She snatched the cup and drank, then coughed delicately into her sleeve, causing him some amusement as she attempted not to choke on the fiery drink. “Rest assured, my lord,” she rasped, “with your dislike of pork and my distrust of powerful men we should all get along famously.”
With this blustery declaration, she lifted her watery gaze and the light fell full on her face beneath her hat’s brim. Something inside him cracked. No longer holding his anger close to his chest, he wondered what fool notion had brought her across a hostile ocean a world away from her own. “What are you doing here, Christel?”
“I was on my way to Glasgow. Two weeks ago a storm diverted the ship from Boston to Lisbon for repairs. What was not confiscated from me in Spain was stolen yesterday when I arrived in London. It was only by chance that I learned you were here and that this was your ship.”
“Let me rephrase. What are you doing on this side of the Atlantic?”
She cautiously set down the tin cup. “I . . . I received a letter in Williamsburg six months ago.” While she spoke, she struggled to pull a crumpled, water-stained letter from beneath her shirt. “ ’Twas written by Saundra. She asked me to return to Scotland to be a governess for Anna.”
“A governess?” His gaze hesitating on the tattered gloves covering her fingers, he took the letter from her hand and brought it nearer to the window for light. “Saundra has been dead almost two years.”
“Do you think I do not know that? But that is Saundra’s handwriting. It bears your wax seal. It came from Blackthorn Castle.”
In the uneasy silence that followed, he flipped over the letter and studied the wax seal. He shoved his hand into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew the missive he had received last evening from his solicitor concerning the onset of his grandmother’s illness. The signet wax seal matched the ring on his finger, down to the laurel leaves that framed the crossed swords. This ring had not left his finger in years. He had another that he kept locked in a desk in his library. Only Saundra and his grandmother had ever had access to the ring kept at Blackthorn Castle.
Saundra could not have written the letter unless someone had mailed it long after she had died. He found it impossible to believe his grandmother would have done such a thing without his consent. But still . . . His grandmother and Christel’s had always been close friends. Or else the letter had merely got lost for almost two years.
“I was not aware you and Saundra communicated,” he said so casually that the question seemed to startle her.
He looked up from the letter into her liquid blue eyes. “Why?” she asked. “Because I am the family scandal?”
“That is not what I meant,” he said quietly.
“We wrote to each other often.” She tucked her arms in her cloak. “Now that the war is over, you must know that there were many Scots sympathetic to the colonists’ plight. Trade and communication between us did not cease because of an embargo.”
“Us? I am English, Christel. The Carrick title is an English patent given to one of my ancestors two hundred years ago for successfully quelling a Scottish rebellion and hanging all its leaders. Had I known she was in league with Leighton and you, I would have put a stop to it.”
The color seemed to drain from her face. “I—”
“You think I did not know my own brother worked with your uncle against me in the war?” He folded the letter, little caring that his voice was sharp. “Saundra may have kept in contact with you, I do not know. But if the individual who sent this letter knew anything about me, she would have known that hell would freeze over before I would ever ask a colonial urchin to be governess to my daughter.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Please do. Someone should. You have a habit of popping in and out of my life like a hand full of mist. You present me with a letter mailed from a woman who has been dead sixteen months. And I should not consider this a joke?”
Her temper flashed hotly. “Acquit me, my lord. Whatever I have done to make you angry, I apologize. But if I have earned your animosity, then let it be for a sin I have actually committed.”
The ship lurched. Bentwell had cast off the mooring lines. Knowing what was about to come, Camden braced his hand against the timber stretching across the ceiling as the ship climbed and dropped. Despite his lame leg, he rode the ship’s movement as years of experience and practice supplanted the effects of the injury on the psyche. Miss Douglas attempted to catch her balance on the desk and missed. He hooked his arm around her waist and kept her from tumbling to the floor. He heard her breath catch as he brought her hard against him.
Beneath the layers of homespun, her skin was warm, her curves soft. Despite the pungent scent of her clothes, he held her tightly braced against him. There was nothing about her that should have intrigued him, yet he found his interest piqued despite himself.
“What sins have you committed since our last meeting, Miss Douglas?”
Shoving away from him, she captured his gaze. “I have not murdered you. Yet,” she said, riding the pitch of the ship with more ease. “And for your information, I never considered for an instant that I was not qualified to be a governess.” A calm seemed to settle over her, banishing all timidity. “My grandmother saw to that part of my education before . . . before I left Scotland.”
Camden set his teeth and silently cursed himself. What was wrong with him? For a moment, all he could grasp was that she had made a dangerous trip halfway across the world alone. She could have been killed and no one would ever have known her fate.
He also knew that she had already endured hell coming from the war-torn Tidewater region in Virginia. He was no novice when it came to understanding what war did to people.
Despite her bravado, she was very much a person now in exile.
Much as he was.
Forcing his attention back to the letter, he refolded it as his gaze fell on the dog. He had forgotten the mutt was present.
“He is mine,” she said defensively, kneeling beside the natty red and brown spotted dog as if she would protect it from being thrown into the Thames.
He had never had pets, and when he was a boy, he couldn’t understand his own grandmother’s doting over a hairy, yapping lap dog that had never missed an occasion to bite him.
“I am not going to toss either of you overboard, Christel.” Pocketing the letter, he looked past her out the stern gallery window into a dim, snowy morn. “When was the last time you ate something?”
“Yesterday morning.”
He turned and strode across the room to the adjoining chamber. The cold made his leg ache, and absently he rubbed his palm against his thigh as he opened the door and found his steward in the corridor, warming blankets in hand. He took one, then directed the rest to his daughter’s chamber. “After you deliver those to Anna’s room, bring hot water and soap to these quarters,” he said. “Then bring our guest something to eat. Coffee?” he asked her.
“And something for my dog?”
“Will a plate of kippers suffice?”
At her nod, he allayed the information to his steward. “Have we any women’s clothing on board?”
“Maybe sir,” his steward said. “Captain Bentwell’s wife keeps a trunk in his quarters.”
Shutting the door, Camden turned back into the room. As Miss Douglas and her mongrel stared back at him, he contemplated what he had got himself into.
“You will remove those clothes so I can have them burned.” He jutted his chin toward the trunk in the far corner. “You can find something in there to wear. My robe should provide you adequate protection until we find you something more suitable. I trust the dog will not chew up anything.”
“But these are your quarters. Where will you stay?”
He gathered up his hat and gloves to quit the room. “Accept my hospitality, Miss Douglas. I am not normally so accommodating.”
She waited until he had opened the door before saying, “Thank you, my lord. You have saved our lives this day whether you lik
e it or nay.”
His hand froze on the latch and his gaze returned to hers. Any normal person would have been grateful for his aid. Yet with typical colonial impertinence, she seemed to reproach him, as if his character had been on trial in a room filled with his peers.
“I will repay you for any expenses you incur on my behalf,” she said.
Camden’s scowl gave way to a momentary lapse of amused silence. She could not afford one of his shirts. But her posture told him more eloquently than words that she intended to repay him every shilling if she had to dig turnips from the ground the rest of her life to do it.
He was not a man tolerant of emotions, especially his own, yet he found himself possessed of the need to lift her face back into light and ask her what the hell she could possibly do to support herself.
“Christel . . . Miss Douglas,” he managed with patience, “if ’tis your conscience you need to appease, you may do what you think best.”
“I have never thought you less than kind, my lord.”
Her voice again arrested his hand on the door latch. Only this time it was the words spoken that made him turn. For they had not been facetious, nor had she meant to be hurtful.
He wanted to laugh. Saundra had not died thinking him kind.
But he could not force cynicism into his thoughts. There was none.
“And me with no reputation for civility. You, Miss Douglas, are still too trusting by far, or you would not be stranded and in need of my help.” He cocked a brow, surprised that of everything he had been able to say, it had been the truth that had cowed her into silence. “Now do I have your leave to retire?”
Camden’s steward was waiting for him in the corridor. “I put yer trunk in my cabin, my lord.” Carrying a tray, he hurried forward and swung open the door to his quarters. “I am heating water for the girl’s bath. She is young. I had heard she got out of Lisbon before they closed the port for cholera. She is fortunate to have made it this far alone. Why would a woman cross the Atlantic alone?”
“I do not know, Harry.”
“Must have been desperate to come home.”
Camden limped past the little Irishman into a cabin that was smaller than his privy closet. He dumped his cloak, hat and gloves on the bottom berth. The room had a washbasin and a narrow space next to the wall barely wide enough for Harry’s sea bag and Camden’s leather trunk.
His leg was so stiff that he could barely bend it to sit on the berth. His knees bumped the stove, but he welcomed the heat.
“I can see from here that leg’s all swelled up,” Red Harry said. “Let me take a look.”
“Have mercy on me and bring me hot coffee.”
The old steward shut the door. He had already made a pot of coffee and forced Camden to stand to accommodate his presence as he squeezed next to the washbasin, where he set the tray.
“That girl has come a long way,” Red Harry said. “You ought be more patient with her. She is no’ as strong as she seems.”
“That girl survived Yorktown.”
“So did you, my lord.”
Camden yanked at his stock. “Duly chastised, Harry. As the oldest of the crew and more trustworthy than my own grandfather, you are tasked with her care. Make sure she eats a hearty meal. The galley will most probably be out of service once we enter the channel.” He removed his jacket and ducked to look out the porthole. “Someone will also need to take that hound of hers to the hold. There is straw in the livestock stalls for his needs.”
He scrubbed frost off the window. Outside, a forest of masts sporting flags from several nations bobbed above a crowded watery surface and stood against a London skyline of tall brick buildings and chimneys billowing clouds of black smoke. The scene held little interest beyond a cursory glance to reassure him that his ship was leaving the quay. The voyage around the southern tip of England past Falmouth, then north into the Firth of Clyde, would last four, maybe five, days. By land with winter encroaching, the journey to Ayrshire would have lasted six weeks.
He could survive four or five days in close quarters with Christel.
Absently rubbing his thigh, he turned away from the porthole. Harry squeezed past him to the cupboard, forcing Camden to stand. Finding himself trapped against the bunk, the top of his head touching the ceiling and his shoulders pressing against the upper berth, he eyed his steward narrowly.
“Ye can toss me overboard if ye wish later,” Red Harry said. “But right now ye will be lettin’ me tend to that leg.”
Red Harry removed a tin and, slapping a towel around his neck like a drover snapping a whip, turned. “Down with yer breeches and on your side, my lord.”
“Dammit, Harry.”
But the old hunched-over wolf stared Camden down as if he’d been a contrary pup. After a moment, Camden’s hands fell to his waist and the next thing he knew, he was peeling down his breeches in the most humbling, humiliating way possible. He sat on the berth, accepting a flask of whiskey from his gaoler.
“You do understand you are the only man I would ever allow to torture me in this way.”
The man’s gnarled fingers kneaded foul-smelling balm into the swollen area around the ugly red scar just below Camden’s hip. The scar stretched to his knee. “I have known wee babes who take better care of themselves,” Red Harry muttered unpleasantly.
“Is that a tone of hostility I am hearing?”
“When ye be old and crippled like me you’ll be wishin’ you’d listened to me more, my lord. Ye should have stayed at Blackthorn Castle to begin with, where ye belong, my lord.”
Tipping the flask, Camden let the warm liquid slide down his throat. “I should have listened when you thought moving to Naples would be a good idea.”
“I never thought ’twould be a good idea. I only said any place would be warmer than England. I do no’ fancy ye goin’ anywhere but back to Blackthorn Castle.” Red Harry wiped the oil from his hands on a towel and slapped it around his neck. “No one ever believed ye would walk away and leave the place to your blackguard brother.”
“I do not intend to remain longer at Blackthorn Castle than I must to discharge my duty to Grandmother.”
“You’ll be returning to London to be with Miss Jordan then?”
Camden adjusted his clothes. “Are you tiring of London’s gay life, or is it the company I keep?”
Red Harry knew better than to question Camden’s relationship with Marie Jordan. The fact that he did surprised Camden.
Indeed, he was more than aware of the beautiful Miss Jordan’s character. He just didn’t care. He’d ceased finding relevance in society or its over-bloated opinion of itself long ago.
A knock sounded on the door. Camden answered it as he pulled a heavy sweater over his head. “We will reach Gravesend in an hour, my lord,” Bentwell said. “The snow has turned to ice. We may need to take the ship farther east toward Calais to escape the brunt of the storm.”
Camden had no intention of entering French waters with his daughter aboard. “Or we can skirt Dover and use the wind to our advantage in the straits.”
Bentwell nodded. “Aye, the storm is coming in from the north. That could work. Could shave off half a day of travel if we time it right. The crew will like that. ’Tis bloody damn cold up there.”
Camden shut the door and turned to Red Harry. “See that someone brings enough coal for the stoves in both Miss Douglas’s room and my daughter’s. I will be topside as soon as I finish down here.”
After Red Harry scurried out, Camden stepped across the companionway and entered his daughter’s cabin. He found her dressed warmly and lying on her bed asleep. Smoothing her hair from her face, he kissed her brow. The girl being eight years old, her beauty still possessed the angelic innocence of childhood, untarnished by the lessons of life. Asleep, she looked as fragile as the finest porcelain. Awake, she could be a mythical woodland sprite rumored to live in the woods surrounding Blackthorn Castle.
Anna was the one thing with which God had seen fit to bles
s him. Camden loved her more than he had ever loved anything, even more than his own life. Despite everything that Saundra had done, she had never alienated his daughter’s affections from him. Anna was the reason he’d survived these hellish last years after Yorktown. She was the reason he’d learned to walk again. The reason that he lived. They had rarely been home since Saundra had died there almost two years ago.
“She had a restless night, my lord,” the nurse said. “I think she will be glad to be returning home.”
Camden wrapped her in fur. Warming bricks heated the interior sufficiently to render the chill less biting.
His daughter stirred and turned onto her back. “Are we going home now, Papa?”
He looked into her face and smoothed the hair back from her cheek. “Aye, lass.”
“And I will be able to see Uncle Leighton and Grandmamma?”
Camden held back the frown that wanted to form just at the corners of his mouth. Somehow, his brother had managed to steal his daughter’s heart, and Camden did not have it inside to hurt her more than she had already been hurt with her mother’s passing. “Aye, Anna. They will be there.”
She settled comfortably in the blankets as he wrapped the fur more tightly around her. “I am glad, Papa.”
“The weather will be rough. I want you to stay in your cabin. You and I will share a cup of tea tonight.”
“My doll, too?”
He chuckled. “Aye, your doll, too.”
She smiled and turned back into her pillow. He looked over at Mrs. Gables and told her not to stand. Letting himself out of the cabin, he caught himself against the ship’s sway as he shut the door. Two lanthorns on the wall knocked against the bulkhead. He looked over at his cabin, hesitated, then raised his hand and knocked.
The door swung open. Christel stood before him wearing his brown silk robe and carrying a stave bucket filled with soap and a towel. Her gaze shot up to his. “Oh.”
The disappointment in her voice was so evident that he almost laughed. “Oh?”
Her other hand clutched the edges of the robe. A whisper of gold flashed just above the mounds of her breasts. “I thought you were Mr. Harold . . . ah, Red Harry. He took my dog to the hold. It has started to sleet.” She held fast to the door. “Does the captain know what he is doing? Should we have left London in this weather?”
This Perfect Kiss Page 3