Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (26 page)

"Always?"

"Esteemed you above other men."

He laughed a bitter laugh she had heard before when she had first met him at court in what seemed a far-gone time. "Then, Mistress Spy, I pity the man you do not esteem."

When she was free, he moved away from her, keeping the knife. She saw no blame in that. He wanted no tale of hers, and none she told would he believe. She knew that she had lost him. No man under God's heaven could forgive what she had done. A man can be cheated of his money, of his property, even of his honor, but not of his given love. That is an unforgivable and bitter acid that eats at all manly pride, for it is the rejection of his essence. This was a truth any woman grown knew without a need to be told.

In the dark, she heard him breathing, steadier with each breath, and she began to speak quietly. Whether he wanted to hear or no, she would speak. If she were to die in this hell of a Dutch ship hold, she would die without a lie on her conscience. Even the rats stopped their scrabbling about to listen as she unburdened her deepest self.

Meriel told him all to his face, or rather she told it in front of the sound of his breathing in the dank darkness. She looked into the mirror of memory and recited everything from the moment she arrived in court and was mistaken by Chiffinch, kidnapped and borne away to the Tower, then taught the trade of a spy, albeit a spy for England. She said nothing of Felice. At last, she fell silent.

"You were a servant in Admiral Cheatham's household."

"Yes, personal maid to his lady."

"While you are in the way of truth, tell me ... Felice is the traitor, and Chiffinch used you in her stead. Is that the right of it?"

She hesitated, but finally whispered, "Yes." She would not pile lie upon lie. She would tell him about her own web of deceit, but she would not tell the depth of Felice's wickedness, for which she had endured much to protect him from knowing.

"My countess a traitor against all I e'er fought for," Giles said in a wondering, agonized voice. "I am disgraced!"

Meriel rounded on Giles's faint outline. "How so, sir? No man can be disgraced by another. Your brave deeds are not diminished by what your wife has made of herself. She can not subtract from your glory. I think that is a male idea no woman would truly believe."

"And now you are a petticoat philosopher! Is there no end to your talent?" He was silent for long minutes, ashamed of that bitter sarcasm when it was obvious to him that she had pulled every painful word from her deepest self. "My pardon, mistress." He could not bring himself to call her Merry. He had buried that name to keep at least some of what it had meant to him.

Of a certainty, he was happy that Felice had been stopped in her betrayal, or at least exposed. But a question of equal importance haunted him: Had this woman who shared his captivity made love to him only as part of her masquerade, or had there been more to it? Surely, he could not be so completely wrong in what he remembered, the look on her face, the tenderness of her embrace, the tears..,. Nay, he would swear the tears were real.

Finally, Giles lifted his head from his arms where it had rested during this entire tale. He was all amazed, and doubted he would ever be less so. He was not ready to share the first question on his mind, so he asked the next question. "Are you telling me that you learned to be a lady in less than a fortnight? That it is so easy for a commoner to transform to a coroneted peeress of the court!"

Meriel ruffled, thinking this
would
be the question an aristocrat would ask of a serving maid. "M'lord earl, you think it so difficult to imitate speech, manners, carriage! You imagine it unlikely that a servant could so quickly accommodate to silk, powder and jewels, not to mention seven meat dishes at the clap of her beringed and softened hands!"

Giles refused her an answer. But he heard her stand and begin to pace about, hearing her hands hit the mast that ran down the middle of the hold they were in, for balance, he supposed, against the ship's roll. He almost stood to support her before stopping himself from touching a body he couldn't trust.

"Nothing to ask now, my lord?" She was showing a temper, but she didn't care. "Allow me to tell you what
is
difficult to learn for a serving maid from a decent family. Expected to deceive a husband in the bed of others less worthy ... many others... and glorying in it. Being kidnapped by a duke who does not keep his underlinen clean. Bowing low and pretending to respect those whose greatest career and delight is in scandal, whoring, cuckolding and cheating honest tradesmen of their due receipts."

In spite of his desire not to, he stood and came closer, facing her to stop her tormenting, too-truthful language. "Cock's life! You think to charm me with your truth now! You cozened my love from me and now I find it ripped away. I vow you have no pretty words for that, Meriel St. Thomas!"

Meriel's eyes, adjusting further to the dark, began to see shapes more clearly, especially Giles's broad shoulders as he faced her.

She would not shrink. Her guilt was now primed with anger because she had lost him. "I confess that I have done you wrong. Kill me if you will with that knife you hold in your hand. I do not ask your understanding. How could you... a man ... a peer of the realm with the wealth and power of generations ... understand what I am, what I need, what I can be made to do to live and to eat another day? Did you ever fight for a crust Of bread? Endure a whipping? Sleep on filthy straw after the animals had finished with it? Were you turned a whore at twelve years by a brute of a stable boy, and left bleeding and in fear of being sent into the streets with a great belly?" Her breath gave out.

"You're asking something of me with this tale that I cannot give."

"You do not believe me?"

"Oh, but I do. Not even Cervantes—you remember Cervantes—could dream up a tale like that one."

Meriel shivered as the words, loaded with memory, reached her. Expecting the knife to follow, she braced herself. "Do it! Release me from this misery."

"No," he said. "I will not release you." He did not know exactly what he meant by those words, nor did he want to know. "Leave off this torment!"

He went to the farthest place to sit upon the hatchway stairs.

She spent the next hours watching the struggle that showed on his face in the faint light creeping around the hatch cover. ... Much against her will, but without the strength to avert her eyes.

They were both sleeping, exhausted in body and spirit, when the hatch opened and de Witt, followed by Felice, descended into the hold.

Blinking against the sudden light flooding into every corner of the hold, Giles stood to his full height, his head thumping hard against the ceiling, but fearing a megrim less than appearing weak before the enemy ... all his enemies, the Hollander, his wife and even Chiffmch's spy, whom he yet could not call by the name that had become completely dear to him.

"They are out of their bonds, Cornelis," Lady Felice said, looking around de Witt's shoulder, a bit of fright mixed with her cruel hauteur.

"I see that," de Witt answered, not obviously concerned. "There are more than eight hundred good Dutch seamen above, some of them with memories of fighting him last year, perhaps a match even for the Earl of Warborough." De Witt bowed without mockery.

Meriel stood, bracing her back as best she could against the moving bulkhead, refusing to grovel on the deck at their feet, or to imagine what Giles was thinking or not thinking. Or feeling. If he felt anything at all, and that was more than she allowed herself to hope for.

Felice stayed behind the protection of the Dutch plenipotentiary. "Cornelis, they must have a weapon."

Giles saw the uselessness of trying to keep the knife and bearing the indignity of having hands probe his person. He shrugged and handed it over to de Witt with an insultingly short bow. "It has served its purpose, sir. We had need to beat off your Hollander rats, fat on your cheese stores."

De Witt smiled, refusing to be goaded by the familiar English taunt.

Meriel thought de Witt a man much given to irony, and in a way he was rather enjoying the drama of a man with two identical wives unfolding before him. She stepped forward and grasped the mast. She would not allow this group of aristocrats to plague Giles or ignore her.

"You can be rid of us easily, my lord. Set us ashore." Her voice was one of command and it pleased her because she had not planned it thus. The tone had just been there when she needed it. Once again she wondered why command was more natural than submission, and she a servant her life long.

Felice laughed, and Meriel thought she had never heard so much of evil locked in merriment. "More like, we throw you to the fo'c'sle crew for their night's enjoyment. Surely, such a low person can jig and sing like the orange girls in the pit at the Theater Royal. Perhaps not so well as Mistress Nellie or—"

"Not so well as
your ladyship,"
Meriel responded, growing mightily irked at this lady libertine's superior manner. "Your reputation is no state secret. I found those universally high expectations of your bed's availability by every court spark the most difficult part of my disguise. It took all my strength to fend off your expectant lovers." She curtsied slowly to underline her disdain, and saw her words hit their mark, although the countess pretended to ignore them, turning her head away. Or perhaps she truly was not concerned with what was said or thought about her. There were such people. Meriel stared at Felice more closely than she had done afore, because to see evil in a face so much her own was just too distressing. A person with no evident conscience was surely in league with the devil or his minions on earth.

But Felice was yet concerned with the niceties of her noble position. "Giles! You would allow this lowborn counterfeit to—"

"Cock's life! This counterfeit, as you name her, asks no permission of me and needs none. I heard not one falsehood." Giles turned his back to his countess, and there was something of finality in that move, as if for him she was no longer in the world.

Meriel watched, her heart needing to understand more than it could. Yes, she thought she had detected something in his voice when he spoke of her. Not forgiveness, nor affection. No, never those. But some smallish speck of acceptance, even. . . and she dared much to think it... admiration.

De Witt descended into the hold completely, Felice staying behind on the stairs, holding her skirts in obvious fear that they would touch something foul.

Meriel had to smile at that. How could this countess be more befouled than she was aready? Whore. Adulterer. Traitor. What was fouler beyond those?

Felice caught her eye, and Meriel saw from her thunderous expression that she must sense the thoughts behind such amusement.

"Giles, you were ever easily led by a pretty face." She laughed a court laugh, brittle and with no mirth. "Oh, la, as it seems now, the
same
pretty face. But you and your king will pay for denying me what was mine by right. You for withdrawing my funds—•"

Lord Warborough did not turn to face her, but stiffened. "Monies that you were spending in depravity, even to having my heir torn from your womb."

De Witt looked back at Felice in some horror.
"Mijn God!
What company have I hired?"

Felice lifted one shoulder, uncaring of either man's opinion. "As for Charles Stuart! A king who chose Babs Castele-maine o'er me. Why would I serve such a husband as you, or such a monarch as he?"

"Because we are wed in the sight of God and you are English born."

"I serve the god and country of Felice, and ever have," she said, laughing at his scruples.

Giles bit his tongue to contain further responses, all seamen's curses. For some reason, the king's spy tempered his anger. He would not bring shame on himself in her eyes. That he thought of her regard first didn't surprise him, but he wondered at it. How could he be so willing to forgive deceit again?

De Witt raised his hands. "Enough! There is much important business I must conclude before my admirals meet tomorrow to make an end to our attack plans. My apologies, Lord Warborough, for believing some hours belowdecks without food would bring you to give up the defense plans for Sheerness Fort, and for the chain, especially the chain. I won't think so ill of your capacity for suffering again. You and your most lovely counterfeit"—he bowed, smiling to Meriel—"will be treated humanely and fed well."

"Bread will not make me traitor," Giles answered.

"Nor me," Meriel said, removing a steadying hand from the mast centered in the hold, riding the ship with legs spread like a born sailor as it dipped to meet the next waves.

"Then hang
her,
Cornelius, if your dainty stomach will not allow you to hang an earl!"

His face thunderous, de Witt rounded on Felice. Even the countess could see that she had gone too far, and quickly climbed back up to the hatch and disappeared on deck.

De Witt sighed. "I cannot apologize to a man for his own wife."

Giles faced de Witt, mouth rigid with disgust. "I congratulate you, sir, for removing her from my sight and my country. God help you and yours."

"Indeed, my lord, I do think I agree with you. But for now, I will keep my bargain with her as quickly as possible. For you and ... er, the other lady, I offer you better quarters in the small cabin adjoining mine. I'm afraid for some time. At least several turns of the glass until the battle is finished." He bowed with regret writ in his features. "I fear that the Lady Felice might attempt to carry out an execution on her own, thus I will lock you in near to me and keep the key on my person. I do assure you, my lord, she has no access to my person."

Meriel sat on her bunk in the small cabin, a plate of crumbs and a few bites of excellent eel pie in front of her. De Witt had been as good as his word, supplying them with blankets, food, thick Dutch beer and a pisspot. Giles had rigged a blanket that gave privacy to the pot.

After inquiring politely as to a stranger if she preferred privacy in her bunk and without waiting for an answer, he hung another blanket down the middle of the cabin so small that her foot could kick the blanket. She did not know if he behaved as a gentleman would in such circumstances, or as one wishing her well out of his sight. She suspected the latter.