The Spare (24 page)

"Thank you."

"Now, let me see your head." He clucked in dismay when she showed him the scar. "You were fair in the eyes of God when you got that." His fingers probed. "Worse megrims since you came to this wee cottage of the Captain's?"

She nodded.

"And you cannot recall how you got this scratch of yours?"

"No," she said.

"You are too thin, Miss Willow. Your complexion is pale. Your eyes shadowed by your cares."

She shook her head.

"Let the Captain's staff look after your mother for a bit." He put a hand on her shoulder. "You've been through enough, Miss Willow, to make even a Scotsman think of his bed with longing. Promise me you'll rest today." He tilted his head. "I've a feeling Captain Alexander—Lord Tiern-Cope—would never forgive me if something happened to you."

"He's been kind to me."

"Which I dare say is proof enough."

"Of what?"

"I've known him ten years now, Miss." He grinned, eyes twinkling. "Has the Captain told you how we met?"

"No," Olivia said.

"May I?" He indicated a chair.

"Please."

"We made our acquaintance at sea, as you might expect. In the middle of a pitched battle. Smoke so a body could not breathe 'twas so thick. I was ship's surgeon on the
Courageous
. Eighty-four pounder, she was. We met the French and engaged them. We'd fired all cannons on the
Deluge
and thought she was done for. Mast shot clean through and the sails like nets there were that many tears. I was on the gun deck, tending to the wounded there, to get them firing if they could be roused and patched. I could see topside through a great gaping hole in the deck above. They struck their colors and gave permission to board. When we came near enough the French started firing. Cowards all of them, for they killed good men who never expected such a trick. Captain Farral took a bullet to the heart and three more officers besides. We thought we were done for. We didn't have a man fit to take over.

"But your young man, Miss Willow, Lieutenant Alexander in those days, was on the frigate
Achilles
, well behind us we thought. But no, suddenly there she was, off our port bow and tacking. For an instant, an instant mind you, we heard nothing but waves and wind and dying men and timbers creaking, for the Frogs were waiting to get close enough to board us, and then came a sight I'll never forget 'til I'm cold in the ground. A man jumped from the
Achilles
clean across twenty feet of ocean right before a hundred French and one of them, thinks I, fires, for there's a crack like a shot." He slapped his palms together in imitation of the sound.

"Deaf as I was from the cannons, lass, I heard that clear as anything, and I'm thinking the poor fellow's dead and consigned to the deep. Then, like the very Angel of Death himself, here he comes. A cat couldn't have walked any lighter than he. He scoots right down through the hole in the deck, through smoke thick as soup, and he looks at the gunner's mate with eyes like blue fire, and he says calm as ever you like, 'Sir, will you fire that cannon or shall I?' And there the mate was, bleeding from his leg—he was naught but a boy, he was—and thinking he'd soon be as dead as the gunner, but he says, Aye, sir, I will.'

"That crack I heard wasn't any gun but Lieutenant Alexander hitting the deck after he jumped. By then, the Achilles engaged the French and never mind us. We were done for, so they thought. Blasted a hole clean through her side, we did. I never saw the like before and never after."

"He jumped twenty feet?"

"That he did," Fansher said. He stood, looking around the room. "We routed the French and Lieutenant Alexander saw us repaired and sailed to Bermuda along with the ship, which, it turned out, carried gold, and made us richer than ever we dreamed. I asked to be assigned to his ship. As it happened, they'd lost their surgeon. I sailed with him until just before he got that hole in his side."

"I never heard any of that."

"Oh, the lad would never tell it himself. I knew him at sea, but this place suits him as I never thought dry land would. Aye, lass, it does."

"He is Tiern-Cope. He belongs here."

"That he does. But he needs a woman at his side. The right woman." He fixed Olivia with a stare. "And I'm thinking it isn't Miss Royce." He smiled. "Well. I'll check on you and your mother later today, Miss Willow. And be taking you to task if you've not gotten some rest. Mind you, eat every bite of food sent to you. I expect you fit enough to dance a fling with me tonight."

Olivia laughed. "Thank you for your kindness."

"So long as you are kind to him."

"You'll send me your bill, won't you?"

He took her hand between both of his. "I see how it is between you. He's gone off course, and it's up to you to set him back on it. Don't let him get away. Dig in your heels, lass and keep him. It's the best thing for him." He released her. "Now, Miss Willow, you go to sleep yourself. Doctor's orders."

"Thank you again."

Taking Fansher's advice wasn't hard. She was exhausted. Back in her room, she crawled into bed, letting her head sink deep into the pillows. Did Tiern-Cope ever feel his body was too small to contain his emotions? No, she decided. That man took life by the throat, stared eternity in the eye and accepted what came. His life was as wide as the ocean while hers seemed as constricted as the pages bound between the covers of her journal. She lay on her back, staring at the shadows. Her thoughts drifted to Tiern-Cope and in her head she saw him leaping onto the deck of a doomed ship. Such a stern countenance, and, she suspected—no, she knew—an unyielding character, but not for ill. Fansher was right. He'd lost his way, that's all. Handsome as the very devil himself, too. Handsomer than Andrew. Handsomer than Fitzalan, if only he would smile.

She slipped toward the oblivion of sleep. Warmth stole over her, a warmth edged with—well, what was it, exactly? Eagerness. Anticipation. A strange certainty that
something
would happen to change her life utterly. She would not spend the rest of he: life in the terrible solitude of these last years with nothing to look forward to but loneliness and poverty.

Outside, the spit and caterwauling of a tomcat snarled through the air. A dog howled, a mournful bay expressing, no doubt, frustration at his inability to chase the tom. For some time after her return from Land's End, and before she and her mother had moved to Far Caister, she'd not been able to sleep. She'd gotten used to her bed at Land's End. But she soon came to feel at home. With her mother's health in increasing decline, they moved to far cheaper lodgings in Far Caister. Soon enough, she couldn't imagine not being comfortable with old ticking and a duvet that had been on her parents' bed at the Grange or minding that her pillow was little more than a square of rag-stuffed linen. Now, she didn't have even that.

The patterns overhead shifted so that, had she an imagination prone to hysteria, she could easily convince herself something hid in the curtains above her head. She imagined a face in the shadows and folds of fabric, a face with sad, hollow eyes. The sliver of light shining through a crack in the window curtains disappeared. Shadows deepened and swirled and the face became even more uncannily real.

Unnerved, she listened to the wind. The creaking hinges of a loose shutter somewhere on the tower sounded oddly smooth, a sort of ringing sound of metal sliding along metal, which meant the sound wasn't hinges at all, but someone sharpening a knife. The air had a bite to it, a promise of colder weather to come that made her pull the blanket higher and more snugly about her. Sunlight reappeared, winked out again then returned. Her eyes drifted shut. With each breath she tasted the damp tang of sea air, felt the rocking of waves, the cry of an ern. The earl's mouth on hers, so warm and gentle and eager, yes, eager, for her. And she for him. One last time, she heard the cat spit and yowl, and then she was fast asleep.

She stood in a hallway, cold and shivering. In one direction, the library at Pennhyll, in the other, eventually, and after a series of twisting hallways and narrow stairs, her tower room. The wood-covered walls were not so dark as she remembered, but she recognized the vines and flowers carved into the squares. Masterwork, the carving. The wooden flowers appeared to wave in a gentle breeze. She made her way to her room. But at the floor below she saw a light from the parlor. Strange that someone would use it. She pushed open the door—it wasn't completely shut—and found another world.

Instead of plastered walls painted orange, panels of fabric covered the walls, and instead of lamp oil and coal, she breathed in the scent of beeswax candles. Fireplace and mantel dominated the center portion of the wall opposite her but the marble columns were gone. Her desk was gone. Where there ought to have been bookshelves, there rested a canopied bed bedecked with silk curtains embroidered with a lion rampant. The bed sat on a dais with gold railing around the perimeter. Next to the bed a broadsword for a warrior's hand rested in a wooden frame. Arranged at an angle to the fireplace was a chair of sunburnt brown with metal rivets sunk deep into the stuffing. One cobalt pillow lay on the rush-covered floor.

A man sat on a chair turned toward the fire so that she saw mostly his hair and a portion of his face. She blinked, and like that, the room changed, became recognizable as the salon she used for her office. The man was still there, not upright nor dressed, she saw upon coming nearer. Clothing lay in a heap on the floor, a coat and some heavier garment. His dark head rested on the chair back. His eyes were closed, his mouth curved in a secret, inwardly intense smile. Sprawled atop him, head bent so that she'd not initially been visible, a woman slipped her hands down his chest. His arms circled the woman, but did not hold her. Instead he worked at his cuff, fumbling with a square of gleaming gold. One had already come free, for the cuff dangled open, but the second proved more difficult.

"Sod it."

One violent jerk sent the cufflink arcing into the air. It hit the wall with a metallic
plink
and tumbled into a corner. The two of them worked at his shirt until it was over his head and drifting downward to join the other jumbled clothes. The woman stroked his naked chest, fingers gliding over muscled ridges from chest to belly, the other hand braced on the chair back next to his head, holding most of her weight.

Now his hands held the woman's waist, slipping lower to clutch her to him. Her chest was bare, and while Olivia stood rooted to the spot, he leaned forward to press his face to her bosom. His mouth opened, and he kissed her breast, slowly and with lavish attention. Outside, wind whipped past the stone walls and set the hounds baying in their kennels so that the woman's moans were lost in the sound.

The dark-haired man freed her hair, running his fingers through her curls, lifting them high and letting the mass of copper fall down her back. Red hair, as coppery as her own. Surely, there wasn't another female in all Cumbria so cursed with hair that color. The woman's head fell back and gave Olivia a view of her partner's face. As if her thoughts had flown to him, his eyes opened, and he looked at Olivia. For a moment, it was like seeing someone else's eyes in a familiar face, and then she realized he wasn't a stranger at all. The face flickered and shifted, not one face but a dozen men with eyes like blue ice, until at last the man's features settled into the familiar.

Pleasure eased the edges of Tiern-Cope's face, and with his mouth curved in a smile he resembled his brother more than ever. But the eyes gave him away. They were cold, a lifeless, icy blue. He grasped the woman's hips, and this woman who had Olivia's copper hair and even her features, cried out in a low, guttural moan of pleasure incapable of containment. "I am coming," he said. He opened his eyes again, looking at her, and she wanted to weep from the heartbreak.

His hips came up, and he gasped and said, "My heart. My love. I'm coming."

She slid away, down and away, and into the safety of Sebastian's embrace. His arms enfolded her, warm and tight.
Hurry
, she thought.

«
^
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12:16
p.m.

Sebastian took refuge in a parlor in the medieval wing of the castle. Refuge from the uproar of preparations but not from the thought of Olivia marrying her cousin or of James's plea to intercede on his behalf. An overstuffed leather chair brought up to a fire that glowed with the promise of warmth invited him to sit. Jesus, he was tired. His chest ached, and his throat hurt from the heat and smoke he'd breathed in. Light through the window slanted across the floor and illuminated a table on which there sat a bottle of brandy. French brandy. Some portion of the prizes awarded him over the years. He'd shipped everything to Andrew, who converted what he sent to cash. But, it seemed, not everything. Delicate stuff, French brandy. He walked to the table, found a glass near the bottle and poured himself two fingers. He ought to be upstairs resting before the evening's madness, but he didn't fancy McNaught and his potions just now. Not when he could have brandy and a moment's rare and welcome solitude.

Glass in hand, he made a circuit of the room and found it disturbingly familiar. A charming room he was certain he'd never been in before. Marble columns rose to the ceiling at either side of the mantel. Over the fireplace a painting of peonies looked so lifelike he expected any moment to catch their scent. Open curtains of cobalt blue contrasted with the orange plaster walls. Near the oriel the surface of a walnut desk was cluttered with all the implements of a letterwriter: pen, ink, seals, wax, blotter and several sheets of paper bearing the Tiern-Cope crest. Obviously, someone used this room. He extended a fingertip from the hand holding the brandy and moved the papers. Underneath lay a clothbound book such as anyone might purchase in the lower sort of shops. A green cover, much battered with corners bent and frayed. He opened it, saw two thirds of the pages filled with a neat feminine script, and closed it against further invasion. His head ached, or put better, felt stuffed full. The coals shifted with a hiss of flaring ember. He shivered. Pennhyll could be damned cold sometimes.