Teresa Medeiros (51 page)

As they descended from the carriage to the paved cobbles of Ionia’s drive, Lucy’s step was lightened by a nervous expectancy so acute she was afraid she was going to float away if it wasn’t soon relieved. She took the Admiral’s proffered arm purely to anchor herself. It might have been her overwrought imagination, but he seemed to be leaning on her more than his cane.

Guided by Fenster’s gnarled but capable hands, the carriage rolled on to the stables as they marched up the walk to the front stairs, their identical postures so rigid they might have been leading a formal processional.

The front door creaked open. Lucy’s heart danced in her chest to the seductive song of hope.

The music came to a discordant halt as a cadaverous figure in satin livery and powdered tie wig appeared in the doorway. “Good afternoon, sir,” he intoned, his
ponderous voice lacking the crisp snap of Smythe’s. “And this must be your lovely daughter.”

Lucy’s step faltered. “I don’t understand. Where …?” For the first time, her courage deserted her, scattered by the unthinkable nature of the question.

The Admiral shook his head sadly. “I didn’t want to mar your homecoming, my dear, but I’m afraid there’s something you should know.”

L
UCY WAS RELIEVED TO FIND THE WARDS of the Greenwich Hospital for Seamen spacious and sunny. In the two weeks it had taken her to escape the Admiral’s watchful eye, she had envisioned a wealth of horrors, most of them inspired by once listening to Sylvie give a colorful, if exaggerated, lecture on the monstrosities committed against the helpless inmates at the Bethlem Hospital for Lunatics in Moorfields.

“Aye, we takes pride in our lads, we do,” Mrs. Bedelia Teasley proclaimed as she bustled ahead of Lucy down the broad corridor lined with drowsing old men. “We give ’em mutton on weekdays and beef on Sundays with a pint o’ porter to wash it all down. It’s the porter they love best. Ain’t it, Willie?”

The blind seaman she chucked under the chin gave her a toothless grin, his face wizened beneath an old-fashioned tricorne hat.

She stopped in front of a heavy door to fish a key from her voluminous apron. “Of course, there ain’t no charity provided for your Mr. Smith. He’s to have only
the best of everything. The finest linens. The freshest rations. The best grade o’ laudanum.” She inserted the key in the lock and gave it an expert twist. “ ‘Spare no expense to make him comfortable,’ the Admiral says. He’s a fine chap, your father, lookin’ after his own that way.”

“Yes, he is,” Lucy murmured absently, swallowing her dread as the door swung open.

The cell was spacious and clean, its walls whitewashed, its wooden floor freshly swept. Sunlight filtered through the iron bars at the window, casting a hazy glow around the shrunken figure huddled in a wheelchair below its sill. A white bandage circled his brow.

Lucy took an involuntary step toward him, besieged by a wave of helpless love.

Mrs. Teasley’s voice dropped to a doleful whisper. “He may not know you, dear. He just sits like that, hour after hour, starin’ at nothin’. He don’t sleep much neither. I hear him thrashin’ about at all hours, callin’ out a woman’s name. Sometimes it’s Anne. Sometimes Marie.” She shook her head sadly. “We get a lot like him here. They usually don’t last through the winter.”

“May I have a few moments alone with him?”

The woman threw a guilty glance into the corridor. “It’s against the Admiral’s orders. He don’t want him fatigued.” Her broad face crinkled in a conspiratory wink. “But I don’t see how a few minutes alone with a pretty girl could do him harm.”

Mrs. Teasley departed, but Lucy stood rooted to the floor. The kindhearted woman had no way of knowing how much harm she’d already done him. After all, her hands might have passed the cannonball that had put him in this place.

Drawing in a shaky breath, she crept toward the wheelchair. Smythe’s hair, grayer than she remembered, was slightly tousled by the bandage. He wouldn’t like that, she thought, reaching to correct an errant strand with her fingertips. He wore a silk dressing gown she recognized as a faded castoff of the Admiral’s. A blanket had been tucked around his legs to protect him from the chill. His hands lay limp in his lap. It was only after noting all of those irrelevant details that Lucy allowed herself to look at his face.

His expression was bland, the twinkling intelligence in his eyes replaced by a vacant stare.

“Oh, Smythe.” Overwhelmed by a sense of loss, not only for this man she loved so dearly, but for all of her hopes and dreams, she sank to her knees in the folds of her cloak. She gathered his cool, dry hands in her own, warming them against her cheeks, bathing them in her tears.

Lucy
.

The croaked whisper was so faint she might have imagined it.

She slowly lifted her head. Smythe’s unfocused gaze had drifted downward. Sadness weighted the corners of his mouth. “So sorry, Lucy. So many mistakes.”

He sighed, threatening to slip back into that netherworld of consciousness, dismissing her as a dream or a ghost. Yet instead of closing his eyes, he gazed directly into the brilliant sunshine, his tiny pupils almost swallowed in murky pools of brown.

He’s to have only the best of everything … the finest linens … the best grade of laudanum … he’s a fine chap, your father, lookin’ after his own that way
.

Lucy flew to her feet. She snatched at the cotton bandage wrapped around Smythe’s brow, unwinding it with careless haste. She pushed back the lank hair falling
over his temple to discover a gash that had probably been nasty at its inception, but was now scabbed over and healing well. His skull bore no indentation. She pressed the back of her hand to his brow. It was cool and dry with no sign of the dreaded brain fever the Admiral had admitted him for.

She caught his shoulders, giving him a fierce shake. “Smythe! Look at me! It’s Lucy! I’m here, Smythe. I’m really here.
Look at me!”

At first she thought her pleas had been in vain. Then his gaze shifted, almost imperceptibly, to her face. She rewarded him with a tender smile. He lifted his trembling hand. It drifted over her hair, its touch as intangible as a breath of hope.

“Thought you were dead,” he mumbled. “Thought I’d killed you.”

“No, Smythe. I’ve alive and well. Listen to me. The Admiral is keeping you drugged. He wants you out of the way until after they execute Gerard. Do you understand me?” She curled her fingers in the lapels of his dressing gown, desperate to communicate her urgency. “They’ve locked him up, Smythe. In chains. In the dark. They’re going to hang him if we can’t provide proof of his innocence. You have to help me!”

Smythe’s eyes fluttered shut. That was when Lucy realized his withdrawal ran deeper than battle fatigue or even a forced addiction to the laudanum. He was suffering from a sickness of the soul, giving in to the temptation to retreat to some safe, becalmed waters where his regrets could not follow. Lucy was frantic, the prospect of coming so far only to fail utterly unbearable.

If her entreaty couldn’t shake him out of his complacency, perhaps her wrath could. Ruthlessly tamping down her compassion, she sharpened her tone until it
could have flayed his fragile, papery skin from his slack bones.

“Stop being such a coward! I know it was you. You were the one who betrayed him. You acted as my father’s agent and robbed him of everything he was, everything he could have been. You owe him, dammit!”

Smythe turned his head from side to side in a vain attempt to escape the searing light of truth. Lucy had to strain to hear his broken words. “Had no choice. Admiral threatened to tell you he wasn’t your father … to cast you out in the streets. You were only a child … couldn’t bear it.”

With an effort that agonized her, Lucy kept her voice chilly with rebuke. “So you duped an innocent man?”

Smythe opened his eyes. For the first time, they seemed to focus on something beyond his own pain. “A good man. Young. Gifted. Eager to serve his country. His whole life before him.”

“Is that why you didn’t expose him when he came to Ionia?”

Smythe nodded. He moistened his parched lips, his speech flowing easier with each halting word. “Always believed in second chances. My hands were tied, but I thought he’d be clever enough to rout the Admiral. Never dreamed he was the sort of man to take you … hurt you …”

Lucy gave his hands a fierce squeeze. “He didn’t hurt me. He couldn’t hurt me if he tried.” Only too aware that her face was drawn with strain, her eyes shadowed from lack of sleep, she added, “Not intentionally anyway. Your instincts were sound. He’s a good man. An honorable man. But the Admiral plans to testify against him. To see him convicted not only for his current crimes, but for acts of piracy committed
six years ago. Without that letter of marque, he’ll hang for sure.”

Smythe’s head fell back. “S’gone,” he mumbled. “Destroyed it.”

Lucy’s heart plummeted. She sank back on her heels, her gaze going as bleak and unfocused as Smythe’s had been only moments before.

A wracking cough shook Smythe’s spare frame. Lucy’s concern turned to shock when that cough turned into a feeble chuckle. “He thought I was fool enough to destroy it. Arrogant bastard always underestimated me. It was my only leverage if he threatened to cast you out again.”

Smythe crooked a finger to beckon her nearer. She moved her ear next to his mouth, listening intently to what he had to say, then nodded her understanding with dawning joy.

She straightened, longing to give him a gift of equal value in return, but knowing that was impossible. She reached into her cloak, drew out a ledger, and laid it in his lap. His hands shook as they enveloped the dogeared diary of Annemarie Snow.

Lucy peered into his face, gathering her courage to ask the most difficult question of all. “Are you my father, Smythe?”

The regret on his face was so keen that she knew the answer even before he spoke. “Would to God that I were. I was your mother’s friend, her only confidant, but never her lover.”

Lucy’s disappointment burned her throat like acid. “Then it’s true. She didn’t even know who my father was.”

“Nor did she care.” At the bitter cast of Lucy’s features, Smythe swallowed, gathering all the eloquence he could summon in his muddled state. “All she cared for was you. The Admiral quit her bed
shortly after they were married, yet she was determined to have a child. She knew Lucien would never divorce her. That he would always provide for her and the child for fear of scandal. I thought it a mad scheme from the start, but I could deny her nothing.”

Perhaps she needed something to nurture
. Gerard’s words, so perceptive, so compassionate, so like him, echoed through Lucy’s mind. God, how she missed him!

Smythe reached out to stroke her cheek, his tender gaze riveted on her face. “Don’t judge her too harshly, my dear. She loved you. She risked everything to have you, even her life. I’ll never forget the joy in her eyes when I placed you in her arms.”

Lucy bowed her head, humbled by his generosity. He had given her a gift more incomparable than any he had bestowed upon her before—her mother’s love, an emotion so sweet and fierce that it transcended even the barriers of time and death.

She threw her arms around his neck. He returned her embrace, the strength in his hands increasing with each whispered word. “You don’t know how many times I longed to gather you into my arms. But I was afraid the Admiral would send me away. So I was forced to stand idly by while he browbeat your sweet spirit into submission.”

At the harsh reminder of the Admiral’s cruelty, Lucy was beset by a fresh sense of urgency. She drew back to gaze into Smythe’s eyes, finding in their depths a ghost of a familiar spark. “Pretend to take your medicine, but don’t swallow it. It’s best we let the staff of the hospital believe your condition unchanged for now. I’ll be back for you. I swear it.”

He seized her hand, squeezing it tightly. “Take care, my love. He’s not one to concede defeat gracefully.”

Lucy’s face hardened. “Then perhaps I’m more like him than either of us would care to admit.”