Never Romance a Rake

by Liz Carlyle

  Camille dredged up her resolve. “I am Dorothy’s daughter,” she said, keeping her voice emotionless. “I arrived in London some weeks past. I would have called upon you as a courtesy to tell you so, but I understood you were in the country.”

  “So I was.” Halburne narrowed his eyes. “Might I ask why you’ve come to London after all these years?”

  Camille hesitated. She had expected indignation—perhaps even outright dismissal—but not this combative suspicion. “I came to be married,” she said. “My father brought—”

  “Your father?” he said sharply.

  Camille felt her cheeks grow warm. She felt like the worst sort of fool. “The Comte de Valigny, oui.” On impulse, she jerked to her feet. “I beg your pardon. This was a mistake, monsieur. I came merely to apologize in advance for the gossip which my presence—and my father’s—will inevitably generate. If I could spare you from it, I would.”

  “I am afraid I don’t perfectly understand, Lady Rothewell.”

  Camille had already started toward the door, but she stopped and turned around. Halburne’s hand was clutching his chair arm as if he meant to spring from his seat, but he did not.

  “My mother was a vain and foolish woman, monsieur, but I loved her,” she finally said. “And yet one cannot be insensible to the…the inconvenience, I suppose, which her behavior caused you. I regret it. That is all I wished to say.”

  At that, Lord Halburne did jerk from his chair. “Good God!” he said affectedly, pacing toward the front windows. “The inconvenience? The inconvenience?”

  Camille watched the stiff set of his posture. “Whatever one would properly call it, my lord, I do not wish to make it worse,” she said quietly. “Bonjour, Lord Halburne. I shall find my way out.”

  “Wait.” His voice was gruff; he still would not look at her. “What…What did she tell you of me?”

  Camille shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Little, my lord,” she said. “Indeed, she rarely spoke of her life in England.”

  “Little?” he rasped. “Not how we met? What I looked like? How long I courted her?”

  Camille swallowed hard. “Non, monsieur.”

  At last he turned from the window. “Did she tell you why we parted?”

  Camille hesitated, then hung her head. “Oui,” she whispered. “Because she wished to go with Valigny to France.”

  Halburne set his fingers to his temple. “But he never loved her. Never. It was…just a lark to him.” The man was shaking now. “All of life was but a lark to him. For God’s sake, could none of you see that?”

  “Maman could not, monsieur,” said Camille quietly.

  Halburne came away from the window then and paced twice across the drawing room. Camille was uncertain what she should do. Stay? Go quietly? Tell him to go to hell? But that would not do. And in truth, she understood much of his anger and confusion.

  Suddenly, Halburne stopped pacing. “She was just too young,” he muttered. “Just seventeen, and I nearer thirty, and far too stern. I know that now. And I was not a handsome man, God knows. But after all those months—when she finally said yes—I…I thought she meant it.”

  Camille did not know what to say. She wished very desperately she had never come here to witness this man’s pain. “I am so sorry, monsieur.”

  Halburne’s jaw was set at a grim angle now. “I forgave her, at first,” he gritted, turning to face her. “Did you know that? Did she tell you?”

  “Non, monsieur.” Camille dropped her gaze. “She did not.”

  His hand was clenched into a fist. “Valigny left me no choice but to demand satisfaction,” he gritted. “But I brought Dorothy back here. To start again. To wait out the duel and the gossip. I was willing. I loved her that much. But even then, her only thought was for Valigny. She begged me to spare him.”

  Camille tried to smile sympathetically. “She never realized he would fire first.”

  “Fire first?” Halburne looked at her incredulously. “The notion is ludicrous! I was known to be a crack shot. No, I deloped. I did what Dorothy asked. I fired into the air.”

  “I…I beg your pardon?”

  “I deloped,” Halburne slowly repeated. “Then the bastard shot me.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Camille sank into a nearby chair, horrified.

  It was the worst breach of gentlemanly etiquette imaginable. To shoot an unarmed man? Particularly one who had just forgiven so egregious an insult?

  “Your…you arm?” she managed to whisper.

  Halburne gave a terse nod. “The shot severed an artery,” he said. “They said it was hopeless. That I was as good as dead. Dorothy fled with Valigny to France.”

  Camille swallowed hard. “What madness!” she whispered.

  The earl misunderstood. “What choice did I have?” he asked. “Had I killed him as he deserved, he would have died a romantic death—a poet’s death—and she would never have forgiven me. I could not win. I know that now.”

  He was quite right. Camille wished the earth would open and swallow her whole. She opened her mouth to say something—anything—but words failed her.

  At last, Halburne approached her. “But after all these years, Lady Rothewell, there is still one thing I cannot fathom.”

  “What is that, monsieur?”

  “Why did your mother never marry him?” His voice was hoarse now. “Wasn’t that what she wanted? I divorced her. By God, I set her free. And yet she did nothing.”

  Camille swallowed hard. “Valigny, too, was divorced,” she whispered. “He lied to Maman, saying he’d learnt the church would not permit him to wed again. Maman discovered his perfidy years later. It was…the final blow.”

  Yes, the final blow indeed. To her mother’s love for Valigny. To her very life, really. But if Camille had expected triumph to flare in Halburne’s eyes, she was mistaken. The heated emotion turned to pity.

  “And so she knew,” he rasped. “In the end, she knew. Our lives—yours and mine—perhaps even hers—all were ruined. And for what? Nothing but a lark.”

  Camille looked away. “The truth, I think, sent her to an early grave.”

  Halburne collapsed slowly into a chair. “So she is dead, then?” he said hollowly. “I knew, of course, from your words that she was.”

  “Oui, monsieur,” said Camille quietly. “She is dead.”

  Lord Halburne did not respond.

  “Monsieur?”

  But Halburne was a beaten man. He would not so much as look at her.

  Camille left him sitting limply in a chair, his shoulders slumped forward, his eyes unseeing. This time when she told him good-bye, he said nothing.

  Halburne’s entrance hall was blessedly empty. No one having bothered to take them, Camille still carried her cloak and umbrella. So she simply let herself out, wondering what manner of harm she had just done—to herself, and worse, to Lord Halburne.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In which Lady Rothewell stands Firm

  Camille arrived home to find the house as empty as she had left it. Alone, she moved restlessly from room to room, picking up her books and her letters—anything to occupy her mind—and finding solace in nothing until some hours later, Chin-Chin came up from the kitchens to comfort her.

  She sat with the dog in her lap until well past dark, eschewing dinner, then finally going to bed sometime past midnight. It was scarcely the first night she had passed in this house without her husband—without even knowing where he had gone, or whose bed he might be warming. So why tonight did it feel such a tragedy?

  Because of last night. Because of the day they had spent together. And because she wished desperately to talk to him about Halburne. She had needed a shoulder—and now she fully understood that only his would do. But perhaps Kieran was sending her a message? He had never intended to get so close. Could he be drawing back from her, perhaps, in the only way he knew how?

  She rolled over again in the big, too-empty bed, and drew Chin-Chin against her side. The dog snorted sympathet
ically and licked her cheek.

  “Oh, Chin-Chin,” she whispered. “What a fool I was to imagine I could do this—marry a man I was altogether too attracted to—then keep my distance.”

  No, there was no distance—not on her part. And sometimes, she believed, not on his. To console herself, she got up and pushed open the connecting door to Kieran’s room so that she might hear him if he returned. Back in bed, Camille sighed and stared into the low fire, which flickered in the hearth. But she kept seeing Lord Halburne’s stark, grief-stricken face in the flames and had to roll over and confront the grim emptiness of her room.

  Once again, as she had been throughout most of her marriage—perhaps most of her life—Camille was alone, save for the dog. But Chin-Chin was lightly snoring now. Camille tucked him tight against her and tried to go to sleep.

  It was almost dinnertime the follow day when Rothewell made his way back from Surrey. He had been a fool to hope to make the journey down in one day, even without the rain. In Berkeley Square, he leapt down with only a little more grace than he had done at Selsdon Court, and looked only marginally better, he suspected. Fighting to stand straight, he passed the carriage off to a waiting footman and went gingerly up the steps to see that Trammel awaited him.

  “My lord.” The butler all but winced as his gaze swept over him. “You look—”

  “Never mind that,” Rothewell interjected, pushing past him. “Where is my wife?’

  Trammel followed him up the stairs. “Lady Sharpe came for tea,” he explained. “She insisted Lady Rothewell return with her to Hanover Street for cards and dinner.”

  Camille, gone? Rothewell stopped, his heart sinking with disappointment. He had rushed back to London with pain burning a hole from his belly to his backbone, and a vise round his heart, longing for Camille. He had simply assumed she…but how arrogant of him.

  His shoulders fell. Good God, he felt at death’s door. He wanted…her. Simply her—selfish though such a desire might have been. He strolled along the empty passageway of his home, listening to the hollow echo of his bootheels on the fine wood floors. The sound of an empty house. The sound of what his life had once been.

  Was it too late, he wondered, for him and Camille? Too late for them to find their way into each other’s hearts? And was it even fair to her that he should contemplate trying? His days were numbered, and there was little, it seemed, to be done about it.

  Just then, a spasm of pain wracked him. Rothewell floundered, the corridor swimming dizzily before him. “Christ!” he choked, his hand clawing at the balustrade.

  “My lord.” Trammel caught him by the arm. “Let’s get you into bed.”

  Rothewell forced himself upright and shook him off. “Just fetch me my brandy,” he rasped. “I don’t want a damned nursemaid, Trammel. I can put myself to bed.”

  But the gnawing beast had been his constant companion the past day or more, and Rothewell knew it was gaining in strength. There was no escaping it this time, he feared. Even Gareth had seen the fiend at work. Rothewell had passed a nearly sleepless night at Selsdon, and had found himself unable to eat much more than dry toast this morning.

  Trammel, however, did not fetch his brandy, and for all his high talk, Rothewell wasn’t sure he could stomach it anyway. Instead, the butler busied himself by going unobtrusively about his job; drawing down the bedcovers, removing Rothewell’s boots, then laying out a fresh nightshirt. Perhaps Trammel knew the signs, for within the hour, Rothewell was heaving up bloody bile, nearly doubled by the agony. When at last the spasms relented, he found himself in bed, the shafting pain dulled to a sickening ache.

  The dog lay upon the coverlet, his chin upon his paws, staring forlornly up at him.

  “Well, what do you make of it, Jim?’ Rothewell rasped, when Trammel went downstairs again. “Am I to meet Old Scratch before the night’s out? Or do they mean to torture me a while yet?”

  The tiny spaniel made a strange sound, something between a howl and a whine, and inched farther up the bedcovers. Rothewell closed his eyes and laid his hand over the dog’s silky head. He shared the spaniel’s sentiments. He had spent the better part of his life hell-bent on killing himself—and now that life had suddenly become worth living, he was fairly confident he had succeeded.

  In Hanover Street, Camille had just taken three tricks in a row and was passing the deal to Lord Sharpe when his butler entered the drawing room. He bent low over the card table, holding a silver salver in her direction. “A note for you, my lady,” he said. “From Mr. Trammel.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Lady Sharpe. “What can it be?”

  Camille’s eyes darted over it. “Rothewell is ill,” she said, jerking to her feet. “Mon Dieu, I must go.”

  Within two minutes, she was bundled back into her cloak and out the door, having gently but firmly refused Lady Sharpe’s offers to accompany her. Her heart was in her throat. It must be very bad indeed for Trammel to have sent for her.

  She arrived home to find one of the footmen hovering at the front door.

  “Where is Trammel?” she asked, stripping off her gloves.

  “Upstairs, ma’am.” The footman lifted her cloak from her shoulders. “He says to tell you that his lordship is resting comfortably now.”

  “Merci.” Camille hastened up the stairs and turned down the passageway. Trammel met her by Kieran’s door, his brow deeply furrowed. “How is he?” she demanded. “What happened?”

  Trammel gave a stiff half bow. “He went down to Selsdon Court, my lady,” he said quietly, “and was taken ill on the drive, I collect. But this time, the pain was slow to abate. I believe he suffered terribly last night.”

  Camille’s eyes darted toward the door. “Alors, he is retching blood?” she asked. “Tell me the truth, Trammel.”

  The butler nodded. “Not a great deal—it never is—but the spell has lasted longer than before.” Then he leaned into her. “I did not tell him I sent for you, ma’am.”

  Camille set her hand on the butler’s forearm. “And he does not need to know, n’est-ce pas?”

  She went in to find Kieran’s lamp turned down and a warm fire blazing in the grate. The covers were drawn halfway up his chest, and one hand rested upon Chin-Chin’s back. Seeing Camille, the dog lifted his head and wagged. Kieran’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Aye, he sent for you didn’t he?” Kieran muttered, surveying her approach. “Damned interfering old hen. I’m well enough now.”

  Camille settled onto the edge of his bed and took his free hand in hers. He was colorless and a little drawn, but otherwise seemed himself. “If you have enough energy to complain of the servants, mon chéri, perhaps you have enough energy to tell me where you have been? And how you came to be ill?” she gently suggested. “And kindly do not tell me it is none of my business. I think I have decided that it is going to become my business.”

  He cut a dark, irritated gaze at her, but a smile, she thought, toyed at one corner of his mouth. “And how long have we been married?” he complained. “A month?”

  Camille pursed her lips. “Thereabouts,” she remarked. “My questions, s’il vous plaît?”

  After a moment, the dark gaze relented. He closed his eyes, and squeezed her hand affectionately. “I went down to Selsdon.”

  “Oui, but where is that?”

  “Warneham’s estate,” he answered. “Down in Surrey.”

  “I see,” she said quietly. “In the future, would you be so kind as to leave word for me?”

  A ragged sigh escaped his chest. “I thought—foolishly, as it happened—that I could get back in one day if I pressed on.”

  “But you did not,” she said calmly. “And I have been very worried.”

  “Have you, my dear?” A faint smile curved his mouth. “No one has ever worried about me before.”

  “Xanthia does,” she softly challenged. “When you will allow it.”

  But the fact was, Camille inwardly acknowledged, he spoke the truth. For much of his life, Kieran had h
ad almost no one in his life to care whether he lived or died.

  Suddenly he stirred, withdrawing his hand from hers, and pushing up in the bed. “Speaking of my sister, there are some papers inside my coat,” he said, nodding toward a side chair. “Be so good as to fetch them, will you?”

  Camille hesitated. “Non,” she said. “No papers. Not until we discuss your illness.”

  He sucked in air through his teeth. “Just…please do as I ask, Camille,” he said. “And then—well, we shall see.”

  Reluctantly, Camille rose, and the dog leapt down to follow her, his tiny claws tapping on the wood floor, an incongruously merry sound. Kieran’s coat hung over the chair, and inside the pocket, she found a fat fold of papers. She took them back to the bed, wondering if she should have refused him. But she had questions—and for once, perhaps, he seemed disposed to actually answer them. After that would come the argument about a doctor—and it was going to be a short one, she vowed.

  She handed the fold of papers to him, stroked a hand over his face, then perched herself on the bed.

  “I had to discuss this with Gareth first,” he said, passing the first several pages to her. “This is a conveyance for my share of Neville Shipping. The second is for ownership of this house. Xanthia needs to sign the last, but she will. Gareth shall be your trustee.”

  Camille looked at him blankly. “I—I do not understand.”

  “They are yours now,” he said quietly. “Take them.”

  “Pourquoi?” she asked, confused. “I do not understand, Kieran. I am your wife.”

  His lips thinned, and fleetingly, his eyes closed. “Camille, I want those things in your name,” he said fervently. “Everything else I own is entailed to a son—and if I have no son, to some distant relation whose name I don’t even know.”

  She nodded. “Oui, I understand this is the English law.”

  He reached out again for her hand. “God forbid the worst happens, I want these things clearly separate from the barony,” he said. “I want there to be no question but that this is your home, and that my share of Neville’s assets now belongs to you. They are not part of the entail, and they were not acquired with entailed assets.”