The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (37 page)

“The ship is restored to its standard before the Navy captured her?”

“It is, sir. Thanks to your generosity.” Mark indicated the chair. “Please do sit. I have my steward bringing us a bit of refreshment.”

“Ha!” the old earl barked. “I do not know if my poor stomach can tolerate spirits, but I welcome it.”

“If you wish something other? Sarsaparilla, perhaps? Or lemon water?”

“Whiskey, my boy, will be fine.” The man’s dark blue gaze examined Mark’s with severity. “I came to have my full say to you.”

“Sir, you need say nothing more to me. Your actions speak in eloquent ways.”

“Thank you.” The elder man took a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his mouth. “But I have more to say now that we know each other better. I waited until you were restored in health and to your three brothers, your sister and their families. So too, I delayed until your ship and men were under your feet to reveal my true thoughts about you, your mother and your birth.”

“Sir, please. We need not speak of this.” And in fact, I wish we would not open a wound so recently beginning to heal.

“I must. I do not wish you to go without it. In fact, I planned this as I must impress upon you how deeply I regret my actions.” His father put up a hand to ward off any more objections. “Permit me, son, to say these things. I am only learning how to be a man of emotions here in my dotage. I wish to tell you more. Much more than we had time for in London.”

Mark nodded. “So be it. Do, go on.”

The old man sucked in air and rallied to his purpose. “First, you must know that I was a hellion as a young man. Position and money do that to a man here. I took advantage of both in business and pleasure. I won at cards, at dice and with women. Good for me, not terribly wonderful for the ladies of my acquaintance, but I loved many women and far too often. But those I loved, I loved well. Your mother included.”

Mark shifted at the mention of the woman he valued above all others. She had endured much sorrow and pain to rear him, educate him and place him as apprentice to a China clipper merchant out of Baltimore Harbor.

“She was a charming lass, a merchant’s daughter whom I met on a voyage to Baltimore. Suffice it to say, I loved her well, but indeed I treated her poorly, leaving without much thought to consequences. When I did return to Baltimore the year after she and I were together, I could not find her. The house where she lived with your grandparents was empty, and no one would tell me where they had gone. I suspected she was with child and I wanted to make amends, make things right. I had money. But your American war for independence from us was newly won, and no one in Baltimore could bear to look at an Englishman, much less help one.”

A rap came at the door and Mark called out to have Simpson enter. When the steward laid the flagon and glasses before them and left, Mark poured a draft for both. “Sir, thank you for that explanation. It goes far to helping me see the past in a different light.”

“I wish us to be more than friends, Mark. I will work to make that so.”

“You have already, sir.”

“To purchase your freedom from jail?”

“My men and my ship, too. No small price.”

“Small recompense, I say, my boy, for deserting you.”

“That was long ago, sir. For what you have done for me today, I am extremely grateful.”

“You are very welcome,” John said with satisfaction and a raised glass. “To your health, my boy. And your welfare.”

The two men drank.

Avoiding Mark’s gaze, the elder played with the hem of his frock coat for a moment, his expression tense . “I cannot leave before I share some final news with you. Sad news. Very sad.”

Mark, fearing to hear that his father foresaw his own demise soon, balked. “Sir, I do hope that you will take good care of yourself and—”

“This is not about me, my boy, but Sirena Maxwell.”

Mark froze. “What about her?”

“I know you cared for her. This is difficult for me to say.”

“I enjoyed talking with her when she came for dinners and readings at Adam’s and Felice’s. After I met her at their ball, I could not stop—” wanting her. “What has happened? If de Ros has hurt her--”

“No. Not that. Much different. You see, a week ago, she packed a reticule and left a note to say she was leaving home.”

“What?” Mark heard his own voice crack with shock. “Where did she go?”

“We do not know where she headed. But we do know why. She refused to marry de Ros.”

“Thank God He’s a prig. An idiot. Not worthy to kiss her slippers.”

“Yes.” John examined Mark’s expression as though he were carefully dissecting a butterfly. “I agree. So does most of Society. Your siblings included.”

At his father’s pregnant pause, Mark scowled. “What else are you telling me?”

The old man stared at Mark with sad eves. “No one can find her. Or could. Until….”

Mark laid a hand on his father’s arm. “Until what?”

“Two days ago, a young woman fitting her description was discovered floating along the Thames near Saint Katherine’s Wharf. She was young, lovely with dark brown hair. She had drowned.”

“No!” Mark rose to his feet, his mind a whirl of horror. “This is a mistake. That woman is someone else.”

John gazed up at him through distressed eyes. “She was in the river for days, they say, and yet she still bears a resemblance to Sirena. The height. The build. A doctor for the Bow Street Runners dissected the body and he found water in her lungs. She either fell into the river accidentally or she took her own life.”

“That is not possible! Sirena would never—”

“Mark, please. The Duke recognized her coat and dress as Sirena’s.”

Mark stumbled backward, sinking to his chair. His mind awhirl of loss and outrage. “I cannot believe she would do such a thing! She was so full of life and— Are you certain it was Sirena?”

John had tears in his rheumy eyes. “She could not bear to marry de Ros. Everyone knew it. Just to look at her conversing with you these past few weeks told the tale. De Ros, of course, challenged you to pistols because he saw how she cared for you.”

“The man’s an idiot. A bully and a coward.” Mark put his head in his hand, incredulous still at the news Sirena was dead. “You must press Bow Street to make certain de Ros is innocent.”

“Everyone did.”

A fog of grief fell over Mark, darkening the room and the sky and his world. Sirena had seemed so alive, so competent, and confident. A survivor. How could she have even considered running away and he not know? Not recognize any telltale signs? There had to be another explanation. “I saw him try to manhandle her more than once.”

“Mark, de Ros is not suspected of hurting her. For the past week, he was at his estate in Norfolk.”

“He might have hired a ruffian. He is as unprincipled as they come. You know it’s possible.”

John nodded. “Possible, but with de Ros, do you really think it probable? He is too simple-minded to engineer a murder of his betrothed and get away with it. Besides, he wanted the enter to her father’s social circle and her money. He has not the nerve to kill her.”

Mark swallowed back tears at her loss. “She did care for me.”

“No one else could miss it, Mark. Would that you came to us under different circumstances. I can claim you, dear man, but I cannot undo the fact that I introduced you to Society as my bastard. Many accepted you as you were, without censure, on my recommendation. And if I could have helped you woo her and win her, I would have. But that was beyond me. The ton would not permit such a breach. I mourn that deeply. Another loss I cannot repay, I despair to say.” He stood, swaying on his feet. “I can only affirm once more I did remove what barriers I could.”

“You did wonders, Father.” Mark jumped up to catch his father’s arm, comforting the man who attempted to make amends for past mistakes before his demise.

“I leave with the hope you will return to us at any time for any reason. If only to come enjoy our company.” John smiled with a quivering chin.

Mark knew it was their last moment to erase the past from both their hearts and he opened his arms to embrace his father. “Come, I will help you out. Simpson will hail a carriage for you back to London.”

****

“Stop that pounding!” Mark’s head burst with the banging noise at his cabin door. He pushed up on one arm to his mattress, but the taste of the whiskey he’d downed for hours soured his stomach and tilted his view of the world. “What?” he barked. “What do you want?”

“Captain, open the door!”

“Told you to leave me alone!” Mark objected and put one leg to the cold wooden planks. The room reeled. Covering his eyes, he slumped back to the ticking. “Whoa.”

“Captain!”

“All right, God’s sakes, stop yelling.” Groping for the beams above his head and catching himself with the pitch of the ship, he stumbled toward the door. “Are we at sea?”

“Aye, aye, sir. Two nights ago.” His man murmured a hushed warning to someone else, then to him said, “You ordered it. Please, sir, open the door.”

“Okay, okay. Here I am,” he grumbled and undid the latch, then swung the heavy door wide. He frowned at the sight before him. Simpson had a grip on the bound hands of a young, thin sailor. “What do you want, Simpson? Tol’ you not to disturb me. Who’s this?”

Simpson pushed his way past Mark, hauled the sailor in behind him and shut the cabin door. “Sir, I found this stowaway in the forward storage.”

Mark ran one hand over his mouth, another back through his hair. He never held his liquor well. “Stowaway, huh? Brave. Stupid. How’d you get here, boy? Hmm?”

“Tell him.” Simpson scowled down at the creature who cast his gaze to the floor. “Go on. I don’t ‘ve all day.”

Even through his drunken haze, Mark noticed the shrug of the youth’s slight shoulders. Rascals trying to steal aboard a ship were not novel. Especially since the American Revolution, many Englishmen wanted a new life in a new land and hid away on ships bound for the New World. But today, tonight—whatever the hell it was—Mark had no time for such aspirations. No energy. He felt drained, emptied him of any desire to face another hour. As if someone had set a thousand-pound weight atop his chest, Sirena’s death had robbed him of the need to even breathe. How could he care for someone else’s trials and tribulations when hers had ended so needlessly, so quickly?

Reaching out, he caught the lad’s chin. “Look at me!”

Two golden eyes with shards of green stared back at him.

He blinked.

Cruel to think of her here now.

He bent toward the youth. His own eyes narrowed and examined the visage before him. The nose was straight, elegant. The lips full and pink. The skin pale and smooth. The hair? He ripped off the long cap of white cotton and watched rich sable curls spill out like a dark waterfall. No. He squeezed his eyes shut and shot them open again. Impossible. He would never touch another drop of Scots whiskey as long as he lived. “Simpson?”

“Aye, Captain?”

Mark caught up a handful of the waving hair and crushed it in his fingers. “You knew this about our guest?”

“I did, sir. One look tells the tale. The hair, the eyes, the…other parts. That’s why we’re here. I cannot leave her in the storage to starve and I cannot put her below to bunk with the crew. They’d never be right in the head for the rest of the journey.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Mark said with an articulation that surprised him, given his wooly brain. Never taking his gaze from the woman who still seemed like a mirage to him, he flicked his hand toward his steward. “Get us a bowl of whatever was for dinner tonight, Simpson?”

“Mutton stew, sir.”

Mark’s stomach flipped at the ugly suggestion of the greasy concoction. “Ugh. Yes, that. Water. Grog.”

“Now, sir?”

“Now, Simpson.” He reached toward his guest and flicked the shirt collar of the flowing crude cotton garment she wore. Beneath he caught a glimpse of a delicate collarbone, and he winced. “Soap. Towels. A pot or two of hot water from the kitchen. Set up the hip bath here.”

“Right you are, sir.” The man turned on his heel, but not before giving the creature he’d found a look that could boil water all by itself.

“And Simpson?” Mark crossed his arms, examining his new guest with an interest in her figure. A head shorter than he, more finely boned, with slender fingers and a curving derriere in the loose seamans’ trousers, she was more starkly revealed to him than in the silks and damasks she’d worn in London. In her current state, her femininity shining through the rough cotton, she could never survive among a crew of men. Not even his well-disciplined sailors would endure the temptation of her exquisite face and form for three weeks journey to Baltimore. “You told no one?”

“No, sir.”

“No one knows we have a woman aboard.” Mark strolled around his guest, wondering if he was hallucinating at the perfection of this gorgeous body before him. “Well done, Simpson.”

His steward muttered a string of curses, headed for the door and slammed it shut.

Mark winced.

His guest jumped.

Mark ambled to the edge of his bunk, sat and stared at her. “You astonish me.”

She lifted her nose in the air. “I hoped no one would find me.”

His anger vied with his concern for her. “Did you think you could survive for three weeks in my hold without food or water?”

“I thought I could eat what was there. I had no idea how small a clipper ship was.” She clutched her arms, suppressing shivers. “I miscalculated much. Including how cold the North Atlantic could be in November.”

He cursed and rose to dig a blanket from his trunk. Handing it over, he fought the urge to wrap her in it. Instead, he tried to think logically, but a few flagons of scotch worked against his better intentions. “You’re foolish.”

Hurt darkened her gaze, but she graced him with an imperious look. “I had no other choices. A father who would not listen. A fiancé who was intolerable. No money to buy passage.”

“I find that last hard to believe.”

“Well, it’s true! These last few weeks, I was much restricted. I was watched night and day.”

“Women have few freedoms in this society.”

She snorted. “An understatement. Attracted to a man I should not even speak to, I was shunned by my own father. Under suspicion, given only enough money to pay my dressmaker. And that was for my trousseau. Garments to marry I man I could never respect, let alone love.”