A Most Unsuitable Groom. Kasey Michaels

to see Jacko stepping forward to hold open the door for two of the Becket Hall women, Edyth and Birdie, to enter with pots of steaming water and an armful of towels. This was happening. This was really happening.

      “I would say approximately nine months, Spencer,” Elly told him. “So that would be…last September?”

      Spencer shook his head. “No, that can’t be right. We didn’t meet the Americans at the swamp until the beginning of October. So that’s…that’s…” He began counting on his fingers, then looked at his sister before looking at the closed door, his stomach suddenly uneasy. “It’s too soon, isn’t it? If it’s mine.”

      “If it’s yours? Spencer?”

      He held up his hands to ward off the harder tone of Eleanor’s voice. “It’s mine. Odette says so. The woman says so. I’m the fornicating son of a three-legged cur. I just don’t remember. Why don’t I remember?”

      “You had that knock on the head,” Jacko reminded him. “Your shoulder, your leg, the knock on the head, that fever that hung on for months according to Clovis. Damn, boy, I’d say the woman had her wicked way with you when you couldn’t fight her off. You lucky devil.”

      “Jacko.”

      One word, just one, from Eleanor and Jacko lost his smile and much of his swagger. “I was just saying…”

      “Yes, and now that you have, you will forget you’ve said it, please,” Eleanor told him as if she were a governess scolding her young charge. “Now, you boys go downstairs to Papa, who had the good sense not to come up here, and I will go in with the ladies and offer my assistance if it is needed as I introduce myself to your young woman.”

      “She’s not my—” Spencer gave it up as a bad job. “You’ll let us know what’s happening?”

      “I will,” Eleanor said, her smile soft. “What’s her name, Spencer? I should most probably know that.”

      “Rutledge. Mariah Rutledge. And she’s English. But that’s all I know. Damn it all to hell, Elly, that’s all I know.”

      And that hair, that voice…

      Spencer pressed his fingers against his temples, hoping for more memories to assert themselves. But there was nothing. He did not know this woman, remember this woman. “Go downstairs, everyone, before we wake Fanny and Callie. I’m…I’m going to go talk to Clovis.”

      He walked briskly toward the servant stairs and climbed to the top floor of the large house to where Anguish and Clovis had been installed upon their arrival at Becket Hall.

      Ainsley had given them the run of the house if they’d wanted it, in thanks for bringing Spencer back to Becket Hall, but neither man had felt comfortable with that sort of free and easy arrangement. After all, as Clovis pointed out, they were only doing their duty. Hiding them from an army they didn’t wish to return to was thanks enough for both of them.

      Still, Becket Hall wasn’t like most English homes, made up of a strict hierarchy of master, master’s family, upper servants, lower servants. No, that wasn’t for Ainsley Becket.

      He had run a taut ship but a fair one, and he ran a fair house. The servants were the crew, each lending a hand to whatever chore was necessary at the moment, and each still very much the individual…individuals who refused to see Ainsley as anyone less than their beloved Cap’n.

      There was no butler or major domo at Becket Hall. Whoever heard the knocker and was close opened the door. When beds needed changing they were changed; when rugs needed beating they were beaten.

      The only area of the house Ainsley considered to be off-limits to himself and most of the household was the kitchens where the cook, Bumble, reigned supreme by means of a sharp tongue and a sharper knife that had been waved threateningly a time or three over the years, and anyone who thought the man’s wooden leg had slowed him soon learned their mistake.

      When Clovis and Anguish were moved in nobody blinked an eye. The Cap’n said they could stay, so stay they would and welcome aboard. Clovis had insisted upon acting as Spencer’s right hand and, since Anguish no longer had a right hand, he had offered his left to Bumble and now spent most of his day sitting on a high stool in the main kitchen, telling tall tales to make the females giggle behind their hands and sampling all of the day’s dishes. It was an arrangement that worked well all around.

      Spencer knocked at Clovis’s door, because personal privacy was also very much a part of living at Becket Hall, and entered only when he heard a grunt from the other side of the thick wood.

      He walked in to see Clovis sitting on the side of his bed, still completely dressed, an empty bottle in his hand.

      “Sir!” Clovis said, quickly getting to his feet. “I’m wanted?”

      “In several countries, no doubt,” Spencer returned with a wan smile, indicating with a wave of his hand that his friend should sit once more, and then joining him. “You’re still worrying about our decision to guard the freetraders?”

      “That I am, Lieutenant, sir,” Clovis told him, then sighed. “You and Anguish see adventure, and I see only trouble. I think I’m old, and I don’t know which worries me more.”

      “No, not old, just prudent. But I’m here on another matter. Clovis, do you recall a woman named Mariah Rutledge?”

      Clovis shot to his feet once more. “You’re rememberin’, sir? Well, sir, that’s above all things grand.”

      “No, I’m not remembering anything, more’s the pity. She’s here, Clovis, at Becket Hall. Miss Rutledge. And she’s giving birth to my child in my sister’s bedchamber. Odette says it’s a boy, so I imagine it is.”

      The older man sat down once more with a thump that shook the bed. “I shouldn’t drink so deep. I thought you said—sir?”

      “I know, Clovis. It’s a lot to swallow. I don’t remember Miss Rutledge. I damn sure don’t remember bedding the woman.”

      Clovis wrinkled his brow, deep in thought. “Well, sir, we were all together for more’n three weeks. First in the swamp, then movin’ north. Forty-two of us, forty-one after little Willy died. Sad that, him being only three years old. You remember that, sir?”

      Spencer shook his head. “No. Nothing. How did he die?”

      “Caught a stray bullet during the worst of it, sir. We laid him atop you when we drug you along in the litter the Indian women made up. Until he died, that is. You suffered something terrible, sir, when we had to take his little body from you. I didn’t want to tell you. There are things best not remembered. Mr. Ainsley said as much himself when we told him. Either you’d remember or you wouldn’t.”

      Spencer buried his head in his hands. War. What a stupid, senseless way of settling disputes. Governments shouldn’t rise or fall on how many people their soldiers could kill. “I don’t remember, Clovis. I don’t remember any of it. Tell me…at least tell me about Miss Rutledge.”

      “Miss Rutledge, sir? Now there’s a woman. General Rutledge, Anguish called her. Standin’ up, takin’ charge, barkin’ out orders, everyone steppin’ -to just as if they knew it was right, that she was goin’ to save us all, lead us out of there. And I’ll say this for her. She did it, sir. A fine, rare woman. She was the first to begin strippin’ the dead for what we could use, sayin’ prayers over each one, thankin’ them for what she took. It was her what sang to our Anguish the whole of the time we was cuttin’ off his arm. Holdin’ his head in her lap, singin’ loud enough to shoo the birds from the trees. Don’t hear the saw workin’ down on the bone so much that way, you see, or hear Anguish cursin’ and screamin’.”

      He shook his head. “I ain’t never seen the like, not from a woman. Walkin’ around in that scarlet jacket she took for her own, givin’ us all what-for, tellin’ us what to do. Our Lady of the Swamp, Anguish called her, too, when she couldn’t hear him. I think he half expected her to