“Oh, yes,” Zeke continued, the lightness of his tone not disguising an underlying bitterness. “Cristabel never married. Matt and I are both—begging your pardon, Amanda—bastards.”
“Matt never told me,” Amanda breathed, her eyes fixed on Zeke’s face.
“It isn’t something one brags about,” Zeke returned dryly. “Does it make a difference to the way you feel about Matt?”
“Of
course
not.” Amanda was clearly indignant. Zeke nodded, the movement brusque.
“Good. Because that’s merely the beginning of the story. According to Cristabel, after a debut that would have put Queen Victoria’s to shame, she eloped with a handsome young man from New Orleans. She thought he came from a wealthy aristocratic Creole family. Later, when they arrived in New Orleans, she discovered that he was nothing more than a professional gambler. Again according to Cristabel, when he learned that she didn’t have any money of her own, he abandoned her. Left her at a seedy hotel one night and never came back. The next night, when he still hadn’t appeared, she went to the hotel where he had set up his games and asked about him. A lady—and I use the term advisedly—came out to talk to her upon hearing whom Cristabel had been asking for. The lady was also Paul Mareschel’s wife—that was his name, Paul Mareschel. And since their marriage was solemnized some years before Cristabel’s, obviously it took precedence. And just as obviously Cristabel was not Mrs. Mareschel at all, but still Miss Grayson. And Miss Grayson was alone, frightened, and with child.”
“Matt.”
“That’s right.” Zeke nodded. “Well, Mareschel’s wife—if she was his wife, any more than Cristabel was, is open to speculation. Apparently he was quite a lady’s man.” Zeke grinned suddenly and added in an aside, “Matt must take after him. Cristabel always said that Matt’s daddy was as handsome as the devil himself and as popular with the ladies.” Then, recollecting himself, he went on hastily. “Mrs. Mareschel felt sorry for Cristabel and took her in. Oh, not to the hotel, but to a little business she owned in partnership with an aristocratic New Orleans gentleman. They gave her a place to stay until Matt was born, and then she had to start earning her room and board. Which she did, without any qualms that I ever noticed.”
Amanda’s eyes were huge as they met Zeke’s. The implications were clear.
“You mean …” She faltered.
He nodded. “I mean she became a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession: a prostitute, if you’ll forgive my bold speech. And she plied her trade with talent and enthusiasm, from all accounts. I was born seven years after Matt, when Cristabel, according to her calculations, was twenty-six; I think she must have been closer to thirty. I have no idea who my father was. Some nameless fellow who bought my mother for the night. Since I don’t look like Cristabel—who is blonde and small, although she now makes up in girth what she lacks in height—I assume I resemble my father. Good looking son-of-a-gun, wasn’t he?” This last was accompanied by a flashing grin that reminded Amanda again that this man was Matt’s brother.
“Then Matt is ashamed because his mother is a … prostitute?” Amanda colored a little on the last word, but got it out nonetheless. This conversation was too important to leave vital points unclarified for lack of a little plain language. “I don’t really see what that has to do with why he won’t believe me when I tell him I didn’t betray him.”
Zeke shook his head. “I don’t think Matt is ashamed, not anymore. You get used to it, over the years. What he is, is hurt and angry—and bitter toward women. You see, despite what she was, Matt thought the sun rose and set in our mother. When I was a child, he would come into the room we shared in the attic of Cristabel’s place of employment, his face all bruised and bloody from fights with boys who’d called his mother a whore. For a long time Matt wouldn’t admit to himself what Cristabel was. He would even be angry at me when I tried to tell him.” Zeke paused to take a deep breath. “When I was seven and Matt fourteen, Cristabel was offered better circumstances. There was a man who wanted to take her away from the sordid life she’d led until then, and give her everything she didn’t deserve. She left us then. Merely kissed both of us on the forehead, said good-bye, and left us. That was the first and only time I’ve seen my brother cry: the day our mother left us. He was a big boy, tall but rather thin and gangly, and he sat there on the end of our bed and tears ran down his cheeks. It frightened me more than Cristabel’s leaving did. I’d never depended on Cristabel, but I did depend on Matt. And Matt was crying.”
Zeke’s eyes clouded as he remembered. Amanda’s heart ached at the image he was creating for her, the image of a tall, thin boy with Matt’s face, weeping for the mother who had abandoned him.
“But Matt stopped crying and went to work,” Zeke continued softly. “He supported me from the time he was fourteen until I could do it myself. He’s a remarkable man, my brother.”
“Yes,” Amanda agreed softly, her eyes misting. She thought about what Zeke had said. Matt’s mother, whom he had adored, had betrayed him, and that had led him to expect betrayal from all women. He was harboring a deep-rooted fear. She would have to be kind and patient and, most of all, loving …
“But you’ve had contact with Cristabel since?” she asked, suddenly remembering that Zeke had said they’d heard from her just six months ago. Zeke’s mouth twisted.
“Oh, yes—whenever she needs money. When Matt was about twenty-two, she came back to New Orleans and learned that he was part owner of the
Lucie Belle,
his first ship. And she thought it was charming that the son she had abandoned had done so well. She tried for a reconciliation, but her money-grubbing little claws were showing. Matt gave her some money—he has a soft heart beneath that tough exterior. At the end of their last interview, when she saw she wasn’t making headway, she gave up acting the prodigal mother and screamed about being destitute—and Matt wouldn’t leave her in want no matter what she’d done to him. Now we hear from her once or twice a year, whenever she’s penniless. And Matt always sends her money. But she’s never tried to see him again and he never speaks of her. And I think she’s forgotten that I ever existed.”
“I’m so sorry, Zeke,” Amanda murmured impulsively, sensing the pain that was as real in him as he’d said it was in Matt. She laid a gentle hand on his arm in an instinctive gesture of comfort. He looked down at her, smiled Matt’s smile, and patted her hand. And then both of them became aware of a tall figure looming behind them.
“Making advances to
my
girl, little brother?” Matt asked. His tone was light, but as Amanda and Zeke both started and turned a guilty look on him, his eyebrows knitted in the faintest of frowns. Those silvery eyes were keen as he surveyed them in turn.
“I acquit you of trying to steal my girl,” Matt said slowly, his eyes fixed on Zeke. “But the two of you are clearly up to something. Come on, brother, out with it. If you don’t, Amanda will. She’s the worst liar I’ve ever seen. She’s even worse than you.”
There was a taunt in his voice as he said that last. Zeke looked uncomfortable, and Amanda, feeling sympathy for a fellow habitual truth teller, stepped into the breach.
“We were deciding to be friends,” she said, tilting her chin defiantly as she looked Matt straight in the eye. “Just because
you’re
stubborn and mule-headed doesn’t mean Zeke has to be.”
Matt’s eyes widened fractionally. “Is that right?” he drawled as Zeke chuckled.
“She has you there, brother.” Zeke grinned, obviously not a whit disturbed by the frown Matt directed at him. “You
are
stubborn. And mule-headed. Only, I never thought to hear a little chit of a girl tell you so.”
Matt looked back at Amanda. She looked very small and slight as she stood there staring impudently up at him, her bright head barely reaching the top of his shoulder. For what must have been the thousandth time, he thought what a lovely thing she was, with her violet eyes and delicately carved face, pinkened now by the breeze, and the sun finding golden threads in the cascade of ruby curls. His stomach twisted as he looked at her, and his mouth was grimly set.
“You can go below,” he said shortly to Zeke, moving to take command of the wheel. “You need some sleep.”
“I’m fit,” Zeke protested. Matt silenced him with a look. Zeke pursed his lips, shrugged, and obediently went below.
“What were you and Zeke talking about?” Matt asked abruptly when he and Amanda were alone.
“Oh, nothing. Just … just this and that,” Amanda stammered, caught by surprise. A faint flush rose in her cheeks. She knew she must look guilty, and she also knew she could not betray what Zeke had told her in confidence. She decided to take the offensive, hoping it would throw him off the track.
“What do you suppose we were talking about, how to cause a mutiny?” she added tartly. Matt looked at her, one corner of his mouth quirking up.
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” he retorted. “But I do trust Zeke.”
She bridled at the implication. But there was nothing surprising in that. After all, he thought she had betrayed him, made no bones about thinking so. He was a low-down, suspicious … She opened her mouth to tell him so, then remembered why he was the way he was. The image of that gangly fourteen-year-old crying for his mother superceded the reality of the tall, tough man who looked as though he’d never needed anyone in his life. Her harsh words were swallowed before she could speak them. She would win him with kindness, get him to trust her with love …
“Where are we headed?” she asked, changing the subject, although she had a fair idea of their destination.
“Home,” he said, confirming what she had thought. “New Orleans.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, wondering how best to penetrate his defenses to the man within the hard, distrustful shell. Finally she decided to ask the question that had been plaguing her for days.
“Why did you come back for me, Matt? Why are you taking me with you?” Her voice was soft, her eyes searching as they moved over his face. His mouth tightened, but the silvery eyes were mocking as they glanced down at her.
“Why do you imagine?” he asked musingly. “Because of your irresistible beauty, perhaps? Because I feared I wouldn’t be able to live without you?” He was mocking her. Amanda’s chin tilted at him, but she didn’t say anything. She was going to be kind and loving to him if it killed her. “It wasn’t either of those things, Amanda,” he continued softly. “I went back for you because we had—still have—some unfinished business. Business that I plan to finish before much longer.”
“You mean that you came for me because you wanted revenge.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “That, and other things. You have a lovely body, Amanda. I had just started to teach it what pleasure’s all about. I wanted to feel it squirming beneath me, begging me to make it mine.”
He was trying to embarrass her, Amanda knew, but that did not stop the hot color from flooding her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled indignantly as she glared at him. Weeping fourteen-year-old or not, he was pushing her tolerance too far.
“Well, in that case, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. I’ll never beg you to …
you
know. I don’t even like it particularly.”
His eyes narrowed, then he smiled. “Don’t you?
Well, I’ll just have to see what I can do about that, won’t I?”
Amanda fairly quivered with temper. “Chance is a fine thing,” she retorted, and turned her back on him, stalking away before he could reply. Because of course he knew as well as she did that he would have the chance, and there was nothing she could do to stop him from taking it. But at least she would make no secret about her lack of enjoyment. And as she stomped away down the stairs to the accompaniment of his low chuckles, all her good intentions of winning him to her with loving kindness were forgotten.
For the rest of the day Amanda was careful to keep well away from the quarterdeck and Matt. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and bright with just the hint of a breeze. Even to avoid Matt she refused to stay in his cabin. Besides, she reasoned, he would surely return for some much-needed sleep before too long, and she didn’t want to be there when he settled down for a rest. She had an uncomfortable suspicion that he wouldn’t think twice about taking her to bed with him.
She spent the afternoon on the poop deck, above the main afterdeck. Most of the men were sleeping, and the few who moved about ignored her. She was able to enjoy the day, at least, as long as she firmly banished any thoughts of Matt. Just imagining that tall, strong body and handsome face, not to mention the sneering smile that was its usual adornment lately, made her angry. And sad at the same time.
Without Matt’s handsome, if maddening, self to occupy her mind, her thoughts turned eventually to those she had left behind at the convent. What an uproar there must have been when she disappeared. What did they imagine had become of her? she wondered. Did they think that she had run away or perhaps even drowned herself in the bay rather than face marriage to Lord Robert? Amanda shook her head. Mother Superior and the other nuns, with the possible exception of Sister Boniface, who was always ready to think the worst of her, would never believe that she could be guilty of such a mortal sin. But Edward and Lord Robert did not know her quite so well. Amanda grinned as she pictured Lord Robert’s embarrassment if word should get about that she had drowned herself rather than become his bride. He would be furious at being made to appear so foolish. Then there was Edward. Amanda shivered as she thought of facing his anger. Fervently she hoped that he believed her dead. If he did not, he might try to find her. And the thought of what he might do to her if she came into his power again made her shiver despite the warmth of the day. How he would enjoy making her pay for ruining all his plans. But, then, she told herself bracingly, even if he did not believe her dead, he was hardly likely to look for her in New Orleans. He could have no notion that she had gone there, and with Matt …
Susan would be grief-stricken. Her friend knew her too well to believe that she would take her own life, but for a young woman of Amanda’s background and breeding, being on her own with no money and no one to come to her aid could be a fate almost worse than death. But she had no way to allay Susan’s fears—not now. Later, when they reached New Orleans, she would write and let Susan, and through her the nuns, know that she was alive and well. Although she wouldn’t be more specific than that. Not for anything in the world would she bring the authorities down on Matt’s head.