The Pirate’s Bluestocking

by Bowlin, Chasity

  Wyverne sputtered. “It’s a legal matter. The House of Lords—”

  “The House of Lords be damned,” Declan snapped. “You’ll be a man about it for the first time in your miserable life and offer a challenge or you’ll slink of like the coward you are and never utter a word of it again! Which is it?”

  “Let it go, Wyverne,” Livingston advised. “The scandal and expense of it would ruin you regardless.”

  Declan was disgusted with them both. “We’re done here. My wife and I are leaving. But make no mistake, if you fail to keep our agreement or fail to do as I’ve said, there will be consequences. I’ll be in that courtroom tomorrow, Livingston, evidence in hand to see you ruined.” He turned to his wife who had waited silently. “Kitty, are you ready to leave this place and the intolerable company we’ve endured?”

  Kitty stepped forward and faced her father. “Earlier, you said I was just like my mother. But you’re wrong. I’m not just like her. I’m stronger than she was. She stayed and let you bleed the very life out of her until she simply faded away into nothing. I will live my life free of your poisonous influence from this day forward and you can live in the penury that you have earned with all the extravagance you have heaped upon yourself while using my life and happiness as collateral. Goodbye.”

  Declan felt something shift inside him. Pride, he realized. It didn’t take more than a moment or two in Wyverne’s presence to know that Kitty had been browbeaten and belittled by him her entire life. But she’d survived it to be strong, fierce, brave, intelligent, and not hardened by it all. She still had a tender heart and a giving nature, things that he’d been lacking in his own life for a very long time.

  When she moved toward him and placed her hand on his arm, he led her from the room and out of the Assembly Hall. People stared and whispered and he couldn’t care less. Better still, from the slight curve of her lips, he knew she couldn’t either.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was late evening by the time they’d managed to get back to his small estate, a gift from his grandfather to remind him that he wasn’t completely Irish. The assizes had gone as intended. Livingston had suggested clemency for all four of the sailors who’d assisted in rescuing his young niece from Samford’s schemes. If the other justices had been surprised, they had not protested but gone along as Declan had suspected they would. The lot of them appeared to be like crows lining a fence anyway, doing and saying the same thing as the one beside them no matter what it bloody was.

  “We need dinner,” Kitty said. “I’m famished!”

  “I am as well,” he said, but it wasn’t food he hungered for. He was starved for something else that, in that moment, seemed more vital to him than mere sustenance.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, a familiar gesture from her, but one that still hit him like a punch in the gut. Kitty was what most would have termed pretty, but not beautiful. Yet there was something in the way her features shifted, in the expressions that danced across her face and something that was simply her, her spirt or her soul. Whatever it was, it left him utterly entranced by her.

  “I suppose we could have a tray sent up later?” she suggested.

  He laughed at that. “I could be persuaded to fetch us one later. We have three servants in this house with a combined age of two hundred and forty-five. They’ll not fetch anything after seven in the evening. But I’ll gladly suffer the inconvenience.”

  “Then, Husband, you should show me to my chamber.”

  “Our chamber,” he corrected. “This is no society match, Mrs. Kelly, where we’ll be polite strangers in the dark as well as in the day. You’ll share me bed, every night.”

  “Will I?” she asked. “And what if you decide to take to the sea again as a roving pirate?”

  “Privateer… well, sometimes pirate. Mostly privateer,” he relented, even as he ushered her toward the stairs. “And having lost the ship my uncle entrusted to me, I doubt he’d trust me with another.”

  She stopped then, her feet at the bottom of the stairs. “Will you want to? Go to sea, that is?”

  Declan sighed as he stopped behind her, wrapping his arms about her waist. “I love the sea and I love sailing… but I don’t need to do it as a vocation, Kitty. I’m more than content with a small boat and pursuing it as a hobby only. I told you that I was a terrible pirate and I meant it. I detest the violence and the stealing. Doing it for king and country was one thing. Doing it just to satisfy my own greed was another altogether.”

  She leaned back against him. “You really were a terrible pirate. Are you a better farmer?”

  “We shall find out, I suppose,” he said. “Do you want to stay here in Cornwall?”

  “What about Ireland?” she asked.

  “Eventually, we’ll go. But for now, I think it would behoove me to stay here and keep an eye on both Livingston and your father,” Declan said. “I don’t trust them and I think, given an opportunity, either one of them would make trouble for us.”

  “Then we’ll stay here. Can we go to Bath? I’d like to see my friends and at least assure them that I survived mostly unscathed… and at some point, I’ll need my own clothes or at least something that doesn’t make me look like a trollop.”

  “I rather like you looking like a trollop,” he said. “I’d prefer it if you’d behave like one, at least for the next hour or so! Get up those stairs, Wife. We’ve waited too long already.”

  “We didn’t wait at all, Husband. We had a preliminary wedding night, did we not?” Kitty fired back, but she was climbing the stairs even as she said it.

  They hadn’t even reached their bedchamber door before he was reaching for the laces of her gown, tugging them free. The garment fell to the floor just as the door closed behind them. She turned in his arms, her breasts crushed against his chest, and tilted her head back all but begging to be kissed.

  Declan stared down at her. “You deserve a better man than I am, Kitty, and certainly a better man than I’ve been. I tried pirating as a lark, a way to prove myself, but it doesn’t change the fact I did awful things in the name of it. But I swear to you, I’ll spend every day from this one forward working to be that kind of man.”

  Kitty blinked at the unexpected tears. “I don’t want a better man or a worse man or a different man. I only want one man, Declan Kelly, and that man is you. Somehow, between stowing away in your wagon, surviving a mutiny and a shipwreck and traveling the whole of England, or so it seemed, like a gypsy with you… I fell hopelessly in love with you.”

  “You love me?” he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

  It was a terrifying thing to admit. But if there was one thing Kitty had learned during her ordeal and ensuing adventures, playing it safe did not truly spare one risk. “I thought it, wondered if I was. I questioned and doubted. But the way you stood up to my father, the fact that you stood up for me when no one ever has—whether we make our home here or in Ireland, whether you want to try your hand at being a pirate again, wherever you go, be prepared for me to follow.”

  He stood there for the longest moment. It seemed to stretch on endlessly, to the point that Kitty worried she’d said too much, that she’d made herself too vulnerable to him. She opened her mouth to speak again, no notion of what she was actually going to say, but all that escaped her was a startled shriek as he hoisted her into his arms and carried her across the room to the ancient and rather dusty bed. Making a mental note to engage servants who shouldn’t have been pensioned off before the turn of the last century, Kitty sneezed as he dropped her onto the mattress.

  “Just so we’re clear, I love you, too,” he said, as he began removing his tailcoat and then his waistcoat. As he began removing his neckcloth, he added, “And I’d have gotten around to saying it sooner or later. You’re an impatient woman, Kitty.”

  She was an impatient woman. Recalling the heat and pleasure he’d shown her aboard his ship, she was growing more impatient by the minute. Rising to her knees, Kitty reache
d behind her to free the ties of her stays. Every garment that was shed, by her or Declan, was tossed carelessly aside until, at last, he climbed onto the bed with her gloriously naked and hedonistic.

  His mouth and his hands roamed over her freely, invoking a fierce need that left her gasping and clinging to him. He wasn’t gentle or even especially tender. There was a wildness to him that should have frightened her. But it didn’t. Instead, it only stoked her need of him further. She didn’t want him to treat her like a fragile thing made of glass. That she could inflame him so, drive him to the edge and beyond, it was something she gloried in.

  When he positioned himself between her parted thighs, Kitty eagerly wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles behind his lean hips. She arched upward, eager for him as he surged into her. It was as if the entire world fell away. Her mind was incapable of thought and only the most primal part of her was in control as the pleasure built inside her. When it crested, when he drove her over the edge and she could only cry out his name, she dug her nails into his shoulders and held on to him, clinging to him as he found his own release.

  They lay there in the aftermath, limbs tangled as he toyed with a lock of her hair that had escaped its pins. His head rested upon her breasts and she absently stroked his back, soothing the marks she’d left there. She felt his smile against her skin.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A week ago, I didn’t even know you existed. In that time, you’ve turned my entire world upside down and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Kitty grinned at that. “Do you know that in Bath, I’m considered to be quite dull and boring? I was never popular at parties or balls. I was a bluestocking and a spinster that spent most of her evenings being entirely ignored by everyone.”

  He lifted his head, one eyebrow arched skeptically. “I didn’t give up piracy to be married to a dullard, Kitty. However will you keep me entertained?”

  Kitty closed her arms more tightly about him. “I’m sure I can think of something.”

  Declan kissed her soundly then. “Oh, on that score, we are in complete agreement, Mrs. Kelly. Complete agreement.”

  Epilogue

  The house was quiet as Declan descended the stairs. He’d heard a noise, one he recognized well enough. The sound of a tin whistle had been unmistakable and the few bars of the tune played were known well enough to him. It hadn’t woken Kitty, but he was quickly learning that his new bride could sleep through anything.

  Still, he’d donned his breeches and his shirt and set off in search of his uncle. He knew he’d find the man wherever the brandy was kept. With that in mind, he headed straight for the library. Sure enough, as he entered, he saw his uncle seated at the desk with his booted feet propped up and a bottle clutched in his fist.

  “You destroyed my ship,” Stephen Kelly said.

  “Actually, that would be Haggerty. I was locked in the cabin after his little mutiny and he steered us right to the rocks as the storm was coming on,” Declan said. “You should have gotten rid of him years ago.”

  Stephen lifted the bottle and took a healthy swig of the amber liquid. “This is terrible. I serve better in my tavern and that’s after I’ve watered it down!”

  “Actually, that is what you serve in your tavern. It’s from a case you sent me as a gift,” Declan replied, nonplussed. “What do you want, Uncle?”

  “I’m going back to sea. You should come with me.”

  Declan arched one eyebrow at that announcement. “In what bloody vessel?”

  Stephen Kelly grinned. “I might have given you that ship, Boy, but don’t think it was the only one I had. There are always ships to be had when you’re a member of the Na Madrai Mara.”

  “Yes, yes… The Sea Dogs. Always out for one another and always out to get everyone else,” Declan replied. “I won’t be going back to sea.”

  Stephen sighed. “It’s just as well. You make a fine sailor, but a terrible pirate.”

  “That’s exactly what I told him.”

  Both men turned at the sound of the soft, feminine voice in the doorway. Kitty stood there, her dark hair billowing about her shoulders and a velvet wrapper in deep red draped over the stark white of her nightrail.

  “And you must be the lovely bride,” Stephen said. “Easy enough to see why he was tempted.”

  At that, Kitty raised her hand to reveal a pistol. “I’m tempted, too… tempted to shoot you if you think for a moment that I’m going to let you drag my husband back to sea with you. We almost died, you know?”

  Stephen grinned at that. “The sea giveth, my dear, and it taketh away. It’s the way of life.”

  “Not our life,” Declan said. “I’m not going back to sea, Uncle. I’m content where I am.”

  Stephen gestured with the bottle. “I’d be more apt to believe you if she wasn’t brandishing a weapon.”

  “Oh, he’s in no danger from me. I like my husband just fine… love him to bits, in fact. But you’re an unknown quantity, sir, and I’ll have no qualms about putting a pistol ball in you,” Kitty said. As if to prove her point, she pulled back the hammer on the pistol and leveled it right at the stranger seated in their library.

  “Maybe I should recruit you for piracy,” Stephen said. “You seem to have a knack for it. You’ve damned sure got the nerve.”

  Kitty smiled. “Flattery will get you nowhere. And I don’t believe for a minute that you came all this way just to ask Declan to sail with you… not when there are sailors by the hundreds in every port between your home and ours looking for work. So why are you really here?”

  Declan watched his uncle’s expression shift from amusement to grudging respect. “I do like her, Boy. She’s a prime one for sure. Truth is, your mother sent me. She’s a bit perturbed with you—getting married all havey-cavey like and then sending a letter telling her you’d be home sometime. No notion when. Don’t you know anything about women?”

  “Surely you didn’t do that, Declan,” Kitty said. “Your own mother!”

  Stephen shook his head sadly and leveled a commiserating glance at Kitty. “I hope you see, my dear, just how much work you’ve got set before you. Hardheaded, stubborn and foolish.”

  “I know, I know!” Declan said. “Just like my father.”

  “No. Just like me. It’s taken me sixty years on this earth to figure out women—”

  “Sixty-five,” Kitty corrected. “Declan told me how old you are.”

  Stephen eyed him then as if it were the worst sort of betrayal. “That’s just uncalled for, Boy.”

  “What should I have done,” Declan demanded, “when I have no notion of when we’ll get to Ireland?”

  “You should have assured her we’d be there within a month or so. You could also have extended an invitation for her to come stay here,” Kitty said. “No mother wants to imagine her son running off with some harpy who would keep him from his family!”

  Stephen smiled then, grinning broadly in the dimly lit room. “So glad I am, young woman, that you see things my way. And that’s why your mother, and my own dear Henrietta, are right outside in the carriage. They didn’t want to come in as it were, being uncertain of their welcome, but I told them it as likely just an oversight on your part. They are welcome, aren’t they?”

  Declan stammered, but Kitty stepped forward. “They certainly are,” she said. “Declan, you’ll need to wake the new butler and the housekeeper so that rooms can be readied for them as quickly as possible. They won’t have had a good airing really, but everything has been scrubbed top to bottom in the last week, so it should suffice.”

  “Now?” Declan asked.

  “Yes, now,” she said. “Hurry. We can’t leave them waiting in the carriage forever. And, Mr.—well, I don’t actually know your name.”

  “Stephen Kelly, ma’am, and a pleasure it is to see my nephew wedded to such a fine woman! A fine figure of one, too!”

  Declan turned around at the door then. “No you don’t! I’ll not be leaving you a
lone with Kitty to try and charm her out of the clothes she’s wearing!”

  “I’m not really wearing clothes,” Kitty replied. “Nightclothes, but they hardly count.”

  Declan glared at her. “Is that helpful? Really? Uncle Stephen, go and fetch Mama and Henrietta while my wife sends me off like an errand boy!”

  Stephen rose from the desk with a chuckle and followed Declan from the room. At the last second, he turned back to Kitty. “I do like you. I wasn’t just having on there. You’re good for the boy. You’ll keep him on his toes.”

  “He’s not a boy,” Kitty corrected softly. “He’s a man. A far better one than he knows.”

  Stephen Kelly smiled again. “That he is. That he is. Best of the lot of us… I’ll go fetch his mother and his auntie, my wife.”

  “Are you really going back to sea and leaving your wife behind?” Kitty asked him.

  “We were happier spending more time apart,” Stephen admitted. “But you’ve got the right of it. Start out together and stick together. That’s the way to make a marriage work.”

  It was a flurry of activity from that point on. The two women entered, introductions were made, tea was offered. It was stiff at first, aloof and perhaps even chilly. But as things progressed, Declan’s mother warmed up to her. And as Kitty was showing them to their rooms which the butler and housekeeper were making up hurriedly, Bridget Kelly smiled at her in a way that made Kitty feel better but also feel like a bit of confession wouldn’t hurt. “I didn’t know Declan had written you with such vague assurances. We did intend on coming to Ireland to see you as soon as we’d gotten things settled here at the estate. There’s been quite a bit to do to make it livable.”

  Henrietta was bringing up the rear of the group and she clucked her tongue. “Just like his uncle, he is!”