Ravished by the Rake

by Louise Allen

  ‘But he still loves me,’ Imogen said. Dita stared at her. Impossible. ‘He desires me,’ the young widow whispered. ‘I am afraid to be in the house with him, that is why I must take refuge in the Dower House. I told him, it is wrong, sinful. I am his father’s widow. But—’

  ‘That,’ Dita said with conviction, ‘is nonsense. Of course he no longer loves you. Or desires you.’ Her certainty wavered a little there—Imogen was very lovely. No, surely Alistair had better taste now he was an experienced man.

  ‘Oh!’ Imogen glared at her. ‘I see what it is—you want him yourself and cannot face the fact that he is besotted with me. Well, you beware, Lady Perdita, he is dangerous.’ She sprang to her feet and swept off along the terrace, silken skirts swishing.

  Dita sat and stared after her. ‘Dangerous? No, but you are,’ she murmured. After a few minutes she got up and made her way back to the drawing room. ‘Lady Iwerne was a little tired and went to lie down,’ she said. Alistair looked at her, questions in his eyes, but she produced a bright smile, incapable of thinking what to do about this revelation.

  Alistair was charming to all three of them, saw them to the door, waved them off, but Dita had the impression that his gaze rested on her with speculation.

  ‘What on earth did that woman want with you?’ her mother demanded, the moment the carriage door was closed.

  ‘Oh, to poke at me and be catty,’ Dita said. ‘She is bored, I have no doubt—I do not grudge her the amusement.’ She fiddled with the pearls for a while, then asked, ‘Will she be moving into the Dower House?’

  ‘I imagine so. Alistair said something about having it renovated,’ Lady Wycombe said.

  That sounded likely. A planned renovation for the Dowager to move into before Alistair came home with a bride was only to be expected. Surely, if Imogen felt threatened in any way, she would have fled there immediately. No, for some reason she was feeling the need to attack Alistair and he ought to know what she was saying.

  Inwardly Dita quailed at the thought of discussing that day when he had made love to her, but if Imogen spread this vicious nonsense some of the mud might stick. How could she? she railed inwardly, more furious the more she thought about it. How she must have changed—or had Alistair been blinded by love, all those years ago? She would have to think how to tell him, but she must do it tomorrow. It would be a sleepless night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Please meet me at the hollow oak by the pond, the note read in Dita’s impatient black hand. Ten o’clock this morning. It is very important. D.

  Alistair studied it while he drank coffee. That could only be the old tree that he and her brothers had used as a shelter when they fished in the horse pond as children. Dita would tag along, too, but it was one of the few occupations that would drive her away with boredom after half an hour.

  What did she want that was so urgent and that could not be discussed in the house? Had she thought better of her situation—or realised how determined he was—and had decided to accept him?

  He suspected not. Dita was stubborn. No doubt a frustrating encounter lay ahead, but it would get him out of the house with its increasingly poisonous atmosphere. Alistair found himself longing for the moment when he could, with a clear conscience, leave the estate and go up to London.

  He strolled down to the stables and spent an hour with Tregowan, looking over his father’s horses, but he found he was too restless to concentrate.

  Was Dita unhappy? He missed her, he found, more every day. There was no one to wake him up with tart observations over breakfast, no one to make him laugh or to freeze him with a sharp look from green eyes. No one to stir his blood as only Dita stirred it. Green-eyed hornet, he had thought her that evening in Calcutta. She would certainly sting when he finally had her trapped.

  Alistair shifted restlessly, changed his position leaning against the mounting block, and considered how long it would be before he could go to London and set up a mistress. It would be a short-term arrangement until he took Dita as his wife; he despised men who took marriage vows and then immediately broke them.

  ‘I’ll take the grey hunter out now, Tregowan.’ It was early, not half past nine, but he’d gallop the fidgets out before he met her.

  Dita was already sitting under the oak when he got there, her back against the trunk, her knees drawn up with her arms around them as she’d been used to sit, watching the boys fish until her patience gave out. It made him smile despite everything, just to look at her. She turned her head at the sound of hooves, but did not move position. The long skirts of her riding habit pooled around her feet and his horse snickered a greeting to her mare, tied to a nearby willow.

  ‘He’s handsome,’ she said in greeting as Alistair dismounted and threw the reins over a branch.

  ‘Very,’ he agreed and came to sit next to her on the turf. ‘My father had an eye for horseflesh.’ And female flesh, too. ‘Are you all right?’ She was silent and he turned his head against the rough bark for a better look at her face. ‘You are not, are you? Couldn’t you sleep?’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Nightmares? Or have you made up your mind to do the right thing and marry me?’ He put his arm around her shoulders. She sighed and leaned in to him for a second and he felt himself relax.

  ‘No. A dilemma.’ After a moment she sat up straight, pushing herself away from his arm. ‘Alistair, I am worried about Lady Iwerne.’ When he did not reply, she added, ‘She told me a very unpleasant story about you. If she is spiteful enough to spread it, she could do a lot of damage.’

  ‘What is she saying?’ he asked, surprised his voice was not shaking with the temper that flashed through him.

  ‘That you were in love with her, eight years ago, and that you left home when you realised she was going to marry your father, which in itself is quite understandable,’ Dita said flatly. ‘But she told me that she is frightened of you now and feels she has to flee to the Dower House to be safe from you forcing your attentions on her.’

  Alistair swore. ‘Quite,’ Dita said. ‘The question is, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘You don’t believe her?’ He had to ask.

  Dita made a scornful little noise. ‘I believe you were in love with her, yes. She is quite extraordinarily lovely and I expect then she was prettily behaved and flirted with a sweet sort of innocence. You were in such a state when you realised the truth that your emotions must have been deeply involved.

  ‘But now? I can imagine that she is distractingly beautiful to have around the house, but she is foolish and empty-headed and you have higher standards than that. I would guess that she irritates you greatly. Leaving aside the small matter of it being incest to lie with your father’s widow.’

  The relief that Dita so categorically believed in him distracted Alistair from how she had phrased it and it took a while for her words to sink in. ‘Thank you for your faith in me.’ He found her calm intelligence both bracing and refreshing after Imogen’s tantrums. ‘But how do you know how I reacted to the realisation that she and my father—’

  ‘I saw you that day, don’t forget.’ She kept her voice carefully neutral, but Alistair winced. ‘Imogen said that your father found her alone, his passions overcame him and he swept her into his arms and showered kisses on her face while declaring his undying devotion. It was rather more than that, I imagine.’

  ‘I walked into the library and found him taking her on the map table,’ Alistair said. ‘I turned right round and walked out and didn’t go back until I was sure I wouldn’t do something stupid, such as hit him.’

  ‘And so you went and got drunk.’

  ‘Yes. And, unfortunately you know more about what happened next than I do.’ He got to his feet and walked away from her. ‘I must have sunk at least two more bottles after you left me.’

  ‘I am so sorry. Look at me,’ Dita said. ‘It is all right,’ she went on as he turned, and he saw she was studying him gravely. ‘I told you af
ter the shipwreck—it wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t your fault that I realised that I was in love with you and that you broke my heart.’

  ‘What?’ He sat down with a thump on a tree stump.

  ‘Along with every other impressionable girl for twenty miles around,’ Dita explained with flattening calm. ‘You were very handsome then, you know. You still are, of course, but so many of the boys and young men we knew had spots, or kept falling over their feet or were complete boors. I didn’t see it because I was still thinking of you as my friend, you understand. Or like George. Only, when you kissed me like that I realised that you most certainly were not my brother and I didn’t want you to be. That is why I came to you. Don’t think you forced me.’

  Alistair knew he was gaping and had no idea what to say. ‘I was sixteen, Alistair. Girls that age are all emotions and drama and there is nothing they enjoy more than the agonies of exaggerated love. We grow out of it, you know. You broke my heart, of course, when you went away. I thought it was all my fault, because I didn’t know about Imogen. But then I heard Mama and Papa talking about some row you had had with your father over land and I saw it was nothing to do with me. Girls that age fall in and out of love four times a month.’

  ‘You were in love with me? Then why the hell won’t you marry me?’ he demanded. ‘That’s what you want in marriage, isn’t it? Love?’

  ‘I told you—I fell out of it soon enough. And I was rather hoping for a husband who loved me,’ she said tartly. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘it did make a lasting impression, making love with you. You know how if ducklings hatch and there is no duck around they become fixed on whatever they see first and think the cat or a bucket is their mother?’ He nodded, bemused. ‘Well, I think I must have become imprinted with the image of tall, dark, handsome men with interesting cheekbones—because Stephen looks a bit like you, I realise now. And I don’t find blond men very attractive.’

  He shook his head as though to dislodge an irritating fly. ‘Look, you know you have to marry me. You love me.’ The thought filled him with terror.

  ‘You were not listening,’ she reproved. ‘That was eight years ago. Calf-love. But that doesn’t matter now. How are we going to neutralise Imogen before she spreads this tale round half the county?’

  Alistair dragged his mind—and his body, which was taking an entirely inappropriate interest in the thought of how Dita might demonstrate love—back to the problem. ‘I need a chaperon,’ he said. ‘In fact, half a dozen of them. I’ll invite a houseful of men, sober professional men, to stay immediately. I’ll get in my London man of business, an architect, someone to advise on landscaping the grounds, the steward here, my solicitor—they’ll drop everything if I call. I’ll have the vicar to stay, while I’m at it, tell him I want to discuss the parish and good works, or something. I’ve got the devil of a lot of business to see to—I’ll do it here and now.’

  ‘Of course!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘They won’t be a houseparty of bucks or rakes but deadly dull businessmen of the utmost respectability. There is no way she can accuse you of harassing her with them in the house. And, I’ve just thought of another idea—why not bring her to call on us and ask Mama’s advice on finding a suitable companion to live with her? Mama can tell everyone quite truthfully how thoughtful you are and how concerned that Imogen is looked after and how you are exerting yourself to make the Dower House comfortable for her.’

  ‘Yes, that should put a stop to her nonsense. We make a good tactical team, you and I.’ There it was again, the sense of connection that he so often felt with Dita stealing over him, as though their minds were touching. ‘I don’t understand her—she seems to be reacting with spite because I haven’t fallen at her feet. But she must know perfectly well that any sort of relationship other than the obvious one is impossible—and scandalous.’

  ‘She has a guilty conscience.’ Dita rested her chin on her knees and tipped her head to one side, thinking. ‘She knows she betrayed you and that both she and your father acted badly—it is much easier to attack the person you have wounded rather than beg forgiveness. I feel sorry for her. At least, I feel sorry for the girl she was, and it is sad that she did not have the character and intelligence to mature into a happy person now.’

  ‘Sorry?’ He stared at her. ‘What is there to arouse your pity, pray?’

  ‘It kept me awake last night, thinking about it,’ she confessed. ‘I was so angry with her, and so frightened at the damage I feared she could do you. But gradually I began to think about her all those years ago. She was very young and, I have no doubt, completely under the influence of her parents, as any well-bred girl would be. What they said was law. She fell for you and I am sure they encouraged it, for you were an exceptionally good match. And then someone—probably her mother—realised that your father’s roving eye had fallen on her. Not the heir, but the marquis himself. They didn’t care that he was old enough to be her father, or that she had a tendre for you. He was the better match and that is all there was to it.

  ‘They would have told her to encourage him, she would have found herself alone with him when she might have expected to be chaperoned.’ Dita shivered and looked up at him as he stared back at her, appalled. ‘He had a reputation, did he not? This was not some kindly, fatherly figure. This was a mature rake and she was an innocent little lamb.’

  ‘My God. She was unwilling?’

  ‘She did as she was told, as was expected of her,’ Dita said and he heard the anger quivering in her voice. ‘I wonder if the fact that you look like him made it better or worse. But I doubt she ever thought she had a choice; young girls in our world do not, you see. They are raised to make a good match at all costs. That is what the Marriage Mart is, a market, and they are the lambs brought for sale.’

  ‘All of them? What about you?’ he asked and her fierce expression softened.

  ‘I have exceptional parents.’ She chuckled, ‘And I am a disobedient and difficult daughter. Evaline is not like me,’ she added, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘She is the dutiful one, like Averil. I hope she will be all right; this is her first Season.’

  ‘I won’t be in London for another week at least, but I will keep an eye on her,’ Alistair promised. ‘And then you and I will talk and you will realise by then that marrying me is the right thing to do.’

  Her face must have changed for the arrogant male certainty of his expression softened. ‘Dita? Are you all right?’

  ‘No. I am not,’ she said. ‘I am thinking about those young women like Imogen was. Like Evaline. All those hopes and expectations, all that duty and ignorance. A few months when they are the focus of attention, their virtue and their bloodlines and their dowries on display—and then a lifetime to live with the results of the bargains that are struck.’

  ‘It is the way it has been done for people of our class for hundreds of years.’

  ‘And it suits the men very well, does it not?’ she flashed back. ‘Listen to yourself: the complacent marquis. You will keep an eye on my sister and make sure she finds a suitable man, never mind her true feelings. You will satisfy your own pride and sense of honour by trying to force me to marry you. Not because you love me, or even because I am suitable, but because you took my virginity.’

  Too angry now to sit at his feet, she scrambled up. ‘Nothing else matters, does it? Such a little thing to make such a fuss about—a thrust, some pain. But that makes the woman your possession and you will duel and kill for that. Was that what it was with Imogen? Your father had her virginity and you did not even stop to think about her feelings? Damn you and your honour.’

  ‘Honour and desire,’ Alistair said, and closed the distance between them in two strides. He took her wrist and bent his head even as she reached to lash out at him. ‘Let me show you.’

  He had taught her well. She had him twisting to avoid her knee, grunting as her stiffened fingers found his stomach, cursing under his breath as her teeth found the back of his hand.

 
‘So you will force me now?’ she panted as he crushed her back against the tree.

  ‘But you want me. Tell me you don’t want me.’ Almost eye to eye the amber gaze held hers, demanded the truth, made her knees tremble.

  ‘Damn you.’ But she stopped struggling. I love you, you arrogant creature. Why can’t you love me? I want you.

  ‘Tell me to stop,’ he said. His body heated hers; the thrust of his erection felt as though it had the power to pierce their clothing. Her mind emptied of everything but need.

  ‘Let go of my arms,’ she managed to say and he did, his eyes darkening at what he must think was her refusal. Dita curled her arms around his neck and brought her mouth, open, to his. There was a moment of stillness, then his tongue thrust in to take possession.

  She expected urgency, roughness, anger. Instead, he stilled again, then began to lavish languid strokes into her mouth. She had time to taste him and savour every texture, the slide of her tongue across his teeth, the muscular agility of his tongue, the soft, wet interior of his mouth, the firmness of his lips. This was kissing as luxurious as the most decadent dessert and she surrendered to it with soft whimpers of delight.

  His hands cupped her breasts, his fingers seeking her nipples, frustrated by the tight weave of her tailored habit. She slid her hands between them, fumbling with the buttons until the top opened and he could push aside the short habit-shirt and free her breasts from the constraint of the light corset she wore for riding.

  In contrast to his mouth his fingers were not gentle as they found the peaking nipples, trapped them, rolled them until they became aching pebbles and the sensation lanced down through her belly to where she throbbed for him.

  Dita found the fall of his breeches, opened it, clumsy with her haste, and sobbed with relief against Alistair’s mouth as she closed her fingers round the hard silken shaft. He lifted his head as his hands left her breasts and took hold of her skirts, but the length and weight of the voluminous habit defeated him.