The Ravishing One

by Connie Brockway

  Chapter 3

  She’s not worthy of you, Jim.” Thomas raked his hair back in exasperation. They’d been at it ever since Thomas had come upon James tying his neckcloth in front of the hall mirror. He’d sarcastically asked just how tightly Lady Fia liked her men trussed.

  He shouldn’t have said it. But once started the silence he’d imposed on himself for the past week broke lose. Jim’s subjugation to Fia Merrick worried and disappointed him. All week he had heard tales of her sexual exploits, her wildness, and her profligacy. Added to which, being a devotee of Lady Fia’s was bad for one’s health. Her reputation stood constantly in jeopardy and therefore stood constantly in need of defense.

  James must have heard the same stories, yet it seemed not to matter to him. Every night he hurried to Fia’s side with exotic baubles and expensive gifts. Thomas’s hands clenched.

  “You do not understand, Tom,” James said. His voice, a moment ago raised in anger, was now placating.

  “Oh, I rather think I do,” Thomas muttered. He understood that Fia’s bosom was snowy and full, her mouth inviting, and her gaze beneath the thicket of curling black lashes as impertinent and wise as Lilith’s. “After what you had with Amelia, how can you be besotted of a—”

  “Don’t.” James’s eyes, usually so placid, blazed. “You’re perilously close to being called out, Tom.”

  “I won’t duel with you, Jim.”

  “I’ve used my fists before.”

  Thomas gave a short, bitter laugh. He owed this man so very much, not the least being his own miserable life. It had been James Barton who’d purchased Thomas’s bond from the sadistic animal who’d originally owned it. Within a week, James had released Thomas of the year left in his indenture and hired him to work on his ship.

  James had never asked Thomas anything about his past and Thomas had never spoken of it, though he had told James his intention of someday quitting the sea and rebuilding his ancestral home in Scotland. He considered telling James about his association with the Merricks, but discarded the idea. James would only point out that Fia had been a babe when Carr had betrayed the McClairens and stolen their home.

  “What spell has she cast over you?” Thomas asked in exasperation.

  “You’re so damn set against her. She told me you would be. But you don’t know her, Tom.” James’s face grew earnest.

  Thomas ignored his entreaty. “She told you?” The ramifications flooded Thomas’s imagination.

  Fia knew he was in London. She knew he and Barton were partners and she’d warned Barton that he would oppose any relationship between James and her. The bitch had preempted him! Fury uncoiled within him and coiled back in on itself, vibrating with intensity.

  “What did she tell you?” Thomas asked.

  “That you were once her brother’s only friend and that you came to their home and ate their food and slept under their roof and then betrayed her brother, nearly costing him the one thing in life he required, the woman he loved.”

  The sharp spear of guilt was unexpected and thus all the sharper, for it was true. What Fia had told him was true. And yet there was so much more to it than that.

  “I told her she must be mistaken. Just as you are mistaken in her, Thomas.”

  “I’m not mistaken in this,” Thomas said stubbornly. “She’s made you her lapdog.”

  “Damn it, Tom!” James burst out. “There’s more to this than you understand. Much more.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t. I gave Fia my word. God! It’s all such a muddle.”

  Thomas nodded sardonically. Fia had always “muddled” men’s minds. Thomas only hoped the poor fool didn’t live to regret his infatuation. The thought burned like acid. He snatched his cape from the back of the settee where he’d tossed it.

  “You’re going out?” James asked.

  “Yes.” Thomas’s voice was curt. “And I won’t be back this night.” He did not think he would handle returning and finding her here, with James.

  Tomorrow, he would visit Fia—just to make sure she knew that James had a friend as well as a partner. Until then, he would go toward the river, where he could find a way to work off his anger in the haunts of hard men and harder women.

  Though he doubted they could hold another woman as hard as Fia Merrick.

  The clang of steel on steel echoed through the dark predawn air. Thomas peered past the links boy who’d lit his path across the cobbled street.

  “Ye don’t be wantin’ to get involved wid them what’s down there.” The boy jerked his head toward the black maw of an alley. The glare from the torch made cruel work of his young, pinched face. “Best go this way.”

  “And why is that?” Thomas’s voice was a soft rumble, slipping easily into dockyard cant. “You wouldn’t be havin’ a chum waitin’ in a yard down there to nab me purse, would you, lad?”

  “Nah,” the boy answered, the glance that traveled over Thomas’s tall frame as impersonal as it was assessing. “Yer too big. Yer knuckles is too large and yer eyes is too canny. ’Twas a friendly word of advice, is all.

  “That down there goes to the York Stairs what leads to the river. Dark place. Out of the way, like. The watch don’t even like going there. So’s it’s a grand place fer the bloods to stick each other.”

  “Dueling? Is that what we’re hearing?” Thomas asked.

  The lad shrugged and Thomas tossed him a penny. Up the narrow street a door opened. A pair of staggering nabobs emerged from the bright rectangle of a tavern’s door. The links boy trotted off to offer them his services in navigating the dark, muck-filled alley.

  Thomas turned toward the embankment. Long rows of smudge pots lined the top, their ghostly haze unfurling spectral tendrils into the dank night air. The salty bite of brine and the thick stench of sewage clotted in his nostrils.

  He walked on. If all went right and his little discussion with Fia had its desired effect, perhaps in a few days he could escape this city and go north to McClairen’s Isle.

  The affinity he felt toward the isle and its castle mystified him. He’d never lived there, and had seen it only a few times as a youngster. Yet like a lodestone it exerted a powerful pull not only on him, but on other McClairens, too. Perhaps it was simply that they were an exiled people tired of wandering.

  “Next time you conceive a desire to spill blood, I suggest you find a better reason!”

  Tunbridge’s voice echoed up from the riverbanks. The hairs at the nape of Thomas’s neck rose. He strained his ears to discover the exact direction of Tunbridge’s voice.

  Damn. London’s perpetual fog and the twining stone corridors conspired to confuse the senses and throw back sound as though it came from every direction at once. Boot heels beat a sharp tattoo against cobblestones. A man shouted once for aid, other voices answered, fading in a hollow echo.

  “Where are you?” Thomas shouted.

  “Here!” a young man’s voice returned frantically. “Dear God, please hurry! He’s unconscious and the blood—Help!”

  Thomas followed the voice down a long, dark alley that ended in a small yard surrounded on three sides by tall buildings, their rude stone walls wet with brackish slime. At the opposite end of the yard a vaulted area stood at the top of one of the river’s many flights of steps.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here! Oh, thank God you’re here, sir! Help me!” A figure moved beneath the vault. Thomas went at once and found a young man crouched beside another youngster, a pool of glistening black spreading beneath his prone body. Pip Leighton.

  One hand clutched a kerchief to his breast; the other lay twisted beneath his body. Beside Pip lay an obscenely pristine blade. Another lay a few feet away, its broken tip dark with blood. All this Thomas saw in a matter of seconds.

  Wretched, stupid boy! Savagely he kicked Pip’s sword away, sending it clattering down the steps. He turned to the other youngster. “Who are you?”

  “Albert Hennington, sir,” the boy answered in a qu
avering voice.

  Thomas barely heard him. He knelt and carefully removed Pip’s useless rag. Quickly, he studied the wound. It was high on Pip’s breast and deep … very deep, no slashing of the meat. Driven in and jerked out. Pip’s blood flowed freely but did not gush from the wound, nor did it bubble as would indicate his lung having been pierced, nor well up rhythmically, as an arterial wound would have done.

  Thomas felt little rewarded by the discovery. Pray God it had not severed whatever pathways served to make the arm functional. He let the blood flow a minute longer, having noted in a life all too conversant with injuries that those puncture wounds that bled most freely less often grew gangrenous.

  He ripped the fine Brussels lace from the cuffs on Pip’s shirt and, pressing his own folded kerchief over the wound, bound it tightly to Pip’s chest with the torn lace.

  “What the bloody hell was he doing here?”

  “It was Tunbridge, sir,” Albert said. “Pip saw him at a drum we attended earlier. He accused Tunbridge of offending Lady Fia and demanded satisfaction! Tunbridge only laughed. Pip waited until Tunbridge left the ball and then confronted him.”

  “The fool!” Thomas whispered. “Well, boy, you’d best pray your friend here lives to regret his folly.”

  Gingerly, he slid an arm beneath Pip’s knees and another under his back. With a grunt, he heaved himself and his burden to his feet. “Come on, then, Albert.”

  “But, sir! Perhaps I should wait? Tunbridge sent for a surgeon!”

  “Bloody unlikely,” Thomas said, “but satisfy yourself.” He strode out of the vaulted cavern.

  The boy waited a full five minutes before the sound of a wharf rat scuttling toward the scent of fresh blood sent him scuttling, just as ratlike, to retrieve Tunbridge’s bloodied sword. He waved it threateningly at the rodent. The rat sat on its haunches and commenced to clean itself.

  Ten minutes later Albert caught up with Thomas.

  Thomas brushed past the stammering footman guarding Fia’s front door to find a stately-looking butler blocking his way. “Where is your mistress?” he demanded.

  “If you’ll inform me of your name, sir,” the butler said coldly, “I will see whether Lady Fia is—”

  Thomas gripped the man’s front coat and jerked him forward. He was dimly aware that he was bullying someone who could not respond in kind, but anger crowded such considerations from his mind. “Where … is … your … mistress?”

  Amazingly, the butler refused to speak, as if inspired by loyalty. Only the flicker of his gaze in the direction of the stairs gave away any information.

  With an oath, Thomas flung the man from him and took the stairs two at a time. Of course she would still be abed. It was not yet noon.

  At the top of the stairs a frightened maid bearing a stack of linens pointed a shaking finger in response to his demand. He stalked to the door she indicated and pushed it open without knocking.

  Though it was only midmorning, a full half-dozen men crowded Fia’s boudoir, offering their opinions on her toilette. They ringed her rosewood dressing table, their primped and carefully painted faces reflected in the huge velvet-draped mirror sitting atop its lacquered surface. One man sat on a tufted stool by her feet. Another knelt beside her, peering into a silver dish containing beauty marks. The others stood close. James was among their number.

  Thomas dismissed his friend’s presence, turning his attention to Fia.

  Like a rose in a field of bracken, she reclined against the tufted back of a small gilt chair, glorious and feminine in her fashionable dishabille. Her black, spiraling tresses trailed over her spare, smooth, white shoulders, naked above the filigreed lace edge of her negligee. Sheer, shell-pink silk flowed along the curves of her body and pooled about her feet.

  As a child her beauty had been disconcerting; as a woman it was devastating. An untried boy would have no chance of resisting such as she.

  She’d not remarked his entrance, Thomas noted bitterly. Why would she? What could one man more in her chambers mean to her? Or the absence of one boy? Nothing.

  He cut through the ranks of her admirers until he stood within a few feet of her. The men’s heads turned, irritated at the appearance of yet another contender for Fia’s attention. When they saw what he carried, their irritation gave way to alarm.

  Thomas lifted Tunbridge’s broken, bloodstained épée like a talisman. He pitched it into the air and seized the middle of the bare blade in his fist, feeling the edge cut into his palm. The men’s mutters faded, the room grew still with expectancy, and Fia, who’d been leaning back and sideways as she listened to the poor sot kneeling beside her, froze.

  She turned her head slightly, her eyes still downcast, as if assessing his presence with senses other than sight. Her lashes swept across the creamy curve of her high cheekbones. Her nostrils flared delicately. She was unearthly beautiful.

  He waited for her to look up. She would acknowledge him, damn her, before he spoke. Her brow knotted, smoothed, and slowly her gaze rose. By God, her eyes were just as startling a blue as he’d remembered. Mayhap more so.

  “Lord Donne.” Her voice was slight, breathless.

  “Lady Fia.”

  “I say, Lady Fia, who is this fellow?” the swarthy man at her feet asked.

  “Lord Donne is a very old friend of the family.” Her eyes remained locked with his.

  “Thomas?” James spoke.

  Thomas ignored him. He didn’t want to be here. The thought drummed, angry and desolate, in his mind. He’d thought himself finished with the Merricks. Above all things, he desired to be done with them.

  But she, damn her, had drawn him back into their poisonous web and he resented it, almost as much as the regret with which he registered the fine lines at the corners of her magnificent eyes and the shadows beneath her cheekbones. He steeled himself against the unexpected compassion these signs of her weariness awoke.

  She’d played havoc with a boy’s heart, a boy’s life. Common knowledge said it was not the first time she’d done so in her brief but lethal career. She played, now she must pay the price of her sport.

  “I’ve brought you a memento,” he said.

  A line of consternation appeared between the dark wings of her brows. “A memento?”

  “Of a particularly successful seduction.”

  “Thomas …” James laid a cautioning hand on his forearm. Thomas shook it off. James was in her thrall. ’Twas a fitting term, for couldn’t he himself feel the draw of her, the potent attraction she wielded with such blithe disregard?

  “Here.” He dropped the bloodied blade on her lap, staining the fragile silk of her dressing gown. “You can add this to your collection.”

  She looked down, instantly recoiling. He waited, the pulse beating thick and urgent in his veins. He could not see her expression. Her face remained bowed over the blade, her hands arrested in the air above it, her tumbled locks masking her face.

  “What is this?” she asked in a low, hoarse voice.

  “By God, Thomas, you go too far!” James ground out.

  “Do I?” His gaze slew to James, white-faced and trembling. “And here I’d thought she’d gone too far, for ’twas for her sake that the boy offered himself up in a demonstration of Tunbridge’s art. For her—”

  “What boy?” Her head snapped up.

  “Are there so many?” He smiled mirthlessly.

  “What boy?”

  “I’d best describe him lest you have forgotten his name,” he said. “A boy of eighteen years but looked less. Red-haired and fair-skinned—”

  “Not Pip.” Her eyes looked stricken and for a moment his resolve wavered. But then, he remembered, she had an audience to woo.

  “I see you do recall him. He’ll be gratified. Phillip Leighton. Pip. Not rich Pip, not powerful Pip, but as capable of love as any grown man. Indeed”—his gaze swept through the group of poseurs like the blade he’d so lately discarded—“more so. But then, the young love so ardently, so wholehearted
ly, don’t they? So very, very foolishly.”

  “Yes. They do,” she said quietly. “Or so I’ve been told. Where is he now? What happened?”

  “Your name was being besmirched,” he said. “Pip would have none of it. The young fool challenged Tunbridge to a duel. Tunbridge accepted. They fought. Young Pip, as you can see”—he looked tellingly at the bloodstained épée—“lost.”

  “Is he dead? “

  “Not yet. The blade pierced his breast but no vital organs.” The tension in her eased. She wasn’t going to get off so comfortably. “If he’s very lucky no nerves will have been severed and no infection will set in and he’ll live to learn a lesson from his ill-advised gallantry.”

  “Perhaps we all will,” she said softly before raising accusing eyes. “And what of you? Apparently you have some feelings for … this lad. Were you his second? A man of your years playing second for a boy? Could you have not stopped it?”

  “I knew nothing of the duel.” How dare she place the onus for Pip’s fate on him? “I heard the sound of the duel and followed it. It was done by the time I got there. Pip is not much of a swordsman.”

  And having been stung by her inference that he had let the boy challenge and fight an opponent that Thomas knew to be superior, he repaid her in kind, by attacking. “When did you first come upon him? Pip, that is. You could have circumvented this then, by simply letting the lad be. He couldn’t have presented much of a challenge. Not for you.”

  “No,” she said tautly. “No challenge at all.”

  “ ’Sblood, man,” James burst out. “Continue and I’ll be forced to call you out myself!”

  Fia put her hand down on the chair’s arm and pushed herself upright. The sword clattered to the floor, leaving a dark smear on her pale skirts.

  The sharp sound shattered the shocked paralysis holding the other men in the room. The swarthy young man on the stool surged up and struck Thomas’s cheek.

  “Name the place, sir!” he ground out.

  “No.”

  “Coward!” another gentleman spat.