by Mia Marlowe
The woman—Miss Lark? Sparrow? No, Wren, that was it!—Mistress Wren had the effrontery to frown at her briefly.
“Lady Curtmantle, none here hold you responsible for your husband’s reprehensible behavior,” she said in clipped tones. “But perhaps you should be thankful that Lord Drake chose an unconventional method to teach your husband humility rather than render you a widow.”
Catherine’s jaw dropped. No servant—and what was this woman if not merely a servant who carried heavier responsibility than most?—no servant should speak to her in such a manner.
“Shall I deliver your regrets to Lord Drake or would you care to follow me?” Miss Wren asked.
“I know my way to the garden,” Catherine said, narrowing her eyes at the cheeky Miss Wren. “Perhaps you are unaware, but Lord Drake and I were once close friends, exceedingly close friends. I am certain he would not condone your insolent tone.”
“Forgive me if my tone offends you, my lady.” The chatelaine cocked her head. “Close friends, you say? It was my understanding that you were once Lord Drake’s betrothed, but perhaps I’ve been misinformed.”
Catherine lifted her chin. “Servants’ gossip is not to always to be trusted.”
She rose majestically and swept past Miss Wren.
“Oh, then you must not have betrayed Lord Drake with Baron Curtmantle, after all,” she said. “The play will be over if we tarry long, so I’ll leave you now. But may I suggest, Lady Curtmantle, that you step aside into an alcove to adjust your bodice before making your way to the garden? Your abigail seems to have been . . . singularly negligent in your toilette this morning.”
The insufferable little bitch had the audacity to stare pointedly at Catherine’s bosom. Her nipple was still winking behind the thin veil of lace, pert as ever, but now the pale skin around it flushed crimson with embarrassment. It was one thing to plan a seduction. It was quite another to be caught at it.
Catherine stepped behind one of the curtains and shoved her breast back down. Once Hugh managed to get himself named protector of this pile of rocks, Catherine decided her first demand would be that the sharp-eyed Mistress Wren be released from service. Without good character.
The Drake children’s play was in full swing when Catherine slipped into the garden. A make-shift stage was set up on one side of the central fountain with chairs arranged in neat rows for viewing. Catherine took quick stock of Gabriel’s other guests. She recognized Millicent Harlowe and several other hopeful young ladies along with their chaperones leaning forward in their seats in an effort to look interested in the farce being presented.
On stage, four of the girls had what appeared to be large papier-mache boats attached to their hips, with rope rigging slung over their shoulders to hold the vessels in place and ridiculous tall hats designed to simulate a mast and sail on their heads.
“On July 12, 1588, a fleet of one hundred and thirty warships set sail from Spain to attack our beloved England.”
The speaker was that dreadful Hyacinth, the eldest of Gabriel’s nieces, the one Hugh tried unsuccessfully to deflower. She gave her narration from a podium on stage right.
To Catherine’s surprise, Gabriel, a priest and a scruffy, thoroughly disreputable-looking fellow who she’d wager hadn’t bathed in months appeared on the stage. Like the children, they too ‘wore’ ships, but Spanish flags flapped from their absurd headgear.
“The frigates and galleons of the Spanish Armada were bigger than the English schooners, but the English were more swift and agile,” Hyacinth informed them.
In demonstration, the little ‘schooners’ darted about between the larger ‘frigates and galleons’ to the delight of the fawning ladies in the audience. The scruffy character tried to turn circles along with the children and only succeeded in making himself dizzy enough to weave like a drunkard before he sank to the floor, one Spanish galleon sent to the sea bed by the gallant English.
Catherine tried to smile and chuckle along with the others, but her face felt brittle. Once Hugh controlled the destinies of these spoiled children, she’d see to it they were fostered out as far away as possible. Or perhaps they could be sent to a nunnery to insure no furtherance of the Drake line. Yes, that would probably be best.
“The English chased the Armada up the channel and set a fire ship adrift toward them,” Hyacinth read from her script.
One of the Drake children stepped out of her ship costume and produced a flint and steel from her pockets.
“Daisy,” Gabriel’s tone held a stern warning. “What did I tell you about using real fire?”
Daisy rolled her eyes and shoved the flint and steel back into her pocket.
Perhaps a nunnery on the continent for this one, Catherine mused.
Then Daisy raced to the side of the stage and came back with a length of fiery cloth. She wrapped her little sister, the smallest ship, with the simulated blaze and gave the tike a shove toward the Armada. The Spanish frigates tried to evade her, but the priest became tangled in the child’s trailing ‘flames’ and went down in a blaze of orange muslin.
“The Spanish didn’t dare try to run the English gauntlet by sailing back through the channel, so they traveled north, trying to escape around Scotland,” Hyacinth explained.
Gabriel, the only remaining Spanish frigate, began to sail away from the harrying English.
Catherine glanced over to see Mistress Wren lean against the wall, her features going soft and drowsy as a cat on a windowsill while she gazed on the Lord of Dragon Caern. The chatelaine looked as if she might break into a full-throated purr at any moment.
Well, that explains much, Catherine thought. The trollop fancies herself in love with Gabriel.
“But as you know, the weather in Scotland is generally not felicitous to any, not even the Scots,” Hyacinth continued. “Terrible storms rose up to meet the Spaniards and many ships were lost.”
Upon this dire pronouncement, the four youngest of Gabriel’s nieces fell upon him with arms flailing, simulating foul weather. The Lord of Dragon Caern put up a valiant effort, but in the end, he was ignominiously rolling on the floor under a tangle of giggling children. Unlike the true history, none of these Spanish ships escaped English courage and craftiness and Scottish foul weather.
The audience applauded politely when Gabriel stood with his littlest niece straddling his shoulders, demanding a pony ride. As the players took their bows amid general hilarity, Catherine noticed that Gabriel tossed a glance toward Mistress Wren, his face flushed and beaming.
It was a fleeting unguarded moment, but she recognized a look of utter captivity when she saw it.
Catherine heaved a deep sigh. Seduction was no longer a viable plan. Gabriel Drake had already been seduced.
She ground her teeth together, wondering how best to make use of this new development. The goal was still the same, of course. To make certain Gabriel didn’t wed.
Unfortunately, Catherine would have less joy of the enterprise than she’d hoped. No matter. Viscount Linley would be visiting later in the fall to stag hunt with Hugh. She’d always been sizzlingly aware of him in a way that made her body hum. She’d find another use for the lamb bladder in her reticule.
Gabriel’s gaze slanted toward Mistress Wren again. Catherine caught another unspoken message zinging from him to his chatelaine. Men were so transparent sometimes. Or perhaps, Catherine was more perceptive than most.
Yes, indeed. Gabriel was a lamb she could lead to slaughter. And he’d just shown her the best way to go about it.
Chapter 25
Jacquelyn pushed through the kitchen doors and recoiled immediately, bringing a scented hanky to her nose. “Mrs. Beadle, what on earth is that stench?”
“Whatever do you mean, Mistress?” Mrs. B. didn’t bother looking up from the ham-sized mound of dough she was kneading into submission.
“That.” Jacquelyn waved an arm toward the offending crock bubbling on the hearth. “What are you cooking there?”
“Why,
that’s naught but a couple of hens I’ve set to boiling along with some herbs and an onion or two.” She paused to flour her hands and the rolling pin and began flattening a ball of the dough into a perfect circle. “We’ll have the broth with bread for luncheon and the meat for supper, I’m thinking.”
Jacquelyn’s stomach roiled in protest. “Why are you using old rotten meat?”
“Old? Rotten?” Mrs. Beadle bristled under the accusation. “For shame, Mistress! As if I’d ever set bad flesh on the table at Dragon Caern. These hens are freshly killed. Twisted their necks for them myself, I did. Had the devil’s own time with it, too, let me tell you. Lively ones, they were. Nothing a bit wrong with these biddies.” She gave an injured sniff. “Their feathers are drying yet in the shed if you doubt my word and wish to be thorough about checking your facts.”
Jacquelyn lowered the hanky and took another tentative sniff. She quickly recovered her nose. If she hadn’t already emptied her stomach twice that morning, she was sure she’d leave what was left of her breakfast on the clean stone pavings of Mrs. B.’s immaculate kitchen.
“What ails you, Mistress?” Mrs. Beadle’s round face puckered into a sympathetic frown.
“I don’t know,” Jacquelyn said into the heavily perfumed hanky. Even the rose-water scent she loved now had a metallic tang to it. “Nothing smells right.”
Mrs. Beadle rounded the stout table and laid the back of her floury hand against Jacquelyn’s cheek.
“You’ve a touch of the ague, like as not,” she pronounced as she waddled back to her work. “No fever, though. A garlic poultice will fix you right up. Soon as I’m done with these pies, I’ll make you one.”
Jacquelyn doubted the strong scent of garlic would settle her uneasy stomach, but she perched on one of the chairs to wait. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to make another dash to a chamber pot. The need to void her bladder was so urgent; she’d barely made it the last time.
Whatever was wrong with her, she feared it wasn’t the ague.
“You’re making pies again?” Jacquelyn asked, trying to distract herself from the scent of boiling poultry.
“Aye, gooseberry this time,” Mrs. B. confided. “Mr. Meriwether picked them himself, or so he told me. Actually, I think the children did most of the work. With the tall tales he fills their noggins with, that old scallywag can make any chore an adventure.” Mrs. Beadle shook her head in mock reprimand, but a chuckle escaped her lips.
Could Mrs. Beadle actually harbor tender feelings for Gabriel’s old first mate? Jacquelyn wouldn’t have thought so, but the odd little smile on the housekeeper’s face made her wonder.
“So, you’re making pies for Meri,” Jacquelyn said. “That’s the third time this week unless I’m mistook. Some might say you’re spoiling the man. Do I detect a romance in bloom?”
Mrs. Beadle’s brows lowered in a frown. “Certainly not! This is but a business arrangement.”
“A business arrangement?”
“Aye,” she said, pounding the crust with more enthusiasm than the task warranted. “We’ve reached an agreement, that old salt and me. I make him a pie and he takes a bath. And there’s an end to it!”
Mrs. Beadle dusted the excess flour from her hands and looked up at Jacquelyn, concern making her clamp her lips tight for a moment.
“Mistress, you’ve gone pale as a fish belly. The kettle’s boiling. Let me get you some tea.”
“Thank you,” Jacquelyn said when Mrs. B. set the cup and saucer before her, then she waved the housekeeper off. “No, no cream or sugar.”
“But you always take your tea with a bit o’ milk and a lump or two.”
“Not today,” Jacquelyn said, gratefully letting the warm tea slide down her throat. “Nothing tastes right either.”
“Sickness will do that to a body,” Mrs. Beadle said philosophically, then she chuckled. “Lady Helen was like that when she was bearing Miss Lily. If you was a married lady, I’d say you were breeding instead of down with the ague. ‘Course Lady Helen also had a weak bladder and nipples so tender she could hardly bear to dress. Couldn’t keep down her breakfast if her hope of heaven depended upon it for the first six months.”
Sensitive nose, weak bladder, tender nipples, queasy stomach, Jacquelyn ticked off her symptoms one by one. To make matters worse, she was late for her monthly woman’s trial. Mrs. B’s words confirmed Jacquelyn’s worst fear.
She was either carrying Gabriel’s child or she was dying.
Jacquelyn wasn’t sure which would be worse.
By day, Gabriel served admirably as Lord of Dragon Caern. He meted out justice, advised his tenants and paid court to the women who hoped to become his baroness. He even made time to play with his nieces or oversee some of their lessons. Jacquelyn found reasons to avoid him during the sunlit hours and he didn’t seek her out.
But by night, Gabriel was either in Jacquelyn’s bed or she was in his, finding new ways to drive each other to exhausted completion. And when they were utterly spent, they talked. He regaled her with tales of piracy and she told him of the doings at the Caern he’d missed while he sailed the Spanish Main. Sometimes, they recovered enough to make love a second time, with unhurried thoroughness. Sometimes, they sank into satisfied slumber, their bodies fitting together with the natural unselfconsciousness of lovers.
By tacit agreement, they didn’t discuss his impending nuptials or what it would mean to their nightly trysts. They reveled in the eternal now.
The odor of the roasting chickens made Jacquelyn retch silently.
‘Now’ was irretrievably gone.
When Mrs. Beadle’s back was turned, Jacquelyn fled the aromatic kitchen and bolted up the stairs to her chamber. She shoved a rug under the door to stop up the crack beneath it—anything to get away from the stench of roasting flesh.
Nothing would allow her to escape the inconvenient truth growing in her belly.
* * *
“Mistress Wren.” Timothy’s voice pleaded through her shut door, his consternation evident in the uneven breaks and squeaks in his tone. “Are you there, Mistress?”
“Yes, Timothy, I’m here,” Jacquelyn said wearily. She’d stripped off her dress and lain down in her shift across her bed, willing the nausea to pass. “What is it?”
“It’s Lady Curtmantle. She’s in the solar and she says it’s urgent.”
“Tell her Lord Drake is otherwise occupied,” Jacquelyn said. She thought Gabriel was planning to ride over to inspect the new mill he’d ordered built for his tenant’s grain. Already he’d found productive use for some of the treasure he and Jacquelyn found in the Caern. As long as he spent it in small increments, no one would believe he was anything other than a good steward of a prosperous estate making improvements to his holding.
“The lady doesn’t wish to see Lord Drake,” Timothy explained. “She’s asking for you, Mistress.”
“Botheration,” Jacquelyn muttered. The first time she laid eyes on the woman, something inside her twitched. This person meant the folk of Dragon Caern no good. She couldn’t point to any particular behavior on the lady’s part that gave her that irritated tingle on her spine, but she couldn’t shake the feeling either.
Lady Curtmantle had been the soul of proper behavior, confessing to Jacquelyn on her most recent visit her disgust over her husband’s attempt at Hyacinth’s ruination. Of course, there was that exposed nipple incident. But Jacquelyn had it on good authority that some grand ladies were now appearing in London with not one but both pink nubs rouged and powdered and proudly on display. A show of ankle was deemed shockingly fast, but exposed nipples as part of a lady’s décolletage was not considered particularly risqué for an evening fete. Lady Curtmantle might conceivably have made an honest mistake.
But Jacquelyn doubted it.
And lately, Catherine Curtmantle had been calling with maddening regularity. Just social visits and if Gabriel was unavailable, the baroness seemed just as pleased to bore Jacquelyn with inane pleasantries. Her con
versation was mindless drivel for which Jacquelyn had little patience and less time, but she bore it in the interest of keeping peace with their neighbor to the north.
“Tell her I’ll be down directly,” Jacquelyn said through the door as she stepped into her panniers. Her empty stomach rumbled. Jacquelyn hadn’t taken any nourishment since her lost breakfast, but now her nausea was fading. “Oh! And see if Mrs. Beadle’s gooseberry pie is ready to serve.”
If her mouth was full of pie, Lady Curtmantle couldn’t talk so much. Jacquelyn would figure out a way to rid herself of the baroness. Then she’d deal with the stickier problem of how to tell Gabriel she was bearing his child.
At least, this proves he’s capable of getting an heir, Jacquelyn thought wryly, remembering the way she’d baited him that first day. She’d intended bullying Gabriel into doing what was necessary for the estate.
Now she wished with all her heart he was free to do what was necessary by her.
* * *
“Ah, Mistress,” the baroness said, rising to drop a shallow curtsey when Jacquelyn entered the solar. “How lovely to see you—oh! Perhaps I’ve come at a bad time. You don’t look at all yourself. So pale. I do hope you’re quite well.”
Jacquelyn parried the woman’s pointed inquisition and steered the conversation to safer ground. They made small talk over a cup of excellent tea and Lady Curtmantle pushed her gooseberry pie around her plate a few times while Jacquelyn told her of Gabriel’s plans for the new mill.
“You know, Jacquelyn—may I call you Jacquelyn?” the baroness asked and then hurried on without waiting for a reply. “One of the reasons I’ve been calling so often of late is that I care deeply about Lord Drake’s happiness. I must tell you, I’m frightfully concerned.”
“Really?” Jacquelyn set her teacup down and leveled her gaze on Lady Curtmantle. “Given your history with him, I find your concern difficult to accept.”
“Yes, well. Touché, Mistress. He has confided in you, I see.” The baroness had the grace to blush slightly. “I admit it. I was young and lusty and in retrospect, unbelievably stupid. Alas for the past. I could not change it even if I would, but given your present situation with him, I doubt you’re in a position to sling stones.”
