Rake Beyond Redemption

Was she prepared to leave it like this and pretend they had never met?

No. She was not.

What’s more, she would not. Within her, bright anger warred with intrigue, and a little frisson of excitement such as she barely recalled curled its way into her belly as she ran her tongue over her lips. She would discover the mystery of Mr Ellerdine, for it was her chief desire that he should kiss her again. Then with a little laugh she rubbed at her lips with the scented water. No daughter of the de la Roche family would bow weakly before the whim of fate, but would seize it, shake it.

Alexander Ellerdine had better beware.

Chapter Three

Mr Alexander Ellerdine—Zan, as she had called him—had told her, before his bewildering volte-face and his descent into disgraceful bad manners, that he would come the next day to the Pride to ask after her safe recovery. Marie-Claude waited, finding an excuse from her previous day’s exertions to remain within the house and gardens. She was feeling just a little weary, she informed Meggie—quite understandable. She would stroll and sit in the rose garden and read perhaps. So she did with increasing difficulty. She had never felt so full of energy in her whole life. And of course he did not materialise—and she was not in the least surprised, in the circumstances. He had warned her off, well and truly, with no attempt to soften his words. She paced the rose garden with increasing impatience.

And waited two more full days.

Zan Ellerdine did not come.

Marie-Claude decided to seize the initiative. Events played beautifully into her hands. Meggie’s ageing mother demanded her daughter’s attendance at her side when a flare of the rheumatics kept her to her bed. With no one to notice her comings and goings, and certainly not to question them, on the third morning Marie-Claude ordered up the cob and trap as soon as Wiggins had cleared the breakfast cups and saucers and asked directions from a stable lad. She dressed with care.

She would wager the pearl bracelet that she clasped about her wrist against his being overjoyed, that she was the last visitor he would wish to see uninvited on his doorstep. Tant pis. Too bad. He had made her feel alive again, restored to her a vivacity that she had somehow lost over the years since her coming to England. And the connection between them had been so strong, so undeniable, like knots in a skein of embroidery silk. Until, that is, the unfortunate mention of her name. She must discover what it was about the Hallastons and Lydyard’s Pride that had turned his tongue from lover to viper. It was quite beyond her understanding, and it was not in her nature to let it lie.

Marie-Claude considered her imminent conversation with Zan Ellerdine. How to conduct it, she had as yet no idea, but must wait to see whether he would smile or snarl at her. Then she allowed her mind to assess her own personal situation as the cob picked its sedentary way towards Ellerdine Manor. It was a line of thought that had occupied her frequently of late.

The Hallastons were not her family, of course, the only one of them who had given her that connection being dead now for—unbelievable as it might seem—almost six years. And her future as a Hallaston widow? She could not imagine what it would hold that would bring her true happiness and heal her heart that had recently acquired a hollow emptiness. Perhaps that was the problem, she mused. She no longer had any roots, not in France, the country of her birth that she had fled those five years ago, not here in her adopted country. Her future, cushioned as it was by Hallaston money and consequence, seemed increasingly solitary and just a little lonely.

Until, that was, she had met Zan Ellerdine. It was as if he had opened a window to allow sunshine into a darkened room. Or opened an unread page in a book, promising any number of new possibilities. Only to slam them both shut again! Marie-Claude swiped her whip at a bothersome fly. She did not think she could allow him to do that.

She would never forget Marcus, of course. Marcus Hallaston, the vivid young man who had awoken her to the delights of first love when their paths had crossed in the battle-torn campaign of the Peninsula War. Rescuing her, he had wooed and wed her before she could collect her thoughts, loved her extravagantly, and then died at Salamanca, leaving her destitute in Spain with a new-born child. She would always remember him, always love him. What a whirlwind romance that had been. A regretful little smile curved her lips. But she had known him so little time. And her memories were growing pale with the passage of the years. Sometimes fear gripped her when she could no longer bring Marcus’s face to mind, yet it seemed that her heart was frozen in time, when she was still nothing more than a young girl who had fallen in love with the handsome officer in Wellington’s army.

Until Zan Ellerdine had pulled her into his arms and kissed her. With a delicious warmth, the ice around her heart had melted. And then what had he done? Thrown all her reawakened emotions back in her face.

It was not that she was unloved of course. Marie-Claude denied any such self-pity. There was Raoul, her five-year-old son, spending a few weeks with Harriette and Luke, Marcus’s brother, at The Venmore. Raoul had been her whole life since Marcus’s untimely death. They had not always been safe. She narrowed her eyes at the cob’s ears as the horrors of the past pressed close. Abducted by that villainous individual Jean-Jacques Noir as objects of blackmail to wring money from Luke, it had demanded a midnight run to France by Luke, and Harriette in her old guise as Captain Harry the smuggler, to rescue them and bring them home safe. What an adventure that had been when the Preventives had almost caught them on the beach and Harriette had been shot. Marie-Claude’s recall of the details was vague—it had been a time of danger and extravagant emotions with the future of Harriette and Luke’s marriage on the line—but she had been accepted and welcomed at last, and her son had reclaimed his rightful place in the Hallaston family.

But now Raoul was growing up and showing a streak of Hallaston independence. Of course he would rather spend time with Luke, in the stables, riding round the estate at The Venmore on a new pony, running wild in the woods, than with his mother. Of course he would. It was to be expected. But what would she do with the rest of her life?

Spend it with Zan Ellerdine…

Ridiculous! He did not want her. She should not be demeaning herself by going to meet this man. But Marie-Claude’s newly melted heart began to throb with some strange elation. She would not step back from him and whatever it was between them that had been ignited in that dingy little room. If he did not want her in his home—then he would just have to send her away.

She would not make it easy for him. She shook up the reins and prompted her somnolent cob into a more sprightly gait.

Ellerdine Manor. Not so very far away. First impressions—not good as she steered the cob into the drive. An old mellow stone house, long and low, stood at the end of the drive. Substantial, attractive it must once have been, but now with an air of dilapidation. The drive was choked with weeds and overgrown shrubs that had not seen a gardener for a decade. It was plain to see as she drew closer that the stonework needed attention. The chimneys were crumbling. So this was where her mystery rescuer lived. She wrinkled her nose. It could have been lovely with time and inclination. With money.

This, Marie-Claude thought, was the point of no return, and her courage nearly gave out. Fearing it would if she hesitated longer, she directed the cob at a shambling trot into the stable courtyard to the rear. Stepping down from the little carriage, she headed for the sound of activity in the range of stalls occupying one side of the outbuildings.

It amused her a little. This area looked as if someone had taken it in hand. Someone was more interested in the stables and their occupants than the house itself. She stepped through the open doorway into shadows, bars of sunlight angling across to form strips across the floor. It smelt of dust and hay and horses, in no manner unpleasant. Dust motes danced and glinted gold in the light. Somewhere in the far depths of the building someone whistled tunelessly.

The first stalls were closed. But the third was not.

Marie-Claude approached quietly.

And there he was. Coatless, in shirt and boots and breeches, he was grooming a dark bay stallion. Long smooth strokes of the brush from shoulder to knee. It was no difficulty for her to simply stand and stare, to watch the stretch and bend of his body. The flex of sinew in his powerful thighs. The fluid, agile play of muscle in his back and shoulders under the linen shirt. He reached and stretched with an elegant grace that set off a silent hum of pleasure in her throat. Turned away from her as he was, she could not see his face, but his dark hair shone in the soft light. Once more she experienced the urge to run her fingers through the dishevelled mass.

Here was her future. She was sure of it. Here was the man who could make her body sing again, even without touching her. And when he did—well, she really had no point of comparison. It was as if all the sparkle and bubbles from a glass of French champagne had erupted in her blood. This was the man who could wake her from the trance in which she had lived and slept since Marcus had died. Like Sleeping Beauty roused from a hundred years of enchanted sleep with one kiss from the Prince.

Marie-Claude was transfixed. Until Zan Ellerdine stood to his full height, half-turned and shook back his hair from his face as he reached up to a curry comb on a shelf above his head. As the light gleamed on the sweat at throat and chest she felt a need to touch her tongue to her dry lips. He was magnificent. And how intriguing. He applied himself again to the animal’s quarters, his expression distinctly moody, the lines between nose and mouth heavily drawn, his eyes dark and brooding, snapping with temper. There was no softness in that beautiful face, only a cold ruthlessness, a driving force that would be indifferent to all but the ultimate goal.

But, oh, he was beautiful.

Cold logic immediately took hold. She should run for her life. This was not a man any well-bred woman should seek out. Zan Ellerdine was a man who had no thought of her, of any woman, but only of his own needs, who would take her and use her to his own ends.

A faint noise. She must have moved, scraped her foot against the cobbled floor. Marie-Claude held her breath.

Zan straightened to run his fingers through the stallion’s mane. ‘How’s the mare, Tom?’ He raised his voice to the far whistler. ‘Just a sprain, I thought…’

He glanced back over his shoulder. And stilled, every muscle controlled, the words drying on his lips.

There, just as she had known. Those dark eyes, dark as indigo, looked into her, knew every secret of her heart, she was sure of it. For a brief moment his features softened as he saw her. The lines that had bracketed his mouth smoothed out. The fierce emotion in his eyes faded. She thought he would smile at her. Hoped he would.

His mouth firming into a hard line, Zan Ellerdine tossed the brush he was holding on to the bed of straw and faced her, hands fisted on hips.

‘Go away. There’s no place for you here. You shouldn’t be here.’

It was like a blade to her heart, a tearing pain. Marie-Claude took a moment to wonder why it should matter so much, if a man she barely knew felt no desire to spend even a moment in her company. And after all, wasn’t this what she had feared would happen? If she’d had any sense, any sense at all, even one ounce of dignity and pride, she would never have set foot on Ellerdine property in the first place. Instead she had laid herself open to this.

And she would open herself to more. She simply did not believe that his insolent denial of her reflected that initial response in his face. She summoned all her sang-froid, straightened her spine and raised her chin.

‘I have come to pay a morning call, Zan.’ There! She had called him by his name. ‘Did you not expect me?’

‘No.’

‘You promised you would come to ask after my health. You didn’t.’

‘No. I didn’t.’ Still he stood, uncivil and unwelcoming.

‘Did you even care?’

‘You had wet feet and a ruined gown, nothing more. A gown that Venmore could afford to replace out of the loose change in his pocket. I doubt you would succumb to some life-threatening ailment.’

So callous. So unreasonably impolite. But Marie-Claude kept the eye contact, even when it became uncomfortable. ‘As you see, I am perfectly well, but I was raised to honour my obligations,’ she stated, her demure words at odds with her galloping heart. ‘So since I am indebted to you, I have come to pay a morning call to offer my thanks in a formal manner.’

His lip curled. ‘I was clearly not raised to honour my obligations, my upbringing being lacking in such finesse,’ he retaliated, giving no quarter.

‘Frankly, sir, I don’t believe you.’

That shook him. She saw the glint in his eye, but his response was just as unprepossessing. ‘What you believe or disbelieve is immaterial to me. I thought I made it clear our—our association was at an end. I am not available for such niceties as morning calls. As you see, madam, I’m working and you are disturbing me.’

She would not be put off. ‘Then I will say what I wish to say here, Zan. It will not take but a minute of your so very valuable time.’

‘Say what you have to say, madam, and then you can leave.’

He would be difficult. He was deliberately pushing her away. Well, she would not be pushed away in that manner. ‘My name is Marie-Claude,’ she informed him with a decided edge.

‘I know your name.’

‘You called me Marie-Claude before.’

‘So I did. I should have treated you with more respect.’ His tone was not pleasant.

‘But as you have just informed me, your upbringing was lacking in social niceties. So why should you cavil at using my name? I did not think Englishmen were so stiff-necked as to be so rigid over etiquette. Frenchmen, perhaps.’ She paused, then delivered her nicely judged coup de grâce. ‘Since you kissed me, more than once, and I think did not dislike it, I would suggest you know me quite well enough.’

He breathed out slowly, unfisted his hands, but only to slouch in an unmannerly fashion. ‘What do you want from me?’ Still bleak and unbending.

‘I’m not sure quite what it is I wish to say,’ she admitted. How hard this was, how intransigent he was being. ‘You saved me from drowning, or at least a severe drenching. I think I didn’t thank you enough.’

‘As I said—it’s no great matter. I happened to be there—and I would have saved anyone in your predicament.’

‘I think it does matter. Would you deny that some emotion flows between us? Even now it does. It makes my heart tremble.’ She stretched out her hand to him, but let it fall to her side as the stony expression remained formidably in place. Indeed her heart faltered, but she drove on. She would not leave here until she had said what was in her mind. ‘I think I should tell you that I don’t usually allow strange gentlemen to kiss me—or any gentlemen at all, come to that. Just as I don’t believe you kiss women in inn parlours—unless it’s Sally who showed willing. Then you would.’

‘I might,’ Zan admitted.

‘I envy her.’ She raised her chin higher. ‘What I don’t understand is why you went into fast retreat when you learned my name, as if an overwhelming force had appeared on the horizon.’

His eyes released her at last. Turning from her, Zan picked up a wizened apple from the shelf and offered it to the stallion, who crunched it with relish. ‘What did Meggie say?’ he asked, stroking his hand down the satin neck.

‘That you are a smuggler and I shouldn’t associate with you. But that’s not it. Everyone seems to have some connection with smuggling here. Harriette was a smuggler. George Gadie is a smuggler and Meggie doesn’t disapprove of him. Or not much.’

His eyes snapped from the stallion back to her, fierce as a hawk. ‘You don’t want to know me.’

‘I choose whom I wish to know. I am not a child.’

‘Your family would disapprove.’

‘But why?’

A pause. Would he tell her? ‘I’ll not tell you that.’

‘Then you must allow me to make my own judgements. Do I go, Zan? Or do I stay?’

It was a deliberate challenge. If he wanted her to go, he must tell her so. She would not move one inch otherwise. She could read nothing in his face, anticipate nothing of his thoughts. And so was surprised when she heard him issue the invitation.

‘Since you’re here, I suppose I must take you into the house and provide you with the tea that never materialised at the Boat.’

Something had changed his mind. She inclined her head graciously. ‘It would be polite.’

He retrieved his coat from the stall partition and remarked drily, ‘I know the form after all. My mother was a stickler for good manners. I was at least raised as a gentleman.’

‘I never doubted it. And I would like to see your house.’ She fell into step beside him.

‘You’ll be disappointed.’

He took her hand, drew it through his arm, to lead her out of the stable courtyard towards the main entrance.

Until she hesitated. Looked up at him, head tilted.

‘What’s wrong? Have you changed your mind after all? Not willing to risk stepping into a smuggler’s den of iniquity?’

‘Not at all. I simply wondered why you led me to think that you were raised as an unmannered lout. Not that you will tell me, of course.’

He laughed at her prim reply. ‘You’ll prise no secrets from me, Madame Mermaid!’

Abruptly he opened the door into the entrance hall and stood back so that she could enter.

Marie-Claude stepped into his home. ‘Do you live here alone?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Are you changing your mind again?’

‘No. Are you? Do you not want me here?’

‘I invited you. I have a housekeeper. Mrs Shaw.’

‘I did not think I would need a chaperon, Zan,’ she chided gently. She stood in the centre of the entrance hall and turned slowly round, taking in her surroundings. ‘Will you show me around?’

‘If you wish. It won’t take long.’

He opened the doors that led off the entrance hall, into the library, two small parlours, a withdrawing room, a little room with an escritoire that still held traces of his mother who had used it for her endless letter-writing. He watched Marie-Claude with some amusement as she inspected each room without comment. Without expression. Finally, calling along a corridor to an invisible Mrs Shaw for tea, he led her back into the library, where she sat on the dusty cushions of the sofa, hands neatly folded in her lap.

‘Well? What do you think?’

‘Disreputable,’ she remarked immediately. ‘What are you thinking to allow this?’

He gave a crack of laughter at the directness of her censure. Then Zan sobered, frowned. ‘No money to spend on it.’

‘I was thinking soap and water, rather than money. What is your housekeeper doing? And is smuggling not a lucrative trade? I was under the impression there were fortunes to be made if a smuggler was not too nice in his choice of companions. We hear talk of the vicious rogues in the smuggling gangs even in London. I know all about rogues…’ She shivered as if a draught had touched her arms.

‘It can be lucrative, as you say, with the right contacts,’ he offered.

‘Are you a member of a smuggling gang?’

‘No. I am not.’

‘Forgive me. I did not mean to pry.’

‘I’m sure you did mean it! But I forgive you and I assure you I’m not a vicious rogue. When I organise a run, I use my own operation from the bay, and my own cutter.’ The door opened to admit the spare form of the housekeeper, bearing a tray. ‘And here’s Mrs Shaw with refreshment.’

Whilst Zan leaned his weight back against the edge of the desk, arms folded, Marie-Claude removed her gloves and took charge, murmuring her thanks despite the housekeeper’s chill disapproval of an unchaperoned female visitor, then proceeded to dispense tea with skilled assurance, measuring the amount from the inlaid box, pouring the pale liquid into fragile china cups. Zan took the cup offered to him.

‘I can at least guarantee the quality of this,’ he remarked drily.

‘I’m sure you can.’ She sipped. ‘And doubtless your brandy too. Has it paid any duty?’

‘Not that I know of!’

‘Tell me what you do when you are not smuggling.’

Zan cast himself into one of the chairs and proceeded, against all his good intentions, to tell her the trivial nothings of life on the run-down Ellerdine estate whilst Marie-Claude sat and listened, asking a question when it seemed appropriate. How strange it was. How surreal. There they sat and exchanged polite conversation as if they were in a London withdrawing room, certainly not as if an intense undercurrent throbbed on the air between them. Later Marie-Claude had no clear idea of either her questions or his answers. Only that he had not taken his eyes from her.

Mon Dieu. How confusing this all was. Marie-Claude felt like a butterfly on a pin. His replies were brusque, his dark beauty and stern demeanour never exactly encouraging, yet she felt astonishingly at ease in his company. Eventually she put down her cup. Replaced her gloves. Rose gracefully to her feet and held out her hand to him.

‘I must go. Morning calls should only last half an hour, should they not?’

‘So I understand. I’m sure you’re well versed in such social niceties.’ He bent his head in a formal salute to her knuckles, a glint of humour lighting his dark eyes at last. His lips brushed softly against her skin.

‘You have been most hospitable.’ She managed a smile as her heart jolted with desire. ‘Will you come to Lydyard’s Pride one afternoon? For tea?’

‘No. I will not.’

The humour vanished. The whole pleasant house of cards they had just constructed collapsed around them.

‘Why not?’

‘I would not be made welcome there.’

‘But why would you not? What on earth have you done to cause this impasse? Meggie will not say, and neither will you. How can I accept what I do not understand?’ She frowned at him, her dark brows meeting in frustration. ‘You don’t like the Hallastons, do you?’

‘No.’

‘There! Again! That’s no answer, Zan.’ Her fingers gripped hard when he would have released them. ‘Why won’t you tell me the truth?’

‘Because I choose not to. Goodbye.’ He kissed her fingers once more with an elegant little bow. ‘You have made your morning call and reprimanded me for my lack of duty in fulfilling my own obligations to you. You have seen and disparaged the way I live. Let that be an end to it. Whatever is between us—it can be explained away as a momentary foolishness. We should acknowledge it and bury it. It’s good advice, Madame Mermaid. I advise you to take it.’

‘No. I won’t.’ The frown became almost a scowl. How effective he was at dismissing her, at putting her at a distance. ‘Three days ago you called me Marie-Claude. Your told me I was beautiful and that you had known me all your life. And now you tell me to put it aside as if it had no meaning? Three days ago you kissed me.’

‘So I did and I should not have done so. Forget what happened.’

‘I will not.’ A determination stormed through Marie-Claude, to hold tight to what she believed might be if he would only allow it. ‘If you will not come to me at the Pride, then I must come to you. But you have to agree. I’ll not force myself on you or be a trouble to you.’

‘You don’t know what you’re stepping into. You don’t know me.’

‘I know what I see,’ she persisted. ‘A man who is brave, who risked his own safety to rescue an unknown woman.’