Taming Rafe (9 page)

“I tried to look menacing so the settlers wouldn’t shoot all of us, or their Dutch neighbors.” The little girl looked puzzled, and he grinned. At least she wasn’t terrified, any longer. “I was in the army,” he explained.

Suddenly Felicity began laughing. “Of course you were,” she managed, looking absurdly relieved. “We have several regiments in Africa, don’t we?”

He looked at her quizzically. “Yes, we do. Not mine, unfortunately, but I managed it, anyway.”

“What regiment were you?” the little girl asked.

“The Coldstream Guards.”

“Are they important? They sound bang up to the mark.”

Rafe chuckled. “Well, mostly I led troops about for parades, coronations, and funerals and such.”

Felicity stopped chuckling. “You
led
troops?”

Perhaps when he’d landed on her, she’d hit her head, as well. “Yes. I was a captain. I only resigned a few weeks ago.”

“Did you learn how to fight?”

An unexpected chill rattled Rafe’s teeth. The gaping hole where the west wing used to be certainly wasn’t helping to keep the house warm. He’d have to see to that after the doors. “I learned seventy-three ways to kill a man.”

May straightened and grabbed his arm. “Seventy
three?” she exclaimed, her eyes wide. “Will you teach me some of them?”

Rafe lifted an eyebrow. “You already know at least one.”

Felicity stepped forward and put her hands on May’s shoulders. “Yes, the infamous tea kettle maneuver.”

“Ooh, is that one of them?” the girl asked excitedly.

Solemnly Rafe nodded. “Number twenty-eight.”

Felicity smiled at him over May’s head, her eyes dancing.
Thank you
, she mouthed, then tugged her sister toward the hallway. “Come on, let’s get you wrapped in a blanket and warmed up.”

“Number twenty-eight,” May chirped. “You know number twenty-eight, too, Lis.”

Rafe watched them go down the hall, then walked over to hunch against Aristotle’s warm flank. “Don’t worry about me,” he muttered. “I’m only the one soaked to the skin and freezing to death.”

The horse swung his head around to eye him.

“Oh, be quiet, old Totle.”

Felicity chuckled from the doorway. “Which number is freezing to death?” she asked, stepping forward with a blessedly warm-looking blanket in her arms.

“Number seven,” Rafe answered promptly, his teeth chattering again.

“Well, we must prevent number seven, then.” Felicity hesitated, then lifted the blanket to wrap it about his shoulders.

Rafe closed his eyes as her hands slid over his shoulders, too slowly and gently to be anything but a caress. He felt
much
warmer than he had a moment earlier. And he realized that the acquisition
of Forton Hall was becoming very complicated, indeed.

Stop touching him
, Felicity chastised herself as she sipped tea in the morning room an hour later. Rafe sat on the hearth before the roaring fire, playing jackstraws with May.
And for heaven’s sake, stop looking at him
. Addle-brained though he was, at least he knew enough to come in out of the rain—even if he had waited until he was soaked through, and even if he had insisted on bringing his horse into the house with him.

“You cheated!” May declared, giggling.

“I did not, little Miss Cutthroat.”

Felicity smiled. May would be devastated when Rafe left—she’d never seen her precocious sister become so attached to anyone. And she hardly made a habit of letting strangers step into their lives, herself. Since he’d arrived—exploded into their lives, more like—she’d been off balance and befuddled. For the first time since she could remember, she felt as though she was moving forward instead of treading water, or worse yet, slipping backward into further ruin.

“How did you get your scar?” May asked him, reaching out toward his face.

With a grin he gripped her wrist and returned her hand to the game, but not before Felicity saw him flinch. She settled deeper into the couch’s soft cushions, studying him over the rim of her teacup.

Rafe shrugged. “Just an accident.” He loosened the blanket around his shoulders. “I say, I think I’m beginning to thaw.”

May wrinkled her nose at him. “What sort of accident?”

Felicity should have told her to stop prying, but she was supremely interested in hearing the answer
herself, and whether it would involve more dukes and elephants and fabulous adventures. May’s manners were becoming atrocious, but at least they were useful—and their guest didn’t seem to mind a whit.

Rafe sighed. “Fine. My horse stumbled and rolled on me and broke my leg in two places, and a French soldier stuck me in the face with a bayonet.”

“Aristotle rolled on you?”

“No. I was in Belgium.”

May’s eyes widened even further, while Felicity’s narrowed. “At Waterloo?”

While her sister mentally congratulated May on her knowledge of geography, Rafe looked ill at ease. “Yes, at Waterloo. Until damned—deuced—old John wrote Prinny and my father that I’d probably lost an eye and a leg, and that they were shipping me home posthaste before I expired.”

“Who’s John?” May asked.

“Wellington.” Rafe smiled, then leaned forward to tap her on the nose. “And you know what?”

“What?”

“He could never beat me at jackstraws, either.”

May scowled. “You never played jackstraws with Wellington.”

Rafe shrugged the blanket off and stood. “How do you know that?” He sketched them an elegant bow. “Excuse me, ladies, while I check on old Totle and go take a look at that door.”

As he left, May scooted around to face her sister. “Do you think he really knows the Duke of Wellington?”

Felicity set aside her tea. “I’m sure Rafe has seen His Grace,” she conceded.

“I think he’s telling the truth. He knows about elephants, and hippos, and seventy-three ways to
kill someone. And he ate a wildebeest.”

With a sigh Felicity nodded and patted the cushion beside her. “Come here for a moment, May.” When her sister had settled onto the couch, Felicity put her arm around May’s shoulders and hugged her. “I need to explain something to you.”

May looked at her warily. “All right.”

“Remember how Nigel always said his friend Peter Whiting was so wonderful, and when he finally visited we really didn’t like him all that much?”

“He was a damned stuffed shirt.” May nodded.

“May!”

“All right, deuced. But Rafe’s not like him at all. Rafe’s top of the trees.”

“Yes, he is. But what I mean to say is, he may see things one way, like Nigel did, and really they might not be that way at all.”

May thought about that for a long time. “So you mean he might think he’s seen a hippopotamus, but it’s really a pig,” she said finally.

Felicity smiled in relief. “Yes. That is precisely what I mean.”

“He’s as mad as a Bedlamite.”

“We don’t know that for certain.” She tugged her sister up against her side. “Remember, though, he may be completely smashing, but we really can’t rely on him. We must rely on ourselves.”

“Can we rely on Nigel?” May asked, looking up with her dark eyes.

“We can rely on what we know about Nigel,” Felicity answered.

As May scampered off to help Rafe, Felicity sat on the couch and stared into the fire. Relying on what they knew about Nigel wasn’t very comforting.

There were a few things still salvageable in the
west wing, but with the bad weather, anything made of cloth or paper would be lost. And all she could afford to do about it was to board up that end of the hallway so the snow wouldn’t come in when winter arrived.

She stood to straighten the room. If Nigel didn’t make good on his promises, by the time winter arrived, she and May would be lucky to have any roof at all left over their heads. And given his history of grand schemes that went nowhere, their situation was becoming more tenuous by the moment. Like their father, Nigel had always been full of good intentions, and completely incapable of carrying through on them.

And then there was Rafe. Full of wild fantasies and impossible dreams, at least he knew how to mend a roof. She felt guilty about abusing his kindness and his delusions, but if she turned him away, she could only imagine what sort of trouble he might get himself into. At least here he had a roof—well, part of a roof—over his head, and he could be of some use. Neither she nor May had smiled or laughed so much in ages.

Believing himself to be nobility, though, could get him arrested elsewhere—particularly when he was so bad at it. Nigel, who complained about the deficiencies of rural life and the way his attire must be fading sadly out of fashion, seemed much more a member of the nobility than amusing, easygoing Rafe, who was wearing clothes far older than he was. If Nigel ever attempted to hang a door, he’d be more likely to end up hanging himself by accident.

“Damnation!”

Something heavy thunked and crashed, resonating hollowly through the remains of Forton Hall.

“Oh, my God!” Felicity lurched to her feet and
dashed toward the foyer. She was stupid,
stupid
to let May play about in this wrecked house, especially with a strange man pretending he knew how to fix doors and cook wildebeest. “
May!
”

A vision of her sister crushed beneath the heavy door filled her mind as she ran. She nearly stumbled into Rafe coming toward her, and the somber expression on his face wrenched her anxiety into panic.

“Where’s May?” she asked frantically. “What happened?”

His expression immediately softened into surprised concern, and he grabbed onto her shoulders before she could rush past him. “It’s all right, Lis. Really.”

“But—”

“May is fine,” he said firmly. “I broke your vase. I’m sorry.” He let go of her and held up a broken-stemmed daisy. “I was trying to make a jest out of it so you wouldn’t get mad at me. It was stupid. I should have realized you’d think we’d flattened May, or something.”

“I’m all right, Lis!” May called a moment later.

Felicity stood staring up at Rafe, trying to collect her wits and catch her breath. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

He looked sheepish. Suspecting duplicity, Felicity put her hand on his chest and pushed. Reluctantly he moved aside, like a great lion being held at bay by a mouse, and she continued into the foyer. And stopped again.

May did seem perfectly fine. She sat upon Aristotle’s bare back, while the bay stood as far from the front door as he could manage. Odd as that sight was, the three men lifting the fallen door of solid oak surprised her even more. As she entered
they froze, the heavy, ornately carved plank suspended between them.

“Miss Harrington,” Mr. Greetham said. “Sorry for the noise.”

“Wood was slippery, Miss Harrington.” The second man, Bill Jennings, grimaced apologetically. “Won’t happen again, miss.”

The third man—or boy, actually, for Felicity knew Ronald Banthe couldn’t be older than eighteen—tried to doff his hat and nearly dropped the door on his foot. “Morning, Miss Harrington.”

“Good morning, gentlemen.” Felicity turned around again, nearly running into Rafe for the second time. “Mr. Bancroft, might I have a word with you?” she asked, moving past him into the shambles of a dining room.

She didn’t turn around to look, but when the door softly closed a moment later, she knew he had followed her.

“I really am sorry,” he began again. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“What,” she said, turning to face him, “are they doing here?”

“They?” Rafe repeated. “Oh—my troops. They’re assisting me. With the door.”

“I don’t want them doing that,” she stated, putting her hands on her hips.

He tossed the broken daisy onto the table. “If you’re worried about them sullying your carpet, I hardly think—”

“No!” Felicity flushed, embarrassed that he would think such a thing. “For heaven’s sake, that’s not it. They—they have their own lives and responsibilities. I…” She stopped.

Rafe took a step nearer. “They
want
to help you, Lis. I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re quite
popular here in Cheshire. If you’d asked, they would have been here a month ago.”

“But I can’t pay them,” she blurted.

“They
want
to help,” he repeated. “I barely had time to mention it before they volunteered.” He stopped in front of her. “Don’t be so stubborn. You can use the assistance.”

“I am not being stubborn,” she insisted, having difficulty meeting his intensely curious gaze. “It’s just…It’s not right. I am a landowner—or Nigel is, anyway. I’m supposed to help
them
. They are not supposed to help me, or even think that I might need help.” Finally she looked up into his light green eyes. “I wish you could understand what that’s like.”

“I do understand,” he murmured. “But you don’t have to do everything yourself. Sometimes people just want to do kind things for one another.” He reached out and took her hand, tugging her closer. “Sometimes you have to let other people help you.”

The back of his fingers brushed across her cheek, and suddenly she couldn’t speak. Taking her face in his hands, he leaned closer.

“Has anyone told you how beautiful you are?” he asked softly. Then he kissed her.

Felicity closed her eyes as lightning and hot liquid fire coursed through every part of her at his touch. She slid her hands up his chest and over his broad, strong shoulders.

His mouth, warm and soft and infinitely more knowing than hers, teased at her, kissing and pulling away until she had to pursue. His teeth found her lower lip and gently bit, tugging at it. Felicity gasped, hot sparks tingling down her spine and up her thighs to where they met.

As his hands slid, caressing, down her back to
her hips, she realized the soft, yearning moan she heard came from deep in her own throat. Her eyes flying open, she pulled away, knocking his hands away from her.

“Stop that,” she protested. Not even her voice was steady, and she was half surprised her legs didn’t collapse and send her to the floor in a molten puddle.

Rafe looked at her for a long moment, something startled in his own eyes. “I’d best get back to the door,” he said.