A Rake's Vow (45 page)

Loving her.

He’d used the words in the physical sense. For herself, she thought first in terms of the emotion, with the act the physical outpouring. Until last night, she’d assumed Vane’s meaning was strictly physical—after last night, she wasn’t so sure.

Last night, the physical had reached new heights, intensified by some force too powerful to be confined within limbs and flesh. She’d felt it, tasted it, gloried in it—she’d come to know it in herself. Last night, she’d recognized it in him.

Drawing a slow breath, she stared at the cruet set.

She was certain of what she’d sensed but—and here was the rub—he was such an accomplished lover, could he conjure that, too, without it being real? Was what she’d sensed simply a facade created by his undoubted expertise?

Setting down her teacup, she straightened. It was tempting to imagine that she might, perhaps, have misjudged, and his “love” was deeper than she’d supposed. She distrusted that conclusion. It was too neat—too self-serving. One part of her mind was trying to talk the rest into it. Into entertaining the notion that he might love her in the same way she loved him.

As distractions went, that won the crown.

Lips tightening, she picked up her well-buttered toast and crunched. After arriving on her threshold unheralded, he’d taken himself off the same way—before she’d had time to wake up, let alone think. But if what she thought was even half-true, she wanted to know. Now.

She glanced at the clock; it would be hours before he called.

“I say, can you pass the butter?”

Setting aside her impatience, Patience handed Edmond the butter dish. Beside him, Angela smiled brightly. Idly scanning the faces opposite, Patience encountered Alice Colby’s black-eyed stare. Intensely cold, black-eyed stare.

Alice kept staring. Patience wondered if her topknot was askew. She was about to turn to Gerrard to ask—

Alice’s features contorted. “
Scandalous
!” Uttered in a voice hoarse with righteous fury, the exclamation cut across the conversations. All heads turned; all eyes, startled, fixed on Alice. Who clapped her knife down on the table. “I don’t know
how
you can, miss! Sitting there like a lady, taking breakfast with decent folk.” Face mottling, Alice pushed back her chair. “I, for one, do not intend to put up with it a moment longer.”

“Alice?” From the bottom of the table, Minnie stared. “What is this nonsense?”

“Nonsense?
Hah
!” Alice nodded at Patience. “Your niece is a fallen woman—do you call that nonsense?”

Stunned silence gripped the table.

“Fallen woman?” Whitticombe leaned forward to follow Alice’s gaze.

The others looked, too. Patience kept her gaze steady on Alice’s; her face had frozen, luckily in a relaxed expression. She was leaning on her elbows, her hands, steady, gripping her teacup. Outwardly, she consciously exuded calm; inside, her wits whirled. How to respond? Coolly, she raised one brow, faintly incredulous.

“
Really
, Alice!” Minnie frowned disapprovingly. “The things you do imagine!”

“
Imagine
?” Alice sat bolt upright. “I didn’t imagine a large gentleman in the corridor in the middle of the night!”

Gerrard shifted. “That was Vane.” He glanced at Henry and Edmond, then looked at Minnie. “He came upstairs with us when we got in.”

“Yes. Indeed.” Distinctly pale, Edmond cleared his throat. “He . . . ah . . .” He glanced at Minnie.

Who nodded, and looked at Alice. “See, there’s a perfectly logical explanation.”

Alice glowered. “That doesn’t explain why he walked down the corridor to your niece’s room.”

Timms sighed. Dramatically. “Alice, Minnie doesn’t have to explain all she does to everyone. After the disappearance of her pearls, naturally, Vane has been keeping an eye on the house. When he returned to the house late, he simply did a last watchman’s round.”

“Naturally.” Minnie nodded, chins in unison. “Just the sort of thing he would do.” She glanced, challengingly, at Alice. “He’s very considerate in such ways. As for these aspersions you’re casting on both Patience’s and Vane’s characters, you should really be careful of making outrageous accusations without foundation.”

Flags flew in Alice cheeks. “I
know
what I saw—”

“Alice! That’s enough.” Whitticombe rose; his gaze locked with his sister’s. “You mustn’t distress people with your fantasies.”

There was an emphasis in his words Patience didn’t understand. Alice gaped. Then her color surged. Hands clenched, she glared at her brother. “I am
not
—”

“Enough!” Leaving his seat, Whitticombe quickly rounded the table. “I’m sure everyone will excuse us. You’re clearly overwrought.”

He manhandled Alice, incoherent with rage, from her chair and locked an arm about her scrawny shoulders. With a strained smile for the rest of the company, he turned her and marched her, stiff-legged, from the room.

Slightly dazed, Patience watched them go. And wondered how she’d weathered potential calamity without uttering a single word.

The answer was obvious, but she didn’t understand it.

Somewhat subdued, the rest of the household dispersed. All made a point of smiling at Patience, to show they hadn’t believed Alice’s slander.

Retreating to her room, Patience paced. Then she heard the tap of Minnie’s cane in the corridor. An instant later, Minnie’s door opened, then shut.

An instant after that, Patience tapped on the panels, then entered. Minnie was easing into an armchair by the windows. She beamed at Patience.

“Well! That was a bit of unexpected excitement.”

Patience fought not to narrow her eyes. Indeed, she fought to retain a proper degree of calm in the face of Minnie’s twinkling eyes. Timms’s smug smile.

They knew. And
that
was even more scandalous, to her thinking, than the fact Vane had spent the night—a number of nights—in her bed.

Lips thinning, Patience swept to the windows, and fell to pacing alongside Minnie. “I need to explain—”

“No.” Minnie held up a commanding hand. “Actually, you need to keep your lips shut and concentrate on not saying anything I don’t wish to hear.”

Patience stared at her; Minnie grinned.

“You don’t understand—”

“On the contrary, I understand very well.” Minnie’s impish smile surfaced. “Better than you, I’ll warrant.”

“It’s obvious,” Timms chimed in. “But these things take time to sort themselves out.”

They thought she and Vane would marry. Patience opened her mouth to set them right. Minnie caught her eye. Reading the stubborness behind Minnie’s faded blue gaze, Patience snapped her lips shut. And muttered through them, “It’s not that simple.”

“Simple? Bah!” Minnie fluffed up her shawls. “You should be relieved. Simple and easy is never worthwhile.”

Pacing again, Patience recalled similar words—after a moment, she placed them as Lucifer’s—to Vane. Arms folded, pacing slowly, she wrestled with her thoughts, her feelings. She should, she supposed, feel some measure of guilt, of shame. She felt neither. She was twenty-six; she’d made a rational decision to take what life offered her—she’d embarked on an affair with an elegant gentleman with her eyes fully open. And she’d found happiness—perhaps not forever, but happiness nonetheless. Bright moments of glory infused with heady joy.

She felt no guilt, and not the slightest regret. Not even for Minnie would she deny the fulfillment she’d found in Vane’s arms.

But honesty insisted she set the record straight—she couldn’t leave Minnie imagining wedding bells on the breeze. Drawing a deep breath, she halted by Minnie’s chair. “I haven’t accepted Vane’s proposal.”

“Very wise.” Timms bent over her stitching. “The last thing you want is a Cynster taking you for granted.”

“What I’m
trying
to say—”

“Is that you’re far too wise to accept without being convinced. Without gaining a few meaningful assurances.” Minnie looked up at her. “My dear, you’re going about this in precisely the right way. Cynsters never give ground easily—their version of the matter is that, once seized, things, even wives, become theirs. The fact that in the instance of a wife, they might need to negotiate a trifle won’t at first enter their heads. And even when it does, they’ll try to ignore the issue as far as you’ll allow them. I’m really very proud of you, standing firm like this. Until you gain sufficient promises, sufficient concessions, you most certainly shouldn’t agree.”

Patience stood, stock-still, for a full minute, staring into Minnie’s face. Then she blinked. “You
do
understand.”

Minnie raised her brows. “Of course.”

Timms snorted. “Just make sure he gets it right.”

Minnie grinned. Reaching out, she squeezed Patience’s hand. “It’s up to you to judge what will finally tip the scales. However, I have a few sage words, if you’ll accept advice from an old woman who knows both you and Vane better than either of you seem to realize?”

Patience blushed. She waited, suitably penitent.

Minnie’s grin turned wry. “There are three things you should remember. One, Vane is not your father. Two, you are not your mother. And, three, don’t imagine—not for a moment—that you won’t be marrying Vane Cynster.”

Patience looked long into Minnie’s wise eyes, then turned aside and sank onto the window seat.

Minnie, of course, was right. She’d hit all three proverbial nails soundly on the head.

She had from the first visited her father’s character on Vane. Now, holding one up against the other, that was patently a false image, a superficial glamor. Vane was an “elegant gentleman” in appearance only, not in character. Not in any of the ways that were important to her.

As for her not being her mother, that was unquestionably true. Her mother had possessed a quite different nature—if her mother had sighted her father going into a conservatory with a youthful beauty, she would have put on her most brittle smile and clung to the pretense of not knowing. Not for her such meekness.

She knew what would have transpired if the beauty Vane had retired with had not been so innocent—so related. It would not have been a pleasant scene. While her mother had accepted infidelity as her lot, she would accept no such thing.

If she married Vane . . . The thought drew her into a daydream—of ifs, buts, and possibilities. Of how they’d interact, adjust to each other, if she took the risk, grabbed fate by the throat, and accepted him. It was a full five minutes before her mind moved on and the implication of Minnie’s third statement dawned.

Minnie had known Vane from childhood. She also understood her own dilemma, that she would insist on love as her talisman for the future. That she would not accept Vane without his love declared. And Minnie was sure, convinced beyond all possibility, that she and Vane would marry.

Patience blinked. Abruptly, she looked at Minnie and discovered her aunt waiting, watching, a deep smile in her old eyes.

“Oh.” Lips lifting, her heart leaping, Patience could think of nothing more to say.

Minnie nodded. “Precisely.”

The incident at breakfast cast a long shadow. When the household sat down to lunch, the conversation was subdued. Patience noted it, but, her heart light, paid it little heed. She was waiting, as patiently as she could, to see Vane. To look deep into his eyes, to search for what Minnie was so certain must be there, concealed behind his elegant gentleman’s mask.

He hadn’t appeared for their usual midmorning drive. As she settled her skirts, Patience wryly reflected that, even a few days ago, she would have interpreted his absence as evidence of waning desire. Now, buoyed by an inner confidence, she was convinced that only some urgent matter to do with Minnie’s pearls would have kept him from her side. The inner glow that went with that confidence was very pleasant indeed.

Alice did not join the table. As if in apology for her morning’s outburst, Whitticombe set himself to be more pleasant than usual. Edith Swithins, beside him, was the main beneficiary of his careful erudition. At the end of one particularly tedious explanation, she beamed.

“How fascinating.” Her gaze alighted on Edgar, sitting opposite. “But dear Edgar has studied that period, too. As I recall, his conclusions were different?” Her tone made the words a question. Everyone at the table held their breath.

Except Edgar, who launched into his own perspective.

To everyone’s amazement, even, Patience suspected, Edith’s and Edgar’s, Whitticombe listened. His attitude had about it the air of gritted teeth, but he heard Edgar out, then nodded curtly. “Quite possibly.”

Patience caught Gerrard’s eye and fought to suppress a giggle.

Edmond, still pale and limply disheveled, chased a pea around his plate. “Actually, I was wondering when we might be heading back to the Hall.”

Patience stiffened. Beside her, Gerrard straightened. They both looked at Minnie.

So did Edmond. “I really should get on with my drama, and there’s precious little inspiration, and a great deal of distraction, here in town.”

Minnie smiled. “Bear with the foibles of an old lady, my dear. I’ve no immediate plans to return to the Hall. Besides, there’s only a skeleton staff left—we gave the maids leave, and Cook has gone to visit her mother.”

“Oh.” Edmond blinked. “No cook. Ah.” He subsided into silence.

Surreptitiously, Patience grimaced at Gerrard. He shook his head, then turned to speak to Henry.

Patience glanced—for the fiftieth time—at the clock.

The door opened; Masters entered, his expression stiff. Approaching Minnie’s chair, he bent and spoke quietly. Minnie blanched. Her face grew instantly old.

From the end of the table, Patience looked her concern and her question. Minnie saw; sinking back in her chair, she gestured to Masters to speak.

He cleared his throat, gathering all attention. “Some . . . gentlemen from Bow Street have arrived. It seems a report was lodged. They’ve come with a warrant to search the house.”

An instant of stunned silence ensued, then cacophony erupted. Exclamations of shock and surprise came from all sides. Henry and Edmond competed for prominence.