For the Love of a Pirate

by Edith Layton

  “I’m free now,” was the first thing Constantine said to her.

  Lisabeth looked up at him. He didn’t seem elated, or sad. He was just reporting the fact to her.

  “Was she angry? Were her feelings hurt?” she asked.

  “Not in the least. As I thought, when I told her about my ancestors, that did it. Miss Winchester’s very proud of her family and her position in Society. She was glad to be rid of me and my bad blood. At least, once I dropped a few bad names, she agreed at once and I didn’t see a hint of regret in her eyes. The notice of the end of engagement has already appeared in the paper, no excuses given. It’s her right to announce it that way, and she did. I’m surprised your grandfather didn’t show it to you. I wouldn’t have sent for you if it hadn’t already appeared.”

  “I suppose he wouldn’t have come here if he hadn’t seen it either,” Lisabeth said. Her grandfather always had at least one card up his sleeve. He must have had his reasons for not wanting her to know about it before she saw Constantine.

  “And so now I can take you around London, and then,” he said on a slight smile, “we can announce our engagement when we wish.” He paused a moment, and looking into her eyes with an unreadable expression in his own, he added, “That is, if we have the time for ‘then.’ Otherwise, we can do it immediately, though I’d prefer to have a space of time between ending one engagement and announcing another. And it would be better if we had some time between the announcement and the wedding. There’d be less gossip that way. I suppose we can delay another month, but that’s the limit. We won’t be the first to marry with cause,” he murmured. “There’ll be people counting on their fingers, but let them. Needs must when the devil drives.”

  He was so cool, so calm, so unimpassioned. She wanted to kick him. She wanted to shake him. This languid, proper, so correct gentleman was not the man she’d fallen in love with. Was it the London air that changed him? Was it that he’d come to his senses? Or had she entirely lost hers that day when she’d lain with him? Lovey was always saying that the older a woman got, the more lust began to look like love, and that a spinster’s excuses for lovemaking grew with every birthday that came to her. She hoped that wasn’t true of herself, but began to wonder. He was still as handsome. But it turned out that he was still as heartless as he’d seemed when she’d first met him.

  He’d as much as asked her if she was with child—his child. She wanted to shout: “You’re free, damn you!” and then leave him standing there. But she had loved him, and she hated to give up on him as easily as she’d given herself to him. She reined in her temper and concealed her disappointment. She counted to ten. She might not want to marry him anymore, but she deserved something, if only ten seconds’ revenge, for all her trouble.

  Ten reached, she hesitated, opened her lips, and then remembered Miss Lovelace’s sage advice. So Lisabeth kept her eyes on his as she assembled her thoughts.

  He looked apprehensive.

  She was delighted. But nothing good lasts forever, she thought, and she sighed. “I’m free too,” she said. “There are no lasting consequences resulting from our … meeting.”

  She watched him closely and saw the vast relief wash over him. He smiled, and visibly relaxed. Now she wanted to push him into the fountain. She clenched her fists and waited to hear what he’d say. Then, she decided, she’d push him into the fountain.

  “That’s as well,” he said, nodding. “Now there’ll be no gossip. No one can challenge our association, and in time, we can announce our engagement and there’ll be no undue talk.”

  She stared at him, resolved now to end it. She wondered how he’d feel when she told him that not only the idea of her being pregnant was over, so was their plan for marriage. Would she see disappointment or more relief in his eyes? Her own heart felt sore.

  “I confess,” he added softly, his gaze on the toddlers playing at the fountain’s edge, “that I feel a bit cheated. You know? After a while, the idea of our child became very attractive to me. I began thinking of names, and wondering if he’d be lucky enough to look like you. Well, that will be another day. For now, we have time and leisure to do things right, and our wedding won’t be a scrambling, embarrassing affair. You deserve so much better. And Lisabeth? When in God’s name am I going to have you alone for a few minutes, to be able to kiss you again?”

  She stared at him. And then she laughed. In that one moment, she’d caught a glimpse of the man she’d fallen in love with. “We’ll find the time. After all, as you said, now we have it. And surely,” she added with a grin, “an experienced man about town like you should be able to find a way for us to be alone.”

  “I wish I were that,” he said fervently, taking her hand. “I led a misspent youth trying to be as trustworthy and moral as my uncle decreed. I succeeded, too well.” He looked down at her with entreaty. “Help me find myself again, will you, Lisabeth?”

  She tried to see his expression, but couldn’t make it out because his image kept shimmering as her eyes filled with unshed tears of joy. He made a sound of exasperation, pulled her to himself, dipped his head and kissed her.

  “What’s this?” the captain roared from across the fountain. “I can’t see clear because of the damned water, but it looks like … what’s he up to now?”

  “Hush,” Miss Lovelace said comfortably. “It’s naught but a kiss. Sealing their bargain, I believe.”

  “What’s to do with that girl?” he asked, sinking to the bench again. “One minute she’s going to renounce him, the next she’s snuggling with him in public.”

  “She’s in love,” Miss Lovelace said. “Poor, fortunate girl.”

  Later that night, in Lisabeth’s room, as she was brushing out her hair before going to bed, and smiling as she did so, Miss Lovelace came in to talk to her.

  “He passed the test, did he?” Miss Lovelace asked. “Or was it just that you can’t resist him? No harm in that!” she added quickly. “Though if that’s so, it would be better if you never told the captain that’s why you made up your mind to marry the fellow.”

  “Oh, Lovey.” Lisabeth sighed. “He passed, and for all the right reasons! He was glad that I wasn’t having his child, and you were right, I could read the relief in his eyes. But you were wrong too. It was only because he didn’t want people to gossip about us, and thought I deserved less of a scrambling sort of wedding. But you know?” she asked in wonderment. “He was genuinely sad because of it too. He said he’d begun to daydream about our baby, and had got quite used to the idea. Then, when I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to marry him—he kissed me. In public. He forgot everything but how much he wanted me. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “It is,” Miss Lovelace said. “But I’m surprised. I’m usually always right about men. I can’t understand it. This means I’ll have to think about my test some more. I didn’t know there’d be any loopholes in it.”

  “There was,” Lisabeth said. “Lucky me. Imagine. The great Lord Constantine Wylde, that paragon of propriety, kissing me right there and then, in the sunlight, in the heart of London town, without a care for whoever might see us.”

  “Tosh!” Miss Lovelace said. “Who was there to see but for some infants and nurses, and your grandfather and me? And we could only see outlines through a veil of water. What are you worried about? Why shouldn’t he have been bold enough to kiss you in public? Squirrels and pigeons don’t gossip. And no one else was there to see.”

  But again that day, though she didn’t know it yet, Miss Lovelace was wrong.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He got her alone in the shadows at the side of the theater as they were leaving it. They kissed, and then, as Lisabeth leaned into his arms, reveling in the warmth and heat of him, Constantine drew back.

  “No, we can’t,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked him in confusion, as she stood alone, suddenly chilled.

  “Because we must kiss and run,” Constantine whispered angrily. “We have to go now because it’s not yet t
ime to announce our intentions, and I will not shame you.”

  They’d sat in a box to the side of the stage, some of the best seats in the place, as Miss Lovelace had exclaimed with delight. “You can see the line where the makeup on the actors’ faces doesn’t match their necks,” she’d added with great satisfaction.

  Lisabeth couldn’t. She’d turned her gaze to her right side, and watched Constantine more than the play all through the evening, wondering at the hard, handsome attractiveness of his face in the shadows, lit by wayward torchlight from the footlights that flickered at the foot of the stage. He looked so like his portrait—his father’s and his grandfather’s portraits, she corrected herself—that she vowed her first wedding gift to him would be to have his portrait painted to hang beside them in their home.

  She missed most of Hamlet wondering where that home would be.

  When the farce was presented, she reveled in Constantine’s laughter more than anything going forth on stage. She’d been smitten, bitten, magicked by him: she knew that. And she didn’t care.

  So when he’d drawn her away from where the waiting carriages were lined up in front of the theater, because they’d lost sight of her grandfather and Miss Lovelace in the crush of exiting theatergoers, and he’d taken advantage of the moment to kiss her again, she lost all sense of time and place. She just wanted to stay in his arms.

  “Tomorrow,” he’d said to her when he left her off at her hotel.

  But the next evening they’d seen Kendall and Blaise again and had had an uproarious dinner with them at a renowned restaurant. Constantine had no chance to get Lisabeth alone for so much as a private word with her.

  The week wore on, and if it wasn’t that they were out in the broad daylight in company, it was that they weren’t left alone again by day or night. The captain and Miss Lovelace seemed to be taking their chaperone duties very seriously during their stay in London.

  “Why?” Lisabeth had finally demanded one night as she paced her room before going to bed. “We are getting married soon, you know.”

  “No, we don’t,” Miss Lovelace had said blandly. “Not I. And not the captain. When’s this wedding to be? Where was it announced? Where is it to be? Aha!” she’d said triumphantly. “You don’t know yourself. So there’s to be not so much as another stolen kiss until you do.”

  She fanned her face with her hand. “Thought we couldn’t see it, did you? Ha. That would be the day. But we allowed it because then we thought you’d come to us full of plans for the wedding. You didn’t. You were almost filled with something else before we came to London, and that won’t happen again! Almost died of the pip when we thought you were with child, didn’t we? Yes, you could have gone it alone, and your grandfather, God bless him, would have stood beside you through it all, and so would I, but we don’t want to have that again. If you do have a babe, and I pray you do in time, it’s to be legitimate, and that’s that.”

  She shook a finger at Lisabeth. “Your lord may have wild blood in him, but you don’t, remember that, missy. Get a time and a day, and a notice in good black ink for the world to see, and you can canoodle with him much as you like, we say.”

  “We?” Lisabeth asked.

  “Your grandfather mightn’t like to scold you, but he threatened to toss me overboard if I let you out of my sight for more than two minutes together. But you should know better, my love. What’s happened to you? You’re flightier than the parson’s pointer in heat. Use your head, love, not your heart or other intimate parts. Get a ring, and a date, and then do whatever you want. It’s not as though I like playing watchman,” she added with a sniff.

  “Have I been that bad?” Lisabeth whispered.

  “Yes,” Miss Lovelace said.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just that seeing him again, being so near to him and yet always having to stay so far, is just about killing me,” Lisabeth said, sinking to sit on her bed. “I never knew I had such hot blood! I am acting like a fool. Well, no more of that. He’ll get not so much as a kiss on the cheek from me until we settle matters.

  “Because, in truth, Lovey,” Lisabeth admitted shamefacedly, “I never asked him how long he expects us to keep company before we make the announcement, and that’s just stupid. It’s been a week. What does he want? A month? Two? Three? He’s never said a word, no more than I have.” She made a face. “If he’s not ready, then I’ll go home with you, and come back when he thinks the time is right. Because,” she said sadly, “I don’t think I could hold out for that long, and it’s just foolish to expose myself to such temptation. Like keeping a fish on a plate on the table and telling the cat not to touch it.” She grinned.

  Miss Lovelace didn’t. “You’re not a cat,” she said. “You used to be a sensible chit. I don’t want to wound you, you know I never would. But you have to find out if he’s even sincere. It’s all very well for a gent to protest his love. After a while, he has to prove it. You think about how well you know him, and then you speak to him. Because your grandfather and I have noted that though he’s charming, he’s not the same man he was when he was staying with us. He’s more distant, even when he’s smiling. In fact, he seems to have starch in his soul now, and that’s a fact.”

  Lisabeth nodded. It was true. Oh, he’d been merry with his old friends, but he didn’t introduce her to new ones. He said it was because it was too soon after his breakup with Miss Winchester. But Lisabeth wondered. He was a different man now, and not one she wanted as a husband, until he kissed her. Then her wits went flying. After Miss Lovelace left the room, Lisabeth sat in her bed with her chin on her bended knees, pondering.

  It was better to go home now and wait for him to send for her when he thought the coast was clear. She didn’t understand his world, and didn’t know when that could be, or if she’d want to live in his world, that is, once some time went by. He too might be having second thoughts. She’d made a mistake, a terrible one in his world, too common a one in her own. She’d been brought up to love freely and without stint, once she knew her love. But she hadn’t really known him, had she? Maybe that’s why Society insisted on virginity for females of breeding—so they wouldn’t start breeding the second a girl saw a handsome face, Lisabeth thought, with no humor at all for her play on words, as she hid her face in her hands.

  Tomorrow, she vowed, she’d talk to him. The next day, she’d go home. She’d leave the next move to Constantine, and if he never made it, she wouldn’t be surprised. Devastated, yes. But not surprised.

  She laid her head down on the pillow at last, and started when she heard a light tapping on her door. Her maid was sleeping. Everyone in the hotel must be sleeping, it was very late. She sat straight up. Could it be Constantine? Had he thought of some daring, dashing way to finally get her alone? She was both thrilled and terrified. If it was he, how could she resist him? It was such a bold thing, the sort of action a buccaneer or a highwayman might take.

  She slipped out of bed, slipped on a dressing gown because there was only so much daring she could cope with, and cracked open the door. Her smile slipped too.

  “Grandy!” she said. Her eyes flew wide. “What is it? Are you ill? Do you need a doctor?”

  “Hush,” he said as he came in the door. “Want to wake the world? No, I’m in fine tucker. I just couldn’t sleep. I had to talk to you.”

  She closed the door behind him and smiled. “No, how could you sleep? You’re dressed for a walk in the park.” He was fully dressed, and even carried his new jaunty cane in his hand.

  “Couldn’t creep down the hall in the altogether, could I?” he growled. “Be enough to give the maids fits.”

  They both snickered.

  “Sit down,” she said, gesturing to a chair by the window. “I’m happy to see you any time. What troubles you?”

  “I talked to Miss Lovelace,” he said as he sat, and motioned her to sit nearby.

  She pulled up the footstool that was by her dressing table, and sat beside him.

  “And s
he told me she’d lectured you, which is all good and proper,” he said, frowning. “But she didn’t tell all, because she couldn’t. There are things that for all her experience, she don’t know.” He looked at Lisabeth and sighed. “It’s my own fault. I brought you up with stories of the good old times, filled your head with nonsense about pirates and highwaymen. Very romantic, they were, or at least so I described them, I see it now. But you took me too much to heart. And I forgot I was speaking to a girl who had never seen a real pirate or a real highwayman, never lived in the age when they was feared by all citizens, good and bad alike. And then there were those damned portraits to fire your imagination.

  “Lisabeth,” he said soberly, “pirates were lice-ridden, selfish pigs, they was. Outcasts of the land, and dogs of the sea. They killed, raped, murdered for nothing but money, and half the time, just for fun, for few of them could find enjoyment in much else but drinking. They couldn’t read nor write, nor reason right neither. They had no respect for anything, nor fear of death, because I reckon they decided nothing could be worse than the lives they led. Sewage, they were, the filth of the land run off into the sea. Bad cess to them all. I’m glad their numbers are dwindling, for I make my living from importing and exporting, and I’d be ruined if they still ruled the seas.

  “Oh, there be a few left, but they mostly plunder now in the New World, since we’ve gotten so fierce with them. They went with the old century, most of the greatest, or worst, of them. I met Captain Cunning the once, when I was just a lad. He had manners and charm, aye, that he did. But I daresay he was no better than any of them, only smarter, and meaner, which is the only way a pirate could take command of a ship.”