"All three of our sisters hate Sierran," Fallon drawled.
"Jilly could befriend the little whore and somehow get her down to the seaside where we will be waiting with a boat to whisk her away! 'Tis only a two hour sail from Zynkanthos to Edgeville Bay."
"What part of ‘DuMond has guards all over the place’ did you not understand, Dyllon?" Vaughn snarled. "There…are…guards…all…over…the…place!"
"Watching for your sloop," Peyton commented. "Would they be looking for a fisherman's boat tying up near LeMoyne's place, do you think? A brace of natives from Guernsey perhaps?"
"A fisherman's boat rowed out from your sloop," Fallon suggested.
"The sloop would have to be far enough out that DuMond's guards can't spy it," Vaughn said. "That's a long row."
"What do you care?" Dyllon asked. "You won't be the one doing the rowing."
"But how will we get Jillian there?" Fallon asked.
"I can take her in my sloop," Peyton said. "I doubt they'll allow me to come ashore with her but they won't dare turn Jillian away. One of my men can row her ashore in the jolly boat. They'll take her up to Vista del Mar, mark my words."
"Do you think she'll go along with this?" Vaughn asked.
"Jilly hates Sierran as much as we do," Fallon replied. "If it means doing something to piss him off, she'll be all over it!"
* * *
Lady Jillian Morgan-Rhys was only too glad to help her brothers when they rode out to her estate later than morning. All she asked in return was to be allowed to watch her youngest brother's crippling downfall at the hands of their father.
"I want to watch him go down once and for all, the snotty little bugger," she growled.
"We'll all be there," Dyllon said. "The more the merrier to witness Sierran's humiliation."
Jillian nodded. "It's high time Father put him in his place!"
"All right," Fallon said. "This is what we do…"
"Poor old Sierran," her husband remarked as he sat smoking his pipe beside the fireplace while his wife and her brothers hatched out their scheme. "He'll never know what hit him."
* * *
The only thing that Lady Judith Morgan enjoyed―save the devoted attention of her stable master―was embroidering. Sitting for hours with cloth and thread in hand, she could wile away the hours quite pleasantly without interruption by either staff or onerous husband. Eagle Grove—the estate ruled over by the iron hand of a husband she despised and coveted by his four eldest sons whom she equally detested—practically ran itself with a well-chosen and excellent staff who rarely bothered Lady Judith with decision making. When she was in her solarium, no one dared to intrude unless it was a matter of life or death and that was rarely the case. So it was that on that late November afternoon when she looked out her solarium window to see her arrogant sons riding up the drive, she paused with needle pulled up through fabric and frowned.
"Melissa!" Lady Judith called out to the servant girl who sat out in the corridor awaiting her mistress' pleasure.
"Aye, milady?" the girl replied, hurrying to the doorway but not stepping foot over the threshold unless invited to do so.
“The brats are here. Find out what those little twerps are about," Lady Judith commanded, pushing the needle through the material in her hand. "Be very cautious but report back to me everything that is said as soon as they leave."
"Aye, milady!" Melissa did not need to ask which little twerps she was to spy upon. The girl curtsied and hurried away, tripping lightly down the stairs with her skirts held up, and blended in with the other servants who were seeing to the young masters' riding gloves and coats.
"Where is Lord James?" Lord Vaughn inquired of Jenkins, the butler.
"In the library, milord," Jenkins replied. "Shall I announce you, sir?"
"Not necessary," Vaughn snapped and he and his three brothers trooped toward the library.
Melissa sidled down the corridor behind them. She motioned away another girl who would have followed the Morgan brothers into the library in case they required refreshment and slipped unseen and ignored into the room, pressing herself close against the wall with her hands folded demurely at her waist—as invisible as all the other servants scuttling about Eagle Grove. As usual, none of the men noticed her as she hovered there.
"We have been thinking on this problem with Sierran, Father," Lord Vaughn began.
For nearly an hour Melissa listened to the conversation between father and sons and noted every word spoken and who had said it. When the brothers had finished their business with their father and were trooping back out of the room, not a one of them glanced her way. She was a part of the furnishings and garnered just as much notice.
"Get me a sandwich and a glass of lemonade, Mel," Lord James ordered, not even bothering to look up at the girl who was about to slip quietly from the room. "And be sure to inform my wife that it was Fallon's idea for Jillian to go to Zykanthos and not mine."
"Aye, milord," Melissa said with a deep curtsey.
Reporting her news to Lady Judith after carrying her master's snack to him, Melissa asked if there was anything else she could do for the mistress of Eagle Grove.
"No, that will be all," Lady Judith said as her nimble fingers plied the needle through a series of intricate knots.
Melissa bobbed another quick curtsey then went back to her uncomfortable chair in the corridor.
As soon as she was alone again, Lady Judith laid her embroidery down in her lap and turned to stare out the window. The skies were gunmetal gray and it looked as though snow would finally come to Argonne. She liked the snow for it covered the land in a crisp, pristine blanket that hid all the imperfections on the ground.
If there was one thing Lady Judith hated more than her overbearing, cheating husband was imperfection of any kind. A perfectionist, her embroidered creations were perfect in every way and she would accept nothing less even if it meant ripping out hours of stitching until the piece was flawless.
Because the offspring of her loins were not perfect and never would be, and because they each had faults Lady Judith found nearly unbearable, she kept as far away from them as possible. That a woman such as herself could produce imperfect children wounded her very soul. She could not even find it in her to lay hands to the creatures once they had slithered from her womb. Looking forward to the day such abominations would cease being foisted off on her by her hated spouse it had been with acute displeasure she learned she was carrying her last unwanted and unloved child.
"Sierran," she said aloud and her eyes glazed over with distaste.
Right from the start the pregnancy had been difficult. Where no morning sickness ever had been with the other seven confinements, now it never seemed to end. Heartburn, weight gain, bloating, and many additional conditions she had not experienced with her other children, she was forced to endure with the last one. From the moment he had come squalling into the world, she had loathed the squirming child. As she had with her other children, she had handed him off to a wet nurse and turned her back to him.
"Get that thing out of my sight so I may rest!" she had ordered the midwife.
Not once in his entire life had Lady Judith laid a hand to her youngest son except to switch his bare legs when he was a small child or to brutally slap his face when he was older. No motherly arms had ever been thrown around Sierran DeLyle Morgan. No gentle maternal eye had ever looked upon him. No caring, gentle voice had ever spoken his name within the walls of Fallwich, where the unwanted brat had been born. Nor had he been spirited away in the dead of night to Argonne when the rest of his family had fled the war-torn soil of Emardia, but rather he had been left behind to fend for him self at the tender age of thirteen.
"Sierran," Lady Judith said again, and the word was followed by a long sigh.
Mentally calculating how old the boy would be now, she realized it had been sixteen years since last she'd seen her youngest. She wondered if he looked like her or if he more resembled his father. When he had been left behind i
n Emardia, he was undergoing that gawky in between stage where he was all arms and legs, thin as a rail. There had been nothing even remotely handsome about the gangly boy. He was, after all, the runt of the litter and therefore expendable.
But now? she thought. What of now? What was he like now?
News of her youngest son's exploits during the war with Emardia had managed to reach her, though she tended to dismiss much of the rhetoric where he was concerned. Apparently he had risen quickly up the ranks of the Ibydosian Forces and had been awarded many medals for honor and valor. His daring was well documented and his brilliant successes were spoken of with high respect by those who erroneously believed the Morgans would be all too happy to hear of their son's accomplishments. He was considered a national hero by the Federation and had amassed a fortune in bounties from the Ibydosian High Commission.
But what was he really like?
"Quite the lady's man is your Sierran, Judi," one of their old acquaintances had reported a few years back. "Has chits running after him wherever he goes."
"Like father, like son", Lady Judith had snapped at the time. "Morgan men are all alike. They can't keep it in their britches!"
Yet not one hint of scandal had ever been associated with her younger son's name—unlike her older sons' predilections for debauchery and depravity that were the talk of Argonne. There were no bastard offspring of Sierran's running around as there were with Vaughn, Dyllon, Fallon, and Peyton. Not one hint of dishonor had ever sullied the young man's name and no rumors or gossip of bad conduct had been linked to him.
Even her daughters—for whom she had an even stronger dislike than she did for her sons―had scandal associated with their names on occasion but not once had anyone spoken ill of Sierran.
Her embroidery forgotten, Lady Judith laid her head on the tall back of the chair and closed her eyes.
"Are you the only perfect one among them, Sierran?" she asked softly. "Did I produce one nearly flawless specimen after all?"
She rather doubted she had.
Chapter Twelve
When several weeks passed without someone from his family attempting to contact him about his forced Joining to Lady Beatrice Summerall, Sierran began to breath a sigh of relief. Perhaps, just perhaps—he prayed—they had decided to forget about him as they had for the past sixteen years. Though he'd ran into Vaughn and Peyton in Placida a few times over the last year since the Ibydosian Forces had all but squashed the Emardians, their meetings had been in passing and not long enough to discuss family matters—which he was sure neither Vaughn nor Peyton would have done anyway. Those chance encounters had left a bad taste in Sierran's mouth and a mean look in the eyes of both Vargas and Mac who despised their commander's older brothers.
He'd said little of his family to Celeste, giving her only rudimentary information about his brothers and sisters as he remembered them from his childhood. He had absolutely no knowledge of the spouses of his siblings or how many times over—if at all—had he become an uncle. Of his parents, he said barely anything except to express his belief that he had been unwanted by both. Since both sets of grandparents had been long gone before his birth, all he could say of the rest of his family was that many of them—uncles, aunts, cousins—had met their deaths at the hands of the Emardians. If there were any left outside his immediate family, he was unaware of their existence.
Having grown up an only child, Celeste could feel the loneliness she heard in what her husband did not say. She began to realize he had grown up virtually on his own without the help or support of his family. Raised by the staff, he had not been given the opportunities or indulgencies his brothers and sisters had enjoyed and had instead been given only what was left over and that seemed precious little in Celeste's estimation. The more she heard of his family, the less she liked them and was more determined than ever to be the family he had never really had.
On the day another Morgan sloop appeared on Zykanthos Bay, it was bitterly cold and the fancy ship sat half-hidden by curtains of falling snow. A cry went up along the dock and word soon reached Sierran that there was a ship in the harbor. Taking the stairs two at a time up to the solarium, the owner of Vista del Mar stood staring at the ship as it dropped anchor in his bay.
"Is it your brother Vaughn?" Celeste asked as she joined him at the glass.
"That isn't his sloop but it carries the Morgan colors of gold and green on the flag," he said around clenched teeth. He nudged his chin toward the boat. "You can't tell from here but there's a sable gryphon rampant on the gold shield."
Celeste had seen his family crest on the gold ring he wore on the little finger of his right hand. She looked up at him and saw a muscle grinding in his cheek. "Will they dare to come ashore?"
"They'd best not," he snapped and spun around to stalk back the way he'd come. When he got to the landing, he leaned over the railing to yell down at the man who had run all the way to the keep to inform him of the ship's arrival.
"Franco, go back to the docks and tell Mac he isn't to let any of my brothers come ashore. Tell him I said for them to get their asses out of my waters or I'll blow that fancy sloop into so much driftwood!"
"Aye, milord!" the man replied, tugging at his forelock then hurried off.
"Sierran," Celeste said. "They are lowering a boat into the water."
Spitting out a stream of vulgar words, Sierran strode back into the solarium and straight to the window where his wife was still standing. Through the gently falling snow, he could see three people in the jolly boat being lowered from the port side of the ship.
"Is that a woman sitting between the rowers?" Celeste asked.
Sierran stiffened. "If they sent that diseased hag to me, I'll cut her into little pieces and send her back to them in a vat of brine!" he snarled.
"You'll do no such thing," she said and when he swiveled his head around to glare at her, she raised her chin. "I'll do it for you."
He grinned for the militant look on his lady's face was precious to him. "I'll leave such things to your tender mercies, then, but if that is the Summerall bitch, she'll never see the inside of Vista del Mar." He put a hand to her cheek. "You'll have to kill her down at the docks, and pray not in one of your good gowns, either."
Celeste tilted her face into his palm. "You are so good to me, husband." She batted her eyes at him.
His ill humor vanishing beneath the onslaught of his lady's bantering, he bid her stay there until he could find out who it was that had braved the wintry sea to come calling. "It could be my mother, the gods forbid," he said though Celeste had heard a slight hint of hope in his gruff voice.
From the solarium, Celeste watched her husband go into the stable and come back out sitting astride his huge buckskin stallion, Churada. Riding bareback with his black great cape fluttering behind him, her husband was something to behold. The sight made her very proud of her warrior as he clattered over the planks of the drawbridge and toward the harbor.
* * *
Sierran was pacing the dock by the time the jolly boat entered the shallows and two of his men went to help the rowers pull the ship to shore. He squinted against the cold invasion of the snow crystals clinging to his eyelashes, trying to get a glimpse of the woman sitting all bundled in a dark green wool full length cape—the hood of which was pulled low to protect her face—in the middle of the jolly boat. When one of the men would have lifted her from the boat, the woman balked.
"Only my brother is to touch me, you oaf!" he heard her snap.
A portion of the expectation that had been building in his chest dissolved when he realized it was not his mother who had come after all. It was one of his sisters—or sisters-in-law—but he did not recognize the voice. Of course it had been many years since he'd heard or seen them and doubted he had ever met any of the women whom had married his brothers. Frowning, he strode toward the boat and once there held his arms out to the woman standing with the hood down even lower over her head.
"Milady," he said.
She smelled good, he thought as he carried her through the sand. Nearly as light in weight as his wife, she appeared to be taller than Celeste. When he set her down on the boardwalk, he realized she was so tall, she nearly equaled him in height. Since his two older sisters had been short, he reasoned this must be the youngest, Jillian, and when he spoke her name, she tilted her head back, and he saw her face for the first time since they were children.
"You bruised my ribs, I believe," she complained.
It was a petulant face he beheld but lovely, though lines were beginning to bracket the corner of her mouth. Slightly oval in shape, her striking green eyes—an inheritance from their mother—peered at him with the haughtiness he remembered all too well and he saw lines developing there, as well. Her cupid bow lips were pursed into an unforgiving line, her cheeks red from the cold, and her determined chin held high as she regarded him.
"Well, now. You are not as ugly as Vaughn said you were," she stated, sweeping her gaze down him.
"Why are you here?" he asked, her hateful words striking his heart.
"But just as rude as ever, I see," she said. "Are you going to keep me here in the cold while I state my business with you, Sierran?"
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to state her business and be gone but some tender part of him relented and he turned to the men who had rowed the jolly boat ashore. "Put her luggage on the boardwalk then go back to the ship." He looked at Jillian. "How long do you intend to stay?"
His sister waved her hand regally. "At least a few weeks. We've so much catching up to do."
Sierran winced. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to his sister but of the three, she was the only one for whom he had held even a smidgen of affection. There was no doubt in his mind why she was there but some renegade part of him hoped to learn something of his absent family.
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