To Tempt an Heiress

by Susanna Craig

  She recalled his words about the fulfillment of a twenty-five-year-old wish. “Did you mean for me to marry him in her place?” Fatigue and uncertainty combined to reduce her voice to a rough whisper.

  A stricken look passed over his face. “No,” he insisted. “I have thought a great deal, then, and”—he glanced toward the door—“more recently, about the price of my obstinacy in such matters. And I could not like his manner, his determination to succeed with you, although I had no suspicion until last night, or rather this morning, what he truly was—what he had become. I suspect the West Indies was the worst sort of place for a man such as he. Little need there to check one’s . . . appetites.”

  “I firmly believe the people make the place what it is,” she countered, unwilling to accept the familiar slander, “and not the other way ’round. My father—”

  “Was a good man,” he finished, much to her surprise. “I know that now, even if I did not want to see the truth all those years ago.”

  After a long, silent moment, Tempest suggested, “You might come with me.”

  Her grandfather gave a bark of surprise. “I? No. I should have nothing to do in Antigua.”

  “Nothing to do?” She could feel her color rising with her temper. “Do you imagine estates in other parts of the world manage themselves, that absenteeism is no scourge there—?”

  “I imagine nothing of the sort,” he spoke over her, holding up a hand to halt the flow of bitter invectives. “I meant only that my presence would be superfluous. Harper’s Hill is yours to do with as you see fit. From this moment, if you wish it,” he said, waving his hand as if he were granting a wish. “The very least I can do to make up for so many years of neglect.”

  “I—” Tempest began and then stopped, pressing her lips together. She must have misunderstood.

  She found herself on her feet, although she did not remember standing. Could her grandfather really be offering her the chance to realize Papa’s dream, the chance to right what her heart had always told her was a great wrong? And if so, at what price?

  “You will grant me my inheritance now . . . if I stay here with you?”

  How could she refuse the bargain he offered? He was giving her everything she wanted. The promise of her inheritance, the chance for a family. Everything.

  Even an excuse not to leave. If she wanted one.

  His reply was slow in coming as he wrestled with himself. “Or if you go,” he said finally. “It’s up to you.”

  “Thank you, Grandfather,” she cried, throwing her arms around him.

  The embrace clearly caught him off guard, but he did not hold himself rigid for long. In a moment, his hand was patting her back, and she felt something suspiciously like tears against her neck. “Thank you, child. Thank you.”

  Though the words were muffled, she heard a note of hesitation in them. He was waiting, hoping for her to say more. To tell him that she would not hurry back to Antigua.

  “I condemned myself to misery twenty-five years ago. Now I would like to become acquainted with my granddaughter, in whatever time is left to me,” he said, pulling away enough that he could look her in the eye. “But I can offer very little to tempt you to stay, I’m afraid. A cold house, and a dull old man for company. I suppose we might arrange to pay a call on Mr. Wilberforce, if the weather permits.”

  “William Wilberforce, the abolitionist? You know him?”

  “Oh yes. He is MP for the county. I understand you and he have a common interest.”

  Tempest could only nod.

  For as long as she could remember, she had been dreaming of the day when the slaves at Harper’s Hill would be free. Once that goal had been met, she had told herself, she would be content. But she knew their emancipation was only a drop in the bucket—a “grand gesture,” as Andrew had told her, that would in the end have little impact. Leaders like Wilberforce were working to change things on a much larger scale: first, by ending the slave trade, then eventually putting an end to slavery. It would be an honor to meet someone doing such noble, necessary work.

  Enough of an honor to tip the balance in favor of extending her visit here, if only for a little while?

  “Or perhaps you can think of better reasons to stay than just to satisfy an old man?” Her grandfather’s rather misty gaze darted once more toward the door, toward the patient recovering in the room across the way.

  Andrew. The anchor to which her heart was tied. The temptation she had so little will to resist. The very reason she ought to go.

  Ah, there it was. The age-old contest between head and heart—which was, in her case, a marked tendency to claim to act with the former while being led entirely by the latter. For weeks now, her impulsive actions had put her at risk. That was how she had wound up aboard the Fair Colleen in the first place. How she had wound up in Andrew’s arms.

  And how she had almost wound up losing him forever.

  It was time to do what she had promised Papa. It was time to behave like a rational creature.

  “It is not a decision to be made lightly, Grandfather. I will have to think about it.”

  * * *

  “Another horrid novel, Tempest?”

  The sound of Andrew’s voice jerked her into the present moment, and she clutched automatically at the book in her lap before it could slide off her silk-covered knees and onto the floor. Although it felt inappropriately festive, Hannah had insisted on the dark red dress. For Christmas, she had said.

  At her feet lay Caliban, as he had done since having been shooed from the sickroom by Mrs. Beauchamp earlier in the afternoon. Now, however, his ears were perked forward and he looked alert, awaiting permission to move.

  Andrew stood just inside the door to the library, devouring her with his eyes, and suddenly she could not resent Emily’s or Hannah’s interference in the matter of her wardrobe. His uninjured shoulder was propped against the jamb—a characteristically devil-may-care pose, except that this time, she suspected he could really do with the support. How long had he been watching her?

  “Not another,” she corrected as she rose and laid the book aside, remembering how he had once teased her about such reading. Taking her movement as consent for his own, Caliban went immediately to Andrew. “My first. Udolpho.”

  “Oh?” Andrew shook his head laughingly, whether at her or at the dog she was not sure. “I thought it was meant to be exhilarating, but I haven’t seen you turn a page for a quarter of an hour at least.”

  “I—” As before, she had picked up the book, hoping for a reprieve, a distraction from her conflicted thoughts, but her eyes had passed over the words without seeing them. While her mind had wandered, the room had grown dark, far too dark now to read. “I’ve had quite enough of villainy and bloodshed for a while. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  Her heart would willingly have carried her to his side if her feet had not seemed to be frozen in place. After a night of terror and a day of worrying, to have him now standing before her as if nothing had happened . . . Despite the dog’s confirmation, she still half-feared Andrew was an apparition, and if she touched him, he might disappear.

  “My mother has spent the afternoon pouring beef tea down my throat. For strength, she says. I do believe I’m as strong as I’m going to get.” He managed a wry sort of grimace, but his face was pale. “I could do with a bit of fresh air now. Will you walk with me?” he asked, straightening and holding out his good arm, over which was draped her velvet cloak.

  “If we must talk, cannot we sit here, where you can rest? I will call for a lamp,” she insisted, moving closer and reaching for the bellpull near the door.

  “Please.”

  The whisper alone would have been enough to stay her, but his hand touched her arm, and she took some reassurance from its warmth. With a catch in her throat, she nodded and let the tasseled silk cord slip through her fingertips.

  The brighter light from the sconces in the entry hall did nothing to improve his pallor, and above his cravat, along the
edge of his jaw, she glimpsed a fresh-looking cut.

  As if feeling her eyes on it, he brought his fingers to the collar of his greatcoat and hitched it higher. “A shaving mishap. What do you have on your feet?”

  Embarrassed, Tempest raised her skirts enough to show him the worn toes of her half-boots, the ones she had been wearing when she left Antigua, now scuffed and salt-stained and patched. In her hurry, Emily had managed dresses, underthings, everything but shoes.

  “They’ll do.” Andrew smiled. “I half-expected to see them bare.”

  As she slipped the cloak around her shoulders, he reached to raise her hood, fumbling a bit as he worked one-handed. Caliban wove himself between their knees. At Andrew’s nod, a footman opened the door, and a gust of cold air swept in, taking Tempest’s breath with it. “Are you sure this is wise?” she asked.

  “I’m quite sure it isn’t.”

  But the wind seemed to brace him, invigorate him. How galling it must be for a man accustomed to going where he wanted and doing what he would, to find himself confined—to a sickbed, to a house, to a desk in a London shipping office. And what was it that he was bringing her out here to say? After last night, did he feel forced to tie himself to her, too?

  Offering her a surprisingly steady arm, he led her out into the twilight.

  “Oh.”

  The world around them was blanketed in white; downy flakes still fell silently from the darkening sky. After only a moment, they coated the capes of Andrew’s greatcoat, caught and sparkled in the fur trim of her hood. Nothing like ash, nothing like dust. Cold. But beautiful, so beautiful.

  Caliban was first down the steps, barking in celebration and snapping at the snowflakes. The noise startled a hare from beneath a snow-covered bush, and the dog readily gave chase.

  “He’s earned it,” Andrew said, watching him run.

  “Yes.”

  The reminder of Lord Nathaniel’s grim fate recalled to her mind the evening aboard the Fair Colleen, after the storm. Then as now, she had felt somber at the thought of the death of another human being. But also a deep sense of relief. She could not mourn him.

  Cautiously, she released Andrew’s arm and walked down the few steps, shuffling her feet through the snow. When she turned back toward the house, he was watching her.

  “I saw it start more than an hour ago. I hoped you had not noticed. I wanted—I wanted to be the one to show you.”

  “Thank you,” she mouthed, not wanting to disturb the stillness.

  Little eddies of snow swirled around his feet as he strode toward her. “It will be a memory to take with you to Antigua.”

  Why should those words stab her to the quick? He spoke only the truth. She meant to return to the West Indies, did she not?

  But she would never forget this night. Nor any other she had spent with him.

  “Yes.”

  When he stopped beside her, he did not reach for her hand or offer his arm again.

  “My grandfather has made me a gift of Harper’s Hill,” she said after a moment of watching the snow fall. Her feet were growing cold. “As soon as the paperwork can be drawn up, I will be able to do what I have wanted, what I have waited to do all my life.”

  In the half light, she could not read his expression, but the news did not seem to surprise him. “You will be off as soon as possible, then.”

  It was not a question, so she did not attempt an answer. “And you? Will you strike out for the sea once more when you are able?”

  “No. My sailing days are behind me. At least,” he added after a moment, “I shall not captain another voyage.”

  “What will become of the Fair Colleen?” she asked. “Mr. Bewick will take her out, I suppose.”

  “I don’t know about that. The air in Hampstead seems to agree with him, at least for now. But there will be someone right for the job, someone eager for profit and adventure on the high seas.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug and then winced, as if he had forgotten his injuries for a moment. “I am going to manage Beauchamp Shipping. Important changes are coming. Key decisions must be made, and my stepfather wanted me to make them.” He sounded certain, but far from happy.

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” It was what she had wanted for him, was it not? “Will you never go back to the West Indies, then?”

  “Perhaps,” he said after a moment, his eyes scanning the horizon. “Someday. There is an argument for maintaining my connections in that part of the world. But for now, I am needed in London.”

  “Then that is where you should be, doing the work you have to do.” How easy it was to make rational decisions for others!

  “As you must do yours.”

  “Yes.”

  Snow capped the balustrade, made strange figures of the topiaries in the garden, coated the bare tree limbs. A landscape with which she hardly had had time to become familiar grew more alien with each passing moment. “So, a journey that began under tropical skies ends here,” she said, studying the feathery pattern made by the hem of her cloak against the snow. “Soon it will be as if we never met.”

  She heard him inhale sharply through his nose, as if something gave him pain. The cold settling into his wound, perhaps. Surely not her words.

  Then he said, “I brought you out here thinking to propose.”

  “Because my grandfather wishes it?”

  A humorless laugh burst from his lips. “Wishes it? I believe it would be more accurate to say Sir Barton sees our union as a necessary evil, something to paper over a scandal.” Before she could speak again, he stepped in front of her, so close that she had to look up to see his face. “But in any case, I would not marry to make him happy. I would only marry because I was in love.”

  Overhead, the sky began to clear, giving way to a rising moon. The heavy snowfall slowed. All around them the world lay at peace. Only the pounding of her heart threatened to disturb it.

  “You . . . you love me?”

  Did two people ever mean the same thing when they uttered those words? She had never doubted Andrew was capable of passion, of strong attachment. But love was more than that. It was also sacrifice and heartache.

  Wasn’t it?

  “I do,” he said. “And if I thought there were a way to teach you to need me the way I need you, Tempest Holderin, I would never let you leave my side, shipping companies and sugar plantations be damned.”

  Suddenly in need of something on which to steady herself, she laid her palms against his chest and wondered at the easy rhythm of his heart. Her own thudded against her ribs as if determined to escape.

  “Marriage . . .” she began, then stopped, no longer certain what she had been about to say.

  “I know your mind where matrimony is concerned.” He spoke quickly, as if to reassure her. As if loath to hear what she might say. “Your feelings about marriage stand between us, even if every other barrier to our being together could somehow be overcome. So, because I love you, I won’t ask you to marry me.” He took a step backward, then another, until her hand slid down his shirtfront and he slipped from her reach. “And because I love you, I never will.”

  Her arm was still outstretched, exposing her wrist to the cold air, to the moonlight. A phalanx of oval bruises bloomed on her pale skin where Lord Nathaniel had grabbed her. Andrew’s fingertips, encased in cool, supple leather, brushed across them, his touch feather light. “You should never have told Delamere you would marry him, either. Nothing could be worth that particular sacrifice.”

  “I had to do something.”

  “To save the people of Harper’s Hill?”

  She gave the tiniest shake of her head. “No. Well, yes. That too. But mostly to divert his attention from you. I realize now it was a reckless thing to do—one of many reckless, foolish things I have done. But you were in danger. And I—I told myself he couldn’t hurt me.” A derisive noise escaped Andrew’s lips, but she spoke over it. “I’m not naïve. Physical pain is not the only thing that matters, you know.” She drew her arm back so
her cloak fell forward, covering the marks. “I always believed that if I never gave my heart away, I would keep my dreams, keep myself, safe. So I convinced myself I was never in any real danger from him. How could I be hurt by someone I cared nothing for?” She glanced past him, across the snowy landscape. “The far greater risk was letting myself fall in love with you.”

  His hand came up and brushed back her hood so that she could not avoid meeting his gaze. Despite the cold, despite his pain, there was heat in his eyes. “Still, you want to return to Antigua,” he pointed out soberly. “And I am needed here. What sort of future can we have together?”

  “There must be some way—”

  “We cannot be in two places at once,” he pointed out.

  “No. You are right. So I propose,” she said, holding out one hand and then the other, palms upward, as she spoke, “that you do just as you have suggested: Stay in London, but travel occasionally to the West Indies, in the interests of Beauchamp Shipping. And for myself, I—I propose taking an active role in the work being done by the abolitionists. Here, where the laws are made. In short—” Her voice broke and she drew her hands inward, clutching them to her chest. “I propose.”

  “Tempest.” Andrew’s dark brows knit together, shadowing his eyes. “What are you saying?”

  Grabbing his hand for balance, she lowered herself to the ground, indifferent to the fate of garnet silk and green velvet—although she could not help but shiver when her knee, covered only by her stocking, met the snow. “You have said you will not ask me. So it seems I must do the asking.”

  As he sank down to face her, one hand on her shoulder, his eyes searched hers, a question in their green depths. “Why are you doing this? Merely because it’s expected? Merely to avoid censure?”

  “I confess I have never worried much about what society says. I do what I think is best.”

  A huff of sound, not quite laughter, escaped him. “If you’ve made up your mind to marry, you might better accept Cary’s offer,” he said, and she could not be entirely certain he teased. “He’s a far safer choice.”