Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired. Nicola Cornick
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had been in no danger and that was the way he preferred it.
And now he had met Sally Bowes and he wanted her. The idea of seducing her aroused all his most predatory instincts. He remembered what she had said about the Blue Parrot not being that sort of club. Maybe it was, maybe it was not. He did not really care. He was only interested in her. He was only interested in winning—the woman, the game, the money.
He turned his attention to the cards.
‘Matty! Matty!’ Sally reached her bedchamber on the second floor, flung open the door and hurried inside. She was out of breath. It was not because she had climbed two flights of stairs but was all to do with the fact that Jack Kestrel had been watching her as she had walked away from him. She had never been so conscious of a man’s eyes on her, had never felt so aware of a man in all her life. Plenty of men came through the door of the Blue Parrot, rich men, powerful men, charismatic men, and on occasion a man who was all of those things. None of them had affected her in the way that Jack did. None of them was as dangerous and laconic and damnably handsome and coolly charming as Jack Kestrel.
None of them had threatened to ruin her business and, with it, her life. That was what she had to try to remember about Jack Kestrel when her emotions seemed in danger of sweeping her away.
‘There you are, Matty,’ Sally said breathlessly, seeing her maid and former nurse sitting before the fire knitting placidly. ‘I need to get changed for dinner. There is a gentleman waiting for me. Please help me.’
Mrs Matson rolled up her ball of wool with what seemed agonising slowness, skewered it with her knitting needles and got creakily to her feet.
‘What’s all the fuss about?’ she demanded. ‘A gentleman waiting, you say? Let him wait!’
Sally hurried over to the wardrobe and pulled open the door. Matty had been with her family for ever, nursing all three of the Bowes girls in their youth, then acting as Sally’s personal maid when she had left home to marry. She had been with Sally through thick and thin, ruin and riches. When Sally had decided to open the Blue Parrot and had tactfully suggested that Matty might prefer to retire rather than go to live in a shockingly decadent London club, Matty had stoutly declared that she wouldn’t miss it for the world. She had bought herself a little house in Pinner, on the new Metropolitan Railway line, but she spent most of her time at the club.
‘Steady now,’ Matty said, as Sally started pulling gowns from their hangers and discarding them on the bed. ‘What’s got into you tonight?’
‘Nothing,’ Sally said. ‘Everything.’ She swung around and grabbed Matty by the hands. ‘Do you know where Connie has gone, Matty? There’s trouble. Bad trouble. She has tried to blackmail someone …’
The deep lines around Matty’s mouth deepened further as she pursed her lips. She looked as though she was sucking on lemons. ‘That girl’s bad through and through. You know she is, Miss Sally, whatever you say to the contrary. Goodness knows, I nursed her myself and she was a sweet little child, but the business with John Pettifer changed her …’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing but trouble now.’
Sally let go of her hands and started to unfasten her patterned brown blouse, her fingers slipping with haste on the buttons. She had felt very dowdy in her working clothes under the bright lights of the hall and the even brighter appraisal of Jack Kestrel’s eyes
‘Connie’s unhappy,’ she said, stepping out of the brown-panelled skirt. ‘She loved John and she has not been happy since. But it goes back before that, Matty. It goes back to when our father died. It’s all my fault.’
‘Don’t speak like that.’ Mrs Matson’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, Miss Sally. You are not to blame for your father’s death.’
Sally did not reply. It was true that they had had this discussion many times and she knew in her head that she was not directly responsible for Sir Peter Bowes’s death, yet every day she reproached herself because she might have prevented it. She might have saved him …
‘I don’t know what to do with Connie,’ she said now. ‘I can’t reach her.’
‘You’ve tried.’ Matty bent creakily to retrieve the skirt. ‘You never stop trying. Time you thought about yourself for a change, Miss Sally, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Now, who is this gentleman you’re dining with?’
Sally sighed. ‘Mr Kestrel. He has come to retrieve the letters that Connie is apparently using to extort money from his uncle.’
Mrs Matson made a noise like an engine expelling steam. ‘Mr Jack Kestrel? The one who ran off with someone and broke his mother’s heart?’
‘Very probably,’ Sally said.
If ever a man had been born to cause a scandal over a woman, Jack Kestrel was that man.
Matty tutted loudly. ‘I remember the case being in all the papers. His mistress was married when she ran off with Mr Kestrel. Her husband went after them. She was shot and there was a terrible scandal.’
‘How dreadful,’ Sally said, shivering. She wondered what effect such a dreadful tragedy would have had on Jack Kestrel at such a young age.
‘Old aristocratic family, that one,’ Matty said. ‘Your Mr Kestrel is the last in a line that goes back hundreds of years. They say he has inherited all his rakish ancestors’ vices, and I suppose the business of his mistress proves it.’
‘Did the Kestrels have any virtues as well?’ Sally asked.
Matty had to think hard about that one. ‘A lot of them were soldiers,’ she said, ‘so they were probably very courageous. Mr Kestrel joined the army after he was banished. I hear he won medals for gallantry.’
‘Trying to get himself killed, more like.’ Sally said. ‘How do you know all these things, Matty?’
‘I know everything,’ Mrs Matson said smugly. ‘He’s a dangerous one, and no mistake, Miss Sally. You watch him. Charm the birds from the trees and the ladies into his bed, so he does.’
‘Matty!’ Sally was scandalised. The colour flooded her face. ‘He won’t charm me.’
‘Best not,’ Matty said. ‘You need a nice young man after that dreadful husband of yours, Miss Sally, not a scoundrel. Now, how about the gold Fortuny gown for tonight?’
‘No, thank you,’ Sally said, considering for a moment the tumble of evening dresses on her bed. ‘I think I need the Poiret column gown tonight, Matty, to give me courage.’
‘We’ll have to change your corset, then,’ Matty said, with disapproval. ‘Don’t like these newfangled modern contraptions, myself. They’ll be doing away with the corset altogether at this rate and then where will we be? What’s wrong with the old styles, I always say?’
‘You can’t breathe in them,’ Sally said.
‘I’ve breathed perfectly well for nigh on seventy years,’ the old nurse proclaimed. ‘Nothing wrong in a bit of tight lacing. Sit down and I’ll do your hair.’
Sally sat obediently before the big mirror and Matty started to unpin her hair and brush it out. It was long and thick, a rich chestnut colour with lustrous golden strands. Matty always grumbled that it was a crime Sally wore her hair in such severe styles so that no one could see how beautiful it was. Sally claimed that it was not her job to look beautiful, but to keep the Blue Parrot running smoothly.
‘I’ll put the matching bandeau and the diamond pins in tonight, Miss Sally,’ Matty said now. ‘No arguing, mind.’
Sally was not going to argue. Jack Kestrel was, she was sure, a connoisseur of feminine beauty and whilst she could not compete in looks with some of the Blue Parrot’s prettiest hostesses—or, indeed, with her own sister—she knew she scrubbed up quite well. The Poiret dress also added to her confidence. Long, silky, lusciously rich and expensive, it slithered over her head