by Laura Parker
“You killed Meg?” Cassandra whispered in horror.
Kendal’s chuckle was as thin as the rattle of dry leaves. “Nothing so final. She has a fondness for Blue Ruin. Two bottles and she wept on me shirtfront for her lost love. You stole her benefactor and she didn’t mind telling me she’d never see him again, not with him taking the coach to Dover.”
“Why are you telling me this? What matter can it be now?” Cassandra took a deep breath, tried to steady her pulse. “I must come with you. I’ve no choice.”
“You don’t, but I do,” Kendal answered. “You don’t see it yet, do you? You don’t know why I can’t let you go. If not for the bad luck of tipping your hand to that Lambert wench we’d both have what we want.” He shrugged. “I freely admit I lost your trail after Chatham, but I supposed I’d frightened the pair of you into permanent exile. The marquess wanted you found, but he wasn’t doing the looking, I was. He had to take my word for it that I’d tried my best.”
His smile stretched into a hideous grin. “He never suspected I’d use my skill against him. He’s never given me credit for a man’s feelings. I’d have let you rot in Newgate if it hadn’t served my purpose to have you home again safe.”
His smile turned ugly. “When I heard what plans the marquess made after he learned your sluttish ways had gotten you with child, I could have killed you with my bare hands. But I’m a patient man. There are enough hot tempers in the Briarcliffes, and they’ve served me well.”
He paused, running his tongue over dry lips. “But that’s another tale. In a few days or weeks the world will learn just what Kendal Dermont’s made of. The marquess can’t last long.” His eyes glittered. “I’ve you to thank for it. You’ve taken your toll on his temper and his nerves, ground him down slowly. No one’s ever bested him before, not even his son. You were first, but I’ll be the last. When he’s gone, Briarcliffe will belong to me.”
Cassandra had taken her eyes off him for a moment, straining to hear the faint sounds of Adam’s awakening. It was the last thing she wanted, to draw Kendal’s attention to the boy. “What did you say? Briarcliffe will belong to you?”
“Aye. That’s so, once your son’s been put where he can do me no harm.”
Cassandra stood up, pushing her chair back so that it loudly scraped the floor to distract the man from the increasingly fretful stirrings in the other room. “I don’t understand. Surely you know my son cannot inherit. I wouldn’t want him to, in any case.”
“But you’ve no say, lady. ’Tis the marquess’s doing. He signed the will naming the boy his heir. After that comes Cousin Nicholas. I’m third, as ever. But that’ll change.” His fair lashes flickered repeatedly over his pale eyes. “Some of the marquess’s gold went into the pocket of a professional murderer. Nicholas has fought three duels this year alone. The Briarcliffe temper. He won’t walk away from the next.”
Cassandra looked down quickly before he could see the look in her eyes. Nicholas had not walked away—but this man didn’t yet know it. “If all you want is Briarcliffe and I want no part of it, let me go.” She raised her head. “I swear I will leave England and never return.”
Kendal’s lids fluttered again. “Leave England? For how long? You know little of the lengths to which poverty can drive a man—or a woman. You may leave, but years have a way of turning the mind to other thoughts. Were you to find yourself cold and hungry and could remember the wealth and splendor of Briarcliffe you might be persuaded to return, for your wee one’s sake.”
Cassandra did not bother to deny that. For her child’s sake she had dared much. Without Merlyn—but no! She would not think of that, not now. “You were willing to trust me before. Why not now?”
“You had a man before,” Kendal answered simply, and Cassandra understood. “Your son stands between me and Briarcliffe. I’m a patient man; I can wait for the marquess to die.”
“You can’t murder us.”
“Aye, that I can,” he answered pleasantly. “Once I could have let you go. Now it’s different. As long as there’s a chance you’re alive the marquess will keep up the search, spending money that should be mine. No, I must know where you’re to be found. In a year, maybe two, your bodies can be dug up and presented if necessary. Victims of highwaymen. Who’ll know different?”
Just then Adam wailed out in hunger, the tenseness of the moment climaxing in that small human cry.
“So the babe’s awake.” Kendal’s gaze swung from the woman to the open doorway of the second room and he smiled. “Too bad. I’d rather have smothered him in his sleep.”
The horror of that statement, so matter-of-factly pronounced, sent a wild, surging revulsion through Cassandra. She did not think of the futility of her action but flung herself at him with a scream of desperate fury.
He had turned away, did not expect the physical assault of the small woman, but it was not surprise alone that made him stagger against the weight that careened into him and buckled his knees. Terror and fear for her child had given Cassandra an extraordinary share of strength. Even as they fell together to the floor she grabbed the wrist that held the gun and sank her teeth into its flesh.
Kendal cried out his pain and brought his other fist up to smash her face, but he fell on his stomach with her on top and he couldn’t find the room to swing his arm. He heaved under her to throw her off, but Cassandra quickly straddled him and jerked his gun arm back as hard as she could. A muffled oath burst from him, maddening him beyond endurance, but before he could rise under her weight she bit his thumb and he involuntarily dropped the pistol.
The heavy metal weapon bounced and clattered across the floor, but Cassandra had no time to reach for it. Kendal was a man, a sinewy farmhand, and it was not to be expected that she could long overpower him. He gained his knees quickly and threw her from his back. She landed with an impact that winded her, but she struggled to all fours. A moment later his fist landed with a sickening stun on the side of her head and she sagged back to the floor, dazed.
“That should hold you,” she heard him hiss as the world behind her closed lids swirled and dimmed, bucked and dipped, with nauseating rapidity. She tried but she couldn’t move, not even her lids would open. Chains seemed to weight her to the floor, and then she heard his retreating footsteps.
“Adam!” She didn’t know if she cried out loud or if the scream sounded only in her thoughts, but she found the chains melting away and she struggled to her knees. He was smothering Adam! She must stop him.
She saw it lying on the floor beside her. She’d never touched a pistol before in her life and she had no way of knowing if it would fire. She picked it up, the weight of it like an anvil in her trembling hands, and staggered to her feet.
He was silhouetted in the rectangle of light beyond the doorway, a tall figure bent over her son’s crib. She did not cry out or warn him. She did not ask him to stop. She lifted the pistol with both hands and pulled the trigger.
The bump and rattle of the Bath coach was surprisingly easy on Cassandra’s nerves. Adam lay against her breast and she absorbed with her body the worst of the jolts.
“It won’t be long now,” Hugh Mulberry said to break the long silence since his last comment.
Cassandra looked across at him. She owed him so much, as much as she owed Ebba, who sat beside her. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you,” she said.
Hugh held up a hand. “Dear lady, please. You would make me out to be better than I am. I have done so little and fear that I may fail you in your greatest need.” His eyes were kind, but sadness lurked there. “I will do all that is within my power to gain Merlyn a new hearing, but that may take months. It’s better if you don’t tempt fate by remaining in England until then.”
Cassandra nodded, telling herself yet again that she must be grateful that she had not killed Kendal Dermont. Had she not simply wounded him, no one would have believed her story. She shivered in remembrance of the marquess’s face when he learned
of his son’s death. The pale ice-water eyes had closed briefly but, she knew, not in sadness. His hatred for his son was complete. It was the spoiling of his victory he mourned, that and the fact that he’d been beaten by the one foe he’d never understood he had: Kendal Dermont.
“I can’t believe he let me go,” she said aloud.
Hugh leaned forward to take one of her small hands in his and found the fingers icy cold. “You’re shivering. You don’t quite believe it’s over, do you?”
Cassandra shook her head. “How can it be over when I am about to embark on an ocean voyage to a place I’ve never been, alone and with a son to care for? Do not think me ungrateful, Lord Mulberry. I long to put an ocean between myself and the marquess. I know that he no longer has any jurisdiction over me, but in my heart I cannot shake the dread his very name invokes. He is responsible for Merlyn’s arrest. I can neither forget nor forgive him that.”
“Miss Lane will be with you,” he reminded her. “And I’m sending letters with you for every member of my family in the Massachusetts. They will take an instant liking to you. You must leave behind old memories and begin anew.”
Anew. Cassandra closed her eyes. She did not want to begin anew if it meant a life without Merlyn.
“The ship leaves at dusk tomorrow.” Hugh saw her blink in astonishment. “That’s right. There’ll scarce be time to put you aboard. That’s why I sent a messenger on horseback. Whatever else, you must be aboard.”
“I wish to see Merlyn first,” Cassandra replied.
Hugh shook his head. “Absolutely not!” At her shocked expression he frowned. “Do you think Merlyn would have you see him behind bars?” Her crooked smile made him blush as he remembered the long incredible story she had told him in the wee hours of the night following Kendal’s attempted murder. “Still, he wouldn’t, not this time. You must be Patience herself. You will wait for him in America.”
Cassandra said nothing more. How could she fight against the man who was trying to save Merlyn’s life? But it was the hardest sacrifice yet.
The city of Bristol went by her window unnoticed. The boarding of the ship took but little more of her attention. When they set sail the next day with the evening tide, she did not have the heart to watch the shore disappear behind her. Instead, she huddled in her bunk with Adam, staring into his dear little face, so very like the one she ached to have beside her.
“We must be Patience herself, my son,” she whispered just before tears obscured her vision.
“It isn’t right, and what’s more, you know it,” Ebba scolded her charge. “Five days at sea, and you’ve yet to take a breath of fresh air.”
Cassandra sighed and picked up her fork, but the thought of food made her green. “I can’t be happy, Ebba. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I’m not that brave.”
Ebba clucked her tongue. “Don’t speak to me of brave. I’ll never know how you managed it, wrestling that pistol away from the man. And giving him his own shot for the trouble, besides.” She chuckled. “Merlyn knew what he was getting when he picked you. No, don’t cry, little lamb,” she added quickly and reached out to put an arm about the younger woman’s shoulders.
After a moment she said, “This simply must stop. You’ve got me all teary-eyed, too. Tonight’s our first night beyond the sight of any land. We’re in international waters. It’s a grand spectacle to view the sea all about you, the captain tells me. Now I want you to wash your face and go up to have a look. Scat!”
Cassandra huddled in her woolen cloak as she leaned against the midship railing. The wind off the North Atlantic was bracingly cold, numbing fingers and toes within minutes. It would be a long, hard crossing, two months perhaps, Hugh had told her. No other ships would sail from England to New England until after the spring thaw.
Cassandra closed her mind to everything else but the rolling gray sea before her. Little caplets of white rode the tips of the larger waves and icy spume occasionally raked her cheeks, but she stayed there staring, willing herself to forgetfulness until the blue-gray of evening passed into the wintery black of night.
“Miss! Miss!”
Cassandra turned at the sailor’s cry.
The burly seaman came up to her and smartly touched his cap. “The cap’n’s orders, miss. You’re to go below. ’Tain’t safe after dark. You need a guide?”
Cassandra merely shook her head and he backed away, saying, “Soon, miss. Don’t tarry.”
Cassandra flung one last look back at the inky waters and turned toward her cabin.
She felt him in her being before she saw him, the tall, dark figure wrapped in a long coat against the frigid night air. And it was as before.
Shadows dulled his features, but she had the impression of a harshly handsome face. And power, a power so strong that her fear momentarily subsided. There was only the feeling of power, of security, of safety, that she had felt once long ago in the arms of another.
Then a spasm of horrifying clarity shook her and, with a wail of fright, Cassandra swirled about and would have fled the ghostly presence of all her fondest dreams.
“Cassie!”
That voice! Cassandra swirled about so quickly her skirts tangled at her knees. He was coming toward her and she knew—knew beyond reasonability or plausibility—that it was “Merlyn!”
He stopped within inches of her, staring down into her face with the emerald and sapphire eyes she saw even in her dreams. “Well? Is this all the welcome I’m to receive from my loving wife?”
“Merlyn.” Cassandra could barely whisper the words past the tears in her throat. Suddenly she could not speak the words to make him know her joy or her terror or her love for him, so great that it threatened to burst her small frame with the sheer magnitude of it.
There was no need. He simply opened his arms and, miraculously, she was in them, enfolded against the warm masculine heat of his body. She felt him tremble and it was as if the world trembled, so closely were they bound by each other’s arms.
“I thought I’d lost you!” she whispered when she could find breath.
“Have you so little faith?” She heard the rumble of laughter deep in his chest and gloried in the sound so dear and not lost to her.
“Hugh said it would be months and months!” she wailed against his shirtfront, her fingers clutching the material of his coat.
“Easy, love,” he whispered hoarsely next to her ear. “Hugh wasn’t sure he could bribe enough turnkeys to set me free.”
Cassandra raised her head. “How did he manage it?”
“Oh, a few pounds here, a few there. He’s quite an interesting fellow, actually. We must invite him to visit us when we’re settled in the New World.”
Cassandra cried then, uncaring that the sound of it carried to the sailors nearby. “That will hardly repay him for all he’s done for us.”
Merlyn smiled, but his embrace did not relax even a fraction. “You’ve already repaid him, Cassie. He told me he’s finally at work on his new play. It’s to be a kind of beggar’s opera about a jewel thief who falls in love with a nobleman’s wife.”
“He wouldn’t!” Cassandra gasped.
“Oh yes, I rather think he will, and make a fortune with it. Five nights in the hold of this ship have quite convinced me that the jewel thief will reform by the play’s end. We’re in international waters. I’m free, Cassie.”
Merlyn stared at her a moment, mesmerized by her gaze. “Has anyone ever told you how absurdly beautiful you are?”
Cassandra shook her head. “No one’s ever been that foolish.”
“Then they’ve never seen you as I have, Cassie, my love.”
He kissed her then, in the wind, in the cold, in the dark of the night in the midst of the North Atlantic.
More from Laura Parker
Caprice (The Masqueraders Series - Book One)
Hadrian Blackburne returns to London from the war. Thought to have been killed at Waterloo, he soon wishes he we
re, instead bored to tears by his unruly family and his role as Lord. He misses the spy games of Persia, where he was a master of intrigue. His attention is snared by a ravishing, veiled beauty who has swept into London’s Regency society on a cloud of exotic mystery.
Who is this Princess Sultana el Djemal? Hadrian must know, even if playing the game of love could cost him body and soul.
Clarissa Willoughby’s harmless deception was designed to open doors for a widow ready to shed her weeds. Once Hadrian begins his pursuit of “Sultana,” his passionate seduction makes Clarissa jealous of the exotic temptress she herself created. The game of love becomes more perilous than way when Clarissa sets out to win Hadrian’s heart, battling again his suspicions and her alter ego.
Mischief (The Masqueraders Series - Book Two)
One night of passion can build a world. One memory can tear it down.
As Napoleon invades Persia, clever but shy Japonica Fortmon is chosen by the ailing English Viscount Shrewsbury to arrange his escape from Baghdad. To get him out, Japonica must enlist the aid of the infamous Hind Div, a man as mysterious as he is ruthless. Whispered to be a spy, an assassin, and even a sorcerer, Hind Div agrees to help Fortmon, and all it will cost her is a night of passion.
A year later and the war is over. Freshly widowed Japonica arrives in England, wishing only to settle her unruly step-daughters with Devlyn Sinclair, the new Viscount, and to return to France, and the son conceived on that one night of surrender. She is stunned to recognize the new Viscount, for he is none other than Hind Div, only scarred by war and missing any memory of the merciless man he once was. If his memory returns, he could claim back his son and destroy Japonica. She must live with this man who once ignited her passions, and has started to once more, and to restore to him a sense of pride, of honor, of identity, even if it costs her everything.