Dark Before the Rising Sun (5 page)

“Lady Rhea Claire is in love with the captain. She'd never leave him, Kirby.”

“It might just be better for everyone involved if she did,” the little steward said, not meaning to speak his thoughts aloud.

“What do you mean?” Alastair asked sharply, but he looked as if he did not really want to know the answer.

“What I'm thinkin', lad, is that once the cap'n sets his mind to somethin', there's no stoppin' him. And I wouldn't like to see the young lady get caught up in what is bound to happen if the cap'n, nay”—Kirby paused and corrected himself—“if Lord Jacqobi returns to Merdraco. Which he will. Ye see,” he continued slowly and thoughtfully, “there might be other folk as well who haven't forgotten the past. And them folk may be hell-bent on revenge too. Dante, though he's been gone these many years, is still the Marquis of Jacqobi. That much hasn't changed. And for some people that title will revive old and bitter memories. When his lordship returns to Merdraco, certain people might feel like 'twas only yesterday. Then all the old hatreds will flare up. Nothin' quite like festerin' resentments to start poisonin' some people's minds over and over again.”

“But, Kirby, the captain doesn't have to become involved in all that. He can—”

“He may not have any choice in the matter,” the little steward interrupted harshly. “Reckon it might already be too late to stop what's been set into motion. Maybe we never even had a chance. 'Twas meant to be all along.” Kirby spoke sadly, remembering another time. “Only this time Lord Jacqobi isn't the betrayed young man who knew only how to run away. He has become a man who is more than a match for his enemy this time. And when the two meet up there's goin' to be hell to pay.”

“It does not have to be that way,” Alastair repeated, but he knew their captain too well really to believe himself. “Has the captain's struggle been for naught? If only the past could be forgotten,” he spoke wistfully.

“Ye can't forget, Mr. Marlowe, because the past is what ye be today. 'Tis a part of ye, lad. Besides, some things may not be as much in the past as ye might be thinkin',” he added.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that maybe the cap'n hasn't been idle all these years. Maybe he's been up to somethin', and that somethin' might not sit too well with a certain somebody, not if he finds out. Which he will, once we get to Merdraco. Aye, then the fat will be in the fire.”

“To be sure, I've never seen such glum faces,” Fitzsimmons exclaimed. “I'm beginnin' to think ye're not God-fearin' men. Haven't ye read Ecclesiastes? ‘A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.' Well then? We've got the food and the drink, so let us be merry, mates! Damned if I'm goin' to let them two woebegone faces spoil me appetite,” he declared, helping himself to a large wedge of thick-crusted cheese.

“Aye,” Kirby muttered as he picked up his own knife and fork, thinking the Irishman ought to be quoting Isaiah instead. Even gallows-bound men deserved a last meal, he decided, washing down a stubborn piece of pork with a hefty swig of ale.

The little steward glanced upward, toward the location of the private room where the captain of the
Sea Dragon
and Lady Rhea Claire were dining, and he wondered if they, too, were suffering a lack of appetite.

Or were they, as the young so often were, blithely unaware of what the morrow might bring while they celebrated the end of a journey, little realizing that the end was often but another beginning?

They say best men are molded out of faults,

And, for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad.

—Shakespeare

“Another piece of gooseberry pie, Conny?” Lady Rhea Claire smiled.

“No thank you, m'lady. I'm fair to bustin' me new breeches already,” Conny Brady said, muffling a belch behind his hand as he looked up sheepishly.

“Do not forget your milk, Conny,” she reminded him a second time.

Conny sniffed, sounding like Houston Kirby when the little steward wasn't pleased about something. “Beggin' your pardon, m'lady, but I don't really take to milk. Heard tell it ain't good for a person. Reckon a wee swallow of ale might taste good, though,” he said.

“Indeed? Well, I shall have to tell my mother and uncle about your views.”

“M'lady?”

“You see, my mother swears by milk, as does my Uncle Richard. And they are both in quite good health.”

“That be the duchess, then, m'lady? She drinks milk?” Conny asked doubtfully, then eyed the mug of milk with a less suspicious eye.

“To please me, won't you drink just a little?” she cajoled, a slight smile curving her lips while she watched him take a deep breath, then down the contents like any good drinking man would have done.

“Thank you,” she murmured, thinking how much he reminded her of her younger brother Robin. The boys were of a similar age, and both had dark hair and blue eyes. Both possessed a certain mischievous quality that should have given fair warning to anyone who might have mistakenly thought either one was the angel he appeared to be.

“Cap'n, m'lady. D'ye mind if I'm excused now? I'd kinda like to join me mates. Thought I saw Mr. Kirby comin' up the lane not more than half an hour past. And I heard Longacres down there in the taproom when I was passin' through. I'd kinda like to be havin' a word with him.”

“Very well, Conny. Off with you,” Lady Rhea Claire told him with an understanding grin, knowing that the boy could never get his fill of Longacres's pirate lore.

“Cap'n, sir?”

“Run along, Mr. Brady,” his captain consented. “But go easy on the ale, Mr. Brady,” he advised.

“Ye won't be needin' me anymore this evenin', then? D'ye want I should give Mr. Kirby a message?” he asked as he stepped away from the table that was now cluttered with empty platters, a linen napkin still tied round his neck and stained with gooseberry pie.

“No, I'll not be needing either of you anymore this evening. And, Conny, remember that you are a wealthy young man. You need no longer ask consent of any man, nor serve him. What you do from now on is your own business,” Dante reminded the lad who had spent half his life serving aboard the
Sea Dragon
.

Conny frowned slightly, the thought seemed to trouble him. Then, with a shrug of his thin shoulders, he bid them good evening. But as he opened the door to leave and join his friends below, he glanced back. There was a strange expression on his face, almost one of longing, as he gazed at the captain and Lady Rhea Claire sitting companionably in the warmth of the firelight.

When the door had closed behind his small figure, Rhea Claire carefully folded her napkin and placed it on the table. “He seems so lonely sometimes. He enjoys being with his mates, and listening to that old pirate's stories of buccaneers, but underneath he is a very lonely little boy, Dante,” Rhea Claire said, her face sad. Although she had been raised in a loving family, she had come to know loneliness since being kidnapped from her home, and she worried about Conny.

It seemed as though Dante had forgotten those long days of loneliness when he had had no family. “Do not mistake him for your own brother, Rhea. Conny Brady's been more places and seen more things than many a man old enough to be his grandfather. He has become strong, Rhea. And he now has a future most of London would envy. He'll not want for anything. He doesn't need your pity, my dear.”

“But perhaps he does need love, Dante, and a family who cares about him, and not just what his money might buy,” Rhea responded quietly but firmly.

“A family? What, pray tell, is a family? A group of loving people dedicated to one another's happiness? Or a group of selfish people related by blood, but who couldn't care less about one another?” His slight smile was little better than a sneer.

“I think that is an absolutely horrid thing to say.”

Pressing a warm kiss against her forehead, his expression apologetic, he realized he had shocked her. “I did not come from a loving family. My father lived in his own little world, which excluded me. For some reason he took a dislike to his only son. No, perhaps that is rather harsh,” Dante amended. “Let us just say that he was disinterested in my welfare. And my esteemed grandfather, the old marquis, was more concerned with upholding family tradition than seeing to the wants and needs of individual family members. We were, none of us, overly devoted to one another.”

“And your mother?” Rhea asked softly, her violet eyes shadowed.

“My mother?” Dante repeated, as if the word were foreign to him. “She loved me so much that she preferred death to watching her son grow into manhood. Not that I had given her much hope of seeing that boy become an honorable man, or even a son that she could be proud of. Too late I discovered my true enemy, and that my mother had never been happy with…” Dante paused, then continued, his voice harsh, “Well, suffice to say that I did not make her life any the more bearable. I suppose I am partly to blame for what followed. If only I had been more a friend to her. If only she had turned to me for help,” Dante murmured more to himself than to Rhea. His eyes closed against the memories, he did not see the instinctive movement she made toward him.

He moved the hand that Rhea would have touched comfortingly, and impatiently ran his fingers through the soft, dark chestnut curls that framed his forehead and temples. “The despair she must have known. How she must have suffered because of me. Sometimes I wonder what must have been going through her mind in that fleeting yet endless moment of darkness just before the rising of the sun. If only she had waited, given me a chance to make things up to her. But she did not.

“We'd had an argument, just one of many in those last days. I had thought her wrong, and I had stormed out of the library, not sparing her even another glance. I heard her call my name, but I never stopped. And I never saw her again. I went off to London, and it was just a few days later that I received the news. They said it was an accident, that the path had been slippery after the rain, and she had lost her footing. Everyone knew she loved to walk the cliffs. Even with a storm coming she could be seen standing on the cliffs, gazing out to sea for hours at a time. I realize now that was her way of escaping the torment of her life. Eventually it must have come to her that there could be another, more final escape. She must have thought it her salvation when she stared down at the tide breaking against the rocks so far below. And so, at dawn, she took that last step that ended it all. She no longer had to face the morrow and what it might bring.”

“No, Dante, you cannot know that. She may truly have slipped,” Rhea whispered, shaken by Dante's tormented memories.

“The last words she spoke to me, except for calling my name, were, ‘Perhaps death will be my only escape from this hell I have created for those I have loved.' Then she asked for my forgiveness.”

Dante opened gray eyes shadowed by the past, and Rhea felt as if she were staring into a stranger's eyes. “She wanted
my
forgiveness. Dear God, the irony of that! Her words still haunt me. The villagers of Merleigh say that her windswept figure can still be seen on stormy days silhouetted against the dawn above the cliffs near Merdraco. Some have even said that she haunts the great hall, and that her voice can be heard calling to someone, but of course there is no one to answer. Even the vicar of Westlea Abbot, a neighboring village, has claimed to have seen a specter that appears atop one of the towers of Merdraco on a moonless night. Of course,” Dante added with the cynical look that Rhea knew only too well, “he preaches more from the bottle than from the Good Book, so you can't take his word as gospel.”

“How do you know all this? I thought you'd not returned to Merdraco in over fifteen years.” Rhea wanted to learn all she possibly could about this man she had come to love, yet knew so little about.

Dante seemed momentarily startled by her question, then he shrugged. “It is not important how I know,” he said, unwilling to explain. “Most good people think it a sin for someone to take his own life. They believe that the soul will never find peace and is destined to wander for eternity, or perhaps be damned. My mother did not make a very good bargain when she traded one hell for another.”

“Dante, I am so sorry,” Rhea said awkwardly. “I never knew. You do not speak of the days before you left England. I wish you would tell me,” Rhea urged, her slim hand touching the hardness of his tanned cheek.

But she was unprepared for the violence of his reaction when his fingers wrapped round her hand and he pulled her from her chair and onto his lap. Staring deeply into her startled eyes, he spoke coldly. “You are not a part of that life. Never do I want you to be touched by it, or even learn of the man I once was. I wonder if you will continue to be faithful to me, no matter what may happen, or what you might learn. Or will you, my most beloved, find life with me so unbearable that you would turn away from me? Will I hurt you as I have everyone else in my life? Or will you remain true, little daffadilly?” he demanded, his gaze lingering on the golden glory of her hair.

“Dante, you know you have my love forevermore. I have pledged that to you.”

Dante loosened his viselike grip when he saw the hurt expression in her eyes. Turning her palm upward, he pressed a gentle kiss against its softness.

“Forevermore? If only I could believe that. But I fear that nothing is forever. You will only be hurt all the more if you are deceived into believing that what happiness we have found today will be there tomorrow,” Dante told her.

Perhaps he was unaware of the cruelty of his words. Rhea turned her face away. His casually spoken words frightened her. There was such a hopelessness about them.

Dante's touch was gentle this time as he turned her face to his. “I've hurt you, haven't I? I did not mean to, but now you can see how easily an ill-spoken word can cast doubt on or even destroy the feelings we thought inviolate,” he warned her. “Never let anyone turn you against me, Rhea. Promise me that.”

Rhea stared at him in silent confusion.

“Promise me?”

“I promise you,” Rhea finally spoke the vow.

“You may have doubts about me one day, but never doubt that I love you. You may hear of scandal associated with my name, but however genuine it may sound, come to me and let me explain. Give me the chance to deny it. Or perhaps to confirm it. But give me that chance, Rhea. Never run away without letting me explain,” he asked her, almost pleadingly, she was later to remember.

“I'll never leave you, Dante,” she told him again, trying to reassure him, for she had just seen a side of Dante that few people knew about, and it had been anything but arrogant.

“How easy it is for you to promise that now, but what of later?” he murmured as his mouth closed over her lips and he parted them, savoring the familiar feel and taste of her.

Rhea's hands moved caressingly as she cradled his head and responded to his kisses with a growing passion of her own. It was always this way, she thought drowsily as she felt his fingers moving with purpose against the laces of her bodice. She could deny him nothing. She could think of none but him when he looked at her, touched her, made love to her. The rest of the world ceased to exist when they were together.

Unfortunately, however, the rest of the world still had business to take care of, and a persistent, not-to-be ignored knocking finally intruded into Rhea's consciousness. Reluctantly, she freed her lips from Dante's possessive kiss.

“There is someone at the door,” she tried to tell him, but the words were little better than a breathless whisper.

“The damned fool can bide his time,” Dante replied, unwilling to stir himself for some misadvised oaf demanding entrance, not when he could bury his face in the fragrant, golden tresses he had loosened to fall free about Rhea's pale shoulders.

“Dante, please,” Rhea pleaded. She felt his mouth moving along the curve of breast revealed by her parted bodice. The knocking was becoming impatient.

“Either the bastard's crazed, or he has an army at his back, for few men would dare disturb my privacy. One of the few advantages of being thought the devil incarnate, my sweet,” Dante muttered as the knocking continued and a noisy shuffling could be heard beyond the solid oak of the door.

“I do believe 'tis an army. I suppose there's nothing for it but to face the enemy.” Dante sighed as he allowed Rhea to slide off his lap. He was far from being in good humor as he watched her cross the room and, her back to the door, straighten her bodice.

“Enter at your own risk! Pistols primed!” he called out, sounding more like the captain of the
Sea Dragon
than a gentleman of leisure.

Rhea spun round in surprise, expecting to see Dante standing with a pistol in each hand. But he was still sitting where she had left him. A wicked grin was widening his mouth as he stared at the door.

“I daresay the worst of your reputation has now been confirmed, and by your very own lips,” Rhea commented dryly while adjusting the delicate fall of lace adorning the sleeves of her muslin gown. “Half of the maids in the inn are scared witless whenever they happen to cross your path. I truly believe that you enjoy causing an uproar,” she accused him, but the smile curving her lips took the sting from her words.