The Fall into Ruin, page 19
A new horror dawned. “You can’t leave.” She had to present him to Smith. There was no other way around it.
“I suppose you’re right. Trelissick should arrive in a day or two depending on when he received my note about Smith. Fine,” he declared. “As soon as this business is done though, we’re getting married.”
She cast about for an argument. What they had shared had been beyond this world but that didn’t mean she would tie herself down for it. Her plan was still to flee England, her father and her familial ‘duty’. If Smith kept to her word, then Anthony would be released with her somewhere along the coast of France and then Rose would send him back to London without her. He couldn’t very well drape her over his shoulder and carry her back. Could he? Would he?
“Rose, I am coming to know that look of yours.” He put a fingertip to her lip where she had bitten down on the flesh. “There is no way around it now. We have prematurely shared our wedding night.” He looked around the room. “In a leaning shack.” Lightning flashed and the room brightened for a moment, revealing dust in the corners, cracks in the timbers and several leaks where water pooled, making mud.
“What about Michael?”
His expression darkened as thunder boomed outside. “You’re thinking about bloody Michael while you still lie naked in my arms?”
“Not in those terms.” Her cheeks burned. “We must act tomorrow to get him back. We cannot wait for Trelissick or Smith will punish him for every hour that I do not show. How could I think about marriage when his life hangs in the balance?”
His tone was dry when he answered, “How indeed.”
“We need to go after Michael tomorrow, give Smith what she wants, and then we can sort this business of nuptials.”
“There is no getting out of it, Rose. I agree that we have to take Smith down first but then we will be exchanging vows before the vicar.” His warm touch drifted up her arm, over her shoulder, and then down, to rest on her stomach. “What if you were with child after tonight? We cannot have a six- or seven-month pregnancy to set the tongues to further wagging and I’ll not leave a bastard for you to raise.”
Blast, she hadn’t thought of that. She refused to dwell on it now either. Smith was pregnant and on her own and she seemed to be handling it quite remarkably. Rose only needed to buy herself some time. “After we take care of Smith?”
“After.”
She breathed a sigh of relief when Anthony looked to take her question as acquiescence. He rolled back to stare at the ceiling and pulled her with him to tuck her once more into his side.
Rose had almost fallen asleep when Anthony tensed and said, “We should head back. They’ll be looking for you.”
She shook her head and nuzzled his chest. “They all think me abed. Molly will cover for me.”
A longer silence passed but then he spoke again. “What kind of husband do you want, Rose?”
He’d come to Hell’s Gate without fully knowing what he was going to do about their impending nuptials. Not much had changed really. He still had very little clue about marriage. He was certainly warming up to Rose though. His body swelled knowing her bare leg was draped over his and her breasts rested against his ribs.
The woman in question lifted her gaze and speared him with a glare. “I didn’t want a husband, remember?”
“Never?”
“Not ever.”
“What about children? Had you never thought about a baby of your own? A legacy? Love?”
Her silence spoke volumes but he’d give just about anything to know what went through her mind. Why hadn’t she argued with him more? Usually her protests were far more insistent. Anthony prodded a little deeper, this newfound sense of self, the person he actually rather thought he wanted to be instead of the kind he thought society would accept. It really never occurred to him that there could be a middle ground. He’d had a goal, a path for his life; he hadn’t wavered from that until now. “What kind of man would I have to be to capture your heart?”
“Capture my heart?” she scoffed, her breath huffing over the muscles of his stomach. “I didn’t take you for a romantic.”
No one ever really took him for anything but he didn’t point that out to her. “Humour me. Please?”
Rose’s sigh was audible and her chin lowered from the permanent stubborn angle she kept it at as she toyed with the dark hair on his chest. “I suppose I would want a husband who is my equal.”
“Equal how? Give me an example. I promise I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”
“You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t. I’m merely trying to understand you. What kind of woman you are. What you really want out of life.”
“I already told you this. I want to be free to have adventures and fill my time as I please. I don’t want to be told what to do and when to do it. I don’t want a husband who will put demands on my time, my body, my self, whenever the fancy strikes.”
“The only demands I will put on you will be like this, when it’s just the two of us—naked, wanting, needing.”
“Tell me something,” she said. “What do you want in a wife? Someone biddable? A quiet, meek thing who will launder your clothes and take care of your guests? That won’t be me.”
How little she knew. He had hoped that she’d started to understand him like he was coming to understand her. Rose’s insecurities were born of fear. Anthony’s came from persecution and humiliation. “I rarely have guests so you may be easy on that score and I do have a servant or two to launder my clothing.”
“Please don’t patronise me. If you want the truth then I deserve the same in return.”
“The truth? The truth is that my wife will face a world of ridicule and cold shoulders. I am neither a gentleman of the ton nor am I in trade or rich enough to do as I please and tell society to go to hell. It has never mattered that my mother was the daughter of a baron or that my father wasn’t always a notorious pirate. It doesn’t even matter that I saved the prince’s life all those years ago and was knighted for it. All people are going to see when they look at my wife is that her husband will never amount to much.” If she thought she was judged now, wait until she was a Germaine. Only then would she know true ridicule.
“And you wonder why I wouldn’t want to marry into a society like that? When will men stop placing so much value on a person based on their lineage or their sex? Since when did my total worth equal my birth and appearance and nature? Since when did yours equal the total sum of your parents’ mistakes?”
Anthony wondered if she knew she was championing him? Her total sum could have come from her spirit alone and be worth more than all of England’s treasures combined. “My parents never once considered their actions mistakes. They truly found in each other what made them whole.” Had he also found that elusive thing—feeling, emotion, whatever—to make him whole? He’d thought a career helping those who couldn’t help themselves would fill the missing pieces he knew lay within him. They howled sometimes, for peace, for justice, for a fair chance. But lying there next to Rose, those pieces finally felt full, quiet, right. And it had nothing to do with a job.
“I am not a bucket in need of filling. I don’t have missing places in my heart or in my head that I can only make whole by marrying. And how do I know you won’t become a tyrant? How do I know you won’t want to…to…to nail me to a bedpost?” She finished the sentence with finality but her cheeks flushed and Anthony wondered if she truly believed her own words.
“You sound exactly like Daniella.”
“Your sister?” There was no disgust in the two words, only interest. He instantly regretted bringing her into the conversation.
Rose smiled and tilted onto her back, her breasts high, her nudity on display though she didn’t seem to mind. “I should like to meet her. A real pirate. Oh, the sights she would have seen, the countries and the people and the customs.”
“Yes,” Anthony replied in a wry tone, ignoring the siren call of her body. “All of the above. But then she married.”
“Because she was compromised.”
He heard the whisper of just like me but didn’t call her out on it. “You don’t know Daniella. She wouldn’t have married Trelissick in a thousand years if she didn’t feel something for him. I suspect he wasn’t the first man Daniella took to her bed. She was like you in so many ways, craving adventure and terrified of being curtailed.”
She met his gaze again. “I am not terrified. It’s just not going to happen to me.”
Anthony let her think that for a long moment.
She spoke again. “Did he curtail her?”
“Not in the least. He even bought her, her very own ship. They were to live on it when she became restless on land.”
“He did not.”
“He did. But since she is with child, she cannot sail away even if she wanted to. Which she doesn’t. My sister looked forward to marriage with as sour a taste as you do but she loves him. They will still have adventures, of that I am sure.”
“Well, then, they are the exception and definitely not the rule.”
“How do you find the energy to be so cynical of everything all of the time?”
Rose smirked as though she had won an argument. “I eat a lot.”
Anthony couldn’t help but laugh at that but deep down Rose was exactly like Daniella. Neither woman could believe in something they had never experienced. Anthony wasn’t an expert on love by any stretch but he wasn’t stupid enough not to know it made people do crazy things. Love had made a titled ex-assassin marry the outrageously scandalous, common daughter of a pirate. Love had turned his mother from her own family to marry a fisherman.
Love was a dangerous emotion.
If it could make a man consider giving up his own hopes and dreams in order to make another person happy, to give it all up so they could truly live the life they wanted, then he hoped Cupid’s arrow wasn’t embedded too deep into his shoulder…
*
Rose couldn’t believe Anthony Germaine would have such romantic notions. How could someone who had lived the life he had still believe love to be a great and wondrous thing? It had torn apart the lives of his parents and had repercussions on the next generation and probably the one still to come. She resisted the urge to turn in the saddle and face him again. The last time she’d done that on this short ride home, he’d kissed her and Belle had nearly stumbled.
Daniella Germaine had raced horses through the park against the very gentleman who thought to mock her. There was even rumour that she had swum naked in the moonlight on a mere dare. She was raised on the decks of a pirate ship surrounded by cut-throats and thieves. Even if only half of her exploits were to be believed, she had more than tasted adventure; she had dined on it at every meal. And now she was happily married and expecting a child.
Rose didn’t need to be quite that outrageous. She was reasonably satisfied living with very few constraints, coming and going as she pleased, having friends and comrades she could trust. The notion of babies had been relegated to the same place marriage had been. It was a box with a large label that read ‘Unlikely to ever happen’. But now that it was likely, she didn’t know how to feel at all.
The threat of rain was still heavy in the air and the storm continued to rage with lightning flashing in the distance and thunder rumbling but they’d had to make a break for home and the weather would hopefully work for them rather than against. Malum had worked his way free from the knot Anthony had tied, or rather more likely chewed his way free, so once again they both sat pressed against each other atop Belle. If that devil horse, Malum, would do as he was told, Rose would have known Anthony waited for her at the cabin. Would she have still gone in knowing now what she did?
Her body felt thoroughly well used, aching in a few places, satisfied in others. Of course she’d have gone to him knowing this would be the result. It could just as easily have gone the other way for her though. She knew there was a time he would rather have throttled her today than kissed her. That too had passed. She hoped.
He hadn’t spoken of marriage again and she was glad. Once he discovered her willingness to hand him over to Smith to gain her own selfish ends, he would no doubt be back to the throttling stage of their tumultuous relationship. She could handle that better than this foreign easiness descending on them. He had his arm around her waist like it belonged. And damn her if it didn’t make her want to melt back into him and return his optimism about a combined future.
But. She didn’t. It wouldn’t be long until he was asking her where his dinner was, his spare sock, shine my boots this and scrub the floors that. She knew he had a townhouse and a couple of servants but if he didn’t get his position with her father’s Runners, what else would he, or could he, do? If he stayed with her in France, would he find a position there? Would he bend to working harder for their supper or would he always resent her for changing the course of his life so dramatically? Money would be scarce, friends even more so. They would have no family to lean on, not that they had much of that anyway. They would be alone but for each other for a long time. She would probably kill him if he ate with his mouth open or snored or left his muddy boots on the washroom floor.
“You’re doing it again,” he said, his chin resting on her shoulder.
She resisted the urge to swat him away. “Doing what?”
“Thinking too much. Worrying. We’ll get Michael back. Your brothers and I have come up with a half-reasonable plan.”
Dread hit her so hard in the stomach, she nearly vomited. “My brothers? What did you tell them?” And why hadn’t he informed her of this development earlier?
“I overheard those two idiots talking in the corridor and your father caught me listening in. It was sort of hard after that to hide my knowledge of anything.”
Rose twisted in the saddle and shot him an accusing glare. “You told my father as well? You promised not to.”
Anthony shook his head. “I didn’t tell him anything. Only your brothers. I told them they were irresponsible to draw you into their mess.”
“Their mess?” Rose asked, playing dumb so she could know what he knew. She turned back to face forward in the saddle. He had an uncanny ability to sense when she wasn’t being very honest.
“It seems they both made promises to Smith. When she fled her clubs in London, your brothers fleeced her.”
Rose sighed. He already knew just about all there was to know. “That’s not all,” she said. “Smith is heavily pregnant and the baby could belong to one of them.”
He tensed at her back. “Damn it. Could this whole mess get any more complicated?”
It could. Rose should tell him about Smith’s demands, that Anthony come along and be taken hostage. Perhaps there was another way though? Perhaps Rose could simply turn up with the money and that would be enough? Except that she’d given her word. They both had. If one broke the rules of this particular game, then the other could too and probably would.
Rose was pulled from her musings by lights heading their way. A party on foot by the looks. She squinted, tried to make out how many and who. Of course her absence couldn’t be ignored for this long. She guessed the best way to respond would be to fall further, tell her father that she and Anthony had spent a passionate afternoon alone and nail the lid shut for good on her marriage coffin. But if she was too cocky about it, her father might just shoot him where he stood.
“We have company,” she said in a low voice over her shoulder.
“Your father?” he guessed.
“One would assume. Let me handle it, please. The less you say, the longer you stay alive.”
Rose breathed deep and called out, “You have found me. No sense in having it out in the dark. Let us ride back to the castle and settle everything in comfort.”
But as the party got closer, Rose could make out black hoods and cloaks but not a familiar face. These were not her father’s men.
Chapter Nineteen
Anthony knew the moment Rose froze in his arms that something was very wrong. What it was though, he couldn’t make out. He also couldn’t ask her since the men in cloaks were now within earshot.
He did the only safe thing he could think of with his brain cold and his body sapped of energy both from the earlier fury and the lovemaking. He had to protect Rose, no matter what.
Sliding from the horse’s rump, he said, “Go straight to your rooms and lock the door. I’ll make my way.”
She twisted to look at him, to voice a protest, but he gave Belle an almighty slap, which set the horse straight into a gallop. Hopefully they didn’t break both of their beautiful necks in the dark. Luckily he didn’t get kicked in the head for his trouble. Although it would be quicker than what these men had planned, he was sure. Would they simply shoot him or would they beat him to death first and then toss him from those damned cliffs?
“Surely we can work this out like men? Tomorrow? The girl has come to no harm—we’re to be married anyway. Let’s go back to the house and have a drink.”
One of the men stepped forward, his lantern high, his hood tipping back to reveal his face. “You’re not going back to the house.”
Josiah. Of course. “Is this your father’s idea then? Get me out of the way?”
Rose’s brother laughed. “We’re not here to kill you, Germaine. Smith wants you. She needs you for some reason and it might just save my own neck to give you to her.”
“What would she want with me?” Anthony was genuinely puzzled about this turn of events. He had nothing of value, no line of communication with his father who was officially retired anyway. He had no riches and barely a name.
“Rose didn’t tell you?” Samuel asked as he moved in from the shadows.
“Tell me what?” Dread descended to the pit of his stomach where before a measure of joy and determination had settled. He had forgotten the moment her men had brought her back to the cabin and said a very similar thing. His mind had been on Rose, her tears, the way she’d collapsed against him.
