A Most Unsuitable Groom

Mariah opened her eyes once more, even summoned another smile. He looked rather like a boy who’d been caught with his hand in the candy dish and was now weighing the consequences as to the reward and the possible punishment. He also looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept all night. “Much like a horse that’s been ridden hard over rough country and put away wet, I imagine. How do you think I feel?”

“Abandoned,” Spencer said. “Clovis told me what happened.”

Her smile turned rueful. “Oh, I highly doubt that. He wasn’t there at the time.”

The corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “You might be down at the moment, Miss Rutledge, but you’re most assuredly not out, are you? Are you always this blunt?”

“I’ve just given birth to your child, Lieutenant. And I’ve no time for niceties. If you’re at fault, so am I. It was a…a frightening time. You really don’t remember? Eleanor swears you don’t. I wish I didn’t.” She regretted those last words as soon as she said them, for Spencer seemed to stiffen his spine as if she had just physically threatened him. “He…the baby has such a thick thatch of black hair just like yours. Did you see?”

“I did. A humbling sight. And I’m sorry that I questioned you last night. He’s mine, there’s no doubt.”

Mariah plucked at the bedcovers, avoiding his dark, intense gaze. He looked so different and yet so much the man she remembered. A handsome man, there was no denying that. Fiery. Exotic. All that was missing was the vulnerability. Healed, sound once more, he was rather formidable. But she could be formidable, too!

“He’s also mine, sir. I cannot, however, provide for him, not now with my father dead, our few possessions gone and with no other family to take me in. After paying for the passage, the coach, I have precious little left but what I can stand up in, once I can stand again, and Onatah to care for. I can’t…” Her voice broke slightly and she took a deep, steadying breath in order to say what she had to say. “I can’t even nurse him. Onatah has decreed that I’m too weak from our journey, that I need all my strength and that he needs more than I will be able to give him. Your Odette agreed and has kindly arranged a wet nurse. I hate both of them for that, but they both said I was being womanish, which I hate even more.”

Spencer felt even more uncomfortable. What could he say in answer to a statement like that? All he could do was reassure her, he supposed. “We’ll marry, of course. As soon as you’re recovered. You have no worries about your future, madam, I promise you that.”

Those green eyes flashed in quick anger, anger being preferable to tears. “Aren’t you generous,” she said, her voice all but dripping venom. “It’s not my future that brought me here.”

“Perhaps not, madam, but that’s what is going to happen. No son of mine will be a bastard, never knowing his father. Or did you simply think I would hand you money and send you and the child on your way?”

“I didn’t know what you’d do,” she admitted quietly. “Yes, marriage had occurred to me. It seemed a logical answer.” She looked up at him again. “Until now.”

“How did you find me?” Spencer asked, to avoid an answer to her last words, not that he had one.

Mariah shifted on the sheets. “There was a letter in your jacket. Bloodstained, but I could make out some of it. Someone named Callie signed it, adding the words Becket Hall, Romney Marsh to her signature. No one knew you when we landed at Dover but the closer we drove, the more people were able to direct the coach on the proper roads. It’s difficult to believe this is England. The landscape is so singular. I lived with my father in the Lake District, until we left for North America eight years ago.”

“Clovis tells me your father was the quartermaster at Fort Malden. Yet we never met.”

Mariah caught her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment, the mention of her father, who would never see her child, obviously piercing her heart. “Papa kept me fairly well isolated from the men once we were moved into the fort as our losses mounted. And the Indians, of course, no matter what Onatah told him to the contrary. He was certain they’d be after my hair if they had a chance.”

Spencer looked at the mass of golden-red curls spread out on the pillow; living fire. His fingers itched to reach out to stroke that hair, to learn whether it was as soft and warm to the touch as it appeared. “I remember your hair. I don’t know why, but I do. Your hair, your voice.” He shook his head. “But that’s all. I’m sorry. Clovis told me you were very brave and that he doubts anyone would have survived without you. Me, most especially. So I thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Mariah said, wishing he’d leave the room. She was going to cry. She wasn’t exactly sure why, but she was definitely going to cry. She wanted, needed, to cry.

“He also told me about the child who died. We…we have a small tradition, us Beckets. When I was brought to…when Ainsley adopted me, I was given the name of a sailor who had died. With that in mind, I thought we might name the child William. William Becket.”

Mariah squeezed her eyes shut. Would he please just go away? “William Henry Becket. After my father, as well.”

Spencer laughed shortly. “William Henry? As in William Henry Harrison, the American general who beat us so soundly?”

Now Mariah was caught between tears and laughter. Thankfully, laughter won. “General Proctor’s name is Henry,” she pointed out, grinning at him. “Perhaps we need to reconsider this whole thing?”

“No,” Spencer told her. “William Henry Becket. And he’ll grow to be his own man, as we all must. Now, madam, I think you should rest.”

“I was just about to suggest the same thing,” Mariah said, sighing. “But I would like to see William again, please. Just for a minute?”

Spencer looked to the door to the dressing room, then to Mariah. “He was sleeping when I looked in on him a few minutes ago. And alone. Um…I’ll go find somebody.”

“Why? Just bring him to me, Mr. Becket.”

“Spencer, Mariah. I think you’ll agree that we’re a bit beyond formalities.”

Just when she thought she could begin to relax, he was looking at her that way again. So intense. She had to look away and hated him for making her so nervous. “Yes, of course. Spencer. Just pick him up and bring him to me. You can do that, can’t you?”

He’d rather juggle siege cannonballs. With their fuses lit. “Yes, certainly.” He looked toward the door once more. “Is there…is there anything I should know about him?”

“I don’t think he’ll break, if that’s what you mean,” Mariah said shortly, then took pity on him. She threw back the coverlet. “Oh, let me do it.”

Spencer held out his hands to stop her. “I said I’d do it, damn it.”

“Thank God,” Mariah said quietly, falling back against the pillows. She really was exhausted and more than a little sore. “Support his head, please.”

“What?” Spencer asked, already halfway to the dressing room. But he kept going, knowing that if he stopped he’d probably turn into a complete coward and simply run away, like Proctor. So he opened the door slowly and looked into the dim room at the cradle someone had brought down from the nursery.

Their ship’s carpenter had made the cradle for Callie, so many years ago. Pike, dead now, one of the first casualties in their personal war with the Red Men Gang. But the cradle was still here, the magnificent carving done with such talent, such love, the oils of Pike’s hands as he stroked and smoothed the wood permeating it, giving it color and life. In this cradle, Pike lived on. They all lived on, every last lost man of the Black Ghost and Silver Ghost crews, if only in the memories of those who had sailed with them.

Just as young Willy would live on in William Henry Becket.

For the first time Spencer truly understood why he and the others had been taken to the island, taken in, been fashioned into a family by Ainsley Becket. By Geoffrey Baskin, who had died sixteen years ago, come to this most deserted area of Romney Marsh coastline, and become Ainsley Becket. If he could be half the father Ainsley was, he’d be a happy man.

Spencer looked down on his sleeping son, a cotton-wrapped warm brick snuggled against his back. There was a small brown cloth bag tucked into one corner of the cradle, tied with colorful ribbons and with a single feather protruding from the top. Odette and her charms and amulets. The child would soon probably have his own gad—an alligator tooth dipped in powerful potions to ward off bad loas, bad spirits. Spencer believed he might have some small trouble explaining that to Mariah. Ah well, as long as Odette was happy.

William’s incredibly small hands were in tight fists, hanging on to this new life with fierce tenacity, already looking as if he knew there would be times he’d have to fight.

But not alone; never alone.

Something drew up hard and tight in Spencer’s chest, just like William’s fists, and he marveled at the feeling, at the fierce protectiveness he felt all but overwhelm him.

My son. My God, my son.

“Spencer? Just put one hand beneath his bottom and the other behind his head,” Mariah called to him from the other room.

Spencer blinked, realized his eyes were wet. He’d been alone for so long. Alone, amid the crowd of Beckets. Always looking for his own way, some reason for being here, for being alive at all. Always angry, always fighting and not knowing why.

And now, William.

And now, in an instant, everything made sense.

He bent over the cradle, carefully scooping up the closely wrapped infant, pressing him against his heart. The knot in his chest tightened even more, then slowly dissolved, filling him with a warmth of feeling that threatened to completely unman him.

Slowly, as if he were carrying the most precious of treasures, he returned to the bedchamber and crossed to the high tester bed. “He’s so small. It’s like holding air.”

Mariah reached up her arms. “Amazing, isn’t it? For the past few months I would have sworn to anyone who asked that I was carrying a sack full of rocks wherever I went. Please? Give him to me?”

Spencer handed the child to her and immediately felt the loss of that slight weight. “He stays here,” he said firmly. “You stay if you wish, marry me, or go if you like. But the boy stays here.”

Mariah ignored him, gazing in wonder at her child who, until she’d actually seen him, held him, had been considered little more than yet another problem to be solved in a world filled with problems. “He has my eyes. See? Tipped up at the edges a bit? That won’t make him look too girlish, will it?”