Taming the rake, p.11
Taming the Rake, page 11
When they’d first been reunited in the statue garden, she’d clearly meant no more to him than she had during their first disastrous encounter: a nameless, forgettable wench with which to exchange a torrid kiss—or more—and never think of again.
But the brewer’s field they were quickly drawing closer to was not a place for seduction. It was crowded, hectic, and highly public. Much like the wide pedestrian area at the center of the hedgerow labyrinth.
If anyone was winning this game, it was Gladys. The rake was firmly on her hook, dangling helplessly in response to her every whim. That her deepest desire was revenge, not conjugal bliss, was a little secret he would discover soon enough.
Reuben grinned at her. “The brewer’s field is just ahead.”
“I had no idea,” Gladys replied with a straight face.
The brewer’s field could be heard long before it could be seen. When their steps drew them within a hundred yards, the dull roar of drunken conversations punctuated by the occasional clink of ale mugs drifted with the wind, despite the six-foot-tall boundary of thick, flowering elderberry bushes enclosing the eponymous field.
They entered through an open brass gate and were immediately greeted with a sea of scarred circular, gray stone tables, around which hundreds of happy men perched on old curved stone benches, drinking and speaking animatedly with their compatriots.
Gladys wasn’t the only woman present… but it was close. This must be where the menfolk came whilst their wives and daughters were off shopping or promenading or taking tea in proper parlors like civilized ladies.
Gladys much preferred being uncivilized. She hadn’t been proper in years. But she wasn’t quite certain how to take Reuben’s easy acceptance of her complicit behavior. Had he sussed her out as no sort of lady from the moment he’d grabbed her in the statue garden? Or was he so used to being around a fast crowd in London, that the idea of propriety was the farthest consideration from his mind?
“Any specific ale you’d like to try first?” he asked.
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
“Then let’s start here.” He paused before the first vendor’s booth and exchanged a coin for a pair of foaming ales.
Gladys accepted her half-pint with both hands.
“If the mugs are smaller than you’re used to,” he explained, “it’s because these are meant to be samples. Brewers come from all over England to put up booths here during the festival, in the hopes of attracting new customers year round.”
“It looks like it’s working.”
“Does it?” Reuben made a doubtful face. “Many of these men are so sotted, they wouldn’t know a brewer from a badger if one bit them on the nose. The vendors hand out calling cards to anyone who asks, but after the fourth or fifth ale, I’d be surprised if anyone could remember the nuances differentiating their first mug from the second.”
“At least the vendors are making money?”
“Good money, I imagine. Several of them have told me they raise more here in one week than they usually earn in an entire month.”
“A frequent customer then, are you?”
“The frequentest.” He grinned at her, and held out his mug. “To not remembering what this tastes like an hour from now.”
She laughed and clinked her mug against his. They took their first sips at the same time, and ended up with matching froth mustaches, which they wiped away with the backs of their free hands.
“Shall we take a seat?” he asked.
“If there is one.”
“Oh, there’s always something. We might just have to venture a little further from the vendors to find a free table.”
True to his word, Reuben discovered an empty stone table nestled in a fragrant green corner where two elderberry hedgerows met.
Gladys settled herself on one of the squat, curved stone benches. Reuben took the seat next to her, rather than the bench opposite.
“Well?” he asked. “Are you picking up notes of oak and caramel and desperation?”
“Did you even taste yours?” she replied with a lift of her brows. “The primary flavor is toasted barley, balancing out the malt. The slight bitterness in the aftertaste is the perfect touch to round out this particular blend of roasted grains and fermentation.”
He blinked in astonishment. “You do like ale!”
“I told you so, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t tell me you’d be the only person here who really would be able to distinguish nuance several pints later.”
“We’ll see how it goes,” she said with a small half-smile. “This is only my first mug.”
“I’ve no doubt you can do whatever you set your mind to,” he said with confidence. “I should cease being surprised that you keep impressing me more with each passing day.”
Cheeks flushing, she took a drink rather than respond. She reminded herself to stick to the plan. This was not courtship, but vengeance. The only way to regain a small piece of the autonomy, power, and dreams he had stolen from her.
Enacting her well-deserved revenge was turning out to be much harder than expected. Oh, not Reuben’s part. He was even easier to ensnare than she’d dared to hope. The problem was Gladys. And the fact that the more time she spent with her sworn enemy, the less she hated him.
Belatedly, she recalled her hourglass and quickly placed it at the center of the stone table.
“I had dared to hope you’d forgotten,” he said ruefully.
She almost had. Such was the danger of his company. The hourglass was meant to worm inside his head, and now served just as much for her sake. It was becoming increasingly evident that she could only resist him in short doses. An unchecked hour from now, she would still be able to distinguish notes of barley from malt, but might no longer remember the reason she was supposed to hate this handsome scoundrel with every ounce of her soul.
They finished their ale samples at the same time.
“Shall I retrieve the next round?” Reuben asked.
Gladys leapt to her feet. “My treat. Will you guard the table?”
“With my life.” He gave a cheeky salute.
She wasn’t supposed to care about his life, the same way he hadn’t cared about hers. But as she hurried away from him to wander amongst the vendor booths, her feelings were very much in conflict.
On the one hand, he was exactly as she remembered. A spoilt, pleasure-seeking libertine with nothing but time on his hands and predictable selfish desires to indulge.
On the other hand, he was so much more than that. He was surprisingly studious and surprisingly clever and surprisingly thoughtful and surprisingly sweet and surprisingly… not all that bad, if one wasn’t hoping to marry him.
And since Gladys most emphatically did not wish for a connubial future with Reuben or any man, if they had met under any other circumstances, they might have wound up right here where they were today, toasting each other with glasses of ale without the least thought of old hurts and fresh revenge.
All because the damnable man wasn’t seducing her or even courting her. His methods were far more devastating: he was becoming her friend.
She purchased a pair of ales and made her way back to the table as slowly as possible, in the hopes that the hourglass would run out in her absence.
The sand had barely fallen at all. Either the rake had been up to tricks whilst she was gone, or time simply stood still when spent with him, despite the sensation that every minute rushed by breathtakingly fast.
“What did you choose?” he asked with interest.
“I settled on a selection of…” She launched into an unnecessarily detailed explanation, hoping to bore him out of the look of disconcerting admiration currently on his face.
No such luck. With each word, he seemed to find her even more fascinating than before.
“I wish I could take you with me everywhere I go drinking,” he lamented with feeling. “Such experiences would be infinitely better in your company.”
Damn him, how was she supposed to guard her heart against comments like that?
This was what she wanted, she reminded herself. This was the plan, working. He was supposed to fall in love with her, so that it would hurt all the more when she discarded him, as he had done to her.
But now, a dreadful little part of her wanted him to fall head over heels not to exact revenge, but because he finally saw her as a human worthy of love. Specifically, his love.
God only knew a shameful piece of her heart still held a foolish tendre for him.
“Why did you come to the matchmaking festival, if you weren’t looking to make a match?” she blurted out.
“My uncle commanded my presence, and I was hoping for another glimpse of…” He dropped his gaze and glanced away. “Nothing. I was chasing a ghost. Boyish folly.” His bright gaze flew back to hers and he smiled. “I much prefer finding you to the old dreams I left behind.”
She made a rude sound with her lips. “Don’t fling your rakish lines at me.”
“I have to try,” he protested. “What if they worked?”
She rolled her eyes and took a sip of her ale. “I don’t even want to know how often it does work.”
“None of my lines appear to work on you, so I’ve given up trying.”
“Then what do you call the nonsense you just spouted?”
“The truth.” His eyes held hers, his face serious. “I’ve had more fun in these stolen hours with you than all my prior days in Marrywell combined.”
The same was true for her, though she would not voluntarily admit it.
“What about you?” he asked. “Are you here to make a match?”
“No. I came to settle a score.”
“Ooh, intriguing. Is the score now settled to your satisfaction?”
“It’s a work in progress.”
“Isn’t everything?” he said in commiseration, and tapped his mug to hers. “To your success.”
She stared at him. If he had any idea what he’d just wished for…
“Did you start your novel last night?” he asked suddenly.
“Started and finished it,” she admitted. “I was up almost until dawn.”
“It was worth it?”
“Every sleepless minute.”
He looked pleased. “I wish I felt half as passionately about my dusty old history tomes.”
“I suspect you do,” she said wryly. “It’s just not very rakish to say so.”
“All right, you’ve caught me. I can quote to you from many of my books. Do you know the difference between Hoplitai and Psiloi warriors?”
“Please don’t tell me. Ignorance is bliss.”
He harrumphed in faux petulance. “What was your book about, then?”
“You’d probably find it as stimulating as I find ancient warfare.”
“I find you stimulating. What do you do when you’re not reading?”
She took another sip to buy herself some time. Thus far, Gladys hadn’t lied to Reuben about anything, though she’d refrained from volunteering a few choice details. What did she do when not reading?
This did not seem the environment in which to pronounce, I engage in bedsport for money. Or to proclaim that she was no longer welcoming men who took their pleasure without considering hers, and therefore intended to retire with her cat and her fireplace and many more books like the one she’d read last night.
“I was a hostess of sorts,” she said at last. “But I’ve tired of entertaining others. I cherish my moments of solitude.”
“To read novels and skip rocks and drink yourself into oblivion?”
“That sounds like as good an afternoon as any.”
“I don’t know what it says about me that I agree with you.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “Rakes are also supposed to be born entertainers, but such exploits are boring more often than not. I enjoy a good book and I enjoy a good ale, though I admit I prefer playing cards with friends over skipping rocks.”
“I enjoy playing cards,” she admitted.
“Do you? What are your favorite games?”
“It’s difficult to say. I rarely have an opportunity to join a game with others. Men have their gentlemen’s clubs, but women… Mostly, I play solitaire.”
“Most card games do require four or more players, but not all. Do you know Casino? It can be played with two.”
“I know Casino.” Gladys used to play it with her sister, before she’d been ruined and banished.
He leaned forward, ale forgotten. “Come to my room, tomorrow. We’ll play all the Casino you can stand. I’ll provide the ale.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why do I feel like I’d be walking into a spiderweb?”
“Because you’re an astoundingly suspicious shrew,” he said cheerfully. “And because if I can manage to steal a kiss between the card-playing, I absolutely will.”
“What makes you think I want a kiss?”
“What makes you think you won’t?”
Nothing made her think that. She did want a kiss. Was burning for a kiss. Ducking out of his embrace every time he reached for her was the hardest thing she’d had to do in years.
The next time he kissed her would be even worse. Unlike the first few encounters, this time, he would mean it. He’d be reaching for Gladys, not some nameless stranger in a garden. He’d be kissing the woman he picnicked with, and played cards with, and drove to London and back in the dead of night to buy a gothic novel for.
And Gladys wouldn’t be faking her desire either, blast him. She’d laid a trap for the Despicable Medford and stepped into its sharp jaws herself.
She glanced at the hourglass on the table. Empty. How long had it been empty?
She snatched it up like King Arthur brandishing his sword and scrambled to her feet. “I must go.”
Reuben rose as well, his warm brown eyes locked on hers. “Tomorrow? My room?”
It was a wonderful idea. A terrible idea. The perfect opportunity to put the final step of her plan into motion.
“Tomorrow,” she managed. “Four o’clock.”
His smile was brighter than the sun. “I’ll be waiting.”
Waiting, then soon after, he’d be weeping. Because when Gladys was through with him, she would walk away without looking back, and wipe him from her mind altogether, the same way he’d done to her. Reuben wouldn’t become a memory. He’d be nothing at all. By this time next week, she’d be safe and sound back home, and have forgotten him entirely.
She hoped.
CHAPTER 15
Reuben spent the entirety of the following morning preparing his rooms for Gladys’s arrival.
First came artful decorating with candles. A vase of fresh flowers here, a vase of fresh flowers there. Then he got rid of the excess candles, because they were too much. Then the flowers looked like too much, so he got rid of those, too. Then it wasn’t enough, and he was forced to buy more flowers and prepare a few candles after all.
The problem wasn’t the room. The problem was Reuben. Beneath his rakish veneer, he was nothing more than an idle, lonely bookworm, whose idea of scintillating conversation was to blurt out aspects of Greek historical influence before he’d even imbibed his ale. Of course an intelligent woman like Gladys would run away from the real him.
He would pretend to be whatever it took for her to give him a few more precious moments of her time. If only he knew what that was.
By the time she finally knocked on his door, Reuben was no longer sure his shoes were even on the right feet. After sending away his valet for privacy, Reuben had immediately repented. In the past hour, he’d dressed and undressed and redressed twelvefold, redoing his cravat and his coiffure every time. He and his rented rooms were as clean and presentable as possible, giving an air somewhere between Don’t worry, this is definitely not a seduction and But of course it can become one in an instant, if a seduction is what you want.
“Good afternoon,” he said breathlessly as he answered the door.
The breathlessness was not because he’d sprinted at top speed across the room the very second her knuckles touched the wood door panel, although that was exactly what he had done.
The breathlessness was because he always forgot to breathe whenever he looked at her.
Gladys did not have the least air of frantic costumery. She looked calm and collected and utterly captivating in a simple gown of pale rose sprigged muslin, with her hair gathered behind her head and only a single brown tendril framing half of her captivating face.
One of her dark eyebrows lifted with amusement. “And a fine afternoon to you, good sir. Am I interrupting something?”
“What? No, I... Come in, come in.” He stepped aside and welcomed her into the small parlor.
After much deliberation, he’d left the door to his bedchamber shut tight. Closing it off made the available space seem even smaller, but at least for the moment, the look he was going for was cozy, not mouth of the dragon.
He motioned her over to the sofa, armchairs and tea table, upon which latter object stood a covered dish, two place settings, and a pair of crystal wine glasses.
“Wine?” she asked. “I thought you promised ale.”
“I have ale if you want it,” he said quickly, “but I fear toasted barley won’t go as well with fresh pudding as an inch or two of fine port.”
She took her seat, and set her infernal hourglass atop the table. “I do like port. And pudding. Where did you get it?”
“From the very best chef in the region,” he assured her.
“The pudding competition?” she guessed. “Who won it this year?”
“I didn’t catch her name,” he admitted and started to take his seat.
An odd look flashed across Gladys’s face.
He paused. “If you’re not peckish, we can jump straight into cards?”
Her face smoothed. “I’d have to be dead not to have room for pudding.”
Relieved, he reached for a serving spoon and scooped a portion of hot, crumbly pudding onto each of their plates. After pouring a bit of port into each crystal goblet, he lifted his glass toward hers. “To good wine, good food, and a good game.”
