Текст книги "I Married the Duke "
Автор книги: Katharine Ashe
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
Dedication
To
Marcia Abercrombie
Anne Brophy
Meg Huliston
Mary Brophy Marcus
&
Barbara Tetzlaff
Sisters of my heart.
And to Noah Redstone Brophy
A true hero.
Epigraph
Blessed are they who hunger,
for they will be satisfied.
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: The Orphans
Chapter 1: The Pirate
Chapter 2: The Sea
Chapter 3: Brandy
Chapter 4: The Servant
Chapter 5: The Duke
Chapter 6: Two Louis
Chapter 7: The Bath
Chapter 8: The Dinner
Chapter 9: The Vows
Chapter 10: The Widow
Chapter 11: La Comtesse
Chapter 12: The Bride
Chapter 13: Lord of the Manor
Chapter 14: Enticements
Chapter 15: Secrets
Chapter 16: The Wedding
Chapter 17: The Strength of a Man
Chapter 18: The Bull and the Boar
Chapter 19: The Lovers
Epilogue: The Fairy Tale
Author’s Note
Announcement Page
About the Author
Praise
Romances by Katharine Ashe
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
The Orphans
A Fair Somewhere in Cornwall
April 1804
Three young sisters of no rank and even less fortune sat in the glow of lamplight before a table draped in black velvet.
Upon that table was a ring fit for Prince Charming.
Veiled in ebony, the soothsayer studied not her clients’ palms or brows or even their eyes, but the ring, a glimmering spot of gold and ruby amidst the shadows of everything else in the tent.
“You are motherless.” The Gypsy’s voice was rich but as English as the girls’.
“We are orphans.” Arabella, the middle sister, leaned forward, tucking a lock of spun copper behind an ear formed as delicate as a seashell. Only twelve years old and already she was a beauty—lips pink as berries, cheeks blooming, eyes sparkling. In appearance she was a maiden of fairy tales, and just as winsome of temper, though any storyteller would be obliged to admit that she was not in the least bit meek.
“Everybody in the village knows we are motherless.” Her elder sister Eleanor’s brow creased beneath a golden braid tucked snugly into a knot. Bookish as she was, Eleanor’s brow often creased.
“Our ship wrecked and Papa adopted us from the foundling home so that we would not be sent to the workhouse.” With the simple candor of the young, Ravenna explained the history she did not remember yet had often been told. She was but eight, after all. Restlessly, she shifted her behind on the soft rug, and the fabric of her skirts tangled beneath her slippers. A tiny black canine face peeked out from the muslin folds.
Arabella leaned forward. “Why do you stare at the ring, Grandmother? What does it tell you?”
“She is not our grandmother,” Ravenna whispered quite loudly to Eleanor, her dark ringlets bouncing. “We don’t know who our grandmother is. We don’t even know who our real mama and papa are.”
“It is a title of respect,” Eleanor whispered back, but her eyes were troubled as she looked between Arabella and the fortune-teller.
“This ring is the key to your destinies,” the woman said, passing her hand over the table, her lashes closing.
Eleanor’s brow scrunched tighter.
Arabella sat forward eagerly. “The key to our true identity? Does it belong to our real father?”
The Gypsy woman swayed from side to side, gently, like barley stalks in a light breeze. Arabella waited with some impatience. She had in fact waited for this answer for nine years. Each additional moment seemed a punishment.
From without, the sounds of the fair came through the tent walls—music, song, laughter, the calls of food sellers, whinnies of horses at the trading corral, bleats of goats for sale. The fair had passed through this remote corner of Cornwall every year since forever, when the Gypsies came to spend the warm seasons on the flank of the local squire’s land not far from the village. Until now, the sisters had never sought a fortune. The Reverend always warned against it. A scholar and a churchman, he told them such things were superstition and must not be encouraged. But he gave freely of his charity to the travelers. He was poor, he said, but what little a man had, God demanded that he share with those in even greater need—like the three girls he had saved from destitution five years earlier.
“Will the ring tell us who we truly are?” Arabella asked.
The soothsayer’s face was harsh and stunning at once, pockmarked across her cheeks but regal in the height of her brow and handsome in its strong nose and dark eyes.
“This ring . . .” the Gypsy intoned, “belongs to a prince.”
“A prince!” Ravenna gaped.
“A prince?” Eleanor frowned.
“Our . . . father?” Arabella held her breath.
The bracelets on the woman’s wrist jingled as she ticked a finger from side to side. “The rightful master of this ring,” she said soberly, “is not of your blood.”
Arabella’s shoulders drooped, but her dainty chin ticked up. “Mama gave it to Eleanor to keep before she put us aboard ship to England. If it belongs to a prince, why did Mama have it? She was not a princess.” Far from it, if the Reverend’s suspicions were correct.
The fortune-teller’s lashes dipped again. “I do not speak of the past, child, but of the future.”
Eleanor cast Arabella an exasperated glance.
Arabella ignored it and chewed the inside of her lip. “Then what does this prince have to do with us?”
“One of you . . .” The woman’s voice faded away, her hand spreading wide above the ring again, fingers splayed. Her black eyes snapped open. “One of you will wed this prince. Upon this wedding, the secret of your past will be revealed.”
“One of us will wed a prince?” Eleanor said in patent disbelief.
Arabella gripped her sister’s hand to still her. The fortune-teller was a master at timing and drama; Arabella could see that. But her words were too wonderful.
“Who is he? Who is this prince, Grandmother?”
The woman’s hand slipped away from the ring, leaving it gleaming in the pale light. “That is for you to discover.”
Warmth crept into Arabella’s throat, prickling it. It was not tears, which never came easily to her, but certainty. She knew the fortune-teller spoke truth.
Eleanor stood up. “Come, Ravenna.” She cast a sideways glance at the Gypsy woman. “Papa is waiting for us at home.”
Ravenna grabbed up her puppy and went with Eleanor through the tent flap.
Arabella reached into her pocket and placed three pennies on the table beside the ring, everything she had saved.
The woman lifted suddenly wary eyes. “Keep your coins, child. I want none of it.”
“But—”
The Gypsy grabbed her wrist. “Who knows of this ring?”
“No one. Our mama and our nanny knew, but we never saw Mama again, and Nanny drowned when the ship sank. We hid the ring.”
“It must remain so.” Her fingers pinched Arabella’s. “No man must know of this ring, save the prince.”
“Our prince?” Arabella trembled a bit.
The Gypsy nodded. She released Arabella’s hand and watched as she picked up the ring and coins and tucked them into a pocket.
“Thank you,” Arabella said.
The soothsayer nodded and gestured her from the tent.
Arabella drew aside the flap, but the discomfort would not leave her and she looked over her shoulder. The Gypsy’s face was gray now, her skin slack. A wild gleam lit her eyes.
“Madam—”
“Go, child,” she said harshly, and drew down her veil. “Go find your prince.”
Arabella met her sisters by the great oak aside the horse corrals around which the fair had gathered for more than a century. Eleanor stood slim and golden-pale in the bright glorious light of spring. Sitting in the grass, Ravenna cuddled the puppy in her lap like other girls cuddled dolls. Behind Arabella the music of fiddle and horns curled through the warm air, and before her the calls of the horse traders making deals mingled with the scents of animals and dust.
“I believe her.”
“I knew you would.” Eleanor expelled a hard breath. “You want to believe her, Bella.”
“I do.”
Eleanor would never understand. The Reverend admired her quick mind and her love of books. But the Gypsy woman had not lied. “My wish to believe her does not make our fortune untrue.”
“It is superstition.”
“You are only saying that because the Reverend does.”
“I for one think it is splendid that we shall all be princesses.” Ravenna twirled the pup’s tail with a finger.
“Not all of us,” Arabella said. “Only the one of us that marries a prince.”
“Papa will not believe it.”
Arabella grasped her sister’s hand again. “We must not tell him, Ellie. He would not understand.”
“I should say not.” But Eleanor’s eyes were gentle and her hand was cozy in Arabella’s. Even in skepticism she could not be harsh. At the foundling home when every misstep had won Arabella a caning—or worse—she had prayed nightly for a wise, contemplative temperament like her elder sister’s. Her prayers were never answered.
“We will not tell the Reverend,” Arabella said. “Ravenna, do you understand?”
“Of course. I’m not a nincompoop. Papa would not approve of one of us becoming a princess. He likes being poor. He thinks it brings us closer to God.” The puppy leaped out of her lap and scampered toward the horse corral. She jumped up and ran after it.
“I do wish we could speak to Papa about it,” Eleanor said. “He is the wisest man in Cornwall.”
“The fortune-teller said we must not.”
“The fortune-teller is a Gypsy.”
“You say that as though the Reverend is not himself a great friend to Gypsies.”
“He is a good man, or he would not have taken in three girls despite his poverty.”
But Eleanor knew as well as Arabella why he had. Only three months before he discovered them starving in the foundling home, and Eleanor about to be sent off to the workhouse, fever had taken his wife and twin daughters from him. He had needed them to heal his heart as much as they needed him.
“We shan’t have to fret about poverty for long, Ellie.” Arabella plucked the ring out of her pocket and it caught the midday sunshine like fire. “I know what must be done. In five years, when I am seventeen—”
“Tali!” Ravenna’s face lit into a smile. A boy stood at the edge of the horse corral, shadowy in plain, well-worn clothes.
Eleanor stiffened.
Arabella whispered, “No one must ever see it but the prince,” and dropped the ring into her pocket.
Ravenna scooped up the puppy and bounded to the boy as he loped forward. His tawny skin shone warm in the sunlight filtering through the branches of the huge oak. No more than fourteen, he was all limbs and lanky height and underfed cheeks, but his eyes were like pitch and they held a wariness far greater than youth should allow.
“Hullo, little mite.” He tweaked Ravenna’s braid, but beneath a thatch of unruly black hair falling across his brow he shot a sideways glance at her eldest sister.
Eleanor crossed her arms and became noticeably interested in the treetops.
The boy scowled.
“Look, Tali.” Ravenna shoved the puppy beneath his chin. “Papa gave him to me for my birthday.”
The boy scratched the little creature behind a floppy ear. “What’ll you call him?”
“Beast, perhaps?” Eleanor mumbled. “Oh, but that name is already claimed here.”
The boy’s hand dropped and his square shoulders went rigid. “Reverend sent me to fetch you home for supper.” Without another word he turned about and walked toward the horse corral.
Eleanor’s gaze followed him reluctantly, her brow pinched. “He looks like he does not eat.”
“Perhaps he hasn’t enough food. He has no mama or papa,” Ravenna said.
“Whoever Taliesin’s mama and papa were, they must have been very handsome,” Arabella said, fingering her hair. She remembered little of their mother except her hair, the same golden-red as Arabella’s, her soft, tight embrace, and her scent of cane sugar and rum. Eleanor remembered little more, and only a hazy image of their father—tall, golden-haired, and wearing a uniform.
The fortune-teller had not told her everything, Arabella was certain. Out there was a man who had no idea his three daughters were still alive. A man who could tell them why the mother of his children had sent them away.
The answer was hidden with a prince.
Arabella’s teeth worried the inside of her lip but her eyes flashed with purpose. “One of us will wed a prince someday. It must be so.”
“Eleanor should marry him because she is the eldest.” Ravenna upended the puppy and rubbed its belly. “Then you can marry Tali, Bella. He brings me frogs from the pond and I wish he were our brother.”
“No,” Arabella said. “Taliesin loves Eleanor—”
“He does not. He hates me and I think he is odious.”
“—and I aim to marry high.” Her jaw set firmly like any man’s twice her age.
“A gentleman?” Ravenna said.
“Higher.”
“A duke?”
“A duke is insufficient.” She drew the ring from her pocket anew, its weight making a dent in her palm. “I will marry a prince. I will take us home.”
Chapter 1
The Pirate
Plymouth
August 1817
Lucien Westfall, former commander of the HMS Victory, Comte de Rallis, and heir to the Duchy of Lycombe, sat in the corner of the tavern because long ago he had learned that with a corner at his back he could detect danger approaching from any direction. Now the corner provided the additional benefit of a limited landscape to study.
On this occasion the landscape especially intrigued.
“Ye’ve got the air o’ a hawk about ye, lad.” Gavin Stewart, ship’s physician and chaplain, hefted his tankard of ale. “Is she still looking at ye?”
“No. She is looking at you. Glaring, rather.” Luc took up from the table the letter from his uncle’s land steward, folded the pages and tucked them into his waistcoat pocket. “I think she wants you gone.”
“Wants to get at ye. They all do. ’Tis the scar.” Gavin lounged back in his chair and scratched his whiskers, salty black and scant. “Wimmen like dangerous men.”
“Then you are doomed to a lonely life, old friend. But you were already, I suppose.”
“Hazard o’ the vows,” the priest chortled. “Bonnie lass?”
“Possibly.” Pretty eyes, bright even across the lamp-lit tavern, and keenly assessing him. Pretty nose and pretty mouth too. “Though possibly a schoolteacher.” A cloth cinched around her head covered her hair entirely, and her cloak was fastened up to her neck. Beneath it her collar was white and high. “Trussed up as tight as a virgin.”
“The mither o’ our Lord was a virgin, lad,” Gavin admonished. Then: “An’ what’s the fun if a man’s no’ got to work for the treasure?”
Luc lifted a brow. “Those were the days, hm, Father?”
Gavin laughed aloud. “Those were the days.” He was broad in the chest like his Scottish forbearers, and his laughter had always been a balm to Luc. “But since when do ye be knowing a thing about schoolteachers?”
Since at the age of eleven when Luc had escaped the estate where their guardian kept him and his younger brother and blundered onto the grounds of a finishing school for gentlewomen. With a soft reprimand, the headmistress had returned him home to a punishment he could not have invented in his worst nightmares.
Luc had not believed his guardian’s rants about the evils of temptation found in female flesh. Of course, he hadn’t believed anything the Reverend Absalom Fletcher said after the first few months. Bad men often lied. So he escaped the following day and ran to the school, hoping to find the headmistress out walking again, and again the following day, and again, seeking an ally. Or merely a haven. Each time the footmen dragged him back to his guardian’s house, his punishment for the disobedience was more severe.
He had borne it all with silent tears of defiance upon his cheeks. Until Absalom discovered his true weakness. Then Luc stopped disobeying. Then he became the model ward.
“I know about women,” Luc grumbled. “And that one is trouble.” He took a swallow of whiskey. It burned, and he liked that it burned. Every time she looked at him he got an awfully bad feeling.
Her movements were both confident and compact as she surveyed the crowded dockside tavern with an upward tilt of her chin as though she were the queen and this a royal inspection. Clearly she did not belong here.
Gavin set his empty tankard on the table. “I’ll be leaving ye to the leddy’s pleasure.” He dragged his weathered body from the chair. Not a day over fifty, the Scot was weary of the sea that he had taken to for Luc’s sake eleven years earlier. “Don’t suppose ye’ll be wanting to have a wee bit o’ holiday at that castle o’ yours after we leave the crew off at Saint-Nazaire? Visit yer rascally brother?”
“No time. The grain won’t ship itself to Portugal.” Luc tried to shrug it off, but Gavin understood. The famine of the previous year was lingering. People were starving. They could not halt their work for a holiday.
And, quite simply, he needed to be at sea.
“Grain. Aye,” Gavin only said, and made his way out of the tavern.
Luc swallowed the remainder of his whiskey and waited. He did know women, of all varieties, and this one wasn’t even trying to feign disinterest.
She wove her way through the rowdy crowd, taking care nevertheless to touch no one in her approach. Only when she stood before him on the other side of the table could he make out her eyes—blue, bright, and wary. The hand clutching the cloak close over her bosom was slender but the veins beneath the pale skin were strong.
“You are the man they call the Pirate.” It was not a question. Of course it wasn’t.
“Am I?”
A single winged brow tilted upward. “They said that I was to look for the dark-haired man with a scar cutting across his eye on the right, a black-banded kerchief, and a green left eye. As you are sitting in shadow, the color of your eye is not clear to me. But you bear a scar and you cover your right eye.”
“Perhaps I am not the only man in Plymouth that answers to such a description.”
Now both brows rose. The slope of her nose was pristine, her skin without blemish and glowing in the fading sunlight slanting through the window at Luc’s back. “There aren’t any pirates now,” she said, “only poor sailors with peg legs and patched up faces from the war. It is very silly and probably disrespectful of you to call yourself that.”
“I don’t call myself much of anything at all.” Not Captain Westfall, and not the Duke of Lycombe’s heir. The latter was an unstable business in any case. Luc’s aunt, the young duchess, had never carried an infant past birth, despite five attempts. But that did not mean her sixth could not now survive. So in the year since he had left the navy to pursue another noble goal, he’d gone only by Captain Andrew of the merchant brigantine Retribution. Simple and without any familial complications, it served his purposes.
The Pirate was a foolish nickname his crew had given him.
“Then what is your real name, sir?” she asked.
“Andrew.”
“How do you do, Captain Andrew?” He nearly expected her to curtsy. She did not. Instead she extended her hand to shake. She wore no ring. Not a war widow, then—the war that for years had kept his brother, Christos, safely hidden in France beyond their family’s reach.
He did not take her hand.
“What do you want of me, miss, other than to lecture me on the evils of war, it seems?”
“Your manners are deplorable. Perhaps you are a pirate after all.” She seemed to consider this seriously, chewing on the inside of her lower lip. The plump lip was precisely the color of raspberries.
Tastable.
Luc had not tasted a pair of sweet lips like that in far too long.
“I suppose you are an expert on manners, then?” he said with credible disinterest.
“I am, actually. But that is neither here nor there. I need passage to the port of Saint-Nazaire in France and I have been told that you depart for that port tomorrow. And that . . .” She studied him slowly, from his face to his shoulders and chest, and soft color crept into her cheeks. “I have been told that you are the most suitable shipmaster to transport a gentlewoman.”
“Have you? By whom?”
“Everyone. The harbormaster, the man in the shop across the street, the barman at this establishment.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are not a smuggler, are you? I understand they are still popular in some ports even since the war ended.”
“Not this port.” Not lately. “Do you believe the harbormaster, shopkeep, and yonder barman?”
Her brows dipped. “I did.” A pause, then she seemed to set her narrow shoulders. “Will you take me to Saint-Nazaire?”
“No.”
Her jaw took on that determined little tilt that made Luc’s chest feel a bit odd.
“Is it because I am a woman and you will not allow women aboard your vessel? I have heard that of pirates.”
“Madam, I am not—”
“If you are not a pirate, why do you cover your eye in that piratical manner? Is it an affectation to frighten off helpless women, or could you only find black cloth of that width and length?”
Clever-tongued witch. She could not possibly be teasing him. Or flirting. Not this prim little schoolteacher.
“As I believe the scar makes clear, it is not an affectation, Miss . . . ?”
“Caulfield. Of London. I was recently in the personal service of a lady and gentleman of considerable status.” Her gaze flittered down his chest again. “Whom I don’t suppose you would know, actually. In any case, they employed me as a finishing governess for their daughter who is—”
“A ‘finishing’ governess?”
“It is the height of ill breeding to interrupt a lady, Captain Andrew.”
“I believe you.”
“What?”
“That you are a governess.”
Her eyes flashed—magnificent, wide, expressive eyes the color of wild cornflowers flooded with sunlight.
“A finishing governess,” she said, “teaches a young lady of quality the proper manners and social mores for entering society and leads her through that process during her first season in town until she is established. But I don’t suppose you would know anything about manners or mores. Would you, captain?”
Oh. No. Magnificent eyes notwithstanding, he needed a sharp-tongued virginal school mistress aboard his ship as much he needed a sword point in his left eye.
He climbed to his feet. “Listen, Miss Whoever-You-Are, I don’t run a public transport ship.”
“What sort of ship is it, then?”
“A merchant vessel.”
“What cargo do you carry?”
“Grain.” To people who could not afford such cargoes themselves. “Now, I haven’t the time for an interrogation. I’ve a vessel to fit out for departure tomorrow.”
With that jaunty tick of her chin, she darted around a chair and moved directly into his path. “You cannot frighten me with your scowl, Captain.”
“I was not attempting to either frighten or scowl. It is this inconvenient affectation, you see.” He tapped his finger to his cheek and stepped toward her.
She remained still but seemed to vibrate upon the balls of her feet now. She was a little slip of a thing, barely reaching his chin yet erect and determined.
He couldn’t resist grinning. “You don’t look any taller to me standing on your toes, you know. I am uncowed.”
Her heels hit the floor. “Perhaps you take pleasure in playing at notoriety with this pirate costume.”
“Again with the pirate accusation.” He shook his head. “You see no hook on my wrist or parrot on my shoulder, do you? And I have all the notoriety I wish without pretending a part.” Heirs to dukedoms typically did, even Luc, despite his estrangement from his uncle. But now the latest letter from the duke’s steward sounded desperate; the fortunes of Combe were in jeopardy. However much he wished to help, Luc hadn’t the authority to alter matters there. He was not the duke yet. Given his young aunt’s interesting condition, he might never be.
He closed the space between them. “As to the other matter, I take pleasure in a man’s usual amusements.” He allowed himself to give her a slow perusal. She was bound up snugger than a nun, in truth. But her lips were full, and her eyes . . .
Truly magnificent. Breathtaking. Full of emotion and intelligence he had absolutely no need of in a woman.
“I daresay,” she said. The magnificent cornflowers grew direct. “Name the price I must pay for you to give me passage to Saint-Nazaire and I will double it.”
He scanned the cloak and collar. Pretty, yes. Gently bred, indeed. Governess to society debutantes, possibly. But now she was alone and begging his help to leave Plymouth.
Suspicious.
“You cannot pay double my price.”
“Name it and I will.”
He named a sum sufficient to sail her to every port along the Breton coast and back three times.
Her cheeks went slightly gray. Then the chin came up again. In the low-beamed tavern packed with scabrous seamen she looked like a slim young sapling in a swamp, and just as defiant. “I will pay it.”
“Will you now?” He was enjoying this probably more than he ought. “With what, little schoolteacher?”
The cornflowers narrowed. “I told you, I am a governess, a very good one sought after by the most influential families in London. I have sufficient funds.”
With a swift movement he slipped his hand into the fold of cloak about her neck and tugged it open.
She grabbed for the fabric. “What—?”
His other hand clamped about her wrist. Her gown was gray and plain along the bodice and shoulder that he exposed, but fashioned of fine quality fabric and carefully stitched. And hidden beneath the fabric stretched over her throat was a small, round lump.
“Not a little school mistress, it seems,” he said.
“As I have said.” For the first time her voice quavered.
“You do look like a governess.” Except for the spectacular eyes. “More’s the pity.”
Her breasts rose upon a quick breath, a soft pressure against his forearm that stirred a very male reaction in him that felt dispiritingly alien and remarkably good.
“My employers prefer me to dress modestly to depress the attentions of rapacious men,” she said. “Are you one of those, Captain?” Her raspberry lips were beautifully mobile. He wanted a glimpse of the sharp tongue. If it were half as tempting as her lips, he might just take her on board after all.
“Not lately,” he said. “But I’m open to inspiration.”
The raspberry lips flattened. “Captain, I care nothing for what you believe of me. I only want you to allow me to hire passage on your ship.”
“I don’t want your gold, little governess.”
“Then what payment will you accept?” She sent a frustrated breath through her nose, but her throat did a pretty little dance of nerves. By God, she truly was lovely. Not even her indignation could disguise the pure blue of summer blooms, dusky lashes, delicate flare of nostrils, soft swell of lips satiny as Scottish river pearls, and the porcelain curve of her throat. And her scent . . . It made him dizzy. She smelled of sweet East Indian roses and wild Provençal lavender, of Parisian four-poster beds and the comfort of a woman’s bosom clad in satins and lace, all thoroughly at odds with her modest appearance and everything else in this port town.
“I can cook and clean,” she said. “If you prefer labor to coin, I will work for my passage to Saint-Nazaire.” Her voice grew firmer. “But my body is not for sale, Captain.”
Governess and mind reader at once, it seemed.
“I don’t want that,” he lied. His hand slipped along the edge of the linen wrapped about her head. Her eyes were wide but she remained immobile as his fingertips brushed the satiny nape of her neck. Her hair was like silk against his skin, the bundle inside the linen heavy over his knuckles. Long. He liked long hair. It got tangled in all sorts of interesting ways when a woman was least aware of it.
“Then . . .” Her lips parted. Kissable lips. He could imagine those lips, hot and pliant, beneath his. Upon him. She would be hot and pliant all over. He could see it in her flashing eyes and in the quick breaths that now pulled her gown tight over her breasts. Cool and controlled she wished to appear, but that was not her true nature.
Her true nature wanted his hands on her. Otherwise she would be halfway across the tavern by now.
“What do you want?” Her words came unsteadily again.
“Aha. Not as starchy as she appears, gentlemen,” he murmured beneath a burst of rough laughter from a table of sailors nearby.
“What do you know of gentlemen?”
Too little. Only those moments during the war when Christos was safely stowed at the chateau and Luc had been able to enjoy the company of his fellow naval officers, as the lord he had been born to be.
“An expert on the subject, are you?” His fingertips played.
“No. What do you want?” she repeated flatly.
“Perhaps this?” His thumb hooked in the ribbon about her neck. She gasped and tried to break free. He twisted the ribbon up and the pendant popped from the gown’s neck.
Not a pendant. A man’s ring, thick and gold with a ruby the size of a six pence that shimmered like blood.
“No.” She slapped her hand over the ring.
Luc released her and stepped back. Lovely, yes indeed. But she did not look like a man’s mistress. She was too plainly dressed and far too slender to please any man with money to spend in bed.
But appearances could deceive. Absalom Fletcher had looked like an angel.
“What is it?” he said. “A gift from an appreciative patron?”
She seemed to recoil. “No.”
“He has poor taste to give you his ring instead of purchasing a piece for a lady. You should have thrown him off much earlier. Or haven’t you? Are you going to him now?”
The cornflowers shuttered. “This ring is none of your business.”
“It is if you intend to carry it aboard my ship. That’s no mean trinket you have there. Where are you going with it?”
She stuffed it back into her dress. “I am traveling to a house near Saint-Nazaire to take up a new position at which I must report before the first of September. And what do you think you’re doing, reaching down a helpless woman’s gown? You should be ashamed of yourself, Captain.”
“If you are helpless, madam, then I’ve something yet to learn about women.”
“Perhaps you should learn generosity and compassion first. Will you take me aboard?”
Beautiful face. Gently bred. Desperate for help. A rich man’s cast-off mistress. Eager to leave Plymouth. Had she stolen the ring?
He didn’t need this sort of trouble.
“No,” he said. “Again.” He headed toward the door.
A GREAT STONE seemed to press on Arabella’s lungs. It could not end like this, rejected in a seedy tavern by a man that looked like a pirate, and all because she had been foolish enough to miss her ship.
But she could not have left those children alone, the little one no more than three and his brothers trying so valiantly to be brave while frightened. The eldest, dark and serious, reminded her of Taliesin years ago, the Reverend’s student and the closest to a brother she had ever known. She could not have abandoned the children like their mother did, even if she had known it would cause her to miss her ship.
