Craving the Rake's Touch (Rakes of the Caribbean) by Bronwyn Scott Read Free Book Online

Sarah would need him to play host got him down to the
breakfast room, dressed for the day’s activities.
    Any hope he had of having a quiet breakfast alone evaporated
immediately. Devonshire was already there as was Teddy, Ren’s younger brother.
Teddy grinned when he saw him. “Benedict! I heard you were here.” The boy jumped
up from the table, a tangle of gangly limbs. “Sarah says I can fish with
everyone today. Some of the other boys from the village are coming along,
too.”
    Benedict smiled. He was genuinely fond of Teddy, having never
had a younger brother himself. “You’ve grown! Look how tall you are.” Benedict
held up a hand over his own head and nearly leveled it with Teddy’s. “I think
you weren’t even up to my shoulder the last time I saw you.”
    Teddy grinned, pleased at the compliment. “The last time you
saw me, I was only ten. Where have you been? You used to come around all the
time with Ren.”
    Benedict fixed a plate from a sideboard loaded with breakfast
favorites—eggs, sausage, kippers, hot toast, smoked salmon, summer strawberries
and cream—and politely ignored Teddy’s question with a diversion of his own.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to? Is the rope swing still up at the swimming
hole?”
    “Yes, and Ren put in a second one last summer.” Teddy beamed.
“Perhaps we might try it out before dinner today.”
    Benedict nodded. “We might just squeeze it in if Sarah keeps
dinner until later.”
    “She will if you ask her,” Teddy said confidently, biting into
a piece of toast.
    Devonshire looked over the edge of his newspaper. “So you have
that much pull with Lady Sarah? The benefits of being a nominal host, I
suppose?” Devonshire’s tone bordered somewhere between suspicious and nasty.
    “What do you mean by that?” Benedict asked sharply.
    Devonshire raised an inquiring eyebrow. “What do you mean by it? You breeze in here several days into a
house party to which you were not invited and attempt to steal a march on decent
men with a day to go. Men, I might add, who have come here under the impression
that Lady Sarah means to choose one of them, that a very important match is
about to be made.”
    Teddy was looking avidly from Devonshire to him. Damn
Devonshire for his lack of discretion. This was not a subject to be vetted in
front of Sarah’s brother. Benedict rose, leaving his plate untouched. “I think
our discussion might be better suited to the veranda.”
    Devonshire gave a mean laugh as he stood. “It is absolutely
hilarious and ironic to see you in the role of moral arbiter, DeBreed. The
veranda it is.”
    Outside, Benedict did not mince words. “If you have a problem
with my presence, you address it with me privately. But you know better than to
bring up Lady Sarah in such a way in front of young Teddy.” He wondered if Sarah
would forgive him if he rolled up his sleeves and planted Devonshire a facer.
Probably not.
    “What I have a problem with is being brought here under false
pretenses,” Devonshire began. “This is a matchmaking party and everyone knows
it. We are all here for the same end. Even if we’re all here for different
reasons, we all need the same goal accomplished. We all need to marry. Do you
need to marry? Is that why you’re here, too?”
    He slid a sly look in Benedict’s direction and Benedict
stiffened. “Perhaps Lady Sarah needs to marry faster than the rest of us.”
    Devonshire pulled a letter from inside his coat pocket. “I had
a note from my friend, Rhys Camry, to that extent.” He paused, waiting for a
reaction. Benedict was careful to not give him one. This was the nightmare he’d
ridden neck or nothing to Sarah for.
    “Perhaps you are not surprised because you already know the
contents of the letter?” Devonshire asked, hazarding a guess. “Maybe that’s why
you’re here, to warn Lady Sarah of impending scandal or to implore her to pick
one of us faster than news can travel. She might have pulled it off if