Where was he? His portmanteau was still here, she realised hopefully. Except that to someone as rich as Rafe, a portmanteau or two was neither here nor there. Probably he had lots more of them in his London house. Which was probably where he was now.
Well, if he had abandoned her—though she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that he had—then she’d just have to set about sorting things out herself. ‘It’s what I was going to do, anyway, before he came along,’ Henrietta said stoutly, plumping the pillow, which refused to be plumped, ‘so there’s absolutely no cause to be downhearted.’ But despite the fact that she knew Benjamin Forbes would do his best, it wasn’t quite the same as having Rafe by her side. Although she had known him for only a few days, and although she had thought herself quite inured to coping alone, the prospect of not seeing him again was most melancholy.
A spark of indignation flickered in her breast. How dared he do this to her? How dared he make her feel so—so—whatever it was he made her feel—and then just walk away. How dared he!
She plumped the pillow again. Then she buried her head under it, in an effort to stop herself thinking. Then she began to fret about how she would pay her shot. And then, finally, exhausted by all the thinking, Henrietta fell asleep.
Chapter Six
She was woken a few hours later, as dawn was rising, by a rattling at the door of the bedchamber. Startled, she sat up, her heart pounding, thinking she must have been dreaming. But the rattling came again, then a heavy fist pounded on the door.
Shaking, she edged from the bed and picked up the pewter candlestick, before creeping over to the door. The handle shook. ‘Go away,’ she hissed, so quietly that it was not surprising when the handle shook again. ‘Go away,’ she said, more loudly this time, ‘or I’ll scream.’
‘Open the door, Henrietta.’
‘Rafe?’
‘Dammit, open the door before I break it down.’
Relief made her clumsy as she fumbled with the lock. Still holding her candlestick in one hand, she peered out into the corridor. It was him, leaning heavily on the doorframe. ‘Where have you been?’ He pushed the door open and stumbled over the threshold. Only then did she smell the brandy on his breath. ‘You’ve been drinking!’
‘Your powers of observation never fail to amaze me,’ Rafe slurred, staggering towards the bed. ‘I have indeed been drinking, Henrietta Markham. I have, in point of fact, been drinking copiously.’
‘That much is obvious,’ she said, pushing the door to and pulling back the curtains in order to let in the grey dawn light.
‘An enormous amount,’ Rafe agreed, dropping on to the bed and nodding vehemently. ‘And you know what? It still wasn’t enough.’ He tried to rise, but his foot slipped.
Henrietta caught him just before he fell on to the floor. With an immense effort, she managed to push him back on to the bed, which he promptly tried to get back up from. ‘More brandy, that’s what I need.’
‘That’s the last thing you need,’ Henrietta replied, pushing him with a bit more force.
He fell on to his back with a look of extreme surprise, which made her giggle. ‘What are you laughing at?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, quickly covering her mouth.
‘I like the way you laugh, Henrietta Markham,’ Rafe said with a lopsided grin.
‘I like the way you laugh, Rafe St Alban, though you don’t do it nearly enough. You should try to sleep. You’ll have a terrible head in the morning.’
‘Got a terrible head now,’ Rafe muttered, ‘far too many unpleasant things whirling around inside it. All your fault.’
Endearing. It was not a word she’d ever have thought to associate with him, but that is how he looked, with his hair standing up on end and his neckcloth rumpled and his waistcoat half-undone. The stubble on his jaw was dark, almost bluish. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes slumberous. He looked younger and somehow vulnerable, the way his arms were spread out as if in surrender, one long leg sprawled across the bed, the other dangling over the edge. Henrietta edged closer. ‘Rafe, I was worried about you.’
‘Come here.’
She hadn’t thought him capable of moving so quickly. Before she could get out of his reach, he had grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down on to the bed beside him. Her breath left her in a whoosh. She was pretty certain she must look every bit as surprised as he had done only a moment before.
‘Ha! That showed you, Henrietta Markham.’
‘Let me go, Rafe. And stop calling me that.’
‘Henrietta Markham. What else shall I call you? Miss Markham? Think we’ve gone beyond that one. Hettie? No, you’re not a Hettie. Hettie sounds like a great-aunt or a chambermaid. Henry? Nope. Nope. Nope. You feel far too feminine for that.’ Once more he took her by surprise, rolling her easily over so that she lay breast to breast, thigh to thigh, on top of him. ‘Nice,’ he murmured, running his hands over her, ‘you have a very, very nice bottom, did you know that?’
‘Rafe, stop it, you’re drunk.’
‘I am a little intoxicated, but that does not, I assure you most fervently, stop me from appreciating quite how delightful your bottom is. And, I may add, that touching it is quite delightfully delightful.’
His hands moulded her curves and settled her more firmly on top of him, and, though she knew he was in his cups, she couldn’t help agreeing with him. What he was doing was quite delightfully delightful. His coat buttons were pressing into her side. She could feel his fob chain and his watch on her stomach. His chin was rasping against her cheek. He smelled of smoke and brandy and man. Of Rafe.
There was something else pressing into her thigh. She wriggled, in a half-hearted effort to escape, but his hands remained firmly on her bottom, and the something got harder. She realised what it was then and felt herself get very, very hot. Her breasts were flattened against his chest, but still she could feel her nipples harden. She only hoped that brandy and a shirt and a waistcoat would prevent Rafe from noticing. She wriggled again, telling herself she really was trying to free herself, but succeeded only in making Rafe moan and heard herself moan, too, as his arousal pressed more insistently on her thigh.
Her flannel nightgown was getting caught up around her legs. Perhaps if she waited, he would just fall asleep? Cautiously, she lifted her head, only to be met with the glint of slate-blue eyes revealed by very unsleepy lids. ‘What are you going to do now, Henrietta? Wriggle some more? You have my permission to do so.’
‘Where were you, Rafe?’
‘My mind was clogged with poisonous memories. I thought to wash them away with brandy. It didn’t really work.’ He shrugged dejectedly. ‘Did you think I’d abandoned you?’
‘No. Yes, well, for a moment. But—no. You said you’d help me, so I knew you’d be back. Hoped you would be. Not that I couldn’t have managed on my own if you didn’t.’
‘But I said I’d take care of you,’ Rafe muttered, ‘so I did come back. You have no idea how much—how very much—I’d like to take care of you at this moment, Henrietta Markham. I did tell you not to trust me, did I not?’
His meaning was quite unmistakable. His meaning made her stomach clench in anticipation—and a little in trepidation. One hand was trailing up and down her spine. It was warm through her nightgown, yet it was making her shiver. And that feeling was back again, tingling and zinging and filling her with a sense of recklessness. How did he do that?
‘Do what?’ Rafe murmured, and she realised she’d spoken out loud again. ‘You mean this?’ he said with a wicked smile, and how he did it she had no idea, but his hands were on her spine and her bottom, only this time without any material between them.
‘Rafe!’ One sweeping stroke, from the base of her spine along her back and back down again, played havoc with her breathing. Another, and she felt she could not breathe at all. ‘Rafe,’ she said again, only this time it was not a protest, but something more akin to a plea. A plea he seemed to heed, for he rolled her over on to her back and now hi
s hands were on her sides, her flank, her stomach. ‘Rafe,’ she said, only it was more like a moan. And he moaned, too, cupping the weight of her breasts, his thumbs caressing the hard peaks of her nipples, setting her on fire with his touch, making her writhe and arch her back, and ache for more.
Rafe hitched her nightgown up further. In the pearly grey of the morning light, her skin seemed translucent. She was every bit as luscious, as perfectly curved, as agonisingly desirable, as he had imagined. He dipped his head, eager to take one of those rosy nipples into his mouth. He felt the rasp of his stubble on the tender flesh of the underside of her breast.
An image of himself, dishevelled and smelling of brandy, looking every bit the hardened rake Henrietta thought him, flashed into his mind and he paused. He would not. He could not. She did not deserve this. The demons she had aroused, the demons that sinking his aching shaft into her wet, welcoming flesh would exorcise, they were not her demons. He would not use her thus, no matter how much he yearned to.
Yearning. The word echoed round his mind as he pulled her nightgown back down, as he hoisted himself away from her too-tempting flesh, as he sat up shakily on the edge of the bed. Yearning. Not a word he normally associated with himself, but that’s what he felt, looking at her. For the union that would be, he knew, the most sensual of all unions. Yearning for the intimacy it would bring. Yearning to feel something. Anything. To give and to receive in return. Yearning, too, for what he had lost for ever. Innocence. Optimism. Idealism. A belief in love. She had them still. He could not deprive her of them, not like this.
‘I can’t,’ he said aloud.
‘Do you feel ill?’
Soft arms round his neck. Warmth against his back. The tickle of curls on his cheek. Rafe closed his eyes and groaned. She had taken him literally. Despite his patently obvious arousal tenting his breeches, she had taken him literally.
Sweet irony. He should be relieved, for it were better she thought him unable to perform than that he betray himself more completely. For she had been right, after all, Henrietta Markham—he was not the cold fish he thought himself.
‘Rafe, do you feel ill?’ Henrietta asked, slipping off the bed to kneel before him, testing his forehead with the back of her hand.
‘Sick to the very pit of my soul, Henrietta Markham, that is how I feel.’
‘Let me take care of you.’
He allowed her to help him with his boots. He allowed her to help him out of his coat and waistcoat, but not his breeches. He allowed her to tuck him into the bed, to bathe his brow and to pull the covers gently over him. He closed his eyes as she lay down beside him, not touching him, but not putting the pillow between them, either. The world swam. He closed his eyes tighter. Blackness, welcome, brandy-induced oblivion awaited him. He succumbed willingly to its siren call.
* * *
Rafe woke with a start. His head was pounding, his eyes felt as if they had been filed vigorously with a large rasp and his stomach was most decidedly queasy. He had drunk an immense amount of Benjamin’s French cognac, far more than was his wont, for he hated to be foxed. Clutching his head, he rolled out of bed and only then realised he was quite alone in the room. Fumbling for his watch, which was still on its fob in his waistcoat pocket, he saw that it was just a little before noon and cursed quietly, fervently hoping that Henrietta had had the sense not to leave the inn without him.
Henrietta. As he tugged his shirt over his head, he remembered, and groaned. What had he said? Splashing tepid water over his face, snippets of the conversation—if one could call it a conversation—popped into his head, making him wince. He’d left her alone all night. She’d have been perfectly justified in being angry with him, but she’d refrained from uttering even one harsh word. Casting a quick glance around the room, he was relieved beyond proportion to see her shabby bandbox still sitting in the corner, her cloak still draped over the chair.
He rang for fresh water; when it arrived, satisfactorily hot and plentiful, he stripped off his clothes and scrubbed himself thoroughly before shaving. A fresh shirt and neckcloth, clean hose, and he felt almost human again. Human enough for his body to stir at the recollection of Henrietta’s soft and luscious body pressed into his. Human enough to imagine what it might have been like had he not stopped himself. Human enough to be both relieved and rather astonished that he had stopped himself.
And then he remembered why he had been so drunk in the first place and groaned again. As he struggled into his boots, the guilt resettled, seeming to weigh even heavier on him than before. No doubt because he had allowed himself to recall the reasons for it. God dammit! The rawness of it all made him acutely aware, now, of how far below the surface he had buried it all. Made him realise, too, that his defences were just that: safeguards, but no solution. That the perpetual ennui he suffered was not boredom, but unhappiness.
Shrugging into his coat and brushing his hair, Rafe considered resorting to the brandy bottle again. Sweet oblivion. Except it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t understand why so many of his peers chose to dip so deep so often. All it gave you was nausea and a head that felt as if it would crack open like an egg. What it didn’t allow you to do was either escape or forget. In fact, he recalled with a shudder, the more he drank the more he remembered, all the tiny details he’d tried so very hard to obliterate.
Henrietta was the unwitting cause of it all, for he could see, even through his pain, that she had not meant to rake over his smouldering ashes. He could picture quite clearly the horror on her face. She had had no idea she was treading on forbidden ground. Why should she?
Ironically she was the balm, too, for she, and not the brandy, had finally given him the sweet oblivion he sought. Henrietta on top of him, under him, laughing with him, kissing him, in her hideous flannel nightgown and not in her hideous flannel nightgown. Then he had found something much more delightful to occupy his mind. Only then.
Sighing heavily, Rafe made his way downstairs to the coffee room. He needed breakfast. ‘And bring me a tankard of porter immediately,’ he said to the maidservant.
It arrived within a few moments and so, too, did Henrietta in her brown dress with her brown eyes—more cinnamon than chocolate today, he thought—fixed upon him sympathetically. ‘Have you a very sore head?’
Relieved, but not very surprised to discover that she was not the type of female to raise her grudges when a man was at his lowest, Rafe attempted a smile. ‘Extremely,’ he said wryly, ‘but it serves me right. Have you had breakfast?’
‘Ages ago. I’ve been helping Meg bake bread.’
‘Is there no end to your talents?’
‘Well, most people consider baking bread a basic skill, not a talent,’ Henrietta said, as she seated herself opposite him and poured them both coffee from the steaming pot that Bessie had just served. ‘I don’t have any real talents. I can’t play upon the pianoforte—in fact, Mama says I’m tone deaf—and although I can stitch a straight seam, I can’t embroider.’
‘And you can’t dance, either,’ Rafe reminded her.
‘Well, I can only assume I cannot,’ she pointed out, ‘given that I’ve never had the opportunity to find out.’
‘Would you like the opportunity?’
‘Would you teach me?’ she asked with a twinkle. ‘Only I’m not so very sure that you’d be a particularly patient teacher, especially not at this precise moment. Probably, you’d end up furious with me.’ Her face fell. ‘Actually, that’s pretty much guaranteed, because you always end up furious with me. I don’t know how it is…’
‘Any more than I do,’ Rafe said feelingly. ‘Perhaps it is your tendency to say the most outrageous things.’
‘I don’t. I don’t mean to. I just—’
‘Say what you think. I know.’ Rafe took a sip of coffee. It was hot and bitter. ‘Contrary to what you are thinking, I like it. Most of the time. I’m getting used to it. It’s refreshing in its own way. Like this coffee.’ He took another sip. The ache in his head was beginning to
subside. He realised that Henrietta had not once, since that fateful morning when he had found her in the ditch, complained about her own headache, which must have been considerably more painful. And he hadn’t thought to ask. He took another sip of coffee. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Her startled look would have made him smile had it not first made him feel guilty. ‘Sorry for what?’
‘I shouldn’t have gone off and left you alone like that last night.’
‘You asked Mr Forbes to check up on me. He did. Often.’
‘You’re very generous. More generous than I deserve.’
‘And you must be very hung-over to be so complimentary,’ Henrietta said, with a chuckle.
He did not deserve such understanding. For a brief moment, he had the most bizarre wish that he did. ‘I don’t make a habit of getting so disguised,’ he said. ‘You have every right to be disappointed in me.’
Henrietta grinned. ‘It helped to know that an appropriate punishment surely awaited you in the morning.’
Rafe’s real smile made a brief appearance. ‘Then you should be more than content, for I am paying a heavy price indeed.’
‘Is it very painful? Shall I fetch you a compress?’
‘Good God, no. What I need is some breakfast, that should do the trick.’ He released her hand and sat back in his seat, his long legs sprawled in front of him.
‘I heard Mr Forbes tell Meg to give you three eggs, he said you’d need them,’ Henrietta informed him helpfully.
‘Benjamin Forbes is a very wise man.’
Henrietta picked up a knife and put it down again. Rafe looked paler than usual. His eyelids were heavier. He had cut himself shaving. A tiny nick, just below his ear. ‘I was angry with you for a while last night,’ she confessed. ‘I am sorry, Rafe, but you cannot have expected me to know… .’
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