The Rake

by Mary Jo Putney

  In his heart, he surrendered. His weary mind jangled with inchoate phrases and broken prayers as he desperately sought for a strength beyond himself.

  His anguish was a tidal wave, on the verge of smashing him beyond any hope of healing. But like a tide, a subtle shifting of the current began. Not a great revelation, no soaring trumpets or flame-edged promises. Just a simple knowledge that he was not alone. That he had never been alone, though he had been too blind and self-absorbed to realize it.

  Like the tide, the turning point was slow, with no clear moment at which hope took over from despair. Yet hope did come, a wordless promise that gently soothed his lacerated spirit.

  He lay staring at the stars, knowing the battle was not yet over. Struggle and dark doubt still lay ahead. But he also knew that when he needed help, it would be at hand.

  Not long after he had reached that understanding, Alys found him.

  Even in near-total darkness he knew who came. His raw senses were unnaturally receptive, and he recognized not only her step and her scent, but the ineffable feel of her caring. Wordlessly she sat cross-legged beside him, not quite touching, her face a pale blur in the thick velvet dark.

  He stretched out his hand. She took it, her fingers far warmer than his, her clasp light and sure. Linking his fingers with hers, he brought their joined hands to his chest, against the beat of his heart. The tide of hope was running stronger now.

  Her voice gentle in the night, Allie asked, “How are you doing?”

  “Better.” His voice sounded harsh to his own ears. He swallowed hard. “Talk to me, Allie. Please.”

  And so she spoke of Strickland, of the children, of her plans for the pottery, of the promise shown by the students in her school. Passively he listened to the healing flow of words, immersing himself in the details of normal life.

  Finally Alys said in her rich voice, “I think I’m getting hoarse. And though I never thought the day would come, I seem to be running out of things to say.”

  His fingers tightened on hers, and she had a faint impression of his amusement. “You’ve done well,” he said. His voice was closer to normal now. “Now it’s my turn.”

  He began to talk. He told her of his childhood at Strickland, and the shock of remembering his father’s near-disastrous drinking. He spoke of the short, idyllic period when he had been part of a happy home.

  Softly she asked, “What happened to your family?”

  “Smallpox.”

  She shuddered as the evil word fell between them. No wonder he had been so insistent on vaccination.

  He sighed. “Actually, that isn’t quite the whole truth. My father was away when the disease broke out. There was a smattering of cases in the village, but the manor was much harder hit. My little sister Amy died first, then my brother.”

  “Did you catch it, too?” she asked, assuming that he must have escaped.

  To her surprise, he said, “Yes. The only time I’ve ever been sick in my life. Ironic, isn’t it? It killed everyone else, and left me without so much as a single scar. I have a magical immunity to disease, or I would have died of something ghastly years ago.” His voice faltered. “I was beginning to recover when I woke with the feeling that I must go to my mother. I could barely walk. It was nighttime, and the house was eerily quiet. The only servant who would stay was an old woman who had survived smallpox as a girl, and she had fallen asleep from exhaustion.

  “My mother was close to death, but she opened her eyes when I came in. She ... smiled.” Reggie’s fingers tightened around Alys’s with numbing force. “She said that she was glad one of her children would survive to grow up. She didn’t speak again.” He took a deep, ragged breath. “My father had been sent a message that his whole family was dead or dying. He was killed in a carriage accident racing to get back to Strickland. I ... I’ve sometimes wondered if he would have driven more carefully if he had known that I was going to live.”

  Alys wanted to weep for the bleakness, but before she could answer, he said bitterly, “A precious poor use I’ve made of the gift of life.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for surviving,” she said gently. “We are not in a position to understand such things.”

  “Do you believe in God, Allie?”

  It was not a question she would have expected from him, but he had always been unexpected. “Not in a way that Junius Harper would approve of,” she said slowly. “I believe there is a pattern, an order, to why things happen. I believe my actions matter, even if only in a very small way. If I have an ambition, it’s to leave the world a little better than I found it.”

  “You’re a wise and good woman, Allie,” he said in a voice scarcely louder than the sighing wind and rippling leaves. “I’ve spent my life fighting windmills, trying to change what couldn’t be changed, wanting the approval of a selfish old man. I patterned my whole existence around a contest that didn’t matter.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “Yes. He sent his secretary to collect me from Strickland. I was frightened and alone, not fully recovered from my illness. When I reached Wargrave Park, for an instant I half believed the earl was my father. There’s a strong family resemblance among the Davenports—tall and dark and damn-your-eyes. I went to him, and ... he stepped back as if I was a plague carrier. Said that since I was my father’s son, he couldn’t expect much of me, but he hoped I wouldn’t disgrace the name any more than absolutely necessary.”

  Alys ached for the pain of that rejection on a boy so sensitive, who had already suffered so much. He had been scarcely older than William. “So that is when you started being the Despair of the Davenports.”

  “You’re perceptive.” He shifted restlessly. “I discovered very soon that there was nothing I could do that would make my uncle approve of me. But I did learn that I could damn well make him notice me. The harder he and everyone else tried to make me behave, the wilder I got.”

  He gave a rusty chuckle. “At Eton I made a wonderful discovery. Most of the students who were King’s Scholars had allowances from their parents to buy extra food, since a goat would starve on what we were fed. I didn’t have any money, but from sheer desperation, I bought food on credit from the inn that stood in the middle of the campus. It was called the Christopher and kept many a lad from starvation. Anyhow, I found that while my uncle disliked giving me any money directly, he would pay bills that I incurred.

  “From food, I expanded to the draper, the tailor, the bookseller, and so forth. By the time I went to Cambridge, I was living fairly comfortably, and the pattern was set—Wargrave would pay my debts for the sake of family pride, even though he loathed me.”

  So Reggie had been a King’s Scholar. Amazing. “Did you finish at King’s College and become a Fellow?”

  “Yes, though few people know or would believe it. After a year, I gave the fellowship up. Lacked the temperament for teaching.” Another rusty chuckle. “I wanted to go into the army, but my uncle refused to buy me a pair of colors as long as I was the heir after his own sons. He insisted I stay in London and gave me an allowance, though hardly a generous one. Since two of his sons wouldn’t marry and the other had been disowned and left the country, I was his hostage for the future. I found considerable satisfaction in knowing that even though he despised me, I was the Wargrave heir.”

  “Ignoble, but understandable.”

  “More than ignoble—it was stupid,” he said with patent self-disgust. “I should have said to hell with him and bought myself a commission the first time I had a good run of luck with my gambling.”

  Hearing the bitterness, Alys asked, “Why didn’t you?”

  He moved restlessly again. “Because as a member of his family and his ward, I felt that my uncle owed me the commission. Certainly I would have cost him much less in the army than I did on the town, but he preferred thwarting my ambitions. He was a man who had to control everyone around him. In return I tried to punish him by being as difficult and disgraceful as possible. It was like a ... a covert war
between us. In the long run, I thought I would win, if only by outliving the old bandit.”

  He paused, then said flatly, “But in the end, he won. He set his lawyer to looking for heirs of his youngest son, and my cousin Richard was located.”

  “That must have been hard to accept,” she said sympathetically.

  With a ghost of acid humor, he said, “It was. I’d had every intention of shocking everyone senseless by running the Wargrave estates profitably and well.”

  “Which you could have done, based on what I’ve seen of you here at Strickland.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Perhaps. I’ll admit that after growing up on the fringes of society, never quite belonging, I wanted the title and position of an earl. But far more than that, I wanted”—he searched for the words—“validation that I mattered. I wanted proof that spending my life locked in a battle of wills with my uncle had some meaning.”

  His voice flattened again. “But it didn’t. I could have made a thousand other choices that would have been better for me, but in my pride and stubbornness, I stayed locked in a pointless struggle with an evil old man. Without ever consciously choosing it, I spent my life on a fool’s throw.”

  She stretched out in the grass next to him, lying on her side with her head on his shoulder and her arm across his chest. His arm curved around her as if she belonged there. “I know a great deal about pride and stubbornness, Reggie,” she said quietly. “I made a hash of my own life for similar reasons. But I decided that something could be salvaged from the wreckage, and that’s what I’m doing now.”

  He brushed his cheek against the top of her head. “But you’re wiser than I, Allie.” He laughed suddenly. “Not that that’s a decent reason. I’m going to be thirty-eight on All Hallows’ Eve, and by my age, innocence and ignorance are not valid excuses. If one makes a hash of things, one is either stupid or guilty.”

  She smiled, knowing that if laughter had returned, he had survived this crisis. Then she pressed more closely against his lean body. There was nothing the least erotic about this embrace, but it felt wonderfully right. “You were really born on Halloween?”

  “Yes, and you needn’t comment on how some demon must have been substituted for me as a child,” he said dryly. “The possibility has been mentioned before.”

  “That is not what I had in mind,” she said with dignity. “Halloween is a perfectly respectable day to be born. I know because it’s my birthday, too.”

  “Honestly?” he asked, amused. “You mean we actually have something in common besides Strickland?”

  She chuckled and slid her arm around his waist. “Apparently.”

  As Allie lay quietly in his arms, Reggie felt closer to her than he ever had to any other woman, even in the most passionate sexual intimacy. Despite his teasing words, he knew they had a great deal in common. The significant difference was that Allie used her intensity and will more productively than he ever had. In a way, they were opposite sides of the same coin: the rake and the reformer, both stubborn and proud. One a destroyer, one a builder. One a cynic, one a dreamer.

  And, of course, one a man, the other a woman.

  As he inhaled the fresh herbal scent of her hair, Reggie realized that his feelings for Allie had gone far beyond respect, liking, and even the sheer, rampaging lust she roused in him. He might have made it through this night without her, but her presence and generous spirit had joined with the tide of hope to heal him, to make it possible to face the rest of his life with more wisdom and grace than he had shown in the past.

  He was not ready yet to put a name to how he felt, but someday, when he was whole, when he was sure and sober, he would. Then, perhaps, if Allie was willing ...

  They dozed together, sharing their warmth as the night cooled and dew dampened their clothing. The sky was beginning to lighten when Reggie came awake. Allie stirred as he did, and they both pushed themselves to sitting positions.

  “I’m definitely too old to be sleeping on the ground,” he said ruefully.

  He got to his feet, feeling the aches from last night’s frantic running and falls as well as from the cold earth. Allie rose smoothly with the help of his hand. They walked in silence back to the manor house, his hand lightly touching the back of her waist.

  They entered through the library doors, and found that all trace of last night’s orgy of destruction had vanished. Only a lingering scent of liquor remained as proof of what had happened. “I guess Mac has been here,” Reggie said. “He’s always made it easy for me to keep on doing what I’ve been doing. It’s a mixed blessing.”

  If Mac hadn’t been there to put the pieces back together after every debauch, might Reggie have hit the breaking point sooner? Hard to say, but it was possible that Mac’s unswerving loyalty had had the destructive consequence of helping Reggie avoid the fruits of his folly.

  Too tired for abstractions, Reggie followed Allie upstairs. Outside her door he pulled her into a hug, feeling her slim body along the length of his. Desire was no longer dormant, but this was not the place, and certainly not the time, to travel that road.

  He stroked her back, feeling the heavy silk of her hair against his face. “Thank you, Allie,” he whispered. “I think the tide has turned now.”

  “I know,” she replied, her voice equally soft. “I sensed that something was different when I found you.”

  Perceptive as well as kind, generous, and beddable. He wanted to kiss her, but refrained. Instead he let her go, then turned and went to his own bed.

  Today he must begin the business of living wisely.

  Chapter 21

  The summer of 1817 became the happiest time of Alys’s life. After his dark night of the soul, Reggie was a different man. He laughed and talked easily, his desperation a thing of the past and drink no longer an irresistible craving. He and Alys often sat up late and talked, but it was no longer because he needed her as a distraction. Now they were simply friends, and never ran out of things to say to each other.

  Alas, as she had feared, there was nothing the least loverlike about him. But as a companion he was superlative, his wide-ranging mind and quirky opinions meshing with hers as no one else’s ever had.

  Reggie still worked long hours, both in the fields and with his horse training, but he now took enjoyment in his labors. The unhealthy color that had underlain his skin was gone, replaced by a deep tan that made his eyes shine like light, bright aquamarine. Altogether he was a delectable sight; Alys’s dreams did not get any less restless. But in spite of her repressed longings, she was happy.

  The crown of the summer had passed and the harvest was nearing when Reggie casually mentioned over one of their late-night chess games, “My cousin Wargrave will be visiting in a couple of days.”

  “Really?” Alys paused with her queen’s rook in midair. “Did you invite him?”

  “He said he would be nearby and asked permission to call.” Reggie grinned. “Of course Richard is checking up on the prodigal, for which one can hardly blame him.”

  “Do you mind that he’s doing that?” She set the rook down, capturing one of Reggie’s pawns in the process.

  “Actually, I don’t. Richard has been amazingly tolerant and fair-minded toward me. When we first met, we shared the same roof for some weeks and he didn’t see me sober the whole time. I was in a rather evil mood, too.” Reggie tamped fresh tobacco into his meerschaum reflectively. “After a lifetime of burning bridges, it’s time I built a few.”

  Alys propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her palm. “I can’t wait to see his reaction to learning that I’m the A. E. Weston he offered to find a situation for if matters didn’t work out with you.”

  Reggie laughed, a devilish twinkle in his eyes. “Neither can I, Allie. Neither can I.”

  In the event, the Earl of Wargrave was not at all what Alys expected. With Reggie’s remark that Davenports were all tall, dark, and damn-your-eyes, it was a surprise when she returned to the house in late afternoon at the same ti
me as a dusty rider trotted up to the main entrance. As he dismounted, Alys asked, “Can I help you?”

  The new arrival was a pleasant-faced young man of about Alys’s height. She gave him credit for not looking startled at the sight of her booted, breeched, and too-tall self.

  “I’m looking for my cousin, Reginald Davenport,” he said in a soft, mellow baritone. “He’s expecting me.”

  It took a moment for her to make the connection. Then she blurted out, “Good Lord, you must be Wargrave.”

  His face straight, he replied, “I’m not sure if I’m a good lord, but I do try.”

  Alys burst out laughing and decided that she approved of Reggie’s cousin. Her eyes gleaming with anticipation, she offered her hand. She always did that when wearing male dress, to spare men the confusion of having to decide whether to bow or shake her hand. “I’m A. E. Weston, steward of Strickland.”

  The hazel eyes were startled for just a moment. Then they filled with amusement. “So you’re the financial and agricultural wizard who put the estate back on its feet,” he said, shaking her hand firmly. “Is it a fair guess that the sick relative who took you away from Strickland on my first visit was considerably less ill than you thought?”

  “A very fair guess,” she agreed. “Tell me, my lord, if I had accepted your offer to manage Wargrave Park, would you have withdrawn it when you learned I was female?”

  “With your record, I would have felt privileged to have you.” He looked hopeful. “Are you interested?”

  “No, merely curious.”

  “A pity,” he said with an elaborate sigh.

  Alys smiled, thinking that even though the earl’s appearance was very different from that of his cousin, there was a similarity in their humor. “I believe Reggie’s working back in the paddock. Shall we see if we can find him?”

  Wargrave agreed, and they walked his mount back to the stables. After leaving the horse with a groom, they continued on to the paddock. Before Reggie became aware of their presence, they were treated to one of his superb exercises in horsemanship.