Never Romance a Rake

by Liz Carlyle

  “Hush, Camille,” he said sharply. “Let the world think what it will, but never belittle yourself. You are nothing like your father.”

  Camille did not answer him. What more was there to say? She had long ago stopped feeling sorry for herself. And long ago stopped trying to win Valigny’s love. For all the paternal affection the man had shown her, she could have been the child of some stranger—or worse, of an enemy.

  But was her coldness so deep and so permanent—were her emotions so tightly shut off—that she was failing as a wife? Was she no longer able to open her heart? That was not what she wanted. It was not the person she wished to be. Perhaps it was no longer the sort of marriage she wanted.

  She looked again at her husband’s profile, so grim and yet so handsome in the sun. Was there any hope for the two of them? Was there any chance of real intimacy? Intimacy which went beyond the bedchamber? And yet, even if she were willing to risk being hurt, she scarcely knew how to take that first step. How to reach out and shatter the glass wall they had erected between them.

  “When I was five years old,” she said suddenly, “I decided that my name was Genevieve.”

  Rothewell turned from the window, one eyebrow politely arched. “Did you indeed?”

  “Oui, and that I was a princess who had been kidnapped by the evil Comte de Valigny,” she went on, feeling supremely foolish, but somehow driven. “I told my nurse that my real papa—a great and powerful king, of course—was coming to find me and take me away.”

  Rothewell flashed a rueful smile. “Yes, and then they would all be sorry, wouldn’t they?” he murmured. “Was that the idea?”

  Her face fell. “Oui,” she said quietly. “You know how this fairy tale ends.”

  “I fear so,” he said. “I liked to pretend that a powerful Ottoman corsair was my father, and that he had sent me to Barbados to keep me safe from his enemies. When he returned, I imagined, and saw what my uncle had done to me, he would cut off Uncle’s head with his scimitar. I believe I even shared that sentiment with him—or something very like it.”

  Camille gave a cluck of sympathy. “I daresay he laughed in your face.”

  “No.” Rothewell’s expression was suddenly emotionless. “No, he locked me in the slave hole for three days with no food or water. Then he passed out drunk, and Luke stole the key from his pocket. When he sobered up, Uncle was too preoccupied by stripping the hide off Luke’s back with his bullwhip to spare me a moment’s notice.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Camille’s gloved hand had flown to her mouth. “You…you were but children!”

  “Oh, not for long,” said her husband quietly. “Not for long.”

  The horror of it chilled her. “Rothewell,” she managed to whisper, “what is this thing, this hole? Something very bad, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Just a pit Uncle had dug in a swampy spot near one of the sugar mills.” Rothewell’s gaze had returned to the window, but his mind had returned to the West Indies, Camille sensed. Even his hand had stilled, and now lay frozen upon Chin-Chin’s back.

  “It was a deep hole,” he finally continued, “like a sort of cistern or a well. There was always brackish water in the bottom, and if there was rain—and God, there was always rain—the hole would begin to fill.”

  “Mon dieu!” she whispered. “How did you get out?”

  “You could not,” he said. “One simply prayed the water didn’t rise too high. There was a heavy grate atop it, and my uncle had the only key. He built it to punish the slaves, but after our arrival, he grew increasingly fond of it.”

  Camille felt herself begin to shake. “But this is monstrous!” she cried. “Why…Why did someone not stop him?”

  Rothewell’s head at last swiveled around, his gaze locking with hers. “Someone?” he said quietly. “Who is someone, Camille? There was no one who gave a damn.”

  She shook her head rapidly. “Non, non,” she whispered. “This I cannot believe. There were people…the parish, the priest. A magistrate. Someone who should have looked out for such things.”

  After a moment had passed, Rothewell sighed. “It was a colonial backwater, Camille,” he said. “There was a woman who came from the church once—concerns had been raised, I collect, about Xanthia living under my uncle’s roof, given all that went on beneath it—and there was talk of taking her away to live with a family in Bridgetown. But nothing came of it.”

  Then his gaze shuttered, and he turned once again to his window.

  They said no more for the duration of the drive through the City. But when the carriage rumbled beneath Temple Bar, Rothewell seemed to bestir himself as if from a dream. “Are you happy, Camille?” he asked. “In Berkeley Square, I mean? You are satisfied there?”

  For an instant, she hesitated. “I have never had a home of my own,” she said quietly. “Oui, I like it well enough.”

  “I am glad,” he said quietly. “I would never wish you unhappy.”

  “But if I might—” She paused, and snagged her lip between her teeth.

  “Yes?” He looked at her pointedly. “Go on.”

  “I have some things still at Limousin,” she said. “Sentimental things which I should like to send for.”

  “But of course. What sort of things?”

  “Bagatelles, really,” she said. “Things to…to warm the house. A pair of landscapes which I like, and some objets d’art. A set of needlepoint pillows and a portrait of my mother. A few of my favorite books.”

  “More of your dry financial tomes, eh?”

  It took her a moment to realize he was teasing. “A few, oui.” She found herself blushing. “But also some geography and history—even a novel or two. The house, you see…well, it feels a little bit empty. I know you have not been there long. And I just thought that…” She searched her mind for the right word.

  “You find it uncomfortable?” he suggested, once again stroking the dog pensively.

  “Certainement pas,” she said hastily. “It is a lovely home and very comfortable indeed. I should have said it merely lacks ambience.”

  He seemed to consider it. “I daresay you are right,” he said, his gaze fixed upon the shops along the Strand. “Xanthia and I wouldn’t know ambience if we tripped over it. You should furnish it however it pleases you.”

  Their conversation fell away, and after a few minutes had passed, in which his eyes remained fixed beyond the window, he surprised her by calling to his coachman to halt.

  “Why are we stopping?” she asked.

  “It is a surprise,” he said in his grim, raspy voice.

  When the steps were down, he climbed out to help her descend. Inordinately curious, Camille laid her hands on his shoulders. Rothewell lifted her out as if she weighed nothing, then turned and set her lightly onto the pavement. Behind them, Chin-Chin danced about on the banquette, whining.

  “Oh, bother!” said Rothewell under his breath. “Come along then.” With that, he plucked up the dog and tucked him into his waistcoat.

  They doubtless made an interesting sight strolling along the shop-lined Strand, with Rothewell’s dark, rather ominous form towering over Camille’s slender, far shorter one, and the little dog’s head sticking incongruously from Rothewell’s waistcoat.

  Her hand on his arm, they strolled languidly past drapers and haberdashers and china shops until, a few yards along, Rothewell turned into an elegant, bow-fronted shop with a polished hook harp in the window. The small sign which swung from a brass bracket read JOS. HASTINGS FINE STRINGED INSTRUMENTS.

  Inside, the place smelled of beeswax and of freshly sanded wood. Harps, harpsichords, and even a small spinet sat about the shop, the latter in a state of disrepair. Camille looked about in wonderment as a thin, pale gentleman came from behind the counter.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “The harp catches one’s eye, does it not?”

  “Oui, it is most lovely,” said Camille a little breathlessly.

  The man steepled his fingertips lightly together. “You have excel
lent taste, ma’am,” he said. “It is a McEwen single-action, and they just don’t make them like that anymore.” He bowed slightly to Rothewell. “Shall I price it for you, sir?”

  “No, thank you,” he said, extracting his card with one hand as he supported Chin-Chin with the other. “What we want is a piano. A grand piano.”

  A look of greed flashed across the man’s countenance but was quickly veiled beneath a mask of obsequiousness. “You have certainly come to the right place, my lord!” he said, glancing at Rothewell’s name. “The grand piano is the finest instrument money can buy. I have a lovely Babcock due in from Boston in a few weeks’ time.”

  “No, not an American piano,” said Rothewell a little irritably.

  “Sir, the Americans really are not to be sneezed at.” The man looked wounded. “The Babcock has a modern one-piece, cast-iron frame; one which will far outlast your lifetime.”

  Rothewell’s mouth twisted wryly. “That I do not doubt,” he said. “But what we want is the sort of piano you sold last year to the Marquess of Nash.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Camille whispered, clutching at Rothewell’s arm.

  The pale man grew paler still. “Oh, dear,” he murmured. “The six-octave Böhm. A truly exceptional instrument, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Rothewell, ignoring Camille’s grip. “How long shall it take?”

  The man winced. “Sir, those are Viennese-made, and very hard to obtain.”

  “How long?” he said firmly.

  “Why, it could be months, my lord,” he said. “The Babcock can be had on a six-month order, and a good English piano in half that. But the Böhm—why, the one we just received was bespoke almost a year ago.”

  “You have one?” said Rothewell, his voice suddenly sharp.

  “Well, yes,” the pale man admitted. “But it is bespoke.”

  “Indeed? By whom?” Rothewell had extracted his purse.

  “Well, by the French ambassador’s wife,” he answered.

  Rothewell laid a banknote in his hand. “Then unbespeak it,” he said quietly.

  The pale man looked down at the banknote and swallowed hard.

  Camille gasped.

  “Well,” said the man unsteadily. “Well, I daresay…I daresay there could have been a delay in shipment.” He paused to lick his lips. “And after all, ambassadors come and ambassadors go, do they not?”

  “Yes,” said Rothewell grimly. “And I will not go. Away, I mean. Ever.”

  The pale man cast him a nervous glance, and tucked the banknote into his coat pocket. “It seems we have struck a bargain,” he said brightly. “Congratulations, my lord.”

  “We are in Berkeley Square,” said Rothewell. “When can you deliver it?”

  The man cast a nervous glance toward the back of the shop. “Early next week?” he answered. “But through the alley, I think, my lord. Not the front door.”

  “Mon Dieu, why did you do such a thing!” Camille protested, as he helped her back into the carriage ten minutes later. “Really, Rothewell, it was not necessary.”

  Indeed, she considered, she and her mother could have lived an entire year in reasonable comfort on the cost of the new piano alone—and never mind Rothewell’s bribe.

  Rothewell settled himself into his seat and extracted Chin-Chin from his brocade cocoon. “Walk on!” he cried to the coachman. Then, returning his somber, silvery gaze to hers, he said, “We are married now, Camille, and I wish my wife to have only the best. But the piano—ah, that is for me.”

  “For you, my lord?” She set her head to one side and studied him.

  His eyes drifted slowly over her. “So that I might have the exquisite pleasure of hearing you play,” he explained, his voice dropping an octave. “It is customary, is it not, for a wife to—er, to entertain her husband with her many talents?”

  Camille felt a frisson of desire mixed with embarrassment, but she refused to look away. “And do I, my lord?” she whispered. “Do I entertain you satisfactorily thus far?”

  For a long moment, he said nothing. “Oh, I think you know the answer to that question, my dear,” he finally answered. “I think you know very well indeed.”

  Oddly pleased, Camille relaxed against the seat and said no more.

  Upon their arrival at Berkeley Square, Rothewell escorted her into the house with the dog trotting at his heels, then vanished. Camille went upstairs to find her grandfather’s old letter, and rushed into Rothewell’s bedchamber. Her shoulders fell with disappointment when she found the room empty.

  She had hoped that he might be there; that she might reach out for him and feel again that sense of emotional intimacy they had shared so briefly in the shadowy confines of his carriage. It was a heady, almost dangerously seductive feeling, that wish to unburden oneself to someone who cared, and to yearn to be the vessel for the outpouring of another’s grief—restrained, perhaps, though Rothewell’s was. Still, they had shared something of themselves with one another.

  Lingering, she drew in his tantalizing scent, cool and diffuse in the shadowy stillness of the room. She looked about the austere, ordinary walls. So many of her first impressions in this house were beginning to make sense. The lack of anything intimate, such as a portrait or a trinket. The emotional bareness of the décor. If she poked through her husband’s drawers or riffled his desk, Camille sensed, she would find nothing. Nothing but folded clothes and unused letter paper. They had been three children who had possessed nothing of sentimental worth. Nothing which they wished to remember.

  And into this cold, austere place, he had brought her—a cold and austere wife; one whom he seemed at times to wish to make even more so. Why? Why had he married her? Did he not wish for warmth and love? Perhaps they were kindred spirits, she and her husband, both afraid to want for anyone or anything. Afraid to hope. Afraid to love. But his voice in the carriage—that had been neither cold nor austere. And for the first time outside the bedchamber, he had looked at her with both tenderness and raw desire, his suggestive words running over her skin like molten honey.

  Camille set her forehead to the smooth, cool wood of his bedpost, and fleetingly closed her eyes. She was falling. Falling fast and hard. And suddenly it dawned on her that she did not want to fail as a wife. She wanted to shake off the coldness, perhaps even at the cost of her own pain.

  But could her wounded, withdrawn husband ever be convinced? Or was this the marriage—and the emotional distance—he would always insist upon? Her hand trembling a little, Camille laid the letter at the foot of his bed and left.

  If Rothewell read the letter, he did not mention it. Camille found it on her writing desk the following day and tucked it back into her prayer book in which she had brought it from Limousin.

  The following week, Rothewell surprised Camille by proposing a visit to Neville Shipping. The drive to the Docklands was fascinating, taking Camille deep into a part of the city she had never seen. The sounds and smells were gloriously uncultured—fetid mud, rotting fish, steaming meat pies, and the scent of the sea carried in by the massive merchant vessels which floated almost cheek by jowl across the Thames.

  As they made their way along Wapping Wall, the alleys they passed were choked with stacks of barrels, crates of squawking poultry, and craggy-faced men with red noses and rough surtouts. Men of the sea, and of the slums. Rothewell pointed out the front door of Neville’s offices, a grimy, nondescript building of four stories which was wedged between a cooperage and a shop selling rope and sailcloth.

  At the front door, Rothewell lifted her down, spun her neatly over the pavement, and set her high on the doorstep. Camille looked down to see the pavement below splattered with what looked like fish offal and sodden straw.

  “A vile place,” he muttered, kicking a fish head from his path. “I daresay I’d no business bringing you down here.”

  “Not at all,” Camille protested. “I think it fascinating.”

  Inside they were greeted by Xanthia, who was clearly stunned to see her
brother. She tossed down the pencil and ledger she’d been poring over and came at once to the door. “This frightful account!” she said, obviously exasperated. “Thank God someone has come to save me from it.”

  After a brief introduction to Mr. Bakely, the head clerk, Xanthia gave them a quick tour of the counting house. The ground floor was one large room, surprisingly well-appointed, and generously lit from the wide rear windows which overlooked the Thames. The half dozen clerks, she noticed, gave Rothewell a wide berth but bowed to her as she passed between their desks.

  “Do come upstairs,” Xanthia suggested when they were through. “Mr. Bakely, give me back the ledger and I shall sort it out upstairs. Will you have one of the lads bring tea?”

  With the offending book tucked under her arm, Xanthia started up the steps. They followed her up to a surprisingly grand, high-ceilinged office with a window which looked down on the teeming Pool of London. Glass bookcases lined one wall, whilst two wide mahogany desks, one of which was covered with neat stacks of baize account books and a pile of correspondence, dominated the room. The second was neat as a pin.

  Xanthia paused to lay her ledger facedown atop the pile of correspondence. Amazed, Camille went directly to the window. “Alors, are any of those vessels yours?” she asked, staring down at the water.

  “One, yes, and she’s a fast, Boston-built beauty, too.” Xanthia set her hand on Camille’s shoulder and leaned past her, pointing. “The Princess Pocahontas, just there by Hanover Stairs.”

  “Only the one?” Camille had expected a vast flotilla.

  Xanthia laughed. “We have another down at the West India Docks and one just upriver at St. Catherine’s. Remember, my dear, that a ship in the Pool is a ship which is costing us money.” She paused to set her hand over her heart. “That is my sacred duty. To keep our assets under sail.”

  Camille could feel Rothewell’s comforting warmth just behind her. “Zee handles the planning and scheduling now,” he explained, setting one hand at Camille’s waist. “Gareth keeps up with the inventory and the money—or did do, at any rate.”