“I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“Tough times, those.”
“They’ll be tougher yet, Mercy, if that man down there discovers our real secret. And I’m not talking about what’s in that bag.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at Mercy in the darkness. “After what happened here today, I fear for our safety should anyone find out we’re—”
“They won’t. How could they? We’ve been careful.”
“Yes, but there have always been whispers. Doubts. We must be very mindful not to do anything to flame those doubts, especially after the events of this afternoon.”
Both women lay silent and staring up into the darkness, each thinking their own thoughts. Outside in the night, a great owl hooted, a fox barked, and the first spring peepers of the season began to chirp from nearby wetlands, the age-old harbinger of spring after a long, cold winter. But what would the summer bring? Mercy wondered. More bloodshed? More death and terror and uncertainty?
God help them all, what would tomorrow bring?
She lay staring out the window, toward the east. Toward Boston, wondering what Gage would send next.
It was a long time before she fell asleep.
* * *
Dorian, too, had trouble sleeping.
He had gone back to the parlor after the girl had retired. Tossing and turning on the too-narrow sofa, he’d been plagued by memories of the carnage this morning, of an army gone to pieces as they’d been ambushed and overwhelmed by the colonial militias that had come pouring out of the countryside by the thousands. Dorian was a warrior, and no stranger to death by violence, but the arena on which the skirmish had been fought was unfamiliar to him. One that he didn’t care to find himself in again, any time soon.
Give me a fast frigate with twenty eight guns and a few Navy men beside me, and I can conquer the world. Today? What a bloody, humiliating embarrassment.
He thought again of Lord Charles lying dead against the wall and shut his eyes in pain. The first duty he’d need to perform upon returning to Boston was to tell poor Juliet of his death.
It was too much.
Dorian could not turn off his thoughts, and his thoughts would not let him sleep.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The house was quiet, and the low murmuring from the women upstairs had long since ceased. Dying firelight glowed against the thick, hand-hewn beams that held up the low ceilings and he shivered, his shirt still damp from the washing to which it had been subjected earlier. He was not unused to wet clothes. God knew he’d gone to bed many a night soaked with sea spray and shivering. He reached for his waistcoat.
You failed Sir Geoffrey.
That thought, on top of the rest of the ones already tormenting him, was untenable.
It was then that he remembered the jug of ale that Mercy Payne had brought up from the cellar, still out there on the long table in the keeping room.
Sleep. He craved it. Would need it, for tomorrow promised to be another trying day, and one where he’d need his wits about him if he wanted to finagle a way back to Boston.
The ale, he hoped, would help him achieve that state.
Clad in his breeches, damp shirt and waistcoat, he padded back out to the keeping room. The big jar of ale sat on the table. Seizing both it and his mug, he pulled out the ladder-back chair that Mercy Payne had occupied earlier. He let his fingertips graze the top rung of the chair and smiled a bit wistfully. How pretty she had looked, with her head tipped back over this very rung. He wondered what her hair would look like, spilling down the back of the chair, had she let it loose. He eased himself down into the chair, imagining her warmth still lingering here, her bottom against the caned seat, her slight weight held by the chair’s stout, no-fuss legs. Sitting in her chair made him feel oddly close to her. And it was about as close as he was ever likely to get.
He poured ale into his mug and stretched his feet toward the fire. It glowed a dull orange in the brick hearth, flickering against the iron crane from which a pot of water hung. Dorian took a long drink of the ale and licked the foam from his upper lip, thinking.
Thinking too much.
Of Mercy Payne.
She was a unique and spirited soul. She intrigued him. Made his blood move that much faster through his veins and set his mind to thinking of beds and hot kisses and his hands upon her flesh while she lay panting and beautiful beneath him. In a different world, perhaps he might entertain the idea of courting her. But the world as he knew it, as anyone knew it ... it had been shattered today, and he had no idea what awaited him upon his return to Boston.
Besides, she was a rebel. She’d have no use for him if she knew who he was, and no relationship could be built on a lie.
He took another long swig of the ale, shifted his weight in the seat, moved his legs—and caught his heel against that damnable floorboard that nobody had bothered to nail down.
The floorboard.
It was not his business.
You are an officer of the Crown. This is a house of rebels. You have a duty to see what’s under that damned floorboard.
Yes, he did. But to intrude upon this good family’s privacy, to go poking around in a place to which he owned no invitation, felt wrong in every sense of the word.
He took another long swallow of ale, trying to dull the nagging voice in his head. Beside him, he was aware of the floorboard, the way that one can feel a stranger staring at them from across a room.
Dorian was losing all ability to ignore the floorboard.
Cursing, he put the mug down, eased himself from the chair to the floor, and quietly put his fingers against the lifted edge.
The nail, more like a pin within a too-large hole, came out easily in his prying fingers. The fire danced, and as Dorian brought the edge of the floorboard up as far is it would go, given that it was still nailed down on the other end, he saw a gleam of dark red velvet in the shadows beneath the plank.
Not your business.
He paused.
You’re a king’s officer. Of course it’s your business.
He stretched his fingers down into the gap. Found the velvet, brought the bag out of the hole, opened it and sat staring before quietly putting it back. Too late, he heard a creak on the stair and turning, saw the startled face of Mercy Payne just behind him.
Chapter 7
“What,” she asked, frowning, “are you doing?”
Dorian de Wolfe wasn’t a man given to blushing, but he’d been caught red-handed and he could think of little he might say or do to redeem or excuse what he’d been up to.
Instead, he straightened up, replaced the nail in its too-large hole, and mustering as much sang-froid as he could given the circumstances, looked at the girl, who must have hastily dressed and crept downstairs as silently as a cat. “My apologies, Miss Payne. I’ve been much troubled by your near fatal plunge toward the hearth earlier, and I determined to nail down that board to ensure such a mishap never happens again.”
She just stared at him. Her eyes were no longer sparkling and inviting as they’d been earlier, but hard and distrustful, and a little crease between her eyebrows betrayed her anger.
“I should think,” she said evenly, “that if you were trying to nail it down, you’d have been down there on your hands and knees with a hammer, not trying to pry the board up all the more.”
“Perhaps I was trying to resettle it so it would be flush with the rest of the floor.”
“Perhaps you were looking for something you’re not meant to find.” She folded her arms across her bosom. “I had thought you had the manners of a gentleman, Mr. Dorian, but it seems I was mistaken. You are rude to go snooping around in other people’s homes.”
There was no sense pretending any longer. “You are correct,” he murmured, bowing. “It is indeed rude, and I apologize. But I could not help but notice the fearful and guarded way both you and your mother treated this particular floorboard earlier tonight, and my curiosity got the better of me.”
<
br /> “I should never have trusted you.”
“I am implicitly trustworthy.”
“You were snooping!”
“Snooping is not the same thing as stealing, and if you think I would have stolen whatever’s under that board, you have most grievously misjudged me.”
She glared at him, her mouth tight with anger, her gaze going from the floorboard to his hands and back to the floorboard again. He knew she was trying to discern whether he’d taken anything. Knew she was wrestling with whether to ask him to empty the pockets of his waistcoat.
He saved her the trouble, doing so himself to prove that they were empty and looking at her with eyebrows raised.
She abruptly turned her back and moved to the jug, her hand shaking as she poured a hefty measure into the mug she had left behind.
It had been a close call, Mercy thought. Too close. Mother was right; she should have stayed down here tonight. Mr. Dorian did not know what was under that floorboard, but another thirty seconds and it would have yielded its secrets to him and then what would have happened? She drank, trying to control her trembling.
“I trusted you,” she said flatly, not turning around. “I—”
He had come up behind her. Too late, she sensed his presence, turned, and there he was, towering over her by a good foot, all male strength with his shoulders broad and bulging beneath his loose shirt, his snug waistcoat boasting of a trim, tapered body with lean hips and long, powerful legs. He reached out and cupped her jaw with one hand, cocking his head slightly as he looked at her. “Why so skittish, Mercy Payne?”
Her gaze flashed to the fowling piece in the far corner of the room. Too far for her to reach, and it would take too much time to load it. She realized then how much danger she was, or might possibly be, in. Really, she did not know this man. Her mother was upstairs, her brother was just a little boy, and only she and her wits stood between the secrets beneath the floorboard and Mr. Dorian’s will. Nervous sweat prickled all along her spine.
“I did not give you permission to touch me.”
“And you’ve not answered my question.”
“I owe you no explanations.”
She glared up into his eyes, aware that he could crush her like a bug. Dispatch her quite neatly, take the velvet bag and be off. Her blood buzzed with sudden terror. But there was no malice in those eyes, nothing that made her feel as if she were in imminent danger, nothing but a teasing sparkle that made her begin to feel rather foolish for imagining that this man would hurt her.
“No,” he said, reluctantly letting his hand fall away, “You do not. But now that it has become such a subject of curiosity, that floorboard, you would be cruel indeed to send me on my way without at least giving me a hint as to what’s beneath it.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“I bet you have bones buried there.”
“I do not!”
“And I bet they’re not chicken bones, either. A murdered body. Yes, that’s what’s beneath that board, is it not, Mercy Payne?”
“You accuse me of murder!”
“No, no, of course not. I’m just positing my theories. In the absence of proof of what that floorboard hides, my mind is free to imagine all sorts of things. So, then.” He leaned against the table and let his gaze drop to the floorboard, then rubbed at his jaw. “Not bones, then.”
“Most certainly not!”
“Pewter? Something that could be melted down to make musket balls as everyone else here seems to be doing, but something that means so much to you that you’re hesitant to sacrifice it?”
“Mr. Dorian, you pry too much!”
“Wine, then. An expensive bottle of wine, smuggled in by the Irish Pirate or some other Boston hero. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Fine spirits. Illegally obtained.”
“Mr. Dorian, you’re making it very hard for me to remain angry with you, teasing me so.”
“I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
“I am compelled to be angry with you!”
He grinned then, took another swallow of beer, and shifted his weight to relieve his foot. “That, Miss Payne, is your choice.”
She glared at him. “Even if I choose not to be angry with you for, admittedly, attempting to satisfy your curiosity—and it is snooping, no matter how you try and frame it— I’m now faced with a problem, aren’t I?”
“What problem is that?”
“I can’t leave you alone down here now.”
The side of his mouth turned up in a smile and quivered with contained mirth. “Do you really think that if I’m determined to know what’s under that floorboard, there’s anything you can say or do that would stop me?”
He had one dark brow lifted, his gaze pinning her, and Mercy was reminded again of how big and powerful he was. Only the amusement in his eyes gave her assurance that she was safe, that he wasn’t going to come around the table and overpower her in order to rob them blind. He was right, of course. There wasn’t a thing she could do to stop him.
“And,” he added, the grin spreading, “do you really think you can get to that firearm faster than I can stop you?”
“Oh!” So he’d seen her quick, furtive glance to the only possible protection at hand. And had anticipated her thoughts.
“Obviously, if I were the scoundrel you’re thinking I might just very well be, I’d demand that you lift up that board and show me what’s under it. And if it’s anything but the bones you claim aren’t buried there—”
“Stop mocking me, you know very well there are no bones buried there.” She relaxed into his gentle teasing. “Besides, if we’d murdered someone, they’d never fit under a floorboard. I’d bury them in the cellar.”
“Shall we have a look down there, too, then?”
“I can assure you there’s nothing down there worth seeing.”
He nodded, once. “Just as there’s nothing worth seeing under that floorboard. Something so worthless that you’re now afraid to leave me to my own devices for fear that I will discover it.” He took another drink of ale, and she saw his gaze drop briefly to her bosom, and when he looked into her face once more, his eyes were simmering with warmth. He pulled at his bottom lip with thumb and finger, a thoughtful, and deliberate gesture. Her body thrummed with answering heat. “Fancy that,” he murmured. “Do you see how pointless your worries are, Miss Payne?”
Truly, she rather did. “It’s still none of your affair. But I’m staying down here with you tonight, even if we have to pass the rest of it listening to each other breathe. You obviously can’t be left alone.”
“And maybe I don’t wish to be.”
“Oh, you are impossible!”
He laughed.
And then she looked at him, at the invitation in his dark and handsome eyes, and felt herself seem to sway toward him. He straightened up, putting the mug down on the table, and began to come around it toward her, and in that moment she knew that he intended to take her in his arms and kiss her.
Too late, they heard the hoof beats outside, the sound of someone coming up the stairs to the front door.
In the next moment, there was a hard pounding—and the moment was lost.
Chapter 8
Startled, Mercy jerked back only a moment before she might have leaned in and let Mr. Dorian kiss her.
What on earth came over me?
The anxiety and heartbreak of the afternoon. The beer dulling the edge of her caution. And the proximity to a very attractive man, this very attractive man, and an innocent flirtation that had become more than she’d envisioned.
She stepped back, blushing, ashamed of herself for how quickly she’d nearly yielded to his appeal. “My heavens, who could it be at such an hour?”
Wariness came into his eyes. “You’d better answer it.”
The pounding started again, louder this time.
“I’m coming!”
Mercy straightened her kerchief over her bosom, tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and hurrie
d to the door. Upstairs, she heard a bed creak as Mother, awakened by the racket, got up. Behind her, Mr. Dorian hobbled, hopping on one leg and towering over her.
She cracked open the door and there was Tom Hart out there, his jaw set with impatience and his cheek bulging with a wad of tobacco. He had small, deep-set eyes and a face scarred by the pox, and two men were with him: his strapping son Zachariah, and Isaac Sanderson, a no-good cheat whose wandering eye was the talk of the town.
“Evenin’, Miss Payne.” Hart took off his tricorn. “May we come in?”
“You may not,” she said, not liking the way Hart was trying to see around her and using his body to intimidate her into moving aside. “Mother has gone to bed and little Elias is fast asleep. What is so important that you’re banging on our door at this hour?”
“We’re a-looking for someone. He’s dangerous, and a threat to good decent folks like yourselves. Was stayin’ down at the tavern and then disappeared.” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head, then spat in the grass. “The missus said she saw ye talking to a stranger out on the street and that ye brought him inside. That so, Mercy?”
“I’ll not deny it.” Behind her, she sensed Mr. Dorian’s presence, though he had hidden himself on the other side of the door, away from Hart’s prying eyes. “He had a bullet wound in his arm. I extricated the ball, sewed him up and sent him on his way.”
“Ye sure about that now, are ye?”
Her voice held just the right amount of affront. “Do you have reason to doubt my word, Mr. Hart?”
“Of course not, Mercy. Course not. I know there was a rumor going around that you and your family are more loyal to the King than liberty, but I ain’t seen nothing to make me think ye’re anything but a good patriot.”
Mercy’s chest tightened with sudden fear. She schooled her face into a calm she didn’t feel. “Good luck with your search,” she said crisply, and started to close the door.
Hart put out a booted foot. “Of course, if you are a-harborin’ the man we’re looking for, we’ll be forced to wonder just how loyal ye really are. Too pretty you are, Mercy, for tar and featherin’. But I’ll take your word for it. Mind ye lock your doors, and come fetch me if ye see anyone who puts your hackles up. Ain’t safe out there tonight.”
Heart Of The Sea Wolfe Page 5
