by Henke, Shirl
He accepted it, taking a sip while studying her over the rim. “So, puss, what's it to be—will you marry me?”
“At least you have the good grace to ask. Everyone else simply assumes I'll fall in step with the arrangements, which appear to be moving along briskly. Father Vivalde was here earlier to assure me that the bishop has granted a dispensation so that we may be wed on the morrow!”
He shrugged. “Tomorrow would be fine with me. What of you?”
“You must first tell me why you wish this. The only time you have ever spoken of marriage was to call it leg-shackling and shudder at the prospect.”
“So did you, if you recall. Your art was your life...or so you told me.”
His coolness was palpable, as if he'd removed himself from emotional involvement. How could he ask her to bare her soul when he stood so aloof, a handsome stranger with the unreadable face of a spy. “What are you fishing for, Derrick? Do you want me to tell you I would abandon painting for love of you?”
“I expect not,” he said, a rueful half-smile touching his lips fleetingly as he sipped at his wine again. “I'll not forbid you to paint, Beth—as if forbidding you to do anything would signify. You may pursue your art career as you wish. After all,'tis not as if I were the earl and you my countess.”
The offhand comment wounded her painfully. How careless are the barbs of the aristocracy. “I would be a scandal in London,” she replied, taking a large swallow of wine for courage. “My father believes I'm one here, too.”
“He doesn't understand Naples.” He did not deny that she would be a fish out of water in London society.
“He doesn't understand you. Neither do I. Vittoria's right. Even Quintin Blackthorne could not coerce you into what on our frontier is called a ‘shotgun wedding.’ ”
He stiffened angrily for an instant, then brought his temper under control as Piero's words echoed in his head. A dead father. A dead lover. Now there's a fine solution to everything. “I am no more afraid of your father than he is of me. That is not why we reached an accord.”
“You still have not answered my question, Derrick. Why are you willing to marry me?” Just say you love me. The words echoed in her head, but she knew they were foolish even before he replied.
“Dammit, must everything be spelled out for you as if you were still a school miss!” His angry outburst made her pale and the wine splashed over the rim of her glass. At once he repented. “Ah, puss, I’m sorry. I did not mean to rail at you.”
“What did you mean then?” she persisted doggedly.
He reached out and took the glass from her whitened fingers, setting it on the table, then drew her with him to the Grecian couch and sat down beside her. “I'm offering you the protection of my name. Beth...there might be a child. It could be mine...or that corsair Quinn's or Kasseim's—”
She leaped to her feet angrily, her head spinning with the sheer pain and rage of the practical arrangement her father and lover had made for her. “How noble that you concede it might be yours—this imaginary child!”
“I know for a fact that you have not had your courses since we left Algiers,” he said, gritting his teeth as he rose. “How long before that?”
She had gone through hell to keep another man from touching her, working her fingers to the bone nursing Quinn, stealing Maya's opium to drug that thrice-cursed Kasseim! And now Derrick thought one of them might have gotten her with child. It had hurt when she realized that he believed she'd lain with them, hurt even worse that he blamed her for being captured in the first place.
She had wondered if it had been a prideful mistake not to reveal the real reason for her voyage. Now she was glad she had not confessed that it was despair over losing him that had driven her to risk sailing in Barbary waters.
Beth swallowed back her tears, unable to voice a painful denial, which he would not believe anyway. Instead, she replied, “My courses have always been erratic. Derrick. I think it best if we wait a while before leaping into a marriage that we may both regret. There may be no reason for it.”
She looked so vulnerable and brave at the same time. His heart softened, but the memory of the steely glint in Quintin Blackthorne's eyes made him say, “Waiting may not be a wise idea, Beth. Your father wants this matter settled. He has the rather traditional view that his daughter's honor has been compromised, and the only thing that will satisfy him is a wedding.”
“You aren't afraid of him.” She was certain of that.
“I would not want to kill him either.”
Then she understood. The ground seemed to evaporate from beneath her feet. “Dear God, he really did threaten a duel.”
“As a matter of fact, the possibility was mentioned,” he said with a wry smile that did not reach his eyes. “Piero reminded us that it would please you ill if either or both of us ended up dead. So, I think, puss, that you shall simply have to marry me,” he announced, taking her in his arms and pulling her against his chest.
The world was spinning out of control, everything moving much too fast. Perhaps she was enceinte. Her dizziness was certainly not due to a few sips of wine. It is Derrick. Beth quashed the thought. “There must be another way to settle this,” she said reasonably, pushing against his chest. ”I shall speak with Papa.”
Her resistance should have heartened him. Instead it only seemed to rub salt into what was already a fiery wound. He had fled the marriage noose repeatedly during his days as a London rake. Women had always tried to entice and entrap him. But this woman, a totally unsuitable American whose body had been violated in unthinkable ways, refused him. “You said yourself, Beth, your courses are erratic. What if we wait another month, two—and then learn that you are four months with child? Do you think your father will be willing to allow that?”
When he put it that way, reasoning with Quintin Blackthorne did seem a bit ridiculous.
“Look, puss, you shall marry me or I will kill your father...or he shall kill me...or we'll kill each other.”
Beth was appalled. “Derrick Jamison, are you blackmailing me?”
Derrick cocked his head and stared down at her, an enigmatic smile slowly curling his lips. ”Hmm, it does rather sound like it, doesn't it?”
Chapter Sixteen
Beth lay awake all night after Derrick left, tossing and turning until the sky pinkened with morning light. Wearily, she climbed out of her bed, which was large and lonely without him beside her. Even if her fathers presence in the city was not a deterrent, it would have been unwise for them to sleep together until they settled this matter of marriage. What should she do?
Beth dressed hurriedly and went into her studio. Perhaps the familiar routine of work would soothe her troubled spirits, enable her to think more clearly if she focused on something other than this dilemma for a while. She readied her palette and brushes,dry and dusty from sitting so long while she was gone. The light was perfect. Now, what to work on? Several paintings in progress were propped about the room, covered with cloth. Some instinct sent her to the one farthest from her.
When she flung the cover off, Derrick Jamison's brooding countenance stared back at her: the portrait she had never completed. She studied the long lazy lines of his body as it reposed by the side of the stream, the tilt of his head, the deep blue of his eyes and that mouth...oh, yes, that mouth, sculpted as perfectly as if Michangelo himself had done it. But this man was not lifeless marble, the embodiment of some mythical figure. He was alive and warm. He was the man who would be her husband, if she agreed.
Her thoughts were broken by a knock at her door. Thinking that it was Donita with her morning coffee, she continued to stare at the painting as she bid the caller enter.
“So this is where you work,” Quint said, striding into the large, cluttered room filled with canvases, paints, charcoal and paper. “I remembered that you were always up while your slug-a-bed brothers still slept.”
When he approached, she started to cover the canvas, but he quickly stopped her, then stood back
to study the portrait, which was almost complete. She had only to fill in the rest of the background. “It reveals much, Beth,” he said thoughtfully.
“About him...or about me?” she asked nervously.
“Perhaps both. You've captured something elusive in his eyes, in the way he's looking out at the world—or at the one who's drawing him. You're in love with the rogue, aren't you, daughter?”
“Yes,” she replied, seeing no use in denying it since he would not relent in his insistence she marry. “But he is not in love with me,” she felt compelled to add.
Quint walked across the airy room to one of the large windows that overlooked the bay in the distance. The sun had just begun to clear the hills behind him and was gilding the water with flecks of gold and pink. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then said, “Perhaps he is...perhaps not. When first we wed, I did not love your mother either.” At her small gasp of shock, he turned. “I've never told a living soul what I am going to tell you now.
“Ours was an arranged marriage. Madelyne's father and mine had been compatriots in the war against the French. I did not wish to wed...but my duty to produce heirs for Blackthorne Hall made me consent to the match. Your mother was not...what I expected. I had wanted a plain, biddable wife.”
“Mama—plain! Biddable!”
Quint smiled sadly. ”I was mistaken about those matters...among many thing,” he said, seeming to grope for words as his expression became haunted and grim. Beth sat spellbound as her father's tale of love and betrayal unfolded, stunned that what she had always assumed to be the most perfect love match ever made had in fact been a forced arrangement in which her father had treated her mother abominably. Almost too late he had realized how much he had come to love her.
“So you see,” he finished at length, “women as remarkable as you and your mother have only to outlast and outwit male blindness and stupidity. I made it my business last night after Jamison and I had our discussion to make inquiries about him from some sources that Piero and the contessa have here in Naples. He is a man of honor and rare courage, in spite of the fact he's a bloody earl's son. And there is that unfortunate spy business,” he added with a wry grin.
“And you believe I can outlast and outwit him just by loving him?” she asked, afraid to believe it.
“Just by loving him, yes,” her father replied simply.
* * * *
Did she love Derrick enough for both of them? The thought tormented and tantalized her as she worked through the morning, filling in the background on his portrait. “Twould make a fine wedding gift,” she murmured to herself, remembering the day she had made the first sketches for it, when they had made love in the water. At least that part of the marriage would work out splendidly. But passion alone was not nearly enough, as her parents had found out.
Sighing, she put aside her brushes and stood back to look at the finished work. His arresting blue eyes stared back at her, cool and distant, with just the faintest hint of mockery in them. Was it for the world around him...or for himself that his beautifully sculpted lips turned up in a melancholy smile? Beth concluded that she had captured a fleeting bit of the enigma that was Derrick Lance Jamison.
Thank heavens he was the earl's second son. What if he had been the heir? She shuddered at the thought, remembering her father's comments regarding Derrick's decidedly overdeveloped sense of duty. An American wife whom he believed had given herself to renegades and Algerines would scarce make a fit countess. Nor would a woman who dressed like a peasant and haggled with street vendors, posed in the nude for artists and, perhaps worst of all, sold her own paintings for money.
Her troubling reverie was interrupted when she heard Derrick's voice from down the hall. Hurriedly, she draped a cover over the portrait and walked to the door of her studio. He stood in the center of her small sitting room, seeming to overwhelm the dainty space with his masculine presence. He wore tan doeskins that clung to his long legs like a second skin, polished high boots and a white lawn shirt open at the collar, revealing a patch of the crisp black hair that furred his muscular chest. His skin had darkened even more under the hot North African sun, and she felt the heat of him leap across the room and scorch her.
“Vittoria said you had not been to the markets in a while. I thought we might go this morning. 'Tis one of my fondest memories of our first days together. That is, if you've finished your work for the day.”
“Oh, yes; that is, I will have to change my dress,” she replied, feeling foolish when he bowed formally.
“I shall await you downstairs,” he replied and left her standing alone in her quarters.
When had they become so stiff and uncomfortable around each other? How she longed for the early days, when there had been no thought of permanence, no pressure from family—just two lovers laughing and enjoying life in each other's company. “I want that old Derrick back,” she whispered to herself as she slipped into a pale yellow peasant's blouse and a dark green skirt.
Of course, the “old Derrick” had been a sham, a British agent on a mission, only posing as a charming wastrel pensioned off by his family. Still, there had been real magic between them when first they met. She would not deny it. Neither could he.
It was late in the morning for the choicest fish on the quay, but since the summer harvests were bountiful, they bought ripe juicy melons and succulent peaches after appropriate haggling with the vendors. As in times of old, Jacomo followed behind to carry the bounty. She made a splendid bargain on a leg of spring lamb for the dinner table and would have felt inordinately pleased with herself if not for a hint of restraint on Derrick's part as he accompanied her.
This time when they reached the piazza where the goat milk vendors worked, he seemed to regain some of his old sense of humor, saying with a teasing light in his eyes, ”I vow not to touch a hair on the head of even the most winsome kid.” He eyed the tethered nannies warily as she chuckled.
Derrick watched her animated exchange in Italian with the old woman who owned the goats. Her artless American charm and free Neapolitan way of savoring life had delighted him when she had been his mistress. But everything had changed since his confrontation with Quintin Blackthorne. What kind of wife, and possibly mother, would she make? His own qualifications for being a husband and father were equally questionable; perhaps more so, he admitted to himself.
Yet here he was attempting to convince her that they should wed. We will simply have to make the best of it. More easily vowed than done, he realized, but there was no turning back now. He had given his word. They would remain in Naples, of course. The idea of returning to England was unthinkable. Beth would rebel against the social strictures of the ton and be wounded by the rejection of his family. Yes, here she could continue to paint and live the unconventional life she loved.
As to what he would do...therein lay the rub. The only life he knew was that of spying. Not exactly the sort of career compatible with wedded bliss. Blackthorne had indicated that Beth was an heiress and a sizable dowry would sweeten the marriage bargain, but the idea of living off a woman was more repugnant to him than accepting Leighton's offer to support him in exchange for his continued exile.
That left few choices. Piero had mentioned an intriguing possibility early that morning. He was considering expanding his shipping operations to the lucrative Mediterranean trade now that the Barbary pirates were being forced to stop their depredations. If Derrick was not averse to entering the world of business, he might become a factor for the warehouse here in the city.
The old earl would roll over in his grave at the very thought of it. Leighton would be apoplectic. However, the employment would yield a decent income. But he was loath to give up his work for the Foreign Office. He would miss the chase, the adventure of his old life. There was something addictive in the danger, an almost sexual thrill to outwitting his most cunning enemies in the game of intrigue.
The baa of a kid interrupted his tumbling thoughts, and without thinking he reached dow
n absently and gave its head a pat, then jerked back his hand with a startled oath, stepping away before he could raise the ire of an over-protective mama again. He heard the old crone's tittering laughter. She remembered him from that last ignominious encounter. As he looked over at her, she raised a walking stick as gnarled as the fist that shook it, cursing as only the lazzaroni could. Her eyes were fixed on a ragged filthy mongrel who was lapping from an unattended pail of milk.
As the old woman scuttled toward the hapless dog, raising her cudgel, Beth suddenly darted to the rescue. Leave it to his softhearted love to save every starveling she encountered, he thought as she cried, “No! I will pay for the milk, please, Graciella.” Beth knelt in front of the cowering dog who lay flattened on the hard-packed earth, seeming almost too weak to run. His long shaggy fur was so matted with filth that his color was not readily discernable, his ribs practically protruded from his emaciated sides and there were raw sores all over his body, no doubt inflicted by irate merchants and lazzaroni children throwing rocks.
“Come, boy. It's going to be all right. No one will harm you. There's a love,” she crooned as the dog bellied closer and she reached down to stroke his head. “Oh my lord, Percival, what evil has befallen you?”
“Percival?” Derrick echoed in stark amazement. Now that he looked at the poor creature, he could see that it was a spaniel—Sir Percival of Inverness! At the sound of Derrick's voice, the dog looked up with pain-glazed eyes, and Derrick recognized him.
Just then a half-dozen street urchins came darting furtively from one of the narrow alleyways leading to the piazza. Sticks and stones in hand, they caught sight of the quarry that had eluded them and took aim. Derrick jumped in front of the hail of fire, shielding Beth and the dog. Since he was not dressed as a gentleman,he was fair game for the young toughs, several of whom were as tall as he.