The Silver Lord. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ or be hideously seamed with scars. She had pictured the visitor like this in alarming detail, steeling herself for the unpleasant task of showing him the house.

      But what she had never imagined was the reality of Captain Lord Claremont who had presented himself on Feversham’s doorstep.

      She had, quite simply, never in her life met such a gentleman, let alone found one standing on the doorstep before her. He was appallingly handsome, tall and broad-shouldered and lean, and the dark blue coat and white breeches of his uniform were so closely fitted that she’d no more need at all for her imagination.

      It wasn’t just that he had all his limbs, unlike the Captain Claremont she’d been picturing in her mind. This Captain Claremont stood before her with an assurance that was new to Fan, a kind of unquestionable confidence that came from inside the man, not from any tailor’s needle. She could see it in his eyes, his smile, even the way his dark hair waved back from his forehead. She’d known her share of brave men, but their bravery had come from muscle and force, while this one—this one would have the same muscle and force, true enough, but it would be his intelligence and his conviction that he would win that would always give him the advantage.

      And God help her, he already had it over her. He had begun by treating her like the lowliest parlor maid, and she had responded as was fitting for the housekeeper of Feversham: dignified and aloof, and justly proud of her position and the old house. He’d respected that, or so she’d thought at first.

      But somehow things had shifted between them while she’d shown him the house. He’d challenged her, dared her, badgered her, until she’d done it all back to him, and not only in defense, either. She’d enjoyed testing herself against such a clever man: that was the horrible truth of it. She’d enjoyed the banter, and she’d enjoyed being with him. By the time they’d reached the bedchambers, he’d been out-and-out flirting with her, and, wretched creature that she was, she could only smile and blush like some simpleminded maid.

      Her only solace came from knowing Captain Claremont had left Feversham the same day he’d come, and wouldn’t return. He’d made that clear enough, hadn’t he? She’d made a shameful fool of herself once, but at least she’d be spared doing it again. And if she let his handsome, smiling face haunt her dreams, then that would be her penance.

      That, and the questions and doubts of the men before her.

      “But why Feversham, mistress?” called Will Hood from the back, and others rumbled along with him in a chorus of uncertainty. “There’s scores o’ other grand houses for the likes o’ him. Why’d he come here if he’d no reason?”

      “He wished a house by the sea,” answered Fan, raising her voice, praying she sounded more sure of herself than she felt. “That is what the Trelawneys’ agent in London wrote to me. He saw a drawing of Feversham, and was much taken with it. But he found the real house much lacking and inconvenient, and left disappointed, determined to find another.”

      She was unwisely repeating herself, and she saw the uneasy glances passing back and forth.

      “Captain Lord Claremont saw nothing to make him wish to return,” she continued, “nor anything of our affairs here. None of this barn, or your ponies, or the boats near the stream.”

      “This Captain Lord Claremont, was he the same captain what made all the fuss last year?” asked Hood. “The one what stole all that silver from that dago treasure-ship? Was he your gentleman here?”

      “He’s not my gentleman,” said Fan quickly, but no one else noticed the distinction, or cared.

      “Likely this Claremont’s friends with the old bloody Duke o’ Richmond, too, may his bones rot in the blackest corner of Hell,” said Forbert darkly. “All them nobles are kin, aren’t they? I say this one’s come to see us broke and strung up for the gulls to pick apart, like they did to those poor blokes on Rook’s Hill near Chichester.”

      “And I say you’re daft, Forbert, making no more sense than a braying jackass,” said Hood, wiping his nose with a red-spotted handkerchief. He was a sensible man, an old friend of her father’s, one she trusted and one the others listened to as well. It was also whispered in awe that Hood was strong enough to row single-handedly across the Channel to France, which doubtless added extra weight to his opinions. “Those black days o’ Richmond were your grandfather’s time, not ours.”

      “But who’s to say they won’t come back?” demanded Forbert peevishly. “Who’s to say they’re not here now?”

      “Because they’re not.” Impatiently Fan shoved a loose strand of her hair back under her cap. “Do you think I’d purposefully lead you astray, Bob Forbert, just for the sport of it? Do you think I’d put my own neck into the noose first? You know I’ve ways to tell Ned Markham to keep back his tea for another week if the customs men are here. Why would that be changing now?”

      Hood nodded. “And mind, we’re a small company, and always have been. No high-and-mighty lord-captain’s going to bother with us, not when he can go fill his pockets as deep as he pleases catching dagos and frogs. Mistress here will tell you the same. We’re not worth the bother.”

      Forbert gulped, his Adam’s apple moving frantically up and down. “But there’s a peace now,” he persisted, “and if this captain is idle, then—”

      “The peace won’t last, not with the French,” said Fan quickly. “The London agent said so in his letter. He said Captain Claremont wanted to find a house at once, since he expected to be sent back to sea soon. Ned Markham’s said that, too, that the word of a Frenchman’s not worth a fig.”

      “Well, then, there you are,” said Hood. “And if mistress says this lordly bloke’s not coming back, then he’s not, and that’s an end to it.”

      “Yes,” said Fan, her old confidence beginning to return. Captain Claremont was no more than a single day’s inconvenience in her ordered life. Why, in another week, she’d scarce remember the color of his hair, let alone the way he’d grinned to soften his teasing about the mistress’s bed. “That is an end to it, Bob Forbert, and to Captain Lord Folderol, too. Let him take his Spanish dollars and settle in China for what I care, and a pox on anyone who says different.”

      Hood nodded, the lines around his mouth creasing through the graying stubble of his beard as he smiled.

      “True words, mistress, true words,” he said, clapping his hands. “How could it be otherwise with you, considering what the Navy would do to the likes of us if they could? Ha, that old bastard of a captain-mi’lordy’s lucky you didn’t shoot him dead there in his fancy carriage, just because you could!”

      The others laughed, pleased by the vengeance Hood was imagining. But while Fan laughed, too, her conscience was far from merry.

      Shoot the bastard dead, that’s what they wanted, dead on the step of his fancy carriage.

      And forget forever the way he’d smiled, just for her, just for her….

      George sat in the small office, ignoring the dish of tepid tea that the bustling clerk had brought, and considering instead the murky fog in the street outside. Though landsmen failed to mark the difference, London fog was nothing like the clean, salty fog at sea. The stuff that clogged the London air was gray and heavy as a shroud, so weighted with coal smoke and grime that he wondered the people who lived in the city could breathe it without perishing.

      Not that any of them seemed to notice it, let СКАЧАТЬ