Now the next tangle of wagons and porters and furious drivers snarled the traffic to a halt again and it seemed even more stifling inside the tired old hackney than ever. At least Toby was chastened enough by his latest misadventure to only fidget and sigh and peer out of the small window to listen to colourful arguments being traded all around them. Hetta dreaded to think what gems were taking root in his busy head, but she would have to trust him to save the worst for his peers at the school she must find him before summer’s end. He knew enough insults in several languages to keep a pack of scrubby boys happy, but at least their wandering life had given him a wider view than he would have got in Lyme or at Porter House with her rigidly formidable grandmother. Her son had a robust sense of his own worth. Now she owed him stability, she decided as she eyed the sweaty chaos outside the window and sighed. She would have to endure this benighted country while her son grew up and there was no point having the blue-devils about it.
Since before he was even born Toby had been her counterweight against the failings and sadness of the past, and hope for the future, but she had to be careful not to smother him. The fact that most schools were closed for the summer let her put the idea of him going to one at least as a weekly boarder to one side, so she could at least get her breath back and give herself more time to look around for a place that wouldn’t stifle his character and try to turn him into the crushed pattern card of a gentleman. Not that it seemed likely, but the attempt to force him into such a mould would end in disaster for him and his mother, so she would need to be very careful about this school and the place she would eventually settle—nearby, but not too near.
The new Earl of Carrowe’s odd behaviour seemed a good way to distract herself from thoughts of her imminent parting from her son, so she let him steal her anxiety about the future, as the ancient vehicle finally trundled on. Shouting at Toby to come down off his less than noble roof had almost shocked her son into the tumble Lord Carrowe had claimed he was trying to prevent. The panic in the dark eyes the Earl shared and yet didn’t quite share with his younger brother Magnus had looked odd as well. Understandable for her to feel her life was hanging in the balance while Toby teetered between safety and a crashing fall, but why had his lordship been so concerned about a boy he didn’t even like? He’d continued to stare at the chimney Toby was clinging to even after he had let go and taken the lesser risk of a jump into the ancient attic below rather than a fall to unkempt grounds far too many feet below. At the time she had been so concerned for her son that his lordship’s odd behaviour had seemed irrelevant, but now she thought about it the more the man had seemed almost as hard-pressed to keep his feelings in check as his younger brother had under very different circumstances at Dover.
Hetta sighed and concluded she was making mountains out of molehills. Toby had been exploring where he wasn’t supposed to, so the Earl could hardly pat him on the head and claim it didn’t matter. Her fault for weakening and agreeing to stay there instead of facing a tramp around London looking for suitable accommodation. She should have recalled Haile was the Earl of Carrowe’s family name and steered clear of the rest of them the moment she heard Magnus’s name at Dover. Still, she recalled all the heart and intelligence under the misery in Magnus Haile’s dark brown eyes as he’d watched his little girl sail away and decided he had hopes, dreams and a passionate nature his elder brother must have sidestepped at birth. She marvelled Lady Drace was so obsessed with the current Earl of Carrowe that she refused to see how much less of a man he was than his younger brother. Perhaps ten years ago the eldest Haile brother had been as dashing and deliciously dangerous as the Honourable Magnus was now, but Hetta couldn’t imagine it. There was coldness in the Earl’s gaze his brother would never share, and if she was lucky enough to have a lover as potent and passionate as Magnus Haile, she hoped she wouldn’t be as big a fool as Lady Drace was by whistling him down the wind.
No, close off that notion right now, Hetta Champion. One failed love affair in a lifetime is enough.
She refused to be second-best ever again and Magnus Haile wouldn’t even notice if she fell at his feet and begged him to take her instead of his precious Lady Drace.
* * *
A week after he had to watch Delphi and his daughter sail away Magnus was halfway down a second bottle of cognac and still the memory refused to fade. He’d felt so hollowed out and despairing that day he had been trying to fill the void ever since.
‘Oh, no, what the devil are you doing here?’ he asked when he heard rapid footsteps outside, then looked up and only just managed to silence a groan of protest. Maybe he was asleep and dreaming. He blinked and the apparition still didn’t go away. The boy glared back as though Magnus was somehow at fault. Well, he was drunk and noxious in his mother’s newly decorated dining parlour. He needed a hot bath and someone to shave him, then push him into clean clothes, since he was too cast-away to do it himself. He didn’t think he deserved a hallucination as ill timed as this one, though.
‘Mama! Mama! It’s the man from Dover and he’s got horns,’ the boy’s treble voice yelled and managed to make Magnus jump as if he’d been struck by lightning.
He put up a shaky hand to feel his hair standing up in two peaks where he’d run his fingers through it and smoothed them down as best he could. He still didn’t see why the boy had to trumpet his sorry state to his mother when she was standing right behind him and could see for herself. ‘Oh, the deuce, please get him out of here,’ Magnus begged, putting his hand over his eyes and hoping the boy would disappear if he pretended not to be here hard enough. He thought he’d done quite well not cursing his imagination for dreaming the boy up, but next time he looked the brat from Dover was glaring at him as if he was the interloper here. Even thinking about the day they’d met made Magnus’s stomach give a heavy roll of nausea in protest. He only just managed to force it back and go on glaring at them owlishly.
The sight of him glowering must have made the bespectacled lady hesitate in the doorway, far more daunted by the rough welcome than her appalling offspring. For a moment Magnus felt guilty about making it so plain he didn’t want them here, but she shouldn’t march into strange houses if she wasn’t prepared for a rebuff. Before he could repent his harshness and recall his manners, she raised her chin, braced her shoulders and sailed further into the room as if she had every right to be here as well. He was almost ashamed of himself and could see the effort it cost her to brazen this out, but he was three-parts drunk and looking forward to adding the last quarter as soon as she and her son left, preferably as fast as their feet would carry them.
She was eyeing the chaos Magnus had wrought during his day of drunken misery instead of obliging him, though. A tidal wave of sickness ground again in Magnus’s belly as dread of Delphi and his little girl being unmasked by this woman who knew too much joined all that brandy and very little food, if any, he recalled hazily. This woman knew things he didn’t want anyone knowing and here she was expecting... Exactly what was she expecting of him?
‘We did knock, but nobody came to see who was at the door, so I dare say they thought it was you being loud and ridiculous,’ she explained frostily. She looked tired and pale even to Magnus’s jaundiced gaze and shame got a little stronger under the dread she might have tracked him down somehow and come to extort a price for her promised silence.
‘And why the deuce were you knocking on my mother’s door?’ he barked harshly.
‘Lord Carrowe told us to stay here until I find more suitable lodgings.’
Magnus felt more at sea than ever as he wondered why Gresley had sent this woman, of all the women he could find and send to the Dowager Countess of Carrowe’s Hampstead home, in their mother’s absence. She didn’t look like a member of the muslin company and the boy couldn’t have an ounce of Haile blood in him if she turned out to be another of Gres’s guilty secrets he was shuffling about the country now she was on these shores, in the hope his wi
fe never found out about her.
‘Who the devil are you, then?’
‘Mrs Champion.’
‘And who the deuce is she?’ he said, still uneasy with the notion Gres could have had anything to do with her or her son.
‘Sir Hadrian Porter’s daughter,’ she said flatly, as if that was all he needed to know about her. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t dredge the man out of his memory to go with it. So, who was Sir Hadrian Porter and where was he while his daughter was running wild about the countryside with her brat knocking on doors where she wasn’t wanted?
‘So now I know?’
‘My father was called back to England to track down your father’s murderer,’ she told him wearily, as if she was quite accustomed to being unwelcome among Sir Hadrian’s victims, or should that be his clients? ‘Lord Carrowe sent me here when he decided Carrowe House was unsafe for adventurous boys. We had nowhere else to stay at the drop of a hat,’ she explained reluctantly, and even in this state he thought she was probably skimming over a chapter of disasters.
Another wave of guilt washed over Magnus as he looked round his mother’s dining parlour and wondered if it looked any better than Gresley’s ancestral wreck in town at the moment, thanks to him. Not much of a welcome to be had here nor any comfort. Wouldn’t his mother be ashamed if she could see him? He heard himself groan as if he’d been kicked by his uneasy conscience, then glowered at them for hearing it and seeing him like this. Though, if they thought him objectionable enough they might go away and leave him to find oblivion in a bottle at last. He eyed them with disfavour and wondered if he ought to go on with his potations to underline how little he wanted them here.
‘I beg your pardon for interrupting, Mr Haile,’ Mrs Champion said. ‘But the front door is open and this one was ajar.’ She carried on as if that was a good enough excuse for rushing in here even when his glare argued it wasn’t.
‘Your son would march into hell to argue with the devil uninvited, if you ask me,’ he said harshly. Unfair, but he might as well try to get drunk in a busy London street and he didn’t feel like being fair.
‘You are the devil,’ the boy argued, chin out and a fine glare of his own.
For a moment Magnus almost smiled and might have managed to laugh at himself if those words hadn’t hit home so hard. It was devilish of him to speak to a child like this. He had sworn never to be like his father at a very early age, but he caught the glower and meanness of the man in his own frown and gruff unfairness now and felt his sins grind in his gut all over again. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he hated the man he’d become with a bitter passion close to despair. He heard an unearthly noise, more like an animal in pain than a human being, and realised he had made it as the awful fear he was about to disgrace himself washed over him like icy water. Desperate to prevent the final disgrace of having them see him spew, he lurched to his feet and shot past them at a speed he didn’t know he had in him. A brief image of the woman and her boy staring as he fumbled blindly past them haunted him as he ran for the back of the house, blessing the fact the door was open as he dashed past the kitchen. Lingering cooking smells didn’t help, but he was vaguely aware of Cook and Peg, the middle-aged maid who stayed with his family through thick and thin, staring after him open-mouthed, but they at least must have been expecting it after the amount of time he’d spent in the darkened dining room trying to drown his sorrows. At last he was outside and in the kitchen garden, gulping in clean air, and dared to hope he had managed to overcome his ills.
Wrong, an evil little voice in the back of his mind chortled triumphantly. Heat and icy chills washed over him in waves and he managed to stumble as far as the stable midden before casting up his accounts as the smell hastened wave after wave of wretched sickness, so he doubled over in self-inflicted misery and gave in. No effort of will could halt the cramping nausea now and he hardly had time to moan his woes into thin air between bouts as brandy scorched out of him a lot faster than he had put it in.
Magnus had no idea how much time passed before he finally dared hope he was done. A wonder if there was anything left in his belly to retch on now and he dearly wanted to believe it was empty. The cold of his own sweat on his skin belied the glorious summer day all around him and he had a horrible suspicion he might be about to faint. The threat beat in his ears as the world seemed to come and go with an angry buzz every time he moved his head, so it would be foolish to straighten up just yet.
Not that, he silently pleaded with the gloating voice of his conscience. Don’t let me be found lying on a muck heap by a nosy boy.
Determined to save a small scrap of dignity from the wreck of fashionable and almost Honourable Magnus Haile, he straightened up slowly and carefully and waited for the world to stop spinning.
‘Come on, Mr Magnus. Let’s get you under the pump.’ He heard Jem’s resigned voice behind him and he realised Peg or Cook must have run to fetch the lad so he could deal with Magnus while they welcomed their unexpected visitors.
‘I am a damned fool, Jem,’ he managed to mutter as he lurched towards the pump in the far corner of the yard and felt better as the smell of manure faded a little.
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ Jem said wisely, and Magnus felt like a child with a patient and resigned adult telling him boys will be boys.
Then even thinking was impossible as ice-cold water rushed over his still-reeling head and shoulders and soaked him to the skin. Feeling as miserable as sin, he made himself stay under the relentless flow while Jem pumped and he shivered. At last he called a halt and shook like a great, misguided and miserable dog. Standing still for a long moment, he signalled Jem to pump again and made himself gulp icy handfuls of water to test his still-complaining belly. Shaking water from his sodden hair, he dared stand back and strip off his soaking shirt.
‘Finished?’ Jem asked.
‘Aye.’
‘Best have this, then,’ Jem said and first presented him with a towel, then exchanged it for a pristine shirt Magnus pulled over his head, at the same time wishing he’d never even heard of brandy as the thunder of it rang in his temples. Why had he thought getting drunk would solve anything?
‘Cook said you was to drink this,’ Jem said glumly and passed over a concoction that smelt of peppermint and something a lot less tempting, so Magnus gulped it down as fast as he could and grimaced as the taste clashed with everything else he’d put into his belly lately.
‘I will do now, go and help Peg,’ Magnus managed to say gruffly, and Jem took one last look at him, then nodded as if he agreed the worst was over, before leaving him.
Magnus felt his stomach give one of those ominous rolls as it objected to whatever the drink was before it settled and felt surprisingly better. At least he had the taste of peppermint in his mouth now instead of the sour aftermath of his sins. He stood still for long moments like a chastened dog bathed after a really good roll in something awful. After a while he dared hope he might be himself again in a week or two and the sturdy wall at the end of the kitchen garden looked just the right height to support a failed gentleman in a fragile state of health. Somehow, he made his way there without toppling over, but he could not face going back inside to apologise to the woman from Dover and her unruly boy quite yet.
It would make sense to build this wall higher and block out the wind, he reasoned to distract himself from the thunder of his own pulse in his ears at the thought of her and all he had to be sorry about this time. Peaches and grapes and apricots could shelter under its sunny warmth and fruit almost as happily as they would in their Mediterranean home, but why would anyone wall out such a view even for those natural riches? And where did grapes and apricots and peaches come from originally if not those warm and sunny lands?
Magnus leaned on solid stones under a benign July sun and gazed across wide acres of blessed space as the Heath spread out before him. Out there was
real life—the glory of nature he ought to have clung to as his world fell apart, instead of trying to lose himself in a brandy bottle. He listened to the quiet buzz of bees happily occupied among the bean flowers and mused on the origin of garden plants in an attempt to forget his troubles. His shirt was still clinging to him like a lover and his head was thumping as if Thor’s hammer was busy inside it, but the world was wondrous again and he needed to remember how small a part of it he was.
Soft footsteps sounded from behind him and he heard the rustle of feminine skirts. His brief moment of peace was over. ‘Can’t I be spared even one indignity?’ he pleaded with nobody in particular under his breath. He knew she heard when she met his aching eyes with a hint of hurt behind the eyeglasses he suddenly suspected were there to keep him and the rest of the world at a distance. Regret nagged at him as he caught sight of her flinching and a feral nag of attraction to this sharp, yet somehow vulnerable, female dug into his conscience like a hot whip. He groaned in audible protest that she took the wrong way from the look of that poker back and her best antidote’s glare. She should know what a contradiction all the pretend hardness was against the soft fullness of her mouth and a figure not even the most determined attack of dowdiness he had ever come across could quite disguise. A true rake would be so intrigued by the contrast between the faulty disguise and a warm, desirable woman underneath it and try all the tricks in his armoury to seduce her. Luckily he was an uneasy seducer and in no state to undo any sane female with his mythical charms right now.
A Rake to the Rescue Page 4
