The Rake's Mistress (6 page)

She went over to her workbench and placed the bowl carefully on the top. She had a small pot of paint in a drawer, which she always used to make a delicate outline on the glass before she started the engraving. She took out her brush and edged the top off the pot, sketching with delicate strokes. An angel with a wicked face… She could see it in her mind’s eye, head bent in prayer, the line of its cheek and jaw a straight slash in the glass, giving the impression of strength and grace. Rebecca stuck her tongue out slightly and concentrated hard, trying to block out Lucas’s presence.

She did not succeed. She was too aware of him. He took his time, examining all the pieces on the display shelves with close attention. She could see his shadow crossing the deeper barred shade on the floor, coming closer. Despite the fact that her back was turned to him, his presence disturbed her, stirring the air, creating currents.

‘Is this all your own work?’ Lucas questioned.

Rebecca pushed a stray strand of hair away from her flushed face. ‘The majority of the display pieces are my uncle’s work. This was his studio up until his death four months ago. I engraved the
glass panels and some of the other items plus the vase.’ She gestured to the windowsill.

‘Your work is very good.’ Lucas’s voice was quiet. ‘There is so much passion in the pieces…’

Rebecca dropped her brush and bent down to retrieve it. Passion—and Lucas Kestrel. It was a combination that made her stomach drop. Her mind filled with images that were nothing to do with engraving at all, images of his hands on her body, his mouth against her skin…

‘Thank you.’ Her voice was muffled.

Lucas was standing by the window, looking at the slender vase with the ship engraved on it. He traced the curve of the engraving with one finger. Rebecca repressed a shiver and bent back over her work. She had never experienced such a strong physical reaction to anybody in her life and it frightened her. She wanted him gone.

He came back to the workbench and Rebecca put the paintbrush down, eyeing him warily.

‘Have you made your choice, my lord?’

Lucas nodded. ‘I think so. I would like a set of the slender glasses like the one that you have on the shelf engraved with an anchor. A set of six would be perfect. They are quite beautiful. I believe you must be extremely talented, Miss Raleigh.’

There was no mistaking the sincerity in his tone, and after a moment Rebecca gave him a shy smile.
‘Thank you,’ she said again. She did a quick mental inventory of the contents of her storeroom. She thought that she had just enough stock to cover the order.

‘You have made a good choice,’ she said. ‘And the design?’

Lucas frowned slightly. ‘I am not certain…’

‘I usually advise clients to choose a design that has a significance to the recipient,’ Rebecca said hesitantly. ‘Flowers for a gardener, or a ship for a sailor, for example.’ She looked at him. ‘A kestrel for the Kestrels, perhaps?’

The lines about Lucas’s eyes deepened as he smiled. ‘What a splendid idea, Miss Raleigh. A kestrel it is, then.’

Rebecca put her head on one side and did a rough drawing of a bird of prey in flight, proud and predatory.

‘How appropriate,’ she said softly. She looked up to find Lucas’s eyes upon her, bright and hard. For a moment their gazes locked and held.

Then Lucas said, ‘So, how much are you going to charge me, Miss Raleigh?’

Rebecca tore her gaze away from his. For a brief moment, trapped in the compelling power of his eyes, she had forgotten everything else. She plucked a figure at random.

‘I…erm…twenty guineas, my lord.’

Lucas looked astounded. He straightened up. ‘Twenty guineas? That is ridiculous, Miss Raleigh.’

Rebecca was shocked. She had not anticipated that he would argue over cost. Plenty of people did, but she had not imagined Lucas Kestrel to be a miser. She supposed that twenty guineas was a little expensive, but she was not backing down now. She raised her chin in a determined fashion.

‘Twenty guineas it is, my lord.’

‘I will not give you a penny less than sixty.’

Rebecca recoiled. ‘Sixty guineas for six glasses? Do not be so foolish, my lord!’

‘It is sixty guineas or nothing, Miss Raleigh. Not a penny more and not a penny less. If you do not wish the commission…’

Rebecca had also got to her feet by now. She faced him across the desk. ‘This is idiotic, my lord! Most people negotiate downwards, not upwards!’

Lucas looked down his nose. ‘I am not most people, Miss Raleigh.’

Rebecca glared at him. ‘You do not understand. I have given you a fair price for the work.’

‘Must you sell yourself short? You will never make enough money to survive if you do not value your own work.’

Rebecca shook her head with frustration. ‘It is the market price, my lord. Allow me to know more
about that than you do. Only Adams or Woolf could command such prices!’

Lucas shrugged. ‘Do you accept the commission, Miss Raleigh?’

‘Of course, but—’

‘Then you must accept the sum I offer.’

Lucas came around the desk and stood in front of her. His dark gaze scanned her face, softening slightly as it lingered on the indignant colour in her cheeks. He shook his head slightly. ‘Pride, Miss Raleigh, is one of the seven deadly sins. But then—’ he took a step closer and his fingers brushed her cheeks with a featherlight touch ‘—so is lust…’

Rebecca went hot all over, then cold. Lucas’s gaze dropped to her lips and she knew with a certainty and a tingling anticipation that he was about to kiss her. She backed away until she came up the hard edge of the desk and put out a hand to ward him off. ‘My lord—’

‘I am still not sure about you, Miss Raleigh,’ Lucas said slowly, ‘despite your claim last night that your association with the Archangel is entirely innocent.’ His fingers drifted down the line of her throat and rested momentarily where the pulse beat hectically in the hollow at its base.

‘I am not at all sure whether you are as virtuous as you claim to be…’ His hand was sliding to the nape of her neck now, tangling in the curls there,
stroking softly. His tone was hypnotic and so was the intent look in his eyes. Rebecca felt her knees tremble. The desk creaked as she unconsciously leaned against it for support.

She put up a hand and tried to push his aside. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of effort and so did her words. ‘Whereas I am in absolutely no doubt about you, my lord.’ It came out as a whisper.

Laughter lightened Lucas’s eyes. Somehow he had captured her hand in his, diverting it from its purpose. His touch was warm and intimate against her skin. ‘Are you not?’ he said. ‘And what do you think of me?’

‘That you are a rake, my lord,’ Rebecca said.

‘And I suppose that you do not have any time for rakes, Miss Raleigh?’

His thumb was rubbing the back of her hand now, sending tiny quivers of feeling along her nerves. Rebecca frowned, trying to concentrate.

‘You suppose correctly, my lord.’

He was drawing her closer. There was something inevitable, something inescapable about the way his arms went about her. She did not struggle. She found that she wanted to know what it would be like.

His lips were cool and light and for a second hers clung to his before he released her. The way that she trembled in his arms was out of all proportion
to the kiss and yet she felt shaken to her very soul.

‘Why not?’ he said, very softly.

‘Why not what?’ Rebecca was so confused she could barely stand.

‘Why not give rakes—or at least this one—some of your time?’

For a moment, Rebecca could not think of any reason why not. Then she shook her head sharply to dispel the seductive spell he was weaving. ‘Because I have my own way to make, my lord, and I doubt that you are likely to make that any easier for me.’

‘You mistake,’ Lucas said. ‘I could make life much smoother for you.’

Rebecca closed her eyes for a moment against the temptation. She barely knew this man and yet she knew with an instinct as old as time itself that he was dangerous to her. There was a predatory intensity about him that forced a reaction from deep within her.

‘I am sure that you could make my life smoother, my lord,’ she said, taking a deep breath to steady herself, ‘if your patronage gains me more work.’

Lucas laughed and released her. ‘Very well, Miss Raleigh.’ His tone sobered. ‘How long will it take you to complete the work on the glasses?’

‘About a week, I imagine.’

Lucas bowed. ‘Then I shall return in a week’s time. Good day, Miss Raleigh.’

Rebecca sank down on to the
chaise-longue
as he went out, closing the door quietly behind him. She felt physically exhausted, as though she had been working ceaselessly for hours. She was not at all sure what had happened between the two of them. It was not something that had ever happened to her before. But Lucas had had a word for it.

Lust.

Nothing could have spelled out more clearly the role Lord Lucas Kestrel foresaw for her in his life. He might have held back from an offer of
carte blanche
now, but it was only a matter of time. And in truth, there was something a great deal more appealing about accepting an offer from such a man than from the likes of Lord Fremantle.

Rebecca felt herself tremble at the thought. What had Nan said?
It is not so difficult in the end
…

Rebecca could see just how easy it could be.

She picked up the rose bowl and peered at her reflection in the polished glass. Her face was flushed and her eyes bright. She felt wide awake, stirred up. Once again, she remembered the blissful feeling of Lucas’s arms around her. It had felt absolutely right to be there, exciting, pleasurable and at the same time deeply comforting, like coming home.

Rebecca put her face in her hands for a brief moment, then bent to scoop up the pencils and the sheets of paper that were still lying scattered on the floor. She reminded herself that bliss was a very short-lived and deceptive feeling, for when it had gone, as it surely would, one was left counting the cost.

She must be practical. She had a living to earn and she wanted matters neat, tidy and simple. There was no room in her private life for passion when it all went into her work. Nothing must induce her to accept
carte blanche
. Not Lucas’s persuasions, nor her own desires. She owed it to herself to keep that pledge.

All the same, she was tempted.

L
ord Lucas Kestrel was feeling guilty. It was not a sensation that was familiar to him and he did not care for it. It was a guilt that had crept over him during the previous few days and had finally driven him out of the house at nearly midnight to take refuge at White’s, where his friends had greeted him with great pleasure and had promptly set out to relieve him of a large part of his army pay. Since Lucas could not concentrate he lost very quickly, and had just thrown his cards in for a final time when someone touched his shoulder and Cory Newlyn’s voice said in his ear, ‘Would you care to join me for a drink, Lucas, before you lose your shirt?’

Lucas looked up, his dark scowl lightening into a reluctant smile. Cory had been a friend of the Kestrels for many years and the two of them had met only the previous week when he had called on Lord Newlyn at the British Museum to discuss the pictorial code being used by the Midwinter spies.

Lucas stretched. ‘I’ll gladly join you,’ he said, moving to sit with Cory at a quiet corner table where a bottle of port already resided on the table between them. Cory sat down, crossed his long legs at the ankle and viewed Lucas with a meditative air.

‘The only time I have seen a man lose like that was when your brother Richard was suffering the pangs of unrequited love for Deborah Stratton,’ he said cheerfully. ‘There must be something weighing heavy on your mind. What is going on, Luc?’

Lucas scowled. ‘Damn it, Cory,’ he said feelingly, ‘must you be so shrewd?’

Cory laughed. ‘Forgive me. If you do not wish to talk…’

Lucas shrugged, trying to shake off his irritation. ‘I feel guilty because I am behaving like a cad,’ he said bluntly. Briefly he told Cory the tale of his dealings with Rebecca Raleigh. ‘Tom Bradshaw discovered that she worked out of a studio in Clerkenwell,’ he finished. ‘Until four months ago it belonged to her uncle, George Provost. He was a well-respected engraver, if not a particularly eminent one, and he would have been the perfect choice to make the Midwinter engravings, for he would welcome the business but not be famous enough for anyone to recognise his work.’

Cory grimaced. ‘You are sure?’

‘Certain.’ Lucas toyed with his glass of port, watching the deep red liquid glow in the light. ‘I have been to the studio. There were some pieces there that matched the patterns on the Midwinter glass precisely, and Miss Raleigh confirmed that they were her uncle’s work.’ Lucas sighed and sat back. ‘There can be no doubt.’

‘So we have found our engraver.’

‘It would appear so. But as he has so inconveniently died, his niece is our only contact to the Midwinter spy ring and I need more information from her.’

Cory pulled a face. ‘I see your dilemma.’

Lucas nodded. ‘I am taking advantage of Miss Raleigh’s vulnerability because I want her to confide in me,’ he said. He pulled a disgusted face. ‘Good God, it sounds even worse when I express it like that! I can scarce believe what I am doing.’

Cory did not reply immediately. He lifted the bottle and poured another glass of port slowly, watching Lucas’s face as he did so.

‘It sounds to me,’ he said perceptively, ‘that you are suffering an excess of remorse over this, Luc. We all know that espionage can be an unpleasant business, requiring the sort of actions one might not normally contemplate.’ He looked closely at his friend. ‘Are you sure that your feelings are not involved?’

Lucas drew rings on the highly polished surface of the side table with his wine glass. He tried to block out the memory of kissing Rebecca and the promise of passion with which she had responded to him. That had not been part of his original plan. He had intended to draw her out and gain her confidence, nothing more, but the mutual attraction between them had made a mockery of his good intentions. And then it had taken little to change good intentions to bad ones…

He had been reading the poetry of Ben Jonson the previous night. God only knew why—he was a man of action, not a scholar. He suspected that it was a book his brother Richard had left lying around and he had picked it up because he was bored and restless and thinking too much on Miss Rebecca Raleigh. He should have known better. Poetry never helped a man to think straight, and when he had stumbled across a line from the ‘Queen of Love’ he had paused and thought of her even more, for he seemed powerless to resist.

‘You will turn all hearts to tinder…’

He told himself that he had kissed Rebecca because he had been testing her, suspicious of the innocence that cloaked her like a shield. He had wondered if that purity could possibly be genuine. Yet there had been nothing calculated about their embrace. Lucas himself was experienced enough to know the difference between real and counterfeit
emotion, the type that men could buy from courtesans. There was nothing counterfeit about Rebecca Raleigh. He had acted on impulse and her response had shaken him. And when he had seen the confusion of desire in her face as he released her, he had been overtaken by such a wave of tenderness… He shook his head. That was no way for a rake to think. More to the point, it was no way for him to be thinking when he was conducting an investigation.

Cory cleared his throat gently and Lucas glanced up.

‘I confess that I find it difficult to be detached about this,’ he said morosely, answering the question in his friend’s eyes. ‘I cannot conceive how it happened.’

Cory’s lips twitched. ‘How many times have you met Miss Raleigh?’ he asked.

‘Twice.’

‘And what do you know of her?’

‘Very little, as yet.’

Lucas realised that in terms of fact this was probably true, but that in terms of instinct, on a deeper level, he felt that he already knew Rebecca intimately. It was a disquieting feeling. The little that he did know prompted him to trust her, to take her into his confidence. He was sure that she could not be guilty of involvement in the Midwinter spy ring. Perhaps even her uncle had not known the
nature of the business he was involved in. When Lucas had studied the pieces on display in Rebecca’s studio, his heart had sunk like a stone at the likenesses between the engraving on the glasses there and the ones in his possession. It was the first time he had visited an engraver’s studio
not
wanting to find the patterns he sought. But the style was unmistakable.

‘Ask her to tell you the truth.’ Cory was watching him, his face grave. ‘Either that, or disengage until Justin returns from Midwinter and can question her himself.’ He grimaced. ‘When do you expect him back?’

‘In a week or so.’ Lucas rubbed his brow. ‘I cannot disengage, Cory. We cannot take the risk that Miss Raleigh is involved with the Midwinter spies. If she were to suspect anything and disappear, we would have lost the lead. Worse, she would warn the others what had happened and then all our work would be destroyed.’

‘And if she is innocent?’ Cory questioned. ‘How will she feel to discover that you have approached her under false pretences?’

Lucas’s lips thinned. It was the one question that he had not permitted himself to consider. ‘I cannot allow that to influence me.’

There was a silence between them. ‘I appreciate your difficulty, Lucas,’ Cory said slowly. ‘Sometimes, however, a man must follow his instinct.’

‘Following one’s instinct can get one killed,’ Lucas said bleakly.

‘And ignoring it can lose a man the one thing he most desires,’ Cory pointed out gently.

Lucas shifted irritably. ‘Marriage is making you soft, Cory Newlyn. Why tie yourself to one woman when there is an entire legion of them out there?’

‘Perhaps,’ Cory said, ‘because one particular woman is all you need?’

Lucas gave him a cynical smile. ‘Definitely soft, Cory.’

‘All rakes reform in the end,’ Cory said, ‘unless they want to end as sad old roués leaning on their canes and leering at the débutantes.’

Lucas shuddered. ‘You paint such an attractive picture.’

‘Think about it,’ Cory said, smiling. ‘Look at Richard.’

Lucas shook his head. ‘Richard was ready to reform,’ he said slowly. ‘He was in love. I…’ he hesitated, ‘… I am not.’

Cory sighed. ‘Nor ever shall be? I thought that you had recovered well enough from your youthful disappointment to realise that not all women are designing harpies.’

Lucas laughed. ‘Oh, I have. My antipathy does not stem from that.’ His face stilled. ‘It is more that I have never met a woman to whom I wished to be faithful. Ever after is a long time.’

‘You are thinking of your father,’ Cory said acutely.

Lucas shrugged. ‘I am thinking of my mother,’ he said. ‘She detested Papa’s philandering, but she never said a word against him.’ He shifted uncomfortably in his chair for, even now, the memories were hard to recall. ‘She never said a word, but she lost the happiness that once lit her eyes. I could not ask for such stoicism from my wife.’ He fixed Cory with a sardonic look. ‘If you start to tell me, in that exasperating manner of happily married people, that I shall feel differently when I meet the right woman, then—’

Cory held up a hand peaceably. ‘I should not dream of it, Luc.’ He got to his feet and slapped Lucas good-naturedly on the shoulder. ‘I wish you good fortune. I am away, home to my wife.’

Lucas watched Cory’s tall figure thread its way through the milling crowd about the card tables. He saw Cory pause to greet an acquaintance here and there, but there was a barely repressed impatience about him that soon had him on the move again. Lucas noticed that he turned down at least two offers of a round of piquet and several invitations to join some cronies for a drink. He shook his head thoughtfully. He had the greatest admiration for Rachel Newlyn, but he could not see why Cory should be in such a hurry to return to her side. Petticoat government… He had done very
well without it these twenty-eight years past and he was not about to succumb to its lure now. This business with Rebecca Raleigh was a different matter entirely. The only reason he felt badly about deceiving her was because she was young and alone. She had struck him as gallant. Yes, that was the word to describe Miss Raleigh. She was gallant in the face of all the odds and he admired her courage whilst being in danger of trampling that very gallantry underfoot.

‘Devil take it!’ Lucas said bad-temperedly, slapping his glass down so hard that the table shook. He had come out to drown his sorrows and yet it seemed there was nowhere to hide. He felt the greatest scoundrel in the whole world.

With two commissions to complete, Rebecca rose each day when the bleary London dawn spread across the sky and worked late into the night. During daylight she would throw the shutters wide to draw as much natural light into the workshop as possible. When night came she would light the candles and continue until her head ached and her eyes itched. There was no sound in the studio but for the diamond scribe scratching the glass as she meticulously picked out the pattern of the wicked angel. Beneath its point the figure came to life, wings folded neatly, the line of cheek and jaw giving the impression of strength and grace,
head bent, as if in devout contemplation of sin. On the evening of the fourth day she laid her scribe aside and considered the engraving. She knew at once that there was something wrong with it. The problem was not in the execution, but in the finished picture. She had given the wicked angel Lucas Kestrel’s face.

It was undeniable. The detail was perfect: the high cheekbones, the hard line of the jaw, the watchful eyes, the mouth… Rebecca put her head in her hands in despair. All this time she had been shutting Lucas out of her thoughts by concentrating on her work. She had refused to think of him, refused to dream of him. Yet he had come to haunt her nevertheless, taking life beneath the point of the scribe and showing her just how foolish she was to think that she could dismiss him.

Rebecca pushed the bowl away dispiritedly. She knew she should have spent longer practising on old glass before she started work on the crystal, but she had been desperate to finish the commission, desperate for the money, if she were truthful. And there was no real need to despair, for Lord Fremantle was likely to be very pleased with the work. She would deliver it to the Club in the morning. It was undoubtedly amongst her best work. Technically it was beautiful and perfectly executed. It was what it told her that was worrying.

Rebecca stood up, wiped the palms of her hands on her apron and walked restlessly across to the window. Night had fallen long since and the lights of the Jerusalem Tavern twinkled faintly in the dusk. A distant murmur of voices drifted on the night air.

Rebecca turned away. She knew that she should put in some time on her accounts, which consistently refused to add up. The mere thought of it made her head ache.

She wished with fierce longing that her uncle, George Provost, was here with her now. She had never felt so alone as she did these days, not even when she had been a child and her parents had died and she and Daniel were obliged to go their separate ways. George and his kindly wife, Ruth, had taken her in and over the years she had become much attached to them, but now she had no one. She knew that she had tried to bury her grief in her work, but every so often it would bubble up as it did now, making her eyes sting and her heart ache.

Rebecca had never minded working on her own before. Engraving was a solitary profession, but she was beginning to realise that there was a difference between working on her own commissions with the buzz of the workshop going on around her, and working in silence because she had lost all her colleagues.

With a little sigh, she went into the storeroom and took out an old wineglass that she used for practice. Now that the angel was completed, she needed to start practising birds of prey. She went back to her desk, sat down and picked up her diamond-point scribe and the little hammer. Stipple work engraving was slow and expensive, for each dot was placed individually on the glass with utter precision. For Lord Lucas Kestrel’s commission, however, nothing but the best would do. Her professional pride demanded it.

She picked up her engraving scribe and the little hammer that she used for stipple work. She placed the scribe against the glass and tapped it gently.