Dear Captain Braithwaite,
Imagine my surprise when last week my brother came to visit. As you know, we’ve been estranged for years. At first I was unwilling to meet with him, but when he told me of your sister, a young woman named Beatrice, who had convinced him to attempt reconciliation, I was intrigued and flattered. When I discovered how she had worked so diligently to ferret out my secrets and arrange this meeting, flattery devolved to cynicism. I had enjoyed the company of your sister and had imagined a mutual attraction, though now her interest in a middle-aged country farmer makes more sense. I did visit your home to ask permission for a courtship, but your sister had gone. I can assume she was not ready for what I had to offer, and I regret the missed opportunity to know her better. She was a lovely young woman, a little lonely and sad despite her pretty smiles and engaging conversation.
My brother has informed me of your career, Captain Braithwaite, and from comments my brother has made, the path you are on is equally lonely, as well as dangerous. You have my gratitude for finding and returning my brother to me for even such a brief period. One day I’ll repay the favor. Perhaps, Captain, much like my brother, you are in need of a friend. If such a day arrives, I would be honored to be one for you.
Sincerely, Lord Andrew Smith
P.S. Before he left, my brother gave me your most likely direction, so do not fear either he or I will compromise your chosen course. He bade me tell you it’s never too late to leave and find a new path.
She put the letter on the table with a sigh and stared at Lord Smith’s signature until the ink blurred. When she’d left Anthony Longe on the beach in Oban, she’d told him she had no regrets. The inked parchment in front of her was proof enough she lied. For one night, she was Beatrice Westby, society beauty and companion to a charming gentleman. It wasn’t real, though. None of it had been. Beatrice was a part she played to acquire what she wanted. Captain Braithwaite was as authentic as her society self, and she was left with a hollow sensation akin to dread. For years, she’d played a part to achieve one goal or another, and with the end near, she had no new persona to take on. The idea of finding and adopting her real self was daunting. What if I don’t know who I am?
“Lord, I hate being maudlin.” She tested it out and found it was true whether she was playing a part or being herself. “At least I know one true thing about myself.”
“Is everything ready for tonight?” Jones asked, interrupting her self-pitying. He sank onto the stool opposite her.
She tucked the letter under her hands. “The sleeping potion is almost done, and I’ll set the fuses once the evening meal is complete.”
“What’s in your hand?” Jones, drat the man, missed nothing. He eyed the parchment until she tucked it away in her jacket pocket.
“Nothing. A letter for someone who no longer exists.”
He pinned her with an assessing stare, and she resisted the urge to fidget. Dissembling with Master Jones was ineffectual and a waste of time. He was a ferret, able to seek out the truth amidst a mountain of lies.
“Do you know why I agreed with Thomas’s plan to train you?”
“I assumed it was because you are friends.”
“Thomas Wickes is an honorable man who inspires great loyalty but rarely friendship.”
“If it wasn’t friendship, why?”
“Because I knew what it was to be lost and alone, powerless against those who would seek to exploit. The day in your bedroom when I attacked, I saw something in you.”
She snorted. “Most likely fear. You had me pinned to the wall and shaking in my night rail in under a minute.”
His lips curved in an approximation of a smile. “Yes, there was fear, but there was also light. For despite the darkness which had all but consumed you, I saw a spark, a part of you which refused to give in. That’s why I agreed to train you.”
She studied her hands, clutched white in anxiety and unspoken fear. “What if I’m not the same person anymore?”
His exasperation colored each word. “Of course you’ve changed. Everything changes.”
“But what if the change isn’t good?”
“What is it you are afraid of?”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost myself, that without this life, I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“Look at me.” He took her chin in his weathered brown hands and studied her for countless moments.
“Well?”
“I have seen your soul, Beatrice Westby. Kind, witty, generous, and terrified, you hide yourself so others won’t guess at your pain.”
She flinched and jerked her head away. His hands dropped to the table. “He has been dead for years. My actions have nothing to do with him.”
“The lies you tell yourself! You knew who I was talking about without hearing his name. Of course he has everything to do with the choices you’ve made these last eight years, and he will continue to influence them until you give yourself permission to be human. You made a mistake a long time ago and have punished yourself since.”
“You and Thomas are the ones who taught me what I know. You gave me this purpose.”
“We gave you a way to channel your pain. What you did with it afterwards was your decision.”
“But Thomas…I owe him a debt.”
“At no time did your imagined debt outweigh your desires and goals. Had you wished to stop, he’d have directed your energies to something else. You alone chose this life. Not Thomas, not me, and especially not George.”
“It’s all my fault. All of this, the baby, my marriage, it’s my fault. I’m to blame.”
“Beatrice, what happened to you was not your fault. George Darimple was an evil man, and you were unfortunate enough to be his property. But his actions do not define you. They do not decide your worth or your value. They do not dictate who you are. You alone control how you see yourself.”
She clutched the older man’s hands in her own, her throat thick with unshed tears. “I don’t know anymore who she is, Master Jones,” she whispered. “Tell me, please!”
He stood and pressed a soft kiss to the crown of her head. Squeezing her hand, he said, “You will rediscover your spark and find your way home when you’re ready, Beatrice Westby. I promise.” Master Jones bowed and left the galley, plunging her into a dark despair.
A loud hissing signaled its need for attention as water from the boiling pot roiled over the sides onto the fire. She checked her pocket watch. Her thirty minutes were over. She removed the pot from the fire and prepared the potion for the evening’s meal. After cleansing the galley of all traces she’d been there, she wrote a letter to her sister Evie, blew out the candle, and sat at the little table. As darkness faded to dawn and sounds of the crew’s awakening rustled around her, she contemplated Master Jones’s words, but she was no closer to deciding whether this night she’d live or die. Sighing, she heaved away from the table, walked through the hold, and went onto the deck to watch the sunrise.
There was nothing left but to wait.
****
Everything had gone wrong. Correction. Almost everything had gone wrong. Her sister Evie was off the boat, which was now a raging inferno primed to blow. Michelson, who was not drugged into indefinite sleep with the rest of the crew, had awakened to find her checking the fuses.
The potion hadn’t worked. Michelson stood tall and angry in the hold, the grogginess from the herbal tea she’d mixed hindering his movements, for he weaved on unsteady feet across the hold and tripped on barrels blocking his path. With a thud, he fell to the floor, and she did not stop to question her actions. She lit the fuses.
Her original plan called for her to be miles away, rowing to Guernsey, when The Stallion, her cargo, and the traitors who called her home exploded and floundered at sea. Michelson, damn him, had ruined everything, and if she didn’t want to perish with the ship, she needed to flee.
Sprinting to the exit, she climbed the ladder, yelling, “Michelson’s awake! Jones! The fuses are set! Cut the rope now!�
��
She heard a piercing scream, followed by a large splash, relief swift to replace her initial concern. Her sister and Mr. Coombes were off the ship. Now to ensure she herself didn’t die with the rats. Running across the deck, she climbed onto the quarterdeck to better prepare for Michelson’s attack. She did not wait for long. Fire licked the wood, escaping from below deck, and the man emerged from the hold illuminated by the orange flames wending their way across the wooden floor. He was wreathed in smoke, his gruesome features contorted to a feral mask of savage intent. Beatrice had long suspected the devil was real, and an involuntary shudder wracked her small body. She was going to die.
“Cap’n!” Jones yelled, and she turned her head. A flash of steel flew through the air, and she caught her sword. Jones ran to her side, and the two crouched in position. She watched and waited as Michelson removed a sword from the scabbard at his hip and charged, leaping to the quarterdeck with agility and speed.
He circled her and snarled. “You’re Westby’s git, aren’t you, girl? And if I’m not mistaken, Thomas Wickes’s pet project. I recognized your Chinaman. You call him Jones. Thomas loves collecting the outcasts and giving them a second chance. I can’t believe he convinced an intelligent woman like you to do his dirty work, but my boy was too much of a coward to face me.”
She pushed this new information about Thomas aside, not ready to contemplate what Michelson had revealed. If the traitor was to be believed, Thomas had been using her for years. She hated being someone’s pawn in a game to which she understood only part of the rules. Anger prompted her to speak with uncharacteristic boldness. “Nobody sent me,” she said. “Wanting to kill you has nothing to do with Thomas Wickes and everything to do with me. You’ve ruled my family for too long, Michelson. Killing you will be a pleasure.”
The stairs were close, and there was a chance she’d survive if she could dive overboard before the fuses arrived at their target. Already the ship listed and groaned as fire ate through the ship’s wooden hull. Soon, the hot licking flames would ignite the gunpowder and they’d all be dead. Fighting was never her first choice. She’d flee if given the chance, but he had her boxed in between her cabin and the rails. There was no room to run; she’d have to fight.
Jones kept by her side as she circled Michelson. Seeing an opening, Beatrice lunged, but Michelson had been expecting her first move. He parried, and the two clambered across the deck, the ring of steel against steel competing with the sizzling crackle of burning wood. Jones fought behind, forcing Michelson to divide his attention between the two. When smoke wafted from below deck and surrounded the three, cloaking them in a thick, pungent haze of charred wood and imminent demise, she lost track of Jones and Michelson. She kept the cabin wall to her back and skirted the perimeter of the quarterdeck, using the railing as a guide.
Jones lay on the deck; a large welt in his head bled onto the deck floor. The reassuring thread of Jones’s pulse against her trembling fingers soothed her initial panic, yet the momentary distraction cost her. A keen slice of pain ripped through her torso, and she cried out. Metal pierced the tender skin below her breast, and she staggered and fell to the ground. The smoke cleared, and Michelson stood over her, his dark, leering face resurrecting forgotten panic and fear.
“A pity. You were smarter than I expected and even had me fooled, until your sister was brought aboard. The similarities were too prominent not to question your true identity. Some discreet eavesdropping outside your cabin, and I had enough to put together who you were, Beatrice Westby. Your reputation is well known to private entrepreneurs such as me and my associates.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “How unfortunate reports exaggerated your skill with the blade. It makes killing you less exciting.”
She gathered the remnants of her strength and plunged her sword in the man’s foot. He crumpled and fell to his knees. They stared at each other for endless minutes, both panting in pain, before Beatrice reared back her arm and punched the man in the nose. Pulling herself to her feet, she stood over him and pressed the tip of her sword against the older man’s neck. She stomped on his sword hand until he released his weapon. When she kicked the sword away, it clattered against the wooden deck.
“A notable difference between the two of us, Michelson. Killing you brings me nothing but satisfaction.” She had tensed her arm, prepared to drive the sword through, when he held out his hands.
“If you kill me, you’ll never know.”
“Know what, you foul old man?”
“Where your son is,” he said. Her sword arm faltered, the pressure on the man’s neck eased, and he smiled, a gruesome mockery of mirth. “Correct, Captain,” he said. “Your son.”
“You’re wrong, Michelson! He’s dead! My husband told me—”
“And your husband was honest, was he? A kind man, one who would never beat his wife or servants?”
“He’s dead,” she repeated, though with less conviction.
Michelson threw back his head and laughed, a wild, frantic chortle which rose above the fire’s sizzle and hiss as flames crept along the deck below them. “No, he lives, and I know where he is.”
Not dead? Impossible! Yet haven’t I hoped he was alive? Her arm trembled, and the sword shook in her hand. Triumph blazed from Michelson’s black soul. No, Michelson must die. The debt she owed to Thomas was so close to being paid. She raised her sword, swung, and let it fall to the deck. Some things were more important than honor. “Go,” she said. “Get out of here.”
Michelson needed no further encouragement, for he stood. Before launching himself from the railing, he said, “Bring me Thomas, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.” In a moment, he was gone, the splash below confirmation he had landed in the water. Michelson would live. He was too stubborn and too evil to do anything but. She’d find him, and when she did, nothing short of a miracle would prevent her from discovering what she desired.
A loud groaning crack filled the silence following Michelson’s departure, and Beatrice had mere seconds to dive out of the way as the main mast crashed to the deck. Though she avoided being crushed by the burning timber, she was now pressed against the stairway. It creaked and groaned before shuddering beneath her. She fell to the main deck as flaming chunks of stair crashed around her, trapping a portion of her left leg.
“Jones!” she yelled, hoping her friend and mentor would awaken and hear her cry. “Help!” She screamed until her voice was hoarse, all the while pushing at the smoldering wood with her hands. Skin, raw and charred, peeled off her hands, and she fought back an overwhelming urge to give in. “Jones!” she tried again.
“You let him go,” Jones said as he stumbled over from where Michelson had felled him. Finding the two discarded swords, he used them to heave the remaining pieces of stair off Beatrice’s leg.
She wriggled her leg from underneath the heavy weight, each movement a fresh wave of torment as pain licked through her body. “My son’s alive, Jones. He knows where my son is.”
“If you can believe the word of a murderous traitor,” Jones said as he lifted her off the ground and helped her to the railing. Each agonizing step sent a jolt of pain through her body until she shook from the effort to remain upright. She clutched Jones’s waist and turned her face to his, the familiar lines and wrinkles visible in the harsh, orange glare. A popping noise sounded from below, and The Stallion listed to the side. They were out of time. The fuses had found their target. “I have no other choice.”
“Go, and find your son. Make your own path, and leave this world of secrets and danger behind.”
“Come with me, Master Jones. We’ll find him together.”
“What was my first lesson?”
Tears having nothing to do with the pain in her body plopped on her cheeks, and she shook her head even as she said, “Know when it’s time to leave.”
He hugged her and said, “God be with you, Beatrice Westby.” With a final bow, Master Jones stood as she pulled her burned leg behind her, graspe
d the rails of the tilting deck, and threw herself in the ocean’s inky embrace.
Her son was alive, which was reason enough to live.
Part III
“I’ve not considered my future. Someone else has done it for me. In twenty-eight years, nobody ever asked me what I wanted. Now that the future is mine, I’ll tell you exactly what I want. As soon as I figure it out for myself.”
~Beatrice Westby
Chapter 25
Paris, France, October 1810
Beatrice awakened to the muted sounds of grunting and a woman’s high pitched squeal. Her heart pounding, she scanned the cramped, dim room, looking for a familiar sight to ease the panic her abrupt arrival to consciousness brought. A gentle snore focused her gaze on the lumpy cot adjacent to her bed. From her candle’s muted light, she saw tousled brown locks and a snub nose poking out from above the threadbare quilt.
“Amy,” she whispered, latching on to the name like a rope in a storm. Her memory continued to play tricks on her mind, but she would remember the child’s snore for the rest of her life. The young girl, who was no more than twelve, had a musical nose. Every night for the past six weeks, Amy’s whistling nose had serenaded her to sleep. It was maddening and endearing, and raised her protective instincts toward the child. Another grating laugh followed by a lusty moan penetrated the thin walls. These sounds she knew as well. One of the girls was entertaining a caller. Sleep’s tenacious hold cleared, and she remembered.
She was in Paris at Madame Cosette’s brothel, one of the few safe refuges for a single woman traveling in Paris. Most madams did not allow a single, attractive woman to stay at her home without the rough slide of sheets at her back, but Madame and Beatrice had a long history.
Cosette, a petite Frenchwoman with chestnut locks, wide, chocolate-colored eyes, and an oval face, had been a downstairs maid in her husband’s London home when the pretty girl had caught her husband’s roving hands. As with all his possessions, he had soon injured Cosette, and the girl feared for her life. Beatrice hadn’t hesitated to help her, knowing all too well the cruel sting of George’s spite. The girl had to leave. One day when George was out of town on business, she gathered her meager pin money, sold what jewelry was hers, and helped Cosette disappear. It took Bea six weeks to heal from the broken ribs George gifted her after discovering what she’d done. Years later, Cosette had written her and promised safe haven if she were ever in Paris. After fleeing Herm, she called in her favor and presented herself on Madame Cosette’s doorstep late one chilly September night. She’d stayed with Madame since then.
Silver-Tongued Temptress Page 15