by Mia Marlowe
“And for Dragon Caern Castle to fall back into the Crown’s keeping,” Gabriel finished his uncle’s thought. Strange that nothing had been said to him about the disposition of the title when the King issued his pardon.
It certainly put this morning’s attack on him in a new light.
Father Eustace clapped his hands together. “But now that Gabriel is back, the castle will remain in Drake hands.”
“Dragon Caern hasn’t suffered under your rule, Uncle,” Gabriel said. “I’ve never seen the fields so green or the crofters so prosperous-looking.”
“For that, you must thank Mistress Jacquelyn,” his uncle said. “When Lady Helen died, she stepped into the breach when our need was greatest.”
Gabriel cast Miss Jack a quick assessing glance. A likely lad in a pinch, a worthy chatelaine and a damned good kisser. Evidently a woman of many talents. He just wished she’d quit scowling at him.
“I’ve never been one for administration,” his uncle admitted.
“You were never one for prayer either as I recall,” Gabe said.
“No, but when need arises . . . one comes to it eventually,” Uncle Eustace said with a self-deprecating shrug. “And it seems my prayer has been effective. Yet, we are not quite safe. The Crown has placed certain conditions upon us.”
“What else is necessary?” Jacquelyn asked.
“In order to assure that the Drake line will continue, Gabriel will have to wed, bed and produce a male heir—”
“I’ve no wish to wed,” Gabe said.
“Passing strange, I would have said you liked women,” Jacquelyn all but purred at him. Her velveted claws didn’t fool him one bit. She’d scratch him blind if she could.
“I like women fine, but I don’t care to be trapped by one.”
“Ah! I see.” Her eyes darkened to gun-metal gray. “As long as you do the trapping, it’s all well and good.”
“Hold a moment, children!” Uncle Eustace interrupted, his gaze darting from one to the other, not missing the smoldering animosity between them for a moment. “I’m trying to impress something important on the pair of you. The long and the short of it is this. If there’s no heir, Dragon Caern will be forfeit to the Crown. Either a Drake continues the lineage or the title will be held extinct.”
The sizzle went out of Jacquelyn’s eyes at that dire prospect. “We can’t let that happen.”
“Passing strange,” Gabe taunted. “I would have said you had little liking for Drakes or their lineage.”
“Is that the best you can do?” She arched a russet brow at him. “Pity your wit isn’t as sharp as your blade.”
“Alas, Mistress!” Gabriel gave her a sardonic bow. “Nothing is as sharp as your tongue.”
“Would the two of you quit pricking each other? Our situation is dire enough,” Uncle Eustace said. “Bald as an egg, here it is. Gabriel, you must wed, man. It’s our only hope of retaining this little patch of Cornwall for the people of Dragon Caern.”
At that moment, five unidentifiable creatures, stair-stepped in height and covered with mud, ran screaming through the keep and up the stone steps with the long-suffering Mrs. Beadle huffing after them.
Gabriel had seen Carib tribesmen once, a fierce race of cannibals on one of the islands. Those primitive people had nothing on the little savages that just streamed past him. A long wail, a cry of the damned if ever he’d heard one, wafted in an open window.
Jacquelyn’s lips went white. She looked more flummoxed than when he slashed the first button from her boy’s disguise.
“Mrs. B., where is the girls’ tutor?” she asked.
“Trussed up in the pigsty and promising to resign,” the housekeeper said. “Honestly, Mistress, you must do something. That’s the third tutor in as many months.”
Mrs. Beadle turned and hefted herself up the stone stairs after the fleeing barbarians.
“What on God’s earth were those?” Gabriel demanded.
Jacquelyn turned her grey gaze on him. “Your brother left no son to hold the keep, just as I told you.” She pointed after the retreating tribe. “Those are your nieces.”
“Girls?”
“Aye, Gabriel, generally speaking nieces have to be girls,” his uncle supplied unhelpfully.
“Girls,” Mistress Jack affirmed. “Girls who’ve lost both their parents and will lose each other if Dragon Caern is forfeit to the Crown. They’ll be wards of the King, separated and fostered out to God knows where. Imagine five pawns of noble blood for the Crown to use. The King will marry them off one by one to secure this alliance or repay that favor—”
“He’d have to bathe them first,” Gabriel said uncharitably. He had enough trouble understanding women. Girls were another hornets’ nest altogether.
“Perhaps you’d do well to concentrate on the problem at hand.” Jacquelyn folded her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at him. “You must fight to hold Dragon Caern. You must wed and sire an heir, my lord. Otherwise your nieces and all the folk of the Caern will suffer. Now, will you honor your responsibilities or will you not?”
Gabriel had led his crew in countless skirmishes, but this was a fight with rules he didn’t understand. In truth, he’d never felt more like hoisting all his canvas and running before the wind. But when Miss Wren looked at him as if he’d been weighed in the balance and found sadly wanting, he itched to prove her wrong.
“I’ve never yet run from a fight.”
“I’ll take that as consent, my lord,” Jacquelyn said with a dangerous glint in her eye. “Very well, to business, then. Do you have a woman in mind to wed?”
“Mistress Wren, I’ve been at sea—“
“Yes, and I’ll try to make sure your time as a . . . a mariner doesn’t prove a sticking point with your prospective bride. Given your recent behavior, I doubt you have any idea of the proper way to woo a woman.”
“What makes you say that, Jacquelyn?” Uncle Eustace asked.
Her mouth flew open in a small ‘oh.’ Gabriel smiled. She’d been close to accusing him of manhandling her, but was finally caught in her own net. She couldn’t denounce his boorish behavior without admitting her own unwise caper as a boy.
“She’s right, Uncle. I’ve been absent from polite society for a number of years.” Gabriel made her an awkward bow for Eustace’s benefit. “Perhaps, Mistress Wren, you’d be kind enough to teach me the subtleties of courtly love.”
He couldn’t think of a better way to continue his campaign to meddle with the bothersome wench.
“It would be my pleasure to remind you of your forgotten manners.” She glared at him. “But I suspect that is a task for which we have insufficient time. When would you like to leave for London?”
“London?”
“All the finest folk flock to London for the marriage season.” She cocked her head at him as if he were a dunce not to know it. “Even with a few rough edges, a man with title and lands will find a wife of good family there easily enough.”
“No, not London,” Gabriel protested. “I mean, I’ve just returned home. I’ve no wish to leave Dragon Caern so soon.”
The less said about his real reason for avoiding the city, the better.
“Very well, but that narrows your choices considerably, my lord.” She turned to go. “Tomorrow I’ll start the process of finding a suitable wife for you from the daughters of the regional nobility.”
“And my lessons in wooing as well,” he reminded her, tossing out the challenge as if it were a thrown gauntlet. “Don’t be forgetting that.”
Miss Wren shot him a brittle smile. “Never fear, Lord Drake. I shall look forward to teaching you a lesson.”
“You may find me a daunting pupil.”
“And me a demanding teacher.”
Aye, lass. I certainly hope so. Gabriel planned to have her far past demanding. He intended to see her beg.
“I trust you’re capable of getting the heir Dragon Caern needs,” she said with daggers in her voice. From the corner
by the wine decanter, Eustace made a noise of surprise, like a pig bladder balloon deflating suddenly. Then the priest hid his urge to laugh with a quick drink. “Pressure can do strange things to a man, I’m told.”
Gabriel swallowed his shock at her slight on his manhood. By Thunder, he should have bent her over that boulder after all, the Code be damned.
“I’ll try to find a woman who pleases you, but no matter what, the needs of the estate must come first.” She smiled at him sweetly, but he wasn’t fooled for a moment. Miss Wren would happily saddle him with the first horse-faced daughter of a pig-farmer she could find.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, Your Lordship, I believe Mrs. Beadle could use a hand.” Mistress Jacquelyn dropped a quick curtsey and started up the stairs in the direction of his shrieking nieces.
“Don’t worry, Lord Drake. I’ll see you wed by the end of next month,” she called down to him. “You have my word upon it.”
Gabriel watched her mount the stairs, temporarily robbed of the power of speech. His uncle pressed a glass of wine into his hand.
“She’s an exceptional fine woman, our Mistress Wren, but strong-minded as a mule,” Uncle Eustace said. “I like my women more biddable—I mean, I did when I was allowed to like women, you understand. Make no mistake. Jacquelyn will do exactly as she says. She’ll see you wed even if she has to marry you herself.”
“Well, here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that,” Gabriel said, swallowing hard.
He still fully intended to meddle with the little vixen, if only to put to rest her snide comment about whether he was capable of getting an heir. There were ways a man could torment a woman with pleasure before he took her, ways to reduce the wench to helpless pleading. It would do the indomitable Miss Wren good to be humbled before she fell.
And he was just the man to do it. She’d thank him in the end. He’d make sure of that. His cock twitched at the bare thought of subduing her.
But there could be nothing more between them. Miss Jack had a will of tempered steel. Like his uncle, he preferred his women on the softer side.
“No, I don’t think she’ll do,” Gabriel said.
“Amen to that, nephew. Of course, you couldn’t marry Miss Wren in any case,” Eustace said. “Just to make things more difficult for us, the missive from the royal court stipulates a well-born wife in order to satisfy the Crown and, bless her heart, Miss Jack has no idea who her sire is. So our Jacquelyn is out of the running.”
Uncle Eustace clinked the rim of his drink with Gabe’s and knocked back the contents in one long swallow.
“Good thing, too,” his uncle said. “The pair of you would kill each other within a fortnight.”
Chapter 4
Mid-morning sunlight streamed through the green glass windows of the solar. The shimmering threads in the ancient tapestry on the far wall fairly vibrated with color. Ordinarily, Jacquelyn loved this bright room. Now, she prowled its perimeter, stopping every third circuit to tap her toe with impatience.
“Trust a bloody pirate to sleep away the day when there’s serious work to be done,” she grumbled.
The new Lord Drake and his nefarious friend Meriwether had gotten roaring drunk after supper. The pair had every soul in the castle quaking in their beds, certain of impending mayhem. Jacquelyn kept one ear cocked for the rasp of swords or splintering furniture if the debauch turned violent.
Instead she was treated to a concert of raucous singing. Once, Jacquelyn even thought she heard Father Eustace’s quavering tone join in on the fifth chorus of a particularly ribald song, but she dismissed it as the fancies of an over-wrought mind.
Gabriel Drake had her turning mental cartwheels.
The fate of the girls—indeed everyone at Dragon Caern—was now in the hands of a pirate. How was she to manage a fellow who willingly turned his back on the civilized world? And this man had not only stooped to piracy, he’d led a pack of the mad seadogs.
For once, she wished she had her mother’s ability to effortlessly bend a man to her will. A sought-after courtesan, Isabella Wren had been a renowned beauty, a regular bird of paradise. Even though she’d lost her protector years ago and hadn’t bothered to acquire a new one, Jacquelyn’s mother was still in demand at the most decadently fashionable salons. In the rarified air of that not-quite-respectable world, her stock in trade was now sparkling wit. When Isabella Wren entered a room, she claimed the space by right. Moving with remembered grace, she drew all men in the room into her wake, panting to do her bidding. The wags who wrote for the London tabloids claimed she should have been named Swan instead of Wren.
But Jacquelyn was more like their dowdy surname, plucky and hardy assuredly, but not the sort of woman men fell over themselves to please. Jacquelyn sank into one of the heavy Tudor chairs, its oak now blackened with age. She sighed.
Her mother would know what to do with a pirate.
The scrape of a booted foot on the threshold brought her chin up. Gabriel Drake paused and leaned on the doorjamb, his broad shoulders filling the opening. He folded his arms over his chest and cast her a sideways glance. Barring his tousled hair and the shadow of a beard darkening his unshaven jaw, the Lord of Dragon Caern looked no worse for his late-night carouse.
By rights, he should be bleary-eyed and staggering, Jacquelyn thought crossly. Perhaps the Devil does look after his own.
“Mistress Wren.” He acknowledged her with a raised brow.
She rose to her feet and dropped a quick curtsey, though it galled her to do so. This man had done nothing to earn her respect except be blessed with the accident of his birth. “My lord.”
“I was told you want me.”
He stressed ‘want’ just enough to let innuendo sizzle in his sleep-roughened tone.
He probably wanted see if he could ruffle her dignity. She refused to rise to the bait. “If by that you mean to inquire whether I sent Timothy to see if you had roused for the day, then the answer is yes.”
“If you want to know if I’m roused, Mistress, you should come yourself. If not, you can rectify matters.” His mouth twitched with a repressed smile. “Then we’ll see if your answer is still yes.”
Heat crept up her neck. For a moment, she imagined him sprawled in his bed, his sun-bronzed skin dark against the linens. There was something so raw about the man, so primal; Jacquelyn could no more stop her belly from cavorting in response than she could stop the sunrise.
But he didn’t have to know about it. She frowned at him.
“Perhaps that sort of remark is acceptable among women who regularly consort with pirates, but no wellborn lady will find it so.” She settled back into the chair and fiddled with the tea service on the low table to avoid his probing gaze. “I see a night’s rest hasn’t improved your manners.”
“Nor your shrewish tongue.” He strode forward and sat in the chair opposite her. “By all means, let us be mannerly. To that end, I wonder if you would satisfy my curiosity on one point.”
She nodded cautiously.
“Granted, things may have changed in the years I was at sea.” He leaned forward to balance his elbows on his knees. “Correct me if I am mistaken, Mistress Wren, but is it customary for one in your position to chastise the lord of the manor?”
She bit her lower lip. “Not ordinarily.”
“So you didn’t berate my father?”
“No, my lord.” She would no more have spoken out of turn to the old baron than take a flying leap from the battlements.
“Then you must have taken my brother to task for every breach of etiquette.”
“Lord Rupert committed no such breach.”
“Oh, yes, I keep forgetting he was always the perfect one,” Gabriel said. “Then it seems I am unique in receiving the favor of your frequent tongue-lashing.”
“So it would seem.”
“You know, Mistress . . .” He leaned back in his chair, a sinful smile lifting his lips. “That is not the best use of your tongue.”
Jacquelyn stood and
paced, trying to put more distance between them. “You have done it again, my lord.”
“Done what?”
Set her cheeks aflame. Filled her head with forbidden images. Raised something dark to life. She wouldn’t acknowledge the strange pull he exerted on her so she grasped for the cover of indignation.
“Spoken to me in a manner that will do you no credit in polite society,” Jacquelyn said icily.
He stood and moved toward her, like a wolf stalking a doe. “Yes, but we’re not exactly polite society, you and I, are we?”
She flinched as though he’d slapped her and took a few steps back.
“I see someone has seen fit to speak to you of my background.” She didn’t have to feign anger this time. “My lord, we are not all blessed in the matter of our birth. I may not know who my father is, but that does not mean I must wallow in debasement.”
“Now hold a moment—“
“I have made every effort to rise above my heritage.” He continued to advance toward her and she gave way till her spine met cold stone. “You, however, have done just the opposite.”
“Mistress Wren, I didn’t mean—“
“You were born a gentleman and yet you threw it away,” she said as he trapped her against the wall with his long arms, his hands braced near her shoulders. There was no place left to retreat. “Do not, I beg you, deride me for aspiring to be a lady.”
He leaned toward her, close but not touching. His warm masculine scent crowded her, breaking down her will to resist. His mouth, that devilishly tempting mouth, still curved in a languid smile. If she so much as tilted her head, she was certain those lips would be on hers again. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to move.
“Are you finished?” he asked.
She clamped her lips shut.
“I’m not in the habit of having to explain myself, but for you, I’ll make an exception,” Gabriel Drake said. “When I said we were not polite society, I intended no slur on your parentage, Mistress. What I meant was that you and I both seem to have a healthy disregard for the rules of society when it suits us to flaunt them. Can you deny it?”