Rapturous Rakes Bundle (6 page)

and creamy flesh. She looked up as Rebecca came in

and gave a little shudder.

‘Brown, darling? So disfiguring!’

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43

‘I do not dress to impress in my profession,’ Re-

becca said, without rancour.

Her friend’s blue eyes mocked her. ‘And how it

shows!’

In reply, Rebecca pushed Nan’s feet gently off the

workbench and sat down opposite her. Sam the coach-

man put the tea tray down on the rosewood desk and

gave Rebecca a huge wink. She found herself smiling

back. Sam had the bearing of an old soldier and a

granite-hewn face to match, and he might work for the

Archangel, but then so did she after a fashion. He also

made an excellent strong cup of tea, and that went a

long way towards gaining Rebecca’s appreciation.

‘Call back for me in a half-hour if you please, Sam-

uel,’ Nan said sweetly, kicking off the red shoes and

tucking her feet up under her on the
chaise-longue.
‘I

have matters of business to discuss with Miss Ra-

leigh.’

The coachman bowed, gave Rebecca another smile,

and went out into the street.

‘Your business must be urgent indeed if it brings

you out so early,’ Rebecca said. She remembered Nan

once saying that one of the benefits of being a kept

woman was that one worked all night and could sleep

all day. Rebecca privately thought that it was not

worth it, even to be the mistress of an amiable buffoon

like Lord Bosham. For better or worse, she had in-

herited a large amount of pride and a streak of inde-

pendence from her family, and that pride revolted at

the thought of being any man’s mistress.

Nan did not answer immediately. She allowed her

gaze to travel around the workshop, pausing as her

44

The
Rake’s
Mistress

eye fell on a slender vase on the windowsill. It was

engraved with a picture of a sailing ship, a privateer

with elegant lines and furled sails. She smiled slightly.

‘How is your brother these days, Rebecca? Have

you heard from him lately?’

‘Not in a long time,’ Rebecca said. Her chest tight-

ened and she took a deep breath to steady herself. No

matter how much time went past, it always hurt to be

cut off from Daniel; now that her aunt and uncle were

dead, the isolation was much more acute.

‘A pity,’ Nan said, her blue eyes sharp. ‘Now there

is a man who could persuade me into marriage...’

‘I do not believe that Daniel is a marrying man,’

Rebecca said with a small smile. ‘He is wedded to his

ship.’

‘Show me a man who is the marrying kind, darling,’

Nan said, a little bitterly. ‘They are all out for what

they can get, which is why we have to fleece them

first.’

Rebecca pulled a face. She had heard Nan speak

like this before and seen her friend’s pretty face crease

with cynicism and bitterness. Rebecca herself had

never had a great deal of time for love. As a child,

she had been a voracious reader and had devoured

everything that came within her grasp, be it romances

or treatises on engraving. Once she had started to

work, the time for reading and any other pursuit had

become very limited indeed and Rebecca had come to

the conclusion that romance belonged only between

the pages of a book. As far as she could see, marriage

was a matter of comfort, convenience and sometimes

of financial benefit, and yet she had never seen fit to

Nicola
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45

enter the married state for any of those reasons. Not

even when her aunt and uncle had died and, lonely

and almost destitute, she had received three offers of

marriage and had been tempted to take them simply

for security... She had held out because a stubborn

instinct had told her that, despite her cynicism, there

had to be something better. She hoped it was true, yet

in her heart she did not really believe it.

Rebecca drew a piece of paper towards her and ex-

tracted a pencil from the drawer of her desk. She

started to sketch idly—little cherubs, larger angels

with grave faces, wings folded, hands held piously in

prayer. The angel motif was the perfect engraving for

her commission. But perhaps a saintly face was not

the correct image for the Archangel Club. Angels with

wicked faces would be more appropriate, angels that

looked like Lord Lucas Kestrel...

Rebecca bit the end of her pencil and tried to con-

centrate.

‘Lord Fremantle was asking for you,’ Nan said. ‘He

was most impressed when he met you last night.’

The pencil broke between Rebecca’s fingers but she

did not look up. ‘By my engraving, I hope,’ she said

colourlessly.

Nan drummed her fingers on the brocaded edge of

the sofa. ‘You understand precisely what I mean,

Becca.’

Rebecca sighed. ‘I hope that you told him that I was

not interested,’ she said.

There was a pause. ‘Rebecca,’ Nan said, ‘will you

not at least consider it? Fremantle is rich and gen-

erous—’

46

The
Rake’s
Mistress

And
depraved
and
revolting,
Rebecca added, though

she did not voice her thoughts aloud.

Nan waved a hand to encompass the workshop.

‘What are you trying to prove here? You know that

you cannot continue. This week, next week, it will all

be the same in the end.’

Rebecca looked up and met the steely blue of her

friend’s eyes. She felt angry and upset. So this was

why Nan had called so early. Lord Fremantle,

Bosham’s crony and one of the gentlemen of the Arch-

angel Club, had made no secret of his admiration for

her when they had met the previous night. Rebecca

had ignored his veiled hints and had concentrated on

business, but now the inevitable had happened. Fre-

mantle wanted her to be his mistress and he had sent

Nan as a go-between, to negotiate the arrangement.

Perhaps there was even a financial reward in it for Nan

herself, when Rebecca complied. The thought made

her skin crawl.

Nan was still looking disparagingly around the

empty workshop. Rebecca knew there was no point in

pretending. Her friend had seen the desperate state to

which she had descended. Nan had even checked that

Daniel, Rebecca’s brother, was not inconveniently on

hand to defend his sister’s honour, and then she had

passed on Lord Fremantle’s proposition. And the

worst of it was that Nan was right. Sooner or later

Rebecca would lose the roof over her head and would

need to find alternative employment, although she was

utterly determined that it would not be in a house

of ill repute, even one so exclusive as the Arch-

angel Club.

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47

Rebecca thought about Lord Fremantle and felt her

skin shudder. He had been everything that was cour-

teous the previous night, but his dead fish eyes and

his waxy hands had repelled her. Even had she been

starving she could never have accepted his offer. The

thought of those hands on her body was so repellent

that she felt sick.

‘His lordship is very kind,’ she said, trying to swal-

low the lump of nausea in her throat, ‘but I fear I must

decline his proposal. Even if I cannot continue with

my own workshop I am certain I shall find employ-

ment elsewhere.’

‘As a drudge in someone else’s workshop?’ Nan

asked, the derision clear in her voice. ‘You are too

good for that, Becca.’

Rebecca almost said, ‘Better a drudge than a

whore’, but managed to hold back, both out of friend-

ship and also because she was not at all certain that it

was true. Was her own parlous situation so much more

enviable than her friend’s pampered life? Most people

would think not.

‘I cannot do as you suggest,’ she said.

She knew that her voice was nowhere near as steady

as she would have wished, but she also knew that Nan

was canny and would not push too far. She had

planted an idea and she would watch it grow as Re-

becca’s plight became more acute. Sure enough, Nan

shrugged lightly now.

‘No matter. It was merely a thought. Your decision

will not affect your commission, of course. Lord Fre-

mantle was most impressed by your work.’

‘Thank you,’ Rebecca said. She looked at her friend,

48

The
Rake’s
Mistress

her shoulders slumping. ‘You know how grateful I am

that you got me the work, Nan, but I cannot do as

Lord Fremantle wishes.’

Nan’s hard little face softened slightly. She put a

hand out to Rebecca. ‘I know you think that you could

not do it, Becca, but it is not so difficult in the end...’

‘I understand that,’ Rebecca said, shuddering. ‘That

is what frightens me.’

She picked up her pencil again and sketched a few

more angels. Lord Fremantle had been entranced by

her suggestion that she should take the Archangel im-

age and transfer it to the medium of glass. He had

placed an immediate commission for a large shallow

rose bowl and a matching vase to grace the dining

table of the Club, and he had offered her a huge

amount of money as payment for her work. Rebecca

felt cold inside. She had an unpleasant feeling that she

might be obliged to offer Lord Fremantle various other

services before she ever saw her money, whatever Nan

said.

The difficulty was that she was trapped. If she un-

dertook the work and the Archangel Club refused to

pay then she was ruined, with no recourse. If she re-

fused the commission because she suspected Lord Fre-

mantle’s motives, then she would starve all the sooner,

for she had only one other customer at present and no

prospect of that situation changing. She had no choice.

‘I hear,’ Nan said, holding her teacup delicately be-

tween painted fingernails, ‘that you had a most excit-

ing encounter with Lord Lucas Kestrel last night, Re-

becca.’

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49

Rebecca pushed her sketches away with an impa-

tient hand. ‘I suppose that Samuel told you?’

‘Of course. He was most concerned for your safety,

my love. He would have stepped in at any moment,

you know, had his assistance been required.’

‘Handsome of him,’ Rebecca murmured, remem-

bering the alacrity with which the coachman had taken

orders from Lucas Kestrel. ‘Fortunately I was in no

real danger.’

‘Tell me all about it,’ Nan invited, leaning forward.

‘You are flying high there, Becca. The Kestrels are

monstrously high in the instep.’

‘I am scarcely pursuing their acquaintance,’ Re-

becca said drily. ‘Indeed, I should be happy if I never

set eyes on a member of that family again. One meet-

ing was quite enough for me.’

‘It sounds as though you set eyes on quite a lot of

Stephen Kestrel,’ Nan said, arching her plucked eye-

brows knowingly. ‘Almost all of him, in fact. Sam was

concerned that he might catch his death of cold when

he hopped into the carriage half-naked.’

Rebecca stifled a laugh. ‘Happily for Lord Stephen,

I lent him my cloak. And I averted my gaze as best I

could.’

Nan opened her reticule and popped a sugared al-

mond into her mouth, crunching with fervour. ‘I hear

that he is a sweet boy.’

‘Very,’ Rebecca said wryly. ‘I felt very sisterly to-

ward him.’

‘I wonder if he has a penchant for bawdy houses

and low company?’ Nan mused. ‘Perhaps I could

make his acquaintance?’

50

The
Rake’s
Mistress

Rebecca gave her a very sharp look. ‘He has no

money of his own,’ she said. ‘I think he is beneath

your notice, Nan.’

‘Oh, well...’ Nan put her reticule aside with a pet-

tish gesture. ‘I doubt the game would be worth the

candle. Young boys...’ She shrugged. ‘They are usu-

ally grateful and eager, but it is seldom worth it in the

end.’

‘Besides which, you would incur the wrath of Lord