Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired. Nicola Cornick
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avoided Jack’s gaze. He offered her his arm and she put her hand on it gingerly, as though it might burn her. She wished she were not so shockingly conscious of Jack’s physical presence. Her awareness of him always undermined her defences.
‘How the hell did you do that?’ Jack asked abruptly as they stepped through the door on to the darkened terrace. ‘She likes you more than she likes me!’
‘I answered her questions honestly,’ Sally said. She saw his look of patent disbelief and added, ‘That may surprise you, Mr Kestrel, given your opinion of me, but your great-aunt is a good judge of character by my estimation, and she liked me.’
She expected Jack to make some cutting remark, but he was silent; glancing at his face, she saw he looked pensive. They walked along the terrace to where the moat opened out into a broad lake fringed with reeds.
‘Gregory Holt warned me off a little while ago,’ Jack said, after a moment. ‘He told me that he was standing as your brother and if I hurt you he would kill me.’
Sally shot him a look of surprise. She was not sure whether she was annoyed or amused at Greg’s interference.
‘He should mind his own business,’ she said. ‘He knows I can look after myself.’
‘So I thought,’ Jack said. He paused. ‘He is in love with you,’ he added, and there was an odd tone in his voice.
‘Yes,’ Sally said after a moment. ‘I suppose he is.’
‘Has he asked you to marry him?’
‘Now you should mind your own business,’ Sally said.
Jack laughed and put a hand over hers where it rested on his arm. ‘It is my business. I am your fiancé.’
‘My temporary fiancé,’ Sally said. ‘Until tomorrow only.’
‘So my guess is that he proposed and you refused him,’ Jack said. ‘Why?’
‘Must you be so persistent?’ Sally let her breath out on a sigh. ‘I do not like you, Mr Kestrel, and I do not particularly wish to speak with you.’
‘Indulge me,’ Jack said. ‘I want to know.’
Sally freed herself and went to stand on the edge of the terrace, looking out over the darkened garden where the topiary shapes were silhouetted against the deep blue of the summer night sky. She was very conscious of Jack, still and waiting, behind her.
‘I refused him because it would not be fair to make so unequal a match,’ she said, after a moment.
‘In terms of wealth and status?’ Jack sounded incredulous. ‘But you are a baronet’s daughter.’
‘I was speaking in terms of affection,’ Sally said. ‘Not everything can be measured in pounds and pennies, Mr Kestrel.’
‘Not a philosophy I would expect to hear you supporting, Miss Bowes.’
‘Probably not,’ Sally said. She rubbed her fingers over the cool mossy stone of the terrace wall. ‘I care for Greg,’ she said. She wondered why she was even trying to explain to Jack Kestrel, who thought that her motivated by nothing but avarice. ‘I have known him a long time and he has never played me false. I owe it to him not to take his affection for me and use it badly or take advantage.’
Again she expected Jack to make some kind of cynical reply, but he was silent, and in the darkness she could not read his expression.
‘Whilst you are engaged to me,’ he said, after a moment, ‘you will have nothing to do with him.’
Sally shook her head. ‘You cannot tell me what to do, Mr Kestrel. We are not really betrothed and you have no claim on me.’
She saw Jack make a sharp movement, full of repressed anger, and she backed a step away from him. ‘If you value Holt as you say you do,’ he said, ‘it would wise to agree.’
‘In case you decide to challenge him?’
‘Quite.’
Sally tapped her fingers irritably on the balustrade. ‘You are both as bad as each other,’ she said. ‘I do not think that your aunt would appreciate your attempts to rid Stephen of his relatives.’
‘Probably not,’ Jack conceded. He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I noticed you attempting to persuade her not to cut Bertie out of her will in my favour. Thank you for that.’
‘I am sure that you have enough money,’ Sally said.
‘And Bertie does not—particularly if he is to keep your sister in the style you are hoping for.’
Sally shrugged. She might have known that he would interpret her intervention as an attempt to gain everything for Connie when all she was concerned about was that Lady Ottoline should not change her will on the basis of an engagement that was a sham.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘unless you have a better plan, we shall travel on to Gretna and then we shall see if it is too late to save your cousin from my sister.’
‘What was it that Aunt Otto said I would tell you about?’ Jack asked, as they started to walk along the terrace towards the lavender-scented beds of the parterre.
‘She said that I should not listen to any gossip about you,’ Sally said. She smiled. ‘I imagine she wished to reassure me, believing as she does that I am genuinely betrothed to you.’
‘And have you heard any gossip about me?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Sally said. ‘I have heard plenty relating to your elopement with Merle Jameson, but I do not require reassurance since I am only betrothed to you for the duration of this one night.’ She shivered in the breeze off the lake. No matter how much she professed not to care, she knew she was shamefully jealous of the other woman—the only one that Jack had ever loved.
‘Let’s go back inside,’ she said.
Jack smiled. ‘A moment,’ he said. ‘If this night is all we have, we had better make it worth every moment.’ He put a hand out and caught her wrist, drawing her closer to the warmth of his body. He smelled of cologne and fresh night air and the longing caught at the back of Sally’s throat and made it ache.
She put a hand against the crisp white of his shirtfront and held him off. ‘Mr Kestrel, it may have escaped your notice, but, as I said, I do not like you very much. Nor do you care for me. Only a man with supreme arrogance would assume that I would fall into his arms again after what has happened between us.’
Jack put up a hand and brushed the strands of hair back from her face. His touch made her skin tingle. She turned her head aside in an attempt to deny the way he made her feel.
‘In a moment,’ he said, ‘we are going to go back through those doors into the drawing room. In order to persuade everyone that we are indeed betrothed, you must look like someone who has been thoroughly kissed in the moonlight, Miss Bowes, rather than someone indignant after an acrimonious discussion.’
Panic caught at Sally’s heart. If he kissed her, she was not sure that she could resist the feelings that coursed through her. Once again she wondered, helplessly, how it was possible to dislike a man so much and yet hunger for his touch. It felt like a betrayal of her principles and yet she wanted him.
‘I could pretend—’ she started to say, but Jack slid a hand into her hair and turned her face up to his.
‘The reality,’ he said, as he leaned down very slowly to kiss her, ‘is far, far better than the pretence.’
It was not like his kisses earlier, when he had been asserting his possession and his mastery over her. Now he courted a response from her, the kiss gentle and persuasive, teasing her, tempting her to open her lips beneath his and return the kiss. Sally relaxed, feeling the warmth in her veins turn her body soft and willing. It was so seductive that she let her hands slide over Jack’s shoulders, drew him closer to her