THREE HEROES
Page 51
Sometimes the fishermen took them out in their boats and even let them have the huge treat of hauling in nets for them. Fred liked being on the boats more than Con, so he’d had time alone to wander the village straining to hear smuggling secrets.
Stupid boy.
He’d finally spotted Mel Clyst, a sinewy man of only moderate height, with a square jaw and Susan’s hazel eyes. He wasn’t exactly handsome—his bones were heavy and his nose had been broken a time or two—but it was easy to see him as a leader of men. He’d been dressed like the prosperous businessman he was in a cutaway coat and stylish beaver hat.
Another time he saw him with Lady Belle, who was dressed as a fine lady, though with a flamboyant touch that Lady Kerslake would never attempt. A wicked woman, and Susan’s mother, although he gathered she had nothing at all to do with her children.
Lady Belle fascinated him, but Captain Drake fascinated him more. It became his dearest ambition to have a chat with his hero.
He got his wish, but it was not a chat he would have wanted.
He’d been sitting on the pebbly beach listening to old Sim Lowstock telling his version of the killing of the dragon by the first earl when they were interrupted. He was politely but firmly escorted into the George and Dragon. Not into the taproom at the front, but into a back room fitted out more like a gentleman’s sitting room.
Mel Clyst was sitting on a sofa in gentleman’s dress, Lady Belle beside him. It was the first time Con had seen her up close, and he noted plump, clear skin and large blue eyes, but above all he recognized her lush, carnal appeal. Her bodice was very low, and her wide hat held a sweeping, glorious plume dyed scarlet.
Captain Drake and Lady Belle sat on the sofa like a king and queen, and Mel Clyst had chatted about Con and Susan.
Now a man—and a man tested by fire—Con could still feel the sick nervousness and embarrassment of that interview. Or trial, even.
Clyst had not been cruel, but Con had felt all Captain Drake’s power that day—the power of a natural leader, but also the power of a man who held the allegiance of most of the population of the coast. If he ordered one of the fishermen to take Con out and throw him into the deeps, it would be done.
In later years, developing his own authority, and using the power of the direct warning and the unspoken threat, Captain Drake had been one of Con’s prime models.
All it had been, however, was a conversation, one in which Mel Clyst acknowledged that Susan Kerslake was his daughter, that she enjoyed great freedom to wander the area because surely no one would do her any harm. That a promising young man like Con Somerford had an interesting life ahead of him, one away from here, in the army perhaps, or the law.
It had been a silent but clear warning, man to man, not to do what he and Susan had done the very next day.
Had the warning put the idea into his head, sown some sort of seed? There was no way to know. His affection, his boyish adoration, had been essentially pure, but his body had been young, healthy, and lusty.
Mel Clyst had given one blunt order—no more nighttime meetings. Without a word of threat, Con had known that he, and probably Susan, would suffer sharply if they disobeyed.
So they had met in the afternoon the next day, in Irish Cove, a mile or more along the coast from both the fishing village and Crag Wyvern. It was not easily reached, since an old road there had been cut off by a landslip, and the way down to the beach was steep and treacherous. A smuggler’s path, Susan told him, intended to be difficult. They’d scrambled down in search of privacy, aware now of being observed.
They hadn’t been planning anything.
At least, he hadn’t been.
They’d shared their grievance about interfering adults who didn’t understand a friendship, and laughed at the suspicions.
Then they’d kissed to test it out, to prove that it wasn’t...
Except that it was.
He had kissed a girl or two before. It had been mildly intriguing, but not something he particularly wanted to do again.
When he’d kissed Susan, it had been different. He closed his eyes now and could almost feel it again, taste it again, that soft, uncertain innocence that had left him hot and breathless.
He could still smell her—something subtle and flowery over the heat of her body in the sun. He could relive the hesitancy, the growing enthusiasm, the absorption. Then the breaking apart in shock, fear—and intense, burning speculation.
He’d had an erection. Astonishing, alarming, demanding. He’d had many erections before, but never one with such direct and present purpose.
She knew. She looked at his breeches and smiled, blushing. He was fiery-faced too.
“Cold water will cure that, they say,” she said, and stood to strip off her dress. She hadn’t even been wearing a corset on her firm, lightly curved body, only a shift, stockings, and shoes. She’d shed shoes and stockings, then said, “Come on!” and run down into the water.
Slim, lanky, but oh, so feminine in those subtle curves hinted at beneath her sturdy shift.
They were in view of anyone on the clifftop! But the road there went nowhere, so unless they were being closely watched, no one would pass by to see by accident.
If they were being watched he’d be married or dead come morning. Susan would likely receive the whipping of her life. Even so, he fought out of entangling clothes down to his breeches and ran to join her in the cool water.
Since she hadn’t hesitated, he didn’t, and plunged in to swim. She could swim too, better than he could, and they swirled back and forth in the salt water, her shift molded to her body now. It was a kind of dance, but as with other dances, awareness swam with them, heightened by brushing touch and glimpse of shape. Knowledge sat deep in eyes that rarely parted.
Then she stood, water lapping at her small, high breasts, hiding then revealing her nipples beneath opaque cloth. He couldn’t stop looking at those flickering buds.
“You can touch them if you want,” she said.
And he did, after one frantic glance at the deserted headland. He was dead—dead—if Captain Drake found out he’d touched his daughter’s breasts.
Death seemed worth it.
Her breasts were cold from the water, and rough with the covering of cloth, but soft and firm, and sweetly unlike any part of his own body. They were womanly mystery in form, and he kissed them by instinct alone, wishing desperately that he were brave enough to uncover them, to feel silky warm skin instead of rough, cold cotton—
A squawk jerked him out of the past.
A red-faced maid stood in his doorway, a huge jug clutched to her chest. “I knocked, milord! Mrs. Kerslake said you were up—” She bit her lip, going puce at what she’d said.
He was stark naked and didn’t need to look to know he had a full erection.
They both stood frozen for a moment. Then the maid scuttled over to his washstand, eyes averted, then out again. Except that she hesitated at the door, her color merely rosy. Her eyes slid to him, down, then back up to his face. “Unless there’s anything else you need, milord.”
He caught his breath as base temptation sank its teeth. She was willing, and though she was plain, with a heavy face and thick neck, it didn’t seem to matter.
“No,” he managed to say, “that’s all.”
The door closed, and so did his eyes as he struggled for control. It would be the last bloody straw to start using the servants as convenients.
He knew that wasn’t the real reason he’d turned down the offer, though. The absolute barrier had been the thought of Susan’s reaction when she found out.
Susan was in the kitchen supervising little Ellen in the making of toast when Diddy Howlock rushed in. “He were naked. Stark, staring naked! And ready to go, too!”
Laughter and exclamations ran round the five women in the room, young and old.
“And you just left him like that, Diddy,” said Mrs. Gorland, the middle-aged cook who came in daily. “That’s a turn up.”
Susan bit back cold, angry words, knowing they’d be far too revealing. With a bit of prompting some of the local people might remember that she and Con had been ... well, whatever they had been.
Friends. They’d been friends.
People would remember that meeting between Con and Captain Drake in the George and Dragon. No one knew what had been said, but enough guessed. Most thought it had been a youthful love affair, though no one seemed to think they’d gone as far as they had.
Who would think it? A young lady of the manor, even if a bastard, and a young gentleman of Crag Wyvern. Simple people persisted in thinking that the higher orders had less fleshy desires than they, even in the face of evidence to the contrary such as Lady Belle and Mel Clyst. And the old earl taking any youngish woman who was willing to his bed.
People would soon realize that the new earl was Con Somerford, that likable lad who’d hung around the village soaking up any story a body wanted to tell, and who’d spent dunamany hours on the cliffs with Miss Susan. He’d made a good impression, and thus haunted her for years after with the villagers’ talk about “that young man of yours, Miss Susan.”
It would start again. Fancy the earl being that young man of yours, Miss Susan.
How was she to bear it?
All around her, the women chattered and giggled about the naked earl, while she remembered the sight of him in the window earlier. She’d assumed he was wearing drawers, but now she knew he must have been stark naked. Despite logic it made that moment freshly embarrassing.
Or freshly stirring.
“Lovely body on him,” Diddy was saying, relishing being the center of attention. “Good hard muscles, and no really bad scars ...”
Yes, thought Susan. The sleek youthful body had grown and hardened to perfection. Wide shoulders, just enough muscle.
No really bad scars? There were scars?
Of course there were.
“Got a tattoo on his chest, though,” Diddy said. “Can’t say as I like that on a man.”
So it hadn’t been a freak shadow of the half-open window.
“A dragon it is. Not like the Chinese ones. I rather like those ones.... I know!” Diddy exclaimed. “It’s like the one in the Saint George bedroom! Nasty old beast. Could be taken right off the walls there, it could. Coiled all around his ...” Diddy circled her own large right breast.
Susan smelled burning and turned sharply. Ellen was watching Diddy, slack-mouthed.
“The toast’s burning,” Susan snapped, giving the girl a slap to the head, which she regretted immediately.
Ellen started to cry as she pulled the charred bread off the fork and grabbed a fresh slice. “I’m sorry, ma’am!”
Oh, Lord. She’d had little sleep last night, what with having to be sure the contraband was well settled down below, and then Con rattling in her mind like a spiked ball. But she shouldn’t be taking it out on poor Ellen.
Susan rubbed the girl’s cap for a moment. “I’m sorry. But watch the toast, not Diddy’s boobies.” She turned to the rest of the room. “Enough of this shameful talk. This is a decent house now. There’ll be no goings-on, do you hear?”
Everyone hurried back to work, but Diddy said, “He be Earl of Wyvern, b’ain’t he? And he thought about my offer. I saw him. So there.”
Susan was sure he had. Diddy was plain, but she had a ripe body, a huge, generous curving of breasts and hips. She had plenty of suitors, and the only reason she wasn’t married already was that she had an eye to bettering herself.
Diddy’s ways weren’t responsible for the churning inside Susan, however, or for her surge of bad temper. Nor was tiredness. “Heaven knows why the earl is awake so early,” she said, “but we’ll have a good breakfast ready for him. Get to work. Whatever he might desire.”
Diddy chuckled.
Susan swallowed a retort and retreated to her rooms. There she sat, hugging herself.
It wasn’t Diddy.
It wasn’t even the thought of Con and Diddy.
It was the dragon.
If Con Somerford had a dragon tattooed on his chest, a dragon like the one in the big picture of George and the dragon in the Saint George rooms, it was all her fault.
Chapter Five
They’d talked about his name, George, and why he didn’t use it. She’d heard about the other two Georges—Van and Hawk—and how they’d chosen their names.
All three had been born within weeks around the time the French were imprisoning their king, and so all three boys had patriotically been christened George. They’d been born into neighboring families, too, and grown up as close friends, so the name became a constant confusion.
Eventually they’d sat down to sort it out. They’d all wanted to be George, not for the king but for the saint who slew the dragon. To them the dragon represented all the evil in the world, and Saint George was the perfect hero. They’d discussed drawing lots, but in the end they’d decided that if they couldn’t all be George, none of them could. Instead they’d take names from their surnames.
George Vandeimen had become Van, George Hawkinville had become Hawk, but George Somerford had balked at the sissy name Somer. Instead he’d taken Con from his middle name, Connaught.
She remembered how she’d drunk in the stories of his close friends. Growing up at Kerslake Manor, she’d had her cousins for friends, but there were no other suitable young ladies nearby, and her cousins, though very sweet, were not mates for her adventurous soul. David was more in tune with her, but he was a brother, and two years younger.
Con had been the first true friend she had known, the only friend of instant, perfect connection. In her imagination, his friends were her friends.
The Georges, as Con had called them. Or, sometimes, the triumvirate. Con, Van, and Hawk.
He also had friends in the Company of Rogues, a group of friends at Harrow School. Twelve new boys gathered by a boy called Nicholas Delaney and formed into a band for protection from bullies—and for creative mayhem.
Fourteen good friends in all.
Riches beyond her imagination.
Yet all that happiness was now shadowed by that tattoo.
Con had loved the story of Saint George and the dragon, and all the dragon stories at Crag Wyvern. Though he had no high opinion of the Devonish Somerfords, he was thrilled to share the blood of a possible dragon slayer. He and his brother had been put in the Norse rooms together, but once he’d found the Saint George rooms he’d asked to move.
One day he’d sneaked her into Crag Wyvern and up to his room, to study the picture on the wall. Strangely, there had been no trace of awareness that they were together in his bedroom. That had been on the seventh day, before things changed.
“The George looks like me, don’t you think?” he’d said, eager expectation in his eyes.
She looked at the saint, so covered in Roman armor, swirling red cloak, and huge crested helmet that it was hard to see him at all. She knew what friendship demanded, though. “Yes, he does. He has your square chin. And your cheekbones.”
“I might be Con,” he said, “but in my heart I’m George, defender of the weak and innocent. I’ll defend you, Susan, if ever you are threatened.”
“I’m not weak and innocent!” she’d protested, with a disgust that made the older Susan wryly smile.
He’d been so flustered, apologizing and protesting at the same time, that they’d fled outdoors again, where everything seemed so much simpler.
She remembered thinking that he might like her to call him George, but it hadn’t seemed to fit him. He was Con, steady, fun-loving, beautiful Con. But in the aftermath of lovemaking, she’d said, “My George,” and he’d kissed her and said, “Forever.”
She could still remember that moment, perfect as a diamond set in gold. Lying in his arms in the warm shade of the cliff, seabirds calling, waves chu
ckling around nearby rocks.
It wasn’t what they had just done. It was that she’d found her person, the one she would be with all her life, the one from whom she would never want to part.
She’d known they’d have to separate for a while. They were young. People would make them wait. But they were joined for all eternity. And the perfect final detail was that her Saint George, her hero, her friend, would also one day be Earl of Wyvern.
She would be Lady Wyvern, queen of all she knew.
It had never crossed her mind that Con wasn’t the older son. He had been as tall as his brother, and both stronger and more vigorous. Fred Somerford had even been painfully shy, and only at ease when talking about boats.
So, all through those magical days as she had fallen in love with Con, she’d fallen in love with a vision of the future.
She wouldn’t be Lady Belle’s bastard daughter, always being told how kind it was of Sir Nathaniel and Lady Kerslake to treat her and David as part of the family.
She wouldn’t be a person who didn’t really belong.
She would be Countess of Wyvern.
It would be perfect retribution for all those people who treated her and David as not quite members of local society, who discouraged their children from spending time with them, who watched constantly for misbehavior.
She would be Countess of Wyvern. She would belong without question, and everyone—everyone!—would have to curtsy and smile to her. And she’d take David into respectability too, so he could go anywhere, do anything. Marry an heiress. Become a grand lord himself if he wanted.
No one would be able to look down on them again.
So she had lain there in his arms, sure of complete perfection.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he said, stroking her, looking at her body as if it was a wondrous mystery to him.
She was looking at him the same way. What they’d done had hurt a bit, and she was sure there was more to it, but still, it had been the most magical thing she could ever imagine, and she wanted to do it again.
There was the danger of catching a baby from him, but if it happened it might not be so bad. They’d have to marry immediately then, wouldn’t they?