To Tempt an Heiress

by Susanna Craig

  Although her back was to him, he could see her head shake. “I will manage, as I have done all these years. Only this time, I will try not to waste my days praying for your return.” She paused, and the crackle and hiss of the dying fire was loud in the stillness. “But what will become of Miss Holderin?”

  “Has it not occurred to you that she wishes me gone almost as much as I wish to leave?”

  “Frankly, no,” she said, setting the glass down with a deliberate motion and turning to face him. “Not given the way she looks at you when she believes no one else sees.”

  “She—?” he began and then broke the sentence off abruptly, hearing the ridiculous note of hope in his voice. Had she not just called him careless, concerned only with himself? “Nonsense, Mama,” he said instead, although his heart was not quite in the denial. “Her misgivings are well-founded. We are ill-suited in every conceivable way.”

  “Yes.” Her skirts whispered as she walked toward him, hand outstretched. “And no.”

  Reluctantly, he took her icy fingers in his. “You have the look of a woman hatching a plan. What is it?”

  “Her grandfather is in England, you say?”

  “Yorkshire, yes. But—”

  She raised her free hand to interrupt him. “If she could be persuaded to visit him, then perhaps . . . It is nearly Christmas, after all.”

  Once, he had imagined that such a trip would buy him a few more weeks with her—time that would tell for certain whether she was to bear his child, time in which he could . . . In which he could what, exactly? She had made it perfectly clear that England was the last place she wanted to be, and he was the very last man she wanted to be with.

  “I cannot force her, Mama, and she will never go willingly with me. She suspects my motives for making such a journey.”

  “I said nothing of force, Andrew,” she scolded, “nor of her traveling anywhere with you. I daresay I shall make a more fitting chaperone, if not a more . . . engaging companion.”

  Andrew was familiar with his mother’s powers of persuasion. For that reason, he had left her a letter all those years ago, expressing in writing his intention of going to sea, rather than confronting her face-to-face. Otherwise, he might never have screwed up the courage to leave. But could she do this? Could she convince Tempest to do what she did not want to do?

  “She will never agree to it,” he said flatly.

  His mother conceded that possibility with a slight tilt of her head. “But if she does, then you must promise to do one thing for me in return.”

  He did not ask. He did not need to.

  “Stay here and manage Beauchamp Shipping in your place,” he said, every muscle in his body tense with the effort of fighting his natural impulse to run.

  “Precisely,” she said with a small smile. “Only for a few weeks, of course.”

  “Of course.” A few weeks that would mean throwing away a perfect opportunity to sail away from his troubles. A few weeks that she no doubt hoped would stretch into forever.

  At least the trip to Yorkshire would set some distance between him and Tempest, distance he had always known to be necessary—for his peace of mind as much as hers. And it would complete his bargain with Cary, although the money seemed rather beside the point now.

  “Perhaps the holiday will work its magic, its miracle, as it has been known to do before,” his mother said, her hazel eyes bright with anticipation.

  Although he had more than a sneaking suspicion they would each be praying for a different miracle, he jerked his head in a stiff nod, just as he had done the last time he had been presented with a devil’s bargain.

  “All right, Mama,” he said.

  * * *

  With so little to her name, Tempest’s packing was complete in a matter of moments. Into a small valise she had found in the bottom of the armoire, she placed the nightrail and spare shift, a pair of Hannah’s stockings, and a silver-backed hairbrush from the dressing table. And of course the money Andrew had thrust into her hands with such fervor. She was past caring what was and wasn’t hers to take. When she was home again, and mistress of her own purse, she would find a way to make things right.

  Only the velvet mantle gave her pause, but in the end, she could not bring herself to step out into the night air without it. She wrapped herself in its softness, raised the hood, and slipped down the stairs on silent feet. At this late hour, the hall was empty. One sconce remained lit, but its flickering candle served only to cast the corners of the room into further darkness. The butler had long since retired to his own room; now not even a footman remained. As she laid a hand on the door, wondering if she would find it locked, she heard a sound behind her, beside her. She jerked back her fingers when they encountered something cold and wet.

  “Caliban,” she scolded in a whisper. “Stay.” The dog sat as ordered, squarely between her and the door. In the stillness she could hear him pant, could picture his doggy grin, the eager sweep of his feathery tail across the marble tile. “You mustn’t try to follow me. Go on, Caliban. Back to your master.” Only her first command seemed to have any effect, for Caliban interpreted her second as an invitation to lie down. “Shoo,” she tried again, but was answered only with a soft groan.

  Then a voice spoke from the shadows.

  “Miss Holderin.”

  Her pulse sped and her heart sank simultaneously. Mrs. Beauchamp’s voice, not Andrew’s.

  “So you are determined to be off at once.”

  Tempest’s answering nod barely stirred the fur trim of the hood.

  “I cannot blame you.”

  Those were not the words Tempest had expected to hear. Her eyes sought the woman’s figure, still hidden in the deep well of the door to the receiving room, invisible but for the occasional shimmer sent up when the candlelight caught the golden chain of her locket. “Still, you intend to stop me.”

  “You must be allowed to make your own decisions. It is not for me to say whether you stay or go.”

  “You mean to claim you had no hand in the disappearance of my clothes? Or my shoes? That you did not discourage your Mr. Farrow from looking too hard for a ship that was leaving sooner?”

  “Ah,” came the answer on a breath of quiet laughter. “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid. I confess I wanted to know what could possibly hurry you away so quickly. I wondered what it was you were fleeing.”

  “But now you have found your answer?”

  A pause, loud in the late-night silence of the house. “I have.” With a rustle of skirts and a tap of shoes, she crossed to the door, reaching out and lifting Tempest’s hand from the knob.

  “I cannot stay here,” Tempest said, her voice the merest whisper despite her determination.

  “I understand. But it is not necessary to leave in the dead of night, I do assure you,” Mrs. Beauchamp insisted, turning her away from the door. Caliban looked up with interest and rose when Mrs. Beauchamp tried to lead her up the stairs once more. This time, Tempest did not follow. “Andrew tells me your grandfather lives in Yorkshire.”

  What else had Andrew said? “So I have been told, yes.”

  “It is to be regretted that you have been unable to know one another.”

  “If there is regret to be felt in the matter, it must be felt by him. I am not the one who has kept us apart.”

  “No,” Mrs. Beauchamp agreed. “At least, not until now.”

  Pushing away the pang of guilt she knew those words had been designed to produce, Tempest asked, “What is it that you want, Mrs. Beauchamp?”

  The older woman appeared to consider the question. “Miss Holderin, have you any other family?”

  “No.”

  A cluck of the tongue. “And you so young. Your only living relative, and this your first—and likely last—chance to meet him.”

  “As I said, I have no desire to—”

  “Forgive me for speaking out of turn,” Mrs. Beauchamp interrupted. “It’s just that, having been separated from my only child for so many
years, knowing that pain, I worry that you will wish someday that you had known him—when it is too late to satisfy that desire.” When Tempest began to shake her head, she held up a finger to stay her. “Mothers know these things.”

  Did they? Although she felt very little curiosity about her grandfather, she knew that a few days’ journey would also take her to the place where her mother, the mother she had never really known, had been born. Unbidden, her mind called up the flyleaf of Andrew’s book, his grandfather’s faded name, his own scrawled beneath it. What would it feel like to find some similar treasure bearing her mother’s girlish hand?

  Resolute, she shook off the mental image. “I thank you for your concern, ma’am. But my mind is made up. Your son has provided me with the means to leave forthwith, and I intend to seize the opportunity, before it is snatched from me once again.”

  Unexpectedly, Mrs. Beauchamp wrapped her arms around Tempest and pressed her cheek against hers. “Then I wish you a safe journey, my dear,” she said, turning and walking up the stairs, all liveliness gone from her step, all music gone from her voice. Caliban followed, pausing only to glance behind him once with an expression Tempest would have sworn was a frown.

  “Mrs. Beauchamp, wait,” she called after her, resting her satchel on the bottom stair. “Tell me one thing: Did your son ask you to persuade me to stay?”

  The woman hesitated between two steps. “He did not.”

  Tempest lifted her bag again. “I had hoped you would be honest with me.”

  “I am telling the truth, child,” she promised. As she spoke, she sank heavily down to sit on a stair. Caliban whimpered and Tempest was at her side in a moment, her hurry to be gone temporarily forgotten.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Beauchamp?”

  “It will pass,” she replied, laying a hand across her breast. “Leastways, it always has before. I just have to accustom myself to the ache.”

  “Your heart?”

  She drew a steadying breath. “He agreed that if I would take you to Yorkshire he would . . . look after things while I was gone. I confess I had hoped that a taste of the business—”

  “Might tempt him to stay for good.” Despite having no memory of her own mother, Tempest had known enough grieving women, slaves separated from their children, to recognize Mrs. Beauchamp’s pain.

  She nodded. “It was wrong to tease you into going. I had no right. I know how you long to go home. Can you forgive me?”

  Tempest took the woman’s hand in her own, surprised by its warmth. “Of course.”

  Mrs. Beauchamp gave a hopeful smile, as if waiting for Tempest to say more.

  But no. She could not stay. She was needed elsewhere. It would be madness to agree to go to Yorkshire merely to give Andrew a chance to prove he was a better man than any of them believed him to be.

  Not nearly as mad as haring through London alone in the middle of the night, however. And was she not always reminding herself of the need to think rationally, to act reasonably?

  By acquiescing to Emily’s plan, she could acquaint herself with more of the country of her parents’ birth and her own citizenship, even if it would never be her home. She could try to forge a relationship with her grandfather, who might then be persuaded to improve things at Harper’s Hill immediately, rather than requiring her to wait grimly for his death. She could also repay the kindness of a woman whose strength she had come to admire over the last few days.

  Any one of those reasons for going had more sense in it than the truth: She simply could not trust herself to stay here, with Andrew, another moment.

  If she ran to the docks tonight, she would be acting with her heart, trying to shield it from the sort of ache to which Mrs. Beauchamp’s had already succumbed.

  She needed, more than ever now, to act with her head.

  “All right. We will leave for Yorkshire first thing tomorrow morning, Mrs. Beauchamp. Just you and I.”

  “Och, thank you, child,” she exclaimed, squeezing her fingers with unexpected strength. “But make it the next day. I’ve a few things I must do first.”

  “Very well. But we must return in time for me to make that ship to the West Indies, Mrs. Beauchamp,” Tempest insisted. “I will go home when it sails.”

  “Of course,” she readily agreed. “Now, please, if we are to be traveling companions, you must call me Emily.”

  “And I am Tempest,” she offered, returning the press of Emily’s fingertips.

  “Tempest. How unusual.” Seeing the surprise on the other woman’s face, Tempest prepared to launch into the oft-rehearsed explanation, but Emily kept speaking. “I like it.” With a twinkle in her eye, she rose from the step without difficulty, wrapped Tempest’s arm through hers, and walked with her briskly up the stairs. “It suits you, my dear.”

  Did it? The name connoted power and strength, her father had always said, qualities he had believed she possessed. But a tempest was also unpredictable and disastrous, and sometimes she wondered whether she had not allowed her unusual name to become an excuse for rash behavior. Had Papa’s choice been blessing or curse?

  Either way, she knew she had just witnessed proof that when it came to shaking a stubborn oak, sometimes a gentle breeze was more effective than a gale.

  Chapter 15

  As Emily Beauchamp stepped into the carriage, Tempest peered past her. Beyond the coachman and the stable boy, however, not another soul was in sight—except Caliban, sitting beside the kitchen door, watching the goings-on in the mews with interest. Andrew and his mother must have exchanged a private good-bye.

  Just as the carriage door was closing, the dog bounded forward, leaped into the carriage without touching his paws to the steps, and wound between the two women’s legs.

  “Now, Caliban,” Tempest began to chide, glancing back toward the house, expecting someone—Andrew—to retrieve him.

  “It would be a comfort to have him along on the journey,” Emily countered, reaching down to scratch the dog’s head. “An extra set of ears to stay alert to mischief.”

  While she didn’t have much faith in Caliban’s abilities as a guard dog, Tempest could already feel how having the animal curled between them warmed the carriage’s interior a few more degrees. “I suppose,” she agreed, “but won’t Captain Corrvan—”

  “Oh, Andrew will be too busy in the City even to care properly for the poor dog. Besides, our need is greater,” his mother said, settling the matter with a firm nod.

  Given everything that had happened over the last two days, Tempest was left only to wonder that the gentlemen of the West India Merchants had not immediately acceded to Mrs. Beauchamp’s wishes in the matter of the construction of a new dock, or whatever other plans she might have had in mind. Clearly, the woman was unaccustomed to being gainsaid. If Andrew could be persuaded to take up his duties at Beauchamp Shipping, even temporarily, what hope had Tempest ever had of resisting this trip to Yorkshire?

  Why, she was even wearing another new dress. Mrs. Beauchamp had swept into her room this morning as she was dressing and snatched up the blue silk, muttered something about how it would be ruined by three days in a carriage, and swept out again. In its place she had left a traveling dress of tobacco-brown wool—trimmed about the bodice with apple-green ribbon, but otherwise as simple and plain as Tempest could have demanded if she had been allowed to place the order herself. Given how well it fit, she could only guess that Madame D’Ar-bay had made it according to the measurements she had taken during her visit. Wanting to protest—at Mrs. Beauchamp’s duplicity, at the shocking expense of having another new dress made up so quickly—Tempest had nevertheless put it on, fearing the alternative would be to make the trip in her shift and petticoats. If she had understood Hannah’s chatter correctly, where they were headed it was likely to be even colder.

  Despite the wool dress and the heavy cloak, the morning air took her breath away, leaving in its place those peculiar little clouds of steam that no one else seemed even to notice. The groom and
the stable boy had been talking and laughing with one another, oblivious to the haze surrounding them. Even the horses made smoky puffs of breath when they snorted. Good heavens, what if they were all indifferent to the sight of their frozen breath because they had never known any different? What if it were always this cold in England?

  No, no, that could not be so. Her father had often spoken of bright spring days and warmer summer ones, and Edward had learned to swim as a boy in England. One could not swim if the water were always solid, as it looked to be now.

  As the horses’ hooves broke through thin layers of ice on the puddles, muddy water splashed up and starred the windows, but Tempest did not turn away. The fog had finally lifted and the rising sun turned everything they passed into a diamond-crusted wonder. The carriage wheels squeaked over cobblestones that were coated with a fuzzy sort of rime—frost, Mrs. Beauchamp had explained when Tempest had reached out uncertainly to touch the similarly afflicted lamppost and found that the fur was cold but melted away under the relative warmth of her fingertip. It was a strangely beautiful world, nothing she ever could have imagined.

  And she felt as if she had it all to herself. Mrs. Beauchamp and Caliban dozed contentedly, indifferent to the swaying of the carriage that reminded Tempest of those uncomfortable first days at sea. The streets were still mostly bare on this early morning, and they passed quickly through town. After a while, she caught her first glimpse of the famed English countryside, its rolling hills and leafless trees all painted with Jack Frost’s silvery brush. Straining her eyes, she sought any sign of coastline, of water—was this not an island?—but the sun sparkling against the landscape blinded her and she was forced to give it up. At least two days, probably three, to get to their destination. A somewhat larger island, then, than the one to which she was accustomed.

  At midmorning they stopped to change horses, and as they dismounted to take refreshment at the inn, Tempest approached Hannah to persuade her to join them inside the coach, unable to bear the thought of leaving the young woman outside in the freezing air any longer.