My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles)

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Deirdre swayed.

  A hand far larger than Chloe’s encircled her arm. “What’s wrong, MacKenzie? Does the sight and smell of us make you sick?”

  “Ross.” Deirdre gripped her basket with both hands to keep herself from throwing her arms around his neck. “Are you all right?”

  He looked anything but. He seemed to have made an effort to comb his hair and wash his face, but he was bearded and sported a black eye. Grime encrusted the edges of his coat sleeves, and one sleeve was nearly torn off.

  “You’ve been fighting,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Wat objected to me calling you a whore.”

  “He should have knocked your teeth down your throat,” Chloe said with pure Ashford haughtiness.

  “You didn’t hurt him, did you?” Deirdre stamped down the pain of learning that Ross still despised her.

  “No, of course not. Who’s with you?”

  “You don’t need to know, but you can trust her.”

  “When she talks like that? I don’t think so.” Ross snatched two packets from Deirdre’s basket and held out some coppers. “So this looks like a legitimate transaction. Or do you want to rob us of what coin we have left, as well as our freedom?”

  “Don’t be a beast.” Deirdre dug beneath her packets and lifted the false bottom of the basket. “I’ve brought you more.” She thrust two specially made up packets into Ross’s coat pocket. “More coin and some messages for everyone.”

  “We appreciate the money.” Ross started to turn away. “But don’t think this will salve your conscience. Nothing but our complete freedom will make up for us being here while you sleep with the enemy in a clean bed.”

  “Then you’ve got to trust my companion,” Deirdre said. “She may have to come with information if I can’t.”

  Ross shot Chloe a withering glance. “She’s dead if she betrays us.” As silently and swiftly as he had appeared, he vanished into the throng.

  “Well,” Chloe said with a shaky laugh, “we had best be on our way home.”

  They skirted the worst of the refuse in the prison yard and nodded to the vacant-faced guards at the gate.

  “Not too much in the way of sales, eh,” one of them called.

  Deidre and Chloe shrugged. “Too many people and too little coin.”

  They reached the pony cart before Deirdre lost her composure. While she wiped at the stream of tears that would not stop flowing down her face with the mist, Chloe drove the shaggy moorland pony in silence until halfway down the rock-strewn gorge.

  “How old is Ross?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “My age. Twenty-three.”

  “I suppose his anger is justified.”

  “He came sailing with us,” Deirdre said, “because he got caught helping slaves escape from South Carolina. His family helped him evade prison. Now he’s there after all.”

  “He could not have been very old when he did that.”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Oh.” After that, Chloe again fell silent until they reached the track that would lead them to the abandoned cottage and their female clothes. “How long has he been in love with you?”

  Deirdre laughed. “You sound like your brother. But, truly, he is nothing more to me than something akin to a brother.”

  “Why? I mean, what is wrong with him?” Chloe smiled. “I mean, other than being rude and foul-mouthed and hot-tempered?”

  “Nothing. He’s usually a gentleman. The Trenerrys are a wealthy family, and he was well educated. Was supposed to go up to William and Mary College in Virginia, but he liked the sea.”

  “Did you say Trenerry?” Chloe sounded too casual as she turned the cart into the yard of the cottage. “Is he related to the Cornish Trenerrys?”

  “Probably. I think his grandmother is English.”

  “We should find out. They might be able to help us.”

  “I don’t think you should be helping me, let alone enlisting the help of another English family.”

  Chloe leaped from the cart and tethered the pony before assisting Deirdre to alight, much to her protest. “The Cornish Trenerrys are reputed to be smugglers. Legend has it that they have waterways that go right under their house. We have only caves and a cove not big enough for anything but a few fishing boats.” She winked. “But fishing boats can get away with carrying all sorts of cargoes.”

  “Chloe—”

  “Hush. After seeing that prison, do you think I can, for a minute, leave those men you call your family there?”

  Deirdre waited until they were inside the cottage, shivering as they changed their clothes, before she asked, “What about the danger to your family?”

  “Danger to us?” Chloe laughed as she tugged her gown over her head. “No danger if the authorities know nothing of who helps these men.”

  “But if anyone does—”

  “Turn around and let me hook up your gown. We need to get home before Mama misses us much.”

  Deirdre acquiesced.

  On the way home, they spoke only of what they should have seen that day. Phoebe was in her studio when they arrived at Bishops Cove, and Juliet curled up before the library fire reading, Miss Pruitt knitting on a nearby chair.

  Juliet gave them a vague smile and distant look and returned to her volume.

  “More romantic drivel?” Chloe prodded.

  Juliet glanced up, frowning. “It is not drivel. It is showing me just what kind of man I will want for a husband.”

  Chloe snorted. “Let me guess—handsome and dashing and probably a lawbreaker who wants nothing but your dowry.”

  “Hmph.” Juliet slammed the book closed.

  Deirdre read the title, Domestic Affections.

  She considered retreating to her chamber, but Phoebe came in then, and they spent the evening playing whist and reading aloud from a book of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry.

  That night and the subsequent days of Kieran’s absence passed more quickly than Deirdre thought possible in the company of three females. Rather than bored day by day, she joined in the bustle of life on a large estate, and liked it most of the time. But some nights, such as after excursions to the farms with Chloe or working with Phoebe learning the art of the stillroom, Deirdre dragged herself up the stairs and down the corridors to her chamber. Most nights, she was glad she was too weary to think about the reality of the prison and how much Ross disliked her now.

  As usual, Deirdre entered her bedchamber to find Sally sewing by the fire, waiting for Deirdre’s arrival so she could help her out of her gown and into a nightgown. On nights like this, when she was cross-eyed with fatigue, Deirdre appreciated the pampering, even allowing Sally to brush out her hair.

  This night was no exception. Sally sat by the fire with some mending in her lap. She sprang up at Deirdre’s entrance. “Milady, did you hear?”

  “Hear what?” Deirdre’s fingers convulsed around the door handle, mind racing around thoughts of something having happened to Kieran or Tyne the servants learned of first. “My husband?”

  “No, no.” Sally clasped her hands in front of her as though she were trying to rein in her excitement. “Some Frenchmen escaped from the prison.”

  “What? How?” Deirdre sank onto the nearest chair.

  “No one knows for certain how, but those Somerset militia are so stupid anybody could fool them.”

  “Are they now?” Deirdre worked not to smile. “I suppose that is unfortunate.”

  “Yes, milady. Cook’s afraid we’ll be murdered in our beds.”

  Remembering her role as lady of the manor, Deirdre rose to pat the girl’s shoulder. “Don’t fret yourself over that, Sally. They’ll be too busy getting back to France to worry about us. Besides, we have locked gates and high walls around us to keep strangers out.”

  “Yes, milady. But I wish we had guards.”

  Deirdre didn’t. Guards kept people in as much as out.

  She allowed Sally to unfasten her gown, but sent the girl off without brushing
her mistress’s hair. Deirdre needed the repetitive motion to calm herself for sleep.

  If Frenchmen could escape, so could Americans.

  Usually Deirdre fell asleep the instant she climbed into the big bed. Tonight, however, her head whirled with possibilities and excitement too much for rest. And the house seemed to join in her restlessness. Something disturbed the stillness more than the usual cracks and pops of a house or dripping of moisture off the eaves. She heard a clang of metal on metal, then a click. A blast of cold, damp air sent her shooting upright in bed, reaching for her stiletto.

  “Who’s there?”

  The click sounded again. The cold air flow ceased, and the silhouette of a man moved between her and the fire. “Did I wake you—my lady, is it now?” asked the mocking voice of Blaze Eider, second mate of the Maid of Alexandria.

  Chapter 18

  Kieran wanted to go home. While enjoying the company of the ladies who flocked around him, so long as they kept their distance with tapping fans and pouty lips, he longed for home and Deirdre.

  She had finally written to him. Bold and full of loops, her handwriting looked just as he imagined it would. Her letter smelled of ginger, which put him in mind of warm, tropical nights, and made him want to bolt for the nearest post chaise and depart, despite his father’s request that he remain in London.

  Not that she said anything that encouraged him to believe all was well between them. She wrote of riding out with Chloe, which made him happy to learn they were becoming friends. She wrote of feeling well and how Juliet had actually ripped a seam on her gown she laughed so hard over Deirdre’s first attempt to knit something. She wrote of making friends with the dogs and of rebelling against Phoebe’s insistence that she help with the church fete.

  I’m weary of having people look at my middle instead of my face as soon as I’m introduced as your wife.

  He squirmed like a schoolboy caught in a misdemeanor over the fact that he wasn’t with her to ease the humiliation of that kind of scrutiny. Fortunately, as far as he knew, nothing should show yet. That would ease her way a bit. People could be so mean about these things, and if anyone learned of her life aboard a ship with only men for company, someone was bound to raise questions regarding the child’s parentage.

  He did not doubt for a moment that the child was his. Deirdre might have had more knowledge of intimacy than most females on their wedding nights, but her body was innocent.

  Sometimes, Kieran doubted those words of his father’s he had overheard in the study and wondered if Tyne wanted to keep Deirdre’s background a secret for her sake rather than the family’s. But Tyne was spending most of his days at the Admiralty, and that concerned Kieran.

  It also left him with far too much time on his hands—as usual. No one expected a viscount with money to do anything useful other than perhaps dabble in the funds now and again. He was supposed to pursue pleasure and had for all his adult life. But gaming had bored him, excessive drinking of blue ruin in the slums had given him a headache, and females got him into trouble because he liked them the best.

  The fact that he was married now did not seem to stop them from pursuing him. “It is only a mariage de convenable,” Liza Cantrell had the audacity to claim when he refused to dance with her at a party that had ended up far too small for his comfort. “Was it not simply to get some colonial to England with honor and safety?”

  “Actually, no,” Kieran said. “My wife is—”

  But he could not tell a single young lady Chloe’s age that his wife was already with child, or even that their marriage was far from one in name only. It just was not done.

  When someone, apparently weary of the same people and the same gossip, decided to have a little fun with the guests at a dinner party for a mere twenty, Kieran knew he had to go home regardless of what his father wanted him to do. Let these people cavort beneath a sprig of mistletoe stuck in the lintel of the drawing room doorway. Before Deirdre, he would have done the same. Now she was the only female he wished to kiss.

  He had to pass beneath it to reach the front door and would have made it except that a young man waylaid him with some tale of them being up to Oxford together. The man looked familiar, but Kieran knew neither his name nor anything about him.

  “We suffered through writing the same papers for the same don,” the gentleman proclaimed. “But I can see you do not remember me. Too many ladies addling your wits. Ha, ha, ha!” He burst into gales of mirth as Liza Cantrell sidled up and kissed Kieran full on the lips. “Your face, Ripon. Oh, your face!”

  Kieran had no idea what his face looked like—disgusted, he hoped—but he could see his father’s from across the room—thunderous.

  Liza laid her hand on Kieran’s arm. “You are not moving away, my lord. Do you wish me to kiss you again?”

  “What I wish,” Kieran said, brushing her hand away, “is for you to remember that I am married, and for your father to lock you up until he finds you a husband of your own.”

  That is what his father would do to Chloe or Juliet if they acted in such a forward manner.

  Seething like a keg of gunpowder with the fuse growing near, he slammed out of the house without waiting for a footman.

  Nor did he wait for the carriage. He walked from Upper Brook Street to Grosvenor Square despite a driving rain. Once at the Ashford townhouse, he ordered a servant to pack his bags.

  “You’re never leaving tonight, sir,” the man protested.

  “Daylight.” No, that came too late this time of year. “Six of the clock.”

  Still dripping from the rain, he stood before the library fire and steamed himself dry. Tyne would be home any moment. Kieran wanted to make certain he was still wearing his evening attire to face his father and discover how much of their newly built ground Liza’s actions had cut away.

  He did not have long to wait. Carriage wheels sounded in the square. A door banged, then footfalls sounded on the steps, brisk. Determined.

  “I did not plan it,” he greeted Tyne.

  Tyne shed his greatcoat and laid it over a chair back. “I know.”

  “You do?” Kieran felt deflated with the wind yanked from his sails. “But you looked like you wanted to thrash me right there.”

  Tyne offered him a tight smile. “Not you, that friend of Rutledge’s.”

  “Rutledge?” Kieran thrust his shoulders back, his chin out. “Are you saying that Rutledge set that up?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And Deirdre is just going to happen to find out.” Kieran ground his teeth. “Why?”

  “Petty revenge.” Garrett moved to the drinks table and filled two glasses. “I suspected he would get up to something, so I have had him followed. I knew this little trick would occur, but I did not know when. And, to be frank, I did not suspect Liza Cantrell to be in on it. She seemed like such a nice young lady when she went about with Chloe.”

  “But she gains nothing by putting a rift between Deirdre and me.”

  “Except for Rutledge.” Tyne strode to Kieran’s side and pressed a glass into his hand. His face was full of concern. “And why are you so certain word of this will place a rift between you and Deirdre?”

  Kieran drank before answering. When he did, he looked into the fire. “From the beginning, I have done nothing to endear myself to her. I perpetrated the death of her father. I took her ship and imprisoned her crew, her true family. I would not settle for a marriage in name only.” He shoved his fingers into his hair. “And I told her our marriage is a mistake.”

  Tyne remained silent for several moments, so long Kieran knew that if he looked at his father he would see disapproval. He had done one more thing wrong.

  He set his glass on the mantel, prepared to leave the library.

  Tyne laid a hand on his arm. “Why did you tell her that?”

  “She needed to know.” Kieran retreated a step from his father’s side, but turned to face him. “I overheard you telling Mama that if there was trouble about the marriage, we c
ould all end up in prison. Deirdre needed to know that so she would think before she did anything foolish like trying to make contact with her countrymen or free her crew from Dartmoor.”

  Tyne looked thoughtful. “Would she do that?”

  “The first opportunity that arises.” Kieran shoved his hands into his coat pockets, felt Deirdre’s letter now crumpled and damp. “Two of her crew escaped because of her. The rest would have if she had managed to get away, too. But those men went to prison rather than abandon her to me on the ship. She will want to repay that kind of loyalty.”

  “That takes money and a contact.”

  “I am afraid that she has the money. I found her bank certificates and some specie on the ship, but that might not be all of it. As for contacts”—he shrugged—“she can find those with enough gold. I do not want to see her suffer for her own loyalties. Nor can I abide the notion that I could be the cause of the rest of you suffering because I brought an enemy into our midst. If . . . if I did not misunderstand you.”

  “You did not.” Tyne paced to the door, opened it, looked into the corridor, then closed and locked the portal. “Sit down, Kieran. It is long past time you learned the truth behind my marriage to your mother.”

  Blood drained from Deirdre’s head. The room spun, and she put her head between her knees. A dream. She was having a dream. No, a nightmare.

  She moaned. “You’re not really here.”

  Blaze laid his hand on her hair. “I am.”

  “Why? How? What do you think you’re doing? Oh, you fool, you were free.”

  “We are free. Zeb is in France helping a captain from Maine outfit his privateer. I slipped over here with a smuggler helping some frogs escape.”

  “Why? No, wait.” Aware that she wore only her nightgown, Deirdre reached for her velvet dressing gown and pulled it on. She made certain that both doors into her bedchamber were locked, then settled on the hearthrug and began shoveling coal onto the fire. “How did you know how to find me?”

  Blaze settled beside her, nibbling one of the savory biscuits left on Deirdre’s bedside table each night. “Everyone knows that the Ashford heir married an American. Seems your husband’s father is a powerful man in Devonshire.”