It seemed that the kiss went on forever in just that manner. His lips moved over hers and she permitted it. She did not resist, but she did not participate.
Then something shifted. She leaned into him just a bit, and then she moved her mouth against his, mimicking his movements. It lit a fire in him. Innocent, sweet, and yet so undeniably carnal that he had no hope of controlling his immediate response to her. Blood rushed and pooled, his shaft growing hard and thick within the confines of his breeches.
Emboldened by her response, Declan moved to deepen the kiss by sweeping his tongue over her bottom lip. A soft gasp and then a sigh, and he swept his tongue into her mouth. Again, it was soft and sweet, slow building and slow burning, at least for her. For him, it only added to the maelstrom of sensual torment he suffered from her nearness.
As the need built inside him, as the urge to simply lift her against him, raise her skirts and find sweet relief in the warmth of her body, became overwhelming, Declan found the strength to back away, to ease from the kiss in a way that would let them both slowly come back to earth.
With enough distance between them, Declan could see the look of wonder and confusion on her lovely face. She had never been kissed before, he thought. It spurred a possessiveness inside of him to know that he was the one to awaken such feelings in her, that he was the first man to share such an intimate moment with her.
Her sweet naïveté had stirred far more than his lust, it seemed. In another life, one that seemed more than a hundred years past to him, he’d have met her in a ballroom or at an assembly. They might not have danced, given her previous injury, but they certainly would have taken a turn about the room, enjoyed conversation. He’d have called on her and been welcomed into her home. In short, Kitty Wyverne, in his other incarnation, was just the sort of woman he’d thought to marry when such a thing had been possible for him.
“I should go,” he said abruptly. And he needed to, before he forgot himself entirely. “That last flick of the fan was perfect. You should practice it in front of the looking glass until you’re comfortable with it.”
Kitty watched him go and her heart sank. He wasn’t simply vacating the room, but fleeing as if the very hounds of hell were nipping at his feet. Had she muddled it so badly? As kisses went, and admittedly her knowledge was limited only to the one and to the whispered nonsense young girls shared with one another, it had seemed an inordinately pleasant thing. And yet, he could not run from her quickly enough. Had her breath been foul? Had she been too forward? Could one be too forward with a terrible pirate who was transitioning to privateer and free trader?
Uncertain what else to do with herself, Kitty began tidying up from their meal. The plates and crockery were loaded onto the tray they’d been delivered on. She’d just finished the task when there was a knock at the cabin door.
“It’s O’Hurley, miss. I’ve come to fetch the tray and get it back to the galley.”
His called out greeting had been a courtesy to her. The door to the cabin was locked at all times unless Captain Kelly was with her. Kitty bade him enter. She paced nervously as he saw to the task and continued pacing long after he’d gone. Captain Declan Kelly had kissed her. He wasn’t the first to have attempted such a liberty, but he was the first to whom she’d granted it. Not just granted it, but welcomed it. Even thinking of the way his lips had felt on hers, of the sensations that intimate touch had stirred within her, left her breathless.
“Oh, Kitty, what have you gotten yourself in to?”
The man was a privateer, a sometimes pirate, a free trader and generally completely unsuitable on all fronts. And yet, if he walked into that cabin and kissed her again, Kitty knew with utter certainty that she would fall willingly into his arms and behave like a wanton, shameless hussy.
“Well,” she said, “I’m likely ruined anyway. By now, the whole world will know that Samford hauled me off to Scotland. If I’m going to be known as a fallen woman, then maybe I ought to actually enjoy the fall.”
With that thought echoing in her head, Kitty removed her gown. Clad only in her horribly dirty chemise, she climbed into the borrowed bunk that still smelled like the very man who tormented her thoughts. She prepared herself for a long and sleepless night.
Chapter Seven
Declan awoke in a foul mood. Nothing could sour a man faster than unrequited lust. Except it wasn’t really unrequited, was it? Just ill advised, he thought bitterly. A night in a hammock, freezing cold when he had a warm bed and a woman who, with a bit of effort on his part, would have been more than willing to share it with him was hardly cheering. They were a day and a half out of Port Isaac at least and he wasn’t sure he’d make it the rest of the way without throttling one of the crew, tossing her overboard or jumping over the side himself.
Scrubbing one hand over his face, Declan climbed the stairs to the deck and found O’Hurley waiting for him. The older man looked grim to say the least. “What the devil is it now, O’Hurley?”
His first mate grimaced. “Haggerty is stirring trouble, Captain. It seems our passenger is more well known in these parts than anyone imagined.”
Declan was in no mood for cryptic nonsense. “Just state it plainly, O’Hurley.”
“Fine, if you don’t want any of the Irish on it, I will,” the man said, clearly offended. “It seems that Miss Wyverne’s family saw fit to announce in the papers that she was missing and that they feared she had run off to Gretna Green to elope with Lord Samford. And here we are, with no Lord Samford in sight, because he’s dead. Because your brother-in-law killed him.”
There wasn’t a curse word foul enough to utter for that particular predicament. “Why would they put the information there, O’Hurley? Knowing that Samford had abducted her, they were essentially forcing her to marry him by disclosing it!”
“Mayhap, Captain, she was taken with their foreknowledge. She wouldn’t be the first reluctant bride browbeaten, cajoled, coerced or dragged to the altar. But those aren’t your problems. Haggerty was in possession of that news sheet. Shocked me to my toes the man could bloody read it, but there you have it. He knows who she is and, what’s more, he knows what she’s worth.”
Even if Kitty could pay the fare as a passenger, or if she was willing to give up every shred of jewelry on her person, it would not be enough. For men like Haggerty, indeed, for most of the men on the ship, the smell of money to them was like the smell of blood to a shark.
Climbing up to the deck, he found the man in question already there, surrounded by a bevy of supporters.
“And there he is… our captain. A liar and a cheat, he is! Did you mean to swan the lady back to her family and claim the reward for yourself?” Haggerty demanded.
“Is there a reward?” Declan asked. “I didn’t know. I only knew that the lady required our assistance and I meant to offer it for the price of passage. You’re out of line, Haggerty. Stand down or I’ll bloody well have you flogged.”
The other man sneered at him. Haggerty had been looking for a reason to challenge his authority and it seemed that the presence of Kitty Wyverne aboard his ship had offered that.
“Not this time. Not any time,” Haggerty answered. “You don’t have the bollocks to captain this ship… not like your uncle did.”
Declan turned to O’Hurley. If Haggerty wanted a fight, he’d give him one, but first he had to make sure that Kitty was safe. “See to Miss Wyverne. Lock the door and if anyone other than me dares try to enter, shoot them.”
Kitty had been awake for some time, dressed in her borrowed clothing and waiting for Captain Declan Kelly to make his way below deck to begin their lessons on society flirtation. And possibly kiss her again. That traitorous thought slipped into her mind and would not vacate it. It had kept her awake for the better part of the night and when she had finally slept, it had prompted vivid dreams that were both arousing and horribly frustrating. The gothic novels she’d read had given her only the vaguest sense of what it meant to be ravished, enough that she tho
ught she might like it so long as it was Captain Kelly doing the ravishing. But as the details were disappointingly absent from those books, she could only guess.
A brief knock sounded and then a very harried Mr. O’Hurley entered. Unlike the evening before when he’d served their dinner, he did not have the appearance of unflappable second-in-command. His face was white and it appeared as if his hands were shaking.
“Mr. O’Hurley, whatever is the matter?” she asked.
“Miss, I have to ask if your family would pay the reward that’s been offered in the Times.”
Kitty blanched. “My family what?”
“They put a notice in the Times, miss. Said you’d run off with Samford and meant to wed him in Gretna Green and would pay the sum of one hundred pounds to anyone what brought you back to them.”
Her father didn’t have ten pounds lying around, much less a hundred. While most were unaware, the money was all Kitty’s. Her grandfather had left it in trust and she was given so much pin money each month and her father was granted an allowance for providing food and shelter for her. His own funds were all but gone, squandered on terrible investments where he was always expecting windfall returns that never materialized. She’d suspected that he and Samford had been in cahoots from the start; that Samford had agreed to gift him a sum of her inheritance back if he helped to carry off the betrothal and marriage.
“No. They don’t have the money… but I have it,” she said.
“How is that possible, miss?”
Because she never spent frivolously. Books were her only vice and she bought few enough of them out of fear her father would rage that she was ruining her mind for marriage by reading fiction. Most of her books were borrowed or traded with her friends. “It’s being held in safe keeping for me by a friend. What is happening, Mr. O’Hurley? Why are you here and not the captain?”
No sooner had she asked the question than she heard a commotion from the deck above them. The sound of splintering wood, of men shouting, and of brawling drowned out even the crashing of the waves and the snapping of sails. “Is he fighting all of them? Alone?”
“Only a few of them, miss. Most will stand back and cheer, but very few would wade into the fray. No one wants a mutiny, after all… well, excepting Haggerty that is.”
Kitty rushed forward but he halted her at the door. “Captain said to keep you in here and to keep them, all of them, out there. That’s what I mean to do.”
“He’ll be killed!” she shouted. “Can’t you see that? Let me pass!”
He looked at her speculatively. “It’s him you’re worried about, ain’t it? Not finding a way off this ship before those miscreants get to you… you’re actually worried for the captain!”
She had been. Well, she still was, but now Mr. O’Hurley had given her an entirely new set of fears to add to her ever growing list. “Yes, I am concerned for his well-being!”
“Why?”
Kitty blinked at him in confusion. “What do you mean, why? He’s been very kind to me, helped me when he was not required to do so and has done everything in his power to see to my safety and to return me to my home unharmed!”
O’Hurley’s eyes narrowed further. “You’re certain that’s all? There’s been no funny business in this cabin, has there?”
Kitty was too flummoxed to answer. She wasn’t certain whether the truth or an artfully crafted lie would be the key to swaying Mr. O’Hurley to permit her on deck to try and stop whatever was occurring and rescue Declan Kelly.
Her hesitation was apparently answer enough. “That’s what I thought. Helping you out of a tight spot my eye! His mother’ll have his backside tanned like a hide for this and mine, too, no doubt! Go on with you! Get up there and see if you can’t talk sense into the lot of them. I’ll be right behind you soon as I’ve got the pistols primed and ready!”
As she reached the deck, Captain Kelly was fighting with a bevy of men. There were too many of them. He’d be killed of a certain.
“Stop it!” she cried out, but her voice was drowned out by the shouting and the whipping of the wind.
O’Hurley, armed with a brace of pistols that he’d liberated from somewhere in the captain’s quarters, brandished them high as he rushed onto the main deck. “Next man that takes a swing at the captain will have his brains splattered across these boards,” he yelled out. His deeper voice boomed over the melee and the crowd of onlookers began to disperse as the group of five or so men battling their captain stepped back. Leveling one of the guns at the man who appeared to be the primary antagonist, O’Hurley demanded, “You’ll all stand down until Miss Wyverne has her say!”
“It ain’t right for the Cap’n to have her all to hisself. Ain’t. We ought to have a go, too!” one of the men in the back grumbled.
“She’s not a bloody lightskirt,” O’Hurley snapped at him. “She’s a passenger.”
“Then what was they doing in his cabin last night? Alone, eh?” the man asked.
“Having dinner, you dolt,” Kitty said, drawing on her most imperious tone. “Your assumptions are rude, insulting, base and thoroughly unwarranted. Your captain is a gentleman and, you sir, are naught but a filthy cur!”
Another man stepped forward, armed with his own pistols. He pointed one of them directly at the captain’s head. “He might be a filthy cur, we might all be, but for my part, don’t care what you was doing in the captain’s cabin. I care ’bout the money. There’s a reward for you,” one of the other men said. “An heiress from Bath, abducted from her home, and making for Gretna Green. Miss Wyverne. It’s you, ain’t it?”
“I am utterly dismayed that my father would consent to offer a reward for my return… even if he did, he lacks the means to pay it,” Kitty said. The puzzle as to why he had done so unraveled itself in her mind at that precise moment. The answer came to her immediately. His offer of a reward was newsworthy and would ensure that word of her ruin spread far and wide. All of society, from high to low, would now know that she had been abducted and ruined by Samford. Her father had done what he had to do to be certain she had no other options.
“Do not say another word,” Declan warned her. “I can deal with this without your interference!”
“Interference? I came here to help you,” Kitty said, offended at his tone.
“Well, you’re not,” he hissed at her. “Let me handle this and go below where it’s safe!”
“Like you handled getting us work as free traders? We’re not smugglers,” the man called Haggerty insisted. “We’re pirates. We like being bloody pirates! We’re tired of slaving on this ship for a pittance when we used to be lousy with gold!”
“Then I say we have a full on mutiny,” the smaller man standing near O’Hurley replied. “If you ain’t worth money, then you’re at least good for a little diversion.”
“I have my own money,” Kitty said hastily, realizing that she’d sealed her fate. “But I can only access it if I marry a gentleman my trustees would approve of.”
“Where are we supposed to come up with one of them?” the tiny, coarse, little man asked.
Haggerty smiled coldly. He certainly appeared to be the smartest of the group. “We got one right here aboard this ship. Don’t we, Cap’n?” As he spoke, he sauntered toward Declan and squared off in front of him. “Or don’t the lot of ’em know you’re the grandson of a high and mighty earl?”
“The bastard grandson,” Declan answered. “It hardly signifies. And Miss Wyverne is off limits to everyone aboard this ship. Myself included!”
“Oh, but it does signify. Your mam gave you manners like a gent and I reckon she did it cause she figured you’d be one and not a sea dog like the lot of us.”
Kitty realized then that the two men had a long acquaintance and one that was very tense, indeed. “It doesn’t matter what Captain Kelly’s birth is. But the trustees of my grandfather’s estate will not allow me to marry any man that does not have his own property and estates.”
The angry, snide ma
n whirled on her then. “Aren’t you a presumptuous baggage to think he don’t? Our captain is a man of property… but he’ll not be captain of this ship any longer. This is a mutiny, miss. I mean to helm this ship and lead us back to warmer waters and fat ships… and I don’t much care what flag they fly under. The other men feel the same!”
“This ship is mine. Haggerty… it belonged to my uncle and now to me!” Declan declared.
“And this ship used to be the scourge of the sea,” Haggerty snapped back.
“We didn’t agree to no mutiny,” one man said. The others grumbled in either agreement or discord.
Haggerty whirled on them. “Do you want to be paid? Do you want to earn a decent wage and to be able to port somewhere that we might have a bit of fun with some exotic beauty rather than these pale English women who demand marriage for even a kiss? We were better off in the West Indies!”
“Aye, we were, but mutiny is a thing you cannot come back from. The lot of them know that even if you do not. Honor isn’t just a thing for the gentry to speak of. Out here on the water, we’ve got our own brand of it,” O’Hurley said.
Another cheer from the crowd of men, this one seeming to be a bit less bloodthirsty and bit more rallied to the cause.
“There is an option,” O’Hurley continued. “The captain can step down of his own accord after we finish our mission to Cornwall and name a successor from the crew.”
“And what of the money?” Haggerty demanded.
The Pirate’s Bluestocking Page 4