The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “I’m not paying you anything, bastard. You have no rights here, no sway and no friends. Perhaps the only thing I owe you is a quick end? To put you out of your misery and wipe your existence from the earth?”

  Darius pushed his stool back with a scrape, desperate to reach for a weapon but understanding it wasn’t the time nor the place. He rose to his full height, towered over his sire and said, “Try all you like, old man, but my blade will find your heart well before yours finds mine.”

  “So you mean for war?” Wickham asked, fury blazing in his bloodshot gaze.

  “It seems between you and I, that is all there has ever been room for. The victor will be the last man standing.”

  “What have you to gain? Harold will wear the title and inherit what I have left should you win. You will still be a nameless, penniless cur.”

  He straightened and smiled, the action humourless but full of promise. “I’ll have the pleasure of watching the life drain from your eyes, knowing this bastard was more powerful than an earl, than a man who thinks himself beyond the reach of vengeance.”

  “So that’s why you came? For revenge?”

  Darius shook his head and turned to leave. “You could have paid me the gold and I would have left you alone, ignored your presence as I have for more than a decade. You are the one who made it personal, milord, when you did wrong by the Persephone and her crew.” He stopped at the door, donned his hat and coat, tugged his brim down in a show of indifference to all who heard the words he made no attempt to quiet and then left the pub, never once looking back.

  He whistled a bawdy tune as he mounted his horse to head back to his estate. He had bigger battles to dwell on, on this night. One way or another, his father would pay with either his gold or his life. After meeting the man again, Darius almost hoped it was the latter.

  Eliza Penfold was altogether a different matter. Pirate or legally appointed captain, Darius would never purchase a woman, and definitely not a wife, but he needed Eliza’s dowry and Eliza needed his protection. Without her coin, he had no way to return home to America or take care of his crew.

  He also couldn’t leave her or her siblings out in the cold on their own. Even if Eliza did consent to the union, he still wouldn’t be able to take her money and run. But what would he do with her? Take her back to America with him? No, she would never leave the children and his ship was no place for a lady.

  She’d created quite a scandal when she’d turned Harold down and rejected his suit. But was it his half-brother she had a distaste for or a marriage that would see her young siblings in even more danger without her presence? He’d learned all he could from the local townsfolk and the whole mess made him want to kill Harold just as slowly and painfully as he now wanted to kill his sire.

  There was a time in Darius’s life where he had only looked out for himself but those times, along with his naïveté and enthusiasm for adventure, were long, long gone. It had never been his intention to seek revenge over his father, only what was owed to him. But if Wickham did come after him or Eliza with murder in his eyes, Darius would kill him. He would not hesitate and he would not bother with compunction. It would be his final act on English soil, to rid the country of a cockroach.

  Chapter Nine

  When Darius finally returned to his home, the sun was setting and the evening chill had well and truly settled over the pine forest, darkening clouds a sure promise of more snow to come. As unpredictable as the weather, had Eliza finally realised she was out of options? A better man would have had their roof repaired and the children taken care of in their own home. But he was dead broke. As was Eliza. They made the perfect couple. The thought made him smile as he handed his hat and coat to Wiggins, the butler-for-the-moment taking to the navy fabric with a fine brush before hanging it carefully in the closet.

  “You’re getting a little too good at that,” Darius told him with a chuckle.

  Wiggins shrugged. “Beats the hell out of wearing dirty clothes for months on end and smelling like tar and sweat.”

  This gave Darius pause. “I thought you enjoyed the decks of the ship? You told me you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  His man shrugged again and his gaze drifted away from Darius’s. “I didn’t know no other way until now, Cap’n.”

  What could he say to that? Every one of his men wanted to be with him, of that he had been sure. Should he have questioned their loyalties? No. He had their devotion. Perhaps he should have questioned the men further when he’d asked them to come on this last hurrah? He tossed the notion aside until later. “Is Duncan in? Marcus?”

  “Taking tea in the silver drawing room.”

  “Taking tea? Do we have a guest?” Anticipation filled his chest until he was fit to burst. Had the beautiful idiot finally seen reason? Had she finally seen that she could not ever hope to succeed without his help?

  “We have five guests, milord. The lady is taking tea and the other four are exploring the house and choosing their bedrooms.”

  “I see.” Darius couldn’t help the smile that stretched his lips but then he had to bite it back. Eliza couldn’t see him happy over this turn of events. Indeed, he shouldn’t have been quite so happy but found it too hard to sober. Perhaps it was the ale?

  Pausing to steel his face to a mix of fury and concern, Darius threw open the doors and rushed into the room. “I just got the message. Marcus, Duncan is everyone all right? Eliza, what are you doing here?”

  The men rose but Eliza didn’t even look up. She sat before the hearth staring at the mountain of flames, her ungloved hands outstretched to the warmth as though she couldn’t quite believe it was there. Thin white strips of fabric wound around her palms and over three of her ten fingers.

  Now his fury became real. “What the hell happened?”

  Marcus shook his head so Duncan answered. “Ruffians shot out the windows of the house. Eliza was injured but not badly, just a few scratches.”

  “And the children?” Darius would kill both of his men if their bullets had gone low and harmed anyone. They’d discussed the fact that the glass might cause injury but Darius had been hoping to get away without bloodshed. He was a desperate man pushed to desperate measures and hadn’t considered the children fighting back. Where had his battle prowess gone to? His ability to see the dangers from every angle?

  “All fine and accounted for.”

  Marcus cleared his throat and gestured to Eliza who still hadn’t uttered a word or moved at all. “We chased the beggars off but didn’t want to take the risk of them coming back so we brought them all here until you returned.”

  “A wise idea. Thank God you were both there.”

  “Aye,” Marcus grunted and then turned and stomped from the room.

  Darius raised his brows to Duncan in question but the other man merely raised his shoulders and shrugged in return.

  “Eliza, are you all right?” Darius called to her from a few steps away.

  No response at all. Kneeling beside her, he took her wrists and forced her to turn in the chair until she faced him. “Eliza? Talk to me.”

  Finally her blue eyes, once sparking with anger but now flat with a strange sense of nothingness in them, lifted to meet his gaze. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “What do you mean? You were attacked.”

  “My father… He never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” he placated. “None of this is your fault.”

  “Yet it is my responsibility to fix it.”

  Darius shook his head and placed a finger beneath her chin when she made to drop her gaze. “Not anymore. Please let me protect you.”

  She shook free of his hold and turned back to the fire. “You can’t protect me. You have no sway. No standing in the village or in town. When they find out…”

  “When they find out what? What haven’t you told me, Eliza?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut but her back sho
ok as a sob took hold. Raising her bandaged hands to her face, Eliza began to cry. She cried until she couldn’t draw breath, until Darius was forced to pick her up and sit with her on his lap, his arms tight around her slight frame as she sobbed against his shoulder. Where was the spitfire who’d told him she would bow to no man? Where had her sass gone?

  “This doesn’t have to be the end of anything,” Darius said as she relaxed against him, as her tears dried but her grip on his shirt didn’t ease.

  “I’ll lose my freedom and my family all in one moment of time,” she said with an indelicate sniff and half a hiccup.

  “You’ll lose nothing at all and if you’d listened to me yesterday, I would have said the same thing. I have a proposal for you that I think could work out for all of us.”

  She pushed away from his chest to look him in the eye. “What proposal?”

  “I have a special licence in my pocket, the names have been left blank but your father and the archbishop both signed their names to it. We can be married in the morning and holding your dowry in the afternoon.”

  “What then? You’ll sail away free as a bird but I’ll be left behind with another scandal and in no better position than I was a week ago.”

  “Would you like to know what the alternative is? I promise you my idea will look like a rainbow compared to what you have now, which by the way resembles horse shit.”

  A small smile bent her lips but then a shudder racked her body and she hugged her arms to herself. It was then that she seemed to recall she sat on his lap. He liked it. He liked her inconsiderable weight perched on his thighs. It felt familiar and yet not all at the same time. He wanted to pull her back down so she rested against his chest but then she rose. The cold and detachment were instant. He wondered if she felt it too.

  “Give me the alternative and then we shall compare rainbows with…with…”

  “Faeces,” he supplied with a grin. He needed to lighten the moment before sealing both of their fates. “First tell me why you didn’t accept Harold’s offer after you were compromised.”

  Her head drooped and she sat on the settee, or rather fell, her eyes back on the dancing flames in the hearth. “You know about that?”

  Darius nodded. “I asked around the village. The tale was a little too eagerly relayed to a stranger. Did it happen recently?”

  *

  Eliza supposed he had to find out sooner or later. He’d obviously done his research on the men who owed him money and the families who supported them. Was it concern in his eyes or did he wait to hear her version of events before he pulled the rug from under her and sent her back to the house with no roof and now no windows?

  “It happened two years ago. Harold didn’t even know about my dowry then. He was full of charm and courted me even though I knew my father wasn’t completely taken with the notion.”

  “Why didn’t the duke put a stop to it? Forbid him to call?”

  For a bastard who had moved away from England more than a decade before, he had a good grasp on the proprieties observed by the ton. “I guess he owed Wickham money even then, or perhaps I should say Meddington as he’d been at the time. The two, father and son, came to call anytime they were visiting with the old earl. They’d invite my father to this game or that fight. He would never say no. I assumed they were friends, all of them.”

  “Maybe they were?”

  “He certainly put his esteem of them above his own daughter,” she muttered but then went on. “One night, my father invited the men to stay after dinner. I put the children to bed and told them to keep the doors of the nursery locked. We had no nanny or governess to see over them. We had no servants to play music or to pour the drinks. That was my task, he told me.”

  “I am beginning to see where this is going,” Darius interrupted. “Did he force himself on you?”

  Eliza shook her head. “He didn’t. He was actually quite polite and ordinary when he propositioned me. When I turned him down, he took me in his arms. Persuasion, he called it.” She lifted her gaze and looked Darius right in the eye. She had to make him see she told the truth even though no one had so far believed her. “I pushed at him to leave me alone but it was in that moment that my father and his entered the library. I knew instantly that Wickham had set up the whole thing. I knew in the way that Harold wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve that he hadn’t really wanted to kiss me at all. They all began to argue over wedding dates but I refused. For two months I refused to marry him. But the damage was already done. My father viewed me as sullied, it got far worse when word began to spread that we’d been having an affair, that I had given away my favours.”

  She didn’t bother telling him that Harold never wanted to be shackled to her, that it was his father’s idea. He merely wanted to bed her and then ruin her. He wanted a plaything he could blackmail into fulfilling his every sordid, depraved fantasy. He made no secret of it. She had been sickened and felt sorry for Harold’s future wife.

  “I can guess who spread those rumours,” Darius mused.

  “Father wouldn’t look at me after that. He began to spend all of his time in London with Wickham, leaving us at the house on our own. Any time we were alone together, Father would tell me that I was no good for any man. I told him I didn’t care.”

  “Did you though? Did you care, Eliza?”

  She shook her head. “Not once. I still don’t. What would have happened to Gabriella, Grace, Ethan and Nathanial if I’d given in? They weren’t old enough to look after themselves and Father had sent away the servants. The same fate that awaited me with Harold would have awaited my sisters. They would have been sold off like prized pigs to repay the highest of Father’s debts.”

  “That still might happen.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  Darius rose and started to pace. She wanted to tell him to stand still and talk to her but she felt so powerless in the situation. What else did he know? Surely not… “Please, just tell me.” Had he already promised the girls to others?

  “Your guardians are not your aunt and uncle. English law would have severely frowned upon it since your uncle is next in the line of succession after Nathanial.”

  “Then who is? We don’t know anyone else. My father had very few friends or acquaintances.”

  “He named the Earl of Wickham in his will. I believe he meant the old earl, Harold Senior, but the documents state no names, only the title.”

  “Oh, dear God.”

  “Indeed,” Darius said as he came closer. She held a hand out to ward him off, to keep him at bay. She didn’t need his comfort, only the truth and some distance to think.

  But then she couldn’t breathe. What had she done? She was supposed to be saving them all, not helping them faster to their doom. The room tilted as she placed an arm against her roiling stomach, his voice grew distant and the colours faded to grey around her. She was now officially stuck in a tug of war between a monster and a stranger who could yet turn out to be a monster.

  When she thought things couldn’t get any worse than the smoking pistol at her slippered feet beside her father’s cooling corpse, she’d been so, so wrong.

  Chapter Ten

  The little amount of colour Eliza had taken at their frank discussion quickly drained from her cheeks and Darius only just caught her as she fainted. Again. He wondered if she made a habit of passing out or if it was only when he was around to disrupt her equilibrium.

  Though she weighed little more than a feather, her dead weight was just enough to overbalance him and they both fell rather inelegantly to the settee.

  Just as the children entered. Along with Marcus.

  Damn it all to hell.

  Nathanial recovered first. Pulling the pistol Darius had given him from the band of his trousers, he marched forward five steps and held the gun alarmingly close to Darius’s temple. “You are a blackguard. I knew we couldn’t trust you. Unhand my sister.”

  Marcus cleared his throat. “Perhaps
this is one of those times we should ask questions first and draw weapons second?” His eyebrows rose but Darius couldn’t miss the look of admonishment on his friend’s weathered face.

  With a snort of contempt for them, and for the situation, Darius gently released Eliza and made sure she wasn’t going to fall to the carpets and then turned to face the four children. Marcus didn’t require his explanations. Darius was captain and didn’t have to justify his actions to his crew member.

  The children were a different matter. “She fainted. Again. I caught her so she wouldn’t hit her head on the edge of the table.”

  Gabriella spoke up. “She has been feeling poorly a lot lately. Perhaps the pressure of our situation is too much for her?”

  As Darius looked down on the sleeping beauty, her dress askew over her shoulder and collarbone, the bones too clear to see, he wondered if there might be another, much more feasible, explanation. Eliza was no wilting rose; she had backbone enough to hold a weapon on a peer of the realm. “When was the last time you saw your sister eat something? More than a few bites?”

  Nathanial lowered his gun but the scowl didn’t fall from his face. “She broke her fast with us this morning. Granted, it wasn’t an enjoyable meal, tasted like decades-old coal if truth be told, but filling all the same. She ate it too.”

  “Hey!” little Grace called out indignantly. “There was nothing wrong with that porridge.”

  Ethan giggled and Darius nearly rolled his eyes. Is this how it was with young siblings? They seemed to argue a lot about the mundane. It made his ears ring a little. “Did you actually see her raise the spoon to her lips and take a bite?”

  The four looked to each other, three shoulders shrugged and a future duke groaned and knocked his forehead with the barrel of the pistol, twice.

  “Shall I take that as a no, then? When was the last time any of you recall her actually eating?”

  Ethan appeared to be putting a great deal of thought into remembering when he cried, “Huzzah, she ate the hare your men brought for us. Not much of it but she did eat some. She said after that she was as stuffed as though she’d had an elephant on her plate and not a bunny.” He finished his statement with a firm nod and crossed his arms over his tiny chest.