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“Please. You never consider the feelings of others, either. We’re all just obstacles to your military glory. ” Colin threw up his hands. “I don’t even want to be in this godforsaken, disgustingly charming place. ”
“Then leave. Go find one of your many dissolute friends and leech off him for the next few months. ”
“Do you really think that idea hasn’t occurred to me, on a damned near hourly basis since we arrived? Good Lord, as if I couldn’t find better accommodations than that ghastly castle. ”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Because you’re my cousin, Bram!”
For a well-established fact, this sudden outburst rather surprised them both.
Colin made a fist. “You’ve been my closest kin since my parents . . . since I was a boy. And since your father died, I’m all you’ve got, too. We’ve barely spoken to each other in over a decade. I thought it might be nice to try this ‘family’ thing the rest of the world seems so keen on. An idiotic notion, clearly. ”
“Clearly. ”
Bram paced in a slow circle, swinging his arms in frustration. This was brilliant. Just exactly what he needed to hear right now—that atop betraying Sir Lewis, deflowering Susanna, and contributing to the village’s destruction tonight, he was somehow failing Colin, too. This was why he needed to return to his regiment. In the army, he had a routine, a drill book, marching orders. There, he always knew what to do. If he never resumed his command, this would be his life, it seemed. A string of disappointments and failures.
The futility of it all incited him to unreasoned anger.
Colin scratched behind his ear. “Just think, and all those years growing up alone, I thought I was missing out on something. ”
“Guess you learned your lesson there. ”
“What does either of us know about family, anyhow?”
“I know something about it,” Bram returned. “I know we’re doing it wrong. I don’t respect you. You don’t respect me. We’ve only been at each other’s throats this whole time. ”
“You’re such a principled, arrogant ass. If you respected me, I’d have your sanity challenged. And so far as filial affection is concerned . . . ” Colin gestured angrily toward the spot where the Bright twins had grappled. “It seems clawing at one another’s throats is the standard practice. ”
“Well, in that case. ” With his left hand, Bram grabbed Colin by the shirtfront. His right fist made an impulsive swing at his cousin’s jaw. He checked the strength of the blow somewhat, but it still landed with enough force to send Colin’s head whipping left. “That’s for Miss Highwood. ” He drove a halfhearted, joyless punch into his cousin’s gut. “And that’s for . . . for fun. ”
He waited, breathing hard, holding his cousin by the collar and bracing himself for retaliation. Longing for it, truly. Bram knew he had blows coming to him—for Susanna, for Sir Lewis, for everything. The impact could only come as a relief.
But his cousin wouldn’t do him even that favor. He simply touched his tongue to his bruised lip and said, “I’ll be off in the morning, Bram. I’d let you be rid of me sooner, but I don’t travel at night. ”
“Oh no, you don’t. ” Bram gave him a shake.
Damn it, what was he going to do with this man? If he left here, nothing good could come of it. Of him. As a young, unattached, soon-to-be-wealthy peer, Colin had no checks on his behavior. Since a tragically young age, he’d been lacking both a father’s example and a mother’s understanding.
Susanna, he thought with a bittersweet twinge, would probably argue Colin needed a hug.
Well, Bram didn’t know how to offer his cousin any of those things—not with a straight face, at any rate. But he knew how to be an officer, and experience had taught him that duty and discipline could patch a good many holes in a man’s life.
He might be the only person in the world who could offer Colin this: the chance to rise to expectations, rather than sink to them.
“You’re not leaving,” he told him. “Not now, and not tomorrow, either. ” He released his cousin, then gestured at the scene of destruction and chaos. “You broke this, and you’re damned well going to mend it. ”
Spindle Cove was falling to pieces.
Once she’d seen that Diana was safely upstairs and resting in her bed, Susanna descended to the drawing room of the Queen’s Ruby. There she found her whole world breaking apart. Complaints and confessions detonated in every corner of the room.
“Oh Lord. Oh Lord,” a voice pitched above frantic flapping. A gull’s wing couldn’t have worked harder than that fan. “I feel an attack of nerves coming on. ”
“I can’t believe I drank whiskey,” mourned another. “And danced with a fisherman. If my uncle hears of this, I’ll be called home in such disgrace. ”
“Perhaps I ought to go upstairs. Start packing my things now. ”
And then came the observation that froze Susanna’s blood.
“Miss Finch, what’s happened to your gown? The buttons are all askew. And look at your hair. ”
“I . . . ” Susanna strove to keep calm. “I suppose I dressed too hurriedly tonight. ”
“But it wasn’t like that at Summerfield,” Violet Winterbottom said. “And I thought for certain you would have arrived in the village long before me—I was forced to rest for so long—but you didn’t. Did you meet with some accident on the way?”
“Something like that. ” As she melted into a nearby chair, Susanna’s conscience stabbed at her. Then she knew the piercing quality of Kate Taylor’s curious gaze. Then Minerva’s.
They all turned to her, every lady in the room. Staring. Noticing. Then wondering.
She’d been so foolish. What she’d shared with Bram had been . . . indescribable, and she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. But to engage in it on the village green, where they had every chance of discovery? While complete pandemonium broke out nearby, putting a woman’s life at risk?
And Miss Highwood wasn’t the only one in danger. Women like Kate and Minerva . . . If Spindle Cove ceased to be a reputable place, what chance would they have to pursue their talents and enjoy the freedom of independent thought?
“Miss Finch?” Kate asked quietly, coming to sit beside her and take her hand. “Is there anything you wish to tell us? Anything at all?”
Susanna squeezed her friend’s hand and looked around the room. She was not a resentful person as a matter of course. But in that brief moment, she rather hated the world. She hated that all these bright, unconventional women were here because they’d been made to think there was something wrong with them. That they had to escape from society, just to be themselves. She hated that the slightest hint of her behavior tonight could put their safe haven at risk—assuming that tavern debacle hadn’t ruined everything anyway.
And most of all, she hated that she could not sit here with her only friends and confess to them that she’d just given her virginity to the strongest, most sensual, wonderfully tender man. That beneath her rumpled clothing, she was still flushed and damp and . . . pleasantly sticky from his attentions. That she was changed inside, still reeling from the pleasure and profundity of it all. Little echoes of bliss cinched tight in her belly, and her heart brimmed with emotion. And did they know the wicked things a man could do with his tongue?
It was so wrong, that the world forced her to keep quiet. But Susanna had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she could not single-handedly change the world. At best, she could protect her small corner of it.
Tonight, she’d failed at even that.
“On my way into the village, I had a tumble,” she said, “and my gown took the brunt of it. That’s all. ” She rose from her chair, preparing to leave. “I’m going home to rest. I suggest you all do the same. I know it’s been an unusual evening, but I hope to see you all in the morning. It’s Thursday, and we do have our schedule. ”
Eighteen
Mondays are country walks. Tuesdays, sea bathing. Wednesdays, you’d find us in the garden.
“And on Thursdays . . . ” Bram said aloud, “they shoot. ”
Of course they did.
He stood with Colin on the edge of a green, level meadow near Summerfield. The two of them watched as the assembled fragile-flower ladies of Spindle Cove donned doeskin gloves and arranged themselves in a rail-straight line, facing down a distant row of targets. Behind the women sat a long wooden table, atop which lay bows, arrows, pistols, flintlock rifles. Quite the buffet of weaponry.
At the head of the line, Susanna announced the first course. “Bows up, ladies. ” She herself fitted an arrow to her bowstring and drew it back. “On three. One . . . Two . . . ”
Thwack.
In unison, the ladies released arrows that flew true to their targets.
Bram craned his neck to see how Susanna’s had landed. Dead center, of course. He wasn’t surprised. At this point, very little would surprise him, where Susanna Finch was concerned. She could tell him she ran an elite espionage ring out of her morning room, and he would believe it.
The ladies walked briskly across the meadow to retrieve their arrows. Bram’s eyes were fixed on Susanna as she crossed the ground in smooth, confident strides. She moved through the tallish grass like an African gazelle, all long legs and graceful strength.
“Pistols, please,” she said, once they’d all returned. She traded her bow and arrow for a single-barreled weapon.
Each lady in line lifted a similar firearm and held it in braced, outstretched arms, staring down her respective bull’s-eye. When Susanna cocked her pistol, the others followed suit. The chorus of clicks raced down Bram’s spine.
“I find this scene wildly arousing,” Colin murmured, echoing Bram’s own thoughts. “Is that wrong?”
“If it is, I can promise you company in hell. ”
His cousin made an amused sound. “And you thought we have nothing in common. ”
Susanna leveled her pistol and took aim. “One . . . Two . . . ”
Crack.
Neat, smoking holes appeared on each of the targets. In unison, the girls lowered their pistols and set them aside. Bram whistled low, admiring the accuracy of the ladies’ marksmanship.
“Rifles next,” Susanna called out, shouldering her own firearm. “One . . . Two . . . ”
Bang.
Once again, true shots, all. One of the targets exploded with a little burst of paper, rather than the usual batting and straw. A breeze carried a scrap of it to land at Bram’s boots.
“What’s this?” Colin asked. He bent to retrieve it. “A page from some book. By a Mrs. Worthington?”
The name was oddly familiar to Bram, but he couldn’t think why.
Colin shook his head. “I’ve no idea why this place is called Spinster Cove. It ought to be Amazon Inlet. Or Valkyrie Bay. ”
“No doubt. ” Here Bram had been straining and sweating through his effort to round up the local men and train them into a fighting force. Meanwhile, Susanna had already organized her own army. An army of females, no less.
She was, quite simply, the most amazing woman he’d ever known. More the pity that this morning, as she stared down that target, she was probably envisioning Bram’s face on it—if not his nether regions.
Steeling his nerve, he strode forward into the breach. As he walked the line of markswomen, he had the distinct sensation of being a moving target. Susanna caught sight of him and stopped short.
As he neared her, he held up his open hands in a gesture of peace. “I told you I’d risk a firing squad. ”
She wasn’t amused. “What are you doing here?”
“Watching. Admiring. ” He flicked a glance toward the women. “You’ve trained your ladies well. I’m impressed. Impressed, but not surprised. ”