Daring Lords and Ladies

by Emily Murdoch

  “There you are,” he said softly, putting quits on her assumption.

  She stood, immobile, unsure of what to do or say.

  After a long moment, he stepped off the last tread and slowly approached. She could not see his expression in the dim light. It was only when he stopped a few paces away in the watery light from the porthole behind her that she could see his face, so handsome and dear to her, still thin from his imprisonment. She searched his gaze, trying to read his emotions. The silence stretched until she could no longer bear it.

  “You’re back,” she said, her voice dry and raspy.

  He nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving her face. In fact, he studied her as if he’d not seen her in months. As if he was touching her with his fingertip, she felt his gaze on her brow, her cheeks, her jaw, and finally her lips, soft as a caress.

  “You—” she began.

  “It’s over,” he said at the same time.

  She nodded, not knowing what else to say. He seemed so at peace, so like the man she had fallen in love with, she could almost believe the last month had not transpired.

  He smiled slowly, the sensuous curve of his mouth affecting her as it always did, eliciting emotions and sensations that were at once comforting and stimulating. She forced her gaze from that smile. She couldn’t think straight looking at it. And she was so confused as it was. Her gaze fell to his hands. His knuckles were split on several fingers, his right hand swollen from hitting something hard. A jaw? Degroot’s nose, perhaps?

  As she watched, his hand lifted slowly, palm up, asking for her own. She stared at it, unsure of what to do. It was clearly a conciliatory gesture, something she longed for. And yet…

  “You were right, of course,” he said. “Killing Degroot was not the answer.”

  Her heart sank and she took his hand to console him.

  “He’s dead, then?”

  “Oh no,” he replied cheerily. “he’s alive and sitting in a prison cell in Bridgetown.”

  Jo stared mutely at his grinning face, unsure if he was telling her the truth.

  “How—”

  “It turns out, Degroot doesn’t visit the town himself since a call for his arrest went out for impregnating the mayor’s daughter last year. It was why I found him on his ship.

  “But you—” She seemed incapable of completing a sentence.

  “I realized what you were trying to tell me,” he replied, all jocularity leaving his voice. “It was a near thing,” he whispered. “I had my knife ready, Degroot at my mercy. I was close. So close. But all I could see in my mind was your face. Not like it is now, befuddled but adorable.” He dodged her half-hearted jab with a huff of laughter. “But sad. Full of disappointment. And I realized what you meant about giving Degroot power over me. And…I let him live. We took him to shore and I was going to try to convince the magistrate to prosecute him—a longshot, mind you, given that there were no slaves on his ship and it was just my word against his. But as soon as the magistrate heard his name, he gleefully clapped him in irons.

  “Gleefully?”

  Ford’s lips twitched in humor. “It seems our magistrate is a bumbling idiot—”

  “What? He told you that?” Jo asked, her mind whirling with the revelations of the last minute.

  “Of course not. It was evident within the first minutes of meeting him.” Ford sat on the bale she had been perched on and drew her down to sit on his lap, cradling her against him. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her scent before continuing.

  “What the magistrate did share was that Degroot had slipped through his fingers twice before and the mayor had been most displeased. I believe he hopes presenting a trussed Degroot now will redeem his lackluster career.”

  “So he’s imprisoned? Degroot?”

  “Yes. And likely to remain so for a very long time.”

  “What of his crew? Will they continue to run slaves?”

  “I implied to the magistrate that Degroot’s hold was full of gold and contraband. He’s ordered the vessel impounded pending further investigation. With no captain, no cargo, and no ship for the foreseeable future, Degroot’s crew will scatter, hiring out as they can find work. Degroot was the only one who made real wealth off of his illegal trade.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes. Jo reflected on all Ford had told her, comparing it to the dark, despairing thoughts she had been wallowing in just a few minutes earlier. A wrenching sob escaped her, surprising both her and Ford.

  “Love, what is it?” he asked, tilting her head up so he could see her face. She closed her eyes to avoid looking at him as she struggled to regain control of her wayward emotions, but the tears would not stop. They were a mixture of relief that Ford had heeded her pleas, fierce pleasure that Degroot was imprisoned, and shame that she had doubted her husband.

  “Jo, tell me. Let me make it right,” he pleaded, smoothing her hair back from her face and pressing a kiss to her damp forehead.

  She took a shuddering breath. “I—I thought I didn’t know you at all. I thought I’d fallen in love with a—a façade, or at least just a small part of you. Because of—well, because of being married to Kent, I thought I’d again misjudged the man I married. I thought I’d made the same mistake again.”

  She forced herself to meet Ford’s gaze then and the pain she saw in his eyes made her heart clench painfully.

  “I am so sorry I gave you reason to doubt me. It’s just—what happened to me and the other men…It was more than just a false imprisonment. It was slavery. It was bound up in hundreds of years of my people’s suffering, of my mother’s—”

  “I know,” she said, gently cradling his beloved face and silencing his words with a kiss. “I tried to put myself in your position. I remembered the feelings of fear and hate and misery of my life with Kent and multiplied it by my mother and grandmother and her mother before. I—I can’t know, of course, exactly what the experience meant to you, but I think I have an understanding.”

  Ford kissed her softly on the lips. “It is done. And we are now free of our respective prisons.” He kissed her again, a long, lingering communion of lips that spoke more of forgiveness and redemption than any words could.

  After a time, he lifted his head and Jo blinked her eyes open to study her husband by the dim light of the porthole.

  A rueful grin curved his lips and he wiped a hand over his sweaty brow. “Can we go above deck now, love? It’s hotter than Hades down here!”

  Jo laughed, aware that her own clothes and hair were damp with perspiration as well.

  As they climbed out into the fresh sea breeze a thought occurred to her.

  “What will we do now?”

  “Hmm?” Ford asked, holding his arms out and allowing the breeze to dry his shirt and cool his body.

  “The past months have been spent escaping one calamity after another. Now that we are both free, what will we do? Where will we go?

  His arms still aloft, Ford spun in a slow circle.

  “The world is your oyster, Mrs. Spooner. You have only to name the destination.”

  She followed him to the prow of the ship and held his hand as they stared out at the open ocean. It was a heady feeling, the idea that they were free to explore the world, free to live, free to love. Whatever difficulties they may face in the future, they would face together with the support of their family that was Ford’s crew.

  “I feel like a different person,” she said as the sun slowly dipped into the sea.

  “Different from what?”

  “Different from the woman I was a year ago, even six months ago. I feel different even than a day ago. As if everything has changed me somehow.”

  “We are always changing, aren’t we? Otherwise we stagnate,” Ford said, staring at her as if she was the most precious person in the world. “But I think that you’re simply becoming your true self.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, watching the golden beams of the setting sun glaze his skin in its honeyed warmth
, lighting the golden streaks in his hazel eyes.

  “I think you’ve always been an intrepid explorer, savior…lover.” He paused to nibble the skin beneath her ear and she felt her body melt against his in anticipation of later. “And perhaps all of life’s other circumstances were simply holding you back from your true nature.”

  She smiled at the idea. “So instead of being a terrified battered woman or a meek and dutiful sister, I’ve actually always been courageous and daring?”

  “How else could you have escaped Kent or defended Mrs. Livingston? Or crossed a sea to rescue me?”

  She turned to link her arms around his neck. “And how do you like the real Josephine, then?”

  “Very much,” he growled, low in his throat. “Very much indeed.”

  And with that, he swooped her off her feet and carried her down to their cabin to prove it.

  Epilogue

  Jo climbed unsteadily down from the carriage and paused a moment to stretch, her hands digging into the tight muscles of her lower back. She began waddling across the drive to the wide steps leading up into Ford’s family home, one supportive hand low on her enormous belly.

  Her husband came out of the dim interior of the house and rushed to take her arm.

  “I was just coming for you. You should have stayed in the carriage.”

  Jo shook her head and panted lightly as they climbed the steps. “Too hot outside,” she said. “And I have to go again.”

  “Again? We stopped not a mile back to—” At the look Jo levelled at him, he wisely shut his mouth and once inside, escorted her down the hall to the water closet.

  Once she re-emerged, she found her normally reserved husband practically hopping from foot to foot.

  “Why are you so anxious?”

  He laughed. “I’m not anxious. I just want everything to be perfect for you.”

  “I am no longer on a ship or in a carriage. I require nothing else except perhaps a bed that does not tilt with the waves,” Jo answered, removing her bonnet and glancing around the main hall, off of which she could see a collection of drawing rooms, a dining room, study, and a back door to the breezeway leading to the kitchens. The wooden floors and bannisters gleamed with beeswax, the scent sweet and comforting. The wooden shutters were angled to keep the bright mid-day sun at bay and the air was pleasantly cool. A slight breeze dried her damp face and she turned to fully catch it.

  “My father designed the house to catch the ocean breezes,” Ford explained.

  “It’s wonderful,” Jo said, ignoring the sharp twinge across her belly.

  In the last two years, she and Ford had travelled to Europe, the northern United States, and even visited Egypt. Though Monsieur Pallet had returned to his small packet ship, the rest of the Nightingale’s crew had remained aboard as they transported goods from country to country. In England, she’d been able to introduce Ford to Lady Howard, who had helped her escape Thomas Kent.

  Lady Howard and her husband had hosted a dinner party in their honor and while there had been some stares and scarcely-muffled comments about her and Ford’s marriage, the majority of the Howard’s friends had been welcoming and interested in life in the East Indies.

  As soon as Jo found herself pregnant, they had intended to return immediately to St. Kitts, but ship repairs, bad weather, and a run-in with an unscrupulous French merchant in Egypt had delayed their departure and by the time they were on their way home, the trade winds were not with them.

  So it was that they’d docked in Basseterre with scarcely a few weeks before the babe was due. Ford had rushed about, ordering local supplies and overseeing the transport of the furniture and rugs they’d acquired on their travels, having it all sent ahead to his house while Jo visited her brother (who politely hid his shock and both her marriage and her advanced state of pregnancy) and Jasper, who had finally convinced Molly to marry him. The two still worked for Theo, but had a small house of their own on the outskirts of Basseterre and had provided invaluable help in getting Ford’s house ready.

  As her confinement grew closer, Jo grew more anxious to be settled in her own home and so had endured the two-hour carriage ride, despite the increasingly frequent twinges she’d been experiencing since dawn.

  “They don’t have all the furniture unpacked and I’ve no idea where our trunks are,” Ford said as Jo blew a steady stream of air out, trying to push away the sharp pain as her belly tightened. “Would you like to sit in the study? It’s the coolest room in the house at this time of day. I can have some refresh—what is it?” Ford asked suddenly as Jo grasped his arm to keep from doubling over. “Is it the babe?”

  Jo nodded, too focused on the contraction to speak.

  “You said you had plenty of time!” he protested. She spared him a narrow-eyed glare before bending to rest her hands on her knees while she panted through the pain.

  “What be the matter, Miss Josephine?” Molly said, coming through the hall with an armload of linens. She handed them off to Jasper and rushed to take Jo’s other arm, laying a hand on Jo’s belly.

  “Get them linens on the master bed now, Jasper,” she said without turning her head. Jo’s old friend ran up the stairs with the spryness of a man half his age. To Ford, Molly said, “You gonna have to carry her up—no, not now. You gotta wait until the contraction passes. Jes’ breathe easy, Mis Josephine. That’s right,” she urged. “How long since the last one? The last pain?”

  Jo shook her head but then answered, “A few minutes. Just before I came inside.”

  Molly laughed softly and gestured for Ford to sweep Jo up into his arms. As she led the way upstairs, she said over her shoulder, “You lucky you didn’t have this babe on the road here then. You should have stayed at Mister Theo’s house.”

  “I wanted—uhn. Wanted him to be born in his father’s house, not his uncles.”

  Molly snorted her disapproval while Ford asked softly, “Him?”

  Jo frowned as another wave of tightness began. “Him. You’d better—oooh! You’d better start thinking of names.”

  “You’ll know soon enough if it’s a boy,” Molly said as she pushed Ford to move faster. At the landing, she ushered them into a spacious, dimly lit bedroom. It was dominated by a massive bedframe and mattress, over which Jasper was stretched, frantically spreading linens.

  “Leave that be, husband,” Molly commanded. “Get back down to the kitchen and tell them to start bringing up water. Boiling, you hear?” she called after Jasper’s retreating form. “Now, Mister Ford, ease her down gentle-like.”

  As soon as Jo’s feet touched the floor, another pain struck her. She scarcely noticed Molly and Ford stripping her down to her chemise, which was already drenched in perspiration and clinging to the oval protuberance of her belly.

  “Have you—” she paused to gasp. “Have you ever had a baby, Molly?”

  She felt the other woman’s strong, gentle hands ease her onto the bed and tuck an old quilt up under her hips.

  “No I ain’t ever had my own babe, but I sure delivered enough. You gonna be jes’ fine, Miss Josephine. Don’t you worry.”

  Through the waves of pain which followed, Jo was only peripherally aware of Ford’s tense, ashen face as she grunted and moaned. Molly’s calm, firm voice guided her through each contraction and in the end, her body took over, doing what it instinctively knew to do.

  Less than two hours later, Jo’s son bellowed his greeting to the world.

  “You were right,” Ford said, his husky voice filled with wonder.

  “Of course I was,” Jo murmured sleepily. She cradled their baby closer and reached a hand up to caress her husband’s face. “What do you want to call him?”

  “Oh no,” Ford said emphatically. “After the work you just did, no one is naming him but you.”

  She smiled and let her eyes droop closed. “Later, then. We’ll decide later.”

  Ford watched his sleeping wife and newborn son and felt a surge of love so intense it was nearly painful. He brush
ed a stray tendril of hair off Jo’s brow and caressed her face tenderly before moving his hand to cup the downy head of his son. He closed his eyes in silent prayer and an image of his mother immediately filled his mind. He focused on her smiling face, feeling as if she were here, in this very room where he himself had been born and he felt a peace wash over him that let him know he had finally come home.

  Thief of Broken Hearts

  The Sons of Eliza Bryant

  Book One

  Louisa Cornell

  Thief of Broken Hearts: Book One The Sons of Eliza Bryant Copyright © 2018 by Pamela Bolton Holifield.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Chapter One

  London

  August, 1814

  “Your Grace, I…”

  Endymion de Waryn, Duke of Pendeen, lifted his quill mid-word. He raised his head and stared at his personal secretary…astonished. Yes. Astonished. Not surprised, as Babcock had stood there long enough to repeat those same three words twice now, punctuated by a few moments of painful silence and violent throat clearing after each utterance.

  At two and thirty, Endymion had been neither astonished, nor surprised, nor shocked in nearly two decades. His carefully scheduled life precluded it, just as he preferred.

  Astonished. Precisely, and the Duke of Pendeen was nothing if not precise. A quality he also expected of every man, woman, and child in his service.

  “Your Grace, I…” The secretary, standing just inside the door, extended his hand. The stack of the day’s post, trapped in his long, knobby fingers, fluttered like so many ivory butterflies caught in flight.