The Reckless One

by Connie Brockway

  “Dear me, Father, please advise me should you ever try your hand at striking terror into someone. I shall absent myself immediately,” a smooth feminine voice said from behind him. Carr spun about.

  Fia stood framed in the doorway, her hands folded primly at the waist of an extraordinarily indecent dress. Another young woman would have looked like an expensive bawd in such a gown. On Fia one barely noted the midnight-blue satin.

  Father and daughter regarded each other in silence. Beneath its thin layer of bright makeup Fia’s face was perfectly composed. He’d seen an oriental doll once, a porcelain depiction of a theatrical character. It had been fine, detailed craftsmanship, finer than any he’d ever seen. But something about a doll depicting what was in essence a living doll had been unsettling, like seeing a reflection in a reflection. Looking at his daughter gave him exactly the same sensation.

  “How long have you been there, spying on me?” he demanded.

  She lifted one wing-shaped brow. “I wouldn’t spy on you, Carr. Haven’t you ever heard the old nursery adage ‘He who listens at keyholes hears no good of himself’?”

  Her tone was oblique, her brilliantly colored blue eyes, unrevealing. Where once she’d shared every thought with him, now she’d entombed herself in her composure, giving him nothing.

  “What do you want?”

  “That little man. Rankle. He said you would not be dining. I thought perhaps you’d taken ill. I came to see.” Her tone did not imply concern, but impersonal curiosity. “Forgive my inquisitiveness, but does she answer you?” She raised her gaze to Janet’s likeness.

  Carr snapped the concealing draperies closed. “Speaking in front of a picture is not the same as speaking to a picture, Fia.”

  “Isn’t it? Thank you for explaining the subtlety.”

  Not a ripple of expression flawed her smooth, ravishing young face. Just as well. His two sons had been hot-headed, emotional children; both had ultimately proven enormous wastes of his time.

  Fia was different. Fia was, like himself, a predator.

  She would never let maudlin sentimentality cloud her judgment, nor pedestrian principles dull her purpose—that purpose being to see that she made the most brilliant matrimonial match English society—’sblood. European society!—had ever seen, thus aligning her father ultimately and irrevocably with power, prestige, and money. So much money he would never again need to waste a moment of his life thinking of it.

  “What is that in your hand?” Fia asked.

  “A piece of scarf Janet wore the day she died.”

  “Don’t tell me her ghost left it for you?” Fia laughed and then reading his expression with horrifying accuracy, said quietly. “Begad, I do believe I’ve hit on it.” She reached out, brushing her fingertips quickly over the silk and just as quickly withdrawing her hand.

  “You know,” Fia said coolly, “I should very much like to see my mother’s ghost. Should you ever have occasion to chat with the transparent dame, kindly point her tattered parts my way when you’re done.”

  “Are you mocking me?” he asked in his deadliest voice.

  She considered him calmly. “Perhaps.”

  Insufferable, yet he dared not slap her and the reason provoked him far more than any words she could have uttered. He did not strike her because he was no longer precisely sure of what she was capable. Certainly revenge. Possibly more.

  “Get downstairs,” he commanded her, and waited, hating the uncertainty he felt. She’d never directly disobeyed him before. But someday soon she would. He needed to get her wed before then. “My guests ought not to be left unattended.”

  “You’re right. They’ll need a pied piper to lead them in their debauchery.”

  “I’ll be down shortly.”

  “I hope so.” Fia began to turn away. “There’s a lady there who feels your absence keenly. She was quite distressed when she heard you were not dining.”

  Carr’s interest quickened. Could it be her? Janet? “Lady?” he asked. “What did this lady look like?”

  Fia watched him interestedly. “Elderly. Not yet antique but decidedly venerable.”

  Horrible apprehension filled him. Janet had died in the full bloom of womanhood. The idea that she might choose to inhabit a body any less lovely than her previous one would never have occurred to him. She couldn’t do that to him!

  “Who is the lady?”

  “Mrs. Diggle? Douglas? A mild-mannered, apologetic old cat. Not your usual guest.”

  “Douglas,” Carr corrected her, his anxiety abating. He knew the lady. Anyone less like Janet would be hard to imagine. “No, she isn’t in the mode of my usual guest. But her nephew certainly is and it’s for his sake that she and her charge are here.”

  “Oh?” Fia intoned uninterestedly.

  “Yes. He spent the spring here. You remember him,” Carr said slyly, seeing an opportunity to reward Fia for her mockery. “Thomas Donne.”

  Fia had never confessed her infatuation for the tall Scotsman. She hadn’t needed to. Every omission, every glance, every stilted conversation Carr overheard her have with Donne told the story of a young girl’s first overwhelming passion. Just as her sudden and absolute silence on all matters regarding him told another sort of tale altogether.

  Carr was rewarded. Her pupils contracted slightly, her nostrils turned a paler shade about the delicate rims. It was a nearly imperceptible reaction, if one wasn’t looking for it.

  “Of course,” she said briskly. “I remember them now.”

  “Mrs. Douglas is chaperoning Donne’s little sister, a Miss … Miss Favor, I believe.” He scoured his memory for a face to put to the name and came up with a vague recollection of a comely, well-dressed wench, surprised he remembered that much. He paid little heed to virgins, even wealthy ones. What, after all, was the use? He couldn’t marry again and since Favor Donne did not gamble and since he couldn’t get at her money any other way, he hadn’t bothered with her.

  “What is she like?” Carr asked, twisting the knife a little. “Does she look like her brother?”

  “I don’t recall him that well,” Fia said smoothly. “Miss Favor is small. Handsome. Black hair, aggressive eyes, a dark little warrior.

  “Now that I think of it, I recall overhearing her asking one of the other guests after you, too.”

  Handsome? Black hair? And she’d asked after him.

  “You know, Fia,” he said, “I believe I have changed my mind. I believe I will go down to dine after all.”

  Chapter 14

  High above the grand ballroom, hidden in a cleverly disguised gallery cut between the arching buttresses, Raine looked down at the spectacle below. The crowd churned like broken bits of brightly colored glass stirred in a giant bowl. The smell of bodies, ripe with heat and perfume, rose in sultry waves. Their din was as incessant as the surf beating at McClairen’s Isle’s rocks.

  Though his vantage point allowed him only an occasional glimpse of an upturned face, he ultimately discovered the two figures that interested him. He spotted Carr first, resplendent in purple, standing as straight as ever, his gestures elegant and languid.

  As a child Raine had despaired of ever achieving even a portion of his father’s aplomb. Carr had ridiculed his attempts, advising him not to waste his efforts on so hopeless a cause. And when it had become clear that nothing Raine could ever do would raise him in his father’s estimation, he’d sought other ways to win his attention. He could not begin to recall all the damage he’d done in that man’s name: harassment of the locals, destruction, drunken fights, and mad carousal. All done to prick, discomfit him, embarrass; to somehow provoke a response—any response—from him.

  Raine smiled ruefully. Five years earlier such memories would have awoken bitterness. But then, five years earlier Carr had been important to him. Since then Raine had had his priorities forcibly rearranged. He no longer cared about Carr, not even enough to hate him.

  He studied his father with detachment. Still handsome, still rigidly st
raight and graceful. His gestures were just as smooth as ever, his expression as bland and polished. But even from this distance Raine could make out a slight slackening of the once tautly fitting flesh on his face, a looseness under the square jaw and the beginning of pouches under the fine eyes. Even Carr’s will hadn’t been able to keep the toll of years at bay.

  Raine’s gaze traveled through the crowd until he found Favor. Yards of vibrant jonquil yellow swathed her upright figure, the light-killing blackness of her dyed hair as coal dust against her white bosom. She moved unswervingly through the crowd, as though she traveled a narrow corridor without doors or windows but only one egress and that far ahead.

  Hardly provocative behavior, yet she didn’t lack for attention. A definite pattern was emerging among Carr’s male guests. A small train of them had fallen into procession behind Favor. It was subtle, of course; the idiots weren’t actually queuing up, but undeniably Favor was gathering a retinue.

  He understood the attraction. There was something about her. Something more than a desirable figure—though, by God, she did have that. And, he conceded, a not unhandsome face. Something about her challenged a man or provoked or inspired or—

  Inspired?

  He’d been imprisoned too long. ’Twas the only way to account for this interest in Favor McClairen. Because she’d saved his life he’d imbued her with qualities she more than likely didn’t possess.

  If Favor inspired him at all it was with lust, he decided. And it was damned maddening that the woman whose skirt he wanted to toss up was named McClairen. It complicated things. It caused obligation to contend with animal desire.

  Obligation would win. After all, for him to owe a debt to another person, particularly one he was in a position to honor, was a unique experience for him. Lust was not.

  Once more he focused his attention on Favor. The dowdy female beside her must be her chaperone. At first glance he could not imagine a less effective-looking dragon to defend this particular damsel. But a short observation proved him wrong. Few of the men following Favor made it to her side. Apparently she allowed access only to those who met some standard set by either the old biddy or Favor herself. What would that be?

  Whatever the gauge, Raine thought wryly, for a certainty his name would never have made the approved list. But then, he didn’t need to chase after Favor McClairen. She was coming to him in—he pulled out his timepiece—about ten hours.

  “Here’s your food,” Favor said sullenly. She flung the tied napkin at Rafe, envisioning the greasy contents making an agreeable splotch on his white shirt.

  She hadn’t counted on the rogue’s having such keen reflexes. He spun away from the window he’d been looking through and snagged the bundle from the air. His shirt was opened, exposing his lean torso. A pistol, tucked beneath the waist of tight black breeches, caused hardly a dent in a flat belly dark with fur. The sleeves of his shirt had been rolled up over broad, tanned forearms.

  Her gaze plummeted to the ground, utterly nonplussed by an immediate tactile memory of that warm flesh beneath her hand. This was not Dieppe. He was no longer chained to a wall and she was no longer pretending to be a—whatever Madame Noir was.

  More’s the pity, an inner voice mocked.

  “Why, how civilized!” Rafe said. “With such manners, Miss Donne, I’m certain your brother’s doorway must soon be choked with suitors.”

  “Humph,” she said, but could not entirely quell a smile in response to his banter. How odd he was acting, how … friendly. She was immediately on her guard.

  He clamped a palm theatrically to his chest. “I swear when your mouth twitches like that it sets my heart to racing. Assuredly, whoever instructed you to hoard your smiles knew their power. For should you ever actually grin, I am sure no man could be held accountable for his actions. Certainly I could not testify as to what I would be capable of doing.”

  She burst out laughing, surprised and amazed. Whatever she’d expected from her blackmailer, it had not been charm or merry foolishness. She’d assumed she would deposit his food in the middle of an empty room and leave. She’d never expected him to be waiting for her.

  He smiled back, displaying a full set of even white teeth and surprising her yet again, for his smile filled his eyes with warmth and humor. It was a potently attractive smile, a devastatingly attractive smile, devil-may-care and winning. A man with a smile like that didn’t need elegant features and that recognition sobered her.

  He sensed her withdrawal, his smile became one-sided and wry. “Ah, forgive me my jest. For a moment I forgot our relative positions and the history that had led us here.”

  “That being you as blackmailer and me as victim?”

  The dimple in his lean cheek cut deeper. “And here I’d cast myself as the injured party. How could I have so misinterpreted our roles? Mayhap it had something to do with you throwing me to the wolves in Dieppe?”

  She flushed. Vindicated, he turned his attention to the napkin. He planted a huge boot on the windowsill, using his broad thigh as a table on which he unknotted the linen and spread it open. He bent his head over the package, the movement causing his shirt to gape away from his chest, revealing hard contours she all too clearly remembered. They were even more contoured now. Presumably they would be even harder.

  “Beefsteak!”

  She jumped. He glanced up, his honey-colored eyes guileless.

  “Bless the English for their unholy love of dining on beef. Didn’t bring me a set of cutlery, did you, sweetheart?”

  “Don’t call me ‘sweetheart.’ And no, I did not. I considered it,” she replied dryly, “but rather worried that someone might object to me nipping off with the silver. Believe me, I drew enough odd looks when I dumped my dinner in my lap.”

  He burst out laughing. “You didn’t!”

  “I did. How else was I to get your food? I couldn’t very well show up at the kitchen door with a sack and a request that it be filled with table scraps. And I most certainly couldn’t send a servant. Your presence would be discovered within an hour. Once a servant smells a secret he won’t rest until he’s ferreted it out.”

  “Well versed in the ways of servants, are we?” He tore off a piece of meat and popped it in his mouth. His eyes slid half-shut in sybaritic pleasure. He chewed slowly, savoring the process, swallowed and sighed. Deliberately, he licked the burgundy-laced gravy from each finger.

  She’d never seen anyone enjoy food so thoroughly. It was fascinating.

  He had long fingers, lean and strong-looking. Soft, dark hairs sprinkled lightly across their backs, growing more thickly above his wide, supple-looking wrists. Very masculine, his hands.

  He looked up and caught her watching him. He winked. “Four years of moldy cheese and stale bread soaked in water,” he explained without the slightest hint of rancor. “I will never again take the joy of eating lightly. Care for a bit?”

  “No.” She sounded doubtful. She tried again. “No!”

  “Please yourself.” He shrugged and popped the next bit into his mouth. “Cake!”

  His delighted cry broke her reverie. She scuttled back, as though her thoughts were physical things she could retreat from. He didn’t notice, being too busy devouring the cake she’d brought—and ruined when she’d hurled it at him. He had beautiful—

  Whyever was she thinking these things? She was daft! He was her enemy!

  But was he? That sly, internal voice queried. Or wasn’t she, if truth be told, his? Or had been.

  Since Dieppe, he had done nothing to cause her any harm. He may have frightened her but even that might have been manufactured more from her own guilty conscience than his actions. In fact, he’d rescued her from Orville.

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Yet, as he’d already pointed out, he could still denounce her.

  She should tell Carr about Rafe. Immediately. And when he, in turn, revealed her she would affect astonishment and pity. Everyone would think he was a ranting madman, especially since by his own wo
rds he was hunting for a fairy-tale cache of jewels. It was a good plan. She should implement it.

  She would have implemented it by now except … except he hadn’t done her any harm and she’d done him wrong aplenty.

  “Should I be expecting a brace of bruising footmen any moment?” Having finished the cake, he dusted the crumbs from his threadbare breeches. “Or have you decided to take pity on me after all?”

  His words too closely followed her duplicitous thoughts. She felt contemptible. She disliked feeling contemptible. She reacted badly to it.

  “I brought you food, didn’t I?” she asked.

  “They always fed the prisoners a bit better before taking them out to be drawn and quartered.”

  He’d startled her yet again. How could he make light of such a thing?

  “I haven’t told anyone about you.”

  “Including the old puss?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your chaperone.”

  Muira. No, she hadn’t ever considered telling Muira about Rafe. The old woman would probably have had Jamie hunt him down and slit his throat. Nothing must interfere with Muira’s grand scheme. “You mean my aunt. No. She doesn’t know about you.”

  He smiled again. “My thanks.”

  Her gaze flickered away and back. He grinned more broadly, as though he knew the course of her wayward and wholly unacceptable thoughts and lowered his leg from the sill. “That was good.”

  He reached his long arms above his head, rotating at the hip as he slowly stretched from one side to the other, his shirt ends swinging like the foundering sails on a tall ship. She felt the warmth stealing up her throat and turned away so he would not be driven to make any ridiculous assumptions about her blush.

  “How goes the hunt for McClairen’s Trust?” she asked.

  “It goes.”

  She looked about. Most of the boxes and trunks had been opened since yesterday. He’d rifled through the pictures standing against the wall, too. A portrait of a black-haired lady stood at the head of the stack, face out. It hadn’t been there before.