Redemption Of The Rake

‘Three out of four is a fine record, darling,’ he murmured as he stared unseeingly at the soft, serene blue of the October sky.

And a full house trumps it every time, came the reply so certainly he looked for Virginia’s shade again, then called himself a fool for expecting it to show up for him. There was a little more in her missive from some time last year, when she had put her affairs in order while she had the strength and certainty to do so. How he admired and loved the one woman he could safely adore until his dying day. Come to think of it; if she was ordering him to give his heart, wasn’t she already too late?

Cheating, my boy, the gruff almost-sound of her voice reproached him and what he wouldn’t give to actually see and speak to her one last time? That’s a different sort of love. Virgil and I simply tried to give you and your brother and Tom a firm foundation of love to build your lives on. Love between a man and a woman, full and true and without boundaries, is very different to the deep affection of true family. That love is an undeserved gift that can light up a whole lifetime with the joy and surprise of it, for however long or short a time you are together. I want you to love like that, James, I need you to love truly if I am ever to have peace and join my far-more-saintly Virgil in heaven one day.

‘Now that’s blackmail,’ James muttered with a frown at the circling buzzard that had taken off from the perch where it had been dreaming in the sun at the top of the tallest oak in Lord Laughraine’s beloved woods. ‘I’ve made love to some of the loveliest women in this land and quite a few further afield and not fallen in love with a single one of them. If I couldn’t love any of them, I’m beyond heavenly intervention.’

No, just looking in the wrong place, the not-quite sound of Virginia’s distinctive voice in his head insisted stubbornly.

James felt that restriction where his heart ought to be again and did his best to ignore it. Did she expect him to find a saint? The very idea made him snort with derision. Even the slightest hint of the saintly martyr in a woman would make him play the devil more than ever. No, he didn’t have it in him to give himself wholeheartedly to any deep human emotion, let alone loving a woman who’d preach at him and pry into his sooty soul. Shaking his head at the very idea, he forced himself to read the final farewell of the most matchless woman he’d ever met.

Whatever you do, live well and never close your heart to loving those around you if you can’t let go of your pride or your tender conscience long enough to truly love a partner for life. I was lucky to adore your great-uncle from the moment I met him and perhaps that’s not a miracle given to many of us sinners. You must believe that if I could have had a son I wanted him to be just like you, James. Know that now and please shrug off the self-loathing you struggle with for some reason you never would confide in me.

I find it hardest of all to stop writing to you, but now my pen is in need of mending and I am weary of this wide and wonderful earth of ours at last. Don’t grieve for me any more, love. I’m more than ready for a new adventure the other side of this little earthly life, if God will allow a sinner like me into heaven where I know Virgil already abides.

Farewell, my love; be happy and true to yourself. I pray one day you will be truly loved by the right woman, despite your conviction you do not deserve her,

Virginia

James blinked several times and watched the buzzard lazily circle its way up to the heavens on a warm thermal of autumn air and call for its mate to join it. Soon two birds were mewing in that circle, gliding and calling in the still air as if all that mattered was the miracle of flight and one another. For wild creatures with only their next meal and the urges of nature to answer perhaps it was. For James Winterley there was good earth under his feet and a mass of mixed emotions in his heart. He must go back to Raigne soon and show his sister-in-law and his hostess he wasn’t bowed down with the task Virginia had laid on his shoulders. Truth was he didn’t know how he felt about it. How could an unlovable man end up like the other three? Impossible, so he shook his head and decided he’d been right all along, he was destined to be Virginia’s only failure.

Perhaps he should give back the small fortune Gideon had passed to him as Virginia’s lawyer? James had plans for it, so, no, he’d accept the sacrifices Virginia’s nearest and dearest had made to get him off their hands. It would be an insult even he couldn’t steel himself to make if he was to throw the money back in their faces and tell them he didn’t want it.

‘Are you a hermit, mister?’

James jumped and looked for the source of that voice, so attuned to ghostly intervention he wondered for a moment if it came from a cherub instead of a child. He looked harder and spotted a grubby urchin peering down at him from halfway up a vast and curiously branched tree.

‘No, are you a leech?’ he asked as casually as he could and watched the girl squirm a little higher. Was there some way to get close and catch her when she fell without alarming her into falling in the first place?

‘Of course not, do I look like such a nasty, slimy bloodsucking thing?’

‘Only by hanging on to an unwilling host and defying the laws of gravity.’

‘You’re a very odd gentleman. I watched you for ages until I got bored and decided to see if I could get to the top of this tree instead.’

‘So that’s my fault, is it? I suppose you will tell your unfortunate parents so if you survive the experience?’

‘No,’ the pragmatic cherub said after a pause to think about it. ‘They will know it’s a lie,’ she finally admitted as she carefully worked her way up a little further and James’s heart thumped with fear as he let himself see how far from the ground she truly was.

‘How perceptive,’ he managed calmly as he strolled over so casually he hoped she had no idea he had his doubts about her survival if she took a wrong step.

‘Yes, it’s a trial,’ she admitted with a sigh that would normally have made him laugh out loud, but he was holding his breath too carefully to do any such thing as a branch writhed and threatened to snap when she tried it too hard.

‘I can see how it must be,’ he somehow managed to say calmly. ‘Sometimes knowing what you know and keeping quiet about it has to be enough, don’t you think?’

‘What?’ the adventurer asked rather breathlessly, as if not quite willing to admit her lucky escape had scared her so much she hadn’t been listening.

‘You know you can climb that tree, so perhaps that’s enough.’ He did his best to reason with her as if every inch of him wasn’t intent on persuading her to come down before she fell and he must try to catch her.

‘There’s no point me knowing I could do it if nobody else does.’

‘Yes, there is. You have the satisfaction of achievement and I’ll know.’

‘No, you won’t. I’m only halfway up.’

‘Which is about ten times as far as anyone else I ever came across can get. Being further up than anyone else can be has to be enough at times, don’t you think? I believe that’s the sign of a truly great person—knowing when it’s time to stop and be content.’

His latest critic seemed to think about that for endless moments before she took another step either way and he felt slightly better when the whippy branches above her head stopped swaying from the intrusion of a small human into its stately crown.

‘Do you really think it’s a big achievement to get this far?’

‘Of course it is; Joan of Arc couldn’t have done better.’

‘She got herself burnt,’ the urchin said doubtfully.

‘There is that, of course. Well, then, whatever great woman you think the most highly of couldn’t have done, as well. No woman of my acquaintance could touch you.’

‘What, not even one?’ she asked as if she didn’t think much of his taste in friends.

‘One might have done, but she died nearly a year ago now and I suppose by then even she was getting a little old for climbing trees. She would have been up there with you like a shot otherwise,’ he assured her.

‘And you think she would have thought this is far enough?’

‘I’m certain of it, she was the most lionhearted woman I ever came across and even she would say it’s enough to prove your courage and daring to yourself at times. Now I do wish you’d come down, because I’m getting a stiff neck and I’m devilish sharp set.’

‘Why don’t you just go, then?’ the girl said rather sulkily.

James wondered if he’d blundered and might have to risk both their lives by climbing up after her. If the girl insisted on going too high for him to be able to break her fall, even if he could judge the right place to try, he might have no choice. A lot of those branches simply wouldn’t take his weight, though, so he wondered if he could shout loudly enough to attract the woodsmen and hope they were lean and limber enough to do what he couldn’t.

‘There’s roast lamb and apple pie for dinner,’ he said as if that was all he could think about right now. He hoped the mention of food would remind her she hadn’t eaten for at least an hour and eating might trump adventures even for intrepid young scamps like this one.

‘I wish I was going to your house for dinner.’

‘I suppose if we’d been properly introduced I might get you invited another night. I’ve heard rumours about plum cake being available for hungry young visitors at any time of day, but I don’t suppose you like it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Only boys like plum cake, don’t they?’

‘No, I’m as good as any boy and twice as hungry.’

‘So girls don’t prefer syllabub and sponge cake after all, then?’

‘I don’t.’

James was delighted to see the girl look for a way down almost without noticing she was doing it. She might make it back down to earth without killing herself on the way now, but he tried not to let his relief show lest she went further up the tree, because she couldn’t let him see she was almost as scared as he was she might fall right now.

‘What don’t you like? So I can tell Cook when you come to dinner,’ he went on as if he hadn’t noticed she was thinking better of her plan to reach the top of the slender tree.

‘Cucumbers and rice pudding.’

‘Oh, dear me no, I can’t think of a worse combination.’

‘Not both at the same time, idiot,’ she said scathingly and felt less confidently for footholds on the way down and his heart seemed about to take up residence in his mouth as he watched her fumble, then find one.

‘How, then?’ he made himself ask as if he hadn’t a serious thought in his head while she hesitated between the next unsteady foothold and an even less likely alternative. Luckily the first held long enough to let her find a better and he sucked in a hasty breath and tried to look calm and only mildly interested when she found the nerve to look down again.

‘Rice pudding is worse, it looks like frogspawn and tastes like it by the time it gets to the nursery all cold and shuddery,’ she told him rather shakily.

‘I know exactly what you mean, but it goes down much better with big spoons of jam. I would never have got through school without wasting away if my brother hadn’t insisted I have jam with my pudding or succumb to a mysterious ailment unique to our family.’

‘I wish one of my brothers would think up stories to get us out of having to eat cold rice pudding on its own,’ she said wistfully and moved a few feet closer to the ground.

James estimated she was still about thirty feet above his head and worryingly unsafe when the girl’s elder sister appeared at the edge of the clearing, looking visibly shaken and pale as milk. She seemed about to distract the girl with a terrified exclamation and part of him whispered it would be good if she turned out to be a widgeon and released him from the spell he’d been in danger of tumbling into since the first day he laid eyes on her.

This wasn’t about him, though, so he shook his head and glared at her to keep quiet. He’d done his best not to know the Finch family better after spotting this disaster of a female hovering on the edges of it after church a few weeks ago. And who would have thought he’d let himself be cajoled and persuaded inside one of those for the good of his sooty soul quite so often?

‘I don’t think my brother would save me from rice pudding at every meal now we’re grown up if that makes you feel better,’ he shouted cheerfully enough.

He held his breath as the next branch the child tried gave an ominous crack. Again she skipped hastily on to the next and both watchers let out a quiet sigh of relief. The girl in the tree had frightened herself with her own daring and he had to keep her calm enough to take the next step to safety and the next, until she was low enough to catch if she fell.

‘Why not?’ she quavered bravely and how could he not put all he was into saving a girl who seemed as reckless and brave as Virginia must have been as a child?

Despite her mass of golden hair and bluest of blue eyes, she reminded him of Hebe’s little daughter Amélie. The defiant determination not to cry and admit how frightened she was put him in mind of the poor little mite he’d smuggled out of Paris at the behest of Hebe’s mother. The Terror had taken her husband and sons, now treachery had robbed her of her daughter, but she was still brave enough to part with her grandchild. Now it was up to him to see that the child had a better life than her mother and the responsibility felt terrifying at times.

‘We argued,’ he admitted, although it wasn’t exactly true. The problem was he and Luke hadn’t even had the heart to argue, they just let each other go and that was that.

‘Me and Jack argue all the time,’ the girl said matter-of-factly.

‘Is he your only sibling?’ he said with a warning glance at the one he wanted to know about least right now.

‘What’s a sibling?’

‘A brother or sister.’

‘Oh, no, but Nan’s only a baby and can hardly walk yet. I’m next, then there’s Jack, he’s two years older. Sophie is fifteen; Josh is at Oxford. Joanna is quite old and she’s getting married in November. Rowena has been grown up for years and years; she lived with her mama-in-law for ages but she’s home now. I hope she stays with us. She’s really old, but much more fun than Sophie. It’s nice to have one big sister who doesn’t scold all the time.’

James couldn’t spare a glance at Mr Finch’s eldest daughter to see how she’d reacted to that quaint summary. ‘Your parents must be busy with such a large and enterprising family,’ he managed coolly.

‘Oh, Papa and Mama are always busy. What with Papa’s pupils and all those services, Mama says it’s a wonder we ever see him.’

‘You must be Reverend Finch’s daughter, then?’

‘Why do people always say that as if it’s a surprise?’ the girl grumbled.

‘I really can’t imagine,’ he said wryly.

His breathing went shallow as the child stretched a grubby bare foot to find her next precarious hold. At a crash of unwary movement behind him he turned his head to bark a furious command at Mrs Westhope and saw a gangling stripling stumble into the clearing. Shock at the sight of his sister perched halfway up the wretched tree was written all over the boy’s ashen face. James drew breath to shout out an order to be silent just too late.

‘Good Lord, this time she’ll kill herself, Rowena,’ the boy shouted furiously.

The girl in the tree started, snatched at a much-too-slender branch to steady herself and screamed when it snapped off. This time there wasn’t another close enough to grab and save herself. She did her best to stumble on to another slender branch and shuffle her way back to the relative safety of the trunk. James’s heart seemed to jump into his mouth as he tried to calculate where best to stand to break the child’s fall, at the same time as briefly snatching off a prayer she wouldn’t need him to in the first place, since it was so hit and miss. The force of even her slender little body made the fine branches whip away or break as she grabbed at them. He winced for the scratches and bruises they would cause even as he reminded himself far worse would happen if he didn’t get in the way and stop her fall.

‘Stay back, you’ll do no good,’ he ordered the boy who looked about to dash forward and get in the way.

James had to forget him and hope his elder sister would stop the boy. She must have dragged her brother away, because James could pick the best spot to try and catch the child. He braced himself against the impact of the solid little body now hurtling towards him in a flash of flailing arms and grubby petticoats. A pity she couldn’t grow wings like the buzzards he’d been watching earlier, he found time to reflect as stalled time passed sluggishly. He did his best to second-guess gravity and snatch the girl from the shadowy arms of death by adjusting his stance as she fell. An image of this intrepid child lying lifeless and broken if he failed flashed in front of his eyes to truly horrify him, even as he stepped back to compensate for a little flail she managed, as if trying to slow her flight on the way down. He couldn’t quite think her a hell-born brat as every sense he had was intent on saving her from as much harm as he could.

Time flooded back in a rush. The girl’s speed crashed into him with all her slender weight behind it. He frantically closed his arms and caught her close. In the flail of limbs and hammer of his own heartbeat he knew he was between her and the dry, hard-packed earth. For a long moment it seemed they would escape winded and a bit bruised. Then he felt his foot slide on the smooth bark of an outstretched tree root, as if the wretched thing was reaching out to claim them even now he had the girl safe. Unable to flail about and get his balance because of the child in his arms, he had no hold on solid ground. He twisted and turned as best he could to save the girl injury and fell heavily to earth with a bone-jarring thud and actually heard his own head slam against the next tree root with a vicious crack. Almost at the same time a harder, sharper slap of sound rang through the wood like a death knell as James fought hard to hold on to his senses.

Chapter Four

‘Oh, Lord, Hes, what have you done?’ Jack Finch yelled.

Rowena let go and they dashed to the dark-haired stranger who still held Hes, despite a blow to his head that still seemed to echo round the clearing. Perhaps he’d been mortally wounded by the shot that followed his fall so closely it might almost have been one sound.

‘Be quiet, Jacob Finch,’ she ordered, knowing shock and his full name would silence him while she took her little sister from Mr Winterley’s arms and willed air into her lungs. ‘You can let her go now,’ she told the all-but-unconscious man. Her little sister was whooping for air with dry little groans that terrified Rowena that she’d never restart her much-tried lungs without wiser help than she had right now. ‘Let her go!’ she demanded this time.

He did one of those terrifying saws for air that echoed Hester’s and she wrested her suddenly frighteningly small sister out of his grasp. She spared a preoccupied moment to be relieved his much-more-powerful lungs were forcing air into his labouring chest now they were free of the slender weight.

‘Come on, Hes, breathe,’ she shouted desperately.

‘How could you, Hes?’ Jack shouted, terror making him sound so furious he could hardly get the words out. ‘How could you?’ he repeated on a sob.

‘Hush, Jack,’ Rowena managed to say as calmly as she could when her own nerves were stretched almost to breaking. ‘Sounding as if you’d like to strangle her won’t help her recover. She’s alive and breathing, so leave her to me now and run for help as fast as you can. We must get her home and get help for Mr Winterley. We owe him our sister’s life,’ she reminded him when Jack shot Mr Winterley an impatient look, as if he was the last thing on his mind.

‘I startled her and made her fall in the first place, didn’t I?’ he said, an agony of self-reproach in his eyes.

‘And did you make her go up the tree she’s been expressly forbidden to climb time and time again? You know you didn’t, so just run to Raigne as fast as you can now, love, and we’ll worry about who did what later. Tell the grooms to bring a hurdle or the best sprung cart they can find, but go now, love, and hurry. They need a doctor and Raigne is closest.’

‘I suppose someone has to fetch him, even if Mama and Papa are home and I don’t suppose they will be.’

‘No, go to Raigne and tell Sir Gideon what happened. He’ll know exactly what to do and which order to do it in.’

‘Don’t alarm Lady Laughraine, boy,’ the stranger managed in a broken whisper.

‘Do as he says,’ Rowena ordered brusquely. ‘Now go.’

With one last look round as if he’d like to go and stay at the same time, Jack went as fast as his legs would carry him and Rowena managed a sigh of relief. A fleeting idea that the powerful male at her feet cared too much about Callie’s serenity flitted though her head, but she banished it to a dark corner and concentrated on facts. If that really had been a gunshot so close she had felt the echo in her own ribcage, two semi-conscious adventurers and an over-bold poacher were enough for one woman to worry about right now.

Hester’s stalwart little lungs were gasping in air as eagerly as if it was going out of fashion now and colour was coming back into her pallid cheeks. Rowena went on rubbing her narrow ribcage as she leant Hester forward to help as best she could. She stared down at the stranger, feeling helpless in the face of his deeper hurts. Now Jack was gone and with the worst of her fears for Hester calming, she had time to feel the horror of what might have happened, if not for this supposedly idle gentleman. Had he sustained some terrible injury as he strove to save Hes, or maybe he’d been shot although he twisted to save her sister from a terrible fall at what seemed like exactly the right moment at the time?

Considering the loud crack his head made when it hit the tree root, how could he not be badly hurt, Rowena? If he’d taken a bullet as well there would be blood, though, wouldn’t there? She examined every inch of him visible; his closely fitting coat of dark-blue superfine was only marred by grass seeds and the odd leaf that dared cling to it. His dark hair fell in rougher versions of the neatly arranged waves she’d seen gleam like polished ebony as the late summer sun shone through the plain side windows in church only last Sunday. There was no sticky trail of blood matting it to dullness when even this far into the woods light came in leaf-shaded speckles.

She made herself glance lower and concluded such pristine breeches would give away a wound all too easily and as for his highly polished boots, what was he doing wearing such expensive articles of fashion in Lord Laughraine’s woodland? No, he seemed unmarred by bullets and she knew too much about such wounds to be mistaken. He wasn’t flinching away from the ground pressing against one or moaning in agony. She doubted he’d do that if he was badly injured, though, for the sake of the child sitting so close she would feel as well as hear them. Some instinct she didn’t want to listen to said he’d put Hes’s welfare before his own. Under all the Mayfair gloss and aloofness this was truly a man. Trying to pretend otherwise every Sunday since she had come back to King’s Raigne and found Mr Winterley a welcome guest at the great house had been a waste of effort.

Never mind that; he must be horribly uncomfortable on that unyielding root. She dare not move him for fear of causing more harm. One of the better military surgeons once told her that well-meaning efforts to help an injured man often did as much damage as the wounds inflicted by the enemy. She wanted to remove her light shawl and cushion his poor head, but would that do more harm than good?

Since he didn’t appear to have been shot she could discount that as a reason for his continuing unawareness. Perhaps she had misheard in all the shock and confusion of Hes’s wild tumble anyway and there never was a second sharp crack ringing through the now-silent wood. He did take the full force of a surprisingly substantial little body hurtling towards him after all. She suspected Hes could have broken one or two of his ribs when she slammed into him almost as hard as a bullet might. The thought of a gun being fired in anger took her back to the terrifying noise of the battlefield and the long, terrible tension every wife endured when waiting to find out if she was a widow. She shuddered at the tragic end to that waiting for her and all the other wives and lovers facing the full stop put on a man’s life by war, then drew in a deep breath to banish old terrors from her mind and concentrate on new ones instead.