With This Kiss: Part Three (4 page)
He didn’t say anything, just nodded, but his voice lost a bit of its impassiveness. Her letter had been one sheet; his was five sheets.
The next day he worked with Daedalus all morning and then, in the afternoon, he wrote a letter to Mr. Heath’s wife and children. After that, he found Grace’s next letter, and answered it. His was more than eight pages long, and much of it was difficult to hear. Grace cried, because Colin did not (but should, in her opinion).
The next night he did, though. Just a tear, but she thought it was a priceless tear. He told her, in that letter, what it was like to kill someone. The man had jerked upward as the bullet hit him, and then collapsed, falling to the ground, one leg twisted underneath him, staring at the sky. He had written about what it was like to know that someone—some mother’s son, no matter how despicable—was dead by your own hand.
And he wrote about the ordinary moments when he would think he saw the man walking across the deck, shoulders hunched, walking somewhere fast, as if he had a place to be. A person to meet.
That night Colin didn’t dream of blood.
A fortnight or so later, Grace woke in the night and propped herself on an elbow, looking at Colin’s face by moonlight. It was shadowed and hollowed by all that had happened to him.
As she watched, a smile shaped his lips. “Come here,” he murmured, pulling her down onto his chest.
The letters were helping, and so was she; she knew that truth deep in her bones. Death stood on one side, and she on the other. Every time they made love, every morning he spent taming Daedalus, every afternoon he spent writing, every evening when he read aloud another letter, every time he teased her or asked her a question about one of her paintings, she dragged him farther onto her side.
The side with life in it, not death.
She came out of that kiss a little breathless. Sometimes they just looked at each other and that was all it took. He would roll on top of her.
This night they didn’t say a word, and yet he didn’t tuck her underneath him. Instead, he lifted her so that she was poised above him. She fumbled, learning this new way of making love, thinking about the fact that he was not protecting her. Not afraid for her.
Colin thought about the same thing, though neither felt the need to say it aloud. He felt free to allow the person he loved most in the world to sit on him, pale, lovely breasts glazed by moonlight, her head thrown back.
He wasn’t afraid.
Grace was his, and life was good.
And he wasn’t afraid.
Ten years later
Arbor House
B
y late summer, Portia was almost nine and the rest of them were a little or a lot younger. There were many children, a whole tribe of them. That’s what their mamas called them. A pack of wolves, their papas said.
That August they rocketed about Arbor House, all the children whose grandfathers had been pirates, though Portia felt that
she
was the most important. Both of her grandfathers had been pirates, and her papa had also been a fierce sea captain. What’s more, she was the oldest of all of them.
She had the sea in her blood, and sometimes, if she lay very still at night, with one ear pressed into her mattress, she could even hear the sound of waves.
If that wasn’t the sign that the sea was in her blood, what could it be?
But now August was coming to an end, and pretty soon everyone would have to go back to their homes because no one lived at Arbor House, except in the summer. Mama said (and Grandmother agreed) that the house had grown old from being battered by too many children.
Portia loved Arbor House with a passion, and she meant to live there when she grew older. The back garden was full of half-wild barn cats, and there were nettles in the fields that smelled like black currants. Her mother spent her days painting by the lake instead of tucked away in her studio.
And her papa was always there, too. This summer he had taught her how to shoot a bow and arrow, and how to tie a slipknot. She didn’t really want to live on a boat, but those skills would be useful in case she ever capsized at sea and landed on a desert island. Portia liked to plan ahead. Her mother said that she inherited that from her grandmother, the duchess.
This particular afternoon Portia had organized her troupe of eight—all the children who had learned to speak—to put on a play she had written herself. It was a very patriotic play, in which the queen (played by Portia) would quell the rascally pirates (played by the boys), with the help of her sister, who happened to be her twin. Twin or not, Portia was eleven minutes older than Emily, and liked to think that those eleven minutes were very important.
All the parents had gathered in the courtyard, ready to watch the play. Four mamas sat together, laughing, wearing gowns of strawberry pink and pale green. Portia’s papa was leaning against the wall, talking to his father, who used to be a pirate, but was now an earl. There was a lot of champagne being poured.
She clapped her hands, but she couldn’t get her audience to settle down until her father finally barked at them.
The play opened with Edmond, who, at two and a half years old, was as fat as a pigeon, and had rather a waddle. Portia knew it was just his nappy, but even so, she was glad that he was her cousin and not her brother. Edmond was supposed to start the rebellion by shooting an arrow at the queen, but of course they couldn’t give him a real weapon. So he ended up throwing a twig in the air, then picking it up and giving it to his mother.
Portia had to explain what had just happened—an assassination attempt followed an attack on Her Majesty’s Royal Navy (the entire fleet ably represented by Emily). It wasn’t easy to be a playwright when her actors couldn’t remember their lines or shoot arrows properly. She had grown used to narrating the story, because her audience was often unable to follow.
By the time she got around to explaining the middle of the play, her father had moved from where he was leaning against the wall and scooped up her mother. She was sitting on his lap now, leaning against his shoulder.
Her mother and father were mad for each other, which meant they kissed when they thought no one was looking. And if someone caught them, her father would laugh and tell them that his wife had saved his life. Sometimes he was talking about a pitcher of water she threw over his head, and sometimes it had to do with the time Papa was in the navy. The facts were unimportant.
It was just one of those things that papas said.
“Go on,” she told the band of pirates, who were all armed with wooden daggers clenched in their teeth, or at least what teeth they had. Her cousin Cedric was missing almost all of his in front. “It’s your turn. Yell and run about, but don’t forget that when Emily points her rifle at you, you have to fall over and play dead.”
It was a little irritating how long they each took to die, especially Cedric. Finally, she hissed at him until he stopped twitching and she was able to straighten her crown, put her foot on his stomach, and shout, “Huzzah!” while Emily pranced about with her sword in the air.
Everyone clapped in a very satisfactory fashion, even though Emily had forgotten a couple of lines of her victory speech, which made Portia cross. She had written the whole piece in iambic pentameter, which they learned all about in the spring by studying Shakespeare, and that wasn’t easy.
Since she meant to be a writer someday, she knew it was important to master these things. Later that night, in the nursery, she pointed out that Emily could have tried harder.
“You’re a despot,” Emily said, looking up from her book and scowling at her.
“I’m an enlightened despot,” Portia retorted. She had just learned that term, and she rather liked it. “Why do you think that all the fathers fell about laughing when Cedric said he was a warrior?” she asked. “I didn’t think it was so funny.”
“They were drunk, that’s what Nanny said.”
“Papa was not drunk!”
“Not Papa,” Emily said with a shrug. “But the other uncles. And maybe Grandpa, too.”
“Which one?”
“The duke,” Emily said. “He was laughing very hard, and then he gave the duchess a kiss on her ear—I saw him. That’s not the way that dukes are supposed to behave.”
“He never behaves like a duke,” Portia said, dismissing that as evidence. “Look at that portrait Mama made of him—the one in the National Gallery. He looks more like a robber baron than a duke.”
“Do you suppose,” Emily asked, “that they still do…
that
?” She waved her hand.
Portia frowned at her. They had just learned about
that
from the laundry maid, and while it was rather fascinating to contemplate, obviously no one as old as their grandparents did anything of that nature. “Of course not!” she whispered. “Be careful Nanny doesn’t hear you, or we’ll be in trouble.”
“Grandpa looked as if he liked kissing Grandma,” Emily said.
Portia thought about it. The laundry maid had explained about how a husband and wife fit together like puzzle pieces and then kissed, which resulted in children. It seemed rather undignified, and she was pretty sure that their parents had done it only a very few times.
She couldn’t imagine the duke and duchess doing such a thing, though one had to suppose they had when they were young. “Perhaps Grandmama and Grandpa on the other side,” she decided. “Grandpa the earl. They…” She hesitated, not sure how to explain what she meant.
“They like each other quite a lot,” Emily said. “Do you suppose that we’ll do that when we’re as old as they are? Grandpa the duke must be, oh, one hundred years old or even more. Parts of his hair are quite silver.”
“Don’t be silly,” Portia replied. “He told me once that Grandmother
stupefied
him.”
“What does that mean?”
“Makes him go to sleep,” she explained. “You can’t be kissing and so on, if you’re asleep.”
Portia often knew the answers to questions like that, which was proper given that she was oldest. Just now she didn’t want to talk any longer, so she pushed the window in the nursery open and hung over the sill, smelling the country air. Bats were darting about as if they were weaving lace in the sky.
Her father’s favorite horse, Daedalus, had escaped from the stables again and was munching on the grass under the shelter of a willow; he would probably end up sleeping there all night. No one worried about Daedalus running away, because he was old and fat and very sweet. All the children had taken their first ride on his back.
Down by the lake Portia saw the pale green of her mother’s gown. She was with Papa, of course, and as Portia watched, he pulled her into his arms. They must be kissing, though she couldn’t see that far in the hazy light. Their bodies were so close together that they looked like one person. There was something about the way Papa held their mother tightly, as if she were very precious, that made Portia happy down to the bottom of her stomach.
“What’s out there?” Emily said, coming up behind her.
Portia pointed, even though ladies don’t point.
“Ridiculous,” Emily said with a huff of disgust. “That’ll end in another baby, mark my words, Portia.”
And it did.
And if you haven’t read the earlier books in this series,
you’ll love
The Ugly Duchess
and
“Seduced by a Pirate.”
Keep reading for excerpts.
March 18, 1809
45 Berkeley Square
The London residence of the Duke of Ashbrook
“
Y
ou’ll have to marry her. I don’t care if you think of her as a sister: from now on, she’s the Golden Fleece to you.”
James Ryburn, Earl of Islay, and heir to the Duchy of Ashbrook, opened his mouth to say something, but a mixture of fury and disbelief choked the words.
His father turned and walked toward the far wall of the library, acting as if he’d said nothing particularly out of the ordinary. “We need her fortune to repair the Staffordshire estate and pay a few debts, or we’re going to lose it all, this town house included.”
“What have you done?” James spat the words. A terrible feeling of dread was spreading through his limbs.
Ashbrook pivoted. “Don’t you
dare
speak to me in that tone!”
James took a deep breath before answering. One of his resolutions was to master his temper before turning twenty—and that birthday was a mere three weeks away. “Excuse me, Father,” he managed. “Exactly how did the estate come to be in such precarious straits? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I do mind your asking.” The duke stared back at his only son, his long, aquiline nose quivering with anger. James came by his temper naturally: he had inherited it directly from his irascible, reckless father.
“In that case, I will bid you good day,” James said, keeping his tone even.
“Not unless you’re going downstairs to make eyes at that girl. I turned down an offer for her hand this week from Briscott, who’s such a simpleton that I didn’t feel I need tell her mother. But you know damn well her father left the decision over who marries the girl to her mother—”
“I have no knowledge of the contents of Mr. Saxby’s will,” James stated. “And I fail to see why that particular provision should cause you such annoyance.”
“Because we need her damned fortune,” Ashbrook raged, walking to the fireplace and giving the unlit logs a kick. “You must convince Theodora that you’re in love with her, or her mother will never agree to the match. Just last week, Mrs. Saxby inquired about a few of my investments in a manner that I did not appreciate. Doesn’t know a woman’s place.”
“I will do nothing of the sort.”
“You will do exactly as I instruct you.”
“You’re instructing me to woo a young lady whom I’ve been raised to treat as a
sister.
”
“Hogwash! You may have rubbed noses a few times as children, but that shouldn’t stop you from sleeping with her.”
“I cannot.”
For the first time the duke looked a trifle sympathetic. “Theodora is no beauty. But all women are the same in the—”
“Do
not
say that,” James snapped. “I am already appalled; I do not wish to be disgusted as well.”
His father’s eyes narrowed and a rusty color rose in his cheeks, a certain sign of danger. Sure enough, Ashbrook’s voice emerged as a bellow. “I don’t care if the chit is as ugly as sin, you’ll take her. And you’ll make her fall in love with you. Otherwise, you will have no country house to inherit. None!”
“What have you done?”
James repeated through clenched teeth.
“Lost it,” his father shouted back, his eyes bulging a little. “Lost it, and that’s all you need to know!”
“I will not do it.” James stood up.
A china ornament flew past his shoulder and crashed against the wall. James barely flinched. By now he was inured to these violent fits of temper; he had grown up ducking everything from books to marble statues.
“You will, or I’ll bloody well disinherit you and name Pinkler-Ryburn my heir!”
James’s hand dropped and he turned, on the verge of losing his temper. While he’d never had the impulse to throw objects at the wall—or at his family—his ability to fire cutting remarks was equally destructive. He took another deep breath. “While I would hesitate to instruct you on the legal system,
Father,
I can assure you that it is impossible to disinherit a legitimate son.”
“I’ll tell the House of Lords that you’re no child of mine,” the duke bellowed. Veins bulged on his forehead and his cheeks had ripened from red to purple. “I’ll tell ’em that your mother was a light-heeled wench and that I’ve discovered you’re nothing but a bastard.”
At the insult to his mother, James’s fragile control snapped altogether. “You may be a craven, dim-witted gamester, but you will
not
tar my mother with sorry excuses designed to cover up your own idiocy!”
“How dare you!” screamed the duke. His whole face had assumed the color of a cockscomb.
“I say only what every person in this kingdom knows,” James said, the words exploding from his mouth. “You’re an idiot. I have a good idea what happened to the estate; I just wanted to see whether you had the balls to admit it. And you don’t. No surprise there. You mortgaged every piece of non-entailed land attached to the estate, at least those you didn’t sell outright—and pissed all the money away on the Exchange. You invested in one ridiculous scheme after another. The canal you built that wasn’t even a league from another canal? What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“I didn’t know that until it was too late! My associates deceived me. A duke doesn’t go out and inspect the place where a canal is supposed to be built. He has to trust others, and I’ve always had the devil’s own luck.”
“I would have at least visited the proposed canal before I sank thousands of pounds into a waterway with no hope of traffic.”
“You impudent jack-boy! How dare you!” The duke’s hand tightened around a silver candlestick standing on the mantelpiece.
“Throw that, and I’ll leave you in this room to wallow in your own fear. You want me to marry a girl who thinks I’m her brother in order to get her fortune… so that you—
you
—can lose it? Do you know what they call you behind your back, Father? Surely you’ve heard it. The Dam’Fool Duke!”
They were both breathing heavily, but his father was puffing like a bull, the purple stain on his cheeks vivid against his white neck cloth.
The duke’s fingers flexed once again around the piece of silver.
“Throw that candlestick and I’ll throw you across the room,” James said, adding, “Your Grace.”
The duke’s hand fell to his side and he turned his shoulder away, staring at the far wall. “And what if I lost it?” he muttered, belligerence underscoring his confession. “The fact is that I did lose it. I lost it all. The canal was one thing, but I thought the vineyards were a sure thing. How could I possibly guess that England is a breeding ground for black rot?”
“You imbecile!” James spat and turned on his heel to go.
“The Staffordshire estate’s been in our family for six generations. You must save it. Your mother would have been devastated to see the estate sold. And what of her grave… have you thought of that? The graveyard adjoins the chapel, you know.”
James’s heart was beating savagely in his throat. It took him a moment to come up with a response that didn’t include curling his hands around his father’s neck. “That is low, even from you,” he said finally.
The duke paid no heed to his rejoinder. “Are you going to allow your mother’s corpse to be sold?”
“I will consider wooing some other heiress,” James said finally. “But I will not marry Daisy.” Theodora Saxby—known to James alone as Daisy—was his dearest friend, his childhood companion. “She deserves better than me, better than anyone from this benighted family.”
There was silence behind him. A terrible, warped silence that… James turned. “You didn’t. Even you…
couldn’t.
”
“I thought I would be able to replace it in a matter of weeks,” his father said, the color leaving his cheeks suddenly so that he looked positively used up.
James’s legs felt so weak that he had to lean against the door. “How much of her fortune is gone?”
“Enough.” Ashbrook dropped his eyes, at last showing some sign of shame. “If she marries anyone else, I’ll… I’ll face trial. I don’t know if they can put dukes in the dock. The House of Lords, I suppose. But it won’t be pretty.”
“Oh, they can put dukes on trial, all right,” James said heavily. “You embezzled the dowry of a girl entrusted to your care since the time she was a mere infant. Her mother was married to your dearest friend. Saxby asked you
on his deathbed
to care for his daughter.”
“And I did,” her father replied, but without his usual bluster. “Brought her up as my own.”
“You brought her up as my sister,” James said flatly. He forced himself to cross the room and sit down. “And all the time you were stealing from her.”
“Not all the time,” his father protested. “Just in the last year. Or so. The majority of her fortune is in funds, and I couldn’t touch that. I just… I just borrowed from… well, I just borrowed some. I’m deuced unlucky, and that’s a fact. I was absolutely sure it wouldn’t come to this.”
“Unlucky?”
James repeated, his voice liquid with disgust.
“Now the girl is getting a proposal or two, I don’t have the time to make it up. You’ve got to take her. It’s not just that the estate and this town house will have to go; after the scandal, the name won’t be worth anything, either. Even if I pay off what I borrowed from her by selling the estate, the whole wouldn’t cover my debts.”
James didn’t reply. The only words going through his head were flatly blasphemous.
“It was easier when your mother was alive,” the duke said, after a minute or two. “She helped, you know. She had a level head on her shoulders.”
James couldn’t bring himself to answer that, either. His mother had died nine years earlier, so in under a decade his father had managed to impoverish an estate stretching from Scotland to Staffordshire to London. And he had embezzled Daisy’s fortune.
“You’ll make her love you,” his father said encouragingly, dropping into a chair opposite James. “She already adores you; she always has. We’ve been lucky so far in that poor Theodora is as ugly as a stick. The only men who’ve asked for her hand have been such obvious fortune hunters that her mother wouldn’t even consider them. But that’ll change as the season wears on. She’s a taking little piece, once you get to know her.”
James ground his teeth. “She will never love me in that way. She thinks of me as her brother, as her friend. And she has no resemblance whatsoever to a
stick.
”
“Don’t be a fool. You’ve got my profile.” A glimmer of vanity underscored his words. “Your mother always said that I was the most handsome man of my generation.”
James bit back a remark that would do nothing to help the situation. He was experiencing an overwhelming wave of nausea. “We could tell Daisy what happened. What you did. She’ll understand.”
His father snorted. “Do you think her mother will understand? My old friend Saxby didn’t know what he was getting into when he married that woman. She’s a termagant, a positive tartar.”
In the seventeen years since Mrs. Saxby and her infant daughter had joined the duke’s household, she and Ashbrook had managed to maintain sufficiently cordial relations—primarily because His Grace had never thrown anything in the widow’s direction. But James knew instantly that his father was right. If Daisy’s mother got even a hint that her daughter’s guardian had misappropriated her inheritance, a fleet of solicitors would be battering on the town house door before evening fell. Bile drove James’s stomach into his throat at the thought.
His father, on the other hand, was cheering up. He had the sort of mind that flitted from one subject to another; his rages were ferocious but short-lived. “A few posies, maybe a poem, and Theodora will fall into your hand as sweetly as a ripe plum. After all, it’s not as if the girl gets much flattery. Tell her she’s beautiful, and she’ll be at your feet.”
“I cannot do that,” James stated, not even bothering to imagine himself saying such a thing. It wasn’t a matter of not wishing to spout such inanities to Daisy herself; he loathed situations where he found himself fumbling with language and stumbling around the ballroom. The season was three weeks old, but he hadn’t attended a single ball.
His father misinterpreted his refusal. “Of course, you’ll have to lie about it, but that’s the kind of lie a gentleman can’t avoid. She may not be the prettiest girl on the market—and certainly not as delectable as that opera dancer I saw you with the other night—but it wouldn’t get you anywhere to point out the truth.” He actually gave a little chuckle at the thought.
James heard him only dimly; he was concentrating on not throwing up as he tried to think through the dilemma before him.
The duke continued, amusing himself by laying out the distinction between mistresses and wives. “In compensation, you can keep a mistress who’s twice as beautiful as your wife. It’ll provide an interesting contrast.”
It occurred to James, not for the first time, that there was no human being in the world he loathed as much as his father. “If I marry Daisy, I will not take a mistress,” he said, still thinking frantically, trying to come up with a way out. “I would never do that to her.”
“Well, I expect you’ll change your mind about that after a few years of marriage, but to each his own.” The duke’s voice was as strong and cheerful as ever. “Well? Not much to think about, is there? It’s bad luck and all that rot, but I can’t see that either of us has much choice about it. The good thing is that a man can always perform in the bedroom, even if he doesn’t want to.”
The only thing James wanted at that moment was to get out of the room, away from his disgusting excuse for a parent. But he had lost the battle, and he forced himself to lay out the rules for surrender. “I will only do this on one condition.” His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears, as if a stranger spoke the words.
“Anything, my boy, anything! I know I’m asking for a sacrifice. As I said, we can admit amongst ourselves that little Theodora is not the beauty of the bunch.”
“The day I marry her, you sign the entire estate over to me—the Staffordshire house and its lands, this town house, the island in Scotland.”
