Redemption Of The Rake

‘Will she do?’ the man made the huge effort to ask in a rasping whisper.

Even the breathy rumble of it told Rowena there was more to his hurts than simply being winded by her little sister’s plunge into his arms. She shifted the small body in her arms to peer at Hester’s face and saw a trail of tears on her grubby little face that almost made her break down herself. She couldn’t put her sister aside to check on the gentleman who had rescued her. While she was grateful to him, this was Hes, her sister, and she came first, even when she was sitting between two injured souls and none of it was his fault. She wiped away her sister’s tears with her fingers and kissed her grubby cheek.

‘I don’t think much harm befell her ladyship here, as long as she does as she’s told for a day or two and doesn’t climb this particular tree ever again. I think all will be well with her, don’t you?’ she said softly and Hester managed a wobbly smile.

‘I won’t,’ she managed to gasp between breaths. Her little sister was a daredevil scrap of mischief far too headstrong for her own good, but Rowena loved her so much it physically hurt right now.

‘Pleased to hear it,’ he said, went even paler, then finally lost consciousness.

‘Is he dead, Row?’ Hester managed to wail in an almost-normal voice.

‘No, love, but remember he’s been hit on the head and probably hasn’t managed to get enough air into his lungs quite yet.’

‘He looks dead.’ The little voice sank to a fearful whisper.

‘No, I’m sure he will be perfectly fine in a day or two and Jack is sure to be at Raigne soon. You know he can run like the wind when he chooses. So help will be on its way before long and Dr Harbury will probably insist he stays in bed for a while. Mama and the doctor are sure to insist you stay in yours until we’re sure no harm was done and you deserve it, so don’t look at me like that,’ Rowena added as her little sister shuddered and seemed unable to bounce back to her normal state of barely suppressed mischief.

‘You know how much I hate being shut inside on a lovely day.’

‘Let’s hope for rain, then,’ Rowena murmured hardheartedly, with an apologetic look at the serene blue sky and a shiver. Somehow she dreaded the coming winter and all the long and lonely dark nights it would bring with it even more than usual.

‘I hate that even worse.’

‘I know, all mud and stickiness and damp stockings.’

‘Ugh, don’t,’ Hester said with another shiver and clung to Rowena in a way that made her more anxious about her little sister and at the same time guiltily annoyed at Mr Winterley for worrying them with his long and somehow painful silence.

If not for him, she could carry her little sister home and put her to bed, then send for the doctor herself. If they didn’t have to wait for someone from Raigne to take responsibility for Mr Winterley, they could be halfway back to King’s Raigne Vicarage now. Rowena would love to hand over the care of their most-adventurous child to her mother and father and take time to be shocked and shaken herself. She shouldn’t dream of being so selfish, she decided, with an apologetic look at the unconscious man. If not for him, Hes would be dead or so near to it they must pray for a miracle to save her from a fall from such a height. Now he was suffering for his heroism while Rowena wished him at Jericho.

She was a bad and ungrateful woman and ought to do penance. Luckily Papa wasn’t a fire-and-brimstone vicar who thundered hellfire and damnation at his parishioners from the pulpit and expected constant repentance from his family. Flinching away from the poor man because he lay almost as still and pale as her husband after the terrible battle at Vimeiro that day was cowardly and wrong, though. He was deathly pale under the unfashionable tan that gave him away as a contradiction. Even she knew pinks of the ton prided themselves on having a pallor that set them apart from those who toiled for a living, or country squires who rode their acres so they could afford a spring Season in town to marry off their daughters.

The bronzed smoothness of this man’s skin was tight over high cheekbones and she suspected he was forcing stillness on himself now. Perhaps he was suppressing his injuries so as not to shock her little sister with his moans of torment? She refused to think about the chance that really had been a gunshot aimed with deadly accuracy. After all, she had to sit here with her shocked little sister and a semi-conscious and injured man until help came. The idea hostile eyes could be looking for a chance to try again felt intolerable right now, so she wasn’t going to admit it was possible on a sunny autumn day in safe little England.

Mr Winterley must have a very low opinion of her after today. She had stood paralysed with fear while he acted to save the life of a child he must only have had a vague idea existed until today. Rowena shivered at the thought of his contempt for such a useless female and fought not to pass on her disturbed feelings to Hes. Struggling with her horror at being so close to a wounded man after scouring the battlefield for her husband’s mangled body that awful day two years ago, she gently laid the hand she could spare from hugging Hester on the man’s forehead, as if touching him might tell him she was sorry. His skin felt warmly familiar under her hesitant fingers. Seeing his faint hint of a frown smooth out, she made a gentle exploration of his temples and further back and was relieved to see no blood issued from his finely made ears. Not sure how she knew that was a good sign, she sighed and wished she knew more about how a vigorous male should react to the world around him.

Even with that last awful image of him in her head, Nate was little more than a boy in her memory rather than a mature warrior like this one. Why had her imagination painted him as a battle-hardened knight and not an idle gentleman of fashion? Somehow this vital man had lessened her husband in her memory and she’d meant to find out about his hurts, not compare him to a corpse on a godforsaken battlefield a thousand miles away.

Rowena caught in her breath and reminded herself she must be cool and logical, despite her fear that a mortal wound might lurk under this man’s crisply curling black hair. His fine and fashionable haircut wouldn’t guard his head from attack. She recalled the noise as he hit this confounded tree root with horror; it sounded like the crack of doom when he hit the earth with Hes locked in his arms. What a shame he wasn’t wearing the fine beaver hat she could see on the bench where Lord Laughraine usually sat after walking up to his favourite viewing point. It might have shielded his head from the worst Hes and the tree could do. She gently winnowed her fingers though the midnight unfamiliarity of his thick dark hair and felt a slight tightening of his skin. He was awake and suffering as she suspected, so she padded her fingers a little further away so as not to hurt him, then snatched them away altogether. Surely it was wrong to feel so in tune with a stranger that you knew where he hurt even when he was pretending to be unconscious? He frowned almost imperceptibly and she automatically smoothed it away and saw a faint smile relax his stern mouth.

She had touched a perhaps mortally injured man and found him warm and human under the bravado and show of a Bond Street beau. Far from being cold and glaring in death, or alive and somehow desperate to feed off her vitality, he was himself. She stopped again and he shocked her a little by raising the hand nearest to her reaching one and meeting hers as if he knew exactly where she was by instinct and didn’t need to open his eyes. He wanted her touch, it was as plain as if he’d sat up and told her so. And she wanted to touch him back; that was equally plain, since her hand closed gently on his as if it belonged there without any permission from the rest of her. Perish the thought—she reminded herself how firmly she had resolved never to marry again after she found Nate dead that day—but she couldn’t bring herself to slide her hand out of his and break the contact even so.

Tempting to tell herself the warmth spreading through her was caused by the simple human contact of another hand on hers—tempting, but not very honest. A tingle of something more exciting and less understandable ran under it, a feeling of heat and homecoming. She felt shocked to realise this was the first physical contact she’d had with Mr Winterley, a man who stayed with lords and ladies as casually as she might with her sister and Mr Greenwood once they were wed and ready to receive visitors. Even as she did her best to remind herself of the gulf between them, the feel of his hand against hers without pressure bridged it. So she sat and let warmth flow from her hand to his and back again, rather bemused by the intimacy and telling herself her lungs had an excuse to be breathless after such a shock.

Birds were still singing in the distance and Hes was squirming to be let out of the fierce hug Rowena still held her in with her other arm and that made her recall where they were and what had happened. She couldn’t simply let her little sister go or leave this man’s side to watch over her as the wary widow in her wanted to. It would be so wrong to desert a warrior in disguise while he was brought low like this. Although she hated the way his gentle grasp on her hand tugged her back into a world of feeling she thought she’d put behind her with Nate’s death, none of it was his fault. Well, part of it was, but she doubted he’d reached across the gap between them for the comfort of her touch and done it on purpose.

‘Be still, little love, you’ll hurt yourself and Mr Winterley if you flail about so. You’re not going adventuring again until Dr Harbury says you’re over your latest attempt to kill yourself,’ she murmured softly and Hester stilled.

‘I never meant to hurt him, Row,’ she whispered, on the edge of an overwrought storm of tears as the seriousness of what had almost happened finally sank in.

‘Oh, my love, I know that and so will he when he’s awake,’ Rowena said, using her sister’s distress as an excuse to slip her hand out of Mr Winterley’s light grip and stroke the wild white-blonde curls off her little sister’s face. She met her little sister’s teary gaze and did her best to reassure her there was no need for hysterics. ‘You are a dear, you do know that, don’t you?’ she assured her sister with a fond smile as blue eyes so like her own gazed back at her sorrowfully.

‘I don’t think many people would agree with you right now, Row.’

‘This gentleman obviously liked you enough to save your life,’ she said lightly.

‘That was nice of him, wasn’t it?’

Rowena saw Mr Winterley’s surprisingly expressive lips twitch as if he was amused by Hes’s artless comment. Even in such pain as he must be in to lie here as if he’d truly been felled by that blow, he still managed to find her sister endearing.

‘Yes, love, very nice,’ she confirmed.

She let her gaze flick over his compelling face and person once again, lingering on his perfectly barbered dark head and beautiful coat. Such fine tailoring should be forbidden gentlemen with so many natural advantages, she decided severely. Ruffled and slightly battered by his adventures, he didn’t look like a heartless dandy any more and that seemed a little unfair for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom.

‘There’s someone coming,’ Hester whispered.

‘Thank heaven for them, then, love.’ Rowena breathed, a little of the tension easing from shoulders she hadn’t realised she was holding so stiffly until now. He wasn’t going to die in her care; this man wasn’t going to let life slip out of him between one breath and the next as Nate had moments after she found him on that bloody and blasted battlefield, as if she wasn’t worth struggling to live for.

‘I will,’ her sister promised so solemnly Rowena believed her.

‘We’ll do it together,’ she murmured and the man let his mouth relax for a moment, as if he was about to speak, then thought better of it.

‘Why are they coming creeping through the bushes like that, Rowena? Jack must have told them where we are and what the matter is and that they should hurry.’

Rowena glanced at the watch Nate’s mama had given her for a wedding present, as if she knew they must count the hours. Now she realised how little time had passed, her heart jigged like a frightened horse in panic. It was too soon even for Jack to have run all the way to Raigne, found someone capable of organising a rescue, then got here before Hes’s lungs had quite settled into their usual unhurried ease.

‘Maybe one of your friends escaped from their books and won’t show their face for fear of being sent home,’ she said as cheerfully as she could.

Memory of that sharp echo ringing out as this man hit the ground with Hes in his arms sniped at her and a superstitious shiver slid down her back. The thicket of evergreens a past Lord Laughraine had planted to preserve game looked ideal cover for a hunter of men now. Even the air in the mellow autumn woodland seemed to have gone wary; birds stopped singing as if they were listening and there was the angry flick of a squirrel’s russet tail halfway up the tree that had caused all this trouble in the first place. Nothing stirred but the branch echoing the squirrel’s flight, yet it felt as if half the world was listening for what came next.

‘I’m frightened, Row,’ Hester whispered, as if she felt like a pheasant in the sights of an expensive shotgun, as well.

‘This gentleman isn’t in a fit state to hurt you even if he wanted to. We have proof the boot is on the other foot and he must wish you well, since he’s saved you a hard tumble and more broken bones than I can bring myself to think of right now,’ Rowena joked as best she could.

With another glance at the unfriendly evergreens she counted how many seconds it might take her to snatch her little sister up and run for safety. No, she couldn’t leave this man staked out here like a sacrifice, even if it wasn’t a little bit too far to take the risk. Mr Winterley had saved Hester’s life, even if he had brought an enemy into this wood with him. Nobody had tried to shoot her or Hes or Jack in all the time they’d lived here, so the danger was his. What a poor return it would be for saving Hes if they left some villain to murder and rob him as brutally as she’d seen the dead and wounded on the battlefield stripped and plundered that awful day, irrespective of which side they fought for. Even if she was that ungrateful, this odd feeling of connection to the man would keep her here. So should she let Hes go and tell her to run home as fast as her shaky legs could carry her? No, she might be caught and used against them and, knowing Hes, she’d refuse to go.

Her little sister had heard the furtive movement as if a marksman was finding a snug spot for an ambush, as well. Rowena shuddered at the idea of Mr Winterley coldly murdered, yet he was Lord Farenze’s brother and wouldn’t that bring every single instrument of the law down on his killer? It seemed too big a risk for a sane man to take, but a leaf stirred where no wind could reach it and she sensed a predator waiting for a clear shot at his quarry even so. The safety of two other beings felt heavy on her shoulders. Mr Winterley’s face was still blank and serene as if he lay unconscious, but the flex of his hand nearest to her, shielded from view by her skirts, told her he was aware as any man could be after that savage blow to the head.

‘Can you see that patch of dried-up moss and oak leaves yonder, Hes?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,’ Hester said impatiently.

‘Then go and gather the driest and softest bits and bring them here so we can make a cushion with my shawl for the poor man’s head to rest on,’ Rowena said and hoped the silent listener had no idea she was thought to be a sensible woman the rest of the time.

‘Didn’t you say he should be kept...?’ Hester’s still slightly shaky voice tailed off at the sight of Rowena’s fierce glare. She hoped the fact she was being moved out of the line of fire wouldn’t dawn on her reckless sister. ‘Oh, very well, it really is taking for ever for Jack to get back with Sir Gideon or his lordship and that tree root must be very hard,’ clever little Hes said with her bottom lip stuck out, as if she felt sulky and furious and a bit bored.

Rowena tried to make it seem natural to shift round a prone man, then hover slightly hysterically. She took her time forming her least favourite shawl into a square and wondered aloud if it would ever be the same again if the man bled all over it.

‘Not even the most careful laundering will get the stain out of wool and it’s not as if I have dozens of them to be ruined,’ she twittered fussily.

‘Here, this ought to make him comfortable as the Sleeping Beauty,’ Hester said as she trudged back with an armful of leaves and moss and some bleached and dry grass harvested from the edge of the clearing.

Rowena bundled the driest of her sister’s offerings into her shawl, then wrapped it into a makeshift pillow. Keeping between her sister and harm, she thrust the neatly wrapped bundle at Hes, then knelt at Mr Winterley’s other side to frustrate his attacker.

‘The instant I lift his head you must put my shawl between his poor head and that nasty tree root,’ she ordered as if she and Hes were nearly as dimwitted as one another.

‘Yes, of course, sister dear. How you do fuss,’ Hes said with such a huge sigh of long-suffering patience Rowena frowned at her for overacting. Nothing stirred behind her, though, so maybe it was working.

‘Right pocket,’ Mr Winterley murmured when Rowena bent even closer. She felt almost as fluffy and distracted as she was pretending to be as she fought off the feeling of being too close to a sleek and magnificent predator. ‘Get your sister out of here,’ he added so softly she bent over him like a ministering angel to hear him and her hair tumbled out of the last of its pins and hid even more of him from prying eyes.

Close to he was lean and vital and ridiculously tempting as she breathed a little too heavily in his ear and heard him grunt with pain when she lifted his mistreated head. Hes pushed the improvised cushion under him and Rowena watched as fascinated by him as the silly debutante she was doing her best to ape. He smelt of clean woods and a faint, cool undercurrent of spice and lemon water and man. The scent pleased her somehow as Nate’s linen rarely had, even when she laboured hard to keep it clean herself when they were on the march and he said the laundresses were too rough with his precious shirts. How unfair of her to contrast a man intent on fighting his country’s mortal enemies with this idle fop. Cross with herself, she flinched away, then saw him frown as if in pain and called herself every sort of a fool under her breath.

Chapter Five

James willed the ringing in his head to subside and pushed the darkness away. He distracted himself from feeling awful by wondering where a vicar’s daughter had learnt so many unladylike curses. He hoped the imp on his other side was too busy wondering if he was dead again to hear and resolved to have words with the woman when they were free of an audience. He knew from the warning tingle at the back of his neck the man who had shot at him was out there. The worm was probably puzzling about what to do next, but James couldn’t dismiss him as that shot was so true that, if not for this iron-hard tree root and the impulsive girl who felled him, he’d be dead. He’d be dead meat if he was standing where he was when the shooter aimed and no doubt the man had a second weapon and nerve enough to try again.

How the devil had his enemies tracked him down? He’d thought it safe to be James Winterley when he had to come home with his tail between his legs. Nobody took a useless society fribble seriously and it was a relief to saunter through life as if he hadn’t a care in the world. If he was being honest, and it might be as well if he was considering how close to God he might be, he took perverse pleasure in living down to James Winterley’s raffish reputation. He’d been very young when he gained it; a confused and angry boy at odds with himself and the world. Fifteen years on from his riotous start to adult life as the Winterley boy, the spare half-brother, he could almost pity his younger self. Or he could if he wasn’t saddled with the low standards the boy set him so many years on.

This wasn’t the best time for chewing over past mistakes, but even that cover had failed him if the skill of the stalker so close he could almost taste him was anything to go by. He lay still as a corpse behind the coward’s shield of Rowena Finch’s glorious hair and delightful body and did his best to plan a speedy exit from this open space without either Finch girl getting hurt. It was more of an effort to keep his face blank when he felt a slender hand insinuate itself into his coat pocket and heard the rustle of hot-pressed paper under the fair Rowena’s searching hand. Not that, he wanted to shout at her. Don’t touch Virginia’s letter.

He managed to crack open his eyelids by the smallest distance and saw her wrinkle her nose in distaste at having to search a gentleman’s pockets. The sight somehow calmed the worst of his fears and that was a beginner’s mistake. Between one breath and the next a woman as full of life and promise as this could be dead as mutton. Why had he thought that one certainty of a spy’s life less true here? Raigne had cast a spell over him, but he should never have stayed so long. But how could he have thought it would be easy to give up his unseemly profession and live near here in peaceful obscurity either?

‘Got it,’ Mrs Westhope murmured as she bent close to cover the movement of her lips with a front of fussing over his injuries as she slipped the lethal little pistol out of his pocket with the finesse of the finest pickpocket in the land.

‘Take your sister and run, then,’ he muttered as urgently as he dared.

‘No,’ she whispered emphatically.

‘This isn’t some rustic coney-catcher ready to shoot me for my boots.’

‘Who is he, then?’ she asked as if she had a right to know.

‘None of your business,’ he grumbled so faintly she pressed closer, as if shielding him with her body was all the answer she need make to that grumpy denial.

Somehow he must fight the blankness that blow on the head threatened every time he tried to move. She was risking so much and all he really wanted was to reach up and cup her chin, see a flush of consciousness across her fine-boned cheeks and a softening spark of desire in those extraordinary cornflower-blue eyes of hers. He wanted her to bend an iota of space closer still and kiss him as if she meant it. Had that blow on the head truly driven all the sense out of it? Until now he hadn’t thought he had enough masculine idiocy left in his pounding head to lust after this luscious mixture of a woman, but now it was sending messages to the rest of him he didn’t want to hear. He must make her go, before she got killed, or noticed the state his body would be in if she didn’t move further away.

‘Get her out of here,’ he risked demanding loudly as he dared.

‘And risk whoever is out there attacking us? Don’t be more of an idiot than that blow on the head made you.’

‘Is he coming awake at last, Row?’

Hearing the panic under that question, James hesitated and Rowena seemed caught between admitting it and laying them open to his enemy, or denying it and making her little sister more disturbed by the whole business.

‘Wha...?’ he moaned artistically and made the decision for her.

‘Do be still and stay quiet, sir,’ the fair Rowena ordered so sternly he suspected she would prefer to slap him.

‘Who...?’ He gasped, as if fighting unconsciousness, and now at least he could snatch a glance round the wide clearing and take in the slender options available.

‘You saved my little sister’s life,’ Rowena proclaimed dramatically. He frowned under cover of her tumbling hair as she bent over him again to act out her fantasy heroine.

‘Da...?’ he managed. Maybe the watcher would believe him addled by the blow any listener must have heard, since it sounded like the crack of doom inside his head.