The Tide Watchers (39 page)

Fulton talks to her . . . he tells her things.
So far all Duncan had told her was that he'd played cricket with Leo and his true father was a Jacobite.

What incentive do I have to accept you?

She'd put her finger on his pulsing wound and probed it without mercy. He hated saying anything about his past, especially to her—but there was little choice unless he wanted her to walk away with Fulton. “I was fourteen the last time I ran away from home.”

She didn't answer; but if he stopped now, he'd never start again. Pointing to the scars on his face, he said, “Annersley gave me these. There are many others on my body. Living with him was more dangerous for me than any duty I've performed for Britain.”

Horror dawned in her eyes, but she didn't speak.

Papillon
bucked. He jumped up and checked through the window. “There's no ships close enough to be causing this. We're just rocking with the outgoing tide.”

He saw her shoulders relax a little. So she was as nervous as he. She knew the stakes.

He checked the map and compass and adjusted the rudder, hanging on hard to keep them on course. “Yes, fourteen. I'd been locked in my room again without food or water for some misdemeanor against the great name of Aylsham, who were barons hundreds of years before the Conqueror, titled by some Saxon king. They've been inbred for centuries.” He felt justified telling her a half lie—his room instead of the cupboard. She was only nineteen; the true story wasn't for her ears. “He brutalized a servant. I broke the door down and pushed him down the stairs. He's been confined to a bed since then. I'd paralyzed the only father I'd known.”

She said nothing, barely moved apart from holding on to the pump. He closed his eyes for a moment and went on.

“I had no one to go to. My real father was dead, my mother left a week after my birth, and all I knew about my father's family was that they were a bunch of poor Jacobites that blamed me for my father's death. So I ran to the only other place I knew: the streets near Harrow.”

After a few moments, she asked, “How did you survive?”

The sordid story of his life was something he'd hoped never to tell anyone, least of all the woman he hoped to make his wife. His stomach knotted, and sweat broke out on his skin from more than the heating chamber. “I stole a piece of bread here, a pie there, but I wasn't very good at it. A cook named May caught me and threatened me with the magistrate.”

“But you were a child,” Lisbeth protested.

Did she have any idea how many children were imprisoned or transported for the crime of theft? Seven years for a loaf of bread. “I didn't look like one. I've been this tall since I was thirteen. May thought I was a man—and she made a deal with me. No magistrate, if . . .”

After a bit, she said softly, “You don't have to tell me.”

He forced the self-loathing down, the words out. “No magistrate, and food to spare, if I satisfied her carnal needs.”

“Dear God,” she whispered, sounding ill.

Though she was no virgin, it was clear she knew little about the seamier side of sex. May was the first of many women he'd pleased during his career, but her memory was the one that shamed him most. A frowsy woman three times his age who believed bathing more than once a month brought disease, her needs had been rapacious. “After a few weeks, others in town heard of it, and also approached me. Lisbeth, the propeller.”

The hand covering her mouth returned to the propeller. He had to walk a fine line here—honesty without revulsion for him, personally. He went on with care.

“I had no interest in doing it again—with anyone—but one of May's neighbors was kind to me, gave me food, and patted me on the arm. When May found out Julia and I had become friends, she threatened to inform on me to the magistrate. But Julia had some kind of hold over May. When May let me go, Julia took me in.”

Lisbeth's face softened. “Oh, that was kind of her,” she said, her voice husky.

His laugh was hard. “Not quite. Within an hour she seduced me.”

The hand returned to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”

He shrugged. “By then it seemed almost natural. I knew nothing of women before May. The cook and a few maidservants at Mellingham Hall had looked after me, but I was still very much a child when I left for Harrow, and then I only saw them during holidays. But I was well aware of Annersley's idea of women—it was to use them for cooking, cleaning, and sex, whether they were willing or not.”

Lisbeth gulped. Speech seemed beyond her.

“So when Julia took me in, I thought I was lucky. Julia gave me a bed, good food, and somewhere to stay. I helped her around the house, and she taught me how to please her. This lasted about six weeks, until her husband returned from the north.” Again he prompted, “The propeller, Lisbeth.”

It seemed she'd run out of ladylike expletives. She worked the propeller, her slanted gaze fixed on him, asking him to go on.

“Mr. Wapping was almost sixty to Julia's twenty-nine. It seemed he'd been threatening to turn her out on the streets for her barrenness. The day he left, she took me in. When she heard he was returning, she told me she was pregnant, and thanked me for proof that she wasn't barren, but she had to turn me out of the house. She gave me two shillings.” He looked at Lisbeth, but only saw only Julia's pretty, scheming face. “I'd turned fifteen the day before.”

The trembling hand touching his brought him back from the darkness.

“The propeller,” he said for the third time, but smiled. Thank God, he hadn't repulsed her; his brave, sympathetic Lisbeth was back.
“Unfortunately for Julia, Mr. Wapping suspected the child wasn't his. He made inquiries, and within a few days, he met May. Unable to bear being cuckolded in front of his town and laughed at by his people, he bludgeoned Julia to death and disappeared.”

“Oh, Duncan,” she whispered, eyes brimming with tears.

He shrugged. “I ran to the streets of London and stole to survive. I avoided all women and learned to avoid men who wanted the same thing as May and Julia. A few months later, a man caught me picking his pocket. He knew who I was at a glance, had known my real father, and despised Annersley. He'd been looking for me for months. He made me return to school. In the holidays, he sent me to an older man who treated me well. He trained me in the game right alongside his sons and treated me as one of them. That man made me what I am.”

A smile like the dawn breaking crept across her face, lighting her dimples. “Papa.” He smiled at her, thinking she was still too pale, her eyes black ringed. When they got to Jersey, she'd do nothing but rest for a week.

He nodded. “Eddie saved my life. I know he wasn't at home for you often, but I'd either be dead or owned by some street-gang king but for him. I owe him everything. It's time for more air.” He unlocked the hatch. “You go first.”

She stood, breathed and stretched for a moment, her body jerking. He was about to ask her why, when she dropped down fast. “A ship's light's close, coming fast,” she croaked.

“This has been going on too long. Somehow our double agent must have got a message to Delacorte. I think they're looking for us. Drop down a full fathom for as long as possible.”

The ominous rocking began seconds after he'd battened down the hatch. The next few minutes were taken up with the necessities of staying alive.

It took almost half an hour until the ship was out of sight. Gasping with relief, they emerged again and reopened the hatch; but after she'd stood and drawn in fresh air, she looked even paler, and somehow hollow. She shivered. “Your turn now.”

He took in air and gave her more time to breathe, but she stayed up only moments before her body jerked again. He watched her, concern growing; but she said, “Please turn your face.”

They performed the necessities of life, cleaned the chamber pot, and ate the last of the food he'd bought at a tavern before bringing the hatch down. After, she sucked on one of the remaining eight peppermint sticks.

Disturbed by her white complexion and heavy-lidded eyes, he said, “Only two hours to go, if all goes well. We're clear of any small islets, and the patrols have stopped for the day. I think we can use the sails.”

Lisbeth nodded, but she looked strained.

He affixed the sails, working
Papillon
by the compass and map. He didn't have to be outside, except to check for ships every few minutes.

After a bit, she asked the question he'd been expecting ever since he'd told her his identity. “Did you offer to marry me to please Papa?”

He wanted to smile in blinding relief. She wouldn't be asking if she didn't care. “I would have—I'd always wanted to. Becoming part of your family was my dream for so long,” he admitted. “But though Eddie spoke of you and your mother often, taught me to be a King's Man, trained me in the ways of a gentleman, and called me his son, he never brought me home to meet you. I was scared sick he knew about May or Julia and didn't want to infect his wife and daughter with the likes of me. He only invited me home once, when you were staying with your grandmother near Bath. He wanted me to meet your mother.” He had no idea how she'd react to his next words. “Then when you were nearly eighteen, he told me you'd had a Season but didn't find a single gentleman who interested you. He said he wouldn't be surprised if you turned out to be as hard to please as your mother.”

She smiled, but it was a weak, pale thing, like first light at the winter equinox. “That was because I thought I was in love—with Alain or the dancing master, I couldn't be sure.”

He chuckled, but said, “I didn't know what Eddie wanted me to
say. I'd wanted to go to London and meet you during the Season, but he sent me on a mission. I thought it his way of telling me I wasn't good enough. Then he gave me this”—he brought out the miniature of her that he'd carried from the day Eddie had given it to him—“and said,
Here is your way into our family, if you like her
.”

After a few moments, she started laughing, punctuated with strange snuffling sounds. “Oh, that's so—so like my Machiavellian papa. He . . . he meets a ragamuffin vagabond who happens to be a baron's heir, and—and thinks, ‘This boy's p-perfect for my rebel daughter. I'll keep them apart so they don't think of each other as brother and sister, and—and then propose on her behalf.'” She kept making odd sounds as she spoke: not quite a laugh, closer to choking.

“Good God, I never thought of that.” He grinned. “That sounds exactly like Eddie.” He checked for ships before he went on, taking the time to think out his words. “I wanted to be a Sunderland so badly I'd have married you no matter what, but I took one look at your miniature and blurted out a proposal. I fell in love with a face—but when I met you, and took the time to know you, I came to love the brave, surprising woman you are.” He hesitated, but decided to press on. “The moment we're safe I will marry you, Lisbeth.”

In a flash her warm vivacity was gone behind a wall of stone and mortar. “I can't marry you, Duncan.”

Though she'd said it with quaint dignity and tired honesty, in a voice strangely hoarse, that old sword tip ripped his belly; all he heard was the rejection. “So I'm good enough for sex when nobody's around to see, but not to marry?” he asked, voice cold.

She made a small sound. He couldn't decipher it because she moved the propeller at the same time.

“I suppose you'll marry Fulton,” he went on, not knowing whom he punished more with this. “Go to America, so you won't have to face your past. He'll be happy to have a pretty young wife and a bottomless pit of funding. You'll have a nice life. Just don't ask him to save you, because he won't even notice that you're gone, or he'll hide behind his principles when it means risking his own neck to help others.”

Another sound, just like the last: distress or exhaustion, he didn't know. But this time he refused to fill the silence.

Eventually she said, “Please. We need to concentrate on the mission.”

Good sense told him to keep his mouth closed. But like an idiot he pressed on. “By all means, let's return to the ship, saying nothing.”

“It's what you're good at,” she mumbled. When he turned on her, she sucked her lips in, shook her head, and whispered something, apology or defiance. Her body jerked again, making him irritable. Why didn't she just tell him what was going on?

“Whatever it is you're thinking, say it out loud,” he said, but without heat. Only a fool would let this descend to a full argument, given where they were now.

The look she turned on him was touched with betrayal. “I thought you knew I wasn't a whore. Yet you just treated me as one. How could you think I'd ask you to kiss me, to—to—and think I could go back to marry Fulton?” Her voice sounded gravelly. “You know nothing of me, to think I could do that.”

He shifted on the bench, fiddling with the sails to hide the flush covering his cheeks. “I beg your pardon,” he mumbled.

She shrugged and spread the map across her lap, peering at the compass. The stiffness of her position screamed some kind of warning to him, but he had no idea what it was, or what to say. He'd never been in such an intimate place before with any of the women he'd bedded. With Julia, he'd been the supplicant; with every other woman, he'd made certain he was in control, always keeping a vital part of himself back, keeping his emotions in check.

He'd been doing that with Lisbeth from the start, yet here they were, sitting in a darkness that was as emotional as it was physical, and she wasn't trying to fix it. She was the only woman he'd met who didn't demand, ask, cry, or beg, and it left him floundering in unfamiliar waters.

“I think we've drifted east with the tidal changes,” she said in a rasping voice after standing for a moment. “We seem too close to land.”