My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles)

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Deirdre gave her ladyship a blank look. “What sort of female issues?”

  “Have your courses been regular?”

  That kind of female issue. Momma had explained all that when she had become expectant on her last voyage. Only ten at the time, Deirdre had been horrified and disgusted. But when the changes came in her twelfth year, she was prepared and able to discreetly manage the regular event—

  Regular until recently.

  Deirdre’s face felt as though it must blaze as red as her hair, but her heart began to thud like a bass drum. “I’m late.” Her throat closed. “I’ve never been late.”

  “By how much?”

  “Five weeks.” She began to shake. “I’ve missed twice. But my life has been so disrupted.”

  “That it has.” Lady Tyne stroked her cheek. “Do you always cry a great deal?”

  “Not like lately.” Deirdre’s eyes filled with tears. “Everything makes me cry these past few days or so. I’ve just seen friends go off to prison. I lost my father not so long ago.”

  “And your husband hasn’t been exactly up-front with you about his family connections.” Lady Tyne had the sweetest smile Deirdre had ever seen. “But he has been attentive as a husband.”

  Deirdre ducked her head, mortified to even hint at how attentive, especially not in a conversation with Kieran’s mother—a conversation whose conclusion Deirdre did not want to hear, for she feared she already knew the answer.

  “As he should be.” Lady Tyne slid off the bed and crossed the room to where a cherrywood stand held a china pitcher and basin. She wet a cloth in the water and returned to the bed to wipe Deirdre’s face. “Have you been sick in the morning?”

  Deirdre shook her head, hope trying to ignite like a spark on wet flint. “I haven’t much felt like eating breakfast, but I haven’t been sick at all.”

  “Well, let’s hope that continues. I thought I was going to die for the first three months I was carrying Kieran.”

  There, the truth was out. Deirdre met Lady Tyne’s sherry-colored eyes. For a moment, her heart soared with elation. She might already be carrying the heir, one step toward ending this passionate but loveless marriage.

  Now, with the reality of her bargain staring her in the face, she wondered what sort of unnatural woman would agree to carry a child and then abandon it to land and riches and—now she knew—a title simply because his father’s land and hers were at war.

  Beneath the coverlet, she curved her hand over her flat belly as though to shield the spark of life inside. Whatever she had or had not been thinking when she made her deal with the devil, she needed to find a way to change it now.

  “Did you not suspect?” Lady Tyne’s smile was gentle.

  Deirdre shook her head. “The wh—the strumpets on the docks never . . . that is . . . I am so very sorry. I’m not used to being around ladies or talking about . . . about . . .” Words failed her.

  Her ladyship laughed. “When I was your age, we talked about these things much more freely than is done nowadays, but I’d have died rather than discuss my marriage bed with my mother-in-law. It’s the sort of thing you should be able to talk about with your mother, but since you don’t have one, please feel free to ask me anything.”

  “Thank you.” Deirdre barely managed to choke out the two words around the lump of gratitude in her throat.

  “Good. Shall I send Kieran up here?” Lady Tyne asked. “Or would you prefer to rest?”

  “I’d prefer to rest, and you’ll want to be with your son.”

  “I have missed him.” Lady Tyne half turned toward the door. “I’ll send a maid in with a nightgown.”

  “No need. I’m not wearing stays.” Deirdre slid down in the bed so warm and soft and fragrant, pretending a fatigue she no longer felt.

  She needed to be alone to think, to plan out a new future.

  And work out how a lady bearing the next generation of Ashfords was going to manage to get eleven men out of Dartmoor Prison.

  Chapter 14

  Tyne stared at Kieran until he felt like a butterfly on a pin beneath a magnification glass. With the sun beating down on it. He applied all his will not to squirm. That look shaved a dozen years off his age. Once again, he was a schoolboy caught planting moles in the neighbor’s bowling green, or trying to smoke a pipe, or dipping Chloe’s braids in ink. The thrashings he’d received had been a relief, for they turned him away from the spine-chilling coldness of that look. When Tyne took a step toward him, Kieran nearly backed into the fireplace.

  “You married an American prisoner.” Tyne’s tone was as cold as his eyes.

  Kieran nodded. “Yes, sir, I did. On Bermuda.”

  “Why?” Tyne’s voice didn’t warm a degree. “So you could bed her?”

  Kieran clenched his fists. “So I could protect her, my lord. I thought it was the honorable action.” He bowed his head to hide the pain piercing through him. “I thought you would approve.”

  “She would have been comfortable as a noncombatant prisoner here in England. You did not need to bring the enemy into our household.”

  “Enemy? You call her the enemy?” Kieran’s head shot up, anger replacing anguish. “Mama is an American. Do you call her the enemy now that we are at war with her countrymen again?”

  “Your mother is married to me.”

  “And Deirdre is married to me.”

  With those words, he suddenly missed being near her. He wanted to hold her, to know how she felt about the likelihood that they had created a child together.

  That knowledge strengthened his resolve to make his father understand, to make peace in the family for Deirdre’s sake, for all their sakes. He no longer wished to fight with his father, but sought the kind of love and understanding Chloe and Juliet shared with their sire. He wanted his son or daughter to have a grandfather they could love.

  “Deirdre is my wife.” He spoke the words with pride.

  Tyne’s expression did not change. “Phoebe was not a prisoner, combatant or otherwise. When I met her, her family was known to be loyal to the Crown.”

  Kieran sidled over to one of the chairs facing the desk and perched on its arm. “I met Mrs. Willoughby on Bermuda.”

  Tyne paled and dropped onto his chair, looking suddenly old and tired. “Did she tell you anything about your mother’s family?”

  “No.”

  But his father’s reaction made Kieran suspect more to that existed.

  “Good.” Tyne relaxed. “She was always a terrible gossip. And I will not be diverted from discussing the inappropriateness of your marriage, nor you turning my merchantman into a privateer, nor you corrupting my best captain with the promise of gold.”

  “Which we acquired.” Kieran shot his father a rueful grin. “Deirdre’s dowry.”

  Tyne made a noncommittal grumble in his throat, rose to catch up the poker and stir the fire into a greater blaze. “Sit here by the fire and tell me what happened.”

  The directive emerged more as a command than a suggestion, but Kieran’s insides uncoiled just a little. He settled on one of two wingback chairs set at angles facing the fire. Tyne took the other. They sat, not quite facing one another, and yet not separated by the massive mahogany surface of Tyne’s desk.

  “You do not want the whole story.” Kieran began to talk, measuring each word with care. “I am not a sailor, which is another black mark in my copybook, I am certain. I do not like death either. The sight of Captain MacKenzie’s body . . . It was an apoplexy that took him, so no blood. But to know I had caused a man to die . . .”

  That made Tyne smile. “Your mother would approve. When we heard you fought a duel, she was overset. If you had come home, I would likely have forgot that you are five and twenty and thrashed you.”

  “Perhaps you will believe that I could never shoot anyone.” Kieran sipped his brandy, waiting.

  Tyne did not move.

  Kieran sighed, then continued his story, emphasizing Deirdre’s courage, her strength, her cl
everness. “So, instead of escaping as she could have,” he concluded, “she dove into the harbor and pulled me out.”

  “How altruistic of her.” Tyne did not sound complimentary.

  Kieran bristled. “All but two of her crew did not escape either because they chose to help me. It was altruistic of her. She sacrificed a great deal to save my life. Marrying her is the least I could do to repay that.”

  “But where do her loyalties lie, Kieran?” Tyne asked. “Can you trust her not to betray England?”

  “What can a lady in her condition possibly get up to?” Even as he asked the question, Kieran felt a prickling of concern that Deirdre could get up to anything. “We have the family to watch out for her,” he said with an edge of defensiveness. “And Dartmoor is a bit more difficult to get men out of than a ship with a drunken watch.”

  “Do not,” Tyne said in a constricted tone, “even jest about that ever again, not even to me. You cannot imagine—”

  A gentle tap sounded on the door, and Mama slipped into the study.

  Kieran and Tyne rose.

  Mama looked from them to the smashed crystal, then back to them. “Where’s the blood?”

  “No blood,” Tyne said. “Just trouble.”

  “Have the two of you been fighting all this time?”

  “We have been having our usual sort of discussion.” Tyne smiled—for Mama, his whole demeanor softening.

  “I have been telling him about how Deirdre saved my life in Bermuda.” Kieran bowed his head to show the scar from the marlinespike.

  “Oh my.” Mama paled. “But your hair has grown out nicely around it. Surely you can cut it to a respectable length by now.”

  “We have had that discussion,” Tyne grumbled. “He intends to spend the rest of his life looking like the pirate he is.”

  Kieran stiffened. “My letters of marque were legitimate . . . sir.”

  “Legalized piracy is still—”

  “That is enough.” Mama laid her hand on Tyne’s arm. “I’m sure Kieran regrets what he did.”

  “I do,” Kieran hastened to affirm. “Except for meeting Deirdre. How is she, Mama?”

  Phoebe smiled. “She’s an interesting girl, told me that she didn’t guess her condition because the ladies on the docks never got that way.”

  Kieran and Tyne groaned.

  Mama’s eyes twinkled. “She apologized quite prettily. But she’s not happy with you, Kieran. I was coming back with a nightgown for her and heard her repeating her intention to kill you.”

  “Perhaps she and I can discuss the best method,” Tyne muttered.

  Mama poked him in the ribs, probably the only person in the world who would ever dare do so. “You should have more respect for your heir.”

  “I should have a more respectable heir.”

  Kieran turned his back on his father. “Is it all right if I go see her?”

  “I’d let her rest if I were you,” Mama said.

  Kieran’s mouth went dry. “She is all right, is she not? I mean, she fainted.”

  “That is normal under the circumstances.” Mama’s soft hand patted his arm. “You should have shown a little restraint.”

  “When,” Tyne asked, “has he ever shown restraint?”

  “He’s been spoiled by his good looks and charm just like you. Now, Kieran, get upstairs and have your father’s valet do something about your hair and clothes.”

  “The clothes, yes,” Kieran said, glancing down at his rumpled shirt and salt-stained breeches. “The hair stays. Refreshments in the gold salon at five of the clock as usual?”

  “Yes, but your hair—”

  Kieran bowed without turning around. “Good afternoon to you then. Tyne can explain the hair.”

  He exited the study, but he did not go upstairs immediately. For a moment, he paused outside the door, listening to the quiet voices beyond the panel, waiting, hoping, that his father would say something kind about him.

  “Is her being here going to make difficulties with the Admiralty?” Mama asked.

  “I am afraid so,” Tyne said. “She already helped her crew escape once. If she tries again, we could all end up in prison.”

  Deirdre knew she had to face Kieran’s family. When she awoke, she felt too well to make the excuse of illness to hide in the enormous four-poster bed with its blue silk bed hangings.

  Silk, just draped off a bed! The same sea blue adorned the long windows and reflected in the border of the carpet, velvet of the chaise-longue cushions, and stripes in the chairs that formed a cozy area to read or talk in the adjoining sitting room.

  No one was there to talk to. In fact, the room was disturbingly silent after shipboard life. Low, the fire hissed, and outside, a rising wind rattled the branches of the trees. No timbers creaked. No sails snapped. No one laughed or coughed or banged down a hatch.

  She had never felt more alone in her life.

  Shivering outside the bedclothes in a white batiste nightgown that reached just above her ankles, she strode to the fire and huddled before it. She had no idea what to do next. Her gown was missing, and she needed help donning it anyway, with all those nonsensical hooks up the back. Her sea chest stood at the end of the bed, but she could scarcely don her salt-stained breeches and waistcoat and slide down the banister like it was a backstay.

  One thing she could do was hide the gold and bank certificates tucked into the false bottom. As she withdrew the gold, a knock sounded on the door.

  “One moment, please.”

  In haste, she tucked the bag beneath the mattress up against the headboard. Later, she would find a better hiding place for it and the certificates still in the chest.

  “Deirdre?” Lady Tyne’s soft voice came through the heavy door. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Deirdre hauled the counterpane over her shoulders.

  Lady Tyne entered, carrying fabric over her arm. A maid followed with a tray on which resided combs, brushes, ribbons, and—

  “Scissors?” Deirdre squeaked.

  Phoebe smiled. “We’re not cutting off that lovely hair of yours. The scissors are for cutting the basting threads if these alterations are right. You can set that tray on the dressing table, Sally.”

  The maid, a pretty girl of no more than sixteen, nodded and did as she was told.

  “I’ve raided Chloe’s dressing room,” Lady Tyne continued to Deirdre. “We’ll get into Plymouth and have a real seamstress work up some things for you, but this will do for a day or two. You just can’t continue to wear that other dress.”

  Deirdre made a face. “Yes, the white is ridiculous for me, isn’t it?”

  “For anyone on the English Channel in November. I don’t care if filmy fabrics are the fashion, no lady needs to freeze herself. Now then, go into the dressing room and put on these things and the dressing gown while we get this fire built up.”

  “Dressing room?” Deirdre looked around.

  Sally crossed the room and opened a door beside the hearth. Painted the same cream color as the walls, it wasn’t noticeable.

  The dressing room was larger than Deirdre’s cabin. Shelves, hooks, and drawers lined the walls. Another door opened from the opposite side. Deirdre opened it and found another bedchamber, one dark and cold, its furniture draped in cotton and liberally sprinkled with lavender. Kieran was not going to be moving into that chamber. She was going to be alone in these quiet rooms with that big, silk-draped bed large enough for four of her.

  Chilly in the unheated dressing room, she turned her thoughts to donning the undergarments Lady Tyne had provided. Except for the lace and ruffle leggings, the stockings, garters, chemise, and petticoat reminded her of her one year on land. For a moment, she considered throwing them on the ground and stomping on them. Her breeches, like her freedom, were lost to her. That made her cry.

  Sinking onto a low stool, she buried her face in her hands and wept for her loss of freedom, for her imprisoned crew, for her father. She cried over the weakness of tears,
which made her weep harder.

  Finally, Lady Tyne entered with a handkerchief and soothing noises, then a small but firm hand on Deirdre’s arm.

  “That’s enough of that now. The rest of the family is waiting to meet you properly, and Kieran has been pacing about wanting to see you for hours. They’d have all stormed in if I hadn’t told them that you deserve to look your best first. Here, do you need some help with the pantalets? They’re a bit silly looking, and these will be too short for you, but they keep one’s legs warm. And Sally and I have been working to lengthen one of Chloe’s gowns. I still had some of the fabric in my studio, so we made a flounce. I used your gown to measure things. You’re a bit smaller here”—she gestured to her bust—“but taking in is easier than letting out.”

  Phoebe’s chatter and Sally’s quiet competence got Deirdre through having a gown tucked, pinned, and stitched around her, her eyes bathed in lavender water to remove the redness, and her hair snipped—“Just a bit so you can have some curls around your face”—curled, twisted, and pinned, then finally adorned with her own combs.

  “Two pieces of silver,” Deirdre muttered.

  “What was that, my dear?” Phoebe presented Deirdre with a cashmere shawl of a creamy fragility that looked like sea foam over the lavender silk gown. “Now, you look lovely. Take a look.”

  “No, thank you.” Deirdre turned her back on the dressing-table mirror.

  “Are you warm enough?” Lady Tyne asked. “I can fetch you a warmer shawl. A pelisse would be better, but a bit difficult to alter quickly.”

  “I’m warm enough,” Deirdre assured her.

  “Good. We’ll go down then. You may go have your dinner, Sally.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” Sally curtsied. “And you do look lovely, my lady.”

  The girl had dropped another curtsy and left the room before Deirdre realized that this compliment was directed at her.

  She stared at the blank panel of the door. “Why did she call me my lady?”

  “You are now Lady Ripon. It’s a courtesy title given to the heir to the Tyne earldom and his wife. A viscountcy. You will now be introduced as Deirdre Ripon.”