The Pirate's Secret Baby (33 page)

"There always is, Lydia," he said with surprising gentleness. "Just start from the beginning."

"The beginning--I suppose my story begins as so many do, with a foolish, headstrong girl who thought herself special. Not like the other girls. No, for her everything had to be...more. She wasn't content to sit at lessons all day, she had to run and be in motion. She wasn't content to wear washed-out white and pastels, she wanted to dress in reds and purples and gold. She wanted to be shiny, and glittery, and let her voice be loud, and her feet pound the ground and her brushstrokes be bold and outside the lines of what was appropriate for girls to draw."

A smile tugged up the corners of his mouth. "I think I would like this girl."

"No doubt," she said tartly, "because rogues like you are attracted to the girls most likely to get into trouble."

His smile broadened at this and slouched back in his chair, his long legs stretched out before him, ankles crossed, hands clasped on his lap as he settled in to hear her tale.

"Her behavior did not improve when her parents died and she was sent to live with relatives who had strict notions of how girls should comport themselves. Naturally, she also thought herself wiser than all the adults around her, and knew them to be nothing but dried-out old sticks who'd never lived, and could not possibly understand how deeply she felt about everything. She was a great one for fervid drama and florid verse."

He frowned at this. "Is this what I have to look forward to in ten years or so?"

"If so, it will only be what you deserve, Captain St. Armand."

He waved his hand in the air to have her continue.

"So, this girl grew up and was the despair of the relatives raising the orphan--"

"What happened to her parents?"

"Do you want me to continue, or not?"

He raised a finger in the air to have her pause, took the rum and drank it.

"That is my rum," she scowled.

"You will receive more if it's warranted. Continue."

Lydia shifted in her seat and forced her shoulders to relax. "Where were we?"

"This interesting girl was the despair of all who knew her."

"Ah. Yes. Her parents died in a boating accident and she was told--repeatedly--how fortunate she was that her aunt and uncle took her in, considering how little money was left from her parents for her upbringing."

"Were they cruel to her?"

"Not in the way you might think. She wasn't beaten, but she knew they saw her as a burden, a test of their Christian charity. They made that clear to her. There were those who didn't object to this girl and her bold ways. She was popular with the young gentlemen who knew she was always up for a bit of fun, a 'good 'un' as they would say, a girl who wanted find out for herself what all the fuss was about, a girl who would sneak behind the bushes to try a cheroot--or a kiss."

She looked down at her hands, remembering, not totally with regrets. He didn't say anything, but she saw him shift in his seat, so she took a breath and continued.

"Then one evening at an assembly, she met a man. He wasn't like the boys in her village who talked big but had never done anything with their lives. This man was a naval lieutenant who'd had adventures and been places and done things, exciting things."

"Wasn't this girl warned about sailors and their ways?"

"Of course she was. But why would this obstinate chit listen to that when she'd never listened to any other good advice? So she began spending time with the lieutenant, Edwin Carstairs, who was on half-pay. When her family warned her he had a reputation as a hothead and a braggart she did not listen to them. When they forbade her from seeing him, she sneaked out of the house to meet him at night in the woods. When Edwin asked her to run off with him, she said yes, because it sounded romantic and adventurous and it would get her away from all the censorious eyes constantly watching her."

This time when she paused, and looked at the glass of rum in his hands, he passed it to her. When she was done drinking he stepped out and returned with a second glass. He didn't tell her to stay put. He didn't need to. Both she and he realized this was story she needed to tell, a story he needed to hear.

If nothing else, she thought wryly, it was an excellent cautionary tale for a man with a young daughter.

"She packed a valise, taking her book of poems, because what could be more necessary to life and love than that, and the few coins she'd saved and her small pieces of jewelry--a gold locket, a strand of pearls, a cameo brooch. Pieces suitable for a young lady."

"He was disappointed by her lack of money and jewels, wasn't he?"

"You speak from experience?"

He shook his head. "No, but I have an idea of how the minds of men like Carstairs work."

"Of course you do. Our lovebirds traveled to London and it was all quite exciting and romantic, staying in questionable inns, giving him her possessions because when you were in love you share everything, don't you?"

"Did he abandon her in London?"

"Do you want to hear the rest of the tale?"

"My apologies. Please, go on."

"No, Edwin did not abandon her. He really did want her, and was glad of her company and her love, and the feeling was mutual. But he was without funds of his own. He was owed prize money but it was not forthcoming. He'd spent the small bequest from his late father, he had no prospects except his hope of another ship. When they arrived in London he took her to Wapping, to an inexpensive house where he knew people, people who would not condemn a young couple who were in love, but without the benefit of the church sanctioning it. He didn't have the funds for a special license, she could not marry without her guardians' permission, but they did not care for they had each other."

"It must have been horrid for her."

"She loved it," Lydia corrected him with a smile of remembrance. "Every day was a new adventure. While her beau wrote letters to contacts who he hoped would secure him a berth on another vessel, she spent the day playing house, chatting with the other women in the building, learning how to shop in the marketplace without getting robbed--by the merchants or the pickpockets--writing bad poetry until she could no longer afford ink. It did not feel tragic at all. In the evenings they joined his friends at a nearby tavern, a mixed crew of all sorts. There were vicars and whores, gentlemen and rat-catchers, and a political assortment of deists, utopians, abolitionists, Spenceans, Paineites--if someone had thought of a way to upset the usual workings of government and society, he'd be found there. It was all quite educational for a young lady of gentle birth."

They
had
been heady times. Talking--really, arguing--late into the night about the rights of man, and the rights of women as well, drinking cheap ale, sharing what little they had with others who had less. At night when it was cold she and Edwin had each other's warmth and she felt satisfied. In some ways they were the best days of her life.

"In every Eden there's a tempting serpent, isn't there?" Lydia sighed. "We debated Bentham and were fond of his ideas of 'sinister interest' keeping the common man from reaching his full potential. Of course, once you accept such ideas it's easier to take a step into a more Jacobin attitude--am I boring you?"

"Not at all. Had I known I could spend evenings debating political reform and philosophy with you I might have focused less on your quite attractive bosom. Unlikely, but one never knows. Continue, please. You haven't gotten yet to the good part, the part where you no longer have this man in your life and you're in the islands, and how Thomas Wilson enters into it."

Lydia shrugged her shoulders. "What does it matter, Captain? You know now that once I ran off I threw away whatever chance I had at respectability here in England, and as so many others have done, I want to make a new life for myself elsewhere. I still do."

"Where people don't know you. Yes, I understand, but there is the issue of that man who was not your husband."

She looked down at her hands. It still pained her, when she thought about it. Did she regret what she'd done? Sometimes, but in her heart she still believed it was the only choice she could make.

"One day, my uncle showed up in London. Word had reached him of where I was, and what I was doing. He's a wealthy man, Uncle Frederick, and he approached Edwin when I was at market."

Lydia could never forget that day. When she returned Edwin was gone from their lodgings, along with his few possessions. Her dour uncle waited for her there. He explained how Edwin took the money offered him to leave her. Uncle Frederick would take Lydia home, and if she lived a repentant life, in time people might overlook her sins and her shame.

"I refused his offer. I was so angry. Angry at Edwin, at my uncle, at the world, at my parents for dying and leaving me alone, but most of all, I was angry at the thought of losing my freedom again."

"You did not stay in touch with Carstairs?"

"No. I heard from someone in London that Edwin died of illness when he was sent to America toward the end of the war. It saddened me that he was dead, but to be honest, I was not interested in hearing anything more from him after he took money to abandon me."

"Brava, Lydia."

She looked up at the pirate. There was no amusement on his face at her missteps and bad decisions. Instead the glow in his eyes was tender. He understood. Of all the people she'd met over her life, she knew that whether he'd kill her or keep her, Robert understood her choices.

"After my rejection of his offer, Uncle Frederick said if that was my choice, there would be no more communication among us. He would tell people I'd died--it would be better for his family."

"What?"

She nodded. "My uncle is--well, he's a man of consequence and rigid morals. I had to think about my cousins, I was told, what my disgraceful ways would mean to them, how it could hurt their chances at finding husbands."

He swore under his breath. "You must have been terrified, once you realized you were on your own."

"Yes. It was frightening, of course, and while I had our new friends around me, I also knew that I needed to find a way to support myself."

She stopped talking and looked down again, her lips clamped together because she really, truly did not want to say more. Robert leaned forward, his fingers under her chin as he eased her face up so he could look into her eyes.

"Whatever you have to say, I can hear it. You need not fear telling me," he said in a gentle voice.

She swallowed. "It's not what you're thinking."

He raised his brows at that. "Then enlighten me, Miss Burke."

Oh, he'd be enlightened all right. Lydia sucked in a deep breath and stood, walking to the window. She looked over her shoulder at him. He'd stood when she did, and leaned over with his hands on the chair back, watching her.

She stared at the window, her dark reflection looking back at her, the shadow of her inquisitor behind her. There was no moon tonight, a good night for doing things one didn't wish to have revealed. She touched the glass, but didn't turn around.

"I am being blackmailed. As long as I stayed away from England, I was out of reach of my enemy. Now that I'm here, word will get to him and everything I've worked so hard to build in the past few years could be snatched away from me."

"Blackmailed?"

At his tone she turned back to him.

"Why are you smiling?"

"Generally, one is blackmailed over acts illegal or immoral. Neither of those things would especially bother me, but it makes your story so much more
interesting
than the usual story of a young woman's ruination. What
could
you have done that is so terrible?"

She wanted to tell him without looking at him, but she fancied herself braver than that. She took a breath, and turned.

"Some of that reckless girl's new friends were publishers of pamphlets, political pamphlets. I mentioned the Spenceans and other radicals with whom she consorted. She began to earn coin writing for them."

"Writing radical pamphlets?"

"Sometimes," she prevaricated, "but that wasn't all she wrote."

"Lydia, getting information from you is like trying to pry pearls from oysters. Who was the publisher of this seditious trash?"

She glared at him. Who was a pirate to call what she wrote trash?

"The publisher was William Drysdale of Drysdale Press."

His brow furrowed as he thought. "Drysdale Press...that name is familiar," he paused, then a delighted grin crept over his expressive mouth, curling it up the corners. His face lit like a boy who'd just been handed a piece of warm gingerbread.

"My dear Miss Burke! My
darling
Miss Burke!" He wagged a finger at her like a scolding nursemaid. "You have been a naughty, naughty girl, haven't you, Lydia!"

"I have no idea what you are referring to," she muttered, looking past him at the blank wall.

"There are only two types of publications that emerge from Drysdale Press. I know this because I like to read one of the two. Drysdale Press publishes treasonous tripe" --he paused dramatically, then waved his hand with a flourish-- "and entertainment for lonely gentlemen!"

"Are you quite finished being amused at my expense?"

"Finished? I've hardly begun, my dear, dear governess!"

He capered over and putting his hand on the window frame leaned in. His mercurial disposition, one moment threatening, the next gleeful, nearly caused nausea with the rocking of his back-and-forth moods.

"Tell me your entire story, I must insist," he said in a low voice. "You interested me before, but now you
fascinate
me."

She felt heat rising in her face, though she stoutly told herself she had no need to apologize to the likes of Captain Robert St. Armand or Lord Robert Huntley or anyone else.

"I needed to pay the landlord and it was what the publisher was buying."

He stepped back, his hands clasped behind his back. "Rather like my trade, wouldn't you say? I needed money and there were all these ships on the water, just begging to be raided."