“Damn the bastards! Hit us from the stern, they did. Had to be the Trident, too, may her timbers rot in hell. A broadside. Most of the shot fell short—we were far enough ahead, thanks to Cap’n turning the ship to starboard—but a few did their damage, as you can see. I only wish that was the worst of it.”
At Cooky’s heavy sigh, Lindsay felt a chill course through her. “There… there are more wounded?”
The grizzled old sailor’s grim nod made Lindsay look around. She was astonished that she hadn’t seen the half-dozen men lying drugged and bandaged in nearby bunks.
“Thank you kindly for your help, miss. We’ll manage fine now. This is the last of them.”
Grateful to hear at least that bit of good news, Lindsay shuddered as the pounding through the ship continued unabated.
“They’re plugging up the holes left from the Trident’s cannon, miss. Walker told me you’d taken a blow to the head. A bit of laudanum—”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she murmured, although, in truth, she didn’t feel fine for the disquiet filling her. If there were so many wounded, had anyone been…? She wanted to ask Cooky, but she couldn’t bring herself to, the man already busy with bandaging his patient’s ravaged leg. And the other two sailors helping him looked so somber, matching the gloom that tinged the air, that Lindsay felt a sharper chill.
Cooky would have told her if anything had happened to Jared, wouldn’t he? she assured herself wildly. Swallowing hard, she left the crew’s quarters and its cloying stench of blood and sweat. The ship was rolling so heavily that she had to brace her hands against the bulkheads, suddenly remembering the squall that had come upon them just before the attack.
Lindsay felt her heart lurch as she remembered, too, Walker’s words when he’d burst in upon her—something about Jared sending him to get her out of the cabin. And that cabin lay in the stern… Jared must have known it was in the line of fire
“Miss Somerset, I wouldn’t go above deck if I were you.”
She turned to see two sailors who’d just come through an adjacent passageway, their faces blackened from gunpowder, huge mallets in their hands and other tools stuck in their belts. She realized then that the pounding had stilled, these men obviously the ones who’d been hard at work plugging the holes made by cannon fire.
“We’re not going to sink, are we?” she asked.
“No, the damage has been fixed, at least for now,” the sailor closer to her added quickly, reassuringly. “But not above, not yet. There’s rigging down and sails torn and a shattered top foremast to be cleared away—”
“I won’t get in the way, I promise.” She turned to go but stopped, surprised, when the man reached out and caught her arm.
“Miss, it’s not a pretty sight. They’re still cleaning up the mess—”
“Mess? If you mean the damage you mentioned from the attack—”
“Not that. We’ve four men didn’t make it, miss. I think Cap’n would want you to stay below, especially…”
The sailor fell silent, glancing uncomfortably at his companion, his face so grim that Lindsay felt her breath stop when the second man uttered a low curse. She looked from one to the other, her voice sunk to a hoarse whisper.
“Dag?”
They didn’t need to answer, their grave expressions telling her all she needed to know.
Tears blinding her eyes, she fled to the main companionway, not heeding what the sailor had told her, not caring. She could think only of Dag… and of Jared, his anguish at Dag’s side just yesterday leaping to her stricken mind. Her eyes were so clouded she stumbled upon the third step, made slick from rain and blood; suddenly she felt strong hands on her shoulders and she looked up, Jared’s gaze burning into hers as he made her climb back down with him into the hold.
He was drenched from head to toe, a wildness in his eyes that she’d never seen before, a fierce desperation that touched her very soul.
For a fleeting moment he stared at her, his gaze moving over her as if ensuring that she was safe, his trembling hand grazing the painful knot above her temple where she’d hit her head. Then he shoved her almost roughly away from him. Yet his shift from poignant gentleness to harsh treatment of her wasn’t half as jarring as the agony in his voice when he spoke.
“Don’t… don’t go up there.”
“I-I won’t,” she murmured, shaking her head even as she longed to reach out to him, to touch him, to console him. “I promise, Jared. I promise.”
He said no more, brushing past her and the two startled sailors, who backed up to let him by. Jared disappeared down the darkened passageway, disappeared just as surely as if his private anguish had swallowed him whole. A distant door opened and then slammed shut with such violence that Lindsay jumped.
She wanted to follow him, wanted to so desperately, but the horror of his suffering seemed too black, too deep. Her knees giving way, she sank to the floor and surrendered to the wrenching sobs she could hold back no longer.
***
A full day later, Jared still hadn’t emerged from Cowan’s cabin and Lindsay hadn’t gone above deck.
She hadn’t needed to, Walker telling her what she wanted to know.
Dag and the three other sailors had died instantly, a single cannon shot snuffing out their lives and leaving a gaping hole in the deck; their shattered bodies had been wrapped in sailcloth and buried early that windy, rainy morning at sea.
Serving as temporary captain of the Vengeance, Walker had also told her that Jared’s last order had been that they make urgent course to the northwest coast of Spain, since it was too dangerous, given the reward for their capture, to venture into the Channel. For that reason, even Roscoff, Brittany, where they usually docked, was denied to them. No British ships would dare proceed into the French port, but smuggling vessels from England abounded, some whose crews might have heard of the reward.
No, it was safer for them to head to northern Spain, which was still controlled by Napoleon’s army. There they would make needed repairs and decide what their next move would be.
He had said little else, except that they had managed to outrun both the Trident and the four other ships that had dogged them, thanks in part to the turbulent weather that had yet to abate. Walker had been as subdued as every other man aboard, all responding to the black pall that hung over the ship like a funeral shroud. He had left Lindsay to her own devices, which consisted of no more than counting the bleak hours and wondering when Jared might break his tortured exile.
Only when supper had long passed did she finally allow her mounting fear for him to overwhelm her. Cooky’s several tries to get him to open the door for a meal having failed, she decided to make an attempt herself.
After fetching a plate of salt pork and dry biscuits, the weather too rough to risk lighting a fire in the galley stove for a hot meal, Lindsay thought her hammering heart might burst from her breast when she knocked softly on Jared’s door.
She wasn’t surprised that no answer came, and no light from an oil lamp shone, either, Jared shut away in complete darkness. She almost faltered at the daunting image, but the memory of his trembling touch last night spurred her on.
She took a deep breath and entered, the stillness inside the cramped first mate’s cabin so great that she wondered for an instant if Jared might have left while she’d been in the galley.
“Jared?”
This time she held her breath, her fumbling hand finding a table by the door where she set the tray. An interminable moment later and still no sound, she tried again.
“Jared, I’ve brought you some food—”
“Leave me.”
She started, his voice so empty, so emotionless that her heart went out to him. No, she would not leave him! Slowly she closed the door behind her, the pitch darkness swallowing them both.
“Jared, if you would at least drink something, I’ve brought some water—”
“I’ve drink here enough… and I told you to go.”
She smel
led it then, not the sweetness of brandy, but the pungency of Scotch whiskey; she heard, too, the telling slur in his voice that warned her she might want to flee. But she thought he might care to know at least that Dag, and the other sailors who’d died, had been properly laid to rest.
“I will go, Jared, but—I wasn’t there myself, I haven’t been above deck—but Walker told me a prayer was said for Dag and the others—”
“A prayer? And who might be there to hear it? A God who could make a gentle man like Dag suffer wretchedly for three years, not counting the ones that came before, and then allow him to be blown to pieces? Did you know we found his severed head lodged beneath a cannon, his left leg hanging from the rigging?”
Jared’s voice was so icily bitter that Lindsay couldn’t help but shudder. Sickened by his words, she shook her head bleakly in the dark.
“As for the other three, there was scarcely anything left of them to throw to the sea. But better food for fish than worms. Perhaps it won’t be long before such useless words are said over me, and that’s one prayer I know God won’t hear.”
“No, don’t talk like that!” she blurted out, rushing blindly forward. She gasped when she bumped into his legs hanging over the narrow bunk, flailing her arms to find some hold to keep herself from falling, until a strong hand suddenly clamped around her wrist to steady her.
“My blasphemy troubles you, woman? You should have learned by now that I’m far closer to spending eternity in hell than in heaven—damn you, leave me, Lindsay! Go!”
She almost did when he abruptly released her, his angry words almost masking the tremor she heard in his voice, a hoarse tremor that made her heart ache for him anew. She didn’t think, only acted, reaching out to draw him near and cradle his head against her breast, his tense resistance melting almost at once.
“Oh, Jared, I’m so sorry about Dag, and the other men, too. So sorry.”
She heard an anguished curse as Jared’s arms went around her to hug her fiercely against him, his face buried in her shirt. Tears stung her eyes, but she would not allow herself to cry. All she wanted right now was to be strong for him and hold him and hope he might find some comfort, some solace, in her arms.
Just as she felt such warmth to have his arms around her. Lindsay closed her eyes when his hands tugged suddenly at her shirt and then slipped beneath the cambric to encircle her waist, his fingers splayed against her back.
His embrace became wild, desperate. She tunneled her fingers in his hair as he buried his face deeper against her breasts, her breath stopping when her shirt was lifted higher and his stubbly beard raked the tender flesh of her stomach. She nearly sank to her knees when she felt a warm wetness against her skin… Jared’s tears. Her love for him swelled so, she could not stay her trembling.
As his lips moved fervently from her stomach to the valley between her breasts, she lowered her head and kissed him, his hair smelling of gunpowder and the sea. And when she kissed the hard plane of his cheek, tasting the salt of his tears, she knew, no matter what happened after tonight, she would never, never leave him.
Their breathing coming faster, his hands pressing against her back to draw her even closer, Lindsay moaned raggedly when she felt him draw a nipple into his mouth, the wondrous agony unlike anything she had known. Her desire to surrender to him so searing, so intense, at that moment that she thought she might die from sheer longing, she bent her head and whispered against his hair.
“If you want me, Jared, I’ll stay. Please… please say you want me…”
Chapter 26
This time Lindsay couldn’t stop the tears from falling when Jared tensed, but he didn’t pull roughly away. Instead he pushed her slowly from the bunk until he held her at arm’s length, her throat tightening at how his hands were shaking.
“Leave me, Lindsay. Please. You deserve so much better.”
She wanted to scream, to shout it to the heavens that he was the only one she wanted, but when he dropped his hands and rose in the darkness to open the door, she knew she would not sway him. Not tonight.
Somehow she made herself leave him, but as the door closed behind her and she walked numbly down the passageway to her cabin, her hands fisted in her sodden shirt, her breasts flushed and aching from his touch, she swore that there would come a time when he would not push her away. Maybe he had forgotten, but she still remembered how to pray.
***
And she prayed for six days, but Jared didn’t leave Cowan’s cabin, although she took heart when, the morning after she’d gone to him, he began to accept meals from Cooky. The heavy pall over the Vengeance remained, not lifting even when they finally anchored off Cabo de Peñas, near the port city of Gijón, Spain.
The only thing that had changed was the weather, the storms that had plagued their crossing from Ireland giving way to an afternoon sky of intense blue, so clear that she could see rugged mountains to the south and the formidable Pyrenees to the west, and all from the porthole in her cabin. She still hadn’t gone above deck, honoring her promise. But her yearning to breathe fresh air was very close to overwhelming her when Cooky came to ask if she might like to accompany him to shore to buy fresh stores for the ship.
She jumped at the chance, not surprised he had thought of her. She’d done what she could to help him with the wounded sailors the past week, although another man had died. Lindsay was almost glad Jared remained in Cowan’s cabin for fear of seeing what a fifth death might do to him.
She knew he’d been told. Walker had gone to him, the American as grim-faced upon leaving as when he had entered.
That had just made Cooky shrug helplessly and shake his head, mumbling something about seeing Jared like this once before. She could only imagine he had meant after Elise’s death, but she hadn’t asked him, the old sailor succumbing to a gloomy silence that had captured the entire ship.
Yet he seemed of lighter spirit when they left the hold, his eyes squinted into slits against the sunlight—until he saw the shattered deck near the ship’s galleys that men were already hard at work repairing. His vehement curse blistered her ears, while she could no more than attempt to swallow down the terrible lump in her throat.
She tried not to think of what Jared had told her about Dag and the other poor victims, only too glad to leave the scene of such wretched destruction. Yet as six sailors rowed the galley toward shore, Cooky sitting grim and silent beside her, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the shattered topmast and sails shot through with holes as if poked by a giant’s stick.
“To think it was the Trident. There’s no damned justice, none at all.”
She glanced at the old sailor who was as accomplished with pots and pans as he was with a surgeon’s knife, his leathery face creased by a hundred intersecting lines. But none was so deep as the scowl around his pale eyes.
“I don’t understand.”
When Cooky didn’t answer, Lindsay saw somber glances pass between the other men, making her wonder all the more.
“Has the Vengeance run into that ship before?”
“In a way, miss, in a way,” came Cooky’s low reply. “We knew her to be far away in India these past three years, but it’s clear she’s finally come back to haunt us.”
“So it was India, then—where you ran into her, I mean—”
“India? I’ve never been to the place, though Cap’n lived there a long time ago. Left when he was a lad of seventeen, and that’s how old he was when I first met him. Beaten to within an inch of his life, those bastards. Just for trying to tell them who he was.”
As Cooky sighed heavily, Lindsay could only stare at him in confusion. Whatever was the man talking about? The three years made sense; it seemed everything had happened to Jared three years ago. Dag saving his life, she had thought in India. Jared returning to England. Elise dying. But the rest?
“You’d best stay close to us, miss, while we’re ashore,” Cooky said, interrupting her roiling thoughts. “We won’t venture far, just to the market, and
I doubt these folk will give us any trouble. They’ve probably little love for the French, but I’ve heard they don’t care much for the English, either. At least not this far north. And gold is gold, no matter who you are.”
As the galley bumped against a wharf, Jared’s men clambering out to secure the vessel with a thick twist of rope, Lindsay could see that her questions would remain unanswered, at least for now. And suddenly she felt a bit nervous. Gijón was a bustling port where tens of ships were anchored, although she was relieved to see that none flew the British flag. She saw French flags and the colors of a host of neutral countries; obviously trade was trade, just as Cooky had said, no matter the ongoing war.
Given a hand up onto the wharf, Lindsay felt more than a little self-conscious, too, about her male garb, wishing she wore a gown as curious Spaniards glanced her way. Not silk or satin, just a simple one would do; the breeches didn’t grate upon her so much as that she craved something feminine to wear. She blushed, wondering what Jared might think to see her…
“Cooky, do you think there’s a chance we might find a place that has women’s clothes? I don’t have any money—”
“But I do, plenty to go around. And Cap’n said to buy you something pretty first thing.”
Startled, Lindsay hurried to keep up with him, his pace quite sprightly for an aging sailor. “Jared said… truly?”
“Do you think I would have dared to bring you ashore if he didn’t know about it? He’d have my hide and then some, miss! I may be old, but I’m not blind. He’s never looked at any woman as he does you.”
Flushing to her toes, Lindsay could do nothing but catch up again, Cooky frowning and shaking his head as if he’d said too much, while she felt like she’d just been given the greatest gift in the world.
Man of My Dreams Boxed Set Page 52