Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired. Nicola Cornick
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smiled placidly and his jealousy tightened a notch. ‘How clever of you to guess!’ Charley said admiringly. ‘That is exactly what he suggested!’
‘Lord Holt has always behaved as a perfect gentleman to me,’ Sally said, her tone reminding Jack pointedly that he had not. ‘I am sure I shall be perfectly safe with him.’
‘His reputation is worse than mine,’ Jack said grimly, and saw her smile in mock-disbelief.
‘Surely that is impossible?’ she said sweetly.
Jack caught Sally’s hand just as they entered the drawing room. ‘Don’t forget that for tonight you are engaged to me,’ he whispered, ‘or I may be obliged to remind you.’
Sally’s beautiful hazel eyes opened very wide. ‘And how might you do that, Jack?’ she enquired, in an even sweeter tone.
‘By kissing you in front of everyone,’ Jack said, and watched with pleasure as the pink colour came into her cheeks.
‘You dare,’ she hissed.
‘Don’t tempt me …’
They stared at one another, captured in both the fierce mutual attraction and the equally fierce mutual hostility they could see in each other’s eyes and only broke apart when Stephen Harrington came up, cleared his throat loudly, and drew them into the room to introduce them to the other dinner guests who had come to Dauntsey for the evening.
Between fending off his aunt’s enquiries into his moral character, being polite to Stephen and Charley’s neighbours when he did not feel like it, and watching Gregory Holt flirt with his fiancée, Jack was in a vile mood by the end of dinner. The whole meal seemed interminable: consommé, oysters, champagne sorbet, trout, venison, trifle, cheese … Each course was more elaborate than the last and seemed to take hours to serve and even longer to consume. And through it all Jack could do nothing but glower at Gregory Holt as he chatted easily and with the greatest of pleasure to Sally.
‘Drown your sorrows in a glass of Tokay, old man,’ Stephen Harrington said in his ear as the ladies rose to leave the men to their drink. ‘Must say, you have got it bad. You’ve been watching Miss Bowes all through dinner. Never thought to see you brought so low!’
‘Holt annoys me,’ Jack said, through his teeth, watching as Gregory Holt took Sally’s hand and placed a kiss on the back of it in a gesture of laughing gallantry. ‘He has a damned nerve to do that to my fiancée!’
‘Oh, Greg’s harmless,’ Stephen said calmly. ‘He’s only doing it to spite you, old fellow, and because he has always held a candle for Miss Bowes. He was a protégé of her father, you know, and I understand he wanted Miss Bowes to run away with him when matters became particularly grim between herself and her late husband. Not,’ he added hastily, seeing Jack’s glare, ‘that she gave him the least encouragement.’
‘She didn’t tell me,’ Jack said. He could feel the shreds of his control slipping. So Gregory Holt was an old flame of Sally’s. Their situation was uncannily close to his elopement with Merle all those years ago. Except that Sally had had the good sense not to run away and provoke the desperate kind of situation that he and Merle had found themselves in. He took a deep breath. At least he knew they could not have been lovers, though probably not for want of trying on Holt’s part. He wanted to go straight over and confront the man about it but bearing in mind that Greg was some distant cousin of Stephen, they had known each other for years, and it was bad form to cause an affray at a country house party, that was probably not a good idea. What the hell was the matter with him? he wondered. Where had his self-control gone? He’d been a friend of Greg Holt since their schooldays and never had the slightest inclination to ram the other man’s teeth down his throat before now.
‘Well,’ Stephen said, giving him a sympathetic smile, ‘I understood from Charley that—strictly on the quiet—there is some doubt over whether Miss Bowes really is your fiancée, old man, so perhaps she did not see the need to tell you. Seems to me,’ he added, ‘that you could do with sorting out your romantic life properly, Jack, before you explode with frustration. Always thought you had a reputation for conquest, but you seem to be making a dashed mull of everything at the moment.’
‘Thank you,’ Jack said ruefully, reflecting that Stephen had hit the nail on the head. Before he had met Sally Bowes he had had no problem controlling his frustrations or ordering his romantic life successfully.
He looked up as Greg Holt put his hand on his shoulder. ‘A word, Kestrel?’
The smile faded from Jack’s eyes as he took in the other man’s demeanour. Greg had always struck him as being the most easy-going of fellows, rather like Stephen himself, but now there was no good humour in his eyes. Holt looked as though he was itching to take Jack by the throat and throttle the life out of him.
‘With the licence of an old friend,’ Greg said, his mouth a thin line, ‘I have warned Miss Bowes against marrying you, Kestrel. You would make the devil of a husband.’
Jack was already half out of his seat when Stephen grabbed his arm to restrain him.
‘Easy,’ Stephen muttered, and Jack allowed himself to relax infinitesimally.
‘It’s none of his damned business,’ he said, through gritted teeth.
Holt inclined his head ironically. ‘Miss Bowes is unprotected. It is my business when I stand in the place of a brother to her.’
‘Brother!’ Jack exploded with disbelief.
‘Just so,’ Greg said. ‘I hope for your sake that you will be an exemplary fiancé, Kestrel, because I would hate to ruin our long friendship by putting a bullet through you.’
And with a curt bow he walked away.
Jack let out the breath that he realised he had been holding for the whole encounter.
‘Damn it, he was in earnest,’ Stephen said, staring after Holt, his glass of Tokay suspended halfway to his lips.
‘In deadly earnest,’ Jack agreed. He realised that Gregory Holt must have been in love with Sally for a very long time. He wondered why she had turned him down. Holt was rich, titled, the perfect catch for a good-time girl on the make. Even if she had run off with him and had to weather the scandal of divorce, they could have been married by now.
Jack was accustomed in business to weighing evidence, making quick decisions, trusting his own judgement. He looked at Gregory Holt’s ramrod-straight back and furious demeanour and wondered what it was about Sally Bowes that seemed to command the loyalty of all the people whose lives she touched. It did not square with the evidence that he had uncovered about her. Perhaps it was time to confront her.
‘Come on,’ he said, knocking back the rest of his Tokay in one gulp, ‘it’s time to join the ladies. I want to talk to Sally.’
‘Wait a moment, old chap!’ Stephen protested. ‘It’s only ten minutes since dinner! They won’t want to see you yet. And that’s no way to treat my best wine—’
But it was too late. Jack had gone.
‘So, my dear,’ Lady Ottoline said to Sally, patting the seat beside her, ‘come and sit with me.’ She gestured to the deck of cards on the table. ‘Do you play?’
‘A little,’ Sally said, thinking ruefully of the gaming tables at the Blue Parrot. She wondered how Dan was getting on in her absence. She trusted him completely, but with the opening of the Crimson Salon a mere few days away she was extremely nervous.
‘Then perhaps we may have a game of bezique later,’ Lady Ottoline said. ‘But first I want to talk about you—and about Jack. He tells me that you met at the Wallace Collection.’
‘Indeed we did,’ Sally said, wondering how much truth and how many lies Jack had mixed together to describe their relationship.
‘Well, at least you must be a cultured gel,’ Lady Ottoline said. ‘Buffy, the current Duke, is an utter