A Most Unsuitable Groom

“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?”

Clovis went red to his hairline. “I did…the personal things, sir. Bathing you and such like. Don’t fret about that. But nights, sir? There were only a few of us men and we had to stand guard on the camp, you understand. So Miss Rutledge would watch you then. Give you water for the fever, lend her body to heat you when the chills took you, shook you. The night…the night after Willy died, you were shakin’ bad, sir. Really bad. I was sure you were dyin’ on us then.”

“So she laid with me, sharing the heat from her body,” Spencer said, imagining the scene. The dark woods, the chill October night air, their two bodies close together in the middle of nowhere, hope fading, young Willy dead, their collective future looking bleak. Sometimes you just needed to hold on to someone, believe you were alive…

“I see.” He got to his feet. “Thank you, Clovis. You won’t speak of this to anyone.”

“No, sir, Lieutenant,” Clovis said, standing to attention. “Not a word to anyone. She’s a good woman, sir. Daughter of the quartermaster at Fort Malden, him cut down in the first volley. A world of hurt she had that day, but she never gave herself a moment to mourn, never gave us a moment to think on our dire straits. A true soldier’s daughter. Just movin’, keep movin’, and she got us safe out of there.”

“And then?” Spencer asked. “How did we become separated?”

Clovis lowered his head. “Well, sir, it’s like this, sir. Anguish didn’t want no more of the Army, and I could agree with him, seein’ as how General Proctor made a holy mess out of everythin’ he touched. We saw a boat, stole you out of the cabin they put you in that first night, and off we went, fast as we could.”

He looked up at Spencer pleadingly. “They were safe, sir, everyone was safe. But we wanted to be gone before everythin’ froze and we was stuck there all the winter long, and we couldn’t think to leave without you. But she found you, so that’s all right, isn’t it, sir? A baby you said, sir? Doesn’t that beat the Dutch for somethin’?”

“That it does, Clovis, thank you,” Spencer said as he walked out of the room, ducking his head under the low lintel, for the room was tucked into the eaves of the large house. His head stayed down as he walked the length of the hallway to the servant stairs, then slowly descended to the next floor. He paused for a moment, looking down that wider hallway toward his sister Morgan’s room.

The woman had saved his life. She’d saved many lives.

And he’d rewarded her by impregnating her, leaving her and then forgetting her.

She was here now, straining to bear his son, and he still didn’t remember her, couldn’t remember her.

“Bloody hell,” he swore, and turned his back, headed all the way down the servant stairs to the kitchens. He walked past a startled young cook’s helper he didn’t recognize and slammed out of the house and straight into the raging storm, the windblown rain plastering his thick black hair to his head and his shirt against his skin in mere moments.

He half walked, half staggered to the slippery sand and shingle beach. He didn’t stop until he was standing knee deep in the angry Channel, where he punched his tightly fisted hands high above his head, lifted his face to the wind and rain and screamed out his frustration at the lightning-streaked sky.

CHAPTER THREE

MARIAH SENSED someone looking at her and slowly opened her eyes. She’d slept, only a little bit, but couldn’t seem to tamp down the strange exhilaration she felt, as if she’d just accomplished something wonderful. And she had, hadn’t she?

“You,” she said, seeing Spencer, and closed her eyes again. He looked so solemn; please God he wouldn’t feel some compelling need to ask her again if he was truly the father of her son. And if he was, then it was just too bad for him. Odette said there was no doubt and he’d simply have to come to grips with the situation, wouldn’t he? “Come to see the fruit of my labor, have you?” she asked him, unable to restrain a smile at her genius. Goodness, she felt good. Sore, tired, but good, very good. And fiercely protective of her son…their son.

“Madam,” Spencer said, looking a bit awkward. “He’s a fine boy. Small, but Odette promises me he’s strong and healthy. And you? How do you feel this morning?”