by Marie Hall
He was nothing like Devin expected, though anything less than a red-skinned, fanged, horned man with a tail was unexpected. For a man perhaps in his fifties, he was rather stiff looking, though there was something weak about him showing through the polish. He might have had boyish looks at one time, but now he looked like a child that never grew up.
“Admiral?” Fallbrook again snapped to attention.
“You’ll send for the captain now.” Admiral Booker waved the man out.
“Why have we been brought here?” Lady Briskbee asked and Devin knew instantly who was in charge of the group.
“Perhaps we might start with introductions,” Mrs. Booker said. Devin smiled, the woman was ever the consummate hostess. Even in a battle.
“There’s no reason for any of this,” Lady Briskbee snapped. “The chit need only return what is mine or I’ll have the magistrate arrest her for theft.” The woman seemed not to realize she was hardly anyone at all in this room with her minor title. Her son, though, took note of the Duke of Marshal sitting now on the corner of the admiral’s desk.
Lord James Briskbee started as his eyes swept over the room then settled on Mia. Devin knew the minute recognition set in. The man knew who Mia was to him. And he was clearly shocked to see her.
“Yes, yes,” the magistrate agreed. Devin didn’t doubt by the way Lady Briskbee glared at him, she thought this matter already settled. “I’ll do the introductions. I’m Walter Milton, Magistrate for South Portsmouth. I’ll be presiding over this matter. This is Baroness Gerta Briskbee, she’s the complainant. Her son, Baron James Briskbee, witness.”
The admiral cleared his throat, pulled back his shoulders and began introductions for their side. “I’m Admiral Jonathan Booker. This is my wife, Mrs. Annabel Booker. Then here we have his grace, the Duke of Marshall, Phillip Lovelace and his sister Lady Alice. This distinguished gentleman is Bartholomew Smithe, First Mate on the… Molly.” Everyone saw James Briskbee start. “And of course Captain and Mrs. Robert D. Winthrop, whom I believe your complaint is against.”
“Ah very good,” the magistrate said, and held out a sheet of paper which Devin took as Mia stared at the man who fathered her. “Do you have the item in question?”
“There is no question about the item,” Mia said, finally breaking eye contact and turning to glare at Lady Briskbee. “It’s mine. It belonged to my mother and my papa handed it down to me.”
“It never belonged to your mother,” Lady Briskbee snarled. “She stole it.”
“Mother,” James hissed, showing just a bit of spine. “It may have been more a misunderstanding. There’s no reason to malign anyone’s character. I’m sure that… Mia, is it?” he asked tilting his head to the side as if to see her in some different way, “doesn’t care to hear ill of her mother.”
Devin did wonder then if the man wanted to add that neither did he, but…
“I prefer the distance of formality, sir,” Mia said, her voice cold and calm.
“Beg pardon, Mrs. Winthrop,” James said, and his disappointment was clear. If he thought he might charm Mia into giving them back the piece, he knew now it wouldn’t happen. This man and the commodore couldn’t be any more different than night and day. It wasn’t anything from his loins that made Mia the perfect woman she was. That was every bit the commodore and crews. It was they who taught Mia what a real man was, how a real man treated a woman, regardless of her place in society.
“You’ll not beg pardon of that little—” Lady Briskbee started, only to have all four men step threateningly towards her.
“You’ll remain civil in this proceeding, madam,” Philip told her flatly. She flushed and huffed but she nodded her understanding.
“Yes well,” the magistrate started clapping his hands together. “If you have the piece, please produce it that it should be known if it is indeed the one in question.”
Mia sighed but lifted her hair from her shoulders, so it no longer covered the brooch. Again no one missed how Lord Briskbee started. It was almost as if he didn’t think it would be the piece he was here to recover. Again, his eyes surveyed Mia. And while Devin might have expected either anger or sadness what he thought he saw was a hunger.
“Might you remove it from your person?” magistrate Milton asked.
Mia was quick and emphatic. “No, I will not.”
“I would have you prove the piece is yours before you require my wife to remove it,” Devin told them.
“Of course it’s mine,” Lady Briskbee said, and withdrew a parchment roll from her reticule. “They’ve been in my family for generations.” She handed that to his honor and reached again to pull out a case. Opening it, she turned it to display the matching brooch.
“Give me that,” Lord Lovelace said when the magistrate didn’t seem to know what to make of the document he was handed. “It says here there are six of these. The other four, where are they?”
“My sister was given three and I was given three,” Briskbee said.
“And your other one? Where is that?” Lovelace pressed.
“My other son has it. He was given it on his sixteenth birthday, just as that one was given to James.” The woman’s certainty was perhaps unraveling as the questions continued. And Devin couldn’t say how very much having Lovelace, a man fully studied in law and governance, on Mia’s side pleased him.
“So the brooch is in fact not yours, but your son’s? This son?” Lovelace asked, pointing to the man who was busy again studying Mia.
“Well, yes,” the woman spluttered. “What difference can it make?”
“Madam, you have no claim if the brooch belonged to your son and not you,” Lovelace said and handed the paper back to the magistrate who was standing there useless in the face of someone who was studied in legal matters and not simply the poor sod selected to act as if he was.
“The brooch belongs in my family. I want it back.” The woman stomped her foot and Devin almost fell over. He wouldn’t have thought such things could simply be in one’s blood but perhaps…
“You have no claim,” Lovelace said again, perching himself on the corner of the Admiral’s desk. “The brooch was no longer yours once it was given to your son.”
“James.” Gerta Briskbee slapped her son’s arm to gain his attention which remained completely focused on Mia.
To Devin the man seemed almost in awe that she was even standing before him. Mia for her part paid little attention to James.When she did look his way it was with a disdain Devin didn’t know she could rise too. Even her fine maneuvering against Major Bennet didn’t really carry disdain, contempt wasn’t even there. She simply thought him stupid for trying to intimidate her. Which of course he was.
“I’m sorry Mother, what?” James said momentarily looking away from his daughter then back again with wonderment in his expression.
“Tell them you want the brooch back. That it’s yours and that stupid girl stole it from you.”
“If you should like to leave here with your teeth I suggest you have more care about how you speak about my mother,” Mia warned stepping up to the woman. “Because from all I know, it was this man who behaved stupidly, if that’s what you want to call it, when he gifted the brooch to my mother. I call it dishonorable and cowardly, personally,” Mia said making it plain her opinion of the man who’d bedded then abandoned a young naive girl. One who maybe hoped he’d remove her from her father’s unhappy house.
Devin also knew Mia was choosing her words carefully. They might have only had two days, but Lovelace prepared Mia well enough.
“It wasn’t a gift. It was never a gift,” Gerta snapped.
“What might you call it?” Magistrate Milton asked. “Did she take it without permission or was it given to her?”
“I gave it to Miss Molly Cadley,” James admitted. It was clear the man didn’t give a damn about the brooch. “Damn, but you look just like her,” he spoke, barely louder than a whisper.
“It was given as a promise to wed, but when the
engagement was broken it should have been returned,” Gerta Briskbee was quick to say. She probably knew at least this much of the laws. “And it’s a family heirloom. I want it back. I demand it back.”
“It’s the common way of things, Mrs. Winthrop. A family heirloom given as a promise to wed is returned to the family if the marriage doesn’t take place.”
“But it wasn’t given as a promise to wed,” Mia said. “He might want to call it a gift,” Mia said tossing her hand out at James Briskbee. “And she might want to call it an engagement gift.” She nodded towards her grandmother. “But why not call it what it was,” Mia stepped to the desk and slid the three letters across its surface towards Lovelace who lifted them and waited. “It was given as payment rendered for… services.” Mia turned to again face the woman who by every legal way possible was her grandmother. “Your stupid son used your family heirloom to pay for sex. He forfeited it, as anyone forfeits anything of value when they purchase something. Like I trade gold to buy rum, he traded this brooch to buy my mother’s virginity.”
“Your mother was a whore,” Briskbee said and was almost felled by the slap Mia laid across her face.
“My mother was an innocent young girl your son lied to, seduced, and after he got what he wanted, abandoned,” Mia snarled, and Devin prepared to intervene if either of the Briskbees thought to retaliate. But as Devin deduced at the start, the man was weak. Too weak to even defend his mother. And with little doubt too weak twenty years ago to go against the woman when he did learn Molly carried his child.
“Mrs. Winthrop, you will contain yourself. You’ll not strike a member of the peerage,” Magistrate Milton remarked, stopping short of saying they were Mia’s betters. They certainly weren’t and that they all but admitted James Briskbee fathered Mia gave Mia a wider deck to plant her feet.
“Or what? You will fine me?” Mia snarled. “Well you can’t, can you, because my birthright makes me a member same as she, doesn’t it, Lord Briskbee?”
The man didn’t respond. He seemed far too intrigued by Mia’s boldness. His mother wasn’t going to be silenced so easily. “Are you trying to claim kinship? Why you odious little—”
“Madam,” Lady Alice said, coming to her feet. “I have had quite enough of your attempts at slander. You’re the very reason the heads of all nobility rolled in France. No one could stand for the contempt people like you rain down without thought or justification.” Alice crossed the room and snatched the letters from her brother’s hands. “This is your seal, here in the wax on these letters, is it not?” She held them out for the magistrate to take and show Gerta, but she went on even as everyone looked. “But of course, a sword and ribbon.” Alice snatched the letters back and handed them to her brother. “Your entire bloodline puts the word nobility to shame. Your son spent great effort to woo a young woman who until he crossed her path was upstanding and moral. As stated in your son’s own hand, she had fine prospects as a missionary’s daughter within the respectable clergy. She may not have been nobility, but she was a lady all the same. As her daughter is.”
“As lady Alice has pointed out, the gentleman’s own words, crass and vulgar as they are, do attest that the brooch was used to pay for services rendered,” Devin saw Philip cast Mia an apologetic glance. “Pardon, Mrs. Winthrop.” Mia shrugged. “I shouldn’t like to have to read them out loud that all hear how faithless, dishonest, selfish and heartless your son is, but if you wish to continue this pursuit of Mrs. Winthrop’s legal property I won’t only read them here, I’ll read them to heads of state when I bring you both to parliament as I work to see about laws criminalizing what you and your family did to Miss Molly Cadley, and her daughter. These last letters full of such threats about ruining a family who’d done nothing at all dishonorable or disgraceful…”
“You’re really Molly’s child,” James Briskbee said, still staring at Mia with an unnatural gleam in his eye. “Is your mother still alive?” James asked but maybe not intentionally out loud. Though it proved he wasn’t really paying attention to the proceedings
“We’ll buy back the brooch,” Lady Briskbee shouted. “A thousand pounds.”
“It’s not for sale,” Mia stated flatly. “Not at any price.”
“Mrs. Winthrop,” the magistrate started, but was interrupted when the door behind him opened and Captain Mallory slipped in. Devin almost laughed at the man’s instant show of terror as he must have realized what he walked into. “The lady has made a fair offer and it’s her family’s heirloom.”
“My mother surrendered her dreams for a bribe, I’ll not surrender them again for one. This is now my family heirloom.”
“Two thousand pounds,” Gerta called like she might have missed what Mia said.
“And how, madam, might you pay that amount. Everything you have now is under strain from creditors,” Lady Alice announced and Devin saw both Briskbees pale.
“Aye, you’ll never come up with a price high enough,” Mr. Smithe said, stepping forward and speaking for the first time. “Captain Cadley, that is, Mrs. Winthrop in her own right has enough money to buy out your creditors and set you down to the very level of pathetic, begging, undesirable rubbish you claim to detest but can’t stop chasing the skirts of. If you don’t care to see her become the owner of your other brooch you might think about shoving off now.”
“You’ve become wealthy?” James said, but he didn’t sound very surprised.
“Ridiculously,” Devin said and stepped up behind Mia. The man who was her father was looking more and more like a man ready to throw her to the floor and rape her. How a man could look so lustfully at his own daughter. It was vile and disgusting.
“You’re my daughter,” the man breathed, and Devin felt Mia tense. “Amaz—”
Mia stepped right to him and spat in his face. “That is from my mother,” she told him. “From me, have this. I’m not your daughter. I’m the daughter of Molly Cadley and Captain Gregor Dekker. I’m the product of their love and devotion to each other. You had no part in making me who or what I am.” She stepped back but didn’t drop eye contact with the man who had to take a handkerchief from his mother. “Molly Cadley hated you every minute of my life. You stole something of her away from me. And for some time, I’ve let you steal the same from me. No price can be named to buy that back the joy and satisfaction hate takes from life. Starting now and until the seas run dry, I won’t think of you again. I won’t give you even my hate. You’re nothing at all to me.” She set her hand over the brooch. “And when I pass this down to my own child I’ll tell them only it’s a reminder that out of the sea comes life. That it brought two people together in the simplest and truest manner. Nothing of you will ever be attached to it and when you are gone and long forgotten this will be the one thing everyone will know brought true love to two people. One of them named Molly Cadley.”
Devin watched carefully now. A drowning man could become crazed in his attempt to stay afloat. But rather than attack and try and take Mia down too, James Briskbee smiled sadly, nodded and taking his mother by the arm turned and left the room.
“The matter seems settled after all,” Mr. Milton said.
“You’ll make an official record that it won’t become a matter again,” Lord Lovelace said. “As I intend to make it such at a much higher level.”
“Of course, of course,” Milton said, nodding and bowing to everyone before scrambling after the other two departing people.
“Oh Mia,” Alice cried and hugged her. “You couldn’t have done it any better.”
“I will say not,” Mrs. Booker said also hugging Mia. “I think well I should want you always on my side in a fight.”
“Speaking of sides and fights,” Devin said, bringing everyone’s attention to Mallory who stood against the far wall trying to stay out of sight.
“Indeed,” Admiral Booker said. “Captain Mallory, on deck.”
“Admiral?” Mallory stepped forward and squared his shoulders.
“I’ve no understan
ding at all of your reasons for involving yourself in any of these private and personal matters involving Mrs. Winthrop. But your utter failure to stand with your fellow captain in all things is nothing but a disservice and disappointment.” He lifted a sheet of paper from his desk and handed it to the captain. “Your appearance before the admiral’s board will be the second Tuesday of next month. Be prepared to explain your actions, sir, or be ready to be discharged. Good day.”
“And try and keep from letting your prick think for you anymore, cousin,” Alice added. Alerting Devin that it wasn’t professional jealousy, simply lust for Mia that made the man act irrationally. Unlike Helen Mallory in her want of Devin, Kendrick hadn’t seen Mia was beyond his reach.
“Aye, Admiral,” Mallory said then turned sharply and marched out.
“Captain?” Mia cried as she turned to face him, and her knees gave out.
“Oh, sit her here,” Mrs. Booker cried and helped him ease her down to the sofa.
“Here,” Smithe said handing her a cup. “Oh stop it’s a little port from the sideboard,” He grumped when Mia looked at the drink with disgust.
She took a small sip then a deep breath. “Great Neptune, that was rather frightening,” she said and a round of nervous chuckles went out.
“God save me, Mia,” Devin yelled and slapped his forehead. “That? That’s what you call frightening?” Mia only nodded at him and took another sip. “That was frightening. All these people here, and knowing you were in the right, going to win the fight before it started and that was frightening, but jumping a hundred feet or more from a cliff into the ocean was fun?”
“It is,” both Mia and Smithe said, making everyone but Devin laugh.
“God save me,” Devin sighed as the admiral stepped up and patted his shoulder consolingly.
“Only He might be able to Captain, only Him.” Again laughter filled the room.
