Pirate's Bride (Liberty's Ladies) (68 page)

Her beautiful face, shining with love and devotion, was inches from his. Pulling her towards him, he couldn’t resist placing a tender kiss on each of her nipples. But when he lifted his face, there was no gentleness there.

“Bethlyn, I want you to tell me about Eversley. I mean the man would have to be made of iron not to have touched you in all of this time, and I don’t hold you responsible for his doings. But I have to know if…”

“Thomas never touched me. Tonight was to be the first time.”

He sighed a ragged, relieved sigh which seemed to come from the very center of his soul. He helped her dress and then he said, “I’m glad for that, because I didn’t want to have to torture him first for violating you after I find him.”

“Why would you do that anyway, Ian? Aren’t we going to leave here now? I don’t care about Thomas. I want to go home before he realizes we’ve gone.”

Even when Ian was Captain Hawk, she’d never seen his face filled with such black loathing. Placing his hand on the hilt of his sword, he gave her a thin but determined smile. “I’m not leaving Woodsley until I find Eversley.” Leaving the room, she placed her hand in Ian’s

~ ~ ~

They found him in the Grotto Room, staring into the stone-faced image of Diana. At their entry, Thomas turned, some shock and surprise mingled on his face which he managed to suppress behind a sneer. “Welcome back to the living, Briston. I should have known you’d find some way to escape, but not killing you when I had the opportunity was my fault.”

Ian appeared as nonplussed by Thomas’s greeting as Thomas did at seeing a man whom he had sent to a hellish existence.

“I promised you that I would return. As you well know I’m a man who keeps his word.” Ian placed Bethlyn behind him, much too aware of Thomas’s close scrutiny of her.

Thomas’s laugh mocked him. “Yes, I remember how you kept your word all of those years ago when I read the terms of your mother’s will. You promised to marry a plain, shy little girl and you did. But you deserted her, cast her adrift for seven years before you claimed her again. But, of course, you’d want that which I most coveted, wouldn’t you, Briston? The ugly goose had grown into a beautiful and elegant swan, much too good for the likes of me. And now you believe you have won, but no. Bethlyn is my wife now. She is mine.”

“Bethlyn is my wife. Her marriage to you isn’t legal.”

Bethlyn saw Ian’s hand tightening on the sword and heard the warning in his voice. She drew back into the room’s shadows.

Thomas withdrew his own sword and held it aloft. “Then I shall remedy that situation permanently.”

A muscle twitched in Ian’s jaw when he unsheathed his sword from the scabbard.

Before Bethlyn’s terrified eyes, the two men began to parry, each testing the other’s expertise. Thomas surprised her with his skill, but Ian was a master swordsman and constantly managed to sidestep Thomas’s swipes.

“I’m going to kill you,” Thomas retorted. “You cost me endless humiliation that day on your ship when you strutted in your hawk-like guise. But this day, I’ll rip out your heart and feed it to your namesake.” Thomas perspired, his breath coming in small gasps which led Bethlyn to wonder if he was growing tired of parrying and would soon commence in earnest.

“You’ll be denied the chance, Thomas,” Ian commented, moving swiftly away from the point of Thomas’s weapon, and not seeming to be at all out of breath or tired, considering his long, grueling months in prison and his recent recovery.

Around and around the room they went until Bethlyn grew dizzy and wondered if she should run for help. However, when Thomas nicked Ian’s arm, drawing blood and knocking him off balance for a second, her heart fell to her feet. But it was at this precise moment when Thomas looked his smuggest and relaxed his sword arm that Ian lunged and struck the sword in the center of Thomas’s chest. Immediately crimson liquid stained Thomas’s white shirt front as he fell to his knees.

Kicking Thomas’s discarded sword out of reach, Ian towered over his nemesis like a hellish specter — something Ian intended Thomas to see for all eternity.

With arms cradled around his middle, Thomas managed a painful grin. “I always thought you were an arrogant son of a bitch. Now I suppose you’ll finish the job.”

For all his hatred of Thomas, Ian sensed that Thomas was frightened of a painful death, and he couldn’t bring himself to be anything less than merciful even to this man who was his enemy. “I’ve instructed Augustus to alert the constable. “But if you wish I can finish the job of sending you to your maker.”

A shriek echoed through the Grotto and Grace ran into the room. With her hair atumble around a face which framed wide, haunted eyes, she resembled a madwoman. “Don’t kill him!” she pleaded, and came to a sudden halt beside Ian.

“Grace, my fair Grace,” Thomas said in a suddenly triumphant voice. “I should have known you’d not desert me.”

“Quiet, you sniveling excuse for a man,” Grace commanded Thomas before turning all her attention on Ian. “I beg of you not to kill him, sir. Take your wife and child and leave here. Please grant me this one favor.”

“The authorities have been called. I am fearful you might attempt to help him.”

“No, sir,” Grace confessed, and for the first time Ian noticed that she held a bloody paring knife at her side. “I escaped from the room your friend locked me in.” Fastening her gaze upon her wounded lover who was fast losing blood, she suddenly sounded as demented as she looked. Her voice was a chilling hiss. “I hate Thomas even more than Perkins. I will not help him.” She failed to say she had found Perkins bound and gagged in the pantry and killed him in a most merciful fashion, considering how he had ill used her. But for Thomas she had something else in mind — something he should expect as his due.

“Grace?” Thomas sounded weak, unsure.

Grace didn’t seem to hear him when she turned to Ian. “Believe me, sir, he won’t escape. I’ll not allow him to be a bother again to you or your wife and precious baby. “

Ian realized Grace was insane. Whatever end she planned for Thomas he couldn’t dwell upon when Jeremy arrived at the Grotto door to say that the constable was near the house and the carriage was ready for departure.

“I give you my word,” Grace persisted, holding tightly to the blood-smeared knife, lifting it for Ian to see. “You must go.”

Ian sheathed his sword. “The honor is yours.”

Calling to Bethlyn, he grabbed her by the arm and hurriedly they ran from the Grotto, ignoring Thomas’s pitiful cries that they return.

Grace laughed, a wicked sound even to her own ears. She went to the door and latched it with the iron bar across the center. In Thomas’s weakened state she was able to push him easily onto his back and pull off his satin breeches. She was obsessed by the sight of him, not heeding his pleas for mercy. She saw just this event as in her daydreams, her mind repeated the action over and over again when she took him into her hand and raised the knife.

With one swift, sure swipe…

~ ~ ~

In the carriage which raced to London a sense of jubilation prevailed. After hugging and kissing Tessie, Jeremy, and Augustus, Bethlyn handed the baby to his father.

“He looks like you,” she hesitantly explained, “but I named him Nathaniel Matthew after our fathers. I discovered my father may have loved me a little, because he tried to warn me about Thomas in a letter.” She gripped Ian’s hand. “Am I foolish for naming our child after a man you disliked, for hoping that his good points may instill themselves in his namesake? Was I wrong to name the baby after two men who loved your mother?”

Clearing his throat, all Ian could do was shake his head, too overcome to speak by the sight and feel of this perfectly formed child, his son, and the almost childish hopefulness expressed by the woman he loved. Even after all that had happened between their families and this business with Eversley, Bethlyn still clung to the naive hope of a wonderful future.

Was he so jaded by life in general, by the accursed events of his own life, that he could no longer feel as she did? While in prison he thought he wanted to die, sometimes considered ending his life by his own hand, but he kept thinking about Bethlyn and about the life they’d shared. Seeing her face in his mind, filled with winsome hope, always instilled that emotion in himself and gave him the courage to continue and find a way to escape. He realized that before he met her, he had had nothing, and, without her, he’d always be unfulfilled.

If at this moment he was dreaming, then he didn’t want to awaken. But the cooing child was real, the people staring at him so strangely were real. Most of all the woman beside him, squeezing his hand, made the reality more magnificent than any dream.

“Ian,” he heard her say, “are you all right?”

“I’m fine, my darling.” Kissing the furrowed brow of his son, he handed the child back to Tessie then he took his son’s mother in his arms.

Now he had everything.

EPILOG
UE

Windhaven

One year later

An afternoon breeze ruffled the strands of Bethlyn’ s hair as she stood on the beach with Ian beside her and watched Nathaniel toddle off with Mavis, Marc, and their child.

“I do hope Nathaniel won’t miss us too much,” she worried aloud in a motherly fashion. “This is the first time he’ll be apart from us.”

“For goodness’ sakes, Bethlyn, the boy is only spending the night with them at a cottage not a half mile away. You can’t keep him tied to your apron strings forever.”

“I know, but he’s still a baby.”

“And likely to remain one if you don’t give the child a bit of freedom. Remember, he’s soon to have a baby brother or sister.” Ian patted the slight bulge of her abdomen. “It’s time Nathaniel gets a taste of life without you constantly hovering over him.”

“I know,” Bethlyn admitted, and dug her toes into the sand.

Ian touched the honey-colored wisps of her hair which blew so becomingly around her face. “Of course, you may hover as much as you like around me.”

Bethlyn laughed and impetuously threw her arms around his neck, her lips inviting the kiss which Ian was only too happy to bestow. “Carry me inside the house and ravish me, Captain Hawk,” she whispered in his ear.

“Why, you’re a saucy wench even to suggest such a thing. And here I thought I had tamed you for the domestic life, and you’re always thinking about that rebel Hawk. What am I to do with you?”

“Take me inside and I’ll show you.”

With a lustful grin clinging to his mouth, Ian gladly picked her up and carried her into the cottage. For the next three hours, until the evening shadows streaked the room in lavender and gold tones, they made love and reveled in their passion for each other which seemed to grow stronger with each passing day.

For all intents and purposes now, Windhaven was their home until Ian decided to return to Philadelphia and take over the running of the company from Marc’s able hands. He’d long since retired Captain Hawk and had no desire to return to his privateering ways, hoping to spend as much time as possible with his wife and child. At the moment, he didn’t want to return to Philadelphia with Edgecomb in ruins. The memories of that house were still too painful, but when he decided he was ready, he’d build Bethlyn the grandest and most elaborate house Philadelphia had ever seen. Still, he worried he wasn’t being fair to her. Perhaps Bethlyn would prefer to go home now, to have a house with plenty of room for Tessie and the children. Or maybe she’d rather live in New York and be near Molly.

Reaching out, he twirled one of her honey-brown curls between his fingers. “Do you want to go home to Philadelphia?” he asked.

She snuggled against him. “I thought I was home.”

Lifting her chin, he gazed deeply into her eyes. “I mean, when do you want to return? I can build you a wonderful house with large rooms, anything you’d ever want in a house.”

“Ian.” she said softly, “you don’t understand. Home isn’t a place. Most assuredly it isn’t a grand house, as I well know. I grew up in a museum, a house so large that I never saw some of the rooms. There was no love within its beautiful gilded walls or the rooms which contained only the finest furnishings and paintings. Right now, my home is here, and I don’t mean the cottage.”