“Who was he?” he asked with a casual boredom.
He’d be so flippant in his motives and then probe her with that searching question? She shook her head trying to muddle through who, in fact, Daniel Winterbourne was—diffident rake or honorable friend. “By your earlier claim, as he was a rake and unlikely to attend the same events as your sister, it’s unlikely we’ll meet again.” It was a lie. They both knew it. The likelihood of moving among the same Social events as Lord Leopold was great and, yet, she would be on the sidelines with the hired companions, invisible to him, just as she’d been invisible as anything more than a conquest to that same dastard years earlier. “And the alternative is the gentleman is married. As such, I doubt he’ll be in the habit of raising attention to past conquests he might have made.”
Long ago, she’d ceased to feel anything but a stinging hatred for the cruel man who’d taken her in his arms.
Daniel took slow, smooth steps toward her. “Then you still have not learned the proper wariness, madam.” No, her body’s heated awareness of this man even now and the burn of his kiss on her lips was proof of that. He came to stop, so close that their boots touched. For the sliver of a moment, she believed he’d dip his head and claim her mouth as he had in his library five days earlier.
And God help her, how she wanted that kiss. She concentrated on her breathing, but only inhaled the deep sandalwood scent that clung to him.
“What if I say I wish to know his name for reasons that have nothing to do with your role as companion?” he posed, brushing his knuckle down her cheek. His touch was as delicate as a butterfly’s caress. “What if I wish to know as a friend?” Something stormy and volatile turned his dark eyes nearly a shade of black.
A friend, he said. And yet, his eyes were those of a stranger. His careless words better suited the rake than the gentleman who confounded her with his words of concern and his defensiveness on her part. She stared at his rumpled white cravat, needing to build a barrier for this one-time friend, now seductive rake who made her want to risk all again in ways that would invariably result in her being hurt—again. “Is that what we are, Daniel?” she asked softly. “After all these years, friends, still?” For as much time as she’d spent as a young girl, hating him for having abandoned her, he’d been the only friend she’d ever known and he would, no matter what life and fate shaped them into, exist in that role.
Holding her gaze with his, he palmed her cheek. “I rather thought we were, Daphne.” She curled her hands hard. Friendship is all they’d once known and, yet, with him now, there was a hungering for dreams she’d long ago abandoned. He slid his stare to a point over the top of her head. “Or rather, that we could be again,” he murmured, more to himself.
Sadness assailed her. Of course, Daniel who received the world as though it was his due, would think nothing of picking up as the ten and almost thirteen-year-old children, they’d been. The difference being the ultimatum he’d give her, holding ransom those references that would set her free. “When I first arrived in London all those years ago,” she began hesitantly. “I sat inside a stranger’s household, who’d taken me in as a request from your father, looking out the window, waiting for you to come.”
His body coiled tight.
“You never came,” she said, stating the obvious as a reminder to herself. No one had. No one, except one suitor, who’d won her affections and her virtue. It was a testament to her own desperation. “I was in London for more than three months and not once did you visit. Were you too busy?”
A muscle leapt at the corner of his eye. “I…” That gruff single syllable went nowhere.
“It is fine,” she said softly, taking a step away from him and resurrecting the much needed barriers. “We were friends, Daniel, and you will always hold a place here,” she touched her chest and his gaze followed that slight movement. “But let us not pretend we’re the same children racing across the lake.” The girl she had been died in the copse with him at her side. When had his world been irrevocably changed? With Alistair’s passing? Or his mother’s? Or mayhap it had been a culmination of all the miseries he’d known. She gentled her tone. “We’ve grown up. Become different people whose lives have traveled divergent paths. I told you about Lord—” He thinned his eyes into narrow slits. “I told you what I did,” she swiftly amended, “because I am a servant in your employ and, as such, you require the truth.”
He firmed his jaw and that hard glint sharpened in his eyes. Had her words hurt him? Daniel, a man who’d prided himself on being incapable of suffering? “Of course, madam,” he said crisply. “You are correct. I have hired your services and you’re here with the sole intention of looking after my sister. As such, I will allow you to return to your responsibilities.” He drew the door open and, with that unbending divide firmly erected between them, Daphne limped forward.
When he closed the door behind her, she leaned against the opposite wall and borrowed strength from the surface. This was for the best—this safe distance. Because for his question about friendship, Daniel was something wholly dangerous—a rake—and what was more, a rake who’d proven himself to be an honorable gentleman not condemning her for her past, the way most of the ton would.
With that loyalty and honorability, he posed a far greater danger than any rake ever could. For she was still the same, hopeful girl clinging to childhood dreams about Daniel and a future with him in it. And there could never be a future with Daniel Winterbourne. Ever.
No matter how much she might wish it.
Chapter 14
All was right with the world.
Or those were the words that had been printed in the paper about Daniel Winterbourne, the Earl of Montfort, and his peculiar departure from depravity and sin, into a seeming calm of respectability.
Having spent the past three nights at his tables at Forbidden Pleasures, he had shattered all confusion about his true character. Of which there could be no mistaking—corruptible, dark, selfish, and all things black, he lived for his own gratification.
… We’ve grown up. Become different people whose lives have traveled divergent paths…
He downed his third tumbler of whiskey and stared into the empty glass. His path had been solidified long, long ago, when he’d raced Alistair across the turbulent lake in the middle of a summer rainstorm.
…grab my fingers… I said grab my fingers, Alistair, please…
He’d resisted thinking of his brother for more years than he could remember. Mayhap it was Daphne’s reentry into his life that brought everything rushing forward. But he was tired of battling back his past. He’d spent nearly his whole life running from the young man he’d been and the pressing weight of guilt. Only, doing so hadn’t made the pain of loss disappear.
Now he allowed the memories in.
Memories long buried. Of failings and loss. Of a brother who’d only stepped into that water because of his taunting, and then his parents’ keening misery at finding their son dead because of Daniel’s inability to save him.
Having entered into the world but twelve minutes behind his brother, he had always striven to prove his worth. To prove he was better than Alistair in some way. But for swimming, Alistair had excelled in everything. So desperate to prove his own worth, he’d raced Alistair, and his brother, the weak swimmer that he was, had been carried away by a violent current. If not for Daniel’s inherent need to be better at something, his brother would even now be alive and his family would have never fallen apart as they had.
Drawing in a slow breath, he stared at the lone drop of whiskey that clung to the glass like a teardrop. Bile stung his throat as he glared into his glass. But to blast his deceased father’s memory, he’d not thought of his family in too many years to remember. He’d not thought of how his family had once been smiling and his parents equally proud of him and Alistair. Until that dark night when no boys should have been outside the lofty walls of their estate, when everything changed.
He briefly squeezed his eye
s closed.
In the darkest days after Alistair’s death, his own culpability and his father’s shouts, rightfully blaming Daniel, there had been one person there with him, through it all—Daphne. She’d been steadfast in her devotion. When he’d wept with guilt and the agony of losing his twin, she’d held him. When he’d engaged in riskier and riskier pursuits to gain his family’s notice, she’d attempted to talk him out of his wickedness. It was just one of the reasons why he’d cut her out.
I was not there for her.
Through the raucous din of laughter and coin striking coin upon the gaming tables, Daniel firmed his jaw. Bloody hell, in his advancing years, he was turning into a maudlin bastard. He swiped his bottle from the table. Damn and blast Daphne for not staying buried. She, with her expressive eyes filled with disappointment one moment and hunger in the next.
The lady was right to take him to task for thirteen years of neglect. But for the rogues and rakes he kept company with in London and the beauties he took to his bed, he’d kept the world insularly out. That had been the easiest course and he had been a man who’d long proven he only ever took that particular route.
From the day his mother died trying to birth a better child than him, he had vowed to never again care or let anyone in. Not the babe his mother had left behind. Not the girl he’d once called friend. No one. That was, no one except the miserable blighters like himself. Those wastrel lords, who didn’t give a frig. And so he’d retreated from the world, descending more and more into a level of sin and debauchery from which there could be no coming back.
…I was in London for more than three months and not once did you visit. Were you too busy…?
Yes, he had been too busy. Whoring. Cavorting with unhappily married women. Bedding both sad and joyfully free widows. Attending orgies. Hosting orgies. All of it, dark acts committed by a coldhearted rake. And through it, she’d been waiting for a visit. He winced as an image trickled in of Daphne as she would have been, a girl of seventeen, at the window. Alone in a world she’d never been part of, one that he had been wholly born to. In the end, she’d been an easy quarry for a rake who preyed on her innocence and earned her virginity.
His stomach churned and with unsteady fingers, he set the glass aside. Too much bloody drink. There was no other accounting for it.
“You look to be in need of company.”
Daniel abruptly glanced up at the Marquess of Tennyson.
Both were former spares to the heirs who’d found themselves ascended to the ranks of nobility. Rivaling Daniel in depravity, they got on famously well since Oxford and, more importantly, Tennyson wasn’t the happily married blighter St. Albans had become. Rather, this marquess was a ruthless bastard in the market for an heiress. Daniel motioned to the vacant seat and the marquess plopped his tall, wiry frame into the chair.
“You have been absent from Town,” the other man remarked, as he claimed a seat.
He gave a wave of his hand. “I have the additional responsibilities of a sister now,” Daniel reminded him.
“Ah, yes, that is right,” Tennyson said, layering his hands on the arms of his chair.
With neither sisters nor brothers underfoot, the marquess didn’t know a thing about those responsibilities. Not that Daniel did, either. Not truly. He just knew of late with his well-ordered life now thrown on its ear by his miserable uncle.
“So you’ve become a devoted brother, then?” By the mocking smile on Tennyson’s lips, he believed that as much as Lord Claremont.
Daniel snorted. “Hardly. My uncle is ransoming eight thousand pounds left me by my mother, if I behave.”
The marquess went still and then tossed his head back, howling with laughter until tears seeped from the corners of his eyes. “Oh, this is rich. And here, members of the ton befuddled by it all. Of course, you’d only ever be driven by a wager.”
“Of course,” he repeated tightly. Had the other man always been this bloody aggravating? Mayhap Daniel would rather do with St. Albans’ concerned probing than this prig’s taunting. He took a long sip.
“There have been wagers placed,” Tennyson said without preamble. How many times had he planted information to aid Daniel in a bet placed at White’s or Brook’s? He’d long been without the moral scruples to feel humility at cheating another lord.
In the past, it had filled Daniel with a thrill of certain wicked victory. Now, it left him oddly bitter. “Wagers?” he drawled because really, something was expected of him.
“About you,” the marquess clarified, motioning over a scantily clad beauty with red hair and crimson lips.
He gritted his teeth. Must the woman have goddamned red hair? “Oh?” he forced that reply out in bored tones.
“About the young woman you’ve hired.” Tennyson accepted the glass from the lush creature and tugged her unceremoniously onto his lap. She let out a little squeal and then promptly layered herself to the young lord, nuzzling his neck while she worked her hands over his body.
Bloody hell. Now Tennyson would drag Daphne through his thoughts. With a scowl, he poured himself another whiskey and took a quick drink.
The marquess shoved the whore off his knee and then swatted her on the backside, sending her off. He sighed. “The wagers are rich on how soon you’ll debauch your sister’s companion and where.”
Daniel inhaled his swallow and dissolved into a fit, strangling on his spirits until tears flooded his eyes. He set his glass down hard and liquid sloshed over the rim of the glass.
The marquess sat sipping away, indifferent to his gasping, heaving attempts for breath. The ton was well within their right to question Daniel’s intentions toward any young woman, but having Daphne’s name thrown about cast a haze of red over his vision.
After he managed to draw in a shuddery breath, Tennyson dragged his chair closer. He stole a glance about. “Eight thousand pounds is a near fortune, but,” he dangled that one word. “We can manipulate the wagering to secure you a sizeable sum that doesn’t require you to behave.” The other man waggled his blond eyebrows. “Anything but.” Of course, with the other man being an equal wastrel also with depleting coffers, he’d stand to earn nothing from Daniel honoring the terms set forth by his uncle. It was no secret to Society that Tennyson had entered the Marriage Market in search of a biddable miss with a fat dowry.
“You’d have me throw away eight thousand pounds to secure you a few hundred?”
The marquess slapped his hand to his chest. “I’m insulted, chap. I’d wager far more than a few hundred pounds on a sure bet.”
Daniel had influenced more wagers than most bookkeepers could properly track. Odd, he had never felt any compunction about a bet; neither the type, nor amount, nor persons involved.
Until now.
Tennyson and the ton would turn him into the very man who’d once ruined Daphne. And, mayhap, he had some good left in his soul after all, because even as he wanted to bury himself between her welcoming thighs, he could never be the man to ruin her on a wager. To keep from burying his fist in the marquess’ blasted face, Daniel balled his hands tight. “I am not debauching my sister’s companion,” he said icily. Even breathing the possibility of it aloud sent nausea roiling through him in waves.
Understanding registered in Tennyson’s cold blue eyes. “Ah, I see.”
Do not ask. Do not ask. Let the matter die…
“What do you see?” he snapped.
“She is long in the tooth.”
“She is not—” Daniel snapped his mouth closed so quickly, his jaw ached. He’d said too much and the hard grin on the marquess’ lips said as much.
“Then, I suspect eight thousand pounds is an exorbitant amount to throw away on a straitlaced spinster. Though, there is something,” he smacked his lips, “delicious in breaking those ladies free of their constraints, isn’t there?”
Actually, he couldn’t say. He’d never bothered with the reproachful ladies and their disapproving eyes. “I am sorry to disappoint,” he said with a
droll edge, setting down his glass. “But I’ve no intention of corrupting my sister’s companion, nor accepting any wager that would compromise,” Daphne’s reputation, “my uncle’s funds,” he settled for. “Now, if you’ll pardon me,” he said, shoving to his feet before the other man could launch a series of comments or questions about Daphne that would earn him a fist in the face.
Tennyson inclined his head, but he’d already shifted his attention to the nearby whore, sauntering by.
Daniel stalked through the crowded hell. The disreputable club was heavy with the thick plume of smoke from too many cheroots. The acrid smell blended with the pungent odor of floral fragrances worn by the women working the floors. Such scents had never bothered him before. Now, they invaded his senses so that he increased his stride, eager to step out the doors and draw in a cleansing breath.
He gathered his hat from a servant and jammed it atop his head. Then, shrugging into his cloak, he fastened it at his throat. The guard at the front held the door open in anticipation of Daniel’s exit and he stepped outside. He paused, blinking to adjust his eyes to the darkened London streets. Filled with a restiveness, he motioned to the street urchin waiting with his mount. The boy rushed over and handed over the reins. Daniel fished around inside his jacket and withdrew a guinea. He held the coin out, when his gaze snagged on the emblazoned George III. Tucking it back inside, he reached for another.
The boy coughed loudly, holding his fingers out.
Daniel dropped the different coin into his palm and climbed astride his mount. Perhaps it was the impending financial doom which hovered, only just now really acknowledged by him. Or mayhap, it was the tiresome company of Lords Tennyson and Webb, discussing the same wicked topics, seeking out the same wanton pleasures, but with each stride that carried him farther and farther away from the unfashionable end of London, which had always been home, some of the tension eased in his chest.
For the first time, ever, as he reined in Satan, there was a greater ease in being at his white stucco townhouse than his clubs. Daniel dismounted and a waiting servant came to gather the reins. Cloak whipping wildly at his ankles, he strode up the steps and through the doors opened by his butler. “Tanner,” he greeted, turning over his cloak and hat to the tired-eyed servant.
To Redeem a Rake (The Heart of a Duke Book 11) Page 17
