THE WEEKS MOVED on into July, then to the middle of July, with Mariah keeping herself occupied with William—hiding behind her own child—and Spencer busy either in the village or on weekly trips to Dover, many of them lasting several days.
They met at the dinner table and sometimes crossed paths in the dressing room that was William’s nursery, as they did now, with the child already sound asleep after Sheila Whiting had filled his belly for him.
“I’ve come to say goodbye. I leave in the morning. Again,” Spencer said as Mariah, who had been leaning over the cradle, straightened at the sound of the door to the hallway closing behind her. Strange how attractively maternal she looked bending over the cradle to gaze at their son, and how his mind immediately saw the difference, and the different sort of attraction she presented when she was looking at him, the man who would soon be her husband.
Mariah nodded, drawing her dressing gown more closely over her breasts, and turned to enter her bedchamber, Spencer following after her. Once inside and still carefully a good twenty feet away from the bed, she turned to confront him.
He was dressed informally in just form-fitting dark brown country breeches, tall black boots and a full-sleeved white shirt open at the neck. But she was barefoot, clad only in her night rail and dressing gown, which made him seem positively overdressed…and her underdressed. In other words, he held an advantage over her, and she didn’t much care for the feeling.
“And when do we see this magnificent ship, Spencer? I should think a fleet could have been built in all this time.”
“Miss me when I’m gone?” he asked, grinning at her.
“As I’d miss a pebble in my shoe.”
Spencer pressed a hand to his chest in mock pain, the two of them now used to this constant thrust and parry, for they had spent many hours together, usually with William as their chaperon, just as she’d teased. But they were getting to know each other and he hoped she liked him as much as he liked her, as a person.
They’d kissed again a time or two. But those kisses had been few and chaste. He hadn’t pushed, had held back his desires, and he truly believed that she became more relaxed with him every day. Less fearful that he would simply pounce on her, as he was beginning to think he must have done when they’d come together under that blanket in the forest.
But they were still a long way from the sort of relationship Chance and Julia shared, or Elly and Jack had or Morgan and Ethan had. They still had such a long way to go. Until he was certain he could trust her. Until she was certain she could trust him.
“Ah, a mortal wound,” he said, still rubbing at his chest. And then he sobered, for he had come here for a specific reason and needed to keep their conversation civil. “Ainsley cornered me after dinner tonight, Mariah. In his opinion, we’ve put off the wedding long enough. I agree. I should be back by Friday evening and we’ll be married on Saturday morning and William baptized, as well, as long as the vicar is handy. Please consider allowing Callie to stand beside you for the marriage ceremony, as she’s a very romantical child.”
Mariah’s heart ridiculously began racing in her chest and she silently admonished it to return to its regular beat, a feat not easily accomplished as long as Spencer looked at her the way he was doing now. “And who stands behind you, with a pistol pressed to your ribs?”
“You think so little of your attractions, Mariah?” he asked her, taking two steps forward. God, how he wanted her. It had been six long weeks now, surely enough time for her to have fully recovered from William’s birth. But no, he would wait. He’d waited this long.
With some effort, Mariah stood her ground. “Stop smiling like that, you look the idiot. And step back, you’re looming.”
“Looming? Surely not. I’m fully five feet away from you.”
She pulled the dressing gown sash tighter. “It feels as if you’re looming. You are looming over me.”
“Menacingly so? Or provocatively so? This looming I’m doing, that you think I’m doing. You and I together, alone in your bedchamber. Does it frighten you, Mariah…or excite you? It’s something I’ve wondered, something I’ve longed to ask.”
“Oh, don’t be so smug.”
Now Spencer grinned, beginning to enjoy himself very much. She stood toe-to-toe with him, never afraid, and he admired her for that. “Looming and smug. Shame on me.”
“Yes, shame on you. Shame on all of you. You just…you just take it for granted that I should be so very grateful to you and then do anything you say. Perhaps I’ve been using giving birth as an excuse. Perhaps I don’t want to marry you. Perhaps I’m even considering the benefits of being a fallen woman. Perhaps I’m—stop looming.” She pointed in the general direction of the fireplace and the chairs that flanked it. “Go. Over there. Sit down.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Spencer said, shaking his head. God, she was remarkable. “If it pleases you, ma’am. God knows I don’t want another hole added to my head.”
“And don’t be facetious. I hate when people are facetious. I only did what had to be done,” Mariah said, following after him and then sitting down in the facing chair. “Now, about this marriage.”
“Yes, something else to be done only because it has to be done. That is how you see it, isn’t it, Mariah? Or is it a question of religion, the choice of celebrant? Or perhaps one of marriage settlements? You wish to discuss an allowance?”
Mariah bit her lip for a moment at that last question. “An allowance? I hadn’t considered any of that. Should I?”
Spencer shrugged. “I have no idea. You’ll be my wife, Mariah. Anything you want, anything you wish, I’ll provide for you. I’ve no intention of being cheese-paring or even stern. Although being stern does hold some small appeal. You know all of that business about you obeying me, being subservient to your husband in all things? That is in the vows, I believe. I could probably enjoy that.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes. And I thought we two could have a reasonable, mature discussion? I must have been out of my mind. You know, Spence, if it weren’t for that child in there—”
“If it weren’t for our child in there,” Spencer interrupted, turning serious. “Nothing else can be more important than William. No one else can come first for either of us.”
Mariah felt herself beginning to soften toward Spencer. Again. If William grew up with half the man’s charm, they’d be beating young women away from him with stout sticks. “At least we agree on something.”
“And William should not grow up alone,” Spencer said, pushing his point while he felt he had the advantage.
“Alone? Becket Hall is not exactly uninhabited. For such a large house, it’s nearly impossible to walk more than ten feet in any direction without bumping into somebody.”
“But he’ll need brothers, sisters. As a child, I enjoyed being a part of a large family.”
Mariah nodded. “It was always just my father and I. It would have been nice to have a sister or brother for company at some of the more isolated posts where my father served. But wanting and having are two different things, Spence. You can’t ask me to agree to…to be a wife to you in all things.” Then she closed her eyes and ceded him some ground on their personal battlefield. Not complete surrender but definitely a yielding, an offer to renegotiate terms. “Not yet.”
A wise man does not gloat when victory is in sight and a very wise man is careful to at least feign compromise. “There’s a fairly good-size dressing room connected to my bedchamber. I’ll sleep there for now and William will be moved to the nursery and someone will be with him there at all times. Do you have anyone in mind for the position of nanny?”
Mariah tried to speak, but found that her mouth was dry. She swallowed, coughed slightly and then nodded once more. “Onatah, of course. And Edyth, if she’s agreeable, to spell her from time to time.”
Spencer smiled. “There. We’re being civilized. Making decisions. Or does that make me smug again, pointing this out?”
“No. Merely vaguely irritating,” Mariah said without stopping to think before she spoke and then she smiled. “What will you do once the trips to Dover are no longer necessary? What is your…your role, here at Becket Hall?”
It was a good question. It would have been better, Spencer believed, if he had an answer for her. “We all just lend a hand where it’s needed. I’ve spent many years firmly under Jacko’s not quite tender tutelage, learning about the sea, and others learning about the land.” And still more, learning how to fight, he added mentally but didn’t actually say the words. “I’ve been gone for nearly two years and returned home wounded, so I haven’t really been doing much of anything, frankly. That’s why I was happy to help out with the trips to Dover. Are you going to put forth suggestions as to how I might occupy my time?”
“No,” Mariah said, sighing. “But to just stay here for the rest of your life? Living under your father’s roofs? Your brother Chance left to establish his own residence. Morgan left to live with her husband.”
“And Eleanor stayed, along with her husband, who now seems to be Ainsley’s second right-hand after Courtland, a change that took place during my absence. So what you’re asking, Mariah, is if you and I are to remain here for, as you said so portentously, the rest of our lives. I take it the prospect doesn’t appeal?”
“I don’t know, Spence. Eleanor is very much in charge of the day-to-day running of the household and Courtland and Jack are in charge of most everything else—with Ainsley overseeing it all. I’m used to running my father’s—” She’d nearly said life. “That is, being in charge of a household. Granted, a small one. But I was in charge. Here? Here, I’m as useless as…as…”
“A wart on the end of Prinney’s nose?” Spencer suggested helpfully. “And if you were going to say that you were used to running your father’s life before you thought better of it, please be contented in the knowledge that I fully understand that you aren’t the sort of woman who is happy merely tending to her knitting and that I’m up for the challenge. So, what do you suggest?”
“I have no idea.” She looked at him intently. “You will be the head of our small household. Those decisions rest with you.”
“Ouch!” he exclaimed, pretending to cringe. “That must have hurt, saying that. Very well, I’ll give what we’ve discussed some thought and then render my decision, hopefully with all the gravitas incumbent upon me as the head of the household. Does that please you?”
“No, it doesn’t,” she said honestly. “I am handing my son and myself over to a man I barely know and then trusting him to do what is right for all of us. Would you be pleased, were you to be standing in my shoes?”
Spencer fought the urge to squirm in his chair. “You’re making me look at myself, Mariah, and that isn’t pleasant, not when I know that as a man grown I’m now completely superfluous here and useless anywhere else. When Chance left to live in London we had no idea our circumstances would change.” We had no idea Edmund Beales was still above ground to recognize any of us, so now I’m fairly well stuck here at Becket Hall, even as Chance is stuck at his country estate, until Beales is eliminated. That, he did not say.
Mariah twisted her hands together in her lap as she struggled to understand what he was telling her and what he seemed to be attempting to avoid telling her. “I don’t understand. Is it…is it a matter of money?”
Now Spencer laughed. “Money? Oh, no, never money. That has never been a problem, not for any of us. Ainsley has made ample provisions for each of his children. Agreeing to take that money is something else. I would prefer to earn it, not have it handed to me on the proverbial silver platter.”
At last Mariah felt they were getting somewhere, making some sort of progress between them. Her soon-to-be husband was a proud man, a man with a conscience, a man who wished to succeed on his own merits. She liked that. “That’s very commendable, Spence. And how would you wish to earn that money if you are, as you say, superfluous here at Becket Hall? And what would you do with that money?”
He looked at her for a long time, wondering what she might say if he told her what he’d been thinking about for the past few years, for the entire time he was with the Army and most especially since his return to Becket Hall to see Jack Eastwood fitting so comfortably into the place he’d always thought would fall to him. Would she laugh at him? Would she be horrified? Would she refuse to marry him?
Was it time for the truth? Yes, it was. It was time he trusted her with his dream just as he trusted her with his son. It was time to learn if the strengths she’d shown after Moraviantown extended to taking his hand and stepping out into the unknown at his side.
“Have you ever heard of a place called Hampton Roads, Mariah?”
She shook her head. “No. Oh, wait. Yes. Yes, I have. Wasn’t Jamestown established near Hampton Roads? That first, failed English settlement in the colonies so many years ago?”
“I think so, yes. The entire area is now called Virginia,” Spencer said, relaxing somewhat. After all, it was only his dream, not yet an accomplished fact. “A few years ago I very briefly met someone who lives in Hampton Roads. A ship’s captain by the name of Abraham. An interesting man, Mariah, a freed slave. We’ve since corresponded, only a few times I’m afraid, before the war put a stop to our letters. But Abraham’s powers of description make it almost possible for me to see what he tells me are the green, rolling hills of Virginia. Canada was green and so were the parts of America I saw, but Virginia draws me more with its warmer climate and with a friend there to greet me. I have no desire to return to the islands, Mariah, and England has never really felt like home to me. But a new land, fresh and clean and still with opportunity for anyone willing to work hard, build his own dynasty, his own future? England will give up this war soon and I’ll be able to travel there, see it all for myself.”
He smiled at her, attempting to gauge her reaction to his words. “Do you look at me and see a gentleman farmer, Mariah? Crops, cattle, horses—even sheep? Do you see me, see yourself, in America? A new land, Mariah. A fresh start. A home and a life to build. Something of us to give into William’s hands one day, to all of our children?”
Mariah didn’t know what to say to him. His words had come to her seemingly from out of the blue, totally unexpected. She could hear the intensity in his voice and a hint of uncertainty, as if he wasn’t sure of her reaction. A new land. A fresh start. God, what did the man need to put behind him?
Then again, what was here for him, a younger son, in Romney Marsh? His large family, for one thing. Perhaps too large? Perhaps even crushing him beneath its collective weight? To leave Becket Hall, this she could understand. But to leave England?
Perhaps he was looking for a home he felt was his.
And he was offering to take her and William with him.
“I…I have nothing and no one holding me here, Spencer,” she said at last, realizing that this was the truth. She had only William. She’d never had a home that was hers, but only a series of posts, traveling with her father, saving for the few years she’d had to stay behind in the Lake District while he served on the Peninsula.
She had no roots other than the ones she longed to put down somewhere for herself, for her son. A home of her own. A husband and family of her own. A place to build on for the future.
“Yes, Spencer,” she said at last. “I can see both of us—all three of us—in America. Building something of value for William. But the war continues.”
Spencer got to his feet, unable to sit still any longer, excitement coursing through him, not realizing how young he looked, how eager…and how vulnerable. “Ainsley tells me quiet negotiations are already underway to end the war. Don’t ask how he knows this. He always knows everything and I’m convinced he’s right. With Bonaparte banished, England is tired of war and nearly bankrupt with it. No one will win or lose in America. It will, in the end, be as if nothing had ever happened and no one had died over there.”
“My father died over there, Spencer. His body is buried over there among so many others, where I cannot even hope to find his grave again let alone put flowers on it,” Mariah said tightly. “I detest war.”
“And I agree. The entire exercise has been one of futility and holding on to lands already our own, lands that weren’t even threatened when we began the whole horrible mistake. In the end, the only ones to lose will be Tecumseh’s Five Nations and the whole Indian population. I know this, Mariah, just as I believe he did, but I don’t want to personally watch that inevitability, which is another reason to choose Virginia, far from the conflicts with the Indians that are bound to be small, bloody wars that last for years. But Virginia is already solidly in the hands of the Americans. I would find it difficult to aim down my rifle at an Indian, knowing Tecumseh’s arguments about the land were sound, if futile.”
Mariah twisted in her chair to watch Spencer as he spoke and paced. “You truly have given this a great deal of thought, haven’t you? And you wouldn’t miss your family too much?”
Spencer stopped, looked at her. “All of them would be a mere five- or six-week voyage away, and Ainsley is already investing rather heavily in those new steamships that will one day soon make the journey even shorter. It’s not as if we’d have traveled to the opposite end of the earth. But only Ainsley—Papa—knows how I feel, what I want. I have his blessing. And I will earn the money he’ll give me in order to travel to Virginia, buy land, build my house—our house. He knows I feel I have that obligation and has made…arrangements for me to earn whatever he gives me. I wouldn’t feel comfortable about taking his money any other way.”
“Earn it,” Mariah said, also getting to her feet. “By overseeing the building of his new ship? That’s very commendable, Spencer. Is that why you’ve been gone so much? Earning your way to…to freedom?”
Now it was Spencer who lowered his gaze to the carpet at his feet, thinking of Edmund Beales, but then he recovered just as quickly and looked at her. “I wouldn’t want to leave here until I knew everyone else was…settled. I owe that to Ainsley for all he’s done for me. But, as he reminded me when I began stammering and stuttering out my dreams, he did not take us in to be his possessions, but only to guide us as we grew and then let us go our own way if that’s what we wished. It’s…it’s difficult to explain Ainsley. He’s an extraordinary man.”
And a very secretive one, Mariah reminded herself, although she didn’t say that to Spencer. It was enough that they were speaking, actually getting along, getting to know each other better.
And Virginia was a long, long way from whatever was going on here, at Becket Hall. She’d believed Spencer when he said that the Beckets weren’t smugglers. She’d believed that for at least four and twenty hours, until she’d overheard Fanny in a whispered argument with Rian about how he’d conveniently forgotten to tell her that he was riding out as the Black Ghost to meet the luggers instead of Spencer.
The Black Ghost? The name sounded romantic; what that Black Ghost did sounded so very dangerous. How Mariah longed to confront Spencer with what she knew…except that she knew so little and he lied so smoothly.
Yes, Virginia and a new, fresh start seemed the perfect answer.
Now to worry about whatever it was Spencer seemed to think he still owed Ainsley before they could leave…
“Mariah?”
She shook herself back to attention, to realize that William was crying in the next room. “Oh, our voices must have woken him.”
“Should I go find Sheila Whiting?”
“No, that’s not necessary. He nursed only a short while ago. I’ll just walk with him for a while, until he goes back to sleep.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that,” Spencer told her, following her into the dressing room. “He should be in the nursery.”
Mariah scooped the crying child up and onto her shoulder, patting his back as she rocked from side to side. William began to settle himself almost immediately. “Nonsense. He’s my son. And I’m no grand society lady who only sees her children when she happens to turn down the wrong hallway in her great London mansion.”
Spencer laughed. “We’re going to rub along together just fine, aren’t we, Mariah, you and I.” He stepped closer, ran the back of his fingers down her smooth cheek. “Thank you again for saving my life and for giving me William. Thank you for…for listening to me.”
Mariah didn’t know how to answer him. She fairly basked in his nearness, gloried in his love for his son and had at last begun to believe the three of them could become a real family. If only she hadn’t overheard Fanny and Rian. If only she could pretend that she didn’t know Spencer had looked firmly into her eyes and then lied to her and would probably continue to lie to her until whatever hold Becket Hall and Ainsley Becket held over him was satisfied.
What good was anything, any one place, if she and Spencer couldn’t seem to trust each other enough to be entirely honest with one another?
“Spencer,” she began, still not quite sure what she was going to say and then there was a knock on the door to the hallway and Jacko’s voice could be heard through the thick wood.
“Do your mooning over the fruit of your loins another time, bucko. Cap’n wants you downstairs in his study. Now. And dress warm, it’ll be nippy out in the Channel.”
“Damn the man,” Spencer said at the interruption, sure something had gone wrong just when one thing in his life seemed to at last be going right.
“Spencer? You’re going out now? Tonight? Why?”
His expression had closed, become unreadable after so many wonderful minutes during which she was sure he was at last showing her at least a piece of his heart. “I have no idea. But duty appears to be calling me.” He cupped a hand around her neck as he bent to kiss the top of William’s head and then kissed her forehead, as well. “Saturday morning, Mariah. And, after the ceremony…Saturday night and beyond. You’ll think about the rest of our lives?”
“I…I…”
“The word was now, bucko,” Jacko called out loudly in his deep, booming voice and William began to cry once more.
Spencer kissed her open mouth. “I ask only that you think about it,” he said and then left her, pausing with his hand on the door handle to look back at his soon-to-be wife and their son, his heart aching—a reaction he needed time to think about, time he didn’t have now. “A whole new life, Mariah.”
Then he pulled open the door, stepped into the wide hallway and glared at Jacko, who was grinning at him, his eyebrows raised, his hands stuck deep into his pockets, the great big bear attempting to look sheepish. “I woke young William? I didn’t mean to do that.”
Spencer closed the door behind him, unimpressed by Jacko’s show of embarrassment. “You didn’t mean to do anything, Jacko. You never do. Unless it’s watching the rest of us jump through hoops for your amusement. It’s well after ten. What’s wrong?”
“Word’s just come from Calais. Seems you, together with Ainsley’s bits of gold, have finally done it. There’s someone important come to town, hiding his face inside a fancy black closed coach escorted by eight ugly-looking bastards on horseback, and being sneaked up the back stairs at the best hotel in the whole Frenchie town.”
Spencer almost asked Jacko when someone was going to tell him that he hadn’t been the only one crossing the Channel on the hunt for Edmund Beales, but held back in time. He should have realized that fact on his own. Ainsley Becket left little to chance and had probably had someone watching his son’s back, guarding him, the entire time he’d thought he was on his own. He could be angry about that, but Ainsley was just being Ainsley. Careful. And always thinking.
“I’ll assume the crew has already been alerted. Luckily, the sky is full of stars tonight to guide us across the Channel. Give me five minutes to change and collect Clovis and Anguish and I’ll be ready to leave.”
“Not before you talk to the Cap’n. He’s waiting on you in his study.”
William held close against her shoulder, Mariah stepped back from the door, having had her ear pressed to it for the past minute or more. She kissed the sleeping infant and placed him back in his cradle with hands she wished weren’t trembling, before tiptoeing back into her bedchamber, heading straight for her clothespress. A moment to dress, another to find Onatah to tell her to sit with William and she could be heading down the servant stairs to the back hallway and Ainsley’s study.