Kasey Michaels - A Most Unsuitable Groom

Mariah knew her cheeks had gone pale. “Spencer…Spencer didn’t plan to stay here? Where was he going to go?”

Jacko shrugged those massive shoulders. “Which way is the wind blowing today, Miss Rutledge?” He lifted a hand to his forehead in a blatantly mocking salute. “But he won’t be sailing off now. What with the fine great anchor you tied fast to his ankle.”

“Jacko,” Callie said quietly. “That was a mean thing to say. Go away.”

And, to Mariah’s amazement, that’s just what the man did, turning his back on the pair of them and heading toward the front of the house. Her body inwardly sagged in relief.

“Did he mean that, Callie? Was Spencer planning to leave?”

Callie shrugged. “Spencer has always talked about the places he’d like to see. China. America. I think he’d cheerfully sail off to the moon, if it took him away from Becket Hall. That’s why he went off to the Army. He wanted to fight Napoléon, see the Continent. But he was sent to Canada instead.” She smiled. “But that’s how he met you, Mariah, and now you’re going to be married. Elly says Spencer has to grow up now, stop chafing at living here. I don’t know why he chafes. I think it’s lovely here. But Spence was ten years old, I think, when we came to Romney Marsh. He remembers the islands and I don’t. I only know Romney Marsh.”

“But Spencer knows other places exist,” Mariah said as they began walking once more. “Whole other worlds he hasn’t seen. And now, because of William and me, he won’t see them.”

“Nonsense. He hasn’t even been to London. You can take William and go to London, surely. That’s another world, or at least that’s what Morgan and Elly say. Come on, we’ll go outside, let you smell the fresh air.”

Mariah nodded her agreement, knowing she’d just heard an opinion straight out of the innocence of youth. It would serve no purpose to argue that she, Mariah, had put an end to all of Spencer’s dreams, whatever those might be. A wife and child meant responsibility and, if she knew nothing else about Spencer Becket, she knew he was a man who took his responsibilities very seriously.

She’d had time, around their nightly campfires, to listen to Clovis tell her about Spencer Becket, the man who had bloodied General Proctor’s nose. She’d heard the same story from her father, who’d believed the man had deserved a medal, not two months in the small gaol and being stripped of his rank.

Was it any wonder that the night she’d crawled beneath the blanket to share her body’s warmth with Lieutenant Becket, and he’d reached for her, felt her softness, began to fumble with the buttons of her gown, that she’d welcomed that touch, sought…sought something in that touch? Not only allowed what the feverish man was doing, but aided and abetted him?

Even the pain that had come when he’d entered her had been welcome, proving to her that, yes, she was still alive and she could still feel.

And now she had tied an anchor to the man’s ankle; he felt duty-bound to marry her, care for their son. She’d quite possibly saved his life; he’d quite possibly saved hers without knowing it and his reward was to be a lifetime in this house, on this land—where he didn’t want to be.

“Mariah, what do you think?”

Mariah blinked, surprised to see that she was now standing on an immense stone terrace overlooking a stretch of sand and shingle beach, the Channel lapping quietly at the shoreline, the blue sky seemingly limitless.

“It’s…it’s beautiful,” Mariah said honestly and walked over to the railing, placing her palms on the cool stone. How did Spencer see this view? Did he recognize it for its own beauty or stand here to look longingly toward the water and all that lay beyond it? “Oh, and two ships. Aren’t they sleek-looking?”

Callie also looked to her left to where the sloops rode at anchor offshore, about one hundred yards apart, their sails rolled up and firmly lashed to the masts. “The first is Papa’s Respite, and the other is Chance’s Spectre.”

“Spectre? You mean, as in ghost?”

Callie’s smile suddenly seemed awfully bright. “Yes, that’s it. Chance, um, Chance says that with a wife and two children now and his estate to oversee, he has only the ghost of a chance to go sailing on her more than twice a year. He says that and then Julia gives him the hairy eyeball and he laughs.”

“The hairy eyeball and an anchor firmly tied to his ankle. Well, they’re beautiful ships.” She leaned forward slightly, still looking to her left, to see a few peaked roofs peeking up behind a rise in the land. “And there’s the village, I suppose. I’d like to walk over there someday, but not just yet.”

She then looked to her right where there was—nothing. Only some tall grasses waving in what must be a constant breeze from the water. Even the shingle slowly faded away, leaving only a wide stretch of sand.

“You aren’t allowed to walk there,” Callie said, suddenly serious, as if she knew where Mariah was looking. “The sands can shift and swallow you whole, the way the whale swallowed Jonah. But the sands never spit you out again. Long ago, someone told me, some local freetraders taking their wool across the Channel used the sands to beach their boats where the Waterguard wouldn’t dare follow, and then offloaded the contraband they brought back with them. There are so many legends. But the smugglers knew the sands and we don’t. They’re not safe. Nobody goes there. And nobody smuggles from these shores anymore, of course. Not for years and years.”

“Really?” Mariah asked, still looking at the sands, fascinated by them for some reason she didn’t understand. Perhaps it was the stark beauty of waving grass and sand and water…and the danger hidden beneath that beauty. Or perhaps it was the rushed way in which Callie had told her small story and then added even more warnings.

“Oh, yes. There’s no smuggling here. There’s no need.”

“But it must have been so very exciting, don’t you think, Callie?”

Callie sniffed. Quite an adult sniff, at that. “That’s just romantical. Smuggling is…smuggling was what they did to survive, nothing more. Nobody smuggles for the adventure of the thing. That would be silly.”

“Yes, of course it would be,” Mariah said, stepping back from the railing, ready to return to the house, as she was beginning to feel as if her legs were fashioned out of sponges. But then she caught a movement in the distance, and moments later Spencer Becket appeared out of the tall grasses. He was striding surefootedly across the sands toward Becket Hall, a staff taller than himself in his right hand. The young man she recognized as Rian Becket from that first night walked along behind him.

Rian Becket had a small wooden cask hefted up and onto his shoulder and he was whistling. The sound carried to her on the stiff breeze.

She felt Callie’s hand on her arm. “We should go inside now.”

Mariah blinked, closed her mouth, which had fallen open at the sight of the two men. “Yes, yes we should. I’m afraid I’ve done too much too soon.” She allowed herself to be led back across the wide terrace to the French doors they had used earlier, turning only at the last moment to take one last look to the beach.

He carries the staff in case the sands try to take him. To either hold out to a rescuer, or brace it lengthwise against the sands and employ it to crawl to safety. But he carries it carelessly, because he already knows the way.

What had she asked him? How did he amuse himself here on Romney Marsh? And what had he answered?

Oh yes, she remembered now. “We keep ourselves busy….”

“SHE SAW ME, saw what I was doing.”