The Pirate Next Door (6 page)

And his warning about Mr. Burchard had been most bizarre. Was the story true, or had he been fabricating it to play with her a little more? She had casually dropped the name in conversation with Maggie, but Maggie had never heard of the man.

She had intended, before the viscount had found the list, to have a serious discussion with him about Maggie, and her clothes and education. But after he’d teased her so, then made his second brazen suggestion that she sleep without clothes, she’d not found the courage to approach him.

Of course, that night, she had once again removed her nightrail after Alice had departed and climbed between the cool sheets in her skin. And every night since. She had learned to keep her dressing gown on the bed so that she might cover herself before Alice entered in the morning. Each night she’d chide herself for being so wicked, but then she would remember the heat in the viscount’s blue eyes when he’d made the request, the sinful smile he’d sent her way, and she’d be sliding the nightrail from her body before she could stop herself.

Her nightly debate made it more difficult than ever to speak to him about Maggie. Finally she’d written a short note and had Jeffrey deliver it. She first apologized for her liberty of writing him and then for her audacity in suggesting she assist with Maggie. Then she stated that she would be happy to take Maggie shopping for new clothes and that she had a lady in mind who would suit as Maggie’s governess.

It had taken her three hours and several drafts to compose the letter. At last as satisfied as she was going to be, she had signed and sealed it and Jeffrey had delivered it.
Ten minutes later had come his reply, scrawled across the back of her painstaking letter: “Do what you like.”

She’d stared at the scribbled words for a long time, wondering what they really meant. Was he angry and exasperated and resented her intrusion, or did he simply not care?

She never saw him in the intervening week to ask. She no longer met him going out while she was coming in, but the Duke of St. Clair had been to visit him three times. The duke, she knew, worked closely with the Admiralty. She remembered the viscount’s explanation, heard through the window, that the Admiralty wanted his help in finding the missing Louis of France. Her curiosity chafed her, but she had no one to satisfy it.

Maggie’s hair was not completely dark, Alexandra observed as she brushed it. Streaks of lighter brown mixed with the black, the legacy of a golden-haired man.

Maggie watched her in the mirror. “My papa thinks you are stunningly beautiful,” she observed.

Alexandra jumped slightly, but covered the movement by setting down the brush and picking up a ribbon. “That is very flattering, Maggie,” she said when she could control her voice, “but you cannot know that.”

“He said, ‘Mrs. Alastair is stunningly beautiful.’ ” Maggie toyed with the brush. “He told me to ask you if you liked emeralds.”

“Why on earth does he want to know that?”

“He must want to give you some. He has boxes of jewels. He says they are my legacy, but I do not mind sharing them with you.”

Alexandra remembered Mrs. Waters proclaiming that the viscount’s house was filled with jewels and silks and exotic things. Maggie and Mr. Oliver were the most ex
otic things she’d ever seen there, not to mention the viscount himself.

She hastily began winding the ribbon through Maggie’s curls. “I do not need any emeralds.”

Her eyes were ingenuous. “He wants to give them to you. He usually does what he wants.”

“Yes, I’d noticed that.”

Maggie was silent a moment, letting Alexandra work. The little girl much intrigued her and continued to the more Alexandra got to know her. She was like her father in many ways, possessing a casual and somewhat careless cheerfulness that was very charming. But Maggie was not a foolish child. She had wells of intelligence in her eyes that fixed with uncanny perception on her listener just before she proclaimed some piece of profound wisdom.

“The missionaries in Jamaica did not want Papa to take me,” she said now. “But he did anyway.”

Her voice was a monotone, and Alexandra wondered what story the flat words masked. “Did your mama want that too?” she asked, trying not to sound too curious.

Maggie shrugged. “I do not think Mama cared. She often left me with missionaries in whatever place we were and then didn’t come back for a long time. She was from Tahiti, and she always tried to go back there, but she mostly just roamed about Jamaica and Martinique. I was happy when Papa came to fetch me. I did not like the missionaries.”

Alexandra’s heart wrenched. The cry reached her, though Maggie would never say it:
I was unwanted
.

She fell silent while the incredibleness of this whirled in her mind. How could no one want a child? Especially one as lovely and vivacious as Maggie? Her own little son, who had lived but a day, had torn her heart out with his leaving. And here was this child for the taking, and no
one had wanted her. The world was a most unbelievable place.

She pulled herself back to the present. Mrs. Fairchild, Alexandra’s governess, had always admonished Alexandra that it was wrong to say a hurtful word against anyone, as much as one wanted to. “The missionaries were kind to take you in,” she suggested.

Maggie gave Alexandra the pitying look of a twelve-year-old who knows what is what in the world. “The ones in Jamaica always told me how unfortunate I was because my mama and papa were bad people. But my papa was married to my mama. She had a license. She was very proud of it. But they said I should tremble before God and work very hard, because I was the devil’s child.”

Outrage tumbled to Alexandra’s lips. Mrs. Fairchild’s lessons flew out the window. “Well of all the—”

She closed her mouth with a snap and picked up her brush again. She silently raged at anyone who could tell this beautiful child she was evil. She raged further at a mother who had left her about all over the world like an unwanted parcel. What had the woman been thinking of?

She firmed her lips and kept her thoughts to herself.

“It’s all right,” Maggie said, catching her glance. “Papa shouted at them. He said if I was the devil’s child, then that meant he was the devil, come to get them. That frightened them a lot.” She gave a satisfied smile that exactly mirrored the wicked grin of her father.

Alexandra could imagine the missionary couple, used to a life of severe quiet and obedience, suddenly confronted with a huge, hard-faced pirate with blazing blue eyes and a voice that could drown thunder. She imagined them cowering against the wall while he raged at them. A secret, guilty pleasure touched her.

“Did your mama tell you about your papa when you were young?” Alexandra asked curiously.

“Oh yes. She talked about him a great deal. She said he was tall and had yellow hair and blue eyes. I did not believe her. But when I saw him, I knew he was my papa. I knew it right away. He had a lot of whiskers on his face, but he shaved them off, right after. He said he was sorry he had not come sooner, but he hadn’t known about me. Mama was happy that he came to get me. She died just after that.”

Alexandra’s throat caught. Sincerity and belief shone in Maggie’s eyes. Grayson—the
viscount
—must have seemed to her like a hero from a fairy tale, charging in to rescue her from a dark and cold dungeon. Alexandra suddenly wondered what it would be like if such a man would rescue
her
. He would dash in, all handsome, with his shirt open to his waist, slay her enemies, slash the chains from her wrists, catch her into his arms, and sweep her away.

Which was ridiculous. This was Mayfair, and she had no enemies. Unless you could count Theo, but he had not really been an enemy. Just a foolish man who had made her very, very unhappy. There were no dungeons in Mayfair, no chains, no dark enemies. And no pirates. She sighed.

She finished Maggie’s hair, and they took Alexandra’s carriage all the way to Covent Garden to the theatre. Alexandra had no way of knowing that before she returned again, she
would
confront dangers that even Mayfair could not hide, see for herself a pirate ship, and discover just how much the viscount’s enemies hated him.

Grayson also was dressing to go out.

“—!” The word was sliced off in his throat.

“Almost finished, sir,” Jacobs assured him. The man ceased tying whatever complicated knot he was tying and finally let Grayson lower his head.

Grayson glared at him. “Must you throttle me?”

Jacobs shrugged in his bland, unoffended manner. “It’s a cravat, sir. Has to be done.”

“The last time I felt this strangled, Ardmore was trying to hang me. Bloody useless piece of—”

Jacobs—his first lieutenant, second in command on board the
Majesty,
and the man he trusted most, despite his relative youth—showed no sympathy. “Fashion, sir. You have to dress to go to a club. Didn’t you wear neck cloths when you were a lad?”

“That was twenty-three years ago.”

Jacobs gathered up the remaining linens and tossed them to Oliver, who had watched the whole proceeding
with enigmatic dark eyes. Grayson irritably settled the knot across his throat. Jacobs, who had grown up in a fashionable family, had been given the task of making Grayson look like a Mayfair gentleman. Thank God he would not have to do this very long.

“St. Clair had better appreciate this,” he said darkly.

The Duke of St. Clair had proposed they meet at White’s, his club, which would soon be Grayson’s. The duke had put Grayson’s name forward, and all that remained was the vote. The old viscount had been a member; the new would likely slide in without much trouble, or so St. Clair had said. What St. Clair really wanted tonight was to discuss the search for the French king. Letters of marque had been drawn up, he’d said, retroactively, to condone any and all piratical activity on Grayson’s part, but the Admiralty would only grant them when Grayson finished his assigned task. If he did not, Grayson would dangle from a rope, and that would be the end of the viscounts Stoke. St. Clair had never made clear whether Grayson must present the king on a platter or only point them in the right direction. Grayson cynically surmised that the Admiralty would decide what was enough only after he had done it.

He had agreed to meet St. Clair, although he had not much to report. He’d spread a network over the river towns that marched toward the Channel: Greenwich, Blackwall, Gravesend. He had learned some interesting gossip; for instance, he knew that a dock master in Blackwall would take rum, tobacco, slaves, and strangely, pins, for bribes, and that the mistress of the Lord Chancellor was pregnant, probably not with his child. But nothing about the French king. If he were being transported down the Thames, Grayson had not yet found any evidence of it.

But the monarch also had not turned up in France.

St. Clair had spies there as well, and there had been no ransom demands for the corpulent king, nor any gleeful proclamations from the republic that another Bourbon king had been beheaded. Grayson understood from St. Clair that the English were more or less allowing Louis of France and his supporters to remain here in reserve for the day that Napoleon was toppled. But Napoleon had dug himself in pretty deep, and Grayson did not anticipate that date anytime soon.

It was strange to view these political battles from the other side of the water. The war with Napoleon had made the English naval vessels in the Caribbean jittery, not to mention a bloody nuisance. They would fire on and board almost any ship they came across, and press-ganging had reached an astronomical level. He and Jacobs had twice been accosted in taverns by English sailors looking to fill more ranks. He and Jacobs had explained, firmly, that they were busy.

American privateers strolling up and down the waters pounced on ships left alone by the British navy, making things even more dicey. Then there were the pirates. And then there was Ardmore.

All in all, striding through glittering Mayfair searching for a missing king was a walk in the park compared to slipping through all those blockades and dodging the madman, James Ardmore. And, in the end, Grayson had not dodged fast enough. But escaping Ardmore would have entailed abandoning Maggie, and that Grayson knew he would never be able to do.

He remembered with hot clarity the hard planking of Ardmore’s deck beneath his knees, the rope burning his neck, the cold sword at his throat. His wrists had been raw with his bonds, his torso bruised where Ardmore and his lieutenants had beaten him. “Why should I not kill
you, Finley?” Ardmore had sneered. “Give me a reason not to hang you from the highest yardarm.” Grayson remembered his own voice, cracked and desperate, answering, “Because my daughter would miss me.”

Jacobs smoothed the black coat over Grayson’s broad shoulders, jerking him back to the present.

“Did they get off to the theatre?” he asked.

“They did, Captain. In Mrs. Alastair’s carriage. Fine team.”

Grayson narrowed his eyes. “With the guard?”

“Priestly is on it, sir.”

“Good.”

He imagined Mrs. Alastair’s pretty eyes going all furious when she discovered that he’d sent along one of his men to keep watch over her, but damned if he was going to let her wander about with his daughter when Burchard was loose.

He had tracked the supposedly dead pirate to lodgings in St. James’s, a house of rooms for respectable and slightly wealthy gentlemen. He’d assigned another of his officers the duty of wandering about coffee houses in the area and keeping a surreptitious eye on the lodgings. Grayson had not actually seen Burchard himself, but every instinct told him it was the same man, despite the incongruities.

A rumble of carriage wheels sounded in the street outside, and then the sound of someone thumping on his front door. Grayson moved to the front room and peered out the window. It was not the carriage he had hired, or Ian O’Malley returning. It was a hired hack, however, and the fellow who’d thumped the door now turned back and handed a woman out of the carriage.

“Damn, I forgot about the governess.”

“Want me to take care of her, sir?” Jacobs asked, a
bland expression on his face. What he meant was, he knew what to do with servants of the governess’ class while Grayson only knew how to command pirates. Grayson scowled. “I will talk to her. She is here to teach my daughter.”

Oliver had already lumbered down the front stairs to open the door. Grayson strode after him, and Jacobs, with a slight smirk on his face, brought up the rear.

Low, feminine tones met his ear as he stepped off the last stair. Oliver led a woman into the dimly lit hall and went past her to fetch her cases. She began to remove her gloves, and looked up. “Your lordship? I am Mrs. Fairchild. Mrs. Alastair, sent me.”

Grayson stopped, his stride arrested. Good lord,
she
had been Alexandra’s governess? Alexandra had explained in her coldly polite letter that the woman had taught her and would be excellent for Maggie. Grayson had expected Mrs. Fairchild to be gray, stout, and grandmotherly. What he saw was a woman of about his own age, black-haired with a sculpted face and eyes as dark as midnight. Red lips curved into a polite smile, and sable lashes lowered under his scrutiny.

The rest of her could have made even a man of the most monkish habits go hard in a trice. Her gown was a dull gray, governesslike, but it outlined a body of lush curves, and draped limbs that were long and shapely.

His daughter’s governess. The woman who had made Alexandra Alastair what she was today. This could prove interesting.

Grayson pasted on a smile and held out his hand. “Mrs. Fairchild.”

She took it, exuding politeness. She looked past him and suddenly went white to the lips.

Grayson studied her, puzzled. The woman had stopped
breathing. She was gazing at something behind him, her eyes wide with shock. He disengaged his hand from hers and turned.

She was looking at Jacobs. He stood three steps up the stairs, and he too had frozen in place, his hand locked around the banister. His face had gone paper white.

Grayson folded his arms and leaned against the newel post. Neither of them moved, not even when Oliver came trundling past with the bags and began climbing the stairs.

Grayson said, “Do you two know each other?”

Jacobs’s head snapped up. His face flooded with color and his Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. “Uh, no, sir. Of course not.” He looked away.

A blatant lie. Mrs. Fairchild had obviously recognized Jacobs as well. This was becoming more interesting by the minute.

Grayson unfolded himself. “Maggie is at the theatre with Mrs. Alastair tonight, Mrs. Fairchild. You can spend the time unpacking and getting settled. I am going out. If you want tea or anything, ring Oliver.”

“Of course, my lord.” Her voice was strangled and breathy.

“Good. I will speak to you tomorrow. Good evening, Mrs. Fairchild.”

A spark of misery and fear hovered deep in her dark, lovely eyes. Grayson longed to know what this was all about, but he had an appointment with St. Clair and the fashionable dandies of Mayfair. He’d have to pry into the private lives of his lieutenant and his daughter’s governess later. He snatched up his hat and went out.

A light comedy was playing when Alexandra arrived with Maggie in tow, all about two sisters, one good, one bad,
and their bewildered and countrified parents. The good sister ultimately landed the noble aristocrat’s love, plus his hand in marriage, while the bad sister was disgraced. She wept and begged pardon of her stricken parents at the end, and the family was reconciled. Maggie watched this all with great interest.

Of course, much of the play was drowned out by the audience who gossiped, shouted to each other, or called out to the players on stage. A group of young men evidently preferred the wicked sister and kept suggesting that she seduce the noble aristocrat and run away with him. That and to “show us your fine ankles, Nellie.”

Lord and Lady Featherstone had joined them in the box, which was comfortably settled with armchairs and a low table on which to place reticules, fans, and cups of tea. Lord Featherstone sipped tea and watched the play with furrowed brows. From time to time, Alexandra caught him giving Lady Featherstone an affectionate glance, and once, under cover of dim lighting, holding her hand. It gave Alexandra a lonely feeling.

After the first offering, the stage lit up again and a few acrobats danced on and commenced tumbling. Maggie turned to Alexandra, her eyes glowing. “The missionaries said all theatre was wicked. But it does not seem wicked.”

Lord Featherstone rolled his eyes. “Wesleyans.”

Maggie rested her chin on her hand. “But then, I am wicked, so maybe I do not notice.”

Alexandra’s earlier anger resurfaced. “Maggie, you are not wicked.”

The Featherstones exchanged a glance. “Indeed not,” Lord Featherstone said.

Maggie did not argue. She went on watching the dancing. She had Alexandra’s lorgnette in her hand and raised it to her eyes to gaze about the theatre.

Lord Featherstone left the box to pay a visit to some acquaintance, and when he returned, he had a gentleman with him. Alexandra’s heart turned over. He’d brought back Mr. Burchard, the one the viscount had so firmly crossed off her list. She had not told Lady Featherstone about this oddity, not knowing what to make of it herself.

But this man could not be the horrible villain Grayson claimed he was. Grayson
must
be talking about a different Zechariah Burchard. This Mr. Burchard was nearing forty, slightly gray at the temples, lean, and tall, though nowhere near as tall as Grayson. He had dark eyes that observed his surroundings quietly, and fine manners. Lady Featherstone had found nothing objectionable about him, though she was waiting on some inquiries she had made about his cousins who apparently lived in Yorkshire.

He bowed to Alexandra and Lady Featherstone, gave Maggie a curious glance, and accepted a chair. Lord Featherstone introduced Maggie as Miss Finley, Viscount Stoke’s daughter.

Did Mr. Burchard start at the name, or did Alexandra imagine it?

Conversation began. Mr. Burchard was deferential to Lady Featherstone and attentive to Alexandra without being flirtatious. Maggie had returned her attention to the rest of theatre, and Mr. Burchard did not seem overly interested in her.

Mr. Burchard’s unlined face bore no evil taint, and his eyes remained neutral. Too neutral perhaps? Alexandra shook herself. Imagination. There must be more than one Zechariah Burchard in the world.

Lord Featherstone did not say much, probably because Lady Featherstone had gone into full interview mode. She had pried from Mr. Burchard that he had no brothers or sisters, and that his father had left him a house near Scar
borough that he planned to open later that year, and that he would be sending invitations for the shooting season.

Lady Featherstone gave Alexandra a look that said she was passing the token to her.

Alexandra touched her tongue to her upper lip and drew on her courage. “Uh—Mr. Burchard. Have you ever been to sea?”

She did not imagine his start that time. His backside left the seat and he bumped back down. But then, it had been a most unusual question. Lady Featherstone gave Alexandra an odd stare.

“To sea?” Burchard’s mouth opened and closed a few times.

Lord Featherstone stepped into the awkward gap. “I am often
at
sea,” he said, “when seeing the fripperies that are supposed to be fashion nowadays.”

Lady Featherstone laughed appropriately, and Alexandra pretended to smile. Lady Featherstone shot her an annoyed look, but took her cue from her husband. The moment smoothed over.

Maggie leaned over the balcony. “Oh look,” she cried. “There is Mr. Henderson!”

Alexandra glanced quickly to where she pointed. Indeed, she saw the blond man in spectacles who had so impudently assaulted her the week before. Her heart thumped.

Lady Featherstone had not actually observed the gentleman’s rude kiss before Alexandra’s house, and Alexandra had not explained to her what she’d learned from Grayson about the incident. Lady Featherstone went on chatting, sensing nothing amiss.

But Mr. Burchard’s reaction was unmistakable. His face drained of color, then became a sickly green. He looked at Alexandra and the light in his eyes changed from neu
tral to alarmed to wary. He knew that she knew that she was sharing her box with a villainous pirate, one who was supposed to have died a horrible and fiery death several months before. Oh, dear heavens.