The Rake's Retreat

by Nancy Butler

  “Never?” she echoed softly in disbelief.

  “It was all a ruse. I used it to keep you here.”

  An expression of pure pique welled up in her eyes. “You mean you let us stay here, shivering in our beds with fear, knowing the whole time that there was no danger?”

  Bryce shrugged. “I told you repeatedly that no harm would come to you or Lovelace. It was you who refused to believe me.”

  Jemima’s bosom swelled. “What possible reason could you have to do such an infamous thing?”

  He narrowed the gap between them. “It was a foolish notion I had. I wanted to keep you here… I thought you had possibilities, Jemima.”

  “The less that is said about that, the better,” she uttered in her most caustic voice.

  “You intrigued me, if you want the truth. And I needed something to distract me…from the milk fever and the beetles in the wainscotting.” He paused, hoping to at least see a glimmer of humor in her fine eyes. But they only flashed at him dangerously.

  “So it was another lie—”

  “Not a lie,” he protested. “An opportunity, more like. To spend time with you, to learn who Jemima Vale was when she wasn’t hovering behind her brother. I knew you would be angry when you found out about my little game. But I thought you would forgive me when I told you why I’d done it.”

  “Spare me your idle flattery. You saw me as just another woman to be seduced.”

  “Yes,” he said, determined to offer her honesty, at least in this matter. “At first. But it wasn’t long before I realized I wanted more from you. A great deal more.”

  “You’ve gained nothing but my scorn, Bryce. There is nothing you can say that will convince me of any nobility of purpose in your behavior.”

  He growled softly. “Nobility of purpose, is it? I tell you the unsullied truth, and still you rail at me about honesty? I’ll give you honesty in spades, then, and say right out why I came back to find you.”

  “It is of no interest to me,” she said, half turning from him.

  He caught her by the shoulder, forcing her to look at him. “I came back here…to ask you if you would consider having me.”

  “Having you?” she repeated blankly.

  “Having me for your husband. Because I thought, fool that I am, that you cared for me. And this is what I am met with…ridiculous accusations and foul inferences. But that’s all I deserve, isn’t it? Because I’m a rake and a scoundrel. A man beneath contempt.” There was now a white-hot anger in his voice. “Not a fit mate for the great Troy’s sister, eh?”

  He watched with satisfaction as she blanched noticeably. He wanted to wound her, as she had wounded him. But then, when he saw how she trembled under his hand, his anger shifted to irritation.

  Christ! Did she honestly think she had anything to fear from him besides harsh words?

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Jemima,” he cried. “Stop wilting against the bookshelf. I’m not Armbruster—I’m not going to force myself on you.”

  He turned and took two steps away from her. But the magnetic pull was too strong—he had gotten too close. And the anger in his blood had done its work.

  In an instant he spun back. “The hell I’m not—”

  He thrust her hard against the bookcase, twisting her arms behind her in a crushing embrace. The thin veneer of civilization shattered as he kissed her. His mouth was wild, scorching, as it battered against her lips. His head swam with the sensation, while the rest of him drowned in her scent and her taste and the stirring shape of her beneath his hands.

  The last time…his brain keened. The last time you’ll ever touch her…

  That inevitability lent added heat to his assault; he needed to imprint every part of her on his soul. The thrust of her breasts, the arch of her hips, and the thready sound of her breathing, as she gasped against his hungry mouth.

  She wasn’t wilting now, she was fighting him, trying to free her hands from his implacable hold. She cried out as he braced his body against her and caught her chin with one hand to hold it steady. Over and over he let her taste his pain and his frustration, until her thrashing ceased. He felt her go limp beneath his hands as she groaned softly.

  He released her abruptly and stepped back. Her mouth trembled like a child on the edge of tears.

  “Take that with you to your spinster’s bed,” he whispered raggedly just before he stalked away.

  Jemima leaned back against the mahogany shelves, unable to move, barely able to breathe. She was still stunned by Bryce’s declaration that he wanted to marry her and equally shaken by the fact that he had rescinded his proposal in practically the same breath.

  Oh, but how he had kissed her! As though every fiber in his body were crying out for her touch, as though he were consumed by his need to brand her with the fire that raged inside him.

  She had never felt so confused. Or so full of self-loathing. Because she knew that the things she had accused him of, in her monumental arrogance, had placed them beyond any possibility of reconciliation.

  He was facing away from her now, standing directly before the window with his arms crossed over his chest, the bright light creating a nimbus around his dark curls.

  “I c-can’t bear—” she stuttered, trying not to sob out the words.

  “The sight of me,” he said from over his shoulder. “Yes, I’ve gotten your drift. Well, I won’t stop you, if you want to go running off to the inn. You can go to perdition for all I care.”

  She blinked several times, then lifted her skirts and walked with slow, studied steps to the door.

  He watched her with a curiously detached expression on his face; he wasn’t attending her rather shaky retreat from his library. In his mind he was seeing a frightened, white-clad version of Jemima Vale as she was forced up against a wall and overpowered by a tall, strapping man. He felt her panic and distress as she was rudely groped and cruelly kissed, all the while held captive, like a rabbit in a snare.

  His stomach lurched.

  Don’t flatter yourself that you’re any better than Armbruster, his inner voice rasped. In truth, you’re a damned sight worse.

  Jemima was too far away to hear it when he slammed his fist into the front panel of the desk—leaving a noticeable dent that would be remarked upon by subsequent generations of Bryces.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jemima decided to leave most of her clothing behind. She threw a few gowns and some underthings into a valise and then changed into her riding habit. She was doing up the buttons when she heard a commotion in the hallway outside her room. Men’s voices, low-pitched and muffled.

  “Jemima!” Troy called through the door.

  “Go away!” she called back. He was the last person she wanted to see.

  He opened the door and came cautiously into the room, his windblown hair and muddied boots proclaiming he was not long away from the fields. Jemima saw Kimble and Carruthers hovering in the hall, trying not to gawk. Count on Troy to make her humiliation a public spectacle.

  “What the devil is going on, Jemima?” he asked, shutting the door behind him. It caught on the edge of the carpet and didn’t quite close. “I come in from shooting and discover from the butler that you have ordered the pony cart and are leaving for the inn.”

  “That is correct,” she said. As he started to protest, she leaned forward and said intently, “I want to leave this place, and so I shall.”

  “Without a word to me?” He plucked her parasol from the bed and leveled it at her accusingly. “You’ve clearly lost your wits. Bryce is barricaded in his library and refuses to see anyone, but I know this has something to do with him.”

  She crossed her arms and stuck out her chin. “I don’t owe you any explanations.”

  “This is intolerable, Jem. How can I work when you are forever distracting me with these bizarre fits of yours? It’s hard enough keeping my mind on poetry, without worrying about you half the livelong day.”

  Jemima tugged the parasol from his hands and jabb
ed him in the chest with it. “Worrying about me?” Her voice rose a notch. “Worrying about me? That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard. When have you ever spared a thought for me, Troy? No, it’s Jemima fetch this, Jemima fetch that. It’s pack for me, unpack for me, order up a dinner for me. It’s soothe the butler, calm down the cook, fire the footman, hire the housemaids. All the livelong day!”

  Troy stood with his mouth gaping open and his eyes round as bright blue marbles. “Jem…” he at last managed to utter. “Is…is that what you think?”

  “That is my life with you, Terence Vale. But not any longer. I will not take another farthing from you. Not another penny. I will live on my own resources… I have a small inheritance from Great Aunt Clarice. It will be enough. It must be enough.”

  “No,” he said, crossing his own arms. “I won’t allow it. You’ll be next to a pauper.”

  “Better a pauper than a piece of luggage in your train. Better my own woman than a supplicant in your house.” She saw him wince, but did not apologize for her words.

  Troy took a step closer. “A supplicant? You are talking twaddle, Jemima. I’ve looked after you, as a brother should, and hope I’ve never made you feel you owed me for anything. I can’t comprehend this change in you. We’ve rubbed along very well until now, haven’t we?”

  “Until now,” she said. “But things change, people change. I… I can’t live that way any longer. I need my own life.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “What there is left of it.”

  He ran his hands over his face and said irritably, “I think I’d best fetch Bryce up here. He’ll make you see reason. Knows his way around women, that one.”

  “No!” she cried. “If Bryce sets one foot inside this room, I will climb out that window, walk to the inn, and get on the next coach to London, or to Canterbury.” Or to perdition, she thought, recalling Bryce’s harsh words. “You have no idea what that man has done, Troy.”

  “Bryce?” Troy appeared unruffled. “If he flirted with you, I suppose I’m to blame. I told him you needed a bit of cheering up. Where’s the harm in that?”

  Her eyes narrowed. So it was true, what Bryce had told her.

  She gave her brother another sharp jab with the umbrella. “You set a notorious libertine on my trail,” she inquired in disbelief, “and then ask where’s the harm? Are you completely witless?”

  Troy held out his hands and stepped back from her anger. And her parasol.

  “It might interest you to learn,” she said acidly, “that the man kept us in this house under completely false pretenses. There was never any risk to Lovelace. Bryce swears the murderer has no interest in her.”

  “H-how can he possibly make such a claim?” Troy sputtered.

  “He knows who the murderer is,” she said darkly. “He’s known all along.”

  Troy’s brows furrowed. “You believe Bryce is in league with the French? I take leave to doubt it. Why, the man is no more a spy than I am…or Kimble or Armbruster, for that matter.”

  Jemima drew a breath. “He says he is not. And I want to believe him. But I found the poem that was taken off the dead man locked in Bryce’s desk. And he would not tell me how it came to be there.”

  Troy sighed. “I am convinced you are starting at phantoms, Button. And if you have a nice lie-down, and a bit of cordial, I am sure you will come to your senses. What’s more, I’ve promised Carruthers a game of whist tonight, and you know I can’t play worth anything, if you aren’t there to partner me.”

  “Whist!” she cried, flinging the parasol across the room, where it bounced against the door, effectively shutting it. “Is that all you can think of? Your own petty pursuits? When I tell you that we have been living with a man who lied to us, who cozened us…”

  “He hasn’t cozened me,” Troy uttered blithely. “Been the soul of generosity. Gave me my own place to write, after all.

  And let my friends run tame in his house. I heard he even saw Army off this morning.”

  At the mention of Armbruster, Jemima felt her temper begin to rise beyond her ability to control it.

  “You’d better go now,” she said between her teeth. “There’s no point in arguing with you.”

  “Jemima!” Troy implored her. “I refuse to let you leave!”

  “And I refuse to discuss it. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to fetch Lovelace.”

  She tugged her valise off the bed, swept past her brother, and headed for the door.

  But Troy knew the value of making a good exit. He rushed to the door and flung it open.

  “I will leave you then, Madam Ingrate!” he proclaimed in affronted tones. “I am off to Withershins with my friends. The mayor’s spaniel bitch has just whelped six prime youngsters, so I won’t waste my breath brangling with you, Jemima, when I can be having a jolly time looking at puppies.”

  He spun out the door and went striding off. Jemima stood fuming for all of ten seconds before she stormed into the hall in his wake and wailed out, “Puppies!” in pure frustration.

  Lovelace was drowsing on the drawing room sofa, a novel clasped to her dimity-clad bosom, when Jemima found her. To her credit, the girl at once fell in with the plan. Jemima had no way of knowing that it was the expression of lost hope in her eyes that made Lovelace so amenable, rather than Jemima’s insistence that there was no longer any danger and, therefore, no reason to stay on at Bryce Prospect.

  “Might I not say good-bye to Mr. Bryce?” Lovelace asked, popping one last bonbon into her mouth.

  “He is closeted in his library,” Jemima explained. “You can write him a note from the inn, if you like.”

  Lovelace nodded. She followed Jemima out of the house and down the path to the stables behind the house. She was still using the cane and had to hobble along lively like to keep up with her companion.

  “Isn’t your brother coming with us?” Lovelace inquired breathlessly.

  “Troy has chosen to stay here, but it’s of no matter. I have enough money to hire a carriage at the inn. We’ll be back in London by tomorrow night.”

  “London?” Lovelace said. “But what of my family? How will they find me?”

  Jemima laid a hand on her arm. “Tolliver will have my direction. They’ll find you, never fear.”

  Jemima helped Lovelace into the pony cart, politely refusing the head groom’s offer to drive them. She didn’t take an easy breath until they were on the main road heading for the inn. It was all behind her now. Tomorrow she would be back in London, and then she could have a good, long cry. But not now, she thought, as she wiped a stray tear from her eye. This was neither the time nor the place for regrets.

  An hour later, the ladies were sharing tea in a private parlor at the Iron Duke. A very quiet tea. Since Jemima had refused all of Lovelace’s conversational gambits, the girl had subsided into a pouting silence.

  “Mr. Bryce is in love with you,” she remarked when the boredom had quite overcome her.

  Jemima looked up from her teacup, which she had been gazing into as if it held the secrets of the universe. “What?”

  “I am something of an expert on love,” Lovelace continued. “Oh, I don’t mean because of all the young gentlemen who have pursued me,” she added with uncharacteristic humility. “It’s the plays I perform, you see. By Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Sheridan and even those my own papa has written. I understand what real love is. Do you recall in Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo says, ‘Ah, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek.’ Mr. Bryce is forever looking at you like he wished he were a glove.”

  Jemima nearly chuckled. But then she grew annoyed. Who was Lovelace to preach to her about true love? A feather-headed, simpering coquette who hadn’t the wit to hold on to her own family.

  “I don’t wish to discuss Mr. Bryce,” she said stiffly.

  “Did you two have a row, Lady J? Lover’s quarrels are at the heart of most romantical plays. You’ve only to recall Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing—”

>   “This isn’t a play, Lovelace,” Jemima said crossly as she rose to her feet, setting her cup down with a distinct clink. “And I wish you would not rattle on in such a way—it is giving me the devil of a headache. Can’t you find something else to occupy you besides this mindless chatter?”

  Lovelace’s face fell. She rose, hobbled to the doorway, and then said in a hollow, wavery voice, “Perhaps I should take myself off to the stable. Mrs. Tolliver told me there is an orphan lamb in there.”

  Jemima nodded without meeting the girl’s eyes. She felt as though she were the one who had orphaned the lamb. And skinned it to boot. This was all it required, Jemima thought wretchedly. She’d quarreled with Bryce, alienated her brother, and had now sent Lovelace off nearly in tears. Maybe she should go outside next and kick the stable dog.

  Maybe you should kick yourself, Jemima, her conscience taunted. For leaping to conclusions, for presuming to sit in judgment, and for having so little faith in the man you love.

  She refilled her teacup and sank back on the sofa, again trying to make sense of Bryce’s behavior. But as much as she twisted the facts in her head, trying to find some way to exonerate him, she always arrived at the same conclusion—even if he wasn’t involved with the spying, Bryce was guilty of protecting the man who had killed the Frenchman. A man who, if her recent nighttime encounter with him was any indication, was hiding somewhere in the nearby vicinity.

  But where? Certainly not at the Prospect—even Bryce would have balked at allowing that. It was a pity she knew so little of the surrounding area. There might be abandoned cottages or shepherd’s huts where a hunted man could take refuge. There could be remote farm sheds or caverns…

  She sat up so abruptly that her tea sloshed onto the carpet.

  Of course! It all makes sense now—Bryce’s cave in the ravine.

  She recalled that the remains of the twig fire near the cave’s entrance had still smelled pungently of smoke. Bryce had brushed at the charred wood with his boot and blamed it on local farm children. It was clear he hadn’t known anyone was using the cave when he’d brought her there. But she also recalled how briskly he’d dismissed her that afternoon with some nonsense about visiting a neighbor. Without a doubt he had gone back to the cave to discover who was sheltering there.