A Most Unsuitable Groom

His brother involuntarily backed up a pace, nearly tripping down the steps. “Knows we’re planning some freetrading across the Channel? Please God, no. Why would you ask that?”

Spencer pulled the hood of his cloak up over his already drenched head as they headed down the stone steps. “No reason. We were having a conversation just before you came to get me, that’s all. I’m imagining things.”

“But Papa does have this way about him,” Rian said and then sighed. “He never goes anywhere, never does anything, and yet he seems to know everything. Spence? Damn this rain. Look out there, see if you see what I think I see. Is that a coach heading this way? By God, it is. Spence?”

Instantly on the alert, for visitors were rare at Becket Hall and never arrived uninvited, Spencer motioned for Rian to go alert their father as he watched the coach lurch to a halt and a groom hop down to open the door and let down the steps.

He squinted through the dark and the slashing rain, watching as a female form emerged from the doorway, holding tight to the groom’s hand as she stepped to the ground, a small moan quickly cut off as she thanked the servant.

Now what? You don’t turn away a woman, not late at night, not in the middle of a growing storm that could last for days. But who the hell was she, and why was she here? Was she alone?

That unspoken question was answered when the groom shut the door without anyone else having stuck his or her head out the doorway.

The groom looked good only for hanging on to and probably would have let the woman stand there until she drowned in the downpour, so Spencer advanced until he was in her line of sight, such as it was on this starless, moonless night. “Good evening, madam. Lost your way on the Marsh? This is Becket Hall.”

Her head lowered, the woman replied crisply, “What a happy coincidence. I fully intended to be at Becket Hall, albeit much earlier in the evening. Do you make it a point to keep visitors out in the rain, sir?”

“A thousand apologies, madam,” he said, gesturing with his left arm that she should walk ahead of him, climb to where Rian now stood in the open doorway, light spilling out onto the wide stone porch.

He followed her up the steps, the newly supplied light not quite bright enough for him to be able to inspect and perhaps admire the woman’s ankles as she lifted her gown and cloak in order to navigate those steps. Pity. He hadn’t been with a woman in a long time. Long enough to have forgotten both the time and the woman.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. He had to start thinking like a Becket, and a Becket would be calculating how dangerous this unexpected visitor could prove to be, not hoping for a glimpse of shapely ankle.

“Ma’am,” Rian said, bowing slightly to the hooded figure that brushed past him as he looked to Spencer, his expressive eyebrows raised. “Yes, of course, ma’am, please do come in,” he ended, the woman having already disappeared into the house. “Spence? Who in hell—?”

“Did you alert Papa?”

“I did. He’d just gone up to his bedchamber. He’s throwing on a jacket and will be down directly. Spence?”

“Good, he can handle our unexpected guest. I have no bloody idea who she is,” he told his brother as he shrugged out of his sopping cloak, looking toward the woman who had her back to him as she surveyed the large entry hall.

As she lifted her head the hood of her cloak fell back and Spencer looked hard for a moment, then squeezed his eyes shut as a memory flashed into his mind. Sunlight. A halo of golden red fire. And a voice. We can’t just stay here and freeze as well as starve, not for one failed lieutenant.

He shook his suddenly aching head and opened his eyes again to see that the woman had turned around and was looking at him now. God. Hair the color of golden fire was only the beginning. Her green eyes were those of an imp of the devil, tilted up at the edges and penetrating as a pitchfork to the gullet. Her full lips were slightly parted over straight white teeth; her skin was the color of fresh cream. With her masses of wavy, disheveled hair, she looked like a woman who would bed well. A passionate woman. One who might even bite…

And then she shrugged out of her cloak, allowing it to drop to the floor, which exposed an out-of-fashion plain gray gown and the fact that she was—good God, the woman was pregnant.

“As you can see, Lieutenant, I don’t arrive alone,” she said just as Ainsley Becket descended the last step to the marble floor. “Congratulations, sir,” she added, her green gaze fastened on Spencer. “It’s possible the coach ride from Dover so soon after my sea journey may have been ill-advised. I do believe, Lieutenant, that you’re about…to…to become a father.”

Spencer opened his mouth to hotly deny her ridiculous accusation. But his words were cut off when the woman swayed like a sapling in a breeze, then gracefully collapsed into Ainsley’s waiting arms.

“Rian, you help me get her into the drawing room. Summon Odette, Spencer,” Ainsley ordered tightly. “Spencer. Now.”

CHAPTER TWO

SHE WAS LYING on a couch now, in a large, splendidly appointed room. How lovely, after so much time at sea and then in that terribly sprung coach, to be somewhere that didn’t move. “Thank you…thank you, sir. I’m fine now, really. Perhaps I’d…I’d simply over-reacted. The jarring of the coach, you understand. I must apologize. I’m not by nature a blatantly dramatic person and hadn’t planned quite so intense an entrance.” She then quickly placed her hands on her swollen belly in surprise as another pain gripped her. “Oh.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Spencer said, fairly skidding into the drawing room after flagging down Anguish in the hallway and sending him to fetch Odette. “She’s really giving birth?”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Oh, dear. I had hoped for at least some small modicum of intelligence from the man. For the child’s sake, you understand,” she said, looking at Ainsley. “I…I should introduce myself, shouldn’t I? My name is Mariah Rutledge. I, um, I met Spencer in America.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Rutledge. I am Ainsley Becket.”

“Would someone be so kind as to go out to dismiss the coach and bring in my maid, Mr. Becket? Her name is Onatah. And she won’t scalp any of you, I promise, which is something I had to swear to those idiots whose coach I hired. If you’re nice to me she won’t, that is.”

Rian grinned at Spencer. “Onatah? Is that an Indian name, Spence? Did she bring a red Indian with her from America? Yes, of course she did. Oh, this is beyond splendid. Except for you, I imagine. Sorry,” he added quickly, losing his smile as Spencer all but growled at him. “You stay here. Let me go get her. Yes? Well, I’m off, in any event.”

Spencer advanced on the couch, to get a better look at the woman. No, he didn’t recognize her. Just the hair. Just that voice, a little low, faintly husky, the disdain in it flicking hard at his memory. “Miss…Rutledge, you said?”

She looked up at him, then returned her gaze to the older man, attempting to sort out the people in the room with her. His father? No, she saw no resemblance. “He truly doesn’t remember me, does he?” she asked, pushing herself up slightly against the pillows now that the pain had eased.

“I don’t think so, no,” Ainsley told her kindly. “He has no memory of anything between his last battle and being at sea, on his way back to us. Where, may I ask, did you two meet?”

“Actually, sir,” Mariah said, embarrassed but truthful, “we were never formally introduced.”

“I tried to bring her but she—Miss Rutledge? Here? Our Sainted Lady of the Swamp? Oh, now and isn’t this a fine kettle we’ve got boilin’ now.”

Spencer wheeled about to see Anguish standing just inside the door, his ruddy Irish complexion gone white. “You recognize her, Anguish? And where’s Odette?”

“I was just about to say, sir. She was all dressed, Lieutenant, and waitin’ on me, but still at her heathen altar, prayin’ and such, and won’t budge until she’s done. That’s what I came to tell you. It’s knowin’I was comin’ for her that chills my marrow,” Anguish said, his bug-eyed stare still riveted on Mariah Rutledge, who had wrapped her arms around her belly once more. “Is she…is she…oh, Lord God, she is! Crikey, and her woman’s here, too? Ah, the sight of that takes me back to where I don’t want to go no more, lessen it’s to visit my poor arm, because at least my arm I miss seein’.”

Anguish stepped back sprightly as the latest addition to this insane farce entered the room behind Rian, who was grinning like the village idiot, as if he’d just brought home a Christmas surprise. The woman was small, thin, bent—wizened, Spencer supposed—with wrinkled skin the color of mahogany and black bean eyes that would give small children and many grown men nightmares. She wore a dark gingham dress over moccasins, her thick grey hair twisted into a single braid falling halfway down her back, a patterned wool blanket clutched tight around her shoulders by one heavily veined hand.

“Iroquois,” Spencer said quietly, recognizing the design on the blanket. “Bloody Iroquois.”

Onatah paused a moment in her advance, just long enough to say something gruff and pithy to him, before she moved on toward the couch.

“What did she say?” Rian asked excitedly. “Did you understand her? Do you know the language? God, Spence, this is magnificent. I never dreamed I’d ever see a real red Indian. Tell me, what did she say?”

Spencer’s jaw was set tight at an angle as he shook his head. “I hate to disabuse you, brother mine, but I’m not that familiar with the dialect. I spoke mostly to Tecumseh, who knew our language better than half the men living on this island. However, and only for your amusement, I do think I’ve just been called the fornicating son of a three-legged cur.”

“Oh, well, that’s understandable. I suppose. Ah, and here comes more trouble. I really should go wake Jacko and the girls. I shouldn’t be having all the fun.”

Odette shuffled into the room in her aged carpet slippers and one of Courtland’s old greatcoats over a rusty black gown, her wiry silver hair also hanging down her back in a single braid, her skin ebony to Onatah’s mahogany and only half as wrinkled. She stopped, took in the scene—her attention centered on the Indian for several tense seconds—and then walked over to Spencer.

“I was wrong,” she said sadly. “The good loa didn’t steal your memory. The bad loa took it, so that you would not know you’re to have a son. I only saw that in my bowl tonight, as she drew closer, too late to warn you. I ask your forgiveness for my failing.”

And then, surprising Spencer even more, Odette lifted her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek, her unexpected strength knocking him back on his heels.

“And what was that for?” he asked, holding a hand to his stinging flesh.

“For thinking the boy isn’t yours,” she told him. “Now, come, help get this girl upstairs. Your son wishes to be born tonight.”

Mariah was speaking quietly to Onatah, who had placed a hand on her mistress’s stomach, waiting for the next contraction. “They’ll stop now that I’m not in that coach, won’t they, Onatah? It’s too soon.”

“Babies come when they come,” Onatah pronounced with all the gravity of Moses tripping back down the mountain with stone tablets in his hands.

A gnarled black hand joined Onatah’s on Mariah’s belly, and Mariah blinked up into the kindest eyes she’d ever seen. “Foolish child, to hide the pains from your nurse. You’ve had them all day, since you first rose this morning. There is time yet, but not much. We will allow no harm to come to you or to Spencer’s son. Now come. Rise up, walk with us. And better you do it now, between the pains.”

“Onatah?” Mariah asked, feeling suddenly very young again, and quite frightened.

“Old women know best,” Onatah said and, between the two of them, Mariah was on her feet once more, being led toward the hallway.

She had taken only a few steps when she could feel the pain begin in the small of her back once more, long, strong fingers advancing around her hips to grip tightly against her lower belly. She’d had the pains since that morning, but not like this, not so intense, so frequent or lasting so long. “Ohhh,” she said, her knees buckling slightly. The hallway looked miles away, the tall, winding staircase a mountain she could not possibly climb.

“The devil with this!” Spencer exploded, storming across the room to take hold of Mariah’s arm and pull her toward him, then scoop her up in his arms. He turned toward the hallway. “Where? What room?”

“Yours, of course,” Ainsley said smoothly, motioning with a sweep of his arm that Spencer should carry Mariah up the stairs.

“No,” Spencer said flatly. “Morgan’s chamber.”

Mariah moaned again, her eyes shut tight. “If I had a pistol, I’d shoot you,” she told Spencer quietly. “Just put me somewhere—and then go away.”

“Go away, is it? Should have said that sooner,” Anguish whispered to no one in particular, unfortunately not that quietly. “Would have saved us all a boatload of bother.”

Spencer’s last sight of Rian as he carried Mariah toward the stairs was of his brother sliding down the wall, clutching his stomach as he laughed uproariously at the Irishman’s assessment of his brother’s predicament.

Mariah kept her eyes closed as Spencer carried her up the stairs, holding her breath against the pain of the contraction and the added pain she felt each time he jostled her as he climbed the stairs, not opening them again until she felt herself being laid on cool sheets.

When his arms left her, when he stood back from the bed, she felt curiously abandoned.

“When?” he asked her, his dark eyes boring into her. “Where?”

“What does it matter?” she asked in return. “Believe me, it was considerably less than unforgettable. Go away.”

“Do as she says,” Odette told him as the Indian woman stepped between them to begin stripping Mariah out of her clothing. “Go downstairs and fall into a bottle. It’s what men do. Women know what to do here.”

“But—” Spencer knew when he was beaten. “All right. But she and I have to talk. I have to understand how this happened.”

Odette’s white teeth flashed bright against her dark face. “Boy, I think you already know how. Now go.”

Spencer stomped out into the hallway to see Jacko standing there in baggy brown trousers, his nightshirt hanging over his large, tight belly and dropping all the way to his bare knees. The man’s eyes were fairly dancing. “Rian came to tell me your news. Congratulations, papa.”

Spencer spoke without thinking, because a wise man never gave Jacko an opening he could slip his tongue through. “I don’t even remember her.”

“You bedded what Rian tells me is a fine-looking woman and you don’t remember? Ah, bucko, there’s all kinds of hell, aren’t there? But I think you’ve managed to conjure up a new one.”

“As long as I can amuse you, then it’s all right,” Spencer said, heading for the stairs only to be stopped by his sister Eleanor, who had come out into the hallway in her dressing gown. Had Rian run from chamber to chamber, ringing a bell and banging on every door, eager to tell everyone?

“Spencer,” Eleanor asked, “is there anything I can do to help?”

He thought about this for a moment as he looked at his sister. So small, so fragile and beautiful. Yet Eleanor and her Jack had almost single-handedly dismantled the Red Men Gang last year. If there was anyone whom he could count on to move mountains, it would be Eleanor. Calm, steadfast Elly.

“Odette’s in with her, Elly, and her own Indian nurse. But,” he said, a thought just then striking him, “you could answer a question for me, one Odette would box my ears for asking. How long, um…” He hesitated, waving one hand in front of him. “You know. How long from…beginning to end?”

Elly blinked, then smiled. “You’re asking me the length of a pregnancy, Spencer?”

He nodded, looking back at the door to Morgan’s bedchamber, to see Jacko stepping forward to hold open the door for two of the Becket Hall women, Edyth and Birdie, to enter with pots of steaming water and an armful of towels. This was happening. This was really happening.

“I would say approximately nine months, Spencer,” Elly told him. “So that would be…last September?”

Spencer shook his head. “No, that can’t be right. We didn’t meet the Americans at the swamp until the beginning of October. So that’s…that’s…” He began counting on his fingers, then looked at his sister before looking at the closed door, his stomach suddenly uneasy. “It’s too soon, isn’t it? If it’s mine.”

“If it’s yours? Spencer?”

He held up his hands to ward off the harder tone of Eleanor’s voice. “It’s mine. Odette says so. The woman says so. I’m the fornicating son of a three-legged cur. I just don’t remember. Why don’t I remember?”

“You had that knock on the head,” Jacko reminded him. “Your shoulder, your leg, the knock on the head, that fever that hung on for months according to Clovis. Damn, boy, I’d say the woman had her wicked way with you when you couldn’t fight her off. You lucky devil.”

“Jacko.”

One word, just one, from Eleanor and Jacko lost his smile and much of his swagger. “I was just saying…”

“Yes, and now that you have, you will forget you’ve said it, please,” Eleanor told him as if she were a governess scolding her young charge. “Now, you boys go downstairs to Papa, who had the good sense not to come up here, and I will go in with the ladies and offer my assistance if it is needed as I introduce myself to your young woman.”

“She’s not my—” Spencer gave it up as a bad job. “You’ll let us know what’s happening?”

“I will,” Eleanor said, her smile soft. “What’s her name, Spencer? I should most probably know that.”

“Rutledge. Mariah Rutledge. And she’s English. But that’s all I know. Damn it all to hell, Elly, that’s all I know.”

And that hair, that voice…

Spencer pressed his fingers against his temples, hoping for more memories to assert themselves. But there was nothing. He did not know this woman, remember this woman. “Go downstairs, everyone, before we wake Fanny and Callie. I’m…I’m going to go talk to Clovis.”

He walked briskly toward the servant stairs and climbed to the top floor of the large house to where Anguish and Clovis had been installed upon their arrival at Becket Hall.

Ainsley had given them the run of the house if they’d wanted it, in thanks for bringing Spencer back to Becket Hall, but neither man had felt comfortable with that sort of free and easy arrangement. After all, as Clovis pointed out, they were only doing their duty. Hiding them from an army they didn’t wish to return to was thanks enough for both of them.

Still, Becket Hall wasn’t like most English homes, made up of a strict hierarchy of master, master’s family, upper servants, lower servants. No, that wasn’t for Ainsley Becket.

He had run a taut ship but a fair one, and he ran a fair house. The servants were the crew, each lending a hand to whatever chore was necessary at the moment, and each still very much the individual…individuals who refused to see Ainsley as anyone less than their beloved Cap’n.

There was no butler or major domo at Becket Hall. Whoever heard the knocker and was close opened the door. When beds needed changing they were changed; when rugs needed beating they were beaten.

The only area of the house Ainsley considered to be off-limits to himself and most of the household was the kitchens where the cook, Bumble, reigned supreme by means of a sharp tongue and a sharper knife that had been waved threateningly a time or three over the years, and anyone who thought the man’s wooden leg had slowed him soon learned their mistake.

When Clovis and Anguish were moved in nobody blinked an eye. The Cap’n said they could stay, so stay they would and welcome aboard. Clovis had insisted upon acting as Spencer’s right hand and, since Anguish no longer had a right hand, he had offered his left to Bumble and now spent most of his day sitting on a high stool in the main kitchen, telling tall tales to make the females giggle behind their hands and sampling all of the day’s dishes. It was an arrangement that worked well all around.

Spencer knocked at Clovis’s door, because personal privacy was also very much a part of living at Becket Hall, and entered only when he heard a grunt from the other side of the thick wood.

He walked in to see Clovis sitting on the side of his bed, still completely dressed, an empty bottle in his hand.

“Sir!” Clovis said, quickly getting to his feet. “I’m wanted?”

“In several countries, no doubt,” Spencer returned with a wan smile, indicating with a wave of his hand that his friend should sit once more, and then joining him. “You’re still worrying about our decision to guard the freetraders?”

“That I am, Lieutenant, sir,” Clovis told him, then sighed. “You and Anguish see adventure, and I see only trouble. I think I’m old, and I don’t know which worries me more.”

“No, not old, just prudent. But I’m here on another matter. Clovis, do you recall a woman named Mariah Rutledge?”

Clovis shot to his feet once more. “You’re rememberin’, sir? Well, sir, that’s above all things grand.”

“No, I’m not remembering anything, more’s the pity. She’s here, Clovis, at Becket Hall. Miss Rutledge. And she’s giving birth to my child in my sister’s bedchamber. Odette says it’s a boy, so I imagine it is.”

The older man sat down once more with a thump that shook the bed. “I shouldn’t drink so deep. I thought you said—sir?”

“I know, Clovis. It’s a lot to swallow. I don’t remember Miss Rutledge. I damn sure don’t remember bedding the woman.”

Clovis wrinkled his brow, deep in thought. “Well, sir, we were all together for more’n three weeks. First in the swamp, then movin’ north. Forty-two of us, forty-one after little Willy died. Sad that, him being only three years old. You remember that, sir?”

Spencer shook his head. “No. Nothing. How did he die?”

“Caught a stray bullet during the worst of it, sir. We laid him atop you when we drug you along in the litter the Indian women made up. Until he died, that is. You suffered something terrible, sir, when we had to take his little body from you. I didn’t want to tell you. There are things best not remembered. Mr. Ainsley said as much himself when we told him. Either you’d remember or you wouldn’t.”

Spencer buried his head in his hands. War. What a stupid, senseless way of settling disputes. Governments shouldn’t rise or fall on how many people their soldiers could kill. “I don’t remember, Clovis. I don’t remember any of it. Tell me…at least tell me about Miss Rutledge.”

“Miss Rutledge, sir? Now there’s a woman. General Rutledge, Anguish called her. Standin’ up, takin’ charge, barkin’ out orders, everyone steppin’ -to just as if they knew it was right, that she was goin’ to save us all, lead us out of there. And I’ll say this for her. She did it, sir. A fine, rare woman. She was the first to begin strippin’ the dead for what we could use, sayin’ prayers over each one, thankin’ them for what she took. It was her what sang to our Anguish the whole of the time we was cuttin’ off his arm. Holdin’ his head in her lap, singin’ loud enough to shoo the birds from the trees. Don’t hear the saw workin’ down on the bone so much that way, you see, or hear Anguish cursin’ and screamin’.”

He shook his head. “I ain’t never seen the like, not from a woman. Walkin’ around in that scarlet jacket she took for her own, givin’ us all what-for, tellin’ us what to do. Our Lady of the Swamp, Anguish called her, too, when she couldn’t hear him. I think he half expected her to be growing wings at any minute—when he wasn’t thinking she should be sprouting horns. A hard taskmaster, Miss Rutledge. But she saved you, sir. Her and her Indian woman. She saved us all.”

Spencer wished he could remember, hated that he’d been a burden rather than a help. “So Miss Rutledge was in charge of me, Clovis? Not you?”