Redeeming the Roguish Rake

by Liz Tyner

  ‘Pardon,’ Fox said. ‘I believe I owe you something.’

  The man blocked the first fist. Fox sidestepped the answering punch and delivered a firm one, knocking the air from the man’s stomach. Peabody’s son stepped back, but righted himself, then lunged and connected a glancing blow to the cheek, but Fox moved aside, dodging the momentum, and slammed backwards with his elbow well enough to knock the attacker off balance.

  The man jumped to his feet, but before he could get his balance, Fox gave a punch to the chin and knocked him to his backside.

  ‘Get up five times, get knocked down six.’ Fox kept his fists ready. ‘You can choose the numbers.’

  The man swore, but he didn’t stand. He touched his jaw.

  ‘I know how that feels,’ Fox said. ‘And then some.’ The face was rage-reddened, but hardly old enough to shave.

  ‘Only the fact that I should not have proposed is keeping you alive,’ Fox said. ‘You nearly killed me.’

  ‘I thought we did.’

  Fox stared at him and, when he gritted his teeth, the pain of his jaw returned, fuelling his words. ‘You must pay attention to details to be successful. I was most likely still breathing.’

  ‘I thought you’d die. I heard the crack of your face. Your nose was a bloodied mess and it turned Robbie’s stomach. No one had wanted to bash in your head again. We were just going to let you freeze. We were kind enough that we wanted your family to be able to recognise the body.’

  ‘Well, that is a detail I wouldn’t have considered.’

  ‘You deserved to die.’ He spat blood on the ground. ‘You disgraced my family. My mother. Father sent her away and she’d done nothing wrong. People laughed at him and she had to leave her friends. My grandmother had to move, too. She cried. Mother, my sister and my grandmother have to stay in the country and my father has a cousin I never met before that keeps visiting and sitting in my mother’s chair and drinking my mother’s tea.’

  Fox remembered how he’d felt when his father left and how he’d not liked the men who’d leered at his mother and acted like concerned gentlemen around her. She’d not cared. He’d gone to university then. It was the easiest thing to do.

  ‘You’d proposed to my mother,’ the one on the ground said. ‘It was in the newspaper that she didn’t say no and said she’d think about it. My sister can’t have a coming out and she’s sixteen.’

  ‘My words meant nothing. And if your father had cared for your mother he wouldn’t have sent her away.’

  ‘I know he didn’t care. Don’t you think I see that when the woman is drinking her tea?’

  He picked his hat up from the ground beside him. ‘I don’t care if they hang me or transport me for what I did. You insulted my family. It was worth it.’

  Fox took that hit on the chin.

  He saw the boy’s footwear and recognised the boot. He tapped the toe of his new boot against it. ‘Well-made. Not worth it, though.’

  The boy turned his head, staring to the side.

  ‘You won’t do your mother any good…wearing someone else’s boots.’

  Fox smiled. ‘But you can keep them with my blessings. You’re disgracing her as badly as the rest of us did. Letting her down. Following in my footsteps. Yes. You’re wearing my boots and making my footprints in the world.’

  Peabody’s son sneered.

  ‘I’ll see your name in the papers some day, too, and I’ll know, every man in your mother’s life let her down. Every one. Every single one. And how much more distressing it will be for her when the last hope she has fails.’

  Fox turned, walking away. He had given Mr Peabody an easy excuse to walk away from his wife. Practically held the door open for him to shove her outside.

  He could imagine the look on Rebecca’s face if she heard what had happened to Mrs Peabody.

  A flung boot hit his shoulder, but he didn’t turn back. He couldn’t change anything that lay behind him.

  *

  Sleep fogged Rebecca’s mind, but she roused from her slumber, aware from the light filtering in that she’d fallen asleep in her chair. She coughed, wishing she had some of the honey tonic her mother-in-law had mentioned.

  She sniffed, her head feeling stuffed. She stood up and reached for a handkerchief.

  Then, the tickle in her nose grew. She coughed, holding the handkerchief over her face. And coughed again.

  The door to the sitting room opened, and Foxworthy strode in. He had a fresh bruise on his cheek and that relieved her. It was unlikely a woman had put it there.

  ‘Rebecca.’ In a heartbeat, he stood in front of her.

  ‘Are you ill?’ he asked.

  She stepped back so she could dot the handkerchief to her nose. Then she touched two fingers to her throat. ‘It feels a little sore.’

  ‘Is that why you don’t fit your clothes? A sickness?’

  ‘Just a little cough. Your mother had it. And my forehead… It feels warm.’

  He reached to the pull and summoned a maid. ‘Tell the maid you need a poultice. Some honey. An infusion of herbs. A physician.’

  Almost at the same time someone knocked on the door.

  ‘Enter,’ he called out. A maid carried a lamp into the room. He took the lamp and held it to shine on Rebecca’s face. ‘Has she been acting sick?’

  The maid looked at Rebecca. ‘No.’ She turned to Foxworthy. ‘No. She’s healthy enough.’ Then her eyes changed. She smiled and her voice softened. ‘She’s strong enough to have a healthy babe.’

  Foxworthy’s head snapped to Rebecca’s face.

  She used her full range of motion to shake her head in one definite movement.

  No one moved, until Fox turned to the maid. ‘Bring some tea. Brandy. Honey. Toast. And send for the physician.’

  ‘No.’ Rebecca’s voice stopped the maid. The servant stared at them both.

  He fixed a gaze on the maid. ‘Get the honey. Send someone for the physician.’

  ‘Wait outside,’ Rebecca told the woman.

  No one moved.

  ‘I am not sick,’ Rebecca said. ‘I do not want any medicines and I will not see the physician.’

  ‘Are you certain?’ He brought the lamp close enough she could feel the heat.

  ‘I am certain,’ she said.

  ‘You may go,’ he told the maid. ‘But tell the servant who can move the fastest to be prepared to go for a physician at a moment’s notice.’

  The servant dashed to the door and it shut with a click.

  Rebecca strode away, the handkerchief in her hand. ‘I have never had a physician attend me in my life. All I need is a handkerchief. I am sleepy and wish to go to bed.’

  She stopped, kept her face from him and shut her eyes. ‘Your mother was here. She wishes for us to appear together so the rumours will not swirl so greatly.’

  She stepped into her room and with a flick of her wrist managed to reach up and undo the buttons of her dress. He followed her into her room. The shoulder of her gown slid down and bit into her skin as she managed the last fastening. She didn’t feel right disrobing in front of him.

  He didn’t seem inclined to turn around so she did. The dress slid to the floor and she picked it up, put it across the foot of the bed and slid under the covers.

  ‘Let me rest. Apparently I am ill.’ She turned away, rolling to her side, and pulling the covers high over her neck and bundling down into them.

  His footsteps sounded on the rug. He stood at the side of the bed, then sat on it. He rolled her over.

  His finger trailed a lock of hair at the side of her face, brushing it into place. ‘You must take care of yourself.’

  ‘I do. I’m sleepy and I don’t feel well.’

  ‘But you’re not sick?’

  ‘No.’ She corrected herself. ‘No more than a cough and my head is quite stuffed. Your mother has had this and she is over it. This is not sick. This is just a sniffle.’

  He left the room and didn’t close the door. Light remained. She heard
his footsteps and muffled noises continued. When all was quiet, she slipped from the bed and peered into the sitting room. He lay on the sofa with a pillow under his head and his feet extended over the arm.

  The coat could have been on the floor, but she didn’t see it. His feet were bare. He wore trousers still.

  His eyes didn’t open. ‘Go to sleep, Rebecca.’

  Chapter Twenty

  He walked in the entrance door of his house and one look at the butler and the man backed away without taking Foxworthy’s hat. Fox had been to see his mother and let her know she was not to meddle in his marriage.

  She’d agreed wholeheartedly, then began telling him a few thousand things he should do concerning him and Rebecca. It was not marriage talk, she assured him, she had so little experience in that.

  He moved up the stairs and stood in the doorway. Rebecca sat by a lamp, reading. A wadded handkerchief was on the table beside her. He didn’t think she’d heard him moving up the stairs.

  The paper sounded crisp when she turned the page.

  He settled against the door frame, twirling his hat, watching.

  He couldn’t wait long enough for her to read another page. ‘Yesterday I spoke with the man who attacked me. It’s over. I have no need for revenge. It wouldn’t mean anything. My jest just went awry.’

  ‘That’s thoughtful of you.’

  He put his hand inside the hat, holding it on one finger and spinning the hat. ‘Not really. I realised I wouldn’t gain anything from it.’

  ‘It wasn’t because it is the right action to take?’

  ‘That is not how I choose what to do.’

  ‘Perhaps you mislead yourself.’

  ‘I do. Right to the brandy. Right to the soirées, the tasteless humour and the people who share the same sensibilities I do.’

  ‘I doubt I have any of those.’

  ‘I doubt you do. Odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why didn’t you propose earlier and to someone else if you wanted someone so different from me?’

  ‘Never said that.’

  She coughed. ‘I believe I should rest.’ She picked up her book.

  ‘You’re escaping me. You don’t wish to talk.’

  ‘Not if I feel criticism from your words.’

  ‘I don’t mean them that way.’ He didn’t.

  ‘Nor your actions, I’m sure.’

  ‘I sent you a note letting you know I’d be out.’

  ‘But I didn’t know whether to believe it or not. And then your mother arrives telling me not to put stock in the tales that are going to be spread about concerning you and Lady Havisham.’

  ‘I received a speech as well. But I had to see the person who ruined my face. I had to talk with him. And you had no clothes to go to the soirée. It is as if you purposely arranged so that you would not be on my arm.’

  ‘Perhaps I did. Perhaps I wanted to see if you would find someone else for it.’

  ‘I don’t think that would count as a good work.’

  She stood, not looking at him. ‘My throat is hurting from all this talking.’

  ‘Then don’t talk.’ In one step he was at her side. He smiled and leaned closer. ‘We can go for a carriage ride and I will tell you about the best places in London.’

  ‘That does sound grand.’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘But I don’t want to go about in the air. It will be dark soon and that’s not healthful.’

  ‘You would probably say the night air is not healthful for me either and I would have to agree. But I’m going out.’

  He was out the door before he realised there was no place he wanted to go, except for a carriage ride. He didn’t want to go alone either.

  Even though he was certain Rebecca had the same sickness his mother had had, something about it concerned him.

  He shook his head. He’d give her time to get some sleep, then he’d return home to make sure she was fine.

  If anything happened to her, everyone he knew would hold him responsible. Even Lady Havisham. And even the part of him that remembered what it was like to be Fenton.

  *

  Rebecca woke when her bedroom door opened. She rose on her elbows to study his expression.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ She imagined the same look in his eyes when he proposed to someone who was married. He stood, shirtsleeves dangling, legs muscled in the same way as a stallion’s, his hair dark and his eyes light.

  She touched her throat. ‘Much better. It doesn’t hurt at all.’

  He moved closer, sat on the bed, leaned over and dropped a kiss on her lips. The flutters of warmth pushed away the uncertainty inside her.

  ‘How are the good works faring?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m lost without them, but I’m sure I will get better at finding new ones as time goes one.’

  ‘I’m sure you will also. One of your good works can be to go out with me. To dance with me. To show the world that I do know a woman named Rebecca and our marriage wasn’t a misprint.’

  ‘I have nothing to wear yet, but I will soon.’

  ‘You’ve been to the seamstress. How many times?’ His voice lilted, but his eyes studied.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘I stopped by the seamstress’s shop and asked for the bills. I saw exactly how many dresses you ordered.’

  She put her hand to her cheek. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve spent too much.’

  He frowned, shaking his head. ‘You’ve not spent too much. But I can’t think why the woman hasn’t made you a dress to wear with all the charges she’s included. Are you hiding them?’

  In an instant, she saw past the charm and into the heart of him. He’d not happened into her bedroom for a few kisses.

  ‘They just look hideous on me.’ She’d tried the second one and it hadn’t looked like the fashion plate and the seamstress had tucked a bit here and there and altered it. Still, the dress had felt heavy. Rebecca had even had some of the silk ribbons removed. ‘I showed you the first one.’

  ‘The first one. What about the other four?’

  ‘I just would not want to be in the room when you court someone else. Or propose to someone.’

  ‘One time cured you of that, I see.’ He stood. His lips smiled, but his eyes didn’t.

  ‘I did not mean that. I saw the other ladies in the seamstress shop and I see how your mother dresses. And the seamstress has trouble making one my size. When she finishes a dress it does not fit.’

  The covers fell away as she talked. The chemise concealed her well, but he could not see any problem with her size, except for the thinness.

  ‘In order to be my wife, to be a countess, you will have to go about and visit and talk with people, much the same as you did in the country.’

  The social world was his true home—no building or structure meant more than a roof to him. He saw that now. He didn’t care what walls surrounded him, as long as people joined and the talk and laughter flowed. ‘I will not hide in the country like my father did and I will fulfil my role. I must take up where my grandfather left off and follow in his dancing footsteps.’

  ‘Then why did you marry me?’ She crossed her arms again.

  ‘You spent every moment searching about for a good work to do. I didn’t give it much thought, but that would certainly be good in society.’ He moved his head. ‘And it might take some of the sting out of my actions when people do not get my jests.’

  ‘I really don’t see how proposing to women carried on your grandfather’s good works, but I might have missed something.’ She shook her head, causing her dishevelled hair to bob about. For a moment, it took his thoughts. He’d not noticed how narrow her face was.

  Then he returned to the conversation.

  ‘No. That wasn’t particularly how my grandfather would handle things, but it did liven up the nights, for everyone. Most of the people who hate me forget the very next time I greet them with a swagger and a smile. It is a distinct advantage to have a broad smile and use it often.’

  ‘And do you
wish to be married?’ She pushed back a strand of her hair. He wondered if the length of it reached her waist and he would wager it did.

  He didn’t want to feel married. But he did like the feeling of standing in her bedchamber and watching her.

  But this wasn’t the time to be thinking of the bed, no matter how she looked sitting in that white frock thing with her hair all about her shoulders.

  They had to get past that. At least for a few moments. She could not hide behind a seamstress’s errors for ever.

  ‘I don’t feel any more married today than I have on any other day of my life. But that doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘We are to be a couple working together. Some day I will be more involved in the political side of life and a trustworthy wife will be an advantage.’

  ‘I will take that as a no.’

  He didn’t address it. ‘My sister died and my father turned his back on his duties, though he does often stay in town when Parliament is meeting. He decided he needed that blasted, valuable quiet in the country. He tucked his tail between his legs and fled where he could be lord and master to all.’

  ‘What if he was just grieving over the loss of your sister?’

  ‘I know he grieved. We all did.’ He turned his back to her. ‘That’s no excuse to stop living. Just as living in a larger house is no excuse to hide in it.’

  Her eyes locked on his. ‘If I had had somewhere to go to when my mother died, I might have moved there.’

  ‘Let’s both be truthful. You would never have left your father.’

  ‘Perhaps not. He was hurt. Only faith helped us.’

  ‘I do not have that. I have this. I have the clubs, the soirées, the dances, the proposals. The laughter. A different kind of faith.’

  She blinked, and he stepped back to the bed and moved forward. In one move he could be holding her in his arms and the knowledge passed between them.

  She let out a breath. ‘I thought I loved you—when you could not speak and I didn’t know who you were. I have heard so little good about you—’

  ‘I think you expected a bit of clay already moulded into the shape you wished for.’

  ‘Perhaps. That would be easiest. And what I asked for.’