To Tempt an Heiress

by Susanna Craig

  But she had made a promise to Papa, and she meant to keep it. She fought the impulse to rub the place where Lord Nathaniel’s fingers had been. He was simply going to have to learn to take no for an answer.

  “It is . . . kind of you to take such an interest in something that does not concern you in the slightest, my lord.”

  “Tempest,” he chided, a deceptively gentle note in his voice. “You must believe that I value your future happiness, my dear. What must I do to show you how much?” He raised one hand, and despite her resolve to stay firm in the face of his threats, Tempest flinched. With a knowing smile, he tucked one wayward curl behind her ear before skating cool fingertips along her cheekbone to rest against her lips. “Say you’ll marry me and I’ll let Cary keep his post.”

  She could not open her mouth to speak without seeming to kiss the fingers he held there. So she shook her head instead, a gesture that unfortunately seemed to provide him almost as much pleasure.

  “Ah, Tempest. You do seem to enjoy making a man work to earn a yes from you,” he murmured, leaning closer. His fingers slipped lower, pinching her chin between knuckle and thumb and forcing her head upward to meet his gaze. “But never doubt that I shall continue to rise to the challenge of your disobedience. In the end, I will have my way.” Thrusting her away from him, he turned and strode from the house.

  As soon as the door had closed behind him, she snatched up her book from the floor, then raced into the hall and up the stairs to her bedchamber. Omeah was already within. Tempest laid the broken and battered volume on her dressing table, studying the place where the stitching had ripped and the quires had pulled away from the binding. Most of the damage could be repaired. All but one page, which was torn almost in half.

  With the tip of one finger, she traced the jagged line now running through the words her father had written, in a shaky, spidery hand she could hardly recognize as his.

  For my daughter, that she may ever be a rational creature. Thos. Holderin, 1792.

  The book was the product of those passionate early days of the revolution, when all the talk had been of the French “Rights of Man.” Mary Wollstonecraft had bravely stepped forward to speak of the rights of women—“rational creatures,” she insisted, who were capable of thinking for themselves and making sensible choices. Women were expected to act according to the dictates of their hearts. Miss Wollstonecraft simply wanted them to use their heads as well.

  Those words of wisdom had been one of the last gifts her father had been able to give, and it was a gift Tempest was determined to repay.

  Omeah bent over her shoulder and clucked. “How’d that happen, missy?”

  “Lord Nathaniel,” she whispered.

  “That man think nothin’ of hurtin’ others.” She paused and laid her black fingers over Tempest’s pale ones. “Maybe it time t’ make sure he don’ do the like t’ you.”

  Tempest pulled her eyes away from the book and focused on Omeah’s frown. “What are you saying?”

  The woman dipped her hand into the pocket of her snowy apron, pulled forth a stack of folded papers, and held it out to Tempest. “Jubal ask me t’ give you the post.”

  Wordlessly, Tempest sorted through the pile. Unfamiliar hands. Hands she knew too well. An invitation to a ball in St. John’s from a planter who hoped to promote a match with his son. Two offers to go out riding after church on Sunday. And the fifth proposal of marriage in as many days from a man named Gillingham, who owned a public house in English Harbour but apparently hoped for something better.

  “You think I ought to accept one of them, do you, Omeah?”

  Omeah shrugged.

  “Make one of them my master—and yours?” she pressed. “Give some man the right to send Mr. Edward away, put your Hector to work in the cane fields, flog Jubal for the way he polishes the silver, and warm Mari’s bed on the odd days, perhaps?”

  They both knew it was not an exaggerated picture of a planter’s prerogative, but Omeah straightened her spine and stood her ground nonetheless. “Him be worse.”

  She was right, of course. Lord Nathaniel was worse, and Tempest knew it.

  He had not always been the man he was now—or at least, if he had been, he had hid it well. Oh, he had always drunk too much and had a wicked tongue, but in the West Indies, those were hardly vices. It was only since her father’s death that his capacity for brutality and baseness had begun to show itself. If Papa had known the man’s true nature, he would never have befriended him.

  And he certainly would never have wanted his daughter to marry such a man.

  Not even to save Edward, whom he had loved as a son.

  Hot tears welled in her eyes, rendering Mr. Gillingham’s businesslike penmanship a blur. Blinking them away, she forced herself to focus on something else, and her wandering gaze fell on the still-open book.

  Head over heart, head over heart—again and again, Miss Wollstonecraft urged women to value reason over emotion. Papa had been all heart. Soft, other planters had called him. So Tempest had tried to be the rational one. Oh, she still felt things, felt them deeply. Not for nothing had she been named after something as wild and unpredictable as a tropical storm. But she could not afford to cherish any romantic notions, particularly ones that stood in the way of her duty.

  “I don’t want a husband, Omeah,” she reminded the companion of her childhood.

  According to Miss Wollstonecraft, marriage was a state of slavery for women—and Tempest knew something of slavery. If she married, she would sacrifice all control over everything she would one day inherit. “We don’t need anyone else to keep Harper’s Hill running smoothly,” she insisted, not for the first time, “and my staying single and independent is the best way to keep us all safe.”

  But she had to admit there were days when it seemed that all the determination in the world would not be enough to ensure her freedom and the freedom of those she loved. With a cry of frustration, she tossed both hands in the air. Her suitors’ letters fluttered upward and then pelted onto the floor like a plague of locusts dropping from the sky.

  There simply had to be a way to drive them off—starting with Lord Nathaniel.

  If only she could count on her grandfather’s support. She could write, contradict the lies he had been told. But even if her letter arrived in time, her words would likely have little effect. She doubted he would listen to her even if they were standing face-to-face. Not, of course, that she had any intention of leaving Antigua.

  Desperate, suddenly, for a breath of air, she kicked the letters aside and stepped through the window and onto the upper veranda, heedless of the sun or the coarsening wind, focused only on the vista before her. From this height, she could see much of the plantation: the neat rows of slave quarters with provision plots between them; sugarcane grown taller than any man and ripening to a deep yellow-green; the sheltered blue waters of Angel’s Cove in the distance.

  What would happen to all of it if Edward were no longer here to keep everything running as it should?

  It was not enough to refuse to marry. It was not enough to go into those little cabins bearing ladylike offerings of food or a poultice, or even to go in carrying chalk and a slate. If Lord Nathaniel succeeded in removing her most stalwart supporter, she was going to have to find a way to run Harper’s Hill on her own.

  And she could start by meeting with Mr. Whelan in Edward’s place, she thought as she watched the windmill turn listlessly despite the stiff breeze.

  A small step, perhaps. But maybe, just maybe, if the men on this island began to see her as a woman of business, they would cease to think of her as a bride.

  “Omeah,” she said, turning away from the window, feeling the wind tangle the wayward curls that clung to her neck, “ask Jubal to order the pony cart. I’m going to English Harbour.”

  The whirling in her mind must have shown itself on her face. “What you thinkin’ of, missy?” Omeah settled her hands on her ample hips.

  “A way to keep us free.
”

  Based on Omeah’s upraised brow, the answer failed to satisfy. “How so?”

  “I think,” Tempest replied, stepping on rather than over the pile of letters as she crossed the floor, “these worthy gentlemen need to see who is in charge.”

  “Who’s goin’ with you?”

  “No one.”

  Omeah shook her head. “No, missy. Better you stay home.” She waved a hand at the discarded and trampled post. “These here men come ’round, after while.”

  “There’s really no danger,” Tempest declared with a bit more boldness than she really felt.

  “English Harbour ain’t no place for you. ’Specially not alone.”

  Striking as it did the exact same note as Edward’s warning had, Omeah’s words fell on deaf ears.

  As a girl she had gone frequently to English Harbour with her father, watching the loading of sugar, the unloading of slaves. It was there he had first entrusted her with his dream. She knew the narrow cobbled streets would be crawling with sailors, from the rough men who manned the slavers to the uniformed dandies of His Majesty’s Navy. But in the course of a lifetime spent on the island, she had learned how to recognize—and avoid—their ilk.

  Take that Captain Corrvan, for instance. If he were a character in a novel, his appearance would surely be described as “piratical,” with those sharp green eyes and dark good looks. Salt-stained clothes, scuffed boots, and a week’s growth of black beard shadowing his jaw certainly helped him look the part.

  But in her world, pirates were not merely the romantic product of some authoress’s overheated imagination. They did not generally discuss Shakespeare or bow like gentlemen or formulate opinions on the philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft. More important, Edward Cary did not do business with them.

  Captain Corrvan was no pirate, only playing at one, and what was there to fear from such a man, really? Coarse language? Insulting leers? She endured as much from Lord Nathaniel in her own home.

  It was not as if someone was going to abduct her from the street in broad daylight.

  She would go to English Harbour, conduct her business, and be home in time for supper. And if her behavior elicited a few more raised brows, so much the better. She could stand up to Edward’s inevitable disapproval if it meant that George Gillingham and the rest would consider her a less suitable bride.

  Tempest peered into the looking glass as she settled a fresh bonnet on her head. Under ordinary circumstances, she would put up her hair and change into a clean dress before going out. But today, she wanted to be seen as she really was: a woman who didn’t give a fig for such frivolities. A woman bent on charting her own course.

  Beside her reflection, she caught a glimpse of her old nurse’s face. “Oh, Omeah, don’t worry so,” she said, turning to give the woman a quick embrace. “How much trouble could I possibly get into in just a few hours’ time?”

  Chapter 3

  The conversation at Harper’s Hill had led Andrew on a quest for a dark, quiet hole-in-the-wall, somewhere he could get drunk enough to forget that he had agreed to take Tempest Holderin away on the turn of the tide.

  The King’s Arse, or whatever the sorry little pub called itself, was certainly dark enough. A hundred years of grime covering one small window was an effective antidote to the blinding late-afternoon sun. By contrast with the crowded street, the air inside the pub felt blessedly cool. The ale wasn’t the worst he had had. And the place was definitely quiet.

  Too quiet.

  By his feet, Caliban lay with his head on his paws, eyes closed but ears alert. At his right elbow sat Mr. Bewick, quartermaster of the Fair Colleen, staring silently into his untouched mug. To Bewick’s other side, Timmy Madcombe wore the queasy, closemouthed grimace of a boy who had just quaffed an illicit pint and feared its imminent return.

  On the far side of the pub sat the only other customers: a pair of men huddled together in whispered conversation. One was a dark-haired fellow of middle age, wearing a long red coat; the other was clad mostly in black. Andrew could hear nothing that passed between them. Once, the man in red murmured something and spread his hands, palms up, before him. On the little finger of his right hand, a gold signet ring winked in the half light. The other man had laughed.

  Nothing about the two or their behavior should have attracted Andrew’s particular notice. Yet it had, and he could not shake the suspicion that there was something sinister in their talk.

  Or was it merely his own guilty conscience that made him think it? After all, he was the one meant to be plotting the abduction of an heiress.

  Despairing of the peace he had sought, Andrew pushed away from the table and was preparing to rise when a crash and a shout from the far table sent his hand automatically to his boot and the slender dagger he kept secreted there. Caliban leapt to attention. When Andrew turned, the blade hidden in his palm, the man in red was shaking wet hair from his eyes and swiping foam from the ruined sleeve of his coat. A battered, empty tray wobbled in an erratic circle before coming to rest, and once-full tankards now lay impotently on their sides, littering the table and the floor. Beneath the men’s feet, a puddle of ale was spreading.

  The dark-clothed man, untouched by the accident, struggled to mask a sly smile of amusement, but the other man stood, his face growing as red as his coat. When he spoke, Andrew could hear every word quite clearly, although his voice was still eerily quiet.

  “You little shit,” he hissed, grabbing the serving boy by the throat. The boy’s eyes rolled in fear, large and white in his black face. A scrawny lad of perhaps eight, he must have been almost outweighed by the tray he’d been carrying.

  With a shove, the man pushed the boy down to the ale-slick floor. One swift kick kept the lad from trying to crawl and slither away, and when his hands slipped from beneath him, the man seized his advantage, toeing him over and then pinning him supine, with the sole of his boot pressed against that narrow chest. The boy wheezed once, and then ceased to struggle.

  “Hey, now,” muttered Timmy, his sympathy with the boy’s predicament driven by his own youth and experiences. Caliban’s hackles rose and Bewick started to his feet, but Andrew waved them all into silence, hoping the two men would not take notice and decide to start a brawl. He liked his odds against a pair of drunken louts, but he would rather avoid the fight entirely if he could.

  When he turned back to the other table, he saw the man in red fumbling with the buttons of his fall. “Shower me with that piss your master tries to pass off as ale, will you, boy? Let’s just see how you like it.”

  The boy squirmed, twisting his face away from the expected fouling, but the man simply leaned more heavily onto the foot that pinned his victim in place. Still, the child did not cry out.

  “Enough.” Andrew took one long step toward the man. At well over six feet tall, he had ended more than one fight just by standing up.

  But the man in red seemed to be too caught up in his twisted plan to exact revenge to be mindful of his own safety. He tore his eyes from his victim only long enough to growl, “Bugger off.”

  Laying one hand against the stranger’s shoulder, Andrew repeated his command. “Enough, I said. Let the boy go.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  With his left hand, Andrew laid his knife against the man’s side, careful to keep the movement hidden from the others. “If that worm you’re hiding in your breeches makes an appearance,” he said, speaking low enough that only the man in red could hear, “I’ll serve it up to you instead.” Andrew turned his wrist slightly, pressing the tip of his blade into the space between two ribs, so that the man might suffer from no illusions about either his ability or his willingness to do what he said, and more.

  The man’s back arched away from the knife and he sent one dark, desperate look at his companion, who seemed frozen in his helplessness, unwilling to step in where he was so clearly outmatched.

  After a long moment of dreadful silence, in which the only sounds were a low, rumbling growl
from Caliban and the pattering of ale as it dripped off the edge of the table onto the flagstones, Andrew heard the telltale creak of leather. His opponent shifted his weight onto his other leg and lifted his boot from the boy’s chest.

  The boy tried to scramble to his feet but fell back, his face awash with pain. He had bruises, certainly, perhaps even a cracked rib. But Andrew guessed him likely to recover.

  “You’re captain of that ship called the Fair Colleen, ain’t you?” the lad rasped.

  “Aye.”

  “The Fair Colleen? Odd name for a merchant vessel,” said the man in red. “I suppose her owner had an itch for some Irish whore.”

  Caliban, who understood English better than most men seemed to expect, charged from his spot beneath the table, teeth bared and hackles raised. The man flailed out with one booted foot, as if to ward off the dog with a kick.

  “I wouldn’t,” Andrew said softly, twisting the knife just enough that it pricked the fabric of the red coat, but not quite enough to draw a brighter drop of crimson from the man’s side. Slowly the man lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender. “And though I shouldn’t, I’ll forgive the insult. The Colleen was my father’s ship, and he named her for my mother.” Sheathing the knife, Andrew shoved the man toward his dumbstruck companion.

  “You’ll answer for this, you son of a bitch.” The man in red ground out the threat with a scowl rendered somewhat less menacing by the fact that his breeches drooped around his knees. Snatching them up, he motioned for his friend to follow him from the pub.

  Andrew stretched out a hand to help the boy rise and saw scars ringing the small wrists that peeped from beneath tattered sleeves. “What’s your name?”

  “Mas’r Gillingham calls me Caesar.”

  “I see. And the man in red?”

  With fear in his eyes, Caesar darted a glance toward the back door of the pub. “Lord Somethin’. De—De—”

  “Delamere?” Andrew suggested. The boy nodded.