Gregory, Lisa (8 page)

"Katherine,
I cannot allow you to dispose of your mother's family jewelry in this manner."
He raised his hands in a gesture of capitulation. "You win. I shall
retrieve your earbobs and from now on, your project bills are to be sent to
me."

"Thank
you, Papa." She rose to lean forward and kiss his cheek. "Am I
forgiven enough that I can return to work? I should very much like to."

Her
father smiled. "You are certainly forgiven that much. Frankly, it's been
dreadfully difficult here without you."

Katherine
smiled and returned to her carriage. All the way home, she had to answer
Pegeen's anxious inquiries and then attempt to explain the rationale of a
blockade to her. She felt rather deflated, oddly enough. She had won, and of
course there was the principle of it, and she would be helping those men, but
somehow the whole thing seemed so petty and unimportant. While all of life
thundered with such mighty battles, the horrendous clash of ideals, the simple,
important struggles to survive, she seemed doomed to waste her life on
trivialities. She had an awful picture of herself in later years, an aged spinster
engaging in petty social battles. Surely there must be more for her than that.
She wanted to wrestle, to fight, to build. To challenge the wilderness like a
prisoner woman, taking care of husband, home, and children in primitive
conditions, struggling to keep alive and bring civilization to a wild land. To
have a career, to build a business, to combat the sea and wrest a living from
it. To seek adventure—tea in China, gold in California. Anything—anything but
moldering quietly away in Boston!

"Miss
Kate," Pegeen's voice intruded on her thoughts, "are you all right?
You got so quiet all of a sudden."

"Yes,
yes, I'm fine, Pegeen. My mind was just wandering."

"Yes'm.
You know what I noticed, mum? That bold man wasn't there, the one that winked
that day. Why do you suppose he wasn't there?"

"I
don't know, Pegeen. I hadn't noticed he wasn't there," Katherine lied
coolly.

"I
don't know how you could keep from it, miss," Pegeen said, shaking her
head over Katherine's strange ways. "He's a terribly handsome man, that
one."

"Is
he?" was all Katherine said.

Two
days later, Katherine was dishing meat and potatoes onto plates when she looked
up to see Captain Hampton standing in line three men back. Her stomach gave a
peculiar lurch as her eyes met his gray ones. He looked thinner, paler—as if he
had been ill; but his smile was as self-assured as ever. As she fed the men
before him, her pulse began to mount and her muscles tense, as if she were
preparing to race.

"I
see you have turned to good works, ma'am," he said when he reached her,
extending his tin plate. "Surely you didn't take to your heart anything I
said."

She
raised her eyebrows and said, "I'm sure I don't know; I can't remember
what you said to me." She gave him an extra slice of meat, feeling an unwanted
stab of pity at the sight of his thin wrists. "Have you—been ill?"

He
laughed an odd, hoarse laugh. "No, ma'am, I've been in solitary. Being
punished, you see—I have this remarkable ability to get under other people's
skins." He winked slyly. "But I'm so indispensable here, your foreman
talked them into sending me back." He moved on to where Pegeen was
dispensing coffee and bread, leaving Katherine choking back the words of
sympathy that had sprung to her lips.

When
she returned to the office after lunch, she began to question Teddy. "Once
you said something about a Rebel raider named Hampton. Was he captured?"

The
boy's eyes lit up. "Was he ever! That was some battle, Miss Katherine. He
sailed out of Wilmington—the one in Carolina—right under the noses of the
blockaders, floated out on a foggy night—Lord knows how he got out without
running smack dab into one of our ships. But he didn't. Well, we spotted him
just as he edged past and we started firing, but then he started his engines
and steamed away. Well, it made the skipper of the
San Francisco
so mad
that he started out after him. But that Hampton, he headed for Cape
Hatteras."

"The
'Graveyard of the Atlantic'?" Katherine said in awe.

Teddy
beamed at her knowledge. "That's right. Well, Hampton knew that channel
like the back of his hand, but the captain of the
San Francisco
didn't,
and she grounded. Hampton picked up the survivors and put 'em in irons and
sailed to Nassau, where he unloaded the prisoners and a cargo of tobacco and
stored up on provisions and coal. And then he headed north and proceeded to
burn three of our merchant ships. Well, it was July, right after Read, and the
Navy was hopping mad and they sent three ships after him.

"One
of them found him and engaged battle. What a fight! The Union captain was a
canny one, too, and they dodged each other and swooped in and fired a shot and
then they'd sweep around right quick to miss a broadside. Well, finally Hampton
got the better of him and the Union ship retreated. But Hampton's ship was
badly damaged and he was running low on ammunition, so he starts back to a friendly
port. Only on his way there, he runs into the second ship we got looking for
him!"

"Oh,
no!"

"Oh,
yes. Now the Reb knows that this ain't the time and place for a fight, so he
tries to sneak past them—runs up a British flag and just sails on. But the
second ship sees that one of the masts has been snapped and he looks at her
real close and can see that she's been in a fight. So he flashes to her to
identify herself and explain her condition. Well, Hampton signals back that he
had been mistaken for a Yankee ship by a Confederate raider. 'Which one?'
signals our ship. 'The
Artemis,'
he signals back—well, that's the name
of his own ship, and of course the Union skipper is hot to go after it and goes
sailing off in the direction Hampton tells him. Hampton would have gotten clean
away if he hadn't had bad luck. One of his engines conked out on him, so he was
just limping to port. And meanwhile, our second ship crosses paths with the
first and realizes that it was the
Artemis
he'd been talking to. So he
goes tearing out after him and manages to catch him because Hampton was so
slowed. Well, Hampton was the better skipper and he did some fancy maneuvering,
but his ship was crippled and he ran out of shot. And so we got him."

"Bravo!"
said a deep voice behind them, and Katherine and Teddy spun around. Matthew
Hampton stood in the doorway. "You tell it as if you'd been there,
lad."

"I'd
like to have been."

"Well,
I've brought you an errand to run, boy. Mr. MacPherson has grievous need of a
certain sort of nail, and it seems there are none to be found in the
yard."

"A
broadhead, no doubt," Katherine said and sighed. "We've had terrible
trouble getting them since the war started."

"You're
absolutely right. And since Mr. MacPherson thinks they might not sell any to
one of us," he lifted his hands to show his chains and grinned bitterly,
"he wants you to run down some for him."

"All
right." Teddy jumped off his stool and bundled himself into his coat and
woolen cap, eager to spend some time outside instead of cooped up in the
office. He ran out the front door. Hampton closed it behind him, then turned to
face Katherine.

She
felt a sudden twinge of fear. His hard, masculine presence seemed to fill the
room, and she was all alone with him. She forgot that only an hour before, he
had seemed thinner and almost ill to her; now she noticed only that his
rolled-up sleeves revealed well-muscled arms, that he was poised like an animal
about to spring, that his hands were large and strong.

To
hide her apprehension, she said calmly, "Are you the same Hampton that
Teddy was talking about?"

"I
am, and his tale is mostly true." His face was expressionless, but there
was an odd glitter in his gray eyes.

"Hadn't
you better return now? The guards will think you have escaped."

"I'm
not unused to being in disfavor with the guards."

"I'm
sure you're not!" she snapped.

He
laughed, but there was no amusement in his eyes. Slowly he started toward her,
the litheness of his walk marred by the clinking chains. Katherine gulped and
retreated a little.

"Captain
Hampton, my father is in his office; I think it would be very unwise of you to
try to—to—"

"To
what? Touch you? Kiss you? Caress that sanctified Boston skin?" His voice
was low and harsh, and Katherine stepped back before the force of it. "I
know you're lying, Miss Devereaux. I've watched, you see, and I know your
father never returns from his lunch until two-thirty and it's only
one-thirty."

"Well,
Charlie will be in shortly, and he'd kill you if you touched me,"
Katherine said, edging toward the door of her father's office. He stood between
her and the outside door; she knew she could not reach that. But if she could
just get inside her father's office and lock the door...

Deliberately,
menacingly, he came toward her, his eyes never leaving her face. "That old
drunk? Peljo told me he's been on a binge for two weeks and hasn't come to work.
And your Yankee lieutenant has vanished also. Tell me, did you freeze him
out?"

Katherine
backed away, cautiously feeling for the doorknob behind her. "I'll scream
if you touch me."

"The
yard's a fair distance—and very noisy. I doubt they'll hear you. And, believe
me, I can muzzle you rather quickly."

Suddenly
she jerked open the door and darted inside and swung the door behind her. But
despite his encumbering chains, the captain was quick, and before she could
lock the door, he had turned the knob and pushed the door open so violently
that she stumbled back against her father's desk, painfully striking one hip
against the sharp corner. She looked at him, frightened almost past thought
now, as he coolly closed the door and turned the lock. Desperately, she backed
away from him, her eyes fixed in terror on his face. She couldn't seem to tear
her eyes away from him; she remembered reading somewhere that there was a snake
that fixed its victim with its magnetic gaze, holding the frightened creature
transfixed until the snake lashed out and killed it. Finally, her back touched
the wall, and suddenly he was on her.

His
muscled hands held her arms against the wall above her head, and he pinned her
to the wall with his own hard body. No man had ever touched her before, at
least no more than a hand under her elbow or a fervent handclasp. Certainly no
man had ever pressed his hard, lean body into hers. She gasped with the
indignity, and he chuckled, his breath ruffling her hair, and moved his body
against her.

"Are
you trying to crush the breath out of me?" she said tartly, determined not
to admit her fright. "I shall have 'C.S.N.' imprinted on my stomach from
your belt buckle!"

He
leaned back his head and roared with laughter. "What an absolutely
indelicate thing to say, Miss Devereaux."

"I'm
too angry to be delicate," she snapped.

He
looked down at her, his eyes roaming her face. His gaze rested on her lips and
he said huskily, "Have you ever been kissed, Miss Devereaux?"

"I
certainly don't intend to tell you!"

He
squeezed her wrists. "Answer me."

"Yes!"

He
eased the pressure on her wrists. "Good and thoroughly kissed?"

She
blushed and said primly, "I haven't the slightest idea what you
mean."

"I'm
sure you don't," he said, and his lips descended on hers.

It
seemed to her as if he wanted to devour her mouth, for his lips crushed hers,
forcing them apart. She struggled indignantly against him; never had she
received more than a chaste peck on the lips. He was bruising her with the
violence of his kiss. Suddenly his tongue darted into her mouth, and she gasped
in surprise. What was he doing to her! Her mind reeled; it was barbaric: the
kiss seemed to go on forever, his tongue probing, caressing. Then his tongue
retreated and the pressure of his lips lightened, and she thought he was
through, but he did not end his kiss, only buried his lips in hers once again.
It was a shock again, though less this time, but she felt dizzy and faint with
his kisses. Would he never stop? His hot breath seared her cheek; his mouth
seemed to suck all of the breath out of her. Then suddenly his mouth left her.