A Reckless Beauty (15 page)

How she longed to just cease living, permanently flee from this crushing fear. But Rian wouldn’t have allowed her to do that. His ghost would mock her as she rode the marsh, as she sat on a rock and stared out over the Channel. Better to be where he couldn’t see her….

She withdrew her hands at last to unbutton the three top buttons of her morning gown and reach inside the bodice, coming out with a paper folded several times over. She handed it to Valentine. “Read this, please.”

Valentine took the paper, warm from its contact with Fanny’s skin, unfolded it, quickly recognizing it for what it was. Rian Becket’s will.

The document was far from customary. But, then, Rian had been a young man, and probably not familiar with the high-flown language of such documents.

Valentine scanned the single sheet quickly, passing over the disposition of Becket’s horse, Jupiter, and his favorite swords, and his collection of toy soldiers, which had been gifted to a William Henry Becket.

“William Becket?” he asked, pausing for a moment.

“Our brother Spencer’s son,” Fanny said quietly. “He’s little more than a baby, and Rian wants him to play at war.”

Valentine nodded, read on. Read through to the end. Carefully folded the page and handed it back to Fanny. Without saying a word.

“Rian said…he said we’d read it together when he got back. Laugh over it,” Fanny told him, slipping the page back into her bodice. “Do you think it’s funny, Brede?”

“He knew I had put myself in position as your temporary guardian,” Valentine told her.
Promise me. Promise me you’ll take care of Fanny.
“I was…honored to do so.”

Fanny looked at him, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. She wasn’t being fair to the man, but her need was great, beating down her better instincts. “Not your ward, Brede. You read what he wrote. Rian…Rian
gave
me to you. Like I was his to give.”

Yes. Valentine wondered about that, as he already wondered about so much else.
Make her forget me. She has to forget me.

“It’s a moot point, Fanny,” he said at last. “You have a father, you have a family. You’ll soon be with them again.”

She shook her head again. “I can’t go back there, Brede. Not yet. He’s not there, yet he’ll be everywhere I look.” She looked up at the blue sky, praying for Valentine’s understanding, his compassion. “What am I going to do?”

“As you have a family, adoption is out of the question. So I suppose you could marry me.”

The words were out of Valentine’s mouth before he could draw them back. He hadn’t meant to say them. He’d thought them, over and over these past eight days. Thought them, wished them, believed them. But he’d never imagined he’d ever say them. Even if Rian had asked him to take care of her, gained his solemn word that he would.

What had Rian said, joked?
I’ve just cursed you, my lord, haven’t I? But there’s worse fates than Fanny, I imagine.

And the boy had been right. There could be worse fates. Like living with Fanny and never telling her the truth about her brother, how he had died. Living together, living a lie.

Fanny hadn’t spoken since he’d blurted out his ridiculous suggestion.

“Fanny, I—Please, forget I said that. The last thing I should be doing is pressuring you. Not now. Let me take you home and—”

“Yes,” Fanny said, cutting him off before he could take back the words, words she’d prayed to hear, but not for the reason she’d given him. “That would be a solution, wouldn’t it? Rian admired you very much. He…I suppose he’d like that.”

Rian again. What did her brother have to do with where his sister wed?

But before Valentine could find his tongue, Fanny was speaking again. Not that she’d look at him. “We’d go to your home, of course. Nowhere near Romney Marsh. Somewhere safe. Somewhere where I’d never have to even think about…about bad things happening again.”

“Bad things, Fanny? Bad things happen at Becket Hall?” He didn’t understand, and he was more intrigued than ever. Who were these Beckets? What sort of family had his friend Jack Eastwood married into? “Fanny? Is there…is there some sort of
problem
at Becket Hall, with your family? Is that why you ran away?”

She blinked, pushed back her shoulders, Valentine thought, as if snapping herself to attention at a command only she heard.

“No, of course not. I shouldn’t have said that. I…I’m tired, and would like to return to my room. But we’re settled on this now, Brede? We’ll marry?”

She started to rise, but he gently pulled her back down beside him. “I believe I have enough consequence to arrange for a vicar by tomorrow morning, before we leave for Ostend. If you really want it.”

Fanny closed her eyes, fighting back the tears she hadn’t shed in eight long days and nights. Rian would want this, wouldn’t he? He’d want her to feel safe. And there’d been the dream, that strange dream, with Valentine standing in Rian’s place. Protecting her, allowing her to feel safe again. Maybe she didn’t really understand what she was doing, what was driving her, leading her to Valentine. Odette would, but Odette wasn’t here, was she? Just as Rian wasn’t here. She had to protect herself. “I think that would make Rian happy.”

Valentine didn’t understand. Damn Rian. What did he care about a dead man’s happiness? Yet he did. He owed the man that much, and more.

But now was not the time for questions, was it? Especially now, when he was getting just what he wanted. Did that make him selfish? And if it did, he’d deal with his guilt at another time.

He helped his now affianced bride to her feet, bent to kiss the bandage on her cheek. “Rian would want
you
to be happy, Fanny.”

“I know. Thank you, Brede. I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You won’t be,” he told her, walking her to the door to the back of the town house. “If my sister is to be believed, I’ll be your burden.”

At last she smiled. Only a small smile, but it was there, and Valentine dared to believe he could one day make her smile again. Be happy again.

“I’ll just always make sure to keep you well fed,” she told him, then disappeared up the steep servant stairs, leaving him to shrug his shoulders at Frances, who was bobbing a curtsey at him even as she held out a plate of warm cherry tarts.

He shook his head and left the kitchen….

T
HEY’D BEEN MARRIED
for six hours, and Fanny had pointedly avoided Valentine for all of them, pleading the headache and spending the entire crossing belowdecks.

She’d hugged Lucille goodbye on the Dover docks, Wiggins traveling with Lady Whalley and her maid in order to hire a coach that would safely deliver them to the Brede mansion in Portland Square in the fine style to which her brother’s fortune had accustomed her.

Valentine had been glad to see her go, nearly as pleased as his sister was to wave her farewells. Knowing Lucille, news of his impetuous marriage would be dinner table conversation all over Mayfair by the following evening, with Lucille the center of attention. She’d been positively giddy at the prospect.

And Fanny had been glad to see her go. Not that she didn’t enjoy Lucie, because she did. The woman could be quite amusing in her silly, selfish way. But Fanny wanted to be alone with Valentine. Her husband. She might try not to be happy that they were wed, attempt to concentrate only on her very real grief, but she couldn’t ignore the man beside her. She hadn’t been able to ignore anything about him ever since they’d first met.

“Lady wife,” Valentine said, extending his arm to Fanny as Lucille, chattering nineteen to the dozen with a friend she’d spied on the docks, walked away without so much as a final wave goodbye. “We can stay here in Dover, dine and return to the
Pegasus
tomorrow morning.”

Fanny looked up at him, attempting to gauge his mood. He’d called her his lady wife. Was he mocking her? Already regretting his decision?

“Or?” she asked as she slipped her arm through his, hoping he’d give her another option, as she wasn’t enamored of the idea of spending the night—her wedding night—at a Dover inn. As for the rest of it, she knew she was a bride, and what her groom would expect of her. She had weighed all of that when she’d decided on this course of action, and decided it was a small price to pay for her selfish safety.

A very small price, as she enjoyed Valentine’s kisses. Enjoyed them, longed for more, just as she longed for his smile, his touch. That was also selfish of her. She was a terrible person, with her beloved Rian dying even as her heart had been pulling her in two directions at once. Oh, her head ached. Her heart ached….

“Or we could continue directly on to Brede Manor, passing the night on the water. I would like to get the horses offloaded as quickly as possible. The
Pegasus
wasn’t really designed to carry horses.”

Fanny nodded, thinking of Molly and Shadow tied to the rear deck outside of the cabin, tucked inside a rude construction meant for Shadow alone and now forced to accommodate both horses.

“I think we should push on, if you don’t mind.” Then she smiled as a ridiculous thought struck her. She had absolutely no idea where they were going. “Where, precisely, is Brede Manor?”

“Not all that far from where you tell me Becket Hall is located, actually. Your home is on the coast, but Brede Manor is about a half dozen miles inland from Hastings, in East Sussex.”

That close? Fanny tripped over the plank leading up onto the yacht, catching at his arm so that she didn’t fall. “But…but you said you thought only sheep lived in Romney Marsh.”

“And I stand by my ignorant statement, having never traveled there. Brighton, London—those, lamentably, are my more familiar haunts. But earlier I took the opportunity to consult one of the maps belowdecks, and it turns out that, as the crow flies, Dymchurch itself is on the coast and probably less than forty miles from Brede Manor, considerably more if we sailed there, hugging the coastline. And yet the whole of Romney Marsh could be on another continent for all the attention I’ve paid it, I’m afraid. Even my maps, admittedly a few years old, seem very vague in their drawings of the Marsh coastline.”

Fanny knew that, at least. Wasn’t that one of the reasons her papa had chosen Romney Marsh in the first place? It’s ever-changing shoreline, its—to most Englishmen—monotonous scenery, its lack of inhabitants, the commonly held belief of most Englishmen that the approximately one hundred square miles of the Marsh was worthless except for its wool and hops? And the goods brought across the Channel by the wild, uncivilized local smugglers, of course.

“Less than forty miles? I thought…I thought you lived in the North, or possibly in the West, or—we’ll be sailing past Becket Hall on our way to your estate, won’t we?”

“Yes, I would suppose so, although we won’t be sailing too close to the coastline, not at night,” Valentine said, not unaware that her complexion had gone quite pale. “Have you reconsidered? Would you like the
Pegasus
to put in there? I would feel much more comfortable apprising your family of our marriage in person, rather than via a letter.”

“No!” Fanny put her hand to her mouth, as if she could take back her quick response, or at least phrase it differently, keep the panic out of her voice. Her family would be full of questions—incisive questions for which she currently had no logical answers. “That is, I really would like to go to your estate for…for a few weeks? Until my wound is healed?”

“Your wound. Of course,” Valentine said, not understanding, but willing to agree to anything she wanted, if it would bring the color back into her cheeks. She’d been so brave, even fearless. Her obvious fright now, her seeming emotional frailty, tore at his heart. “I spoke with Lucille’s maid, and she assured me the scar, if there is one, won’t be too terrible. Is that what’s worrying you? That the sight of your bandage will upset your family?”

Fanny shrugged, then turned to stand with her palms pressed on the rail as the
Pegasus
lifted anchor and set out into the Channel once more. “I don’t mind if there’s a scar. Do you?” She looked up at him. “Would it disgust you, if I was scarred?”

He lifted her hand to his lips, looking at her intently as he pressed his mouth against her sweet-smelling skin. “It would have destroyed me entirely if you had succumbed to your wound. Anything less than that is cause for rejoicing.”

“Thank you, that was very prettily said.” Fanny lowered her chin, hiding her eyes from him even as her stomach did a small flip inside her. She’d been amazed to feel attraction for him when Rian was still alive. Surprised to know she could react the way she had when Valentine had kissed her, as she had been so certain of her love for Rian. But what had seemed interesting, intriguing, perhaps even eye-opening, when Rian was alive, now seemed like a betrayal of his memory.

Brede felt the first spit of rain and turned Fanny away from the rail. “Time to go below again, I’m afraid. Are you hungry?”

“I suppose,” she told him, and then quickly realized that she was starving. She’d thought she’d never really want to eat again, never feel the need. But the sea air had worked its miracle, and she was actually hungry for the first time since she’d awakened in her chamber in Lucille’s town house, her ear and cheek seemingly on fire, and remembered that Rian was dead.

Valentine escorted her down the few steps to the main saloon and carefully untied the bonnet she’d been wearing, easing it off her head without touching the bandage that still covered her right ear and cheek. “Why don’t you go lie down for a bit, and I’ll wake you when the food arrives. We’ve a considerable galley for the size of the yacht.”

Fanny smiled weakly. “Built to your specifications, I’m sure. You should never be allowed to go hungry.”

“Or?” Valentine asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Or you turn into an ogre,” Fanny told him, slipping off her light cloak. “Wiggins didn’t precisely say so, but I’m convinced I’m correct. I remember the first night you brought Rian and me to your—” She looked down at her toes.

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Do you blame me, Fanny? If I’d left him where he was, his chances would have been no better. Perhaps worse.”

“I know,” she said, keeping her head down. “He was so happy, Brede. Finally doing what he’d always wanted to do. If we could have seen only a few days into the future…”

“He did his duty, Fanny, and he did it well. He’s a hero.” And he, Valentine told himself, was a bastard of the worst sort. He knew he should tell her the truth. Except then she’d hate him, and with good reason. He felt he could stand anything, even living with the lie, as long as she didn’t hate him.

She finally looked up at him, saw her own pain reflected in his usually unreadable eyes. She raised a hand to his cheek, pressed her palm against his skin. He was, truly, a wonderful man. “Oh, Brede, how do you stand me? I’m wallowing in pity for myself, for what I’ve lost, and not giving a thought to you. It’s our…our wedding day. I’m so sorry.”

Valentine covered her hand with his own. “You’re mourning your brother, Fanny. I understand that. You’re still recovering from your wound. I understand that, as well.” He smiled slightly. “No matter how
hungry
I might be for my new bride, I promise not to turn into an ogre, ask anything more than you’re willing to give.”

Fanny’s eyes clouded as she considered his words, his seeming affection for her. She had been curiously attracted to him from the first, even Rian had seen it, pointed out to her that now they moved in a wider world. But what did she really know of love? She hadn’t realized, hadn’t thought that Valentine could actually—Oh, God, she was such a silly, selfish idiot, a child masquerading as a woman. She’d made a better soldier than she did a wife…and she had made a terrible soldier! “But everyone…everyone was kissing the ladies.”

He’d probably spend the rest of his life trying to understand the workings of her mind. “I beg your pardon?”

She rolled her eyes, wishing she hadn’t said anything. “At the ball. Rian was chatting up Miss Pitney. Everyone was chatting up someone, he told me. Flirting with someone. Kisses before fighting. But the kisses? They didn’t really mean anything, did they? It was…it was just the moment. The not knowing what would happen next, if anyone would survive…”

Valentine’s mouth curved slightly in a small smile. “And that’s what you thought it was that drove me to kiss you, Fanny? The moment?”

She felt her spine stiffen. “You said so yourself, remember? That it was
necessary.
That some things seem rational at the time.
At the time,
Brede. You said all of that, and even more.”

“Do you have to remember everything I say, and then flog me with it?” he asked her, lifting her hand from his cheek in order to press a kiss into her palm.

Her heart, the one she thought dead inside her, gave a small skip. “But you meant what you said, didn’t you? Rian didn’t say as much to Miss Pitney, I’m sure of that. But he did admit as much to me. So I thought…I felt I could only assume that you, like Rian, were only…”

“Shh, sweetings. Don’t think. Not so much, and not about this. I assure you, I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I didn’t want you as my wife.” He fought for some levity. “Again, it also might have been the sight of you in those trousers. Among your other attractions.”

“So,” she said, wishing she could sew her lips shut and stop saying everything she thought at the moment she thought it. “So it wasn’t my idea? You didn’t marry me because I all but asked you?”

“You did?” Valentine shook his head. “Clearly, my memory doesn’t match yours. I don’t remember you proposing to me. I’m fairly certain such a thing wouldn’t have slipped my mind.”

“But I did,” she protested, wanting to make herself clear on at least that one point. “At the very least, I said that Rian
gave
me to you in his will. You may not have realized that if I hadn’t pointed it out to you.”

“Oh, I doubt that, sweetings. His words were very clear, quite succinct.”
Nearly as succinct as they were as the poor boy lay dying against a tree.

Some devil pushed Fanny into saying more. “But if I wasn’t so afraid to go home, I wouldn’t have—”

“Wouldn’t have agreed to marry me,” Valentine finished for her. Something else was going on here, he felt sure. Something he had seen a hint of yesterday, but not understood. “How flattering, I’m sure. But why, Fanny? Why this fear of going home? I know what you said, that Rian’s ghost would be everywhere you looked. But that’s not so terrible, because he loved you, and you loved him. Rian isn’t really the reason, is he? Or at least not all of it.”

Fanny bit her lips between her teeth, fearful that if she said anything else she’d then say everything…everything no one outside the Becket family was ever to be allowed to know. About the island. About the return of that monster, Edmund Beales. About living in fear this past year or more, knowing their enemy could appear at any moment to repeat what had happened on the island so many years ago. About her nightmare…and Valentine’s presence in it.

Her papa and the others tried to keep the truth from her, but she’d known. The world was drawing closer to their long-time sanctuary at Becket Hall, and when the two worlds collided everything she knew and loved would be changed. Already everything was changing. Rian had died. More might die. And she didn’t want to witness those deaths. She couldn’t. Not again.

Rian wouldn’t be there this time, to pick her up, run with her. Hide her and protect her. So she’d found herself another protector. Brede. Only he didn’t know that, did he?

Shame on her. Shame on her for being a coward, for wanting to hide, to be safe. And she felt safe, when Brede held her. Safe. Protected. But did a man, a husband, want to be thought of as a sanctuary? Fanny doubted that.

“Fanny? You don’t look well, sweetings. Is it the headache again?”

She blinked herself to attention. “No, I—Yes, I suppose so. I should probably lie down?”

“Yes, I think someone might have suggested that, earlier. Myself, I believe,” Valentine said, guiding her across the small saloon to the sleeping quarters where she had spent most of the hours since their marriage. He pushed open the slatted door and held it open for her as she passed by him. He saw the bed he’d had installed when the
Pegasus
was built, feeling fairly certain he would not be invited to share that bed later, with Fanny. “I’ll knock when our dinner is ready.”