by Gaelen Foley
In the meantime, the unrelenting blackness had begun playing tricks on her mind. There was too much time to worry about the rats she heard scratching about in the darkness. She hoped they did not grow bold enough to bite her.
Above all, there was too much time to think…about everything that could go wrong with her adventure now that she had flung herself into it. Time, as well, to contemplate the mighty captain of this ship.
Since this was a far more interesting subject, she spent countless hours pondering what Papa had told her about Jack Knight—yet somehow she only arrived at more questions.
Why, for example, had he been forbidden to marry the girl he had loved, Lady Maura? If he was the second son of a duke, why had her parents deemed Lord Jack unsuitable? Was that the reason he had not returned to England all this time? Had he no family there to draw him back for a visit?
And what was he really doing in the jungle that day in the first place? She remembered the mysterious look in his eyes when she had asked about his visit to the rebel town of Angostura. Papa had claimed that his mere presence in Venezuela meant that Lord Jack was up to no good. Collecting timber…? No. They were hiding something, he and his men. Whatever the rogue was involved in, he obviously didn’t want her to know.
Alas, the spirit of inquiry had been nurtured in Eden from too young an age to leave the mystery alone. There was nothing else to do, hour after hour, so she decided to look around and see if she could find some answers.
Taking the tinderbox out of her satchel of supplies, she lit her candle with a few clicks of the flint. She knew she had to conserve her candle, but the light was such a blessing. With the small flame to guide her, she went exploring a bit.
The great rocking warehouse of the cargo hold contained no clues about Jack’s secrets, but was piled with orderly mountains of supplies. Barrels of water and wine. Various tools and spare sails. Black powder stores and cannonballs. There was plenty of food and water to see her through the long journey, but the air was fetid just above the bilge.
She did not need her physician-father to tell her that amid such ill vapors, fevers lurked. Indeed, she doubted she had another two days’ worth of breathable air down here. She realized grimly that she would have to ascend to the next level and find a new hiding place.
This she did the next afternoon, sneaking up onto the orlop deck, and here she had passed another several days in hiding. There was still no daylight to be had, for the creaking orlop, like the cargo hold, sat below the waterline, but at least there were lanterns in the cramped, narrow passageways and better ventilation. The sea air filtered down through wooden grates placed over the hatches far above, on the main deck.
The orlop also housed supplies, including the vast tonnage of goods that Lord Jack was transporting to market in England. The mahoganies and other tropical hardwoods took up much of the space, but there were also great quantities of sugar, rum, cotton, tobacco, and indigo. Useful items all, but nothing yielding information about the captain’s jaunt to Angostura.
In her wary explorations, ever dodging the crewmen who passed by going about their business, she had found the bread and cheese room, where the ship’s cats were on constant duty stalking rats. She found the wood shop of the ship’s carpenter, and the office of the purser, the frugal fellow in charge of accounting for all the supplies—who used what and how much.
Though she often heard the easygoing carpenter singing in the wood shop as he banged away with his hammer, and smiled in secret at the purser’s constant muttering to himself as he scribbled away in his office, balancing his ledger books and grousing about how nobody appreciated him, Eden stayed out of sight and made friends with the ships’ cats to pass the time.
Now and then, as the days passed, she sought to comfort herself by summoning up those familiar, shining images of brilliant ballrooms, elegant music, lords and ladies dancing—but it was then that she discovered there was something wrong with her pretty fantasy.
Each time she imagined herself at the ball, the man who now stepped forward from amid the swirling dancers to claim her was none other than that blackguard ex-pirate, Lord Jack.
A fortnight out from the Spanish Main, The Winds of Fortune had traversed over a thousand miles of ocean, traveling at eight knots on a steep northeasterly angle. They had cleared the warm Sargasso Sea and were now in the middle of the cold Atlantic.
Taking current wind conditions into account, Jack gave orders to change the set of the sails slightly and advised the helmsman to adjust his steerage on the wheel.
All was in order, and the captain was pleased.
The sails were in fine trim, the men cheerful in the rigging, the lookout posted in the crow’s nest. A dozen crewmen mopped the decks, while another group received their weekly training with pistols and cutlasses from gruff, tough Mr. Brody, the master-at-arms. Old Brody also served as Jack’s fencing coach and occasional sparring partner at his daily practice in fisticuffs and the other manly arts of self-defense.
The sailors stood at attention and saluted their captain as he strode past, inspecting them and their efforts, asking questions here, giving orders there, granting a few approving nods to men who had done good work.
Indeed, as he strolled the decks with Rudy at his heels, the smooth running of his prize vessel—and his worldwide company, for that matter—inspired Jack with a most gratifying sense of solid order, security, and accomplishment. And yet…
He was plagued by a deepening awareness of a large hole in his life. An emptiness. He had sensed it vaguely and ignored it for a very long time now, but it had sharpened since they’d left Venezuela into a nameless hunger, a gnawing urgency.
Yes, he had built up an empire and possessed a fortune to rival his ducal brother’s, but he had no one to share it with, and worse, no one to leave it to. If he died unexpectedly—and there was always a chance of that, the way he lived—everything he’d worked for, the company he’d spent his life creating, would die with him.
The solution was plain, of course: He needed sons. And if his father had had five, Jack wanted six. But getting heirs meant finding a wife, a prospect he so little relished that he had been putting it off for years.
Where could a man find a woman who would bear his children and otherwise leave him alone? As he prowled the decks of his ship, irked with the whole uneasy subject, only one tolerable candidate came to mind—Eden Farraday.
Now, there was a girl who could take care of herself. Hell, if he was smart, Jack thought, he’d marry her. Look at the conditions she was used to, he reasoned. For the kind of luxury that he could give her, she would probably do whatever he said. Her capacity for loyalty was unquestioned, having stayed with her father through his quest. By now, it was clear she’d be happy just to get out of the jungle—but Jack could give her so much more than that, if they could come to a reasonable agreement. A life of privilege, social position. A life of ease.
She deserved it more than most of the women he knew.
Certainly, in their brief meeting, she had displayed qualities that suggested she could breed him first-rate sons: strength, confidence, robust health, keen intelligence, courage, resourcefulness. Observation had also told him that she would be a good mother, for she had shown her nurturing side even to him in removing his splinter.
Considering his dam’s selfish ways, his future wife’s ability to love his children was of paramount importance to Jack.
Oh, all of this sounded like madness, he thought, scowling—but in practical terms perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea. By all visible measures, the redhead seemed to fit the bill.
She was caring, capable, deliciously beautiful, and, best of all, not some ninny-headed Society miss whose response to danger would be to faint gracefully into a chaise longue.
Indeed, she was still quite young, but as a few years passed and she came into her own, she would further mature into a formidable queen who could hold down the fort when he was on the other side of the world for long periods of
time, attending to the far-flung reaches of his empire.
If Victor trusted her to help in his complex scientific work, then Jack saw no reason why she could not be trained to keep an eye on the company for him.
The ideal wife—one with sense, one he could trust, one who could stand on her own two feet—would almost be, he mused, a kind of partner in the firm.
He just never thought that he could find one.
But now there was Eden Farraday, hidden away in the trees, where more deserving fellows could not find her. Not to mention the fact that the memory of her kiss still made his body burn with agitated lust.
Hell, he wondered if she’d even have him after he had let her down by refusing to take her to England. What choice had he had? His mood gone restless, Jack joined Trahern at the rails.
“No sign of the Valiant yet,” his top lieutenant informed him, peering through a spyglass.
“No, I don’t expect to see the old man ’til above the fortieth parallel,” Jack muttered, though the thought of his uncle, Lord Arthur Knight, made him smile wryly.
It was comforting to know there was at least one family member he could relate to, probably because his distinguished old nabob of an uncle had been, in his day, as much a black sheep of the family as Jack was.
Decades ago, after a spat with his elder brother, the previous Duke of Hawkscliffe, the second-born, Lord Arthur Knight, had scorned the family empire, packed his trunks, and sailed off to India to make his own fortune. He had flourished there by his wits and the sweat of his brow, had found a wife and raised a family, two fine sons and a beautiful daughter; he had risen through the ranks of the East India Company, and then, upon retiring, had used everything he knew from three decades of cutthroat business in the Orient to help Jack grow his firm into a force to be reckoned with.
He was the closest thing to a true father Jack had ever had.
Arthur and he had made a deal to return to the shores of their homeland together—for moral support, as it were. It was hard to say which one of them the rest of the clan would be more shocked to see.
Trahern snapped his spyglass shut and looked at Jack hopefully. “Do you think your uncle might bring Miss Georgie with him?”
Jack laughed. “What, the belle of the Spice Islands? Queen of Bombay? Do you think she’d really tear herself away from her social life just to see you?”
“No.” Trahern sighed. “But a chap can dream, can’t he? The woman’s a goddess.”
Jack shook his head at him sardonically. “Forget her, man. She’d eat you alive.”
“Yes, but I don’t think I’d mind it.”
“Hey.” He arched an eyebrow, frowning at him. “That’s my little cousin you’re talking about.”
Rudy interrupted with a sudden storm of barking, once again at his favorite hobby of trying to get to the chickens and ducks that lived in crates inside the lifeboats. The live poultry were kept on hand to supply the galley with fresh eggs.
A clamor of alarmed clucking and quacking arose from inside the jolly boats, and though the sailors on hand tried to deter the bull-terrier from his game, Jack sighed and went to collect his errant pet.
He grabbed Rudy’s leather collar, hauled his panting dog away with a halfhearted scolding, and returned to his luxurious day cabin. When he walked into the spacious wood-paneled chamber, Rudy scrambled ahead of him, greeting Phineas Patrick Moynahan, Jack’s grubby, nine-year-old cabin boy, otherwise known as the Nipper. The little tyke was shining Jack’s boots, but Rudy’s joyous greeting shoved him right off his low stool.
The Nipper landed on the floor with a peal of half-vexed laughter. “Get off o’ me, ye daft mutt!”
Rudy licked his cheek in answer, then waited for the boy to play with him, his tail wagging wildly.
Jack was all business, however, and gave the lad his next errand. “Mr. Moynahan, I require my clerk. Go and fetch Mr. Stockwell for me. I wish to dictate a letter.”
“Sorry, Cap, can’t.” He climbed back onto his stool. “He’s gone down to sickbay with one o’ them tropical fevers.”
“Really?” Jack asked in surprise.
The Nipper nodded and picked up the other boot.
Yesterday, Stockwell had complained that he wasn’t feeling well during their work, but Jack had not suspected it was serious. “Mr. Moynahan,” he said abruptly, “you have boot-black on your forehead.”
With a scowl, the Nipper reached up to wipe it off and only succeeded in smearing more sooty polish across his face.
Jack fought a smile. “Martin!” he called, summoning his valet to fill in for his clerk.
The neat, fussy, little man instantly came hurrying in answer to his call. While Martin fretted over the assignment outside his usual duties and hurried about getting paper and ink, Jack took a seat and propped his feet up on the corner of his large, baronial desk, leaning back and musing on how to start the letter.
A knock sounded on the cabin door as he was mentally composing a terse greeting. “Come.”
Jack looked up as the grizzled master-at-arms entered.
“Problem, Brody?” Jack glanced at his fob watch. “Our training session’s not ’til four.”
“If I could have a word with ye, Cap’n,” he said, his hat in his hands.
“Of course. Speak freely.”
Brody eyed Martin with his usual warrior’s wariness. “Thought you should know, Cap, there’s a rumor goin’ around among the men, quietlike, says we picked up a stowaway off o’ Trinidad.”
Jack steepled his fingers in thought. “Really?”
“Aye. One o’ the carpenter’s mates thought he caught sight of a young lad hidin’ on the orlop deck.”
“Is that right?” he murmured, taking no heed of how the Nipper had perked up at the news.
He considered for a moment; Brody waited.
Jack brought his feet down off his desk with a clomp. “Take a couple of the men below and have a look around. If you find anyone hiding out down there who’s not on our roster, put him to work. Everybody pays their way on my ship,” he reiterated, shoving away another taunting memory of a redhead with emerald green eyes.
No, it couldn’t be.
Eden Farraday was bold, not insane.
Besides, no one could mistake that luscious beauty for a lad, even in the dim half-light of the orlop. No doubt it was just some poor orphan runaway from one of the Caribbean islands looking for a better life. His merchant fleet picked up strays all over the globe. If they refused to work, his firm policy was to turn them in as thieves. He wasn’t running a charity, after all.
“Remind the crew there are consequences to be paid for anyone who helps conceal a stowaway,” he ordered. “I won’t tolerate anyone stealing from me.”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Brody answered stoutly and went to do his bidding.
“Where are you going?” Jack asked as the Nipper popped up from his stool and ran across the cabin.
Rudy’s ears pricked up at the boy’s movement, but the dog remained lying near Jack’s desk.
“Oh, um, gotta refill the scuttlebutt, Cap.”
“You’ve finished with my boots?”
“Almost, sir. They need a final buffin,’ but the polish ain’t dry yet—”
“Isn’t,” Jack corrected gently.
“Aye, sir—isn’t dry yet—and since you’re always sayin’ as how I should use me time wiser…?”
“Ah, right. Of course. Very good, Mr. Moynahan. Run along, then,” he said, eyeing the little imp with a twinge of suspicion.
The Nipper, dismissed, went tearing out of the day cabin. Jack could not recall the child ever having been half so eager to complete his chores, but he shrugged it off and began his dictation: “My dear Abraham,” he clipped out while Martin quickly began writing, “it is with great regret that I have watched the friendly relations between our two companies dissolve over the course of the past few years. Despite my efforts to maintain fair, indeed, preferential policies toward your firm…” H
is voice trailed off, his train of thought dissolving.
“Sir?”
It couldn’t be Eden Farraday.
She wouldn’t.
Would she?
Don’t forget who you’re dealing with here. She was no ordinary female, the little wild woman.
Which was, of course, exactly why he wanted her. She had gotten under his skin like that damned splinter….
Staring at nothing as he tapped his pen on this desk, Jack recalled her fearless plunge off the tree branch, swinging on that blasted vine, the cheerful ease with which she had hacked the pineapple into neat slices with that razor-sharp machete.
Aye, the way she had stood up to him, Black-Jack Knight, the so-called terror of the seas. She had looked him in the eye and spoken her mind with a frankness most men wouldn’t dare.
But was she foolhardy enough to stow away after he had denied her request for passage?
Of course she was, he realized, though he was barely able to wrap his mind around the notion that all this time that he’d been lusting for her, she might have been here on his ship, right under his very nose, and now could be in arm’s reach.
The terror of the seas suddenly found himself with butterflies in his stomach.
Jack scowled. Ridiculous.
“My lord?”
“Dismissed.” In state of mystified incredulity, he got up from his desk abruptly and tossed the pen down. “We’ll finish later, Martin. I have to go, ah, check on something.”
His valet looked startled. “Your letter, sir?”
“It can wait.” Jack strode out of the day cabin and headed for the orlop deck.
He had to see this stowaway for himself.
Reclining in the orlop deck with her head resting on a sack of sugar, Eden was thumbing through La Belle Assemblée in a state of extreme boredom, having already memorized every page, when suddenly, her jungle-honed senses registered an unfamiliar presence somewhere very nearby.
She froze for a second, then rolled onto her side and crouched down behind the fruit crates. Someone was coming—or already here?
She held her breath, listening for all she was worth. Her straining ears pinpointed the faint patter of bare footsteps on wooden planks.