The Pirate Hunter's Lady

by Jennifer Ashley

  He didn’t have much time now. Admiral Lockwood would have alerted whatever naval ships were in the area, and they’d be coming for him. Marines in red would fill the room, and they’d sail him off to some prison hulk to await hanging. Or maybe Admiral Lockwood would merely shoot James straight away. Lady Worthing might enjoy that.

  The door opened again, and steps whispered across the board floor. A moment of silence, then a cool hand rested on his forehead.

  James knew who it was without opening his eyes. He lay still a moment and enjoyed the softness of her touch, the scent of her skin. She bent over him, silken hair brushing his cheek.

  He reached up and touched her face.

  Diana gasped and jerked upright as James opened his eyes. Her red hair hung over her shoulder in a loose braid, and her cotton dress was thin enough for him to see that she wore no stays beneath it.

  The last time he’d seen Diana Worthing, she’d worn a fine lady’s dress with little ruby earrings in her ears, her hair dressed in neat curls — at least until the wind had torn at them. Now she wore simple garb, better for climbing about the rocks on this island, her hair hanging like a farmer’s daughter’s. James liked her better this way, fresh and unadorned, nothing to get in the way of her beauty.

  “I’m surprised you let me live, Lady Worthing,” he said.

  Diana tucked in his sheet with a sudden, vicious tug. “Yes, well, my father insisted we look after you.” Her tone told him she hadn’t agreed.

  “My thanks to him.”

  “He’s a kind man. He admires you.”

  James tried a laugh, but it came out cracked and harsh. “Doesn’t work, Lady Worthing.”

  “What does not?”

  “The lofty lady act. I know what you’re really like. All fire and sparks and sharp edges. Nothing ladylike about you.”

  Diana gave the sheet another tug, which pulled at his wound and gave him a moment of fresh pain. He bit down on it, not wanting to give her the triumph.

  “I helped my father and Jessup save your life,” she said. “But I’m not much pleased to see you again, Captain. I’m sure you understand that.”

  “But I’m pleased to see you.”

  Which was unusual for James. He knew very few women he’d be glad to stumble over twice in his life. But Diana was different. In the cramped parlor of the inn, when they’d been out of reach of the world, James had almost — almost — fallen, like a mighty oak that had resisted storms all its life, only to be pushed over by the touch of a butterfly when he wasn’t looking.

  What he should have done was flung all the dishes from the table and toss her to it in the wild frenzy they’d both felt. They should have taken one another in a fierce storm of passion, and gotten it out of their systems.

  Instead, they’d degenerated into an argument that had included flying soup and bread and ended in James walking out, alone and frustrated. He, James Ardmore, feared throughout the seas, bane of pirates, hated by the British navy, had been reduced to exchanging expletives and bread missiles with the wife of one of the most famous captains in England.

  Edward Worthing was now dead, and Diana was free. God help him.

  “Don’t worry,” James said. “I won’t be here long. A frigate must be rushing here to take me to my hanging.”

  Diana shook her head. “No one is coming. We’re cut off.”

  James stopped, surprised. “Are we?”

  “We keep only a gig,” she said, naming a one-masted rowboat not much good for long distances. “We’ll have to wait for a passing ship, and this is not their usual route.”

  James’s tightened muscles relaxed a little. “Well, now, isn’t that too bad?”

  “So you are in our care until then.”

  “Hmm, now why doesn’t that make me feel better?”

  Diana rested her slim hand on the sheet, right over his abdomen. “Does it pain you?” She sounded like she hoped so.

  James wanted to reach out and drag her down to him to prove he wasn’t helpless. He could lift her to straddle him, kiss her firm lips, and teach her to want him again. In this quiet place, before real life returned, they might steal a moment of bliss.

  He didn’t have the strength to do more than lift his fingers. “It’s not so bad,” he answered.

  Diana pressed down the slightest bit on his abdomen, and pain shot through him with a fiery vengeance. “Son of a bitch.”

  She lifted her hand. “You see? You’ll be here a while.”

  “Damn you, woman.”

  Diana smoothed the sheet again, this time more gently.

  James realized then that he wore nothing beneath it. They’d have had to take his clothes off in order to bandage and wash him. He wondered how thick the sheet was, and if Diana noticed how his rising cock was pressing against it.

  When she started to turn away, James closed his hand around her wrist. “Don’t go yet.”

  She stopped, uneasiness in her eyes. He thought she’d pull away, flay him with the scorn she did so well, maybe look around for some kind of food to throw at him.

  Instead Diana she let her gaze meet his for a long time, both of them silent. Then, very slowly, she reached down and drew one finger across the bronzed flesh of his shoulder.

  Sparks danced between them like a strike from flint. Mating desires was right. In London, they must have fought over her like beasts. Manners for drawing rooms probably flew out the window, etiquette meant nothing. A man would want to possess her, control her, mate with her. Nothing civilized about it.

  James brushed his thumb across the inside of her wrist. Soft, soft skin. Lovely Diana. Stay and play.

  “I told you, remember?” he whispered. “We’d tear up the world.”

  Diana jumped and jerked her hand away.

  “You started it, love.” James tucked his arm comfortably behind his head. “Tell me what happened to the lieutenant who washed up with me. He still alive?”

  Diana put a few feet between herself and the bed. “He had a bad head wound, but he’s better. My father thinks he’ll make a full recovery.”

  “Good. How long have we been here?”

  “Three weeks.”

  James stopped. “Three weeks . . .” He lifted his hand to his face. No beard marred it.

  “You have been very ill. We feared you would die.” Diana sounded as though that would have suited her.

  Three weeks. Damn.

  “You should rest now,” Diana said, still holding herself away from him. “I’ll call Jessup to change the bandage.”

  “Wait a minute. I want to talk to you.”

  Diana put her hands on her hips, her eyes flashing like southern stars. “Well, I do not wish to talk to you. I have said all there is to say.”

  “I remember. You said I should go back to the swamp I crawled out of. You didn’t even use good grammar when you said it.”

  Diana swung away. James started to laugh, at least as much as his throat would let him.

  “I’ll fetch my father,” she said. “And the lieutenant. They have something to ask you.”

  Probably a good many things. James was wanted for numerous crimes against the Royal Navy, damn their rotten souls, and likely would fetch a good ransom.

  Diana almost ran away. The hem of her cotton frock lifted, showing that beneath she again wore skin-hugging breeches and half boots. Probably so she could climb around the island without scratching up her legs. Her glorious long legs.

  Her sloppy red braid caught on the back hooks of her bodice. James watched her go, reflecting that he liked her better now than when she’d been dressed as a fashionable lady, all silk and gossamer. She looked like a real woman here, one he could throw over his shoulder and drag off to have a little fun with.

  She’d left the door open. Sunlight danced in the hall, and James sobered.

  Three weeks. Interesting. These people had healed him, shaved him, cared for him. For three weeks. They could have let him die, and the world would have been rid of Captain Ardmo
re, outlaw and pirate hunter. Admiral Lockwood would have been praised as a hero, and Diana would have thought it a job well done.

  But these English people, who had no cause to love James, had saved his life and nursed him back to health. Why? he wondered. Was this kindness, or something else?

  Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall, interspersed with Diana’s lighter ones. Over those came the pattering footsteps of the little girl.

  They entered the room — Diana, her daughter, an older man with graying hair but the same firm jaw as Diana, and the lieutenant who’d washed up on the beach with James. The buttons on the lieutenant’s dark blue coat had been polished, his hair neatly combed and trimmed. His brown eyes were both stern and frightened.

  Hmm. A man inside the uniform of the most powerful navy on earth was frightened.

  The lieutenant approached the bed, the watchfulness in his eyes turning to hope. “Hullo,” he said.

  James stared back at him. An officer in the British navy did not speak to the likes of Captain Ardmore in that friendly tone, no matter that James had saved him from drowning. “Hey,” James answered neutrally.

  The lieutenant stopped. “You do not know who I am.”

  “I know you’re the lieutenant who was about to drown before I hauled his backside onto that piece of wood with me. Why?”

  The man stared at him a little longer, then tears washed his eyes, and he balled his hands and turned away. He moved to the window and looked out, his back stiff.

  “You don’t know his name?” Admiral Lockwood said, giving James a sharp look. The admiral was not very tall, which meant that Diana’s height had come from her mother’s side of the family. He had a longish face and a long nose to go with it, and blue eyes that held intelligence and awareness.

  James shrugged the best he could. “No. Sorry. Didn’t get much to the quarterdeck.”

  Diana flicked her gaze to the lieutenant, then back to James. Her eyes could burn him up, and he wasn’t sure he’d want someone to douse him if they did.

  “He does not remember,” Diana said. She sounded angry, as though she blamed James. “He remembers nothing that happened before waking up here. We hoped you could tell us who he was.”

  *** *** ***

  Diana sat on her campstool on the ledge overlooking the beach, pretending to sketch. She tried to concentrate on the landscape she was to be drawing, but she was very aware that Captain Ardmore had left the house and now leaned on the garden gate, watching her.

  A week had passed. Diana had given over nursing him to Mrs. Pringle, the small woman who acted as their cook and housekeeper. Unseemly for her to continue, Diana had explained to her.

  Coward, she’d berated herself. But Diana could not trust herself around him.

  She’d come here to Haven last summer, after her disgrace over the abduction, to console herself. Not long later, her husband Edward had taken the voyage that had ended his life.

  On Haven, nothing touched Diana. Here she could regress to her girlhood days of quiet happiness, and enjoy walks with Isabeau and her father, the peace of puttering in her garden, and playing on the beach with her daughter.

  Now James had come to destroy her peace. He’d laughed when she’d touched him as he’d lain helplessly in his bed. He’d watched Diana with those ice-green eyes, and the sheet in the area of his thighs had risen the slightest bit.

  The carnal reaction had startled her, just as it had when he’d held her in his arms in that dark parlor in the public house. Her admirers in London had liked to chase her about ballrooms or corner her alone or write badly rhymed poems to her, but true carnality had never entered the equation, despite what Edward had believed.

  Overall, it was best that Mrs. Pringle took over the nursing.

  Isabeau played in the waves below her. The blond man they’d decided to call Lieutenant Jack helped her gather shells.

  Lieutenant Jack remembered nothing, not the shipwreck, nor the ship itself, nor anything about his life prior to waking up in Diana’s father’s house. Diana pitied him. Jack covered his distress with determined cheerfulness, but she saw in his eyes, when he thought no one was looking, the blank fear of man who walked the edge of a cliff and wondered when he would fall.

  James had claimed to know nothing about him. Diana wondered if that were true. James had not explained what he’d been doing on a ship with an English naval lieutenant anyway. He’d only shrugged and said he’d been traveling.

  Very suspicious. James was a liar. Diana’s father knew that, but he was strangely willing to let James tell his lies.

  Haven had its secrets, her father’s secrets. Upon discussing it, Diana and the admiral had decided that they should not worry unduly. The island could hide its secrets well, even from someone as ruthless as Ardmore.

  Diana’s pencil poised on the clean paper clamped to her easel. She was supposed to be drawing Isabeau below her, the waves, happy memories of Haven. But James had left the garden gate and was strolling her way.

  They’d mended his clothes, but neither her father nor Jessup had possessed breeches or shirts large enough for him. So his dark coat hung open, exposing his hard chest and abdomen and the white bandage across his waist. He’d offered no explanation for the wound, and oddly, Diana’s father had not pressed him for that either.

  James stopped beside her. He could have continued down to the beach, helped Lieutenant Jack and Isabeau collect shells, but did he? Oh, no. He stood next to Diana, rested one booted foot on a rock, and forced her attention entirely on him.

  Chapter Six

  Diana slashed her pencil across the paper, but the resulting line had nothing to do with the scene in front of her.

  “A fine day,” James observed.

  His voice had healed, the grating from his near-drowning gone. He spoke with the long vowels and silken consonants of the Southern states of America, and managed to make every word sensuous.

  “We are always lucky in our weather.” Diana’s words were cool, clipped, very English.

  The sudden vision came upon her of drawing him. She imagined the pencil strokes to outline his shoulders, his chest, the hollow of his throat, the line of hair that led to his waistband. She was acutely aware of his coat opening in the breeze, every line of his exposed chest, the slash of pale bandage across his brown skin.

  Diana’s pencil moved on the paper before she could stop it. She gripped the pencil so hard it snapped in two.

  “Careful,” he said.

  Diana slammed the broken pieces to the easel. “I do not care for sketching. It is too windy.”

  She nearly ripped the paper from the clasps and tumbled it and her pencils into her sketch box. She folded the easel, pretending to ignore James as he stooped to retrieve the box for her.

  Below them, Isabeau dug fervently in the sand. Lieutenant Jack squatted next to her, showing her how to mold the sand with the small bucket she’d brought with her.

  Diana softened as she watched them. “He so enjoys Isabeau’s company. I wonder if he has children of his own.”

  “He won’t know until he gets back to England,” James said.

  “His family must imagine him lost.” She glanced at James. “So must yours.”

  “Not really,” James drawled, his gaze still on Lieutenant Jack. “The only one left is my sister, and she’s always happy to see the back of me.”

  Diana remembered the pretty, black-haired girl with James’s green eyes who’d stared out of the portrait she’d found in his sea chest. “Why do you say so?”

  “Not all families are full of tender-hearted warmth, Lady Worthing. You ought to know. You hated your husband’s guts, didn’t you?”

  James had been one of the few people in her life who’d realized that right away. But it still pained Diana to speak of it. “Isabeau is waving,” she said. No need to answer his question. He knew. “We should go down to her.”

  James insisted on carrying her sketch box and folded easel. Diana sped nimbly along the path before
him, wishing he’d go away. She couldn’t think clearly with James near. But he followed, navigating the rocky passage to the beach with no difficulty, even burdened, not to mention wounded.

  Lieutenant Jack rose from the sand and beamed Diana a smile. She quite liked Lieutenant Jack. He was polite. Jack strove to hide his bewilderment with friendliness, and his gratitude for their help touched her.

  Jack was Diana’s own age and quite handsome, with his light-colored hair, intelligent hazel eyes, and body as honed as James’s. Diana wished she could fall in love with Jack and put James firmly out of her mind.

  “Your daughter wants to build a castle the length of the beach,” Lieutenant Jack said.

  “She would,” Diana answered darkly.

  “How do you understand her?” James asked. “She can’t speak.”

  “Oh, she gets her meaning across well enough,” Jack said. “She and Lady Worthing speak in signs, you know. Very clever.”

  Isabeau had invented the signs herself. Over the years, Diana, Isabeau, and the admiral had added to them. Diana warmed still more to Lieutenant Jack.

  Isabeau had been running through the waves, making the high-pitched squealing noises she called singing. Now she hastened back to them and grabbed Diana’s hand.

  “My father is preparing the boat for launching,” Diana told Lieutenant Jack as she let her daughter swing on her hand. “He wants to fish ’round the leeward side of he island.”

  Lieutenant Jack brightened. He liked sailing around Haven, had done so already several times with Diana’s father. Jack would remember things, such as how to tie knots, move sails, and navigate, which gave him hope that he’d remember more as time went on.

  The last time her father had taken the boat out, however, Lieutenant Jack had stayed ashore, laid low with a foul headache, a reminder of his original injury. He’d been almost pathetically looking forward to the next outing.

  “I’d be happy to accompany him,” Jack said now. “Coming Ardmore?”

  James touched his abdomen. “Not today. This cut still hurts a bit. Best I stay a landsman a while.”

  Lieutenant Jack looked concerned. “Then perhaps we’d better not desert you.”