“Aye, it’s true,” he heard Bewick admit softly. “But Geoff shouldn’ta said awt.”
Andrew froze, waiting.
“What happened?”
“Twenty years ago, Stratton tried his damnedest—beggin’ yer pardon, miss—to sink the Colleen. Almost succeeded.”
“Twenty years ago? But Captain Corrvan would’ve been little more than a child.”
“Aye. And when he grew to a man, he were determined to make Stratton pay. Been chasin’ him, one way or t’ other, ever since.”
“But why? It can’t only have been over damage to the ship.” A pause. “Mr. Beals said something about his father.”
“If you want to know more, you’ll have to—”
“Ask the captain,” she finished for him. “Yes, I know.” With an exasperated sigh, she got to her feet and, by the sound, brushed herself off. He could too easily call up the image of her small, pale hands sweeping over the seat of those buckskin breeches. “Well, he may have a feud with Captain Stratton, but I don’t see how he can expect all of you to go along with him. Isn’t anyone ever tempted to—?”
“I know what you been about these last days, Miss Holderin,” Bewick spoke over her question. “It’s dangerous business, tryin’ to persuade sailors to go against their captain. Best give it up. The Colleen’s crew ain’t got no cause to complain.”
“I’m not so sure, Mr. Bewick. Because instead of chasing the Justice, now the Justice is chasing us.”
Bewick hesitated for a moment before simply saying, “Aye.”
Another not-so-soft sigh of exasperation. “I suppose I’ll say good night, Mr. Bewick.”
“G’night, miss.”
Andrew waited until the sound of her footsteps had disappeared before ascending the ladder the rest of the way. On deck, the gloom of evening had begun to gather as the last rays of the sun left the sky. The brilliant blue of the Caribbean Sea had long since given way to the colder gray waters of the Atlantic.
Although he had moved silently, Bewick seemed to have sensed his presence. “Wondered when you was comin’ up.”
“You knew I was there?”
“Aye.” After a moment, he added, “T’ bottom rung squeaks. Allus has.”
“Why did you tell her?” Andrew asked after a moment.
“She’d a right t’ know. An’ if you let her go on askin’ questions, there’s no knowin’ what she’ll hear. Or do. Women on board ship are a danger, I’ve allus said.”
“Yes, well, having that one aboard means you’ll get home again—and with enough money to stay there, if you please.”
Bewick appeared to consider this. “Who’d look after the Colleen then?”
Andrew mustered a humorless laugh—it was an old joke, always told at his expense. “There’s a card game in Fleming’s cabin. I left them shorthanded when I came up to relieve you.”
Jeremiah Bewick’s knobby hands made no move to relinquish the wheel, steadfast as always. Would that they had never given it up.
“But I find I must ask you to stay at your post a bit longer,” Andrew continued. “I’ve some business to attend to first.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
With a nod, Andrew strode toward the quarterdeck.
After almost a fortnight of avoiding the inevitable confrontation, the undeniable temptation, it was high time he returned to his cabin.
* * *
With Caliban at her heels, she descended the short flight of steps to the captain’s cabin. Before she could even cross the floor to light the lamp, Caliban exhaled in a deep woof and curled into a ball. In another moment, he was snoring softly. So much for companionship.
The lamp cast its stippled glow around the room, making the sky outside look comparatively dark. In a few moments, the bells would sound, signaling a change of watch. Perhaps she ought to have waited for Captain Corrvan to arrive on deck. But what good would that have done? He would never tell her the truth.
With a muffled cry of frustration, she slapped her hands onto the paper-strewn desktop. The motion dislodged a heavy book, which slid onto the floor, narrowly missing her toes. The volume of Shakespeare. Certainly not in the mood for reading, she was on the point of returning it to its crevice in the bookcase, when the corner of a folded sheet of paper peeked from between its pages and caught her eye. After a moment’s hesitation, she laid the book on the desk, slid her nail between the edge of that folded sheet and the pages surrounding it, and flipped open the book to reveal a letter that bore no direction, only a name.
With the fingertips of one hand she held the book open while lifting the letter with the other. Andrew was written on the outside in a delicate, surely feminine, script. Whatever the missive’s contents, they had certainly been of interest to the captain, for the paper had been folded and refolded so many times that its edges were like the book’s, soft and worn. What words had he been compelled to read again and again and again . . . ?
“Find something interesting, Miss Holderin?”
She was surrounded, suddenly, by Andrew’s heat, the hard length of his body behind her, pinning her to the desk. She had been too absorbed by the book and the letter to hear him enter, and of course Caliban had sounded no alarm.
One broad, calloused hand slapped onto the desktop, rattling the instruments, while the other hand came forward to twitch the letter from her grasp.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Despite the biting anger of his words, his voice was dangerously soft. Behind them, the cabin door clicked shut.
For a long moment, neither one moved. Tempest closed her eyes. She could hear his breathing over the furious tattoo of her own heart. Then the low, ominous rumble of a growl.
“Et tu, Caliban?” Andrew laughed wryly.
But he took a step backward, all the same. Once free, she darted across the cabin, putting a half-dozen strides, the table, and the dog between them. Briefly, she considered fleeing the cabin altogether. He made no other movement, gave no sign that he would try to prevent her, but his apparent indifference offered little comfort. They both knew she had nowhere to go.
“I d-did not intend to p-pry,” Tempest stammered, suddenly desperate to fill the silence.
“Ah, but you did. You’ve been asking questions of every member of my crew.” She felt her eyes widen, and he seemed to find amusement in her surprise. “Nothing happens on this ship without my knowledge, Miss Holderin.”
With his head cocked to one side, Caliban looked from one to the other, as if watching a fencing match between skilled opponents.
Restoring the note to its place in the volume of Shakespeare, Andrew turned from the desk. Then, with one booted toe, he drew out a chair and slung himself into it, as if she required further proof he was no gentleman. “So here’s your chance,” he said, tossing the book onto the table and gesturing for her to take up the chair opposite. “Ask me. If you’re certain you’re ready for the answers.”
* * *
Andrew tipped back in his chair and propped his heels on the table’s edge, ankles crossed, as if he were perfectly at ease.
Tempest, for her part, looked as if she had taken his caveat to heart. If she had been wearing a skirt, she would have been arranging it nervously around her as she sat down in the chair he had indicated. Caliban, the faithless cur, came and nuzzled his head into the narrow gap between the backs of her breeches-clad knees and the chair, a gesture that somehow seemed to bolster her resolve, for in the next moment, she raised her eyes to his face and said, “Mr. Beals told me, and Mr. Bewick confirmed, that you and this Captain Stratton have some sort of history.”
“That’s not a question, Miss Holderin,” he pointed out, forcing a lopsided smile. No, he should never have invited her to plumb his depths, to churn up the foul darkness that was buried there. “But, aye. We’ve that.”
He expected some sharp retort, but none came. Instead, she looked wary, and he felt a sudden stab of regret for frightening her. Not as much as he regretted the di
scovery that her hair smelled of jasmine, however. How was it possible, after more than two weeks at sea? Had the sweet scents of the islands simply become a part of her blood?
“My father was a ship builder,” he said at last. Best to start at the beginning. “In Cork. The Fair Colleen was, as it turned out, his last ship. The company who’d commissioned her asked my da to sail out with her, to bring her to London. I’ll never forget standing on the dock, waving him off on a grand adventure, just the sort he’d long been craving.” His father had never truly settled, despite his marriage. And Patrick Corrvan’s son was unlikely to end up any different. Would Tempest understand the warning in his words?
She didn’t strike him as the sort to heed it, even if she did.
“In those days, Stratton still lurked in the North Atlantic. The English Channel.” Andrew focused on the ripples in the supple leather of his boots, fighting the temptation to glance toward the sea. Or toward her. “He must’ve wanted the Colleen herself as his prize. She was carrying no cargo to speak of. There was a skirmish in the shallows off the coast of Cornwall. Enough damage to sink her, though she didn’t sink. Most of the crew survived. But my father was killed.”
A soft gasp. Of sympathy, he thought. But still she prodded, “What happened then?”
“After a time, the man who owned the ship came to Cork to pay his condolences. We were living with my grandfather.”
“Alastor Mitchel.”
He jerked his gaze to her face. “How did you—?” But she was staring at the book he had thrown onto the table, and his question was answered before it was asked.
“Despite the loss of my father, I had a good childhood. The man from the shipping company wrote a few times. I thought very little of it. Then . . .” Reaching for the volume of Shakespeare, he withdrew the letter, unfolded it, and handed it to her. “I woke one morning to find this note on my pillow.”
He watched her eyes flicker over the paper that had piqued her curiosity mere moments ago. Did the contents of the letter disappoint? Its words were few enough, long ago committed to memory.
My dearest boy—
Daniel and I are gone to London to be married. We shall send for you as soon as we possibly can.
Your loving mama
Her fingertips hovered over the faded ink, but she did not touch the words. “And did she? Send for you, I mean.”
“Aye,” he replied as he took up the letter without looking at it and folded it again. “Then shortly afterward, I was sent away to school.” His chest ached as if the old loss, the terrible homesickness, were new wounds. Why hadn’t he thrown away the letter years ago? Why had he read it, night upon night, after the other boys were sound asleep, as if a tattered piece of paper could somehow take him back to a place and a time before those words had been written?
Something in her expression caught his eye. “What is it, then?”
“Your voice. I have been thinking all this time that you really sound nothing like any Irishman I have ever known. But tonight . . .”
He gave a humorless laugh. “I expended a great deal of effort learning to sound nothing like an Irishman, Miss Holderin. English schoolboys can be quite cruel.” There were moments, then and now, when he deliberately cast aside his carefully cultivated accent. Tonight, however, it had happened without thought. As if the mere memory of his origins could restore who and what he had once been. As if, with her, he could be his true self.
And what a foolish notion that was.
Horror mingled with pity in her face, but he brushed it aside and pressed on. “As soon as I was able, I claimed the Colleen for my own and ran away to sea. Bewick was her master by then, but he let me play at being captain. Still does—though God knows, he shouldn’t. I was determined to avenge my father’s death, single-minded in my pursuit of the Justice. I followed her across the Atlantic. I tried to engage Stratton more than once, but he always slipped away . . .”
He realized his voice had trailed off with the memory when she prompted, “And then?”
“And then . . . he didn’t. We had trailed him to a spot on the coast of Montserrat and got caught out in the shallows, his favorite spot to hide. The Justice’s guns ripped a hole in the Colleen that Stratton might’ve sailed through, if he’d a mind to do it.” Her blue-green eyes grew wide. “Two men died. Another lost both his legs. That was seven years ago.”
In the silence that followed, he could hear her draw a steadying breath. “And you’ve been hunting him ever since?”
He swung his feet onto the floor and rocked his chair forward. Caliban gave an uncharacteristic yelp of surprise at the sound. “Aye.”
Tempest leaned forward, too, meeting his gaze across the table. What glimmerings of fear he had once spotted in her eyes were gone. “Now you mean to fight Stratton again,” she said, the words coming slowly, as if she were working out the terrible truth as she spoke. “You’re luring him into deeper water.” She jumped to her feet and strode back to his desk, the lamplight picking out golden sparks in her close-cropped curls, Timmy’s breeches sliding provocatively over the curves of her backside. “Using me as bait.”
Would the realization result in tearstained pleas? Or white-hot fury?
Instead, she offered sympathy. Of a sort.
“My mother died when I was only three.” Her voice was low, as if she were not speaking to him. And perhaps she really was not. “My only memories of her are those that Papa’s stories created. I lived for him, always. And I promised him I would do all that I could to make his dream become reality.” She turned back to face him, her eyes hidden in darkness. “So I understand the powerful effect a father’s life and death can have on his child. Truly, I do.” Despite the shadow, he knew she was studying him, seeking the answer to some question she had yet to ask. “But what you’re doing . . .” Shaking her head, she took one hesitant step forward. “It’s selfish. Irresponsible.”
“I never claimed to be otherwise,” he said, pushing to his feet. “But I suppose you believe you’re selfless, living for someone else’s dream?”
Her pointed little chin tipped upward in defiant acknowledgment of the truth of his words.
“Was it not ‘irresponsible,’ then, to get yourself trapped on a sailing ship with no means of getting back to the people who depend on you?” he challenged. “Not to mention bloody dangerous to go traipsing around wearing naught but boy’s breeches and a smile, trying to persuade my crew to mutiny! Selfish? Irresponsible?” With each word, he stepped closer, until they stood face-to-face. Tempest showed no sign of backing down. “Aye,” he whispered, dipping his head to bring his gaze level with hers. “The difference is, I’ll own to it.”
Her brow dove downward and her lips pursed together, an expression half scowl, half pout. And partly because he did not want to hear her retort, and partly because he had been wanting to do it almost since the moment he met her, he lowered his head farther and kissed her.
Whatever he had been expecting—resistance, rejection, a slap through the face—it certainly was not the feel of her hands sliding up his shirtfront, curling in the lapels of his coat, drawing him closer. Raising his hands to cradle her head, he brushed his fingertips along her jaw, and she opened to him easily, parting her lips so he could feel her soft heat when she moaned into his mouth.
No sooner had his tongue touched hers, than Caliban scurried from his place beneath the table, wedged himself between their legs, and sat, the breadth of his haunches pushing them apart. Reluctantly, Andrew broke the kiss and breathed in sharply through his nose to restore his equilibrium. Her scent filled his nostrils. A proper English miss would smell of roses, not exotic island flowers.
But Tempest Holderin was no proper English miss.
Resting his forehead against hers, he murmured, “That was . . .” . . . tempting . . . teasing.
“Unwise,” she finished.
That, too.
Her hands slipped from his chest. “Caliban’s instincts are true,” she said. Having
separated them, the dog was already on his feet again, pacing to the cabin door and back, as if seeking an escape from the tension between them. “You’ve as good as kidnapped me and now you’re using me to draw a pirate into open water so you can kill him, sink his ship—”
“He’ll take Delamere with him when he goes,” Andrew reminded her.
“I ought to be railing at you, pleading with you . . . something,” Tempest continued as if she had not heard him. With unsteady steps, she made her way to a chair and sank into it. “Not kissing you.” She chanced a glance in his direction. “But I—”
He shook his head. Taking the seat opposite once again, he pulled the heavy book toward him. “Rail away, if you’re so inclined. You’re entitled. Just don’t fret about the kiss, lass. One little misstep won’t change our stories. They were written down too long ago.”
She smiled uncertainly, as if trying to make out whether or not he was joking. “By Shakespeare, I suppose?”
“Certainly. Take yours, for instance. A wide-eyed girl grows up on an enchanted island with her magician father.”
“My father wasn’t a magician,” she protested. “If he had been, my mother would never have died. He wouldn’t have died.”
“It’s a strange little play, Tempest.” She gave no sign either of pleasure or displeasure at his use of her given name. “Some unconventional elements, for a comedy.”
The smile that had begun to lift her lips turned downward instead. “But a marriage in the end, nonetheless.”
He lifted one shoulder. “To a prince. Not a monster.”
“And which are you?” she asked, tilting her head and fixing him with one twinkling eye.
“Why, a prince, of course.” He laughed. “But before you make any plans . . .” Skating his fingertips over the familiar pages, he found the play he sought and passed the book to her.
“Prince Hamlet?”
“Who else? Son attempts to avenge his father’s murder. Fails again and again. Kills innocent men instead of guilty ones.”
She closed the book and laid her hand on its cover, tracing the embossed leather with one slender fingertip, refusing to raise her eyes. “Hamlet dies in the end.”
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