A Pirate's Wife for Me (5 page)

Cate rushed to turn the key in the lock. "Yes. Let us all remember that." She tried to concentrate on that. But her heart ached too much for such wisdom. Leaning her hot cheek against the rough wood, she said, "I only wish I could forget why Taran once meant so much to me."

The Isle of Mull, Scotland, 1831

Clutching her best glass marble, thirteen-year-old Caitlin knelt on the hard-packed dirt and lowered her cheek until it rested on the ground. She sighted along a straight line, right at Graeme MacQuarrie's blue-swirled marble, and with an expert flick of her fingers sent his spinning out of the circle. The lads gathered around gave a groan. Graeme fell backward, clutching his head in pitiful despair. Sitting up, Caitlin flung out her arms, and gave a shout. "Ha! I told you I would beat you, Graeme. I told you. Now give me that marble!"

Her brother's warm, laughing voice intruded on the moment. "Such overweening conceit isn't pretty in a girl."

She twisted around to see Kiernan, standing by the edge of the stable, with a slight youth slouching beside him, eyes on the ground, lips sulky. "The lads would behave the same toward me."

"So they would." Kiernan moved forward, the youth straggling after him. "The more fools, they." He nodded at the boys, then with his hand on the strange youth's shoulder, he said, "I'd like you all to welcome Taran Tamson to Castle MacLean. He's come here to complete his education and learn how to be a warrior. Taran, this is our neighbor, Graeme MacQuarrie, his cousin, Will, our own cousin, Jimmy MacGillivray, the Buchanan twins, Morgan and Gunn, and Douglas Ross, another lad like yourself I'm pleased to foster." The boys stood up as he introduced them, nodded their heads, and scrutinized the young man.

Taran stared back, examining them with a cool interest that seemed at odds with his shoddy demeanor. He was shorter than her, and so thin his chest was almost concave. His shirtsleeves were too short for his arms and his ankles shone beneath the hems of his trousers. Kiernan always said the way to judge how a lad would grow was to measure the size of his hands. Well, Kiernan topped six-foot-two, and Taran's hands were as huge and raw-boned as Kiernan's own.

Kiernan smiled down at her. "And, Taran, this unpleasantly victorious girl with the dirt on her cheek is my sister, Caitlin."

Taran scarcely flicked her a glance. "I'm pleased to meet all of you, and I look forward to furthering our acquaintance."

Caitlin tilted her head and studied him. He spoke with a slight accent, one that wasn't quite Scottish and certainly not English. "You sound funny," she said.

For the first time, he looked down at her.

She almost fell backward from the shock. His broad, bony face was austere, unsmiling. His nose was thin and too long. His black hair was shorn, and his ears stuck out. But his bleak gray eyes were rimmed with the most beautiful fringe of black lashes, and the rage there burned red and hot and passionate.

A kindred spirit. She recognized him.

But he didn't seem to recognize her. Without interest, he replied, "I'm from south of here."

Rising to her feet, she scrubbed at the dirt on her cheek. She had already gained her full height, and her figure had a way of making men stare.

Taran looked without interest at the dust on her skirt, then turned to Kiernan. "I thought you said your sister was thirteen."

"She is."

"She's horribly tall for thirteen."

Caitlin wanted to wilt into the ground.

But Kiernan wrapped his arm around her shoulders and clucked her under the chin. "Aye, she's a long-legged beauty with a mind that will outwit you if you don't study hard, Taran Tamson. Best take the warning and make the best of yourself."

"I will." Taran spoke the words like a vow. "I'm here to learn to fight."

Kiernan's face grew grave. "Not merely to fight. To speak Latin, French and Italian, to study mathematics, history, music and dance. I have a grave responsibility toward you, Taran. And you, too, Douglas."

Douglas nodded, but Taran said fervently, "I'll learn everything you can teach me, sir."

"Good." Kiernan leaned down to Caitlin and whispered, "You, minx, you are to treat Taran as your own brother. He's far from home, his father very recently passed on, and he misses his home and the rest of his family."

Then Taran and Kiernan walked on, and the lads followed as if mesmerized by the new boy.

Caitlin stood rooted in place. Always before, male attention had annoyed her. She preferred to run, to shout, to fight like a man. Nothing, she declared could make her simper around with a parasol and flutter her eyelashes at the stupid lads when she'd as soon trounce them in a horserace.

Now, in an instant, everything had changed. She wanted Taran to see her, to notice the way her breasts filled out her bodice and her waist curved in. She wanted to sit at his feet and stare into his smoky gray eyes surrounded by such lovely, long, dark eyelashes.

She put her hand over her fluttering heart.

She wanted him to take her in his arms and declare his undying devotion. She didn't know why or how, but there could be no doubt.

She was in love with Taran Tamson.

CHAPTER SIX

Clutching his gory, shattered arm,
Taran staggered down the corridor toward the stairway. Below him, in the taproom, the revelry continued unabated. The merriment and the music, the laughing shrieks from visiting ladies of the night.

Blood slid down to his elbow and onto the floor, but the bullet had gone right through the muscle. If a man had to be shot, this was the wound he wanted.

Taran had been shot before in battle, and suffered while a clumsy quack surgeon had dug the bullet out. Unfortunately, familiarity did not make the experience any easier to bear.

Damn it.
Damn it.
He had to jettison Cate. Since seeing her in the taproom, getting rid of her had been his only desire.

Well, not his
only
desire. But the other wasn't a desire, really. More of an instinct, a sense, a need …

He started to descend the stairway, then paused to lean against the railing and breathe … deeply. His head was swimming…

In 1831, King Edward Antonio Dashiell Kane of Cenorina died, his mother was struggling to maintain control of the country, and on her insistence, fourteen-year-old crown prince Antonio Raul Edward Kane was given an alias, smuggled out of the warm, sunny islands and sent into bleak and lonely exile in Scotland.

Taran Tamson was that alias. Taran was that crown prince.

At the time Taran left Cenorina he was still a scrawny youth who, except for the characteristic Kane family jaw, looked like no one else in the Kane family. His mother claimed he looked like her father, but the comte of Gramont had been dead for thirty years, and no one else remembered him.

During his first year in Scotland, Taran's voice deepened, he shot up seven inches in five months, and his feet grew so quickly the boot-maker was tearing his hair.

Now, twelve years later, Taran disguised his jaw with a short black beard. He had continued to mature until he stood six foot four in his stocking feet and outstripped everyone in his family — except for, perhaps, the comte of Gramont — in height and breadth.

Women in ports as far away as Istanbul and Bombay had avowed they would never forget his pale gray eyes, but he'd seduced not a single lady since returning to England. No one recognized him here. He took care to keep it that way.

Now Cate MacLean had arrived, and like a cat in the chicken house, she'd set loose chaos.

What kind of man was he? He had a mission. For years, he had dreamed of, imagined, sought to right the wrong done to him, his family and to Cenorina. Now, at last, he had his chance … and he had allowed himself to be distracted by a female.

The trouble was, Cate was no mere female. When he had lived on the Isle of Mull, she was the woman who had haunted his dreams. Then, for the first five years on the pirate ship, he'd scarcely thought of her and never dreamed of her. Hell, he never got enough sleep to dream at all. There'd been no women; in the hierarchy of the ship, he was on the bottom rung with no power to claim a captive for his own nor even any money to buy a dockside whore.

When he'd become captain … how well he remembered the girl his crew had brought him. Blowfish and the others had chipped in to get him the fanciest piece of English ass in Singapore. A thank you, they said, for ridding them of the blackguard who had commanded them for so long. Taran had gazed on the girl's lush curves, golden hair and pale skin, and for one moment he'd been transported back to Scotland and to Cate's arms.

He didn't know why. That female bore not even the slightest resemblance to Cate. But he'd seen what he wanted to see and he'd found a passing pleasure in her arms.

After that, he had picked his own fancy pieces, and they'd always looked like Cate. Every woman he had kissed had Cate's delicately-boned face. Every body he caressed was tall and sleek. He could not claim the real Cate, not while keeping faith with the mission to recover Cenorina, and the world had been bleak and colorless.

Tonight, it was as if a rainbow had exploded in his mind.

He looked down at his arm.

But no. A rainbow had exploded in his flesh. Red for the blood, blue and yellow for the bruising. Blowfish would have to care for him now. He only hoped he didn't make the mistake of falling down the stairs in a faint. His men would never let him live it down.

Leaning his weight against the railing, he descended into the taproom.

His men were drunk, every man Jack of them.

Quicksilver held a doxy on his lap.

Dead Bob was leading a lady of the evening toward the kitchen.

Lilbit was intent on proving to a whore his nickname involved his age and not his physique.

But Blowfish … where was Blowfish?

Taran spotted a fully dressed female who appeared to be in the throes of ecstasy. Moving closer, he observed the soles of a pair of shoes sticking out from under her lumpy skirt. A man's pair of shoes, wiggling enthusiastically.

He'd found Blowfish. He aimed a kick at the largest lump. When he connected, he heard a yelp from beneath her skirts.

Blowfish emerged, fists up, eyes belligerent, until he saw Taran. "Cap'n?" His gaze fell on the burned and bloodstained shirt, and Taran saw sobriety strike him.

For that reason, Blowfish was his first mate. This man, sun-spotted, middle-aged and reaching no taller than Taran's chest, could be depended upon in a crisis.

"What happened, Cap'n?" Blowfish demanded with a great measure of hostility.

"I faced off with the wrong enemy." Taran indicated the back room. "Fix me up?"

Blowfish got to his feet.

The prostitute gave a shriek of dismay.

Taran asked, "Did you let her down, man?"

Blowfish snorted. "She's got nothing to complain about."

They entered the room they'd turned into the men's barracks, and Blowfish pulled his medicine bag out from under his bunk. "Ye might want to lie down," Blowfish suggested. "Ye're looking peaked."

Torn between tumbling onto the mattress and the pain that doing so would cause, Taran lowered himself inch by laborious inch. The gunshot wound burned like fire, each movement jolted his entire body, and when he finally reclined full length on the mattress, he closed his eyes and fought to control his churning stomach.

Blowfish leaned over him. With his knife, he cut away Taran's shirt, baring the wound. In a low, intense voice, he said, "Tell me who did this, Cap'n, and I'll kill the bastard."

Reluctantly, Taran looked up at his first mate. The temptation to lie was strong, but the truth would out and the razzing would never cease. "Remember that woman who came into the taproom?"

"The tall one with the shock of angry red hair? That lass?" Blowfish cackled. "That
girl?"

The ridicule had started already. "I didn't think she'd really shoot me."

"How did she surprise a man such as yerself — an important man, a Cap'n — with a gun?"

Taran didn't know if the pain was worse from his shoulder or from his humiliation. "She didn't surprise me exactly."
Like a whale blowing at the surface, Blowfish breathed loudly through his nose. "What, exactly, did she do?"

"When last I saw her, nine years ago, she was wild, but sweet. Now she's a termagant."

"Ye knew her before tonight?" While Taran winced, Blowfish cleaned the entry wound and pressed a clean pad over it. "Why didn't ye say something in the taproom?"

"It's not that simple, Blowfish." Tonight when he'd first seen Cate, he had planned to go to her. Introduce himself. See if the mere sight of him would discourage her from pursuing this madness.

It hadn't. She'd been highly perturbed, as she had the right to be, but she hadn't seemed unduly discouraged.

Then he'd planned to invoke the use of good sense, logic, and family loyalty to convince Cate to leave. He thought he'd done a reputable job of that.