The Rusticated Duchess (24 page)

“No, no need,” Sykes grunted. “If she’s there, we will want to keep an eye on the chit and make sure she doesn’t run again. Have you seen her? Blonde maiden? I understand she’s quite fetching.”

Clare managed to keep his hands at his sides, though his fingers were digging into his thighs. He knew the castle household would not speak a word to these strangers, but the widow in Kilchet and others might very well identify Gloria as having lived there for months.

“The cottage has been occupied for several months,” he finally said thoughtfully. “But I do not have the pleasure of being acquainted with its household. I suspect my steward Jamie would know more. He’s about on the farms more than I am. I’m afraid the Castle itself occupies most of my time and I do not go about among the country people while I am in Ireland. I will say”—he looked Sykes in the eye as he spoke—“if you are looking for Lady Gloria March, as seems likely, I did not meet her in society while there, nor have I seen anything resembling a countess’s household in residence. I can’t imagine a widow of her standing and reputation living a stone’s throw from my front gates in that draughty little structure all winter, and never once attempting to ingratiate herself with either the Castle’s household staff or me personally.”

Sykes narrowed his eyes, but Clare held his gaze. He’d told no untruths, and had let them know of his understanding of London affairs.

Firmly, Clare added, “M’pater keeps me up to date on affairs in London. If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I must return before the tides change.”

They stood, while Clare farewelled them, and returned to their ale and fondling the barmaids as Clare withdrew to the sunshine, breathed deeply, and walked briskly—if not anxiously—back to the Douglas wharf.

* * * *

“Captain, if it is urgent for his lordship to return, you must send men to look for him,” Gloria argued.

“I can’t do that, madam,” he shook his head. “If his lordship came back, then, where would we be, with half the sailors out on the docks and in the taverns, hunting him down? If we miss the tide and have to wait for morning, then I’ll be sending them out, but not just yet.” Gloria watched him study the water, then the seawall where the water bounced up against the stones.

“Hai!” one of the men shouted from the top of the mast, and the captain’s face broke into a relieved smile.

“That’ll be him, your ladyship. ’Tis not like him to be late, I wonder what happened,” the captain murmured.

Gloria hmphed, her stomach tightening.

“You should go back inside now, my lady,” the captain went on. “We’ll be pullin’ anchor and hoisting sails and it isn’t always a fit situation for a lady, mind.”

“I’ll wait until he’s on board,” she answered, following him to the gangplank.

Clare looked up then, even as he made his way up, and his face literally darkened at the sight of her. She felt a wave of anger come off him, but he said not a word to her. “Let’s be off, captain, and to Whitehaven as discussed, as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, milord,” the other man answered calmly, having already ordered the crew to leave the dock. They’d only been waiting until Clare was aboard. “Any other business to speak of?”

“No,” he said shortly, his hand clasping Gloria’s waist unceremoniously. “I’ll be up later.”

To her surprise, Gloria found herself bundled up against Clare’s shoulder and hauled down the ladder. She remained still at first, afraid he would fall and hurt them both, but when he hit the lower deck, she struggled. “Let me down,” she objected.

He growled, and to her shock smacked a hand hard against her derriere as her hips squirmed about against his chest. “I thought I told you to stay out of sight in the salon,” he groused, kicking open a door and hauling her through it into a small cabin.

“No one expects me to be here!” she objected, still struggling. Clare dumped her unceremoniously onto the bunk, and Gloria gasped.

To her relief, he stepped away to the porthole. “So much you know,” he shot back, clearly angry. “I am charged with your safety and promised it to your family, so you will bloody well follow orders or I will turn that little smack I just gave you into a proper spanking!”

“You do not own me,” she returned, just as angry now with his attitude and the ale she’d inhaled on his breath. “And if you’d been back on time, I would’ve been in the salon. But you weren’t! You were out in some dockside tavern drinking!”

Clare froze. Beneath her, she could feel the ship shifting, preparing to cast off, preparing for the tide to draw it out into the bay.

“I did have a pint of ale, Gloria,” he said, still looming over her and the bunk. She could sense the careful way in which he spoke. “But I was not out carelessly drinking. Were you worried about me?”

“I shouldn’t have been,” she said proudly, straightening herself and her gown and sitting up straight. The cabin had one other chair that faced an escritoire and Clare turned it, then sat in it to face her. She folded her arms across her chest and shivered. “If I’d known you were out drinking, I would have asked the captain to leave you here and come back for you tomorrow.”

Clare shook his head, his voice rising as he spoke. “Captain Wortham works for me, angel. But that’s not the point. The point is that you’re thinking of me as a possible husband now, and suddenly you are looking for some reason to refuse. But while I had a pint of ale today while I read the London news, I am hardly in a drunken stupor. I’ve only been completely soused once in my life, and that was while I was quarantined on this yacht after Sarah died, and I had to sit in the damned harbour and
wait to see if I would be leaving my son as an orphan.
”

Gloria shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t
want
you to be like he was,” she whispered, putting her hands in her lap and staring down at her gloves.

“I’m not,” he reminded her gently. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, then swallowed heavily. “Why were you late?”

Clare stared at her, his eyes trailing over her face and shoulders and down her arms. Reluctantly, he admitted, “I met an old acquaintance after I read the news. There was nothing about the Winchester suit in the papers yesterday.”

Gloria breathed a sigh of relief.

“However,” he added, making her breath stop in her throat, “as I was leaving, an old schoolmate of mine, Percy Colchester, came into the tavern with some companions. One of the other men is an out-of-uniform infantry officer, Captain Robert Sykes.” Gloria felt the blood rush from her head and knew from Clare’s narrowed eyes that he could see her reaction.

“Colchester.” Gloria hugged herself. “He was often a guest of Winchester’s from the time I was a child. Sykes I’ve not met, but his mother is Bernadette Sykes, the actress. Sykes’s half-brother has the title, he’s Lord Troutwell.” She couldn’t help that her voice broke on the name, but she tried very hard to suppress the fear pooling in her stomach.

Clare’s teeth gritted. “Gregory Troutwell? He’s nothing more than a disreputable card cheat—how could a gentlewoman of your rank possibly be acquainted with him?”

Gloria’s stomach heaved. She wouldn’t vomit in front of him. She wouldn’t.

Thankfully Clare realised before she had to speak. He rose from his chair, fury etched in every line on his face, his voice a roar. “You will
not
marry that cocky shark if I have to throw you over the damn anvil at Gretna Green and paddle you into saying your vows to me instead!”

“Winchester probably owes him money,” she whispered, then felt indignation rise inside her. “What is it with this sudden urge to beat me?”

“I would never beat you!” Clare looked suddenly appalled. “Why would you say that?”

“If you do, I will
never
marry you.” Gloria felt the stubbornness of her heart already forming on her face. Her jaw hardened, her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned. “Never.”

“Smacking your bottom once in a while is hardly beating you,” he scoffed, then had the audacity to smirk. “In fact, it can be downright pleasurable. Explosively orgasmic, even.”

“Hah,” Gloria spat at him, ignoring the carnal word and the way her bottom wanted to squirm against the blankets beneath her. “So what happened with Sykes?”

Clare related their conversation, while Gloria struggled to comprehend exactly how close she had come—how close they had both come. How close Winchester probably was. “We have no way of knowing exactly how close the Court is to issuing a warrant, but if Winchester’s allies found you at Blessing Cottage, they very well might have taken you to London by force, or simply set a siege-like watch on the cottage and notified Winchester. His lawyers would then petition the Court for a warrant requiring you to appear, which they would have taken to a local magistrate—or to Seton or I—who would have taken you into custody by force. Of course, once in London—”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Gloria concluded bitterly.

Clare watched her steadily, carefully. “I was later than I intended because I stopped to arrange for a privateer to sail to Killard Castle. We have a regular arrangement with a fishing boat. The fisherman and his son anchor in the harbour and Seton or the watch captain will take out a small boat and retrieve the message. This time, they will wait to see if Meriden wants to return with them to Manx. They’ll arrive at Killard Castle tonight and can leave early tomorrow directly for England on the morning tide, before Sykes and Colchester even leave Douglas.”

Gloria shivered, trapped in the tiny cabin with a man she wanted and feared with equal ferocity. He’d brought her to physical heights she didn’t know existed, and might very well forever keep her captured within his grasp.

Better than Sykes or Troutwell, after all, but desperation still clogged her throat and her mind.

“Gloria,” Clare said, and Gloria could feel the intentness in his voice, the sudden huskiness that came with intimacy. “Gloria, now is the time to speak, for us to really come to terms with your fears. What objection do you have to marriage to me?”

He was right, of course. Gloria needed to speak now. She understood that Sykes might very well find out that Gloria and Clare had met. If he did, Sykes and Colchester would be on their heels as soon as possible, and they would head immediately for Norham Castle. It was, after all, on the Scottish border. Winchester and his cronies would immediately grasp that fact and understand that Gloria had a permanent alternative to Winchester’s guardianship.

She wrapped her arms tight around her waist, and shook, then stared at her black leather-clad toes, peeking from beneath her gown.

The words were abrupt. Gloria didn’t know how else to express them, except to blurt them out in painful, raw relief in the silent cabin. “I don’t want any more children.”

Chapter Sixteen

Clare didn’t say a word. He simply stared at her, until she squirmed nervously and let her shoulders fall in defeat. “I shouldn’t have said it,” she whispered, tears leaking from her eyes. “I should have kept silent and told you some sorry tale about it not being acceptable to marry less than a year from his death—”

“No!” Clare ground out. “No. The truth is better. Harder perhaps, but better.”

He paced restlessly in the small room, only able to go three steps in each direction before he turned and went the opposite way. After a few minutes of observing this restless release of energy, Gloria stood on trembling legs. “I’ll—I’ll go back to the salon,” she whispered, timing her move to the door when he was furthest from it.

Clare caught her of course. “No, stay here,” he said, and drew her with him to the desk chair. In the light, he studied her carefully, his thumb tracing her eyebrows while she stood docilely, her heart beating hard against her chest. “You look exhausted. Defeated,” he said slowly. “But you shouldn’t. You should glow, your smiles should be beams of sunlight.”

Gloria swallowed. “I haven’t slept well, these last few days,” she hedged.

“I could promise to take care of you—to take care of everything, but that’s not really what you need, is it?” He sighed and stroked her cheek. “But I can and do promise to support and defend you, Gloria.”

She nodded, grateful he didn’t try to patronise her or belittle all the problems that haunted her whenever she stopped to rest.

“And part of supporting you is ensuring you are ready for a few very long days of travelling, starting tomorrow. Will you lie down and take a nap?” he asked.

“Here?” she inquired, surprised. Her brow furrowed. “I suppose.” Gloria looked at him suspiciously but Clare simply helped her onto the bunk and covered her with a blanket. He tucked the sides into the mattress and leaned over her, kissing her forehead and her nose before gently grazing his lips over hers.

“I’ll wake you for dinner,” he murmured, and she nodded. “Just sleep now,” he added. “We’ll talk more. Later.”

* * * *

True to his word, Clare woke her for dinner. He’d had a meal delivered to the ship while they were in Douglas, and one of his crew had prepared the cabin next to the one where Gloria slept with a table and china that rivalled Lennox’s boards in London.

While they ate, he entertained her with tales of his childhood at Norham Castle and Killard Castle, painting it as a somewhat solitary but carefree life, away from children his own age but always well-attended. She was surprised that he had no siblings, and asked about his mother, so Clare told her about his mother’s illness and death.

She knew what Clare was doing, even pointed it out to him, but he smiled and agreed, taking the sting out of her accusation. “I never want you to think that Eynon is not welcome or somehow of secondary importance in my homes,” he said carefully. “The truth is, we don’t know each other all that well.”

Gloria asked him what he wanted to know about her, and ended telling him the tale of her only brother John’s death. “It was the end for Mother, I think. I mean, I know she was with Lennox already. But she’d married a man who virtually ignored her during their entire marriage. I can’t imagine them ever dining together like this, and Winchester actually listening to her tell a story. She’d had an affair with M-m—Fiona’s sire. She’d apparently loved your cousin Colonel Blessing and kept the secret of their relationship through the births of Abigail and John. She had me later, and I have no idea how that came to be or how it ended, but then there was Lennox, whom she loved as well but could never marry.”