A Wedding by Dawn

by Alison Delaine

  “My keeping Taggart won’t make a difference to her. You know her—you’ve sailed with her. She’s too free-spirited, too...enamored by the wonders of the world. To India, life at Taggart is like...being locked away.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake—”

  “She never wanted this marriage, James.” Nick sat forward. “I forced it upon her. Literally. I literally dragged her into a bloody church with Winston and Charles Vernier as my henchmen and forced her to say the vows. Our marriage isn’t even legal.”

  “Who’s to challenge it?”

  Nick gave a laugh and drank more. “How many times did I threaten India with those exact words?”

  James sighed. “So you give her a ship. She sails away, and six months later you learn she perished in a wreck. How will you feel about your decision then?”

  He would never forgive himself. But, “I’ve been watching her these past days—it’s unbearable. The light has gone out of her. If I force her to stay at Taggart, I’ll watch her perish as well, only much more slowly and painfully. And I’ll know it’s my fault—every last bit of it.” She’d made a tremendous effort for Emilie’s sake—they both had—but somehow that only made the whole situation more tragic. “She’ll never be happy with me, James. My sins against her are too great.”

  * * *

  WHILE EMILIE DUG the soil in a small garden plot of her own Miss Ursula had given her, India drifted farther down the garden to where Miss Ursula trimmed dead roses off the bushes. Millie’s letter was tucked up her sleeve. India stood there watching Miss Ursula work.

  Snip. Snip.

  This was a bad idea. There was no telling what Miss Ursula might say. Perhaps she couldn’t even read herself.

  Snip. Snip-snip.

  India slipped the letter out. It trembled in her fingers as she unfolded it, and the entire situation Nicholas had described about Millie replayed in her mind. She wanted to hear Millie’s words.

  Miss Ursula tossed a handful of dead flowers into a bucket. “Well? Are ye going to stand there waffling all day, or are ye going to tell me what’s in that letter?”

  India swallowed. “That’s...just the trouble. I...I’m not sure what’s in the letter. Precisely.”

  Snip-snip-snip. A trio of dead roses flew into the bucket.

  India fidgeted. “I was wondering if perhaps...you could read it for me.”

  Snip.

  Miss Ursula tossed a final rose into the bucket and reached for the letter. She squinted at first, then frowned, then frowned more deeply. “Ye want me to read it aloud?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Miss Ursula looked at her—hard—and shuffled toward a nearby bench, grumbling, “Can’t read all this standin’ up.”

  India sat next to her and listened to Miss Ursula read the letter aloud, and India’s heart broke for Millie. “Poor Millie.” She sighed when it was finished.

  It hurt—it did—but she knew Millie too well to hate her. Millie feared being alone and powerless in a world of cruel men. There was no way she could have resisted Nicholas’s offer.

  She told Miss Ursula about Millie, about taking the Possession, about the plans they’d had. “Suppose I can understand it,” Miss Ursula said. “Suppose I can at that. But I never would have pegged ’is lordship for something like this,” she added, still frowning.

  “It hurts, but...I can’t hate her for it.”

  “And ’is lordship?”

  India looked at her hands. She couldn’t hate him, either—not even after this. Offering Millie that money...it was all part of the same thing, his desperation to keep Taggart. “No, I don’t hate him.”

  Miss Ursula snorted. “’Course ye don’t hate ’im. Seems more to me like the opposite, what with ye both creeping ’round each other like foxes circling a henhouse.”

  “Taggart is going to be sold, Miss Ursula,” India said now.

  Miss Ursula made a noise and waved the fact away.

  “And even if it weren’t, Nicholas doesn’t want me as his wife.”

  “Now ye listen to me,” she said, pointing a weathered finger. “I’ve known ’is lordship these many years—twelve, to be exact—and I know when he’s happy and when he’s not.”

  “He doesn’t want me. Once Taggart is gone, he and Emilie will move into a cottage, and he’s already ashamed of me—”

  “Ashamed of ye!”

  “—and he doesn’t want me to go with them. He never wanted me for anything but the money he thought he would get from marrying me. He’s made that clear enough. And now he knows I can’t read, and you should have seen the look on his face—I don’t think I can ever face him again.” She stood up. “I need to leave Taggart. I need to leave before he returns.”

  “Ye’ve gone mad! Leave Miss Emilie?”

  No. No, she couldn’t do that. But—

  Across the garden, Emilie stood up and pointed toward the drive. “Nicholas!”

  India turned. Saw him riding toward them. Her heart leaped and sank all at the same time.

  India watched from the garden while Emilie rushed to meet him. Nicholas slid from the saddle and grabbed Emilie around the waist, lifting her into the air and turning in a circle as he hugged her.

  She could see his smile from here. Could see him telling her something, and Emilie growing excited and throwing her arms around his neck.

  He led his horse toward the stables, holding Emilie by the hand, and India watched them go, wanting more than anything in the world to join them.

  But she waited until they came into the house and Emilie ran upstairs to change out of her dirty gardening apron, and she approached him in the entryway.

  “How was London?” Seeing him now, everything they’d done the night before he left came rushing back—every last touch, every brush of his skin against hers, every intimate movement.

  “It was...surprising.” He tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling, the windows at the front of the house. “I have good news.”

  “What news?” He didn’t look like a man with good news. He looked...sad.

  Almost as sad as he’d looked before he’d left.

  “I shan’t have to sell Taggart after all.”

  The news struck India breathless. “My father’s man of business—”

  “Hardly.” His greatcoat swirled around his legs as he turned in a circle, as if seeing Taggart for the first time. “It would seem that my mother set aside something for me, and as yesterday was my thirty-fifth birthday—”

  “Yesterday was your birthday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you not tell me?”

  “It didn’t signify.”

  It signified to her.

  “In any case,” he went on, “it seems I have come into a considerable fortune through a trust my mother set up for me.”

  “Oh, Nicholas, that’s wonderful!”

  “Yes.” He stopped looking around the entry and looked at her. “Yes, it is. I have more than enough to pay my debt to Holliswell, keep Taggart and...about anything else I fancy, I suppose.” He paused, looking at her. “Such as a ship.”

  A ship—

  “I stopped to see a man who manages the London affairs for a friend of my brother who has shipyards in Turkey and London. As luck would have it, they’ve nearly finished construction of a small brig for an investor whose funds fell through at the last minute, and I was able to make an advantageous bargain. I’m told she will be seaworthy in a fortnight.”

  “Seaworthy...” He couldn’t possibly mean...

  His ridiculous promise, made—she’d thought—in the heat of anger. She’d nearly forgotten. But now...

  Blazing pain spread out behind her ribs as her mind grasped what he was telling her.

  “And to further compensate you for the upheaval I’ve brought to your life,” he went on before she could think what to say, “I intend to give you five thousand pounds instead of the five hundred you found so insulting.” He looked down at her, his expression carefully bl
ank. “I only regret that I cannot give back the liberty I’ve stolen from you these past weeks. I cannot undo it—nor can I undo the marriage—” there was a pause, a memory of that awful meeting with the bishop in London “—but I can do as you’ve asked.”

  He was giving her a ship.

  He had money now, money of his own, and Taggart was secure. And he was sending her away. Of course he was. He knew the truth—knew she could never be a fit mistress for Taggart.

  Her plan to insist that she go with them to the cottage crumbled. That was so different from insisting she stthaay here as Lady Taggart. She might have made a fit mistress for the cottage, but now there wouldn’t be any cottage.

  Now there would be balls. Soirées. There would likely be a house in London, dinners with his compatriots in the Lords, entertainments to be hosted.

  This is my wife—you remember, Cantwell’s daughter, the young woman I agreed to marry in my desperation, she imagined him saying. I had to drag her away from her stolen ship, you know. She was in a tavern when I found her, dressed like a man. Tried to gut-shoot me with her pistol. Oh, yes—and she won’t be reading us any poetry tonight. She can’t.

  Of course he’d bought her a ship. It was the one thing he thought she wanted more than anything. The one thing guaranteed to have her packing her things and setting out from London posthaste, never to return.

  Except...

  She didn’t want to sail away on a ship, never to return.

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  No. She was breaking inside. But, “Yes. Yes, of course. I...” She couldn’t tell him that she loved him. That she wanted to stay at Taggart. “I’m just surprised. After all that’s happened, I despaired of ever returning to the sea.”

  Despair of an entirely different kind keened inside her. But she couldn’t refuse the ship, the living, without telling him her heart.

  And if she did that, he would laugh, or perhaps pity her, or worse.

  There was a sound from outside. The unmistakable clatter and clop of an approaching carriage. Nicholas went to the windows.

  “Are you expecting visitors?” India asked.

  “No.” And then a muttered curse. “It’s Cantwell.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  FATHER.

  But— “I thought he’d gone to the colonies,” India said, hearing the edge of panic in her own voice.

  “I saw him in London,” Nicholas said grimly. “Go into the library— I shall deal with him.”

  India hesitated. Through the windows, she saw Father approaching the door.

  “India, go.”

  So she did. She hurried past the staircase to the library and ducked inside the door, just as she heard Nicholas admit Father.

  “You’re not giving my daughter a goddamned ship.”

  “The gifts I choose to bestow on my wife are between her and me,” Nicholas said flatly.

  What if Nicholas decided to send her back with Father instead? Hiding in the library, she felt nine years old instead of nineteen.

  Stop being a ninny and face him.

  Her feet wouldn’t move.

  “When you propose to give my daughter the means to her own death, Taggart, it bloody well is my business. I asked you to marry her and return her to England—safely. Implicit in that arrangement was the idea that you would not then send her back out to perish on the seas.”

  “Forgive me,” Nick said coolly, “but we no longer have any arrangement at all.”

  “Is it the money? Are you trying to blackmail me, Taggart? Because it’s worked. I’ll give you the bloody money.”

  “Perhaps you ought to offer it to India instead. She was making her way splendidly when I found her, and I expect she’ll do so again.”

  That wasn’t exactly true.

  “My daughter belongs in a drawing room, not on the deck of a sixteen-gun brig!”

  “Then you’ll be happy to know the ship she’ll be sailing has a mere ten.”

  “She’s a girl—and not a very intelligent one at that. She can’t command a ship.”

  “The fact that I had to pursue her all the way to Malta proves otherwise.”

  “You do realize that India can’t even read—”

  “Most likely thanks to you.”

  “Me,” Father thundered. “I did every bloody thing I could think of to take her education seriously. Only imagine how easily such a foolish girl will be taken advantage of. Does she imagine anyone will deign to transact business with her? Good God. Tell me what it will take to change your mind.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind. India will have her ship, it will be hers to do with as she pleases, and that’s the end of it.”

  It was too much. India rushed out of the library and into the entry. “What did you expect, when you decided to find me a husband this way?”

  “India,” Father said sharply.

  “He only agreed to your horrible arrangement because of the money, and now that he doesn’t need your money anymore, you’re surprised that he doesn’t want me? And you call me foolish.”

  “India!”

  But she was already halfway up the stairs. Devil take Father and Nicholas both.

  * * *

  NICK WATCHED INDIA hurry up the stairs.

  He doesn’t want me. What the devil—

  “India!” Cantwell shouted, starting past him, but Nick stepped in front of him.

  “Your business here is finished.”

  “It won’t be as easy as you imagine,” Cantwell said. His eyes hardened—blue eyes the same color as India’s. “Do not expect that ship to be ready anytime soon.”

  Suddenly Nick wasn’t sure it mattered. He doesn’t want me? Above, his eye caught Emilie’s aghast face peeking over the rail, watching India hurry out of sight. He made a motion for her to return to her rooms as he ushered Cantwell to the door. “I shall see you to your carriage.”

  Cantwell spun on his heel. Nick followed him outside—just in time to see a second carriage coming down the drive.

  “Looks like Croston,” Cantwell said, just as Nick himself spotted the crest on the door.

  Bloody hell. It was James.

  Worse, he discovered moments later as Cantwell’s carriage pulled away and James’s pulled up, it was James and Honoria. Both.

  “La, Nicholas,” Honoria said as Nick helped her out of the carriage, “what is this I hear about Lady India sailing away on a ship?”

  * * *

  THEIR EVENING MEAL was a sorry affair prepared by Miss Ursula, the only servant he had.

  Nick dipped his spoon into a quick soup Miss Ursula had thrown together—thin and brothy, but full of meat and vegetables, and tasting better than it looked. He thought of Emilie, alone in her rooms with her dinner tray. He’d managed to excuse himself for a few moments earlier to go up and explain what had happened, but he’d bungled the whole thing because how could he explain without telling Emilie the whole sordid mess? It was hardly appropriate subject matter for the thoughts of an eleven-year-old.

  To his left, Honoria set her spoon on the edge of her plate. The sound was deafening.

  To his right, James ate silently.

  And at the other end of the table...

  India seemed to shimmer in the candlelight. She lifted her spoon to her lips, a perfect lady in one of her aunt’s reworked gowns from Paris.

  He watched those full pink lips close around the edge of the spoon and had to look away.

  There’d been no opportunity to speak with her privately since her father’s visit.

  “Where do you plan to go?” James asked India now.

  “Athens,” she said, carefully tilting her spoon to let a swirl of soup pool inside of it, keeping her eyes carefully lowered. “Perhaps Constantinople.”

  “Katherine said to remind you of a merchant in Constantinople named Ashkan.”

  India thought for a moment. “Oh—yes. Thank you.”

  Honoria put down her spoon. “Staying with Nicholas would be an
excellent plan, as well,” she said crossly.

  “Ree...” James said.

  “Well, it would be. Certainly Taggart is grander than any ship, even if it does need a bit of repairing. Nicholas will have an army of servants in short order, and it will be as comfortable as anywhere. La, India, I simply cannot understand you.”

  “Honoria,” Nick said, “she doesn’t want to live in England.”

  “But the two of you are married.”

  Now India put down her spoon. “That may be true, Lady Ramsey, but this was never a love match.”

  The hell it wasn’t.

  The thought shot through Nick’s mind, and his hand stilled with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

  Slowly, deliberately, he lifted it the rest of the way. Tasted his soup. Put the spoon down.

  Love.

  He stared at India, sitting across from him looking at once vulnerable and defiant, and suddenly he saw her again perched on the table aboard William’s ship with her toes on his chair, taunting him about loving her to distraction.

  And damnation if it wasn’t the truth.

  He loved her.

  And he didn’t notice Miss Ursula approaching until she came up behind him and whispered in his ear.

  He tossed his napkin aside and stood abruptly.

  “What is it?” India asked.

  “Emilie’s gone.”

  * * *

  INDIA REFUSED TO stay behind and let Nicholas and Captain Warre conduct the search. Emilie was nowhere to be found in the garden or even at Miss Ursula’s cottage.

  The cold grip of fear was the specter of what they might find as they made their way down the wooded path to the pond. They hurried so fast that caution was impossible—India felt her skirts snag on a bush and heard the fabric rip.

  Nicholas held a lantern, calling Emilie’s name. Ahead of them, a rippling slash of moonlight cut through the inky pond.

  India heard a splash. “She’s there!” India shouldered past Nicholas and Captain Warre, hiked her skirts and ran. “Emilie!”

  They burst from the woods onto the pond’s grassy banks. And there was Emilie, crouched by the water with a great mass of soggy fabric in her hands...

  Scrubbing.

  She looked over her shoulder, seeing them, but she only scrubbed all the more frantically. India rushed toward her with Nicholas on her heels.