Redemption Of The Rake. Elizabeth Beacon

that was taking drama too far, but it wasn’t her mind so she probably didn’t care.

      ‘I’ll never forgive myself,’ Hester wailed, then buried her head in her handkerchief to muffle the noisiest pretend sobs James had heard in a mercifully long time.

      At least she was suffering for her art, he concluded, with a fierce frown at the elder sister to make his impatience clear. He spared a moment to wonder why Rowena’s tumbled mass of fair locks felt like a soft golden lure against his cheeks, then told himself not to be such a fool. It was hair, admittedly of the silken and shining kind, and as thick and soft as a lover’s wildest fantasy, but still a workaday feature most women of her age enjoyed in one form or another. Reminding himself that blow on the head hadn’t addled his wits entirely, he cleared his senses of Rowena Westhope and tried to use them on his enemy. Something told him the man was furious and impatient, and James couldn’t spring up and dash for cover without warning his co-stars, so he made as if to sit up to divert them from amateur theatricals.

      ‘No, sir, you must remain still until help comes. I couldn’t live with myself if you did some terrible harm to your poor head because I lack the wit to keep you lying quiet,’ the lovely Rowena said earnestly, fixing a steely gaze on him and daring him to argue.

      ‘Grab her and run when I say so, then,’ he demanded as softly as he could. Something in her wide blue gaze made him think it was highly unlikely the minx ever did as she was bid without an argument. Seeing a similar talent in the blue eyes her little sister fixed on him reproachfully, James shifted to test his reflexes. No better than satisfactory, he concluded, but they would have to do. ‘Now,’ he urged and wondered if he was about to faint and make this too easy for the shooter as he lurched to his feet.

      He wasn’t giving in yet; not after all the years of warding off blows and knife blades in dark alleys where the likes of him lurked. He imposed his steely will on his wavering legs and managed to keep pace with Rowena and her wriggling captive. At least this way a shot would hit him first. They were too close for even the best marksman to be certain of shooting him and not one of Finch’s beloved daughters, and James sent a desperate plea to heaven to guard that good man’s offspring from a death James probably deserved and they didn’t. The hasty movement jarred his bruised and protesting head and spine, and he winced and waited for a kill shot to smash into him. Breath sawed in his labouring lungs as if he’d run a mile instead of a few yards. He thought for a moment he’d been shot and his body was keeping going in the long moment when terror blocked agony for mortally wounded men. He’d seen it, inflicted it even, yet he’d never felt it and by some miracle he still hadn’t.

      There were no more hurts to his person than Hester Finch had inflicted by accident when they reached the opposite side of the clearing. They sank into the sheltering hollow of a mighty oak tree’s roots. It took the lack of any blood coursing out of any of them to convince him his foe hadn’t risked picking him off, then getting away before anyone could give chase. This was no time to sink into the leaf-cushioned sanctuary and give in to the headache pounding at his temples, though. No rest for the wicked, he reminded himself ruefully, and managed to cling to his right senses by a hair’s breadth.

      ‘You’re safe?’ he gasped as if he’d run a mile instead of less than fifty yards.

      ‘Aye, but how much do your enemies hate you?’ Rowena asked impatiently, as if all her talent for pretence had been used up.

      ‘Enough,’ he admitted. Hester patted his shoulder solemnly, as if to console him.

      He couldn’t help the surprised guff of laughter it shocked out of him. She smiled wisely at him as if she understood his confused thoughts, which was more than her sister did from the impatient frown knitting her surprisingly dark brows.

      ‘Some of them dislike me almost as much as my friends,’ he joked. The girl’s silent sympathy took him closer to tears than a grown man wanted to be, especially with a deadly enemy nearby.

      ‘You can watch that way while I cover our backs,’ Hester’s unimpressed sister ordered him, expertly cocking his deadly little pistol, then turning away to ignore them both.

      ‘She would learn how to shoot before she went to Portugal with Nate,’ Hester explained with a shrug, as if that covered her sister’s ability to defend them to the death.

      ‘Nate?’ he managed lamely.

      ‘Her husband, he was a soldier,’ the child said matter-of-factly.

      James supposed that was what a generation or two of war did—made death part of day-to-day life and cut off a young woman’s hopes and dreams in a moment. He risked a sidelong glance at the young widow and saw her intent glare into the middle distance, as if she’d cut herself off from them and her past. Somehow that moved him far more than the most delicate of flinches or a bravely blinked-away tear. The girl with the bluest of blue eyes he’d ever encountered had lost so much yet she had fire and courage enough to tie her knots and carry on. Wasn’t it about time he did the same?