Rake's Reform

Annabel had been right, she thought wryly. He was seductive, far more dangerous than any of the trappers she had encountered while staying at Lilian’s boarding house in St Louis. And this was no polite invitation from one neighbour to another to visit his garden. Any well-bred young lady would refuse such an invitation without hesitation.

But then, she wasn’t a well-bred young lady, she was Janey Hilton, colonial and daughter of a millhand. And Janey Hilton was tired of a life that held no more danger and excitement than taking a fence on her horse…tired of trying to behave like an English lady and being constantly reminded that she had failed.

“Thank you, I will,” she said, holding his gaze steadily.

“You will? Alone?” He could not quite hide his surprise.

“Yes,” she replied with a calm that she was very far from feeling. “It is a very special place for me.”

“And for me—now.”

It was her turn to be caught off-guard by his sudden unexpected seriousness; she let her gaze drop to the ground.

“Why is it so special for you? Because it reminds you of home?” he asked as he, too, dropped his gaze, and flicked a stone into the water with the toe of his top boot. “Or did you meet with your betrothed here? No—don’t answer that,” he said as he heard her sudden intake of breath. “I had no right to ask such a question.”

“No, you did not,” she agreed, staring at the ripples that spread out from where the stone had sunk, wondering how they had come so far so fast. It was, she thought, as if they had known each other for years, not a few minutes.

“The answer is no,” she said quietly. “Edward would never have considered meeting me in such a place alone, even if I had suggested it—he would have considered it far too improper. He was always very concerned for my reputation. He was a curate and very principled.”

“They usually are, until it comes to getting a lucrative living or catching an heiress,” he said cynically.

“That is unfair. He was a good man. He did a great deal for the poor and he cared for me, not for my money, I am sure of it.” But was she? The words sounded hollow, even to her own ears. Of late, she had begun to wonder about Edward, wonder if he was all she had once thought him…wonder if he would have been so prepared to overlook her shortcomings, or quite so supportive of her efforts to improve conditions for the poorer families in the village if she had not been her grandfather’s heir.

“I am sorry,” he said as he watched her face. “Cynicism becomes something of a habit.”

“Like flippancy?” She gave him the ghost of a smile, remembering their first encounter in the lane.

“I am afraid so.” He smiled back at her ruefully. “But—”

“Jem!” she interrupted him sharply, horrified that for these few minutes she had forgotten the very reason she had come to meet him “Oh, have you had any success?”

“No, I am afraid not.” He looked away as he answered. “I had hoped to call in a favour from the Home Secretary and obtain a pardon for him, but—”

“He refused,” she said flatly. She had not realised, until this moment, just how much trust she had placed in him or how much she had hoped she would not have to put her other plan into action.

“Not exactly.” He shook his head. “The government fell shortly after I reached town. Wellington has resigned and, unfortunately, we have a new Home Secretary.”

“But couldn’t you ask the new Home Secretary?”

“Melbourne?” He shook his dark head a second time. “Lord Melbourne does not hold any affection for me. I was a friend of his wife, Caroline Lamb, and of Lord Byron, you see.” Then he gave a wry smile as he saw her blank expression. “You don’t see…you were probably playing with your dolls then.”

“I was more likely helping my mother deliver a neighbour’s child or my father harness the oxen,” she said shortly, feeling as if a chasm had suddenly opened up between them as she saw shock ripple across his face. She had been a fool to think him different, a fool to think that he might like the real Janey Hilton.

“I suppose it must be a very different life for young women who live on the frontier,” he said after a moment of silence.

“Different is something of an understatement.” She was brisk. The use of the word “women” rather than “ladies” had not escaped her after four years in England. “You have to grow up fast on the frontier, Mr Lindsay,” she added sharply, as he opened his mouth to say something. “Just as the sons and daughters of labourers must in this country. Now, if you will excuse me—” she turned abruptly from the pool “—I really must go back, before I am missed.”

“Wait!” He strode after her. “I did not mean to upset you and I am truly sorry I have not been able to do more for Jem.”

She stopped and turned to look at him, and to her surprise found that she believed him.

“It is not your fault.” She sighed. “And I am very grateful that you at least tried to help him. You haven’t upset me…it is not your fault that you are a—” She faltered, struggling for the right words.

“A patronising, arrogant society dandy who has never had to step outside of his gilded and well-padded cage?” His dark brows lifted quizzically.

“I should not have put it quite so rudely,” she said a little ashamedly.

“No, but you thought it.” He grinned at her.

“True,” she confessed ruefully, “and I apologise for it.”

“Then will you allow me the honour of escorting you home? It will be absolutely dark in the woods.”

“Oh, there is no need,” she protested politely. “I shall be perfectly safe. I am not afraid of the dark—it is not as if you have bears or Indians in England.”

“I insist,” he said and turned away momentarily to whistle to the spaniel.

“You insist?” Her brows lifted and so, for no reason, did her heart as he returned his attention to her. “Then I suppose I have no choice in the matter.”

“None,” he said, offering her his arm.

It was politeness, she told herself, as she put out her gloved hand and tentatively let her fingers rest upon the sleeve of his coat and they began to walk towards the cliff path, falling easily into step, nothing but ordinary politeness. There was no reason for her pulse to race, her heart to pound. No reason at all.

“No, Tess! Down!” His exclamation as they halted at the base of the cliff path came too late for her to avoid the spaniel’s enthusiastic greeting as it caught up with them and transferred a considerable amount of mud, water and pond weed from its coat and paws to the skirts of her black wool pelisse.

“I am so sorry—she’s still very young and gets rather out of hand,” he apologised. “Lie down, Tess!”

Tess shot off up the cliff path.

He muttered an imprecation under his breath and then turned to her. “I hope she has not done too much damage—I have a handkerchief somewhere.”

“It really doesn’t matter,” she said, laughing as she watched the spaniel turn and come back down the path again, so fast it turned a somersault at the bottom as it tried to stop at its master’s feet.

“Idiot dog!” He laughed, too, as Tess put her muzzle upon the toe of his boot and gazed up at him soulfully, the very picture of man’s loyal and obedient friend. “She was the runt of the litter and is terrified of guns. I should have knocked her upon the head at birth—still should, I suppose—”

“But you won’t,” she said with a certainty she did not stop to question.

“No.” He gave a half laugh. “As you have obviously perceived, a tender heart beats beneath this grim exterior.”

“I should not have called you grim,” she replied, giving him a brief sideways glance. “A little weathered, perhaps.”

“Thank you.” He inclined his head to her in a mocking bow. “Dare I allow myself to be flattered?”

“I do not think you have any need of my flattery. I suspect even the youngest son of an Earl receives more than enough.”

He laughed again. “That was definitely not complimentary, Miss Hilton, though I am afraid it was all too true. Have you always been so brutally honest with your friends?”

“Yes,” she said sweetly. “I find real friends always prefer honesty to pretence.”

He smiled and conceded her the victory with the slightest nod of his head. “I had better go first,” he said, gesturing to the rocky beginning of the cliff path, “then I can help you over the difficult places.”

“Thank you,” she acquiesced politely with a fleeting smile. She had climbed this path a hundred times without mishap and, in her childhood, rock faces as sheer as the one the water tumbled from, not to mention trees. Daniel had always got her to do the climbing when they had been looking for bird eggs—of the two of them, she’d had a better head for heights.

But that had been a different world, a different life, she thought, as he turned and held out his hands to her after scrambling over the first few boulders. English ladies were expected to be fragile, helpless creatures, and for once, as she put her hands into his and he smiled at her, she found she did not particularly mind furthering the illusion.

The path was steep enough to preclude much conversation and they climbed mostly in a companionable silence, with Tess padding quietly behind them.

He had been right. It was almost pitch black once they entered the woods. Out of old ingrained habit, she paused, listening and cataloguing the sounds in her mind and relaxing as she heard nothing but the natural chorus of the wood at night: the cooing of wood pigeons, the flutter and swoop of an owl, the squeal of a shrew and the rustle of leaves beneath Tess’s paws as she nosed around their feet, seeking a scent. It was only as she went to move forward again that she realised he had also halted and was listening.

“Sorry—” he turned his head to smile at her in the gloom “—I’ve never walked into a wood at night without stopping to listen since my troop was ambushed in Spain.”

“You were a soldier?” She was surprised. He was so unlike the army officers who dined with the Filmores from time to time.

“Briefly, in my misspent youth.” He shrugged as they walked on. “I did not particularly enjoy the experience. The Peninsular War was savage enough, but Waterloo—that was simply a slaughterhouse, and killed any remaining hankering to cover myself in military glory. I decided twenty was far too young to die and resigned my commission the moment we were sure Napoleon was beaten.”

“You were six years older than Jem is now,” she said flatly.

“I know.” The self-mocking tone left his voice. “And I wish to heaven there was something else I could do…I feel as if I have failed you.”

“No. No,” she protested, knowing she had been unfair. “At least you tried to do something for Jem, which is far more than I expected of a—”

“A worthless rake and a dandy?” he supplied wryly. “That is what you thought me at first glance, is it not?”

“At first glance, perhaps. But I could not count anyone who made the speech that you did to Parliament entirely worthless, Mr Lindsay.”

“Speech?” He looked at her blankly for a moment.

“The one defending the rights of the labouring poor.”

“Ah—” he stumbled suddenly upon a tree root “—that speech. There is something, perhaps, you should know—I am no radical, Miss Hilton. I sit on the Tory side.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He echoed her question in astonishment, as if he had never considered any other possibility. “Well, because my father did, and his before him, I suppose,” he said after a moment of silence.

“That’s the worst reason I have heard yet,” she said drily.

“Thank you,” he said with equal dryness.

She sighed. “Oh, well, I suppose it is not the label which matters, it is what you say. And you said all the things I should like to, except that you did it a great deal better than I ever could—”

“I doubt that. I suspect you would make a formidable advocate of any cause, Miss Hilton.”

She sensed rather than saw his smile in the gloom.

“And is that what you thought of me at first glance? That I was formidable?”

“No. My first thought was that I should like to take you to my bed.”

“Really, how strange…” she said after a moment, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing. He was impossible. Quite impossible. But did he really think he could shock her so easily when she had lived most of her sixteenth year in a St Louis boarding house?

“Strange?” He sounded faintly piqued by her reaction. “No man would think so, I assure you.”

“That was not what I meant,” she replied, after the most fractional of hesitations. “I thought it was strange because I was wondering whether or not I should like you to be one of my lovers.”

“One of your lovers!” He halted so abruptly that she found herself dragged backwards. “Great God, how many have you had?”

“Not nearly so many as you, I fear,” she lamented. “There are so few men that I find both interesting and desirable.” She could hardly keep the bubble of laughter out of her voice.

For a moment he stared down at her, trying to discern her face in the darkness, and then started to laugh. “I have just been hoist with my own petard, have I not?”

“You should not have tried to shock me,” she said as they started to walk on again.

“I am beginning to think that is impossible,” he said, shaking his head. “But, do you know, what shocks me most, Miss Hilton, is that you came to be betrothed to some milksop of a curate. What did the poor devil die of? Heart failure?”

“No.” Her expression became closed and the laughter left her face abruptly. “And he was not a milksop!”

“I am sorry.” He held her arm more tightly as she tried to walk ahead. “I did not mean to intrude upon your grief and I had no right to say that of a man I have never met.”

“No,” she said as they fell into step again, “you did not.”

“I suppose he would have helped you in your efforts to save Jem and succeeded, most like,” he said sourly, and then wondered what the devil was wrong with him to behave so mawkishly.

“I am sure he would have pleaded for Jem to be treated mercifully,” she said a little too quickly, then realised that she was not sure at all any more. There was something that nagged at her, something that had been at the edge of her mind since the day of the accident, but she could never quite remember what it was, what they had been discussing in the minutes before the staircase in the Tower had collapsed.

They walked on in an awkward silence, each sunk in their own uncomfortable thoughts. And then, quite suddenly, they stepped out of the darkness into the comparatively lightness of dusk that turned Pettridge Park to every hue of silver and grey.

By mutual, unspoken consent they both halted in the shadow of a large beech at the edge of the Hall’s garden. Pools of light shone out from windows of rooms in which curtains had not yet been drawn. Glancing up, she could see Mr Filmore, reading beside the drawing-room fire, Annabel playing the piano, and Piers leaning lazily across its lid.

“It does not seem you have been missed,” he said as a maid suddenly appeared at the window, and the scene was abruptly blotted out by a sweep of lined brocade.

“No,” she agreed succinctly as she remained staring at the curtained window.

He stared at her, studying her face in the dusk. For all her sharpness, her apparent self-confidence, her fierce honesty, she suddenly looked so very young, vulnerable, wistful and alone that he wanted to take her in his arms—though for very different reasons to those he had had until a moment or so ago. But now—now he was getting distinct twinges of conscience about his pursuit of Miss Janey Hilton, and about what the consequences might be for her.

“I had better go back,” he said. “Your guardians might think it a trifle odd for me to be walking alone with you in the dark.”

“They’d think you odd for choosing to walk with me at all.” She gave a slightly ragged laugh.

“Then they have no taste,” he said softly.

“All these compliments, you could turn my head, Mr Lindsay.” She strove to sound light.

“Like this?” He lifted a hand and placed his palm against her cheek, turning her face and tilting it upwards so she found herself staring into his shadowed face.

“I was speaking metaphorically,” she said a second—or was it minutes?—later. She did not know. She only knew that her face was burning beneath his hand, and that the world had seemed to stop again the moment he had touched her.

“Really? How stupid of me not to realise,” he mocked her softly and himself for being such a fool as to think she did not know the rules of the game. But there was no hurry, he told himself as his hand dropped away. Janey Hilton was like a rare vintage wine—she should be enjoyed slowly.

“You had better go in, Miss Hilton,” he said as she remained motionless.

“Yes,” she agreed, “but I cannot until you let go of my arm.”

“Of course,” he said, but still did not release her.

She swallowed. “Is there something else, Mr Lindsay?”

“Jem?” he said, not knowing where or how the sudden anxiety had arisen in his mind, but only that she had been too quiet upon the subject. “You have not any wild or reckless schemes for his rescue in mind have you?”

“No,” she said. It was not a lie. Wild and reckless simply would not do. It was going to take careful planning to save Jem. And a miracle to save herself from falling in love with Jonathan Lindsay.

“Good.” He exhaled and let go of her arm. “Because this is England, and in England, the rule of law is upheld mercilessly.”

“You need not tell me that,” she said, half-relieved, half-disappointed that he had believed her so easily.

“And neither need I tell you, I hope, that such strategies as exchanging clothes with the prisoner, or copying keys with wax and the like, only work in the pages of fiction.”

“I know.”

“Then I’ll say goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” She turned and began to walk towards the house.

“Wait!” he called softly after her. “How are you to get in?”

She stopped, turned and looked back at him. “Why, through the door, Mr Lindsay. You did not think I was going to climb the ivy in my petticoats, did you? If I had meant to do that, I’d have worn my buckskins.”

“Breeches?” He sounded shocked again, she thought with a smile.

“Buckskins are what the Indians wear, men and women—” she began to expound, and then laughed. “Never mind, Mr Lindsay, I’ll explain another time. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Miss Hilton.” His voice floated after her as she walked across the drive. And she was aware of him standing in the growing darkness, watching her, until the moment the great front door swung shut behind her.

She stood for a moment in the dimly lit hall, a half-smile on her lips. Worried as she was about Jem, and the estate, somehow, she had the absurd conviction that everything would be all right now Jonathan Lindsay had come to Southbrook.

Outside, at the same moment, Jonathan Lindsay frowned. He was feeling unaccountably guilty and it was not an emotion he was accustomed to. The trouble was, he liked Miss Janey Hilton, liked the way she looked at him, liked her cool directness and the way she smiled. He swore silently. What the devil was wrong with him? He was thinking like some greenhorn. She was just another woman, another conquest to be made…wasn’t she?

He turned away without answering his own question, whistled to Tess and strode back into the woods.

“Jane! There you are!” Mrs Filmore, her ample figure tightly upholstered in cherry silk, greeted Janey majestically from halfway up the broad flight of stairs. “I have been looking all over for you. Mr Filmore has relented. You may come down and join us—when you are suitably dressed, of course.” She frowned as she glanced derisively at Janey’s besmirched pelisse.

“I’d rather go to my room, thank you.” Janey gave Mrs Filmore her most benign smile. “I’ve been walking in the gardens and I am rather tired.”

“Walking alone in the dark!” Mrs Filmore gave a long-suffering sigh. “Really, Jane dear, you cannot go on like this. A little eccentricity in the first throes of grief is allowable, but poor Mr Grey has been dead almost a year now—though the ordeal you suffered would be enough to turn anyone’s mind.”

“There is nothing wrong with my mind.” Janey sighed as she began to climb the stairs. “And I should prefer it if you and Mr Filmore would stop implying that there is to anyone who cares to listen.”

“Well,” Mrs Filmore snorted, drawing herself up to her full, rather limited, height, “would you rather that I had explained to Mr Lindsay that your extraordinary behaviour this morning was learned from the female brothel-keeper with whom you lived for the year following your parents’ death?”

“Lilian was not a brothel-keeper,” Janey retorted. “She owned a boarding house.”

“A boarding house! A wooden hut where men drank liquor, and women sold their services.” Mrs Filmore gave a theatrical shudder. “If I had been your poor dear late grandpapa, I should never have brought you back here.”

“Sometimes, Mrs Filmore,” Janey muttered as she began to climb the stairs, “I wish that he had not.” But she knew that was not true, not any longer. It had not been true from the moment Jonathan Lindsay had first smiled at her.

“About time, Jono, where the devil have you been?” Lord Derwent said complainingly as Jonathan entered the library of Southbrook House. “This place is freezing, and I’ve been ringing for ages for your man to bring some more wood for the fire. Had to put some books on—only Mrs Radcliffe,” he added as Jonathan frowned. “Didn’t think you’d miss those.”

“Probably not,” Jonathan conceded, as he stepped up to the fire and held his hands out to the blaze, “but I’d rather you did not burn any more. The reason the servants have not answered is because the bell wires are all in need of replacement. You will have to go to the door and shout.”

“Shout? Didn’t think of that,” Lord Derwent grumbled, leaning back in a creaking chair upholstered with well-worn green leather and putting his feet up upon the brass fender. “And where have you been?” he asked as his brown gaze took in Jonathan’s muddy boots.

“Playing in the garden and walking in the woods,” Jonathan said with a grin, sitting down in the opposite chair.

“Playing in the garden! Walking in the woods on a November evening!” Lord Derwent scowled, his fastidious nose wrinkling as the wet and muddy Tess pushed against his boots in an effort to get closer to the fire. “And to think we could have been at White’s, or eating Wilkin’s steak and oyster pie.”

“Woods have their compensations,” Jonathan said, “in the very delicious shape of Miss Hilton.”

“What!” Lord Derwent’s feet dropped from the fender to the floor. “You’ve not had an assignation with Miss Hilton already! How the deuce did you manage that?”

“Very easily.” Jonathan laughed. “I do hope you’ve told your horseman to get Triton fit for me, Perry. Winning this wager is going to be easier than beating you at cards.”

“After you’ve failed to save her arsonist?” Lord Derwent shook his head. “I’ll believe it when I see it. A walk in the woods is one thing but—” he made an eloquent gesture “—is quite another.”

“I haven’t failed yet. We are going back to Town.”

“Hurrah!” Lord Derwent’s countenance brightened immeasurably.

“As soon as we have dined.”

“Tonight?” Lord Derwent groaned. “But it’s just started to rain.”

“There’s not much time and I want to see Caroline Norton.”

“Caro Norton.” Lord Derwent looked at him in surprise. “I thought it was all over between you years ago.”

“It was. But we have retained a fondness for one another.” Jonathan smiled. “Melbourne is besotted with her and, where he might not do me a favour—”

“He will do anything for the beautiful Mrs Norton,” Lord Derwent said slowly, “and Mrs Norton will do anything for you.”

“Exactly, Perry, exactly.” Jonathan laughed. “I don’t know why I did not think of it before.”