The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  Darius sat up and placed both of his hands over her breasts and smiled his contentment. “How could you be any less? You’re perfect inside and out.”

  “I expected to feel less, somehow. If we kept doing…this.”

  His brows rose and she knew she’d said something wrong but she couldn’t find another way to express how she felt inside.

  “Define less? Because I’m not a lord and gentleman?”

  His rough hands slid as though he was pulling away so she latched on and refused to let go, lifting his fingers to her mouth to kiss their backs. “Less because this is not the way a lady behaves. But I don’t feel less because I feel…I feel…so much more. I feel as though I could float away on the breeze and never come back down to the earth.”

  “You truly don’t care, do you, for society and perhaps being a duchess? You don’t care that you’ve fallen in station? Fallen so far?”

  Her hair fell about her shoulders as she shook her head and she smiled to soften the words she wanted to speak. “Not at all. My prospects died the day Harold cornered me in a darkened room. I cared then. I cried so many nights. But now? With you? I find I no longer care about much at all. It’s all slightly terrifying.”

  “Only slightly? It’s a hell of a weight to put on a man’s shoulders, Eliza.”

  “I don’t say it for any other reason than to make myself feel better, not to make you feel obligated in any way.” She wanted to tell him that he had freed her but bit her tongue against the admission.

  In the ensuing silence, Darius put his head back down but he didn’t relax. Even as Eliza ran her fingers over his shoulder and down his back, he stayed tense.

  “How did you get these scars?” she asked, suddenly wanting to know more about the years he’d spent as a pirate.

  “You don’t want to hear my horror stories.”

  “Then spare me the horror. Some of the marks look quite recent.”

  He shifted under her hand but didn’t get up. “Two years ago was the last lash. I was captured and taken aboard a pirate ship, whipped for my new station, payback from a years-before slight.”

  “That seems a rather harsh penalty,” she muttered.

  “I did kill the man’s brother so I suppose it could have been much worse for me.”

  Her hand stilled. “You killed a man?”

  “I’ve killed many men.”

  “Women and children too?”

  *

  This time he did sit up. “Never. I’ve done terrible things in this life but never to a woman or a child.” He wouldn’t tell her that the women and children of the dead men suffered enough that he might as well have run his sword through their bellies and ended it quickly.

  His years as a pirate, as the bastard and worthless cur his father had led him to believe he was, were so far behind him yet the memories would never leave. All of that misspent time, he’d been so angry, taking from the titled because his father had made him hate wealthy men of privilege who thought him so far beneath them. When Deklin Montrose had fished him from the sea, as close to death as he’d ever been, his life as a pirate came to an end. He had grown so sick and tired of the all-consuming anger eating his life away one lash of the punishing whip at a time. So tired was he of looking over his shoulder and wondering when death would come, so exhausted from the constant fury only just sustaining the worst of his actions. He’d cowed on the deck and wept like the boy he’d been when forced upon the sea but Deklin refused to let him give up and die.

  After a few months working for his passage, Deklin had offered him a legitimate position with his fleet of cargo ships. He’d offered him a chance at a fresh start but at the time had joked about one less sword-wielding seadog to deal with. Darius had accepted with a simple handshake and so began his new life.

  He drew in a lengthy breath before speaking again. “I told you I’m no shiny dragon slayer.”

  “You’re not a cold-blooded murderer of innocents either.” She raised herself up so she was sitting and touched her fingers to the biggest scar of all, right on the curve where his neck met his shoulder, the curve where Eliza’s head rested perfectly, like it had been meant to always rest there. “How did you get this one?”

  Darius covered her hand with his and drew her away. Such a long story was that one. “I had a family once. On the seas. Not the flesh-and-blood-kin kind, but the comrades-in-arms kind. The kind where each man would lay his life down for a captain and his daughter.”

  “What happened?”

  “I betrayed them when I thought I could do it better.” He laughed but there was no humour in it. “Daniella Germaine nearly ended my life that day. When I saw her a few months back, she said she wished she had.”

  “That seems callous considering the life you now lead. Is there no leniency at all? No forgiveness?”

  He recalled the look on her face as he’d dragged Daniella by her hair across the deck of his ship in the name of doing the right thing. “She has every reason to hate me, Eliza. I have made so many mistakes and even more enemies.”

  This was not the time nor the place to convince a gently bred daughter that he was the stuff of the horror tales granddames spread to scare the little girls into behaving. There was a reason he and Eliza had not been allowed to mix when they were children and for a few years, he had proven his father right. He had been a bastard and a cur. But not anymore. Now he was a good man and despite his cruel words from the night before, despite the fact he didn’t deserve any of them, they were his to keep safe now, Eliza and her siblings. It didn’t matter that he was an ex-pirate and a bastard, he would die to protect what was his in the same way any man of substance and honour would.

  Eliza didn’t realise it yet, but she now fell into that possessive, protective category. She was his and he was never going to let her go while there was still breath in his body and a sword in his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Did you think when the mighty fell, this is the shithole they might have wound up in, Tobias?”

  “I suppose it has some rustic charm…” the answering voice responded but then hesitated before continuing with a cackling laugh, “but damn me if I know what it is.”

  The first instinct to wash over Harold when he heard the two loud rumbles behind him was to flee. As fast and as far as his sore legs could carry him. But even he knew he had no chance against two of Mr Smith’s roughest employees. Men who could douse another man in oil and then set him alight over a debt were to be feared. Harold shivered. Instead of fleeing, he would pretend they weren’t there. Perhaps they hadn’t seen him yet?

  The discussion continued. “A man could disappear out here and nary a soul would know where to look for him.”

  “Unless those souls weren’t as dumb as they looked?”

  “That would mean the man who was hiding out was the dumb one wouldn’t it, Jackson?”

  “It would appear that way, my friend, it would appear that way indeed.”

  With a groan, Harold swivelled on his stool so his back was to the bar where his umpteenth ale sat, almost empty yet again and ready for a refill. He eyed the two men, his heart in his throat when he realised just how close they were and that their gazes sat riveted on him and only him.

  “Gentlemen,” he acknowledged with a nod but said no more.

  Tobias spoke first. He was big and brawny and brainy. A dangerous combination. “Mr Smith gave you a date and time for repaying in full yet you failed to show your ugly face anywhere near his place of business.”

  Harold still didn’t speak but then Tobias hadn’t asked a question. A thousand excuses, rehearsed over and over, along with a little begging, entered Harold’s mind but his tongue seemed weighed down as though made of lead and just would not move. Fear? Or self-preservation? If they were there to kill him, nothing would stop or slow them down.

  Jackson didn’t wait for a reply anyway. “You know how much Mr Smith hates to be kept waiting.”

  Finally Harold’s mouth worked fo
r him but his squeaky tone betrayed his fear. “Is Mr Smith here?”

  Both men shook their heads. “You don’t really think someone as esteemed as Mr Smith would be caught dead or alive in a place like this, do ya?” The last two words were short but they were loud.

  They were beginning to draw a lot of attention.

  “I told you last time, I was working on it. I can’t simply conjure funds from thin air,” Harold hissed but then regretted it as the two men came a step closer.

  Tobias looked to Jackson and said, “That’s funny because that isn’t what the rodent said last time he sat at a table with Mr Smith. He said he had the magic touch and therefore couldn’t lose.”

  Jackson nodded. “A rodent ’oo thinks ’imself magical. Should have known you was cracked then.” This was followed by guffaws of laughter and backslapping.

  Harold didn’t even bother bristling at the insult. He was too busy trying to come up with an excuse, an explanation, some way to find just a little more time. What he would do with that time, he had no idea. He wasn’t any closer to the Penfold dowry now than he had been yesterday or the day before. In fact, he was even further away with his father still in denial about the duke’s current state of being dead. He’d threatened Harold with a beating if he brought the matter up one more time.

  He wasn’t sure why his father was content to wait. It was insane. It was a death sentence.

  “Mr Smith wants ’is money, ’arold.”

  The way Jackson crooned his given name gave Harold shivers down his back and everywhere else. “He’ll get it, just like I said.”

  “But you’re out of options, lad. That Penfold chit would as soon stab you through the ’eart with a letter opener as she would marry the likes of you.”

  He should have known they’d be watching. He should have been more careful. “How do you know about Eliza?”

  It was Jackson who replied to the high-pitched question. “It’s our job to know all about the men we might ’ave to kill and those around them.”

  Harold gulped and looked around the now empty inn for help. The keeper and his wife had left the room, probably fled at the first raised voice, and not another soul waited around. Within minutes it was just he and the henchmen. He gulped again. “Don’t be too hasty there, my good fellows. If I turn up dead, Mr Smith will never get his money.”

  Tobias shrugged. “Seems he don’t much care at this late stage. He’s had it with your whining and your excuses. It would suit his constitution much better to have you done with and out of his life for good.”

  Just because they were in a public establishment didn’t make Harold feel any easier at all about his precarious situation. He only hoped his father would return from wherever the hell it was he went the day before with a solution in hand. “One more week. Just give me one more week and I’ll have Eliza and the dowry. Mr Smith can have it all. The whole lot.”

  This gave the two men pause. They looked at each other and the tiniest spark of hope flared to life in Harold. One shrugged, the other shook his head slowly but then shrugged back. “I s’pose a few more days can’t make any difference but you’re not having a week,” Jackson said. “And if you think to run, to ’ide, I’ll shoot you in the stomach. It’ll be a slow death for you if you set one foot beyond the county line without a lady at your side. Get it?”

  “I get it.” Harold nodded, sagging in his chair. It wasn’t relief coursing through his veins though. Sheer terror gripped him. What was he going to do?

  Then Tobias spoke again. “We want to know the plan. Were you going to just take her? Carry her off over your shoulder and then what? Gretna? But now your brother has her.”

  Jackson nodded. “Against our better judgement, we intervened and tried to stop ’is men but we got there too late and ’e took her.”

  Harold squeezed the bridge of his nose. He had to find something his brother wanted. Something he wanted bad enough to swap Eliza for it. Then it came to him. “The ship,” he murmured. The tiny spark of hope flared hotter. The bastard wanted the Montrose ship that had delivered the fabrics. Of course he and his father didn’t have it, but Harold had the story. Perhaps even the whereabouts. Wickham would be furious but Harold was at a point where he had to save his own neck before he thought of saving his father’s.

  “What ship?” Jackson asked, coming closer still.

  Harold hadn’t been aware he’d said it aloud. His brain worked to catch up. “I’ll not have to take her to Gretna if I could get her to a ship. We can be married by ship’s captain and then sail straight to London, straight to the bank if we bloody have to.”

  Tobias came closer as well. “But you don’t have a ship.”

  Harold looked up into the other man’s eyes. “No. I don’t. But your Mr Smith does.”

  Jackson laughed. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And just how are you going to get the girl out?”

  He’d have to take her. But how? His brother would watch those children like a hawk does a mouse. The house was surrounded by heavily armed pirates. He didn’t care what anyone said about his brother being a legitimate captain. He saw the pirate in him, knew he had to be capable of murder. How else could he have survived all those years on his own? By his smarts? Harold nearly snorted. “I’ll have to separate her from my brother somehow.”

  He was so caught up in his own thoughts, he didn’t see the two men exchange another look, another shrug, another nod. His attention was captured when Tobias pulled a sheaf of papers from beneath his well-tailored coat. “These might help do it all a little quicker.”

  “What are they?” Harold asked, snatching the documents. Any chance they could be of any help at all, he’d take it.

  “Penfold’s will and, it seems, his suicide note.”

  “Where did you get these?”

  “Your brother had them.”

  The shiver returned. “What have you said to my brother?”

  Jackson shook his head. “We didn’t hang about for tea, idiot. We have our methods for appropriating information.”

  “You stole them?” What did he care anyway? Harold began scanning the documents but then a meaty hand shoved them back against his chest. Hard.

  “Not here.”

  Harold nodded as elation filled him. Just one line had shattered his fears to dust and solved the way forward. Eliza wouldn’t like it, but the law was the law. Wickham would arrive to collect his new wards and Harold would have his wife and her dowry. At last, a way out of the quagmire.

  He stood and pushed past the henchmen. He had to find his father.

  “You have five days to make this happen. Get the girl and bring her to London; we’ll have the ship and a captain to do the marrying,” Tobias called after him. “Or there’ll be a tin of oil with your name on it.”

  Harold flew out the door, their maniacal laughter following him a long way down the road.

  *

  When word reached Darius that the Persecutor would be ready to sail in just three days’ time, the mixture of his emotions ranged from actual rage all the way to sadness and then back to rage with all the variants in between. He was beyond furious that his father would get away with being a blackguard and despicable excuse for a man. He was sad that Eliza and her siblings had to run.

  These should have been the best years of their lives. Nathanial should have been away at school. Eliza should have married and be expecting children with a man who was worthy of her. Gabriella would dream of come-out balls and Grace and Ethan could have just simply behaved as children, running about creating trouble and mischief. His father had had too much of a hand in their downfall for his part to be merely let go and forgotten. It grated so badly it hurt.

  But Darius couldn’t go after him. Not anymore. Not now. Not with so much at stake.

  One of the many problems with this was that they still hadn’t found Deklin’s missing ship. He knew the cargo of brand-new brocades and silks was long gone but whole ships and their hundred-odd sailors did not simply disappe
ar. Not unless they’d been fired upon and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. If that is what happened then it meant the crew of the Persephone handed over the cargo and then sailed away without trading money for the goods. Deklin’s cousin was captain aboard the beautiful three-year-old Persephone and imagining John a thief or worse was almost unthinkable. His loyalty to his extended family is what had earned him the top job aboard the newly built ship in the first place.

  Darius had known there would be variables and unaccounted-for events on this trip to London, but he sure wished it easy. Well, a part of him did. If it had all been too simple, he would never have met Eliza Penfold again. He still couldn’t be sure if this was a stroke of good luck for him or the worst of luck for her. Perhaps a little of both.

  If he’d had it his way—and he was still searching for a solution, he hadn’t given up yet—he would call his father out and put a bullet in his head. Not just for the people he’d wronged in this current fiasco but also for the half-siblings he’d known nothing about. Darius had had Eliza repeat over and over the words the maid said the day she delivered Sarah to them.

  “It wouldn’t be the first bastard he’s had show up on his doorstep. Not really sure what happens to ’em but they never come back.”

  Each time he considered what might have befallen them all he felt a deadly chill. He wondered just how many illegitimate children his father had spawned. He wondered how many of the women had actually said yes to his attentions. None, he’d bet money on it. His father was a rapist of housemaids and servants, women he obviously thought had no right to the two little letters that made up a no.

  Marcus’s final task, before fitting the Persecutor out with enough supplies for their extra passengers, was to hire a private investigative man to unearth all he could about Wickham’s bastards. Darius wanted to know how many there were to begin with, how many still breathed and where they were now. Perhaps when he returned to London after Nathanial had come of age, he would deal with Wickham then. If someone else didn’t get to him first.