Barbarous Read online

  “Is that a monkey?” she blurted, pushing up her spectacles.

  Ramsay chuckled. “Yes, that is a monkey, although you had better refer to him as Mr. Boswell when you are within his hearing—if you wish to remain on his good side.” He gave her a mocking bow and sauntered into the fray.

  Daphne was still gawking at the awe-inspiring display when what could only be the screech of a monkey—Mr. Boswell, she mentally corrected—came from behind a tower of casks and was followed by the equally simian shrieks of her children.

  Daphne was already headed toward the sound when Mr. Boswell shot out from behind the casks, scrambled over a mountain of burnished copper chests, and streaked past Daphne carrying something large and shiny in one small hand. Hot on his heels were the boys, laughing so hard they could hardly run. Bringing up the rear was a slight man wearing a turban. Humans and monkey flew past her, looped back around, and then disappeared behind a wall of neatly stacked crates.

  Daphne edged around a massive collection of wooden barrels, carefully picking her way toward where Lord Ramsay stood conversing with several men.

  He gave her a rueful smile and gestured to a beautiful gold chain in his hand. “Mr. Boswell is vexed with me and has taken my quizzing glass to demonstrate his displeasure.”

  Daphne could not find it in her to mourn the loss of his wretched glass. She stood on her toes and peered over the mountains of baggage, looking for some sign of the boys.

  “Is that creature safe?”

  “Mr. Boswell? He has never bitten anyone who was not intent on doing him harm.”

  Daphne turned to stare at him.

  He raised one big hand and gave her a reassuring smile. “You needn’t worry, he won’t hurt them.”

  One of his men laughed and Ramsay scowled and fired off a volley in French, the words far too rapid—and colorful—for Daphne to translate them. The men dispersed quicker than a puff of smoke, leaving Daphne alone with him.

  “Ah!” Ramsay pointed toward a towering stack of trunks. “There, you see? Here they come, all safe and sound with Kemal.”

  Kemal was the soberly attired man wearing the turban. Mr. Boswell was perched on his shoulder and the boys followed behind, their adoring eyes fastened on the small animal.

  “Mr. Boswell feels deep remorse, my lord.” Kemal handed Hugh his quizzing glass and turned to glare at the monkey until the diminutive creature removed its hat and executed a formal bow in Ramsay’s direction.

  Daphne bit back a smile. The little beast was turning his tiny felt hat round and round in his hands with downcast eyes in a convincing show of contrition.

  Ramsay frowned at the monkey before commencing to fumble with the chain and quizzing glass. Humans and monkey observed with interest as Ramsay’s huge fingers struggled with the delicate chain and clasp.

  Daphne watched as long as she could bear it before stepping forward and taking both items from his unresisting hands and squinting down at them. The chain wasn’t broken but the clasp was bent. Fortunately the metal was soft and she was able to gently tug it straight, until the tiny hinge opened and closed smoothly. Once she was satisfied with her work, she slid the glass onto the chain, closed the clasp, and gestured for Ramsay to lean forward.

  Only when his golden head was inches from her face did Daphne realize how brash her actions had been. But it was too late to retract the offer so she lifted the chain over his bowed head, needing to stand on her toes to accomplish the task. The deed took only seconds, but it brought her close enough to catch a whiff of his scent: an intoxicating blend of sun-warmed skin, fine wool, and something sharp and tangy she could not identify. Her first impulse was to bury her nose in his crisp, shiny locks and inhale until she could place the scent that eluded her.

  Thankfully she did not yield to that impulse.

  Instead, she dropped the chain and stepped back, her heart pounding frantically at her brief brush with sensual madness.

  She cleared her throat and avoided his disconcerting green eye. “I will go find my housekeeper, Mrs. Turner. She will arrange accommodations for both you and your servants and determine the most convenient place for you to store your possessions.”

  Daphne turned without waiting for his answer—or, God forbid—his questions.

  * * *

  Hugh studied the departing figure of his young aunt, enjoying the slight sway of her hips beneath the heavy train of her habit. He was, quite frankly, stunned by his uncle’s widow. Oh, he’d known the old man had married a girl more than fifty years his junior—but he hadn’t expected this. Hugh had possessed only vague recollections of the little neighbor girl he’d left behind seventeen years ago. But this woman? This tall, lithe, cool, perfectly sculpted, self-contained creature? Hugh shook his head; both at her and at his immediate, and unfortunate, reaction to her. She was bloody gorgeous.

  He watched until she disappeared up the steps of Lessing Hall and then he reconstructed her in his mind’s eye, but without any clothing—a specialty of his. He smiled at the mental picture, which was more than a little gratifying. But even more enticing than her beautiful face and slim body had been the haughty, appraising intelligence he’d seen in her frosty blue eyes. Hugh knew it was juvenile, but he’d always had a weakness for women who appeared immune to his charm; charm that, he’d been told more often than was good for him, was not inconsiderable.

  And then there was the way she’d looked up at him when he rode into that clearing. Hugh grinned. Even crawling about on her hands and knees with her hair half down, she’d been in possession of her wits—or at least she’d managed to look like she was.

  Beautiful, smart, aloof, and doughty! Could there be a more intriguing combination?

  Hugh pushed back his hat and scratched the scar at his temple, his smile fading as he thought back to that clearing. Just what the devil had that been about? He certainly did not believe Malcolm Hastings’s ridiculous story. What had the two of them been up to? Hugh would have given a great deal to have come upon the fracas even a minute earlier. Not that she hadn’t handled the matter herself, if Hastings’s bloody nose was anything to go by.

  Good Lord, she had looked fierce! The furious light in her eyes when she’d shifted her angry blue glare from Hastings to Hugh had gone straight to his groin.

  Hugh paused to consider his body’s reaction. Just what was it about self-possessed, haughty, furious women he found so arousing? He shrugged and chalked it up to his fascination with danger in general; and dangerous women in particular.

  She is the mother of your dead uncle’s children. The rogue thought thrust itself among the more lusty ones crowding his head, but Hugh brushed it aside. So what if she’d been married to Thomas? It wasn’t as if he was lusting after either of his real blood-aunts. That thought—meant to be reassuring, instead conjured up visions of his batty Aunt Amelia and terrifyingly militant Aunt Letitia. Hugh shivered.

  She was Thomas’s lover. This thought was harder to ignore and clanged loudly as it slammed down, caging his libidinous fantasies like an iron-toothed portcullis.

  “Blast and damn,” Hugh muttered. Since when had his conscience developed into such a loud, nosy, and insistent presence—especially when it came to his amores?

  She bore Thomas’s children.

  The unsettling image of his uncle and young wife—as invasive as the proverbial serpent in the original garden—slithered into his brain and swallowed up his randy imaginings entirely. The enticing naked image he’d constructed with such care disappeared as quickly as a seaman’s self-control in a whorehouse. Hugh recoiled from the unwelcome image that replaced it: that of his ancient uncle bedding the spirited, nubile creature who had just left him.

  Hugh closed his eyes against the horrifying image, but the damage had already been done; never had his ardor been so thoroughly extinguished.

  But that wasn’t enough for the pitiless voice in his head. You have come back to pay your debt—not create a new one. You must do your duty and return to your real
business.

  Ah yes, his real business. Well, he was here now, so there was no point in thinking about the places he wasn’t, or about the things he wasn’t doing.

  Hugh shoved away the hectoring inner voice and turned his attention to the motley band of sailors overrunning Lessing Hall’s manicured lawn.

  Part of him thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle—especially when he considered how the sight would have outraged the old earl. His stiff, proper uncle had been a starched-up man who had feared a vulgar display more than a public shaming in a stockade.

  But another part of Hugh—the small part that was forever English, no matter how much he would never belong here—wanted to protect this delicate place from the turbulence of the outside world. From men like him.

  The verdant park, the elegant sprawl of bricks that comprised Lessing Hall, the somnolent air which hung over it all—it was a cool oasis of tranquility and calm. Standing in this peaceful slice of green, a person could forget that a short distance away men like Napoléon Bonaparte were tearing apart the world with violence and greed.

  That was Hugh’s world; not this one.

  He had just turned twenty when his uncle banished him from Lessing Hall in shame seventeen years ago. Seventeen years; a lifetime.

  He now had more in common with the human flotsam and jetsam he’d deposited on this pristine lawn than he’d ever had with his uncle or anyone else in England. Hugh’s memories of the late earl were pale recollections, but he knew his uncle would have been scandalized by the man Hugh had become—a man hardly more civilized than the Barbary corsairs who had captured, enslaved, and brutalized him all those years ago.

  Thomas Redvers would have been horrified to learn his heir hadn’t just found a place in the savage hierarchy of the Mediterranean; he had killed, fought, and clawed his way to the top, until he dominated it.

  It would have embarrassed the old earl to learn Hugh was One-Eyed Standish, the mysterious captain of the Batavia’s Ghost, a man variously known as the King’s Privateer, the King of the Pirates, and other, far less flattering epithets. A man who had captured more corsair vessels and sunk more French ships than any other in His Majesty’s navy.

  That’s who Hugh was—not an earl, not an English gentleman. He hadn’t belonged here when he was twenty, and he certainly didn’t belong here now—he never should have returned.

  “Spilt milk, you fool,” he muttered. “You are here.” He glanced around for his two young cousins, hoping they’d not been compromised by Mr. Boswell’s unsavory sense of humor.

  Kemal stood not far away with the twins, who were gawking at the parrot Hugh’s sailors had christened the Great Sou’wester. The vile bird was screeching multilingual imprecations, encouraged in his bad behavior by the boys’ laughter. Hugh shook his head, grateful the Sou’wester spoke very few words of English.

  Satisfied the boys were nowhere near loaded weapons or animals dangerous to more than their vocabulary, Hugh looked about for Will Standish, the man responsible for dragging him back to England after seventeen years.

  His uncle’s sandy-haired stable master stood near a precariously leaning tower of crates, shooting scandalized looks at Hugh’s second mate, Martín. In spite of Hugh’s direct order, the younger man still had not donned a shirt and coat. Hugh rolled his eyes. That was just what he needed right now, a brawl between his incorrigible second mate and his prudish ex-servant.

  Not that he’d ever viewed Will as just a servant, of course. Will was the only son of the old Earl of Davenport’s steward and just a few months younger than Hugh. Will’s father had been an educated man who’d raised his son to take over his position—a destiny Will fought tooth and nail. It hadn’t surprised Hugh to learn his old friend had taken the position of stable master, which was what he’d always wanted, rather than steward.

  Hugh and Will had been raised like brothers, regardless of the social gulf between them. But after Hugh went away to Eton and Will began to study stewardship with his father, their relationship had subtly shifted. By the time Hugh was sent down from Oxford in disgrace, they were no longer close. Even so, when the earl banished Hugh to the Continent, he engaged Will to accompany Hugh in the capacity of manservant. And probably Hugh’s minder, as Will had always been the more responsible and levelheaded of the two.

  And it had been Will who’d been begging him to come back ever since.

  Yet today—when Hugh had ridden up the driveway to Lessing Hall for the first time in almost two decades—Will had greeted him with a coolly appraising look more suited to a stranger.

  Hugh’s eyes narrowed; Will was still wearing that same irritating expression now. Apparently his erstwhile friend had spent the intervening years mastering the art of looking superior and impassive. Well, Hugh supposed it was better than spending seventeen years fighting, killing, and carousing in the brothels of the world. He dropped his quizzing glass and strode toward the men.

  “Martín,” he barked in his captain’s voice, “Clothing!”

  The young Frenchman turned slowly and gave Hugh an insolent stare before strolling off.

  Hugh turned to his friend. “William.”

  Will crossed his arms. “Aye, my lord.”

  Something in the man’s bland tone made Hugh’s temperature rise and he had to struggle to keep a civil tongue. “The letters.” It was not a question.

  “I have them, my lord.” Will’s mouth settled into a prim, judgmental line as he extracted two ragged pieces of paper from his waistcoat.

  Hugh unfolded them. Both were brief and written in the jerky hand of a person who did not write often.

  The first one read:

  I no the old erl liked and trusted you, will standish. So Im giving you fare warning. Get ladee daffnee away from lessing hall befor her and the boys take harm. They are in teribell danger. Her lif wont be worth living if she stays.

  The second one read:

  I wont tell you agin, will standish. Her lady ship is in danger wors than deth! Take her away somewere very, very far. Her and the boys. Bad, bad things will hapen. This is yur last warning.

  Hugh’s head buzzed and he gaped at the other man, waving the notes in the air. “This? This is all you have?” He realized his voice had climbed an octave or two and he took a deep breath and brought it back into the normal range. “I’ve come running halfway round the globe for . . . this.”

  Will drew himself up even straighter—something Hugh hadn’t believed possible. “I’ve only done what you bade me, sir. I believed the letters were explicit and threatening.” He gave Hugh a self-righteous glare that would have done a saint proud. “Perhaps I may have erred on the side of caution, but I used my best judgment, my lord. Lord Davenport was very good to both me and my sister—especially after her troubles. I would do anything for his lady wife and sons.”

  Hugh ignored Will’s sanctimonious tone and focused on what his friend was saying, swallowing his desire to bluster and rant. After all, Hugh had been the one to put his trust in Will once he had decided to remain dead to his family all those years ago.

  It had taken Hugh a few years after escaping captivity to realize he didn’t really wish to sever all connections with the country of his birth.

  So he’d reestablished contact with Will Standish, asking him to occasionally apprise him of matters at home but to keep his survival a secret. Will had sent him perhaps two dozen letters over the years, each and every one begging Hugh to allow him to tell the earl he was alive. Each and every time Hugh had refused—especially since he’d had no intention of returning to England or assuming the earldom. It was Hugh’s belief he had caused the earl nothing but grief and the old man was better off believing him dead and moving on with his life. Even so, Will had continued to beg him to return in each letter until . . .

  Hugh snorted; what a fool he was! Will hadn’t needed to beg him to return in his last letter because he’d finally gotten what he wanted.

  Will returned Hugh’s searching look with a glare of host
ile insolence no friend or well-behaved servant would employ. Hugh sighed; the man had always been obstinate, opinionated, and headstrong. The only time Hugh had ever prevailed in an argument with him was when Will had been so shot through with fever he’d been delirious.

  Did it count as a victory if the person you were arguing with was almost unconscious?

  Hugh pushed away the pointless thought. “You purposely misled me about the magnitude of the threat to Lady Davenport, didn’t you?”

  Will’s jaw worked, but he said nothing.

  Hugh let out a string of curse words that made the other man flinch. “Your message made it sound as though Lady Davenport and my young cousins were in imminent physical danger—as if the whole damn lot of them were characters in a Sussex version of The Castle of Otranto.” He held up the scraps of paper. “Why didn’t you take the letters to her?”

  Will shifted from foot to foot, his eyes dropping to the grass. The only parts of his face still visible—his forehead and the tips of his ears—were scarlet.

  Hugh exhaled. “I see.” And he did. Will had seen a chance to get Hugh back on English soil and he’d pounced on the pretext—no matter how flimsy.

  He knew he should have felt flattered his oldest friend wished him to return so badly—but he wasn’t. Instead, his jaw ached with the effort of not yelling.

  “You purposely deceived me to get me back here, didn’t you? Did you ever think about what my return from the dead would mean to the woman you were claiming to protect?”

  Will didn’t move or speak.

  Hugh threw up his hands. “Well, as of today, I’m her biggest bloody problem. My presence in her well-ordered life will be far more detrimental to her peace of mind than a few anonymous notes.” Hugh didn’t even bother to mention the biggest threat the other man had unleashed on the poor widow: Hugh. An unprincipled, immoral dog who would lust after his own uncle’s widow and do everything in his power to have her.

  Hugh closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before opening them again and charting a new course.