The Bridegroom

by Joan Johnston

  Reggie felt the tears sting her eyes and blinked quickly to banish them. She missed her father terribly. How sad that he could not share her joy at seeing this new addition to the family for the first time. Reggie turned to Carlisle, feeling resentful, but saw the stark look in his eyes and said, “Would you like to hold her?”

  She felt the stillness, as everyone around her froze. Mick frowned at her, and she glared back. Kitt’s brow furrowed, but she made no word of protest. Becky sucked in a breath … and held it.

  Reggie could hear the flies buzzing the scraps of ham. The distant surf pounding against the shore. The snuffle Meg made as one of the dandelions Gareth had picked landed momentarily on her cheek before being carried away by the cool sea breeze.

  “I want to hold her now,” Gareth said. He didn’t wait for Reggie to agree. He simply leaned down, plucked the tiny child out of Reggie’s hands, and threw her up over his shoulder.

  “Careful!” four adults said at once. Only Carlisle did not speak.

  Gareth gave them all a pitiful look of schoolboy disdain. “She’s a baby, not a piece of china,” he said. “She won’t break.”

  To Reggie’s amazement, Meg laid her head down on Gareth’s shoulder, stuck her thumb into her mouth, and stared at the rest of them in complete contentment.

  “You are a marvel, Gareth,” Reggie said with a relieved smile.

  “I know,” Gareth said, grinning back.

  Mick snorted.

  Becky laughed.

  And the tension was broken. In an effort to find some harmless subject to discuss, Reggie said, “You will never guess what Carlisle gave Pegg to read the other evening.”

  “What?” Becky asked.

  “A pamphlet on improving the yield on crops!” Reggie said as she shot Carlisle a teasing look.

  “You used to be quite interested in farming,” Kitt said.

  When Reggie raised an inquiring brow, Kitt explained, “The earl once told me that he hoped someday to put into practice a great many new ideas about farming he had learned from books.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Carlisle said curtly.

  “Are you planning to farm the land around the castle?” Mick asked.

  “As you must know, the land around the castle is not mine to farm,” Carlisle said. “My brother sold it to Blackthorne.”

  “Blackthorne deeded it back to you twelve years ago when he realized how badly he had misjudged you,” Mick said, meeting Carlisle’s embittered words with a steady look. “I suppose you would have no way of knowing that, since it was done so long ago, and you haven’t been in communication with the duke.”

  Reggie saw the flash of astonishment in Carlisle’s eyes before they turned dark and unreadable again.

  “I don’t want anything from him,” he said.

  Mick shrugged. “It is already done. The land is yours to do with as you wish. Farm it. Leave it fallow. The choice is yours.”

  Reggie watched as Carlisle opened his mouth to retort, then shut it again before saying the words she could imagine were on the tip of his tongue: He can have it back. It was plain to see that he was moved by her father’s gesture. Or maybe the better word was disturbed by it.

  Before the situation had a chance to deteriorate further, Gareth blurted, “When are we going boating?”

  Reggie smiled, thinking how Gareth’s interruptions had helped them avoid more than one nasty confrontation that afternoon. She might have gone on believing Gareth’s interruptions were merely luck, if she had not happened to meet his gaze—his shrewd, entirely perceptive gaze—at that moment.

  He knows exactly what he is doing, she realized suddenly. She wondered how her brother had learned to be such an effective peacemaker. She did not think her parents fought often, which only left boarding school. It must be a hellish place, for him to have acquired such a talent so young.

  Taking advantage of his timely interference, Reggie said, “Why not go boating now? Mick, you and Becky and Gareth can go in one skiff, and Carlisle and Kitt and I will—”

  “I prefer to stay here with Meg,” Kitt said.

  Gareth had handed the sleepy child to his nurse, and there were two additional servants to guard Meg’s safety. It was possible her father had asked her stepmother not to leave the child with anyone else. But Reggie believed Kitt was merely giving an excuse to avoid being in the same boat with Carlisle.

  Reggie could have confronted her stepmother, but what was the use? Carlisle was the one with the problem. Until she could convince him to make peace with her father, she would have to bear the loss of her family’s company.

  “Fine,” Reggie said. “Carlisle and I will go alone in the second boat.”

  The small wooden rowboats had been set just far enough away from the water that the tide could not catch them and carry them out to sea. The two men each pushed a skiff into the water, while Gareth stood holding a rope attached to each. Then each man returned and picked up one of the twins and carried her out and set her in his boat. Finally, Gareth climbed in, followed by each man, and Mick and Carlisle began to row away from shore.

  To no one’s surprise, they rowed in opposite directions. Reggie might have protested, except she wanted to talk to her husband, and a little distance was necessary to keep her voice from carrying to the occupants of the other boat.

  “It must be good news to learn that the land surrounding Castle Carlisle is yours again,” she said.

  “Should I be grateful that your father sought to sop his conscience by returning land he bought from my brother at a pittance of its worth?” Carlisle said.

  “My father is not to blame for mistakes your brother made,” Reggie returned heatedly. “Will you farm the land, or not?”

  “I will not.”

  “Then I shall.”

  “What?”

  “I see no reason why the land should go to waste,” Reggie said. “And it will put a great many people to work.”

  He stared at her as though she belonged in Bedlam.

  “Of course, if you are inclined to offer any suggestions concerning how I should go about getting started, I would certainly—”

  Carlisle threw back his head and laughed. “You are a constant delight, my dear. I make no doubt you would be successful … if you had the slightest idea what you were doing.”

  “Does that mean you will help?” Reggie asked hopefully.

  “I will—”

  “HELP! REGGIE, HELP!”

  The boat waggled in the water as Reggie lurched to her feet to see why Mick was yelling. “Their boat is sinking!” she shrieked at Carlisle. “Becky can’t swim!”

  “Sit down,” he ordered, “before you fall out and I have to stop and rescue you!”

  Reggie plopped onto the wooden seat and clasped her hands desperately on either side of the skiff. “Hurry, my lord. Please hurry! Gareth is not a strong swimmer!”

  Reggie leaned forward and back with each stroke of the oars, as though that would help Carlisle row faster. “There is no way Mick can save Becky and Gareth both. He will need help,” she said, feeling a desperate sense of doom.

  “Don’t do anything foolish,” Carlisle warned.

  “I must do something!” she snapped back.

  “Drowning yourself won’t help your sister,” Carlisle said. “If you jump in wearing that dress, it will drag you under like a stone. We’ll be there in a minute or two—”

  “That may be too late!” Reggie cried, feeling all the more helpless because she was so close—and yet so impossibly far away.

  She did not understand what she saw happen next. Mick picked Becky up, kicking and screaming, and threw her into the sea, then forced Gareth over the side. While the two of them flailed in the water, he jumped onto one edge of the skiff, flipping it upside down!

  Then he was in the water himself, grabbing Becky and Gareth each by the scruffs of their necks—like two drowning pups—and hauling them over to cling to the upturned boat.

  Within another min
ute, Reggie and Carlisle were beside them.

  “Becky, Gareth, are you both all right?” Reggie asked, leaning over the side to reach out to them. She managed to grasp Gareth’s shirt and heave him over to her.

  Carlisle reached over her shoulder, caught the boy under his arms and hauled him in. A second later, Mick handed Becky over to him, and he lifted her into the boat. Reggie took her shivering sister into her arms and held her tight, as Gareth huddled beside them.

  “I can manage by myself if you will balance the boat,” Mick said through chattering teeth.

  A moment later he had levered himself into the skiff, which was now dangerously overloaded. Carlisle picked up the oars and began rowing back toward shore.

  “What happened?” Reggie asked. “Why did the boat start to sink?”

  “Someone put a hole in the bottom, that is why,” Mick said furiously, glaring at Carlisle. “The gash was concealed under the seat and apparently plugged with something that came loose once it was wet enough.”

  “Maybe the hole was there when you left Blackthorne Hall,” Reggie said.

  “I checked the boats myself before we left. There was no damage to either of them. Someone sabotaged that boat today and trusted it would not be discovered until it was too late.”

  “When would someone have had the opportunity to do such a thing?” Reggie asked.

  “Carlisle helped unload the boats. He helped carry them down to the shore. He stayed there alone until we called him to come and eat.”

  Mick’s accusation stunned Reggie. It was horrible to imagine Carlisle wanting to hurt Mick or Becky or Gareth. She simply could not imagine it. If Mick would only think, he would realize that Carlisle had stayed on the beach merely to avoid further confrontation with her family.

  “Carlisle is innocent,” she said. “Think, Mick. How could he know which boat you would choose?”

  “He chose first,” Mick snapped back.

  “What if you had chosen first? You might have.”

  “Then the two of you would have gotten wet,” Mick said. “Instead of nearly drowning Becky and Gareth.”

  Reggie could see the futility of trying to convince Mick that Carlisle was not to blame. She looked at Carlisle’s face, to see how he was reacting to Mick’s accusation. It might as well have been made of stone.

  But if Carlisle had not sabotaged the boat, then who had? None of Kitt’s servants had gone down to the shore. That left only the three men Reggie had brought along, Terrence, George, and MacTavish, as suspects. Her gaze immediately sought out MacTavish.

  Of the three, he was the one she had not asked to come along. She remembered how he had appeared from nowhere the previous evening when she had been returning from the pond, frightening her out of her wits. Why had he been there? And why had he come today?

  Reggie realized she knew very little about the gille-coise turned gatekeeper. He kept to himself and did not socialize with the other servants. He lurked—yes, that was the word that fit—around the castle. And despite his age and his small stature, he was wiry and, she was certain, quite strong. And he must be clever to have managed to sabotage the boat without being caught.

  There was only one enemy who could want to hurt both Carlisle and her own family—Cedric Ambleside. Reggie wondered if Mr. Ambleside might have hired MacTavish to do what harm he could.

  The party on shore had seen the disaster and were waiting with warm blankets. “What happened?” Kitt asked, as she pulled Gareth to her and held him close.

  “Another ‘accident,’ ” Mick said, glancing sideways at Carlisle.

  Carlisle did not bother defending himself, but Reggie knew as well as he did that where Mick was concerned, it would have been wasted breath.

  Reggie saw the shadow of concern that flickered in her stepmother’s eyes before Kitt said, “We had better get started home.”

  “You can get into some warm clothes at the castle,” Reggie said, knowing they would not want to drive home in cold, wet, sea-salty clothes.

  “We can be home in the time it would take us to stop and change,” Kitt countered.

  Reggie stared at her stepmother, then met Mick’s eyes, and Becky’s. It was clear that all of them suspected Carlisle.

  He is innocent! she wanted to shout.

  As a last resort, she turned to Gareth. Surely a child as canny as he had proved to be would recognize the truth. But Gareth would not meet her eyes. He lowered his gaze to the toe of his wet shoe, which was burrowed into the seagrass.

  Reggie did not say another word. There was nothing more she could say.

  Kitt left the servants to repack the wagons and immediately headed back in the landau. Reggie and Carlisle followed in the gig.

  “Why do you bother to defend me?” Carlisle said at last. “They will never believe you.”

  He was staring straight ahead, so there was no way to catch his eye. But she slipped her arm through his and said, “Because I believe you are innocent.”

  He eyed her askance and said, “Despite all evidence to the contrary?”

  Reggie considered telling Carlisle her suspicions about MacTavish, but he was likely to simply terminate the old man on the spot. And if MacTavish was not guilty of anything, the poor man would be put out into the cold again through no fault of his own. Reggie decided to wait and to watch on her own.

  “When the real culprit is discovered,” she said, “I will make sure they all apologize to you.”

  He pulled his arm closer to his body, giving her arm a gentle squeeze, which was all the response she got. It was enough. It was a start. Maybe if someone believed in him, he would begin to believe in the good in himself again.

  Becky woke up gasping for air. She had been dreaming that her mouth and nose were filled with saltwater, that her dress was tangled in her legs, and that she was suffocating in the murky depths. She sat up and took a slow, deep breath.

  I’m alive. I’m safe.

  But her escapes from a watery death—both the real one, and the one she had conjured in her dream—had left her too agitated to sleep. She got up, jammed her feet into cold slippers, yanked on a dark green wool dressing gown, and stalked over to the window to stare out at the moonlit darkness.

  She had been horrified when Mick suggested that the only way he could save both her and Gareth was to flip the skiff so they would have something to hang onto until Reggie could reach them with the other boat. Becky was embarrassed to remember how terrified she had been, refusing to go over the side, until Mick had been forced to pick her up and throw her in. She had swallowed a mouthful of seawater as she flailed ineffectually toward the surface. Suddenly, Mick’s strong arms had been there to haul her up for a gasp of life-giving air.

  I might have died today without ever loving Mick … or telling Mick I love him.

  It had been her intention when she first came to Blackthorne hall to visit Mick’s manor house and tell him she wanted to be his lover. But the rains had come, and she had used the weather as an excuse to delay her sojourn. When the rain finally stopped, she had told herself it was indecent to leap into Mick’s bed when she had so recently been another man’s wife.

  Excuses. I have always had a great many excuses for why my life is not as I want it to be. It is time to stop being chicken-hearted. It is time to reach out for what I want. And I want to make love with Mick.

  That was as far as she would let her fantasy take her. Love, marriage, any kind of future together, all seemed quite impossible. Becky laughed softly. She did not even know if she could persuade Mick to make love to her. She only knew she had to try.

  She managed to go back to bed, but not to sleep. In the hours before the sun rose, she tried to imagine how she might induce Mick to take her to bed. Unfortunately, this was her first attempt at seducing a man, and she lacked any useful experience. In the end, she decided she would arrive in her best looks and leave the rest up to Mick.

  Becky took special care with her toilette, making sure a few curls were freed fro
m the knot at her crown so that Mick might imagine pulling out the rest of the pins and letting it all fall down.

  She chose a peach-colored, sprigged muslin dress with puffed sleeves and a V neck that revealed a mere hint of the feminine assets that had never been enough to satisfy her husband, but which she had caught Mick admiring. She put on her best straw hat, tying the blue plaid ribbon a little askew, hoping Mick would want to adjust it, providing an easy way for him to reach out to her.

  Finally, she wore white gloves, which she planned to get dirty along the way, giving her an excuse to remove them, and opted for a parasol, rather than a fan. No sense getting needless freckles before she saw him.

  Becky made sure Lily had breakfast and sent her off with her nurse to play before she went looking for Kitt to explain her absence from the house, so that no one would get worried and come looking for her.

  She found Kitt in the library with her father and announced, “I’m going for a walk to see how many different wildflowers I can find.”

  “What a wonderful idea! Perhaps I’ll go with you,” Kitt replied.

  Ordinarily, that would have been the end of that. Becky would have conceded defeat and come home with a faceful of freckles and a handful of wildflowers. With a willfulness that was frightening, it was so new, she said, “Actually, I would prefer to be by myself.”

  “Oh,” Kitt said. “Well. Of course.”

  Her father gave her a probing look that usually had the effect of launching her into a confession of whatever sin she was contemplating.

  Becky resisted the urge to blurt out the truth. “Do not worry if I am not back for luncheon. I have asked Cook to prepare a basket to take along with me.”

  Her father arched an inquiring brow, and she hurried from the room before she could succumb to the desire to confess everything.

  It did not occur to Becky until she had walked half the distance to Albury Manor, where Mick was living, to wonder whether he would be there when she arrived. Becky thought she remembered Mick telling her yesterday on the ride back from the picnic that he would not see her the following morning, because he had bookkeeping that must be done at home. But what if he had since changed his mind?