The Road to Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  She sighed and settled back into the soft velvet. Her brother wanted nothing more than an advantageous marriage for her. When she had asked him about independence, he’d scoffed and told her a good husband was all she should hope for, that women are dependent by their very nature and wouldn’t get far in the world on their own. If the truth were to be told, she would have entertained the idea of a man she liked enough to put up with day after day. She might have even married a rich (and complacent) man so she would have money enough to disappear and set sail for her father’s inlet once a year. But no one wanted her. Not one offer had been made. Not even from the more lecherous members of the ton—at least not until it had only been her virginity they were required to take. She was undesirable.

  Unwanted.

  It was about time her father saw that in her wild upbringing, her freckles and red hair, and took her back. At least on the decks of a ship, she would be happy and free.

  She supposed she could ask Lasterton why even he apparently didn’t believe her about that. But it wasn’t a question one blurted out over carriage seats.

  *

  Apparently what one did blurt out over carriage seats was bad pie.

  James hadn’t wanted to stop until traveling became dangerous due to the dark but when Mrs McDougal began to cast up her accounts right there in the carriage, he was forced to re-evaluate for the day.

  “Hobson?” he called through the open carriage window.

  There was no reply.

  He rapped sharply on the ceiling with his knuckles and the vehicle slowed and moved off to the edge of the road. He’d barely taken the breath needed to order Mrs McDougal out before the door was open and the poor woman on her knees in the damp grass.

  He threw a glance towards Daniella, who sat poker straight against the squabs, face implacable, hands in her lap like a demure lady. He nearly snorted.

  They hadn’t shared two words in five hours. He hadn’t wanted to bring up her family and see the anguish in her eyes again. He was equally worried about her pressing about his own relations so he’d leaned his head back and pretended to sleep.

  He’d suddenly turned the coward over a few innocent inquiries but in this confined space, he had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from her bright, prying eyes. He wouldn’t have the matter brought up only to have to shut her down. Telling her about his mother and sister or his brother and father would get him nowhere. In fact, she would be less inclined to play the part of his hostage, he was sure.

  “You should see to Mrs McDougal,” Daniella pointed out with an irritated flick of her hand.

  As soon as James jumped down from the carriage he looked around for Hobson, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

  “Willie?” he called up to the driver.

  The carriage tilted and then Willie’s bald head popped over the edge. “Milord?”

  “What happened to Hobson?”

  “Oh, he got sick a mile or so back and jumped off for a spell.”

  “Why was I not informed?”

  “Begging your pardon, milord, but you was sleeping. He didn’t want to disturb you.”

  Damn that blasted innkeeper for feeding them all bad food. He wouldn’t countenance the sickness to have come from his own kitchens since Mrs McDougal herself prepared most of the meals when he was in. And there was the fact that he felt absolutely fine. Well, his irritation beggared belief but apart from that, he was fine.

  “Daniella? Do you feel as though you might be ill?”

  “Not at all. I would need more provocation than a bouncy carriage to see my breakfast again, thank you.”

  He wanted to point out that she hadn’t partaken in breakfast. In fact, he hadn’t yet seen her eat much at all. He lowered his tone to a better measure of gentle and addressed his retainer. “Mrs McDougal, are you going to be all right?”

  She didn’t answer for a long moment and he found himself looking away lest he begin to feel queasy after all. Blood and innards he could deal with; vomit was another matter.

  “Hurts like the devil it does,” was followed by a low moan and yet more bad pie.

  They could not go on like that but neither could they linger by the roadside. James searched the road behind them but there was no sign of Hobson. They couldn’t turn the carriage around on the narrow road and he was fairly sure they were closer to a village ahead than they were to those they had passed. They would have to press on.

  Raking a hand through his already mussed hair, James went to the rear of the carriage and emptied a small bucket that hung on a hook there. He was no stranger to travel sickness since his sister suffered on long journeys.

  His hands stilled. God, he hoped she was all right.

  “James?” Daniella’s voice reached him and he shook away his distracting thoughts.

  “I didn’t give you leave to address me so personally, madam.” He sounded like a schoolgirl. Did she witness his moment of vulnerability?

  “You insist on calling me by my Christian name; am I not allowed to do the same, James?”

  Her smirk as she enunciated his name almost made him smile in return. She tried to irk him on purpose and he actually appreciated the sentiment in that moment. “Trelissick is my name. Only my mother calls me James.”

  “So stuffy. Not Lasterton? Since that is your title?”

  “I ask them not to.” He still didn’t feel like Lasterton. Like a toffy gentleman. The genteel, poor child, soldier and second son in him were still far more present than the titled man.

  “I think I’ll call you Jimmy. I knew a Jimmy once.”

  “You will do no such thing.”

  “Very well: James it is. What says your perfect plan about all of this?” She gestured to the still-retching Mrs McDougal.

  He held up the bucket.

  “I’ll ride up the top then,” Daniella said, her suddenly not-so-bright green eyes switching from the bucket and back to Mrs McDougal.

  “You will do no such thing,” he said again as he turned back to the carriage and used the lip of the bucket to scrape the mess from the floor. Would he keep having to say those six words to her all week? “You will ride in the carriage with me and Mrs McDougal will ride up top.”

  “What if she falls?”

  James’s gaze never left Daniella’s as he called over her shoulder, “Mrs McDougal, would you ride up top with Willie? We’ll stop at the first inn we happen across.”

  “I would appreciate that, my lord.”

  James raised a brow and waited for any more protest or bright ideas from Daniella.

  “Let us be off then,” she called.

  “I give the orders around here, Miss Germaine.”

  “Aye aye,” she said with another salute. How he hated that salute. He began to get the impression she really wanted to stick up only one of the two fingers she held to her forehead.

  Chapter Seven

  As night drew in, poor Mrs McDougal at last fell asleep in a cot at the end of the bed where Daniella now lay at a small posting inn known as the Black Sheep. Hobson had arrived an hour after them, looking the worse for wear but not quite as sick as Mrs McDougal. It was decided that the pie was definitely to blame since Daniella and James were feeling fine.

  The emotion Daniella did not feel was relief. She just wanted something to happen. Anything really. She wanted one of her father’s spies to make himself known. She wanted to get to Scotland already and be done with the nervous butterflies taking up residence in her stomach. She hated uncertainty almost as much as she hated London.

  As if summoned by her frustration, the lock turned and the door opened a fraction.

  “May I enter?”

  Daniella smiled at the hesitation in Lastert—no, Trelissick’s voice. She’d thought his titled power and self-importance ran too deep for such courtesy, as she had already witnessed in so many blustering dukes and earls of the ton, but James was different. Only just, but there was enough disparity to draw a comparison. She pulled the bedcovers up to her shoulder
s. “You may.”

  He looked so uneasy as he entered the room, leaving the door open wide—less like a military peer facing battle than an ordinary man facing a woman sat up in her bed.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” he said immediately upon seeing her.

  “Pish,” she said with a huff. It wasn’t as though she was naked.

  Her cheeks warmed.

  “I wondered if Mrs McDougal will be well enough to travel on the morrow.”

  There wasn’t an actual question there but Daniella didn’t enjoy the awkward silence that followed. “I don’t think she will be going anywhere anytime soon.”

  Trelissick leaned over the cot to see the woman’s face and then straightened with a shake of his head. “Who would have guessed one little pie could upset the plan so spectacularly?”

  In his voice was defeat. She knew the feeling well. “How long do you think we will have to wait here?”

  “We can’t wait. We have to press on otherwise your brother might catch up to us and force an early confrontation.”

  “Will you give me over to him if that happens?” she asked, immediately dreading the answer.

  Trelissick met her eyes with his for the first time since entering the room and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You must think him dreadfully weak.”

  “Is he?”

  She considered her answer as she lay back against the pillows. Her brother was an intelligent man of sharp words and cold shoulders. A perfect politician but a poor fighter. He would never have made a decent pirate had it come to it. He couldn’t throw a knife or aim a cannon…but he could make Daniella doubt herself and all she did with mere syllables.

  “My brother has his fine points but in a fight I would wager money on your side.” Out of loyalty alone she should have told him that her brother was fierce and noble and would fight to his very last breath for her, but it was not believable. He had been knighted for saving the prince’s carriage but it was common knowledge that even that had been nothing more than smoke and mirrors and well-placed bribes.

  “You are the strangest woman I have ever met.”

  “Thank you?” she replied.

  “Perhaps you are lying so that if I face your brother over pistols I’ll let my guard down?”

  “Believe me or no, I was serious when I said I would cooperate. If you knew how desperately I want to be away from London, you would understand.”

  “Why don’t you make me understand? Was there a beau? Perhaps a gentleman for whom you had a tendre, but who felt differently in return?”

  “Not quite.” Daniella laughed. “What about you? Is there a lady wondering where you are tonight? Perhaps a mistress waiting for her bauble?”

  “You should not know about mistresses and you certainly should not talk about them with a gentleman.”

  “Can I talk about them with a lady?”

  Trelissick choked, on laughter or outrage she had no idea since he chose that moment to turn towards the window and the dark night beyond. “Did your brother never engage a companion or tutor for you?”

  “I know how to read and write and I don’t need a governess.”

  “I meant to teach you a lady’s manners. To teach you not to talk about mistresses or sell your virginity or ride astride in a dress through the park.”

  She’d forgotten his presence in the background as she’d attempted to disgrace herself again and again. “You were there for the race with Callington, weren’t you?”

  “He should have known better. And I should have taken you over my knee that very day.”

  Daniella blushed but replied with indignation, “The prig should never have challenged me in the first place.”

  “How did that come about?” He leaned against the wall, his hands behind his back as he waited for her story.

  “The earl was bragging about his horse being the fastest in all of Britain.”

  “And you just had to prove him wrong?”

  “Well, I did, didn’t I?”

  “Where did you learn to ride like that?”

  “I didn’t spend my whole life on board a ship. When the weather turned and we were forced to make for land, I enjoyed the normal pursuits of a child.”

  “A boy child,” Trelissick flatly pointed out.

  “My father never did know what to do with a girl.”

  “One should probably not teach her how to use a sword.”

  “I had to be able to protect myself, otherwise he would not have had me on the ship in the first place.”

  “You shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It was irresponsible of him to drag you into danger.”

  Daniella bristled anew. “You have no clue what you are talking about. What was he supposed to do? Abandon me to a nanny? Live a pauper just because my mother had the mischance to bear him a girl and then—?” She bit back the words “abandon her” just in time. He did not seem to notice.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “Only that a pirate’s life is not for a girl.”

  Those were her father’s words exactly the night he’d told her of her fate. They had fought all day after he banished Jimmy the deckhand from the ship for kissing her. That they’d happened to dress before their discovery was the only reason the handsome and charming Jimmy was still alive and not deep-sea fish food. But her father wasn’t a simpleton. He’d discovered part of their relationship and put an end to it before she found herself with child. Or, and in his opinion even worse, married to a pirate.

  But she was only having fun. She’d never considered marrying at all. She wasn’t the daughter of a nobleman or an heiress or a helpless lady in need of a husband. It wasn’t until her father’s threats became reality that she began to think about what marriage would be like.

  She’d only come up with one answer so far. Stifling.

  What husband was ever going to let her sail her own ship for months at a time or scramble about the rigging in trousers and a shirt?

  Not a one.

  “I’m sorry.” Trelissick spoke into the silence. “I didn’t mean to upset you again.”

  “It’s not you. It’s the whole situation. I prefer to make my own choices.” The admission probably wasn’t one she should have made out loud but her insides felt as though they could explode with tension and nervous anticipation. She had grown up with a company of friends to confide in. A ship was a small home compared to the mansions on Mayfair but it was never lonely. She had never known loneliness before moving to London. She may not have had female friends, but she was a chatterer, and right now, with James staring at her with pity in his eyes, she wanted to pour her heart out and make him understand why she had gone to such lengths as to sell her supposed virginity.

  What she wanted was to speak with her father. She wanted to feel his tight embrace and the scratch of his beard on her cheek as he told her everything was going to be all right.

  “Oh good God, please tell me you aren’t going to cry.”

  The horrified tone of Trelissick’s voice pulled her back to the present, to the room at an inn where she was held hostage and would spend the night with a woman who smelled like stale vomit and sweat.

  “I do not cry,” she replied. Even though her eyes burned and her throat felt as though it was stuck fast with a rock in it, she would not cry. Ever.

  Trelissick exhaled with what sounded like the relief she had earlier longed for. “Get some rest. We leave first thing in the morning.”

  “What about Mrs McDougal and Hobson? You can’t expect them to travel.”

  “They are going to stay here.”

  It dawned on her exactly what he didn’t say and Daniella wasn’t sure if she wanted to crow with joy or shrink back in fear. Alone. She would be alone with Trelissick in that carriage for hours on end each day. What was left of her reputation would finally wither and die, never to be revived again. She smiled.

  “You needn’t lo
ok so happy about it.” He sighed. “We might be able to find another chaperone in the next village.”

  “Are you worried for my reputation?” She laughed.

  Trelissick turned the door handle and looked back one last time. The picture she must have made with her frizzed hair wild about her shoulders and the blankets tucked under her chin.

  “I’m worried for mine.” And then he left, closing the door as quietly as he’d come.

  All of Daniella’s happiness disappeared in that moment and she shivered. She hadn’t thought of his standing in the ton. Would his name sustain damage when linked with hers or would it bring the matchmakers out with rewards for removing her influence from their daughter’s lives?

  Only time would tell.

  *

  James had no idea what the hell he was doing anymore. Just one hiccup in his plan and it all fell to pieces. It had never happened to him before. He always had contingencies for his contingencies when going into battle. Daniella Germaine was going to be the end of him.

  Pondering her situation required ale and a lot of it so he found himself perched on the edge of a rough stool at the inn’s bar indulging like he shouldn’t. He would only drink to forget her siren’s call. To forget she was a victim in this saga and not its instigator.

  At the sight of her red-rimmed eyes, he was ready to absolve her of her indiscretions and push her back to her brother’s embrace…except that that wasn’t what she wanted. After seeing her in a state of complete dishevelment and ready for bed—with obviously not much in the way of clothing on—it wasn’t what he wanted either.

  When he’d first insinuated himself into her life he’d honestly thought her capers were those of a spoiled brat. The occasional anguish shadowing her eyes said it might be so much more.

  James could understand the lures of freedom, especially as one who also felt the constraints of high society, but it was the world they’d both been landed in, whether Daniella accepted it or not. It was a club whose members had great privilege and greater responsibility, even if many revelled in the first at the expense of the second. She owed it to family and society to marry well and breed. And apart from any of that he wondered if she had stopped for even one moment to consider what she would do if her father turned her away. Again. There had to be very good reasons for the captain ignoring her, unless he simply hoped, given time and distance, she would accept her fate.