The Wild Wellingham Brothers: High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke

He swore into the gathering wind and turned his horse for home.

Lucinda met him in the front portico and she did not look pleased.

‘Emmie is gone.’

‘Emmie?’ He had not heard her called that before.

‘She was my friend. She told me her friends called her Emmie. She said that I could too and now she has gone.’

‘Did she tell you why she went?’ He could barely keep the irritation from his voice.

‘No, she did not have time, though she did leave this note for me.’ She handed him a small piece of paper to read.

Miriam and I need to return to London. Thank you for letting me borrow the clothes and jewellery.

‘I do not think she went of her own free will, Asher. I think you were cross with her. I think she reminds you of a time when you used to laugh and enjoy life and so you frightened her off somehow…’

‘That’s enough.’ The whiplash of his words shook Lucinda visibly and she turned towards the stairs, but not before snatching her note back.

‘She may be gone from Falder, Asher, but you can’t forbid me to see her in London, for I like her, even though you are determined not to.’

He watched her as she flounced up the stairs, the letter tightly held in her hand and the promise of rebellion in the staunch set of her shoulders. Life had not burdened her yet, he thought as he made for the library, all her hopes and dreams still intact and possible.

So unlike his own.

Taris sat in the armchair by the window. Today he looked tired, and when he removed his glasses to clean them Asher saw that his right eye was strangely opaque.

‘Emma Seaton has gone?’ His brother’s tone had the same ring to it as Lucinda’s. Tired of defending his actions, Asher reached down and took a cigar from a box on the desk near the fireplace. Cutting it, he breathed in deeply before sitting on the leather sofa opposite his brother.

‘When Father died he made me promise on his death bed that I should never compromise Falder because a thousand years after our demise this pile of stones and mortar will still be here, and a thousand years past that thousand too. Custody. Tradition. Responsibility. Call it what you will, but I listened.’

‘Lord, you actually believe that she would compromise Falder? In what way?’

‘Rifling through the silverware at midnight would be one way I could mention.’

‘And did she steal anything?’

Asher shook his head. ‘Nothing I could determine, but I think there was something specific that she was after and she has not yet found it.’

‘Specific. Like what?’

‘God knows, for I don’t. Money, perhaps. Jewels. The combination lock on my safe had been tampered with.’

‘She had the skills to try to break open your safe? Who sent her, do you think?’

‘She wouldn’t say. I did ask.’

A moment went by as he watched Taris play with the tassel of a burgundy bookmark left on an open copy of Webster’s Duchess of Malfi.

‘She’s in trouble, Asher. You said as much yourself.’

‘And you think that it concerns me?’

‘I can hear it in your voice that you admire her, which leads me to conclude that, if you have any hopes of an heir to enjoy these hallowed halls, now might be the time to take action.’

Asher swore to himself and did not answer. Could not answer. Whatever it was that Emma Seaton inspired in him was irrelevant. Lust? Like? Love?

‘You would not think of providing heirs yourself, of course?’ His query after a moment or so was cynical.

‘Hard to catch a woman when you can barely make out their form.’

‘The Caribbean was kind to neither of us, Taris.’ He hated the way his brother’s face stiffened as the air around them creaked under the dead weight of regret, and the scars on his back smarted under memory as the shifting frames of time and place took him back to the pirates’ compound. The jangle of his broken chains in the run between sand and water. The silent ricochet of lead that ripped across Taris’s temple and dashed his sight into splinters: a bitter reward for the rescue he had orchestrated. The red of the froth on the waves and aching arms as Asher had dragged them out, out into the greenness of the deep with its blue-edged sky and its uncountable miles of nothingness. Out where the ocean currents were like a river and where letting go of fear was the only way to survive.

And survive they had. Barely. He looked down at his fingers and across at the glazed eyes of his brother.

And knew.

Knew that if he let go of Emma Seaton, even more of him would be lost.

‘I will leave for London tomorrow to see how Lady Emma fares.’ He frowned as he saw his brother’s smile and refilled his glass. With water. ‘Don’t read too much into the change of plan. It’s for peace of mind, that’s all.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘You haven’t been to town in years.’

‘Then it’s past time I was back there, isn’t it?’

‘You’re doing this for her?’

‘I am.’

Asher was astonished at Taris’s capitulation. And worried by it too. If the gossip about his sight was not kind, he wondered how it would affect his brother. Another problem, he thought, but one that could be minimised by a careful campaign. It would not be too hard, after all, to mingle in a crowded ballroom, especially if he stayed at Taris’s side to smooth any problems.

He was pulled from his reverie as the housekeeper bustled into the room.

‘I heard that Lady Emma left, sir, this morning while I was at Thornfield. I wonder if I might have a word.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Ignoring Taris’s obvious interest, he led her out of the library and into his office. The normally ebullient Mrs Wilson seemed almost embarrassed by what it was she next wished to relate to him.

‘It’s just that I wondered what you wanted me to do with the bed coverings, your Grace? Miss Emma never used the bed while she was here, and if she is coming back—’

‘She what?’

‘She did not favour the mattress, your Grace. Nay indeed, she always slept near the balcony with the doors open.’ Her face reddened as he frowned. ‘Perhaps she liked the fresh air, your Grace, and indeed I have heard it is said to be good for one.’

Another convert to the cause of Emma Seaton, Asher thought. Lucy. Taris. And now Mrs Wilson.

He took a breath and addressed his housekeeper. ‘Lady Emma Seaton will not be back.’

‘Oh, dear, your Grace. Well, all as I can say is that it’s a shame, it is, for a nicer guest we have not had, or a tidier one. And what should I do with all the shells that she collected?’

Asher began to laugh even as he stood.

Five minutes later he took to the stairs leading to Emma’s room and opened the wide oak door.

A nest of blankets sat near the French doors, the sheets folded on the bed in a neat pile. And unused, as was the thick felted quilt.

Emma Seaton travelled light and rough, he thought and crossed to the balcony. Two heavy chairs had been moved and placed together to form a platform that one might stand upon. With care he mounted them and before him, through the green fold of a hillock, lay the sea.

The sea.

If he closed his eyes, he could hear it, as she must have done. My God, every single thing he ever found out about her confused him. She was not used to sleeping in a bed and she liked the sea. And the only thing in this room that had been used while she inhabited it was a candle.

A candle used to signal her men in the wood in the very dead of night. A candle used to search his home. He ran his fingers through his hair and wished she were still here.

Near him. Safe. And then he cursed himself for thinking it.

It was late when Asher and Taris and Lucinda arrived back in London, and Jack Henshaw, who had been waiting for them at Carisbrook House, had worrying news.

‘The Countess of Haversham is ill and Lady Emma has sent away the doctor and taken full charge of the situation herself. Unusual, but dutiful,’ he added and leant forward to his drink. ‘Gregory Thomas, the physician, is an acquaintance of mine. He said he saw the Countess last in the company of a burly black man lighting a sweet-smelling fire of oil in a copper basin while the niece pushed hot pins into the side of her aunt’s neck. Many are saying it to be witchcraft.’

Asher swore. Lord, if that was the case, Emma was going to be sore pressed to re-enter the narrow world of society. Clothes a little odd or outdated were one thing, but it was quite another to be accused of practising sorcery. And so blatantly. ‘Why the devil would she have done that? Why would she be negligent with her reputation?’ The answer came to him immediately.

Because Emma Seaton did not mean to stay in England at all. Because the search of Falder was a means to an end and that end was to be once again ensconced in the place she called home. Jamaica.

When Jack left Taris lingered and Asher could tell that he was disturbed by something, though as his brother began speaking the subject was very different from that which he had expected.

‘If you have an Achilles’ heel, Asher, it is your love of control.’

‘You’re speaking of Emma Seaton, I presume?’ he bit back. Tonight he was tired.

‘She is not like the other women here. She is strong and independent and would not thank you, I think, for seeing to her reputation.’

‘You do not think I should help her?’ Real anger reverberated in his question.

‘I do not think that you should judge her by the standards of society.’

‘Because she so obviously is from somewhere else?’

‘No. Because she is very much her own person. Like I am mine. Sometimes, even despite my lack of sight, I can feel you watching me and worrying about the next person with too loud a voice who will inadvertently hurt my feelings.’ He laughed and softened his tone. ‘What will you do, Asher? Fight them all because you feel responsible? Don’t you see? I came to the Caribbean to find you on my own accord and Emma Seaton has come to London on her own accord. It is not you who needs to calm the waters to make sure that she fits. She doesn’t and she probably doesn’t want to either.’

Asher slapped his hand against the wood in the wall. Hard. ‘And where will she fit, then? Jamaica has hardly nurtured and protected her.’

Taris laughed. ‘Lord, Asher. It’s more than a feeling of responsibility for her, isn’t it?’

Turning away, he mulled over his brother’s last question and was glad when he did not demand an answer, but left the room in that particular way he had of moving around objects.

More than responsibility?

More than friendship?

For a moment Asher imagined Emma Seaton as the Duchess of Carisbrook, immune against all criticism just because of who he was. He could protect her. From everyone.

But would she want him to?

Without a doubt he knew that she wouldn’t.

‘Lord help me,’ he muttered and was wondering what the hell he was going to do when his eyes fell on a cane near the door. Uneasy conjecture caught as he remembered the conversation in the coach on the way home from Longacres. Canes. Questions. The quick flare of interest.

In the corner of a room off the blue salon was a stand set in the wall, hidden behind the thick fold of a velvet curtain. Two canes sat inside it and, as his fingers reached for the black-and-ivory stick studded in jewels, memory turned.

He’d taken this from the Mariposa after he’d returned to the Caribbean and killed Sandford. A crutch to aid his damaged leg. Could this be what Emma was after? The stones were valuable after all, and it was a fine piece of carving. Intrigued, he examined it closely and noticed that the handle was not quite round, the ornate twists of wood hiding a catch beneath the lip of ebony stones. Perhaps she had been interested in this particular cane not for its value, but for something else! Something hidden. Swearing, he ran his nail across a ridge and shaved off parings of wax, the sealant hindering the downward motion of the clasp. A dull click and the handle parted company with the body of the wood, a hollowed compartment inside becoming plainly visible.

He smiled at the ridiculous ease of it all as he ironed out a parchment under the light.

A map, he determined. An old map of the Eleutheran inlets and with much more than the gauge of depth shown. A map delineating caves of gold! Contemplation sparked discomfort. What would a woman like Lady Emma Seaton want with such a map and how could she have known about it?

Slipping the parchment into a secret drawer in his desk he sat down to write a note.

The noise came later, much later, as he sat in the darkened library before the embers of a dying fire. A small scratching at first and then a larger bang. Someone was in his office down the hall.

Emma? His heartbeat surged as he moved forward into the passageway that divided the rooms. When the heavy wood of a baton hit him square across his shoulders and sent him to the floor, the parquet was cold beneath his cheek. For a moment he felt winded by shock and disorientated.

‘Where’s the bloody map?’ the larger one of the two men demanded, his accent somewhat similar to Emma’s. The lilt of an island cadence. Lord, were these her men, tired of the more gentle persuasion? Dizziness dissipated under the larger threat to his life and, surging forward, he knocked the man nearest to him off his feet. The sharp blade of a knife nicked the flesh of his upper arm, and, swearing, Asher lurched to standing and eyed them both warily, the circling distance between adversaries lessening.

‘Who the hell are you?’ He looked down at his hand. A red tide of blood dripped from his fingers. The damned blade had got an artery, he thought, suddenly light-headed, though he shook his head to dispel the gathering haze and held his wounded arm tight against his body, balancing as he calculated the seconds left before they rushed him.

They came together and the remembered moves of fighting learned in the hot compound of the Caribbean returned to him. Effortlessly. The sharp clean noise of a broken bone and a knife falling to the floor, to a quick curse of anger as his assailant’s heads met.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he bellowed again as the second thief rose uncertainly up. He had no more energy to fight, though already he could hear the running footsteps of those in the house. Evidently the other man heard it too. He grabbed his accomplice around the shoulders and they crossed to the window and were outside even as he slid to the floor.

Asher looked up as Taris, Lucinda and four servants entered the room. ‘Get a doctor,’ he said as spurts of his blood rose into the air before him.

He came to in his bed. His sister sat beside him and he could see that she had been weeping. Taris watched him from the window and for a moment the world lightened and his ears hummed. Then it refocused, but strangely. He had never felt so tired in all of his life.

‘What happened?’ Even words were hard to say.

‘You nearly bled to death, Asher, and would have done so had not Lady Emma turned up at the exact same moment that this all happened.’ Taris spoke carefully.

‘Emma?’

‘She arrived just as Lucinda and I came downstairs to see what all the noise was about and she almost certainly and single-handedly saved your life.’

‘How?’ Nothing made sense.

Lucinda carried on the narrative. ‘She stripped off your sleeve with a knife she kept and wound the ties of the curtains tightly around your upper arm and kept it raised. I think she pressed down on the wound as well and when the bleeding had slowed she took the blade to the fire and heated it before searing your flesh. All in the space of a few moments. When Dr MacLaren arrived, everything was over. All he did was to bandage the wound.’

‘Is she here?’

‘No. She left. Without a word to us. Grabbed the two knives on the floor and left.’

‘I want her here.’

‘She has gone from the Haversham town house.’ Taris walked forward and sat on the bed. ‘I had the only servant the place boasted brought here and she intimated that Emma and Miriam were with other friends in London. She had no idea where.’

Asher tried to rise and fell backwards, the pain in his arm radiating around his whole body and making him feel dizzy.

‘Doctor MacLaren said to warn you that if you move too much you will rupture the artery and bleed to death. He also said you were to have this.’ Lucy emptied the contents of a sachet of powder into a glass of water and handed it to him.

‘To stop it hurting,’ she explained as he hesitated, and then smiled as he finished the lot.

‘Stand guards around the house, Taris, and if you find Emma keep her here. Safe.’ Asher felt the floating dizziness reach out and already the day was fading but he had to be certain his brother had heard. ‘It is dangerous here. Everything is dangerous.’

He was pleased when Taris nodded, the tight anger on his face suggesting that the house would be watched over.

It was midnight when he woke again.

Emma sat in lad’s clothes at the side of his bed, the tight line of her trousers emphasising the curves of her body. She held an assortment of sharp pins in her hand. Ungloved, he noticed. The searing red of the scars caught his attention, but tonight she did not seem to care.

‘Stay still,’ she whispered and placed a pin into his skin below the elbow, twirling it this way and that. A small dull pain radiated up into his armpit.

‘It will take away any infection,’ she explained when she saw him looking. A dozen other such needles graced his arm and chest, catching the quiet dance of lamplight in their shivering thinness.

He tried to raise his hand to touch her, but he couldn’t.

‘Why…?’ At least his voice still worked. She moved back, the frown on her brow deepening, but he was too tired to try to patch the story together tonight. All he wanted to know was Emma’s part in it. He could not quite bring himself to say what he was thinking.

Why did you want me dead?

His eyes flickered uncertainly to the needles.

‘They were island men,’ she said quietly, anger resonating in every word.

‘Are there more of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘They wanted to kill me.’

She was silent, though he could see the quick flash of temper that stormed through turquoise eyes. The unusual shade was muted tonight. Smoky. Distant.

‘I will not let them.’

The absurdity of her vow almost made him laugh. He had no idea of how much time had passed since he had been hurt. One day? Two days? A week? Everything was blurred and difficult and when she bent down he tried to summon up his last reserve of energy.

‘Look under the bed, Emma,’ he instructed, pleased when she did not question him, but leant down. ‘Is that what they were after?’

A sharp spike of adrenalin raced through Emerald. Her father’s ebony cane lay before her. Confused she laid it on the quilt. If Asher did not know of the secret compartment, she could slip the map out once he fell asleep. When she looked at him, however, she knew that the game was up.

‘It was easy to open.’

‘Open?’ She tried to inject a great sense of surprise into the word.

‘Move the catch and turn the body of wood to the right.’ Said flatly as though he was running out of patience with the whole pretence. With trepidation she did as he instructed.

Nothing was inside save a sheet of paper twisted strangely to stop it from disappearing down into the sharp end of the cane. Removing it, she ironed it flat with the palm of her hand.

If you want what was in here you will need to trust me.

The ornate Carisbrook baronial seal was stamped on to the bottom in red wax and her shock was compounded by the wariness on Asher’s face. It was all she could do to stop her voice from shaking.

‘Where is the map?’

‘I want a promise first.’

She stayed silent, not trusting her voice enough to speak. Where the hell would he have hidden it? Her eyes flashed around his room in a quick survey of possible places.

‘Not here,’ he continued. ‘Falder is the only place I will return it to you and I want your promise to come there with me.

‘I cannot—’ He didn’t let her finish.

‘Where are your men?’

‘Outside.’

‘Bring them in.’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’ The lighter webbing in his eyes was easily seen, giving him a dangerous and predatory look. Not willing to chance a denial, she walked across to the window and lifted a candle, waving it twice.

He noticed the sash had been raised. For her entrance, he supposed. And her exit. Lord, if he felt stronger this would have all been so much easier.

A man came through the window with a knife in his teeth and two pistols tucked into his belt and he was closely followed by a second.

Not servants at all, Asher thought, but pirates. He had had enough dealings with the likes of Beau Sandford to recognise those who scoured out a living on the open oceans. Lord, his ordered and controlled world was tipping up into more chaos by the second and he was angered anew by the silent questioning message that passed between the men and Emma.

Complicity and knowledge. They had seen the cane and it was impossible not to feel the flare of anticipation. Nothing quite made sense and the ache in his head blurred a nagging connection that he knew he should be making.

The burly Arab stationed himself at the door and Asher hoped that his sister would not take it on herself to grace him with one of her midnight visits. Taking a breath, he steeled himself to the task.

‘I would like Lady Emma to stay here. With her aunt,’ he added when he saw that she was about to argue.

‘You what…?’

He ignored the smaller man’s outburst completely and carried on in a measured tone. ‘She will be chaperoned and protected.’

A slice of steel was the only answer. The knife at his throat pressed in before he could utter another word. He made himself relax.

‘No, you will not hurt him.’ Emma’s voice shook and the knife melted away to be replaced by the angry dark visage of its owner.

‘If you cross us, your Grace, the last thing you feel on this earth will be my blade.’

Asher laid back against the pillow. His head throbbed and the steady beat of blood in his ears made the world echo. Why did he not just give them the damn map and get them out of his life once and for all? Let them go back to Jamaica with the hard-won spoils of greed.

He knew the answer as he looked at Emma. Because, like it or not, they were connected somehow. He could almost feel the tie that bound them, and see in the turquoise depths of her eyes the same loneliness that was inside him. He’d felt it from the very first moment of seeing her at Jack’s ball. Affinity. Alliance. Knowledge.

And the realisation that her prime motivation for being in England was greed had not bent him from his purpose.

A treasure map!

He noticed she had replaced her gloves before calling in her men. And yet she would show him the angry scars upon her hands. Nothing made sense.

‘What did you want us here for?’ The man at the door spoke for the first time. ‘She could have told us what you have so far.’

‘I want you to stand guard on the trip back to Falder. I will pay good clean gold for you to find the safest way back.’

The slur was not unheeded. ‘And what do you get in return for all this?’

‘The absolution of a debt.’

Emerald started at the words. Had he remembered her from the Mariposa or was it the incident after the Henshaw ball that he spoke of? Nothing showed in his face save exhaustion, the tinge of red around his irises giving him the look of someone who had ingested too much bad liquor.

Asher.

He had been as near death as she had seen anyone, the blood from the wound on his arm coursing across the floor in a red river, taking away consciousness and making him clammy. She put the image from her mind and walked to the window, raising her hand against the moon. Her fingers shook when she thought of it. Still.