The ship chose that moment to lurch alarmingly to starboard. She’d walked with an effortless sailor’s gait earlier, but her sea legs deserted her now, and she tumbled into the room, a mess of honey blond hair and pale, cold skin.
He caught her. “You’re trembling,” he said, tucking the log discreetly into his pocket.
“It’s cold,” she said, disentangling herself from his arms.
It wasn’t. Not in the cabin, and not in the stuffy main deck she had just crossed to reach him. “No,” he said. “It is the aftermath of the tension on deck.” He snatched the coverlet off the bed and approached her with it. She backed from him warily.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he assured her. “If I had the stomach for hurting a woman, I would have disarmed you on deck earlier.”
Her pale complexion turned ashen. “Why didn’t you, then?” she asked.
“Because if I had touched you, I believe your crew might very well have begun a war over it.” He dropped the blanket loosely over her shoulders and stepped back.
Duty said he should push her out the door of the cabin and lock it from inside until he’d memorized everything he needed from the log.
Honor said she was a lovely young woman—with an unfortunate fondness for firearms—in distress.
“I take it you don’t make a habit of kidnapping naval officers,” he said.
It was difficult now to imagine this fashionable young girl leveling a pistol at him. Her jacket was Indian cotton, brightly printed, and smartly laced in front with a green silk ribbon. The glimmering lattice tempted his eye down to a neat, defined waist. Her clothes were stylish and spoke of money and leisure, but her skirts were hemmed country-high, as though she were a farmwife or a shopkeeper. Not that he minded the extra inches of stockinged calf on display.
“No,” she said. “Do you make a habit of abducting children?”
The ship rolled once more, and he reached for her automatically. Earlier he had held no doubt that she would have shot him to protect the boy and that the standoff on the deck would have dissolved into a bloody slaughter if he had tried to disarm her. The events of the last hour had taken a toll on her. She was shaking so hard she could barely stand upright.
“Children, no.” He led her to the bunk. “Able-bodied men of seafaring habits, yes. Your brother counts as such if he has been working a merchantman. And manning the Wasp is one of my responsibilities as an officer.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You would not have caught the Sally had my father been at the helm. Your Wasp is a lubberly brig. Sluggish and in need of careening. I grant that you handled her well for all her faults, but she does not, from what I saw of her, have an excellent crew.”
He was most definitely not on his own quarterdeck with this girl. “I might have exaggerated on that point,” Sparhawk said. “But your brother would not have been mistreated on my ship. And it is in my power to press whom I see fit.”
She sat and pulled the blanket tight around herself. He’d had his first glimpses of a tempting female form in three months, and he found he sorely resented the embroidered coverlet. Nevertheless, when she shivered once more, he took his coat off and draped that too around her slender shoulders.
“My brother is hardly a hired hand. This is our father’s ship. And considering that I have kidnapped you,” she said, acknowledging the loan of his coat with a nod of her head, “you needn’t be so gallant.”
Earlier, he’d thought her pretty, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. Now she smiled, and he revised his opinion. It was more than the pleasing curve of her full lips, the light in her wide brown eyes, the hint of strawberry in her honey gold hair. She had a daring and directness that made her an original. He felt strongly the unwanted tug of desire.
He retreated to the other side of the tiny room, putting the table between them.
There were men—like his father—who preferred their lovers vulnerable and powerless. Who preyed on chambermaids and serving girls—women in difficult positions.
Like this one. It was an abuse of privilege, and it was wrong.
Since his first affair with an opera dancer at fifteen, Sparhawk had confined his passions to those who could not be hurt by a liaison. He took care to be certain that his lovers were financially secure and socially immune to censure. He bedded bored wives with open-minded husbands, carefree widows, and members of the demimonde who would not be thrown into the street by an angry father, jailed for immorality, or condemned to spinsterhood and destitution.
Sparhawk had always drawn this line between himself and his father, to prove that they were nothing alike. He had never found it inconvenient—until now.
• • •
On the deck above, holding him at gunpoint, Sarah had been aware that Sparhawk was handsome. Up close he was disconcertingly beautiful. She ought to have expected that. Rumor had it that he made too free with other men’s wives. It would be easy for him, with his pale blue eyes and blue-black hair, bleached at the crown by the sun. Six foot aloft, he had the build of a fighting man but the face of a Bernini angel—or a fallen one anyway. His nose was slightly crooked. It had probably been broken at some point.
On deck, his beauty had made it easier for her to focus her anger—and her fear—on him, because he was as handsome as the man who had put her there. Easier to raise a pistol to his head and feel the smooth steel of the trigger beneath her finger.
Especially after seeing the captain’s head torn off by a cannonball.
Sick with frustration at Molineaux’s incompetence, she had been standing quite close when it happened, watching the Wasp overtake them. The ball had struck him and then the mast, exploding in a shower of blood and splinters and lodging in the heart of the hewed pitch pine. The impact had been so loud, it had temporarily deafened her.
She watched the top of the mast strike the water in eerie silence.
Then her hearing came back in a rush of sound, of flapping sails and shouts and the ring of axes. Mr. Cheap shook his head and pushed her down the hatch, ordering her to don her brother’s clothes and tuck the sailing master’s pistol in her sash and cover it with her jacket.
Then the British had boarded them, and found the gold, and tried to take Ned.
After she had faced Sparhawk down and they were well away, she knew she must confront him, this splendid naval officer with his glittering braid and buttons. She wished she could put herself on an equal footing with him, armor herself in silver lace and silk damask, but she had only her faded calico jacket and petticoat, the one she had worn to buy the French molasses and trade on her father’s name in Saint Stash—Saint Eustatius, the Dutch free port in the Caribbean where anything could be had for a price.
She had entered the cabin expecting Sparhawk’s haughty disdain, but he was outmaneuvering her with his kindness. He draped his soft wool coat, still warm from his body, around her shoulders.
“I kidnapped you,” she said. “You needn’t be so gallant.”
“You did it to protect your brother,” he replied, “and I cannot fault your motives. In the navy we celebrate the courage of our enemies. Without it, we would all be on half pay.”
Handsome and charismatic. He was trying to charm her.
“I’m not your enemy, Captain Sparhawk. Even loyal Englishmen find the press barbaric.” The words carried slightly less dignity than she intended, because the Sally rolled again and threw her off the bunk.
Sparhawk caught her, his hands warm and reassuring around her waist, and replied almost without missing a beat, “It is how Britain has manned her navy for a hundred years. It is how she keeps your coast safe from French incursions. The press may be a trifle . . . callous, but it is legal, and you would not enjoy such security without it.”
She had not been so close to a man since Micah Wild. And she had never been so close to a man like this. Sparhawk’s face and form a
pproached a heroic ideal, like an engraving she had once seen of a statue of Achilles.
The deck pitched again and she grasped him for balance. Her fingers discovered a lean, hard body beneath the fine tailoring of his uniform, and something hidden in his pocket. Her hand slid down. It was the briefest movement, disguised by the wild motion of the deck, and he did not appear to notice. “This is not Britain. And just because it is legal does not mean that it is right.”
“Now you sound like a Rebel,” he chided, but his hands were still around her waist, and his warmth was tempting her closer.
Sarah knew where such temptation led. With regret, she disentangled herself and stepped back.
“I’m no Rebel,” she said. “You will want the name of the man expecting that French gold, which I can tell you, and you will require this as evidence if he is to be arrested.”
Sarah held up the Sally’s log, which she had just picked out of his pocket.
He moved to pat his coat, then stopped, a self-deprecating smile playing across his lips. “That was very deftly done,” he said. “What is it you want in return?”
“I want my father and the Sally’s crew cleared of any suspicion of treason. They are not Rebels, and they should not be treated as pirates. They knew nothing about the gold.”
“Forgive me, but I am hesitant to trust the word of a woman—no matter how lovely—who has just picked my pocket. Where did you acquire such a skill?”
She blushed at the compliment, but she knew better than to answer truthfully. “Dame school,” she said. Her father had been pardoned long ago, but some of the rogues in his crew had not.
“In between needlework and penmanship?”
“After music but before drawing. Will you help us?”
“What you ask may be difficult. A hold filled with French molasses is hardly a testament to your loyalty.”
“Everyone smuggles. Even the admiral drinks Dutch tea, for heaven’s sake. That does not make the man a Rebel.”
“But treating with foreign powers does. And someone aboard this ship most assuredly did.”
“The Sally,” she said, anger warming her, “is my father’s ship, but he did not hire the captain, nor did he give the man his instructions.”
“Then who did?”
“An investor,” she said. If only Micah Wild had been just that.
“And does your father take his business affairs so lightly that he does not know the character of his investors?”
“My father had no choice. We owed the man money.”
“He has embroiled you in treason. Tell me his name, and I will do my best to bring him to justice.”
“British justice,” she said, “extends no farther than Boston these days. The Rebel mob rules in Salem. If I cross this man without the Crown’s protection, my family and I will lose what little we have left.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I cannot give you the assurance you want.”
“Then I cannot give you this.” She slid the log into her skirt pocket. Sparhawk’s eyes followed her hand, then lingered.
He took a step closer.
She took one back. “Don’t even consider it,” she said.
“I only want the Sally’s log.”
“Liar.”
“Fine,” he said, and closed the distance she had put between them. “You’re a saucy piece, and I’d like to have you too.” His hand skimmed the silk of her skirt; his fingers slipped inside the opening at the seam, found the bare skin of her thigh, and stroked.
It had been so very long since a man had touched her, but her body remembered and ached with longing. She was no longer chilled. She was warm all the way through, heat radiating from the tips of his fingers dancing closer to the apex of her thighs.
And then he stopped.
His hand shot to the pocket tied around her waist and dove inside. “But I believe Mr. Cheap would have something to say about that, and what I require,” he said, grasping the book in her pocket, “is the log.”
She’d been a damned fool again.
The door crashed open. Ned stood panting and dripping on the threshold, and thankfully, he did not appear to notice that Sparhawk had his hand in her skirts.
Her brother gulped in air and words tumbled out. “You must come. Mr. Cheap would not furl the sail and the wind has fouled the spar, and the carpenter says that if he tries to run before the gale in this blow, her seams will open.”
Three
The skin of her thigh had been warm and silken. The responsive tilt of her hips had invited further exploration. He could not recall ever being so powerfully attracted to a woman. Closing his fingers around the slender book in her pocket had taken an act of will.
The child’s interruption—the emergency—had been timely indeed.
With regret, Sparhawk pocketed the log and followed the girl up the ladder. His eyes were once more drawn irresistibly to her swaying hips. Until they emerged on deck and into a fierce maelstrom. It was a vicious little New England squall. Rain pelted his face and soaked through his coat almost instantly, replacing desire with sodden discomfort. His shoes filled with water. The wind whistled so loud he could no longer hear the boy shouting beside him, but he looked up to where the child was pointing.
The foremast was bristling with sail. Too much for the Sally’s slight build and far too much for this heavy weather. Cheap had left it too late. He couldn’t blame the man. In the same position, he might have cut it too close as well. The Sally needed to put distance between herself and the Wasp, or risk recapture by another naval vessel.
Now she risked loosing her foremast and opening her seams. The topsail was the problem. It had to be reefed. Easier said than done. The mainmast had tangled the standing rigging when she fell. It would be tricky work and dangerous in such weather.
There was nothing else for it. He shouted as much to Mr. Cheap, who shouted back that he could not send a man up in such a blow, that it would be the death of anyone who tried. Cheap was, as Sparhawk had suspected, no captain. He would not order a shipmate to his likely death.
The alternative, Sparhawk knew, was that they would all die. The Sally was heeling and taking on water, and now was not the time for democratic decision making. Now was the time for blind obedience to orders.
“I’ll go.” A small piping voice.
Ned. Sparhawk had forgotten him.
“No!” The girl shook her head.
Sparhawk ignored her. “We’ll both of us go.”
The boy reached the top before him, proving himself, as Sparhawk had suspected earlier, a seasoned hand. It was the work of a few minutes to cut the sail free. Reefing her was harder. The boy did not have the strength of a grown man, and they did not make pretty work of it, but between them they got it done.
The descent was still more difficult. The schooner was settling, but there was still a wild motion in her. Hands that had been warm and nimble going up were cold, bruised, and numb coming down, and it was easy, so easy, to lose one’s grip.
Then the Sally rolled and the boy fell. Not from a great height. Twelve feet perhaps, and if the weather had been still and the boy had been lucky, he might have hit the deck and broken a few bones.
The weather was not still and the boy was not lucky.
• • •
Sarah watched her brother plunge into the dark roiling sea.
Not this. Not this. She had already lost so much. Not Ned.
She ran for the side. There was shouting, but the words were lost in the wind and all she knew was that she had to reach the pale form that had fallen from the gray sky into the grayer water.
There was movement on the deck, someone dropping from the rigging and streaking toward the side, and then rough hands were grasping her from behind and dragging her back from the rail.
• • •
Sparhawk
watched the boy fall. He was only a few feet from the deck. He slid down the rest of the way in time to see the girl running toward the rail. “Stop her,” he barked over the howling wind. The crew was frozen, but Lucas Cheap acted. He grasped the girl and dragged her, kicking and screaming like a banshee, away from the pitching sea.
“Give me a line,” he demanded. And now the crew was answering to him because Lucas Cheap had done so and they wanted orders. He took the line, kicked off his shoes, and dove over the side.
The water was bitingly cold. It sent a shock through his whole body, wet though he already was. It had been only moments since the boy had gone in, but every second counted. The cold would soon start to drag at him, make him clumsy and slow. Sparhawk saw a golden head break the water. Swam. Reached it. The boy was conscious and swimming. That was good.
He shouted, hoping his voice would carry above the wind, and felt the line begin to draw them in. They were only a few yards from the Sally when a wave picked them up and tossed them toward the hull. Sparhawk pulled the boy close and tried to take the brunt of the impact. His right hand connected with the hull, and pain lanced up his arm.
The boy, thankfully, had the good sense to grasp the line and begin hauling himself up. Another wave slammed into Sparhawk. He held his breath under water. His lungs ached. The churning sea receded, and he saw the boy scramble over the rail to safety.
His right hand was still numb from the impact. He could not make it answer. He wrapped his good hand around the rope and used his legs to lever himself up. An inch or two of progress, no more, and then another wave swamped him.
This time he didn’t catch his breath. His lungs burned, his grip slackened, and he knew that he was going to drown.
The line jerked. His head broke through the water. The rope started to move, hauling him up in fits and starts until finally strong hands were reaching for him and lifting him over the side. They deposited him on the deck, where he stood swaying, the churn and tumble of the waves still echoing through his body and scrambling his senses. Even so, he could tell that the Sally was riding easier.
The Rebel Pirate Page 3