Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired. Nicola Cornick
lenses of his glasses. ‘Yes, sir.’ He held out the papers. ‘I have the court transcripts here. Miss Bowes was her younger sister’s most staunch supporter in the case against Mr Pettifer and my sources also informed me of her role in the Chavenage case.’
Jack took the papers. He would not, he told himself sternly, believe a word against Sally until he had seen the evidence with his own eyes. And yet even as the thought went through his mind he was scanning the papers before him. In Churchward’s neat annotations he read that the Chavenage family had apparently paid Mrs Hayward seven thousand pounds to keep the matter of her sister’s elopement with Mr Geoffrey Chavenage out of the courts. Chavenage senior was a Member of Parliament and Jack could see how badly the elopement of his son with an underage girl might affect his political standing. With increasing anger and disbelief he turned to the court transcripts for the Pettifer breach of promise case. Again, Sally had been very active in supporting her sister’s claim and had presented Connie Bowes as an innocent who had been cruelly betrayed by an experienced older man. Jack raised his brows with incredulity that the judge could have been so taken in.
‘Of course,’ Mr Churchward was saying, in his precise manner, ‘we must consider the possibility that Miss Constance Bowes was indeed the injured party in both of these instances—’
He broke off as Jack slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘I think,’ Jack said, ‘that is as likely as hell freezing over.’
‘Sir?’ Churchward looked confused.
‘Apologies, Churchward—’ Jack straightened up, casting the papers aside ‘—but I do not for one moment think that is likely. Miss Constance’s attempt to blackmail my uncle fits too neatly with the pattern for it to be a coincidence.’ He strode over to mantelpiece and rested an arm along the top whilst he tried to think coolly and calculatedly about Sally Bowes’s deception. She had told him that she knew nothing of Connie’s extortion threats and that she would do all she could to return the letters.
And he had believed her.
Fool that he was—he had been taken in by her apparent frankness, intrigued by her intelligent mind, led astray by his lust for the luscious body she hid beneath those deliciously silky gowns. There was evidence here, chapter and verse, of two occasions on which the Bowes sisters together had entrapped a young man and walked away with a fortune, but in his hunger for Sally Bowes he had almost fallen for her lies. He had exonerated the elder sister from the greed and cupidity of the younger, when in fact she was probably the one who arranged all the details of these unscrupulous affairs. Sally provided the brains, Connie the looks, to fleece the gentlemen of their choosing.
Something twisted inside him that felt almost like pain. Jack was not accustomed to feeling pain in any of his love affairs. It was something that had not happened to him for ten years. Then he felt anger, so intense and searing that for a moment his mind went blank.
‘Mr Kestrel?’ He became aware that Churchward was addressing him. ‘What would you like me to do now, sir?’
‘Churchward,’ Jack said slowly, ‘thank you for gathering this information for me. What I would like you to do now is to find out who the investors are in Miss Sally Bowes’s club, the Blue Parrot. Find out, and then approach them to see if any would be prepared to sell their stake.’
Churchward’s brows shot up. ‘Are you looking to invest in a nightclub, sir?’
‘No,’ Jack said grimly. ‘I am looking to ruin Miss Sally Bowes’s business, Churchward. Find the investors and buy them up. I want that club. I want Miss Bowes in my power.’
‘Mr Kestrel is here to see you, ma’am—’ Sally’s secretary had barely managed to get the words out when Jack Kestrel shouldered through the doorway into the office.
‘I’ll announce myself,’ he said. ‘Miss Bowes …’ He gave her an unsmiling nod.
Sally had been unable to concentrate all morning, a fact that she knew her secretary had noticed with curiosity. She had made half a dozen errors in her arithmetic and had started and abandoned three letters to the club’s suppliers. Her attention had been torn in half between worrying about Nell’s situation and thinking about Jack, and neither had been conducive to work. When Jack’s name was announced she had felt her heart do a little flip and the heat had rushed through her body in an irresistible tide, but then she had seen his face, his hard, uncompromising expression, and the smile had faded from her eyes as she had known at once that something was dreadfully wrong. Her superstitious dread had been well founded.
He did not look in the least glad to see her. In fact, he looked thunderous.
‘Thank you, Mary,’ Sally said, rising to her feet and nodding to the secretary to close the door behind her. Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast now. Already the abruptness of Jack’s tone and the dislike that she could see in his eyes reminded her all too clearly of their first meeting, before they had taken dinner together, before he had kissed her, before that tempestuous and passionate lovemaking that even now stole her breath to remember it. She felt confused, as though time had slipped back and all the things that she knew had happened between them over the past few days had never been.
‘This,’ she said, as calmly as she was able, mindful of the staff in the outer office, ‘is distressingly similar to your arrival two days ago, Mr Kestrel.’
Jack slapped a pile of papers down on the desk in front of her. ‘Do you deny that you supported your sister in a claim for damages after an elopement and also in a breach of promise case in 1906, Miss Bowes?’ he demanded.
Sally’s stomach lurched. She felt a little sick. So Jack had been digging into Connie’s past affairs. She might have guessed that he would. He must have started his enquiries before they had met, but even so she felt horribly betrayed. She remembered the previous night, the things she had done, the heated, intimate, perfect things she had allowed him to do to her, and she could not bear to think that all the time he’d had no trust in her. Even now the memories could make her melt with longing and she hated the fact that he could still do that to her when he was standing there like a cold-faced stranger. That was humiliating. But what was blisteringly painful was the fact that she had loved him then and, despite everything, loved him still.
‘You have been quick to make enquiries into our business, sir,’ she said stiffly.
‘Naturally,’ Jack said. His expression was stony. ‘Did you think I would simply trust your word, Miss Bowes? How surprisingly naïve for a woman like you!’
He allowed his gaze to appraise her insolently from her plain brown shoes to her neatly pinned hair. ‘I have to say that you have been very convincing over the past couple of days. I almost believed you honest. You are evidently both practised and clever.’
The pain of his contempt sliced through Sally like a knife. ‘You have this utterly wrong!’ she said. ‘Yes, I was involved in supporting Connie through the breach of promise case two years ago, but she had been cruelly let down and I wanted to help her—’
‘Oh, spare me the false protestations of innocence.’ The derision in Jack’s voice was searing. ‘Your sister’s attempt to extort money from my uncle is part of a pattern of blackmail that both of you have perpetrated for years.’
Sally’s outrage swamped all other emotions. ‘How dare you? It is not!’
Jack tapped the sheaf of papers. ‘The detail is all here, Miss Bowes.’ He straightened up. ‘Chavenage, Pettifer, and now you seek to add my cousin to the list.’
Sally’s mind was spinning. She knew that the cases looked damning, but her heart was sore that Jack had come to accuse, not to ask her for the truth. They had only known each other a brief time but even so, she had hoped that it would have been enough for him to trust her. Evidently not. He could make love to her with no emotional commitment whatsoever. He had no respect for her. She felt despair at the contrast with her own feelings.
‘I know that the breach of promise suit looks bad,’ she said desperately, ‘but if you would