How To Please a Pirate (14 page)

“Well, the look on your face would sour the
milk,” Hyacinth said with another pursing of her lips. “Don’t be
such a pickle, Daisy, and I’ll tell you all about it later.”

“You promise?” Daisy extended her pinky.

“And hope to die.” Hyacinth locked little
fingers with her.

“Stick a needle in my eye,” they recited
together. Then the sisters turned aside in unison and spat on the
floor.

“Did you get some on my skirt?” Hyacinth
demanded.

“Only a little,” Daisy admitted. “No one will
notice. Here, let me wipe it with my hanky.”

“Not that one. You never have a clean hanky.
Go get one from Posey—” Hyacinth froze when the strains of a violin
wobbling over a particularly difficult passage of triplets wafted
into the room. “Oh no! The ball has started without me!”

In a flurry of satin, Hyacinth rustled out
the door and down the long staircase with haste worthy of a blooded
colt, anxious for its first race. Daisy followed and watched her
descent from the landing. Near the bottom step, Hy threw a slipper
and had to stop to cram her foot back into the shoe Daisy had told
her was too small. Hy’s feet had grown along with the rest of her
in the last month or so, but she wouldn’t give up the intricately
beaded pair.

“Her feet will be so covered with blisters
she won’t be able to walk tomorrow,” Daisy predicted grimly.

Even though Hyacinth had pinky-sworn to tell
all, she probably wouldn’t feel like talking either. It would be
like her to have a grand adventure and then keep all the juicy
details to herself. Well, there was a remedy for that right
enough.

Daisy slipped off her own shoes and tailed
her sister down the stairs, silent as a cat. She was quick as a
blink and she knew all the good hiding places. As long as Mistress
Jacquelyn didn’t spot her, this plan would work. Daisy would go to
the ball along with Hyacinth.

She’d simply have to hide under a few tables
to do it.

When Gabriel and Jacquelyn reached the
ballroom, parallel lines of ladies and gentlemen were forming up.
She noticed Hyacinth already on the dance floor, her painted cheeks
flushed even brighter with excitement. The gangly youth from Essex
with whom she was paired looked as if he was being led to the
pillory instead of the dance floor. Fearful of treading on her
toes, no doubt.

“What’s Hyacinth doing here?” Gabriel
asked.

“The quadrille, I believe.”

“You know what I meant. How could you allow
my niece to attend?” Gabriel asked. “She’s just a child.”

“A child who will soon be a young lady.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have,” Jacquelyn admitted, “but I couldn’t dash
her hopes. Hyacinth pleaded so eloquently to enjoy her first taste
of merriment. Heaven knows there’s been little enough of it here in
recent years.”

Now the castle itself seemed to shake off the
old gloom as the fresh sounds of laughter and music rattled the
ancient stones.

“You spoil those girls,” he said.

“Mrs. Beadle says the same.” Gabriel and Mrs.
B. were probably right. Jacquelyn suspected she coddled her
motherless charges because there’d never been anyone to spoil her
when she was a child. Her earliest memory of her mother was of a
sumptuously dressed, sweet-smelling stranger who didn’t want
Jacquelyn to soil her gown with sticky fingers.

She brushed away the old hurt as the
glittering ball gowns of the candidates for Lord Drake’s affection
caught her eye.

“That’s Lady Millicent Harlowe of Doud over
by the punchbowl. She’s the daughter of a viscount,” Jacquelyn
whispered to Gabriel. “It’s reported his lordship will settle a
handsome dowry on her, though that’s a small matter since Dragon
Caern is doing well. But with her father’s connections at court,
she’s considered no end of a catch.”

He grunted non-committally. “It would have to
be a monumental dowry.”

“I know,” she agreed with his unspoken
objection.
Pity Miss Harlowe resembles a carp.

Musical laughter floated toward them and
Gabriel’s head turned like a foxhound scenting his quarry.

“Elisheba Thatcher,” Jacquelyn said, her
belly tightening with an emotion she didn’t care to name. Pale and
pink, the girl was lovely as an English rosebud, her petals just
beginning to unfurl. “Her father boasts a ‘Sir’ before his name
thanks to some exemplary service to the Crown, but no hereditary
title.”

“Obviously hoping his daughter’s good looks
are his ticket to permanent nobility,” Gabriel said. Elisheba’s
laugh came again, this time more shrill than musical and followed
by a definite snort. Jacquelyn felt him wince.

One by one, she searched out and found the
eligible young women she’d invited for Gabriel’s consideration.
Lady Rosalinda Breakwaithe from Plymouth, Lady Calliope Heatheridge
from Bath, Miss Penelope Fitzwalter from Falmouth, Jacquelyn
whispered the pertinent facts about each of the potentials in
Gabriel’s ear. She tried to swallow her satisfaction when he seemed
not to prefer any of them.

Yet they had all come. She shook her head in
wonderment. Though rumors of Lord Drake’s piracy had probably
traveled even faster than the news that he was seeking a wife, the
nobility seemed more than willing to offer their daughters to the
new baron. Amazing what a prosperous estate and a title would
induce folk to overlook.

“A man’s sins are easy for the world to
forgive,” her mother had told her once. “But a woman’s
indiscretions? Never.”

The world was patently unfair.

Jacquelyn shoved aside this glaring
understatement and turned to the pirate whose arm she still held.
The world offered little hope for a courtesan’s daughter, but if
she could see Gabriel Drake suitably wed, perhaps she could help
balance the scales for the rest of the folk of the Caern. She had
to try.

“This is beginning badly,” Jacquelyn said.
“We shouldn’t be standing here weighing the graces and deficiencies
of your choices as if we were judging cattle at auction.”

“A fairly apt comparison when you get down to
it,” he said with resignation. “Perfumed and pomaded, but breeding
stock just the same.”

She frowned at him. “I hope you’ll keep that
less than gallant sentiment to yourself.”

He ignored her, smiling and nodding to an
acquaintance across the room.

“You said it first,” he reminded her in a
half-voice. Then he looked down at her, a wicked smile spreading
across his face. “Actually, I rather like the idea. It makes me the
bull standing at stud.”

She dug a sharp elbow into his ribs. “But
unlike the bull that has a whole harem, you, my lord, must content
yourself with one cow. So choose wisely.” She narrowed her eyes at
him. “Lest you run too far afield with your bovine visions, let me
remind you that bulls who prove too unmanageable often find
themselves gelded.”

He laughed. “Trust you to keep me from
feeling too full of myself, Mistress. By all means, manage away at
me.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “If you were at
all manageable, you’d have been available to greet your guests as
they came in, instead of gawking at them once the dancing has
already started.”

“Then I’ll give a little welcome speech over
supper,” he said smoothly. “I’ll have a captive audience then. With
their mouths full of my mutton, no doubt my remarks will be found
even more amusing.”

“Have you decided what you’ll say about your
. . . your time at sea yet?” She’d fretted for naught that his
stint at piracy would turn away the best, most eligible potential
brides. Still, society might be willing to ignore only what was
kept from its view. If the bare truth were confirmed, the arbiters
of correct behavior might feel compelled to shun Lord Drake.

“The least said about my former career the
better, but I’ll not deny it, if that’s what you’re angling for. As
you say, laying aside the past is not always possible. Looking
forward seems the most prudent course,” he said. “And right now,
I’m looking forward to taking a turn around the floor with
you.”

Country manners allowed for a relaxation of
the normal stratification of class. And Jacquelyn was the
chatelaine of Dragon Caern—a position of authority normally filled
by the well-born lady of the household. But noble blood did not
flow through Jacquelyn’s veins. Not acknowledged nobility at any
rate.

“It’s not seemly that your first dance should
be with me, my lord.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a
half-smile. “When did a pirate ever concern himself with what’s
seemly?”

“This night you are Baron Gabriel Drake, Lord
of Dragon Caern and no pirate,” she argued.

“If, by the admission of your own lips, I’m
your lord, then my will is to be obeyed,” he said, his pleasure
evident at having caught her neatly in the web of her own words.
“Come, Mistress. I’ll not be denied. It’s not a minuet, but you did
promise me a dance.”

Jacquelyn felt all the eyes in the room
fastened on them as he led her onto the dance floor. Continued
argument would only create more spectacle, so she went with him
quietly, the picture of demureness.

“Ah, Drake. You finally decided to join us,”
the man next to Gabriel said as they bowed in unison.

“Hugh, it’s good to see you.” Gabriel nodded
to the man. “Mistress Wren, I’m sure you know Baron Curtmantle.
Hugh, this is Jacquelyn Wren, Dragon Caern’s chatelaine.”

The baron cast a dismissive glance her way.
Jacquelyn had never met him, but she knew of Dragon Caern’s
neighbor to the north. Given his reputation for buggering serving
girls, she wouldn’t have invited him and his wife to the ball, but
Gabriel requested it.

“You remember my wife, Lady Catherine,”
Curtmantle said as the woman beside Jacquelyn dipped in a low
graceful curtsey.

“Charming as always, my lady,” Gabriel said
in a tone that told Jacquelyn he found Baroness Curtmantle neither
charming nor a lady. The woman gave no outward sign of
understanding Gabriel’s subtle message. Perhaps Jacquelyn was more
attuned to his meanings than most.

She observed the woman from the corner of her
eye as they moved through the precisely prescribed movements of the
dance. Catherine Curtmantle had all the marks of bone-deep
loveliness, long-necked grace and even features.

But the permanent cleft between her brows
warned of an evil temper.

Gabriel may be friends with her husband,
but the baroness would make a formidable enemy,
Jacquelyn
decided.

The two couples joined hands to form spokes
of a rotating wheel.

“We’ve heard you’re planning to wed, Lord
Drake,” the baroness said, the arch of her elegant brow turning the
statement into a question.

“All these lovelies lining up for a chance to
warm your bed,” Lord Curtmantle said. “If I had your choice before
me, man, I’d have made damn sure to be here on time.”

His wife glared dirks at him.

Perhaps she has reason for the frown mark
between her brows,
Jacquelyn allowed. Of course, hadn’t Gabriel
just likened the women in the room to cows waiting to be serviced
by a bull?

Maybe Mrs. Beadle was right. “All men are
swine, dearie,” she’d said. “We may like bacon well enough, but
just remember there’s no telling where it’s been wallowing.”

* * *

All adults are addle-pated,
Daisy
decided, propping her chin on her fist while she peeped from
beneath the long table cloth. The whole Caern had been atwitter
about this blasted ball for weeks and for what? She squirmed under
the serving table that held the big punch bowl, trying to keep the
people she knew in sight. For the last hour, nothing remotely
exciting had happened, except when someone dropped their dainties
plate in front of her table and she managed to snag a sweet, sticky
petit four.

Mistress Jacquelyn didn’t dance any more
after that first quadrille. She wandered among the guests, chatting
and smiling, but Uncle Gabriel ‘tripped the light fantastic toe’
each time the music started afresh. Daisy was no judge of male
grace, but she thought he was quick enough on his feet without
being overly silly-looking. He changed partners each time the music
stopped—even giving a bow and dancing a somber sarabande with that
poor girl whose thin face, pursed lips and buggy eyes made her look
like a fish.

Uncle Gabriel really must be pretty nice, she
decided, even though folk whispered that he’d been a bloody pirate.
If it was true, Daisy bet he was a nice bloody pirate, for all
that.

She couldn’t understand why Hyacinth had
decided to dislike him so. Uncle Gabriel was certainly better than
that big fellow, Baron Something-or-other, who kept wanting to
dance with Hy. Daisy shivered each time. The man was old—as old as
their uncle and there was a woman with a pinched face who kept
staring at them each time Hyacinth danced with him. The woman
didn’t look at all happy.

Hyacinth, on the other hand, had a sort of
squishy expression on her face. Like she was a dish of butter left
in the sun and part of her was melting.

Daisy wanted to slap Hy till her teeth
rattled.

She wasn’t completely certain of the proper
etiquette for a ball, but surely it wasn’t right for a man to dance
with the same girl that often. She didn’t see any of the other men
singling out one dancing partner to the exclusion of the
others.

Not even Uncle Gabriel who was supposed to be
picking out a wife, for pity’s sake! His face was exactly the same,
no matter who was leaning on his arm. The only time he’d looked the
slightest bit different was once or twice when Daisy caught him
sneaking a glance at Miss Jack. Then he had this sort of
wooly-headed, dazed expression that made him seem quite a bit less
bright than Daisy knew he was.