Ravished by the Rake Page 23

  ‘You do look very pale, dear. I will come with you.’

  Her mother swept her out with punctilious farewells to their hosts. ‘I do hope you have not got anything more than a slight chill,’ she said, tucking rugs around Dita in the carriage. ‘At this stage in the Season it would be such a pity to miss anything.’

  ‘I would like to go home, Mama. At once. To Combe.’

  ‘Home now? But why?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Mama.’ Her mother opened her mouth, but Dita pressed on. If she was asked any more questions or talked at, she felt she could not bear it. ‘Now Evaline is betrothed there is no reason for me to stay in town, is there? There is no one I am going to marry, Mama. I am sorry, but I am certain of it. I need time to decide what I want to do and I cannot think in London.’

  Nor can I bear to dance and flirt and smile and watch Alistair make his choice. Much better to hear about it at a distance. When he brings his new bride home I can come back to town or go to Brighton or something. Anything. Her hand crept to her cheek where his had touched. Goodbye.

  Dita straightened her shoulders and made herself sit up. She was not going to run away and mope for the rest of her life. She had money, she had contacts, there was a new life out there if she only had the strength to find it. Widows managed it when they had lost the men they loved and so could she. She just needed some peace to plan, that was all.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Alistair left it until eleven before he called. He had to tell her how he felt. It was hopeless, of course, if she was in love and not just telling him that to stop him insisting on their marriage. That it might be a ruse was the only thing that supported his spirits—until he remembered the tears on her cheeks. They had been so very real.

  It was still far too early for a morning call, which properly, if illogically, should take place in the afternoon, but there was a limit to how much suspense he could take. Pearson answered the door. ‘Good morning, my lord. I regret that none of the family is at home this morning.’

  ‘None of them? I will return this afternoon.’

  ‘I believe it unlikely that they will be receiving today at all, my lord.’

  What the devil was going on? The only thing he could think of was that Dita had announced that she wanted to marry whoever it was, her father had objected and a major family upset was in progress. The fact that she must be holding out would indicate that she was serious, he thought, striding down St James’s and into his club. It was going to be a long twenty-four hours.

  The second day produced almost exactly the same result. ‘His lordship is at the House and is expected back very late. Her ladyship and Lady Evaline are, I believe, shopping, my lord, and will be going on to afternoon appointments. Lady Perdita is not receiving.’

  Frustrated, Alistair reviewed his options, other than breaking and entering. He did have, if not a spy in the camp, a source of intelligence, he realised.

  The note he had written to James Morgan brought the young man himself around to White’s in the early evening. ‘How may I be of service?’ he asked as they settled into chairs in a quiet corner of the library.

  ‘I need to know what is going on in the Brookes’ house,’ Alistair said. No point in beating around the bush. ‘Is Lady Perdita betrothed to someone, or is there a problem over some man?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ James frowned. ‘But then, I haven’t seen Lady Evaline today as she had various obligations. I can ask her tomorrow though—I am hiring a curricle and taking her driving in the park. Of course, if it is very delicate, she might not be able to say anything.’ He hesitated. ‘You could ask Lady Perdita, perhaps?’

  ‘I would if she was receiving,’ Alistair said, almost amused by the way James struggled to keep the speculation off his face. ‘Never mind, I will call again tomorrow.’ And this time, if he was still refused, he was going to go in through the tradesmen’s entrance and find out, one way or another. But he had betrayed more than enough to his new secretary. ‘Do you enjoy the play?’ he asked. ‘We could go to the Theatre Royal and then on to some supper.’

  Pearson looked decidedly uncomfortable to find Alistair on the doorstep at ten the next morning. ‘I am sorry, my lord, Lady Perdita is indisposed.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Alistair’s blood ran cold. Had Langham hurt her and she had said nothing at the time?

  ‘I could not say, my lord.’

  The man was hiding something. Alistair smiled. ‘Please tell her I called.’ As soon as the door closed he went along the pavement to the area gate, down the steps into the narrow paved space and tried the handle of the staff door. It was unlocked.

  ‘Here, you can’t come through here! Oh. My lord …’ One of the footmen stared in confusion as Alistair nodded pleasantly to him and took the back stairs, up past the ground floor, on up to the first where the ladies had their sitting room.

  The door was ajar and he walked in to find Evaline trimming a bonnet at the table. ‘Alistair!’

  ‘I need to talk to Dita,’ he said without preamble.

  ‘You can’t. She’s not … I mean, she isn’t well.’ Evaline appeared decidedly flustered.

  ‘Not here?’ She bit her lip and then nodded. ‘Where?’

  ‘She left for Combe yesterday morning, first thing,’ Evaline admitted.

  ‘Why?’ Evaline just shrugged, her pretty face showing as much bafflement as he felt. ‘Is she betrothed to someone?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She seemed glad to have something she could answer. ‘Although it something about marriage, I am certain. I heard Papa and Mama … I should not repeat it.’

  Alistair sat down without waiting to be invited, finding, for the first time in his life, that his legs were none too steady. As he realised it Person opened the door. ‘Do you wish refreshments to be served, Lady Evaline? Good morning, my lord.’ It was as close to a rebuke as he was going to deliver. Alistair smiled at him. Even disapproving butlers were to be tolerated now he knew that Dita was still not promised to another man.

  ‘Not on my account, thank you.’ He got to his feet and bent to kiss Evaline’s cheek. ‘I’ll go and see she is all right.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ She beamed back at him. ‘And tell her to come back to town soon—I need her help for all the shopping I have to do!’

  The temptation to take his curricle was almost overwhelming, but Alistair controlled it. He had no idea how Dita would react when he arrived on her doorstep and he wanted his wits about him. Speculation about what was going on kept running round and round in his head, but he could make no sense of what was happening.

  He ordered Gregory to pack for at least a week away, ordered a chaise and four and set out at midday with one terse instruction to the postillions. ‘Make the best time you can and there’s money in it for you.’

  It took them fifteen hours to Bridgewater, and another five on the narrower, twisting roads, and then lanes, that led to the Castle.

  By the time the chaise pulled up in front of the great doors it was eight in the morning, Alistair had taught his valet to play a variety of card games, they had snatched dinner in Bristol and had slept in moderate discomfort for the past five hours.

  Two hours later, with breakfast inside him, bathed, shaved and dressed in buckskins and boots, Alistair rode up to the front door of Wycombe Combe. At least he had got inside the door this time before he was refused, he thought, confronting the Brookes’ butler.

  ‘Is Lady Perdita not receiving me, or is she not at home to anyone?’ he demanded.

  ‘Lady Perdita has given orders that she is not to be disturbed, my lord. She’s shut herself up in the Library Suite in the tower, my lord. And she hasn’t come down. We take her meals up to her and I have to knock; the door at the foot of the tower is locked, my lord.’ Gilbert had known Alistair since he was a boy and seemed grateful for the prospect of some guidance.

  The butler would have a master key, Alistair reflected, but he did not want to put him in a difficult position; beside
s, he was experiencing a strong urge to do something flamboyant to make his point to Dita. She wanted romance? Well, if she locked herself up in a tower like Rapunzel, romance was what she was going to get.

  Her grandfather had added an incongruous tower at one end of the house in a fit of enthusiasm for the Gothic, inspired by his friend Hugh Walpole. It overlooked the miniature gorge that the river made and created the impression that one of the turrets of his own castle had taken flight and landed there. Dita’s father had moved the library into the second floor and Alistair recalled from childhood games of hide and seek that there was a guest suite above that.

  He wondered why had she abandoned her own rooms as he made his way along the frontage of the house, round the curve of the tower wall and along to a point where a mass of ivy clung to the stonework. Forty foot up a window was open. Alistair shed his coat and hat, gave the ivy an experimental shake and began to climb.

  He had made harder climbs, and more dangerous ones, although the result of falling on to the slabs below would be terminally unpleasant, but the ivy was old and thick and made a serviceable ladder. He was within six feet of the window when a wren erupted out of the foliage, shrieking with alarm, a tiny brown bundle of aggression.

  The ivy tore under his hands as he swung out reflexively, swearing, then he grabbed hold above the weak spot and threw his weight more securely across.

  ‘What the devil are you doing?’ Dita’s voice, immediately overhead, almost had him losing his grip again.

  ‘Climbing this ivy,’ Alistair said, while his heart returned to its proper place.

  ‘That is such a male answer!’ He looked up and found her glaring down at him, her arms folded on the sill. ‘The question, as you very well know, Alistair Lyndon, is why are you climbing the ivy?’

  ‘To get to you. I want to talk to you—I am worried about you, Dita.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’ She straightened up and the window began to swing closed.

  ‘I can’t get down,’ he called.

  ‘Nonsense.’ But she poked her head out again.

  ‘Let down your hair, Rapunzel,’ he wheedled.

  ‘This is not so much a fairy tale, more a bad dream,’ she retorted, vanishing again.

  Oh well, if she was not to be teased into a good humour he would just have to climb up and hope she didn’t slam the window in his face. Alistair climbed another four feet before it opened wide again. This time a cloud of brown silk billowed out, settled, and revealed itself as Dita’s hair. His fingers clenched into the ivy as a wave of erotic heat swept through him. He had seen it down wet, sticky with sea salt, tangled into knots, and it had affected him deeply then. But now it was clean, glossy and smelled of rosemary.

  Alistair fisted one hand into it and tugged gently. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, and swept it back and over one shoulder out of his reach. ‘I always wanted to do that as a little girl, but I never realised how painful the weight of a grown man on the end of it would be.’

  ‘May I come in?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Dita vanished, leaving the window wide, but as he breasted the sill she held out her hands to help him climb through. ‘Of all the idiotic things to do! You might have been killed.’

  ‘Easier than climbing rigging.’ It was interesting that that made her blush. ‘Dita, why are you here?’

  It seemed, as she turned and walked back to the big table in the centre of the room, that she would not answer him. Alistair did not push her, but looked around. They were in the library, the walls lined with curving bookshelves to fit within the circle of the tower. On the table there were piles of books, maps weighted at their curling corners and pen and paper.

  ‘I am not going to marry,’ Dita said, her back still turned. ‘I realise I cannot compromise on what I need: marriage is too permanent, too important to settle for a lifetime of second best. And I don’t want to hurt someone by not being able to offer them everything that I have to give. So I came here to think about what I want to do and I decided that I will travel. I will find a congenial older woman as a companion and I will discover this country first. Then, perhaps, the war will be over and I can go abroad.

  ‘I enjoyed writing. I might well rewrite our novel, and I will write about my travels.’

  ‘You may hurt someone else, by deciding not to marry,’ Alistair said.

  ‘Who?’ She turned, puzzled.

  ‘Me.’ He said nothing more, but let her work it out for herself.

  ‘You? You would be hurt by my not marrying? You are saying that you care for me?’

  ‘You know that I care.’ His voice was rough, and he knew he was not gentle as he closed the distance between them and jerked her into his arms. ‘I am telling you that I love you.’

  ‘But you don’t want to fall in love,’ she wailed. ‘You don’t believe in it. Don’t do this to me, Alistair. Don’t pretend and say this just because you think you must marry me.’

  He looked furious and more nearly out of control than she had ever seen him. ‘I will be all right, Alistair. I don’t have to marry—’

  ‘I. Love. You,’ he repeated. ‘Love: not like a friend, not like a neighbour—like a lover. I had no idea until I walked out of that garden knowing you were in love with someone else, and then I found I was shaking and sick and I realised that I had lost you because I’d had no idea that what I felt for you was love.’

  Dita felt as though the tower floor was shifting under her feet, but Alistair was holding her. She would not fall while he was there. Alistair, who was telling her he loved her.

  ‘Then Evaline said you were not betrothed to anyone, so I guessed he either does not love you or is totally ineligible. Take me, Dita,’ he urged. ‘We’ll travel and I’ll take you wherever you want. We’ll write together—you can help me reconstruct my notes and I’ll help with the novel. We’ll make love. You like me, I know that. Desire me, too. I think you trust me. One day I’ll make that enough for you. I’ll make you forget him.’

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’ she said, looking into his eyes and reading the truth and an utterly uncharacteristic uncertainty in them. ‘When I saw you on the ivy I thought you must have guessed.’ He shook his head, not understanding. ‘It is you. I love you, Alistair. I’ve loved you all the time, even when I told myself I hated you, when I told myself it was just desire, when I knew it was hopeless.’ Dita smiled at him, trying, failing, to conjure an answering smile.

  ‘But you said you grew out of it.’

  ‘I lied. Do you think I could bear you knowing and not feeling the same? I would have sunk with mortification.’

  And then he did laugh, his whole body convulsing with it. ‘I believe you—I can imagine how that would feel.’

  ‘But you were prepared to risk it,’ she said, sobering as rapidly as he relaxed. ‘You were prepared to risk your pride by coming here and telling me you loved me.’

  ‘Because I realise my task in life, Perdita my darling, is to cherish you and protect you and love you and if that means carving out my heart and my pride and my honour and laying them at your feet, that’s what I will do.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her voice broke as the tears welled in her eyes. ‘That is so lovely.’

  ‘Don’t cry, sweetheart, not before I tell you your duties. You are fated to give me purpose, make me smile and restore my faith in the world as a good place.’

  ‘I won’t stop you being an adventurer,’ she promise as she swallowed the tears. ‘I’ll never close the window and leave you to climb alone again or tell you to stay at home and be safe. But you’ll take me with you, always, won’t you?’

  ‘I promise,’ Alistair said. ‘Do you want to get married at the same time as Evaline?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know I was getting married until five minutes ago! Why?’

  ‘Well, she is not marrying for about three months and I have every intention of taking you to bed as soon as I can find one—and I really don’t want to be careful.’

&nb
sp; ‘Careful? Oh, you mean children.’ She had tried not to think about babies, the ones she would never have because she was not going to wed. And now she would have Alistair’s children. ‘No, I don’t want to be careful either. We’ll tell everyone we want to let Evaline have her day to herself and we’ll be married as soon as we can, if you want.’

  ‘I want.’ Alistair swept her up off her feet. ‘Now, where’s this bed?’

  ‘Upstairs.’ Half-breathless, half-inclined to giggle, Dita let herself be carried. Alistair shouldered open the door and laid her on the bed. ‘This is very romantic, my lord.’

  ‘Something from our novel writing obviously rubbed off,’ Alistair said as he sat on the end of the bed and pulled off his boots. He turned back to her, shrugging off his waistcoat. ‘I’ll take it slowly, Dita, don’t worry. By the pond—I should have been gentler, more careful.’

  ‘I have been waiting a very long time for you to love me,’ she said, kneeling up to untie his neckcloth and undo the buttons of his shirt. ‘Could we be fast first and then slow, do you think?’

  ‘I won’t tease you,’ he promised, dragging his shirt over his head. Dita reached out to run her hands over his skin, raking her nails lightly through the dark hair on his chest. She saw the way he tensed as she brushed his nipples, heard the intake of breath as she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and the arrogant swell of his erection and closed her eyes for a moment to let the wave of pleasure and power sweep through her.

  Alistair took her mouth, his hands swift and sure on the fastenings of her gown, and she opened her eyes on his closed lids, the sweep of his lashes sooty against his tan, and shivered in delight at the sensation of skin against skin as the simple cotton gown fell around her hips along with her petticoats.

  ‘Better than in the hut on the beach,’ she murmured as she pulled back to look into his face. ‘Dry and warm and not sticky.’

  ‘Sticky can be good,’ he said as he pressed her back on the bed, pulled off her chemise and began to lave her nipples with long, wet, lavish strokes of his tongue.