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PART III

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JUNE, 1780
MAYFAIR
LONDON, ENGLAND

CELIA SAT IN THE fourteenth Earl Tavendish’s sitting room slowly savoring the last meal she would eat in this house. Piefke shuffled around Elliott’s dressing room putting things to rights as if he would return from his social obligations at his usual hour.

She watched the valet through the antechamber’s doorway, powdering the white wig Elliott wore in the House of Lords, straightening his scarlet robe and brushing the white ermine trim until it gleamed.

Otherwise, Mélisande Gables was relatively quiet. Those members of Elliott’s staff who had served under him for years, who maintained a loyalty Celia had never seen amongst so many men, were grieving as if their commander had already perished.

She supposed he had, since the farewells had been made the night before and throughout this day until his and Camille’s final departure from Mélisande Gables two hours ago.

The dowager countess had taken to her rooms that morning after private interviews with Elliott, then Camille, and had not emerged since.

“Piefke,” Celia murmured. He stopped immediately and emerged from the dressing room.

“Cap’n?”

“How do you know you do not have a traitor amongst you here? Surely not every sailor and servant here can keep his tongue.”

Piefke snorted. “Those who could not keep their tongues no longer have them.”

Celia burst out laughing. “Ah, why did I think any differently? And yet, they stay.”

“They are not allowed to leave.”

“I see.”

Piefke nodded solemnly. “Even so, we are treated and paid well, as we were at sea. Perhaps not by comparison to yours, but by Royal Navy standards, Commander Raxham is generous. By the standards of upper-crust servants, we live like kings, even those who found themselves without tongues. In truth, while they may mourn them, they have no reason to leave and nowhere to go at any rate.”

“But now you loyal ones need not stay.”

He shook his head. “Nay, Sir, not with the commander dead. After we took the pay ship, each of us received shares enough to depart and seek our leisure for the rest of our days. The servants who replace us will be those Misters Raxham and Kerr hire, and that staff will only know Mister Raxham became the fifteenth earl upon his brother’s death.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m returning to Cornwall. I’ve received word that my adolescent tendre is now a widow, and I mean to court her.”

Celia’s throat tightened. “I’ll miss you, you know.” She almost smiled at the faint flush staining his cheeks, but in the face of the overwhelming grief permeating the walls, her cheer was in short supply. Indeed, even she could succumb to the illusion that Elliott was gone from her forever. “I should have sent for George these past ten days so that you could train her.”

He cleared his throat and looked away, blinking rapidly. “She is a good girl, that one, what I saw of her. Swift to learn and willing to work.”

An abrupt knock at the door startled them both, and Piefke hastened to answer it. Celia heard low voices, then saw the dowager countess being wheeled into the sitting room by Lynch.

The butler stood straight and saluted Celia, who returned it. “Dismissed, Officers.”

Neither woman spoke until the door to Elliott’s apartments had snicked softly closed.

“Capitaine.”

Celia sighed. “My lady, please.”

“As I see our relative positions in the world, Captain,” she proclaimed in haughty French, which, so Elliott had informed her, meant she was overset, “you have as much right to expect me to honor you as I should expect from you. Do you insist on addressing me as ‘my lady,’ I will address you as ‘captain.’”

“I haven’t curtsied to you yet,” Celia said dryly, conceding to converse in French.

“You’re an American,” the countess sniffed. “I would never expect it from savages who think too much of themselves, particularly ones with barbaric African accents.”

And again Celia laughed. It was a sorrow they were natural enemies, for in the past ten days, Celia had found the countess delightful in conversation, in nowise short of wit, and brimming with diverse schemes.

“I am here,” she began stiffly, never meeting Celia’s eyes, “to beg you take care of my daughter. She is delicate and, I fear, has romanticized the fact of your existence without regard to what you may have endured that makes you superior to Lucy and Sophie and, in fact, makes you my son’s equal.”

Celia pursed her lips. “Do you expect me to coddle her? To treat her as an idler, a passenger?”

The countess did not move, speak or betray any insult she may have taken at Celia’s barb.

“She will work, as she was told from the beginning,” Celia said blithely after a moment and bent back to the delicious meal Elliott’s recently acquired Moroccan chef had created for her. “And she will succeed or fail on her own merits.”

“But on your terms.”

Celia’s mouth turned up. “She seems to believe my terms are kindlier than yours.”

Silence.

Celia did not look up, but merely continued to eat. There was a baklava awaiting her pleasure, and still another pitcher of strawberry-sweetened lemonade to finish.

“Are they?” the woman said tightly.

“I cannot say, since I have not been presented the option of selling my womb to a noble I don’t know, one I hate, or one I can barely tolerate.”

The countess drew herself up with offended dignity.

“But she has created another option—nay, begged—without regard or knowledge of its ramifications that I do not feel obliged to dissuade her from because, quite frankly, her fate as it stands is utterly abhorrent to me. Of course, the only ramifications of Sophie’s choice is that she is outcast from Society, which is not the most terrible thing.” She put down her fork and picked up the pitcher, not expecting a reply. “Lemonade, my lady?”

The countess hesitated. “I— Yes, I— Ah … thank you.” She propelled herself toward the table and took the goblet Celia poured for her.

“What you really want,” Celia said matter-of-factly, “is to know how I came to be, as a measure of what Camille may endure.”

Lady Tavendish abruptly stopped mid-sip. “Yes.”

“I will not indulge you in that. Clearly, I am not only alive, but powerful, and my scars serve to reinforce my place in the world. Think of what may be the end result and do not let your imagination carry you away. As you will never know what becomes of her, any details real or imagined are entirely irrelevant to you.”

Her breath left her in a whoosh and she closed her eyes. Her hand was trembling when she put the goblet back on the table.

“She needs a mother more suited to her than I have been,” she whispered tremulously.

“If ’tis mothering she needs, she’ll not get it with me.” Celia leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “My lady, consider your line and the Raxham line. Consider your children. Who are they? Whence did they come? As far back as you know, has there been a weakling amongst you? You do yourself a disservice thinking she cannot endure what lies ahead, and thus torture yourself needlessly.”

“She can barely stand up straight,” the countess snapped.

Celia smirked. It was true: Able seaman Milly’s first act of rebellion against her new captain had been to protest the relinquishment of her stays, to which end Celia had ordered all but two sets burned.

Thus, they had been summarily collected and burned, Elliott’s staff only too willing to carry out Captain Jack’s orders over the dowager countess’s. The girl’s desperate appeal to the enraged countess had been overturned by the earl himself, along with a bellowed lecture about the girl’s new position.

“Her body will strengthen with work and time. Allowing her to rely on whalebone will keep her weak. Tell me,” she went on without allowing the woman to interrupt. “Did you have marriage options other than Tavendish?”

“Of course.”

“You fell in love with him, did you not? And ’twas only fortune smiling upon you that he was noble enough to be approved for you?”

Her brow wrinkled. “Fortune?”

Celia tried again. “Had Henry been anything other than an earl and you had somehow met and fallen in love, would you have cast your family aside to wed him? Declared your love and moved heaven and Earth to be with him?”

“Of course!”

“And would you have cursed him once you realized exactly what moving heaven and Earth entailed, particularly if your other options had guaranteed you a life of ease and privilege? Before you answer, think on my mother’s fate when she chose Dunham over Rathbone.”

Her expression was one of genuine confusion. Of course. She had never thought of it before. She had not had to.

“I … don’t know,” she murmured with wonder and annoyance in equal measures.

Celia cut a bit of the baklava and slid the plate to the older woman without comment. “I will protect her to the best of my ability,” Celia said abruptly once the countess hesitantly picked up her fork. “That I can and will promise you.”

“Is that the best I can expect?”

“Yes, but remember: My ability is great. Now. Let us share the baklava and spend our last hour together on more pleasant topics. Tell me of Elliott as a child. I want to know the things with which to tease him best.”

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If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.
Pirates!