Breaking the Rake's Rules

by Bronwyn Scott

  Her father had one last parting thought for him. ‘James, a man is defined by the choices he makes in his hour of crisis.’ In other words, James’s future on the board would be contingent on his ability to embrace the phrase ‘discretion is the better part of valour’. Nothing that occurred in this house was to be bandied about with anyone, not his magpie of a mother, nor with the other investors.

  Her father’s brave façade faded the second James Selby passed through the gate. He turned to her with worried eyes, looking every day of his fifty-five years and then some. She could do without reminders of his mortality. ‘Why did you do it?’ he asked quietly, sinking down into a chair in the little-used front parlour.

  ‘Captain Sherard had indicated after the toast at dinner he was concerned about the nature of the investment. That made me worry, too, and I couldn’t just sit back and wait.’ But it had been more than that. The words tumbled out. ‘You were leaving, going off with your new friends and partners on a trip you hadn’t told me about, you were investing in plantations without a word of it to me.’

  She twisted her hands in her skirts. ‘You didn’t need me any more and here was an opportunity to show you I was still useful.’ She didn’t feel twenty-three at the moment. She felt about eight, very small, very vulnerable. She’d felt vulnerable with Kitt, too, that last night. She didn’t particularly like it. Exposing one’s feelings was nasty, uncomfortable, risky work. No wonder Kitt was so reluctant to do it.

  Her father’s features softened, his eyes misty. ‘You don’t need to be useful to me, Bryn. You’re my daughter, you’re my whole world.’ He waved a hand to indicate the house about them. ‘We’re here for you as much for me, after all.’

  * * *

  Complete acceptance of who she was flaws and all, the kind of acceptance she’d offered Kitt. The similarities struck her hard. Had it been as difficult for Kitt to accept as this was? Her father put a hand on each of his knees and straightened. ‘This would be easier if your mother were here. She would know what to do, what to say. I’m afraid these sorts of delicate conversations elude me, they always have.’ She sensed he was gathering himself. ‘Do I need to bring Sherard up to scratch?’

  ‘No, we had an agreement,’ Bryn answered evenly.

  Her father raised his eyebrows. ‘Might I enquire as to the nature of the agreement? I may be old, Bryn, but I know what happens between men and women in close quarters. Captain Sherard has a certain reputation and you are a beautiful woman, so full of life like your mother. Do not play me for a fool.’

  ‘Sherard is not the marrying type. I will not have him forced into anything he does not want,’ Bryn said with finality. She wanted Kitt, but not like that—not bought and paid for with her father’s money and influence. There were a hundred men she could have had in London under those terms. Such an arrangement would trap them both. Neither of them were looking for that sort of marriage.

  Her father tapped a finger on his leg in thought. ‘Sherard might not be the marrying sort, but James Selby is and he’s made no secret of his esteem for you.’ She started to protest. They’d had this discussion before. Her answer hadn’t changed. Her father held up a hand to stall the interruption. ‘Selby is a good man, a steady man, Bryn. With my guidance, he will become more astute. He is young yet, unpolished. He is bound to make mistakes like the Sunwood project in his eagerness to prove himself. But I will make him my protégé. He can be taught. If you need a husband, he would do admirably.’

  What he meant was if she was pregnant, if there were consequences for her five days with Kitt. She looked down at her hands, her face colouring. Her father was offering to buy her a husband, to set that man up for life with the Rutherford connections and the banking charter all to make her and her child respectable. It was a generous offer, a loving offer that spoke again of being completely accepted flaws and all. ‘Selby wouldn’t be so bad,’ her father argued with soft persuasion. ‘Sometimes the quiet ones are just what wild souls need. They can have a calming, balancing effect.’

  ‘Like you and Mother.’ She looked up and shook her head. ‘But that was true love.’

  Her father looked uncomfortable for a moment, a look that was gone as soon as it came. She might have imagined it. ‘Perhaps it’s time for a confession. It was always love for me, but I think true love came later for her.’

  Bryn wanted to argue—she had cut her teeth on stories of her parents’ fairytale romance—but something in her father’s gaze stopped her.

  ‘I had no chance. I was a younger son, I was retiring. I liked my numbers, I liked calculating odds. I had little use of society in practice. She was such a bright flame, always the centre of everyone’s attention. My cousin the marquis was much the same, handsome, wild. Everything came easy for him, even Esme. When things come easy, it is hard to appreciate them. He did not appreciate Esme as a gentleman should appreciate a lady.

  ‘There was a compromising incident, there was scandal, my cousin blamed Esme and would not do the right thing. Scandal is always more bearable for a man, especially when he has a title. Not so for a beautiful untitled woman with little claim to society beyond her looks. The Rutherfords understood my cousin’s hesitation to marry so far beneath himself, but my brother was earl by then and he was eager to see the family redeemed. Suddenly, as the only unwed male close at hand, my odds started to improve. I couldn’t believe my luck. Then you were born and I knew I was the luckiest man alive.’

  Bryn knew she’d been born early in their marriage. A new suspicion took her as she let the story settle. ‘Am I yours?’

  He grinned. ‘Most definitely. You were born twelve months almost exactly after the wedding.’

  ‘And the scandal? Was there any truth to it?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. She had been...well, indiscreet with my cousin, but that’s not the point. Everyone makes mistakes. We don’t love them the less for it.’

  ‘You never held the past against Mother,’ she said, implying that Selby would. He was all that her father said, but he was also petulant. His remark this afternoon indicated as much. He would hold Kitt Sherard over her head whenever he needed leverage for the rest of their lives. No amount of money or prestige her father threw Selby’s way would change that.

  Her father rose, perhaps sensing they’d reached another impasse on the subject of James Selby. ‘Think on it, just in case. I’ll have Cook make your favourite for dinner tonight.’

  Bryn didn’t want to think on it, but it was inescapable. No matter how far down in the bubbles of her bath she slid, she could not escape her thoughts. The story her father had told her threw her world off balance. It forced her to call into questions assumptions she’d taken for certain truth, assumptions about love, about marriage.

  Whenever the villagers had recounted her parents’ courtship, they’d conveniently left off the events leading up to it, the cousin mentioned only as a secondary character in the tale who had surfaced as competition for the charming Esme’s hand, but who had been out-wooed by the quiet hero. There’d been no mention of Esme’s desperate circumstances, or of the callous marquis’s rejection, only of her father sweeping Esme off her feet in a whirlwind courtship.

  She saw also how much her own situation paralleled her mother’s. She, too, was wild. Her mother had feared her daughter would follow in her footsteps, throwing herself away on the squire’s son who might also be too wild to care about the consequences. No wonder her mother had wanted her with someone stable, someone well situated like her father.

  Bryn ran a cloth over her arms, washing them free of bubbles. It was no wonder her father favoured Selby. He saw himself in Selby. Perhaps she should, too. Her father was far wiser and far worldlier than she’d given him credit for. And, apparently, she was far less. True love didn’t exist. Practicalities did. Perhaps the James Selbys of the world were the best a girl could hope for. Even her parents’ marriage hadn�
�t embodied the ideal, no matter what the local legend purported.

  Perfection didn’t exist because it couldn’t. It wasn’t a happy prospect. It was, however, a sobering one that required more answers than she had and those were answers that included the past, whether Kitt was willing to dredge it up or not.

  This wasn’t only about romance and love. In a larger sense it was about truth, something Kitt had been skating around. She had, too. She’d convinced herself it didn’t matter in her new paradigm of living for the present, of living for herself. But it did.

  If she was to go forward with Kitt, if she was to force him to admit he cared about her, that he didn’t want this to end, there had to be truth. There had to be explanations about his past, which did exist whether he wanted it to or not. Everyone had one, even the man from nowhere. That his past involved an encounter of some sort with a land swindle seemed to make it even more pertinent considering their circumstances. These were answers she had to have no matter how painful they might be. Nothing more could happen without them.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘I have a warrant for the arrest of Chase Melford on grounds of fraud.’ Kitt was dreaming of the past, of promises. They were all gathered in his father’s office: himself, his mother, his father, his brother, older by two minutes and the heir. ‘He is named as an active collaborator in the Forsythe scandal.’ His brother’s face, Chase’s face, was ashen as he listened. His brother probably was guilty and probably had been oblivious to what he had done. Finances weren’t his brother’s strong suit. He had other talents. Chase wasn’t reckless, but he didn’t often think about the long-term implications of his actions. He was heir to an earldom, he didn’t have to.

  Then had come the charges. If found guilty, he would face imprisonment. A title, his father’s connections, wouldn’t protect him now. Too many of the nobility had fallen in this scandal. In their desire for vengeance they would not protect one of their own if that one was guilty or if that one would provide a convenient scapegoat. It was said the Earl of Audley’s heir had suffered a nervous breakdown over his investment in the non-existent island somewhere out in the Caribbean. Kitt had been friends with Audley’s other son, Ashe Bedevere.

  Kitt had thought his brother would faint at the mention of imprisonment. His brother would not survive this. The family would not survive this. But he would. He could save them and he could save himself, give himself the freedom he’d been craving. This was his chance, their chance.

  Kitt crossed his legs and drawled indolently, ‘You’ve got the wrong man. It’s not him. It’s me. He’s entirely unaware. One might say I wooed in his name, to quote a little Shakespeare.’

  His mother moved to protest, but a sharp look from his father silenced her. ‘We are identical twins.’ He explained the obvious to the inspector. ‘It was no hard thing. I’m the one who convinced our friends to invest.’ He quelled Chase’s argument with a look only a twin would understand, a silent message: let me save you. I love you. The family needs you to survive this intact. Chase’s eyes had met his: Are you sure? I will trust you. I love you, too.

  The inspector had been hampered then by legalities. The warrant had the wrong name on it and could not be enforced. He’d left with a threat to return. ‘I’ll be back.’

  I’ll be gone, Kitt thought with a quiet calm—the magnitude of what he’d done hadn’t fully settled, but the need for action had. His mind was already working. How much time did he have before the inspector was back? An hour?

  The moment the door shut behind the man, Kitt was up the stairs, calling for a valise and all the money he could find in the house. He fired off instructions. Trunks could be sent to Ren later and Ren would get them to him. Chase was beside him, arguing all the way between orders. But not his practical father, who remained below, staring up at him from the bottom of the staircase with admiration and sadness before he moved to comfort his wife. His father understood it was the only way to save the family.

  The transformation in his status amazed even him and he’d been the one to put it in motion. Only the night before, he’d been the darling of the ballroom, charming maids and matrons, his biggest concern in life being how to avoid his mother’s matrimonial shenanigans. Less than twenty-four hours later, he’d become persona non grata, running for his life. ‘My son, you can never come back—do you know what you’ve done?’ his father had said, embracing him one last time.

  He knew precisely what he’d done and he knew why he’d done it: to take all the stain upon himself, to save the family. Within an hour, he’d left it all behind, even his own name. Michael Melford could be traced. Kitt Sherard—a man from nowhere—couldn’t be. So he’d become Kitt Sherard—Christopher from one of his middle names and the patron saint of travellers, Sherard for his mother’s maiden name. He was a man with nothing but what he made for himself.

  * * *

  There was more to dream about, but the sun wouldn’t let him. He had to wake and deal with what the day brought, starting with a meeting with the board of directors to sort this whole mess out. That wasn’t the only sorting to be done. There was sorting to do with Bryn as well. Had things gone well for her after he’d left? Did she understand he’d meant it when he’d said ‘no expectations’?

  Kitt splashed water on his face and reached for a clean shirt. He’d not played fair there. He knew what she thought—that he wouldn’t marry her because he refused to abide by society’s dictates in that regard. The reality was quite different. He couldn’t marry her because of the risk to her and to his family.

  How could he tell her what he’d done? What if she knew the nightmares he dreamed? If he told her the truth, she might understand. But one more person knowing Kitt Sherard was nothing but a mask for another man put them all at risk. If England ever discovered him, he was dead. He could offer Bryn very little. They could never return to London. This was a secret that had to be kept for ever.

  Kitt finished dressing and broke his fast downstairs with the other boarders. He spoke little, his mind on the upcoming interviews, on other fantasies. Would Bryn be surprised to know he would have her if he could? The realisation had stunned him the first time he’d thought it. But the more he took it out and examined it, the less shocking it became. He took it out now as he walked to the meeting.

  He had fabricated domestic fantasies aplenty of a future with Bryn lending her touch to his home; Bryn wading in the surf, her skirts held above the waves, her hair flying loose about her shoulders as she laughed with him; Bryn in his bed, the big mahogany one at the villa with the down bedding. Bryn with his son, their son, on her hip. Ah, that was the most dangerous image of all. A child. One more person to protect. It was the most potent, too, the one with the power to lure him away from the lonely discipline he’d worked so hard to acquire.

  * * *

  He was not the first to arrive at Rutherford’s. Harrison and Crenshaw were already there, and Selby. He shook hands and greeted everyone, his eyes distracted already as they searched the room for Bryn. He wondered if she would sit in. She had valuable information to contribute, to be an alibi for his story if nothing else. But perhaps it was best she didn’t. There was no need to bring their association to anyone’s attention, especially if Selby’s reaction yesterday was anything to go on. Selby had immediately jumped to sordid conclusions.

  Unfortunately, those conclusions were accurate, but irrelevant to the situation. They only served to muddy the waters. The first priority was to get permission to go after Devore. Technically, he didn’t need permission. He’d go after Devore regardless. Permission would simply determine on what grounds. Did he have permission to make the land swindle part of his vendetta or would this remain a private affair between the two men?

  The rest arrived and took their seats around Rutherford’s long dining-room table. Bryn was not coming, but Rutherford left the doors open ostensibly to catch the bre
eze. Kitt hid a smile. Bryn was in the house and he’d wager his fortune she was listening somewhere.

  Rutherford made an initial statement about the situation and turned to Kitt. ‘Mr Sherard undertook a short voyage to the supposed destinations. I’ll ask him to share what he found.’

  Kitt nodded and began to speak. ‘The Sunwood Plantation does not exist at these co-ordinates...’ He unrolled a map and pinned it down with candlesticks. He pointed to different places, tracing his voyage. It seemed like he talked for ages. He shared what he had found, how he had found it and gone on to a second set of co-ordinates to be sure. There was outrage and questions. He fielded the questions patiently, explaining how the scheme was set up, how this was not the first time. It was easy enough to do out here in the uncharted ocean with thousands of islands.

  When he finished, silence descended on the table. Selby had been uncharacteristically quiet, as well he might, since it was his rashness that had brought this upon them. Now, Selby leaned forward, locking eyes with him. ‘How is it that you know so much about land swindles? You seem highly informed for a man of your background.’

  Kitt braced himself on his arms and leaned across the table. ‘What are you saying, James? Is there an accusation you wanted to make?’

  ‘I don’t know—should I be concerned about one? You have to admit your recommendations are not the best.’

  Kitt raised an eyebrow at this. Those were fighting words. There was much he would tolerate for himself, but he would not hear a word against Ren. They had been friends since their school days, not that he could call on that allegiance now without giving too much away. To do so would indicate he had noble connections in England as opposed to the fiction he and Ren fabricated here—they were business partners. How else would the lofty Earl of Dartmoor know a rum runner? ‘Careful, James. You question Dartmoor’s reputation.’