The mention of her cousin caught Alyson’s attention as
little else had done to this point. “Cranville?”
Rory felt her tension and hastened to reassure her. “He will
not return for several days. He is searching for you.”
The governor snorted. “He is looking for your head, is more
like it, Maclean. Whatever face you might wish to put upon it, abducting his
ward was not one of your better deeds. I suggest you meet him in a more amiable
manner than with cannon next time.”
Alyson turned her face up like an inquisitive bird at this
suggestion. “The next time, I will order Rory to blow the odious man out of the
water, Governor. You would do well to do the same,” she said sweetly.
The older man went blank and glanced to Rory for
confirmation. Rory lifted his shoulders. “Family quarrel. I did not wish to
mention it without Alyson’s permission.”
“My God.” He stared at them as if they were both insane. “Cranville
said as much, but I thought he exaggerated. He could have you hanged for
piracy. You could spend your wedding journey in the brig on the way to
Admiralty Court.”
“Cranville is the pirate.” Alyson fixed the governor’s stare
with a wide-eyed look. “That is my ship he has commandeered. I do hope you can
have him restrained so it can go about its business. This senseless running
about is costing me money.”
Rory resisted staring at her with incredulity. When Alyson
chose to be coherent, she did it with flair. Unfortunately, the governor had no
idea that this was Alyson at her most cogent. He saw only her porcelain
prettiness and vague expression and thought her simpleminded or half-mad. Earls
did not steal ships and young girls did not own them.
Rory intended to stay clear of this fight. The governor had
already threatened to throw him in jail for smuggling, kidnapping, and
suspicion of piracy on the basis of Cranville’s lies. He just wanted to get the
hell out of here.
“Well, well. We’ll have to see about that.” Uncertainly the
governor bowed over Alyson’s hand, and with a nod to Rory, beat a hasty
retreat.
“Not very well done, dear heart. I’m the rogue around here,
not one of His Majesty’s nobles. Cranville had him quite convinced I abducted
his innocent but simpleminded young ward for nefarious purposes. The governor
does not like being made a fool.”
“Then he should not consort with fools.” After that terse
statement, Alyson greeted Dougall with a false smile and accepted greetings
from well-wishers.
Rory could feel her tension build until he was almost
certain her brittle facade would crack. The room was almost entirely filled
with men, and every one of them had heard some version of their scandalous
story by now. Their considering looks at the ruined heiress set Rory’s nerves
on end, so they were both on edge.
When a fight broke out in the back of the room, Rory decided
it was time to remove Alyson from the scene. Taking her elbow, he guided her
firmly through the throng.
Alyson offered no resistance. Like a lifeless doll, she
allowed him to push her past the winks and jests of the crew into the
passageway outside the kitchen. A muscle jerked in Rory’s cheek as he gazed
down at her vacant expression, and he had the jolting realization that she
might very well escape him even now. He wanted her mind as well as her body,
but she seemed capable of separating the two.
“Go up the back stairs. I’ll send Rosie to you and see our
guests off. You needn’t wait up for me. They’re quite likely to make a night of
it.”
Alyson nodded, and lifting her skirts, trailed up the narrow
stairs without a word.
Leaving Rory to wonder what the devil he was going to do
now.
***
When the house was finally cleared of all but his watchful
crew, Rory dragged up the stairs, much the worse for too many toasts. And the
night was not yet over. If he had any reassurance that his wife would welcome
him with open arms, he could relax and indulge in the pleasures his marriage
entitled him to. But he had indulged in those pleasures before the marriage,
and he felt certain he was about to pay the price. Everything had a price. He
had learned that the hard way long ago.
No candle flickered in the bedroom, but he knew she was in
here. There had been men stationed at all the exits, and Rosie had assured him
that Alyson was resting and had eaten some of the meal that had been taken up
to her. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see that the bedcovers had
not been folded back, and he searched the room.
She was not hard to find. She sat curled in the window seat,
shoulders propped against the wall, her wedding gown trailing to the floor as
she gazed out over the street. Weariness overwhelmed him, and he had half a
mind to turn around and walk out. Only the knowledge of the wrong he had done
her forced him to face her. If they were ever to retrieve any shred of
happiness, someone had to be reasonable.
Alyson watched without curiosity as he staggered into the
room. He dropped his coat and vest across a nearby chair, then came to an
uncertain standstill at the foot of the bed.
“You’re drunk again,” she stated simply, without
condemnation.
“Aye, it seemed the thing to do.” Rory took another step forward,
but Alyson did not rise to greet him.
“I’ll not disturb your sleep tonight. You may go on to bed
without me.” Alyson dismissed him politely, turning back to the window.
Dumbfounded, Rory swayed and stared at her silhouette. She
had not even taken her hair down. “I think not, lass,” he finally answered. “You
are my wife now. I have the right to ask you to share my bed with me.”
“I suppose the law and the church give you the right to
force me, also.” Her voice remained quiet and without emotion. “That is the
only way you may have me.”
“I’m too tired to force you to anything. Come to bed and get
some sleep and we’ll discuss it in the morning.”
“No.” She turned her back on him again.
That simple word drove him to fury faster than any argument
or excuse. Rory clenched his fists and tried to rein in his temper. “What have
ye to gain by refusing me? What is done cannot be undone. We must make the best
of what we are given.”
“You weren’t satisfied when I gave myself, so you are a fine
one to preach. Now you have what you want, go find your pink canary to share
your bed, and leave me alone. Otherwise I shall talk to Mr. Farnley and see if
this mockery of a marriage cannot be undone. I see no reason to take your word
for it.”
Pain followed the fury, and Rory rocked unsteadily on the
brink of disaster. This was no time to have a head full of cotton batting. He
was a man accustomed to thinking quickly under fire, but she almost had him to
his knees, and his brains refused to function.
“Alyson, I had to do it. Do ye not ken? It was not myself I
sought to protect, but you. I could have sailed away and left ye here, and
Cranville would have been satisfied, but I dinna think that was what ye wanted.”
Inspiration came to him, and he offered his final plea. “I thought it was
marriage ye sought, to protect any bairn ye might have. If I have misjudged, I
am sorry, but I couldna give ye up to Cranville.”
She glared at him in astonishment and renewed rage. “Bairn?
Child? I might have? You said there would be none. You said I would be safe.
And that was all a lie too? Had Cranville not come along, would you have let me
keep on making a fool of myself until I ended like my mother, with only shame
for my child’s name?”
Inspiration had certainly failed him this time. He was
guilty as charged, with no words to explain. “’Twas madness, I know, but I
wouldna have left ye.” Rory turned away and found a chair to hold his
weariness. These last days had become a nightmare without end. He leaned his
head against the upholstered back and stared at the ceiling. “Take the bed,
lass, I’ll not be bothering ye.”
Rory’s admission of guilt left Alyson no target for her
rage, and she continued to stare at him even after his eyes closed and his
breathing fell into light snores. A child could have come from these weeks of
madness they had shared. Her gaze drifted to the flat valley between her
hipbones, and her hand covered it wonderingly. She wasn’t prepared for a child.
She wasn’t even certain she wanted a husband. And now she might have both.
Her grandmother had been right. Moon dreams were the most
dangerous of all, particularly when they were granted.
Rory woke to the rustle of satin skirts against taffeta
petticoats. Keeping his eyes closed and his pounding head still, he tried to
recover some memory of his wedding night. The fact that he sat fully dressed in
a chair warned that the memory would not be romantic.
He stifled a groan at the recollection of his manifest
errors. He might as well have cut his own throat. Why he had ever involved
himself with a woman was beyond his ken, but he deserved whatever happened when
that woman was Alyson. She was beyond the reasoning of any mortal man.
Still, there were a few explanations she owed. The fault was
not all on his head. With that scarcely reassuring thought, Rory opened his
eyes.
The first thing he saw was his new wife rearranging the
folds of her blue satin skirt in an attempt to hide a mended patch in one of
the creases. That hit a raw nerve.
“Don’t fash yerself o’er it, lass. We’ll order new ones this
morn. I may not be a rich man, but I can keep ye well enough. Is Rosie here
yet?”
“I’ve just been waiting for you to wake before calling her.”
Alyson went to the door and nodded to someone waiting outside. A clatter of
footsteps on the stairs signaled breakfast would soon be on the way.
Rory regarded her warily as she turned back into the room.
She had found a fichu to hide the rounded rise of her breasts, but the
transparency of the filmy scarf could not disguise what he already knew by
heart. A familiar ache had already begun to build in his loins.
Alyson stared out the window as he stripped off his shirt
and washed.
The whole world knew them as man and wife. They would have
to share this room or be subject to the jeers of his crew. Worse, Cranville might
call their marriage into question. Then there was the return journey to England
to face. Rory glared at his image in the shaving mirror and decided to leave
his beard unshaven.
“I thought I saw my father’s ghost again yesterday.”
Rory rubbed soap out of his eyes and turned to stare. “When?”
“Before the wedding. Outside there, on the street. I thought
he was a stranger who had lost his way, but now I think on it, he was too much
like the man in the portrait, only older. Do ghosts age, do you think?”
When she talked like that, she scared him. This was the
Alyson he could not reach, the dreamy angel who drifted off into a world that
did not exist. The man outside could have been quite real, and her mind had
transformed him into a vision she desperately wanted. Or she could very well
have seen a ghost, if such things existed. Or the Sight could have given her a prophecy
she did not yet know how to interpret.
He suspected that was much of the reason she would not talk
about her gift: it had few practical purposes unless she could also interpret
what she was seeing. It could have been anything, and he did not know how to
respond.
“I have had men searching this island for people who might
know of the wreck of your father’s ship.” That was something he could relate
without fear. “It was last seen near here, and apparently disappeared before it
reached any of the other islands. There was a hurricane that season, and a few
of the older inhabitants remember it. So far, none remembers the wreck or any
survivors.”
Alyson turned around as Rory pulled on a clean linen shirt.
She lifted her gaze to his unshaven face. “May I talk to the men who remember
the ship being here?”
“If you wish. I can see no harm in it. Just do not hope too
much.” He reached for the buttons of his breeches, and Alyson hastily turned
around.
Rory grinned for the first time in days. Alyson might be
angry and confused, but she would never be cold. That didn’t necessarily mean
there was much hope for him—in fact, she could very well be right in wishing to
pursue an annulment—but her lust made him feel better just the same.
The maid delivered a selection of delights to their bedroom,
where they could dine in privacy. In no hurry to confront the myriad problems
of the day, Rory enjoyed explaining the contents of the various delicacies on
their plates.
His usual store of coins had been sadly depleted when
deprived of his profits in Charleston and Bridgetown. He would have to deplete
it further to finish filling his hold with sugar to return to London. He didn’t
know what the hell he would do with the load of barrel staves he had intended
to sell in Barbados, now that he had been forbidden the outlet of free trading.
Their profit would not be so great in London.
And then there was the sticky problem of what he would do
with himself when he reached London. In return for the governor’s agreement to
his wedding, he had vowed to return to honest trade. Except one ship would hardly
produce the income needed to keep Alyson in gowns. All that and more lingered
outside the bedroom door.
Dougall was the one to demolish his brief peace. At his mate’s
curt knock, Rory scowled and ordered him in.
Dougall’s gaze immediately traveled to Alyson. She seemed in
better command of herself this morning, and, relieved, he turned to his
captain. There was a man who teetered on a dangerous brink. The news he brought
could very likely send him over.
“Well?” Impatiently Rory rocked back in his chair.
Dougall nervously contemplated Alyson’s back. Since Rory
made no motion to dismiss his wife, the message would have to be repeated here.
“The governor’s had word from one of the other islands, and he sent a warning.”
Again he glanced at Alyson, but Rory didn’t take the hint. “Cranville has
apparently found the captain of a British navy frigate willing to listen to
complaints of piracy and kidnapping. They’re on their way here now. I don’t
know how much of a start the messenger had on them.”