Rake's Reform

“It’s so unfair that you had to meet him in Burton’s Lane instead of me,” Annabel complained as she toyed with one of the flounces on her gown. “You should have invited him back here. Do you have any idea of how hard I tried for an introduction when I was in Town last Season?” Then her sullen round face brightened. “Mama will not possibly be able to refuse to allow us to be introduced now he is to be a neighbour.”

“Your mother would not allow you to be introduced to him? Why ever not?” Janey asked, curious in spite of herself. The son of an Earl, even if he were the younger could usually do no wrong in the eyes of Mrs Filmore.

“Because of his reputation, ninny,” Annabel explained patiently, as if she were speaking to a child. “He is the greatest rake and gambler in England; at least, that is what Miss Roberts told Mama. She said that there were a dozen husbands with cause to call him out, if duelling had not been banned, and another twenty wives who would willingly give their spouses cause to do the same.

“And she told me that he quite broke Araminta Howard’s heart—and very nearly her reputation. Miss Roberts says he cares for nothing but his pleasure—” Annabel’s lips parted upon the word and she gave a little shiver.

“I can scarcely believe that of the man who made the speech that was printed in the paper,” Janey said, feeling a peculiar distaste about hearing of Jonathan Lindsay’s apparently numerous amours.

“The speech about the poor!” Annabel gave a shriek of laughter as her brother entered the room, and came to lounge sullenly against the mantle. “Piers! Piers! Jane admires the speech Jonathan Lindsay made on behalf of the poor.”

“Then, once he has settled in, we must be sure to call so she can congratulate him in person,” Piers drawled, an unpleasant smile on his rather too-plump mouth. “I am sure he will be delighted with her admiration.”

“Oh we must—we must—” Annabel spluttered into helpless incoherent laughter.

With a resigned sigh, Janey bent to pick up the Register and made to leave.

“Where are you going, dear coz?” Piers stepped in front of her.

“Somewhere a little quieter,” Janey said, staring back into Piers’s rather bulbous pale blue eyes. “Will you stand aside, please?”

“Papa wants you in the library,” Piers answered without moving. “He is none too happy about the food you’ve been doling out in the village. Quite choleric, in fact, says he won’t have the estate’s money wasted upon the undeserving poor who do no work.”

“And yet he does not mind keeping you in funds,” Janey said mildly.

“I am not poor,” Piers said frostily, his heavy features taking on an expression of hauteur.

“Undeserving was the adjective I had in mind.” Janey smiled. “Now let me pass, if you please. Perhaps you can convey my apologies to your father? I have other more pressing matters to attend to this morning.”

“Like reading this insurrectionist rubbish!” Piers snatched the Register from her, crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the fire.

“How dare you!” Janey hissed. “That was mine, you had no right—”

“I had every right, dear coz,” Piers sneered, catching her arm as she went to turn away. “You know Papa will not have that paper in the house. And now you are coming to the library, as Papa wishes.”

“Let go of me!” Janey said warningly.

“No.”

“Very well.” Janey brought her knee sharply upwards in a manoeuvre which no well-brought-up young English lady would have known.

There were definitely some advantages in a frontier upbringing, she thought, as she saw Piers’s eyes bulge, and he crumpled into a groaning heap upon the floor.

“Jane! What have you done? You have killed him!” Annabel flew to her cursing brother’s side.

“I fear not,” Janey said unrepentantly. She picked up her shawl from the window-seat and turned for the door, a smile upon her lips. A smile that froze as she found herself looking over her guardian’s shoulder, straight into Jonathan Lindsay’s blue eyes.

How long he had been there, what he thought of her after the scene he had just witnessed, were of no consequence for the moment in which their gazes locked. She only knew that she felt a ridiculous surge of happiness that he had not forgotten his promise to her. He had come.

“Jane!” Mr Filmore, who had seemed transfixed, apart from the trembling of his moustache, finally found his voice in a tone of thunderous disapproval. “I cannot think what you have to smile about! Brawling like some tavern slut! Has the money your grandfather spent upon your education, the effort Mrs Filmore has expended, counted for nothing?”

Janey made no answer, but stood, head held high, her gaze fixed upon a point somewhere over the rather short Mr Filmore’s head. She had a very good idea of how the conversation would progress. Mr Filmore never lost an opportunity to remind her of her failings, her lack of gratitude for the belated, but expensive, education lavished upon her by her grandfather.

Or the fact that she had been discovered, at the age of fifteen, living in a boarding house in the care of a woman who thought little of hiring herself out along with the beds, a woman who taught her the very useful manoeuvre she had just tried out on Piers. And upon receipt of that information, Jonathan Lindsay would no doubt decide to discontinue their acquaintance at the earliest opportunity, she thought, her happiness evaporating into a sudden bleak emptiness.

“Have you ever had the misfortune to witness such behaviour before, Mr Lindsay? I should wager you have not!” Somewhat to Janey’s surprise, Mr Filmore turned to address his visitor before berating her further.

“No.” Mild contempt edged Jonathan Lindsay’s voice like a razor. “But then, neither have I seen such provocation before, being accustomed to the company of gentlemen.” He looked pointedly at Piers who, after being assisted to his feet by his sister, strode out of the opposite door without so much as a word to any of them.

Janey’s hazel gaze flashed back to his in grateful astonishment. She had not expected to find an ally in the aristocratic Jonathan Lindsay.

Holding her gaze, he gave her the briefest of smiles. A smile that made her heart stop and skip a beat. Suddenly, the imminent lecture to be endured did not seem such an ordeal.

“If you knew my ward, sir, you would know my son is blameless in this matter,” Mr Filmore said huffily. “We make allowances, of course—she has never been quite herself since her betrothed died so tragically last year.”

“Allowances!” Janey’s hazel eyes took on a greener hue as her temper rose.

“Jane,” Mr Filmore said firmly, “do not let us have another scene. You do not want Mr Lindsay to think you unbalanced, do you?”

“That is not an error I am likely to make,” Jonathan said coolly. “In my opinion, Miss Hilton is perfectly balanced.” He put the slightest emphasis upon the last word, and Janey felt her insides contract as his blue gaze skimmed downwards from her face to the sharp curve of her waist emphasised by the tightly fitting bodice of her lavender gown. “And it is a delight to see her again.”

“Again?” Mr Filmore said, looking down his sharp thin nose. “I was not aware you had been introduced, Jane.”

“We met by accident, last week,” Janey said dragging her gaze from Jonathan Lindsay’s face. A delight. Was that true?

“In Burton’s Lane,” supplied Annabel with deliberate malice. “That’s where the family of that boy who fired the rick live.”

“Not for much longer, if I have anything to do with it.” Mr Filmore was curt, disapproving. “I might have known you were gallivanting about the countryside again, dispensing largesse to all and sundry.” He drew himself up. “If it were not for me, Mr Lindsay, Miss Hilton would not have a penny of her money left by the time she is of age.”

“Oh, Papa, I am sure Mr Lindsay does not wish to be bored with our little domestic disagreements.” Annabel came forward, all smiles, swaying flounces and bouncing curls, as Janey stood, momentarily stricken, wondering whether Mr Filmore could evict Mrs Avery without notice. “And you have not introduced me yet.”

“There is hardly any need,” Jonathan said, with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I know you by sight, Miss Filmore, and by reputation.” His mouth curved a little upon the last word. “You were in Town last Season, were you not?”

“Yes, how clever of you to remember,” Annabel simpered, fluttering her eyelashes. “I did not think you would have noticed me amongst so many.”

“Oh, you are impossible to ignore, Miss Filmore,” Jonathan said drily as his eyes flicked over the pink frills. “Quite impossible.”

“Oh, Mr Lindsay, you are such a flatterer,” Annabel said, twirling one of her red curls coyly about her finger. “Is he not shameless, Jane?”

“Utterly, I fear,” Janey agreed mildly, the corners of her mouth curving in spite of everything. Only Annabel, whose vanity was overwhelming, could possibly have taken what he had said as a compliment.

“Jane,” Mr Filmore said frowningly, as he glanced from Lindsay to Janey, “have you entirely forgotten your manners? Go and order some refreshment for our guest.”

“Of course,” Janey said demurely. “If you will excuse me?” She waited for Jonathan Lindsay to step aside.

“A moment, Miss Hilton.” He touched her arm as she made to pass him, stopping her in mid-stride. She stared down at his long elegant fingers, so brown and firm upon her thin muslin sleeve just above her wrist. It was the lightest, politest of gestures. There was no need for her pulse to beat wildly at the base of her throat, no reason at all for her breath to stop in her throat. And it was ridiculous to have this feeling that her whole life had been leading to this moment, this man’s touch upon her sleeve.

Dragging in a hasty breath, she jerked her gaze upwards to his and found him staring at her speculatively.

“Yes?” Her voice was almost, but not quite, as steady as she would have wished it as his gaze held hers and she caught the gleam of amusement in the indigo depths of his eyes. No doubt he was used to women reacting to him in such a fashion and that piqued her. She did not want to be like the rest…not to this man.

“That matter we spoke of—”

“About the gardens of Southbrook, you mean?” she interrupted him warningly, willing him with her eyes to understand that she did not want Jem’s case mentioned before Mr Filmore.

“Yes,” he said after a fractional hesitation, “the gardens.”

“You will find the camomile seat at the foot of the waterfall,” she went on hastily. “Sunset is the best time to sit there, the light turns the water to rainbows—” She stopped, as close to blushing as she had ever been, as his brows lifted quizzically and he smiled at her in a way he had never done before, a wide slanting smile that reflected the warmth in his gaze.

“Rainbows at sunset?” he said with gentle mockery. “How very romantic for a Radical.”

“It was merely an observation—you really do get rainbows—” she said tersely as Annabel giggled.

“Then I shall go there this very evening.”

She exhaled with relief as he lifted his fingers from her arm. He had understood. But then he understood everything far too well, she thought wryly as she took a step back from him.

“Rainbows!” She heard Annabel snort as she left the room. “I swear Jane is becoming more fanciful by the day.”

Chapter Three

The orange disc of the sun was just slipping below the distant horizon of the downs when Janey stepped out of the woods. A few feet ahead of her was an apparently sheer cliff, out of which sprang a small torrent of water, which foamed and sparkled as it tumbled into the shadowy pool some forty feet below. Above the noise of the water, she could hear the frantic excited barking of a dog; glancing down to the edge of the pool, she saw Jonathan Lindsay, throwing sticks for his liver and white spaniel into the calm end of the pool.

Cautiously she began to descend the narrow zigzag of a fern-lined path that threaded down the cliff, thinking ruefully that it would have been easier if she had been as close a follower of the fashions as Annabel and, hence, would have been wearing a skirt that skimmed her ankles rather than the ground.

The roar of the falling water drowned out the noise of her approach. It was the spaniel who sensed her presence first, dropping its stick at Jonathan’s feet and raising its head to bark furiously.

“Hello! I was beginning to think you were not coming, or I had misunderstood you,” he called up to her as he turned.

“No, you understood perfectly,” she shouted back, wondering why it was that seeing him should give her this peculiar feeling of instant well-being. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said as she drew nearer, “it was more difficult than I had expected to get away.”

“You are still in disgrace, I take it?”

“For all eternity, I suspect,” she said with feeling, her guardians having waxed long and lyrical about her outrageous behaviour.

“Wait, I’ll help you—the path has collapsed there.” He came forward, hands outstretched to help her down the last drop of two feet or so.

“Thank you,” she said after a fractional hesitation, and put out her hands to rest them on his shoulders as his hands closed about her waist. It would have been ridiculous to refuse. As ridiculous as it was to feel so afraid of touching him. Daniel had lifted her down from a thousand such places when they had roamed the great forests on the long trail west, looking for firewood and berries.

“Ready?”

“Yes…” The word dwindled to nothing in her throat as she glanced down into his blue, blue eyes and everything seemed to stop: time, her heart, her lungs—even the roaring, cascading water.

For a second, no more, he stared back at her. Then, with a flicker of a smile, he lifted her down. Staring at his snowy linen cravat, she waited for him to release her waist, and then she realised that he could hardly do so until she removed her hands from his shoulders, where they seemed to have become fixed.

Snatching her hands back, she pulled out of his grasp, took two steps back and dragged in a breath. She had danced with several men, even been kissed upon the mouth once by Daniel, but she had never, ever felt anything like that sudden irrational sense of belonging, of wanting to touch, hold on and never let go—

Get yourself in hand, girl, she told herself impatiently, as he regarded her a little quizzically with a half-smile hovering upon his wide mouth. Sure, he was handsome, but he had not found their proximity in the least bit earthshaking—but then, no doubt, he was used to simpering society misses falling at his feet. She took another breath and lifted her chin, preparing to be as cool, as ladylike and as English as she knew how.

“Do you always look at man like that when he touches you?”

His dry question almost made her gasp. No one she had met since she had come to England had ever been so direct, so outrageously intimate. How dare he ask such a thing! And then she almost laughed—if he wasn’t going to play by society rules, then neither was she…she would be what she was, a colonial who did not know how to behave properly.

“Only when they have dishonourable intentions.” She gave him a blithe smile as she spoke and had the satisfaction of seeing surprise flicker across his face.

“Alas, you know me so well already.” He inclined his head to her, his blue eyes sparkling with laughter. “But at least you did not slap my face; I suppose I should be grateful for that.”

“I have never cared for overly trodden paths,” she said as they walked side by side towards the camomile seat.

“Oh, sharp, sharp, Miss Hilton, I am wounded to the quick.” He put a theatrical hand to his breast.

“Not so much as Piers was,” she said sweetly, thinking it would do him no harm to be reminded that she was very capable of defending herself.

“True,” he agreed wryly, and then frowned. “You are limping. Have you hurt yourself?”

“It’s nothing. I broke my leg in a fall almost a year ago and it still aches sometimes,” she answered, as she sat down gratefully upon the springy cushion of herbs.

“Horses can be dangerous beasts, can they not?” he said as he seated himself beside her. “I broke a collarbone once, and that took long enough to mend.”

“Yes.” She let his assumption go. She did not want to have to explain about the accident, or Edward, just now. She was having trouble enough coping with his disconcerting nearness and the knowledge that she was as susceptible as any society miss to Jonathan Lindsay’s very considerable charm.

“So is that why you like to come here often, because you do not care for the overly trodden paths?” he asked a moment later, giving her a sideways glance.

“How did you know I come here often?” She paused in the act of crushing a sprig of the camomile between her fingers, wondering if the herb’s calming properties would have any effect upon her heart, which had begun to race from the moment he had sat down beside her.

“This—” he patted the springy camomile, his fingers a scant half-inch from her thigh “—has no need of weeding, someone has been doing it, and—” he reached into his pocket with his other hand and produced a glove worked with the initials J.H. “—I found this. You, Miss Hilton, have been trespassing for some time. Have you not?”

“Guilty, m’lud.” She released the breath that had caught in her throat as she accepted the proffered glove and his fingers momentarily brushed hers. “It was the one place I could be sure of escaping my guardians and—” she glanced across the pool and upwards to where the tall pines clung to the edge of the cliff above the waterfall “—there is something about it which reminds me of home.”

“Home?” His straight brows lifted as he looked about him, from the sparkling spill of water to the wild untidy tumble of ferns, brambles and once-cultivated shrubs, long since gone wild. “I cannot say this puts me in mind of the grounds of Pettridges Hall.”

“I meant America,” she said, still staring across the pool. “This reminds me of the Kentucky Trail and where we settled in Minnesota. Sometimes, sitting here watching the water and listening to the wind in the trees, I can almost believe I am back there—that if I turn around quickly enough I will see my father hitching up the team or my mother coming out of the cabin to call us in for dinner—” She broke off, wondering why on earth she was confiding such thoughts to him.

“You miss your life there?” There was the faintest note of surprise in his voice. A note she recognised all too well in carefully educated English voices, when she made the mistake of speaking about her past.

“Yes, I do,” she said with a sharp lift of her chin, telling herself that she was a fool to think that he might be different from the rest, that he might just understand. “America has a great deal to recommend it. England does not have a monopoly upon natural beauty, Mr Lindsay.”

“While you are resident in England, that is a subject upon which I shall have to disagree with you,” he said, bending down to pick up the stick that the ever-hopeful spaniel had dropped at his feet.

“Then I suppose it would be churlish to argue—” she said after the slightest intake of breath. “Do you always flirt so outrageously, Mr Lindsay?”

He straightened, threw the stick and then turned to look at her, his eyes sparkling. “Only with women whom I find interesting or desirable.”

“And into which category do I fall, Mr Lindsay?” she asked, surprising herself with the apparent uninterestedness of her tone.

“Both,” he said softly after a moment, his eyes suddenly very dark as his gaze dropped to her mouth, and then lower still to the fullness of her breasts. “Very definitely both.”

His voice had lowered to a velvety depth that made her skin prickle and grow tight, as if his hands had followed his stare, and she found herself staring back at his face, the wide slanting line of his mouth, his long clever fingers as he toyed with a piece of camomile.

Her mouth and throat grew dry as his gaze came back to her eyes and she knew that he meant it and that they had just stepped off the safe ground of lighthearted flirtation into some decidedly dangerous waters—for her, at least.

She swallowed and stared down at the glove in her hands. “Good,” she said, as matter-of-factly as she could manage. “I should hate to be merely desirable.”

He laughed, dissolving the tension that had been almost tangible. “I do not think you could ever be ‘merely’ anything, Miss Hilton.”

“You are doing it again,” she murmured, lifting her gaze to watch the spaniel heave itself out of the pool and shake the water from its coat.

“What?” he said innocently as he studied her detachedly, thinking that he had been right. She was not pretty: her fine nose was too straight, the upswept line of her jaw too clean and sharp, her forehead a fraction too high, her mouth too wide and feline. Oh, no—no insipid, dainty, English rosebud, this—more a lioness, lithe, fierce and very beautiful.

“Flirting,” Janey replied, putting a hand to her face, ostensibly to push back an errant strand of fair hair, but in reality to shield herself from the piercingly blue gaze that was making her feel decidedly uncomfortable.

“And you are not?” he mocked softly.

“No. I have no talent for it,” she said tersely, wishing that she were not quite so aware that, if she moved a matter of an inch, his shoulder would touch hers. “All I asked you—”

“—was whether or not I found you desirable?” He laughed. “If that does not constitute flirting, Miss Hilton, I don’t know what does.”

She shrugged, determined not to fall into another of his verbal traps as she glanced at him with what she hoped passed for indifference. “I was simply curious.”

“I should be happy to satisfy your curiosity whenever you wish.” He grinned at her and quirked a dark eyebrow. “You only have to say the word.”

He was wicked. Quite impossibly wicked, she thought, the corners of her mouth lifting despite all her efforts to look stern.

“The word is no,” she said a little too emphatically.

“Pity.” He was almost sober suddenly. “You would not reconsider if I told you your hair was the colour of gold, your eyes as dark and mysterious as that pool, that I shall die if I do not kiss you—”

“No!” She laughed, but got up abruptly and almost ran to where the dripping spaniel had dropped its stick, before adding, with all the lightness she could muster, “but before you expire, do tell me of any last requests and I shall be happy to see they are carried out.”

“Heartless—heartless,” he reproached her softly as he watched her bend lithely and throw the stick with an easy competency not often seen outside of Mr Lord’s new cricket ground. “How can you be so heartless at sunset, beside a waterfall of rainbows?”

“I daresay I have not read enough of the latest novels,” she said as she watched the spaniel plunge into the shallows of the pool again. “But it is beautiful, isn’t it? I shall miss coming here.”

“Why should you miss it? So far as I am concerned, you may come here whenever you wish.”

She started as his voice came from immediately behind her shoulder. He had moved as silently as an Apache warrior across the muddy grass until he was a scant pace behind her. She turned, and then wished she had not as he met her gaze. She felt her heart leap and race beneath her ribs as if she had suddenly found herself between a she-bear and its cub. It was ridiculous, she told herself, ridiculous to think he had meant that nonsense about kissing her, ridiculous as this soaring feeling of happiness because he seemed to like her.

“That is very good of you, but I should not like to intrude.” Her words came in a rush.

“I should count your presence an advantage rather than an intrusion.”

His voice was soft, warm, like his blue eyes as he sought and held her gaze. “So promise me you will come here again, whenever you wish?”