Bronwyn Scott - Rake Most Likely To Sin

Haviland dusted off his trousers, his gaze moving beyond Brennan’s shoulder. Brennan turned his head, following Haviland’s stare. He could see the men on the docks shaking impotent fists in their direction. Brennan flashed them an obscene gesture of confident victory. The greatcoat he’d been forced to leave behind settled any debt he had with Cynthia and her thugs. One button alone was worth the night.

‘Good lord, Bren, what have you got yourself into now?’ Haviland’s voice was gruff with concern, not anger.

Brennan stopped in the midst of tucking in his shirt tails and quirked an auburn eyebrow at his friend in mock chagrin, trying to keep things light. ‘Is that any way to greet the friend who just saved your life?’ He didn’t do well with any show of sincere emotion and Haviland was nothing if not sincere. It tore at him to see his friend worried and to know he was the cause of it. Again. This wouldn’t be the first time.

Haviland answered with a raised dark brow of his own. ‘My life, is it? I rather thought it was yours.’ He stepped forward and pulled Brennan into an embrace, pounding him on the back affectionately. ‘I thought you were going to miss the boat, you stupid fool.’

Brennan returned the embrace for a moment, his voice low for Haviland alone. ‘You told me all I had to do was show up and I did.’

Haviland laughed, which was what Brennan had intended. Haviland needed to laugh more. He was far too serious, especially these last three months. Brennan knew he’d been busy with arrangements for the trip, but Brennan thought the seriousness came from more than that, from something deeper. Although it was hard to imagine Haviland with any real problems. His life was perfect inside and out.

If there was trouble inside Haviland’s life, Brennan would know. He’d been going home with Haviland since he was fifteen and Haviland had taken pity on him in school. Haviland’s family was always appropriately civil, always politely welcoming, their home always well ordered, his mother at one end of the dinner table smiling at his father at the other end. It made his own home look like absolute chaos. Even his farewell had been devoid of any real feeling. There’d been no organised goodbye dinner, no teary farewells in the hallway the day he’d left, much as he imagined there’d been at Haviland’s town house.

His own father had called him into the study five minutes before his scheduled departure, barely enough time to share a final drink. It wasn’t even a private moment. Nolan had been with him, having come to collect him. His father’s parting words to him in London had been, ‘Don’t get syphilis. You know...’ He’d stammered it awkwardly, never comfortable with his paternal role. ‘You know, just in case.’ Brennan had heard the rest of that unspoken message: just in case we need you, just in case your brother can’t get the job done with that mousy Mathilda he married. Then his father had pressed a package of French letters in his hand with a wink, ‘the best they make’.

The comment had been entirely at odds with his father’s attempt at preaching sexual responsibility. Then again, perhaps not so incongruous. His father had always been more interested in being his friend than a paternal head of the house when he was interested at all. As farewells went, it was what Brennan had expected. It just wasn’t what he had hoped. After all, he’d be gone at least a year, perhaps longer. As last words and moments went, Brennan would have preferred ‘I love you, I will miss you, be safe’.

Perhaps Nolan was right. Nolan had hypothesised late one very drunk night that he sought out sex to fill an emotional gap in his life. Nolan prided himself on being a student of human nature. At the time, Brennan had laughed. It was easier to laugh at such ideas than admit to them. No one liked acknowledging deficiencies.

Archer led the horse away to a makeshift stall and the three of them took up positions at the rail, Nolan on one side of him, Haviland on the other as England grew tiny in the distance. Nolan shot him a side glance, mischief quirking his mouth into a half grin. ‘So,’ Nolan drawled, ‘the real question isn’t where you’ve been, but was she worth it?’

Brennan laughed, because it was indeed hard to admit to mistakes, especially one’s own. ‘Always, Nol, always.’ He silently toasted a fading England. Here was to one more escape.

Chapter Two

Kardamyli, on the Greek Peloponnesian Peninsula

—early spring, 1837

He was going to need an escape plan. Again. The party in the town square to celebrate Konstantine’s birthday was only an hour in and Brennan was already headed for disaster of the female sort, careening towards it actually. He should not have danced with Katerina Stefanos. Now, he was trapped with her on one side of him, her father on the other, espousing his daughter’s wifely merits to the group, but especially to him.

Somehow, Brennan had thought this time it would be different. He always thought that, but this time he’d really believed it because this time he was different or at least he’d thought so. He’d reached the ends of Europe here on the southernmost tip of the Peloponnesian Peninsula, he’d swapped his trousers for the traditional foustanella—the kilt worn by men in Greece. He’d traded in the traditional sights that populated an Englishman’s Grand Tour—the Acropolis with its Parthenon, Olympia with its pillared ruins—for the remote fishing village of Kardamyli, a town that was barely on the map, let alone the Grand Tour. In short, he had gone native, as far as an auburn-haired Englishman on the Greek peninsula could go, both figuratively and geographically.

And it hadn’t mattered. Not really. It went to prove that you could take the boy out of trouble, but you couldn’t take trouble out of the boy. For all the outward changes he’d wrought, for the thousand miles he had travelled, there were, apparently, some things he had not succeeded in outrunning, mainly his penchant for landing in compromising situations without truly meaning to. There’d been the woman in Dover before he’d sailed, the rather possessive prostitute in Paris, the Alpine beauty in Bern, the opera singer in Venice and the opera singer in Milan because he hadn’t learned his lesson the first time. The list was rather, um, lengthy. Now, there was Katerina Stefanos to add to it, another woman who didn’t understand he wasn’t looking to make a commitment, wasn’t capable of making one.

Her thickset father slapped a paternal hand on his shoulder, his voice booming out to the group over the music. ‘My Katerina makes the best diples in the village. A man will never go hungry with such a woman as her for his wife. A fine cook she is and a fine housekeeper, too, her linens are the whitest, her stitches the straightest. Her mother has taught her well and she has...’

Wait for it. Brennan fought the urge to cringe. He knew what was coming next, testimony to how many times he’d heard it in the last month: two olive groves as her dowry. He knew! He knew! Enough already! Beside him, the lovely Katerina of the two olive groves tossed her dark hair and looped a bold, proprietary hand through his arm, further indication he had to move fast.

His sense of urgency was beginning to border on panic. Of all the situations he’d been in, this one was by far the most dangerous. None of the other women in his past had wanted to marry him. They weren’t the marrying types. They’d merely wanted his patronage and his prick. Katerina and her father wanted something substantially more, ah, permanent. It might be time to start thinking of a more permanent solution on his end, too. Maybe this was a sign it was time to move on. He’d been here six months, longer than he’d stayed anywhere on his tour. Where he went from here wasn’t important at the moment. He’d think about that later. Right now, he was interested in a more immediate solution and for that, he’d need an ally. This time, he didn’t have his companions to extricate him. There was no Haviland, no Archer, no Nolan to help him out of this. He would have to manufacture an ally on his own.