Angel dropped to the sand, crossed one leg over her knee, and inspected the sole of her left foot. "Thought so," she murmured. "Picked up a prickle." She drew her knife from the sheath at her waist and used the blade to remove the thorn. "There, got it." She sheathed the weapon and patted the ground beside her. "Sit, Will."
He considered for a moment, then settled beside her.
"You were deep in thought when I slipped up on you."
She flashed him a smile, and he noticed again how perfectly spaced and white her small teeth were.
"Musing on your lady, weren't you?"
He nodded. "A great lady, but old enough to be my grandmother. She's my neighbor... and friend. Lady Elizabeth Graymoor."
"Gentry?"
"More than that. Lady Graymoor is an English noblewoman, widow of an earl."
"And you know her? You've been in her house?"
"More times than I can count, and Lizzy in mine. She's a dear soul, and I think she would find you intriguing."
Angel made a small sound of derision. "Aye, she'd that. Very intrigued she'd be with the likes of me."
"I'm serious. And you'd like her. She's a great storyteller and a talented painter. She gives the best parties on Church Street. Even the governor and his lady come when they're in town."
"In Charleston."
"Yes. She still has vast estates in England, but she's lived in Charleston for many years."
"Ye must tell me everything about her, of her house and yours, and of these great parties. Has she a coach and four white horses to pull them? And does she dress in silk and wear pearls in her hair?"
He laughed. "As a matter of fact, she does wear silk and pearls. Lizzy is the soul of fashion and a fantastic dancer."
"And the coach? Is it all aglitter with gold and silver wheels and—"
"Lizzy has a fine carriage and a team of black horses to pull it, but I've not noticed any golden wheels."
Angel sighed. "Bett said the coaches in London are all golden, and I thought that..." She took a deep breath. "Does the lady have music at her parties and candles by the dozen?"
"Hundreds." Will grinned at her. "Lizzy has not only candles and a coach, but spaniels, a pack of them, all bathed and beribboned like spoiled children. And a parrot that sings."
"Fie on you, Will Falcon, to take me for a cod's head. Surely, you're telling me lies." She scrambled up and began running away from him down the sand.
"Wait!" he called. "I wasn't... Angel!" He got up and ran after her, startling the horses and sending them galloping into the thicket.
Angel sprinted along the hard-packed sand at the water's edge, her coppery braid bouncing against her back and streaming out behind her. She was fast, and his healing injuries had left him in less than prime condition. But once he'd set his mind on catching her, his longer legs began to close the distance between them.
"Angel!" he shouted. A cramp stitched through his side, but every step took him closer.
She glanced back over her shoulder, saw how near he was, and veered into the waves.
"Why are you..." He broke off when she whirled to face him, and he saw tears glistening on her cheeks. His annoyance faded, and he stopped a few arms' lengths away.
"I've never seen it," she said all in a rush, shouting above the crash of the surf. "Not the houses, nor coaches, nor golden streets. I'm naught but an ignorant wrecker's wench with salt water in my veins, but that gives you no right to poke fun at me. It was all I asked of you, that you tell me—"
The tears were his undoing.
He splashed through the incoming wave and seized Angel by the shoulders. She struggled, but he held her and gathered her close against him while water drenched him nearly to the waist. "I didn't mean to laugh at you," he said.
Trembling, she raised her head and looked full into his eyes. For an instant, he thought she would kiss him again, and he bent to meet her mouth, but she turned her face away.
"Is it wrong, to want to know what's out there?"
"No, Angel, it's not." He kissed the crown of her head, marveling at her wild, clean scent and the heady sensation of holding her in his arms.
She gave a small ragged cry, deep in her throat, and need thundered through him. He caught her chin in his hand, lifted it, and seared her mouth with his.
Chapter 9
She yielded to him. Her lips softened and parted. She struggled in his embrace, not to escape, but to get closer. He could feel every curve and swell of her body pressed to his, and need pulsed in his groin.
"Angel... Angel." He groaned as desire ignited into a flame that roared through his veins, searing through bone and sinew, destroying reason, making him forget who he was and where. "Sweet... sweet Angel," he murmured.
He'd never tasted anything so perfect as her mouth, and he couldn't get enough of kissing her. He couldn't remember ever being so excited by a woman's scent or the feel of her skin.
Angel's thick lashes fluttered. Her throat flushed, and she gasped for breath. Her lower lip quivered as she gazed wide-eyed and questioning into his eyes.
Her total vulnerability struck him with gale force, and he shuddered with emotion. Her head tilted back, exposing the creamy expanse of her throat.
"Angel," he whispered thickly.
Cradling the nape of her neck with a trembling hand, he brushed his lips against the sensitive spot beneath her ear, her eyelids, and the dimple on her left cheek. Angel's skin was soft and inviting... as sweet on his tongue as warm peach honey.
She writhed against him. Her fingers stroked his face, threaded through his hair, and clung to his shoulders. She murmured his name, drawing it out in her soft, almost musical way.
He nibbled the hollow in her neck, rasping his tongue over the delicate skin, thrilling to the quick, hot pulse of her blood just beneath the skin.
Angel made small impatient sounds and strained to find his mouth with hers. And when she did, she caught his lower lip between her teeth, gently nipping and sucking at the sensitive flesh until he thought he would go mad with the joy of it.
"Vixen." He groaned, fighting release. Her teasing caress was a spark to gunpowder. Blood thundered in his loins; his rod ached with wanting her.
But he wasn't ready for this storm of sensations to end. Hungrily, he plundered the velvet cavern of her mouth, thrusting deep with his tongue, claiming what she offered, while his hands sought the swell of her lush breasts.
She sobbed with pleasure as he filled his palm with her soft flesh, and her cry whipped his lust to frenzy. He could control himself no longer. Ripping the thin cloth, he lowered his head and drew the swollen nipple between his lips.
"Mother of God," Angel whispered. She arched her back and encircled his neck with her arms as she pressed against his leg and thigh. He felt her nails cut into his skin, but he found the slight pain exciting. He suckled greedily at her breast, reveling in her soft moans of pleasure while he fumbled with her skirt, trying to remove every obstacle between them.
Without warning, a powerful wave larger than the others surged around them, knocking them both off balance. He and Angel went down in a tangle of arms and legs and swirling water. Will swallowed a mouthful and came up sputtering for breath. "Are you all right?" He gasped and choked, spitting out ocean. "Angel?"
Laughing, she lay on her back in the shallows, foaming water buoying her up. Her red-gold hair hung around her face like a veil, revealing only her haunting green eyes. Her scrap of a skirt rode high on her tanned thighs; her thin bodice hung in shreds, so that both rosy breasts were exposed by the receding waves.
"All right?" She giggled merrily. "Had I known that bump and tickle was so gaysome, mayhap I would have tried it sooner."
Will wiped the stinging salt water out of his eyes and tried to think with his head instead of his mast. "Best you cover your..." He gestured toward her, feeling suddenly fifteen and foolish. "I'm but human, Angel. And the sight of your breasts is enough to..." He exhaled between clenched teeth, wishing mightil
y that he was a man with less scruples or that the taste of those taunt pink nipples didn't linger on his tongue. "I'm afraid... that... was unwise," he stumbled. "Considering our circumstances."
Her green eyes clouded. She got up slowly and tugged at her ruined garment. "Did I do something wrong?" she asked him.
"Hell, no." He balled his hands into tight fists. "It was..." He shook his head. "You don't understand, and the fault is all mine."
Her full lower lip protruded in a delicate pout, and it was all he could do to keep from kissing her mouth again and again. The dip in the sea had eased his discomfort, but it would take only seconds to pitch him headlong into full arousal. He tried to think of something disgusting—maggots, even rotting fish. But the very available, very desirable woman before him was all too real.
"I don't kiss like those fine ladies in Charleston, do I?"
He shook his head.
"I reckoned that was it." She covered her face with her palms. When she took her hands away, confusion and hurt filled her eyes. "You think me a trull," she declared hotly. For a minute, he thought she would burst into tears.
"It's not... ," he began. He felt clumsy, foolish and, because of it, he snapped at her. "I don't know what to do with you."
"Ye... you cannot see me as your handfast wife, can you?"
"No. That ceremony was a sham."
She grimaced. "Blast me if you're not the oddest man I've ever laid eyes on." She yanked her skirt down. Wet, it clung to her body like a second skin.
Will felt the back of his neck sizzle with heat. "I've not got the sailor's curse, if that's what you think. I'm a man who likes women."
"So you say."
"Careful," he warned. "You're treading on thin ice."
She sniffed in disbelief. "Are all gentry like you?"
He shook his head again. "No, definitely not." He made for the beach, heading north. How the blazes could he explain it to her when he didn't understand it himself? The need for her throbbed like an abscessed tooth. But he was a man of reason. Since he'd reached his majority, he'd rarely done anything rash—other than go into the ocean to rescue a dead man.
The Falcon family had survived and prospered amid war, floods, and political upheaval because they had acted rationally. Maybe that's why his father's death had come as such a shock. Nicholas Falcon had charted a course in life and never veered from it... until the night he'd put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
That had been his father's single act of stupidity. And since he, Will, had already used up his single witless voucher in trying to save Isaiah, it was clear that now he had to be prudent with Angel.
"Will! Wait!"
He walked on, but she soon caught up with him. He glanced at her, then wordlessly removed his shirt and handed it to her. She shrugged and put it on.
"It's the woman in Charleston, isn't it? You do love her."
"Leave it," he answered roughly. He started walking again, and she kept pace.
"You despise me."
"I don't despise you. I simply don't want..." He was lying through his teeth again. Hell, yes, he wanted to do it with her, here and now, on this glorious beach. But he refused to be a slave to his cod. "Reason," he muttered. "I'm a man of reason."
"Strange reason, by my way of thinking." She shook her head. "I wait long past anytime I should have taken a husband. And when I do pick one, not only is he an off-islander, but he's a bloody cod's head."
He stopped walking and glared at her. "Mind your tongue, woman. What kind of foul talk is that?"
"Plain speech."
"You don't know the first thing about men."
"Don't I? I've fended off Dyce and his kind since I grew nether hair."
Will swore. "That's the talk that will get you raped in any seaport on the Atlantic. Hell, anywhere. A decent woman doesn't mention her..." He gritted his teeth in frustration. Where to start explaining? She was impossible. "Do you make it a habit of walking the beach naked around the men of your Brethren? Of kissing them like you kissed me?"
Her face paled to the color of old bone. "The Lord made women as they are. And if you don't like the way we're formed, take your complaint to Him."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it."
Angel averted her eyes and traced a circle in the damp sand with her bare toes. "Dyce is no better than a shoat," she murmured. "But if he touched me or another unmarried lass, Cap'n would stake him out on the beach for the crabs. He did it to the man who got Tamsey with babe. Crabs stripped him clean. That's why Dyce kept beggin' Cap'n to let him take me to wife. He knew he couldn't have me any other way."
She started walking again, shoulders stiff, and head held high. He knew that if he had any sense at all, he'd let her go, but he couldn't.
"I don't suppose there's a boat on this island?" he called after her.
"If there was a boat, you might escape."
"So you admit it. I'm a prisoner."
"You might could say that."
He ran and caught her by the shoulder. "Why? What's to be accomplished by holding me here?"
She stared stonily at him until he dropped his hand, then said, "Cap'n... the Brethren, they all thought that you'd be content to stay and be one of us."
"And you? Do you believe that?"
She sighed and shook her head. "More likely I could hold the wind in my hands." Her green eyes hardened to chips of jade. "The world's not all sky and water, black and white. There's gray in between, like land and the green things what sprout on it. Can't you understand that we're not all villains? Bloodthirsty buccaneers, eager to slash throats and make widows and orphans of off-island folk?"
"You're wrong," he insisted. "It's you that's blind. You won't see what's happening here. My father lost two ships here on this coast. It cost us our company, devastated the families of the crew, and cost my father his life. So you'll get no sympathy from me for your pirate brotherhood."
And none for you, if I had any sense, he seethed silently. He was letting Angel get to him, twisting his values of right and wrong because she had the timeless eyes of Eve, breasts to make a man blind, and a strut that could lure a bishop through the gates of hell.
"You knew your father?"
"Of course, I knew him. Didn't you know—" It was out of his mouth before he realized that she'd take it as an insult.
"Nay. I don't remember my father. Not even his name."
She remembered little of her poppet days. Things just were. Sometimes she had dreams of a man she thought was her father. When she awoke, she could hear his voice crying, "Bett... Bett... my precious Bett." ...Almost hear his voice.
She forced herself to be pleasant in spite of Will's picayunish mood. As Bett always said, "Sour bait catches no trout."
"My mother died when I was twelve," Will said. "After that, it was just my father and me. I'm the last of the Falcon line."
"You'll be wanting to breed up sons."
He made a strangled sound. "Is there nothing you won't say? No lady would—"
"No Charleston lady?" Angel wrinkled her nose. "I don't reckon your Julia would. But I wasn't asking. I was saying what was so." She folded her arms. "No need to go all gentry on me, Will. I wasn't suggestin' that I have your babes. When it comes to your sons and daughters, it's natural you'd want a fancy woman, one of your own kind, to be mother to them."
"A fancy woman."
She could see that he was doing his best to look stern, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth and the gleam in his eyes told her that he wasn't really angry. "Just tell me about Charleston," she urged. "About your father, and your house, and even your Julia, if ye want. Tell it all, and I promise I'll bite my tongue and be still as a beached clam."
"I wouldn't know where to start."
"The beginning is the best." She took hold of his big hand and squeezed it. "Tell about your da," she said.
He gave her a glance that made her go all shivery inside as she walked a little faster to pick up his pace.
>
"You want to know about my father?" Will asked. "Seriously?"
"Aye," she said, stretching to keep up with him. "I do. I'm hungering to know."
Will's expression turned solemn, but he nodded. "All right, I'll tell you about him. My father's name was Nicholas, and he was the most honest and wisest man I've ever known. He was born on a rice plantation to parents who had given up all hope of ever having a child. From the first day of his..."
Once started, Will was as bursting over with words as a cloud full of raindrops. He talked until the sun began to go down, and true to her promise, she listened without asking so much as a single question.
They arrived at camp as the first star twinkled on. Neither had spoken since they had turned inward from the beach. Both she and Will were lost in their own thoughts. It was clear as well water to her that he'd loved his father dearly, although he'd not said it in so many words.
For herself, she'd seen death aplenty, but she couldn't imagine coming on Bett and finding that she'd killed herself. Hard as life was, it was difficult to figure how a body could come to such an end, especially over a thing like money.
"How long ago since ye lost your da?" she asked, breaking the silence between them.
"A year."
"And you say he did it because of his lost ships and cargo?"
"We've had a difficult time in the last few years. One of our schooners, the Whippet, was boarded off the coast of Ireland by the British navy. Our men were pressed into service, and the vessel was seized. And off Saint Kitts, the Polly Anne and the Savannah were fired on. We lost the Savannah, but Jem Howard, the skipper of the Polly Anne, made a run for it. He escaped, but when he got his cargo to port, the harbormaster turned him away, claiming it was too dangerous to deal with American merchants. The English are bound and determined to run us off the seas."
Angel busied herself with starting the campfire and fetching fresh water. There was honey in a crock and a bit of cheese. They'd best eat everything perishable right off before it could spoil.
"Things went from bad to worse. Storms, a scarcity of experienced hands. I had a close call with the Katherine. A French pirate shredded one of our sails and nearly grounded us on a reef. But keeping good men is the biggest problem. Not many are willing to sign on when they're afraid of ending up as virtual slaves, sailing under the Union Jack." Will crouched beside the fire pit. "I can do this," he said, adding twigs to the small flame.
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