I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (30 page)

“But what does it mean?”

“I don’t know yet.” The earl’s voice was clipped. He was clearly tired of not knowing things. He looked at his ale, realized he’d drained it, fussed with the tankard instead. The sun was lowering into the sea. The sunset was of the gaudy citrus colored variety. The sky looked incongruously cheerful, like a circus tent.

“Miss Redmond?” the earl asked suddenly.

She looked up at him expectantly.

“What did the barmaid say to you when she took you away?”

Bloody hell.

Lavay rotated his head slowly toward the earl in surprise. Then toward her. She was confronted with two pairs of suspicious, unsympathetic, unyielding eyes.

“Apart from ‘mon dieu’ and ‘je regrette’?” she said lightly.

But he knew. He must have known. So happy, he’d said to her in the garden. Almost wistfully. Anyone could see it. And likely he’d seen her face light up again when Polly spoke to her of Lyon.

What use am I to Lyon if I can’t remain inscrutable?

She remained tight-lipped. She could do that much for Lyon.

“Your brother no longer fears you’re my doxie, does he, Miss Redmond?” He sounded almost ironically amused. But there wasn’t a shred of warmth in his voice. She didn’t answer. Lavay looked from one to the other. Clearly disappointed there would be no grand pantomime or ambush this evening.

“No,” she admitted weakly.

“But perhaps we ought to go to La Rochelle,” she added, when it was clear Flint and Lavay were only going to stare at her with cold and faintly surprised eyes. They were remembering that, despite her plethora of charms, she was essentially the enemy. And still she couldn’t resist making a point.

“You may be forced to consider, Lord Flint, that it’s not just robbing and sinking. That maybe he has a plan that isn’t entirely sinister.”

They stared at her.

“And…how would that matter to our mission, Miss Redmond?” Lavay asked politely, finally. She saw the earl’s mouth twitch at the corner in appreciation. She fell silent again.

Something shifted in the earl’s expression. She suspected he was forcibly recalibrating his own sanity. Perhaps he wondered how on earth he could lose sleep over desiring a woman who was determined to free a murderous pirate. The straightening of his spine was a way to impose a subtle distance.

And then we are agreed on the distance, Captain, she thought. Relieved. Odd that relief should feel so bleak, however.

“Of course we shall go to La Rochelle.” He ironically lifted his empty tankard to her. He sounded like a man determined to win no matter the cost.

Chapter 19

I n solidarity with Violet’s mood, the weather was fitful and uneasy the moment they sailed from Brest. A blue sky was streaked in strange shreds of clouds on the first day; on the next, alarmingly dense fog gave way to glassy clear skies in the afternoon. It was still a sharp, breathless pleasure to emerge from the galley to the deck to absolute uncertainty of the weather, to the changeable vastness of the sea and sky.

Unsurprisingly, there were no serendipitous meetings with the earl on deck. Oh, she saw him. Twice. Briefly. Rather like spotting a ghostly galleon sailing on the far horizon. If he saw her, he convincingly pretended he did not. He was a man of formidable discipline, after all, and likely he’d managed by now to corral his sanity and categorize her as inconvenient cargo, undesirable, untouchable, given his mission.

Lavay still dutifully promenaded her about deck twice each day. But even his charm had become rote and distracted; he was warier of her now, too. But according to Hercules, Captain Flint was spreading tension like a contagion among the crew, pushing all of them to keep The Fortuna sailing as swiftly as they safely could. Both Hercules and Violet were silently aware of the steadily eroding stores of grain and potatoes and cabbage, and Hercules, out of loyalty, remained close-lipped about it.

In La Rochelle, the captain would likely need to do some more of his nimble maneuvering to keep his crew paid and fed for another week.

A week beyond that and things would become a little dire.

All eyes were on La Rochelle.

On the third day Violet emerged from the galley to find the sky gray and leaden, sagging beneath the weight of ominous clouds. Below the sea was flat and lightless; it simmered and foamed like a cauldron.

She was a country girl. She recognized the makings of a storm when she saw one. She took a deep breath of the crackling air as a hot wind whipped at her dress and threatened to yank her hair from its pins. She put her hands up to rescue it. She didn’t dislike the impending wildness.

Suddenly, as though she’d never disturbed a moment of his sleep, as though she’d sat across from him in the mess for the past two nights while he forked her labored-over potatoes into his mouth rather than avoiding her entirely, the earl was next to her within three emphatic strides. If he’d been ready to speak, the sight of her stopped him.

The wind whipped his hair into absurd spikes and turned his shirt soufflé. She stared at him.

He stared at her.

How foolish I am, she thought, with sudden frightening clarity. He was so much more real than everything else around him. I only feel real when I’m near him. In that odd moment, everything that had come before him seemed like a dim dream.

She suspected everything that came after him would seem that way, too. She was already ruined.

And with the realization came the strange sense of falling and falling, exhilaration and despair. Unfair. A word he would have mocked.

Her heart instantly hammered away at her.

He still looked weary; the hollows beneath his eyes had deepened. Her impulse was to reach up and smooth them out. She wondered if he would nip off her fingers if she tried it. His demeanor certainly suggested something of the sort.

She wondered what he saw in her face. When he spoke, she sensed the effort that went into keeping his tone neutral. “We’ve a storm coming on fast. Go below, Miss Redmond, and stay below until I tell you it’s safe to emerge.”

It was a moment before she recovered from simply hearing his voice; she savored it. His meaning registered belatedly. “But I’ve seen storms before, Captain. Perhaps I can be of some—”

“Do not argue with me. Go. Below. Miss Redmond.” Urgency crackled from him. His patience was clearly stretched so taut the breeze would pluck a note from it any second. She recoiled. She knew she had no right to feel wounded, but his lashing words made her breathless. She took a few steps toward the ladder. Then stubbornly turned to him.

“But how long will it be dangerous to—”

He pivoted and shouted across the deck, making her jump. “Mr. Corcoran! Will you please escort Miss Redmond below to her cabin and ensure she stays there, and return to the deck immediately? We’ll need all hands on deck for this one.”

“Aye, Captain!” Corcoran’s big boots thumped hurriedly across the deck. And the earl took one last long unreadable look at her. He drew in a breath, visibly squared his shoulders.

Then whirled and stalked off muttering, “Bloody Bay of Biscay. Bloody pirates. Bloody, bloody, bloody—”

She couldn’t hear the last word. She suspected it was woman.

But Corcoran got her by the elbow so quickly she gasped. He summarily steered her to the ladder as she looked over her shoulder and all but clucked her down it, like a hen with a chick. She protested and questioned the whole way. “But what is the trouble with the Bay of Biscay, Mr. Corcoran? Is it always dangerous? It was so calm when we set out.”

Will Flint be in danger?

“Well, the Bay of Biscay, she’s a temperamental bit o’ water, ain’t she, Miss Redmond?” he said soothingly. “Nivver fear. We’ve sailed in all manner of weather, aye? ’Tis a storm coming on, ’tis all. The captain, ’e knows ’is ship. Just do as ’e says and ye’ll be all right.”

But he was clearly already distracted, too, and his grim expression made lies of his soothing words.

“But how do you know this storm will be so very terrible? I’ve seen storms before, Mr. Corcoran. “What should I—”

“You should stay in ’ere, as the captain says.” As if this was all anyone ever needed to know. He opened the door to the cabin, guided her in, and released her elbow.

“Dinna leave the cabin now, Miss Redmond, until ye’ve been told that ye can. Captain’s orders. And dinna worry.”

And with a quick insincere smile and one final tip of the cap he closed the door hard, and she heard his boots slam, hurrying for the deck.

She stared at the closed door. The feeling was all too familiar: she was being collected, herded like a pet.

Funny how there was nothing like being ordered not to worry to inspire worry. Through the window she could see the sky was just a shade lighter than charcoal and the light peculiarly, eerily flat. It was just past noon, but the clouds purely united against allowing daylight through.

It was certainly threatening. It was not officially a storm. Yet. Very well, then. If she were to be imprisoned for the duration, perhaps she would read. The first real swell began so gradually as she crossed the room to fetch a novel she’d borrowed from the captain that she almost mistook it for her own breathing. She settled on the bed, and within moments realized the bed—the ship—was rising and rising and rising and still rising. Vertigo set in.

Suddenly the heavy bed slid forward, nearly bucking her off.

She leaped from it and stared at it as if it had suddenly become mammalian. Staggered backward warily.

And that’s when thunder exploded the ship.

That’s how it felt. The sound was apocalyptic. She gasped and flung her arms up over her head, crouching in terror while The Fortuna heaved and shuddered like a whipped dog. The sound echoed and echoed intolerably, dwindling to a growl.

Lightning seared the flat slate sky white. It left her cabin night black by contrast. Burnt shadows of her furnishings floated before her eyes. Wind howled in the corridor now, and her door rattled, as though some great creature fleeing the storm longed to join her inside. The ship lurched sickeningly again, and she wrapped arms around her stomach, before it rose and rose and rose at the mercy of a monstrous swell.

Before she could grasp onto something, anything, for balance, she was sent wheeling like a drunk backward against the bed. When the ship dropped hard into the trough of the wave she toppled backward on the mattress.

Lightning scorched the room white again.

And then, like fistful after fistful of nails hurled at the window, came the rain. Relentless. How could the window withstand it?

How could anyone stay upright on deck?

A very pure almost cleansing fear took her out of her body for an instant: The earl had talked about clinging to a shred of exploded ship in the aftermath of a storm. She squeezed her eyes closed.

She clung to the counterpane with clammy hands. The air was dense, but fear chilled her; her teeth chattered. Her trunk shifted and slid at an angle to her, tipped, as an angry wave lifted them; she watched it warily.

And to think she had always found the unknown and the uncertain exhilarating. Beneath her the belly of the sea heaved and then lifted the ship higher and higher…and then dropped it. For a bizarre moment she was a little airborne. Her stomach seemed to land hard before she did. She tried not to retch. The chamber pot had slid clean across the room. Clanking to a halt against the far wall.

She thought of Flint tumbling and tumbling across the deck of a ship—

Later she couldn’t remember going out of the door. She could recall fighting through the passage, hands against the wall for balance in the bucking ship, wind howling in gusts, finding every available cranny. She seized the ladder up the foc’sle, but even that was woozily snatched from of her grip as the ship tossed at the mercy of a wave. She got herself up with some effort. On deck, she kept a ferocious grip upon the ladders as a violent wind lashed her. Waves were monstrous black walls all around them. Sideways rain soaked her to the bone in gasping seconds, stinging her skin.

Sweet Jesus.

Where was he? Dear God, where?

“Violet! What the bloody hell are you doing?”

She could just see him through the wall of rain and the tangle of hair suddenly in her eyes. Alive. Roaring.

Furious.

The ship dipped sickeningly. She scrabbled for balance, her feet skidding uselessly. Through the slanting bars of rain she saw him, soaked to the skin, hair plastered against his skull, as they struggled to keep the sails up, the yardarms from snapping.

“Go BELOW!” he bellowed. “I told you to stay—”

She screamed her reply, and yet she could scarcely hear her own voice over the elements. The wind caught her voice, turned it into a shredded, faint thing. “I was afrai—”

The wave came from everywhere and nowhere. A dark monster arcing over the deck, she was helpless to do anything but watch it come inexorably down. With an effortless brute power it slammed her legs out from beneath her and tore her grip loose from the ladder rail. Her scream was lost to the wind and roar of the sea, as she tumbled over and over and over again and again.

She landed hard. Breath was knocked from her. Her head spun; she wasn’t certain she was upright and flat against the deck or even alive. It was everywhere dark. She pushed her hair away from her eyes, which solved the darkness a little. She was on a firm surface; she struggled to stand. Was she still on deck? Her lungs still wouldn’t fill with air; and her wet gown trapped her legs.

“Violet!”

Flint was screaming. She heard terror in it, and even in the midst of her own suffering his ripped at her. And yet his voice was scarce more than a ringing in her ear. Maybe she was dead already.

She pushed her hair away from her eyes and the deck came into view. A mast. How had she wound up near the wheel? She coughed.

“Flint!”

She couldn’t get the word out; her lungs were still struggling to refill with air. The ship tipped and heaved like a toy, and she slid again, her hands futilely scrabbling for purchase, for anything, anything near to hold fast to.