“I thought no one knew I was here.”
“Penny doesn’t, if that’s what you mean. The rest of us are well aware of your whereabouts, as we all know the two things you prefer to do when you’re upset.”
Rake lifted the bottle of wine and let the red liquor fill his mouth. He didn’t need this harassment. Not now. Not ever.
All he wanted was some privacy, so he could drink himself into a stupor he would hopefully never wake up from. If it meant he would have to stay drunk the rest of his life, so be it. Just as long as he didn’t have to face the pain of reality.
The pain of loving Penny.
That woman could drive a saint crazy, and for all he knew she probably already had, considering poor Thomas Bedford.
Maybe he should seek Thomas out. They could drink together, and maul with words the wicked witch named Lady Penelope de Vere, who thoughtlessly walked over every man’s heart, not once thinking about their feelings.
Or not. If he came any closer to Thomas than a mile, he would probably thrash the poor man who had kissed Penny not only once but twice. Put his ugly lips against her lush ones and pressed his tongue gently against hers, tasted her sweet mouth…
This time he emptied the bottle in one final gulp before he threw it away in the same direction he had thrown the first bottles. The clanking noise when the bottle landed with its friends made his father arch an eyebrow against him.
“Feeling a bit thirsty?”
“A bit.”
“Water would be a better choice.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Go away.”
Hannibal, as the understanding and loving father he was, ignored his son’s harsh words and instead sat down by him and, without a word, reached for the next bottle, which he opened and offered his son.
“Here, don’t let me stop you.”
Rake grabbed the bottle, but instead of putting it to his mouth, he looked at the swirling wine inside. It felt good to have his father beside him in his hour of need. If his family was the solidness of his life, Hannibal was his guiding star.
Even though they were as different as night and day, he had always tried to live up to his father’s standard.
Hannibal Darling, the Duke of Berkeley, was the most honest and caring man he knew of. Without remorse or embarrassment, the duke showered his sons with love, not once caring who saw how soft he was when it came to his boys. So what if Hannibal didn’t want to leave Chester Park? When he was home at the ancestral castle, Rake knew he had his father’s full attention whenever he wanted it.
And occasionally when he didn’t want it.
“This has gone too far.” His father spoke softly, as if he didn’t want to scare the moment away. “You and Penny have to work this out somehow. You are both suffering immensely from it, and besides that, it drives the rest of us crazy.”
Rake snorted. “Don’t you think I have tried to? But it’s like talking to a mule: she refuses to listen to me. It doesn’t matter what I do or what I say, it’s just not enough for her.”
“So what is it she wants?”
“I don’t know! She refuses to tell me.”
Rake felt Hannibal’s probing eyes and knew he sounded lunatic. But the whole Penny situation was crazy from beginning to end. He didn’t know what to do, and the fact that she didn’t seem to know either didn’t make it any easier. It was a never-ending story, destined to run in circles forever and ever.
“I-I’m not a man of words, not when it comes to emotions,” he continued, too tired to care whether he was revealing too much. It was his father, after all. If he was going to open up to anyone, who better than the man who loved him without boundaries? “I have tried in every way I can think of to show her how much she means to me, but it’s never enough for her. There is nothing more I can tell her that I haven’t already shown her in a thousand ways. And yet she stubbornly persists…”
He broke off and shook his head in desperation. It was too much for him, all those feelings, and the frustration over not being able to get past one obstacle on his way to eternal happiness: Penny herself.
“I don’t know what’s going on in that beautiful little head of hers,” he continued. “Every time I try to talk to her, I seem to end up just as angry and frustrated as I feel now. Somehow it feels like she doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say but instead hears only a word or two before she gets all upset over them.”
“Don’t you think you are overreacting a bit now?” Hannibal stood and began in a very Darling-like way to walk to and fro in front of his youngest son, obviously caught up in finding a solution to the situation which rendered Rake this unhappy. “Penny is a smart girl, although she tends to live with her head in the clouds a bit too much sometimes. But more importantly, she loves you with all her heart. Always has and always will. If you just try again, maybe you two could find a way to meet in the middle.”
Rake couldn’t stop the hysterical laughter which erupted from his chest. “Don’t you think I have tried? Oh, Lord, how I have tried.”
The emotions were too much for him, and he flew up too, ignoring the spinning inside his head, and walked to and fro beside his father. “It’s like the first time I talked to her about us joining our futures, having a house of our own. I asked her where she would like to live. I thought it was obvious, considering the lack of tactfulness from the rest of you Darlings…”
“What?” Hannibal gasped outraged. “We are not untactful. Of course we would stay out of the way for you and your new bride.”
“Of course you would,” Rake sneered, “For an hour or two.”
Hannibal snorted, but even he couldn’t deny the truth in Rake’s words. He too knew, just as Rake did, that the Darling family was a bit over-intrusive when it came to other members of the family, and not one of them would have thought twice about the newlyweds wanting some privacy.
“All I wanted was to be alone with her during the first months of our marriage, so we could have time to adjust to our new life together and get to know each other, body and soul. But Penny, my lovely little dove, missed the part of me hiding in a house with her as her husband and thought I was telling her I wanted to put her in a house as my mistress.”
“What?” Hannibal hooted with laughter. His large shoulders shook so much his wavy white hair bounced upon his head. “That’s hilarious. My God, how I would like to have heard that conversation. You—my wicked libertine son—giving up your bachelor lifestyle for this slip of a girl, while she accuses you of wanting to turn her into your mistress. Truly hilarious.”
Rake stopped his pacing and shook his head over his father’s obvious delight. “Your compassion overwhelms me.”
“Oh, come on, Richard.” Hannibal gave Rake a whack on the back that would have sent a smaller man flying. But Rake had inherited his father’s large frame and was used to his constant whacking, and so held his stance.
“Really, Father, it’s not as funny when you’re in the middle of it.”
“No, of course not.” Hannibal cleared his throat in an attempt to regain his composure. “Please, continue. What happened after Penny thought you were trying to turn her into one of your mistresses?”
Rake glared at his father. “Why does everyone think I have hoards of mistresses everywhere? Penny does, too, and the jealous little minx wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say after misunderstanding me.”
“Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?”
“Have a couple of mistresses waiting around for you?”
“Of course not.”
Rake could see his father had trouble believing him and, frankly, he couldn’t hold it against him. He had been a bit infamous when he was younger and had let his manly lusts lead his way for a couple of amorous years.
But when Devlin left for the military, Rake had more or less left that part of his life behind and instead spent most of his time helping his father and the rest of his family with the financial side of the estate, increasing the already enorm
ous Berkeley riches.
He was a man with certain needs, of course, and he had not been without female company for more than a few weeks, over the past six years, and for a while he had even had a mistress tucked away in a house for him to visit when he felt so obliged. To his credit, he had never been with more than one woman at a time, never with unmarried ladies, and never, ever, had his heart in it.
And from the moment he laid eyes on Penny at the lake last August, he hadn’t even looked at another woman, much less bedded one. His body burned with need, but it was a fire only Penny could ease. Something he knew from experience, embarrassingly enough.
After Penny had tumbled into Francesca’s bedroom that night a year ago and then refused to talk to him about it, he had behaved in the most destructive way. Something had happened to her, something so awful it had turned her into a shadow of herself, and he was kept outside of it. By her choice.
He knew he had acted the reverse of what he should have, but in a desperate need to have revenge against Penny for shutting him out, he had flirted outrageously with every woman he met, not once caring about who she was as long as she could be a possible bedmate and for a short moment of time erase the image of the drenched and bruised Penny on the floor that night.
But in vain. It never went farther than him arriving at the woman’s bedroom and making a humiliated escape from it in a couple of minutes. Not because he wasn’t able to perform. No, it was simply because he felt like an ogre, thinking of being unfaithful to Penny, and he never got over that enough to be able to stay.
After a while he gave up his foolish quest for bodily satisfaction and let the truth sink in. Everyone always joked about how a reformed libertine made the best husband, and he guessed he was the living evidence of that.
Not that he knew what kind of husband he would be—probably suffocating poor Penny with his silly need of being near her, touching her, looking at her, loving her—but it was obvious he had no need for anyone other than her, his woman.
“Why don’t you just explain to her how wrongly she thinks of you?”
Rake scowled at his father. “Why? Because you all keep joking about me being the lover of all time, something you always have done, and probably always will. Is it so strange that she, who has heard about this her whole life, believes it to be the truth?”
“No,” his father admitted, looking a bit embarrassed. “I’ve never thought twice about it. We all have our place in the family, and I’m sorry to say that you, dear son, have always been the wicked libertine.”
“I might have been in my early twenties, but not for years, now. But to her that is all that counts.”
The memory of Penny’s words, that his mouth had kissed every woman of the ton, rang in his head, and he sighed heavily. He had a sinking feeling that he had tried to fight a cause already lost. Penny loved him, something he had no doubt about, but for her that apparently wasn’t enough.
Telling her he wasn’t the man for her hadn’t been a complete lie, because he knew if she just opened her eyes and saw him for what he really was, and not what she had been told all her life, she would know too that they were meant to be together. But if she couldn’t get past the image of him that his family’s constant teasing had given her, he knew he had to let her go.
He would probably die a little every lonely day without her, but at least he wouldn’t live this strange half-life waiting for her to come around.
“Why don’t you just go to the foyer and talk to Penny? She’s been sitting there for hours, waiting for you to come back home.”
“She has?”
His father rolled his eyes dramatically. “You don’t have to look so happy over that. The poor girl is probably boiling mad right now, after sitting there in that drafty room all day. Last time I spoke to her she practically bit my head off. She’s not in the best of moods, I dare say.”
Rake felt a hope build in his chest as he heard his father’s words. So she had been sitting there all day, waiting for him to return, while he had been drinking in the stable across the courtyard? How nice.
“Oh, that smile I know.” His father chuckled and whacked him again on the shoulder. “Go on, get your girl. Become as ridiculously happy as you deserve, my son.”
Rake took a few steps toward the castle, but something in the back of his head kept nagging him. It didn’t feel right. Something inside him didn’t want him to go to the castle and take Penny in his arms and live happily ever after.
He hesitated at the large stable door. He had always followed the voice inside him, and it had not once failed him. Now it told him to wait.
Or, to be honest, he had to admit it practically screamed to him that this wasn’t the time for him to erase everything in the past and throw himself into a happy life without remorse.
There were too many things that still bothered him when it came to Penny. Would he ever be able to let bygones be bygones?
Aside from everything else, he wanted her to know she had been wrong about him. Bloody hell, he needed her to know who he truly was before he could marry her. If she didn’t know the real him, how could they ever be completely happy?
How could he ever be completely happy?
And if she never told him what had happened that night six months ago, how could he ever completely trust her? He needed her to trust him. He needed her to feel she could confide in him, tell him anything that was on her mind, without restraint.
Like she had told Thomas…
The pain he’d felt when she admitted that had almost knocked him off his feet. His darling girl, his love, had confided the truth to that outsider, to that unimportant man she didn’t even love, and still she refused to tell him—the man she did love.
“What’s wrong?”
His father’s voice broke through his confused, wine-dazed thoughts, and he took a step back from the door, shaking his head slowly but nevertheless determined. “I can’t.”
“You can’t what?” Hannibal frowned. “Open the door? I can help you with that.”
Rake snorted. That joke was too bad even for his father. “No. I can’t go to her. Not yet, at least. I need to clear my head first and to think things through before I do anything else.”
Hannibal’s grey eyes, so much like Rake’s, looked up toward the castle and he sighed deeply in defeat. “Of course you have to. Why don’t you go out the other way and sneak up the back stairs? I’ll talk to Penny and tell her you’ll speak with her tomorrow—say, noon in the library?”
Rake nodded. It sounded fine to him. This would give him a respite, and he could gather his thoughts enough to be able to make a plan on how to solve the problem with Penny.
“Well, I can’t say I like it, but at least this shows me you are serious about the girl.”
His father put his hand on Rake’s shoulder and gave him a smile filled with love and encouragement, and for a second Rake put his own hand on top of his father’s, letting the old man know without words how much he appreciated him.
“Off you go,” his father grunted, obviously touched by the moment, and with a last smile, which felt more like a grimace, Rake left the stable and went to his room without being seen.
Not caring about how dirty he was, he stripped his clothes off and lay down on his bed, closing his eyes with a contented sigh as the soft sheets embraced his body. Before he had a chance to think things through, his head became empty and he fell promptly asleep, not waking up until shouting voices in the corridor roused him.
Just as he opened his drowsy eyes, the door to his bedroom flew open and his twin Jamie barged in, looking quite a mess.
“She’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Rake shook his head in an effort to force his sleepy brain to start work again.
“Penny. He took her.”
What? Rake sat up in bed, suddenly wide awake. “Who took Penny?”
“Lord Nester.”
“Her father came here?”
Jamie shook his head. “No, she went to
him.”
Rake stood and reached for his trousers in one single movement. What on earth had possessed Penny to go to Lord Nester? As far as he knew, she didn’t even want to talk about her father, let alone see him, and Rake had long ago guessed her tragedy had something to do with him. It didn’t make sense.
“Come, the others await us in the parlor.”
They rushed through the dark corridor, and when they passed a large clock, it told Rake the time was just past midnight. In the duchess’s parlor his whole family had gathered by one of the sofas—their faces worried.
When he came closer, he saw his mother on the sofa hugging Charmaine, who looked beautiful despite her disheveled appearance and her obvious need to throw up.
As his mother saw him, she put a finger against her lips, ensuring that he would stay quiet and not disturb the girl.
“There, there,” the duchess soothed, and with a deep breath Charmaine managed to compose herself again.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just been too much, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“You did the right thing to come here. Now, please tell us what happened when Penny arrived at Harveyfield.”
Rake watched Charmaine wring a soiled handkerchief between her slender fingers and wanted to throw himself upon her and shake her hard to force her to start talking. As if she felt his urgency, she looked up and met his eyes.
“Why couldn’t you just have married her?” she accused him hoarsely. “It would have made everything so much easier, and she would have been safe.”
Rake could feel his family’s probing eyes on his person as if they wondered the same thing. Instead of answering her question, he asked her one back.
“Where is Penny?”
“I-I don’t know. He took her with him.”
“Who took her? Your father?”
Charmaine nodded, and her delicately beautiful cheeks paled even more. “H-he caught her when she tried to sneak into Mother’s bedroom. I think she thought he was at his usual weekly card game, as he always used to be before. She couldn’t possibly know that he stopped going to them when he ran out of…”
Never Had a Dream Come True Page 21