Читать книгу Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight - Julia London, Alison DeLaine - Страница 33

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“‘LADY DUNSCORE HAS become a dire threat to London male ego at large. Recommend gentlemen button coats in public. Lady Dunscore’s threat expanding in scope—seems a matter more suited to the army.’” Admiral Wharton looked up from the letter and glared at the committee. “That, your lordships, is the kind of report Captain Warre, Lord Croston, has seen fit to give us.”

James looked from the committee toward Katherine and knew it was only by the grace of God that she was here and not sitting in gaol, which was exactly what the admirals would have ordered if she had attempted to follow through with her plan last night.

Thank God—thank God—this would end today.

All nineteen lords to whom the bill had been committed for consideration were gathered around the table, backlit by a tall bank of windows that arched all the way to the high-vaulted ceiling. Others crowded into the room—the Scottish contingent of peers, a few lords he knew were hopeful they might somehow secure Dunscore for themselves and a handful of members from the Commons. Jaxbury had been summoned as a witness, along with several others of the Possession’s crew.

Against a side wall, standing a foot shorter than the paneled wainscoting, Holliswell, the greedy bastard, watched the proceedings stone-faced.

From the committee’s table, Edrington raised a brow at Admiral Wharton. “Pray, what did you expect Croston to learn from his assignment? That Lady Dunscore was pirating barges on the Thames?”

Wharton shot James a thunderous look, and James nearly smiled. “We do not perceive Lady Dunscore to be a threat to His Majesty’s realm at this time, your lordship,” Wharton said.

“Indeed,” Edrington said sarcastically. He turned his attention to Katherine. “Tell us, Lady Dunscore—when exactly did you make the decision to return to England?”

James caught Nick’s eye and sent him a silent message. Withdraw your support.

Nick looked away.

“When I received news of this bill,” Katherine answered.

“Why did you not return sooner?”

“There was business to attend to.”

“Why not return the moment you were able, Lady Dunscore?” De Lille asked sharply. “Before you had any ‘business’ to attend to?”

James tensed and fixed his eyes on Katherine.

“I had just spent four years in captivity, your lordship. I preferred to have my ostracism on my own terms.” She smiled, but mirthlessly. “I do not play the pianoforte and I’ve never been good with a needle, and there are only so many books a young woman can read.”

Her answer was met by scowls and a few raised brows.

“I know at least one young woman who would beg to differ with you on that point,” Linton remarked wryly, bringing a grunt from Marshwell and a sharp look from De Lille.

“How remarkable that you’ve never mastered the pianoforte, Lady Dunscore,” De Lille said, “yet you’ve apparently grown proficient at captaining a sixteen-gun brig.”

Katherine raised a brow at him. “Is it, your lordship? I suspect if you ask Captain Warre, you’ll find he has the same affliction.”

Good God. “Indeed,” James told them. “I confess I couldn’t plunk out a minuet even on my best day.”

At one side of the table, Winston sat casually in his chair. “So instead of returning home to your family,” he said to her, “you chose to captain a ship.”

“Yes.”

“What funds did you use to purchase the ship?”

“I had a trade route between Egypt and Venice. I bought the Possession with the proceeds.”

Ponsby sat forward. “The Possession was not your first ship.”

“No.”

“Lady Dunscore,” Gorst said evenly, “it does not help this committee if you do not explain yourself fully. Tell us how you came into possession of a ship after escaping from captivity. You did escape, did you not? You were not released?”

She didn’t answer immediately. James stretched his fingers. Forced himself to relax. It wasn’t as though he didn’t already know she’d been through hell.

“My captor passed away in the nighttime,” she finally said. “Chaos went up in the household, and I went into the city.”

“Alone? Unseen?”

Her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly, and a delicate cord in her neck tightened. “Forgive me, Lord Gorst,” she said, “but I fail to see what the details of that night have to do with the issue at hand.”

“Agreed,” Edrington said, and a few others muttered a general concurrence.

Gorst scowled across the table. “I am trying to ascertain how it could be possible that a woman held captive in a Barbary state could find her way aboard a ship.”

“There were ships anchored in the harbor,” Katherine told him evenly. “Ships the corsairs had taken as prizes. It was simple enough to take one of the longboats tied to the docks and row out.”

James frowned. There could have been nothing simple about that at all. The currents would likely have been strong and the harbor far from empty.

“Row out in the harbor at Algiers?” Ponsby asked incredulously. “A woman alone?”

“I was dressed in men’s clothes. And it was after midnight.”

Good God.

“And in fact, you were not alone, were you, Lady Dunscore,” De Lille said. “You were with Sir William Jaxbury.” He shifted his attention to the back of the room, where Jaxbury stood with a group of onlookers. “I presume you were the force behind such a suicidal escape?”

“Only if by ‘force’ you mean oarsman, Admiral,” Jaxbury said. “Lady Dunscore is a most determined woman, and braver than I.”

All eyes shifted back to her. Then again to Jaxbury. “I understand you were in captivity, as well, Sir Jaxbury.”

“Yes,” he said darkly.

“And I presume you escaped from your captor, as well.”

“Yes.”

“And the two of you met where, on the streets of Algiers?”

“Yes.”

A stark scenario coalesced in James’s mind. Katherine, alone and with child on the nighttime streets, dressed, most likely, in the clothes of one of her captor’s male slaves. She crosses paths with Jaxbury. The two of them scrape by on whatever they can, ducking into doorways and avoiding the sultan’s henchmen, plotting a way out of the country, toward which end Jaxbury draws on his experience at sea to suggest a dangerous plan.

“And the two of you, alone, snatched a prize out from under the corsairs’ noses?” Winston asked. “I find that exceedingly difficult to comprehend.”

“It was a small prize,” Katherine told him. “Only eight cannon.”

“Lady Dunscore,” Nick said, finally speaking. “You will understand, of course, that some of my colleagues are concerned about a member of the peerage who has demonstrated a tendency toward the unlawful.”

“Unlawful?” she said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“You deny you have taken ships unprovoked?”

“I certainly do not deny it. But I was always justified.”

“By the promise of silks and spices? That smacks mightily of piracy, Lady Dunscore.”

“By the knowledge that my prey had come by its spoils by being a predator.”

“A questionable activity at best,” De Lille interjected.

“But one that resulted in the liberation of more than one Englishman, as this committee well knows. My prize-taking activities have been strictly limited to ships far more questionable than mine. As for my present circumstances, rest assured I know nothing about robbing stagecoaches or burgling slumbering widows.”

“Relieved to hear it, Lady Dunscore,” Rondale declared from the end of the table.

“At least our travelers and widows may rest easy,” Edrington said, glancing down the table at Winston, “even if gentlemen hopeful of producing children may not.” Uneasy laughter went up from the gallery.

“I have only the deepest respect for Lady Dunscore’s skill with a cutlass,” Winston replied with a half smile.

De Lille tucked his chin and assessed Katherine over the top of his spectacles. “What of your plans to marry, Lady Dunscore?” he demanded. “Certainly you do not plan to manage an estate the size of Dunscore alone.”

Around the room, half the men both on and off the committee had turned their attention to Katherine, no doubt salivating at the thought of having both her wealth and her body at their disposal.

James’s blood ran cold.

But Katherine merely offered that smile he was becoming too familiar with, one he’d seen night after night watching her fend off every lecher in the ton. “What a creative suggestion, Lord De Lille. My only regret is that you are not unattached.”

A member three seats away erupted in a fit of coughing. Lord De Lille’s face dove into a wrinkled scowl.

“Perhaps Croston ought to marry her,” Winston suggested, shifting his attention to James. “He seems to take her in hand well enough.”

Damn the man. “A ship can only have one captain,” James said dryly, “and I prefer to be it.”

Ponsby barked a laugh. “You’ve taken enough prizes in your day, I’ll avow you know how to master that situation.”

“You have a point.” Somehow he managed to form his mouth into what he hoped was a pleasant smile. “But may I suggest the committee return to a more salient topic.”

“Indeed,” Edrington said, leaning forward to look down the table at his colleague. “The basis of this folly of a bill has no foundation in Lady Dunscore’s marital status.”

“Perhaps not,” De Lille replied, “but its resolution may.”

“We are not here to arrange Lady Dunscore’s marriage,” Edrington shot back. “We’re here to get at the facts!”

“Precisely,” Nick agreed, for once doing something to steer things in the right direction. “Lady Dunscore, I have here a list of a number of your exploits in the Mediterranean. Perhaps you can give us the details of each—”

“Blast the bloody details!” Edrington exclaimed. “I fail to see why this bill lives on in the face of the fact that this woman saved Croston’s life. Do we have any evidence at all that she has acted against the Crown? Violated the law of the sea? Has anyone made a complaint?”

“She sailed under her own colors,” Nick reminded them, and James wanted to grab him by the throat to keep him from speaking. “And we do have evidence that she took prizes from across the Barbary coast.”

“Then by God, give the woman a medal!” De Lille exploded.

“Need I remind you we are trying to maintain peaceful relations with the Barbary states for the safety of our merchant trade?”

“Peaceful,” Edrington spat. “Those bloody curs have no honor. They’ll agree to peace with one hand and take our ships with the other. This woman has saved not only Croston, but other British subjects—the dowager countess of Pennington, for one, and Cantwell’s daughter Lady India, for another. Clearly she has acted not against the Crown, but in its interests.”

“Has she?” Ponsby demanded, staring down the table at Edrington. “I believe Lord Edrington has information relevant to this discussion that he planned to withhold from us today.”

Edrington’s expression turned stony. “I brought no information.”

“No doubt you didn’t,” Ponsby scoffed. “But I believe this committee should know that not three days past, Lord Edrington shared with me an affidavit he’d procured from one of Lady Dunscore’s crew alleging that she did not, in fact, intend to save Croston at all. Rather, her initial order was to leave him to die in the water.”

James looked at Katherine. A moment of fear in her eyes confirmed the truth. Bloody hell, this could ruin everything.

“Is it true, Lady Dunscore?” Ponsby demanded.

“Taking a stranger aboard a ship with a skeleton crew was a foolish thing to do,” James told them before she could answer. “My respect for Lady Dunscore’s judgment as a sea captain would seriously decline if I thought it might not be true. She had no way to know whether I was friend or foe, as the wreck happened at night when I was not wearing my uniform. There was nothing to mark me as British—quite the opposite, in fact, given my natural coloring. Moreover, I could have been carrying any number of diseases that might have killed everyone on board. Whether we like it or not, there is no duty to rescue.”

“Don’t like it,” De Lille muttered. “Never have.”

Ponsby frowned at him. “And it doesn’t bother you, Croston, that you might have been left to perish?”

“By all rights, I should have perished the night of the wreck,” he said flatly. “This line of inquiry has no bearing on the bill before this committee. If anything, it shows more clearly the risk Lady Dunscore was ultimately willing to take to help another.” You should know that I’ve forgiven you. Now he had a good idea why.

Winston spoke up, addressing Jaxbury. “What have you to say about that day, Jaxbury?”

“Only that Lady Dunscore was acting out of care and concern for her crew. And that a young child was aboard.”

“Your daughter,” Winston said to Katherine.

“Who also has no bearing on this discussion,” James said. He’d be damned if he’d allow them to drag Anne’s legitimacy into this.

Ponsby studied Katherine. “Ultimately, you chose to take the risk and bring Croston aboard. Why?”

“My ship’s surgeon was of the opinion that the man in the water had been adrift for several days, and that a diseased person would not have survived that long without food and water.”

It sounded cold, even though the reasoning was sound. Fear of what might have happened gripped him, and he pushed it away.

“For God’s sake, I’ve heard enough,” De Lille blustered. “If Croston says he should have been left behind, who are we to disagree with him? I, for one, would be prepared to dispense with all this if Lady Dunscore will agree to find a husband.”

James’s lungs constricted. There was a murmur of agreement, punctuated by a snort of derision and more than a few sharply worded dissents. Winston, chairing the committee, cast long glances to his right and left, then looked at Katherine and smiled. “You will be informed of the committee’s recommendation on this matter, Lady Dunscore. Prior to that, if it does so happen that you should enter into a marriage contract...clearly, the committee would be most interested.”

Bloody living hell.

“This committee is adjourned!”

Nothing had been resolved. Not one bloody thing. They could not force her to marry, but it was obvious they hoped to try. He looked at Katherine, hoping to see her reaction, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Lord Deal.