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?”
“Madame, I’ll have your answer,” Spencer said, feeling fierce and wishing himself civilized. But then, he’d never been all that civilized.
She tightened her hold on the infant as she glared up at Spencer. “I liked you better when you were nearly senseless. You didn’t talk so much. Yes, I’ll marry you. For William, for what appears to be your very kind and concerned family, I’ll marry you. But attempt to touch me again, Spencer Becket, and I’ll gut you like a deer. Do we understand each other?”
Spencer watched her eyes, those tip-tilted green eyes that had looked so lovingly at William and now stared icily at him. The fire of her hair, the sudden ice of her eyes.
He remembered Jacko’s joking comment and un-ashamedly used it. “I could say the same to you, Mariah, as I was hardly in any position to fight off your advances, was I? Another man might say you took unfair advantage of me.”
“But another man didn’t say that, did he? You did. Another man might not have been fevered and distraught and reaching out to someone, to anyone. And another woman might not have been so frightened, so alone…so foolish as to yearn for someone to hold on to, for someone to tell her that, yes, she was still alive, she could still feel…and that being held, being kissed, being touched, was so natural, so human a need…”
“Sweet Jesus,” Spencer said, rubbing roughly at his aching head. She’d just said exactly what he’d thought last night, put those thoughts into words that sliced at him, humbled him. “I don’t remember, Mariah. I can’t remember. I’m…I’m so, so sorry. Was it so terrible?”
“You? Were you so terrible? Is that what you mean?”
Spencer attempted a smile. “Consider it manly pride, madam. If the thought of me touching you ever again upsets you so, I must imagine that the experience wasn’t exactly a maiden’s dream.”
Mariah didn’t know what to say, where to look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…that is, I didn’t know what to expect.”
“But, whatever you did expect, it wasn’t what you received?”
“No, I suppose not.” She kissed William’s head. “When you were gone, I was glad. I knew I couldn’t face you, not after what we’d…And then, when I realized what had happened…that I was…Can we please discuss this some other time?”
“When you realized you were carrying my child,” Spencer finished for her. He was pushing her, he knew that. But there was so much he couldn’t remember. How in hell could a man forget bedding this woman? “You must have hated me then.”
“I can’t hate you now. Look at him. Something good, coming out of something so terrible. So many lives lost, and now there’s him.”
Spencer sat on the side of the bed, laid his hand on the small, tightly swaddled infant. “Let’s begin again,” he suggested quietly, then smiled. “No, let’s begin. There’s no again about it, is there? For William?”
Mariah
