The Queen's Captain
Page 17
His intended bride.
As delighted realisation dawned, her arms reached up and tightened about his neck. She drew the well-beloved tawny head down to her own and their mouths sought, found one another, no longer in doubt or fear, but in sweet and utter trust. Pausing for breath, they parted for an instant and Beth had a swift glimpse of dark-fringed hazel eyes, the hard mouth which could be surprisingly soft and melting when his lips enveloped hers.
She looked up at him, smiling shyly, enchanted by his tenderness. But not for long. His eyes closed, and with a sigh that was half a moan, he seized her again. Roughly this time, his body hardened against her, she felt the strong rigidity of muscle, of arms, chest and thighs. She was his captive in a delicious prison from which she hoped never to escape—
He was hers at last. Beloved Captain, master, lover. As they kissed and clung together, and kissed again, she felt the slow fires of answering passion surge through her, following his caressing hands in a pattern of urgent longing. Faint with desire, only his arms kept her from falling. Falling out of the world where his body was the sun, his kisses summer rain, his love the glory of moon and stars and all the great universe beyond—
"Oh James." His name was all she could murmur, but it was enough.
At last he rearranged her wedding bonnet and said: "Downstairs our guests are solemnly awaiting the appearance of Captain Danyell and Mistress Elizabeth Howard, having come from around the district to witness their arranged marriage." He smiled at her. "They will be imagining that we are little to be envied in such a matter, the men thinking the Captain a fool, the women thinking the poor young bride a martyr."
"My guardians—are they too present?" Beth was filled with a sense of loathing at having her happiest of days tarnished by any encounter with that greedy, heartless couple.
"Nay. I visited them with a story of how I had rescued you after your flight from Craighall, and that we desired a quiet wedding. I also indicated that it was known to me that your hasty departure had been brought about by their cruelty. Their faces revealed the guilt their words denied. They were eager indeed for the gold I offered for a legal release from your guardianship."
Then Beth told him of the ring, the velvet for a gown which he had sent when she had a fever. "Your gifts never reached me, or I would not have seemed so ungracious. Even if I did not love you, I would have been grateful, since I had few possessions of any kind."
He regarded her with compassion. "So I realised when your aunt was wearing the ring upon her hand and the velvet gown upon her back, the day I called unexpectedly from Folkestone." He smiled. "That fortunate day you disappeared from their lives and appeared in mine aboard the Sea Queen. Now, should my lengthy absence be necessary before your eighteenth birthday' next year, Madeleine will be your legal guardian until my return."
"Your lengthy absence?" she whispered dolefully.
"Nay, sweet, there is little likelihood of us being separated, since I intend to keep you most jealously close to my side each day—and every night," he added, his hands tightening upon her shoulders.
"But what of the Sea Queen? I would not keep you from your other love," she added shyly.
"True. And we must eat and run a fine house, for I doubt not that the years will fill it with the family it deserves." Narrowing his eyes, he said: "Sometimes I fancy I see down the corridor of years, both of us grown stout and content, with our children making daisy-chains out there upon the lawns—"
This was so exactly her own vision of the future at Millefleur, that she laughed. "I think the house wants us too. It has been a lonely place."
"But not any longer, I swear. The Sea Queen has been my whole life these past years. Home was but a sad burden, with empty rooms echoing to my own footsteps. Now it will be different. However, the Sea Queen must voyage under another master for a while, though I fear he will not be as fortunate in his choice of cabin boy as I was, in finding the remarkable Master Perkins to attend me."
He looked at her solemnly and added: "If I have been devious about declaring my love, then it is because knowing how Mistress Beth Howard loathed and detested Captain Danyell, enough to risk the dangers of the Spanish Armada and a cabin boy's disguise, I had to be certain sure that love had grown between us."
In a voice thickened with emotion, he continued: "Do you not understand, my dearest, that having learned to love you, had you refused me, scorned or laughed at my declaration, life itself would be insupportable?" His arms tightened about her. "I could not live in the same world and know you existed and went uncaring from day to day. My love is so great, I would take thee gladly, Beth Howard, if instead of love, you had only pity to offer me—"
Beth put a hand to his lips. "No more, I beg, for you have all my love. Humbly and proudly, I adore thee, James Danyell."
"Then although I fear I shall never make a man of Master Perkins," he whispered, "I swear that before this days is much older, I shall make a woman of Mistress Howard—a mistress, ay, and a wife—"