He’d told her she was weak. He should have realized she was insane! Or maybe he was, for saying any such thing. Gut-wrenching horror had him elbowing a filthy deckhand larger than he was as he shoved closer to the pier.
More men leapt into boats. A flotilla formed on the filthy waters of the Thames. The tide depth was against the larger ship, but the little ones navigated this stream all day.
Erran wanted to tear his hair and bellow for everyone to go home, but he couldn’t. He had to respect that the fool woman was doing precisely what was necessary for the occasion—even if she risked her own life in doing so. He was the inexperienced one in the Realm of the Wyrd.
But he damned well wasn’t letting the brilliant, reckless female stand up there alone and unguarded. Keeping his hand on his pistol, he bullied his way to a space near her feet. Legs braced apart, arms crossed, he defied anyone to come close. He wasn’t certain she saw him. She was concentrating hard on the right commands and not the pushing and shoving men milling at her feet.
To Erran’s relief, Trevor eased up to his side, his hand on the grip of his sword. The boy had good instincts.
“Bring back the prisoner!” Celeste cried, gesturing dramatically with her cloaked arm, pointing at the ship.
More men poured into boats. A few leapt into the muddy freezing water and began stroking toward the middle where the Jolly Wench bobbed. Erran had to catch Trevor’s shoulder to prevent the boy from leaping to this command.
“She’s inciting a riot! Stop her, men!” a male voice abruptly bellowed from the cobblestones.
Celeste’s eyes widened. Erran turned to see a phalanx of uniformed men marching through the crowd. These weren’t bobbies, but hired forces.
He recognized the commander— Lansdowne.
In an attempt to retreat from the soldiers, the mob panicked and surged toward the river. Crushed between the edge of the pier and the crowd, Erran and Trevor stood shoulder to shoulder, attempting to stand strong against the wave of humanity, giving Celeste time to climb down.
She teetered helplessly, looking for footing as the crowd surged.
With a mighty bellow, Erran grabbed for her. Before he could clasp even her cloak, she lost her balance and toppled— into the foulness of the Thames. She would drown in that debris-strewn tide.
Watching such brilliance vanish beneath the murk was akin to seeing the sun explode and the heavens crash. Erran roared his anguish.
Caution be damned. He could not let her die. Bellowing for ropes and buoys, uncaring that objects leaped off the pier without human intervention, he tugged off his coat containing the valuable documents and shoved it at Trevor. Without noticing that his entire audience madly jumped into the water around him, Erran dived after his sunshine.
Thirty
Water as thick as pea soup closed over her head. Petticoats, cloak, and riding boots dragged her down through the murk. Celeste held her breath until she thought her lungs might burst and she started seeing stars. Frantically, she kicked, but fabric wrapped her legs, trapping her more surely than a river of seaweed. Something filthy bobbed beneath her nose. She fought to avoid it, and a rotted timber slammed into her arm. Panicking, she grabbed at it, but the board dipped from her hand and bobbed away. And she kept sinking. Her struggle against the current got her nowhere.
She sensed her parents in the water and air around her, frantically urging her to safety. She longed to reach out to them . . .
Abruptly, a barrage of large objects plunged into the water around her in a confusion of colors and bubbles.
Unable to hold her breath longer, she gulped for air. At the same time, her braid caught on an invisible hook. She almost screamed, except she couldn’t. Choking, blacking out, she was barely aware of being hauled upward. Her cloak was ripped from her throat, and she felt immeasurably lighter. An arm grabbed her waist—
The muscular solidity was as familiar to her as her own frailty, jarring her back to consciousness. Why was he here? He was supposed to be in court, saving her family home. Was he dead, like her parents?
Frantic for his sake and for his child’s, her spirit clung to this drowning body.
She wept and coughed as her head emerged from the water. She still couldn’t breathe, but Erran’s frantic pleas for her to live reached her through the veil separating her from life. She couldn’t speak to tell him she was trying. Her voice was gone with her breath. She gagged desperately for air as he swam to the pier.
She could hear shouts of rage and panic and . . . concern? Maybe. She inhaled abruptly and couldn’t think while gasping for breath and choking on water.
Hands hauled her upward until she sprawled along the pier planks, spitting up her lungs, soaked, and miserable. She tried to shove upright. She tried to shout Jamar’s name, remind them they must rescue Jamar . . .
Erran sat on her rump. “Shut up. Just shut up for once. They’ve boarded the Wench. The mob is furious and out of control and turning on Lansdowne’s thugs and will probably light fire to warehouses soon. The earl and his men are being mauled and driven back. You did a very good job of arousing ire. Just stay down!” He pushed her flat, then pounded and massaged her back until she indecorously heaved up half the contents of the river.
“Trevor, your handkerchief,” Erran commanded when she had no more to heave.
A clean white square was pressed to her mouth, and the heavy weight lifted from her back. “You weigh twice of me,” she muttered, scrambling to sit.
“And a good thing too,” he retorted. “I went down faster.”
“Like cannon shot,” Trevor said cheerfully, although his voice hid terror.
She didn’t want to hear other people’s fear. She had enough of her own to last a lifetime. Shivering, she accepted someone’s coat and leaned into an equally soaked Erran’s reassuring embrace. She couldn’t stop shaking. Or crying. She had to do something. She couldn’t let Jamar—
A roar of triumph echoed over the water. She barely had the strength to lift her head and look.
She caught a glimpse of Jamar standing tall and proud on the ship’s deck. Men swarmed over the Wench, dismantling the sails, carrying out trunks.
“Wharf rats,” Erran commented, drawing her closer, holding her as if he would never let her go again. “They’ll strip the ship clean now. It’s blatant thievery, but I cannot condemn them if they demolish a slaver.”
Neither could Celeste. She watched with hope as, unshackled, Jamar climbed down and into a waiting rowboat. At least one of the sailors appeared to be an honest man. Rather than wait for riches, he began rowing Jamar back to the dock.
“Justice takes a strange path,” Erran murmured above her head. “I must condemn lawlessness, but if fighting among thieves brings justice, who am I to argue?”
Pistol shots rang out near the warehouses. The mob still on shore roared in rage and surged in several directions at once. She could hear fistfights breaking out and shuddered. “I should stop them.”
“Take a look at yourself and say that again,” Erran said in that disturbing tone she couldn’t quite define.
While she glanced down at her seaweed draped skirts and soaked bodice—revealing everything they were meant to hide— he released her. She hadn’t been fully aware that she’d been in his arms until she wasn’t—he felt that much a part of her.
He was right. She couldn’t stand up looking like this. People would merely see a madwoman. Wringing out her loosened braid, she watched as Erran stood and took the perch she’d commanded earlier.
“He got his new shirt wet,” she said sadly, madly, admiring the way his lordship’s finery plastered to his athletic build as he shouted at a rioting mob.
“He’s lost his neckcloth,” Trevor said, “and his boots will never be the same again. He encouraged a riot to save a nodcock like you.”
For her. Not for the marquess. Not for riches. For her. The elegant, intimidating aristocrat she’d once regarded in awe had saved a pathetically useless wretch like her—as
if she might actually have some value. Even after she’d used the compulsion he condemned.
As she watched Erran shouting in his commanding courtroom voice, accepting his gift and conquering his fear of becoming his evil cousin, she thrilled at the knowledge that he did this for her. Maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t simply been being polite when he’d offered marriage. Was it possible a gentleman of his many talents could actually care?
She had been trying to pretend such a gifted man couldn’t really want an ungainly spinster. She had sought to set him free. Instead, he was risking arrest, humiliation, and the ultimate destruction of his career for her, and for Jamar, and because her family would be devastated at Jamar’s loss.
He had to be the most selfless man she’d ever met. And she loved him with every soggy fiber of her heart.
Her dripping, seaweed-adorned suitor stood like a towering, waistcoat-wearing pelican on the highest pier post and bellowed for order in no uncertain terms.
And maddened men listened.
The chaos gradually died down, except for rowdies engaged in hand-to-hand combat with uniformed men. She could hear cries of pain and anguish and winced at what she’d done.
“Cease and desist!” Erran roared again. It was easier to hear him now that the worst of the shouting had stopped. “These men have a right to protest! Their voices should be heard. You have no power to arrest working men for enforcing the laws our wealthy aristocrats cannot and will not!”
“Protest? Is that what they are doing?” Celeste asked in confusion.
“Probably not,” Trevor said with a shrug. “But there are soldiers beating up those fellows who were trying to help you, and I don’t think we can explain tearing apart the Wench any other way.”
She was grateful that her brother took her riot-inducing ability in stride.
She didn’t dare stand up and use her voice if Lansdowne was still out there. There might really be a riot if she screamed her opinion of her father’s dreadful cousin.
She and Erran did tend to approach riots from opposite sides, so it might be best if she let him handle this one. Besides, her throat hurt and her voice rasped.
“We are a kingdom of free men,” Erran shouted—presumably at Lansdowne and his soldiers. Perhaps at the occupants of the expensive carriages watching the entertainment. She winced, remembering the marquess was in one of them. It was a good thing he couldn’t see his brother. Hearing Erran would be shock enough.
“We have the right to speak our minds,” Erran continued roaring as the noise died down. “These good men have been unemployed and underpaid and treated like human waste for far too long. Let them be heard all the way to the halls of Parliament!”
“Is that stopping the soldiers?” Celeste asked with curiosity.
“It’s hard to tell,” Trevor acknowledged, standing over her to keep her from being trampled. “There’s an old man standing on a wagon, berating the soldiers and pointing at Lord Erran. I’d say that was Lansdowne. He seems to be turning purple. And there are more carriages filled with gentlemen who are shouting back. I think perhaps he’s causing the gentlemen to riot.”
“How very . . . original.” She coughed and hacked some more.
Trevor stiffened at some sight out of her view. Frightened at his look of helpless terror, she struggled to sit up.
“He’s aiming at his lordship,” her brother said, shoving her down again. Before she could scream, she heard Erran thunder, “Put that gun down!”
A clamor of more than one weapon hitting cobblestones followed. Celeste watched in bemusement as a few of the guns seemingly slid of their own accord toward the water.
“I think his lordship has learned the purpose of his talent,” she whispered in awe.
A gloved hand reached down to help her up. “Let’s take the lady out of here, shall we?”
“Not without Erran,” she argued, standing of her own volition to meet the eyes of Erran’s blond younger brother Jacques.
He grinned. “You’ll be good for the family, even if you’re as tall as I am.” He gestured at a few less filthy thugs and pointed at the orator on the post. “Haul his noble lordship off his pedestal and carry him along with the lady. The marquess is tired of waiting.”
Celeste watched speechlessly as a couple of brawny sailors lifted Erran from his post and propped him on their shoulders. Erran continued waving and ranting and gesturing at the carriage surrounded by soldiers.
The mob parted to let them pass.
When Jamar finally caught up with them, he lifted Celeste into his arms and followed in Erran’s wake. Despite her elation at learning her lover had come to her rescue, she despaired at the thought of a future without him.
Even a blind marquess couldn’t accept a riot-invoking Fury into his household, not if he meant to win votes and influence Parliament. This was probably where he politely but sternly requested that she and her family find another home—far, far away. Well, that had been what she’d wanted, wasn’t it?
***
Three days later and Erran still hadn’t seen Celeste to determine how she felt. He knew she was alive because she’d been bombarding him with impersonal commands rather than face him. He paced the parlor with increasing dudgeon.
“You sorry dunghill, don’t pigeon me with that claptrap! I may be blind but I’m not dead yet.”
As Ashford’s howl echoed down the corridor, Sylvia tittered and covered her mouth with her fingertips. Aster rolled her eyes and continued laying out bolts of cloth and studying the parlor windows.
Erran snarled and watched London pass by outside the hundred-year-old panes.
“Erran, swing your hide in here and make yourself useful,” the frustrated marquess shouted from his newly completed apartment. “Tell this jackanapes the walls could be purple and the hangings fishnet, and I wouldn’t give a fig!”
Aster raised one eyebrow at him. Erran wanted to toss her in the drink. “Where’s Theo?” he growled. “Hiding?”
“Harvest, and swearing and scowling like the rest of you.” She rolled up two bolts and opened another. “We need a miracle worker to fix Ashford’s blindness so everyone can return to normal.”
“He hasn’t found a better steward yet?” Ignoring his brother’s howls, he continued pacing up and down the parlor, listening for any sound from Celeste’s chambers overhead. “It’s not as if Theo was raised to ride the fields like Dunc.”
“It will take time to sort out,” Aster said with a shrug. “The stars aren’t in the right house yet. But Ashford is doing considerably better. You should stage more riots. I think he enjoys them.”
Erran refrained from rolling his eyes. He was not exactly proud of what he had done. He’d just known he’d had to stop Lansdowne from hurting the men who had saved Jamar. Perhaps this purgatory was his punishment for using his wyrd voice for his own purposes. Although dunking shotguns in the Thames hadn’t been part of his plan.
Aster and her damned family had kept him from Celeste, saying she was too ill for male visitors. How could he even think if he could not see for himself that she’d survived her near-drowning intact?
They just thought he was restless. They didn’t know what Celeste meant to him.
Maybe he should bolt up the stairs . . .
Jamar appeared in the doorway. Erran glanced his way in hope. The man merely shrugged. “His lordship requires your presence, my lord.”
“You are not his butler nor his manservant,” Erran pointed out. “You have the power and position of a respected majordomo who should be treated with dignity.”
“As he treats you, an educated barrister?” Jamar asked.
“We’ll tie him up and shove him in a closet.” Erran stalked past Jamar and down the corridor to Duncan’s chambers to confront the monster. His patience was at an end.
Duncan stood in the middle of his chamber, swinging his walking stick and pointing at the various workmen applying paint and plaster. Cousin Zack was working through a checklist and attempting to
ask questions that Dunc apparently did not wish to answer.
“Erran, quit moping over that bird-witted female and explain to this jinglebrain that I just want his men out. I do not need plaster birds and cherubs or Wedgewood blue, whatever the hell that is. I want peace and quiet!” Duncan whipped his cane against the post of his mahogany tester bed, cracking the stick.
“We’ll need a few timbers to carve out more canes for you to break,” Erran said, shoving his hand in his pocket and surveying the scene.
Zack shot him an amused look. “Rotted wood, perhaps? Better to break the stick than heads.”
“I am right here! Why does no one listen to me?” Ashford sat down on the mattress and bounced, testing it. “It’s too soft.”
“When you start saying something worth hearing, we’ll listen, your noble lord and master. Do we bring in Goldilocks to test your beds now? We’re all busy men. What, precisely, did you want of us that you cannot do yourself?” Erran took the list Zack handed him and began ticking off items with a pencil.
And, of course, there was the crux of it. Duncan couldn’t check off the list to see what had been done to his satisfaction. He couldn’t go out and order his own bed. He couldn’t see the colors he wanted. Someone needed to deal with him with patience.
Right now, that wasn’t Erran.
“I need a word with you without all the clamor about,” Ashford complained. “How the devil am I to have a confidential meeting with a house full of witches and workmen?”
Zack snorted and took back the paper Erran had initialed. “Kick his valet in here to oversee the decoration, and use the valet’s room. I don’t know what you do about witches.”
“Dunking apparently doesn’t work anymore,” Duncan snarled, heading unerringly for Jones’s chamber.
Erran followed into the dimly lit dressing room. Jones was tidily dusting his new furniture. The valet gaped at his employer’s entrance and fled when Ashford pointed at the door.
“Terrorizing servants, nice, Dunc.” Erran perched on the manservant’s narrow cot and watched his brother pace off the chamber’s dimensions. “What do you want of me?”
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