Breaking the Rake's Rules

She and her father had only been ashore for three days and everyone was eager to make their acquaintance given her father’s mission. The men gathered at the Crenshaws’ this evening were the influential cream of Bridgetown society, the men with connections and knowledge that would be critical in carrying out the crown’s charter.

These were the men she needed to impress, not sweaty, blond rogues caught in the likely act of housebreaking. The man today was nothing more than a common criminal and she’d carried on like a common hussy with him. No matter how exciting he might have been, such behaviour was not what her father needed from her. He would be scandalised if he knew what had transpired. She supposed she should be disappointed in herself. She’d set aside the teachings of girlhood at the merest temptation. But when that temptation kissed like her balcony god, it was hard to be penitent.

Bryn sipped from her wine glass and smiled at the man on her right, a Mr Selby, very aware that he was trying to sneak a glimpse of her bosom while he talked about the island’s sights. Heaven forbid he actually talk about banking with a woman. She had the impression her unexpected visitor wouldn’t make such a distinction. He’d talk about whatever he liked, with whomever he liked. Kitt-with-no-last-name wouldn’t ‘sneak’ a peek at her bosom, he’d make no secret of appreciating it with a rather frank and forthright blue-gazed assessment.

‘What do you think, Miss Rutherford?’ Mr Selby asked, catching her unawares.

‘I’m sorry, about what?’ Bryn apologised, trying to look penitent, an emotion she was apparently having difficulty conjuring with any sincerity tonight.

He smiled patiently, too much of a gentleman to protest her inattention, but not too much of a gentleman to look down her dress. ‘About a picnic. I thought you might enjoy a tour of the parish.’

Coward. The man from the balcony would have made her accountable for her distraction. The thought of how he might do that sent a pleasant shiver down her spine. Then again, if it had been him, her attention wouldn’t have lapsed in the first place.

‘I would, although perhaps it could wait until Father and I are settled. There’s quite a lot to do at the moment with unpacking.’ She smiled and turned back to Orville, signalling the discussion was closed.

* * *

It became the pattern of the evening. Bryn listened intently, and responded appropriately, playing the dinner game adequately if not adroitly. By the time the cheese course arrived, signalling the end of dinner, she’d come to the disappointing conclusion evenings here weren’t unlike the evenings in London. She’d hoped they would be different. She’d hoped the men would be different, too.

A little smile tugged at her lips. In that regard, at least one of them was. She wondered if she’d see him again or how she could see him again. Perhaps he ran a business in town? Perhaps it was possible to arrange a chance meeting? She almost laughed aloud at that. Her logic was failing her. He’d given her no last name, very likely on purpose. Men like him didn’t want to be found. Her balcony Romeo was no businessman. Just a few minutes ago she was thinking him a criminal. Besides, businessmen looked like Mr Orville on her left, they simply didn’t look like Kitt: part-beach god, part-pirate.

Be careful where your thoughts are leading you, her conscience warned. This is a new start for your father. Your father needs you. You can’t run around risking a scandal. This is too important for him. Besides, you promised.

But it’s a new start for me, too, her heart argued in return. She could have stayed in London with relatives where life was safe and predictable. She’d had enough of that. If she was discreet, perhaps there would be a way to have both. After all, was it wrong to want a little adventure? She’d been good for so very long. Years, in fact. Surely she was due some reward.

Eleanor Crenshaw, their hostess, rose, indicating the ladies should follow her into the drawing room. Bryn gathered her skirts and cast a last glance up the table where her father was nodding and answering questions. She hoped it was going well. She still didn’t know quite how her father had managed the royal appointment. She suspected well-meaning relatives had had a hand in it. Her father’s older brother was the Earl of Creighton and well-connected politically.

It wasn’t that she doubted her father’s abilities. Even as a younger son, he’d had his own ambitions, albeit they’d always been more of a local bent. Still, she wasn’t sure it was fair to equate his experience as a country financier on the same level as the banking interests of an empire. She adored her father. She didn’t want to see him set up to fail, but this had not been a consideration when the mighty Rutherfords had lobbied for the lucrative post to Bridgetown. They’d seen only the advantages.

Her father’s success would see the Rutherfords strategically placed to take advantage of the crown’s banking monopoly in the Caribbean. It served the grand Rutherford design to send her father overseas to expand the family interests, but Bryn hoped for more than that from this appointment. She hoped the change would give him a chance to rebuild his life after the death of his wife. For over a year her father had moped about, showing interest in nothing since her mother’s death. It was time for him to move on. He was too vibrant, too intelligent of a man to simply give up on life when there was still much he could do for his family and for others.

The ladies’ conversation in the drawing room politely danced around that very issue with feminine delicacy. What could her father do for their husbands? How much authority did her father have to act on his own? Was her father going to run some of his own investments? Bryn hoped not, if for no other reason than she wanted him to start slow, follow the crown’s directive to the letter and complete his mission with success. It was simple enough if he stuck to the plan. But she also knew his brother had encouraged him to make some private investments as well.

Bryn was about to turn the conversation a different direction and ask about the empty chair at the dinner table when a footman entered. The man whispered something to her hostess, bringing a smile to the woman’s face. ‘By all means, Bradley, show him in.’ She beamed at the women seated around her. It was the smug smile of a woman who has just pulled off a social coup. Bridgetown or London, apparently the look was universal. ‘Our dear captain has arrived.’

Everyone burst into smiles and there were even a few titters behind painted fans. Good Lord, this Captain Whoever-he-was had the women acting positively swoony, even the married ones who ought to know better. To Bryn’s left, the daughter of one of the women—a Miss Caroline Bryant—blushed and looked down at her hands in an attempt at modesty. Bryn thought it only a moderate effort at subtly calling attention to herself and whatever she wished the gesture to imply about her and the captain. In London, a girl Miss Bryant’s age would have been out for a few Seasons and far better schooled in the art of dissembling.

‘Ladies,’ the footman intoned, coming back into the room, ‘Captain Christopher Sherard.’

Bryn’s gaze went to the door out of curiosity over the hubbub, her mind wrapping around the name. Captain Sherard was one of the investors on her father’s list of potential hopefuls and one of the men they had not met yet. He’d been highly recommended by the Earl of Dartmoor through a friend back in London. Her father was pinning a lot of his hopes on this particular investor who had yet to materialise.

At first glance, the man who stepped into the room was striking. At second glance, he was horrifying familiar. Kitt. Christopher. No, it couldn’t be. Her heart began to hammer as her mind connected the names with this golden god and then connected the implications. The man from the balcony was her father’s prime investor!

Unexpected didn’t begin to cover it. Bryn looked a third time, desperate to be sure, or was it to be ‘not sure’? She wasn’t certain if her heart pounded from fear of impending disaster or from the excitement of seeing him again. The way it was racing at present it might be both. Maybe she should simply wipe her sweaty palms on her skirts, ascribe it to the fact that he looked extraordinary and leave it at that.

Surely it couldn’t be the same man? Long golden hair was slicked back into a thick tail tied with black ribbon. His sweat-streaked shirt had been exchanged for immaculate linen. A subtle diamond winked in his cravat as a statement of wealth and good taste. His evening clothes were well fitted enough to have done any Bond Street tailor proud, their tight fit showing off broad shoulders, lean hips and long legs.

The physique certainly suggested he was the same man. It was the clothes that differed. They were expensive and tasteful, two traits she didn’t associate with her balcony visitor. She knew a moment’s disappointment. Perhaps it wasn’t him after all, just a strong similarity simply because she’d been thinking of him. It would be an easy enough trick for her mind to play on her. Her pulse settled back into its usual rhythm. It was for the best. Business and pleasure never mixed, at least not well, and what sort of investor climbed balconies and kissed strange women? Not one her father could trust and not one she should trust either.

But wait... She studied his face, the strong line of his jaw, the razor straightness of his nose, features she’d seen up close today. It was the eyes that gave him away. Her heart bucked in her chest. It was him! The very same man who’d climbed up to her balcony, kicked over her trellis and kissed her senseless without even knowing her name.

All the fine tailoring in the world couldn’t disguise the wildness in his blue eyes as they roamed the room, taking in the occupants one by one until they rested on her. Recognition fired in their cobalt depths ever so briefly, his mouth twitching with a secret smile.

Her breath caught as she suffered his silent scrutiny. Would he expose their little secret? She’d not worried about the man on the balcony exposing anything, it didn’t suit that man to be caught in a compromising position. She understood him. But this one in fine evening clothes who acted like a gentleman and was supposed to be a banker? This was going to be tricky. He had destroyed all her assumptions and that left her feeling far too vulnerable at the moment.

A scandal was the last thing she needed. She knew very well her behaviour reflected on her father. Rutherfords were taught from birth the actions of the individual reflected on the family. Men would be reluctant to do business with a man who couldn’t control his daughter. Besides, she’d made a promise and Bryn Rutherford never went back on her word.

His gaze left her and he moved towards Eleanor Crenshaw, making their hostess the focus of all his blue-eyed attention. Gone was the sweaty, dirty pirate prince. This new version came complete with requisite manners. He would dazzle in any ballroom, let alone Mrs Crenshaw’s provincial parlour. He took their hostess’s hand. ‘Please forgive me for being late. I hope the numbers at the table weren’t terribly upset.’

Bryn fought the urge to gape, her thoughts catching up to the implication of his statement. He was the empty chair. This grew more curious by the minute. Questions spun off into more questions. If he was supposed to have been here, why had he been scaling balconies? It was hardly standard banker behaviour.

Mrs Crenshaw was murmuring some inanity about forgiving him anything as long as he was here now to entertain them. ‘Perhaps you and Miss Caroline would play another duet for us. You are both so excellently talented at the piano.’ Her balcony intruder played the piano? The oh-so-modest Miss Caroline blushed again as Kitt acquiesced and escorted her to the piano, which stood suspiciously ready for such an occasion, further proof that his presence tonight was no accident. He’d been expected and in fact was expected regularly. This was no random occurrence. Well, Miss Caroline and her blushes were welcome to him, Bryn told herself. She hardly knew the man well enough to be jealous. A few stolen kisses hardly constituted a relationship. She really ought to feel sorry for Miss Caroline, who was clearly labouring under the assumption Kitt Sherard was somehow a respectable gentleman.

Bryn should count herself lucky. She’d seen his true colours this afternoon. She knew what he’d been doing and why he was late.

* * *

However, by the time the tea cart arrived and the men joined them, she liked Miss Caroline a little less than she had the hour before.

‘When you said another time, I didn’t think it would be so soon.’ The smooth voice at her ear made her jump. She salvaged her tea cup just barely without spilling.

‘I didn’t imagine this party to be your sort of venue—no trellises to climb,’ Bryn replied smoothly, keeping her gaze fixed forward on the other guests, but her body was aware of his closeness, the clean vanilla scent of his cologne and the sandalwood of his bath soap. He’d bathed after he’d left her, a thought that brought a flood of prurient images to mind. Hardly the sort of thing one should think about over evening tea.

‘Pity, I would have pegged you for having a rather good imagination earlier this evening.’ Laughter bubbled under the low rumble of his voice as if he had somehow followed her train of thought straight to his bath and knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘There’s plenty to climb here, just trellises of a different sort.’ She ought to be put out by his innuendo, but instead all she could do was fight back a smile. If she did smile, people would be bound to notice and wonder.

His breath feathered her ear in a seductive tickle. ‘Your failing imagination aside, I fear you have me at a disadvantage.’

She smiled down into her tea cup, unable to suppress it any longer. ‘Oh, I doubt that very much, Mr Sherard. I don’t think you ever find yourself at a disadvantage where women are concerned.’

He grinned in agreement, his teeth white against the tan of his face. ‘In this case I most definitely am. Might you do me the honour of your name? You know mine, but I don’t know yours.’

He would know soon enough. Island communities were small. ‘It’s Bryn, Bryn Rutherford.’ She felt him stiffen slightly, the pattern of his breathing hitching infinitesimally in recognition, signs that he knew her already, or perhaps knew of her. She turned to catch sight of his reaction, wanting to confirm she’d guessed right. She nearly missed it.

He hid the reaction well. Had he not been standing so close, she wouldn’t have noticed it, but she’d not been wrong in its attribution. He recognised the name. How odd that a simple fact like a name could provoke surprise between strangers. Or perhaps it wasn’t so surprising. Bridgetown was a small society and news must travel fast. Every merchant, every businessman in town would know by now her father was coming, and why. It was intriguing to count Kitt Sherard among their number since she had so quickly dismissed him on those grounds earlier that evening. Did she proceed with the fiction that she hadn’t noticed his surprise or did she confront him?

She opted for a bit of both. ‘Does the earl know what you do in your spare time?’ She was having difficulty reconciling this rogue of a man with a gentleman who’d have the ear of an earl. She was starting to think Dartmoor must have owed him an extraordinary favour to make this recommendation. Although, dressed as he was tonight, Captain Sherard might be mistaken for a lord, too.

He was studying her, hot blue eyes raking the length of her evening gown. He crooked his arm. ‘Miss Rutherford, perhaps you would accompany me out to the veranda for some fresh air?’ There was going to be a price. Bryn saw the subtle negotiation immediately. He wasn’t going to talk in here where they could be overheard, but he would be pleased to trade information for the privacy of the veranda and whatever might evolve out there.

Say yes, the adventurer in her coaxed without hesitation. If his impromptu kisses were that good on a balcony, what might they be like on a veranda with moonlight and a little premeditation behind them? The lady in her knew better and tonight the lady held sway. But only for tonight, her naughty side prompted. She wouldn’t always have to be the lady. She’d promised herself that, too, among other things.

Bryn decided to challenge him. ‘Why? So I can risk a dagger in the back from the lovely Caroline Bryant for stealing your attentions or so that you can manoeuvre your way into my father’s good graces through me? It’ll take more than a kiss and a trellis to wring a recommendation from me, Captain.’

The women had been trying to lobby her all night. As much as a starlit veranda stroll with Kitt Sherard appealed to the adventurer in her, she wasn’t naive enough to think romance was the captain’s sole motivation. Rutherford girls were taught early to detect an opportunist at fifty paces. With dowries like theirs, it was a necessity for surviving London ballrooms crawling with genteel fortune hunters.

Bryn let her eyes lock with his over her tea cup as she raised it to her lips. ‘I never mix business with pleasure. It would be best if we said goodnight, Captain, before one of us makes any faulty assumptions about the other.’ Goodness knew what he must think of her after the balcony. If it was anything akin to what she thought of him, there’d been plenty of assumptions made already. Hardly the first impression either of them would have chosen to make.

His eyes glittered with humour, giving her the impression that while she had got the last word, he still had the upper hand. He gave her a small bow like the one he’d given her on the balcony, elegant and exaggerated in a subtly mocking manner. ‘I have a meeting with your father in the afternoon. Afterwards, we could walk in the garden. You can decide then if it’s business or pleasure.’

A meeting with her father? She knew what he thought. It would be a meeting where she was relegated to some far part of the house while men did business. Who was she to correct his assumptions? Bryn smiled, hoping the wideness of her grin didn’t give her away. ‘Until tomorrow, then, Captain Sherard.’ The arrogant man might think he had the upper hand and the last word, but she had a few surprises of her own.

Chapter Three

Damn and double damn! Of all the balconies in Bridgetown, he’d climbed up Bryn Rutherford’s, the daughter of the man who’d come to induct the crown’s currency into the Caribbean and the man on whom Kitt’s future business interests depended. Kitt couldn’t believe his luck. What he couldn’t decide was if that luck was good or bad. He was still debating the issue the next afternoon when he set out for his meeting with her father.

A certain male part of him had concluded it was very good luck indeed. Bryn Rutherford was a spitfire of a goddess. She had the lips to prove it, and the tongue, and the body, and everything else, including an insightful amount of intelligence. She’d immediately seen the ramifications of going out on the veranda with him.

Her refusal made her something of a cynic, too. For all the spirit she’d shown on the balcony, she was wary of consequences or maybe it was the other way around: consequences had made her wary. Perhaps it simply made her a lady, a woman of discernment and responsible caution. Not everyone had a past chequered with regrets just because he did. Then again, this was the Caribbean, a far-flung, remote outpost of the British empire. In his experience, which was extensive, ladies didn’t sail halfway around the world without good reason. Did Bryn Rutherford have something to hide, after all?

It was an intriguing thought, one that had Kitt thinking past the interview with her father and to the walk in the garden that would follow. How did a girl with a well-bred, and very likely a sheltered, upbringing end up with the ability to kiss like seduction itself?

No, not a girl, a woman. There was no girlishness about Bryn Rutherford. She was past the first blush of debutante innocence. The green silk she’d worn last night communicated that message with clarity, even if he hadn’t already seen her in that sinfully clingy satin dressing robe, felt her uncorseted curves, or tasted her unabridged tongue in his mouth giving as good as it got. Thoughts like that had him thinking he was a very lucky man. Thoughts like that also had kept him up half the night.

The other half of the night belonged to another set of less pleasant thoughts—who wanted him dead this time? The candidates for that dubious honour were usually different, but the motives were always the same. Was this latest attacker simply one of his less savoury business associates who felt cheated or was it more complicated than that? Had someone from his past found him at last and bothered to cross the Atlantic for revenge? He’d been so careful in that regard. Discovery risked not only him, but his family. He’d cast aside all he owned including his name to keep them safe. Of course, discovery was always possible, although not probable. But he was alive today because he planned for the former. It wasn’t enough to just play the odds. Not when the people he loved and who loved him were on the line.

His mind had been a veritable hive of activity last night. He supposed he should feel fortunate he’d got any sleep, all things considered. There’d been critical business thoughts claiming his attention, too: would Bryn Rutherford hold the balcony interlude against him? If she did, how would that skew the business opportunities a bank in Barbados would provide? Those questions were still plaguing him when he knocked on the Rutherfords’ front door.

He was taken down a long hall by a stately butler who must have come with them from England. The butler, Sneed, fit the surroundings perfectly with his air of formality. In the short time they’d been in residence, the Rutherfords had already left their aristocratic mark on the house. They’d come loaded with luxuries; carpets and paintings adorned the floors and walls in testimony to the Rutherfords’ prestige to say nothing of the butler.

Kitt always made it a habit to study his surroundings. How a man lived offered all nature of insight. This house, the décor and its accessories were all designed to communicate one message: power and authority. Kitt approved of the intent. It was precisely the message a man charged with the crown’s banking interests in the new world should convey. But, did the message match the man? That remained to be seen.

The door to the study was open, revealing the same luxury and wealth that dominated the hall. The butler announced him to the room in general and Kitt was surprised to see that Rutherford was not alone. James Selby, an aspiring local importer, was already present. The weasel. He must have come early. Well, Selby’s limitations would speak for themselves sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

The surprise didn’t end there. Selby wasn’t the only other person present. By a set of open French doors that let in the light and the breeze, her head demurely bent over an embroidery hoop, sat Bryn Rutherford. She looked up for the briefest of moments, long enough to let a coy smile slip over her lips when she met his gaze, her eyes communicating silent victory.

The minx! She’d known all along she was sitting in on the meeting. Until tomorrow, then. He could still see the wide smile on her face, the cat’s-got-the-cream look in those grey eyes. He hadn’t quite understood at the time. He understood now. She’d been laughing at him, getting a little of her own back.

‘You look well settled for a man who has just arrived,’ Kitt said affably, shaking hands with The Honourable Bailey Rutherford. Today, he would finally have a chance to take the man’s measure more closely than he’d been able to do last night during their quick introduction at the Crenshaws’. The man was in his early fifties, with faded chestnut hair starting to thin, although once it must have been the rich colour of his daughter’s. His face betrayed weariness in its lines and there was a trace of sadness in his eyes. He exuded none of his daughter’s confidence.