Miss Antiqua's Adventure (7 page)

“I know you mean well, Mr. Vincent,” she conceded, “and I thank you for the honor you are bestowing—”

“Please spare me the proprieties!” he cut in sharply. “Your refusal is useless in any case. We shall be wed. Afterwards, you may go your own way and so long as you are discreet, I give you my word I shall not be too inquisitive a husband.”

The commanding tone annoyed her. “I am
not
marrying you!” she snapped.

“No?”

The lazy inquiry coupled with the barest arching of one dark brow had the effect of bringing an angry sheen to Antiqua’s eyes and a bright patch to each of her cheeks. “You cannot
force
me to marry you! If you stand me up before a parson, I shall stamp and scream,” she threatened with false confidence.

“You may stamp and scream all you wish, my girl, but you will still be wedded.” Vincent shrugged. “Whatever else may be said of me, it shall not be said that I am an abductor of innocents.”

“But you did not abduct me,” she reminded him. “I asked to come with you.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “My dear Brown-eyes, what actually happened does not matter at all. It is how it is perceived which counts. And I intend that ours shall be perceived as a match of the most romantical.”

The man was mad. Or . . . her gaze fell to the bottle standing beside his glass. It was now empty. Understanding crept into her eyes, and she forbore telling him that theirs would not be perceived as any such thing, for she would not make a match with him under any circumstances.

Instead, she braced her elbows upon the tabletop and, resting her chin atop the flat of her palms, inquired with lively interest, “Are you foxed, sir?”

A frown passed through his blue eyes.

Disregarding his reaction, she continued, “I must say, you don’t look the least bit castaway, but that is quite the second bottle of wine you have emptied, you know. My father would have been thoroughly disguised by the end of the first.”

“It is generally understood, my love, that I am not cup-shot until after the third bottle,” he coolly explained.

“You must be deep-cut, if you think to marry me.”

At this pronouncement, Vincent pushed back his chair and stood. “It’s time you retire. We leave early tomorrow and I’ll not be kept waiting while you sleep.”

With a hand lightly, but firmly, under her elbow, he guided her across the room, then paused at the door. By some trick of the wavering candlelight, his expression appeared softened. She swallowed in nervous anticipation as he placed two fingers beneath the curve of her chin and tilted her head up. She felt his feathery touch as heavily as if he were gripping her, locking her within his hold, and she thought, she tried not to hope, he would kiss her. Her lips quivered.

Vincent studied her shadowed eyes, her trembling mouth and felt an unexpected desire heat up within him. His face darkened as he cursed his own lack of control. She was an innocent! He would do what he knew he must, but he had not lost all honor during his years of reckless living. He would not take advantage of this naive young lady. He withdrew his fingers from the softness of her skin.

“Do not worry,” he said, his voice oddly roughened. “I shall make no husbandly demands upon you. I offer you only the protection of my name, such as it is.”

Not trusting her voice, Antiqua returned no reply before slipping quickly up the stairs. She shut the door of her chamber hard, but that failed to shut out the image of his handsome face. She leaned against the wood and tried frantically to understand why his merest touch, look, presence could so disconcert her. She berated herself for responding to his practiced charm and reminded herself that spies must be very learned in the art of making love to a woman. No doubt he merely meant to retrieve the information he knew she possessed, even if he had to wed her to get it. The thought burst upon her as wildly as her pounding pulse, and her ready temper exploded.

That she had nearly forgotten his perfidy in the face of his overwhelming attraction added shame to her fury, increasing it to a white heat. Antiqua vowed to never again succumb to his charm, be it ever so beguiling. She would outwit him, she would!

“Why, Miss, whatever are you frowning for?”

Antiqua focused on her maid standing near the bed. “That man—that man means to
marry
me!” she announced in a voice filled with loathing.

“I knew him for a right one,” Lucy said with a shrewd nod of her becapped head.

“Are you mad?” Antiqua demanded, now thoroughly incensed. Striding angrily forth, she released her pent-up emotions. “Depend upon it, Lucy, he means to serve me some trick! And do not be looking down your nose like that. Oh, he made some very pretty speeches about protecting my name and saving my reputation—such a very chivalrous murderer, is he not?—but it must be that he has learned, or he suspects, that Allen gave his papers into my keeping. Perhaps he actually would marry me in an attempt to wrest them from me. I certainly would not put any wicked, devious idea past him!”

“That’s as may be, Miss,” Lucy said as she collected shawl, ribbon and dress from the floor where Antiqua had strewn them in her wrath. “But you can’t deny as how Master Vincent is in the right of it.”

Before she disappeared into a voluminous flannel nightdress, Antiqua’s mutinously extended lower lip indicated that she could, indeed, deny just that.

“You spent a full night alone with the gentleman—”

“He’s no gentleman!” came a muffled objection.

“—in his coach, and no one there to say nothing more’n words passed atween you.”

“But, indeed, there wasn’t!” Antiqua’s head emerged through the top of her nightdress and she resumed her energetic pacing.

“Yes, Miss, and so I believe. But how many fancy folk—them as don’t know your accidental ways o’ fallin’ into trouble as well as me—how many of
them
do you think will believe that?”

The hostile striding ceased; an arrested expression covered Antiqua’s face. She subsided onto a chair and meekly allowed Lucy to brush out her hair. The methodic stroking seemed to massage her soul, for at length she said placidly, “I cannot marry such a man, no matter how ostracized I may be, Lucy. I really don’t believe he wants to be wedded either, but needs to control me because of the information I possess. We’ll simply carry on with our original plan and escape from Vincent once he has landed us in England.”

Misgiving figured largely in Lucy’s reception of this scheme, but Antiqua no longer evidenced the desire for argumentation. She was taken up with visions of bringing Vincent to his knees. A thrilling sense of excitement coursed through her as she crawled over the top of a quilted coverlet to press herself into a mound of awaiting pillows. To best an infamous traitor would indeed be exhilarating!

Chapter 7

She woke as grey as the morning mist. A dreary drizzle veiled the world beyond her window, precisely matching her own dismal mood. As she donned her serviceable blue muslin, Antiqua tried to purge the disquieting dregs of her dreams from her thoughts.

Through the long night, Thomas Allen’s death-mask had haunted her while she was locked in an impassioned embrace with Jack Vincent, an embrace which led over and over again to a tantalizing kiss . . .

That she found it tantalizing merely to dream of Vincent’s kiss did nothing for her waking humor. Antiqua had snapped at her maid three times before a tall pot of steaming hot chocolate arrived to revive her spirits. She offered her sincere apology to Lucy and was sitting by herself sipping the last of the cocoa when Lucy reappeared carrying an enormous bandbox. It said a great deal for the state of Antiqua’s mind that she spared her maid only a cursory glance over her cup before resuming her gloomy study of the etching on the silver cocoa pot.

A brown cloak of heavy woolen covered Lucy’s shapely figure and a large bonnet with impossibly bright yellow ribbons perched proudly atop her red curls. A broad smile stretched over her mouth as she set the box upon the bed and lifted the lid.

“Just wait ’til you see this, Miss Antiqua! It’ll pick your chin up off the floor or m’name’s not Summers!”

Antiqua did pick her chin up long enough to glance in Lucy’s direction and thus saw her maid reach into the box and spin around to display her surprise. She held a modish cherry red pelisse so stunning that several seconds lapsed before Antiqua was able to speak. Her eyes widened as they took in the gold frogging running down the front, the thick black fur trimming both the collar and ankle-length hem. Then they flew back to Lucy’s face.

“What on earth! Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“Oh and Miss, just look at this!” Lucy ignored the ominous note of Antiqua’s question. She laid the pelisse down and withdrew from the box two items which she presented in either hand. The first was a huge square fur muff, which when held at the waist would surely reach to one’s knees; the second was the most fetching hat Antiqua had ever seen, with a high, red-and-white striped crown and wide red silk ribbons.

As charming as this confection was, however, Antiqua was not to be distracted from her object. “Lucy,” she said in a foreboding tone, “where had you these things?”

The maid faltered. Hat and muff were hesitantly put forward and then back. “It was Master Vincent as said—”

“I knew it!”

Lucy finished what she had started. “As said you ought to be well protected on the crossing, what with the cold weather lingering so long this spring.”

“But I cannot accept such a gift!” Antiqua declared.

“Why not?” inquired a deep voice behind her, freezing her where she stood.

Antiqua felt Vincent come up behind her and drew a quick breath. “Because it passes all bounds!”

“As my
fiancée
, Brown-eyes, your acceptance of such a practical gift is quite within bounds, I assure you.”

Her eyes flared at his lazy tone, but she said nothing as she slowly pivoted to face him.

Vincent’s gaze traveled leisurely over the blue dress she had worn the night they met. “I believe . . . yes, I am certain,” he drawled, “that I much prefer your previous style of leaving those buttons undone.”

Her hand darted up to the row of pearl buttons firmly fastening her gown up to her neck and her bosom swelled with indignation. A smile flashed in his sapphire eyes, evidencing his enjoyment of her wrath and incensing her further still. A nod toward Lucy brought the pelisse instantly to his hand.

With a provoking air of assurance, Vincent held the garment before the resentful young lady. She lifted her chin haughtily, but turned her back to him, letting him gently drape the pelisse over her shoulders. Antiqua would then have moved away, but he kept his hands clamped on her shoulders, forcing her to face him once more. She suffered in disdainful silence while he secured the cloak at her neck. With the lightness of a passing cloud, his fingers brushed against her skin. She fought to ignore the tingling sensation aroused by his touch. He stepped away and she sighed.

“Oooh, Miss, it’s ever so lovely,” Lucy breathed, thus deepening Antiqua’s frown.

“With the exception of the frightful scowl, Lucy, I believe you are right,” Vincent agreed.

“If you two are quite finished with discussing the merits of my appearance, may I suggest we depart?” Antiqua said in voice laden with sarcasm.

Without awaiting an answer, she swept majestically from the room, an exit only marred by her immediate return to snatch up her reticule before again marching out. As Vincent this time held the door for her, his lips curved with amusement, the effect cannot have been said to be as impressive.

It was not long before Antiqua was to be seen, complete with bonnet and muff, gracing the deck of the
Blue Angel
. Impervious to the small crew’s frank stares and curious sidelong glances, she stood watching with interest as they busied themselves with a bewildering complexity of ropes and riggings. With his dark hair blowing in the wind and his pantaloons shoved into the top of his three-quarter boots, Vincent looked every inch the captain of his ship. He had left her to Fawkes’s care while he directed his crew’s efforts, and she was bemazed to note how the rough-looking men were sent leaping in response to his quiet commands.

As his gaze swept the deck, Vincent suddenly caught sight of Antiqua staring wide-eyed at one scarred old salt swearing roundly and with vivid imagination, at a younger one.

“I suggest, Fawkes, that you see our passenger and her maid to my cabin without delay,” he said before moving on.

Antiqua had not been allowed to protest; Oliver led her down the steep companionway to the lower deck before she could do so much as mention her desire to remain above.

“’Twould only put you in the way, Miss,” he said, not unkindly. “You’re best settled down here, where ’tis warm and cozy.” He ushered her into a commodious cabin which had the understated elegance seeming to surround everything connected with Jack Vincent.

A wan-faced Lucy entered behind her mistress. She staggered directly to the bunk which occupied the length of the bulkhead and sank upon the edge with a groan, her first utterance since coming up the gangway some minutes previously. From the moment she touched the deck, she had been turning a fine shade of green.

Having known from the instant she had seen the state of the troubled waters, with the waves clawing for the sky, that Lucy would not make the crossing on her feet, Antiqua set immediately to work. She shed the detested pelisse, casting it carelessly upon a chair bolted to the floor, then collected a large ewer and placed it by the bedside in preparation for the worst. Next she removed Lucy’s cloak and forced her to lie back on the bunk.

As she undid the first few buttons of Lucy’s gown, Antiqua felt the lumpish wad reposing there. With a swift, guilty glance toward the closed door, she drew the leather bundle out of her maid’s dress. Lucy, eyes skewered shut and lips pressed tightly together, paid her not the least attention.

The ship heaved as they weighed anchor and Antiqua lurched in her progress to her cloak. With a smile of satisfaction, she slipped the packet securely within the lining of her muff. Fighting her own squeamish feeling by then, she weaved her way back to Lucy.