“Well, you
should
think in music,” Theo revised. “Given your voice.” But he was obviously in a serious temper, and she had learned over the years that the best tactic was not to engage when he was peevish.
“I wish I had your advantages.” She dropped onto her bed and drew up her knees so she could hug them against her chest. “If I were you, Geoffrey would be at my feet.”
“I doubt it. He wouldn’t want a wife who has to shave twice a day.”
“You know what I meant. All I need is for people to start paying attention to me,” Theo said, rocking back and forth a little bit. “If I just had even the smallest audience, I could be funny. You know I could, James. I could talk circles about Claribel. I just need one proper suitor, someone who’s not a fortune hunter. Someone who would…” An idea popped into her head, fully formed and beautiful.
“James!”
“What?” He raised his head.
For a moment, looking at him, she almost dropped her idea. His eyes were positively tragic, and there were hollows in his cheeks, as if he hadn’t eaten enough lately. He looked exhausted. “Are you all right? What on earth did you do last night? You look like a drunkard who spent a night in a back alley.”
“I’m fine.”
One had to suppose he had spent the previous evening drowning in cognac. Her mother was of the opinion that gentlemen pickled themselves in the stuff by age thirty as a matter of course. “I have an idea,” she said, returning to her point. “But it would mean that you’d have to delay your plan to marry for the immediate present.”
“I have no such plan. I don’t wish to get married, no matter what my father says about it.” James could be maddeningly sullen when he wished. It had gotten better since he was fifteen, but not that much better. “Do you know what I hate most in the world?”
“I’m sure you’ll say your father, but you don’t really mean it.”
“Besides him. I hate feeling guilty.”
“Who on earth makes you feel guilty? You’re the perfect scion of the house of Ashbrook.”
He ran a hand through his hair again. “That’s just what everyone thinks. Sometimes I would kill to go away, where they’ve never heard of earls and
noblesse oblige
and all the rest of it. Where a man could be judged on who he is, rather than on his title and the rest of that tomfoolery.”
Theo frowned at him. “I don’t see where the guilt comes in.”
“I’ll never be good enough.” He got up and strode to the side of the room to look out the window.
“You’re being absurd! Everyone loves you, including me, and if that doesn’t mean something, I don’t know what does. I know you better than anyone in the world, and if I say you’re good enough, then you are.”
He turned around, and she found to her relief that he had a lopsided smile on his face. “Daisy, do you suppose you’ll try to take over the House of Parliament someday?”
“They should be so lucky!” she retorted. “But seriously, James, will you at least listen to my plan?”
“To conquer the world?”
“To conquer Geoffrey, which is much more important. If you would pretend to woo me, just long enough so that I would be noticed, it would mean the world to me. You never come to balls, and if you began to escort me, then everyone would be asking why, and before we knew it, I would find myself talking to Geoffrey about something… and then I could charm him into overlooking my profile and he would be mine.” She sat back, triumphant. “Isn’t that a brilliant plan?”
James’s eyes narrowed. “It has some advantages.”
“Such as?”
“Father would think I was wooing you and leave me alone for a bit.”
Theo clapped. “Perfect! I’m absolutely certain that Geoffrey will talk to you. Wasn’t he head boy in your last year at Eton?”
“Yes, and because of that I can tell you straight out that Trevelyan would make an uncomfortable husband. He’s far too clever for his own good. And he has a nasty way of making jokes about people.”
“That’s what I like about him.”
“Not to mention the fact that he’s ugly as sin,” James added.
“He isn’t! He’s deliciously tall and his eyes are bronzy-brown colored. They make me think of—”
“Do not tell me,” James said with an expression of utter revulsion. “I don’t want to know.”
“Of morning chocolate,” Theo said, ignoring him. “Or Tib’s eyes when he was a puppy.”
“Tib is a dog,” James said, displaying a talent for the obvious. “You think the love of your life looks like a ten-year-old obese
dog?
” He assumed a mockingly thoughtful attitude. “You’re right! Trevelyan does have a doggy look about him! Why didn’t I notice that?”
Demonstrating that she had not spent seventeen years in the Duke of Ashbrook’s household for nothing, Theo threw one of her slippers straight at James’s head. It skimmed his ear, which led to an ungraceful (and rather juvenile) scene in which he chased her around the bedchamber. When he caught her, he snatched her around the waist, bent her forward, and rubbed his knuckles into her skull while she howled in protest.
It was a scene that Theo’s bedroom, and indeed, many other chambers on various Ashbrook estates, had seen many a time.
But even as Theo howled and kicked at his ankles, James had the sudden realization that he was holding a fragrant bundle of woman. That those were
breasts
against his arm. That Daisy’s rounded bottom was grinding against him and it felt…
His hands flew apart without conscious volition, and she fell to the ground with an audible thud. There was true annoyance in her voice as she rose, rubbing her knee.
“What’s the matter with you?” she scolded. “You’ve never let me fall before.”
“We shouldn’t play such games. We’re— You’re soon to be a married woman, after all.”
Theo narrowed her eyes.
“And my arm is sore,” James added quickly, feeling his cheeks warm. He hated lying. And he particularly hated lying to Daisy.
“You look fine to me,” she said, giving him a sweeping glance. “I don’t see an injury that warrants your dropping me on the floor like a teacup.”
It wasn’t until James practically ran from the room that Theo sank onto the bed and thought about what she
had
seen.
She’d seen that particular bulge in men’s breeches before. It was a shock to see it on
James
, though. She didn’t think of him in those terms.
But then, all of a sudden, she did.
May 30, 1816
45 Berkeley Square
The London residence of the Duke of Ashbrook
A
s a boy, Sir Griffin Barry, sole heir to Viscount Moncrieff, had no interest in the history of civilized England. He had dreamed of Britain’s past, when men were warriors and Vikings ruled the shores, fancying himself at the helm of a longboat, ferociously tattooed like an ancient Scottish warrior.
At eighteen he was a pirate, and at twenty-two he captained his own ship, the
Flying Poppy
. By a few years later, just a glimpse of a black flag emblazoned with a blood-red flower would make a hardened seaman quiver with fear.
No one knew that Griffin’s ship was named for his wife, whose name was Poppy. He had even tattooed a small blue poppy high on one cheekbone in her honor, although he had known her for only one day—and never consummated the marriage.
Yet he always felt a certain satisfaction in that small sign of respect. Over the years, Griffin had forged his own code of honor. He never shot a man in the back, never walked anyone down the plank, and never offered violence to a woman. What’s more, he sacked any of his crew who thought that the
Flying Poppy
’s fearsome reputation gave them the liberty to indulge their worst inclinations.
Though to be sure, the royal pardon recently issued for himself and his cousin James, the Duke of Ashbrook, described them as privateers, not pirates.
Griffin knew the distinction was slight. It was true that in the last seven years he and James had limited themselves to attacking only pirate and slave ships, never legitimate merchant vessels.
But it was equally true that he was, and had been, a pirate. And now that he was back in England he wasn’t going to pretend that he’d been fiddling around the globe in a powdered wig, dancing reels in foreign ballrooms.
On the other hand, he was damn sure that the wife he scarcely remembered wouldn’t be happy to find out that she was married to a pirate. Or even to a privateer.
However you looked at it, he was a sorry excuse for a gentleman, with a limp and a tattoo and fourteen hard years at sea under his belt. Not exactly the respectable baronet to whom her father had betrothed her.
He didn’t relish the idea of strolling into a house somewhere around Bath—he wasn’t even sure where—and announcing that he was Lady Barry’s long-lost husband. An involuntary stream of curses came from his lips at the very thought. He even felt something akin to fear, an emotion he managed to avoid in the fiercest of sea battles.
Of course, he and James had entered those battles together, shoulder to shoulder. That was undoubtedly why he blurted out an unconscionably ungentlemanly offer, one that would horrify his father.
“Want a bet on which of us gets his wife to bed faster?”
James didn’t look particularly shocked, but he pointed out the obvious: “
Not
the action of gentlemen.”
Griffin’s response was, perhaps, a little sharp for that very reason. “It’s too late to claim that particular status,” he said to James. “You can play the duke all you like, but a gentleman? No. You’re no gentleman.”
From the grin playing around James’s mouth, it seemed likely he was going to accept the bet. It was hard to say which of them faced the biggest battle. Griffin couldn’t remember his wife’s face, but at least he’d supported her financially in his absence. James’s wife had been on the verge of declaring him seven years missing, and therefore dead.
“If I accept your bet, you’ll have to take yourself off to Bath and actually talk to your wife,” James observed.
Talk to her? Griffin didn’t have much interest in talking to Poppy.
He had left a lovely young woman behind. Due to various circumstances beyond his control—which he didn’t like thinking about to this day—he had left her a virgin. Unsatisfied.
Untouched.
No, he didn’t want to
talk
to his wife.
It was time to go home, obviously. It would be easier if he hadn’t taken a knife wound to the leg. But to come home a cripple…
After James left, Griffin walked around the bedchamber once more, trying to stretch his leg, then paused at a window looking over the small garden behind James’s town house. The alley was full of gawking men, journalists who had caught wind of the news that the returned duke was a pirate. They’d probably be out there for the next week, baying like hounds at a glimpse of James or his poor wife.
Griffin’s man, Shark, entered the room as he turned from the window. “Pack our bags, Shark. We need to escape the menagerie surrounding this house. Has rabble congregated at the front as well?”
“Yes,” Shark replied, moving over to the wardrobe. “The butler says it’s a fair mob out there. We should bolt before they break down the door.”
“They won’t do that.”
“You never know,” Shark said, a huge grin making the tattoo under his right eye crinkle. “Apparently London is riveted by the idea of a pirate duke. Hasn’t been such excitement since the czar paid a visit to the king, according to the butler.”
Griffin’s response was heartfelt, and blasphemous.
“The household’s all in a frenzy because they don’t know whether the duchess will leave the duke or not.” Shark shook his head. “Powerful shock for a lady, to find herself married to a pirate. By all accounts, she thought he was five fathoms deep and gone forever. She fainted dead away at the sight of him, that’s what they’re saying downstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if your wife does the same. Or maybe she’ll just bar the door. After all, you’ve been gone longer than the duke has.”
“Shut your trap,” Griffin growled. “Get someone to help you with the bags and we’ll be out the door in five minutes.” He grabbed his cane and started for the hallway, only to pause and deal his thigh a resounding whack. For some reason, slamming the muscles with a fist seemed to loosen them, so that walking was easier.
Not easy, but easier.
“Yer doing the right thing,” Shark said irrepressibly. “Run off to yer missus and tell her yerself before she finds out the worst in the papers.”
“Summon the carriage,” Griffin said, ignoring Shark’s nonsense. That was the trouble with turning a sailor into a manservant. Shark didn’t have the proper attitude.
A moment later, he was pausing on the threshold of the library. Over the years, he and James had been entertained several times by no less than the King of Sicily, but even so, Griffin was impressed by the room’s grandeur. It resembled rooms at Versailles, painted with delicate blue and white designs, heavy silk hanging at every window.
Unfortunately, James didn’t suit the decor. He sat at his desk, sleeves rolled up, no coat or neck cloth in evidence. Like Griffin, he was bronzed from the sun, his body powerful and large, his face tattooed.
“This is remarkably elegant,” Griffin observed, wandering into the room. “I’ve ruined you, that’s clear. I never saw a man who looked less like a nobleman. You’re not living up to all this ducal elegance.”
James snorted, not looking up from the page he was writing. “I’ve just had word that the pardons will be delivered tomorrow.”
“Send mine after me,” Griffin said, leaning on his cane. “I have to find my wife before she reads about my occupation in the papers. In order to win our bet, you understand,” he went on to say. He truly felt a bit ashamed of the wager he and James had placed; one ought not place bets regarding one’s wife.
James rose and came around from behind his desk. Griffin hadn’t paid attention to his cousin’s appearance in years, but there was no getting around the fact that the tight pantaloons he wore now weren’t the same as the rough breeches they had worn aboard ship. You could make out every muscle on James’s leg, and he had the limbs of a dockworker.
“Remember the first time I saw you?” Griffin asked, pointing his cane in James’s direction. “You had a wig plopped sideways on your head, and an embroidered coat thrown on any which way. You were skinny as a reed, barely out of your nappies. Most ship captains looked terrified when my men poured over the rail, but you looked eager.”
James laughed. “I was so bloody grateful when I realized the pirate ship following us was manned by my own flesh and blood.”
“How in the hell are you ever going to fit in among the
ton
?”
“What, you don’t think they’ll like my tattoo?” James laughed again, as fearless now as when he first faced Griffin and his horde of pirates. “I’ll just point to Viscount Moncrieff if anyone looks at me askance. Maybe between the two of us we’ll start a fashion.”
“My father’s still alive,” Griffin said, wondering whether he should go through the trouble of collapsing into a chair. It was damnably hard to get upright again. “I’m no viscount,” he added.
“His lordship won’t live forever. Someday we’ll find ourselves old, gray, and tattooed, battling it out in the House of Lords over a corn bill.”
Griffin uttered a blasphemy and turned toward the door. If his cousin wanted to pretend that it was going to be easy to return to civilization, let him revel. The days of being each other’s right hand, boon companion, blood brother, were over.
“Coz.” James spoke from just behind him, having moved with that uncanny silent grace that served him so well during skirmishes at sea. “When will I see you again?”
Griffin shrugged. “Could be next week. I’m not sure my wife will let me in the front door. Yours has already declared she’s leaving. We might both be busy finding new housing, not to mention new spouses.”
James grinned. “Feeling daunted, are you? The captain of the
Flying Poppy,
the scourge of the seven seas, fearful of a wife he barely knows?”
“Funny how
I
was the captain on the seas,” Griffin said, ignoring him, “but now you’re the duke and I’m a mere baronet.”
“Rubbish. I was the captain of the
Poppy Two,
by far the better vessel. You were always my subordinate.”
Griffin gave him a thump on the back, and a little silence fell. Male friendship was such an odd thing. They followed each other into danger because bravado doubled with company: side by side, recklessness squared. Now…
“Her Grace will presumably be coming down for dinner soon,” Griffin said, looking his cousin up and down. “You should dress like a duke. Put on that coat you had made in Paris. Surprise her. You look like a savage.”
“I hate—”
Griffin cut him off. “Doesn’t matter. Ladies don’t like the unkempt look. Shark has been chatting with the household. Did you know that your wife is famous throughout London and Paris for her elegance?”
“That doesn’t surprise me. She always had a mania for that sort of thing.”
“Stands to reason Her Grace won’t want to see you looking like a shiftless gardener at the dining table. Though why I’m giving you advice, I don’t know. I stand to lose—what do I stand to lose? We made the bet, but we never established the forfeit.”
James’s jaw set. “We shouldn’t have done it.” Their eyes met, acknowledging the fact that they were easing from blood brothers to something else. From men whose deepest allegiance was to each other to men who owed their wives something. Not everything, perhaps, given the years that had passed, but dignity, at least. A modicum of loyalty.
“Too late now,” Griffin said, feeling a bit more cheerful now that he knew James felt the same twinge of shame. “Frankly, I doubt either of us will win. English ladies don’t want anything to do with pirates. We’ll never get them in bed.”
“I shouldn’t have agreed to it.”
“Damned if you don’t look a proper duke with your mouth all pursed up like that. Well, there it stands. The last huzzah of our piratical, vulgar selves. You can’t back out of it now.”
James growled.
Shark poked his head in the library door. “We’re all packed, milord.”
“I’m off,” Griffin said. “Good luck and all that.”
For a moment they just looked at each other: two men who’d come home to a place where they didn’t belong and likely would never fit in.
“Christmas?” James asked, his eyebrow cocked. “In the country.”
Griffin thought that over. Spending Christmas at the seat of the duchy would mean acknowledging that James was like a brother. They’d find themselves telling stories about times they had nearly died protecting each other, rather than putting it all behind them and pretending the last years were some sort of dream.
James moved his shoulder, a twitch more eloquent than a shrug. “I’d like to know there’s something pleasant in my future.”
The duke didn’t want to be a duke. Griffin didn’t want to be a baronet, let alone a viscount, so they were paired in that.
“It’s as if Jason—or the Minotaur, for that matter—returned home,” Griffin remarked. “I’ve got this bum leg, you sound like gravel on the bottom of a wheel, and no one will know what to make of us.”
James snorted. “Actually, that makes us Odysseus: didn’t Homer have it that no one recognized Odysseus but the family dog? I don’t give a damn what anyone makes of us. Christmas?” he repeated.
If Griffin said yes, he would be declaring himself a duke’s intimate friend, going to a house party for the holiday, acknowledging a closeness to power that his father had always lusted after.
He had thought becoming a pirate was the ultimate way to thwart his father’s ambitions.
It seemed fate had something else in mind.
“I wish you weren’t a duke,” he said, to fill the silence as much as anything.
“So do I.” James’s eyes were clear. Honest.
“Very well, Christmas,” Griffin said, giving in to the inevitable. “Likely you’ll still be trying to bed your wife, so I can give you a hint or two.”
A rough embrace, and he walked out without another word, because there wasn’t need for one.
Now he merely had to face his family: His father. His wife.
Wife
.