The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  *

  It had been a long hard few days for Darius and his crew, assessing the Persecutor’s decks and bow damage from the storm they’d endured. Hours had been spent scraping back timbers and tar ready for the supplies Marcus had ordered only to be told the ship would have to be limped to a building dock just outside of London. They were lucky to have been able to do all they had in five days but they’d had little choice in it. The repairs were just too big for he and his men to do on their own. It was going to take most of Eliza’s dowry but they would be ready to sail in eight days.

  Seven too long for Darius.

  He’d had a bad feeling since leaving Eliza and he’d tried to shake it free, drink it free, but it had a hold of him. He wouldn’t rest until they were on their way across the ocean to Boston.

  The men had been in favour of staying on the ship for another night before returning to the house but Darius had voted against the idea.

  He’d denied it was to see Eliza, preferring instead to go with a different excuse. There were too many dangers surrounding the Penfold children, enough danger at his own back as well, and five days was long enough to leave them. It was argued that they’d left more than enough men behind to protect the women and the house but Darius’s mind could not be swayed. He was captain so even at a vote, he still had the final say and say it he did.

  And so it was almost evening when he and his weary sailors reined in and carefully dismounted in the forecourt. It seemed every candle burned from within the house, every window glowing impossibly bright, welcome and warm. A smile found its way to his mouth.

  “You’re smitten with the girl,” Marcus remarked from his left. He’d joined their party on the second day rather than riding back to the house on his own. Darius had been glad to see his old friend safe and well and equally glad to hear the dowry was in their hands. Now Wickham couldn’t use Eliza in any way. She was useless to his sire and it made Darius breathe a little easier. The other news Marcus had uncovered had just as quickly caused his anxiety to return.

  Tarquin leaned over and bumped shoulders with him as they approached the house. “I knew you was just eager to get back to your bride. Had nothing to do with danger at all.”

  The front doors opened wide and Benny came running down the steps. He was never finely dressed, none of Darius’s men could claim that distinction, but this evening, Benny’s hair stood out in every direction, his yellowed shirt had some sort of creamy white stain glistening and wet on the front and he was babbling unintelligibly. Darius thought he heard the word baby, followed very closely by help me.

  “Slow down, man. Slow down.” Tarquin laughed, slapping the man hard on the back to jolt him out of his frazzle.

  Darius didn’t wait around for an explanation. The hair on his nape had risen at the panicked noises and he marched right into the house, his gun in his hand. He paused at the base of the stair and listened for where the most sound came from. He was listening for the sound of a woman’s voice, or a child’s hysteria. Instead, there was only singing. Low and soft and melodic, the rest of the house silent but holding a tension all the same for its apparent calmness.

  He climbed the stair two at a time, deliberately missing the three that creaked so as not to announce his presence just yet. He stopped again in the long corridor to holster his weapon. He tilted his head and then headed for the bedroom allocated to his wife.

  The door was open, the children all sitting on the bed, their gazes riveted to their sister who hummed and sang and swayed with her back to him. Ethan saw him first and held a finger to his lips, already shushing before Darius had uttered one word.

  Eliza turned.

  Darius almost died.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The smile his wife wore, the rosy hue on her cheeks and joy in her entire countenance had Darius stepping back, such was the blow to the region where his heart lay under its layers of blackened sin.

  Then she stepped towards him and his gaze dropped to her arms, to the bundle cradled against her chest. This time when he stepped back, the movement was most deliberate. Her smile faltered, faded, fell away as she hugged to herself what looked alarmingly like a baby.

  What had he done? He was an idiot and had fallen for it all.

  She had tricked him, connived and deceived. As soon as it was too late, his back turned, she had no qualms about revealing another of her many ruses. How could he not have seen it coming? His turbulent thoughts went back to the night when they truly became husband and wife.

  He’d been in her bedroom but she had come to him.

  She had been wearing nothing but her gown.

  He had been furious and vulnerable and then she had swooped and put the final seal on Darius’s freedom, his future.

  Their future.

  Why?

  Because he was a bastard and so therefore would have no trouble being cuckolded in this way? Did she think he would silently raise another man’s child? His brother’s child no less?

  He’d been duped in the biggest way but how had he not noticed there was a baby involved in their mess? Her stomach hadn’t been marked as though she’d carried a child, her skin soft and tight and smooth. Had she secreted it away in the village until she’d said her vows? He’d discovered her scandal and had dismissed it as fodder for the gossips with little truth in it but when he stared at that little baby’s face, her nose and chin identical to that of his and his brother’s, the truth dawned. The babe couldn’t be more than a few months old. The Duke of Penfold had disappeared in the last few months. The scandal. Had Eliza killed her father so he wouldn’t tell of his daughter’s bastard?

  His mouth worked but it was several moments before he could speak. “You tricked me,” he murmured, suddenly—strangely—hurt, confused, betrayed. Emotions he hadn’t let himself feel for the longest of times. Why had she married him then? Why not Harold? Had it all been a ploy so he wouldn’t retaliate against his brother and father? His mind was a cyclone of turbulent thoughts but not one made sense.

  Eliza shook her head, reached for him with a free hand.

  He retreated. She’d settled for a rich bastard to hide her disgrace. He’d known there had to be more to the story than she had told him but this? She could have married his brother when she’d discovered she was increasing. Why hadn’t she done that? She had obviously been his mistress but for how long? Was she their puppet after all? Their plaything? Nothing made sense.

  As Darius backed from the room, horror showing all over his face since it was all he felt at that moment, his chest heavy and his mouth dry, Eliza passed the infant to Gabriella and came after him.

  Darius was faster. He didn’t stop, simply threw the words over his shoulder as he ran down the stairs. “I suppose you are going to claim that Harold forced himself on you? That you had no choice in any of that either?”

  He flew down each step but as he reached the bottom, Benny stopped him with a solid hand to his chest. “Where are you going?”

  “How could you let that female bring that child here? I left you in charge and this is how you carry on?”

  “You think that baby had any choice in being left here on our doorstep? You would run from your own sister? Throw her out into the cold?”

  Sister? That certainly stopped him, gave him reason to pause. He wanted to listen but the blood roared in his ears and cheeks and he needed to get away from there. From her. Just another in a long line to betray him in the worst way. He’d thought they might have a future. He thought they had something.

  “Darius?” Eliza’s breathless voice came from halfway up the stair. “I don’t know what conclusions you are drawing from this situation, but I assure you, you have them incorrect.”

  “What conclusions could I draw, madam? Tell me you did not give birth to my brother’s child and then attempt to cuckold me after the fact.” He then said to Benny, “That would make the child my niece, not my sister.”

  Eliza reached his side and crossed her arms over her ches
t. “You ninny, she’s your sister because she is one of your father’s bast—” Her cheeks coloured. “One of your father’s illegitimate children.”

  “It’s not yours? Yours and Harold’s?”

  She paled but then her spine straightened and she pinned him with a glare. Was she likely to slap him? “How dare you? Not in this life or any other would I ever allow that toad to touch me.”

  “Again,” Darius reminded her, though why he did it he wasn’t sure. He tried to think back to the night he and Eliza had finally come together. He remembered how gloriously tight she had been as he’d entered her but then thinking had become too hard as he’d thrust and buried himself in her heat. He didn’t remember any physical barrier but then he’d never bedded a virgin before.

  God, his brain throbbed.

  “Once was more than enough to ruin my life. Why would I carry on an…an…affair with him? If my feelings lay in his vicinity, why would I not have married the toad when he tried to compromise me? Why would I have let you… You and I…” Her arguments came on furious breaths of air until her face pinkened and he ached to take it all back. He really was a bastard, in every sense of the word.

  “Why not indeed.” It was all he could come up with considering the accusation he’d just levelled at his new wife. He supposed there were some pieces of this puzzle missing. Like why she would commit to a marriage of convenience if she was going to make a baby magically appear a week later. If it was him, he would consummate the marriage immediately to ensure there was little he could do once said baby was produced. He sighed. “That is not the story about the village.”

  Eliza raised her hands to her hips and her glare became ferocious. He deserved it. And more. “I know what they say in the village. Why do you think we have no callers? How would we have hidden our desperation had we friends nearby? Blast it, if we had friends, we would have been calling on their hospitality rather than yours in the first place.”

  Darius knew she wanted to call him all sorts of names after that statement but her breeding obviously disallowed her from insulting a man. He may have been born on the wrong side of the blanket but he had manners. Somewhere. “My apologies,” he offered with a deep bow.

  “Yes, well, perhaps the next time you feel like passing judgements, you might take a moment to ask questions? That child is your sister. You must decide what will happen to her.”

  “Happen to her?”

  “You must find her a family. Somewhere she can be safe from ridicule. She needs to be fed and cared for, hidden away from Wickham.”

  He had been fed and cared for once upon a time. Even though his father refused to claim him, the old earl, Darius’s grandfather, had given him a home, some measure of love, of acceptance. He hadn’t cared that Darius was a bastard. He hadn’t cared how his first grandson was conceived or who the unfortunate woman had been. Darius had let him down by not sending word that he was still alive. He hadn’t wanted his sire to know he’d survived. He’d waited for a day to reveal his living state and knock his sire on his arse, but he’d waited too long. His grandfather had passed away and Darius hadn’t heard about it until it was too late. The old man died thinking that Darius had run away rather than live the life of a servant.

  The absolute truth was that Darius would have been quite content as a stable lad and servant. For years before his abduction, he’d known what bastard meant in its entirety. He could have lived with it. But then his father and his brother had taken him from his bed in the dead of night and beaten him unconscious. They had then paid a sailor to stow him away in a rat-infested hold until they were days away from England.

  When his presence had been discovered, he was stripped and then whipped and then put to work. Degraded, abused, treated far worse than any boy ever should be. He’d grown into a man without affection, without a caring word or thought. Surrounded by torture. Surrounded by filth. He would not allow any man or woman to endure what he did. He would certainly not let his tiny, innocent sister be taken in by strangers and treated for her whole life like an outcast.

  “Does Wickham know about her?”

  Eliza relayed the short story of the housemaid who had delivered the baby. “I don’t know what the earl knows but it sounds like Sarah is much better off anywhere than with him.”

  “Sarah? Is that what she is called? Where is her mother?”

  “Disappeared. Sarah needs a family, Darius. You should send word to London and enquire as to a carer for her.”

  “No.”

  “No? What will you do with her?”

  “May I see her?”

  “I suppose, though do not wake her. She does not like being cleaned and cries a lot.”

  “You cleaned her? Got her to sleep? You’ve been caring for her?”

  Eliza nodded, her gaze dropping to the floor as she turned to go back up the stairs.

  “Thank you,” he said to her back as he followed. What must she think of this new development? He had no thoughts yet. No thoughts beyond what he would do to his sire when he saw him again. He did have to wonder how many bastards there were in the world with their particular colouring, their unmistakable Meddington bloodlines, muddied only by the poor women the earl forced to his depraved will.

  When Darius had landed in London, he’d been intent upon ruining his sire, vengeance for the path he’d set his illegitimate son on, one of them at least. Then Eliza’s situation had forced him to admit he would never get his money from Wickham and that it didn’t matter so long as the man was ruined. He had been willing to give it all up to get Eliza and her siblings far away from England’s shores.

  Sarah changed things. She changed everything. Wickham was going to pay dearly. Castration would be the best start but would it be punishment enough? He doubted it. Darius was going to see to it, if it was the very last thing he did, that his worthless sire paid. And he was going to enjoy every second.

  *

  Later that same evening, all thoughts of revenge and death were overridden by an angelic, peaceful face. Darius couldn’t believe how impossibly small his half-sister was, how vulnerable she was or how her tiny fingers wrapped about just one of his would wake something deep within his heart.

  He wasn’t the only one irrevocably changed. It seemed as much as Darius was a magnet for damsels in distress, then Eliza was one for abandoned children. When he’d suggested they search the village for a wet nurse, Eliza had been resistant, saying Sarah took in enough from the way they fed her. When he couldn’t locate Eliza or the children after supper, he found them all in the nursery. Settled in for the night. Even his wife.

  “Did I miss something, Eliza?” he asked her when he saw an extra cot made up, a basket for the baby next to that.

  She had the good grace to flush but then her little chin went in the air and he knew he was in for a fight. “I had my things moved up here after you left. Now that we have Sarah, I am needed in the nursery.”

  “You are needed by my side also.” He tried to convey his meaning into the statement without spelling it out. The household were meant to think them in love in case anyone came and asked questions. Also, there was the fact that she belonged in his bed, with him.

  Eliza passed Sarah to Gabriella and then dragged him into the hall by his arm. She pulled the door shut behind her so the children wouldn’t hear but the warmth of her hand on his shirt distracted him from her first words. “I was by your side when the children’s lives were at risk after the fire. Ethan was terrified and asked me to stay near. Now Sarah needs me as well.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come to me that night,” he pointed out, irritated that she would place the blame on him. Irritated that she seemed skittish now. Days ago she almost begged him not to leave. Now she behaved like a stranger he had wronged somehow.

  He’d held fast to two things since leaving her and spending his days with his ship and his men. One was that she had the softest, palest skin a man could spend forever and a day exploring—with his mouth.

  T
he second was that she had come to him. Strangely, while he was in a terrible rage over burning the duke’s body, she had come to him. She hadn’t so much as offered herself but she could have said no, could have turned from him and fled. He wouldn’t have followed.

  Well, maybe not.

  Then she’d made comments about him leaving them. Had she martyred her innocence in the same way she’d handed over her freedom? He’d felt a little sick after thinking about it and hadn’t been able to shake it off since. Darius wasn’t dumb, he knew they had to consummate eventually but he hadn’t been about to rush her; in fact, he’d tried his damnedest to keep his hands to himself so as not to scare her or turn her away, his blushing English rose.

  Hands that now itched to either draw her closer, or throttle her, he clenched at his sides. “You can sleep up here tonight but then tomorrow, you have your things moved back down to your room.”

  She straightened and jabbed a finger into his chest. “You might presume to order me about like one of your sailors but my brothers and sisters come first to me. Sarah too. They are vulnerable and need someone close by. Someone who will cuddle them when they wake from a nightmare. A friendly face to recognise when they wake in the morning in a strange bed in a strange house.”

  “Tarquin was right outside the door,” he pointed out but what he really wanted to say, to ask, was what about me? Yes, Eliza had charges under her care, but she was his wife now. Perhaps he should ask her to rank him in the order she saw him in her life so he would know where he stood? So it wouldn’t hurt his heart to know even with her, he was not a priority.

  “And where is he now?” Her foot tapped against the floor and he knew he’d lost this battle.

  “He has chores to see to.”

  “So you would place yet another pirate at their door? An unfamiliar face?”

  “All of my men are beyond trustworthy, Eliza. They have each earned their place by my side and on my ship. I’ll not let you cast aspersions.”