Eloisa James (2 page)

Two

Two years later

December 1829

On the way to Ryburn House

C
olin Barry, the eldest son of Sir Griffin Barry—but not heir to his father’s title, as he’d joined the family by way of adoption—was absurdly pleased to be home for Christmas. Although in point of fact he wasn’t headed home; after leaving his ship, he had picked up his brother Fred at Eton and they were on their way to the country house of the Duke of Ashbrook.

He hadn’t been in England in more than a year; he’d been at sea, fighting the wind and the waves, wearing the uniform of the Royal Navy. His father had taught him everything he knew about sailing, and inasmuch as Sir Griffin had been a notorious pirate—before he became an equally notorious justice of the peace—Colin had an unfair advantage over other young men his age. Those lessons explained why he was carrying with him a commission from His Majesty’s navy stating that Mr. Colin Barry, midshipman, had received a commendation from Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn.

Colin saw that commendation as an expected step on the way to being the youngest captain ever to be given his own ship in the Royal Navy. He had a burning wish to make his father proud, and since he knew perfectly well that his mother would never allow him to become a pirate, a naval captain was next best.

“How are all the Ryburns?” he asked Fred.

Fred shrugged. “Grace and Lily are fine. The twins are still in the nursery.”

“How is the terror herself, Lily?” Last time he’d seen her, she’d been an eight-year-old with the temper of a young devil. Her own mother nicknamed her The Horror. Of course, that had been two years ago.

“Annoying,” Fred said shortly. “She thinks she’s grown up and she acts like a romp. Grace is much better.”

It was hard to imagine Lily becoming a young lady. Whenever he thought of her he got a little lurch in his stomach, remembering the frogspawn she’d tricked him into eating. Not to mention the toad she put in his bed a few days later.

“Oh!” Fred said, looking up. “One thing did happen. Grace almost died; did Mother write you about it?”

Colin frowned. “She mentioned an illness, but I didn’t realize Grace was truly in danger.”

“Something is wrong with her lungs.” Fred looked away, out the window. “I hate that.”

“I’m sorry,” Colin said gently. “Will she get better?”

“Of course she will!” Fred scowled at him and bent his head back over his book. “I have to learn this Greek.”

Colin nodded, not that his brother noticed. There were five siblings in his family: himself, Margaret, Alastair, Sophie, and Fred. Given the four in the Ryburn family—Grace, Lily, Cressida, and Brandon—nine children had tumbled about together for large stretches of his childhood. To lose one would be inconceivable.

Lily was the loudest and the naughtiest Ryburn, which made it all the more unexpected when they were greeted by a charming young lady, who curtsied with a sprightliness that made her perfectly groomed curls bob around her shoulders, and generally behaved like the daughter of a duke. Even so, Fred regarded her with a healthy skepticism, and Colin felt a bit wary himself. There was something about Lily’s smile—no matter how charming—that suggested she was enjoying her own performance.

“My poor darling Grace is closed up in the nursery, which is
such
an insult for a young lady of twelve,” the duchess said, after a few minutes. “You did hear that she’s been ill?”

“I was very sorry to learn that,” Colin said. “I hope she’s feeling better.”

“She’s much improved. We may take her to Spain after Christmas to see if sunshine might help her turn the corner. Do go and see her. Grace always loves news of you.”

“In the nursery, you said?” Colin felt rather sick at the thought. Grace was the quietest of the ducal progeny, but he hated to think of her confined to bed.

He climbed the stairs as Lily’s giggles drifted from the sitting room behind him, punctuated by the duchess’s laughter. A moment later he poked his head around the nursery door. Grace was sitting up in bed, her vivid red hair in a braid. Her fingers looked very delicate, holding a book.

Colin froze. It was the one thing he hated about being in the navy: the fact that people died. Not just men on his ship, but the enemy as well. He was haunted at night by images of a man he’d shot falling into the waves, and of a man on fire after the mainsail had broken out in flames.

He shook himself. Grace was not dying. She had improved. The duchess said so.

She looked up. “Colin!” Her face lit up. “I’m so happy you’re back safely!”

He walked over to her, and sat down at her bedside. “Poor Grace! You’ve grown as thin as a pennywhistle.” He took her hand, which was as white as her face. His heart was thudding in his ribs. He had hated learning lessons about death at sea; it was even worse to encounter that threat at home.

“I’ll be better in no time. Mother and I are going to travel to Spain after Christmas. What about you? Have cannonballs been whizzing past your ears?” Her hand tightened on his. “We worry about you so.”

“A cannonball did hit my ship last month,” he admitted.

“That must have been awful.”

He looked down at her fingers against his sun-darkened skin. “It was, rather. I don’t like to think of you almost dying, Grace. No more of that.”

“I don’t intend to die,” she replied, with the kind of quiet dignity that characterized her.

Colin studied her face for a moment and then smiled. She had a little pointed chin and huge gray eyes; she looked a bit like an elf. “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Grace turned up her nose. “I’m a young lady, so you mustn’t ask that sort of thing.”

“You’re twelve,” Colin said, remembering. “My goodness, by the time I next have leave, you’ll probably be dancing your way through your first season.”

She shook her head. “It’s years away, and you must come home sooner than that. Besides, I hate dancing.”

“It’s impossible to imagine a young lady who hates dancing,” he said teasingly, adding, “though in truth, so do I.”

“I prefer to paint. I’ve had to spend a great deal of time in bed, so Mother bought me some proper watercolors.” She reached to the side and handed him a sketchbook.

Colin opened it and found himself quite startled. Grace’s paintings weren’t the sort of ham-handed jumbles that he and Margaret had created at the same age. The first page held a vivid painting of a lop-eared dog. The paws weren’t quite right, but he would have recognized that dog anywhere, simply by the look on her face. “Old Bessie,” he said. “Mother wrote me that she’d passed away.”

“We buried her under the flagstones by the buttery,” Grace said. “That’s where she liked to sleep, in the sun.”

Colin turned the page and discovered a portrait of a young maid, and then a window with clouds visible in the sky beyond, and finally an apple just on the verge of turning soft. “I think you’re brilliant,” he said, meaning every word. “I could never do anything approaching this.”

She beamed at him, and her smile was so beautiful that Colin blinked. Grace generally stayed in Lily’s shadow, and to be honest, he hardly thought about her. But now he realized that Fred could be right: Grace might well be the more interesting of the two sisters.

The thought made him uncomfortable. She was a twelve-year-old girl, for heaven’s sake. And he was eighteen, a grown man. He rose to his feet and bowed, picking up her hand and kissing the back of it.

“Lady Grace, I hope you are entirely recovered very soon.”

Her eyes grew round. She had extraordinary eyelashes, as thick a fringe as he’d ever seen.

“Oh!” she said, pulling her hand away quickly. “I expect I shall.”

Colin got out of the room feeling rather queer. He was the eldest child in the Griffin family, and he had watched as his own siblings and the duke’s babies arrived. They were all
family
, nothing more than that.

It was just odd to think of Grace and Lily growing up, that was all.

Three

Two more years have passed

December 1831

Ryburn House

The Duke of Ashbrook’s country estate

T
he year Grace turned fourteen, Colin walked through the door in a uniform, and her heart gave one big thump and never beat exactly the same way again. He had grown even taller. His shoulders were very wide, and his cheekbones much more pronounced.

Her family flew from their chairs and everyone clustered around, exclaiming at the fact he’d been made a lieutenant. Grace didn’t quite dare join them, but all day she secretly watched him whenever they were in a room together. When her mother declared that she was old enough to join the adults at supper, Grace walked down the stairs white with excitement.

Sir Griffin happened to be in the entry, and he looked up at Grace and then smiled. He was a justice of the peace, and Papa had been trying all morning to talk him into running for Parliament, before his father died and Sir Griffin had to take up his seat in the House of Lords.

But she didn’t think he would run for Parliament; he liked going to court half the day and then playing with his children or sweeping his wife off for a private talk. She loved her own mama and papa dearly, but they were busy all day long.

Now Sir Griffin waited until she reached the bottom step and said, “Lady Grace, you are exquisite. How did you manage to grow up while my back was turned?”

Grace dropped into a deep curtsy and smiled at him. “I am not quite grown up yet.”

He offered his arm. “Your mother showed me the painting of Fred in which you caught his snub nose perfectly. I think you show a positive genius with a brush.”

Sir Griffin sat her beside Colin, stopping to ruffle his oldest son’s hair, just as if he were eleven instead of twenty. “Why don’t you do a portrait of this ruffian, Grace? It would give us something to swear at when he decides to visit the fleshpots of Europe rather than return home where he belongs.”

Grace had no idea what “fleshpots” were, but they didn’t sound very nice.

“I’d love to have you paint my picture,” Colin said cheerfully as she sat down beside him. “As long as you don’t bring along that naughty little sister of yours.”

“I tried to paint her portrait last week, but she wouldn’t sit still long enough.”

Colin laughed. “Lily is like a sprite, isn’t she? Flying on to whatever mischief she can make next.”

Grace could have sorted him out regarding Lily. She wasn’t nearly as interested in mischief as his own brother Fred was, for example. She was just high-spirited. Papa said he was planning to move to Scotland when she came of age. Mama said that Lily was just like her father.

Deep in her soul, Grace resented the fact that everyone talked about Lily all the time. “I rode my first steeplechase,” she told Colin, ignoring his foolish comment about sprites: Lily couldn’t fly. And she was even worse at riding than Grace was.

“That’s brilliant! Any luck?”

She shook her head. She’d fallen off after about ten minutes, and had been taken home by a groom. “So is it fun being at sea?”

“Fun?”

“Yes, fun,” she prompted. “You always said that the best thing in the world would be to go to sea and never step foot on the shore again. So I was wondering whether it is as much fun as you thought it would be.”

“There are moments that are great fun,” Colin said slowly, then stopped because his mother asked him something from his left.

“Which moments?” Grace asked, when that conversation was over, and she had his attention once more.

“There’s nothing better than being chased by a storm. It howls up behind you, and it takes everything you’ve got to outwit it.”

Grace could almost imagine it because of paintings she’d seen in the National Gallery. “Isn’t it wet and cold? Aren’t you afraid?”

“Storms are not always cold. If you’re in the Tropics, the water can be warm as your bath, but even so a storm can whip it up so that it froths like cream.”

“I shouldn’t like that.”

“You might surprise yourself. There’s a wonderful burst of excitement that comes from skimming before a wind that’s going faster than even the swiftest bird can fly.”

Grace shook her head. “I don’t care for excitement.”

“You don’t, do you? It’s Lily who inherited the pirate sensibility.”

Lily again. Grace was tired of hearing about Lily.

“What parts are not as much fun?” she asked.

His eyes darkened a little, the periwinkle blue going navy. Like seawater in a storm, she thought, or her father’s favorite waistcoat. Her father liked somber colors, though her mother always tried to put him in magnificent purples.

“Oh, you don’t want to hear about that.”

Grace sat up a little straighter and gave him a polite smile. She was her mother’s daughter and had excellent manners. She knew that one never argued at the table. “I do wish to hear about that,” she pointed out. “Otherwise I would not have asked.”

Colin grinned at her. “Do you always mean precisely what you say?”

“Yes.” Grace didn’t have a gift for fibbing. She was fascinated by the way people tried to hide their thoughts. More than anything, she liked watching the secrets people had in their faces. But she knew perfectly well that she didn’t have any secrets herself, and no ability to hide them if she did. “Do tell me what you don’t like about being at sea.”

“Sometimes it feels as if the ship has fallen out from under your feet, and you suddenly realize the water beneath you is fathoms deep: I don’t like those moments.”

Grace shivered. “I wouldn’t, either. Especially because that water is full of fish who would like to eat you.”

“Not all of them,” Colin said. Then he told her about fish that had lights on their noses, and eels whose tails whipped the water so it looked as if a current went through it.

But Grace was nothing if not tenacious. “What else don’t you like about being at sea?” she asked, some time later.

Colin’s smile went crooked. “You never give up, do you?”

“Why should I?” Grace asked. “If I want to know something, I mean?”

“Right you are,” he muttered. “Well, I have to say that I don’t like fighting. And that’s a problem because I’m in the navy, and the navy is all about fighting.”

“Do you fight with swords?”

“Mostly with guns.” His face closed shut and his eyes went the color of the ocean at night, not blue but black.

“When you are fighting, do you wish that you were home instead?”

“There’s no time for it, not in the middle of a sea battle.” He stopped but then he added, “After, when we’re cleaning up from the fight, I want nothing more than to watch Fred and Lily misbehaving, or see my father and yours behaving like idiots at the dinner table.”

“Idiots?” Grace frowned at him. “Papa is never
an idiot. Don’t you have maids to clean up for you on board ship?”

“No,” Colin said. “There are no maids in the navy, Grace.”

“I could write you a letter now and then,” she offered. “If I knew where to send it, that is. I can describe to you what’s happening at home so that you can picture it, even if you are washing the deck.”

A faint smile touched his lips. “I would love any letter that you would write me. If your father forwarded it to the Admiralty, they would send it on to me in a dispatch.”

And that was how Lady Grace Ryburn began writing to Colin Barry, Lieutenant. Her first letter was quite short, and included a frank truth: “I hate Lily. Last night she cut off the fingers of my favorite pair of gloves because she thought it was funny.”

Colin wrote a note back, saying that he’d had a rotten week, and her letter about the gloves made him laugh.

So Grace started trying to find stories that might make him laugh in the midst of the worst days. She described her brother taking all of their father’s neck cloths and turning them into sails for toy boats. She wrote when the chickens escaped and perched on the housekeeper’s clean linens. She even put in a little watercolor of a hen roosting on a sheet.

She told him the plots of plays they saw in London, and what their governess said about them. Once she even wrote down an entire song that Lily learned in German, sending it along with an ink drawing of Lily singing with an agonized expression.

In fact, she found herself writing about Lily quite a lot. Lily
was
funny. Besides, no matter how much Grace resented her sister, she loved her even more. Grace tried to make her own life sound as interesting, but it wasn’t.

At some point, she began painting very, very small portraits (because she had to make them fit between the folds of a sheet of pressed paper), and many of them were of Lily, too.

Mostly, Colin didn’t write back, but when he did, he always thanked her, and he always asked what Lily had got up to lately.

By two years later, Colin hadn’t managed to return to England, but Grace was still writing to him twice a month.

Both families got used to asking Grace how Colin was doing, and after a while she began forwarding his letters to Sir Griffin and Lady Barry. Colin was not communicative, it seemed. The occasional letters he sent to Grace were the only ones he wrote at all.

“He has a best friend,” she told them all one December. “His name is Philip Drummond and he’s a lieutenant as well. Colin says that Philip is a better sailor than he is.”

And the following August: “He and Philip are assigned to the West Africa Squadron. Their ship is trying to protect people from being stolen from Africa. He says slavers fight like demons when they’re caught.”

“He’s a chip off the old block,” her father said, smiling at Sir Griffin and raising his glass. “You raised a good man, Coz.”

But Grace remembered how much Colin hated fighting, and didn’t care whether Colin was good or not; she just wished he could come home.