Page 604 of From Rakes to Riches

Firsthand, Rake saw the matter as it stood—Gemma needed to be protected from this man.

“And your lad?” asked Bolton, mildly, as if making idle conversation. “Where did you find him?”

Rake had a choice. He could continue to stare out in parallel to Bolton and pretend indifference—or he could cut straight to the point.

For Rake, there was but one option.

He turned to face Bolton square and met the man straight in the eye. “Theladis under my protection.”

Bolton’s mouth pinched at the corners, and his gaze narrowed an assessing sliver. “You mean in your employ, of course.”

Rake wasn’t playing this man’s game. “You will stay away from the lad,” he stated, each word clear and deliberate. “You will have no contact with the lad.”

Bolton glittered with barely contained affront. Earls weren’t spoken to thusly. “And what’s the lad to you?”

Since Bolton only understood the world in terms of possession and subjugation, Rake spoke in the language the man knew. “Mine.” It was possible he’d growled.

Though it felt slightly wrong to speak such a word about another human being, it felt mostlyrightto speak it of Gemma.

She was his.

Not his possession.

Buthis.

Bolton’s brow lifted and understanding lit within his eyes. He scoffed in disbelief. When Rake didn’t flinch, he blinked. Then scoffed again. But Rake could see the man was beginning to understand.

Good.He had more to say. “Neither you nor your toadies are to come within a mile of Gemma or her brother.”

Bolton puffed out his chest, like a pigeon attempting to make itself appear larger and more fearsome than he really was. “You have a no right?—”

Rake smiled, and the rest of the sentence died in Bolton’s mouth. His skin turned the shade of spoiled milk. “I am the Duke of Rakesley,” spoke Rake, low and implacable. “I have every right. More than most, in fact.”

As a duke, it was only the truth, and they both knew it.

Bright scarlet flushed up Bolton’s neck, making his cravat appear suddenly too tight. “More fool you, then,” he spat. Now the man was making his true self known—and what a nasty piece of work he was. “A willful pair of ingrates from the moment of their birth. Their mother was practically a whore.”

Rake wasn’t having it. “She was the mother of your only children.” There was yet more he would say. “The way you treated her…did you think it love?”

Bolton’s mouth snapped shut, and he swallowed the lump that had surely formed in his throat.

“Here’s what someone like you doesn’t and can’t understand,” continued Rake. “That’s not love. It’s power and control. Anything that hurts another isn’t love.”

“I protected them,” proclaimed Bolton. “All of them.”

Rake gave his head a slow shake. “As a gaol protects its prisoners from the outside elements?”

“You…you…” stammered Bolton. “You go beyond the pale, Rakesley.”

Rake wasn’t deterred. “That’s not protection. That’s captivity.” He wasn’t quite finished. “If you ever contact Gemma, I won’t rest until I’ve ruined everything you hold dear.”

With that, he squeezed his knees, stirring Moonraker into motion, and they rode down the gentle slope of the Heath, leaving behind a blustering Bolton. Rake had neither the timenor inclination to explain love to someone who would never understand it.

He’d only begun comprehending it himself.

But the main objective had been achieved. Bolton would no longer be a source of concern for Gemma.

After greeting various lords and ladies on the short ride to the grandstand, Rake left Moonraker with a groom and jostled his way inside the structure reserved for spectators of the aristocratic variety. While he and Artemis had agreed to meet here before the race, they would watch outside, from their mounts, as did many spectators at Newmarket. The Jockey Club had been trying to put an end to the practice for years, but there was no better way to view a race on the Rowley Mile than by horseback.

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