Kitabı oku: «Redemption Of The Rake»

Chapter One

‘Mr Winterley is very handsome, isn’t he?’ Mary Carlinge said with a wistful sigh.

‘If you ask me, he’d be more at home in London and the haut ton must be flocking back there for the Little Season by now,’ Rowena replied warily.

‘Don’t try and change the subject, Rowena Westhope. You’re four and twenty and in full possession of your senses, so how can you not be intrigued by a young, rich and well-looking gentleman like that one? I don’t know how Callie Laughraine managed to drag to him to church again this morning, but I’m grateful to her even if you’re not.’

Rowena eyed the tall, dark and, yes, very handsome gentleman and felt a shiver of something she didn’t want to think about run down her spine. ‘He’ll certainly need to be rich, as he’s bought the old Saltash place and it’s almost a ruin. I suppose he is good looking, but he’s far too vain and haughty for me to admire him because he was born that way.’

‘Either you’re a saint and belong in a nunnery, or you’re a liar, my friend,’ Mary murmured as Mr Winterley glanced in their direction, then let his gaze flit past as if they weren’t worthy of it.

‘And you’re a wife and mother, Mary Carlinge, and should know better.’

‘I may have wed Carlinge when I was hardly out of the schoolroom,’ Mary said blithely, sparing her husband of six years a fond but dismissive glance, ‘but your Mr Winterley is still worth a second look, then a third and fourth for good measure.’

‘He isn’t mine and he knows he’s attractive and well-bred and a fine prize on the marriage mart a little too well for my taste,’ Rowena replied as coolly as she could when the wretched man’s unusual green eyes flicked back to eye her speculatively.

She had thought herself all but invisible in the shadow of an ancient yew tree, until Mary tracked her down and insisted on asking impossible questions. Now he was watching them as if Rowena might put a toad down his back if he didn’t keep an eye on her. A decade and a half ago she certainly would have, but it was unthinkable for a sober widow to do anything of the kind.

‘Now I like a man who knows his own worth. I’d wager my best bonnet that one is a fine and considerate lover as well,’ Mary insisted on telling her, although Rowena didn’t want to know her friend’s innermost secrets. ‘When I finally manage to give Carlinge another son I do hope I’m still young and attractive enough to find out for myself, as long as some discerning female hasn’t snapped him up in the meantime.’

‘Oh, Mary, no; that’s an awful thing to say. We were only confessing our sins before God a matter of minutes ago. You can’t possibly mean it.’

‘Shush,’ Mary Carlinge replied and took a look round to make sure nobody was close enough to hear the vicar’s eldest daughter being shocked by things she really shouldn’t admit out loud. ‘It’s as well you lurk in dark corners nowadays and do your best not to be taken notice of. Is that a habit you learnt at your mama-in-law’s knee, by the way? If so, it’s a good thing she’s taken it into her head to go and live with her sister and abandon you to your fate, because you would have stayed with her otherwise and become a boring little widow who breeds small dogs and keeps weavers of iron grey worsted in luxuries.’

‘This particular shade is called dove grey, I will have you know, and it was kind of Mama Westhope to take me in when I came back from Portugal with little more than the clothes I stood up in. I stayed longer than either of us intended because she was so prostrate with grief I couldn’t bring myself to leave, but it was only until we felt more able to cope with Nate’s death,’ Rowena defended herself and her late husband’s mother, but she had a feeling Mary was right this time all the same.

‘Kind my foot, she made use of you, Row.’ Her old friend put aside her sophisticated woman-of-the-world manner for a moment to lecture. ‘You were little more than her unpaid skivvy and I doubt she’s let a single day of the last two years go by without reproaching you for being alive when her darling is dead. No, you have been cried at and belittled for quite long enough, my friend. It’s high time you learnt to live again and there’s the very man you should begin doing it with,’ she concluded with a triumphant wave of the hand to where Mr Winterley was standing with a less-distinguished gentleman doing his best not to know he was all but forgotten at his fellow guest’s side.

‘Who is the gentleman in the brown coat, Mary? You’ve become such a fount of information since you persuaded Mr Carlinge to live in his great-uncle’s house instead of selling it when he inherited and staying in Bristol.’

‘It’s healthier for the children, but are you calling me a gossip?’ Mary asked sharply. She seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then shrugged and grinned impishly, as if the truth of that silent accusation was undeniable, and Rowena remembered why she loved her old friend, despite her forthright tongue and interfering ways. ‘You’re quite right, of course. What else is there to do in the country but take an interest in your neighbours and watch grass grow? The man in that rather dull coat is the Honourable Mr Bowood and his father must be Lord Grisbeigh, who is the sort of mysterious grandee the government pretend not to have. He would have to admit to working if they did and we all know gentlemen don’t do that.’

Since Mr Carlinge was an attorney and Mary sounded a little bitter about the social distinctions that fed into, Rowena turned the subject to Mary’s little son and baby daughter and tried to listen to their doting mother’s description of their latest sayings and doings with all her attention and wipe Mr Winterley from her thoughts. For all her talk of taking lovers and the dullness of her life, she was almost certain Mary loved her workaday Mr Carlinge and their lively children far too much to take a risk with fashionably bored Mr Winterley. Or at least Rowena hoped so for her friend’s sake, not because the man was tall and broad shouldered and rather fascinating and stirred something in her she’d rather leave unstirred.

‘So this is where you’re hiding today, is it, Rowena Finch?’ the clear tones of her other friend from the old days interrupted Mary’s tale of teething and breeching and now she had two pairs of acute female eyes on her instead of one. Rowena shifted under Calliope, Lady Laughraine’s dark gaze and flushed ridiculously as Callie’s words drew the attention of the very man she’d been trying to avoid.

He looked like a Byzantine prince dressed as a gentleman of fashion and plonked down in an English village to overawe the locals, she decided fancifully. There was a sense of power and fine self-control about him that almost offended her somehow. It was hard to say truthfully how she felt about the interloper, even if a nice little competence and a more useful life than the one she had now depended on it, but no matter, she was done with handsome gentlemen and he would never seriously look her way even if she wasn’t. She was a dull and impoverished widow of the very middling sort and he was the brother of a viscount who looked about as tricky and handsome as the devil and that was that.

‘I’m not Rowena Finch any longer, as you know perfectly well, Lady Laughraine,’ she pointed out with a stern look for the woman she’d known ever since she could remember.

Callie was the last Vicar of Raigne’s granddaughter and had come to live with him as a tiny baby. When the Finch family arrived at Great Raigne, so Papa could be installed there as the Reverend Sommers’s curate, Rowena was a toddler and her brother Joshua a babe in arms. Callie was an elder sister she never had to long for, because she had one already, rather than a friend.

‘I do, although marriage doesn’t seem to have done you much good,’ Callie said in a voice low enough only to be heard by the three of them.

Mary nodded militantly. ‘Callie’s right, you should listen to her,’ she said and finally took notice of her husband’s repeated signals that their carriage was waiting and it was high time they went home. ‘I only hope you can make her see sense and come out of her shell, my lady. Rowena won’t listen to me and you always were better at getting her to see reason than I am. Only because you’re the eldest, you understand? Not because you’re Lady Laughraine and all set to be a power in the land as soon as you’re not quite so busy being Gideon’s wife we hardly ever see you now you’re finally home.’

‘Very well and I will try to be less busy and make time for my friends. Now go away and let me have my turn at bullying Row for her own good, Mary; your poor, put-upon husband will teach you a lesson and go without you one day if you’re not careful.’

‘I’ll go, then, since everyone is so keen to be rid of me. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on you and a certain gentleman, Rowena Westhope, so don’t imagine I’ll let you do so either.’

‘It’s as well she’s gone while we still have a little patience and affection left for her,’ Callie observed with a roll of her eyes after the friend they both loved and despaired of in equal measure. ‘Mary says outrageous things to disguise the fact she’s very content as a country wife and mother. It really is most unfashionable of her, apparently.’

‘A lapse you will shortly be sharing,’ Rowena said with a rather anxious look at her friend’s pale face and still perfectly flat stomach. The early months of Callie’s pregnancy were taking a heavy toll on her energy and spirits, and she couldn’t help worrying about her, as well as hoping and praying this babe would be born safe and well and Callie and Gideon could get on with being the doting parents they were always meant to be.

‘Don’t try and change the subject, Row,’ Callie argued as if she was tired of the concerned looks and veiled anxiety of her husband and close friends, and fully intended to worry about someone else today. ‘You’ve been home for nearly a month now and I’ve barely set eyes on you, let alone persuaded you to join me at Raigne for a comfortable coze. Every time we invite you there’s some reason you can’t possibly come and Mary says you avoid any dinner invitations or, heaven forbid, party invitations other neighbours send, as well. This simply won’t do, my dear.’

‘Why not? I’m a widow; why can’t I live quietly?’

‘Because you’re four and twenty, and not four and seventy, and you seem sad and a little bit defeated. Living with your mother-in-law has clearly done you no good at all. That woman was an invalid and watering pot before her son died in battle, so I hate to think what she’s like now. The very idea of you shaping to her ways as long as you have fills me with horror. Such a life does nobody any good, Rowena; take it from one who knows.’

The note of regret for all the years Callie wasted listening to her selfish and downright fraudulent aunt instead of her then-estranged husband was too sharp in her friend’s voice to be brushed aside as one more attempt to ‘bring Rowena out of herself’.

‘Gideon always loved you though, Callie. It shone out of you both from the moment you were grown up enough to know what love and passion are.’

‘We might have known what they were, but we weren’t old enough to understand how to live with them. You’re not going to divert me with my own past mistakes today though, because we’re talking about you and not me. It’s high time you made some sort of future for yourself that doesn’t involve writing letters for a bitter and twisted woman, and running errands she’s too idle to do herself. And don’t tell me you’ll be perfectly content teaching other people’s children as a governess either, because I know you won’t be.’

‘Why not, you did just that for nine years and don’t seem much the worse for it.’

‘Don’t I?’ Callie said looking as if every day she had spent away from her husband still cut at her now they were blissfully reunited and already expecting another child. ‘I don’t want you to turn aside from life for such a ridiculous span of time as I did, Rowena. I can’t tell you how much it pains me to think my dearest almost-sister has settled for an existence instead of a life because of one youthful mistake.’

About to defend her own impulsive marriage against that accusation, Rowena met her old friend’s challenging gaze and let out her breath in a long sigh instead. ‘Maybe I’m not as brave as you, Callie,’ she said and that felt a bit too true.

‘You could hardly be less so.’

‘Yes, I could. You were so brave when you lost Grace, then quarrelled so bitterly with Gideon you decided you didn’t want to live with him any more. It almost hurt to look at you at the time and he was nearly as good at concealing his feelings as you were. I wish now I hadn’t given you that promise not to tell anyone where you were or what you were doing as long as we could go on exchanging letters after you left Raigne. If I was a better liar I might have let it slip to Mama and she would have got the truth in the open long ago. Nine years was far too long for you to be so alone and shamefully deceived by your aunt, Callie.’

‘Yet you want the same sort of life I endured for yourself? No, Rowena, you can’t let yourself off trying to do better because your dashing lieutenant made you unhappy, and I can’t stand by and watch.’

Again Rowena drew breath to lie that she and Nate were blissfully content from first to last, but the act failed under Callie’s steady gaze. ‘Yes, I can,’ she said instead and defied her friend to argue black was white. ‘For me love was vastly overrated and I shall not marry again. Apart from that, I agree, it’s high time I stopped feeling guilty because Nate is dead and I’m alive and got on with living the best life I can. I intend to advertise for a position as a governess or teacher and look forward to using the fine education Papa and your grandfather gave me at last.’

‘At least that fantasy is the ideal opening to play my trump card. Gideon and I have been trying to make you an offer of employment ever since you came home so tired and out of spirits with your life as unpaid companion. Will you work for me instead, Row? Please? I need you and I doubt your fictitious young ladies with rich and doting parents even want a sound education. Very few of mine did. It’s true the odd one or two who did made my years away from Gideon bearable, but you don’t have to endure the frustration of trying to teach young ladies to be learned and wise when society wants them naïve and empty-headed.’

‘You certainly don’t need a governess yet, even if this babe turns out to be a girl. I doubt you need a companion either, not now you have Gideon to occupy every spare moment,’ Rowena told her friend.

Being offered a sinecure because she and Callie once ran wild about the countryside together felt as wrong as Mr Winterley clearly thought their earnest discussion, if the frown of concern on his face was anything to go by. There was a hint of steel in his not-quite-indifferent green eyes that said he cared about his hostess’s welfare, endanger it at your peril. She forced a pang of something uncomfortably like jealousy to the back of her mind and told herself the man ought to care about Callie and Gideon by now, since he’d been at Raigne an unconscionably long time for a house guest and clearly owed something for the privilege.

‘I don’t have nearly enough spare moments for Gideon to occupy, and I so want to be with him whenever I can. We wasted so many years apart every second seems precious now and I can’t find enough of them for us at the moment, or for this little one when it’s safely born, God willing.’

‘What would you want me to do for you, Callie? Mama Westhope tells me I’m a hopeless housewife, so I’d be very little use to you as one of those.’

‘Mrs Craddock would be highly insulted if I even suggested Raigne needed more housekeeping than she and her deputy already provide. No, what I need is a scribe and a clerk I trust and you’re perfect for both roles. You always did have a far neater hand than me and by clerk I suppose I mean a secretary. I know most of them are men, but just imagine what Gideon would say if I asked to share his.’

‘I wouldn’t sully my thoughts, let alone my ears, with your husband’s feelings about you being in such close contact with another member of his species on a day-to-day basis. But are you sure you need a female to deal with your correspondence and help with some of your duties? I shall hate it if my return home without much more than a penny to bless myself with put the idea of finding me pretend employment at Raigne into your head,’ Rowena made herself say. In truth the very idea of working with her dearest friend and living at Raigne was almost a dream come true. Almost, she reminded herself, as she tried not to meet the eyes of the man who could turn it into a nightmare.

‘Yes, I’m sure. I seem so taken up with this little devil the need for help has become a lot more urgent,’ her friend confessed with a protective hand on her still-flat belly that gave away volumes about her changed priorities.

‘Will you give me a few days to discuss the idea with Mama and Papa and Joanna? If I can persuade my darling sister to take her head out of the clouds long enough to think of aught but her beloved Mr Greenwood, of course.’

‘What a fine clergyman’s wife Joanna will be and she was always better behaved than either of us. I do hope Hester never falls in love with a serious man though, she’d drive him to drink,’ Callie observed with an indulgent glance at ten-year-old Hester Finch rolling over and over in the mown grass in the churchyard and doing her best to shove as much of it as possible down the necks of her mixed assortment of playmates.

‘She still has time to grow up and be a lady, more unlikely things have happened. We weren’t a lot better at the same age and look at you now,’ Rowena said. ‘Hes is in severe need of a lecture on the subject of not picking on much smaller opponents right now, though,’ she said and went off to supervise her little brothers and sisters after a despairing look from her mother and a promise to consider Callie and Gideon’s offer properly.

‘Imagine it was made by someone you don’t know half as well, then tell me truthfully you don’t want the post, Rowena,’ her friend called after her.

Rowena turned back to nod agreement, then shrugged ruefully as the squeals of her little sister’s victims became too overexcited for comfort. She needed to restore order before there were tears as well as giggles of high delight to disturb the serious-looking conversation her parents were having with Sir Gideon and Lord Laughraine.