Silver-Tongued Temptress

by Sara Ackerman

  She turned and walked to the fireplace, her actions swift and sure as she laid logs in the hearth and lit a flame. A warm blaze soon crackled.

  “Clever. You’ve learned the important skill of building a fire.”

  “I am as surprised as you.” She bustled about the room, gathering the tea kettle and cups, her movements graceful in their efficiency. The ewer on the sideboard contained water from the night before. She grabbed the porcelain container and poured water into the kettle, her movements fluid and graceful. “Perhaps my father taught me when I was younger. However, it might be pure conjecture. If he had, though, it was the one time he deviated from his indifferent approach to raising children. His tutelage is the most likely scenario, for how else would I know how to light a fire? Not from my mother. She was of the firm position my sisters and I should master other, more important skills.”

  Her back was turned toward him, yet he heard the smile in her voice and tempered one of his own. She was always a wild one, shunning the more delicate arts in favor of untraditional pursuits like horseback racing, climbing trees, and running. Bea was a hoyden at heart. Even when he’d been thirteen he had known she was trouble. He doubted she had outgrown those tendencies, lost memory or no.

  “It is a most useful skill. I never understood why you English insist on sheltering your young women. Everyone should know how to care for himself, whether it’s setting a fire or cooking a meal. Needlepoint and how to wave a fan about is hardly useful.”

  “The next time I see my old governess, Miss Potts, I’ll be sure to pass on your complaints, even if she is sure to disagree.” She put her nose in the air and in a nasal voice said, “A lady must never do for herself what she can pay others to do for her.”

  “Miss Potts?”

  “The one and only. Though perhaps after a week of eating my cooking you’d like a chance to tell her yourself what a lady needs to learn.” She was stirring his porridge, a becoming rosy flush on her cheeks.

  He shuddered, more from the reminder of her cooking than the banked fires stirring in his gut. If this week had taught him anything, it was to be careful what he wished for. He’d wanted to keep her occupied tending to household chores. If she were busy cooking or cleaning, she’d have no time to concoct new ways to get into bed with him. His plan had backfired, though he didn’t know how. Even anticipating unmitigated disaster, he’d not foreseen her unabashed glee which occurred with every mishap.

  All week he’d been served barely edible food; it was undercooked, too salty, or burnt. She served it all with a smile and a sassy wiggle of her hips, and he was helpless to do anything but eat or else risk hurting her.

  There were times when he imagined a glimpse of his former Beatrice, a young woman who wouldn’t have blinked twice at doing a task poorly in order to avoid doing it. In fact, on more than one occasion he suspected she deliberately sabotaged his food. Yesterday morning’s porridge had been served too soon, swimming in milky-white water. The oats were chewy and, to add insult to injury, she had substituted salt for sugar. He almost choked to death on the first bite. After spying her trembling mouth and tear-filled eyes, he had spooned the offending mixture into his mouth with forced gusto, doing his best not to asphyxiate himself or upend the contents of his stomach onto the table.

  He dreaded what she’d serve him today. “No, no, my dear. You cook well for someone who is learning.”

  She continued to stir his porridge and smirked. “Perhaps you take displeasure with my sewing skills.”

  After a disastrous breakfast several mornings past, he had handed her several worn garments needing to be mended. She had taken the garments without complaint, and he’d left the cottage, satisfied she’d learned her place. When he returned later in the afternoon, she presented him with his mended clothing. A hole in the sleeve of his shirt had been sewn together with pink thread—and in a heart pattern, no less. His hose, having turned out a large, toe-size hole, had been darned to within in an inch of the heel. His little toe didn’t even fit in the opening. Anger blossomed like a summer rose, and he’d opened his mouth to yell, but he saw those red lips of hers quiver and glistening tears dampen her cheeks. As anticipated, his anger wilted, and he had snapped his jaw closed, his outraged pride silenced. Now here she was baiting him with her deceit. Oh, she is good. I see why she’s called the silver-tongued temptress.

  “Why, Tris, your sewing skills are innovative and clever, but I suspect you already knew that, hmm?”

  He held her gaze with his own, but she neither darted her eyes nor squirmed under his intense scrutiny. She had never retreated from a direct challenge, and she didn’t look as if she was going to now.

  “So you enjoyed the dainty heart-shaped lips I stitched on the rear of your small clothes, too?” Devilry had possessed her, for she no longer bothered hiding her triumphant smirk.

  Why the sneaky little… He hadn’t known about that particular surprise, as he hadn’t bothered with his smallclothes for days. It had been too hot, and he’d been too eager to leave the confines of the small cottage. Most mornings he was lucky to have his boots thrown on before he escaped to other parts of the island.

  “Your innovation knows no end. It’s a shame they will be hidden under my breeches, for I wish the world to see how much my wife loves me. So much, in fact, she is too happy to kiss my—”

  “Luka! You’re impossible!” Dangerous fury contorted her features, and she advanced, brandishing the porridge-laden spoon in her hand. She shook it in his face, and he watched fascinated as a glob of hot meal dribbled from the handle to land in his lap. He removed the warmed food from his pants and popped it in his mouth, barely avoiding gagging as the saline porridge slide like hot, rubbery oysters down his throat.

  “I’m not the one who has been deliberately making life miserable this past week.”

  “I told you I was not adept at domestic duties,” she said, her lips quivering anew. “I’ve done my best.” She lowered her head, blonde curls falling in a riotous tangle over her shoulders.

  “Oh, stuff it.” He pushed back from his chair and grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look at him and face the havoc she had wrought. Defiance stared back. She wasn’t sorry, not one bit. “Don’t you shed fake tears again. I know you’ve been intent on botching every task I set you.”

  She wrenched her chin free and stomped to the kettle. Grabbing a bowl, she ladled out a heaping spoonful of the salty mush and slammed it into the container. She stomped back to the table and threw the dish and his meal onto it. “There. Are you happy? I have done my wifely duty this morning.”

  “Where are you going?”

  She stopped and turned, fury contorting her gentle features to one of feral savagery. She was an avenging angel. With her blonde hair, she was a Valkyrie. A warrior. His girl had never been meek and biddable. He’d been daft to even imagine she’d accept his demands with anything less than ferocious noncompliance. Her muscles coiled and trembled, and her eyes darted to the butcher knife hanging by the fire. For a moment, he feared she might do him harm.

  “To my room until you leave. I’ve had enough of you and your husbandly demands. If this is what marriage is, I want nothing to do with it. You could have hired a servant girl and saved yourself the trouble of providing for a wife.”

  “I didn’t want a damned serving girl.”

  “No, you got yourself a wife to do the work for free. What a fool I was, believing you cared for me.”

  “I do care—”

  She advanced and grabbed his shirt front and shook it. “Why won’t you touch me? Even now you shy away from me. Am I so repugnant? Do I disgust you?”

  “Stop being dramatic. There are circumstances of which you are unaware.”

  “Tell me why you won’t love me!” she shouted. “We are man and wife. I want to be more than your maid. I want to share your bed and your life, but every time I show you any affection, you shun me. Why won’t you let me be your wife?”

  “Because you’re n
ot my wife! You never were and you never will be.”

  Her face blanched, and she flinched as though struck. “What?” Confusion clouded her features, and she shook her head. “Why would you say something so hurtful?”

  “It’s true. It’s the first true thing I’ve said to you since you’ve awakened. We are not married. The night before our elopement, I sent you a letter to break off our engagement. I left your father’s estate before dawn and sailed to France from Portsmouth. I have not been back since.”

  She dropped the fabric of his shirt and backed away until her feet hit the wall. Her curls swayed with the force of her denial as she shook her head over and over again, her hands covering her face as if their barrier alone could spare her the awful truth.

  “No, you’re lying to me. We are married. I remember it.”

  “We were never married. I was too scared you’d grow to hate the lifestyle I led and your hate would one day turn on me, so I ran away. I’m sorry, but I left you almost ten years ago.”

  “You’re punishing me. I-I’m sorry I wasn’t better at cooking your breakfast. It was wrong of me to challenge your orders.” She rushed to the fire and dumped out the hot porridge to the wooden floor. In a flurry of movements, she rushed about the cottage gathering supplies. She dumped water and oats in the hot kettle and stirred. “You’re my husband, and I must do as you say.”

  “What is going on?”

  “You are my husband, and it is my duty to care for you, as you cared for me. If I hadn’t been so disobedient, you wouldn’t be saying any of these things. I have to make it right.”

  She stirred the pot, her frantic movements causing liquid to dribble over the sides into the fire below. A sizzle and hiss filled the empty space following her rushed apology. This cringing, cowering, quiet woman was not his Tris.

  What the devil is going on? She crouched her shoulders and knelt by the fire, stirring the mixture and rocking side to side. When a low keening came from between her lips, he rushed to her side, to fix the anguish his truth had caused.

  He approached her as he would a spooked mare. “Beatrice, come away from the fire. You will hurt yourself.” He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched, cowering away from his light touch.

  “D-don’t hurt me, George. Please don’t hit me. I won’t do it again. I promise I’ll be a good wife.”

  Alarm bells sounded. She was more disoriented than he had known. “I’m Luka. There is no George here. I won’t hurt you. I won’t let anyone else hurt you, either.”

  Her tear-stained face turned to look at him. “Luka?” she asked, her voice small and trembling. She moaned and dropped her head in her hands. “My head is going to break in two.”

  “Let me help you to bed. A nice nap will clear away some of those cobwebs. I’ll have breakfast waiting for you when you awaken, and we’ll talk.”

  She clung to him, waves of terror emanating from her small, trembling body. “Oooh, the fire. It’s too close.” Her hands clawed at the fabric around her neck, pulling, ripping the cloth away from her skin. “I’m choking. Why can’t I breathe?” She gasped for air and tugged until the fabric ripped and draped about her shoulders.

  “Are you remembering what happened to you? Tell me what you see.”

  But her eyes had gone blank, and she swayed like a new tree in a stiff breeze. “I’m going to get your shawl and take you to bed.” He seated her in the chair and raced to the room to retrieve her shawl, but when he returned the front door was ajar. She was gone.

  Biting back a curse, he took off after her in hot pursuit.

  Chapter 14

  London, England, May 1801

  Bea had known better than to run. George had told her every time he caught her she was not to run. Her avoidance made him angrier. Look at the trouble running had gotten her in this time.

  She surveyed the kitchen floor at the two bodies lying lifeless in jagged pools of their own blood.

  “My lady? What has happened here?”

  As if she was a separate entity from her body, Bea watched herself turn and stare at the man in the kitchen doorway. He was tall, taller than George had been, and had brown hair. His steel-gray eyes regarded her with worry and a hint of fear.

  “I-I don’t know,” she admitted, the man’s voice sparking faint recognition and jolting her out of her stupor.

  He approached her as one would a wounded animal, and she shrank against the wall, hiding in the shadowy corner by the fireplace. “Are you hurt?”

  Bea looked at her hands and at her body. Blood covered her skin and had soaked through her dress. “There’s blood on me.” She looked at the knife clutched in her bloodied hands and dropped it, the metallic clang echoing on the stone floor. “Why do I have a knife? What did I do?”

  “First tell me if you are hurt,” he said. “We’ll figure it out together.”

  “My head. I hit my head after George struck me.”

  His mouth tightened. “Was this the first time?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “Since we’ve been married, he’s punished me, to shape me into a more dutiful wife. After the b-baby died, it worsened.”

  “What happened today?”

  Images played behind her closed lids—George’s angry face, her fear he’d finally kill her. “I ran. I know I’m not supposed to run, but I was scared, and so tired.”

  He had approached her hiding spot in the corner when shock sent trembles through her arms and legs, and she sank to the floor.

  “What happened?” he asked, crouching to her level so their gazes collided.

  “He took Harriet, my maid, and punished her because I had run to hide in the kitchen.”

  “Harriet?”

  “She’s over there,” Bea said, and pointed around the fireplace to the crumpled form of a young woman. “He raped her. She wasn’t fast enough, and he must have caught her in my room after I left. I could hear her screams from all the way here, until they stopped. He brought her to the kitchen to show me what my disobedience had caused. He d-dropped her body like she was a piece of r-rubbish.” Bea brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, rocking and keening through her grief. “Harriet,” she moaned. “Oh, Harriet. She was my one friend.”

  A large, warm hand enveloped her smaller ones, and she flinched.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, my lady,” he said. “Can you tell me how your husband died?”

  “He came after me with such rage, and he pushed me against the wall…” She freed a hand and touched the back of her head, wincing when she discovered a large, raised bump. “I fell, and—”

  “He beat you,” he said.

  “He turned his back on me, certain I was dead. Then something snapped. I saw Harriet’s body, and I saw the knife…” She remembered the rage coursing through her body at the moment when she had decided he must die.

  “He’d have killed me eventually,” she said. “It was only a matter of time before he went too far. I had to do it.”

  “I know. It’ll be all right.”

  “How?” She wrung her hands as the implications of what she had done became clear. “I killed my husband. I’ll hang, for sure.”

  “You won’t. I promise.”

  Her eyes, which had been swimming out of focus after the blow to her head, narrowed to study the man before her. It took all her energy to concentrate on his face, to remember from where she recognized him. Weariness robbed her of thought, and she ceased tormenting her overtired brain. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Thomas Wickes.”

  Part II

  “A man’s past is simply that: his past. It’s what a man does in the present which decides whether he’s worthy to be one.”

  ~Thomas Wickes

  Chapter 15

  Guernsey, Channel Islands, September 1810

  Thomas Wickes pushed his hands through his tawny hair and nearly screamed in frustration as he watched the crew of the supply ship bustle on the Guernsey dock reloadi
ng the ship in preparation for her evening departure. Aside from much-needed supplies from the mainland, the ship had brought him news from England and orders from his superior at the War Office to stop his search for Lady Beatrice Westby.

  He was not ready to abandon his search. To do so was to admit she was gone, and losing her was not an option. Yet a part of him knew his efforts were futile, for the more he searched, the more the certainty she was gone intensified. Crumpling the missive containing his new orders, he turned on his heels and marched away from the harbor to town.

  Guernsey’s cobblestoned streets were deserted, as most inhabitants either were working or enjoying their midday meal. Neither option appealed, for his head pounded and his concentration had disappeared upon reading his letter. He was restless and regretted the day’s missed opportunity to continue his search for Beatrice. Since the night she’d gone missing, he’d not stopped moving, using his considerable resources to investigate Guernsey and her surrounding islets. Tedious, backbreaking labor aside, at least in productive activity he found a measure of peace. To do nothing was inconceivable, for the harmless whispers he was able to ignore while working mutated to discontented ravings when idle. Already a persistent buzz droned in his ears. He needed a cast iron pan to smash against his skull. Painful oblivion was preferable to this constant worry.

  “What I need is another person to talk to,” he said as he turned down a side street off the main thoroughfare. A woman going about her day’s errands heard his mumbled request, for she tugged her shawl about her shoulders, ducked her head, and scurried past him. He didn’t care. There were few people he trusted enough to unburden himself, and none lived in Guernsey. Had Alfred Coombes and his wife, Evelyn, not returned to England several weeks ago, he’d go home and seek out the quiet solicitor. Alfred was steady and often possessed valuable insights, but he was gone, and Thomas’s modest two-story brick home sat empty.