by Carrie Lomax
Lizzie smirked, though Richard detected tension in her jaw and a shadow behind her eyes. He did not like to think what measures a desperate Lizzie might take compared to a merely conniving one. Fear threaded through him like a needle trailing a long thread, binding him in this mess.
“How did I know what?” Lizzie asked, deflecting.
“How did you know I am leaving America?”
Lizzie’s fever-bright eyes widened. Her foxlike features lent her a feral appearance. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
“I didn’t, until you told me.” Lizzie chuckled. “Your landlady caught me looking through the house mail. I knew you had received a letter from the earl. The true earl, if I recall correctly.” Tap. Tap. Tap. “The brother who banished you for killing your own father.”
Twist the knife deeper, dearest. Richard swallowed his anger so hard it choked him. His fists curled against his thighs. But letting Lizzie get the better of him was not going to happen today. Nor tomorrow. He wouldn’t touch her again, and she wouldn’t come within five miles of him if he could help it. He just needed to pack his few remaining things and board the New Hope with his bride.
Lizzie didn’t blink. She was a basilisk. A demon.
“Get out,” he growled.
A hint of trepidation tinged Lizzie’s eyes. He flinched at his own anger. Lizzie saw it and smiled in her vulpine way, predatory and fey at once.
“You’ll regret this,” she snapped.
When she was gone, Richard fisted his hair and collapsed on the bed where he’d lain with Lizzie for months. Richard must keep his departure secret from Lizzie at any cost. He feared what she might do if she found out.
Two weeks later…
Miriam strolled arm-in-arm with Richard around the deck. The setting sun bled giddy streaks of color over the water. Gulls flapped and called hoarsely into the air. Miriam inhaled deeply. Fresh, clean, life-sustaining air rushed in until her bodice strained to contain her body.
She loved the sea. This was the adventure – albeit a tedious section of it – that she had awaited. At least, the beginning of it. As much as Miriam missed her father, she enjoyed her newfound freedom even more. If only her husband would use the key she’d pressed into his palm. Why wouldn’t Richard make her his wife in truth?
It was true in every respect that mattered, Mrs. Kent had reminded her. Legally they were husband and wife. The thought never failed to send a shiver down her spine.
“Are you all right?” Richard asked, his brow crinkled slightly with concern. Miriam nestled against him. A warm glow suffused her body. Once he took her to bed, Miriam planned to tell him the depth of her feelings. I love you. There were moments when she could hardly hold back the words. She smiled up at him and folded her gloved hand over his where he held her arm to steady her from the roll of the ship.
“I am perfectly all right. More than perfect. I am so happy to be with you that I could burst with joy.”
Richard met her smile with a kiss.
“Ahem.” Mrs. Kent’s gentle interruption, one of many, had become something of a game. Richard smirked and they continued on their unhurried way around the deck, dodging a pile of rope or a busy sailor. A secret smile played over her lips as though they shared a joke only they understood.
They rounded the stern and began walking directly into the sun. Miriam was forced to keep her head tilted downward to keep the strong light from scalding her eyes. For a few moments there was only the sound of his footsteps on weathered wood, their shadows cowering behind them. A bell clanged nearby. The ship tilted. Richard’s hand gripped her arm. Miriam felt him steadying her against the sudden shift in balance.
The light shifted, momentarily blinding Miriam. When she looked up, the shape of a woman in a fashionable traveling dress swam into focus.
“Hello Richard,” Lizzie smirked. “Miriam.”
Miriam’s mouth hung open for a moment. Lizzie’s nimbus of hair had stolen color from the sun’s palette. It licked about her face in the wind glowing like a hellfire crown. She looked fierce and confident and not a little arrogant. Lizzie wrapped one hand around Richard’s forearm.
“Mind if I join your little stroll? I have been cooped up below-deck for days.”
“What are you doing here, Lizzie?” Richard snarled. He moved a few inches in front of Miriam as though to protect her.
“Richard, darling, you should know very well what I am doing here. I am holding you to your obligations as the father of our child.” Lizzie placed her other gloved hand over her small, flat abdomen.
Miriam’s world swam sickeningly. The ship rolled, and where a few minutes ago she would have moved with it, she now stumbled. Behind her, Mrs. Kent gasped.
“Your child?” Miriam stared at Richard with shock and accusation. “When were you planning to tell me?”
“Ideally never, dear heart. Lizzie is quite mad. She may not even be pregnant. I haven’t touched her since before I met you, and she appears no further along than she did...”
“At lakeside house.” Lizzie finished for him, smirking. “You didn’t tell her, I see. It isn’t entirely true, either. You last touched me the night you met Miriam. I took up with Spencer the next day.”
Richard’s jaw worked. Miriam had come to recognize this as a sign that he was trying to bite back words.
“If there is a child, I cannot even be certain that it is mine. You were with your husband at the shore.” Richard’s voice cracked slightly with barely-restrained emotion.
Appalled, Miriam’s gaze glanced between her friend and new spouse, one gloating, the other twisted in miserable fury. This was the true nature of the man she had married?
Married. A sick feeling curdled in Miriam’s stomach. This had to be the reason why Richard refused to come to her bed. She glared at him in accusation. Richard met her gaze sidelong and jerked his head away.
No. But the truth shimmered almost tangibly between them. Hot tears blurred Miriam’s vision.
“Oh, it’s your baby,” Lizzie snapped. Miriam jerked her gaze to her friend’s hard face. What kind of woman had she been friends with all these years? Foxy Lizzie, her detractors had called her. Well. It appeared Miriam had been thoroughly outfoxed. She’d never experienced this side of Lizzie. Her friend’s – former friend’s – manipulativeness wounded her almost as deeply as Richard’s betrayal.
Not now. She would think of it later.
“I believe her.” Miriam startled all of them by speaking.
“I don’t,” responded Mrs. Kent. For a second Lizzie looked like she might fly at Mrs. Kent and scratch her eyes out. Miriam’s nurse narrowed her eyes at the unwanted interloper, daring Lizzie until she brought herself under control.
“Dearest Miriam. I knew I could count on you to see reason. Why would I lie? I have nothing to gain. Do I, Richard?”
He stood stiffly, tight-lipped and silent, beside her. Richard glared at Lizzie with mute hatred and suffering naked in his eyes. Miriam edged away from him, closer to Mrs. Kent.
“Money. That is what this is about, Miriam. Lizzie wants money so that she can divorce her husband and free herself from her family’s influence. Specifically, she wants your fortune,” Richard snarled. His smile expanded into an arrogant, pained smirk. “I am afraid you’re too late, Lizzie. The money is tied up in our business venture. There is nothing for you to pillage.”
Lizzie’s face twisted again as if a demon possessed her body. Her features took on a feral ferocity. Miriam shivered. A metallic taste rose in the back of her throat at reality sank in. Miriam’s one true friend had never been a friend at all. That fact broke her heart.
“I’d have given you the money if you asked for it, Lizzie,” Miriam said softly.
“This is about our love, Richard. It’s about your fatherly obligations,” Lizzie returned evenly.
“I would never ignore my responsibilities as a father.” Richard spoke quietly, yet his body radiated tension. “I have promised to support you and the chil
d financially. I never said I would marry you.”
Silence fell over them all, broken by the harsh calls of sailors around them and the snap of sails in the strong wind, taking them ever closer to a shore Miriam no longer wished to land upon. Richard turned to Miriam, his eyes and voice pleading. “I swear I had broken with Lizzie before I courted you. She may not have believed me, but I told her quite distinctly that we were through. The first time I kissed you was a revelation.”
Miriam listened to her husband as though from a very great distance. Now that the cold shock had worn off Miriam was beginning to understand what a tremendous fool she had been. Lizzie had known just what her dreams were. They had shared a dormitory together. All the girls at boarding school had all talked about their hopes and dreams. They’d shared stories of first kisses stolen at parties and warned one another of men with wandering hands. Everyone had known about Miriam’s condition, and had probably even seen an attack or two in progress.
Richard was every girl’s dream—handsome, aristocratic, and kind, when he wasn’t seducing girls out of their fortunes or impregnating and abandoning married women. Yet underneath Richard was nothing but a snake. And she had fallen for him like a rock sinking into the ocean, fast and irretrievable.
“Correct me if I am wrong. The plot was to seduce and marry me, wait until I die of an asthma attack, and marry a newly divorced Lizzie a few months after the funeral. Am I correct?” Miriam asked.
“That was not my plan,” Richard insisted.
“But you agreed to it,” Miriam clarified.
Richard didn’t speak. He shook his head. “I...” He snapped mouth shut.
She had her answer. Miriam inhaled sharply. She’d told herself this man might be a fraud. A cheat. A liar. But it did not stop the truth from cutting into the quick of her soul.
“I knew it,” muttered Mrs. Kent, her eyes blazing. Miriam sent her a quelling glare. Her world narrowed to a pinhole. Her father would lock her away in the countryside forever once he discovered how badly Miriam had missed her flying leap toward freedom. Livingston could take over her investment accounts with a single quill stroke—and he probably would. She had taken her shot at a living life and found humiliation instead.
Richard turned to Lizzie and said, “I will give you five hundred dollars in cash if you promise to disappear the instant this ship lands. I will give you the name of my family’s solicitor, who will arrange for a trust naming the baby as the beneficiary until the age of majority, if you promise never to cross my path again.”
Lizzie’s strawberry lips parted to respond.
“I have a better plan,” interjected Miriam, her heart pounding. “I shall settle sufficient funds upon you both in exchange for full legal custody of the infant.” She had the momentary satisfaction of watching them both turn to her in shock. Richard’s scowl deepened.
Lizzie’s shook her head. “This is my child. I won’t give him up.”
“Why?” Miriam demanded with a harsh laugh. “I cannot see you, of all people, tending to a shrieking, demanding baby.”
Lizzie scoffed and tossed her head in reply. “I’ll dose the creature with laudanum so it sleeps or hire a nurse.”
Miriam raised one eyebrow. Beside her, Mrs. Kent gasped in horror. Richard blanched.
“Of course, I’ll take care of it,” Lizzie muttered, mulish.
Miriam scoffed. “The same way you care for everyone else in your life? For me? For Arthur?”
Miriam turned her back and picked her way back to her cabin across the foredeck. The crack of canvas and rope overhead blasted her eardrums like whips and dynamite.
“Miriam!” Richard hastened after her. “Please don’t leave me. Lizzie’s motivations were not mine. Don’t confuse us. I promised that I would support the child, and I will. That has nothing—nothing—to do with us. On my honor.”
“Oh, such honor.” Miriam snapped. She paused and let him catch up with her but didn’t turn to face the husband who’d betrayed her so deeply she could hardly breathe. Richard came alongside and peered at her, agony writ into his features. Miriam touched his face. “Richard, I can’t believe anything you say ever again. There is no us. Not anymore.”
“Give me a chance to tell my side of things, Miri.” The ferocious hurt in Richard’s voice pained Miriam’s heart.
“I have heard everything I need to know, Richard.” Embarrassingly, a tear trickled down her cheek. Miriam swiped it angrily away.
Mrs. Kent was at her elbow. “That’s enough now. Miss Walsh needs to rest.”
“Miriam. I know this isn’t what you expected of our marriage,” Richard said, following them. “I trust you understand now why I left you a way out.”
Of all the things to bring up now. Miriam stopped so fast that Richard nearly bumped into her. “Lord Northcote. You have done enough damage. I thank you for sparing me the pain of looking at you over the breakfast table for the rest of my existence. If you will excuse me.”
This time, he did not trail them. Miriam and Mrs. Kent made their way to their tiny shared cabin. The walls closed in around her like a coffin. She could not leave the safety of this room for the next two weeks without risking an encounter with either Richard or Lizzie. The thought of seeing either of made her sick with fury.
Once her father heard about Lizzie’s betrayal, Livingston Walsh would never countenance her having another friend. No adventures. No family.
No love.
“How could I have been such a fool?” Miriam hissed through her tight throat.
“Miriam, you mustn’t say that about yourself. You are no less intelligent because of what two schemers did. I was as taken in by Lord Northcote as you were. I believed him enamored of you. I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but I still believe that to be true.” Mrs. Kent shuffled into Miriam’s vision.
“How can you say that about a man who only ever wanted me for my fortune?” Miriam flopped back onto the bed with a wheeze. If she suffered an attack this time, Miriam had will to fight it.
“Just breathe. Inhale slowly. Exhale slowly.”
The harsh sound of Miriam’s breath went on for a long time in the dark, cramped, wave-tossed room. The draught of medicine Miss Kent gave her tasted like punishment. Miriam gagged, but the laudanum in the concoction ushered Miriam into a haze of almost-sleep. She shuddered in the darkness.
Richard had warned her that he was a bad man. She hadn’t believed him.
Now she knew the truth. The Dishonorable Richard Northcote was her husband, and he had no heart for her to win.
Chapter 18
The woman was certifiable.
Richard stalked over to Lizzie with enough menace to make her take a step backward. He was a hair’s breadth from tossing her into the sea. “Leave Miriam alone. I expect you to apologize to Miriam and spend the rest of the voyage atoning for your rashness.”
“Me? Rash?” Lizzie’s arched eyebrow. Richard held his ground.
How could a woman who weighed eight stone soaking wet intimidate him? A nobleman, if not an earl. A man, not that he felt like one.
Humiliation, his familiar shadow, sat on his shoulders like the very devil. It was followed by a wash of anger Richard could hardly control. His words came out clipped and terse. “Yes, Lizzie, you. Rash. I see you for what you are. You treat people lower than the barnacles clinging to the hull of this ship.”
“My husband adores me,” Lizzie mocked.
Richard guffawed humorlessly. “Then why aren’t you with him? Your husband is the only man who wants you.”
He needed this to be a final break, whatever it cost him, however low he needed to sink. A man who’d killed his own father had no honor to preserve. Lizzie slapped him twice. The first time, he deflected the blow, but the second time he hadn’t seen coming, and she had hit him hard enough to hurt her own hand.
“I own you,” she hissed as she shook her fingers. “You are mine, Richard Northcote. I make the rules. Not you.”
Unabl
e to think of a single other thing to say, Richard had stomped away. He hadn’t had a single apart from the morning of their wedding. The champagne had scarcely touched his lips. Perhaps, if he had not been trying to drown his shame at losing Briarcliff and his father, he might have extricated himself from Lizzie before he’d become enmeshed in this awful situation. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been aware of her worst traits. He simply hadn’t cared.
He definitely cared now. The look on Miriam’s face was going to haunt him for the rest of his existence. Richard kicked at a barrel lashed to the deck. He had not felt this friendless since he’d washed up on the streets of Boston. This was worse, by far, and there was no Howard to pick up his half-dead carcass this time.
He made his way toward the bow. Richard stared at the moon bright and high in the night sky. Soon it would be dawn. The night watch might not notice if he chucked himself overboard. Even if they did, the ship would plow him under in its wake, drowning him before his body bobbed up at the stern. Or sank, to be eaten by monsters of depths unknown. He might bob in ocean water, but he had never learned to swim like his brother Edward had.
No one would stop him. Only his honor as a man, what remained of it. No one would argue that what scraps of gentlemanliness Richard still clutched were threadbare indeed.
Yet there was the future child’s safety to consider. Lizzie was, if not half-mad, far from stable. Richard finally understood why New York’s high society rarely called her to account for her misbehavior. Lizzie used her peculiar gift for cunning and angelic appearance to search out the most vulnerable chinks in people’s armor.
The metal teeth of the key to Miriam’s bedroom at Cliffside bit into his palm. Richard had moved the key to his pocket, replacing it with a new one to her cabin door. He had a strong sense that a midnight visit would no longer be welcome.