The Taming of the Rake

“Don’t try to deny it, Mr. Blackthorn. You’ve sent person after person to insinuate himself with Thomas this past year, guide him down all the wrong paths, divesting him of our family’s fortune just as if you had been personally dipping your hand into his pockets. Granted, my brother is an idiot, but I, sir, I am not.”

“Nor are you much of a lady, traveling about London without your maid, and barging uninvited into a bachelor establishment,” Beau said, walking over to one of the couches positioned beneath an immense chandelier that, if it fell, could figuratively flatten a small village. “Then again, I am not a gentleman, and I am curious. Stand, sit, it makes me no nevermind, but I’ve had a miserable night and now it appears that the morning will be no better, so I am going to sit.”

Chelsea looked at the bane of her existence, who was also her only possibility of rescue, and considered what she saw. He was blond, even more so wherever the sun hit his thick crop of rather mussed hair, so she hadn’t at first noticed that he had at least a one-day growth of beard on his tanned cheeks. He looked rather dashing that way, not that she would tarry long on the path to that sort of thought. He also looked—as did this entire area of the large room, for that matter—as if the previous night had been passed in drinking heavily and sleeping little.

Good. He probably had a crushing headache. That would make him more vulnerable.

“Yes, do that, sit down before you fall down, and allow me to continue. In this past year, which happens to coincide with Thomas reentering Society after our year of mourning that also gained him the title, and paired with your return to London now that the war is finally over, we have been visited upon by a verifiable plague of financial ill-fortune, one to rival the atrocities of the Seven Plagues of Egypt.”

Beau held up one hand, stopping her for a few moments, and then let it drop into his lap. “All right. I’ve run that mouthful past my brain a second time, and I think I’ve got it now. Your brother, the war, my return after an absence of seven years—and something about plagues. Are locusts involved? I really don’t care for bugs. But never mind my sensibilities, which it is already obvious you do not. You may continue.”

“I fully intend to. You know the locusts to which I refer. Mr. Jonathan Milwick and his marvelous invention that, with only a small input of my brother’s money, could revolutionize the manufacture of snuff. The so-charming Italian, Fanini, I believe, whose discovery of diamonds in southern Wales would make Thomas rich as Golden Ball.”

Beau closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. “I have no idea what you’re prattling on about.”

“Still, I will continue to prattle. The ten thousand pounds Thomas was convinced would triple in three weeks’ time in the Exchange, thanks to the advice of one Henrick Glutton, who would share his largesse with Thomas once his ship, filled with grapes to be made into fabulously expensive wine, arrived up the Thames. I went with Thomas to the wharf when the ship arrived. Have you ever smelled rotten grapes, Mr. Blackthorn?”

“Glutten,” he said rather miserably.

“Ah! So you admit it!”

“I admit nothing. But nobody can possibly be named Glutton. I was merely suggesting an alternative. Excuse me a moment, I just remembered something I need.” Then he reached down beside him to pick up a bottle that had somehow come to be sitting on the priceless carpet, and took several long swallows straight from it, as if he were some low, mannerless creature in a tavern. He then held on to the bottle with both hands and looked up at her, smiling in a way that made her long to box his ears. “You were saying?”

“I was saying—well, I hadn’t said it yet, but I was going to—I don’t blame you for any of it. Thomas deserves all that you’ve done, and more. But with this last, you’ve overstepped the mark, because now you’ve involved me in your revenge, and that I will not allow. Still, I am here to help you.”

The bottle stopped halfway to his mouth. At last she seemed to have his full attention. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow. You’re going to help me? Help me what, madam?”

Chelsea held her tongue until Wadsworth had marched in, deposited a silver tray holding two glasses and a decanter of wine on the table and marched out again.

“I haven’t made a friend there, have I?” she commented, watching the man go. And then she shrugged, dismissing the thought, and finally seated herself on the facing couch and accepted the glass of wine Beau handed her. “You know that my brother became horribly ill only a few weeks after our father died. It was believed he’d soon join Papa in the mausoleum at Brean.”

“I’d heard rumors to that effect, yes,” Beau said carefully, shunning the decanter to take another long drink from the bottle. “Am I to be accused of that, as well? The illness, perhaps even your father’s demise? Clearly I have powers I have not yet recognized in myself.”

“Papa succumbed to a chest ailment after being caught in the rain while out hunting, so I doubt his death could be laid at your door. It was Madelyn’s brood, come to Brean for the interment and bringing their pestilence with them, who nearly killed Thomas just as he was glorying in his acquisition of the title. You had a victory there, didn’t you? With Madelyn, I mean. Thomas’s vile behavior that day had repercussions on my idiot sister, and she had to be married off quickly in order not to have all the ton staring at her belly and counting on their fingers. Do you remember what Thomas screeched at you that day? Something about you taking advantage of her innocence? Poor Madelyn, hastily bracketed to a lowly baron when she had so set her sights on a duke, but she couldn’t convince Papa. That you and she hadn’t—you know. And poor baron, as he’s had to live with her ever since. You had a lucky escape, Mr. Blackthorn, whether you are aware of it or not.”

His blue eyes narrowed, showing her that she had at last touched a nerve. “You term what happened that day a lucky escape? Your memories of the event must differ much from mine.”

“You’re still angry.”

Beau leaned against the back of the couch and crossed his legs. “Anger is a pointless emotion.”

“And revenge is a dish best served cold. Thomas humiliated you for all the world to see, whipped you like a jackal he refused to dirty his hands on. The woman you thought you loved with all your heart turned out not to possess a heart of her own. Between them, my siblings brought home to you that you are what you are, and that Society had only been amusing itself at your expense, while it would never really accept you. I would have wanted them dead, all of them.”

“Thank you for that pithy summation. I may have forgotten some of it.”

“You’ve forgotten none of it, Mr. Blackthorn, or else I would not be saddled with Francis Flotley. I, who remain blameless in the whole debacle, a mere child at the time of the incident. Do you think that’s fair? Because I don’t. And now you’re going to make it right.”

“You’re here to help me, and yet I’m supposed to make something right for you.” Beau looked at her, looked at the bottle in his hand and then looked at her again. “Much as it pains me to ask this, what in blazes are you talking about? And who the bloody hell is Francis Flotley?”

Chelsea’s hands drew up into fists. She wasn’t nervous anymore. It was difficult for one to be nervous when one was beginning to feel homicidal. “You admit to Henrick Glutton and the others? We can’t move on, Mr. Blackthorn, until you are willing to be honest with me.”

“Glutten,” he said again, sighing. “And the others. Yes, all right, since you clearly won’t go away until I do, I admit to them. Shame, shame on me, I am crass and petty. But, to clarify, I’m not out to totally ruin the man, but only make him uncomfortable, perhaps even miserable. Ruining him entirely would be too quick. As it is, I can keep this up for years.”

“Why?”

“I should think the answer to be obvious. Because it amuses me, madam,” Beau said flatly. “Rather like pulling the wings from flies, although comparing your brother to a fly is an insult to the insect. I’m unpleasantly surprised, however, that you connected me with your brother’s run of ill luck, although I should probably not be, remembering you as you were. A pernicious brat, but possessing higher than average intelligence.”

It was taking precious time, but at least they were finally getting somewhere. “So you admit to Francis Flotley.”

“If you’ll just leave me alone with my pounding head, I’ll admit to causing the Great Fire. But I will not admit to Francis Flotley, whoever the hell he is.”

Chelsea sat back in her seat. She had been so certain, but Beau clearly did not recognize the name.

“Francis Flotley,” she repeated, as if repetition would refresh his memory. “The Reverend Francis Flotley, Thomas’s personal spiritual adviser. The man who interceded with God for him in order to save him from the mumps in exchange for his promise to mend his ways. You used Thomas’s vulnerability to insinuate the man into our household, to defang the cat, as it were, make him believe that he had to give up drink, and loose women, and his rough and tumble ways, in order to save his immortal soul. Curb his vile temper, turn the other cheek—all of that drivel. A man who would whip another man in the street, reduced to nightly prayers and soda water, doing penance for his crime against you, even if he doesn’t realize that he is, lacking only sackcloth and ashes. How that must please you.”

“Ah. The Reverend Francis Flotley. Yes, I will admit that I am aware of a cleric’s presence in your household,” Mr. Blackthorn said, sitting forward once more. “But no, sorry. I had nothing to do with that. Wish I had, though, having once been at the wrong end of what you call your brother’s vile temper. It sounds a brilliant revenge.”

Chelsea sat slumped on the couch, like a doll suddenly bereft of all its cotton stuffing. “Oh,” she said quietly, seeing her last and only hope fading into nothing. “I’d been so sure. So brilliantly Machiavellian, you understand. I have given you too much credit. Forgive me. I’ll go now.”

She got to her feet and picked up her gloves, putting them on slowly, giving him time to sift through everything she’d told him. Surely he wouldn’t let her leave. He couldn’t. He had to at least be curious as to what she’d meant about having her own life ruined, and that she’d come here to help him. Even if she hadn’t been correct about the Reverend Flotley, perhaps her plan could still work.

But Beau stayed where he was, not even rising because she had stood up, and very much ignoring her, as if she’d already gone. Perhaps he wasn’t the man she’d built him into in her head. Perhaps he was just as bad as her brother in his own way.

Still, knowing she had no other options, she dared to continue hoping, even as she walked toward the foyer, slowly counting in her head. One. Two. Three. Four. Oh, for pity’s sake, I’m here to hand you the perfect revenge, you jackass! Does it really matter that you didn’t send Flotley to us? Five. Six …

“Wait a moment.”

Chelsea closed her eyes for a second, swallowed her fear once more and then turned around. “Yes? Has the penny finally dropped, Mr. Blackthorn? I’ll excuse you, considering your drunken state, but you really shouldn’t have taken much past three. If I’d gotten to nine, I’d have needed to reassess my opinion of you.”

Beau got to his feet, waving a hand in front of him as if erasing whatever she’d said as not worthy of a response. “Why did you come here? Alone? Not just to crow over me that you know what game I’ve been playing with your brother. And more importantly, why do I get the feeling that you’re not here to help me as much as you’re here to help yourself? Wait—don’t answer yet. Sit, drink your wine, and I’ll go stick my head in a basin of cold water and clean up some of my mess, in the hope it clears my head.”

“Yes, all right,” Chelsea answered, once again taking up both her seat and the wineglass. She didn’t really drink wine; she’d ordered it for him, believing he’d need it after he’d heard what she had to say. “But we should be leaving here within the hour, and even that will probably be cutting it too fine for comfort.”

“Leaving? We? As in, the two of us? Oh, really. And to travel where, may I ask?”

“You’re wasting time, Mr. Blackthorn. My brother is far from an intellectual, but he isn’t completely stupid, either. He’ll soon be out and about, looking for me, his newfound docile nature stretched to the breaking point. Oh, and to that end, although it is reminiscent of barring the barn door after the cow has escaped, I suggest you have my mount and groom removed from in front of the building.”

“I’ll order that,” the other Mr. Blackthorn volunteered, halting just inside the doorway, a thick slice of bacon in his hand. “Shall we have the fellow bound and gagged, Lady Chelsea, or simply sat down somewhere and told to stay put? Beau, brother mine, clearly you’ve been holding out on me. I had no idea you led such an interesting life.”

Beau grumbled something Chelsea was too far away to hear—which was probably a good thing—and headed for the stairs, bounding up them two at a time.

“Good, he’s gone. Now we two can get to know each other better, as it appears you and my brother are up to some sort of mischief. Or is it just you? He is looking rather harassed. It’s his age, you understand. Can’t hold his drink anymore, either. It’s a curse, old age. I have just now, over a plate of coddled eggs, vowed never to succumb to it.”

“My mount, Mr. Blackthorn,” Chelsea told him, smiling in spite of herself, for Mr. Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn had the most engaging smile and way about him. “And after you’ve gone off to do that, please order your brother’s horse saddled and have his man pack a small bag for him. A traveling coach would be much too slow and easily spotted for our needs for now, I believe. We may also, now that I have a moment to reflect on the thing, needs must keep to alleyways until we’re clear of London.”

The man opened his mouth, clearly to ask her what she meant, but she merely pointed behind him, to the foyer. “This is life or death, Mr. Blackthorn, so there is no time for me to stand here and applaud your silliness. Go.”

He went.

Chelsea took a sip of the wine.

It didn’t help; she was still shaking.

CHAPTER THREE

MUCH TO THE CHAGRIN of his valet, Beau refused to take the time to sit and be shaved, opting for a quick wash at the basin, a brief encounter with his tooth powder and a rushed combing of his hair as Sidney helped him into a clean white shirt before handing him fresh linen and buckskins and then throwing up his hands in disgust and quitting the dressing room.

Beau was still having difficulty believing that Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman, sister of his nemesis, was downstairs, sipping wine in his drawing room. Sans chaperone, clad in a rather startlingly red riding habit and clearly expecting him to go somewhere with her.

Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman. Knowing things she shouldn’t know. Cheeky and impertinent as she’d been as a girl … and hinting of helping him revenge himself on her brother.

While helping herself. He shouldn’t forget that. Women with ulterior motives were the norm rather than the oddity, he’d learned, and as this woman was also intelligent, he would have to be doubly on alert.

“Well, that could be considered by the less discerning as a bit of an improvement, I suppose,” Puck said, entering the dressing room to lean one shoulder against the high chest of drawers as he visually assessed his brother. “I have reconnoitered your visitor, grilling her mercilessly for details. She informs me whatever is going on is a matter of life or death. Worse, she seems astonishingly immune to my charms, which would have me descending into a pit of despair were it not that I’m secretly delighted that she has targeted you rather than me for whatever it is she’s planning. Not that I’m not here to help.”

Beau snatched up a neck cloth and hastily tied it around his throat. “Your enthusiasm for throwing yourself down in the path to protect me nearly unmans me,” he grumbled, realizing he’d just tied a knot in the neck cloth—rather like a noose.

“You’re welcome. Disregarding female enthusiasm for melodrama, do you think she’s right? The brother is a nasty piece of work, as I recall. Are you sure you wish to become embroiled in whatever she’s prattling on about?”

“She’s in my house, Puck.”

“Our house, not to quibble about such a small point. But, as I am also here, I believe I should be apprised of whatever the devil it is I’ve somehow become embroiled in myself, if only by association. She’s ordered me to hide her horse and groom, and then to advise Sidney to pack a bag for you, as you will be leaving within the hour. Which, naturally, begs the question—where are we going?”

Beau shrugged into a hacking jacket and took one last, quick look at his reflection in the mirror above the dressing table. “We are not going anywhere,” he told his brother. “Whatever the mess, I brought it on myself by being idiot enough to think I was a cat, toying with a mouse. I should have let it go, Puck, years ago. But, for once, it’s my idiocy, not yours. You’re not involved.”

“What? You’d leave me here to face the wrath of the brother? I think not. If I’m not to go with you, I’ll inform Gaston to pack me up and I’ll be back off to Paris. The weather is better, for one thing, and the food at least edible. I damn near cracked a tooth on that bacon our cook dared serve me. We should sack him.”

Beau turned on his brother. “You do this just to annoy me, don’t you?”

Puck pushed himself away from the dresser. “Yes, but I’ll stop now. You’re much too easy to rile, you and Jack both. Takes the joy right out of a fellow. I was listening from the terrace, you know, and heard most of what she said. You’ve really been quietly ruining the earl? I’d say that was brilliant, except that Lady Chelsea found you out, so you couldn’t be overly credited for subtlety. Comparing you to Machiavelli? Hardly. And now your pigeons seem to have come home to roost.”

“We can’t know that. Not unless the damned woman left her brother a note before she ran off. Because she did run off, Puck, that much is obvious. It’s what women do. Without a thought to anyone else perhaps not agreeing to become an actor in their small melodrama.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Puck agreed as he followed Beau down the hall to a small room he used as his private study. “She would have been better off applying to Mama. She dearly adores a melodrama. But when I left her to come to town, she was about to begin a tour of the Lake District with her troupe. I hadn’t the heart to tell her she’s getting a little long in the tooth to play Juliet, but as long as Papa finances the troupe, she has her pick of roles and no one gainsays her. Are you listening to me? What are you doing messing around in that cabinet?”

Beau turned back to his brother, the wooden case that held a pair of dueling pistols in his hands. He then opened a long wooden box kept on a sideboard and pulled out both the sword and belt he’d taken to war with him and a short, lethal-looking knife kept safe inside its sheath. “See that these are taken downstairs, if you please. I probably won’t need the sword, but I know I’ll want the knife.”

Puck frowned as the weapons were thrust at him. “Really? Would you be wanting me to hunt up a piece of field artillery as well while I’m at it? You really think the brother will come here, don’t you?”

“I was unprepared once, Puck. That won’t happen again. Now, take yourself off and do what you said you were going to do—get yourself prepared to return to Paris. This may all come to nothing, but the girl knows things she shouldn’t have guessed, and I’m going to believe her until she says something that changes my mind. Damn, what a morning—if I’d known this last night I wouldn’t have crawled so far into the bottle with you.”

“Yes, of course, blame me. It was a terrible thing, how I held your nose pinched shut and poured three bottles of wine down your gullet as we celebrated your birthday.”

“In case you’re about to add that the woman downstairs is some sort of birthday present from the gods, let me warn you—don’t.” Beau left his brother where he stood and headed downstairs to where Lady Chelsea was now pacing the Aubusson carpet, slapping her gloves against her palm.

She was, upon reflection—something, according to her, he didn’t have time for—a startlingly beautiful woman. He remembered that, as a child, she’d shown a promise of beauty, but that he’d believed she’d never hold a candle to her sister. Time had proved him wrong.

He’d seen Madelyn a time or two on his visits to London since his return from the war, driving in the park in an open carriage. The years had not been kind to her. She’d developed lines around her mouth, which seemed pinched now rather than pouting, and the nearly white-blond hair aged her rather than flattered her. She looked like what she was—a haughty, clearly unhappy woman.

He’d learned she had taken lovers over the years, sometimes without employing enough discretion, and her reputation, as well as her standing in Society, had suffered. For that, she blamed her brother, and the two of them had not spoken since their father’s death. She also probably blamed Beau, as well, for her fall began only after what he thought of now as The Incident.

But Beau had taken little satisfaction from any of Madelyn’s problems. To him, justice had been served up very neatly to Lady Madelyn for what she had done.

It was Thomas Mills-Beckman who had yet to feel justice come down on his neck. Hence the cat, toying with the mouse’s purse strings.

And now, pacing his drawing room, full of cryptic statements and offers to help him administer that justice, was this intriguing and maddening young woman, fallen into his hands either like a ripe plum or as the agent of disaster, clearly wanting to get some of her own back on her brother and eager to use Beau to help her.

“My brother tells me you assured him that we are embroiled in something very serious. Life or death, I believe he said—or perhaps that was you saying it? I’ll admit I’ve begun to lose track.”

She stopped pacing and looked at him, her blond head tipped to one side as she ran her clear blue-gray gaze up and down his body as if he were a horse she was considering purchasing. “You look somewhat better. Are you sober now?”

“I believe I’m heading in that general direction, yes. At least enough so that I want to make it clear to you yet again—I do not know this Reverend Flotley. I did not arrange to have him introduced to your brother, so if the rest doesn’t bother you—the smell of spoiled grapes notwithstanding—perhaps you wish to rethink whatever it is you believe you can do for me and go away. Quickly.”

“I can’t. I think we both know it’s already too late for that,” she said and then sighed. “We really don’t have time for this, but I have truly burned my bridges just by coming here so openly, and yours, as well, which I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you. I’m sorry for that, at least a little bit, but I had no other choice open to me. I left my brother a note explaining every—”

Beau slammed his fist into his palm. “I knew it! Why do women always feel they have to explain themselves?”

She straightened her slim shoulders. “I was not explaining myself, you daft man. I couldn’t allow my maid to take the brunt of Thomas’s anger, not when she helped me tie up some of my belongings and met me at the corner so that I could strap them onto my saddle without anyone being the wiser that I was leaving.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I can see the wisdom of that. He won’t turn her out without a reference now, not when you’d clearly cowed her into doing what you’d asked.”

“Oh,” Chelsea said quietly. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I didn’t tell him where I was heading. I’m not stupid.”