Rake Beyond Redemption (12 page)

‘Oh, Zan!’ she whispered. ‘Did you feel nothing for me but lust and revenge? What a lowering thought. You have humiliated me. Your punishment has been as bad as you could ever have envisaged.’

Marie-Claude rubbed her hands over her face. She must accept what she knew. He had felt nothing for her. It had all been false. After all, he had never said that he loved her.

Even the gift of the parasol had been a means to entrap her.

Her heart was broken.

But still, Marie-Claude decided as she lay sleepless on her bed, until she learned it from his own lips that he had never loved her, never felt even the most mild affection for her, she could not fully accept that her world, so new and bright, lay in ruins round her feet.

F
or a whole week Marie-Claude endured the company of Harriette and Luke. Endured their surveillance, their constant presence. They were very kind. They were endlessly compassionate. They surrounded her with love and sympathy, as if she might sink into some life-threatening melancholy if left alone for more than five minutes! Existing in a bleak grey world, immured from the ever-changing beauty of sunlight glinting on the waters of the bay, Marie-Claude was conscious that Harriette watched her like a mother hawk anxious for the health of its solitary chick. In the end she could not bear to be watched with such solicitude any longer so she pinned on a bright smile and set herself to get on with her life. It was difficult—no, it was well-nigh impossible to pretend that her heart was not in pieces—but she would do her best. Since time—was it only a week since the man who had become the centre of the world had so cruelly betrayed her?—was not healing her pain, she must learn to live with it.

She had her family, her son, all the luxuries that
money could buy. She was young and strong. Her heart would heal as well as any other wound, with hardly a scar to show for her pain.

But then Harriette suggested she return with them to The Venmore.

‘I think you should come with us,’ she persuaded. ‘So does Luke.’

‘Yes, I will—but not yet.’ Marie-Claude was adamant.

‘You’ll enjoy the company. So will I.’ Harriette was not of a mind to give up easily. ‘Raoul misses you…’

A low blow that her sister-in-law had used without compunction! Marie-Claude had to swallow hard against that, with the suspicion that Raoul was perfectly content with the dogs and horses and freedom of his present life at The Venmore. She steeled her heart and made her decision. She had, after all, unfinished business in Old Wincomlee.

‘I wish to stay here for a few more weeks. Don’t you trust me to remain at the Pride and steer clear of your cousin?’ Marie-Claude asked, uncomfortably forthright.

‘Of course I do.’ But Marie-Claude saw the quick blush in Harriette’s cheeks.

‘I’m not likely to go anywhere near him, am I?’ she stated firmly. ‘Not after the humiliation he inflicted on me. Besides, I’m not the best of company at the moment. I think the sea air would prove rejuvenating.’

‘I suppose…’ Harriette murmured, doubtful but weakening. They could hardly drag her off against her will, could they? ‘Are you sure you won’t come?’

‘I will. I promise. After a week or two.’ Marie-Claude managed a smile and squeezed Harriette’s hands. ‘I need my own company for a little while and Raoul’s
safe with you, I know. Go back to The Venmore, Harriette. I know you’re missing your own children.’

‘Yes, I am. If you’re sure…’

So it was settled. But not before Luke, to Marie-Claude’s mind in an entirely unscrupulous manner, introduced his own man to the Pride, Mr Samuel Temple, young and energetic, ostensibly to act as steward under Wiggins’s overall authority. Marie-Claude was not fooled for one moment.

‘He’s an able man. He’ll see to your comfort, far more efficiently than Wiggins,’ Luke said.

‘I’m sure you’re right.’ She kissed Luke’s cheek.

But Mr Temple, urbane and obliging though he might be, was a Hallaston spy.

‘You’ll send for us if you need us, won’t you, Marie?’ Harriette asked finally as their coach was made ready.

‘Yes—’ a touch waspishly ‘—I most certainly will, especially if the Pride is invaded by a horde of Wincomlee smugglers led by your obnoxious cousin! And if
I
don’t send for you, I’m sure Mr Temple will.’

‘I was thinking more along the lines of the Fly-By-Nights led by that monster D’Acre and his cold-blooded lieutenant Rackham!’ Harriette replied sharply—but had the grace to blush.

Then they were gone and Marie-Claude was free to take steps to close the door on this most painful part of her life. Was Zan guilty? He had stood there and accepted every accusation hurled at him by Luke. Well, perhaps he was. But there was the answer to one question she needed to hear, from Zan himself, if she was to put it all behind her.

I can’t shut him out, as if I had never known him!
He’s with me every waking and sleeping moment! I can’t escape.
Her heart wept.

You must. You’ve no choice. He lied to you. Or at least he did not tell you the truth
—
which comes down to the same thing.
Her head had no compunction in outlining its condemnation.

Marie-Claude could find no argument against such a harsh judgement.

Hardly had the Hallaston coach vanished round the bend in the drive then Marie-Claude avoided both Meggie, now reinstated at the Pride, and the supremely efficient Mr Temple, claiming a need to pay a purely social call on Sir Wallace and Lady Augusta Lydyard, Harriette’s brother and sister-in-law. Dull but perfectly innocuous. Ordering up the cob and trap, conveniently tacked up by George Gadie, who added to his fishing and smuggling activities with occasional work in the Pride’s stables, she sought some information.

‘One thing, Mr Gadie. Something Harriette said—’ She managed a nice touch of false insouciance. ‘Tell me what you know of Captain D’Acre. And a man called Rackham?’ Now there was a name—and a face—she recalled.

‘Captain D’Acre’s a bad man, mistress.’ George spat in the dust. ‘Leads the Fly-By-Nights—out of Rottingdean. You don’t want nothing to do with the likes of him.’

Rottingdean.
She remembered that too. ‘Is he another smuggler?’ Was
everyone
involved in the Trade?

‘Amongst other things. He’s vicious to get his own ends. Murder, torture, rape…Beggin’ your pardon, mistress. He runs the gang—has done for a score of years now—with as tight a hold as ever he had. No one can touch him.’

‘And Rackham?’

‘D’Acre’s second-in-command. They runs a tight ship together and don’t care who gets hurt. Bad doings…’ George shook his head. ‘Smugglers beaten to death for passing information to the Excise—not that they had, you understand. Another with his hand chopped off because he dipped his fingers in a package of lace from one of D’Acre’s runs.’ George spat again. ‘Pardon, mistress.’

‘Can the Preventives not put a stop to his cruelties?’ she enquired curiously.

George Gadie shrugged. ‘Preventives’ve tried to find evidence, mistress. No one’ll speak against him. Too afraid, y’know. D’Acre’s a long arm and Rackham’s the heavy fist at the end of it.’

Marie-Claude thought she did know. Knew too much as another hurt bloomed in her heart. If her suspicions were correct, Captain D’Acre and Rackham would provide the final, fatal wound in her love for Zan Ellerdine.

A week could last a lifetime, Zan discovered, in which to consider the list of his crimes as displayed by the Earl of Venmore.

A callous scheme to ruin Harriette’s new marriage. A smuggling run condemned to failure with the threat of imprisonment or death for all concerned, because he had laid the information into the hands of the Preventives. A bullet intended for Venmore that had found Harriette instead. She had not been seriously injured, true, but that hardly drew the poison from the act. She might have died. As for the wrecking of the
Lion D’Or
—did not the evidence against him speak for itself? As he’d said in self-accusation, who else could
be guilty of lighting the Smugglers’ Lamp to lure that ill-fated ship on to the rocks?

He could make excuses, of course. There had been reasons. He had made the choice all those years ago, young and arrogant and ambitious for power as he had been, and in the same circumstances, he would make the same choice again. He was as guilty as hell and must live with it.

Zan showed his teeth in what was not a smile and got on with his life. He rode into Lewes on legal estate matters, he sailed the
Black Spectre
to test a new rigging. He rode the Ellerdine land, shutting his mind to the ravages caused by lack of investment of time or money. He organised a run for the following week. He was summoned and met with Captain D’Acre, pursuing his goal to its inglorious end.

And when the shadows of his past did not loom and encroach, in the evenings when he sat alone in his library with wine or ale to hand, there was Marie-Claude to despise and censure him, hating him to the depths of her soul.

He sensed her approach the moment she stepped on to his land, lifting his head as if her perfume, the soft but spicy tones of lavender, reached out to his senses. He heard the outer door pushed open, her footsteps on the paving in the hall. Of course she would come. He had never thought she would run away from her problems to The Venmore. She would remain in Old Wincomlee, out of pride if nothing else. He had known her so little time, but his instincts told him that she would not let it lie as they had parted.

He considered her, as he had left her in the entrance hall at the Pride, as dispassionately as he was able.
Beautiful, and somehow fragile under the weight of truth that she had been forced to accept. Bewildered and confused as she had every right to be. She had looked at him with disbelief, and with such sadness, such hurt.

All his own doing.

Zan snarled, and lifted his tankard in a mocking toast to himself.

‘Your affectionate father was right after all. You’re a worthless unprincipled rake at heart.’

He shook his head as if to dislodge a series of unpalatable thoughts, not least of his long-dead sire, from his mind. Now was not the time for such regrets and recriminations. Now he had to face Marie-Claude whether he liked it or not.

There she stood in his library as she had once before. She had come with a purpose. As pretty as ever in her favourite deep blue spotted muslin, as composed and confident as if engaged on a formal social call. Her straw bonnet had a high frame and sweep of feathers that curled to draw his eye to her lovely face, her magnificent eyes. Today she carried her parasol. His gift to her. He thought she carried it today of all days as a challenge, a deliberate slap in the face. How inconsequential that he should notice it. And that her fingers were hard-clenched around its ivory handle. She was not as composed as he had thought.

Zan steeled himself to conduct this meeting on his own terms.

He did not move a muscle as the library door was thrust open.

Marie-Claude came to a halt in the open doorway.

‘Come in, Madame Mermaid. I thought you’d be
here before too long, once you managed to escape your watchdogs.’ Disdainful, sneeringly ill mannered, Zan remained where he was in his habitual slouch, his booted feet on the desk, a tankard of ale in his hand. Insolent. Wilfully discourteous. ‘Come to heap your own particular condemnations on my head, have you?’

It had taken all her courage to come here after all. It nearly failed her as Zan’s boorish welcome hit home. But she would not be daunted. ‘Yes, I have come. There’s something I need you to tell me.’ She kept her tone cool, direct. She breathed deeply against a sudden spasm in her belly.

‘Go away,’ Zan growled, not stirring one inch. ‘We’ve nothing to say to each other.’

Marie-Claude simply looked at him. A long, level stare. ‘Is that all you have to say?’

‘What more is there? I think enough has been said. In God’s name, what can possibly be achieved by raking over the ashes of my past sins again and again? It’s not going to change the facts, is it?’

‘So you lied to me.’

‘No. I never lied. I just did not tell you the truth.’

So there it was. Impossible to believe—so brutal, so unfeeling—but stated so unequivocally.

‘I loved you, Zan. I think I still do,’ Marie-Claude stated with amazing calm, the product of many hours of thought. ‘My sentiments are not so shallow that they can be destroyed simply by accusations when you have made no attempt to defend yourself. I have come to hear your defence.’

An unmannerly, mocking little tilt of his head was his only reply as he raised the tankard to his lips.

‘Why will you not answer me?’

‘Because you don’t need to hear my
defence
, Marie-Claude. You say you love me, but you don’t.’ He put down the tankard, locked his fingers behind his head and tilted back his chair. Was it possible for him to be any more ungallant? ‘Face facts, my dear. It was a harmless flirtation to while away the summer months. Now you believe the worst of me. And why shouldn’t you? You’ve heard all the unpleasant evidence from Harriette. I’m sure she described to you every sin and crime in lurid detail. Overwhelming, isn’t it? Face it—I’m not the man for you.’

She gripped the handle of the parasol even tighter, fingers bone-white within her gloves, struggling to find a reply. ‘I find it hard to reconcile what I hear with what I know.’

‘This is what
I
know!’ His lips twisted. ‘You’re guilty of romanticising smugglers and smuggling, my dear girl. It’s not romantic—rather hard and brutal with no room for principles and higher emotions.’

‘Then are you hard and brutal too?’

‘So it seems.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Then you’re more foolish than I thought.’

She faced him, did not retreat one step. ‘Is it true? Everything that Luke said?’ she demanded.

‘You heard it all. The damning evidence against me on Venmore’s lips. Was it not strong enough to convince you?’

‘I want to hear it from
you.
Did you truly do all those terrible things?’ In her despair, in her inability to claw through her confusion, Marie-Claude’s accent became more pronounced.

‘Yes. I’m guilty as charged.’

‘All of it?’

‘Yes. All of it.’

A tremor touched her, but she remained staunchly determined. Her fingers clenched strongly enough that the fragile ivory was in danger of snapping.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she repeated.

‘You have known me a bare few weeks. How would you know what I’m capable of?’

She placed one palm against her breast, as she had once before. ‘Because you are here. In my heart. You wouldn’t lie to me. I know it.’

‘You have no choice but to accept it, Madame Mermaid. Would Harriette lie to you?’

The question took Marie-Claude aback. For a moment she had to think. ‘No. I don’t think she would.’