Secrets of a Proper Countess (32 page)

I
sobel marveled that the sea glittered placidly in the moonlight as if nothing at all had happened that day.

Phineas stood close behind her on the deck of the
Lady Marianne,
his hands on her waist, protecting her now from nothing more sinister than the cold sea wind, but she leaned into him, not wanting to be anywhere else.

Four strong men lifted Adam aboard, and Marianne hovered anxiously, issuing orders like a bosun.

Mr. Gibbs had the true Earl of Ashdown at last, fast asleep on his shoulder, and Charles had been sent to London in the custody of His Majesty's Guards, who arrived after the shooting stopped and everyone was safe.

“Evening, Captain,” the real bosun greeted Adam as the sailors set him carefully on the deck. His leg was wrapped in frilly strips of Marianne's petticoat. The wind blew her thin muslin skirt against her legs, and her husband scowled as his sailors gaped at the fetching sight.

“Fetch my wife a cloak, Mr. Jessop, and make your report, if you please,” Adam growled at the bosun.

“Surely that can wait,” Marianne fussed. “Get the surgeon, Mr. Jessop. His lordship is hurt.”

“So is Blackwood, but I'll hear the report first if you please, wife. I am still master aboard this ship, despite her name.”

Isobel glanced at Phineas in concern, but he shrugged off
the bullet wound in his shoulder with a devil-may-care smirk that quickly became a wince.

Marianne folded her arms over her chest and frowned. “You have two minutes, Adam.”

The bosun spoke quickly. “Lord Renshaw's ship has sailed, my lord. We considered giving chase, but our orders were to stand to and wait for you. A boat came from the shore, loaded up, and they weighed anchor with full sail.”

Phineas looked at Adam. “Despite being wounded, Renshaw got away. No one saw him go. I assume he used one of those tunnels you mentioned.”

Poor Evelyn, Isobel thought. She would be forever branded as a traitor's wife.

“Oh, and sir?” The bosun actually blushed. “The lads found this in the stable near the house. They brought it just in case it belonged to—” He cast a sweet-eyed look at Marianne.

Isobel gasped. He was holding a silk nightgown, pink with red ribbons. With a cry, she grabbed the lacy garment.

“That's mine! However did it—” She glanced at the grinning sailors and crumpled it behind her back, feeling her face heat. She looked at Phineas. He gave her his most charming rogue's grin, and her heart tripped over itself and tumbled.

“I believe I'll let you handle that question, Blackwood,” Adam said, and turned back to the bosun. “If that's all, Jessop, fetch the surgeon and make ready to sail.”

“For Westlake, sir?”

Adam sighed. “For London first. There's business to see to before we go home.”

 

Phineas lay on the bunk with Isobel beside him. The surgeon had dosed him with rum, stitched and bandaged his wounds, and he was feeling drunk and sleepy. Every inch of his body ached, but Isobel was in his arms, and she was kissing him, sliding her delicious body against his.

“You came for me,” she murmured yet again.

“Isobel, stop kissing me,” he begged. “It hurts.”

“Oh.” She pulled back, but he dragged her close again. Having her more than a few inches away was as unbearable as the pain.

“Well, perhaps kiss me here,” he said, indicating his chin, one of the few unbattered parts of his anatomy. She leaned over him, her hair brushing his chest, her mouth gentle.

“And here?” she asked, letting her lips trail over his jaw, down his neck.

“Mmm,” he growled. Her breasts pressed deliciously against his side.

“And here?” She nipped at his flat nipple.

Desire stirred, rose, became urgent.

“Isobel,” he murmured, reaching for her. “I love you.”

“I know,” she said. “You came for me, for Robin.”

“We need to talk.”

“We've never been very good at talking.” She slid her hand over every uninjured place she could find, making him wild. She was distracting him again, driving every rational thought out of his head.

He caught her roving fingers, kissed them. “Why is it that every time I want to discuss something serious with you, I forget what I want to say the instant I touch you?”

She smiled wickedly. “I don't have that problem.”

He groaned. “There goes my reputation as a lover.”

She gave him a slow, seductive vixen's grin that raised his lust and tied his tongue in a knot. He pulled her on top of him on the impossibly narrow bunk.

“Once we're married, I'm going to buy the biggest, softest bed in England, and I'm never going to let you out of it,” he said as she settled onto the part of him that ached most, and all for her. Her eyes closed in rapture. She moved carefully, gingerly, trying to be gentle.

“What did you say?” she murmured, obviously beyond caring.

“You're going to marry me.” He thrust into her, hard, showing her he didn't want her to be careful. He wanted all of her.

“Yes!” she screamed, and as he tumbled over the edge of his own forceful climax, he wondered if he was that good, or if she had accepted his proposal at last.

 

Isobel slipped back into the cabin and shut the door. It was still dark, and the ship rocked gently on the waves. Phineas stirred and opened his eyes. “I went to check on Robin,” she explained. “He's fast asleep in Jamie's cabin.”

“Come back to bed,” he said, lifting the covers, and she curled in beside him. “Yasmina,” he sighed.

She stiffened in his arms. “I'm just plain Isobel.”

He tightened his hold on her. “You've never been plain anything. You're the most incredible woman I've ever met.”

“I'm Robin's mother, Phineas. He needs me.”

She lowered her eyes so he wouldn't see her fear. He stroked her cheek. “Robin's a fine lad. I hope he'll be my son too. I'd like to give him brothers and sisters.”

She felt something wonderful bloom in her chest. “You truly want to marry me?” she asked. “Not Lady Amelia?”

“She wouldn't suit me. Too plain.”

He looked at her with so much love it made her throat ache, and she felt beautiful, and loved, for the first time in her life. She wrapped her arms around him, but he held her off.

“Wait, sweetheart. I have something for you,” he said.

“Can't it wait?” she asked.

“You need to see it now.” He pointed at his ruined coat, hanging on a hook by the door. She crossed to fetch it. The garment was stiff with dried blood, and she wrinkled her nose as she handed it to him. He fished out a packet of papers and held them out to her.

“What's this? A special license to have the bosun marry us?” she asked.

“That can wait until tomorrow. Read it.” His gray eyes were sober, his emotions shuttered.

She unfolded the two legal documents and scanned them. Her limbs grew heavy with shock, then hot with fury. She spread the pages out on the table, comparing them. She was muttering by the time she was halfway through, yelling by the time she'd finished.

Jessop knocked anxiously at the door, and she told him to go away. She tried to pace, but the tiny cabin wouldn't allow it.

“Isobel?” Phineas said gently.

Livid with rage, she turned to look at him, stabbing the crumpled pages with her finger.

“There are two wills here, Phineas! Honoria forged Robert's will!”

“I know,” he said.

“Robert never wanted her to have custody of Robin. She took it. She took my dowry, my estates,
my freedom
!”

“What do you want to do, Isobel? Do you want that freedom now?”

She looked at his face, so carefully expressionless under the cuts and bruises, waiting for her answer. He'd let her go if that's what she wanted. He loved her that much. Her happiness mattered more to him than his own.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand.

“I want to be happy, Phineas, I want to marry you, have more children, grow old with you. I love you. What do you think of that?”

He held out his arms to her, relief clear in his eyes. “I think it's the best revenge in the world.”

P
hineas stood in front of Carrington's desk with his hands behind his back like a schoolboy. Actually, it was
his
desk, and
his
study, but he wasn't going to quibble about details today. Carrington was glaring at him, waving a letter.

“Do you know what this is, Blackwood?” he demanded.

“No, Your Grace,” Phineas said.

“It's a note from Welford. He wanted me to be the first to know that Lady Amelia is betrothed to Colonel Lord Hollister. The wedding will take place at St. George's church on the twenty-second of next month. What do you say to that?”

“I wish them both well,” Phineas answered. Everyone should be as happy as he was. “I have news of my own, sir—”

But Carrington wasn't through. “If that's not bad enough, a young gentleman came to see me yesterday about Miranda. A fellow named Fiddler or Fisher or something.”

“Fielding, Your Grace,” Phineas supplied. Good for Gilbert. He might have made a good soldier after all, if he had the courage to face Carrington.

“His name hardly matters, since he hasn't got a title or so much as a farthing attached to it.”

“Does he love Miranda?” Phineas asked.

Carrington frowned. “Yes, damn it! And Miranda says she loves him and will have no other. I shall have to permit the match.”

Phineas hid a smile. He'd give Miranda an estate as a wedding present, and a whole stable full of pretty horses.

“And just this morning, Marianne announced she's expecting again,” Carrington ranted on. “Can this day get any worse?”

Phineas cleared his throat. “I'm afraid so, Your Grace.”

The old man looked at him in disbelief, his white brows crumpling together over his sharp eyes, his face reddening. He crushed Welford's letter in his fist.

“What have you done now, Blackwood? I swear I will leave everything that isn't entailed to young Jamie this time.”

“I've taken a wife, Your Grace.”

“Whose wife?” Carrington demanded.

“My own,” Phineas said. Repeatedly. In lace, in silk, and stark naked. In a real bed. In fact, it had taken him three days to drag himself out of his marriage bed and come to see his grandfather. He grinned at the old man's stunned expression and crossed to open the door. Isobel entered and curtsied to the duke.

His wife looked particularly pretty today, wearing pink from head to toe, with a saucy feather in her ridiculously fashionable hat, pretty red curls framing her glowing cheeks.

“Hello,” Carrington said, his eyes widening at her beauty. “Have we met, my dear?”

“May I present my wife, the Marchioness of Blackwood and the Countess of Ashdown, Lady Isobel Archer?” Phineas said proudly, and Isobel held out her gloved hand.

“Ashdown?” Carrington murmured, frowning again. “Ashdown? As in Maitland? Isn't Charles Maitland under arrest for treason?”

“He is, Your Grace,” Isobel said lightly.

“And Lady Honoria Maitland was recently killed in a carriage accident, wasn't she?”

Isobel sobered. “Correct again, sir.”

“And wasn't your mother…”

Isobel raised her chin and met the old man's eyes. “Lady Charlotte Fraser.”

Phineas tensed, ready to grab Isobel's hand and get her out of harm's way if Carrington exploded.

“Charlotte Fraser was the prettiest woman in England,” Carrington said at last, his eyes softening with memory. “I was a little in love with her myself. I can see where you get your extraordinary beauty, my dear.”

He looked at his grandson, and for the first time in his life, Phineas read approval in his grandfather's eyes.

Phineas touched a hand to his pocket, checking for the letter of resignation he'd written to Adam. Westlake House was their next stop. He bowed to Carrington, who was staring besottedly at Isobel.

The rake was gone. So was Yasmina. There was no more need for subterfuge or masks. Phineas and Isobel had found home at last. It wasn't an estate by the sea or a fashionable town house in London. They lived in each other, and in those they loved, and that was a grander home than the finest palace on earth.