Kit whistled. “Must have been some hell of a service. What did you two do? Stop Napoleon invading England?”
“Something like that.”
A flash of surprise crossed Kit’s face before it settled into a mask of caution. Adam made a silent appeal to Daniel. The truth about the King’s Rogues was not his to tell. And it seemed his former employer was not of a mind to speak about it.
“You’re not the only one who’s led an adventurous life, Kit,” said Daniel who then drained his glass. “I think I’ll join the ladies and leave you two to talk.”
Two voices spoke in unison: “No!”
The captains exchanged wary glances. Daniel picked up the three-quarter’s full decanter of whisky with great deliberation and set it on little pedestal table that stood between two wingback chairs that faced the fire.
“Stay,” Daniel said firmly. “That’s an order. You both have a lot to talk about.”
Their host left the room and closed the door behind him leaving nothing but the sound of the crackling fire to mark the passage of time.
“Well, I won’t knock away another drink,” said Kit, suddenly bright and animated. “Our host has a fine cellar. It would be churlish not to help him lighten it.”
Kit poured a triple measure for himself and raised the decanter in a mute question. Adam released a breath and thrust out his glass. Kit filled it to equal measure and they both slumped into the chairs, the manic energy of a moment ago vanished.
They stared into the flames, drinking in silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Adam watched Kit stretch his right leg and massage it. The cane he carried wasn’t for effect then.
The whisky and fire was enough to occupy him for a while, but now the glass was empty. Refilling was an easy choice but he was conscious of Kit watching him. Damn. Now he was obliged to speak.
“More?”
Kit shrugged his shoulders and nodded, accepting the decanter from his hand.
Adam sipped the whisky for one last kiss of courage and asked a question “So, what happened to you?”
“The leg you mean?”
“No. You. What became of you? I know you were on the Pendragon when it was raided by the Barbary pirates. How old were you? About eleven? Twelve?”
“Ten. I was ten years old. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Adam heard the warning in Kit’s voice and ignored it. The genie was out of the bottle now. “And then nothing for ten years. Where the hell were you all that time?”
“Hell. That’s as good a description as any. I was in Hell for ten years, but I escaped and I worked it out. So…” Kit paused to take a sip. It didn’t go unnoticed that he gripped the glass tight. “What the hell happened to you?”
“The navy happened.”
“I don’t care about the bloody navy! What the hell happened to you? Why did you desert my mother?”
Curses learned from a life lived at sea filled Adam’s head – mostly directed at Sir Daniel Ridgeway. Firstly, for not telling Abigail to mind her own business and, secondly, for leaving him here with a man who clearly hated him.
Merry Bloody Christmas.
“I had about as much choice leaving your mother as you had when the corsairs took you,” said Adam with as much forced calm as he could muster. “I was barely sixteen. Constance’s father found out about us and had me beaten so badly my first clear memory on waking was being in the middle of the Atlantic, halfway to Jamaica. At first, there’s not a lot of difference between a press-gang and the Turks.”
The whisky soured in his stomach. Adam lost the taste for the alcohol as well as the conversation. He put down his almost full glass and stood.
“By the time I learned you’d been born, Constance was dead. Everyone thought you were dead, too. So I mourned you just like I mourned your mother. That’s what happened to me.”
He stormed out the drawing room.
*
Kit gritted his teeth. For a moment, he was tempted to hurl his full glass of whisky into the fire but remembered his promise to Sophia that he would act house-trained.
He set the glass down by the decanter and slumped further in the chair.
There it was.
There was the answer to the question that burned within him for nearly twenty-five years. Every now and again, the ten-year-old boy in him still cried out in fear, wondering why there was no one to protect him, to save him from the pain.
Now he had his answer, and it was as bitter as rue.
He sighed, picked up the tumbler and drank, letting the heat of the liquor trace fire down his throat.
Whether he wanted it or not, he had a family history now, a past he could connect with. How much more of it did he want to know? Sophia would want to know. Where did his mother grow up? What was she like? Did he carry any of her features? He remembered telling Sophia he had no memory of his father and mother, so to look into the face of a man in whose features he saw his own was damned disconcerting…
“Shhh, he’s asleep.”
“He can’t be asleep with his eyes open.”
Kit started from his trance-like state and looked into the faces of two little girls.
“We were looking for Maman and Papa,” said the eldest, half-apologetically. She looked about eleven and had brown hair very much like Olivia Hardacre who he assumed to be her mother.
“I… uh, um… they went outside for a walk,” he said softly. “I think Lady Abigail was showing them the garden.”
The other child was a couple of years younger. She stood in front of her sister with naked curiosity in her hazel eyes. Eyes that were the same color as her father’s. Eyes that were the same color as his.
“You look like Papa,” the little one whispered in something akin to awe. “We really are related!”
“You know about me?”
He put the whisky down; all of a sudden it was making him sentimental. Damn Scots.
The eldest nodded. “Maman said Aunt Abigail had arranged it as a Christmas surprise for Father. Was it a surprise to you, too?”
The innocent interrogation threatened to bring every raw emotion to the surface. Among the ebullient Sicilians, Kit was happy to give in to it. But here, in England, with people who were familiar and yet still strangers, he could not.
“It was,” he said evenly. “In fact, so much of a surprise, I didn’t know he had…”
… other children. Kit swallowed the last two words and came up with two others.
“… two daughters.”
“I’m Charlotte!” announced the youngest one. Her sister nudged her shoulder, and Charlotte bobbed an awkward curtsy.
“My name is Julia,” the eldest said, and she, too, gave a curtsy. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Captain Hardacre.”
He straightened in his chair, feeling more sober and much more like his normal self.
“Since we’re family, you’ll have to call me Kit,” he replied.
Julia looked uncertain; Charlotte was in awe. “I can call you by your first name?”
He exaggerated a frown which sent the young girl into giggles. “Hmmm, your papa may not like that. How about we compromise and you call me Uncle Kit, instead.”
He leaned forward and shook hands with Julia first and then Charlotte.
“You have a gold earring!” she exclaimed. “Like a pirate!”
Kit put a hand over one eye like a patch and pushed forward in the chair. “Arrrgghhh!”
A squeal of surprise was rapidly followed by giggles. Adam’s daughters were charming and, moreover, they seemed to like him. The black mantle of depression lifted from Kit’s shoulders.
His half-sisters. He had half-sisters! Restless energy returned and the thought of drowning his sorrows fled. Kit leapt to his feet.
“Why don’t we find your parents, and I’ll introduce you to your Aunt Sophia? They’ve got to be around here somewhere. Do you know where the gardens are? I haven’t a clue!”
Chapter Nine
Olivia took one loo
k at Adam and steered him away from Sophia and the Ridgeways, taking a different turn down a path where the formal gardens gave way to a wildflower garden.
“I take it didn’t go well?”
“He got defensive when I asked him what happened after the Pendragon, and he accused me of deserting Constance when she was with child.”
“Give him time to know the truth.”
Adam tucked Olivia’s arm in his.
“I know. The whole thing is just…” Adam shrugged his shoulders, unable to find the right word to describe how he felt.
“He was ten years a captive of the corsairs.”
“I feared as much when we found out all those years ago. At least then, I could tell myself he’d died at sea and been spared such a fate – and now, to know the truth…”
“In the years afterwards, he turned his pain into vengeance,” Olivia added. “That’s how he damaged his leg, according to Sophia.”
Adam was helpless to fix the past and he sure as hell didn’t know how to repair the present, either. He let go of Olivia’s arm and bent down to pick up a pebble from the path. He hurled it with all the strength he had.
“My son hates me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
He fixed Olivia with an exasperated look which she returned with hands raised in mock surrender. “Have it your way, but we’re all under the same roof until New Year’s.”
He shrugged a silent apology, which Olivia accepted by taking his hand. They strolled on in quiet reflection, down the path that followed the gully leading to the lake and the little summer house.
“Have you thought of taking him to Ponsnowyth and Kenstec House?” Olivia asked. “He’s come all this way to learn about his mother and who better to show him than the man who knew her best – who loved her as much as anyone could? If he knows, I’m sure he’ll understand. Will you promise me at least that much?”
“We will show him. Together.” said Adam, placing emphasis on the last word.
Olivia squeezed his hand in silent agreement and they continued the walk in silence. His wife had been Constance’s champion when even her father ordered every trace of her erased.
What a hard, unbending man – and where did it get him in the end? Adam mused. Squire Denton’s second wife and their daughter moved to London, never to return. The squire himself passed unmourned; his legacy and influence long gone.
His pride, Kenstec House, once the centerpiece of Ponsnowyth was now uninhabited, in the ownership of a distant cousin from Canada who’d been through its doors exactly once.
Had the new owner finished the long-abandoned widow’s walk? Or had it been removed completely and the original roofline restored? Perhaps, it would be interesting to go back again after all these years.
Adam looked at his wife in profile. They were dangerous times when they first met and they both nearly lost their lives up there on that widow’s walk. After fourteen years, those memories had been replaced with better ones – filled with laughter, love, home, and family. He wished the same for Kit. He wished the same for all his children.
The sound of giggles and hoots of laughter reached him first. Adam and Olivia emerged from the woods. Thirty yards away was the lake and the summer house, and marching around to it was Kit Hardacre like some kind of enchanted pied piper with Julia, Charlotte, and several of the estate’s children following him.
He paused with Olivia beside him, watching as Kit entertained the children, playing some game he didn’t recognize. There he was – his son in his natural habitat, his face youthful and animated. Adam didn’t move, afraid if he did they would be spotted and the cold, bitter wall between them would re-emerge.
He watched his daughters take to this man, who ought to be a stranger to them, as though they had known him all their lives. Perhaps there was hope for him as well.
“There you are!” Daniel called out. “I thought you two had gotten lost!”
He, Abigail and Sophia emerged from the wooded path behind them.
The call alerted Kit. He glanced up at them, then spoke to the eldest child of the group, the stable boy – Ross, Adam’s memory supplied – and appeared to be instructing him to carry on the game in his stead.
As Kit approached, his smile fell somewhat.
Adam felt himself watched closely, as though Kit were trying to gauge his mood.
“Julia and Charlotte were showing me their favorite parts of the garden,” said Kit, smiling at Olivia. But he addressed his next words to Adam. “You have two lovely daughters.”
It wasn’t much as olive branches go, but there it was. Message received and understood.
“Thank you.” There was a moment’s hesitation before Adam continued. “I imagine you have a lot of questions about Constance, so I thought tomorrow you might like to go out to Kenstec House and see where she grew up.”
Something like relief lit the younger man’s eyes.
“Thank you. I’d be indebted to you.”
*
“Since we don’t know how many fine days we’ll get until Christmas,” suggested Abigail, “we should make the most of the afternoon and take the forest path back. Perhaps the girls would like to join us and collect pine cones to decorate for Christmas.”
Before too long, Adam and Daniel had their arms laden with pine cones, as two children forged for foliage. Kit delighted the girls by revealing that his walking cane was, in fact a sword stick, which he used to slash away a length of holly and to reach up to pick some mistletoe from the fork of an apple tree.
It made him even more like a pirate in Charlotte’s eyes – not that she was frightened of pirates, she told him, not when there were good pirates like him.
Her remark touched something in Kit. He wanted to be a good man – a good pirate – just as he tried to be a good husband and, one day perhaps, a good father. The fact that a child saw there was good in him fostered hope.
In the company of the girls, everyone seemed to relax, even Adam. Well, that was easy, Kit thought to himself. All he had to do was to make sure he only spent time with his father in the company of his half-sisters.
Sadly, that ploy only worked until their bedtime and, after supper, when the ladies adjourned to the drawing room, he was alone with Adam and Daniel. What Kit wouldn’t have given to be around a dining table with Jonathan and Elias right now – three thousand miles away might as well be the other side of the planet. But they knew him. They had a history together.
What would these men know about going to war and fighting to protect the very lives of the women they loved?
Fortunately, Daniel kept port and cigars of short duration, and it wasn’t too long before Sophia offered him a tired smile, and begged her host’s indulgence to retire early.
Kit accompanied her to their room. The fire was already lit and the maid who had just finished lighting the lamps offered her services to aid madam, but she was dismissed with thanks. Kit helped Sophia undress.
“You’re looking tired,” he said, sweeping tumbled masses of jet black hair over her shoulder as he undid the buttons on the top of her dress. He dropped a kiss on the nape even as he heard her stifle a yawn.
“I haven’t slept well since leaving London,” she said.
“Is that all it is? I’d hoped that after leaving London for the cleaner air here you’d start getting some color back, but you’re still pale.”
Sophia turned back to him and smiled before slipping the fire-warmed nightdress over her head while he finished drawing the copper warming pan over the sheets.
“I’m fine,” she told him before yawning once more, putting a hand to her mouth to cover it as she slipped under the covers.
“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If anything was amiss?” Kit asked as he tucked her in. He dropped a kiss on her forehead and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Nothing is amiss that a good night’s sleep won’t cure,” she said. She snaked her hand out from under the blankets and found his. Kit took a deep brea
th and asked the question that had been nagging at him for a couple of days, ever since the visit to the church.
“You would know, and I can only guess at it, but do you… do you suppose you might be with child?”
“It’s possible,” she replied thoughtfully, “but it’s too early to know.”
Kit tamped down a mix of panic and elation. “Is there a way to be sure?”
“Other than waiting nine months?” she teased. Kit grinned back.
“Yes, I think there is,” she said. “But it will take several days to be certain.
She squeezed his hand. “Are you ready to be a father? You’ve seen how it has changed Elias’ life. Jonathan’s, too.”
He stroked her brow tenderly. “I’m more ready than I’ve ever been, my love. We promised to share a life together, and we will, whether we’re blessed with children or not.”
Kit watched Sophia’s eyelids become heavy with sleep. “Shall I stay with you?”
“No. You have an opportunity to talk with your father – your new family,” she said, keeping her eyes closed. “I know what it is to be orphaned. Every day I remember my mother and father in my prayers and now you have the chance to know your own father in life.” She paused a moment. “He seems like a nice man, Kit. Give him the chance to know you, too. Will you do that for me?”
“Anything in my power to give is yours, carissima.”
Chapter Ten
It was only the Hardacres who took the eleven mile journey down to Ponsnowyth. The Ridgeways remained at Bishop’s Wood on receiving word their daughter, Marie, and her family would be arriving that day.
Adam watched his daughters regale Kit and Sophia on the journey, pointing out places of interest along the way, and the attention they received in return was generous as well as genuine.
“You called Julia passarotta. What does that mean?” asked Charlotte.
Kit and Sophia exchanged a smile. Sophia answered. “It’s a term of endearment. It means ‘little sparrow’ in Italian.”
Father's Day (The King's Rogues Book 2) Page 5
