Instead of going home just yet, with his tail between his legs, he sent Ralph and Theo on their way and stayed the night, playing cards and losing with grace and aplomb.
That night, in his hotel room, lying alone in his rented bed, he thought about Beth and their baby, about the magick she’d worked and what could be done about it.
The next day, he went to the docks, and put word in and left letters with every captain he could.
Beth met him at the door. Philip stood silent beyond her, near the music room, and Sophie paced the floor between the two.
She had been crying.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” she sputtered. Her nose was as red as holly berries, and water threatened to spill from eyes the color of Aruba. “I dinnae understand. He s-should hae w-wo-won.”
“Should have,” Ian agreed, setting his bag inside and closing the door. “But he didn’t, and I’m running out of options. The next race isn’t for another month. As much as I hate it, I may have to leave for a bit. I’ve sent word to my ships. As soon as the Deirdre docks, I’ll see what I can manage to work up. Nothing illegal,” was all he could offer her. “I promise to stay clean. For your sake and the baby’s, I will.”
He couldn’t tell her the flash of inspiration that had struck like a heavenly bolt from the blue. Couldn’t let her know that he’d found a way to get around the gris that she’d concocted. To keep from thinking about it—he didn’t trust her not to eavesdrop, he dropped to his knees and kissed her stomach.
“How are we?” he asked, framing her hips with his hands.
Beth laughed through her tears. “Fine,” she said. “I hae been listening names.”
He took that as a good sign.
Nodding to Philip, he picked Beth up in his arms and carried her upstairs where Philip could not follow, her on the bed they shared, and stretched his self out beside her. She was wearing the bright calico dress that was his favorite, and the wild red curls that crowned her head looked like a sun goddess’s halo.
Lifting himself on one elbow, he stroked her cheek, then put his hand on her belly.
“And?” he asked, picking up where they’d left off.
“I only heard the girl’s name.”
“And what’s that?”
“Elspeth, but we’ll call her Bess.”
Ian chuckled. “Red Beth and Black Bess. Now that’s a right proper pair of pi-rettes.”
Beth smiled as serenely as a Madonna he’d seen in a cathedral, once upon a time.
“What names do ye like?” she asked, feeling the shadow of his jaw.
“There was only ever one Blackbeard,” he said. “Not very likeable. But he was kind to Christiana, so I put up with him.”
Beth wondered if she would ever know all there was to him. Imagine. He knew Blackbeard.
“And Stede Bonnet,” he said, doing a bit of eavesdropping himself. Laudanum still had its moments, fewer and farther between, but present nonetheless. He could see why people went back to it, when the need was no longer there.
Beth wrinkled her nose to think of saddling a bairn with a pirate’s name, but the moment he’d said it, the sound of it took hold, and she wondered if Stede might not be fitting for the son of a ship’s captain who’d forsaken the sea to raise blooded horses.
“I’ll give it thought,” was all he promised, though she’d half made up her mind already, he could tell.
He stayed behind when Beth and Sophie went to the woods that night to draw down the moon. Too distracted to read, wound too tight to sleep, he went to the music room and played the fiddle for Philip, then, because it was Sunday night, he let the fiddle play for him. Occasionally Philip would join in, if it was a tune he knew, but for the most part the fiddle knew songs of the Celts that Ian had grown up with in Dublin, before he’d met Marie.
Marie Delacorte had worked at her Breton uncle’s tavern, and Ian had fiddled a tune that wrapped around her sweet singing voice and drove her uncle to madness. The aunt had helped her get away, and they’d forsaken France, never looking back. Eventually they landed in Limerick, where he got them a little flat and worked a job until his drinking put an end to it. He’d straightened up, but one night they’d had a tiff and he’d felt the need to relax and bend an elbow, and a press gang saw that he never made it home.
Aboard ship, he’d taken down two of them, thanks to the boxing he’d done. He’d have a harder time of it now, of course, out of shape as he was.
Ian decided that he should hang a punching bag in the tack room. Lord knew, he needed the exercise, and he could teach Sean a thing or two. If they were lucky, if he could show him enough, he could sponsor the lad in some contests and make them both some extra money.
Money. It seemed that everything these days came back to it. Beth’s mother was a midwife, at least, and came damn close to being an apothecary. Down the road, he would need to hire a tutor, or bring one over for this and all the future little O’Malleys. Finding one worth his salt – that they could afford, or who was willing to serve seven years – would be the trick.
Ian blew out softly and told himself there was yet time for it. For now, he had Beth to think of, and the next race, and what he must do in the time between. They had grist ready to go; the miller needed paid what was already owed from last time and then some. Beth was convinced that Zephyr would win September’s race, but she saw Patrick O’Flaherty doing it. Ralph had blown out his knee, and even if it healed in time—which everyone agreed, it wouldn’t—she said that when Patrick won, they’d blame the first loss on the jockey, not the horse, and he’d see the colts’ values increased accordingly.
Beth said that Patrick lived to race and burned to win, and his stallion could feel the lad’s hunger. Even a skeptic would have been made a believer the first time he put Patrick on the big black and let them loose on the track. He could have been the god of thunder, riding out a storm, the way they blew across the finish line.
Beth said Zephyr approved. He guessed that should have settled it. Beth was so rarely wrong.
He prayed she was right this time.
He needed her to be right.
He needed Zephyr and Patrick to win.
He needed the Deirdre to come and take him away for a little while. Only for a little while, he promised when Beth came back to the house, and they left the fiddle with Philip and went upstairs to bed. He lit a candle and undressed her, checking, making certain that Herne had not hurt her while she was out in the oak woods making magick. Then he got naked too and kissed their pagan-papist baby and sang a nursery song he’d never got to sing for Christiana, since he hadn’t found her until much later, when she was eight years old going on a hundred, because she’d just seen her mother murdered by Stede Bonnet’s crew.
Beth stopped breathing, and when she started again, she was already busy thinking of new boy’s names that would better fit the son of an Irish sea captain who played the fiddle and saw ghosts and raced horses and rode the wind.
“Brendan.” The word drifted over his black Irish Catholic head like a benediction.
Ian smiled. “Brendan or Bess it is.”
That much was settled, then.
The Deirdre docked on a Tuesday.
He should have known they would have their second fight.
He took Beth to the dock on the Patuxent to see the smaller of his two ships. The first and larger, the Bold Avenger (formerly the Annie Laurie), was the one he’d come in on, that Tuesday in June when they’d rowed him ashore and carried him up to the overseer’s cottage, where Beth had refused to let him die. He’d won the Deirdre, a two-masted schooner, on the turn of a card, when he was sailing as Jean Delacorte.
Jean Delacorte, who’d been pardoned by the king, don’t you know, but had some subsequent shady dealings nonetheless. When Jean Delacorte won The Oaks plantation, Ian took it as a sign. Time for a new leaf, a clean start, and thus Captain Ian O’Manion was born.
God, he couldn’t wait to get his real name back. He could marry Beth proper.
Hell, he might even talk her into a Catholic service. There was a private chapel in Annapolis, and her mother could come. If Beth was worried about riding with the baby, he’d take her by water, in the little dinghy or aboard the Deirdre, whose draw was shallow enough for her to tie up at the dock.
Beth took one look at the two-masted schooner, dug in her heels, and refused to go aboard. She refused to let him board and begged him not to go. It was rubbish, but she swore it anyway, that nothing good would come of it, that evil followed in its wake.
He hated to tell her, but that was old news.
Three years ago, his gambling was paying off nicely, having already won The Oaks and the Deirdre here. When a chance for some easy money came along, temptation got the better of him and he’d taken the Deirdre on a smuggling run because of her shallow draft. In, out, quick about—he’d been pleased how easy it was, but he was trying to keep his nose clean, with Christiana in school and all, and that was the last time Jean Delacorte went smuggling.
Then came Tuesday, Valentine’s Day last. He pawned a ring linked to a pirate raid and couldn’t offer an alibi, having been doing the old in-out-quick-about aboard the Deirdre at the time. So in a succession of bad Tuesdays later, here he was, having his second fight with Beth and trying to make her be reasonable.
Good luck with that.
“I’m sorry, but it’s business. Nothing personal. It’s just business.” He forced the words between clenched teeth, exasperated by her attitude. When it was clear that he couldn’t convince her otherwise, he stopped trying. Jaysus and Mary, she’d turned cold as the ice house and clammed up tight, refusing to talk to him.
That kind of stuff couldn’t be good for the baby, and he told her so.
He finally got her to at least look at him. But instead of apologizing or promising to behave, she told him she was taking Sophie and going to her cottage.
Her cottage.
Because it was Tuesday, and she said she needed space.
Beth gritted her teeth until they hurt.
Why could he not see it?
It was so clear to her, she couldn’t imagine anyone else not seeing it. There was an evil on the horizon and it was attached to that ship he’d won and having the Deirdre here would only let it find them.
Cut the cords. Cut the cords. And pray that nothing lets them come back.
The new moon wasn’t until Monday, but she closed her curtains and took out her tools and worked magick in her cottage on the edge of the forest. She could feel Herne nearby, and the Captain closer yet, making certain she stayed safe while he got eaten up by mosquitoes doing it.
He should know better. Really, who couldn’t feel the evil in mosquitoes? He knew where to find the insect wash she’d made from her mother’s recipe, with little charms added to it. If he wanted to be that way, refusing to listen, ignoring her warnings about the dangers of insect bites, she didn’t know what she was going to do with him.
Stubborn man.
Beautiful, haunted, stubborn man.
She sometimes wondered, when she was curled in his lap with his hand stroking her hair or rubbing her bottom, about what had been done to him, how he’d survived it and not become a monster like other men he’d known. No wonder he’d looked at her the way he did when she’d thought to name the baby Stede. On the surface it had seemed to suit, sounding like a stallion as it did. But the name had an undercurrent, carrying the taint of evil and of death; saddling a child with that energy attached to it would be as close to a curse as a witch could cast, the first rule of magick being to harm none.
The night when she’d lain naked with him and descended into his hell, she’d seen what had happened to him. If memories shaped a person, and that person created a child, perhaps there was more healing to be done than she realized.
Another reason to go to the cottage on the edge of the woods.
Another reason to weave more magick, prayers for clearing, prayers for healing. Cleanse, correct, integrate, seal.
This time when she worked, she directed the energy at the both of them: the child in her womb and its father, the black haired Irishman beyond the cottage door. The Captain was in the orchard but close to the edge of the woods, hovering, as if he could keep Herne from coming if he chose to. And Herne was in the woods on the edge of the orchard, watching, waiting to see what the Captain would do…or trying to decide what to do with him….
Goddess, help me.
She was getting so tired of this. Like stags in rut, they were, antlers locked so that neither of them was ever free of the other. They thought they were so very different but they were more alike than they knew: Herne, as old as the river, who never revealed himself, and the Captain who couldn’t even bring himself to say his real name.
She knew it, of course. She’d fathomed it long ago and held it close, knowing it would one day be hers.
Elsbeth O’Malley.
“Hear that?” she asked her bairn. Then it came: the whip of the wind, and the first pelt of rain, and her baby’s stubborn father was standing out in it.
Chapter Fourteen
Ian didn’t know what he’d find when he followed Beth and Sophie to the cottage. He suspected that Herne would be pouting close by, kicking up leaves as he paced under the oaks, upset that he had to share his pet human. Well, too bad. Herne had best get used to it.
He was getting tired of this. She threw fits about him sailing with the Deirdre because of some phantom evil, while she danced with the devil in her own back yard.
Beth. Beth. If what we share isn’t reason enough, think of the child.
The danger wasn’t only from Herne. Lucy Knowles was already wishing her to perdition for suspected cohabitation; she’d better never learn what else Beth was about. They burned witches in Scotland, and he had no doubt they’d do it here, too.
He thought about confronting Herne but decided against it, wisdom being the better part of valor and all. He thought about confronting Beth, warning her of the dangers of the path she insisted on taking. Last week when the Knowles twins found the treat she’d left for Herne, Lucy was ready to start performing exorcisms.
He’d promised to keep her safe. He’d die for her to do it.
If she loved him, you’d think she’d help just a little and not make his job so damn hard.
But he’d do it, because he loved her.
And Herne could go to hell.
He swore sabers rattled in the oaks. The wind kicked up, and the rain pelted him, and the next thing he knew, Beth threw open the door of the cottage and ordered him inside.
Herne, you hear that, you bastard? That’s my name she’s calling.
The burst of wind swept by him so strong, it nearly ripped the door from Beth’s hand.
He had the sense to stay quiet after that.
Beth fetched a towel and ordered him to dry off. She must have finished her circle already; her ritual tools were back in her bundle, ready to stow away. Shaking the raindrops off his coat, he spread it on the back of the chair by the hearth and buried his face in fresh linen, drying his skin and toweling his hair with brisk efficiency.
She gave him the silent treatment, making him pay for putting her out of her way, forced to find her so-called space in her cottage rather than stay with him at the big house, where she belonged. They should be there now, listening to Philip and the fiddle sing, or making love in the bed upstairs, rocking their pagan-papist baby to sleep.
Oh, Beth, my love. How did we come to this?
It must have become Wednesday, because she turned, then, and looked at him the same hopeful way as when she lay naked with him all night and kept him from dying when he thought that’s what he wanted and she knew better.
“I am such a fool,” he said, meaning it. “Forgive me.”
Beth wanted to. She wanted to. But he still had his mind set on treading a path fraught with peril, and she’d invested too much of herself in him to give up so easily. She meant to dissuade him; she would not cease trying. She would sa
ve him from himself if it was the last thing she did.
“Ye may stay,” she said, willing to concede that much at least. “At least until the rain stops.”
The air had turned noticeably cooler. Not that it was cold just yet. It was just so much less hot, it felt cool by comparison. Ian built a fire to warm things up a bit, and give Beth more light to do what else needed done.
She cached her bundle under the floorboards and slid the rug in place over her hiding space. Sophie went to the door, first listening, then singing, until Beth lifted the latch and let the fox run free.
If Herne couldn’t have Beth, he’d settle for her familiar.
“Poor Sophie.”
Beth gave him a dirty look.
He cocked his head, ready for a rumble. That boxing bag he’d be hanging in the tack room? He was going to name it Herne.
Beth gasped and shot a panicked look at the door, as if she half expected it to come crashing open.
Ian smiled darkly. “Eavesdropping tonight, are we? I’ll save you the bother. Poor Sophie,” he repeated. “Summoned into the night. Did nobody warn her what a piss poor bargain he might be?”
“Please, dinnae do this,” she said, playing her trump card. She looked him in the eye and put her hand on her stomach. “It cannae be guid for the bairn.”
“My thoughts exactly.” He pointed to the cottage door, closed against the wind and rain and the creature who’d summoned them in his anger. “I don’t know how you can do it, risking you both—and for what?”
That lower lip quivered, and her blue eyes filled with tears. “Please,” she begged him. “I cannae do this. I cannae.”
Ride the Wind: Touch the Wind Book Two Page 12