Rakehell's Daughters

by Gayle Eden

  Alexander leaned across and took her hand. He held it between their chairs comfortably, his thumb stroking comfortingly. “He is a man with great weight and responsibility. Always has been, from youth. He has been allowed little in his life, even here, that does not have to do with expectations and responsibilities. I am sure you know, daughter, what it must be like among his own kin.

  Those who will depend upon him, and those who bedevil and vex him with every petty problem, the Van Wyc’s and their extended families run a near empire. Aside from the business he must oversee, there are towns and villages, families and such, who rely upon them, and the industries they control. From what he tells me, there are widows, young and old who fall under his ward ship, children to educate and the head of the family branch must oversee every detail…”

  “Good Lord,” Val stared at him.

  Alexander smiled wryly, “I wish that were the least of it, but there are formal duties, and times he must join the other branches for their traditional honors to royalty. I bloody cannot imagine the extent of his duties. I have oft watched him write letters and posts until the wee hours of morning, as they appraise him of every sheep slaughtered or cousin betrothed or length of sail purchased.

  I dare say, he would go daft ending his days with a child bride who will understand nothing of his burdens and likely vex him further by her very lack of maturity and life experience. I only submit to you that he deserves some comfort, something more in the life he is about to walk into.”

  Valerie turned and this time her eyes were on the woodlands. Like himself, she no doubt knew how Van Wyc spent his frustrations.

  Alexander felt for her however, whilst she tightened her fingers on his. Her voice small and trembling, unlike the normal Val whilst she uttered, “But can he not see that I wouldn’t be a fair choice for him? He is a young man, despite all of that. A man in his prime. It would not be fair to….”

  Knowing what she meant, the Marquis squeezed back slightly and offered gently, “A man with great pride, and reason for it, doesn’t beg lightly, my dear. He needs you, Val.”

  Later, at the dinner table, everyone bathed and dressed, Alexander noted Valerie’s absence. He made some excuse to the others—not that anyone noticed for long, since Alex was holding Edmund’s hand openly by their plates and whispering him some tease, which had him reaching often for the water glass and rushing through the meal.

  Jo was flirting with Auvary, and that earl was indulging her. Not, Alexander hoped—to the point of actually becoming the lover he was well aware his daughter was bent on, only to assuage her thinly veiled anger at Auttenburg.

  Not that he would interfere, given that Johanna was twenty and four, and one of those daughters who would likely learn her lessons the hard way. She refused to speak of Sascha, and even in London went back to creating a sensation wherever they went. No matter how amused he was at her daring, he could not be glad to witness any pain on her part. Yet with the experience of his fifty years, the Marquis knew he could do nothing to prevent it.

  Sitting back with his wine, he moved his eyes to Sonja, truck by the enigmatic smile on her dark lips whilst she observed her brother and Alex. She had changed into some lovely deep chocolate silk; a frothy drape of pleated material over her shoulders attached just at the corner of each breasts. Her breasts, full and round, fashionably displayed in the lower cut bodice.

  Jerking his gaze upwards, he studied her beautiful skin and fine bones beneath his half-mast lashes. By slow degrees that smile settled into her normal repose, and Alexander realized her eyes were on him.

  Soft chestnut eyes with sparks of gold between the longest, thickest black lashes, met his for a space of heartbeats. The Marquis’ own beat too hard behind his ribs, causing him to sweat under his formal black coat and white ruffled shirt.

  She lowered them a fraction and reached for her wine with beautiful hands, ungloved. He should have looked away but watched that glass touch her full lips, and followed the flex of her slender throat whilst she swallowed. Ashamed of himself, aware he could be discomforting her, the Marquis finally jerked his gaze away, then standing, he excusing himself.

  He was not surprised when Edmund and Alex retired early, and only Auvary joined him for cheroot and brandy—a game of billiards.

  Sometime in the hours before he sought his bed, the Marquis of Hawksmoor mused wryly that he had not been distracted, stirred, nor this fixated on a woman since the year Johanna’s mother died. In fact he had taken no lovers since his part with Constance, and their last year together had been on and off due to his longing for whatever that restless void meant…whatever he had missed.

  While the reckless passion of youth might bring a fond smile to his face in remembrance, he was certainly glad to discover his well-maintained body had all its working parts—even if a bit dismayed too, admitting with a sigh that this particular ache in his chest was entirely new.

  The End

  Rakehell’s Daughter

  Valerie

  Cast:

  Alexander Ramsey, the Marquis of Hawksmoor—Rakehell and lover, the 50-year-old faded from society and quit his famous mistress, for three years, before he emerged and began claiming daughters by his former lovers.

  Edmund de Forrest, Earl of Sotherton (Recently wed to Lady Alexander Ramsey, one of three bastard daughters of the Marquis

  Jo—Lady Johanna Ramsey-24 year old daughter of the Marquis-dubbed by society as the brazen one.

  Alex—Alexandria Ramsey, de Forrest, Countess of Sotherton and daughter of the Marquis, youngest bastard daughter, recent wife of Edmund.

  Sascha Auttenburg, Viscount Whitford, a good friend and crony of Lord Edmund’s who fell instantly for the brazen Lady Jo, but was entangled with a Duchess who blackmailed him from a young age. He broke Jo’s heart when he sought Van Wyc out for a position in one of his businesses, leaving England and any chance with Jo, to redeem his pride and honor.

  Lord Adam Auvary—friend/country neighbor of Edmund, Earl of Sotherton, current rakehell himself, who courted Alexandria briefly, Lady Sonja, Duchess of Summerton, the beautiful 40-year-old sister of Lord Edmund. After suffering the neglect of her parents and forced to be a child bride to a cruel elder duke, she was ostracized by the ton following his death. Established in London as an independent woman who owned a residence on Regent where discreet trysts were conducted. A break in, has forced her to sell the home, and currently visiting the Marquis and his family at his English estate, Hawksmoor. Happy for Edmund and Alexandria, her life is in limbo.

  Leland Bellamy, the former husband of Lady Valerie, the Marquis oldest bastard daughter, a blond Adonis, with the character of a gutter rat. His final act of cruelty nearly killed Val, and did kill the child she carried. He left London after the divorce, still followed by scandal, which his cousin Van Wyc has had to deal with.

  Archard Van Wyc—born in Holland to a merchant family of mixed Dutch and Finnish descent that made their fortune in the Dutch East India Company, formally educated in Sweden, France, England, due to his families far reaching enterprise and his own interest in experimental ventures. He has the hands on knowledge of trade and actual labor. Dubbed the Viking, by many for his 6 foot 5 impressive brawn, long white mane and light blue eyes, his Nordic looks, Van Wyc is the eldest of his branch which has connections through marriage to families in Norway, Sweden and abroad, a scholar as well as merchant and jack-of-all-trades. His family’s ties to royalty, his own firsthand experience as a common laborer, make for an interesting man of contrasts. He came to England in the latter years to clean up the mess his distant cousin Leland made, which appalled the family, and has stayed on as a protector/feeling responsible for Valerie, the Marquis daughter, who has finally divorced Leland. Loyal friend to the Marquis of Hawksmoor and the family, he has been suddenly summoned home, and asked Valerie to be his bride to avoid an arranged marriage to a young ward of his uncles.

  Chapter One

  Lady Valerie Ramsey made her way through the wood
s by moonlight. Holding her skirts up so they did not catch on twigs, she scolded herself for not bringing a shawl. It was near to fall, the end of summer, and northern nights were cooler. She could see the glow of an old lantern long before she reached the clearing, where the woodcutter’s cottage sat.

  Her father’s words spurred her to this. She had to give him an answer. Still, her father had no idea how long she had sat after Van Wyc’s proposal, arms around herself, rocking her body in the darkness of her chambers with suppressed memories flooding her.

  Although the family knew some of it, Van Wyc knew the worst. Even after she ended her marriage to Leland and walked out of the nightmare, she had not really faced it.

  In some ways, she realized Van Wyc was both her savior and… her demons. Times she had looked at him and flashes of things better forgotten tormented her mind. Guilt was her constant companion, because before wedding Leland, she would have challenged anyone who foretold such a future to her.

  All of her life, Valerie, had considered herself a person of deep thought, and intellect. Enlightening her mind often gave her that ability to be objective, and gained her a certain poise and confidence.

  Whatever she had become once she wed Leland—isolated from support and family, living in his world, his self-centered universe; it was not that woman.

  Nevertheless, the fact that she had spent two years being that stranger to herself deepened the sense of culpability for the abuse. Valerie had, in those dark hours of trying to fight images and memories, recalled when Leland had given her that potion to abort the babe. She remembered only the cramps and pain, the fever and foggy helplessness of being lucid enough to scream for him.

  It had not been he who burst through the door, but a horrified Archard.

  She remembered him saying, “He has gone, left.” Her body arching with pain, she had begged and begged that she not lose the babe.

  Of course, the bed was red by then with her blood. And even when he’d gathered himself, bellowed for servants who never came—likely for fear—as there was never many who stayed long under Leland’s tyranny, Van Wyc had wadded toweling and tried to stanch the flow.

  There were memories of him sniffing the glass and holding her face in his rough hands, repeatedly demanding to know what she had taken. She had mumbled that Leland had forced her to drink something sent by the midwife for nausea. Not yet aware of her husband’s real intent, Valerie went in out of consciousness as Van Wyc bundled and lifted her, running below, going down several flights with her in his arms.

  She was no small woman, five feet and 8 inches tall. It later amazed her that even a man of his brawn did not jostle her. However, at the bottom of the stairs, one of the young servants was pleading, “Please sir. Do not take her to the village. There is only the midwife and she is not clean. More women die at her hand than deliver.”

  “Then bloody help me!” Archard had growled. She was carried to the parlor floor.

  Her fever soared and the pain in her body felt worse than torture in the next hours. She remembered Archard’s taut Nordic features hovering above her, his accented prayers and soothing words on and off. Water was brought. She was (cleaned out) as she recalled the young girl calling it. Some hollow part of her heart knowing, when the babe was no more.

  At some point a mattress was dragged down and in the days following she was changed, washed, fed and held—she felt her life pulled from her bones with hot tongs. It was always Archard, who lifted and carried her. Always he, who talked through her night sweats and writhing.

  She had recovered. Nevertheless, it taken a month for her to do more than shuffle from room to room. Depressed and devastated, she had cared little about life, about food or air even. It had been Van Wyc again who picked her up and carried her outside, making her sit in the air despite the fact; she never spoke or looked at him.

  As humiliating as that dark time was, Valerie could go back further. Further, to the times she may have been healthy in body, but somehow lost in her mind. Those times she begged Leland, and allowed him to mock and scathe at her whilst she pampered his vanity and soothed his ill temper. There were slaps and shoves, cruel pinches that did not hurt as bad as his words.

  Her world shrank to him, and her every mood depended on his kindness. When he was gone, she existed, having glimpses of her former self but never quite able to see past her inward thoughts.

  Valerie shuddered now, recalling that desperate act of begging him to lay with her for a child. A babe became her lifeline, her answer to feeling abandoned, worthless, and isolated. During a string of taunts and foul talk, Leland had roughly taken her. He had left the following morning. She was so fixated on that seed taking, on finally having a child, that she had not heeded the marks on her body.

  At supper that evening, she caught the expression on Van Wyc’s face. His food untouched as he stared at her chest with mingled horror and anger.

  Having worn a gown modest for the day, but having generous breasts Val had looked down to see them smudged with blue marks and the outline of Leland’s teeth. She had shrunk from the table and then on covered herself, but avoided Van Wyc’s eyes, determined, in her skewed mental state, to think only of the babe.

  She supposed that final act of her husband’s stripped all illusion from her. That, and Van Wyc going to her father. Between them, they had freed her from that isolated estate and freed her from Leland in some sense. Yet she knew Archard still cleaned up Leland’s messes. A fortune or several spent to try to amend his sins.

  Reaching the edge of the woods, Val hesitated, clearing the darkness from her mind—making herself recall this past season and the somewhat normal life she’d come back to. She thought perhaps it was the first time she had actually viewed Archard outside his connection to Leland. At times, he disconcerted her with his continued solicitation. She was among her family after all and sound in mind and body—she was not his family responsibility.

  The money, yes. They argued about that often. She had finally acceded and let him open an account for her. She knew when to give in, and had a sense he (needed) to return her dowry.

  The thing was, it was all a tangle because of those past secrets and ties from Leland, how to separate him and herself completely from that, she did not know.

  Val looked at the huge pile of split kindling in the spill of lantern light, her eyes going to the door of the cottage and faint light spilling out. It was at the corner she saw him, apparently washing, dunking his head in a rain barrel.

  He held to the rimmed sides, back muscles and arms bulging and shifting while his head submerged. Raising it out, he flung that long hair back and roughly pushed it against his skull and nape. It really was a mane, long for fashion these days. He rinsed and splashed his torso, the water casting silver drops under the moon, and putting a crystal sheen on his honey toasted skin. His buckskin trousers were damp at the spine, soiled from his labor.

  Arms around her stomach, Val was aware of his six feet five height, the sheer expanse of shoulders and chest. She recalled the times she actually saw him—really noticed Archard Van Wyc, the man, since re-uniting with her father. Aware for a long time that he was nick named the Viking; she still had been a bit startled finally putting together that long gold and white mane, the Nordic bones and pale blue eyes. She had been in awe of his frame. She really had been blind whilst with Leland, because she had not precisely noticed the vigor, and virility in this man. A sinewy neck and rounded chiseled arms, veined under that honey skin, broad, sculpted in his chest, carved and ridged abdomen and long, powerful legs—that no fashionable trousers would have fit without a tailor measuring a few times. Back or front, he was a solid sculpture of hewn muscle and sinew. It was not just his unique style of dress in London that turned heads, she finally realized. Not—that his face was not compelling.

  She was likely the only one who had ever seen him break from that fixed cold stare and set jaw he wore amid society. He may smile, laugh even, and tease her sisters. However, his wide, hi
gh cheekbones, impossible brow and narrow bridged, arrow nose, and rugged jaw, were prominent and eye catching.

  She did not think of his sensual mouth…If she did that, Valerie feared she would think of one newer memory after a certain ball. He had excused his action by way of too much brandy, she now reminded herself. She chose to accept that. If she did not, she certainly could not contemplate what she was about to do.

  He was pulling a linen shirt with open ties over his head that he had picked up beside the barrel, when she took a step out of her covering.

  A twig snapped under foot.

  Pulling down the square hem, he instantly spun and spotted her.

  Val watched him smooth his hair back behind his ears. His expression, even in moonlight, first surprised and then watchful.

  Taking a hesitant step her way, he paused and turned to collect the square lantern. Holding it a bit aloft, he scolded in his particular accent; “You should not come through the woods at night in the dark.”

  “I know.” Her mouth felt dry, arms tighter around herself. Val tried not to notice how the lantern light and shadows enhanced the harder plains of his face. Do not. She told herself. Just get on with it, and do not make yourself any more nervous than you already are.

  “I wanted to speak with you.”

  He came abreast and then took her arm. “I was on my way back.”

  Val did not speak in the woods. She was again aware of him despite her mental scolding; the earthy smell of his skin and heat from his body. Normally feeling too full and larger than most women and not a few men, she sensed the larger height and breadth of him, that physical masculinity and strength that could be intimidating.

  They were forced to walk close, and often brushed against each other, his hold on her arm firm, without being hurtful.

  They cleared the woods.