Dauntsey Park: The Last Rake In London. Nicola Cornick
the portrait of Justin’s duchess, vivid and bejewelled in emerald satin and with the most glorious auburn hair ‘—must be your great-grandmother.’
‘Indeed,’ Jack said. ‘Lady Sally Saltire. She was reputed to be as clever as she was beautiful. Half of London society was at her feet. In Regency times she was known as an Incomparable.’
‘How marvelous.’ His companion seemed amused. ‘It is unusual to hear of a clever woman who did not trouble to hide her intelligence. I admire her for it.’
‘I do not believe that she cared what others thought of her,’ Jack said. ‘And her husband adored her. He said that she was more than a match for him in every way.’ He laughed. ‘She could certainly shoot straighter than he could.’
‘A useful accomplishment,’ she agreed. She leaned closer to the pictures to admire a small square portrait of a little girl in a white dress. The lamplight caught on the strands of tawny brown hair beneath her hat and burnished them to gold, setting the shadows dancing against her cheek.
‘Is this their daughter?’ She asked.
Jack nodded. ‘My Great-Aunt Ottoline.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘Very much so,’ Jack said feelingly.
A spark of mischief lit her eyes. ‘I imagine she must be quite a character.’ She turned to face him and once again Jack felt the impact of that clear hazel gaze. Something shifted within him, something poignant and unexpected, like a hand squeezing his heart.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it has been a pleasure making the acquaintance of your dangerous ancestors, Mr Kestrel.’
She was leaving, and Jack was determined to stop her. He wanted to know much, much more about her. He was not going to let her go yet.
‘Is art a passion of yours?’ He asked.
She shook her head. ‘No more than an interest, like music. My work is my passion.’
Jack slanted a look down at her. He was surprised. She did not look like a New Woman, the type of female who was independent and earned her own living as a shop assistant or factory worker. She looked too glossy, pampered and rich. He was about to ask her what she did for a living when she smiled at him, a luscious smile, but quite without promise of any sort.
‘If you will excuse me, Mr Kestrel, I think I shall go and look at the Cosway miniatures now. They are accounted extremely pretty.’
‘Then may I escort you to the Grand Gallery?’ Jack asked.
After a brief second’s hesitation, she shook her head. ‘No, I thank you. I am here with a friend. I should go and find him.’
‘What was he thinking of to leave you alone?’ Jack asked.
She flashed him a smile. ‘I am able to take care of myself. And he genuinely is no more than a friend.’
‘I am pleased to hear it.’
She sighed. ‘You should not be. I do not seek to further our acquaintance, Mr Kestrel. I am too old a hand to have my head turned by a handsome face.’
She did not look a day above five and twenty, but Jack thought she sounded world-weary. And he was too experienced to push her too hard. That way he would lose all that he had gained.
‘At the least, tell me your name,’ he said. He took her hand. She was wearing long black silk evening gloves that reached to her elbow. They felt deliciously smooth beneath his fingers and for a moment he thought he felt her hand tremble in his. Her long black lashes flickered down, hiding her expression.
‘I am Sally Bowes,’ she said. ‘Good evening, Mr Kestrel.’ She smiled, withdrew her hand from his, turned and walked away down the corridor towards the Grand Gallery. The light shimmered on her peach gown and the voluptuous curves beneath.
Sally Bowes. The shock and disbelief hit Jack squarely in the stomach like a blow. Unscrupulous, greedy, manipulative … A woman who would blackmail a dying man … He knew now what she did for a living. She was a nightclub hostess who used the weakness of men against them to extort money.
Yet the information was counter to every instinct he possessed about the woman he had been talking with. They had only spoken for a few moments and yet she had entranced him. He did not usually make errors of judgement of that magnitude. And along with the shock he felt something deeper, something that felt like disappointment.
He took an impulsive step after her, but then saw a gentleman join her, offering her his arm, and saw her smile up into his face. A pang of jealously pierced him, all the sharper for being so unexpected. He recognised the man; Gregory, Lord Holt, was a very old friend of his. He wondered if Holt was Miss Bowes’s next intended victim.
Jack straightened. Tomorrow he would seek out Miss Bowes again and tell her in no uncertain terms that her attempts to extort money from his uncle had to cease. He would warn her that, in tangling with him, she was engaging a very dangerous enemy indeed.
Chapter One
‘Miss Bowes?’
The voice was low, mellow and familiar. It spoke in Sally’s ear and she came awake abruptly. For a moment she could not remember where she was. Her neck ached slightly and her cheek was pressed against something cold.
Paper.
She had fallen asleep in her office again. Her head was resting on the piles of invoices and orders that were on the desk. She half-opened her eyes. It was almost dark. The lamp glowed softly and from beyond the door drifted the faint sound of music, the babble of voices and the scent of cigar smoke and wine. That meant it must be late; the evening’s entertainments at the Blue Parrot Club had already begun.
‘Miss Bowes?’
This time the voice sounded considerably less agreeable and more than a little impatient. Sally sat up, wincing as her stiff muscles protested, and rubbed her eyes. She blinked them open, stopped, stared, then rubbed them again to ensure that she was not dreaming.
She was not. He was still there.
Jack Kestrel was leaning forward, both hands on the top of her desk, which brought his dark eyes level with hers and put him approximately six inches away from her. From such an intimate distance Sally could not focus on all his features at once, but she remembered them clearly enough from the previous night. He was not a man one would forget in a hurry, for his appearance was very striking. He had dark brown hair, very silky looking and a little ruffled from the summer breeze, a nose that was straight and verging on the aquiline and a sinfully sensuous mouth. Sally was not generally impressed by good looks alone. She was no foolish débutante to lose her head over a handsome man. But Jack Kestrel had had charm to burn and she had enjoyed talking to him the previous night. She had enjoyed his company too much, in fact. Spending time with him had been dangerously seductive. It would have been all too easy to accept his escort, and then, perhaps, to accept an invitation to dinner …
Sally had not been so tempted in a very long time and had known she could not afford to get to know Jack Kestrel any better. As soon as he had told her his name she had been wary, for all of Edwardian society knew who he was. The ancestral line of the Dukes of Kestrel had bred rakes and rogues aplenty in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and there were those who said that this man was the last Kestrel rake, cut from the same cloth as his ancestors. Cousin to the present Duke, eventual heir to the dukedom, he had been banished abroad in his youth as a result of an outrageous scandal involving a married woman and had returned ten years later having made an independent fortune.
Sally could see why he had gained the reputation he had. There was certainly something powerfully virile about him. Women were supposed to swoon at his feet and she had no intention of joining their ranks and littering his path.
She realised that she was still staring at him. Suddenly hot, she dragged her gaze away from Jack’s mouth and met his eyes. His expression was distinctly unfriendly.