Chapter 11
Seated at the vanity with Scarlet brushing her hair—and with none of the gentleness of August’s ministrations the night before—Meghan stared miserably at her reflection.
With its layered dust and wear, the mirror must have been original to the building. The distorted glass panel still managed to capture all of Meghan’s heartache. Her swollen, bloodshot eyes. Her wan complexion made the freckles she normally loved appear as splotchy, darker specks she now hated.
“Had a cry last night, did you?” Scarlet asked snidely. “The captain has a way of making a woman weep, but they don’t seem to be the same sort of tears.”
No, Meghan’s were the I sobbed in silence and had my heart broken kind.
“You and I aren’t different, you know,” Scarlet continued bitingly. “You ain’t a fancy wife, but a whore the same as me. The difference is he’ll tire of you. He comes to visit me every time he sets sail.” A lusty glimmer sparked in the woman’s brown eyes. “And when he returns.”
This is what awaits me. I’ll be seen as a whore…
Meghan’s fingers shook. She buried them in her lap.
When she returned home, every door would be closed to her. Her married kin would weather the storm. They were powerfully titled and connected. But Meghan, Fleur, and Andromena—they would be pariahs.
This was August’s doing.
How could he do this?
Linnie.
His love for Linnie…
Her eyes burned.
Fortunately, Scarlet dragged the comb through Meghan’s hair hard enough to raise tears. Meghan flinched.
“Tell me, was the captain as attentive and generous with you?”
The servant’s taunts hurt worse than the brushing.
Meghan dug her nails into her palms.
“Most generous, most attentive,” Meghan murmured. “I trust he also sends a maid to attend you in the mornings.”
Scarlet’s face darkened. She increased the force with which she yanked the comb through Meghan’s hair.
Meghan’s barb brought no victory. She was awash in a sudden cold as cutting as the tempest raging outside.
He had unknowingly broken her heart twice. Not that he would have cared either way, but he could not again crack that still-raw organ open and let it bleed anew over his corrupted soul.
Because then it would mean her cousin Linnie’s marriage to Captain Tremaine had transformed him—from man into villain, charmer into captor. From a good, honorable gentleman capable of smiles and laughter into a brute monster—all because he had loved and lost.
And it seared Meghan’s soul that she cared so much for the man who had abducted her. An enemy of her family.
How Scarlet the mean maid would laugh were she to know the truth—that August hadn’t even desired Meghan enough to seek his pleasure.
Still, seeing Scarlet as an enemy served no purpose. They were simply two women who wanted a man they should not.
And only one of them knew hoping for even a crumb of affection from August was futile.
Meghan.
Meghan was the one who knew.
Blistering envy aside, Meghan felt a kindred connection to the other woman.
“How long have you worked here, Scarlet?” she asked carefully.
“Do you mean how long has his lordship been visiting my bed?” Scarlet’s smirk was sharp as a blade and cut far worse.
“It is not my affair.”
So much for female camaraderie.
A visceral knot twisted in Meghan’s stomach.
The maid answered anyway.
“Every time he sails.” Scarlet’s gaze grew distant and heavy. “A generous lover he be,” she said, her voice equally faraway.
Biting her lower lip, the buxom maid ran a restless hand over the front of her gown.
Before he sails…
Meghan’s body snapped upright.
He did not intend for them to stay hidden here.
“We are at the Pool of London!”
Where August kept several of his brigs.
He intended for them to sail.
Scarlet’s hand fell away from her bodice. “Never said that!” Her flushed cheeks begged the contrary. “You hear me, you fancy bitch,” Scarlet railed, jerking the brush so hard it tore tears from Meghan’s eyes. “I didn’t tell you anything.”
Meghan spun around and snatched the brush from the other woman’s hand. Ignoring Scarlet’s outraged gasp, Meghan soared to her feet and brandished the item the maid had turned into a weapon.
“If you touch me once more, I swear I’ll make you rue the day you picked up a brush and not a knife.”
“That is enough,” thundered a man’s voice.
Scarlet shrieked loudly enough to drown out Meghan’s gasp.
Heart pounding, Meghan grabbed the only weapon available to her—her comb—and jammed it in his direction.
Mary Mother of Heaven and Poor Souls everywhere.
Thor had invaded Meghan’s rooms.
His nose was bent from both birth and break. His lips were scarred at both corners, painting the man in a perpetual frown.
Only one of them needed fear—for all that well-controlled anger of the towering man, some four inches taller than August’s six feet, was centered on Scarlet.
While the giant assessed the mere mortals before him, Scarlet cowered.
Meanspirited though Scarlet was, Meghan was not so petty as to withhold a modicum of pity.
She stepped between them.
“I take offense to your treatment of the lady. If you wish to retain employment, madam, I advise you make your apologies as well.”
His quiet authority cut like steel through silk.
Where was the logic in that? Why should this stranger care how Scarlet treated Meghan, when August—who had been a friend to her—thought nothing of hurting her?
Properly chastened, Scarlet fell into a deep curtsy.
“My apologies, miss. I did not mean no harm.”
The stranger weighed the worthiness of that apology.
“That is doubtful but sufficient. You may go.”
The flushed woman jumped and, with two more hurried curtsies, gathered the sides of her skirt and fled for the door.
The moment he stepped aside, Scarlet bolted past him.
“So much for the same courtesy you showed her,” he said. “Forgive my intrusion. I heard raised voices and decided I did not like what I heard.”
“And so you decided to simply come in?” she asked incredulously.
He paused.
He seemed to consider that a moment.
Then nodded.
Scarlet swept from the room, the echo of her boots a bitter drumbeat in her wake.
Meghan gripped the back of the chair and kept it between them.
Had there ever been a less revealing stare than this man’s?
“Who are—?”
“You needn’t be afraid.”
Meghan blinked slowly.
“I…needn’t?”
The towheaded, tree-sized fellow shook his head.
She kept her weapon raised.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Meghan and her peculiar champion spoke at the same time.
“That is meant to reassure—”
She rolled her eyes extravagantly.
“Oh, I needn’t be afraid of a strange gentleman entering my bloody rooms. Goodness, you should have said that sooner. I feel vastly better.”
He stood with the proud carriage of a military man—and the silence of one too.
Meghan warily studied the stranger. His sun-bronzed skin marked him a sailor.
“Who are you?”
“Lord Greyhold. I am in the earl’s employ.”
He followed that with a bow.
Meghan ignored the courtesy.
She narrowed her eyes. “I do not know a Lord Greyhold.”
The cryptically even stranger lifted a single dark brow. “You know all the lords in London?”
“I have had five London Seasons, attended enough events, plays, and operas, and stood in and observed enough receiving lines to say beyond a shadow of a doubt there is no Lord Greyhold.” She delivered the entire speech without pausing for breath.
“Ah,” she spat. “Another gentleman pirate.”
His already fully erect shoulders snapped back. It was a wonder his spine did not crack.
“I am no pirate.”
His mouth tipped in slight distaste.
She had offended him.
Meghan regarded him carefully. August would not keep crew unskilled in sailing. What manner of man who served under a privateer should take umbrage with the title other men boasted about? Based on his bearing and deportment, she marked him as a military man.
“Lord Culross is too much of a coward to face me?” She looked him up and down pointedly and sneered. “I suppose that places you a hair above a coward.”
He clasped his hands behind him. “That is for you to take up with Lord Culross.”
What a peculiar man. Meghan did not know whether he intended that as jest or actual suggestion. “Is there a reason you are in my rooms?”
The gentleman nodded once. “Lord Culross instructed me to collect you.”
August had truly sent another man in his stead.
The bloody coward.
A sharp ache throbbed behind her breastbone. No. It was worse. Her lower lip trembled.
It was a clear sign of his indifference. August cared so little he could not be bothered to come for her.
As if she had needed another sign, a voice in her head needled.
Her skin tingled and she glanced up quick.
Lord Greyhold’s eyes revealed their first emotion—pity.
Gathering the last vestige of her pride, Meghan tossed her head back. “Collect me?”
Lord Greyhold nodded.
The laugh she forced out emerged with all the bitterness in her heart. “Like marbles or snuffboxes?”
“Not insofar much as you’ll be wrapped in a carpet and carried out.”
Wrapped in a—?
Meghan studied the stoic gentleman again, searching for signs he joked.
She found none.
And burst out laughing anyway.
She laughed wildly, helplessly. Her entire body shook until mirth bent her double.
Meghan barely caught herself against the chair.
“O–oh my…g–gooooood.” She gasped, trying to breathe through her amusement.
“A-all of this is too absurd. And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ’tis that I may not weep,” she said—before realizing what she had quoted.
“Don Juan,” her nearly seven-foot companion observed.
The legend of the arrogant libertine devoid of morals, honor, and heart.
Meghan howled with laughter.
Don Juan, indeed.