Page 4 of Raked Away in September

“Nick! No!” Olivia rushed after him as he stormed toward the front door, a look of terror on her face. “Surely, you don’t mean to duel Haversham. Please, calm down and think this through.”

Nick shrugged his wife off and stormed out of the house, the heavy door slamming with a force that rattled the paintings on the walls. Olivia turned toward Tamsin, her face white. “You don’t think he’s really going to challenge Haversham, do you? He’s never dueled in his life!”

Tamsin sank into her chair, shame and fear churning within her. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I hope not. I hope he realizes how foolish he’s being before he gets there.”

Nick could never win a duel against a man like Haversham. She couldn’t believe that this was all happening, simply because the earl had exited the Dark Walks right after she did…

Why did he follow me? Surely, he’d laugh in Nick’s face when he got there, demanding satisfaction. Why wouldn’t he? They hadn’t exchanged so much as a word.

Just one heated stare.

She’d been so foolish to follow Rose last night. Rose would undoubtedly continue to try to see Lord Cedric. All Tamsin had succeeded in doing was to consign herself to the fate she’d tried to spare Rose. And she’d pulled the Earl of Haversham into this nightmare as well.

All she could do was pray that he wouldn’t kill her brother. If he did, she’d never be able to live with herself.

The pounding on the front door of Haversham House was loud enough to wake the dead, or at the very least, a man who hadn’t crawled into bed until three in the morning.

Rowan groaned, shoving a pillow over his head to drown out the distant, rhythmic thudding. At last, it stopped, and his mind filled once more with the memory of a pair of startled blue eyes in the darkness of Vauxhall. He had dreamt of her—not the woman he had been with, but the one who had watched from the shadows. Miss Tamsin Fairchild had haunted his dreams with a persistence that was as annoying as it was intoxicating.

What was it about her that had always drawn his attention? It wasn’t just her beauty, though she was very beautiful. No, there was something else. An innate kindness, perhaps? A goodness and purity one rarely saw in the ton? But last night… The look in her eyes as she’d watched him… It hadn’t matched what he’d thought he knew of her at all.

A tentative knock at his chamber door snapped him back to reality.

“Enter,” Rowan rasped, sitting up and pushing his hair back from his face, blinking in irritation.

Stephens, his silver-haired butler, stepped into the room, looking uncharacteristically rattled. “My lord, I apologize for the intrusion, but Viscount Wilding is below. He is... adamant that he speak with you immediately.”

Rowan’s eyes narrowed. Nicolas Fairchild. Unfortunately, he feared he knew exactly why the boy who had spent their years at Eton reporting Rowan’s every minor infraction to the headmaster was now a man at his front door at an ungodly hour. He tried to stave off the disaster anyway. “Tell him I am not receiving visitors until noon.”

“I attempted to convey that, my lord. He threatened to storm up here if you didn’t agree to come down. Shall I have the footmen throw him out?”

“No.” Rowan swung his legs out of bed, a cold sense of foreboding falling over him. Once again, he remembered the twig snapping in the Dark Walks and Tamsin Fairchild staring at him across the clearing. Wilding being here isn’t a coincidence. Had she told him what she’d seen? It seemed unlikely, since she’d been in the Dark Walks herself. But perhaps he’d misjudged that look in her eyes. Maybe it had been revulsion, not interest, that he’d seen.

“Tell him I’ll come down in ten minutes.”

As Stephens withdrew, Rowan’s valet, Miller, appeared with a tray of shaving water and a fresh shirt. But instead of laying out the clothes, Miller stood by the bed, holding a small, folded broadsheet.

“My lord,” Miller said, his voice hesitant. “You might wish to see this before you go downstairs. It was delivered just an hour ago and might shed some light on why the viscount is here.”

Rowan snatched the paper, his stomach plummeting even further. The Brazen Belle.

His eyes scanned the text, his jaw tightening with every word. Seen emerging from the most scandalous of Vauxhall’s Dark Walks... preceded a mere heartbeat by Lady T— F⁠—.

Bloody hell.

Last night’s embarrassment was nothing compared to the white-hot fury now blooming in his chest. The Belle had taken a coincidence—two people on the same path at the same time—and spun it into a narrative of ruined virtue. Tamsin Fairchild was innocent of any wrongdoing—or at least any to do with him—and this column had just tied her to a man the world considered an irredeemable scoundrel.

“Miller, my coat. The dark charcoal one,” Rowan commanded, his voice tight.

He dressed with a frantic, focused energy. He understood now why Wilding was downstairs. The man he loathed was currently in his entrance hall, rightfully believing that Rowan had compromised his sister. In the eyes of the ton, the Earl of Haversham had just destroyed his sister’s reputation, and there were only two ways to settle such a debt: a wedding or a duel.

Rowan checked his reflection in the looking glass. He looked downright disreputable after his late night, every bit the rake the paper described, but his eyes were hard. He didn’t mind being the Brazen Belle’s villain—he was used to that role—but the thought of Miss Tamsin being dragged through the mud alongside him made his blood boil. He didn’t stop to examine why.

“Stephens!” Rowan called out as he reached the landing, his boots clicking sharply against the marble. “Tell the viscount I am coming down. And for God’s sake, hide the dueling pistols.”

He didn’t know how he was going to fix this, but as he descended the stairs to face his oldest rival, one thing was certain: The Brazen Belle had made a powerful enemy when she’d named him the Rake of September.

Chapter Three