Page 9 of How to Court a Rake
‘I am sorry about your brother.’ The words came out on a careful sigh as if she was not sure she should offer them. The words were intimate and, personal. Perhaps she was thinking they were too personal.They did not know one another well. Out of habit, Caine waited a heartbeat, for her to ruin it with the enquiry that always followed—‘Do you think he’s truly dead?’ He’d had to field that impertinent probe more times than he could count in the last two weeks. But the words did not come.
Something softened within him at her innate sensitivity and he offered her what he’d offered no one else—an answer to that question although she’d not asked. ‘I have not given up hope. My brother is infinitely resourceful. If anyone is a survivor, it is he. Even now, he might be making his way to us.’
She gave him a gentle smile. ‘You are very brave to live with such hope. You do him a credit, even though such hope must be as exhausting as it is a source of strength.’
Caine paused to study her in the lantern light, struck by her words, by what she saw. ‘Exhausting is exactly the right word for it.’ He laced his fingers through her gloved ones, absently studying the size differential between them. Her fingers were long, elegant and slim, capable of great delicacy like the woman herself. His were strong, capable of great power, to protect, to pummel as needed.
‘I rise in the morning with hope renewed that perhaps today will be the day there will be word of him. I go to bed each night with those hopes dashed.’ He shook his head. He’d talked of this with no one, not wanting to burden his brothers. They had their own grief. They didn’t need his. What they needed was his strength, his unrelenting confidence that it would all be all right.
‘Each day that passes that flame of hope wanes a bit more. I wonder how long I should keep it up? When weeks become months? When months become a year? When does hope become ridiculous?’
‘Why don’t you ask the Church? They’re going on nearly two thousand years of hope, aren’t they? And as long as there’s no body, they can continue on, can’t they? Just like you.’
Caine stared at her for a long moment before he threw back his head and laughed at the stars, a great rippling chuckle taking him. He was seldom wrong about people, but he’d been wrong about her. Never had he thought such words would come out of her well-bred mouth. ‘Lady Mary speaks heresy.’ He smiled, feeling lighter than he had in weeks.
‘Oh, hush! Someone will hear you,’ she scolded, casting a worried glance about her. They were deep in the garden now, past the ornamental bushes and decorative fountains where other couples lingered in decency.
‘No, they won’t,’ he countered in measured tones, letting each of his words make their point. It wasn’t being heard that should bother her. It was the prospect of not. She was in the dark, alone with a notorious rake who’d already managed to bring scandal to her once. He should offer to take her back into the light, back on to well-trod garden paths or into the ballroom. He should put himself back to work searching for saboteurs and fending off eager mamas with daughters in tow.
They should return to being the Marquess and the lady, or the rogue and the rose. What they shouldnotdo was stay out here as Caine and Mary. The longer they talked, the more the mutual intrigue between them grew and that was dangerous. He recognised a woman’s interest when he saw it and he’d unmistakably roused Lady Mary’s. It was there in her gaze, in her wit, in her questions, her sensitivity. It was not what a woman’s ‘interest’ in him usually looked like, but itwasinterest none the less. He intrigued her. And, damn it all, if she didn’t intrigue him as well.
To stay out here was to court all nature of temptation. Already his mind was wondering what it would be like to capture her mouth, to taste the sweetness of her on his tongue, to feel the softness of her body as he held it against him, his hands at her hips, tutoring her with his touch. There was something intoxicating about the idea of offering her such tutelage, to put that sharp tongue of hers to good use, to bring her, however briefly, into this world of his, to satisfy her intrigue, to show her what it was like to tempt a rake. But to do so would be to ruin her. She didn’t deserve that.
He offered her what shediddeserve—his protection. ‘Would you like me to take you in?’
‘Back there?’ She gave the distant ballroom a disparaging shake of her head. ‘No.’
Gravel crunched, followed by the flutter of feminine laughter, the jovial slur of a man’s voice who’d had too much to drink. Her eyes went wide with the implication of discovery. She froze. He was already in motion, gripping her hand and pulling her through the garden towards the edge, hoping the light colour of her gown didn’t give them away. At the edge, he found what he was looking for—a door into the back of the house, into a dark room not in use for the evening. He rushed her inside and shut the door behind them. ‘We’ll be safe in here.’ But he thought it was rather a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.
‘Will we though?’ Mary said drily. ‘Forgive me if I respectfully disagree. I think you and I understand “safe” a little differently.’
‘Do we indeed?’ Caine laughed. For the second time that night she’d managed to surprise him.
Chapter Six
Safe was a relative concept these days, demonstrated most aptly by the idea that she was safer in a dark room with a rake than she was at the breakfast table of her own home. Mary would go as far as to argue that the person most at risk in this room right now was he. A marquess caught alone with a gently bred young woman would have no choice but to marry her. That was certainly not an outcome either of them was looking for out here.
She studied him as he toured the room, turning up a lamp so that they could see, taking care to draw the curtains against the lamp’s light so as not to attract notice from the garden with its glow. He was careful, attentive to detail. She’d never stopped to think about such characteristics before. They seemed to be the antithesis of what a rake was: a man who was careless, reckless. Perhaps this was how he’d survived so long without being caught. He took precautions to ensure his freedom.
He stopped at a sideboard displaying a row of decanters. ‘Port or brandy?’ He held a decanter up in each hand, giving each a swirl. ‘No sherry, I’m afraid.’ She liked his assumption that she was entitled to the option of drink as much as he was.
‘Port, please. I’ve always wanted to try it.’ The rebel in her was alive and well tonight: dancing with rogues, walking in dark gardens, sipping port—a man’s drink—alone in a room with a marquess of dubious reputation. It feltgood.
Caine brought her a glass, his fingertips brushing hers, a gesture that set the butterflies of awareness fluttering in her stomach. Tonight, her body was sharply cognisant of his every nuance, every touch. Perhaps this keenness was akin to that special vividness felt by the dying. A star never burned as brightly as it did right before it was snuffed out, its energies spent, its presence swallowed by the universe. One last brilliant gasp. She was that star. Ever since her father had delivered his decree. This was her last gasp. At the end of the Season, she’d be snuffed out, carted off in marriage to become a matron, someone’s wife. No longer belonging to herself.
‘Sip it slowly. It’s meant for relaxing, for long conversations by the fire.’ Caine’s dark eyes were watching her as she took a swallow, his gaze following the liquid down the column of her throat. ‘Do you like it?’ He took the space beside her on the sofa, his leg brushing hers. For him it was no doubt a gesture without thought. Not so for her. She was aware of every inch of him.
She let the taste of the port linger on her tongue before giving a slow smile. ‘Idolike it. You may have corrupted me. I could easily get used to a glass of this after supper.’ What she liked more was the man who’d poured it and the promise of a long conversation. With him. The very thought of exchanging such intimacies turned this foreign room into a private space rife with fantasy—what would it be like to sit on a sofa every night beside this man who ignited her with a simple touch? To sip port with him, this rogue who’d seen to her safety, who’d been cognisant of her reputation, who’d given her a waltz to remember and who was also a man wild and untamed, who followed no rules but his own.
Therein lay the fantasy—thinking such a man would be content with firesides and fortified wine, that a woman like she could domesticate a man like him, that such a woman could hold him.
She took another swallow to cover the sudden bitterness that came with the realisation that she could not aspire to such a man. She was too calm, her existence to staid. She was agoodgirl. And look what that had got her so far…angry parents and lost proposals. All it would get her in the future would be an enforced march down the aisle to a husband of her father’s choosing.
‘You look like a woman debating her choices.’ Caine nudged her knee with his leg in a gesture meant to convey casual enquiry. ‘Care to talk about it?’
‘You assume therearechoices.’ She gave a dry laugh before sipping her port.
‘You are a woman with a dowry, connections and status. I would think there are choices aplenty. Creighton and Harlow are merely two men in a pool of several who would be appropriate for you.’
