Captain's Bride (7 page)

“I told you before, Miriam, Captain Blackwell’s an
arrogant, despicable man. Why he . . . he’s no gentleman, I’ll tell
you that.”

“Did he kiss you, Glory? Did he?”

“Don’t be a featherhead, Miriam. Captain Blackwell
and I don’t get along at all. If he weren’t Father’s friend, I
swear I wouldn’t so much as speak to the man. He’s rude and
overbearing; he’s ill-tempered and inconsiderate; he’s—”

“Absolutely divine,” Miriam broke in. She rolled her
eyes and fluttered her painted fan, and Glory fought down an urge
to strangle her. She changed the subject to something safer, and
the long afternoon rolled slowly to a close, Glory staunchly
refusing to arrive at home before her father and the captain, no
matter how tedious Miriam’s usually sparkling company seemed.

She even forced herself to stay a little longer than
usual. By the time she finally did leave, her driver, old Mose, was
nervously wringing his bony hands.

“Your daddy don’ like you comin’ home late, Miss
Glory. He gonna have my hide.”

“Oh, horsefeathers,” Glory said, paying the old man
no heed. “If we hurry, we’ll be home well before dark.” But they
weren’t. Halfway home the carriage hit a rut and one of the wheels
broke off the axle. Mose was taking forever to fix it. His gnarled
old hands were not as nimble as they used to be, and Glory hadn’t
the vaguest idea what to do to help him. She just sat quietly in
the seat, waiting patiently for him to finish, and wondering how
she was going to calm her father’s raging temper.

“Damn that girl,” Julian Summerfield raved. “She
damned well knows better than to stay out this late!”

“She probably just let the time slip by,” Nicholas
soothed. They sat in the upstairs drawing room, sipping bourbon and
branch water and smoking thin cigars, Julian’s concern becoming
more and more apparent.

“What that girl needs is a husband,” Julian stormed.
“And the sooner the better!”

“Listen, Julian, I’m sure she’s all right, but just
to be on the safe side, why don’t I go make sure?”

“I’ll go with you,” Julian volunteered, leaping to
his feet. He took several hurried steps, then suddenly stopped
short, one hand going to the small of his back. “Damned if I
haven’t pulled a muscle,” he said, but couldn’t meet Nicholas’s
gaze. “Darned sacroiliac.”

Nicholas almost smiled. “I know the road to Buckland
Oaks. She’s probably not far. I’ll escort her the rest of the way
home.”

“Thank you, Nicholas. This damn back of mine picks
the darnedest times to act up.”

Nicholas just nodded. Crushing out his cigar, he
headed for the door, setting his glass down on the piecrust table
near the fireplace on the way out. Since the night air was still
chilly, he stopped by his bedchamber to draw on his black wool
cloak. Then he strode downstairs.

One of the stable boys saddled Hannibal for him, and
Nicholas swung up into the saddle. He’d begun to worry about the
girl himself, though he wasn’t certain why he should. She was
probably just indulging herself. She was willful and spoiled. A
woman like that wouldn’t be the least concerned for the worry she
caused others. Julian should have taken the girl in hand years ago;
now it was too late. Too late for a father, but not for a husband.
In that Julian was correct.

Setting Hannibal at a mile-eating pace down the road
to Buckland Oaks, Nicholas thought of his somewhat limited
experience with the institution of marriage. His mother had been a
beautiful French Creole woman. She’d been the darling of every
party, the belle of every ball. Everywhere she went men fell at her
feet. Alexander Blackwell, Nicholas’s father, had been no
exception. He’d loved his wife, Collette, with a limitless passion;
unfortunately Collette did not love him. At least not in the same
way. Collette Dubois Blackwell wasn’t capable of that kind of
love.

After Nicholas was bom, Collette had lain with every
dandy in New Orleans. His father had known of her infidelities, but
had chosen to ignore them, hoping he could somehow regain her
love.

When Nicholas was seven years old, his mother ran
away to France with a wealthy merchant with never a thought for
Nicholas or his father. A few years later, Nicholas was told she
had died of some sort of plague. How he had missed her. How he had
yearned for her love—just as his father had.

As always, thoughts of his beautiful, hedonistic
mother darkened Nicholas’s mood. Gloria Summerfield, with her soft
laughter and flirtatious ways, would probably turn out just the
same. Just like all the other women Nicholas had known. For the
hundredth time that day, Nicholas vowed not to get involved with
the girl. Tomorrow he’d be leaving Summerfield Manor, returning to
his ship and the way of life to which he belonged. Nicholas could
hardly wait.

“Aren’t you done yet, Mose?” Glory asked, glancing
up and down the dark, tree-lined lane. Only the lonely hooting of
an owl had kept them company until now, but as the moon rose above
the trees, Glory began to hear other sounds. She couldn’t make out
just exactly what they were, but they were ominous sounds, and
Glory was anxious to be on her way.

“All set, Miz Glory.” Mose tottered over to the
calèche and climbed into the driver’s seat. He clucked the team of
matched sorrels into a trot, and the carriage rolled away.

At first Glory breathed a sigh of relief. But as they
traveled farther down the lane, the ominous sounds grew louder. She
noticed old Mose glancing nervously from side to side, and a chill
of apprehension raced down her spine. The noises sounded closer
now—hounds baying, horses’ hooves thundering against the still-soft
earth. As her worry increased, her heart began to thud in rhythm to
the galloping beasts.

Old Mose slapped the reins a little harder, urging
the team forward at a faster pace. As the tall pine forest rushed
past in a moonlit blur, Glory gripped the velvet seat to keep from
being tossed around inside the open carriage. Seeing a bend in the
road up ahead, Mose slowed the horses. At the same time, a small
Negro youth rushed from the side of the lane, forcing Mose to pull
up on the reins to avoid a collision. Just for a moment, the youth
froze in his tracks and Glory recognized Ephram’s brother, Willie.
Then he bolted toward the woods.

“Willie, wait!” she cried out. “Not that way, they’ll
catch you for sure!”

Willie turned and, recognizing Glory’s voice, raced
up beside the coach, his slender body bathed in sweat, his clothes
in shreds, his arms and legs scratched and bleeding. “Please, Miz
Glory,” he pleaded. “Dey’ll kill me for sure.”

The echo of the lash rang in Glory’s ears. By some
miracle Ephram had survived the whipping. Little Willie had neither
his older brother’s size nor his stamina.

The sounds were getting louder. Glory could hear
men’s voices as they called back and forth to each other, searching
determinedly for the runaway slave. The hoofbeats of their horses
were so loud she wondered how she could possibly hear the pounding
of her heart.

“Please, Miss Glory,” Willie begged. “You da only
hope I got. Dey
ain’t
nobody else.”

Glory glanced at the woods, ringing with the terrible
sounds of death, and back at the boy, who seemed nothing more than
two huge white-ringed eyes. “We’ve got to find someplace for you to
hide.”

“There’s a tool box under my seat,” Mose offered.
“The boy is small enough to fit.”

Glory hesitated only a moment. “Get in!” she ordered,
and Willie’s flashing smile was all the thanks she needed.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Nicholas Blackwell
stormed onto the scene just as Willie lifted the canvas flap
concealing the tool box beneath Mose’s seat.

An expression of terror frozen on her face, Glory
stared up at him, seated astride the big black. He looked ominous
and forbidding in his dark cloak, his features drawn and angry.

“Please, Nicholas,” she pleaded, hands clutching the
folds of her skirt. “They’ll kill him if I don’t help. Just go back
up the road a little. No one will ever have to know you were
here.”

Nicholas hesitated only a moment, his glance straying
to the woods, then back to the anxious face of the girl in the
carriage. “Do as she says,” he commanded the boy, and Willie
climbed into the box. “The dogs will pick up his scent,” he told
Glory. “Do you have anything we can use to distract them? Food
scraps, anything?”

“I have some fried chicken Mrs. Allstor sent along.”
Nicholas dismounted. With trembling fingers, Glory hurriedly handed
him a small wicker basket from the seat beside her. She hadn’t
missed the word “we.” Gratitude surged through her, so potent it
made her feel weak.

Nicholas looked into the basket. “Pepper. Let’s hope
this works.” He set the basket in the foot box of the calèche,
sprinkled the pepper all over the tool box, rearranged the canvas
flap, and climbed back on his horse just as twenty sweat-covered
riders burst through the woods and onto the road. A short, stout
man held five baying hounds by the end of their taut leashes, and
the cacophony of snorting horses and heaving men threatened to
overwhelm Glory’s senses.

From the center of the group, Thomas Jervey, a
muscular man in his mid-forties who owned a neighboring plantation,
approached.

“Miz Summerfield.” Though the air was cool, he lifted
his felt hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with an elbow.
“Sorry to bother you, but the hounds have been following that Nigra
who ran from Buckland Oaks.” The dogs strained at their leashes,
baying and barking furiously at the driver’s seat of the carriage.
“They seem to have followed him here. Mind tellin’ me what you’re
doin’ out so late?”

“I was visiting Miriam Allstor. One of the carriage
wheels broke on my way home. Mose just got it fixed.” She pointed
to the wheel, broken and lashed haphazardly back together on the
right side of the calèche. “Since I was late getting home, Captain
Blackwell came out to escort me back.”

“Mind if we take a look?” Jervey asked, and Glory
felt the color drain from her face.

“Not in the least,” Nicholas put in, dismounting from
the black and coming to stand near the front of the carriage. The
stout man holding the dogs brought them around to the driver’s
seat, and Glory thought her heart would stop.

Nicholas lifted the flap, revealing the lunch, while
the dogs, standing on their hind legs, took several deep sniffs.
Then they sneezed and howled pitifully, turned tail, and ran in the
opposite direction, pulling the stout man along behind them. Seeing
the wicker basket Nicholas had opened to reveal the chicken and a
bit of spilled pepper, the men chuckled softly among
themselves.

“Sorry to bother you, Miz Glory,” Thomas Jervey said.
“But you can’t be too careful.” He turned toward Nicholas. “You’ll
see she gets home safely, Captain?”

Nicholas nodded. He swung himself up on the black,
his dark cloak billowing out behind him. “Good luck with your
hunt,” he told Jervey. Then he signaled for Mose to take the
carriage on home.

Glory leaned back against the seat, her heart still
hammering wildly. The carriage rolled along the road in silence for
several miles, until Nicholas motioned for Mose to stop. After
dismounting, he tied the stallion to the calèche, and joined Glory
inside the open rig.

“Mind telling me what that was all about?” he asked,
settling his lanky frame against the seat.

If the day had been trying so far, Glory now found it
exceedingly so. She could feel the captain’s powerful presence—and
his muscular thigh pressing against hers through the folds of her
skirt.

“I wish I could tell you, Captain. But it all
happened so quickly. I just did what seemed right at the moment.”
Nicholas regarded her closely. “You risked your reputation and your
father’s standing in the community to help a runaway slave? Only
yesterday you sent a man on a four-mile walk just so you wouldn’t
soil your riding habit.”

“Things aren’t always as they appear, Captain.
Sometimes Jonas, the overseer, is a little too eager with the whip.
I believed the boy would rather take a four-mile walk than nurse
the cuts on his back.”

Nicholas felt a little of his cynicism slip away.
Maybe there was more to the girl than he thought. Moonlight
filtered between the clouds, and Nicholas noticed the way the soft
light glistened on her smooth cheeks and lit the blue of her eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman more full of surprises than
you, love,” he said softly. Glory’s cheeks pinkened at his use of
so intimate a word, and he felt that same pull of attraction he’d
felt before.

“I’m grateful for your help, Captain. But I’m afraid
I’m going to need to ask for more. Willie won’t be safe until he
reaches the North. You could take him there aboard your ship.”

Nicholas stiffened. “I don’t approve of the
institution of slavery, Glory. But I have friends in the South. Men
like your father. Men I admire and respect. I do business with
these men. I won’t interfere in their way of life.”

“I appreciate your feelings, Captain. I feel much the
same way. But just this once . . . ? No one need ever know.”

He ran a long tanned finger down the line of her
cheek. She looked so beautiful, so caring. He really had no
choice—he’d known that the moment he came upon her in the road.
“All right. Just this once. But don’t ever ask it of me again.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Back there you called me Nicholas. I liked the way
it sounded.”

“Nicholas,” she whispered softly.

It seemed so natural he should kiss her, so right
somehow. What harm could there be in one little kiss? He lifted her
chin and covered her soft coral lips. They felt full and warm, and
Nicholas heard himself groan. When she parted them to allow his
tongue entrance, Nicholas forgot the promises he’d made himself,
forgot all but the warmth of her breath, the sweetness of her
mouth. He deepened the kiss and felt her slender arms slip behind
his neck, her fingers glide through the strands of his curly black
hair.