The Rambunctious Lady Royston (7 page)

No, all efforts were now being directed towards beating down the flames that had already inflicted considerable damage on the left side of the compartment and were now threatening to burst out of control entirely. It was easy to spot Zachary's tall figure in the center of the group of black-faced, tattered men, his calm and authoritative voice issuing crisp, clear commands that urged his crew to keep beating at the fire with their water-soaked blankets.

Samantha hot-footed back to the main cabin and yanked the offensive burgundy bedspread onto the floor with one mighty heave, sending three (by now) generations of pillows spinning into the air. Then, using the nail scissors from her reticule, she cut into the fabric until she had enough of a handhold to be able to tear the spread into two ragged parts. That done, she went on deck and plunged the material into a nearby water barrel before running back to the galley, clutching the soggy bundle to her breast.

For a considerable time, perhaps even a quarter hour, Samantha swung her impromptu fire-beater with all the gusto of her young muscles. Her hair was soon dreadfully tangled, and bits of ash and splinters of charred wood nested there in abundance. Her face became as black as the others; so did her bare feet and uncovered arms. On the whole, it could be said that Samantha was having the time of her young life—and when the last sparks in her little area of concentration could no longer elude her flailing bedspread, she was more than a teeny bit pleased with her accomplishment.

Then Zachary saw her. A second later Zachary saw red—the crimson hot heat of anger. He advanced on his bride with menace in his eyes, eager to take her out of sight and sound of his crew so he could box her smoke-begrimed ears, when Samantha pointed out in an amused voice:

"Zachary, you're black as pitch from your head to your toes. If the
haut ton
could see you now, they would surely be convinced you were not just in league with the devil, but were, in truth, old Fire-and-Brimstone himself! Oh, and Zachary, if your Lady Foxx could just have a moment's sight of you with half your one eyebrow all but singed off and your hair all spikey and out of order, she would run so fast the whole Quorn couldn't catch her!"

The crew melted discreetly away, especially Samantha's supposed bodyguard—who had considered rowing back to Margate and disappearing out of the reach of the Earl's punishment, but who had decided instead to come back and fight the fire and then hopefully hide himself away below decks until his lordship got so occupied with his honeymoon he forgot the crewman's existence.

At any rate, within moments, Samantha and Zachary were left alone among the debris of the destroyed galley.

St. John glared at his wife for some moments as she met his gaze stare for stare, and slowly he began to see the humor in the situation. Samantha looked like a chimney sweep after a long hard day, and if she was correct, he looked no better. "Madam," he told her, "as Cervantes said, 'the pot calls the kettle black.' "

Samantha looked down at her damp and dirty cape and examined her grimy hands and feet before looking up at her husband and bursting into laughter—laughter into which he quickly joined. In between chortles Samantha explained her impromptu swim, which St. John applauded as quite inventive. And even he found humor in her admission of destroying a very costly bedspread for the freely admitted twofold purpose of fighting the fire and ridding herself of such an offensive article.

At last physical discomfort overtook their pleasure, and each went off to await uncomfortably cold hip baths and a necessarily light cold supper, made up from supplies kept in storage separate from the galley. Samantha was so exhausted by the time she crawled onto the right side of the mattress—the side she had arbitrarily chosen for herself—that she was asleep moments after her damp (but clean) head touched the pillow. If St. John wished to consummate the marriage this night, he would have a mightier task rousing his bride than ever he would have arousing her.

When Samantha woke the next morning and turned over in the bed, it was to see St. John soundly asleep beside her.

She lay quietly for a few minutes, studying the dozing Earl. He slept on his stomach, and as she inspected his bare back—down to where the sheets covered him at the waist—she noticed he slept without nightclothes, much to her consternation since she too had preferred to sleep in the nude before marriage intervened. St. John's head was turned towards the middle of the bed, so that she had a clear view of his full lips—slightly relaxed now in sleep—as well as his dark, slightly curled, unruly thatch of hair, and the long sweep of his curving black eyelashes, which all joined together to give him the look of a much younger, more approachable man. Even his singed eyebrow looked innocent.

Samantha sniffed. So much for appearances; the man didn't have a kind bone in his body. If he did—she told herself as she remounted her favorite hobbyhorse and started in to ride—he wouldn't have maneuvered me into this marriage against all my wishes. Arrogant, self-centered, toplofty, selfish, domineering old coot! she screamed silently, her sleep-flushed face and tangled curls looking curiously at odds when combined with a pair of narrowed green eyes and a cherry-red bottom lip that was at the moment jutting forward in an unmistakable pout.

Such was the vision of contradictory impressions to meet his lordship's eyes when he awoke with the eerie feeling that someone was staring at him. He was not accustomed to sharing a bed—at least not for an entire night—and he was at first pleasantly surprised with the sight of his new bride. That glorious, long red hair, looking as if it possessed a life of its own, licked like living flames (he winced slightly at the thought of flames and fire) over the pillow and down about Samantha's shoulders. Her clear skin and pleasing, slight shape beneath the covers went a long way towards convincing the Earl that there were indeed benefits other than the obligatory heir to be derived from sharing a bed with this complicated child. But then, as his sleep-fogged mind cleared, his brain took in the mulish expression on his bride's expressive face.

"Are you going to tell me I snore?" he asked quietly.

"What? Oh, Zachary, you're awake," Samantha said, startled out of her reverie. "I don't know whether or not you snore, as I slept quite soundly, thank you, not that you asked," she informed him pithily. She could not tell him she had been staring at him while he slept, just like a cat eyeing a strange dog just come into the yard, so she changed the subject. "I was just lying here trying to decide where this ridiculous bed came from and, to be even more curious, why you or anyone would wish such a bizarre thing in your possession."

There! That was a reasonably intelligent question, if one considered that it came from a young girl lying in a strange bed beside a comparative stranger. And, if she but admitted it, she was a girl scared half out of her wits.

St. John turned onto his back, plumped up his pillow, and crossed his arms behind his head. "That, my inquisitive and impolite child—as well-behaved young misses do not go about casting stones at another's taste—is a long story. Do you wish to hear it?"

Samantha wished she were home in Mount Street sipping her morning chocolate, but as she was reluctant to crawl out from under the covers with Zachary there to see her indecently
décolleté
nightgown (another of Aunt Loretta's little surprises), and the alternative of her husband climbing from his side of the bed in the raw was even less appealing, she settled herself and said she would like above all things to hear the tale. Under the covers, she crossed her fingers on the lie and then pressed her empty stomach and silently implored it not to growl.

"Very well," the Earl nodded, with the air of a tutor about to impart the morning's lesson. "It seems that, once upon a time, one James Graham, an undoubted quack but a man with an undeniable ability to attract the desperate, opened an establishment he called his 'Temple of Health and of Hymen.'" The Earl stole a peep at Samantha, but her only reaction was one of interest. Ah, he mused, how lamentably innocent she is. At times even I believe l am depraved. "Graham's first Temple was opened in 1783 in the Adelphi, but he moved up in the world, thanks to the beneficence of his grateful patrons, and was eventually located in prestigious Pall Mall. It was said he was the Emperor of the Quacks, and although honest physicians condemned him, his establishment flourished for many years."

Samantha was truly interested now, no longer needing to counterfeit her curiosity, and she sat up cross-legged in the bed—the better to see the storyteller—heedless of the fetching picture she presented.

Zachary sent a regretful eye over the soft body so close to his and continued with his tale. "Graham's most touted, and no doubt most financially rewarding invention was that of a stupendous Celestial Bed. Inside a chamber guarded by two gigantic porters, any married couple possessing the ludicrous sum required as payment by friend Graham could spend one heavenly night in this magical bed, thus obtaining an instant, guaranteed cure for infertility." He shot another look at Samantha and her blush told him she was at least educated on this one point: bed was the place to begin if one was to go about setting up one's nursery.

"Graham's Celestial Bed was all the rage for some years," the Earl continued, "until his Goddess of Health, a dear friend of his, took a chill one day and died. It was a well-known fact that the Goddess made a practice of sleeping in the miraculous Celestial Bed on the nights it was not needed by some hopeful couple, and the rumor was soon bruited about that the bed's damp sheets had hastened the lady to her final resting place. With the bed no longer an attraction, Graham gathered his profits and disappeared. And the bed—" St. John trailed off, giving an eloquent shrug of his broad shoulders.

"This is the Celestial Bed?" Samantha cried, torn between repugnance and the thrill of it all.

At last Zachary dropped his instructional tone and gave his wife a grin. "Alas, my child, I've no idea of the whereabouts of the infamous object. But it was an interesting story, was it not? I hesitated to tell the truth, as it's far less dramatic. Actually, my father bought this particular contraption from some dethroned prince or other, and I do fear built the Sea Devil around it. Like a ship in a bottle, the bed's presence in this tiny cabin defies all logic, but I am afraid if I have it dismantled the entire vessel will fall apart. I will change the hangings, however, now that you have already destroyed the bedspread. Besides, I cannot abide having my wife clash with the color scheme," he finished jovially.

Samantha did not, after a few moments reflection, take umbrage at the Earl's teasing with his preposterous story and only mused, "A real prince?"

"Bona fide blue blood," his lordship assured her.

Samantha raised her eyes and assessed the heavy canopy, its posts carved and gilded over every inch of wood. '"The mind boggles. I didn't know royalty could be so vulgar."

St. John threw back his head and laughed. "My dear, as you go on you will learn that rank and position are considered ample excuses—yea, even downright demands—for frequent displays of vulgarity. I submit in evidence our own Florizel, the Prince of Wales."

Samantha looked puzzled for a moment and then, her mind conjuring up an image of the flamboyant prince as she had seen him one day in Hyde Park, she joined in the laughter.

This air of bonhomie lasted throughout the day—already mutually agreed to be their last day aboard because of the damage to the galley—and it was only as the satinwood table in the cabin was set for an obvious
dîner pour deux
that she began to feel apprehensive. By dawn the next day they would be back in Margate, their honeymoon officially over, so tonight would surely be the night St. John would claim her as his own.

The Earl sensed Samantha's tenseness and went out of his way to be a charming dinner companion, keeping the chatter and the wine flowing freely throughout the meal. Indeed, Samantha was so relaxed that, when Zachary remarked on her creamy complexion and how it was set to glowing from the candlelight, she blurted out her misgivings about the value of freckles on a Countess's nose and cheeks.

"I have tried a freckle removal recipe of strawberries crushed in green grape juice and a quantity of ass's milk, but I fear it's much the same as Mr. Graham's cures—a bucketful of promise backed by only a thimbleful of results. So if you can learn to tolerate the horrid, spotty things, I'd appreciate it, as I can't abide going to bed with bits of strawberry clinging to my cheeks."

St. John manfully hid his amusement at this ingenuous disclosure and proclaimed that he for one would cast neither aspersions upon nor attempt to eradicate such an entrancing sprinkling of golden dust.

This and a multitude of other compliments, when added to the unaccustomed quantity of wine she had sipped from glasses that were mysteriously refilled from the bottom every time she took a swallow, combined to throw Samantha into such a mood of congeniality that she quite forgot her intention of yawning prodigiously throughout the meal and then pleading fatigue and the need of an uneventful night. In addition to her unconscious tippling, she had attacked her dinner with all the efficiency of a practiced trencherman, so that she could not complain of a headache or unsettled stomach with any real confidence of being believed.

As the sun dipped below the horizon and the stars began to twinkle in the darkened sky, Samantha was left with no choice but to prepare for bed and the inevitable granting of Zachary's husbandly rights. But she was determined to win at least one small battle and dragged out the time required for her toilette as long as possible, demanding a hip bath be brought to the cabin and then soaking in it so long she feared her fingers and toes would be wrinkled for a fortnight. If nothing else, she would make one thing clear: the St. Johns might be going to bed together sometime this night, but Samantha St. John alone would set the hour.

Outside, the wind—which had been blowing fresh all day—began to increase in intensity as Samantha dressed in another negligee of her aunt's choosing: this one in a flattering sea-foam green rather than the virginal white of the other two she had already worn (even Aunt Loretta was acknowledging the disappearance of her niece's innocence), but no less revealing in its cut. Samantha had blithely left the choosing of her nightwear to Aunt Loretta—what with the pressure of an entire trousseau to gather in a little under a month—but then she had not then been aware of any latent lascivious streak in her spinster relative's character. As Samantha stood scowling at her reflection in the long mirror cunningly hung inside the cabinet door, the wind suddenly gusted, causing a bit of water from the hip bath to splash onto the carpet.