by Karen Ranney
She wished she had the coin to take passage on one of those giant schooners. She would stand at the rail and feel the ship skipping over the sea, let the wind, laden with salt and warmth, thread through her hair. She would raise her face to the sun, unmindful of the fact that her skin turned to pink too quickly, and that gentlewomen did not do such things. She would travel the world, explore places she’d only read about, see things she’d only dreamed of, become acquainted with people who lived plain and ordinary lives in exotic locales. She would loosen her corset strings and unlace her bodice, and become as wickedly seductive as the figurehead that stared back at her right now. Larger than life, the red-haired carving seemed on the verge of a smile. An otherworldly chiding smile.
Perhaps it was not the wisest course to have taken, to come to the docks in late afternoon in hopes of meeting with someone. But the Admiralty, while it had proven a wise choice, had not been an encouraging one. There was, indeed, a listing of all sailors, but only if they enlisted in the navy, and only if they shipped out from London. Information concerning other British ports was almost nonexistent. Therefore, any question Mary Kate asked about her uncle was met with an obdurate, but civil, silence.
“It will not do any good to ask the location of any of the ships of the line. That information is not forthcoming to anyone, save those with need to know.” All this was related to Mary Kate by a gray-bearded clerk, whose look indicated his irritation at both her questions and her insistence.
Help him. No!
Go away, Alice. Please.
Mary Kate pressed her fingers against both temples. A small dot of pain existed there; another spot of it bloomed above her left eyebrow. Not here, not now. No!
She could be as insistent as Alice St. John, as stubborn. The voice had not ceased its imprecation, had accompanied her hours with softly voiced, gently coaxed murmurs. A gentle implacability. A will most stubborn.
It seemed the farther away from Sanderhurst she traveled, the more insistent Alice had become, the louder the voice in Mary Kate’s mind. There was no defense against it, nothing she could do but endure the pain of the headaches and listen to the voice as it pleaded and shouted and cajoled with equal ferocity.
She could be as obstinate. Archer St. John did not need her help. She’d never viewed a man so supremely his own person. To think him in danger would be to render the most majestic of mountains reduced to rubble, the deepest sea a pond.
I don’t want to hear you, Alice. I will not.
A few moments later, the pain seemed to subside, although Mary Kate knew it only waited for another time to pounce, catlike. Perhaps she would have a dream when she slept, when her defenses were not so armored. Another vision of Archer? Of Alice’s joy? Either one spawned feelings Mary Kate would rather not have—longing and curiosity.
She closed her mind to such thoughts, with the same rigidity that she refused to hear Alice’s plea, concentrating instead on the task before her.
She was either an incredibly stupid woman, or she was beyond clever. Surely that was the reason she’d led them a merry chase to London, to the Admiralty and now to the London docks. Archer congratulated himself on the fact that he’d had the sense to take the new footman with him, since it was his information that had alerted them to Mary Kate’s ultimate destination. Even so, the fellow hadn’t wanted to tell, no doubt effortlessly lured into loyalty by Mary Kate’s charm. Well, at least he wasn’t the only male similarly affected. As it was, Archer had to regale the man with stories about what could happen to a lone woman in London before he would talk.
Strange, but he hadn’t seen the new footman before today, and it seemed an improbable occupation for him. His stature, tanned face and bleached hair indicated a life outdoors, not one of opening doors and standing at attention in odd spots in the hall.
They had slowly been making their way down the pier, stopping at every bloody ship of the line, it seemed, in an effort to find her. Twice, Archer had thought he’d seen her, only to lose sight of her in the crowded conditions of London’s quayside city.
Idiotic woman. Didn’t she have the slightest idea of the danger?
It did not matter that she wore mourning garb, or that her hair was concealed beneath a scarf. The whistles and catcalls that preceded Mary Kate’s arrival at each one of the ships she visited were both disconcerting and frightening. Still, she had no hope but to remain there, hoping to address one of the officers of the H.M.S. Argosy.
“I’m sorry, miss, but the captain has gone ashore.” The young man looked to be barely beyond his first shave, but his face was well tanned, and his eyes too worldly wise as they looked her over from top to toe.
“Are you sure it’s the captain you want? Can a reefer interest you, darlin’?”
He was barely as tall as her shoulder, not yet fully grown, but he had a leer on his face the match of any of the men who crowded around and laughed at his words.
She had had no choice but to come to the docks and solicit what information she could. Unfortunately, these rough sailors believed she was petitioning for something else entirely.
“Aw, Brian, leave the lass alone. She’s for me, can’t ye tell?” A burly man who topped her by nearly a foot and was possessed of a beard near as red as her hair stepped beside her, curling one arm around her shoulders. It was not a protective pose, but one of threat. Barely noticeable, but there in the way his hand curved down her arm and too close to the swelling of her breast.
She edged away from him, a simple tactic of bending her knees and scooting beneath his arm before he realized her intent.
“Have you any word of the Royal George?” Her uncle’s last berth had been on that ship. She could remember his pride on being a foretopman aboard one of the largest vessels in His Majesty’s Navy.
It was as if the world silenced in that moment. As one, the men who had gathered at the rail, watching her travel over the plank of wood that stretched between ship and wharf, grew silent. There were noises, the strain of winch, the odd thrumming sound of rope growing tighter, the screech of seabirds. Someone sang a ditty and a pipe played.
But not on the H.M.S. Argosy.
“The Royal George sank without warning while being repaired at Portsmouth in 1782, my dear. All eight hundred men, including Admiral Kempenfeld, were lost that day.”
It was too difficult to separate her emotions at that moment, define them so that she might label each. A horrid sorrow. Acceptance. The spiking of tears. A feeling that he was destined to be there, to be standing so aloofly beckoning, a man bathed in power and too strong, finally, to resist.
Archer extended a hand and she put hers in it, allowing him to lead her from this place. Comfort. Security. Protection.
Resignation.
Coincidence?
No, not with Alice St. John’s implacable will. There was no coincidence here, no odd set of circumstance set into motion by Fate.
This was destiny.
Archer said nothing as Mary Kate sank back into the coach seat. The tears on her face shocked him. No, not shock, Archer. Concern, yes. Even curiosity. Then what the hell was this other feeling? The one that made him reach out and pull her across the space that divided them, so that she sat next to him, and his arm surrounded her. When he’d seen her being similarly embraced by that seaman, he’d nearly shot the man.
An odd sort of resignation had struck him as he glimpsed a tall woman attired in a soft blue cloak, her titian hair escaping an ugly scarf. He’d wasted no time coming to her aid. Even Mary Kate Bennett was no proof against a mob of leering sailors.
He said nothing as she hiccuped a sob, only pulled her into his lap as he would a small child. Except, of course, that she was not a small child, but a weeping woman. Her tears wet his neck, her fist gripped his cape, he felt the shudders that wracked her as if he, too, sobbed aloud, matching the cadence of her sorrow with his own.
Who, then, did she weep for with such studied grief? Who was the man who was worthy of Mary Kate Bennett�
��s tears? Not a husband. A lover?
He stroked her back, wishing there were fewer layers of clothing between them. Wishing, too, that she did not feel as soft in his arms, nor pliant, nor womanly. Wishing, more than anything else, to know the cause for her sorrow.
“Please. Let me go.” Her voice was strained.
“I like holding you.”
“It is vastly improper.” She laid her head back down upon his shoulder, surrendering then.
“Our entire association has been vastly improper, madam. Plagued by consistent inconsistency, odd coincidence, a flavoring of the bizarre.”
“You do not believe in what you cannot see.” Why, even coated with tears, did her voice sound chastising?
“And you are eternally believing in such things.”
He glanced down at her, touched not by her solemn look, but the glimmer of a watery smile. Something speared his chest, caused his breath to be compressed. Something dangerously provoking.
“For whom do you weep with such assiduous grief?”
Her fingers toyed with the buttons of his greatcoat, her chin lowered so that he could not see the expression in her eyes. Her soft voice seemed painted with sadness. “My uncle.”
“For a woman with no family, you spend an inordinate amount of time looking for them.”
“And would you not, if you were alone in the world?” Her chin pointed straight at him. He wanted to nip at it with his teeth.
“Good God, no. I would celebrate, sing hosannas, write odes to my good fortune.” Why was he trying to tease her out of her grief? Would he not be better served to be demanding the truth from her? Reluctance, Archer? Why? Do you fear the answers to questions that must be posed?
He placed his palm against the side of her cheek, pressing her face back into place against his chest. He did not question his actions; there was, after all, no answer to what he did. Or, if there was one, he did not wish to hear it at this moment. Another inconsistency, then. It would be easier to ignore this strange and novel attraction. Encapsulate it, surround it in glass, watch it grow or mourn its decline. Whatever it was, it needed to be contained, lest it spread to other parts of his mind. Or heart. It was bad enough that his loins were enthusiastically involved.
“We are returning, then, to Sanderhurst?”
“Did you think otherwise? Come, my imprisonment has not been that onerous, surely.”
A moment passed, no more.
“You are weeping again.” Accusation in his voice, not gentle remonstrance.
“I cannot help it.”
“Have I ever told you how I detest a woman’s tears?” His voice had softened, become warm. He gave her permission, then, for her grief. She allowed the tears to flow. It seemed she wept a lifetime of them.
His arms encased her in a woolen embrace. He wanted to surround her with himself, protect her from everything that might impinge upon this grief.
How long did he hold her? He didn’t know. It was no longer important. Such things as time didn’t matter right now, not with Mary Kate’s tears dripping over him. A curious baptism, this. An even more curious longing.
“Do you know, I don’t believe you were ever a servant. You haven’t the comportment for it.”
Her skin was pale, pinkened only slightly by the tears she’d shed in the last few minutes. Her eyes were downcast, but they held a sparkle of health. How could she look so utterly lovely when she’d just spent interminable minutes wetting him with grief?
A long moment until she replied, a soft smile preceding her words. “What does it take to be servile enough for you? Should I tug on a lock of my hair, or keep bowing backward out of the room?”
“It might be a pleasant surprise, at least once. And stop gnawing your bottom lip. I find it an extremely irritating habit.”
“Is there anything I do well enough to suit you?”
“Indeed, yes. I opine that you will absolutely bedazzle me with your ability to speak the truth.” He allowed himself the freedom of anger. It was a blessed release, after all. The questions churned too fiercely in his mind. “You will confess to all manner of things, not the least of which is the fact that your late husband was my solicitor, that you begot this absurd plot because you were destitute and desperate. That you’ve since seen the error of your ways and will readily divulge that you are a cheat, and the most hideous kind of opportunist. The truth, Mary Kate, you shall excel in it.”
He nearly shook her when she grew pale, had to drop his arms and push away from her so that there was a foot at least between them. Damn it, she had no right to look so shocked by his revelations.
“What do you mean, Edwin was your solicitor?”
“I warn you, Mary Kate, I am in no mood to hear any more of your lies, even as inventive as they might be.”
“I didn’t know.” She blinked at him, a startled fawn.
“I met a friend of yours, my dear,” he said, his voice as carefully noncommittal as he could make it, no treacherous hills and valleys of emotion there.
She did not seem entranced by such a verbal offering, did not nibble at it as he’d suspected she would.
“A Charles Townsende. He says he was your husband’s partner.”
He did not add that he’d known her husband quite well, a spare, wizened figure of a man, with sparse and graying hair, long fingers with swollen knuckles, and the distasteful habit of snorting every other breath, as if in dire need for air. It was simply another one of her inconsistencies, that she would have been wed to such a man as this.
“Charles is no friend of mine,” she said, her voice clear and without guile. A common enough skill, perhaps, among those who cheat and steal.
“Indeed, he bragged he’d made you penurious. A shameful thing to confess, but he seemed quite proud of it.”
She looked at him, a sparrow’s inquisitiveness. Direct, unflinching, knowing of her place in the bird world but oddly regal all the same. “Charles thought me a money-grubber, and an opportunist, someone who did not love Edwin the man as much as Edwin the money-maker.”
“You confessed yourself that you did not love him.”
“I told you I respected him. It was enough for both of us.”
“What an idiot you are, Mary Kate, if you believe respect is all a man wants from a wife.”
She blinked once, then again, as if the gesture would help her understand his comment more ably. Her smile, when it came, was tinted by a little sadness.
It made him want to kiss her, then have his carriage take her to the farthest corner of the world where she wouldn’t be a threat to his peace.
Instead he sank back against the cushioned seat and resigned himself to a long and confusing journey home. It was only later, after they’d reached Sanderhurst and he’d bundled Mary Kate up to the Dawn Room once again, a sense of déjà vu greasing their passage, that he realized she had not answered any of his questions.
Chapter 21
Archer opened the stronghold door, withdrew a velvet bag. He dumped the contents of it on his palm. A yellow diamond, unmounted, awaiting the time and inclination to take it to his jeweler, a black pearl whose future he’d not yet decided, his grandmother’s ruby-encrusted brooch, the clasp of which needed repair, all these things tumbled free and without onerous memory onto his palm. All these and one more. The cameo brooch lay atop them all, not nearly as expensive a piece as the other jewels, one chosen instead for its likeness to the wearer. The lady of the cameo had Alice’s nose, her slight smile. But for the hairstyle, severely Grecian, Archer might have believed himself staring at her portrait in profile.
Instead of sleep, he’d gone to his glass house. But even there he had been unable to concentrate upon the task at hand. So a few minutes near to midnight, he’d found himself in his library obeying an odd compulsion that had caused him to seek out the cameo with Alice’s face.
Why? A masochistic urge, surely. One designed to wound, not to heal. He’d given this brooch to Alice on the anniversary of their wedding, a
full year of, if not bliss, then at least constancy. She’d rarely worn it, even though he’d searched for months to find just the right engraving, the most delicate of profiles.
Archer had been a solitary child; before him a brother had died in infancy, a sister stillborn. His companions had been, for the most part, adults.
It was not a cruel life, because one accepts what one has, but it was a lonely one. Consequently, when he’d gone off to school, he’d learned some hard lessons and gained some greater joys. One of the lessons had been a difficult one for him. He’d had to learn to share and he hadn’t liked it at all.
He discovered that the possessiveness he felt for his belongings was a matter of personality and not early training, a fact that was borne out whenever one of his school chums took something of his without asking for it. He learned, however, to be a team player, to lean upon his friends when a greater goal was at stake. Such school training makes good, obedient British subjects, a thought he’d had many times. But he’d never been required to prove his loyalty to his country. It seemed the St. John heir was more needed as head of his empire than as soldier or sailor.
He was now a man past thirty, with few friends and a lamentable habit of possessiveness that remained with him to this day. A fact his wife had never known.
The brooch lay on his palm, the aristocratic profile seeming to stare at him, accusation in those sightless eyes. He could almost hear Alice’s soft whisper.
“Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
For a second Archer thought the damn cameo had spoken.
Although it was nearly midnight, Mary Kate was clad in that black monstrosity of a dress. He suspected she felt it kept her safer than her nightclothes.
