After a while he couldn’t take it any longer. “See if she’s coming,” he growled at Shark. “And if she isn’t, step down the hill and ask her if she would be so kind as to greet her husband.”
Shark walked over and looked toward the lake. “She’s coming up the hill,” he said. Then: “You never mentioned your missus was such an eyeful.”
Griffin narrowed his eyes, and Shark shut his mouth, retreating to a chair.
He should probably send the man off to the servants’ quarters, except there didn’t seem to be any servants. And Shark would undoubtedly send the cook into hysterics if he strolled in without introduction. The saber scar on his chin lent him a particularly ferocious air.
Griffin sighed and pounded his aching thigh again. Shark had no need to remind him that Poppy was beautiful. Her face was pretty much the only thing he remembered about their wedding night. There he had been, all of seventeen years old and skinny as a twig, whereas she had been an older woman of twenty: exquisite, shapely, utterly beautiful. Terrifying.
The outcome was hardly unexpected.
He’d left a virgin wife behind, though it appeared she hadn’t stayed that way. The wave of anger he felt was unfair to her, and he knew it. A man couldn’t leave for fourteen years and expect his wife to remain faithful.
Though wasn’t Penelope faithful to Odysseus?
Odysseus probably satisfied his wife before he took off for war. Likely gave her some children. Griffin had read Homer’s tale so long ago that he couldn’t quite remember.
Still, he had never imagined that his wife might take those unconsummated wedding vows as lightly as he himself had. That she might have a child. A son. A boy who would inherit his title and be viscount someday.
He’d stayed at sea for years precisely because he loathed his father’s obsession with titles, nobility, standing, et cetera. He couldn’t start caring about that claptrap now.
Where the hell was the boy’s father? The pirate was a smart, scrappy little fellow who likely hadn’t been told he was a bastard. He would learn that later, in school.
Actually, he wouldn’t, because the pirate wasn’t illegitimate. He was born within the bounds of marriage; in fact, he stood to inherit a viscountcy. Griffin’s mouth tightened.
A smaller version of himself in more ways than one.
“You’d better not swear like that in front of yer wife,” Shark observed. “She won’t like it.”
FIVE
Lyddie brightened up, screamed, and very nearly fainted when Colin ran down the hill and gasped out the news that there were two men in the front entry, and one of them had skin with pictures drawn on it. Actually, he thought they both did. And one had a cane.
“A cane!” Margaret cried, jumping up and down. “It’s a pirate with a peg leg! Let’s go!” She and Colin were obsessed by pirates, which Phoebe, who had never breathed a word to her children about Sir Griffin’s profession, had thought a rather humorous coincidence. It didn’t seem so amusing now.
Nanny McGillycuddy grabbed Margaret’s arm just in time. “No, you will not,” she said, in the tone of voice that none of the children—nor indeed Phoebe—ever disobeyed. “Your mother shall speak to the gentlemen by herself.”
“You’d better get up there, Mama,” Colin cried. “These men are big. Big! So big.”
“How big?” Margaret asked, sounding cheerfully interested rather than dismayed. That was Margaret. She would ask questions of a highwayman demanding her money.
Phoebe rose and collected her parasol. She didn’t want to go up to the house. With every particle of her being, she didn’t want to climb that hill.
“Huge!” Colin answered. “They could have eaten me up. Though I had my sword, of course. They would have eaten you,” he said to his little brother. Alastair gave a shriek and hid behind Phoebe’s skirts.
“Colin,” Phoebe said sharply, “you are not being helpful. There are no cannibals in England.”
“These men aren’t like everybody else! What’s more, they can’t be from England, because no one has drawings on their skin here. So they might be cannibals.”
Phoebe knew that she was white as chalk. But as her mother used to say, what could not be avoided must be faced. She had made it through her parents’ and sister’s funeral, and she could make it through this.
“Children, stay with Nanny.”
“Mama, you shouldn’t go,” Alastair whispered, hanging onto her skirts. “They might be bad. Bad men.”
“I told you that we needed a butler,” Nanny put in unhelpfully. “I’d best come along.”
The words of the Morning Chronicle were seared in Phoebe’s memory, and she knew precisely who was waiting for her at the house. “Absolutely not, Nanny. Please remain here and make sure Alastair doesn’t wade back into the lake. You may join us in . . .” How long did it take to greet a husband one didn’t know? Ten minutes?
And after that greeting was dispensed with, how long should one wait before informing him that he had three children?
“Fifteen minutes,” she decided. “Please bring the children to the house in a quarter of an hour.” With that instruction, she headed reluctantly toward the house.
Her temples were throbbing.
What if he rejected her children?
She would leave him, of course. Thanks to her father’s careful stewardship, the estate was thriving, her jointure along with it. She could more than afford to scoop up the children and buy a house. Her mind reeled. What was she thinking?
This was her house. If he rejected the children, she would order him to leave.
She paused at the top of the hill to allow her breathing to return to normal before she walked through the courtyard and into the house. She was making too much of it. After all, she remembered Griffin clearly. He had been thin, small, and rather shy. Even in the scant light of just two candles, she remembered how red his face had turned.
Men didn’t change. Everyone knew that. She merely had to be polite but firm. He would leave again. A criminal would not be allowed to stay in the British Isles, no matter how powerful his father.
Thankfully, the resulting scandal would have no effect on her life. The thought was steadying. There was a time, just after her marriage, when her father-in-law had urged her to become part of his circle. Humiliated by her husband’s desertion, she had declined.
Now, years later, she was deeply grateful not to be involved in the petty meanness that engaged so-called “polite society.”
She shook out her skirts, took a final deep breath, and moved toward the house. Halfway through the courtyard something made her stop. She pivoted on her heel.
They were seated under the tree. Two of them.
Pirates.
One of them wore an earring, and both had strange designs on their faces. They were huge, just as Colin had claimed. Big, muscled men who sprawled in her chairs like . . . like nothing she’d seen before. One of them rose at the sight of her. He was immense, his shoulders broad as an ox, and his face bronzed. He looked at her with unnervingly steady eyes as she walked closer; something about his gaze sent an errant wave of heat up into her cheeks.
But at the same time, she realized, with a sense of relief that made her feel positively dizzy, that neither man was her husband. Neither resembled him in the least. It stood to reason that Griffin would have grown a bit more, since he was only seventeen when he bolted, but he would still have brown hair and a wiry build. These men must be his emissaries.
“Gentlemen,” she said, summoning a smile as she came to a halt before them. “I am so sorry that no one was here to greet you. I expect that you are acquaintances of my husband, Sir Griffin Barry.”
They were both on their feet now, but a moment of silence ensued while they stared at her. Despite herself, her smile slipped. They were so large, and in appearance so non-English. Perhaps they d
idn’t speak the language?
“Bonjour,” she said tentatively, silently cursing the fact that she had always been too bored to pay attention during French lessons.
“Poppy?” the big one asked. He had dark blond hair, cut very short, and skin the color of honey. Not to mention the decoration under his eye. He was terrifying.
Poppy? She didn’t quite know what to make of that. “I’m afraid we haven’t any poppies here, but that can’t be what you mean?” She tried to look at him again, but her eyes skittered away.
He was so male. She wasn’t used to being near people like him. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single Englishman, other than the blacksmith, who had that air of fierce masculinity.
They continued to stare at her silently. It was really quite irritating. Then Phoebe noticed that the man who had spoken was wearing a coat that was far too elegant for a mere servant.
She folded her hands in front of her and summoned the patience she’d developed raising three small children. “Gentlemen? Do you work for my husband, Sir Griffin Barry?”
The blond man cleared his throat. “We are—we do know your husband.” He shifted his weight, and she saw he was leaning on a cane. It was hard to reconcile this infirmity with the muscled brute he appeared to be, but of course there was no way that strength could compensate for a partially missing limb.
“Please,” she said quickly, “do sit down. I know it must be very difficult to manage your balance.”
He looked at her through absurdly long lashes. Really, if he weren’t so monstrously large, he would be attractive, the way laborers sometimes were.
For a moment she thought he hadn’t understood her, but at last he sank back into his seat.
His associate backed against the wall and remained there. One hardly noticed a footman standing at the ready, but this fellow had a distinct air of menace, evoked by the fearsome scar across his chin. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled at the very idea of such a man under her roof.
Once Sir Griffin arrived, she would have words with him about sending such a pair of reprobates to greet her, even though it was considerate of him to send advance notice. She truly appreciated that.
“Please tell me what I can do for you,” she said, spacing the words slowly. “I understand that Sir Griffin Barry has returned to the country.” She hesitated and then plunged in. “Are you here to inform me of his imminent arrival?”
“Something like that,” he replied. His voice was deep and lovely, like water on stones. “Do you suppose the boy would like to join us?” He nodded behind her.
She turned and saw the tip of Colin’s sword poking out from behind the bricks. “Colin Barry, I told you to stay with Nanny,” she scolded.
The blond man stared at Colin with his brows furrowed. She did not allow people to scowl at her children, and she gave him a look that told him to stop it, this minute.
Really, the man seemed a bit thick. Naturally, Colin hadn’t paid her the slightest mind; he was edging toward them for all the world as if she might not notice his disobedience.
“Is this your son?” the man asked. ’Twas an impertinent question from a total stranger, unless perhaps he was a foreigner—yet he sounded English.
“He is indeed,” she said, putting some severity into her tone. “I am disappointed to say that he is quite naughty.”
“Ah, but he’s a pirate,” the man said. “Pirates are naughty.”
Phoebe took another deep breath. “Should I assume, sir, that you speak from experience?”
“Retired,” he said solemnly.
Colin was at her side now. “I’m not retired,” he said, his voice coming out in a near bellow. “I’m going to spend my life sailing the seven seas.”
“How old are you?” the man asked.
Colin pushed out his chest. “Five and a half. Almost six, really.”
Phoebe wrapped an arm around him and kissed his hair. “He turned five a couple of weeks ago.”
“I should like to speak to your mother alone for a few minutes,” the man said.
Colin obeyed him instantly and moved to the far end of the courtyard; given his usual disinclination to listen to whatever she had to say, this was profoundly vexing.
Still, it probably showed an instinct for self-preservation that she was glad to see in her child.
The servant stepped away from the wall. “Perhaps the young master and I could stroll down to the lake,” he suggested.
Phoebe gave him a searching look. His nose had been broken at some point, and his face was marred by a flower design near his eye, not to mention the scar. A single sentence was all she had to hear to know he’d grown up in the East End of London.
But she’d made it her business to stop judging people by superficialities like accent and appearance. There was kindness in his eyes, almost as if he were laughing inside. “What is your name?” she asked.
The blond man planted his cane to stand, but she touched his sleeve lightly. “Please, sir, do not bestir yourself.”
She turned back to the servant and held out her hand as her mother had taught her to do. “Ladies curtsy,” her mother had said. “Women of worth and value shake hands. Without gloves. And even with servants, upon meeting them for the first time.”
The pirate’s hand enveloped hers, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. “Lady Barry,” he said, “my name is Sharkton, though I am usually called Shark.”
“Shark!” Colin cried with delight from across the courtyard.
Shark grinned over at him. “Aye, it’s a pirate’s name, my lad.”
The other man had risen, despite what she said. “Take Colin down to the lake, Shark,” he said. Although his voice was mild, a strand of tension shot through Phoebe: she was suddenly edgily aware that she was about to be left alone with him.
She walked across to her son, bent down, and tapped his nose. “Now remember, you’re the host. What would your guest like to see?”
“Not Lyddie,” Colin said. “She might faint.” He trotted over, reached up for Shark’s hand, and led him away.
Phoebe turned back, feeling strangely unsettled. The blond man was still standing; she gave him a cool smile and held out her hand. “I am Lady Barry,” she said, pulling out of thin air the title that she never used. But there were times when it was wise to stand on precedence, and this was one of them.
“Lady Barry,” he said. He leaned his cane against the table and took her hand in his, but he did not shake it. Or kiss it. He wasn’t of the gentry, then, for all the magnificence of his coat.
His hand was even bigger than Shark’s. She could feel calluses on his fingertips, and saw a white scar that snaked across the back of his hand.
In that instant, she was struck by a realization so unnerving that she felt quite unsteady.
She withdrew her hand and sank into a chair, her eyes fixed on his. Blue eyes. Terribly blue. She remembered those eyes, but they had belonged to a different man.
“You were short,” she whispered, disbelief paralyzing her.
“Not any longer.”
There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other.
Then: “Sir Griffin Barry at your service. —Your husband,” he added, when she didn’t say a single word.
She couldn’t.
SIX
Griffin was in the grip of a feeling so overwhelming that he didn’t have a name for it. He was looking at his wife.
The word hadn’t meant anything to him for years. Nor had it meant anything to her, apparently, given that he had just met his heir.
Anger burned in his chest at the idea that another man had touched his wife. Still, during all those long years abroad, he hadn’t sired any children because he knew the ins and outs of a French letter. Poppy almost certainly didn’t. And he couldn’t say that he left her satisfied. So . . .
/>
“Colin’s father,” he began, and despite himself his voice emerged from his chest like the slam of a hammer on metal. “Where is he?”
For the last decade men had jumped when he’d raised his voice. But the lovely woman seated before him? She didn’t even twitch. “He is dead,” she said, after a moment had stretched to an eternity.
“Do you have other children?” He could have choked on the question. He’d been so careful with his seed, and all the time his wife was . . . well.
“Two,” she replied, her eyes direct and unafraid.
Damn, but she was a pirate’s bride. There wasn’t even the smallest flare of shame in her eyes. Not even a twinge.
“You must have thought that I was never coming back.”
“You gave me no reason to believe otherwise. In the first decade of our marriage I asked your Mr. Pettigrew on occasion, but I must admit that I stopped asking.”
That was fair. Logical.
“You were gone. And I gather you were engaged in piracy, a pursuit from which I believe few men return. It appears you were successful, given the large amounts that Mr. Pettigrew deposited into the household account.”
There wasn’t a shade of blame in her tone. His wife was outrageously pretty, with hair like bright butter. But she had a backbone of steel.
“I’ve been a privateer for the past seven years,” he said. “My ship flew the flag of the Kingdom of Sicily, and we attacked pirate ships rather than the other way around.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the difference.”
“Privateers are sanctioned by a government to attack pirates, thereby keeping the shipping lanes safe. We also made it a practice to attack slave ships and free the captives.”
“So you didn’t walk people down the plank?”
He shook his head. “Never. Even my first ship, after I was kidnapped, never—”