by Lisa Chaplin
Her mouth turned down. “I believed you had greater discernment than the average male. It seems I was wrong.”
His ire boiled up, but he threw water on his temper. What she’d revealed was far too important. Nightgowns that made me blush when I put them on—and he understood the wounded look in her eyes. If Fulton had fallen into the usual male trap of judging a woman by a man’s needs, so had he. “I beg your pardon.” He leaned forward, taking her hand in his. “You’ve more than proven your worth. This mission would have failed without you—and, as you say, you accomplished it without losing your principles.”
She pulled her hand away. “Don’t pat me on the head, Commander. You wouldn’t have spoken so to any other team member.”
He found himself chuckling, even as he shook his head. “Forgive me once more, Miss Sunderland. My only excuse is that no other gently reared girl—or man—your age could have endured your life the past year. I hardly know how to treat you.”
“Woman,” she said quietly.
She was right; she was no longer a girl, had none of a girl’s tricks or traits, and she knew her mind. “Yes,” he conceded, “but to return to the point, you can’t deny you don’t have the equivalent of my physical strength, and what physical strength you have is depleted.”
“True, sir, but you don’t have my knowledge of submersibles. None of your crew could learn everything I have in a day or two—and as you’ve said, it’s best to go now. Given our time frame, I am not merely the logical choice. I am the only choice.”
She had him there. “If you’re called the weaker sex in the Bible, it’s certainly not in the ability to argue,” he muttered, feeling outgunned on every score.
Her eyes twinkled. “I believe St. Paul was also, as St. Peter put it, just a man,” she said, with a soft gurgle of laughter. “One with no knowledge of the strength a woman faces monthly, and in enduring the travails of childbirth. But be assured I will never take off my hat in church.”
She’d deliberately repeated her assertion about monthly cycles to discompose him. The girl’s impish sense of humor caught him out every time. He grinned. “I now understand what your father said about needing to take to you with a birch switch.”
She laughed. “He couldn’t have caught me, even on the rare occasions he was at home.”
Something in her riposte disturbed him. “You’ll have to prove your ability, the same as any crew member, Miss Sunderland. We’ll take a few trial runs.”
Her brows lifted again. “Certainly, sir. I have no desire to be trapped inside my locked boat with a panicking male . . . and since this is my boat, I ought to choose the crew.”
And here it was—the time for truth. “The property of a woman crosses to her husband on her marriage.”
“Are you saying you’re going to hand the boat to my husband to pass on to Fouché or Bonaparte as he sees fit?” Her face and voice stopped halfway between incredulity and derision.
He wondered if she could see how much he hated this, knowing how it would hurt her. “Of course not—if Delacorte was your husband. But he’s not.”
After all the emotional bombs he’d thrown at her since they’d met, he expected something physical from her, perhaps anger. All she did was withdraw into the shadows. Her voice came softly from the dark. “Explain that, if you please.”
“Your father sent me to Scotland after you left with Delacorte.” His tongue felt thick and clumsy. “There was no record of the marriage at any cathedral or kirk in the region.”
“We married at the kirk in Creasy Village by Jedburgh. It’s small and out of the way.”
He nodded. “I was there. The rector had no memory of you. I arrived two weeks after you. It seems Delacorte had a sham ceremony performed and papers filled by his cohorts after poisoning the real rector’s poached pears with syrup of ipecac the night before. He was sick for days. It means your marriage is invalid.” He waited for the anger, the tears—
The last thing he expected from her was a burst of wild laughter. He stared at her as she threw her head back, thudding her fists against the wing chair’s arms. “Oh, that’s beyond price. He never married me—of course he didn’t. Of course he didn’t!” Tears rolled down her scarred and bruised face as she laughed like a Bedlamite.
Unsure of his ground, he waited for her to compose herself.
“That’s why he burned my identity papers as Lisbeth Delacorte,” she gasped. “Should anyone check their validity, Alain would have been arrested for forgery—oh . . .” Her eyes widened. “That’s what you meant by your threats at the fort! By drugging me when I refused to go to France, he abducted a nobleman’s daughter. Since he wasn’t my husband, he had no right. It would have caused an international incident. He kept me watched because I was his ransom so my father wouldn’t expose him, either about the forgeries or about abducting me. It’s also why he took Edmond. He knew I wouldn’t leave my baby.”
His respect for her intelligence grew tenfold. If she’d been a man, she’d be running the bloody Alien Office before she turned thirty. “I believe you’re right on all counts.”
“That’s why he set the town against me. With all of them watching my every move, Papa couldn’t send someone to Abbeville without him knowing. That’s why you took on the Gaston Borchonne identity.” Her face came alive, brighter as she absorbed each new implication. “He set us up for LeClerc’s murder because Alain suspected you’d been sent by my father. He needed to hide his crimes before they became public. If the European Tribunal discovered his acts, not even Bonaparte or Fouché could protect him. They’d make him the acceptable sacrifice.”
“Neither can afford to be seen as Delacorte’s accomplices.” He couldn’t keep the wonder from his voice. She hadn’t even been with him when he’d worked out that Fouché had kept Delacorte in Abbeville after the espionage rings at Le Boeuf came to light. Good God, she was brilliant.
“Alain stood to lose everything,” she went on. “People have been killed for far less since the Revolution. So he made up the story of my being a whore, took Edmond, and set the entire town to watching me to protect himself. It’s why he keeps chasing us. He has no choice.” In the soft firelight, the wonder on her face fascinated him. “I thought he hated me because my father didn’t love me enough to let my husband in the door. But it was all just a cover-up.”
Alarm bells tolled in Duncan’s head again. “It was to punish your father, too.”
Like dawn breaking after a black night, her charming, one-dimpled smile came alive. “I’m free of him. Even Edmond—he could have told me when I was pregnant, and I’d have married him for the baby’s sake. But he made his son illegitimate and didn’t care.”
Before he knew what she was about, she’d jumped from the chair and, balancing each step as the ship pitched, bent and kissed his cheek. “I told you the night we met that you were a godsend, and you’ve been just that. I don’t care if you never tell me anything about yourself—”
“My birth name is Damien,” he said harshly, hating her gratitude when he didn’t deserve it, “and I haven’t finished.”
Instead of seeming cowed, she tilted her head, considering him. “Damien? No . . . I’m sorry if I seem rude, but it doesn’t fit.”
How odd that she could make him smile even now. “I’ve been calling myself Duncan since I was fourteen.”
“So that’s why you could introduce yourself as Duncan, yet still tell me it wasn’t your real name. I thought you were lying to me.” She nodded wisely, looking like a lovable owl. “Yes, Duncan suits you perfectly. But how did you—” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, it’s not my concern.”
“I was christened Damien Urquhart Charles Aylsham. I took the first letter of my names and added the ‘n.’” He smiled as she nodded again, innocent and wise—and suddenly he knew he’d never intended to let her marry Fulton. “Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Should it?” she asked, frowning.
Blowing out a breath, Duncan said the w
ords he’d refused to speak since the night he met her. “I thought your father might have told you the name of the man who offered you marriage.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open, and the color drained from her cheeks.
He stood and made a formal bow. “I’m the heir to the Annersley barony—the man you ran off with Delacorte to avoid meeting.”
Before she could speak, he bowed once again and kissed her knuckles. “Since I dare to hope you no longer find my offer repulsive, I ask again, this time in person. Miss Sunderland, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
CHAPTER 39
Walmer Castle, Kent, England
October 30, 1802
I DON’T LIKE THIS, Pitt.”
Former Prime Minister William Pitt, known as Pitt the Younger, felt his brows lift. Shivering, he pulled his chair closer to the fire. As current Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports he’d been given Walmer Castle as his home, and he loved it; but it was drafty and cold, and the Channel wind roared through the walls even in summer. In the colder months it was unbearable. “You don’t like it, my lord.” The emphasis carried volumes of incredulity.
“No, I damn well don’t.” From the other side of the tea table, Marquess Cornwallis drained his tea. He was too old a campaigner to care what Pitt thought of him. In America, India, and Ireland he’d performed tasks few could stomach, and as British ambassador to France until three weeks ago, he had been well rewarded for his unswerving loyalty to British interests. “I was looking forward to my retirement after being recalled from Paris—but like it or not, I’m temporary Lord Constable of Ireland until they find a replacement for Whitworth. If there’s insurrection on my watch, I ought to expose it, not sit on it like a chicken waiting for it to hatch.”
Pitt hid the grin at the mental vision Cornwallis had engendered: a fat, self-satisfied chicken indeed, in his wig and the fashionable tight coat that he could only fit with a corset, the kind made for the Prince of Wales. As he shifted in the chair, the corset creaked ominously.
“Appropriate action will come at the right time. It’s necessary to let this plot . . . mature, shall we say?”
“Why?” Cornwallis demanded as he took the delicate cream cake offered him.
Covering his aching knees with a second blanket, Pitt eyed the marquess with secret envy. When was the last time he could eat without care? Irritable, he drained the port in his glass. No point in repining the hand he’d been dealt.
Apart from a lifted brow, Lord Cornwallis didn’t react. Everyone knew his proclivity for port had begun as early in life as fourteen. “The French and Irish are collaborating again.”
“Of course they are. They’re both Catholic and want this republican rule by the rabble. All the more reason to expose an Irish plot right away.”
Bulldog Cornwallis, Pitt thought, with an affection he felt for few outside his family. “‘There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue,’” he quoted.
“Edmund Burke’s words. Good man for an Irish. Why?”
Pitt knew better than to think he was asking about the famous Irish statesman. “I believe this insurrection is an old song resung.”
“Which song?”
“Seventeen ninety-eight.”
Cornwallis stared. “French invasion via Ireland again? I thought we’d finished with those tomfool plots in 1801 when Nelson went into Boulogne.”
And had his arse soundly kicked. Pitt shrugged. “Boulogne’s blockaded by land and sea. Our agents are having the devil of a time getting in, and two or three of our men have already been killed. Something’s going on there, my lord, during a peace Boney engineered.”
Cornwallis frowned. “Boney pulling strings behind the scenes I’ll accept, but you must have compelling evidence to ask me to risk going behind Addington’s back.”
But he looked interested. Though Pitt had retired on ethical grounds a year ago, the day was near when Prime Minister Addington, a good man given to panic, would desert the sinking ship. Then the king, still offended with Pitt over his stance on Catholic emancipation and his friend Wilberforce’s public passion over the abolition of slavery, would beg his return.
Pitt believed passionately in good government. Power by the people was asking for trouble when they didn’t know what to do with it. The crazed slaughter during the French Revolution and the Terror were proof positive. Boney was a brilliant commander of troops but knew little of politics or statecraft. France needed someone bred to the task of government. “Word from the Archbishop of Narbonne and the Comte d’Artois was confirmed through reliable agents in France. There was a failed attempt to kill Bonaparte yesterday. Most of the conspirators disappeared before the day, but a massive cache of weapons was found.”
Cornwallis snorted. “He has so many demmed spies and sharpshooters and guards no assassin can reach him, not even that Infernal Machine in 1800. What makes this plot different?”
“When Boney returned to Paris, he insulted Fox again at the Tuileries, accusing Britain of harboring assassins at the embassy. The weapons were found at Raoul Gaillard’s house. O’Keefe was also implicated.”
Cornwallis was fast to catch on. “The Gaillard brothers want the little grinder dead, I grant you—the silly gudgeons made their feelings public on the subject—but why would Boney alienate the Irish by naming O’Keefe . . . ah.” Cornwallis nodded. “The Act of Union makes him British—and he has known ties to the Alien Office.” He drummed his fingers on the table before taking another cake. “He’s alive. So Boney’s using this as a diversion. The question is why.”
Relieved Cornwallis had grabbed the plot by the throat—age certainly hadn’t dimmed his sharp mind—Pitt nodded. “I’m sure you know, my lord.”
“Boney made the plot fail at the last moment, confiscated the weapons, and accused the British via O’Keefe, knowing Addington will panic, send every troop to Dublin, and recall Nelson from the Channel to prove he’s keeping to the Amiens Treaty,” Cornwallis murmured.
“Meanwhile, Boney sails his Grande Armée across the Channel and lands wherever he chooses on our coast instead of risking the Irish Sea again. Probably he’s hoping it’s our ships that get wrecked this time.” Pitt offered the lord constable a fourth cake, which the marquess took with a self-effacing grin.
Every man had his Achilles heel.
“‘When bad men combine, the good must work together,’” Cornwallis said, quoting Burke again. “Addington makes decisions based on fear and panic. Boney can’t be blind to that. Well done, Pitt. I’m on board. So what’s happening in Boulogne?”
“We don’t know yet. So far the European Tribunal inspectors have only been invited to the Mediterranean ports, and our spies have found just a few ships built at any port in France. Seems they’ve only built the agreed-upon number of warships. We have a team combing the Channel Coast, unofficially of course.”
“Is it unofficial to prevent untimely war? Or because your cousin was part of the conspiracy?” Cornwallis asked softly.
Pitt held in the shudder. Nobody of good birth and breeding dared admit the head of their family was a madman, especially when one was in politics—but Thomas’s acts were as well known as they were erratic, even before his latest assassination attempt and capture. For all Camelford’s obsession with birth and breeding, Pitt couldn’t remember the last time he’d acted the gentleman and kept his violent little peccadilloes to himself. As the saying went, he might as well have tied his garter in public.
Though he rarely felt warm these days, Pitt felt his cheeks heat. “That, also. Boney captured him just outside Boulogne. No one knows where Thomas is now. My cousin Anne . . .”
Cornwallis waved a hand. “Shall I send my brother a note to ask if he’ll send a patrol or two to the right region, perhaps send a few good men to go discreetly hunting for the prison that holds Camelford?”
Pitt’s face broke into a rare smile. He couldn’t have asked, that wouldn’t be playing the game; but Cornwallis’s offer o
f his admiral brother’s influence to help find his cousin was a gift he desperately needed. “Thank you, my lord.”
“So what else do you want me to do?”
Relieved to leave the subject behind—they both knew what had to be done, but one had to play the game—Pitt shrugged. “Let the Frogs think we’ve swallowed this.”
Cornwallis’s puff-cheeked countenance lit with his grin. “What am I to do?”
“Keep sending the troops to chase the usual suspects—but somehow your soldiers don’t find them. Keep Dublin Castle manned and ready, but make certain it’s as discreet as possible. Play the arrogant old fool making bumbling mistakes. They’re bound to have their spies inside the castle.”
The rheumy eyes twinkled. “I’ve played that part quite well before. I can see how history will paint me! What will you do?”
“The vital work now is being done by Windham’s people.”
Cornwallis tapped the side of his nose as he stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “So I’m guessing this meeting never occurred.”
“What meeting, my lord? Few people even know you inhabit Dublin Castle this month. I certainly didn’t invite anyone to Walmer.”
The marquess chuckled and grasped Pitt’s hand. “You’ll do, lad. I’ll be back in Dublin by morning. Don’t chafe too much during this lull, or watch the ocean too hard. Figureheads look pretty, but in a storm, those who steer the ships into safe waters are the ones remembered.”
After Cornwallis was gone, Pitt thought about his analogy. This was but a lull before war, and Britain couldn’t have a mere figurehead leader. A good man, Addington wasn’t built for hard decisions. He was already bending. Soon he’d break, the government would collapse, and the king would have to give power back to Pitt . . . on the right terms.
Thomas must be out of France before that happened. When war came, it couldn’t be a Pitt that started it.
With a weary smile he sat at the desk by the window of his library and wrote a note to his old friend William Wilberforce. On the surface, he asked after his wife Barbara’s health; she was in confinement for the fourth time. But if a few words slipped in that resurrected Wilberforce’s passion for the abolition of slavery and Catholic emancipation, it wouldn’t do any harm. It would also make Fox very happy.