Authors: The Challenge
“Still mad at me?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “We’re friends too long for that, I think.”
He nodded, satisfied. “Thing of it is that it’s time I broadened my horizons,” he said, sitting back. “My business goes to England, no reason why I can’t, too. At least for a spell. I heard your rich brother-in-law, the baron, sent you fare. I was surprised and that’s a fact. Well, everyone says they’ve a rich and noble rel
ative in England. Much good it does them. But this one came through. I heard you’re looking for someone to accompany you there. Well—here I am.”
Lucy answered with a gasp—then a prompt and flat, “No! I mean to say, it wouldn’t do. It would give rise to speculations. We’re just friends, William. Were you to be my companion, it would look like more than that.”
“It could be more than that,” he said, “and you know it.”
“Thank you,” she answered through clenched teeth, “but I’ve no plans for that sort of thing now. First, I have to bring Jamie to meet his uncle and settle his future. Then, and only then, I can think about mine.”
“Then you may have to wait until the boy’s a man,” he said with a pronounced sneer, rising to his feet, “because there’s not many folk around here with either the funds or the notion to go to England so easily. Unless you’re waiting for a certain English nobleman to decide to go home, so he can accompany you?”
Lucy shot to her feet. “How dare you!”
“Well, it looks like that,” William countered. “Everyone knows the Ameses are asking around for someone to go with you. They got you some respectable female—and you turned her down. It looks like you’re just waiting for
him
to find out and offer his services,” he added, not having to say whom he meant.
“As it happens, I did not turn down the lady,”
Lucy lied. She said a silent farewell to the extra money. Staying here now was impossible. “I’ll be going to England as soon as may be. With Mrs. Oliver, of Richmond.”
The Ameses hugged Lucy and Jamie, kissed and wept over them, and waved handkerchiefs at them until their coach disappeared out of sight. Jamie waved back, his expression somber and a little fearful. But when the coach reached the main highway, he bounced up and down on his seat. “I’m off to see the world!” he laughed.
Lucy sat silently looking out the window, watching as they left familiar fields behind, perhaps forever. They looked more like burning bridges to her. She might see the Ameses again. But eligible men measured time differently than fond relatives. She knew she was leaving behind all hopes of ever seeing one particular elegant face again. At least while he was still single. She felt a huge, painful lump in her throat.
She sat back, faced forward, and looked backward, and knew all her regret was nothing compared to the regrets she’d have had if she’d followed her heart and not her head, again.
It didn’t make it any easier.
Mrs. Oliver had arranged to meet Lucy at an inn on the main highway.
“My dear Mrs. Stone,” the short, round woman said, when Lucy introduced herself. “How charm
ing to meet you. It is too dark to travel further today. So, tonight, we rest here. Tomorrow you can bespeak lodgings at the Swallow, a very fine hostelry in Richmond. I will take you ’round to show you the sights.” She eyed Lucy’s gown. “How glad I am I told my dressmaker I would drop by before we sailed. I’m sure she can do wonders for you. Richmond fashion is not London style, but it is closer to it than…”
“Mrs. Oliver,” Lucy said firmly, thinking of the expense of staying on in Richmond for a week and her hard-earned store of coins, “tonight I must stay here, of course. But tomorrow I expect to board the ship for England.”
Mrs. Oliver’s slightly protuberant eyes widened. “Good heavens! Of course not. It takes time to prepare for such a journey. You can’t know, of course. But I, who have traveled so often, do. A few days to rest, a few days to buy staples, a few more to—”
“Mrs. Oliver,” Lucy said, straightening her spine, no easy task after hours in the jostling carriage, “the
Sarabeth
sails tomorrow. There’s not another bound for England for another week and if the weather changes, maybe not for longer. If you can’t go with me, I’m sorry for it, but I didn’t come all this way to go to Richmond. I leave for England tomorrow.”
Mrs. Oliver caught her breath. Then she shrugged, an unpleasant smile on her tight mouth. “Indeed. But, I remind you, she sails at noon. You’ll have to wake in a few hours, and travel like the wind
to get there. I doubt you can make it in time.”
“I can try,” Lucy said grimly.
Lucy rose before dawn, splashed cold water on her face, and struggled into her gown. Her body still ached from yesterday’s hard traveling, and she was bleary from lack of sleep. She took her cape from a peg on the wall and left the room, groping down the narrow stair in the waning moonlight, and made her way to the outbuilding. When she returned to the room, she lit a lamp, yawned, and went to wake Jamie. She paused, her hand almost on his shoulder.
His face was rosy in the lamplight. He was still young enough to glow with sweet warmth in his sleep, as when he’d been a babe. His hair was damp with perspiration and lay on his forehead. There was a smile on his lips. There in that instant, Lucy saw Francis again, reborn. There was her own youth and all her hopes, all embodied in this one dear, fragile little soul. Her heart filled with tenderness. Her weariness vanished. She was buoyed by resolve. It was time to take him to his destiny. Hers would follow.
Jamie woke in an instant, and leapt to her every request. He was ready to travel in half an hour. Then he watched as Lucy did battle with Mrs. Oliver.
“If you can’t come, I understand,” Lucy repeated, as they stood by the carriage in the growing sunlight. “But I can’t wait any longer.”
“If I do not have my maid count everything in my luggage, something important may be missing,”
Mrs. Oliver said, the same way she’d said, “If I do not have something to eat before I travel I become most vilely ill” a half hour before.
Her long-suffering maid gave Lucy a sympathetic smile. “Done, ma’am,” she said. “All’s present.”
“Good,” Lucy answered. “Now get into the coach, and we will leave.”
“But there is the matter of my medications,” Mrs. Oliver said.
Lucy’s last straw snapped. She turned and walked to the coach. “Good day, Mrs. Oliver,” she said, “I am leaving for England.”
Lucy, Jamie, Mrs. Oliver, and her maid rode in hostile silence, broken only by Lucy opening the window to shout “Faster!” to the coachman every so often as they drove along the dusty road. She smelled the sea before she saw it, and began smiling. When the coach stopped, she fairly flew from it. She took Jamie’s hand in one of hers, lifted the hem of her skirt with the other, and rushed down the dock to the shipping office.
“The
Sarabeth
?” the clerk said, “Why, there she is, ma’am.” He gestured to a window.
Looking out, Lucy saw a beautiful sailing ship, slowly heading toward the horizon.
“I must be on it!” she cried. “Can’t you do anything? Oh, please! Please!”
The clerk hesitated. Lucy was obviously distressed. Her hair was out of its pins and curled
riotously around her flushed face; her long-lashed eyes were wide and blue as the deepest part of the sea she was staring out at.
“You could swim,” Mrs. Oliver said with a titter as she entered the room behind her.
“I can signal them with flags,” the clerk said quickly, “if you don’t mind taking the longboat.”
“I don’t mind swimming, if I have to,” Lucy said fervently.
T
he two men stood at the rail of the
Sarabeth
, watching the water sparkling blue and green in the sunlight. The breeze was strong enough to have made the sails snap, but they were furled. The ship was at anchor, halted, waiting for some last late passengers to board. The longboat taking them to the ship was being readied to set out from the shore. When the light, warm wind shifted, the two men at the ship’s rail could catch the scent of flowers drifting out from that distant shore. It was so intense it overwhelmed the saline smell of the sea.
“A hard time to leave, in the spring,” Lord Wycoff mused.
Perkins’s face was bland. “We are not yet unpacked, my lord. It is not too late. We could take that longboat back.”
He was rewarded by one of his master’s infrequent real smiles. “No,” Wycoff said, “there’s no point. We sail for home and it’s better that way. Can you see me lying about that great house in Virginia by myself, so near and yet so far from my desire, languishing like one of those romantic poets you’re so fond of? Or dashing about the countryside at midnight, to no purpose, on my wildest horse, making a grand show of my despair? I’ll leave that sort of behavior to my lord Byron and his set, thank you. No, I’m for home. Past time, anyway. Traveling’s educational, but a man who can’t stay at home has closed his mind to himself.”
“I should have thought,” Perkins said slowly, picking his words with the same exquisite care he used when he picked his master’s apparel each day, “that the lady would be more amenable to your persuasion in person. Most females are.”
“But she isn’t ‘most females.’ Precisely why it’s so important that I proceed carefully. If I am to proceed at all. Some things are futile. A wise man knows the difference between desire and desirability. I hope to be that wise, although…” Wycoff looked at his valet consideringly. “You’ve known me these past ten years…”
“Twelve and a half,” Perkins said quickly.
“Indeed. And in that time I’ve showed you a side I myself am not too fond of.”
“I am aware, my lord.”
“Are you?” Wycoff smiled, “Well, I thank you for knowing that. But in that time, I’ve come to
know you, too. I value your opinion and discretion equally as much as I do your taste in clothes.” He paused. “I have a difficult time deciding why you put up with me. But I’m grateful for it. How many men would so willingly follow me to each end of the earth whenever I decide to cast myself off? There I was, a year past, sending you notice to pack our bags and come with me to America on the next fair tide. And there you were, within the hour at my side, without a question or a word of hesitation or complaint. I wonder why you bother.”
“You’re a good master, my lord,” Perkins said simply. “And, I admit, an interesting one. You might not believe it, but my profession can be a dull one. Being employed by you satisfies that wanderlust and quest for excitement. It is not only that. I have found you to be a just and equitable man.”
“High praise,” Wycoff said, “but misplaced, perhaps. I’m no hero. I believe I may be the opposite of one, in fact.”
“I dislike disagreeing with you, sir. But I must. You carried certain messages for His Majesty when we traveled on the Continent during the late war. Your discretion and bravery were often called upon. You challenged Mr. Bellows for personal reasons. But other duels you took part in were not staged because of any personal quarrel of yours, but rather required of you, on order, for the sake of our country. You always acquitted yourself with honor in spite of the danger to yourself. I consider that heroic, my lord.”
Wycoff made a dismissive gesture. He leaned on the rail and stared back to shore, watching the ship’s longboat set out at last. “Other men did more. Before you call me heroic for risking my life, consider it just may have been that I didn’t care about preserving that life. And some of those challenges were conducted for the sake of my lusts, and nothing more.
“But this time,” Wycoff said quietly, watching the sailors in the distance plying their oars, “it meant more. Much more. What I was going to say before is that you’ve known me a long while. But the man I discovered myself being when I was with her was more like the man I once was, long, long ago. That man—or boy, I suppose—had potential for being good. For being true to himself and whomever he devoted himself to. He was someone you never met and I scarcely remember myself. But I found echoes of him in her company. She did not, however. And who can blame her? Lord, but I’m tired, Perkins. Tired of traveling to no purpose. Tired of being so damnably persuasive, especially since it never got me what I needed, only what I wanted.”
“But leaving now, my lord? It’s not like you, if I may say so.”
“It’s very like me,” Wycoff said curtly. “I’m still full of plots and plans, never fear. I’m leaving—so she can see me more clearly. And I, her. I’m keeping a watch on her, as you may have guessed.”
“Mrs. Truesdale hinted there was more than her interest in Mister Geoffrey and Mr. Bellows keep
ing her at the Ames Hotel,” Perkins said primly.
“Yes,” Wycoff said, with a slight and twisted smile, “I made arrangements before I left. Alfred’s fond of earning the odd extra coin, too. Geoff’s determined to see me happy, since my investments have made him a rich man. And the Ameses are determined I should have her, ‘when she comes to her senses,’ as Mrs. Ames says. The problem is she’s never left her senses. I’ll see her again, one way or the other, when the time is right. The other problem is that it may never be. I won’t become a supplicant, Perkins. Such a man inspires only pity. So if it’s not to be—I’d rather know it from afar. That much pride is left to me. Or that much idiocy. I sent her a letter; be sure I’ll send more. We shall see. In any event I’m leaving because I don’t think any good can come of my staying now. For me, or her.”
He went still, watching the longboat come aside, thinking of her, bitterly amused by the way he thought he saw her in every woman now. He blinked. Because now that the longboat was beside the ship, he could see each of the four incoming passengers clearly.
One was a boy, beside himself with excitement. He was pointing out every feature of the ship to the women with him. One was obviously a maidservant, dressed all in gray. One was a heavyset, overdressed female of a certain age. She was gripping the boy’s hand tightly, to save herself or him from overbalancing the boat in his glee. The other was a younger woman, as excited as the boy, windblown
and wide-eyed as the breeze threw back her hood and scattered her shining chestnut hair. Lovely. She was lovely in her disarray. But then, she always was.
Wycoff straightened, staring. Disbelieving.
She was looking up at the ship when their gazes met. And locked.
He gazed at her with absolute, incredulous delight.
And Lucy looked up at him with absolute shock and utter disbelief.
Lucy stumbled coming aboard. It had nothing to do with the pitch and sway of the longboat. A sailor held the rope ladder still for her as she climbed up to the ship. A long, strong hand gripped hers firmly, supported her, and helped her stand when she got there. That was when she stumbled. Because she couldn’t look at anything but his face.
“How—how did you know?” she gasped, staring at him as though he was an apparition, unsure of whether to celebrate or rush back to the longboat. “I only sent the letter to you yesterday!”
“The same time I posted mine to you,” Wycoff said, looking at her with bemused delight. “But I couldn’t have gotten yours. I left the district a week ago.”
“Then—you didn’t know?”
“Know what?” he asked, his gaze on her, devouring her.
“Don’t toy with me, my lord,” she said, her wits returning. She stood straighter. “I book passage
home, and arrive on the ship to find you here to greet me? I see! You have a fine way of arranging things to your advantage, don’t you? Mr. Ames told me about that encounter he had with poor William before the duel you engineered with him. Frightening him half out of his wits before he could make a move! I felt such a fool,” she added indignantly. “You had that entire episode under control, and still you let me worry about you.”
“I wouldn’t have if I’d known you knew about it,” he said. “When I did find out you were worried I confess I was too flattered to do more than be pleased by your concern. But
this
? You think I arranged this? My dear, I would have, if I could have. But even
I
have my limits, and some sensibility. You said you didn’t want to see me again. I accepted that. I told you I was going home, and so I am. That’s all it was, and all there is. But now you’ve got me thinking. Perhaps you changed your mind? Arriving so late, and yet in such good time?
“My dear,” he said with a growing grin, “I never would have thought—but how delightful! You engineered this happy meeting? You came to your senses, discovered my whereabouts, and followed me. That is wonderful. I
am
flattered!” But he was obviously more pleased by the way her eyes sparkled and her cheeks grew pinker than the sea breeze could account for.
“You told me you were going home,” she accused him. “Everyone thought you meant to your new home, down the road.”
“Then everyone ought to have asked me what I meant,” he said sweetly.
Before she could frame a killing retort, Mrs. Oliver, just arrived on deck, cleared her throat loudly enough to drown out the gulls wheeling overheard. Lucy turned. The woman looked at her meaningfully. Lucy frowned, not understanding.
When Lucy didn’t answer, Mrs. Oliver looked up at Wycoff, simpering. “My lord,” she said, echoing Lucy’s greeting, but with obvious satisfaction at using his title. She bobbed him a bow. “It’s clear that meeting you has robbed Mrs. Stone of speech. But as we are to be fellow travelers, and life is more informal aboard ship, allow me to present myself. I am Mrs. Oliver, sister to my lord Ffolkes, the baron Ffolkes, of Hudley Hall in Wessex. When I heard Mrs. Stone was going home I offered her my company, since a lady of any reputation cannot travel alone. At least, I wouldn’t hear of it.”
Wycoff bowed. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, “since it does appear that Mrs. Stone is indeed robbed of words.”
“I was not robbed of words,” Lucy protested. “I was just trying to find the right ones.
Me
, engineering
this
,” she said, rounding on Wycoff, who was looking very pleased. “I’m shocked at such conceit! I didn’t know you were going to be here,” she said furiously.
“Nor could I have known you were to be here,” he answered. “What does bring you here, if not my humble self? I thought you were planning to visit England in a few years, not a few days.”
“It’s nothing to do with you,” Lucy said quickly. “I got a letter from Lord Hunt, my late husband’s brother.” Her joy overcame her indignation, and now her eyes shone with pure happiness, her voice softening as she spoke in awe—as though she still didn’t dare believe it. “He wants to meet Jamie. He sent me funds for our journey. We moved heaven and earth to get the last berths on this ship, the first one we could find leaving for home. I couldn’t wait another hour, much less week. They
asked
us to come.”
“Wonderful,” he said honestly. “That is, indeed, wonderful.”
She searched his face and saw nothing but sympathy and honest understanding in his eyes. She lowered her own as she felt that concern awakening a kindred feeling in her. It was more disturbing than seeing his lust, more thrilling than mere desire. He was calling to her again. On an even more dangerous level.
“Lord Wycoff!” Jamie shouted as he was handed aboard just behind them. “This is famous! What fun! Did you know he’d be here, Mama? Was this your grand surprise? I’ll bet it was. Thank you! What a good trip this will be!”
“No,” Lucy began to explain—but stopped, dumbfounded.
Mrs. Oliver looked as though she’d been stung by a bee. She went rigid, her eyes widening and rolling up, her face growing ruddy. “Lord
Wycoff
?” she said weakly. “And you knew
he’d
be here before
we set out?” she asked Lucy, appalled.
Wycoff heard the horror in her voice. “No, she did not,” he said. “I was merely jesting.” His face suddenly was wiped clean of all expression but a faint, mocking smile. “I give you good day, ladies. Don’t trouble yourselves. The ship is small, and I’m too large to avoid. But I promise you I’ll do nothing to cause you further distress. Good morning.” He tipped his hat and walked away, Perkins following at his side.
“May I come along, sir?” Jamie cried. “Mama, can I go talk with Lord Wycoff?” Wycoff turned to look, absolutely no expression to be read in his face.
Lucy nodded. “You may, Jamie, if his lordship doesn’t mind.”
Wycoff’s smile was cool, though it warmed when he looked down at Jamie. “Mind Jamie’s company? Never. Come along, my boy,” he said. “We’ll show you some interesting things we’ve discovered aboard this fine vessel. Have you met Captain Kelly? No? Then let’s remedy that. I’ll see him safely back to you,” he told Lucy without turning his head, and strolled away.
“You let the boy go with him?” Mrs. Oliver hissed. “Very foolish! I visit England frequently, I know the
on dit
of the ton. Every bit of gossip. Because one must know how to go on with those she meets in society,” she added piously. “I tell you, Lucy, the man is a rake! A hardened case. A married man famous for his affairs. His name is a byword for…for…”
“For his dealings with women,” Lucy said wearily. “I know, he told me. Jamie isn’t a woman. Lord Wycoff has been kind to him. Let it be, Mrs. Oliver. By the way, Lord Wycoff’s a widower now.”
“I know, I do read the papers,” Mrs. Oliver said, pulling herself up on her highest ropes, “but a leopard does not change his spots.”
“He’s a man, not a leopard,” Lucy said. “Let’s not quarrel. He gave his word not to distress us, let’s not do it for ourselves.”
“His
word
?” Mrs. Oliver scoffed. “That sort of gentleman’s word is only good for his own pleasures.”
“I know,” Lucy whispered, watching Jamie skip off with Lord Wycoff, the tall man smiling down at the boy by his side. “I know.”