Poetic Justice, a Traditional Regency Romance (Regency Escapades)

by Alicia Rasley

  Then Devlyn forced a laugh, a harsh sound against the gentle surf. "How very like him you are. I never was. Never had that anger that you have, that he had. He was a sailor too, do you remember? He used to take his yacht out every summer, until he lost it in a cardgame. You got that from him also. You just don't take your risks on cards."

  "You're wrong. You're wrong. I have spent my life doing all I could not to be. No. I won't accept kinship like that."

  "Oh, but you did. You've got his signet ring." There was quiet triumph in Devlyn's voice. "It was all he left, and you've got it on now."

  "That's not why I took it, and you know it. I never meant to claim kinship with him. Here." John wrenched the ring off. "If it was his, it wasn't yours to give away."

  Devlyn caught the ring as it spun through the air. He held it in his fist for a moment, then spun on his heel and hurled it into the water. For an instant it sparked blue in the dying light, then fell with a quiet splash and disappeared.

  John reached out as if he could somehow grab it back. But it was gone, fathoms deep in the dark water. "Michael—"

  "God, that hurt." Devlyn's expression was hidden by the sudden dusk, but his tone was almost normal. "I must have thought myself trapped in a melodrama, to do that. But it's done. Good night."

  And he strode up the beach path to his house without another word.

  ***

  The princess was waiting for John in the stableyard, a slight figure in the dimness, a silk shawl trailing heedlessly from her arm. He dismissed the grooms with a jerk of his head. In her usual imperial disregard, Tatiana hadn't even noticed them skulking about, their ears aprick, their hands busy with small tasks.

  She couldn't speak English quickly enough to suit, so she slipped into French, and even then sometimes words failed her and she had to make do with angry chops with her hands. But her intent was clear. She was fierce when she loved, and he knew how she loved her husband. "He asks so little."

  "He doesn't ask. He demands. And it's stupid, what he asks, it's trivial. It means nothing."

  "It means something to him. And," she leaned forward and grabbed his wrist, "that matters to me. So you must do as he wants."

  He wrenched his arm from her grasp and started to saddle his horse. "I know you are used to getting whatever you desire, princess. But this is not your affair. You will only complicate matters, with your high-handed ways."

  "No. I will simplify matters." She shoved him out of the way with a small shoulder and efficiently unbuckled the stirrup he had just buckled. "You are not going till you hear what I say."

  There was no use arguing with her, if he hoped to leave tonight. Resignedly he stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. "Say on."

  She wasn't expecting such a quick capitulation, and for a moment couldn't put the words together. Finally, she said, "You have another brother, someone bound to you by blood and not mere friendship. But Michael does not. You are all the family he has."

  "But I have never wanted that. We were friends. That has been enough for me."

  "But not for him. You have always known that, from the first. And you have used that, to suit your own purposes."

  "That's not true! What I have, I've earned, my own way, and God knows, he's never thought it the right way."

  "Oh, not that." With a wave of her hand she dismissed his ships, his commissions, his acquisitions. "No, you are too proud to use him that way, and you would have got all that regardless, I've no doubt. I mean that you kept him—oh, as a replacement. For that other family that wasn't like you, that never understood you, that you never really wanted. When you wanted understanding, camaraderie—fraternity—you would come to him. And then, when you'd had enough, you'd leave."

  He bit back another angry denial, because something she said struck a chord of memory in him. He closed his eyes to the awareness in hers, and laughed bitterly. "I recall—on that voyage with you, when he was losing his heart, I saw it coming. He couldn't even help himself. He said he didn't, but he did. He wanted a family so badly. And I told him I never did, never wanted all that tangle that families bring. I should have been the one orphaned. Even now, when I am, this family is too tangled for me. But Michael—"

  "Yes. He is not like you." The princess reached up to finger the buckle of the bridle, but the mare stirred, disturbed by the jerky motions of the princess's hand on her mane. Tatiana stopped and looked at her hand, then let it drop to her side. "He wants connection. He can't cut off as you do, not once he's committed. He can't leave it behind as you do."

  "But I meant for you to do that. That is your job, to give him that family. To make him happy."

  "Then I will."

  All the pleading had vanished from her voice. He had never seen her so cold, so remote, not in all the years they had been friends. "As much as I love you, John, I think he is right now to end the debate. Perhaps it is only boyish sentimentality after all to want a brother. But he'll never be like you, nor like his father. He cannot come and go with his caring. I know he won't tell you—he is too much the gentleman. But I have no such scruples. He will do better without your friendship. So don't visit any more."

  "Tatiana—"

  He thought for a moment that her iron control would break, that she would give that tremulous smile and say, Well, perhaps not. But instead she only nodded, stepped back from the saddle, and said with regal cool, "You may go."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted?

  Love is a familiar; love is a devil; there is no evil angel but love.

  Love's Labour Lost, I, ii

  The guard at the library door snapped to attention when John came down the corridor. The brother of John's boatswain, Petrus was a powerful man whose coat gapped open to show a knife in his belt. "There you are, Cap'n. Been expecting you anytime. T'other one, the one with spectacles, just tried to pass me by."

  "Wiley? The librarian? He was supposed to have left town."

  "Well, he hasn't, that's for certain. Been here every morning since you left, trying to get in. Offered me ten pounds, he did."

  "Ten pounds. Well, there'll be that much for you in bonus, then."

  "No need for that, Cap'n." Petrus scuffed his foot against the sun-dusted parquet floor, absurdly abashed for a man of his bulk. "It's enough to have a position at all. Ha'en't any work at carpentry since I lost my hand."

  "You kept the knifehand, and that's what I need from you. I don't mean for you to use it, you know. Just take the knife out for a polish next time Wiley comes up, will you?"

  "Yessir. I've been sleeping here, you know, just down the hall there on that bench. Lord Parham said it was best. Not that the night man isn't a good man, but—

  "But ten pounds is ten pounds. Well, tell the night man he'll have it, and his skin still too, if Wiley's kept out of here till the twenty-third."

  John brought out his ring of keys and unlocked the two new locks on the library door. So as not to cause suspicion, he ought to have someone with him as he went through the collection, but he didn't want to take Petrus from the door. He could send for Jessica, he supposed, but he wasn't in any mood to see her.

  "Come inside here, will you, Petrus?"

  He locked the door behind the guard. "Now stand over here in the entrance and watch me as I go back. I want to check on the vault, but I want you as a witness that I didn't take anything off the shelves."

  Petrus shook his head, as if this was a jest. "You wouldn't do that, Captain. I know that."

  John couldn't help but be pleased with this testimonial, however misguided it was. "Well, watch me anyway. Wiley's likely to complain if I'm back here alone."

  The wax on the vault's locks was unbroken, and the bulky shapes inside seemed unmoved. John stared at the block that held the treasure and thought, only eighteen more days. Then I'll see it, and hold it in my hands—and hand it to Jessica.

  And, if all went well in his interview with Parham today, she would be
able to keep it.

  The thought of how he was going to accomplish that brought the bile to his throat. He swallowed hard and went out to ask permission to pay his addresses to Jessica.

  Parham was waiting in the drawing room, a room with space enough to pace in. Not that John meant to pace, or that, after so long as a sailor, he had developed a fear of enclosed spaces. But he needed some distance between him and Parham, the whole expanse of the Persian carpet perhaps, to disguise any tension he couldn't suppress.

  Parham was all that was gracious, gesturing him towards a chair, offering him cigars and brandy. John refused the smoke but accepted the drink. As he waited for the familiar warmth to soothe his unfamiliarly frayed nerves, he noted that Parham was quite genial. The prospect of refusing another suitor no doubt put him in a fine mood.

  In fact, Parham got the process going expeditiously. "I expect you want to speak to me about my niece."

  "Yes." I should be standing, John thought distractedly, and rose. "I would like your permission to pay my addresses to your niece." That wasn't so hard. "I know I'm not the sort of husband you would wish for her." That was hard. The rest was easier, since he had written it down this morning and memorized it. "But my regard for her is so strong that I felt impelled to approach you, even knowing that you would not grant my request."

  "You knew that already, did you?" Parham jerked his head towards the abandoned chair. "Sit down, young man. I don't like staring up at you. So why is it, do you think, that you're not good enough for my niece?"

  Though he had expected nothing else, John knew a sharp sense of injustice. Not good enough, was he? If he hadn't a promise to fulfill, he might argue with that characterization. But it mattered naught. He might reject those values and this sort of people, but not before they rejected him.

  So he resumed his seat, trying to damp down his anger. Let Parham have his fun. If it helped to secure Jessica's inheritance, John would enumerate what Parham already knew. "First there's my background. I've never made any secret that I was of the—"' He started to say "lower classes," but then he remembered his mother and her two-story brick house, the carriage his father bought near the end of his life, the pride they took in those achievements. "Of the middle class."

  "Yes, I recall. Apothecary, am I right? You grew up above the shop, did you?"

  "No, we had a house and acreage outside the village. My father had a shop. My brother owns it now."

  "Salt of the earth, your brother, I suppose?"

  "Dennis? No. He's a businessman, not a farmer."

  "I meant, a sturdy, stalwart, English sort."

  "Well, yes, I suppose." He couldn't stay seated. No pacing, he told himself, so he walked to the window and opened the drapes. The sunlight was dense, filtered through the London soot, and warm against his face.

  "I was wondering. You look foreign to me. Sound it a bit, too, but I suppose it's all that traveling you do. Glad to hear your family is British to the bone."

  "Right. British to the bone." John pushed open the casement and let the air fill his lungs, buoying up more differences between him and the poet. "I work for a living. I expect to do so for the rest of my life."

  "You look like you need some sort of occupation. Can't stay still for a moment, can you? Jessica's the same way. Tires me out just to watch her. You don't need to work, though, do you?"

  John cranked the window closed again and leaned back against the sill, turning back to look at Parham. There was no hostility in the man, but somehow that made the casual dismissal sting all the more. "I suppose not. I have seven ships carrying finished goods, mostly to the New World. There's enough in that to keep me. But I can't imagine giving up command of the Coronale. She's the one that carries the art I buy."

  "The art you buy for the Regent."

  "Among others."

  "Unusual trade, that. Shipping art."

  As Parham had brought up that significant word, "trade," John had nothing more to add. But Parham cleared his throat and poured another glass of brandy. "I understand you had another trade too."

  Self-abnegation must become easier with practice, because now the words came trippingly to John's tongue. "I was a free-trader for years. That's how I acquired the ships. The usual South coast trade—silk, brandy. Whiskey and wool going back. And art."

  Parham held up his glass with a hint of pride. "This is smuggled cognac."

  "I know. Out of Shelmerston, I wager." Anger made him cruel. He came over and picked up the decanter and held it up to the light. "You're being taken, you know. This isn't from Charente, but further south."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It's not real cognac." John set the decanter back on the table and restoppered it. "It's not bad brandy, but the grapes are from Bordeaux, I think."

  This disspirited Parham so much he could hardly rouse himself to continue the inquisition. But sulkily he said, "I hear you had another profession too."

  John stepped back, wary again. "What's that?"

  "With the Foreign Office."

  That wasn't generally known, even among John's friends and crew, none of whom were the sort to gossip. More likely it came from the FO, which had never been good at keeping secrets. "I had a letter of marque, letting me take enemy ships. But most of us got one, by hook or crook. Cut down on the competition from the other side of the Channel."

  Parham laid a finger alongside his nose and nodded sagely. "I understand. Can't divulge national secrets. Very patriotic of you."

  Irritated, John said, "I'm not patriotic. I told you, harassing the enemy is good business practice."

  "But you weren't paid, now, were you? Not for the Foreign Office work."

  John wasn't about to admit that he had anything to do with the Foreign Office, but he might have retorted that his payment was his freedom. Smuggling was punishable by deportation or hanging, and he liked both his homeland and his neck too much to turn down his government's commission. And there was the risk too—that was a form of payment. "I try to avoid associating with the British government as much as possible."

  "But that's why you got the title, isn't it? For that patriotic work you won't admit you did."

  This, at least, was one mistake he could correct. "No. I forgave a debt, that's all."

  "Must have been quite a debt."

  "It was."

  "Kind of you. It's cruel, how whenever Prinny spends a bit of funds, those Radicals tie the pursestrings and try to foment revolution."

  It wasn't just the Radicals, of course, who objected to Prinny's artistic extravagance. But John wasn't about to get into a debate on royal privileges. He just wanted out of this prison of a room. "As you say. At any rate, a new title hasn't any currency anyway, on the usual account books, no matter how it's acquired."

  "Well, that new Duke of Wellington might disagree!" Parham laughed merrily at this, one hand on his chest. "A title's a title. In another generation, no one will remember why you got it. I've always suspected the first Baron Parham was raised for procuring Charles I some likely wenches."

  "Have we done now?"

  "Done? You're not finished, are you? No other objections to your suit?"

  This was too much to abide. "Haven't you heard enough?" With heavy irony, John held up his hand and began counting off on his fingers. "One. Wrong class. Two. Wrong profession—that is, any profession at all. Three, criminal background. Four, havey-cavey wartime doings, real or imagined. That's all I've got."

  "What about your irregular birth?"

  John stilled his restless pacing, planting his feet firmly as if the carpet were the deck of a ship on treacherous seas. "My birth was perfectly regular. I survived, my mother survived."

  "A bit early, weren't you?"

  John had been expecting something of the sort, but this euphemism was simultaneously too delicate and too crude. "Say what you mean, Parham."

  Parham flushed and looked down at his brandy glass. "Didn't mean to give you offense. Just heard your father was some lord."
/>
  "I told you. My father was an apothecary. Tom Manning. I care naught for any lord."

  "Right. I understand." Parham added heartily, "Appreciate such loyalty. But Devlyn. The current one, not his father. The one married to the princess."

  As far as apology went, it was the best John was likely to get. So he stopped halfway to the door. "What about him?"

  "Do you get on well with him?"

  "Devlyn?" John shoved that last encounter to the back of his mind. "We grew up together."

  "You're friendly, then."

  "What are you getting at?"

  "The princess. Are you, ummm, friends with her too?"

  It took a moment for the rage to subside enough for John to realize that Parham, in his clumsy way, was only angling for an introduction, not suggesting the unimaginable. "The princess occasionally gifts me with a bit of royal approval, I suppose."

  "You see them in London, ever, the Devlyns?"

  "Yes."

  "Never met the princess, my wife and I. Don't run in those circles, and then, well, Lady Parham hasn't been getting about much. But to meet the pretty princess, she'd go out for that. Even to a ball, I think."

  John sighed, thinking of Lady Parham and her lugubrious black gowns and her lasting lamentation. If anyone could cheer her, it would be Tatiana, she of the blinding smiles. "Perhaps when the Devlyns are next in Town, they'll give a party. The princess does love to give parties."

  "And—" delicately Parham hitched his trouser legs up and leaned forward. "And Lady Parham will receive an invitation?"

  Why John should be expected to cater so to the family that was set to reject him, he didn't know. But here he was, tangled up with these tenacious Setons. And it was a minor enough request, he supposed. "I will mention her name to the princess. Now can we get on with it? I've an appointment at two."

  Parham straightened in outraged affront. "Wait just a minute, young man. I don't suppose you know much about this hand-seeking business, but I have been through it many times with Jessica's other suitors. You can't expect just to say your piece and go on to your other appointments. There's a certain ritual to these affairs. For instance, I haven't asked you yet why I shouldn't accuse you of fortune hunting."