by Anne Gracie
Damaris stared, appalled. After all this trouble, this long, desperate chase, and now they were in London and they didn’t know which docks?
“The ships that come from China,” she said desperately. “Isn’t there a place for them?”
Higgins shook his head. “Depends, miss. Could be Wapping; could be down past Tower Bridge; could be the Pool of London or any part of the docklands.”
Damaris turned to Abby. “Do you know which docks to go to?”
Abby shook her head again.
“Then what will we do?” Damaris bit her lip, ready to burst into tears. Only she couldn’t; she had to find Freddy.
“Maybe Featherby would know,” Abby suggested. “He knows just about everything.”
“Yes, Featherby, of course.” Damaris pounced on the idea. To Higgins she said, “Take us to Lady Beatrice’s house on Berkeley Square. Down there.” She pointed.
“Yes, miss.” Higgins climbed back up to the driver’s seat, and the traveling coach moved on. In a few minutes they’d pulled up in front of Lady Beatrice’s house. Damaris couldn’t wait for the carriage steps to be put down; she jumped out of the coach, hurried up the front steps and pulled hard on the bell, setting the bell inside jangling loudly.
After several long, agonizing minutes, the door opened. “Miss Damaris,” Featherby exclaimed in surprise. He looked past her and his face was immediately wreathed in smiles. “Lady Davenham.” He greeted Abby with delight. “Welcome home, my lady.”
Damaris interrupted the joyful reunion. “Featherby, where are the docks?”
He looked down at her. “Which docks, miss?”
“The ones where Freddy would go to if he wanted to see a ship that had come from China.”
“I’m sorry, miss, I have no idea.” He turned back to Abby. “We didn’t expect you back so soon, my lady—”
Damaris grabbed his sleeve. “What about Mr. Flynn? Is he here? He would know.”
Featherby shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss, he went out this morning and won’t be back before evening, he said.”
“Abby!” a voice cried and Jane came flying down the stairs and caught her sister in a hug that spun them around in a circle. “What are you doing here? Where is Max? How was the honeymoon?”
“Abby!” Daisy came running and joined in the excitement.
Damaris stood frozen, taking none of it in. She’d failed him. To come all this way and then, at the last minute, not to know where the ship would dock.
She’d landed on that very dock, no doubt, but she couldn’t remember. She’d been carried ashore, tied hand and foot and wrapped in a blanket. She hadn’t been able to see a thing.
“Bartlett!” she exclaimed suddenly. “What about Bartlett, their man of affairs? We’ll go to his office; he’ll know.”
“Go to the office of a man of affairs?” Lady Beatrice’s voice floated down the stairs. “You will do nothing of the sort, young lady. It is Not Done.”
“But I must,” Damaris said. “It’s a matter of life and death!”
“Is it indeed? Then come up here, gel, and tell me what is going on that is so urgent.”
Damaris hesitated, torn, but she didn’t know where Bartlett’s office was, and without Lady Beatrice’s cooperation, she wouldn’t get any help in finding it, she knew. She hurried up the stairs and helped Lady Beatrice back into her sitting room. The others followed.
“Now, my dear, sit down beside me.” Lady Beatrice patted the seat beside her on the sofa. “Featherby, tea and cakes, if you please.”
Damaris curbed her impatience and sat. Featherby snapped his fingers to an unseen menial and stood by the doorway. They had no secrets from Featherby. He and his friend, their footman William, had been friends with the girls long before they’d even met Lady Beatrice.
“Now, my dear, tell me what’s got you all in a lather. It’s not like my lovely cool and calm Damaris.” Lady Beatrice’s words and the shrewd look that accompanied them helped Damaris to compose herself. Lady Beatrice valued control in a lady.
So, for that matter, did Damaris. She glanced at the clock on the overmantel, folded her hands in her lap and, having calmed herself somewhat, began. “Freddy has gone to kill a man, and it’s all my fault, so I have to stop him.” In measured words that got faster by the minute, she told her story, stopping every few seconds as Lady Beatrice interrupted her with questions or demanded clarification.
When she finished, there was a long silence. She glanced at the clock and was shocked by how little the hands had moved. Every second wasted had felt like an age, but only seven minutes had passed since she first sat down.
“So now, if you could give me the directions to Bartlett’s office, I will go, and from there, I should be able to find Freddy and stop him.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Lady Beatrice informed her. “I told you before, it’s Not Done.”
“What? But—”
“Foolish child, you’re not thinking. Freddy is doing this for the sake of your reputation. If you turn up on the docks and demonstrate your involvement in this matter”—she glanced at Damaris’s hair—“especially looking like you’ve been up all night and dragged through a bush backward, you will cause a scandal. Which is the very thing he’s trying to prevent.”
“But—”
Lady Beatrice held up her hand. “William will go. You will stay here.”
“But—”
The old lady’s finely plucked eyebrows arched. “Do you suggest that William is incapable of stopping a fight? After all the years he spent as a pugilist? That he would be less effective than one small, distraught female? No, of course not. Featherby, send William, with all haste. And send the footmen with him.”
Featherby bowed, and William, who must have been listening from the corridor, poked his head around the door. “I’ll find him, Miss Damaris, don’t you worry. I won’t let nothing happen to your Mr. Freddy.” He ran off.
Damaris sat staring after him. Her mouth wobbled, then she burst into tears.
Lady Beatrice gathered her into her arms, murmuring, “There, there, my dear, have a good cry. It will do you a power of good.” Over Damaris’s head she silently indicated to the others that they should leave her and Damaris alone. They filed out obediently.
Lady Beatrice let Damaris cry until she was all cried out. Then she handed her a wisp of lawn edged with lace and told her to dry her eyes and tell her everything.
Damaris did. She told her everything: the false betrothal, the cottage, the visit to Breckenridge House and the dreadful things she’d said to Freddy’s parents—and added with a sob and a hiccup that they’d deserved every word.
She told her about the flood, and being marooned, and how Freddy had said that, having compromised her, he would marry her. She told the old lady about how she had had to leave China and how Captain Sloane had tricked her and forced her to—to—”
“I understand, child.” Lady Beatrice patted her hand. “It’s why you never wanted to marry.”
Damaris had nodded and confessed that Freddy had learned Captain Sloane’s ship was in port, and that Freddy had gone after him for—for . . . revenge. On her behalf.
“Now hush, and no more tears, if you please,” Lady Beatrice said with brisk kindness. “We shall not dwell on things we have no control over and there is no point talking about them. What I am interested in discussing, however, is your apparent conviction that you cannot marry the boy.”
“Well, of course I can’t,” Damaris said, scrubbing at a few disobedient tears. She explained all the reasons why she couldn’t marry Freddy Monkton-Coombes, why it would be selfish and greedy of her to do so, how marrying her would be bad for him, all the reasons she’d turned over and over in her mind all the way to London.
No lawyer could have presented a case better. It was very depressing.
When she’d finished there was a short silence. Then, “Pish-tush! All these shoulds and oughts and what-other-people-might-thinks. I have no patience with ’em. The question is, what do you want, my gel?”
Damaris bit her lip and said nothing.
“Do you love him, child?”
Damaris’s face crumpled. “More than anything.”
“Then for goodness’ sake, marry the boy.”
“But—”
“Pish-tush! You’ve told me all that. As if any of that will matter to Freddy once he gets you in his bed—oho! I gather from that blush that he already has. Was it horrid?”
“No, wonderful,” Damaris said tragically.
“Thought it would be. Rakes usually do make good lovers. Give me a man who knows his way around a woman’s body any day.” She glanced at Damaris’s face and chuckled. “Don’t look at me like that, gel—I may be old, but I’m not dead! Such a pretty color you go when you blush. I was always a beetroot as a girl. I haven’t blushed in years, thank God. Not that I’ve had anything to blush about, more’s the pity.”
By the end of that speech Damaris was almost laughing.
The old lady gave her an approving look. “That’s better. Not such a Miserable Maud now, are you?”
“No, but . . .”
Lady Beatrice heaved a gusty sigh. “Out with it, gel. What’s the real issue?”
“He doesn’t love me.”
“Good God, what does that matter?” She eyed Damaris shrewdly. “But I see to you it does.” She sniffed. “Well, I can’t speak for the boy, but it seems to me that a man who’s reached the age of eight-and-twenty and managed to avoid every lure and marriage trap the eligible misses of the ton and their mamas can devise wouldn’t offer marriage to a gel unless he was willing. And that’s a start. Add to that his rushing off to confront this captain of yours—”
“He’s not my captain,” Damaris flashed.
“You know what I mean.” The old lady waved an impatient hand. “But men, being creatures of action, will sometimes go off to slay dragons for their ladies and expect us to understand.” She paused to let that sink in.
Damaris gave her a troubled look. It was all so confusing.
“Oh, pish-tush, just marry the boy and have done with it. Love can grow in marriage. If you don’t marry him, you’ll never find out whether he’s got it in him to love you. And if he doesn’t, well, a gel could do worse than marry a handsome young man who’s rich and kind and good in bed. Besides”—she poked Damaris on the arm with a bony claw—“if you don’t marry the boy, some ambitious female will snap him up for herself. Someone who doesn’t love him. And where would he be then, eh?”
Damaris blinked. She hadn’t thought of that. She thought about the girls in the park who’d all been pursuing him. They would make him positively dreadful wives.
“Have a little more faith in yourself, my dear. You have beauty, spirit and courage, but most of all you must believe in yourself.” Lady Beatrice patted her arm. “Now, go off and have a bath. If your Freddy survives his encounter with the captain—oh, don’t look like that; he will, I’m certain of it—but when he comes here, would you rather greet him looking like a drowned rat or like a fresh and beautiful young lady?”
Damaris hesitated and the old lady gave her a push. “Get along with you, gel. You can worry about the boy just as well wet or dry.”
There was no answer to that. Damaris went off to have her bath.
The hot, fragrant bathwater had a soothing effect. Damaris soaped herself absently, turning Lady Beatrice’s words over in her mind.
If you don’t marry the boy, some ambitious female will snap him up for herself. Someone who doesn’t love him.
He needed to be loved, that man, that kind, honorable, proud man. And the little boy inside him who’d blamed himself so terribly for his brother’s accident and who’d been cut off from his family because of it. That little boy hadn’t known love since.
Love was the one thing Damaris had plenty of, the one thing she could offer him. Each time he looked at her, smiled at her, gave her that sleepy-eyed wicked come-to-bed look, she felt like she could burst from all the love that swelled inside her. And the longer she knew him, the more her love for him grew.
Lady Beatrice was right. It didn’t matter if Freddy Monkton-Coombes didn’t love her. He needed to be loved, and that was what mattered.
Believe in yourself. She would try.
• • •
“You’ve got damned cheek, marching into my cabin on my ship,” Captain Sloane growled.
“I have a bone to pick with you,” Freddy said.
“Spit it out.”
“It’s about illegal cargo, something you didn’t list in the ship’s manifest.”
Sloane stiffened, and his gaze went to the door as if to check nobody could hear. “I don’t know what you mean.” The look on his face suggested otherwise.
“Slavery is illegal in England.”
The man’s brows shot up. “Slavery?” He snorted. “I’ve never kept a slave in my life. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bringing girls into England and selling them into brothels is slavery,” Freddy said silkily.
Sloane’s eyes narrowed. “Those girls knew what they were in for.”
Those girls? So Damaris wasn’t the first.
“I’m talking about an English girl,” Freddy said with ice in each word. “A girl who you found stranded in China.”
“She made the same bargain as the others,” Sloane said dismissively. “Come here to talk about a whore, have you?”
At those words Freddy snapped. He launched himself across the cabin and punched Sloane with all his pent-up rage, a savage blow to the jaw that connected with a loud crack. The man staggered back. Freddy followed, going for his throat.
Sloane twisted away and shoved him back. He made as if to throw a punch at Freddy, but at the last instant Freddy saw the blade that gleamed in his fist.
He dodged but it was a close call; the blade slashed through the fabric of his shirt.
“Come unarmed, did you, pretty boy? Bad mistake.” Grinning nastily, Sloane feinted with the blade.
Snap! Freddy kicked the knife out of Sloane’s hand. It went clattering across the cabin and slid under the table. Sloane snarled in wordless anger.
“I don’t need to be armed to kill you, Sloane,” Freddy said softly. He was more furious than he’d ever been in his life, but he was cold and he was focused.
Sloane sneered. “Think I’m scared of a gentleman?”
Freddy came at Sloane again. He hit him once, twice. Sloane returned each blow.
He punched Sloane in the eye. Sloane kicked him on the shin and followed it up with two sharp successive blows to the head.
His ears ringing, Freddy managed a short left hook to the man’s head followed by a hard blow to the belly. Sloane, gasping, fell back.
For a few seconds they stood, panting, eyeing each other, then Sloane rushed him, grabbing him in a headlock and raining punches to the side of his head.
They swayed, locked together. The man’s hot, fetid breath made Freddy want to gag. He got a hand free and landed a punch to the throat. At the same time Sloane kneed him savagely in the balls but Freddy was expecting it and, twisting, collected the blow on the hip instead.
They staggered apart. Sloane recovered first, with a heavy punch to the chest, followed by a blow to the face. Blood spurted from Freddy’s nose.
Freddy, gasping for breath and with blood streaming down his face, managed a sharp left to the man’s chin. His head snapped back and Freddy followed it with a punishing right into the solar plexus.
The man sagged. Freddy punched him hard in the face. Again, they staggered apart, reeling a little. Regrouping. Sloane swore, spat, and a blackened tooth rolled across the floor. His
breath was coming in loud gasps. Freddy’s too was rasping out of his chest. He could taste his own blood.
“All right, I give up,” Sloane wheezed. He held out his hand, as if to shake on it.
Freddy frowned. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Sloane hadn’t been nearly punished enough. But the man was offering truce, blast him.
He hesitated, and in that moment Sloane rushed him, head down like a bull, and butted him hard in the stomach. Freddy went down, all breath knocked from his body.
Sloane started kicking him, going for the gut, the balls, the kidneys. Blows pounded into Freddy.
Twisting, writhing, trying to avoid each kick and gasping fruitlessly for breath, Freddy managed to catch a booted foot in two hands. He heaved and Sloane went crashing backward to the floor.
Freddy’s breath came back in a rush and, as Sloane scrambled to his feet, Freddy hit him, a huge, powerful blow that connected so hard, the man went flying backward across the cabin and hit the floor again.
Pain reverberated all down Freddy’s arm, but it was satisfying pain. Sloane would be hurting more.
He looked. Sloane, in fact, wasn’t moving. Was he dead?
At that moment the door flew open and Max burst in, followed by Flynn.
“You damned fool, you’ve killed him already!” Max exclaimed.
Flynn bent to examine the captain. “He’s still breathing.”
“I can fix that,” Freddy said.
“Stop right there!” Max ordered, adding, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather my oldest friend wasn’t tried for murder. Or have to flee abroad to escape the trial.”
Freddy glowered at the unconscious man, unrepentant. He itched to finish the job.
Max added, “And I’m sure Damaris would love life as an exile. Again.”
His words acted like a bucket of cold water dashed in Freddy’s face. This affair mustn’t touch her in the least. Freddy looked down at Sloane. The haze of fury cleared. His breathing slowed. It was finished.
“Bind his hands and feet.”
“He’s in no fit state to—” Max began.
“Bind them.” Freddy wasn’t afraid of more dirty tricks. Damaris had left this ship helpless, bound hand and foot. So would the captain.
