Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired. Nicola Cornick

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СКАЧАТЬ wished she had guarded her heart more carefully when they had first met instead of tumbling into love with him like a young girl fresh from the schoolroom. But it was too late for those regrets now. She loved Jack Kestrel, but he could not love her in return and, foolish as she might have been, she would not be so unwise as to marry him and then watch him fall in love with someone else when his heart had healed.

      ‘Good night, Jack,’ she said. ‘Think about what I have said. It was not your fault. Let it go.’

      She heard him call her name, but she did not wait. She knew she had to get back inside the house and into the privacy of her room before she was tempted to reveal her most secret feelings. She could not tell Jack that she loved him and expose the deepest vulnerability of all.

      Jack stood on the darkened terrace for a long time after Sally had gone. He could smell the faintest, most elusive hint of her fragrance still in the air and for a shocking moment he felt so bereft without her presence that he was hollow with longing. For the first time in ten years he felt at a loss, unsure of himself in his relationship with a woman. He had told her more of his feelings for Merle than he had ever told another living person. He had locked that pain and that grief away for all those long years, but Sally had gently brought him right to the edge of the precipice. He was so close to opening his heart to her and revealing his true feelings. Except that now he was not sure what those feelings were.

      A few days ago it had all seemed so easy. He had desired Sally Bowes. He had felt so powerful a passion for her, but he had thought it no more than lust. He had told himself that he could manage his lusts. He had always done so before. His emotions had never been involved.

      But one night with Sally had made him realise that he needed her as well as wanted her. Yet still he had not seen his danger. He had assumed that because he had kept the memory of Merle preserved so perfectly, because he had loved her with a youthful and idealistic first passion, that nothing and no one could ever match that. Now he was not so sure. He did not feel for Sally what he had felt for Merle. His first love had had an innocence about it, despite the circumstances. It had been rash, idealistic and magical. What he felt for Sally was deep; his desire for her was the least complicated part of his feelings. He had tried to pretend that they were his only feelings, but he knew now that he needed her. He wanted to spend his life with her. He wanted to grow old with her and for her to have his children.

      He did not want to have to live without her.

      He admitted to himself that he was afraid. He, who had fought for his country in the cause of freedom and justice, who had shown extreme physical bravery and made difficult decisions of life and death, did not have the moral courage to confront his fears of love.

       ‘You should not marry, Jack, until you find someone you can love. Least of all should you marry me.’

      Sally’s words seemed to hang on the night air. She had been generous, just as she had been to Gregory Holt when she had refused to take advantage of his love for her. Jack had misjudged her and insulted her, yet now she was generous enough to try to help him and to prevent him from making an error that could conceivably lead him to repeating the mistakes of the past. She had thought that he might marry her and then fall in love with another woman and be trapped.

      Except that he could not imagine wanting to be with anyone other than Sally …

      Jack swore softly under his breath and started to walk slowly back towards the house. He knew where his thoughts were leading him and he did not like it. He did not like it because he was not in control. Sally had the power in their relationship now. He thought about the power that she had over him because of his emerging feelings for her. He was afraid to confront them.

      They terrified him.

      Sally slept badly and awoke to a bright, sunny Sunday morning that seemed an ill match for her feelings. They rode to church by horse-drawn carriage—Lady Ottoline would not dream of permitting anyone to be conveyed to the service in a motorcar—and immediately the difficulties of precedence raised their head again when Connie insisted on riding in the first barouche with Lady Ottoline and Charlotte, leaving no space for Sally.

      ‘As a widow woman,’ Connie said to her sister, ‘you must become accustomed to taking a step back, Sally.’

      ‘I am a spinster, Mrs Basset,’ Lady Ottoline said sharply, her bright gaze fixed on Connie’s petulant little face, ‘not even a widow, and I have never been accustomed to taking a step back in my life.’

      ‘Oh, but it is different for you, ma’am,’ Connie said blithely, ‘for you are the daughter of a duke.’

      ‘And Miss Bowes is your elder sister,’ Lady Ottoline said, ‘and, for reasons that I cannot quite fathom but that do her great credit, she has wanted the best for you all your life. The least that you can do is show her a little respect.’ And she patted the seat in the barouche beside her and gestured to Sally to join her.

      Not even Connie’s elephant hide was proof against such a set-down and she rode in the second carriage with Bertie and the Harringtons, all the while shooting venomous glances at Sally and Lady Ottoline and waving her hand in ostentatious display at the villagers so that everyone could see her enormous diamond ring.

      ‘Truly, Sally, I do not know how you tolerate her,’ Charley whispered to Sally as they slipped into the family box pew in the little fifteenth-century church and Connie’s complaining tones bounced off the rafters as she sent the hapless Bertie off to find her extra cushions. ‘I am afraid that I would have strangled her long since if she was my sister!’

      ‘I know,’ Sally whispered. ‘I am sorry. She has become much worse since the wedding. I think that her status has gone to her head.’

      Charley snorted. ‘Bertie is no great catch! Not like Jack. And it is not for you to apologise for her, Sally. It’s not your fault! Besides—’ she shot Sally a mischievous look from her dark eyes ‘—I think that Aunt Otto will utterly crush her. I know Aunt Otto, and I am not taken in by her quietness. She is working up to something tremendous!’

      Sally did not have a great deal of spare energy to worry about Connie and her discourtesy. She was far more concerned about Jack. The pleasure that they had taken in each other’s company the previous day had vanished. Jack had sat across from her in the barouche, moody and withdrawn, and once again Sally had felt a helplessness that she could not reach him and barely knew him at all. Charley had also noticed Jack’s bad mood and had sought to reassure her:

      ‘It is just a way that men have, you know,’ she confided. ‘I have observed that if Stephen is wrestling with a problem he barely speaks to me at all until the matter is solved.’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Such silence is quite incomprehensible to me and it used to worry me dreadfully in the early days of our marriage, until I realised that it was just his way. Jack is the same.’

      Sally smiled, but was not reassured. She knew the nature of the problem that must be troubling Jack. It was the same matter that had kept her tossing and turning all night. Their engagement was surely at an end now. She had finished it the previous night when she had told Jack he should not marry until he had found love again. When they travelled back to London the following morning they would go their separate ways.

      ‘Thank goodness that Greg Holt has gone,’ Charley added irrepressibly as the choir procession heralded the start of the service. ‘I think his continued compliments to you would have made Jack intolerably bad-tempered!’

      It did not help Sally that the vicar preached on the benefits of a happy marriage and Connie beamed and sat with her wedding СКАЧАТЬ