A Rake To The Rescue

Chapter Four

‘I am sorry to disturb you, Mr Haile, but your manservant said you were feeling a little better and I wanted to talk to you before we go,’ Hetta said with more sympathy than he deserved after calling Toby a little devil and greeting her with such revulsion she almost turned tail and ran, until weariness and common sense took over and reminded her what a challenge it would be to find somewhere else to go this late in the day.

But then he’d stared at Toby with what looked suspiciously like a sheen of tears in his bloodshot dark eyes before dashing outside to be disgracefully ill, as if her son was a painful reminder his own child was gone. Her heart went out to him even as she fought an impulse to run after the hired carriage she could hear trundling down the drive and forget she had set eyes on him again. She noted the sunlight played on his wild, wet black curls as they dried in complete disarray, but highlighted his starkly handsome features more acutely than ever as he squinted against the light with a flinch that gave his headache away. Even after seeing how drunk he was when she got here she still had to fight a ridiculous flutter of enthusiasm for the dratted man. He could have walked straight out of one of Lord Byron’s epics and he wasn’t to know she had peeped through the window on the half-landing and glimpsed him bare-chested and rather magnificent as he reeled back from his dousing under the pump. Bran had been five years older than her, but he’d lacked the sleekly muscled power of this mature man even when he died. And Magnus Haile managed to look deliciously masculine even when shivering like a drowned rat in the July sun. With sunlight merciless on his ashen face now and those darkly shadowed eyes showing how little he had slept since she saw him at Dover, a dangerous sort of pity softened her heart. Despite his dissolute ways and low opinion of her and Toby, he was clearly a deeply lonely and bereft man and at least he had a heart to be broken by a lover’s desertion. Her late husband would have shrugged and found the next willing female if she had left him. Heart or no, Magnus Haile had no feelings for her, though, so she ordered herself not to be more of a fool than she could help and waited for him to argue.

‘Why?’ he obliged, producing one of his best frowns especially for her.

‘My son and I need a safe place to lay our heads for the night. The jarvey has demanded his fee and driven back to town. I could not persuade him to take us to the nearest respectable inn. He said his horse wanted its stable and he did as well, so I need your advice on where I can find a respectable and clean place to stay for the night. Oh, and I also wanted to remind you I never gossip.’

‘Everyone gossips in the right circumstances, Mrs Campion.’

‘Champion,’ she told him impatiently. Getting her surname wrong wasn’t an insult even if it felt like one. ‘And I don’t.’

‘What did you say you are doing here, Mrs Champion?’ he demanded sharply as a man could when he was suffering so many self-inflicted ailments.

She should wait until he was completely sober, but she really must find lodgings for the night and, once she had, they need not meet again. Even now she would leave him to his misery and his favourite glower, but he was ghost pale under the tan even she knew a dandy would condemn as bucolic. Maybe the rumours she claimed not to listen to were right about the Honourable Magnus Haile after all, then. Perhaps he had been trying to turn over a new leaf since his father was murdered and wanted to live a more useful life. She reviewed Mr Haile’s solitary drinking spree and decided, no, he was quite happy with the old one.

‘My father came to England to find your father’s murderer,’ she told him.

‘You said that before as well,’ he said impatiently.

‘Drunken gentlemen rarely recall what was said five minutes ago,’ she said and cursed her own stupidity for trying to reason with him. ‘I suppose you are so used to being one you have developed an obliging memory.’

‘If you say so, but if your father is Fat George’s Bloodhound he will need an exceptionally hard head to keep up with his master,’ he said with the suggestion of a sneer in his voice. She could imagine him backing it up with a quizzing glass in his heyday as a dandy. ‘Like his royal patron Sir Hadrian Porter doesn’t seem to take much interest in his immediate family, does he? Even I know he doesn’t spend more time in his home country than he can help, yet he is supposed to catch the killer who has confounded our efforts and half of Bow Street as well? Forgive me if I doubt it, ma’am.’

‘Papa has solved all the mysteries His Majesty’s Government set him so far, I will have you know. He does important work, so why should he worry about things I am capable of sorting out myself? We go on very well together, Mr Haile, and, if I were you, I would be glad he is here to unmask your father’s murderer and he always refuses to listen to rumours. Because of my father your family has a chance of finding true justice instead of some cobbled-together tale made up to satisfy his masters.’

‘I hated my father, so no wonder the gossips whisper I must have killed him, despite my valet’s evidence I was even more drunk that night than I managed to be today.’

‘Your mother and sisters have my sympathy, then. Two drunks in the family must have been almost too much to endure,’ Hetta said bluntly, but he had insulted her and her family first, so why not?

‘I am not a habitual drunkard and I would never hurt them if I was,’ he protested, and deep down she felt guilty for implying it.

She knew he would never use his strength to coerce or dominate a woman. If ever a man was tempted to do so he must have been when Lady Drace walked away with his child. Now, instead of one of Lord Byron’s devil heroes, he looked like a weary knight who had defended too many lost causes for the good of his soul. Fanciful nonsense, she told herself, and it came of being in the wrong place at the wrong time to witness his darkest moments, but what on earth was she going to do with herself and Toby now? The idea of trying to find a hired coach to heaven knew where at short notice nearly overwhelmed even her sturdy determination never to allow a man to order her life again.

‘Why are you here instead of in Worthing?’ she asked impulsively, because it was easier to think about him than worry about where to spend the night.

‘Guess,’ he said wearily. ‘This summer by the sea is supposed to be a much-needed tonic for them and it won’t be if they spend it worrying about me.’

‘Honestly, men,’ she said disgustedly. ‘Do you really believe your mother and sisters won’t worry if they can’t actually see you drunk and miserable? If you truly believe we women live on fluffy clouds of ignorance about what men get up to behind our backs, I am sorry for you. I took you for less of a fool than most of your sex, Mr Haile, but apparently I was wrong.’

‘Obviously, and why would you give me so much credit when my idiocy was writ large the day we met, Mrs Champion?’ he barked as if he meant to drive her away and never mind if she had to sleep under a hedge tonight.

‘Your sister Lady Aline has such a high opinion of you I must have fallen into the error of thinking she knew you better, despite all evidence to the contrary. She seems such a rational being and really should know better.’

‘No doubt she will see through me in time, but what I can’t understand is why my elder brother sent you here and your father let him. Your husband must be deranged to let you and his son visit England in his father-in-law’s so-called care.’

‘My husband is dead,’ she said, indignant he thought she ought to have one to take charge of her when Bran was as irresponsible as a cuckoo whenever he was far away from his command and the sea.

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said so soberly she almost believed him.

‘As I am for yours,’ she replied, and if he chose to think she meant the death of his father he was welcome.

‘I don’t deserve pity,’ he said harshly.

‘Yet your dilemma was made by two people,’ she said with a brutal frankness she refused to regret even when he glared at her, then shook his head as if silently admitting she might be right.

‘Most of them are,’ he said with a half-weary, half-wolfish smile that made her heart skitter, then race on in panic. No, she refused to be a fool for a handsome face ever again. She had been one for Bran for a heady, brief time, and now this man was baiting her she almost wanted to flirt back. Luckily, he waved a hand as if he was being more unworthy than usual in using such tactics to deflect her. ‘I cannot deem my child a mistake, then shrug and carry on with life untroubled, Mrs Champion, even if her mother wants me to,’ he added bleakly.

Her heartbeat sped up again as she put herself in Lady Drace’s elegant shoes for a moment and decided she would say yes to almost anything if he asked her to in the right way. ‘Why would you?’ she managed to argue even so.

‘You heard Lady Drace, Mrs Champion. I have been dismissed from their lives and I hope you and Champion did a better job of being parents, for all your sakes.’

‘He died before Toby was born,’ she said, frowning at the prickly memory of how little Bran wanted the baby in her belly during his last shore leave.

‘That explains a lot,’ Magnus Haile said as if it might well.

‘And do you always use rudeness to deflect personal questions, Mr Haile?’

‘Only when frigid politeness fails me, Mrs Champion. None of which explains why my elder brother sent you here when our mother is from home and the place half-finished,’ he persisted.

He waved an impatient hand at the lovely little Queen Anne manor house behind them. It was obviously still undergoing improvement from piles of sand and gravel and a dusting of sawdust, and Hetta wondered if he had sent the builders and carpenters away for the day, so he could get drunk in peace. The strength and elegance of his long-fingered hand caught her feral imagination and painted her a picture of him sensually rendering parts of her helpless with longing and melted to the core. She was so shocked she glared at him to make up for the shameful image and thought she saw a reluctant echo of her own fascination in his dark brown eyes for a moment before they were sternly guarded again.

This will not do, barked her inner puritan, so she grasped at the reason she was here to divert them both.

‘Lord Carrowe caught Toby climbing the roof at Carrowe House, despite all the nailed-up doors and windows and his dire warnings not to go anywhere near the worst parts of the poor old place. His lordship suggested I get Toby out of London before he killed himself in such a deathtrap and it was kind of him to suggest we came here for a few days, given Toby’s mischief. I would have had to stop him bothering the builders here, I suppose, but we cannot stay now, so at least that’s one less thing to worry about—and that reminds me. I must find somewhere to stay tonight before the inns are full, so I shall bid you good day, Mr Haile.’

‘Wait, there’s no need to quit the place. I am in the way of the builders and upholsterers anyway and of my mother’s cook and housekeeper, who insisted on staying to be sure the builders do not make a mess. My mother hired servants for the summer season because she wanted those two to enjoy an easy summer after years of devoted and often unpaid work, so looking after me is hardly a rest.’

‘They don’t seem unduly worried, rather the opposite, in fact.’

‘Peg was our nursemaid and playmate when I was young and we still had a few servants willing to stay in such a decaying old wreck as long as my mother managed to scrape together their wages. By the time my youngest sisters came along, Peg and Cook and a very ancient butler were the only staff left. Peg is more a member of the family than a housekeeper and Cook is too happy with her new kitchen to complain about anything much.’ He smiled and looked as if his memory had taken him back to more innocent days, before he recalled Hetta was a stranger in his home and snapped back to the present. ‘This business with the old Earl must have made my elder brother think harder about his responsibilities if he got you out of the old dust heap before your son did himself permanent damage,’ he said as if it almost explained her presence. ‘And I ought to leave this place, not you. There are plenty of low dives where I can stay and you cannot.’

‘No, finding a new place to stay is hardly a great hardship and we will soon be back on the Continent and back to a proper summer, so it hardly matters where we stay for now.’

‘Is this an improper one, then?’ he asked with a ghost of rakish innuendo in his naturally husky, fascinatingly deep voice.

The sound of him reciting a laundry list would make goosebumps rise on her over-sensitised skin, so his almost-suggestion they misbehave together made her shiver with something very far from cold. ‘No, just a British one,’ she said flatly.

‘Aye, the rain must have found all the holes in the roof and made Carrowe House even more uncomfortable than usual,’ he said as if he had already repented his lighter mood.

It was wrong of her to wish he hadn’t changed his mind and his mood, she reminded herself, as she tucked away a fantasy of being locked in his arms until they both forgot the season and everything else on a lazy afternoon in the middle of the sun-sleepy Heath. Magnus had been brought up at Carrowe House with a bullying father and a mother wilfully mired in scandal by her own husband, so it was silly of Hetta to feel sorry she had never had a real home to go to. Her father’s country house had been let out ever since he inherited it in order to cover the costs of his mother’s grand London home. And Magnus Haile’s own home was so tumbledown and faded she wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy. She kept her suspicion that someone was slipping in and out of Carrowe House to herself. It was only a prickly feeling of being watched from shadowy corners and once fancying she heard a soft footstep where feet should not be able to go. She had no proof and if she mentioned it the impulsive idiot could gallop off there to lie in wait for a murderer. Hetta shivered and was more glad than ever to be out of the poor old house, despite Magnus Haile’s drunken revulsion at the sight of her.

‘Yes, I suppose it did feel damp and a little depressing in the rain yesterday, but I doubt you need a stranger to confirm its shortcomings,’ she said almost politely.

‘Gresley says most of it was habitable when he was a boy, but nobody should have to endure the place now if they don’t really need to.’

‘Although you wish he had sent us somewhere else?’ she asked, and as he said nothing she knew she was right. ‘I suppose you will be glad when Carrowe House is torn down,’ she said to fill an uncomfortable silence.

‘Aye, and Gres will have to pay someone to do it and that will delay matters. There isn’t a shred of gold leaf worth more than a farthing to salvage after my father stripped it bare to fund his excesses, so at least my brother and your father should be safe from thieves there since there’s precious little left to plunder.’

‘Couldn’t your brother stop your father doing so? He was the heir.’

‘You never met our father,’ he said with a gesture of that fine-boned hand to distract her again. ‘Although Gres was wild in his youth and closer to our father than the rest of us back then. Shortly before he married he seemed to wake up to the folly of it all, though...’ He paused and they avoided one another’s eyes as Lady Drace’s bitter parting words reminded them of a possible reason why. ‘As the heir he was the only one who could rescue the rest of the family fortunes from the same ruin. Our father would have picked everything clean and mortgaged the land as well and I have to admire Gres for stopping him, but I’m not so sure about the way he did it now.’

Hetta could hardly agree out loud, but she managed to school her features to her best imitation of a marble statue in spectacles. She would never have agreed to stay under the new Lord Carrowe’s roof if Lady Aline Haile had not made it virtually impossible to refuse until something more suitable came along. The Earl’s sister was back for a fleeting visit when Hetta had called to ask her father’s advice on suitable lodgings when the affair of the rat made her and Toby homeless at short notice. She had been away from England so much of her life she had no idea which areas were respectable and which only looked so by daylight. At the time it seemed sensible to seek his help, even if her father would rather not be distracted when he was hunting a murderer of aristocrats because the King thought the idea might be catching and he must be next on any revolutionary’s list.

Sir Hadrian and the Earl of Carrowe had been out when Lady Aline insisted Hetta and Toby stay at Carrowe House rather than take the first place on offer. Lord Carrowe had tried to pretend they were welcome when he returned, but Hetta never quite managed to believe him. This morning Lady Aline left for Worthing and Toby grew bored in the small range of rooms the family had kept watertight and nailed up against the ruin everywhere else. Of course, she should never have fallen asleep in an almost comfortable chair after a disturbed night, but it could have been worse. The dream she had been having about sneering ghosts and stalking murderers could have come true. Instead she woke up to hear Lord Carrowe shouting and ran out of the room just in time to watch her son take that fall into the attics as their reluctant host stood looking horrified and stared up at the chimney where Toby had been clinging. To give him his due, his lordship soon awoke from his horrified stupor and ran upstairs while she was still trying to make her legs stop wobbling long enough to follow. Before she could stop shaking like a leaf Lord Carrowe had come downstairs as fast as he could go whilst towing her son behind him with every last iota of the fine Haile temper he must share with his brother flashing from his dark eyes and a scowl even Magnus Haile could not outdo. What a relief to find the worst damage her son had suffered was to his pride—oh, and a few scratches and bruises he richly deserved and yet another set of his clothes waiting to be patched and mended when she had time. Lord Carrowe let her know he had only kept his hands off her boy because Toby fell through his lordship’s rotten roof on to his lordly rotten floor and landed on his merely genteel backside. Even in a fine Haile temper Lord Carrowe could hardly give the boy a beating for going where he was expressly told not to go when he was already bruised and a little bit chastened.

Once she had got over her reluctant host’s impressive show of temper and made sure her son wasn’t really harmed, Hetta had been secretly delighted to leave Carrowe House. If not for her father’s vague order to go where she was bid and keep the boy out of trouble, she would have resumed her hunt for another lodging straight away. That wretched promise again. Why the deuce had Papa invoked it simply to get them out of his way as fast as possible? She frowned at the thought there was something real and a little bit anxious behind her father’s irritation today. She was almost glad Magnus was staring at the wall as if he wished he was alone, so he couldn’t read her thoughts. However hard she tried to tell herself he and his family mysteries were nothing to do with her, she felt involved. Somehow, she couldn’t simply put the Haile family to the back of her mind and carry on with her life as if she had never met any of them.

And poor old Carrowe House had felt so oppressive and strange she could easily believe a man was murdered there. It felt as if the tremors of such a violent crime lingered there like the aftershocks of a great earthquake. Fanciful to even think such a thing and she blamed her fascination with Gothic romances she picked up during long, lonely nights sitting up with Toby as a baby as he grew teeth or was fretful or simply his usual ravenous self. A series of shocking events happening at a distance to timid, yet recklessly curious, heroines seemed an ideal diversion when the rest of the world was fast asleep and hired lodgings could feel soulless by candlelight. Except last night, as she lay listening for the next creak or moan the old house made as if it tried to settle on its ancient foundations and couldn’t get comfortable, her secret vice had not seemed such a good idea. Even the latest chilling tale she had picked up could not divert her from the fancy she was living inside one and could be silently, watchfully observed from places that looked perfectly innocent in daylight.

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