by Playing
“What?” Drew frowned, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “London?”
“Yes. I miss England terribly.” She knew her next words would kill him, but it was the only way she could think of to get him to leave her and try to restore his relationship with his family. “I don’t want to stay here. There isn’t anything for me here, so I want to go home.”
A sad smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “A nice try, Heather.”
“What makes you think I’m not serious?” she demanded, rising to her feet to face him squarely. “If we were in England, I would never — ”
“But we’re not in England, are we?” he countered softly.
She didn’t know what to tell him. On one hand, she was quite moved by the fact he was so willing to walk away from everything. On the other, she’d never rid herself of the guilt, knowing she cost him the people he loved so dearly and the company for which he’d spent almost half of his life toiling.
She thought of the child she carried, of what awaited her in London, should she return with a bastard. She also thought of when that child was five, six years old and asking for his father. What would she tell him?
She looked up at Drew, trying to imagine his features on a little boy or girl. How strong would the pain be, looking down at that child and seeing his handsome father, who was no longer a part of her life? It hurt now, and he stood right there before her. She couldn’t imagine it would be any easier in several years.
Still, she knew what needed be done. Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her chin and said, “I’d never ask you to make that choice, Drew.”
“You aren’t asking me to do anything,” he replied calmly. “It’s a choice I’ve made alone. A decision I made months ago.”
“Think of what this decision means, though.”
He caught her by the hand. “I’m willing to make the sacrifice, Heather.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then glanced down at that large hand holding hers. “I don’t want you to come to regret this, Drew,” she whispered, slowly pulling her hand free. “And I’m afraid that’s exactly what will happen. Perhaps not tomorrow, or next year, but it will happen. You’ll wake one morning to the terrible realization that your life has gone horribly awry.”
“That won’t ever happen.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I know you think I’ve made this mistake before. And perhaps I came very close to doing just that. But all I know is that what I feel for you doesn’t even compare to Bridget. I’m not that same man any longer. I know what I want, Heather. And you are what I want.” He moved to close the gap between them, taking her into his arms. “You’re what I want and I’d never regret that.”
He did not give her the chance to argue as his lips came down to seize hers in a fierce kiss that left no room for her to doubt exactly what it was he felt for her.
When they parted, he wrapped his arms about her, pulling her to his chest. She sighed softly, resting her head against the broad expanse, listening to the strong, steady thumping of his heart.
He kissed the top of her head and murmured, “Tonight we will be married. Tomorrow, we will leave for London.”
“London? Are you certain?”
As she looked up at him with questioning eyes, he nodded. “Yes. There’s no reason for us to remain here. In London, I can make a fresh start for us. If we remain here, there’s nothing but rumors and innuendoes facing us. I’d rather give our child a brighter future in England.”
“If you’re certain…”
He nodded. “I am. I’ll gather the Triton’s crew together and we’ll leave with the tide tomorrow.”
“But — ”
He cut her off with a kiss. “The Triton is mine. The deed’s in my name. My father can’t touch her.”
She heard the bitterness in his voice and couldn’t help but again think he was making a mistake — a terrible mistake. “Perhaps we should wait, then,” she murmured, chewing at her forefinger, “until tempers cool. Then, if things haven’t changed, we can set sail.”
“Heather — ”
“No.” She pulled free from his embrace. “You’re angry. Your father is most likely angry as well. Give it some time, Drew. See what happens. At least then, we’ll know you gave it a chance. I know what your temper is like, and I’ll wager your father has the same fiery temperament as well. Can we not see if cooler heads will prevail? “Besides,” she smiled up at him, “You did just buy a house and I was so looking forward to furnishing it.”
A flash of irritation glinted in his eyes, but he slowly nodded. “Very well. You win. I’m not such a beast that I’d deny you the fun of decorating your home. But,” he added solemnly, “I wish us to be married as soon as possible. Perhaps that’ll prove to them I am serious about this.”
She had to agree. After all, she’d been growing concerned about their wedding. She was nearly three months along. Eyebrows would rise if their baby was born too soon after their wedding. Although the child would be legitimate at birth, there would still be much speculation amongst the populace of Brunswick. The point would be rendered moot, if they returned to London, but the sooner they were married, the easier Heather would breathe.
At sunset that evening, Judge Montgomery Adler presided over the wedding ceremony of Andrew Kieran McKenzie and Heather Mary Morgan. It was a simple ceremony, taking place at the elegant, white marble edifice of the Brunswick courthouse. Jeremy Allen and Christina Anderson were the only guests present, acting as witnesses as the judge read the simple vows.
Heather’s eyes filled with tears of joy as Drew eased a delicate gold ring onto the third finger of her left hand, then took her in his arms for their first kiss as man and wife.
When it was over, he ordered their driver to take them to the harbor. As their home was still unfurnished, he explained, they would spend their wedding night in the privacy of his cabin aboard the Triton. In the morning, he would confront his father with the news of his marriage.
“But for now,” he whispered, setting her gently in the middle of the bed and covering her body with his, “we shall forget the outside world and celebrate our first night as man and wife the way it was meant to be celebrated.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Heather sneezed.
“Bless you.” Drew dragged the back of one wrist across his forehead. “Now will you please go below and sit down?”
“Fine.” She dropped the rag she’d be using to wipe down the windowsill at the rear of the nursery. Two weeks had passed since their wedding, and tonight would be the first night they’d spend in the house on Front Street. Although she loved the Triton almost as much as Drew did, she was greatly anticipating sleeping in their house.
“You shouldn’t be up here. Go and rest.” He came over and cupped her shoulders in both hands. His thumbs stroked lightly over her collarbones. “Please.”
“But there’s so much to do — ”
“Don’t argue, Heather. I’ll be fine. You’re going to make yourself sick.”
“Perhaps I could go up to Stonebridge and talk — ”
His jaw tightened. “You’ll do no such thing. I made myself perfectly clear. He forced my hand and I don’t regret my choice.”
His voice was hard, his words bitter. Heather reached to catch his hands in hers. “Drew, they’re your family. Please talk to them.”
“I said all I needed to say. Now, we aren’t discussing this again.”
With that, he walked back to the corner, where he was sanding the molding. She stared at him for a long moment, then turned to march out of the room. Only instead of stopping at the parlor, she snatched up her reticule and left the house to go up to the livery to hire a hack.
Her heart picked up its pace, hammering against her ribs as she alit from the carriage and stared up at the main house. Drew would be furious if he knew she was there, but since he refused to listen to reason, he left her with no other option.
She hesit
ated, rapped on the door, then questioned the wisdom of her actions until Martha, Stonebridge’s housekeeper, appeared. “Mrs. McKenzie?”
The name still sounded so foreign to her that her first inclination was to look for Drew’s mother. She caught herself, however. “Good afternoon, Martha. Is Mrs. McKenzie receiving?”
Martha stepped aside. “She’s in the music room, Mrs. McKenzie. This way, please.”
Her mouth uncomfortably dry, Heather followed the housekeeper down the narrow corridor, beyond the parlor, to the cozy music room. Martha stepped inside. “Miss Rebecca?”
The dryness in Heather’s mouth worsened as Rebecca looked up from the pianoforte and her expression remain stony. “Heather. How nice to see you.”
“Mrs. McKenzie, I understand you are upset with Drew, and he would be furious to know I’m here,” Heather crossed the room to the fireplace, where half a dozen miniature portraits dotted the mantle, “but I hate to see family not speaking to each other.”
Rebecca’s expression didn’t change. “It’s a sad day, to be sure.” She sighed, rising from the bench to join her at the hearth. “I’ve tried reasoning with Drew’s father, but he won’t listen.”
“You have?” Heather had expected an argument from Rebecca. She certainly hadn’t expected the woman to be on her side.
Rebecca bobbed her head. “Of course. I can’t honestly tell you it doesn’t trouble me, how you came to meet my son. It does to a certain extent, of course. But in the end, what matters most is that you make Drew happy. People will gossip no matter what, and by next week, the subject matter will change.
“But Drew loves you. I saw it that night you came for supper, and the night of the ball. Everyone could see it.” She lifted the portrait of a young dark haired, smiling boy, and pressed it into Heather’s hand. “See how mischievous he is there? He’s just a boy in this portrait, no more than fourteen if memory serves. But the devil in this boy’s eyes is the same one that was there until Bridget came along. And you put it back in his eyes.”
Heather stared down at the oval-shaped portrait in the palm of her hand. A young, boyishly handsome Drew smiled up from the canvas. “But you have reservations?”
“I do, and they have nothing to do with a gaming house in London.” Rebecca turned away from the mantel. “Would you care for a drink, Heather?”
Hearing Rebecca use her Christian name sent the warmth of camaraderie slicing through her. “I would love one.”
“Come into the kitchen. A bit unorthodox, I suppose, but most of the servants are out and about running their errands and the like. But, we will do just fine on our own. So, come along before Martha takes it upon herself to refuse to fetch us anything stronger than tea.”
What did Rebecca McKenzie have in mind? Heather found out when Rebecca marched through the kitchen and out the back door. “Madame McKenzie?”
“Wait there, Heather. I’m going to the wine cellar. Do you prefer red or white? Or port, perhaps?”
“Um…white̵…or red. Either is fine.” She’d never had port.
Wood ground against stone and Rebecca let out a soft oath as a bottle smashed to the floor. But when she emerged from the wine cellar, she looked pleased with her take-a bottle of red and a bottle of white.
“We’ll sit in the gazebo. Come.”
As Rebecca swept by, the heavy odor of ripe raisins wafted by. Heather wrinkled her nose at the syrupy sweet perfume of perfectly aged port. The liquor must have splashed back up, for it streaked the side and back of Rebecca’s pale gray muslin skirt.
The gazebo was not too far from the main house, on a high enough hill to take in a beautiful view of either rolling fields, or thick woods, and to attract the soft breezes skimming along the fields. Inside, Rebecca withdrew a corkscrew from her skirt pocket, and set to work uncorking the bottle of red.
“If I had my way, wine bottles would not have cork in them,” Rebecca grunted as she struggled to pop the cork from the bottle’s neck. “They are all so bloody stubborn.”
Heather carefully folded her skirts beneath her as she sat on the built-in bench. “Miss Rebecca, I just want you to know that the circumstances aren’t quite so salacious. They weren’t nearly as seedy as the gossips had made it.”
“You’ve heard the stories going around?” Rebecca opened the first bottle and brought it to her lips to for long swallow.
Heather tried not to stare, but she never would have taken Drew’s mother as one improper enough to drink directly from the bottle. Still, she managed to neither stare nor smile. “I have. And I can assure you, Drew paid that money to get me out of Coal’s. That was it. He did nothing untoward, nothing improper. He just did not want me to go to a man who would think nothing of mistreating me.”
“But why were you there if you weren’t…” Rebecca’s cheeks tinted pick and, instead of trying to finish her sentence, she brought the bottle to her lips again.
Heather hesitated before sipping from the bottle of white. It seemed so indecent. Then Rebecca’s words sank in, and she shook her head. “No. Oh, no. I’m not. I never was. I didn’t even want to be there at all that evening. I had no choice. My father sold me to Coal to pay off his own huge debts.”
“You mean to say, your own father dumped you there?” Rebecca’s eyes went almost round with horror. As Heather nodded, Rebecca tsked. “That is terrible!”
“It would have been, had Drew not been there. But he was, and he saved me from becoming one of them.”
“I will speaking to his father again about this. It’s ludicrous. Fathers shouldn’t disown their sons over something so trivial and I am going to make certain James marches his way down to Front Street and refuses to leave until all is well again.”
“I think that sounds like a wonderful plan to me.” For the first time in days, Heather’s spirits rose easily. She had an ally, and a very powerful ally at that, and she had every intention of reuniting father and son before the chasm became too wide and impassable.
A block of wood flew past her face, just merely missing her nose. “Drew? What the deuce are you doing?”
“I told you we were finished discussing those people — ”
“Those people are your family, you jackass. And you can swear to me until you’re blue in the face that you don’t give a damn about them, but we both know that isn’t true.” She frowned at the bottle on wine lying on its side on the sideboard, knocked over by his fit of temper. “If it was, you’d have left Brunswick entirely when we were living on the Triton. But you didn’t.”
“Because this is my home and I’ll be damned if that old goat is going to drive me from my home.” He scooped up scraps of sandpaper and gathered discarded chucks of wood. “You had no right — ”
“I had every right, Andrew McKenzie! They are my family as well and I will not have them thinking poorly of me unnecessarily. You and your father need to talk. If you like, I will ask Garrett to come and sit in as well.”
“What I want is for you, and my mother, and everyone else who’s thought to shove their nose into my business, to leave me alone. Do you understand that, Heather. Leave. Me. Alone.”
With that, he threw down the scraps he’d just gathered, and stormed from the room. Stairs thudded as he stomped up, then a door slammed.
She winced with that bang, even as she moved to the foot of the staircase, pausing briefly before she gathered her skirts to hurry up after him.
She pressed her forehead against the closed door. The floor creaked as Drew moved from one side of the room to the other, and he was muttering something, but she couldn’t make out the words.
The door handle turned easily in her hand. “Drew?”
“What?”
Oh, dear. He was still angry, judging by the tautness in his voice. “What’re you doing?”
“There’s a shipment of indigo ready to go to Europe and I’ve changed my mind about allowing Mr. Barber to take the Triton’s helm. I’m going to do it, instead.”
“You are?” Sh
e closed the door, then folded her arms over her chest as she glared at him. “So, you’re going to run away? Is that what you do when things get messy, Drew? You run?”
He turned away from the wardrobe, a pair of boots in his hands. “I’m not running.”
“Of course you are. Why won’t you simply speak with your father. You both have tempers, isn’t it possible you both said things you now regret?”
Drew tossed the boots into the trunk. “No.”
With that, he slammed the lid and she jumped. “Drew — ”
“We’re leaving tomorrow with the tide.”
“We’re leaving?”
He nodded as he sank onto the closed trunk lid. Resting his forearms on his thighs, his hands dangling between them, he looked much older, and very tired. “I can’t stay here, Heather. We can’t stay here. I’ve been thinking about it all day and there’s nothing here now. We’ll go back to England and start over.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, her anger fading as she moved to sit beside him. Leaning her head against his shoulder, she murmured, “Are you certain you want to leave things this way? Your mother agrees with me that you and your father need to sit down. She — ”
“Will side with my father, no matter what she says to you.” He shifted to drape an arm about her shoulders and pressed her into him. “And I do understand why you went to see her, and I do appreciate it.”
“Please just be certain leaving is what you truly wish to do.” She lifted her face to his. “I should hate to see you regret this.”
“I’m not going to regret anything.” He bent to brush her lips with a gentle kiss. “Now, go and sit, and I will make sure everything you need is brought to the ship.”
“Very well.” She rose with a sigh. “If you’re certain…”
“I am.”
He said it with such finality that, despite her reservations, she didn’t press. Perhaps one day he would change his mind. She only hoped that, when that time came, it wasn’t too late and the chasm between father and son wasn’t too large to bridge.