“Is there a significant difference?” Phoebe shrugged inelegantly. “Either way, I am married to a criminal who stands to be hanged. Hanged, Amelia. Or thrown into prison.”
“His father will never allow that. You know how powerful the viscount is, Phoebe. There’s talk that Lord Moncrieff might be awarded an earldom.”
“Not after it is revealed that his son is a pirate.”
“But Sir Griffin is a baronet in his own right! They don’t hang people with titles.”
“Yes, they do.”
“Actually, I think they behead them.”
Phoebe shuddered. “That’s a terrible fate.”
“Actually, why is your husband a baronet if his father is a viscount and still living?” Amelia asked, knitting her brow. Being a goldsmith’s wife, she had never been schooled in the intricacies of this sort of thing.
“It’s a courtesy title,” Phoebe explained. “Viscount Moncrieff inherited the title of baronet as well as that of viscount, so his heir claims the title of baronet during the current viscount’s life.”
Amelia digested that. Then, “Mrs. Crimp would be mad with glee if she found out.”
“She will be mad with glee,” Phoebe said, nausea returning.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s back,” Phoebe said helplessly. “Oh, Amelia, he’s back in England.” She handed over the Morning Chronicle, pointing to a notice at the bottom of the page.
“In England? Without informing you? And you’ve had no contact with him since—”
“Since the night we married, in ’02,” Phoebe said. “Fourteen years ago. And now he’s back in England, without a word of warning.”
“I know you’ve been living apart for years, but surely he will pay you a visit immediately,” Amelia said, reading the short piece.
“Quite likely they’ll throw him in prison before he has the chance,” Phoebe replied. Her daughter Margaret ran by them, curls dancing about her shoulders. She’d lost her ribbon again.
“Did you tell him about the children?” Amelia asked, looking up from the paper.
“What was I supposed to do? Write him a letter addressed ‘in care of the South Seas’? I suppose I could have informed his man of business, but to be quite honest, I never thought he’d come home! Amelia, what am I going to do?”
“He can hardly complain about the children. He’s a pirate, for goodness’ sake. He hasn’t a leg to stand on. —Oh! Do you suppose that he has a peg leg? I’ve heard of that. Or an eye patch?”
“What a revolting idea.” A shudder went straight through to Phoebe’s toes at the thought.
Amelia bit her lip and put down the newspaper. “Seriously, Phoebe, you’re facing a terrible predicament.”
“I know it.”
“So your husband left England the night of your wedding . . .”
Phoebe nodded.
“And now he’s coming home to three children!”
THREE
June 3
Arbor House
Phoebe’s youngest, Alastair, ran past her, his shriek coming in a long stream like shrill birdsong.
“Behave yourself, Master Alastair,” Nanny McGillycuddy shouted. “He’s losing his nappy again. Where is that dratted girl? I swear she spends the better part of her time daydreaming. Lyddie!” she bellowed, waving across the lawn to where a young nursemaid lounged in the shade of a willow.
Satisfied that the girl was rising, albeit reluctantly, to her feet, Nanny turned back to Phoebe. “What will you tell people about this muddle?” Since the death of Phoebe’s mother, her old nanny had become her only real confidante.
“I don’t want to tell anyone anything.”
“You’ll have to. And you’ll have to deal with him as well.” Nanny put down her teacup and surged to her feet. “Drat that child; Alastair is in the lake again.” She turned back to Phoebe. “Whatever happened on your wedding night, you’ll have to put it out of your mind, child. If he seeks you out, that is. He’s your husband, more’s the pity.”
Phoebe hesitated, the truth trembling on her tongue. But she bit it back, and besides, Nanny was already trundling toward the lake.
Griffin had been so horrified when . . . when that had happened. She had been braced for the searing pain her mother had described, ready to get it over with and count herself a properly married woman.
Then, when there had been nothing whatsoever to get over . . .
She had never blamed him for jumping out the window. At first, she had thought he would return in the morning. But he hadn’t. It wasn’t until the end of the week that she’d finally confessed the truth to her family: her husband had deserted her.
It was beyond humiliating, especially when they’d concluded that he must have boarded a ship and left England altogether. Her father hadn’t made things any better. “I paid for that churlish blue blood fair and square,” he had said between clenched teeth. “Paid up front for the privilege of making my daughter into Lady Barry.”
“I am still Lady Barry whether Sir Griffin is at my side or not,” Phoebe had hastened to say.
Her mother had taken a much more cheerful attitude. “She’s better off without that young sprig,” she had said. “He’s too young by half, and I told you so at the time. He’ll be off to see a bit of the world and then find his way back home again. You’ll see.”
As for the wedding night fiasco, her mother was of the opinion that Phoebe was lucky, and that was that.
The problem was that Griffin never did make his way home again.
For a long time—years!—Phoebe fretted about the possibility, especially after a man named Mr. Pettigrew paid her a visit, announced that he was her husband’s agent, and deposited a large sum of money in a household account for her.
Then, after the fire in which she had lost both her parents and one of her sisters . . . well, after that she stopped thinking about Griffin altogether. It was hard enough just to get through the day.
When the mourning period was finally over, the children came along.
Her husband had been just about her height, she thought, with no sign that he would grow much taller. They had snuffed all but two candles on her wedding night, but even so she had realized that he was nervy, and then horrified when his tool wouldn’t do its business.
Over the years since, she’d heard quite a few stories of men in the same situation. In fact, just last week Mrs. Crimp had told her of the baker. His wife had driven all the way to Pensford in order to ask the apothecary a private question, but she’d had the bad luck to be overheard by Mrs. Crimp’s oldest granddaughter.
Phoebe had just shrugged. She didn’t care about that, especially now she had children of her own. She would welcome an incapable husband. At least he wouldn’t be bothering her when she was tired or out of sorts.
Mrs. Crimp had said the problem was near to an epidemic. And if that was the case, well then, Griffin probably felt better by now, knowing that his friends were in the same boat.
But it was one thing to be thinking all these thoughts over the years, and it was quite another one to imagine her husband walking through the front door.
She had forged such a comfortable life, with friends like Amelia, whom he would probably look down on. No one in her close circle was from the gentry, let alone the aristocracy.
What if Sir Griffin wanted to rub shoulders with Bath’s polite society? Or worse, pay a visit to London for the season? The very idea gave her a feeling of profound disquiet.
Yet surely she was worrying in vain. How could a nobleman-turned-pirate possibly reenter polite society?
Just as it had throughout the sleepless night, her mind bounced back and forth between terrifying possibilities.
Nanny had plucked Alastair from the lake and was wringing out his little nankeen coat. It was so peaceful at Arbor House. Beyond the river she
could see men mowing grass and, in the far distance, a faint haze that suggested it might rain later on.
A man of violence had no place here. Griffin would likely recognize that in one glance.
She was worrying about nothing.
FOUR
Griffin kept telling himself that he wouldn’t recognize his own wife. There was something swashbuckling about that notion, he thought, something that took the edge off the way he felt.
Not that he could put into words precisely how he felt, other than that his stomach got this rocky only in the most choppy of seas.
By the time his hired carriage trundled up the rather long road that led to his house—a house he’d never seen but had apparently acquired eight years ago—and finally stopped, he would have described himself as irritable.
Pirates didn’t have nerves, damn it.
Out of the carriage, he adjusted the ruffled linen at his wrists. He had dressed particularly magnificently, in a coat of Prussian blue with silver buttons. His breeches fit like a glove, and his boots were made by Hoby.
Inasmuch as he had to limp in the door, he reckoned he might as well look as good as possible doing it.
It seemed he owned a comfortable, sprawling mansion, which stood on a small hill looking over Somerset countryside. Its mellow brick had weathered to a rosy orange. In the distance he could see fruit orchards and fields spreading out to the sides. It was a working farm, then, not a nobleman’s estate. It was large and imposing, but not extravagantly so.
As unlike the house he’d grown up in—the country estate of a viscount fiercely aware of his place in the hierarchy of the peerage—as could be imagined.
This was a house designed for a family, though of course that was not the case.
Maybe Poppy had brought her family to live with her? He vaguely recollected that she had a great number of siblings. Merchants generally had many children.
Shark came around the carriage, holding Griffin’s cane. “Would you like me to summon the butler so he can have you carried in on a litter?”
Griffin glanced at him. “Stuff it, Shark.”
Didn’t it say it all that Griffin couldn’t make it to his own bloody front door without a cane? For all his was mahogany topped with a dull ruby, and hid in its innards a vicious blade, in the end it was an old man’s stick.
Pride goeth before a fall, he thought, hobbling toward the front door. And damn it, he had been proud. He’d racketed around the world, collecting pirate’s booty and investing it. Rather surprisingly, money made money. It turned out that timber made money, as did spice, and birdcages, and whatever else he and James felt like picking up and shipping to a different part of the world.
But then a pirate had slit his cousin’s throat and almost killed him, and the same man had slashed Griffin’s thigh. And James had realized he was still in love with his wife, and decided to return to England. There was no such realization in store for Griffin, since he had known his wife for precisely one day. But he did know that a pirate with a game leg is a soon-to-be-dead pirate, which was just as important an insight.
He’d come home because he couldn’t think of another bloody thing to do. He had travelled the world. He had made a fortune eight or nine times over. Nothing left but waiting for the grave, he thought grimly.
As he stumped his way to the bottom of the steps, the front door swung open. Griffin straightened, expecting a butler to materialize, but the shadowy entryway appeared to be empty.
He glanced at Shark with a raised eyebrow. Shark fit into the sleepy green landscape around them about as well as a mastiff at a tea party.
“Best not go in,” he said now. “Might be an ambush.”
Griffin snorted and hauled himself up the steps. If his leg didn’t improve, he’d probably find himself killing people just to relieve his own irritation.
The entryway was deserted. It was large and gracious, with a marble staircase that curved gently up and then to the left. Not bad, he thought. But where on earth were the servants?
A noise came from somewhere behind them, just a scrabble. They hadn’t been retired from the sea long enough to dull their reflexes; Shark drew his dagger in one smooth movement, swinging about to put his back against the wall. Griffin flung the door shut, poised to unsheathe the blade concealed in his cane.
A small boy had been crouching behind that door. A boy clutching a wooden sword and wearing an eye patch.
After fourteen years at sea, Griffin knew a pirate when he saw one. This one’s visible eye was wide, and his chest rose and fell with gusty breaths.
Griffin hadn’t been around children much . . . ever. He stood staring down at the boy for a moment before he snapped, “For God’s sake, Shark, put your blade away.”
The boy couldn’t be more than five or six, and he was clearly scared out of his wits. But his lips firmed and he pushed himself to his feet. His knees were scabbed and smeared with dirt, but he was obviously well-born.
“Mama won’t want you here,” he said, just as Griffin was trying to figure out whether he should say Ahoy, mate.
“But we’re pirates,” Griffin said, suppressing a grin. “She must like them, since she has you.”
Cautiously, the boy slid an inch or two to his right, obviously planning to make a run for it.
Griffin jerked his head at Shark, who stepped back. But the child didn’t move any further. He was a brave little thing.
“Where’s your butler?” Griffin asked.
“We haven’t got one,” the boy replied. “We don’t need one, because no one comes to call except our friends.” His eyes narrowed a bit. “You aren’t friends, so you shouldn’t be here.”
There must be some mistake, Griffin thought. Was the address his agent had given him incorrect? Though that was hard to understand; he could see the card in his mind’s eye: Arbor House, Somerset.
“Is this Arbor House?” he asked.
“No, it isn’t!” the boy shouted, and then he ran full tilt, disappearing through a door at the back of the entry.
“We’ve made a mistake with the address,” Griffin said, somewhat relieved. “The child’s mother can give us proper direction so we can find—”
He broke off. Shark was regarding him with a distinct trace of pity in his eyes.
Griffin’s next words were unrepeatable.
“I was sitting on the box, you see,” Shark said. “I seen the sign, clear as can be. It said Arbor House.”
Griffin felt as if someone had given him a kick in the stomach. It seemed . . .
“It’s not as if you kept yourself pure as a lily,” Shark said, interrupting that thought.
“Keep to your place, for God’s sake,” Griffin said with a scowl.
Shark shook his head. “You was having a fine time; she’s got the same right.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Griffin said tightly.
“Yer title doesn’t give you the right to be an ass.”
Griffin shot him a look, and Shark finally shut up. Griffin had allowed his men wide latitude—but in the end he, and he alone, was captain.
He limped across the entry and pushed open the nearest door, discovering an empty sitting room. It was rather lovely, hung with watered silk and a painting of the Thames that was as beautiful as any he’d seen.
But there were also piles of books, and a group of soft chairs before the fireplace where a chessboard lay waiting to be used. Someone had tossed embroidery to the side, and a piece of knitting had fallen to the floor.
Even more telling, a toy ship lay on its side, surrounded by a scatter of tin soldiers. The ship was flying a tiny Jolly Roger.
His wife had moved on.
“She can’t have married someone else,” he muttered, half to himself. “I would know. Pettigrew would have told me. She’d have to have declared me dead.”
“No sign of a man,” Shark said from his right shoulder. “The little one and herself, I’d guess. No pipe. No brandy.” He nodded toward the side table. “That’s sherry.”
“Don’t spit,” Griffin said. “Spitting is not allowed in a gentleman’s house.”
“I wasn’t going to spit,” Shark said, offended. He’d spent the last two months soaking up all the information he could from a sailor who had once worked in a noble residence. “I’m just saying that yer missus has got a child, but she don’t—doesn’t—have a man.”
“Or she hasn’t brought him into the house,” Griffin said, through clenched teeth.
He backed into the hall again. The next two doors opened, respectively, into a dining room and a small, very feminine sitting room.
The fourth door—the one the boy had fled through—opened, unexpectedly, into a courtyard shaped by two backward-extending wings of the house. It was charming, paved in uneven bricks, with a couple of trees providing shade. On the far side he could see a broad lawn spreading down to a lake.
“There he goes,” Shark said, laughter rolling in his voice.
A small figure was tearing down the hill, his legs pumping. At the water’s edge, there was a flutter of white skirts and a parasol.
Griffin stepped forward into the courtyard but immediately realized he couldn’t walk to the lake. By the time he reached the bottom of that hill, he’d be sweating and shaking. His leg was already throbbing, thanks to the steps leading to the front door.
“You can sit over there,” Shark said, jerking his head toward a table with a crowd of serviceable chairs. It stood to the side of the courtyard under the shade of a spreading oak tree. Griffin sank into a chair with a sigh of relief.
For some time, nothing happened.
They sat and listened to birds singing. At sea, the ship was accompanied by seagulls’ wild shrieks. By comparison, these birds sang Mozart arias, speaking to each other in trills and tremolos, performing elaborate courtship dances on the branches over their heads.
Minutes passed. Apparently, Poppy had paid no heed to the boy, who by now must have told her that pirates had taken over the house. You could hardly blame her for ignoring his nonsense. Yet it wasn’t safe to have a house open like this, a house without, as far as he could see, any male servants. What if robbers stopped by? Marauders?