by Gaelen Foley
“Aye, so they said.” He shrugged. “I was lucky.”
“What about this one?” she murmured, touching the jagged, star-shaped outline of a hole on his right shoulder that she knew on sight had been made by a bullet.
“That one, my dear—” He grasped her wrist gently and plucked her hand away, “is a very long story.” He kissed her hand and gave it back to her. “I’ll take it from here.”
She did not argue, for the searing hunger in his eyes warned that her touch was tormenting him. Instead, she leaned her elbow on the edge of the washstand and searched his face intently.
“What?”
“I would so hate for you to come by any new scars.”
He smiled mildly. “Thanks, but it’s probably inevitable.”
“You’re really putting yourself on the line for the rebels, aren’t you?” She let her troubled gaze travel down over all the marks of pain on his body. “Why risk it?”
“I thought we already talked about this.”
“Yes, but I don’t understand. It isn’t even your country. You can’t need the money. You’re already rich. Is it just for the thrill?”
“Hell, no. I am not a reckless man.” He moved past her. “I have my reasons.”
“Nothing you feel you can tell me?” She turned to watch him.
He went to the door again, apparently to check the locks one last time before sleep. There, he paused with his back to her, barely glancing over his shoulder. “It’s a very satisfying thing in life when you’re able to do something no one else can,” he said in a low voice. “Not even people who think they’re better than you. Not even a duke,” he added under his breath.
Eden gazed at him in wary tenderness as he turned around slowly and leaned back against the door. He returned her stare but made no move to come any closer.
“Are you talking about your brother, Hawkscliffe?”
He shook his head. “The dead one, before him.”
“Your father?”
He folded his arms across his chest and dropped his gaze. “Yes. My father,” he said in a low, scornful sort of growl.
“You didn’t get along with him?” she asked softly.
“Couldn’t do anything right for him.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
She gazed at him, not knowing what to say; it obviously mattered a great deal.
“I’m helping Bolivar because I can. Come on.” He nodded toward his berth. “Let’s go to bed.”
Following his glance at the sleeping quarters they were to share, she bit her lip. All of a sudden, his six-foot berth didn’t look so big.
“After you,” he ordered.
“Which side do you want?”
He looked at his bed. “You take the wall.”
She nodded, drew a deep breath, and then climbed into his berth while Jack crossed back to the washstand to blow out the candle.
He doused it with a puff of breath. Immediately, they were plunged in silver moonlight just as Eden slid beneath the light coverlet and sheet.
Jack approached, pewter moonlight sliding along the sleek contours of his mighty shoulders and powerful chest—as though he were forged of polished steel, or as if his very skin were a kind of supple armor. Taut silver ridges and blue shadows contoured every compact muscle of his sculpted abdomen. The scars were invisible now.
Eden held her breath at his beauty as he sat down on the edge of the bed, punched his goose-down pillow into the desired shape, then reclined slowly beside her, folding his arms behind his head. It was not lost on her that he kept the covers between them, lying atop them rather than joining her beneath their light warmth.
God. She was positive he could hear her pulse thumping in the awkward silence.
When he changed position after a few minutes, lowering his hands to his sides, he bumped her thigh with his left hand—a fleeting, accidental touch—but even as he mumbled an apology, she fairly quivered in response. This was insane, but her body was throbbing.
Right, she told her fevered flesh, closing her eyes resolutely. Go to sleep now.
Silence.
She could tell by his shallow breathing that he was wide awake, too. Indeed, she could feel the pull of his masculinity, almost hear his body begging for her touch, but she didn’t dare.
The silence stretched.
“Eden?”
“Y-yes?” she asked at once, swallowing hard. Her chest rose and fell in abrupt pulls of breath, all but panting.
“Is it my turn to ask you a question?” he whispered.
She licked her lips, prepared to say yes to nearly anything. “All right.” She rolled onto her side and braced her elbow on the pillow, resting her cheek in her hand. “What do you want to know?”
He rested his hands on his stomach but turned his head to gaze at her. His eyes glittered in the dark. “Why’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Stow away.”
Somehow the question took her off guard. But at least it turned the subject away from her growing desire to pounce on him. “I told you. I have to find a new patron for Father’s work.”
“Ah, right.” He looked at the ceiling again. She could just make out his wry smile. “My money wasn’t good enough for you.”
She poked his shoulder in playful reproach. “That’s not true. You wanted the lion’s share of the profits.”
“We were negotiating,” he reminded her in a reasonable tone. “Besides, what else would you expect than for me to want the lion’s share? You’re the one who said I’m just a big grumpy lion with a thorn in his paw.”
She smiled. “Well, you are.”
“You got the thorn out.”
“I think,” she said slowly, “there may still be a few more buried inside you.”
He turned his head and looked at her.
For a long moment, they stared at each other in silence.
“Maybe,” he admitted barely audibly. “But you haven’t answered my question. If it was just to find a patron, you’d have accepted me. But there’s more to it, isn’t there?”
Eden laid her head down on her pillow, still holding his gaze.
He reached over and caressed her cheek with one knuckle. “What is it that made you run away? The snakes and spiders? Couldn’t take it anymore?”
“I wasn’t made for solitude, Jack.” I was made for love, she thought, but she didn’t say it aloud.
She didn’t have to. The look in his eyes told her he already knew. He rolled onto his elbow and captured her face in his other hand. Her pulse climbed. Gazing into her eyes, he bent his head toward her lips, giving her plenty of time to protest.
Instead, Eden wound her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, melting under him as his warm, fine mouth descended on hers. She stroked his face, raked her fingers through his hair, and lost herself in his wondrous kiss, so deep and drugging and slow.
He eased partly atop her, cupping her waist through the light bedding, and then, more sensuously still, kneading her hip through the coverlet in the most provocative fashion. With his chest flush against her breasts, Eden could feel his heart pounding. The might of his body, the power of his passion, though leashed, nearly threatened to overwhelm her. She had never experienced such potent desire, when all of a sudden her prior decision to resist shone out through the haze.
“Jack!” she gasped, pressing up on his shoulder. She tore her lips away from his kiss with a groan of denial.
“Eden,” he panted. “What’s wrong?”
“Jack—stop. Please.”
He lifted his head and gazed down at her, his chest heaving, his lips bee-stung with her kisses. Slowly, he seemed to come back to his senses. He looked away and, a second later, lifted his weight off her, withdrawing to his side of the bed.
“Good night, Miss Farraday,” he said after a long moment.
Relief flooded through her to find that the terror of the West Indies had actually obeyed her. She gave him a tremulous smile. “Good night, Lord Jack.�
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The next morning, Eden donned the sparkly sea-princess gown, then made friends with the dog while Jack went and rang a bell to summon his valet. He unfolded a painted wooden screen that had been leaning against the wall, then he set it up, blocking off a portion of the day cabin.
“You and Martin can work on your sewing over here.”
She smiled at him, wholly grateful to have been allowed out of the cramped sleeping cabin. Despite their cordiality, both she and Jack were feeling a little self-conscious this morning after waking up entangled in each other’s arms. Neither was quite sure how it had happened.
“Halloo!” His valet made an entrance at that moment, arriving promptly in answer to Jack’s summons.
A neat, prim, rather dandyish little eccentric, Martin made an entrance with his sewing basket draped over his arm and his nose in the air. Impatiently he waved in one of the sailors, who teetered along under the huge pile of fabric bolts that the valet had apparently loaded into his helper’s arms.
“Oh, there she is! What an angel!” Martin sailed toward Eden, his hands in the air. “Ah, you precious thing! Let me have a look at you, darling!”
Jack leaned his hip on the corner of his desk and looked on with an expression of bemusement as Martin spun Eden in a circle and then stood back to pass an assessing stare over her, one fist cocked on his waist. “Yes, hm,” he murmured to himself, warming to his project. “I think I may be able to work with this.”
Eden cast Jack a worried glance.
He grinned, his blue eyes dancing. “Then I shall leave you to it.” He heaved up, pushing away from his desk.
“Where are you off to?” she asked.
“Got to get dressed. Work to do. Nothing too daring, Martin,” he ordered as he strode toward the sleeping cabin. “Try to be at least a little practical. I know the fashionable ladies deem it very smart to go around half-naked, but I don’t want Miss Farraday catching her death as we move north. She’s used to the tropics, remember.”
“No worries on that point, my lord,” he answered, frowning at their choices of fabric. “I fear we shall have little choice. We’ll do a walking dress in the sprigged muslin, I should think. A spencer in the blue broadcloth. A pelisse, perhaps, in the green merino wool.” Martin was talking more to himself than to Eden, and Jack had already left them, clearly having no interest whatsoever in such things. “Oh, but it’s all so dreadfully plain!” he fretted.
“It’s all right,” she hastened to assure him. “I’m not half bad with a needle myself. When I reach London, I can get some lace to sew along the bottom of the skirts, or trim the pelisse with ribbon or even gold frogging.”
“Well, not frogging, my dear. It’s all exploded this year.”
“Is it?” she asked in surprise.
“La, child! It’s a wonder you know anything of fashion where you’ve been. I imagine you mostly wear fig leaves!”
“Only in the latest styles,” she replied with a grin. “My cousin has been my salvation sending me the ladies’ magazines. I devour them, but with our camp being so remote, they’re always nearly a year out of date by the time they get to me.”
Martin said nothing, but with a sly look, reached under the lid of his sewing basket and pulled out a copy of La Belle Assemblée, which he placed in her hands.
“January?” she gasped, looking at it. Her jaw dropped and she gaped at him. “It’s practically new!”
She let out a small shriek of delight and hugged him without warning. He laughed and blushed a bit at her enthusiastic thanks, and Eden realized her spontaneous reaction had shocked the little man, but from that moment, she and Martin were fast friends.
They measured and draped, compared colors against her complexion in front of the mirror and discussed all the intricacies of achieving an elegance that must always, he assured her, appear effortless.
“I admit I’ve been looking forward to this ever since the captain mentioned it. Secretly,” Martin confessed, “I have always wanted to try my hand at designing for ladies.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Jack muttered as he came back out, clean-shaved and smartly dressed in a dark blue, single-breasted waistcoat buttoned down snugly over a fresh white shirt with loose sleeves, and nankeen breeches over shiny black boots. He adjusted the neat, square knot of his ebony neckcloth as he crossed to the center table to retrieve a few nautical maps.
Eden watched him pass, her eyes wide.
Good Lord, if she could barely resist him last night as a rough, sweaty, half-naked barbarian, how was she supposed to prevail when he looked like this, all fine and clean and elegant?
When he glanced at her a trifle self-consciously, she snapped her jaw shut, but privately, she was still agog.
The blue waistcoat turned his eyes to a deep sapphire shade, and his bronzed skin looked wonderful, his erstwhile scruffy jaw bare and fresh and touchable. The smooth shave had merely revealed the manly precision of his chiseled bone structure, the cleaner look transforming him from a pirate into a prince. Good God, he wasn’t just handsome, the man was magnificent.
Before he went out to take the helm of his ship, Jack sent her a very slight but gentlemanly bow, with a faint whiff of his nice cologne trailing in his wake.
Martin turned to her with a knowing glint of mischief in his eyes. “Oh, I see you’ve had an influence on somebody, my dear.”
She bit her lip and smiled at him, still dazed, as her cheeks turned pink.
Up on deck some time later, Jack received a report from Lieutenant Peabody that his clerk’s condition had worsened through the night.
Poor Peter Stockwell now had gone beyond the surgeon’s art. Mulling this over, he found himself drawn back to the day cabin, where Martin had Eden draped in pale green muslin with her arms held out to her sides.
“Now with that gorgeous red hair of yours, you’re going to have to be careful of the colors you choose for your wardrobe—”
“Jack!” Her lovely face lit up, more from her enthusiasm over the creation of her pretty new clothes rather than from seeing him, he was sure, but she immediately noticed his brooding expression and frowned at him in concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Sorry to interrupt. Miss Farraday—one of my men is very ill. It looks like yellow fever. The surgeon thinks he might not make it. I was wondering if there might be anything in your bag of jungle weeds—”
“I’m on my way.” She was already extricating herself from her muslin drapery, revealing her sea-princess costume once more.
She grabbed the haversack of her father’s botanical samples and strode toward Jack, leaving Martin startled, his needle poised in midstitch.
“This way,” Jack murmured, leading Eden to the main hatch, where wide stairs led down into the lower decks.
“How long has he been ill?”
“A few days.”
They marched down to the sickbay, fore on the middle gun deck, and Jack wrinkled his nose briefly at the strong scent of vinegar used to clean the place. He showed her over to the patient, who lay shivering in his berth in the grip of a fevered delirium.
The surgeon, Mr. Palliser, was standing beside Stockwell’s bed. When he saw Jack, he shook his head regretfully. It seemed the doctor had simply given up.
Jack and Eden went to Stockwell’s bedside, and he tensed as he read the suffering in his loyal clerk’s face. The pallid man streamed with sweat, shaking in his cot. Though barely conscious, he spotted Eden with a glazed stare.
She looked tenderly at him, compassion spilling from her emerald eyes as she took his hand like a very angel of mercy. “What’s his name?”
“Stockwell. Peter Stockwell.”
“Peter, how are you feeling?” she asked softly. “Can you hear me? I’m here to help you.” She picked up the damp washcloth nearby and blotted his face with it. “You’re going to be all right, do you hear? It’s just going to take a little time.”
Her gaze wandered to Stockwell’s arm, which, when she turned it wrist up, reve
aled the marks of having been recently bled.
Jack saw her expression harden slightly.
“Right, we’re not going to be bleeding him anymore,” she ordered in a startling tone of pure feminine steel.
“I beg your—my dear young lady!” the surgeon sputtered, then harrumphed. “Bleeding is the customary treatment in such cases,” he informed her with great condescension, not at all happy to be told by the stowaway how to do his job. He had been saving lives, after all, since before the girl was born. “The foul humors must be released—”
“Let’s try something else,” she said sharply, ready to fight for Stockwell’s life, it appeared.
“Captain?” Mr. Palliser turned to Jack with a long-suffering look.
Jack considered the matter. A man’s life hung in the balance. Palliser’s way had already failed, so Jack decided to trust her. After all, she was the great Dr. Farraday’s daughter. She had to know a thing or two about these tropical ailments. He nodded. “Do as she says.”
Palliser gasped at the order, but Eden sent Jack a passing glance of gratification as she took the satchel off her shoulder.
“I’ll need a mortar and pestle and a quart of boiling water,” she said to the surgeon’s mate. “Let’s try to get him to take some juice. He needs liquids. Is there any ice on board?”
“Not much,” Jack said.
“Bring me whatever you can spare. We’ve got to get his fever down. If nothing else will serve, we may have to lower him into the water.”
Jack’s curt nod sent the second mate scurrying to do her bidding, then Eden turned to him and shoved him gently toward the door. “Go. Stay away from here. Whatever it is, I don’t want you catching it.”
“I don’t get sick. What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me, I’m used to these things. Go.”
“Eden, I’m the captain. Every man on this ship is my responsibility—and every woman,” he added pointedly.
She gave him a private smile. “Very well. Make yourself useful, then, Captain. I’ll stay with Mr. Stockwell. Go and ask around among the crew to see if anyone else is showing the same symptoms. Send them here and that will help contain the danger.”