Edith Layton (16 page)

He felt her lips curve in a smile against his chest.

“So, let’s fool the night. I’ll keep talking. It’ll keep raining, but we’ll hold back the night. Yes, you did do a silly thing. And you’ve had a mad adventure. But you know? One day, soon, when you look back, all of this—me included, will seem like some strange dream. Oh, you’ll know it happened, but it will seem like it happened to someone else.”

“Is that how it is with you?” she asked softly. “I mean, all the bad things that happened to you?”

He hesitated. “Yes, in a way. No, in a way, too. So much happened to me. I can’t say my whole life was a dream, can I? I met some wild fellows in the Antipodes who do say that. But I don’t think so. Still, yes, some of the really bad things do seem like a dream to me now. Some don’t.”

“How do you live with that?” she asked. “I mean, the regret, the fear, the sorrow?”

“I live with everything. I have to. Now, you, you’ll just have a little misadventure to remember. But not now and not tonight. And you still have a chance to mend all. In fact, if you remember this in the future, it can be your one secret grand adventure. You know, something to sit by the fire and have a mysterious grin over, something to make your grandchildren wonder what the old lady was up to when she was young.”

She smiled again.

“We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” he said. “One thing we already know—it will bring the light. Now, just relax.”

She fell still, and slowly, he could feel the tension leave her body. He held her as close, as calmly and companionably as if she were a young child, or an old man, or a good friend, or a desperate stranger, or any of the other wretched people he’d had reason to see through a bad night in his tumultuous lifetime.

In time, she dozed.

Then he relaxed. He sat and thought of all the pos
sible ways he could help her, and when he was done with that, he allowed himself at last to dare wonder if he could keep on helping her for the rest of their lives.

Daffyd sat by the fireside with a warm, sweet-scented woman asleep in his arms. He sighed, but carefully, so that the rise and fall of his chest didn’t disturb her. The warmth and supple softness of her body felt good against his own. He caught the slightest scent of lemons and flowers that rose from her hair. He felt at peace, and yet felt a need for more. Without thinking, his hand left her shoulder and rose to her hair—and stopped in midair, before he’d touched one silken lock of it. His thin black brows lifted as he looked down at the sleeping woman. He’d surprised himself.

Daffyd carefully placed his hand back on Meg’s shoulder, exactly where it had been. He sat quietly, and thought hard.

He wanted her, perhaps more than he’d wanted a female in a long time, and he knew he could have her. That was plain. He’d been teasing her with words, but he knew that was no way to seduce a woman. Words and glances set the stage. Still, the only way to seduce a woman was with touch, and he already knew what his touch did to her, and to himself. He could have her in his bed this very night.

All he had to do was to wake her, place a feathery kiss on her ear, angle his mouth along her soft neck, and whisper soft reassurances as her eyelids fluttered open. While she was still dozy and warm and re
laxed, as her lips opened to ask where she was, he could kiss her mouth, deeply, sweetly, and thoroughly. She would rise to him. He didn’t even have to take her here, where they sat, though he could. He could put his arms around her and ease her upstairs. He could slowly talk her up the stairs to his room and have her in a wide, clean bed, and show her what pleasure really was, and take his time about it, too.

She already wanted to make love to him. He had only to let her pretend she was still dreaming. Women liked to pretend, that was what seduction was all about. While her defenses were down, he could take her to his bed and have her, and it would be good.

But it would be cruel. With all he was, he tried never to be that. He’d seen enough of cruelty. It would be wrong because she was a one-man woman. And he wasn’t that man.

He was a wild gypsy lad, cursed for it in every land he’d ever set foot in. The gypsies didn’t want him because he was a bastard of the nobility. The nobility had too many bastards to concern themselves with. He was a Rom and a bastard and a convicted felon and he’d learned that the world considered him useless to everyone but himself.

But he’d also had the incredible luck to live until this hour. Not all of it had been bad. He’d experienced love, or what passed for it among strangers. In fact, he’d known more women than this woman in his arms did, and he’d known most of them carnally. That was because he knew how to get by in hard
times, how to take every chance and seize every opportunity. He reasoned that was both the gypsy and the aristocrat in him. Both types only cared for their own, and both had only one aim: to survive. So much as he hated his heritage, he admitted it had kept him alive. He was awake on every suit, and proud of it. He knew a lot.

But he didn’t know if he could ever be faithful to one woman. He certainly didn’t know if any woman could ever be faithful to him. And for a lifetime? He thought it might be possible for some folk. As for himself? He didn’t know, and with all he’d done, he wasn’t willing to find out.

He’d had enough of pain. He’d told her only the truth: He meant to live life lightly from now on.

So he looked down at the sweet, dreaming woman in his arms and accepted that whatever became of her, his part in her life would soon be over. And that it would be better that way for him, and certainly for her.

Then Daffyd laid his head back against the settee, planning how to help her one last time, and then move on.

But from time to time, he sighed.

“T
he sun’s out, the road’s dry and hard. The horses are rested and restive. So am I!” Daffyd called from outside Meg’s bedchamber door. “Up and out. The hunt is on!”

Meg shot upright in bed and blinked at the sunlight poking through the cracks in the shutters. The last thing she remembered was Daffyd waking her, putting an arm around her, and walking her up the stairs to her bedchamber. No, she thought, with a groan, the last thing she remembered was standing in the hallway outside this room, swaying with weariness, suddenly cold, seeking the warmth she’d felt as she’d dozed beside him downstairs. She’d shivered, and looked up into his dark, dark eyes, hoping he’d take her in both arms and stay the night with her.

He’d looked down at her. Though she’d been fast asleep moments before, she’d suddenly realized she’d never been so awake in her life. She waited.

She’d waited in vain. He’d touched a finger to her nose. “I see you’ve heard the gossip,” he’d said with a laugh. “But don’t be fooled. I’m not that easy. I have a reputation to uphold—yours. Go to bed,” he’d said, opened her door, and pushed her into the bedchamber. Alone.

Now, she remembered, and her head flopped back down against the pillow. She’d acted on mad impulse. He’d turned her down and she was very glad—and strangely sad.

“Up, up, up!” Daffyd caroled from the hallway. “Its half past dawn. I let you sleep in ’til the sun rose. I’m down to breakfast. If you want to ride on an empty stomach, fine. I don’t. I leave in a half hour either way.”

She heard his boot steps fading away. Meg scrambled from bed. He was right about the night and what it magnified. He just neglected to mention that it also increased desire and set a woman’s body to burning as though a magnifying glass were being held to her heart—and nether regions.

But what she’d wanted in the night had nothing to do with what she had to do today. She looked for the chamber pot and the washbasin, saw them, and popped up out of bed, ready to set about making herself ready to go downstairs.

She hesitated.

She’d see Daffyd by daylight, and maybe see the
knowledge of exactly what she’d wanted to do last night in his eyes. Strangely though, she realized she wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed of her nighttime longings. Because she knew that if anyone understood them, it would be Daffyd. She began to dress.

“Are we almost there?” Meg asked again as Daffyd tooled down the road toward the sea in the curricle he’d hired. She could smell a briny scent on the air now, from where she sat on the high driver seat. She hoped that the next turn in the road would show her the ocean and the port city where silly Rosie had landed at last.

“Soon,” Daffyd said, as he turned the team around another corner.

Meg had to hang on to her bonnet, and her seat, but she pitched herself to the motion of the carriage and didn’t lose her place or her breakfast as they turned. They were going at breakneck speed. She wasn’t worried. “You drive well,” she said with approval, when she got her breath back.

He glanced at her and grinned. “So that’s why you stopped screeching. You like it now.”

“I never screeched. I merely gasped.”

“Sang like a bird,” he said. “It inspired me. But that’s the thing about new experiences. If they’re any fun they scare you to death at first, yet if you survive you can get to enjoy anything.”

“Speed is exhilarating,” she said.

“And necessary. It’s a fine day with a snapping wind blowing out to sea. I’ll wager there are a lot of
packets setting off today. We want to get there before they do. Ah,” he said, and pointed with the whip. “There it is, there we are. Won’t be long now.”

Meg held her breath. As they came down the hill the turn showed her a glimpse of the city below. There was a long stretch of coastline and a dizzying array of topmasts and sails crowding the harbor.

“So many boats!” she groaned. “How will we ever find her?”

“Half the ships are fishermen or navy,” Daffyd said. “She won’t be there. Almost another half are traders, bringing goods in and out. The big ones wallowing in port are those that come and go with passengers as well as cargo. There are fewer of them. I know their names, and their destinations.”

Meg’s spirits still sank. “And how do we know she’s even here?”

“Late in the day to ask that,” he said, as he turned another corner. “But this is where I was told they’re heading for. It’s a seaport for the long haul, with ships heading to the New World: the Americas and Canada.”

Meg sighed. “Canada? I remember when Rosie used to talk about the Canadian wilds all the time. They entranced her for a while. She would pick up books when a subject fascinated her, and Canada fascinated her. I couldn’t get her mind off the subject. She read tales about the Canadian wilderness and learned more about bears and beavers and fur trapping than she ever did her French or watercolors.”

Daffyd slowed the team and turned his head to look at her. “When was this?”

Meg shrugged. “Last Christmas. It was because of Thomas Rackham, her poor fiancé. It was one of his many enthusiasms. He was always getting her fired up with his mad schemes to get rich. The autumn before, all he could talk about was the Caribbean. He wanted to go there with her after they married. He kept talking about the sugar plantation they’d buy and manage until they were richer than anyone they knew. Rosie waltzed around the house for weeks talking about nothing but the tropical fruits and hibiscus and flowers big as horse’s heads that she’d have in her garden when she went there. Of course her parents were appalled at the thought of her so far away. Thomas’s parents were, too, so the idea was squashed.

“Then it was India and emeralds big as elephant’s eyes, or rubies big as elephant’s ears, I forget which, that the pair were prattling about. You can imagine the parents’ reaction to that! They lectured about wars, savages, and fever, and threatened to disinherit the pair of them, even end the engagement if they didn’t come to their senses. That put an end to any Indian adventure before it got further than a few books, maps, and globes.

“Then Thomas was off on his new tangent. All he talked about was a friend of his who went to Canada to make a fortune in rare pelts. Rosie caught fire about that, too. Whether it was the Orient or the North, they spoke about it with the same enthusiasm,
as though they expected jewels in the streets and fur pelts laying themselves down on their doorstep.”

Meg smiled sadly. “Thomas is a charmer, but the despair of his parents. They wanted him to settle down and look after the little estate his uncle left him, but he was always on about making a real fortune, going abroad and returning a nabob. Rosie played his games, planning fabulous futures as though she believed him. But it must have gotten tiresome. No wonder she finally got weary of him and ran off with…”

She blinked, and then stared at Daffyd. “…Or did she? But to Canada?
No!
You don’t think…?”

“I think,” he said, as he raised the whip and set the horses flying, “that you might have remembered this a few weeks ago.”

“But she was seen with a redheaded man….”

“And a dark-haired one,” Daffyd said grimly, “and a blond. And a man with a big hat. Whenever she was seen with the fellow, whatever wig he had on his noggin, she was always giggling and having a high old time. Like a pair of good old friends as much as lovers, my cousins reported. Did she ever look at another lad before? Did she seem like the type who would get so comfortable with a new man so fast?”

Meg shook her head. “No,” she said. “But the reports of Thomas following the pair, riding like a fury?”

“I expect he thought it was a great lark, stowing her at an inn, doubling back and following his own
trail partway, before returning to her in disguise again. They probably laughed for hours after.”

Meg waited a long moment and then asked, with sinking heart, “So you always thought it was Thomas?”

He nodded. “Seemed likely. Now this flit to Plymouth and a boat to the New World makes a lot more sense. Those who knew the lad said he was a wild man with high imagination, so a midnight dash to the Continent would have been in keeping with his personality. But he didn’t go to Dover, he kept heading south and west. I was puzzled. Now, I know why.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t think to tell you, I didn’t know it was important, I…”

“How could you have known? You trusted her. It doesn’t matter. We’re here now, or almost.”

Meg sighed. “So, at least it looks as though she’s not a light-minded cheat. That’s a great relief to me. I didn’t really think she was, at least, I couldn’t believe it. She’s not a bad girl, just willful. The way she sees it she’s only trying to make her own destiny, with her own true love. I can understand, even if her parents didn’t. In fact, I sympathized. I thought we were friends as well as companions. I know that’s nonsense, I was being paid to watch over her.

“But we’re not that far apart in age. It’s true I liked to read, and she liked to talk, and we didn’t share much, but we did share laughter, sometimes, and…How could I have been so wrong? She knew I liked
Thomas. Why didn’t she trust me, why couldn’t she tell me?”

“Why? Because you’re a nice, decent, law-abiding, moral female with a strong sense of responsibility. She knew that, as well as the fact that you
were
being paid to watch over her. I doubt she ever forgot it. The upper classes seldom befriend those beneath them, though they claim to when they have to. I suppose I’m being unfair. No, I know I am. But I often am. I’m sure you’ve noticed.” He glanced over to see if he’d won a grin.

He hadn’t, so he went on, “Anyway, I’ll bet your Rosie didn’t say anything because she knew you worried about her, with good cause. Of course you’d have told her parents.”

Meg was still. Then she asked, in a little voice. “I suppose I would have. It would have been the right thing to do.” She hesitated. “Would that have been so wrong?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Yes. And no. It was your job. You’re the type who does her job. It doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t, you’d have been in just as much trouble as you are now—maybe more. What was wrongest was that she didn’t think to leave a note absolving you of blame.”

He saw Meg’s downcast eyes and added, “Stop blaming yourself. No matter how much she talked about foreign travels you couldn’t have known she’d fly off in disguise, because you
are
moral and decent. It isn’t a thing you’d have done.”

“But I did,” she said so quietly he almost didn’t
hear her above the sound of the horses and the spinning carriage wheels.

“No,” he said, when he understood what she’d murmured. “You chased her to save her. That’s different.”

“To save myself,” she said on a sniffle.

“You’re so good at blaming yourself, you leave no room for anyone else to do it. It
is
different. You had to find her. She didn’t have to run away. You were earning a livelihood. She wanted adventure, pure and simple. You run for your supper, she’s off on a lark. The worse thing is that she could get into trouble. So you were right to follow her, for whatever reason.

“Pelts don’t lay in the street,” he said, almost angrily. “They grow on wild animals that want to keep wearing them. Canada’s a wilderness, and she sounds like the type who can’t fend for herself in her back garden. Her man’s a boy who acts without thinking. But luck favors lovers as much as the stupid, so she might come out of it without harm. She’ll wind up married to the lad, if she isn’t already. It’s what her parents wanted, and maybe he can protect her, at that. He planned their escape well enough. But I don’t trust in a mad young boy’s schemes,” he said grimly. “And I don’t bank on luck. So let’s try to get to them in time to give luck a hand.”

Meg watched the scenery fly by as they went hurtling down a long curved road that led to the port of Plymouth.

Meg had been in fishing villages, visited the riverside in London many a time, and once gone to the Billingsgate Market, just to see what it was like. Nothing prepared her for the docks of Plymouth.

It was a city of seafarers. There were men from every land striding along the wooden boardwalks by the sea, or pushing their way through the throngs. There were men of every color and complexion. Meg saw smart naval officers and trim young ensigns, as well as common sailors of all stripes. There were men with beards and long hair, men with more tattoos than teeth, men with bright kerchiefs on their heads who looked like pirates, and boys running messages from the shipping offices to the ships at dock. There were gentlemen, too, along with dock-workers and sailors.

A few women, and those few obviously women of business, could be seen bearing baskets, dealing in mysterious stocks or trades. And of course, there were prostitutes, easily recognized by day or night. Only a few respectable-looking females, surrounded by their servants, could be glimpsed as they hurried to or from the ship’s offices or the tall ships at dock.

Daffyd paused and squinted up at the sun. He held a paper in his hand. “Here’s today’s docket. We’ll play the odds and search the ships bound for North America first. There are a lot leaving, trying to avoid the autumn storms. The
Doris
is off to Nova Scotia at the turn of the tide.
Mother’s Love
sails for Mary
land, and
Black Jack’s Dream
is sailing to New York. And no,” he said, seeing her expression, “the names mean nothing, no more than in horse racing. We decide by time of departure and destination. The
Wild Rose
is due to leave for Boston later in the day, so we’ll see it last. First we visit the shipping offices and have a look at the manifests. Then, and only if we must, we board a ship and have a look ’round.”

He saw her expression, and added, “No sane man steps aboard a vessel, even in time of peace, without either a ticket to go and return, or a mighty good reason to risk boarding. England still impresses her navy. America is still not entirely thrilled with Englishmen. Eighteen twelve wasn’t that long ago. And too many merchant vessels need able-bodied crewmen and don’t care much if they come aboard willing or not.