The Lure of a Rake

by Christi Caldwell

  Just as he’d had no right to go to Clarisse seeking absolution, he had even less so, going to Genevieve and asking for another chance at them. She’d been clear her last night here that she wanted no part of him, that she regretted having ever entered that library. His chest throbbed, like a weight was being pressed on him, cutting off airflow.

  From the corner of his eye, a flash of white caught his eye and he turned. Drawn to that crumpled page; the one out of place in this room, Cedric moved with wooden steps. Desperate for even a hint of her, he picked up the page and unwrinkled it. The small babe, with Cedric’s eyes and hair, grinned back. His fingers curled at the edges of the sheet, rumpling it. Pain speared his heart and sucked the life from his legs. Numb, he slid onto the edge of the mattress.

  Realizing immediately what he did, he quickly loosened his grip. He ran his palm over the creased surface and forced himself to accept all that he’d lost. Genevieve and a child. A child she’d rightly said he’d never wanted. For he hadn’t.

  Only…his throat worked…looking at this child that would have been, he accepted a truth he’d never known—until now.

  He’d hated the prospect of sharing his blood and proving to be the same, miserable excuse of a man his own sire had been. He’d hated the idea of a child of his blood, because he’d spent years hating himself.

  Only, to look at this child and realize—this babe would have never been an extension of the Duke of Ravenscourt but rather an extension of Genevieve and him. It would have been a girl with her mother’s smile and strawberry curls. A child that loved to sketch like them. A girl who would have gardened beside her mother and…

  He rested his elbows on his knees and buried his head in his hands, further wrinkling that discarded image. A sob tore from his throat. He allowed the page to slip from his fingers and gave in to the tears. He let them fall unchecked; great, gasping sobs that tore from his chest, emotion long buried. He cried for the man he’d allowed himself to become. He cried for having realized too late that Genevieve and their child were the only gifts he’d ever wanted and needed in life. He cried for the aching void of emptiness that would never, ever be filled unless she was there.

  And at last, when the tears were gone, he drew in a juddering breath. She is gone. Cedric rescued the sketch. He’d not changed for her, as she’d stated before she left him and stole all his happiness. He’d changed because of her. He stilled. And mayhap, even if he professed his love and promised her all of him, she’d still choose a life apart…but he needed her to know.

  Footsteps sounded outside the door and for a sliver of a moment, hope hung suspended. Then there was a faint rap. “My lord, His Grace is asking to see you…” Avis hadn’t even finished speaking before the duke threw the door open.

  “There you are,” his father said coldly. “I am here to speak with you about your wife. I—”

  “I have no intention of discussing my wife or my responsibilities with you,” he said quietly, cutting into his father’s lecture. How many times had his father stormed into his home with some form of ducal directive? Only now, Cedric’s words were not meant to taunt or bait.

  “I beg your pardon?” his father barked, stamping his cane. Then, he narrowed his gaze. “Have you been crying?” he spoke with the same horror as if he’d uncovered his son’s plot to overthrow the king.

  “I am no longer a child,” he said. Even as he’d lived a life without responsibility, he would take ownership of who he was, now. “Do not come here and lecture me. Do not come here and speak to me about my wife or my responsibilities. I am going to my wife.” Triumph lit the duke’s eyes and Cedric felt none of the old familiar hatred. He smiled sadly. “I am not going to Genevieve because you command it or even wish it, Father. I am going because I need to. Because I love my wife.” Sketch in hand, Cedric strode over to the door and past his father. “If you’ll excuse me.” He had a wife to win back.

  Chapter 28

  She missed him.

  Oh, the day she’d boarded his carriage and made the long journey from London, she’d had no doubt she would miss him. She’d just made the erroneous assumption that time would dull the love and all the hurt and anger of their last days together would prove strongest.

  It hadn’t.

  The ache inside was just as jagged now as it was since her world had fallen apart. Reflexively, she touched a hand to her belly, the pain of that loss brought her closed. She would have been nearly four months along. Her heart wrenched.

  “I never thought I’d see you more miserable than the day you showed up five years ago, Genevieve Grace, until I see you now.”

  Seated at the windowseat that overlooked the vast Kent countryside, that gravelly, aged voice shifted her attention from the serene view to the ancient, wizened earl she’d once feared. She smiled for his benefit. “I am not miserable.” How could she be? In the month since she’d returned to his residence, she’d slipped so very easily into the routine she’d once known—gardening, walking the countryside and collecting flowers, sketching. Why, these were all the activities she’d always so loved. The enjoyments she’d always taken pleasure in.

  Her smile dipped and she looked out the lead windowpane. Except, time had changed her. Nay, Cedric had changed her so much that she’d come to find the enjoyments she’d found did not bring the same joy and fulfillment of being in love. Grief scraped at her still ragged heart. Even if it was a one-sided love.

  “This is about your husband?” her grandfather interjected and heat infused her cheeks at his unerring accuracy. She opened her mouth to form a half-hearted protest, but he quelled her with a look. “There is no point in denying otherwise. I’ve read the papers.” She cringed, shame assailing her. Oh, the words printed in those gossip columns; about Cedric, about her, about them. Did her grandfather even know about that scandalous affair she’d arrived at like a naïve fool? “Are you ready to speak of him?”

  All the hurt and humiliation of that night came rushing back, as fresh now as it had been. “There is nothing really to speak about,” she murmured. Nothing beyond a failed marriage, a lost child, and a gaping hole in one’s heart.

  Restless, Genevieve shoved to her feet and strode over to the floor-length windows that opened out to the back portion of her grandfather’s vast estate. The rolling green hills and cloudless blue skies were a beauty that she could never manage to capture on canvas. Yet, there was none of the calming peace she’d once known in this place.

  “Isn’t there?” the earl’s voice rumbled at her back.

  She absently touched her fingertips to the windowpane warmed by the summer sun. “No. There really isn’t.” Genevieve lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “My father would have wed me off to one of his old friends and Cedric,” the muscles of her stomach contracted at even breathing his name again. “My husband,” she amended, “offered me a marriage of convenience. He’d have his freedom and I would have mine.” And how simple he’d made it all sound. Only there had been nothing simple about any part of their union.

  Her grandfather snorted. “And you agreed to that because your father wished to wed you to one of his miserable cronies?” The thick skepticism coating that inquiry painted her for the liar she was. “You’d have never married one of my miserable son-in-law’s picks for any reason under the sun. And you’d most assuredly known you had a home here for as long as you needed it.”

  His words aligned so very clearly with Gillian’s accusations weeks ago that she sighed. “Yes, I knew as much,” she conceded. Even if she hadn’t admitted as much to herself. Genevieve swiped a forgotten volume of artwork and fanned the pages. “He was…” She grimaced. “Is a rake. I made the mistake of falling in love with him.”

  A low growl rattled from his chest and he then dissolved into a fit of coughing. Genevieve took a step toward him but he waved her off. He pulled a white kerchief from his jacket and coughed into it, glaring over the fabric when she made to come over. She stopped. The earl had long been a proud man who’
d never accept, nor welcome, such displays of concern. “The gossip is true about him, then.”

  As his was more statement than question, she remained silent. She pressed her fingernails into her palms so tightly she left crescent marks on her skin. All the agony, rage, and humiliation blended into a maelstrom of emotion.

  “There is no accounting for love is there?” her grandfather said from where he sat in his old, familiar, leather winged back chair.

  She shook her head and looked distractedly down at the page she’d stopped on. Francois Boucher’s work stared back and she promptly closed it.

  “You haven’t returned to Kent to keep me company.”

  “You would be wrong,” she said. Crossing over to him, she claimed the seat nearest his. She’d needed his reassuring presence as much as he, no doubt, needed hers. Perhaps more. “I haven’t been comfortable in London in too many years. I hardly welcome the company of people who are cold and emotionless.” But for her sister and Francesca, there had been nothing but icy rigidity in all the peerage Genevieve had the ill-fortune of seeing. How could she have failed to realize how very different she and Cedric were? They could have never been happy, together—not forever. Not with his interests what they were.

  Her grandfather shifted in his chair. “You’re nothing like your mother.” She would have wagered her every sketchpad that he muttered “thank God” under his breath. “Though she never had sense like you do, girl.” He waggled his bushy, white eyebrows. “Her marriage to your father is proof of that.”

  A small laugh burst from her lips. Through the years, her grandfather had made little effort to hide his annoyance with her parents. “Such sense that I married a rake who’d never love me?”

  He tightened his mouth. “Of course he loves you. How could he not?”

  She looked down at her interlocked fingers. “I do not doubt he cares,” she said softly, recalling him that last day, when she’d sent him away and he’d acquiesced. “But caring is not love.” Nor could it ever be enough—not for her. She’d wanted all of him.

  “Enough of that,” her grandfather barked. “As much as I am enjoying your company, I want you to go.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Outside. Traipsing across the countryside. Riding. Gardening. As long as you’re not hiding away in my library. You need to find your smile again, girl.” He snorted again. “And you’re assuredly not going to find it with my miserable company.”

  She made a sound of protest. “You’re not—”

  “Save your breath, gel, and go.” He thumped his palm on the arm of his chair. “I’ve need of a nap now, anyway.”

  Genevieve hesitated and passed a concerned gaze over his slender frame. His wrinkled face hinted at a fatigue. His skin was slightly pallid. Worry turned in her breast. Though he was approaching his eightieth year, she’d never allowed herself to think of him as nearing the end of his life. He’d been so much to her and for her for so long. “Are you unwell? Should we call for—”

  “I’ve limited time enough on this earth, Genevieve. I don’t have a mind to spend it with a doctor.” Then, in a moment, the blustery show was gone as he gentled his tone. “I’m tired, nothing more. I’ve no plans to die any time soon.”

  She hesitated. “You’re certain you—?”

  “I’m certain.” He banged his hand once more and that firm thump brought her to her feet. Genevieve leaned down and dropped a kiss on his weathered cheek. “Gah, go, girl,” he said, gruffly.

  With her book in hand, Genevieve made her way from the library. She paused outside the room a moment to study the aging earl. He closed his eyes and, within a moment, his snores carried over to the door. Gently pulling the door closed with a soft click, she continued through the long, hardwood halls. She made her way outside to the gardens she’d spent so many years working in alongside her grandfather. How quickly time changed a man. The earl showed the signs of his age and, yet, how little a person could truly change.

  The memory of her husband’s visage slipped forward. This time she didn’t thrust his rogue’s smile to the far recess of her mind but, instead, accepted that memory. In their last exchange, he’d spoken of a desire to begin again, a willingness to put aside the rakish lifestyle and be a true husband to her. In the moment, she’d been so consumed by her own agony and resentment that she’d not even considered that he possibly meant those words. How could he, a man who’d proudly worn the title of rake? Since her parting, the tumult of emotions that had assailed her through the loss of their child, the remote, but ever-there possibility crept in: what if he’d meant those professions? What if he truly loved her and wanted a life with her in every way that mattered?

  Yes, she’d been a pawn of sorts in a matter of revenge against his father, but her intentions in marrying Cedric hadn’t been truly honest either to Genevieve or him. With his offer of marriage, she’d thought of her security and freedom from her father’s influence and the ton’s presence. He’d dangled the prospect of sketching and gardening before her and she’d grasped it—not acknowledging until much later that her acceptance had come from deep inside, to the part of her soul that had loved him from their first meeting in the library.

  Reaching the back of her grandfather’s sprawling manor, she collected a basket in the conservatory, along with her scissors, and made for the glass door that emptied into the gardens. Genevieve dropped her scissors inside her basket. Shifting the bundle in her arms, she pressed the handle and stepped outside. The summer sun immediately slapped her face in with gentle warmth and she closed her eyes a moment, tipping her face up to those soft rays.

  Starting forward, she picked her way through the expertly cared for rose bushes interspersed with boxwood topiaries and elaborate watering fountains. As beautiful as this space had forever been, she’d secretly dreamed of a less deliberately manicured garden. Rather, one that belonged in its natural setting and less a testament to a man’s grandiose power over nature.

  Genevieve stopped beside the bluebells that blanketed the earth and dropped to a knee. Fishing around her basket, she withdrew a small shovel and set to work gently digging about the base of a plant. The sun beat down on her bent head and perspiration trickled down her neck, dampening her brow. She paused to brush the sheen from her brow, a healthy exhilaration going through her at her freedom. Carefully unearthing the roots, separating it, she lay it inside the basket, and moved to the next.

  Except, even as she found peace and solace outside working in the gardens, her mind harkened back to an overgrown space walled in by bricks, with a too-charming rake soaking up the sun’s warmth beside her.

  *

  He looked like hell. He’d not needed the horror wreathing the butler of the vast Kent manor to indicate as much. Cedric had known from the scratch of two days’ worth of growth on his face and the rumpled fabric of his garments.

  As such, the old servant had left him waiting in the foyer while he went to see whether his employer was, in fact, receiving visitors. The man gone, Cedric surveyed the mural painted on the high ceiling. A storm raged with streaks of lightning, with a single crimson rose bush in an ominous display. It was hardly the inviting warmth one would expect for welcoming guests.

  He imagined Genevieve as she would have been, an eighteen-year-old young lady, betrayed by her betrothed, sent away by her family to this expansive estate. What terror would she have known at her banishment and in the cold entryway to her new home? She’d been robbed of so much happiness and Cedric was among those thieves. Pressure weighted his chest. An aching need to see her, once more.

  Just as he’d no place visiting his sister, he had even less place coming here. But he was that selfish, because he needed to see her. He needed to, at least, offer her his worthless heart, for then he’d know.

  Then, what? What if she turns me away, anyway? His throat closed tightly.

  “His Lordship will see you.”

  He spun, having been so absorbed in his musings he’d failed to hear the o
ld servant’s slow, shuffling approach. With a slight nod, he followed the other man. Mahogany side tables etched with roaring lions continued the ominous motif of the earl’s uninviting home. Yet, upon those narrow pieces of furniture were large urns filled to overflowing with colorful blooms.

  His chest tightened. It was her. She was everywhere in those small splashes of cheer in an otherwise dark existence. Just as she’d transformed his life, flipping it upside down on him, so she brought an effervescent light wherever she went. I would have killed it… If she’d remained in London, her light would have no doubt gone out…

  “Here we are,” the butler murmured, bringing them to a stop outside an opened door. “His Lordship, the Marquess of St. Albans,” he announced loudly.

  For a sliver of a heartbeat, Cedric’s breath lodged deep as he skimmed the vast library in search of her. Disappointment filled his chest at finding only an ancient and darkly glowering man seated. Either in a testament of the man’s age or in a blatant show of disrespect, the earl remained seated, not bothering to rise. Cedric would wager his very life it was the latter. Genevieve’s grandfather ran a coolly appraising gaze over him and then peeled his lip back in a sneer.

  “So you’re the worthless husband then,” he spoke with a slowness, the aged tones stretching out each syllable.

  Cedric solemnly inclined his head. “The very same,” he said quietly. He was deserving of the other man’s loathing…and so much more. Pain clutched at him. She’d deserved so much more.

  Pursing his lips, the earl said nothing for a long moment. Then he grunted. “Well, I don’t expect you rode yourself into a sweat, with a face covered in beard, to hover in my doorway.” He jerked his chin. “Get over here, boy.”