Love's Patient Fury (The Deverell Series Book 3) (24 page)

Fixing her wide doe eyes brightly on him, Merry inquired laughingly, “Are we engaging now in what you referred to yesterday as your best behavior?”

A laugh. An arched brow. “My best behavior in this circumstance. Smile, Little One, you are being watched. You are drawing the most curious stares. Almost as if they want to know if you were willing last night in my arms, as if half the outbuildings on the grounds couldn’t hear your pleasure moans. I would not be surprised if your father had given them instruction to guard you from me. If you don’t relax I am apt to be rammed with a pitch fork.”

Laughter floated from Merry’s lips as she lovingly relaxed her head against his chest. Opening her eyes she realized it was only half a jest.  She placed a kiss on his arm and began to laugh stronger.

“Wouldn’t that be such a humiliating end to such a spectacular life of villainy and terror? ‘Here lies Morgan, pirate and debaucher, death by impalement on a pitch fork.’”

Merry’s words
were
a jest. She had sailed with him long enough to know most everything she had ever read about this man was myth, overblown exaggerations,  and wild ravings most probably the result  of his absolute love for drama. Every unsolved crime committed at sea was recklessly tossed on his head in England’s desperate need to put their fear in a single villain. He had been accused while she sailed with him of offenses she knew very well he hadn’t committed. Not by Morgan.

While he was guilty of the crimes of piracy and smuggling, it was in a strangely virtuous way; the rest of the litany was more often nonsense and wild embellishment. He had gone to sea to find his son, had stayed at sea to raise and protect him. All his exploits had been a quiet manipulation to interfere with Rensdale’s villainy and bring about his ruin. His moves, for the most part every one of them, a counter reaction to his cousin.  He was not even capable of the act of murder against the man who had caused his first wife’s death, held back by his inescapable loyalty to flesh of his blood,  and  unwilling to be pulled farther from himself than necessary. He had worked slowly, patiently, ten years to allow Rensdale’s own deeds to set his fate.

Even his support for the Irish rebels was purely a generous and loyal act of this discreetly benevolent man. It had nothing to do with spite toward England or malice toward the society that had cast him out so cruelly. His acts were of unending silent gratitude to the cause of Ian Shay the elder, the man who had saved his son’s life and died aboard the
Carolina
doing so.

Varian had lived a rich, full life, neither saint nor sinner. Imperfect, human, complicated, but in the center of it all simply a man.

Merry looked up at him. Varian seemed suddenly focused away from their playful aftermath of the hours of making love in a hay loft. She said, “I am sorry. It was unwise and dangerous of me to make that jest. I need to be more careful in my talk. I know that.”

Those black eyes began to sparkle like berries. “You need have no fear of the workers, Little One. The farming equipment I know how to battle. It will more likely read, ‘here lies Morgan dead by his love for a beautiful lunatic, hanged by an angry father after a night in a hay loft though
they were wed.
’”

Merry followed the direction of her husband’s gaze, grimaced, and thought Varian was most probably right. There in the front garden was her father, reclined on a chair near Rhea as she was enthusiastically shoving plants into pots. On Lucien’s face was a wash of unpleasant emotions too many to count. It was ridiculous.

Varian’s arm slipped around her waist and eased Merry closer to him as his face lowered to her ear. That low voice came to her quietly, “I am sorry, Little One. I promised you my best behavior to keep peace with your father, and I have failed you already.”

Merry frowned at Varian then, unsure what he was apologizing for. “If you are apologizing for last night, you insufferable man, I am going to hit you, right here, in front of them all. It is one of the few things you have done in the past two months you need not apologize to me for.”

He smiled, a little wicked and very happy. Whispering now, because they were almost to her parents, “I am referring to  that very long leaf of hay  I left sticking from the back of your curls when you asked me to try to brush them.” And then with more meaning and more smile, “
Very long.
”

Merry moved a hand to see if he was serious and was shocked to find he was. It was such a wonderfully preposterous impulse for Varian to have indulged. Realizing the length of it as she pulled it free, she began to laugh uproariously.
Whatever happens, it will be all right
, she felt her heart singing in reminder.

Her wide doe eyes sparkling, she brushed the hay playfully against his chin, and then purposely down his shirt with its missing buttons.

“A little less perfection and a little more laughter does suit you so much the better,” Merry exclaimed and gave him a quick, improperly thorough  kiss full on his lips. She waved to her mother, gathered her skirt above her bare feet and calves, before running into the house.

~~~

Merry and Varian in marital estrangement had been a torture for Lucien Merrick to endure; their wedded bliss was a misery. Their reconciliation of affections after that long remembered, often laughed at in private, quarrel in the drawing room brought a rapid shift in their personalities. 

Ironically, or perhaps not ironically at all, it was Merry’s best behavior that kept calm from ever settling fully in the Merrick household. Varian had always been a man of smooth and controlled elegance, his manners impeccable, his social graces an art. No longer compelled by the necessity to behave badly, he was usually the better of the two them.

It was Merry’s conduct that was outrageously shocking, a strain to the serenity and a constant irritation in her father’s attempt to maintain civility with her husband. She was a wild and impulsive girl, but happy at Varian’s side, her feelings for her husband were a powerful force that rushed through the walls like a crashing storm.

Varian adored her in every facet she turned, always tolerant and amused, so obvious in his love for her, that his displays of affections were the only element of his conduct ever to wander outside of propriety. Though how the man managed to maintain composure and not beat the girl at times, would be a much wondered question in the Merrick household in the days to come.

They made an absolutely nonsensical match, and Lucien watched, graying head shaking, with poorly straining temper, partly wanting to kill Varian, partly wishing he’d spanked his daughter more, and partly wishing he didn’t feel compelled to hold them here.

As the months passed, Lucien wasn’t sure which of Merry’s moods he dreaded more. When his daughter was angry with the ‘odious, insufferable man’ or when she happy with the ‘insufferable man’. Both were equally volatile states.

As bad as it was to watch them quarrel, it was outside tolerance to witness his daughter’s displays of contentment in marriage.  And Lucien couldn’t help but to witness it. Merry wouldn’t let anyone escape the damn thing. The girl had no restraint of conduct and never had. That was the one fault of Merry’s Lucien didn’t even try to blame on Varian.

If Varian were gone—and Varian was making his flying trips more frequently, unannounced and unexplained, now that the war between them was open war—Merry, whether clad in dressing gown or fully clothed—it was worse on days Varian arrived at dawn because his daughter had developed a strange fetish to sleep often times in her husband’s shirts—would greet her husband with none informing her of his return, her senses always pricked to awareness of the man with a keenness that never failed her.

She would run to meet him before he even entered the house, as though he’d been gone for years, her wild and dark curls streaming around her beautiful young face, throwing herself into the always opening arms of her more elegant husband.  They were lucky when her mood was such her desires only sought his welcoming embraces and kisses. Their exchanges in that a thing improper and quite enough to bear. When her impulses desired more, it was dreadful.

His daughter was at times a madwoman, overflowing with laughter, wild in happiness, and unconcerned about what any of them thought of any of it. Her adoring husband didn’t do a damn thing to temper it. Never faltering in his fairness, Lucien doubted any man would. Varian Deverell was a man undeniably loved by his wife.

As the days grew, still working and not there,  as they gathered proof Varian was the infamous Morgan, Lucien felt the pressure of making his decision in a way he had never imagined. Bizarrely enough, this man firm in his duty and love of England found that what he wanted most was the peace of his house back. He almost didn’t care any longer what crimes Varian had committed. If letting Varian escape justice for his past, by letting him move happily on with Merry, would succeed in bringing calm back to Lucien’s world, Lucien was more than mildly tempted to do it.

And Rhea was positively right about one thing. Watching them together had made it an inescapable truth and the most harshly cutting of all Lucien’s worries. Any act against Varian would devastate Merry.  The girl was head over heels, passionate and devoted, totally loyal to the man. The child she carried, growing larger, made her connection to Varian complete and tied Varian’s fate with the Merricks forever.

Two years of diligent work for Whitehall now sat stalled in a morass of morals and personal loyalties at war for the Merrick men. Strangely enough they were joined in the web of this struggle, in the same house awaiting the birth of a child that linked them all, with the infamous pirate Morgan. All three men played at civility, played at normalcy, and covered truth with pretense. Each was unwilling to commit the first move in an unspoken, dangerously progressing battle carefully held at bay out of their love for two women. No one it seemed wanted to fire the first shot, though it would happen, and they all knew it. When the truth was at last unable to be ignored, none of them were certain yet where they would go with it or what they were willing to risk or what they were capable of doing out of love.

So it lay there, simmering, in unpleasant wait with the passing months as the Merrick’s continued gathering their evidence against Varian. It was absolute lunacy the three men involved somehow managed to exist fully aware and in a single house.

Lunacy. It was Merry.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Merry lay in the small day room next to her father’s study beneath an open window. A book in hand balanced on the enormous swell of her middle, she struggled to be comfortable atop a stack of strategically placed pillows.

Early in her ninth month, she was irritable, volatile and much to her dismay, weepy. It felt like she had a baby whale inside her instead of a child. She was ridiculously enormous, no doubt the fault of that goliath husband of hers and she couldn’t help but wonder if Varian’s tolerance of her moods had finally waned— they were quite simply dreadful now and she knew it— and if her conduct combined with her unsightly figure were the reason why his last absence had reached nearly a month.

Rolling awkwardly onto her side and not even finding comfort in that position, she cursed that insufferable man and wished him home.

Hearing her father’s study door close and the familiar voice of Warton, she smiled. Half asleep, she cursed this time that day eighteen months ago when she had lay in this very spot eavesdropping because it had sent her into reckless actions that crossed her paths with a pirate captain, now her noble husband, and responsible for this miserable state.

Damn you, you odious insufferable man, I will kill you when you get home
. Kill him for this discomfort and kill him for being gone so long. Brushing at tears, she knew she wasn’t crying for any reason. It just seemed to happen.

God, she wished she had been nicer to Varian the day he’d left. She’d thrown a book at him, in front of her mother no less and the woman kept stitching calmly. Those black eyes sparkling, Varian had smiled, laughed and kissed her goodbye. The man was impossible to annoy when he was happy, and he was happy with her and happy with his child.

For the life of her she couldn’t recall why she had done it. There was probably no reason to it all. She seemed to do nothing motivated by reason any more. It was discomfort, and the ever present strain of the worry she was unable to escape that Varian denied existed at all.

She brushed her cheek against a pillow, thankfully feeling the pull of sleep and thought,
you insufferable man, I don’t blame you for staying away.
Merry wasn’t really listening to her father’s meeting. The voices were simply there in the room with her, faintly floating around her. She had no intention of giving it full notice, and yet slowly that’s what she did.

It was Warton’s voice that first caught her attention. “These are everywhere, Your Grace. They began circulating two months ago, after the inquiry was started regarding Rensdale’s cargo on the
Hampstead
. Whitehall has had a full investigation under way for weeks and are close to charges and arrest. Four days after Varian reached London, Rensdale disappeared without a trace. There’s not even a hint of what happened to the viscount.”

Merry heard the distinct sound of ruffling papers. “Damn.” It was Lucien’s voice, harsh, displeased. “What does Whitehall think? Do they think these speculations have a basis in fact? That it was Rensdale and this group of conspirators who sank the
Carolina
ten years ago, killing Ann Deverell? What about the rest of the accusation. Where are they in confirming them?”

Warton’s voice was firm. “Every one of the accusations seemed to point clearly to truth. What is unclear is who began circulating these documents. It wasn’t any of our operatives. Some of this information is quite old and obscure records from Whitehall, the customs office, shipping manifest, insurance records, and Rensdale’s letter. There’s a floodtide of it out there, Your Grace. A lot of very highly placed people are panicking and furious.  Whoever gathered this held it long to use it wisely.”