The Wayward One

by Danelle Harmon

  He grinned over at her. When he looked at her like that, it was impossible to stay angry with him. Besides, she thought grudgingly, it wasn’t his fault that he’d passed out. He’d lost a lot of blood. What was left had gone to his male organ instead of his brain, and had done him in.

  She glared at him, but her anger was short-lived. She stepped out of the breeches and returned to the cot. He reached out to snag her around the waist. She climbed up beside him and nestled her back against his chest, his abdomen, his thighs. He molded himself to her, enclosing her protectively with his own body, and it felt good. Blissfully, blessedly, good.

  She sighed with contentment. He wrapped a possessive arm over her upper body and pulled her up even closer, his chin buried in her hair, his breath warming the back of her head. Eventually that arm grew lax, and before his warm, heavy weight was sagging into hers, she, too, was asleep.

  Chapter 26

  Several days later….

  Hadley had gone back and scoured the area where he’d put McPhee in command of Tigershark. He had studied the currents, sailed with them in search of flotsam and debris, circled the area once, twice, three times, and finally admitting defeat, had made sail for London. Surely, McPhee was waiting for him there. Now, he watched the banks of the Thames become more and more clogged with buildings, wharfs, and vessels unloading their wares, the refuse and dirt of the great city reaching out to encompass everything it touched. He was the picture of calm as he stood on his quarterdeck, barking orders to proceed under topsails and jib alone as he waited for a pilot to come meet him, but to his eye was a spyglass and only he could feel his heart pounding as he anxiously scanned the sea of vessels that clogged the Pool of London.

  The American prize brig, Tigershark, was not amongst them.

  Dewhurst tried to offer a bit of hope. “Maybe they got delayed by the storm,” he murmured, though a sideways glance at his face showed his own doubt and silenced him immediately.

  “They’re not here. Damn it to hell, they’re not here.”

  His lieutenant kicked at an imaginary deck seam. “Might’ve lost some rigging and got delayed,” he offered.

  “Might’ve gone down,” Hadley snapped.

  “Might’ve been retaken by the French. After all, that frigate was right there in the area.”

  “Does it matter? That brig’s not here. She’s missing, and with her, Lady Nerissa and Lord Andrew de Montforte.” His eyes bleak, he slapped the glass shut with the palm of his hand. This could mean the end of his career. There would be an inquiry, of course—he had lost an American prize that would have brought a tidy amount at auction and he had made a bad decision, a very bad decision, in allowing Lady Nerissa—at her own insistence—to stay aboard the prize brig. And why? Because he was trying to win her favor? Her heart? How was he going to explain that to his superiors back at the Admiralty?

  And God help him, how was he going to explain it to the Duke of Blackheath?

  His insides twisted and turned and he felt a sudden urge to defecate.

  “See to our anchoring, Mr. Dewhurst, he muttered, and putting the glass back in its rack, stalked off.

  * * *

  Hadley had good reason to be nervous. At the very moment his bowels were emptying at the thought of facing the Duke of Blackheath and telling him of his siblings’ absence and possible—if not likely—loss, Lucien de Montforte himself was arriving at the Admiralty.

  Footmen leaped down to steady the fretting horses, to open the door of his gleaming black coach and to put down the steps for His Grace. Wordlessly, the duke strode beneath the great portico and into the austere building itself where a clerk, recognizing him, raised his eyebrows and immediately began to look like a penned sheep circled by a wolf.

  “Is Lord Sandwich in?” the duke asked.

  “I’m sorry your Grace, but he stepped out for just a moment, and should return shortly. Would you care for some refreshment? Some—”

  “Show me to his office. I will await him there.”

  “Your Grace, I can’t just bring you into the office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, I could lose my position here and….”

  His voice fell off as the duke’s cold black eyes settled on him, pinning him to his chair and sucking every ounce of courage from the blood that ran suddenly cold through his veins. Without raising his voice, without moving a muscle, the duke merely said, “If you value your position that much, then it would behoove you to grant my request because I can assure you that the strings of Admiralty are not controlled by those you think control it.” The hard mouth was unbending. “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Y-yes, your Grace, very clear indeed.” He rose to his feet, managed a clumsy bow, and led Lucien de Montforte to Lord Sandwich’s office. “Make yourself comfortable, Your Grace. Some coffee, perhaps? Tea? Refreshments?”

  The noble profile turned to gaze out windows grimy with coal smoke. “I am quite comfortable. Send the earl to me when he arrives. That is all.”

  That is all.

  The young officer bolted. He had been grateful when his own connections had landed him this position at the Admiralty, away from seasickness and foundering warships and tyrannical captains who thought nothing of beating their junior officers over the breech of a gun. But at that moment, he would have traded hell and high water to be out on a ship…anywhere but within the reach of the mighty Duke of Blackheath.

  He had just returned to his desk when the door opened and two well-dressed young men came in, their faces grave and bearing a similarity in profile to that devil he’d just left back in Lord Sandwich’s office. One, clad in the uniform of an Army officer, was tall and taciturn with blond hair tied back in a neat queue; the other’s hair was a tawny golden-brown and his blue eyes were dark with worry.

  He drew himself up. “Can I help you?”

  The same lordly attitude, the same expectance of being obeyed. It was there in the Army officer, just as it had been in Blackheath. “I am Major Lord Charles de Montforte, and this is my brother Lord Gareth. I understand our brother the duke is here?”

  “Yes, he is. If you’ll but wait here, I’ll—”

  “Take us to him immediately,” Lord Charles commanded. “This is a matter of grave importance to my family and possibly even the security of England herself.”

  The clerk took a deep, bracing sigh. If it wasn’t one, it was three. He was going to lose his position over this, to be sure. Maybe he’d find a berth on a Royal Navy ship and there, serve out his days waiting to get his head blown off.

  In the meantime, the pale blue eyes of the major were regarding him with growing impatience.

  “Come with me,” he said, and led the two brothers to Lord Sandwich’s office.

  * * *

  John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich and currently serving his third stint as the First Lord of the Admiralty, returned from lunch in a bad mood. As he entered the Admiralty, he saw the young officer at the desk beckoning madly to him.

  “What is it, Fleming?”

  “The Duke of Blackheath and his brothers, sir. They’re here.”

  Sandwich’s thin mouth, perpetually down-turned these days, tightened in a frown beneath his long, hooked nose. “Where?”

  The young man grew visibly uncomfortable. “They demanded to be put in your office, my lord.” As Sandwich’s brow went dark, he began to stammer. “I-I told him that that was not possible, th-th-that I would lose my position over it, but he said that you and I both would lose our positions if I didn’t grant him his wishes and he’s in there now, sir, waiting for you—all of them are.”

  His mood souring all the more, Lord Sandwich stalked down the hall toward his office, the heavy joint of beef he’d consumed over lunch beginning to sit rather uncomfortably in his stomach. He knew all about the abduction of Lady Nerissa, was doing everything he could think of to get her back. Damn the Americans, the most worthless race of men on earth. This was going to put him into his damned grave. What more could he possibly
do to appease Blackheath that he hadn’t already done?

  Better think of something. Life will surely get worse than it already is if you don’t.

  He pushed open the door to his office and saw the three brothers there, the resemblance between them all quite unmistakable. Bows were exchanged, but Blackheath allowed no time for pleasantries. A muscle twitching in his cheek, he looked coldly at Sandwich and then, reaching into his pocket, produced a folded piece of vellum and slapped it down on his desk.

  Lord Sandwich pulled out his chair and sat. He glanced up, once, at Blackheath through watery, pale blue eyes, thinned his mouth and unfolded the paper.

  “This was delivered to me an hour ago,” the duke said icily. “Earlier this morning, Rear-Admiral Hadley informed me that my siblings were safe and on their way back to England aboard the American prize-brig Tigershark.” Blackheath’s eyes were blazing-cold. “Is someone lying to me, Sandwich?”

  The earl rubbed wearily at the bridge of his nose. He was already dreading whatever words lay on that vellum. “We received dispatches from the cutter Mosquito, which spoke Captain Hadley’s frigate in the Channel following a brief squall. Captain Hadley informed Mosquito’s master that he’d taken the brig after a brief skirmish and left Lady Nerissa and Lord Andrew aboard, but that the storm had separated them. He was on his way back to find them. I can assure you, Blackheath, that no one is lying to you.”

  Sandwich kept the rest of that thought to himself. They wouldn’t dare.

  “Then read the damned letter,” Blackheath said coldly, slamming the heel of his hand down on the vellum. “Read it and explain to me what the bloody hell is going on here.”

  All three de Montforte men were waiting. Lord Sandwich pulled the paper toward him, smoothed it flat and began to read:

  My dearest Lucien,

  I don’t have time to go into details as we will be shortly underway, and it is only by virtue of the fact that he is currently quite incapacitated and his crew lacking his own canny suspicions that I am able to slip this note off to you. Whatever you may or may not have heard, Ruaidri O’ Devir, captain of the American brig Tigershark and abductor of our beloved sister, is alive. Not well, but alive and back in command of this brig, and given the sheer stubbornness of his will, I expect him to make a full recovery. By the time you receive this, he will have been united in marriage to our sister and Tigershark on her way back to Boston with the prize she came here to get—that is, me. Rest assured that we are safe, and so are the secrets of my invention which I will never disclose, not even under threat of death. As for O’ Devir, I have given my consent to this union and am confident that he will be a good husband to our sister. There is so much to convey, and so little time to do so… I must go, but wanted to spare you further worry as to our safety and well-being. Please give my love to Celsie and know that I’ll be home just as soon as I can manage it.

  Yours,

  —Andrew, Saint-Malo, France

  Lord Sandwich rubbed at an itch beneath his starched, rolled and powdered bagwig and pushed the vellum back toward Blackheath. So Tigershark was once again in the hands of the Americans and on her way to Boston, carrying not only two de Montforte siblings but the most important military discovery to come along in the last two centuries…a military discovery that had to stay here with England at all costs.

  “What are you going to do about this, John?” the duke demanded, his mouth taut with fury.

  Not, “Are you going to do anything about this.” It was already assumed that he was going to do something about this, and that he would do it yesterday instead of tomorrow. Given Blackheath’s famously protective stance toward his family, Sandwich knew it was less about England’s military security and more about the fate of his two siblings that was the force behind Blackheath’s cold, deadly anger.

  ’Struth, what a colossal mess. Things surely couldn’t get any worse.

  But in the next moment, the clerk knocked on the door to tell him Captain Hadley of the frigate HMS Happenstance was waiting outside, and Sandwich suddenly knew that yes, they could indeed get a whole lot worse.

  And did.

  Hat under his arm, the naval captain entered, his face paling beneath its tan as he saw the three de Montforte brothers already waiting in Sandwich’s office. The First Lord of the Admiralty rounded on him.

  “Your father assured me you were the man for the job, the man he most trusted to bring Lady Nerissa safely home,” Sandwich thundered, taking out his own stress on the hapless captain. “Where is she?”

  Hadley opened his mouth, his elbow now crushing the hat to his side. “My lord, I—” he glanced nervously at the duke and his equally intimidating brothers. “Her ladyship insisted on staying aboard the prize after we captured her. I put my first lieutenant, a good man, sir, a fine sailor, in charge of her to sail her back to London. Lord Andrew stayed with her.”

  “What about O’ Devir?”

  “Cut down on his own quarterdeck, my lord.”

  “And you know this for a fact?”

  “I saw his corpse with my own eyes. One of my own marines delivered the fatal shot.”

  “And where is that damned brig now, Hadley?”

  What color remained in the captain’s face swiftly dissolved, leaving his cheeks the color of tallow. His gaze flickered to the window, down to his feet. “I don’t know, my lord.”

  “What?!”

  “She was with us as we headed back to England. A storm came up. Night fell. We became separated. I went back to look for them, but…but they were gone.” He met Sandwich’s furious gaze, but could not muster the courage to look at Blackheath.

  Sandwich let him squirm for a few moments, then picked up the vellum and held it out. “Read this.”

  Steeling himself, Hadley did. Twice. He looked up, frowning. “I don’t understand…the Americans must have found a way to retake the brig.” He straightened up, the color returning to his face. “With your consent, my lord, I will head right back out in pursuit, surely they can’t be more than a couple days ahead of us, and I—”

  It was the Duke of Blackheath whose cold voice cut through Hadley’s words.

  “No, you’ve already cocked this up well and good, you incompetent ninny,” he snarled. “You’re done. Done.” He rounded on Sandwich. “Maybe if you had sent more of our fleet to North America instead of concentrating them here for fear of an invasion by the damned French, vermin like this damned O’ Devir rascal would’ve been blown to bits long before he could have even thought about crossing the damned Atlantic and threatening us in our own waters.”

  “We will find him, Your Grace.”

  “Yes, you will. In fact, you’ll assign the fastest warship in the damned Fleet to finding him, you’ll put a commander on board who knows what the bloody hell he’s doing, and you’ll have her outfitted and ready to chase down this—this parasite, immediately. I expect you to set about doing this the moment I leave this office, and you can expect to accommodate a passenger. Me. Do I make myself understood?”

  Lord Sandwich kneaded a weary brow. He understood.

  Chapter 27

  The crossing took nearly six weeks.

  For Nerissa, it was a time of getting to know the enigmatic man she had married. Of learning that he had an aversion to salted fish, that he was a stern but fair captain who never, no matter what the crime, resorted to the lash, that he was a tough, stubborn, and respected commander whose single-minded drive to get them back across the Atlantic as quickly as possible had the miles falling away behind him.

  She learned that he enjoyed making things, and she watched another exquisite, perfectly scaled ship model come to life beneath his big, scarred hands in the rare moments when he’d find time to relax in their cabin. He learned that she was happier when she had something to do, and he began to teach her the rudiments of navigation. She learned that he despised tea, harbored a private guilt about how his most recent actions would affect his sister, and that most of the swear-words in the v
ocabulary of Joey’s parrot had come from him. Late at night, they lay in the narrow cot, talking about the differences in their childhoods, their countries, their shared hopes and dreams after a session of gentle lovemaking, and fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

  And he grew stronger.

  Stronger by the day.

  In the early days of his recovery, a member of the crew would bring a chair up on the quarterdeck for him. There he would sit when standing became too exhausting, calling for endless sail drills, gun drills and musket practice, until the men under his command were as fine a fighting unit as any captain in any navy could hope for. During those times Nerissa stood quietly nearby, admiring the sheer, pig-headed determination he showed in denying his injury mastery over him, denying anyone to pity him or think any less of his capabilities as a commander for it. He might have collapsed the moment he returned to the privacy of their cabin but on deck, no man would have perceived any weakness. He led with a quiet, firm resolve, and the men trusted him. Respected him. Perhaps even liked him.

  Even Lord Andrew.

  He was not the man the youngest de Montforte brother would have chosen for his baby sister, but even he could not deny the glow to her cheeks and the warmth in her eyes when she was with her new husband. He noted the way her gaze followed him as he went about the business of commanding the ship, the way she tenderly saw to his comfort as he slowly regained his strength. And he saw the way he treated her, with free and easy abandon instead of the status-conscious, fawning deference to which she was accustomed…and that in itself gave her a certain liberty to be the person she had never really had the chance to be:

  Herself.

  And she was blossoming. Thriving. Looking more beautiful and more fulfilled than he had ever seen her.

  Andrew, despite missing his own wife and daughter with a desperate ache, was happy.