A Most Unsuitable Groom by Kasey Michaels (17 page)

"Courtland's pacing in the drawing room like an old woman. He wants to talk to you before you leave, Spencer," Jack said before turning to head back down the hallway.

Spencer swore under his breath. He liked Jack, not that he knew that much about him. He did not like being summoned.

Jacko started to follow, but Spencer grabbed his arm, held him back. "Jack said he agrees. He knows? He's that far into the family?"

Jacko shrugged. "He's Elly's husband, Spence, and not half-smart. She trusts him so who are we to say no?"

"So the same should be true for Mariah, who is shortly to be my wife. She asks so many questions," Spencer said as they headed down me hallway once more.

"Questions you can't answer, Spence. Jack proved himself, putting himself in danger for us," Jacko reminded him. "The girl has yet to even be tested."

Spencer bit down on his temper. "Tested? And how do you propose we go about that, Jacko?"

"And now you've hit on it, haven't you, boyo? How, indeed? But we'll not risk us all until we can be sure of her, a soldier's daughter and loyal to the Crown. She Could hang us all. It's, as the Cap'n says, a conundrum."

"I'm so bloody sick of secrets," Spencer said as he all but slammed into the drawing room to see his brother standing in front of the large fireplace, legs spread, hands hidden behind his back, that damn short beard making him look like a headmaster about to deliver a homily. "Court? You sent for me?"

Courtland, at twenty-nine, was the second-oldest of the four Becket sons. It had been a younger Court whom a defeated, returning Cap'n—then known as Geoffrey Baskin—and the crews of his two ships had seen standing knee-deep in the clear blue surf protectively clasping the infant Callie to his chest; the carnage Edmund Beales had left behind spread out behind him on the once-white sands. Courtland Becket, who rarely smiled, who worked hard, who was loyal to a fault. Calm, clearheaded, careful, responsible Court.

Spencer loved him as the brother he'd become. Admired him, looked up to him. But what a damn bore.

Court frowned, most probably at Spencer's tone or because Court simply liked to frown, and then pulled his right hand out from behind his back—a flat, silver and mother-of-pearl cylinder about an inch wide and four inches long in his palm. "I know you're hot to leave, but I'd like you to take this with you."

Spencer hefted the thing in his hand. It weighed next to nothing. "What is it?"

"Push that small lever at the one end. See it?"

Spencer did and nearly dropped the thing when an evil-looking four-inch, two-sided blade instantly swung out, locking into place. "Jesus, Court! You could have warned me."

Courtland smiled one of his rare smiles. "Forgive me. Waylon made it in the smithy, to my specifications. Simply one of my random ideas. There's a mechanism that goes along with it to secure the thing up under your sleeve. I've already discussed this with Clovis, who will fit it on you once you're aboard ship. A careful shrug of your shoulder and the knife will slide down onto your palm, ready to use. I haven't completely perfected the harness yet so it's still rather bulky. Luckily, you're not in love with your tailor and your jacket will be loose enough to conceal that bulk."

Spencer didn't know what to say as he pocketed the strange knife. "Thank you, Court. You don't mind that Ainsley's sending me rather than you?"

"No," Courtland said quietly. "He chose the right man. Beales would remember me, at any rate. I was older and he'd known me years longer."

"Even with that hideous growth on your face?" Spencer asked, grinning.

Courtland rubbed at the light brown fuzz. "Please. Callie hates it. That alone makes it marvelous and worth the occasional itch."

Spencer nodded at the oft-told joke, understanding. Fanny and her insistence on following Rian wherever he went. Callie worshipping Court like some wide-eyed puppy. They had to get this business with Beales settled, get those two silly girls away from Becket Hall and into the world to find more suitable mates. And the same for Rian and Courtland. Becket Hall had been their sanctuary, their prison, much too long.

"You'll watch over Mariah and William for me? If anything should happen?"

Court put his arm around Spencer's shoulder. "If America didn't kill you, nothing else will. But we'll keep your lucky charms safe until you return, at any rate."

Jack Eastwood stepped forward, his right hand extended. "Godspeed, Spencer. I wish I could go with you. It's been a while since I've been out to play." He stepped back, raised his hands. "Not that I'm complaining. Married life holds its own
rewards, as you'll soon discover."

"And you're terrified of Elly, just like the rest of us," Spencer
s
aid, pinning and feeling in charity
with this
new brother. "All right, I'm off."

Then a now grim-faced, hard-eyed Spencer Becket was out in the hallway once more, to where Clovis arid Anguish waited, and Clovis was tossing a greatcoat up and onto his shoulders before smartly saluting his lieutenant. The three men stepped out of the house into a moonless night and a rising mist, striding silently toward the beach, the
Respite
and the unknown.

Spencer sat at the small table bolted to the deck in the captain's quarters as the sloop cut through the choppy waters of the Channel, testing and retesting the knife Courtland had given him, smiling at the thought that his brother could be a dead bore. Dead bores don't get ideas like this weapon in their heads. Perhaps Court's time spent riding out as the Black Ghost hadn't all been for the unselfish sake of the residents of Romney Marsh. Staid, proper Courtland Becket might just have enjoyed cutting a dash in that cape and mask—the devil. What was that saying about still waters?

"Spencer?"

He was on his feet arid turned about in less than a second, the chair toppling backward on the wooden deck, the knife still open in his hand. "Mariah, what in bloody bell—"

She held her hands out in front of her, the door to a cabinet behind her still hanging open on its hinges. "Put that thing away, please. I've been punished enough, cramped up in that cabinet for the past several hours," she said, and then waited until he'd done so. "Thank you."

"You might not want to thank me," he said, righting the chair and motioning for her to sit in it—which she didn't do and he probably should never have expected her to do, damn it all to hell, anyway.
Obey
might be a part of the marriage vows they'd take on Saturday morning, but that's all it ever would be to Mariah. A word. "How did you get aboard ship? Is there a body I may be tripping over soon?"

She shook her head, trying not to smile even if what she'd done wasn't all that amusing. He was so upset. "Jacob Whiting is neatly tied up, I'll grant you, but he's safe enough. He's in a cabinet in the other cabin. A smallish cabinet, so his knees are touching his ears, poor thing. Don't be angry with him. I was holding a pistol on him from beneath my cloak as he rowed me to the ship. It was tricky as I climbed the rope ladder onto the deck, but he believed me when I told him I'd shoot his nose off for him if he betrayed me. I can see why your sister Morgan found it easy to lead him around by that nose, as Sheila does now."

Spencer rolled his eyes heavenward. "Jesus. And this is the mother of my child?"

He wasn't the only angry person in this cabin. Mariah was more than ready to dismiss the subject of Jacob Whiting and get down to the business at hand. "And this is the father of my child, deliberately lying again and again to the mother of his child, haring off to risk his life and that of this crew in order to clean up Ainsley Becket's mistakes for him? He was a
pirate
when you lived on that island with him, Spence. He broke the King's law."

If she wasn't going to sit down, he was. "Where were you?"

"In the hallway outside Ainsley's study, until I had to hide in a corner when I heard Jack walking down the hallway. You'd left the door open behind you when you went in to see your father," Mariah said, not bothering to dissemble. She, at least, told the truth. "Spencer—what is all this about? Is this the way you think you'll
earn
your way out of the family, how you'll
earn
your freedom? By putting yourself in danger, jeopardizing your own future to make up for whatever terrible past is clearly Ainsley's responsibility? I heard him say it, he was a bad man who'd done bad things. This isn't your fight, Spence. It's his."

"No, Mariah," Spencer said, oddly calm now, his blood suddenly so cold it barely moved through his veins. "It's our fight. All of us. You heard what you heard but you can have no conception of what happened, what so many suffered. Old men. Women, children—babies. Not a few casualties of a fight between partners who'd had a falling out. Not even a fight. A massacre, Mariah. Torture, when Beales didn't get the answers he wanted. Venting his rage once Ainsley's Isabella was dead and lost to him, because Beales had wanted her for his own. And the rage went on forever, while those few Odette could rescue hid deep within the trees and listened to the screams. A bloodlust that fed on itself until there was no person, no animal,
nothing
left alive to destroy."

He scrubbed at his face with one hand and then pushed his fingers through his hair, trying to wipe away the mental portrait he had just painted for her. But this had to be said if she was to understand the enemy they faced, and damn his family for making him keep such a secret from her. Maybe he had to say it for himself, too, as he had forced the memory from his mind for too long, tried to deny that terrible day
had ever happened at all.

It was time to bring the memories out and deal with them. Not to defend Ainsley or any of them. But to explain. Until Mariah, he hadn't found anyone else he had wanted to tell. Had trusted enough to tell.

"There were more than forty children on the island when Ainsley's supposedly trusted partner and his men dropped anchor in the harbor that day. Fourteen sailed with us to England.
Fourteen,
Mariah. I was one of them. Sometimes we would wish we'd died that day, so we wouldn't have to remember what we saw, what we heard. I've spent the last sixteen years trying to forget it. All those bodies wrapped in sailcloth, silently slipping into the sea once we reached open water, one after another after another, as if we'd mark our route all the way to England with the bodies we left behind us. Sweet Jesus, there wasn't enough sailcloth, so we had to wrap the babies with the mothers."

"Spencer, I—"

"No, you need to hear this, if you're going to accuse: Ainsley. Let me finish. Aboard ship, night after night, I'd hear the other children crying for their mothers. Grown men sobbing, cursing God as they shouted at the stars. Hell on earth, Mariah. Two ships, manned by dead men who still breathed and only held together—eventually made whole again—by the man I most admire in this world. You can't know what it was like and I don't want you to know what it was like. But don't tell me ridding the world of Edmund Beales is not my fight."