A True Lady

by Edith Layton

  Satisfied, his visitors stopped asking questions and began to report on what they’d been doing. And asking Magnus’s opinion of it.

  It wasn’t until dessert was being served that Cristabel was sure. Then she turned to Magnus and whispered in chagrin, “You could have married yourself a squid’s daughter, and they wouldn’t have minded! Anything you do is right to them.”

  “Yes,” he said with unholy amusement at her expression. “How lucky for me that I have better taste than that.”

  “But you let me wonder and worry,” she began to say.

  “Never,” he said seriously, stopping her. “You let yourself wonder and worry. I told you the truth from the start. I always have and I always shall, Cristabel.”

  She flushed and looked at him with such love that she didn’t notice all conversation at the table had stopped. When she looked around the table again, his whole family was beaming at her, even Sophia.

  “Well,” Cristabel told Magnus, striving valiantly for control, “that’s true—so far, at least.”

  He laughed. “And so it will go on,” he whispered, leaning closer to her as if he were only offering her a spoonful of his trifle. “But now you see why I married you. I had to have someone who fought back.” She smiled. “Only please,” he added softly, “not later tonight. For once, I’m looking forward to your being as obliging as is my family—in a different way, of course.”

  So was she. His parents were charming, and she was enormously relieved by their instant acceptance of her—although she was a little disappointed, knowing they’d have accepted any woman Magnus married—but so she, too, wished the evening were over and she were deep in Magnus’s arms in his bed again.

  She fairly bounded from her chair when her new mother-in-law yawned and started murmuring about how tiresome their long journey had been.

  “We shall sleep late tomorrow, to be sure,” the countess said as she rose and took her husband’s arm, preparing to go up to bed, “but when we wake, I want to have a nice long chat with you, Cristabel, my dear. I’m sorry I have no bride presents for you yet, but this rogue of a son of mine didn’t tell us his intentions. No matter, I’ll make it up to you. Tomorrow then, my dear, we will get thoroughly acquainted.”

  “Oh yes,” his sisters chorused happily.

  “Oh. Yes,” Cristabel said.

  Being held by Magnus was the last thing she was thinking about as he drew her into his room and closed the door behind them. Feeling the tension in her slight frame, he only held her close, his chin resting on the top of her head.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said on a heavy sigh, after she hadn’t spoken for long moments. “She’s a fearsome woman, my mother. I’d rather face a mad dog myself.”

  Now she did move. She burrowed into him as if she could hide there. “Don’t joke about it. I’m not a good liar,” she said in a muffled voice against his chest. “No, I’m a terrible liar, and well you know it. How shall I tell her? But how can I not? Oh, Magnus,” she wailed.

  He rubbed his chin on her hair, “She knows,” he said simply.

  She pushed away and stared up at him.

  “Unless you’re talking about something else?” he asked quizzically. “If it’s only that your father is Captain Whiskey, there’s no problem. But if you tell me now that you have leprosy or are given to fits of barking like a dog at the full of the moon… No, you can’t hit me, I’m an invalid, remember?” he said, dancing away a step and grinning like a boy.

  “She knows?” Cristabel asked in astonishment.

  “They think it’s terribly romantic. Of course, they also think the fact that your father so deeply repents his former life that he’s given it up to live alone and anonymously, safely across several seas, in penance, is equally romantic. They think your fortune is more romantic than anything, though.

  “Mind, they’re not going to go bragging about your father,” he added, when he saw her expression, “and it’s possible they may never mention him to anyone. But they know, and it doesn’t bother them. Ours is a proud family with an old name, but the oldest names have the most blood on them, and my parents know it well. I think even your father would be appalled at the way some of my ancestors got our property—and the way some noblemen are still getting theirs. In fact, it’s too bad there’s a price on his head, because otherwise, the way things are, your father himself might have been able to buy himself a title.

  “You see, dear wife, a reformed villain is acceptable to my family. A reformed villain they’ll never have to set eyes on, is doubly so. And having their son marry the beautiful daughter of an incredibly rich, reformed villain whom they’ll never have to see is actually the dream of most English parents. No, seriously, my love, they know, and they don’t mind. As you might have noticed, they trust my judgment. And they know, because I’ve told them, that you’re the best and only woman for me.”

  “And about my mother?” she asked fearfully, her eyes searching his.

  Now he didn’t jest. He held her shoulders and spoke seriously. “They know she was a lady, but that’s all. That’s all anyone needs to know, unless you choose to say more. As I said, you’re my lady now. Anyone talking to you or looking at you would know you’re everything a fine lady should be. All right? Now, my fine lady, will you take off all your clothes and do remarkable things with me again? Please?”

  “Oh, Magnus,” she said, laughing and blotting away glad tears, “what am I going to do with you?”

  “This,” he said in a deeper voice, as he took her back in his arms and lowered his mouth to hers, “please.”

  She laughed, she wept, and she helped him help her out of her gown. She heard a tapping on the door just as she was unbuttoning his long vest. He raised his head, thought of telling whoever it was to go hang, and then sighed. He took her hands in his.

  “Need must,” he reminded her ruefully. “It’s not our house.”

  Rebuttoning the few buttons Cristabel had managed to open, he went to the door. Cristabel darted behind the bed hangings as he cracked the door open and exchanged a few soft words with a footman. When he closed the door and came back into the room, she picked up her discarded gown and held it in front of herself. Lovemaking was clearly no longer on his mind.

  “I must go downstairs for a few minutes. There’s a visitor there waiting for me,” he told her. “He sends word that he regrets the late hour of his call but that he has news for me. A tall, dark fellow, extravagantly well dressed, the footman says: one Master Jarvis Kelly.”

  “I’m coming,” she said, scrambling into her gown.

  “No,” he said, and before she could protest, he added, as he looked at her longingly. “Even if it were necessary, I’ll not have him seeing you as you look now.”

  “I’ll be dressed, ninny,” she said as she hurriedly tried to do up her gown again.

  He put one big hand over hers, and putting a finger under her chin, tilted her head up to look at him. “For once, clothes don’t make the woman,” he said in a low voice. “Your hair, your eyes, your mouth—my love, you look like a woman ready for bedding. Any man would know. And don’t say you’ll lose that look before you come downstairs. And,” he said in a lighter voice, with love showing in his eyes, “it would take you so long to get dressed, Black Jack would have half the silver plate in the house spirited away by the time you came down. I’m jesting, but really, there’s no need for you to go. I’ll be quick as I can, and return to tell you everything.”

  “Everything? Promise?” she asked, standing absolutely still.

  He hesitated. “Yes,” he finally said. “But I’ll also tell him of my promise to you tonight, and my pledge to keep it.”

  She nodded, puzzled. It wasn’t until he was out the door that she realized what he meant. If Black Jack had anything to tell him that she wasn’t to know, he wasn’t to tell Magnus tonight. She dropped her gown and kicked it aside as she paced the room. A man of honor was just as tricky as a man without it, she decided angrily. Then she st
opped and laughed; now at least she knew she could trust him—but she’d also have to keep a close eye on him, which would be a very pleasant task.

  “My lord,” Black Jack said, putting down the glass of wine he’d been offered, and swept Magnus a low bow as the big man strode into the parlor. “Sorry to call so late, but there’s news.”

  “Come to me at any time with news,” Magnus said, noticing that though the pirate was dressed fine and fashionably, he was all in gray and black tonight, as though to blend in better with night shadows. “What is it?”

  “Someone’s still recruiting murderers,” Black Jack said, his dark eyes on Magnus’s face.

  “No, wait.” Magnus held up a hand and shook his head in annoyance. “’Od’s mercy,” he muttered to himself, “but a man must remember to be less free with his oaths. Black Jack—Master Jarvis, whatever you wish to be called…”

  “‘Jack’ will do,” Black Jack said with interest, seeing Magnus’s discomfort.

  “Well then, Jack, your old friend Cristabel pried a promise from me. I have to tell her all you say to me tonight. So if there’s a thing you’d rather she didn’t know, it will have to wait until tomorrow, if at all possible. If not, I’ll hear it now and have to contend with her… I am a man of my word,” Magnus explained, annoyed at the way the pirate was staring at him. He was even less pleased by Black Jack’s shout of hearty laughter.

  “Stave my sides, if that ain’t a good one,” Black Jack said, wiping his eyes. “Leave it to Cristabel! Got you tied like a longboat to her side already, don’t she? I gave you my congratulations already, me lord, though it grieved me to do it, for you’ve got yourself the only woman I’d ever have made me wife. Aye, but for that reason I’ll tell you something else too: I’d never tell you a thing I wouldn’t tell her, and well she knows it. We pirates got our own word to keep, you know, and old friends come first.

  “Be that as it may, the news ain’t fair to neither of you. Someone be trying to hire assassins. That’s nothing new in London town, but the word is that when anyone asks who it is they want put down, the name be: Snow. They don’t give their own name, neither. But they’re offering a lot for a job well done. They have to—seems you’ve made a grand reputation for yourself, me lord, with the poor as well as the rich. Then there’s an extra hazard, seeing how neat you and our Cristabel put away the last wretch that tried to do the job. And you be a lord, and the penalty for trying to snuff one of your kind be wicked. Desperate men don’t mind simple death as payment for failure,” Jack said, picking up an Oriental figurine and examining it. “It be the extras that give a man pause, and cost more money.”

  Magnus nodded. He poured a glass of the ruby wine for himself. “Do you think sending someone to pretend to take the job would help to find the one responsible?” he asked as he studied its red depths.

  “Aye. So I did. But we tried and it don’t work,” Jack said. “The man what was doing the hiring that night didn’t know the answer neither, and there’s truth, for not many men tend to lie with their next to last breath.”

  Magnus’s broad shoulders went tight. “I thank you on our behalf. But your method seems a bit extreme.”

  “Pirates be extreme, me lord,” Jack said.

  “Just what I was thinking,” Magnus said with a frown.

  “Then unthink it,” Jack said through clenched teeth. “It weren’t none of us responsible. No, not even the old captain his own self. I told you, it be not his style.”

  “Agreed. But it occurs to me that he must know by now that I wasn’t the man he married his daughter to. And I doubt he knows that there’s no longer any reason to be angry with me about that now.”

  “Yes,” Jack said, looking momentarily disconcerted. “But then, me lord,” he said with a curling smile, “there ain’t many folks do know, except for those of us most directly involved with you two. Oh, I’ll not be saying your match ain’t legal as the king’s own marriage is. Nor that there weren’t a good reason for it to be done so quick and silent at the time. But it were kind of a hole-in-the-corner affair, weren’t it? How is the capt’n—or anyone else—to know you really gone and married her, and that it’s not all a humbug?”

  Magnus put his glass down with a snap and uttered a low oath. “Damn you, Jack, for being right. ’Od’s death, but I’m a fool! I was so glad to be wed to her, I didn’t think…” He brooded for a second before he looked at his visitor with a growing smile. “Well then, my friend, you’ve just invited yourself to one of the finest weddings London has ever seen. I’ll contact a minister related to half the royal family, and have the other half packed into St. George’s—maybe even St. Paul’s—whichever has the most room to accommodate the most of London. Buy yourself a pair of dancing slippers, Jack. You’ll have need of them soon.”

  “Aye,” Jack said, “soonest is best. Good then. I may not approve of the groom, mind, but I think that’s the ticket. If someone be vexed about you and her, seeing is believing. Having a grand wedding may end the problem, one way or the other.”

  “Yes. One way or another,” Magnus said thoughtfully. “Thank you for giving me an easy solution to what must be a hard problem for you,” he said, extending a hand to the pirate.

  “It be for the lass,” Jack said gruffly, taking his hand and clasping it harder than he had to as he added, “Now, you take care of her until her second wedding day, me lord. ’Twould be prudent—’cause neither your fine reputation nor your title would stop me from my revenge, if you don’t.”

  *

  “We’re getting married,” Magnus said as he strode into his bedroom again.

  “What?” Cristabel squeaked, sitting straight up in bed.

  He paused in undoing his cravat and stared at the shapely breasts that had risen from under the covers. She saw the direction of his gaze, and started to pull the bedclothes up again.

  “No,” he said, coming to her side and taking hold of her hands, “no need to conceal such loveliness from me.” He bent his head and kissed one high breast on its puckered rosy tip, then the other. She quivered and touched his hair gently, but stopped him when he began to do it again.

  “No,” she said, “tell me first. What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, that,” he said, casting his coat aside hurriedly. “Well, wife, it occurred to me that we wed like Romeo and Juliet, which is fine, and very romantic, but not practical for our purposes. It was good of you not to complain, but I’ve come to see that I was selfish. I was so delighted with my bride, I didn’t think that the best way to introduce her to my world was to have a wedding they’d all be talking about for years to come. Invite people to something they have to dress up for, feed them until they groan,” he said in a muffled voice as he quickly drew his shirt up over his head. “Let them dance till dawn at our expense, and they’ll bless our marriage forevermore. And that’s just what we shall do,” he said as he emerged from it, “as soon as possible. They are often dullards, but they can count to nine. Of course, we’ll tell them the truth, that we married in haste at my sickbed. But I want them to know we didn’t have to.”

  She gazed at him, watching how the candlelight gilded the play of muscles in his broad back as he bent to remove his shoes.

  “Aye, I can see that, but—but if you just tell them we were wed, they won’t have to know—this way they’ll all know my name is Stew,” she whispered fearfully, “and surely everyone in London won’t be as accepting as your family is.”

  “True. But there are other Stews, my lady, just as there are other Snows and Smiths and Joneses, for that matter. What of it? You don’t think every man named Marlowe is related to the poet, do you? Or every Kidd, a son of that infamous pirate? Well, then.” He shucked his breeches and came quickly up the step to the bed. “Of course there’ll be rumors. London lives on rumors,” he said as he took her into his arms. “There would be rumors even if your name were Becket and you were the holy man’s own daughter. Rumors are like gnats: annoying, but mercifully short-lived.”r />
  He laid her down, drew back the covers, and looked his fill at her, drawing her close. She was warm and fragrant against his eager body. He filled his hands with her breasts, with her hips and then her buttocks, feeling the gently swelling textures and contours of her, and bent his head to let his lips follow where his hands had led him. He groaned. It was hard for him to let go of her even for a minute. But he did, because he felt the tension in her slight frame, and because she didn’t throw her arms about him and respond with the wholehearted passion he’d come to expect of her. He sighed. “Now what?” he asked, drawing back a little to watch her eyes.

  “What did Black Jack say?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he said, trying to concentrate on what had happened rather than what he hoped would soon happen. “He said there was a man trying to hire someone to do us harm. I knew that, because I’ve started some investigations of my own. He regretted that he couldn’t find out more than that, or who it was that hired the man to recruit a killer in the first place, although he said he interviewed the man thoroughly—in pirate fashion.”

  He waited for her reaction and was wryly amused to see her nod with satisfaction and mutter, “Aye, good thing that.”

  “Then he warned me to be very careful of you, as if he had to tell me,” Magnus said. “But I forgave him enough to invite him to our wedding. I thanked him. I gave him a glass of wine. He looked very well. Now what?” he said, seeing her frown.

  “Nothing else?”

  He thought a minute. “That’s the gist of it. I can’t repeat it word for word. He said we’ll find the villain, as, of course, we will. And he said again that he wasn’t responsible, nor were any of your father’s men, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  She sighed. Then she drew him back to her. “Aye, that was what I was worried about.”

  He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her, and ran his hands over her and sighed with pleasure and the anticipation of pleasure as her body rose to meet him and her hands sought him as well.

  “Then stop worrying,” he muttered against her breast.