The Rake

by Mary Jo Putney

  He almost fell as she twisted away, but managed to retain his grip on her left arm. “Coyness don’t suit you, Allie,” he said reproachfully. “I know what you want, and be m ... more than happy to give it to you.” He slid one hand around her head in a travesty of the gentle gesture he had made in the garden of the King’s Head.

  Alys was not alarmed, not yet. As he drew her toward him again, she turned her face to the side. “You’re drunk, Reggie. Just go to bed.”

  Since her lips were unavailable, he concentrated on what was within his reach, trailing kisses across her cheek to her ear. Then he traced the outline of her ear with his tongue. Alys gasped as he cupped her breast with one hand, sensuously stroking the nipple to hardness through the gold velveteen. Perilous warmth flowed through her, melting her limbs and her resistance.

  With horror, she realized how close she was to giving herself to a man too drunk to know or care who she was. A ghastly sense of déjà vu gave her the strength to shove him away again, this time furiously. “Damn you, get away from me!”

  Taken by surprise, he staggered back into a small table carrying a globe. The table pitched over, the globe frame smashing and the colorful sphere bouncing across the carpet. Reggie managed to avoid falling, but only just, and when he regained his balance his expression was ugly.

  With the volatility of the drunkard, he tilted from boozy goodwill to fury. “Don’t play with me, y’r bloody ladyship. Don’t you think I know why you’re always twitching around me? Under that prim facade you’re as hot as they come, and we both know it.”

  The fact that he was right was unbearable. Alys wanted to weep. She also wanted to murder him, for seeing too much, for invading her heart and soul with such careless ease.

  Anger was swiftly followed by fear as she realized that Reggie was moving toward her with dangerous deliberation. Gone was the amused, tolerant man she had worked and bantered with. This was a cold-eyed, angry stranger.

  She would have to get by Reggie to reach either door. She gauged the distances, and knew that she was trapped. Slowly she backed away, keeping her gaze on him while her heart accelerated toward panic. Though she was tall and strong for a woman, she was no match for Reggie if he wanted to ravish her.

  Her retreat ended in a corner with bookshelves stretching away on both sides. She tensed, ready to fight.

  Into the angry breach came Nemesis, who trotted between the humans with soft nervous yelps. Reggie stumbled over the collie and almost fell. “Damned dog!”

  He kicked at Nemesis and landed a glancing blow along the ribs. With a howl that was as much shock as pain, the collie bolted across the room and out the French doors.

  The distraction gave Alys a moment to prepare. Arming herself with a heavy volume of French plays, she hissed, “Don’t you come near me!” when Reggie resumed his stalking.

  Ignoring the warning, he lunged toward her. Alys hurled the French plays into his stomach, then grabbed another book, a huge leather-bound edition of the complete works of Shakespeare. She heaved it blindly. The massive volume smashed into the side of Reggie’s head, then clipped his knee on its downward journey.

  “Christ!” he swore as he fell to the floor, gasping from the impact. “You bitch!”

  Not stopping to see how much damage she had done, Alys whipped past him and headed toward the door. Just short of the hall, she collided with Mac Cooper, who was racing into the library. The impact knocked her breathless, and only the servant’s steadying hands saved her from falling.

  She had seen little of Reggie’s valet, knowing him mostly as a rather dapper, distant figure, but now his face was alive with concern. “Are you all right, Lady Alys?”

  No, blast it, she wasn’t! But she damned well wouldn’t admit that to a stranger. “I’m fine, no thanks to your drunken master,” she said icily as she struggled for breath.

  Mac released her and went to kneel by Reggie, who was being violently sick. Alys started to leave, but the valet looked up and said, “Don’t go. I’m going to need help getting him upstairs.”

  “Why not just leave him here?” she snapped. “A night on the floor in his own vomit might do him some good.”

  Cooper grimaced. “Not when he won’t even remember what happened.”

  That at least was a blessing. As Alys hesitated uncertainly, Cooper waited until Reggie stopped retching. Then he said calmly, “Time for bed, Reg. Let me help you up.”

  Groggy and green-faced, Reggie muttered, “Don’t have to help me home, ’m already there.”

  The valet tugged at one of his arms. Since he wasn’t making much headway, an exasperated Alys went to help. Between them they managed to get the incoherently muttering Reggie up and moving.

  The trip to his bedroom was slow. Halfway up the staircase, their unruly burden gave a wild lurch that almost knocked all three of them down the steps. Alys would have a major bruise on her thigh where she was slammed into the railing.

  A yard from his bed, Reggie suddenly went berserk, swearing and throwing a wild punch at his valet. If it had connected, Cooper would have been in trouble, but the valet deftly dodged. Then he gave his master a short, neat clip in the jaw, using just enough force to knock him out.

  By the light of the lamp burning on the bedside table, Alys saw that Reggie was dead to the world as they deposited him on the bed. “Is he like this often, Cooper?”

  “Aye, though not husually so bad,” the valet admitted as he rolled his master onto his back. “’E’d been off the booze for ha while, and Hi’d ’oped ...” His voice trailed off.

  Alys was interested to note that Cooper now had a thick cockney accent, quite unlike his usual genteel tones. “Why do you put up with him?”

  She didn’t expect an answer, and was surprised when the valet glanced up. “I stay because if it hadn’t been for Reg, I’d have been transported or hung a dozen years ago,” Cooper said, his accent under control again.

  Seeing her surprise, he said, “S’truth, Lady Alys. I was the scrawny product of a flash house, stealing whatever I could to survive. I’d been caught and put in Newgate twice already. If I went up before a magistrate again, they wouldn’t be making any more allowances for my youth.”

  Interested despite herself, she asked, “How did you meet Reggie?”

  “My specialty was robbing rich swells who were too jug-bitten to defend themselves. I made the mistake of trying it with Reg, and he broke my arm. I started howling and begging him not to turn me over to the watch. He said that since I was such a poor excuse for a thief, I should find an honest job. I told ’im I wanted one, but who would hire a footpad? He laughed, then said that he needed a valet. If I was willing to learn, he’d take me on. And if I tried to rob him again, he’d break my neck, not my arm.”

  Cooper’s mouth quirked wryly. “The first few months were right lively. There have been times I’ve wondered if I would have been better off on the streets, but it’s never been dull. Reg has gotten us into some rare trouble, but he always gets us out again.”

  Alys gave the little cockney a hard stare. “Why did you tell me that?”

  “Thought you might need reminding that Reg has some good qualities.”

  “You’re right, mate,” she said sourly. “I’d forgotten.”

  “But no harm was done, was it?” Cooper said soothingly. “You get some rest, Lady Alys. I’ll clean up the library.”

  For a long moment she studied the limp, powerful figure sprawled across the wide bed. Then she left with a sigh.

  Why couldn’t the blasted man be a simple hero or villain?

  Chapter 18

  The vicars were right: there really was a hell. The prospect of fire hadn’t seemed so bad, but this poisonous swirl of nausea, pain, and black, soul-deep depression was a worse torment than anything a medieval theologian could have concocted.

  Reggie shifted slightly, then stilled when his head threatened to split. The only virtue to being alive was knowing that in the natural course of things, he should event
ually feel better. He’d read once that drinking was the perfect puritan vice, since it carried its own built-in punishment. He thought it bloody unfair that the resolutely non-puritanical had to suffer equally.

  The mists closed in again. When they rolled away once more he tried opening his eyelids, which felt as if they had been sewed shut. The glare of the light sent a spike of agony through his head and scalded eyeballs, and his empty stomach heaved.

  This way of life is killing you.

  He must have made some sound, because Mac’s calm voice penetrated his lacerated brain. “Can you drink this? It will make you feel better.”

  With Mac’s arm supporting him, Reggie managed to drink. Mac’s elixir was mostly apple juice this time, with other ingredients, including a small dash of spirits. His nervous stomach began to settle down.

  Burning eyes still closed, he asked in a grating voice, “What time is it, and has anything happened that I should know about?”

  “Almost noon. Mr. Markham left early this morning, with regrets that he couldn’t wait late enough to say good-bye.” A hint of irony underlay the valet’s voice. “Master William inquired after you, saying that you had an engagement to ride with him this morning, but I said you were indisposed.”

  Reggie groaned, remembering that he had promised to take the boy up to the downs. Well, it would have to be another time. “Anything happen last night?”

  “You might ask Lady Alys about that,” Mac said, bland as an egg. “It’s not my place to say.”

  Reggie’s stomach lurched again as he tried to remember what might have happened with Allie. He drew a blank; the last thing he remembered was Julian yawning and bidding good night. Had Allie come downstairs? Or, God forbid, had he gone into her bedroom? What the hell had happened? With deep foreboding, Reggie asked, “Where is Lady Alys?”

  “Working somewhere on the estate. Took bread and cheese with her and said she would be out all day.”

  Making a supreme effort, Reggie pushed himself to a sitting position. Then he hung his head forward until the world steadied. “Bring me some whiskey.”

  “Wouldn’t coffee be better?” Mac suggested. “I’ve a pot right here.”

  “Then pour a cup, and put some whiskey in it.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mac said doubtfully.

  “God damn it, just do as I tell you!”

  It was very rare for Reggie to take that tone, and Mac knew better than to disagree. Within two minutes a huge mug of coffee, liberally spiked with whiskey, was in Reggie’s hand. He gulped it down, ignoring the scalding of his mouth and tongue.

  As the whiskey took effect, he started to feel better. He lurched to his feet and stumbled to the washbasin. Water in his face helped, though his hand was still too unsteady to risk shaving. He let Mac do that.

  After two more mugs of doctored coffee, a floating calm had eradicated the worst of his misery. Ignoring Mac’s worried face, Reggie changed into fresh riding clothes and headed toward the stables, trying to guess where Allie might be today. Would the sheepshearing still be going on? He couldn’t remember. But he had a very bad feeling about the night before, and Mac’s suggestion that he ask Lady Alys what happened boded ill.

  Surely he wouldn’t have hurt her, no matter how cup-shot he was? She must be all right, or she wouldn’t be out riding.

  Physical injury is not the only, or even the worst, kind of damage.

  He shook his head to chase the inner voice away, then immediately regretted the action as a wave of dizziness surged through him. He should have had more whiskey to steady himself.

  What got you into this condition in the first place?

  Swearing under his breath, he opened the stable door. The grooms were taking their midday meal, so there was no one in sight. As his eyes adjusted to the lower light level, his ears were struck by the sudden, earsplitting neigh of an enraged horse.

  He stopped dead. It sounded like his stallion Bucephalus, but what could have set the horse off like that?

  Then the enraged whinnying was joined by the high-pitched scream of a child.

  William. Oh, God, William, who had always been fascinated by the stallion. Reggie had told him more than once to keep clear of the horse’s unpredictable temper, but the child must have ignored the warnings.

  His physical ills forgotten, he raced toward the stallion’s large box stall at the far end of the stables. To the screaming of horse and child was added the ominous boom of heavy hooves smashing against wood.

  Reggie reached the stall and looked over the half door to see William cowering in a corner, his small body drawn into a ball, his arms raised in a futile attempt to protect his head. Half buried in the straw on the floor was a carrot he’d brought as a present. Shrieking with a fury that made the walls vibrate, Bucephalus reared above the boy, a thousand pounds of lethal horseflesh with flailing, iron-shod hooves.

  The stallion lurched downward, one hoof gouging the wall by William’s head while the other grazed the child’s arm. Viciously the horse reared to strike again. Reggie grabbed a pitchfork that was leaning against the wall, then charged into the stall, shouting to distract the stallion’s attention from the child.

  Too furious to recognize the one human for whom he had any affection, Bucephalus wheeled and struck at him. With agonized regret, Reggie defended himself with the pitchfork. He tried to do as little damage as possible, but even so, he risked ruining the animal forever.

  The fork shivered in his hands as the horse’s heavy shoulder slammed into the tines, drawing blood. As Bucephalus retreated a step, Reggie barked, “William, get out!”

  The boy scuttled across the stall and out the door. Reggie waited until he was clear, then raced for safety himself, slamming and bolting both halves of the door. The crazed animal continued to scream and smash its massive hooves into the walls. Grimly Reggie recognized that Bucephalus might lethally injure himself even if the stab wounds were minor.

  Dropping the pitchfork against the wall, he turned to William. The boy appeared uninjured, though he was badly shaken. He dragged one sleeve across his eyes to wipe away tears.

  The terror Reggie had felt for the boy’s safety combined with the sickness of hangover and the fear that his favorite horse might have to be destroyed. Completely out of control, he grabbed William’s shoulders and shook him violently. “You damned little idiot! Do you know what you’ve done with your disobedience? That horse may have to be destroyed. I should have let him kick your skull in!”

  Then, as Reggie’s hand curled into a fist, time and space seemed to shatter into a kaleidoscope of fragments. In front of him was William, white-faced and trembling, more frightened of Reggie than he had been of the horse. Yet at the same time he was a dark-haired boy, smaller, equally terrified, and somehow the child was Reggie. The endless equine screaming was also that of a woman, and the man was not Reggie, but another man of similar height and coloring and drunken fury.

  A wave of dizziness and panicky, hysterical fear engulfed Reggie, sweeping him away and shattering him on the knife-edged rocks of memory. With horror he realized how close he had come to striking William with his dangerous adult strength.

  Releasing the boy, he straightened, dazed and unseeing. The scene in front of his eyes was not the stables but his mother’s morning room, a place he had avoided without knowing why. It was a lifetime ago and his parents were arguing about his father’s drinking, one of an endless series of conflicts. His mother was crying and saying that her husband must leave Strickland and never come back, that she would not let him hurt her children. Drunk and enraged, his father had first railed at his wife. Then he turned violent.

  Reggie had been drawn by the sounds of fighting. Indelibly etched in his mind was an image in silhouette, both his parents standing in front of a window, his father’s powerful arm frozen at the moment of impact as he struck his wife on the side of the head. How could Reggie have forgotten an image so sharply edged, limned in agony?

  How
could he bear to remember?

  He had been small, three or four, but he hadn’t hesitated. As he heard his mother cry out, heard the sickening thud of flesh and bone colliding, he had hurled himself at his father, shrieking his own childish fury, his fists flailing, wrapping himself around his father’s leg, kicking and biting, doing everything he could to protect his mother.

  Drunkenly, mindlessly enraged, his father had seized him by the shoulders, lifting him bodily and hurling him viciously through the air. That brief flight had seemed very slow, almost languid. There was no pain when he hit the wall, though he could feel the snap and stab of breaking bones before his body tumbled to the floor. His eyes were open, but he could neither move nor feel.

  His spirit seemed to detach from his body, floating dreamily above the turmoil. He saw his mother scream, then fall to her knees and sweep the broken body of her son into her arms. He had believed her words when she cried out that her husband had murdered their son, for surely he must be dead to see and hear, yet be powerless to act.

  Then, with a shattering jolt, he was back in his own body. He felt his mother’s fierce embrace, her desperately beating heart beneath her soft breasts, and the comfort of the rose scent she wore. He remembered with excruciating clarity his mother’s frantic tears, his father’s anguished expression as he cried out that he hadn’t meant it, Annie, that it was an accident, that she must believe he’d meant no harm.

  And cruel as a blade, he remembered the fury and revulsion that filled the room. As he faded into blackness, he carried with him the horror-etched images of his parents’ faces. He recalled quite clearly telling himself that he mustn’t die. Though he had been too young to define it in words, he had known instinctively that death would separate his parents forever, isolating his father in an endless hell beyond forgiveness.

  As awareness returned, Reggie found himself staring blindly at the stable wall, his hands knotted in front of him on the splintery surface, kneading and clawing as if release lay somewhere within the wood. In an agony of despair, he knotted his right hand into a fist and smashed into the wall with all his trained strength, striking again and again in a futile attempt to destroy the memories and the anguish and the knowledge.