by Baird Wells
“No?” Alix thought she understood, by his expression and by the tense thread that had drawn between them for days, a thread which forced them to cling together or snap apart.
“I'm angry,” he said in response to an unspoken question, “but not with you.”
“Then what?”
“London.” He sighed and scrubbed a palm over his face. “Crowded, noisy, clinging with all its busyness. Not a moment's peace to be had. A hundred pairs of eyes watching. You and I in the middle of it, shaving our words, hiding our glances. I think of being forced to spend days apart and …” He raised hands into trembling fists, eyes pressed shut a moment. “I could strike something.”
Alix leaned onto one elbow, clasped his fist and smiled. “Spencer?”
His eyes snapped open, wide and questioning in time with his hand, and he twined their fingers.
“Are you saying …?”
Nodding, he raised his head from the pillow and caught her lips. She barely registered the sensation, heart pounding until her head swam. He loved her.
“Madly, Alexandra.”
“Then what should I do? Chas, Paulina …I have to go back, for him.”
“Would Chas do the same for you?” he demanded.
“No,” she admitted. “No, I don’t think so, but he is still my brother. I can't postpone going back forever.” She sighed at an ache in her chest when she thought of her brother alone with Paulina. “It’s all so tangled.”
“I would never ask you to turn your back on your brother, but I also don’t believe that flying to London is necessary. Or wise, considering Paulina’s hand in last night’s visit.”
“What do I do?” She repeated, desperate.
“What do we do.”
Alix shook her head, not understanding.
“I want to be married,” he blurted, looking as surprised as she felt.
Alix held her breath, waiting for the spell to break, to wake up. One moment continued into the next unbroken, and she stretched further along Spencer's frame. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.” He nodded with a grave slowness. There was a desperation on his face, to his words which Alix felt mirrored in her heart. “Will you have me or no?”
It was a dangerous question, treasonous and defiant, tempting her to do the very thing she had feared for years. Only now, Silas seemed much smaller in her recollection, his reach shorter and Paulina’s thumb not as heavy as it had been just a week earlier. Spencer could protect her, would fight for her. Love her.
“You ask as though I have a choice.” She pulled their hands apart and laced her arms behind his neck, trailing kisses across his mouth until he growled and fit their lips together for a long moment. “I will,” she breathed. “Of course I will.”
“I'm sorry for last night. It wasn't gentlemanly behavior.”
Spencer had every right to be less than a gentleman. She had caused him real fear, and worse, her pride had gotten between them. Her heart ached at the idea even now. Still, they'd met in mutual combat, both making amends, of a sort. Chuckling, she tucked her toes behind his ankle, drew them up his calf, enjoying the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “If I didn't want you, you would not have taken me.” She dragged lips over his cheek and nuzzled his ear. “Certainly not more than once.”
“Bollocks, Alexandra. How will I keep my hands from you until we're wed?”
“Don’t.”
“We’ve agreed to marry. I’d like to make an effort to honor that, hypocrite that I am.”
He had apologized, but she intended to make him pay at least a little for last night. Alix ran a hand under the quilt, traced a rigid thigh and pressing until Spencer jerked beneath her. “That, my lord, is entirely your problem.”
* * *
Morning sunlight after the rain was always warmer, more golden in his estimation. It poured in through the dining room’s narrow windows and bathed the room in a soothing glow which perfectly suited his mood.
Alix banged and clattered in the kitchen while aromas teased his nose and grumbling stomach. For just a breath he slipped into a fantasy; Alix preparing their meal while he saw to chores outside, both unhurried, confident of their days and nights belonging only to each other.
Her cheerful call pulled him up from the day dream, and, despite an ache in his chest, he managed a smile.
“What a domestic marvel you are,” he said, rubbing his hands together at her appearance and a bowl of steaming golden-brown biscuits. “All this time I may have been overlooking your greatest talent.”
Grinning, Alexandra dropped into the chair across from him and snatched the cracked stone lid from a butter crock. “A surprising revelation, considering what you whispered to me upstairs.”
He poked her with a toe beneath the table. “A lass to warm the sheets is well and good, but a man can find that sort of comfort on campaign. Good food,” he proclaimed, snatching a biscuit and shaking burning fingers, “is what a soldier misses most.”
She slid the crock over and passed him the knife. “When my parents married, my father was still a struggling captain trying to convince anyone to let him haul cargo. My mother had never had to do anything domestic. By both their accounts, the first few months were …” She shook her head and frowned. “Anyhow, she made us all learn to cook. Sew a button. Kindle a fire.”
“All?”
“My sisters, Nan and Sarah, too. They died young.” She offered the information frankly, between bites of ham.
Still, it tugged at his heart. “She did well.”
“Thank you.” Her cheeks colored, and she poked at her food.
“Alexandra, I love you.” The words were out before he comprehended that they had entered his thoughts. Relief was followed by contented joy at finally having spoken them.
Her face snapped up and she nodded. “I know.”
“I didn't say it earlier, and I wish to now.” He’d wanted to feel the words on his lips, try them on. They felt right.
“I love you, too.” She took his hand, fingers cool against the heat of his palm. “I thought it would be more difficult to say,” she mused.
“Maybe it is, when one is young and proud and fearful.” He answered her smile with one of his own.
“We’re both too sensible for all that.” She broke their gaze and sat quiet, staring at the table and pressing a pattern with her fork into the soft top of her scone. “You're set on being married, when we return?”
Her words were drawn with hesitation and gave him pause. “I bloody well am. Why?”
“You're Oakvale's heir.”
“It's a profitable estate,” he offered. If income or comfort were giving her worry, he could put those fears to rest in a single breath. Forty thousand a year would buy her anything she desired.
Her hands waved, cutting the air between them. “I don't care about money, Spencer.”
He caught her hand, took away her fork and squeezed her fingers. “What then?”
She swallowed. “I'm older, obviously. My mother struggled for two children well before my age. Don't you think that perhaps you should find someone younger and –”
“No, I do not,” he stopped her and squeezed harder. “Bennet will have children. Bennet probably already has children, England and abroad. I'm not marrying you for practical reasons, Alexandra.”
In fact, his reasons were entirely selfish. He wanted her close at every moment. He loved the way she made him feel, and that she may be saving him from an empty, solitary existence. But there was no translating the wild joy in his heart to words. “Besides,” he waited until she met his eyes again, “I'd say we've hard tested your ability to get with child.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered, pressing a hand to her mouth.
“Had that not occurred to you?”
“No!” Then softer, “No. To be frank, not much of anything occurs to me when you're near.”
It had occurred to him. First, when he realized he'd forgotten his little wooden case of sheep gut condoms. Not
that they would have been a sufficient amount. They were well and good for a night here or there, but Alexandra's effect on him would have exhausted his supply before their second sunrise. And then, it occurred again, the first time he spent himself inside her. Just once, he'd reasoned, raw and unadulterated, passion over reason. But they had come to it a second time so quickly. Then his heart began to ache for her in earnest and he'd stopped caring. If Alexandra gave him babies so much the better, though the idea of fatherhood at forty pulsed in his temples. And if no children were forthcoming … He studied her face, brushed knuckles from her chin to the soft curve of her cheek. Then, nothing changed. They stayed perfectly as they were now.
Alix chewed her lip, still considering his words.
He refused to let her fret over matters beyond their control, and according to Captain Dudley they had more immediate concerns. “I have a worry, about your brother.”
“That makes both of us,” she muttered, crossing her arms.
“You know your brother's wife far better than I, but I'll be blunt, Alexandra: I think she's up to no good. Something outright sinister.”
“I don't believe his injury in Bath was an accident,” she whispered, ducking her head as if they might be overheard. “Silas has made some coupe, or something has made him believe that my brother is expendable. In the past he needed Chas as the face of Paton; it was reassurance to my father’s accounts, to the investors. But if Silas were to lay the right groundwork, Van der Verre Freightage could practically own Paton & Son outright.”
He gnawed his lip, head aching at the depths of so much scheming. “I wonder how Paulina trailed you here.”
“I don't.” She shook her head. “Well, I do wonder at the specifics. Just not at her ability. I thought Edward and I were so careful, so circumspect. Silas found us anyhow, and Paulina has been his eager pupil all her life.”
He had sworn, on their first day at Haywood, to help Alexandra break Silas’s grip. He’d meant it, but appreciated now that their efforts would be necessary sooner rather than later. “We have to sort this out. If we return prepared, you and I can strike more quickly, rob them of a chance to do more harm.”
“Chas,” she offered flatly. “His marriage contract with Paulina has harsh conditions if they divorce. The excuse for it was to clearly set terms for his estate, since they have no children.”
He was beginning to understand. “But really it keeps him hostage.”
She nodded. “Both of us.”
There was still something that didn’t make sense to him. “Why is Van der Verre so desperate for Paton Shipping? His business seems solvent enough; why go through all the trouble?”
“Silas takes a great deal of pleasure in that trouble.” A shadow crossed her features. “And he doesn't want to own Paton. He wants to dismantle it.”
“You cannot be serious.” He didn’t question her business acumen or her grasp of the situation; if anything, her information underscored Silas’s madness.
“Entirely serious. Silas was my father's partner, years before I was born. My mother's encouragement separated them, once she convinced my father that he could succeed on his own and remain… ethical in his business practices.”
He raised a brow. “Ethical?”
“Slaves,” she whispered back, eyes downcast. “Van der Verre made their fortune in the Dutch slave trade. When my father left, gained success, and exposed Silas's main source of income, it put a bitter taste in Van der Verre's mouth.”
Scheming and machinations enough to write a novel. He took it all in. “So how, by God's bollocks, did your brother find himself wed to the man's daughter?”
Alexandra's sour expression turned outright hostile “Chas always had a weakness for her, ever since childhood. She would hold court in the yard demanding he fetch her hoop, get her lemonade.” She shivered. “And he did, for any scrap of approval. Even then she knew how to manipulate him.”
“And Van der Verre was not specter enough to put him off?”
“Just the opposite, at first. When my father died, Silas was contrite. He swore a desire for our families to reconcile. That was about all the encouragement Chas needed to ask for Paulina's hand.”
He admitted grudging admiration for Silas’s commitment. A decade or more of laying the groundwork, biding his time, playing a calculated long game to his greatest advantage. It was a level of cunning few men could boast. “So what has changed?” he puzzled aloud. “Why is Paulina so intent now on doing your brother harm?” Spencer pressed fingers to his eyes, trying to see the problem in the same way he viewed the battlefield, arranging lines in his head.
“Go to the source. Chas may be her husband, but Paulina takes her orders from her father, make no mistake.” She popped a last dainty bite of scone into her mouth, dusting away crumbs with her napkin. “I don't think John has provided Chas the lucrative contacts Silas demanded of him. Van der Verre wants more Prince Regents and fewer Old Baron Crowleys.”
Spencer thought he finally grasped Silas's aim. “Clients for Paton & Son, those will ultimately be clients for Van der Verre, when Silas disassembles the former.”
She nodded. “It's brilliant, really. Use the more successful company's reputation. Attract all you can and then claim it for yourself. Faster ships, hearty crews. Our load masters calculate ballast-to-cargo down to fractions. Silas deserves credit for recognizing our advantage. Even if he loses ten percent over brand loyalty, twenty percent, he’ll have made out like a king.”
He was impressed by her grasp of the business. Very impressed, but not surprised. “You know a great deal about your father's company.”
“I do. I had hoped he would split it equally between us. He did see that I was taken care of, the house and some shares, but not as I'd have liked.” Bitterness colored her words.
“I wager you deserve more than half. Your brother's hand doesn’t belong in any of this.” He wondered if his opinion would offend her.
Alix nodded, chewing her last bite slowly. “Chas is handsome, polished, and clients take him seriously. But he's too weak to manage by himself. Paulina is the gears in that machine.” She tossed the napkin onto her plate as if throwing away Paulina herself.
Her eyes were far away now, staring out the window. “Chas never applied himself at school, never paid attention to father's lectures. He is the master of all sport, all things outdoors, but his pursuits are clean. We only ride in the park, and we only play Bocci on the lawn, wearing our gloves and minding our hem. In that respect he and Paulina are equal snobs. He never even once traveled west with me and father.”
Alix shook her head and held up a finger. “No, that isn't right. One time. Sometimes father imported goods and then took extra coin to transport them. Forts, trading posts, that sort of thing. He oversaw those himself. We stopped in the native villages along the way, bartering here and there.”
He was jealous, Spencer realized. Men who had served in America during 1812 had come home with all sorts fantastic, unfathomable tales about the wildness and beauty of the land and its people.
“We came to a camp of Delaware near Ohio,” she continued, “And they were punishing a woman outside the chief's lodge. For adultery, we came to learn. The elder women held her down and an old man, a shaman or some official, slit the tip of her nose with a bone-handled knife. When my father asked, one of the braves said the wound was meant to resemble the part of her body by which she'd committed her offense.”
So at least some of the stories had been true. “Brutal,” he acknowledged.
Alix shrugged. “Perhaps, but that is their law. I never felt it was my place to judge, but Chas was horrified. He didn't speak to anyone the rest of the night, and he never traveled out with father again.”
“So, he wasn’t much of an obstacle to Van der Verre.”
“Useful,” she agreed. “To this day I have no idea why father thought Paton should belong to Chas. Wishful thinking, I suppose.”
“I have no sons of my own,” he raised
his hands at Alix's look, “but being the older of two boys sired by a demanding sort of man, I think that in some men, there's a hope that his son will rise to the occasion.”
“Not always,” she muttered.
“Not always.” It was time to broach the topic neither of them wanted to consider. “Which brings us to your brother now, and what the hell to do about our returning to London.”
“Our returning to London,” she repeated, staring past him with eyes narrowed. “That is why Paulina is looking for me. Or you.”
“I don't follow.”
“Paulina hasn't survived so long or pushed Chas so far by being stupid. She's perceptive enough, and she’s obviously caught our attraction.”
A blind man could have. Spencer held his tongue.
“If we courted, if we married,” she added meaningfully, “it would be a threat to Van der Verre. You would make a formidable enemy.”
An unfamiliar feeling gripped his gut. It took Spencer a moment to identify it as protectiveness.
He strangled his knife handle, knuckles aching. “We'll face him together, Alexandra. This ends now.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
London -- July 20th, 1814
Alix sat in the carriage, staring up at the number '24' on the townhouse's whitewashed face. She had been there at least ten minutes, putting off going inside. She felt different, so changed after her week with Spencer, and was certain that everyone would be able to tell.
Her dread wasn’t helped by Paulina knowing the truth, or knowing at least that she had not gone to Stirling. She'd put off their encounter for part of the afternoon, collecting business papers Spencer had asked to have sent to his townhouse. She wished for all the world that the stage had not been full at Longbridge, that bad weather and worse roads had not conspired to trap other travelers and fill the seats so that she and Spencer were separated. If only they had traveled back together, to face Chas and Paulina now as one. One more day, one more night apart, and they would never be separated again. Drawing a last steadying breath, she opened the door and climbed down.
