A True Lady

by Edith Layton

  Martin thought slipping away from the watchful crew would be difficult, but Cristabel made it easy. She nodded farewell to the rogues she knew from her home port, and then, raising her head as they descended the gangplank, never looked back. She wore a long, dark cape with a voluminous hood, and took Martin’s arm like a lady as they headed toward a waiting carriage. As soon as they’d been driven out of sight of the wharf, she demanded they be put down. After the carriage drove off, leaving them and all their baggage on the cobbles, she took a long look around the street. Only then did she let Martin summon another carriage to them.

  When they were seated inside the second carriage, she laughed. When she threw back her hood, he saw her lovely face flushed with excitement.

  “Now. You take me to a decent inn, my lad. And then it’s good-bye.”

  “I won’t leave you alone. It’s not safe or proper,” he insisted.

  “Laddie, I be bristling with knives and armory. I be safer than any female you know, and most men!” she said angrily, and then subsided. “Oh aye,” she muttered grudgingly, “tell you what. Find me an inn, and take dinner with me. I’ll find meself a decent girl in the kitchens or serving at the tables, and hire her to play maid to me till I can find better. Will that suit ye?”

  He could tell she was impatient and annoyed by the way her accent slipped as well as by the hectic glitter in her golden eyes. He nodded.

  “Done then!” she said gleefully. “Thankee, lad. Ah…That is to say, thank you, Martin, that will suit admirably.”

  And ruined it all by giggling so hard, he had to laugh with her.

  He installed her in a respectable inn and engaged a sleepy-looking maidservant to unpack for her. He ordered the girl to wait for her in her room, and then took Cristabel down to dinner in a private dining room.

  “I’ll look in on you,” he said, as he saw their dinner ending.

  “You’ll look in vain. For I shall not be here. I’m being honest with you,” she said seriously. “This is good-bye, my friend.”

  He frowned. He wanted to leave, he yearned to see his wife and family again, but he worried about leaving her. All his upbringing told him to stay with her, but every instinct told him to leave now, just as she was urging him to.

  “It’s done, Martin, it’s over, and good riddance,” she said, echoing his thoughts.

  “Then this is farewell,” he said, as he rose from the table and took her hand.

  “No,” Cristabel said, rising with him. She shook his hand firmly before he could raise it to his lips as he would a lady’s. “No,” she said again, “make no mistake. This is good-bye.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The big man moved quietly as was his habit, though he certainly didn’t need to move with stealth tonight. No one could have heard him above the babble of happy voices. The lower floor of the town house was crowded; every man there held a drink, and every woman seemed to be laughing. The only quiet place was the clearing they’d made around the obvious center of attention—a young man flushed with pleasure, his arm around a winsome blond lady who smiled up at him tearily as he spoke to the admiring throng.

  “…and so I hailed a sedan chair because I couldn’t quite run all the rest of the way from the docks, at least not with my trunk in tow,” he said before he drank down the last of the ale in his glass.

  “Just like the tale of Robinson Crusoe, I vow!” an elderly woman cried out with pleasure. “So exciting! I begged you to read it after I finished it last year, didn’t I, my dear?” she asked the man with her.

  “Yes, but now I don’t have to—young Martin has told me a better tale, I’ll wager,” he answered heartily.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she retorted with a wink to the young man in the center of the room. “Did you have a Man Friday on that desert isle, too, Martin—a savage native who catered to your every whim?”

  “So long as it wasn’t a Lady Friday he had on that desert isle!” a happy young fellow called out before Martin could answer.

  The big man who had just come quietly into the room noted with interest that Martin’s face became quite flushed before he answered.

  “What? With my Sophia here for comparison?” Martin said after a moment’s pause. “No, nor any Lady Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, either!” he added, dropping a light kiss on his young wife’s forehead, to the approving applause of the group.

  “Pirates and desert isles—cutthroats and narrow escapes. I tell you, my friends, this young fellow has had more thrilling experiences in the past months than I have in all my days!” a heavyset man declared.

  “I’ll drink to that!” another man called.

  “Ah, but, Sir Francis, you’ll drink to anything!” Martin answered, and the laughter began again.

  “A toast then,” the big man said in a deep, soft voice that nevertheless carried to every corner of the room, “to the prodigal returned. Welcome home, brother.”

  Martin stopped laughing and turned to the speaker, his eyes glowing with real pleasure. But then quickly, so quickly that few in the room noticed, his pleasant face held a fleeting expression of something more than surprise and less than delight. It was gone so quickly that even his brother couldn’t be sure he’d seen it. In a blink of an eye Martin was grinning again.

  “I came as soon as I heard. Unlike some people, I came running all the way from my house—I didn’t stop for a sedan chair,” the big man said, taking Martin’s hand in a firm clasp.

  “You couldn’t find one big enough,” Martin said, his eyes suspiciously damp.

  “We’re much too old to be so grown-up,” his brother Magnus muttered, dragging Martin forward and taking him in a bear hug. “There,” he said with satisfaction when he let him go, as Martin pretended to be breathless in order to hide his emotion, “that’s how to greet a fellow lost at sea—and found in his own front parlor. You can’t know how glad I am to see you. Sophia,” he said, turning to his sister-in-law, “I congratulated this wretch on your wedding day, but I offer my best wishes to you this time. Congratulations on getting the fellow back.”

  “I shall never, never let him go again!” she declared, her piquant face a study in determination. She was a tiny young woman, with delicate features and some freckles on her little upturned nose that even rice powder couldn’t entirely conceal. Her fair hair was powdered and curled in the latest fashion. She had blue eyes and a pink mouth, her cheeks were full as a milkmaid’s, and her complexion just as fresh. But there was nothing childlike about her figure in her low-cut, wide-skirted gown.

  “Not even if I promise to bring you primrose silk next time?” Martin asked slyly.

  She pretended to think about it for a second and then cried, “No!”

  “Pity, I found a merchant who could supply it—along with some fine bolts of white striped silk too.”

  “Well…perhaps,” she said slowly, to make them all laugh.

  Everyone laughed more, and raised more toasts. Then, as often happens during any momentous event, wedding or funeral, or as in this case, a sudden return from abroad, the company began to talk of other things. The men began discussing their new German king’s policies, and the women, exchanging opinions on his many mistresses. When a group of women came to gossip with Sophia, Magnus raised an eyebrow at his brother and lifted one wide shoulder, tilting it in the direction of the library. Martin hesitated for a second before he went to the library with his brother and closed the door behind them.

  “So,” Magnus said, after he’d gone to stand by the fire. “You’re back.” He raised his eyes from the fire to study his brother. “Tell me all. I missed the first telling of your adventures because I was half-dressed when I heard the news. It took my valet and two footmen to convince me to go back and throw some more clothes on before I went running out in the street to see for myself.”

  He was dressed impeccably, his brother thought with admiration. He was a tall, well-muscled man, and although he was substantial, there wasn’t an extra bit of flesh on him. He had lea
n flanks and a flat stomach to balance his sturdy chest and wide shoulders. Like many younger men, he wore his thick, long light-brown hair unpowdered, tied at the base of his strong neck with a simple velvet ribbon. He had sleepy gray eyes in a big face, dominated by a long nose that was too broad at the bridge for beauty. But women couldn’t take their eyes off him, and when those sleepy gray eyes grew sharp and concentrated on anyone, that person felt as though he were being seen more clearly than he’d ever been. Magnus’s presence was commanding, and not just because of his sheer size.

  Magnus was the tree under which his family sought shelter, a friend to all fair men and women, an appreciator of beautiful women, and a challenge to all the others. At thirty he was still a bachelor, but he had more friends than anyone Martin knew, and even more than Magnus was probably aware of.

  Cristabel had thought Martin worshiped his brother. He didn’t, but only because he thought Magnus wouldn’t want him to.

  “Yes,” Magnus murmured, “I’m fully dressed, but I swear I don’t remember doing it, I was in such a hurry to see you. But here I am. Again, brother, Welcome home. You had me really worried, you know.”

  He gazed at Martin, his gray eyes troubled. “I thought of shipping out to find you myself, and would have, had word not got to us that you were safe and bound for home. ’Od’s death, Martin, I finally agree to send you out to deal with spice merchants as I’ve done so many times, so you can learn the way of it, and you are the one captured by pirates.” He shook his head again. “Well, done’s done, thank God. Now, out with it. How much is it going to cost us? Not that any price would be too high, you understand.”

  “How much will what cost us?” Martin asked, genuinely surprised. “I offered old Benson the same for his pepper that you always pay, and Greggson, just the going price for his sugar, and—”

  “No, no. Not the merchants. The pirates, what’s their share?” Magnus asked. “How much shall I send them? …The ransom, lad. What is it?”

  Martin stopped breathing—or so it seemed to his brother. Then Martin swallowed, and when he spoke at last, his face was red. Odd, Magnus thought, his gray eyes narrowing; only moments before, his face had been a ghostly white.

  Magnus seemed relaxed. He leaned back against the mantel, his eyes unreadable beneath half-closed lashes. That, his brother knew with queasy certainty, meant that he was listening very closely.

  “Ah well,” Martin said, “but there’s no ransom involved.”

  “None?”

  “Ah, no, none,” Martin said, and then continued with a sickly smile, “You see, ahm, when they caught us, they thought they’d a grand lord on board…”

  “Yes, so the captain told me,” Magnus said. “They thought you were me.”

  “Ah. So. You spoke to him, then,” Martin said in a ragged voice. “So why ask me? You must know everything.”

  “I know they carted you away to their stronghold, separating you from the captain and crew. The captain’s company came up with their ransom and he sailed for home at once. He had no idea of what happened to you. That’s why I was making plans to sail to Jamaica myself when word came that you were released and on your way home.”

  “Oh,” Martin said, thinking furiously. Magnus didn’t know! If this was true, then things could go on as Cristabel had said. Martin straightened his shoulders. He’d take a page from the pirate’s daughter’s book of boldness.

  “I told them the truth,” Martin said, “and it took some telling, believe me. But in time they knew I was telling the truth, because one of his men had seen you once and supported me. I told them you’d be after them hammer and tongs if they harmed me. And I told them further that if they made you pay a ransom for me, they’d regret it, because you had a way of evening up scores. They believed me.”

  Magnus listened with undisguised interest now.

  Martin’s confidence grew as he spoke. What he said was nearly true. It was exactly what he would have said if they hadn’t terrorized him into marrying the pirate king’s daughter first.

  “And so—voila!—here I be, as the pirates would say. Safe, and not sorry, because, after all, I’ve got years of dinner conversation out of the adventure!”

  “And nothing else happened?” Magnus asked quietly, watching his brother closely.

  “Nothing worth mentioning. Just some amusing adventures I’m saving to bore you with for years to come,” Martin said with a shrug.

  “I see,” Magnus said.

  He didn’t believe his brother. Not for a minute. But Martin never lied to him, and so he was at a loss to know just what to do. No matter, whatever it was could keep. There was time. Martin would eventually tell him, and for now, he didn’t look for sugar on his miracles—the boy was back, whole and safe. This discussion could wait a day or two.

  “Well then,” Magnus said, “tell me, what did you think of the tropics? Aside from your unwanted hosts, that is? The fruits, the flowers, the women—were they not just as lush and ripe and fantastic as I promised?”

  Martin grew very red. “I…I had little to do with them—the women at least,” he stammered, thinking of Cristabel in all her lavish silks.

  “’Od’s blood! I forgot,” Magnus laughed. “You’re a wedded man now; that’s not a thing I’d want you to forget. We take marriage seriously in this family. Well done, lad. So then, the oranges. At least you can tell me about them. Better than the sour ones sold in the theaters here, aren’t they?”

  “Superior, far superior,” Martin said, remembering the tangy sweet fruit of the tropics he’d encountered during his adventure. “Exotic and surprising,” he said, and then forced himself to concentrate on oranges and forget the forbidden fruit, so Magnus wouldn’t read the truth in his face the way he always did.

  *

  People of any means seldom walked London’s streets alone, and to do so at night was unheard of. If they walked at all, they were accompanied by linkmen bearing torches, and sturdy footmen. Because London teemed with thieves, prudent men stayed home at night or hired protection if they had to stray far from their carriages or sedan chairs. But Magnus said good night to his brother and the company, stepped down the stairs of the brightly lit town house, and strolled alone into the night.

  The moon shone bright, brighter than the lanterns in each doorway, and the glow made his shadow seem to swim down the deserted streets. The moonlight showed an occasional glint from several watchful eyes that followed his progress. But the wavering shadow walked confidently, with a hand resting on the hilt of a sword. It was a very large shadow.

  Magnus didn’t worry about thieves; he had larger concerns. He was worrying about his brother. His shoulders were wide, and it seemed to him that he had been forever carrying the weight of his family on them. Oldest of all the children, he’d looked after each of them since the day they were born. His greatest regret was that, as hard as he tried, he’d not been able to protect them all. He didn’t want to fail again. Martin’s life wasn’t in danger, but something was very wrong. Every instinct told him that, and his instincts were finely tuned when it came to his family.

  Not that his parents didn’t take care of their own. They did, or tried to. But his mother’s first response to crisis was to weep, and his father’s first course of action was to try to calm her. It was as if they stood onshore watching someone drown, unable to plunge into the water because they were too busy trying to comfort each other and give each other strength. He didn’t know how his parents would survive if he hadn’t been born. Nor did they, or so they always said.

  No, Magnus thought with a bemused smile as he strode down the street, he was the one who always came to the rescue—ever since he’d been a boy. His parents turned to him whenever there were difficulties. And now that he was a grown man, they were happy to retire to their country estate and let him run the family.

  What was left of it, he thought grimly. All his care and attention couldn’t save his poor little sister Elizabeth, who died of a fever at three years of age.
Nor did it save his handsome young brother William, who, brought low with a toothache one night, died of a raging infection despite all the bleedings and possets. Magnus blamed himself for his death, for hadn’t Will complained of a twinge in that tooth only the month before? But Magnus hadn’t insisted that Will see the barber to have the tooth taken out, and he should have. Although he was only fifteen, he’d had the authority to order his younger brother. But he’d been too busy thinking of a new horse, or some other stupid trifle, to nag Will into going. This failure ate at his heart still and kept him awake at night.

  And his dearest sister, best friend, and wise counselor, gentle Lucy… Only one year younger than himself, and at sixteen the most beautiful girl, with the kindest heart. She should have been wed and with her own babes now, not sleeping in the churchyard with her ancestors. His fault, of course. He should never have let her go to that party in the next county. He knew she always picked up every contagion, and it had been such a cold season, and her friend’s house was ancient, cold, and drafty—but not so cold as where she was now… He never should have let her go, but she’d begged and teased and cajoled and got around him, as she always did. And within two weeks he had to bring her cold body to the family vault, and leave her to lie there always.

  Magnus was a big man with an equally big heart, and that had caused him much grief. Thirteen years had passed, but he never forgot the pain of these losses. He hesitated to risk burying half his heart again.

  Magnus loved his family very much, but he could never again become so vulnerable. They depended on him, and he had to be strong. He knew he had to wed someday. He would, but it would be done sensibly, and carefully, when he had the need of sons. A nice girl from a good family with a strong body who could survive childbirth. He meant to like her, expected to respect her, hoped she’d care similarly for him, but he didn’t know if he would ever love her. Loving his family was the most he could do now; he took responsibility for them and they took it as their due.