My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles)

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “They are the enemy.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Yes, Deirdre, to you. You are the wife to the heir of a peer of the realm. That makes you a British subject. Can you not get that through that stubborn brain of yours?”

  “Could you give up your family were we in America and your family imprisoned?”

  Kieran took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing his muscles to relax and his voice emerge with gentleness. “No, I could not. Nor could I risk the freedom and the lives of people who took me into their family and cared for me.”

  She opened her mouth as though about to rebut his claim, then brushed past him to perch on the chaise without saying a word.

  Not for a moment did he think he had achieved a victory. Victory indeed. As though their marriage was a war.

  Feeling as deflated as a balloon without its fire to give air, Kieran dropped onto the chaise beside her. “When will your maid arrive?”

  “Soon. The Trilling ladies are staying for dinner, since we didn’t expect you and Tyne home for two more days.”

  “Which is why you went to the prison today. You thought it safe.”

  “I wanted to take them some Christmas cheer.” She leaned into the deep cushion of the chaise and closed her eyes, looking as fatigued as he felt. “So have you cleared your name?”

  Accepting that the subject of her visits to Dartmoor was ended for now, Kieran lifted one of her hands and held it between both of his. “I made great strides forward, thanks to my father. He’s starting to see me in a different light.”

  “I’m glad of that.” She opened her eyes and gave him a half smile.

  Thinking she was sincere, he started to point out that now, more than ever, he needed her cooperation to seal his return into the family’s good graces, but her maid arrived and he needed to make his own ablutions before dinner with company. He had plenty of time with Deirdre to work out their difficulties and more.

  When he walked into the drawing room an hour later, he realized he needed to add Amelia Trilling to the difficulties with his wife. Kieran knew perfectly well that she always expected him to offer for her. But he had too much respect for and received too much enjoyment from female companionship to settle for a pretty face masking a mean spirit.

  But there she sat in one of the more formal drawing rooms, draped over the arm of a chair in an attitude of drooping flower in need of watering. As he held the door open for Deirdre, astoundingly elegant in her midnight-blue silk gown, Amelia swept her gold-tipped lashes upward, looked at Deirdre, then guided the lashes down again.

  She had just cut Deirdre dead.

  Deirdre pretended not to notice. She crossed the room with her confident stride and joined Mama and Mrs. Trilling.

  Kieran headed straight for Amelia. “If you ever treat my wife that way again, I will see to it that you are never invited into this house.”

  Amelia sat upright. “I have no idea what you are talking about. I did not even see your wife.”

  “Then you need spectacles.” He stalked over to Deirdre’s side. “Are gentlemen permitted to participate in the fete, too?”

  “Can you entertain children?” Mrs. Trilling asked.

  “He has a fine singing voice,” Mama answered for him.

  He scowled at her.

  She laughed. “But you do. Why do you, Jane, and Chloe not practice some music after dinner? Chloe and Jane have prepared some songs, but a male voice will add something special.”

  “I have not sung much in years. Deirdre?” He looked at her poised on the edge of a chair as though ready to fly. “Do you want to join us?”

  “I don’t know how to read music.”

  “You do not know ‘The Holly and the Ivy’?” Mrs. Trilling appeared as shocked as Kieran felt.

  Deirdre shook her head. “I never heard it before yesterday.” She smiled at Kieran in a way that made his toes curl. “But I’ll enjoy listening to you sing with Chloe while Jane plays.”

  How easily she could give him hope of a more harmonious future. He wished the arrangements at the table allowed him to be near her. At dinner, she sat beside his father as the second-highest-ranking female, and appeared to be getting along with him rather well. Because females outnumbered males, Mama had invited the steward and secretary to join the company for a bit more balance. That still placed Juliet and Jane beside one another, which left Kieran with Amelia or the governess. He gave Amelia only enough attention to be polite, while making the middle-aged spinster blush with his attentiveness, and sighed with relief when Mama led the ladies from the room.

  “You have found yourself an intrepid bride.” His father slid the port coaster across the table. “Keeping her close to home rather feels like caging an eagle, but you know we must.”

  “I know, sir.” Kieran filled his glass, then sat staring into the ruby depths of the wine. “She will despise me for it.”

  “I am not altogether certain she will.” His father offered him an encouraging smile. “She is settling here despite the sojourns to Dartmoor. Phoebe says Deirdre is getting on well with all of them. She loves the dogs. She has a fine head for household accounts, and she is kind to all the servants.”

  “She is also kind to her crew. If anything happens to a one of them, she will move heaven and earth to betray us and help them.” The idea those men came before him in her affections sent a dull knife cutting through Kieran, and he downed the rich, sweet wine meant for sipping, then shoved back his chair. “Shall we join the ladies?”

  His father rose, but halted Kieran in the doorway with a hand on his shoulder. “The burden and joy is on you to persuade her otherwise.”

  Kieran understood what his father was saying, and he held little hope he bore the right skills to accomplish it. Too much depended on the course of the war with America, on how her crew fared in prison, on Deirdre herself. But he could start trying.

  The minute he entered the drawing room, however, Chloe descended on him and drew him to the pianoforte. From the corner of his eye, he saw Deirdre sitting quietly by the fire, a pattern of some kind spread on her knees.

  “All knitting is concentration,” Mrs. Trilling was saying.

  “Kieran, pay attention,” Chloe admonished. “You can ogle your wife later. Jane, begin again.”

  He allowed Chloe to pull him into the music. Jane played beautifully, and he liked Chloe’s voice. When they finished a set of songs and he sought for Deirdre, she was no longer in the room.

  Did he have to tether the woman to him with a chain?

  He left and raced up the steps. She was not in her bedchamber either. She stood on the balcony, gripping the railing, a rising wind tugging her hair from its pins and whipping her gown around her legs.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded. “It is freezing out here.”

  She did not look at him. “Do you never feel like fresh air after you have been around Amelia?”

  “I feel that way after I have been around a number of ladies, and gentlemen, too.” He moved close to her, curved his hands around her upper arms. “Was she unkind to you?”

  “Just innuendo.” She leaned back against him. “I’m worn to a thread. Must I go back down?”

  “No.” He rested his cheek on her hair. One of the pins poked his cheek, but her scent of ginger and fresh air filled his senses, and he did not care. “Everyone understands that you need your rest.” He slid his arms around her, then drew back with a wordless exclamation.

  She laughed, though the sound held no humor. “Did you forget?”

  “No, but I did not realize, did not think—” He lowered his hands to her belly, stroking her through the fabric of her gown and petticoat, feeling what the line of the dress had concealed—firmness, fullness, a hint of the roundness to come. “I did not realize that I could notice so soon.”

  “We’ve been married for three and a half months.” Her fingers clamped on his wrists. “Do you think it’s too soon, that maybe it isn’t yours?” Her voice was
as tight as her grip.

  “Deirdre.” He held her close against him, giving her knowledge of his reaction to her scent, her nearness. “That thought never entered my head. I am new to this, too. I do not know details like this. But doubt that you came to me innocent?” He began to caress her, noting other changes in her body. “Why would you think that?”

  She began to relax against him. “Amelia Trilling suggested that you might prefer society young ladies, so you don’t have to worry about your heir being a true Ashford.”

  “Do not ever believe Amelia Trilling. She enjoys hurting others she deems vulnerable.” He slid his hand into her hair, scattering hairpins onto the balcony with pings like raindrops, and tilted her head back so he could kiss her. “I have missed being with you.”

  She said nothing, but the fervor with which she kissed him back assured him she was happy to give him everything he wanted.

  Everything he thought he wanted. Yet afterward, when she lay in his arms breathing with the slow, even rhythm of sleep, he did not feel as much satisfaction as he expected. Despite being weary from travel, he lay wakeful, close to his wife in body, but feeling as though the rough waters of the Atlantic lay between them.

  “Perhaps the war will end soon and your crew will be sent home.” He rubbed his face on the cascade of her glorious hair.

  Another hairpin scratched his cheek. He must have missed one when he pulled them out.

  He reached up to remove it—and froze. It was not a hairpin.

  It was a twig.

  Chapter 21

  When she woke, Deirdre found the twig on the chest beside the bed. For several moments, she simply stared at it, unable to think, scarcely able to breathe.

  “I had to go down there,” she whispered to the telltale twist of wood.

  If she had not slipped away from the party to make her way to Blaze’s hidey-hole, he would have come looking for her to reassure himself she was all right. Kieran might have caught Blaze and seen to it he was hanged if she remained at the party, stayed safe and warm inside the house playing the role of an obedient, loyal wife.

  She should have brushed her hair after racing through the parkland with its low-hanging branches. She should have kept Kieran from getting near her. Letting him think he had edged his way back into her good graces—or at the least her bed—had been a poor idea. It hadn’t distracted him from his anger with her over her excursion to Dartmoor. His finding of the twig had made matters worse. Somehow she needed to repair the damage or he would give her not a yard of freedom. With only the vaguest of plans in mind, she slipped from bed, drew on her dressing gown, and picked up the twig. She opened his bedchamber door without knocking. He stood at the dressing table tying his cravat. Their eyes met and held in the mirror.

  “Are you well?”

  She nodded. “I’m tired a great deal of the time, and if I stand up too quickly I get faint, but mostly I feel wonderful.”

  “I am pleased to hear that.” He finished with his toilette and faced her. “Shall I ring for your maid?”

  “Could you play maid?”

  His gaze caressed her. “I think not. We are expected for the fete.”

  She felt like she was melting inside. “I’ll ring for her then, but I wanted to explain this first.” She held up the twig. “I went outside last night. You were singing with Jane and Chloe, and I’d managed to knit a whole row without dropping or adding stitches, and Amelia was talking about people I don’t know. I’m still not used to being inside so much. Please understand that I need exercise and air.”

  “I do.” The heat of desire had left his face. “I also understand that you will put your crew before my family, even knowing that it could endanger all of us, and I have to stop you, for your sake as much as for my family’s and mine. You, please, understand that.”

  “But I’ll suffocate under too many restrictions.”

  “I will ensure that you get plenty of air and exercise.” His face tightened. “Do not go outside alone again.”

  She shivered. “You look like your father.”

  “Now get yourself ready. We will make the Christmas pudding before we go into the gallery for the fete.”

  Deirdre had never done anything so astounding as the English tradition of stirring the Christmas pudding. The entire family gathered in the warm, steamy kitchen. With servants looking on, each member of the household took a turn running the spoon around the pudding basin that was as large as a washbowl. It was a rich batter smelling of spices and filled with plums and little trinkets.

  “I want the wedding ring,” Juliet declared.

  “You’re only seventeen,” Phoebe protested. “It should be Chloe’s turn this year.”

  “I would rather receive the sixpence,” Chloe said. “Prosperity for the new year.”

  Juliet finished her turn at the basin and handed Deirdre the spoon. “This is easier than knitting.”

  “I’ve stirred porridge.” Deirdre ran the wooden spoon around the edge of the bowl.

  “Which trinket do you want?” Juliet demanded.

  Deirdre watched the silver tokens wink to the surface then sink again—a button and a thimble, a wishbone and an anchor. She could guess at what they represented—domesticity, good luck, safe harbor. Not one of them fit her life, as much as she longed for the luck to give her crew safe harbor.

  “Well?” Juliet pressed.

  Deirdre glanced up to a sea of faces gazing at her in anticipation.

  She managed a bright smile. “If the crown means I get to call the tune and make everyone else dance to it, then I want the crown.” She stepped back from the table. “Who is next?”

  Let someone else be under everyone’s scrutiny.

  Kieran took the spoon from her. “You have stolen my thunder, m’dear. I wanted the crown so I can make Juliet sing for us.”

  A chorus of protests rose from the family and a handful of the servants.

  “You will disturb the dogs with that,” Chloe said.

  Juliet elbowed her in the ribs. “If I cannot have the wedding ring, I want the crown so I can make you kiss Phillip Lawhorn under the mistletoe.”

  Chloe looked horrified at the idea.

  Having no knowledge of what everyone found so amusing, Deirdre withdrew behind the gathered family to watch the rest of the proceedings. For all Kieran had behaved rather badly in the past, the family caring among the Ashfords proclaimed a love that reduced past indiscretions to mere peccadillos.

  Her betrayal of them would not be so easily cast aside.

  Her spirit felt as thick as the batter in the basin.

  On the other side of his mother and sisters, Kieran held up the spoon. “Does Father come next?”

  Stillness came over the kitchen, everyone staring, no one moving except for Tyne, who strode forward, clasped Kieran’s shoulder with one hand, and took the spoon with the other.

  “Thank you, son.” His voice was quiet, the emotion raw.

  “He called you Father, not Tyne.” Phoebe made no pretense about wiping the tears from her eyes even as she smiled. Deirdre’s own throat closed. The sight of the two Ashford men standing side by side filled her with an odd sense of joy for Kieran having gotten what he wanted—full acceptance back into the fold of his family—while dread for herself made her stomach roil.

  She could never fight against anything so formidable as the alliance of these two men working to one purpose—protecting the family, the kingdom, centuries of wealth and privilege.

  “What a happy Christmas.” Miss Pruitt wiped her eyes with a scrap of a handkerchief. “Now then, Martha, do you have the pudding bag ready?”

  One of the maids scrambled to produce the bag in which the pudding would be boiled. The spell Kieran’s use of “Father” had cast over the room broke.

  Juliet dashed up to Kieran and hugged him. “So you do love Papa. I am so, so happy you two will not be fighting all of the time.”

  Kieran laughed, looking a little embarrassed. “I never said we wo
uld not argue a bit. I simply accept that he is my sire and deserves more respect than what I have been giving him.”

  Respect. Loyalty. A choice between her, his wife, and Tyne, his father.

  How could she do that to him?

  Deirdre scarcely had time to think, let alone come up with answers. The fete drew scores of children from the countryside, laughing, yelling, gamboling about the gallery at full speed. They sang songs and joined in the Christmas pageant. They ate and drank the refreshments prepared with a liberal hand, and eagerly accepted the gifts the ladies of the parish prepared for them all year.

  Through it all, Deirdre stood behind a table laden with bowls of cold lemonade and hot cider and ladled the drinks into earthenware mugs so thick they didn’t break even when dropped on the stone floor, which happened often. Her feet hurt. Her back ached. Her smile grew less forced with every small bright face that passed by her. And something odd kept happening to her heart, first a softening, then a genuine pleasure in the noise and laughter and shrieks of joy.

  She liked the children.

  At the end of the day, certain Kieran would have to carry her upstairs, she rested her head on his shoulder and sighed with contentment. “I never knew I liked children. I haven’t really ever been around any.”

  “Neither have I. I have always managed to avoid the fete in previous years.” He slipped his arm around her waist despite the number of guests still present. “But they did amuse me.”

  “You looked as though you were enjoying yourself with Chloe . . . and Jane.”

  “They are both lovely, generous girls.”

  “You should have offered for Jane years ago.”

  “I would have been bored to death.”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten yourself into so much trouble.”

  “Hush, Amelia is coming this way.”

  So she was, gliding purposefully forward like a hawk with a juicy mouse in its sights.

  “I am too weary to spar with her further.” Deirdre gripped Kieran’s arm. “May I plead fatigue and go to my room?”

  “I am still needed here.”

  “But I’m not.”