To Tempt an Heiress

by Susanna Craig

  His sharp green gaze was immediately upon her, looking far more amused than surprised. “Awake at last, are we? Well, this is my cabin. And I’m no gentleman.”

  “I never!” She knew she was blushing, a curse of her complexion, but she kept her spine ramrod-straight.

  “A pity, Miss Holderin,” he said with a laugh, coming at last to his feet. His dark head almost brushed the ceiling.

  “Just what was in that ‘tea’ you gave me? How long have I been asleep? Did you—did you—?” For all her bravery, she could not muster the courage to put an accusation into words.

  “Violate you?” he suggested. If she had imagined his expression sardonic before, the look he gave her now made her realize she had only just tapped the deep vein of mordant humor that ran through his soul. “Would that have been before or after you vomited in my sea chest?”

  “I couldn’t have,” she whispered in a voice that lacked all conviction.

  A cocked brow. “No?”

  Mortification rolled over her in a wave almost as powerful as the seasickness had been. Anything might have happened in the hours . . . or days . . . since he had carried—oh God, carried—her to bed. Everything was a blur. She seemed to remember Mr. Beals bending over her, murmuring something . . . She pulled the sheet more tightly around her body and discovered what she ought to have noticed first. The bandages were gone. And her hands were mostly healed.

  “How long?” she demanded, still staring at the pink flesh of her palms.

  “Oh, call it a week.”

  Shock jerked her chin upright again. “A week? First, you take me prisoner—”

  “I seem to recall that you climbed aboard this ship under your own power, Miss Holderin,” he countered.

  “Not with any intention of sailing across the Atlantic, as you well know,” she tossed back. But the accusation earned little more reaction than a careless shrug. “So you drugged me with that so-called tea—”

  With those words, she seemed to have crossed some invisible line. “In ten years at sea I’ve found nothing more effective against the scourge of seasickness,” he said, stepping closer. “Greaves’s brew quiets the stomach and calms the head. As the best recourse is often rest until one has adjusted to the sea, and you seemed—forgive me—unlikely to listen to that sage advice, I ordered something I knew would ensure it. Now, if young Madcombe neglected to convey to Greaves that the patient in question weighed, oh”—he paused to look her up and down—“eight stone, and not twice that, certainly I cannot be held responsible for the error. And in any case, you seem well enough now.”

  His explanation made some sense, but it did very little to mollify her. “Yes. I am well now. And I demand that you take me back to Antigua.”

  “Not possible.” Stepping around the corner of the table, he brushed past her on his way to the door. She sputtered out a protest, but he merely held up his hand in reply, his face a carefully schooled blank. “When you’re ready, come on deck and I’ll explain. Here are some clothes,” he said, lifting a small bundle from the floor, “and you’ll find tooth powder and a, um, hairbrush in the top of the chest of drawers.”

  “But,” she exclaimed as she took the bundle from him, “these are boys’ clothes.”

  His lips twitched in a sort of smile. “None of the crew would confess to keeping ladies’ garments in their sea chests.”

  She could find no humor in the situation. “What became of the dress I was wearing when I came aboard?”

  “If I had to guess, Miss Holderin, given its condition, one of the deckhands claimed it for polishing the brasses.” Then he bowed his head in that unexpectedly proper way of his and motioned to Caliban to follow him from the room. This time the dog heeded orders.

  With a sigh, Tempest walked back into the bedroom and freshened up as best she could with the dregs of the washbasin, then turned her attention to the garments that had been supplied. In truth she was no stranger to wearing boys’ clothes on occasion. She kept a few items that had once belonged to Edward for . . . oh, emergencies, one might call them. And as emergencies went, being kidnapped and held prisoner aboard a ship at sea would seem to qualify.

  Once she had pulled the shirt over her head, she sat down to shimmy into the breeches. Over all, she donned a long waistcoat of scratchy wool. The clothes were ill-fitting and inelegant, but the greater freedom of movement could not be denied.

  Lastly, she pulled open the drawer he had indicated. Inside, a clever mechanism pushed a mirror upward as the drawer slid out—at an angle suited for a much taller person, it was true, but she would make do. She glanced at her image, expecting wan and delicate. She was greeted instead by a Gorgon.

  And true to form, when faced with her reflection, the Gorgon froze in stony horror.

  She was pale, yes. But then, she was always pale. Except for her left cheek, which was still red where it had been creased by the pillow. And her eyes, which were bloodshot and ringed with circles so dark they might have been mistaken for bruises, suggesting the captain had not entirely exaggerated how ill she had been.

  Worst of all, though, was her hair. A tangled mess under the best of conditions, now it looked as if—well, it looked as if she had stood in a salt-damp wind, rolled about on the deck of a ship, and then slept in a sweaty heap for a se’ennight.

  No wonder Captain Corrvan had looked so wry. Violate her? It was a miracle he had not laughed in her face.

  With a will and a wince, she took the brush to the worst of the snarls. Before she had managed a single pass, however, bristles had broken and her wrist was trembling with fatigue. She thought longingly of the daring new short crop described in the latest London magazines. If only she could . . .

  She glanced down at her clothing. Well, why not?

  At the cost of a few more bristles, she jerked the brush from her hair, laid it aside, and set out for the great room, the captain’s desk, and, hopefully, a decent pair of shears.

  * * *

  “And the, uh . . . er, the, uh, topsail . . .” As the boatswain stared over Andrew’s shoulder with widening eyes and what looked for all the world like a blush, the ginger-haired Scot’s jaw grew slack and let his words slip free from their moorings.

  “A problem, Mr. Fleming?”

  “No, sir! That is, well . . .” Definitely a blush. The man’s head nodded forward. “See for yourself.”

  Andrew forced himself to turn, although he knew full well what, or rather whom, he would find.

  He was nonetheless unprepared for how she looked.

  Tempest Holderin had emerged from below wearing Timmy Madcombe’s shore clothes, as he had expected. What he had not expected were her freshly, and rather haphazardly, shorn locks. By rights, she ought to have resembled a deck swab—or the boy who wielded it. Instead she looked like a sprite or a fairy, something from one of the tales his gran had once delighted in telling him, stories of the wee folks who lived in the glades and the glens. “They can do a body good or ill, as they choose,” she had always warned him.

  But there was little doubt in his mind about the sort of sorcery to which he had made the mistake of subjecting himself.

  “Miss Holderin.” He stepped forward, abandoning Fleming, who seemed to have forgotten all about the ship’s rigging in any case.

  “Captain,” she said when she had drawn close enough to him that she could reply without shouting. Her hands were crossed behind her back and she moved now with a quiet confidence that drove from his mind all thought of her earlier disastrous appearance on deck. “What could I offer that would entice you into taking me back?”

  Under sail, the Colleen was not a quiet place, but in that moment, it seemed as if total silence had fallen: not a sound from the ship or the air or the water. Just the heated roar of blood in his ears. Without meaning to, he wet his lips. “Pray, what did you have in mind, Miss Holderin?”

  “Why, money, of course,” she answered with the merest hint of a smile. “I’m fully prepared to match what others have al
ready offered.” And with that, she brought her hands forward. In one of them, she held a slip of printed paper. A bank draft. Signed by Edward Cary.

  Damn and damn.

  “You went through my desk.”

  “I was looking for scissors.”

  “Which you found,” he observed, unnecessarily.

  “Mmm.” She sounded as if she had not heard him. Her eyes were still focused on the bank draft. “Why did Edward give you this?”

  “As a sort of bonus,” Andrew explained smoothly. “He had cargo to be moved and he had run into difficulty finding someone willing to take it.”

  “What sort of cargo?”

  “Human cargo, Miss Holderin.” Why not let her believe the worst of him? People usually did. And no one would be served if she imagined him a better man than he was.

  “Not slaves,” she declared, her voice tight with shock.

  “No,” he agreed, folding his arms across his chest. “You. I was to take you to England. Whether you were willing to go or not.”

  “I see.” Her short curls bobbed in a slight nod of acknowledgment. “He had often suggested I leave, but . . .”

  “For your own safety, as I understand it.” He did not know why he rose to Cary’s defense, except that he was beginning to sympathize with the man’s dilemma. Her slight stature and general heedlessness of danger roused a primal, protective instinct in a man. So much so that he found himself tempted to give in to that urge and ignore the voice of good sense, which recommended putting as much distance between the two of them as possible.

  “Harper’s Hill is my home, Captain Corrvan,” she said, waving off his words, as if his point were irrelevant. “I do not wish to leave it. I cannot leave it. If I do, God knows what sort of authority over its management others will attempt to claim, or what will be done in my family’s name.”

  “I was under the impression you found Cary a satisfactory manager.”

  “I did,” she said, a heavy emphasis falling on the last word.

  Then she let the bank draft fly.

  Fortunately, Andrew had two advantages on his side: long arms and light winds. Snatching the paper with the tips of his fingers as it whirled past him, he kept it from her grasp long enough to tuck it into the waist of his trousers. Let her look for it there. “Get to work!” he shouted to his crew, conscious suddenly of having attracted an audience. “Even if I wanted to take you back to Antigua,” he said, a prospect that grew ever more appealing, “I cannot.”

  She had the temerity to roll her eyes.

  Wordlessly, Andrew drew his perspective glass from his jerkin and handed it to her. One look at the Justice, still lurking to starboard, and she would understand the fix they were in. So far the winds had not been in their favor. Why Stratton hadn’t attacked already remained a mystery to him. It was almost as if he had some reason not to.

  Her slender hands encircled the shining brass cylinder and then she hesitated, as if considering the varied uses to which the heavy instrument could be put. With a slight grimace and a toss of her head, she lifted the glass to her eye. Although she obviously struggled first to locate the other ship, then to bring it into focus, she refused to ask for his assistance, a foolish sort of stubbornness he could not help but admire.

  Then she saw. And she gasped. Her hands trembled. “No.” It was a quiet prayer, little more than a breath. He caught the spyglass as it slipped from her grasp. “It can’t be.”

  “I assure you, it is,” he demurred, reluctantly lifting the glass to his own eye. Since Bewick had first spotted the Justice off the cove, Andrew had refused to take a clearer look at the other ship. Stratton already had a place in his nightmares.

  With a practiced eye, he swept the deck, counting the guns, assessing the crew. Stratton himself was at the wheel. And beside him—

  It was Andrew’s turn to freeze and to fight the tremor that rose in his own hand. Lowering the glass, he squinted across the distance instead, as if the instrument were not to be trusted, as if it were little more than a child’s toy, rendering a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors.

  But it was not the glass, of course. He had seen what he had seen. He had seen what she had seen.

  On the deck of the Justice, his red duster swirling about his ankles, stood Lord Nathaniel Delamere, a spyglass raised to his own eye. And he was looking right at them.

  * * *

  When Andrew entered his cabin a short while later, Tempest was sitting curled atop one of the leather benches, staring out over the water, one breeches-clad knee drawn up to her chest. Caliban, who had followed her when she flew from the mid-deck, sat beside her, his head in her lap.

  At first, neither dog nor woman seemed to remark Andrew’s arrival, but after a moment, Tempest turned and spoke to him. “You must take me back, Captain Corrvan. I have a duty to the people of Harper’s Hill. A duty that does not include running away from my problems and leaving those people vulnerable to the machinations of others.”

  Did others mistake it for courage, this bravado that hardened her voice and lifted her chin? Had Cary himself been misled by it? Andrew could see the uncertainty in her blue-green eyes.

  “Lord Nathaniel Delamere, you mean.” When he spoke the name, her body jerked as if she were suppressing a shudder. “Cary told me the man has proposed marriage.”

  She nodded, the movement stiff with the stubborn set of her jaw, as if prepared to issue another refusal.

  He found himself wondering whether she knew enough to understand how afraid she ought to be. There were many men who liked authority, who wanted power, and the better part of them sometimes abused it, he had little doubt. But the men who wanted to dominate, who enjoyed punishing and humiliating, who craved another’s total and abject submission—ah, theirs was a special sort of sickness, one whose telltale symptoms could sometimes be hidden from innocent eyes.

  The question was, after a lifetime spent in the West Indies, just how innocent was Tempest Holderin?

  “You might forestall him by marrying another, you know,” he pointed out, pulling a chair away from the table and easing into its depths. The leather protested softly. “With that fortune of yours, your suitors must be legion. Surely one among their number is eligible.”

  “That has proven a surprisingly popular suggestion of late. And I cannot help but wonder which one I ought to choose,” she said, lifting her hands in an exaggerated shrug of indecision and then ticking off her choices on her fingers. “The son of a local planter, sent to England as a boy, who knows nothing of Antigua and has no intention to fulfill his responsibility to his plantation by living on it? Or perhaps an earnest publican would be a better choice?”

  “Not Gillingham?” he said, recalling the identity of Caesar’s former owner.

  Her hands fell and the mocking expression left her face. “How do you know that name?”

  “I stopped in his fine establishment for a drink. That’s how I came to meet . . . Caesar,” he explained, deciding at the last moment not to mention the run-in with Delamere, knowing an account of the man’s behavior would only fuel Tempest’s insistence that they return to English Harbour. “What about Cary?” he suggested. “There’s a man who seems ideal for your purposes.”

  “Edward?” She snorted. “Impossible. Why, we’re as much brother and sister as anything. He’s been a part of our family for twenty years, since the day Papa and I found him on the docks and brought him home.”

  That, then, was what Cary had meant when he had said the Holderins rescued lost souls . . . It was on the tip of Andrew’s tongue to point out he felt quite certain Cary had long since outgrown their supposed sibling ties, but in the end, he resisted that devilish impulse. “You’ve named three men—four, if one counts”—he paused and jerked his head in the general direction of the Justice rather than say Delamere’s name again—“who are, for one reason or another, ineligible. But surely there are others to whom you can have no objection?” She shook her head with surprising vehemence. “Why are you
so desperate to avoid marriage, Miss Holderin? I’m given to understand many women find the state desirable. Has reading Miss Wollstonecraft given you such a thorough disgust for the institution, then?”

  Her lips twitched with annoyance, but in the end, she humored his question. “Exactly what is it you imagine marriage offers a woman, Captain Corrvan?”

  He had never thought much about it before, but surely it could not be too difficult to muster a respectable list of benefits. “A home. Economic security.”

  “I have those things already—as I think you well know. I realize there are some who find the notion of making one’s home on the fringes of the empire most unsettling—”

  “Improper, even,” he suggested, lifting one brow. “For a lady.”

  “But I did not think a man of the sea would prove susceptible to such nonsense,” she continued as if he had not interrupted. “Harper’s Hill is my home, my only home, and I do not wish to leave it. As to economic security, when my grandfather dies, the plantation will be mine, and I feel quite confident of its ability to provide me with a comfortable life.”

  But of course she did. West Indian plantations produced sugar under the most inhumane conditions imaginable to satisfy an all-too-human craving for sweets. And for that, the planters enjoyed extravagant wealth. Regardless of the gossip that swirled around English Harbour about Cary’s unusual management of Harper’s Hill, he suspected things were far from idyllic there; otherwise, she would not be so rich.

  He did not pursue the point, however, preferring for the moment to provoke her in other ways. “What about . . . affection?” His voice deepened as he hesitated over the last word, although he had not entirely meant it as a euphemism. “Or love?”

  She laughed, but there was very little humor in the sound. “Oh, Captain, even if I were susceptible to such sentiment, the men vying for my hand are not interested in my personal charms—as you yourself pointed out.”

  “I suppose you are far too rational to believe in love, in any case.”