The Raider

by Jude Deveraux

  WEARILY, Jessica threw down a load of fish and lobsters on the big table in the Montgomery common room. Eleanor snapped at Molly to watch what she was doing, then slammed a corn muffin pan into the brick oven. She hissed at the scrawny dog in the cage turning the spit, then gave Nathaniel a dirty look because he wasn’t already at work cleaning the fish.

  “What’s going on?” Jess asked.

  “Him.” The word was as much seethed as spoken by Eleanor.

  Jess looked in question to Nate as he retrieved a lobster from where it had fallen to the floor.

  Nick, Nate mouthed, motioning his head toward the doorway.

  “What has your Nicholas done now?” Jess asked, taking a corn muffin hot from a pan.

  Eleanor turned on her sister with angry eyes. “He’s not mine.” She calmed herself. “Alexander is ill. He may be dying, for all I know, and that great, hulking, arrogant monster won’t let me in to see him. He says Alex wants to see no one.”

  “That’s probably true,” Jess said, her mouth full. “He probably doesn’t want anyone to see him without one of his rainbow coats.” She dusted off her hands. “But he’ll see me.” She went down the hall and had her hand on the latch to Alex’s room before Nick came from another room and saw her.

  “He doesn’t want to see anyone.”

  Jess knocked on the door. “Alex, it’s me, Jessica. Eleanor is worried about you. Unlock the door and let me in.” There was no answer. She looked at Nick. He was a big, thick, dark man who was now looking down his nose at her in a particularly haughty way.

  “I want to see him,” Jess said, her jaw set.

  “He is not receiving callers.”

  Jessica started to say more but then smiled and shrugged. “Just make sure he eats well,” she said cheerfully, then turned and went back to the common room. Eleanor looked at her askance and Jess shook her head before leaving the house.

  She had no intention of allowing that man to tell her what she couldn’t do. She skirted the house, through the weeds and bushes, making her way to Alex’s bedroom. She stopped short as she passed Sayer’s window. Very calmly, the elder Montgomery looked up from his book.

  Jess swallowed hard, but as the older man merely kept looking at her, she gave him a weak, tentative smile and continued on. He was watching her intently when she passed the second window, but he didn’t call to her or question what she was doing skulking about his house.

  When she reached Alex’s window, she was pleased to see the shutters were open. She put one foot inside before someone grabbed her belt and pulled her back out. She looked up at Nicholas Ivanovitch.

  “Mistress Jessica,” he said in a shaming voice. “I wouldn’t have believed this of you. Now run along and don’t be sneaking into a gentleman’s bedchamber.”

  Jess’s hands made fists at her sides, but she turned on her heel and left. What did she care what had happened to Alexander? All he did was give her trouble anyway. It was his fault she’d made the Raider so angry. If Alex hadn’t planted those nasty doubts in her head about the Raider’s usefulness, she’d never have questioned him.

  She could feel tears gathering in her eyes, but she sniffed them back. Maybe the Raider had told her he loved her, and maybe he did hate her now, but she’d survive.

  She sniffed some more and headed back to the cove. The Wentworths wanted fifty pounds of clams for dinner for the admiral and his officers. The thought of the last time she’d seen snobbish Mrs. Wentworth made Jess smile. The woman had had to take on some of the cooking for the English officers. The Wentworths were expected to feed and house the Englishmen and all their wealth was going into the men’s bellies.

  “That’ll teach her,” Jess said, smiling and swinging her clam shovel.

  That night Eleanor was tearful. The children were used to Jessica’s emotions and rages, but Eleanor was a different matter. Usually, she was their rock, someone who was steady and unshakable.

  “Something is wrong with Alexander. I know it,” Eleanor said. She was sitting at the table, seeming to have completely forgotten her role of serving food. The children looked at their empty crockery plates, then up at Eleanor and they seemed to understand the depth of her concern.

  Jess motioned to Nick and the two of them brought the stew and cornbread to the table, silently dishing it out while Eleanor voiced her worry about Alex.

  “The food I send in to him is barely touched and never a sound comes from the room. The door is locked; the shutters are bolted over the windows. I think something is wrong.”

  “What’s the worry?” Jess asked. “So the man has a cold. He’s so vain he probably doesn’t want anyone to see him with a red nose.”

  Eleanor came out of her seat in fury, pointing her wooden spoon at Jessica’s face. “We owe our very lives to that man,” she yelled. “You’re so busy dreaming over your glamorous Raider that you don’t see how much that dear man has done for us. He saved our house from being burned. He kept you from being hanged. When Pitman destroyed everything we owned, Alex replaced it. When the Mary Catherine was burned—because of your Raider—Alex saved your neck by keeping you from making a fool of yourself. Alexander is the one who’s helped us. The clothes we’re wearing, the dishes, the furniture, the food—everything we owe to Alex. And you can’t even be so much as courteous to him. So help me, Jessica, if you ever again say one word against him again, I’ll…I’ll…”

  Jess was aghast. Eleanor was always bossy, but she’d never dared yell at her sister before. “Make me wear a coat like his?” Jess said meekly, trying to lighten the moment.

  One moment Eleanor was standing utterly still and the next, Jessica had a bowl of hot stew pouring down her face. The door slammed on Eleanor’s way out.

  Jess threw the bowl aside and plunged her head into a bucket of drinking water. When she came up for air, all the children were standing around her, their eyes wide in fear.

  “Will Eleanor die and leave us, too?” Phillip whispered.

  “Not unless I kill her,” Jess muttered, then looked at the children’s faces and sighed. “No, she’s just angry. Just like I get sometimes.”

  “All the time,” Nate said, making Jessica glare at him.

  “You stay here and eat and I’ll go get Eleanor.”

  It wasn’t easy making good her promise to the children. First, Jessica had to chase her sister for a quarter of a mile through the forest, but as Eleanor wasn’t used to moving about outdoors at night, Jess found her just as she became entangled in a blackberry bramble. Jess had to listen to more of Alexander Montgomery’s many virtues—and when Eleanor ran out of those, she started in on how the bondservant Nicholas was above himself.

  Jess just worked at freeing her sister’s hair from the thorns and listened. She wasn’t about to comment on Eleanor’s belief that one man was a saint and the other a devil.

  At home Jessica swore that she’d get in to see Alex the next day, no matter what she had to do, and that she’d be very kind to him and thank him for all his help and not make one comment about what he was wearing.

  “Even if the light blinds me, I’ll not say a word,” Jess promised.

  Eleanor woke her at four the next morning and told her to go then, while Nicholas was asleep. Jess grumbled but she obeyed. She didn’t want a repeat of Eleanor’s temper. Yawning, Jess left the house and went up the hill toward the sprawling Montgomery house.

  * * *

  Alex climbed in the window of his dark bedroom, stretching his shoulders in weariness and rolling his head, trying to ease the kinks in his neck. He tripped over the end of the bedstead.

  “Taggert!” Nick’s voice came from the bed.

  Alex stood still. “Is Jess here?” he whispered.

  Nick sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Oh, it’s you. What time is it?”

  “Three in the morning.” Alex sat on the edge of the bed and removed his boots. It had been wonderful to wear his own clothes in Boston. It had been nice not to be sneered at, and to have ladies look a
t him from over their fans. No one pointed at him or laughed at him or ridiculed him. “Why are you in my bed and why did you call out ‘Taggert’?”

  “Those women!” Nick growled, getting out of bed slowly. “Eleanor was sure you were dying and demanded to see you. Then she sent the other one, your Jessica, to sneak in the window. I caught her by the seat of her pants.”

  “If you hurt her, I’ll—”

  “What?” Nick challenged.

  “Thank you, most likely,” Alex muttered.

  “Did you get your pamphlets?”

  Alex stretched his back. “I’ve been on a horse for three days. No sleep, very little food, but I got the damned things. As soon as I’ve slept a day or so, I’ll distribute them.” He smiled. “So Jessica tried to sneak in the window. She didn’t see that the room was empty, did she?”

  “No, I got her out in time. Take your bed and I’ll go to my own. Tomorrow the women can come in.”

  “Not unless I’m warned. I’ll need to put on a”—he sighed—“a wig and my fat suit.”

  “That’s your problem. Tomorrow I’m going to lie on my boat and let my servants wait on me. You can take care of yourself.”

  Alex was too tired to protest. He pulled off the rest of his clothes and slipped naked into bed, asleep before the covers settled.

  He was awakened by small hands on his wrist and traveling up his arm.

  “Alex,” came Jessica’s voice. “Alex, are you all right?”

  Somewhere in his tired brain, Alex sensed danger—and lust. He took Jess’s hand in his own and had it halfway to his lips before the danger won out. “Jess?” he said thickly.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I came to see that you’re all right. Eleanor is frantic about you.”

  Alex’s mind was slowly beginning to function. Right now he was neither the fat Alex nor the masked Raider. He opened his eyes, thankfully, to a dark room. “Hand me one of those wigs,” he said, moving down under the covers. The last thing he needed was for Jess to see his full head of hair. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been running her fingers through that hair.

  “Alex, I told you that I can well stand the sight of a bald head.”

  “Please, Jessica,” he whined.

  His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. When she thrust the smallest wig at him, he peeped at her from beneath the covers. “Turn your back.”

  She groaned but obeyed and, surprisingly, didn’t say a word.

  Usually when he wore the small wig she had handed him, he had to tie his hair down tightly to conceal it and now he had difficulty getting his thick hair under the wig. He hoped no black tendrils were straying for Jess’s sharp eyes to see.

  “Would you hand me a coat?” he asked petulantly. Maybe a bright satin coat would keep her from looking at him too closely.

  Jess spun around on her heel to look at him. “I promised Eleanor I wouldn’t say a word about your clothes, but I think the only way for me to keep my promise is if you don’t wear one of those things. Now sit up so I can look at you. Eleanor is convinced you’re at death’s door and, by your voice, you aren’t far away.”

  Alex stayed under the covers and, after a few silent curses directed at nosy women, he looked up at Jess. “I can’t sit up. I don’t have anything on.” He almost lost his resolve when he saw Jess shudder at the prospect of seeing his nude body. Too quickly, he thought, she opened a chest at the foot of the bed, withdrew a clean shirt and tossed it to him as she turned her back. He sat up, the covers falling away and revealing his strong, powerful body. As he slipped the shirt on, he thought he ought to make her pay for what she had said to him when he was the Raider.

  He moved down in the bed, put a pillow over his stomach, and covered his arms so only his hands could be seen. “All right,” he said tiredly. “I’m decent now.”

  Jess lit a candle and studied his face. “You don’t look so bad. What’s been wrong with you?”

  “Just a flare up of my old illness. Did I tell you, Jess, that one doctor said I might not live very long?”

  She frowned, then put the candle down. “You don’t seem to be ill most of the time. Except that you look awful, you don’t act especially decrepit.” Her eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I promised Eleanor I wouldn’t insult you. Well, now that I’ve seen you’re all right, I’ll go. I have fish to deliver. Now, you eat something and stop making my sister yell at me. Maybe I’ll see you in a couple of days.” She turned to leave.

  By a lightening quick motion, he caught her wrist. “Jess, couldn’t you stay a moment? It’s so lonely here.”

  She tried to shake his hand away but couldn’t. “That’s your fault, Alex. You post that sea bull outside and he lets no one in.”

  “I know,” Alex said wistfully. “It’s just that I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  “You look a sight better like that than in those—” She broke off. “All right, I’ll stay for a minute or two. What do you want to talk about?”

  She started to take a chair, but Alex kept holding her wrist and pulled her to sit on the bed beside him.

  “What have you been doing while I’ve been ill?”

  “Fishing.”

  “Nothing else?” he asked.

  “What else can I do? It takes three times as long to gather half my catch now that I don’t have a ship.”

  He still didn’t release her hand but held it. “No problem selling them?”

  At that she smiled. “Admiral Westmoreland and his men are eating every penny of the Wentworths’ profits from the chandlery. Mrs. Wentworth was frying clams yesterday.”

  “How’s Abigail?”

  Jessica’s mouth twisted in disgust. “The gossip is that she and Ethan retire directly after supper.”

  Alex coughed to cover a laugh. “And how’s your Raider?”

  “Mad,” she said before she thought, then closed her mouth.

  “Mad as in angry or as in insane?”

  “That’s none of your business.” She tried to move away from him but he held her hand firmly.

  “Lover’s quarrel?” he teased.

  “We’re not—” she said, then broke off and looked down

  “You can tell me,” he coaxed. “I take it you saw him again. Glad he wasn’t making a raid. I’ve been too sick to save you.”

  She pulled away from him that time, grabbed a pillow and slammed it on his head, powder filling the air. “You ass!” she yelled. “You pompous, lazy ass! What happened is all your fault. You make me doubt him. He’s hope to this town, while all you are is something to laugh at. You’re nothing but a—” She broke off because, when she raised the pillow, Alex didn’t move. His head lay to one side at a sharp angle.

  “Alex!” she gasped and half fell across him, her face close to his. “Alex, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I forgot that you’re so fragile. Oh, Alex, I didn’t mean it. Please don’t be dead. I really am grateful for all you’ve done to help us.” She picked up his head and pressed it to her breast while stroking his cheek. “Alex, I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I won’t hit you again.”

  Alex smiled against her breast, enjoying her for several long moments, and then his hands came up to her back as he groaned.

  She started to pull away, but he held her fast.

  “Jess, your strength feels so good. Hold me a minute. Let me feel your strength flowing into me.”

  She clutched his head closer to her, her hands gripping him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. You say such awful things that I forget you’re so breakable.”

  “Would…would you be sorry if I weren’t here any longer?”

  She hesitated. “Why yes, I believe I would be. You’ve caused me a lot of problems, but you’ve really been a friend to me and my family. I was pretty mad but, when I look back on it, you really did save me the day they burned the Mary Catherine. I might have done something that could have been somewhat foolish.”

  Alex raised one eyebrow. “Somewhat. Yes.”

 
“Are you feeling stronger?”

  “Much,” he sighed, snuggling his head against her breast.

  “Alex, ah…I’m not sure this is what Eleanor had in mind. I need to go to work.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said weakly, releasing her. “I understand. I’ll just stay here alone until someone remembers me and brings me food.”

  “I’ll tell Eleanor as I leave,” she said, straightening her clothes.

  “She won’t be here this early.”

  “I guess not. I’ll tell her at home. I have to get my nets.”

  “What do a few more hours of hunger make to one so close to death?” He rolled his head to one side.

  Jessica sighed. “Maybe there’s something left over in the kitchen. I’ll see.”

  She brought back cold chicken and bread and cheese, watered wine, and hard-boiled eggs. She put the platter beside Alex and started to leave, but he couldn’t seem to reach anything by himself. Minutes later she found herself sitting cross-legged beside him and eating as heartily as he was. She began to tell him of her ideas for distributing handbills to the people of Warbrooke.

  “We can’t let this oppression continue,” she said adamantly.

  “And your Raider refuses to help? I assume you asked him.”

  Jess found herself telling him about everything except their lovemaking.

  “You said he was angry. Why?”

  Her eyes flashed. “I listen to you too much. I told him he was incompetent.”

  “In those words?”

  “More or less,” she said, blushing at the memory of her actual words. “He’s not happy with me now. I may never see him again.”

  Alex squeezed her hand for a moment. “If he’s smart, he’ll come back.”

  She smiled at him, then glanced at the sun coming through the shutters. “I have to go. I’ll miss all the fish.” She set the crumb-covered platter on Alex’s desk, then paused and, on impulse, kissed his forehead. “Thanks for all you’ve done and thanks for listening to me. I’ll tell Eleanor to let you rest.”

  He smiled at her in such a way that she stared at him for a moment.

  “You know, Alex, you don’t look half-bad like that. When we find you a bride, we’ll have to let her see you in bed. Rest now,” she said and left the room.