The Rake's Enticing Proposal

by Lara Temple

  ‘Our family home. There were debts and a mortgage when my father...died. I’d hoped with good management we might pull through in time, but then last year there was little rain and the crop was poor and Mr Soames, from the bank in Nettleton, said they can no longer be lenient. We have three months until foreclosure. Henry said... Oh, it does not matter what Henry says. He tells me not to worry, but I can tell he is avoiding facing the truth. With all the goodwill in the world he cannot save Whitworth.’ She hitched her shoulders back. ‘I have been thinking, though, that once the bank has Whitworth, perhaps he could lease us a cottage. We do not need much space. And perhaps he could take Edmund on to help manage the estate. It might be easier for all of us to start anew elsewhere... It is only that I hate failing Edmund like this. Whitworth has been held by the Walshes for at least two centuries.’

  ‘That is on your father’s head, not yours, Ellie,’ he said softly.

  ‘I know, but still...’

  Her shoulders sank and once again he saw the pain and weariness. Without a thought he pulled her back into his arms, tucking her head against his shoulder. For once there was no fire in the contact of her body with his, just a deep, comforting warmth, as if their bodies were melting molasses, melding into each other, blurring into one.

  ‘Poor sweet,’ he murmured as he gently rubbed her back.

  ‘I’m not sweet.’ Her voice was muffled against his coat, her breath warm through the fabric.

  ‘I can hardly say poor crosspatch, now can I?’

  The momentary lull in his lust was already abating, but luckily after a moment of shocked stiffening she laughed and pushed away.

  ‘You are incorrigible.’

  ‘And you are...tired. Things will look better in the morning.’

  Her smile wavered and he brushed his knuckles down her cheek.

  ‘They will, I promise. Now take your poor shawl and go to your room before I do something to earn my reputation.’

  She hesitated, and he held his breath, counting out the seconds of temptation. But finally she went to the door, closing it softly behind her without another word.

  Chase returned to his contemplation of his port.

  * * *

  When he finally looked up he was surprised to see a half-hour had passed. He drained his glass and went to ring for his valet. Poor Tubbs would have to be up and out at dawn, but there was a great deal to do in a short amount of time.

  Chapter Ten

  Ellie winced as the door to the Ghoulish Gallery creaked. Her head ached after a night of disjointed sleep and dreams and regrets and pointless wishes. She still couldn’t believe she’d behaved so... She couldn’t even quite think of a word that could encompass it. She’d cried at him and on him, betrayed Henry’s trust without even consulting with him first, allowed him to insult her and to make her laugh...

  How on earth would she face him this morning with any degree of calm?

  But if she didn’t come to the study, he would know she was embarrassed. Perhaps he would even realise she was more than embarrassed...

  She unpeeled her hand from the doorknob.

  Either go forward or back, said sensible Eleanor. Standing here like a pillar of salt is no solution at all.

  None of those options is a solution, not really, Ellie retorted.

  Then when in doubt, go forward, Eleanor replied and released her hold on the door.

  Oh, be quiet, said Ellie, but went forward none the less.

  Only to find the study empty.

  Only a couple minutes ago she might have convinced herself she would be relieved not to face him. Her response to his absence made a mockery of that conviction.

  She felt cheated.

  Soon she must return to her world, but while she was here, she wanted to hoard these new sensations, feelings, experiences—however unsettling.

  Clearly he was regretting last night even more than she if he did not wish to face her this morning.

  Ellie looked around the study, memorising it. Already most of the contents were packed away and only two shelves and the wall of prints remained to be cleared by Chase’s valet. It was like watching leaves slowly being stripped from a tree by coming winter. Now just a few clung, but they could not prevent the approaching frost.

  She could already feel loneliness creep back on her and that made no sense. Why would she feel less lonely with a man she barely knew than with her own family? She loved her brothers and sisters—she wasn’t blind to their faults and she knew they weren’t blind to hers, but she loved them and wanted their happiness and safety. She’d just never realised she was lonely until she wasn’t.

  She kneaded her fist in her hand as she stared at the empty chair behind the desk. Today she would speak with Henry and tell him it was time they both faced the truth, then she would return to Whitworth.

  She closed her eyes and fixed the sight of the study in her mind—Chase sitting at the desk, head bent over the notebooks...

  She wished she had his sister’s skill so she could sketch the image.

  As if summoned, Chase entered the study, pausing in the doorway as if surprised to see her there.

  ‘Good morning, Ellie.’

  It was a perfectly proper greeting and that in itself was enough to make her heart sink further. She knew it was a mistake to reveal so much to him last night.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Sinclair.’ She tried to make her eyes meet his as if there was nothing at all peculiar about her behaviour or revelations last night, but she couldn’t. So she turned to the wall with its exotic prints of places she would never see.

  The wallpaper in between was old and faded, except for one patch. Her mind leapt to latch on to the diversion from her embarrassment.

  ‘Has Tubbs already begun taking these down? I cannot remember what was in this space.’

  ‘In what space?’ he asked and she pointed to the gap between the frames directly opposite the desk.

  He cursed softly, moving forward to touch the brighter blue of the wallpaper where it had been protected from the light. His hands were large, but finely cut, as if a sculptor had agonised over their making, judging every line, even the rise of veins over the fine bones on the back of his hand. The only imperfection was a faint scarring and roughness over his knuckles.

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ She dragged her eyes away from his hand.

  ‘There used to be a sketch Sam made of my mother and Huxley sitting in the garden at Qetara. Huxley liked it so much we framed it for him as a gift. It was always there. How could I not have noticed?’

  ‘Are you certain Tubbs has not removed it?’

  ‘Quite certain. It’s not in the cupboards or gallery cabinets, either. Tubbs and I cleared out the last of those yesterday evening.’

  ‘Perhaps he sent it to be reframed?’

  Chase shook his head.

  ‘I doubt it, Huxley never parted with it, said the drawing was his lucky amulet. Even when he travelled he kept that sketch and some notebooks in a special travel case. I noticed the case was gone, but... Are you certain the portrait wasn’t here before?’

  ‘Quite certain. I have been wondering if Lord Huxley looked like Mr Whelford, but there are no paintings of him here or in the portrait gallery. I am tolerably certain I would have noticed a drawing of him and a woman. I am sorry, Mr Sinclair.’

  ‘Chase,’ he corrected absently. ‘Why are you sorry?’

  ‘Because it was of your mother. I only have one miniature of mine and I would hate to lose it. Some days I already find it hard to remember what she looked like. Was your mother very beautiful?’

  The harshness bled out of his face, his mouth curving a little, and again the world expanded and contracted about her. Chase was back. The sense of rightness at his smile terrified her. It should not matter so much.

  ‘No
t really. We thought she was, but I remember people saying behind her back they didn’t understand what my father saw in her. She was...vivid. Less so after my father died. Sometimes it came back. She liked Egypt. When we were there I think she sometimes forgot what she had lost. But it rarely lasted.’

  ‘She had you.’

  He turned at her protest, his gaze focusing again.

  ‘Precisely. She had to shoulder alone the burden of three difficult children because the man she adored had allegedly cuckolded a friend of his and then shot him in the back. For over a year she only left our great-grandmother’s palazzo in Venice to take us to concerts at La Fenice, only to return to her room and cry. If it hadn’t been for Huxley forcing her to bring us to Egypt, she’d likely have stayed there until she died. I never quite understood why my cousin took us on, but I know how much I owe him. He succeeded in doing for her what we couldn’t, no matter how hard we tried.’ He looked back at the gap on the wall. ‘I should have come here more often these last few years. Damn it.’

  She didn’t comment at the profanity—he was far away again. Her mind tumbled over itself to find ways to alleviate the pain she’d unknowingly unveiled. The need to soothe and help frightened her—she never felt that way outside her little circle and she didn’t want it to expand to include this stranger who made rooms shrink and expand and her balance totter.

  He turned his back on the wall and went the desk.

  ‘Come, we’d best finish with these notebooks. Tubbs will pack the rest of them this afternoon and take them to Sinclair Hall tomorrow.’

  Ellie turned away as well, but there was no evading the implications of the emptying study. The books were gone, too, aside from the set of Desert Boy books Chase had left for her. At least she would have some memento from this strange time other than a broken heart. She picked up the top book, letting it fall open, and gave a little gasp.

  ‘Oh no! it is all cut up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look. Oh, this is terrible.’

  He came and took the book from her. Three whole pages were missing and half of the next page. He flicked forward, finding several more places where similar cuts had been made.

  ‘How peculiar,’ he said, clearly not as affected as she by the vandalism.

  ‘Why would he do this? What on earth would he do with a clipping of a description of the Silver Desert?’ she demanded, her heart sinking as she checked the next volume and found more missing pages.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? Leila and Gabriel reach the Silver Desert where there are towers shaped like mushrooms and crystal flowers growing from the ground. And here... I think this is from the scene where that evil sorcerer...what was his name? Jephteh... He is trying to hurl Gabriel from the cliffs and Leila the Sprite saves him. See?’

  He didn’t answer, just picked up the next book on the stack. Sure enough someone had taken a pair of scissors to this as well.

  ‘Do you recognise the missing scene here?’ he asked, holding it out to her, and she nodded.

  ‘Yes, this is where they find a drunken camel with a missing ear wandering at night near the step pyramid and he leads them to the sacred spring.’

  ‘A missing ear...’

  ‘Oh, and this where Gabriel and Leila are caught in a sandstorm and fall into a cave and she is scolding him. Susan always had me read the scenes between them twice. She is convinced they are in love with on another...’ Her voice petered out and she moved back. ‘Do you think this is a sign of his deterioration? Surely it cannot have anything to do with your little quest.’

  ‘I don’t know. Wait here a moment. Where is that map? Ah, here.’

  He pulled a rolled-up map of Egypt from one of the boxes and spread it on the desk, the Nile twisting upwards and then blooming into the veins of the river delta.

  ‘Fetch me those paperweights on the shelves over there, would you?’

  Ellie gathered the little statuettes shaped like Egyptian gods and he began placing them around the map as he leafed one by one through the mutilated books.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said at last and she bounced a little on her heels, her dismay giving way to curiosity.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Perhaps this was why Huxley had all the notebooks out. He must have been looking for clues.’

  ‘Clues to what?’

  ‘To the author of the Desert Boy novels. He must have recognised these places as well. And not just places. That tale of the camel with the missing ear? Remember the tale I told you about Fatima and Khalidi? Well, a few years later Khalidi’s favourite donkey disappeared and we all went searching and eventually found it with part of its ear missing, probably taken by a jackal.’

  ‘That could merely be a coincidence.’

  ‘Except that we found this donkey munching on some bushes in the middle of the most arid part of the valley which led Khalidi to discover an old underground well that was probably used once by camel traders.’

  ‘That is an interesting parallel,’ she conceded.

  ‘And the scene with Jephteh?’ He pointed to one of the statuettes located halfway down the Nile. ‘That is an almost perfect description of the Howling Cliffs.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The cliffs just above Poppy’s house in Qetara. You reach them from a path leading off the gardens and sometimes at night when the jackals are on the hunt it sounds as though there are hundreds of them. In fact, now I think of these scenes together, I recognise most of them except for the Silver Desert. But your description of the mushroom-shaped towers could refer to the Sahara-al-Beyda, the White Desert, near Farafra. Very few explorers have been there, but I know Huxley went once with Poppy and Edge and Mallory and some others. I remember Huxley telling Sam the illustrations she made of them lacked verisimilitude and she said it was his fault because he hadn’t allowed her to join that expedition even though she’d begged to go.’

  He took another volume and between them they pieced together over a dozen events or locations Huxley had removed from the books.

  ‘So you recognise them all?’ she asked and he nodded, his gaze moving back in time, his mouth softening.

  ‘I told you he was curious about the author. Every time Sam received a new commission for illustrations the conjecture would begin again. I think he even wondered whether it might be my mother because Sam said he was surprised she received a new commission after she died.’

  The animation drained out of his face, the firelight gilding his features and turning his eyes more black than grey. He looked a little like an Egyptian statue himself—a secretive and enigmatic god. Ellie watched the firelight gild his lowered lashes and in her mind she touched her hand to the tense line of his jaw.

  He picked up one of the paperweights she’d handed him from the shelves. It was not a statuette, but a lovely stoppered vase made of a peach-and-cream-coloured substance she did not recognise.

  ‘It is lovely,’ she said. ‘See how the light shines through it. What is it made of?’

  ‘It is alabaster,’ he replied and cleared his throat. ‘From Egypt. I’d forgotten about these also. My mother bought a matching pair of them for Huxley because he liked alabaster. The other one must have broken. You may have this one. If you like.’

  ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly...’

  Her voice disappeared as he enveloped her hands in his, closed them gently about the vase.

  ‘Take it. Please.’

  They stood there, above the map of Egypt, his hands about hers and hers about the modest little vase, as if it was as unique and precious as the holy grail.

  * * *

  Chase froze, dragged out of his abstraction by the feel of her hands in his. Though there was nothing terribly outrageous in his gesture, even as he did it he knew it was a mistake.

  His blood hummed as if l
aced with whisky—expanding as it raced through his veins outward from the point of contact between them, singeing him from within and gathering into a near-unbearable pressure at his centre. He looked down at the vase, waiting for the ache to subside.

  Walls built over decades could be torn down in moments.

  It was one of Oswald’s favourite warnings and though Chase was accustomed to rolling his eyes at his uncle’s descents into philosophising, he’d seen the truth of this too often both in war and peace. A city’s or a nation’s defences are never quite as robust as one hoped.

  He’d just never thought it applied to him.

  He thought he’d understood the pull she exerted on him—lust, friendship, even caring—he could manage these, pass through them and continue. It never once occurred to him there was a line to be crossed that signalled real peril.

  But with his hands on hers, he teetered on the edge of a cliff, only half-aware he must...he must recapture his balance before something terrible happened.

  He managed to remove his hands from hers, but then her lashes rose to reveal the warmth in her gold-spiced eyes and he could not stop himself.

  He fell.

  The closest he’d ever felt to this sensation was when he’d fallen off a twenty-foot cliff into the Mediterranean Sea. The moonless night had provided good cover for his meeting with the Sultan’s agent but also for the several of the Russian Tsar’s less diplomatic representatives, and their short but spirited scuffle ended when he and one of his opponents miscalculated their distance from the cliff’s edge.

  He could still feel the shock of the ground disappearing from beneath his weight, the desperate denial as mind separated from body. Then came the stinging impact as he hit the water and the frantic clawing through black liquid, unsure which way was up, his lungs begging for air, his heart hammering even as his mind bellowed commands.

  He’d forgotten about that moment, but now it was back—the same overwhelming shock and resistance. This could not be happening.

  But it was.

  If he could have moved, he would have been out of the room like a bat out of hell, putting as much space between him and the absurd conviction that everything, his life, his very being had suddenly shifted to another plane.