“Sirena.”
Siren. The coincidence did not surprise him but in an oddly gratifying way amused him. Fate was an intriguing master, his friend Ch’iang Ling had told him years ago in Shanghai. ‘Best not to fight Her,’ the tiny merchant had warned. But with this young woman, Mark knew he had better not encourage her, either. Beholden to his father for his release from a British press gang last month, Mark was not the sort to repay kindness with insult. He knew he had to maneuver her back inside. Quickly.
So he turned the subject. “Do you come to visit the Stanhopes often?”
“As often as I am invited, yes. I like all the Stanhope wives. Emma is a friend from childhood.”
“I like each one myself. Emma I met first.” Emma was his oldest brother Jack’s wife. She was his viscountess, a woman who had waylaid him, so the story goes, one stormy night to ask him to marry her and keep her for three months. That they had begun to adore each other in that time and that Jack had pleaded with her to remain with him had become a tale told by the ton as the last in a series of Stanhope love stories. “The whole family has been very helpful to me.”
“I know. Was prison terrible?” she asked on a whisper, inquisitive of his fate.
“Abominable.” Ugly memories swamped him. “The dark, dank place stank of filth, sick and dying men and women. Rats and mice crawled about. Worms lived in the slop we were fed once a day.”
She shuddered. “And our Navy? What did they make you do?”
He took a long inhalation off the cheroot and then threw it to the stones, grinding it out with his heel. “Man the guns.”
“Had you ever done that before?”
“Yes, years ago,” he replied, his actions firing cannon against the fortified walls of Tripoli bringing memories of bombs tearing the black night skies with a thousand lights. “My own ship has two guns.”
“My father tells me your father has bought it up from the Navy. If that’s true then—?”
“It is. Purchased my crew’s freedom as well. At the moment, it flies the Union Jack out of Dover. Tomorrow the Black Dagger becomes an American clipper once more.” He grinned at the joy of his next declaration. “I hoist those flags myself.”
“You will return to your own country?”
He nodded. The longing in her huge almond shaped eyes resembled that he’d seen in many an adventurer’s. “I go to Dover tomorrow to claim her and my sailors. I hope to set sail for Baltimore within days.”
She tipped her head, wistful. “How fortunate to sail away.”
He covered her hand with his own. She trembled and he stroked her soft fingers. “Life at sea is not as serene as one sees in paintings.”
“Oh, I know it isn’t,” she told him with a strained smile. “I’ve traveled often across the Irish Sea. A catastrophe!” She laughed and he joined her, having sailed that himself at twenty and, veteran of the oceans even then, tossed his gorge. “I’ve also gone to Genoa twice through the Straights of Gibraltar visiting my older sister,” she went on. “Neither time, a pleasant trip, I will say.”
“The weather was bad?”
“The Barbary pirates were worse.”
“They captured you?” Alarmed, he knew the beys of Tunis and Tripoli in the Mediterranean were godless men who thrashed their pirates if they did not return with white slaves and booty. And beautiful milky-skinned infidel women were a precious prize whom they thrust into their private harems. Even worse were the pirates of the northern Africa, the self-styled pasha of Bou Regreb.
“No, no. We outran them, thank heavens.”
“The pirates have attacked our merchant vessels,” Mark said with a bitter taste in his mouth, “for more than ten years. Al Hassan of Bou Regreg in Rabat took me and five of my mates off a clipper six years ago. We almost died from the beatings until one of our diplomats negotiated for our return at the point of ten twenty-four pound cannon.”
Her mouth parted. He wondered what it would be like to taste those lips and hold her curvaceous body in his arms.
“Al Hassan. Horrid man. I hear he is a monster,” she added in dismay. “Even now he and his cutthroats assault our trading ships in the Atlantic as we fight Napoleon.”
“You keep abreast of war news?” He did not suppress his shock at this. Most women did not give a fig about such doings. Especially the English women he had met this past month in his family’s drawing rooms.
“I horrify my father with my penchant for newspapers, financial news and novels.” With wry amusement, she arced a long delicate brow. “I fear I am horrible at needlepoint. Whist bores me. I do like reading, but not aloud to anyone. Is it so amazing that I know it is illegal to seize a ship on the high seas?”
Shaking his head, he squeezed her hand. “Remarkable. And commendable.”
She leaned into him, her warmth a spur to his body’s hardening desire for her. “I know, too, it is just as illegal as seizing all hands on deck and impressing them in your own service.”
Mark closed his eyes to shut out the vision of one of his men hit by flying debris and dying as British navies boarded his Black Dagger to impress them. “If your Navy does not stop, there will be war between the British and Americans again.”
“I do hope not.” She shivered.
“You’re cold.” He pressed her arm closer to his body. Her suppleness was a hot lure. The fragrance of her filled his head with hopes he should not honor. “Have my coat.”
“Don’t bother. We are nearly returned.” She dug her fingernails into the sleeve of his frockcoat. “You’ll dance with me?”
Here in the fuller light from the ballroom, he saw her more clearly. Her upturned face was a perfect oval. Her lips pink and full. Her tone so beseechingly dear he yearned to embrace her. “No. I am not of your country or background, Sirena.”
“But what would that matter if you and I were—?”
“Here you are!”
The two of them turned toward the man standing slim at the entrance of the maze.
Mark gazed at the reedy figure of the Earl of Rerrick. This close to him, Mark’s impression of the man’s tepid blond looks and louche manners did not improve.
Not as de Ros scowled at his betrothed and not as he reached out and seized her wrist. “Come inside! This is disgraceful. I will not have it.”
“We were talking, Colin,” Sirena announced cool as stone.
Mark clasped de Ros’s wrist. “Leave off, I say.”
“How dare you, sir!” De Ros tugged to be free. His gaze snapped to Sirena. “I care not what you were doing. I care what they think you were doing.”
“Listen to me!” Mark peeled the man’s fingers from Sirena’s body. “They should not matter to you as much as your future wife’s word.”
Sirena stared at Mark with bold admiration.
“You are an American,” de Ros said the last word as if it were dirt.
Mark drew himself up, his grip on de Ros a crushing thing. A head taller than this sniveling twit, Mark brought to bear the full power of his anger on the British fop. “We Americans had the good common sense to rid ourselves of you and your like. Someday you will see your women cast off their yoke from you, as well.”
“Do not hold your breath, Mister Stanhope! We Englishmen can protect our women from the likes of you.”
“Colin!” Sirena scolded him. “Enough!”
“Go inside!” he barked at her. “I shall deal with this man.”
Mark laughed as de Ros yanked from his hold. “Not a good idea, de Ros. I weigh a third more than you, dear man, even though I have wallowed in one of your jails for more than two months.”
“A duel then!” the man shot back.
Mark snorted.
Sirena groaned. “Stop this, Colin. You know you are feeble with a sword.”
Mark raised a brow, amused. “Really? Are you? Too bad, old man, because I am very expert. You would not want to have a run at me.”
De Ros narrowed his eyes. “I say, Sirena, go inside.”
“Lord Rerrick to you.”
“Good night, Sirena.” Locking his gaze on the wily little man, Mark tipped his head toward her in deference. “Do rejoin the party. This…gentleman will follow in a moment.”
She stepped into his line of vision and in her expression, Mark saw yearning and gratitude. “Thank you, Mister Stanhope, for the delightful conversation. Good night.”
“Goodbye,” he bid her, his gaze reluctantly returning to her fuming fiancé. “Shall you join her, sir, or do you wish to challenge me to…what…pistols, perhaps?”
Chapter One
London, October 1811
Mark strode toward the flower girl’s stand in front of the seaside church in Dover, and the aroma of her wares hit him in the guts. Again.
Today, he had vowed he would not buy any posies from the child. The memories they brought of Sirena Maxwell were too roiling. Besides, his crewmen joked that he was getting soft, needing the frilly smell of flowers to rock him to sleep. Flowers. Ha! As if that’s all I need to recall her laugh, her sigh, the tilt of her nose and the fullness of her lips.
Cursing that the fragrance of a woman forbidden to him by outworn social codes did not leave his reverie, he smiled down at the charming little blonde-haired girl. She held two blooms toward him, but he refused to take them, pressing two pence into her hand anyway. Then he made his way toward the dock. The sight of his ship inspired him as he rounded the corner. His Baltimore clipper, his Water Witch, newly restored to him by his overly generous English father, rode high in the water. He swelled with pride at the contrast of the intricate chalk white rigging and the coal dark hull against the crisp azure sky.
But the Witch does not compare to your flesh and blood siren, Stanhope. Nor can it. The memory of the loveliest woman he’d ever met filled him with regret. Regret for what English society forbade her. Regret for what he had no time or resources to court her. Regret for how different his world was from her. How different his life from hers. He was a privateer. A seaman. She was a duke’s daughter. Her friends and society formed, rigid. Two different worlds. And neither would ever meet. He had been told—yes, warned, by his father, the earl of Stanhope, to stay far away from the luscious Lady Maxwell.
“She is betrothed, Mark. Soon to be engaged formally, Mark,” his father had told him that night after he’d met her in the maze. “Do not pursue a relationship that will bring you only pain. Sirena is tied to another.” An Englishman. A nobleman. Rich. A fop with more nerve than brains. A man who boasted when cloistered with men of his exploits with women. A braggart who had seen Mark’s interest in Sirena, had challenged him to a duel, but did not show on that fated morning.
No wonder Sirena did not care for Colin de Ros. How could the raven-haired beauty with such charm and vivacity find joy in the arms of a blowhard and nitwit?
Mark paused at the foot of the ramp to the Water Witch’s deck. He turned to stare back at the flower girl and her sad, wilted little red roses. But how could Sirena possibly care for an American? A man who made his way in the world—and whose freedom has been purchased by his father? The father whom he had never known. The father who had left his mother and made him a bastard.
Mark raked his hair. What good will this do to review what you lost? To remind yourself of all you cannot claim. Including the one woman whose verve and wit appeal more than any other? Once you are at sea, Stanhope, you will forget Sirena. Roses do not grow on the Atlantic!
He hurried up the gangplank. “Simpson?” he called to his steward. “What word on the dried beef supplies?”
The roly-poly man had served with Mark since he’d purchased the Witch two years ago. He came bounding down the steps from the forward deck and peered up at Mark. “This afternoon, Captain.”
“And the barrel of whiskey?” He asked about the item he always carried for each man to enjoy a tot if a storm came and tossed them all about.
“A few minutes ago. Tucked away, sir. Nice and tight.”
“Tonight’s tide then, we leave. Spread the word.”
“Three of the men are still not up to their old selves, sir.” Mark’s men, like he, had been impressed into British Navy service months ago. Boarded illegally on the high seas, his Water Witch had been towed to Portsmouth, impounded. His men had at first been forced to man British ships. But once he had arrived in an English jail, Mark had petitioned the man whom he had once vowed never to seek, never to meet. The man who had left his mother, pregnant and alone. The man who was his father in name only. The eighth earl of Stanhope. A man of great wealth, influence and many wives. A man with little regard for the numerous children he sired by numerous women, most of whom, it seems, he’d made his wife. Unlike his own mother.
“Captain?” his steward brought him back to the issue at hand. “What shall I tell the crew master?”
Mark took pity on his sailors weakened by months at sea with the merciless British and weeks more in filthy English jails. “Cut their shifts by half again. When they are better nourished by Cook’s soups, they can repay the men who doubled up.”
“Aye, sir. You must know before you go below, Captain, that your father is here.”
Mark stilled. John Stanhope had gone to his Cotswold estate the day Mark had left London for Dover. That the ailing earl should appear here now astonished him. Not only had they parted at his half-brother’s house in London, but they had parted knowing the older Stanhope might not survive the winter. Was his father’s condition worse? If so, how could he summon the stamina to come here? “I’ll receive him, Simpson. Bring us a pitcher from that whiskey barrel, will you?”
“Aye, Captain, I will.”
Hurrying below, Mark thrust open the door to his captain’s cabin and gazed upon the man whom he knew he resembled so accurately, only the slight stoop and the snow-white hair of the elder differentiating the two.
“Hello, sir,” Mark greeted John Stanhope with more cheer than he had ever shown his father. He was going home to the sea, to America, his own country, and this man had done him the service to free him to do so. Fatherly love or guilt might have driven the earl of Stanhope, but Mark had decided that last night in London to let bygones be bygones, and he’d vowed to try to honor the resolution more each passing day. “What a surprise you have come. I truly thought we had parted well in London two weeks ago.”
“We had, Mark,” his father acknowledged as he struggled to his feet. Gout afflicted the older man and according to Mark’s oldest half-brother, Jack, dropsy too. “I came because I had to wish you farewell alone.”
“That is kind of you, sir.” Still, this visit is odd.
“The ship is restored to its standard before the Navy captured her?”
“It is, sir. Thanks to your generosity.” Mark indicated the chair. “Please do sit. I have my steward bringing us a bit of refreshment.”
“Ha!” the old earl barked. “I do not know if my poor stomach can tolerate spirits, but I welcome it.”
“If you wish something other? Sarsaparilla, perhaps? Or lemon water?”
“Whiskey, my boy, will be fine.” The man’s dark blue gaze examined Mark’s with severity. “I came to have my full say to you.”
“Sir, you need say nothing more to me. Your actions speak in eloquent ways.”
“Thank you.” The elder man took a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his mouth. “But I have more to say now that we know each other better. I waited until you were restored in health and to your three brothers, your sister and their families. So too, I delayed until your ship and men were under your feet to reveal my true thoughts about you, your mother and your birth.”
“Sir, please. We need not speak of this.” And in fact, I wish we would not open a wound so recently beginning to heal.
“I must. I do not wish you to go without it. In fact, I planned this as I must impress upon you how deeply I regret my actions.” His father put u
p a hand to ward off any more objections. “Permit me, son, to say these things. I am only learning how to be a man of emotions here in my dotage. I wish to tell you more. Much more than we had time for in London.”
Mark nodded. “So be it. Do, go on.”
The old man sucked in air and rallied to his purpose. “First, you must know that I was a hellion as a young man. Position and money do that to a man here. I took advantage of both in business and pleasure. I won at cards, at dice and with women. Good for me, not terribly wonderful for the ladies of my acquaintance, but I loved many women and far too often. But those I loved, I loved well. Your mother included.”
Mark shifted at the mention of the woman he valued above all others. She had endured much sorrow and pain to rear him, educate him and place him as apprentice to a China clipper merchant out of Baltimore Harbor.
“She was a charming lass, a merchant’s daughter whom I met on a voyage to Baltimore. Suffice it to say, I loved her well, but indeed I treated her poorly, leaving without much thought to consequences. When I did return to Baltimore the year after she and I were together, I could not find her. The house where she lived with your grandparents was empty, and no one would tell me where they had gone. I suspected she was with child and I wanted to make amends, make things right. I had money. But your American war for independence from us was newly won, and no one in Baltimore could bear to look at an Englishman, much less help one.”
A rap came at the door and Mark called out to have Simpson enter. When the steward laid the flagon and glasses before them and left, Mark poured a draft for both. “Sir, thank you for that explanation. It goes far to helping me see the past in a different light.”
“I wish us to be more than friends, Mark. I will work to make that so.”
“You have already, sir.”
“To purchase your freedom from jail?”
“My men and my ship, too. No small price.”
“Small recompense, I say, my boy, for deserting you.”
“That was long ago, sir. For what you have done for me today, I am extremely grateful.”
The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances Page 28