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

Sally shook her head slightly, trying to understand the demons that drove this complex man. There was something here that he was not telling her. It had been a long and bitter struggle for him to come to terms with the past; even now, she suspected there were matters he still could not forgive himself for.

‘They have welcomed you back with open arms,’ she said. ‘Both Charley and Lucy dote on you, and I think Lady Ottoline probably likes you much more than she pretends.’

‘Oh, everyone has treated me like the prodigal son,’ Jack said, and once again Sally heard the thread of bitterness in his voice.

‘You do not feel that you deserve it,’ Sally said.

Jack shook his head, but he did not speak and after a second Sally leaned over to kiss him, wanting to comfort him in the only way she could. For a moment he was still beneath her and then his mouth moved on hers and his hand came up to clasp the back of her head to hold her still so that he could kiss her more deeply. He tumbled her over on to the rug beside him and raised himself on one elbow to look down into her face. There was a hard glitter of desire in his eyes, barely leashed, and it lit an excitement like wildfire in her blood.

‘Jack,’ she whispered.

His expression was dark. ‘This was not how I had planned my courtship of you to be.’

‘I don’t care,’ Sally said recklessly. ‘I want you.’

Somewhere deep within her she did care; she loved him and wanted his love in return, wanted it to wash away all the doubts between them and the pain of the past. But this was all that Jack could give her, this intense, sensual need that could not be denied, but threatened always to rule her.

‘When I am with you I feel alive,’ she said. ‘I want that, Jack. Make me feel alive.’

He was on her in an instant, kissing her deeply, his hand buried in her hair. His tongue thrust, demanding a response as though he owned her and wanted to taste every inch of her. Her body felt hot and heavy as though they had been apart a long time and she could not wait to welcome him back. The champagne fizzed through her veins and the sunlight danced against her closed eyes, hot on her skin. Jack’s hair felt warm and silky beneath her fingers. She felt him shift, his hand coming up to clasp her breast and tease her nipple beneath the material of her riding habit. She writhed against him, desperate to be free of the constriction of her clothes, and he started to unbutton the bodice of her gown and unlace the chemise beneath. The summer air played across her heated skin and Sally moaned with pleasure.

Then, suddenly, shocking her, Jack stood up and bent to lift her in his arms. Her head spun and the green darkness of the tree cover closed about them.

‘What—?’ she began, but Jack silenced her with another searing kiss that stole her very soul. He placed her gently on her feet, giving her a gentle push so that her back came up against the warm, rough bark of a tree. Understanding came to her then and she gasped, but he silenced the sound with another searching kiss, his mouth moving over hers, then dipping to taste the hollow above her collarbone and the sensitive skin at the base of her throat. Sally leaned back and felt the bark score the palms of her hands. Jack pulled open the bodice of her habit and dipped a hand inside, warm against the silk of her chemise. Her nipple hardened against his palm and he pushed the silk aside. Her bodice fell down, leaving her naked to the waist.

‘Thank goodness,’ he murmured, ‘that you wear no corset for riding.’

‘I protest,’ Sally said weakly, ‘that I am losing my clothes and you are still fully dressed.’

‘And that is the way that it is going to be,’ Jack said. He bent his mouth to hers again, stifling her protests, his kiss deep and hungry. His hands moved. Sally heard something give. Her legs felt weak and she leaned back against the tree for support, held there by the press of Jack’s body against hers. When he released her mouth abruptly, she swayed, her body hot and melting, her mind dark with wanting.

Jack moved a little away from her and she looked down to see that he had caught hold of the hem of her riding habit, looping it over his arm. Beneath the habit she wore only her bloomers, which were no protection as they were designed to be open. Jack lifted her, then slid her down so that he held her by the hips, forcing her back against the tree trunk even as his erection pushed just inside her. Sally screamed at the unbearable and pleasurable tension within her.

‘Hush, my sweet.’ Jack’s tone was laced with wickedness. He thrust lightly. ‘You would not wish the gardeners to hear you, I am sure.’

Sally sobbed as he bent his head to her breasts and slid inside her a few inches further. She squirmed against his body, needing nothing now other than the intense satisfaction of being impaled on him. He continued to tease her breasts, nipping and biting gently whilst she writhed desperately, seeking release. And when he finally buried himself within her, thrusting deep again and again, the pleasure overwhelmed her and she gave another choking cry and hung limp in his arms.

When she could breathe again, and move, and look at him, she found that she was lying once more on the rug beneath the trees, her body boneless with bliss. Jack wrapped his arms about her and drew her close to his body and she listened to his breathing slowing and felt the gentleness in his hands and a part of her felt exultant to be so close to him. But even in her physical satiation a small part of her felt lonely too, because she knew that Jack had given everything that he could and she still wanted his love, but perhaps he would never be able to give it to her.

It was Lady Ottoline’s birthday dinner that night and because they were a small family group they were seated at a round table exquisitely decorated with pale pink and old gold roses amongst asparagus fern and ivy. The main course of pheasant was decorated with its tail feathers and Connie laughed herself into a fit at the fact that Lady Ottoline was wearing osprey feathers in her hair.

‘Two old birds together that are well past their best,’ she whispered to Sally.

There was dancing after the meal. Jack behaved with impeccable propriety, the attentive fiancé, always at Sally’s side, his attention on her alone. But for all his surface decorum the touch of his hands would remind her of their encounter in the park and her whole body would flush with the heat of remembered desire as she wondered if he might come to her room that night.

Connie was in her element, so full of her own importance as Mrs Bertie Basset that Sally could see even the kind-hearted Charlotte was rueing the day Bertie and Connie had decided to come to Dauntsey. Connie flaunted herself in a dashing gown of purple silk, draped herself all over Bertie in a very public display of affection and insisted loudly on taking precedence over her sister as a married woman, just as Jack had predicted. Lady Ottoline, who had greeted her godson and his new wife that night with a cool civility that, Sally thought, had fooled Connie into thinking she was an insignificant old relative, was watching Connie very sharply with her shrewd dark gaze.

It was late that night when the dancing was over that Connie sought Sally out as she was on her way to bed and fitted yet another cigarette into her mother-of-pearl holder.

‘I suppose Mr Kestrel is very handsome,’ Connie said, drawing daintily on her cigarette as she tripped up the stair beside her sister, ‘and he is rich, of course. I can see why you might wish to marry him.’ She sighed. ‘But really, Sally, I could kill you for causing such a scandal! I wanted to be the centre of attention.’

‘Well,’ Sally said, her borrowed shoes pinching and her irritation just as sharp, ‘I do not think you need to fear that, Connie. You have managed to make a profound impression on everyone in a very short space of time. Besides,’ she added, ‘this weekend party is to celebrate Lady Ottoline’s birthday and it is for neither of us to steal her thunder.’

Connie brightened. ‘Yes, and Bertie has just told me that he is the old lady’s heir! Why he chose to keep that piece of information from me until now is a mystery, for I have wasted a whole day when I could have been making up to her, but never mind.’ She caught Sally’s arm, dropping cigarette ash on to the sleeve of the gown Sally had borrowed from Charley. ‘But you must tell me what she is like, Sal, and how best I can get into her favour.’

‘I cannot help you,’ Sally said. She felt furious at this further example of her sister’s barefaced greed. ‘Lady Ottoline will make her own judgements.’

Connie’s face was working like boiling milk. ‘Well, upon my word! You have become very high and mighty all of a sudden! I suppose this is because you are engaged to Mr Kestrel. Well, I shall become a lady long before you are a duchess!’ She looked down the stairwell to where Jack and Stephen Harrington were standing chatting in the hall. ‘You know, Sally darling, I think I am happier with my Bertie than you will be with Jack.’ She fidgeted a little with the cigarette. ‘Bertie made me promise not to say anything, but I think you should know …’

‘Know what?’ Sally said. Her attention was half-distracted because Jack had just looked up and smiled at her and her heart turned over in her chest in the sweet and poignant way to which she was becoming accustomed.

‘That Jack Kestrel murdered his mistress, of course,’ Connie said. She looked with satisfaction at Sally’s shocked, horrified face. ‘There! I told Bertie that you would not know. It is scarcely the thing a man tells his new fiancée, is it?’ And, having delivered her barbs, she slipped past Sally with a sinuous little slither of silk.

Chapter Eight

Sally was not sure how she got outside. She vaguely remembered running back down the staircase and seeing Jack’s and Stephen’s startled faces as she rushed past them. Jack put a hand out to her and called her name, but Sally brushed him aside and slammed the door open. She hurried across the terrace and stood with her palms resting on the flat top of the wall that bounded the moat, and breathed in deep breaths of the fresh night air in an attempt to still the whirling, giddy spin of sickness within her.

You mustn’t listen to all the gossip about his past, Lady Ottoline had said to her only the night before, but it was difficult not to listen to fiction when Jack himself refused to speak of his first love and Sally knew nothing beyond the fact that he had loved her and they had run away together and that she had been shot. To think that it might have been Jack who had killed Merle was shattering, impossible, even if it had been a tragic accident.

An icy trickle of despair ran down Sally’s spine. She could not believe it of Jack. She simply could not. It was not just because she loved him. She did not think she was so blinded to his faults because of that. She knew Jack could be ruthless. She knew that his mistress had died. But the rest …

It would explain the scale of the scandal, a little voice whispered inside her. It would explain why he was banished abroad. It would explain Jack’s silence …

‘Sally?’

With a start Sally realised that Jack had come to stand beside her. The night wind was ruffling his dark hair and he raised an absentminded hand to smooth it down in one of the gestures that she was coming to love. He was looking at her with concern and Sally realised that she was gripping the masonry so tightly that her knuckles were white and the stone was scoring her hands.

‘Sally?’ he said again. ‘What is the matter? What has happened? Did Connie say something to upset you?’

‘Yes,’ Sally said. She did not think of lying to him. She could not see a way of pretending that there was nothing the matter when suddenly there was this ugly, monstrous secret between them.

‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘She told me that Bertie had told her—’ She stopped and cleared her throat. ‘She told me that Bertie had told her you killed Merle Jameson,’ she said. ‘She said that you murdered her.’

There was a silence. Behind them the fountain in the courtyard splashed softly. A swan floated past on the smooth waters of the moat, its head tucked beneath its wing as it slept.

‘And did you believe her?’ Jack asked quietly.

Sally looked at him. ‘You told me yourself that she had died,’ she said slowly, knowing that it was no answer.

Jack took a step closer to her. ‘You don’t trust me,’ he said, and his voice was hard.

‘I don’t know!’ Sally spun around on him. Her heart felt torn. ‘God knows, I don’t want to believe you capable of murder. I cannot believe it! I cannot even imagine that you might hurt her by accident. But you have never told me the truth, Jack. You told me Merle died, but you never told me what happened.’

‘And because of my reticence you think I may be guilty?’ Jack’s icy tone flayed her to the bone.

‘No!’ Sally spoke, once again on instinct, and when he turned away from her she felt sick and dizzy all over again. She did not want to believe it, could not believe it was true …

‘Connie was right.’ Jack drove his hands into his trouser pockets and stood braced, staring out into the darkness. ‘I did kill Merle.’