by Edith Layton
“Aye. I know that,” the man said.
“Then what’s your quarrel with me?” Magnus asked, even as he stepped into position to parry.
“Just that,” the man said. “You are the wrong man. But I am the right one.”
CHAPTER 8
“I suppose this means you don’t want to name seconds,” Magnus remarked as his opponent lunged forward with his sword.
Magnus successfully parried the thrust, and his attacker’s sword sizzled down the length of his own weapon with a metallic slicing sound, sparking a brief flash of light in the night.
His opponent recovered and drew back with quick grace.
“Glib and cold, aye, you’re everything a cold bastard like yourself is supposed to be,” the man muttered. “A fine lord with all the trimmings. Enjoy your jests whilst you have your life. It won’t be long.”
“Possibly. Your skill is a matter best known to yourself,” Magnus said, as he surged forward, forcing his attacker back, “but I wonder about your estimate of me. We haven’t met before, have we?”
“Aye, I meet lords and ladies all the time—but briefly,” the man snarled, “before I send them to the bottom of the sea. I haven’t met you before, m’lord, but I know your kind.”
The conversation was halted as the man thrust forward again, his sword meeting empty air where he’d sworn the big man had been but a second before. The attacker’s eyes narrowed. The fellow was the size of a full-rigged galleon, but he moved like a sloop on a windy day. He stopped thinking about his opponent’s speed and only reacted to it when he saw him lunge. The big man’s sword skimmed past his shoulder by micrometers.
“Now, I wonder,” Magnus said, his rumbling voice showing neither alarm nor lack of breath as he pressed forward, “why does Cristabel’s father want my death now? It was enough to try to beat me senseless the other night. What has upped the stakes?”
“I have!” the man cried, lunging again. And missing again.
The fellow was a good swordsman, Magnus thought, which was no small praise, because he was an exacting judge. But the man was fighting with his heart as much as his mind, and it would defeat him in the end. Magnus hated to see a good swordsman extinguished or crippled, so he decided to fence with words rather than his weapon for a moment. It would be easier for him, too, if he only had to defend himself. He knew he could do that for the rest of the night without strain. But he didn’t think it would come to that. He had stamina and a clear mind, and his opponent was almost blind with fury. He had only to make him a little more angry. He thought he already knew the magic word.
“Do you imagine Cristabel will be pleased if you kill me?” Magnus asked, “I doubt it. She and I have come to an agreement…”
That was the magic word. The fellow snarled and leapt. But swordsmanship was not acrobatics, however pretty it looked. Magnus watched, waited for the precise moment, and then struck. A quick thrust under the fellow’s hand as he lunged forward caught his hilt on Magnus’s sword tip. Magnus pulled and shoved, and then in one sharp motion he flung his opponent’s sword up out of his hand and into the air, spiraling it into the moonlight. It clattered on the cobbles, too far for the man to reach without turning his back on Magnus or retreating to a wall.
Magnus looked back from the sword to his foe, and found him crouched low, circling him with a short, sharp dagger in his hand.
“And when I divest you of that, there’ll be a cannon, I suppose,” Magnus said wearily. “Do you think we could talk before we go on? I think it would be better for you, at least. You’re very angry. I’m not…yet. That’s not fair. Anger is a man’s best ammunition.”
The fellow stopped, and looked at Magnus straight on. “No,” he said in an odd voice, “you know that’s not true. Anger will be the death of me. I’m likely to die this night because I’m so filled with hate, and you’re so calm and amused. I’m wondering why you’re telling me that if you know that calming me down might even the score.”
“That, I doubt. I’m very good,” Magnus said, but he watched the other man closely and didn’t lower his sword as he added, “but I have an aversion to killing strangers. Introduce yourself, tell me your grievance, and then we’ll get on with it if you like. I am, as you say, Magnus, Lord Snow. And you?”
“Black Jack Kelly,” the fellow said, bowing mockingly, but keeping his dagger clenched in his hand and his eyes fixed on Magnus, “the man Cristabel is going to marry.”
“Ah,” Magnus breathed, reevaluating the man he faced as best he could in the dim light. Almost as tall as himself, young, with a dark, dashing face, and a long, trim body in his soft pirate clothes. “I see. And she knows this? Odd that she never said a word about it. She spoke of her father and her plans for the future, but never mentioned you at all.”
“She has to come round to it,” the fellow said, shifting his feet, with the first hint of uneasiness he’d shown, “but she will, she will.”
“Oh. I see. I think you had better pull up a curbstone then,” Magnus said, “because I think we may be here all night.”
* * *
The dark and smoky tavern light flattered the man at the table with him, Magnus thought. Even so, it was a handsome face, scarred in all the right places, with rakish dark eyebrows and a lush black mustache for emphasis. Long, straight, shining jet hair bound with a bandanna added to the look. He was lean and spare and hungry-looking, with long, watchful blue eyes and an infrequent smile that showed sharp white teeth. The man was smaller than he himself was, but not by much. And fit and dangerous. Magnus observed him closely, though only those who knew him well would recognize that his casual, half-lidded gaze was intense. They would have been as surprised as was he by the uneasiness he felt as he studied the man sitting opposite him.
The pirate, Magnus decided, was a formidable opponent. He thought he himself was the better fencer and probably the better man—if only because piracy was, after all, thievery on water. Magnus would never take anything he hadn’t earned, and thought he would starve before he would. But no doubt the ladies would love this rakish fellow. He found himself wondering, and to his discomfort, worrying, about how much one particular woman who claimed she was half a lady felt about this pirate.
The pirate had agreed to parley when he’d realized there was no immediate need for him to kill Magnus. That was only after Magnus convinced him that he was neither husband nor lover to Cristabel. It was clear the pirate wanted to be both to her. Now Magnus found himself having a difficult time controlling his own murderous urges.
“I’ve known her since she was a tyke, and I just a green hand,” Black Jack was saying now. “I believe I had me eye on her even then. Well, captain’s daughter and all, and I a lad eager to get ahead.” He laughed and shook his head. “Had I knowed what she was to grow up like, I’d have stolen her away then and devil take the consequences! So much for currying favor with Captain Whiskey. When it came down to it, I wanted her whatever her pedigree.”
He paused to swallow more ale, before he went on, “He promised her to me, y’see. And so when I heared he married her off to you! Well, the lads had to hold me back, for I was all set to jump right overboard and swim to England to get her back. But the lads said what’s done’s done, and I figured there was no way even me paddling like a fury would win back her maidenhead. What’s that to me when all’s said? It’s her I was after, breached or not. So I set out when I could, determined to make her a widow before I got much older. I mean to have her, y’see, maiden or widow, whichever way. She’s mine.”
“I see,” Magnus said, his voice a low, comfortable rumble, his body relaxed. The only thing to betray his nerves was his big hand, which was tightened to white knuckles on his cup, and the faint flickering of the muscles bunching in his jaw. “But if you are her fiancé, why did her father marry her to another man?”
Black Jack shifted in his seat. “Ah, well, Captain Whiskey be a pirate and a good one, a fair man but a tough one, all to his good, and so say I to anyone. But
he’s a climber, y’see. Married himself a lady, he did. Wanted a gentleman for his daughter too. I’m his crony, and the best man he knows, but I’m common as the dirt beneath my fingernails, for all that.”
“You don’t speak like a pirate,” Magnus remarked.
“But I ain’t a gent. Nay, I wasn’t born like Cristabel, her ‘half a ladyship,’” Black Jack said mockingly, with such a parody of Cristabel’s constant claim that Magnus’s jaw knotted tighter. “No. But I ain’t nothing, neither. An honest cottager is what I was born. With the soil of Ireland at me feet—and almost over me head before I got much older,” he added ruefully, “for we was starving, and that’s a fact. I went to sea as a lad, as an honest sailor working for the queen’s coin. And by the time we had ourselves a king, I was sailing against him.
“Want to know why?” he challenged Magnus. “Count the stripes on me back, and take a guess. Or the bones in me face, broke by one of His Majesty’s fine captains. Say what you will about the Brotherhood—but we don’t try to force pretty young lads to our berths if they don’t want to play our games. I jumped ship, and found fair employment with the bad lads of the sea. In so doing, I discovered the lot of a pirate: The food’s better, the voyages shorter, the companionship closer, and the pay’s ten times better than that of an ‘honest’ seaman.”
“And the conscience?” Magnus asked dryly.
The pirate was brought up short. His smile was crooked as he answered, “That be telling you, m’lord, when I can afford one.”
“You’ve not shown a profit yet?” Magnus asked. “I’m surprised. I’d assumed you were expert at your profession by now.”
“Aye, that I am. But the gold goes fast as it comes in, seeing as how the Brotherhood lives higher than your average man. The gambling, the fancy houses—there’s nothing on earth as good as the brothels in Tortuga. ’Cept maybe those in Kingston town. No, I make money the same way I lose it—with pleasure. And I’ve no regrets…save for misplacing me Cristabel. But I’m here to see to that. She’ll be the making of me, you’ll see. With her in me bed, the gold will stay in me pockets. As to the rest? I be a pirate bold and thank the Lord for it too!”
He raised his voice and his mug in mock salute to Magnus. No one in the crowded tavern even looked up. It was the sort of place where Black Jack was safer announcing his occupation than Magnus was in his fine clothes. But Magnus’s size and air of casual confidence—and his sword—gave him safe passage here just as it did everywhere else in London at night.
Magnus’s face had gone very still at the mention of the pirate’s plans for his bed, but his voice was calm and even when he spoke. “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “And so I wonder why Captain Whiskey was so quick to marry his daughter to another.”
The pirate’s shoulders jerked before he spoke again, trying to sound as casual as Magnus had. But he looked into his mug of ale instead of at Magnus as he muttered, “Like I said, the captain be a climber. When he saw a chance to nab a viscount for her, he tried. Ha!” he said with real enjoyment, meeting Magnus’s eyes again. “I’d give three bags of Spanish gold to see his face when he finds out the truth! Imagine! Wedding her to the younger son by mistake. And worse yet for his plans—not marrying her at all! Outsmarted—the fox outfoxed! He’ll choke on it, it’s so rich. And well he may. Aye, and I’d give another dozen bags of gold to see his expression when he finds out I’ve wed her after all!”
Magnus’s broad shoulders stiffened, as did his hand on his own mug of ale. But his voice remained languid. “Now, that surprises me,” he mused, “because she claims to want only her independence. She’s accepted my protection because she’s wise and has been made to see the need for it—and sees no other course right now,” he added ruefully. “But she fought it like a tigress, and I know it rankles still. In truth, I can’t see her going off with you, my friend.”
“She will,” Black Jack promised in a low snarl.
“And,” Magnus added, “I have to tell you that I won’t see her going off with you if she doesn’t want to.”
It was only one sentence, but Magnus said it slowly and coldly. Then he was still. The pirate stared at him. Magnus met his eyes with a bland gray gaze.
“Ah. I see,” Black Jack said. “I take your meaning. I will consider it. But I’m wondering. You’re a gent, true. And so maybe you just feel protective toward the wench. But I’m wondering if there be more to it. There’s more to her, to be sure.”
“So there is,” Magnus agreed, but his face remained impassive.
Black Jack rubbed his jaw as he studied the big man he sat with. “I wonder,” he mused. “No nobleman such as yourself wants such as her for a wife. She claims to be half lady, but the other half be pure pirate, and no mistake.”
“You don’t believe her claim?” Magnus asked quickly.
“Oh, ’tis true enough,” the pirate said on a shrug. “It were before my time, but all the lads know it for truth. The great Lady Elizabeth—Captain Whiskey’s even got her name tattooed above his black heart, lest anyone forget he once bedded a real lady. He even fitted up a figurehead of her for his favorite ship: a frigate he took off the coast of Spain. The thing has too much in the breast and not enough in the eyes, or so the old hands say, but otherwise ain’t a bad representation of her. She looks too saintly for me taste, but Cristabel’s said to be her spitting image, and so she must have been a beauty, all right. But the lady is long gone, and Captain Whiskey had the raising of her daughter.
“No, I doubt a gent like yourself wants such a lass to bear his noble name, and his sons,” Black Jack went on, “but I tell you, if it’s the something else you’re after, you’re fishing in the wrong waters, m’lord. The Cristabel I know would tear off your face afore she’d consent to be your—or any man’s—mistress. Her father, rot him, with his parade of sluttish mistresses and all them poor sad, bedraggled creatures he brought home to teach her to be a lady—and taught her instead to hate men. He near ruined her for men forever.”
“Odd. She doesn’t seem to hate my brother, or me,” Magnus mused.
The pirate slanted him a bright look to acknowledge the slight, but his broad white smile was without humor. “Aye, but your brother was no threat to her, you said—being as he’s so young, moral, and married, to boot. As for yourself,” he purred, “why, m’lord, it just may be she don’t consider you exactly as a man neither, being accustomed, as she is, to pirate folk.
“She’s used to men with hair on their chests, like they say,” Black Jack chuckled. He seemed amused, but beneath his vest his hand crept to his dagger’s hilt as he looked for rage on the big man’s face. Seeing nothing but a cool gray gaze, he relaxed, shrugged, and added, “Still, whatever it be, I can tell you this: She’s got herself a problem. A famous one. She’s one and twenty and never had a man, nor wanted one. In fact, the better-looking the fellow, the more she resists him. I can’t remember all the names she’s called me in me time! Nor the many ways she’s threatened to remove my hand if I lay so much as a finger on her.” He grinned, as if in fond remembrance.
Magnus lifted one thin brow. Keeping his temper so firmly in check that he appeared incredibly bored, he asked merely, “Then why do you want her as wife?”
“Use your eyes, just look at her, man! Ah, but it ain’t just her pretty face, nor that glorious form. It’s her, herself. With all her fears and anger, she’s pure fire beneath. It’s herself she’s fearing as much as any man, I tell you. She feels the lure same as any woman, more than most, in fact. But she don’t want to become like none of them poor sad wretches her father or his men ill used. For whether they be married or slave, or freeborn whore, she never met no female at home she wanted to grow up to be.”
Magnus nodded. He had sensed the conflict in her too. What bothered him was that this man was also clever enough to have seen it.
“Aye,” Black Jack went on, “fire. And the right man can set it free. I count meself to be that man.”
“I see,” Magnus said aga
in. He let out a long sigh and rose from the table. He put his two hands down flat on the top of it and looked down at the pirate. “I’ll take you to see her tomorrow,” Magnus told him, “if only to save myself the trouble of preventing you from breaking into the house. But mark me well. You will meet with her. You may speak with her. But nothing else. Not tomorrow. After that it will be entirely her decision. I will abide by it…and so will you.”
Black Jack studied him for a long moment. Then he, too, rose. He spat in his palm and then thrust out his hand. “Done!” he said.
Magnus took off his glove. They shook hands.
“Ten o’clock then. I’ll be here,” Magnus said.
The pirate grew a slow, long, and toothy smile, just thinking of how it would look for him to swagger alongside the viscount at ten in the morning, and then go up the stairs to his brother’s elegant house in the respectable part of town where he lived. He’d spied the place out when he’d first arrived in England, looking for windows to enter should it be necessary. The thought of a pirate fool enough to show his nose on a sunny morning on such a street in London town almost made him laugh aloud. His smile grew wider. It would be good to take the big fellow down a notch or two, he thought, as he prepared to tell him of the sheer idiocy of his suggestion. Ten indeed.
“At night, of course,” Magnus added, causing the pirate’s smile to fade. ’Till then,” Magnus said, nodding, and turning on his heel, he walked out.
He left the pirate to stare after him, frowning, reevaluating the big man he’d just fenced with in so many ways, thinking furiously and wondering. And worrying.
*
There was no one at the table when Cristabel came down for luncheon. There was a footman at the sideboard and another to lay out her plate for her. But there was no sign of Martin or his wife.
“The master has gone out,” the butler remarked when Cristabel stood and looked at the empty chairs at the table. She’d never been alone in this room before. “And the mistress has decided to have her meal in her rooms. She suffers from the headache.”