Chapter 32
Midnight. The captain’s wounds had been bandaged and the men accompanying Ethan had taken him to a roadside source of strong rum. They assured him this would help the healing process.
Helen, drained but almost recovered, had been put to bed. Lochranza had tucked her in.
So here they were, Lochranza and Ethan sitting like cardboard puppets until one of them spoke.
Ethan explained his reason for coming.
‘I heard you are with child. And before you ask, Helen told Venus before she left that she suspected as much. I came to tell you that I would bring it up if you did not wish to.’
‘I’m not sure I wish to marry you.’
‘That’s neither here nor there. I’m willing to bring it up if you wish to go on having your… adventures.’
She sensed both confusion and annoyance in the way he said this. Lochranza was puzzled.
‘You don’t want me, but you want the child?’
‘I’m not a fool. Whatever was between us has been destroyed – at least for now.’ He bowed his head. ‘My fault to some extent.’
The memory of that night brought pain to her mind and as if sensing her unease, the child caused a fluttering in her stomach.
Ethan continued to explain, though with some difficulty, twisting his fingers, his frown deep enough to sow corn.
‘The child is of my blood. It will have a secure environment living under my roof. A good education. Stability.’
‘Lochranza, you attract instability, wild happenings and wilder people like a field of August corn collects wildflowers!’
Pride wouldn’t let her beg him to try again despite the possibility of scandal for both of them. She held her head high and clenched her jaw. She would not say anything to demean her position. He was just as guilty of tearing them apart as she was.
‘So you have your daughter back.’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And you want my child too.’
‘Our child.’
She swallowed the pain she felt. Ideally, if he cared to hold out his arms, she might rush into them. But he wouldn’t do that and she would not give in unless he did too.
‘What angered you most?’ she asked him, her narrowed eyes fixed on his. ‘Me helping Venus to go off with Lester, or spying on you?’
‘I knew you were headstrong. I didn’t know just how headstrong. As for the other matter, I have to ask myself if I can live with a woman I know to have been spying on me.’ He shook his head, his dark eyes that she’d come to love clouding over and guarded. ‘The answer is no.’
He didn’t trust her! The realisation shocked her, but then she countered, why should it?
From the very first, she’d become involved in a double-edged game that she didn’t really understand.
The prospect had excited her – a different life from that led by her contemporaries, the young ladies in pink, the kind of lady she had protested she never wanted to be.
And now she wished from the bottom of her soul to be that kind of lady.
Because of him! Even as she thought of that night he had slapped her face and taken her by force, the very night her baby was conceived.
Suddenly, she could not contemplate a life without him. Whether he was at home or away doing intriguing things on behalf of international concerns and countries, she wanted to be there for him – just like any other lady waiting for her lord to come home. But it was too late. It was all too late.
‘Ethan. I took on the task without thinking of the consequences. I thought it would be exciting. I thought you were exciting. I could see no real malice in the instructions I was given. My uncle… my father is the true enigma in all this.’
It was hard to visualise the man who had brought her up as being her natural father and not her uncle.
Even if he had acknowledged her as his daughter, would he have been any less withdrawn, a solitary figure who lived in his library for most of the time and seldom saw, let alone spoke to, the child he had sired on his brother’s wife.
She wondered at how passionate that moment in the Scottish village had been, how much her mother might have pined for her lost love before she’d died.
But that was all in the past. With hindsight, she should not have agreed to spy on her fiancé.
‘I realise now that the fact you had a foot in both America and Britain was a distinct advantage. Perhaps if you had been allowed to travel freely between the two, the war would never have happened.’
‘Napoleon would never have allowed it! Two English-speaking nations fighting it out between them suited him, his chance to grab what spoils he could.’
Lochranza was unnerved. She’d thought his reasons for turning away from her were rooted in her perceived betrayal and nothing else.
Now it seemed there was something else. Another reason simmered just below the surface.
He held a great passion for the thirteen states who had dared fight for independence.
‘Is there nothing I can say or do that will persuade you to tell me everything, or are such things of national importance and not for the ears of a woman?’
When he shrugged his broad shoulders, she saw through the dark blue wool to the well-defined muscles, the smoothness of his skin and recalled the warmth of his body when it was cupped against hers, her back fitting comfortably into his front.
The shadows shifted as she closed in on him, longing for him to fold his arms around her and tell her that all was forgiven.
He was a while thinking, considering what she had asked him. ‘Very little.’
‘And what if I refuse to let you have the child?’
She felt her heart skip a beat when he turned to face her, his handsome profile highlighted in the glow of the candles behind him.
He blinked. His lips were parted. She waited for him to smile, to at least look displeased.
‘Is it mine?’
His statement came as a complete surprise and cut her to the bone. But she would not break down. Neither would she lose her temper, though her eyes blazed like fire.
‘How can you doubt me?’
His laugh was mocking and full of bitterness.
‘Captain Crabbe, my lady. You’ve spent some time in his company the last few months.
The man’s an adventurer, a brigand and little more than a pirate, but then, my dear, you’re a woman tempted by anything exciting or unusual.
You’re not a woman ever likely to settle down to respectability no matter what.
’ He smiled sadly and shook his head, then looked away.
‘I should have known better than to consider marrying you. You’re very young.
Perhaps in time you will be able to settle down, but you’re not ready for it yet. How old are you?’
‘Twenty.’
Her voice seemed far away and the fact that she was twenty, even to her own ears, came as something of a surprise.
Two years since that summer ball when she’d first met him.
So much had happened since. Abducted in Jamaica, fleeing up the Mississippi, living for a time on Ethan’s plantation, trekking into Indian Territory before fleeing before a robber band paid by vested interests greedy for the Indian lands.
And here she was again, back where it all started.
He pursed his lips as though testing words before saying them.
‘Exactly. Twenty years old and you have already done many things a lady never gets to do. There are many years for adventure left to you, Lochranza. Have those adventures before it’s too late.
Do not become the lady you’re expected to be on account of society decreeing that you should. ’
‘And the child?’
‘I wish no scandal attached to the child’s name. I am more than willing to marry you without requiring you to live with me. My only stipulation is that the child is brought up in Virginia.’
Confused feelings ran through her mind. As a mother, her first inclination was to say no, but on a practical basis, Ethan was right. She still had fire in her belly, an uncontrollable urge to see more of the world, to do more than other women did.
‘I think I’m lucky I can travel and enjoy new experiences,’ she said, and knew immediately it was true.
There was also another reason for agreeing to his terms. By acknowledging their child and by marrying, a continuous bond would exist between them.
Their squabbling had been foolish and born of pride.
Time would no doubt settle their differences.
She realised that was her hope, and yet she was not yet ready to fill the role of loyal wife, doting mother.
Something in her had remained wild – even devious.
Like her father – Lord Kildare, fascinated by world events and the machinations of driven people.
She nodded curtly, her flashing eyes discreetly lowered. ‘I agree to your terms. The child, once it is weaned, will live with you.’
‘Where will you go after the child is born?’ His voice was low and there was concern.
The truth was that she didn’t know what she would do next. There was a hunger in her, a desire to be part of this world, not hidden away from it, surrounded by stout walls and a plethora of servants.
‘England,’ she said. ‘I will likely go back to England.’
He nodded quietly.
She turned away. Her heart felt heavy, but she would not – could not – allow herself to break down until he had gone. Through the tears, the past and the present – perhaps even the future – mingled. There was one other task she had promised herself to do.
* * *
In the clear air of the following morning, she rode out to where the house had stood where she’d lived with Mama Molly.
Weeds and scented bushes had taken over the area of ash and blackened beams. Here and there, a flower bloomed, all that was left of the colourful garden, a mix of English blooms and the wildly exotic local variety.
This, she thought, is the place where Molly’s spirit still remained, not beneath the mound in the Darkies cemetery.
At the cemetery, she’d placed a bunch of flowers on the simple grave.
In time, they would wilt, but the wildflowers thereabouts would always bloom, a fitting memorial to a selfless woman who’d kept secrets and looked after a lonely little girl.
She urged her horse away and onto the barely discernible path leading to the cliff edge where she reined him in. Her eyes were drawn to the sea and the myriad shades of blue and green; her colours, the ones that complemented her hair and her eyes.
Not until Ethan had laid it bare had she realised how she was drawn to the sea and whatever lay beyond, whatever it could lead her to.
Her life spread out before her, an unknown place. But he was there, in the background, and somehow, she knew he always would be, no matter where she was or what she did.
* * *