Taming Charlotte

by Linda Lael Miller

  She felt an oddly sweet sadness fold over her spirit as she linked her arm with his. “And after Spain, where will we go?”

  He turned his head, looked down at her with those wondrous eyes. “Where would you like to go, Charlotte?”

  She let her cheek rest against his muscular upper arm for a few moments, reflecting on the question. Charlotte had often marveled at her stepmother’s devotion to Brigham Quade; now she was beginning to understand how deeply a strong woman could care for an equally forceful man. Such love was an elemental thing, beyond blithe definitions and even poetry; to grasp it fully might take every moment of a lifetime. Or an eternity.

  Finally, softly, she echoed, “Where would I like to go?” Charlotte paused again, drinking in the slumbering sea, the multitude of silver stars. “Wherever the wind takes me.” Bold as she was, she couldn’t quite make herself reveal the full truth and say, Wherever you are, Patrick. That’s where I want to be.

  He might laugh at her for thinking their marriage was anything more than a game to him.

  Patrick gazed down at Charlotte in silence for a long time, his eyes reflecting the starlight and the deep, primal secrets of the ocean itself. “I have business in Spain,” he said at long last, his voice gruff. “After I’ve finished with that, we’ll sail for the island—we’ll have cargo to deliver there. Then, after the Enchantress has been made ready again, we’ll set out for Seattle.”

  Charlotte gripped the ship’s rail tightly. She wanted most desperately to be reunited with her family, but she feared that Patrick meant to leave her in Washington Territory, to sail on without her.

  She grasped what she hoped was a safe topic. “The island?”

  Patrick’s teeth flashed in a spontaneous grin. “I believe I’ve mentioned the place once or twice—it’s in the South Pacific. I raise sugar cane there, but mostly Hidden Island is a place to think and restore myself.”

  Charlotte was enchanted and, momentarily at least, distracted from her worries. “Hidden Island,” she repeated dreamily, imagining palm trees and blue lagoons and gloriously colored orchids growing wild. “What a mysterious name.”

  Above them, the masts creaked in a light breeze, and sailors called to one another from fore and aft. Patrick was silent, and Charlotte was homesick for a place she’d never seen.

  They stood on the deck awhile longer, then went below to Patrick’s quarters, where a large tub brimming with steaming water was waiting.

  Charlotte was delighted. “A bath!”

  Patrick gave her a sidelong look as he closed and latched the door. “Yes, Mrs. Trevarren. And it’s mine, so don’t get any ideas about taking it over.”

  She put out her lower lip and sat down on the end of the bed, her arms folded. “You aren’t being very gentlemanly, I must say.”

  Her husband hauled his shirt off over his head, revealing a well-sculpted chest and back. “I’ve made no claims to good manners,” he said. “I like my comforts and pleasures, and I’ve been pretty straightforward about that.”

  Charlotte blushed and averted her eyes for a moment. When she looked back—she tried to resist and failed miserably—she saw that Patrick had kicked aside his boots and was in the process of removing his breeches.

  “Ministers preach sermons about men like you,” she observed. “They say you’re nothing but tools of the devil.”

  Patrick stepped into the large, ornate copper tub, sighed hedonistically, and lowered himself into the water. “So you listened in church, did you?” he asked, settling back and cupping his hands behind his head. “That’s amazing. You strike me as the sort to wool-gather from the first note of the opening hymn to the last word of the benediction.”

  Charlotte coveted the feel of warm water against the skin, and she was vaguely insulted as well. “I’m not the scatterbrain you seem to think I am, Mr. Trevarren,” she said, somewhat tersely, while fighting a quite contrary urge to strip off her clothes and join her husband in his bath. “Furthermore, I was attentive in church. My stepmother, Lydia, was very strict about our spiritual development. She says people need fellowship and ritual to be healthy in their minds.”

  He reached for a bar of soap and the washcloth one of the sailors had laid out, along with several towels. “Are you a believer?” he asked offhandedly, as though it were normal to have such a discussion stark naked, in a lantern-lit ship’s cabin dominated by a rumpled bed.

  “Yes,” Charlotte answered, “though I must admit I share my father’s doubts about organized religion. Too many people are looking for an excuse to let someone else do their thinking for them—like their pastor, for instance. Or the deacon.”

  Patrick lathered the washcloth, looking thoughtful. “Not everyone is a leader, Charlotte. Plenty of people need somebody to look up to and follow, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Would you mind washing my back, please?”

  The change of subject was so quick and so unexpected that Charlotte’s tongue tangled around the words she’d planned to say.

  “No,” she finally managed.

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  Charlotte took a few moments to cast about for an answer. “Because I’m annoyed with you, that’s why not. First, someone dumps me out of a sack at your feet like a litter of unwanted kittens, and you immediately start ordering me about. Then you leave me in a harem, for pity’s sake, and after that, you offer me a choice between marriage and a beating. Now you don’t even have the common decency to let me take the first bath!”

  Methodically Patrick soaped his chest, making the dark hair lie against his skin in swirling patterns, like frost on a window. “You’re welcome to join me,” he informed her, after lengthy consideration.

  He was so arrogant, Charlotte thought furiously. Not only had Patrick dismissed her list of complaints concerning his behavior without so much as a shrug—now he seemed to think she should be honored to share his bathwater!

  “Thank you so much,” she said, with acid sweetness. “You are extremely generous, sir.”

  Patrick laughed and sprang up out of that copper bathtub as suddenly and sleekly as a dolphin breaking the surface of the sea. He gripped Charlotte’s arm, while she was still stunned, and dragged her, robe, slippers, and all, into the water.

  The gossamer fabric of her gown turned transparent and clung to her every curve. She struggled wildly, and the floor of the cabin was awash, but Patrick held her easily, her back to his chest.

  “You wanted a bath, Charlotte,” he reasoned, his lips close to her ear. “Now you’re going to get one.”

  She kicked and twisted. “Let me go this instant!”

  Patrick sighed but did not slacken his hold. “There is just no pleasing you,” he said, with philosophical resignation. “We’re going to have to do something about your contrary and, yes, downright shrewish temperament, Mrs. Trevarren.”

  Charlotte calmed herself, but it took a series of several deep breaths and a mental count to twenty-seven. Her hair had come down from its pins and was plastered to her shoulders and breasts in sodden strands, and the robe, the only garment she possessed, was almost certainly ruined. “This is reprehensible behavior, Patrick. Release me at once.”

  Instead, he turned her to face him and brazenly admired her breasts, which were entirely revealed by the filmy fabric. “Certainly, my dear—anything you say. You have only to wash my back, as a good wife could surely be expected to, and then you may do whatever you wish.”

  Once again, Charlotte began to count, making no sound but shaping the numbers with her lips.

  Patrick laughed. “By God, you must be the stubbornest woman ever created. It will be a challenge to tame you.”

  Charlotte knew her eyes were shooting fire. If she’d dared, she would have spit in Patrick’s face, but even she wasn’t quite that courageous. “You will see angels dance the minuet in hell first,” she hissed.

  He brought her dose to him, raised her a little way out of the water, and scraped one fully visible nipple lightly with his tee
th. “No, Charlotte,” he argued, after subjecting her to sweet torment for several moments. “But I will see you dance beneath me, in my bed, this very night. Your own cries of pleasure will be the music.”

  She trembled, awed by the power this man held over her, outraged by it, as helpless against it as she would have been against an earthquake or a hurricane. “Patrick—” she gasped, loving him and hating him, both at once.

  Gently he peeled away Charlotte’s wet robes and tossed them aside. Her slippers had come off during the battle, and while one was submerged, the other floated. These, too, were retrieved and discarded.

  Patrick positioned Charlotte astraddle of his hips, and soon water splashed rhythmically over the sides of the tub as she rode him.

  Charlotte was sleeping like a rock beside Patrick, and he willed her not to awaken when the alarm bell up on the main deck began to clang steadily. He reached for his clothes, found that they were soaked with the overflow from the bathtub, and cursed as he splashed to the chest for fresh breeches and a clean shirt.

  “Patrick?” Charlotte muttered as he dressed. “Are we sinking?”

  “No, goddess,” he answered. “Go back to sleep.”

  She sighed. “All right,” she replied, with unusual compliance, and Patrick felt a strange twisting sensation somewhere deep in his chest. It was purely remarkable, he thought, as he took his pistol from a desk drawer, how a little amber-eyed minx like Charlotte could complicate an otherwise orderly life.

  Quickly, more by instinct than by sight, Patrick loaded the gun’s chamber and then strode across the dark cabin and out. No more than a few minutes had passed when he reached the wheelhouse.

  “What is it?” he demanded of Cochran, who was on night watch.

  “There’s a ship approaching, sir—off the starboard side. She’s moving fast, and I don’t think she’s just passing close by for a friendly hello.”

  The night was silvered with the light of the stars and moon, and Patrick snatched the spyglass from Cochran’s hand and raised it to one eye.

  Sure enough, another vessel was coursing toward them. Patrick couldn’t make out her colors or emblem. “Tell that idiot to stop ringing that bell before I stuff his head into it and strike every note in the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’“ he muttered, still studying the intruder.

  “Yes, sir,” Cochran responded, and immediately carried out the order.

  Patrick’s well-developed instincts told him the visitors weren’t friendly. Under different circumstances, he would have relished the challenge of a good fight, but Charlotte was belowdecks, warm and well loved in his bed, and that put a very different light on the situation. He had taken on a weakness as well as a wife, he reflected, and he’d never felt more vulnerable.

  He saw the flash of cannon fire, and his experienced crew rushed to their battle stations. The Enchantress fired on her attacker, and the salty air was suddenly pungent with the smells of gunpowder and smoke.

  A ball struck the ship’s hull and she quivered under the impact, but her timbers, heavy oak from the oldest forests in New England, held firm. Patrick felt her strength through the soles of his feet, for the clipper was as much a part of him as his stomach or his soul. She had breath and a heartbeat of her own.

  The cannon on both vessels fell silent, but only because the intruder had drawn up alongside. As pirates poured over the rails from the other craft, Patrick concentrated on defending his ladies—Charlotte, the wife he had not intended to wed, and his beloved and faithful mistress, the Enchantress herself.

  8

  THE SOUNDS OF A RAGING BATTLE WERE UNMISTAKABLE, EVEN to Charlotte’s relatively naive sensibilities. She bolted out of bed, trembling, and scanned the small chamber for something to wear. Her robe, the only garment she possessed, was sodden, and there was nothing to do but commandeer some of Patrick’s clothes.

  She found gray kidskin breeches in the trunk at the foot of his bed, along with a very dashing linen shirt. The breeches were too loose in the waist and too snug through the hips, but Charlotte wasted no time worrying about the way they fit. She might be called upon to defend herself at any moment.

  After more searching, she finally found a mean-looking dagger among Patrick’s belongings. Uncertain that she would be able to wield the blade against another human being, Charlotte nonetheless carried it with her when she left the cabin.

  The din of warfare was deafening by the time she sneaked cautiously onto the main deck, and smoke curled everywhere, like a blue-gray fog, making it difficult to breathe. All around her, male bodies clashed in hand-to-hand combat.

  Charlotte gripped the handle of the dagger in slippery palms and crouched behind a large crate to assess the situation. There was another ship bobbing alongside the Enchantress, and it required no particular genius to work out that the attackers were pirates.

  Closing her eyes briefly, Charlotte swallowed and, once again, silently cursed herself for ever wishing to find adventure.

  A hard, familiar body tumbled backwards against the crate. Patrick bent his knees and kicked the pirate hard in the chest, sending the other man sprawling.

  “What the hell are you doing up here?” Patrick yelled, without even looking at Charlotte. “Find a place to hide and stay there until I tell you otherwise!”

  With that, he sprang back into the fierce battle, and Charlotte did not pause to wonder how he’d known she was crouched behind that crate. She looked around carefully, then made a dash for the doorway leading to the lower deck.

  She had barely gained the top step when she felt ironlike arms clamp around her from behind. A jolt of pure terror shot through her system, petrifying her for a moment, but then some deeper, more primitive part of her mind took over. She fought like a tigress, wildly thrusting the dagger behind her, against her assailant’s torso.

  A bellow of furious pain presaged her release; Charlotte did not pause to look back, but scrambled down the short flight of stairs and hurtled along the companionway. She was pulling open the door to the storeroom, where she intended to hide until she was either rescued or murdered, when a hairy hand reached past her head to slam it shut again.

  She whirled, her back to the hard oak panel, and found herself face-to-face with a leering pirate. The smell of him, coupled with the terrible fear she felt, made bile surge into the back of her throat. He clutched one bloody thigh, his fingers stained crimson, and glared at her.

  “Cut into my hide like a joint of venison, will you?” he rasped, revealing himself to be an Englishman of very low social standing. He knotted his other fist in her hair, slammed the back of her head hard against the doorjamb. “You’ll have to pay for that, little lady, and the price will be a dear one!”

  Charlotte moved to knee him, but he saw the attack coming and shifted sideways to avoid it. She was left with no choice but to use the knife again, and she did, pretending the pirate was a roast chicken and aiming for the breastbone.

  The blade bounced off, but not before it sliced the man’s filthy shirt and the flesh beneath. He gave another shout of animal fury and sprang at her again, but at that instant, God be thanked, he was wrenched away.

  Patrick sent him headlong into the wall, and the misguided wretch folded to the floor, unconscious.

  “Damn it all to hell, Charlotte,” Patrick blazed, bending to get the pirate by the back of the collar and drag him toward the steps, “I don’t have time to play nursemaid to a puddingheaded woman! Do as I told you!”

  “I was trying!” Charlotte couldn’t help pointing out, before she ducked into the storeroom and bolted the door behind her.

  The place was dark and the air was hot and close. She stood still for a long while, struggling to calm her nerves, and when her eyes had adjusted to the near-total absence of light, she crawled behind a tall crate.

  Muffled shouts and gunshots seeped through the deck over her head, and Charlotte started to tremble, now that she had time to review her situation. When she heard a body thud hard against the storeroom
door, her heart leaped into a beat so fast that it left her with no strength to breathe. She lifted the lid on one of the barrels and climbed inside, sneezing as a cloud of flour rose around her.

  Squatting down, she tried to be grateful that the cask was only partially full and at the same time prayed her hiding place wasn’t marked by a circle of white.

  The interval to come was like something out of Dante’s Inferno—more than once, the storeroom door literally rattled on its hinges as it was struck from outside. The battle, confined to the upper deck before, was now being waged in the lower confines of the ship as well.

  Charlotte’s bravado was all gone. The dagger’s handle was literally glued to her hand, since she was perspiring, and clumps of paste formed on her cheeks when she finally gave way to tears. If the pirate siege was successful, the results would be too horrible to contemplate.

  She waited, too frightened even to pray.

  At least an hour had passed, by her fevered reckoning, when she heard a thunderous knock.

  “Charlotte!” The voice was Patrick’s. “Open the door!”

  Relief swept through Charlotte—he was still alive!—followed by the purest rage. He had sounded impatient, as though he would rather be doing almost anything besides looking for his wife.

  “How do I know you’re not being coerced? This might be a trick—a pirate could be holding a knife to your throat!”

  “You’ve been reading too many silly books,” the captain responded irritably.

  She climbed out of the flour barrel, went to the door. She stood with her ear pressed to the panel, listening. Then, driven by her longing for light and safety, Charlotte took a chance and lifted the latch.

  Patrick stood alone in the companionway, glaring at her. His dark hair was rumpled, his face was bruised, and his shirt was torn, but there was no visible blood anywhere on his person.