The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle (19 page)

‘Fool that I was, I thought that when I reached New England on my discontented wanderings about the globe and met Davy there, that his dilemma solved mine and there was nothing more for either of us to worry about. He wished he could sell his birthright and I wished I could buy it. Simple enough, we both thought, as he trusted me to love and look after it as he somehow could not. Then he suggested I set his mind at ease about our whole bargain and wed his sister, and suddenly I could have my cake and eat it. So I promised to marry Miss Courland, if I could persuade her to have me, and that made our deal all the sweeter.'

‘Very convenient,' she said in a cool, non-committal voice.

‘It would have been, too, if I hadn't arrived here one dusky night and wanted you more urgently than any female I'd ever laid eyes, or hands, on.'

‘It was more than hands you laid on me that night.'

‘One almost-chaste kiss, and I dared not risk coming any closer, or I'd have done my best to seduce you right there and then.'

‘Funny,' she murmured with a reminiscent smile, ‘I don't remember it being so very chaste.'

‘Wanton,' he accused, and his other arm came up to hold her closer, as if he revelled in their closeness nigh as much as she did. ‘Now, where was I?'

‘Seducing me in the twilight.'

‘Ah, yes. It came as a terrible shock that you'd grown into a stubborn, capable and independent woman while I was away, as well as one of the most beautiful females I ever laid eyes on.'

‘Come, Charles, we must deal honestly with each other now,' she scoffed and sat a little more upright in his embrace.

‘Roxanne, I found your complete innocence of your own powerful allure exasperating and dangerous even before I got you up the aisle. Don't make me regret you weren't born with a squint or a wooden leg.'

‘Nobody could be born with a wooden leg.'

‘I dare say not, but you know very well what I mean.'

‘I don't.'

‘Then you should; you have the finest of finely made features, the most lusciously curved feminine body I was ever privileged enough to lust over and I could lose myself for hours in appreciating your hair, my dearest love. I love the look of it and the heavy silk feel of it between my fingers, under my hand, and I dare say the male half of the local population would feel the same, if they ever saw it down about your naked shoulders in a witchy web as I have. Of course, if any of them ever do, I'll have to kill them, then lock you up in the tower for the rest of our lives.'

‘Harsh,' she murmured in what sounded even to her like a sensual purr rather than an indignant protest. ‘But interesting.'

‘Hmm? Well, maybe, but I believe you didn't sit me down all undignified and unladylike in this fashion to flatter me beyond reason, sir?'

‘I can see I have a lot of enjoyable work ahead of me, convincing you that I speak only the truth, but for now let's get back to our sheep.'

‘If you must, but if you truly love me I need nothing
more,' she said, turning enough to watch him with her feelings in her eyes.

‘No, I need to tell you now, even if you've turned cat in pan.'

‘Go on then,' she told him huffily as she swung back round to stare into the fire again.

In retaliation, he settled his chin on the top of her head and drew her back into his arms, so she settled into his embrace and finally let the tension drain from her muscles. There seemed no point fighting her compulsion to snuggle as close to him as possible, when he liked having her there nearly as much as she did being held as if she mattered.

‘I
t was after that joyous, carefree Christmas I spent with your family, which somehow makes the memory of it seem so much more shocking.'

Charles began his tale with his eyes fixed on the fire, but she could feel the tension in the tightly packed muscles of his torso and almost wished she'd never demanded he purge whatever horror haunted him and for so long had stopped him admitting he loved her just as surely as she did him. He needed to tell her and she needed to hear him out, however terrible his tale might be, so they could face it and defeat it, together.

‘I rejoined my ship and found everyone fit to sail scrambling to get us to sea. As many ships as were even half-ready to embark were under orders to sail to Spain and pick up as many of Sir John Moore's expeditionary force as we could save from falling into Bonaparte's clutches.'

‘I remember wondering if you'd got back in time to sail with your ship.'

‘I'm not sure to this day I wouldn't rather have missed it. Anyway, we reached Vigo at last and discovered we were in the wrong place, and most of the army were waiting at Corunna while the French got closer with every hour that passed. We sailed off to find them in the teeth of a gale that seemed as if it would never give over, until at last we reached harbour and began to embark as many as we could carry. We took on men until it seemed as if one more might sink us, but I begged the captain to let me take one of the transports and collect any poor souls the French would capture if we left them behind and eventually he let me go.

‘It was like a scene from hell, Roxanne, the beach covered in the corpses of their horses, the town with all its windows blown out from our army exploding its remaining powder. The people did their best to defend their town from the advancing French, and even the women braved the French fire to wave farewell at us from the rocks, but it was hopeless and we'd just taken off what few men we could and were preparing to return with them when a French battery opened fire. There was a great panic and some cut their cables without bracing their yards, so their transports ran aground and those poor souls aboard were either wrecked or drowned.

‘Hardened to battle as I thought I was, it horrified me to choose between the wretched souls we already had aboard and those at risk of drowning or capture on shore. Still, the second lieutenant I had with me pointed out we must save what we had, so we were halfway back to our ship when we came upon a most pitiful spectacle of all. Apparently one of the men on another boat had
smuggled his woman on board with him, disguised as a soldier of the 38th, although not particularly well, it must be said.

‘On hearing the French shelling, she screamed and scrambled upright in her terror, so the master of the vessel took out his pistol and shot her, then calmly ordered her body thrown overboard. We saw it all from afar and were powerless to do anything, Roxanne, but I was bitterly ashamed to be part of the same navy that day. We found her floating in the water, but there was nothing we could do for her, she was dead as the poor horses on the shore. She looked to be Spanish or Portuguese rather than English, for masses of black hair floated about her and she looked almost peaceful, if you discounted the bullet hole through her heart. She was also heavy with child, which makes me wonder even more what sort of a wicked fool failed to note he had a pregnant woman on board and then shoot her as casually as I might a rabbit.'

‘Oh, Charles, how appalling. No wonder if you were deeply shocked, and you were still so very young to see such a desperate sight.'

‘I saw men blown to pieces in battle from the age of thirteen when I became a midshipman, my love, so I really can't tell you why this one affected me so. We never managed to track down the man who did it, and, even if we had, the Admiralty wouldn't have disciplined him. We had orders not to take camp followers, although many ignored them and pretended they hadn't seen the women among so many men, and most of them were a pitiful sight, grey-faced, starved and sexless after that terrible retreat. One dead Spanish girl shouldn't have meant much when we were carrying so many starved
and hungry soldiers from a chaos of regiments, yet from that day on she haunted me as if I'd put that damned bullet in her breast myself.'

Roxanne slewed round in his arms and hugged him close, feeling him tremble at the memory of that day and cursing the callous, black-hearted rogue who'd shot a helpless girl for no real reason other than that he could.

‘It wasn't your fault,' she informed him fiercely, kissing his lean cheek and horrified to feel the wetness of tears under her lips. ‘You would have saved her if you could, and you'd never kill a woman, Charles, or a child.'

‘Maybe not, although it's astonishing what men will do in battle. The wisp of a man who you expect to climb down among the ballast and cower there, despite the stink and the danger, will fight like a lion until he's hacked to pieces by the enemy or carries the day, and some great hulking bully of a sailor might just as easily break down and scream like a baby at the first sound of cannon-fire. I may never have been tested enough to know what I'd do in the grip of panic and the certainty I could die if I didn't strike out.'

‘Don't be a fool, Charles, you've been in acute danger more times than I care to think about, and I would have heard if you went about screaming and striking out at the first vulnerable creature to get in your way,' she told him sternly. ‘The public likes nothing better than knocking down this week a hero they made last week, so if you'd a cowardly bone in your body we'd both know it by now.'

‘Not if you went about organising my defence, we wouldn't,' he told her with a wry smile she saw in the
fading firelight as he disengaged himself long enough to add a couple more logs to the fire and watch them catch. Then he sank back on to the rug at her side and took her into his arms again, as if he needed her in them to be able to confess more. ‘Shortly afterwards I began to have nightmares about her—she'd lie there in the water as she had that day and suddenly open her eyes accusingly. Funnily enough, she didn't seem any less dead as she watched me with hate in her eyes, as if I'd fired that shot and ended her and her baby's lives, but the worst part of it was she watched me with
your
eyes, Roxanne, and it was
your
wildly curling ebony hair that floated about her at the mercy of the current. Then sometimes she'd raise her hand and point at me with hate in her eyes and a curse on her pale lips.'

He paused, watching the flames lick over the new applewood with sombre eyes. ‘I knew then that I wouldn't come back to Hollowhurst and claim you after all. I'd never risk taking you to lose your life at some stranger's whim on a foreign sea, maybe with my brat in your belly to rob me twice over of all that mattered in my useless life.'

‘Oh, Charles, my love, I'd never think my life useless if I spent it at your side, however long or short it might be. Never think that, never!'

‘I might dare to now, love, but I didn't then. I was a coward and all the more so when I woke one night and found I was wrestling with Rushmore, my personal servant, in my sleep, because he'd heard me cry out and come to see what was wrong and I thought I'd finally got my hands on that murdering bastard and could end my torment by avenging her.'

‘No wonder he treats you with quite a ridiculous
amount of respect then,' she said, quite unimpressed by another reason he'd found not to be happy with her and not to come back and marry her, which seemed even more important, considering she'd spent nearly ten years being denied her wildest dreams.

‘Just say I'm a coward, why don't you, my love?'

‘No, for I never met a braver man, but you
are
a fool, husband. Do you still have these nightmares now, after ten years?'

‘For the first few months after it happened I did, but in the last eight or nine years only the once, after that first night we met again. I roused Rob and Caro's household with my shouting in the process, and if Rushmore hadn't been there to cope with my ridiculous starts, heaven alone knows what I'd have done.'

‘Did you try to attack him again, then?' she asked.

‘No, he developed the knack of talking me out of my terrors after that first time, no doubt out of respect for his own skin if he didn't,' he joked weakly and she blinked back a tear.

‘And apart from that time, you never had a repeat of your nightmare?'

‘Not so far as I know, but d'you see why I dared not sleep beside you, Roxanne? Much though I'd like to sleep with you in my arms all night long and wake to you and everything you do to me every morning, so we can do something about it for once. I can't put you in danger.'

‘Nonsense, do you think me incapable of doing what your manservant has learnt to and talk you out of it and back to sleep? Waking or sleeping, or even in the grip of your darkest nightmare, you could never hurt me, Charles, so if you dare to sleep anywhere but in my
bed from now on I'll track you down to where you
are
sleeping and make your nights hell without any help from a long-dead spectre who never had any grudge against you in the first place. Is that understood, husband?' she ended briskly, believing common sense a far better antidote to his fear than the tears and sympathy she longed to pour out over him after his long thrall to a tragically dead girl he'd done nothing to harm and would have risked his life to save if he could.

‘It is, wife, and how can I argue when all I seem to have done for the last few weeks is long to have you in my arms all night and at my side every waking moment of our days?' he responded with a boyish grin that made her heart wobble for a brief moment, then skip with joy, it was so like the one he'd entranced her with that first snowy night she had set eyes on him.

‘And maybe we can do something about your primitive morning urges as well, husband,' she promised with a wicked smile. ‘But one thing I can assure you of, Charles Afforde, is that if you don't share my bed from now on, I'll very likely come in one night and murder you myself. And I'll be awake while I do it, what's more.'

‘In that case, I'd best keep you so content you'll only want to kiss me all night instead,' he jested feebly, but she knew instinctively he'd have no more nightmares of drowned women while she slept content and fulfilled at his side.

‘Is the memory of that poor woman really the reason you made sure I took a violent disgust of you the one time I laid eyes on you during my come-out Season?' she asked as she sat up in his arms and glared at him accusingly.

‘Of course. I knew there was no point trying to reason with you when your eyes were full of hero worship and your smile was warm as the sun rising over the Mediterranean on a July morning.'

‘Horrible man.' She thumped a balled fist into his chest and heard the ‘Oof!' of his protest with some satisfaction. ‘You broke my heart, or at least I thought so at the time. I was seventeen and thought I loved you more than any woman ever loved a man.'

‘But it mended.'

‘I patched the poor battered thing up as best I could and went home to Uncle Granger and a life of single blessedness.'

‘So did I,' he said virtuously and she thumped him again, a little harder.

‘You raked and caroused your way round the world,' she accused and thought of those lonely years when the only news she had of him was Maria's satisfied letters, informing her that Captain Afforde was still busy flirting with all the most beautiful women in England whenever he was home on leave.

‘I certainly appeared to, but I doubt if any man could satisfy as many conquests as rumour credited me with, or not without killing himself from the effort at least. I've led a far more blameless life than you'd credit, love. It's far easier to give a dog a bad name and hang him for it than it is to actually find out he's not as much of a dog as he appears. I made myself useful by helping on some deserted ladies' campaigns to make their husbands and lovers jealous and a lot more attentive as a consequence.'

‘So you're entirely innocent of all the sins ascribed to you and have lived the existence of a monk for the
last decade? Just how gullible do you think I am, Sir Charles?'

‘Certainly not that gullible, my lovely, but whilst there have been a few women I liked and even lusted after and bedded to our mutual satisfaction during that time, I never even came close to loving one.'

‘Well, you can stop looking so smug about it, you didn't think you loved me, either, until I made you stop and decide you might, after all, manage to do so, if you worked at it hard enough.'

‘Oh, that wasn't anything like work, love, more of a poor, stupid, ignorant male's realisation he'd finally met his fate and stood no chance of escaping it this time.'

‘How lovely to be a “fate”, as if you can think of nothing more terrible than meeting me some dark night,' she said crossly.

‘I forgot to add that I don't want to escape you this time, that being without you now would be an arctic waste of a life—in fact, no life at all.'

‘Really?' Sitting upright enough so she could face him and look deep into his eyes, Roxanne closely examined his handsome features and most particularly his dark blue eyes for any sign of insincerity.

‘I hope my countenance has the wit to tell you the truth of what's in my heart, Roxanne, for I love you to my very soul, and I'm afraid I always will.'

‘Afraid?' she asked, mock-horrified even as brilliant joy sang in her own heart and probably shone betrayingly in her own eyes, as there was so much delight inside her fighting to express itself. ‘You're afraid, husband?'

‘Aye, wife, for a rake who's fallen so deep in love with his wife is such a bad example to all damn-your
eyes rogues who look to me as a model. They'll surely disown me now and drum me out of town.'