O'Rourke's Heiress

by Bancroft, Blair

  “I don’t doubt it. I just want to hear you say it.”

  He brought their hands together directly under her chin, as if clasped in a four-handed prayer. “I, Terence Michael O’Rourke, love Elizabeth Mary Brockman Renfrew,” he vowed. “I have loved her as long as I’ve known her, loved her as a woman since the woman she would become was only a vision in my mind. I’ve not been a saint. I’ve indulged myself where I might, but I’ve never loved anyone but my Beth. Nor will I ever let her go to another man again. I swear it, so help me God.”

  He wasn’t Irish for nothing.

  Carrying her small fingers to his mouth, Terence laid them against his lips. “Will that do, my girl?”

  “Very well,” Beth breathed. “Except I am so undone by your words that I am weak as a jellyfish.” It was true, but she had no doubt elation would spur a quick recovery, for she could feel him taking up the challenge, swelling inside her, filling her, taunting her to finish what she’d started.

  Beth straightened, wiggled. Terence groaned. Oh, yes, it was exhilarating to be in charge. Her earlier experimental thrusts tumbled back on a rush of sensation , her body moving as if she’d had infinite practice in the arts of love. After all, had she not been gifted with secret knowledge from the pages of the colorful but inanimate figures in Uncle Bertie’s books?

  Keeping Terence’s face fixed in her mind, Beth closed her eyes, held onto his hands and took them into the blind world of sensual fulfillment, where nothing was left but burgeoning sensation growing ever stronger. Demanding, crying out, shattering, falling over the edge into nirvana.

  She collapsed on his chest, where they clung together, gasping for breath, unable to talk, thought of any kind out of the question.

  The door flew open, banged back against the wall.

  “Now ain’t that sweet?” a mocking voice declared. “Guess your pistol’s limp, Mr. Merchant Prince? Not much to give us a worry.”

  Terence had already thrust Beth from him, pulling the bedcover up to her chin. From eyes gone to ice, he regarded two men in black cloaks and rag masks with pistols in their hands. “Kidnapping, is it?” he challenged. “Ransom? Why don’t we just settle the sum now and be done with it? I really don’t care to have my lady catch cold?” And what the bloody hell had happened to the small army of men he had posted both on board and on shore?

  “Oh, we’ll be done with it right quick,” the leader assured him. A burly confident figure, he was, a broad felt hat pulled low over his eyes, little flesh to be seen except a hairy hand gripping a long-barreled pistol. His companion held matching pistols, one in each hand. “The masks are just so no one else has to be done in along the way,” the leader added magnanimously.

  Terence heard Beth’s quick intake of breath. He was sorry she’d caught the brigand’s meaning. Better a bullet quickly . . . But why . . .? After all this time . . .

  “May I ask how we’ve displeased you?” Terence inquired. Play for time. But what was the use? He’d truly been caught with his pants down, his pistol in a drawer a good eight feet away. The knife he kept in his boot, though closer, was useless as well, with three pistols aimed at his heart.

  “Oh, ’t’ain’t me,” the ruffian declared. “But you surely ’ave an enemy. One with plenty of brass. There’s two more of us outside, guarding the crew, so don’t go gettin’ any notions now. No one’s comin’ to save you.”

  “I’d go easier knowing my enemy’s name,” Terence said, managing to sound as if he were having a perfectly normal conversation.

  “Well, now, I might oblige if I knew it, but I don’t.” The brigand raised his pistol, took aim.

  “Someone hired you. Who?” Terence snapped.

  The absolute authority in his voice, the lack of fear, did its work. The leader, without lowering his pistol, said, “A gent sought me out, never give his name. A go-between, ’e was. Paid me and m’men enough to do in a whole passel of swells, he did. Nothing personal, Guv. Just another night’s work.”

  “Your last night’s work,” decreed a voice from the door, “unless you lay down your pistols and back away.”

  Terence grabbed Beth, rolled them both onto the floor as pistol shots filled the cabin. One sent an eruption of feathers flying up from the bed. One shattered a lantern. Two others accounted for the men in the black cloaks. Beth gasped as hot oil splattered onto her bare legs.

  “Sorry, sir,” the sloop’s captain apologized profusely, as well-armed crewmen began tugging bodies from the cabin. “We were careless, they got by us. Took a few minutes to settle with the others so we could come to your aid. You’ll have my resignation in the morning.”

  “All is forgiven if you can tell me the leader still lives,” Terence replied grimly.

  Bending down, the captain peered at the brigand leader’s wound, touched his fingers to the man’s throat. “Aye, he’s still alive,” he said, “though I wouldn’t guess for how long.”

  “Good. Take him.” Terence waved the captain, his men and their inert burdens out. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

  He looked down to discover the full length of his beloved had turned scarlet. “No one saw you,” he assured her. “I’m covering every inch of you.” Terence took a second look. “Well . . . nearly every inch of you.”

  “I will never set foot on this boat again. On any boat. I will never make love in any room which doesn’t have bars on each and every door—”

  Terence kissed her. “You’re down behind the bed. Nobody saw a thing.”

  “Hah!” Beth said, and hiccuped.

  Terence rose to his feet, reached for his clothes. “I must question our murderer before he breathes his last. This time we’re going to solve this devil’s brew.”

  “You think he wanted to kill both of us?”

  “Oh, yes. What we have to find out is why. And where the money came from.”

  Beth was never certain how long she lay on the cabin floor, stark naked, contemplating her sins. They had been many, she decided. Her part in Rodney’s death the worst of all. But someone had wanted her dead long before that. Was this a renewal of that threat? Or something else entirely?

  Tonight, for a few brief moments, she had thought all barriers to her happiness had come tumbling down. That she and Terence were free at last.

  The more the fool, she.

  Grabbing a fistful of bedcovers, Beth scrambled to her feet. With hunched shoulders and dragging steps, she pulled on her clothes. Perhaps she was cursed, born under a unlucky star?

  Why hadn’t Terence come back?

  Would the brigand die, leaving them with no clue to their fate?

  If Terence had died, it would have been her fault. All her fault.

  Where was he?

  Oh, God, dear God, what have I done?

  London, a week later

  Beth sat behind her old pine desk, staring into the glow of the fire she had lighted to take the damp off the gloom and chill of three solid days of roiling black clouds, rain pounding onto the cobbles in the mews outside her office, fog enshrouding the land by night. Not to mention the depression of a full week of celibacy, after all the mindless pleasure that had gone before. Never mind Terence’s entreaties, the flashes of strong Irish temper. She wasn’t ready to confess all to her papa or Tildy, wasn’t ready for a reading of the banns. She was star-crossed, her life a disaster for those around her. For a few moments, caught in the throes of love, she had weakened. But no, marriage was once again anathema. Not likely now, or ever.

  But this morning Terence had something else in mind when he’d arrived, misted with dampness, his huge black umbrella dripping onto the office carpet and making a puddle in the bottom of her umbrella stand. What he’d come to tell her was stunning, lifting a weight she’d borne so long Beth could scarcely believe it was gone.

  “The lout recovered,” Terence said, “enough that Jack and I sat him in a carriage early yesterday morning outside the offices of Gossett & Finch. Hector Gossett being Lady Colchester’s solicitor,” he
explained. “And sure enough, we’d guessed right. Our brigand identified him, even though it was raining cats and dogs. Gosses, poor bastard, came close to fainting when we confronted him, with a suitable contingent of Bow Street Runners to make it official. Babbled out the whole sordid mess. It’s Botany Bay for him, along with his band of hired assassins. As for the witch . . . it’s agreed she’s mad as a hatter, pursuing revenge for what only she saw as destroying her daughter’s life. Her brother Mablethorpe will confine her at one of his country estates.

  “So it’s over,” Terence said. It’s truly over.”

  Was it? Beth wondered an hour later as she stared into the fire. No matter how much she loved, would anything free her from her fears? From the great band of terror that squeezed her soul when she contemplated giving her life into anyone else’s keeping?

  But if she couldn’t trust Terence . . .?

  She loved him more than life. What was this insidious compulsion toward independence? This refusal to give in? The men in her life were already ruling the Brockman empire. What would she be giving up? Perhaps, like Shakespeare’s Kate, it was time to stop fighting. No one ever said love brought only joy. Sorrow, pain, responsibility were as much a part of love as the ecstasy she knew in the hours they’d shared aboard the sloop—

  “My lady. My lady!”

  Embarrassed to be caught in a fit of distraction, Beth raised her head to regard the young woman hovering in the doorway. “Yes, Nan?”

  “Visitors, my lady. With a baby.” The girl, unable to read, moved forward, handing Beth a calling card.

  The rain became a deluge, skies darkening to night. How singularly appropriate for the moment. “Please show the visitors in,” Beth said, hoping the sharp tremors she felt were not apparent in her voice.

  The visitors were three, all damp and unhappy with it, the smallest lustily expressing his displeasure as the middle-aged woman clutching him tried to calm his loud protests. Nan gathered the visitors’ umbrellas, placed them in the stand near the coat rack. Turning to her benefactress, she asked, “Shall I take the baby upstairs, my lady?”

  “No!” Beth and Rochelle Dessaint cried simultaneously. Nan flashed an odd glance from one lady to the other, bobbed a swift curtsey, and departed with haste.

  Beth waved a hand toward the burgundy leather sofa. “Won’t you please be seated,” she said over the temper tantrum of a baby whose cozy world had gone awry.

  The middle-aged woman, undoubtedly the child’s nurse, said something Beth did not catch. French? She had never excelled in languages. That was Terence’s gift, not hers. Again, Rochelle Dessaint was shaking her head. Perhaps the nurse had suggested taking the baby into the hall.

  Now seated with the angry child on her lap, the harried nurse rummaged through the pockets of her voluminous skirts until she found a battered wooden ring which she offered the tearful youngster. Small gums snapped tight over it; silence reigned.

  “I am told he is teething,” Mademoiselle Dessaint announced coldly. “He also has his father’s temper.”

  A boy, Beth thought. Another generation of bastards. For she’d had little doubt what Rochelle Dessaint was doing here from the moment the American walked into the room.

  “His name is Raoul,” Rochelle continued, biting off each word with precise care, as if making sure each hit its mark with the maximum possibility of a fatal wound. “You have only to look at him to see his origin. I swear, for a child who is half French, he is as Irish as Paddy’s Pig. ’Twas truly a shock. I had not seen him in six months and thought to find something of my father or my brother in him.” She tossed off a Gallic shrug. “Evidently, it was not to be. N’importe. It would have been more convenient to keep him in France forever, but Terence has wanted him here since birth. So we have come straight from the docks. Here he is, I give him to you.”

  Mademoiselle Dessaint rose to her feet. “I have told his bonne you will arrange passage for her back to France when you have acquired an English nurse. This is satisfactory? I am not, you see, so hard-hearted that I would tear the child from the only mother he has ever known.”

  The challenge in Rochelle Dessaint’s green eyes, the proud stance of her shoulders, said far more than her words. Suddenly, unaccountably, Beth felt a twinge of sympathy. Perhaps the American girl’s waywardness had not been solely of her own making.

  “Did he not offer you marriage?” Beth asked, rising to face her nemesis.

  The beautiful Creole laughed, that superior aristocratic laugh Beth had learned to hate. “My dear, he practically groveled. Positively lavished money on me. The best of everything, I assure you. But such a disappointment it was to discover he is nothing more than a glorified tradesman. Ah, no, I plan to follow in your footsteps, my dear. More successfully, of course. A marquess at the least. I want no part of an Irish bastard or an Irish bastard’s bastard. My little Raoul is yours. I assure you his papa will welcome him with open arms.”

  “So why did you bring him here?” The Dessaint had not actually answered her first question, Beth noted.

  Rochelle opened her green eyes wide. “Where else?” she taunted. “You can’t possibly think I don’t know where his heart lies?”

  The final twist of the knife. The implication that she was still in touch with Terence. Still saw him . . . Perhaps intimately . . .

  Then again, Beth conceded, bringing the child here was infinitely better than parading him through the offices of Tobias Brockman & Company and plunking him down on Terence’s desk.

  Somehow she found herself issuing assurances that everything would be done to see that the little boy was raised with all the love and care it was possible to give. A curt nod, and Rochelle Dessaint was gone, leaving Beth face to face with a still-pouting baby who looked as if he’d renew his wails at any moment.

  Unlike most babies she’d seen, young Raoul had a thick coating of black hair, as wavy as his father’s. Rochelle also had black hair, Beth reminded herself, but the baby’s blue, blue eyes were unmistakable. They were as good as a brand of paternity.

  Would the small boy burst into tears if she touched him? Beth knelt before the sofa, held out a finger for his inspection. Scowling, he grabbed it, waving it back and forth with vigor. A hellion, Beth thought. Maybe even more so than his father. But the poor baby had had enough for one day. Evidently, he and his bonne had journeyed from France, been dragged from the docks through the rainy streets of London, and deposited in the keeping of perfect strangers. She would not attempt to pick him up. Not yet.

  Beth stuck her head out into the hallway and called for Nan who, she knew, would be hovering close by. After giving orders for the Frenchwoman and the child to be taken to the nursery on the third floor of the old house, Beth collapsed onto the chair behind her desk. Life, it seemed, had come full circle. At nearly the same age as Raoul, she had been given into Terence’s keeping, and now his son was being given into hers.

  She should be horrified, hurt, angry. At the moment she was merely numb. After an unknown length of time she took up her quill and began to write.

  Less than an hour after Mademoiselle Dessaint’s departure from Beth’s office, Terence O’Rourke received a summons to dinner that night at Falcon Court. And a summons it was. The tone of Beth’s note did not read like an invitation to a cozy family supper. Something was up, but for the life of him he could not imagine what.

  Tildy, of course, was delighted, even though she cast a number of eager glances over Terence’s shoulder when he arrived, obviously expecting Tobias to follow on his heels. Hiding her disappointment well, she immediately plunged into the assumption that Terence’s arrival signaled a new era of reconciliation for her two charges. They would discuss being seen together in public, subtle ways to worm themselves back into the good graces of society. Courtship. Marriage. Children!

  By the time a sweet of blancmange, served with a side dish of raspberries, had been removed, both Terence and Beth were ready to scream. “Tildy, dearest,” Beth murmured, “do you th
ink Terence and I might be excused from the drawing room this evening? We have some ah–matters to discuss.”

  Tildy beamed. Nothing, not even Tobias, was closer to her heart than the wish her two “children” might rediscover their love. In truth, she’d had her suspicions about Beth’s glowing joy these past few weeks. It was high time they discussed regularizing whatever was going on between them. “But of course, my dears,” she said. “Why don’t you share a bit of port in the bookroom? A very fine room for privacy, I believe.”

  Terence rushed to pull back Tildy’s chair. She patted him on the hand. “Don’t let her get away,” she whispered, and gave him a wink. He was still smiling when he held open the library door a few moments later and ushered Beth inside.

  The smile didn’t last past the pouring of the port. The look on Beth’s face as she accepted her glass was enough to confirm that he wasn’t going to like the why of tonight’s invitation to Falcon Court.

  Beth put her lips to the glass, seemed to think better of it. Placing the wine on the small table next to her, she said, “Rochelle Dessaint visited me today. With Raoul and his nurse.”

  “He’s here? In London?” Terence knew he was gawking but couldn’t help it.

  Beth nodded. “Your son is upstairs. In a guestroom at the moment, as I had not thought to refurbish the nurseries.”

  He was on his feet, half way to the door, his mind a blank, when he heard Beth’s harsh call. “Terence!” She rushed to him, took his hand. Pulling him back to a large overstuffed chair, she shoved him down into it. “Now listen carefully,” Beth said, sitting on the arm of the chair, a finger pointed straight at his chest. “The poor lamb’s had a very bad few days. At the moment he’s asleep. Behave yourself, and I’ll take you up for a peek at him. But right now we have to talk.”

  “I wanted him,” Terence confessed grimly. “I told her I wanted him, but she wouldn’t let him come. Said he was too young. And now . . . without a word to me, she gives him to you!” He ran his hand through his hair, tugged on his ear. “I made all the arrangements, you see. She was determined to catch a title and a baby was no part of her plans. She went to the south of France. Afterwards, she came back, resumed her place in society, telling everyone she’d been enjoying a tour of her ancestors’ homeland.”