Something fell from her open hand. It shimmered through the water, tumbling, sinking deeper, away from them. He didn’t go after it, but whatever it was, he knew it had been what had caught the midday light and made Thomas see her.
A buoyed rope splashed into the water in front of them, and he grabbed on to it, thankful to have it hold some of their weight. There were shouts above him, someone on the ship, but he couldn’t make out the words over the sound of the rotating paddle.
Meg’s body was cold, her skin rubbery, and he couldn’t see her chest moving with breaths. “Please, Meg,” he whispered into her hair as he continued to hold her face above water.
“Please breathe. Please don’t die. I couldn’t bear it—not again. Please…”
He kept whispering to her, encouraging her, vaguely realizing the salt water running in streaks down his face was not from the sea. Eventually, hands were tugging at them, taking Meg first, and then pulling him into the boat. They rowed back to the Endeavor, which now drifted silently. Meg still hadn’t moved. One of the seamen leaned over her, taking the pulse at her neck.
“Is she breathing?” Will choked out.
“Aye,” the man said. “Weakly. Her pulse is weak, too”—he frowned—“and not quite right.”
“What do you mean by that?” Will asked, desperately clawing his way through the surging panic.
“It goes fast, then slow, seems to skip a beat every now and then.”
Will closed his eyes, forcing himself to think rationally. He didn’t dare touch her. He was dripping wet, and he’d only make her colder. “She needs to be warm. All of you, take off your coats and cover her. Wrap her in them. Warm her up.”
The four men in the boat complied instantly, and one of the seamen bundled her tightly in wool.
They struggled, as they had the first time on the Freedom, to get her limp form up the ladder and onto the deck. As before, Will had her laid in the captain’s quarters. This time, though, he ordered everyone, including Thomas, out. He stripped her clothes off completely, tearing the delicate fabrics of her chemise and undergarments, and then he did the same to himself. He wrapped her hair in one of the blankets he’d had the cook warm over the fire.
By now, he was hot again. Sweating, actually, fear for her sending blood surging through him and making his heart race. Naked, he’d be a furnace next to her. If blankets couldn’t keep her warm, he would.
He climbed into the narrow bed and drew her slight form against his, touching her cold, clammy body everywhere he could. He lay there against her, half the blankets on board the Endeavor covering them. When she cooled one side of him, he switched her to his other side.
“Please, Meg. Please wake up. I love you. So much.”
I love you, Meg. You are my life. Please wake up, Meg.
Will’s voice. Her beloved Will. Was she dreaming? Was this heaven?
Her lids were so heavy, it was almost impossible to raise them, but through sheer force of will, she did it. Though if anyone asked her to move a limb, she’d fail. Was she paralyzed? A wandering spirit?
She squinted at the form in front of her, blinking until it came into focus.
Will’s face, drawn and haggard.
“Will,” she whispered. But no sound emerged.
Will blinked, too, and she saw moisture in his eyes. He moved the hair, tangled and thick with salt, off her forehead. “Don’t speak, Meg. Save your strength.”
He turned away, then back to her, holding a bowl. “Here’s some hot broth. Try it. You’re cold, inside and out, and it’ll help to warm you.”
She couldn’t speak to him, tell him she wasn’t sure if she could open her mouth, and if she could do that, how could she possibly find the strength to swallow? But he pressed a spoon to her lips, cracking them open, and then the broth, warm and comforting, slid down with hardly any effort at all.
She had so many questions, so much to say to him, to ask him forgiveness for. But she ate without speaking, focusing on rebuilding her strength.
Caversham has Jake.
She closed her eyes and swallowed another spoonful of broth. He fed her in silence, spoonful by spoonful, until the soup was gone.
Then, as the warmth swirled around in her belly, he set the bowl and spoon down and then turned back to her, drawing her close, skin to skin. For the first time, she realized he was naked. She didn’t question it. She rested weakly against him, taking in his warmth, his salty male smell.
Will Langley. The man she loved. The man she’d always loved but had forgotten, for a time, how to love.
“Will,” she finally whispered, her voice rough, cracking and breaking with every other word. “I am so sorry.” Bowing her head, she tightened her arms around him. “I was so stupid. I thought it was the only way to keep Jake safe… to keep you safe, and I ruined everything. Please forgive me.”
“Shh,” he murmured, stroking her tangled hair, the warmth of his fingertips dancing over her back. “Hush. It doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that you’re alive. That you’re going to be all right.”
“When I left you, I thought I’d never see you again. I thought I’d never be whole again.”
“You’re tired, Meg. Sleep now. Rest and get warm.”
She went limp, her muscles relaxing.
“But Jake…” Her voice was weak and whiny. She needed strength. She needed to find Caversham, fight him, get her son…
“I know. Caversham still has our boy. I’m going to find him, Meg. Trust me. Sleep now and get your strength back.”
She did trust him. For the first time, she thoroughly trusted him. Will would do exactly as he said.
“He wants to stay well off the coast of Wales,” she murmured. “But he’s heading for Bristol.”
“Good. Can you tell me anything about his ship?”
“It’s a brigantine—maybe eighty feet? Caversham equips all his ships with cannon—I think”—she scrunched her forehead, trying to remember through the thickness that seemed to have shrouded her mind—“this ship has four or six six-pounders.”
Warmth infused her forehead as he pressed his lips to it. “That helps me a great deal. We’ll find him, and we’ll get Jake back.”
Secure in the knowledge that he’d save her little boy—no, their little boy—she dropped into an exhausted sleep.
Late in the afternoon, there was a knock on the door. Will turned away from a deeply slumbering Meg and called out softly, “Who’s there?”
“It’s Halliday, sir. We’ve sighted a ship.” A short pause, then he added, “It’s a brigantine like the lady described.”
Gently, Will disentangled himself from Meg. After he quickly pulled on his trousers, he went to the door and opened it. “Is he flying a flag?”
“None that we can see, sir.”
“Very well. Set a course to intercept.”
“Aye, sir.”
Will dressed and slipped out of the cabin, going directly to the cook and asking him to watch Thomas and to give him more warm blankets to lay on Meg. He posted a man at the door to his quarters with strict instructions not to allow anyone but himself to enter.
Then he went to check on the ship they were overtaking. It was beating a southwesterly course, and since Will had chosen to continue running on steam after they’d retrieved Meg, they didn’t have to fight the wind to catch up to it. Halliday told him that on full steam, he thought they’d overtake it in less than half an hour.
Dusk was approaching, and they were losing light rapidly. But if this was Caversham, Will thought grimly, they’d sink his damn ship and everyone on it regardless of whether the sun lit their way.
He went to the galley to check on Thomas, who was happily playing a card game with the cook.
“Thomas,” he said, interrupting their game. “There’s going to be a battle.”
Thomas’s blue eyes widened. “A… battle? With cannons and—”
“Yes, son. And I want you to stay here with Gunnar, do you understand me?”<
br />
“But—”
Will looked at his cook. “Keep him safe, Gunnar.”
“Aye, sir,” the cook said soberly.
“Good. All will be well, Thomas. You do what Gunnar tells you to do, and everything will be all right.” Will kissed the boy’s head and left, trusting that his cook, who had young sons of his own back in Liverpool, would take good care of him.
It turned out that Halliday had underestimated how quickly they’d reach Caversham. By the time Will was back on deck, he could see far more detail through his spyglass. He and Halliday watched the crew mobilize to prepare to fire upon the Endeavor, and Will ordered his own crew to do the same.
Caversham’s ship swung around, giving it the advantage of the wind. For the first time in his sailing career, that didn’t matter to Will. He could maneuver however he wanted under steam power, giving him the advantage regardless of which of them had the wind on his side.
However, if one of Caversham’s six-pounders were to destroy one or both of his paddlewheels, then it would be a different story altogether. If that happened, they’d be in trouble. Will ordered the sails readied, just in case they needed to make a rapid switch from steam to wind power.
In just under half an hour from Will’s order to pursue, Caversham’s ship made its first attack, launching a volley of cannon fire that fell well to larboard of the Endeavor’s bow. Instantly, the enemy ship turned slightly, making the correction that would give them better aim.
Will roared the order to fire, and a split-second later, the Endeavor’s two starboard cannons fired with deafening twin booms. One of the shots fell off Caversham’s bow, but the other grazed the gunwale, showering the deck with wood splinters.
Undaunted, Caversham’s ship glided forward. Its starboard guns fired again. This time, there was a giant exploding noise and a bone-shaking shudder as one of the cannonballs hit the Endeavor.
“Damage report?” Will shouted as men scrambled around him.
“Paddlewheel’s been hit, sir,” a midshipman cried out to him.
Will turned toward the starboard paddlewheel. Water spewed up over the deck, wood splinters flew into the air, and the screech of bolts wrenching free assaulted his ears.
“Shall I shut down the boiler, sir?” Halliday shouted.
Will glanced at Caversham’s ship, heard another volley of shots, then looked up at his sails. The Endeavor was beginning to turn toward starboard as that paddlewheel slowed and the larboard paddlewheel kept thrusting forward.
He made several quick calculations. If they shut down the engine, they’d give Caversham a huge advantage in terms of maneuverability.
“No,” he said to Halliday. “Full steam ahead. Release the spanker sheets. Unfurl the foresails.”
“Sir—”
He turned away and shouted toward the helm. “Turn hard to starboard.”
“Aye, sir! Hard to starboard!” the helmsman repeated without hesitation, though surely he saw where that would put them.
Will glanced back at Halliday and saw the man gaping at him, bug-eyed.
“Brace yourself for the impact, Halliday,” he said grimly. “Because we’re going to cleave that damned ship in two.”
Meg came awake with a painful jolt as her body was thrown forward onto the floor of the cabin. She clutched one of the posts nailed to the floor holding the bed in place and held on, her head pounding as she found her bearings.
She’d been dreaming about pirates. About Caversham.
Through the years, she’d witnessed the atrocities he’d committed against honest ships and the people aboard them. Most of the time when Caversham attacked, the captains and crews knew that they’d been beaten and surrendered without bloodshed. But in the first year after she’d been taken, Caversham had boarded a ship, and to everyone’s surprise, the captain refused to surrender. Caversham had laughed, called him an idiot, and then took his first mate aside and promised him his life if he told him what the captain’s most beloved possession in the world was.
“His son,” the mate had wheezed. “Lad’s on board—he serves as cabin boy.”
Caversham had called his crew, including Meg and Sarah, onto the deck and had made them watch as he denounced the mate as a traitor to his captain and then had proceeded to slit his throat.
Then he’d commanded his men to find the cabin boy, and there, on the deck of the other captain’s ship with the man watching, struggling against his bonds, Caversham had slit the boy’s throat, too.
Meg had never forgotten the look in the father’s eyes, that expression of sheer horror, of such intense pain. She dreamed about that ship—the Mary Ann—and its captain, first mate, and cabin boy often.
She’d been dreaming about them now. It was the beginning of the engagement, that gleam in Caversham’s eye when he was contemplating the kind of prize he’d take, and the loud, low boom of cannons and the sharp retort of firing guns.
After a moment of confusion as the dream faded, of the panic of not knowing where she was and what was happening, it all came flooding back.
Battle. Will had pursued Caversham. Obviously, he’d found him.
Men were shouting, their footsteps heavy as they ran past Will’s door.
The ship wasn’t moving in any way that made sense—not forward or with the swell of the waves, but rather like some giant fiend had grabbed it and was attempting to pull it apart, plank by plank. Metal screamed and wood splintered as the ship groaned.
She stumbled to her feet, needing to know what had happened, whether Will and Thomas and Jake were safe. She was naked, but her chemise, now only slightly damp, was hanging on a peg. Holding on to a post for support, she clumsily yanked the garment on over her head, then pulled one of the blankets from the bed and wrapped it around her like a large woolen shawl.
She opened the door to chaos. She pressed herself against the door frame to stay clear of the men running. Gunshots cracked all around. Thick, black smoke covered everything—so thick she couldn’t even see to the side of the ship. The smoke scalded her throat and burned her nostrils and eyes. Loud shouts, pandemonium, but there was a strange sort of order to it all, with men calling out orders and obeying them.
Her first thought was that Caversham had sunk them, but that couldn’t be true. Will had made her a promise, and she knew that he wouldn’t break it.
“Miss Donovan?” A form of a sailor appeared through the smoke.
Shading her eyes, trying to make sense of the chaos and identify the man, she grabbed at his sleeve. “What’s happening?”
“You ought to get back inside, miss. It’s danger—”
Gunshots rang out again, whizzing by her ear and cracking wood behind her. Reflexively, she dropped to the deck. Smoke billowed, but when she looked up, she saw that the sailor had crouched down over her, as if to protect her from any flying debris. “Are we sinking?” she gasped at him.
His smile was grim through a face streaked black with soot, only his bloodshot blue eyes gleaming through the smoke. “Nay. But the enemy ship is.”
He squinted down at her, then knelt so they were eye to eye. “Och, I’m sorry, miss. Terrible thing to wake to, I imagine. Here now, let’s go back to the captain’s quarters.”
“But what’s happened?” she asked, her voice breaking with desperation.
“We’ve rammed the enemy ship, and it’s goin’ down—”
“Sinking!” She surged to her feet, then stumbled as the ship made that strange shuddering, jerking movement again.
The man rose, caught her arm, and steadied her. “Aye, miss. We broke her right down her middle.”
“Jake is there, Jake is on the ship. He was tied down—gagged… oh, God. I have to go…”
She struggled to break away, but he held on to her with a firm grip. “Now that’d be a foolhardy thing to do, given as the ship’s going down,” the man said, his voice gentle but stern.
She glared at him, knowing she was half-naked, her hair tangled and wild, and that she pro
bably looked like she’d gone completely mad. “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice now steely. “He’s my son. My son. I have to find him.”
“Nay, miss,” the man said, his voice still gentle. “Never worry. The captain has already boarded. He’ll find the boy.”
“What?” Meg cried. Losing Jake was unthinkable. Losing Jake and Will was… impossible.
“He’ll be fetching the lad and bringing him to you.”
Groaning softly, Meg stilled. She closed her eyes.
“Cap’n Langley’s as determined a fellow as I’ve ever seen. You’ve got to trust him, miss.”
Her knees went weak, and the man steadied her as she sank back down to the deck planks. “I trust him,” she whispered. “I do.”
Crouching on deck in the midst of bedlam, she found peace in her trust as she waited for her son and her beloved to return to her.
Chapter Twenty-two
Chaos reigned on deck, but Will heard Halliday and his other officers calling out orders, and he knew they’d take care of the Endeavor. Will had another mission: Caversham’s ship was going down fast, and he had to find Jake.
From the starboard deck of the Endeavor, he leaped onto the shattered stern of Caversham’s ship and rushed toward the poop deck, where the captain’s quarters would be located. If Jake wasn’t there, Caversham would most likely be near, and Caversham would know where Jake was.
He rushed toward the first narrow door, and as he laid his hand on the handle, a cold voice spoke from behind him. “Captain Langley, I presume. I suppose I have you to thank for destroying my ship.”
Slowly, moving his hand from the door handle to the pistol holstered at his hip, Will turned and took a few steps forward.
“I suppose you do,” he said, coming face to face with Jacob Caversham for the first time. The ship lurched, making a cracking noise like the wrenching of nails being torn from wood. It was coming apart. He needed to get to Jake, and soon.
He narrowed his eyes at Caversham, his hand still on his pistol. “Where’s the boy?”
Caversham raised one thin black eyebrow into an arched peak. “The… boy? One would think a child would be the least of your worries, good captain, since this ship—my ship—is preparing to go down and likely to take you with it.”
Pleasures of a Tempted Lady Page 28