Midnight Mistress (25 page)

“Lie still, idiot, or I’ll knock you senseless.”

She froze. Her rescuer was behind her, pulling her toward the ship with long strokes, but she didn’t need to see his face to know it would be creased by a livid scar. Salt tears mixed with salt water as she pleaded one last time. “Please, let me go.”

“Never,” he growled, his low words a promise and a threat. “You’re mine. Forever.”

“Is he gonna kill her?” Jamie asked quietly.

“C’est possible,”
Raoul acknowledged with a shrug. It lacked an hour until dawn, and since Connor had brought the girl back on board they’d heard nothing but roars and curses coming from behind the closed door of the captain’s cabin. He knew Juliana was all right—at least, she had been all right when he’d wrapped her in thick wool blankets and carried her into the cabin. She’d been spent in body and spirit, but she’d still gifted him with a smile so luminous that it almost outshone Mademoiselle Evans’s—a smile that had turned to ash when Connor stormed into the room and ordered him out. “I must admit that I have never seen the captain looking quite so—how you say—bubbling.”

“Boiling,” the Barnacle supplied from the hatch, where he stood with a group of anxious tars. “The cap’n looked fair ready to spit the little lady for ‘is supper. But that might not be such a rum thing. My missus says a man can do with a bit a stirring up once in a while.”

Thoughtfully, Raoul twisted his mustache. “Your good wife must have a touch of French in her. But enough. We have a ship to sail, and the dawn will be here too soon. To your hammocks, my friends.
Allons-y!
”

As the men reluctantly shuffled away, Jamie tugged on Raoul’s sleeve. “But I should stay here. I’m her watch. What if she tries to escape again?”

“She will not escape tonight. Neither, I think, will our good captain.”

Jamie scratched his chin. “I don’t understand.”

“You will. In a few years.” He lifted the child in his arms and carried him down the hallway. Behind them another roar erupted from the room, but Raoul wasn’t concerned. Instead, his broad grin grew noticeably wider. “Multitudes of
l’enfants
, I think.”

For Connor, seeing Juliana fall into the black waves, knowing that the sea could swallow her in a heartbeat, had given a new meaning to terror. Having her alive—even if she despised him—was the only thing that made his own life worth living. The worst moments of his life had been the frantic, searching minutes when he’d thought he’d lost her forever. The best had been when he dragged her sputtering, kicking, furious body into the longboat and knew she was going to live.

Of course, since that treasured moment, he’d come close to throwing the ungrateful chit right back over the side.

“And another thing,” Connor bellowed as he paced the room. “A dozen of my best men jumped into the water to save you. A dozen! You put every one of those men’s lives in danger with your foolish act!”

From her strategic beachhead at the end of his bed, Juliana pulled one of the woolen blankets closer around her bare shoulders. In the lonely light of the room’s single candle, she gave Connor a murderous glare. “I’m sorry that I endangered your
men
,” she stated, clearly not at all sorry that she had endangered him. “But it was not a foolish act. I was trying to escape. As a prisoner it was my duty to—”

“To hell with duty. You could have been killed!”

Juliana raised her chin disdainfully, her aristocratic hauteur somewhat impaired by the fact that at the moment she closely resembled a bedraggled water rat. “ ’Twas my duty—something a blackguard like you knows nothing about.”

“Don’t talk to me of duty, lady. I spent years dutifully keeping your sweet little behind safe from harm—too many years to let you waste your life on an idiot attempt to reach one of the convoy ships. You must have seen they were out of range. God’s teeth, I thought you had more sense than that.”

“I thought you had better sense, sir. My drowning would have silenced my tongue and spared you a trip to the gallows.”

He stopped pacing. Hell, what was he doing? She was on the edge of exhaustion, and he could think of nothing to do but rant at her like an angry fishwife. He went to the bed and reached out to comfort her, stifling the pain that struck him as she shrank away from his touch. “I am not going to hurt you.”

Her unaristocratic sailor’s oath showed that she didn’t trust his veracity.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he repeated carefully, trying to school his voice into gentleness. ’Twas like trying to turn a hoary-hided humpback into an angelfish. “You’re chilled to the bone. I only want to remove these wet blankets so that you will not catch your death of cold.”

“ ’Tis your fault. You made me wet.”

He let out a long breath, knowing she couldn’t possibly understand the licentious images that statement brought to
mind. Drawing on his nearly exhausted supply of decency, he clenched his teeth and continued. “I’m taking the blankets. That’s an order.”

Her suspicious glare showed that she doubted him entirely, but she did allow him to remove the blankets. Without the heavy wrap she looked impossibly fragile, with her still-damp shift plastered to her slender form. For a moment the years rolled back, and he saw her again as the child he’d rescued from the Thames, the lace-and-satin miracle whose green eyes had looked past his filthy appearance and made him remember that he was still a human being. He’d saved her life that day, but she’d saved his soul. She’d become his friend, his joy, his guiding star, and he’d worshiped her with all the fire in his young heart—

His memories disintegrated as his gaze skimmed her front and saw the dark nipple beneath her wet shift. She was no child. He was no innocent boy. And the fire seething in his gut wasn’t one of worship. With clumsy haste he tucked the bedsheets around her and practically bolted for the door.
I will return her to her family untouched, even if I have to take a bath in the Arctic Ocean. Every day. Every hour
.

“Connor.”

Sweet Lord, she could make him hard just by saying his name. He stopped, but did not turn around. “Aye?”

He heard her slip from the bed and felt her approach. Lust tore through him as he imagined her padding toward him with innocent, coltish grace. Arctic baths.
Every minute
.

She drew in a hesitant breath. “I know you have chosen … an ungallant path. I know you have chosen gold over honor. But I have seen the respect in your men’s eyes, and I have watched your kindness toward Jamie. And you showed … well, surprisingly selfless bravery in rescuing me. There is still—there must be—some goodness in your heart.”

Her uncertain voice brushed like silk against his ruined soul. He gripped the door handle, sinking into a torture
greater than any he’d experienced on the
Absalom
. “You are mistaken, my lady.”

He heard her huff of annoyance and could almost see her planting her hands on her hips. Despite his torture, the image brought a smile to his lips.

“You are monstrously pigheaded. Listen to me. It is not too late. There is still time for you to make amends. When we sail into Lisbon harbor you can hand the dispatches over to the magistrate. If you confess your crime and throw yourself on the mercy of the court, you might escape with your life.”

And the sea would lose its salt. “ ’Tis not likely. Laws are for the heavy funded or high friended. Who would stand for me in this Lisbon court?”

“I would.”

He wished he’d starved on the London docks. He wished he’d drowned with the
Absalom
. Anything would be better than this killing sweetness stabbing through his heart. Bitterness for what could never be rose in his throat. His words came out in shattered pieces. “I … thank you. But it is too late. It was too late years ago.”

He started to press down on the door handle, but stopped. He heard nothing, felt nothing, yet every instinct in his body went on alert. He spun around and raised his arm—and caught her wrist inches before she brought the last of his crystal glasses crashing down on his head. He easily twisted her arm, ignoring her cry of pain as the heavy glass thumped to the wooden floor and rolled into a corner. Then he yanked her ruthlessly against him so that he could stare down into her luminous, traitorous eyes. “So this is how you meant to stand up for me.”

“I did not. I would have helped you, but you chose—Please, you are hurting me.”

“I haven’t even begun.” His eyes glittering with lethal promise. “You called me a betrayer—well, Lady High and Mighty, it seems you’re a traitor too. But of course, my kind
doesn’t matter to the likes of you. Your breeding is too refined for dirt like me.”

“That’s not true,” she cried. “I … I cared for you. Very much.”

He circled her waist and pulled her against him, grinning wickedly at her shocked gasp when she felt the hard evidence of his lust. “I care for you, too.
Very
much,” he mocked. “But I draw the line at trading my body for favors. I sell secrets for gold—but I’m not a professional like you high-born dells, who are ready to do any randy fop for a lofty title and a—”

Her fierce slap knocked him silent—for a moment. He rubbed the livid welt and smiled with malice. “That … was a mistake.”

“You are a shameless cur,” she cried, struggling against his hold. “You have no decency, no honor. I shall be glad when they hang you. I hate you. I despise you. I—”

His mouth fused to hers in a crushing lass.

His kiss was as ruthless as his grip. There was no love in it, not a trace of regard they’d once shared. It was a bold, carnal seduction, nothing more. But it was Connor who was doing the seducing, and Juliana couldn’t have stopped wanting it any more than she could have stopped her heart from beating.

Desire that had been building inside her for weeks raged in her like a furnace. She didn’t want this. She couldn’t want this. But as Connor’s hot, thorough caress moved from her lips to the sensitive lobe of her ear, she knew he’d already won the battle that had barely begun.

“I hate you,” she breathed weakly.

“Yes I know,” he growled as he laved moist, searing kisses down the column of her throat.

“I mean it. I despise—oh, Connor!” She sank her fingers in his hair and brought his mouth to hers, eager for more.

For a thousand lonely nights Connor had dreamed of having her in his arms, savaging her with all the aching hunger in his damned, burning soul. His tongue spiraled
down into the sweet, wet heat of her mouth. He buried his fingers in the abundance of her hair and held her fast for the plundering assault of his lass. He feasted on her lips, eyelids, and chin before lingering in the pounding hollow of her throat. He could taste the salt on her skin, a remembrance of the death he’d narrowly saved her from. The naked fear of that moment returned, stoking the already white-hot flames of his desire.
If she’d died … if I’d lost her forever …

His mouth took hers, drowning her in a caress far darker and hungrier than the ocean beneath them.

She was fire. In all her dreams, she’d never imagined the deep, coiling heat that pulsed from her core. It was nothing like the tepid fondlings of her admirers. She buried her fingers in his chest hair, loving the way he was made, gorging on his strength and power. For the first time she knew what a woman was made for—what she was made for. Pleasure. Seduction.
Connor
.

“Juliana,” he whispered against her throat, his husky voice seducing her every bit as much as his hungry caress. “I need you. God, how I need you.”

Her blood bubbled like molten lava. His hands were everywhere, coaxing and fondling her yielding body with the same brutal mastery as his wicked kiss. He was a villain and a traitor, and she wanted to hate him with every fiber of her being. But he was also Connor—her Connor—the man she loved with every broken piece of her heart. Her duty to her country vied with her love of the man, the two forces warring in her soul. She leaned against his chest, exhausted by war and passion. “Connor … you are tearing me … apart.”

His caresses ceased. Slowly, as if every muscle in his body ached, he raised his head and stared down into her eyes. The pain in them ripped her soul. He dropped his arms and turned away. “Forgive me, my lady. I will not trouble you again.”

“Connor. Please … I want to … but how can I love you
when you have given me every reason to distrust you? How can I believe in you?”

“You did once,” he offered quietly. “Without thought or reason, you believed in me without question, and trusted me with your heart.”

“Yes, and you shattered it! You asked me to marry you when you already had another
lover
.”

Connor froze. “What are you talking about?”

“You heard me,” she stated as she went back to the bed, and slumped down on to the edge with barely contained misery. “I know you loved another.”

“Juliana, I fully admit that I’ve done a number of despicable things in my life, but when I offered for you I was pure.”

He’d meant to allay her doubts. Instead the misery in her eyes increased. “Save your pretty speeches. After you left the house that night, I followed you to your rooms. I was … was going to run away with you.”