For the Love of a Pirate (2 page)

“So it is,” Constantine said. “Here to congratulate me, are you?”

“Aye, with a letter from my man-at-law! And my pistol, if need be.”

“Why?” Constantine asked with fascination.

“Because, you dog, you're already engaged—to my granddaughter!” the fellow shouted.

The goblet of brandy hit the floor after falling from Constantine's suddenly numb fingers. “Oh, dear,” he said a second later. “And it was the last of the '49 too. Want to tell me that again?”

Constantine pressed his fingers to his forehead. The ache he felt had nothing to do with how much he had drunk this night. He simply couldn't believe his own eyes or ears. He sat still and waited. His strange visitor said nothing. This gave him a feeble random hope that what he had seen had been some sort of visitation, rather than a human visitor. A visitation brought on by too much liquor and the lateness of the hour. He hoped and half believed that when he opened his eyes again, his weird visitor would be gone, vanished with the growing light. It was, after all, by his reckonings, not far to dawn.

The room had been quiet since his bizarre guest had stopped telling his bizarre story. Constantine didn't accept it. It was easier to believe the captain was something brought on by mixing ale, wine, and good whisky.

He opened his eyes. And didn't see anything in his study that shouldn't have been there. He sighed. It had only been a terrifying dream, after all. But he
had
been drinking too much, and decided to remain more sober now.

“You keep a good cellar,” a deep voice boomed from behind him. “That much I give you, lad.”

Constantine closed his eyes again. “Thank you,” he said carefully. “Now, as I understand it, to recapitulate, you're saying that my father and your son were bosom friends?”

“Don't know about that,” Captain Bigod said. “Know they were close as thieves, which is what they were then. Not an ounce of harm in either of them, mind. Just young rapscallions, looking for adventures in all the right places.”

“If they were shot in commission of their crime, I should not call that the right place,” Constantine said.

“Nay, what they were after, they got,” the captain said, his voice thick and deep, sounding like a bass organ playing a dirge. “What could be righter than that? I was fair demolished, I can tell you. My Jeremy was a fine lad; handsome as he could stare, full of old Nick, and good to his father and every female he ever met.” He sighed. “I liked your father too. And wasn't your ma a fine piece of mischief? My boy swore he'd have married her had your father not clapped eyes on her first. Always one to play fair, was my Jeremy. But she died soon after they did. Pined away, I think, aye, that's what I think it was. For she loved them both, although in different ways, mind. Nothing shady about your mam, and that's a fact.”

Constantine nodded absently, until he realized how much that hurt his head. He had never met his mother or his father. “I see. Now, to be sure I have it all,” he said slowly. “You say that my father, Constantine Roger Wylde, Lord Wylde, was a good friend to your son, Jack Bigod. And that they both met my mother at the same time, at a soiree, but it was my father who won her hand?”

“Aye, but I think that . . .” the captain said, wagging a sausage-sized finger. “Not meaning no harm to your father's memory, but I think that was only because my Jeremy bowed out when he saw where your father's heart was. Now your father was a handsome lad; you're the spit and image of him, by the way. But my Jeremy was a taking fellow too, glib as he was bonny, and a treat for the ladies. Still, he had morals, and wouldn't graze in someone else's pastures, especially not when he saw how the wind blew. Your father was daft about her.”

“Yes,” Constantine said wearily. “And then, you say, the two of them took to the road together.” He cleared his throat. “As highwaymen.”

“Straight truth,” the captain said. “My Jeremy was up to every rig. Gave him an education, which is where he met your father, at school. But his learning didn't slow him down; it just gave him better ideas. He loved to run rigs. He loved laughter more than money. He rode a horse up a staircase in a noble house, for starters. Why, I could write a book about what he did with horses. He once painted one, to addle its owner. He rode to the hounds, after he trailed three foxes in different directions. That was a scene. He once moved a cow into a stable, after moving a fine-blooded horse out, and bragged about the look on the face of the toplofty fellow who owned it when he saw a cow instead of his prime blood there.”

The captain wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.

“Ah, he carried on one way or another, all the time,” he said in happy remembrance. “That was what attracted your father. See, your grandfather had the raising of your father, and as I heared it, he was a prosy old fellow. Not an ounce of life in him. And stupid, to boot, because if you give a young lad his head, he'll find his feet soon enough. But no, he couldn't back off. He sermonized and moralized, and then when he heard about how your father was living, cut him off without a penny. It only made your father more eager to get rich and rub his father's nose in it. It was the tight purse strings that set him on the high Toby in the first place.”

“I see. That was what set your son on that road as well?” Constantine asked.

“Nay,” the captain said sadly. “I gave him money enough. Pure deviltry was what sent my Jeremy out with his pistols at midnight. He loved the risk, and knew his friend needed the gold, so he was glad to ride out with him to demand that travelers stand and deliver. I didn't know about it, or I'd have knocked his head off for him. But he got it shot off before I could,” he added sadly.

“So my grandfather was no more wrong in his treatment of his son than you were,” Constantine said.

“Well, if you want to look at it that way,” the captain conceded. “But my Jeremy loved me, and your father couldn't stand in the same room as your grandfather.”

Constantine was silent. He remembered his grandfather too well. The old gentleman had been a model of rectitude and a pillar of Society. And he had terrified his servants, his community, and his only grandson. But then, Constantine had only been five when the old man died. He had never discussed his dead son. But Constantine's uncle had.

“My uncle,” Constantine said carefully, “always told me that my father died a hero, while he was in the service of His Majesty, on the Continent.”

“Hard to do when he was cashiered out of the army, lad. For gambling. Well, not so much for gambling as for cheating. Well, not so much cheating as shaving the cards, because he thought it fun to run a rig. But you can't, not with gents, not when you're gambling, y'see.”

Constantine closed his eyes again. “You can prove that?”

“Aye,” the captain said. “He'd been quit of His Majesty's service for two years when he was felled.”

“By the pistol of a disgruntled traveler who refused to give up his purse,” Constantine said woodenly.

“Aye. The lads didn't know that the guards on that coach had been warned about them. A sad day. My Jeremy wept for a month, and he wasn't a soft man.”

Constantine's head came up. “Your son didn't die when my father did?”

“Oh, nay,” the captain said in surprise. “He got winged, but got away, though he had to wear a sling for weeks. But he lived to go to your poor father's funeral. Nay, my Jeremy died later, at the hands of a jealous husband. Well, but if that bastard hadn't of killed him, his wife would of done it when she found out he had a few other women on the side. So he was dished either way. Your father was betwixt a rock and hard place where money was concerned. Too proud to take a loan from my boy, and my lad too full of devilment not to join him on the high Toby out of friendship.”

“And you say I'm betrothed to your orphaned granddaughter because my father and your son signed a pact saying that if your son ever had a daughter, I'd marry her?”

“Signed in blood,” the captain said proudly.

“May I see it?”

“Aha!” the captain said craftily, wagging a finger “And wouldn't I be the fool for carrying it here, to you, where you could read it and then throw it in the fire—over my dead body, of course,” he added.

“And the fact that my father was a nobleman, and your granddaughter obviously is not of noble blood, didn't matter to my father?”

“Ha,” the captain said without humor. “We ain't so highly placed as you, but if you rattle our family tree, it would rain barons and lords down on your head. Some of us are wanderers, some are gents, but the name is a good one and the fortune's solid. My son went to the same school as your father, with all the nobs. That's when they partnered up.”

Constantine slowly rose from his chair. “I'm sorry,” he said. “It might have been amusing to see the document, at least. But I thank you for a most entertaining evening anyway. A stranger tale I have never heard, quite gothic. I don't believe a word of it. Even if I did, that pact, signed in blood, or spit, or ink, wouldn't stand up in any court of law.”

“Maybe not,” the captain said, scratching his beard. “But it would certainly get the world's attention.”

Constantine sat down again.

“Why didn't you come to see me before this?” he asked slowly.

“Well, first my girl was too young. Then, I figured you were biding your time. Then I saw that announcement and knew you'd left her in the lurch.”

“There was no lurch to leave her in,” Constantine said. “Again, I didn't know any of this. I still don't. I don't believe it.”

The captain shrugged. “Don't blame you. Tell you what. You go see your uncle and ask him. He knows.”

Constantine's eyes widened. “My uncle Horatio knows?”

“Aye. Of course he does. He had the raising of you, didn't he? Your grandfather knew too. Everybody did, seems to me, but you.”

“I'll go to my uncle and speak with him,” Constantine said.

“Aye, that's the ticket, lad. He knows all. Then, come to us.”

Constantine frowned as another unbelievable and horrible thought occurred to him. “Why would your granddaughter want to marry a stranger?” he asked.

“Because she's a good girl, and does as I tell her. I had the raising of her, y'see.”

Constantine felt a chill just imagining this man's granddaughter, a woman willing to marry an utter stranger. No, she had to be a woman who was of age, who hadn't married yet and was desperate enough to marry an utter stranger.

“I'll discover what I can,” Constantine said stiffly. “And act accordingly.”

“That's all I ask,” the captain said piously.

Constantine meant it, he would discover all. Tonight, he was tired, shocked, and incredulous. But one thing he knew. There was no way on earth he'd agree to the mad captain's bizarre scheme, or honor his long-dead father's idiotic pact, if indeed he'd ever made one.

Still, there was a lot of smoke, and even if there were only a little fire causing it, it would be best to put it out before any hint of it came to his fiancée's nose. Or the
ton
's ears. Or to his own, ever again.

I
t was growing dark, it was getting late, and a thick dank fog was rolling in from the nearby sea, covering the setting sun. Constantine was annoyed, damp, cold, and angry. He couldn't blame anyone for the filthy weather, he couldn't blame his lead horse for casting a shoe a few miles back, he couldn't really hold anyone responsible for the fact that there wasn't a decent inn, or an indecent one, for that matter, for miles along this lonely road.

So he blamed Captain Bigod for the mission that had sent him careering out of London as if his tail were on fire. He also blamed his uncle for being unable to refute the bizarre story, having kept it a secret in order to hide the disgrace. And he definitely blamed the unknown woman who was trying to hold him to his dead father's idiotic scheme. He'd always worshiped the idea of his father, because he couldn't remember the man. Now, he positively disliked him, and his feelings of disloyalty matched his disappointment. Constantine, Lord Wylde, was not a happy man.

The one good thing he'd done, Constantine thought as he rode through the growing dusk, was to take this heavy coach with a team of four. He'd been in a hurry but never traveled without his valet. A gentleman had to present himself correctly, wherever he went. Still, now he almost regretted it. With only three horses pulling, and the fourth going slowly behind, ridden by his tiger, the boy who usually rode with him in his lighter curricle, the going was slow. The coach held his valet and his luggage, and a footman rode on the back of it. He'd turned down the company of his best friends, but only an utter fool would venture into the countryside without a few other men beside him. Especially here, on England's southwestern coast, where smugglers and wreckers, highwaymen, and such villains, were still said to be as common as pickpockets were in London. But all he'd met up with thus far was misfortune and bad weather.

“Wait! What's that? A light?” he shouted to his coachman as he peered into the murk. He was sitting up on the driver's seat of his coach, because he'd gotten too impatient to sit inside.

“Aye,” the coachman said uneasily. “But I doubt we should make for it, milord. This is a wild coast. Y'know the wreckers hereabouts lure the unwary to their doom with false lights.”

“That's ships,” Constantine said.

“Mebbe,” the coachman said darkly. “But if men hereabouts lure ships into ports that ain't there, so they can shatter on the rocks, so's to loot the dead washed ashore, I don't doubt it would be easier for them to lure innocent travelers on land. I've my musket right here by my side. And I thinks if you got a pistol, you should do the same, sir.”