Columbine (5 page)

“I swear the other passengers know nothing of who I am, and I’d—I’d rather they didn’t.”

She raised her chin a little higher, and for the first time Kit noticed the cleft that divided it neatly in two.” Her face was not conventionally pretty. Her aristocratic nose was a shade too long, her mouth too full to be the fashionable rosebud. But there was a sensuality to her features that attracted him more strongly than he wanted to admit. In spite of his intentions, his irritation with finding her on board was quickly changing to something a good deal more enjoyable.

“No matter how far you run, my girl,” he said softly, “you won’t leave the past behind.”

“Then what will you do with me?” she asked bitterly.

“Pitch me over the side? Aren’t you afraid I’ll defile the whole ocean as well as your sainted ship?”

He cocked one eyebrow in surprise at the bleakness of her tone.

“Nay, there must be some better use for you than that, isn’t there?”

He had meant it as teasing, a way to coax the bitterness from her. But Dianna heard only the bare words. Her uncle had said the same things to her, and she knew what they had meant, just as now, she understood why she had been brought to Christopher Sparhawk’s ship. The man wanted her—no, expected her to be his whore for the voyage. She felt her cheeks burn with shame, and automatically she glanced at the bunk behind him. Lord, a man of his size could kill her! Her mouth went dry, and she bit her lower lip to fight back the tears as she looked down, unable to meet his gaze.

Kit in turn could not take his eyes from her. The way she’d blushed so prettily as she’d looked at the bunk, her little white teeth nibbling on her lip as she’d glanced up at him through her lashes–God’s blood, she’d have to have her invitation engraved to spell it out any clearer!

“Dianna, lass,” he murmured, low and dark, as he reached out gently to stroke her haft. But when he touched her, she gasped and turned her face full toward him. It was not the tears in her eyes that stopped him. It was the fear. She was so clearly terrified of him that his hand drew back at once as if it had been burned. Awkwardly he jammed both hands in his coat pockets, wondering what the devil had gone wrong.

Dianna saw how he pulled away and relief washed over her. But mixed with the relief was a kind of chagrin, too. She had saved herself by crying, and though she hadn’t done it intentionally, she felt no better than some blubbering milk-maid cornered by the master. Weak and cowardly, that’s how she’d acted. What had happened to her pride?

She squared her shoulders and sniffed back the tears, fumbling for her handkerchief.

“I’ll have you know,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster, “that I don’t usually do this.”

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously.

“Don’t do what?”

“Why, cry, of course.” She sniffled again, loudly, and without comment he handed his own handkerchief, an enormous square of bleached homespun.

“Thank you. I’m sure I don’t know what happened to my own, but I’m quite short of linen for a journey of this sort.”

“Indeed,” he said dryly.

“Not what you’re accustomed to?”

“Faith, no! When Father and I travelled to Paris last spring, we had four trunks between us, and that didn’t count what we bought there. You should have seen the long faces on the porters when they saw all the baggage on top of the coach!” She began to laugh at the memory, until she realized Kit wasn’t laughing with her.

He wasn’t even smiling. For an instant she dared to meet his gaze and the intensity of those half-closed cat’s eyes. Their expression baffled hen She saw none of the hostility that her uncle had shown when she’d refused his advances, no threats, but the question she found instead was one for which she had no answer. Quickly she looked away, lower, to the front of his shirt. His neck cloth was loose, his waistcoat partly unbuttoned, and his shirt hung open at the throat in a deep V. She had never stood so near to a man other than her father, and curiosity unwittingly made her bold.

Intrigued, she stared at the tanned triangle and the pattern of the dark curls upon it. Her eyes wandered farther, following the horsetail braid down the front of his waistcoat, across a belly that was flat and lean.

Lower still, his hips seemed surprisingly narrow for the breadth of his shoulders, while his breeches were cut so snugly that Dianna looked hastily away. The breeches were tucked into tall leather boots, the leather worn and comfortable from long use, and his feet, like the rest of him, seemed enormous. She raised her gaze, stopping short again of his chin. At the base of his throat she could see the measured beat of his pulse, and wondered if it matched the quickening rate of her own.

She was no longer frightened, though even in her innocence she knew she had more reason to be now than before. Still, she stood before him and could not bring herself to meet his eyes. Instead her own gaze shifted sideways, past the row of polished coat buttons, across the expanse of his chest and shoulders.

With a little shiver, she remembered how his arms had felt around her that night at her uncle’s house, how he’d held her gently, like a fragile piece of porcelain, yet how aware she’d been of his strength.

For Kit, her eyes roamed over him with the intensity and the intimacy of a caress, and he wondered how she’d react if once again she looked lower and discovered the effect she’d had on him already. My God, what would happen when she actually touched him? He wanted to catch her and take her now, fiercelY, while the desire ran hot in his blood. A woman this brazen would not expect to be wooed, nor deserve to be, either.

“What shall we do with you, eh, Dianna?” His question came from deep in his chest, almost a growl.

She swallowed, “That, Master Sparhawk, is—” “Kit. Call me Kit, Dianna.”

“That’s—that’s a decision you’ll make, not I,” she answered in an odd, throaty voice that refused to sound like her own. What is wrong with me, she thought uneasily. She felt giddy, almost light-headed.

“Whether I like it or not, you own this ship, and I am only an unwilling passenger.”

He didn’t answer, and her voice slipped even lower, to scarcely more than a whisper.

“That is the way of it, isn’t it … Kit?”

He heard the promise in her voice, and almost groaned aloud at the eager way her lips were parted, beckoning to him. The sound of his name on her tongue was heady magic. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted a woman this badly.

But the tears that still glistened like tiny diamonds in her lashes stopped him. She kept changing like quicksilver, by turns coyly shy, then seductive. She was playing with him, reeling him in as neatly as a fat, open-mouthed trout. Well, he’d be damned if he took her bait. If he could get his wits out of his breeches and back into his head, he’d realize there were too many things about the girl that. promised trouble. She was a convicted felon for one. She was also the niece of one of the most debauched noblemen in England, and she’d already made a fair start on a similar reputation herself. She might even try to kill him, too, the way she had her uncle; maybe Sir Henry himself had put her up to it. At the very least he might end up with a case of the French pox.

Kit frowned and shook his head, almost as if he were arguing with himself, and for the first time since she had entered the cabin, he looked away from her.

Slowly Dianna felt her heart begin to quiet, and the breath return to her lungs. Strangely, too, she felt an odd sense of regret that she couldn’t put into words.

“Because Welles is the Prosperity’s master, I’ll honor your agreement with him,” Kit said carefully, looking somewhere over her head.

“You behave yourself, and you’ll be treated as decently as any woman on board. GOd knows you don’t deserve it, and I don’t like it, but I’ll honor it just the same.”

With a sigh, he dropped heavily into the cabin’s one chair. He stretched his legs out before him, and, with his elbows on the chair’s arms, touched his fingertips together and pressed them lightly to his lips.

“You might,” he said at last, “thank me.”

“For what, offering to treat me decently?” She knew that was not what he meant, not really, but she gambled that he wouldn’t correct her.

“No, I don’t think I shall thank you for that. May I return to my quarters, Master Sparhawk?”

So he was once again Master Sparhawk. Kit scowled and bent his head deeper against the arch of his fingers.

“Aye, go.” Damn her nose-in-the-ak politeness!

She made him feel as if he’d been the one dismissed, not the other way around.

“No, one moment, stay.”

She faced him again, waiting, and without any real reason to call her back, he asked the first question that came to his mind.

“In the court, they said you wore mourning only as a sham to sway the judge to pity. Yet still you dress yourself in black. Why?”

She hadn’t heard that before, and she stiffened at the implication.

“My father was killed while hunting four months ago. It is for his memory alone I wear mourning.”

“And your mother?”

“She died birthing me. May I go now?”

He should have said something to her then, for he knew too well the pain of parents lost. Instead he merely nodded and watched her go.

But at the door she paused, her hands balled in tight fists at her sides.

“Whatever else my uncle told you about me, about my—my being his mistress, I would have you know he lied. He lied!”

She saw the disbelief on Kit’s face and fled before he could see the disappointment show on her own.

He despised her, that was clear, and he had accepted every foul word Sir Henry had said against her. And what was that to her? He was a liar, a rogue, the over-sized colonial ox responsible for her conviction.

Why, she’d almost fainted from being shut in the same cabin with him! So why, then, did it matter so much that he believe her?

She slammed the door after her, and Kit heard her heels echo on the deck as she ran toward the forward companionway. Why the devil did she have to say that about her uncle .9 The more the chit denied her past, the worse he decided it likely was. He swore to himaeff and kicked the bulkhead. He had no choice but to avoid her for the rest of the voyage. Two months, at most three. Not so very long.

He remembered how her silvery eyes had roamed so freely over his body, and he swore again. He knew he had to leave her alone. And he knew, just as surely, that he probably wouldn’t.

Carefully, Dianna opened her hand and stared down at the hard half-biscuit that would be her supper and her dinner, as well. For the past four weeks, since the end of the fresh food, ship’s biscuit had been all any of them between decks were given to eat, and even that had dwindled from three biscuits a day to one. The slow starving worsened each day, gnawing mercilessly at both strength and will

Sitting on the deck beside Dianna, Mary Penhallow cradled her youngest son in her lap. The dry rattle of the boy’s breathing shook his wasted little body, and he was too weak now to resist the fever that unnaturally brightened his cheeks. The arc of light from the swinging lantern overhead caught the dread in Mary’s face, and Dianna looked away.

The siilor who brought the biscuits and water each morning growled that they should expect no better on a winter crossing, but Dianna didn’t believe him, not with his jowls and fat belly. But the Penhallows and the others did not agree with her. The Prosperity was a Christian vessel, they argued doggedly, the captain a good man, a gentleman who had promised to treat them well, and to question him would only cause trouble..

The sick boy cried out fretfully. As Mary tried to comfort him, something inside of Dianna at last rebelled.

Abruptly she shoved the dry biscuit back into her pocket and rose, steadying herself against the ship’s rocking, and hurried toward the companionway.

She could no longer sit and do nothing. Somewhere in the ship there was still plenty to eat, and she meant to find it.

Kit pushed his chair back from the captain’s table and let his head drop back on his shoulders. He was past exhaustion, but even the hot stew and Abraham’s rum could not make the tension in his body fade. To fight his boredom and restlessness, he’d chosen to work the same watches as the crew, and it was hard work, made harder by the winter storms that haunted the North Atlantic. Kit would not soon forget this last one, a blizzard that had shrouded the deck in white and treacherously coated every line with ice. For fourteen hours they had straggled to keep the Prosperity from destroying herself in the shrieking wind and snow.

Despite his inexperience, Kit was strong and agile, and that was what had mattered most. Another man on the foremast had not been so lucky. One moment Caleb Tucker had been beside Kit, reefing the stern-sheets, and then the next he was gone. Kit wished he could forget the memorybf Caleb’s startled face as he’d lost his footing. And Caleb still scarce a bridegroom when they’d left New London, his pretty wife—widow, now—Patience, newly with child. Although he’d make sure Patience never wanted for anything, the old fear ate at Kit again. Why had Caleb died, and why had he, Kit, been spared?

“By my reckoning, Kit, we’ll make New London in less than a week,” said Abraham with satisfaction as he lit his pipe with a wisp from the candle.

“Your Prosperity’s a sweet sailer, no mistake.”

“She’s Jonathan’s, not mine,” said Kit automatically.

It bothered Kit that Abraham had made this assumption about his brother before, just as it bothered him that the captain seemed so unaffected by Caleb’s death. But then Kit had learned more than he wished about his father’s old friend on this voyage.

Abraham was a superb mariner, but as a companion, he was far less satisfactory.

“I may be the Prosperity’s owner on Paper, but she’s all Jonathan’s in every other way.”

Abraham sucked on his pipe stem

“About Jonathan, Kit. I’m not wishing ill to the lad, but if he’s still not well-mended, I’d be willing to take on as captain for you again.”

“There’ll be no need,” said Kit quickly.