Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired

‘I am sorry that I missed you,’ Sally said politely.

Connie waved a dismissive hand. ‘No matter. We saw Nell instead, and she was very happy for us.’ She frowned. ‘She was at the club. Apparently she had come to find you to thank you for the money you sent her.’

Jack’s stomach dropped. He looked sharply at Sally. She met his eyes for a brief, guilty moment and then looked away with a studiously feigned lack of interest, fidgeting with the cuff of her blouse before glancing quickly back at him again. Jack raised his brows and smiled at her and she blushed. She looked the picture of guilt. Some of the tight, angry feeling inside Jack eased. He knew now where his two hundred pounds had gone the previous morning. He knew what Sally had wanted the money for. He knew that his original instincts about her had very probably been sound. He felt an overpowering urge to confront her there and then, but unfortunately his new cousin was still holding the floor.

‘I thought Nell looked quite frightful,’ Connie was saying, blithely ignoring everyone else as she gossiped to her embarrassed sister. ‘She was all ragged and thin, but perhaps now that I am Mrs Basset I may be able to help her. It is good to be in a position where one can be charitable … Yes, what is it, Bertie?’ She spoke to her husband in tones of extreme irritation.

‘Sorry to interrupt you, darling,’ Bertie said uncomfortably, ‘but I wanted to introduce my cousin Charlotte Harrington and her husband Stephen, and also my cousin Jack Kestrel—’

‘Mr Kestrel!’ Connie ignored Charley and Stephen completely, but held out a hand to Jack upon which glittered the largest diamond he had ever seen. She was smiling winsomely at him, but it left Jack singularly unmoved. Looking from her little painted face to Sally’s, seeing them together for the first time, he was struck by how very different the two of them appeared. Connie, with her vapid airs and sharp tongue, was exactly how he had imagined her. He thought his cousin an even bigger fool than previously.

‘How do you do, Mrs Basset,’ he said, and Connie preened herself.

‘Connie,’ Sally intervened, ‘what are you doing here? This is Mrs Harrington’s home, you know, and everyone is here for a family party.’

‘Great-Aunt Ottoline’s birthday,’ Jack said helpfully, turning to Bertie. ‘You will have remembered that it is her party, of course, Bertie? She will be delighted to meet your new bride, I am sure.’ He had the pleasure of seeing his cousin turn a gratifying colour of white.

‘I had no notion Aunt Ottoline would be here,’ Bertie choked. ‘Came to see Charley, to ask that she might help smooth our way into the family, don’t you know.’ He looked askance at Jack. ‘Didn’t know you would be here either, Jack, for that matter.’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘I dare say that if you had you would have thought twice about coming. I have been looking for you on your father’s behalf for the past week.’

Bertie gulped. ‘Deed’s done now,’ he said, ‘signed and sealed. We were married yesterday.’

Connie skipped up to Sally and thrust her hand under her nose. ‘Look at my diamond! Is it not tremendous!’

‘It is extraordinary,’ Sally said. ‘We thought that you might have headed for Gretna Green for your runaway match, Connie.’

‘Gracious, no!’ Connie wrinkled up her nose. ‘I could not possibly get married in such a hole-in-the-corner way! We had a special licence. Bertie bought it weeks ago.’ She caught Sally’s arm, smiling beguilingly. ‘I am sorry to have deceived you about my intentions, Sal, but it was the only way to keep the whole matter secret. I know you would have tried to dissuade me with your tiresome scruples.’

Jack looked at Sally again. She was pale and her face was set. ‘My tiresome scruples,’ she said. ‘Yes, they have always been such a trial to you, have they not, Connie?’ Again, she met Jack’s eyes for a brief moment, but there was no triumph in her own to have been vindicated. She looked hurt and regretful, and Jack felt a sudden fury that Sally could care so much for other people when Connie clearly cared nothing at all for her sister’s feelings.

‘Well, you cannot help yourself, I suppose,’ Connie said, smiling blithely. ‘You always were prim and principled. It was fortunate that I had Bertie to conspire with instead!’

Bertie flushed bright red. ‘I say, old thing,’ he protested, ‘it was not really like that! All we did was plan to raise a bit of cash.’

Jack turned to his cousin.

‘Congratulations on a stunning piece of duplicity,’ he said icily, and watched Bertie wither beneath his contempt. ‘You have nearly driven your own father to his grave with your blackmail, leaving aside the anxiety you have both caused Miss Bowes.’

‘Only wanted enough money to get married, what,’ Bertie said plaintively. ‘Papa wouldn’t countenance it, don’t you know, so Con and I had to think of something.’

‘I’m glad to see that in the end a shortage of funds didn’t stand in the way of true love,’ Jack said bitingly.

‘Papa will probably stop my allowance now it’s happened,’ Bertie said gloomily, ‘but he can’t disinherit me because of the entail.’

‘And his health is poor—’ Connie started to say, then stopped as Bertie shot her a look and Jack realised that even Connie Bowes did not quite have the brass neck to come out with the bald statement that she was merely waiting for her father-in-law to die.

‘I do apologise,’ Sally said, turning to Charley and Stephen, who had been standing watching the exchange in fascinated horror. Jack was not sure whether she was apologising for her sister’s behaviour or Connie’s very existence.

Charley shook her head and gave Sally a squeeze of the hand, which seemed to convey sympathy and support together, then stepped forward hospitably to smooth things over, offering breakfast and to show the newcomers to their room.

‘For if you have travelled from London this morning you must have set off extremely early and be very hungry …’

‘Oh, we stayed in Oxford last night,’ Connie said airily, ‘at the Randolph, you know. Nothing but the best.’

‘She’ll ruin you within a month,’ Jack said to his cousin in an undertone.

Lady Ottoline’s querulous tones, floating from the breakfast room and demanding to know what was going on, put an end to further discussion. Connie picked up a small bag from the floor and thrust it into Sally’s arms. From inside peeped the smallest and most bad-tempered-looking dog that Jack had ever seen.

‘You are far better with dogs that I am, Sally darling,’ she said. ‘Could you take him to the kitchens and feed him? And whilst you are there, would you secure me the services of a personal maid as well? I simply cannot manage on my own.’ Her face brightened. ‘Oh! But since you are here, perhaps you could attend to me yourself?’

Jack felt his temper snap comprehensively. ‘Out of the question,’ he said. He grabbed the bag with the dog in it and handed it to the butler, who recoiled with a look of horror on his face. ‘Keep him away from the Labradors,’ Jack said. ‘They’ll think he is a rabbit.’ He took Sally’s hand in his.

‘Your sister is here as my fiancée, Mrs Basset,’ he said, ‘so you will have to make shift for yourself.’ And he pulled Sally’s hand through his arm and marched her back into the breakfast parlour, with Connie’s indignant voice rising and falling like a siren behind him.

Sally’s head was aching by the time that breakfast was over. Connie had chattered non-stop about her wedding and about how utterly marvellous it was to be Mrs Bertie Basset now. Lady Ottoline had sat in ominous silence, her sharp gaze going from Connie’s animated face to Bertie’s embarrassed one and back again. After the meal she had announced that she wished to speak with Bertie and when Connie had tried to accompany them into the drawing room had uttered the chilling words, ‘Alone, if you please!’

Connie had looked mutinous, but Charley had persuaded her to go and inspect her bedchamber instead and they had disappeared upstairs with Connie’s fluting tones floating back down to Sally as she commented on the dowdiness of Charley’s colour schemes.

‘You didn’t tell me,’ Jack said in her ear, ‘just how unlike you your sister is.’

‘Connie was not always this way,’ Sally said, sighing. ‘Before her broken love affair with John Pettifer she was a sweet girl.’ She looked at him. ‘I did try to tell you about that, Mr Kestrel, but, as I recall, you were not interested in listening.’

‘Touché,’ Jack said. ‘I think we have rather a lot to talk about, Miss Bowes.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘Shall we walk for a little?’

‘I do not wish to discuss matters with you,’ Sally said coldly. She wanted nothing more than a bit of peace and a corner in which to hide away from Connie’s presence. She supposed dully that she should be grateful to her sister, whose artless prattle had confirmed so comprehensively that all the things she had told Jack were true, but she was too heart sore and too miserable to appreciate it.

Jack tucked her hand through his arm and steered her out on to the terrace. ‘Too bad, my love,’ he drawled, ‘for I need to talk to you urgently.’

They did not speak again until they were well away from the house, across the moat and in the arboretum, where the huge pines and redwoods spread their shade and the sharp and sweet scent of the pine needles was all around them. It was warm and tranquil, but Sally did not feel very peaceful. Connie was no doubt wreaking havoc even as they spoke, Lady Ottoline would probably have a heart attack and Jack was looking so unyielding that she quailed to see it.

‘I think,’ he said mildly, ‘that you owe me an explanation.’

Sally’s overtaxed nerves snapped. ‘Oh, do you!’ she said. ‘Well, I think that you owe me an apology!’

Jack nodded. ‘That too,’ he said pleasantly. He drove both hands into the pockets of his trousers and faced her directly. Sally’s heart started to pound.

‘First,’ he said, ‘I want to know why you did not tell me that you wanted the two hundred pounds for your sister Nell. You let me think you were selling your own virtue—’

‘I let you think nothing,’ Sally interrupted. She was incensed that instead of a polite apology he was trying to blame her for his own misjudgements. ‘You chose to think that I was venal and grasping because you had already decided to believe it,’ she said. ‘I tried hard enough to tell you that you had your facts wrong, but you chose not to listen.’

Jack raked his hand through his hair. ‘But if you had told me the truth I could have helped you.’

‘You were in no mood to help,’ Sally said. ‘Have you forgotten how severely we had quarrelled, Mr Kestrel? Besides, I barely knew you. I was not going to ask for a loan from a man I had met only two days before.’

‘You knew me well enough to sleep with me when we had met only two days before,’ Jack said. His gaze was hard and narrow. ‘So instead of requesting a loan you let me think you a grasping harpy who had sold her virginity.’

Sally shrugged, trying to pretend she did not care. ‘You offered the money.’