My Runaway Heart (29 page)

For a fleeting moment he stared at her, his gaze moving
over her as if ensuring that she was safe, his trembling hand grazing the
painful knot above her temple where she'd hit her head. Then he shoved her
almost roughly away from him. Yet his shift from poignant gentleness to harsh
treatment of her wasn't half as jarring as the agony in his voice when he
spoke.

"Don't . . . don't go up there."

"I-I won't," she murmured, shaking her head
even as she longed to reach out to him, to touch him, to console him. "I
promise, Jared. I promise."

He said no more, brushing past her and the two startled
sailors, who backed up to let him by. Jared disappeared down the darkened
passageway, disappeared just as surely as if his private anguish had swallowed
him whole. A distant door opened and then slammed shut with such violence that
Lindsay jumped.

She wanted to follow him, wanted to so desperately, but
the horror of his suffering seemed too black, too deep. Her knees giving way,
she sank to the floor and surrendered to the wrenching sobs she could hold back
no longer.

***

A full day later, Jared still hadn't emerged from Cowan's
cabin and Lindsay hadn't gone above deck.

She hadn't needed to, Walker telling her what she
wanted to know.

Dag and the three other sailors had died instantly,
a single
cannon shot snuffing out their lives and leaving a
gaping hole in the deck; their shattered bodies had been wrapped in sailcloth and
buried early that windy, rainy morning at sea.

Serving as temporary captain of the Vengeance, Walker
had also told her that Jared's last order had been that they make urgent course
to the northwest coast of Spain, since it was too dangerous, given the reward
for their capture, to venture into the Channel. For that reason, even
Roscoff
, Brittany, where they usually docked, was denied to
them. No British ships would dare proceed into the French port, but smuggling
vessels from England abounded, some whose crews might have heard of the reward.

No, it was safer for them to head to northern Spain,
which was still controlled by Napoleon's army. There they would make needed
repairs and decide what their next move would be.

He had said little else, except that they had managed
to outrun both the
Trident
and the
four other ships that had dogged them, thanks in part to the turbulent weather
that had yet to abate. Walker had been as subdued as every other man aboard,
all responding to the black pall that hung over the ship like a funeral shroud.
He had left Lindsay to her own devices, which consisted of no more than
counting the bleak hours and wondering when Jared might break his tortured
exile.

Only when supper had long passed did she finally allow
her mounting fear for him to overwhelm her.
Cooky's
several tries to get him to open the door for a meal having
failed,
she decided to make an attempt herself.

After fetching a plate of salt pork and dry biscuits,
the weather too rough to risk lighting a fire in the galley stove for a hot
meal, Lindsay thought her hammering heart might burst from her breast when she
knocked softly on Jared's door.

She wasn't surprised that no answer came, and no light
from an oil lamp shone, either, Jared shut away in complete darkness. She
almost faltered at the daunting image, but the memory of his trembling touch
last night spurred her on.

She took a deep breath and
entered,
the stillness inside the cramped first mate's cabin so great that she wondered
for an instant if Jared might have left while she'd been in the galley.

"Jared?"

This time she held her breath, her fumbling hand
finding a table by the door where she set the tray. An interminable moment
later and still no sound, she tried again.

"Jared, I've brought you some food—"

"Leave me."

She
started,
his voice so
empty, so emotionless that her heart went out to him. No, she would not leave
him! Slowly she closed the door behind her, the pitch darkness swallowing them
both.

"Jared, if you would at least drink something, I've
brought some water—"

"I've drink here enough . . . and I told you to
go."

She smelled it then, not the sweetness of brandy, but
the pungency of Scotch whiskey; she heard, too, the telling slur in his voice
that warned her she might want to flee. But she thought he might care to know
at least that Dag, and the other sailors who'd died, had been properly laid to
rest.

"I will go, Jared, but—I wasn't there myself, I
haven't been above deck—but Walker told me a prayer was said for Dag and the
others—"

"A prayer? And who might be there to hear it? A
God who could make a gentle man like Dag suffer wretchedly for three years, not
counting the ones that came before, and then allow him to be blown to pieces?
Did you know we found his severed head lodged
beneath a
cannon, his left leg hanging from the rigging?"

Jared's voice was so icily bitter that Lindsay couldn't
help but shudder. Sickened by his words, she shook her head bleakly in the
dark.

"As for the other three, there was scarcely
anything left of them to throw to the sea. But better food for fish than worms.
Perhaps it won't be long before such useless words are said over me, and that's
one prayer I know God won't hear."

"No, don't talk like that!" she blurted out,
rushing blindly forward. She gasped when she bumped into his legs hanging over
the narrow bunk, flailing her arms to find some hold to keep herself from
falling, until a strong hand suddenly clamped around her wrist to steady her.

"My blasphemy troubles you, woman? You should have
learned by now that I'm far closer to spending eternity in hell than in
heaven—damn you, leave me, Lindsay! Go!"

She almost did when he abruptly released her, his angry
words almost masking the tremor she heard in his voice, a hoarse tremor that
made her heart ache for him anew. She didn't think, only acted, reaching out to
draw him near and cradle his head against her breast, his tense resistance
melting almost at once.

"Oh, Jared, I'm so sorry about Dag, and the other
men, too. So sorry."

She heard an anguished curse as Jared's arms went
around her to hug her fiercely against him, his face buried in her shirt. Tears
stung her eyes, but she would not allow herself to cry. All she wanted right
now was to be strong for him and hold him and hope he might find some comfort,
some solace, in her arms.

Just as she felt such warmth to have his arms around
her. Lindsay closed her eyes when his hands tugged suddenly at her shirt and
then slipped beneath the cambric to encircle her waist, his fingers splayed
against her back.

His embrace became wild, desperate. She tunneled her
fingers in his hair as he buried his face deeper against her breasts, her
breath stopping when her shirt was lifted higher and his stubbly beard raked
the tender flesh of her stomach. She nearly sank to her knees when she felt a
warm wetness against her skin . . . Jared's tears. Her love for him swelled
so,
she could not stay her trembling.

As his lips moved fervently from her stomach to the
valley between her breasts, she lowered her head and kissed him, his hair
smelling of gunpowder and the sea. And when she kissed the hard plane of his
cheek, tasting the salt of his tears, she knew, no matter what happened after
tonight, she would never, never leave him.

Their breathing coming faster, his hands pressing
against her back to draw her even closer, Lindsay moaned raggedly when she felt
him draw a nipple into his mouth, the wondrous agony unlike anything she had
known. Her desire to surrender to him so searing, so intense, at that moment
that she thought she might die from sheer
longing,
she
bent her head and whispered against his hair.

"If you want me, Jared, I'll stay. Please . . .
please say you want me . . ."

Chapter 26

This time Lindsay couldn't stop the tears from falling
when Jared tensed, but he didn't pull roughly away. Instead he pushed her
slowly from the bunk until he held her at arm's length, her throat tightening
at how his hands were shaking.

"Leave me, Lindsay. Please. You deserve so much
better."

She wanted to scream, to shout it to the heavens that
he was the only one she wanted, but when he dropped his hands and rose in the
darkness to open the door, she knew she would not sway him. Not tonight.

Somehow she made herself leave him, but as the door
closed behind her and she walked numbly down the passageway to her cabin, her
hands fisted in her sodden shirt, her breasts flushed and aching from his
touch, she swore that there would come a time when he would not push her away.
Maybe he had forgotten, but she still remembered how to pray.

***

And she prayed for six days, but Jared didn't leave
Cowan's cabin, although she took heart when, the morning after she'd gone to
him, he began to accept meals from
Cooky
. The heavy
pall over the
Vengeance
remained, not
lifting even when they finally anchored off
Cabo
de
Peñas
, near the port city of
Gijón
,
Spain.

The only thing that had changed was the weather, the
storms that had plagued their crossing from Ireland giving way to an afternoon
sky of intense blue, so clear that she could see rugged mountains to the south
and the formidable Pyrenees to the west, and all from the porthole in her
cabin. She still hadn't gone above deck, honoring her promise. But her yearning
to breathe fresh air was very close to overwhelming her when
Cooky
came to ask if she might like to accompany him to
shore to buy fresh stores for the ship.

She jumped at the chance, not surprised he had thought
of her. She'd done what she could to help him with the wounded sailors the past
week, although another man had died. Lindsay was almost glad Jared remained in
Cowan's cabin for fear of seeing what a fifth death might do to him.

She knew he'd been told. Walker had gone to him, the
American as grim-faced upon leaving as when he had entered.

That had just made
Cooky
shrug helplessly and shake his head, mumbling something about seeing Jared like
this once before. She could only imagine he had meant after Elise's death, but
she hadn't asked him, the old sailor succumbing to a gloomy silence that had
captured the entire ship.

Yet he seemed of lighter spirit when they left the
hold, his eyes squinted into slits against the
sunlight—
until
he saw the shattered deck near the ship's galleys that men were already hard at
work repairing. His vehement curse blistered her ears, while she could no more
than attempt to swallow down the terrible lump in her throat.

She tried not to think of what Jared had told her about
Dag and the other poor victims, only too glad to leave the scene of such
wretched destruction. Yet as six sailors rowed the galley toward shore,
Cooky
sitting grim and silent beside her, she couldn't seem
to take her eyes off the shattered topmast and sails shot through with holes as
if poked by a giant's stick.

"To think it was the
Trident
. There's no damned justice, none at all."

She glanced at the old sailor who was as accomplished
with pots and pans as he was with a surgeon's knife, his leathery face creased
by a hundred intersecting lines. But none was
so
deep
as the scowl around his pale eyes.

"I don't understand."

When
Cooky
didn't answer,
Lindsay saw somber glances pass between the other men, making her wonder all
the more.

"Has the
Vengeance
run into that ship before?"

"In a way, miss, in a way,"
came
Cooky's
low reply. "We
knew her to be far away in India these past three years, but it's clear she's finally
come back to haunt us."

"So it was India, then—where you ran into her, I
mean—"

"India? I've never been to the place, though
Cap'n
lived there a long time ago. Left when he was a lad
of seventeen, and that's how old he was when I first met him. Beaten to within
an inch of his life, those bastards. Just for trying to tell them who he was."

As
Cooky
sighed heavily,
Lindsay could only stare at him in confusion. Whatever was the man talking
about? The three years made sense; it seemed everything had happened to Jared
three years ago. Dag saving his life, she had thought in India. Jared returning
to England. Elise dying. But the rest?

"You'd best stay close to us, miss, while we're
ashore,"
Cooky
said, interrupting her roiling
thoughts. "We won't venture far, just to the market, and I doubt these
folk will give us any trouble. They've probably little love for the French, but
I've heard they don't care much for the English, either. At least not this far
north. And gold is gold, no matter
who
you are."

As the galley bumped against a wharf, Jared's men
clambering out to secure the vessel with a thick twist of rope, Lindsay could
see that her questions would remain unanswered, at least for now. And suddenly
she felt a bit nervous.
Gijón
was a bustling port
where tens of ships were anchored, although she was relieved to see that none
flew the British flag. She saw French flags and the colors of a host of neutral
countries; obviously trade was trade, just as
Cooky
had said, no matter the ongoing war.

Given a hand up onto the wharf, Lindsay felt more than
a little self-conscious, too, about her male garb, wishing she wore a gown as
curious Spaniards glanced her way. Not silk or satin, just a simple one would
do; the breeches didn't grate upon her so much as that she craved something
feminine to wear. She blushed, wondering what Jared might think to see her . .
.