The Windflower (54 page)

Now it was too black to see anything, but Devon could feel the kitten stand, stretch, resettle. And atuned as he was to her faintest movement, he knew the second Merry woke. He could even feel her moment's bewilderment as she found she was pressed intimately to a man's body. Then she tensed, and he felt her breath, drawn quickly in shock, as it flooded against his nipple. Before she could start to withdraw from him, he said softly, "We have a visitor."

His fingers followed the line of her arm until he reached her hand, and carried it to the kitten. He could feel her expression change against his skin—perhaps to surprise—and the contraction of her arm muscles against his chest as she began to stroke the kitten. Her fragrant hair tickled his face as he strayed slow kisses there and caressed the lovesome geography of her, the flat, solid muscles in her back, the flesh of her nape under its wanning hair-cover.

"Do I seem different to you now?" she asked in a hushed voice.

His wrist arched comfortably over her ear; the side of his thumb rode the potent softness of her cheekbone. "No. I seem different to myself.''

"How?"

"Wiser. And younger. Nearer to myself ..." He put a finger on the tip of her nose and wiggled it gently. "I meant all the words I said to you, Merry."

"I didn't." Sudden tears scratched her voice. "I'm sorry about what 1 said—you know,
during
—about not liking things. It turned out not to be true."

In the quiet he could hear her swallow the pooling moisture in her throat. Finding the underside of her chin with one finger, he tilted her face upward toward his. In this total absence of light he could see nothing more than the faint shine of her eyes, but their exhalations swirled together like cloudscapes under a sable moon. "Do you know what, Windflower? It's appalling that women are made so their first love is painful. Whose idea was that, do you think?" Her watery chuckle quavered against his chest. "If it had been up to me, things would be much different."

Comforted, she snuggled against him, her fawn-soft breasts moving in an unknowing massage on the high shallows of his rib cage. She seemed content to lie in the peace of his arms, lulled toward sleep by the knowledgeable persuasion of his loving hands. A minute passed. Her voice came to him, a low melody.

"Could it be true? Were Morgan and my mother—" She broke off, as though the relationship defied description.

"I don't know. I haven't started thinking about it yet. I think it's something I'll have to prepare myself for by three days of fasting and meditation. Did you have any inkling?"

"I'm not sure." The kitten yawned, a tiny sigh. "On the night the British officers came to St. Elise, Morgan made me come with him to the beach. He
knew
that I had drawn those pictures before he saw them, and afterward I thought,
How did he know?
Is he clairvoyant?"

"Morgan is many things, but a clairvoyant is definitely not among them." Devon stretched his hand backward above his head to free a reed from the matted hay. He put it between his teeth, tasting the sharp wild grass flavor on his tongue. "Could your servant—"

"Henry Cork?"

"Yes. Henry Cork. Could he have heard you talking with your brother about the drawings and somehow passed that information to Morgan?"

"It's possible. He often hid in strange places, but we thought that was to keep Aunt April from putting him to his chores." Her sleepy voice intoned the words slowly, as though she found the whole thing a hopeless bewilderment. "If Morgan knew from the beginning, why didn't he tell you?"

"I wouldn't have kept you then." Folding her into the warmth of his body, he felt a thrill of protective fear for her pass like metal fibers through his nerves. "God help us both, love, but I'm afraid those months of turmoil were my half brother's notion of matchmaking."

Cat could have thought of another name for it. Alone in Lord Cathcart's library, waiting, waiting ... He had conducted several useless cursory examinations of the room; but there had been nothing to distract him except perhaps the book on probate law that lay open on Cathcart's desk. Except for the book the room was bleakly tidy. Even the marble bust of Homer had not so much as a dust mote on its eyelids.

Plucking an abridged history of Rome from the shelf, he had carried the calfskin volume with him to the couch. The Roman Empire. It was, in a convoluted way, his favorite period of history. One couldn't find a more acute allegory of human civilization than the Roman coliseum, wherein the selfish, complacent multitudes gazed from their smug tiers at the sad struggles below. Rand Morgan would have done very well in Rome.

Three days ago in Falmouth Cat had watched the traveling carriage bear Merry off, and then he had gone directly back to the
Joke,
where Morgan was poring over a sheet of figures, a candle assisting the pale dayshine. He was a striking figure, his ruffled shirt opened over the iron chest muscles, his hair darkly glossy, the color of apple seeds. Smiling, he had looked up at Cat, his eyes black mocking embers.

"So—did she weep down your shirt buttons?"

Ignoring the taunt, Cat had walked to the desk and picked up the sheet of figures. "Have you figured out yet how much of a bribe we'll have to give Customs?"

"Yes. That being done, I'm going to shore, where I want two things: to have a meal and to have a woman, and that means if you're going to be emotional at me about Merry, do it while I pull on my boots, or you'll have to scold my empty nightcap."

Cat set down the page. "I wish we could come to some kind of uniform agreement on whether I'm supposed to have emotions, or not have them."

"Very well," Morgan said agreeably, picking up a boot. "You can have emotions. Abracadabra. Wasn't that easy? Now, look around inside your skull for your common sense. You see? It remains in residence. No one makes you surrender your logic in order to feel. Hand me my other boot."

With temper chills biting like teeth in the lining of his stomach, Cat wrenched up the boot, strode with it to the window, pushed open the casing, and flung Morgan's boot into the harbor, where it drowned in a crown-shaped splash. Its halo of disturbed water had expanded and vanished before Morgan spoke.

"That might have caught my attention, but think of the poor fisherman who pulls it up on a line instead of a sea bass. ... I don't know what you're worried about. The chit can handle Devon."

"Rand, she doesn't know that. She's frightened. And she has good reason to be too."

"She has
no
reason to be. Why do you think I let him drag her off on St. Elise? They've both had a chance to see that you can pour anger into him until it steams from his ears like hot sulfur, and even then he can't harm her. What else would you like to know?"

Cat took a long silent breath of the moist air that cascaded through the open window. "About her mother."

Behind him Cat heard silence. A low laugh. A voice. "Here."

Turning, he caught Morgan's other boot, lightly tossed.

"Why do things by halves? Send down a pair."

So Cat threw the second boot after the first and sat down on the window bench, watching Morgan stretch out in a chair, cross his stockings at the ankle, and rest his hands on the naked flesh of his abdomen. For a long time Morgan stared at but not into Cat's eyes. Elbows braced on the chair arms, the pirate raised his hands, knotted absently in prayer fashion, touching his own lips with the steeple of his fingers.

"When I was thirteen," he said suddenly, softly, "I went to England to see my father. Literally to see. As one
sees
the pyramids. It was five years before the war of 1793, and I'd been smuggling with a crew of Corsicans all winter. When spring came, I landed in Margate with a pocket full of coins and made my way to Teasel Hill. On Sunday morning I sat on the churchyard wall and saw them all—my father's exquisite child-bride, and Devon, squalling his bloody head off under a hundred ells of lace, and Jasper himself, beaming down at them as though they were all the angels in heaven. They disappeared into the church without looking around."

The gnawing in Cat's stomach had grown more intense. "That was all?"

"That was all."

"Did you want more?"

Morgan grinned. "From my father, no. But I wanted to unwrap his smothering infant and swive his wife. Neither thing being possible, I thought,
Well, I've seen them
and set out across the meadows with my thumbs tucked in the waist of my ragged knee breeches." The hands relaxed, conjoined still, against his chest. "That afternoon I saw her. Her. The girl who became Merry's mother. She was my age, but in most ways a child, and I first saw her walking in a dry ditch with strawberry clover all in flower. Her silk skirts were spread out all around her like willow boughs, and her ringlets were filled with wild apple blossoms and falling down on one side; and she had put her bonnet on a lamb that she was trying to lead on a red ribbon, as though it were a puppy, but the lamb kept balking and chewing the ribbon. Her eyes were light blue, the color of robin's eggs, and they opened round when she saw me standing in the lane above her. Then she grabbed my hand and drew me into the ditch beside her, putting two fingers on my lips and saying "Ssh!" when I would have spoken. She whispered to me that I had to be very quiet because Indians were coming. And when I told her that ! didn't know there were Indians in England, she touched my lips and said "Ssh!" again. England was full of Indians, she said, only they had to stay mostly out of sight because people made such a fuss when they saw them. Sometimes, she said, she let the Indians scalp her, and sometimes she hid. And the next time she opened pink-bud lips to speak, I put my fingers on her mouth and said "Ssh. ..."

The dark gaze was blind, the smooth jet irises catching quills of light like the seed globe of a thistle. "I stayed until late May, working for a chandler in Lcatherhead, seeing her when she could slip away. On the last day it rained, and we met under a beech tree, with celandine growing in a mat beneath, the flowers closed in the poor light, and she said it seemed as though the sun had drawn closed its shutters." A long pause. Morgan's eyes returned to Cat's. Mildly the pirate said, "I had to leave her, you know. Her family would never have allowed me to court her openly. Too gently reared for friendship; too wellborn to marry; too young to bed. The temptations were too great, which was why 1 tried not to learn what became of her, but I imagined her cherished, and happy, and in time . . . married. Years later I discovered by chance that her family had left England in a state of poverty. 1 had the
Joke
and money, and I searched for her, but by then she had died. There were two children, Merry and an older brother; and a widowed husband—James Wilding."

Cat released an aging breath from his lungs. "Wilding. The famous ones?"

"The famous ones. The fanatical ones. James and Carl Wilding . . ."A terse smile touched Morgan's firm lips. "He was probably better to her than I would have been. My only consolation. I left someone with the children—"

"I know. Merry's Henry Cork."

Morgan's brow skipped upward in mocking admiration. "How long have you known?"

"When she was ill," Cat said, "she told me all about Henry Cork, and the man bore a certain resemblance to old Hezekiah, the gunner's mate that Sails used to tell stories about. Big practical joker. I found his name on a copy of your old manifest on St. Elise. Hezekiah Cork."

"My, my. You have been rowing with both oars, haven't you? Hezekiah Cork. He wasn't much, but at least I knew I could trust him not to seduce the girl the day she reached puberty. What I haven't quite figured out yet is what she was doing on a ship bound for Britain in Michael Granville's company, and why he would go to so much trouble to besmirch her reputation. Although I suspect Letitia's fingers in this somewhere."

" Devon' s grandmother?''

"Yes." Morgan uncrossed his ankles. "She reposes immense confidence in Granville's integrity. And you see, I'd been toying with the idea of bringing Merry to England if the political situation in America continued to deteriorate. 1 had Letitia maintain a correspondence with Merry's aunt so that if I had to move her, it could be done through an intermediary. At that point there seemed to be nothing to be gained by terrifying the girl with the knowledge that I had an interest in her. In the end I decided she'd be safer where she was." He studied his toes, flexing them. "It turns out, of course, that I was wrong. It was fortunate you brought her to me."

" 'All the while he by his side her bore. She was as safe as in a Sanctuary,' " Cat quoted sarcastically. "And you decided she'd do for Devon. Please, if you happen to pick someone out you want me to marry, just say 'Marry her!' and I will. Don't drag me through all the cellars in hell by the seat of my inexpressibles first."

"Nonsense." Morgan's smile was disquieting. "I only provided proximity. They did the rest. I wouldn't have encouraged it if I hadn't seen in the beginning that they were in love. You're worried about Merry; then go after her."

Morgan's words had taken Cat off guard. He said quickly, "Do you mean it?"

"Certainly. You might begin looking for her at Cathcart's. I gave Devon a letter to deliver to him."

There it was. The trap, neatly closing. He might have known. Through hell by the seat of his breeches. Why had he ever expected anything else?

"Why do you always have to be so bloody thorough?" Cat's eyes grew colder than the icy fluids that had suddenly filled up his veins. "Was the letter about me?"

"My dear, what else do I have in common with the saintly Cathcart? Certainly it was about you. Run along to London and find out what's becoming of our little nestling. But first," he said with a malicious grin, "find me something to put on my feet. I don't intend to brave the wet cobbles of Falmouth in my stockings."

Sitting in Lord Cathcart's library three days later with the history of Rome on his lap. Cat thought angrily that what Morgan deserved was to walk over live coals in his bare feet. He flipped open the expensively bound volume. It was printed on wave paper. Good God, who could read it? A gift, obviously, from one of the illiterate Most of Cathcart's friends were men of letters, weren't they? He looked on the front leaf.
For dear Brian. From your sincere, loving, and affectionate friend Aline. On Christmas Day 1813.
Aline. Devon's mother. That was interesting. After years of benign devotion here was Devon's mother giving Cathcart books with love sandwiched pathetically between sincerity and affection. As an approach it was probably too subtle for Cathcart. She would have done better with
Dear Brian. Aching and damp for you in my lonely bed. Pension off your mistress and I'm yours. Aline.
It must be difficult for her. Rumor had it that she was a woman of unassailable virtue. Enough men, certainly, had tried to assail it, including the royal scion himself. Poor woman, and here she was, chaste as unsunn'd snow and reduced to trying to send blurred signals at her late husband's best friend. Cat closed the book cover. Maybe he was reading too much into a simple inscription.

Outside, a carriage stopped in clanging rhythmics of iron upon rounded stone. With unwelcome emotion writhing in his stomach Cat heard the muted sounds of Cathcart's entrance, the indecipherable rustle of his conversation with the butler. The door opened. Lord Cathcart entered.

They stood in the quiet and looked at each other. Father and son. The man and the only living creation of his body.

The boy had his looks from his mother—the sturdy bones, the square hips and shoulders, the relaxed elegance of the carriage, and the odd tintless hair that had enchanted Cathcart nineteen years ago. Cathcart had met her on his Grand Tour, and though she had blossomed from the purest flower of Swedish gentility, and was only twenty, she was tainted already by disgrace, and there had been plenty of people to warn Cathcart not to marry her. But Cathcart had been young and naive, and his insight was colored by the generosity of spirit that later made him a beloved and enlightened philanthropist; he had believed in her completely, ignoring or forgiving every sign that she might not fully return his regard, and attributing her heavy use of oral opiates to the stresses of her unquiet nature. When she deserted him after five months of marriage, it had stricken him to the marrow of his soul, and it was five years before he had recovered enough to allow Devon's father to gently prod him into hiring a young lawyer to find out what had become of her so that they could gather the evidence for a divorcement. The lawyer was a conscientious man; it was not his fault that when he traced the woman to the Caribbean brothel where opium overuse had finally stopped her heart, no one there had thought to tell him she had left a child. Probably none of them took any interest in the parentage of the filthy and abused scraps of humanity that slept in the hen yard, the malnourished survivors of the abortionist's sporadic competence. They became better kept and better fed as they grew older, and a source of labor or profit.

It had been Rand Morgan, with his myriad sources, and his curiosities, and his own much less overt philanthropy, who had heard the old scandal from Devon and decided, because the frail underside of the seemingly pious had always interested him, that Cathcart's investigations had been criminally lax and if it were ever convenient, he might look into the matter himself. And Morgan's looking into the matter had produced Cat, and the documentation that the boy had been born in a month that placed his conception during the only period in Cathcart's marriage when it would have been impossible for his wife to be unfaithful.

Four years ago Lord Cathcart had been introduced to the existence of his child by Devon, who had met him in an inn fronting the Thames. "Brian, you have a son," Devon had said gently and began the careful, compassionate explanation of Cat's life in a narrative that avoided judgments but could do nothing to buffer the horror of the full truth.

The horror had been crushing. Morgan had brought the boy in, and Cathcart, searching beneath the surface for a child, could see only a braid, and an earring, and the eyes, old eyes, and an existence he could barely imagine. Trying to reach through those things, he had found in Cat (dear heaven, that name—he couldn't bring himself to use it) a hard-willed and intelligent adolescent who was bored, impatient, saw no significance in their relationship, and who, it was clear, was here only because Morgan had commanded it and it was his habit to obey Morgan. No, there was more than habit in his obedience to Morgan; there was something deeper. How intimate had their relationship become? Discipline and the need to preserve his own sanity had kept Cathcart from following that thought to its conclusion.

Twice, at Cathcart's insistence and with Morgan's bland consent, there had been experiments in which Cat came to stay with him in London. Both occasions had been failures. What would a third failure do to them both?

Lord Cathcart watched the boy put down the book and stand, candle-glow irradiating like a phasm from the smooth coils of his braid.

"I'm here," the boy said, his expression remote, his tone polite. "I hope you don't mind."

"No. ['m pleased." Cathcart had learned to keep his phrases simple. In the past anything more had sounded surprisingly insincere, even when it was meant from the heart. It was harder for him than it was for the boy; because love for a son was ingrained in Cathcart while Cat had no need for a father. And on the
Joke
he'd had a whole shipload of potential fathers, if he'd wanted one, and all of them less alien than an English marquis. "I appreciated your letters."

There had been two, delivered at odd times of the night by disreputable-looking scoundrels four months after they were dated. The first, eighteen months ago, had said, "Alive. On the Atlantic. Cat." The second, in March, had said, "Devon gave me your letter. I don't understand why you say you need to see me. I've never noticed that my presence does anything beyond distress you. If you call my relationship with Morgan 'an infatuation' once more, it's unlikely that you'll hear from me again. Cat." The words may not have been friendly, but they were the closest Cathcart had ever come to an exchange of substance with his son.

Cat acknowledged his father's appreciation with a slight wary nod. Then, coming right to the point, he said, "Has Devon been here?"

"Yes. Last night."

Urgently, "Was there a girl with him?"

"Yes. Merry Wilding. He married her this morning."

"Jesus! He married her?"

Recoiling inside, unfamiliar as he was with the workings of his son's mind, Lord Cathcart misinterpreted his wonder. The surprise in Cat's gently sardonic inflection sounded like callous incredulity, as though he could hardly imagine why Devon would marry her, when women were to be used and discarded.

It took so much of Cat's concentration to absorb that change in Merry's situation that it was a moment before he realized Cathcart was watching him in rigid silence.
I've said something wrong.
Cat thought.
Already. Was it the "Jesus"?
He was trying to figure out whether it would make things better or worse if he apologized when Cathcart said, "You knew her on the
Joke?”

That tone. Accustomed as Cat was to thinking of himself as Merry's . . . almost her foster parent, it required some abrupt mental gymnastics to recognize that this stranger whose only claim on him was that they had both spent a minute or two between the thighs of the same woman—under entirely different circumstances—this self-righteous stranger saw him as one of her captors. And of course, in a way, he had been. Before, all of this had been only irritation. Having to spend time with this gentle, balding scholar at Morgan's insistence—irritation; having the man's gawky, gossiping servants stare at him as though he were about to run off with the silver— irritation; being introduced to Cathcart's noble friends with their slack-jawed fascination—well, all right, that had been a little more than irritating. But this—prior to now only Rand Morgan had been able to make Cat feel this kind of vivid hot and cold anger. The feeling he usually had with Cathcart, the feeling that he wanted to retreat and retreat, switched with shattering speed to attack.

"Did I know her in the biblical sense, do you mean?" he snapped, his eyes wide and brighter than he knew.

The last thing Cathcart desired was to strike his son on an open nerve. Truthfully he had never thought the boy had one. Could Merry Wilding have touched him as she had Devon?

"No," Cathcart said.
God help me to say the right thing,
he thought. "Devon assured me that she was protected from that. We don't have to discuss it."

"Why not? Because you can't stand to hear the truth about the way I live? Because you don't want to know that I brought her on the
Joke
against her will, that 1 held her down so Morgan could feed her opium, that I left her in Devon's bed, knowing that he might—" Cat broke off, hardly recognizing his own voice. Odd quick catches separated words and syllables. The vowels had soft slurs. His throat ached. What was this? Guilt. Guilt for every time she had needed him and he had turned away. Guilt for the rough words he had spoken to her on those first days when he could have been comforting and kind. Now she was married. And safe. And as he had done once before, when he had realized she was going to survive the nearly fatal attack of malaria, he was crying. Of all times, of all places for this to happen—he thrust his face into one callused palm with a sound somewhere between a gasp and a groan. In a moment he felt himself being drawn into the warm oval of his father's arms. He would have cast off the hug because he usually hated being touched, but this clasp was startling in its strength and tenderness; and the darkness around him began to recede though the sobs came harder, painfully racking contractions in his esophagus. He murmured, "This is so bloody embarrassing."

Cathcart remembered asking Devon once if Cat ever smiled. Devon had said, "He has a sense of humor, but no, he doesn't smile. When you know him better, it won't matter." Devon was right. It didn't matter. As warm as a smile was this disarming ability the boy had to express with such candor that his tears embarrassed him. Absorbing the precious weight of his son's body, gazing down at the neat pale hair, Cathcart saw that it was not tintless, as his mother's had been, but held the delicate sunny ivory shades of a pear blossom.

"Did you come to care for her a great deal?" Cathcart said thoughtfully.

"Someone had to. At first she was so helpless—" Cat heard Cathcart chuckle, not as Morgan would have done. This sound was sympathetic, gently interested.

"She's not helpless anymore. Last night she landed a wallop on the underside of Devon's jaw that almost knocked him out of his waistcoat," Cathcart said, watching his son lift his head, the pale lashes webbed with blue glittering tears.

"Did she? Poor midget, his jaw's the only part of him she can reach, unless he leans over," Cat said shakily, blinking. "He's been acting like an ass lately. I hope she knocked some sense into him."

"I think she did," Cathcart smiled. "He seemed more reasonable afterward." He felt the slight gather of tension in his son's well-muscled shoulders, and he stepped back, gently releasing the boy, not with regret but with grateful wonder that he had had this brief first chance to hold his unchildlike child. "Can you stay? We should give them a few days alone, and then, if you like, we could visit them."

Cat nodded. As he took the comfortable chair Cathcart offered and settled into its velvet upholstery, it occurred to him that there was one thing Cathcart offered the people around him that Morgan never gave to anyone. Peace.