Page 33 of How to Court a Rake
‘Who won most often? Did you?’ she prompted, liking this glimpse into Caine’s past.
‘Most of the time until we were about sixteen and then Stepan started to outpace us, even though he was four years younger than I. But he loved the water, he was born for it. The rest of us just tried to dominate it, whereas he was one with it.’
Caine’s eyes sobered. ‘We were having a relay race—Stepan and Kieran against Lucien and I. Lucien raced Kieran and I raced Stepan, but in the middle of the race, I got a cramp. I couldn’t swim, I couldn’t tread water. I was too far from shore to go back and too far from the island to go forward. I might have drowned if it hadn’t been for Stepan. He came back for me, got an arm about me and found the strength to swim me to shore. No mean feat for a twelve-year-old given that I outsized him in every way.’
Mary gave a wistful sigh. How wonderful it must be to have brothers. She could hear his love for them in his words—his grief, too, because a person could not have one without the other. For all their rakish ways, the Parkhurst brothers were close, the family was close. Caine was close even with his grandfather. Despite his grandfather’s displeasure at their sudden arrival, there was something about the way the two men had spoken with each other, the way they simply were with each other when they shared space, that indicated a respect and love that transcended disagreement. So very different from her home, her family.
Caine looked off into the distance and she sensed he was remembering a different swim now, one much more recent and more deadly. ‘He was younger than I, but always protective of me, even though it was my job to be protective of him.’
Mary smiled softly. ‘You hate that, don’t you? Allowing others to take care of you.’
Caine cocked a dark brow. ‘I dislike others doing my job for me. I am the oldest, it’s my job to look out for them, all of them, whether they like it or not.’ As he’d looked out for her, whether she’d asked him to or not. He’d certainly gone above and beyond what she’d expected of him. What an interesting dichotomy that offered: a rake with a soul, a conscience. It was something to hold up against Lady Morestad’s claim of inconstancy.
Caine’s voice dropped and his words came slow and deliberate. ‘That night at Wapping…’
He chose each word with care, perhaps so as not to open himself up to grief.
Heaven forbid the great champion Caine Parkhurst be vulnerable, she thought, even as she found herself leaning forward, not wanting to miss a word.
Here was another secret she might add to her treasures.
‘We were on the dock and he said to me, “If it comes to swimming, you let me go in.” And he hasn’t come out. Yet.’
She reached for a strawberry, aware of the silence around them. One could hear the night birds begin their evensong, the gentle susurration of the lake water against the shore. She ought not probe, a young lady should avoid indelicate conversation, but perhaps that did Caine a disservice. Perhaps here, with the privacy of dusk settling around them, where no one could hear, it would be a kindness to ask the question, to give him a chance to talk about something that obviously troubled him deeply.
‘What happened in Wapping, Caine?’ Why had Stepan Parkhurst jumped into the water at midnight? What had been so urgent to call a gentleman away from a ball? What had been so dire it could not have waited until morning or even a few minutes?
‘Business for Grandfather.’ He held up the jug of lemonade, silently asking if she wanted more. It was an attempt at distraction. But she would not be diverted.
‘You can tell me, Caine. Youcantrust me. I’ve kept your secrets,’ she offered the reminder softly.
He set the jug aside and touched her good cheek with a gentle caress that sent her blood pounding. ‘It’s not that, Mary. Some secrets are not made to be shared.’
She would not get more than that from him. He was withholding for her sake, not his. He was protecting her again, this time with his words. He could not tell her because the secret was too big, too much of a burden. That was perhaps more frightening than whatever it was he felt he needed to hide.
‘You’re a complex man, Caine Parkhurst,’ she murmured, ‘I don’t think you’re all that London says you are.’ There were too many contradictions for that to be true.
‘Oh? And what do you think I am?’ Caine’s eyes glinted with amusement.
‘I think you are more, much more.’ She selected another berry. This one she held up to his lips, miming his earlier gesture, and watched his eyes go obsidian black, watched them drop to her own lips and linger. Her mouth went dry.
‘Mary, what are you doing?’ Caine’s voice had become a seductive rasp.
She wet her lips, her breath catching at the sight of desire stealing over him, naked want in his gaze. ‘I am claiming my forfeit.’ Her own voice was a sultry husk she hardly recognised, but then again, she was hardly herself these days; she was a new person since she’d met him.
‘Minx,’ he growled, taking a slow bite of the strawberry that left juice on her fingers. ‘You’ve already claimed your forfeit.’ His gaze held hers, hungry and hot. He took her wrist and drew her fingers to his mouth, licking them one by one, his tongue a wicked caress against her skin. Mary felt the heat of want and desire rise in her cheeks, stir low down in her belly, until she was boiling with it. She swallowed hard, finding the words to answer his challenge.
‘The forfeit was to claimyou, but as I recall in the carriage, you were the one doing all the claiming.’ And quite honestly, that had been fine with her. His mouth, his hands, had wrought all nature of wicked pleasure, but that was not the forfeit. Would he even allow her to claim him? This man who protected others but would not permit others to protect him?
‘Mary, do you know what you’re asking? Wanting?’ he warned, his eyes meeting her in a clash of onyx and lightning.
‘Yes, I know exactly what I’m doing, Caine, and who I am doing it with.’ She wanted this moment, this night, to take into a new world with her new self, to hold against all the other nights to come—empty ones, lonely ones. ‘Tonight, I want to know pleasure, Caine, and I want to know it with you.’ She raised her arms, feeling deliciously exposed as his eyes followed the motion of her body, and reached for the first hairpin, just to be sure Caine knew she meant business.
Chapter Eighteen
The first length of hair fell over her shoulder, a silken walnut skein shimmering in mauve twilight. Another length fell and his body answered with a primal bolt of arousal, searing him at his core even as his mind launched its best defence. He should say no. He knew better—he shouldnot, under any circumstances,particularly these circumstances, induct Lady Mary Kimber into the exquisite art of lovemaking on a picnic blanket beside the lake.
There were a hundred reasons why, beginning with she was vulnerable and her world had only just been upended—she was reaching out for something, for someone—and ending with he did not seduce virgins, with ninety-eight other salient points in between. But not one of those arguments singularly or taken together were a match for Mary taking down her hair with slow, deft motions one would think she’d deliberately designed to tease a man into insanity. Her grey eyes held his, making promises his body was more than happy to help her keep. How had this happened? How had he come to want her with a single-minded ferocity that drove reason into oblivion, that had him brawling with dukes in drawing rooms and racing through the night?
