Rake with a Frozen Heart

‘Whose did you think it was?’

‘I didn’t know,’ she said, feeling extremely foolish and extremely nervous. His winged brows were drawn together in his devilish look. Of all the people, why did it have to be him!

‘Get out.’

He held out an imperious hand. She tried to move, but her legs were stiff and her petticoats had become entangled in her bandbox. With an exclamation of impatience, he pulled her towards him. For a brief moment she was in his arms, held high against his chest, then she was dumped unceremoniously on to her feet, her bandbox tumbling out with her, tipping its contents—its very personal contents—on to the grass. Her legs gave way. Henrietta plopped to the grass beside her undergarments and promptly burst into tears.

Rafe’s anger at having harboured a stowaway gave way to a wholly inappropriate desire to laugh, for she looked absurdly like one of those mawkish drawings of an orphaned child. Gathering up the collection of intimate garments, hairbrushes, combs and other rather shabby paraphernalia, he squashed them back into the bandbox and pulled its owner back to her feet. ‘Come, stop that noise, else anyone passing will stop and accuse me of God knows what heinous crime.’

He meant it as a jest, but it served only to make his woebegone companion sob harder. Realising that she was genuinely overwrought, Rafe picked up the blanket and led her over to his favourite spot on the riverbank, where he sat her down and handed her a large square of clean linen. ‘Dry your eyes and compose yourself, tears will get us nowhere.’

‘I know that. There is no need to tell me so, I know it perfectly well,’ Henrietta wailed. But it took her some moments of sniffing, dabbing and deep breaths to do as he urged, by which time she was certain she must look a very sorry sight indeed, with red cheeks and a redder nose.

Watching her valiant attempts to regain control of herself, Rafe felt his conscience, normally the most complacent of creatures, stir and his anger subside. Obviously Henrietta had been dismissed. Obviously her ridiculous tale of housebreakers was at the root of it. Obviously Helen Ipswich hadn’t believed her. He hadn’t expected her to, but despite that fact, he had sent her off to face her fate alone. Faced with the sorry and very vulnerable-looking evidence of this act before him, Rafe felt genuine remorse. Those big chocolate-brown eyes of Henrietta Markham’s were still drowning in tears. Her full bottom lip was trembling. Not even the ordeal of lying in a ditch overnight had resulted in tears. Something drastic must have occurred. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

The gentleness in his tone almost overset her again. The change in his manner, too, from that white-lipped fury to—to—almost, she could believe he cared. Almost. ‘It’s nothing. Nothing to do with you. I am just—it is nothing.’ Henrietta swallowed hard and stared resolutely at her hands. His kerchief was of the finest lawn, his initials embroidered in one corner. She could not have achieved such beautiful stitchery. She wondered who had sewn it. She sniffed again. Sneaking a look, she saw that his eyes were blue, not stormy-grey, that his mouth was formed into something that looked very like a sympathetic smile.

‘I take it that you have left Lady Ipswich’s employ?’

Henrietta clenched her fists. ‘She accused me of theft.’

He had not expected that. Unbelievable as her tale was, he had not thought for a moment that she was a thief. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Yes, I am. She said I was in cahoots with the housebreaker. She said I opened the safe and broke a window to make it look as if he had broken in.’

‘A safe? Then whatever was stolen was of some value?’

Henrietta nodded. ‘An heirloom. The Ipswich emeralds. The magistrate has summoned a Bow Street Runner. Lady Ipswich ordered me to stay in my room until he arrives to arrest me.’

Rafe looked at her incredulously. ‘The Ipswich emeralds? Rich pickings indeed for a common housebreaker.’

‘Exactly. It’s a hanging matter. And she—she—by implicating me—she—I had to leave, else I would have been cast into gaol.’ Henrietta’s voice trembled, but a few more gulps of air stemmed the tears. ‘I don’t want to go to gaol.’

Rafe tapped his riding crop on his booted foot. ‘Tell me exactly what was said when you returned this morning.’

Henrietta did so, haltingly at first in her efforts to recall every detail, then with increasing vehemence as she recounted the astonishing accusations levelled at her. ‘I still can’t quite believe it. I would never, never do such a thing,’ she finished fervently. ‘I couldn’t just sit there and wait to be dragged off to prison. I couldn’t bear for Papa to be told that his only child was being held in gaol.’

‘So you stowed away in my carriage.’

Rafe’s eyes were hooded by his lids again. She could not read his thoughts. She had never come across such an inscrutable countenance, nor one which could change so completely yet so subtly. ‘Yes, I did,’ she declared defensively. ‘I didn’t have any option, I had to get away.’

‘Do you realise that by doing so you have embroiled me, against my will, in your little melodrama? Did you think of that?’

‘No. I didn’t. It didn’t occur to me.’

‘Of course not, because you act as you speak, don’t you, without thinking?’

‘That’s not fair,’ Henrietta said indignantly. She knew it was fair, but that fact made her all the more anxious to defend herself. ‘It’s your fault, you make me nervous; besides, I didn’t know it was your carriage.’

‘As well for you that it was. Did you think what might have happened if it had belonged to some buck?’ Rafe’s mouth thinned again. ‘But I forgot, it could not be worse, could it, for you are now at the mercy of a notorious rake. Consider that, Miss Markham.’