Laura Kinsale (6 page)

The instant hate that poured through Gryf at the thought of Eliot was old—old enough to have cooled, but after all the years, it had not. The bitterness and grief were still there, still locked away, walled off in a corner of Gryf’s mind. It was Eliot who had murdered Gryf’s family, as surely as if he had boarded the ship with the pirates. It was Eliot who had kept his guns at a distance, just long enough to be sure the killing was done. And it was an Eliot who held Ashland now.

Captain Eliot was related to the Meridons, having married the niece of the old marquess, but until one week before the family left Calcutta, Cousins Grace and Nathaniel had been just one more set of faceless names to Gryf. Cousin Grace had died in England when Gryf was no more than a baby and her widowed husband had been kept out of sight and mind by an active naval command. There was a son, Stephen, near Gryphon’s age, a troublemaker who lived at Ashland while his father sailed—Gryf had known this because each time there was a letter from the marquess bemoaning his great-nephew’s antics, Gryf’s mother used that “unfortunate child” as an example of how boys needed maternal care.

Then, so short a time before they left for England,
Captain Eliot’s warship had put in to Calcutta, and of course he had paid a call on his late wife’s family. Gryf had been anxious to meet him, ready to admit another hero to his temple, but the navy commander was nothing like Gryf’s beloved Uncle Alex. The difference between them had made a certain childish sense to Gryf: a military man would of course be stiff and taciturn and have little time for amusement, and less still for a pesky boy of twelve who asked too many questions.

How unbelievably fortunate, his mother had exclaimed, when the departure of Captain Eliot’s ship from Calcutta had coincided with that of the
Arcturus,
though Gryf’s father and uncle had scoffed at the rumors that new pirates out of the China Sea had been seen as far east as Ceylon. So of course Gryf had scoffed, too, because his uncle did, and considered it rather an embarrassment to be escorted by the Royal Navy.

He had thought, in his naiveté, that it would be more heroic to battle pirates alone.

The
Arcturus
had been newly built then, on the return leg of her maiden voyage. She’d been one of the first of the new British tea clippers, a beautiful, expensive aristocrat’s toy with a purpose, made to compete with the fast American ships on the run from Shanghai to Liverpool. It was just one of the many ironies of her career that she had never yet carried a crate of tea. That first voyage had been empty, so that she went light and fast carrying only passengers.

They would never have caught her, the pirates, without their trick of the burning ship. It had seemed a true conflagration, a cleverly faked horror that turned into a real one for the
Arcturus.
When the first “survivors” had come aboard, a mixture of races and language, filthy beneath their disguise of Western dress, only Grady
and Uncle Alex had guessed. In those few critical moments, the crew and passengers of the
Arcturus
had not questioned, and so had doomed themselves.

The memory of the slaughter was a jumbled kaleidoscope of brutal images, things Gryf could not forget: his sister’s screams, his father’s blood, the wild whites of a man’s eyes in the instant before his club smashed against Gryf’s skull. He had lived because they left in a hurry, left him for dead among the others. He knew that, although he did not remember it; remembered nothing else, in fact, but waking up to pain, and the aftermath of nightmare.

How Grady had survived Gryf never knew, never wanted to ask. The mate was there, nursing a shoulder wound, when Gryf regained consciousness. His family and the crew were already gone, buried at sea; the decks were clean of blood and Uncle Alex was dying. He lived long enough to dictate a will to Gryf, leaving whatever in the world was his to Gryphon Arthur Meridon, the last direct heir to Ashland. Signed by his uncle and witnessed by Grady. Gryf still had the pathetic, scribbled document in the safe, along with Uncle Alex’s signet ring and the true title to the ship, which had been made over to him also. He kept the papers from sentiment alone. No court of law would hold them valid, and even if one did, Gryf had no proof that he was who he was. The ship and the white-gold ring with the emerald crest of Ashland could be identified, but a boy who had grown to a man could not. There was only Grady’s word and Gryf’s own, which would amount to precisely nothing.

Probitas Fortis,
the ring proclaimed.

Undaunted Honor.

Gryf remembered little of the days after the attack. They had limped along under the lower course of sails
only, and Gryf had learned to handle a ship in a hurry, standing terrified at the wheel while Grady managed the lines single-handed—a feat which Gryf had only later come to understand as nearly superhuman. A storm carried them south; they were two months drifting in the Indian Ocean, staying alive on plentiful provisions originally stocked for thirty souls.

It had been a week after the blow to his head before Gryf’s eyes had ceased to blur. It took him two weeks to wonder about Captain Eliot’s ship, and another several days before the question found a focus, and he asked Grady why the warship hadn’t rescued them.

The answer was a shrug. Gryf had thought on it, and did not ask again.

On the day Uncle Alex had died, after they buried him, Grady had asked Gryf where he wanted to go.

“Home,” he had said, the extent of his plans for the future.

“England or India?”

He’d thought of his pony, left behind in Calcutta, and a pet mongoose named Sebastian. He’d thought of his family and the bungalow and rooms that would be empty, rooms that his mother and sisters would not laugh in again. In the space of a breath, the moment between a question and answer, he had begun to understand what life was going to be.

“Ashland,” he said.

So Grady took him.

They had made landfall off the southeastern coast of Africa. Grady had gone ashore alone, come back with two men, and they had left again, with Gryf never setting foot on land. They headed south, for the Cape, stopped again four times, and ended with a crew of eight—a motley crowd: himself, Grady, three Americans, one Dutchman, a Frenchman, and an African.

Grady’s obsession with secrecy had confused Gryf, whose first instinct would have been to find the authorities and cast himself upon their mercy. He realized now what the
Arcturus
and her strange crew had been: an easy plum, ripe for picking, too few men on a valuable ship. Now, Gryf understood about authority. He knew, from hard experience, just how much justice weighed against power. Or how little. The authorities would have been only too happy to take the
Arcturus
under protection, and send her young owner packing to whatever fate might befall him.

Gryf took a stiff swig of rum and let his head drop back against the unyielding bulkhead. He would dream tonight, thinking of these things. He dreaded it, wished himself blind drunk instead. A measuring glance at what remained in the bottle told him that he didn’t have enough. He had to be up in four hours anyway. His nights were mercifully short.

He finished the glass and stood, his eyes sweeping over the pile of book-filled boxes stacked in the shadows against the opposite wall. They were Uncle Alex’s books, removed from the captain’s cabin in preparation for Lady Collier’s comfort, and also because Gryf did not want to leave them where he could not reach. Well-read, they were all the higher education Gryf had known—a mongrel collection, Plato and Chaucer, Jonathan Swift,
The 1849 Register of British Merchant Ships.
There was poetry by A. H. Clough and an entire set of Jane Austen, which Gryf had glanced through that afternoon to refresh himself on correct behavior in gentle society. He had added to the selection: Voltaire and Virgil, Dante and Dumas, Bentham and Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson—whatever struck his fancy, until the boxes overflowed and he could never find the volume that he wanted at any given time.

He had a sudden recollection of the library at Ashland, that great book-lined room that he had seen only once in his life, for perhaps a total of thirty seconds. Imprinted indelibly with the mental picture was a clear memory of Nathaniel Eliot’s face, in the first stunned moment of recognition, when Gryf had presented himself at Ashland sixteen months after the attack on the
Arcturus.

For the space of a heartbeat, the two of them had stood facing each other: a ragged boy and the naval commander, the only man at Ashland who could know who that boy was. Then Eliot’s face had closed on the truth, narrowed and hardened, and he had called Gryf a beggar and a thief, ordered him imprisoned, ordered him chased down when he ran. Finally he torched the old barn where Gryf took refuge.

Gryf remembered that chase too clearly, the smell of smoky pitch, and the voices of the men outside waiting for him to flee the fire. But he would not, because he had finally comprehended, almost too late, what Grady had never quite said in words: that Gryf’s cousin, Nathaniel Eliot, was a mortal enemy.

The noise and flames had sent rats scuttling, and it was only desperation that had sent Gryf after them, so that he found the clogged entrance to an old cellar and squeezed himself below into a space too small for movement. He’d cringed there, choking and crying while the inferno raged above him, as mindless with fright as the rats themselves. And ever afterward, he’d felt a kinship for such creatures, who knew what it was to be hunted like vermin.

So Gryphon Meridon had died twice, once in a pirate raid in the Indian Ocean, and once a nameless beggar-thief in an abandoned, burned-out hayrack. There was no one to dispute it when the old marquess died and
Nathaniel Eliot took control of Ashland in the name of his own son.

There was no one left named Gryphon Meridon.

In his place, Gryphon Frost poured himself another drink and sat down heavily on the bunk. It felt stiff and unfamiliar, unused as it had been for over a decade. He wished, rather sullenly, that he could sleep where he usually did. He stared at the ceiling and felt sorry for himself on that account, knowing better than to feel sorry for himself on any other. There were some things better left locked away, some currents that ran too deep and strong to dare.

He tossed back the rest of the rum and snuffed the lamp. In the sudden, smoke-scented darkness, he felt his way to the bunk, lay down without pulling back the musty bedclothes, and shut his eyes. With a determination learned from years of watches that were too long and sleep that was too uncertain, he concentrated on nothing. After a long time of nothing, he let go, and fell over the brink into troubled sleep.

T
ess took a surprised gulp of the soft April breeze that fluttered through her open boudoir window. She emitted a faint squeak as her maid pulled the corset strings taut. An echoing squeal drifted up from some carriage braking suddenly in the bustle on Park Lane, but the sounds of London, interesting as they were, did not penetrate far into Tess’s beleaguered awareness at that moment. She had other, more immediate, concerns.

“Oh, no,” she panted. “That’s much too tight!”

“Not at all, mum,” the woman said briskly. “The gown wouldn’t fit, else. If you’ll ’old your breath ’twill be a sight easier.”

“But I was measured—” Tess began, and then squeaked again as another notch was taken on the corset. Tears sprang to her eyes, so that the last pull and tie was accomplished as she took in a great gasp of air and stared at the blurred gold-leaf decoration on the ceiling. “How will I—breathe?”

“You’ll soon get used to it, mum,” the maid said confidently. “’Ere now, ’old the arms up.”

Tess, too weak from lack of air to protest, closed her eyes and raised her arms. There was a rustle of silk, and
the gown dropped down over her head. She opened her eyes as a cascade of emerald-green slid past her nose, then the room reappeared again. The dress formed a generous puddle around her waist, resting on the wide cage of her crinoline and petticoats. The maid began to fluff and smooth, and guided Tess’s hands through the tiny dropped sleeves. The low-cut bodice, which exposed all of Tess’s smooth white shoulders and arms, fitted precisely to the artificial shape that the corset forced on her. There was not one fraction of an inch to spare.

The quick, shallow breaths she had been taking made her dizzy, and she concentrated with great effort on slowing them. The maid continued to fuss and adjust, buttoning buttons and fastening hooks. At her instruction, Tess sat, a slow and intricate process in the stiff corset. The woman tucked back a stray curl that had escaped the smooth coil of Tess’s hair and placed a crown of white flowers on her head, cheerfully ignoring Tess’s protest that the wires hidden in the greenery pricked her severely.

The maid’s persistence had its effects; Tess finally submitted to the adornment with an impatient sigh. She sat still while various pins and combs were placed with utmost care, trying not to dwell on the evening ahead. It would be her first taste of London society, and the prospect made her feel dizzy again. She took a deep breath to clear her head, chiding herself for developing a case of nerves that would do any young London miss proud.

I’ve faced alligators, she thought. Jaguars. Indians. Typhoons.

But somehow, none of those dangers equaled the terror of facing Fashionable Society. She wished longingly to be back aboard ship, standing at the rail and watching the spray spin past in a shower of rainbow colors,
with an honor guard of dolphins cavorting on the
Arcanum
’s bow wave. A faint smile traced her lips as she remembered how Captain Frost had sometimes joined her there, and they had talked of places they had been, of islands and cities and wild empty coasts. He had been a different person at those times, not the taciturn gentleman at the dinner table. He laughed with her, and teased her for letting her hair fly free in the breeze, and once he had even reached out to brush a dark strand from across her cheek. The memory of that touch brought a flush of warmth to her face; she should have stopped him, moved away. It was unwise to associate with Captain Frost at all. A blockade-runner, an adventurer; he was not what her father would have called “suitable,” by any stretch of reason or imagination.

But the queer excitement that took over her when he was near was addictive. Everything seemed to come clearer; her senses sharpened and life seemed sweeter. Seen through his eyes, the sky and the sea became ever-changing wonders; he knew their moods and lived by their rhythm, understood them, in the same way Tess understood the complex life of a tropical jungle—by instinct, and by a lifetime of watching and listening.

But he had always changed when one of the Campbells appeared on deck. Whenever one of her chaperones was near, his mask of wary reserve fell into place, and he would not speak to her. She had been hurt at first, thinking she had made some blunder and offended him. But like a hesitant, wild animal drawn to a sweet in her hand, he would come again, and she learned to be patient with him as she had been with the creatures of the forests. She went every afternoon to stand alone by the rail, and her patience was rewarded; the day would come when she looked up to find him at her side. He never spoke of why he sought her out, but Tess thought
there was a shadow behind the ready smile in his gray eyes, and she drew her own conclusions. He was lonely, as she was, and so they had been friends.

It was probably just a sign of her general vulgarity and lack of taste that she counted a blockade-runner fairly high on her short list of friends and acquaintances. But at least with Captain Frost, she had not had to weigh every word before she said it. He had listened to her tales without criticism, with respect, even, and when she was finished, he had smiled and shaken his head and asked her if she cared to join his crew and shame them into showing some spirit. It was joking praise, but the look in his eyes when he said it had warmed her inside.

But that pleasant interlude was over, and now she had to apply herself to the business of finding a proper husband, which seemed to have nothing to do with friendship or respect, and everything to do with title and fortune. Her aunt had already made up a list of eligible gentlemen, and tonight Her Ladyship Terese Collier, the fabulously wealthy heiress of Morrow, would be presented for their perusal.

With a last pat and a wish for a pleasant evening, the maid declared Tess ready for inspection. Formidable Aunt Katherine—no: dear, kind Aunt Katherine, Tess recited firmly to herself—was waiting in her room for the troops to be assembled. Several of Tess’s cousins were already there: tall, long-nosed Charles and his twin sister Anne, who might have been identical in everything except dress; dreamy Francis, the despair of his parents for his poetical aspirations, and pert Judith, who was exactly Tess’s age and already married and widowed for over a year. Judith would appear at dinner, but not at the ball afterwards, in deference to her situation.

Tess’s entry caused a well-bred sensation. Francis, the
one friend she had made since her arrival in England, professed himself overwhelmed, and even solemn Charles agreed with his twin that Tess looked particularly well this evening. Aunt Katherine nodded a terse approval, in keeping with her square-jawed, militant face and iron-gray hair. She was satisfied that the heathen had been tamed into a lady, or at least the image of one.

“But I hope, Terese dear,” Aunt Katherine warned, “that you will
not mention
that distressing trip down the Amazon
alone
.”

“I wasn’t alone, Aunt,” Tess said, pricked into speaking when she knew she should have kept her peace.

Aunt Katherine fanned herself. “Most
particularly
do not say that you have traveled with a troop of naked savages, if you please. This ball is being given for the sole purpose of introducing you into good society. It has been a great deal of trouble to arrange. Pray do not disappoint your uncle and me.”

Since Tess knew very well that it was herself, or her estate, that had paid for the ball, the dinner, all the clothes, and the very house they were standing in, this comment provoked a stinging mental reply. Outwardly, she only smiled politely and said, “I shall try my best, Aunt Katherine, but—”

Tess had been about to say that she could hardly lie if she were asked a direct question, when a new and strident voice interrupted. “Oh, Cousin Tess, if you
dare
speak of that horrid place you came from, I shall faint, I know it. What will Sir Walter think of us? Mama, you must make her promise!”

The late arrival, Larice, was engaged to Sir Walter Sitwell. She fixed Tess with a pinched glare from nearsighted blue eyes, her pretty heart-shaped face reddening with emotion at the thought of such a breach. Tess,
seeing that the reinforcements had arrived and she was outnumbered, promised faithfully not to mention the Amazon, Brazil, naked savages, or anything remotely connected to them. What she would talk about in their place did not seem to worry anyone but herself.

Aunt Katherine was calling Tess to task on another point before she had any time to think of suitable topics of conversation. “Terese dear, who is this Mr. Everett that your guardian so high-handedly instructed me to invite? I declare, I cannot understand why your uncle was not appointed trustee; it would have been so much more suitable. People will think it very
odd.
Your poor dear papa was so unpredictable, God rest his soul.”

That lament had become increasingly familiar to Tess in the past three months. It was useless to debate the subject, and she addressed herself to the first question. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a Mr. Everett, Aunt, but I’m certain that if Mr. Taylor recommended him to you, then Mr. Everett is a person of merit.”

“Well,” said her aunt, “he is invited, whomever he may be. I only hope he is presentable. Some protégé of your guardian’s, no doubt, who hopes to climb in political circles. The letter said he was attached to the governor in Trinidad, or some such place.” She waved the matter away with a snap of her fan and stood up. “Come now, it’s time to go down. Larice, you look charming. Do straighten your sash, Anne dear. Take shorter steps, please, Terese—do
try
to show some delicacy.”

The ballroom at Morrow House was two stories tall, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and a riot of plasterwork by the Francini brothers. Pristine white garlands of flowers, swags, and smiling, unclad cherubs cavorted across the arch and down the walls, outlined on a background of crimson and gold. Larice had complained of
the house’s rococo dowdiness, and said that all the fashionable families had remodeled to the Gothic style, adding turrets and crenellations to their simple Georgian manors. Tess kept her opinion of that to herself, and resisted the advice on updating with what she considered to be admirable restraint.

Now, the ceiling, the sparkling chandeliers, and the grand staircase made a splendid setting for the multitude of aristocratic guests. By her own admission, Lady Katherine Wynthrop, daughter of an earl and married to a baron of impeccable reputation, could command the attendance of the highest in the land. The guest list had mounted to five hundred before a limit was called, and the only reason the newlywed prince and his princess had not been invited was because Tess had not yet been presented at court.

Tess’s feet ached horribly in her tight slippers, but she maintained a frozen smile as guest after guest was announced and brought to her for introductions. It seemed that the world consisted of nothing but viscounts and dukes and their ladies. She remembered none of their names, and little more of their faces. When the dancing began she was immediately dragged into a quadrille of thirty-two people with a young man whom she vaguely recalled was a distant relative. She missed many of the steps, and was quizzed and pitied by several elegant and self-possessed matrons of at least eighteen years, who made sure to tell her how they had suffered at their first ball, and how long ago it all seemed. Tess nodded and smiled, and nodded and smiled, and was glad that at least she did not have to worry about saying the wrong thing, for she seldom had the chance to say anything at all. A veil seemed to have come down over her eyes, making her surroundings a bright confusion of sound and color.

Lord Thaxton, Lord Welborn, Lord This and Lord That; she was surrounded constantly by a suffocating crowd of punctilious gentlemen, most of them young and a few so old that they creaked in corsets as tight as the one she wore. Her card was completely filled with the hastily scratched names of her future dance partners and she glanced at it often to try to keep their names straight. Aunt Katherine had warned Tess, on pain of instant ostracism, not to dance more than once with the same partner. It had not sounded difficult at the time, but now, with all the faces a blur, she thought she might have been dancing with the same one over and over and never known the difference. She formed the habit of glancing toward Aunt Katherine at each request, and quickly learned from the degree of tilt of that haughty chin just how desirable a particular partner might be.

That was how Tess knew the slender, dark-haired man introduced as Mr. Eliot was a prime candidate. The name, she remembered, had been at the top of Aunt Katherine’s list, but it was the angle of chin tilt that truly distinguished Stephen Eliot from all the other aspirants. When his number came, Tess thought that her feet were beyond supporting her any longer, but one look at Aunt Katherine’s chin made Tess accept the invitation with as much cheerfulness as she could manage.

Thankfully, Mr. Eliot was a forgiving partner. When Tess missed a step, he recovered smoothly for them both, and shook his head deprecatingly at her apology.

“Never mind,” he said simply. “Dancing is nothing. Your natural grace outshines them all, mademoiselle.”

Tess looked up at him in surprise, focusing clearly on his face for the first time. He smiled and raised his eyebrows, returning her look with one of sharp, icy blue. There was something in his eyes she could not interpret, something that made her question the smile, and she
lowered her lashes again as color sprang to her cheeks. “I have all the natural grace of a water buffalo tonight.”

“Ah,” he said calmly. “Now you are fishing for compliments, for you know I have to deny it.”

“I’m not!” Tess protested, and then, before she realized how it would sound, added, “My feet hurt.”

He stopped dancing instantly. “That would explain it. I had wondered why the brilliant Lady Collier found nothing at all pleasing about her first ball. Come then, and sit down.”

Tess followed him gratefully off the floor, only a little worried about the acceptability of cutting off a dance in the middle. Mr. Eliot, she presumed, would know the rules much better than she. She sank into the chair, and nodded to his offer of champagne. She had learned that holding a glass discouraged would-be dancers, several of whom began to converge on her as soon as Mr. Eliot left to fetch her drink. She held them off with difficulty until he returned, and then listened in amazement as he dispatched them deftly elsewhere. When he turned to her again, she said, “I should like to learn to do that.”