Andrew fingered the handle of his knife, weighing it, as if considering where to land the blow. But the shock of meeting Stratton face-to-face tempered the bloodlust that pounded in his ears. Had he really wasted ten years of his life chasing after this worthless specimen? What his mind had built up as fierce adversary, the dingy light of this room revealed to be a feeble old man. Not that he spared him any pity. But suddenly he was no longer certain that the satisfaction of justice at long last was worth the price of bloodying his hands—further than they had already been bloodied, that was.
At Andrew’s hesitation, Stratton snorted his disbelief. “Thought the Irish had spirit,” he said as he turned to pick up his coat from the chair.
Andrew watched him slip his arms into bedraggled red sleeves. “Where did you get that coat?”
“This?” Stratton brushed off one shoulder as if flicking a speck of lint from superfine rather than fleas from a rag. “Why, it b’longed to that nob what paid me to come after you. Wore it to the bitter end, ’e did.”
“Until he drowned, you mean.”
“Drowned? Naw.” Stratton shook his head. “Somehow in all the twistin’ and turnin’ after that storm, the two of us ended up floatin’ free. Mighty glad to be alive, I was, but I don’ know how much longer we coulda lasted if’n ’is Majesty’s boys hadn’t hied into view. When we got on board, t’ lieutenant said he’d never have seen us if’n it weren’t for this ’ere red coat. That nob was all set to toss it in the rag bin, but I snatched it right up. Kinda took a fancy to it, I guess you’d say, since it saved my life an’ all. ’Sides, I ain’t got nuthin’ left after t’ old bitch sank.”
Andrew heard very little of the account after the point at which Stratton had revealed that Delamere had survived the wreck. “He’s alive? Where?”
“Delamere? Said he had business in t’ North. ’llowed me to ride along. Decent enough fellow, for a nob.”
“Which is to say, not decent at all.”
My God, the man was in Yorkshire. When Tempest had arrived at Sir Barton Harper’s, Delamere had likely met her at the door.
And Andrew had been the one to send her to him. Had insisted she must go. For his own peace of mind.
Well, what little peace their separation had bought him had certainly flown when Stratton had begun to speak.
Andrew sheathed his knife and turned toward the door. He could be at Crosslands tonight if he left immediately. If he were not already too late . . .
“I allus knew you was a coward, Corrvan. You’d have had me years ago if you weren’t. Always runnin’ off jus’ when things got interestin’.”
“You might be right, Stratton,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder. “But I’m not running now.”
With a swift lunge, he drove his right fist into the man’s gut, then cut upward with his left to break the man’s jaw and send him crashing into the wall. Stratton slid down and collapsed onto the floor in a groaning, immobile heap.
“It’s not enough,” Andrew said, shaking out his hand as he walked away. “But it will have to do.”
On the other side of the door, the girl still waited, her eyes wide with shock as she attempted to peer past him into the room.
“I need you to do something for me,” he said to her, reaching into his pocket as he spoke.
Warily, she watched his hand. “What’s that?”
“Grab your cloak, if you’ve got one. Go and fetch the constable and tell him there’s a wanted criminal, a pirate named Stratton, in that room. And then,” he said, thrusting a number of crisply folded banknotes into her hand, gripping her fingers to keep them in place, “keep going. Don’t come back here.”
“But I—” She glanced down, bewildered by his gift.
“Promise me. There’s enough there to keep you in a better life than this.”
Mutely, she nodded and slipped down the stairs. He followed close enough behind that he saw her pluck a filthy mantle from a hook and sling it around her shoulders. “Goin’ out, Pa,” she called over her shoulder.
The man at the bar grunted in acknowledgment. With the luxury of more time, Andrew might have served him as he had Stratton. Instead, he paused and fixed the man with a fierce glare that seemed for once to capture his full attention.
“Have you another daughter?” Andrew asked.
The man looked taken aback by the question but shook his head. “Naw. Jus’ Nell there.”
Despite himself, Andrew felt one corner of his mouth lift. “Good.”
Caesar was not waiting where he had left him. Instead the boy was running breathlessly toward him, having just rounded the corner of the cross street. With a shake of his head that would have to serve for a scold, Andrew hoisted the boy onto his shoulders and set off in the direction from which they had come, winding through cramped streets in a swirling fog that seemed to turn them around and send them in the wrong direction more than once. The air was turning sharply colder; every breath pierced his lungs and clouded his vision further.
At last he saw the carriage ahead. “Crosslands Park,” Andrew ordered breathlessly, lifting Caesar inside. “As fast as you can travel. I’ll double your usual fare,” he vowed, conveniently ignoring the fact he had given the barman’s daughter, Nell, most of the money he had brought on the journey.
“Did you find ’im?” Caesar asked eagerly, almost knocked onto the floor as the coach jerked, then lumbered away.
“I did.”
“I knew you would! That’s why, when I saw those officers, I went after ’em.”
A few questions produced a clearer explanation. Suspecting that Stratton was within and fearing for Andrew’s safety, Caesar had kept an eye open for help and gone after a party of militiamen when he saw them. Two had gone around to the back of the pub to keep Stratton from escaping, while a third had gone after their commanding officer to get more assistance. By now, Stratton would be under watchful eyes, perhaps those of the constable himself. When Admiral Clarkson’s information about Stratton’s activities in the West Indies came to light, he would be swinging at the end of a rope before his jaw had a chance to heal.
“Thank you, Caesar,” Andrew said, laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
But the boy brushed aside the gesture of gratitude. “Somethin’ still wrong?”
“Aye,” he admitted reluctantly, watching as the afternoon light faded from the sky, leaving the gray world gloomier yet. “Miss Holderin is in grave danger. And I have put her there.”
Caesar appeared thoughtful for a moment, then gave a sharp nod as if he had reached some conclusion. “Then we save her, too.”
Chapter 19
When the mantel clock chimed twelve, Tempest started, roused from her book as if from the depths of slumber. Why, more than two hours must have passed since Emily had announced her intention to retire. She looked for Caliban, but even he had abandoned her. She was alone but for the footman by the door, whom she caught struggling to stifle a yawn when she glanced around the room.
Christmas Eve.
She had not meant to stay up so late. Well, she was likely not the first to have been kept awake by one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s books. Tempest had really never had much interest in gothic tales. Such novels were precisely the sort of frivolous reading Miss Wollstonecraft cautioned against.
But as Tempest had lain resting in her room on the morning after her arrival—on Emily’s advice but for reasons quite other than her health—her grandfather had knocked on the door and entered bearing a small armful of books, the volumes of Mrs. Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. “Your father once wrote me saying you were a great reader,” he had explained, looking rather uncertain. The revelation—not that Papa had written, but that her grandfather had read, and remembered, his letters—startled her into accepting the gift eagerly despite her general disdain for such books. Perhaps a show of enthusiasm might encourage a longer visit, perhaps even a real conversation. But he had stayed only a few moments, his eyes darting uncomfortably around t
he room the entire time, leaving her wondering when he had last visited his late daughter’s chambers.
Mysteries of Udolpho, despite its popularity, had a number of flaws as far as Tempest was concerned. Its pages and pages of description did not transport her to some ancient alpine castle; she had no difficulty remembering she was sitting in a comfortably modern and improved manor house in the north of England, one now tastefully decorated for Christmas at Emily’s gentle insistence. The heroine of the story she found insipid, too perfect by half, and the hero—to the extent he could be said to deserve the title—too prone to fainting. Only the villain, the wicked uncle, seemed to her to have been drawn from life. At least, it required no great stretch of imagination for her to believe there were men who would threaten and imprison a young woman to get their hands on her fortune.
Still, beggars could not be choosers, and the book gave her an excuse to closet herself away at all hours to read, a place to stick her nose when she did not wish to be drawn into conversation. Thanks to Mrs. Radcliffe, she had enjoyed several days not of terror and excitement, but of peace and quiet.
Once her courses had come and gone, her head felt somehow clearer. The strain of worry must have befuddled her senses. By the light of day, even Edward’s letter had looked unremarkable. Nothing of a marriage proposal in it at all, just some hurried words assuring her of his steadfastness and brotherly affection, ending as he had begun. Even Lord Nathaniel had been making himself scarce.
And as to that other late-night realization? No doubt as much a figment of her imagination as the rest. Why, all afternoon, she had given at best half an ear to Emily’s tales of Andrew’s boyhood mischief-making—hardly the mark of a woman in love.
Her fears, her feelings on that night, had merely been an outburst of irrationality, such as women were unfortunately sometimes prone to experience. She was capable once more of behaving with sense, of using reason to apprehend the world around her.
Frowning at the clock, she marked her place in her book, stretched and inhaled the spicy sent of pine boughs, then shivered. Despite the fire, there was a chill in the room. Wind moaned past the windows. The weather must be turning colder. She needed no better excuse to retire, to lose herself under the weight of wool blankets and down-filled quilts. Though perhaps, once upstairs, she would indulge in just a few more pages before she extinguished the lamp . . .
A stream of light leaked beneath her bedchamber door into the corridor. Hannah must have left a candle lit for her. Mentally imagining what lay in store in the final chapters of her book, Tempest’s eyes went first to the writing desk where the candle glowed.
A figure stood there, back to the door, between her and the flame. For a moment, she tried to persuade herself it must be Hannah, although one glance had made it clear her midnight visitor was a man. But no—it simply was not possible. A puff of air left Tempest’s lips in a gasp.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
As Andrew turned toward her and the light limned his profile, she could see he had been frowning over some scrap of paper, which he now laid aside. His features eased. “Tempest. Thank God.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked again as she stepped toward him.
“I’ve been in Hull. A few days ago, an old friend told me Stratton had survived the storm, was believed to be in Yorkshire. So I came after him.” He paused and searched her eyes, as if expecting condemnation. He was meant to be in London, after all.
But the fate of Beauchamp Shipping was the last thing on her mind.
“Did you find him?”
“I did.”
“Did you kill him?”
Again that hesitation, as if he were torn between telling her the truth and trying to divine what she would most want to hear. “I did not.”
She had not known whether she wanted him to say yes or no, until the denial passed his lips and relief swept through her. “I know you wanted justice for your father, but his life is not worth your own.”
“My life is inconsequential,” he insisted. “Believe me—when he revealed that Delamere was also still alive, and in Yorkshire, my only concern was for you.” If the intensity of his green gaze had not confirmed it, everything else about his appearance made it clear that he had come to her with all possible haste. He looked almost as he had aboard the Fair Colleen after the storm, his clothing damp and mud-spattered, his face lined with fatigue, his cheeks hollow and unshaven. It must have been a terrible journey. “Is he here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right? Has he—has he hurt you?” He sounded almost as if he were reluctant to hear her answer.
Without conscious thought, she clutched her book tighter to her chest. “I am fine.”
“Where is he now?”
“Gone to bed, I daresay.”
“Good God, why didn’t you leave the moment you found him here?” His cat’s eyes gleamed in the flickering light of the candle.
“I—” she began. What reasonable excuse could she offer? She had considered it, of course. But her options had been limited. Without a coin to her name or a ship to sail on, leaving Crosslands would have meant returning to London, returning to Andrew’s house, where she faced an entirely different sort of danger. In some ways, Lord Nathaniel’s presence seemed far less threatening. She cared nothing for him, so he could never hurt her the way Andrew might.
Unable to explain herself, she shrugged.
“Well, you’re safe now.” His hand slid up her arm, and she allowed herself to be pulled into his protective embrace, although she knew she should not want it. It was a violation of all her principles to lean on someone else. But, oh, the relief of allowing him to bear her weight, bear her worries for just a moment. It would not last for long—he had his own burdens to carry.
“I’d take you away this instant,” he said, “but the roads were nigh impassible in the daylight. Impossible after dark. We’d be risking our necks to try it now.”
What do I risk if I stay? she wondered. “If the roads are that bad, how did you get here?” she asked instead, her voice muffled by the capes of his greatcoat.
“The luck of the Irish, I suppose you could say.” The note of humor in his voice was entirely self-deprecating. “And I walked the last three miles or so.”
She shivered. That explained the cold radiating from his clothing. “And how did you find your way here, to this room?”
“Mama’s abigail, Hannah, happened to be below, and as she is technically in my employ, I was able to persuade her to assist me. Although she was reluctant to escort a man to the bedchamber of a young lady. It seems she had recently overheard someone brand me a kidnapper.”
He paused, and Tempest glanced up in time to see something of the old devilry gleaming in his eyes. “And you said I was safe with you here.”
His smile faded. “You are,” he said, all seriousness, releasing her and stepping back to shrug out of his coat. “If you’ve a blanket to spare, I’ll make my bed in the corridor, right outside your—where is Caliban, anyway?” he asked sharply as he glanced toward the door.
“I don’t know. Probably with your mother.” Or with Sir Barton, she added silently. The dog had taken a great liking to her grandfather, but she did not think Andrew would appreciate hearing further proof of his canine companion’s unfaithfulness. “You cannot really believe I am in any danger tonight. Let me ring for someone to make up a room for you.”
“No danger? Cary was right,” he snapped, tugging off his gloves and tossing them onto the chair along with his coat. “You’re too stubborn to know what’s best. Too blind to see what’s right in front of you. Are you trusting in Delamere’s honor to keep you safe in your bed?”
“If all he wanted was to force himself on me, he has had ample opportunity to do so,” she said, tired of mincing words. “If not here, then in Antigua. He has always been determined to have some legal hold over me first. But at that he cannot succeed. As long as there is breath in my body to s
ay no, to scream it if I must, he will never have my consent. He would have to kill me first, and I do believe that would defeat his purpose.” Folding her arms across her chest, she met Andrew’s stare. “Now, would you care to tell me exactly what it is I fail to see?”
“This,” he said as he lowered his mouth to hers.
At first, his lips felt chill against hers, but after that first brush the familiar spark passed between them, heating them both. As she stretched onto her toes, reaching for a taste of him, his arms came around her, lifting her against his chest. Her own hands, trapped between them, scrabbled up his shirtfront to clasp his neck.
Despite the eagerness of their hands, the rough scrape of his beard against her cheek, the kiss was tentative. Seeking, finding, their tongues danced and retreated as they learned one another once more. Beneath the ordinary smells of horse and sweat and starch, she caught a hint of salt air, and she inhaled greedily, eager for that scent that was uniquely his, the scent that reminded her of home.
The longer he held her, the deeper the kiss, the more she wished he might never let her go. Nervous fingers tangled in the dark hair that fell over his collar. To the nibble of her lips, the tentative swipe of her tongue, he replied by hitching her higher against his hard body, one arm around her hips, the other cupping the back of her head, stilling her to his plunder.
Only when a moan of surrender bubbled from her did he break the kiss and release her.
“This?” she echoed breathlessly as she slid back down to earth. “This can never be.” The denial rose to her lips automatically, even as every fiber of her being, those traitorous lips included, still vibrated with Andrew’s touch. “I think you know that.”
“Do you mean to accept him, then?”
“Lord Nathaniel? Can you even ask—?” Before she could finish her question, however, he glanced toward the writing desk and her eyes followed his. Edward’s letter lay there, almost where she had dropped it after her last perusal. That must have been the piece of paper Andrew had been scrutinizing when she entered.
To Tempt an Heiress Page 24
