Boyett-Compo, Charlotte - Wyndmaster 1 (16 page)

be here but if his tart were, don't you imagine he'd follow after?"

"I know he would," Vaughn said. "But how do we get her to come here?"

Dyllon stopped scooping eggs into his plate and looked at his eldest brother. "We snatch her, of course,"

he said.

"Precisely," Fallon said.

"And just how do we do that?" Vaughn demanded. "That DuMond bastard has guards all over the

place. Not even a mouse could get into
Vista del Mar
to make off with the strumpet."

"Well, now, that will need thinking on," Fallon said. "But between the four of us, I'm sure we can find a

way to get Sierran's whore here and our little brother into father's grasp."

Dyllon snapped his fingers. "Jillian!" he stated, referring to the youngest of their three sisters. "If we send

Jillian there, Sierran won't turn her away. He’s too much of a gentleman to do so. Of us all, he has a bit

of affection for Jilly even though she hates his guts."

"All three of our sisters hate Sierran," Fallon drawled.

"Jilly could befriend the little whore and somehow get her down to the seaside where we will be waiting

with a boat to whisk her away! 'Tis only a two hour sail from Zynkanthos to Edgeville Bay."

"What part of ‘DuMond has guards all over the place’ did you not understand, Dyllon?" Vaughn snarled.

"There…are…guards…all…over…the…place!"

"Watching for your sloop," Peyton commented. "Would they be looking for a fisherman's boat tying up

near LeMoyne's place, do you think? A brace of natives from Guernsey perhaps?"

"A fisherman's boat rowed out from your sloop," Fallon suggested.

"The sloop would have to be far enough out that DuMond's guards can't spy it," Vaughn said. "That's a

long row."

"What do you care?" Dyllon asked. "You won't be the one doing the rowing."

"But how will we get Jillian there?" Fallon asked.

"I can take her in my sloop," Peyton said. "I doubt they'll allow me to come ashore with her but they

won't dare turn Jillian away. One of my men can row her ashore in the jolly boat. They'll take her up to

Vista del Mar
, mark my words."

"Do you think she'll go along with this?" Vaughn asked.

"Jilly hates Sierran as much as we do," Fallon replied. "If it means doing something to piss him off, she'll

be all over it!"

* * *

Lady Jillian Morgan-Rhys was only too glad to help her brothers when they rode out to her estate later

than morning. All she asked in return was to be allowed to watch her youngest brother's crippling

downfall at the hands of their father.

"I want to watch him go down once and for all, the snotty little bugger," she growled.

"We'll all be there," Dyllon said. "The more the merrier to witness Sierran's humiliation."

Jillian nodded. "It's high time Father put him in his place!"

"All right," Fallon said. "This is what we do…"

"Poor old Sierran," her husband remarked as he sat smoking his pipe beside the fireplace while his wife

and her brothers hatched out their scheme. "He'll never know what hit him."

* * *

The only thing that Lady Judith Morgan enjoyed?save the devoted attention of her stable master?was

embroidering. Sitting for hours with cloth and thread in hand, she could wile away the hours quite

pleasantly without interruption by either staff or onerous husband. Eagle Grove—the estate ruled over by

the iron hand of a husband she despised and coveted by his four eldest sons whom she equally

detested—practically ran itself with a well-chosen and excellent staff who rarely bothered Lady Judith

with decision making. When she was in her solarium, no one dared to intrude unless it was a matter of life

or death and that was rarely the case. So it was that on that late November afternoon when she looked

out her solarium window to see her arrogant sons riding up the drive, she paused with needle pulled up

through fabric and frowned.

"Melissa!" Lady Judith called out to the servant girl who sat out in the corridor awaiting her mistress'

pleasure.

"Aye, milady?" the girl replied, hurrying to the doorway but not stepping foot over the threshold unless

invited to do so.

“The brats are here. Find out what those little twerps are about," Lady Judith commanded, pushing the

needle through the material in her hand. "Be very cautious but report back to me everything that is said as

soon as they leave."

"Aye, milady!" Melissa did not need to ask which little twerps she was to spy upon. The girl curtsied and

hurried away, tripping lightly down the stairs with her skirts held up, and blended in with the other

servants who were seeing to the young masters' riding gloves and coats.

"Where is Lord James?" Lord Vaughn inquired of Jenkins, the butler.

"In the library, milord," Jenkins replied. "Shall I announce you, sir?"

"Not necessary," Vaughn snapped and he and his three brothers trooped toward the library.

Melissa sidled down the corridor behind them. She motioned away another girl who would have

followed the Morgan brothers into the library in case they required refreshment and slipped unseen and

ignored into the room, pressing herself close against the wall with her hands folded demurely at her

waist—as invisible as all the other servants scuttling about Eagle Grove. As usual, none of the men

noticed her as she hovered there.

"We have been thinking on this problem with Sierran, Father," Lord Vaughn began.

For nearly an hour Melissa listened to the conversation between father and sons and noted every word

spoken and who had said it. When the brothers had finished their business with their father and were

trooping back out of the room, not a one of them glanced her way. She was a part of the furnishings and

garnered just as much notice.

"Get me a sandwich and a glass of lemonade, Mel," Lord James ordered, not even bothering to look up

at the girl who was about to slip quietly from the room. "And be sure to inform my wife that it was

Fallon's idea for Jillian to go to Zykanthos and not mine."

"Aye, milord," Melissa said with a deep curtsey.

Reporting her news to Lady Judith after carrying her master's snack to him, Melissa asked if there was

anything else she could do for the mistress of Eagle Grove.

"No, that will be all," Lady Judith said as her nimble fingers plied the needle through a series of intricate

knots.

Melissa bobbed another quick curtsey then went back to her uncomfortable chair in the corridor.

As soon as she was alone again, Lady Judith laid her embroidery down in her lap and turned to stare out

the window. The skies were gunmetal gray and it looked as though snow would finally come to

Argonne. She liked the snow for it covered the land in a crisp, pristine blanket that hid all the

imperfections on the ground.

If there was one thing Lady Judith hated more than her overbearing, cheating husband was imperfection

of any kind. A perfectionist, her embroidered creations were perfect in every way and she would accept

nothing less even if it meant ripping out hours of stitching until the piece was flawless.

Because the offspring of her loins were not perfect and never would be, and because they each had

faults Lady Judith found nearly unbearable, she kept as far away from them as possible. That a woman

such as herself could produce imperfect children wounded her very soul. She could not even find it in her

to lay hands to the creatures once they had slithered from her womb. Looking forward to the day such

abominations would cease being foisted off on her by her hated spouse it had been with acute displeasure

she learned she was carrying her last unwanted and unloved child.

"Sierran," she said aloud and her eyes glazed over with distaste.

Right from the start the pregnancy had been difficult. Where no morning sickness ever had been with the

other seven confinements, now it never seemed to end. Heartburn, weight gain, bloating, and many

additional conditions she had not experienced with her other children, she was forced to endure with the

last one. From the moment he had come squalling into the world, she had loathed the squirming child. As

she had with her other children, she had handed him off to a wet nurse and turned her back to him.

"Get that thing out of my sight so I may rest!" she had ordered the midwife.

Not once in his entire life had Lady Judith laid a hand to her youngest son except to switch his bare legs

when he was a small child or to brutally slap his face when he was older. No motherly arms had ever

been thrown around Sierran DeLyle Morgan. No gentle maternal eye had ever looked upon him. No

caring, gentle voice had ever spoken his name within the walls of Fallwich, where the unwanted brat had

been born. Nor had he been spirited away in the dead of night to Argonne when the rest of his family had

fled the war-torn soil of Emardia, but rather he had been left behind to fend for him self at the tender age

of thirteen.

"Sierran," Lady Judith said again, and the word was followed by a long sigh.

Mentally calculating how old the boy would be now, she realized it had been sixteen years since last

she'd seen her youngest. She wondered if he looked like her or if he more resembled his father. When he

had been left behind in Emardia, he was undergoing that gawky in between stage where he was all arms

and legs, thin as a rail. There had been nothing even remotely handsome about the gangly boy. He was,

after all, the runt of the litter and therefore expendable.

But now?she thought.
What of now? What was he like now?

News of her youngest son's exploits during the war with Emardia had managed to reach her, though she

tended to dismiss much of the rhetoric where he was concerned. Apparently he had risen quickly up the

ranks of the Ibydosian Forces and had been awarded many medals for honor and valor. His daring was

well documented and his brilliant successes were spoken of with high respect by those who erroneously

believed the Morgans would be all too happy to hear of their son's accomplishments. He was considered

a national hero by the Federation and had amassed a fortune in bounties from the Ibydosian High

Commission.

But what was he really like?

"Quite the lady's man is your Sierran, Judi," one of their old acquaintances had reported a few years

back. "Has chits running after him wherever he goes."

"Like father, like son", Lady Judith had snapped at the time. "Morgan men are all alike. They can't keep

it in their britches!"

Yet not one hint of scandal had ever been associated with her younger son's name—unlike her older

sons' predilections for debauchery and depravity that were the talk of Argonne. There were no bastard

offspring of Sierran's running around as there were with Vaughn, Dyllon, Fallon, and Peyton. Not one

hint of dishonor had ever sullied the young man's name and no rumors or gossip of bad conduct had been

linked to him.

Even her daughters—for whom she had an even stronger dislike than she did for her sons?had scandal

associated with their names on occasion but not once had anyone spoken ill of Sierran.

Her embroidery forgotten, Lady Judith laid her head on the tall back of the chair and closed her eyes.

"Are you the only perfect one among them, Sierran?" she asked softly. "Did I produce one nearly

flawless specimen after all?"

She rather doubted she had.

When several weeks passed without someone from his family attempting to contact him about his forced

Joining to Lady Beatrice Summerall, Sierran began to breath a sigh of relief. Perhaps, just perhaps—he

prayed—they had decided to forget about him as they had for the past sixteen years. Though he'd ran

into Vaughn and Peyton in Placida a few times over the last year since the Ibydosian Forces had all but

squashed the Emardians, their meetings had been in passing and not long enough to discuss family

matters—which he was sure neither Vaughn nor Peyton would have done anyway. Those chance

encounters had left a bad taste in Sierran's mouth and a mean look in the eyes of both Vargas and Mac

who despised their commander's older brothers.

He'd said little of his family to Celeste, giving her only rudimentary information about his brothers and

sisters as he remembered them from his childhood. He had absolutely no knowledge of the spouses of his

siblings or how many times over—if at all—had he become an uncle. Of his parents, he said barely

anything except to express his belief that he had been unwanted by both. Since both sets of grandparents

had been long gone before his birth, all he could say of the rest of his family was that many of

them—uncles, aunts, cousins—had met their deaths at the hands of the Emardians. If there were any left

outside his immediate family, he was unaware of their existence.

Having grown up an only child, Celeste could feel the loneliness she heard in what her husband did not

say. She began to realize he had grown up virtually on his own without the help or support of his family.

Raised by the staff, he had not been given the opportunities or indulgencies his brothers and sisters had

enjoyed and had instead been given only what was left over and that seemed precious little in Celeste's

estimation. The more she heard of his family, the less she liked them and was more determined than ever

to be the family he had never really had.

On the day another Morgan sloop appeared on Zykanthos Bay, it was bitterly cold and the fancy ship