Bound by the Heart (2 page)

"If we could paddle over to it, we could climb on
top and at least get up where we'd be a little drier. Help me, Michael. Kick as
hard as you can."

The thought of clambering onto something solid gave
them both strength, and within minutes Summer was steadying the raft while
Michael slithered and wriggled himself aboard. After much straining and
groaning, she, too, rolled like a wet fish into the center of the strapped
planking, too exhausted to do more than utter a brief prayer of thanks.

Michael pressed himself as close to her as was
possible.

"Don't cry, Summer. Father says there are
d-dozens of ships passing through these waters all the t-time. We just have to
w-watch for the right one and hail it."

"The right one?" she gasped.
"Any
ship I see will be the right
one, believe me."

"Do
...
do you suppose the
Caledonia . . .?"

Michael bit his lip again, and Summer finished the
question in her own mind. The
Caledonia
was easily three times the size of the
Sea Vixen.
Surely it could not have met
with the same fate?

The desolation closed in around them, and Summer
shivered.

How could they have been the only two to have
survived? The
Sea Vixen
had carried a crew of seventy-five and a passenger
complement of twenty-four. The British warship was manned by three hundred and
eighty . . . including Captain Bennett Winfield, the man she was supposed to
marry in six weeks' time.

The air was cool, and Summer shivered again as the
salt water began to dry and tighten her skin. Her blonde hair hung in a wet
mass to her waist, adding yet another chill to her spine. All that remained of
her clothing was a brief muslin smock and torn satin pantaloons. She had lost
both of her slippers and—her hand flew to her throat—the heavy gold locket and
chain that had belonged to her mother.

She lowered her head and closed her thick
honey-colored lashes over the tears that were brimming in her eyes. It was not
fair that this should happen now. Michael was not ready to die. She was not
ready to die, not when everything in her life was beginning to look so perfect!

She thought of Bennett Winfield and the tears came
hotter and faster. He was tall and blond as summer wheat, a bronzed sun god
beside the pale, vapid men of London. Father had known what he was doing when
he sent Bennett Winfield with the ultimatum. He had known the moment she laid
eyes on Captain Winfield she would be lost.

"I don't believe you have listened to a word I
have said."

He was there. So real she could have reached out and
touched him . . . touched the fine line of his jaw, the wide smooth brow, the
mouth that was so stern and yet so sensuously intriguing . . . She reached out
and her hand fell limply into the water.

"Of course I have been listening," she
replied pertly, allowing the tall, immaculately uniformed officer to lead her
deeper into the garden. They located an iron bench along the path, and he
gallantly laid down a linen handkerchief before she sat. She folded her hands
demurely on her lap, knowing that as he sat beside her and made a great show of
straightening his saber, he was also making an unhurried and far from casual
appraisal of her.

Her gown was the very latest style from Paris, cut low
enough across the bosom that a man's searching eye could swear to a faint hint
of pink where the firmness of each breast strained against the silk. Summer's
figure was displayed to perfection by the semi-transparent gown; her waist was
narrow, her hips gently rounded, her legs long and willowy with delicate, trim ankles
peeking out below the hem. The actual existence of three layers of clothing
separating her flesh from Captain Winfield's gaze did nothing to hamper his
imagination or his acute pleasure.

She decided he'd enjoyed enough of the view and opened
her fan, gracefully stirring the air against her throat.

"I have heard every word you said," she
repeated. "Father is demanding I come home. He is threatening to
discontinue my allowance if I refuse, to disinherit me, to disown me. . . .
Have I neglected to mention anything?"

Captain Winfield smiled at the flash of mischief in
the gray-green eyes. "Only that you would be breaking my heart, madam, if
you were to refuse."

He lifted a slender hand to his lips.

"Break your heart? Come now, Captain, you have
been in London only a fortnight. Do you mean to tell me you lose your heart so
easily?"

"Not easily, I assure you. But completely."

Summer was surprised and a little unsettled by the
tingle that rushed up her arm and flushed into her cheeks. She was, after all,
no stranger to flirtations, casual or otherwise. Her beauty, her wit, her charm
had won over most of the marriageable men in her circle of friends, and she had
already refused several offers. No one, least of all herself, could understand
why she would even entertain the thought of agreeing to a marriage of
convenience.

Not unless they had met Bennett Winfield. Or talked to
him. Or felt his magnetism across a crowded room, drawing her as if they were
the only two people present.

His lips were on her wrist, then the palm of her hand
as he uncurled and kissed each fingertip one by one.

"And I
...
I suppose he gave you instructions to kidnap me in the event all else
failed?"

"Would that he had, Miss Cambridge," he
murmured. "I can think of nothing that would give me greater pleasure than
being alone with you at sea for two months."

"Really? I should think you would soon grow bored
with my company. Why, only last evening you were seen to yawn in the
parlor."

"Last evening," Winfield's fingers brushed
at a stray tendril of blonde hair on her shoulder, "we were in the midst
of a roomful of old crones listening to a red-faced contralto trying to warble
her way through an aria."

Summer concealed her smile behind her fan. "Mrs.
Pithney-Whyatt is very talented."

"I'm sure she is," he agreed quietly.
"And I am very anxious to hear your decision."

"I
...
I hardly know you, sir," she stammered, lowering her lashes. "I am
very flattered, of course, but I have yet to see Father and speak with him. I
mean
...
a letter is so cold and
impersonal."

"Whereas you are anything but," he said and
leaned forward, pressing his lips to the vein fluttering at Summer's temple. He
traced the mist of curls down, down to her ear. Then beneath it. Then along her
throat to the soft, smooth curve of her shoulder.

Summer's fan had frozen midstroke. She closed her eyes
and reasoned that the night air must be cooler than she thought: She was
shivering to the tips of her toes.

"Captain Winfield—"

"Bennett," he murmured, his mouth playing
upward along the same lazy path.

"B-Bennett. . . you don't understand. . . ."

His breath was warm on her flesh. She could feel the
heat of it rippling through her body, touching off a sweet, heady weakness that
did not want stopping.

He raised his head, and his pale blue eyes were
gleaming. "I understand you and Sir Lionel are embroiled in a battle of
wits at the moment. He wants you home. You want"—he gestured carelessly at
the trees, the moon-washed pathway, the glittering lights blazing from the
party behind them—"this."

"Is there anything wrong with
this?"
she bristled.

"Certainly not. If there is nothing better."

Summer took a deep breath, and the motion of her fan
occupied her for a long moment. "There is nothing in Bridgetown except
heat and flies."

Bennett smiled. "There are also long tropical
nights, cool breezes and the scent of wildflowers fed by the surf. Who indeed
would prefer it over dampness and constant chills, endless plagues and the
smell of refuse clogging the streets?"

She glared at him. "There was a plague in
Bridgetown the year I left."

"There was an epidemic of measles in the slave
population," he corrected her gently. "Not the plague. No whites
died."

"Well
...
I have been to court three times! I have been to see the queen when she was in
residence at Hampton Court, and I regularly take tea with duchesses and
countesses. What on earth would I find to do in Barbados—sample molasses with
the overseer's wife?"

Bennett laughed and shook his head. He lowered his
mouth to hers without warning, and before she knew what he was about, she was
gathered tightly in an embrace that made her very much aware of the power and
strength in the solid wall of muscle that was his chest.

It was not the kiss of a love-struck gallant. It was
the kiss of a man, forceful and demanding, one who knew the games well enough
but who was contemptuous of all but his own rules. The hot, useless feeling
washed through Summer again, and she knew she could not fight it. She shuddered
and leaned into him, abandoning propriety to run her hands up around his broad
shoulders and to cling to him as the thrills engulfed her whole body. She
gasped under the assault of his lips and then again as he stroked the curve of
her throat with an impatient hand. The sensation teased her flesh unbearably,
and she felt the tremors racing through her arms as she strove to hold him
closer, to feel more of this shocking pleasure.

The kiss ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Captain Winfield held her at arm's length; only his
eyes continued to devour her.

"Wh-why did you stop?" she gasped
uncertainly.

"I stopped, Miss Cambridge," he murmured,
"because I am still able to. And because I would sooner cut off my arm as
be the cause of bringing a hint of a scandal down around you." He paused,
and Summer shivered at the blatant message in his eyes. "And what a
scandal there would be, my love, if we were to do half the things my body aches
to."

Summer blushed painfully. "You should not speak
to me in this way."

"No," he agreed, "I shouldn't. You are
correct in saying you have doubts. In your position, I would probably want to
know a great deal more about a man I am betrothed to than a mere two weeks
could provide."

"That is not why I hesitate," Summer
whispered. "I feel I have come to know you better in two weeks than some
men I have known for two years."

"And have you also kissed them as passionately as
you have kissed me?"

"Oh, no!" she cried and saw the trace of
humor in his eyes. "No, I had no idea a kiss could be something so . . .
so . . ."

"It was just a kiss," he said quietly.
"And a kiss is just the prelude to something far more rewarding. I want to
be the one to share your discovery of it, Summer. I want the air filled with
the scent of jessamine and hibiscus, and I want the island breezes to cool our
bodies from the heat. You will never regret it, Summer. Never."

Never.

Summer's head stirred from the crook of her elbow
where it had fallen. Michael was curled tightly against her, lulled into a
fitful sleep by the rocking of the planks on the water. For a moment her eyes
refused to open. She knew what she would see: gray water, gray sky, gray
nothingness. Bennett Winfield was gone. He had been a mirage, nothing more.

She opened her tear-filled eyes and terror scalded her
throat. Michael felt her stiffen, and he sat up, rubbing his swollen eyes with
his fists to clear away the crust of salt.

"Wh-what is it, Summer? Did you hear something?"

"No," she said quickly. "No, darling, I
didn't. It just surprised me, that's all. I mean . . . the darkness.
..."

It was pitch black all around them. There was no moon,
no stars, nothing to interrupt the void, no way to distinguish between water
and raft and body. They could be floating in a foot of water within arm's reach
of shore, and she would not know it.

Michael moved closer, and she wrapped her arms around
him, sharing what little warmth there was between them.

"Do you think this raft will keep holding
us?"