The Rake of Hearts by Emily Windsor
A cat in mittens catches no mice
Naught to be nervous about.
Keep calm.
Disregard the past.
With those stern words to herself, Beatrice Cassell wafted her lavender handkerchief beneath her nose and then marched down the garden path towards the stables to request a pair of mares be tacked.
Fate, she’d discovered on her travels, oft worked in mysterious ways – wretchedly missing a ship’s departure only for the next to complete the journey before the first; fever preventing an excursion, only to hear of an ambush…
Yet fate also seemed to wield a wicked sense of humour, fond of toying with mere mortals, of inciting their pulses to thump, of allowing long-ago lovers to stumble upon one another, here in the Cotswolds.
Keep calm.
Naught to be nervous about.
“After all,” she muttered to herself, “you’ve faced down the Ton following your scandalous conduct, you’ve been married, widowed, and have crossed the desert on a camel.”
So what is meeting one erstwhile lover?
Albeit her first love. Her only true love.
Nevertheless, at her age, to submit to nerves was insupportable and she hastened through the double doors, striding past horses and grooms alike.
Yesterday, she’d merely gained her bearings and courage, wandering the gardens, detouring past the stables but loitering by the water trough and quizzing the housekeeper as to the marital status of the staff.
The unmarried Redmond O’Conner had changed.
Once a shy young man, passionate but shy, he had stridden the courtyard with hands upon hips, issuing commands and sternly directing the grooms in their care of the many horses.
A man in control.
The main stable doors were open wide so she stomped in with her prepared demand. “I would like–”
Alone in the harness room, Redmond was stuffing something inside his shirt with a decidedly shifty mien, jaw tight and with a gaze pitch as Hades directed towards her.
Beatrice cleared her throat. “Mr O’Conner.” Then cocked her head in that way which had caused a Spanish brigand to flee. “Mrs Locke and I require two horses prepared. We are to ride out to that meadow yonder and sketch the loose mares.” Of course, she used the royal ‘we’ in regard to the sketching but Mrs Pettifer had also prepared a sumptuous picnic…
After buttoning his waistcoat, he unhurriedly turned his back on her – the blaggard – and replaced a small tin box within a drawer.
He still had a fine backside.
“Of course, Mrs Cassell.” And he swivelled on his heel to face her.
“What happened to your tooth?” she blurted. Then wished it back.
His ink-black eyes flashed. Still damn handsome even with the gap, added to which the rough stubble and grey-stranded hair oozed an air of menace which he’d been without as a youth.
“And how do ya think I lost it, Mrs Cassell? The fairies didn’t pluck it out one night whilst I slept.”
The Mrs was beginning to particularly grate upon Beatrice’s nerves.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Mr O’Conner.” A fury was rising within her, turbulent and hazardous. Unlike Hebe, she’d never been one to stifle her emotions but allowed them free rein.
Of course, that had been her and Redmond’s blessing…and curse – the two of them such fierce-blooded creatures who’d found a passion that had scorched uncontrolled, not caring that others had seen them in the forest, invincible, young and unafraid as they were.
She stiffened her spine, eyes widening as his brazen stare eased lower, loitered on her bosom and slid down her skirts.
The insolent shagbag.
“How dare you, Mr O’Conner,” she hissed. Keep calm be damned.
“How dare I, Mrs Cassell? I dare much for what ya cost me.”
Beatrice’s muscles quivered. “Cost you!” Disregard the past be damned. “I waited for you, Redmond. Held out for three long years against my father’s derision and my brother’s…” She set a trembling fist to her mouth.
He took a step. Halted. “He hurt ya?”
“There are many ways to hurt, Redmond. He shamed me in front of everyone he could. Made me feel unworthy. A whore. My love for you a twisted repellent act, and I was scorned, dumped in a forgotten manor house.”
Lips rippling with anger, he tugged at his neckcloth. “And I was dumped in Cork with nothing but the clothes on my back.” He took one step forward. “And a bloodied face.” Another. “I slept in ditches. No work. No food.” And another. “No money to return.” Then he stood before her. “And all because I dallied with the master’s faithless seventeen-year-old daughter.”
Her hand flew out before she could halt it, her temper, her torrid temper as ever dictating her actions.
Redmond barely flinched as her palm struck his cheek.
“I was ruined. A disgrace, Redmond. And all I’d done was to fall in love with you.”
A bark of laughter. “Is that so? Well, I returned four years later to find…find ya married to some fella old enough to be ya bloody grandfather.”
“Mr Cassell was a kind man. Offered his name and status when I had nothing. So do not seek to attack him, Redmond O’Conner. Just me.”
“Ya loved him?” he spat.
“A different kind of love. There are many types I have learned – respect, companionship.”
“And what was ours?”
“Young. Impulsive. Passionate. The type that burns brightly but…” She dug nails to her palms. “…dies quickly.”
He stared, soundless and still, before brushing past her. “I’ll bridle ya horses.”
But Beatrice twisted, frowned at his rigid shoulders.
Just one question.
“Why did you never write?” she whispered. “Three years, Redmond, and my maid was loyal. She would have passed on a–”
In an instant, he swivelled, face a scowl. “Ya fare steal a man’s pride, do ya not, Bea? Along with his heart.” A hand with swollen knuckles pushed through his hair. “I hid it all from ya, back then, but…the truth of it is…I never learned… I cannot write.” And he silently stalked out.
Leaving her nerves in bloody tatters.
* * *
Goblin’s Fingers,Kidney Vetch, Lady’s Bedstraw and Bachelor’s Buttons – they smothered this fallow meadow in weaves of colour and Ernest breathed deep as their scent released from beneath the hooves of his horse.
The spring flowers had brought bright yellows and engendered hope after the sodden weather, but the summer now begot a fragrance like no other, of sunshine and richness. It reminded him of running wild in the fields as a stripling. No parents who cared or tutors to defy.
Father had forever been in London, spending money that didn’t exist, and Mother had not cared for scruffy little boys with filthy nails. Half the village had thought him a servant’s get, so wild had he been – togs torn from scrambling though brambles and hair muddied from swimming in the moat.
But he’d learned the land – from Grampy Tom – the shape of clouds that signified rain, the plants that rendered the horses ill and how to tend a bird’s injured wing.
Of course, all that had changed when Father had died and Casper had inherited and begun to turn the estate’s fortunes around, sending Ernest off to Eton then Oxford… And when he’d returned from there, commanding him to London.
Stanley snickered, bored with his master’s introspection, but then it wasn’t often Ernest thought on the past. Most probably due to his tavern visit last night, where a Wychmere local had clapped a palm to his back and said he’d read in the rags all about the Town rake that Ernest had become.
Was that all he was now?
A debauched rake with seduction in mind as he stared at the pretty blond widow in damson cotton sitting with sketchbook in hand amongst a lake of summer flowers.
Everything felt different here.
Hewas different here, but neither could Ernest deny that he desired Mrs Locke in the most rakish of ways too. He yearned for those artist’s fingers gripping his chest and her endless hanks of hair in his fist. He wanted to lie her down in the warm meadow grass and decorate her naked skin with cornflowers. To make her arch and cry his name as he pushed deep…
“Coo-ee, Lord Ernest!”
Mayhap not with her aunt watching. He wasn’t that debauched.
“Mrs Cassell.” And he guided Stanley to the ladies’ little patch of heaven. The aunt had snaffled the shaded half of a blanket beneath a beech but Mrs Locke appeared quite content to sit in the sunshine alongside, her nose pink.
Dismounting and leaving Stanley to forage with the mares, he then bowed low. “It was remiss of me to not greet you previously, Mrs Cassell, but I was in Witney this morning and yesterday Lydia demanded all my energies.” He slid his gaze sideways, saw Mrs Locke glower, thought possibly she’d also growled.
Ravishing.
“Lydia?” Mrs Cassell asked with a wince.
“Hmm. Is your room comfortable, Mrs Cassell? Do you have all you need?”
They chatted of inconsequential matters as Mrs Locke ignored him, and as at the Prince’s hell, he found he liked the aunt – an honest, open and warm woman.
At length, he twisted. “And how are you today, Mrs Locke?” He stole a corner of her blanket, sitting without invitation, and noted her lips tighten. “You look enchanting this morn, a worthy competitor for the wildness and beauty that surrounds you.”
The aunt gleefully sighed.
Mrs Locke glowered at her sketchpad. “So trite.”
The aunt mournfully sighed.
“A Lothario such as yourself,” Mrs Locke continued, “with a trail of broken hearts, must keep a store of rehearsed compliments.”
“To be truthful, I do my utmost to not break hearts and am only ever honest with my intentions.”
She glanced over with a stare that could close a summer flower. “When we were first introduced at the Plymtrees’ by your brother, you confessed to being a scoundrel and libertine, incapable of resisting temptation.”
“Ah, youthful folly.”
“It was four months ago!”
“And a man cannot change?” He peered over his spectacles at her, hand clasped to knee.
She stifled a twitch of lip with little success. “Can you actually see anything when you do that?”
“I’ll have you know, Mrs Locke, that this look once caused a debutante to swoon in her trifle.”
“Perhaps the custard was off?”
“Hebe, dear,” Mrs Cassell interrupted. “Why don’t you show Lord Ernest your sketches?”
“Hebe.” He repeated the name in a long whisper. Study of the Classics had passed him by at school, but his brother had a painting of that goddess of youth in his drawing room, one which had always affected Ernest – a woman natural and wild but at peace. She fed an eagle from a golden cup, blossoms strewn in her hair.
“An apt given name, if I may say so, Mrs Locke.” Perhaps this was the moment to inveigle her full name but for some reason, wagers with his brother seemed a world away from this place, this meadow.
She sniffed. “I have never thought it so.”
But he did. Could see it hidden within her. She might sit so prim with spine erect and feet tucked in, but an urge for the untamed revealed itself in her discarded bonnet, long curls now drifting in the light breeze, and in the plucked daisies that dotted her skirts.
One day, Ernest silently vowed, he’d place blossoms in her hair, smother her naked body with his own amongst these meadow flowers and take her with the sunshine beating upon his back.
But for now…
“May I see?”
With a sniff, she relinquished her sketchbook and he leisurely flipped through the leaves…
The foal on precarious legs, eyes alarmed at the new world – tender and exquisite.
The dam, exhausted but at peace – serene and emotive.
A stallion galloping through the meadow, his noble bearing reflected in every line of charcoal – fluid and passionate.
On occasion, he’d been invited to view some nobleman’s painting of a horse – staid and unnatural portraits to commemorate a win.
But these sketches…
They breathed life and love.
They encapsulated why he adored horses so much.
He gazed up and watched as she perused a mare’s swishing tail. Saw Hebe Locke with entirely new eyes, for no one could sketch in such a way if that icy exterior sank to the core.
“They are truly beautiful,” he said softly, handing back the book. “You have a unique talent.”
She startled. “Thank you.”
“And I believe you are visiting Squire Skelton’s and Sir Henry Winkworth’s stables over the next few days. I have asked that a carriage be left at your disposal. Any hour you require.”
“Our utmost thanks, Lord Ernest,” the aunt gushed. “I’m sure Hebe is most grateful, aren’t you, dearest?”
“Beyond doubt.”
“Do be careful of Sir Henry though,” he added. “I could escort you, if you wish, as he has an eye for the ladies.”
She arched a blond brow.
“And fingers for them…” He waggled his own leather-gloved paw.
A smirk betrayed her act of indifference as she commenced sketching once more while Mrs Cassell, with a roll of eyes, wandered off to investigate the picnic basket attached to her mare’s saddle in the shade of the trees.
Ernest just sat…quiet and content.
The view from here was sublime, the castle like a floating stone barge upon the moat. As a child, he’d taken all this for granted, had not thought on the estate’s upkeep, why the roof tiles leaked or the gardens were unkempt.
Despite their father’s neglect, the castle had silently waited for the next owner, for Casper, to bring it back to life. The Rothwells – good and bad – were written all over this landscape and the place was rooted in Ernest’s own bones and blood.
He breathed the fragrant air. “I’ll be absent for dinner again, I believe. My apologies.”
“Lydia?” Mrs Locke snarled. “Or her sister?”
“Both.”
She blinked at her sketchpad.
“I know. I find it exhausting but cannot resist their soft brown eyes and fluttering lashes.”
Mrs Locke tightened her lips and he curved near, plucked a chicory flower from the meadow bed and fluttered it against the back of her hand.
Her fingers twitched.
“I can’t stay away from them. Lydia in particular has such a silken rump and tight–”
“Lord Ernest!” She glared, their faces so very close. He could scent honey with the rosemary, wished he could lean just that further fingerbreadth and kiss her, taste her snippy lips. “I do not know why you feel a need to impart all this on me.”
“Fetlock,” he said.
“Fetlock?”
“Hmm. Tight fetlock.”
She closed her eyes. Inhaled.
Ernest simply watched her slender throat swallow.
“I’ve…been in error, haven’t I? Or perhaps misled. Lydia is a horse.”
“It was not my intention, and well, to be fair to yourself, Mrs Locke, the…phrasing has been unfortunate.”
She opened her eyes, pressed her lips together, but Ernest winked and she…laughed, head thrown back. It took his breath away, pure and true.
“You are a scoundrel, Lord Ernest. A deceiving…” Then those eyes narrowed. “Would you… Would you be so kind as to grant me a favour?”
At this moment, she could ask him to swim the cesspit or clear the oubliette of rats and he would.
“Anything.”
“Would you…could you remove your gloves?”
A strange appeal and she wasn’t going to be impressed with what she viewed but…
With his teeth, he tugged at the fingers of his right glove and presented his paw. “Not at its best, I’m afraid. Lydia and her sister haul the ale carts at the tavern and they’ve caught some kind of infection in the fetlock. I’ve been rubbing in ointment every night and morning after their shifts – they kick out at their owner and the village farrier – but it’s a devil for my skin.”
No doubt Mrs Locke would cringe at his coarse knuckles and calloused palms from grasping reins without gloves, and there was more than a smidgeon of dirt stuck under his nails, but he’d always enjoyed being close to the horses and had spent the last three months engaged in every aspect so he could issue orders with knowledge – mucking out, brushing down and banking up the stable walls.
He’d caught the askew glances between the stable lads at a nobleman undertaking such work but his innate sense with the horses had soon gained their respect.
His guts and…lower clenched as Mrs Locke brushed a bare silken finger against a line of rough skin. “You’re not perfectly golden,” she whispered.
“No one is.” Normally he’d jest, but her tone was so serious.
This close, he noted a slight scar by her right eyebrow, her lashes bronze-tipped and her skin pinking in the sunshine.
Past affairs had been with sophisticated society women who thought to pass the night in pleasure, who preferred his flippant, carnal side, indeed sought it out, but Hebe Locke, he thought, would favour honesty, kindliness and compassion – traits ignored in London.
And never before had he felt the need to enquire of a society widow’s dearly departed, but a yearning to know all about Hebe Locke was rudely interrupting his baser desires.
Her favourite flower, colour and book.
Her deepest wants and dreams.
To know if she’d loved her husband. Or whether it was he who haunted her eyes, the reason for the shadows beneath…
“Hebe dear,” called Mrs Cassell as she arrived back at the blanket and flopped down, cake in hand. “Take care in the sun. Too long and you will burn.”
Her eyes flicked, hands snatching away. “Too true, Aunt. Have you the hour, Lord Ernest?”
“I don’t carry a pocket watch. My apologies.”
“Par-pardon?”
“Never have done. I’m always late. Always lose them and the castle has a damn great sundial attached to its wall. What need have I?” She stared, shoulders tense as though he had five heads and was called Twinkle, so he babbled on, which was most unlike his usual urbane self. “I should mention that Sir Henry has also tendered you both an invite to his masquerade ball in a sennight. Should you wish to attend, there are some costumes in the attic – togas and tails and suchlike.”
Nevertheless, she was still peering at him strangely.
So Ernest licked his lips and cleared his throat. “And if you are still here, there’s the Wychmere Feast in late August. Not that you can fail to attend that one as it’s in the estate grounds. As a Rothwell and in my brother’s absence, I have to elect the fairest maiden of Wychmere to crown as Queen of the Feast.” He winked. “Not an onerous job for an experienced London rake such as I.”
At last, her shoulders loosened.
Phew.
Mrs Locke rose and brushed down her skirts. “Thank goodness for that,” she muttered. “I was beginning to think you too good to be true.”