Dangerous Secrets (92 page)

‶
Take her as a lover, then. She
has had her share.″

Miranda shot Simon a look filled with
disappointment, and he warmed with shame. Why he said it he could not explain,
even to himself.

Peter sat up, incensed.
‶
Your bitterness is
out of place, Simon. Your mother was blameless. Sinclair, our father, and I
were the fools.″

‶
Your father, not mine.″

The older man met his gaze steadily.
‶
I
wanted to explain to you why you are truly Sinclair′s son, and not my
own, but I was distracted by the news I was going to be a daddy again.″
He sighed.
‶
But
it′s time for you to face the fact that you are a true heir as no future
son of mine could ever be.″

‶
I do not need to accept a lie
as fact.″

Peter lurched over to the desk and shuffled
through the papers on the desk and tossed something to Simon.
‶
Read
this.″

It was the envelope, seal broken. The one meant
only for the eyes of the duke.
‶
This is not for me to read. He told me you did not
understand the Kerstone motto. I presume that is why he was so careful to drum
it into my head.″

‶
Honor and truth in all.″
Peter′s lips twisted with distaste.
‶
It is as much a part of me as
the Watterly blood.″

‶
It could not be.″

‶
Read it. Until then, you do not
know enough to judge.″

‶
Who are you to tell me
this?″

‶
His son.″ Peter looked
away, his hands massaging wearily at his neck as he looked away out the windows
and onto the lawn where Kate, Betsy, and Jeanne, Peter′s youngest
daughter, were playing blind man′s bluff with the older girls.
‶
His
other son.″

‶
No son would have done what you
did. I don′t want you to think I hold my mother blameless, but —″

Peter′s eyes blazed with anger.
‶
Your
mother was completely innocent in this. She was the victim of a controlling old
man and a young man with much too much self-conceit.″

‶
I cannot excuse her for what
she did, and you should not either.″

Miranda intervened at last, with a gentle pull
on his arm.
‶
Look
out there, Simon.″ She pointed to the window.
‶
Look at those
girls, laughing, playing games as children should.″

Simon looked, reluctantly, just in time to see
Juliet captured by a blindfolded Jeanne.

‶
Your mother was younger than
Juliet when she married.″

Simon had known her age — fifteen — at her
marriage, but he had not stopped to imagine her as a girl, like Juliet. It was
impossible even to imagine.
‶
I doubt she ever stopped to play a game. She was
never as young as those girls out there.″

Peter′s hushed tone disputed that
contention.
‶
Oh,
yes, she was. So very young and so very serious about her new role as duchess.
She had no idea what my father wanted of her. I doubt he knew, at that point,
either. He had not thought beyond a child to the years of marriage
ahead.″

‶
Why did he not have you marry
her, then?″

‶
Control, Simon. Control. I was
entering a dangerous profession, and he did not want to risk having to fight my
widow for control of the fate of any child of mine.″

That certainly meshed with what Simon knew of
Sinclair Watterly. He disliked defiance and used every weapon necessary to
demolish it at the first sign.

Simon took the wrinkled, water-stained envelope
that had remained sealed since he received it. Now broken, the Watterly seal
sat above a strong bold hand declaring, Honor and Truth in All.

Another fairytale, he thought bitterly. There
were three pages enclosed, in three separate hands: Sinclair′s, the
Eighth Duke; Mortimer′s, the Fifth Duke, and Geoffrey′s, the Third
Duke. Three generations. He read, Miranda′s body warm next to his,
lending him strength to face this last hurdle.

After a long silence he looked up to see Peter
staring into the fire. He knew Sinclair′s sin, and now he knew the reason
for it. An unbroken line from father to son. It was a lie. Mortimer had been
injured in a hunting accident, unable to father children, and had taken his
dying sister′s bastard to raise as his own son. Geoffrey had been
afflicted with syphilis and had conspired with his younger brother to
impregnate his unknowing wife.

‶
Do you expect me to be
comforted by the fact that we both spring from a line of men who do not know
the meaning of honor?″

‶
They made sure the blood was
true, and that was what they honored most.″

‶
I cannot be like them. I will
not.″

‶
I understand. I tried — and
failed.″

Looking into the pain-shrouded gaze of his
father, Simon suddenly felt understanding flood through his heart. He knew why
Peter had never come back. It had not been cowardice but honor. The same
twisted Watterly honor that held him here against his will.

He stood watching his father. The man was
willing to give up the woman he loved, the child he wanted. For what? Not for
the same reason the men in the letters had. Only to restore Simon′s own
sense of honor.

Peter rubbed a weary hand across his
sun-weathered skin.
‶
You′re going to have to succeed me, Simon.
I′m sorry. I hope you can reconcile it in the years to come. But I
don′t see any other way. We′re both the true heirs to their
tradition.″

‶
No.″ Simon stood and went
close to the fire.

‶
We′re not their
heirs.″ He tossed the generations old papers into the fire and watched
them burn.

In the flare of light, his eyes met
Peter′s.
‶
We′re
beginning a new tradition.″

Peter eyed him warily, as if he was afraid to
dare believe that Simon meant what he said.
‶
And what tradition is
that?″

Simon crossed to where Miranda still sat,
watching him with hopeful eyes.
‶
The tradition of the happy
ending.″

Peter allowed a small smile to soften the
rough-hewn planes of his face. A thread of doubt crossed the older man′s
features.
‶
Are
you sure you can live with this? Because once I marry that woman and take her
away, I′m never coming back.″

‶
Honor and Truth in all. Our
family thought to circumvent that motto to keep the bloodlines passing from
father to son. We won′t pass on that legacy. Instead, we′ll begin a
new generation who′ll learn what′s most important in life.″

Miranda rose to face him and asked softly,
‶
What′s
that?″

‶
A happy ending, of course — and
no more lies.″

‶
Except that Peter Watterly is
dead.″ Peter′s eyes darkened.

‶
Is that a lie?″ Simon
could not break his gaze from his wife′s dawning joy.

He shook his head slowly.
‶
No.
Peter Watterly died a long time ago.″

Simon looked away from Miranda′s joyful
gaze for a moment.
‶
Yes, he did. And Peter Watson has a woman who loves
him. I′d have to be a fool to stand in the way of his happy
ending.″ He held his wife close.
‶
Or my own.″

Miranda whispered to him, softly.
‶
To
new traditions, and happy ever afters.″

He replied in her ear,
‶
To sons or
daughters as they may come — no more will the Duke of Kerstone put a cuckoo in
his nest to satisfy pride. Honor will out, now and forevermore.″

‶
Not love?″ she teased.

He held her against him, tightly, and yet
without binding her so that she could not breathe.
‶
Of course. How else
can one have a happy ever after, if not with love?″

THE END

***

If you enjoyed Miranda’s story, don’t miss
Valentine’s quest to regain his lost love Emily in
The
Star-Crossed Bride
(http://www.kellymcclymer.com/once-upon-a-wedding-ebook-boxed-sets/the-star-crossed-bride/).

EXCERPT:

She let out the rope, and squinted down to see
where it reached. It didn't reach all the way to the ground, but was it ten
feet too short? Five? Courage, she told herself, you have jumped farther than
that climbing field gates.

Even with the locked door to remind her how
awful her future was, she hesitated on the sill. If she fell . . . She'd just
have to make certain that she did nothing so silly as fall. Holding her breath,
Emily began to climb down. When she had reached the end of the makeshift rope,
she dared a hasty peek down to see how far away the ground was. It seemed, at
this point, to be much farther away than she had thought.

For a moment she hung there, her arms aching,
her eyes closed against her damnably vivid imagination. Would the countess cry
to see Emily's broken body upon the grass tomorrow? Would they assume she had
tried to kill herself? She shivered at the thought of being buried in
unhallowed ground.

Would it be better to climb back up? Could she
climb back up?

Courage, she reminded herself, and released her
grip on the bedsheet. She dropped farther than she expected. However, her
landing was not on solid ground, but rather into a pair of strong and
encompassing arms, which clasped her against a broad cloth-covered chest.

For a moment she thought she was caught and
would find herself an unwilling bride before morning, and then her captor released
her with a little push and a familiar voice whispered, "What are you
doing, you reckless little fool?"

She turned and faced the man who had held her
so tightly for but a moment, and then let her go free.

"Valentine. "

"Lady Emily" His face was familiar
and strange all at once. She knew his features by heart, but three years had
changed him. His once ready smile was tucked away and he had only a stern look
for her.

Still, he was here, just when she had
determined to go to him for help.

She could not seem to break her gaze from him.
Or to speak. All she could think of for a moment was that her longing, her
need, had conjured him from London to her side in a flash of witchcraft. He
couldn't be real. But he was. With no thought to her resolution of minutes before
to expect nothing, with no thought to his wife, she threw herself at him, arms
tight around his neck, and kissed him full on the mouth.

Hero for Hire

Book One

Eno the Thracian Series

by

C.B.Pratt

When mythic
creatures are rampaging through your Ancient Grecian village, the man to call
is Eno the Thracian, Hero for Hire.(Special Rates for Multiples). In HELLAS, he
is summoned to Leros where a harpy has been plaguing the island. Eno knows he
can sell a live harpy to the king of Troezan, who prefers canned hunting. The
two fees will pay off his part-time pirate partner, Jori, and enable Eno to
marry Doris, the girl of his dreams.

But when he
arrives at Leros, the king is dead, a self-sacrifice to dark powers. Eno's task
is now to keep the new young king from overthrow by a rogue guard captain with
a crab-claw hand. While discovering more about the king's death, Eno discovers
the temple on Leros is blocking one of the seventeen gates to Hades...and that
someone is trying to open it.

Author′s Note:

To avoid tedious scenes of bartering, I have moved the
existence of the coin back in time. The Dorians/Greeks had no coinage;
everything -- goods, the services of a hero-for-hire -- was ‵paid
for′ with other goods and different services. It was not until approximately
four to six hundred years after the time of this book that some clever Lydians,
in what is now Turkey, invented the portable, easily recognized, and easily
degraded coin.

Chapter 1

Jori, my favorite Phoenician pirate, understood
everything about my latest mission except for two things. The how and the why.

“To hunt a harpy is a good and noble act but to
capture one and bring it across the sea...this is madness.”

“Probably. But it’s the best way I know to get
five hundred drachma together in a hurry.”

He shook his head as if giving me up for lost
and toyed with a couple of loose stones atop the sea-wall where we sat. “This
cage you mean to build, I have never heard of such a thing. Will it be strong
enough?”

“I don’t really know. No one has ever tried this
before.”

“Other people are wise, sometimes. No, no, Eno,
my friend, it is madness.”

“But you’ll take me there?”

Jori tends to fidget when he doesn’t want to
give a straightforward yea or nay. It’s the merchant in him. He always wants to
make a deal and you don’t get what you want as a trader by saying yes or no
without every detail hashed out. That′s why, when he gets fed up with
negotiations, he turns back to piracy. Piracy is simple.

“Surely you must know someone who can lend you
this money?”

“Like who?”

“You have done much work for important people.
What about that rich merchant from Carthage? Or King Lycymon? He was very
grateful.”

My turn to shake my head. “A king’s gratitude
lasts a as long as the walk from the steps of his throne to his front gate.
I’ve never had one yet hand me a basket and the keys to his treasury with
orders to help myself.”

“But you saved him from poison!”

“Poison administered by his favorite concubine.
He was glad to know what was behind all the vomiting, but he hated giving her
up. The Queen was pleased.”

“Maybe she’ll give you the money.”

“She wasn’t that pleased.” She’d offered
something, all right, but after witnessing what the king did to his would-be
poisoner, I didn’t wait around to find out what he did to men who committed
adultery with his queen. I told her I was for hire, but not interested in that
kind of work, and slipped out a window when the king came in through the
bedroom door.

A couple of months ago I got a message from
her, reminding me that Lycymon had gone off to Troy with most of the other
rulers of Greek city-states and wondering if I was still available for ‘hire.’
I told her my rates had gone up and am waiting to hear whether it was a real
job or just more fun-and-games.

In the loose conglomeration of states,
alliances, defeats, and victories that is Hellas, there′s a definite
pecking order. Astride the top of the heap stand the Olympian Gods, family of
Zeus the Mighty. Quarrelsome, proud, immortal, their family troubles often
affect the mortal population, almost never to the benefit of the poor working
slob who just wants to get his catch in or the harvest safely under cover.
There are more gods beyond the Olympians, gods of rain, of wind, of dreams, of
sleep. Naiads live in water, dryads live in trees, maenads roam the mountains,
and any one of which can trip a man up and ruin his life.

Between Gods and mortals are the heroes, men of
might and valor clad in supernatural armor and unending self-satisfaction. They
are usually related in some degree to the Olympian they are fighting against or
for. The Gods admire them as the finest examples of human-kind, though that
doesn′t always prevent heroes from coming to a sticky end. Their stories
are the stuff of legend, told and re-told around countless fires. Emulating
them is an excellent way to wind up dead.

So what is a farmer or petty king to do when
all the heroes are off fighting somewhere else? Somewhere like Troy, for
instance.

The Battle for Troy has been good for my
business. With most of the big-name heroes off salvaging Menelaus’ pride,
wounded by a wandering wife, who are you going to summon to battle the monsters
rampaging through your vineyards and carrying off your maidens? What about the
guy who’d posted the following in the marketplace?

Hero for
Hire. All monsters dispatched from carnivorous geese to Minotaurs. Special
rates for multiples. Eno the Thracian at the sign of the Ram’s Head, one flight
up.

But, to be a bit vain myself, I’m more than
your average sword-swinger. Let’s say you’re a nice young prince, new to the
ruling game, and you’ve got this chief vizier with a square beard and a twisted
mind. Sure, you could just hack off his head and hire a fresh face but there’s
something about the job that turns an ordinary civil servant into a gibbering,
war-whooping maniac with eyes for your wife, your daughter, or your throne.

Throw in a few magical powers, and you’re going
to find yourself in need of some muscle. Muscle alone is all very well but
muscle that can outthink the traps, monsters, and mental trickery old Weird
Beard has thrown around his Fortress of Death is easily worth an extra five
drachma per day. Plus expenses.

I’m getting a reputation for being that man. It
doesn’t pay all that well but I’m in demand more than ever recently. Business has
been picking up as preternatural creatures seem to be on the increase.
I′d just gotten back from a nice little job in Syria where...well,
another time.

“After all you have said about women, about
Queen Helen, now you want to do this because of some girl?” Jori clicked his
tongue chidingly.

“I can’t very well get married if I can’t
afford to keep her.”

“Keep her? A man does not keep a woman; she
keeps him. Come back with me to Tyre. My mother has many fine girls in her eye.
She will choose you one. One that can cook. Even pretty if you must be so
picky.”

“Why doesn’t she choose one for you?”

“Oh, she says I am too young to marry.”

Jori is maybe three years older than I am,
though I admit he doesn’t look it. His smooth brown face is hardly
weather-beaten at all, considering his profession. He has a few lines around
his quick brown eyes, peering under a fringe of smooth hair, that hair enough
to mark him out as
xeno
, Not-Greek.
He doesn’t seem strong enough to do the heavy work of a ship. I know of at
least one sailor, now dead, who thought that a slim, youthful-appearing captain
meant an easy mutiny. I didn’t see the end result myself, but these stories get
around. Sailors gossip more than washerwomen.

He has his own ship, the
Chelidion
, not the biggest or the fanciest but enough to take him
around the rim of the known world. Not all the goods she carries appear on a
manifest. I travel with him when I happen to be going in the same direction. He
claims that his grandfather did a favor for some sea-god or other but says he
doesn’t know the details. It’s why the sea is always calm for him.

I have no quarrel with any supernatural being,
from the Olympians down to the weakest sand-sprite, so far as I know. But they
can be an easily offended bunch, so I am careful with my lustrations and
sacrifices. At the moment, I was wooing Hymen and Aphrodite, all because I’d
glimpsed a face in the marketplace.

I’d been buying eggs, a homely pursuit, and
turned away just as a girl, an ordinary girl, let the corner of her veil fall.
She’d been holding it to her face to keep out the dust and donkey smells. Maybe
if she’d been barefaced, I wouldn’t have noticed her. As it was, I caught a
glimpse of a pink cheek and a pair of eyes that, though dark, were bright as
the flicker of a star.

The power of one of Zeus’ thunderbolts is
nothing compared to Aphrodite’s.

I forgot about the eggs, though I’d already
paid for them, and turned to follow her. But it was the harvest festival and
there were more women in the streets than at any other time so I lost sight of
her in the crowds. When I came home, a broadly-grinning messenger boy was
waiting on my steps with the eggs and word of her father’s name, occupation and
directions to his home. There are no secrets in the Piraeus agora.

Her father is an oil merchant, doing good
business for himself. Well-enough that he can pick and choose a suitor for his
third daughter. A near-penniless hero for hire is not his first choice. But a
man with acquaintances among royal houses and strength of arm and head might
make a useful son-in-law. And even if Minthe hadn’t hit me with a thunderbolt,
I might still be interested in marriage into a family like Karoli’s. Even
heroes have to think about retiring sometime.

So, after a wink and a nod and an introduction
from the local matchmaker, I was informed that if I had five hundred drachma
tucked away, I could consider myself a son-in-law. There were, however, a
couple of other suitors in the hunt, both of whom were younger, better-looking,
and didn’t have to kill anything or anybody for a living. Sometimes I’d comfort
myself with the idea that they were weedy specimens without a good tale to tell
between them. But for all I knew, that’s what simple, home-loving girls like
Minthe preferred.

I would have liked to ask her. But nice girls
like that never talked to their future husbands. Or saw them. Or even knew
there was such a man until her father told her otherwise.

Fortunately, a day or two later, when I was
wracking my brain for a way to come up with the money, I received a messenger
from the king of Leros, a small backwater island, with word that his herdsman
were being menaced by a harpy.

Over a glass of wine, the messenger mentioned
that the harpy seemed to be both small and confused, no doubt in the hope of
getting me to lower my prices. I made him a good deal for I knew that the King
of Troezen had a standing offer of four hundred drachmas to anyone who could
bring him a harpy alive and undamaged.

The King of Troezen loved the hunt and was
especially keen on fighting monsters in the good old heroic style,
face-to-face, carefully ensuring that the monster was hamstrung or drugged
before he risked himself in front of guests.

So I’d solve the Leronian Harpy issue by
capturing it, charging a couple hundred drachmas, and then delivering it to
King Pavlos for another four hundred. Everybody’s happy and I’m rich enough to
marry Minthe and live without working at least until our first baby was born.

I should have remembered that coincidences are
always unlucky for me.

***

A week later, the
Chelidion
came dancing up to the quay. The cage I was having built
was about done and I thought it was just more good fortune that Jori showed up
to take me along to Leros.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I will take you and
your crazy idea there. I will do more. I will wait for you and, if you live,
take you to Troezen.”

“Have more wine,” I pushed a beaker towards him
across the sticky table. “How soon can we leave? I don’t want anyone else
getting there ahead of us.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t arrived?”

“Drunk that wine myself,” I said, watching the
last of it disappear down his throat, “and hired Telamon.”

“That fool? He gets lost every time he puts his
nose out of port. And his crew are all cut-throats.”

“Safety against piracy. I hear a lot of that
goes on, this time of year.”

He hiccupped when he wanted to laugh and looked
cross-eyed at the beaker. Before he fell over, we agreed to meet in two days’
time at the boat. He was having her bottom tarred and I needed the time to
finish the cage.

It had cost a bit more than I anticipated, as
is usually the way with custom work. No ropes tied these corners together.
Harpies have sharp claws. The blacksmith had protested the impossibility when I
said I wanted the wooden bars joined with iron but on my last visit to the
agora, I saw that he’d put up his own placard, describing his new ‘method of
ironwork, revealed in a dream from the master-contriver, the god Hephaestus
himself.’

When I mentioned this questionable
advertisement, playfully twisting a few left-over bars of iron into decorative
shapes, he threw in the use of a cart to get the thing to the quayside free of
charge. Idle boys ran along behind it, any excuse to scamp off school or work.
I threw a few hemi-obols among them, remembering my own boyhood craving for
sesame honey candy and jellied quince.

Jori had picked up a new crew since I’d last
traveled with him. They seemed shy of me. It’s the muscles. And maybe my
reputation. Lifting the cage into the boat without using the winch might explain
their attitude too.

I kept up my exercises during the voyage,
having little else to do. Prudently, I skipped my usual swims. Though the sea
was flat as my hand, the water was somehow uninviting, grayish-yellow foam
scumming the water-line and an oily sheen sliding from one small wave to the
next. There was some muttering among the crew at this but Jori soon set them
tasks to take their minds off any evil omens they might invent.

“Lazy men,” Jori said to me. “It’s the last
time I take men from Ithaca. King Odysseus took the best with him and all
that’s left is the dregs of the port. It is the same story all over Hellas
these days.”

“Do you run supplies to Troy any more?”

“No,” he said, curling his lip. “The blockade
is very strong, like a wall of wood. Now I run supplies to the Greeks.”

“The city can’t hold out forever.” I was only
repeating what everyone else said. It had been the better part of two years
since Queen Helen had run off with Prince Paris. No one seemed to know if she’d
gone of her own free will, or if he’d ensorcelled her somehow. If he had, it
was with Aphrodite’s contrivance and I wasn’t about to utter a word against the
Lady. Not with the plans I had in mind.

Thinking of my future wife made the time sweep
by. Soon we were looking at the rising coast of Leros. The white houses tumbled
like a child’s blocks down to the water’s edge. Somewhere there was a famous
shrine to Artemis, goddess of the hunt among other things, where I would make a
sacrifice to implore her good wishes. First stop, however, was the palace.