by Shana Galen
“Have there been no women in your life you cared for, truly cared for?”
“If I say you are that woman, would you believe me?”
Her cheeks heated, and she was glad he could not see them in the dark. “Ask me—”
“In a few days. I shall add that to the growing list. In that case, I suppose I care for my sisters and my nieces, although the nieces are all too young to be considered women. But I love them all. In my way.”
In my way. What did that mean? She dared not ask, but she thought she might already know. He had been the perfect man to play the role of seducer in the war. He was a man who did not grow attached, who did not care for women beyond the moment they were together. It didn’t seem to her that Rafe Beaumont was capable of love. He felt strongly for a little while and then the passion faded and he moved on. Was he incapable of love or could he simply not allow himself to love?
“And what about your mother?” she asked.
He stiffened. The gesture was so unlike him, so unlike the Rafe who was at ease in every situation, never ruffled, never flustered. “What about her?” Even his voice sounded different—tense and guarded. He sat, breaking the contact between them. Collette levered herself up as well.
“Don’t you care for her?”
“I don’t know her. She left when I was four. My father remarried a few years later when he learned of her death. My stepmother is a good woman, but by the time she came into our lives, I no longer needed a mother.”
Poor man. Everyone needed a mother. “I’m sorry,” Collette said simply. “I didn’t know about your mother.”
He waved a hand, the gesture barely discernable in the dark. “It’s not as though she was a very good mother at any rate.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My brothers and sisters always called her neglectful. On more than one occasion, I was forgotten or left behind. I am the youngest and easy to forget, I suppose.”
Collette could not think of a more ridiculous statement. He was the most memorable man she had ever known. Women sought his attentions and his favors. Men emulated his way of speaking and his dress.
“When we were all younger, my brothers and sisters blamed me for her leaving.”
Collette sat straighter, surprised at this revelation. “How is that possible? You were only a child. A four-year-old cannot be responsible for the actions of an adult.”
“She didn’t want me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I heard it whispered many times. My brothers discussed it when they thought I slept. Servants talked of it when they did not know I could overhear. From the moment she realized she would have another child, she made it clear she thought the pregnancy was a burden. She had seven children already. She did not want another. To make matters worse, she was very sick during her pregnancy. The doctor actually feared for her life because she could not manage to take any sustenance. Food and even water made her ill.”
“I have seen such sickness in other women. It usually passes after the first few months.”
“Not with my mother. When she finally birthed me, she was so glad to have done with me, she would not even hold me for the first few days.”
“Rafe.” Collette reached for his hand, but he moved it away. He didn’t seem to want her comfort.
“And then there were all the times I was forgotten or left behind. It happened so often they called me Rafe the Forgotten as a sort of joke. But it was not funny when my mother left. She had been with me in the nursery, or so she had said.” His voice took on a rather hard quality she was not used to. The tenor of his voice was usually so musical and lilting, but now it sounded like the edge of a blade. “We were in London for the Season, and the rest of the family had gone to a museum or some sort of performance and left me behind because I was too young. My mother had claimed she wanted to stay back with me. She dismissed my nurse and stayed in the nursery with me herself. I was told hours later the family returned and found me with the nurse, crying inconsolably.”
“And your mother?”
“No one knew where she had gone, but they deduced she had been gone for hours. The nurse had heard me crying and came to investigate. You see, I never cried as a child.”
“All babies cry.”
In the darkness, she made out the quick shake of his head. “Not I or not often. Everyone knew something dreadful must have happened to cause me to cry.”
“And what of your mother?”
“She had taken a valise, some clothing, her jewelry, and gone. My father had her tracked as far as Italy, where we think she settled for a time. And then a few years later, we received word she had died from a fever that came on quite suddenly.”
“You must have been devastated.”
He was silent for a long time, the wheels of the carriage on the packed earth below and the muffled snorts and hoofbeats of the horses the only sound she heard.
“I don’t remember very much from those early years of my childhood. I don’t think most people do, but I remember that day. And I remember why I was crying.”
“Why?” Collette asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Because my mother had been in the nursery, but she ignored me and all my efforts to engage her in play. She stood at the window and stared out. And then after what seemed to me like many hours, but was probably only three-quarters of an hour or so, she picked up her skirts and walked out. I ran after her. I called her name. Mama! Mama! She caught me at the door and with rough hands pushed me back into the nursery. And then she closed and locked the door. I cried in part because I was afraid to be alone, but mostly I cried because I knew she did not care. I knew she did not love me, and somehow I knew she was leaving me.”
Collette sat very still, letting all he had said wash over her. His behavior toward women made more sense to her now. After all, why would he seek any sort of genuine relationship with a woman? The one woman who should have cared for him and loved him left him. And then he’d been blamed for her departure. To make matters worse, women all but threw themselves at him, and these women did not want to know Rafe Beaumont. They only wanted the excitement of having the attentions of a handsome man and a skilled lover.
“Not all women leave,” she said quietly.
He made a sound like a snort of laughter. “It doesn’t matter. There’s always another one.” But she heard the brittleness of his voice, and she knew it did matter. And she knew she was but one more woman who would leave him. He’d told her he cared for her and she was different. How much had it cost him to say those words, to admit he felt something more than lust for her? And yet, even when she had pushed him away, even when he knew they would never be able to be together, he was still here. He was beside her, taking her to see her father. Taking her to begin the journey that would separate them.
At least that was what she wanted to believe. She did not want to think that he took her to Wapping now because this was part of his grand plan to capture her father and turn them both in to the British government. But she could not discount that option. There would always be another woman for Rafe Beaumont. The question was whether he cared enough for her not to want another woman.
* * *
It was almost midday by the time the coach arrived in Wapping. Rafe had not been here in some time, having no reason to go to the town. There was little here, and what there was had been built up around the river. From the Thames rose one main street lined by taverns and inns frequented by sailors. Rafe supposed there were homes and perhaps better areas of town, but he instructed the coachman to take them to the quays.
Wapping had a marine police force, but Jasper had made it clear any ship from France carrying a wanted man would do its best to avoid not only the customs men, but also the police. The ship would not be docked too close to police headquarters. More likely the captain would want to stay wes
t of the town in order to be able to make a quick escape, if need be. With that in mind, Rafe had the carriage leave him and Collette some distance west of the police. He’d given the coachman a few shillings and told him to see to the horses and himself but to stay close and be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. Before the driver could spur the horses forward, Rafe held up a hand and turned to Collette. “Are you certain you wish to come along? Even in broad daylight, the riverfront is dangerous. You can stay with the coach. I will return when I have located the ship.” If it was even here. He dared not hope.
“I am coming with you,” she said, and he knew that look of determination in her eyes. Lowering his hand, Rafe stepped away from the coach. It pulled away, and he and Collette were left alone. Rafe gestured to an old set of stone steps leading down to the river, and he and Collette began to walk.
He didn’t know why he had told her about his mother. He’d never told anyone about his mother, save one or two of Draven’s men and that had been when he’d drank too much wine the night before a mission that was surely suicide. It hadn’t seemed awkward to say such things when all of them would most likely be dead in the morning. It hadn’t seemed awkward to tell Collette his secrets either. He’d wanted to tell her, wanted her to understand who he was. He was not the man the gossip pages made him out to be—a rake and a seducer of women. He had seduced his share of women, that was true, but they had all wanted to be seduced. And although he had been able to make dozens of women love him, he had not been able to secure the love of his own mother. In fact, he had driven her away. He knew Collette would leave him too. She had to leave or find herself imprisoned in Newgate or worse.
She was with him now, following him closely, and it wasn’t long before Rafe wished he had a spyglass or some other sort of mechanism with which to see the ships anchored in the river better. Some were tied to the quays, but most of those were guarded by sailors who did not take kindly to being questioned. This Rafe gathered after he’d had a dagger pulled on him by one sailor with tattoos of naked women decorating his forearms.
Rafe had walked quickly away, pulling Collette with him, but they hadn’t gone far before he noted that the stone path they had been following along the water ended in a stone wall that reached above both of their heads. A rocky outcrop jutted into the water, and whoever had built the path along the water had obviously not wanted to go to the effort of cutting through it. Clearly, he and Collette would have to go back to the last set of steps and go up before coming back down again where the path resumed.
She had already come to this realization and turned back. Just as he made to do the same, she clutched his arm. “Rafe.”
He frowned at the wall one last time. “I know. Doubling back will cost us time, but there’s nothing for it.”
“I think we have a bigger problem than losing time.”
Unease pooling in his belly, Rafe turned slowly to see the sailor with the tattoos on his forearm had followed them. And he’d brought a few of his friends. About six friends to be exact. They stank of unwashed bodies and rotting fish and their open shirts and stained breeches reminded him more of pirates than men operating a merchant vessel. They were armed with knives and daggers, several of them held a weapon in each hand and a knife between yellowing teeth. Rafe looked at Collette. Too late, he realized her hood had fallen back.
A wall of stone at his back and a wall of men before him. He’d faced worse odds, but never alone. “Hullo, gentlemen,” Rafe said, giving them his most charming smile.
The tattooed sailor chuckled with menace. “We ain’t no gentlemen. Give us yer purse and we’ll let ye pass.”
That sounded easy enough. Rafe hadn’t much in his purse, a sovereign and some shillings. He took it from his coat and tossed it to the leader. “There you are. Now allow us to pass.”
The sailor peered into the small pouch with Rafe’s coins, the naked women on his arms moving obscenely as his muscles flexed. “All right, boys.” He gestured and the men parted. Rafe didn’t much like the idea of walking a gauntlet, but he wasn’t in a position to argue.
“Stay close to me,” he murmured to Collette. Taking her arm, he pushed her in front of him, reasoning he could better protect her if he could see her. He did not want to risk her being torn away behind his back.
Collette began to walk, but the tattooed man blocked her path. “We said he could pass, not you.”
Collette looked back at Rafe helplessly.
“She’s with me,” Rafe argued. “I gave you my coins. We don’t want any trouble.”
“But we want the woman,” the sailor said. “And we mean to take what we want.”
Sixteen
The sailor with the drawings on his arms and the small, dark eyes lunged for her, but Collette was quick. She ducked below his arm, swerved to avoid being caught by another man, and darted behind Rafe. Rafe stepped back, edging closer to the wall at their backs. Rafe bent and extracted a dagger from his boot, but the small weapon only elicited loud guffaws from the sailors.
“I use that to pick my teeth!” one called.
“I use it to clean the blood from under my fingernails,” another said.
“Gentlemen,” Rafe said, sounding as though he had not a single concern, “I do not want to use this dagger. I don’t like to kill and maim, but I will do it if necessary. I suggest you disperse immediately. Go back to the ship you crawled out of and allow this lady and myself to pass.”
“Listen to ’im talk!” the tattooed man said. “’E thinks ’e’s the bloody king.”
“I have met the king,” Rafe said quite convincingly. Perhaps it was true. He was a war hero, after all. “I will be more than willing to share the story, if you allow us to pass.”
But the sailors were moving closer and Rafe was slowly backing up. Collette looked behind her. She had less than a foot before she would be trapped against the stone wall. There would be no escape, then. Even if they could manage to scale the wall, the men would grab their legs and pull them back down before they could reach the top.
“We don’t want yer stories. We want the woman.”
“I ’aven’t seen a woman for seven months,” one sailor said.
“Then use the coin to buy all the women you want,” Rafe said. “There are brothels with willing women all along the street. A sovereign will buy all of you a woman for the night.”
“But she won’t be as pretty as that one,” said the man with the tattoo. “Or as clean. Them whores all ’ave the French disease.”
Rafe chanced a quick look back, and he saw the dismay in her eyes before he faced their attackers again. “When I lunge for them,” he muttered, his voice low, “you run. If you’re caught, fight until I can reach you.”
“Yes,” Collette said, her voice failing her and sounding like little more than a whisper.
* * *
Rafe took a breath and tightened his grip on his dagger. He’d always complained he was never chosen for the exciting missions. Lately, he seemed to be making up for lost time. He shifted his grip on the dagger, readying it, then balanced on the balls of his feet, prepared to spring forward. But before he could attack, a blur of black flew in front of him. And Rafe jumped back as a large, dark-skinned man blocked his path.
What the devil? He’d finally had his chance!
The man’s back was to Rafe. He was tall, his shoulders broad, and his hair thick and curly, though neatly brushed. He wore a dark coat and black trousers with polished boots ending at the knee.
And he held a pistol.
The sailors must have recognized him because, as a group, they took a step back. “What do you do here, Brimble?” He nodded to the tattooed man.
“Nothing that concerns you, Gaines.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Everything that happens here concerns me.” He glanced back at Rafe and Collette. His skin was the color of walnuts, his nose s
traight and strong, and his cheekbones high and proud. His dark eyes flicked over Rafe and Collette with interest, then he turned back to the sailors. “I don’t like to see women abused. You’d best be on your way.”
Brimble lifted his weapon again, but Gaines merely cocked his pistol. It sounded impossibly loud in the tense silence. Brimble stared at Gaines. “Ye’ll be sorry, ye will.” And then the sailor gathered his men and retreated.
Gaines tucked his pistol under his coat and gestured to Rafe. “We’d better go. They’ll come up with a new plan and be back.” Without waiting for an answer, Gaines began to walk. Rafe looked at Collette, who stood with her mouth partly open.
“I had the situation under control,” Rafe said, knowing he sounded petulant and not caring.
“Good to know I don’t have to save you next time. Hurry up,” Gaines answered without looking back.
“How do we know you’re a friend?” Rafe called.
Gaines continued walking. “You don’t.”
Rafe hesitated.
“But I can tell you this,” Gaines said, still walking. “I know what it is to have my body belong to another. I would never inflict that pain on anyone else. Your lady is safe with me.”
“Let’s follow him,” Collette said. She pushed past Rafe and rushed to catch up with Gaines.
Rafe spread his hands in defeat. Apparently, he had little choice but to trust the man. His long strides quickly brought him to Gaines’s side, and Rafe was pleased the man did seem to be leading them to a nearby set of steps. He gestured to them. “There is your escape. Might I give you some advice?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Stay away from the ships and the sailors. They’d just as soon slit your throat as watch you pass.”
“That will be difficult,” Collette said. “We are looking for a ship.”
“I see.” Gaines started up the steps. “Maybe I can help.”
“We don’t need your help,” Rafe said.
