Chapter 26 #2
Morgan grinned. “From my father, no. But I wanted to unwrap his smothering infant and swive his wife. Neither thing being possible, I thought, Well, I’ve seen them and set out across the meadows with my thumbs tucked in the waist of my ragged knee breeches.
” The hands relaxed, conjoined still, against his chest. “That afternoon I saw her. Her. The girl who became Merry’s mother.
She was my age, but in most ways a child, and I first saw her walking in a dry ditch with strawberry clover all in flower.
Her silk skirts were spread out all around her like willow boughs, and her ringlets were filled with wild apple blossoms and falling down on one side; and she had put her bonnet on a lamb that she was trying to lead on a red ribbon, as though it were a puppy, but the lamb kept balking and chewing the ribbon.
Her eyes were light blue, the color of robin’s eggs, and they opened round when she saw me standing in the lane above her.
Then she grabbed my hand and drew me into the ditch beside her, putting two fingers on my lips and saying ‘Ssh!’ when I would have spoken.
She whispered to me that I had to be very quiet because Indians were coming.
And when I told her that I didn’t know there were Indians in England, she touched my lips and said ‘Ssh!’ again.
England was full of Indians, she said, only they had to stay mostly out of sight because people made such a fuss when they saw them.
Sometimes, she said, she let the Indians scalp her, and sometimes she hid.
And the next time she opened pink-bud lips to speak, I put my fingers on her mouth and said ‘Ssh.…’ ”
The dark gaze was blind, the smooth jet irises catching quills of light like the seed globe of a thistle.
“I stayed until late May, working for a chandler in Leatherhead, seeing her when she could slip away. On the last day it rained, and we met under a beech tree, with celandine growing in a mat beneath, the flowers closed in the poor light, and she said it seemed as though the sun had drawn closed its shutters.” A long pause.
Morgan’s eyes returned to Cat’s. Mildly the pirate said, “I had to leave her, you know. Her family would never have allowed me to court her openly. Too gently reared for friendship; too wellborn to marry; too young to bed. The temptations were too great, which was why I tried not to learn what became of her, but I imagined her cherished, and happy, and in time… married. Years later I discovered by chance that her family had left England in a state of poverty. I had the Joke and money, and I searched for her, but by then she had died. There were two children, Merry and an older brother; and a widowed husband—James Wilding.”
Cat released an aging breath from his lungs. “Wilding. The famous ones?”
“The famous ones. The fanatical ones. James and Carl Wilding…” A terse smile touched Morgan’s firm lips. “He was probably better to her than I would have been. My only consolation. I left someone with the children—”
“I know. Merry’s Henry Cork.”
Morgan’s brow skipped upward in mocking admiration. “How long have you known?”
“When she was ill,” Cat said, “she told me all about Henry Cork, and the man bore a certain resemblance to old Hezekiah, the gunner’s mate that Sails used to tell stories about. Big practical joker. I found his name on a copy of your old manifest on St. Elise. Hezekiah Cork.”
“My, my. You have been rowing with both oars, haven’t you?
Hezekiah Cork. He wasn’t much, but at least I knew I could trust him not to seduce the girl the day she reached puberty.
What I haven’t quite figured out yet is what she was doing on a ship bound for Britain in Michael Granville’s company, and why he would go to so much trouble to besmirch her reputation.
Although I suspect Letitia’s fingers in this somewhere. ”
“Devon’s grandmother?”
“Yes.” Morgan uncrossed his ankles. “She reposes immense confidence in Granville’s integrity.
And you see, I’d been toying with the idea of bringing Merry to England if the political situation in America continued to deteriorate.
I had Letitia maintain a correspondence with Merry’s aunt so that if I had to move her, it could be done through an intermediary.
At that point there seemed to be nothing to be gained by terrifying the girl with the knowledge that I had an interest in her.
In the end I decided she’d be safer where she was.
” He studied his toes, flexing them. “It turns out, of course, that I was wrong. It was fortunate you brought her to me.”
“ ‘All the while he by his side her bore. She was as safe as in a Sanctuary,’ ” Cat quoted sarcastically.
“And you decided she’d do for Devon. Please, if you happen to pick someone out you want me to marry, just say ‘Marry her!’ and I will.
Don’t drag me through all the cellars in hell by the seat of my inexpressibles first.”
“Nonsense.” Morgan’s smile was disquieting. “I only provided proximity. They did the rest. I wouldn’t have encouraged it if I hadn’t seen in the beginning that they were in love. You’re worried about Merry; then go after her.”
Morgan’s words had taken Cat off guard. He said quickly, “Do you mean it?”
“Certainly. You might begin looking for her at Cathcart’s. I gave Devon a letter to deliver to him.”
There it was. The trap, neatly closing. He might have known. Through hell by the seat of his breeches. Why had he ever expected anything else?
“Why do you always have to be so bloody thorough?” Cat’s eyes grew colder than the icy fluids that had suddenly filled up his veins. “Was the letter about me?”
“My dear, what else do I have in common with the saintly Cathcart? Certainly it was about you. Run along to London and find out what’s becoming of our little nestling.
But first,” he said with a malicious grin, “find me something to put on my feet. I don’t intend to brave the wet cobbles of Falmouth in my stockings. ”
Sitting in Lord Cathcart’s library three days later with the history of Rome on his lap, Cat thought angrily that what Morgan deserved was to walk over live coals in his bare feet.
He flipped open the expensively bound volume.
It was printed on wave paper. Good God, who could read it?
A gift, obviously, from one of the illiterati.
Most of Cathcart’s friends were men of letters, weren’t they?
He looked on the front leaf. For dear Brian.
From your sincere, loving, and affectionate friend Aline.
On Christmas Day 1813. Aline. Devon’s mother.
That was interesting. After years of benign devotion here was Devon’s mother giving Cathcart books with love sandwiched pathetically between sincerity and affection.
As an approach it was probably too subtle for Cathcart.
She would have done better with Dear Brian.
Aching and damp for you in my lonely bed.
Pension off your mistress and I’m yours.
Aline. It must be difficult for her. Rumor had it that she was a woman of unassailable virtue.
Enough men, certainly, had tried to assail it, including the royal scion himself.
Poor woman, and here she was, chaste as unsunn’d snow and reduced to trying to send blurred signals at her late husband’s best friend.
Cat closed the book cover. Maybe he was reading too much into a simple inscription.
Outside, a carriage stopped in clanging rhythmics of iron upon rounded stone. With unwelcome emotion writhing in his stomach Cat heard the muted sounds of Cathcart’s entrance, the indecipherable rustle of his conversation with the butler. The door opened. Lord Cathcart entered.
They stood in the quiet and looked at each other. Father and son. The man and the only living creation of his body.
The boy had his looks from his mother—the sturdy bones, the square hips and shoulders, the relaxed elegance of the carriage, and the odd tintless hair that had enchanted Cathcart nineteen years ago.
Cathcart had met her on his Grand Tour, and though she had blossomed from the purest flower of Swedish gentility, and was only twenty, she was tainted already by disgrace, and there had been plenty of people to warn Cathcart not to marry her.
But Cathcart had been young and na?ve, and his insight was colored by the generosity of spirit that later made him a beloved and enlightened philanthropist; he had believed in her completely, ignoring or forgiving every sign that she might not fully return his regard, and attributing her heavy use of oral opiates to the stresses of her unquiet nature.
When she deserted him after five months of marriage, it had stricken him to the marrow of his soul, and it was five years before he had recovered enough to allow Devon’s father to gently prod him into hiring a young lawyer to find out what had become of her so that they could gather the evidence for a divorcement.
The lawyer was a conscientious man; it was not his fault that when he traced the woman to the Caribbean brothel where opium overuse had finally stopped her heart, no one there had thought to tell him she had left a child.
Probably none of them took any interest in the parentage of the filthy and abused scraps of humanity that slept in the hen yard, the malnourished survivors of the abortionist’s sporadic competence.
They became better kept and better fed as they grew older, and a source of labor or profit.