Dangerous Beauty Read online

  Quickly, like wine from a decanter, a stream of significant events and memories from those years poured through her memory. The birthdays, the parties, the family dinners. Holidays in the country, and her first tour of Europe at thirteen. Arguments with her parents about appropriate dresses for a girl her age. Balls—so many balls and grand soirees! The excitement of the start of the season and the highlights of the year’s social calendar. All those memories, all those watershed moments. And throughout all those years, Seth had lived his desperately mean little life in the worst prison in the world.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, unable to shake the horrible image. “How terrible it must have been for you.”

  “There were some that were considered unskilled and they were assigned to laboring camps,” Seth said, his voice low. “Day in and day out, they did naught but break rocks and build walls. They lived out of tents year-round and Van Dieman’s Land has weather every inch as bitter as a cold winter in Innesford.” He frowned. “Those poor sorry lads died like fleas, but there was always a new supply of convicts for England kept sending more and more.” He shook his head. “I was one of the lucky ones. I found myself assigned as a servant to an Englishman who was trying to set up a trading business out of Port MacQuarrie. He had himself a grand little whaler that he used as a merchanter. He’d run supplies down from Sydney town and sometimes England itself, when the going was fair. And for six years I worked with John Foley. He was a proud man, but honorable, ‘nd he alone was the only Englishman I could stand to be in the same room with. The man was without his letters, though. He needed someone to read and write and deal with his correspondence. He must’ve looked upon me as a God-given blessing—a convict that’d do his paperwork, yet wouldn’t cost him a penny beyond food and shelter. Then, when he died, well…” Seth rubbed the back of his neck. “He gave me the business.”

  Natasha stared at him. “Gave it to you? A convict?”

  Vaughn shook his head. “Seth is leaving out a most vital part of his story, so I will tell it.”

  “The ladies haven’t the need to hear the lurid details,” Seth said quickly.

  “This lady has already heard them from Vaughn,” Elisa replied firmly. “Vaughn is right, Seth. She must know all of it—as much as you can tell. And this part in particular.”

  Seth took a deep breath. Natasha could see his chest rise beneath the shirt and bit her lip to fight the sudden urge to pull the shirt from his pants and run her hands beneath the linen, to spread her fingers over the flesh she just knew would be hot, pliant and silky. Then he pushed his hand through his hair again, and nodded to Vaughn.

  Vaughn put his fingers together and touched his lips with them, composing the start of his narrative. Natasha saw Elisa was watching Vaughn’s fingers, her eyes narrowed a little and her breath coming quickly. Feeling like she was eavesdropping, or intruding upon a moment Elisa had intended to be quite private, Natasha returned her attention squarely to Vaughn’s face again and sipped her cooling tea.

  “For transportees, perhaps the worst part of their sentence is the journey to Australia. They’re herded upon ships and crammed into holds too small to contain them all and for eight, ten weeks or more they must survive storms, corrupt guards, and inadequate food. These ships are paid to transport the convicts and the more they carry, the higher their fee. There is no penalty and little investigation if a ship arrives in Australia with fewer convicts than when they left port, so they have no reason to care for their prisoners’ welfare.”

  Seth blew out a heavy breath, but didn’t speak. Natasha looked to Vaughn once more. “Go on,” she said.

  “In the sixth year of Seth’s service to John Foley, his master decided that transporting convicts seemed like a profitable venture. Seth tried to explain to him the truth of it—that to profit at all would mean treating fellow human beings with less regard than the Herefordshire bulls he regularly shipped from England. But Foley could only see the profit. He’d spoken at length to other transportation ship owners and they had painted a rosy picture for him. Foley took Seth with him on his first voyage, using an old whaler he’d just acquired and equipped for human transportation.”

  Natasha was startled. “How could you go with him?” she asked Seth. “How could you stand to watch their suffering?”

  “I went because I couldna’ stay away. If I was there I could watch over them, be sure they were treated as well as it was in my power to arrange.”

  “I see.” Natasha looked at Vaughn, waiting for him to continue.

  “The contracts for transportation were difficult to get, for there were plenty of merchants willing to turn a profit at the government’s expense. But there was a new opportunity looming. Foley knew that if he could get his ship to England, he could win a contract to transport convicts to the new prison colony starting up in Fremantle, in Western Australia. The one journey would be so profitable, he could re-convert his ship back to the whaler it is designed to be and either sell the ship or work the whale trade down in Albany. Crews were easy to find down there, for Albany was a free town, well established and the whale trade was thriving.

  “He took Seth with him, because Seth was a steady hand on board and had learned much about handling boats over the six years he’d been his servant. And as Seth just told you, he went to keep an eye on the convicts.

  “On the return voyage from England, in 1829, there was a terrible storm at sea. Seth risked his life to help the transportees in the prison deck up onto the top deck, where they could survive the storm and not drown in rising bilge waters. He also saved Foley’s life by lashing him to the mast, then he single-handedly steered the boat through the raging seas until they reached calmer waters.”

  Vaughn grimaced. “Seth made light of this, but I happen to know a little about ships and I can tell you that one man trying to handle a ship through high seas would be a next-to-impossible task. It would take physical strength and endurance beyond imagination. What happened next doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”

  Elisa sat forward, her eyes shining with anticipation.

  “After the storm, they toted up the damage and souls lost to them. Many of the crew, you see, had been washed overboard, or were injured and couldn’t work the sails. Foley didn’t know enough about handling a ship, for he was a businessman first. Seth convinced the transportees to work with him to keep the boat afloat and seaworthy, so that they could all make it to port alive. And so they did.”

  “Ah, ye make light of it,” Seth muttered. “Ye fail to mention I slept with a loaded pistol, when I slept at all. There were genuine thieves and cut-throats on that ship and they’d have sooner tossed the women and children overboard and me right along with them, then set sail for Tahiti. Nothing awaited for them in Australia but hard labor. It was only that Fremantle and fresh water was closer that saved the day for us.”

  Vaughn just smiled. “When the ship arrived in Fremantle, Foley petitioned to the Governor of New South Wales, who was the nearest representative for the crown, for Seth’s unconditional pardon. Six weeks later, an answer was received. The convicts who had helped Seth had their sentences reduced by half. And Seth was a free man.”

  Natasha smiled at Seth and he cleared his throat. “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “For the next year, Seth worked for Foley and saved his meager salary. He intended to buy himself one of the castoff whalers that were used for transporting most of the convicts. The whaling industry was still growing there, although there was sharp competition from American whaling vessels. In 1832, Foley died. He’d made Seth his sole heir and Seth was suddenly the owner of a fleet, with a small fortune to his name, and a thriving merchant business that was not subject to the vagaries of whale spotting and American competition.”

  Natasha shook her head a little and looked at Seth. “And you did not feel that was something I should know?” she asked.

  He rubbed the back of his neck again. “I’m not proud of my part in the affair. I should’ve talked Fo
ley out of the venture in the first place and not scurried around trying to patch things together with spit and prayer after.”

  “And the men, women and children who had their sentences reduced would still be in prison, if you had.”

  “Aye, well, there’s that,” Seth agreed sheepishly.

  Natasha put her forgotten cup and saucer aside. The tea was quite cold now. “That was, what, five years ago? You stayed in Australia, Seth, yet you said you wanted nothing more than to return to Ireland to help your friends.”

  “True enough,” Seth agreed easily, and Natasha could see that he had relaxed. The worst of the telling was done, then. And what a tale! If only all of London could hear it, then perhaps they might change their minds over this most desperate and dangerous criminal.

  “Why did you stay?”

  “I had six ships and their crews to look after. Many of the crews had families settled in Albany and they all looked to me for wages to feed their kin. I couldn’t up and leave them stranded. As healthy as the trade was, there was little enough cash for a journey to Ireland that held not a single promise of profit. Foley took nearly six years to build the funds he needed to finance his first journey to England. I took nearly as long as that, myself. I spent the years building the business up. I was always counting the pennies and adding up the margins, watching the surplus grow. I transported goods and people—paying customers, ye mind—between Albany, Port MacQuarrie, Sydney, Fremantle, anywhere I could turn a good profit. And it’d be an astonishing year if someone didn’t offer me their whaling boat at a price that brought a blush to my face.”

  “You kept buying more boats?” Natasha asked. “I thought you were trying to raise cash?” She’d had ten formal years of education at the hands of indifferent tutors, but mathematics and economics had been her strongest subjects. She knew that buying a ship—investing back into the business—would drain whatever cash Seth had put aside.

  And again, Seth rubbed the back of his neck. “These others thought they would bring whalers out to Albany and turn themselves a handsome profit, but it was an overcrowded business they found when they got there. They’d last maybe a year, their cash pouring from their hands like bilge from a leaky boat and then find themselves in a jam they couldna’ figure their way out of…until they heard Seth Harrow would buy their boat for cash. So they’d come to me, hat in hand and humble, and…well.”

  “The ships all had crews who looked to the owner for their wages,” Vaughn explained simply.

  Natasha bit her lip to hide her smile and looked back at Seth. “You couldn’t let them starve, could you?” she asked, keeping her tone reasonable.

  “Of course I couldn’t, lass! There’s too much of the starving to go around as it is.” Seth almost glared at her, his indignation making her bite the inside of her cheek even harder.

  Then he added softly, “I’ve seen too many babes wailing for the pain in their empty stomachs, too many children staring at me with wide, puzzled eyes, wondering what sort of world it was that could keep food from them and let them die unremarked. I’ll not sit still and allow babes to go unfed while there’s breath in my body. Not again. Not ever.”

  Natasha’s humor fled. “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t think of what else she could say that would take that angry glint from his eyes.

  He pushed his hand through his hair again and took a deep breath.

  Vaughn shifted in his chair and took over the tale once more. “Seth finally scratched together the cash he needed in 1837. Last year. He set sail the day after Christmas. The night of the ball—the night you met him, Natasha, was his first night on English soil in fifteen years. There were two reasons he bothered to visit this country. And I think you can probably guess both of them.”

  “To see your mother,” Natasha said instantly, glancing at Seth for his small, confirming nod. “And…food. For your friends in Ireland. Liam and the others.”

  “Well done,” Vaughn said softly.

  “I only ever intended to linger long enough to fill the holds with food, then set sail immediately for Cork,” Seth added. “Once I’d made Ireland, I thought I’d be able to convince many of them to come away back to Australia with me, if I made a good accounting of my life there. And in truth, it’s a far better life than most of them face under the English yoke. I would steal in and out of London and none’d be the wiser, but…” He grimaced and shrugged. “I’d not made allowances for this black bloody temper of mine, nor…” He looked at her then, straight into her eyes. “Nor did I plan for you.”

  Natasha shivered and her heart picked up its pace, but she fought to think things through despite the heady implication behind his words. For despite them, she was still wary.

  She’d had her coming out season when she was sixteen and within the first six weeks of that season, she had realized with an abrupt shock that she was considered a rare beauty, one that men would willingly fight over. It garnered her attention she did not want. Her appearance drove men to desperate measures to possess her, and she had long ago learned how to deflect even the most ardent of them.

  Only Vaughn had appeared indifferent to her looks. Perhaps that was why she had been drawn to him.

  But now she tried to contain her runaway heart, and consider Seth’s words coolly.

  “You could still go to Ireland,” she pointed out. “There’s nothing holding you here in England. You could steal out of the county in your ship and go help your friends. No one will stop you.”

  “No one but you,” Seth added.

  Her heart stopped and her stomach rolled over in a lazy way that made her tremble.

  Vaughn stood up. “Elisa, a walk to Hyde Park would be just the thing.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right,” Elisa agreed, putting her teacup aside.

  “No, please don’t go on my account,” Natasha said quickly.

  Vaughn shook his head. “We will give you two some privacy. Take it, Natasha, for you won’t find such an offer anywhere else in London. You and Seth must talk and you can only talk freely if we are not here. Gilroy will be within calling distance, if you feel the need, but I’m confident you will not. Not with Seth.”

  Natasha bit her lip, uncertain. Fear was looming large again. Even though she knew the truth about Seth, she still did not really know him. He was asking her for a decision that would change the course of his life and affect the lives of hundreds of people who looked to him for their daily living, based purely on a story—a fireside tale.

  Vaughn must have seen something of her fear in her face, for he smiled kindly. “Before I go, I will tell you something that may help you think about this.” Gilroy held out his coat, and he slipped his arms into it, and then held up a finger for emphasis. “None of what Seth and I have told you has been proven. There isn’t a single fragment of evidence, for I have yet to see even this boat of his that he claims to have tied up at the East End.”

  “It’s a ship, ye great lout. If that’s your way of helping the lass, I’d ask ye kindly to save your breath,” Seth growled.

  Vaughn glanced at his friend with a smile, as he buttoned up his coat. “It reads better if it’s all laid out,” he said simply. “Remember. Strategy, Seth.”

  Seth scowled and crossed his arms.

  Vaughn continued, undeterred. “What you should know, Natasha, is that the conviction for which he claims he is innocent fits in with his character. He’s passionate, Irish to the core, despite being half-English, and fiercely loyal. Seth is one of the most honorable, loyal men I have ever known. It’s those two qualities that make me believe his story.”

  Elisa settled her shawl around her shoulders. “What he says is quite true, Natasha. Vaughn is so sure of Seth that he has spent the last day contacting all his people— especially those in Ireland—with the sole intention of helping Seth find the proof he needs. And Vaughn is better at this than any man that I know, for he found my son when no one else could…or would.” She smiled and rested her hand on Natasha’s arm.

>   Then Vaughn and Natasha left for Hyde Park, Gilroy following them from the room.

  She was alone with Seth.

  Chapter Eight

  Seth was staring at her, his silver eyes dark like a coming storm.

  Natasha realized she was trembling and moved to sit on the end of the settee, which was as far from the fireplace and Seth as the room allowed. “It’s…quite a life you’ve had, Seth,” she ventured, for he seemed to be in no rush to fill the silence that had bloomed.

  “Ye don’t believe me, do you?” he asked, his voice low.

  “I need time to…absorb it,” she pleaded. “For two days I have heard nothing but terrible stories about your conviction as a murderer and how you have ruined so many people’s lives. And no one, not even you, disputed that you had, indeed, been transported to Australia for murder. Now I find that there’s a whole facet to the story that wasn’t visible before.”

  He moved towards her. “Surely you suspected I’d have my own story to tell?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He sank onto the sofa beside her and rested his elbow on the chair’s arm, running his fingers along the plush red material. His hands were large, the fingers long-tapered and calloused.

  Silence fell again, broken only by the crackling of logs on the fire. She could feel him watch her, his silver gaze burning into her. A blush raced up her cheeks. Dismayed, she tried to compensate for the telling reaction. She caught his gaze and held it. “Why do you stare at me so?”

  The sides of his mouth lifted in a lazy smile. “I think you are more beautiful without all the makeup and frills.” His gaze shifted over her face, reminding her that she wore no rouge, or any ornament in her hair. The dress she wore was equally plain.

  She touched her hair self-consciously. “I left the house and did not even pause to glance in the mirror…I was so mad.”

  He lifted the hand that lay on the back of the sofa and very gently, with just his fingertip, touched her cheek. “They hit you?” he asked. Tiny flecks seemed to swirl in his eyes, as if the storm drew closer.