Chapter 10
Seated around a private table with Hart and Kilmartin at White’s, like the respectable gentlemen they were decidedly not, Tremaine finished his accounting of the strides he’d made last evening with Linnie McQuoid Smith.
“Given our last meeting, I’ve decided it would serve me well to make the lady wait a bit before we meet again,” Tremaine declared and picked up the bottle they shared between them.
“Do you think that is a good idea?” Hart asked.
He scoffed. “The whole ‘always toward absent lovers love’s stronger tide flow’ bit . . .”
When he finished his pour, he raised his snifter—and stopped with the drink suspended at his lips.
He frowned.
Hart and Kilmartin both appeared as though the same villain had killed both of their favorite hunting dogs.
Aside from these two, no man had the freedom to challenge Tremaine, or question him, in any way. In Tremaine’s work, were he to allow anyone that right, it would result in all-out mutiny. He’d put down three in his life, only one involving his own crew.
These two men, however, were free to speak, and they always did so with the knowledge they were permitted that right. For some reason, neither gentleman seemed to wish to do so.
“What is it?”
His brother and brother at sea shared a look.
Reflexively, Tremaine tightened his fingers around his snifter of fine French brandy.
For one horrible, nightmarish moment, Tremaine believed he’d said something to give them an indication of just how much he’d enjoyed his time with Linnie.
He froze.
Nay, it wasn’t that he enjoyed being with her. He didn’t.
No, with all her crying and the way she wore her emotions, it wasn’t that at all. It was more he desired her. It was only that he desired her. Other than pure physical lust, he felt absolutely nothing for Linnie McQuoid Smith.
Tiring of the cryptic looks they continued to give one another, Tremaine felt his patience snap. “Would one of you just come out and say whatever the hell it is?”
Hart nudged his chin in a ducal command over at Kilmartin.
Kilmartin shook his head and nodded right back.
Hart stared the other man down.
Tremaine set his glass down hard. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
Kilmartin stepped up. “It is my fear,” he began with clear reluctance, “you may have been, and continue to be, overly optimistic about your relationship with Miss Smith.”
Snifter still in hand, Hart lifted his glass in Tremaine’s general direction. “That.” He jabbed his drink at him.
Tremaine frowned. From everything he’d shared, that was the conclusion they’d reached?
“I assure you, being a gentleman, I won’t share the details surrounding my two meetings with Miss Smith, but you may both rest assured that when I’m speaking, I do so without ego and with absolute confidence.”
Kilmartin frowned. “Since when don’t we discuss and share details about women?”
Wait, when hadn’t they?
Unease tripped along Tremaine’s spine. Sweat slicked his palms. He searched his brain. No, they always had.
As if sensing weakness, Hart dropped an elbow on the table and leaned in. “Yes, little brother, do tell. Why the break from our usual?”
They’d always freely discussed their pursuits with, of course, the knowledge everything said between them would be held in the strictest confidence.
This, however, with Linnie . . . felt somehow different.
It’s because it is, you damned fool.
Tremaine flicked a speck of pretend dust from his shoulder. “I am of the opinion the three of us here have never entertained or dallied with, or even so much as courted, a respectable young virginal lady.”
“Hell no!”
“God no,” his brother blustered.
“I didn’t think so.” Tremaine arched an eyebrow. “Given that, I’m not free to share further details. Just know, based on that which I can’t discuss, you may be sure of my success.”
“Ah, you’ve seduced the lady,” his brother said, toasting Tremaine once more.
“I have said no such thing,” he bit out frostily.
Furthermore, in addition to the passionate exchange between them at the masquerade, he’d forged an even deeper connection with Linnie in Hyde Park. It had been an emotional one. Not for Tremaine, but it clearly had been for her.
His second-in-command broke into his thoughts. “But can’t we assume you did?” he ventured. “What other deduction should we arrive at, based on what you revealed?” Kilmartin puzzled his brow. “Otherwise, what kind of connection would you have forged with the lady?”
The man sounded so perplexed Tremaine could almost think Kilmartin knew there were things he wasn’t sharing.
“Hmm.” Hart might as well have been a bloody Socratic thinker for the intensity with which he pondered Kilmartin’s question. “Yes, little brother. Is there something we’re missing that you’re not sharing?”
Heat suffused his neck. For fuck’s sake. “Can we please just get back to why you seem to think I’m overestimating my strengths and success thus far?”
Once again, Tremaine’s brother and best friend did one of those back-and-forth silent exchanges. His temper was about to snap for a second time when Kilmartin volunteered the next bit of information.
“It appears Culross might have a greater chance in not only accessing the lady but also in wooing her.”
All Tremaine’s senses went on high alert.
He sharpened his gaze on Kilmartin.
This time, Hart took over. “Not long ago, Kilmartin was returning from his club. Along the way, he happened upon Miss Smith.”
Tremaine froze. “And?”
“The lady appeared to have become lost.”
“Lost?” After they’d parted, he’d kept a distance and trailed Linnie and her maid to ensure she arrived safely at her carriage.
A queasy sensation formed in his gut. Oh, God, had harm befallen her after she’d climbed inside? It was all he could do to keep from shouting for his bloody reluctant orators to spit out the damned story.
“Where the hell was she lost?”
“Somewhere between the Duke of Aragon’s and the Earl of Abington’s residence,” Kilmartin supplied, promptly shattering that crazed moment of irrational panic.
To steady himself, he took a long sip of brandy. “I wouldn’t call that lost, gentlemen,” he said with forced sardonicism. “I would say the lady was on the exact street where her family resides.”
“Yes, we’re well aware,” Kilmartin acknowledged. “However, she wasn’t at her own residence, nor was she at the McQuoids’. Rather, it appeared—”
“Not appeared,” Tremaine’s brother piped in. “Be honest.”
“The lady was out front of the Duke of Aragon’s.”
“What is extraordinary about that?” he asked impatiently. “Miss Smith and the Duchess of Aragon are cousins.”
“Yes, but you see—”
“Actually,” Tremaine interrupted Kilmartin, “I don’t see because you both appear determined to make this an epic tale.”
Kilmartin tugged at his lapels.
Hart held a ducal hand up. “I’ll take it from here.” He turned all his attention on Tremaine. “When Kilmartin happened upon her, the lady was in the midst of scaling Aragon’s wall.”
That gave him pause.
The man he’d once been would have smiled. “That sounds like Linnie Smith.” In fact, their tale of how they’d found Linnie proved the most Linnie-like story ever. A hoyden as a child, she’d become an even greater hoyden as a grown woman.
His brother’s next words slashed through the reverie. “There were no other McQuoids present. No cousins. No siblings. No fath—”
“She was alone, then?” Tremaine demanded with an urgency he couldn’t suppress.
“At first, she was.”
He whipped his focus back over to Kilmartin.
The other man’s announcement bore the same ominous quality it had when he’d informed him Triton’s Mistress would not last the night.
Tremaine focused on breathing slowly.
“Someone startled her,” his second-in-command murmured. He bowed his head. “And the lady fell.”
Tremaine’s heartbeat became sluggish. A wave of nausea befell him. “Was she hurt?” he whispered.
Both gentlemen exchanged a peculiar look.
By God, if she’d been, he’d make sure his second-in-command regretted surviving their last horrific sea battle.
Tremaine brought his fist down on the table. “Goddamn it!”
“No!” Kilmartin hurried to reassure.
“No,” Hart assured. “Just bruised some.”
Bruised some?
A fresh wave of rage swept over Tremaine, and it was the first time he’d ever wanted to do his own brother harm.
“Before Kilmartin could help the lady, someone else arrived.”
He narrowed his eyes.
Because he knew by their tension and evasiveness.
“Who?” he seethed, forcing them to say it.
Tipping back on the hind legs of his chair, Hart folded his arms at his chest and looked at Kilmartin—the duke’s meaning clear. Kilmartin was to own this.
Kilmartin’s cheeks grew flush. “Culross.”
Culross.
When he trusted himself to speak, he did. “Let me get this correct,” he said as quietly and calmly as his burning temper allowed. “Kilmartin, you happened upon Miss Smith, and instead of coming to her aid, you let her fall and allowed Culross to rescue her?”
Both men exchanged another look.
“Yes, you appear to have the right of it,” Kilmartin informed.
Tremaine’s temper flared. “By God, are you both even certain you’re helping me?” He slammed a fist down upon the table, causing all three glasses to jump and every patron present to cast a glance in their direction.
Hart and Kilmartin each eyed him like he’d gone mad.
And mayhap he had. How else to account for this uncontrollable rage and seething fire inside?
Taking a steadying breath, Tremaine glared at the owl-eyed patrons. Those lords swiftly averted their gazes.
When he ensured the room no longer stared, Tremaine dropped his voice to a whisper. “What were you thinking to allow him near her?”
“I’d considered intervening when she started her climb—”
“And not at any point when the lady was out alone?” he snapped at Kilmartin. “Christ, if the damned plan is successful, that woman who was out alone, without protection, is in fact my future wife.”
His wife.
A weird sensation filled his chest.
Both men had the good grace to lower their eyes.
“No, you’re correct,” Kilmartin murmured. “I thought I might determine more about her actions, but I should have first seen whether she required assistance.”
“Assistance which Culross was all too happy to provide,” Tremaine barked.
His skin burnt, and he wanted to rip and tear it off to free himself of the bloody miserable sensation.
He took another deep breath.
This was Linnie.
She didn’t want anything to do with the roguish Captain Culross, the man who’d stolen his lumber. Even reminding himself of that didn’t ease the tension inside.
Tremaine glared into nothingness. By God, the hell Culross would get Linnie Smith, too.
The battle had just become an all-out war, and one Tremaine had absolutely no intention of losing.
“What’s the date?” he demanded of his brother and quartermaster.
“The date?” Kilmartin repeated.
“Yes, the bloody date!” Tremaine barked, loud enough to bring the focus back their way.
This time, by the time Tremaine leveled a glare on the crowd, the men had the good sense to be staring elsewhere.
“The twenty-fourth of December,” his brother supplied.
The twenty-fourth of December.
While the pair across from him peered worriedly at him, Tremaine scoured his mind.
In welcoming Tremaine into their fold, the McQuoids, an unconventional lot with an almost comical commitment to family traditions, had done him a wonderful favor—they’d provided Tremaine with an exact, detailed accounting of each and every place they visited, when they visited, who attended, and even more importantly, who did not.
They took part in so many peculiar winter traditions—most of which he used to share with them.
Think, man.
The twenty-fifth was the easiest to recall. Such was the day they cut a tree down, dragged it inside, and hung decorations upon the poor felled evergreen.
He continued in reverse with the dates.
I know where she is!
Tremaine jumped up; the mahogany legs of his leather seat scraped along the hardwood floor.
Hart and Kilmartin looked up, stunned.
“Where are you going?” his second-in-command asked.
“Don’t do something stupid and make a bad situation worse,” his brother warned.
“On the contrary, I’m taking the bad situation Kilmartin created and making it right.”
Not only did he know where Linnie McQuoid Smith would be this day, he knew there wouldn’t be a single gentleman present amongst their gaggle.
Steeling his jaw, Tremaine strode swiftly through White’s. Only when he got outside did he take off running toward his mount.