The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  The door crashed open and Eliza scrambled to cover herself. Lantern light stung her eyes but not more than the smoke did.

  “Fire, Cap’n. Downstairs in your study.”

  Eliza pulled the bed sheets with her as she gained her feet. “The children?”

  It was Tarquin who spoke. Tarquin who turned his back but held the lantern out still. “Outside already. Marcus is with them. They’re fine.”

  Darius had already pulled his trousers on but Eliza couldn’t seem to find her gown, her attention suddenly on her husband’s back as he tightened his laces. Scars crisscrossed the expanse of skin from the top of his neck to reach below the band of his trousers. How had she not felt it against her fingertips?

  He hadn’t noticed her staring when he came to her shoulders with the robe he’d worn earlier, wrapping it about her while he snapped questions. “Accident?”

  “Not likely,” Tarquin snorted. “The window was wide open.”

  “What alerted you?” Darius asked as he took her hand, guiding her bare feet around the glass from the broken bottle and then through the door and down the stairs. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from the puckered skin over his ribs, some marks raised and still looking angry, some older, glistening white and flatter and smoother than the others.

  “I was on watch in the house and Morphett outside. He noticed the window open and came in to report when we heard glass shatter.”

  “How much damage is there?” Eliza asked, slightly out of breath and mentally shaking herself free of the images of Darius’s scarred back, the skin broken and bleeding at some point in his pirate’s life.

  “Hard to say. The boys were dousing the flames when I ran to wake the house. Went for the children and men higher up first.”

  “Well done,” Darius said as he practically threw Eliza at Tarquin and then barged past them towards the study without a backwards word.

  Eliza let Tarquin guide her outside, the smoke thick in the entryway despite the front doors being wide open. She coughed a little but then they were out in the cold night, the air clean but freezing rain falling steadily. A warm coat was draped over her shoulders and head as the two headed for the well-lit barn.

  Nathanial stood by the double doors pulled almost all the way shut, the pistol in his hand raised when he heard them coming.

  “Put that gun down,” Eliza called to him, fearing her own brother would accidentally shoot her.

  She could have wept when she saw Grace, Gabriella and Ethan huddled together in one of the empty stalls. “You’re all well?” she asked as she fell to her knees and wrapped the two younger children in her arms, kissing them both on the head. She shrugged the coat off and handed it to Gabriella who shivered in her nightgown.

  Ethan spoke first, his voice sure and strong but a slight tremor giving away his fear. “I thought you weren’t going to get out of there.”

  “I was perfectly safe,” she assured the boy but in her mind she knew how badly this night could have turned for all of them. Had Darius not set a watch, the house would have burned and them with it.

  “Where is Darius?” Nathanial asked from his stance by the door, Tarquin having gone back to the house to help.

  “With his men,” she told him.

  “What do you suppose happened?” This from Grace.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “One of Papa’s enemies?” Gabriella suggested.

  Eliza certainly hoped not. She shook her head. “It was most likely an accident. A candle blown over in the wind, falling too close to a curtain perhaps.”

  “We were supposed to be safe,” Nathanial muttered beneath his breath but Eliza heard the words and hoped her siblings had not.

  Darius entered the barn then, ash up his arms and dusting his hair, his trousers wet from the knees down. “Nothing to worry about,” he said with more joviality than she could have mustered this night or any other where they could have all died in their sleep.

  “What happened?” Ethan asked.

  Darius kneeled in front of the boy and was almost knocked over when Ethan jumped against him, his little arms around Darius’s scarred neck. “A stupid accident. I must have left a lantern burning when I went up to bed. The window was open and the wind must have knocked it over.”

  Nathanial’s intake of breath was audible and Eliza turned to silence him with a glare. Only the younger children would believe the lie but believe it they needed to. She would not have her brother too scared to go to sleep. Not again.

  “Did the house burn down?” Ethan asked.

  Darius chuckled and lifted him in his arms. “Not this night.”

  “You shall have to be more careful in the future,” the little boy admonished with a yawn.

  “Yes I shall,” Darius replied with a grin over his head. “Is everyone all right?”

  “You’re naked,” Grace said with a giggle.

  Eliza smothered a chuckle of her own with a cough. “It’s not polite to point out the state of a man’s undress, Grace. Neither is it polite to stare.”

  “But he’s naked. Isn’t that impolite? Or is it just improper? Besides, you were also staring.”

  “I think it’s time to go back to bed,” came Eliza’s reply. It was incredibly inappropriate for the girls to see Darius only wearing his trousers but there hadn’t been time to dress properly. She was just grateful that their attention was on him and not the fact that apart from a man’s robe, she was also naked.

  Not trusting the task to anyone else, Eliza tucked the two youngest children into bed, then made sure Gabriella had everything she needed. It was decided that Nathanial would watch over them all despite Tarquin already vowing to do the same. When Darius pulled gently on her hand to draw her away, both man and boy had taken up chairs in the hall, a little table between them with cards being shuffled quietly.

  She pulled back. “I should stay with them tonight. They’ll be scared.”

  “My men won’t sleep tonight, Eliza. Nothing else will happen.”

  “Good night,” Eliza called over her shoulder. She was too exhausted to argue.

  Instead of going back to their room, Darius led Eliza back down the stairs once more but this time he took her to the door of the burned-out study. She took in the extensive damage with a gasp. When Darius put his arms around her, she leaned back into his chest with a shudder, far too tired to examine how she felt about being held by him in public, in a place where any of his men might see.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said, his voice rumbling through her.

  “It certainly doesn’t look very good,” she murmured back.

  “A little paint, a new desk and rug, and it will be as good as new. Perhaps better.”

  “What really happened here do you think?”

  Darius’s shoulders lifted and then his breath warmed her neck as he gave his reply. “Someone was here. We can’t be sure who but it looks as though they rifled through the desk and then either threw the lantern or knocked it over.”

  “Is anything missing? Anything valuable?”

  Another intake of breath and Eliza wondered if he contemplated lying to her.

  Eventually he sighed. “Your father’s papers are either missing or burned.”

  “The ones I forged today? Or rather yesterday?”

  “Only the original letters are missing. Marcus has the forgeries and left for London this afternoon. The suicide letter. The ones about the debt and you. Those are all gone.”

  “What would anyone have to gain by stealing those?”

  “What indeed,” he replied but then he took her hand again and led her back up the stairs. “There is nothing else we can do until sunrise. Marcus will return in a few days and then the ship can be fixed within the next week or two.”

  She nodded, her body and mind numb to the possibilities. She let Darius slip the robe from her shoulders and put her into the bed. She raised her brows when he didn’t climb in with her.

  “I have to go
back downstairs. The fire might flare up or the intruder could return. The men and I will stand guard at every window and door for the rest of the night.”

  Disappointment filled her when he doused the candle and slipped from the room without a backwards glance. He was worried about his house and she didn’t blame him for it, but she didn’t want to be alone. For the first time in seven years, she had felt complete, no longer lumbered with the responsibility of everyone in her life and everything. For the first time ever, she had felt she had help, a partner. She didn’t want that feeling to end, even though, just like her Christmas wishes, she knew it couldn’t last.

  Eliza closed her eyes against the glow of the hearth and willed the rest of the world to damnation.

  All she wanted was peace and quiet. She wanted her brothers and sisters to be safe and happy. She wanted to be happy.

  Why was that too much to ask?

  Chapter Twenty

  Eliza wasn’t thinking straight if she hadn’t seen the connection yet to the letters and her father, the risks now that they were missing. But Darius discovered the enormity of the situation early the next morning.

  “Cap’n?”

  Darius turned towards the door at the sound of his man’s voice. Wes stood half in the burnt-out room and half in the smoke-stained corridor. “What is it? Did you find something?”

  His men were supposed to be scouring the grounds for signs of who and how many had dared to breach his home. It was a new and ugly feeling for his grandfather’s house to be violated that way, for his new family to be put in the path of harm. If they were on his ship, the dangers would be minimal and he could breathe easier. If they had been on his ship, this wouldn’t have happened.

  “You have a caller.”

  A moment’s hesitation as confusion gave way to curiosity. “Who?”

  “Harold Meddington. You want me to toss him out on his arse?”

  The offer had its merits but Darius had to admit he was slightly intrigued. He had invited his sire to call if he was ever to look for a fight but his cowardly brother visiting by himself was an oddity. Darius wondered if he had come to beg for leniency.

  He snorted and dusted his hands off on his trousers. Toffs didn’t beg for anything.

  He’d been sifting through the mess that had once been estate ledgers for one of the properties pertaining to the earldom and notes from this man or that, as well as a few journals on animal husbandry. All of it was gone now, reduced to coals or wet beyond salvage, his grandfather’s bold strokes across every page, now bleeding puddles of incoherent ink. Lost.

  He needed a break from the smell and soot and melancholy anyway.

  Portraying the perfect gentleman, Darius made Harold wait while he changed his clothing and shaved his cheeks. He desperately wanted to know his brother’s business at the house but he also wanted Harold to understand that Darius was in charge and in control. He was no longer a fourteen-year-old youth able to be conked on the head and made to disappear. It was probably his father who had broken into his home the night before and attempted to burn it to the ground with the occupants fast asleep inside. But if it had been Wickham, why wasn’t he there also? Perhaps he was on his way to London to report the duke’s suicide.

  The thought had occurred to him several times during the long, restless night.

  For the few early morning hours after he’d gone back to bed, he lay there in the dark, the fire taking his mind far away, but then as Eliza had sighed in her sleep next to him, his arm wrapped tight around her, he’d almost laughed such was the happiness inside. Who’d have thought the pirate and then the captain who had run from women for years so he could concentrate on a career and respectability could find such…such… He couldn’t even put a word to it. Completion maybe? Satisfaction definitely.

  Losing himself in Eliza had made the horror day full of nightmares turn about into the stuff dreams were made of. Only, never in his sleeping moments had he imagined his wife to be such a perfect fit beneath his arm, her cheek resting on the curve where shoulder met neck, her warm breath skating across his chest hair while her bare breasts pressed into his ribs. How he wanted to repeat the night over and over and over. Minus the fire of course. Which brought him back to his brother and why Harold assumed he could just knock on the door and be received as though they weren’t at war with one another.

  When Darius felt as though he was suitably dressed and well armed, a knife strapped to his ankle and a pistol in a holster beneath his coat, he tripped lightly down the stairs and into the green salon. “Ah, brother, there you are. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  Harold frowned ever so slightly when addressed as his relation but then the lines between his eyes smoothed out and he greeted Darius with a forced smile, though he did not rise from the settee. “I have come on urgent business.”

  “Business? With me? Can I dare hope that you are now flush and have come to repay Father’s debts?”

  Harold shook his head, his eyes darkening with fury. “Why should I have to cover his letters? He is a grown man, an earl no less.”

  “You cannot tell me you didn’t assist with the gaming, Harold. I have my sources and they tell me you enjoy the turn of the card just as much as he.”

  “What else do these sources tell you?”

  Was that fear skating across his face? Darius made a mental note to investigate his brother more thoroughly than he already had. He knew Harold was taken by the gambling high and he knew he was in debt to some very bad men. Amongst their names, a Mr Smith had popped up, but it might pay to discover just how deep it ran. “They tell me a great many things but there is only one missing piece to the puzzle here and that is the location of our ship.”

  “Our ship? You mean Montrose’s ship.”

  “Ah, so you have heard of it then? The ship that conveniently disappeared was to be half mine. Her crew were my friends, Montrose’s family. Did you all just think it could vanish into the fog and no one would come to ask questions?”

  “I had nothing to do with any ship nor with the cargo it delivered.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “If you could prove there even was a ship, we wouldn’t be discussing this right here and now. You would have had the Runners arrest us all weeks ago.”

  Darius gave a slow inclination of his head but didn’t confirm nor deny that there was evidence or not. “You said you had business and I have much to do so state what you came for and then you can run back to Daddy and report in.”

  Harold’s cheeks pinkened and he began to fidget. “Father doesn’t actually know I am here.”

  “How very mercenary of you. Have you come to throw him to the wolves to save your own skin?”

  “Now see here, you have no idea what it is like to live with that man, how he throws away money to beyond excess.”

  “You could have left,” Darius pointed out. “You could have tried harder to catch the money he threw away.”

  He sent him a frustrated glare. “I am to be an earl. What would you have me do? Where would you have me go?”

  “State your case, Harold. Throwing around titles and stalling helps no man.”

  “I want Eliza.”

  Darius hesitated. Let the words sink in. Tried to order thoughts suddenly jumping to all sorts of awful conclusions. “Want her? For what?”

  “If you give me the girl, I’ll take her to Gretna today, marry her and then we can share her dowry tomorrow.”

  A smile split Darius’s lips but inside, fury burned. “And what do you think the lady would say about this?”

  “Stubborn chit has no idea the way of things. She’ll come around.”

  “And her father? He should be back any day now.”

  Harold relaxed back against the cushions. “I’m sure when he discovers his daughters are living under the roof of a bastard, he’ll see I did what was necessary. If he does indeed return. Where did you say he was?”

  “I didn’t. Say, that is. He wishes for peace
while he recovers from ill health.”

  “How do we know he hasn’t met with foul play and lies in a ditch on the roadside? Eliza would be safe with me. You have my word as a gentleman.”

  Darius threw his head back and roared with forced laughter. “Your word? As a gentleman? I’d as soon as kill her myself right now to save her from your toxic presence.”

  “I’m offering you a way to get some of the money Father owes you. You would be far better off with something rather than nothing. Just give me Eliza and we shall work the rest out.”

  Clenching his fingers in his lap, Darius fought the urge to wrap his hands around Harold’s throat and squeeze the life from the beggar. “I’m afraid that just isn’t possible. She cannot go anywhere without her father’s permission.”

  This time it was Harold who laughed. “Must we continue this game? You and I both know the Duke of Penfold ran out of words some time back. There is no declining health, no recovery to be had, certainly no permissions to be given.”

  The hair on Darius’s nape stood on end and the fury in his gut turned to dread but outwardly he displayed no emotion or reaction at all. Those who were close to him, who really knew him, would know this was the precise moment to up and run. “Oh?”

  Harold raised a brow and then leaned forward looking about the room to make sure no one eavesdropped. “I saw what you did yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” he repeated, his brain ticking like a rusty old grandfather clock racing to catch up and work out what came next.

  Lowering his voice and leaning even farther forward, Harold whispered, “I saw you burn his body.”

  Darius launched himself at his brother, his arm squeezing tight around Harold’s neck as he dragged him down to the floor. He held his own wrist with his other hand and applied pressure until he heard the breath wheeze from his half-brother’s lungs and felt the drag of manicured fingernails down his coat sleeve. “I hope I heard you wrong, brother.”

  Footsteps thundered into the room but not a soul intervened. Darius didn’t look up. He didn’t ask for help nor want it. Harold feebly thumped his arm but Darius did not let go. “Never will you touch Eliza. Never will you be allowed in that woman’s company or that of her siblings. When the Duke of Penfold emerges from his sick bed, I hope he calls you out for this crude attempt at blackmail. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I will kill you myself. Do you understand?”