The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (47 page)

Instead, she asked him for three favors. The cost of a traveling wardrobe was the first. Pocket money of three hundred pounds, silver. “A small portion of what my wedding would have cost you, Father. I pray you will consider it a loan to help me on my way. I will not run away from anything or anyone again. That was not kind or fair to anyone, not you or me.” And ultimately, not Mark Stanhope, either. To have foisted myself on him was unthinkable. Yet, in my self-centered way I did it.

To her request of the third favor, her father balked. “I do not understand your reasoning on this. I saw how Mark Stanhope cared for you, my child. While he met de Ros’s challenge of that silly duel and proved his chivalry, he seemed so honorable, so rational. Yet, I daresay I saw him look at you with eyes of love many a long evening before and after that. If you were to tell me now that you wanted to marry him, Sirena, I would not object. The man saved you and brought you home to me let me feast my eyes on you again. Why, Sirena, why then may I not tell him where you are going?”

And though she thought her explanation simple, the old man said he understood, but didn’t, yet he finally agreed. When she climbed into a traveling coach hours later, she had silver in her pocket, a bank note for hundreds more, and the name of a Portsmouth dressmaker whom her father would pay for warm winter clothes for her journey across the Atlantic.

As she walked the streets of Portsmouth for the next few weeks trying to book passage to the United States, she gave herself permission to remember Mark and hope that someday he would understand that she left him because she was not his equal in honor or courage.

She prayed, however, that she would learn both so well, that she would teach their child to emulate his father.

Mark pushed up his coat collar against the wind and falling snow. Worn from combing the wharfs of Portsmouth these past four days, he cursed at the foul weather and pulled his hat more securely over his head. Wicked as hell to be out in December on the shores of England, Mark had never known relief from the country’s raw winter elements.

His heart was as cold. Numb. Where the hell would she be in this town?

Her father, poor man, had struggled to share with him any of her intentions. “She made me promise not to tell you, Mr. Stanhope. I wronged her before. I’ll not do it again.”

“But, sir, she left my brother’s house to come to you, refused my escort, and gave me no indication she would never return. I care for her, sir. I love her. I must find her and ask for her hand.”

“I have always known you prized her, Mister Stanhope. I did not approve of you for my girl, but after she told me how you looked after her and saved her, I can do naught but say you are a very good man. And I know, above all others, she loves you.”

“She told you that?”

“No. She did not need to do that. Just as I never needed to hear it from your lips, but I fear for what she wants to do.”

Dismayed, Mark had leaned closer to the old duke. “What does she want to do, sir?”

He had gone nearly out of his mind at the answer.

Why she wanted to sail to America, he could, in many ways, understand. She had always wanted freedom from her condition. That had made her a woman worth having. A woman worth saving and savoring. A woman meant for him. His equal.

How she had gotten to Portsmouth, Mark knew she’d gone with her head held high. Her father had given her money. This time as she departed England, she would not go without giving her sire a proper goodbye. She would go with dignity and a plan.

But what the hell she planned to do, how she planned to live without him, Mark was wild to know. “Tell me, sir,” he had urged the sad old man, “give me some hint where I might find her. She is the woman I love. She loves me well, I know. Help me. I cannot tell you all that happened those weeks she was with me, but I will tell you I came to respect her as no other woman. I never told her that. I should have. I had so many things to do, to think of to get us all to safety and back to England. To work with my brothers and my father to save my ship and my crew and my friends and to do it with dignity. To reject any charity and instead, to build a future for myself and one worthy of her.” He’d gone to his knees and took the duke’s shriveled hand in his. “Give me a hint, sir, where I might look. I want her for my wife, and I swear you will never be sorry to say I am your son-in-law.”

Daily visits for three weeks to the duke had finally worn the old man down. Four days ago, worried because he’d not had any notes from Sirena, he had given Mark one word. “Portsmouth.”

Since then, Mark had walked the docks talking to any stocking ships bound for America. He’d found two, talked with their captains, asking if they had taken passage from any young women. None was their answer.

He needed a brandy, a warm fire, and a place to rest for tonight. Rushing in to an inn whose owner once sailed with him, Mark sat by the hearth and unbuttoned his great coat.

“Sir?” a serving girl appeared. “Grog for you?”

“Hot whiskey, please. Is Ray Drummond here? I knew him years ago and I’d like—”

A ruddy-faced man appeared from the back of the inn. “Stanhope!”

Mark spun.

“What in hell are you doing here, me boy?” Drummond’s Irish brogue was not quite as thick as when Mark and he had sailed together out of Baltimore when they were both twelve.

“Looking for some potato soup, you rebel.”

“You look like you need more than that! Bring out the brandy, Moira. And the bread and butter.” Drummond fingered Mark’s fine lapel and cravat while the serving girl scurried away. “You seem different. Prosperous. Do you stay in Portsmouth or are you—?”

“Looking for a woman.”

“Oh, hell, Mark, my lad. We all are, eh? ‘Till we find one we can’t live without.”

His humor fell on deaf ears. “I’m serious, Drummond.”

His friend slapped him on the back. “Come sit over here by the fire. So you think she’s here?”

“In Portsmouth, yes.” Mark told him a summary of his relationship with Sirena while the man looked at him with a smile growing on his lips.

“Dear me, she’s led you a merry chase.” Ray Drummond chuckled. “Moira! Will you bring the brandy before the next Coming? Our guest will perish of thirst!”

Mark ran two hands through his hair. “I don’t care, Ray, if I have to look in every house and barn here. I need to find her before she leaves for America.”

“Ah. You love her,” his friend crooned like a moonstruck Irish lad as he looked over Mark’s shoulder.

“I do. I need to tell her.”

“Why’s that?” Drummond asked, tearing his gaze from the back of the room to him.

“I want to marry her.”

“Is that so?” Drummond sounded pitiful.

Moira plunked a mug of steaming hot whiskey in front of him. Grateful, he thanked her and picked up the mug to inhale and close his eyes.

“Is that so?” asked a woman whose voice he heard in his dreams.

There she stood, behind him. Her raven hair flowed down her shoulders like a young girl. Her eyes were clear and round and taking in his own with sad delight. Her lips quivered as she smiled amid tears.

“That’s so,” he whispered, strode across the room and took her hand. He drew her to him, the warmth of her small solace for his torment. He sank to the bench and pulled her to his lap. With her welcome weight in his lap, he took her in his arms, cupped her cheek and kissed her with all the hunger of the past weeks without her. “I love you,” he told her once, twice and then again. “Have you been here all this time?”

“With Drummond and Moira?” Sirena smiled tremulously into Mark’s eyes. “I was. They took good care of me. Moira’s a good cook. And Drummond, well….”

“He’s rare, eh?” Mark threaded his hand through her lush long hair and held her by the nape to kiss her lips again. “Thank God. I worried so. I was out of my mind to find you.”

“How did you?”

“I searched the city. For four days now, I have looked for you everywhere.”

“And how did you know to come here?” she pressed.

Mark pulled back. She wanted to argue? “To Portsmouth? I begged your father to give me a clue.”

She shot from his lap.

He caught her by the wrist. “No, you don’t escape that easily!”

“Exactly!” She spun on him, pointing two fingers to his chest. “I am not easy!”

“God knows that’s right!”

From the corner of his eye, Mark saw Ray Drummond salute him and shoo Moira from the common room. He seized Sirena’s forearm.

She yanked back, but he did not let her go.

“Why did you run away from me?” he demanded, his voice booming with tension and passion, rejection and joy.

“I did not run away from you!”

“No?” He caught her other arm and made her face him fully. “What do you call it then?”

“Freedom!”

“How free are you?” he chided her, lost in whatever nonsense she tried to justify her actions.

“Free as you,” she tossed back.

“You think I am?” he scoffed at her words and shook her, hauling her inexorably closer to his tired, aching body. “How free am I if I can’t breathe because you are not with me? Hmm? How free am I if I walk the streets of London and wonder where you are, how you are, why you left me? How free am I, I insist you tell me, if I must learn from your father that you love me? That you asked him to help you leave me? That you came here all by yourself in a town filled with sailors and thieves from a hundred different countries dying to grab a woman off the streets and imprison her? How free am I?” he bellowed.

And she began to cry in earnest now. Her heart-shaped face crumpled in tears, and she nestled into his chest. He stroked her hair for minutes as she wet down his cravat and broke his heart. “Darling, don’t cry anymore, will you, please? I cannot bear it and neither can my very expensive London tailor.”

She laughed through her tears and punched him in the stomach. But instantly he had her back in his embrace. “Tell me,” she whispered and hiccupped, “how you found me. I need to know you are real. No mirage.”

He fished a handkerchief from his vest pocket, and grinning like a love struck fool, he wiped the tears from her plump cheeks. “I begged your father to tell me. Every day I went to his house and begged. For three weeks, I did this. The poor man was tired of me, to say nothing of his butler.”

They both laughed.

Mark brushed his lips on hers. “I was a crazed fool without you. I told him so, and he believed me. He said he would even welcome me into the family.”

“He would, eh?” she teased him.

Mark nodded. “Happily, he said. But only if you’ll give me long enough that I might propose to you properly. Will you?”

“I’d love to hear it.”

He put her on the chair and then put a knee to the sawdust-strewn floor. From his jacket pocket, he produced a golden ring. “My dearest Lady Maxwell—”

She giggled, clapped her hands in glee. “Go on. Do go on!”

He gave her a lopsided grin. “I have lately become a man of means.”

“Is that so?” she asked with interest.

“Very true. My father, brothers and I have formed a company. A trading company.”

“It’s a reality then? What you talked of that morning I left?”

He nodded. “Stanhope Shipping and Commerce will ply the ports of Boston, Baltimore, Portsmouth and Hong Kong. Perhaps others, as years go on.”

“How exciting. Oh, sweetheart,” she drew back, devotion shining in her eyes, “I am so happy for you.”

“I would be happier if I knew you would come share my good fortune with me.”

“Would you, really, Mark?” she asked, her voice faint.

He grabbed both her hands and squeezed. “My dearest darling Sirena, I adore you. How’s that?”

“Better. Oh, definitely, much better.”

“I love you.”

“Mark,” she whispered as tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I admire you. Your bravery. Your wit. Your conversation.”

“Do you?” She seemed whimsical now.

Eager to draw on her gayer mood, he said. “I love everything about you. Your mouth, your nose, your hair. Your body.”

She glanced about to see if anyone overheard. Skeptical still, she tipped her head one way and the other. “Do you like my dancing?”

“My dearest love, if you can like my dancing, I can certainly applaud yours.”

“Oh, you are very good.” She was beaming now. “Continue, do.”

He cleared his throat and gave her a look of pain. “I want you to come back to London with me.”

“I won’t go to my father’s house.”

“No. You won’t go anywhere from this day forward that you care not to go. You could come to stay with any of my brothers and their wives. They have offered this if you would honor them. But you would stay only for a few days.”

She frowned. “Why? Where would you have me go after a few days?”

“Away with me on a honeymoon trip. Jack has offered us his house in Durham.”

Her eyes went wide. “I’ve never been to Durham.”

“I have a license, sweetheart. In my coat. I applied for it, hoping when I found you, you would permit us to use it. Say you’ll marry me, Sirena.”

“Mark, I must tell you that—”

“What more could I give you? Name it. Tell me. Do you want to sail with me?”

“What? Sail? Of course. But I—”.

He grinned. “Yes. I would hope that from time to time you’d sail with me to many ports.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course, I do. I have noticed you are a very good sailor.”

She cuffed him. “Oh, now you are being ridiculous.”

“No. In fact, I have proof.”

“Like what?”

“You stayed in my storage hold for two days and didn’t lose your guts. You survived a storm at sea and never had a moment’s seasickness.”

“I see. Well, I agree. I am a good sailor.”

“The best,” he acknowledged and dug a ring from his weskit pocket. He held it up to the light. “More than that, you are the most courageous woman I know.”

She examined the ring and nodded. “Courageous, eh? How can you say that?”

Noting her incredulity, he shook his head. “You left your home to make a new life for yourself. Perhaps you did not do it in the best way, not telling your father and then stowing away on a clipper. But you survived it and then survived even worse circumstances. You were a prisoner of ruthless men.”