Pursued By The Viscount (3 page)

“Please drink some of the brandy,” Lucien encouraged gently, hoping none of the anger churning inside him was visible in his demeanor as she finally took the glass from him and then tentatively sipped the amber liquid.

Suspecting abuse and having that suspicion confirmed were two distinctly different things, he now realized. And he was also convinced Rachel had been telling him the truth earlier. How could he doubt it when she had turned on him minutes ago like a wounded and cornered animal, the fear clearly evident in her fiercely unguarded gaze?

Making Lucien self-disgustedly aware, belatedly, that Rachel had displayed none of that public flirt and tease since her arrival here today. Instead, she had been quietly dignified as she told him of her dilemma, and remained so even in the face of his obvious contempt. She had become emotional only when she thought he had been about to touch her. Those emotions had boiled over into tears after he had questioned who was responsible for beating her.

Leading Lucien to several conclusions.

Rachel Shaw was not that flirtatious tease she chose to present in Society.

Every word she had told him today was the truth. Shaw’s sexual preference. His long-time affair with another man. The same man who had deliberately courted her in recent months and now intended to hurt his dead lover’s widow in any way he could.
 

She was undeserving of either Lucien’s contempt or his callous dismissal.

He had allowed his years of disgust for his mother’s behavior to color his opinion of Rachel. Had judged her unheard and found her wanting.

When he did not know her.

He doubted from the little he had observed since becoming aware of Rachel’s ill treatment, that anyone truly knew her.

Perhaps not even Rachel herself?

Because Lucien had no doubt, between that veneer she presented to Society and the almost feral creature who had turned on him seconds ago, she was a woman of deep passions. A woman who, with a man patient enough to break through all her barriers, could be persuaded into being a sensuous and adventurous lover.

“It was your husband,” Lucien stated, knowing she could not have responded so strongly as she had from one incident of mistreatment. That she had to have suffered for years rather than weeks or months.
 

She looked up at him quickly and then away again. “I do not… I… Do you now believe what I have told you?”

How could he not? “Yes, I believe you.”

“It was my husband,” she acknowledged with a pained wince.
 

Lucien took the empty glass from her and placed it down on the low table in front of the sofa, her hands now shaking so badly, she looked in danger of dropping it.

“I apologize.” She sighed. “Since my husband’s death, I have obviously become complacent. Have allowed my emotions to get the better of me.”

Leading Lucien to question how many lovers she had taken since escaping the clutches of her brutish husband.

“None,” Rachel answered the question she was sure the viscount had not intended to ask out loud but had done so anyway. “As you have observed, I do not like to be touched.”

“By me or any man?”

“Any man.”

“I have seen you dancing at balls.”

“Only those dances which require the touching of hands, and always with my gloves between them and me. This other man was not my lover,” she added as Brooketon frowned. “At least, not in the way you mean.” She turned away from that piercing blue gaze to cross the room and stare sightlessly out the window into the manicured garden.

She already felt too raw, too exposed to this particular gentleman to allow Brooketon to see any more of her emotions.

“It began as a silly flirtation at a ball.” She sighed. “I do not even remember which one. We danced together several times that evening. He called upon me at Shaw House the following day, along with several other gentlemen I had also danced with the previous evening. All innocent enough.”

“And yet not.”

“No,” Rachel acknowledged shakily. “We met again that evening at a musical soiree. I believed by accident. And every evening after that for a week. When I retired to the country for the summer, the letters began to arrive. I should have ignored them. Should have ignored
him
.”

“You were flattered by his attentions, believed them to be genuine.”

“Yes.” She trembled at the thought of her stupidity. “He seemed so different from James. Gentle, caring, and his letters were full of praise and admiration. I do not recall what made me answer one of them. Perhaps a question asked, I really do not remember.” She gave a weary shake of her head. “After that, we exchanged letters two, sometimes three times a week, with the agreement we would burn them after reading them.”

“A promise he failed to keep.”

“Yes.” Rachel’s hands were so tightly clasped at her sides, her nails were in danger of piercing the delicate leather of her gloves. She turned to face Brooketon, chin held high, her gaze unwavering as it met his. She needed him to see the truth in her face when she made the next statement. “We were not, nor have we ever been, lovers.”

Lucien had no difficulty believing her. Or admiring her. Many women would have been reduced to hysteria when presented with this added cruelty from another man she had allowed herself to trust. Rachel was shaken but not broken, an indication of the steel in her character.

He nodded. “Being your husband’s lover, this other man knew of his ill-treatment of you. Knew how to flirt with you without being intrusive. How to appeal, in his letters to you, to your need to feel loved and cherished.”

“Yes.” She offered no defense for being so naive as those tears once again fell silently down her pallid cheeks.

“He threatens to make these letters public, in the full knowledge you would never refute them by besmirching the name or reputation of your son’s father?”

“Yes.”
 

Lucien could feel a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw, and it took every effort of will on his part not to reach out again and take her in his arms and comfort her. Something he knew she would reject at this moment. “I want his name.”

She turned away. “I have changed my mind in regard to involving you—”

“As I have changed mine in regard to helping you.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I realize now it will not do. I…I am sorry for having bothered you, but…no. I—I will…manage some other way.”

“This man threatened you a week ago, and yet you have waited until now to seek my help. This leads me to believe I was already a last resort?”

She flinched at his bluntness. “Perhaps. But—”

“Will it help if I apologize for ever doubting you?” Lucien cut in evenly. “I should have seen sooner that the lady you are in Society is not the woman who visited me today.”

She raised her chin in challenge. “Then who am I?”

His expression softened. “A friend of a friend, and a lady in need of my assistance.”

“Assistance you have already refused.”

“And now I have changed my mind. I want his name, Rachel,” he added determinedly.

She chewed on her bottom lip. “What do you intend doing with it if I give it to you?”

Lucien was an amateur boxer as well as an amateur sleuth, and his fists currently itched to connect with the flesh of the bastard who had brought this beautiful woman so low when she had already suffered so much. “I will speak to him, on your behalf, of course.” In between landing several painful blows. “Ask for the return of your letters.” Again, in between causing as much physical pain as possible to this man who was now causing Rachel emotional distress.

“And if he refuses to give them to you?”

“Oh, I have no doubt he will refuse,” Lucien bit out. “In fact, I am counting on it.”

Rachel gave the viscount a searching glance, seeing past those breathtaking good looks and the elegance of his appearance to the strong and determined man beneath.

The same man who had helped Fliss and now stated he was willing to aid her.

But not before he had first stripped Rachel’s emotions down to the bare bone, exposing her completely. Ripping away the defenses it had taken her years to build. Defenses which might have enabled her, in time, to let another man into her life and which had allowed her to indulge in a written flirtation.

 
Lucien reined back the inner fury he felt toward the man who had deliberately gained Rachel’s trust and then as deliberately betrayed it. She would only retreat more if Lucien were to reveal such a depth of emotion on her behalf. “Rachel, I do not believe this man will stop his torment until he has destroyed you.”

She gave a shiver of revulsion. “I have to go—”

“Will you be attending the Walkers’ ball this evening?”

“In the circumstances, I had not intended to do so, no.” She was obviously puzzled by this sudden change of subject.
 

“But you had accepted their invitation before this situation occurred?”

“Yes…”

“I too received an invitation but chose to ignore it. I have now decided I will attend after all. As your escort.”

“
What?
” Rachel gasped. “No,” she refused in a calmer voice.

Even if she did not feel calm. Her reputation would be in tatters if her letters were exposed to Society. It might not be ruined if she, as a respectable widow, openly attended a ball on the arm of the handsome and eligible Viscount Brooketon, but the gossip would be rife.

She gave a shake of her head. “What possible purpose would that serve?”

He shrugged broad shoulders. “You are refusing to tell me the name of your—this other gentleman. Therefore, the only course of action open to me is to publicly demonstrate to this man that you have friends ready and willing to help you. Powerful friends.”

Brooketon was indeed powerful. As much so as James in his own way. Admittedly, Brooketon did not work within the government, but he was powerful in the House nonetheless. As were his close friends, the Duke of Blackmoor, the Marquis of Oxbridge, and Lord Alexander Whitney. Fliss’s new husband, the Earl of Winterbourne, although Scottish by birth, also wielded great power, both in Scotland and England.

“This man also has powerful friends.” Very powerful friends, and as Rachel did not have the letters he had sent to her to use in her defense, he would surely be able to make the frequency and tenor of her own correspondence to him seem those of a needy and infatuated woman.

Why should anyone believe otherwise? Viscount Brooketon, until he had guessed at the physical abuse she had suffered, from her unguarded reaction to being touched, had been utterly convinced she was lying to him. The rest of Society would believe the same if she tried to defend herself with tales of James’s affair with this other man. Which she could not do, in any case, not without, as Brooketon had guessed, affecting William’s future.

She was caught in a spider’s web of her own making. No matter how desperate she felt, she now realized it would not do to involve someone else in that tangled web.
 

“Indeed?” Lucien half smiled at this information. “I do not suppose you are going to tell me the names of those gentlemen either?” If his plan for this evening evolved as he hoped, Rachel would not need to tell him the name of her blackmailer or his powerful friends.

Lucien had well and truly seen beneath her veneer of flirtation now and felt sure he would be able to ascertain, from Rachel’s body language alone, exactly who this other man was. He did not believe she would be able to hide her aversion to this man if the two of them were to meet face-to-face this evening.

“I should not have come here,” she answered him predictably. “I will not trouble you further on this matter.”

“You intend to deal with this man yourself?”

“I believe I must.”

His mouth thinned. “I will arrive at Shaw House at eight o’clock to collect you in my carriage this evening. I advise you to allow me to help in this small way. It is the least I can do when you have refused any further assistance on my part.”

“No one is going to believe that you and I are…are friends,” she protested.

“Why not?” He appeared genuinely puzzled.

“Because you are you and I am me,” she said scornfully. “The arrogant and haughty Viscount Brooketon, and the flirtatious Lady Rachel Shaw.”

“Arrogant and haughty?” He quirked a deliberately arrogant brow.

“Very much so,” Rachel confirmed with exasperation.

“If that is the case, how could they ever doubt it if I say it is so? As you will not confide in me any further, I believe it is important your blackmailer believes we are friends,” he bit out impatiently as she still looked doubtful. “That you are now under my protection.”

“And how do you expect him to believe that when currently I cannot stand to have you—or any man—so much as touch me, unless it is during the formality of a dance?” She repressed a shudder.

“We have several hours before the ball to…deal with that problem.”

Rachel’s eyes widened in alarm. “How do you suggest we go about doing that?”