A Night to Surrender (19 page)

“That’s it,” Susanna murmured to her friend. “That’s it. Take deep, slow breaths. The worst is behind you now.”

Bram released the young woman and left her in Susanna’s care.

“It’s all right, dear,” she mumbled, stroking Diana’s damp brow. “It’s over now. All’s well.” Then Susanna glanced up, and her face went blank with dismay. “Heavens. Just look at this place.”

Bram watched as she made a slow, heartrending survey of the scene. Her gaze traveled from the shambles of the tea shop, to the broken glass in the lane, to the trembling woman in her arms. Miss Highwood might have survived this episode, but Spindle Cove’s peaceful atmosphere had not.

Minerva Highwood came dashing out from the Queen’s Ruby. She flew straight to her sister’s side, taking her hand. “Diana. My God, what’s happened?”

“She had a breathing crisis,” Susanna answered. “But she’s better now.”

Minerva kissed her sister’s pale brow. “Oh, Diana. I’m so sorry. I should never have left you in that place. I knew the dancing was a bad idea.”

“It was hardly your fault, Minerva.”

Minerva’s head whipped up. “Oh, I know very well whose fault it was.” Her gaze focused on a distant target. “This is all your doing.”

To a one, every head in the crowd swiveled to face Colin. But Bram felt the guilt landing squarely on him. To be sure, his cousin was responsible for this mess. But Bram was responsible for his cousin.

Susanna knew it, too. While everyone else was glaring daggers at Colin, her eyes met Bram’s. And her gaze couldn’t have said any more plainly,
I warned you this would happen
.

“We never should have stayed in this wretched place,” Mrs. Highwood wailed, clutching a handkerchief to her mouth. “Lords or no lords. I
knew
that spa in Kent would have been the better choice.”

“Mama, please. Let’s discuss this inside.” Minerva took her mother by the arm.

Slowly, Susanna helped Diana Highwood to her feet. “Come along, ladies. Let’s take her back to the rooming house where she can rest.”

“Can we help you move her?” Bram asked, putting a hand under Miss Highwood’s elbow to help.

“No, thank you, my lord.” Susanna gave him a sad half smile. “You and your friends have done quite enough this evening.”

“I’ll wait for you,” he murmured. “See you back to Summerfield later.”

She shook her head. “Please don’t.”

“I want to help. Give me something to do.”

“Just leave me be,” she whispered. Her eyes darted to the side, and he could tell she was conscious of how everyone stared at the two of them. “
Please
.”

To leave her be, when she was so clearly upset and vulnerable, went against every protective impulse in his body. But he’d asked her what he could do, and she’d answered him. Honor bade him to comply. For now.

With a reluctant nod, he stepped back. Young ladies clustered around her as they all retreated to the Queen’s Ruby.

He’d let her down. She’d asked him to put a stop to this madness, and he’d refused. Now Miss Highwood was taken ill, the tea shop was in shambles, and he’d put both her reputation and her cherished community at risk. After all their confessions last night, he understood what this place meant to her, how much effort and care she’d devoted to its success.

She’d given him her virginity under the willow tree. And he’d let her down. Bloody hell.

Tomorrow, he’d see about making it up to her.

Tonight, his cousin would have hell to pay.

“Go home, all of you,” he told the men milling about the lane. “Sleep off your drink and return to this spot at sunrise. There’ll be no drill tomorrow until we put this place to rights.”

One by one, the men dispersed, leaving him and Colin alone.

Colin shook his head, regarding the scene. “Well, I’ve certainly left my mark on this place. There isn’t a tavern or ballroom or woman in England I can’t leave ruined and panting for more.”

Bram glared at him, enraged. “You think this is amusing? Fosbury’s establishment is in splinters, and a young lady almost died here tonight. In my arms.”

“I know, I know.” Looking grieved, Colin pushed both hands through his hair. “It’s not amusing at all. But how was I to know she would suffer such an attack? I never meant any harm, you must know. We only meant to have a bit of fun.”

“
Fun
.” Bram fired the word back at him. “Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the ladies have a reason for keeping this a peaceful village? Or that perhaps the mission we’re here to accomplish is more important than an evening’s debauchery?” When Colin didn’t immediately reply, he said, “No. Of course you didn’t consider it. You never consider anyone else, except to see them standing in the way of your
fun
.”

“Please. You never consider the feelings of others, either. We’re all just obstacles to your military glory.” Colin threw up his hands. “I don’t even want to be in this godforsaken, disgustingly charming place.”

“Then leave. Go find one of your many dissolute friends and leech off him for the next few months.”

“Do you really think that idea hasn’t occurred to me, on a damned near hourly basis since we arrived? Good Lord, as if I couldn’t find better accommodations than that ghastly castle.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because you’re my cousin, Bram!”

For a well-established fact, this sudden outburst rather surprised them both.

Colin made a fist. “You’ve been my closest kin since my parents . . . since I was a boy. And since your father died, I’m all you’ve got, too. We’ve barely spoken to each other in over a decade. I thought it might be nice to try this ‘family’ thing the rest of the world seems so keen on. An idiotic notion, clearly.”

“Clearly.”

Bram paced in a slow circle, swinging his arms in frustration. This was brilliant. Just exactly what he needed to hear right now—that atop betraying Sir Lewis, deflowering Susanna, and contributing to the village’s destruction tonight, he was somehow failing Colin, too.
This
was why he needed to return to his regiment. In the army, he had a routine, a drill book, marching orders. There, he always knew what to do. If he never resumed his command, this would be his life, it seemed. A string of disappointments and failures.

The futility of it all incited him to unreasoned anger.

Colin scratched behind his ear. “Just think, and all those years growing up alone, I thought I was missing out on something.”

“Guess you learned your lesson there.”

“What does either of us know about family, anyhow?”

“I know something about it,” Bram returned. “I know we’re doing it wrong. I don’t respect you. You don’t respect me. We’ve only been at each other’s throats this whole time.”

“You’re such a principled, arrogant ass. If you respected me, I’d have your sanity challenged. And so far as filial affection is concerned . . .” Colin gestured angrily toward the spot where the Bright twins had grappled. “It seems clawing at one another’s throats is the standard practice.”

“Well, in that case.” With his left hand, Bram grabbed Colin by the shirtfront. His right fist made an impulsive swing at his cousin’s jaw. He checked the strength of the blow somewhat, but it still landed with enough force to send Colin’s head whipping left. “That’s for Miss Highwood.” He drove a halfhearted, joyless punch into his cousin’s gut. “And that’s for . . . for
fun
.”

He waited, breathing hard, holding his cousin by the collar and bracing himself for retaliation. Longing for it, truly. Bram knew he had blows coming to him—for Susanna, for Sir Lewis, for everything. The impact could only come as a relief.

But his cousin wouldn’t do him even that favor. He simply touched his tongue to his bruised lip and said, “I’ll be off in the morning, Bram. I’d let you be rid of me sooner, but I don’t travel at night.”

“Oh no, you don’t.” Bram gave him a shake.

Damn it, what was he going to do with this man? If he left here, nothing good could come of it. Of him. As a young, unattached, soon-to-be-wealthy peer, Colin had no checks on his behavior. Since a tragically young age, he’d been lacking both a father’s example and a mother’s understanding.

Susanna, he thought with a bittersweet twinge, would probably argue Colin needed a hug.

Well, Bram didn’t know how to offer his cousin any of those things—not with a straight face, at any rate. But he knew how to be an officer, and experience had taught him that duty and discipline could patch a good many holes in a man’s life.

He might be the only person in the world who could offer Colin this: the chance to rise to expectations, rather than sink to them.

“You’re not leaving,” he told him. “Not now, and not tomorrow, either.” He released his cousin, then gestured at the scene of destruction and chaos. “You broke this, and you’re damned well going to mend it.”

S
pindle Cove was falling to pieces.

Once she’d seen that Diana was safely upstairs and resting in her bed, Susanna descended to the drawing room of the Queen’s Ruby. There she found her whole world breaking apart. Complaints and confessions detonated in every corner of the room.

“Oh Lord. Oh Lord,” a voice pitched above frantic flapping. A gull’s wing couldn’t have worked harder than that fan. “I feel an attack of nerves coming on.”

“I can’t believe I drank
whiskey
,” mourned another. “And danced with a
fisherman
. If my uncle hears of this, I’ll be called home in such disgrace.”

“Perhaps I ought to go upstairs. Start packing my things now.”

And then came the observation that froze Susanna’s blood.

“Miss Finch, what’s happened to your gown? The buttons are all askew. And look at your hair.”

“I . . .” Susanna strove to keep calm. “I suppose I dressed too hurriedly tonight.”

“But it wasn’t like that at Summerfield,” Violet Winterbottom said. “And I thought for certain you would have arrived in the village long before me—I was forced to rest for so long—but you didn’t. Did you meet with some accident on the way?”

“Something like that.” As she melted into a nearby chair, Susanna’s conscience stabbed at her. Then she knew the piercing quality of Kate Taylor’s curious gaze. Then Minerva’s.

They all turned to her, every lady in the room. Staring. Noticing. Then
wondering
.

She’d been so foolish. What she’d shared with Bram had been . . . indescribable, and she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. But to engage in it on the village green, where they had every chance of discovery? While complete pandemonium broke out nearby, putting a woman’s life at risk?

And Miss Highwood wasn’t the only one in danger. Women like Kate and Minerva . . . If Spindle Cove ceased to be a reputable place, what chance would they have to pursue their talents and enjoy the freedom of independent thought?

“Miss Finch?” Kate asked quietly, coming to sit beside her and take her hand. “Is there anything you wish to tell us? Anything at all?”

Susanna squeezed her friend’s hand and looked around the room. She was not a resentful person as a matter of course. But in that brief moment, she rather hated the world. She hated that all these bright, unconventional women were here because they’d been made to think there was something wrong with them. That they had to escape from society, just to be themselves. She hated that the slightest hint of her behavior tonight could put their safe haven at risk—assuming that tavern debacle hadn’t ruined everything anyway.

And most of all, she hated that she could not sit here with her only friends and confess to them that she’d just given her virginity to the strongest, most sensual, wonderfully tender man. That beneath her rumpled clothing, she was still flushed and damp and . . . pleasantly sticky from his attentions. That she was changed inside, still reeling from the pleasure and profundity of it all. Little echoes of bliss cinched tight in her belly, and her heart brimmed with emotion. And did they
know
the wicked things a man could do with his tongue?

It was so wrong, that the world forced her to keep quiet. But Susanna had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she could not single-handedly change the world. At best, she could protect her small corner of it.

Tonight, she’d failed at even that.

“On my way into the village, I had a tumble,” she said, “and my gown took the brunt of it. That’s all.” She rose from her chair, preparing to leave. “I’m going home to rest. I suggest you all do the same. I know it’s been an unusual evening, but I hope to see you all in the morning. It’s Thursday, and we do have our schedule.”

Eighteen

M
ondays are country walks. Tuesdays, sea bathing. Wednesdays, you’d find us in the garden.

“And on Thursdays . . .” Bram said aloud, “they shoot.”

Of course they did.

He stood with Colin on the edge of a green, level meadow near Summerfield. The two of them watched as the assembled fragile-flower ladies of Spindle Cove donned doeskin gloves and arranged themselves in a rail-straight line, facing down a distant row of targets. Behind the women sat a long wooden table, atop which lay bows, arrows, pistols, flintlock rifles. Quite the buffet of weaponry.

At the head of the line, Susanna announced the first course. “Bows up, ladies.” She herself fitted an arrow to her bowstring and drew it back. “On three. One . . . Two . . .”

Thwack.

In unison, the ladies released arrows that flew true to their targets.

Bram craned his neck to see how Susanna’s had landed. Dead center, of course. He wasn’t surprised. At this point, very little would surprise him, where Susanna Finch was concerned. She could tell him she ran an elite espionage ring out of her morning room, and he would believe it.

The ladies walked briskly across the meadow to retrieve their arrows. Bram’s eyes were fixed on Susanna as she crossed the ground in smooth, confident strides. She moved through the tallish grass like an African gazelle, all long legs and graceful strength.

“Pistols, please,” she said, once they’d all returned. She traded her bow and arrow for a single-barreled weapon.

Each lady in line lifted a similar firearm and held it in braced, outstretched arms, staring down her respective bull’s-eye. When Susanna cocked her pistol, the others followed suit. The chorus of clicks raced down Bram’s spine.

“I find this scene wildly arousing,” Colin murmured, echoing Bram’s own thoughts. “Is that wrong?”

“If it is, I can promise you company in hell.”

His cousin made an amused sound. “And you thought we have nothing in common.”

Susanna leveled her pistol and took aim. “One . . . Two . . .”

Crack
.

Neat, smoking holes appeared on each of the targets. In unison, the girls lowered their pistols and set them aside. Bram whistled low, admiring the accuracy of the ladies’ marksmanship.

“Rifles next,” Susanna called out, shouldering her own firearm. “One . . . Two . . .”

Bang
.

Once again, true shots, all. One of the targets exploded with a little burst of paper, rather than the usual batting and straw. A breeze carried a scrap of it to land at Bram’s boots.

“What’s this?” Colin asked. He bent to retrieve it. “A page from some book. By a Mrs. Worthington?”

The name was oddly familiar to Bram, but he couldn’t think why.

Colin shook his head. “I’ve no idea why this place is called Spinster Cove. It ought to be Amazon Inlet. Or Valkyrie Bay.”

“No doubt.” Here Bram had been straining and sweating through his effort to round up the local men and train them into a fighting force. Meanwhile, Susanna had already organized her own army. An army of females, no less.

She was, quite simply, the most amazing woman he’d ever known. More the pity that this morning, as she stared down that target, she was probably envisioning Bram’s face on it—if not his nether regions.

Steeling his nerve, he strode forward into the breach. As he walked the line of markswomen, he had the distinct sensation of being a moving target. Susanna caught sight of him and stopped short.

As he neared her, he held up his open hands in a gesture of peace. “I told you I’d risk a firing squad.”

She wasn’t amused. “What are you doing here?”

“Watching. Admiring.” He flicked a glance toward the women. “You’ve trained your ladies well. I’m impressed. Impressed, but not surprised.”

A blush climbed her throat. “I’ve always believed a woman should know how to protect herself.” She reached for the powder horn and a gleaming, polished example of the pistol with which she shared a name.

“The men have been working since sunup to put the tea shop back to rights,” he said. He nodded toward his cousin. “And I’ve brought Payne along to apologize. If he doesn’t do a fair job of it, you can use him for target practice.”

She didn’t smile. “Unfortunately, the tea shop is the least of the damage incurred. And it’s not me who deserves his apology.”

Concerned, he looked around the shooting party. “Is Miss Highwood still feeling poorly?”

She poured a measure of powder into the pistol, following the charge with a patch-wrapped ball. “I stopped by early this morning. She’s resting for caution’s sake, but I don’t think she’ll suffer any lasting effects from the incident.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“However”—she cocked her weapon—“her mother is now set on removing her daughters from Spindle Cove. There’s a new spa in Kent, you see. She’s heard they do remarkable things with leeches and mercury.”

Susanna turned, leveled her pistol at the distant target, and shot. A whisper of smoke wafted from the gun barrel. He could have sworn he glimpsed smoke emanating from her ears, as well.

Bram muttered an oath. “I’ll send my cousin to call on them, too. I’m told he can be very charming and persuasive with the ladies.”

“In all honesty, my lord, I’m not sure which has the greater toxic potential. Your cousin’s charm, or the mercury.” She lowered her weapon and her voice. “Mrs. Highwood is all but packing her trunks. Miss Winterbottom and Mrs. Lange are speaking of leaving, too. If
they
leave, others will doubtless follow. If the general concern reaches Society at large, our reputation as a safe haven will be destroyed. All the families will call their daughters and wards home. Everything will come to an end. And for what? This absurd militia is doomed to fail. The men are hopeless.”

Never mind the weapons, or the dozen ladies looking on. Bram longed to pull her into his arms, hold her just as close and tight as he had beneath that willow tree.

“Susanna, look at me.”

He waited until those clear, iris-blue eyes met his.

“I will mend this,” he said. “I know I let you down last night, but it won’t happen again. My cousin and I
will
convince the ladies it’s safe to stay. Until the midsummer fair, I
will
keep the men tightly reined and out of your way. And someway, somehow, over the course of the next fortnight, I
will
drill them into an elite, precise militia to impress your father’s guests.”

She made a sound of disbelief.

“I will,” he repeated. “Because that’s an officer’s duty. To make unlikely men into soldiers, and to ensure they turn up trained and prepared, wherever and whenever they’re needed. It’s what I do, and I’m good at it.”

She released a breath. “I know. I’m sure you’re a very capable commander, when you don’t have to contend with teacakes and poetry and cudgel-wielding bluestockings.”

“I have been distracted. But that’s all to do with you, Miss Finch.”

Her lips curved a little. A tiny fishhook of a smile that had his heart instantly snagged.

But then it faded, and she turned from him, looking off to the distance, toward the village. Her spine was straight; her shoulders, bravely squared. But the fear was there, in the tiny quiver of her bottom lip and the gooseflesh dotting the graceful curve of her shoulder. She felt responsible for the place, and she was scared.

He couldn’t let her feel that way. Not when he had the perfect opportunity and every honorable reason to make her problems his own. To make
Susanna
his own. Right now, this very morning. He’d been thinking on the possibility all night, but now the decision simply clicked within him. Crisp and clear as the sound of a pistol being cocked.

“Don’t worry. About anything.” He stepped back a pace, heading in the direction of the house. “I’m going to leave my cousin here to grovel before your ladies. Make him fall on his knees, if you would. I’m off to have a talk with your father.”

“Wait,” she said, turning back to him. “You promised not to involve my father. You gave me your word.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” He turned away. “I’m not talking to him about the militia. This is strictly to do with you and me.”

S
usanna watched him as he walked toward the house, wondering if she’d understood him correctly. Did he just say he meant to speak with her father? About the two of them?

If he intended that the way it sounded . . .

“Oh drat.” She picked up her skirts and gave chase.

She caught up to him just as he reached the house’s side entrance. “What do you mean,” she asked, panting, “that you’re going to speak to my father? About
us
? Surely you can’t mean that the way it sounds.”

“Certainly I can.”

A footman opened the door for him, and he walked through. Leaving her on the threshold with no further explanation. Teasing, cryptic man.

“Wait just a minute,” she called, chasing him down the corridor. “Are you referring to”—she dropped her voice to a scandalized whisper—“
marriage
? And if that’s the case, shouldn’t you be talking to me first?”

“What we did last night renders that conversation rather irrelevant, don’t you agree?”

“No. No, I don’t agree.” Panic struck her in the breastbone. She put a hand on his arm, arresting his progress. “You’re going to tell my
father
. About last night.”

“Not in so many words. But when I offer for you so abruptly, I wager he’s going to gather the reason why.”

“Precisely. And if my father gathers the reason why,
everyone
will. All the ladies. The whole village. Bram, you can’t.”

“Susanna, I must.” His jade-green gaze captured hers. “It’s the only decent thing to do.”

She threw up her hands. “Since when do you care about decent behavior?”

He didn’t answer, only turned and walked on. This time, there was no stopping him until he’d turned down the rear corridor and halted in the entry of her father’s workshop.

“Sir Lewis?” He rapped smartly on the doorjamb.

“Not now, please,” her father replied, his voice hazy.

“He’s working,” Susanna whispered. “No one disturbs him when he’s working.”

Bram only raised his voice. “Sir Lewis, it’s Bramwell. I need to speak with you on a matter of some urgency.”

Good God. Susanna
urgently
needed to knock some sense into this man.

Her father sighed. “Very well, then. Go on to my library. I’ll meet you there in a moment.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Bram turned on his heel without further comment, making his way toward Sir Lewis’s library. Susanna stood there for a moment, dumbstruck, wondering whether her best hopes lay in reasoning with Bram or distracting her father. Perhaps she ought to simply run upstairs, pack a valise, and abscond to a small, uncharted territory. She’d heard the Sandwich Islands were lovely this time of year.

The idea was tempting, but she took her chances with the library. Bram stood grim and monolithic in the center of the Egyptian-themed room, looking like a man awaiting his own funeral.

“Why on earth are you doing this?” she asked, shutting the door. Obviously, not because he wished to.

“Because it’s the honorable thing. The only thing I can do.” He released a curt sigh. “I should not have done what I did last night if I weren’t prepared to do this today.”

“But don’t I enter this question at all? Don’t you have the slightest regard for my feelings in the matter?”

“I have every regard for you and your feelings. That’s the point. You’re a gentlewoman, and last night I took your virtue.”

“You didn’t
take
it. I
gave
it. Freely, and with no expectations.”

He shook his head. “Listen, I know you’re full of modern ideas. But my own views on marriage are more traditional. Or medieval, as you’re so fond of saying. If a man deflowers a gently bred virgin in a public square, he ought to marry her. End of story.”

End of story
. That was the problem, wasn’t it? She might not be so panicked at the idea of marrying him—in fact, the prospect might make her dizzyingly happy—if he saw their wedding as the
beginning
of a story. A story that included love and a home and a family, and ended with the words “happily ever after.”

But he didn’t, as his next words made clear.

“It will come out to your advantage, you’ll see. We’ll marry before I go back to war, and then you’ll be free to do as you please. You’ll be Lady Rycliff. You can continue your work, but as a countess. It can only help the village’s reputation.” As an offhand addition, he told the desk blotter, “I have money. A good deal of it. You’ll be well provided for.”