Louise Allen – Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch (страница 24)

“But here I am babbling about myself as if it’s the word from the mountain,” he said. “What’s more boring than another family’s history?”

“Oh, but it’s not boring at all!” Suddenly conscious of being in her nightgown, Caro sat back on her heels and tugged the fabric modestly over her knees. “I have no family of my own, you know. Orphans don’t.”

He raised one brow in question. “Someone raised you on that Hampshire farm.”

“Not my mother,” she said, and quickly looked away. “She died when I was quite young, just as yours did. I can scarcely remember her at all.”

Jeremiah knew she was lying, and too late he remembered what his sister had told him of Caro’s mother. If the old gossip was true, then it wasn’t that Caro had forgotten her mother. Instead, he guessed, she remembered too much.

He reached out and gently took her hand in his, lifting her fingers to his lips. “What a pair we are, eh, Caro?” he said wearily. “Both of us plagued by a past that cannot be undone.”

“What a pair, aye,” she whispered with an infinite sadness beyond tears. She slipped her hand free of his and rose, glancing over her shoulder at the lantern. Though she did not move herself, the shadows from the lantern swinging back and forth made crazy patterns across her fine-boned face. “Will it trouble you if I keep the lantern lit? All the sounds of a strange place make me uneasy in the dark.”

“No, sweetheart, it won’t trouble me at all,” he said softly. “Whatever you please.”

The swinging light caught and framed her smile, a glimpse of bittersweet empathy for him alone. For him, from her. And he knew then, as somehow he’d always known, that she was the only woman he would ever love.

Alone in his cabin, Bertle grumbled angrily to himself as he refilled the battered pewter tankard with rum and lime water. He should never have agreed to have the woman on board, no matter how much gold the husband had flashed in his eye. Since Eve in the garden, women had brought nothing but sorrow and grief and discontent to mankind, and this pretty little chit with the silver-blond hair and bullyboy husband were no different than the rest. Damned impudent bastard, challenging him like that on his own quarterdeck like some Yankee fighting cock in spurs!

Muttering another oath, Bertle reached into the tankard, fished out a lime slice between his thumb and forefinger, and lowered it carefully into his mouth. Sucking noisily, he pulled the heavy leather mail pouch from his sea chest and dumped the contents onto his desk.

The letters slipped and scattered like a little drift of snow, and with both hands Bertle sorted through them. The smallest ones, addressed in dainty hands and reeking of scent, would be from ladies to their sweethearts, mostly sailors serving in the English ships stationed at Naples, and Bertle put them aside. Later in the voyage, when he needed amusement, he might turn to them; some of those dainty ladies wrote the most lubricious love letters imaginable.

But tonight the letters Bertle sought would be from men of business or in the government, the letters with information that could do him the most service. Some of his most profitable ventures had come from just such information, that little extra advantage over his competitors, and Bertle smiled with satisfaction at the large pile of business letters before him now. With the situation with France so uncertain, every worried merchant in Portsmouth had taken what could be the last opportunity to write to his factor or agent in Italy.

With a surgeon’s delicacy Bertle slid a thin-bladed knife beneath the seal of the first letter and worked it free without cracking the stiff blob of stamped green wax. The sender’s name had meant nothing to him, but the recipient’s—that ancient harridan of a countess, Lady Byfield—had attracted Bertle’s attention immediately. The countess was said to have the ear of the Queen of Naples herself, which in that court was far better than the king’s. News sent to her might be interesting indeed.

But Bertle’s hopes fell as he scanned the letter. Only some impoverished grandson living beyond his means and begging for funds, whining over a horse gone lame at Newmarket and a dispute with an aunt who’d refused him money, as well. Nothing useful, nothing interesting. But just as Bertle was ready to toss the letter aside, a sentence caught his eye. The tightfisted aunt had run off with her lover, abandoning her husband and his fortune to the hopeful avarice of the letter’s writer and, he prayed, to the rejoicing of the countess. The missing aunt’s name was Caro, the present Lady Byfield, her lover a huge, violent outlaw, and where they had so completely vanished to was anyone’s guess.

Anyone’s guess, and Bertle’s surety. He plucked another wedge of lime from the tankard, savoring both the rumlaced juice and his own revenge. As tempting as it would be to confront that Yankee braggart, it would be better still to wait until Raleigh reached Naples.

He would call on the countess himself, pay his respects, tell her how honored he’d been to carry Lord and Lady Byfield themselves in his sloop. He’d tell her how he’d naturally respected their wish for anonymity and accepted the false surname they’d used, but the lady’s breeding was unmistakable. As for the so-called husband—well, he’d let the man’s real identity be discovered soon enough, and decide at the time which would pay the best, a reward for his honesty or blackmail for silence. Either way there would be gold, gold guineas and plenty of them.

A reward, and revenge. Bertle laughed aloud, spewing bits of lime rind as he imagined the fate of the brash, bullying Yankee in the hands of the Dowager Countess of Byfield.

Chapter Nine

“You have the look of a fightin’ man, Mr. Sparhawk,” said Hart, the earnest young man who was the Raleigh’s mate. Jeremiah had come on deck while he waited for Caro to wake and dress, and while the mate’s cheerful company was not exactly his choice for so early in the morning, at least Hart had none of Bertle’s belligerence.

With obvious pride, the young man patted the stubby little cannonade he was polishing, and swiped his rag over the barrel again as he grinned at Jeremiah. “We’re only a merchantman, but the cap’n insists we be able to hold our own in a fight. You can see for yourself, sir, how far he’s gone to outfit us proper.”

Though Jeremiah considered himself a merchant shipmaster by trade, he’d seen a good deal more fighting one way or another than many captains in the American navy. The boy had guessed right enough there. But Hart’s estimation of the four pitiful cannonades with which Bertle had armed his sloop was inflated by pride, or perhaps loyalty. To Jeremiah’s eye the guns were probably older than Hart himself, and all the polishing in the world wouldn’t make the antiquated barrels aim true or far enough to frighten any enemy. Arming a merchant vessel like this one was asking for trouble, for any attacker would consider the cannonades excuse enough to fire first.

“How I’d like a good crack at a Frenchman myself, wouldn’t I though!” continued Hart. “Why, put anything French within my range and I’d give them a taste of British courage!”

“Be careful what you wish for, lad,” said Jeremiah dryly. Once, very long ago, he’d been every bit as eager to chase after the enemy. His first encounter with one of that enemy’s frigates and the carnage a single broadside could bring had instantly toppled his youthful bravado. “The press-gangs would make a prize of you in an instant.”

“Oh, they can’t take me,” said Hart blithely. “My father paid old man Bertle twenty guineas to rank me mate so I’d be clear of the press. Masters and mates, by law the press can’t touch them.”

“Don’t be so certain.” Judging by what else Jeremiah had seen of Bertle’s character, he wouldn’t trust the man not to sell poor Hart, mate or not, and collect the navy’s bounty himself. He glanced at the horizon, gauging the time by the level of the rising sun, and wondered uneasily why Caro hadn’t joined him by now. She’d been stirring when he’d left, and that had been at least an hour ago.

“Not that it matters,” Hart was saying, his disappointment clear. “I’ll lay you odds we won’t see even a hair of a Frenchman between here and Naples, let alone get to fire at one. Have you ever killed one yourself, Mr. Sparhawk? One of the French bastards, I mean?”

Jeremiah almost winced at the young man’s innocent callousness. “They’re men, Hart, not grouse in season, and they tend to bleed and die the same as the rest of us.”

“Then you are a fighting man, sir!” he exclaimed excitedly. “We was talking in the mess and we were sure you were, no matter what the cap’n said. He said you was mean and dangerous, and we should steer clear of you, but I thought you looked like a man who’d know things worth knowing. A sight more than old Bertle would, anyway.”

Jeremiah looked past the young man to the water. He knew things, all right, such wonderful things that made him shake and weep helplessly as he had last night, things he’d give much to forget if he could. There had been a time in his life when he’d been proud to be known as a man who never walked from a fight because he was confident he’d always win, but now he wasn’t as certain. These days it seemed he wasn’t certain about much of anything.