The Silver Lord

by Miranda Jarrett

  “Markham’d sell us all and his granny besides without a thought,” scoffed Fan. “You should know that, Hood, if you ever hope to take my place as this company’s leader.”

  Her place as leader of the Winslow Company: so this, thought George, was the real test of his loyalty and love. All the little puzzles about Fan—the pistol she always carried, the long solitary rides at night on Pie, her intimacy with the lowest sort among Tunford’s sailors, even the detailed knowledge of smuggling that he’d admired earlier that same evening—were finally clicking together into painfully sharp relief. He shifted his hand from her shoulder to his side, ready to reach for his own gun if needed. God knows even that half second could make a difference. He’d known this situation would be full of risk when he’d come with her, but he’d no idea it would mushroom into this.

  The woman he loved above all others, the one he’d asked to be his wife, was not simply a member of a smuggling gang: she was the outlaw queen of a company that bore her family’s name.

  “Too late for that, mistress,” Hood was saying. “I’ve told the rest o’ the men you wished to be done with the trade, on account o’ your father being gone, and they’ve made me their leader. After tonight we’ll be the Hood Company, right and proper.”

  “Right and proper,” repeated Fan, striving to keep the sadness from her voice. “That’s how I’ve always tried to do things, you know.”

  There were no secrets left between her and George now. These last minutes had put an end to those secrets, exactly the way she’d intended, and she’d never made a bigger gamble. But what her father had said was true: before she and George could consider any future together, he’d needed to know exactly what kind of woman she was, and whether he could still love her that way.

  Now, without a doubt, he did. Didn’t the way he’d just pulled his hand away from her shoulder prove it?

  Yet as much as she longed to turn around and tell him again, here before this crowd of witnesses, exactly how much she loved him, she didn’t, and she didn’t tell him she was leaving the Company for his sake as much as her own, either. Instead she stood with her back as straight and unyielding as a poker, pretending to be brave and stoic when in truth she was simply too great a coward to search George’s face for her fate.

  “You have brought Markham’s gold?” asked Hood. “He won’t give us the tea without it.”

  “Have I ever once forgotten it?” Fan turned back to her saddlebag for the leather bag of coins, for the increase that Markham had demanded now made the bag too heavy and bulky to carry beneath her petticoats. The extra gold also made her more vulnerable, more liable to robbery, and even now she could sense the greedy interest of her own men as she cradled the bag of coins in the crook of her arm. “Markham will have his gold, but not until I have judged the tea, and not until he speaks with Captain Lord Claremont—”

  “The boats be here, Mistress!” called one of the lookout boys, and in a single movement the men turned and began hurrying back over the hill towards the stream.

  “I’m coming with you, Fan,” said George, taking her arm as they climbed the low hill. “I’m not about to let you go into this alone.”

  “Thank you.” Her smile was tight with nervousness. She paused at the crest of the hill, drawing him up short, and with her head high, she finally met his gaze. “I do not believe I could do this alone, not tonight.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Fan,” he said, as if this were the most obvious explanation imaginable. She had always loved that gravity in him, and the sense that she could trust him—especially now. “For you.”

  “You had to know,” she said, her words now tumbling over one another in her haste to tell him. “About the Company, about me. But oh, George, I decided I wanted more from life, that I had to do what was right, not only for you, but more myself. I want you to know that, too.”

  “Because I love you,” he said, still grave even as he slid his hand from her arm to her waist. “Because, miracle of miracles, you love me.”

  “Yes, George, yes!” she said breathlessly. “And because I love you, I swear by all that’s holy that this part of my life is almost done.”

  “Not quite, sweetheart,” he said softly, looking past her. “Not quite.”

  She turned, and understood at once. Markham himself had jumped from the first boat and waded ashore, roaring furiously both at his own men to keep back and at the Company men, led by Hood, to keep their distance.

  “An explanation, Mistress Winslow!” demanded Markham as he charged up the hill towards her, and Fan couldn’t recall having ever seen him so angry or full of bluster. “An explanation for why you have doubled your men this night, mistress, and it had better damned well make sense if you wish me to give the word to unload your tea!”

  “You asked for more money, Captain,” she countered, aware of how the hill had been turned into a stage with the rapt audience of men below watching and listening to every word. Markham’s outburst had made certain of that. “And I’ve brought more of my people to guard it. You have the tea, haven’t you?”

  Despite the chill, he was sweating visibly, his pale face slick in the lantern light as he wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “I keep my word, mistress.”

  “And I keep mine, too, but cautiously.” She raised her voice so the others could hear her as well as she glanced down at the boats. It was odd for Markham to keep his crew waiting like that. Usually he preferred to land his cargo and be gone as quickly as possible. “Listen to me, Captain. Three Tunford men were killed last night by Frenchmen pretending to our trade.”

  “The—the devil you say!” stammered Markham, and swore violently. “But what the hell does that to do with me, eh? Why would you tell me that?”

  “Mind yourself before the lady,” ordered George curtly, “or you’ll answer to me.”

  Pointedly Markham spat in the sand to the left of George’s feet. “And who are you, you black-haired bastard, defending a shrewish whore like this one?”

  “I am Captain Lord George Claremont of His Majesty’s Navy,” thundered George, “and if this lady is willing, soon to be her husband. If you do not treat her with the civility and respect she deserves, then I shall thrash you myself from here to Brighton and back again.”

  Fan gasped, as stunned by how he’d defended her as by how he’d declared his love for half of Tunford to hear in openmouthed astonishment. But before she could accept George’s offer, or throw her arms about him and kiss him as he deserved, or even blush or smile, she realized that she was the only one of them still facing the water, and worse, the only one who’d noticed Markham’s three boats creeping closer to shore. Nor did the boats themselves look quite the same as they had on the other runs. They sat lower in the water, forcing the men at the oars to pull harder from the extra weight, and the tarpaulins protecting the rounded sacks of tea from being splashed seemed different, too, lumpier somehow, more irregular.

  And then, in an instant, she knew why, just as she knew what she must do next.

  “If you have nothing to do with the French, Captain Markham, why then, that is that,” she said nervously, striving to ease the tension vibrating between George and Markham. She knew both men carried pistols hidden beneath their coats, and she hated knowing they might be driven to fire at one another, especially at such close range. “You are a man of your word.”

  “Yes, mistress,” said Markham, not daring to look away from George. “My word’s my honor.”

  “Then I’d say it’s high time, Captain Markham, that we inspected the tea,” she said, her voice rising with excitement as she raced away with the bag of gold still clutched tight in her arms, slipping and sliding in the sand in her haste to reach the water. She was determined to undo what Markham had done, to steal everyone’s attention from him and George and return it to the water, and as she ran she saw a blur of startled faces and lanterns, every man watching her exactly as she’d hoped. She ran hard, not caring how her petticoats flew above her ank
les, for that would make the men look more. If they looked at her, then they’d look next at the boats, and see what she had before it was too late: that instead of smuggling sacks of tea tonight, Ned Markham was importing Frenchmen.

  She ran, she ran, and heard Markham’s grunted oath just before he grabbed her arm and jerked her to a stop and shoved her forward into the sand, sending the bag of gold flying from her hands and into the sand. She fell hard, the wind knocked hard from her lungs, forcing her to struggle to breathe even as she needed to escape. But Markham was a large man made stronger by desperation, and despite her flailing he’d soon pinned her close against his chest, his arm like an iron band across her chest as he dragged her to her feet.

  “Quit your fighting, girl,” ordered Markham, tightening his grip around her. “Be still, I say, or pay the price!”

  “Why should I take orders from you?” she gasped, twisting against him to break free. “You’re—you’re a traitor and a coward, and—and a low, lying thief, too! You’ve—you’ve brought no tea, have you? You—you meant to let those Frenchmen kill—kill us dead, then steal my gold!”

  “Shut your mouth, I say,” ordered Markham, and suddenly she felt the cold steel barrel of a pistol pressing into her cheek.

  At once she went still, so still she could hear the raggedness of Markham’s breathing and the thump of his heart and the rush of the waves over the sand. Everything else came into sharp focus as well, the ring of Company men unsure of what to do, the boys waiting with the ponies, the flickering light from the lanterns glinting off the coins that had spilled from the split bag in the sand. Behind them the Frenchmen hiding under their tarpaulins must be waiting, too, wondering what had gone wrong in their plan.

  And in the center of it all—of the men, of her world—stood George. He, too, had drawn his pistol, but his was now aimed harmlessly into the sand.

  “Let her go, Markham,” he called sharply. “She’s no use to you. Take the gold, but let her go.”

  Markham laughed bitterly, a low rasp in his chest against Fan’s ear. “You can keep the gold, my lord, and I’ll keep your little bride. She’s my safe passage back to France, unless you’d rather risk her life to try otherwise. You raise that gun—if any of you do—and she dies.”

  “Do not hurt her,” said George, the pistol in his hand useless and his expression full of pain and fury and frustration and sorrow. “Damnation, Markham, let her go!”

  “Don’t,” warned Markham, inching backwards towards the water and dragging Fan with him. “Or she dies.”

  She dies: oh, dear God, she did not want to end her life like this. Silently she pleaded with George to understand, to know she loved him no matter how this ended. All she’d ever wanted was to marry him. She wanted to be with him forever at Feversham, his love and his wife and the mother of his children, and she did not want to go to France and she did not want to die.

  “You always were a stinking coward, Ned Markham!” shouted the man from the top of the hill: a voice that was rough with years and rum, but still could call the attention of every man within hearing, and Fan, too. Her father stood with the musket raised to his eye and pointed at her and Markham, and behind him were more men: Leggett, Danny, all the rest of George’s crewmen from the house.

  “I didn’t believe Fanny when she said things had turned so sour, she was giving up the trade,” he continued. “But seeing this sorry show makes me realize what a wise, steady child she is. I wonder you want to take my place at all, Will. I say better to sit in the chimney corner with my pottage now than deal with lying, cheating bastards like you.”

  “The same warning holds for you, Joss Winslow!” called Markham, moving faster towards the boat. “You’re an old fool, and unless you want to see your daughter dead, you’ll drop that musket.”

  “The hell I will,” answered her father so cheerfully that Fan’s despair grew. As far away as he was, and as shaky as his hands had become, he would as likely shoot her as Markham.

  But maybe her father didn’t mean to shoot anyone. Her father was old, true, but he was no fool. Perhaps all he wished was to break Markham’s concentration, and with a flash of hope she glanced at George. He’d been waiting for her to look, and in return he nodded: all the encouragement she’d need.

  “You should’ve stayed in France, Winslow,” called Markham again, unable to resist taunting her father. “Then you wouldn’t have had to see me take your whore of a daughter.”

  Her father laughed, and Fan felt Markham’s arm slacken—not much, but enough.

  “There’s where you’re wrong again, Markham,” said her father. “My Fanny’s no whore. She never was. She’s going to wed this lord here, and be a true lady, while you—you’ll always be—”

  But Fan never heard her father’s prediction. Instead she whispered a tiny prayer for bravery and luck, and threw all her weight to one side, breaking Markham’s grip. She heard the crack of the gunshot as soon as she stumbled free and pitched forward into the sand, the impact making her cry out. Gunsmoke stung her eyes, and there was something wet and warm splattered across her bare arm.

  “Fan! Fan, love, look at me!” said George, dropping the smoking pistol so he could gather her gently into his arms. “Are you hurt, lass?”

  She shook her head and smiled through her tears. She hadn’t died. She still lived, and George was with her, his handsome, dear face so full of concern and love—love!—that no wonder she was weeping with pure happiness. Carefully he was wiping his handkerchief across her arm: Markham’s blood, not her own.

  “Don’t look,” ordered George, turning her away from the body, and she didn’t. All around them men were running and shouting, the Englishmen, whether Navy men or smugglers, working efficiently together to make prisoners of the French still waiting in the boats. “Markham’s gone straight to the devil now, where he won’t trouble you or anyone else again.”

  She shuddered, but not even Markham’s death was going to keep her silent. “Ask me, George,” she said, slipping her arms around his shoulders. “Ask me now. Now!”

  He frowned, still worried. “You’re certain you’re unhurt, Fan?”

  “Don’t be daft, Claremont,” said her father as he joined them. “I heard you declaring yourself earlier, and so did Fanny. Then recall I never did have my chance to fire this old musket, and think a bit harder about the question you should be asking my daughter.”

  “Ah.” He cleared his throat and ducked his chin, and as he fumbled for the ring in his waistcoat, Fan knew she’d never love any man more. “Ah, Fan Winslow. Will you marry me, Fan?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her joy too boundless for any other words than the one that mattered most. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  Epilogue

  They were married on the first perfect day of summer, when the roses had just begun to bloom against the old stone walls, but the golden lilies in the marshes had not yet faded, and even the sun seemed to smile down upon them. Though Brant had offered them the splendid grandeur of the duke’s private chapel at Claremont Hall for their wedding, Fan and George had chosen the humble stone church in Tunford instead, preferring to have their joy pealed over the countryside by the single bell in the church’s squat, square tower.

  The wedding feast at Feversham spilled from one night into three days, all to the music of the blind fiddler from the Tarry Man. Among the guests were three admirals and a score of peers, the crewmen from the Nimble in their best white trousers and gold-buckled shoes and members of the old Winslow Company with sprigs of green boxwood for luck tucked into the buttonholes of their Sunday coats.

  To no one’s surprise, the customs officers from Lydd and Hythe were not invited.

  And on the day after St. Valentine’s Day, the happy product of so much celebration was born. He was christened with a long string of names worthy of being a Claremont, but to George and Fan he was simply, perfectly Baby Jack, and Jack to them he would always be.

  “Oh, George, he must be the most beautiful litt
le boy ever born,” whispered Fan in awe as she stroked the velvety skin on her son’s sleeping forehead. “Have you ever seen such an angel?”

  “I’ve not only seen him,” said George wryly, “I’ve heard him, too, crying out to the rest of the cherubim while you and I were trying to sleep.”

  “Hush,” she scolded, but her smile had only love in it. “And who’s the first to rush to his crib, day or night, whenever he cries?”

  “Guilty, guilty,” admitted George softly, linking his fingers into hers. “Our Jack was rightly born to be an admiral, I think, already giving orders.”

  “I always did wish to do things right, George,” she said, letting him pull her into his arms. “Just as I love you, Captain My Lord, and that is the rightest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Right and proper, my love,” he said, kissing her. “Right and proper for always.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-6045-3

  THE SILVER LORD

  Copyright © 2003 by Miranda Jarrett

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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