by Laura London
“Don’t!” There was a kind of frantic anger in her voice. “Don’t put new images in my head of Rand Morgan and his conspiracies. I can’t live with another one. For months I’ve felt like someone’s tied me cross-shaped to a cartwheel and made me go around and around, head up, head down.” She laid her cheek on his chest, feeling the embroidery pattern of his waistcoat on her skin, inhaling the faint aroma of cognac on his breath. “Why did you keep running away from me tonight? Devon told me that you probably would but—I don’t understand.”
“I know. I know you don’t. But it’s one of the few ways I can help you, sweetheart. Don’t take it away from me.” Her fingers trembled slightly in his clasp; he tightened his grip gently and slid an arm around her. “Back there”—a movement of his head indicated the direction of the house—“do they frighten you?”
“Not so far,” she said. “But they may eventually. Devon’s mother, Aline, seems to be terrified of them. Actually I met a soul or two I might like to become friends with.” The point of her nose was cold. She warmed it in his braid. With deliberate mildness: “What do they think of your earring?”
“They think it’s”—again the dry tone, although this time tinged with amusement—“very French. I know you’ve had too many surprises already. Could you abide another? It will please you, I think.”
Her curiosity aroused, she let him lead her through a pergola thick with the perfume of roses, content to let him guide her steps, since he seemed to be able to make his way through the darkness with confidence. They spoke in low voices as they walked, the questions they asked each other careful, so careful, their answers careful also, because the subjects dealt with were sensitive ones. He told her in a superficial way about his short time with his father, and she saw from the things he didn’t say how difficult it had been. She told him, with humorously chosen details, about her short marriage to Devon; and he saw from the things she didn’t say that she was filled with doubts about her wisdom in beginning this life as a British duchess when another nation had her heart, and she still seemed hardly to believe that Devon really loved her. Silent understanding, unspoken reassurances flowed between them as they strolled through the night, his head slightly bent to catch her whispers, his arm around her shoulders, hers lightly encircling his slim waist. A few minutes brought them to a terrace of flagstones set in sand, floating in patches of light from a Japanese temple lantern. The sharp etherlike scent of peppermint wandered from the darkness beneath the trees surrounding the reaching branches of an aged apple tree with a wooden garden seat on wheels beneath. She could see Cat’s face well as he turned to her.
“If I could produce one man for you, from the Joke, who would it be?”
Astonished, she stared at him for a moment. Then, hardly daring to hope, she said, “Raven?”
A distinct rustle came from the apple tree. Twigs bobbed.
“And what would you have done,” said a bright, euphonic drawl muffled by apple leaves, “if she’d said Sails?”
She looked up, laughing delightedly. Raven was lowering himself from the branches, flexing his loose limbs sinuously, like a snake with an inky curl falling from his red bandanna over one eye. He offered her an apple and a lovingly mischievous smile. “Taste it, m’love. ’Tis the fruit of knowledge,” he said, delivering the apple to one of her hands and the smile to her lips.
“Behave,” Cat said, “or we’re going to enact a new version of the story, and the serpent will be expelled from the garden.”
“Heavens, then, I’m tame!” Raven protested, releasing his laughing captive.
“You’re not,” Cat corrected him. “You’re more than half-sprung, but if I stay, someone’s bound to remark my absence, and I want to tell Devon where she is before he gets nervous, so—”
“So go back. I shall return her intact. Unless”—Raven swept Merry with a flattering inspection—“I decide to run off with her instead.” Over his shoulder: “Go on. I’ll keep her safe, you know.”
Casting an exasperated eye over Raven’s raffishly piratical appearance—the leather breeches and vest, the top boots, the knife belt with its bronze dagger—Cat said, “Try not to let anyone see you then, or God knows how we’ll explain it.”
Cat’s quiet footsteps disappeared swiftly, and Merry couldn’t resist throwing herself into Raven’s arms a second time, exclaiming, “How on earth did you know to come?”
Raven conquered the venal temptation to prolong the embrace and gently disentangled himself from it as he said, “Cat told me. The Joke docked in London three days ago, and after Morgan told us about how Cat had gone to stay with his fine gent of a father, Will and I decided to pay him a visit. What a mistake! For one thing, we should have thought not to wear our bandoliers—scared the deuce out of his servants. And then, when we were walking with Cat to a sitting room on the upper floor, a little chambermaid with her arms full of bed linen stepped from one of the doors. No sooner does she set her brown eyes on us than she drops her armload at her feet and shrinks back to the wall squeaking out ‘No, no’ like she was in a play. Well, you know how it is with Will. He wouldn’t have paid the least heed to her, but that was like issuing him an invitation. Tossed her down on Cat’s bed and kissed the wits out of her—or so you’d think, the way she squawked about it after, poor chit. Lord Cathcart was there in a flash and his manservants, speakin’ bandog and bedlam. I wanted to hide under the bedclothes, I was so embarrassed. Damn that Will. Mind you, we’ve all of us been a little off our stride since you’ve been gone. Miss you, y’know. D’y’know what I did until you took supper? Watched you through one of the upper windows.”
“No! Did you?” she asked, starting to laugh again. “I wish I’d known. But I don’t know why you think you have to sneak a visit with me when you’ll see Cat openly.”
“You funny little thing, what would you’ve had me do? Come in and ask you for a dance? It wasn’t my kind of an affair, I promise you! Was that your aunt that came in with you? Pretty, slim lady? I didn’t have a bit of trouble picking out Devon’s mother—saw her dancing a boulangère with Lord Cathcart. Handsome woman, even with that red wine mustache. She has hair just like Devon’s; looks as though it were spun from sunlight. And there was Cat, prinked up like he came out of a bandbox with his braid in a velvet ribbon.” His liquid gaze dropped to her throat, making, with a smile, a professional assessment of the jewels nestled there. “How does it feel to be holding up a king’s ransom in stones?”
“They’re uncomfortably heavy. Devon’s grandmother sent them, and although Aline said I didn’t have to wear them if I didn’t want to, there didn’t seem to be any compelling reason to offend the dowager by refusing. It’s such a large necklace, the dressmaker had to cut the gown especially to accommodate it.” He gave her a grin which told her he’d noticed, and she said, in a retort to the grin, “How are you finding London then?”
“What this city needs,” the young pirate said, “is a good sewer. And I don’t just mean the Thames neither! Dirty brothels too. You’re hard put to see a thing you want to sit down on, much less lie on. At sea all a soul wants to do is sight land, but once we dock, it don’t take long to get bored with the wenching and the boozing. It’s a disciplined life, the sea, and the truth of it is, I don’t adjust so readily to leisure, especially when it’s in a port where I have to watch the riot and rumpus I can kick up. But I’m not sorry we’ll be fixed here for a while—because it’s plain as a pulpit you can use your friends. Here I thought to find you every bit aglow, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. You’ve got more on your chest than sparkling rocks, no matter what Devon says about how certain he is that he’s going to make you happy, even if he has to pull stars from heaven and lay them in your hands to do it.”
“Raven! Have you talked with him? He’s been in London six days and only returned to Teasel Hill late this afternoon. Did he visit the Joke?”
“You could say so. He came last night to the Joke and had a turnup with Morgan that they could
hear halfway to Guernsey. Nor was Devon too pleased with Sails, neither, being as he was in Morgan’s confidence the whole time. What I didn’t learn then about how it was with you, Cat told me this afternoon.”
Blushing a little in the fluttering light, Merry said, “You must have been astonished to learn that he… about the marriage!”
Raven gave her a gentle look and stroked the underside of her chin slowly with a curved finger. “No. Before we were in sight of Land’s End, I knew what Devon meant for you.” Her expression of utter incredulity and puzzlement brought a light smile to his lips. “He came to me after they had me clapped in iron bracelets, y’know, because he couldn’t much bear the thought of me weeping myself sick over you. Soft at heart, he is; I told you. He said he meant to have you as soon as he could once find out who the devil you were. What he wanted was the truth first, and then he was going to make you his own, even if you were a doxy from the back streets. And when I asked him if he meant marriage or a house on Green Street and maintenance, he said he’d be damned if he’d leave you to your own devices in a hired house; he meant marriage. So y’see, sweetheart, that’s wh—” The break in his words was abrupt. His palm closed delicately, insistently over her mouth, and when she started and tried to pull away, he tightened his fingers. He shook his head sharply, holding her eyes in an intent gaze, and then released her quickly and disappeared into the flat blackness between two honeysuckle bushes, his movement a smooth flow that hardly disturbed the shrubs’ heavy crop of ornamental berries.
Surprise was the only thing that kept Merry from demanding to know whether he’d taken leave of his senses. She stood in the sudden quiet, looking around herself at the haphazard patterns of the lantern’s silty light. Not a sigh of air touched the slumbering foliage. Raven’s last words were ringing softly in her ears, and she was frowning bewilderedly over his unexplained retreat when suddenly an oddly metallic thrill slithered like cold mercury along her nerves. Fear. The feeling came from another plane, a long-buried instinct that erupted without logic like the fret of a dog lifting its half-napping head to growl at some faint, ominous echo of a sound.
Then she heard it. A rustle. A hiss of displaced vegetation. Footsteps printing stealthily on moist soil. Her first shamed impulse was to dive headlong into the honeysuckle bushes behind Raven, but as quickly she soothed her overwrought imagination; because what could happen to her here, of all places, and with Raven so close? And for goodness’ sake, it must only be Cat returning already, or some chance guest rambling in the garden’s inviting coolness. Only her heart grinding uncomfortably against her ribs refused to be soothed.
A dark shadow plunged in the blackness of a far thicket. And then a man stepped into the clearing, the light slowly showing her the contours of his face. His eyes were dark hollows shaped like peach pits. The doughy glow of the light’s cornmeal rays suffused his cheeks, catching brightly in his eyebrows and profuse side-whiskers, limning the severe sculpting of his nose and his sharp-cut nostrils. She knew him. Before she saw the green-silver glint of his eyes, she had remembered that face. His name left her lips in a whimper.
“Granville.” Fast-rising, involuntary terror surged through her. This man above all others had come to be the nightmare nemesis who had been the distant author of her most wrenching unhappiness. Her fear was anguished, riveting. It was only when her eyes flew to the glimmer in his hand and she saw the light dancing off the silver furniture of a small double-barrel pistol that her limbs thawed to allow motion. She retreated from him, little tumbling half steps halted by the wooden bench pressing into the backs of her thighs.
“Yes,” he said in a soft tone. “Run. Run away, you idiotic scrap of skin and blood. You have no notion how much it would please me to be provoked into burying a bullet in your hair. Unless what you have under it is empty, you’ll stay where you are. And don’t bother looking around so hopefully. I know you’re alone. I saw the boy leave you.”
“H-how—”
“For a week I’ve been trying to get close to you, my pretty, and bloody hard it’s been, as well as Devon has you guarded. I never quite expected this little piece of good fortune. A helpful juvenile, Cat. I had him once when he was a child. Did he tell you?”
Three thoughts hit Merry in such rapid succession that she had to force her mind to capture and hold each one. The first was that on the instant whatever doubts she had entertained about who might be right or wrong in Devon’s apocryphal and confusing battle with Granville had been totally resolved in Devon’s favor, and that thought was surprisingly potent in its power to give her comfort. The second was that the “boy” he had seen leave her was Cat, and not Raven, and she was not as alone as Granville thought, which was a comfort also. Her third thought was not so much a rational concept as a flash of blinding rage that this man would use such a hideous weapon to attack her. Like a seed fallen upon fertile earth, even that last impression nurtured her, turning her feelings away from her own fear and channeling them into a tidal wave of protectiveness toward Cat. This creature was not a phantom. He was here, and human, and she must face the repugnant necessity of dealing with him. Her icy anger made it easier to pretend that she had regained her composure and her courage.
“What do you want?” she asked in a voice carefully shed of color.
He laughed suddenly, standing where he was, the sharp sound curling like acid in her senses. “What do I want? You puling trollop, your pretty husband has been chasing me the width and breadth of the country since three days after he set foot in Falmouth. Now that he has the proof he needs to convince himself—if not a court of law—that one of my raiders brought down a ship with his sister on it, my life isn’t worth a stone penny. Don’t show me that face of bovine innocence! I know he had my letters stolen from the Guinevere. Before he had proof, Cathcart and Morgan kept him off me, tender souls. They didn’t want him to trade his life for mine. But there’s enough in those letters to implicate me in feeding information about British shipping to American privateers, if he’s broken the code. And—clever youth that he is—don’t try to tell me that he hasn’t.”
She had no intention of telling him anything of the sort. Nor did she mean to reveal that those papers were no longer a threat to him, through a soaking she’d given them in her attempt to escape Devon.
He seemed to take a queer satisfaction in her silence. “Interesting of them to take you as well. By the time it occurred to me that the papers must have vanished through Devon’s busywork, I regretted I’d been so gentle in my methods of disqualifying you as the future Duchess of St. Cyr. Obviously he didn’t believe the charming tales I spread about your easy virtue in New York.”
Merry could have enlightened him about that as well. Again she kept her mouth resolutely shut. Was he trying to see what information he could shock out of her?
Granville’s narrow lips stretched into a soft crescent. “My consolation was thinking of the things Devon surely must have done to you before Rand Morgan bothered himself to notice who you were. And with Devon’s repressed sensitivity it must have been quite a moment for him when he realized what an innocent you really were. Come here, poppet. Why are you hesitating? Come.” He was drawing a round golden object from his pocket, displaying it to her by a dangling chain. “Study it, Merry. Is it familiar?”
Moving stiffly, without grace, she crossed the clearing to take the offered object in her hand, trying not to touch his skin, though she wore gloves. Her heartbeat slowed almost to a standstill as she studied the thing she held. It was a Swiss watch, gold, with a fine enameled back and rose diamonds on the face, and Merry knew the inscription before she read the elaborately engraved words. To Carl, on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday. With fondest regards. James Wilding. It had never, to her knowledge, left her brother’s possession. So rarely did their father make a gesture of affection, Carl cherished this one.
In an aching voice Merry whispered, “How did you come by this?”
“He gave it to me. No. Let me be
more accurate. I took it.” The smile, a cruel one, extended this time to his eyes. “He’s here in London with me, did you—”
“That’s a lie!” Anxiety had sharpened her voice.
His brow rose over the smoky green glitter of his eyes. “Is it? If you think so, my fair delight, you and I have nothing more to say to each other. Farewell.” Smiling sardonically, he flicked her cheek with a careless finger. “Have the watch as a keepsake. Your brother surely won’t have any further use for it.” He turned as though he would have left her, but she stopped him with a terrified protest.
“Please! No! I don’t understand…”
“Pay attention, then, because I’ve wasted enough time here already. Your brother followed you to England—or at least he thought he was following you, having no idea your route would be so circuitous. Not, I’m afraid, that his advent to the country was aboveboard. He came in by way of a smuggler’s punt. What a singularly rough and ready pair you are, to be sure! It’s no wonder you do so well for Devon.” Granville’s smile twisted into a sneer. “He came to me because I had been your escort to England and he wanted to know my version of the events surrounding your disappearance. The poor lad thought I would be sympathetic because he knew I had passed information to the Americans. I wish he hadn’t let me know he knew that. It presented me with a very grave problem. I could hardly let him run around England with that sort of information. For one thing, he’s a little impetuous. He might be caught and questioned, and tough-minded as he is, he’s very young, and I have small confidence in his ability to hold out against an experienced inquisition. Son of a gentleman or not, they’ll certainly torture him if he’s discovered; before they hang him, that is. I’d have disposed of him quietly at once if he hadn’t been your brother.”
Doggedly forcing herself to contain her rising panic, breathing in the untidy rhythm of desperation, she backed to the garden seat and sat down on it, holding the watch in her two hands, as though it were a delicate thing made of glass instead of gold. “What do you want me to do?”