Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (47 page)

Pete regarded me with a furrowed brow. “Do Ya Na’ Want’ Em Dead?”

“Aye, I want them dead, but I wish to live a long and happy life with Gaston and any children he might choose to collect,” I said. “I feel murdering them would not lead to that.”

He nodded sagely. “Aye. Ya Be Right. Must Be Planned Careful.

Now. This Be A GoodFeint.” He pointed at the letter Theodore held.

“Puts ’Em In Check. Makes ’Em Angry. Keeps ’Em Off Their Balance.

Gives ’Em Some Ground. If They Run, So Be It. If They Charge.” His lips quirked in a grim smile. “We Must Be Ready For ’Em . I’ll Think On It.

Winnin’s Gonna Be A Long Game.”

“Thank the Gods you are on our side,” I told Pete, and then turned to Sarah. “You should consult him before you write.”

“I hear that,” she said with a proud smile.

“I concur,” the Marquis said with an appraising look at Pete.

Dupree was still whispering in his master’s ear with a perplexed grimace, and I knew Pete’s enunciation had confounded him once again; but apparently not so that the Marquis misunderstood the Golden One’s wisdom or intent.

Christine stood abruptly and left the table. Agnes glared after, and then in a move just as sudden, stood to reach the bottle Rucker and Theodore were sharing and capture it for her own. She sat and took a long pull.

“You should be careful of that, young lady,” Rucker chided. “It will make you stupid.”

“I am already stupid,” Agnes muttered bitterly.

I walked to stand behind her and leaned over to whisper, “You are not stupid for loving anyone, even if they are too stupid to return it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

As he was closest to her, and looked quite sad and lost in his own thoughts, I clapped Striker’s shoulder and whispered to him. “I am still proud to call you brother, but I am damn sorry you are embroiled in this.”

He smiled, and looked to Sarah and Pete, who were speaking quietly next to him. “It is worth it.” He looked up at me. “How are you?”

“Somewhat drunk,” I said, and gestured with the bottle I still held.

“But, sadly, that will pass.” I looked to Gaston, who was standing at my side. “But we will endure and conquer.”

“But first we will sleep,” Gaston said, and led me to the stable.

He made me remove my coat and boots before allowing me to sink to the straw and cuddle puppies. I was not so drunk that I could not see his mien was somber and withdrawn, and very much the physician.

“I will be well,” I assured him, as he came to sit next to me after removing most of his clothing. “How are you?”

“The Horse wants them dead,” he said sadly.

“Mine wishes to run to the farthest reaches of the world,” I said, and felt melancholy grip me in echo of his sad tone.

“I must protect you,” he whispered, and kissed my temple.

Like a retreating tide, the wine that had fortified me pulled away and sucked my bravado with it: I cried in his arms like a babe.

Sometime later, he pushed all the puppies into a pile next to their mother and led me to bed. I fingered the blanket lying there, the one I had been covered by when Agnes roused me this morning.

“It has been a very long day,” I remarked. “Did Sir Christopher and the governor truly arrive this morning?”

He nodded, and urged me to shed my shirt and breeches, which I did.“It feels as if days have passed,” I sighed as I lay down.

“Oui,” he sighed in echo, and joined me on the hammock.

He kissed me lightly on the lips, and then his mouth trailed down my neck and chest. I was quickly forced to put a stop to it with deep regret.

“I would not deny you anything, my love,” I whispered, “but I am quite tender and you have not shaved. Neither have I, but…”

He shook his head and pressed fingers to my lips. I kissed them; and with a rueful smile, he moved to lie beside me.

“I feel no need this night,” he said. “I merely wished to comfort you.”

“Hold me, then.”

He complied, and I curled against him and let exhaustion claim me.

I woke alone to rain beating on the roof, and an aching and dazed head and dry mouth. Thankfully, today there was no rapping at the door or urgent whispering of my name. I moved enough to find the pot and water, and then returned to the hammock to lie like I sometimes had as a boy, with the blanket wrapped about me and pulled up around my ears to thwart the chill of the world.

I dozed. I felt Gaston’s weight on the hammock before I had any other awareness of his entry. He was smiling at me with amusement, as if he had been calling my name and I had not answered. He had shaved.

He wore a paint-splattered kerchief and tunic. His kiss warmed me in all the ways a blanket could not, yet my manhood did not stir so much as it sighed. We curled together, and he sighed with either relief or contentment.

With him beside me and not before me, I saw my sea chests stacked just inside the doorway. They still stank of smoke, and Bella was eying them with annoyance.

“What have I missed?” I asked.

“We will be staying here until we return to Negril,” Gaston said. “So Pete and I brought our things down.”

I nodded. “One of the wives will have our room, and the other will have the guest room? And we shall stay in the stable like good studs?” I chuckled.

He did not find amusement in it. “Oui: Christine will have what was our room. I would have put Vivian in it, but Striker…” He trailed off with a disgruntled snort.

“What?” I turned enough to see his face, and found him more troubled than angry.

“Striker suggested that we… I might be more comfortable to ensconce the one who would be fucked farther from my father’s room.”

“Well…” I said with a small smile.

“Oui, he is correct,” Gaston said. “But…”

“You have not married her yet,” I said kindly.

He sighed, and there was resolve in his eyes. “Her things arrived this morning. We put them in our room – her room. She slept there last night without them. Agnes and she have quarreled.” He shrugged.

“Have you seen to Vivian, or visited Jamaica?” I asked to distract him.

He gave a rueful smile. “Vivian is well. I have not dared go to see the baby: Theodore slept in Sarah’s office last night.”

“It is good he is at heart a sober man,” I said with a grin. “Because he drinks with relish.”

Gaston chuckled and kissed my nose. “As do you.”

“I am sorry…”

He kissed my lips. “Non.”

I caressed his smooth cheek.

He grinned and kissed my chest. “Better?”

“Oui,” I breathed.

He smiled, and then guilt suffused him. I laid my hands aside his face and held his eyes to mine.

He sighed. “I fear we will need that whore.”

I nodded. “Perhaps we can ask Theodore if he knows of some lady or widow who entertains gentlemen discreetly.”

“That would be better,” he said with relief and some thought. “I cannot see… The brothel whores disgust me.”

“I know. I have always thought it an irony that many men will tell you that a true man who favors women can crow at the sight of any woman, but I think rising for women of that ilk is not showing an appreciation for women, so much as it is simply affirming one is not dead: if such can give a man rise, he might as well fuck a sheep; they seem far cleaner.”

He nodded with a wry smile, and then frowned. “The thought of mingling my jism with another man’s is… disturbing. And that disquiet does not rise from jealousy.”

“Would you mingle yours with mine?” I teased.

“That is different,” he said quickly. “You are mine and…” He sighed.

“I cannot explain it.”

“We mingle our fluids all the time,” I said.

“Oui, because…” He regarded me seriously. “It is love. If you and I were to fuck the same woman it would be acceptable; but if it is not you, I wish her to be clean and… I would rather she be virginal.”

“You need not explain,” I said. “It is a thing of intimacy, and I am quite pleased you wish to share that with no one else: that you hold it in such regard.”

“I do,” he said earnestly. “You are the only man my Horse ever wishes to be intimate with.”

“Thank the Gods,” I teased.

He smiled at last.

With all the talk of jism and intimacy, my cock had at last stirred, despite my aching head and empty stomach. I ran my hand down his chest and belly to find his member flaccid, but he held my hand there and covered my mouth before I could pull away with regret. His hand was soon upon my organ, and shortly after that he was within me, and we laid siege to Heaven with slow deliberation. When the holy light at last broke upon me, I finally felt I was ready to rise and meet the day.

“I so needed that,” I murmured as I crawled from beneath him and out of the hammock.

He lay there, sated, and smiled up at me happily. “As did I.”

I considered my clothes. It was still raining. I tried to recall if anyone in the house was not part of some faction that considered my bruises to result from either my madness or Gaston’s. I thought it likely Christine and Agnes were innocent of speculation, and perhaps Rucker. Would they notice or care if I did not choose to hide behind finery on this rainy day? I decided I did not care.

“I will dress when and if we go to the church this day,” I told Gaston as I stood in the stable doorway and surveyed the rain-soaked limestone of the empty atrium.

He began to laugh. “Else you will strut about naked?”

“Aye, and proudly,” I teased, and located a pair of breeches and a tunic. The canvas was still rough upon my tender chest, but the thought of being swathed in damp linen the entire day made me find it preferable.

“So, what shall we do?” I asked. “What need we do? How late in the day is it?”

“Past midday. The rooms are clean and ready. Father has moved upstairs. I asked Vivian if she wished to move to the guest room, and she said non.” He shrugged. “Christine has asked if she should dress for church. We should possibly brave the Theodores’.”

I smiled at his evasion. “What did you tell Christine?”

He took a deep breath and regarded the ceiling. “That I would think on it, and see how you were feeling.”

“How do I feel?” I asked with a grin.

“You feel it is entirely too much effort this day,” he said without emotion.

I chuckled heartily. “And I am hungry.”

He dressed, and we scurried through the rain to the cookhouse. Our servants were not there, but we found dried meat and some apples, and my stomach felt they would suffice.

We crossed to the relative dryness beneath the balcony and went to the parlor. Vivian seemed pleased to see us. I was in fine spirits, and found amusement in surprising her, by dropping to kneel on the floor in front of the settee where she sat and resting my elbows upon her knees.

“I want you to move upstairs,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, but sobered to contemplate me. “Will it be mine alone?”

I nodded.

“With the baby,” Gaston added.

I shrugged. “Yours and Jamaica’ s,” I amended.

She grimaced at that. “But…”

“You will learn,” I said firmly with a smile. “Perhaps you should accompany us today to the Theodores’.”

“Oh, Lord,” she sighed. “It is raining, and… I should move upstairs.”

“I do not see where any of those issues are mutually exclusive,” I said with a grin. “We will move you now.”

“Will you move the chain?” she said dryly.

I sighed as I looked to the bolt we had put in the wall. “Do you feel it is necessary?”

She froze, fear deep in her eyes as they peered into mine, and then she looked away with guilt and pink cheeks. “Aye,” she breathed.

My humor fled in the face of compassion. “Do you still crave it?”

She nodded. “I think about it all the time,” she whispered.

I looked about the room. “Aye, well, you have little else to do. That is why you should tend your own child, perhaps. It will give you something to do and focus your thoughts.”

“I am afraid I will do something stupid,” she said.

I was too, and in the face of that, my first thought was flippant: And then Gaston would strangle you. But I held my tongue and looked to him instead, to see who he agreed with.

He was regarding her with compassion, and at my gaze he sighed and rolled his eyes, and came to sit beside her on the settee.

“Babies are somewhat forgiving,” he said kindly. “They must be, because many of us live and many of our mothers were fools.”

“I do not wish to be a fool,” she said seriously.

“Then you must learn,” he said.

She nodded tightly.

We released her, and I went to borrow a cloak and pattens from one of the women. Sarah was in her office busily writing at her desk, and as she was so huge with child that rising from a chair presented difficulty, I decided to leave her well enough alone. Even over the rain, I could hear Henrietta chatting with Christine in the doorway of what had been our room. I did not wish to speak to the bride, and thus appear healthy and capable of attending church. Thus I stealthily went in search of Agnes.

The girl greeted the knock on her door with hopeful teary eyes, and seemed disappointed when she beheld me.

“We need to borrow a rain cloak and pattens for Vivian.” I smiled kindly. “And Gaston said you quarreled with Christine.”

She grabbed my arm and towed me inside. “She is such a bitch!” she spat. “I am not staring at her every moment, and I did not touch her in the night. I lie awake all night so that I do not. We have not been friends since I told her. I should not have told her. Now all that I do is suspect.”

I pulled the girl to me and embraced her until she ceased to struggle and began to cry: all the while murmuring reassuring things.

“I understand your pain,” I said when the worst of it had passed.

“Is it ever this way?” she asked.

I sighed. “If the one you favor does not favor you, aye; even if they do not share your sex, but especially if they do.”

“It is so unfair.”

“Aye, it is,” I said. “I feel Christine is a very confused girl on many fronts.”

“She attests I am the one confused,” Agnes said bitterly, her ire returning. “She says I cannot possibly know I favor women, as I have never been with a man.”