The Wildest Rake: a stunning, scandalous Restoration romance Read online

  Nan, who had been helping in the kitchen for this one night, as a favour, came hobbling into the room and stopped, seeing Mistress Brent.

  ‘Goodnight,’ Cornelia said to her mother quickly. The last thing she wanted was for Nan to overhear a conversation about Rendel Woodham. Nan’s quick mind and sharp tongue had exercise enough over her liking for Andrew.

  How had her father come to meet Sir Rendel, she wondered? She had taken his tales of the King’s graciousness with a pinch of salt, but now she wondered if, somehow, Rendel had discovered her identity, and deliberately cultivated her father out of some twisted reason of his own.

  How his eyes had glittered when he touched the scratch she had inflicted on his cheek. There was that passing look of ruthless will which had alarmed her tonight. She feared him.

  A few days later Alderman Brent spent an evening at Whitehall in Sir Rendel’s company, and came back full of excitement. The King was setting out next day for a progress through the countryside, and the Alderman had seen the lines of wagons waiting to be filled with the Court necessities. He talked excessively of the courtesies shown him by all Sir Rendel’s friends, and said, with awe, that he must be a very rich man, for he had lost at play a ruby of great cost, without so much as turning a hair.

  ‘Do you praise that, Father?’ Cornelia could not help asking him.

  He reddened at this reminder of his puritan views of so short a time ago, but looked irritably at her. ‘We must bend with the wind, child. I do not say I would not rather have back the old Commonwealth. It was a sober, godly time. But we have to take the world as we find it. There would be no gilded leather in our parlour, nor silk gowns for you, if we stood out against the tide in public affairs. They harry old Commonwealth men from pillar to post, and I will not bring your poor mother to poverty for my sake.’

  She lowered her head and said no more, seeing it to be useless. When she remembered how he had forbidden her to curl her hair or wear bright colours before Cromwell’s death, she marvelled at his changed attitudes. She had been brought up in a world so different to this one—a dull world, perhaps, but at least in that world she would have had no divided loyalties.

  A few days later he bade her put on her best gown to take dinner with Sir Rendel at his house in Drury Lane. ‘And,’ he added sternly, ‘I want you not to look glum nor pert at him, for he has put himself out to be useful to me since we met, and I am in his debt.’

  She did not answer, but later, when her mother nervously asked her if she meant to do as her father wished, she answered harshly that she would.

  ‘I’ll play the hypocrite, if that is what my father desires,’ she said coldly. ‘I’ll smile, and flirt with him, at your command. I have always been an obedient daughter, I hope, whether I was told to be virtuous or otherwise.’

  ‘When has your father ever ordered you to do what was not virtuous? It is not wrong to be polite to a host. This is not an ideal world. Honest men must live.’

  ‘By dancing attendance upon those we despise?’ demanded Cornelia, facing her with blazing eyes.

  Her mother sighed. ‘You are angry. I understand why, child. Sir Rendel is wild and, perhaps, dissolute. But we must not be too hard upon him.’

  Cornelia laughed mirthlessly. ‘Oh, no, do not let us be too hard upon him. He is rich and powerful.’

  Mistress Brent reddened and snapped back. ‘Your virtuous protests would convince me more, Cornelia, if I did not know why you dislike him. Well, let me tell you now, you will never marry Andrew Belgrave while I am above ground, no, not if you weep your eyes blind for him. He will never be more than a humble physician. He has neither ambition nor stomach for life. He is more suited for a monk’s life than anything else.’ She drew breath, panting, and added, ‘What is more, I do not like him.’

  Cornelia stared at her, white-faced. ‘How can you dislike him? He is a saint. He is so kind, so gentle . . . how could anyone dislike him?’

  Mistress Brent stared obstinately at her. ‘He is too saintly for me. Why, if every man acted as he does, the world would come to an end, there would be no food for children, no trade, no money, nothing. We would all live hand to mouth as he does. Do you not see, he takes money from more honest men by practising his trade and asking no payment, so that the poor flock to him. He has no right to do such a thing.’

  Cornelia shook her head in disbelief. ‘I never thought to hear such things from you, Mother. I know many a poor family who would have lost a father, or a child, for want of a doctor, if Andrew had not visited them freely. If he were a canting humbug I could understand your resentment. But he practises his religion, he does not merely preach it. Nobody could point a finger at him for hypocrisy.’

  Mistress Brent looked angrily at her. ‘You are still ready to put your father and myself into the pillory, I see, although you spring so hotly to defend your dearest Andrew.’

  ‘Mother. That was unjust. I was not thinking of you when I spoke just now.’ Cornelia was near to tears. She ran to her carved wooden chest and threw back the lid. Dragging out her gowns, she flung them, higgledy-piggledy, on the bed. ‘Choose what I shall wear, then. I cannot bear these constant disputes.’

  Her mother opened her mouth, then closed it again. She turned over the gowns, frowning. ‘Your green is the newest, but Sir Rendel has seen that. Your yellow is too plain and old. The rose pink is pretty, but needs new ribbons and trimmings, and there is little time.’

  ‘Ellen could do it for me,’ said Cornelia. She had managed to talk some of their neighbours into putting out plain sewing with Ellen, who was now out of bed and increasingly anxious because she had no news yet of her husband’s ship.

  ‘But could she finish it in time?’ asked Mistress Brent.

  ‘I will take it there myself and help her with it,’ Cornelia said.

  Her mother sighed impatiently. ‘What is the point of keeping a sewing maid and doing her work for her? If you do it we shall only waste the good money we pay Ellen.’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ Cornelia groaned. ‘If you could see her, so changed, so full of foreboding for her husband, and with her little baby on her lap. ‘

  Mistress Brent eyed her irritably. ‘Cornelia, sometimes I could gladly box your ears. The young are always over-virtuous for others. You think you know all there is to know of life. There is a priggish streak in you which enrages me.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother,’ grinned Cornelia. ‘Then I may help Ellen? The faster the work is done the better.’

  As they walked past Andrew’s house he came out and stood, his black gown fluttering in the autumn wind, taking off his hat.

  ‘How are you, Cornelia?’

  ‘I am well,’ she said, looking sharply at his thin, lined face. ‘But you look so tired. Why do you not take a day in the country before the winter sets in and you are too busy?’

  He laughed, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘You are behind the times. The winter chills have already begun. I have been dosing everyone in sight this past week. Even my housekeeper has fallen sick.’ He sighed. ‘Poor soul, I am afraid she cannot last the winter. Her chest sounds like a boiling cauldron. She has had chills before, but this one has taken all her strength. I do not like the look I see in her face—I’ve seen that shadow too many times before not to recognise it.’ His pale features were grim. ‘I was not long at my profession before I made the acquaintance of Death’s shade. It stalks some sickrooms from the first hour you arrive, and when you see it, you know your hardest effort will be unavailing.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Cornelia sadly.

  He grinned at her doggedly. ‘Oh, I have not given her up yet, child. I shall fight. Death and I are old opponents. Sometimes I win, sometimes he does. Until the last breath I fight him off.’

  ‘But if she does die, what will you do?’

  ‘I do not know,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I am not an easy man to work for—I know that. Meals at all times, and many of them going back to the kitchen uneaten. Callers at all hours. I shall not find it
easy to replace her.’ He turned his head to cough, and she saw, with a fresh pang of anxiety, the veins in his temples standing out like whipcord. He was too thin, his skin too pale.

  Half to herself, she said, ‘What drives you, Andrew? Do you want to kill yourself with work?’

  He looked down at the cobbled street. ‘When my mother died for want of a doctor who knew his trade, I swore to devote my whole life to the service of the sick.’ He paused. A heavy sigh came. ‘There is no room for anything else in my life, Cornelia,’ he added quietly.

  She felt suddenly very cold. Her skin seemed to tighten over the bones of her face.

  ‘I see,’ she said, in a flat voice.

  He looked at her then, his hand involuntarily moving to touch her arm. ‘I thought you understood,’ he said gently. ‘You said that you did the other day.’

  Cornelia looked at him without seeing him, her eyes wide in pain. ‘I . . .’

  But she could not finish.

  How could she say that she had misunderstood him, had been stupidly happy because she thought he was telling her he loved her, when all the time he had been kindly warning her not to love him?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They were welcomed to Sir Rendel’s house by liveried servants, with flambeaux in their hands, who bowed obsequiously as the family passed them into the panelled hall.

  Their host awaited them, elegantly languid in olive green, trimmed with ribbons of a paler shade.

  He kissed Cornelia’s hand, his hard grey eyes appraising her gown. ‘You are the first guests to arrive,’ he drawled. ‘Which is fortunate, for it gives me the opportunity to show you some portraits of my family, as I promised, Alderman.’

  ‘I shall be most interested,’ said her father. ‘I have been thinking of having my daughter painted.’

  Sir Rendel glanced at her mockingly. ‘An excellent idea.’

  The gallery into which they came was a long, panelled room, lit dimly, with a magnificent fireplace in the centre on one side and rows of high, leaded windows on the other, with pictures hanging on the walls between them.

  Sir Rendel seated the Alderman and his wife beside the huge fire and poured them some wine. Cornelia wandered away and began to study the pictures. They were all portraits, she found; dark, heavy studies of faces in all of which she fancied she saw some trace of the arrogant, ruthless features of her enemy.

  She did not hear his soft tread come up behind her, and jumped when his hand gripped her elbow.

  ‘You seem nervous,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I did not hear you approach,’ she stammered, wishing he would not look at her in that disturbing fashion.

  The glimmering yellow candlelight made moving pools of light on the wooden floors, but between these bright islands lay long dark stretches, where shadows lurked.

  The windows were uncurtained. She could see branches moving restlessly outside. The wind whispered through dry leaves and rattled at the windows, sending the candle flames dancing from side to side.

  Sir Rendel paused before one window, gazing out. The soft halo of light illumined his arrogant profile, softening the set of his lips, the sharp angles of jaw and cheekbone.

  She watched him, recognising, with dismay, the depth of the attraction he exerted. For all his languid airs, the shoulders beneath the olive satin were broad and powerful, the line from waist to thigh ran cleanly, athletic and well proportioned, and the slender white hands, despite their apparent delicacy, had, as she knew too well, a hidden strength.

  He turned his head. Their eyes clashed, as they had done before, and he smiled. She felt again that odd tug of attraction. It was a charming, slightly mischievous smile.

  ‘I make it a rule,’ he said softly, ‘never to apologise or explain. Yet I find myself, strangely, wishing to do both to you.’

  ‘There is no need to do either, sir,’ she shrugged.

  His smile teased. ‘I am sure you do not lack the curiosity of your sex. ‘

  ‘Where you are concerned, I do.’

  For a brief second, she almost thought he winced, but then he smiled crookedly and said, ‘I think you lie. ‘

  ‘Your conceit is past belief,’ she said lightly, and walked on to the next painting. ‘Who is this? An ugly fellow. He has a cut-throat look about him. One of your ancestors, I imagine?’

  He laughed softly. ‘Ah, Mistress Kitty Cat, what, sharp claws you have.’ He regarded the portrait of a grim-faced man in jewelled Elizabethan costume, his head to one side. ‘I admit, he is no beauty.’ His grey eyes slid back to her, dancing impudently. ‘But I am held to be tolerably handsome, I believe. ‘

  ‘You would make a fine Barbary pirate,’ she conceded. ‘All you require is a knife between your teeth, and a scar upon your cheek, and that, I think, I could willingly provide.’ She looked challengingly at him, reminding him of the scratch she had once inflicted on his face.

  Far from appearing angry, there was laughter in his voice as he replied, and the grey eyes sparkled at her. ‘Madame, I meant, earlier, to tell you that I regretted the impudence I showed you at your first meeting. But I find, on reflection, that I can regret nothing that brought us so fatefully together.’

  She blushed angrily. ‘Sir, you compound insolence with arrogance. Trust me, I bitterly regret that I have had the misfortune to meet you.’

  Sweeping her skirts behind her, she walked back to where her parents sat. The door was flung open a moment later, and a wooden-faced lackey announced the other guests.

  Sir Rendel went forward to meet his guests. A thin, sharp-featured lady in green was the first to enter, greeting him with a brief kiss, saying, ‘Dear brother, I hope your cook has provided more palatably tonight—I really could not sit down to half-raw mutton with any pretence of enjoyment. It is high time you married and left the management of your household to a woman.’

  ‘I have ordered fish for you, Dorothy,’ he drawled. ‘My cook is aware of your delicate stomach.’ He held out a hand to the man following on her heels, a broad, heavy figure in plum-coloured satin, whose vast periwig gave him added height.

  ‘Are you well, Jack?’

  ‘No,’ the other snapped querulously, ‘I am not well. My fool of a coachman drove us through the muddiest streets in town, finding out every pothole. I am dizzy with jolting.’

  ‘He has been complaining ever since we left home,’ said Dorothy. ‘He detests dining out, you know, Rendel.’

  ‘Why cannot Rendel come to us, I would like to know? A bachelor has no business to give dinners.’

  Sir Rendel grinned at him and threw out a hand towards the Alderman and his family, making rapid introductions. ‘My brother-in-law, Lord Warburton, and his wife, my sister Dorothy.’

  Alderman Brent rose hurriedly, bowing. Lord Warburton eyed him with incredulous disfavour, then looked reproachfully at Sir Rendel, but was merely given another mischievous smile in reply.

  Cornelia flushed angrily. It was very clear that Sir Rendel’s family found it very odd that he should welcome a mere Alderman into his home. Her father, however, seemed unaware of the hostile atmosphere. He was bowing deeply to Sir Rendel’s sister. She, her plucked eyebrows quivering with distaste, frigidly responded.

  The other two guests were more fashionably dressed. They arrived together; a slender young man called Sir George Lambeth and his wife, Lavinia, whose violet gown was cut so low that Mistress Brent grew stiff as a poker and averted her eyes, and who greeted Sir Rendel with cheerful familiarity, embracing him more fondly than had his sister, her arms clinging round his neck.

  ‘Dearest Rendel, was it really last week I saw you? It seems an age. How handsome you are tonight—but restrained.’ Her big blue eyes danced as she smiled up at him. ‘I am sorry we are late. George could not decide what to wear.’ She glanced round at her husband, half amused, half in contempt. ‘I vow, he takes twice as long to dress as I do.’

  Sir Rendel disentangled himself from her embrace and kissed one of her hands. ‘Lavinia, my sweet,�
�� he murmured, ‘you will make George jealous if you dote upon me quite so obviously.’

  Sir George gazed at them both out of his very pale blue eyes, lifting a lace handkerchief to his mouth languidly. ‘Oh, no, really, Rendel. Jealousy—most unfashionable. ‘

  His wife regarded him blandly. Cornelia suddenly realised that the curling blonde locks were not natural. She could not help but stare. She had never seen anyone with dyed hair before.

  ‘George does not have the energy to be jealous, Rendel. I might flirt with every man I met and he would not mind.’

  Sir George bowed, smiling. ‘I do recall promising to love and cherish, I fancy,’ he drawled, ‘but nothing was said in the marriage service about being jealous.’

  Lord Warburton laughed heavily. ‘Damn, Rendel, the way society is going, a married man who allowed himself to be jealous would suffer the torments of the damned, by God.’ Lavinia looked at Rendel, her pink mouth cynical. ‘It seems that wives are not expected to be unfaithful, you see. Would you be jealous if your wife flirted with other men, Rendel?’

  His face darkened. ‘I would take good care she did not,’ he snapped.*

  Lavinia’s eyes watched him shrewdly. ‘What would you do? Lock her up at Stelling House?’

  ‘I would find a way,’ he said between his teeth.

  His sister intervened dispassionately. ‘Aye, you were always a possessive creature, even as a boy. I remember how you used to pinch me if I sat upon Mama’s lap when we were small.’

  ‘You see, George?’ murmured Lavinia.

  Her husband eyed her languidly. ‘You’re in a damned fanciful mood tonight, Lavinia. If you want me to pinch Rendel for kissing you, you will be disappointed, and I’m not calling him out, either. For one thing, he would carve me into fragments as easily as look at me, and for another, I know perfectly well that you and he were brought up like brother and sister, and I never yet knew of a brother and sister who fell in love.’

  ‘There is no romance left in the world,’ Lavinia sighed.