Kitabı oku: «The Wild Wellingham Brothers», sayfa 12

Chapter Thirteen

Someone held her down. Hard. Hurting.

‘Keep still, Emma!’

Emma! Emma?

Not her name. Nearly her name? Asher’s face flew in and out of focus, the dark edges of a room behind, white candles burning on a desk.

Fragments. Memory. Her father mopping the blood from her brow and her mother in a corner. The same candles pushing back midnight.

‘I need some more whisky…’ The slurred voice of a drunk.

Her mother.

Evangeline.

Little angel.

Murderer.

In the blink of an eye she remembered everything that she had shut out as a six-year-old and, bringing the pillow across her ears, she began to shake. Hard liquor and the sound of screaming. The smell of whisky as a bottle broke. Shards of glass and the boozy face of Mother, close. Too close. Dangerous.

‘Mama!’ Her voice across the years. Young. Afraid. Unbelieving. She needed to get away. Out of the room. Into the dark of the trees around St Clair. Safety.

‘Emerald.’ Another voice. Softer. Huskier. Underlined with calm.

Asher was back. Against the shadows, his face impossibly handsome and the smell of drink receding against a different reality.

Falder. They were home.

‘Home?’ she whispered and watched as uncertainty kindled.

‘Azziz and Taris?’

‘Azziz is in the room next to this one, nursing three broken ribs and a sizeable lump on the back of his head. Taris escaped remarkably unhurt.’

‘How long?’ Full sentences were beyond her.

‘You’ve been here for a week. But you have had the fever. It broke this morning.’

‘Feel…strange.’

‘It’s the laudanum to take away pain from the wound in your side.’ He stood up and stretched. The dark rings under his eyes were easily seen.

‘Stay…please.’ Suddenly she was afraid. Her mother crouched in the shadows with her madness and beyond that her father beckoned, tears streaming down his cheeks.

‘James.’ Curly-headed James. She had seen his lifeless body buried in the fertile ground beneath the oak tree at St Clair before her father had calmly read the sermon and sent his wife away. Far from home. Far from them. Far from the grave of a son she had killed.

Emerald swallowed, trying to arrest the moisture that she could feel behind her eyes. Her childhood. The bones of secrets and lies. The product of falsity and hatred. Tears leaked out and fell down her cheeks, warm against a cooling skin.

She had lost them all. And now she was loosing Asher.

‘I always loved you…since the Mariposa… I thought…I think…you are the most beautiful man I have ever seen.’ She took the last of her pride and buried it. At least he would know. Her voice broke and she could not carry on.

Not just repayment, then.

When he said nothing, she turned over and shut him out. Shut them all out.

Just her.

She hated the way her chin wobbled as the strength that she always kept hold of broke into shattering sobs, but she could stop nothing.

It was over. Her life here was over and she could not even begin to imagine what she was going to do next.

The clock on the mantel marked the passing of silence as Asher watched her from above, her scar-traced hands linked across the pillow. Ruined hands like his own.

They had both been ruined by circumstance.

The thought knocked the breath from him. He had spent five days listening to her rambling memories of childhood. Memories no one should have, memories fractured by madness and drink and death and dissolved into…what?

Blowing out the candles, he sat in the dark and when her breathing shallowed out he was glad. Looking down at the nightgown her aunt had carefully dressed her in, he noticed things he had not seen before.

The frail thinness of her bones and the way her hair curled beneath the fragile lobes of her ears.

God. Emerald Sandford. He should be furious. More than furious. His mind went back five years to the sea battle off the Turks Island Passage and he remembered other things. The soft feel of her lips against the nub of his thumb, the laughing turquoise eyes, the warmth of the day and the cold of the sea. He frowned. He had drawn back from the fight the moment he knew her to be a girl, and as he had dropped his guard she had retaliated with the hard edge of her sword and flipped him over the side.

Down into the cold of an angry sea where he had caught hold of the barrel she had thrown in after him, the roar of her father’s anger loud on the air. Closing his eyes, he remembered other things. The circling sharks and a blood-red boiling sea. Thirty sailors on his ship and ten had survived.

Ten. He swore. Six by the time they had reached the coast and then only himself after a year in the pirates’ compound.

Emerald Sandford.

Lord. His eyes ran across her full bottom lip and he laced his fingers together to stop himself from touching.

He wanted to shake her and he wanted to climb in beside her and hold her against the demons of her past. But he couldn’t.

‘I love you.’ How many times had she said it? Would say it? The hollow shaft of memory held him bound by doubt.

As he let himself out of the room, he hated both her fragility and his intransigence.

She had lied, had continued to lie, her motivation based solely on the greed of treasure. Swearing, he walked down the hallway and out on to the balcony, relieved to feel the air on his face. Fresh. Clear. Cold. How long did it take for the sharp prick of vengeance to fade into a lesser ache? A quieter loss?

For ever, he decided, and felt a bone-deep shiver of guilt.

Emerald regained full consciousness just before the morning and lay very still, not wanting to waken the servant who sat dozing in a chair to one side of the bed.

Everything ached, but the mist that had consumed her was lessened.

They knew now. Knew who she was, knew who she had been. Asher. His mother. Taris. Lucinda. Her eyes fell to her hands. Gloveless. Exposed. Like she was. The scars red against the white of the sheet. She didn’t even curl them up to hide them but turned her head to the window and watched the first pink blush of dawn on the high clouds outside.

Thus far she was safe. They had not taken her to Newgate. Or sent her to the poorhouse. No, she was still at Falder. In her room.

A portrait of Asher graced the far wall, his eyes watching with velvet gravity and their unexpected dance of gold. Behind him the house was caught in the last rays of a summer sun, the ocean sparkling to his left.

Falder.

As much as she might have liked to, she didn’t belong here—she was a dangerous interloper from another world. A harsher world where the price of a life was measured in less than honour and where integrity and tradition were words other people used. I love you. She had said it again last night and wished that she hadn’t even as the door opened and he walked in.

He had been riding. His clothes were splattered with dust and when he shut the door behind the departing servant she smiled. His manners were far better than her own. Another difference.

‘I think we should talk.’

She nodded and looked directly at him. Beneath the façade of politeness she glimpsed a steely anger, held in check.

‘You are Emerald Sandford, are you not?’

She nodded.

‘Beau Sandford’s daughter?’

Again she nodded.

‘Who was it that taught you to fight?’

‘My father. Azziz. Toro. Anyone with a bit of time to waste between watches on the Mariposa.’

‘It was you on the boat, then? The girl who hit me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘If you had stayed aboard, my father would have killed you. There were fifty men from the Mariposa and less than a dozen still fighting from the Caroline.’ She stopped and looked away. ‘He always killed those who were left and I thought, since you had given me a chance, that I should return the favour.’

‘The favour?’ Anger resonated around the room. ‘The favour? Better to have lopped my head off then and there than the slow death you sentenced me to.’

‘I did not know—’

He didn’t let her finish.

‘You are a pirate, Emerald.’ The name came from his lips as if he did not even like the sound of it. ‘You have killed people for your own gain.’

The horror in his words was palpable and, turning her head, she faced him, squarely. The past was the past and she could not change it. ‘Believe what you will of me. I came here only for the map.’ Her words were flat and she hated the sound of defeat in them, but she had no more to fight with.

‘And that is all you want from me? Nothing else?’

Question quivered between them.

I want you to love me. I want you to take me in your arms and hold me safe. For ever.

She almost said it, but at the last second pinched the underside of her left arm to stop herself. When she looked down the red crescent left by her nail on the skin was easily noticeable.

‘The map,’ she repeated with more conviction this time, ‘is all that I want from you.’

He nodded and stood, hands in the pocket of his coat and feet apart, as a sailor might have stood on the deck in a storm. Distant. Lonely. Distracted. ‘I have instructed everyone here to keep the secret of your identity. For the moment you are safe. But when you feel better, I would rather that you did not venture outside this room without somebody at your side.’

‘Because you feel I might be a risk to your family?’ A hollow ache pierced her as he looked up and the blank indifference in his eyes broke her heart.

‘I will provide passage to Jamaica for you when you want it. On my ship out of Thornfield.’

She could only nod this time, the thick sadness in her throat rendering speech difficult.

‘And if you should need money—’

She stopped him. ‘No. Just the map.’

As he turned for the door, the dizzy whorl of relief hit her. Another moment and she would have caught at his hand and begged him for even the scraps of love.

Like. Friendship. Esteem.

Even they might have been enough.

Outside Asher laid his head back against the oak door and took in his breath. Lord, Beau Sandford’s daughter. What the hell was he to do with her? She had countered the McIlverray threat with a bravery that had stunned him and had slept with him as a repayment for the hurt done to his family. His teeth ground together as he thought of the hurt he had done to her family.

An equal revenge?

For the first time in days, anger loosened its hold. Perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps in the last threshold of truth something could be salvaged. He imagined Emma…no, Emerald, in satin and silk dancing, candlelight in her hair and the hint of laughter on her lips.

Laughter.

When had she had that in her life? When had she had frivolity or joy or easiness? Not with her mother or Beau. Not since coming to England either, that much was sure.

His eyes flickered to his right hand and he flexed it. Today he felt no movement or sensation in his ghost fingers, another passing reminder of change. Five years since the Mariposa had overcome his ship. He did a quick calculation. She must have been, what…all of sixteen, perhaps? Younger than Lucinda and expected to fight a man? More than one man? The scars on her hand and face and thigh told him that.

By God, if Sandford was here right now he would kill him again just for the hurt he had done his daughter—she had never stood a chance against the greedy underbelly of that world.

And yet somewhere in the darkness of her upbringing she had discovered and fostered integrity and responsibility. Servants and an aunt she would not abandon and a handful of others to whom she felt allegiance. And when she had seen him at risk she had jumped in to the rescue without a thought for her own well-being.

If it was only the map she truly wanted, why would she do that? Better to let McIlverray do his worst and head by herself for Falder and the map.

I love you.

Perhaps she had truly meant it. Not just atonement, but something deeper. More lasting. True. He flattened his fingers out against the wall at his back and tried to take stock of the whole situation, tried to stop the heavy throb in his loins from clouding reason.

Emerald sat up in bed and ate the lunch that had been provided for her. She had not seen Asher since yesterday and Miriam had heard that he was in London on business. She hoped he was safe.

Lucinda and Alice had both visited her that morning and both had looked at her with something akin to wariness.

‘You did not tell us of your skill with a knife and sword, Emmie—’ Lucinda stopped. She said the name with uncertainty, as if just the mention of it might conjure up the steamy Caribbean underworld. ‘Why, when you sent that knife across the clearing and hit that man I could barely believe it—’ Again she stopped and her mouth fell into an even greater gape. ‘It was you wasn’t it, on the dockside with the Earl of Westleigh. It was you, who saved me? You’re Liam Kingston?’ She blushed profusely. ‘I should have known it was you. The gloves. Your height. Lord, it was you all along.’

Emerald could do nothing more than nod, though, as she chanced a look at Asher’s mother, she was surprised by the gratitude that shone from her eyes.

‘You have saved us all from harm, my dear, and I do not know how it is we will ever be able to thank you.’

The thought did cross her mind that such generosity was misplaced, given she had brought the McIlverrays to England in the first place, but she took Alice’s offered hand and held it tightly, and the older woman did not pull away or look askance at the scars that blemished the skin beneath her knuckles.

They had seen exactly who it was she was and still they thanked her. For this moment she felt humbled by the generosity of a family who had much reason to hate her. Unbidden tears welled in her eyes. How she wanted Alice and Lucinda and Taris to like her.

Asher’s family.

At least then, when she was gone, they would remember her fondly. She dabbed at her eyes and was horrified when still more tears welled. She never cried. Never.

Turning her head into the pillow, she was glad when she heard them leave.

When the last rays of orange were fading from the far-off hills, there was a knock on the door.

This time it was Taris who came into the room. Carefully. She could tell that he was not often here, given the number of times he bumped into things. The table in the middle of the room and the chair near the fireplace. He always stood against the light of the window, she thought, as he stopped there.

‘Asher tells me that you blame yourself for this.’ His fingers swept up across his eyes and he was still. Waiting. Emerald took a breath. It was rare in England to find people who came straight to the point and she liked him for it.

‘If Asher had not met my father—’

He stopped her. ‘You do not strike me as a woman who qualifies her life much with “if”. If I had not done this…if only I had done that…’

Despite everything she smiled. What was it Taris had said of blindness? Other senses were heightened? Certainly he seemed to have the measure of her and it was easy to be comfortable with him.

‘My father was a man who felt that the oceans were his own. Any oceans, but more especially those around the Turks Island Passage. If he had not seen the Caroline that day—’ She stopped as she saw his lips twitch and rephrased her words. ‘Your loss of sight was a direct result of my father’s greed.’

‘My loss of sight was a direct result of my own need to protect my brother; if it had not happened in the Caribbean, it might have happened somewhere else. On the high mast of an ocean-bound ship or in the slow roll of a carriage on the hills before Falder. Fate, Emerald, or destiny. Call it what you will. I do not blame him and I do not blame you. There is, however, something that you could do for me.’

‘Yes?’

‘Marry Asher.’

She almost laughed, but stopped herself at the last moment. He was deadly serious. She could see it in every line of his face.

‘I think marriage is the last thing that your brother would want from me.’

‘You are the only one who can save him.’

‘Save him from what?’

‘From himself. He blames himself for everything.’ He reached down to feel the seat of the chair beside him and lowered himself into it before continuing. ‘When Melanie caught a cold, she went to bed with camphor and honey drinks. When it got worse, the doctor was called. And when it got worse still, my mother held her hand while she breathed her last. If Asher had been at Falder, the result would have been exactly the same. He could not have saved her. But a healthy person can die inside just as easily as a sick one and that is what he has done. Ever since.’

Emerald was astonished. She could barely believe what he was saying to her. The power of it! And Taris was close to his brother. Close enough to truly know what drove him, what hurt him, what made him who he was. Could what he said be true? Could she help him in the same way that he had helped her?

‘Don’t give up on him. Not yet. Can you at least promise me that?’

She took in a breath and nodded because she didn’t trust herself enough to speak and then she smiled. He would not see the movement.

‘Thank you.’

‘You saw me nod?’

‘I felt it. In the shift of light.’

‘Where is Asher?’ she added as he stood to leave.

‘He went to London on business. We have a number of ships due out to India.’

Emerald heard frustration in his voice. ‘In Jamaica I had dealings with a witch doctor who could heal just about anything—even some loss of sight.’

He laughed, a rich deep sound that resonated around the room. ‘You are the very first person to mention my affliction in the same breath as divulging a cure, Emerald. Yes indeed, you should suit our family well.’

And with that he was gone.

Asher spent the next week trying to make sense of everything that had happened, trying to dull the effect that Emerald Sandford had made on him and trying to get his life back into some sort of order.

On the third day in London he found himself in an establishment off Curzon Street; the moment he walked through the front doors, he knew it was a mistake.

Angela Cartwright, a handsome red-haired woman met him as he removed his gloves and hat, the neckline of her gown perilously low. Last time he had been here he had admired her obvious endowments. This time all he could think about were smaller breasts topped with shell-pink nipples and a liberal smattering of freckles.

Emerald.

To be thinking of her in a place like this worried him and he resolved to put her from his mind.

‘Why, your Grace, it has been some time since we have seen you here. All of six months, would it not be, Brigitte?’

A beautiful girl, standing against the far wall of the parlour, came forward, her light blue eyes alive with laughter and her brown hair caught in an intricate style at the back of her head before the length of silk tresses fell to her waist.

‘Indeed, your Grace. I think you were here last time with your friend Lord Henshaw. Is he well?’

‘Very.’ Accepting brandy, Asher drank heavily, reasoning that tonight he needed all the fortification he could get.

‘Perhaps I could show you the conservatory, your Grace,’ she added as she renewed his drink from a crystal decanter. ‘It is the latest addition to our household and has been very well received.’

On the edges of her practised French accent lingered the twang of the Covent Garden markets. Normally the contradictions would have amused him, but tonight he was vaguely angered by it, and bothered too by the over-embellished furniture and paintings depicting cherubs in various stages of undress. This place was the most exclusive of all the London brothels, yet it felt cheap in a way that it hadn’t before. And the churning dread in his stomach had absolutely nothing to do with anticipation.

In the conservatory, any inhibitions that Brigitte had displayed seemed largely gone and when he felt her fingers suggestively cup his genitals he moved back sharply.

Lord, why was he here?

Why was he not home at Falder with the green hills all about him and the beating ocean in the distance? And Emerald Sandford in his bed, warm and willing and beautiful? Because she was a liar and a cheat and the daughter of Beau Sandford and because everything she had ever told him had been based on her skewed version of the truth.

A room to one end of the structure had been fashioned into a bedchamber, its large four-poster draped in lawn. When Brigitte raised her arms to loosen her hairpins, he marvelled that the sight did not affect him in the least. All he wanted was gold mixed with red and entwined with the lightest of corn.

Emerald.

He made himself come forward and draw a finger against the warm smoothness of Brigitte’s skin, trailing his touch along the base of her jaw and down again into the softer places. A swelling bosom and milk-white complexion, the fat abundance of womanhood warm and pliable in his hands as she tipped back her head and groaned.

Emerald. He wanted Emerald. He wanted her joy and her fierce independence. He wanted the feel of her against him as they lay under the full light of a new moon, his ruined fingers curled into hers. Disorientated, he stood back and looked around. Uncertain. Desperate. To leave.

‘I am sorry,’ he said quietly, jamming a coin into her hand before moving away.

Away from the wrongness of Curzon Street, its inherent loneliness tempered only by rich fine drink and impossible dreams. This was not the way to forget Emerald. This was not the way to claw back a future and find again in his life a place where sheer emptiness did not consume him.

When he was outside he laid his head against the side of the building and thought.

The port beckoned as it always had with its freedom and smell and foreverness. The infinite blue of the waves and a horizon that did not finish. Adventure, new lands, the riches of the colonies spilling into his holds, spices, silks, tea.

As his driver pulled into the curb near him, he walked briskly across and ordered the coach to the docks. His newest sloop was a few weeks away from completion and he would benefit from a good bout of hard work.