by Anne Gracie
“But Mrs. Beresford is staying,” Rose put in with a bright smile.
“Quite right,” Ollie said. “You just stay here with your wife, Thomas. And remember what I said about the purpose of God’s creations. Use your head. And no rats in the attic this time.” On this obscure message, he left.
Rose glanced at the ceiling. “Are there rats in the attic?”
“Yes,” Thomas said curtly. “Close relations of the ones in your cruel guardian’s dungeon basement.”
She giggled. His body tightened at the sound. How often in the past had he imagined hearing her laugh again? A mountain brook burbling through river stones, sunlight dancing on the water. But the reality of it was so much warmer and more enticing.
He stood up—she was too damned close for comfort—and gathered the folds of his blanket more closely, aware that underneath it he was wearing only a pair of drawers and an undershirt. And that he was already half aroused. “What are you doing here, Rose, alone and at such an hour?”
“Here, you need to tuck it in better.” She stepped close and with nimble fingers arranged the blanket around him, knotting a corner over one shoulder, and tucking fabric around his waist. “Like this. It’s a cross between a Scottish kilt and Roman toga. Lily and I used to love playing dress-ups.”
“Leave it.” The touch of her hands, the brush of her fingers against his skin, the scent of her, damp hair and warm, fragrant woman—he couldn’t bear it. He stepped back and said in a stern voice, “You shouldn’t be here, Rose.”
She scanned his face. “You look tired, Thomas. Are you not sleeping well? Is the chaise longue uncomfortable? It’s too short for you—”
“It’s fine.” The truth was he could sleep anywhere. Just not for long. “Why are you here?”
“I had questions,” she said airily. “Is this what a bachelor’s apartment looks like? I must say I expected something a bit more . . . decadent. This is very neat and nice, isn’t it? But then, Mr. Yelland is quite a particular gentleman, isn’t he? I imagine other bachelors might be more—”
“Rose.” It was a warning.
“Yes, Thomas?” she said in an innocent tone, her wide blue eyes dancing with mischief.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
She batted her eyelashes. “Really, Thomas?”
“I thought we’d agreed, you’d talk to your family and think seriously about accepting an annulment.”
She made a careless gesture. “I talked, I thought and I don’t want an annulment.”
Why could he not make her understand? He wasn’t the man she’d married. If she ever learned what he’d been, what he was now . . . He was doing this for her own good. He tried again. “Four years ago you married me without a thought for the future, and you ended up in . . . in limbo. Now you’re being as reckless as ever.” Throwing herself, body and fortune, into the ring, without a thought for the consequences.
“Thomas, I know what I want.”
He shook his head, unconvinced, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “You think I haven’t thought about this? I’m not a child, you know. I know that people change. I don’t think it matters, that’s all, not unless we want it to. Is that what you’re saying, Thomas?”
“I think you’re reacting to the situation without consideration of what is practical.”
“Practical!” She snorted. “I was on the verge of marrying for practical reasons when you came back. I want something more than practical now, and I want it with you.”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
She threw up her hands in frustration. “Oh, will you please stop saying that? Nobody is who other people think they are. Everyone has secrets. And everyone lies.” She walked over to the window and stood staring out over the bleak prospect.
She was right. Everyone had secrets, but some were worse than others. And it was time he shared some of his.
“I have . . . other obligations,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes. “Children?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“And you said there wasn’t another woman.”
“No, of course not.”
She sat down and smoothed her skirts over her knees. “Then what are they, these obligations?”
“Do you recall me telling you about the five other men who were shipwrecked with me?”
She nodded.
He told her then about his men, about Dyson, the oldest, a big bluff northerner, the backbone of the crew; about O’Brien, a wiry little weasel plucked from the stews of London by a press-gang in the last weeks of the war. Bitter and hot-tempered, he’d nevertheless made a surprisingly good seaman and had proved unexpectedly resilient in the ordeals that followed their wrecking.
Then there was Dodds, big, bald, bandy-legged and easygoing. A joke for every occasion, that was Dodds. He left a wife and two children behind.
Jones had no family; he was a good-looking charmer with a woman in every port.
Lastly there was Jemmy Pendell, the youngest, a boy of nineteen on his first voyage, leaving a new wife behind with a baby on the way.
Pendell was the one who broke his heart the most. The others were hardened men who knew the risks. Pendell had been an eager young boy, naïve and enthusiastic, off on his big adventure before settling down to raise his family.
“I want to bring them home,” he finished.
Her face softened. “Of course you do.”
“It’s going to cost money.”
“Naturally. But where are they?”
“The Barbary Coast.”
“And they need money to pay their fare home?” She wrinkled her brow. “Couldn’t they . . . I mean, if they’re sailors, couldn’t they work their passage home?”
“They could if they were free to leave. They’re not.”
Her eyes widened. “They’re prisoners?”
“Worse.” He didn’t want to tell her, but he forced it out. She had to know. “They’re slaves.”
“Slaves? But how—?”
“It’s how things work along the Barbary Coast. Piracy is rife. Slavery is a way of life and has been for centuries. After we were shipwrecked and the six of us made it to shore, we were captured by local tribesmen.” He paused, remembering how they’d been stripped of all their clothes and made to walk for hours, days across the burning sands, starving, thirsty, burned raw by the sun, their feet raw and blistered.
“They took us to the nearest big town.” A journey that had taken several weeks across the desert. Their captors weren’t deliberately cruel—they were poor, almost as ill-fed as Thomas and his men—but the journey had almost killed the Englishmen with their fair skin and their soft-soled feet.
Thomas had kept them alive by sheer willpower, coaxing, bullying, carrying them at times, and keeping hopes alive with his promise, his absolute, unshakable promise that if they could only make it to civilization, he would get them home.
He’d convinced their captors that his uncle would pay a good ransom, that he was an English lord and would pay.
His captors had believed him. His men had believed him. Thomas had believed it himself, poor fool that he was, because he thought it was the truth. He’d imagined himself loved, valued, wanted.
“They have a system there, where those who believe they can command a ransom are housed by the sultan—he’s the fellow in charge. He takes charge of all incoming slaves and collects a percentage of the profits. It’s a filthy system, the trade in human cattle, but all very businesslike.”
“So, this sultan?” she prompted.
“We didn’t meet him. We stayed in his palace, though, where his deputy, the caliph, lived. He allowed me to send a letter home, explaining what had happened and asking for a ransom to be sent.”
“So what happened?”
“After a month, a letter came from my u
ncle.”
“And?”
“It said the man calling himself Thomas Beresford was no kin of his; he was a scoundrel, not to be trusted; and there would be no ransom forthcoming.”
She gasped.
“It never occurred to me that my uncle would refuse.” It had shocked him so badly he was certain it must be a mistake. “But I saw the letter myself. My uncle had signed it himself—I recognized his hand.”
“The caliph wasn’t happy—all that time feeding me for no result—but after some persuasion he allowed me to send another letter. This time I wrote to my cousin. I was certain he’d pay, but . . .” He clenched his fists, bafflement and fury surging up as it always did. “The same kind of letter came back. Disowning me and refusing to pay.”
“Are your relatives poor, then?”
He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but it spilled over anyway. “Far from it. They could have paid the ransom a dozen times over and not even noticed.”
“Then why would they refuse?”
He looked away, unwilling to show her the hurt he still felt. The hurt that he was determined to stifle with rage. “That’s the question that’s been eating at me ever since.”
“Had you fallen out with them? Quarreled?”
“On the contrary. I would even have said—before this—that we were quite a close family. Fond of one another.” He’d spent his boyhood looking after Gerald, especially at school, and his uncle, well, his uncle had been as much a father to Thomas as his own father.
He gestured, a mix of bewilderment, frustration and anger. “I’ll get to the bottom of it eventually.” He’d beard the old man in his den and demand an explanation.
“I wish you’d written to me. I would have paid.”
“By that time the caliph had no patience for any more letters. And so we were sold.” It was the last he’d seen of young Pendell, thin as a rake, shaking like a leaf, trying hard to look brave, stepping up to the auction block in chains. His grand adventure over.
“As slaves,” she breathed, horrified. “Oh, Thomas, I’m so sorry.”
There was a short silence. She rose and walked back over to the window. “Thomas, the ‘damage’ you spoke of, did you mean because of your experiences as a slave?”
He hesitated before attempting to explain. He hated having to talk about this, would rather they both went on pretending it had never happened. But he supposed she needed to know. And then, with any luck, she’d leave the question alone and he’d never have to speak of it again.
“Yes. Being a thing that someone owns, that they can do what they like with, it . . . changes you. You can never be the same person again.” How could he explain to this lovely, glowing, sheltered girl the depths of degradation to which he’d sunk? It just wasn’t possible. And he didn’t want to try, didn’t want to drag her down to that awareness. Because if she knew, if she understood what he’d been, what he’d done, she’d never look at him the same way again.
Chapter Six
And listen why; for I will tell you now,
What never yet was heard in tale or song.
—JOHN MILTON
Rose wanted to hug him, kiss away the pain, pretend it was all over, that it didn’t matter. But they weren’t children to kiss it better and make it all magically go away. Terrible things happened. So did wonderful things. And for both there were consequences we had to live with.
“The thing is,” she began slowly, “everything that happens to us in life changes us, for better or worse. It isn’t only the bad things. I’ve changed, too, in ways you might not like.”
He shook his head as if that weren’t possible. But he’d made his confession and now she would make hers. And then, perhaps, they could both move forward.
“You said yesterday that when we married I’d made an impulsive promise based on a false premise. What did you mean by that—a false premise?”
It took a moment before he responded, and when he did, it sounded as though he didn’t understand the purpose of her question. “That you might become pregnant. We thought marriage would protect you in that eventuality, but since it didn’t happen . . .”
Raindrops trickled down the windowpane, gathering in tiny rivulets. She traced them with a finger. “But it did.”
There was a short, shocked silence. “Rose?” He took three steps across the room, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her around to face him. “You had a baby?”
“No. I lost it. I miscarried a few weeks after you . . . after I heard your ship had gone down.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded, and she shifted under the pressure of his hands on her shoulders. Would he blame her, the way she’d blamed herself? Losing the one small piece of him left to love . . .
“My God. I had no idea. . . . Why didn’t you tell me?”
She just looked at him. He hadn’t been there when it happened, and since he got back, where had been the opportunity? She wasn’t even sure it was the right thing to do, to tell him now, on top of his own horrific revelations, when everything was still so uncertain and he was still, apparently, pushing her away. But if she didn’t tell him now, when could she?
Rain pelted cold and relentless against the window.
He drew her to the chaise longue and seated himself beside her, holding her hand tightly in his big rough paw. It was so comforting, and yet it made her want to cry. But she was determined not to cry all over him again.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I was back at school. Lily was out of danger then, but still convalescing at Aunt Dottie’s. At first I didn’t even realize I was with child. If it hadn’t been for one of the maids . . .”
She turned to him and said almost savagely, “Why is it that girls are never taught anything useful? We’re not even permitted to know how our own bodies work!”
She’d been throwing up into her chamber pot every morning for a week, thinking she was coming down with something—since the mumps outbreak, everyone in the school was very sensitive to any sign of ill health. But the queasiness passed once she’d vomited and so she thought nothing of it—until the next morning, when it returned. And the next . . . And still she didn’t realize the significance.
Why would she, motherless, and being educated in an establishment staffed by spinsters, where such things were never discussed, never even acknowledged? They probably knew no more than their pupils.
It was Ella, the quiet little maid who lit the fires and scrubbed the floors and emptied the chamber pots who’d first shyly approached her and asked if perhaps miss might be in the family way. Rose had stared at her blankly, and Ella clarified, “Have you lain with a man, miss? Might you have caught a baby?”
Caught a baby?
Ella was the second oldest of ten, and she’d quietly explained that her mum had thrown up just this way, every time a baby started growing inside her.
“I was so happy when I realized it. Your baby, Thomas, our baby. I’d lost you, but you’d left me a little piece of you to love and protect. But then . . .” Her voice broke.
His arm slipped around her and tightened. “Tell me.” His voice was ragged and deep.
“I lost it.” There was no point going into the gory details. Waking in the night, just before dawn. Cramps, like knives cutting into her. And blood, terrifying blood.
He muttered something she didn’t catch. “Go on.”
“Ella, the maid, helped me through it.”
She’d come into the dormitory at dawn to light the fire and saw what was happening. Her mother had lost several babes too early, and she’d explained to Rose that she was losing the babe.
The pain was bad, but the worst pain of all was knowing she was losing the last remnant of Thomas.
He held her tucked against his chest, just breathing, and they were silent for a long time. She leaned against him. He was s
o big and warm. She’d forgotten what a comfort it was just to be held.
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like,” he murmured into her hair. “And nobody else knew?”
“Not a soul. You couldn’t keep a secret in that place. They would have thrown me out, married or not, pregnant or not. Miss Mallard’s Seminary for the Daughters of Gentlemen prides itself on keeping young ladies pure, ignorant of anything to do with life and skilled in the more useless feminine arts.”
“You couldn’t tell your family?”
She snorted. “They’d have been just as bad. They would have whisked me off somewhere horrid. You never met Papa, but he was the sort of father who liked hunting and fishing, thought girls were a blasted nuisance and preferred them packed away and out of sight so he didn’t have to bother with them. Cal was away at the war, and my older brother—George’s father—was built in the same mold as Papa, only Henry was lazier and even more selfish.”
She thought about Henry. It occurred to her that she was actually the second one in her family to have made a secret marriage. Though Henry had behaved disgracefully, whereas she . . . well, the jury was still out on that.
“Do you know, he never met or even acknowledged George, though he did at least marry her mother. I believe her grandfather forced him at gunpoint. But Henry kept the marriage secret and never went near George, left her to make her own way in the world. Cal only found George by accident after Henry died and Cal came back from the war and discovered he’d become the earl.”
Rose would never have abandoned her baby, never, no matter what her father and the rest of them said or did.
“What about Aunt Dottie? Surely you could have gone to her. She seems as soft as butter.”
Rose smiled. “She is. Aunt Dottie is a darling, but I doubt she could keep a secret, and once it was out, Papa and Aunt Agatha would have been the ones to decide what would happen to me.” She shuddered. “I wasn’t going to risk that.”