An Unforgettable Rogue (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Alex barely got downstairs that afternoon before Sabrina arrived with the children to return Beatrix who had spent the night at Stanthorpe House.

She and Sabrina watched the boys chase Bea up to the nursery, and then they went into the small salon for a comfortable chat. The minute they were alone, Sabrina put a fretting Juliana to her breast to suckle and calm her. “Now, tell me what happened,” Sabrina said. “Every detail.”

“I will tell you my every detail, if you tell me yours.”

Sabrina gaped, wide-eyed for a moment, then they both dissolved into laughter.  Sabrina smiled. “Your seduction was … satisfactory, I take it? You are positively aglow.”

“As are you.”

“Ouch! Do not bite, Mama, sweet. I wish babies did not get their teeth quite so soon.”

“Is that not the time to wean a babe, then?” Alex asked, sincerely curious, since, after the night past, she could very well find herself in the family way.

Sabrina closed her bodice and sat her daughter on her lap to pat her back. “Yes, it is. I love the connection that nursing gives me and my babies, but I will have to stop soon.” She smiled. “I am expecting Stanthorpe’s child.”

“Ah Sabrina,” Alex said rising and going to hug her friend. “I am happy for you. I hope you are pleased, since this is your fourth.”

“I am thrilled, because it is Stanthorpe’s first, though you would never guess it to see him with the others, would you? And still he is as excited as a schoolboy on holiday. More so. But I think you have been avoiding my question.”

Alexandra rose with a dreamy smile. “In response to your question, let me ask a question of my own. What do you think the Duchess of Basingstoke will say when she discovers that we broke the bed?”

Sabrina whooped. “Oh, good show! Gideon will be green with envy, for you have managed to do something that we have not.”

Alex giggled.

“Ah, you
are
happy.”

Alex sighed. “I am, and yet … Do you think I am good enough for Hawksworth? His father once told me that I would not be a fit wife for him.”

“That man was a self-centered bully. He cared for none who suffered for his cause. Oh, Alex, I am so certain that you and Hawk care for each other, and yet, you seem at cross purposes the better part of the time.”

“I have always loved him—you know that—but I assure you that Hawk is only making the best of a difficult situation. He would never have married me, if he did not need someone to care for his family while he went to war. I know that. But he is a good man and he will be a good husband.”

Sabrina shook her head and seemed about to argue when Hawksworth came in. “I saw Demon and Rapscallion upstairs,” he said, kissing Sabrina’s cheek, “and knew you would be about. How is the little one?”

“Asleep, thank goodness.”

“Here,” Alex, said, taking Juliana, “let me take her up and put her in a crib, so you two can talk.”

Hawk watched Alex leave. “She looks a treat with a little one in her arms, does she not?”

Sabrina shook her head. “How long have you loved her?”

“Love? I am quite certain that I am incapable of love. Why do you ask?”

Sabrina threw her hands in the air. “Blind the two of you.”

“I do not know about blind, Hawk said, but I must be stupid.” He regarded her earnestly. “I
know
, because I have done a very stupid and unloving thing.”

Sabrina scoffed. “What, pray, is that?”

“I have ruined Alexandra’s chance for happiness.”

“How?”

“I have made it impossible to give her the annulment she deserves.”

“Deserves? Annulment? What nonsense is this?”

“She merits better than a broken man like me. She should have the man she loves.”

“Who is … Chesterfield … who … you hate.”

“All right, then, she deserves the man she loves, as long as he is … other than Chesterfield.”

“No wonder she needed to—”

“Needed to what?”

“Who the bloody devil
would
you consider good enough for her?” Sabrina shouted. “No one, I say.”

“You are overwrought and talking nonsense.”

“
I
am? Do you remember how downhearted I once was about not having Gideon’s love? Remember what you told me? ‘Learn to trust,’ you said. ‘Trust is everything.’ You also knew instinctively that love must be earned and returned, if one wished to keep it.”

Sabrina patted his arm. “It is past time you learned your own lessons, Hawksworth. You were running from life when you told me those things, and I am sorry to tell you, but you are running still.”

On Saturday, the Vicar arrived for Hildy and Giff’s wedding at quarter to one. Hildy arrived at one fifteen. At two, Uncle Gifford was yet to be found.

While Hawk went off in search of his uncle, Baxter took Alex to one side. “I must say that I understand my cousin’s determination to keep you, no matter the cost. I must also say that I very much appreciate your help.”

Alex stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

“It must be grand to have so much power as to accomplish what so many men tried and failed before you.”

“What have so many tried and failed?”

“To bring down the great Hawksworth, of course. Ruin him. How does it feel to have been the one to finally impoverish him and … bring him to his knees, so to speak?”

Baxter’s tone was so filled with innuendo, and his demeanor so forward, that Alex took a step back, but he stepped closer. “You do
know
that I inherited in his stead, because his father disinherited him for marrying you, do you not? That there was a codicil to the will?” Baxter shook his head in disbelief. “The funny thing is, Hawk might annul the marriage, or divorce you, and get his inheritance back, but he refuses.”

Despite her horror at the revelation, Alex knew she faced the true Baxter Wakefield, a blackguard, as they once suspected. “I am afraid that I must ask you to leave.”

“You have no say in this house.” Baxter smiled, though his eyes did not. “Ah, there is my dear Claudia.”

Not two minutes later, Hawk came for Alex and Hildy. Giff was waiting to see them in the library, and Alex would do or say nothing to spoil her aunt’s wedding.

Hildy trembled as Alex and Hawk escorted her into the book-lined room. “It is all right if you have changed your mind,” Hildy said to Giff as they entered.

“My dear,” he said from across the room, looking quite forlorn.

“Be happy, Giff. That is all I care about. Changing your mind will not break me. I am a tough old bird, remember?”

Giff cursed and crossed to her then she was in his arms. “
My
tough old bird.” He kissed her brow. “And if I were worthy of you, I would be honored to be your husband. But, Hildy, I am not. You are better off without me.”

“What nonsense is this?” Hawk asked, even as he remembered Sabrina asking him the same question, even if Giff’s unworthiness rang another familiar alarum.

Alex touched Hawk’s hand to calm him. “Giff, what is this about? I think my aunt has a right to know, even if Hawk and I do not. Do you wish the two of us to leave?”

“No, Lass,” Giff said, seating Hildy and sitting to take her hand. “I want you to hear what I have to say.”

Hawk and Alex sat.

“I am an old reprobate,” Giff said. “A scoundrel, a rakehell, worse. Put simply, I do not deserve you, Hildegarde Huntington. While it might appear that I have put my profligate ways behind me, I have only recently laid the last to rest, and even then, I was not capable of doing so on my own.”

“Giff, no,” Alex said.

The old man shook his head. “Enough of protecting me, Lass.” Giff regarded Hawk. “You have been the son I never had, and I wanted you to be proud of me, so I have kept my counsel since you returned, but I must speak now, because Hildy and Alex deserve my candor. You deserve it.”

“Giff, honestly—”

“I am a lousy gambler. I have always been, but it is Alex who paid the price. Your wife paid my gambling debts, Hawksworth. Your niece, Hildy, who was already responsible for the lot of us, got me out of debt. To the sum of nearly five thousand pounds. I do not know how she paid it, but I have been so afraid that the cost would break her.”

Tears filled Gifford’s eyes. “Forgive me Alex, Hawk.” He bent to kiss her aunt’s hand, humbly bowing before her. “Forgive me, my love.”

Hildy cupped his face and brought it up to hers. “There is nothing to forgive. But thank you for telling me. I have always been proud of my niece, but never more so than at this moment.”

“As am I.” Giff smiled. “If you care to take this old reprobate in hand, you tough old bird, I wish very much that you would do so. If you cannot, I understand.”

Alex rose and led Hawksworth from the room, shutting the door behind them.

“Why did you not tell me?” he asked, when they were in the hall. “Why did you let me chastise you and make you vow to stop gambling?”

“What was there to say?”

Hawk seemed surprised at her hard tone.

“Those were your words to me, remember, when I asked why you had not told me you saved Gideon? You and I talk all the time, Hawksworth, but I swear to God, that we manage to do so without speaking one word of significance. And frankly, I do not think deceit, or conscious omission, is something I can live with. As to that bill of divorcement … I was not joking. Please seek one as quick as may be.”

Alex knew she left Hawk reeling when she went to ask the Vicar and the rest of the guests to be patient.

When at length Hildy and Gifford arrived, their wedding was perhaps the most beautiful Alex ever attended. So beautiful, she could not stop weeping.

Twice Hawk tried to pull her aside to speak to her, twice she managed to rebuke him. “Fine,” he whispered at the last. “Giff and Hildy’s wedding is not an appropriate time or place for the conversation we need to have.”

The thought and ramifications of which skittered up Alex’s spine like a portent of doom.

“But we will talk,” he promised, “and before this day is done.”

The house reverberated with wedding guests and Christmas guests. It rang with the whoops of two little Indian boys and a small Indian princess, named Beatrix, all of them excited by the notion that in two days time, gifts would be brought in the night by a Saint named Nick.

“Baxter, stop encouraging them,” Claudia said.

“Shh,” Baxter whispered, pulling Claude aside. “I am trying to create a diversion, so we can escape.”

“Are you certain this is a good idea?”

“What, Claude, crying craven?” Baxter laughed at the whooping children. “That’s right, Rafe, see if you can scalp that blighter by the wassail bowl.”

While Rafe and Damon performed a war dance nearby, a barking beagle and an ill-favored cat chased a hedgehog beneath a table upon which rested said wassail bowl, nearly knocking the bowl and at least one guest off their respective pedestals.

Despite Claude’s consistent warning, Baxter encouraged the marauding savages, increasing their overabundance of energy.

When war inevitably broke out, very little got broken, except an iced Christmas torte and the temper of a certain Vicar who did not appreciate the notion of wearing same.

To calm the guests, and the bride and groom’s nerves, Hawk and Gideon were encouraged to accompany three Indians up the stairs, each savage carrying a cat, a pup, or a hedgehog.

“You will never guess, Uncle Bryce,” Damon said, “But Papa tells the most amazing stories.”

“A story it is, then,” Gideon said.

Bea climbed into Hawk’s lap to cuddle and listen to the story of a blue fairy and a handsome prince, until she got drowsy and yawned and Hawk kissed her brow.

“I love you, Uncle Bryce,” she said, patting his bewhiskered cheek. “You will always be my most handsome prince.”

Hawk felt a hard old knot of sorrow melt at her words and he looked up and saw Rafferty, with the ugliest cat in the Kingdom draped over his shoulder, petting it with devoted care. That boy did not see a stub tale, scarred fur the color of mud, or a torn ear. Quite simply, he loved that cat so much, he was blind to its flaws. As Bea seemed blind to his scars.

Hawk stood, nodding for Gideon to continue his story, and went to place Beatrix in her little bed. She woke when he laid her down and asked him to take a nap with her, so he lay down beside her.

When he woke, the color of the sky outside her window had changed to smoke. As he rose, Beatrix woke as well.

“Did you have a good sleep, Pup?”

She stretched and nodded. “I dreamed that instead of having Chesterfield’s baby, Alex was going to have a baby for us. Would that not be nice, Uncle Bryce?”

Hawk stopped moving when Bea’s words penetrated, and now he could barely breathe. He kissed her nose. “Stay with the twins and Uncle Gideon, will you?”

Hawk went downstairs to look for Alex, his heart beating a wild tattoo.

He found, not a mob of guests in the drawing room, or anywhere, but the Duchess of Basingstoke pacing the gold salon, wringing her hands. Alexandra’s Aunt Hildegarde, with tears in her eyes, was trying to calm the woman.

“What has happened?” Hawk asked, feeling as if he stepped into a nightmare. “Where is everyone? Where is Alex?”

Hildy began to weep. “Alex has run off to Gretna Green with Chesterfield.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“You know, Alex, you can ride inside the carriage,” Chesterfield said. “You do not need to sit up here on the driver’s box, and freeze, just to keep me company.”

“We should have taken the horses,” Alex said. “Then we could have gotten there faster.”

“We could not take the horses. I told you, after we catch up with Claudia and Baxter—and after I shoot Baxter—we will need the carriage to take Claudia back. I suppose I shall have to wait to beat her until we get her home.”

Alex scoffed. “Tell me again what Baxter’s note said.”

“That he was taking Claudia to Gretna Green to ruin her reputation, and if I did not arrive with ten thousand pounds before morning, he would ruin her in truth and separate us forever.”

“Even Baxter knows you love her.”

“He is a fool. A dead fool.”

“Do not be rash,” Alex warned.

Chesterfield laughed hard and self-mocking. “I was not rash when it came to you, Alex. I did not want a simpering miss nor a green girl who would bore me to tears. Neither did I want a social butterfly who would spend all my money. I wanted a rational, mature, unspoiled female to give me an heir and grow old by my side. I was not rash when I chose you, and look where that got me.”

“Point taken,” Alex said. “But will you have the patience for a girl like Claudia?”

“Claude has more wisdom and maturity than we sometimes credit her for. She has been forced into growing up, has she not, having lost her parents and then her uncle, for a time?”

“I have seen her maturity, yes, but I have also seen the little girl, the child who wants what she wants.”

“And how does that make her different from you?”

Alex laughed. “She overheard us that day, right after our near-wedding, when you came to the Lodge.”

“She told me.”

“When did she? You have hardly had a moment to talk.”

“Alex, once Claudia knew I lived at Hawks Ridge, she used to sneak over there at every opportunity. We went for walks, we played billiards. She even helped me deliver a foal. We have talked; believe me, though never more thoroughly than on the night she climbed in my bedroom window at two in the morning. That was the day you came to London.”

“The little twit.”

Chesterfield grinned.

“Judson Broderick, what did you do?”

He look affronted. “I remained on my best behavior, I assure you.”

Alex squeaked. “I
know
your best behavior. I was betrothed to you.”

Chesterfield cleared his throat. “She remains untouched, I promise you.”

“Look at me.”

He did, but he failed to infuse his look with the depth of innocence she would wish. “Hah. Just barely, I think. Drive faster.”

“Hurrying now will not change anything.”

Alex paled. “But you said—”

Chesterfield cursed. “That is not what I meant. I meant that hurrying would not change the past, and we should probably worry about what
Claude
will do to Baxter,” but Chesterfield urged his matched pair on, nevertheless. “When I know she is safe, I really am going to beat her.”

“Ah, Judson, you do care for her.”

“Do you think Hawksworth will let me have her?”

“Not in a million years.”

* * *

As Hawk began his trek through the shrouded fog of the chill December night, he knew that Alex was lost to him. He knew it, yet he could not stand aside and let her run off with Chesterfield.

He had not looked back when the Duchess and Aunt Hildy called to him, but walked faster than he thought possible. Continuing on to the stables, he found a guest’s saddled Arabian, ready for imminent departure, which he mounted, and rode, hell for leather, down the mews road.

He had not even slowed his pace when Myerson and the horse’s owner tried to chase him down. He simply headed north toward the outskirts of London and straight for Scotland.

Where the devil had he gone wrong?

Alex, of course—she was where he went wrong. Not by marrying her, but by being so stupid as to leave her after he had been so brilliant as to marry her.

Because of that—because of his running off to war and getting himself killed—she had become desperate enough to accept Chesterfield. But had she found it necessary to seduce the man to get him to offer marriage? Was that how she got herself with child? If she
were
with child, which Hawk could not bring himself to believe.

Seduction—that was laughable, when it was exactly what he suspected her of attempt—

No, with him, she had succeeded in her passionate, single-minded, effort to … make it appear as if the child she carried was his?

The probability hit Hawk like a blow, sharp, breath-stealing and … still impossible to believe.

She had been a virgin when he breached her, said she was and appeared to be—though there must be ways to make it appear— Hawk cursed, nearly as muddled now as when he woke to discover that she had tied him to the bed. Even then, he wished he had not drunk so much that night—that glorious, incredible night.

Again, Hawk urged his horse to greater speed.

Damn it to hell; no one was going to have Alex, but him, baby or not. No one. He was certainly not going to sit idly by while she and Chesterfield lived in bloody sin together.

Hawksworth shouted a curse into the night.
He
was her husband, damn it, and he would bloody well remain so. No one could possibly love Alex more than he did.

Did he? Was he capable? Love?

Yes, by God, and he would not let her go. How could he? How did one cut out one’s own heart? Which must explain why he had not finished his deathbed letter to her. Could he not bring himself to say goodbye?

Devil take it, had he loved her even then? Before then? When?

As Hawk rode neck or nothing along the Great North Road, he tried to mark the events in his life that led him to fall in love with the scourge and shadow of his growing up years.

He looked as far back as that tiny mud-drenched urchin standing at the bottom of the Dyke, looking up at him as if he were a bright silver knight, her very own.

He saw a young girl, all arms and legs and big turquoise eyes, warning other girls away from him. He saw the joyful look on her radiant face when he asked her to marry him, then her broken expression when he said goodbye after the ceremony, her chin raised despite her pain.

He saw Alex, the woman, seduction-bent, who bound him and loved him in a fever of passion, with a physical abandon he never imagined married love could embrace.

Hawk shook his head. No single event had made him love her, but all of them, everything about her—faults and strengths—had nurtured and grown his love, not to mention the sense of worth with which she had endowed him upon sight.

To Alex, from the beginning, he was everything.

To him, now and for eternity, she was everything.

He must tell her so, finally, in the event that he was the most fortunate of men and she loved him, as he once, long-ago, suspected, but denied.

No more putting it off, even if, after he was finished slicing open his heart for her inspection, she chose Chesterfield after all.

If she had the courage to run off with the blighter, for whatever reason, then she damn well had the courage to leave him, if that was her choice.

And if it was, he must let her go, once and for all.

Hawk did not know why it had taken him so bloody long to realize the possibility of love. He only hoped it would not take Alex as long.

He hoped, beyond hope, that he was not too late.

“I am no longer certain that this is a good plan,” Claudia told Baxter, “pretending we are eloping so Chesterfield will be drawn into following. Perhaps he will not realize how much he loves me, but that he had much rather live without such pranks. Perhaps we should turn around.”

“This is a brilliant plan,” Baxter said. “Chesterfield will think so, too, once he has you in his arms.”

“And you are certain we will be home by nine? Uncle Hawk insists upon it, even though I am nearly eighteen.”

Claudia turned to regard the inn they had just passed. “Oh, wait, that was the Georges Inn where you said a maid would be waiting to chaperone me. You said we would wait for Chesterfield there, and
there
is where I said, in my note, he could find me. Baxter … tell your man to stop the carriage.”

When he remained silent, Claudia crossed the interior of the vehicle to touch her cousin’s arm. “Baxter, what are you doing? We cannot leave London so late in the afternoon. It is gone past four.”

Baxter looked at her as if she had sprouted horns, and for the first time, Claudia saw a man she did not recognize, a stranger she began to fear.

“You are worse than a baby,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the note I left for Chesterfield in place of yours was worded a bit different. I mean, shut up and let me think for bloody sakes.”

At about two in the morning, Hawk entered the Gretna Hall Hotel, just over the Scottish border, the second inn he’d tried since reaching Scotland. As he did at the first inn, Hawk went straight to the bedchamber the maid said was occupied by an English couple, hoping that, this time, the occupants were not positioned in the bed so as to stop his heart.

Again, Hawk pushed the door open without knocking. “Alexandra Wakefield, I do not care if you carry the cad’s child, I will
not
allow you to live in sin with him.”

Alexandra and Claudia gasped.

Chesterfield barked a laugh, even as he held a pistol aimed at Baxter’s ballocks. Baxter, himself, on the floor, gagged and bound.

Everyone began speaking at once.

“Cease!” Chesterfield shouted until nothing could be heard save Baxter’s muffled pleas.

“I take it I am the cad in question?” Chesterfield drawled. “And that somehow you have it in your head—”

“Do not even say it,” Alex snapped. “It was Beatrix, was it not? The eavesdropping little hoyden.”

Hawk felt himself go cold. “Then you are—”

Alex raised her chin. “Of course, I am.”

Again, Chesterfield laughed. “Damn, I have not had this much fun in an age.”

Chesterfield’s words and his mirth relieved Hawk of worry. Alexandra could not be carrying the man’s child.

Claudia even grinned at the comment, though Chesterfield rounded on her for it. “Do not think you are off the hook, Miss, for you will be turned over my knee, the minute we get home.”

“What is going on here?” Hawk asked, assimilating the scene: Chesterfield standing over Baxter, the tears in Claudia’s eyes, Alexandra’s arms about her, Alex’s worry. “Alex? Claude? Are you all right?”

“I have a bruised jaw and bloody knuckles,” Chesterfield grumbled. “But do not ask if I am all right.”

“Baxter kidnapped Claudia,” Alex said. “Of course we are not all right.”

Claudia shook her head in denial. “Not exactly kidnapped, Uncle Bryce, but I did not know that he planned to take me this far. I swear I did not.”

“I told you, Hawksworth, to take care of her,” Chesterfield said. “This is exactly what I predicted would happen, otherwise.”

“I suppose you think you can do better?” Hawk asked.

“I bloody well can. As a matter of fact, I expect permission to marry her for my part in this.”

“She is already married to me, damn it!”

Chesterfield looked to the heavens in a bid for patience. “Stop being love-bit for a minute and listen. This is not about you and Alex but about me and Claudia.”

“If I cannot think for seeing Alex, it is her own fault, for she has been single-minded—”

“Hawksworth, do not.”

Claudia grinned and nodded for Chesterfield to try again.

“Hawksworth, I respectfully request your permission to marry your—”

“Permission denied. You are not half good enough for her.”

“Uncle Hawk!”

“No, Claudia, your uncle is right,” Chesterfield said. “I am not
half
good enough for you. And since you are not half obedient enough for—”

“I will second that,” Hawk said, scowling at his niece.

Chesterfield nodded. “Good, we are in agreement.”

“We are, for once.”

“Fine then. While we wait for the law to come and claim this cod-head, let us play a game of cards.”

“Cards? Now? Are you out of your mind? Besides, you know I always win.”

Chesterfield shrugged. “My skills improved while you were away. Let me prove it with one hand. The winner gets Hawks Ridge.”

“Of course I will not play for those stakes.”

“Why not?”

“Look at the way Alex is grinning. Even she knows that you are trying to give the estate back to me. You will let me win, and I do not like to be let win. I do not want my home handed back to me on a gilded platter, nor will I accept it as a bribe for my niece’s hand.”

“You think I am a card cheat then?”

“Of course not. You are simply not as good a player as I am.”

“You as much as said that I would throw the game, which makes me a cheat in your mind.”

“I know you are not a cheat, but I believe you would— I do not know what you would do, but … you are not to be trusted right now. Lust will do that to a man.” Hawk regarded Alex with a raised brow and stern expression. “I should know.”

Chesterfield smiled. “Perhaps I am simply a good man who would like to see you have your home back.

Hawk looked annoyed. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps, I am a good man who loves your niece and will take excellent care of her.” Chesterfield looked pointedly at Claudia. “I will certainly keep her too busy to get into trouble.”

Hawk noted the way his niece and his nemesis regarded each other. Hope, love, filled their gazes. Was this what happened when one loved? One could recognize the emotion in others? “Damn.”

Claudia screamed in victory and tore from Alexandra’s arms to fly into Chesterfield’s. The kiss Hawk witnessed made the uncle in him bristle and want to do harm. He went over and slapped Chesterfield on the back, hard. “We had best find a parson.”

Chesterfield looked up, eyes aglaze.

“To the parson,” Hawk repeated.
“Now.”

“What, now?”