Sparhawk's Angel (21 page)

A
private room, Weaver," ordered Captain Lord Eliot Graham over the din of excited voices. "I wish to speak to my lady bride in private."

Rose stared as he came toward her, her mouth dry and her heart pounding. How had Lily ever loved a man like this? He was older than she'd thought, much older than any promising younger son had a right to be, with a full, florid face from too many late nights with too much rum and port. Although his uniform coat was expensively cut, all the tailoring in the world couldn't disguise the softness of his belly, bulging out against the white waistcoat. Tiny beads of sweat trickled from beneath the edges of his white-dusted wig, and he dabbed at his upper lip with the edge of a handkerchief bordered with lace.

"What I have to say to you will be brief, Lord Eliot," she said, striving to keep her voice from betraying her. "An hour of your time, that is all."

Unconsciously she was backing away from him, and he frowned, his chin turning slack above the tightly wound neckcloth. His pale eyes were small and close-set, his mouth wide with a smile that meant nothing. "An hour, my girl, when I've waited months?"

"I fear you've waited in vain, sir," she said quickly, "as my hour will explain."

The host, Weaver, bowed to Eliot. "Ye might have th' front room upstairs, if it please ye, my lord, seein' as ye do know the chit," he said with obvious reluctance. "But mind I run an honest house, my lord, with neither whores nor catamites, an' if she be not what she claims—"

"Oh, she's what she seems, all right, Weaver," said Eliot unpleasantly. "Cold and uncivil, a common little chit of a tradesman's daughter, complete with an overblown regard for her own maidenhead in direct proportion to her dowry. Hardly worth the six hundred pounds some fool clerk must have paid for her ransom for her to be here now. Six hundred pounds, I might add, that's ultimately come from my own pocket. Ain't that so, Miss Everard?"

Before Rose could defend herself, he had seized her by the arm and was yanking her from the room, away from the shouted encouragement and catcalls of the others.

"You are no gentleman," she cried, dragging her feet as she struggled to break free on the narrow staircase. "Not you, nor any of your fine brother officers! My father believed that by agreeing to this marriage he was improving our family, but I swear he would have done better to pluck a husband from a barnyard than—"

"That's enough," he said curtly, shaking her. "I don't air my dirty linen before publicans, and as my future wife, I advise you to do the same."

He threw open a battered door at the top of the stairs and Rose had a quick glimpse of a small room more meanly furnished than the public spaces below, with only a chair, a low bedstead, a washstand and a chamber pot.

"Here you are, Miss Everard." Then he shoved her inside first, so roughly that she stumbled across the uneven floorboards. Instinctively she reached out to catch herself on the chair, and as she did she struck her injured arm hard against the chair's slatted back. She gasped and sank to her knees, the pain so piercing that she feared she would faint.

"You are
…cruel
," she finally managed to whisper, dropping back
onto her heels on die floor as she cradled her arm, the polished brass buckles
of his shoes before her. "Unspeakably… vastly
…
cruel
."

Miserably she thought of Nick, of how kind, how gentle he had been to her, how with him she had always felt cherished and protected.

"It won't be the worst you'll have, my girl," said Lord Eliot, unmoved, "unless you learn to hop right smart to my tune. What happened to your wing, eh? Stabbed with a dressmaker's sharp, or is that Sparhawk's doing, too?"

Carefully she pulled herself up into the chair. "It's a splinter wound, received when the vessel in which I was sailing was attacked," she said, hating him all the more for his callousness. "Not that it matters a fig to you."

"It does if you're damaged goods, unfit for breeding. Sparhawk should have taken better care of you than that to earn his six hundred pounds." He was sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, striving to strike a spark in the bowl of a stained clay pipe he'd drawn from his pocket. "When I agreed to this contemptible marriage, your father assured me there wasn't a smudge on you, and the old bastard better be telling the truth. Though what father thinks otherwise of his daughters, eh?"

He laughed at his own wit, a dry bark that gave Rose one more thing to despise. How,
how
, had Lily loved this dreadful man?

"Lord Eliot," she began, drawing the box with his ring from her pocket. "Lord Eliot. I shall not waste any more of your time than is necessary, and will come directly to my reason for being here."

"To marry me, you little fool," he said, amused, the pipestem clenched in his teeth. "I don't need you to tell me that."

"No, you don't, and no, I'm not going to marry you." She saw the startled look of alarm in his small eyes, and plunged ahead with her well-rehearsed speech. "Since my father made his arrangements with you, I have found my affections lie elsewhere, and that I cannot be the wife you deserve."

"Affections?" He laughed his scorn. "Do you truly believe I care if my wife loves me?"

She lifted her head sharply. "You did once. You loved my sister, and she loved you."

He turned his head to squint at her sideways through the haze of tobacco smoke. "Your beauteous tart of a sister would scarce let me touch her little finger," he said bitterly. "She agreed to wed me only because your father threatened her. I haven't a doubt she would have bolted and left me at the altar when the time came, lily never loved me, not even my title, not for a moment."

"Then it was only for Papa's money that you asked for me," said Rose slowly, the truth making her head spin, "and not from love of Lily."

In one way she was glad that Lily hadn't loved him, but in another she felt her father's betrayal all the more keenly. Papa was too shrewd a man not to have recognized Lord Eliot for the kind of overbred fortune hunter that he was, but had Papa really been so eager for this union that he had lied to her about Lily even as he sealed her own fate in a loveless, scornful marriage? She bowed her head, her heart aching, and thought again of how endlessly fortunate she'd been to find Nick, her Nick, when she had.

" 'Course it was for the money," said Lord Eliot flatly. "Whyever else would I do it? And it's a good thing you've come when you did, too. Even in this hellish place I've run desperate short."

"But Papa paid your debts," she said, bewildered. "He said it was hundreds and hundreds of guineas. How could you possibly need more?"

"A drop of water in the ocean, that was, considering how much the old miser must have with his bankers." His laugh was unpleasant. "But if you think I'll give my accounting to you, my girl, you're sadly wrong."

Oh, she was wrong, all right, thought Rose miserably, wrong from the moment she'd agreed to obey her father, wrong to have come here hoping to convince this man of anything. Two wrongs now she'd have to do her best to make right.

"Your father gives me the money," he was saying, "and I'll make you Lady Eliot before the parson. That's the sum of it, and always was."

"No, it's not," said Rose slowly, carefully, making sure he heard every word, "because I'm not going to marry you. Not now, not ever. And that, as you say, is the final sum of it. Good day, Lord Eliot, and I wish you joy of the next poor foolish woman you try to humbug."

She stood and hurled the box with his ring in his lap, and, with a final flick of her skirts, darted toward the door to escape. But for such a heavy man Eliot was surprisingly fast, lunging forward to block her path.

"It's Sparhawk himself, isn't it?" This close his words were stale with tobacco and bitter with hate, and his eyes glittered dangerously. "That bloody rebel pirate didn't just make you his prisoner, did he?"

"He didn't
—
"

"Don't deny it, you little slut, it's written broad all over your face. He may have had your maidenhead, the bastard, but I'll be damned if I'll let him steal your fortune from me, too!"

"Nick doesn't care about my father's money!" cried Rose. "He loves me, not my dowry!"

"So it's 'Nick,' is it?" he taunted. "If he values a shrewish little piece like you over your fortune then he's an even greater fool than I thought for letting you come here. Not that it matters, since he'll have neither you nor the money."

With aching clarity Rose remembered how Nick had told her not to come, and how yet she'd insisted. Why, why, hadn't she listened to him when she had the chance?

Swiftly her gaze swept the small room, searching for another way to escape, and stopped at the open window.

"I wouldn't advise it," said Eliot, guessing her intention but remaining close to the door. "How far would you get, I wonder, trying to climb down a sheer wall with one arm to support you?"

Rose's hands tightened into fists of frustration at her sides. "You can't make me marry you against my will," she said, panic making her voice shrill, "any more than you can make me your prisoner here!"

"You'll learn soon enough what I can make you do, my girl," he said, his smile chilling. "Before this next week is over, Miss Everard, you
will
be Lady Eliot, And as your wedding gift, the moment we are married I shall bring you the body of Black Nick Sparhawk."

The sun had nearly set on the following day when the hail came from the skipper of a small fishing boat, seeking permission in broken English to come alongside and aboard the
Angel Lily
. At once Nick himself was at the rail, ready verbally to tear the head off any fisherman who'd dare come hawking his wares today. But instead of some
Pierrotin du mer
, the man who climbed swiftly over the side was Michel G
é
ricault, his handsome face unrecognizable beneath a carefully applied layer of grime and the rough fisherman's cap.

"We must talk,
mon ami
," he said, glancing meaningfully at Gideon as he touched Nick's sleeve. "Your cabin, eh?"

But Nick shook his head, impatient with Michel's constant desire for secrecy. "There's nothing you can't say before Gideon. Damnation, Michel, don't keep me waiting! I've been sitting here idle the whole ruddy day! Where the devil is Rose?"

"Still on St. Lucia with Graham."

Nick swore and pounded his fist hard on the rail. "If that bastard's hurt her—"

"Miss Everard is unharmed," said Michel quickly, "
grace
à
Dieu
, and as safe as the entire British fleet at Pigeon Island can keep her. But that is the problem. Though Graham has announced that they are still to wed, she is his prisoner, kept in a genteel lodging house and guarded by a party of women in his pay as well as by his men outside."

"Wedding, hell," said Nick furiously. "She went there to break the blessed match, not plan for it!"

"
Vraiment
," agreed Michel. "No one believes it to be a love match. The gossips are divided between those romantics who claim that Graham is so lovesick that he's loath to share his bride with the world before she is safely his wife, and the cynics who say that the bridegroom cannot afford to let her and her fortune stray from the reach of his creditors. But one thing is certain—the wedding is set for Tuesday evening."

"That's three days. We haven't a moment to lose." Nick's mind was already racing to make plans, relieved as he was at last to be actually able to
do
something on Rose's behalf. It would be the most difficult—and the most important—raid of his entire career, and he meant to leave as little to chance as he possibly could. "Will you lend me this fishing boat of yours, Michel?"

"Everything's squared away on board the
Lily
," said Gideon eagerly. "There's not a man who isn't itching to take on the Britishers for Miss Everard's sake."

"Then let 'em scratch," said Nick grimly. "They signed on to fight for their country, not Miss Everard. Besides, do you think I'm daft enough to take the brig into their cove? They'd like nothing better than to blow us clear from the water."

Gideon shook his head. "You can't do this alone."

"I can, and I will," declared Nick. "I'll want you at hand off the coast, Gid, for when I have the lady with me, but I'm going into the town myself."

Michel frowned. "Very heroic, Nickerson, but also very dangerous, and not perhaps the wisest course, eh? Graham and his men will be expecting you to do this."

"They're expecting me with the
Angel Lily
, not by myself," said Nick confidently. "The English always make their own wars by the rules, and can't conceive of anyone else doing otherwise."

"
Vrai
," admitted Michel, "but you've already broken Graham's honorable rules by stealing his bride. There's nothing he'd prefer than to make good his threats to capture and to hang you. What good will you be to Mademoiselle Everard with your neck stretched as long as a gander's?"

"Then I'll make sure she won't have to find out."

"And she won't, not so long as I come with you." Michel's smile was charming, his manner the same as if he were politely insisting Nick take more brandy rather than what Nick suspected were his very considerable, very deadly skills as an undercover agent. "You will need someone to guide you into the harbor, to make the proper responses with the proper accent if challenged. You'll recall that St. Lucia is at heart still a French island, and only a captured bauble of the English for these past few months. If you wish, I shall swear to stay on the beach with the boat, but I cannot allow you to go otherwise."

Nick cocked one brow suspiciously. "Would my sister make life that wretched for you?"

Michel shrugged with resignation. "Let us say that I should not like to find out."

"Then come if you wish, Michel, but mind that I'm a lucky man, or I wouldn't have lasted as long as I have." He grinned wickedly. "Some swear the devil himself looks after me."

Only Nick heard the indignant squawk from Lily, somewhere above in the rigging, while the lines of concern on Michel's face deepened.