The Rake's Mistress (7 page)

An agonising pain shot through her left wrist, so sharp that it felt as though she were hammering into her own bones. Rebecca cried out, dropping the hammer so that it spun away across the bench. The glass fractured all the way around the top and broke off cleanly in a band half an inch wide. Rebecca felt sickness rise in her throat. She grabbed the edge of the desk to steady herself, then sat down and clutched her wrist with her other hand. The pain was receding a little now, a whisper of agony along her nerves. Eventually the faintness caused by the pain receded sufficiently for her to stumble across to the sofa and sit down.

She sat there for a very long time.

It had happened before, and she had dismissed it as an unlucky vibration from the hammer. Now, however, she knew she could not deceive herself any longer. She had seen it happen to other engravers, seen them work until the pain shadowed their every movement and they were obliged to give up their livelihood. The doctors shook their heads and said that nothing could be done and charged a guinea for the privilege of breaking the bad news.

Rebecca had worked at her craft since she was fourteen years old, and now, a decade on, the pain had come to take her too.

She looked around the dim workshop, at the light glancing off the crystal on the shelves and the tools of her trade lying discarded on the bench. She loved her work so much that she could never bear to let it go. The loneliness welled up more powerfully than before. She went across to the shelf and lightly touched the glass with the engraved anchor, as though it was a talisman. Beneath the elegant chase work was a motto.
Celer et Audax
—Swift and bold.

Rebecca wrapped both arms about her, as though to keep out the cold. If only Daniel was here. But Daniel had his own way to make. They had a made a pact when they were children and found they were to be apart. If ever the one needed the other, they had only to send a token…

For a moment, Rebecca was tempted. Then she sighed and moved back to the workbench. She would need to be in a great deal worse situation than this before she contacted her brother and drew him into danger.

She blew out the candles and made her way up to bed.

Early the next morning, on the basis that the longer she put it off the worse it would be, Rebecca picked up her engraving scribe and set to work. She was tentative at first, but when no pain troubled her, she soon fell into a rhythm again as she chipped delicately at the fragile glass. The work was absorbing and when a shadow fell across her workbench she realised that she had not even heard the knock at the workshop door. She looked up to see Lucas Kestrel there and her heart skipped a tiny beat. The strong morning sunlight from the window made his hair gleam conker brown rather than auburn.

‘Miss Raleigh. How are you?’ He smiled at her and Rebecca’s heart did another quick flip.

‘I am very well, thank you, my lord. How are you?’

‘I am tired, I thank you,’ Lucas said. He looked straight at her. ‘I do not appreciate sleepless nights.’

Rebecca blushed. ‘I suppose that you have something preying on your mind?’

‘You suppose correctly, Miss Raleigh.’

Rebecca bent her head over the glass and polished the surface with unnecessary vigour. Her hand was not quite steady. She tried to calm her singing nerves.

‘I did not expect you to call again so soon, my lord,’ she said. ‘I fear that your commission is barely begun. We did agree a week and it is only five days.’

‘I know it.’ Lucas drove his hands into the pockets of his great coat. ‘I did not wish to wait that long to see you again, Miss Raleigh, and as I may not meet you socially, this seemed the only way.’

Rebecca picked up the scribe and the hammer again. ‘You are, of course, quite welcome to look around my studio, my lord. If you choose to spend more money here, then I shall not attempt to stop you, but not all the items are for sale.’

Lucas laughed. ‘My dear Miss Raleigh, I believe we have established that already.’

Rebecca relaxed slightly. ‘Very well, then…’

Lucas glanced towards the fireplace. ‘You do not have a fire today?’

‘I had not got around to building one,’ Rebecca said evasively. She did not wish to tell him that she had run out of firewood and that her accounts
had shown her it was something she could not afford to buy.

‘If you show me where the wood is stored then I am happy to build one for you,’ Lucas said. ‘It is too cold today to be without a fire.’

Rebecca stared at him in the liveliest astonishment. ‘
You
will make a fire? You cannot!’

Lucas looked amused. ‘I assure you that I am quite capable of it, Miss Raleigh. I have been in the army for years and have taken on far more challenging tasks than the building of a fire.’

Rebecca frowned. ‘That was hardly what I meant, my lord. You would spoil the set of your jacket for a start and might even get soot on your pantaloons.’

Lucas’s face lightened into a smile. ‘Oh I see! You feel that I
should
not make the fire rather than that I
could
not. You relieve me, Miss Raleigh. I thought for a moment that you considered me the sort of frippery fellow who could not remove his boots without the aid of a valet.’

‘You cannot make the fire because I have no wood!’ Rebecca snapped. She put the wineglass down on the desk with a slap. ‘Are you happy now that I have confessed it? I have no wood and I cannot afford to buy any more at present and whilst you distract me from my work I have no prospect of making any money that will enable me to buy firewood. Now will you go away?’

‘I shall certainly go and purchase you some logs to build a fire,’ Lucas said, ‘and then when I return we may talk.’

Rebecca spread her arms wide with frustration. ‘About what, my lord? There are plenty of penniless craftsmen working in London who cannot afford a fire. Why do you have to interest yourself in my case?’

Lucas shrugged. ‘It is your misfortune that I am more interested in you than in the others, Miss Raleigh. I shall see you shortly.’

‘Pray do not trouble to return!’ Rebecca called, as he reached the door. ‘And do not spend any money on me for I cannot repay you—’

‘Please save your breath,’ Lucas said, with scrupulous politeness. ‘There is an entire crowd of people out here hanging on your every word.’

Rebecca ran to the window. She was distraught to see that it was true. Housewives with marketing baskets had gathered outside the door, their faces sharp and eager for entertainment. A group of shabby urchins was trailing Lucas along the pavement and apparently begging for money. The vintner was standing outside his shop in the sunshine, wiping his hands on a rag as he exchanged information with the silversmith. Rebecca gave a cry of aggravation and threw herself down on the
chaise-longue
, her face in her hands. Over the last six months her life had been growing progressively
more difficult, but this new situation was both unexpected and utterly confusing. She did not wish to feel beholden to Lucas Kestrel and she was very afraid of where his charity might take her.

When Lucas returned a surprisingly short time later, Rebecca was still sitting on the sofa. She got up quickly when he came in and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, hoping that he had not seen her tears. The wood merchant’s assistant followed him into the workshop, hefting a very heavy sack of logs. The man took the sack through to the store, as he had done in Rebecca’s uncle’s time, and received a coin for his trouble from Lucas before he went out. It was then that Rebecca also spotted the parcel that Lucas had laid on the table containing a fresh loaf of bread, a pat of rich yellow butter, some cheese, a ham and half a spit-roasted chicken. Her stomach, treacherously, gave a loud rumble at the sight of food.

She seized a few logs and threw them higgledy-piggledly into the fireplace, venting her frustration on the inanimate blocks of wood until Lucas put out a hand to stop her.

‘Wait! It will never light if you build it like that.’

‘I know!’ To her horror, Rebecca could feel the tears closing her throat. ‘I know how to make a fire! I am also quite capable of feeding myself. I
have managed perfectly well on my own for the past six months and I do
not
require some high-handed, arrogant lord—’

‘That is tautology,’ Lucas said.

Rebecca stared, jolted out of her train of thought. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Tautology. Gilding the lily. If I am high-handed, then the arrogance goes without saying…’

Rebecca gave an exasperated squeak. ‘Arrogant, high-handed, conceited, self-important—’

Lucas raised a hand. ‘Please, Miss Raleigh. I have taken your point. I am going to make some tea. Oh…’ he paused ‘…and the food is for me to take home for supper…’

‘I do not believe you!’ Rebecca said sulkily.

Lucas shrugged. He disappeared into the scullery and Rebecca did not even trouble to try to stop him. Instead she took the logs out of the fire again, swept it clear and built it painstakingly from scratch. By the time the flames were taking hold, Lucas had returned with the tea and some Bath Oliver biscuits that Rebecca suspected might be stale.

He placed the tea on Rebecca’s desk much as Sam had done the previous day, and came to sit beside her. The tea, Rebecca was surprised to discover, was almost as good as Sam’s brew had been.

‘Now,’ Lucas said, ‘I would like you to tell me something about yourself, Miss Raleigh, and how you have ended in this situation. You said that you had managed very well on your own for the last six months. What happened before that?’

Rebecca looked at him. She was tempted to tell him everything, not just about the hardship following her uncle’s death, but about her family and how her brother Daniel was the only one left, and he was a hunted man in as much trouble as she. She teetered on the brink of disclosure and then drew back a little. Lucas did not prompt her. He watched her steadily, but with so much gentleness in his eyes that she caught her breath to see it. It was grief and tiredness, she warned herself, that had weakened her. She needed to tell someone. She took a deep, refreshing gulp of the tea, set down her cup, and started to talk.

Lucas had not been entirely sure that Rebecca would answer his question. He recognised that she was living within her work at the moment; that it was the thing she used to blot out the grief. There were no signs of her personality at all in her studio, although it was the place where she lived as well as worked. He concluded that she had withdrawn into herself so much that nothing else could reach her. He wanted to be the one to break through that
shell and touch her. He wanted it so much that it frightened him.

For his own sake he had to draw back. He had never felt like this before and it was the very devil. Even as he was questioning her and trying to gain her confidence, he felt the veriest traitor, the greatest betrayer in the whole world.

He had never met a woman like Rebecca Raleigh before. Affairs of the heart—he did not like to think in terms of love—had never been difficult for him in the past. Yet his current feelings prompted him to take Rebecca away from this hovel of a place where she tried so desperately to scrape a living. He wanted to cherish her, care for her and protect her. He pushed aside all the complex and unfamiliar emotions that pressed in on him and tried to concentrate.

He watched her face as she took a scalding mouthful of tea, watched the pure line of her throat as she swallowed and set down her mug. There was a slump to her shoulders, but she would never admit defeat. His heart swelled with an emotion he tried to dismiss as pity.

He sat quietly drinking his tea—a beverage that had never been his favourite drawing-room tipple—and listened whilst Rebecca talked. Her face was drawn and her blue eyes were full of pain, and it took every ounce of Lucas’s self-control not to touch her.

‘My uncle and aunt died of the sweating sickness four months ago,’ Rebecca said, fiddling with the handle of her mug. Lucas noted that it had been broken and affixed again, slightly off centre. Presumably she could not afford to throw things away.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘So recent a grief must be very painful for you.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘They had brought me up from the time I was a child. It was my uncle who taught me my profession.’ She glanced quickly across at the workbench. ‘He was a master engraver, one of the most talented men in the profession, though he never truly gained the recognition he deserved. I think…’ for a moment she smiled ‘… I think that he taught me well.’

‘I am sure that he did,’ Lucas said, ‘judging by the work on display here.’

Rebecca shot him a glance that had a tiny sparkle in it. Lucas noticed with a jolt how she came alive when she spoke of her work. ‘And you are suddenly an expert, my lord?’ she teased. ‘You, who did not even know that the profession existed a week ago?’

Lucas gave a self-deprecating shrug. He felt guilty. ‘I am a quick learner.’

The sparkle died from Rebecca’s eyes. ‘Whether or not I am good at my work is irrelevant now. When my uncle died, the business died with him.
It was naïve of me to think that I could keep it running single-handed. One of the journeymen and the two apprentices took work elsewhere, for they did not wish to be employed by a woman. The other journeyman…’ she hesitated ‘…he thought to persuade me into marriage as a way for me to continue the business.’

Lucas clamped down on his instinctive violence at the thought of some buffoon forcing himself on Rebecca and kept his voice level. ‘You did not care for the idea?’

‘No, I did not,’ Rebecca said. ‘I cared even less for the way that he tried to persuade me, and
he
disliked the means I took to dissuade him from his amorous advances.’

Lucas bit his lip on a laugh. He remembered her threatening him with the diamond scribe. ‘What did you do?’

‘I used the fire irons,’ Rebecca said. ‘They have a slight dent in them now.’

Lucas shook his head. ‘So you used the fire irons on him and your engraving scribe to defend yourself against me… You are a dangerous woman, Miss Raleigh.’