Once a Rake (Drake's Rakes) (28 page)

Sarah had never thought that Lizzie knew the truth about her. But she must have. She must have remembered Sarah’s visits, or she wouldn’t assume Sarah knew about the steps. Sarah’s heart squeezed at the thought they might have shared that memory. That they might have reached out to each other as more than friends.

“What about the new duke?” Ian asked. “Is he the one keeping you away?”

Scrubbing at her tired face, Sarah nodded. “I don’t blame him really. Who wants his father’s saintly image tarnished by such scandal? If you knew the old duke, you would understand. He might have gone mad later in life, but it was more visions and miracles, not the chase-the-chambermaids-in-his-drawers kind of thing. Ronald is definitely not interested in people learning that the duke had an extra daughter.”

“Why should anyone know simply because you came to Ripton Hall?”

Sarah laughed. “You’ve obviously not met the duke or his siblings. The Riptons are all butter stamps of the old duke. I might not be as identical as the others, but a discerning eye would be quick to identify me. Ronald lives in dread of discerning eyes.”

“But you said your sister was a friend from school.”

“Yes, well, Ronald had no notion of my pedigree until his father died. Within two weeks of that, I was married, my silence secured and my sisters’ names protected. No one knows about me. No one ever can know. It was the price of my dowry.”

Since there really wasn’t much else to say, Ian kept his silence. Sarah did her best to keep her posture. She was far too vulnerable right now, too susceptible to the comfort of him. The hard, broad expanse of his warrior’s body, the great warmth of his heart. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in his arms and close her eyes. To listen to that heart steadily beat, a reminder that there was honor and strength in the world. That there were others who offered to carry burdens.

“When will I go home?” she asked, eyes closed.

Moments passed, broken only by the rhythmic crunch of Harvey’s hooves through the underbrush. Again Sarah held her breath, not sure exactly what she was awaiting.

“I don’t know,” Ian finally admitted. “Everything depends on whether I am cleared of charges. If so, you could return as early as next week. If not . . .”

Sarah wondered if she would ever be able to breathe again. She thought briefly of how impatient her life had been making her. Was it too much of a cliché to wish every slogging, wearying moment back? She detested the unknown.

“If you don’t mind,” Ian said a few moments later, “we need to cover ground. It’s beginning to cloud up, and I don’t want to be out in the rain. Where away then, lass?”

She took a look around. She thought they might have been on Denhay Road near Broadoak. “I fear I am not as familiar with this area, but I believe we should follow this road ’til we reach a road sign. At this point, we are looking for Netherbury.”

Behind her he chuckled. “You seem awfully good at this. You haven’t done it before, have you?”

She shuddered. “Not even in my dreams.” Actually, her nightmares. There was no worse possibility to an orphan than finding herself out on a road with nowhere to go and no idea how to get there. Which just made her wonder how she had allowed herself to end up in that precise position.

“Speaking of unpleasant situations,” she said. “You should know that if we take the most direct route to Ripton Hall, we will pass through Cousin Martin’s estate.”

“We’ll have to take a chance,” Ian answered. “We have no time to waste.”

She nodded against his chest. “Try not to attract attention, then, if you will.”

She could hear a smile in his voice. “Believe it or not,” he answered, “I am quite good at going unnoticed. Of course, a hat would have helped.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “I shall keep an eye out for clotheslines.”

They took the small lanes north and east, from Wootten Fitzpaine to Monkwood, passing darkened hamlets one after another on Harvey’s strong back. Sarah kept an eye out for road signs, and an ear out for other hoofbeats.

“I had no idea the dark was quite
this
dark,” she said at one point as she attempted to read a crossroad sign in the Stygian gloom. “I cannot see a thing. I will be amazed if we don’t end up in Wales.”

Mostly they kept their silence. In contrast to the harried, anxious pace of the last few weeks, suddenly time stretched and slowed, the night so silent Sarah could hear herself breathe. The exhaustion she had been fighting off caught up with her, and the cold had time to collect in each bone and sinew.

It should have been soothing. Sarah liked silence. She liked the dark. But that was because it usually meant a temporary surcease from responsibility and recrimination. This time the silence seemed not restful, but disturbingly empty. A void that inevitably began to fill with emotions, like a caldera that began to bubble in her chest.

It began quietly enough. The cold began to creep in. When Sarah shivered, Ian opened his oversized coat and buttoned it around both of them. Pulling her more closely against his chest, he bent his head over her, providing a cocoon against the night.

His heat quickly surrounded her. His scent, his strength, his protection. And most disturbing of all, the very obvious evidence of his arousal against her bottom. Her own body, so unacquainted with real desire, flared like a rocket at the feel of him, the horse and leather scent of him. She felt hot and cold and oddly liquid, as if all her strength, all her determination was melting within her from no more than the wash of Ian’s breath against her neck. She wanted nothing more than never to move from where she rested against him, his massive arms pulling her into the solace of his embrace. To lift her face to his and once again meld her mouth with his. She wanted his kiss, his touch, his fire. She wanted those large powerful hands on her body; she wanted him inside her.

It was a noisy feeling, all maelstrom and uncertainty. Wanting and fearing and wishing, all tumbling about in her until she thought the cacophony of it should wake every bird in Dorset.

If she could have, she would have simply sunk into that storm without a trace. She would have smiled into the darkness and snuggled closer to Ian.

But it was not that simple. Alone, those feelings could have been withstood. But sometime deep in the night, as they plodded along across the rolling farmland, illuminated only by blurring starlight, something more insidious crept over her. Something even more unsettling to her frayed peace of mind. Something that spread like ground fog in the morning, low and uncertain and unnerving, that mixed inexorably with the very real need for warmth and comfort and closeness.

She sat the horse with Ian’s arms around her, his head tucked over hers, his breath warming her neck, and into the thick silence of the night, a memory crystallized. She had been at school, tucked away with her friends in the grim little dormer with its mold-stained ceiling and gray-blanketed beds. Lying on one of the beds atop the bright yellow afghan her mother had sent, Pippin was saying how it wasn’t until she walked into the family library that she felt truly at home. The smell of leather and old paper, the late afternoon light slanting in through the mullioned windows and glancing off the dancing dust motes, the hush of thick Turkish carpets and the warm, honey-colored oak of the wainscoting. That, she said, was the feeling of home. The timeless sense of belonging, of comfort, of stability. As much a hug as her mother’s arms.

Oh, no, said Lizzie, sitting at her desk working on a sampler for her sister’s birthday. Her mother’s garden. Stepping out the parlor doors to see the precisely trimmed geometrics constructed of boxwoods and pansies, breathing in the heady scent of evergreens, a hundred different kinds of roses, honeysuckle and lilies and iris. Watching the larks tumble in the air over the glittering little ornamental pond. The sun-warmed stone wall she sat against as she sketched the scene. That, she said, was home. It was safety and understanding and acceptance.

No, Fiona disagreed, worrying an old silver penannular brooch in her hands. The smell of peat smoke and heather and wool. The sharp white of a whitewashed stone cottage with thatch over your head and a fire always lit. Bannocks and the familiar drape of a plaid and her mother humming as she cooked. Affection and support and the knowledge that at least in that place she could be brave.

They had turned to Sarah then, where she sat against her plain headboard, her hands empty and her feet curled under her so they couldn’t see her darned stockings.

“What about you?” Pippin asked, not realizing what an idyll her life had been.

Sarah could still remember how lost she had felt trying to answer the question. How could she explain that she had nothing to compare? That this notion of home seemed an exotic land to which she would never be invited. That she ached with black, thick envy at the pictures they painted, because she simply didn’t understand.

No one in her right mind would say such things about the vicarage, with its grim décor, unrelieved gloom, and rigid rituals. Prayers on rising, prayers at meals, prayers while she was being chastised for some infraction or other. And even if the vicarage had been warmer, or brighter or smelled of comforting food, she had never been invited to consider it home. She had only ever been a tenant paid for by her father’s stipend.

Now she called Fairbourne home. She had fought for the right to call it so. But in truth, it wasn’t. She loved the old house. She had tried to love Boswell and his family. But as she traveled away, she finally admitted that Fairbourne had been no more a home than the vicarage.

What was beginning to frighten her was that plodding through the unending darkness, she finally began to understand what it was her friends had felt. The sense of it had sparked the minute Ian wrapped himself around her, and over the hours it kept growing. Warmth, deep in her soul; comfort, a sense of unshakable stability and certainty, as if instead of Ian’s coat she was tucked inside the time-soothed stones of an old house that had withstood centuries of storms. She recognized every one of the emotions her friends had named: comfort, safety, affection, acceptance, stability.

She had spent her life looking for a home. And all along it had been waiting in this man’s arms.

Sarah was not given to weeping. But as she rode along, she could feel tears well up and spill. Wasn’t it hard enough she loved a man she couldn’t have? How could God finally show her what a home was, only to show her how it could never be hers?

It wasn’t fair. She had always believed that she didn’t belong anywhere, that loneliness would be a normal part of her life. She had accepted it. She had gone on anyway, knowing she had no choice.

She did belong somewhere, though. She simply had no right to live there.

“Are you all right?” Ian asked.

Sarah prayed he didn’t hear the hitch in her breathing. “Of course. You?”

“I
am
sorry, Sarah,” he said in a tone that told her he’d been thinking of it for quite a while. “I swear if I could have done it any other way . . .”

“I know.” She kept thinking of Fiona’s whitewashed house with the thatch. She wouldn’t have minded living there, eating bannocks, draping Ian in his plaid. “I am only worried for the women and the estate.”

A lie. She hadn’t thought about them for an hour. She had thought about herself, and how she would finish this trip back where she started, stripped of even the lie that she was content.

Chapter 15

Resettling his arms around Sarah, Ian desperately tried to ignore her soft weight on his groin. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. He was in agony.

God, what was he to do about her? How long had he known her? Two weeks? Three? In that time he had gone from respecting her to needing her like the next breath he took. His cock hadn’t rested since waking up in her barn. His raging, anxious, impatient,
hungry
cock. The rest of him just wanted to be with her.

And when that piece of offal Briggs had attacked her, he’d sworn his heart tore loose. Just the memory sent the red rage coursing back through him. He’d come so close to killing the
riataiche.
To pummeling him until there was nothing left but bruises and bones. The only thing that had prevented him had been Sarah’s small hand on his arm. It had been in that moment that he’d first suspected that he had forfeited his sanity.

He was so afraid he was falling in love with her, and he wasn’t even sure what that meant. He’d never allowed himself that kind of self-indulgence. He loved his mam and the girls, of course. But this was different. This was…primal. Visceral. He felt as if he would kill to protect her, as if he would give away every penny to see her secure. He wanted nothing more than to see her laugh, watch her sleep, wake her in the morning. He couldn’t think of a place he wanted to be more than here, wrapped around her, warming her in the cold, holding away danger. Wishing there was a better reason to have her in his arms.

And he had no right. He would never have the right, and he had needed her to remind him. He still couldn’t think of that moment without flinching. He had asked her to come away with him. Just that, as if the details didn’t matter. He wanted her. He wanted to be with her. The rest could be worked out later.

The invitation had been barely out of his mouth before he’d realized his mistake. Details, he realized, were very important. He could not marry her. He had already made that commitment, and even if he changed his mind tomorrow and decided that he had no desire to help anyone, he could not dishonor his pledge to Ardeth. Nor could he carry on a liaison behind her back. He wouldn’t do that to any friend.