Читать книгу A Gentleman 'Til Midnight - Alison DeLaine - Страница 14

CHAPTER EIGHT

HENRY’S CROSS WRECKED.

Nicholas Warre, Lord Taggart, stared numbly at the printed words. A fire crackled in the fireplace, but a chill shivered across his skin.

All hands lost...

The news screamed at him from the paper. He’d stared at it all afternoon. He’d stared until a cavern of emptiness hollowed out his body and sucked his mind dry.

First Robert, now James. His only brothers, dead.

Nick felt dead, too.

He leaned over James’s desk—his desk, now, though he didn’t deserve it—and cradled his head in his hands, fighting to breathe through a throat that felt swollen shut. Images darted through his mind—dark imaginings too easy to conjure of gigantic waves, splintering wood and the screams of drowning men. He squeezed his eyes shut, then pushed back suddenly from the desk, springing to his feet, turning toward the fire.

Bates’s knock sounded at the door.

Nick stared into the flames. “Come in,” he said woodenly.

“Lady Ramsey has arrived, your lordship.”

“Send her in.”

The rustle of yards of fabric and lace preceded Honoria into the study. “Snuffboxes, Nicholas!” his sister declared as she entered the room. “They’re hawking snuffboxes with his likeness on the lid!”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He gripped the mantel and dropped his head to his forearm. There would be no such thing as a private mourning.

“Is there nothing we can do to preserve the family’s dignity?”

“I’m little match for the adoration of the masses,” Nick said.

“A pox on the masses! James hates snuff.” Her skirts swooshed as she walked up behind him. He felt his sister’s hand on his back, smelled her familiar perfume. “La, Nicholas,” she whispered. “I don’t know how I can survive it.”

He wanted to turn into her arms, but if he did, despair would open a chasm inside him and he would be lost. He returned to the desk instead. “Been all day with Fortescue,” he said. “Nothing’s changed. Not one damned thing.”

She followed him to the desk, all powder and jewels and black lace. Modest, by Honoria’s standards. Grief had dampened her usual high spirits and killed her quick laugh. “I keep having to remind myself it’s really true,” she said quietly. “With him at sea nearly all of the time, everything seems so...usual.”

It did. But it shouldn’t. They’d all been so close, once— God, it had been ages ago. He, James, Robert, riding hell-bent through the countryside, staging mock battles on the lawn, enraging Honoria with their merciless teasing.

Two brothers dead, and they’d all grown so far apart it was as if nothing had changed. “It’s very hard terms for a title,” he spat.

Honoria reached across the desk and took his hand. “Tell me Fortescue had a solution for your problem, at least.”

“Oh, certainly. It’s not as though there isn’t a solution. But I can’t burden the Croston estate with my debts.”

“It’s your estate now. You can do with it as you wish.”

“Indeed. Just as I’ve done with Taggart.” His own barony sat mortgaged to the tune of over forty thousand pounds—an act of desperation as one after another of his shipping investments met with disaster, and that would have been worse were it not for insurance, but that hardly made a difference now. He’d become Bertrand Holliswell’s puppet, and the fact of it made him sick.

“Tempests are not your fault,” Honoria said sternly. “Nor pirates, nor any of the other disasters that befell your ships. La, Nicholas, will you blame yourself next for—” She broke off abruptly.

James’s death. That’s what she’d been about to say. No, at least he was not to blame for that.

He exhaled and looked at the papers on the desk as though they held some kind of answer. “I’ve got to get that bill through, but it looks like the bloody thing has been put off indefinitely.”

“For heaven’s sake, I cannot abide the idea that you’re willing to throw that poor girl to the dogs to satisfy a debt that could be paid with the stroke of a pen.”

“Poor girl?” He stared at her in disbelief. “The woman is practically a pirate.”

“Don’t you remember her at that garden party at Lolly’s, pining after McCutcheon like a lost puppy? No, of course you wouldn’t. Such a spectacle, but then, we were young. We all gave our hearts recklessly at that age.” Honoria sighed. “Poor thing.”

“Poor thing?” Incredulous, Nick put his hands on the desk. “She took a corsair prize!”

“Defending the Barbary reign of terror, brother dear?” She arched a brow at him. “She freed twenty English captives, which is a good deal more exciting than anything I’ve done this season.”

“Will you join your dear friend Lady Pennington aboard that pirate ship? Oh, yes, I can just imagine you with a mop in those dainty hands, swabbing decks.”

“I highly doubt Philomena is swabbing decks. And it is not a pirate ship. The last letter I had from her told of glorious adventure—which, though I’m not well-versed in the law, I know to be perfectly legal.” Her green eyes turned worried. “I only hope the tempest that caught our James did not find them, as well.” She pried one of Nick’s hands off the desk and held it in her own, and he felt like a cad for picking a fight with her—the only sibling he had left. “When the only person standing with you is Yost,” she said, “it’s a good sign you’re going the wrong direction.”

“They’ll come around.”

“Lord Dunscore was well loved.”

He didn’t need her to tell him that. He pulled his hand free and paced back to the fire. “I think he even befriended the parliamentary rats with stray crumbs,” he said in disgust. The terrible thing was Nick had liked him, too. Always ready with a laugh, always up for a night of drink and debauchery, always offering use of his horses, carriage, houses—the man would have done anything for anybody. Poor fellow had tried like hell to ransom his daughter out of Morocco after her capture, but the dey had given her as a gift to a cousin in Algiers who had not been interested in ransom money. It was only when a handful of captives she’d rescued had come home with their tale of a Scottish virago sea captain that anyone knew she had escaped captivity. Lord Dunscore had disappeared up north for months drowning his sorrows. “She broke his heart not coming home,” Nick added.

“But he didn’t disinherit her.”

“In England she never would have inherited in the first place.”

“Be that as it may, the estate is in Scotland, and harridan though she may be, she has inherited. As a matter of principle, it’s not the House of Lords’ place to interfere.”

The irony of Honoria calling someone else a harridan was almost too much. “This has nothing to do with principle. Only with satisfying Holliswell.”

“And marrying his daughter, although you already know my opinion on that.”

“Yes. And I’ll thank you not to repeat it.” It wasn’t enough that Holliswell held Nick’s debt. Holliswell’s daughter held his heart. The moment Nick had set eyes on her, it was clear that the lovely, gentle Clarissa Holliswell was a helpless pawn in Holliswell’s lustful quest for connections. Holliswell wanted the Dunscore title for himself, yes—but failing that, he’d made it clear he would marry Clarissa to even the oldest, most licentious beard splitter in England if the man had the right title.

Baron, Nick had already discovered, was not the right title.

“If this business is keeping you from happiness,” she said, “it has everything to do with principle.”

Dear Honoria, loyal to a fault and impervious to shortcomings. He smiled a little, only to have the rudimentary curve shrivel on his lips. Happiness. It was a ravenous beast, insatiable, incapable of satisfaction no matter how much one fed it.

“Just use the money from the Croston estate,” she said sadly. “The title belongs to you now, and it’s what James would have wanted.”

It was out of the question. “I incurred this debt of my own doing, and I shall discharge it the same way.” Once this bill passed, it was all but certain the Dunscore estate and title would be settled on Holliswell. And once Holliswell became the Earl of Dunscore, he would forgive Nick’s debt and bless his union with Clarissa.

Or so Nick hoped.

* * *

WHATEVER JAMES MIGHT have wanted, what he’d received was a demotion of monumental proportions.

Deep in the hold, he pushed the end of a broom into the crevice between a stack of crates and raked out a wad of rats’ nests. Five days of emptying slop buckets, carrying water, cutting biscuits, swabbing decks—it should have made him furious. He tried for something like outrage when he shoved the next handful of disgusting mess into the bucket, but all he did was scrape his knuckles against the wood.

He yanked his hand away with a hiss.

That he couldn’t work up a good fury over something like this was proof he wasn’t himself. Perhaps he was ill. But then, he’d been wondering that for months now with no sign of physical manifestation. His ship’s surgeon—God rest his soul—had suggested malaise. If nothing else, all this work had him sleeping like a babe in that creaking, knotty hammock he’d been relegated to. But his joints ached like the devil.

The menial tasks, of course, were punishment for being “practically of one mind” with the supposedly ruthless Captain Warre, whose merciless brother threatened her family estate. But poor Lieutenant Barclay wasn’t being punished for Nick’s sins, that much was clear. He was being punished for Captain Warre’s.

Wouldn’t she be disappointed to know that the impassioned naval captain for whom she cherished such a special hatred had been dead for at least a year, perhaps two. The tenacious, single-minded man he used to be had gone missing as completely as the bodies of the men aboard the Henry’s Cross. All that was left was a man who, he could assure her, was much less satisfying.

But if this was Barclay’s penalty for simply knowing him, he preferred not to know what his fate would be if she knew his true identity. Incarceration, probably—and he’d be damned before he let her know he preferred menial tasks over idleness. He wanted his idleness on his own terms, preferably with a generous glass of something expensive and strong.

Briskly he swept out the crevice, shined the lantern to see the result and repeated the process until not even a mote of dust remained. He scooped the mess into a bucket and got on his hands and knees to reach around the side of the crates and into another corner. The little buggers had met their fates at the paws of some of Mr. Bogles’s relations, but before the massacre they’d turned this lower hold into a city the size of London. He breathed in a puff of nasty dust and coughed, wiping his face with his wrist.

Devil take it, this should have been enough to cool the fever she stoked in his blood. But there was no sign of relief from that. Malaise definitely did not afflict him where she was concerned.

At least the tight quarters in the sailors’ berth kept him from becoming more closely acquainted with himself than he ought to.

“I see you’re surprisingly adept with a broom, Lieutenant,” came her smug voice into the hold.

Bloody hell.

Protocol demanded that he stand. Instead, he reached farther around the crates and came up with another handful of dusty, feces-riddled nesting. “I’m adept with any number of tools, Captain.” He didn’t even try to keep the double-entendre from his voice, although there was no doubt it hurt him more than it annoyed her.

“Versatility is a useful quality in a sailor.” Her heavy boots thumped across the planks as she moved in to inspect his work. “My boatswain says your strength is increasing. I thought I would see for myself how you’re managing.”

As though she hadn’t been observing him these past five days at every task he’d put his hands to. He’d felt her eyes on him, caught her watching him countless times. “As you can see, I’m quite recovered and managing well.” He dumped the mess in the bucket and finally stood, reaching for the broom, purposely letting his chest brush her arm—and then regretting it. “You may satisfy yourself that your nemesis is turning in his watery grave to see his lieutenant doing the work of a cabin boy.”

She stood with that arrogant posture, shoulders back and chin up, as though she commanded not just her ship but the sea and everything on it. Her dark hair gleamed in the lantern’s light, falling loose over the swell of her breasts beneath layers of Turkish muslin.

“You misunderstand, Lieutenant,” she said evenly. He watched her lips move and fought an overwhelming urge to kiss that self-satisfied curve from that sensuous mouth. “Your new duties have nothing to do with my feelings toward anyone else. I’m simply operating with a skeleton crew, as you are aware, and naturally I require the assistance of all hands.”

“Naturally.”

“I apologize if the position doesn’t suit you, but I’m afraid I have all the officers I require at present.”

“I have no wish to be one of your officers, Captain.” But he could imagine several other positions that would suit him very nicely. Her power was intoxicating, wrapping around him the way her legs might do, and he drank it in. The raw need to touch her surged through his veins. “Given that I’ve not yet resigned my commission, I am obliged to continue my loyalty to the navy.” He shoved his hand in his pocket and encountered the handful of dowel discs he’d recovered off the floor beneath the carpenter’s bench.

“I am fully aware of where your loyalties lie, Lieutenant.” She looked him up and down, and a pulse jumped in his groin. “Are the men treating you well? If you have any complaints, you are as free to speak with me as any other member of my crew.” The gleam in those topaz eyes told him any complaints he had would be met with satisfaction.

“No complaints, Captain.” Except that he was on fire, and he needed her to leave.

“Excellent.” Her eyes darkened. Good God.

“Although my hammock creaks.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“And this broom is worn.”

“I shall see that you get another.”

And I am James Warre. One sentence, and everything would change—though not necessarily for the better. Wisdom dictated that he wait until a more strategic moment to have the satisfaction of seeing the look on her face when he disclosed himself. Or perhaps he wouldn’t disclose himself at all. Perhaps he would wait until London and savor the moment when circumstances threw them together.

“You’re doing excellent work, Lieutenant,” she said, looking past him with a raised brow. “Very thorough. One can only imagine what you could accomplish with a fresh broom.” She smiled. “You may well earn yourself another commendation.”

On the other hand, perhaps he would prefer to savor his moment much sooner.