My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles)

by Laurie Alice Eakes

“You may sit in a corner and pout for all I care, but you are not leaving this room without me.”

  A blow to her belly would not have felt worse than his proclamation. Robbed of speech, Deirdre stared at Kieran, eyes wide, lips parted. For a heartbeat, she feared she would scream, or worse, burst into tears.

  Kieran ghosted his fingertips across her cheek, his gaze softening. “I am sorry, and right now I can risk nothing else. But if you truly are fatigued, I will make our excuses and take you to your room. Would you like that?”

  She nodded, still not trusting her voice.

  “Then let us say good night to everyone.”

  Doing so was awkward. Looks of surprise and amusement, along with a hissed “That is disgusting,” accompanied them on their rounds of the gallery until they reached the door.

  By the time they arrived at the first stair landing, Deirdre couldn’t hold back any longer. “We can’t do that again. If I need to go rest, you have to let me go alone. Now everyone thinks we’re going upstairs to-to—mate.”

  “That is a far better presumption for them to have than the truth.”

  Deirdre said nothing more until they reached her room, then she turned to him, her hand on the door handle. “The truth being that I am in prison indeed.”

  “Until I can trust you, yes.” He didn’t look happy with the idea.

  She feared she would make him less happy with their situation. How she wished their circumstances were different, for she acknowledged she did not want to hurt him, even while knowing she would.

  The Ashfords celebrated the season with a house full of guests all day, then a ride to a midnight service at the church. Afterward, most of the earlier guests returned to Bishops Cove and the serving of the Christmas pudding.

  Addison carried it in, set it on the sideboard, and proceeded to soak it in brandy. The sharp fumes filled the room, then the butler lit the brandy. The liquor ignited with a whoosh, and everyone cheered. Remembering the trinkets in the batter, Deirdre chewed with care, but still bit down on the silver sixpence before she realized she had it in her mouthful. With care, she removed the token and laid it on her plate.

  “How shall I prosper?”

  She had lost everything, including what little freedom marriage to Kieran should have given her.

  The gentleman to her right patted her arm with a fleshy hand. “Your husband has prospered, my dear lady, and that is what matters.”

  Deirdre ground her teeth, but said nothing.

  Along the table, others complained of finding none of the toys or exclaimed with delight over the ones they found. Jane Trilling received the wedding ring, and Juliet the crown that made her queen of the night.

  “My first order,” she announced, “is for Kieran and Deirdre to lead the dancing.”

  Deirdre choked on another bite of pudding she had taken to not have to speak. She couldn’t dance. The headmistress at school had tried to make her, but she refused to learn. She sent Kieran a helpless look down the table, hating him being so far away so she couldn’t warn him.

  Kieran rose, his gaze fixed on Deirdre. She tried the slightest shake of her head. The motion caught Juliet’s attention, and she began to clap and bob from foot to foot like a child half her age expecting a treat.

  “Juliet,” Kieran said with mock severity, “what has Mama done to make you forget she is always my first partner in the dance?”

  Juliet settled, her brows knit in such exaggerated puzzlement everyone laughed.

  “I only thought because you’re married now . . .” Juliet trailed off in confusion.

  “You’re quite right, sweetheart.” Phoebe rose and patted Juliet’s arm. “I don’t mind in the least being replaced.” She cast a glance at Deirdre, who caught her cue.

  “Dearest Mama Phoebe, I wouldn’t dream of taking your place.” She swept her gaze over her husband’s tall, elegant frame. “Besides, I would rather watch my husband dance.”

  Her tone, her look, conveyed such a sense of intimacy the guests began to laugh. A few young men, who had imbibed too freely, made some inappropriate remarks, the least objectionable of which was “I’ll wager she does make him dance.”

  Blushing, Deirdre forgot to allow a gentleman or footman to pull out her chair, so eager was she to get to the ballroom and tuck herself into a corner.

  With a speed seemingly impossible in the crowd surging from the dining room, Kieran reached Deirdre’s side and slipped his arm through hers. “You do not dance?”

  She shook her head.

  “We will have to remedy that.”

  “Maybe after—” She glanced down. “But thank you for rescuing me.”

  “You are my wife.” He paused in the doorway to raise her hand to his lips, then led her to a chair not at all in a corner before he slipped through the crowd to collect his mother as the quartet of strings began to play. Once the dancing began, Deirdre moved to the corner where Miss Pruitt sat nodding half asleep. She offered Deirdre a smile, and Deirdre joined her to watch and seethe.

  Across the room, Juliet climbed on a chair and herself affixed the sprig of mistletoe above the doorway, preventing anyone from passing beneath it without risking being kissed by the nearest member of the opposite sex. As the refreshments were in another room, a great deal of hilarity arose from the company, Deirdre joining in at the expressions of pleasure or dismay that crossed the victims’ faces.

  How dare these people celebrate with so much frivolity when not a score of miles away men were suffering in the cold without enough food or proper shelter? Her crew, her family, was suffering, maybe dying.

  Unable to bear one more moment of the festivities, Deirdre lunged to her feet and circumvented the room to the door.

  Juliet stepped into her path. “You cannot leave.”

  “Juliet, please.” Deirdre caught sight of Kieran flanked by the Trilling ladies, heading in her direction. “Let me go. I’m tired.”

  “You may leave with the queen’s blessing after you show Amelia that my brother does love you.”

  “Juliet, don’t be absurd.” Deirdre kept her voice low. “You know perfectly well your brother thinks this marriage was a mistake.”

  “But it is not. If there weren’t a war—”

  “But there is, and I am the enemy. Now, please—”

  “Kieran.” Juliet spoke over Deirdre. “Come kiss your wife.”

  Despite wanting to turn her back on him, Deirdre knew she could scarcely do so with a room full of guests watching, with Amelia and Jane Trilling at hand. The best she could do was step out from beneath the mistletoe.

  “You do not need to ask me twice.” Kieran grasped Deirdre’s hands and positioned her beneath the waxy, white berries. “How could I have neglected my beautiful wife like this? A whole evening passed, and not one kiss.” He touched his lips to Deirdre’s.

  “Pretend you like it,” he said for her ears only, then kissed her with more thoroughness.

  She wished she did have to pretend. He was her jailer. Kissing him should not turn her insides liquid.

  Amelia’s titter restored Deirdre’s good sense. “At least this time he is kissing his wife under the mistletoe. A week ago in London, it was poor Liza Cantrell he was trying to—”

  The crack of flesh against flesh broke the spell that kept Deirdre frozen. She jumped back from him as though she were the one who had been slapped. But it was Amelia who sported a reddening handprint on her cheek and Chloe who was rubbing her palm.

  “It is the truth,” Amelia shrieked. “Liza herself—”

  “Stop it.” Chloe raised her hand again.

  Tyne caught it. “That is enough, Chloe. Retire to your room. Mrs. Trilling, please take Miss Trilling home. She has had too much wine.”

  Chloe stalked out of the drawing room, shooting her brother a glare as she passed. She paused long enough to touch Deirdre’s hand. “Come along, Deirdre. I will go up with you.”

  “I will go up with her.” Kieran slipped one hand beneath Deirdre’s elbo
w.

  She shook it off. “I am perfectly all right walking on my own.” She paced ahead of Kieran and Chloe, head high, back straight, belly feeling prominent, though she knew it didn’t show at all beneath the flowing skirt of her high-waisted gown.

  Behind her, the revelries continued. Juliet and Phoebe’s doing, of course. They could make people do what they wanted them to with smiles and kind words. The incident would be talked about for days, weeks, months. Perhaps no one would blame Deirdre for leaving a husband who had been unfaithful, an odd way to spare the feelings of these kind people, to direct the authorities away from thinking the Ashfords would have anything to do with the disappearance of eleven American prisoners and their dead captain’s daughter.

  She reached her bedchamber and tried to close the door in the others’ faces. No doing with those two. They pushed right in behind her.

  “Go away, Chloe,” Kieran said.

  Chloe settled in one of the sitting room chairs. “Liza is my friend. I want to know what this is all about.”

  “Ruining me,” Kieran said. “Joanna Rutledge’s brother wants me discredited. If that means making me look like an adulterer, he’ll work on it. Liza kissed me. I did not kiss her.” His voice softened. “Deirdre, will you believe me?”

  “If only he knew the truth about your wife,” Deirdre said, “he wouldn’t need to concern himself with trying to make you look unfaithful.”

  “Deirdre.” Kieran closed his eyes and his face twisted. “Can we not call a truce?”

  “Will you cease being my jailer?”

  “You know I cannot.”

  “You promised if I wed you I would have more freedom than I would as a noncombatant.” Deirdre pressed her hands to her face, fearing the burning behind her eyes, the tightness in her chest. “You broke your promise.”

  “I did not know at the time about Mama and the long memories of men in high places. Deirdre.” He held out his hands to her.

  She turned away from the longing in his face and met Chloe’s eyes.

  “I think,” she said, “I need to leave you two alone.” She rose, embraced both of them. “I understand why Mama would do anything to see the war end.” She departed, leaving Deirdre alone with her husband, the greatest barrier to her freedom.

  “If the weather is dry tomorrow,” Kieran said, “I will take you to the cliffs for some sea air.”

  Deirdre accepted the offer for what it was—an offer of a compromise, a request for understanding between them. The gesture was kind of him. To reject that kindness was unworthy of her sense of decency. She had married him of her own free will. She had shared a bed with him of her own free will.

  He became such a devoted husband over the next few weeks she began to accept that keeping her a prisoner was not what he would have chosen were their circumstances different. As often as the winter weather permitted, he drove her to the cliffs for fresh air. He walked with her in the gallery on inclement days. He plucked roses from the bushes in the glass houses and left them for her in unexpected places like under her pillow or pressed between the pages instead of the slip of paper she used to mark her place in a book. He assured her warm blankets and coats had been sent to her crew through means he would not disclose.

  His performance was so convincing, Amelia stopped her taunts or even flirting with him, and his parents gazed upon him with approval. For herself, Deirdre doubted the coldest of females could fail to thaw, and the part of her that had always liked him warmed toward him much of the time. If she could forget how someone, from her husband to Miss Pruitt, was always in her company, she found Kieran a pleasant, even a looked-for companion. On blustery nights, she certainly welcomed him beside her. But too often wakeful, as he slept with his head on her shoulder, she reminded herself not to care for him or his family. She could not betray those to whom she was devoted. If she cared about Kieran and his family enough to be loyal to them, she betrayed her crew. Her responsibility lay with them first as much as Kieran’s lay with his family.

  And she remained in a prison from which she could not gain even a minute’s parole in order to free others from a prison that contained neither comfort nor kindness.

  When a north wind swept down from the moor, finding every crack in the old house to send family and servants alike scurrying to the nearest hearth and reaching for another warm wrap, Deirdre thought about what her men were suffering. They might have blankets, yet she doubted they possessed so much as a brazier for warming their hands. When she ate hot soup and drank hotter tea, both of which she seemed to consume in great quantities, she wondered what kind of meals Ross and Wat and the others enjoyed. And were Blaze and Zeb surviving at sea? The few glimpses of the Channel she caught on the way to church, the only place she went outside of Bishops Cove, displayed an angry sea with ten to twenty-foot swells topped with froth like foam on the lips of a mad dog. They had to be holed up in a French harbor, waiting for finer weather.

  Certain Blaze could not still be in England, Deirdre didn’t fret over reaching the letterbox. But when the end of February brought a warm spell of sunshine and calm seas, she began to seek a way to slip her leash and take the path through the park in search of a message.

  One day in the stillroom, listening to Phoebe’s careful instruction regarding how to prepare a potion for treating a digestive complaint, Deirdre remembered Kieran’s mal de mer and how she had treated it, and a horrible, wonderful idea came to her. When Phoebe turned her back to blend ginger and cinnamon, Deirdre slipped a bottle of laudanum into her pocket.

  If Deirdre were his wife alone and not his prisoner as well, Kieran might have been content, even happy with domesticity. He liked having someone near with whom he could converse or play spillikins or stroll in the gallery without having to be careful how much he flirted for fear of arousing false hopes. He liked having her warmth beside him at night and not waking up alone.

  He did not like the truth that she was with him against her will.

  Yet she seemed to accept her fate. Occasionally Kieran found her staring out a window with such longing on her face his heart ached. More often than he liked, she chose to sit on the other side of the room from him. But she spoke of her crew only the occasions he paid a Princetown innkeeper to take clothes and blankets to the Americans inside Dartmoor. She thanked him politely, then seated herself by the drawing room fire with Chloe, Juliet, and Miss Pruitt to continue her knitting instruction.

  “Nothing,” he said to his father, “is a finer sight. She is more beautiful than ever these days.”

  “She is a lovely young lady.” A grimness to his father’s mouth belied the compliment in his words.

  Kieran turned to him. “Is something amiss, sir? Has more talk cropped up to give us trouble over my marriage.”

  “Not yet.”

  A rustle of silk and drift of lilac scent announced Mama’s entrance into the room. She took up a position beside her husband, and the two of them hemmed Kieran into a corner.

  His heart skipped a beat, then began a slow, heavy march behind his ribs. “What is wrong?”

  “That is what we wish to be sure of.” Father kept his voice low.

  “This is a difficult conversation.” Mama rested her hand on Kieran’s arm. “But Sally noticed and spoke to her mother, who spoke to me . . .” Her hand tightened.

  Kieran’s gut knotted. Sally, Deirdre’s maid, spoke to her mother, the local midwife. He could make those calculations.

  “She thinks something is wrong with the baby?” He managed the words in measured tones.

  Mama and Father exchanged glances.

  “Not wrong.” Mama removed her hand from his sleeve and laced her fingers against her fichu. “She seems too bloomed to be less than six months along.”

  “I see.” He felt sick, more betrayed than he had when finding her and Chloe returning from Dartmoor in boys’ clothing, though betrayed by Deirdre or his parents he was not yet certain. “You are convinced the baby is not mine.”

  “She did
agree to marry you with little resistance,” Father said.

  “She agreed to spare her crew.” Kieran dragged his mind back to those days in St. George’s Harbor. “She—I nearly forced marriage upon her. I . . . she . . .” He took half a step back and came up hard against the wall. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “We are thinking perhaps we should send Deirdre to Northumberland until after the baby is born.” Father propped one shoulder against the doorframe in too casual a pose. “Once the baby is born—”

  “After the requisite number of months,” Mama interjected.

  “We can bring her back here,” Father concluded.

  Kieran pressed his hands against the cold plaster to stop himself from balling them into fists. “And if the baby is born before the requisite number of months?”

  “Adopting it out is far easier up in the north than here where more people know you,” Father said.

  Kieran stared at him, then Mama, wanting to push himself between them and snatch up his wife, carry her away from them and interfering midwives.

  He kept himself still. “And would I accompany her?”

  “If you like.” Father smiled.

  “And if I do not like this plan, what then?” Despite his efforts, Kieran’s fingers curled into his palms. “What if I think taking Deirdre’s child away from her is barbaric and cruel?”

  She had agreed to abandon her children to him in some vague future, but that was before they were married, before she knew she was with child—surely she had not made a fool of him.

  “If the child is a boy,” Father was saying, “it will be your heir by law being born within wedlock. Do you want a cuckoo in the nest?”

  “What I want,” Kieran enunciated, “is to keep as much of the promise I made Deirdre as I can. I cannot see to her crew’s welfare from Northumberland. The child is mine by law or by blood, does not matter. We are staying here unless you insist we leave, in which case I will find us our own home. Perhaps I should do this anyway, if this is what you think of my wife.”

  Mama and Father exchanged another one of those glances that said nothing to Kieran but seemed to communicate hours of dialogue between his parents. When they looked back to him, their faces held sympathy, perhaps understanding.