“I wish you well, Emmaline.”
Her head jerked up and she stared at him through those moonbeams. His words had sounded too final. Her stomach heaved and panic replaced all of her other emotions. “You’re leaving.”
“I can’t stay here, surely you know that.”
“What will you tell Kenmar?”
He looked away, and his silence told her more than words ever could. Surprisingly, she wasn’t disappointed. She would have been more disappointed if he hadn’t told Kenmar, because Nicholas Addison wasn’t one to lie or deceive. Keeping her secret from Kenmar would have gone against everything inside him.
“I have to complete my mission,” he said.
“Of course you do.”
He leaned forward, reaching for her hand, then letting his drop before they made contact.
She wanted to cry out, to grab his hand and hold tight.
“Don’t do it, Emmaline.”
“Don’t do what? Attack Blackwell’s ships? You’re asking the impossible.”
“Am I? He doesn’t even know it’s you attacking him. How is that revenge?”
“I know.”
“You’ll hang.”
“Only if I’m caught.”
He reached for her hand again but this time he didn’t stop. His fingers curled around hers, and she had to resist the urge to cling to him.
“Please,” he whispered. “Make me understand.”
Her anger surged anew. Yes, he was honorable and honest, but he was also opinionated and arrogant, believing his way was always the right way, when he knew nothing about her life.
“How can you possibly understand? You who had the love of both parents?”
“Don’t assume things about me.” His voice turned hard, tinged with enough pain that she kept quiet. “Yes, my parents loved me, and yes they provided a wonderful life for me, but it hasn’t always been roses. My parents both died of a fever that swept through London when my sister and I were young. They left my brother, Sebastian, holding the reins of the family when he was barely eighteen years old. We have had our tragedies as well, Emmaline.”
Chastised, she remained quiet. Sometimes she was so thick-skulled that it took a cudgel to the head to make her see sense. “My apologies. Sometimes I can’t see beyond my own nose.”
He let out a gusty sigh. “No need to apologize. Of course your life has been tough. But you had your mother and your aunt.”
“I had a mother obsessed with my father. Who continually believed he would return to her. I had an aunt who tried her best, but was only able to do so much with a child whose noble blood was mixed with a workingman’s blood. I was like a doll, dressed up and paraded about, then tossed in the corner, forgotten, or worse, ignored. I was not of my aunt’s world and not of my father’s world.”
“And so you want to ruin him? Will that give you the recognition you crave?”
“He stole my childhood. And he stole my dreams.”
“He’s merely a man, not a demon.”
“Isn’t he?” She laughed, the sound harsh in the cocoon of darkness. “There are real-life demons in this world, Addison.”
He squeezed her fingers gently. “Pirating is wrong.”
She yanked her hand away. “And leaving your wife and daughter is right? Sailing to the colonies and marrying another woman while you’re still married is right?”
He didn’t answer her, but she didn’t give him time to answer, either. Everything poured out of her—the frustration and anger of a lifetime.
“I hate your stupid laws and rules. A woman must obey her marriage vows while her husband sails to another continent and weds another.”
“Surely, your mother had some recourse—”
“Surely, she did. If she had the money. But my grandfather left her destitute. So excuse me if I frown upon the laws you regard so highly.” She waved her hand in the air, and her shoulders slumped. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t find out about his other family until after my mother was dead. By then, it probably wouldn’t have mattered to the courts.”
“Pirating isn’t the answer.”
He wouldn’t see, refused to see, her side. She should stop arguing, but she couldn’t seem to.
“When James Sutherland took me off the ship and handed me a sword, I felt at home for the first time. Those pirates you hate so much are the only people who accepted me, unconditionally. They’re the only family I have, and the only family I ever want. There is no pretense with them. They say what they mean and mean what they say. They don’t whisper behind a person’s back.”
“No, they’ll run a sword through your back.”
“Better a sword than words. A sword is more honest.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe—”
“It’s not up to you to believe or accept or approve.”
“Let me talk to Kenmar, explain the situation to him. I’m sure he would understand and help.”
“Listen to you, Nicholas. You speak of destroying Blackwell as if your means of destruction is better and more noble than mine, when in both cases the end result is the same. Only you feel better about yours because it’s not as bloody, and it doesn’t involve pirates.”
He stared at her for a moment, then sat back, his jaw tight. “Maybe you’re right, but I still don’t believe pirating is the answer.”
She laid her head back and looked at him. “Return to England and tell Kenmar and the king, and whoever else you feel you need to tell what a horrible person I am. But know this, Captain Addison. Nothing will stop me from righting this wrong.”
Chapter Seventeen
Nicholas sat high on a hill overlooking the port, elbows on knees, eyes squinting against the already bright sun. A half hour before, the HMS Challenger glided out of the harbor on her way to England. Without him.
He threw down the stick he’d been shredding and made a disgusted sound. He was an idiot. A full-fledged idiot.
He should be on that ship bound for his homeland. Instead he sat on an island he’d heretofore only read about, wondering if he’d lost his mind.
Where did his plans go awry?
The answer was simple and complex. His plans went awry the moment he stepped into Emmaline’s bedchamber, the night before. He hadn’t made a conscious decision to visit her in the middle of the night. At least not a conscious decision he remembered. Suddenly he was there and she was sleeping, and thoughts and emotions swamped him. He wanted to crawl into bed with her and make love to her.
Watching her sleep had been one of the most profound experiences of his life. Asleep she was simply a woman. There were no sparring words, no tension.
She was beautiful with her hair spread across the pillow, and her face relaxed in slumber. His reaction had been nearly violent. He wanted her with an intensity he’d never felt for another woman. He desperately wanted her to lift those bedsheets and invite him in, and at the same time he desperately wanted her to put her trust in him, because earning her trust was far more significant than bedding her.
Then the pirate in her prodded her awake, and he knew if he didn’t say something she would run him through with the damn stiletto, because she didn’t trust him.
Maybe it’d been the darkness, or the intimate atmosphere, or the insanity of his feelings. Maybe it’d been the ale, or seeing Lansing’s hands on her. Nicholas wasn’t sure why he made the ill-fated decision to stay in the chair, but suspected it was a combination of all of that, including curiosity.
He wanted to dissect why Emmaline Blackwell chose to become Lady Anne.
Her first response was everything he’d suspected. Revenge was a powerful emotion. Add hatred to the mix and you had a potent combination that would motivate anyone.
What did surprise him, what gave him pause, was her deeper reason. Yes, she wanted revenge—perfectly understandable—but what he’d never considered was that being a woman, and a woman without means, she had no other recourse. Her mother would have had to prove Daniel Blackwell was
not only an adulterer, but that he was also physically abusive, and the abuse had to be excessive and life-threatening.
Knowing what he knew about Emmaline’s mother, she’d maintained hope until the very end that her husband would return to her, and would most likely not have even considered reporting his adultery.
And if she had?
Nothing would have been done about it. The laws were certainly one-sided, favoring men over women. If Emmaline’s mother had been the adulterer, the law would have been in favor of Daniel Blackwell.
So Emmaline took matters into her own hands and evened the odds by becoming a pirate. If the law wouldn’t punish him she would.
After leaving Emmaline’s bedchamber, he’d spent the night on her porch overlooking the dark waters of the Caribbean, stone-cold sober and wishing he was falling-down drunk.
Everything he’d believed about himself had been turned upside down. He’d always viewed women as fragile creatures with limited brainpower who needed a strong man to guide them. He’d always considered himself that strong man. All his life, he’d lived in a simplistic world of black and white, with few gray areas.
But Emmaline proved him wrong on all fronts.
She was stronger than most men he knew. Hell, she was stronger than he was. And she’d shown him a world of color between the black and white. He still didn’t approve of her means for revenge, but he understood it.
He shook his head and stood. What was the world coming to when he agreed with a pirate?
He took one last, mournful look back at the ship he should have been sailing on, then turned back to the house. Suddenly she was there, staring at him, the wind picking up the tendrils of hair escaping her braid, and blowing them across her face.
As it always did when she was near, his body had an instant reaction. He ached to go to her, to gather her in his arms, to kiss her the way he’d kissed her in his cabin so long ago. Ah, but to go back in time to when things were simpler.
She was such an enigma. A puzzle he was unable to solve. That was part of the attraction, of course. What man wouldn’t be intrigued? But his attraction went much deeper, and sometimes it frightened him.
“You’re still here,” she said.
“Yes.” He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t sailed away with that ship, because he wasn’t sure himself. All he knew was that early this morning, the sun was coming up and he’d still been sitting on the porch, contemplating the revelations that had rocked his world, and he knew he couldn’t board the ship. Not yet, at least. Not until he saw this thing—whatever this thing was—through to the end.
“We’re finishing the careening today.” She turned on her heel and disappeared into the trees.
Nicholas stood alone on the top of the hill, more confused than ever, and wanting her more than he ever had before.
“Heave to!”
The unlikely command rang through the chilled air, its reverberations reaching much higher than mere sound.
The sailors and soldiers waited, their faces a mixture of abject fear, tightly strung excitement and fierce determination.
No one—no one—commanded His Majesty’s Royal Navy to heave to.
Someone behind Nicholas snickered. Someone else gasped. Through the creaking of the timbers high up in the masts and the slapping of the sails against the rigging, someone groaned. Standing ready for battle were 131 Marines, along with 569 seamen.
Against a pirate ship.
Never, in all his years as a seaman, then petty officer, and on up the ranks to first lieutenant, then captain, had any of Nicholas Addison’s ships been attacked by pirates. That this one disregarded the wrath of His Majesty’s faithful servants galled Nicholas no end.
The name on the schooner was Megan Kelly, such a pretty name for a vehicle cutting a swath through the Northern Atlantic leaving death and destruction in its wake. Normally, such a small pirate’s vessel would have taken one look at the massive royal ship and moved on in search of easier prey.
Tense, his pistols primed, sword neatly sheathed at his side, Nicholas stood next to his first lieutenant. Silence hung in the air like the fog the Megan Kelly sailed out of, broken only by an occasional cough, a low mumble, the shifting of his officers’ feet.
The only thing worse than the silence was the anticipation.
The guns of His Majesty’s men-o’-war were horribly destructive, but only at close range. Once unleashed, the twenty-four-pounders would wreak a path of destruction, ripping through the hull of the small schooner. But first they needed to get close.
When he finally yelled the command to attack, the noise was deafening. Gone were the peaceful creaking of the timbers, and the lap of the waves against the hull. The cries of wounded men and the relentless report of the cannons took their place. The briny smell of the sea was displaced by the odor of burning cordite.
Both ships suffered the consequences—their sails torn, the center mast of the Megan Kelly split in two and dragging in the water. Yet she didn’t give up, came so near, in fact, that the two ships scraped against each other, taking a good layer of tar off both, and rending the air with a high-pitched screech that drowned out the sounds of battle.
They were close enough now that pistols proved effective. Nicholas drew his and fired, the small pop sounding inconsequential. But, like the Megan Kelly, he refused to give up, and so did his men. Pride tightened his chest at the sight of the red uniforms of the Marines mixing with the royal blue of the Navy, as they fought side by side.
The tide of battle slowly turned. The small pirate schooner couldn’t take the heavy pounding of the Advocate. She began to limp away, still managing a few shots. Nicholas raised his pistol one final time and sighted on a half-naked man whose dirty hair hung down his back in a single, tarred queue, his face a twisted sneer.
And whose pistol pointed directly at Nicholas.
Their guns fired simultaneously. Nicholas never got the chance to see if his ball hit its mark. Burning pain speared through his leg and he collapsed, clutching his torn thigh, clenching his jaw to keep from crying out. Blood poured through his fingers as the light of day began to fade, taking the sounds of battle with it.
And as he looked toward the sky, his vision dimming, the main topsail yard splintered and broke away from the main mast, falling toward him in slow motion.
Nicholas sat up in bed clutching his throbbing leg, the bedsheets twisted around him, sweat covering him and his heart thundering so hard, he couldn’t hear his own breathing.
He swung his legs over the side and perched on the edge, clenching his teeth as he had all those years ago, and rocking back and forth. It’d been a long time since he’d had the dream—or rather, memory—and it seemed as fresh now as it had been when it happened. The horror, the overwhelming fear and the intense anger constantly resided beneath the surface, ready to spring forth. The dream never failed to incite them.
He lost many men in that battle. Good men who believed in what they were fighting for. Who believed in England and the king. He still remembered some of their faces, and would always remember their names. In some ways, he felt responsible for their deaths, and the guilt of it lay heavy on his battered soul.
The pirate’s musket ball had reached its mark. The broken mast had done the rest. The Navy won that day, but Nicholas lost. Near death, he’d been taken to Dover, where a doctor tried to patch him up and word was sent to his brother in London. Sebastian raced to his side and when Nicholas was stable enough he was taken to London. His doctors there deemed his recovery impossible, and counseled Sebastian to install Nicholas in a home and make him as comfortable as possible.
Sebastian refused, and employed the best surgeons the Continent offered. There were times when only his brother’s determination kept Nicholas going, because his own certainly flagged. He believed it would have been better if either the musket ball or the mast had finished him off.
Eventually, he learned to walk again, but the journey was painful, arduous and frustrating.
The doctors called him a miracle.
He didn’t feel like a miracle. He felt like a broken man who had lost everything.
The pirate who attacked the HMS Advocate died in the battle. Nicholas had felt no satisfaction on hearing the news.
He pushed himself off the bed and hobbled across the room, desperate to forget, knowing he never would. He threw up the window sash to gulp in the humid air.
A pirate, a filthy, immoral pirate, ended his life in every way except the final way.
He hated pirates. Loathed their sneaky, self-serving ways.
“Nicholas?”
In the reflection of the windowpane, he watched Emmaline enter his room and stand inside the door. She clutched the lapels of her robe closed. Her hair was tousled, freed from its ever-present braid. She was beautiful. And she was a pirate.
But she’s not the same pirate who attacked you.
“Go away,” he growled.
“I heard a noise.”
He clenched his teeth against the pain in his leg, and the throbbing of his manhood. Sweat dripped down his temples. He didn’t want her near. Didn’t want her to see the wreck of a man he’d become, and didn’t want her to know what a fine line he walked this night. An animal lived inside him. One he didn’t know existed until he met her. He wanted to tear the robe from her clutches and feast upon what was beneath. He’d been raised to be a gentleman, and was proud that he’d always lived by the rules governing that classification. But tonight, he didn’t feel like a gentleman. Tonight, he didn’t want to be a gentleman.
He wanted to forget his past. Forget the attack that brought him to the lowest point of his life. He wanted to forget for a few hours that Emmaline Sutherland was his enemy, and he was on a mission to destroy her.
For one night he wanted to be a man who reveled in his baser instincts.
“What happened?” Ignoring his warning, she approached.
He made a sound in his throat, more animal than human.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, the lightning brightening the clouds over the ocean.
The Notorious Lady Anne: A Loveswept Historical Romance Page 18