A Rake to the Rescue

by Elizabeth Beacon

  His words made him seem so vitally present and real he could be in another room refusing to speak to her, or a town not a half-an-hour’s ride away being stubborn, instead of a hundred miles distant or more. Hetta looked over her shoulder to make sure he had not brought the message himself and sighed with disappointment when no trace of him lurked in a dark corner, glaring back at her for making him stay away all this time for no rational reason at all as far as he could fathom. She could hear Toby in the next room asking Lady Aline a spate of eager questions now he was home from his small but scholarly prep school for the weekend, so she frowned, mended her pen and found an equally small piece of paper to write on and make Magnus curse her conciseness as well.

  Mr Haile,

  How refreshingly brief your first ever letter to me proved to be.

  I trust you are well and suppose you must be, since you have so much energy to spend on your work you do not have time for more than a few gruff lines.

  I will not be any man’s second-rate wife, least of all yours. Nothing I read today makes me think again about your flattering offer, so you will have to try harder to convince me of your sincere regard.

  Lady Aline is going to write by this same post, so I shall not include any details of our lives. She is sure to confide them to you, so we need not repeat ourselves.

  I wish you a good day, sir,

  Yours etc.,

  Mrs H. Champion

  That ought to make him think harder about sending more of himself next time, if he didn’t give up altogether. If he was going to, she would rather he got on with it, and it wasn’t as if she wanted outpourings of impassioned poetry or wild promises of undying love until the end of time, but this was meant to be a wooing, wasn’t it? She already knew he was morose and contrary as well as funny, loyal and strong as steel. It was the everyday intimacy of his love she wanted convincing of.

  She sat chewing on the other end of her quill and wondered if that was her problem instead of his. If he truly did love her, perhaps that was why he sent such a brief and cross-grained letter. If he was missing her so much he could not get smooth words and gallant phrases down on the page, he might deserve more than the same in return. She could not manage to rip her letter up and send a sweet and conciliatory one instead, though, so she let it stand and resigned herself to another few weeks of painful suspense.

  Either he loved her, or he didn’t. Their game of pit-pat would resolve if he shrugged and went on with his life without such a difficult female, but she desperately hoped he wouldn’t.

  * * *

  Dear Mrs Champion,

  Is that better? Neither stiffly formal nor mawkishly loverlike, so you will not need to hide my letter if someone comes in and catches you reading it.

  I do hope you are going to read it, by the way? Imagine my chagrin if you throw it in a corner for a servant to puzzle over later.

  As for my lack of persuasive powers and inability to hide my fury, you already know I am no poet. My brother Wulf got all the eloquence in the family.

  I am glad Aline is coming into her own as a companion of precocious young gentlemen and finicky ladies, but I could do with some of her patience and Wulf’s way with words right now.

  Since I lack words I shall borrow a few from the hero of one of my favourite novels by the late Miss Austen and tell you that if I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more.

  At least rereading Emma helps me understand complicated, opinionated and managing females. Since I had the stupidity to fall in love with one of those I feel for poor Knightley more than ever.

  I do hope you have not taken up matchmaking to relieve your boredom, by the way? I have no wish to have Aline carried off by any of the local smuggler barons, and do not run away with the idea I will sit and twiddle my thumbs if you happen to be flirting with any of them yourself.

  One word of any impassioned suitors will have me galloping to Devon in an even more furious frame of mind than when I left. I will come and find you, then make them regret their effrontery, Mrs H. Champion, so don’t shake your head dismissively and frown. I don’t care how powerful your father is. He won’t keep me away if I need to come between you and another handsome liar.

  Please be convinced soon, Hetta, because I am not a patient man and my new tailor is weary of taking inches out of my coats and breeches now I waste away for the lack of you in my life.

  It has to be love, if you think about it, since neither of us would even think about facing a small riot over breakfast every morning for anything less when you consider how much havoc my daughter and your son will cause together.

  I cannot say more now. The lack of you hurts too much to dwell on any longer and I should get some sleep before I am about Isabella and Wulf’s business again in the morning and my little not-quite-an-angel runs poor Peg and my mother ragged as well as her father.

  I love you—now and always, madam.

  Be sure you come to Develin House soon and bring your infernal boy and my sister with you, because I miss them as well.

  But most of all I miss you, my love.

  Your Magnus

  Hetta smiled dreamily at the view from the breakfast-room window and decided it would do very well as a summer residence when they were settled near Hampstead for the rest of the year. Even here autumn was nipping at the edges of summer, and if Magnus was to earn enough to support his family, he would need to spend most of the year near London or visiting Isabella’s properties. Perhaps they had needed this time to find out how to be the very different people they were now, but she sighed and longed for him with a familiar gnawing ache that never seemed to go away. Physically she had longed for him as her lover ever since she laid eyes on him. She cursed Lady Drace for cutting him off from his little girl as she had and blessed her own father for making it the main condition of letting Lady Drace disappear into a new life on the other side of the world that she passed all care and legal responsibility for her daughter to the little girl’s real father. Hetta had begun to believe Magnus was done with loving the woman and now his daughter could grow into a fine and hopeful young woman instead of sharing her mother’s narrow and bitter life.

  It was time for Hetta to accept she was well enough in her own way and at least she’d never killed anyone or used a good man’s passion for her to make a baby she could pretend then to herself was his brother’s begetting and not his.

  So, was she guilty of pushing her own insecurities off on to Magnus? Yes, she decided. Did she love the man? Oh, yes, and after all these weeks of sleepless nights his impatient letters only confirmed it. ‘I do. I love him,’ she admitted to the lush hills and a long view to the far-distant sea and almost felt them shrug at such a tiny human pinprick in their ancient dreams. ‘So why am I sitting dreaming about him while he is doing the same about me wherever he has gone off to this time?’

  ‘Good question,’ Aline put in from the doorway and made Hetta jump guiltily. ‘What is the answer?’

  Hetta hesitated for a moment between safety and risk and chose Magnus. ‘I must go to London,’ she said, jumping to her feet. Her world had turned the right way up again and it was going to stay this way for the rest of her life. ‘I need to marry your brother.’

  ‘Good, but there’s no point in setting off without a spare petticoat and the rest of us in your hurry when you took so long to realise you want to marry him I was beginning to think you might never see sense.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘There are not going to be sides, are there? I truly hope not. I have had enough tantrums and arguments to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘We are two very definite and argumentative people, Aline, but if you think a marriage between us will be anything like your parents’ you ought to know better. And don’t tell me your brother Wulf and his wife don’t argue as passionately as I intend to argue with Magnus for the rest of our lives, becaus
e I won’t believe you.’

  ‘No, they argue all the time and make up so extravagantly we sometimes don’t set eyes on them for days. It’s embarrassing, but I suppose I shall have to get used to it since I love both of my younger brothers far too much to cut them out of my life and retire to a nunnery. At least you two have children to think about, so you can hardly pretend you both caught an illness that keeps you confined to your bed for days on end then miraculously wears off until next time you have a passionate falling-out.’

  ‘Poor Lady Aline, you will have to find a lover of your own to fall out with at regular intervals,’ Hetta told her friend with a dreamy look in her eyes as an image of Magnus vigorous and exasperated and intently passionate about her blotted out any images of Aline’s potential lover from her head. ‘I can’t wait to get to mine now I know he really and truly loves me and I love him back.’

  ‘I could have told you so before you sent him away.’

  ‘Maybe, but being told something and believing it are two different things.’

  ‘I suppose you did need time to get Lady Delphine out of your head, although I can’t imagine why you thought he would want her once he’d met you. When I decide to marry I shall manage the whole business a lot more logically than you two or Wulf and Isabella. Only think of all the trouble and energy the rest of us wasted trying to make you realise Lady Drace should only have been a boyish infatuation. She used Magnus, Hetta. She kept him on a string and made him feel so guilty about deserting her that Magnus could never quite break free. All those years she danced him about to make Gresley jealous. Then she had the gall to use Magnus to get herself a child who looked like Gresley? Oh, for goodness’ sake, Hetta, can’t you see the woman has no taste? I don’t know why you ever believed she was the love of his life.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Hetta said—what else could she say? Aline was right and when she chose to speak about personal matters she was sharply eloquent.

  ‘You needed to learn what really mattered,’ Aline said almost as if she could read Hetta’s mind.

  ‘Then I wish I was quicker on the uptake. I have missed him so much and it was cruel to both of us to send him away like that.’

  ‘It was, but he understands you, so I dare say he will forgive you sooner or later. He needs you and Toby in his life as well as his own little Angela, Hetta. Don’t doubt he has the space in his heart for all of you ever again and please don’t let Lady Drace bend your view of him out of shape either. She doesn’t deserve to have power over any of our lives after what she did to Magnus and even my father.’

  ‘I pity the choices she made, but I hope she heeds my father’s warning and stays out of England for the rest of her life, because if she doesn’t I might be tempted to shoot her myself.’

  ‘Oh, she will. I have no doubt your father has a way of reminding his enemies his reach is far longer than they would like it to be.’

  ‘I suspect you are right,’ Hetta said and spared a shiver for Lady Drace, if she ever dared to stretch Sir Hadrian’s mercy and patience too far.

  * * *

  ‘You are late,’ Hetta accused the darkly handsome, unshaven and arrogant male riding up the drive of Develin House as if the devil was on his heels.

  ‘No, that would be you,’ Magnus argued with a quirk of his dark eyebrows to let her know he was still in a temper with her and she had best not expect much quarter.

  ‘We got here half an hour ago and have you any idea how hard it is to travel ventre à terre all the way from Devon to London?’ she asked him haughtily, even as her eyes ran slavishly over him, looking for any little hurts and changes to make up for the lost hours since the last time she laid eyes on him.

  ‘I got here as fast as I could,’ he said and his travel-worn state reminded her sharply of the day they first met.

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘Not by any definition of fast I ever came across,’ he argued grumpily and she could see from the strain in his tired eyes and the determined set of his mouth that he had driven himself as hard as he could to get here before she changed her mind again. ‘Are you really here to marry me?’

  ‘I hope so. Are you going to be more of a gentleman than you were last time we were here if I say yes?’

  ‘I asked first,’ he said and let her see the painful anxiety in his dear, darkest of brown eyes and the hope underneath it that was probably making this even more edgy and uncertain for him than it felt for her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said and he stared at her for a long moment as if he hardly dared to believe his ears. ‘Yes, I am going to marry you. Yes, I love you. Yes, can we find the nearest inn with a clean bed in it and make love until I can’t remember my name?’

  ‘God, how I missed you, Hetta,’ he told her, almost as close as the lover she wanted him to be, but he was not quite close enough yet. ‘I’m filthy,’ he said with a manly shrug.

  She laughed. ‘I do love you, Magnus,’ she said in the most feeble, wobbly voice imaginable. ‘There, I lost my words again,’ she whispered as she broke first and launched herself at him, so he had to catch her or let her fall on the gravel.

  ‘Those are the only ones that matter,’ he murmured and kissed her with all the locked-up passion of too many weeks apart.

  Hetta’s legs felt boneless and she was melting with desire out here on his mother’s drive where anyone could see them. She didn’t care who knew how much she loved the man now. Anyone could know how deeply Henrietta Champion adored the Honourable Magnus Haile if they happened to be looking.

  ‘Yuck!’ Toby announced very loudly indeed from somewhere too close for his mother’s dignity and peace of mind.

  ‘I told you not to run ahead and look what happens when you disregard my advice, young man—you see things you did not want to.’

  ‘They were kissing,’ Toby told Aline with a sulky look.

  ‘True.’

  ‘Aline,’ Hetta said reproachfully.

  ‘Well, you were, but married people are allowed to hug and kiss, I fear, Toby, and your mama is going to marry my brother, so you will have to get used to it or go and live in another country with your grandfather.’

  ‘No, he forgets about me all the time. I don’t mind staying with him for a day or two, but I want to eat and sleep and do interesting things and he is always busy.’

  ‘So?’ Magnus said with that quirk of the eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, very well, you can kiss her as long as I’m not looking.’

  ‘Best look away now, then, lad, because I have waited six weeks for your mama to say yes to my proposal and I am not feeling patient.’

  ‘You two are in the way of anyone who wants to visit Lady Carrowe,’ her son pointed out with such chilly dignity Hetta nearly applauded.

  ‘He’s right,’ she told Magnus with an apologetic shrug.

  Magnus blushed under all that intriguingly disreputable stubble and Hetta fell even deeper in love with him than ever. He did not step away from her as if he’d been caught doing something wrong and unmanly by her critical son. He kept his arm firmly round her waist as they followed Aline and Toby inside and insisted on keeping it there until Angela squealed with delight, struggled out of her grandmama’s lap and toddled determinedly towards her father, holding up her arms to be picked up and hugged. Happy to be upstaged by the little girl who clearly adored her papa already, Hetta felt another anxiety soothe out and hope take its place. Angela was so much a Haile, how could she not love her? It would take time to win her over if the way the little minx was staring at her with a feminine challenge in her dark brown eyes was anything to go by, but Hetta was equal to it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘My dears, I persuaded the girls to take Toby for a walk and Peg says it’s time Angela had her nap, so I have you to myself at last. There is something I really must tell you before you go to see the vicar about your banns this afternoon.’

  ‘
We know marriage is a serious business and promise not to take it lightly, Mama,’ Magnus said with one of the wicked, teasing smiles that made Hetta’s knees wobble and he knew it, the rogue.

  ‘I didn’t go to all this trouble to get you two alone to tell you things you already know, my son,’ the Dowager Lady Carrowe informed him in much the same tone as Hetta used when Toby was being exasperating.

  Magnus fidgeted in a similar way to his stepson-to-be as well and Hetta’s heart thumped another reminder of how much she loved this man. ‘Why did you, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I must say things I don’t want to before I lose courage,’ her ladyship said a bit too seriously.

  ‘Best get it out of the way, then, love, before Toby comes storming back in to try and catch me kissing his mother again and be suitably disgusted.’

  ‘It concerns your father and elder brother,’ Lady Carrowe said carefully and Hetta suddenly realised her future mother-in-law never called her eldest son by his given name unless she really had to and how odd that was in such a loving mother.

  ‘The Earl is dead. Long live the Earl. High time we put the past behind us,’ Magnus said, but he reached for Hetta’s hand as if he felt a jag of anxiety as well.

  ‘I wish I could, Magnus, but first I must tell you the truth. I managed not to reveal it when Wulf married Isabella, but he is my younger son, so it is not so important for him to know the true state of affairs.’

  ‘The truth about what affairs?’ he tried to joke, but Hetta knew him well enough to sense his unease.

  ‘Your elder brother is not my child,’ Lady Carrowe finally managed to say as if she had to get the words out in a rush or not at all.

  ‘He has Haile written all over him, Mama,’ Magnus argued.

  ‘Oh, yes, he is certainly his father’s son—but not mine.’

  ‘He must be. There’s no other way for him to be Earl of Carrowe unless he is your son as well.’