A Rake's Redemption Read online

  But that was not his concern. Fossey’s future was not his responsibility to fret over.

  Finally he could see the clearing and a little house in the distance down the road, with a walled garden that abutted the road. Maybe he would stop and ask an early-rising maid the way to the inn. He was about to kick Pegasus into a gallop now that they were breaking out of the dimness of the wooded lane, when he heard a shout and two men leaped out of the brush into the road. Exhausted and nervous, Pegasus did the unthinkable and reared.

  Hardcastle felt himself sliding, sliding, sliding out of the saddle and tumbling backward. Briefly he considered that he had not fallen from a horse since . . . actually, never.

  As he hit the ground, he heard a voice call out in brutal accents, “Stand an’ deliver, mate!”

  Chapter Two

  Before he had the chance to respond, a thick-set man raced at him and he felt the first painful blow of a board hard against his back. More footsteps crunching through the gravel, more blows and more pain; Pegasus whinnied and scuffled on the rutted road, but all Hardcastle could concentrate on was the painful blows, blows that came at such a rate he could not scramble to his feet to defend himself.

  He shouted hoarse, incoherent demands for the brutes to stop, but nothing, no amount of begging—he was not begging, was he?—would make them stop. Blackness closed in around him; the moon was extinguished just like a lantern.

  • • •

  Phaedra Gillian hummed an old Scottish air her nanny used to sing to her as she gazed, in dawn’s first light, out her bedroom window, just under the eaves of her and her father’s Oxfordshire cottage. The distant hills beyond the village were misty, a new-green color like the sage that budded and grew in her garden. It promised to be a glorious day with a hint of early sunshine rising in the pearly eastern sky. She watched a tiny bird battling with a stubborn piece of fluff he was trying to fit into his nest. Wishing him luck, she was just about to continue on her first task of the morning, making herself presentable, when she heard a scream.

  What was it now? Sally, her maid of all work, was a dear, but the slightest setback sent her into hysterics. But not this morning! Please, not this morning! Her father had been awake all night conning over some abstruse point of theological philosophy—she had not heard his footsteps climbing the creaking stairs until almost daybreak—and she would not have him disturbed. He needed his sleep; he wasn’t getting any younger. Even as she thought this, clad still in her night rail, wrap and slippers, she was racing down the narrow, dim stairs. Each step was worn in the center with age. What had set Sally off this time? she wondered; a mouse in the cupboard or a particularly pointed remark from the cheeky butcher’s lad?

  “Miss Gillian, Miss Gillian!”

  Phaedra skittered into the cramped kitchen to find her helper dashing about as though she had run mad. “Hush, Sally, what is it?” she asked the girl, rescuing a pitcher of water before the maid’s erratic movements could send it tumbling off the table. “You know we need to be quiet in the morning so my father can sleep! What is it? Quietly, now.”

  Sally, young and pink-cheeked, her mob cap askew and her eyes glittering, grasped her mistress’s hands and, panting, related her tale. “I was a-goin’ to milk Bessy, just like every morning, miss, out to th’ barn, and I saw, down the road, a-a-a dark spot; yes, a dark spot. An’ I thought to meself, I thought, Sally, what be that dark spot? An’ so I, thinkin’ mayhap it be old Mr. Brunton what drinks too much sometimes an’ falls asleep in the oddest places—I heard once as how he fell asleep atop Flo, his old nag whut was just croppin’ grass on the village green until his wife—Mr. Brunton’s wife, not Flo’s, her being a horse and a lady—”

  Impatient and unwilling to hear the whole rambling story, Phaedra squeezed Sally’s hands and released them. “What was the spot, Sally? You did go to investigate, did you not?”

  “I did, miss, an’, oh!” She shrieked and put her hands to her cheeks.

  “What is it, Sally?”

  “It be a gent, and all bloody-like an’ dead, but I thought as how it might be a trick by those dastardly highwaymen whut’s bin robbin’ folks as travel through these parts, an’ I didn’t dare get too close, you know, for fear he would leap up an’ kidnap me an’ take me to his lair an’ have his way wiv me, like in the tales Joe Mudge, the butcher’s lad, tells—”

  “Yes, Sally, like in Joe’s overblown and ridiculous tales. Did you not think that the highwaymen would not be about after daybreak?” Phaedra didn’t wait to hear her maid’s answer, but flew out the kitchen door, down the walk, out the gate and toward the road where Sally had seen the “body.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she prayed under her breath. “Please do not let it be a body. Please let it be just old Mr. Brunton, alive and well, but drunken!” But the blood, was that just a part of Sally’s overactive imagination?

  As she trotted down the road, fear making her swift, she could hear Sally running after her. There on the road ahead, near the grove of trees that signaled the start of Squire Daintry’s land, was the dark spot of which Sally had spoken. Please, Lord, she prayed, let this fellow be alive.

  • • •

  Shivering from pain, aching in every joint and limb, Hardcastle opened his eyes, only to be blinded by brilliant, glowing light. Out of the light, with an aura of pink and gold around her, was an angel flying toward him, her holy robes fluttering, and she was . . . was she singing, or was it praying?

  He twisted his head farther, trying to see, squinting against the blaze of glory from which the beautiful vision wafted . . . no, not wafted. Floated? Glided? Not quite sure. Hard to tell, with her robes billowing out behind her like that, if her feet ever touched the ground.

  Surely, though, she could not be an angel; if he was dying—and he felt that he was dying—the last thing he would see was a heavenly messenger. More likely a harbinger of a more southerly persuasion, demons from hell come to torment him. Even approaching death could not persuade him that his destination was anything better than “down.”

  But it hadn’t mattered until that moment, until he had seen this approaching vision, this lovely, glowing seraphim gowned in white, with gorgeous, flowing, crinkly golden hair that streamed down over her shoulders, catching the heavenly light from her own aura. Her mouth was opening and closing as she approached, but all he could hear was a strange singing in his brain, a high whine in his ears. Can humans even understand the voices of angels? he wondered. Theological point that, one for the scholars. How many angels can sing while dancing on the head of a pin?

  As he shivered and moaned aloud at the agony he was experiencing, a strangely peaceful feeling came over him. If she would tarry and give him comfort, he could stand any amount of suffering. In that moment he experienced an ardent desire to be found worthy of her presence. But the moment she found out who he was, that he was no candidate for heaven, she would recoil in horror and disappear with one sad look for him, for the life he had wasted . . . no, not wasted. Surely not that. He had lived fully and completely, loved women, drank wine, gambled, but . . . dizziness blurred his vision and nausea overwhelmed him. If only she would stay! If only he deserved . . . he reached out, reached out to touch that warming glow, for he was so very cold. But then the blackness engulfed him and he descended into frigid darkness.

  • • •

  “Get Roger and Dick Simondson,” Phaedra commanded of Sally, who raced after her. The girl retreated to do as she was bid, and Phaedra crouched by the gentleman on the road.

  There was no mistaking he was a gentleman. Even beaten, even stripped as he was of anything of value—his coat, his boots, even the buttons on his shirt—it was clear that he was not some shopkeeper’s assistant from Ainstoun, nor a farmhand or dairyman. Her heart pounded as she examined him, remembering that one brief, appealing gesture, that outstretched hand that seemed to be asking, nay, begging for succor. The look on his battered, bloody face and in his dark eyes had been pain mixed with . . . with what? Ecs
tasy? Surely she was reading strange meaning into what was merely a plea for help.

  She would give aid to the extent she was able. At least he was alive. She glanced around, but it would be some time before Roger and Dick would gather what a hysterical Sally would be asking of them. Tenderly, she brushed the gravel out of his cuts and examined him. The poor gentleman was badly beaten. Blood stained the fine lawn of his shirt, open because the villains had stripped even his shirt buttons from him. With an experienced eye—Phaedra was the only one in or near Ainstoun with any medical ability at all, as befit the daughter of the local vicar, retired though her father now was—she could see that though badly beaten, the fellow would likely recover, if she could get him off the cold ground soon, that was. It was spring, well into May now, but mornings were still chilly, as she felt through her drifting, billowing night rail. Morning dew had settled on the poor gentleman and his clothes and hair were damp. She glanced around, but still Sally was not returning, nor was help on the way.

  If the gentleman was conscious she could ask him if he could walk, but she was certainly not able to move a man of such size. Compared to her slim frame he was a behemoth, but there was no fat over his bones. As she ran her hands over his limbs, checking for breaks, she could not help but notice more than adequate muscle and sinew. He was lean but strong, she would guess, and certainly of a class Ainstoun was not accustomed to hosting, so where was he headed in the middle of the night? For she assumed he had been set upon and robbed some time in the darkest hours before dawn. Had he been traveling alone? And where was his horse?

  And where, oh where were the Simondson brothers? She looked down the road fretfully, then back at her patient. His skin, where it was not bloody or covered in grit, was as pale as marble, and his hair, laying across his high forehead, was raven black and glossy, though road dust clung to it now. He was more still than he had been, was he not? And even more ashen. Was he dying? Oh, Lord, please, she prayed. Not that! She hesitated, but then slipped one hand down under his shirt to his heart, and felt the reassuring thud that told her he was still alive, though in very rough condition. Glancing around, she made a quick decision and pulled off her wrap, laying it over his still form, hoping it might give him some small measure of warmth.

  At long last she saw the two young men she had sent Sally to fetch, striding along the road, Dick still carrying his scythe. She colored when she realized she was in only her night rail now, and on a public road with two young men, no less, but this was no time for missish behavior. She sternly quelled her shyness and determined to act just as if she was in her proper attire. When there was nothing else one could do, one comported oneself with dignity. “Dick, Roger, carry this fellow to my home. He is badly in need of help.”

  The two robust young men, unquestioningly obedient, lifted the man by the feet and shoulders.

  “Careful, careful, he is badly hurt!”

  Their odd procession made its deliberate way to the small cottage Phaedra and her father called home. Once inside, she only hesitated a moment before asking the two to carry their burden up the narrow stairs to the first room on the right, at the top of the flight. They did as they were asked, though Phaedra had a worrisome few moments when they came close to dropping their charge as they turned the tight corner at the top. But finally the young men lay the gentleman down on the small bed in the tiny, cheerful room and made their way back down again.

  It was not until after she had thanked and dismissed both the Simondson brothers and Sally that Phaedra realized she should have admonished them not to embellish on this morning’s work. There was enough fear in the village already over the behavior of the highwaymen without her fanciful maid retailing this story to the butcher’s lad, and the Simondson brothers telling the story over a free pint at the local. It was too late for that caution, and it likely would have been wasted breath anyway.

  She convinced an uneasy Sally to go back out to the barn and milk Bessy and gather the eggs, telling her briskly—but kindly, she hoped—that she had nothing to fear in the bright light of day. Phaedra then poured hot water from the kettle and carried it in a ewer back upstairs, trying to avoid the stairs that creaked, hoping that her father had not been awoken by the rather clumsy work Roger and Dick had made of getting the gentleman up to his temporary quarters. Entering the room, she was struck immediately by how the very dimensions of it seemed to have been shrunk by the presence of the poor beaten gentleman. It was a small room, with cheerful papered walls, bright woven rugs and white-painted furniture lining the walls. The gentleman on the bed seemed to have reduced it to a child’s playhouse dimensions. Like a giant in a fairy story, his feet almost hung over the end of the bed, and his shoulders all but spanned the width.

  She poured hot water into a basin on the small side table and dipped a cloth into the steaming, fragrant water. She had added a few drops of her precious lavender water, a gift from her aunt in Bath at Christmastime. It had cleansing and soothing qualities, she thought, and never did a gentleman need more soothing that this poor fellow. Where was his horse? she wondered again. Had it been stolen along with his purse and coat and boots? And—yes, rings. She could see the indentations on his long fingers where rings had sat for many years, at a guess.

  No stalling; she hesitated briefly and then, dipping the cloth again in the hot water and squeezing it out, she rubbed it over his dirt-smudged face, along the strong, square jaw, bristling darkly with whiskers, and down the thick column of his throat, trying to be gentle, hoping he was in no pain. He was badly bruised and there were a couple of cuts and scrapes on his face; gravel was imbedded and she was grateful he was not awake, for cleansing the wounds would not be a painless operation. But she had a feeling the bulk of the damage had been done to his body. In her brief examination on the road she did not think anything was broken, but she would have to be sure. She sent Sally with a message to the present vicar, who saw the doctor on his travels sometimes. Dr. Deaville would surely pass by Ainstoun sometime within the next couple of days. Phaedra just prayed the gentleman’s injuries were not beyond her meager skills.

  She pushed back his shirt, briskly quelling the blush that would rise—after all, she had seen a man’s chest before, maybe not a man of this quality, but men were men, all equal in God’s eyes, were they not?—and applied the cloth to his chest, first checking more thoroughly for broken ribs and listening for any rattle or indication that his lungs had been punctured or any internal damage done. His breathing was reasonably regular, if a little shallow—no gurgling that would have indicated a dangerous internal bleeding—and his heart still beat a firm, regular thud against her fingers. Nor did his breathing sound wheezy, as it would have if he had taken ill from lying on the road. She nodded, satisfied that he did not seem to be in danger of his life.

  Threading her fingers through his dark hair, she felt for any dent in his skull. That was another possible danger, a bad blow to the skull, and there was some blood and an abrasion or two, but again, it did not seem too serious. Only time would tell some things, she had learned from Dr. Deaville.

  So sturdy a specimen as the unknown gentleman could likely take a worse beating and recover. He certainly was . . . sturdy. She felt the blush rise again, and castigated herself severely.

  “Phaedra Gillian,” she said, out loud, as she rinsed her cloth in the steaming bowl. “You are twenty-seven and a spinster, and a vicar’s daughter to boot! A bookish, learned, scholarly vicar’s daughter, to add to your other failings! He is a man as far above your touch as you are above . . . above Dick Simondson. So it is missish silliness to blush over his manly perfections of body and looks when he would not think twice about the plain little vicar’s daughter.” She glanced down at her disarrayed night rail, now stained with road dirt and blood. It was time to start looking like the vicar’s spinster daughter she was rather than some Gothic heroine from a tale by Mrs. Radcliffe.

  With a smart nod and a pat for the slumbering gentleman’s hand, she rose and gathe
red some of her things together. She would not weave fanciful dream tales about the man lying so helpless on the bed, not if she was as sensible as she thought she was. And yet . . . before she exited, she glanced back. He was the kind of man females were apt to act foolishly over, she thought, leaning against the doorjamb and watching him slumber. It was written in the tumble of black hair, the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his strong limbs. No doubt in the drawing rooms and salons of London he was a gentleman the young ladies would swoon over.

  But not her. She straightened. She was certainly not the swooning type, for how foolish would that be for the vicar’s unwed daughter? She chuckled to herself at the fanciful turn her mind had taken over an injured, sleeping man who would most probably be peevish and whiny and distinctly unlikable when conscious. He would awaken from his ordeal moaning and grumbling and whimpering over the level of care he was receiving, and would demand to be carried off to London and the care of a Harley Street physician.

  That would be the end of it, no doubt, and if he was not whiny, then he would likely be sullen or haughty or be encumbered by one of any number of failings that would turn her romantical musings into so much dream-castle fluff. If there was anything she had learned in her twenty-seven years on earth, it was that folks seldom lived up to the impression one gained of them while they kept their mouths shut.

  Humming the Scottish air, she left the room and climbed up to the attic room she would be sharing with Sally during their visitor’s stay.

  And besides, he was likely married. When he awoke, she would have to ask him if she could write his poor wife concerning his whereabouts.

  Chapter Three

  His first and most overwhelming desire was never again to move, to stay exactly as he was for the rest of his life, however short it would be; the pain he suffered seemed to indicate he was not long for the world. His second thought was that he had an urgent need to move, for very personal reasons, but didn’t know if he ever would be able to.