Dreaming (10 page)

“
Grrrrrrrrr
.”

“Hush, Gus.”

Richard felt a soft hand stroke his cheek.

“Please wake up.”

He opened his eyes. The hellion stared down him. Out of instinct he shifted to move away. A jab of fire shot down his arm and across his shoulder. He groaned and let his head fall back onto her lap.

“Don’t move!” she cried, gently patting his jaw. “Please. I’ve been so very worried.”

The pain faded into a dull throb and he took slower and deeper breaths. He felt clammy, chilled, and realized his chest was bare except for his torn shirt, which lay tucked around him like a blanket. He looked at her and rasped, “What happened this time?”

Her face paled, looking suddenly white against the black soot that smudged her cheeks and chin. There were streaks in the soot on her cheeks. She’d been crying. She swallowed hard, sniffled, then took a deep quivering breath. “I—I shot you.”

He looked at his shirt. A wide brown blotch of dried blood stained the left sleeve. He moved his gaze to his left arm. It was wrapped in a piece of lacy white petticoat linen, the ends of which were tied in a neat but puffy lace bow.

It all suddenly came back to him: the gun at her feet, the dog yawning and stretching his long body out in front of her, the shock on her face as the pistol fired.

He looked up at her now. Her eyes were misty and red from crying, and she chewed nervously on her lower lip. Her whole demeanor showed self-censure. She blinked back her tears, took one quivering breath, and just sat there, waiting, a strange mixture of courage and defeat. He closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to stare into hers.

So the hellion had shot him. Nothing unusual there, just another day in the humdrum life of Richard Lennox.

For a brief instant he asked himself what else she could do to him, then realized that he was only asking for trouble. He opened his eyes. There before him was the face of trouble. She looked like a child waiting to be whipped. Her head hung down and her misty gaze was locked on her clasped hands, the knuckles of which were white from a tense grip.

His upper arm throbbed, a painful reminder that in truth, he was to blame. He’d told her to hand him the gun, which was rather like asking the Devil to pray for him.

Stupid fool. He might as well have just put the weapon in her hand and told her to pull the trigger. He stared at the rafters and asked himself what else could have happened. He supposed that if luck had been with him she could have shot one of the smugglers. But based on past experience, he was her usual target.

He looked at the wound again. It was no scratch, but he’d received worse in a duel. He waited a moment. She still wouldn’t look at him. “
Letty
?”

“What?” she said in a rasp of a whisper, still staring at her hands.

“Next time . . . try to aim for the smuggler.”

Her head shot up and she stared at him for a dumbfounded second. He knew the instant she realized she’d been forgiven. She glowed, and he thought for a moment she might begin to cry.

He gave a quick nod toward his arm. “Is the ball still inside?”

She shook her head. “It went out the other side.” She paused and held a breath, her expression not unlike that of an executioner who’d just killed the wrong man.

He was fast becoming familiar with that look. “And?”

She glanced past him. He started to look that way but paused, the niggling voice of experience demanding he ask himself if he really wanted to look.

He did. One whole corner of the hold was charred black. Burned timbers lay at fallen angles as if some giant hand had tossed them like pickup sticks. Pieces of weathered canvas had been nailed to a huge hole in the ship’s side, but sea water still leaked in streams through the sides. The lowermost part of the hole must have been at just about sea level, for he could hear the slosh of waves slapping the canvas.

“No single gunshot could have caused that,” he said, staring in amazement at the size of the hole and its makeshift repair. He was surprised the ship wasn’t listing.

“It wasn’t the shot . . . well, it was, in a way, but not truly.”

“This ought to be interesting.”

“It was the gunpowder.”

“What gunpowder?”

She pointed at the hole, then said, “There was a tin of gunpowder over there. It was destroyed in the fire.”

“The fire?”

She nodded. “From the oil.”

He waited.

“Remember your cloak?”

“I assure you, the incident is seared into my memory.”

She flinched slightly, then admitted in a quiet voice, “It happened again.”

“You knocked over the other lantern,” he stated flatly, finally understanding.

“I didn’t. The pistol ball did.”

Richard glanced down at his arm and tried to string her story into some logical sequence. “Let me see if I understand you. You tripped and shot me.”

She nodded.

“The ball went into my arm and out.”

She nodded again.

“Then it hit the lantern? And . . . ”

“Knocked it over and the oil caught fire and burned a path to a tin that held gunpowder and then . . .
Bam
!” She threw her hands up in the air. “There was all this smoke and water and shouting. It was quite chaotic.”

He just stared, suddenly understanding the smudges on her face.

“The men moved very quickly.”

“I’ll wager they did,” he said, picturing the scene in his mind.

Neither said a word for long seconds that stretched into minutes. The ship creaked and waves slapped like clapping hands against the canvas.

Richard began to laugh. The hellion had struck again. Perhaps the foreign ministry should send her to
France
as
Britain
’s own secret weapon, guaranteed to destroy the entire French army in a single gunshot. He laughed harder. Better yet, they could make her Napoleon’s
gaoler
.

She stared at him through puzzled eyes, and that only made him laugh all the more.

“You’re not angry that I shot you?”

He shook his head. “No, although I’d appreciate it if you’d avoid doing so in the future. I’m not certain how much torture my body can endure.”

She gave him a tentative smile and relaxed. “I’m so relieved. I thought you’d be especially angry, considering you weren’t too pleased with me before.”

There was a long pause, which should have warned him that she was thinking again.

“Forget it.”

“Thank you, Richard.”

Gus growled.

Richard turned and looked at the beast. No luck there: Gus was unscathed. He lay stretched out on his side, his eyes closed; he looked to be asleep.

Richard examined him more closely. He wouldn’t put it past the devious Gus to feign sleep. But the dog didn’t move. No doubt he was bored because there were no pistols around.

He turned to
Letty
. “Your dog growls in his sleep?”

“Only when he hears your name.”

He looked back at Gus, waited a minute then snapped. “Richard!”

The dog curled his lips into a snarl and growled from deep within his chest. Yet the beast never opened his bloodshot eyes, never flinched. He lay on his side, sound asleep.

He waited, then repeated, “Richard!”

Again Gus growled but never awoke.

“He’s done that since the first time he saw you,” she explained.

“I remember. It was just before he bit me.”

“You were dueling, and dueling is illegal and—” She stopped in midsentence and was too silent. “You really do have a rather shaded past. Drinking, dueling, befriending smugglers . . . ”

“I wasn’t befriending smugglers. I was trying to persuade them to release us unharmed. And I was doing a rather good show of it too, until you sealed our coffins by spilling the tea about the gun locks.”

Her hands fell to her sides. Her face paled. She just stared at him, then slowly whispered, “Sealed our coffins?”

Damn his mouth.

“You mean they’re going to kill us?”

He shifted, wincing from the pain that shot up his arm, then slowly sat up and put on his shirt. “I don’t know what I mean anymore.”

“You told me they wouldn’t harm us.” She looked betrayed.

He silently worked the buttons.

“You said it was just a tale to tell our grandchildren.”

“
Your
grandchildren,” he said, angrily jamming his shirttails into his breeches.

She stood silent, and to him the silence seemed even longer than it probably was. She looked directly into his eyes and whispered, “You lied to me.”

“It was for your own good,” he said curtly, not liking the fact that he was made to feel guilty.

“You don’t lie to someone you care about.”

“I don’t—”

The door flew open and banged against the wall. Two smugglers filled the doorway, one anxiously waving a musket, the other a sword. Soot covered their clothing and blackened their wary faces.

One man’s hair was singed and stuck out like that of a Punch puppet. He had a ratty bandage wrapped around his forehead. Scattered remnants of a black beard spotted the other man’s chin and his face had a blank look, due to the fact that he no longer had any eyebrows.

Their excited gazes quickly scanned the hold and lit on
Letty
. Almost in unison, their weapons rotated toward her.

“Stay where ye be!” came a shout from behind them.

Gus shot upright, suddenly awake, and trotted toward the doorway, his tail wagging and his face alight with a slobbering canine grin.

Phelim
stepped from behind the wall of singed smugglers, holding in each hand a bowl with a battered tin cup poised atop it. He cautiously walked toward them. Gus trailed along behind him, sniffing at the closest bowl.

“Oh, Mr.
Phelim
!”
Letty
said. “You’re awake now!”

“I’m
Philbert
,
Phelim’s
brother. He just came to a while ago. Ever since he’s been running ’round the ship giving orders. His head is still
looby
. Thinks he’s Admiral Nelson. Refuses to use one arm and he keeps
askin
’
fer
his
eyepatch
.” He stopped in front of
Letty
—not too dose—and held out the steaming bowls. “Here, Missy. Take ’
em
, real
quicklike
.”

Chewing on her bottom lip, she took the food, and the man was out the door so fast that even Gus hadn’t time to move. The other smugglers grumbled something about the fires of hell and women before they slammed the door and the lock. Richard could almost hear the sighs of relief through the locked door. He looked at her.

She just stood there, staring at the locked door.

He wondered what she was thinking, then decided that whatever it was, he’d probably be better off not knowing.

As an afterthought, he ran a hand through his hair, which was still there and didn’t feel singed. He turned away from her and covertly rubbed a hand across his forehead, expelling a breath when he felt the thickness of both eyebrows.

He glanced down at his bandaged arm and decided that perhaps he’d been lucky. He relaxed, but his relief was short-lived. He could feel her look and slowly turned, expecting to see the timid, hangman expression she usually wore after a disaster.

To his surprise there was an odd sparkle in her eyes—a look that said she was simply delighted about something. Instinct told him he should be worried. Common sense told him he could never come close to imagining what she was delighted about. Past experience told him not to even try.

She grinned and handed him a bowl of food. “They aren’t going to kill us.”