Love's a Stage (29 page)

“M-marry?”

“I know in some ways you would be getting a very poor bargain. I’m incurably frivolous, probably; occasionally, I drink to excess; and my family has a notion of togetherness that would put an ant colony to shame. They’re likely to encroach terribly. Giles and Richard have had the run of my house since infancy, and I doubt we will find it easy to break them of the habit. There are others, too, that you haven’t met—dozens of them: aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, infants.”

Frances could hardly hear his words over the thunder of her accelerating heart. “Wh-what of my family, pray? My father will insist on conducting the ceremony himself at our village church. And afterward, they will visit us constantly! There’ll be jammy fingerprints on the globe in your library, and river minnows in your crystal wineglasses. They’ll bring the puppy, of course, and inevitably it will chew up the carpet fringe. Grandma Atherton will examine every door and window in your house for drafts. Privacy for us will be impossible.”

“We’ll be forced to improvise. Do you know, Frances, that ever since we were together in the balloon, I’ve been longing to . . .” and he whispered the rest of the sentence into her ear.

She blushed rosily. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have felt safe with you for a minute. Not that I have anyway.”

“My sweet, darling girl, there have been so many times when . . . Frances! Good Lord, are you crying?”

Her tears were beginning to dampen his shirtfront. “I c-can’t help it. I’m just so—so amazed. I never thought you’d want to marry
me
. You told me yourself you didn’t want—that commitment with a woman.”

He stopped her words with a gentle kiss and smiled tenderly into her tear-brimmed eyes. “That was before I fell in love.”

“But I can’t understand how you could be in love with me, when you could be with women who are rich, and beautiful, and wellborn. David, you could marry so many people.”

“No, I couldn’t, they’ll only let me have one.” He produced a handkerchief for her from an inner pocket, and she accepted it, complaining with a broken sniff that he joked about everything. He pulled her closer, settling her comfortably against his chest, and leaned back into the sand. A gull cried overhead, its snowy whiteness transformed into a fiery orange by the sunrise. “Except,” he agreed, “when I tell you that I love you very much—a sentiment which I have yet to hear requited.” He lifted her shyly turned chin with one finger. “Do you love me too, sweetheart?”

The courageous Frances Atherton could only manage one small, affirmative syllable under her breath.

“Then say it,” he whispered.

“I—don’t feel so bold.”

“I’m going to teach you much bolder things than that,” he said. Her eyes were still downcast; he bent his head to kiss the bridge of her nose. “Say it, my love.”

She looked up at him, her expression an arousing mixture of the earnest, vulnerable, and brave; and in a low, sweet voice, she said, “I do love you, David. And I have for a time, even though at first I didn’t realize it.”

He traced a finger across her brow, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. “Neither did I. You know, when I saw you at Chez la Princesse being handled by that damn St. Pips, I was so angry that I wanted to call him out. You’d think I would have been able to recognize it as decent, old-fashioned jealousy.”

“So you went back and beat him at cards later that night? So he couldn’t stay in London to recognize me?”

“Did Richard tell you that? What a rattlepate the boy’s become. He’s half in love with you himself—did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t. But he’s been very kind.” She nestled her face against him. “Aunt Sophie will be so surprised.”

He removed the small, elegant hat from her head and began to remove the pins with which she had hastily dressed her hair before leaving on the ride to Sussex. Then with a wry smile he said, “
Not
as surprised as you think. She came to my house yesterday and told me it was not her way to interfere, but did I or did I not intend to have her niece in lawful wedlock? And I said I did.”

Frances giggled at the thought of her Aunt Sophie confronting Lord Landry, then suddenly pulled away from him and knelt in the sand, the red dress spreading about her in the crimson sunrise. “Do you mean last night in the library you were intending to marry me? And you let me make that wretchedly horrendous promise to you anyway?”

He stood and scooped her up with him. “The temptation was irresistible,” he admitted. His lips caressed her cheek. “Frances, after we’re married, will you let me call you Fanny?”

“Certainly not!” she said, angry still, “and I shall have to wonder always whether or not you’re marrying me because you couldn’t have me otherwise.”

He laughed and took her head in his hands. “We had better make love at once; when we marry in spite of it, your doubts will be laid to rest!” His lips found hers in a kiss thorough and penetrating as the sky’s rich saturation of sun-soaked flame. It was a very long time before he was able to let her go, and then only so he could find her cheeks, her eyelids, the softness of her neck. As his lips wandered, she said in an unconsciously husky whisper:

“This won’t do, David, it won’t.”

“My love, my innocent love.” His voice was thick and love-filled. “It’s already doing.”

“Well, it mustn’t!” Her voice was a poor thread of itself, but stoking, as always, for independence. “Because I intend to marry a virgin.”

Were ever a pair of green eyes merrier than his? “Then I had better confess at once that I am not a virgin.”

With dignity she corrected, “I meant,
as
a virgin.”

“Oh,
as
a virgin.” He let her go for long enough to reestablish her at his side and, with one arm tucked around her waist, began to stroll with her toward the steep trail that led up the cliffside.

“In that case,” he said, “we had better stay away from secluded coves at dawn.”

She let her head rest against his arm. “And ascending balloons . . .”

“And stables with haystacks . . .”

“And the interior of hackney carriages . . .”

So they walked on, together in the new sunlight, their voices and their laughter in mingling harmony with the ocean’s eternal song.

Mistakenly swept aboard an infamous pirate ship, Merry Wilding finds herself at the mercy of a wicked crew . . . and one sinfully handsome pirate.

Please see the next page for a special excerpt of the beloved classic

Chapter One

FAIRFIELD, VIRGINIA. AUGUST 1813.

Merry Patricia Wilding was sitting on a cobblestone wall, sketching three rutabagas and daydreaming about the unicorn. A spray of shade from the swelling branches of the walnut tree covered her and most of the kitchen garden, but even so, it was hotter here than it had been inside. A large taffy-colored dog with thick fur stole past the fence; she noticed it as a flicker of movement in the corner of her vision. Light dust floated in the air and settled on the helpless leaves. The breeze brought the scent of baking ground and sunburnt greens.

There was no one about to disturb her solitary concentration, or to mark the intriguing contrast she made with the homey products of the earth that grew freely near her soft-shod feet. Her appearance suggested a fragile, pale icon: lace and frail blossoms rather than fallen leaves and parsley plants. She was a slender girl, with delicate cheekbones set high in an oval face, and dark-lashed eyes, lazy from the day. Early that morning she had put up her heavy hair in anticipation of the heat, but the ivory combs and brass hairpins were working loose and silky red-gold strands had begun to collapse on the back of her neck. It never occurred to her that some might find the effect charming; it merely made her feel hot, untidy, and vaguely guilty, as though she ought to return to her bedroom and wind her hair back up. She would have been so much more comfortable, she thought, if she dared sit as the housemaids did on the back stoop in the evening, with the hems of their skirts pulled up past their knees, laps open, bare heels dug into the cool dirt. A slight smile touched her lips as she imagined her aunt’s reaction, should that lady discover her niece, Merry Patricia, in such a posture.

Setting down her pencil, Merry spread and flexed her fingers and watched as a tiny yellow butterfly skimmed her shoulder to light on the ground, its thin wings fluttering against the flushing bulge of a carrot. The beans were heavy with plump rods, and there would be good eating from the sturdy ruby stalks of the rhubarb. Merry looked back to her drawing and lifted her pencil.

The rutabagas weren’t coming out right. The front one had a hairy, trailing root that jutted upward at an awkwardly foreshortened angle. Though she had corrected the drawing several times, the result remained an unhappy one. It would make a better exercise to continue reworking the picture until she had captured the very essence of the vegetable, in all its humble, mottled-purple symmetry. . . . Merry was disappointed to discover in herself a flagging interest in the rutabagas . . . discipline, discipline.

Discipline and a hot afternoon sun are the poorest allies, and while Merry forced her pencil back to its labor the dream invaded her mind once more.

Last night the unicorn had come again.

Ten years ago she had had the first unicorn dream, after seeing an impression of the creature fixed into the sealing wax of a letter to her aunt from England. Merry had been eight years old then, and as she slept the unicorn had come to her, like a tiny toy with great soft eyes, and she could pull it after her on a string. As she grew the dream had altered. She would dream of meeting with the unicorn in an enchanted wood, and they would run between the trees, a race which neither won, and afterward they would drink from a secret spring. She wasn’t allowed to have pets; but her dream unicorn was satisfying, exclusively hers, and would always come again if she went to the edge of the woods and called. Her aunt would never find out about it because it lived in the wild and was only tame for her.

Then it left her dreams and hadn’t returned for years—until last night. It had burst through the window in a frightening rush of energy, glass flying everywhere, and it had reared in the corner of the room, pawing and snorting, looking bigger than it had been before, its muscles white and glistening beneath its creamy hide, its chest broad and heaving, its horn poised and thick. She had cowered beneath the covers, but curiosity caused her to look in small peeps and then long gazes. Its eyes were different now, still big, but there was knowledge there, a frightening intelligence, and it tossed its head, beckoning to her.

He wants me to ride him,
she had thought in her dream.
Am I too afraid?
She was going to leave her bed and go closer, but before she moved, it turned in a sudden dash and leaped through the window, hooves flashing in the moonlight.

The fantasy hoofbeats faded slowly from her daydream, slipping away into the dimly lit part of the mind where dreams lie in safekeeping. Merry came back to reality as the soft walking rhythm of a flesh-and-blood horse prosaically replaced her midnight creature.

She had been expecting no visitors, so she looked up quickly toward the sound, toward the narrow pebbled carriageway that split her aunt’s two-story red-brick house from the old frame barn. From behind the potent green of a ridge of lilac bushes, she saw her only brother emerge and watched with unbelieving elation as he worked his sweaty animal over to the shaded wall beside her.

“Carl! Oh, Carl, hello! Hail! Salutations!
Guten Morgen!
”

Leaning forward in the saddle, her brother said, “I take that to mean I haven’t arrived at an unwelcome moment? Who’s been teaching you German?”

“Henry Cork—but that’s all he knows, so it was a
short
lesson.” Grinning her delight in a way she was sure must look foolish, Merry set down her sketch pad and extended her hand. Three months it had been since she had seen him, a comparatively short interval. Heroes, it seemed, didn’t make the most attentive brothers. “How did you know to find me back here?”

“One of your abigails told me—Bess, I think. She’s sitting around front, shelling peas and dickering with a trunk-peddler over a card of buttons,” he said, taking her offered hand. “I imagine it will ruffle April’s feathers that I didn’t have myself announced.”

It was clear from the unemotional tone of his observation that this was not a circumstance that would trouble him overmuch, but because her brother’s casual dislike of their aunt made Merry uncomfortable, she sidestepped the ramifications of his remark and said, “Not at all, Carl. Family needn’t stand on ceremony. How glad I am to see you. But I’m surprised! I thought you were in the capital with Father.” Her expression changed. “Has something happened? Father—is he . . .”

“He’s well. Same as always. Tough as a horseshoe, although Mrs. Madison says he doesn’t get enough rest. I don’t know. I didn’t come to talk to you about him.” He gave her hand a brief squeeze before he released it, and then removed his hat, brushed back his hair, which was red-gold like hers but not as thick, and put his hat back on. He was gray with road dust and had tired, fine lines on his lean face, around his eyes, unusual lines on one so young, mapping the intensity within. She could tell he’d ridden hard. He was wearing civilian clothes, riding clothes which flattered him less than his officer’s uniform, making him look more like the young adult of twenty-one he was and less like a man used to drilling recruits.