Easy Conquest Read online

  “Things, Capac?”

  “You must not shoot birds or anything else with a bow and arrow, or bring down a horseman with your sling.”

  Manco scowled, but said nothing. Cristoval was referring to an alarming incident when an albatross had escaped unscathed, but Captain Gustavus of the Stralsund had lost his tricorn! It was fortunate that Gustavus had a sense of humor, otherwise Manco knew he would have been put ashore at the next port of call.

  Cristoval continued. “Nor must you use your knife to threaten anyone who displeases you, or poke ladies who don’t happen to be moving quickly enough to suit you.”

  The Indian raised an eyebrow. “Lady too slow.”

  Jack grinned. “Ladies are allowed to be slow, Manco, especially when they are negotiating a difficult hatchway, as this one was. But whatever they are doing, you are not allowed to prod their posteriors.”

  “Hmm.”

  Jack sighed. “And while we are speaking of such things, the British do not eat guinea pigs.”

  “No?”

  “No. And if I catch you offering the wrong people a chew of coca, so help me I will dispose of your entire supply. Pious Flemish pastors are definitely the wrong people. I want your word about this, you are not to give it to anyone, is that clear?”

  Manco looked as if he had just been requested to drink ditch water, but nodded. “Manco gives word.”

  “Good.”

  The Indian scowled at the shore again.

  Jack’s attention returned there as well. His own feelings about England were mixed, for he was a stranger here now. His sun-bleached hair fluttered around his shoulders, his poncho flapped as fiercely as the sails overhead, and his gold necklace shone against his tanned throat. An English gentleman? Who would believe it to see him now?

  Emily Fairfield certainly wouldn’t, for he looked more fit for piracy on the high seas than for sipping tea in an elegant drawing room! But he intended to undergo the desired transformation before he met her for the first time. He’d wear fashionable clothes, have his hair cut in the latest style, and be all that was acceptable in polite circles.

  He drew the poncho more closely around him, and as the wind gusted and spindrift flew on the roaring air, something in his heart began to lighten. He was home again, and it felt good.

  * * *

  While the Stralsund was sailing the final leagues to Bristol, Emily was on her own at Fairfield Hall, waiting for Sir Rafe Warrender to call. The skies of Shropshire were as clear and blue as those over the Bristol Channel, but there was no wind at all. It was one of those absolutely perfect fall days, timeless and mellow, when the last of the apple harvest hung plump and rosy in the orchards, and smoke from chimneys floated vertically toward the heavens.

  Sir Rafe had returned to Temford Castle the day before, and sent word that she should expect him that morning. The moment Cora and Peter learned he was coming, they made plans to be elsewhere. Directly after breakfast Peter had gone out roaming in the park, as he did most days, and Cora had gone in her chariot to the stores in Temford market square in search of new trimmings for her evening gown, Bonfire Night now being less than a week away.

  Peter had been removed from Harrow several months before, and made no secret of being bored and resentful. He had become a moody, difficult boy, quite unlike his usual self, and one of his principal ways of passing the time was to stalk people. He was like a predator creeping after its prey, and no one was safe from his activities. It was most irritating to go out in the sunken topiary garden, where one liked to feel cozy and private within the centuries-old enclosing wall, only to become aware of a furtive figure slipping from shrub to tree to shrub behind one! Or to sit at one’s desk, composing a pleading letter to a creditor, only to realize that Peter had tiptoed into the room to hide behind the curtains.

  This all conspired to convince his mother that marriage to Sir Rafe was her only option. Apart from the need to defray her enormous burden of debt, Peter needed a father’s steadying influence. There was no reason to believe her mother’s low opinion of Sir Rafe was correct. After all it was not a crime for a man to desire another man’s wife, nor was it a crime for him to invite that man to attend gaming parties. Or challenge him to a race on horseback.

  Emily had vacillated during the five months since the May confrontation with her mother. Sometimes she had felt that come what may she would remain a widow and try to cling to everything as it had been during Geoffrey’s life. At other times she had been so lacking in courage and resolve about the future that several times she had almost written to Sir Rafe in London, accepting his offer of marriage without further ado.

  Now the vacillation was at an end. Peter’s resentful presence day after day had concentrated her mind remarkably, making her face the fact that Sir Rafe wasn’t just her salvation, he was her son’s as well. Peter needed his life to be safe and settled again; he needed to return to Harrow and his many friends there, and be able to go on with his life as before. His anxious mother’s only way of providing all that was to marry Sir Rafe Warrender.

  The minutes seemed to drag unconscionably as Emily waited nervously for the promised visit, and she went up to the long gallery on the top floor to watch for Sir Rafe’s approach. For the first time in almost exactly a year she was wearing a pretty color again, heather pink.

  Strictly speaking there was still another day to go before her twelve months of mourning was actually at an end, but she had decided not to wear anything subdued for this meeting. It would surely have been hypocritical to garb herself in even half mourning for an interview that would center upon her definite decision to remarry. Nevertheless, she felt awkward, as if she were letting Geoffrey down, mayhap even beginning to dismiss him from her mind.

  The gown she had chosen was three years old, and consequently had a train that was now even more unmodish than it had been last May when her mother had brought things to a head by asking for new togs from a London couturière. The heather pink was made of finely woven merino, long-sleeved and high at the throat, and it bestowed a deceptive glow to her cheeks, as if she felt eagerness for the forthcoming meeting. But she wasn’t eager at all, just resigned to the only solution to her troubles.

  She paced restlessly up and down the gallery’s uneven wooden floor, wishing today was over and done with. A brown-and-white cashmere shawl dragged behind her, and after a year of black and gray, she was very conscious indeed of the gown’s color. Should she change after all into something more restrained? The olive green dimity perhaps?

  Oh, she didn’t know what to do ... Why hadn’t Sir Rafe arrived yet? she wondered. Had he undergone an eleventh-hour change of heart? Maybe he had met someone he wanted more, another bride who wouldn’t bring him just herself, but a fortune as well. Doubt after doubt beset Emily, and with each one her stomach knotted a little more. She felt cold, and every now and then her teeth chattered slightly. She was so filled with nerves that she felt quite ill!

  The gallery was seventy-five feet long, and occupied the entire third floor of the west wing. There was no ceiling, just the heavy beams and trusses of the roof, and windows took up every side except the eastern end so that the sun shone in almost all day long. With so much light it had been the perfect place for Geoffrey to do his painting.

  His things were as he’d left them on the day he died. It would be a year ago tomorrow she mused, yet seemed a lifetime away now. Paints, brushes, rags, stacked canvases, all lay just as if he had slipped out for a while and would be back at any moment. But he had intended to return quickly that November 1st, having only gone out because he and Sir Rafe had a wager about riding each other’s horses to the old disused gatehouse on the boundary of the Hall’s land and back again. But when it came to horsemanship, Geoffrey was mediocre, and Sir Rafe’s black thoroughbred was barely manageable.

  Emily drew herself up and took a deep breath. She didn’t want to think about the race now, not when she was about to give her hand to the owner of the horse. Geoffrey’s death h
adn’t been Sir Rafe’s fault; indeed Sir Rafe hadn’t even seen the accident happen, having lost all track of Geoffrey in the boundary woods. He had reached the old gatehouse, found no trace of Geoffrey, then returned to the Hall, thinking himself outridden. He had been distraught with guilt afterward, saying he should never have entered into the wager. But neither should a less than adequate horseman like Geoffrey.

  Beset with a sudden feeling of disloyalty, Emily glanced around the gallery. Samples of Geoffrey’s work graced every inch of paneling, especially the windowless eastern wall, where he had hung portraits of her, Peter, her mother, and even some of the servants. There was also a fine self-portrait of Geoffrey himself, the eyes of which had seemed to follow her from the moment she entered the gallery.

  She went closer to look at it. “Oh, Geoffrey, I miss you so,” she whispered, gazing at the sensitive, almost beautiful face. There was French blood in the Fairfields; indeed they had once been called the Beauchamps, and in Geoffrey that Gallic strain seemed to have come to the fore. He was matchless, the dark-eyed, dark-haired personification of French romance, sometimes melancholy, sometimes joyous, always loving. He could caress her with a glance, arouse her with a whisper, and take her to the edge of ecstasy with a single kiss.

  And he possessed more passion in his fingertips than Sir Rafe Warrender probably had in his entire body. There was not a day when she did not miss Geoffrey; as for the nights, they were more empty and lonely than she had ever imagined possible. She would continue to miss him even if she married Sir Rafe, whose unfinished likeness was still on the easel at the other end of the gallery, where the great south-facing window had always given Geoffrey the best light of all.

  Reluctantly, Emily walked the length of the gallery to look at Geoffrey’s last work. Sir Rafe gazed haughtily down the canvas, as if demanding that she compare him with the man she had lost. But they were too unalike, both in character and looks. She studied Sir Rafe. His head was almost fully painted, but the rest of him was a pencil sketch that was at once casual and detailed. He had an oval face and even features. It was an oddly expressionless visage, with wide, finely shaped lips, and light blue eyes that seemed almost secretive beneath their heavy lids. His hair was pale chestnut, thinning a little at the temples, but although he was forty, his figure was still slender, with no sign as yet of any thickening at the waist.

  He was pictured standing beside a chair that was still in the corner of the gallery. His beautifully drawn hand rested upon the gold-embroidered upholstery—except it didn’t simply rest there; it grasped the rich fabric as if proclaiming ownership of every last stitch. Geoffrey had captured him well, for Sir Rafe Warrender grasped everything like that. Soon he would grasp her too. What would it be like to be taken by such a man? In spite of what Mama said, had his considerable experience made him a skillful lover? Or would his lovemaking be perfunctory, an efficient coupling like one of his stallions with a mare? Did it matter? Why concern herself with such things when her heart was not involved? She was using Sir Rafe as a means to an end, so could she in all conscience complain if he used her in the same way?

  Chapter 6

  While waiting for Sir Rafe, Emily was in an agony of nerves and unanswered questions, but her thirteen-year-old son Peter was lying idly along a branch overhanging a pool in the woods that cloaked the northern boundary of the park. He dangled a fishing line into the water below. Starlings sang piercingly in the trees, and the guttural tones of a pheasant came from somewhere among the autumn-shaded ferns that covered most of the clearing. The mirror-like pool was dotted with leaves of yellow, crimson, amber, and brown, and every now and then he could see fish darting like quicksilver in the green depths.

  The woodland air smelled of autumn, that strangely invigorating blend of fading vegetation and smoke from garden fires, in this case from a single garden fire, that of the gatehouse, which lay several hundred yards away on the road from Temford into Wales. Directly across that road stood Sir Rafe’s castle estate, the armorial gates of which opened impressively from the town square of Temford.

  Emily’s boy was very like his father, with the same dark hair and rather French features, but he had her hazel eyes, Felix Reynolds’s eyes... Peter wasn’t very tall, nor was he well built, but his boyishly good-looking face promised a handsome man to come. He wore a maroon short-tailed coat, beige breeches, and top boots that had been newly polished when he set out from the house, but were now wet, mud-stained, and very scuffed.

  Peter was very conscious of his slight build, and of his unimpressive physical accomplishments. Mentally he was very quick and agile, but when it came to running, riding, or anything that required strength and endurance, he did not show up at all well. He wished he were more like the gatehouse keeper’s burly son, Archie Bradwell, who could run like a hare, ride like a cossack, and heave weights that Peter Fairfield could barely move an inch. Archie was also an able fisherman. If he were lying along this branch right now, his sack would be full of fat fish; Peter knew his sack was empty. It was always empty. There was no doubt that if they were both marooned on a desert island, Archie Bradwell would survive; Peter Fairfield would not. What point was there in being fluent in Latin if one died of hunger because one couldn’t catch a fish!

  Only yesterday there had been another humiliating encounter with the gatehouse keeper’s son. It had happened in the narrow valley by the rapids, where the River Teme, which flowed through the Fairfield Hall estate, squeezed swiftly between rocks.

  Peter had been stepping carefully from boulder to boulder, but had missed his footing and fallen into the river. He didn’t know Archie was watching from the other bank until he heard the roar of laughter as he hauled himself out by the packhorse bridge a little way downstream. Peter had been so mortified that he ran all the way home. Archie Bradwell was his pet aversion, and if he could best him even once, he’d be very happy indeed!

  Right now Peter was too hungry to think about his rival. All he had to eat was an apple he’d stolen from the gatehouse garden about half an hour before. What he really fancied was a toasted currant bun, which he knew he could have if he returned to the Hall, but nothing would drag him back there until Sir Rafe Warrender had been and gone. So the apple would have to do. He hoped it was a good one after all the trouble he’d had stealing it!

  He’d had to clamber over the garden wall in view of the gatehouse, and the Bradwells’ vicious lurcher had spotted him just as he was making his getaway. The wretched dog had managed to leap up and sink its teeth into his boot, hanging on so grimly that it had been at least a minute before he’d managed to shake it off and drop down to safety outside the wall.

  Unfortunately, the animal’s teeth had punctured the boot leather, so that copious amounts of brackish water had soaked his right foot when he’d run across the swampy area between the gatehouse garden and the edge of the woods. Now his stocking was cold and soggy, and his foot felt quite horrid.

  As if that was not bad enough, Bradwell had seen the apple thieving in progress, which meant Mama, or maybe Grandmama, would be told of the young master’s latest misdeeds. He would be ticked off again, as he had been yesterday when he crept up behind Grandmama just as she decided to check that her garter was secure. It wasn’t his fault that she’d raised her skirts and shown her stocking top! Nor was it his fault that people were stupid enough not to like it when he stalked them.

  With a sigh, Peter sat up and wriggled into a more comfortable position. More leaves floated down to the pool, landing without a sound and creating gentle concentric circles on the water. A fish plopped, disturbing the patterns, then glided away again, almost as if taunting him. Peter was resentful. If fish could laugh, these were undoubtedly curled up with mirth.

  He took the stolen apple from his pocket, polished it on his sleeve, and began to eat. He wished he didn’t feel so restless, fed up, and generally bad-tempered all the time. He knew he was upsetting his mother, but he just couldn’t help himself. At school he’d soaked up lect
ures about antiquities and geography like a blotter absorbing ink; now he had nothing to do all day. He had grown up on this estate and knew every inch of it so well that there was nothing left to intrigue him. He itched to travel like Grandmama’s distant cousin Felix, who had ventured to exciting places on the far side of the world. How could anyone be satisfied with Shropshire when there was South America to explore? Somewhere as provincial and insignificant as Temford could never compare with the wonders of the Incas and the Aztecs!

  He finished the apple, and tossed the core away, wiping his hand on his breeches. Then his gaze slid away from the pool toward an old fallen tree that lay in the center of the clearing, its gnarled trunk covered with moss and bracket fungi. Even now he could hardly believe his father had died because his head struck it when he was thrown from Sir Rafe’s horse. Tomorrow was the anniversary of that horrible day, yet Mama was wearing pink today. It wasn’t right, especially not for Sir Rafe!

  Tears shone in Peter’s eyes. He missed his father so much that it hurt, and he was so angry about it all that he often felt like going up to the long gallery at the Hall and destroying every last brush and canvas. He blinked the tears away furiously. He wouldn’t cry, for he was the man of the family now, and would remain so even if Mama married Sir Rafe!

  He bit his lip. To have such a stepfather thrust upon him was surely every boy’s worst dream. Please let Mama have a change of heart, he prayed. Let her come to her senses and find another way to put everything right.

  He began to clamber down from the tree, but paused as he heard a horse approaching. Quickly he scrambled back up to his branch and lay along it to see who it was. Archie maybe? He hoped so, for there might be an opportunity to get back at him somehow for the debacle at the rapids. But it was Sir Rafe Warrender who rode into the clearing, mounted on the same raw-boned black thoroughbred of a year ago.