Captain Rose's Redemption (Harlequin Historical)

by Georgie Lee

  She drew back at his harsh words. ‘You accuse me of betraying you, after what I’ve risked to help you?’

  ‘Yes, when you care so much for society’s opinion you’re willing to court it on Vincent’s arm or in Lord Shepherd’s bed,’ he hissed through clenched teeth, surprised by the intensity of his jealousy. He shouldn’t attack her. It wasn’t her fault she’d continued to live after he’d pretended to die, but the anguish and rage of having lost her to another man, of Vincent courting her in the open while he remained confined to the shadows, tore at him.

  ‘How dare you of all men judge me!’ She stepped up hard on him, hands tight at her sides. ‘Unlike you, who openly flaunts rules and laws, I have to live under them as best I can. If everyone turns on me because I insult Mr Fitzwilliam, I might not be able to sell my crops. Without an income I’ll lose Belle View and there’s nowhere left for me to go. Yes, I married Giles because I thought I could prove to everyone I wasn’t the poor orphan they’d shunned, but a lady worthy of station and attention. But in every decision I’ve made to reach for more, I’ve been brought even lower than before. Sneer at me all you like, but I work for Belle View to give me and Dinah safety and security, and if I could do it without people like the Bakers and Mr Fitzwilliam, I would. But I need them for my survival more than I need you.’

  A flash of lightning lit up the room, and regret shook Richard as hard as the thunder did the cabin walls. Like him, she’d been trapped by her choices and was doing her best to survive in the world as it had become. He respected her resolve and hated being the one forcing her to test it again and again. He longed to slip his hands along the sides of her delicate jaw and draw her mouth to his, to savour her with the same freedom he’d enjoyed when they were young and offer some comfort with his kiss. He couldn’t because he was the cause of all her discomfort. ‘I’m sorry, Cas.’

  ‘Apologies aren’t enough. As soon as you’re well you can go. Mr Fitzwilliam knows you were wounded. It won’t be long until he discovers you’re here.’

  She moved to leave, but he caught her hand. She whirled around, as stunned as him by the meeting of their flesh. Outside, lightning flashed and thunder rolled across the sky before the rain began to pound on the cabin roof. ‘Cassandra, wait.’

  ‘Why? You accuse me of betraying you, but you’re the one who abandoned me to run after your revenge.’ Cassandra drew herself up with an impressive dignity he admired, but it couldn’t hide the anguish marring her face. ‘Do you know what it was like when Uncle Walter told me you were gone? I could barely rise from my bed to face each morning.’

  ‘If there was a way I could undo it all I would, Cas, but there isn’t.’

  ‘Yes, there is.’ She closed her eyes, and he expected her to pull out of his grasp and leave him and his betrayal behind as she had every right to do. She didn’t, but opened her eyes and stood before him, the resilient, determined woman he should have appreciated and cherished more than his desire for adventure. ‘Lord Spotswood is offering any man who asks for it the King’s Grace. You could accept it, give up your pirate life and then we would both be safe.’

  * * *

  Cassandra held her breath while she waited for him to answer. The memory of him standing with her under the dogwood tree in Uncle Walter’s Williamsburg garden, his hands on hers, anticipation thick between them while she waited for his marriage proposal, rushed back to her. Those words had changed her future as much as the ones he’d uttered a few months later about going to sea. How he answered her tonight could change everything again. The faint hope he’d summoned up in her with his kiss on the Devil’s Rose welled in her again. If he sought the King’s Grace, he might return to Williamsburg and they’d be free to court and fall in love again, and she’d finally have someone to help her at Belle View and ease all of her burdens.

  Then his gaze slid away from hers as it had when they’d first met on the Winter Gale. Her heart dropped and she braced herself for the words she knew were going to come. ‘I can’t do that, Cas.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of my men. I vowed to clear all our names in return for their loyalty. I can’t abandon them to save myself.’

  ‘If you all sought pardons, you could still see justice against Vincent done, except with the law on your side instead of against you. Surely you’ve earned enough from piracy to buy or establish a shipping company and, with your knowledge of the sea, you could destroy Vincent by taking his business.’

  ‘It isn’t only his business I have to cripple. It’s him. I want his secrets exposed so everyone can see the real man behind the respectable façade, especially when he hangs.’ The vengeance illuminating his eyes sent a chill tearing through her. ‘I have to destroy Vincent completely.’

  ‘Even if it means destroying yourself and me?’

  ‘I never wanted you to be a part of this.’ With his thumb, he caressed the delicate skin of her wrist, the subtle motion heady and distracting.

  ‘Then why did you send me the pistol?’

  ‘I didn’t send it. Mr Rush did.’ The fire in his eyes faded to resignation. ‘If I’d known what he was up to, I wouldn’t have allowed it. I’d intended to return it to you and release you from the bargain. Like all the other things I’ve sworn to do for you, I never got the chance.’

  He let out a long breath of exhaustion, the impossibility of their situation weighing on him as heavily as it did her. He hadn’t called on her as she’d believed and it stung her heart, but she didn’t pull away. The rawness of his pain, and his willingness to have let her go despite his desire to ruin Vincent, and the way he continued to hold her hand, his fingertips gentle against her skin, revealed more than any summons ever could. He did care for her, deep enough to have almost sacrificed his papers for her safety. What might she be willing to sacrifice to have him at her side?

  She turned her hand over in his, her fingertips pressing into the inside of his wrist. He’d been right to accuse her of wanting society too much because she did. If he returned, a pardon wouldn’t erase his past and, if they courted, people would viciously whisper about them. It shamed her to be so petty, but having lived so long as an outcast and with Dinah’s future to consider, she couldn’t ignore the possibility of it happening again.

  With her thumb, she traced an old scar on the back of his hand, her weaknesses not killing the encouraging words dancing on the tip of her tongue, eager to be spoken. It tore at her to see what his chosen life had done to him. Like Uncle Walter, she wanted to save him from ruin because she knew what it was like to be trapped by past decisions. Death had freed her from her mistake. The pardon could free him from his.

  ‘You do have a chance,’ she said at last.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her as he had the day he’d told her the wedding would have to wait because he was going to sea. ‘The pardon may seem like the perfect solution, but it isn’t. I know Vincent’s secret and the lengths he’s already gone to in order to shield himself and his business from having it revealed. If I came back to Virginia, I’d spend every day watching and waiting for one of his men to slip a knife between my ribs during some dark night.’

  ‘He wouldn’t risk the gallows.’

  ‘He’s done far worse and you wouldn’t be any safer with me pardoned than you are now. Our past guarantees he’ll suspect you, too, and he’ll do everything he can to ruin you the same way he ruined me. Like you, every decision I’ve made, even the innocent ones, have brought us to this impasse and there’s no way out of it except through Vincent’s demise. Like you, I have no choice but to do what I must to survive.’

  She tightened her grip on him. ‘No, I don’t accept that, or the idea that everything we do and are will always be shaped by what we did in the past. Yes, we’ve made mistakes, but I’m tired of being haunted by them. I want to know that there’s more to my future than misery, hardship and loneliness, and deep down, I think you do, to
o.’

  * * *

  Richard stiffened when she reached up and laid her hands on either side of his face, her touch delicate and at the same time potent with its intensity. It fuelled the fire rising inside him that had tortured him during the last month without her and in the hours of semi-sleep today when he’d dreamed she was lying beside him again. Richard’s fingers tingled with the desire to trace the curve of her bare shoulder above her dress, but he kept them at his sides, afraid one touch might be his undoing. It wasn’t right to dally with her heart after he’d made it clear he couldn’t come home and yet she was the one touching him, urging him to defy his belief that his future held nothing because of his past and to give in to her beauty and the tranquillity of her presence.

  It was difficult to resist and with each flutter of her pulse against his skin he felt himself weakening. Like him, she knew what it was to be deceived by the people closest to her and how it could ruin everything. He’d accused her of not honouring their love, but he was the one who’d lied about his death and left her to face the world without him or the hope of their life together. He was as bad as the others who’d abandoned her and he was about to do it again. He must.

  He didn’t step away and she remained before him, her skin warm against his, each long breath making her breasts rise and fall above her bodice, torturing him with her willingness to remain with him. He wanted her to hate him. It would make their separation easier and spare her from the anguish tearing at him. It wasn’t hate illuminating her eyes, but the determination to make him fight for a different life than the bleak one dominating him, but it wasn’t possible. The calm in her gentle touch was an illusion, like a water creature spied on the horizon, yet a part of him he’d thought long dead urged him to believe in it, to surrender to her and the possibility that there might be something more for him than revenge and the sea. ‘I don’t have a future. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘No, I can’t and I don’t believe it.’ She drew his head down, touching her forehead to his, her breath teasing the sweaty skin in the V of his shirt. ‘Neither do you.’

  He raised his hands to her waist and pressed his fingers into the soft fabric covering her skin, the curve of her against him as alluring as her words. He thought he’d conquered the old desire for her, but the hesitant slide of her hands over his chest, the brush of her dress against his bare waist brought it all back. His life had begun when he’d first seen her, just as it had ended when he’d had to lie to her about his death. He thought he’d lost everything, but he hadn’t. He wasn’t dead and she was no longer an illusion to torture him with what could have been, but here in his arms and free.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ He crushed her against his bare chest, claiming her mouth with all the passion denied to them during their long separation. There was danger in wanting her, the possibility she might make him forget all his lust for revenge, but lost in her caress, he didn’t care.

  He ran one hand through the curls gracing the back of her neck beneath her coiffure, revelling in the silken locks sliding over his skin. With his fingers, he swept the line of her shoulder, the feel of her firm skin beneath his like reaching back into his past and touching the man he’d once been and the woman he’d loved and lost. He buried his face in the curls escaping from the pins he drew out and dropped to the floor one by one, then laid a path of feathery kisses along the line of her neck, groaning at the soft moans his touch drew from her. With his good hand, he caressed the curve of her hips through her thin dress, unashamed to reveal his need for her when he claimed her mouth again.

  Her delicious lips parted at the tender urging of his tongue, and her hand grasped his good arm, her rounded fingernails digging slightly into his flesh with restrained need. All his dreams had foundered, but at this moment he seized this one like he did every prize at sea. In her guiding kiss, he might finally find his way back to her and to himself.

  * * *

  Cassandra slid her hands under the dark hair along Richard’s collar and around his neck, clinging to him the way she had the morning years ago in Yorktown when they’d said goodbye. It’d been too long since she’d been loved and wanted, and she revelled in the pleasure of Richard’s arms around her, his mouth urgent in his demands, the heat of his body against hers. Tonight, she’d surrender to her yearnings instead of her fears and bloom as she hadn’t for the last five years.

  With her fingers, she traced the sharp line of his shoulders, careful to avoid his wound before she brushed the bronze skin of his chest. Breaking from his lips, she leaned down to sweep the hollow between his neck and chest with her tongue. He tasted of her youth and innocence. In Richard’s arms, it was as if there was nothing separating the evenings in the barn from tonight, not years of despair, worry and hopelessness. She revelled in the heaviness of his hand caressing the curve of her hips through her dress. His need for her was potent in the length of his kiss when he claimed her mouth again and the firmness of him against her stomach. Eager to be closer to him, she took hold of the strings of her bodice and tugged them free of the eyelets. When the dress fell open, she cast her arms back to allow the cotton to fall free.

  He watched with eyes as hot as the air while she shimmied out of the petticoat and let it drop around her feet. She undid the laces of her stays, sliding the ties free one by one until the creamy fabric dropped to the floor and she stood in front of him in nothing but her chemise. Catching it by the sides, she drew it up over her head and tossed it to the floor.

  ‘Not even the ocean after a storm is as beautiful as you.’ He raked her naked flesh with a hungry, wanting gaze and she didn’t cover herself, the strength of his need increasing hers. Then he reached out and cupped one firm breast in his hand and circled the delicate tip with his thumb. She gasped when he leaned down and flicked the sensitive skin with his tongue. She wrapped her hands in his dark hair as he continued to tease her with his tongue, moving to her other breast and making circles around her nipple. He swept his fingers across her stomach before tasting her bare thighs above her plain stockings held up by thin blue ribbons. Under his caresses, her body continued to come alive, responsive and beautiful for the first time in ages. The memory of his body against hers had warmed so many cold nights in London, but Richard was here with her once more, as real as the storm engulfing the countryside.

  With his fingers, he stroked the length of her thighs, working closer and closer in agonising circles to her centre. She arched her back in pleasure as he caressed her softness, driving her further beyond her senses and increasing her need to feel the full strength of him. He might be a pirate, but he was a man in charge of his destiny and she wanted to surrender to his heady allure. She held on tight to him, the silken pressure of his touch driving her to the edge of pleasure and she struggled to breathe, willing to follow him over the crest of this wave, but he withdrew.

  Before she could protest, he wrapped his good arm around her waist and, pressing her hard against him, he swung them both around and to the bed. She trembled as he slowly eased her down on to the mattress, the ropes beneath it creaking under their weight. They would be one again, as if they’d never been apart.

  He supported himself with his good arm, his body covering hers like a fine coverlet. She traced the arch of his back and shoulders, careful to avoid his wound, not wanting to hurt him in the midst of their delight. Then he shifted off to one side to lie on his back and pulled her on top of him. She pressed her hands into his chest and sat up, smiling wickedly while she straddled him. Gone was the boy who’d first taken her innocence. Here was the man he’d become, powerful even in his illness, with a fierceness to steal her breath away. Sitting over him, she took in the contours of his chest and stomach to where his hips narrowed beneath the dark fabric of his breeches. She wanted nothing to come between them, not his past or hers or their uncertain future.

  Sliding back over his legs, she undid the fall of his breeches and uncovered the sharp white li
ne where his sun-darkened skin ended beneath the buckskin. She shimmied the sturdy fabric down over his hips, marvelling at the firmness of him, eager to join with him. She covered his body with hers while his wide hands caressed her back, following the line of it to her buttocks, his touch making her burn deeper for him.

  ‘I’ve wanted you for so long,’ she whispered in his ear, taking the lobe between her teeth.

  ‘You have me tonight.’

  She shifted back and settled over his solid manhood, her heart as filled as her body when he entered her. With his firmness inside her, his hand heavy on her waist, the disappointments and troubles they’d endured fell away. They were one, with nothing separating them.

  He moved slowly at first, teasing her with long, lingering strokes until she thought she might faint from pleasure. She stretched out over him, his breath in her ear, his hands firm on her buttocks as they moved together, faster and faster until they cried out in pleasure together, a wave of ecstasy unlike any she’d ever experienced before spreading through her. She clung to him, drawing in deep and heavy breaths until quiet settled over them and the cabin.

  She shifted to lie beside him as the faint tap of the rain on the roof replaced the pounding of her heart in her ears. In the semi-darkness, the world and all its demands were staved off, if only for tonight. She rose up on her elbow to study him. He ran his finger over the line of her chin, smiling at her not like a rogue, but like the man she adored.

  ‘You’re beautiful, Cas, you always have been.’

  ‘Careful, you’ll swell my head with your flattery.’

  ‘Impossible, not even a title made you vain.’

  She rested her head on his chest. ‘My title has made me wise, more so than I ever wanted to be.’

  He slipped his hands beneath her chin and turned her face to his. ‘Had I known what kind of man Giles was, I would have risked the Royal Navy to sail up the Thames and killed him for making you miserable. I would have taken on all of London society as your champion until they saw the wonderful woman I see before me, the brave one who never allows anything to destroy her, but continues to struggle despite the actions of selfish and foolish men, including me.’