The Ravishing One (5 page)

Carr dismissed Tunbridge with a wave of his hand, and the thin man dissolved back into the shadows.

Casually, Carr put away his binoculars and rose to his feet. He secured the silver-tipped walking cane he’d needed ever since the night Wanton’s Blush had burned to the ground, and prepared to quit the box. Thomas Donne—formerly McClairen—interested
him. More so than the opera and certainly more than Swan.

“Lord Carr?” Swan stumbled to his feet. “Can I get you a refreshment? Is something wrong?”

“No, Swan, nothing is wrong,” Carr said with honest surprise. “I would never allow it.”

Chapter 3

S
he’s not worthy of you, Jim.” Thomas raked his hair back in exasperation. They’d been at it ever since Thomas had come upon James tying his neckcloth in front of the hall mirror. He’d sarcastically asked just how tightly Lady Fia liked her men trussed.

He shouldn’t have said it. But once started the silence he’d imposed on himself for the past week broke lose. Jim’s subjugation to Fia Merrick worried and disappointed him. All week he had heard tales of her sexual exploits, her wildness, and her profligacy. Added to which, being a devotee of Lady Fia’s was bad for one’s health. Her reputation stood constantly in jeopardy and therefore stood constantly in need of defense.

James must have heard the same stories, yet it
seemed not to matter to him. Every night he hurried to Fia’s side with exotic baubles and expensive gifts. Thomas’s hands clenched.

“You do not understand, Tom,” James said. His voice, a moment ago raised in anger, was now placating.

“Oh, I rather think I do,” Thomas muttered. He understood that Fia’s bosom was snowy and full, her mouth inviting, and her gaze beneath the thicket of curling black lashes as impertinent and wise as Lilith’s. “After what you had with Amelia, how can you be besotted of a—”

“Don’t.” James’s eyes, usually so placid, blazed. “You’re perilously close to being called out, Tom.”

“I won’t duel with you, Jim.”

“I’ve used my fists before.”

Thomas gave a short, bitter laugh. He owed this man so very much, not the least being his own miserable life. It had been James Barton who’d purchased Thomas’s bond from the sadistic animal who’d originally owned it. Within a week, James had released Thomas of the year left in his indenture and hired him to work on his ship.

James had never asked Thomas anything about his past and Thomas had never spoken of it, though he had told James his intention of someday quitting the sea and rebuilding his ancestral home in Scotland. He considered telling James about his association with the Merricks, but discarded the idea. James would only point out that Fia had been a babe when Carr had betrayed the McClairens and stolen their home.

“What spell has she cast over you?” Thomas asked in exasperation.

“You’re so damn set against her. She told me you would be. But you don’t
know
her, Tom.” James’s face grew earnest.

Thomas ignored his entreaty.
“She told you?”
The ramifications flooded Thomas’s imagination.

Fia knew he was in London. She knew he and Barton were partners and she’d warned Barton that he would oppose any relationship between James and her. The bitch had preempted him! Fury uncoiled within him and coiled back in on itself, vibrating with intensity.

“What did she tell you?” Thomas asked.

“That you were once her brother’s only friend and that you came to their home and ate their food and slept under their roof and then betrayed her brother, nearly costing him the one thing in life he required, the woman he loved.”

The sharp spear of guilt was unexpected and thus all the sharper, for it was true. What Fia had told him was true. And yet there was so much more to it than that.

“I told her she must be mistaken. Just as you are mistaken in her, Thomas.”

“I’m not mistaken in this,” Thomas said stubbornly. “She’s made you her lapdog.”

“Damn it, Tom!” James burst out. “There’s more to this than you understand. Much more.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t. I gave Fia my word. God! It’s all such a muddle.”

Thomas nodded sardonically. Fia had always “muddled” men’s minds. Thomas only hoped the poor fool didn’t live to regret his infatuation. The thought burned like acid. He snatched his cape from the back of the settee where he’d tossed it.

“You’re going out?” James asked.

“Yes.” Thomas’s voice was curt. “And I won’t be back this night.” He did not think he would handle returning and finding her here, with James.

Tomorrow, he would visit Fia—just to make sure she knew that James had a friend as well as a partner. Until then, he would go toward the river, where he could find a way to work off his anger in the haunts of hard men and harder women.

Though he doubted they could hold another woman as hard as Fia Merrick.

The clang of steel on steel echoed through the dark predawn air. Thomas peered past the links boy who’d lit his path across the cobbled street.

“Ye don’t be wantin’ to get involved wid them what’s down there.” The boy jerked his head toward the black maw of an alley. The glare from the torch made cruel work of his young, pinched face. “Best go this way.”

“And why is that?” Thomas’s voice was a soft rumble, slipping easily into dockyard cant. “You wouldn’t be havin’ a chum waitin’ in a yard down there to nab me purse, would you, lad?”

“Nah,” the boy answered, the glance that traveled over Thomas’s tall frame as impersonal as it was assessing. “Yer too big. Yer knuckles is too large and yer eyes is too canny. ’Twas a friendly word of advice, is all.

“That down there goes to the York Stairs what leads to the river. Dark place. Out of the way, like. The watch don’t even like going there. So’s it’s a grand place fer the bloods to stick each other.”

“Dueling? Is that what we’re hearing?” Thomas asked.

The lad shrugged and Thomas tossed him a penny. Up the narrow street a door opened. A pair of staggering nabobs emerged from the bright rectangle of a tavern’s door. The links boy trotted off to offer them his services in navigating the dark, muck-filled alley.

Thomas turned toward the embankment. Long rows of smudge pots lined the top, their ghostly haze unfurling spectral tendrils into the dank night air. The salty bite of brine and the thick stench of sewage clotted in his nostrils.

He walked on. If all went right and his little discussion with Fia had its desired effect, perhaps in a few days he could escape this city and go north to McClairen’s Isle.

The affinity he felt toward the isle and its castle mystified him. He’d never lived there, and had seen it only a few times as a youngster. Yet like a lodestone it exerted a powerful pull not only on him, but on other McClairens, too. Perhaps it was simply that they were an exiled people tired of wandering.

“Next time you conceive a desire to spill blood, I suggest you find a better reason!”

Tunbridge’s voice echoed up from the riverbanks. The hairs at the nape of Thomas’s neck rose. He strained his ears to discover the exact direction of Tunbridge’s voice.

Damn. London’s perpetual fog and the twining stone corridors conspired to confuse the senses and throw back sound as though it came from every direction at once. Boot heels beat a sharp tattoo against cobblestones. A man shouted once for aid, other voices answered, fading in a hollow echo.

“Where are you?” Thomas shouted.

“Here!” a young man’s voice returned frantically. “Dear God, please hurry! He’s unconscious and the blood—Help!”

Thomas followed the voice down a long, dark alley that ended in a small yard surrounded on three sides by tall buildings, their rude stone walls wet with brackish slime. At the opposite end of the yard a vaulted area stood at the top of one of the river’s many flights of steps.

“Where are you?”

“Here! Oh, thank God you’re here, sir! Help me!” A figure moved beneath the vault. Thomas went at once and found a young man crouched beside another youngster, a pool of glistening black spreading beneath his prone body. Pip Leighton.

One hand clutched a kerchief to his breast; the other lay twisted beneath his body. Beside Pip lay an obscenely pristine blade. Another lay a few feet away,
its broken tip dark with blood. All this Thomas saw in a matter of seconds.

Wretched, stupid boy! Savagely he kicked Pip’s sword away, sending it clattering down the steps. He turned to the other youngster. “Who are you?”

“Albert Hennington, sir,” the boy answered in a quavering voice.

Thomas barely heard him. He knelt and carefully removed Pip’s useless rag. Quickly, he studied the wound. It was high on Pip’s breast and deep … very deep, no slashing of the meat. Driven in and jerked out. Pip’s blood flowed freely but did not gush from the wound, nor did it bubble as would indicate his lung having been pierced, nor well up rhythmically, as an arterial wound would have done.

Thomas felt little rewarded by the discovery. Pray God it had not severed whatever pathways served to make the arm functional. He let the blood flow a minute longer, having noted in a life all too conversant with injuries that those puncture wounds that bled most freely less often grew gangrenous.

He ripped the fine Brussels lace from the cuffs on Pip’s shirt and, pressing his own folded kerchief over the wound, bound it tightly to Pip’s chest with the torn lace.

“What the bloody hell was he doing here?”

“It was Tunbridge, sir,” Albert said. “Pip saw him at a drum we attended earlier. He accused Tunbridge of offending Lady Fia and demanded satisfaction! Tunbridge only laughed. Pip waited until Tunbridge left the ball and then confronted him.”

“The fool!” Thomas whispered. “Well, boy, you’d best pray your friend here lives to regret his folly.”

Gingerly, he slid an arm beneath Pip’s knees and another under his back. With a grunt, he heaved himself and his burden to his feet. “Come on, then, Albert.”

“But, sir! Perhaps I should wait? Tunbridge sent for a surgeon!”

“Bloody unlikely,” Thomas said, “but satisfy yourself.” He strode out of the vaulted cavern.

The boy waited a full five minutes before the sound of a wharf rat scuttling toward the scent of fresh blood sent him scuttling, just as ratlike, to retrieve Tunbridge’s bloodied sword. He waved it threateningly at the rodent. The rat sat on its haunches and commenced to clean itself.

Ten minutes later Albert caught up with Thomas.

Thomas brushed past the stammering footman guarding Fia’s front door to find a stately-looking butler blocking his way. “Where is your mistress?” he demanded.

“If you’ll inform me of your name, sir,” the butler said coldly, “I will see whether Lady Fia is—”

Thomas gripped the man’s front coat and jerked him forward. He was dimly aware that he was bullying someone who could not respond in kind, but anger crowded such considerations from his mind.
“Where … is … your … mistress?”

Amazingly, the butler refused to speak, as if inspired by loyalty. Only the flicker of his gaze in the direction of the stairs gave away any information.

With an oath, Thomas flung the man from him and took the stairs two at a time. Of course she would still be abed. It was not yet noon.

At the top of the stairs a frightened maid bearing a stack of linens pointed a shaking finger in response to his demand. He stalked to the door she indicated and pushed it open without knocking.

Though it was only midmorning, a full half-dozen men crowded Fia’s boudoir, offering their opinions on her toilette. They ringed her rosewood dressing table, their primped and carefully painted faces reflected in the huge velvet-draped mirror sitting atop its lacquered surface. One man sat on a tufted stool by her feet. Another knelt beside her, peering into a silver dish containing beauty marks. The others stood close. James was among their number.

Thomas dismissed his friend’s presence, turning his attention to Fia.

Like a rose in a field of bracken, she reclined against the tufted back of a small gilt chair, glorious and feminine in her fashionable dishabille. Her black, spiraling tresses trailed over her spare, smooth, white shoulders, naked above the filigreed lace edge of her negligee. Sheer, shell-pink silk flowed along the curves of her body and pooled about her feet.

As a child her beauty had been disconcerting; as a woman it was devastating. An untried boy would have no chance of resisting such as she.

She’d not remarked his entrance, Thomas noted bitterly. Why would she? What could one man more
in her chambers mean to her? Or the absence of one boy?
Nothing
.

He cut through the ranks of her admirers until he stood within a few feet of her. The men’s heads turned, irritated at the appearance of yet another contender for Fia’s attention. When they saw what he carried, their irritation gave way to alarm.

Thomas lifted Tunbridge’s broken, bloodstained épée like a talisman. He pitched it into the air and seized the middle of the bare blade in his fist, feeling the edge cut into his palm. The men’s mutters faded, the room grew still with expectancy, and Fia, who’d been leaning back and sideways as she listened to the poor sot kneeling beside her, froze.

She turned her head slightly, her eyes still downcast, as if assessing his presence with senses other than sight. Her lashes swept across the creamy curve of her high cheekbones. Her nostrils flared delicately. She was unearthly beautiful.

He waited for her to look up. She would acknowledge him, damn her,
before
he spoke. Her brow knotted, smoothed, and slowly her gaze rose. By God, her eyes were just as startling a blue as he’d remembered. Mayhap more so.

“Lord Donne.” Her voice was slight, breathless.

“Lady Fia.”

“I say, Lady Fia, who is this fellow?” the swarthy man at her feet asked.

“Lord Donne is a very old friend of the family.” Her eyes remained locked with his.

“Thomas?” James spoke.

Thomas ignored him. He didn’t want to be here. The thought drummed, angry and desolate, in his mind. He’d thought himself finished with the Merricks. Above all things, he desired to be done with them.