His Wicked Kiss (33 page)

She spotted Jack on the distant forecastle, barking orders at his men. She followed his upward gaze and spied a number of sailors perched aloft, somehow wedged into place despite the pendulum like rocking of the skeletal masts.

They were working one of the horizontal spars free from the masts, lowering it slowly by a system of ropes and pulleys. She had no idea what that was all about, but she had to find the Nipper—and the wayward dog.

“
Phineas
!
” The bitter wind tried to rip her voice away. Searching the decks and praying the little boy had not been washed overboard already, she suddenly saw him. “Phineas!”

He had hunkered down under one of the sturdy wooden racks that secured the lifeboats in the ship’s waist. He had managed to grab Rudy and was hugging the wriggling dog in his arms.

Eden
waded toward him through ankle-deep water, snow clinging in her hair. She shouted for him to come out from under there, but again, the brutal wind snatched her words away.

She saw he was too petrified to move and realized grimly that she was going to have to make her way to his side, pry him bodily out of his hiding place, and bring him back belowdecks herself.

She brushed the stinging salt out of her eyes, braced herself, and went to collect her errant charge.

“What the ‘ell are you doing here?” a deep voice barked at her.

She looked over and saw Mr. Brody draped in a black oilskin like the one Jack wore. The master-at-arms came trudging toward her.

Jack heard Trahern shout. He looked in question toward his lieutenant on the quarterdeck. Trahern pointed at the ship’s waist.

Jack followed the gesture, saw
Eden
, and let out a curse. What in blazes was she doing on deck at a time like this? She was walking toward the lifeboats—then Jack spotted the boy and dog. Moving around the wheel, he narrowed his eyes against the lashing rain. He might have panicked with all three of them in such danger, but Brody was already on the scene.

The grizzled old master-at-arms took
Eden
by the elbow and hurried to help her collect the boy. Brody got a rope and looped it around the dog’s neck, tugging the crazed bull-terrier toward the hatch that led back down to safety.

A step behind him, Eden pulled Phineas by his hand. The boy must have gotten away from her, but she appeared to have gotten the situation under control.

He waved his t
hank
s to Brody, who was in the process of escorting woman and child back below, then shook his head with a harrumph.

Just as he moved back to take the wheel again, he heard a sickening crack from above.

The men aloft yelled.

They caught the spar, t
hank
God, before it fell—but a thick, tangled knot of sheets and tackle came free without warning, swinging down across the decks.

Jack watched in horror, unable to stop it, as the loose rigging arced across the ship’s waist and slammed into
Eden
, sweeping her over the bulwark.

He roared, already in motion.

For a second, she clung to the loosed shrouds, flapping free over the rail, a look of stunned terror on her face. The Nipper ran toward her.

Then a powerful swell rose up and engulfed her, greenish gray, stone-colored: Her face vanished under the wave.

When it receded, the wet, heavy rigging still remained, tangled over the side of the ship, but it was empty now.

She was gone, taken by the sea.

Jack gave the helmsman the wheel, threw off his oilskin and leaped off the fo’c‘sle, running toward the leeward rail. He roared at the boy to get below and spotted
Eden
in the water, struggling to keep her face above the waves.

The chaotic surface currents were already drawing her farther away from his ship, and the cold would claim her within minutes.

“Give me a rope!” he screamed.

“The boats, sir! Shall we lower ‘em?”

“No time!”

Trahern handed him a rope, which Jack tied around his waist and knotted with swift expertise, jerking a nod at a nearby block and tackle. At once, Ballast ran the other end of the rope through the pulley.

“When I signal you, pull us up, and not a second before.”

“Aye, sir!” the big gunner vowed. Several men gathered behind him to help lend muscle to the task.

“What if you can’t get to her, Jack?” Trahern demanded. “Five minutes, and I’m pulling you in.”

“Don’t you dare pull me in ‘til I have her.”

“Jack, you’ll both die—”

“That’s an order! I’m coming back with her or not at all.” Ignoring the unsteady bobbing and weaving of the wood beneath him, he climbed up onto the rail and dove off.

It was a long, cold drop down into the sea. The waves embraced him with a frigid clutch.

Jack shot to the surface again with a mighty gasp for air. The cold seemed to suck the breath right out of his chest, and he was painfully aware of the sea’s sublime power; he was at its mercy now along with
Eden
.

They both could live or die as the waves saw fit.

Treading water, he turned this way and that, but he could not see her through the dividing crests of icy water.

“
Eden
!”

He couldn’t find her.

He glanced back at his men, watching from the rails. They pointed frantically to his larboard. He turned.

“
Eden
!” He began swimming hard in that direction until he caught a glimpse of her.

“Jack!”

He heard her shriek his name before another frigid wave drowned out her voice.

Jack swam harder with powerful kicks, his shoulders already aching from fighting the wheel for the past hour. At least now he was going in the right direction, but if he didn’t reach her momentarily, the cold would lull her struggles with its killing lethargy and he knew that she would drown.

The next glimpse of her showed him a terrified, bedraggled girl whose face held a sickly white pallor.

A girl who had tried to tell him that she loved him.

Her dark skirts were billowed around her, the heavy material that he had insisted on for her warmth threatening to pull her under.

“Hold on,
Eden
!” he choked out. “I’m coming!” Jack refused to admit the knowledge that he was beginning to tire. No, he was not as young as he’d once been, closer to forty than he was to twenty. The cold and power of the
North Atlantic
in her wrath could suck the strength right out of a man, and he had been fighting this beast of a storm since last night.

God, make me strong enough. Take me if You have to, but don’t let me lose her.

The waves were not so violent if you didn’t fight them, she had realized.

Their motion had become almost soothing, like swinging slowly in a big hammock made of ice. A moment ago, she had been so freezing cold that her skin hurt as if she had been burned, but it had passed and she felt much better now.

The sharp edge of the pain had begun to dull. She supposed she must be going numb, in addition to having swallowed a good deal of vile seawater. Through her shroud of sleet and snow,
The Winds of Fortune
seemed so very far away.

The last thing
Eden
remembered before the cold stole her senses was Jack reaching her in the icy water, his arms wrapping around her with a steely grip. Her head fell onto his massive shoulder. So warm.

Yet he was trembling, too.

“I’ve got you, sweet. Hold onto me. Stay awake,
Eden
!”

“Don’t let me go, Jack,” she murmured.

“I’ve got you.”

Pulling her closer, Jack saw his men throw down a few life-rings from the very closet in which they had found their stowaway. Jack intercepted one of the floating cork rings and put it under her while Trahern quickly lowered the bosun’s chair to pull them up with.

Holding on to
Eden
with singular determination, he looked up and waved his arm, signaling the crew. Praying that
Eden
remained at least marginally alert, he held her tightly with one arm around her waist while he gripped the rope with the other, one knee balanced on the wooden seat of the bosun’s chair.

At his signal, the line of men up on deck heaved in unison, drawing them swiftly through the waves. Then, as the hull of
The Winds of Fortune
towered over them, the men heaved on the ropes again.

Jack tautened every muscle in his body to brace for the strain; he shifted
Eden
onto his shoulder and clamped her to him as the men on deck lifted them out of the freezing water into the bitter wind.

For a few precarious seconds, they ascended on the bosun’s chair, swinging and twisting over the churning waves below. They flew up over the rails of
The Winds of Fortune
, past the tangled mass of rigging that had struck her, and landed heavily in a heap on deck like the blasted catch of the day.

“
Eden
!”

Jack laid her down, cradling her head on the deck as gently as possible as he knelt beside her. Several of the men were already bringing blankets.

“She’s not breathing.”

Her lips were blue. Jack gripped her bodice and tore it open, exposing her new-made corset. In their reverence for the brave girl who had won over the whole crew, the men averted their eyes. Jack wrenched the corset’s lacings loose, pumped on her chest, and she coughed.

He turned her onto her side as she spit up the seawater she had ingested, hacking and coughing for air.

When it was clear that she was breathing again, and conscious, he sat back on his calves in a kneeling position. His shoulders dropped, though his chest was still heaving.

He lifted his face to the marble sky, his hand still resting on her hip. He could have wept. He closed his eyes, shaking with cold and the aftermath of pure terror.

“I’m s-sorry, Jack,” she chattered, lifting her stricken gaze to his with great, green, woeful eyes. “I m-more t-trouble than I’m w-worth.”

“Stop talkin’ nonsense,” he chided gruffly as his heart clenched. He scooped her up in his arms and hugged her to him for all he was worth. “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered.
The choice of whether or not to dare love her had nearly been taken out of his hands
.

“Oh, Jack.” She started crying.

“Shh, sweeting. I’ve got you now.” He pressed a fervent kiss to her cold forehead. A moment later, he stood up, lifting her in his arms. Holding her like the most precious treasure, he carried her back down to safety below.