She threw herself into it with such enthusiasm that they soon heard footsteps pound up the stairs. Jack appeared in the doorway. “Here now, what’s all this ruckus?”
Helena would’ve made Mrs. Nunley proud, for she drew herself up like the bloody queen and said primly, “He was flirting with the maid.”
Jack chuckled…until Helena glared at him. Then he smothered his amusement. “I’m sure he didn’t mean naught by it, did you, Danny?”
“Nothing a’tall, but you can’t tell
her
that,” Daniel retorted in apparent disgust. “Any time she sees me with another woman, her eyes turn green.”
“What do you expect when you flirt with everything in skirts?” Helena snapped. “What I ought to do is—”
“See here,” Jack put in with a glance down the stairs, “the maid has gone anyhow, so there’s no need for this fuss.”
Relief surged through Daniel so powerfully it took all his will to disguise it.
“I’m sorry, lass,” he told Helena. “You know how I am when I’m drinking—”
“Drinking!” She snorted. “Well, don’t think that’ll excuse it. And why were you drinking, anyway? Here we are, probably about to be murdered in our beds, and you’re downstairs having the time of your—”
“I’ll leave you to discuss this in private,” Jack muttered as he backed out. Then he halted with a frown. “I almost forgot. There’s something I got to do before I lock you in.”
Jack disappeared. Helena looked at Daniel questioningly, and he shook his head, not sure what Jack was up to. They didn’t have long to wonder, however, for when Jack returned moments later and Daniel saw what he was carrying, he groaned.
A leg shackle. Bloody hell.
Among the pleasant cocks of hay,
There with my bonny lad I lay
What lass, so young and soft as I
Could such a handsome lad deny?
“Spinning Wheel,”
anonymous ballad
“Y
ou’re not putting that thing on me, Jack, so just forget that idea.”
Daniel’s protest was the first thing that alerted Helena to what Mr. Seward carried. She turned to see him holding a long length of chain attached to two wicked-looking iron cuffs.
“I got to do it, Danny Boy.” Mr. Seward stalked toward Daniel. “I can’t leave more’n three or four men here
tonight, because Jolly Roger needs us for the landing when he comes in. And I don’t trust you to stay put.”
“You’re already lockin’ us up, so why the devil do you need to shackle me?”
“Because I don’t want nobody havin’ to deal with your shenanigans, m’boy.”
Mr. Seward stepped closer. Daniel lifted his hand to the pocket where she’d seen him slide a knife earlier. Oh, dear, surely he wouldn’t fight Mr. Seward over the shackle—that would be terribly unwise with an armed man standing in the doorway. He must have realized it, too, for he dropped his hand abruptly.
Mr. Seward bent to fasten one cuff around Daniel’s leg. “There’s ten feet of chain here so you can move about easily,” he pointed out, “and it’s only till the morrow. But I ain’t gonna leave you in here without something. And don’t be getting any ideas about coaxing Big Antony into letting you out of ’em, because I’m keepin’ the key meself.”
He straightened, a sudden grin flashing over his face. “It’s not so bad, y’know.” He turned and clamped the other cuff to the iron bedstead. “With it locked to the bed, you oughta have an easier time of mending your quarrel with the missus. You want I should shackle her, too?”
Fire leaped in Daniel’s face, though she couldn’t tell whether it was anger or something more…interesting. “Don’t you dare,” he said quickly. “She has enough trouble with her leg as it is.”
A pox on my leg,
she thought wickedly. Shackled to a bed with Daniel sounded quite intriguing. She shushed the little murmur of anticipation in her breast. Merciful heavens, she was turning into such a naughty creature. “Can’t say I didn’t offer.” Mr. Seward winked at her. “Now it’ll be up to you to mend the quarrel, Mrs. Brennan.”
“I think I can manage.” They
were
trapped here until
tomorrow, and they’d done their best to prepare for the coming confrontation with Mr. Crouch. It was enough to tempt even the most inflexible woman to err, and she was feeling more flexible by the moment. Especially with Danny shackled to a bed…
Mr. Seward paused on his way out the door. “I’ll tell Big Antony that nobody’s to bother you, including him. So enjoy yourselves.”
As soon as Mr. Seward shut the door, Daniel brandished his fist at it. “Damn that Jack! Even if I could trick the guard into coming close enough for me to overpower him, I couldn’t shake this bloody shackle.”
She chided herself for thinking about lovemaking at a time when she ought to be helping him plot their escape. “Can’t you pick the lock?”
“I was a smuggler, not a thief. I don’t know any more about picking locks than you do.” He muttered an oath. “I’d hoped for a chance to slip us both out, stash you away, then hunt for Juliet, but that’s impossible now.”
“You still don’t know where she is?”
He shook his head. “One thing is certain. None of them know of her but Pryce, and he has the care of her.”
“That blackguard,” she hissed. “If he dares to hurt her—”
“Don’t worry—I’ll be the first to wring his neck.” He paced the floor like a bear at a baiting, heedless of the chain that clanked behind him. “Well, at least we’ve got a chance for survival now that Seth is on his way to London.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To take that sheet of paper to Griff.” He shot her an approving glance. “You did well, lass. Your sketches and what I wrote will send Griff down here quick as can be. Not to mention that he can use them if we—” He broke off with a curse.
“Are murdered? I thought of that. It’s why I drew them up in the first place.”
“Jack said Crouch wouldn’t kill us.”
“But you don’t trust him, do you? Even if he
is
your uncle.”
Pain slashed over Daniel’s face. “Exactly. But if he proves villainous, we’ll threaten him with all that information you gathered. It just might keep us alive.”
“Do you think Seth can gent to London?”
A smile ghosted over his lips. “He sneaked in and out of here successfully, didn’t he? The boy’s half-mad, I swear. And he makes a damned ugly girl. Good thing, too, or that randy arse Ned would’ve tried to buss the poor lad and probably got his teeth kicked in for the effort.”
She laughed at the outrageous image. “It was rather clever of Seth to come dressed as a girl, wasn’t it?”
“Reckless, more like.”
“I suppose.” She sidled up to him. “Though I have no doubt you were just like him at that age.”
Inexplicably, he stiffened and whirled away from her. “I was
nothing
like him.” With quick, angry strides, he walked toward the window, but the chain didn’t go that far and forced him to halt short of it. His back was to her, but she could see the tension in his broad shoulders and rigid arms. “I only wish I had been.”
Bewildered by his stormy reaction, she folded her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. I only meant that he’s bold and brave. And clever. I’m sure you were clever at his age.”
“Oh, yes, very clever,” he said sarcastically. “Clever enough to start my wenching and drinking early on. Clever enough to keep the books for my own uncle’s smuggling gang without even knowing who he was.” He spun back to her, his gaze bleak. “Clever enough to get your sister tangled up in
my
dirty linen.”
“You had nothing, to do with it! You didn’t know Crouch tried to blackmail Griff, or I’m sure you would have done what you could to prevent Juliet’s abduction.”
Surprise flickered in his features. “Well, at least you trust me enough to believe that.”
Ah, so he’d thought she might not? It hurt to hear it, but she couldn’t blame him. She’d certainly been stingy with her trust until now. “Of course I trust you. Completely, utterly.” She cast him a shy smile. “Why wouldn’t I trust the man I plan to marry?”
For a second, hope flared in his face, fierce and feverishly bright. And then it was as if the fire burned out, leaving nothing but cold gray ash. “No.”
Confusion clamored in her mind. “No? No what?”
“We are not marrying, Helena.”
“What?” she whispered. “Why not?”
He turned back to the window. “I should never have asked you. I see that now. It was bloody stupid, and I’m sorry, but I cannot, will not marry you.”
The words hammered her, beat at her self-respect, and nearly undid her. Her first impulse was to accuse him of being exactly what she’d feared from the beginning—a more wily rendition of her worst suitors.
But he wasn’t, and she knew it. Perhaps she’d always known it. Why else had she let him close to her when she’d never done so with the others? Why else had she exposed herself so wholly to him? Because she’d sensed that he, of all men, was exactly what he seemed, that he would never strive to hurt her.
Until now. Somehow this morning’s revelations had brought on this sudden reversal. Perhaps she could find the root of it if she ignored her wounded feelings and dug deeper into his.
She spoke as steadily as she could manage. “As it hap
pens, I don’t think it was ‘bloody stupid’ at all.” She tipped up her chin and prayed she was not misjudging the situation. “In fact, I accept your offer of marriage.”
“Too late for that. I’ve withdrawn it, m’lady.”
“Don’t call me that!” How dare he try to negate these past few days! With furious strides, she rounded him, forcing him to look at her. “I have no such rank, and you know it. Even if I did, it wouldn’t stop me from wanting to marry you.” She paused, gathered her heart in her hands, then added, “It wouldn’t stop me from loving you.”
He flinched as if struck. Looking hunted, almost wild, he rasped out a curse that seemed to contain all his frustration. Then he glanced away from her. The light of the setting sun limned his taut features. “That…doesn’t matter. It has naught to do with it.”
She swallowed down her hurt. “Well, it happens to matter to me, and I’d say it has everything to do with it.” She pressed him, determined to push past this sudden change in him. “Last night you said you wanted me for your wife, and as far as I’m concerned that’s the only thing that counts.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “A man will say anything to a woman when he’s bent on seduction.”
“Perhaps,” she retorted acidly, “but if that’s what you were about, then you did it very badly. You said it after you’d already seduced me, when it could gain you nothing.” She tried to provoke him. “Are you claiming that you lied when you said you wanted me? That you are merely one more Fickle Farnsworth after all?”
He refused to answer. He just stood there, remote, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.
A pox on him! She would make him talk to her if it killed her. Walking up close, she said with deliberate coldness, “Or have you merely reconsidered the wisdom
of settling down and decided that you would miss not being able to bed all your strumpets? Is that it?”
“At least strumpets know better than to ask a man for what he can’t give,” he ground out.
At last she was getting somewhere. “Like what? Trust? Honesty?”
“A future, damn it!” His belligerent gaze shot to her as he jerked his leg to rattle the chain. “I can’t marry you when I’m leg shackled for life to…to Crouch and his bloody gang!”
Her breath hitched in her throat. “Don’t be silly. Once we’re out of here—”
“Once you and Juliet are out of here, you mean. I’ll
never
be out of here. Weren’t you listening in the coach this morning? No matter what happens, it’ll never stop. My past with Crouch follows me around like…like this damned shackle!”
So that was the source of all this: Mr. Seward’s unsettling revelations. “What if it does? You’ve never let it stop you before, and that was clearly wise. As long as you’re open and honest about your past—”
“For all the good that’s done me.” His pain was starkly evident in the drawn cheeks and rigid jaw. “I thought to rid myself of the monster under the bed by shining a light on it, by acknowledging it openly. But that only works for a child, not an adult. Shining a light on it just made it come after me. It didn’t banish it a’tall.”
His gaze was heartrending in its remorse. “And this time it came after more than me. It came after Juliet and Griff and now you. Even if we escape it this time, it’ll always come back in some fashion. He’s my blood, damn it, which means it’s not an association I can escape!” He released a ragged breath. “So we won’t be marrying, lass. I might have to live with shackles, but I won’t put you in
them. And that’s the end of it. I’ll not change my mind on this.”
Helena’s heart twisted in her chest. Her poor, sweet love, so foolishly determined to protect her. And she doubted that saying she didn’t care about the “shackles” of his past would convince Daniel once he’d set his mind to something.
Nonetheless, she wasn’t about to lose the stubborn lout merely because he’d decided to be noble. She knew exactly how to bring him to his senses: use his nobility against him. “You mean you’re abandoning me now that you’ve ruined me?”
The barb hit its mark. He glanced away, flustered, guilty. “It’s better than dragging you down with me. I’m very sorry for taking advantage of you last night. It was a great mistake. But that doesn’t mean we should compound it by making a worse one.”
She pressed her point. “I can see how marriage would be a mistake for you, but I’m still confused on how it would be a mistake for me.
I
am the one who’ll suffer the consequences of being ruined, you know.”
He gritted his teeth. “You’re not ruined. I daresay many men would marry you, no matter what you think. When Griff and Rosalind return, they’ll launch you properly into society. They’ll see that the right men court you, men of your rank and breeding, who’ll see you for the treasure you are, who won’t care about your leg or your…”