by Darcy Burke
“Delicious,” Richard mumbled. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“When do you return to the city?” Livingston asked. Beyond the tree line, the river sparkled blue and restless in an expansive view down the Hudson River. The cold front had blown off in the night.
“Immediately,” Richard responded. Miriam started beside him.
“So soon?” she asked. He squeezed her hand as if reluctant to disappoint her.
“We have many details to pin down before the ship sets sail. I promise you shall have your wedding night,” Richard said, his jaw tense. Where was the charming man Miriam had coaxed to her side over the past several weeks? This was no time for Richard to turn curmudgeon.
“About that,” Livingston drawled, ever ready to focus on business. “Have you and Howard decided upon your goods yet?”
“Not fully,” he replied. Miriam’s husband of half an hour wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It is one more detail I must pin down before we leave. We’ve a meeting at the warehouse.”
“But…” Miriam gasped. “I thought Howard was in charge of cargo.”
Richard leaned close and whispered against her cheek, “Dear heart, we shall have our wedding night. Just not this evening.”
She inhaled and shuddered. “Of course.” Miriam cleared her throat. “There’s also the proportion of passengers versus cargo. The Thetis can only carry so much. I prefer to diversify our offering rather than bet entirely on a single shipment. Tobacco may only be imported through London, and we shall have considerable competition from the East India company. We shall also import bolts of cotton and wheat.”
She babbled to conceal her confusion. Richard had wanted her two nights ago. How could he leave her now? Why wouldn’t he look her in the eye?
Livingston nodded. “Solid planning. As your wedding gift, I shall offer financial backing. If it all goes tits up, you can live off Miriam’s investments. And what will your role be?”
“I am taking Miriam ahead to secure warehouse space and make contacts in London. I need her with me. Miriam has a head for figures which I cannot match.”
There. It was out.
“The hell you will. You promised not to take her away from me. Miriam stays.” Livingston grabbed the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket to refill his glass.
“I wish for my bride to meet my family. It won’t be for long.”
“No. My daughter stays, or I withdraw my support.” Livingston glared at him. Beside him, Mrs. Kent pursed her lips and picked at a miniature cake.
“Father,” Miriam interjected. “Richard is to receive a title. He’ll be made a lord by the king. I wish to be there.”
“He’s already a lord, supposedly. Or is that one more lie?” Livingston snarled.
“Not a lie. It’s a nicety. Should it come to pass, the king may expect to meet Miriam,” Richard said hastily. “She could become Lady Northcote.”
“As if I care about that.” The man settled back into his chair. “Mrs. Kent, what do you think of this?”
“I think it’s up to Miriam,” Mrs. Kent replied softly with steel in her voice.
“I wish it. I want you to come, Mrs. Kent, if you’re willing.” Miriam gripped his hand excitedly. She could wait for her wedding night a few days longer.
“Please,” Richard interjected with a small smile. “I wouldn’t consider traveling without you.”
“Ganging up on me is a foul play,” Livingston mumbled, but Richard could see he would relent. He speared a sausage and pointed it at Richard. “You had damned well better bring her back in one piece. I’ll murder you myself if anything happens to my daughter.”
Chapter 17
AUGUST
As July came to a close, everything was falling into place.
He and Miriam prepared to board the New Hope, a scheduled packet running between New York and London. The tickets had taken a substantial portion of his funds from Howard. Richard found himself skipping meals to keep his spending to the absolute minimum. At the warehouse, he worked like an ox alongside the hook men unloading the boats and moving cargo into the nearby warehouse.
On two occasions, Howard signaled that he was to drive a wagon uptown to make a special delivery in the middle of a field. Richard never asked Howard anything about them. He was one link in a chain. But he wondered where the escaped slaves went. What the people whose lives he briefly touched did with their tenuous freedom.
“Watch your step!” Howard shouted. It was embarrassing how difficult it had become to keep his new wife’s hands off his body. Considering how Miriam took every opportunity to corner him for a lingering kiss, Richard thought he deserved a nomination for sainthood. Only that morning she’d slipped into his bedroom at Cliffside in nothing more than a thin night rail. Half awake, he’d barely rolled away in time to prevent her from grasping his fulsome arousal by pure, innocent accident.
“Have mercy, Miri,” Richard had groaned. “I am only a man.”
“Are a woman’s desires less?” she responded with affront.
“Hardly. We haven’t the time to do a proper job of it right now.” Richard had chucked her under the chin before moving to dress behind a screen. It gave him time for his discomfort to subside. “Besides. What if you hate my family? Don’t you think it’s proper that you should meet them before making our marriage permanent?”
Miriam had pouted. Richard found her genuine frustration endearing rather than manipulative.
“You make me feel as if you don’t want me. As a woman,” she stammered.
“Oh, Miriam, I want you badly indeed.” Richard had more self-preservation than to dream of taking her innocence beneath her father’s roof. The thought of bringing her to his rooms with their indelible memories of Lizzie was unthinkable. Even if he hadn’t had ulterior reasons to give Miriam a path to back out, Richard had no place to give her the experience she deserved. He’d tugged out the key he kept around his neck. “I will use this when the time is right.”
Her mouth had quirked up at the corners. “It won’t work on the ship. I’ll have to give you another.”
“I shall become chatelaine of all your bedroom keys.” He’d kissed her hand, then his wife’s cheek.
His wife. Richard could hardly believe his good fortune. He had a beautiful, sweet bride who adored him. In his wildest fantasies Richard had never imagined such an outcome. Every day that passed without Lizzie darkening his doorstep let Richard relax his guard a bit further. Until that afternoon when he returned for one last time to his airy rooms in Manhattan to finalize his packing. An ivory envelope on thick, expensive paper lay on the wooden table in the entryway of his home. Edward recognized the handwriting as his brother’s.
“You’re leaving, then?”
Richard leaped out of his chair, heart pounding. “Lizzie.”
She smirked coldly and paced the floor. “As you see.”
“Get out.” How long had she been waiting in his apartments?
Her smirk grew colder and harder. “I understand you’ve taken a wife. Kind of you to invite us to the wedding. I thought you’d abandoned us.”
Richard’s gaze fell to her belly. Lizzie turned on her heel, preventing closer inspection.
“You’ve done well. Frankly, I’m surprised Miriam has fallen for you. She always was so much cleverer than every other girl at school. I should think she could see through your naked ambition. Through your lies.”
“I never lied to her,” Richard hissed furiously.
“But you haven’t told her about our child, have you?” Again, Lizzie angled her body away from view. Tap tap tap. The sinister sound of half boots on wood floors echoed Livingston’s. Despite his pistol and whiskey, Richard recognized Lizzie as the greater threat. He remained silent, confirming what his former lover already knew.
“I thought not. Unless you want me to write an intimate note to my dearest and oldest friend about the existence of our child, hand me that letter from your brother. Now.”
Tap. Ta
p. Tap. Still, he hesitated.
“How did you know?” Richard demanded. Shame and guilt swirled within him, tinged with a darker note of fear. Absurd. This woman’s head barely came to his bicep. Yet her brazen blackmail had Richard trussed with his own sense of worthlessness.
He could free himself from the trap with a few words to Miriam but in doing so he would crush the warm trust in her eyes. Telling the truth meant losing her. Richard couldn’t bring himself to do that. Not now, when there was so much at risk. Howard’s business. His own self-regard. He’d lose Livingston Walsh’s grudging measure of respect, too.
Lizzie smirked, though Richard detected tension in her jaw and a shadow behind her eyes. He did not like to think what measures a desperate Lizzie might take compared to a merely conniving one. Fear threaded through him like a needle trailing a long thread, binding him in this mess.
“How did I know what?” Lizzie asked, deflecting.
“How did you know I am leaving America?”
Lizzie’s fever-bright eyes widened. Her foxlike features lent her a feral appearance. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
“I didn’t, until you told me.” Lizzie chuckled. “Your landlady caught me looking through the house mail. I knew you had received a letter from the earl. The true earl, if I recall correctly.” Tap. Tap. Tap. “The brother who banished you for killing your own father.”
Twist the knife deeper, dearest. Richard swallowed his anger so hard it choked him. His fists curled against his thighs. But letting Lizzie get the better of him was not going to happen today. Nor tomorrow. He wouldn’t touch her again, and she wouldn’t come within five miles of him if he could help it. He just needed to pack his few remaining things and board the New Hope with his bride.
Lizzie didn’t blink. She was a basilisk. A demon. “Get out,” he growled.
A hint of trepidation tinged Lizzie’s eyes. He flinched at his own anger. Lizzie saw it and smiled in her vulpine way, predatory and fey at once.
“You’ll regret this,” she snapped.
When she was gone, Richard fisted his hair and collapsed on the bed where he’d lain with Lizzie for months. Richard must keep his departure secret from Lizzie at any cost. He feared what she might do if she found out.
Two weeks later…
Miriam strolled arm-in-arm with Richard around the deck. The setting sun bled giddy streaks of color over the water. Gulls flapped and called hoarsely into the air. Miriam inhaled deeply. Fresh, clean, life-sustaining air rushed in until her bodice strained to contain her body.
This was her adventure. At least, the beginning of it. As much as Miriam missed her father, she enjoyed her newfound freedom even more. If only her husband would use the key she’d pressed into his palm. Why wouldn’t Richard make her his wife in truth?
It was true in every respect that mattered, Mrs. Kent had reminded her. Legally they were husband and wife. The thought never failed to send a shiver down her spine.
“Are you all right?” Richard asked, his brow crinkled slightly with concern. Miriam nestled against him. A warm glow suffused her body. Once he took her to bed, Miriam planned to tell him the depth of her feelings. I love you. There were moments when she could hardly hold back the words. She smiled up at him and folded her gloved hand over his where he held her arm to steady her from the roll of the ship. “I am perfectly all right. More than perfect. I am so happy to be with you that I could burst with joy.”
Richard met her smile with a kiss.
“Ahem,” Mrs. Kent’s gentle interruption, one of many, had become something of a game. Richard smirked and they continued on their unhurried way around the deck, dodging a pile of rope or a busy sailor. A secret smile played over her lips as though they shared a joke only they understood.
They rounded the stern and began walking directly into the sun. Miriam was forced to keep her head tilted down to keep the strong light from scalding her eyes. For a few moments there was only the sound of his footsteps on weathered wood, their shadows cowering behind them. A bell clanged nearby. The ship tilted. Richard’s hand gripped her arm. Miriam felt him steadying her against the sudden shift in balance.
The light shifted, momentarily blinding Miriam. When she looked up, the shape of a woman in a fashionable traveling dress swam into focus.
“Hello Richard,” Lizzie smirked. “Miriam.”
Miriam’s mouth hung open for a moment. Lizzie’s nimbus of hair had stolen color from the sun’s palette. It licked about her face in the wind glowing like a hellfire crown. She looked fierce and confident and not a little arrogant. Lizzie wrapped one hand around Richard’s forearm.
“Mind if I join your little stroll? I have been cooped up below-deck for days.”
“What are you doing here, Lizzie?” Richard snarled. He moved a few inches in front of Miriam as though to protect her.
“Richard, darling, you should know very well what I am doing here. I am holding you to your obligations as the father of our child.” Lizzie placed her other gloved hand over her small, flat abdomen.
Miriam’s world swam sickeningly. The ship rolled, and where a few minutes ago she would have moved with it, she now stumbled. Behind her, Mrs. Kent gasped.
“Your child?” Miriam stared at Richard with shock and accusation. “When were you planning to tell me?”
“Ideally never, dear heart. Lizzie is quite mad. She may not even be pregnant. I haven’t touched her since before I met you, and she appears no further along than she did...”
“At the lakeside house,” Lizzie finished for him, smirking. “You didn’t tell her, I see. It isn’t entirely true, either. You last touched me the night you met Miriam. I took up with Spencer the next day.”
Richard’s jaw worked. Miriam had come to recognize this as a sign that he was trying to bite back words.
“If there is a child, I cannot even be certain that it is mine. You were with your husband at the shore, too.” Richard’s voice cracked slightly with barely-restrained emotion.
Appalled, Miriam’s gaze glanced between her friend and new spouse, one gloating, the other twisted in miserable fury. This was the true nature of the man she had married?
Married. A sick feeling curdled in Miriam’s stomach. This had to be the reason why Richard refused to come to her bed. She glared at him in accusation. Richard met her gaze sidelong and jerked his head away.
No. But the truth shimmered almost tangibly between them. Hot tears blurred Miriam’s vision.
“Oh, it’s your baby,” Lizzie snapped. Miriam jerked her gaze to her friend’s hard face. What kind of woman had she been friends with all these years? Foxy Lizzie, her detractors had called her. Well. It appeared Miriam had been thoroughly outfoxed. She’d never experienced this side of Lizzie. Her friend’s—former friend’s—manipulativeness wounded her almost as deeply as Richard’s betrayal.
Not now. She would think of it later.
“I believe her.” Miriam startled all of them by speaking.
“I don’t,” responded Mrs. Kent. For a second Lizzie looked like she might fly at Mrs. Kent and scratch her eyes out. Miriam’s nurse narrowed her eyes at the unwanted interloper, daring Lizzie until she brought herself under control.
“Dearest Miriam. I knew I could count on you to see reason. Why would I lie? I have nothing to gain. Do I, Richard?”
He stood stiffly, tight-lipped and silent, beside her. Richard glared at Lizzie with mute hatred and suffering naked in his eyes. Miriam edged away from him, closer to Mrs. Kent.
“Money. That is what this is about, Miriam. Lizzie wants money so that she can divorce her husband and free herself from her family’s influence. Specifically, she wants your fortune,” Richard snarled. His smile expanded into an arrogant, pained smirk. “I am afraid you’re too late, Lizzie. The money is tied up in our business venture. There is nothing for you to pillage.”
Lizzie’s face twisted again as if a demon possessed her body. Her features took on a feral ferocity. Miriam shivered. A metall
ic taste rose in the back of her throat as reality sank in. Miriam’s one true friend had never been a friend at all. That fact broke her heart.
“I’d have given you the money if you asked for it, Lizzie,” Miriam said softly.
“This is about our love, Richard. It’s about your fatherly obligations,” Lizzie returned evenly.
“I would never ignore my responsibilities as a father,” Richard spoke quietly, yet his body radiated tension. “I have promised to support you and the child financially. I never said I would marry you.”
Silence fell over them all, broken by the harsh calls of sailors around them and the snap of sails in the strong wind, taking them ever closer to a shore Miriam no longer wished to land upon. Richard turned to Miriam, his eyes and voice pleading. “I swear I had broken with Lizzie before I courted you. She may not have believed me, but I told her quite distinctly that we were through. The first time I kissed you was a revelation.”
Miriam listened to her husband as though from a very great distance. Now that the cold shock had worn off Miriam was beginning to understand what a tremendous fool she had been. Lizzie had known just what her dreams were. They had shared a dormitory together. All the girls at boarding school had all talked about their hopes and dreams. They’d shared stories of first kisses stolen at parties and warned one another of men with wandering hands. Everyone had known about Miriam’s condition, and had probably even seen an attack or two in progress.
Richard was every girl’s dream—handsome, aristocratic, and kind, when he wasn’t seducing girls out of their fortunes or impregnating and abandoning married women. Yet underneath Richard was nothing but a snake. And she had fallen for him like a rock sinking into the ocean, fast and irretrievable.
