“Storm coming in.”
“Don’t you think someone should make the captain aware of it?”
“He’s aware, m’lady. He’s busy now trying to determine how best to avoid it.”
“Ah, well, then,” she said half to herself, half to Martha, “we’ve nothing to worry about.”
A couple of hours after sunset, the storm caught up with them—or they caught up with it. Anne wasn’t quite certain of the particulars except for the fact that she was exceedingly disappointed in the captain’s navigating skills. When the ship had begun tossing her and Martha about the cabin as though they were ragdolls, they both ran up to the deck and watched in horror as water lashed over the sides.
The captain grabbed her arm in a bruising hold and jerked her about. The fury reflected in his eyes rivaled the storm’s. “Get below and stay there!”
“What about you?”
“Now!”
And he shoved her. Shoved her! Then the bulk that was Peterson was doing the same with Martha and blocking the doorway. “Into your cabin immediately!”
Now she and Martha were curled on the bed, taking turns hanging over a bucket, even though neither had anything left to bring up. She tried to console herself that the ship had no doubt been through many storms, that the captain no doubt knew what he was doing. But the fierceness with which the boat lurched was terrifying. Her stomach sank and rose with the swells of the sea. She wanted to die, wished she was dead.
The ship groaned and creaked. How could it withstand the bombardment? What if it didn’t?
She thought she heard a knock. Was it the ship splitting apart? Then it came again and the door opened. The captain stood there with strands of his drenched hair having worked free of his leather thong. He removed his greatcoat and tossed it to the floor where it landed with a wet slap.
“Are we going to sink?” she asked.
“No, we’re through the worst of it.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” She wanted to tell him that if anything it felt worse, but at that moment her stomach pitched and she grabbed the bucket. Oh, it hurt, it hurt to heave and have nothing come up.
Suddenly he was crouched beside her, rubbing her back. “Easy now,” he cooed, before yelling, “Peterson!”
The large man stepped through the doorway. “Aye, Cap’n?”
“Take the maid to your quarters.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
He leaned over the bed and lifted a feebly protesting Martha as though she were a feather pillow. “Easy, woman. No one’s going to hurt you.”
To Anne’s surprise, Martha sagged against him and began crying.
“I know, I know, girl. It’s frightening, but it’s all over now. You’ll feel right as rain soon enough.”
She was also surprised by the soothing tone of his voice, and she wondered if he’d been watching Martha that afternoon as much as Martha had been watching him. The painful cramps stopped, and she rolled back. “He won’t … hurt her, will he?”
“No, but with the bed bolted down and one side up against the wall, it’s too difficult to try to take care of you both here. He’s big, but he’ll be as gentle as a lamb.”
“And you?”
“Gentle has never been my style. I can’t believe you’re still in your blasted corset.”
“I thought we might have to abandon ship.”
“Which is exactly why you should have taken it off.”
“I didn’t want to wash up onshore improperly attired.”
“Sweetheart, we’re so far from any reachable land that you would have been drowned. You wouldn’t have cared.”
She didn’t like his scolding her and was going to explain that Martha had loosened it some, but she was distracted by his fingers rapidly unbuttoning her bodice. She slapped at his hands with what little strength she could muster. “Don’t.”
He’d already completed the task and was working on her corset. She was wearing a chemise beneath it, but still she tried to roll away from him, only he held her in place.
“Don’t be so modest,” he growled. “I’m not looking.”
She relaxed. “Truly?”
“Of course I’m looking. I’m a man, aren’t I?”
She laughed, then groaned as her stomach protested the movement. “You’re so refreshingly honest. I think I may have done some damage here.”
“It’s always harder on your body when your stomach is trying to empty itself and there’s nothing to bring up.”
“Hardly polite conversation.”
“But the truth. You’ll be sore for a couple of days.”
If she survived. At that moment she couldn’t quite believe that was a possibility. Her corset loosened, he removed it with an efficiency that she would have protested if it didn’t feel so lovely not to be confined. He dragged the gown and petticoats down her legs and whipped a blanket over her before she could complain about the precarious immodesty of her position. Through half-lowered lids she watched him making his way around the room, but couldn’t quite find the strength to ask him what he was doing. The ship was still bucking. How did he maintain his balance so easily?
She imagined him moving about a dance floor with the same grace. He would be poetry in motion, and the woman held within his arms would be swept away. How could she not? He returned to the bed, sat on its edge.
“Face the wall,” he ordered.
“Why?”
He held up a brush. “So I can do something with your hair before it becomes a tangled rat’s nest.”
“I can sit up.” She was halfway to her goal when the room swirled around her and her stomach roiled. She fell back and rolled to her side, wishing the world would stop spinning.
“Ah, Princess, I bruised you when you came up on deck.”
She felt his callused fingers skimming over her upper arm so lightly, as though he was afraid of hurting her again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have treated you so roughly. Forgive me.” He brushed his lips over her discoloring flesh, and in spite of her misery, she felt pleasurable tingles all the way down to her toes.
And disappointment. A kiss. The time of his choosing. She opened her mouth—
“That does not qualify as a kiss,” he said in a low purr.
She released a small laugh. “I could argue that, but I won’t.”
She felt a tug here, a gentle pull there as he began removing the few pins that remained in her hair. It tumbled down and he gathered it up. She thought she heard him mumble, “Glorious.” But how could anyone consider anything about her glorious at that moment? She was a miserable, tired, aching wretch.
Then the brush was gliding through her hair and nothing had ever felt so marvelous.
“You’ve done this before,” she murmured.
“Never, actually.” He slid a hand between her head and the pillow, carefully lifted, dragging the brush through the strands, pulling them taut, before lowering her.
“You’re very good.”
“I’m a quick study.”
She was being lured into sensations she wasn’t quite comfortable feeling. They seemed naughty. She should send him away now. Instead, she didn’t want him to ever stop his tender ministrations. She had never expected such care from him. She thought he would be like a tempest: powerful, uncontrollable.
Nothing about this man ever seemed to be as she anticipated.
“Peterson said you were going to go around the storm,” she chided, not quite pleased with herself for making the words seem accusatory.
“We didn’t have enough room to maneuver. We could have possibly outsailed it but I thought it better to continue forward, skirt it as much as possible. It didn’t look too threatening.”
“But it was.”
“Not really.”
She glanced back. “You’ve been in worse?”
He grinned. “Much worse. Cape Horn is notoriously treacherous. At least in these waters, we don’t have to deal with icebergs.”
> “Does nothing frighten you?”
He grew somber, his gaze gliding over her before he began once again to concentrate on her hair. Knowing that he wasn’t going to give her an answer, she turned her attention back to the wall, studying the knotholes in the wood, relishing the feel of his hands gathering up the silken strands, taming them with the brush. She supposed she should be scandalized to be wearing the barest of undergarments beneath the blanket while a man sat on the bed stroking her hair. If she didn’t feel so awful she would demand he leave. But she did feel awful, except for where he touched her. Why should she not take comfort in that?
He parted her hair and began to plait it.
“You’re really quite nice, aren’t you?” she asked of the wall.
“Because I won’t take advantage of a woman who might heave her stomach contents over me? You don’t have very high standards, Princess.”
Oh, dear God, but she wanted to laugh hard, but she knew her sides and belly would protest, so she settled for a wide smile that he probably couldn’t see. When he was finished with his task, he draped her braid over her shoulder and she fingered the strip of leather that had been holding his hair in place.
With his large warm hand, he began stroking her back.
“I’m feeling somewhat better,” she said. “You don’t have to stay.”
“I’ll stay until you drift off.”
It felt so lovely. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had given her so much attention. That it was him could not have surprised her more. He was a man of varying facets, complex and interesting.
Her eyes grew heavy. She didn’t want to go to sleep, didn’t want to give up the press of his fingers along her spine, the circling of his palm over her shoulders. But the lethargy weighted her down and drew her into oblivion.
“Does nothing frighten you?” she’d asked.
She frightened him, terrified him in fact. When he’d seen her first come to the deck during the storm, terror had ripped through him. She could have tumbled, been hit by a broken mast, washed overboard. Anything could have happened and it had rocked him to his core to consider her gone …
Before he acquired his payment. That was what was so troubling about the whole blasted situation. The woman seemed to have no care regarding debts owed. He’d follow her into hell to claim what was due him.
Unfortunately, he suspected she was headed for heaven, which was barred to him.
Rubbing her neck, Tristan listened to her soft breathing. Her arm was bared, and his gut again clenched at the sight of the mottled flesh where he’d grabbed her. She’d have a nasty bruise by tomorrow. If he could only touch it and draw it upon himself, he’d gladly do so. He doubted she’d ever been so brutally handled.
He was truly the barbarian that the Londoners considered him.
He was also—in spite of wearing a coat out into the storm—damp and chilled. If she’d not been drowning in her own misery she might have noticed and insisted he change into dry clothes. Not that he would have with her awake. But with her asleep …
He eased his hands away from her. She didn’t stir. As gingerly as possible he rose from the bed and crept to a chair where he removed his boots. Then he grabbed a linen towel and rubbed it briskly over his wet hair, before finger combing the strands back. He was exhausted. Every muscle ached from fighting the storm.
What he truly wanted was to lie in his own bed, curl his arm around her, and sleep the sleep of the dead. But he supposed for tonight it was either the floor here or a hammock in the area where his men slept.
Wearily, he forced himself to his feet and wandered over to the chest where he kept his extra clothes. He dragged his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, before lifting the heavy lid.
“Oh, dear God, whatever did they do to your back?”
He froze, fighting against the need to hide the unsightly latticework of scars that marred his back. He forced a casualness into his voice that he was far from feeling as he grabbed a shirt. “I thought you were asleep.”
“No, only drifting about. Those are lash marks, aren’t they?”
He slammed down the lid and shoved his arms into his shirt, before jerking it down over his head and shoulders, welcoming the knowledge that with the material in place, the ugliness was once again hidden. “They’re nothing.”
“They must have hurt terribly.”
“For a short time, yes,” he gritted out.
“But the pain long remembered, I should think.”
Shoring himself up to ignore the pity in her eyes, he gazed over at her. She was sitting up, clutching the blanket high at her throat with both hands, as though that could protect her from him. Her eyes were wide damp saucers. Damnation but he never flaunted his scars and he hated that she’d seen them. “I believe that’s the point, Princess.”
Chapter 8
He was angry at her, furious in fact, judging by the tautness in his features. And so profoundly proud, standing there so magnificently, almost rebelliously, trying to show that the scars didn’t matter, that they were nothing. She wished she hadn’t seen how terribly he’d been hurt. But she had and she couldn’t undo what she’d seen. She felt sicker in her stomach now than she had during the worst part of the storm.
He’d been a lad when he’d gone to sea, seeking adventure, not much younger than Mouse. Had he been as slender, as vulnerable? Had he been near that age when he felt the bite of the whip? Had he screamed? Had he cried? Had he begged them to stop?
“How can men do that to another?” she asked.
“It’s standard practice on a ship when someone isn’t behaving … quite properly,” he bit out.
“Do you take the lash to your men?”
“No, but then none were forced aboard my ship against their wishes. They share in the bounty. They work together because it adds coins to their pockets.”
“You said you went to sea for adventure. Were you forced—”
“No,” he interrupted before she could finish her question.
A knock sounded, and relief washed over his face as though the disturbance would bring a natural end to this conversation, which he obviously loathed. She watched as he strode across the room, his hair freely grazing over his wide shoulders. She wondered what he would say if she offered to take a brush to it, to sift her fingers through it, to provide comfort to him as he had to her. He opened the door and Mouse scurried in with his rocking gait. On the desk, he set a tray with a teapot and some cups on it.
“Mr. Peterson thought ye be needin’ this.”
“Good lad.”
“She gonna be a’right?”
“Should be. Just a bit of seasickness.” He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. It seemed a tender gesture, even though he was guiding the lad out of the room. Had anyone placed a kind hand on the captain’s shoulder or brow after the flesh on his back had been ripped apart?
When they were again alone, he returned to the desk and poured some tea into a cup, then added a splash of amber liquid to it.
She settled back against the pillows, ever conscious of keeping the blanket high.
“This should help settle your stomach a bit,” he said as he handed her the cup and saucer. The china seemed incredibly delicate in his large paw.
As for himself, he poured a generous helping of spirits into a glass before pulling over a chair and sitting beside the bed.
She supposed as things were settling down that Martha could rejoin her now, but she didn’t suggest it on the off chance that she was sleeping. She didn’t want to disturb her. More, she wasn’t quite ready for him to leave. She took a sip, recognized the flavor, and smiled. “Brandy.”
“Your indulgence of choice, I believe.”
“Only because it was the easiest bottle to swipe from my father’s liquor cabinet.” She studied him more closely. He appeared older now than he had before, and she realized fighting the storm had taken a toll on him. She missed his ready smile and teasing.
His eyes cont
ained a distance, as though he were looking inward rather than outward, and she wondered where his thoughts traveled, if he was thinking about the pain he’d endured when they whipped him or how he battled the sea or …
She knew so little about him, knew it was foolish to want to know more. Once they were again in England, she would never see him again. They would take diverging paths, hers leading her to ballrooms and his returning him to the sea.
She wanted to talk, but the brandy was having its way with her, swirling warmth and lethargy through her bones. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised, considering that nothing remained in her stomach to absorb it, to halt its progress.
After finishing off the tea in one long unladylike swallow, she set aside the cup and saucer on the table beside the bed. Then she snuggled beneath the blankets, slipped her hands between her cheek and pillow, and watched Jack. He didn’t quite look like a Jack to her. His lids were half lowered, his glass empty, and she wondered if he was feeling as languid as she. “Why did they whip you?” To her surprise, the words came out slowly, slightly slurred.
“I won’t discuss my back, Anne.”
The anger was still in his voice and he studied his glass as though it were far more interesting than her. She didn’t know why that stung.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked.
Finally, he shifted his gaze over to her. “On the sea.”
She smiled, or at least she thought she did. Her mouth definitely moved. “Before that.”
“Yorkshire.”
“Lovely country.”
Leaning forward, he brushed back some wayward strands that he’d failed to secure in the braid. “You should sleep now, Princess.”
“So should you.” She furrowed her brow. “Where do you sleep … since I have your room?”
“In the room next door or in a hammock on the berth deck.” He cradled her chin, his thumb stroking her cheek.
“Doesn’t sound comfortable.”
“It’s not.”
“You should have taken my two hundred pounds to make it worth your while.”
“It’s worth my while.”
Lord of Temptation Page 8