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

Rendel grinned at her teasingly. ‘What, Vinny? Would you have me spit poor George just for a whim of yours?’

  ‘Poor George might spit you,’ drawled Sir George without heat.

  Rendel bowed with a flourish. ‘Aye, miracles do happen, but you were never a swordsman, George.’

  ‘Do we have to listen to this folly?’ demanded his sister. ‘You have fought too many duels, Rendel. One day you will find yourself facing someone who has more skill than you have—and it will be too late to regret your bravado then.’

  Lord Warburton had been thinking. ‘There’s something amiss with a society that encourages the breaking of marriage vows,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘Ever since the restoration this country has run mad,’ Dorothy agreed. ‘They are like children at a fair. There will be tears before the day is done.’

  The lackey reappeared to announce that dinner was served and the party moved into the dining-room.

  The room was magnificently furnished; candelabra of massive silver, heavy brocade curtains, polished oak furniture and the most beautiful crystal wineglasses that Cornelia had ever seen.

  The meal was elaborate and richly served. Mistress Brent whispered to Cornelia that it was far more impressive than the Lord Mayor’s banquet, since there were so few at the table to eat the huge array of dishes.

  The Alderman, excited, drank far more than was his custom. His face grew very flushed. He talked too loudly, leaning his elbows on the table to argue with Lord Warburton about the activities of the Dutch, and their threat to England’s trade.

  ‘We must be masters of the seas,’ he told him solemnly. ‘Trade is what we live by, and only if we control the passage of our ships can we be safe.’

  Lord Warburton snorted. ‘Sir, while our own shores are defended we are safe enough. Damn trade, I say. Too many foreign goods are brought into the country by you merchants. You will ruin English farming.’ He turned his vast shoulder upon the Alderman and spoke to his brother-in-law. ‘It is certain, now, that there is coal on my estate in Derbyshire. There is talk of forming a company to mine it—it will ruin the fields, though. I do not like to see my land cut open like that.’

  Alderman Brent angrily prodded him. ‘The merchants of this country are its backbone. I sell and buy goods. You breed and sell sheep and cattle. What difference? We both live by trade.’

  Lord Warburton glared at him, eyes bulging. ‘You insult me, sir. I do not live by trade.’ He breathed heavily. ‘Trade. Good God, what next?’

  Sir Rendel rose, scraping his chair back. ‘I think it is high time the ladies withdrew.’

  Somewhat relieved, the ladies hurriedly left the gentlemen to their enjoyment of the battleground, and retired to the drawing-room.

  Lady Warburton, frostily upright, engaged Mistress Brent in probing conversation, clearly designed to discover the exact nature of her brother’s relationship with the Brent family. She glanced, from time to time, at Cornelia, with narrowed eyes, as though suspicious of her.

  Lavinia, seating herself upon a footstool beside Cornelia’s chair, stared up at her intently. ‘Pray, do tell me, how did you come to meet dear Rendel?’

  ‘My father made his acquaintance,’ Cornelia replied coolly.

  Lavinia opened wide her big blue eyes. ‘You must not be offended, Mistress Brent, if I say that it is unusual for Rendel to make friends with the merchant class. He is not only a busy Member of Parliament, when the House is sitting, but he is one of the King’s companions, you know. His interest in your father surprises me.’

  Cornelia met the curious glance openly. ‘I cannot enlighten you, I am afraid. I hardly know Sir Rendel. You must ask him for information yourself.’

  Lavinia laughed lightly. ‘You obviously do not know him very well, as you say, or you would know that Rendel is a perfect oyster when he chooses.’

  Cornelia shrugged. ‘Then you will have to contain your curiosity, will you not?’

  ‘La, do not be so stiff,’ Lavinia said, dimpling. ‘It is only natural to be curious.’ She gave her a sparkling glance. ‘You are a very pretty girl, you know, and Rendel is famous for his love of pretty women.’

  Cornelia grew very red and her eyes snapped angrily. ‘No doubt,’ she said tightly. ‘However, I am not one of the Court ladies, to be pursued and made a public mockery. I dislike Sir Rendel and all men of his kidney.’

  Lavinia’s eyes grew wide again. She stared, opening her mouth to speak again, but at that moment the gentlemen appeared, and the subject was dropped.

  At Lord Warburton’s suggestion, a card table was set up, and most of the party sat down to play a childish, noisy game around it, slapping each other and squabbling over the stakes.

  Cornelia refused to join them, but stayed in her chair, staring at the fire, while one part of her mind angrily went over the conversation she had just had with Lavinia Lambeth.

  She stiffened when Sir Rendel returned from the card table and lowered himself into the chair beside her, lying back with his long legs stretched out towards the flames, his shoes perilously close to the hearth.

  She intended to ignore him, but after a long silence could not resist turning her head, imagining that he must have fallen asleep. Her pulses leapt treacherously as she met the grey eyes.

  ‘Pray, Madame,’ he drawled, ‘do not move. I was enjoying the beauty of your profile. It has a clear stamp which is most fetching, especially when the firelight turns your hair to gold. Your chin is so delicately rounded that were we not in company I should be tempted to kiss it.’

  ‘You would not dare. ‘

  He smiled slowly, his eyes holding hers. ‘Madame, if you knew me better you would not throw down the gauntlet. I will excuse your folly this once—but let me warn you. Issue no more challenges to me. I make it a rule never to refuse them.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She stared, breathless, not sure how to respond to that. But she had to say something, or he might take her silence as a sign that she was tempted. ‘You … You refused a duel with Sir George,’ she said in the end.

  Rendel shook his head. ‘Let me correct you. He refused to challenge me.’

  She remembered the way Lavinia’s arms had clung to his neck, and felt a little hot-cheeked. ‘Would you have done so in his place?’ she asked pointedly.'

  He laughed softly. ‘You do not know Lavinia. She married George for love, but has been trying to remould him ever since into an image nearer her idea of perfection. His languid airs annoy her. She longs to provoke him into a show of jealousy.’ His eyes were warm with amused affection as he glanced across the room at Lavinia. ‘She is a silly child. One day George may take her at her word, and that will break her heart.’

  She watched him closely. ‘And is it your image which she is trying to impose upon her husband?’

  He looked round at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘Shrewd of you. Yes, I fancy it is—yet she would run a mile if I tried to make love to her. Women are strange creatures. Their minds are water.’

  ‘You should not generalise,’ she said flatly. ‘Some women are capable of a serious love.’

  He watched her with narrowed eyes. ‘You mean yourself,’ he murmured. ‘Ah yes. How is the saintly doctor?’

  Her lips trembled. The very thought of Andrew brought a prickling of pain. ‘Why must you always sneer?’ she retorted.

  He leaned forward. ‘I find it such a surprising match—a girl with your spirit and temper, and the quiet doctor. He has an austere face. I imagine he finds your ardent attentions impossible to resist.’ The grey eyes insolently surveyed her, lingering on the white curve of her shoulders. ‘You are a tempting little creature even for a killjoy Puritan.’

  She felt her cheeks burning and, again, that betraying pulse beat at her throat, against her wrists. ‘How dare you?’ she said, and hated him for laughing.

  ‘I thought you had more honesty than that,’ he drawled. ‘You must curb this tendency to mouth conventional nonsense. When we first met, it amused me to hear you
talking to us with the bite of a fish-wife. It was refreshing.’

  She glared at him. ‘I did not intend to amuse you. I only told the truth—you behaved like a pack of mad dogs. Had you been common men, you would have been thrown into prison to moulder for years, and it would have rid the world of a set of poisonous nuisances.’

  He laughed. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but this is not the way in which you address the noble physician?’

  She caught herself up, biting her lip. Andrew would, indeed, have been shocked to hear her. What was happening to her? She did not normally lose her temper with strangers.

  She gave him a cold, contemptuous look.

  It was all his fault. He brought out the worst in her, tried her temper to breaking point. It made her ashamed to realise that, whenever they met, she ended up behaving like a vulgar fish-wife.

  ‘Andrew would never provoke me as you do,’ she told him coldly.

  He leaned back, watching her with the intent gaze of a cat at a mouse-hole, and again she felt her pulses stir into angry life. Rendel Woodham was a dangerous man, shrewd, clever, practised in the art of flirtation, disguising his own thoughts and emotions, but quick to read those of others.

  She looked helplessly into the fire, seeing shadows leaping there, strange images which changed colour and shape as the flames flickered. Her mind was like that lately, full of unfamiliar, dangerous shadows which shifted back and forth, troubling the surface and bewildering her.

  The autumn wore on to winter. Chill winds blew along the narrow alleys. The river was a dull grey under skies leaden with cloud. The pieman huddled in his drab cloak, shouting his wares along Thames Street, and little ragged boys sniffed wistfully after him, their blue-cold fingers trailing along the house walls.

  Cornelia forced herself to go through the usual household routines, sewing, mending torn linen, shopping with Nan. She visited Ellen from time to time, made calls on her friends and helped to entertain the visitors who came to see Alderman Brent.

  Underneath her quiet exterior her mind ached like a sore tooth. She saw little of Andrew. He no longer came to the house to sit with her father. Alderman Brent had new friends now and had no time for the unsophisticated pursuits with which he had once been so satisfied.

  Sir Rendel had introduced him to influential members of the Court circle, and Alderman Brent bent all his energies to pursuing these new friendships.

  To keep pace with these rich friends, he ordered new cloaks, suits, shoes, and bought a magnificent new wig. Even more disturbingly, he began to indulge in the high play which was popular in Court circles. His moral aversion to gambling had, it seems, disappeared. His wife protested in vain. He merely assured her that the important contacts he was making would, in the end, far outweigh the money he had to spend.

  It annoyed Cornelia even more that Sir Rendel was a frequent visitor at the house in Thames Street. He often escorted Mistress Brent to the playhouse, and once he drove the family to visit Mistress Brent’s old father, in his quiet village, sitting in the small parlour, attentive to Grandfather’s rambling tales of days gone by.

  Nan, as always, bluntly expressed her belief that Sir Rendel had dubious motives for his frequent visits.

  ‘I know his kind,’ she muttered as she dressed Cornelia’s hair. ‘He’s only after one thing. He won’t mention marriage—see if I’m wrong. I don’t know what your mother’s thinking of, letting the man come here so often. There’s no fool like an old fool.’

  Cornelia had learnt her lesson, though. She was always blandly courteous to Sir Rendel when she saw him, but found some excuse to leave as soon as possible, although this irritated her mother, and made him smile cynically after her.

  One cold afternoon she met Sir Rendell outside the house as she left, and, since he blocked her path, making a sardonically elaborate bow, was forced to pause and curtsy.

  ‘And what essential business takes you from home today?’ he asked ironically.

  ‘I have to go to church,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘On a Tuesday?’ His brows arched in mockery.

  ‘I am making new hassocks for our pew,’ she defended.

  ‘Your ingenuity is admirable,’ he drawled, nodding at this unlikely explanation. ‘Each time you have a new excuse to avoid my visits.’

  She opened her eyes innocently at him. ‘But, sir, you only come to see my father, after all.’

  ‘Oh, do I?’ he retorted, watching with amusement as her cheeks turned bright pink.

  She gave him an angry, resentful look. He could always make her blush. She must remember not to rise to his bait in future. Lately, she had managed to limit her replies to the flat responses of polite indifference. It had amused her to see him circling, trying to sting some other response from her.

  When she looked back, he was frowning, his grey eyes dark with some new thought. ‘I am surprised, however, that your mother allows you to do so much sick visiting among the poor. You could easily take some contagion. Such matters are best left to those paid to do it.’

  ‘It is our Christian duty to visit the sick,’ she said, angrily determined not to budge from her position. It was the truth. Why, then, did she feel so silly in saying so?

  His lip curled sarcastically. ‘Of course, it has no remote connection with the saintly doctor, whose precepts you follow with such ardour and devotion?’

  ‘Why do you dislike Andrew?’ she asked angrily. ‘I detest cynics. They are too petty-minded to be able to appreciate true heroism and sacrifice.’

  His grey eyes sparked down at her. ‘How precious you become whenever you talk about him,’ he said in amused scorn. ‘I do not dislike the noble physician. I merely object to your constant adulation of him. I cannot help suspecting the motives of a saint who encourages a pretty girl to worship him.’

  ‘He does nothing of the sort,’ she flared.

  His eyes narrowed, alert and watchful. ‘Oh? Do I take it, then, that he is not responsive to your adoring smiles?’

  She turned and walked hurriedly away from him, cheeks burning.

  He did not follow.

  Nan hobbled to keep up with her, mumbling angrily until Cornelia slowed her pace.

  ‘That man is here too often,’ Nan said. ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘Do you think I do?’ snapped Cornelia.

  Nan gave her a hard look. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I sometimes wonder.’

  Cornelia tossed her head. ‘You need not. I hate and detest him. And he knows it.’

  Nan was silent.

  They spent an hour in the echoing church, shivering as the chill of the stone struck through their clothes, and then, with relief, made their way home.

  They met Andrew on the road. Cornelia’s heart contracted. He looked grey and worn, but he smiled when he saw them, his blue eyes startlingly alive in his thin features.

  ‘How is your housekeeper?’ she asked.

  ‘She died in the night,’ he said heavily, the smile disappearing as though it had never been. ‘Another battle lost.’ His lids were blue with fatigue, she saw, the dark shadows beneath his eyes as thickly etched as if they had-been drawn in charcoal.

  ‘You have been up all night with her,’ she accused. ‘You should have some rest. How long can you go on like this?’

  ‘I am as tough as leather,’ he said lightly. ‘You must not judge by my appearance. One good night’s sleep and I shall be fighting fit. But I must engage a new housekeeper today. My house is a shambles. I had a maid while there was some hope of recovery, but she was a useless creature. Do you know of anyone who would be glad of a good place?’

  ‘Had you thought of Ellen?’ she asked at once. ‘Now that her husband’s death is certain, she needs money badly.’

  His smile came back. ‘Why did I not think of that? I will go and see her now. She can bring her children. I would like to have children in the house.’

  She looked at him, eager words trembling on her lips, but said nothing. She wanted to tell him
that if he married he could have children of his own, and no longer need to pay a housekeeper. But it would not be appropriate. Instead, she said goodbye calmly, without a sign, and walked on to her own home.

  ‘If Ellen has an ounce of sense, she’ll marry him,’ said Nan flatly.

  Cornelia grew icy cold.

  She looked sideways at Nan in horror. ‘Marry him? Andrew?’

  Nan grunted. ‘Why not? It would be cheaper for him and safer for her. There will be talk, a young widow living in his house alone with him. Of course, it won’t enter his head, but Ellen’s no fool.’

  Cornelia remembered Andrew telling her he would never marry. Or had he said that? No, he had said that there was no room in his life for anything but his profession. Well, that was the same meaning, after all. He would not marry Ellen.

  She was annoyed, when she returned home, to find Sir Rendel seated in the parlour with her parents. She had expected him to be gone by the time she returned.

  Her father’s temper had been very short these last few days, but he seemed cheerful enough now, and beamed at her as she entered the room.

  ‘All, there you are, Cornelia. Here is Sir Rendel. He has something to say to you.’ He stood up and kissed her on the cheek, then held out his hand to his wife. ‘Come, wife, we will leave them alone.’

  Cornelia felt a flurry of alarm as her parents hurried out, and would have followed them, but Sir Rendel caught at her arm as she walked towards the door, and held her back from leaving.

  She looked up at him, her heart beating so loudly that she was certain he must hear it. The grey eyes were darkly intent. Quickly she looked away again.

  Her father’s remark could have only one meaning. She felt a queer tremor of nervous anticipation. Sir Rendel was going to ask her to marry him. It seemed hardly credible. Their social positions were so remote. And, too, there was his reputation. He was not a marrying man. Everyone had said so.

  She waited, staring at the floor. Through her mind ran one sharp dart of triumph. She could not silence the thought that Rendel Woodham must want her badly to be prepared to marry her. It was shameful that that thought should please her so deeply, but her feminine instincts quickened into a fierce blaze.