They had something else in mind, and she felt her heart sink as she watched Drake move closer to her stepfather. There was nothing they could do, nothing they could say, that would make that man give her up. He had wanted her too long and would not surrender peacefully now that he had her in his hands.
The Darling men were, after all, just a bunch of gentlemen, unused to the way of the world outside their secure little social circle. The only one who had a little experience from anything else but the ton was James, but what could one man’s time in the army help in this situation?
“You, there,” the fashionable lady Lord Nester had spoken to called out to Drake as he passed her. “Go and relieve the gentleman of his burden.”
“Not my job,” Drake scoffed, and Charmaine was impressed at how different from his normal dandyish self he sounded.
The good lady gasped, and her large bosom nearly made the small buttons of her coat fly off. “How dare you, you infidel! Don’t you know who I am?”
Drake looked at her over his shoulder as he continued toward his prey, his eyes cold and uninterested. “No.”
The lady gasped again, grabbing her walking-stick in her hand as she followed him, impolitely pushing aside the people standing in her path.
“I am the Countess of Linley and…” She shoved two men harshly aside, their angry voices following her as she moved closer to Drake. “And I’m not used to being met with this rudeness! Stand still when I talk to you!”
Drake stopped just as he reached Lord Nester, and Charmaine held her breath as her stepfather looked at the sailor with interest, clearly amused over the little drama playing out in front of him.
“What?” Drake sighed as Lady Linley stopped in front of him.
She immediately threw out her finger, poking him hard as she spoke. “This is unacceptable. You, a simple sailor, are not to treat me this way. When I talk, you stop and listen. And you will be polite toward me. Do you hear?”
Drake shrugged indifferently. “Whatever…”
Lady Linley leaned forward, her nose almost touching his. “Whatever what?”
He frowned at her before shrugging again. “Bloody hell, lady, you sure are one deranged aristocrat.”
“Deranged?” Lady Linley gasped, even more outraged than earlier, but this time she caught Drake by surprise and pushed him hard in the chest. Unprepared for the assault, he tumbled backward and landed with a loud oof on top of Lord Nester’s bag.
The crowd gasped unanimously and moved closer, so that Charmaine lost sight of Drake at her father’s feet. Everyone stared at the scenario by the gangplank, and no one was looking at her where she stood with her bag. Without a sound, Rake and James came up to her and dragged her and her bag a little distance away with them.
“Give me your coat,” Rake urged, and she hastened to do as asked. He gave her a quick, reassuring smile, which felt oddly comforting, before throwing the coat further to Sebastian, who immediately left them again, walking back toward the ship.
A shrill whistle effectively silenced the mumbling crowd, and a tall, bearded man, who without doubt was the captain, came down the creaking gangplank. His dictatorial voice soon had the people scurrying around, gathering their luggage before boarding the ship.
Lady Linley’s voice was just as shrill as the captain’s whistle as she grabbed his arm and washed the poor man’s ears with complaints about Drake’s behavior. Charmaine couldn’t hear what she said or what the captain answered as she and Rake briskly walked across the dock toward an anonymous carriage that awaited them, but the countess seemed satisfied with the answer received.
Under Lady Linley’s supervision, the captain had a few sailors carry the disinclined Drake aside, away from what was left of the gawking crowd. Without looking twice at Drake, Lady Linley grabbed Lord Nester’s arm, forcing him to walk her up the gangplank.
Her stepfather looked like an owl as he tried to look back toward the crowd, obviously searching for her face, seeming more and more distressed when he couldn’t find her. If it hadn’t been for the lady’s firm grip of his arm, he probably would have bolted down the gangplank again, but he was too used to acting the nice gentleman to leave Lady Linley in a disrespectful way.
When they had reached the top of the gangplank and were about to enter the ship, Lord Nester’s face changed from anxious to relieved, and without further owl-like movements he disappeared beyond the gunwale.
“H-how…” Charmaine stuttered, and Rake pointed toward the boat.
“Look.”
To Charmaine’s surprise a shape dressed in her lovely coat walked gracefully up the gangplank, and she leaned back in her seat, not believing her eyes.
“H-how…” she stuttered again, and this time Rake chuckled, clearly amused over her inability to think.
“We paid a woman who is travelling with her husband and five children in steerage to put on your coat and keep it on until the ship had sailed far enough to not turn back. You saw it yourself—your father now believes you are on the ship.”
Charmaine shook her head. “But he will find out, I promise you. As soon as he can get rid of Lady Linley, he will go and search for me to take me to the…”
Rake’s smile was filled with compassion as he put an arm around her shivering back. “Don’t you fret, my dear, we have it all under control. I know Lady Linley. She is a very strong-willed woman, and it’s unlikely she will budge easily or let your father leave her too soon, especially not with this upset. By the time he finds out you are not on the ship, it will be too late for him to do anything about it. The captain won’t turn the ship around to come and get you, and he will have to jump into the water and swim back if he doesn’t want to wait until he’s in New York and buy a bed on another ship back.”
“But he has money—he can pay the captain to turn the ship around.”
“With what money?”
Drake climbed into the carriage and removed his dirty jacket with a sigh of utter satisfaction. “That one was so dirty I think it could have stood by itself.”
“As long as he bought the play, you can be as dirty as you like.”
“Oh, he bought it, all right. The man was so angry with me for my disrespectful behavior toward Lady Linley and especially toward himself, he completely forgot he had all the money in his bag.”
Drake removed a packet he had hidden under his jacket and opened it, showing them the money filling it to its brim.
“That’s Sin’s money,” Charmaine gasped, and the two men laughed.
“Do you really think we would have let that bastard leave with our money?” Rake chuckled again. “To be fair, a large chunk of it is missing, but as it has all gone to a good cause, we don’t think Sin will fret too much about the loss.”
“W-what…” Charmaine was still stuttering, unable to think straight. “Where did the money go?”
“Well, we had to pay our coat-wearing lady. She and her family will now have a great start in their new life across the ocean. Money easily earned, for her, although we warned her it might get a little ugly when Lord Nester discovers she isn’t his daughter.”
“Wife.”
Rake lifted an eyebrow toward his nephew, but didn’t let the input get him off his track. He clearly liked telling the story, and both James and Drake were starting to look a bit impatient.
“Of course. Wife. And then we had to give the captain some coins, too, so he wouldn’t be willing to turn the ship around.”
“Of course,” Charmaine repeated numbly, still not able to fully grasp what had happened.
“And then there is Lady Linley’s part.”
Charmaine sat up straight, staring at Rake with disbelief. “Lady Linley was paid? B-but… How did you manage to…”
Drake grinned mischievously, looking more boyish than ever, taking over the storytelling—to his uncle’s frustration. “Oh, we have known Lady Linley for quite some time, and she loves to pretend being wealthier than she really is. So when we noticed her among the pas
sengers, we took the liberty of offering her a deal she simply couldn’t refuse.”
“I can’t believe this…”
“Do you know, Charmaine, when you look as flabbergasted as you do right now, you are not as beautiful as you usually are.”
She couldn’t help herself. They were acting too smug, and before she had a chance to change her mind she rolled her eyes. A lot.
Their laughter was liberating. She could feel some of the tension leave her as she shared their amusement over her honest reaction.
“Oh, Charmaine.” Drake grinned. “Promise me you’ll never hide from us again. We do like you more when you’re human than when you’re a goddess.”
“Oh, stop it!” She waved her hand toward him, not wanting to hear him rant about her looks, but he just laughed at her. Loving disrespect: the Darling solution to how life worked out best.
“Anyway,” Rake continued, with a glare toward his nephew, who was trying to stare starry-eyed at Charmaine. “Don’t mind the clown. He just can’t help it.”
What a family, she thought tenderly. Not one bone of respect toward each other, and yet they were all secure in the knowledge of how loved they were.
A quiet knock on the carriage door interrupted the strange conversation. James let Sebastian in before calling out to the driver it was time to leave.
“No need to stick around,” he explained to Charmaine, and she clutched her hands hard together as she stared at him, wanting to believe him.
“You can relax now,” Rake said gently, as always sensing when she was disturbed. “He will not come after you again.”
“You are wrong,” she said hoarsely. “He won’t give up. In six months’ time he will be back to finish what he started, and nothing can save Sin then. Nothing.”
“You are so wrong, sister dear,” Sebastian drawled. “Your dear stepfather will not be coming back. You see, we have made sure he will not have any means when he arrives. He will have to work his way to a ticket, and I promise you, he will fail. He is not the working kind of man. He will try something reckless, like gambling, rather than living on what money he has left. I promise you, he will sooner end up as a drunk than succeed in saving for the ticket back.”
She shook her head, not knowing how to stress the matter. She knew her stepfather—he would be back.
“No, he won’t.” Drake seemed able to read her mind, but nothing surprised her anymore when it came to him. Had he removed his clothes and told her that he was instead a woman she would only nod in light acceptance.
“It’s true, what Drake says.” Rake smiled. “We left your father with enough money to start over in New York but with less than what a ticket costs.”
“But you can’t promise me he won’t come back. You can’t. He might be on the other side of the Atlantic, but still… Someday he will stand outside Chester Park again, and then Sin’s life will end.”
“He won’t come back.”
“You can’t know that!” Her distressed tone brought her even more compassionate looks from the four gentlemen.
“But what if I told you we can?” Rake stretched his legs out in front of him, rendering him angry glares from his twin, who sat in the opposite seat. “You see, we have not only paid the steerage woman, the captain, and Lady Linley. We also made sure to send a man with the ship whose only job is to follow Lord Nester for a year and report back to us what the dear man is up to. If Lord Nester tries to return to England, our man will do his best to stop him, without revealing himself. Would your father by some strange stroke of luck or unexpected wit manage to buy himself a return ticket, our man will make sure we are informed about it and will continue to follow your father until he is sure we can take over the job of rendering him innocuous.”
Charmaine bit her lip as she tried to make sense of what Drake had told her. “B-but what if the man loses Father? What if he manages to slip away and boards a ship undetected? Then he could be halfway across the Atlantic before your man hears about it.”
“Will not happen.”
Drake’s conviction was quite catching, but Charmaine still didn’t believe it could end this easily. Her life had been so awful during the last few years, turning her into such a horrendous person. The mere thought the solution could be this simple made her feel strangely humiliated.
“Your man might not fulfill his part.”
“He will.”
She shook her head. “You can’t be sure.”
“I can and I am.”
She sighed deeply with frustration. “You can’t trust a random man to do what you have paid him to do when you have no way of making sure he fulfills his part.”
Drake shrugged indifferently. “That’s why we sent a man we do trust. This is not just about you, Charmaine. This is about your sister, too, who we happen to hold in very high esteem, which I thought you were aware of.”
She nodded curtly. Of course she knew how much they adored Penelope. It had been her sister’s salvation and something Charmaine in secret had envied.
Drake’s unreadable eyes pinned her to the carriage wall, and she felt the warmth of a faint blush on her cheeks when he smiled wryly as if he had read her mind again and seen how petty her true feelings were. What was it with these Darling men who made her wonder if she was made of glass?
“You both are now part of our family,” Drake said smoothly. “But you are not the only reason we do this. You see, my dear, this is also about Sin—our Sin. There is no chance we will send someone we can’t trust, as this is about Sin’s life, which will hopefully be a long and prosperous one.”
She hadn’t thought about it like that. Of course the Darlings didn’t want their beloved Sin to live with a death threat over his head.
“Do you remember Hereford’s valet, that odd man called Bear?” James kicked Rake’s legs aside while gazing inquiringly at Charmaine.
She ignored Rake’s groan beside her. “As a matter of fact, I do. He’s that giant of a man who looks like a Viking, isn’t he?”
“Exactly.” James nodded slightly, his light gray eyes looking almost silver in the dim light of the lamp. “Hereford met him in France during the war and trusts him completely. He is on the ship and will follow your stepfather closely, making sure Lord Nester stays as far away from England as possible.”
It had taken a while for the carriage to make its way through the crowds gathered to see the ship off, and now, as she glanced out through the small window, she could still see the ship hovering over the dock. Sailors were lifting the heavy ropes that kept the ship attached to land, while more sailors were preparing the sails high up in the masts.
The ship was leaving, and with it her stepfather.
Could it be true? Was her stepfather leaving England—and her—forever?
The men were almost obnoxiously cheerfully as the carriage rumbled farther and farther away from Southampton and its docks. They kept bragging to each other how well their plan had worked out.
But Charmaine was too tired to listen. Too drowsy to pretend amusement or even attention, she leaned her head against the cold wall, her thoughts spinning as fast as the wheels beneath her.
What would happen now? She knew she would have to face Sin and tell him the truth, the truth he had been asking for since they first were married. Her heart ached at the mere thought of his losing what little warmth he felt for her, but she had no choice.
No more lies.
She hadn’t done anything but tell lies to everyone, including herself, during the last few years, and she’d had enough. She wanted to start over and become a new person—a new Charmaine. She could only hope Sin wouldn’t mind her transforming into the real her. Although, as she thought of it, he had never cared for her fake person, so why would it bother him if she became someone else?
“Good Lord, Charmaine!” Rake’s amused voice interrupted her pitiful thoughts, and opening her eyes she found him grinning at her.
“I beg your pardon?” Without thinking she blurted out her stand
ard response when she didn’t know what to say, something that made Rake, Sebastian, and Drake squeal like little girls, while James, as always, looked blasé and withdrawn. She frowned toward them, irritated. “What?”
“Do you know you snore?”
She stared at them with disbelief. “I do not.”
“Oh, yes, you do. Who would ever have guessed that? The Incomparable Queen of the ton snores.”
Why did he sound so stunned?
Snoring wasn’t so uncommon. Her stepfather had snored every night during her childhood, sometimes so loudly it felt as if the roof was about to lift from the echoes twirling in every corner of Harveyfield. Her mother had more times than she could remember looked like a hollow ghost at the breakfast table after listening to him all night. And they didn’t even share a bedroom.
Sitting up straight, she glared at Rake, who still was chuckling, and tried to look as formidable as she could. “I. Do. Not. Snore.”
“Yes. You. Do.”
“Nobody has ever told me before that I snore, and so I don’t believe you. I definitely don’t snore.”
“We’ll just have to ask Sin,” Sebastian told the other men. “He will tell her the truth. He always tells the truth.”
Rake sighed. “Yes, he does. The bore.”
Drake looked eagerly at Charmaine. “Can’t you make him stop being so very boorish? Couldn’t you just tell him to lighten up and realize there is more to life than ledgers and responsibility?”
“Is there?” Rake drawled, and his nephews grinned in response.
James rolled his eyes. “Could you three cease your merriment? What’s wrong with taking things from the serious point of view? We can’t all go around laughing and dancing our way through life. Someone has to make sure we can live a carefree and joyful life, and unfortunately that has fallen in Sin’s lap.”
“He doesn’t think it’s unfortunate, though,” Sebastian said, and it was quite clear that he had no understanding of how anyone could think responsibilities weren’t tedious. “He thrives when locked into that dungeon of his so he can lean over those old dusty books, calculating his little numbers.”
The Beauty of You Page 24