Mariah's Prize (8 page)

Self-consciously Mariah touched the bright, swollen bruise on the side of her face. She hadn’t told her mother or sister the real cause, not wanting them to worry, and though it did look like she’d been brawling in some rum shop, Gabriel would understand.

Gabriel. Since when had she come to think first of Gabriel instead of Daniel?

Watching Mariah waver. Jenny continued, clapping her hands before her for emphasis.

“You might as well keep the gown, too. Likely Madame Lambert’s already told everyone who’s passed through her shop this week about it and you and Captain Sparhawk. Go ahead and enjoy the gown since you’ll suffer her gossip regardless.”

Mariah looked from her sister’s dimpled face to the gown and back again, surprised to find Jenny’s logic worth considering. She’d always been so busy watching over Jenny that she hadn’t realized her younger sister might have an opinion or two herself.

“Can you imagine what Father would say?” said Mariah, trying to smile.

“He’d double damn me for a brazen hussy.”

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t, ” Riah, any more than Mama would, if you asked her. ” Jenny’s smile shrank, her pretty face taking on a bitterness that Mariah would never have expected.

“Captain Sparhawk is rich, and we are—well, we are something quite other than rich, aren’t we?”

“Oh, Jenny,” murmured Mariah, resting a hand on Jenny’s shoulder. She couldn’t argue with her sister, not about this. Too well she remembered the awful conversation she’d had with her mother the night the Thomases had come to, dine.

“I suppose they just want us to be happy and not to want.”

“I won’t credit the happiness part, not from Mama,” said Jenny vehemently.

“She doesn’t like my Elisha any more than she liked your Daniel. If we let her, she’ll marry us off to whichever shriveled old men offer her the most. Don’t try to say otherwise, ” Riah, you know it’s true! “

She sighed with frustration, and reached out to trace one of the satin-stitch petals on the embroidered carnations.

“Captain Sparhawk may be old as blazes, but at least he’s still handsome, and he has all his teeth. And he wants to please you, if he sent you this gown. He must find you passing fair.”

“I’m not sure he thinks of me that way at all, fair or not. As a lady, I mean.” Unconsciously Mariah touched the bruise on her cheek, remembering all that had passed the night before.

“He calls me poppet.”

“Poppet?” Jenny wrinkled her nose.

“That’s not very gallant of him, is it? But I still think you should go to him tonight. If you cross him in this, you know, he could still throw us all over and refuse to sail Papa’s ship.”

“I don’t know if you’re right or not, Jen.” Mariah sighed deeply.

“But if I go, swear you won’t tell Mama.”

Impatiently Gabriel glanced again at the tall clock in the corner of his bedchamber. Where the devil was Ethan with his hot water, anyway?

He’d no intention of greeting Miss Mariah with a jaw bristling like a hog’s, but Ethan had scarcely left him time to shave, let alone dress, before he had to leave to meet the girl. Swearing under his breath, he thundered down the broad stairway, striking his fist on the top of the newel post so hard that the carved wood rattled. Already the chairs in the hallway were shrouded with sheets to protect them from dust and sunlight while he was away, and his packed sea chest sat waiting beside the front door.

Still swearing, Gabriel threw open the door to the kitchen. Beside a steaming kettle on the kitchen table stood Ethan, his leather waistcoat dusted with flour and dabbed with grease spots. His lips pursed in concentration, he held a long pewter ladle out to the woman across the table, waiting for her reaction to the sauce that she was tasting.

“Sister Sarah.” Gabriel made no effort to hide his irritation.

“I

should have known you’d be here, meddling in the order of my kitchen.

“

“Perfection, Ethan,” said Sarah Sparhawk Tillinghast.

“You’re a better cook than any woman in Newport.” She scooped another dollop of the red cherry sauce onto her finger and licked it off, then turned and smiled beatifically at Gabriel.

“And good day to you, Brother Gabriel. I should have known you’d offer me such a warm welcome into your home.”

“Stop it, Sarah,” said Gabriel.

“I’m sailing with the morning tide, and we’re in uproar enough here without you to add to it.”

Belatedly he went to his sister and kissed her on the forehead. Oldest and youngest, they were the only two of the Sparhawk siblings to inherit their father’s black hair and green eyes, and his temper, as well. The other three were fair and mild like their mother, and as a result Gabriel had always felt a peculiar, irascible bond with Sarah alone.

“I heard you’re bound for the Caribbean, and I brought you letters and a package to take to Mother and Father.” Her eyes narrowed, and she put her hands on her hips.

“You will, I trust, take a few hours from chasing Frenchmen to go to Barbados and see them?”

Gabriel made a noncommittal growling noise deep in his throat and bent to check the water heating on the fire.

“Gabriel, it’s one thing for you not to come to John and me at Nantasket. Though Lord knows we’re near enough to Crescent Hill, at least we’ll be waiting when you change your mind. But Father’s nearly seventy, and if you keep dawdling with your pride, you might not have another chance in this life.”

“Preach to the old man about pride, not me,” began Gabriel, then sighed and shook his head. Even talking about his father made him edgy.

“Damnation, Sarah, of course I’ll see them, though when Mother learns I’m back to privateering, like as not she won’t have me in the house.”

“She’ll forget all about the privateering when you tell her you’ve taken to ruining virginal young ladies instead.” She waved her arm at the pies and pasties and other made dishes Ethan had set to cool on the table. With an incomprehensible grumble of disapproval, Ethan glared at Gabriel’s back, then hoisted a wicker basket from the table and stalked from the room.

“She must be a very pretty little morsel to merit all this, Gabriel. A hungry one, too.”

Gabriel dropped into the old rush-bottom chair and propped his stockinged feet on the edge of the table, tipping the chair onto its rear legs.

“She’s very pretty and very clever, and she’s none of your damned business.”

Sarah’s eyebrows rose with interest.

“Clever, Gabriel? That’s something new for you in ladies. But I’d watch yourself with this one.

I’ve known her mother, Letty, since we were both girls, and she’s pretty and clever, too, when she’s sober. Very, very clever. You tumble little Mariah’s petticoats, and Letty West will have the first banns read from the pulpit the following Sabbath. “

“You sound like you’re standing in the pulpit yourself, Sarah. The girl’s of age, and God knows I am.” He made a tent of his flexed fingers and looked over it to his sister.

“You know the little minx came here at her own will? Bloody well seduced me into taking over her dead father’s sloop.”

“I’d believe that from some of the doxies you traffic with, Gabriel, but not this girl.” Sarah came to stand before him, leaning against the table with her arms folded over her chest. Her expression softened, her smile tinged with sadness.

“Ethan says she’s the very image of Catherine Langley.” “And I say both you and Ethan should keep your interfering noses from what I do, and with whom I choose to do it.” Abruptly he rocked the chair forward with a crack on the floorboards and rose to his feet.

“I’ve much to do before tomorrow, Sarah. Forgive me if I don’t see you out.”

Sarah didn’t move.

“Ethan also told me the watch found two sailors, marked with fleur-delis, cut to death on Water Street. He said when you came home last night he found blood all over your coat and shirt, and nary a scrape on you.”

She reached up to tousle his black hair. “Whatever happened to you before is beginning again, isn’t it, little brother?” she said, her eyelashes spiky with tears as she searched his face.

“Here you haven’t even sailed, yet this time I’m so afraid you won’t return. Be careful, Gabriel, for me if no one else. Watch your back, and guard your heart.”

Q^zAps^Q

-Heaven take me, what a sight you be, Mariah West! ” called Alien Welsh at the passing shay. From his unsteady walk and the jug cradled in the crook of his arm, the gunner’s mate of the Revenge was obviously enjoying his last night ashore. Belatedly his brother Will tugged his that off for him, but Alien was too enthralled with Mariah to notice.

“Bound for th’ gov’ner’s great house, are you?”

On the seat beside her, Ethan answered before Mariah could.

“Nay, you drunken booby, the lady’s dining with the cap’n, as is right an’ proper before a sailing.”

Alien flashed Mariah a mooncalf smile as the shay rattled past him.

“Ah, Miss Mariah, you’ll set Cap’n Sparhawk arse over ears rigged out like that, you will!”

“Mind the lady’s good name, Welsh!” bellowed Ethan over his shoulder.

“Else you’ll have the cap’n his self to answer to!”

Her cheeks burning, Mariah stared down at the folded ivory blades of her mother’s fan in her hand, wishing she was safe again in her kitchen at home.

“You shouldn’t’ve had to hear that, miss,” huffed Ethan.

“Not that it isn’t true, o’ course. You look better’n any lady in this colony tonight, and you’ll turn the cap’n’s head. No doubt o’ that, not a pretty little maid like you.”

He sighed with a moumfulness that puzzled Mariah. For what Madame Lambert had likely charged for her gown, Gabriel had every right to be pleased. Lightly she smoothed her skirts, delighting in the feel of the ribbed silk beneath her fingers. Though she still doubted the propriety of accepting such a gift, the gown did make her feel like a lady bound for the governor’s house.

As the mantua maker had promised, the gown had been made to Mariah’s measurements, and the style—the rosy pink silk that heightened her coloring and the simple, graceful lines that flattered her small, rounded figure—had obviously been chosen with her in mind. Mariah wondered how much of this was due to Madame Lambert, and how much she might credit Gabriel himself. Neither her father nor Daniel had ever shown much interest in women’s finery. But Gabriel was different in so many ways that it wouldn’t surprise her if he knew as much about engagedn-tes and lappets as he did spars and shrouds.

Ethan flicked the whip over the horse’s back, and the shay turned onto High Street. With the long, straight road out of town before them, the horse eagerly quickened his pace. Clutching at the side while her ribbons fluttered from her hair, Mariah turned uneasily toward Ethan’s hawk-nosed profile.

“We are on the road to Crescent Hill,” she began, not quite certain what to say to convince a man to stop a trotting horse and turn back toward town.

“Aye, that we are,” agreed Ethan.

“But we don’t be bound there. You wrote the cap’n ‘tweren’t proper for you to go there, an’ you was right.”

Expectantly Mariah waited for him to continue, and he didn’t.

“So we’re not going to Crescent Hill?”

“Nay, we’re not,” said Ethan amiably.

“Cap’n Sparhawk’s as good at followin’ orders as at givin’ them.”

Marian tried again.

“So where shall I meet him?”

“Where I’ll be takin’ you.”

With a sigh, Mariah looked out across the open fields and the bay to the mainland, and the bright orange ball of the setting sun on the edge of the dark horizon. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. The Revenge would have a fair morning for her departure.

Rounding the curve of a hillside, Ethan drew the horse to a halt. At the gate of a crumbling field stone wall stood Gabriel, a lantern wedged into the wall beside him. From her seat in the shay her eyes were nearly level with his, and she felt a sudden wave of shyness sweep over her. She had never seen any gentleman dressed so elegantly, and though she, too, was dressed in silk and lace, though she employed him and not the other way around, the gulf between their ages and stations seemed somehow in that minute to widen into a chasm. He was of the world, and she was only from Newport, and with a little chill she remembered how callously he had killed their attackers the night before. She felt miserably tongue-tied and childish, only able to gawk like a country maid.

And he was worth gawking at. His suit was dark green velvet, tailored to set off his broad shoulders and narrow hips, and the lantern’s light glittered on the elaborate silver embroidery that faced the edgings of his coat and the matching waistcoat beneath. He was hatless, and his black hair was sleeked back and clubbed with a silk bow. Flemish lace spilled down his shirtfront and from his cuffs. On any other man, the affect would have been foppish, a macaroni’s indulgence. But on Gabriel, all the lace and embroidery only made him seem by contrast stronger, more aggressively, unsettlingly male.

“Good evening, my lady shipowner,” he said as he stepped away from the wall and made a leg to her, his sweeping bow in the tall grass worthy of a courtier.

“I’m honored that you’ve come, and relieved, too. When you didn’t appear at the sloop today, I worried that you’d suffered more last night than you’d let me know.”

“My mother was unwell, and I couldn’t leave her.” Ma-riah lowered her eyes to her lap, praying he hadn’t heard the stories that said her mother belonged in the madhouse in Boston. Too much Geneva had set her to weeping inconsolably, huddled on the floor beside the bed while Mariah had held her shaking shoulders.

Too much Geneva, but only more had brought the insensible peace her mother had craved, and reluctantly, Ma-riah had given it to her.

These last weeks she had left her mother too much alone while she’d played at being a shipowner, just as now she was playing at being a lady. Her mother’s teary accusations were right. She was a selfish, undutiful daughter.

Yet still Mariah bargained with her troubled conscience. Just a little longer. Just this last night. “Mariah.” Gabriel said her name softly as he swung open the door to the shay. By the lantern’s light he’d seen the bright eagerness in her eyes fade away when she’d spoken of her mother. He hadn’t needed his sister to warn him about Mrs. West. Despite her artless omissions and evasions, Mariah had already told him more than enough about her dismal home life. Had the old witch read her a sermon on sin and wickedness? If so, he’d make her forget every word. Tonight he’d make her forget everything she’d ever been taught about sin, and forget himself as he gave her a rich new world of memories.