Falling for a Rake

by Pendle, Eve

  He turned away, strode to his study and flicked the door shut behind Jones who’d scurried to keep up with him. “What is it?”

  Jones passed over the Daily Letters, folded to show a quarter page.

  He didn’t immediately see it. Unlike the last articles that had been on the front page, this was the gossip columns. But there, amongst the customary tittle-tattle about Lord H’s cravat and Miss M’s dress:

  Rumors abound of Lord M– maintaining his affair with a lady from P. He visits, he sends money. Lady X– suggests that Lord M– ought to watch his back. A lady scorned may become French, or American, and take up arms. Or perhaps hunting.

  Emily take up arms? It was inconceivable. Markshall stared uncomprehendingly at the text. Fanny’s position with the corset maker could be in jeopardy if reporters started to contact her.

  “My lord–” Jones began.

  “That’s enough.” He folded the paper and rammed it under his armpit. Someone was deeply angry at Emily, so furious they would falsely imply she was responsible for James’ death. The idea Oscar might be in any danger from Emily was even more laughable. But for Emily’s family, this was yet another disgrace. “I’ll be leaving for the House of Lords this evening. I’m not to be disturbed until then.” He’d thought it had been a face-saving comment when she’d told him about her fiancé when they’d been down the mine shaft, so he’d not asked further. He’d been wrong.

  Jones nodded slowly, his lips tight. But he knew better than to proffer his opinion.

  In a daze, he went to the breakfast room. Emily was sitting at the table. She smiled at the footman when he brought her tea and toast.

  He helped himself to coffee from the sideboard and gave the footmen a curt nod and a flick of the fingers to indicate that they should leave immediately. He sat down opposite Emily. Her dreams… This accusation. He stared into his coffee but the darkness revealed nothing.

  When they were alone and the door was shut, he pushed the newspaper across the flat sea of the table cloth, open on the appropriate page.

  She dragged the newspaper to her with one finger. White suffused her face as she read.

  “A mistress in P–. Plymouth, I assume. How shocking.” She looked up with a bright faux-smile. “What a terrible husband you are. I may have to take up a frond and wave it at you, shaking harmless spores all over your jacket.” She picked up her tea but didn’t drink. “By the way, haven’t you noticed we’re in London? You’re still in country dress.”

  “It’s more comfortable.” She must be rattled if she was commenting on his lounge suit. She could hardly expect him to suddenly wear a frock coat and starched cravat for a trip to a heath. “The mistress is not the significant part of that column. That’s well enough known. The bit about taking up arms is quite deliberate.”

  “It’s nonsense, like all gossip.” She put down her tea, folded the newspaper to the front page, and put it at arms-length down the breakfast table, as though reducing its proximity could make it less credible.

  Only half an hour ago her eyes had eaten him up, shameless and needy. She had reverted to acting the Perfect Lady, even in a damp gown.

  “It’s a sustained attack on you and me. Now, I have some people who would like to see me cast out of society. But for you... You have an impeccable reputation.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “To lose one fiancé in such a way is unlucky. Two would look like a pattern.” It was a ridiculous accusation, but there came a time when the only way to get someone to reveal the truth was to suggest something so outrageous they were forced to tell the truth. “You had better tell me about James. Don’t you think?”

  Her bottom lip jutted out and she avoided his gaze. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “You have nightmares.” Too many. His heart ached for the evident terror of her visions. If he knew about the tragic circumstances, perhaps he could ease her mind.

  “I don’t talk about it.” She shook her head slowly. “I can’t.” She took a deep, stuttering breath. “I don’t even think about it.”

  “Emily, we started this from a position of honesty.” He barely restrained a sigh of frustration. Wanting to protect her family and friends from shame was one thing, but this timidity was another. “I told you the worst of me, and you married me anyway. What could be worse than what I did? I don’t think...” His words died in his throat as he saw her expression.

  Her face crumpled, her usual poise gone. Her eyes were dull when she lifted her gaze to his.

  “I killed him.” She looked so serious, like a guilty kitten.

  “That’s ridiculous.” He huffed with mirthless laughter.

  She was the most refined lady of the ton. She had plates painted with delicate fern pictures.

  “I killed him.” She bit her lip, her eyes unseeing. “I shot him, and he died.”

  “No.” He couldn’t believe it. “Firing a gun at the man you love went out of fashion after the Regency.” He tried for levity, but it plummeted to the ground.

  “Why do you think I only hunt inanimate ferns now?” she snapped.

  “But...” He couldn’t give up his idea of her as a lady whose purity was matched by her sophisticated beauty.

  “It was…” She struggled with herself. “It was a tragic accident. A hunting trip gone awry. We were out together, as we often were. We always used to shoot together.” She looked up at him.

  He nodded for her to continue, even as dread congealed in his spine.

  “That day the two of us were out for a shoot. He was glowing with excitement.”

  Markshall raised his eyebrows.

  “It wasn’t like that.” She waved away his implication. “It was completely normal for us to be alone. We’d been best friends since childhood and engaged to be married almost as long.”

  Her eyes took on a soft, wistful quality and Markshall felt a burn of jealousy that he wasn’t the object of that expression.

  “I remember when he first said it. We were talking about his father’s refusal to introduce deer to his estate and he said, ‘when we’re married we’ll have a herd of deer and throw an annual shoot house party for the whole neighborhood’. And my throat clogged. It was just like a novel. We looked at each other and I said, ‘Yes. But only if I can take the first shot of the season.’ He laughed and said, ‘of course’.”

  She remained lost in the memory for a few seconds before continuing. “On the day of the accident, we went to shoot on the far end of the estate. We didn’t take a man with us. We used to do the whole thing, just the two of us. We used the dogs to flush out the birds, then we’d shoot them. We took it in turns to shoot and manage the guns.

  “When we were young, it had been fun and risky to not take any servants. Then after a while, it was just our way. It was a regular event. As well as the family shoots, we had four special shoots we did every year, just the two of us.” She looked up at Markshall, apparently willing him to understand.

  “Once we were alone, James confessed in words that tumbled out with apologetic fervor. He’d fallen utterly in love with a wonderful lady, and he knew I would release him from our longstanding engagement.” She paused, her face bleak again. “And I did. What else could I do? But he was leaving me and our potential life together, the bond we had through our families and our childhood, all for some chit he’d just met.”

  The sickly-sweet smell of eggs and strawberry jam wafted over from the sideboard. Oscar fought the urge to grip his coffee or the table, or anything stable, as the world tilted.

  “We set out for our hunt and it was like it always was.” A hundred tiny conflicting expressions crossed her face as she remembered. “Taking it in turns to shoot and to manage the guns, we were the pair we’d always been, except we weren’t. He was distracted. He didn’t talk to me like he used to. He told me about this blond girl. He’d already become engaged to her, in secret.” A tiny line appeared between her eyebrows. “He had asked her to marry him when we were still engaged. He was go
ing to marry someone else and expected me to be happy for him.”

  A rival. Who wouldn’t be resentful?

  “We shot some birds, and the dogs retrieved them.” Biting her lip, Emily looked up at him. “There was one the dogs couldn’t find. Trust is implicit in shooting, and we didn’t think anything of going off to find a bird sometimes, help beat out the pheasants, or whatever. We were both good shots.

  “He beat around a bit, and then he called to me, saying that I’d have to shoot another because he couldn’t find it.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Then he heard something behind him. A stag. He always brought rifles as well as shotguns when we hunted, even though he knew I didn’t much like hunting deer. The stag must have become scared when the birds flew up. He gestured to me to shoot it. I picked up the rifle, checked it was loaded, aimed…” She took a deep breath. “And shot him.”

  “The stag?” Oscar frowned.

  “James.”

  He couldn’t move. It was all he could do to not fall. “You shot him dead?” he croaked.

  “I didn’t intend to kill him. I was just so angry.” For a second her mouth tilted into an almost smile. “I’m not a bad shot.”

  “But you killed him instead of injuring him.” Not that good a shot.

  She shook her head. “He always tried to persuade me to shoot deer because I was the better shot of the two of us. I shot James in the arm. A clean wound with a single bullet. He fell down, and I realized what I’d done.” Her shoulders slumped. “Before I knew it I was running to him and crying. His little cocker spaniel was already there, licking him and whining. There was so much blood.

  “When I reached him he muttered, ‘that was your worst shot ever’.” She stared past him into the distance, as though watching the scene unfold. “I think he thought I’d meant to hit his chest. But I hadn’t. I hit him exactly where I intended. In the upper arm, just a graze really. We walked back and he didn’t seem too bad. A little faint. He embraced me before he rode home.”

  Sorrow filled her, seemingly from bottom to top. Her mouth went slack and her eyes dull. “He wasn’t supposed to die. I never thought he would.”

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t see him for days afterward. By then his arm was infected.” She raised her gaze to his. Her voice wobbled. “I just wanted to teach him a lesson. To make him pay for what he did to me. I was so incensed, so hurt. And...” She bit her lip until it was starkly white against the red of her top lip. “I was a selfish little girl. He was happy without me, and I wanted him to be miserable.”

  He couldn’t say anything to that. He couldn’t offer sympathy or condolence. He couldn’t reassure her. It was the bleak truth. Nothing could soften it. “I understand why you did it. I don’t condone what you did. But I’ve felt, and acted upon, the same destructive impulse myself. I’ve done it many times.”

  “I’ve never told anyone about what happened. You’re the first. I told my parents it was an accident. He told his family the same. His obituary just said gun accident, with no mention of me at all. I hid it even from myself. I don’t think of it.”

  “Except with me.” He almost wanted to thank her. For trusting him with her worst self and being so much more complex than he’d imagined.

  “Yes. But the funny thing is, everyone thinks Lady Vidal is a heroine. Lady Dain is a heroine. Miss Jane Fitzsimmons is a heroine. Why?” Emily shook her head thoughtfully. “They punished a man who did them wrong, by shooting him. It never gets infected like that in novels.”

  She named women who had been scorned or threatened and had retaliated. It must have seemed quite reasonable to Emily at the time. “It’s difficult to accept you might not be the hero of your story.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.” Her face was full of anguish when she looked at him, begging him to ease her culpability.

  “It’s not like actions cancel each other out.” She needed to learn to accept her actions and who she was. That was the only way. There was no point in trying to be perfect. “We can’t buy redemption; we can’t tip the scales by lots of good deeds. What I’ve done is with me forever. It’s a part of me, whatever others think of me.” Her Perfect Lady façade was just that – an insubstantial thing that in the end wouldn’t help her.

  Her gaze fell to the table. He reached out his hand to hers. One sinner to another.

  She pulled away.

  A part of him broke with the fleeting contact. She wouldn’t accept his help. She couldn’t cope with who she was, never mind who he was. It was a rejection of him, their relationship, and of fallibility. The optimism he’d held, a delicate thing like spider’s silk, so thin he’d been barely been able to acknowledge it until it was snapped, was broken.

  “It’s not a part of me.”

  “I see.” Oscar’s face shuttered. His chin came up, his shoulders braced. Her actions he could deal with, but her rejection of his offer of solidarity cut him.

  “Ahum.” The sound a throat being cleared came from nearby.

  “Not now,” Markshall said.

  “There’s a telegram for you, my lord.” The pinched visage of Jones intruded.

  Dragging his gaze away from Emily, he turned and accepted the telegram.

  “The messenger sent their sincere apologies, apparently it got lost in the stack and then apparently the address had been written incorrectly,” Jones said apologetically.

  “Never mind.” But a trickle of foreboding went through him. Telegrams for him were usually from Lord Selby or Sir Thomas. Both could be time critical. The date written on the reverse was three days ago.

  He opened the telegram. It was short.

  Annie’s health is deteriorating seriously.

  The words swam before his eyes. He knew a euphemism when he read one. He knew Sir Thomas, the most English of all pompous men, would always couch things in the most optimistic, undramatic way. His daughter was dying, three days had been wasted in ignorance, and he’d never met her. He’d never seen her face close to. He’d never touched Annie’s cheek and told her that he was sorry for the person he’d been.

  He covered his face, trying to block the feelings and stop the prickle that originated inside him from seeping further.

  “What’s happened?” Emily’s voice came from just in front of him.

  He’d forgotten she was here. He had forgotten they were having a conversation where she confessed her darkest action and he attempted to comfort her. In the all-encompassing grief of the potential death of a daughter he’d never known, everything had faded. His heart expanded to fill his chest, even as he wanted to shrink away.

  “Nothing.” He crumpled up the telegram. “I’m sorry. I have business to attend to.”

  He didn’t want her to see him like this, weak and pathetic when she’d just pulled away when he’d offered her his strength. He stumbled away blindly. By some instinct, he got to his study. He collapsed into a deep backed leather chair, putting his head in his hands.

  There was the click of a door and the crinkle of fabric as Emily knelt beside him.

  Emily ought not to be involved with anything of that sordid shame of his past life. This telegram showed what a folly this whole marriage was. She ought not to be anywhere near him; he poisoned everything.

  She might have shot a man, but he’d done worse. He wanted to be alone with the horror that his daughter would die.

  “Just tell me.”

  If someone had told him that his future wife had killed a man and that he would accede to her every wish, he’d never have dreamed it was because of her polite but insistent tone. He couldn’t resist anything she requested. Even as he knew the politeness was a front to defend herself from admitting who she was.

  He looked up and into her face, almost ferocious with intent. “My daughter might be dying. And I can’t visit her.”

  “Your daughter.” Her eyes narrowed. He could almost see her putting all the things he’d told her into order, fitting them together. “We sh
ould visit.”

  “We would not be welcome.” But as he said that, he imagined meeting Annie and how Emily would put Lydia at her ease. He could give Lydia money and finally apologize. He could tell Annie she was a brave girl and ensure she had the best medical treatment available. There was no way to make amends, but there was the effort. “I might not make it back in time for the repeal debate.”

  “One has to risk that,” Emily whispered. She took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “If I could have seen James, just once more, before he died…” She paused. “Don’t spend the rest of your life wondering and regretting.”

  As she did, he realized. She was encouraging him to make amends because she couldn’t face her own past. Perhaps this visit could heal more than it hurt. “I want to see her.”

  She stood. Tall, powerful, feminine, she stood over him. “Then we’ll leave immediately.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Elmswell was a pretty village with a mix of old thatched cottages made from local stone and newer, brick workers’ houses with bay windows and tiled front steps. It was surrounded by fields, some freshly plowed and others green with straggly grass that was still recovering from the winter.

  They’d caught the first train from Bishopsgate station and when they arrived at Ipswich, discovered a man waiting for them to take them to a carriage. Jones had telegrammed ahead and organized everything.

  It didn’t take long to find the right house. Oscar remembered from his previous visit. He’d been hesitant whether he’d recollect, but as soon as the carriage had arrived it had come flooding back. Years ago it had been neat, but now some of the paint was peeling. That observation made his brows lower. He’d have to talk to Sir Thomas about the condition of his tenant’s accommodation. Its heavy wood front door was surrounded by roses, the buds just forming for spring. In summer it would be a riot of flowers. That was new too.