Brazen Temptress (2 page)

Her eyes held him in a wary trance.

She couldn't be related to that Hawthorne, he tried to tell himself, but her eyes, the color haunted him.

Years slipped away, and he was once again in a courtroom looking into a pair of eyes that blamed him, cursed him. And now they beheld him once again.

No, he told himself. This lass couldn't know what he'd done. He washed the thought away. It was an idea worse than a life without rum.

But the girl still studied him as if she sensed his fears. "Or this one as well," she finally said, her gaze never leaving his. "He looks like the only course he's going to chart is to the nearest gin shop. He'll need a drink before he'll find de Ryes — that is, if he can still sail a straight line."

She was right. Will didn't need a drink, he needed an entire bottle. And he hadn't charted a straight line in nearly fifteen years.

Cottwell glared at the guards, who finally got back to the task at hand and prodded their prisoners forward.

But Maureen Hawthorne was not done. "You'll not find de Ryes, milord. Not without someone who's seen his face. Someone like me." She grinned and followed the guards out of the courtroom, whistling a particularly bawdy Irish ballad.

The Lord Admiral's arm swung up, halting the procession. "What do you know of de Ryes?"

She glanced over her shoulder, her mouth turned up. "Enough to catch him. Enough to know what he looks like."

The entire courtroom stilled, as if this woman had just offered them a long-lost Spanish treasure trove of gold.

"And how would that be?" the Lord Admiral asked.

It was her turn to rise up to her full height. "I used to be his wife."

A nondescript black carriage lurched and rolled out from the gates of the Admiralty court behind the elegantly trimmed carriage of the Lord Admiral. Inside the rough conveyance rode Captain Maureen Hawthorne, still shackled but closer to freedom.

The deal she'd wrangled and argued out of the Lord Admiral would have made a fishwife proud. Then again, she hadn't been a smuggler most of her life, raised with bounders, pirates, and thieves, not to know how to get the best of a bargain.

But this, this was like finding an unguarded Portuguese merchantman loaded with New World bounty. She'd gained her freedom and that of her crew — at least for now.

And all she had to do was see that her husband finally received the hanging he so rightly deserved.

She crossed her arms over her chest, the irons on her wrists clattering almost as loudly as the creaks and groans of the old musty carriage as it bounced over the poor London streets.

While she had no love for the Royal Navy and their high-handed ways — her arrest, imprisonment, and sham of a trial still ringing in her ears — she'd own up to this much: She and the Lord Admiral, for all their obvious disparities, had one thing in common — both of them wanted nothing more in life than to see that buggering pirate de Ryes swing from a hangman's rope.

So she had to make a few concessions in her usually unrelenting bargaining style.

Concessions she'd live with just fine once she and her crew and her ship were back out on the high seas where they belonged.

Smiling to herself, she closed her eyes and enjoyed a delicious daydream of watching de Ryes kick and swing as his last breath rattled from his throat.

She hoped he turned down the offer of a hood. She truly wanted her gleeful face to be the last thing he saw in this life.

Only too soon the carriage came to a halt, and Maureen found herself being hauled down from her rolling prison to stand in front of a typical London house in a generally clean and modest neighborhood.

Used to the fresh sea air and the constant motion, Maureen always felt more than a little uneasy on land. And standing in this block of tidy little houses, one stacked against the next, she felt all but closed off from the gray sky above.

Not that the house at number sixteen didn't have a familiar feel to it, she realized, glancing at the lace curtains in the windows. The sheer drapes, the pansies in the window boxes, and the poorly made Grecian columns on either side of the door were not so unlike her Aunt Pettigrew's house just up the Thames in Greenwich. A house she'd come to tolerate for the five years her father had decided to civilize her by marooning her ashore with her mother's only remaining English relation.

She looked again at this house. While clean and neat at first glance, a closer look showed the paint chipping from the window frames and the chimney leaning perilously away from the house, all signs of an unmentionable and underlying poverty behind the crisp white curtains.

The other houses up and down the block showed the same signs of wear, as if the entire street was resigned to its fate — almost spinsterly in its outlook, as if it knew the long years ahead weren't going to be any kinder than the last ten or fifteen had been.

"Welcome to my humble abode, Captain Hawthorne," Captain Johnston said, sweeping up the steps in the familiar rolling gait of a man who'd spent most of his life at sea. He glanced back at her and then just as quickly looked away, with something akin to panic behind his hooded glance.

Why did he have the feeling he knew her? Knew her better than she knew herself?

The guard at Maureen's elbow gave her a rough shove, and she stumbled forward.

"There now," Captain Johnston told the man, "that is no way to treat a lady."

" 'er, a lady?" The grinning oaf laughed.

"You'll treat Miss Hawthorne with respect," Captain Johnston repeated. "Or you'll be reassigned to guarding prison hulks. It's your choice."

The man shrugged, but his next push wasn't as forceful. "Come along with ye,
miss."

Maureen studied her newfound champion as he retreated into his house, following the path cut by the Lord Admiral. For a moment she'd seen past the ravages of alcohol and years of disappointment lining Captain Johnston's face. Once again he'd been a captain, a leader, a man others followed.

"Lucy?" he called out. "Where are you, girl?"

A maid appeared from a doorway and bobbed her head. She smiled politely at the Captain and the Lord Admiral until her gaze fell on Maureen. The girl's eyes widened with horror, while her mouth fell open like a day-old mackerel.

"Tell her ladyship that we've got company."

The girl just stood there staring at Maureen.

"Lucy!" he barked. "Off with you. Tell your mistress we've got company."

"Yes, Cap'n," the girl stuttered, backing down the hallway, her gaping features never leaving Maureen's disheveled appearance.

They were here, Maureen knew, to see if Captain Johnston's wife, Lady Mary, would be willing to play a part in the charade the Lord Admiral proposed — a ruse to turn Maureen into a lady who could move amongst the
ton
and ferret out de Ryes.

Once she'd found their man, she and her crew would have their freedom. A more than fair bargain, in Maureen's humble estimation.

As she passed through the open doorway into the ordered world of Captain Johnston's home, a house ruled by the smell of lemon oil and beeswax, of polished candlesticks and faded but clean carpets, she couldn't help but wonder about the woman who held sway over this small corner of London, a place far removed from the rough-and-tumble world of the sea.

She glanced up to find herself staring at the portrait of a much younger Captain Johnston and his smiling bride. The young demure woman in the picture hardly seemed the iron-willed matron capable of turning Maureen and her rough ways into a lady society would accept.

Lord knows, Aunt Pettigrew had tried and failed.

Maureen could only hope Captain Johnston's Mary was made of sterner stuff.

"Madame," the young maid said. "The Cap'n is home and asking that you attend him in your parlor."

Lady Mary Johnston glanced up and noticed the odd look on the girl's face. "Is there more, Lucy?"

The girl nodded. "His lordship is with 'im. The one with the great bushy eyebrows and ... and ... they brought with 'em a ..."

Mary held up her hand to stave off any more. "Thank you, Lucy. Will you see that refreshments are brought in immediately? Something appropriate for a celebration and for a man of the Lord Admiral's tastes."

Lucy sniffed. "There ain't nothing in the house but them cakes," she said with a nod toward the sad plate of stale cakes on the table, "and the cordial yer aunt sent last Christmas."

Never quite resigned to her reduced status, Mary nodded for the girl to get to work.

Well, cordial and day-old cakes it would be, but now that William had a commission again, their days of this hideous reduced state would be over.

His half pay barely covered their expenses, so full pay would be like a small fortune. And if he was able to take a prize while at sea, perhaps a small ship or one of the highly prized new American frigates William had been talking about, they would be able to afford to entertain their friends and family in the style Mary could only dream about.

She rose slowly from her nuncheon, folding her napkin and setting it precisely beside her unfinished plate before proceeding down the hall toward her favorite room. At her feet trotted her ever-present companion, Baxter, a pug dog William had bought to keep her company. His flat nose wrinkled and twitched in every direction as he led his mistress down the hall.

Their house in Cheapside had been part of her mother's dower holdings and, thankfully, had been left to her despite her family's unhappiness over her unsuitable marriage to William Johnston. Mary had always loved the bright and cheerful little house. And even though it wasn't situated in the most fashionable neighborhood, it still held a quaint charm.

The sunny rooms, the old-fashioned regal furnishings with their glossy coats of wax, castoffs from her father's estates, gave Mary a sense of still belonging to the
ton
— though she'd given up every inch of her rank and social standing when she'd eloped over thirty years ago.

With William going back to sea again, her dreams stretched beyond the niggling embarrassment of such poor refreshments to visiting her family and being able to afford the new clothes such visits would require.

It was one thing to spend an afternoon with her old friend Lady Dearsley. Effie didn't care if Mary wore the same made-over gown year after year, only that she listened with rapt attention to the lady recall all the recent scandalous antics of the
ton.

Mary's family was another matter. Appearances and fashion always ranked higher than amiable companionship.

As she turned the corner toward her parlor, the strong scent of the sea assailed her. It caught her unawares and brought back happier memories of William returning from a long voyage, fresh from his ship and so eager to be in her arms.

She hadn't cared then how he smelled; she was just happy to have him back on dry land. She'd never thought that being a captain's wife would mean so many lonely hours, but then again she'd never dreamed her family would turn their backs on her and leave her, as William often said, marooned.

From the parlor, boisterous male voices rose in discussion. A ring of triumphant laughter followed.

William had his ship! It must mean that. They'd gone down to the pool to see his new ship and now were back to tell her the good news.

But as she drew closer to the room, she realized the odor overpowering the subtler scent of beeswax was not just the sea but something more odious.

She frowned and looked down at Baxter. Oh, she shouldn't have fed him those kippers this morning — he'd had another one of his accidents.

Steeling herself against embarrassment, she entered the parlor with her sunniest expression pasted to her face.

"My dear Lord Admiral, what a delight it is to —" Her voice fell to a staggering halt as she discovered the true source of the stench in her home.

With a quick glance she noted William standing sheepishly by the fireplace. At the other end of the mantel stood the Lord Admiral, his posture as straight and sure as it had been thirty years earlier when he and William had been young hot-blooded captains in their sharply pressed and starched uniforms.

But it was the bundle of rags perched on her best chair that stopped her in her tracks.

Though dressed in the rough clothes of a seaman, the ragtag person before her was most definitely a woman, though what age and what she looked like was hard to tell. It was her eyes, like the aquamarine ring Lady Mary's grandmother had given her, that gave her away. And there were her lashes, too long and full to belong to anyone other than a woman. But the comparison to her fair sex stopped there, for the little baggage appeared to have been dipped in filth and deposited into their parlor without any thought for the carpet or the furnishings — threadbare though they were.

"What is the meaning of this?" Mary demanded, directing her comment at the Lord Admiral, knowing full well this was his doing, for William would never think of bringing such a person anywhere near their home.

"My lady," he began, clearing his throat and shuffling about much as he had the first time he and William had called at her father's house all those years ago. He shook his head and continued, "Mary, I need your help with this girl." Mary's eyes must have grown wide with alarm as the scandalous implication of his request hit her. All too quickly, he started sputtering, "No, it's not like you think ... she's not ... it's just that she's critical to the Admiralty, and we need her to ..."

Baxter let out a small, threatening growl.

The girl ignored the dog. "What this mackerel-mouthed fool is trying to tell ye, milady," she said with an insolent shrug toward the Lord Admiral, "is that 'e wants you to make me into a lady."

Mary's mouth dropped open, and she looked to her husband for confirmation at this outlandish proposal.

William nodded mutely.

"A lady?" she managed to whisper, before she sank into the closest chair. Her gaze fluttered up to William's flushed face.

The Lord Admiral knelt before her. "Mary, it's been a long time since I've asked anything of you, but on this we need your help. This woman has the power to identify a heinous criminal who has taken refuge amidst the
ton.
With your help and your sensibility, she could make a brief entrance into society and complete her work. I wouldn't ask this of you if there wasn't so much at stake."