The Wayward One

by Danelle Harmon

  Sir Elliott nodded. “Gentlemen, if you could retreat a few more feet, just to be on the safe side, it would be to your benefit.”

  Andrew watched the group murmuring, exchanging jokes and glances, and laughing as they widened the circle a few more feet. He shook his head, concerned.

  “This won’t do.”

  “Just use less of the explosive,” Nerissa said. “It will make a smaller impact, will it not?”

  Andrew though, being what Nerissa knew was a typical male, was not interested in making a smaller impact. He shook his head. “This garden is not big enough to keep everyone safe. Perhaps we should ask people to remove to the house.” He voiced his concerns to Sir Elliott and Captain Lord, but upon making that suggestion to the guests who all stood around waiting to see what promised to be a hole blown into the ground all the way to Australia, only laughter and bravado greeted his remark.

  “We’re naval officers, and most of us are used to ship-to-ship action at close quarters. I’ll be damned if I’m going inside!”

  “Aye, you won’t catch me hiding behind brick walls!”

  Laughter rang out and Andrew’s mouth grew mulish with impatience.

  Nerissa touched his arm. “Really, Andrew, it can’t be that potent.”

  He just slanted her a look that told her it very well was.

  “Maybe you should go into the house,” he said, his concern growing. “It will be loud. It could be dangerous.”

  “I am not going into the house. You may need me.”

  “What I need is for you to go into the house. It will be safer there.”

  She took a deep, steadying breath and felt the ire building. When she had been younger, much younger, her brothers’ over-protectiveness had made her feel safe and secure. Eventually, it had become amusing. Now, as a woman who’d recently turned one and twenty, it was no longer amusing. It was restrictive.

  Stifling.

  And increasingly infuriating.

  “And now you are coddling me, Andrew. Just like Lucien and Charles and to a smaller extent, Gareth… I may be the baby sister, but I can assure you that I am not fragile. I get tired of the coddling, Andrew. I am not an egg.”

  He just looked at her. “Egg?”

  “Coddled? Egg?”

  He stared at her blankly, too distracted by the impending demonstration to match wits with her. “Oh, never mind,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “I’ll go inside and watch from an upstairs window if that will make you feel better.”

  “It would make me feel a lot better.”

  She turned and headed back toward the door that they had all just exited, hating herself for giving up so easily—but it was Andrew’s night, and she would not spoil it for him. Still. All her life, her four brothers had sheltered her. Protected her. Guarded her so zealously there had been times she’d felt as though she couldn’t breathe. She wondered if she would ever be treated as anything other than a fine bit of china by those who loved her most. A porcelain doll. Would Captain Lord ask that his wife also watch from the “safety” of the house?

  Unbidden, an image of Mrs. Lord’s rude and loutish brother flashed into her mind, and she credited her shortness with Andrew to her own troubling response to him. Odious man, indeed. She was glad that he had gone.

  Why on earth am I thinking of him?

  The door shut behind her. The house was empty and still, only the distant sound of a clock breaking the silence. She heard a carriage passing on the street outside. Sir Elliott out in the garden, calling for everyone’s attention.

  She tightened her mouth and began to climb the stairs, one hand on the balustrade, the other holding up her heavy skirts. They rustled softly with every step she ascended.

  I ought to go right back out there. Andrew seeks to protect me, but I am here to protect him in case he needs support or has an attack. What am I doing inside?

  Vexed with herself, with her brother, with the situation, with everything, she reached the second level of the house. She turned right, heading for the rooms that looked out onto the back garden, hurrying now so she would not be too late to watch her brother either blow himself to Kingdom Come or emerge as Britain’s next hero. She needed to get her ire under control, to cool down, before facing everyone once again.

  There, that room, to the right—it would do.

  Nerissa swept through the doorway—and froze.

  “We meet again.”

  She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. It was him. Him. Mrs. Lord’s brother, he with the hard, angular face so at odds with those striking long-lashed eyes, he with the unruly black hair and wicked, smiling mouth and, judging from his antagonistic attitude toward Captain Lord and her brother, a wish for an early death. He was leaning against the window embrasure, arms folded, looking over his shoulder and down at the garden below.

  Nerissa stood unmoving, her heart suddenly banging in her chest. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were here, I thought you’d left.”

  He didn’t look up. “I only wanted people to think I’d left.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Watchin’ the demonstration. I might ask the same of you.”

  “I feel no need to explain myself to you, of all people.”

  “Fine, then. Don’t.”

  His blithe dismissal of her only stoked the resentment she already felt at being sent away from the action out in the garden like a child. He was back to looking down over his shoulder again, and had dismissed her as easily and quickly as everyone else had, her brother included. What was she, invisible?

  “Fine then, I will. You wish to know why I’m here and not out in the garden with everyone else? It’s because my brother thinks I’m made out of glass, that I might crack if I stay out there and watch him demonstrate his explosive, that something might happen to me. I’m sick to death of my brothers’ over-protectiveness. Some days I feel as though I can barely breathe. God forbid I end up in any danger! God forbid I ever have any sort of adventure! They treat me like a child, like a fragile doll, and I’m tired of it!”

  He had finally looked up and met her gaze, one black eyebrow raised in either amusement or surprise that she’d confess so much to him, a perfect stranger. “Well,” he said, eyeing her, “why not make the most of the situation? Ye’re here, I’m here, and we’ve got the best seat in the house. Come watch with me.”

  “No, I’m going back outside. I came here to support my brother and I’m going right back out there whether he likes it or not. Besides, it’s not proper for me to be up here with—”

  “It’s only improper if anyone but us knows ye’re up here,” he added, pointedly. There was something languid and predatory about him, something dangerous, and Nerissa tensed, wondering how long it would take her to get to the door. “So come and watch with me. We’ll both have the last laugh. Unless ye’re afraid, of course.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Ye’re still standin’ over there. Come over here. Ye’ll be able to see better.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—because you’re there!”

  He was looking back down again at the garden below. “Aye, don’t tell anyone. I’m supposed to be gone, remember?”

  “I must leave, it was foolish of me to stay as long as—”

  “So your brother down there designed some sort of new firecracker?”

  She backed toward the door. “Not a firecracker, an explosive.”

  “What kind of explosive?”

  He looked up again and the intensity of his gaze, the raw virility of him as a man—and a very tall, powerful, and attractive one at that—caused her heart to do a little tripping flutter. She clapped a hand to her chest. Oh, this was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

  “What kind of explosive?” he persisted.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She took another step back toward the safety of the door. “A loud one. A powerful one. I don’t know much about Andrew’s inventions,
he’s far smarter than the rest of us and I’m sorry but I must go—”

  “We were never introduced, ye know. I’m Mrs. Lord’s brother. You can call me Ruaidri.”

  “I’m not calling you anything, I’m leaving.”

  “And what is your name, Sunshine? Ye’re his sister, aren’t ye?”

  “Yes, I’m his sister, and there is no need for you to know my name, no need for you to be asking me all these questions and trying to detain me, no need for me to stay here when I must go.”

  He grinned, wickedly. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  “Tell what?”

  “Yer brother, if you let me steal a kiss.”

  She gasped, coloring hotly. “You—you are a rogue and a scoundrel to even suggest such a thing!”

  “I may indeed be a rogue and a scoundrel but if I am, it’s not for wantin’ a kiss from a pretty lass.” He straightened up from the window, his strong, perfect teeth very white in the glint of moonlight. “Oblige me?”

  “No!”

  “I’m bettin’ it’ll be far more explosive than what’s about to transpire down there in the garden. Come here, Sunshine. I’ve a mind to see if those lips of yers were made for kissin’.”

  Nerissa’s mouth fell open. Her face went white, then flooded with color, and she was so shocked she could not even take another step backward.

  Seeing it, the Irishman laughed and made a little dismissive gesture with his hand. “Ah, don’t mind me, lass. I’m just messin’ about with ye. I’d never hurt ye, not in a million years. I’m perfectly harmless.”

  “You—you don’t look harmless.”

  “No?” He arched a brow, his gaze dropping pointedly to her bosom, the nip of her waist and the flare of her hips with undisguised interest. “How do I look?”

  Dangerous. Virile. Predatory. Fascinating. “I can’t answer that.”

  “Not scared of me now, are ye?”

  “After what you just said to me? No, I am not scared. What I am, sir, is offended. Outraged.”

  “I paid ye a complement and ye’re offended? Outraged? Saint’s alive, what would your reaction be if I paid ye an insult?”

  “I can’t believe I’m standing here having this absurd conversation with you. You are rude and obnoxious and drunk, and I have already given you far more time and attention than you deserve. Good evening, sir.”

  He went back to looking down at the garden below, his gaze far more keen and watchful than his drunken state should allow. “’Twould be a better one if ye came over here and let me give ye that kiss.”

  “Ohhh!” Incensed, she turned on her heel and hurried for the stairs, hearing his laughter ringing out behind her. Her slippered foot had just reached the first of the steps leading down to the ground floor when an earth-shattering explosion all but shook the house off its foundations. Startled, she missed her footing…grabbed wildly for the balustrade…and suddenly the stairs were coming up to meet her, ceiling, balustrade, walls and stairs all whirling past her eyes as she tumbled and fell.

  Her scream was lost to the wild applause outside.

  * * *

  Ruaidri had only pretended to exit the townhouse earlier, just as he’d pretended to be drunk so that nobody took him seriously—but he’d never had any intention of leaving, and had slipped quietly back into the house after everyone else had filed outside. He had not expected to be disturbed, and certainly not by the ivory-haired beauty who had swept so forcefully into his room. He had no love for the English—not after what they had done to him as a young lad, not after the years he’d spent pressed into the Royal Navy, not after the innate scorn with which most of them treated him and anyone else who happened to be Irish. In fact, truth be told, he hated the English. It amused him to have outsmarted them all into thinking he was nothing but Deirdre’s foolish brother, a tenant farmer who drank too much and was only a few steps above an idiot, obligingly leaving the house when told. It also amused him to rattle the imperious ice princess when she’d come flying into the room. Poor little canary. He could have stayed all night talking to her, as he’d sensed she was not just a spoiled aristocrat but a young woman of depth, passion and feeling, but there were times for the pursuit of a skirt and there were times for the pursuit of duty.

  Tonight belonged to duty.

  And so, he’d deliberately frightened her to get her to leave. He hadn’t moved from his place at the window as she’d stormed off, and he had fully intended to go back to watching the much-anticipated demonstration of this “new explosive” unobserved and unnoticed up here in the upstairs window of his darkened room, when a horrendous boom at close range had nearly blown the glass out of that very window; he heard her shriek and then the terrible, thudding sounds of a body falling down a flight of stairs.

  The explosive forgotten, he charged from the room and to the head of the stairs. There at the bottom she lay, a beautiful broken doll with one outflung arm, her hair down from its elaborate coiffure and now in helpless disarray over her face and her skirts, the blue-green color of Galway shallows under a bright sun, twisted around her legs.

  He took the stairs in three bounds.

  “Yer ladyship!” He knelt and took her gloved hand, alarmingly limp within his own. “Answer me!”

  She stirred, moaned, and fell motionless once more.

  From outside came the sounds of applause, excited voices, congratulations to the clever inventor. Ruaidri picked up one of the dainty white wrists, examined first one arm and then the other for broken bones. She appeared to be intact even if she were unconscious, and Captain Ruaidri O’ Devir of the American Continental brig Tigershark suddenly realized that Fate had just delivered the perfect opportunity to obtain what John Adams had sent him three thousand miles to get.

  The explosive.

  He was nothing if not innovative. Without another thought, he slid his hands beneath the blonde beauty, lifted her in his arms, and before the first guests began to return from the back garden, ran out the front door and to the street beyond.

  The night wasted no time in swallowing him.

  Chapter 3

  “By Jove, that was quite spectacular, Lord Andrew!”

  “Amazing! Simply amazing! I’ve never seen the like, have you, Captain Danvers?”

  “Never, not in a quarter century of being at sea.” Excited faces all around, laughter, blue-and-white-clad officers clapping him on the shoulder, pumping his hand, toasting him with their glasses until Andrew felt like his head was swimming.

  This was what he’d been waiting for. Recognition. A purpose in life. Something that would leave his mark upon history….

  The small crowd all but carried him back into the house, and he frowned when his sister didn’t immediately come to greet him. He had expected her to be at the door. Rushing out to the garden to support him. She must be indisposed, doing whatever females did to tidy their hair or fix their clothing or—

  “I do believe your invention is a hit,” Captain Lord said, smiling. “If you’ll pardon the pun.”

  They went back into the converted ballroom where brandy, gin and rum began to flow in an amount to float any one of these officers’ warships.

  Andrew pulled out his watch.

  Still no Nerissa.

  The excited questions and congratulations from the guests began to fade, and alarm began to prickle at the base of his spine.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, and went in search of his host’s wife. He found Deirdre Lord in a corner of the ballroom holding the blond-haired little boy whose eyes were wide with wonder as he stared at the sea of officers in their handsome blue-and-white uniforms.

  “M’ poor Colin—the explosion woke up the wee mite and now I can’t get him t’ go back to sleep,” she said, holding the child to her heart and kissing his bright hair. “There, there, nothin’ t’ fear, m’ little love.”

  Little Colin Lord looked anything but fearful.

  “Mrs. Lord, I think I need your assistance.”

  H
er face immediately registered concern. “Ye look worried. Are ye well?”

  “My sister,” he murmured, trying to quell his sense of alarm. “Have you seen her?”

  “Not since she went back inside.”

  “I can’t find her. I don’t know where she could be, and it wouldn’t be like her to leave me all alone.”

  The beautiful Irishwoman nodded and handed the baby to her husband, who was just approaching. “Let me see if she’s upstairs—maybe the excitement of the evening got t’ her and she’s lyin’ down.”

  Nerissa was a de Montforte, Andrew thought. She was not likely to be affected by anything of the sort. If anything, she was in a snit at being sent back inside and off sulking somewhere. Or so he told himself, even though that wouldn’t be like her, either. He took a deep and steadying breath as he watched Mrs. Lord head for the stairs. The hour was late. Maybe Nerissa was just lying down.

  After that explosion?

  The little prickle of fear at the base of his spine, unreasonable as it was, began to creep upward. He heard himself answering a question from a lieutenant with ruddy cheeks and a missing front tooth, making the polite response, fielding the inevitable questions, and then Mrs. Lord was hurrying back downstairs, frowning.

  She hurried over to Andrew. “She’s not upstairs. I searched every room.”

  “Where the devil could she be?”

  “Christian!” she motioned urgently to her husband, who quickly left the gathering of naval officers with whom he’d been deep in conversation, his young son in his arms. “We can’t find Lady Nerissa. I checked upstairs. She’s nowhere to be found.”

  “Any chance she wandered into the kitchen? Retired to a drawing room?”

  “I checked. So did Lord Andrew.”

  “Maybe she just went outside to get some fresh air and is sitting in your coach. Stay here and double-check every room. I’ll go out and have a look.”

  Returning the toddler to his wife, Captain Lord strode past a group of guests on his way out, many of them well into their cups and oblivious to the quiet drama that was playing out right under their noses. Andrew rushed to the kitchens and found them empty save for a pair of weary servants sitting at a table playing cards and awaiting any further requests from their employers. No, they had not seen a tall, pale-haired young lady wearing pearls and blue-green silk.