The Unrepentant Rake Read online

  She wanted to kill him. ‘Ask for something else and get it over with!’

  ‘No, I shall leave it to you to decide how to pay me.’ He sauntered to the door, picked up his candle and left, shutting the door behind him.

  She climbed into bed, burrowing under the coverlet, but she couldn’t get warm, nor find a comfortable spot. This was absurd. She’d always slept fine there before. She flung the blanket off, lit some candles, and dressed in her old blue travel gown. She packed her clothing, folding each piece with precision, placing them in the valise with care.

  Damn him! She was open-minded. She wrapped her silver brush, comb, and mirror in flannel and laid them in her leather case. She was a thinking woman, and on this particular issue, she had already reached a logical conclusion and implemented it. She cupped the reliquary in her hand. Just because some unscrupulous rake had tricked her into making a rash promise that he must have known she wouldn’t fulfill, it didn’t mean that…

  Oh! He had known she wouldn’t agree to marry him. He had known she would be upset. Not just upset, furious. But he wouldn’t have asked her to marry him unless he meant it, and she was willing to bet that once he’d made up his mind, Simon wouldn’t give up easily.

  He’d played her up and down—compliment followed by insult followed by compliment followed by insult… He knew women, probably even understood something of how women think, as far as a useless male was capable of such comprehension. He knew she would be both moved by the compliments and unable to let the insults go without explaining to him why she had decided against marriage.

  He knew she would simply have to talk to him, but the risk frightened her. He was too clever, too persuasive… And yet, she owed him. She began to pace.

  For over an hour she walked back and forth, fireplace to bed, windows to door, sitting briefly, then leaping up to pace anew and peer through the crack between the curtains into the uncommunicative night. Once she thought she heard someone in the corridor, but when she opened the door, the passageway was dark and empty.

  She folded her hands around the reliquary, closed her eyes in a brief and terrified prayer, and made up her mind.

  Rap. Rap, rap.

  She would not give in to cowardice. She would face him and regain the right to the reliquary. He would forget her soon enough, strolling merrily through life, keeping an eye out for the next impressionable female.

  ‘Trixieeeee!’

  She whirled. Listened. Crept to the door, her heart battering her chest.

  ‘Help! Rescue me, Trixie!’ Rap, tap!

  The window? She strode across the room and opened the curtains. Simon’s face hung at an angle at one edge of the window. He grinned at her through the glass and tapped again. ‘Save meeee!’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ She flung up the window and stuck her head out. He clung to a drainpipe, leaning perilously across to her window. Three stories up, and no ladder! Oh God, what if he fell?

  ‘Unrequited love does rather unhinge one.’ He gestured dramatically, and the drainpipe rattled.

  ‘Come in, you idiot! Oh, please be careful.’

  He grinned again, and her heart wept. With a grunt, he flung an arm over the windowsill. Oh, God, he was hanging there, just one hand on the sill… The other hand grabbed the sill, and he pulled himself up, got a leg over, and climbed through.

  That was when she noticed the rope around his waist. He untied it and tossed it out the window. She let out her breath with a hiss.

  He shut the window and brushed rust and ivy leaves from his trousers. ‘I said unrequited love, not a death wish. It’s attached to a bed in the garret above this, just in case you decided to push me to my death.’ He chuckled. ‘Or that rickety drainpipe broke.’

  ‘You deserve…’

  ‘To be thrashed.’ He straightened his coat. ‘I’m counting on you to do me good and proper, sweetheart.’

  ‘I think not,’ she said, banishing an improper image of herself doing just that. Indignation seized her. By God, if someone had heard or seen him… ‘Your complete lack of consideration for my reputation relieves me of any obligation to repay you.’

  ‘If you say so.’ His smile belied his words; how dared he so perfectly assess her sense of fair play? She glared at him, fuming. She was doomed. She would never, ever feel she deserved the reliquary again, no matter what she did to make amends.

  And he knew it!

  ‘But you’re a kind-hearted woman. You won’t break my poor heart without telling me why.’ He ran a hand through his deep red hair, dislodging another ivy leaf. ‘Last night, I had the impression you liked me rather a lot.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I want to marry you.’

  ‘But you do admit to liking me. How about love?’

  She pressed her lips together.

  ‘Do you love me, Trixie? Tell the truth, now.’

  She let out a long, shuddering sigh and walked away. ‘You’re very charming, Simon, and an exciting lover. It wouldn’t be surprising if I fell in love with you. Many women have done so, but none of them married you. I am no different.’

  ‘You are entirely different.’ He came up behind her, close enough to make her heart speed up, her breathing quicken and her insides quake like a blancmange. ‘You said no. Not that I asked any of the others, thank God. They might have said yes, and then what would I have done when I met you?’

  She retreated to the window, gripping the sill. ‘Simon, I’m saying no for your own good.’

  He tsked. ‘How very much like your rigid and proper relatives you are proving to be!’

  She clenched her fists. No. She would not let his tactics enrage her. She rested her forehead against the cool glass until she’d mastered her voice, then faced him. ‘Very well, but you needn’t have climbed to my window in such a foolish way. I had already decided I owed you an explanation.’

  ‘Courageous woman.’ He smiled lazily, and her heart flip-flopped and twirled in her breast. Why must he be so beautiful to look at, so tempting to touch and kiss? ‘Are you quite sure you wish to put such ammunition in my hands?’ he asked.

  ‘I have no choice,’ she said grumpily. She didn’t want to talk about this. At all.

  He helped her with a question. ‘Does the prospect of childbirth frighten you? I must say, the idea of losing you like that terrifies me.’

  She pulled the curtains shut. ‘Everyone dies of something. I could just as easily get the smallpox or a lung fever, and so could you.’ Her heart squeezed at this dreadful thought.

  He came up behind her again. ‘An excellent reason to seize the day and make merry while we can.’ Lightly, he smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear.

  She twisted away, evading his devastating touch. ‘A few days of merrymaking in a life of misery? No, thank you.’

  ‘Why misery? We enjoy each other, and we’re more than compatible in bed. I should think we’ll have a bang-up time of it.’

  She walked away, her voice tight with anger. ‘I was engaged once before. I thought I was in love. He was charming, and he kissed reasonably well.’

  He followed, putting his arms around her from behind. ‘But nowhere near as well as I.’

  Why must he always make her want to laugh? She tried to extricate herself, but he wouldn’t let go. ‘Everyone approved of our engagement.’

  ‘What happened?’ The warmth of his arms surrounded her like a blanket of love, of safety.

  That was an illusion. She would be suffocated by that damned blanket. ‘Let me go!’

  Immediately, he loosened his arms and stepped away, and she had to fight not to wail at the loss. ‘The day after our betrothal, he began trying to change me. First it was subtle, then more and more overt. He found my clothing too dashing. He deemed me too outspoken. He disapproved of poetry. A lady should never give in to temper. Laughing too hard showed an immoderate character. My friends were corrupt and immoral. He knew better than I. I must submit to his guidance in all things. If I did not mend my ways, I would ruin
his children. If—’

  ‘Enough,’ Simon said. ‘What a damned prig. I take it you called it off?’

  ‘At the church door. Thanks to St. Davnet’s bone, I brushed through it well enough.’ She shivered. ‘Never again.’

  ‘An understandable decision at the time, sweetheart, but not forever.’ He paused. ‘We could elope to Scotland, avoiding church doors altogether, but you would have no financial protection if we did. Better to have proper settlements drawn up so I can’t steal your money and throw you penniless into the street.’

  ‘I’m not worried about that,’ she said.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘My life, Simon. My life! I want the right to do as I wish, to befriend whom I please, to say whatever I choose. You heard Lord Ottersby tonight: his wife will write what he tells her to.’

  ‘Which is to your advantage. Someone needs to keep a tight rein on that besom.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it fair. If she were in the right and he in the wrong, she would have to submit.’

  ‘True, but you won’t have to worry about that with me. I quite enjoy scandal, and I expect we already share many friends—apart from the poets, that is. I would shoot myself rather than order you about. I’m generally such an intolerable person that I’ll have enough work making sure you’ll put up with me.’ Wryly, he smiled. ‘If you want the truth, I’m a little afraid, too.’

  ‘Stop bamming me!’

  ‘Seriously, love. I shouldn’t do well with a wife who orders me about, and you possess the means to enforce it.’

  She huffed. ‘You don’t even believe in my reliquary.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what I believe, but I’m willing to take a chance you won’t turn out like poor Ottersby’s wife.’

  ‘I would never, ever—’

  ‘Nor would I,’ Simon said softly.

  She’d never thought a man might be afraid, too. She sat on the edge of the bed, struggling within herself, but… The reliquary had protected her so far. It would continue to do so, and she would be safe. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Instead, you’ll muffle yourself for years and years, perhaps your entire life?’ His voice cracked. ‘You’re worth more than that, Trixie. Don’t destroy yourself exactly as that fiancé of yours would have done.’

  Her mind churned. Once again he was right. He wasn’t a useless male, but a brilliant one. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

  ‘If St. Davnet truly does bring family harmony,’ he said, ‘why not provide her with a family to work with?’

  A family. A husband, a home and children of her own. She fingered the reliquary. ‘I’ve fought marriage for so long.’

  ‘Because you hadn’t found the right man. Your saint wouldn’t promote dubious harmony at the expense of love. Rely on the reliquary for your heart’s desire, not a poor second best.’ He looked more than a little upset. ‘Trixie-love, have pity. I’m not used to trying so hard. I thought getting a woman to marry me would be easy.’

  ‘I thought refusing would be easy,’ she said, examining her fingernails. ‘I keep wondering what would have happened if we’d met years ago during my London seasons, before that awful betrothal.’ Before she’d become so afraid.

  Simon grinned, and she fell in lust, tumbled into love all over again. ‘We would have gone to bed together,’ she said. ‘We would have fallen in love.’

  ‘I would have asked you to marry me.’ The tenderness of his smile made her heart spin. ‘But since I was a scoundrel with only a paltry allowance, your uncle and aunt would have shown me the door, and my father would have shipped me to America for fear I might abduct you. Now I’m an eligible suitor.’

  Her heart began a wild fluttering, and hope flooded in. ‘What if St. Davnet planned it all? She kept us from meeting until you inherited a fortune, and then inspired Eudora to steal the reliquary. She brought us all here together: Eudora and Conk, you and me, killing two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Or as I would put it,’ he said, ‘mating two sets of lovebirds with one bone.’

  She snickered. Then giggled. ‘Simon, how vulgar of you.’

  ‘Yes, and since Conk has a bone of his own, it’s completely inaccurate. And we’ve not only proved that our marriage was made in heaven, but I’ve made you laugh.’

  ‘You always make me laugh.’ Oh, Simon, I love you.

  ‘If you agree to wed me, I always will.’

  Beatrix wrapped her fingers around the little silver box, and fear drained out of her bit by bit. St. Davnet had never failed her before. She took a deep breath and gathered her courage. This would work. This would do.

  ‘I love you, Simon,’ she said, and he took her in his arms.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Barbara Monajem grew up in western Canada. She wrote her first story, a fantasy about apple tree gnomes, when she was eight years old, and dabbled in neighbourhood musicals at the age of ten. At twelve, she spent a year in Oxford, England, soaking up culture and history, grubbing around at an archaeological dig, playing twosy-ball against the school wall, and spending her pocket money on adventure novels. Thanks to her mother, she became addicted to Regency romances as well. Back in Canada, she wrote some dreadful teen melodrama, survived high school, and studied English literature at the University of British Columbia. She spent several years in Montreal and published a middle grade fantasy when her children were young. Now her kids are adults, and she writes historical and paranormal romance for grownups. She lives in Georgia, USA, with an ever-shifting population of relatives, friends, and feline strays.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-2011-9

  The Unrepentant Rake

  Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Monajem

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