“CHURCH STEEPLE ahead! Another change of horses coming up fast, Lieutenant!” Clovis yelled down through the opened portal cut into the roof of the traveling coach.
Or, as Mariah considered it, the man had bellowed the warning just when she’d found a comfortable position on the velvet squabs and had dozed off for a few minutes. Her wedding night had been wonderful, but she hadn’t spent very much of it asleep.
“He still calls you Lieutenant,” Mariah grumbled, pushing herself into a more upright position. “Does that mean you can order him shot?”
Spencer, sitting on the facing seat, reading the newspaper he’d found in the posting inn in the last village they’d passed, learning as much as he could about the coming Grand Jubilee, put down the paper and grinned at his wife. “This is only our third stop, Mariah. Between now and tomorrow evening you’ll sleep in this coach and take your meals here, as well. We’ve got horses posted all along the way and will stop only to change teams and mounts. I warned you that this wouldn’t be an easy journey. I can put you down here with a man to guard you or hire a coach to return you to Becket Hall.”
“You wouldn’t dare and I’d never agree,” she told him, adjusting her bonnet, fearing she’d sadly crushed one side of it by leaning her head against the side of the coach. “I’ve been on forced marches before, Spencer Becket, more than once. Your threats don’t bother me. Just make sure you can keep up.”
“I think I’ll ride Fernando between this stop and the next, bear Rian company,” Spencer said prudently, folding the newspaper and placing it beside him on the cushion. “It may be safer.”
“It most certainly may be,” Mariah told him, wondering what maggot she’d gotten into her head that made her think she even liked the man. “And we’ll stop at this inn long enough for me to step inside it for at least five minutes.”
“Mariah, I told you—”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Spence, I need to relieve myself. Something, by the way, you never considered when you locked me in that parlor in Calais. You men may be able to step behind a convenient tree or building, but I am female enough to insist on at least some semblance of civilization.”
Spencer felt hot color running up the back of his neck as the coach halted in the yard of the inn. His hand was on the door latch before the wheels had stopped turning. “Clovis will assist you from the coach. I’ll go ahead and secure a private dining room for us. We’ll stay here for an hour. No longer, Mariah.”
She folded her hands in her lap, smiling sweetly at him. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Spencer.”
He shot her a dark look and slammed out of the coach. This journey couldn’t end soon enough for him.
It was nearing dusk and raining a day later as their party of a pair of traveling coaches and slightly less than two score men on horseback made its way into London. Mariah rode in the first coach; the second was loaded with baggage and an assortment of weapons and munitions. The coaches were accompanied by six outriders; the remainder maneuvered separately through twisted streets on their way to the mews and the back entrance to Chance Becket’s town-house in Upper Brook Street, three doors down from Hyde Park.
The knocker wasn’t on the door to discourage visitors, but there were candles burning in one of the upper windows. A liveried footman opened the door at Spencer’s knock, ushering everyone inside and to the back of the house, where a fire burned in the fireplace of Chance’s study.
Chance rose from his seat behind a large desk and came around to clasp Spencer and Rian to him, one after the other, welcoming them to his home, telling them that he and Julia had only beaten them to town by a few hours.
There was good humor and backslapping all around and Mariah watched, yawning behind her hand. She’d had only one victory during their journey, had seen the inside of only one inn for more than the five minutes Spencer had allotted her to, as he said, “Do what you have to do,” just as if a more reasonable woman could override nature.
No, the bride and groom were not currently on the best of terms. And Mariah was too tired to care.
Now she attempted to take the measure of the man who, Spencer had told her during one of the rare times he’d chosen to ride inside the coach with her, had been the first orphan Ainsley had brought to his island home. Island headquarters. Whatever that accursed, unnamed island had been called.
Mariah was now Spencer’s wife, shared his bed, but it was clear that this didn’t mean that he and his family would now be an open book to her, not if he wouldn’t even tell her the name of the island. She wanted his trust, if not his love, and that was why she had tearfully kissed her small son goodbye and insisted upon accompanying her new husband to London. To earn her way into this family and perhaps into Spencer’s carefully guarded heart. Couldn’t the stupid, thick-headed man understand that?
Besides, she wasn’t the sort of fainthearted woman who could sit home and slice up sheets for bandages, waiting for the outcome of a battle. It wasn’t in her nature. That part of her, Spencer also would simply have to get used to, because if she could accept him, his family, his foibles, then he would have to accept hers, as well.
She continued to visually examine Spencer’s oldest brother. He’d already told her that Chance had sailed with Ainsley, pirated with Ainsley and later been estranged from Ainsley as he attempted to make himself into a gentleman and to forget who and what he had been.
“But don’t let his outside fool you, because it didn’t quite work,” Spencer had told her with a grin. “He’s still Chance, still ripe for adventure.”
Mariah looked at the man and saw that he was still fairly young, probably not much more than a few years on the shady side of thirty. He must have been little more than a boy when he’d sailed with Ainsley Becket. There couldn’t have been much opportunity for a childhood, living a life like that. And, she realized, for all his youth, he commanded this small room with his presence. He wore his dark blond hair long, tied back at his nape, not the fashion, she felt sure, but it suited him. In all, Chance Becket had the look of a man who noticed everything.
And now, once he’d congratulated Spencer on his marriage and rubbed at Rian’s dark curls, suggesting he grow a beard like Courtland’s to lose that look of a pretty baby, Chance turned those intense, all-noticing green eyes on her.
“Mrs. Becket,” he said, bowing. “An honor. And may I offer you my heartfelt sympathies?”
“Accepted with thanks, Mr. Becket,” Mariah said cheekily, dropping into a curtsy as Spencer gave a mock growl.
“Please, that would be Chance. And my wife will be down shortly to collect you, take you to the chamber we’ve ordered prepared and then quiz you on your marriage and on all of the inhabitants of Becket Hall. And, even if you don’t believe me now, within an hour you will have told her things you didn’t even know you knew.”
“I heard that, darling.”
Mariah turned at the sound of another female voice, to see a tall, handsome blond woman with a thin, intelligent face glide into the room. “Spencer! Rian! How good to see you both. Now go upstairs and wash away your travel dirt and I promise you food in the dining room in a half hour. Nothing hot, I’m afraid, as we’re still settling in ourselves. You are hungry, aren’t you?”
Spencer looked to Chance, eager to speak with him about their plans. But he knew better than to ignore Julia Becket’s velvet-wrapped order. After all, the woman who could tame Chance Becket, call him to heel with no more than a smile, was not a woman to be lightly disobeyed. “Julia, if you’d please grant me time to allow me to introduce you to my bride, Mariah.”
“Yes, yes, I know who she is. Don’t growl at me, Spencer, we’ll be fine. I don’t bite, after all, no matter what my husband tells you. Now shoo—this poor girl looks ready to drop. I don’t suppose you spared the horses on your way here and I know how she feels, as Chance shares this same inexcusable rush for speed over horrendously bad roads. Mariah, do you agree? Would you like to leave all these rough-and-tumble gentlemen to their dirt and come upstairs to have your meal in bed?”
Mariah and Spencer exchanged quick glances and then Spencer shrugged in a way that had Mariah laughing as she obediently turned and followed Julia out of the study, more than ready for a good wash, her night rail and a meal taken once she was tucked up in bed.
“I’d have served under Julia without a qualm,” Spencer told Chance as he sank into one of the soft leather chairs in front of the fire. “A passable general, your wife.”
“Yet you’re still here, not marching upstairs to clean up your dirt. You’re hoping I have news, aren’t you?” Chance retook his chair behind the desk, picking up a round silver paperweight, to begin turning it in his hand. He did not in the least resemble Ainsley physically, yet he had many of the same mannerisms. Spencer wondered if Chance even realized that and decided he didn’t. “Billy told me everything and Ainsley’s letter filled in the areas Billy missed. So Ainsley believes it’s really Beales and not just some intrigue you’ve stumbled on by spreading gold around Calais?”
Spencer shook his head, both at Chance’s question and Rian’s offer of wine. “We can’t know. I heard a man speak French, quote something Beales used to say. That’s not much evidence.”
“Jules. It could have been Jules,” Chance said, nodding. “I’ve been making some inquiries over the past year about the man Jack saw, the man we’re assuming is Beales. In the end, I located a few servants from the house our supposed enemy resided in while in London, and learned a few things. One most important thing that I’ve kept from Ainsley these past months. He’s worried enough as it is. I suppose the time has come to share that information.”
Spencer sat forward in his chair. For a year they’d known about the man Jack had seen, the real leader of the Red Men Gang, and they’d taken precautions, kept their faces out of sight, believing that man to be their old nemesis, Edmund Beales. But proof? No. They’d never had absolute proof. “Tell me.”
“Remember, Spence, I’m telling you, not Ainsley. Billy and I managed to run down one of the maids who served in the man’s household. She had little to say, had never even seen the man—our mysterious man in black that Jack saw—but she did clean up after him.”
“And?” Spencer watched Chance’s face, but saw no emotion, none at all. How Spencer envied Chance his control. Cold-blooded, that was Chance, his hard edge probably a result of what he’d done in the past, what he’d seen in the islands…what he’d seen that last day. But even as his eyes stayed hard, alert, Spencer had seen how they softened whenever his wife or children were present. If Spencer could someday find that same measure of peace with Mariah and William, he’d take it and be grateful.
“And, brothers mine, she complained about the mess on the carpets, on the tabletops, the couches, even in the man’s bed. Bits and pieces of chewed-up leaves he’d spit everywhere.”
Spencer released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Coca leaves. Jesus, God—it is him.” Then he frowned. “When in bloody hell were you going to tell Ainsley and the rest of us?”
“Never, if I didn’t have to, if I could find and dispose of Beales on my own,” Chance said, smiling without mirth. “Ainsley’s finally crawled out of that black hole he’s been living in all these years, Spence. I didn’t want to take the chance of sending him back into it, eating himself up inside, knowing for certain that Beales is still aboveground, and yet unable to find him. In truth, I’ve more than once imagined bringing him Beales’s head in a box.”
“Us, protecting Ainsley?” Spencer shook his head. “I don’t know about that, Chance. He won’t thank us for it.”
“No, he won’t. He wants to be in on the kill, you know,” Rian said, settling into a chair with the bunch of grapes he’d lifted from a silver platter. “So, Chance, do you think he’s past it?”
Spencer and Chance exchanged smiles before Chance said, “Rian, you pup, you probably think I’m past it, don’t you? Ah, to be so young again.”
Rian tossed a grape at him. “Well, at least Jacko’s past it. His belly enters the room a good five seconds before the rest of him, for all his fine bluster and bragging over the man he once was. I pinked him, you know, the last time he thought he could teach me a lesson with the foils. That never happened before, not for any of us. Of course, I’m probably better with a sword, a pistol and a rifle than any of you. There is that to consider.”
Spencer got up, went to the drinks table. “Our pup wants to go out and fight, Chance. I think he half wants Bonaparte free of Elba, just so he can take up arms and go chasing him. Not to mention how pretty he’d look in uniform.”
Another grape was launched, this time in Spencer’s direction.
“Have you ever noticed, Spencer,” Chance said, “how much those who have never fought embrace the idea of war to solve any problem and how much those of us who have fought, who have seen the reality of violence, of war, want nothing more than to find a way to a fair peace? It’s why I’d rather take my orders from a Captain, like Ainsley, than trust my fate and that of my family to an ambitious politician or a vainglorious king.”
“Oh, the devil with you both. Maudlin, prosing old women, the pair of you. I’m going upstairs to change,” Rian said, throwing down the grapes and leaving the room.
“Our little boy is growing up, Mother,” Chance said, sighing theatrically.
“Wrong, brother mine. He is grown up. He insisted on coming here to help us. I think he believes the real fighting, if we have to fight, will be here in London, as Ainsley ordered Court to retreat if Bonaparte’s ships left port, and hie themselves back to Becket Hall without attempting to engage them, go down to certain defeat. No sport in that, correct? I felt the way Rian feels, two years ago. All I wanted was a good fight, a chance to prove myself. And the adventure of the thing. I won’t lie and deny that. Is it fair to deprive Rian of the same opportunity to learn the hard way that war doesn’t turn a boy to a man, but only steals his youth?”
Chance looked levelly at his brother. “I heard about Moraviantown, and the rest of it. And now we’ve extended our naval blockade all the way up the American coast, thanks to ships freed from fighting Bonaparte. We may not be winning this war, but it seems we’re as yet not prepared to lose it, not if we’ve sent many of Wellington’s best soldiers over there.”
Mention of the blockade reminded Spencer of something he’d learned. “Ainsley has been keeping up a correspondence with that American woman Ethan brought to Becket Hall. What do you make of that?”
“Mrs. Warren? I don’t know, Spence. It has been sixteen years. And, unless we can be rid of Beales, Romney Marsh might not be the haven Ainsley thought it would be, not for much longer. He’d built the pile for his return to respectability, you know, but that was before Beales turned us all into enemies of the Crown. The sheer isolation has served us well, but now that one by one we’re all growing and leaving? None of us will be his responsibility for much longer. It may be time for him to move on, as well. You do know he turned down what I thought was his best chance for a pardon?”
Spencer sat forward in his chair. “No, I don’t know that.”
Chance picked up a silver letter opener, began turning it in his hand—another unconscious gesture that was much like Ainsley’s. “England is always mad for new maps, new charts of waters where we sailed. You know Ainsley—he’s made dozens of charts, detailed maps of the coastlines we traveled, where the channels are deep enough for larger ships. Others have exchanged valuable knowledge like that for pardons, to have the slate wiped clean. But he wouldn’t hear of it. He had me forward copies of everything he had to the War Office anonymously. I don’t know if he didn’t want to take the risk of being tried and hanged anyway or if he felt that gaining a pardon for himself, without pardons for the rest of the crews, would be a form of betrayal. In any event, that opportunity is now lost to him.”
“He could return to the islands.” As soon as Spencer said the words he knew that was impossible. “No, he wouldn’t do that. That time is past, not just for us, but probably for the world, as well. It was another time, wasn’t it? A time now nearly gone. There are no more true privateers, only pirates. Let’s talk about Beales, shall we, and what I learned in Calais. We’re rapidly running out of days.”
Chance opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out several clippings from London newspapers. “Since you’ve been living at the back end of beyond and busy wooing the mother of your child, you may not know where things stand now. The Czar is here, as are several other heads of state, all to play a part in Prinney’s grand party. Nearly all the generals have crowded into the city, including Blücher, and our own Iron Duke, who has been called back from Paris for the celebrations. They want him to go to America, you know, to take command of our forces there, but he’s resisting the order and will probably be sent to the Congress in Vienna instead. At least for the moment. Paris, I hear, is becoming dangerous.”
Spencer was surprised. “Wellington would really go to America?”
“He will, eventually. He may be a Duke now, but he’s still a soldier, subject to orders. A good friend from the War Office has written to tell me that Wellington has at last agreed to travel there this coming March. It should prove interesting, the Iron Duke marching his beloved boys toward the American capitol. Then they’ll know we’re serious, won’t they?”
Spencer couldn’t restrain his smile. “Clearly, Chance, you don’t know the Americans. They believe in themselves and no one else. And they know how to fight.”
Chance shrugged. “In any event, Carleton House has been lit up every night as they drink and carouse, and a reviewing stand has been constructed in Hyde Park, with a view to both Green Park and St. James’s Park in the distance. I understand this inventor, Congreve, has prepared a fireworks display of rather epic proportions for the first night of the Grand Jubilee. Rockets used for war being set off in the middle of London, for the supposed beauty of them. I think we’re all mad.”
Spencer nodded his agreement. “We haven’t much time, if we hope to put a spoke in this particular wheel of Beales’s plans. Less than four days now, Chance. To find them, to stop them.”
“I know. We’ll reconnoiter the area, but as you’ve never been to London, I’ll tell you now that Hyde Park begins across from Kensington Palace and extends in this direction, funneling down past the Serpentine—where we’re going to be treated to miniature ships re-enacting Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, if you can believe that ridiculousness—and ends at the Stanhope Gate, about six or seven blocks south of here, with the other, smaller parks to the west. It’s a large area to cover effectively. Too large, I’m afraid, especially when we really don’t know what we’re looking for, do we?”
“Ainsley seems to think the most efficient way to eliminate everyone is with explosives.”
Chance considered this. “Black powder? That’s certainly one option. Enough of it, hidden beneath the reviewing stands, could cause considerable damage. Go wash up, get rid of your travel dirt, round up Rian, and we’ll discuss this more over some bread and cheese.”
Spencer made his way back to the front of the narrow house, where a footman directed him up the stairs to the third floor and to the last door at the end of the hallway. He knocked twice, then pushed open the door to see Mariah curled up on her right side in the bed, still dressed in her travel clothes, fast asleep, an untouched plate of meat, bread and cheese on the nightstand beside her. She had her fisted left hand lightly pressed to her mouth, just the way William did in his sleep, and Spencer felt his heart lurch at the sight.
What a maddening, stubborn woman. What a remarkable, courageous woman.
He spied a soft cashmere throw hanging over the back of a chair next to the fireplace and retrieved it, then laid it over Mariah before bending to smooth her hair back from her cheek and press a kiss against her temple.
Tomorrow, and the days after that, could be dangerous. Deadly dangerous.
What would he do with her, to keep her safe? What would he ever do without her, if he failed? How, damn it all, had she become so important to him, to his happiness? He was actually angry with her, angry with her that she’d become so necessary to him. Angry with himself for wanting to forget the world and just lie down beside her, hold her in his arms, listen to her breathe.
He closed the door behind him and made his way to Rian’s chamber at the other end of the hall, to use his washbasin so as not to disturb Mariah, all the time thinking of Ainsley and his lost Isabella. How had the man survived her death? Why had he survived?
For his children. Yes, Spencer understood that now. You survive, for your children. But, perhaps, with your heart buried, lost to you.
“Spence? You’re at the other end of the hall,” Rian said as his brother walked into the bedchamber where Rian was standing at the window, inspecting the scenery outside his window; London, sliding into a misty, smoky dusk. “Uh-oh,” he said, pulling a face. “I’ve seen that particular dark look before. Just remember, I’m your brother, and you’re not really angry with me, don’t really want to hit me, or at least I don’t think you do. Go punch a pillow, or even that wall over there. There’s a good fellow.”
“Rian, I want you to promise me something,” Spencer said, slipping out of his jacket, exposing the harness Courtland had made for the knife. “If we get into the thick of anything and it begins to look bad for us, I want you to grab Mariah and get her the hell away, get her to safety, straight back to Becket Hall. Are we agreed? Just leave us and go.”
Rian hopped up onto the high tester bed, reclining against the tall headboard, his long legs stretched out, his arms crossed over his chest. “Oh, I don’t think so. I’m not here to be your wife’s nursemaid, Spence. Tie her to the bedpost, if you can’t control her. She shouldn’t be here, or Julia, either. I’ll say this at least for Fanny. Much as she thinks she’s responsible for me, she knows where she belongs.”
Spencer rubbed at his aching head. “I don’t remember asking your opinion, Rian.”
The younger Becket grinned. “No, I suppose you don’t. Just don’t ask me to play nanny, Spence. And I still don’t know what help Julia or Mariah could possibly be in any of this. War is a man’s work.”
“True, Rian, my grand and intelligent brother. But peace is everyone’s work.”
“Was that supposed to be profound? And if you and Chance want personal peace, you’ll do whatever your wives say, correct? And you all ask me why I want a good war to run to? It’s a great disappointment my brothers are, a grievous disappointment, and I wish to point out that you’re not exactly shining examples for a impressionable young man such as myself.”
“You know, Rian, you wouldn’t look half so pretty with your front teeth gone missing,” Spencer warned, but his heart wasn’t really in the threat. God, had marriage turned him mellow? That would be a hell of a thing, wouldn’t it? “Let’s go downstairs and feed our bellies. Then we can start planning just how we’ll attack our problem in the morning. We’ll begin by strolling out with the ladies, I think, to see what foolishness his royal highness is planning in the parks…”