Seacliff

by Andrews, Felicia

  His second was not having killed her when he had the chance. “Did you hear me, my lady?”

  “I did,” she said, her voice sounding strange—aloof, and somewhat hard. “And I also know the law, Mr. Flint.”

  “Ah, yes, the law.” He nodded and put a finger to his chin. “But the law says nothing about purchasing the land outright, does it? And by his absence, it seems to me that Radnor has allowed Mr. Jones to become his estate agent. In that capacity, I believe Mr. Jones will see the wisdom of the offer I will make to him before the week is done.”

  “He will never accept.”

  Flint smiled. “I believe he will. He’s not a stupid man, my lady.

  Not a stupid man at all.”

  She looked at him for the first time, coldly. “What will you threaten him with? A flogging? Maiming? Or will it be hanging? I think you will discover that Richard is not easily cowed, least of all by the likes of you.”

  Flint clucked and shook his head. “I thought you knew me better than that, my dear. I am not an unreasonable man, when other men are willing to be reasonable. And women, too.” She steeled herself. It was coming at last.

  “And speaking of women—which I find the most delightful of topics—I should like to know when you will consent to be my wife.” Expecting it and actually hearing it were two different matters; it came like a blow, and she had all she could do to keep from lunging for his throat. Her answer, however, was far less complex than her emotions: “Never.”

  “My dear, let me remind you there is always the possibility of a terrible miscarriage of justice. It could very well be that certain papers will come into my shocked possession, papers which prove beyond a doubt that I was horribly wrong in passing hasty sentence on that poor Northumberland lad.” He waited, toeing the ground with his boot. “Do you think I have made such an error, my lady?”

  “I think,” she said, “you are a foul, disgusting, merciless swine.”

  He was in front of her before she knew he’d moved, grabbing her soft shoulders and pulling her hard against his thighs. “Do not push me, my lady,” he said quietly. “In case you had not noticed, you are no longer needed around here. As a figurehead your role is done. There is no question who is in control, who holds the purse strings, who holds the keys to people’s lives. Me, Caitlin, not you. If you should die this instant, nothing would change.”

  She leaned away from him and his vehemence, and when finally he released her from his licentious grip, she gasped and stood back to catch her breath.

  “That house was built by men we’ll never know of,” he said. “Its original owners were conquered by those who came after. And your forebears conquered them in turn. I, my lady, am the latest conqueror. Seacliff is mine now, and I don’t need you to hold it.”

  With a visible effort she held her silence. Venting her anger now would accomplish nothing but further misery. She walked stiffly away from him, into the center hall through the rear entrance and directly to her rooms. There she stood in front of the fireplace and stared at her father’s bust on the mantel. Tears of frustration spilled down her cheeks, and her chest heaved with the sobs she would not permit to reach her lips.

  She wished Gwen would come to her now, though she knew that was unlikely. Since the others had been dismissed, Gwen had been charged with maintaining the whole of the household, including the preparation of meals. Though Mary and Bradford would lend Gwen a hand now and again, and Davy sneaked in from the stables once in a while, she was on her own for the most part. From dawn until well past sunset, she had so little time to herself that Caitlin was lucky to exchange a dozen words with her once a week—less often since spring had arrived. Flint, by unspoken command and with his silent lieutenants, had slowly, steadily decreased the areas of the house in which Caitlin might move unchallenged until she was restricted to her rooms, the hall, and the back lawn.

  And with her refusal of Flint’s marriage proposal, she knew with a certainty that she would be refused permission to leave the room in which she now stood.

  She was right.

  Later that evening, hungering for Gwen’s company, she made for the door, only to find a laconic Yorkshire trooper outside. He merely showed her his musket and gestured her back inside. His replacement the following morning did the same, after handing her a tray of bread and telling her she would receive nothing more until supper. She blustered, swore, but the man would not be moved into even passing a message to Flint.

  She seethed over the next few days, once even considered not eating as a protest. But reason prevailed. Though she was confined to her apartment—obviously until she consented to marry her jailer— the basic situation had remained unchanged. The man was not perfect. He would err eventually. And she spent many of her daylight hours standing on the balcony, watching the sea blend into sky at the horizon and searching for a way to turn things to her advantage.

  And it was on just such a day, during a moment when she hovered between depression and determination, that Gwen appeared for the first time in days with her supper tray. A full ten minutes was taken in silent embrace, ten more while Caitlin ranted over Gwen’s loss of weight, the rags she wore, the condition of her hands and complexion. When she calmed down, however, and with a suspicious glance at the guard who had stationed himself in the vanity room outside the bedroom, she brought Gwen to the balcony and together they watched the sun setting over the water.

  Briefly, she told Gwen of Flint’s condition for release, and reaffirmed her own position. “I could play the sham with Oliver,” she said, “because he never wanted me. That won’t work with James. And I would sooner slit my throat than have to be his wife in all things.”

  Gwen looked at her sideways. “Perhaps,” she said, “you won’t have to.”

  26

  Though the day was warm, the air was biting enough to send Gwen back into the room to fetch a shawl for her mistress. Caitlin did not complain about the delay. She knew that Gwen was merely checking on the guard to make sure he wasn’t eavesdropping, and that the importance of what she wanted to relay was great enough for her to risk the terrors of crossing the balcony. Gwen was frightened of heights, and since the balcony was very high, the drop had always seemed fathomless to her. Caitlin waited, then smiled when her friend reappeared and placed the fringed, thin garment of wool over her shoulders. She took the edges and held them over her breast and put her free hand on Gwen’s arm to give her some small measure of comfort.

  “I feel like I’m flyin’ sometimes,” the younger woman said, her teeth chattering.

  The ground lay far below, the sea farther still. On the horizon the specks of white and brown marked a passing ship. And the sky was low as scudding clouds signaled the approach of a storm from the direction of Ireland.

  “Griff’s come back,” Gwen said then.

  Caitlin almost lost her balance, she spun around so rapidly. She had to get hold of herself before the guard noticed her agitation. “What do you mean, returned? Is he here, in the valley?”

  Gwen nodded toward the horizon. “From Ireland,” she said. “There was, I’m told, a fair number of soldiers in the mountains just before the snows, and Griffin took his men across the channel to hide. No love was lost between him and the English, and he wintered there.”

  “How do you know this?” she asked anxiously.

  Gwen shook her head. “I cannot tell. You should not know, Cat, because…” Her voice trailed off, and Caitlin nodded her understanding. “But he’s back, and it won’t be long before he knows what’s happened here, if he doesn’t already.”

  Caitlin stood at one of the gaps in the wall and gripped the cold stone as if it were a sanctified relic. It was several minutes before she dared speak again. “He can’t come here.”

  “He will. He’ll try.”

  “He cannot. He must not.” Fearfully, she looked at Gwen. “The one who told you this must warn Griff that returning here would be too dangerous. There are too many of Flint’s men here. Griff woul
d never get close enough to do either of us any good.”

  “I know,” Gwen said. “But you haven’t been out, Cat. Flint has increased the numbers of his people in the fields. A fly can’t travel without his knowing it. No message will get out.” She brought a fist down on the wall. “It must!”

  “What do you plan to do, then? Sprout wings and fly over the heads of those creatures? We’ll have to trust Griffin, Cat. He’s not so foolish that he’ll come down here like the flood without checking the banks first.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  The implication lay heavy between them. Caitlin paced the length of the balcony, looking up to the tower’s serrated crown, looking down to the lawn that might as well have been as distant as a star.

  “How long has he been back?” Gwen shrugged.

  “And there’s no way a message can be sent?”

  “Only if whoever takes it plans not to return. Assuming,” she added sourly, “he makes it at all.”

  “He’ll be back at me soon,” she said, referring to Flint. “You’ve seen him. He’s waiting for something; I don’t know what. But it’s going to force him into some kind of action. Is there any news from France?”

  “Only what I hear from the old fart, who thinks Flint tells him everything under the sun.” She bridled at the thought of Bradford’s smugness, then let it pass when she saw Caitlin’s uncompromising expression. “He says the fighting’s been worse in the colonies. There’s to be a full war there, he says, no getting around that. King Louis is doing nothing. He makes noises like a stuck pig, but he does nothing. Bradford says he’ll wait to see how the Americans do. If German George looks like he’s going to lose…”

  Caitlin nodded thoughtfully. She also suspected that Philip in Spain would not let an opportunity pass to tweak the British lion’s tail. Such a situation would be tailor-made for Flint’s private little army—an army, she guessed, that would not remain very little for very long.

  “Cat, this news troubles you?”

  “Some,” she admitted. “And I have the horrid feeling I should be bothered more than I am.” Again she paced, shaking her head and grunting meaninglessly. Then, as if a barrier had been sprung up before her, she stopped.

  Gwen watched her carefully. Cloud shadows and sunlight passed rapidly over her face. Her eyes narrowed and widened and her mouth formed a grim line.

  “Does Bradford say anything about where all these swine are posted?” Caitlin finally asked.

  “No, Cat. You’d think he was a great general himself the way he struts around and pretends to have great secrets.”

  “At the gap, surely,” she muttered as if she were alone. “I’ve seen them on the cliffs. Probably at the reaches, too.” She looked up. “Do you know if any are at the reaches, Gwen, at the north end fields?” A fleeting gesture told Gwen not to bother replying, and she squinted as though attempting to focus on something at a greater distance than she could see. Then she settled back against the wall with a loud, heavy sigh and nodded once.

  Gwen instantly knew what was coming, and turned away. “That won’t do, Gwen Thomas,” she said softly. “It will still be there when you turn around again.”

  “You can’t do it,” Gwen told her, and stepped across the threshold into the room.

  Caitlin followed slowly, glancing once toward the doorway. The guard was not in sight. “What do you think I do up here all day, count dust motes?”

  “I know, I know,” Gwen admitted with an impotent wave. “But there’s no one now to help you.”

  “There is,” she said. “You, Davy, and Orin.”

  “How? When?”

  “The how I will tell you when the time comes and no sooner. The when shall be…” She looked over her shoulder at the clouds. “When hell comes to Seacliff.”

  Gwen’s face formed a mask of bewilderment, but Caitlin only kissed her cheek and allowed at the top of her voice how the supper on her tray was worse than fodder for a dying horse. She ate, however, and chatted about the weather, the reading she had done, the lives of the villagers, as if her father were still master of the estate. Gwen did her best to hold her end of the conversation, but there were moments when she lapsed into puzzled silence and clearly doubted the stability of her mistress’s mind. And the more concerned she grew, the more Caitlin laughed aloud until the hour just after dark passed as if the good times had returned and there was no man in their lives named James Patrick Flint.

  Then, just before Gwen left, Caitlin took her wrist and peered deep into her eyes. “You will tell Orin it’s my birthday,” she said.

  Gwen opened her mouth, but Caitlin raised a hand to quiet her. “Tell him,” she said firmly. “And tell him the tether must be long enough to reach the sky.”

  Gwen left shaking her head and muttering to herself, not even bothering to stop a second and swear at the guard. Once the door had closed behind her, Caitlin busied herself by laying a fire and as she knelt before the hearth, she felt the eyes of her father staring down at her from the mantel. She looked up, and grinned. Shadows played across the stone face, so that the eyes seemed to blink, the mouth to twitch, and the brow to crease in approval. The comfort of the illusion was enough to keep her steady when, four days later, the outer door slammed open while she was preparing for bed, and Flint strode in.

  She was sitting at her mirror, a pearl-handled brush in her hand, and had been marveling at the way the luster remained in her hair after so long a confinement. She remembered an evening when, as a child, she’d sat at her mother’s feet and watched hypnotically as her mother brushed through similar strands, releasing the firelight in soft starbursts, darting across the mirror as if fireflies had been trapped within. The woman, whose face had grown slightly blurred as Caitlin grew older, had hummed to herself and smiled dreamily. Caitlin had taken to praying for whatever happiness had brought her mother such contentment.

  She’d been remembering and had just sighed, a smile on her lips, when Flint strode in.

  She was wearing little more than a flimsy nightgown over which she had thrown a robe whose cuffs were furred, the neck feathered, and the hem encrusted with semiprecious stones. Flint was taken aback by his reception and stopped in his tracks, the thought striking him that perhaps the woman had something up those elegant and voluminous sleeves of hers. It was not like her to greet him in such a fashion; the best he expected was wintery indifference, and the worst a sharp tongue honed by months of incarceration.

  He himself was in a dressing gown of black and silver, his shirt opened to the waist and black slippers on his feet. A split second was all it took to realize she had not yet recognized him, that she was still in a dream world from which she was returning by slow stages. He waited. Having guarded his patience this long, a few more moments would make no difference.

  And when she started as if dashed with cold water, he smiled. “Your answer,” he said as she gathered her wits about her. “I’m afraid, my dear, I have little time left to play your foolish games.”

  “I do not play games with my life,” she told him. And her left hand fluttered to her chest when she saw the frank direction of his gaze. A flush of anger and embarrassment only increased the tension, and to break it, she looked back to the mirror, picked up the brush and pulled it harshly through her hair. His reflection appeared behind hers, and she was barely able to prevent herself from shuddering when his hands grasped her shoulders and began kneading them.

  “Nevertheless, Caitlin, I must know what to do with you.”

  “You have done quite enough, I should think.”

  “Not nearly enough, Caitlin. Not by half.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to the top of her head. In a soft voice he said: “Has it ever occurred to you that in some mysterious and, I admit, rather unnerving way, you have taken my heart.”

  “Then I shall give it back,” she said instantly. “I have no use for it.”

  His right hand slipped around to the base of her throat, and thrust aside the robe to touch he
r bare skin. “But I have use for yours.”

  “You can’t have it.”

  “I shall take it if I have to,” he said. “One way or another.”

  Her smile was sardonic. “You have a queer way of courting a woman, Mr. Flint. Soft words couched in threats. It must be hard to fill your bed, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  She lowered the brush as his hand eased back and forth, raising a heat she tried to dispel by reminding herself of all the evil he had done. Yet when his fingertips brushed over the tops of her breasts, the shudder that racked her was not due to revulsion.

  His smile, always slightly crooked because of the scar, widened into almost a grimace. “I do not wish to see you in prison, Caitlin. You can believe that, if you believe nothing else.”

  She did. For whatever reasons, she believed it.

  “And neither do I wish to see your lovely body lowered into a grave.”

  “Another threat?”

  “A prediction,” he qualified. “I’ve been rather successful with predictions, you know. Were Sir Oliver still with us, he would confirm that I long ago predicted the troubles in the colonies, and I could not help but see the king’s own problems.” He tapped his temple significantly. “His sanity’s leaving him, I think.”

  “A pity.”

  “For the country, yes. Had you been to London with me some months ago you would have heard the merchants complaining angrily about the American war. The colonies are their prime market. Lose them, and a great many enterprises will turn to dust.” He kissed her hair again. “Not a history lesson, my dear, and not idle chatter. If markets shrivel, this valley will go with them.”