Lady Ramsay lifted her brows and gave them both a very significant look.
They turned, their young faces flushing when they noticed Sarah and Graaf, who sat on the settee. And then they noticed Bouchard.
“Martín!” they both yelled, launching themselves across the room.
The third child was a very dirty little girl. Sarah thought she was perhaps four years of age.
“Uncle Martín, Lucien is being beastly,” the little girl lisped, pushing past her brothers and crawling into Bouchard’s lap, covering him with mud in the process.
Bouchard’s expression was priceless as he looked from the little girl to his no longer spotless coat and pantaloons.
“Antonia, what have you been doing? You are a petite cochon.”
Antonia ignored him and burrowed into his arms, her small filthy hand worming itself into his previously white cravat.
Martín stared at the ceiling with a look of resignation, but Sarah noticed his arm had snaked around the little girl and he was cradling her gently against his chest as he turned to the boy beside him. “Lucien, why do you keep your little sister in a pig sty?”
The boy snorted. “She followed us down to the river and then fell in and cried. We had to stop everything and bring her back home.”
Martín turned to the other boy.
“Hello, Captain Bouchard.” The second boy’s face was identical to his brother’s but his expression was as calm as Lady Ramsay’s; Lady Ramsay was obviously the mother of all three blond children.
“Hello, Richard,” Bouchard greeted him, nodding with equal seriousness while cuddling the little girl, who was poking her tongue out at her brother Lucien.
Martín smirked at Sarah, perfectly aware of how adorable he looked holding the beautiful child in his arms.
Sarah scowled at him.
“That is the look of somebody who has been closeted with Martín for too long,” Ramsay observed, chuckling.
“I’ve seen that look on your face before, Hugh,” Lady Ramsay told her spouse.
Martín rose to his feet. “It is my cue to leave when people discuss me as if I am not here. I will return you to your father, you dirty little girl.” He kissed the top of her golden head before thrusting her into the baron’s arms.
“You will come back for dinner, I trust?” The baron held his filthy daughter at a safe distance.
“With pleasure. Mademoiselle Fisher.” Martín bowed to her and then left without another word, ignoring Mies as usual.
An awkward silence was cut short by the appearance of a servant looking for her charges. All three grumbled, but left with the woman.
Lady Ramsay stood. “Miss Fisher, let me show you to your chambers.”
“Thank you for your kind hospitality, Lady Ramsay,” Sarah said as the woman led her through a confusing collection of turns.
“Please, call me Daphne. Also, promise me this will be the last time you thank me.”
Sarah laughed at the blunt words. “Very well, and will you call me Sarah?”
“Here are your chambers, Sarah.” The tall blonde opened a door to an enormous room furnished in a delightful buttery yellow.
Sarah’s jaw sagged. “What a beautiful room.” The suite had a sitting room, a dressing room, and a room for bathing. “Oh my, what an enormous tub.”
“My husband comes from a family of tall men.” The baroness paused. “Your journey with Captains Bouchard and Graaf must have been most interesting.”
“It was . . . unusual. I believe I deserve the bulk of the praise for Captain Graaf arriving in one piece.”
“Yes, I daresay Bouchard would not find it easy to have another captain on his ship.”
“It was not so much that, as it was the issue of slaving.”
Lady Ramsay’s pale eyebrows arched. “Oh, so that’s the case. No, Captain Bouchard would not go easy on such a man. Neither would my husband.”
Sarah cursed her loose lips and hoped she hadn’t just damned Graaf’s chances for help from the big man.
“Don’t worry,” the blond woman assured her, reading Sarah’s expression with an ease that left her unnerved. “Ramsay will stand by his word. He is less . . . barbaric in his methods than he used to be.”
“I’ve heard stories of your husband from several people. He is still very much respected and not a little feared, I think.”
“Yes. I believe he misses those days, particularly when the children fail to obey him as his crew was used to doing.”
The women laughed, and the tense moment passed.
* * *
Sarah lay in the enormous tub long after the water had cooled, until her fingers and toes wrinkled, and she began to shiver from the cold. She bundled up in thick towels that had been heated with hot bricks and padded into her dressing room.
A small, aged woman with a dour expression was riffling through her dresses. She gave Sarah a quick, unsmiling glance before turning back to the garments.
“My name is Rowena. My lady sent me to help you with your toilette.”
Sarah felt odd having somebody help her dress, but Rowena looked unwilling to take no for an answer.
She pushed Sarah down in front of the mirror and proceeded to work on her hair with all the care of a farmer hoeing a field. Sarah gritted her teeth to hold back agonized screams as the woman drew out the tangles. Rowena left her tormented hair to dry and then helped Sarah into a chemise and drawers before cinching her into a corset with a ruthlessness that would have done a general proud.
The little termagant had selected the fanciest dress Arlette and Adele had given her, a jade green silk embroidered with tiny jet beads. Once Sarah was dressed, Rowena pushed her back onto the yellow silk padded bench and resumed working on her hair. She only spoke to tell Sarah to move one way or the other.
It was deeply uncomfortable to be the beneficiary of such intense, silent care.
“Have you been with Lady Ramsay long?” Sarah asked, for lack of anything else to say.
“All her life.” Rowena spoke around the pins she held in her lips as she created an artful crown of ringlets from Sarah’s straight hair. “Tilt your face down.”
It was like watching a miracle in progress. Sarah would not have believed she could look so elegant. When Rowena finished with her hair, she opened a small casket and rooted around before pulling out a triple strand of pearls with a single emerald cabochon in the middle. She clasped it around Sarah’s neck and stood back to admire her work. She grunted.
Sarah just stared.
The woman in the mirror was still Sarah, but not as she’d ever seen herself before. Not even a gown as fine as the green silk could make her beautiful, of course, but it somehow made her eyes look larger and more green than brown. And her hair? Well, that was beyond amazing.
“Thank you, Rowena. I have never looked so splendid.”
“My lady said to bring you to the drawing room.” Rowena opened the door and went through it, not waiting to see if Sarah followed.
The only person in the drawing room was Baron Ramsay, looking enormous and elegant in his black-and-white dinner clothes.
“Good evening, Miss Fisher, Rowena.”
Rowena turned and left the room without a word.
The baron winked at Sarah. “She adores me.”
Sarah laughed, and the baron raised an ornate gold quizzing glass. “You look lovely, Miss Fisher,” he said, and then frowned.
“What is it, my lord?” She looked down at her gloved hands and examined her skirt. Had she managed to rip or stain her gown?
He tapped the glass against his chin, a wry look on his face. “Perhaps you look too lovely. I’m afraid Martín and Graaf will be engaged in fisticuffs before the first course has finished.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “You are cruel to tease me, my lord. I have already coped with the two of them for weeks on end. I’m lucky to be sane.”
The baron’s booming laugh filled the room. “Yes, I could see how it was this afternoon. Mart�
�n is like a bear with a sore head. He wasn’t even interested in looking at my new horses before he stormed back to the Scythe. Whatever have you done to him?”
Sarah didn’t have to answer the baron’s question as the man himself entered just then.
“Good God, Martín, how fine you’ve become.” The baron eyed the other man through his quizzing glass.
Ramsay was not exaggerating. Even Sarah could see Bouchard’s clothing was cut far more fashionably than their host’s.
The points of his collar brushed his jaw, and the white of his linen contrasted starkly with his dark skin. His waistcoat was a shade of antique gold that matched his eyes too closely to be an accident. His black coat was as snug as a second skin, and he wore black pantaloons rather than the more traditional breeches. The thin fabric stretched over his sculpted hips and thighs in a manner that caused her to blush and look away.
“You look lovely, Mademoiselle Fisher,” Martín murmured, coming to stand before her.
“Yes, doesn’t she?” The baron was watching his friend with open fascination. Sarah realized Lord Ramsay’s mischievous sense of humor was even more dangerous than his reputation as a privateer.
Martín ignored his host, his face expressionless as his eyes swept her, lingering speculatively on the jewels. Did he think they were from Mies? Sarah hoped so. He bowed over her hand, and she felt the heat of his breath through her glove. For a moment she thought her knees might buckle.
But then she reminded herself that he was only interested in her to the extent that he believed Mies wanted her. His predatory nature made such a competition impossible to resist. He did not want her, but he did not want Mies to have her either.
She was seized by an overwhelming desire to kick him.
She was saved from making a fool of herself and hurting her foot by Lady Ramsay’s entrance, on Mies’s arm. The baroness was truly flawless, her simple gown the same shade of blue as her eyes, her only ornament a diamond pendant. Sarah was shocked by the wave of envy that swept her. Was this how she would be from now on? Dreading the fact that just about every woman she encountered would be more attractive than she was?
Sarah could not bear to look at Martín’s face and see his reaction to Daphne.
Instead she turned to Mies. He looked reassuringly the same, and Sarah realized the clothing he wore, the same outfit he’d worn in Tenerife, was probably the only evening attire he’d brought with him from home. In his dark gray jacket and breeches he could not compete with the elegance of the other two men, but the waistcoat he wore was one she had not seen before, sky-blue embroidered with tiny silver birds. His flaxen hair was still damp, the loose curls falling over his collar. His eyes were openly admiring as they took in her hair and dress.
Sarah looked away from his warm gaze, not wishing to encourage him, the fact that he’d been willing to engage in slavery never far from her mind. She frowned, realizing that Christian forgiveness—along with purity and chastity—seemed determined to elude her.
The dining room at the hall was an ancient room with a flagstone floor that appeared to have been here since the dawn of time. The table and chairs had all been constructed on a massive scale, as if they’d been built during an age when people were far larger. A footman waited behind each chair to move the weighty-looking pieces of furniture.
Three massive chandeliers hung from heavy chains, each holding dozens of candles that cast long shadows across the almost Teutonic room. The table glittered with more crystal, silver, and dishes than she’d ever seen in one place. Sarah tried not to gape like a bumpkin at the service, the food, and the innumerable footmen who swarmed around the five diners. There was a place set for a sixth, but neither Lord nor Lady Ramsay seemed inclined to wait for the absent party.
Sarah was kept busy with the array of cutlery and new dishes and watched Mies for cues on which to use before attacking each dish. She looked up at one point and saw Martín’s eyes on her, his amusement at her nervousness apparent. Sarah narrowed her eyes at him and turned back to their host, who was discussing the plans for their journey.
“I hope leaving three days hence will inconvenience nobody?” The baron glanced around and, upon meeting no demur, he continued. “Miss Fisher, my wife tells me the only information you have about your father is that he belonged to a Dutch merchant family in London?”
Mies jolted, his cutlery clattering against his plate. “Why have you not told me before that your father was Dutch?”
Why hadn’t she told him? They had, after all, talked about their families and childhoods many times in the months they were at sea. “I suppose I didn’t think it mattered. I know nothing of his family, and they disowned my father when he decided to marry my mother.”
Mies continued to look wounded, and Sarah darted a look at Martín and then wished she hadn’t. He was staring at them both with an expression of sardonic superiority that made her feel violent.
The baron’s single eye darted among the three of them as if he were enjoying a particularly amusing play and didn’t want to miss anything.
“In any event,” the baroness said, apparently unaware of the currents swirling around the table, “Hugh will look into the matter when we arrive in London.”
The rest of the conversation followed more conventional lines. It seemed Napoleon’s treatment on Saint Helena was the most talked about subject at the moment. Articles in the London Times claimed the exiled French leader was receiving harsh treatment at the hands of his British captors. The doings of Napoleon and the long war in Europe had always seemed very far removed from Sarah’s life in N’goe.
Mies leaned close to her. “I wish you’d told me you were Dutch.”
“I’m not Dutch, Mies. My father was. I’m not English, and I’m not African, either. I don’t know what I am.”
“You have been here less than a day. You will feel more at home after a while. Much more at home than you ever did in your African village.”
Sarah frowned. What right did he have to think he knew her so well—or where she belonged? She glanced at the other three and saw they were still engaged in animated conversation. Martín was laughing and arguing with Lord Ramsay. His face bore an expression of openness she’d never seen before, even during their best tutoring sessions. As if feeling her eyes upon him, he turned. His smile chilled, and all the warmth drained from his face. Sarah turned away, her eyes welling. What had she ever done to him that he should look at her with such coldness and hostility?
* * *
Martín focused his attention on Hugh and Lady Ramsay rather than on whatever Sarah and the Dutchman were whispering about.
He needed to hide his irritation from Ramsay. If Hugh guessed for a moment that Martín felt anything for Sarah—not that he did, of course—he would dig until he got to the bottom of the issue. Martín’s teeth hurt at the thought. Becoming fodder for Ramsay’s well-developed sense of humor was not something he wanted.
They’d just completed their meal when Hugh’s mad aunt entered the dining room. Martín groaned inwardly as she drifted in with a pack of noisy dogs.
“Ah, Aunt Amelia, we’re so glad you could join us,” Ramsay boomed over the din of her barking dogs. He made brief introductions, and the men resumed their seats after the old lady took hers. Conversation ground to a halt. The only one who didn’t seem to notice the deafening barking was Lady Amelia, who shared her food with her dogs and directed questions in her penetrating voice to the various people in the room.
“So, you are back, are you?” she asked Martín, her question surprising him. He wouldn’t have thought she’d taken any notice of him the last time he’d stayed at Lessing Hall, a few years earlier. Her next words proved him wrong. “I certainly hope you will leave the servant girls alone this time.” She paused in her tirade to give half the fowl on her plate to one of her baying dogs.
Martín pursed his lips and stared at his glass, turning it in restless circles on the table.
“I’m pleased to see you
are decently dressed this time,” the old witch continued in a ringing voice, fixing him with a quelling stare when he looked up. “After all, this isn’t the—”
“Aunt Amelia.” Lady Ramsay’s soft voice was unusually penetrating. “Have you spoken to Cook? I believe she was not able to get those calf livers you wanted.”
Martín met the baroness’s cool blue eyes, surprised she’d decided to rescue him. Ramsay certainly didn’t look as if he’d had any plans to stop the old lady. In fact, he looked like a man trying not to laugh.
“I cannot understand what the problem is,” Lady Amelia groused, taking a tiny mouthful of food before placing yet another plate on the floor. “Why is it so difficult to procure calf liver?” She directed this question at her one-eyed nephew.
“Well, there is only one per calf, you know. Perhaps you could find some other part of the calf to feed to your pugs, something less exclusive—more common. Feet perhaps. Even ears.”
She gave him a withering look before raising her quizzing glass, an even gaudier specimen than the one Ramsay wore. She turned her grossly magnified eye on Graaf, examining him for a long moment.
“You are Caroline Balfour’s grandson,” she stridently informed him, her stern look and inaccurate supposition causing the Dutchman’s jaw to sag. Martín felt a flare of pleasure at the other man’s discomfort. “I gather your grandmother has finally come to terms with your mother’s shameless behavior at Lord Atherton’s ball? There is no hiding that your brother inherited Atherton’s ears.”
Graaf opened his mouth. “Er—”
“I’ll have you know we do not tolerate that type of nonsense here at Lessing Hall.” Her eyes, usually a hazy gray, were like the sharpened points of rapiers.
“Uh—” the Dutch peer began.
Choking sounds came from Ramsay’s direction.
Graaf opened his mouth again to say God-knows-what, but Lady Amelia had already lost interest in whoever she thought he was.
“I am going to go speak with Cook about the appalling lack of liver,” she declared to nobody in particular, her eyes slewing back to her nephew, who appeared to be in actual physical pain.
Scandalous Page 18