“SHE SAW ME, saw what I was doing.”
“Is that so? And precisely what did she see you doing, Spencer?” Ainsley asked coolly as he continued to slowly move the magnifying glass across the map on the table.
Spencer fisted his hands at his sides, trying to hold on to some semblance of calm, remaining at least marginally civilized. “I saw her hair. That damn hair, burning in the sunlight. She was on the terrace when I came through the sands, and Callie with her.”
He closed his eyes. Yes, he’d seen her hair. He’d seen considerably more of her earlier. No wonder his eyeballs burned in his head. Just as his soul should be burning in hell for lusting after a woman who’d just given birth. To his son. And he couldn’t even remember impregnating her. What a damnable mess. He could barely wait to be shed of this place for a space, concentrate on something other than his own confused feelings. And if that made him a coward, then so be it.
Ainsley put down the magnifying glass and looked at his son who, as he’d expected, didn’t so much as blink, even as he was sure Spencer would like to be pacing, seething, perhaps even shouting—anything but standing still in front of Jacko and his father. Standing tall, never cringing. Personal bravery had never been an issue with Spencer. Good sense, however, had. Still, he had gone away a lad, and come home a man. “How nice that Mariah feels strong enough to be up and about so soon. You’ll arrange for the wedding now, of course.”
“No, not yet,” Spencer said, thinking back on the promise he’d made to Mariah. “She’d, um, she expressed a wish to be fully recovered from the birth before we hold the ceremony.”
“I see. And you’ve agreed?”
“I’ve agreed. Hell, it was the least I could do.”
Ainsley nodded. “Very well. Was there anything else?”
Spencer dropped unceremoniously onto the leather couch, taking a moment to glare at Jacko, who sat at the other end. He loathed subterfuge, and Ainsley was so very good at it. “Don’t pretend you both don’t know what I’ve been planning, Papa. You made it clear the other night that you knew and warned me against it.”
Ainsley looked levelly at him and then smiled slightly. “Clearly my powers of intimidation have gone sadly missing then, because you still plan to leave for Calais tonight to arrange for the first smuggling shipment.”
“You know even that? Clovis told you,” Spencer said, smacking his fist against his thigh. Mariah’s arrival had delayed his first trip across the Channel, but he would go tonight or know the reason why. “He’s turned into an old woman, afraid we’ll all be caught and hanged. But I never thought he’d betray me.”
“And I doubt he ever would,” Ainsley said, lifting the wine decanter, wordlessly offering the other men a drink, which only Jacko accepted with a nod of his head. “Please allow me to flatter myself that I still hold the loyalty of my own people, who are kind enough to keep me informed when they consider I should know what goes on beneath my own roof. And beneath the roof of The Last Voyage. Now, as you already know I will not discuss my sources any further, tell me about your soon-to-be bride. Exactly what did she see?”
Spencer would not involve Rian. “I was told that there were still a few casks hidden away beneath a hollowed-out log just beyond the sands, left behind from one of the last runs. I went looking for them and found only one, its contents ruined, of course, but felt it better that the cask be disposed of before anyone else stumbled over it. Mariah saw me carrying it across the sands.”
“Takes you back, doesn’t it, Cap’n? Like Chance’s Julia all over again, and him needing to find a way to keep her silent,” Jacko said, chuckling. “Except Spencer’s already bedded this one, Cap’n, so we’ll have to think of something else.”
Spencer leaped to his feet and turned to physically confront Jacko; why, he didn’t precisely know.
“I think we’re done with reminiscences, Jacko, thank you,” Ainsley said, seating himself behind his desk. “Spencer, sit down if you will? We’ve more to discuss than your Miss Rutledge, who is here in any case and not going anywhere else anytime soon. Let her busy herself making brides-clothes or whatever she might feel it necessary to do before your wedding. I’m confident Eleanor will keep her occupied.”
Spencer sat again, but only reluctantly. “You’re going to order me not to go to Calais. Not to ride out as the Black Ghost. Not…not to involve Rian or anyone else in my mad attempt to amuse myself with a dangerous enterprise before I blow out my brains from sheer boredom.”
Ainsley smiled, surprising Spencer by suddenly looking much younger than his more than fifty years. Perhaps it was the slight gleam in the man’s eyes? “Not really, no.”
“No? Wait a moment. You want me to go to Calais. Why?”
Ainsley picked up the heavy brass paperweight and began to turn it in one hand. “It has come to my attention that there are more than a few Frenchmen—and others—who are not happy to see Bonaparte exiled on his minuscule new empire of Elba. If you don’t know the island’s location, there are maps on that table, not that this is important for the moment, except to know that if Bonaparte were to leave that island he could make landfall in Cannes in rather short order, where he could rally his former soldiers to march on Paris. Perhaps before his lax jailers can notify anyone that he has even escaped.”
Spencer sat up straight, his arguments as to why he wanted to help the smugglers forgotten. “He actually could do this? I thought he was chained to Elba.”
Ainsley sat forward on his chair. “We’ve heard that he advised the Bourbons to change nothing but the palace sheets, sure the people of France will call him back to Paris within six months. That leaves five months, at my count, before all hell could break loose on the continent.”
Spencer nodded. “And us? Where would Bonaparte’s escape put us?”
“France, far from thriving, is falling into dire straits with their Emperor gone. There are those here in England who would like nothing more than to see the mad king and his proliferate, spendthrift Regent son sent to the Tower and beheaded, and a new order come to power. For some, a freed Bonaparte begins to look like a viable option to many Frenchmen. And many Englishmen.”
“For some, you say? Some Englishmen? Those who see Bonaparte’s power as their power, correct? And their profit,” Spencer said, his mind now fully engaged. “That’s all very interesting. But Bonaparte, if he did escape, would have his hands fully occupied solidifying his hold on France, without planning another invasion here, on England’s southern coast. No, I don’t see it. The two don’t really connect, not unless it’s from a great distance. This has nothing to do with us, our safety.”
“Tell him, Cap’n,” Jacko said, levering his bulk up and out of the couch so that he could go refill his glass.
Spencer looked from Jacko to Ainsley, felt the tension in the room. “Tell me what? What is it I’m not seeing?”
Ainsley carefully put down the paperweight. “Not what, Spencer. Whom. Edmund Beales.”
Ainsley paused to let the name sink into Spencer’s consciousness. A name from the past and one that, until last year, they’d believed buried in that past. The man who had sixteen years previously destroyed their world, who had caused them to flee to Romney Marsh. The man who had led the Red Men Gang. The man who had yet again disappeared to God knows where and for the devil only knew what purpose.
“But…but Beales was operating from these shores,” Spencer said, trying to sort everything in his head.
Ainsley looked at him levelly. “There are two sides to the Channel, Spencer. An ambitious man like Beales would work both of them. It doesn’t matter to him who wins, just as long as he doesn’t lose. He could give Talleyrand lessons on playing both sides of a fence.”
Talleyrand. Spencer knew that name: Bonaparte’s greatest friend, unless he was Bonaparte’s greatest critic and enemy, and gathering new fortunes to himself every time he turned his coat, from France to England to America to even the Russians—Talleyrand cultivated them all at one time or another for his own profit. What had the Emperor called the man? Oh yes—filth in silk stockings. To which Talleyrand had said—only after Bonaparte had quit the room, of course, for Talleyrand was a prudent man—that it was a pity the man had been so badly brought up.
It was the sort of intrigue, game playing, that Spencer abhorred. On this he agreed with Bonaparte. If you dislike someone, tell him so, and then knock him down. Don’t play with words.
His head was beginning to ache. “And you think Beales was working with Bonaparte?”
“Beales gravitates to the winners,” Ainsley said quietly. “We’ve learned, thanks to Chance’s friends in the War Office, that Beales’s Red Men Gang transported precious little wool across the Channel. He favored gold. Gold that would eventually make its way to Bonaparte to pay his army, to supply him with weapons. Beales doesn’t give up easily, not when he sees a profit for himself. The allies already have begun fighting amongst themselves, with all of them jockeying for the most power and influence, which means that chaos and unhappiness reign in France. And Elba—Elba and the Emperor—are not that far away.”
Spencer mentally sifted and sorted all that had been said, and then tried to apply it to himself and to his plans for the Black Ghost Gang. “And where are we in all of this? Beckets are loyal to Beckets. We watch the world, but we’re not really a part of it. Even as I fought the Americans, I knew that. Our only real enemy is the possibility of exposure, being connected to what happened so many years ago. That and Edmund Beales himself.”
Ainsley stood up and walked to the window to look out over the Channel. “I’m convinced there are already plots afoot to rescue Bonaparte from his plush prison. I could be very, very wrong, but I can imagine Edmund Beales and his ambition being a part of one of those plots in some way, either from this side of the Channel or over there, across that too-narrow strip of water.”
He turned to look at Spencer. “Information will pass back and forth between the shores of the Channel. Covertly.”
“Using smugglers, the way it was done during the war,” Spencer said, nodding his head. “But why us? There are small gangs all up and down the coastline. Nobody needs us.”
“True. But they might want us, if you were, while in the waterfront bars of Calais, to make it known that your sympathies reside firmly with Bonaparte. And, of course, that statement will be proved rather handily when you offer gold coin to help with the cause.”
“And you expect me to sail to Calais and dangle gold I’d willingly give to aid in Bonaparte’s escape. A gamble, a possibility—you can’t be certain anything you’re thinking could ever really happen. Papa, I’ve got that woman and child upstairs. She’s probably already suspicious, seeing what she saw this morning. I’d planned to go to Calais only the one time to set up suppliers and purchasers at that end. But if I am to disappear for days at a time…?”
“I’ve given you a portion of my affairs to manage,” Ainsley put in smoothly. “I’ve commissioned another ship, this time a frigate.”
“And that would be a lie?” Spencer asked, fairly sure it was not.
“That I need you to oversee the building of the ship, which is very nearly complete? Yes, that would be a lie. The frigate, however, would be a reality. There is only one gun deck, but more than three hundred souls can easily be accommodated aboard ship.”
“Three hundred? That’s more than we have in the village, counting the women and children—and the goats.” Spencer looked at Jacko, who was busily inspecting one ragged fingernail, probably gotten while digging in the dirt with his beloved flowers. “Have I had blinders on since I’ve come home? What’s going on here? Are we planning another retreat? Hell, we don’t even know if Beales was the person Jack caught sight of in London.”
“Spencer, to wait until we’re certain could be courting disaster. Better to be prepared for all contingencies. For anyone who inquires, and some have,” Ainsley said calmly, “I am now engaged in the ship building business. That I am only building one ship is my concern and nobody else’s. And yes, we do sit here with our front exposed and nothing at our backs but the Channel. If it becomes necessary to leave—only if, Spencer—it is always prudent to have a convenient back door.”
“And you’d do that? You’d leave all of this, turn your back on it? Just like that? After sixteen years?”
“Certainly not without regrets,” Ainsley told him. “But we will be safe, all of us, yes, to the last goat. The events that took place on the island will never be repeated.” He smiled without emotion. “Edmund Beales isn’t just one man. He has his followers, some of whom were at his side sixteen years ago. He’ll have gathered more, for evil always finds it easy to attract evil. I want him dead, Spencer, it’s that simple. I want them all dead. But I will not endanger our women and children. Not again.”
“So you go smoke him out for us, bucko,” Jacko said, clapping a beefy hand on Spencer’s shoulder. “Go to Calais, dangle your gold and see if you can find Beales for us. If anything will get the Cap’n back on a ship where he belongs, it will be to learn that Beales is chomping down frogs in Paris.”
“We find Beales by taking gold to France, hopefully to have it end in Bonaparte’s pocket? How high do they hang you for that, I wonder?” Spencer said, feeling the excitement of the thing beginning to course through his veins. “What do I tell Rian?”
Ainsley smiled one of his rare smiles. “Goodbye should be sufficient. We’re no longer at war, remember, so you’ll be taking the Respite quite openly. A week for you in the bars of Calais should be sufficient. After what you’ve just told me, I believe you should avoid being in Miss Rutledge’s presence. I’ll speak to her, explain your absence. And remember that boy upstairs and your responsibility to him. I expect you home here in one piece. To be too careful is to invite disaster, but the hotheaded, reckless behavior of your youth is no longer an option you or your son can afford. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Spencer said, finishing off his wine. Then he hesitated, looking to Ainsley. “Why me? I’m flattered, definitely. Chance has more experience at this sort of thing, but he’s got his wife, his children. And his face is known in London. I understand that. But why not Courtland? He’s the oldest here.”
“You both, thanks to Chance and Jacko and their tutelage, are equally proficient handling the Respite. In many ways, save age, you and Courtland are equals. The men will follow you. Court, however, is a steward and a good one,” Ainsley said, having considered both men for the project. “He’s dependable, intelligent and courageous. Solid. You, on the other hand, while also being intelligent,” he continued, smiling yet again, “have the heart and soul of a rogue. For this project, that will require not only the skills of a good fighter, but also a touch of larceny and a glib, lying tongue, I prefer the rogue. You even look the part. Where Court could make anyone believe he is a fine country squire or masterfully play the part of a government official, you, son, possess all the flash and fire of an adventurer.”
“What Cap’n’s saying is that Courtland’s a stick,” Jacko said, then laughed. “A boring stick, bless his heart. Sure, he was the Black Ghost there for a while, but his heart was never in it. Just his belief that he’s responsible for the Marsh and every chick in it. You rode out for the thrill of the thing, bucko.”
Spencer grinned, then nearly fell over as Jacko clapped him heartily on the back. “I’ll be ready to sail the moment the sun sets, sir.”
He headed off to find Clovis and Anguish, the two men he wanted by his side in Calais. He believed he should talk to Mariah before he left but, when he remembered their fairly intense interlude in her bedchamber and how she’d looked at him when she saw him on the beach…well, a week’s absence before they met again seemed a reasonable alternative.
“Which would make me a coward,” he told himself as he paused outside the door to Morgan’s bedchamber on his way to his own chamber to pack a bag for his journey.
So he knocked on the door, and a moment later, Mariah opened it, looked at him and then turned her back and left him standing in the open doorway.
“I’ll consider that an invitation to enter,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.
“You can consider it whatever you wish to consider it,” Mariah told him, retreating to the bed and picking up William, who had been lying there, wonderfully awake, as she had cooed to him. She was using her son as a shield and that was shameful. But what other shield did she have? “At least this time you knocked.”
“And at least this time you’re clothed,” Spencer replied, walking over to bend and kiss his son’s downy head. Then he straightened, not backing up an inch, and looked into Mariah’s too-observant eyes. “I’m going away.”
Mariah’s arms tightened around William’s small body. “You’re leaving? Why? When will you return?”
Spencer nudged at William’s hand with his finger, and the child caught on to the tip, squeezing it tight, just as Spencer’s heart seemed to be squeezed tight in his chest. “Ainsley’s commissioned a ship, and I’m to go to Dover to check on its progress. I’ll be gone for a week, possibly more.” Then he looked at her again. “Will you miss me?”
“I haven’t been in your company long enough to miss you if you’re not here,” Mariah told him, wishing that were true. “A week or a little more, you said?”
William let go of his finger and Spencer took that opportunity to put a bit of distance between himself and Mariah. “Probably a little more, to be honest.”
“Honest? Oh, you’re being honest?” She laid the baby back down on the coverlet. “Now there’s a novelty. I saw you, you know. Earlier, walking easily across sands Callie had just warned me were treacherous. Rian was carrying a—”
“Cask of brandy. Yes, Mariah, I know,” Spencer said, cutting her off. He hated subterfuge, talking around a subject when both parties knew bloody full well what the other was saying. But the damnable thing was, he couldn’t simply confess that he and everyone at Becket Hall had been spending these last years aiding and abetting the local smugglers who engaged in freetrading in order to supplement their meager incomes to feed their hungry children. It sounded too much like a noble excuse to commit a dangerous crime.
Mariah twisted her hands together in front of her, cudgeling her brain for something to say, something that would tell him that she wasn’t about to betray him. “William is your son,” was all that she said. “You have a responsibility.”
“Meaning?” Spencer shot back, testing the waters as it were, trying to find out how much she thought she knew.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Spencer, you’re smugglers. The lot of you,” Mariah said, exasperated. “This house itself was built with money your family gained by shipping wool across the Channel. It’s obvious. Why else live here, at the back of beyond, isolated from the world?” She lifted her chin. “I will not have my son a part of this. I won’t.”
Spencer stabbed his fingers through his hair, frustrated by Mariah’s assumptions. Angered that they were at least partly correct. “How noble you are,” he said, his smile more of a sneer. “You can’t be bothered to ask questions, listen to answers. You simply go forward with your assumptions, damning people who have been nothing but kind to you, nothing but kind to me.”
Mariah had been so angry, so frightened to think she was all but a prisoner here, she and her son both. “Then I’m wrong? I’ve seen a cask of brandy, listened to a few things a young girl has said and then come to an incorrect conclusion? Spence? Answer me. Am I wrong?”
He stepped closer, cupped her chin in his hand, looked levelly into her anxious green eyes. “You’re wrong, Mariah,” he told her in all sincerity, employing the glib, lying tongue Ainsley had so recently mentioned, as if it was an asset, not a fault. Yet he wasn’t lying, not really, not directly. He was merely taking the truth and giving it a twist. “I would never do anything that could harm William. Or you.”
Mariah closed her eyes, sighing. She so wanted, needed, to believe him. “Onatah says that a woman who has just given birth is prone to…to melancholy and to thinking fancifully.” She opened her eyes again and smiled up into Spencer’s face. “Actually, she said only a fool looks for misfortune in the face of good fortune. Oh, Spencer, I’m sorry. I saw you out there, the way you were walking…something about the way you looked, so confident, so at your ease…so…no, don’t—”
But he had stopped listening, fascinated by her mouth, by the softness of her skin beneath his hand, so easily remembering how she had looked earlier. Earthy. All woman. Lush and full. He brought down his mouth and captured hers, sliding his arms around her, holding her close as he slanted his mouth first this way, then that, easing her lips open, sliding his tongue inside, kissing her as a man hungry for the taste of a woman. This woman.
Mariah gave up the battle, gave herself over to this kiss, this sweet invasion. She wasn’t going to win, she already knew that. Her body already knew that.
He had been a handsome man, even as he lay wounded and feverish, his eyes burning dark in an unnaturally white face. He spoke the King’s English like a native, but had the touch of the exotic about him…something foreign and intriguing and, as she had to admit to herself, exciting.
Now, healed, strong once more, she knew he was the most dangerously attractive man she’d ever seen, and she’d seen her share, living so close beside the army all of her life. It wasn’t the uniform; it was the man who wore it, and Spencer Becket could be clad in rags and still be the most striking man in any room. He exuded danger and excitement. Then and now.
She raised her arms to slide her fingers up and into the dark tangles of his hair.
Wasn’t this how it had all begun? With her stroking his thick black hair back from his fevered brow, feeling the silk of it, then being startled when he’d opened his unfocused eyes and she’d glimpsed the mystery of the man—a mystery she would probably never unravel. When she’d unbuttoned his shirt to see his shoulder wound, she’d also seen the slightly olive hue of his fevered skin that covered smooth, rippling muscles, the dark thatch of hair that arrowed down to his waist-band. So elementally male.
He’d lain there, unprotected, vulnerable, helpless, and still he exuded strength she could feel beneath her fingertips. She remembered placing the palm of her hand against his chest to feel his heart beating strongly but much too quickly and her palm had tingled.
At that moment, saving Lieutenant Spencer Becket had become the most important thing in her world, more important than saving herself. Turning into his arms when all her hope felt gone had seemed so logical at the time.
But where was logic now? Where was her sense of self-preservation? Hers, and that for the safety of her own son? Why was this man more important than anything and anyone else in this world? Was it because, deep in her heart, she knew that without him, she and William would never be complete?
“No,” she said at last, pulling away from him. “Not again, Spencer Becket. I won’t allow this to happen again. I don’t even know you, you don’t even know me. This is insane, was insane the first time it happened.”
“A time I can’t remember,” Spencer said, collecting himself, for he had very nearly forgotten that this woman had only recently given birth. What was it about her that made him lose all reason, want nothing more than to kiss her, touch her, take her? Again and again and again. “Forgive me. I should be courting you, shouldn’t I?”
Mariah gave a short, nervous laugh. “Courting me? Really? With our son as chaperon, I suppose?”
The tense moment was broken, saved by Mariah’s teasing remark, and Spencer laughed, that laugh ripe with relief. “I’ve got to go. You’ll…you’ll be all right here?”
“They’re your family, Spence,” Mariah said, lifting up William, who was now asleep. “You’d know the answer to that better than I.”
His smile disappeared. “You’ll be safe. We protect our own. Believe me when I say we’ve learned that lesson well.”
And then, before he could say anything else, before she could ask him what he meant, he turned and left the room.