Читать книгу A Most Unsuitable Groom - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 10

FOUR DAYS PASSED with Mariah sleeping almost constantly, regaining strength dissipated by the long journey and the hours of labor. And she was content, except when she was complaining. She could see William. He could be laid on her bed. She could stroke his head, kiss his fingers. But she couldn’t hold him because, Onatah explained, to hold him would be to draw more milk into her breasts.

She saw Spencer twice during that time, as he seemed to be avoiding her chamber, even as he used the separate door from the hallway to the dressing room to see his son. He could hold William and, irrational as she knew her feelings to be, she hated him for that.

On the fifth day, Mariah decided she’d had enough. Remain in bed for ten long days? What nonsense! She had given birth. Surely a natural process for a woman. And she felt fine. Well, as fine as anyone could possibly feel, being deprived of most fluids in order to keep the milk away, her breasts strapped tight to her—not to mention the layers of folded cloth between her legs as she continued to bleed, also something she had been told was perfectly natural.

Onatah and Odette had already come and gone, fussing over her, subjecting her to the indignity of washing her, just as if she couldn’t do such basic things for herself—it was an amazement to her that they let her clean her own teeth! William was back in his cradle, sleeping the sleep of the well fed; Sheila Whiting had gone back to her own baby.

Mariah was alone. Blessedly alone.

She pushed back the covers and swung herself into a sitting position, ignoring the fact that lying prone for five days could tend to make a person slightly dizzy when that person first attempted to stand up. She took a few deep, steadying breaths, then looked down at the floor, which seemed quite far away.

There was a knock at the door moments before it opened. “Damn it!”

“Mariah? Mariah, what are you doing?”

“Shh, Callie,” Mariah called quietly. “Come in here and close the door. Lock it, if necessary. I’m getting up. I’m getting up, I’m getting dressed and I’m going downstairs to see something besides these four very pretty but confining walls before I go stark, staring out of my mind. And it wouldn’t be quietly, I promise you.”

Callie closed the door and padded across the room to stand at the bottom of the bed. Such a petite, pretty child, all golden-brown curls and huge velvet-brown eyes over a small, pert nose and bee-stung mouth. An angel of a child. Except that, as Mariah had learned to her delight over the past days, Cassandra Becket had the heart of a warrior. And all the deviltry of a born mischief-maker.

“Odette won’t like this, you not obeying her orders. Everyone obeys Odette, you know, and is afraid to take a step wrong around her,” Callie pointed out and then grinned. “Should I get your clothing for you?”

“Would you?” Mariah asked, sliding off the mattress until her bare feet connected with the carpet. “Everything has been washed and pressed, thank God, not that there’s much I didn’t strain at the seams these past months.” She looked down at her belly beneath the voluminous white night rail. “Oh, would you look at me? Do you think there’s another babe still to come out? I still look as round as a dinner plate.”

Callie giggled. “Oh, you should have seen Morgan after the twins were born. Ethan called her his pumpkin, which earned him a shoe tossed at his head. Do you ride? Morgan was back on her horse before anyone could say differently and she swears it helped. I’ve always been a little plump, although it’s finally going away—Odette said it was baby fat. But I know how you feel. Not that I’d want to be all bones like Elly, but no one wants to have someone else shaking their head and tsk-tsking, just because you’ve reached for a second muffin.”

While Callie was chattering she was also opening drawers and cupboard doors, pulling out undergarments, hose, a yellow and white sprigged muslin gown that had been one of Mariah’s father’s favorites—and one of the few personal possessions she had insisted on dragging through the woods after the battle—and a pair of black kid slippers that, alas, had seen better days.

“Would you like anything else?” Callie asked. “I can turn my head, but it would probably be easier if I just helped you, don’t you think? I helped Morgan the day she sneaked out of bed. I think she lasted one more day than you, though.”

“Thank you.” Mariah believed she may have left her modesty somewhere, because she couldn’t seem to muster much at the moment, and began stripping out of her night rail, allowing it to drop to her feet, so that she stood there in her cloth-wrapped bosom, pantaloons that held the cloths between her legs in place, and not much else. “There are a multitude of indignities associated with giving birth, Callie,” she told her seriously, “beginning with the moment a woman you once thought to be perfectly rational kneels on the bed between your spread legs and shouts excitedly, ‘I can see the head! Push! Push!’”

Callie giggled again. “Morgan says she wouldn’t have cared if the whole world had been standing there watching while her bottom was bare, just as long as someone for God’s sake got that baby out of her. Of course, she had two babies in there. Morgan does nothing in half measures.”

“She won’t mind that I’ve been using her chamber?” Mariah asked as she began unwrapping the cloth binding her breasts and then sighed in blessed relief once it was gone, feeling as if she was now taking her first full breath in days. She cupped her bare breasts in her hands, rather marveling at a new heaviness, gained during the pregnancy, that hadn’t seemed to have abandoned her. “Oh, that feels so much better. Would you please hand me my shift?”

“Mariah, I thought I’d see how you—oh, bloody hell.”

Mariah looked toward the door to the dressing room, to see Spencer standing there, looking at her as if…well, she really didn’t want to consider what he might be thinking.

She grabbed at the shift Callie was holding and pressed it against her breasts. “Some people knock and then ask permission before entering a woman’s bedchamber, sir,” she said, hoping the tremor she heard in her voice wasn’t apparent to him. She wouldn’t even think of the way her nipples seemed to have tightened the moment she realized he had seen her bare breasts. She had never suckled William, but that night, that wild and insane night, Spencer Becket had fastened his fever-hot mouth to her as she’d given herself over to the moment—and the man.

Spencer was looking at the floor as if there might be something of great interest lying there. “Some people, madam, were supposed to remain in bed, resting. What in blazes do you think you’re doing?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Spence,” Callie said, rolling her eyes at Mariah. “She’s getting dressed. What did you think she was doing? Go away.”

As quickly as it had come, Spencer’s embarrassment left him. “No,” he said, raising his eyes to look at Mariah. “You leave, Callie. Now.”

“But, Spence, she’s not even dressed. I can’t, oh, for pity’s sake, don’t glower at me like that.” She looked apologetically at Mariah. “Ten minutes. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” she promised. Then she stomped past Spencer, glaring at him, and left the room.

Mariah turned her back to the man. “Are you always such a bully?” she asked, fumbling with the shift, trying to cover herself better even as she knew her back was bare to her waist.

“Probably, yes,” he said, reaching around her to take hold of the shift. He should have left the field, retreated, but not yet. Definitely not yet. “Here, let me help you.”

“No,” she protested, knowing that the bundled shift was all that covered her breasts. But he wasn’t listening to her or at least he wasn’t obeying her.

She couldn’t struggle or else his hand might slip. The shift might slip.

“Mariah, you just gave birth,” Spencer told her, his breath warm against her bare shoulder. “I’m not a monster.”

She closed her eyes, nodded. And let go of the shift.

“Ah, that’s better. Raise your arms, Mariah.”

She’d rather die. She felt so vulnerable. “Just…just drop it over my head, please. I can manage from there. And turn your back!”

Spencer smiled, then realized he was probably fortunate Mariah couldn’t see that smile. “Would turning my back come before or after I lower the shift over your head? After all, my aim might be off, and I’d end up dressing the bedpost.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake! You’re perfectly useless, aren’t you? I’ll do it myself.” Keeping her right arm pressed across her bare breasts, she turned on him, grabbed the shift from his hands and then turned her back to him once more, struggling with her free hand to find the head-hole of the damned, uncooperative shift.

He didn’t know why he did what he did, even as he knew he was being, as so many told him, so often, impossible. Because what he did was perch himself on the side of the mattress, right next to Mariah, fold his arms and say with a grin, “Have at it, my dear. I’ll just watch.”

“I could cheerfully hate you,” Mariah told him honestly, then gave up all modesty in order to turn the shift about with both hands, locate the head-hole and finally drop the damnable thing over her head, shoving her arms into the armholes. And tug. Tug again. “It doesn’t fit. Did you open the buttons?”

Spencer looked at her, her head poking up from the bodice that seemed stuck halfway over her lush, full breasts. Even her arms were stuck. “I believe I’ve seen scarecrows in the field that look much as you do now, madam. But you’re correct. I do think I neglected to open all of the buttons. Would you like me to do that now?”

“No,” Mariah groused, knowing she must look exactly like a scarecrow, damn him. She was hot, she was frustrated, her hair was tumbling into her eyes, and if he didn’t help her she’d be stuck in this ignoble position until Callie came back into the room. “What I’d like is for you to go straight to hell, Spencer Becket.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, in any event,” Spencer said, pushing away from the bed and stepping behind her to open the last half dozen buttons on the shift, then giving the material a yank, settling the straps on her shoulders. “There, you’re decent now.”

“Not in my mind, I’m not,” Mariah told him honestly. “In my mind, I’m committing murder upon your person, in several unlovely and definitely painful ways. But as long as you’re here, now you may button me again. Please.”

“Ah. Please. How can I possibly refuse?”

Mariah stood still, fuming as he began buttoning the shift, from bottom to top. His fingers kept brushing against the skin of her back and for some reason that incidental contact—please let it be incidental—served to tighten her nipples, so that she felt her breasts to be actually straining against the material.

Which was nothing compared to the way her insides reacted when, finished with the buttons, he put his hands on her shoulders, then bent to lightly brush his lips against her nape. “Thank you, again, Mariah, for William.”

She whirled around to push him away, completely forgetting that she was still standing within the puddle of her night rail, and ended by crashing against his chest, her hands on his shoulders to support herself.

“My God,” Spencer said, his senses swimming as he looked at her; that swirl of living fire that was her hair, those bewitching green eyes. “How in bloody hell could I have forgotten you?”

“I…I don’t know. As you said, I took advantage of you,” Mariah said, closing her eyes as his hands slipped down to cup her waist. “Don’t…don’t do that.”

“We’re to be married,” he reminded her, his concentration centering on her full, slightly parted lips.

“And?” Mariah asked, arching one brow at him. “You sound as if you’re purchasing a horse. Pay the price, and I’m yours to…to do anything with?”

Spencer removed his hands, held them up at his sides in mock surrender. “Clearly we don’t know each other very well yet, do we? Will you feel better if I tell you that I don’t believe marriage makes you my possession?”

Mariah stepped out of the tangle of night rail and walked to where her robe hung over the back of a chair. “Yet you said I could leave, but William would stay. I think we should see this marriage for what it is, don’t you? It will be for William. As for anything else?” She slipped her arms into the robe and turned to face him, the material of the robe held tight over her breasts. “I should wish to be recovered from William’s birth before we even discuss the idea of marriage again.”

At the moment, Spencer believed he would agree to anything. His palms still burned from where they had made contact with Mariah’s soft skin, so pale beneath his tanned hands, and the mere thought of her creamy breasts, how she had seemed to be holding, weighing them in her cupped palms—as if offering them to him, or at least that’s how he’d always remember that sight—would probably haunt his nights. “You want time, Mariah. I understand that. How long?”

She shrugged, wondering how much time she could reasonably ask for without daring his refusal. “A month? Two?”

He nodded. “A compromise, then. Six weeks, Mariah. But we will be married.”

“For the child,” she reiterated.

“For whatever reasons may occur to us. The gutting me like a deer, Mariah, will remain negotiable,” he replied, and then turned his head as Callie knocked lightly on the door and then reentered the room. “Callie, help Mariah finish dressing, please.”

“You say that as if that wasn’t what I was doing when you first stumbled in here and sent me out of the room,” his sister reminded him. “Or have you forgotten that?”

Spencer rolled his eyes. “No wonder Court calls you his unholy terror,” he said before bowing to Mariah. “Don’t overtax yourself, madam. Good day.”

“I’ll be very careful, sir,” Mariah shot back at him. “Just as you will be careful to knock next time you come to visit, and then wait for my permission to enter my chamber.”

The door had slammed on Spencer’s back before the last words left Mariah’s mouth.

She looked at the closed door for a few moments and then at Callie. She raised her eyebrows.

Callie raised her own eyebrows.

The corners of their mouths twitched as their eyes danced.

And then the two of them laughed out loud.

“Did you see his face when he first came barging in here?” Callie said, wiping at her eyes as their laughter subsided. “I thought he was going to swallow his own tongue.”

“Well,” Mariah said, removing the robe, “I was standing there, holding on to myself, just as brazen as you please. Oh, Lord, Callie, what am I laughing at? He dressed me! I’m so embarrassed. Mortified. Quickly, help me on with my gown before I’m tempted to crawl back under the covers, never to show myself again. As it is, I’ll never be able to look at the man again.”

“I don’t know. He certainly was looking at you,” Callie said, helping Mariah into her gown. “Turn around and let me button this, if I can see the buttons through my tears. Mariah, I’m so glad you’re here. With Morgan gone, we’re so stodgy and boring these days. But I think that’s about to change.”

Mariah slipped into her shoes and walked across the large room to the dressing table where Onatah had laid out her brushes. She sat down in front of the three-piece mirror and fairly goggled at herself. Look at her hair! She looked like a wild woman. Why hadn’t Spencer run screaming from the room, convinced he’d been compromised into wedding a witch?

She picked up a brush and began attacking the mass of hair that fell well past her shoulders, waving so wildly that it was almost as if only half of her face could peek through to the world. Which might not be too terrible, if she didn’t want to look at Spencer. “It’s all so thick and heavy and a terrible nuisance. I should have Onatah just cut it all off,” she said as Callie picked up another brush and began working on the left side of Mariah’s head.

“Cut this beautiful hair? Are you mad? I’ve never seen hair this color. It’s so alive. It’s like…like a candle flame. I heard Spencer the other night when he thought I wasn’t listening. He was telling Rian that he remembered your hair. ‘Like fire in the sunlight,’he said. It’s not like Spence to be poetical.”

“It’s not?” Mariah asked, daring to open the drawers in the dressing table, then borrowing a dark green ribbon she discovered in one of them. She was so curious to learn more about the man who was to become her husband. “What is it like Spencer to be?”

“Angry,” Callie said, taking the ribbon and tying back Mariah’s hair in a thick tail at her nape. “He’s always angry. Papa says he’s got the passions of a hot-blooded man and chafes at the confines of Becket Hall, of how we live. There! Doesn’t that look pretty? Are you ready to go downstairs now, before Spencer finds Odette and tattles and you’re slapped back into bed?”

“Certainly,” Mariah said, rising to her feet and brushing down the front of her gown. “I’d like to go outside, if that’s possible. Breathe some sea air. The world should smell good after three days of storms.”

“Only if the Channel didn’t spit up something terrible from the bottom,” Callie told her, grinning. “We’ll use the front stairs. Odette never uses them, even though Papa told her she could. But he gave that up as a bad job years ago. Odette does what Odette does. She’s a mamba, you know. A real voodoo priestess. She’s taught me a lot, but says that I’m not a chosen one, so she won’t teach me more. Maybe she’ll teach you. She likes your hair, you see. Says it’s a sign from the good loa. Magical living flame. I wish I had magical living flame hair. Mine is just brown. So depressingly ordinary, and there’s so very much of it. If only it wouldn’t curl so, like a baby’s hair. I detest ringlets….”

Mariah let Callie chatter on as they walked and she examined her surroundings, as she’d been otherwise occupied the first time she’d entered the very large, impressive foyer of this huge house. Squire Franklin’s manor house had been the grandest dwelling she’d seen at home, and she’d lived in her share of small, cramped quarters, following her father to North America.

But Squire Franklin’s prideful possession paled in comparison to Becket Hall. Most anything would, she imagined. In fact, at least half of the Squire’s domicile would probably have fit comfortably in the foyer of Becket Hall.

They passed Edyth in the hallway, and Mariah asked if she would please sit with William for an hour. The woman’s smile was all the answer she’d needed to assure herself that the infant would be in good hands.

Odette had been kind enough to explain how Becket Hall was run, and the whole arrangement seemed very democratic. Almost American in the way everyone was free to do what he or she did best, and with responsibility placed on each person’s shoulders by that person him- or herself. Odette had also told her of the years of slavery in Haiti before the slaves had risen in their own version of the French Revolution and Ainsley Becket’s abhorrence for anything that even vaguely resembled forcing anyone to do anything.

Mariah would have thought that everyone would just lie about, doing nothing, yet Becket Hall was pristine, beautifully organized. And the maids, if they had to be given a title, sang as they worked.

Callie descended the wide, curving staircase slowly, looking back at Mariah every few steps, as if she might faint and topple on her, but then they were crossing the wide foyer and Callie’s slim shoulders seemed to relax.

“Papa is in his study most days at this time, reading all of the London newspapers that he has shipped to him, and everyone else is out and about somewhere—and Spence is probably hiding his head somewhere in shame. Do you want to see the drawing room first?”

“You seem to be enjoying your brother’s discomfort,” Mariah pointed out, smiling.

“Oh, yes, definitely. It’s lovely to not be the one Odette will be giving the hairy eyeball for this once. That’s what Rian calls the way Odette looks at us—the hairy eyeball. I have no idea what that means. Well, here’s the drawing room. You probably didn’t notice much of anything the night you arrived here.”

The furniture in the main drawing room was massive, much of it, Mariah believed, Spanish—she’d once seen a book of drawings on such things. The ceilings soared, the windows rose from the floor to nearly touch those high ceilings and the fabrics that covered those windows and the multitude of furniture in the drawing room were of sumptuous silks and vibrant brocades. She strained to take in the fine artwork hanging on pale, stuccoed walls and to count all the many vases of exotic flowers and acres of fine Turkish carpets spread out over gleaming wooden floors the color of dried cherries.

“All these flowers,” she said, cupping one perfect pink bloom in her palm.

Callie nodded. “We have a conservatory and Papa is always adding new flowers and plants he has shipped here. But it’s Jacko who cares for them. I’ll show it to you later, if Jacko says it’s all right. He’s very possessive of his babies. Not that he calls the flowers his babies, but that’s what Rian says.”

“Then I’ll wait for his permission,” Mariah said, continuing her examination of the large room.

None of the four immense crystal chandeliers, each hanging from a different coffered area of the ornate ceiling, had been lit, as all the draperies had been thrown back so that only sheer ivory silk panels with fleur-de-lis woven into them covered the windows that poured with sunlight.

One enormous glass-fronted cabinet placed between two of the windows displayed a collection of jade that was probably worth a king’s ransom. The far wall—it was very far away in this large room—actually had a highly ornamental black metal grille hanging on it, the entire piece nearly the size of a barn door. And yet it didn’t overpower the other furnishings. Little could.

“It’s humble,” Mariah said cheekily, “but I imagine that, to you, it’s simply home.”

Callie frowned at her, not understanding, and Mariah wanted to slap herself for speaking so plainly. This was a fine home and she should be on her best behavior…and she would be, if she knew what that was. But she was a quartermaster’s motherless daughter, brought up in some rather rough-and-tumble locations, and she was probably both more unsophisticated and more blunt than most young English ladies.

The paintings on the walls were magnificent: landscapes, seascapes. And, when she walked toward a fireplace that could probably comfortably roast an ox on a spit, it was to see something else she had missed that first night—the nearly life-size portrait of one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen. Her hair was a mass of dark curls, her smile lit up the room and her striped, full-skirted gown was bright, colorful. Exotic.

“Mama,” Callie said as Mariah walked closer for a better look. “Her name was Isabella. I don’t remember her and I don’t look like her. Everyone says I do, but I’m not half so…so vibrant. I’m the pale English version, I suppose. Papa bought most everything in this room and many of the others while he lived in the islands and had it all shipped here on his boats, for years and years, to be stored until we found Becket Hall. Oh, and I meant ships. Jacko winces if I don’t say ships.”

“Jacko again.” Mariah returned her attention to Callie, who could prove to be a fountain of information—if she could only find the correct way to ask her questions, that is. “I don’t recall that name in the list of Becket siblings. But he is a Becket?”

“Jacko? Oh, no, he’s not a Becket. Jacko is Papa’s business partner. Most everyone came here with Papa when he decided it was time to return to England. Why, they even broke up the ships and used the lumber to build the village. We’re very self-sustaining, Papa calls it.”

“And quite isolated,” Mariah said, now heading for the hallway again. “This room seems to be at the front of the house. I want to see the water. I don’t know why, as I saw much too much water for six long weeks. I think I’m simply attempting to get my bearings and I’m all turned about at the moment. Which way would I go?”

“This way,” Callie said, leading the way down another wide hallway, Mariah following slowly, taking time to peak into several other large rooms, all of them furnished in equal grandeur. The Beckets were obviously not worried where the pennies for their next meal might come from. She stopped at one doorway, leaning a hand against the jamb. “A piano! Oh, and a harp! Do you have musical evenings, Callie?”

Callie backtracked to look into the room done all in golds and reds, just as if she’d never seen it before this moment. “The music room. The piano is mine. Papa gave it to me one Christmas, as soon as he learned of the invention. What sort of present comes with an obligation for daily practice? Elly plays much better than I could ever aspire to do. And Spencer sings. But never ask Court to sing. He will, most willingly, but he’s not very good. Now come on. We can’t be safe for much longer before someone will see us and—oh, good morning, Jacko.”

Mariah turned around to see a huge man standing in front of her. Not that he was overly tall, but he was, as her father would have said, a door-full of man. Broad, with a hard, rounded stomach that she felt certain she could bounce coins off, if she dared. He was dressed simply in white shirt and tan breeches, his muscular calves straining at white hose. His dark hair had begun to thin atop a huge head and he had a smile that seemed to be full of amusement and a joy for life.

Until, that is, she looked more closely. Because that’s what he was doing—looking more closely at her, his head forward on his neck, his heavy, slightly hunched shoulders hinting at an aggression his smile would put the lie to only for anyone who wished to believe in fairy tales.

This was the man who had grown all those beautiful flowers? The idea seemed incomprehensible, as he looked more like the ogre who would invade a town, frighten all the children and stomp on all the pretty posies.

Mariah fought the urge to step back a pace and instead lifted her chin even as she dropped into a slight curtsey. “Mr. Jacko, I am Mariah Rutledge. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Jacko reached up his right hand to scratch beneath his left ear, a curious gesture, but one that now had his head tilted to the right, so that he seemed to be looking at her now out of the corners of his bean-black eyes. “Just Jacko. There’s no mister about it. So, you’re the one who gave us that fine boy upstairs. I haven’t laughed so long or hard in a long time.”

Mariah lifted her chin even higher. “You find my son amusing, Jacko?”

Now he tipped his head from side to side, as if weighing how he would answer. A fascinating man, but perhaps fascinating in the way a North American rattlesnake could be fascinating. “No, Mariah, girl. I find the fix Spencer’s in amusing. You’ve just tied him fast to Becket Hall, didn’t you now? Tied him hard and fast, when we couldn’t find a way to make him stay. The Cap’n’s over the moon, though he’d never say so. He likes to know where his chicks are.”

Mariah knew her cheeks had gone pale. “Spencer…Spencer didn’t plan to stay here? Where was he going to go?”

Jacko shrugged those massive shoulders. “Which way is the wind blowing today, Miss Rutledge?” He lifted a hand to his forehead in a blatantly mocking salute. “But he won’t be sailing off now. What with the fine great anchor you tied fast to his ankle.”

“Jacko,” Callie said quietly. “That was a mean thing to say. Go away.”

And, to Mariah’s amazement, that’s just what the man did, turning his back on the pair of them and heading toward the front of the house. Her body inwardly sagged in relief.

“Did he mean that, Callie? Was Spencer planning to leave?”

Callie shrugged. “Spencer has always talked about the places he’d like to see. China. America. I think he’d cheerfully sail off to the moon, if it took him away from Becket Hall. That’s why he went off to the Army. He wanted to fight Napoléon, see the Continent. But he was sent to Canada instead.” She smiled. “But that’s how he met you, Mariah, and now you’re going to be married. Elly says Spencer has to grow up now, stop chafing at living here. I don’t know why he chafes. I think it’s lovely here. But Spence was ten years old, I think, when we came to Romney Marsh. He remembers the islands and I don’t. I only know Romney Marsh.”

“But Spencer knows other places exist,” Mariah said as they began walking once more. “Whole other worlds he hasn’t seen. And now, because of William and me, he won’t see them.”

“Nonsense. He hasn’t even been to London. You can take William and go to London, surely. That’s another world, or at least that’s what Morgan and Elly say. Come on, we’ll go outside, let you smell the fresh air.”

Mariah nodded her agreement, knowing she’d just heard an opinion straight out of the innocence of youth. It would serve no purpose to argue that she, Mariah, had put an end to all of Spencer’s dreams, whatever those might be. A wife and child meant responsibility and, if she knew nothing else about Spencer Becket, she knew he was a man who took his responsibilities very seriously.

She’d had time, around their nightly campfires, to listen to Clovis tell her about Spencer Becket, the man who had bloodied General Proctor’s nose. She’d heard the same story from her father, who’d believed the man had deserved a medal, not two months in the small gaol and being stripped of his rank.

Was it any wonder that the night she’d crawled beneath the blanket to share her body’s warmth with Lieutenant Becket, and he’d reached for her, felt her softness, began to fumble with the buttons of her gown, that she’d welcomed that touch, sought…sought something in that touch? Not only allowed what the feverish man was doing, but aided and abetted him?

Even the pain that had come when he’d entered her had been welcome, proving to her that, yes, she was still alive and she could still feel.

And now she had tied an anchor to the man’s ankle; he felt duty-bound to marry her, care for their son. She’d quite possibly saved his life; he’d quite possibly saved hers without knowing it and his reward was to be a lifetime in this house, on this land—where he didn’t want to be.

“Mariah, what do you think?”

Mariah blinked, surprised to see that she was now standing on an immense stone terrace overlooking a stretch of sand and shingle beach, the Channel lapping quietly at the shoreline, the blue sky seemingly limitless.

“It’s…it’s beautiful,” Mariah said honestly and walked over to the railing, placing her palms on the cool stone. How did Spencer see this view? Did he recognize it for its own beauty or stand here to look longingly toward the water and all that lay beyond it? “Oh, and two ships. Aren’t they sleek-looking?”

Callie also looked to her left to where the sloops rode at anchor offshore, about one hundred yards apart, their sails rolled up and firmly lashed to the masts. “The first is Papa’s Respite, and the other is Chance’s Spectre.”

“Spectre? You mean, as in ghost?”

Callie’s smile suddenly seemed awfully bright. “Yes, that’s it. Chance, um, Chance says that with a wife and two children now and his estate to oversee, he has only the ghost of a chance to go sailing on her more than twice a year. He says that and then Julia gives him the hairy eyeball and he laughs.”

“The hairy eyeball and an anchor firmly tied to his ankle. Well, they’re beautiful ships.” She leaned forward slightly, still looking to her left, to see a few peaked roofs peeking up behind a rise in the land. “And there’s the village, I suppose. I’d like to walk over there someday, but not just yet.”

She then looked to her right where there was—nothing. Only some tall grasses waving in what must be a constant breeze from the water. Even the shingle slowly faded away, leaving only a wide stretch of sand.

“You aren’t allowed to walk there,” Callie said, suddenly serious, as if she knew where Mariah was looking. “The sands can shift and swallow you whole, the way the whale swallowed Jonah. But the sands never spit you out again. Long ago, someone told me, some local freetraders taking their wool across the Channel used the sands to beach their boats where the Waterguard wouldn’t dare follow, and then offloaded the contraband they brought back with them. There are so many legends. But the smugglers knew the sands and we don’t. They’re not safe. Nobody goes there. And nobody smuggles from these shores anymore, of course. Not for years and years.”

“Really?” Mariah asked, still looking at the sands, fascinated by them for some reason she didn’t understand. Perhaps it was the stark beauty of waving grass and sand and water…and the danger hidden beneath that beauty. Or perhaps it was the rushed way in which Callie had told her small story and then added even more warnings.

“Oh, yes. There’s no smuggling here. There’s no need.”

“But it must have been so very exciting, don’t you think, Callie?”

Callie sniffed. Quite an adult sniff, at that. “That’s just romantical. Smuggling is…smuggling was what they did to survive, nothing more. Nobody smuggles for the adventure of the thing. That would be silly.”

“Yes, of course it would be,” Mariah said, stepping back from the railing, ready to return to the house, as she was beginning to feel as if her legs were fashioned out of sponges. But then she caught a movement in the distance, and moments later Spencer Becket appeared out of the tall grasses. He was striding surefootedly across the sands toward Becket Hall, a staff taller than himself in his right hand. The young man she recognized as Rian Becket from that first night walked along behind him.

Rian Becket had a small wooden cask hefted up and onto his shoulder and he was whistling. The sound carried to her on the stiff breeze.

She felt Callie’s hand on her arm. “We should go inside now.”

Mariah blinked, closed her mouth, which had fallen open at the sight of the two men. “Yes, yes we should. I’m afraid I’ve done too much too soon.” She allowed herself to be led back across the wide terrace to the French doors they had used earlier, turning only at the last moment to take one last look to the beach.

He carries the staff in case the sands try to take him. To either hold out to a rescuer, or brace it lengthwise against the sands and employ it to crawl to safety. But he carries it carelessly, because he already knows the way.

What had she asked him? How did he amuse himself here on Romney Marsh? And what had he answered?

Oh yes, she remembered now. “We keep ourselves busy….”