How to Marry a Rake (15 page)

Unrepentant, she cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Stephen. I can do a great many things. And I do most of them extremely well.’

‘Perhaps I should have said “won’t” instead. Because from my perspective, the list of things that you should do, but won’t, is longer than my arm.’ He took the risk and entered the shadows of the barn. ‘Certainly you refuse to listen to perfectly rational suggestions—even when they are meant to safeguard your welfare.’

‘Suggestions? Your suggestions sound unfortunately like orders. I have told you repeatedly how I feel about that. I have no wish to be ordered about and treated like my brain caved in when my bosom popped out!’

Her flippancy made him insane. He’d worked himself into a frenzy riding all the way out here. ‘Can’t, won’t. Suggestions, orders. Stop arguing about semantics, Mae! The end result of your folly will be the same, should anyone find out about this little jaunt.’ He stalked towards her, but she held her ground. Like always. Just once he wished he could frighten her enough to
listen.
He grabbed her arms. ‘I won’t see you ruined!’

‘I cannot see where it is any of your concern.’ She scowled up at him. ‘Kissing me twice in twenty-four hours does not give you any say in my future.’

‘If you have a future,’ he said scathingly. He let go of one arm and tugged on the other. ‘Come, we need to get you back to Titchley.’

She resisted. ‘Don’t you even wish to know what I’ve found out?’

‘Nothing you could have discovered would be worth the risk you’ve taken.’ He paused. ‘I harbour serious doubts regarding your theory that Charlotte Hague stole Ryeton’s horse as a parting shot in their relationship.’ He crossed his arms. ‘Did she?’

‘No.’ The admittance came out sulky, like a child’s. ‘But Ryeton does have a bay boarded here.’

He dropped her other arm and stared at her in disbelief. She gestured to the farthest stall. His heart rate ratcheting, he crossed to look.

‘That’s not Pratchett,’ he said, his gut heavy with disappointment.

‘No, but it is odd that he would keep a horse out here, isn’t it?’

‘Four white feet, do without him,’ Stephen mused.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Nothing, it’s just an old superstition. It goes something like this:

One white foot, buy him

Two white feet, try him

Three white feet, look well about him

Four white feet, do without him.’

 

‘Well, fortunately we’re not looking to buy him,’ Mae said with sarcasm. ‘Although maybe that is why he’s here? Could Ryeton be selling off his stables? From some things that Miss Hague said, I’m beginning to suspect Ryeton might be having financial difficulties.’

He sighed, suddenly more weary than angry. ‘Did she
say
he was having financial difficulties?’

‘Not outright, but several things she mentioned suggested the possibility. She did say that his—’

Stephen threw up a hand. ‘Stop. I don’t care what she said. I only care about getting you safely—and quickly—back home. Who knows what Charlotte Hague is going to say when she gets back to Newmarket?’

‘She won’t say anything. She thinks I am a fledgling lightskirt.’

He shuddered. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? Oh, Lord. Fine, then, let’s get you out of here before the farmer who owns this place shows up and finds us here.’

‘So what if he does? Will you shout my name at him?’

‘I won’t have to! Think, Mae. You are not exactly a fade-into-the-background sort of girl. Everyone in Newmarket and its vicinity will have heard of the beautiful and rambunctious heiress with the gold hair. How long do you think it will take that woman—or this hypothetical farmer—to work out who you are? Our best defence is to have you safe and sound at home, with no one else the wiser about this idiotic adventure of yours.’

Her expression had softened. ‘Beautiful?’ she asked softly. But then she frowned. ‘Idiotic?’

‘Yes—to both of those words. There are a host of others I could throw in. Irritating. Exasperating.’
Mine.
He brushed that thought away and took her arms again, this time with a gentle touch. ‘I am not trying to stifle you. Don’t you see, Mae? You say that you are resolved
not to live a life where no one knows or respects the real you. But how much worse would it be if everyone refused to know or accept you at all?
I’m
resolved that you should never know the pain of seeing your friends and family abandon you.’

He slid his hands along her arms to take hers. ‘You are indeed rambunctious and irritating, but you are also happy and fun and full of life and energy. I don’t ever want to see you left alone to grow lonely and listless.’

Comprehension chased the obstinate expression from her pretty face. Some of the tension melted from her frame. ‘Like your mother.’

His every muscle tensed. How could he speak of it? He never had—not even with his brother Nicholas. It had been the secret they kept for and with their mother—even after her death.

And look what disaster that secret had wrought! It—and his irresponsibility—had destroyed Fincote. Speaking of it now would be painful, dangerous even, but he would lay bare at least part of the awful truth if it kept Mae from ruining her life.

He sighed. ‘Yes, like my mother. I know her scandal occurred on a grand scale, but it only takes a small scandal to ruin a young woman.’

‘But … I know it must have been horrible for her—when your father left, I mean. But none of it was her fault—surely once the talk died down—’

Bitterly, he interrupted her. ‘You are right about that—not a bit of it was her fault. She wasn’t a shrew or spendthrift or a wanton. She was merely a wife whose husband loved another. So much so that he couldn’t live without her.’

‘But your father recovered eventually, socially, I mean. Even Lady Catherine was accepted after they stayed together for so many years. And your brothers and your sisters have done well.’

‘Yes, Father and Lady Catherine recovered.’ The bitterness had drained away, leaving only resignation. ‘And they wouldn’t have cared if they hadn’t, for they had each other, and their crowd of loyal, if fast, friends and all of us children. But my mother was left alone to bear the brunt of society’s cruelty. She wasn’t living openly with a lover, but still she was mocked, shunned and ridiculed. And, ultimately, forgotten.’

He rubbed a hand across his brow. ‘Her pain and shame were burdens too heavy for her to overcome. She hid away, with sorrow and disgrace as her only companions.’

‘I never knew,’ Mae said. ‘All the time I spent at Welbourne Manor and I never thought … Her words died away and she moved closer.

‘No one ever thought of her. She lived alone, nursing her grief. It ate at her until she died.’

Her eyes filled with the tears that he had never let fall. ‘Oh, Stephen, I remember that you and Nicholas would sometimes go to visit her.’ She stopped abruptly. Her hands slipped from his and circled around his waist. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry.’ His tone had gone harsh with emotion. ‘Just don’t let it happen to you.’ Her arms tightened and he knew he should step back. Away. But the barn had grown dimmer and the light inside Mae was shining through, glowing from every inch of exposed skin and pricking him with tiny rays of her warmth.
‘I’m not my father, Mae. I couldn’t bear to be responsible for your disgrace, the reason for your suffering.’

When had she ended up in his embrace? She cradled his jaw in her hand. ‘No. I think you’ve enough burdens,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll do my best not to add to them.’

All of Stephen’s anger and fear had gone. There was nothing now except the feel of her yielding curves and soft heat. There was no mischief between them now. No bickering. Only the tenderness in her eyes and the racing of his heart.

Her hands came up. His brain gave a last feeble try, shouting out a distant warning, but it was no match for the much closer press of her bosom to his chest or the rush of desire clogging his veins. He closed his eyes, went under and pulled her close for his kiss.

Chapter Thirteen

H
er heart overflowing, Mae leaned into Stephen’s kiss. He’d done it. It had been horribly difficult for him, that much had been obvious, but he’d opened a piece of his heart to her in a way that he never had before.

And this time it hadn’t been due to her prodding and probing. At last he’d taken the step himself, grabbed both edges of a tiny crack and pulled it wider, shared a dark part of his past that he clearly didn’t care to—and he’d done it to protect her.

She well remembered the times when Stephen and Nicholas had gone away to visit their mother at Fincote Park, how Nicholas had nearly always been subdued when they returned, but Stephen had come back full of energy, almost frantic in his desire to play a bigger prank, tell a better joke, or make everyone laugh until their sides hurt.

His desire for attention as a boy made perfect sense now. How horribly it must have hurt those brothers to see their mother fading away, retreating from life. How
frightened Stephen must have been that the same thing might happen to him.

She mourned for his sad mother, and for all the years that he had carried such a burden all alone. But she also revelled in this new openness, and in the incredible difference in this kiss. Their other embraces had been full of heat and excitement, thick with desire—and with more than a hint of combat. This … felt more like a plea. She could almost feel his inner turmoil begin to quiet.

She feared the opposite was happening to her. Her body was vibrating as his hands moved over her. He made her feel alive in a hundred places, in a thousand ways.

He broke their kiss and buried his face in the angle of her neck. She gasped. His tongue brushed her ear-lobe at the same time as his hands closed over her breasts and a line of fire jumped to life between all three points. A moan tore its way out of her. She was burning, from the inside out.

She didn’t care. She wanted more.

There was no undoing the many tiny buttons marching up the back of her habit. Stephen didn’t even try. He just pinched her nipple through the heavy fabric of her habit with one hand and started pulling up her skirts with the other.

And she was helping him. He pressed her up against a rough wall and she lifted her leg up high, along with her climbing skirts. She wrapped it around him, dug her fingers into his hair and held on. Stephen was above her and around her, solid and reassuring. Her position
should have felt precarious, but she’d never felt safer. Or more filled with hope.

His fingers slid along the length of her leg, following the sweep of her garter on to the soft flesh of her inner thigh.
Yes.

‘No.’ Stephen pulled his mouth from hers, but his fingers were still creeping higher. ‘We should not be doing this.’

She suppressed a groan and agreed with him instead. ‘You’re right, we shouldn’t.’ But she hitched her leg higher, opening to him in a way she’d never done before. The thrill of it, the
rightness
of it set her heart to soaring.

His breath stirred in her hair. A cool breeze whispered along the bare skin of her leg. But the spot where Stephen’s fingers touched now was molten hot.

She jumped.

‘We can’t do … everything, Mae. We shouldn’t even have gone this far.’

She only moved against his hand.

He moaned. It was capitulation and she rejoiced to hear it. She’d never felt closer to Stephen than she did right now, and still it wasn’t enough.

Suddenly he reached down and grasped both her legs. He lifted her easily until she straddled him and carried her over to a ladder leading to a hayloft. She felt the heat and hardness of him with every step.

‘There should be a clean bed of hay up there.’ His words came out a statement, but Mae saw the question in his eyes.

Emphatically, she nodded.

* * *

 

Stephen had spent a good part of his lifetime engaged in a variety of selfish and destructive pursuits, but what he was about to do with Mae just might be the worst.

He’d tried to stop, but her insistence had won out over the creaky objections of his conscience. There was nothing left now but the heat at her core, pressing against him, and the sure, inexorable pull of desire. He shifted her to his shoulder with an ease that left her gasping and quickly ascended.

He’d been right. Here was a loft full of clean and sweet-smelling hay. Gently he laid her down and stretched out beside her. She pulled him close and the sweetness of her touch and the joy in her face erased all of his doubts, melting them into irresistible need.

He kissed her again, enjoying the taste and the scent of her. It was only moments before her skirts were lifted high once more, baring a mile of silky, slender leg. He trailed teasing fingers along the milk-white inside of her thigh. She threw her head back and laughed at the sensation.

He looked down into Mae’s face, alight with happiness, and he knew that she wanted this. Hell and damnation, he wanted it too, more than he’d ever wanted anything. But nothing was settled between them.

He couldn’t deny that Mae was in his blood. She was so much more than he’d ever given her credit for—not just a genius at mischief, but intelligent and full of quick wit and sly humour that called to him like the pull of a magnet. She set him aflame with her innate sensuality.

But this was a pivotal moment, one that could very well set the course for both of their lives. It was not a decision he should be making with his raging member. He had a racecourse that he’d worked hard to build and all the people associated with it counting on him. He had a reputation to build, and the undeniable need to prove himself. He could not abandon his task, not even for this.

And Mae had a mission of her own. Was she even thinking how perilous this course of action could be?

‘Mae?’ he asked seriously. ‘Are you still practising your wiles?’

She laughed. ‘Do I need practice? I’d thought it obvious they were up to the job.’

He waited. She grew serious.

‘What’s worrying you, Stephen?’

‘I don’t know. Things are different between us now.’

She smiled. ‘Indeed they are. For example, I don’t remember doing this.’ She cupped him with her hand.

Involuntarily he pressed against her. ‘Lord, Mae. We have to stop.’

She groaned and pulled away, pressing her hand to her eyes. ‘Yes, Stephen,’ she said in tone of utter frustration.
‘This
has to stop. I can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep doing this! You are open, then you are closed. You push and pull me until I don’t know which way is up.’

With horror he recognised the truth of her words.

She took her hand away, met his gaze without guile. ‘You’re making me miserable.’

Lord, but he knew what she meant. He was miserable
too. And yet somehow he was, at the same time, happier than he could ever remember.

He grabbed her fingers, held them tight to his chest. ‘I know. We’re caught up in the physical, now. And in the excitement of the search for Pratchett, too. But later, when we are not alone in a barn and we’ve either found that damned horse or failed, things might look different.’

She pulled back to look him in the eye. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I meant what I said earlier—I won’t be like my father. I won’t leave you to face the consequences of my actions. And I won’t make you promises that I’m not even sure I’m capable of keeping.’ He ran a caressing finger along the wonderfully stubborn length of her jaw. ‘I’m saying that I’m as miserable and happy and terrified as you, but I think we should just … wait. Let’s finish what we started, not only with Pratchett, but we’ll carry on with your mission too.’

‘And then?’

‘And then, we’ll see how we feel when all of this is over.’

She looked suddenly worried, and he wondered if it was because her feelings might change—or if she feared they wouldn’t.

‘Oh, very well,’ she grumped. ‘But it seems a shame to waste a perfectly good hayloft.’

He looked at her. Her hair was tousled and her lips were swollen from his kisses. Her skirts were still hiked around her thighs.

And suddenly he was tired of holding back, of keeping every damned thing out of her reach. There was
one thing he could give her, one gift to symbolise the fragile new hope he felt in his heart. He leaned down, buried his fingers among her curls and sealed his lips to hers. He put everything into that kiss, all of his old loneliness and his new longings, as well as the promise of the pleasure he was going to show her.

He couldn’t wait—and her eager movements beneath his hand told him he didn’t have to. Searching, he found the heated heart of her.

Ahh. She was wet and ready. He slid his finger along her folds and she exhaled her approval. Back and forth he traced over her, just a little deeper with each stroke. Her breath began to come high and fast, her whole body tensed with the force of her passion.

Ever so softly he eased higher, to meet the hard centre of her desire. Gently he greeted it, circling, rubbing lightly and drinking in with pleasure all the wonderful soft sounds and swift movements of her response.

Without warning, she convulsed. Her head thrown back, and her hips jerking against his hand, she came beautifully apart. He drank in the sight even as he pressed the hot ridge of his length against her thigh.

She collapsed against him. For several agonising moments he struggled for control. But then she lolled her head back onto his shoulder and looked him in the eye.

‘I had no idea,’ she said in wonder.

Stephen laughed and kissed her on the nose.

‘Neither did I.’