Duke of Thorns (Heiress Games 1) (2 page)

They were still a week out from Havana, with any number of hostile British ships between them and their destination. Callie looked across to
Adamant
again, using Jacobs’ eyeglass this time. As he’d said, the British captain was surrendering his sword, looking deeply chagrined. He had a smudge of soot across his cheek that looked utterly out of place with his crisp blue coat and sharp, patrician features. Whatever he was saying to the first mate looked like it was meant to be a threat, but the first mate just laughed it off and tucked the sword under his arm before gesturing the captain toward the hold.

Adamant
’s captain looked over at
Nero
. Callie dropped the eyeglass. Seeing the man’s face in such close relief didn’t bring her pleasure. But at thirty yards, the set of his shoulders made his anger obvious. He shaded his eyes to look at Captain Jacobs, as though memorizing whatever he could of the man who had beat him. Then his gaze swept over her, contemptuous. He’d already dismissed her.

She handed the eyeglass back to Captain Jacobs. “You’ve made yourself an enemy there,” she said as the British captain went down into the hold of the ship he’d lost. “I’m sure he expected to be given his sword back after the surrender ritual.”

“Cowards don’t deserve their swords,” Jacobs said. There was no humor in his voice as he said it. “He disabled
Crescendo
and struck his own colors well before they were at the point of going under. He won’t be on the seas enough to trouble me if that’s the best he can offer.”

“I’m beginning to reconsider our arrangement,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to court such dangers.”

Jacobs laughed. “If you want to tell the crew they’re to stop earning prizes when they’ve just succeeded, you’ll need more than me at your back. And I won’t be there — I’ll be leading the mutiny against you.”

He still sounded jovial. Nothing would prick his mood that day. But there was steel in his voice.

And she couldn’t do anything about it. Not when the men would listen to their captain instead of their owner.

He continued as though he hadn’t threatened her. “You should go below again, Miss Briarley. You’ll grow cold up here once the excitement wears away. No need for your talents until we assess the value of
Crescendo’s
cargo, and that will have to wait until we set ourselves to rights. We’ll find you a pretty bauble in their hold. You’ll feel better about all of this when you see your share of the prize.”

She didn’t obey immediately. But he didn’t expect her to. He just left her standing where she was, rooted to the deck.

The unfairness of it all held her pinned. She nibbled on her thumbnail, a habit she returned to when she forgot her gloves. Capturing merchant ships and recovering the revenues the British blockade had cost her seemed like a decent enough plan. The American government was willing to grant privateering licenses to supplement its inadequate navy, and it felt like half the ship owners in Baltimore had become privateers since the war had begun. Jacobs was happier than she’d ever seen him, putting his old battle skills from the British Navy into better use. He’d never been much for business. He’d been content enough letting her manage the sales and manifests while he sailed his own ship and acted as a figurehead.

But when she’d agreed to his plan to turn her ships into privateers — naïvely, she could now admit — she had thought they would only take commercial vessels. She hadn’t expected to go up against the very British Navy that her captain and half her crew had deserted from over the years. Not that she had any pity for the Navy — if they insisted on mistreating their sailors so dramatically, they deserved to lose them.

The Navy wouldn’t see it that way, though. If they captured her British-born sailors, they would immediately press them back into service. They needed warm bodies to fight Napoleon, and their brutal discipline would force obedience. They would imprison the Americans, letting them languish in horrid conditions while waiting for a prisoner exchange.

And, she supposed, there was a possibility she could be imprisoned as well. Even more unlikely, since no one in the Navy would believe a woman capable of running a privateering enterprise. And she was technically British, not American. But that wouldn’t make it easier for her to sleep at night.

Callie sighed. She went below, reluctantly. It felt cruelly unfair to leave the victory to the men while she hid in the shadows, pursuing a more clandestine strategy. But she would follow through with her plan.

When she reached her cabin, Mrs. Jennings was there. “Did you fix everything?” her maid asked.

“You are not setting a good example for my tongue,” Callie said. “Don’t you always say sarcasm is unbecoming?”

Mrs. Jennings smiled. “You may pretend it wasn’t sarcasm if you’d like to answer the question.”

“Then, as a matter of fact, I
did
fix everything. Not the poor man’s arm, of course. But Captain Jacobs took two ships. We aren’t in danger of drowning. And I’ve decided to wear my hat and gloves for the rest of the voyage.”

Her maid looked more shocked by the last statement than the first. “Have you taken ill, Miss Briarley?”

“No,” Callie said. She smoothed a finger over her ragged thumbnail. “But I have the Briarley name to think of.”

“You have never cared for the Briarley name.”

“Of course I haven’t. But if I’m to become the Briarley heiress, I must maintain appearances.”

Mrs. Jennings’ mouth dropped open. “I thought you weren’t going to accept. You said we were going to England to wait out the war.”

Callie had refused every offer to return to England after her father had drowned on his final, quixotic voyage. Lord Tiberius Briarley had been a conniving charlatan — but he had also been the youngest son of the Earl of Maidenstone. Her grandfather had insisted, repeatedly, that she move to England, but she had declined. Her father often lied, but his hatred of his father had seemed genuine.

She should have refused the most recent invitation as well. The old man was dead now, leaving terms that seemed designed to make her and her only remaining female cousins fight over Maidenstone Abbey and the rest of the estate. The man her grandfather had left in charge of settling this farce — Ferguson, the Duke of Rothwell and her closest male relation on her grandmother’s side — had invited her to a summer house party at Maidenstone.

It wasn’t a party, though. It was a matchmaking opportunity, with a single goal in mind — whichever girl made the best match, according to Ferguson’s judgment, would inherit the estate.

It was ludicrous.

She had very nearly turned it down. She didn’t want a husband. From what she’d seen, husbands were only good for kissing and making babies. If she married, the man would want her to keep his house and follow his lead until he buried her.

She’d far rather run a shipping company and sacrifice the kissing, if it meant she could follow her own lead.

But with the war escalating, she’d felt she had no other choice. She wasn’t wanted in Baltimore, either. Her father had never bothered to become an American, and some factions in the republic’s government wanted to see British citizens like her removed from major ports like Baltimore, no matter her allegiances.

Callie saw the writing on the wall. Captain Jacobs wouldn’t bow to her command, not when he had bloodlust and prizes dancing through his dreams. The American government could order her removed from the coast at any moment, costing her the comfortable, if lonely, life she’d built in Baltimore. She thought she could bribe the authorities to let her stay, but if she could not, the alternative was untenable.

She had nowhere to go.

Callie didn’t give a fig for the Briarley legacy, or for Maidenstone Abbey. But the idea of winning it, of having something permanent…

She liked the sound of that. Even if it meant marrying someone she didn’t particularly care for. This business with Captain Jacobs had reminded her, cruelly, of her place. She couldn’t rely on a friendly business agreement to control her company, or her life. She needed a husband, preferably one who could be trained — one who would let her use his name for her own ends. If she became a widow, even better.

She was already a privateer. She may as well become a mercenary. It was a good plan, if she ignored the morality of it — and what marriage to an unloved stranger might mean.

Callie pulled on her gloves like they were gauntlets. “Find me a hat, Mrs. Jennings. I must find the most easily managed husband in England. And I must look the part of a lady if I’m to do it.”

CHAPTER ONE

Salcombe, near the Devonshire coast - six months later

“I trust you’ve guessed why I have assembled you in a backwater such as this.”

Gavin Emmerson-Fairhurst, better known to the world as the Duke of Thorington, drawled the words. He ran his gaze over each sibling in turn, gauging their moods.

None of them were frightened yet. “I’ve no idea,” Portia said, yawning. “You’ve kept us in this horrid inn for three weeks. Must you have rolled us out of our beds before breakfast to tell us your intentions?”

It was already eleven in the morning, but Thorington didn’t comment on the time. He caught Anthony, the youngest, rolling his eyes.

“You know our guardian,” Anthony said in a carrying whisper. “Our schedules are of little concern to him.”

Thorington tapped his fingers on the table and refrained from commenting on the ‘schedules’ he had impacted. He would grant that three weeks in the small village of Salcombe had bored all of them to death. But they lived on his largesse — their schedules had always been set at his whim.

Portia and Anthony, the youngest at twenty and nineteen, tended to unite forces whenever Thorington called the family together. The others, though, were more unpredictable in their allegiances. Serena, twenty-two, was as likely to spar with Portia as she was to support her. But today Serena had chosen to share a settee with her sister rather than aligning herself with Rafe — the one member of the family she usually idolized.

Thorington would have made the same choice. Rafe had been awake until dawn, pursuing whatever meager entertainments could be found in a village of Salcombe’s size, and he reeked of whisky and tobacco smoke. He sprawled now in the chair farthest from Thorington, one arm draped over his eyes as though even the thought of light was enough to make the demons scream in his head. Pamela and Cynthia, born between Rafe and Serena, weren’t present. They had their own husbands and families, and so they were spared from Thorington’s machinations. And their father’s bastards — more numerous than their mother’s — never figured into Thorington’s calculations, save for the annuities he owed them.

Thorington stood and adjusted the drapes until every window down the long wall of the pub’s private dining room streamed sunlight. Rafe groaned and burrowed deeper into the chair. “Can we not delay whatever it is you want until tonight, Gav? I need a bed, not a lecture.”

Rafe was the only one who still called him Gav. The rest may well have forgotten that they’d ever had a brother named Gavin. To the youngest three, Gavin had raised them for the entirety of their living memory. Even before their parents had died, he was the one who had kept them fed, sheltered, and safe. By the time he’d become the Duke of Thorington at twenty-four, they were already accustomed to his caretaking.

Caretaking he could suddenly no longer provide them.

“It’s not a bed you need, Rafe,” Thorington said as he returned to the table he’d claimed as his desk. “Nor can I afford to give you one.”

Rafe lifted his arm enough to look at Thorington with one bleary eye. Whatever he saw forced him upright.

“Don’t say your luck’s run out?” he asked quietly.

Thorington nodded, once.

Rafe exhaled. “I thought it might have when you started losing at cards.”

Portia sniffed. “You’ll recover your gambling debts. You always do. May I be excused now?”

Serena stared at him, then put a quelling hand on her sister’s knee. “Mayhap we should hear the rest of this.”

What could he say? They didn’t particularly like him. But he had given them every comfort, every bit of security he could provide.

Portia, for once, was silent. Even Anthony sat up. They all looked to him. They always looked, ultimately, to him. When their house had gone unheated, they came to him. When the creditors had threatened and the greengrocer stopped delivering and even the most devoted retainers muttered about missing wages, they came to him. Their father had left them in a tremendous bind.

And he had fixed it all. Made it all safe and secure again, safe enough for them to forget their wounds and mutter instead about how he was too controlling, too cold, too devilish.

He couldn’t fix it anymore. Not without a massive, unimaginable influx of funds. And there was no sense in delaying the inevitable.

He scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “It is past time that all of you married. I want to see it done within a month.”

Rafe put his arm over his eyes again. Serena and Portia gaped at him with identical expressions of confusion. Only Anthony didn’t react — which was a reaction of its own, given how voluble the boy usually was.

“I am glad none of you object,” Thorington said drily.

Portia’s confusion turned to a potent glare. “I could have married any number of times if you’d only allowed me to.”

Serena couldn’t let that go without comment. “He would have allowed it if you weren’t so fond of impoverished cavalry officers.”

“Better cavalry officers than dancing masters,” Portia shot back. “None of your paramours found favor with Thorington either.”

Thorington sighed. “I will arrange everything. All you must do is accustom yourself to the notion and choose your dresses. Something you already have would be preferred. Your husbands can pay the next modiste’s bill.”

“Anthony and I haven’t a thing to wear,” Rafe complained. “All my dresses are shockingly out of season.”