This Rake of Mine (8 page)

Gads, they hadn't come down here thinking one of them would make a match with this infamous rake? Miranda's stomach rolled.

Lord John and one of these girls? Why, it was preposterous!

Not that she wouldn't put it past their scandalous host to take advantage of an innocent young lady, despite his assertions about wanting to be left alone, especially if he discovered the fortunes these young girls would bring to a marriage.

Thistleton Park obviously wasn't prosperous enough to keep him in his usual extravagant Town style, so the lure of a rich dowry to finance a return to London in the lavish and misspent fashion he preferred might be enough to tempt him from whatever dark region of the house he'd retreated to.

That thought sent a broadside of panic through her.

Miranda shot to her feet and into action. "We've imposed on Lord John's hospitality long enough," she announced. "Ladies, let us get our things packed." Ignoring Philippa's protest over her unfinished breakfast, she added a definitive, "
Now
."

The girls knew better than to lodge any further protests, but still, they rose reluctantly from the feast before them and their obviously unfinished task—whatever that was.

Pippin, not one to waste a meal, pocketed a roll or two and looked to be considering whether a couple of sausages would fit as well.

While Miranda knew she should rebuke her, at this point she didn't want to risk a mutiny.

She was in enemy territory with three rake-mad girls. The only course was to hie them out of Thistleton Park as quickly as she could.

Get them well away from Lord John Tremont. A pirate of hearts in ways that these three ladies should never discover.

As she had only too late.

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J
ack stormed into his bedchamber and threw off his sodden clothes. He had every intention of getting what he considered his due: some well-needed rest. Climbing into the large bed, he pulled the coverlet over his head and willed himself to go to sleep.

But in spite of the fact that he had been up all night, sleep eluded him, and he knew exactly what the cause of his unrest was.

Miss Porter and her charges
. How the devil could a man get any peace knowing there was a pack of females in his house?

Truly he'd been quite magnanimous in giving them an hour to depart, but even that seemed foolhardy as he lay in his bed and conjured up a thousand and one ways his unwanted guests could ruin his life.

Especially that tart-tongued Miss Porter.

He rolled over and closed his eyes. He didn't like admitting it, but ever since he'd bumped into her at Miss Emery's, the redheaded minx and her mysterious button had haunted his thoughts.

Jack wanted to imagine that it was her red hair that had captivated his lonely imagination, for he'd always had a weakness for auburn-haired beauties, but there was something else about her… the way she seemed so tightly wound… the wary light in her eyes… that made him want to unravel her that much more…

Perhaps he did need to get up to Town, as Temple was always urging him to do. Get this restless need out of his blood in some fancy brothel. But not even that enticed him, for to go to Town…

Jack shook his head. He'd burned far too many bridges in London to find respite there. No, for better or worse, his life was here at Thistleton Park.

His Aunt Josephine had seen to that.

London

Four years earlier

Rap! Rap! Rap!

The hideous pounding in Jack's head was, he knew, the harbinger of a hangover that threatened to equal the three days of drinking and gambling that had come before. Having been on one of his infamous benders, Lord Jack Tremont had passed out only hours earlier and was certainly in no mood to be disturbed.

Besides, for all he could remember, he had won the night before, so there shouldn't be anyone at the door to collect on vowels or issue a challenge for some remark or comment or insult he'd made during the course of the last few days.

Rap! Rap! Rap!
continued the insistent caller, pounding on the door as if they were trying to escape the gates of hell.

Gads, at this rate they'd break the demmed thing in, and he could no more afford the door than he could the rent on this rat-infested disgrace of a flat.

"What do you want?" he growled, still lying atop his bed and unwilling to test his legs while the room spun at such an unholy rate.

"Get up, you no-account rascal, or I shall give this address to your brother."

The voice belonged to only one person, but it was enough to rouse Jack so abruptly that he nearly emptied his accounts into the bucket beside the bed.

Dear Lord, not Aunt Josephine!

Struggling up from his bed, he made his way to the door. Since he hadn't bothered to remove his clothes when he'd toppled into bed, he was, for all intents and purposes, still decent.

If you could use that word to describe Jack.

Ruinous Jack. Drunken nit. That wastrel Tremont.

He opened the door and, without even waiting for an invitation, she barged in.

He must have gone pale, for the indomitable old girl nudged the bucket over toward him and turned her back on him while he threw up.

When he'd finished, she tossed a towel at him. "Some greeting this," she said, taking the one good chair in the room and sitting.

"Aunt Josephine, what are you—"

"Silence, you fool," she said, cutting him off.

Jack clamped his lips shut. From anyone else, he might have ignored such an order, dared to defy them, but this was Lady Josephine Tremont, and he doubted even the king would naysay her.

"You are a disgrace," she declared.

Leave it to his great-aunt to get right to the point.

"Yes, but a happy one," he muttered.

She snorted and looked about the room with a measure of disgust. "Seems I've arrived in time. You appear to be alive."

"Much to Parkerton's dismay."

This time she laughed. Though it was more of a cackle. "Your brother is a stiff-rumped fool. 'T'would give him apoplexy to see you thusly."

"Not such a bad idea," he conceded, shoving aside the bucket and propping himself up against the edge of his bed.

To be honest, he didn't think he could stand, for the room was still spinning like the very devil. "Aunt Josephine, what do you want?"

"It is about time you took your place in the family."

"Parkerton will never stand for it," he told her.

"Still holding that Mabberly chit's ruination over you, is he?"

Jack shrugged. All Society held him responsible for Miss Miranda Mabberly's disgrace and the calamity that had followed. They hadn't cared much for the
cit'
s daughter beforehand, even when she'd become engaged to the Earl of Oxley. But all it had taken had been one mistaken kiss on Jack's part to propel Miss Mabberly into a state of disgrace and make himself a pariah.

"Yes, well, all that nonsense is in the past," his aunt was saying. "Time you take your rightful place."

"I don't think the
ton
will be all that welcoming." After the debacle with Miss Mabberly, Jack's brother, the Duke of Parkerton, had cut him off without a farthing. He'd then managed to insult and offend every single one of his friends, until even his best friend, Alexander Denford, Baron Sedgwick, had given him the cut direct. Not that Jack hadn't deserved it. He'd made a complete cake of everything, and now here was Aunt Josephine droning on and on about duty and "being a Tremont."

"You've got the wrong man," he muttered, wondering if this bad dream was ever going to end.

"Wrong man? Rubbish. I'll make a man of you, a Tremont of you, if it is the last thing I do."

Those words echoed in his head as he once again passed back into a dark, dreamless sleep. One that offered no happy dreams and little respite.

Until some hours later, when he was roused again.

Once again, insistent pounding interrupted his sleep.

"Demmit," he muttered, as he struggled up off the floor. What did his aunt want now? Yet it wasn't Aunt Josephine on the other side of the door, but a small, bespectacled man, who blinked owlishly in the dim light of Jack's Seven Dials flat.

"Lord John?" he inquired, adjusting his glasses. His tone implied that he hoped he was in the wrong place.

"Yes," Jack replied. No use denying the fact. If the man was here to dun him, let him. There was nothing more to take. "So who sent you? Caldwell? Rodney? I haven't the funds to pay either of them."

"Um, no. I'm from Mr. Elliott's office."

"Mr. Elliott?" Jack heaved a sigh. "I don't recall owing him a thing." He tried to close the door, but the man persisted, pushing his way in, much as his aunt had earlier.

"I'm here about your aunt. Your great-aunt. Lady Josephine Tremont. I work for her solicitor, Mr. Elliott."

Jack rubbed his eyes. "You just missed her. Try for her at—"

"Excuse me?" the fellow said.

"I said, you missed her. She left some time ago."

The fellow's mouth fell open. "You say your aunt was here?"

"Yes," Jack said, growing impatient. "A few hours ago, I suppose."

"I don't see how—" The man's nose twitched at the rank odors coming from the apartment; spilled brandy and worse—the bucket having yet to be emptied. "Yes, well, that is interesting. But as it is, my lord, Mr. Elliott sent me to—"

"Listen, if you've come to find my aunt, she isn't here. So go around to my brother's house in Mayfair, where she's probably bedeviling some other poor sot to straighten up." He opened the door a little wider. "Good luck to you and good riddance."

But the man was, if anything, persistent. "My lord, I haven't come to find your aunt. I've come for you. I've come about your aunt's estate. I need you to sign the necessary documents. There are procedures to be followed if the estate is to be properly passed along."

Jack shook his head. Gads, where had Caldwell gotten that brandy last night? From the Thames? Because he was having a devil of a time following what this fellow was talking about. "What estate?"

"Why, your aunt's, of course. Thistleton Park."

"And why would my aunt want to give me her house? Where is she going to live?"

"Live, my lord?" The fellow got that owlish blinking sort of look going again. "I don't think that is at issue. Now if you could be so kind to come with me down to Mr. Elliott's office, he can go over the terms of your aunt's will and—"

"My aunt's will?" Jack repeated, gooseflesh rising on his arms, a sense of foreboding, of destiny hurtling toward him with the same rude insistence as Aunt Josephine's walking stick pounding against the floor. "Are you saying my aunt is dead?"

"Yes, my lord. A fortnight past. I would have been here sooner, but we had some difficulty locating you."

"But she was—" Jack stammered. "I mean to say she was…" He glanced at the door and around the room and tried to reconcile his memory.

I'll make a Tremont of you yet…

"My lord?" the man asked.

Jack shook his head. Shook away the cobwebs from the night before and listened to what the man had to say.

"Demmit," Jack muttered, as he glanced over at the clock. There were still a good thirty minutes before his unwanted guests would be gone.

And Birdwell's excellent breakfast was sitting down there on the sideboard growing colder by the minute. Considering his conduct this morning, he doubted his butler could be induced to warm any of it up.

So with that semblance of an excuse in hand, he climbed out of bed, rummaged around his disorderly room to find some relatively clean clothes, and tugged them on.

If anything, he told himself, he needed to go downstairs and ensure that his
guests
were well and gone.

Bounding down the steps, he spotted, to his relief, the back of Miss Porter's skirt as she shooed her charges out the front door.

Excellent! Out of his house and out of his life.

Even while he congratulated himself on scaring them enough with his boorish manners to make them leave well ahead of his deadline, he found his gaze straying back toward Miss Porter for one more glance at her soft, curving hips and the luscious red curls peeking out from beneath her bonnet.

Remember
, that aggravating voice whispered up from inside him.

What was it about this woman that made him feel he had met her before?

Perhaps they'd met in London… He winced. He hoped not. He'd rather forget his life back then… he'd been the worst sort of sponger, and after the Mabberly debacle… well, it was better no one recalled those days.

Much to his chagrin, before he could take one more guilty glance at the lady Bruno closed the doors on their guests with a decided thud.

One that said,
Don't even think of coming back
.

Hardly dignified, but Thistleton Park had never really been a proper house, despite Billingsworth's effusive praise.

Jack spared another glance at the door. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to send them off with a good set of directions. Obviously their travel guide couldn't be counted on to steer them on the correct course.

That was it, he told himself, just a bit of help getting them on their way, if only to make some amends.

He continued down the stairs, willing to help in this small fashion—or, at the very least, catch one last glance at Miss Porter. Perhaps if he could see past her starched manners and distracting auburn tresses, he might be able to remember why this vexing lady teased his senses so.

Yet as he came through the door, he nearly ran into the party, for instead of having already climbed into their coach and, hence, out of his life, they were gathered on his front steps like a gaggle of geese.

"Come to call the magistrate?" the one called Thalia asked, sounding only too hopeful for such an adventure.

Christ, that chit was going to give her good parents, and then some poor man, a devil of a time when she came of age.

"No," he said, trying to look a little contrite over his earlier words. "I came to wish you well, and offer some directions that may be of more use than those of your illustrious Mr. Billingsworth."