Splendor

by Catherine Hart

  As it was, Dora was becoming increasingly suspicious and on edge. Something queer was going on in the Winters household, but she couldn’t figure out what. For one thing, the house constantly stank of cigar smoke. Eden had suggested that, with all the visitors they’d had of late, it was to be expected. Dora thought otherwise, particularly when she smelled it so strongly upon first entering the house each morning. Jane had hinted that perhaps Dora was imagining it, since she herself failed to notice it.

  Then there was the matter of various articles of male clothing found here and there. A glove was one thing, easily dropped by anyone. And Captain Kane had once forgotten his plumed hat. Even the neckcloth left behind was not unreasonable, given the uncommonly warm weather they were having. But a stray man’s stocking? A dirty one? Dora simply couldn’t accept Jane’s lame explanation that it must have been one of her late husband’s, accidentally put in her own drawer. The lady claimed it must have gotten tangled within the folds of one of her petticoats and not been discovered until now. Dora doubted that, since she’d found it in the upstairs hallway, in plain sight, still stinking—after three years? Ha!

  What really set Dora’s hair on end was the morning she caught a glimpse of Eden and Devlin headed toward the carriage house. Granted, the sun was extremely bright that day, and the kitchen window was a bit streaked with cooking grease and in need of washing, but Dora could have sworn Captain Kane had no head upon his shoulders! To her immense fright, it seemed his hat was floating in midair, all of its own! When she’d gone running to Jane, almost hysterical at what she’d witnessed, Mrs. Winters had merely shaken her head, laughed that soft laugh of hers, and said, “Dora, my dear, when are you going to stop being so vain and go see Dr. Myers about a pair of spectacles? I shall pay for them, if you do.”

  Two days later, Dora was hanging laundry outdoors to dry. Upon hearing a piercing shriek, she turned, startled, and imagined she saw a mouse fly into the air. With a scream of her own, she dropped the clean dress she’d been holding and ran around the corner of the house as if the Devil were on her heels. She was so frightened that she nearly ran smack into Eden and Captain Kane, who were enjoying a walk in the side flower garden. “Oh, sir! Miss! Did you hear that! Did you see?” she gasped, stumbling over her words.

  “Whatever are you so upset about?” Eden asked with a concerned frown. “Honestly, Dora, you are acting so oddly lately that I fear you must be going daft on us!”

  “That ungodly noise, didn’t you hear it?” Dora cried.

  “The only racket we heard was you yelling fit to raise the dead,” Devlin told her with a shake of his head. “And we didn’t see a thing out of the ordinary. Did we, Eden?”

  “Certainly not,” she concurred. “What is it you saw, Dora?”

  Hesitant now to tell them, lest they have her locked in the madhouse, Dora mumbled halfheartedly, “Well, I could’ve swore I saw a flyin’ mouse, but now I ain’t so sure.”

  Taking pity on the poor befuddled woman, Eden put a comforting arm around Dora’s shoulder. “There, there, now. A flying mouse? Surely not. You know, I think you must be working too hard these days, Dora. And the sun has been unbearable hot lately. ’Tis bound to give a person a fit now and again, especially someone who’s getting on in years and whose eyes and hearing aren’t as sharp as they used to be. Why don’t you go to your room and lie down for a bit, dear? And tomorrow, have Mother give you a couple of hours free to see Dr. Myers.” With a gentle pat, Eden steered Dora toward her apartment over the carriage house. “Go on now and have a good rest.”

  Dora was no sooner out of sight than Zeus, with a heavy rustle of wings, landed upon Devlin’s shoulder. Eden cast a dark look at Devlin, and another in the direction of the falcon. “I told you that bird would be trouble,” she snapped. “Drat it all! Between you and your invisible friend, poor Dora must think she’s losing her mind.”

  Devlin cocked his head to one side and attempted a boyish smile that was not quite innocent enough to pass muster. “Not a great loss there, I’d wager,” he offered. “But I must commend you, Eden. You think fast on your feet, almost as well as your mother. It must be an inherited trait, like your eyes.”

  Those eyes were blazing at him. “You are a scoundrel of the first order, Captain Kane. You and your nasty bird. I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would care to keep such a vermin-ridden creature for a pet.”

  “I’ll make a bargain with you, duchess. When you agree to take Zeus’s place as my prize pet, I’ll turn him loose.”

  “Cows will sooner sing opera, so I suppose we’re stuck with both of you for the duration.” She sniffed, lifting her nose into the air as if she smelled something rotten.

  Even with Zeus complicating matters, Devlin managed to lean down and steal a hard, quick kiss, his tongue delving deeply into Eden’s mouth to vanquish hers. “You still haven’t learned to mind orders, have you, wench?” Then he grinned and smacked her sharply on the rump through her skirts. “Ah, but I do love chastising you, sweetling, so pray do continue your rebellion a while longer, will you?”

  Chapter 13

  For a full week following Tilton’s dismissal, everything was fairly calm, if one discounted all the general complications of having Devlin and Zeus haunting the house, and Dora acting as jittery as a bug in a hot skillet. With the help of the employees Eden had kept on—those who had been more loyal to her father than to Tilton—and the men Devlin supplied from his own crew, the warehouse was running quite smoothly. In just a few short days, business was already improving, and Eden could not believe the increase in profits now that Tilton no longer had his fingers in the cash pot.

  She’d scarcely drawn her first tentative sigh of relief, almost daring to hope her troubles were finally at an end, when she entered the warehouse office one morning to find it in a shambles. So suddenly did she stop, as if turned to stone, that Devlin, who entered just behind her, almost sent her careening onto her face. Together they stood staring in dismay.

  Whoever had ransacked the room had done a thorough job of it. Ledgers were strewn about the floor, pages ripped out and shredded. Not a cupboard or drawer had been left untouched, the contents thrown willy-nilly. Even her desk had been desecrated, the beautiful walnut finish now sporting numerous deep scars, as if someone had slashed it time and again with a knife. Likewise, her father’s chair was no more than a pile of kindling, the leather seat sliced to ribbons and the stuffing pulled out.

  Devlin had never seen Eden cry. He’d seen her sad, worried, angry, happy, even frightened—but he’d not seen her shed so much as a single tear. Now she gave a hoarse little cry, turned her face into his chest as if to shut out the sight of the devastation, and clung to him like a kitten to a tree limb. Enfolded in his arms, her slight body trembled so that he wondered how it stayed intact. With each deep sob, her shoulders heaved, and within minutes her tears had soaked his shirt through.

  She wept as if her heart were breaking, and Devlin felt so sorry for her that his own heart ached for her. Never having had much experience or patience with weeping women, he was at a loss as to how best to comfort her. Awkwardly, he brought a hand up to stroke her head, and crooned to her, “Sweetling, don’t cry. It can all be set to rights again.”

  “N-not Papa’s chair!” she wailed.

  Devlin winced, not knowing what to say. Over the top of her head, he viewed the remains of the chair and had to concur. It was, indeed, beyond repair. Still, he had to say something to make her stop sobbing. “I could try to find someone to rebuild it,” he offered lamely.

  “No.” She sniffled. Her face was flattened against his chest, her words muffled and watery as she added, “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  He sighed, then grimaced slightly as she rubbed her nose back and forth over the front of his shirt. Blast it all, he was going to have to launder his shirt again, and it was about two threads shy of being a rag now. “Tell me what I can do to make you stop crying,” he said, ready to promise almost anythi
ng.

  Her reply surprised him. It was the last thing he expected to hear her say. “Teach me to curse.”

  On a half-laugh, he asked, “What?”

  ‘Teach me to curse,” she repeated past a quivery hiccup. “You once said you would, and I could use a few good curses more than anything else just now, because if I don’t get rid of some of this rage building up inside of me, I’ll surely burst.” She pulled back far enough to turn red-rimmed eyes and a cherry nose up to meet his wondering gaze. “If you were standing in my shoes at this minute, what would be the first words off your tongue?”

  “Son of a ...” The words dwindled off.

  She raised a delicate brow in query. “Go on with it. Son of a what?”

  He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t teach her that particular word. “Bear,” he offered. “Son of a bear.”

  She gave him a disbelieving frown. “Somehow that doesn’t sound right. What else?”

  “Damnation.”

  She nodded. “That will do nicely. Let’s hear another.”

  “Hellfire.” He hoped she stopped adding to her list soon, because he was already running low on his list of milder curses, and he was loath to teach her the more scalding ones.

  Eden was not to be put off that easily. “Yet another, if you please.”

  ‘Tarnation?”

  ‘Try again, Devlin. A really good one this time.” “Jackass. Horse’s bum. Crupper.”

  ‘Too tame,” she insisted with a shake of her head.

  “Blarst it all, Eden! A lady shouldn’t say such things, and I’ll be double-damned if I—”

  “Just one more, and I promise I’ll be satisfied.”

  “Gadzooks.”

  “Gadzooks?” she echoed. “What sort of word is that? Did you make it up? I’ll bet ’tis not a curse at all.”

  “Would you really care to wager on it, duchess? After all, I’m the one teaching this lesson.”

  “Then what does it mean?” she challenged.

  “ ’Tis an oath sworn by the nails driven into Christ’s hands at the Crucifixion.”

  ‘Truly? You swear it?”

  “By everything that’s holy. And as you have pointed out repeatedly, I am well versed in Biblical fact.”

  She still wasn’t sure she believed him, given the teasing twinkle in his eye, but she decided to grant him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, it was a wondrously unusual word, and worthy of being put to good use.

  As she turned to view the ruin of her office, she tried it on for size. “Gadzooks! How I would love to catch the person responsible for this deed and hang him by his ...” Here she paused to wrinkle her brow in concentration. “What is it you would hang him by, Devlin, were you me?”

  “His ears, sweetling,” he supplied with a long-suffering grin. “Most definitely by his ears.”

  Dora got her new spectacles from the doctor, which meant that she began seeing things even more clearly than before, things she wasn’t supposed to observe. Every so often she would pop into a room and catch an invisible Devlin with a spoon or cup halfway to his mouth. Or worse yet, witness a chicken leg suspended in midair.

  At first she simply shook her head and said nothing, lest Jane and Eden think she’d gone daft after all. But when she twice caught Devlin stealing kisses from Eden, only to have him disappear from view a second later, she finally complained, shakily and with pitiful hope clearly written on her face, that the doctor must have given her the wrong prescription for her eyeglasses. Feeling guilty, but still unwilling to confide their secret to their flighty servant, Eden and Jane agreed that the physician probably had made an error. That, or Dora simply had to give herself time to become accustomed to the strength of the new lenses.

  Meanwhile, Devlin was still plotting to get Eden into his bed. When all else failed, he decided to play on her sympathy. At breakfast one morning, he began coughing and sneezing and complaining of a sore throat.

  Though his forehead felt cool to her touch, Eden suggested with a frown of concern, “Perhaps you should see the doctor, Devlin.”

  “Nay. I’ll not go wagging into his office with you at my side, like a sniveling lad needing his mama along for courage. You are not the only person with a reputation to uphold, sweetling, and I’ll not have it bandied about town that I was too much a coward to seek a doctor by myself, which we both know is impossible at this point.”

  “Shall I get him to come here, then?”

  “And stand hovering at my bedside all the while? I think not.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a while?” Jane suggested. “More than likely, ’tis just a sniffle. I’ll send Eden up in a bit with some broth for you, and mayhap a poultice for your throat.”

  Which was precisely what Devlin had hoped when he’d devised this scheme.

  A short time later, he lay lurking in his sickbed, the sheet pulled up to his chin, and wearing absolutely nothing but hard, hot flesh beneath it. He tried his best to curb the wolfish smile which kept curving his mouth as he awaited Eden’s imminent arrival. Soon she would discover that the only ailments he suffered were pangs of acute desire. And the only cure required was her sweet body thrashing beneath his, her moans of longing matching his, her hands caressing his feverish body— soothing, or exciting, everything but his brow.

  Upon hearing her tread in the hallway outside his room, Devlin gave a pitiful moan, in the advent that Eden might already suspect his devious trickery. The doorknob turned, and Devlin held his breath. Just as the door swung open, Zeus let loose with a loud squawk.

  An even louder, human shriek echoed the hawk’s. Devlin bolted upright in bed and stared in disbelief as Dora tossed an armful of linens into the air and tore off down the hall as if demons were fast on her heels, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  He’d scarcely managed to leap from his bed and don his breeches when Eden entered the room. She took one hard look at his sheepish face, long enough to accurately determine the state of his health and his obvious guilt, and launched into a hushed tirade, no less effective for its lack of volume.

  “You snake! You scheming worm! Now see what you’ve done? Dora is downstairs, quaking and screeching about ghosts! And if we don’t quiet her soon, the entire town is going to be alerted. Blast your randy hide!” She tossed the onion plaster into his face and, while he was still trying to peel his way clear of the soggy, smelly hank of cloth, she upended the bowl of broth on his head. “I wish you truly were sick. For a hoax such as this, you deserve to cock up your toes!”

  Fortunately, Jane was able to calm Dora sufficiently. As it happened, the servant had suffered a knock to the head the day before, when a large pot had come tumbling off a high kitchen shelf. Jane suggested that Dora’s hallucinations were a result of the blow. This the woman reluctantly conceded as possible, though she continued to mutter about ghosts and haunted houses for long afterward, claiming she would never, under any circumstances, enter that upstairs guest room again.

  Thereafter, they could hardly encourage her to venture to the upper level of the house to clean any of the bedrooms unless she was accompanied by Jane or Eden. It took a costly bolt of silk from Devlin’s pilfered treasure before mother and daughter forgave him for his part in this inconvenience.

  Just when it seemed that Charles Town was ready to put aside all reservations about Devlin, and forget the fact that he was a pirate as well as a partner in the Winters Warehouse, four brigand ships, with upwards of four hundred rowdy cutthroats, sailed into port and promptly began to terrorize the town. The attacking horde of marauders swept through the streets like an angry swarm of riled wasps, armed to the teeth and destroying everything in its path. Within hours, a large section of the town nearest the dock was reduced to a shambles, all shipping trade brought to a jolting halt beneath this unforeseen assault. Throngs of drunken, sword-wielding raiders pillaged at will, ransacking and burning businesses. In their mad frenzy, they ravaged, maimed, or slaughtered anyone or anything not wi
se enough or fast enough to flee, while the citizens of Charles Town recoiled in abject terror.

  Word of this terrifying onslaught spread like wildfire, and within minutes of the attack Devlin and Nate were being apprised of the situation by their mates. “’Tis that devil Blackbeard and his crew,” one fellow informed them. “Along with others who’ve joined up with him for a time. Looks as if they mean to sack the entire town and leave it smolderin’ in their wake.”

  This was not heartening news to Devlin’s ears, for Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was a crazed, murdering bastard who through his ruthless antics was continually earning all pirates a much worse reputation than the majority of them deserved. Numerous of the more civilized brigands of the day limited their attacks to merchant vessels, opposing pirates, or galleons filled with New World treasures headed for Europe; they did not generally prey on passenger ships or common townsfolk in their search for wealth, nor menace and maim indiscriminately. Not so the infamous Blackbeard. His very name struck terror in many a heart, for he had well earned his notoriety as one of the most ferocious and bloodthirsty pirates known to mankind.

  With a shake of his head, Devlin gave an agitated sigh. “Damn the man! Why did he have to attack Charles Town now, when I was finally gaining some favor with the townsfolk here? He is going to destroy every bit of goodwill Eden and I have managed to garner.”

  “Aye,” Nate concurred, “and with the number of men under his command, there’s little we can do to stop him.”