The Silver Lord

by Miranda Jarrett

  “I’ve always thought I could trust you, Will Hood,” she said, holding the gun steady with one hand clasped over the other. “You know I’ll use this if I must.”

  “’Course you would, mistress,” said Hood with grim resignation. “They’re talking all over the village that you nigh killed the duke up at the Hall. Why then would you balk at peppering the likes o’ me?”

  “Not when you question me,” she said firmly, “and now you’ve done it twice. I can’t have that happening in the Company, Hood, not even from you.”

  “I’m not challenging you, mistress,” argued Hood, twisting the reins more tightly around his hand. “I’m only saying the same as the others are, excepting I’ll do it before your face and not to your back. Things be changed since your father went. There’s Markham’s raising his price for the tea, and this business with Caddem, and that high-bred king’s man buying Feversham, having you live on there with only his men for staff, and him putting us all at risk—”

  “Captain Lord Claremont has nothing to do with any of this, or with any of you!” she cried, lashing out desperately for George’s sake. If he suffered on her account, if they tried to harm him because of her, she would never, ever forgive herself. “You don’t touch him, mind? Not one hair!”

  “Nay, mistress,” said Hood carefully, not needing to say anything more than she’d already said herself. “I won’t. But I can’t answer for all the others, can I?”

  “But you can tell them,” she said, her voice rising with urgency. George was a large, strong man, a brave man who’d spent nearly all his life at war and would know how to defend himself. But she also knew he was also given to long rides along the beach in the early morning, when the fog and mists could hide another with a musket until it was too late. “Captain Lord Claremont has been occupied with his own affairs and with making Feversham his home. He has done nothing, nothing, against anyone here!”

  But Hood only sat there on his horse, offering none of the assurances she wanted to hear in return.

  “This all be a powerful burden for you, don’t it, mistress?” he said finally. “A powerful great burden, and more than I’d want for my wife or daughters.”

  “It’s not more than I can bear,” said Fan, though the tremor in her voice told otherwise. “For Father’s sake, I can. I will, because he’ll wish it that way.”

  Hood only shook his head, the expression of his eyes lost in the shadow of his hat’s broad brim. “How long has he been gone now, mistress?”

  “Eight months and a week,” she said, wishing the words didn’t sound so hollow and final. “Truly, not long at all.”

  “Long enough without word from him, or of him,” he answered, his voice turning rougher. “More than long enough if he still lived, mistress.”

  “But we never found a body!” she insisted, refusing to admit such a possibility to Hood. To say it out loud would be disloyal; to say it out loud might make it true. “Not Father’s, nor Tom Hawkins’s either!”

  “Last anyone saw, they went a-walking towards the water, drunk as stoats,” said Hood. “You’ve lived on this coast all your life, mistress. You know as well as anyone that the sea don’t always give back what it takes.”

  “But I’m doing this because Father would want it so!” she cried, her anguish so real that Pie whinnied in restless sympathy. “I’ve told you that before, haven’t I? I’m keeping the Company for him, for when he comes home again!”

  “Then mayhap you can stop your keeping, mistress,” said Hood, his pony inching closer, “because I believe your father’s done with wanting, leastwise in this life.”

  “No!” She raised the pistol a fraction, steadying it, refusing to let him judge her soft again. “I don’t believe that, Will Hood, and if you had any regard for my father as your leader and your friend, you wouldn’t, either!”

  Hood went very still. “Then mark a date that you will be ready, mistress. If you hold your father’s memory dear, as a daughter should, then you must decide when to mourn him proper, and when to let the Company pass to another’s hands.”

  To let the Company pass to another’s hands. The idea was as unthinkable as accepting her father’s death, but at the same time, it was traitorously seductive as well. To be spared the danger and the endless responsibility, to stop deceiving George and the others, to end the meetings with dangerous men like Markham, even the uncommon luxury of sleeping the night through safe in her own bed—all could be hers if only she’d agree. She would be free to leave Kent if she decided, or simply live out her days at Feversham without fear of meeting a violent end. For the first time in months, her life would again be her own.

  But in return she would have to admit that she’d never again hear her father’s laugh, or smile at his teasing, or be able to rest her cheek against his shoulder and know her world was safe, the same as she’d done since she’d been a tiny girl in his arms.

  “Think upon it, mistress,” warned Hood. “Already there’s men in the Company, Forbert and others, who speak of seizing your place for themselves.”

  She gasped, not so much from what he said but that he’d dare say it to her. “They would not dare!”

  “They would, mistress,” he answered firmly, “and you know it. Why else would you be pointing that pistol at me now, eh?”

  He was right, and in her heart she did know it, too. She wouldn’t have been nearly so quick to draw the gun if she hadn’t sensed the growing resentment and restlessness among the men, even ones as trustworthy as Will Hood. And why else would she have felt such a cold stab of fear for George’s sake? How they’d delight in a chance at a Navy captain, especially if they could justify it as self-protection!

  If she wasn’t careful, if she tested their patience too far, both she and George were just as liable as Caddem’s barn to meet with a lonely, violent end, and the possibility made her tremble at her own vulnerability. It was too late for her father, and if she didn’t act soon, it could be too late for her, and for the man she loved.

  There was, she thought bitterly, no real honor among thieves.

  “One more run, then,” she said at last, each word dragged from her soul. “If my father has not returned, I’ll leave it to you and the others to choose a new leader among yourselves. The company shall be his, to do with what he pleases with no meddling from me, and so I’ll tell Markham myself next week.”

  Hood nodded, approving. “That be the brave thing to do, mistress, and true to your father and your blood. Will you be finding yourself a new place then, too, instead of staying at Feversham with that black bastard of a lord?”

  So much was being left unsaid, yet Fan heard it all: how the talk around Tunford was that she and the lord captain were closer than they should be, how no respectable woman would remain alone in that house of sailors and king’s men, how her most private affairs had become the righteous concern of every other person in the county. No wonder she craved something more from her life.

  “I’ll make my way,” she said carefully, “and I’ll do what’s best for me.”

  “Good girl,” said Hood, exactly as if she’d been a stubborn mare who’d finally been subdued. “Now best we head for home, eh?”

  He turned his pony towards Tunford, confident that she would join him. He would be the new leader of the Company; she didn’t have any doubts of that. Which of the other men would dare challenge him? Yet as Fan watched him go, she knew that her father would have had no qualms now about shooting his old friend in the center of his broad back and leaving him to die on this lonely road, a message to every other Company man with traitorous thoughts.

  But Fan was neither brave nor true as Hood had said, but only a meek, hopeless coward that shamed her father’s memory and that of every other Winslow before him, and with a lonely little sob for her own wretched failure, she uncocked the pistol, and followed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Impatiently George swept aside the day’s crop of neatly written replies to his invitation, and reache
d instead for the newspapers that had just come down with the post from London. He already knew the replies would all be acceptances, composed with varying degrees of hysterical anticipation and gratitude, or at least so had been the case with every other scrap of cream-colored writing paper that had been delivered this week, and all better left for Fan and Brant’s pinch-faced secretary Tway to sort out between them. The real surprises for George would come in the news-sheets, and he didn’t even bother taking off his mud-flecked riding boots before he began scanning the long columns of print for word of a coming war.

  “And a fine good morning to you, too, brother,” said Brant, joining him in the hall. Although his manservant had seen that he was properly shaved, combed, washed, and dressed to face the new day, the grumpiness in his heavy-lidded eyes showed he’d prefer to have been in his bed still. “How appalling that you insist on keeping sea-hours here in the country.”

  “They are the hours that most of the world outside of London does keep,” noted George absently, without looking up from his reading. “You’re not obligated to follow if you don’t wish to, you know.”

  “No, I’m only obligated to listen to you pontificating about the joys of country life,” grumbled Brant. “Where’s Fan?”

  “Fan?” That made George look up, instantly on guard. “I don’t know. Below stairs, I suppose.”

  “Don’t dissemble with me, George,” said Brant crossly. “You damned well know where that woman is every blasted minute of the day.”

  George’s expression darkened. Last week he would have known Fan’s whereabouts, but ever since the day they’d met in Tunford, Fan had kept her distance from him, or made certain that they were never alone together. Now Danny was the one who carried up his tray with breakfast, and Leggett who brought him his letters on the round silver salver. Her excuse was that she was occupied with planning and plotting the coming party, that she was closeted away with Small and Tway and the devil only knew who else, but George was certain the change was deliberate, her wish to try to undo everything that had happened between them.

  Yet all the wishing in the world wasn’t going to make him forget the kisses they’d shared, nor could she put it aside, either. The double-charged memory of their passion was always there between them, refusing to go away, and simmering below the surface of every polite question about the order of supper courses or the musical selections.

  And although George told himself this was for the best, the honorable, responsible path, he was unhappy and frustrated and as short-tempered as the village bull. He didn’t want only memories, and he didn’t want to be honorable.

  All he wanted was what he couldn’t have, and that was Fan.

  “You can believe me or not, Brant,” he said curtly, tossing the newspaper onto the back of a nearby chair. “At this time of the day, Fan will most likely be in the kitchen or the pantry with Small, planning the day’s meals. Not that her whereabouts should matter to you, anyway.”

  “But it does,” said Brant, “and it should to you, too.”

  He stepped closer, lowering his voice even though they were alone together, with no one to overhear. “Even if you want to slaughter me for telling you this, George, you must hear it, and better from me than anyone else. You swear that the fair Fan Winslow doesn’t share your bed, but can you swear as well that there’s no other man claiming her favors instead?”

  Outraged, George’s fingers closed into a fist. “By God, Brant, if that kind of slander is—”

  “Listen to me first, George,” ordered Brant, raising his own hands, palms open. “You go riding every morning. Have you ever passed Fan on your way, on a little piebald pony?”

  “She keeps the pony for her own use,” said George, relaxing his fingers. Fan’s dawn jaunts on Pie were hardly worth this measure of suspicion. “I’ve never seen the harm in that. She occasionally goes riding in the early morning, too, just as I do.”

  “But she’s never gone in your company, has she?”

  “No,” admitted George, fighting his own uneasiness. He’d trusted Fan from the start, and she’d never given him any reason not to. Instead he’d always thought her among the most loyal women in the world: to her father, to Feversham, to her neighbors here in Kent, and, he’d hoped, to him. “But that’s because she goes out earlier, before her duties here in the house begin.”

  “Not always.” Brant sighed, troubled. “Late last night, long after Fan had told us she was retiring to her bed, I saw her from the window. She was riding out on her pony, George, hard and fast, the way one does when there’s somewhere to go, someone to meet.”

  “Fan would ride like that,” insisted George, trying to forget how Pie had been already been rubbed down and blanketed and returned to his stall when he’d come into the stable this morning, the little horse obviously tired from a hard ride. “She’s not about to mince along like some fine lady on a sidesaddle.”

  “So why insist she was going to bed when she wasn’t?” asked Brant with maddening logic. “Why should she creep down the back stairs to the stable? Why behave as if she’s something to hide, if she doesn’t?”

  “Enough of your riddles, Brant.” Once again George’s fingers knotted into a fist, and so, too, did his stomach. “What the devil are you saying?”

  Brant glanced down at George’s fisted hand, well aware of the likely consequences, but continued anyway. “There’s only two things that will make a woman leave her home at such an hour. The first is a sick child, and the second’s a lover. Amuse yourself however you please, George, but if the woman’s faithless, then for God’s sake, don’t let yourself get entangled.”

  But not Fan, thought George defensively, never his Fan, with her solemn gray eyes and lips made more red with kissing and brambles from the marshes scattered over her dark skirts. Fan would have a third reason for riding alone into the night, a good reason, too, no matter what his brother was trying to prove.

  “Damnation, Brant, I do not need your—what is it, Leggett?”

  “A Madame Duvall and her assistants, Captain M’Lord, come down from London at your request,” announced Leggett from the doorway, his gaze straight ahead and all too uncomfortably aware that he’d interrupted. “I put them in the front parlor to arrange their dunnage for showing.”

  “Oh, hell.” Three days ago, when his relations with Fan had been less complicated, George had invited the fashionable mantua-maker to Feversham as a special surprise for Fan. Now, in his present humor, the last thing he wished was to have his front parlor filled with fussing false Frenchwomen and their trunks of overpriced female fripperies. But could there be a better way to show his brother—and himself—that he still believed in Fan’s honesty, her innocence, her loyalty, even, God take him for a fool, her love?

  He took a deep breath to compose himself, to present a show of calmness he didn’t at all feel. “Leggett, pray tell Madame Duvall that I shall join her shortly. And ask Mistress Winslow to join me there, too.”

  Leggett bowed, leaving him once again with only his brother’s questioning company.

  “You are sure of this, George?” he asked softly. “Heed your wise old brother’s experience in such matters. Lavish gifts upon a lady, and everything changes between the two of you.”

  “Stow your infernal experience,” said George, though without any real anger left. How could there be, when Brant was so close to being right? Everything had changed between him and Fan, though lavishing gifts would be the least of it. No, everything had changed for them both the moment Fan had first opened the door to Feversham, and while he’d never wish it otherwise, he could only hope that she’d agree.

  “Short, brisk strokes—that is how it’s best done to dislodge the dust and dirt.” With her sleeves rolled high over her elbows, Fan demonstrated to the small circle of doubtful, pigtailed sailors, sweeping her broom efficiently back and forth across the floorboards. There was a great deal of dust and dirt that needed dislodging, for the ballroom had been empty and shut up for at leas
t a generation. “I want every inch of the floorboards swept twice, so clean that there won’t be a speck of dust left to soil the young ladies’ dancing slippers.”

  “Beggin’ pardon, mistress,” said Small with his thumbs tucked into the front of his leather apron, present more to supervise the others than to contribute any actual labor. “But I should think a good holystone would do the task a sight better’n any little bundle o’ twigs such as that.”

  “Holystones.” Fan sighed her contempt, and shook her head. She might not know the latest London fashion for doing things, but she did understand how best to clean a floor. “I am sorry, Mr. Small, but I do not share your seafaring love of holystones, and holystoning. Perhaps it is better to scratch away at a ship’s deck with a block of rough stone, but it will never do for the floorboards of a house.”

  “But a holystone scours a deck clean as new snow!” protested Small, as scandalized as if Fan had maligned the Bible the stones were named for. “There be nothing like it!”

  “Nothing like it for sanding wood away to a worthless sliver, either,” answered Fan firmly. Feversham was her command, and she’d brook no mutineers, not even Small. “No, ’tis far better to sweep first with a clean broom. Then we shall strew the green herbs, here in the basket, over the floorboards, and rub them gently with a sprinkling of spring-water into the boards with those short brushes. Tansy, mint, balm, and fennel. That will make these old oak floors gleam like polished mahogany, and give a wondrous fresh scent to the room that even—what is it, Leggett?”

  “Captain Lord Claremont wishes you t’join him in the front parlor, mistress,” said the servant, hovering just inside the doorway to make sure he wouldn’t be drafted into sweeping, too. “He says there’s company waiting, and he says it’s most urgent for you to come quick.”

  “Company? At this hour?” Fan frowned, tapping the bristles of her broom on the floor. There had been a steady stream of footmen bringing notes of acceptance to the house since the invitations had been delivered, but it was unusual for an invited guest to bring his or her reply in person, and rarer still that Fan’s presence would be required as well. “You are certain, Leggett?”