“‘Special charms’, hell,” grumbled George as the door clicked shut. “The place is such a rambling, ramshackle old pile that they should be paying me to relieve them of it.”
Not that Brant cared one way or the other. “The housekeeper, George?” he asked, pouncing with un-abashed curiosity. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me again, brother.”
George sighed mightily. “No secrets, Brant, for there’s nothing to tell.”
“Nothing?” repeated Brant archly. “I’d wager ten guineas that this Miss Winslow isn’t the sort of black-clad old gorgon who ruled our youth with terror, else you would have already described her to me in the most shuddering terms. Instead you haven’t even mentioned her existence, which tells me infinitely more than any words.”
“You will make a wager of anything,” grumbled George. This was precisely the kind of inquisition that he had wished to avoid. If there was one area where Brant delighted in displaying his superiority over his younger brother, it was his far greater experience with women—a markedly unfair advantage, really, considering that George had spent most of his adult life at sea and far from any females at all, while Brant, with his fallen-angel’s face and a peer’s title, had absolutely wallowed in them in London.
“Well?” asked Brant, undaunted. “Is she?”
George glared. “Miss Winslow is neither old, nor is she a gorgon, though she was dressed in black.”
Brant waved his hand in airy dismissal. “Black can be an elegant affectation on the right woman.”
“Not if it’s mourning,” said George sharply. “You heard Potipher, Brant. The poor woman’s just lost her father.”
But Brant would not be discouraged. “Is she sweetly melancholy, then? A delicate beauty, shown off by that black like a diamond against midnight velvet?”
“You would not find her so,” said George, his discomfort growing by the second. He’d never cared for Brant’s manner with women. True, his brother’s attitude was shared by fashionable gentlemen from the Prince of Wales downward, but the way Brant combined a connoisseur’s fastidious consideration with a predator’s single-mindedness seemed to George to include almost no regard or respect for the lady herself.
Which, of course, was not how he’d felt about Miss Winslow. “She is tall,” he said, choosing his words with care, “and handsome rather than beautiful. Dark hair, fair skin, and eyes the color of smoke.”
“Ah,” said Brant with great satisfaction as he settled back in his chair, making a little tent over his chest by pressing his fingertips together. “You sound smitten, George.”
“She is not that kind of woman, Brant,” said George defensively. “Put a broadsword in her hand, and she’d become St. Joan and smite her villains left and right, but as for leaving a trail of swooning beaux in her wake, the way you’re saying—no, not at all. She’s prickly as a dish of nettles.”
“But you are intrigued,” insisted Brant. “I know you well enough to see the signs. You’ve had the sweetest cream of fair London wafting before you this last month, and not one of them has inspired this sort of paeans from you as does this housekeeper.”
“Paeans?” repeated George incredulously. “To say she is prickly as a dish of nettles is a paean?”
Brant smiled. “From you it is, my unpoetic Neptune of a brother. I say you should take both the house and the housekeeper. Regardless of her housewifery skills, she shall, I think, offer you other amusements.”
“Amusements, hell,” said George crossly. “That’s not why I’m taking the blasted house.”
“Oh, why not?” said Brant with his usual breezy nonchalance. “Our dear brother Rev has gone and married a governess, and now you fancy a housekeeper. I’ll have to look about me for a pretty little cook to become my duchess, and make our whole wedded staff complete.”
“Just stow it, Brant,” growled George. “Just stow it at once. Potipher!”
The agent reappeared so quickly that George suspected he’d been poised on the other side door, listening.
“You have reached a decision, Captain My Lord?” he asked, hovering with cheerful expectation.
“I have not,” growled George. “What if Miss Winslow wishes to leave my employment, eh? Is she a slave to the wishes of these blasted Trelawneys as well?”
Potipher blinked warily behind his spectacles. “Oh, no, Captain My Lord, not at all. Miss Winslow will be under no obligation to remain whatsoever.”
George sighed with a grim fatalism, drumming his fingers impatiently on the arm of his chair. At least that was some small solace. He would not wish any lady, especially not one as fine as Miss Winslow, to be obligated to stay with him. Yet if he wanted Feversham—which, of course, he did, now more than ever—then he was trapped into keeping Miss Winslow with it. George did not like feeling trapped, but least Potipher was also offering him a way out: what respectable woman, young or old, would wish to remain long beneath the same roof with the crew of the Nimble?
But then George thought again of the way Miss Winslow had smiled at him, bright and determined, as if she’d enjoyed their skirmishing as much as he had himself. Although he’d nobly scorned Brant’s suggestion that he “amuse” himself with the housekeeper, he couldn’t keep from considering all the wicked possibilities and justifications the circumstances would offer, and he nearly groaned aloud at the willfulness of his wayward thoughts and willing body.
Blast, he didn’t even know her given name….
Abruptly he rose to his feet. “Then it is decided, Mr. Potipher,” he said. “I shall take Feversham, and Miss Winslow with it.”
And trust the rest to fate.
“Ooh, miss, those look most wonderful fine on you!” exclaimed the girl behind the counter of the little shop as she held the looking-glass for Fan. “They say all the noble ladies be wearin’ such in London and Bath.”
Fan turned her head before the glass, making the gold earrings with the garnet drops swing gently back and forth against her cheeks. While her Company specialized in bringing in tea, there were others along the coast that carried more jewels and lace from France than in most of the shops in the Palais Royale, and even here in the tiny harbor village of Tunford, not three miles from Feversham itself, Fan could let herself be tempted by earrings that likely were the same as the noble ladies in London were wearing.
“You’ll fetch yourself a handsome sweetheart with those a-glittering in your ears, miss,” promised the girl, nodding with mercantile wisdom. “Less’n you already have a good man, and you want me to set these aside for him to come buy for you.”
Wistfully Fan touched one earring, catching the sunlight in the faceted stone like a tiny ruby prism in the golden filigree. She’d never had a sweetheart, old or new, let alone one to give her anything like these earrings. Father hadn’t permitted it, claiming that all the Tunford boys were beneath her. Fleetingly, foolishly, she now let herself imagine what kind of roses and jewels Captain Claremont would lavish on his lady, just like the heroes in ballads.
For that matter, Fan couldn’t recall the last time she’d bought something so frivolous for herself. Instead she’d always dutifully put her share of the company’s profits into the double-locked strongbox inside the wall of her bedchamber against hard times, the way Father had instructed. She was always conscious of that, of how she wasn’t like other women with a husband to look after her. She’d no one now but herself to rely upon for the future. She’d no one to blame, either, if she died in the poorhouse, or if some cowardly fool like Bob Forbert finally decided to turn evidence against her to the magistrates.
Yet the earrings were lovely things, and Fan let herself smile at her reflection as the red-tinged sparkles danced over her cheeks.
“Them garnets are as right as can be for you, miss,” coaxed the girl. “You won’t find any finer on this coast, not in Lydd nor Hythe, neither, and I vow—la, what be that ruckus?”
The girl hurried to the shop’s doorway, the looking-glass still in her hands, and cu
riously Fan followed. Tunford was a small village with only a handful of narrow lanes, sleepy and quiet the way country villages always were.
But it wasn’t quiet now. Two large wagons piled high with barrels, trunks, and boxes were coming to a noisy stop before the Tarry Man, Tunford’s favorite public house, their four-horse dray teams snorting and pawing the rutted soil while their drivers bawled for the hostler. Dogs raced forward, barking and yelping with excitement, and children soon came running along, too.
Even before the wagons had stopped, the eight passengers who’d been riding precariously on top began to clamber down, laughing and jumping to the ground as nimbly as acrobats. They were strong, sinewy, exotic men, all burned dark as mahogany from the sun, with gold hoops in their ears and long braided queues down their backs: deep-water sailors, man-o’-war crewmen that were seldom seen in a group like this outside of the fleet’s ports.
“What d’you make of all that, miss?” marveled the shopgirl. “Looks like half the Brighton circus, come here to Tunford!”
But it wasn’t the Brighton circus, half or otherwise, thought Fan with sickening certainty as she watched over the other woman’s shoulder. Over and over she had told herself this wouldn’t happen, until she’d let herself believe it. What was arriving in Tunford, and soon after at Feversham, was going to outdo any mere circus, and cause a great many more problems.
Because there, riding on a prancing chestnut gelding as he joined the wagons carrying his belongings, was Captain Lord Claremont.
Chapter Four
It took considerable determination for Fan to make herself walk slowly across the lane towards Captain Claremont, as if she’d been planning all morning to do exactly that. What she really wished to do, of course, was to race back to Feversham, lock every door, and bury her head beneath her bed pillow upstairs like a terrified cony in her burrow. But Father had taught her that danger was best confronted face-to-face, and so she did, even managing a polite smile to mask the thumping of her heart.
“Good day, Captain My Lord,” she called as he swung down from his horse. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”
Clearly surprised, he turned at her voice, ducking around the chestnut’s neck to find her. He smiled warmly as she came closer, and swept his black cocked hat from his head to salute her, there in the middle of Tunford.
“Miss Winslow,” he boomed, his voice so cheerfully loud that she was certain they must be hearing it clear in Portsmouth. “Good day to you. I did not expect to see you here, either.”
She’d forgotten how very blue his eyes were, as if they’d stolen the brightest color from the sky above, so blue that she had to look away, towards the wagons and the grinning sailors watching them with undisguised curiosity.
“You are making a journey, Captain My Lord?” she asked, foolishly saying the obvious as she hoped and prayed he was going somewhere on the far side of the world.
“I am,” he declared, the sunlight glinting off the gold buttons on his coat. “And likely you have guessed my destination as well. Feversham, Miss Winslow. Feversham, my new home port. You have received the letter from Potipher, I trust?”
“No,” said Fan faintly, the awful certainty knotting tightly in her stomach. “I have had no letter from anyone.”
“No?” The captain frowned, his blue eyes clouding. “Potipher was to have written to you. So you’d know, you see. So you’d be prepared.”
“No letter,” she said again, and swallowed hard as she tugged her shawl higher over her shoulders. She didn’t want to know, and she didn’t want to be prepared. “I’ve had nothing from—”
“Miss Winslow!” The shopgirl came puffing up beside them, her expression as stern as her round face could muster. “Miss Winslow, if you don’t be wanting them garnet ear-bobs, then I must be taking them back to the shop.”
“Oh, I am so sorry!” Fan flushed, her fingers flying guiltily to the earrings. “I forgot I even had them on. Here, take them back, if you please. I do not think they suit me after all.”
“I think they suit you vastly well,” said the captain gallantly. “A spot of color is just the thing for you.”
The flush in her cheeks deepened, more scarlet than any miserable garnets, and hastily she pulled the earrings from her ears.
“Thank you,” she said, pressing them into the girl’s waiting palm. “Besides, they’re too dear for me.”
“How dear can they be?” asked the captain. “What’s the price, missy?”
“Twenty-five shillings, M’Lord,” answered the shopgirl, simpering up at him as she brazenly tripled the price that she’d asked of Fan earlier. “They be French garnets and filigree-work.”
“And now they shall belong to Miss Winslow,” he said, reaching into his waistcoat pocket for the coins, “for I cannot imagine them hanging from any other ears than hers.”
“No!” gasped Fan. True, she’d been fancying them, but fancies didn’t account for gossip, or whispers, or how accepting such a gift from him would rob her of all respect from the men in the Company. “You cannot! I will not take the earrings! That is—that is, it’s not proper for me to accept such a gift from you!”
His face fell, and he rubbed the back of his neck, a rare, restless little gesture of indecision for a man like him.
“It is not intended as a gift such as that,” he explained. “Not as a gentleman to a lady, that is. I meant it to make up for Potipher not sending that dam—that letter to you, as he ought to have.”
“Why?” she demanded, though she was already guessing—no, she already knew—the truth. He would be the new master, for as long a lease as the Trelawneys would grant him.
“Because I haven’t just let Feversham, as I’d first intended,” he said, unable to keep the satisfied pride from his voice. “I’ve bought it outright.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck. He’d bought Feversham? Had his captain’s share of that Spanish treasure ship truly been so vast, or were even younger sons of dukes wealthy enough to make such a purchase with ease?
“That is where I’m bound now,” he continued, “to take possession. There’s nothing to be gained by wasting time, is there?”
Aware of her shock, his smile turned lopsided as he answered quickly to fill her silence. “No, no, there isn’t, not at all. But this will be easier for us both if we—”
“No.” Abruptly she turned away from him. Everything in her life would be changed by this impulsive purchase of his, from warning the men, to changing the place along the stream where their tea was landed, to making sure no further messages were delivered to her at Feversham.
Oh, yes, and more change as well: she must leave the house where she’d been born and find a new place for herself to live. No wonder she was walking so fast now she was nearly running.
“Hold now, Miss Winslow, don’t flight off like this,” he said, his long stride easily keeping pace with hers. “We’ve matters to discuss.”
She kept her gaze straight ahead, quickening her step. “We do not.”
“And I say we do.” He wheeled around, blocking her way. “Isn’t there some place more private than the middle of the street where we can talk?”
“I told you,” she said, trying to step around him, “there is nothing to be said!”
“But there is.” He caught her arm to stop her, his grasp through the rough linsey-woolsey of her sleeve hard enough to make her gasp indignantly. “I don’t give a tinker’s dam if we talk here where the whole world can listen. But knowing these are your people, I’d think you’d want it otherwise.”
Fan glared at him and jerked her arm free, rubbing furiously at the spot where he’d held her as if to wipe away his touch. What he said was true; there was never much privacy to be found in a village like this, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Even now she and the captain were drawing a sizeable audience, curious faces peering from open windows and over walls, and she didn’t want to think what sort of tales the company men would be hearing.<
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“This way, then,” she said curtly, heading across the lane and leaving him to follow her into the yard of the little church, stopping when they were surrounded only by overgrown headstones of long-dead villagers and the empty graves of sailors who’d perished at sea. “There’s no one here who’ll spread gossip.”
“Very well,” he said, glancing dubiously around at the old slanting headstones, the carved names and dates softened by the wind and patched with moss and lichen. The breeze from the marshes and the sea blew more insistently here in the open, tossing the heavy tassels on her shawl against her hip and ruffling his hair across his forehead. “Dead men tell no tales, eh?”
“Why should the dead trouble you?” she demanded bitterly. “Considering your trade’s as much killing as sailing, I’d vow that you’d be more familiar with the dead than the living.”
“You cannot have life without death,” he said quietly. “One goes with the other, doesn’t it?”
A chill shivered down her spine. No matter how often she’d pleaded with him to stop, her father had often spoken that way of death as well, as if he almost wished to court his own end. How was she any better, speaking like this while standing among so many graves?
“Life goes with death, yes,” she countered, striving to put her darker thoughts aside, “but few can find as much profit in it as you have.”
“Luck is as unpredictable as death, you know. I could as easily have been shot to pieces by French guns as be standing here with you now.” He tried to smile, but his expression seemed clouded now, without the earlier happiness, and she wondered if he, too, felt the grim pull of the burying ground. “You are angry because I have bought the house you regard as your home.”
The Silver Lord Page 4