Chapter Five
Conscience makes cowards of us all.
“Do you wish to explain, Alex dear, why we are attending a musical soirée at the Beckfords’? Aren’t they the same family you invited to my little rout last year?”
“No and yes.”
On hearing his mother sigh, the Duke of Rakecombe fiddled with his jet cufflink, the carriage veering around a corner. No doubt Mother would love to hear how his prized walking cane had ended up in Miss Quinlan’s possession. She’d clap her hands in glee at his lack of concentration and furthermore deduce false suppositions.
His plan for tonight was simple: Eat. Snooze. Retrieve. Depart.
“Their daughter married the Earl of Kelmarsh, didn’t she?” Mother pestered. “And they have no other daughter, do they?”
“Yes and no.”
The carriage rumbled over cobbles, causing his crumpet to throb and reminding him the ducal transport needed to be re-sprung. One of the miscreants from last night must have caught him a blow, as his eye socket had a bluish tinge and ached like the very devil.
“Hmm,” his mother murmured in that way his mother always murmured when she was pondering.
He glanced across and met her thoughtful eyes, knowing his own capability for insight had not been inherited from his father’s side.
“Perhaps I simply require some edible food?” he muttered. Indeed, he was so damn peckish, his gizzards felt like his throat had been cut.
She laughed lightly.
His mother, despite the past turmoil of their lives, still held a ready smile, and he wondered how she did it.
Lines creased the corners of her eyes, her blond hair slowly fading to ash, but when she smiled, she appeared years younger. The Earl of Fotherington had been courting her for three Seasons.
With cautious eyes, he watched her tap a satin-gloved finger against her mouth. “Are there any other ladies attending who hold your interest?”
Luck was with him, as the coach swayed and jolted to an abrupt halt, terminating his mother’s interrogation. If she received any inkling as to the reason for tonight, the barrage of questions would be prodigious.
A footman lowered the steps and he made his escape before holding out a hand. Mother descended, graceful as ever, and stood beside him, gazing at the Beckfords’ elegant but petite house on Conduit Street.
Her satin glove patted his side. “Well, I trust you implicitly, Alex dear. So, if we need to be here, then here we are.”
Guilt clenched at him for a time. Why did Mother hold such trust when he’d betrayed it so gravely in the past? “Mama–”
“I do remember meeting the Beckfords at my rout, very nice people. Didn’t they have an Irish relative with them, as well? A pretty, dark-haired girl. A Miss…now what was it?”
A trap. A deadly trap. More fatal than a Rookery snare. And coming from Mother, not a very subtle one.
The question was whether he should fall into it or skirt the precipitous edge. He’d try the latter. “A Miss Quinlan, I vaguely recall.”
She glanced up, eyes twinkling. “Why, yes, dear. Is she here also?”
The trap widened, edge falling away. “Mother, she is an Irish nobody.” There, that should put paid to any flawed thoughts.
“Hmm.” She tapped his arm smartly with her fan. “And I was a Welsh nobody, so don’t take that attitude with me, young Alexander Westhide.”
Feeling all of ten years of age, he took his mother’s hand and kissed the back. “And Father could not have chosen anyone better.”
She beamed up at him and clucked his chin – about the furthest she could reach. “When will you men ever learn,” she said. “I chose him, dear.”
Fountain. Hour of ten.
R.
Aideen gazed at the note, the bare words so at odds with the curled ornate writing. The tail of the R swished across the notepaper, bold and rampant.
The demanding devil.
Smiling, she burned it in the low fire of the drawing room, recognising his tactics. Her father often used the same. Control. Even if one doesn’t hold all the cards, issue commands and the control shifts, so subtle one hardly notices.
With a shrug, she turned to survey the guests. The earlier arrival of the Duchess of Rakecombe and her son had caused a rapid chirping to ripple the room.
The Beckfords were already acquainted with the duke, but never would he have graced them with his presence without a little…persuasion.
Aideen had considered many ways to return the cane: she could have merely asked him to call, but where was the fun in that? Yet easier, an errand boy could have delivered it to him with red bow attached – no need to even see his scowling face.
But Mrs Beckford had been feeling cheerless at not having her daughter with them this Season, and Mr Beckford had lost eight guineas at piquet again, so what better way to cheer them up?
A difference of opinion as to what the pianoforte considered to be the high note and what Miss Gibbon sang caused Aideen to wince, and she plonked herself down next to Cordelia at the back of the room.
Tapping her foot in time with the wailing, an astonishingly beribboned Cordelia nudged close. “Thank you so much for the poems. However did you recover them?”
Oh, I wickedly stole into a viscountess’s room, kissed a duke and stared at thighs in tight pantaloons.
“Pfff, ’twas nothing,” she replied.
Aideen snuck a glance at said duke, also lounging at the back. An array of food had been laid out before the music had begun and he’d scoffed – if a peer of such high rank could be said to scoff – the lot.
Now he sprawled replete, eyes closed. It didn’t appear to be wholly boredom, but an outright weariness, not helped by his sombre clothes.
A wave of sadness engulfed her.
Had she really asked him here for the Beckfords’ social benefit? Or for herself?
His demanding kiss haunted her nights, his cold green eyes her days, and yet when they met, they fought like cat and dog.
Despite being the god-daughter of the noble Waterford family back home, and despite the fact Mama had been a baronet’s daughter, she was, in essence, an Irish nonentity as far as a duke was concerned.
And as such he would…could have no interest in her.
Cordelia clapped enthusiastically as the wailing ended and another young miss skipped to the pianoforte. Aideen glanced at the mantel clock. It was nearly upon the hour of ten, so she whispered to her friend of visiting the retiring room and headed off with heavy heart.
The Duke of Rakecombe strode out into the night, feeling somewhat…content.
After the over-capered sauce on his undercooked veal at home, the simple but delicious supper of the Beckfords had soothed his ire.
The claret had been damned good as well.
Now just his cane to collect, a rollicking spar of words with Miss Quinlan and all would be right with the world.
Of course, Napoleon always put a spoke in one’s wheel, but Winterbourne had hoofed it up north to locate Penbury, and so Rakecombe now focused on the search for Stafford here in London, although it had proved unproductive as yet.
Earlier in the day, he had been carped at by Stafford’s grizzled butler, who’d complained he’d not been paid for three weeks, that he couldn’t tend the closed-up house without a maid and that the kitchens had run out of apple butter jam. Sneezing, he’d also whined there was no coal. Rakecombe had never met such a sniveller.
Tomorrow he would visit coffee houses and force himself to drink the foul beverage whilst probing for gossip – surely someone had spied Stafford in London.
Time, he felt, was running out. That list of informants must be found.
Slowing his step, it wouldn’t do to seem eager, his gaze sought the small fountain at the back of the garden.
He halted in his tracks, all contentment dissipating in a moment – Deuced woman!
“What in the hell do you think you are doing?” He marched to Aideen, perched by a lantern on the stone plinth of the fountain.
Damn it, she’d unscrewed the finial of his cane and was prodding inside the neck.
“Arrah, no need to get your tight ducal pantaloons in a twist…Your Grace. I was simply checking the mechanism.”
He snatched the cane away and held out his hand for the silver dog finial. The wench just shrugged and passed it over.
“You can tell your Uncle Seamus,” he muttered, screwing it carefully back on, “that it works perfectly. I can’t believe he lets you work on these.”
“I loved this piece. It suits you. The adorable little puppy with jade eyes.”
“You insolent baggage…” He ceased roaring as twinkling obsidian eyes laughed up at him. His shoulders relaxed. “Miss Quinlan, you shall be the death of me. Baiting a duke is, I believe, frowned upon.”
“But you like it?” she asked, standing.
The scent of violets overwhelmed him, and as always when near Miss Quinlan, he became aware of the great danger she posed. From the very first time they’d met and she’d scolded him for looming, his long-practised reserve had begun to crack.
He liked her provoking words. He enjoyed her bold humour. He adored those tart lips.
All those scathing comments he had thought up last night came to the fore. He would tell her she was an Irish upstart, that he disliked conversing with someone so low in status. He would say her lips were too sour and that she wasn’t pretty. He would hiss he hated violets.
But they all dwindled to naught.
Ultimately, he was a coward who couldn’t bear to see hurt in her eyes. He was a coward every which way.
Rather than insults to push her away, he should tell her the truth – that in his life there was no room for a duchess, no room for entanglement.
Unlike his friend Kelmarsh, he didn’t want to relinquish his important work for the Crown; he needed it and in turn, the Crown needed him with his unique access to the upper echelons of society, but menace from the enemy or from dubious contacts stalked him always, so very close behind. A beloved could too easily step into their path.
“I’m grateful to you for retrieving my cane.”
She curtsied and then held out her hand. He took it, letting his eyes wander.
Some might say she wore a grey frock, yet all he saw was flashing silver, beckoning him like stars and deciding his fate.
But he knew where his fate lay.
This would be the last time, he vowed. He’d ask Rainham for a mission far away. She’d marry a safe gentleman with soft fingers and a mild manner, who didn’t brawl in St Giles on murky nights.
Miss Aideen Quinlan was not for him. Women were fragile. In public, he even kept a circumspect distance from his own mother so as not to bring danger upon her.
Bending, he lightly kissed her hand, when all he really wanted to do was pull her close, wrap his arms around her and see how long they could burn together. But control, the cornerstone of his life since his twenty-second year, fought passion, and passion fought that control.
A perceptible quiver ran through her. He was no innocent. He knew their sparks and baits were part of something bigger – craving, desire, need. It arced between them.
But lust could be restrained.
So he prepared to step back, to end it, when all of a sudden, delicate fingers brushed his eye.
“Have you been at an Irish wedding?”
“I beg your pardon?” He gazed confused, endeavouring to shy from her touch.
“They give out black eyes instead of favours – have you not heard it?”
He shook his head, and a hand caressed the bruise, lightly, tenderly.
“You must be careful, Your Grace.”
So long had it been since anyone had cared, so long since anyone had touched him with such utter gentleness. Because all he did was scare them away with harshness.
But there was no scaring away Aideen Quinlan and so with a groan and all reasoning forgotten, he pulled her close, threaded his eager fingers through her hair and kissed her with irresponsible carnal possession.
Aideen surrendered.
Determined lips smothered her own as a hand swept down her back, hauling her near.
She shouldn’t be surrendering: she should be biting that marauding tongue, pulling the finger back painfully on his seeking hand or bringing her knee up as his hips pressed.
But she couldn’t. Because this kiss was so all-consuming, so intoxicating.
When he’d brushed lips over her hand, he’d appeared sorrowful.
Lonely.
Father always said she had no tender feelings, that she wasn’t even a proper girl, let alone the boy he’d wished for, but her heart had wept at the duke’s bruised eye.
“Touch me again.”
The deep words growled against her mouth and she realised her hands had fallen quiet against his chest – confused and unknowing.
As his lips nuzzled her cheek, so she cradled the side of his face anew, brushing his puffy eye with sensitive fingers.
“More,” he groaned.
For once, she did as she was told, dragging her hand around and finding his nape, the hair ruthlessly short, no poetic curls for the Duke of Rakecombe. She liked it. The roughness against her fingers, and she dragged her nails along the edge.
“Aideen, you don’t–”
Never did she find out exactly what she didn’t, because his large hands cupped her bottom and drew her tight to his body – so tight she could feel his waistcoat buttons pressing, a light stubble grazing her neck and strong thighs pushing against her skirts.
His mouth returned, hard and seeking, tongue invading. No longer the Duke of Restraint but Recklessness. Rawness.
A hand now swept up her side, so she slipped an arm within his tailcoat, smoothing his spine as much as his fitted clothing would allow. It spurred him on and he nipped at her lip, thrust those slender hips, and heaven help her, she did the same.
Fingers scrabbled at her satin-clad shoulder but then suddenly stilled, utterly motionless. He panted harshly, and she glanced down.
The flawless white of her bared shoulder contrasted against his raw-red knuckles; one had bled a little, smearing her skin.
Returning her eyes to his, she could see disgust and horror, but was unsure of the cause. Her? The blood?
A female cultured voice rent the air. “Alexander!” A voice that demanded attention.
“Oh, Aideen…” A sigh of disappointment. Familiar.
“Ohhhh!” A squealy gasp. Not a clue.
Biliousness arose in Aideen’s stomach, and she wanted to bury her head in his waistcoat and never come out.
But Quinlans were cut from staunch cloth, and Uncle Seamus had forever said one should tell the truth and shame the devil, so as the duke drew back, she straightened her spine and faced their audience.
It was less numerous than she’d anticipated.
Three women: a saddened Mrs Beckford, a disgruntled-looking young debutante and the Duchess of Rakecombe. Aideen had a time discerning the latter’s expression – disapproving or amused, she couldn’t tell.
Expecting the duke to stand away, to deny his involvement…somehow, he instead clasped a hand around her wrist.
“Mother. You wished to know my reasons for attending tonight’s soirée?”
The duchess nodded, hesitant.
“It was to choose my wife.”