Gallant Match

by Jennifer Blake

  The passengers wandered away from the railing, some to promenade the deck, others to tidy their belongings brought on board or make ready for breakfast. Sonia disappeared belowdecks, perhaps in search of her aunt. Kerr, watching the last twitch of her skirts, pushed away from where he stood and let out a deep sigh of relief.

  He could not think the lady was either foolish or desperate enough to leap from the moving ship. It would be nothing less than suicide even if she did know how to dog-paddle a bit, like the seaman he’d forced to swim ashore. The Mississippi River was wide, the shoreline impossibly distant. He could afford to rest and maybe catch up on his sleep knowing Sonia could not escape the ship.

  He tried, he really did. Forgoing food, he took off his boots and lay down in his bunk, pulling the curtain closed around it for privacy in the common room. Eyes shut, he listened to the beat and thud of the engine, the swish of the water moving along the hull, the slap of cards and rumble of voices from a game in the gentleman’s parlor next door. A short nap, he thought, that was all.

  He couldn’t do it.

  What if he was wrong? What if Mademoiselle Bonneval so despised her proposed groom that she’d try any means to get away from him? She was no milk-and-water miss, apt to give up at the first setback. Oh, no. She’d spit in the eyes of them all—Bonneval, Rouillard, even him, especially him.

  Besides, the steamer would not be keeping to the middle reaches of the Mississippi. Sandbars, islands and floating debris, even whole trees lifting leafless branches like drowning souls, would send them along channels closer to the banks. She might well throw herself off the stern.

  Chances of her making it to shore were slim if she tried it in her heavy skirts. They’d drag her down to the muddy river bottom where she’d turn, pale and staring with her hair trailing around her, before settling among the scavenger catfish and turtles. And that was if she didn’t jump from the side rail so she wound up battered by one of the paddle wheels.

  Kerr sat up with a shudder, thrusting the images from him as he wiped his hands over his face. It couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t allow it.

  Rolling from the bunk with a hard wrench of tired muscles, he pulled his boots back on and went topside again. It didn’t help his feelings, not a whit, to find the lady stretched out in a deck chair with an open book on her lap, pages riffling in the breeze, and her eyes closed in the most peaceful of slumber.

  Kerr took a chair a few feet down from hers and stretched out, crossing his booted ankles and folding his hands across his waistcoat. For some time, he lay watching Sonia, his gaze moving from the fine dark curls stirring against her cheek to the curves of her lips and soft mounds of her breasts that rose and fell so evenly. Her skirts covered her ankles, yet he caught a discreet display of neatly turned perfection in white stockings every time an errant wind lifted them as it gusted along the deck.

  He stirred uncomfortably, cursing softly under his breath. Pulling up the split skirt of his frock coat, he folded it over him so it covered the front of his trousers a little better.

  He had kissed her, held her, felt her breasts, belly and thighs pressed against him from chest to knees. The taste of her lingered in his head, a sweet intoxication beyond imagining. He wanted her with an ache that was three parts physical need, but one part something else entirely.

  His enemy’s betrothed. What was it in men that demanded they possess the women claimed by those they despised? Did it come from the instinct to hit where it hurt most, to go for the soft underbelly? Or could it be some ancient need to prevent their tribe from increasing?

  Kerr had no idea. He only knew he was fast becoming obsessed with Jean Pierre Rouillard’s bride-to-be.

  She had been afraid of him the night before. It was momentary, he thought, yet he had seen her measure his size with a swift look and estimate her lack of chance against him, seen the terror in her face when she thought he would maim or kill the seaman who’d insulted her.

  He hadn’t enjoyed it. It made him feel degraded, that flash of dread, branded by it as an uncouth bully. And he deserved it, that he knew well, because he had deliberately used his size and strength of will to intimidate her. It wouldn’t happen again, not if it was in his power to prevent it.

  Nor would he touch her again. She didn’t deserve to be made a pawn in the game between him and Rouillard. Except she was that already, had been from the moment he learned of her existence.

  She would not suffer for it, at least not any more than was strictly necessary. This much he swore in silent vow. Like the swordsmen of the Brotherhood, he would fight to his last breath to keep her safe.

  Exalted intentions, he thought with silent scorn. But he did not disavow them as he allowed his eyelids to close.

  Nine

  It might have been an hour later, but seemed mere minutes, when a clatter jerked Kerr awake. His neck was stiff and one arm hung down beside his chair with the knuckles of his hand trailing on the deck. More than that, the deck chair where Sonia had lain was vacant.

  He came erect with an oath, swung his head to peer up and down. There she was, only a few paces away, strolling on the arm of Alexander Tremont. She seemed oblivious to everything except that gentleman as she chatted, smiling as if she had not a care in the world. Behind her on the planking, not two yards from Kerr’s resting place, lay a fan of painted silk with ivory sticks.

  It was the sound as she dropped it that had awakened him. Kerr climbed to his feet, stretched, then bent to scoop up the feminine trifle. Closing the distance between the couple and himself with a few long strides, he cleared his throat.

  “Your pardon, mademoiselle.”

  She paused, turned with the most innocent of faces. “Monsieur?”

  “I believe you lost this.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said as she took the fan from him. She spread the carved sticks, inspecting the silk for damage, before sending him a quick glance from under her lashes. “How kind of you to retrieve it. I am sorry if my letting it fall disturbed your rest.”

  She was nothing of the kind. The bit of silk and ivory had been dropped on purpose. It was, he thought, something in the nature of a thrown gauntlet, a declaration of war between them. He would not give her the satisfaction of knowing he understood it, however.

  “Not at all,” he answered with a brief nod of greeting for Tremont at the same time. “I was merely enjoying the air.”

  “As are we all, though this passage downriver to the gulf is a tedious business. Or don’t you find it so?”

  Kerr glanced at the glittering silver stretch of the river ahead of them. Great blue and white herons waded in the shallows, making the water ripple as shoals of minnows fled before them. Egrets festooned the moss-hung trees like great white flowers. A raccoon scurried out of sight as the ship neared, and an alligator or snake stirred a nearby eddy. Shrubbery feathered with rich green growth skirted the verge of the waterway, leaning out as if to see their reflections.

  “I’m not sure I do.” He turned back to smile into her periwinkle eyes. “There’s much to be said for a slow and quiet journey.”

  “I might have known you would say so. A quiet life for you, at all costs.” She glanced up at the gentleman next to her. “Monsieur Wallace is my escort, you perceive, hired by my father to make certain I arrive safely at Vera Cruz.”

  Tremont nodded. “Your aunt explained it to me. An enviable position.”

  “I’m not sure he would agree with you. I suspect it’s been a trial for him to this point.”

  “It’s had its rewards.” Kerr kept his voice carefully neutral.

  A flush bloomed on her cheekbones and her lips compressed in a flat line. He was gratified to see that she understood his reference, that she recalled the evening before even if her remembrance could not be as vivid as the one that seared his mind.

  It was also satisfying, in some strange fashion, that she seemed to be playing fair with Tremont by frequent reminders that she was not free. He would not have put it past her to ad
d the gentleman to her train in hope he might prove useful in effecting an escape.

  That, he couldn’t allow.

  The gentleman’s intentions toward Sonia were not likely to be serious or to extend beyond the length of the voyage, Kerr thought. A brief flirtation, a midnight tryst or two; he would look for nothing more. No doubt his handsome face and polished address had gained him many a similar conquest in the past, so he naturally expected another.

  His next would not be Sonia Bonneval. Kerr felt no particular ill will toward the man, but he would carve him up like a Christmas goose at the first hint that he meant to take advantage of her.

  “I’ll just amble along with you, if I may,” he said casually, even as these swift conjugations ran through his head. “Nothing like a nice walk around the deck for warding off the fidgets.”

  Sonia made no objection. Primed as he was for another clash, Kerr was instantly uneasy. He leaned a little to see under her bonnet brim as he fell into step beside her, across from Tremont. The flash of burning lavender blue he caught did nothing to reassure him.

  Moments later, while she discussed the passengers she had met thus far and the cargo they were carrying, one end of the shawl she wore looped through her elbows slipped to the deck. In reeling it in again while keeping her hold on the book she’d been reading, she somehow managed to entangle its fringes with Kerr’s boot. He stumbled, trying to keep from ripping away the trailing silk threads, as she pulled them from under his foot. Only the most desperate of hornpipes prevented him from landing on his backside.

  She smothered a laugh. He was sure of it. He apologized, anyway, while avoiding the grin of sympathetic understanding Tremont threw him. Let her treat him like a lackey and buffoon, he thought in wan acceptance. His shoulders were broad enough to take it, and they both knew where the authority lay. If the exercise roused her spirits, he didn’t mind.

  “Curious thing,” the sugar planter said, manfully filling the conversational breach as they began to walk again, “I came up on deck in the wee hours this morning for a smoke and look around. The ship’s crew was loading, doing the work of stevedores. What they carried on board appeared to be crates and boxes of a special size.”

  Kerr inclined his head in agreement. “I noticed the same myself.”

  “I figured you might have, since I saw you at the stern. What did you think?”

  “What was it?” Sonia asked. “What were they loading?”

  She glanced from him to Tremont and back again as she put the question, Kerr saw. Since the other man had brought up the matter in front of her, there seemed no point in beating around the bush, even if it was not a subject usually discussed before the ladies.

  “Arms,” he answered, “or so it looked to me, rifles and ammunition.”

  “But that would mean—” Sonia stopped, frowning.

  “Someone is either planning a large hunting party or sending a shipment of weapons to Mexico.”

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  Her voice was thin and she stared straight ahead so it was impossible to see her face. Kerr wondered what she was thinking, wondered if, just possibly, she suspected the involvement of someone she knew. Rouillard, for instance.

  “Some scoundrel who values gold over scruples, I’d say.” He twitched a shoulder. “Not that there’s any law against it. We aren’t at war.”

  “A technicality,” Tremont said. “There will be a law the instant war is declared.”

  “Agreed.”

  The planter tipped his head. “I suppose the captain could have a hand in it.”

  “Making a bit of extra cash on the voyage, you mean? It’s possible.” The vessel’s master, Captain Frazier, had the look of an upright New England Quaker to Kerr, plain of dress, with a permanent frown between his eyes and side-whiskers like cotton bales on his jaws, untrimmed because it might appear vain to keep them neat. Not that it meant anything. The look of a man had fooled people before, and would again. “Might just as easily be in the charge of the American commissioner we have on board.”

  “As a peace offering from our government, you mean, or a bribe for the good behavior of whoever is president of the country by the time we get there.”

  Kerr nodded, understanding the last as a reference to the frequent changes in that high office. The most disturbing of these involved General Santa Ana, the man behind the decimation of the prisoners from the Mier Expedition, as well as the infamous massacre at the Alamo ten years before. He’d been in and out of the position at least twice, and looked to be back again any day.

  “Might they not be for their protection?” Sonia suggested.

  “You haven’t seen the number of boxes, mademoiselle,” he answered.

  “Unfortunately not,” she said in acid tones, “being otherwise occupied.”

  She meant that she had been confined to her cabin for all rights and purposes. “Just so,” Kerr said in grave approval.

  The exclamation she made was soft but virulent. At the same instant, the book she held slid from her grasp. Careening down the sloped bell of her skirts, it skidded across the deck where it lay with pages flapping in the breeze.

  Tremont reached it first. As he leaned to pick it up, his frock coat fell open, revealing the shape of a pocket pistol against the lining. Gentlemen often kept such a weapon about them, but it was usually for a particular purpose, such as protection late at night or when carrying large sums of money. It was possible this voyage was excuse enough. Still, Kerr took note of it.

  He wanted to snatch Sonia’s book from the planter’s hand. Perverse though it might be, given his suspicion it had been let fall on purpose, he resented Tremont’s retrieval of it. The game was between him and the lady, after all.

  Deliberately, he reached out and took possession of the volume. It was The Legend of Montrose, a historical romance by that purveyor of ancient Highland dramas Sir Walter Scott. The feudal settings and grand notions of honor had made his work wildly popular in New Orleans in recent years. This one was an elegant edition in bound leather stamped with gold and with its pages edged in gold leaf. “A fine tale,” he said in judicious comment, “but not the equal of Ivanhoe.”

  “You’ve read it?” Sonia lifted a brow as she held out her hand for the return of her property.

  “We do read in Kentucky,” Kerr answered, his voice dry.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, her voice stiff.

  Maybe she hadn’t, maybe he was too ready to see insult where there was none. “You feel such high romance is not my style? My ancestors were from Scotland, you know. I’m reminded of the stories told by my grandpa, fine tales of cattle stealing and brawling in the heather for the glory of the clan. Well, and for the fun of it.”

  “Fascinating, I’m sure.”

  “So they were,” he agreed, all affability as he handed over the book with a bow. “Being I’m the type, it could help if you picture me in the part of Scott’s Robert McGregor. You might gain a clearer understanding of events.”

  “I understand well enough.”

  “Now, I’m pleased as punch to know that as it makes everything so much easier,” he answered at his most obtuse, though he knew very well what the snap in her voice meant.

  She gave him a fulminating glance then whisked around in a swirl of skirts and began to walk again. Tremont paused long enough to offer a quick shrug before hastening after her.

  Kerr, his face set in grim lines, stared after them for long moments. He should give up, go below, have a shave and a wash.

  He wasn’t so inclined.

  It occurred to him that he was far too intrigued by the battle of wills between himself and the lady under his protection. Something in it made him feel alive, almost hopeful in a way he had not since—well, since before Andrew had died. Might just be that the long quest was nearing an end, that he was finally doing something that bid fair to let him keep his sworn promise to avenge his brother’s death. Possibly it was because he was going to face Jean
Pierre Rouillard at last.

  Yes, and it could be he simply took pleasure in the lady’s company. He took far too much pleasure in it, in fact.

  He should back off, leave her be except for keeping watch to make sure no harm came to her. He should slope off now, find something, anything else, to pass the time. He could visit the engine room, look in on the bridge, have a word with the captain about when they would reach the gulf and the course they would set for Vera Cruz. He could slip down into the hold, poke around checking cargo markings, see if that shipment of arms and ammunition was directed to anyone familiar, say, a gentleman named Rouillard.

  None of those things held the least appeal. They might later, but not just yet. Regrettable, but there it was.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, whistling a Scots lament for Bonnie Prince Charlie, he sauntered after the irritating yet fascinating Mademoiselle Bonneval.

  Ten

  The arrogance of the man, to suppose she might picture him as the hero of some epic romance, a figure of nobility, chivalry and desperate courage. He hardly fit the mold, having hired out his sword to the highest bidder while taking on the subjugation of a helpless female. Not that she was as supine as all that, which the gentleman would discover to his cost, but the principle was the same. The McGregor indeed! His suggestion was enough to put her off finishing the book; now that he had instilled the idea of himself as a figure in it, she must continually force the image from her mind. How very provoking.

  It was precisely what he intended, of course; she had seen it in the fathomless gray of his eyes. How odd, when she would have sworn subtlety was not his forte. Force, action, overt command, she might have expected, but not oblique challenge.

  How very conscious she was of him behind her. His great shadow, slipping along ahead of him, fell over her so she walked in its gray, moving pool. The sheer magnitude of it would be intimidating if she allowed it to be. She was not a large female, but neither was she petite, and it nearly covered her.