Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (58 page)

He shrugged. “They would have met eventually.”

“But perhaps with a more controllable and less injurious result,” I said.“True,” he sighed.

He rubbed the stubble upon my head and then my jaw and sighed again. “You must shave.”

“I do not wish to shave my head if that is truly a wig I spy.” I pointed at the bundle Cudro had given us from the store.

“I have never seen you in a wig,” he said thoughtfully. “I can barely remember how you look with long hair.”

“Neither can I,” I sighed. “Before coming here, I was blessed with enough hair that wearing a wig was seldom necessary. I detest them.

Have you ever worn a wig?”

He shook his head. “Non. Non, once, when I was young and there was an event at a school. They made us all wear wigs.”

I retrieved the wig from the package and proffered it to him. With a snort, he took it, and after finding the front, placed it upon his head. I resisted chuckling at the result. Under the thick brown curls Dickey had chosen for me, Gaston appeared so alien I might not have recognized him.

“Where is the glass?” Gaston asked.

I dug about in one of my trunks and found a small mirror.

He snorted with amusement at his image. Then he frowned. “I look like my father.”

“Truly? I have never felt I looked like mine, thank the Gods.”

He pulled the wig off.

“Sarah has grey-blue eyes,” he said. “They are not like yours.”

“She has my father’s eyes,” I said. “My uncle has eyes like mine. My mother’s eyes were hazel. Much like Miss Barclay’s, I just realized. And there is a further similarity in the color of their hair. I wonder if that is coincidence or more of my father’s strange thinking.”

“Why would he choose a bride for you who looked like your mother?”

“She does not truly look like my mother,” I said, thinking on it.

“There are differences in their features. Many English women have light brown or blonde hair.”

He was deep in thought. I donned the wig and regarded my reflection. I looked like someone I had once been. That thought was oddly comforting, in that the man I was now was not the one who would do this thing. This would be a costume I donned and a role I played. It made me anticipate dressing, as the more I changed my appearance, the less of me would be in attendance at the ceremony.

I called down to Cudro and asked if he could be troubled to put on a kettle, since I needed to bathe and shave. He agreed with good humor.

When I stepped back into the room, Gaston asked, “What did you look like as a child?”

“My hair was nearly as pale as Liam’s, and I was small.”

He smiled faintly. “The children from the Damn Bride will probably look the same.”

I grinned. “I imagine they will. I actually envisioned them last night.

I thought of little golden-haired tots listening to Rucker lecture them about fables and myths.”

This seemed to please him, and he relaxed back onto the hammock.

“I do not wish for you to misinterpret it,” I said, “but I am going to dress well for the event. I feel it is as if I don a costume. I want little of the man I am to be present there; I wish to be a character in some play.”

He nodded. “I understand.” Then he sat up. “But I wish to make love before you do.”

I grinned. “I will deny you nothing.”

We were not finished when Cudro knocked on the door to give us the kettle. We told him to leave it with hoarse voices and he laughed and left us. I ended up washing and shaving with tepid water; but it was no matter, as my heart was warm enough.

Gaston also seemed calmer in the aftermath, as he lay naked upon the hammock watching me dress. When I was perfumed and powdered and fully acquitted in hat, wig, fashionably-ruffled shirt, brocade vest, coat, breeches, hose, good leather shoes, and gloves, I turned to him and asked, “Well, do I look the part?”

“Lord Marsdale,” he said with a trace of sadness. “You are not Will.”

I was almost loathe to bridge the distance between one reality and the next by leaning down to kiss him before I left, but I could not leave without kissing him. He kissed me happily and then smoothed my powder to cover what he had mussed. There was a little still about his lips, and I brushed it off with a gloved finger.

“You should come see to your guests or they will worry,” I said.

“Though I think I would rather you lay there naked awaiting my return.

The thought of it will give me a happy thing to dwell upon until I do.”

He shrugged and slowly sat. “Do not worry. Lord Marsdale is marrying her, not my matelot. I will be fine.”

My appearance was greeted by our cabal with a number of confused stares – and then laughter, as they realized who I was. I finished strapping on my rapier and told them Gaston would be down shortly, and not to destroy the place because Agnes was not there.

Not wanting to risk the interminable business of escorting my bride from the King’s House, I went directly to the church.

Theodore was there ahead of me, speaking with the pastor. He gaped at my appearance once he recognized me.

“Well, my good Mister Theodore, you have not truly met Lord Marsdale,” I said with good humor.

He bowed. “My Lord, I am pleased to make your acquaintance under these circumstances.”

“And well you should not be at any other time,” I chided with amusement.

“Nay, I think I will be happy to meet you only this once, perhaps,” he said thoughtfully.

Further conversation was disrupted by the arrival of the party from the King’s House – which to my delight, included my uncle and Rucker.

They both appeared almost exactly as I had last seen them in England.

Uncle Cedric swept me into an embrace that reminded me I was indeed small compared to the other men of my relation.

“Marsy, you look well indeed,” he said enthusiastically. “Here Rucker and your sister had me afraid you had taken to dressing like these mercenaries we have seen about town.”

“Then I am sorry to inform you that they are indeed correct, and this attire is but an anomaly, donned only for the purpose of this ceremony.

I count myself among those mercenaries, as you call them.”

“Young men and their need for adventure,” he sighed. “We have much to discuss,” he added seriously.

“I know. Sarah has told me a great deal.”

He frowned and nodded before stepping away to speak to Theodore.

I embraced Rucker, and he smiled at me from beneath dark and speculative eyes. I could see there was much on his mind.

“It is good to see you, old friend,” I said. “We too have much to talk of, I feel, though I know not when. I sail the day after tomorrow. Unless you wish to accompany us,” I teased.

He chuckled. “Unlike your uncle, I read your letter; and I think I shall pass,” he said quietly.

“You have always been a wise man.”

“I would speak to you…” he glanced at my uncle and dropped his voice lower still, “in private, perhaps, before you sail.”

“I understand. I will seek you out.”

He laid a hand on my arm, and this time his eyes darted toward my bride. “Is this a thing well done?” he whispered. “I know of its necessity, but…”

“I am not treading this path blindly,” I assured him. “I was prepared to desert it, but the lady met my demands, as it seems she is more in need of this marriage than I.”

He frowned. “Tell me you do not trust your father.”

“Never,” I hissed with a grin.

“Then I am relieved,” he said solemnly.

“I also feel I will never inherit,” I added soberly. “I am merely making gestures to buy time.”

He nodded with sad eyes. “You might not be wise, but you have never been a fool.”

I smiled. “I wish to have children, and have you instruct them as you did me.”

He grinned. “I am honored. I hope she will prove to be a suitable dam.”

“If she does not, I will somehow find another.”

“Spoken like a king,” he said with a grin.

“One must know one’s enemies,” I said.

And then the pastor was clearing his throat and Rucker stepped away; and I was left staring at my bride. She was indeed lovely. She wore the blue gown in which I had seen her, with her hair demurely coiled and a lace veil. She appeared anxious, and her nod to me was curt but not disdainful.

We went to the altar, and Lord Marsdale said his lines and performed the necessary gestures. The pastor thought it necessary to give us his very best, and thus the ceremony was interminably long.

I kept expecting my red-headed demon to burst into the church and lay the entire matter to waste; but he did not, and I knew not if I was disappointed. In the end, I was married in the eyes of English law, but I did not feel married, not as I had that morning upon the deck of the North Wind, when the chorus had confirmed my matelotage with Gaston. Then I had felt the weight of commitment settle about me.

Today, I merely felt a liar and a fool.

We were received in the hall of the King’s House by Governor Modyford, Morgan, Bradley, and a dozen other Jamaican notables. At the first expression of congratulations, I wished to smash the smiling face before me; by the third I wished to become raving drunk, but I did not: I would not find my way back to Gaston this night if I did, and I knew none here would help me.

I began to take great pleasure in that: the knowing that I would return to him, that I was not tamed as the surreptitiously sneering and smug faces seemed to think. I found it odd that the women, mainly my sister and bride, were the ones who truly knew how little had been gained this day in the name of supposedly holy matrimony. Whereas the men, especially the ones who had once had matelots, or at least understood the practice, seemed to think I had lost the most.

“The women, they always win out in the end,” Bradley said with a toss of his glass.

“Not if one truly loves,” I said quietly.

He winced at my jab, and I hoped Siegfried was pleased at that in Heaven; but perhaps he would be angry with me for poking at his former matelot, as I felt he had loved Bradley far more than was returned.

“But what is love?” Morgan asked as he joined us.

The so-called admiral of the buccaneers appeared comfortable and well-comported in his formal attire, whereas Bradley looked as uncomfortable as I in his.

“I believe it is the ultimate emotion God granted us the pleasure to experience,” I said. “I pity those who have not known it.”

Morgan frowned and then met my gaze. “I have loved.”

“A person who returns it in measure, or a thing?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed, but his smile was wide beneath his mustache. “I have been loved.”

“I cannot gainsay you,” I said with a shrug.

“But you would make the attempt if you felt you held the ground?”

he asked.

“Aye, I would.”

“Why do you dislike me?” Morgan asked with speculative eyes and a note of sincere curiosity.

“You are an ambitious man who has seized upon using the Brethren to further your own greed for glory and gold, or perhaps not gold in and of itself, but for power,” I said honestly.

He bridled at this, yet he scratched his mustache calmly and said,

“I am a leader of men; the Brethren needed a leader in order to achieve their goals of having enough to gold to keep themselves drunk through every storm season. I am not the first to organize them.”

“Aye, and though I have heard good of Myngs and Mansfield, I think it likely I would not like them, either,” I said with a shrug.

“You have not heard good of me?” he asked with feigned amusement.

I smirked. “Aye, I have heard much good of you, from sheep who are unwise in the ways of wolves.”

He chuckled with true amusement. “And what are you, my friend?”

I shrugged. “Just a fool who cares about such things.”

He considered me for a moment in silence, with a slight cock of his head. Beside him, Bradley appeared quite uncomfortable with the entire topic.

“Will you be sailing with us?” Morgan asked at last.

“Aye, my matelot and I will.”

He snorted. “Why?”

“I have no reason to remain in port. Worry not; I am not a leader of men. I offer you no challenge,” I assured him.

At first he snorted dismissively, but then he sobered and said with odd candor, “That is good to hear.” With that he left me, an anxious Bradley in his wake.

I was thankfully next descended on by Sarah.

“We must speak,” Sarah said as she towed me toward a corner where Rucker stood waiting. “Or rather, you must speak to another.”

“After you have told me what to say?” I teased.

We reached the corner and she turned to me. “First, did you find Striker?”

“Nay,” I said sadly. “I had not time to mount the search myself, and apparently the efforts of all others who sought him were in vain. Pete was drunk and unconscious upon our ship. So, as of when I left for the ceremony, they had not spoken.”

She sighed. “Well, I guess there is nothing to be done of that now.

Now, you must speak to our uncle.”

“He has become quite intent upon your sister marrying,” Rucker said. “He is inviting suitors from the planters.”

“He made it quite clear he expects me to entertain them,” she said bitterly.

“That is quite annoying,” I said.

“He also harbors many notions concerning the management of plantations which I hope are not in keeping with yours,” Rucker added.

“Else you failed to raise me properly,” I said with a smile. “I would imagine he does, being who and what he is: a product of his upbringing.

He was indeed raised by wolves, as my father was and their father before them. I will do what I can to mitigate the matter of the plantation, but I can do little until such time as it is mine; and that will not occur, according to my father, until I produce an heir. And even then, I do not trust him not to delay it.”

“Aye,” Rucker said tiredly. “That is why it is all such a pity.”

“I know,” I sighed. “You kindled high hopes in me that day we spoke, when you reminded me I would inherit. I began to think I could do good with his title. But now… Now I am using my title as viscount to insure that the men I sail with are fairly granted land, and to battle that bastard Morgan where I can, to save what remains of the bondsmen I brought here from starvation and sickness, and to rescue the Negroes being purchased for Ithaca from abject slavery in the bargain. I strive to do what I can in the name of justice as opportunities present themselves. I should do more, but I know not how without devoting myself to an even more ruinous course that will lead to my misery, and I am afraid I lack the faith of a martyr.”