[GOD08] The Lost Gentleman

by Margaret McPhee

  ‘I was not asleep,’ she admitted.

  He glanced round at her then and there was something so tortured in those dark eyes of his that it was as if a hand had taken hold of her heart and squeezed.

  She slid her fingers to cover his. ‘In all the time I have been Le Voile I have never regretted it, not once. Indeed, it has been my salvation. But only now, only when I see you, do I wish with all my heart that it were not so.’

  She felt the caress of his thumb against hers.

  ‘La Voile Noire—the black sail,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘Le Voile Noir—the black veil. My little joke. I was a grieving widow and a pirate captain, and I was obscuring what was there in plain sight before all the world.’

  He stared at her, a hard look of shock on his face.

  ‘Please do not feel bad, Kit, everyone made the same assumption. No one looked beyond the black sail.’

  ‘And when they referred to La Voile...’

  ‘I did not correct them. It is what they wanted, what they needed to believe. Part of the illusion.’

  ‘The illusion of Tobias.’

  The silence echoed between them. She could feel the change in him, feel the stillness and sudden increase in tension, feel intense heavy weight of his gaze.

  She looked up into his eyes. ‘It started out right and justified, but...’ She bit her lip. ‘Things are not so clearly delineated any more. Who is friend and who is foe. What is right and what wrong.’

  ‘So all these three years you have been Le Voile,’ he said very carefully. He stepped up close to her, staring down into her face with sharp urgent eyes.

  ‘You know I have.’

  ‘And Tobias, La Voile.’

  ‘I guess.’

  He rummaged in an inner pocket of his coat, pulling out a folded document that was pale in the moonlight, and crossed the room quickly.

  With fast efficient fingers he lit the candle stub using the tinderbox. She saw him swallow before he opened out the document, and, in the flickering candlelight, carefully scan the neat penned black lines.

  His eyes shuttered. His body relaxed. He gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘What is it, Kit?’ she asked, her eyes staring into his.

  ‘My salvation,’ he said, and he smiled as he passed the document into her hands.

  Her gaze moved over the rusty stain that marked the paper, the same stain that was preserved upon the deck of Kit’s night cabin on Raven, before she read the words written there.

  And then she smiled, too. His salvation, indeed.

  For the document was his contract with the British Admiralty. And the name of the pirate he had been contracted to capture and rid the seas of, written clear and without ambiguity in every single instance throughout, was La Voile.

  * * *

  He smiled, that same smile she had once seen him give on Raven, of happiness and relief, a smile that lit her soul and made her heart swell for him. It was as if he had stepped out of the darkness of a terrible oppressive shadow into the light. She was so glad for him, so relieved. She knew how much this meant to him.

  Reaching a hand to cup his cheek, she felt the roughness of the beard stubble that shadowed and darkened his cheek, his chin and above his lips. She slid her fingers against it, caressing the harshness and masculinity that made him the man he was. Anchoring that man now he had returned, never wanting him to leave lest the darkness of that unfathomable torture swallow him up again.

  He smiled and, reaching a hand round her waist, pulled her to him, stroked the long loose strands of hair and stared down into her eyes.

  Tomorrow they would reach London. Tomorrow they would go before the Admiralty. And she would start her journey home to Louisiana. She longed for it and she dreaded it, too. Because of this man standing before her.

  After tomorrow it would be as if she had never met him and everything would go back to the way it should be. Her heart belonging to Wendell. Her life devoted to raising Ben and Bea and caring for her mama. She would be the person she had always been. Strong and loyal and true—to her children, to her country and the memory of the man she had sworn she would always love.

  All of that came tomorrow. But tonight...she was here and looking into those dark, dark eyes with all their secrets and integrity and her heart was filled with tenderness for him and her body alive with desire for him. Tomorrow she would step back into her old life. But tonight...tonight she followed her heart and the longing in her soul.

  He blew out the candle and they kissed and stripped off their clothes, and they loved together beneath the light of the silver moon.

  * * *

  The hour was still early, too early to wake Kate.

  Kit thought of their lovemaking of the night. She had loved him, giving herself and her heart with an intensity of meaning that matched what was within his own body and mind and soul.

  Today she would go home across the seas and he would face what it was he had spent the past three years both running from and to. It had to be this way. He could not weaken. Not now. Not when he was so close, in the home straight. And besides, he had nothing he could offer her. If she knew the man he really was, she would not look at him the way she did now. She would revile him. She would lock her door and her heart against him, not open her soft arms and hold him to her breast. He did not deserve a woman like her. And more importantly she did not deserve a man like him.

  Last night was a dream that would sustain him for the rest of his life. This morning, life was there again, waiting with all its harsh reality.

  He slipped quietly from the bed and, taking care not to wake her, washed in the basin of cold water and shaved the last of the blue-shadowed bristle from his face. Splashing the water through his hair, he smoothed it back from his face and stared at the man reflected in the looking glass. Always his life was a battle against the weakness within. It always would be. But today he would go to the Admiralty and deliver them La Voile in truth. Le Voile would never sail again. And he would let her walk away and turn his face to London and all that he had worked the last years to do. He stared at the man and knew he would always be glad he had known Kate Medhurst.

  He smiled to himself and with a deep breath rolled down his shirt sleeves, tied his neckcloth into place and pulled on his coat.

  Out on the window ledge, Bob gave a caw and Kate stirred to waking, looking over at Kit with sleep-misted eyes and a shy smile.

  Kit walked over to the bed. ‘Bar the door behind me,’ he whispered as he dropped one final kiss to her lips.

  She nodded.

  Kit walked out of her bedchamber for the last time.

  * * *

  Gunner was sitting alone at a small table in the corner of the White Hart’s dining room when Kit entered. Those of the crew who were up and ready sat together at a larger table in the centre of the room, largely in silence and looking dog-eared as seamen always did on those first few days ashore.

  Gunner’s normal calm expression was gone. In its place was a tense worry that stroked foreboding through Kit.

  With a nod at his men he sauntered over to Gunner’s table and sat down opposite him. He ordered only coffee from the serving wench who appeared from the kitchen doorway in her apron. When she was gone he asked, ‘Something wrong?’ He wondered if Gunner knew that he had stayed with Kate last night and disapproved. He would not let a slur be cast on her.

  ‘We have a problem,’ Gunner said quietly.

  ‘What kind of a problem?’

  In reply Gunner handed him a newspaper folded over to reveal half a page, and pointed halfway down a column of print. ‘That kind of a problem.’

  Kit’s eyes read the words with quick precision and all of his assertions about cursing were forgotten. ‘Hell!’

  ‘Not good.’ />
  ‘And with such impeccable timing,’ he said sardonically and set the newspaper aside.

  ‘What time are we due at Admiralty?’

  ‘Three o’clock.’

  A silence stretched while they both contemplated the magnitude of the development and how it changed everything for Kate.

  ‘You could plead her case. Admiralty might make an exception given that you are delivering them La Voile.’

  ‘They will not,’ said Kit. ‘You have had dealings with them before. You know they will not.’

  ‘If you turn up with Mrs Medhurst at Admiralty this afternoon...’

  ‘It is not Louisiana to which she will be sent,’ finished Kit.

  ‘It is not,’ agreed Gunner quietly. ‘She will not be going home anytime soon.’

  ‘She has two children waiting for her there. Six and four years old.’

  Gunner shook his head and glanced away, the compassion clear in his eyes. They both knew Kate’s children would not remember her by the time she returned to Louisiana...if she ever returned. ‘We need her as a witness. And even if we did not, we could not leave her here. She would not be safe. The government have probably already started rounding up all the stray Americans.’

  ‘Not all,’ Kit said softly. ‘They will not be arresting Lady Haslett.’

  ‘Lady Haslett is not an ordinary American woman. She is a member of London’s ton. Her husband is from one of the oldest and most powerful families in England.’

  ‘My point precisely,’ said Kit softly.

  Gunner stared at him. ‘Are you suggesting what I think?’

  ‘It is seven o’clock. We have eight hours before we must be at Admiralty. Could it be done in time?’

  ‘We passed a church on the way into town. A little gentle persuasion may be required...’ Gunner’s long bony fingers caressed the handle of his cutlass. ‘But, yes, it could be done in time.’

  They fell silent while the serving wench delivered Kit’s coffee and left again.

  ‘I will explain the situation to Kate. And ascertain whether she wishes to do what is necessary.’

  Gunner gave a nod. ‘God works in mysterious ways. I cannot pretend that America declaring war on Britain is in any way desirable, but marriage between you and Kate Medhurst might be no bad thing for either of you.’

  But Gunner did not understand, not Kate and not him.

  Kit’s face was grim. He sipped his coffee and waited for Kate to come downstairs.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kate’s first indication that something might be wrong was that there was not one man of Raven’s crew in the inn’s dining room. The second was the fact that Kit had secured them a private parlour for breakfast. The third was the look on his face—a dark intensity and tension so different to the man who had left her not so long since in the bedchamber.

  She felt her cheeks grow warm at the memory of the intimacies that they had shared in the night. She had done things with him, given a part of herself she had sworn never to give again. It had seemed so right in the dark privacy of the night when all that had existed was him and her and their relief. Now in the stark clear daylight, with responsibility and respectability back in place, the wild abandon and tenderness of their bonding seemed to belong to another place and time.

  Last night had been a different Kate Medhurst. This morning she was herself once again, but the echoes of the night still whispered between them.

  ‘That coffee sure smells good,’ she said with a smile, feigning a normality she did not feel as she sat down at the table.

  But Kit gave no reply.

  The serving wench delivered her a breakfast of warm bread rolls, a dish of strawberry jam and a fresh pot of coffee. Kit poured her coffee, adding a splash of cream and a tiny lump of sugar just the way she liked. And in all that time he did not say a word so that the skin on the nape of her neck began to prickle and a chill of foreboding seemed to spread across her skin and she was seized by the certainty that something was badly wrong.

  She took a sip of coffee, but did not touch the bread.

  Only when the door of the parlour closed behind the serving wench did he speak.

  ‘There is something you need to know, Kate. Something that changes everything.’

  A cold draught blew gentle across her heart, sending a chill through her blood. ‘What do you mean? How much can have happened since last night?’

  ‘A lot more than either of us could have anticipated.’ From the table by his side he lifted a folded newspaper and passed it to her.

  The cup of coffee sat untouched on the table as the printed words hit her. ‘America has declared war on Britain!’ Her heart stuttered. She stared at him, her mind stumbling over the implications of the headline.

  Something that changes everything.

  She wanted to deny it, to hope that all would be as they had planned. But she knew in her heart that he was right.

  ‘The Admiralty are not going put me on a ship and deliver me home, are they?’

  He shook his head, his eyes holding hers.

  ‘What will they do?’

  ‘Intern you with the other Americans who are here. For the duration of the war most likely. It is what happened during the War of Independence.’

  A war that could last for years. Years locked in a prison camp in England while her widowed mother struggled alone to bring up Kate’s two children.

  She was so close, so close, and now at this eleventh hour, it was all being snatched away. She wanted to shout out in anger at the injustice. She wanted to weep and cover her face with her hands. She wanted to rail against what was happening. But she knew if she let herself weaken then the floodgates would open and Lord only knew what would come out tumbling out then. So she kept herself together and took a steadying breath.

  ‘There is a way around it, Kate.’

  She looked at him. ‘What way?’

  ‘They would not intern you if you were married to a British citizen.’

  Only the beat of her own heart sounded.

  ‘A gentleman. Someone whose family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in England, and who could stand as your guarantor.’

  ‘Where would I find such a man?’ Her eyes held his. She held her breath, afraid that she had misunderstood what he was suggesting and even more afraid that she had not.

  ‘Here, before you.’

  Silence.

  ‘Marry me,’ he said.

  She glanced away. Marriage, to another man. Marriage. She thought of all that she had done to avoid it. Becoming Le Voile and all that it had cost her. She thought of what marriage would mean to the memory of Wendell; of what it would say about her and her lack of loyalty. It would make a mockery of everything she had sworn—that she would stay true to him and only him. How could she then marry another? And not just any other, an Englishman, a man who hunted pirates and privateers—a man like those responsible for Wendell’s death. And worse than that, a man for whom her feelings already invoked a sense of guilt when it came to the memory of her husband.

  ‘There has to be another way,’ she said quietly and saw something flicker deep in those dark eyes before he masked it.

  ‘Believe me, there is no other way.’ His voice was cool, clipped, focused. ‘It would, of course, be a marriage in name only. As your husband, they would entrust me with your keeping. I have business to deal with in London, but I would arrange for Gunner to return you to Louisiana as soon as it was safe and have the marriage annulled.’

  ‘Could it be so easily done?’ A marriage dissolved as if it had never been? As if it counted for nothing.

  ‘As long as it is not consummated.’

  She could not meet his eyes. ‘Is it not too late for that given we have already...?’ She swallowed and tried again. ‘That
we have...’ She rubbed a hand against the back of her neck, knowing that what she had done with Kit North, sleeping with him, loving him, would earn her the condemnation of every respectable citizen in Tallaholm. She knew what she had done was wrong, but when it came to Kit North it seemed all of what she thought she knew about herself and her morals and beliefs went out of the window.

  ‘I believe the church and law consider only those relations that have occurred, or not, after the marriage ceremony.’

  She nodded and finally met his eyes. ‘You would be marrying a woman who is now officially an enemy of your King and country.’ And more than that, much, much more than that.

  ‘I brought you here. And, as I told you before, I have enough on my conscience without adding making your children motherless to it.’ His voice was quiet and cool, the look in his dark eyes unreadable. ‘I have no preference in the matter. The choice is yours to make.’

  But there was no choice. Not as far as Kate could see. Without him, she stood no chance. She would be England’s prisoner. But as his wife... She told herself that she was only doing this for her children, to get home to her country, for her freedom; that the marriage would be meaningless because it would be annulled.

  And were all those things true she would have agreed to the plan without so much as a second thought. But she knew there was much more to it than that, maybe not for him, but for herself. Things that frightened her to admit. Things that she did not want to feel. Things that made guilt weigh heavy upon her shoulders.

  She closed her eyes, swallowing down the guilt, feeling all those forbidden feelings whisper and smile their victory in that part of herself she would deny.

  Forgive me, Wendell.

  And when she opened them again she said, ‘Then I choose you, Kit North. I will be your wife.’

  He was silent for a moment, his dark eyes on hers. ‘I will make the necessary arrangements.’ Cool. Impassive. As if it truly were just a marriage name. As if they had not lain together and shared their bodies and shared their souls by the light of the moon over ocean and land. ‘Be ready in an hour.’