Reckless Rakes - Hayden Islington

by Bronwyn Scott

  Hayden’s fingers played with a curl that had come down, pushing it behind her ear, his voice low and private when he spoke. “I don’t think that at all. I know others who talk to stars all the time. Who’s to say they aren’t right? Maybe our loved ones do look down on us from there. If it helps us grieve or remember, it’s worth believing in.”

  “Still, it’s hardly seemly to blurt out such things to a stranger. I barely know you and here I am spilling my childhood memories.” The evening had gone passably well too until now.

  She could feel him smile. “Maybe that’s the reason why. I am passing through your life for a very short time. You won’t have to regret something you’ve said every time you sit down to breakfast and see my face staring at you across the table for the rest of your life. I won’t hold you and your secrets accountable. I’m safe.” It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant scenario though, to imagine herself across a breakfast table from this man.

  Jenna laughed. “Safe is not one of the words I’d use to describe you. You seem to pride yourself on being the sort of man mothers warn their daughters about.” She was teasing him of course but it struck her that while he’d been explaining her behavior, he’d revealed a rather telling piece of himself. This was how he kept himself safe too — everyone was a stranger. No one got too close. How could they when he moved on every few weeks? When no one had a chance to ask him for more than he was willing to give? “Is that why you do it?” she hazarded a guess into the night sky.

  “Do what?” His question was wary. She felt his arms tense about her ever so slightly.

  “A new woman every night? A new town every few weeks?” It was odd to think of man who appeared so comfortable with everyone he met as being a man who preferred the company of strangers.

  He chuckled, his breath feathering her ear. “Minx, I thought we were talking about you. You were telling me about your mother, your family. Have you really lived here always?”

  “Since I was six. I remember moving here from Leeds. My father felt there were better business opportunities for a factory manager like himself who wanted to be more upwardly mobile. It’s hard for a man of modest means to invest when he lives in a big city. Big cities require bigger pockets. But here, in a smaller town, there were chances aplenty.” She paused, too many memories flooding back. Hayden’s hand played with more curls that had subtly slipped Edie’s pins.

  “Don’t think alone, Jenna.” Hayden whispered a playful prompt.

  She shook her head. “It’s too sad. I was thinking of my mother; how when we came here she only had five years left but we didn’t know it, she didn’t know it. It’s one of those things you only recognize in retrospect.”

  “Was she ill?” Hayden asked quietly.

  “No, nothing like that. She never got her strength back after Daniel was born and one winter she just slipped away in her sleep. Everyone in town said how peaceful it was, how lucky she was to have a painless death. I disagree of course. She missed so much.”

  Of course Jenna disagreed, with her fire and her temper. She would never go quietly anywhere against her will, not even in death. Hayden knew that without a doubt, no matter how short their acquaintance. She would fight just as she fought now for her father, how she wanted to fight Davenport for the rights of her workers. What an intriguing woman he’d stumbled upon, what a beautiful one, and what a desperate one. Desperate in ways she might not even understand. Her desperation was about more than salvaging her father’s reputation.

  “And your father, Jenna? Will he get well? I didn’t get much of an answer the other day.” Saving the man’s reputation wouldn’t save him, not in the physical sense. But desperate people will do anything, even the most illogical of things, if they think it will save their loved ones. He’d seen it too many times to deny the truth of that. Would she confess to that much here under the stars, wrapped tight in his arms?

  “He will get better.” There was a difference between better and well. One was temporary. He heard the determination in her answer and the hope. A cynic might call that a lie instead. So it was a permanent condition, one from which a few good days might be culled. He would not press Jenna on that point tonight.

  He’d not come out here to make her sad. He’d come out here because he wanted to see the stars, because he wasn’t ready to go back to his room at the inn, because he wasn’t ready to be alone. He wanted to be with her, wanted to get to know her. And maybe, if he was honest, he’d wanted to make good on that gauntlet she’d so hastily thrown down at the stable yesterday. She’d looked stunning when she’d come down the stairs tonight and the evening had been wonderful once they’d gotten past the business piece. Dancing and strolling, talking and teasing, flirting shamelessly. It had been fun. She had been fun and he was starting to suspect that was something she hadn’t been or had for quite some time.

  He took a slow breath, savoring the heat of her against him. He was content to let the silence stretch between them, content to let her have a moment with her memories if she wanted them but Jenna was restless, her tone overly bright. “I told you something, now you have to tell me something. Turnabout is fair play.”

  “I didn’t know we were playing.” he replied drily.

  “We are and now it’s your turn. Tell me about your family, your home? Where do you live when you’re not racing?”

  “Whoa!” Hayden laughed. “That’s a lot of questions, especially for a woman who said she wasn’t interested.” But he answered them anyway. It would take her mind off her memories.

  “I have an older brother, and a younger sister. We have an estate outside of York. How’s that?” he teased. It wouldn’t be enough and he knew it but they were safe memories. To tell her more would lead to uncomfortable memories best left alone. He didn’t want to show her that man, nor was there a need to. They would enjoy one another and move on. There was no need to trot out one another’s histories.

  “Tell me about your home. Give me details. Is it small? Big?” She wiggled against him, not intentionally perhaps, perhaps just to get comfortable but the result was rather arousing. Hayden thought she could have asked him anything and he would have told her just to prolong the starlit magic.

  His home. Where to start? “It’s a small estate, not near so grand as a lord’s home. My uncle is a baron, but we’re plain gentry. The grounds, the parkland, all of it make up for the house though.” It was easier to talk when he played with her hair. Good lord, it had a million pins in it. He could play with it all night and still not get the whole mess down. “The trees turn red in the autumn. The whole wood looks like it’s on fire. And there’s a lake that freezes in the winter.”

  “Of course there is.” Jenna murmured, her breathy response contributing to the magic.

  “We skated on it all winter. Winter was never long enough.” He couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of his voice. Good lord, now he was starting to babble. What a night.

  Jenna gave a soft laugh. “That’s a very odd comment for a man from York. Most folks I know think winter lasts quite long enough in these parts.”

  “Well, they don’t have my lake.” Hayden spun her around and tugged at her hand. “Come on, I bet you’ve never been on your lake like this.” He stepped onto the ice, feeling Jenna hesitate even though she’d seen it hold horses and men earlier that week.

  “Aren’t you ever worried the ice will crack?” Clearly, she was a girl who’d been raised with a healthy dose of respect of Mother Nature. But she put her foot on the ice anyway and gave into the pull of his hand.

  “No, this is good ice and besides, the further out you go, the safer it is. Ice closest to shore is the most likely to crack.” He grinned, holding her eyes with his, willing her not to think too much about what they were doing as they ventured out onto the lake.

  “Why is that? Is it because the ice layer is deeper further out?” She gave a little gasp as he spun her around in a waltz step.

  “No, that’s a myth too.” Hayden explained, feeling himsel
f ironically warming to the subject. “Thickness isn’t as important as freshness. “New ice is stronger than old. What people don’t realize is that five inches of fresh ice can hold as much weight as maybe eight inches to a foot of old.” He winked. “You’ve lived here all your life and you don’t know that?”

  She smiled at his teasing. “You’re quite the scholar. What seems like reckless abandon — by that I mean putting a thousand pound animal and a man on a frozen surface and racing — is really a scientifically calculated risk.”

  “It is for me. I can’t speak for the others.” Hayden laughed. “Do you see that northwest corner over there?” He gestured in the general direction. “If it was daylight we could see the canal in the distance. The race sponsors wanted to run the course that way. There’s better shoreline access for spectator viewing, but I wouldn’t have it. If ice is going to crack it will be near streams, or bridges, any place where there are active currents.”

  He supposed he was showing off now but she appeared to be far more interested in his ice science than the young bucks who’d come yesterday for their lesson. They’d only been interested in the danger and the speed. At that rate, they’d find danger faster than they expected. Whereas Jenna was staring at him, rapt, her expression contemplative.

  “How ever did you come up with the idea of ice racing? Was it more of your scientific calculations?” Jenna laughed.

  “It was a poem, actually.” Hayden felt a little self- conscious over the confession. A man like him, at least the ‘him’ he’d fashioned for the public didn’t read poetry and they certainly didn’t read it in German. “It’s called ‘The Rider and Lake Constance.’ It was published a couple of years ago.” He pitched his voice low to recite the opening stanza. “The Horseman rides in the valley’s glow, the sunbeam glistens on fields of snow, the sweat-drop falls as he speeds to gain the Lake Constance ere day doth wane, to pass with his steed in the ferry o’er and land ere night on the further shore.”

  “A lover of literature and a scientist. I’m impressed.” She meant it too, there was something akin to appreciation shining in those eyes of hers and it stirred him to think she might hold him in regard. It was enough for him to elaborate.

  “In short, a rider crosses a frozen lake only to learn after he’d crossed just how shallow the ice bed was. He becomes retrospectively paralyzed with fear over what he’s done and he falls off the horse and promptly dies.”

  “How depressing!”

  “How stupid was my thought.” Hayden laughed at her reaction. “If he was smart, he would have known that four inches of ice wasn’t necessarily risky as long…

  “As it was fresh.” Jenna finished in unison with him.

  They laughed together and Hayden felt the pull of being in accord with someone, of knowing that someone thought as you did, shared the same sense of humor as you did. It didn’t happen often and certainly not with the women he was used to. He tugged her close and looked down into her face, his forehead resting against hers. “You did listen. I thought maybe I had bored you.” He paused and gave her a look. “What’s happening here, Jenna?” he teased with a grin. “Might it be that you like me a little? Despite, might I add, of your protests to the contrary.”

  “Perhaps we are becoming friends.” she smiled back, the moonlight limning her from behind. She looked like a winter nymph in her cloak, her hair falling down about her, her cheeks red from the cold, eyes sparkling.

  “Friends?” Hayden said the word with a hint of disbelief. He swung her about in a waltz step, careful they didn’t slip on the ice. He didn’t think they would, the ice was fairly dry. He felt her body pick up the rhythm of his improvised dance as he turned them, hips matching hips, thighs matching thighs. Hayden gave a wicked smile. “I shall wait and hope for better.”

  Chapter Nine

  Better wasn’t precisely the word he’d used to describe what was waiting for him back at the inn an hour later. He’d no sooner opened the door to his room when Logan’s stern tones cut across the room. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Opening my door? Going to bed?” Hayden shrugged out of his greatcoat and tossed it over the back of a chair. The bubble was decidedly off the wine in terms of the evening.

  “It’s nearly three in the morning.” Logan rose from the opposite chair set near the dying the fire. His cravat was undone and he’d discarded his coat. From the looks of the decanter, Logan had been there a while.

  “What do you want?” Hayden said tiredly. Conversations with Logan had a habit of going badly. They might be friends but they were also polar opposites. “And by the way, three in the morning would be laughable in London. Most entertainments would still be going on.” Hayden poured himself the remainder and swallowed it a gulp. “Hope the brandy was good. It looks like it must have been.”

  “Three hours is a long time to wait.” Logan was surly.

  Hayden began stripping out of his clothes. “Since when do you wait up for me? You have your own room.”

  “Since we have unfinished business to discuss. Remember when I said our discussion wasn’t over? That we would talk about Miss Priess and your investigation later? Well that time is now. You made it so when you took her to the assembly, acting for all the world like a besotted swain and then disappearing with her for hours afterwards. What are you playing at, Hayden? She’s from a good family. She’s not one of your usual women, anyone in town can tell you that.”

  “I’m seducing her.” Hayden threw it out glibly, knowing full well it would get a rise out of Logan. It served Logan right if he was going to invade his rooms and his privacy. He was a grown man. He could come in whenever he wanted, and he could damn well seduce whoever he wanted.

  “Good lord! What are you thinking? Never mind that, you never think.” Logan had to fight to keep his voice down.

  “I take offense at that.” Hayden said quietly, removing his shirt. In his mind, he saw Jenna’s contemplative face, the revelation stealing across it — he wasn’t just a handsome face, he had a brain. Of course he did, investigators might not be able to recite a litany of the kings of England but they were by nature critical thinkers, able to analyze situations from different angles and he was quite good at that. Being a good ice racer involved a certain level of science, and seduction was a whole science in itself.

  “It’s the truth. You rush right in and never consider the consequences.”

  Hayden faced Logan, hands on hips. “I’m not in over my head with her. I know what I’m doing. She’s not the baroness. I just need an inside track to help her find her missing worker. People won’t open up to me if I’m just the new stranger in town.”

  “So you don’t mean to seduce her?” Logan’s shoulders relaxed a fraction.

  “Not publicly.” Hayden winced. Logan’s tension returned. He hated telling the truth. Any seduction would not be done with the intent of it becoming public knowledge, but if this attraction continued between them, he couldn’t promise things mightn’t evolve.

  Logan let out a breath. “Well, I suppose it’s something that you haven’t seduced her already. What were you doing tonight?”

  Hayden let out a harsh chuckle. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “Alright. We were looking at the stars out by the lake.” And dancing on ice, and talking; talking about things that mattered like homes and families. He hadn’t even kissed her. It was more than a little ironic that the night he hadn’t kissed a woman, hadn’t done anything more than wrap his arms about her, that Logan had chosen to call him to task for propriety’s sake.

  Logan had the good grace to glance away, his hands fiddling with the stopper from the decanter lying loose on the table. “Be careful, Hayden. This is a small town and the rules are different. You could end up married if you don’t exercise some restraint. “She’s beautiful but marriage has to be more than two handsome people in bed.”

  “If you say so, Mr. Confirmed Bachelor. But it
sounds like a good start to me.” Hayden snorted at the idea of Logan preaching about the qualities of a good marriage. “Tell me, Logan, do you worry over Carrick like this too? Does he get the lecture tomorrow night because I happen to know he’s been meeting with a pretty blonde daughter of a snuff shop owner.” He should take back the words if he could. Logan meant well, but there was tension between them, there always had been and their friendship had endured in spite of it.

  “Watch yourself, Hayden.” Logan warned. “I made you and your bank account. You and Carrick wouldn’t last a racing season without me to coordinate everything. I could pack up and be gone by morning. I don’t need this gig like you do.”

  “It was my idea. I came up with ice racing.” Hayden shot back. ‘And that’s a lie, you need it too. You need the thrill. You love the showmanship of coordinating the details, of arranging the meetings, of seeing just how much you can influence people. It’s a power trip for you, Logan. One you can’t get at home.” It was a low blow. Logan was very private but Carrick and Hayden knew his one regret was that his younger brother refused to be brought to heel and was willingly running headlong into disaster.

  “Your idea based on someone else’s. You got it from a poem.” Logan snarled. The last of the logs snapped and fell in the fire behind him.

  “And a damn good idea it was. It’s made a fortune for me and for you. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “You owe me your life!” Logan’s voice was a restrained roar. “Who save you when your gut was sliced open? Who got you to safety when that whore of a baroness would have seen you dead? Who nursed you back to health? I did. Who put up with your depression afterwards? Who encouraged you to find another enterprise? Who financially backed this venture? I did.”