Silver Sea (12 page)

He treasured his nightly bits of solitude. These hours provided an opportunity to be completely himself without worry about stepping out of the role of Nathan Essex. He could forget about wearing spectacles and frayed clothing and once again become a whole person, with a past.

Reclining in an old stickback chair, he let his mind wander. It was too bad that the
Golden Eagle
wasn't docked a bit nearer, so that he could visit his ship, his crew, and his cabin, which contained the possessions of Captain Raveneau. The opportunity to soak up the atmosphere of his own truest home would be the best tonic imaginable.

For now, Nathan wrote nightly in the same ship's log that he'd kept for years. Bound in worn dark blue leather and stamped
Raveneau
in gold, it was crammed with not only the drier details of months at sea but also his own personal history. Here at Harms Castle, he kept the journal hidden in a locked chest under his bed. Often when Nathan opened the brass-bound chest he removed other belongings along with the ship's log. Tonight he wore his signet ring—engraved NR—and one of his own fine linen shirts.

August will be here soon enough, Nathan reminded himself.

Meanwhile, there were plenty of problems to keep both Raveneau
and
Essex occupied. He ran a hand through his black hair and dipped his quill in the inkstand. Writing in the log was a ritual that helped him find his own center before each night's sleep.

He had a great deal to sort out: Huntsford Harms, Walter Frakes-Hogg, Adrienne, of course.... The scratching of the quill was the only sound in Nathan's chamber until he heard a clock on the landing strike two. Almost immediately other noises commenced.

A man's shouts were quickly joined by a woman's voice, and then a second male chimed in. The shouts turned to wild laughter. Someone else broke into song. Was Adrienne still among the revelers in the drawing room? When Lady Thomasina's bell began to ring from across the corridor, Nathan opened his door just as Adrienne peeked from her room.

"I must go to her," she whispered. "Perhaps she's frightened by the clamor downstairs. They aren't very considerate, are they?"

"Quite the opposite." He couldn't help staring at her sleep-tumbled hair and the delicate lace collar of her nightgown. It was a great relief to find her safe from Huntsford Harms, in her own room. "I'll go down and have a word with them."

Adrienne couldn't resist giving him a shy smile before turning away and closing her door. Even though she was well aware of Nathan Essex's potent appeal, it had been a shock nonetheless to see him looking so devastating at two o'clock in the morning. With rakishly tousled hair, black-lashed eyes exposed without his usual spectacles, and his shirt half open to reveal a hard chest covered with crisp black hair, Nathan might have been a pirate emerging from his cabin on board ship....

Adrienne tried to put him from her mind as she went through the dressing room to Lady Thomasina's bedchamber. She brought a candlestick, and lit the taper on the frightened woman's bedside table.

"Miss Beau! Where have you been? I thought you were still downstairs with Hunty!"

"Oh, no," Adrienne soothed. She pried the bell from Lady Thomasina's fingers and offered her own hand instead. "I began nodding off before eleven o'clock, which didn't make them very happy. But Lady Clair revived just in time to take my place, so I was able to escape."

"Escape? But you shouldn't have left him alone with her!" Lady Thomasina was wearing a sort of turban for a nightcap, and it tilted precariously to one side as she shook her head. "It's just as I feared when I heard them carrying on downstairs. I was certain I recognized that fortune-hunter's laughter! Bring me a glass of sherry. I must have some, or I'll be awake all night!"

"I don't think it's a good idea, my lady." She dared to adjust her employer's headdress, at which point Angus rose out of the nearby bedclothes, clutching his prized glove and growling. "It's only me, Angus. Nothing to fear."

"Get my sherry." Lady Thomasina pouted until her request was granted. "Don't think that you can defy me, Miss Beau. I'll sack you in the blink of an eye if you defy me."

"I hardly think it's fair for you to vent your frustrations at me, my lady. I have only been kind to you." She took her hand again and looked into her eyes. "Tell me now what is bothering you. That will help you sleep far more than sherry."

"I—I had a dream that Hunty and that creature were married, and they were simply horrid to me." All at once fat tears rolled down her cheeks. "I was turned out of my house in Cavendish Square, and that awful girl began tossing out all of my furnishings as well. When I came here, by mail coach, penniless, Jarrow and Mabel told me that I would have to live in an awful little dower house in the woods. It looked like a—a woodcutter's cottage!" Sobs overtook her, and she buried her face in a handkerchief that reeked of stale perfume.

"But, my lady, that was only a dream!" Adrienne said in sunny tones.

"Listen to them downstairs!" She paused, frowning.

"You see, they've already stopped. Mr. Essex went to ask them to be quiet out of respect to you, my lady."

Lady Thomasina was not ready to give up yet. "But only imagine how I felt earlier! When I awoke, frightened out of my wits, all I could hear was the pair of them laughing and singing in the drawing room—and it was as if my nightmare had already come true!" Another siege of weeping sent Angus back under the covers. "Oh, Miss Beau, it is simply beastly to be old and useless, at the mercy of one's children!"

"I think that you'll see this matter quite differently in the light of day," her companion assured her. "Your fears have no basis in reality as far as I can tell. Your son hardly appears to be in love with Lady Clair, nor she with him."

"What makes you think that love enters into such matches?" But Lady Thomasina seemed to be relaxing. She lay back against her pillows and heaved a heavy sigh. "I suppose you think I'm an hysterical old wretch."

Adrienne felt her heart tug. "Not at all." She smiled with genuine compassion. "I am glad to understand you better, my lady."

"You're a good girl." Squeezing her hand again, Lady Thomasina let her eyes close. "Perhaps I'll rest for a bit now."

So much about this woman tried her patience. Her bedclothes were stained with jam and tea and littered with crumbs of every sort. She always smelled as if she were a week overdue for a good hot bath. She was tryingly eccentric, with her Systems, and unbearably spoiled. All too often Adrienne felt as if she were dealing with a slightly batty, gigantic baby who had gotten dressed in an ancestor's rotting clothes.

Yet tonight she warmed toward Lady Thomasina Harms. She felt protective toward her, and suddenly all the other annoyances faded into the background.

* * *

Huntsford Harms was sprawled in his chair at the card table, drinking claret out of the crystal decanter while Lady Clair dealt another hand of rouge et noir. On a nearby sofa, Lucy and Alistair, though slightly less inebriated, were engaged in a giggling display of physical affection that was dangerously over the line.

Sir Blake Smythe and Peter, the dog, were sound asleep together in a wing chair before the dying fire.

"You're not keeping track of my losses, are you, darling?" Huntsford demanded loudly.

Lady Clair's response was a high-pitched trill of laughter.

None of them noticed Nathan when he appeared in the doorway, and he was too angry to care. "I realize that this is asking a great deal of people in your condition," he said in clear, glacial tones, "but could you be considerate enough of Lady Thomasina to either go to bed or at least continue your drunken revels in silence?"

"And who the deuce are
you?"
Huntsford drawled, squinting through his quizzing glass.

"You remember, Harms," Alistair rejoined as he untangled himself from Lucy and stretched. "It's that man who's protecting Miss Beauvisage. Essex, I b'lieve. Good lord, look at the hour! Past my bedtime." He gave Nathan a sheepish smile. "No wonder I'm behaving badly."

"Not so badly," Lucy purred. When Alistair had left the room, she crawled to the edge of the sofa and stared at Nathan. "Are you certain your name is Essex? Clair, doesn't he look familiar without his specs?"

Lady Clair wore a suggestive smile. "If you say so, Lucy. I'd
like
him to be familiar!"

As the women ran their eyes over him, Nathan was aware not only that he'd left his room out of costume, so to speak, but also that Huntsford Harms was regarding him with growing animosity. It seemed wise to remove himself before any real damage occurred, and then hope that all of them were too foxed to remember in the morning that he'd been there. "I'll be going now. Good night."

Nathan had retreated only a few steps down the corridor when he heard Lucy cry triumphantly, "Now I know who he looks like! It's that wickedly handsome sea captain who was causing such a stir in London earlier this spring. Remember, Clair? They called him the Scapegrace!"

"What's that mean?" she rejoined woozily.

"Oh, you know—a reckless sort of rogue, or some such thing." Lucy waved a hand. "You know the type. Can't remember his given name, but my cousin Fanny was mad for him, not that it got her anywhere. Fanny told me that he only comes to London from time to time, and he refuses to fall in love with anyone, which just makes women want him more—"

"Perhaps he don't
like
women," Huntsford put in sourly.

"Don't be ridiculous. He likes them all right, for a few nights each! Fanny thinks there's some sort of tragedy in his past. A broken heart. I wish I could remember—"

"Don't bother. It don't signify because this Essex fellow is just a peasant," Huntsford argued. "He definitely ain't some fancy Scapegrace!"

Out in the corridor, Nathan froze. "Damn." He could barely whisper the word. As he traversed the stairs and passageways that would return him to his room, he continued to hear the echo of her words: "The Scapegrace!" During his last stay in London, people had taken up the name partly because he would not be coaxed into society and thus remained a mysterious figure to all but a small circle of friends. He wouldn't play by the rules of the ton, so he was seen as more dashing than ever.

He was spotted with women, which only made the others want him more, and he was seen gambling and drinking in the clubs, but few of the dandies seemed to know him well. People assumed, too, that Nathan Raveneau must be like his father, who had been a notorious rake in his day. Once the title Scapegrace was spoken, everyone adopted it, and Nathan himself only became more remote.

Londoners were notoriously fickle, however. No doubt the Scapegrace had been nearly forgotten after he'd disappeared this spring—until tonight, when Nathan made the mistake of turning up looking like Raveneau rather than Essex.

Of course, in the morning he would put on his unfashionable blue coat, and his spectacles, and he'd comb his hair a bit too carefully, and they would think the Scapegrace had been a claret-induced illusion. Nathan began to breathe easier as he approached the safe haven of his bedchamber.

The door was ajar, and the tallow candle still burned on his desk, sending weak flickers of light through the opening. Safe. He pushed the door, entered, and was stunned to see Adrienne standing over his desk. Wearing her night-clothes and an expression of lively curiosity, she reached toward the open ship's log.

Nathan was momentarily paralyzed with shock, but his wits did not fail him. "What the devil are you doing in here?" he demanded.

Chapter 7

Adrienne gasped, letting the leather-bound volume drop back onto the desk. "Oh, you startled me! What's wrong? I was only waiting for you to return—"

"Haven't you ever heard of respecting other people's privacy?" He snatched the journal away and put it inside his armoire. One more moment and she would have seen
Raveneau
stamped on the cover!

"Why are you so touchy? I wasn't going to steal anything, for heaven's sake!" Frowning, she pointed to his spectacles, long forgotten against the back corner of the desk. "Has your sight suddenly been restored?"

"No. I just forgot to put them on." He reached past Adrienne before she could pick them up, look through the lenses, and discover that they were perfectly clear. "Everyone who wears spectacles isn't blind, you know." To underline the point that he didn't need the spectacles in order to function, he put them in a drawer.

She was studying with interest the fine silver inkstand and the handsomely bound books that were lined along the wall. "You aren't quite what you seem to be, Mr. Essex."

"I have no idea what you mean. Furthermore, I think it is you who should make explanations for your uninvited intrusion into my private sanctuary in the middle of the night—"

"I've never seen you wear that shirt before!" Adrienne touched the pleated front appreciatively. "Why, that's excellent fabric—and it fits you so much better than those others. Did you just have it made?"