The Raider’s Bride

by Kimberly Cates

  Tony looked away, his voice softening. "Ian is the best friend a man could have. He will fight for anyone who is weaker than he. He's the only planter I know who does not use slave labor to work his fields. He buy slaves at the market, but then he sets them free, offers them employment, a plot of their own land, tells them to stay or go as they please. No man has the right to hold others in bondage."

  Tony paused for a moment then gave a crooked smile. "He is the first with a jest when you are disconsolate, and the last to lay blame when someone has failed."

  "Because he so often blames himself?"

  "You do know him, by God. Yes. He blames himself. The one thing he has the most difficulty believing is that he is worthwhile, that there is something inside him of value."

  "Why, Tony?" she asked, praying that this man might be able to give her answers that Ian never would. "What has made him this way? A woman?"

  "I wish it were that simple. But it began long before Ian's first affair of the heart." Tony sighed. "He... was estranged from his father as a boy, and swore never to be like him."

  "Was his father a cruel man?"

  "In his way. Ian's mother died because his father forced his, er, marital attentions on her even after the doctor forbade it, saying she would die if she bore another child."

  Tony hesitated a moment. "In the end she did die. Why Ian blames himself for that, I can't even guess. And I'm certain he'd never share his thoughts with me. But maybe he could tell you, Emily. Maybe you could help him understand that what happened between his parents was not his fault. Maybe he would let himself love you if you reached out to him. If you made him see himself the way we see him. Through your eyes."

  Emily turned away. "I'd like to do that, Tony, but I don't think... There are so many things about me that Ian doesn't know. I have my own pain, my own ghosts."

  "Then you and Ian must lay your ghosts to rest together."

  Tony gave her a gentle hug. "I'm going to pay a call on Ian now. I want to see if that blow he took to the head straightened out his wits or if I need to adjust them some more for the wretch."

  With that, Tony swung astride his horse and tipped his tricorn in farewell, then spurred his stallion exuberantly toward the house.

  Emily stood there a long time, Tony's words echoing in her head: "If you made Ian see himself... through your eyes.... You and Ian must lay your ghosts to rest together.... If you reached out...."

  Reach out...

  Emily felt a shiver of apprehension shimmer through her, her mind filling with images of stormy blue eyes and a face filled with savage beauty. A face she had seen touched with far different emotions—confusion, almost shyness, and the first fragile stirrings of tenderness.

  She remembered the girl she had been, quaking before her parents on the night her betrothal to the squire was announced. She remembered how devastated she had been, yet not strong enough to defy them until Alexander came to stand beside her. And in so doing ruined his life.

  She remembered how desperate she had been on the steps of the ducal seat of Avonstea, how she had allowed the d'Autrecourts to take her child from her arms and deprive Alexander of the care of his wife.

  She was not that frightened girl any longer. She was far stronger now. Strong enough to reach out even when she was afraid.

  To take her own life in her hands. To walk, as the gentle Quakeress had said, out of the water.

  Emily straightened her back, shifting her eyes to the house, where Ian Blackheath had been alone for so long.

  If you reached out to him, Tony had begged her. If you made him see himself the way we see him.

  Goodness. Strength. That wonderful humor that crept into his crystal blue eyes. The gentleness in his touch when she told him about Jenny. The almost shy delight with which he had presented Lucy with the pianoforte, the treasure ensconced in the most Lucyesque room in the entire house.

  "Oh, Ian," she whispered to the night. "There is so little time before I have to leave to deal with Atwood, to finish this disaster I embarked upon from England. But before I go, I will show you. I shall make you see, just this once, what you are in my eyes. A knight-errant, Ian. Battered but more beautiful than any pristine Galahad. A tattered hero with magic in your eyes."

  Her voice shook as she whispered, "The only man I have ever loved."

  * * *

  "Damn it, Tony, I'll brook no more of your interference," Ian raged, stalking the length of the chambre d'amour. "You have enough problems to deal with in your own romance without trying to foist one off on me."

  Tony lounged against the damask siege with that unflappable expression that most infuriated Ian. Gray's face was so beatific and filled with commiseration that Ian was hard-pressed not to break a fire iron over the wretch's head. Gray had been in this blissful state of empathy ever since he had interrupted Lucy's concert and all but dragged Ian to this meeting.

  A meeting in a room that now held a score of agonizing memories for Ian. Not memories of the almost fiendish amusement Ian and Tony had taken in designing this chamber of pure lechery to shock all those who entered but rather memories of a woman so generous with her hands, her lips, her heart, that Ian had almost been selfish enough, greedy enough, to take what she had offered him with those eyes that were so wide and wondering, with those hands that could soothe away the fiercest pain.

  Ian had stalked into the chamber with Tony, hoping to God there was some disaster with the English soldiery to deal with or, better still, that revolution itself had broken out across the land. That way he could escape the tempest Emily d'Autrecourt had unleashed in him by flinging himself into the raging fury of battle.

  But when Gray began his infernal prattling, and Ian realized that it was not some dire disaster or political trauma that had brought Tony here but rather an inquiry after Ian's wound and an urge to meddle in Ian's affairs, Ian felt as if Tony Gray had tossed a burning candle into a powder keg.

  "Ian, don't you see?" Ian heard Gray's reasonable voice through the red haze of his own fury. "It is all right for you to love Emily."

  "You are the one who was railing about the fact that I was fitting my neck for a noose just by having her here until Lucy could be parceled out!" Ian roared. "I remember precisely how you stomped about and—"

  Gray gave a shrug, totally unaffected by Ian's rage. "She's an Englishwoman. I admit it made me a trifle jittery on your behalf. But I just saw her walking among the oaks. I saw her face and listened to her speak of you, and—"

  "You accosted her on the drive?" Ian rounded on Tony with savage fury, unable to tolerate the knowing grin creasing his friend's face. "By God, if you filled her full of any of your crackbrained theories about the state of my emotions, I will kill you and be damned! I can't have her, blast it! Don't you see that?"

  "No, I don't see," Tony said in that infernally calm tone. "Why can't you have her?"

  Ian slammed his fist against the wall, glad of the pain, as he battled to obliterate the utterly beguiling, utterly impossible visions Tony's words were creating in his mind.

  "Because of who I am, damn it! Because of what I am! It's too dangerous."

  "Don't you think that is for Emily to decide?"

  "No! No, I don't! I—"

  "What the devil do you think we are fighting for, Ian, when we take to the highroads and ride?" Tony demanded, pacing toward him. "Do you think we are fighting for theories? Cold words printed upon a page by some idealist with his head in the clouds? We're fighting for a place where our children can grow up, free from all the restrictions of the old order. Free, in a new world, Ian. One we can build ourselves. That is something worth dying for, my friend."

  Ian hated Gray for being right, hated him for the goodness that still wreathed his face. A wholeness of spirit that Ian had never known. He crushed the emotion, struggling to be happy for his friend when his own world was crumbling at his feet.

  "There can be a new world for you, Tony," Ian said at last. "And, yes, blast it, one with Nora in it.
You're not like me, Gray. You never have been."

  "How are you so different?"

  "No one knows better than you," Ian said. "You're not tainted, as I am. What kind of husband would I make for her? A man with my past? A man who courts death as if it were a lover."

  "Ian, that's not—"

  "Those are your words, Tony! Not mine!"

  Gray's hand closed about Ian's shoulder. "If you had Emily's arms to hold you, Ian, you'd want to live."

  "It's too late for me, Tony." Ian ripped away from that steadying hand, needing to feel alone. Alone as he'd always been. He saw a flash of hurt cross Tony's features, along with stubborn determination.

  "Maybe Emily doesn't think it is too late, any more than I do. Maybe Lucy doesn't think so."

  The words were a jagged blade carving Ian's soul. "They don't even know me! What they see is a mirage, Tony, a facade. Ian Blackheath, planter, rakehell. My reality is on the highroads, wearing the mask of Pendragon."

  "Then tell Emily the truth! If she loves you it won't matter."

  "Emily has already given me her opinion of the rebel raider Pendragon," Ian said with a bitter laugh. "She told Lucy that he is a rebel thief, a criminal. Lucy actually had the poor judgment to admire the patriot raider, but Emily corrected that notion at once. It seems people who commit cold-blooded murder are not good examples for children."

  "Emily just arrived here from England a little while ago. How could she be expected to understand? You have to talk to her, show her what you believe in. By God, you've probably made certain she thinks that the only virtue you prize is the rapidity with which you can untie a woman's garters."

  "No." Ian's voice dropped low. His laugh was mirthless, filled with longing. "I am not as good at subterfuge as I was once thought to be, my friend. Emily already knows..." He gestured to the room all around him. "She knows that this is all a lie.

  "But that can't matter, Tony. I can't let it." Ian paced to where Cupid lay in Psyche's arms, and his fingers traced the glorious midnight waves of Psyche's hair. "I cannot let Emily look upon my true face any more than this poor god could allow it of his lady, Tony. For if Emily does, she will find the same thing as tragical Psyche did."

  Ian turned away, his eyes desolate.

  "She will find her ruination."

  Chapter 14

  Emily pulled her comb through hair that rippled like a silken river down her back, as delicately beautiful as the night shift that draped her body. The scent of roses clung to her skin in a gossamer veil, the blossoms having been plucked from the garden and steeped in the hot water of her bath an hour before.

  As she gazed at her reflection in the mirror, the woman who stared back at her seemed like a stranger. Her eyes were large and soft and just a little wary. Her cheeks were brushed with the delicate pink of the underside of a seashell cupped in a child's palm. Her lips were reddened from the countless times she had nervously caught at them with her teeth as she imagined the night that was to come.

  This night that could be the most magical of her life—or the most humiliating, if Ian should send her away.

  Emily brushed back one of the damp curls that clung to her brow and wondered what Ian would think when she entered his room. The bedchamber where she had told him her deepest secrets... the chamber where she now hoped he would reveal secrets of a far more dizzying kind to her.

  She closed her eyes, little frissons of sensation sizzling through her body, as she remembered the caresses Ian had trailed over her skin, the kisses he had pressed, hot and moist, against her racing pulse beats.

  She could remember every groan of surrender, every laugh, every smile. She could remember how indignant he had been when Lucy claimed he was her papa, and how demonically pleased he'd been when he returned to the shop to see that Lucy had been treating Emily to a taste of equally exasperating mischief.

  She could remember his dry humor when it came to Lucy's buttons. She could remember that hot, tempestuous look on his face when he had come to her in the chambre d'amour, the magnificent weight of him against her upon the damask siege.

  But most of all, she could remember how he had cradled Lucy in his arms just a few hours ago, as if he had been entrusted with a most unlikely angel and was not quite certain what to do with her.

  Lucy...

  Emily had tried to stem her own restlessness as she'd tucked the child in bed tonight, singing her asleep with the little French song and doing "the kissing thing," which Lucy pronounced very nice. The child had clamored for her uncle to come as well and sing for her, but Ian had been off with Tony somewhere, talking. And at last Emily had persuaded the little girl to try to sleep.

  Emily couldn't help but smile. The child had tried for nearly two hours, a fact that Lucy had announced in long-suffering accents at five-minute intervals throughout.

  Only for the past half hour had there been a blessed silence. One that Emily was grateful for as she readied herself to become Ian Blackheath's lover.

  His lover.

  Even the words seemed to hold mysteries as dark as midnight, a sweet promise as hot as berries picked in the blazing sun, bursting on lips that were hungry for the sweetness they offered.

  Her pulse skittered, and she turned away from the mirror, setting down the battered comb that was one of the few things she had kept from that other life—the life of the shy vicar's daughter who had been so wide-eyed and innocent when she wandered out through the parsonage gates and into the real world.

  This would be a journey every bit as enlightening.

  She smiled just a little. She had been a wife for four years. She had shared a man's bed. Comforted his pain. Borne him a child.

  But tonight she felt more skittish than she had the night she became Alexander d'Autrecourt's bride.

  For a heartbeat she hesitated at the door of her bedchamber, feeling as if she were teetering on the brink of something wonderful, something frightening.

  Then she slipped through the corridor to the room where she had taken Ian to warm himself when he'd been soaked by the storm.

  She caught her lower lip with her teeth, and raised her hand as if to knock on the door, but then she stopped. A nervous bubble of laughter rose in her throat. Was it proper etiquette for a man's mistress to knock on the door? Or was that definitely de trop, drawing the attention of servants and houseguests upon the indiscretion?

  In the end she pressed her hand against the door and pushed it open just a crack. She hated the quaver in her voice as she called softly. "Ian. It's me. Emily. May I come in?"

  "Emily." Her name was a rasped groan on his lips, and she pushed the door wider, alarm streaking through her.

  He sat in a Chippendale chair facing an open window. His shirt lay rumpled over his shoulders; his face was buried in one strong hand. Stifling a cry, Emily shut the door behind her and hurried toward him, then stopped behind the chair, uncertain what to say, what to do.

  He seemed devastated. Destroyed. His shoulders sagged, his breathing was ragged.

  Any thoughts of seduction vanished in the wake of a fierce need to ease whatever was causing him such pain.

  "Oh, Ian, what is distressing you so?" she asked softly. "Did you and Tony argue again?"

  "Tony? Bloody bastard. As if he wasn't bad enough. But then to have her come here. To find this waiting..."

  Emily took a step toward him. "Who came here, Ian? What did you find waiting?"

  "Lucy. She... she left this inside the door." Emily closed the space between them and stared down at what lay pillowed on Ian's lap. Her breath snagged in her throat, elation warring with raw terror.

  There in stark relief against Ian's breeches lay the small wooden figure of the fashion doll Lucy had stolen from the shop that first day she had barreled into Emily's life.

  For long seconds Emily didn't know what to say. She swallowed hard, groping for words. Sweet heaven, was it possible that Ian knew about her deceit? Was it possible that Lucy had found the message inside the plaything?


  What an idiotic question, Emily thought a little wildly. With Lucy anything was possible.

  Was this despair she saw in Ian because of her? Because he suspected... what? That she was an English spy? Could that matter so much to him? A man totally alienated from the patriot cause? A man who read John Locke? Voltaire? "Ian, I... the doll..." She started to stammer. But at that moment he shoved a piece of paper into Emily's hand. On one side was Lucy's drawing of Pendragon. On the other were words penned in a child's awkward hand. Emily read them, her own heart breaking:

  Dear Uncle Ian,

  Here is the lady's doll that I stole away from her shop and hid under my dress to bring back here. I was very naughty to take it and keep it in the apple barrel. But sometimes I cannot help being detestable bad. I just wanted the doll so I could have something to love. But I have decided to love you and the lady instead. Your affectionate niece, Lucy Dubbonet

  Tears streamed down Emily's face as she slipped around the chair and sank down on the floor before Ian. She looked up into that face, half covered by his splayed hand, but if he'd had a shield of iron before him, he could not have hidden how deeply the letter had moved him or how much he loved the little girl who had sent it.

  Then why the despair? The agony? Why did he look as if he had just lost all of his dreams, instead of having gained Lucy's love?

  And Emily's own.

  He had to know that, had to sense it.

  Or was that only another burden added onto Ian's pain?

  "Ian." She said his name softly, reaching up to thread her fingers back through the waves of his hair, skimming over the rugged square of his jaw, those high-slashed, arrogant cheekbones that were damp. And when he turned his face to look at her, what she saw there was both more frightening and more awe-inspiring than anything she'd beheld in her life.