“Nay, just a preacher, as soon as yer name is cleared. I’d love tae see our guest gane from the library but I’ve yet tae get yer Frenchman tae cross over.”
Ian stroked her head and thought what a lucky man he was, Tuesdays aside. Of everything he’d seen and done, of all that he had loved and lost, to be here, now, with his busy, busy beekeeper and their pagan-papist baby, talking of phantom houseguests and mundane matters like the need for more privies, well, it had a way of giving a man pause and making him stop and count his blessings. Not that many weeks gone, he’d been at death’s door, and would have stepped through in a heartbeat if she’d have let him. But she’d left her new moon ritual, he knew now, and had lain naked beside him and kept him here with the promise of soft pink lips and pomegranate breasts and shapely ankles and pretty feet.
“You need more stockings,” he decided. “And garters. And some slippers to match the blue silk. Next time we get to Annapolis, we’re going to shop.”
Beth had to admit that the idea of shopping with the Captain held no little appeal. The last time Zephyr raced, Beth had stayed behind, concerned that travel might dislodge the baby. But she was two months gone now, and healthy, and the Captain wanted to pamper her with presents.
They formed a regular little cavalcade, riding to Annapolis the day before the race. Ralph and Patrick and Theo came with them, plus Zephyr and Attila, a big two-year-old bay that he was paying another jockey to ride. At the stable in Annapolis, Ralph stayed as close to Attila as his bad knee would let him, to manage the horse and the hired help they were trusting to make a good showing, at least. Patrick and Theo stuck tight to Zephyr.
The Captain secured adjacent rooms for him and Beth at the hotel. As soon as they’d brought up their things, the two of them went shopping.
If there was anything that made Beth feel like half of an old married couple, it was visiting the jeweler and the milliner and the ladies’ shops and the cobbler who came recommended. They were once more invited to dine with the Atwoods, but this time it was a private dinner, just the four adults around a table downstairs and the four little Atwoods in the nursery upstairs, and Beth trying to pay attention to Jane Atwood when she really wanted to listen to the animated conversation between the Captain and his solicitor.
In another lifetime, the two could have been brothers.
Jane wanted to hear about the new hat and her necklace and the shipment of ribbons and lace and hair combs just in from London. She was certain Beth would love her new slippers when they were completed. Baby Jane had just cut her first tooth, and Michael had just lost his second. Beth talked a little about her bees and the gardens and harvest, but Jane was most interested in hearing about Beth’s mother, how Jannet Gordon had come to be an herbalist-midwife, where she’d trained, and what all she had done.
It didn’t take a mind reader to know that another Atwood was in the making.
The men were talking lumber and hardware and nails. Beth did justice to her plate of roast goose, served with asparagus and marrow pudding. The cook had used the bushel of fruit that the Captain had sent to fashion a buttered apple pie.
The Atwoods, Beth learned, were great card players, with a decided preference for Ruff and Honours. The Captain, still stuck in his role as Ian O’Manion until his name was cleared, thought he could not win, which meant that whoever partnered him would lose as well. Once they’d taught Beth the basics, the game began in earnest. At first they played as couples, and the Captain and Beth lost every hand. On the Captain’s suggestion, they switched so that the men were then pitched against the women. Jane and Beth won by the narrowest margins until the last hand, when the men had all four honours and achieved a crowning victory.
Beth smiled, feeling the Captain’s confusion. She knew the question burning in him, even before he asked.
The Captain held it, gathering their things, thanking their hosts for a lovely evening, and helping her out and up into the carriage when it came around. She scooted across to leave room for him to settle in beside her and leaned against the seat as much as her corset would allow. The Captain made certain he wasn’t stepping on her skirts, and barely had time to brace himself for the crack of the whip that set the wheels in motion.
He looked at Beth and shook his head; his grin was endearingly crooked and full of Irish charm. “And how did we come to that?” he asked, still trying to figure it out.
“Ye’ve nocht to keep ye from winning, so long as ye dinnae gamble. Ye won taenight,” she told him, “and Zephyr will win tomorrow.”
Reaching, he took her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “You could have tripped me with a feather,” he said. “But I have to wonder about the hands you partnered me.”
“Honest losses, one and all!” she laughed. “Mercy, I was but learning! Dinnae tell me tha’ ye never lost a game the first time ye sat tae play it!”
Ian lifted a finger and touched her necklace, tracing the gold chain to the pendant that hung at the base of her throat. When he’d taken her to the jewelers to size her for a ring that he couldn’t yet give her, not until his name was cleared, he had seen it on display.
The piece was exquisitely made, outrageously priced, and worth every pound he’d paid. It was, in some ways, a revelation. Ian was a practical man. Frugal, his daughter called him in kindness. He’d never been one for buying lavish gifts. But Jamaica had changed him. Today he’d bought a necklace that a year ago, he would never have considered. When Beth had had him fasten it around her neck to wear tonight, he could think of little else except how she would look wearing nothing but it.
“Not until someone put a gris on me,” he murmured. “I never lost at cards unless it was deliberate and I folded a winning hand. It’s the damnedest thing. And no explaining it, either, unless there’s a special sort of Irish luck to be found at a rainbow’s end and, somehow, I fell into it unawares. Whatever it is, I am grateful. It won me the Deirdre and The Oaks. Without it, I would not have you, and we,” he said, drawing a line from her heart to her belly, “would not have wee Bess or Brendan here.”
She covered his hand and gave him her best sly look, cheeky thing. She turned down her smile by half and winked. When she abandoned it altogether and set the tip of her tongue to teasing the middle of her upper lip, he called to the driver to take them the scenic route until further notice. It wasn’t going to be easy, with the rocking of the rig and a body that was thirty-six and counting, but he was willing to give it a go.
Early on it was clear that his bones weren’t going to bend the way he needed, so he ended up sitting in the carriage seat with a lap full of Scottish beekeeper and two handfuls of delicious pomegranate breasts. After some noble experiments, they discovered she liked it best when she faced away from him, sat back on his cock, and rode him. He knew how wet he could make her and had the presence of mind to make sure his breeches were far enough down to be free and clear when they finished. He played with her nipples and fastened his mouth on the sensitive spot of the back of her neck as they drove the uneven streets, and every dip and swell made for sweet misery. She hadn’t known him in his younger days, when he could do it all night, but she got a taste of it riding through Annapolis the night before the race.
He only stopped because she and the baby needed to sleep and he wanted to finish proper, in bed. He slid a hand up her swan’s neck and turned her face for one more kiss, then told the driver to take them to the hotel.
He managed to get his breeches buttoned and restore appearances before they pulled to a stop. Stepping down onto the night-dark street, he helped Miss Gordon descend from the carriage. They went up to the two rooms he’d rented for appearances and unlocked the door to hers, where he fastened it behind them and they stripped off the layers of civilization until he was naked as a druid and she wore nothing but a necklace and a smile.
Ah, Red.
The years of his life when he’d sailed the seas, he’d thought that a fair wind and a woman’s arms were the closest things
to heaven on earth. Tonight, more than ever, he realized how right he was.
He wanted to take his time, now that he could, and give her the best of himself, poor though it was and herself deserving better. He turned back the sheets and brought Beth down onto the bed with him, his manhood already hard and thick and insistent, reaching for her as she reached for him, and then, it happened.
Next door, in the room he’d rented, a noise that didn’t belong.
Ian froze, suspended above Beth, pressing a hand over her mouth, while above it, her blue eyes were wild with fright. Past the anger of violation, past the fear of the unknown, past the regret that she had to experience it at all, Ian moved past emotion so that he could keep his head cool and his thinking clear. He could fight. Even with no weapon, he knew how to disarm someone. But if there was more than one, if they sought to gain entrance to this room, if one of them had a pistol, which put Beth within their reach regardless….
He put a finger to his lips. She nodded, letting him know she understood the need for silence. He slipped off the bed and lifted a chair and carried it soundlessly across the room to prop against the door, wedging it so tightly that anyone who tried to force it open would wake every other guest before they could get in.
Whoever was next door was only there for mere minutes, but it felt like a cat’s lifetime and he’d already gone through enough of those, he was certain he didn’t have many left. He refused to leave Beth to go see; whatever was taken was long gone and not worth risking life or limb to recover anyway. His purse and Beth’s presents were in her room with them. His room held his shaving kit and clothes and little else, this trip. His legal consultation consisted of verbal updates, no paperwork, thank God. The manumissions and deeds were safe back home, and although the two of them were shaken, they were unharmed.
He held her all night, despite his arm falling asleep as she lay on it, because he needed to hold her and let her know that she and the baby were safe, that he’d protect her. He held onto that thought, because that’s what Beth needed to hear, what she had to hear to be able to get any rest. It wasn’t easy for someone as sensitive as Beth, in the arms of someone who had known the worst kinds of violations, when whatever had happened next door threatened to take him back to Jamaica. But it wasn’t his fault. She didn’t judge him.
They were here, and safe.
For now.
Chapter Nineteen
They took nothing. Nothing but a shaving kit and a pocketful of change.
Beth wanted Ian to fetch the clerk and bring him upstairs before entering his room, but whoever had been there was long gone, and he refused to needlessly tarnish her reputation. Ian bade her lock the door behind him and went to see what he could find.
His door was shut but no longer locked, courtesy of someone with the right key or the skills to burgle. His clothes had been rifled, but everything down to the race bill seemed there, less his razor and some extra coins he’d thrown on the table. He reported it to the hotel management as having happened during his absence last night, which theoretically it had, and stressed that they must improve their security if they wanted any future business from him. He left it to their discretion to contact the authorities if they felt they needed help in that direction and went out to buy a razor, so he and Beth could both get ready for the race.
Beth was still shaken. It couldn’t be good for the baby, and she tried her best, for its sake, to stay calm, but it was so very hard, with the pervasive sense of malice that yet reeked from the room next door. It clung to the Captain’s coat and stayed with him, and she had to pretend that it didn’t, had to pretend that it wasn’t there, because he was already being pulled back to Port Royal and she refused to let him go. He was still mending, and who knew how much of him had cracked loose last night?
It should have been a joyous Thursday. It was the autumnal equinox, a beautiful September morning with a pleasant nip in the crisp morning air and the horses ready to race. Harry Maxwell, the jockey that Barry had found for Attila, had been rescued from chimney sweeping when he’d dramatically dropped onto a runaway horse and saved several pedestrians. One of them had owned a stable. Seeing the promise of the small, gap-toothed teen, he’d bought out his indenture and taken him home, and now Harry straddled horses instead of roofs.
Ian recognized in Harry the same kind of reckless daring that his daughter Christiana had, as a child and as a woman grown. When she’d sailed disguised as a boy, if ever he missed her, he only had to look high above the deck, to find her perched in the crow’s nest, or climbing the rigging to ride the wind.
Ian knew Beth would want to talk to the horses, and he was only too glad to take her from the hotel, which now felt so violated to her, he didn’t think he could ever talk her into staying there again. She was forcing herself to breathe, he could tell, one hand on her nervous stomach, the other fidgeting with her reticule. The Atwoods had made the carriage available for them while they were here—a courtesy extended for Beth’s sake, after she’d been willing to ride the distance on a sweet dapple gray mare named Mab when delivery was delayed on the curricle he’d ordered.
The three-mile racetrack had been built near the blacksmith’s shop, laid out in a circle a mile across. They arrived early enough for Beth to talk to the horses, and Ian honored her request to meet Attila’s jockey. Ian didn’t know what to hope for when he introduced Miss Elsbeth Gordon of The Oaks and Harry Maxwell of Annapolis, but he took heart at her sigh of relief.
“Oh, Captain,” she whispered as Ian escorted her to the place where she and the few other women attending would watch the race, “he is just the thing. This morning, I was so afraid, but now, oh, now….”
“Proof’s in the pudding,” he reminded her. Last time Zephyr should have won and came in third. Luck held, though, when Zephyr drew the inside position, and Attila was polled next to him, providing a buffer in case one was needed. This race, the two toffs that had mucked up the works last time fell to the outside, so when they started to go at it again, Zephyr was far removed and free to run.
And run he did. Patrick barely had to use the crop. Instead he talked to the horse as Beth had told him to do and the lead stretched out, and stretched some more, and although Attila would have won otherwise, he was second in a brilliant finish that would be talked about for months. Zephyr was not just undisputed champion; he had set a new track record.
Bartholomew Atwood II, Esquire, congratulated Ian on his victory and began immediate negotiations to secure what was left of Harry Maxwell’s indenture.
Even before last night’s incident, they had planned to vacate the hotel rooms ahead of the race. Their bags were in the borrowed carriage, ready to return to the stable and collect their riding horses as soon as the race was through. He’d promised to have her home for at least some of the autumnal equinox, if she came to the race with him, but with Zephyr’s victory, Ian had to make himself available for congratulations, for questions, and for future business. Every horse breeder here had mares that they wanted introduced to the big black stallion, and before leaving the track, Ian had half a dozen appointments set to look at Zephyr’s colts.
It was the first day of fall, and Zephyr had finally won.
But the nagging sensation that started in Annapolis did not leave Ian, not when they returned to the stable and repacked the horses and their little cavalcade set out for home. Beth was quiet on her fairy horse, hardly speaking the whole twelve miles. Of course, the men more than made up for it. Ralph and Patrick and Theo could have been roosters crowing in a henhouse.
They returned like conquering heroes. Zephyr and Attila got an extra measure of molasses and oats, and even Sean seemed truly happy for someone other than himself. Lucy Knowles made skunk eyes at Beth when the twins saw her serious mood and sought to cheer Beth up by playing ring-the-rosie with their apple maven in the middle. Jannet Gordon wondered at her daughter’s quietness, and Ian gave the widow a look that counseled patience.
With an eye on the gra
y clouds thickening in the distance, the Captain had Theo take their bags up to the house and care for their horses, then went to check on the harvest. Lucy dragged away her twins, and after days of avoidance, Beth went to talk to her mother. She told her about the hotel break-in, how little was stolen but she could still feel the violation. She had an ill feeling, with nothing to attribute it to, and she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know.
It started to rain. Beth went to her cottage, pulled out her ritual tools, and cast the seasonal circle inside of her old home. She could feel Herne close by, restive, puzzled. He was used to her braving the elements at each turning of the wheel, at every new moon and full moon, but she had a bairn to consider now, and she was feeling too vulnerable to risk getting drenched and catching cold and putting the wee thing in danger.
The Captain’s money was still there, hidden beneath the floorboards with the poppet she’d made for the wild strawberries. On a day when sun and moon, the light and dark, were in perfect balance, when the day was exactly as long as the night, Beth should have felt it with every fiber of her being, but she didn’t. She didn’t, and that frightened her as much as anything.
It felt too much like a Scottish moor on the night of the full moon, when she’d gone out to do ritual and had drawn down the moon. After dancing naked with it, she’d packed her tools, slipped on her dress, and turned to leave…and she’d seen him standing at the top of the hill. She knew he’d been there long enough to know who she was. What she was. Fear had gripped her heart, and sorrow, that now he too must choose. Did he stand firm in his faith and follow the law and not suffer a witch to live? Or did he feed the flame that had burned since their kiss and discover his own humanity?
The young priest came towards her. She waited, trembling like the accused in a courtroom’s dock, willing to accept his judgment but praying that her parents would not have to watch their youngest be pressed or drowned or hanged or burned.
Ride the Wind: Touch the Wind Book Two Page 16