This Rake of Mine (15 page)

J
ack had spent the entire evening watching Miss Porter. He couldn't help himself. It was like driving past a mail coach accident: While manners and good taste dictated that one not look, you couldn't help but steal a glance.

And as his gaze had stolen over her time and time again, he'd come to the conclusion that he had never seen a woman whose corset was tied so tight. She looked positively trussed up by her convictions—proper this, respectable that.

No wonder she never smiled.

Yet all the while, that red hair of hers defied reason—why, it was wasted on her. Such a glorious titian hue belonged on a lady willing to admit to the passion it proclaimed. A woman unafraid of the temptation she represented.

His fingers had itched to pull those sturdy pins out of her tightly wound chignon and set those ruby tresses free. To run his fingers through their fiery silk and whisper into her ear—

Remember…

"The tour, Lord John?" Felicity prompted.

Jack glanced over to find the girls staring at him.

"Uh, ah, yes!" he managed to say, taking another glance down the hall and wondering what was taking Miss Porter so long. "Let's start in the library."

"A library?" Pippin enthused. "How wonderful."

He picked up a candelabra on the sideboard and led the way down the shadowy hall. "A regular library might be: our library is quite different."

"Is it haunted?" Tally asked.

He paused, looking into their wide eyes and serious expressions and realized he might have gone too far. Well, Birdwell had told him to keep the girls occupied, and he supposed a good curse and a few ghost stories would keep them tucked in their beds for the night, not venturing about the house when he had business to conduct.

The irony of it was that while he was supposed to be diverting these girls, the bulk of the evening had passed and he'd all but forgotten what awaited him later. He hadn't even been aware of how much he'd missed company until this evening. Why, the entertaining and engaging little chits had got him confessing his darkest secrets like a schoolgirl!

He was out of practice.

For one, he'd never told anyone that he'd gone to offer for Miss Mabberly. Most everyone thought he'd disavowed doing the respectable thing, and he'd let them think the worst of him.

He hadn't cared. When his head had finally cleared, his only thought had been of a kiss that couldn't be forgotten. Jack had gone straight to the Mabberlys and pleaded with the old
cit
to let him make amends for the girl's ruination.

The cagey man of business had refused, convinced Jack was only after her fortune… and while, to be honest, that had held some appeal, there had been another reason he had wanted to see Miranda again.

He'd wanted to kiss her once more.

It didn't matter that he couldn't recall her face; he could recall her kiss. Her lips, the way she'd smelled, the sound of her first sigh of longing as he'd teased it from her.

Somehow, through the brandy and the hubbub, her innocent kiss, her passionate response had marked him.

Haunted him
. Still did.

In the years since, months might pass when she never entered his thoughts, but then he'd spy some chit with auburn tresses at a posting inn or in the village, and for a fortnight his dreams would be haunted by a red-haired vixen whose lips did more than kiss him, whose hands roamed over his body, who begged the rake he'd once been to take her…

And just as he'd roll this tempting lover over, cover her body with his, give her the pleasure she demanded, he'd wake up in a cold sweat, hard as a rock, and longing for a lady all but forgotten, a fiery miss long passed from this world.

It had been even worse since he'd bumped into Miss Porter at his niece's school. Tangled with her, held her, gazed into her eyes and seen a hint of long-forgotten passion.

Now the dreams had taken a new turn, and the woman in his bed was older, more mature, a living testament of innocence lost, and his desire for her all that much more demanding.

How ridiculous, he thought, that someone like stiff and proper Miss Porter would remind him of Miranda Mabberly.

Why, she'd even scoffed at Miss Mabberly's death! How heartless could a woman be?

Kiss her and find out
, a wicked voice whispered in his ear.

Kiss Miss Porter? Now he was going as mad as Sir Norris alleged.

"My apologies for the state of the house," he told the girls when he planted the candelabra on his desk and a cloud of dust rose up. "I'm not the best at managing these things."

"You should ask Miss Porter for some suggestions," Felicity said, while Pippin wandered over to the bookshelves.

Jack saw no need to do that. He already had a pretty good understanding of Miss Porter's opinions on how Thistleton Park was run.

"Besides decorum," the girl continued, "she also teaches classes in household management. Why, give her a month and she'd have your estate so you would hardly recognize it."

Yes, he could well imagine what Miss Porter would say once she delved beneath the dust and carefully constructed eccentricity and ruin of his household.

Tally joined in the chorus of praise for Miss Porter. "She is also very good at managing investments and such, especially now that she has gained her inheritance and will be overseeing her own accounts."

Her own accounts? An inheritance? This took Jack aback. Why, she hadn't said a word of it all evening.

Well, for that matter, she'd been hard-pressed to say anything.

Before he could delve into this any further, Miss Porter arrived in their midst, tumbling into the room in a rush.

"So sorry," she said. "I dropped one of my hairpins."

The girls gaped at her, and he did as well.

Her tight little knot of a chignon was gone, and her hair fell in a long curl to her shoulder. Without her hair pulled back, her face appeared softer, the severe tip of her brows gone.

"Have I missed anything?" she asked brightly, looking about the library as if she had never seen one.

"Not in the least, Miss Porter," he managed to say, trying not to stare but at the same time captivated by the sight of her freed tresses.

If he weren't a gentleman, he would have sworn she'd lost more than her hairpins back in the foyer.

"You said something earlier about proving your family curse, my lord," she said. "Shall you proceed in convincing us of your claim?" Her lips were turned upward. As if she meant to smile.

Jack looked at her and then at the doorway. Was this the same woman they'd left at the stairs? What the devil had happened to her?

Any other lady, and he might have thought she'd discovered his brandy stash—not that she'd had the time—but he was still of half a mind to march down to the cellar and start counting the bottles.

"Um, yes, the curse," he muttered, trying to get his thoughts back on entertaining and diverting his guests. Especially since he was supposed to be diverting
them
, not the other way around. He pointed at a great wooden chair in the corner. "That is, if Tremont legend is to be believed, the rightful throne of England."

The Langley sisters gaped at the massive piece of furniture. Even Pippin took her nose out of the bookshelves long enough to give the chair a good inspection.

Miss Porter gave his pronouncement a snort of disbelief, then covered her mouth as if ashamed of her hasty judgment.

"My apologies, my lord. Please do go on," she said, smiling at him.

The sparkling light in her eyes was like a Cyprian's invitation. Was it him, or had the room suddenly gotten terribly warm?

"The throne of England? How is that?" Felicity asked, barging into his reverie.

He coughed and struggled to stay focused.
Family history. Diverting their attention
. Yes, that was it.

"The original part of the house was built in 1111," he told them, "as a residence for Lord Harold Tremont. He ran afoul of Henry the First by insisting he was the legitimate heir to the throne of England. Rather than have the entire family disgraced, poor Lord Harold was banished here to continue his single-minded reign. He commissioned the throne and installed it himself, with great pomp. Even bullied the local priest into blessing it."

Felicity gave a disapproving shake of her head.

"How sad for Lord Harold, to think himself the king and no one to believe him," Pippin offered, eyeing the chair with a newfound curiosity.

"Don't pity him too much, fair Pippin," Jack told her, winking at the girl. "Hal had a fine time establishing his own court—which included a court jester, a poor fellow he hired from a traveling troupe." He glanced up and spied Miss Porter running her hand over the wide arm of Hal's throne.

As her fingers trailed over the wood, he felt himself take a deep breath, a delicious chill running down his limbs.

All of them.

Whatever was this woman doing to him? He was going mad, cursed not by this house but by this mercurial woman.

"One poor fool doesn't sound like much of a court," Tally was saying.

At this Jack decided to test Miss Porter's newfound boundaries. "Oh, no, Tally, he also had an entire bevy of ladies-in-waiting he hired from a London bro—"

"Lord John!" Miss Porter interrupted, turning from the chair, her hand clenched on the wide, thick arm.

So she hadn't completely lost her sense of propriety—and for some reason he was glad of that. Yet even as he looked at her, there was that mischievous sparkle in her eyes again despite her protest.

A sparkle?
An odd light as incongruous as her red hair.

No, he was imagining things. But where was the expected admonishment on propriety, the lecture on proper restraint? Just when he thought he understood the lady, knew how to knot up her corset strings and keep her at sixes and sevens, she'd turned the tide on him.

What had she said?
You are not a man easily understood
.

Perhaps she understood him better than he'd given her credit for.

"Miss Porter," Pippin was whispering, "why did Lord Hal need ladies-in-waiting if there was no queen?"

Jack waited expectantly to see how Miss Porter was going to answer this, and he smiled as she blushed a bit before she made her tart reply.

"I assure you, if there had been a queen about the house," she said, "Lord Hal's rule would have come to a quick and decisive end."

He had to imagine that Miss Porter wouldn't let a man get away with such indiscretions. She'd hold him to the highest of standards—the kind no man could ever achieve.

Even with a lifetime to perfect…

A lifetime? Jack didn't have a lifetime to give. Not to any woman. No matter the temptation.

The clock struck the hour, one toll shy of midnight. He half expected Miss Porter to begin shooing her chicks up the stairs before the witching hour struck, but instead, she turned to him. "Where to next on your tour, my lord?"

Where next? She wanted to see more of his tumbledown house? He glanced again at the clock and wondered what it would take for the old Miss Porter to return and put an end to this tour.

An offer to see your bedroom
, came an errant thought.

"What would you like to see?" he said instead, making sure he didn't look at Miss Porter. This madcap reincarnation might be able to see right down into his dark soul.

"Something tragic!" Tally enthused. "Romantically tragic."

"That," he told the girl, "this house has in spades."

He led them back down the hall to the foyer and stopped right before the steps. No, what he needed was a good Tremont tragedy, a story that would have them in their beds with their sheets pulled all the way up to their chins for the rest of the night. And perhaps it would put a chill in his blood as well.

"This," he said, pointing at a spot in the marble, and using his darkest, most menacing voice, "is where Isolda Tremont, the wife of Lord Douglas Tremont, died when she tumbled down this very staircase."

The girls stepped back, as if the lady's broken body lay there still.

That was a good sign, he thought, and so he continued in the same vein, to put a shiver of fear in their hearts. "Douglas swore it was an accident, but others claimed he pushed her, for they had heard the lord and his lady arguing violently a few minutes before she met her demise. Apparently Douglas thought Isolda was paying too much attention to a neighbor, and he was wild with jealousy."

"So he killed her?" whispered a wide-eyed Tally.

"Who's to say?" Jack demurred. "But over the centuries there are those who have claimed to see Isolda late at night rising from this very place and making her way through the gardens to seek her lover."

The girls sucked in a collective breath, their eyes riveted to the spot on the floor.

Instead of frightening the girls and their chaperone into hiding, his dark story only seemed to incite their interest further.

"Are there more such stories?" Tally asked with all the enthusiasm of a girl who'd just received her vouchers to Almack's. She turned to her cousin. "Pippin, think of the play we could write from all this:
The Tremont Tragedies
."

Pippin nodded, as enthralled with the idea as Jack was stunned. "Yes, oh yes," she said. "And the subtitle would be:
A Cautionary Tale of Remorse and Regrets
."

Felicity, practical to a fault and without a bit of drama to her soul, just glanced up at the ceiling and heaved a sigh, as if to say,
How can I be related to the two silliest girls in all the world?
"I doubt Lord Douglas regretted a single moment of his wife's demise," she told them.

Jack turned to her. "In poor Douglas's defense, he never remarried and spent the rest of his years tending the roses around Isolda's grave."

"The ones near the gate?" Pippin asked.

"The very same," Jack said, noting the girl had an observant eye and good memory.

"The poor man," she said softly. "Oh, Tally, we can have a scene where Lord Douglas waters his dear wife's grave with his tears."

"Bah!" Felicity interjected, probably before her sister started rehearsing for the role of Isolda. "He watered them with his guilt."