My Surrender (7 page)

Northern Scotland
Christmas 1788

“I
DIDN’T SAVE
yer from getting yer throat slit only to see ye shot by the militia. It don’t matter what Geoff says, I seen the redcoats meself marching up the great north road.” The bull-shouldered, grizzle-haired man stretched on his tiptoes and peered over the thick hedge lining this portion of the road. Seeing nothing, he dropped flat to his feet and turned around, regarding the boy with an ambivalent expression.

“Time to cut bait and run, and I ain’t runnin’ too fast or too far with a lad taggin’ along. It’s been a bonny treat bein’ yer guide and companion, young sir, but time to part ways.” He squinted down nearsightedly, his broken jaw pulling his
lips into a perpetual grimace. But after nearly a month in Trevor’s company, the boy recognized the expression as being as close to affection as a thief, smuggler, and very possibly murderer, was likely to achieve.

“Yer a fair dab hand with a pick and lock and might keep that in mind fer the future. But not yet. Lads as young and tender as you—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Yer fate wouldn’t be much to yer likin’ on the road. Nah. Better ye go to St. Bride’s Abbey than take yer chances out here. Abbott come along here from town every other Wednesday. He’ll be along soon.”

“I don’t want to go to an abbey.”

The man nodded. “ ’Course ye don’t. But ye got nowhere else to go and the Father Abbot ain’t bad as men of God go, and there’s others like ye at the abbey, too. Orphans.”

The boy didn’t say a word.

“Ye know,” Trevor said thoughtfully. “Ye could tell me who ye are and I could maybe find some folks what might be lookin’ fer ye.”

“I’ve told you,” the boy said with an elaborate sigh, “I’m a lost son of the House of Bourbon, but since your friends drowned everyone who knows my true identity and left me without a penny or a voucher to support my claim. I’m likely to stay lost for a good while yet.”

“Cheeky bastard,” Trevor chortled. “That’s what saved ye, ye know. Ye made Black Sam laugh with yer tall tales of noblemen and palaces and he decided to spare ye. As fer who ye are—well, if ye thought there might be someone ye could make yer way to, I ’spect ye’d do it without me.”

“You’ve been decent to me, Trevor,” the lad said. “Thank you for not killing me.”

Trevor stared at him again and sighed. “Like me own son might have been. Clever hands and stubborn as a sinner with a prayer. Right good company, too.

“Now, I ain’t sayin’ I’m a clever man. But I know a few things and I’m giving the gift of them to you, lad. Ye can take ’em or spit on ’em fer all I care after ye hear ’em, but hear ’em ye will. So here it be. It don’t matter who ye were before ye washed up on them rocks I found ye hid in. Whoever ye were in France died on that shore.”

The boy nodded. If he felt any animosity toward the men—including Trevor—who had been responsible for the death of his once-illustrious future—as well as his companions—he kept it well hidden.

“Don’t be a fool, lad. World has too many of ’em as is. Be smart. Ye can spend yer days cryin’ fer what ye want or ye take what ye can get. Ye have a bonny tongue in yer head and a winning way when ye’ve a mind. Make good use of those things what no sea can drown nor smuggler steal. Keep them skills I taught ye fresh. Ye—”

The sound of a horse whinnying stopped Trevor mid-sentence. He crouched down behind the hedge, his hand hard on the boy’s shoulder. “That’s the abbot’s carriage. Go on. Get out into the road and wave him down.”

“But—”

“Fer the love of God, lad,” Trevor said in exasperation. “I done one good thing in me life when I took ye off that shore. Now, let me do two. Who knows, maybe it’ll be enough to let me slip through the gates come Judgment Day.”

The boy grinned broadly. “Oh, I rather I doubt it,” then, without a backward glance, he scrambled into the dirt road and hailed the approaching carriage.

Culholland Square, Mayfair
July 18, 1806

“Don’t be absurd!” Dand declared, standing over Charlotte as she sat calmly embroidering violets on a new pillow sham.

Her butler had shown him in to the little walled garden. True to her supposition, Dand had returned this morning with a note for Toussaint. True to her expectation, he had not been happy about what she had then told him about their change of plans.

But she had not expected his reaction to be so strong nor to so alter his demeanor. Indeed, she hardly recognized in this stranger the cocksure and imperturbable rogue she’d thought she’d known. His normal ironically amused expression had turned into a forbidding one and his stance was wide-legged and combative.

“I am not being absurd,” she replied evenly. “Stop acting like some overprotective
big brother.”

“Oh, I can assure you,” he said in a low velvety voice that was all the more unnerving for its softness, “my emotions right now are far from brotherly.”

She swallowed, refusing to be intimidated. “If you would remind yourself that we have a goal to accomplish, this would be a great deal easier on all of us.”

“No,” he said roughly. “There is no way this could be easy. There is no way this is going to be anything but ridiculous. A harebrained scheme bred of one feverish mind and one romantic imagination. I leave it to you to claim whichever role you deem best suits you and leave the other to Mrs. Mulgrew.”

“You cannot really accuse me of being a romantic?” Charlotte asked in quelling tones.

“I wouldn’t have said so yesterday, but your present intentions leave little room for any other interpretation. You have decided to be a heroine.”

“Not I,” Charlotte said tightly. “Fate.”

“Fate or Mrs. Mulgrew?” Dand asked suspiciously. “Where
is
the accident-prone Mrs. Mulgrew, by the way?”

She shook her head in bemusement. “It is a source of continuing amazement to me that you were raised amongst a Benedictine order of monks, an order known for their hospitality and sympathetic treatment of the ill and injured.”

“I slept through the lessons on charity. Now. Again. Where is she?”

“If you must know, she is upstairs in bed.” She braced herself. One…two…

“Dear God!” He closed his eyes, struggling to marshal the expletive she could almost see forming on his lips. Though why he should bother now, when he’d already treated her to an impressive inventory of profanity, she could not think.

“Tell me, Lottie,” he said through barely moving lips, “did the notion of living as a social outcast just one day seem so appealing you could not conceive of any other lifestyle? Or was the decay of your reasoning a slower process?”

She carefully placed the embroidery hoop beside her. “You don’t have to be insulting.”

“Yes. I do. Especially when faced with such wrong-headedness, errant self-destructiveness!” he shouted.

“Stop bellowing. The servants will hear. Ginny is here because the accident caused her leg to be fractured in several places,” she explained, waiting for him to show some sign of remorse for his lack of sympathy. There was none. She tried again.

“She may well never walk properly again. If she survives at all, that is.” Not a flicker of compassion. “She is in
extreme
discomfort. The doctor has dosed her with something to alleviate the pain, but she is unable to care for herself.
That
is why she is here.”

“That
is why one has servants.”

“No,” she stated succinctly. “That is why one has friends. And I do count Ginny as a friend. As well as an associate. As should you.”

“I neither know nor do I trust Mrs. Mulgrew. She and I work for different masters. It is a rare person who can serve two.” He paused for a telling second. “Which means, I suppose, I must compliment you on your talents in this area.”

She smiled sweetly. “You can’t shame me into doing what you want, Dand. Or giving up what I want.”

“Damn it!”

“Now, then,” she went on calmly, “I suggest we discuss our current situation and how we can salvage the original plan to reacquire that letter.”

“My God,” he muttered to himself, a study in frustration as he raked his hair back with his hands. “She can’t even say the word ‘steal’ and yet she is determined to—no.” He shook his head, glaring at her. “No.”

“Yes,” she stated just as firmly. “And would you
please
have a seat?”

He glared harder. She leaned forward, her voice softening. “Please, Dand. Sit. We can discuss this rationally, calmly. I am not a fool. You have never treated me as one before.”

“You have never acted like one before.”

She sank back in her seat, her hand moving dismissively toward him. “Fine. Rant,” she said in the tone of a governess exhausted by her charge’s temper tantrum. “When you are done, we will discuss this.”

He stared at her, outmaneuvered by her patronization. “Suit yourself,” he capitulated gracelessly and flung himself down in the wicker chair beside her. “Speak.”

Oh, she hated him in this mood: imperious, superior, unapproachable. But she needed him.
They
needed him. Their plan hinged on acquiring his aid.

She edged forward off the chair, dropping lightly to her knees on the thick, lush grass before him. He looked down at her with a flicker of surprise. Resolutely, she covered his hands with hers and at once felt the restrained tension in them.

His fingerpads were callused and rough, but fine, gilt-tipped hairs lightly covered the backs of his wrists and fingers. The men of her acquaintance had naked hands, white as tallow and as soft. Not Dand Ross. His hands were strong, lean, and intensely masculine. Everything about him was virile and aggressively male. Male, she reminded herself. And in the art of making males do what she wanted them to do, she was an acknowledged expert.

“Dand,” she said quietly, “you know better than I what is at stake.”

His lip lifted in a sneer and he turned his hand over, grabbing her wrist and yanking her forward so that she fell against his lap. Startled, she looked up. His gaze burned down at her.
“Don’t.
Do
not
try your lady wiles on me.” His voice was tight with warning. “I’m not a gentleman. I won’t react the way a gentleman would.”

She pulled back, but rather than let her go, he hauled her to her feet, only releasing her when she was upright. She backed away uncertainly as if faced with a pet hound that had suddenly bared his teeth at her. Twice now he’d frightened her with unexpected reactions. She’d thought she knew him. She might be very, very wrong.

Abruptly, the anger left his gaze, leaving only frustration. “There is another way. There must be some other means of getting into the castle,” he muttered.

And suddenly, the sting of tears started in her eyes, and she was angry. Angry at the situation, angry at the damn carriage, angry at Dand for having the effrontery to argue with her when she was willing to do this.

It wasn’t what she would have chosen for herself. How dare he treat her as though she had given no more deliberation to this than she would to which gown to wear? My God, he acted as though she was going into this with reckless abandon, like she thought it was some sort of lark. She tugged her hands from his clasp and stood up, eyes flashing.

“What then?” she demanded.

“I haven’t thought of it yet. But I will.”

“Lovely,” she clipped out. “But, for the nonce, until your formidable intellect has devised a better solution, what say we implement the one plan we
do
have? Which means that St. Lyon needs to invite
me
to his castle in Ginny’s stead.”

“Why should he do that?” He met her sharp tone. “I know. Perhaps you can take out an advert in the
Times
declaring that you are currently taking applications for the position of your protector and offer a special rate to St. Lyon?”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

“Loath though I am to offend your delicate sensibilities, may I point out that being a Cyprian
is
vulgar?” he ground out.

“This isn’t solving anything. I am fully aware it will not be an easy pretense to pull off,” she allowed, moving cautiously toward the point of this interview, “but we’ve devised a stratagem.”

“I am beyond eager to hear it.”

She ignored him. “Early tomorrow St. Lyon leaves for his castle, there to await his guests who, coming as they are from many different places, shall be arriving in trickles over the next month. St. Lyon will be bored, restless. A week or so hence Ginny shall write to him and offer him my company in her place.”

“And you do not think St. Lyon will find it odd that you are suddenly being offered to him like a basket of apples?” he asked with heavy sarcasm. “Besides, aside from the obvious absurdity of anyone thinking you would suddenly embark on a career as a courtesan, I wouldn’t mark St. Lyon as the sort of man who allows another to pick his mistresses for him.

“And even if he did, a man in St. Lyon’s situation must ask himself why his would-be mistress would offer a substitute when by doing so she is robbing herself of a potentially wealthy protector.”

Charlotte took a deep breath. He would not like the solutions she had to his objections. “The problem of why Ginny would offer a substitute is not as great a difficulty as you would suspect,” she said. “Apparently becoming a procuress is the next obvious step in the career path Ginny has chosen.” Her attempt at drollery was lost on him. His agate colored eyes, once so warm, were now flat and cold as river stones.

She attempted a smile. “St. Lyon will accept me as a substitute because…because he has…shown some interest in me in the past.”

She’d been wrong. He hadn’t used up his vocabulary of descriptive expletives. At least she assumed they were expletives from the tone in which he delivered them. Abruptly he surged to his feet, startling her so much that she scrambled back.