by C. J. Chase
She braced her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her palms. A cloud obscured the emotion in that haunted gaze. “I’m sorry. I allowed my fear and anger to result in rudeness. What happened to Nicky is my fault.”
“I think we’re all exhausted.” He stared into Mattie’s eyes, all the way to her soul. A man could lose himself in those eyes. Perhaps he already had. Perhaps, as Harrison suggested, that explained why her actions so aggrieved him. He’d lost his heart to a woman who’d wanted only revenge, not him. His lungs ached as if he had run forever.
“How did you find him?”
“A little luck and a lot of insight. Really, Mattie, prison was the most logical place to assume.” At least he had persuaded Alderston to use his influence to have Wilkie Fodgel replaced. Perhaps some good would yet come from Nicky’s ordeal. “Take heart. Nicky is fine, a little shaken perhaps, but he will be right as rain after a meal.”
As if to demonstrate the truth of Kit’s assurances, the boy bounced back into the kitchen and slid onto the bench beside Mattie. His freshly scrubbed cheeks shone in the candlelight. “Cook says I can ‘ave an entire meat pie. But there aren’t any oranges.”
Kit poured three glasses of milk. “We’ll see about getting you one tomorrow.”
The boy grinned, displaying surprisingly good spirits despite his ordeal in the grim environment of the gaol.
Mattie took a sip of her milk. “What happened, Nicky?”
“Found that gent’s ‘ouse, just like ye asked, but it looked like there weren’t nobody there. I climbed in a window, and ‘e was dead—right there by the front door.”
“Dead!”
“I ran back ‘ere, and that’s when some other gent ‘auled me off and arrested me.”
Kit paused, glass halfway to his lips. “What dead gent?”
“The one what was an officer on the ship Mattie was asking about, the Impatience.”
Mattie stilled as Kit DeChambelle’s eyes flickered with recognition.
“Lieutenant Fitzgerald?” he asked of Nicky.
“Aye, ‘e’s the one.”
“And you say he’s dead?”
Nicky shrugged. “There’s a bloke in ‘is ‘ouse with a bloody ‘ead. Don’t rightly know if it’s the same fella.”
“Mattie, may I see you in the library?” Kit DeChambelle’s deep voice filled the kitchen with quiet menace. Beneath the beautiful, almost feminine lashes, his brilliant eyes flashed with very masculine anger.
“But Nicky—”
“Cook will make him a place to sleep here.” Kit rose and tugged her along with him, out of the kitchen and through the house. The walls of the hallway tightened around her, like his grip on her wrist.
“Kit, I really don’t think—”
“I want some answers.” He hauled her into his brother’s library. A few glowing embers were all that remained of the fire. He used one to light a candle and then jabbed the taper into a holder on the desk. The light gilded his hair and created enigmatic shadows over the harsh planes of his face. His hands fastened around her arms, making escape impossible. “I want to know why you have been using that boy, that boy who loves you, for your own purposes. Using his love for you. Using even his fear for you.”
The soft, dangerous tones weren’t a question so much as a statement. An indictment. And to her shame, an accurate assessment. How could Nicky love her to the point he would risk imprisonment, transportation, even death? Heat radiated from Kit’s palms through the sleeves of her dress, burning away the excuses she couldn’t justify to herself.
“Now I understand why you believed his disappearance was your fault. It was your fault. And here I was almost convinced you’d changed.”
“I did! I have! That was before …” But only time—and a changed life—would demonstrate the transformation that had occurred within her today.
“Why, Mattie? What haven’t you told me? Why do you act without regard to yourself or to those who care about you?”
Anguish from her double failure ruptured through her as the pieces of her heart shattered and crashed to the floor. She yanked herself free of his grasp—but not his accusations—and tumbled into a chair. “My mother died when I was eight.”
Kit dropped into the neighboring seat. “How old was your brother?”
“Six.” She stared at the glowing coals. Her mind to drifted back to that dreadful moment when her mother’s emaciated body gasped its last. Her mother’s final whisper echoed through Mattie’s mind, a constant companion and reminder of her failure. “She told me … her last words instructed me to take care of my brother.”
“You? You were eight years old. What about your father?”
“He tried, but he missed my mother dreadfully. After her death, he turned to whiskey for companionship and started drinking in the evenings.” And then the afternoons. And then pretty much the entire day long.
Kit propped his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, his chin resting on templed hands. The sleeves of his shirt stretched over the bulges of his arms. “Go on.”
“Without a father and mother to guide him, George began to … get into difficulties. Eventually, my father found out, which only made the situation between them grow worse. With each new provocation from George, my father reached further into his whiskey, and nothing I tried would bring him back.”
“You were just a child yourself, as was George.”
“Finally Father caught George stealing a particularly large amount of cash from the store and threatened to press charges, so George ran off to sea on the Constance.”
“Mattie, Mattie. I’m so sorry.”
“I wasn’t. Don’t you see? When George absconded with the family coffers, I felt only relief. Not regret, relief. His thievery had long been suspected by the neighbors. Whenever calamity or larceny befell our community, all eyes looked to George. Then he ran away. And I thought that finally we would be spared the suspicions and censure of our neighbors.”
“You are not to blame for another’s choices, Mattie.”
“But I’d promised my mother I’d take care of my brother.”
“And you did, as much as you were able, until such time as George reached an age to make his own decisions.” The blue eyes glittered behind their glass shields. “You didn’t fail him. You couldn’t live his life for him, Mattie.”
That boy who loves you. Under other circumstances, Kit’s words would have warmed her. Instead, they sent a chill up her spine at her callous disregard of Nicky. And Lady Chambelston. And Caro. And Kit. Truly, she had been no better than her father, who’d wallowed in his own pain, oblivious to the needs of his son.
No better than her brother, who had loved only himself.
But there was a difference. As of today, she was forgiven—and learning to forgive. She couldn’t undo the past but with God’s help she would not continue the old patterns.
“How many years has it been?”
“Since I last saw my brother? Seven.”
“Seven years? I thought he was impressed shortly before war was declared.”
“George was gone four years when we learned from the Constance’s captain he’d been pressed into the British navy. I found my father the next morning. I don’t know whether he died from drink or despair.”
“And your brother never came home at all in the years prior?”
She stared into Kit’s eyes, the angry fires now banked to little more than embers of … sympathy. “I guess he didn’t have a reason to return.”
“He had you.”
Mattie rose from the chair and paced to the window. Night screened the rosebushes in shadows. With the darkness before her and the gleam of the candle behind, the glass pane reflected her face like a mirror. She stared at her reflection, searching for a likeness to George Fraser. “As I said, I guess he never had a reason to return.”
A chair spring squeaked. She felt Kit’s approach, and then he wrapped his arms around her. He cradled her face against his chest, smoothing the hair from her
temples and the grief from her heart. Emotions, pent up for so many years, burst forth in a torrent. All the terrible, wasted, lonely years. Years of waiting for her father, for her brother. She buried her nose in the soft linen of his shirt and inhaled his scent, his strength.
“Funny thing about war.” Kit’s voice rumbled in his chest, against her cheek. “It oft changes a man. Your brother sent you a letter, no? Perhaps he would have yet gone home had he lived.”
Perhaps. Or perhaps not. She’d never know if George had also discovered the secret to altering his life.
“How old would your brother be now?”
“Two and twenty. All I wanted, all I’ve ever wanted, is to find out what happened.” And exact her revenge.
He rested his chin on the top of her head and stroked her back, his fingers soothing as they caressed her spine. “That’s why you asked Nicky to try to find Fitzgerald.”
“Last night your brother told me that it was the first officer’s job to see the ship fully manned.”
“And you thought it a little too coincidental that you happened to meet Fitzgerald the other day.”
“London is a large city, larger than anything in my previous experience, too large for such a meeting to be accidental. And then there was his demeanor that day. He acted as if he knew neither the Impatience nor George. But an American on one of your ships wouldn’t be easily overlooked. Everyone I’ve met knows my birthplace the minute I speak.”
“So you asked Nicky to follow Fitzgerald?”
“More like see what he could find out. Because he’s mostly lived near the docks, Nicky knows a lot of the sailors. He can find out almost anything about any ship or crew.”
“I could have used his services the other day when Harrison and I searched the pay records for information about your brother.” She felt Kit’s smile against her hair, then his arms stiffened. “Nicky was there at Hyde Park the day someone shot at you.”
“He discovered the whereabouts of one of the sailors from the Impatience, a seaman called Soggy, who claimed he knew what happened to George.”
“Of course he knew what happened to your brother, Miss Fraser.” Mattie wrenched free of Kit’s embrace and whirled to face the man in the doorway. Kit’s brother.
Somershurst leaned against the frame. Proximity emphasized the similarities between the two brothers. The same taut mouth. The same blue eyes. The same tawny hair—Kit’s slightly longer and more rumpled, Somershurst’s bleached by the sun.
“I’m sorry to distress your further, Miss Fraser, but Soggy wielded one of the clubs that killed George Fraser. Under Lieutenant Fitzgerald’s orders.”
Chapter Fifteen
Kit let his empty arms fall to his sides. “Jules!”
“I came to talk. It is past time, you know.”
Past time, but five minutes too early. Kit looked at Mattie.
Her eyes had grown bleak, like the dead brown leaves that littered the ground in November. Then her lashes dropped over her eyes, shuttering his view of her grief. “Why would this Soggy lie to me?”
“I don’t know that he did, Miss Fraser.” Julian strolled into the room and joined them. “From what I overheard of your conversation with Kit, Soggy told you the truth. Just not the entire truth.”
“But why?” The sob ripped from her throat, and anguish etched deep lines around her mouth.
“Who hired Soggy to meet with Mattie is the more appropriate question.” Kit glanced at Julian over the top of Mattie’s burnished hair.
“I did.” Mattie gripped the window sill. The weak candlelight shimmered on her hair, but cast her face in shadow, leaving her expression unreadable. “Nicky promised him a crown if he’d tell me what he knew. I paid him half in advance. But then the shooting started, so I never gave him the rest.”
The shooting! Kit focused on the murky details of that day. Mattie had stood near the sailor at the time. Two shots. Two targets? “Do you know what happened to this ‘Soggy’?”
“No, I didn’t see him when we left the park.”
“Probably ran.” If he wasn’t caught. Kit shot his brother a look. He and Julian needed to talk. Now. Alone. “Mattie, you should get some rest. I’ll walk you to your room.”
Her gaze flickered from him to Julian and back—but she acquiesced to his suggestion with a nod.
He proffered his elbow. For several seconds he feared she wouldn’t take it. And no wonder, given the recriminations, distrust and dreadful deeds that lay between them.
Then she rested her hand on his arm. Through his shirt he felt the coldness of her chilled palm as he led her to the staircase.
Silence accompanied them to the top of the steps, then her fingers tightened on his sleeve. “What you said, about Nicky and how I used him—”
“I had no right to say those things.”
She paused before her door, her eyes luminous in the darkness. “No, I needed to hear them. You made me face some ugly aspects of my character. Of course, I’ve already realized I need to make some changes in my life.”
He held up his hand. “Mattie—”
She pressed her palm to his. “No, let me finish. I did form a friendship with Nicky for what he might gain me, but along the way …”
“You fell in love with the imp. I know that.” Sadness etched her face. His fingers tightened around her hand. “And he fell in love with you, too.”
“I am only now beginning to realize the great responsibility that accompanies such a gift.”
Kit was silent, pondering what Mattie had told him of her relationship with her brother. Perhaps it was understandable that she hadn’t realized how Nicky’s love would influence his actions.
“Thank you, Kit. I hadn’t intended to dampen your shoulder with self-pity.”
“I said a great many things today, things I regret. Mattie, I wish …” His own secrets weighed heavily on his heart as he stared into her unflinching dark eyes. A man could drown there—or perhaps he already had. Longing welled in him. He pressed his mouth against her soft fingertips then released her hand. “Get some sleep. Julian and I will see if we can solve this muddle. Betsy will bring your other clothes first thing in the morning.”
She offered him a watery smile, then closed the door. For several moments, he stared at that wall of oak, reflecting on what had transpired, on the changes in her. In him. Then he pivoted and marched downstairs to join his brother.
“I’d begun to think you weren’t going to return.” Julian stood next to his desk, two glasses of brandy poured and waiting. He grasped one in either hand and walked forward. “Drink?”
Kit raised his palm to forestall him. He had work to do tonight. “None for me, thank you.”
Julian’s brows rose. He reached behind to him return one of the drinks to the desk, then gestured to a chair.
Kit dropped onto the cushion, staring into the fire Julian had recently stoked. “You’ve been most elusive these past days.”
“I had my reasons.” Julian lowered himself onto the other chair.
“Reasons pertaining to a certain document that disappeared during your last voyage?”
“So Miss Fraser does know about the orders?”
“Is that why you tried to hurt Mattie, because you thought she knew about that paper?” Kit swallowed the nausea surging to his throat, but the bitterness remained in his mouth. “A woman, Jules! Did you really believe her such a threat?”
“I say, Kit! What a notion. What do you take me for?”
“A desperate man, on the verge of losing everything. Mat-tie’s troubles began mere hours after I spoke to you.”
“I admit to trying to frighten Miss Fraser into returning to America—a ham-handed attempt at best, and as I’ve since learned, a course destined to fail—but having the innkeeper and Mrs. Parker put notes in her room hardly constitutes physical danger.”
“Mrs. Parker!”
“Ah, so I surprised you. The innkeeper demanded a bit of cash to leave the note on Miss Fraser’s bed,
but Mrs. Parker cooperated with me because she was afraid, you understand, a scheming American would entangle you with her wiles. You always were her favorite.”
“Notes are one thing, Jules, but shooting at Mattie is hardly an innocuous warning.”
“Shooting? I didn’t shoot at anyone.”
“But I thought you hired Stumpy …”
“Who’s Stumpy?”
Relief washed through Kit at this confirmation of the facts he’d gleaned at the Captain’s Quarters. Kit searched his memory for Mattie’s account of the man who’d lost his arm to an American cannonball. If Stumpy hadn’t operated under Julian’s orders, then whose? “Two shots were fired at Mattie yesterday while she was in Hyde Park. One of her assailants was a man named Stumpy, but he had only one arm—the second shot came from another direction. I worried perhaps you …”
“At one time, you looked up to me, little brother.” Resentment hardened in Julian’s eyes and tightened along his jaw. “And now you think me capable of killing a woman.”
Why not? Kit had done it.
Julian took a sip of his brandy. “So this fellow was named Stumpy. He shot at Mattie, and now he’s dead?”
“I don’t know—none of his companions saw him in his usual haunts last night. Not to say I don’t want him dead, or wouldn’t have killed him myself once I’d collected whatever information I could get from him, but I thought you were the person who would be implicated by anything Stumpy might say.”
“Truly, Kit, I didn’t seek Mattie’s death. I wanted her to stop, but I never wanted her dead.” Julian drew a deep breath into his lungs. Lines etched his face—not the patterns produced by a life at sea, but creases of anxiety. “I feared that if she continued, Miss Fraser’s inquiries would eventually advise certain people of my failure to safeguard the orders.”
Except those people already knew about their disappearance. Undoubtedly, Alderston had spies of his own aboard the Impatience. Not a surprise given the ship’s mission, but why didn’t they know the document’s whereabouts, either? “You were conveniently missing for days. I don’t suppose you have an alibi?”
“I was in Portsmouth.”
