The Courtesan's Daughter

by Claudia Dain

  “In a manner of speaking. But it was entirely deserved!”

  John grunted and dropped his gaze, which she understood full well was his way of laughing uproariously.

  “This is Lord Ashdon, Westlin’s heir?” John asked.

  She could definitely hear the sound of Ashdon’s feet on the stones. His feet sounded furious.

  “Yes,” she said, her gaze jerking from the open window to John’s face. “But how did you know? We’ve only been married this day.”

  John nodded and looked out the window expectantly. It was quite clear he was waiting for Ashdon. Why was it that men always grouped together in situations such as this? One would almost think that Uncle John thought she should get thrashed by her husband on the mere technicality that she had struck him first, though not without immense provocation. Let no one forget that striking detail.

  Men were so illogical about these things, particularly when it concerned that part of their bodies. Ridiculous, really. Of course, her mother had told her that this would be the result if she ever chose to use that particular brand of dissuasion.

  It had been worth it.

  Her mother had told her that, too.

  “It makes a nice revenge,” John said softly, staring at her.

  Oh, that. Revenge again. She couldn’t escape it, no matter how hard she ran. Her indignation tumbled down and lost all its heat, leaving her with nothing but sadness and the painful emptiness of lost hope.

  “Is it all of revenge?” she whispered.

  “Let’s find out,” John said in an undertone, his words almost swallowed by a quick banging against the landau door just before it was thrown open to reveal Ashdon’s enraged face and heaving chest.

  Even enraged, his face did such lovely things to her heart. Completely unfair, of course, but there she was, shackled to a husband who could melt her with a look and he only interested in her for the money.

  “You have my wife in your possession,” Ashdon growled, staring at the stranger who had lifted Caro into his landau. “Release her.”

  The man, dark haired and of sternly arranged features, answered Ashdon in a language unknown to him. Caro jerked her gaze to the man, obviously startled. What was equally startling was that Caro spoke to the stranger in what Ash could only surmise was the same language.

  Ashdon lunged into the landau and grabbed the stranger by the knot in his cravat. “Who are you to my wife?” The man did not so much as flinch. Ashdon snagged Caro’s hand and pulled her so that her hip rested against his; if he had to throw her from the landau, so be it. He might actually enjoy it.

  The stranger spoke again, and this time Caro responded in French.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Ashdon,” she snipped, trying to pull her hand from his, unsuccessfully. “This is Uncle John, my mother’s brother. He’s just back from France.”

  As if coming from France explained anything at all.

  “Sophia’s brother,” Ashdon said, looking for a resemblance and seeing it, though dimly. The same dark hair and eyes, the same self-possessed gaze, the same superior smirk; yes, all that, but little else. This man was dark of skin while Sophia’s complexion was fresh cream. This man’s features were sharp and hard while Sophia’s were the fine angles and curves of the oldest French nobility. “He speaks French, but not English? Yet they’re brother and sister? ”

  Uncle John answered in French. “We have not seen each other often over the years.”

  There were a thousand questions Ashdon could have asked, but he thought the simplest would serve him best. “Why?”

  John shifted his gaze to Caro, who returned John’s look expectantly. “Because of one war or another,” John answered, which raised rather more questions than it answered. “You have a dispute with your wife,” John said calmly. “Finish it. In English. I will not intrude.”

  “I will do what I wish with my wife,” Ashdon said, staring hard at Caro’s unusual uncle, “in any language I wish. But not in front of you.”

  “I am her uncle. Until the dispute is settled,” he said, shrugging one shoulder slightly, “she will remain in my protection.”

  “She needs no protection beyond that which I can give her,” Ash said in soft menace.

  “Well spoken,” John said.

  “Yes, well, I can bloody well protect myself,” Caro said sounding oddly annoyed.

  Women were such fools about these things, thinking that they could do as they wished without counting the cost of their actions or their words. It would be his task to teach her otherwise. He was looking forward to it.

  “Uncle John? Will you take me back to Dalby House please?”

  “I think Lord Ashdon is not ready to return to your mother’s house,” John said, still speaking in French.

  And then he spoke again in that strange language that Ash couldn’t name. Whatever it was he said, Caro turned a bit red on the chest, in the exact location that should have been covered by a fichu. The woman needed to learn to keep better account of her fichus. He wasn’t going to allow her to parade her bosom all over London.

  “What the devil language is that, Caro? You speak it as well, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” she said as the landau lurched forward at John’s tap. “I’ve been speaking it since I was a baby.”

  “And? ”

  “And it’s”—she smoothed her muslin skirts, refusing to face him—“it’s Iroquois, if you must know. My mother and Uncle John are half Iroquois.”

  Twenty-six

  IT was at that precise moment that Ash stopped speaking French. He bloody well didn’t care if Uncle John was offended or not.

  “When were you going to tell me? ” he asked Caro.

  “I don’t know that I was ever going to tell you. I can’t see what business it is of yours.”

  “You can’t? My being your husband means nothing?”

  “I don’t know who your grandparents are.”

  “Really? I find that odd since everyone knows my ancestry back to the twelfth century.”

  “How delightful for you,” Caro said primly, staring out the window. “Where are we going, Uncle John? ” she asked sulkily. “If not Dalby House, then where?” That she asked it in French Ash took to be a sign of civility since she could have chosen to speak in Iroquois. It was a small courtesy, but he appreciated the effort it took given their present state of disquiet.

  “I’m taking you into Hyde Park. The dispute will be settled there.”

  “I don’t see why,” Caro said stiffly. “Or how.”

  “You will,” John answered her, looking at Ashdon as he spoke. It was not a particularly cheerful look.

  “I’d like you to explain things to me,” Ash said to Caro, in English.

  “I don’t care what you’d like at the moment,” she said, staring out the window at the growing twilight. “There are many things I’d like that I can’t have. I don’t see why you should get what you want when I can’t ever seem to have the things that I want.”

  Caro’s voice sounded thick and full, full of tears, most likely. He understood that he was at fault somehow, but for the life of him, he couldn’t riddle out what he’d done wrong. He’d finally turned his finances around and actually made some money for a change, and the very woman who scolded him with every other breath of being a hopeless gambler was angry now that he was finally winning.

  If that wasn’t just like a woman.

  “If it’s not too inconvenient,” Ash said, addressing Uncle John in French, “I’d be very interested to hear the details of my wife’s ancestry from a reliable source. I’d also like an explanation as to why we’re in the wildest section of the park.”

  “Hyde Park,” John said quietly. “Isn’t that where duels are fought? ”

  “In the past, yes,” Ash said.

  “There is your answer,” John said. “There is a dispute. It must be settled. Caroline’s father is dead. As her mother’s brother, it is my duty to make certain you are the man for her. The right
man.”

  Ashdon felt his hair bristle on his scalp. “I am her husband by law.”

  “By English law. But I am not English, and it is my law which will decide.”

  Caro stirred at his side and leaned forward on the seat. “I said you didn’t have to kill him, Uncle John.”

  Ash looked askance at Caro and said, “Your wifely devotion knows no bounds, does it? I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “You should be,” she said. “I told John quite clearly that I would kill you myself.”

  “The Iroquois in you, no doubt.”

  “I certainly hope so,” she snapped. “If you’re so interested in my ancestry, let me enlighten you. My grandmother was English and my grandfather a Mohawk of the Iroquois Nation. They had two children, John and Sophia. There. Satisfied? Oh, and let me add since you are so particular about bloodlines, that my mother is a cousin to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Is that rarefied enough for you?”

  “Blast it, Caro, that wasn’t at all what I meant!”

  “Of course not,” she said sarcastically. “By the way, Uncle John, how was France?”

  “Full of Englishmen,” John said.

  “You rounded up my brother without too much trouble?” she asked.

  “Trouble is entertaining in the right circumstances,” John answered. “He’s home, as is Josiah Blakesley.”

  Ash didn’t need any explanation to understand the gist of the situation; having been up at school and chafing to be free of it in his own day, he deduced that Markham, the ninth Earl Dalby, and the youngest Blakesley had run off for France a few hours after the Treaty of Amiens had been signed. Uncle John, as the oldest male relative in Sophia’s household, had been called upon to bring him to heel. Though called upon from where? Surely Sophia’s brother did not reside in England. It wasn’t possible that he should have been kept a secret for so many years if he had. Ash didn’t quite have the energy to focus on his newly realized uncle by marriage, not when he had a bristling wife seated next to him.

  The landau slowed to a stop. The only sounds surrounding them were the call of night birds and the soft lap of the Serpentine. They were not far from the palatial houses of Mayfair in miles, but in the soft dark of deepening twilight, it felt almost as if they were on another continent. Or perhaps it was the savage look in John’s black eyes that gave Ash that impression.

  From far off, through the wood, came the sound of footfalls landing lightly on soft spring grass. John motioned for him to get out of the carriage, which he did, instructing Caro to remain within. Ash did not want her out here. Something was amiss. She must have felt the same for she obeyed him, and they both knew how unlikely that was. Yet the very air was pregnant with hostile expectation. And suddenly from out of the darkness came the shapes of three men running. They ran lightly, effortlessly, and nearly silently.

  In a heartbeat, they were upon him. They gathered in silence around John and as a body, they turned to him, studying him. John spoke softly to them in Iroquois. Caro cried out, “No! Don’t!”

  John barked a command at Caro and she stilled instantly. Ashdon tensed, sensing what was coming. A man did not attend Eton without learning what was surely coming.

  “You must prove yourself, Lord Ashdon,” John said slowly, and then he pulled a long, curved knife from out of his boot.

  Twenty-seven

  “DO I at least get a knife?” Ash asked, taking off his coat and waistcoat. His white linen shirt glowed softly in the darkness. He was, as far as it was possible to be, a perfect target.

  “If you want a knife,” John said softly, “come and get mine. If you can.”

  Ash grunted and nodded, untying his cravat and pulling it from his neck. It fell in a long tangle of white to lie atop his coat. The linen of his shirt gaped open to reveal a tautly muscled chest. Fat lot of good muscles would do against a blade.

  Caro felt the muscles in her stomach clench in protest, but she didn’t quite know what to do about it. When she’d protested, John had reminded her, starkly, that she was a daughter of the Wolf Clan, granddaughter of a Mohawk sachem, and to remember what was expected of her. Which was true, of course, and which she did, but which didn’t help Ash much. And she wanted to help Ash. She just didn’t know how; she wasn’t even sure why. That bet still chewed at her. When had he made the bet? When he was arguing that he still wasn’t going to marry her?

  “Ash? ” she called out. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Really?” Ash said calmly. “I’d like to know how you think I should avoid it.”

  “Relinquish her,” John answered. “I test your worth, that is all. Relinquish her and you may walk away.”

  “Never,” Ash said softly.

  “Then you will be cut. Many times,” John said. “I will make you bleed for her.”

  “Go to hell,” Ash answered, facing John.

  John had also removed his coat and waistcoat. They stood facing each other, their features cut by the dim lamplight from the landau. The driver sat upon the box, facing the darkness, his shoulders hunched up to his ears. He had driven John before, that was obvious.

  “Is it to be between us, or will your sons also try for a piece of me?” Ash asked, his blue eyes gleaming like new steel in the night.

  “They may partake of whatever is left of you,” John answered. “It is their right.”

  “If they earn it,” Ash said, lunging at John.

  Caro held her breath high in her throat, held herself motionless as Ash leapt through the air, his elbow aimed at Uncle John’s throat. John turned at the last moment, deflecting the worst of the blow, and slashed out with his knife, slicing through Ashdon’s shirt, slicing into the flesh along his left side. Ashdon twisted against the blow, keeping the blade along the ridged protection of his ribs. As he twisted, he wrapped his arms around John’s neck from behind, pulling his head back, exposing John’s throat. It was a killing position, except for the fact that John had the tip of his knife pressed to Ashdon’s belly. One move and either could have killed the other; Ashdon by breaking John’s neck and John by gutting Ashdon like a deer.

  They froze, each breathing heavily, softly, patiently.

  “What do you want, Caro?” John asked, staring at her from the darkness. “Say the word and I will rid you of him.”

  Ashdon looked at her from behind Uncle John, his arms bulging with twisted muscle as he held John in a viselike grip. Ash stared. He did not speak. He did not plead or cajole or demand. He only stared in that solemn, penetrating way of his, mute, as always.

  Words would have helped. Words would have been nice. But it suddenly struck her that Ash might not know the words to use to ask for what he wanted. Perhaps he’d never been taught those words. Perhaps no one had ever told him that he could ask for what he wanted, and perhaps no one had ever cared if he got what he wanted or not.

  She cared.

  “I want him,” she said softly, walking toward them. “I’ve wanted him from the first look, pathetic as that sounds. Do I want him now that he’s bled to have me?”

  She stood in front of them, searching Ash’s face for . . . something. Why had he made her dance such a dance to have him? Why had he fought to keep her now? She could make no sense of it.

  “Caro? ” John asked, prompting her.

  “I want him more than ever,” she said softly.

  Their gazes held, locked upon each other, swimming in depths of emotion and secrets that pressed against her heart. But that was all she could read. He would not let her dive deeper. With a cough, he lowered his gaze, releasing her.

  “You’re a bloodthirsty bit of baggage,” Ashdon lightly said as he released his hold on John.

  “Best you remember it,” she said, turning from him, her legs wobbly. “Are the boys to have at him as well? I would so love to get home and change into a proper pair of shoes.”

  The boys stepped forward out of the darkness of the wood and into the feeble light of the carriage lamps. They were, by some st
andards, on some continents, still boys. But not by any standards they recognized.

  They were George, John the Younger, and Matthew, and they were her cousins. They were mostly older than she, but not by much, and they were much more like their father than Sophia was like her brother. Or at least it seemed so to her. She often wondered if her mother would agree with that assessment. She did not know them well, they did live on another, distant continent, after all, but they were her cousins, and as her cousins she felt it completely within her right to torment and tease them as she did her brother, also a John, but called Markham since infancy, even though he was legally Dalby now as the ninth earl.