To Kiss a Thief (8 page)

“None more than Mrs. Fairfax, I do assure you.”

His admission seemed to please her. “I for one am glad you are here. Your wife's arrival in Haverhythe raised more than a few eyebrows, you should know. Her story was so—incredible. There were those who found it quite
impossible
to believe.”

It was easy to see that Mrs. Kittery had been among them. And as her husband was likely the only medical man in the village, he had probably been among the first to learn that the supposed widow was expecting. The apothecary's wife looked to be the type who would be only too glad to pass along a private diagnosis to her neighbors.

Her obvious delight in spreading gossip ought to have made her an ally to his cause, but something about Fanny Kittery did not sit well with St. John. He schooled his face to impassivity. What did it matter, really, what the strangers in this village had said or done to the woman with whom he intended to sever all ties?

But now he could guess on whom Sarah had been practicing the firmly set jaw and cold eyes that had greeted him yesterday afternoon.

He suddenly recalled a detail from his earlier conversation with Beals. “Mrs. Fairfax gives your daughter lessons on the pianoforte, does she not?”

“Er, yes. Indeed she does.” His knowledge seemed to startle her. “In fact, it was I who suggested the lessons as a means for Mrs. Fairfax to earn her keep, rather than relying on charity—it pained her to have to do so, I know,” she added, the words only serving to underscore her contempt. “I came here a dozen years ago, Mr. Fairfax. From Plymouth, you see,” she said, the name of her birthplace falling from her tongue as if it had been Paris. “So I have always felt it my duty to set the tone of life in Haverhythe somewhat higher.”

Probably she hoped to see her daughter one day restored to the more refined circles from which she herself had come, circles in which musical accomplishments would be held in high regard. Despite the pleasure afforded by shunning someone like Sarah, how often did one come across a competent teacher of that particular skill in a fishing village on the northern coast of Devonshire?

But then, Sarah was rather more than competent.

“Then you were instrumental in helping Mrs. Fairfax achieve some measure of acceptance here.”

The supposed compliment did not sit well with Mrs. Kittery. “Oh, I can't take credit, Mr. Fairfax. It's Mr. and Mrs. Norris who did that, along with Beals, the baker. And people seem to dote on the little girl, Clarissa. Of course, folks do say you oughtn't to blame a child for the parents' sins,” she acknowledged reluctantly. “In any case, over the years, people have proved willing to forgive Mrs. Fairfax for any—irregularities that might have been hidden in her past.”

Against Fanny Kittery's better judgment, it was clear to see.

“I'm sure you underestimate your influence, Mrs. Kittery. I'll bid you good day,” he said with a nod and walked back toward the pub, reflecting on everything he'd learned that morning.

Had everyone else in this trusting little village been duped by a jewel thief and lightskirt?

He could not afford to be taken in himself.

A
lthough St. John had slept in some strange places, Mackey's Pub in Haverhythe did not seem fated to be among them. Sheer fatigue should have robbed him of the ability to keep his eyes open, but he found himself in his room, lying on his back, staring up at the smoke-stained ceiling. It wasn't the lumpy tick mattress or the damp sheets that kept sleep at bay. It wasn't even the sounds of Saturday night carousing that erupted at intervals from the taproom.

It was the memory of Clarissa's eyes.

He could still see them peeping over the stone window ledge, bright and merry and a remarkable shade of violet.

He could not say, even now, what color he had expected, what color he had
wanted
to see. Her mother's eyes, a gray that shifted and changed like a sky threatening storm? No, those eyes gave him trouble enough already.

Sutliffe blue? Well, that would have answered one question. But it would hardly have made his task easier. What was it Fanny Kittery had said?
You oughtn't to blame a child for the parents' sins.
If he could prove Sarah was a thief, it would rob a child—perhaps
his
child—of her mother. That was a loss he understood too well. Despite his determination to rid himself of the woman he had never wanted to wed, was he hard-hearted enough to inflict such pain on an innocent little girl?

If he were honest with himself, he had expected brown eyes. It would have been fitting, somehow, if they had been the same dark eyes that haunted his nightmares, eyes glassy and unseeing as they stared up from David Brice's pale face where it lay in the dewy green grass.

St. John shuddered at the memory and looked down, half-expecting to see in his trembling hands a sword dripping with another man's blood. Accepting that sleep was not going to come, and in some ways not sorry for it given the path his thoughts seemed intent on taking, he hoisted himself from the uncomfortable bed and dressed. The passageway was dark, but he made his way along it and down the stairs, following the noise of the taproom.

The smell of fish and sweat and ale was almost as much an assault on his senses as the light and the noise that burst upon him as he opened the door. The pub was crowded. A few women could even be seen among the tables tonight. The eldest Mackey boy was behind the bar, while his father danced grudging attendance on his patrons. Gerald Beals was seated in his regular spot, talking with a man St. John did not know.

Avoiding every eye, St. John crossed the room and walked out the door, forgoing both hat and greatcoat. The cobbled street of Haverhythe was cool and blessedly quiet in comparison to the raucous pub. The sea breeze lifted his hair, and he turned to watch the play of a waxing moon across the water.

Without conscious thought, he was drawn to the massive quay that curled out into the bay, sheltering a shoreline now littered with boats of all sizes. Climbing its wide, worn steps, he found the stone walkway along its top slick with spray where the heavier waves of the incoming tide crashed against the solid pier only to fall back impotently into the sea.

To his surprise, he was not alone, despite the lateness of the hour. A figure stood at the far end of the quay looking out to sea—a woman, her skirts whipped by the wind. His first thought was that it might be Mad Martha, come to commune with her dead husband's ghost. But this woman was taller, almost certainly younger. Some other fisherman's wife, then, waiting for a boat that had not come in. What must it be like to go on, day by day, worrying and wondering what the next tide would bring?

As if trying to shed just such fears, the woman arched her back and lifted her face to the moonlight, and with a sudden and unwelcome quickening of his pulse St. John recognized Sarah.

He hesitated. He did not think she had seen him. He might turn and walk away. Of course, walking away got him no closer to his goal. It answered no questions and solved no mysteries.

So far, however, his encounters with Sarah tended to raise more questions than they answered.

When he was perhaps three steps away, she turned to face him. He had thought the sound of the waves had masked his approach. But she did not look startled to see him, merely angry.

“Have you come to make more threats, then? Come to remind me once again that you have the power to ruin me—to set my friends against me—to rip my daughter away?” With her loose hair and her wide, searching eyes, she looked as wild as her surroundings.

He had regretted his parting whisper in the baker's shop almost as soon as it had passed his lips. If the tip of a blade had not forced Brice to confess, how likely was it that mere words would intimidate Sarah into revealing her own perfidy, or the whereabouts of the stolen gems?

In the hours since, he had given much thought to Beals's counsel to woo Sarah. If he wanted to be free of her in the end, he must do whatever it took to find that necklace, and the search would go more smoothly if he gained some measure of her trust. He would have to worm his way into her house, her bedchamber, even—if necessary—her bed.

Here, under the moonlight, seemed the proper place to take the first steps in that direction.

“Threats?” He shook his head sadly. “Ah, Sarah. You misunderstand me.”

“Oh, I think not, my lord,” she ground out with mock courtesy. “Why else would you be here?”

“In Haverhythe?”

“On the quay. At this time of night.” She pulled her shawl more snugly about her shoulders. Although they stood in the most open and public place in the village, everything about her posture proclaimed that she felt he had violated her private sanctuary.

So he stepped closer still, until they were standing shoulder to shoulder. “I was merely looking for a place to clear my head.”

“Mackey's can be a bit rowdy on a Saturday night.” She sounded anything but sympathetic.

“Mm,” he agreed absently. “And I have had trouble enough sleeping since I went to Antigua.”

“Have you?” she scoffed.

“Yes.”

She gasped as she twisted around to face him. “Do you—do you mean to say that you really have been in the West Indies? But I thought—that is, Mrs. Potts said you told her—” Sarah frowned and began again. “You told Mrs. Potts that you had been there, I know. But I assumed you did so because you knew that I had told everyone my husband had died abroad—that it was just part of the tale you had concocted to amuse Mr. Mackey and the rest.”

St. John managed a wry smile. “Your husband very nearly did die—in an open field just outside London.”

Sarah's brow wrinkled in confusion.

“I met Brice. Did you know?”

“No.” Her eyes darted to his scar. “I cannot believe you would challenge a man over a slight to my reputation.”

St. John cut his gaze away, studying the glossy reflection of the moon on the slick stones beneath their feet. In the intervening years, he had almost persuaded himself that he had not dueled for her honor, but rather for his own—such as it was. Denial had become second nature. But he could hardly deny the duel's importance to the woman he was meant to be wooing. “More than a slight, ma'am,” he said at last. “And then, believing I had killed him, I fled.”

“Captain Brice is dead?” she asked hesitantly.

He tried to analyze the tone of her question. Regret? Relief? “No,” he answered finally. “He survived—was sent on a mission to France, in fact. He returned a hero.”

Another pause. “But you have been in Antigua all this time? That is why you have come for me only now?”

Had she honestly thought that he had simply let her go? That if circumstances had not prevented him, he would have made no effort to find her? But the answer, apparently, was yes. She had tossed aside her marriage vows, created a new life for herself, imagined she was safely out of his reach—that much was clear to him.

He nodded.

“Three years. What did you do there?”

“This and that. Mostly I worked as a sort of clerk for a planter's agent.”

“A clerk,” she repeated, raising one skeptical eyebrow. “Your father's name could not secure you something better?”

“Perhaps,” St. John acknowledged. “If I had given it.”

He could not be sure it was not a trick of the moonlight, but he thought he saw her swallow a smile. “Such a dangerous voyage—and destination. I cannot think that Lord Estley took well to the notion of his son and heir putting himself in harm's way.”

“He learned where I had gone when it was too late to stop me.”

“But you must have had some communication with him.”

“The exchange of letters is an unpredictable business across such a distance.” That was only partly true. Letters
had
come—a few coaxing notes from his stepmother, one demanding missive from his father. But St. John had answered all of them with silence. “The separation gave me an opportunity to sort some things out,” he admitted at last, although he had not intended to reveal anything so near the truth. “You understand, I think.”

Sarah's eyes swept across his face before turning back toward the water. “I understand that I have not been the only one in hiding.”

He looked down at her and followed the line of her gaze along the waves. He thought he understood, finally, the attraction the water held. “Can one see all the way across the bay to Bristol?”

“On a clear day, I fancy I can.” She shrugged. “But no—not really.”

“Your parents—”

She shook her head, cutting him off. “Lady Estley insisted I must sever all ties. I did not know she had claimed I was dead. But at least that means Mama and Papa have not worried over me the last three years,” she said, a convincing tremor in her whispered voice. He had had no notion she was such an accomplished actress.

He nodded his head in silent agreement with her words
.
The report of her death would have given Sarah's parents some sense that the chain of events begun on the night of the nuptial ball had been brought to a close, no matter how terrible. That much he knew from experience. But what would their reaction be when they discovered the report had been a lie?

“Why did you not go to them anyway?” A mere promise to his stepmother could not have prevented her, after all.

“Because they would have expected me to return to you.”

Having had the dubious pleasure of seeing her in another man's arms just days after their wedding, he ought to have been prepared for such a declaration of antipathy toward her husband. Yet the words buzzed in his ears like mosquitos seeking blood, proving he had not been fully ready to hear them. “Was I so abhorrent to you, then?” he managed to ask after a moment. “Or was it your punishment you feared to face?”

“I feared a kind of punishment, yes,” she said, her words muffled by the moaning sea. “A lifetime spent without love.”

Under ordinary circumstances, they might have had what passed for a successful marriage—at least among those of his class. After an heir was born, they would have been free to go their separate ways. He probably would have taken a mistress eventually. He might even have looked the other way if Sarah had chosen to take a lover.

But
love?
That had never been part of the bargain. And it never could be.

With a shiver, Sarah turned her back on the ocean and faced St. John, dashing droplets of moisture from her cheeks—sea spray, though it looked remarkably like tears. “That dream is an old one. What happens now?”

“Things cannot stay as they are.”

Her shoulders rose and fell in a visible sigh. “I suppose not. But I have one request I hope you will honor.”

“If I can.”

She drew another deep breath, as if gathering her courage. “The festival on Michaelmas. I, along with many others, have worked for months to ensure its success. Let me see it through—without interference.”

It was not the favor he had expected her to ask. He had not thought Sarah the sort to get caught up in village merrymaking. Still, Michaelmas was five days off, and if he were going to be forced to spend a week here, he could use that time to his advantage. He tilted his head in a half nod. “That seems a reasonable request,” he said, proffering his hand to seal the agreement.

She regarded the gesture with open skepticism. “And what sort of promise do you demand of me in return?”

“Why, nothing, my lady.” After a lengthy pause in which he felt certain she intended to refuse him, she put her hand in his, and he shook it. Despite their surprising strength, her fingers felt impossibly small in his palm. “For the moment.”

Just then a rogue wave broke high against the quay, driving water over its surface and thoroughly wetting them both. As she belatedly attempted to jump out of its path, Sarah's feet slipped out from under her. She began to flail, but St. John pulled her to safety and set his other hand around her waist to steady her.

She glanced down at the churning foam and then up at him. “It would be a terrible fall.”

Seizing the opportunity the forces of nature had provided him, St. John allowed himself to look, really look, at the woman he had so reluctantly married.

Sarah was not beautiful. At least, not in any conventional way. Her features were quite unremarkable—nothing striking, not even singular. But the moonlight leant her skin an ethereal glow. Her shadowed eyes were dark as pewter, and her hair hung loose, teased and tangled by the salty wind.

No, she was not beautiful—not any more than the steely waters of the North Atlantic crashing below them could be called beautiful. Mysterious, yes. Potentially treacherous.