Rake Beyond Redemption (24 page)

‘I broke the skin.’

‘I know. I thought you’d cracked my skull.’

‘You’re far too hard-headed for that!’ she teased gently.

It had stopped bleeding. Dipping a cloth in the warm water, she soaked away the dried blood from his scalp and his hair, feeling unaccountably tearful. When it was done, kneeling again at his side, she dipped another piece of linen in the ewer and stroked the cloth over his face, his lips, holding back when he flinched.

‘Good God, woman! You’ve a heavy hand.’

‘No, I haven’t!’ But compassion welled despite all her intentions. ‘Oh, Zan. He hurt you!’ The bruising, the raw abrasions where knuckles had made contact.

‘I’ve no desire to look in a mirror. And I expect I’ve had worse injuries falling from a horse or being washed against the side planking of the
Spectre
in a gale.’ But he could not smile.

So for him she blinked away the tears. ‘You’ll live.’

‘I expect I shall.’

‘Let me look at your ribs.’

‘If you must…’

Bruising, scrapes from contact with heavy boots, but no broken skin. She pressed the flat of her hand softly along his ribs where the dark discolouration was worst.

‘Does that hurt?’

He dragged in a breath on a whispered oath. ‘Hell and the devil! Yes.’

‘Cracked, probably, but I’m not sure.’ Her voice was
as raw as his, but she stuck to her allotted task. ‘I could bind them for you.’

‘No. Let them be…’

She resisted smoothing his hair away from his forehead. His eyes were closed as he rode the pain. She gave him a moment to recover, to collect himself.

‘Let me finish. Soon now. I’ve a salve that will ease the pain here. I’ll not hurt you again. Let me…’ She stood, walked behind him, moving the branch of candles to cast more light. ‘I don’t think…Lean forwards a little.’

Her words froze on her lips, her skin suddenly chill as she let her fingers move softly over the skin of his back. Smooth, hard and taut where there were no abrasions. Tanned from working without a shirt in the warm days on board the cutter. Muscles hard and fluid beneath the skin. Satin smooth—except for the silvered marks of a whip, old and very faint, but still visible in the direct light, running across from shoulder to waist. She had had no idea. Despite their intimacy, she had no warning of this. She touched him, could barely sense them beneath her fingertips.

And felt him stiffen beneath her touch. Felt his instant resistance to what she saw. So here was another strand to be unravelled if she were ever to understand the complex man who was Alexander Ellerdine.

‘What’s this?’

He looked up and back over his shoulder, and she read under the pain a quick irritation as he prepared to deny any importance. He shrugged his shoulder under her hand.

‘Nothing.’

‘Someone has beaten you.’

‘I probably deserved it. I was a wild enough boy. A long time ago now.’

‘Yes, I can see.’ A very long time ago, so long that the marks were almost invisible. But someone had taken a switch to him, or a riding crop, and she thought more than once. This was no casual beating. In places the lines overlapped, criss-crossed. Someone had seriously whipped him.

‘Zan…’ She placed her palms against the scars for one long moment, then moved to kneel before him, looking up into his face. ‘Zan, who dared—?’

‘Leave it, Marie. It’s not important. I’m not proud of the scars and they have no bearing on my life now.’ The hardness in his voice touched her. The bleak acceptance of whatever had caused them. And the refusal to compromise.

‘You’re hiding the truth from me again. So many secrets and lies.’ Touching her lips against his cheekbone. ‘So you don’t want my pity, my compassion. Very well. I swear you won’t get it. I’ll remain hard-hearted and unmoved, whatever you tell me, if that’s what you want.’ She captured one of his hands and pressed her mouth against his fingers. ‘Will you still not accept that I love you?’ She did not wait for his reply. ‘Who did this to you?’

The resistance remained, she felt his fingers tense and flex within hers, but she refused to let go. Calmly she sat and waited, tension snapping between them. Until he raised his head at last and breathed out, long and slow.

‘I see there’s no stopping you tonight, and I don’t think I have the will to withstand you. It was my father who did it. As I said, I was a wild youth and not the son he wanted.’

‘Your father?’ Marie-Claude knew little about the previous owner of the Ellerdine acres, but she had thought, from Harriette’s brief explanation, that he had
been a mild-mannered ineffectual man who had failed to control his wayward son. Would such a man cause his son pain? ‘But why?’ she repeated. ‘What could a boy do that was so bad that his father took a whip to him in this manner?’ Her eye glinted in indignation. ‘And why are you smiling?’

‘Because your accent becomes most pronounced when you are angry. It is very attractive.’ The smile faded. ‘Ah, Marie-Claude, it is not worth your anger on my behalf. It is many years ago now—so many that I had forgotten. And my father—well, we didn’t see eye to eye exactly.’

‘But to beat you so harshly…Why did he do it?’ ‘It’s simple enough.’ He would brush it aside, to divert her away from sensitive ground. She could almost see him do it—except that he took another mouthful of brandy as if he needed it to help him face the unpalatable memory, whatever he claimed to the contrary. ‘My father wanted his only son to toe his particular line, the straight and narrow and insufferably dull. The sort of life that he enjoyed—even if he proved not to be particularly effective at any of it. Master of the Hunt. A Justice of the Peace. A landowner. Part of the local social scene with balls and dances at the assembly rooms or with family friends. And do you know the saddest part? He shone at none of it. He had the worst seat in the county when he rode to hounds. The farmed land went to rack and ruin, as did the house. He had few friends who cared for anything but his deep pockets when buying a glass of brandy or a tankard of ale. He wasted money with no recompense to the family or our land. He went near to ruining the Ellerdines. And he wanted me to step into his oh-so-worthy shoes. At the same time he would
give me no authority, no freedom to try my own hand at running the estates. I begged him. And he laughed at me. Damned me for a fool. Why would he waste money on investment when it was there to be spent? There was no moving him—and at last I stopped trying.’

Zan’s hands clenched around hers, his nostrils narrowed on a sharp intake of breath. Now she understood. This was the reason he had adopted a life that led him into dangerous paths.

‘He took every chance to ridicule my dreams of making Ellerdine Manor prosperous again. It could have been done, I know it. He said I was an ignorant lout and no son of his if I wanted to take the money from his pockets and squander it with no recompense. He just could not see…’

‘That was a wicked thing to do.’ ‘All he wanted was a son in his own image.’ ‘And you did not fit the warped vision he had.’ ‘By God, I could not do it!’ he continued as if she had not spoken, lost in the past with all its broken dreams and dashed hopes. ‘I would not. What did I want with the withdrawing rooms of my father’s so-called friends? The drunken wenching and drinking with his hunting cronies? He could not even be trusted to give fair justice as a J.P.’ Forgetting his injuries, he shrugged and then winced as the pain arrowed to his ribs. ‘I had no other guidance. My mother shut herself away into her own world of books and letter-writing and dreams. So, being young and full of defiance, I did what any lad of high temper and hot blood would do. I took the opposite path. There it was at my feet, already well developed in Old Wincomlee. It beckoned me, almost begging me to tread that path and don the mantle. Smuggling with all
its excitement and exhilaration, bringing me adventure, danger, a way to challenge authority. So I did. Fell in with the Gadies. Lydyards had always smuggled. My mother was a Lydyard, so I told myself it was in my blood and I enjoyed it. It was like discovering a new life that gave me fulfilment and satisfaction beyond anything I could imagine. It allowed me to escape from Ellerdine Manor so that I need not see its devastation…’ His words dried at last.

‘And your father, of course, did not approve.’

His focus came back to her. He blinked as if he had not realised she was still sitting there, listening. ‘No. He did not.’

‘Didn’t your mother try to protect you?’

‘I doubt she knew. My father hardly broadcast that he took a riding crop to his son to break him of the habit of joining the Brotherhood of the Free Traders.’

‘So he beat you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it did no good.’

‘It drove me to even greater excess. I can’t deny it, can I?’ Now he straightened and stood, stretching his spine. ‘I need to walk or I shall stiffen.’ He began to pace slowly up and down the room. ‘I enjoyed it. Every minute of it. Don’t mistake me. I was no martyr for my father’s punishments. What lad would not enjoy the thrill of running the gauntlet of the Preventives? I should thank him for driving me into the arms of the Brotherhood. The excitement. The freedom. The sheer joy of sailing a cutter across the Channel under the eyes of the Revenue, a joy for its own sake, but also because I knew my father would hate it with every bone in his body. I revelled in defying him, as boys will.’

So that was it. Bored, lonely, left without sail or tiller to find his own way. As he had said, what lad would not embrace the charms of running contraband and thumbing his nose at his Majesty’s forces? She understood and felt bitterly for him.

‘And it threw you into D’Acre’s path.’

‘Sometimes. I kept out of it as much as I could. Even though I was young I could see that D’Acre was not a man I wished my name to be coupled with. His reputation was as black ten, twenty years ago as it is today. And, of course, he always did have a lively connection with the wreckers hereabouts. He never cared how he made his profits.’

‘So he was interested in the ship that came aground in the bay,’ she prompted, feeling her way, listening to what he did not say, suddenly alert.

‘Yes. The
Lion D’Or.
’

‘And was that how you became involved with the
Lion D’Or
?’ she asked innocently.

‘Yes. D’Acre said that I must—’ His eyes snapped to hers. ‘I didn’t mean to say that.’

‘I know you didn’t. It wasn’t you who arranged the wreck of the ship, was it? It was D’Acre.’

For a long moment their eyes held across the room, everything unspoken but clear between them.

‘No,’ he admitted as he continued to walk, ‘it wasn’t me. Except that I did nothing to stop it. I complied with what I knew would happen when I suppose I could have raised the Preventives. But it all happened so fast and…No, I’ll not make excuses. I’m not innocent in all this, Marie.’

She stood, moved to stop him in mid-pace.

‘What was so bad that you allowed D’Acre to lure the vessel into the bay?’

‘He used threats. Even then so many years ago he was ambitious enough to consider extending his influence along the coast. For a man with wrecking in mind the bay here is perfect—and the use of the Tower here at the Pride, of course, the Smugglers’ Lamp. So he used threats. And not subtle ones either. Not against me, but…’ He hesitated, the skin over his cheekbones taut. ‘He demanded the use of the Tower and if I refused—which I did at first—he threatened Harriette’s safety—and the responsibility if she were hurt would of course be mine. If I did not go along with his scheme to bring the ship to ground, Harriette would pay. So I did it. D’Acre made use of Tom—who was too young to know what he was doing—to carry the word to Wiggins to light the lamp. I didn’t help him, but neither did I stop him.’

‘How old were you?’

‘What does that matter? Eighteen or thereabout? Old enough to judge right from wrong. You can’t absolve me, Marie, however much you try.’

‘I can make a case for vicious blackmail against you from a hardened criminal, threatening your cousin’s life.’

‘I could have stopped them—should have stopped them, gone to the authorities—to Sir Wallace even—anyone…’

‘And risked Harriette’s life? It’s easy to know that in hindsight. But then—we all know what D’Acre’s capable of. Who’s to say he wouldn’t have carried out his threat? I think you had no choice.’ And he had lived with the guilt ever since. ‘Oh, Zan!’

Marie-Claude covered her face with her hands and wept slow tears for him.

‘You must not…’ He reached for her, but she stepped back.

‘How can I not weep for a boy dragged under a vicious current, out of his depth? And you never told Harriette, did you?’

‘No.’ His hands were gentle on her shoulders, but rigidly implacable. ‘And neither must you. She does not need to know that her life was in danger from such scum as D’Acre or be made to feel guilty that a ship was wrecked to save her life. As for being dragged below my depth, I soon swam again! There was no nobility there.’

‘Yet tonight you finally brought him to justice.’

‘I did. I had to.’ He walked away from her to pour two glasses of brandy, handed one to her. ‘Usually there’s a strong element of live and let live within the Brotherhood. We keep our mouths shut about the affairs of others. Our safety depends on it, so the least said the better. But I couldn’t any longer. D’Acre had become a monster.’

He shook his head. He could not tell her of the more recent obscenities that had come to his ears. She had faced enough horror this night and he would not burden her with more. She did not deserve to have the images fixed in her mind to trouble her dreams, the horrors that, even though none of his doing, brought him to waking dread, dry mouthed, breathless, streaming with sweat. An unsuspecting excise-man lured from an inn and a quiet tankard of ale, D’Acre’s ruffians moving the way-markers to lead the man over the cliff edge in the dark, stamping on his fingers where they’d grasped the edge, so he fell over to his death on the rocks below. The crew of a trading vessel taken captive, the captain and his officers manacled together with a heavy chain and thrown overboard to a certain death. The women of a neighbouring smuggling village, held to ransom so that their menfolk would co-operate and hand over their
contraband to the Fly-By-Nights. The contraband was not the only thing D’Acre’s crew stole that night. Wives were raped. Virgins defiled. No one had been safe.