‘Well, Tom,’ she said, crouching down to his level, ‘please tell Captain North that I accept his invitation.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The boy nodded and, with a tug of his forelock, ran off across the gun deck to where the dining tables were ready and waiting with hungry men.
The usual screens were not in place. North glanced over from where he sat at the head table, his dark eyes meeting hers and sending that shiver of sensual awareness rippling down her spine.
Kate stood there for a tiny second, holding his gaze coolly, bold as a pirate about to wield a cutlass and shield, knowing what was coming and tempted to close her cabin door and make him wait for the skirmish. But the crew were not eating, the dishes sat covered, awaiting her arrival. And she could not be so petty.
Taking a breath, she left the illusion of safety her cabin offered and went to eat with North and his men.
* * *
There was only polite small talk during the meal. She sat in the empty space that had been left for her, close to North and directly opposite Gunner, engaging in the politeness and listening to the surrounding conversations, aware that the men’s language was careful on account of both her and their captain’s presence at the head of their table. The time passed until, at last, Gunner cleared his throat and, setting down his napkin, got to his feet.
‘If you will excuse me, Mrs Medhurst...Captain North?’ Gunner’s eyes shifted between Kate Medhurst and Kit.
The men eating at all the tables finished their food and, with a respectful nod to their captain, followed Gunner. The men that were serving table also disappeared so that not one soul remained on that gun deck with Kit and Kate Medhurst.
Now that they were alone there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere—a tightening of that multifaceted tension that shimmered between the two of them.
She swallowed, but made no attempt to run. Holding her head up, she faced him calmly across the table, with cool grey eyes and a small defiant curve to those honey-sweet lips.
‘I’m getting the impression that there is something that you wish to discuss with me in private, Captain North.’
‘Am I so obvious?’
‘Just a little.’
He smiled and so did she.
‘Do you wish something to drink?’ he asked.
‘I will take a brandy, thank you,’ she said, no doubt to shock him.
He poured her one and himself a lemonade, acknowledging her derisory glance at the lemonade with a smile.
She sipped the brandy. ‘You wasted your money, and mine, on that dress. I do not wear yellow.’
‘Why not?’
‘It does not suit.’
‘On the contrary, I think it would suit very well.’
The silence stretched.
She met his gaze directly and dispensed with the small talk. ‘So what exactly is it that you wish to ask me?’
He smiled at her tactic and then supposed with her he should always expect the unexpected. He studied her face closely and saw a mask of beautiful composure. She was cooler under pressure than any man he had known. She revealed nothing, not a flicker of a tense muscle, not a swallow in a dry throat. Not the slightest tremor of her voice.
‘Those men in the alley today. You knew them.’
She did not miss a beat, held his eyes with confidence. ‘I recognised them as being from Louisiana.’
‘They were pirates.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. How do you know them in Louisiana? Friends of yours, were they?’
She smiled again. ‘We’re all friends in Louisiana.’
‘Or perhaps of your husband’s.’
The mask slipped for a tiny second. Something flickered in her eyes, something raw, before she glanced away to hide it, her fingers rotating the thin gold wedding band on her finger. ‘My husband is dead, Captain North.’
‘Tell me of him.’
She looked at him again, the emotion gone, her cool composed self once more. ‘I would rather not,’ she said in a voice that beneath the soft velvet held a hint of steely strength.
The silence hissed between them. She held his gaze, bold and stubborn in her defiance. They could sit there all night and she would say not one word. He tried a different tactic.
‘You know Lafitte.’
‘Everybody in Louisiana knows Jean Lafitte and his older half-brother Pierre.’
‘Pirate overlords.’
‘I would describe them more as trade facilitators.’
‘They are French corsairs.’
‘They might have been French born, but they are of New Orleans and everything they do is for the good of Louisiana. And I am sure you are well aware that Louisiana is now a part of the United States of America.’ Anger and pride flashed in her eyes. ‘They are not violent men, not murderers.’
‘And are these non-violent trade facilitators La Voile’s overlords?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Because you knew La Voile. Because you were with him, willingly, on his ship.’
She did not deny it.
‘What manner of man was La Voile?’ he asked.
‘Not the manner of man most would expect, that’s for sure.’
‘Did he treat you badly?’
‘He did not.’ There was confidence in her eyes and wariness.
‘And yet that morning Coyote attacked Raven, there was a disagreement between you and him.’
‘Was there?’ She arched an eyebrow, brazen and cool.
He let a small silence stretch between them before the important question. ‘Were you La Voile’s wife, Kate?’ he asked softly.
The shock in her eyes was real. She blinked for a moment and then she gave a little laugh, half-incredulity, half-amusement. ‘His wife?’ She glanced away and shook her head.
‘Are you telling me that there was nothing between you and La Voile?’
Her eyes shifted to his once more. ‘On the contrary, I am not telling you anything, Captain North.’
‘You certainly are not,’ he agreed. ‘I wonder why.’
‘I wonder,’ she said.
The silence seemed to hiss between them.
She looked beautiful and pale and proud.
Their gazes held, and for all their stab and fish and parry of words there was the whisper of that other underlying tension between them. That same thing that had made him take her in his arms in the alleyway and kiss her. She could feel it, too. He could tell by the look in her eyes. In the flicker of the candlelight they looked not dove-grey, but charcoal-dark and serious and sensual.
He slid his hand across the table and took her fingers gently in his.
She did not snatch it away, just looked at where their hands lay there together.
The tension pulsed strong between them in the silence.
She swallowed. ‘I am a respectable and loyal widow,’ she said slowly before she raised her gaze to meet his. ‘So you may ask your questions, all you will, but you will hear no answers.’ Her hand withdrew from his, but her fingers were soft as a caress in their parting.
He did not doubt it for a minute.
‘For all you are English and a bounty hunter, you seem an honourable man, Captain North.’
His smile was small and tight and cynical. ‘Do I?’ But appearances could be deceptive.
‘So I am sure you will understand when I tell you I will not compromise mine.’
‘Perfectly,’ he said. He knew what it was she was saying. That she would not betray anything of her connection with La Voile...and that she wanted nothing to come of the passion that was smouldering between her and Kit.
The latter suited Kit perfectly well. The desire was there, palpable and thick and real between them, but he wanted nothi
ng to come of it, either. Kit Northcote would have, but Kit North did not. And North had business in London to think of and a vow to honour.
‘You offered me safe passage, Captain North. Do you rescind it?’
‘The offer remains unchanged.’ Whoever she was, and whatever she was hiding, did not matter. He had La Voile pickled in a butt at the other end of the deck. And that was all he needed to return to London and do what was required.
‘Thank you.’ She gave a small nod of acknowledgement. ‘If you will excuse me, sir, it has been a long day and I would like very much to retire for the night.’
He rose, his eyes holding hers. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Medhurst.’
‘Goodnight, Captain North.’ Her bare feet made no sound as she walked across the deck to her cabin.
Whoever she was, and whatever she was hiding, did not matter, he thought again.
But whoever’s widow she was, it was not La Voile’s.
Chapter Six
Kate awoke to the morning bell ringing up on deck. The warmth and comfort of the dream was still upon her, of her children and her home back in Tallaholm. She clung to its soft remnants, pressing her lips to Bea’s plump baby cheeks and breathing in the scent of Ben’s tousled mop of golden blond hair as she ruffled it and told him to be a good boy for Grandma. But the images faded too soon and she was left lying alone in the tiny cabin aboard Kit North’s ship.
How long would it be before she saw them again? Weeks, maybe even months, stretched ahead—weeks in which she was trapped here with Kit North. A dangerous man in more ways than one.
She thought of last night’s encounter, of questions asked and unanswered, of the louder unspoken tension between them. She had more or less blatantly told him she would not sleep with him and that he should stay away from her. She could scarcely believe her own audacity.
Would he honour her request? She touched against the fingers that his had held, seeing again the cool cynicism of his smile at her admission of his honour despite being English and a bounty hunter.
She thought of the way he ate with his men, not apart on some high captain’s fancy table, sharing the same plain food, not fine fare prepared by a personal chef, as she had believed all British captains did.
I am not kind. The words sounded again in her mind, with their brutal ring of honesty.
He was North the Pirate Hunter. He was not kind. But he had not hesitated to dive into the water with a ten-foot white-tip shark to save her. And she was under no illusion as to what would have happened in that alleyway with Bill Linder and his sleazy companion had North not arrived.
He was not kind. But the caress of his fingers and the touch of his lips were all gentleness.
He would honour her request, she thought. And that, more than anything else, was the one thing that would make the three-and-a-half-thousand-mile journey that lay ahead easier.
* * *
In those first few days, as their journey got properly underway, she was proved right in her estimation of his honour, for North kept his distance just as much as she had hoped he would. And Kate was relieved. For the sake of her children, for the sake of her mama, and for all who waited in Tallaholm. And for the sake of the vow she had sworn to Wendell.
It was Gunner who sat with her at meals and Gunner who came on occasion to speak to her when she stood at the rail, looking out over the endless ocean and all she was leaving behind.
In the evenings, when the work was done and the daylight gone, the azure-blue of the sky curtained with midnight velvet and diamond stars, Raven’s crew got together in the dining room, screened off from the rest of the deck, and drank a little grog and talked and laughed and sang old songs of love and loss, of drink and women, and the sea. Gunner played the fiddle and an older man, called Pete, played a little flageolet. They did not seem English. In those evenings she forgot they were her enemies. They were just men the same as those from Tallaholm that crewed Coyote.
But North was not there, not on any of those first evenings of Raven’s journey. Not at dinner time, when he ate at the opposite end of the table to her, their seats too far apart to allow conversation. Nor later for the singing and the music and camaraderie.
* * *
On the fifth evening when she came from her cabin to join the social he was over talking to Gunner, but when he saw her approach he left the gun deck, giving her a small but cool nod of acknowledgement as he did so.
Her eyes lingered on the deck ladder up which he had disappeared, realising that his absence from the leisure time was because of her presence. She should have been glad of it, but instead all she felt was a curious empty kind of sadness.
Aware that she had been staring too long after him, she glanced round to find Gunner watching her.
‘Maybe I will just spend the evening in my cabin reading one of those books you were kind enough to lend me, sir,’ she said.
‘You will do no such thing, Mrs Medhurst,’ he countered, lowering his voice a notch before adding, ‘North never joins us in the evenings.’
‘Not ever?’
Gunner shook his head and poured her a small glass of grog. ‘He prefers to work.’
‘But he cannot always work. There must be times when he—’
‘There are not,’ Gunner cut off her words gently. His brow furrowed in worry and there was a far-off look in his eyes as he stared at the table between them. ‘North is a hard man, Mrs Medhurst, but hardest of all with himself. He is...driven, relentlessly, without rest, without mercy.’
‘What brings a man to such a place?’
‘His past.’ Gunner looked into her eyes.
‘What happened in his past?’ she asked quietly.
‘Things you could not imagine, Mrs Medhurst.’
She stared at him.
‘Where’s that fiddle of yours, Reverend Dr Gunner?’ one of the men called.
Another was starting up the first notes of another traditional folk song.
Gunner’s confidences were over. Lifting his fiddle from its battered case, he began to play.
The men joined in, singing and stamping their feet in time to the rhythm, smiling and laughing, enjoying the jolly tune.
Kate watched them, her tankard of grog sitting on the long scrubbed wooden table before her. Just the same as the previous nights, but this night was different. Gunner’s words seemed to ring in her head, sending a discomfort through her.
All of this camaraderie and bonhomie while North was elsewhere, alone, working. She should be glad he was not present. He was dangerous. This was what she wanted, for him to stay away from her, wasn’t it?
What happened in his past?
Things you could not imagine.
* * *
She was still pondering on it when Gunner sat down beside her an hour later.
‘Reverend Dr Gunner, are you feeling all right?’ Even in the mellow soft light of the lanterns the priest looked too pale around his eyes, but with the telltale flush of cheeks that boded ill. It was warm on the gun deck, but not enough to account for the sheen of sweat that glistened upon his face. The hour of playing seemed to have drained all of his energy.
He shook his head as if to shake away her concern and set his fiddle on the table surface, something he never did; he always was careful to keep it in its case. ‘I do feel a little under the weather,’ he admitted, and with that his eyes rolled up into their sockets and he slid from the bench to collapse on to the deck.
The dancing and the singing stopped abruptly. The flageolet, too.
Kate got down on her knees, laying her hand against his forehead and feeling how hot he was.
‘Go fetch Captain North,’ she instructed the nearest man, then turned Gunner on his side in case he should be sick and choke upon it. The men were all crowded around, worried but not knowing what to do,
Gunner was the physician, after all; he was the one who normally dealt with such occurrences.
North came immediately. The men cleared a path for him as he made his way to where she knelt by Gunner.
They carried the priest to his cot in North’s day cabin and Kate followed.
‘Go back to your cabin, Mrs Medhurst. The matter is in hand,’ North instructed.
‘If you do not mind, Captain, I’ll stay.’ Her eyes met his meaningfully. ‘I think you’re going to need my help.’
She waited until his crew were gone before she spoke. ‘He is burning up with fever.’
They looked at one another, both realising the awful possibility—that what had wiped out the naval fort and yard on Antigua was now here on Raven.
‘It might be a coincidence,’ she said.
‘Unlikely.’
‘Either way he has a fever that needs to be cooled.’
‘This is not work for you.’
‘I had Yellow Jack as a child. I will not contract it again.’
He just looked at her.
‘For goodness’ sake, I was a married woman. I have seen a man’s body before.’
‘He is a priest.’
‘And a friend to us both. I am not going to sit in my cabin doing nothing. We need a basin of cold water and clean rags. And some boiled water that we can leave to cool.’
For a moment his eyes held locked to hers, the expression them unreadable.
She did not back down, just held his gaze steady. Gunner had been kind to her.
‘Do you know what you are doing, Kate Medhurst?’ he asked.
She swallowed, understanding the layers of meaning in the question.
‘I do,’ she said, still holding his eyes. ‘I have seen fever before.’
[GOD08] The Lost Gentleman Page 9