Pleasures of a Tempted Lady (2 page)

“Aye, sir,” Briggs said. “I’ll prepare to secure it larboard-side.”

“Very good.” Will turned back toward the jolly boat as Briggs hurried amidships. He could see the figure on the bench more clearly now, and he swallowed hard.

It was definitely a woman. The pink was her dress, a messy, frothy, lacy concoction spattered with the gray and black muck that constituted part of the inner workings of any sailing vessel. She lay prone and motionless on the bench. Beside her, the brownish lump wasn’t entirely clear. A dog, Will guessed, probably half dead from fear, with its head tucked under its body.

He waited another two minutes, judging the wind and the closing distance between the two vessels. Finally he shouted, “Haul up!”

Ellis responded instantly to his order, turning the wheel so the
Freedom
sailed directly into the wind. The sails
began to flap wildly, but Will heard the whir of the winches, and soon they were pulled taut.

The
Freedom
lost speed quickly as the jolly boat approached, and they drifted to a halt just as a seaman reached out with the grappling hook to snag the gunwale of the small vessel.

Will hurried to the larboard side while Briggs lashed the boat to the
Freedom
and one of the seamen secured a ladder. He had already descended into the jolly boat when Will arrived at the scene.

“There’s a lady here, sir!” The seaman, Jasper, who was really little more than a boy, looked up at Will wide eyed, as if uncertain what to do.

“Can you heft her up, lad?” Will called down. The poor woman hadn’t budged, and her matted hair and torn clothing covered her features. He hoped she could breathe through that thick tangle of blond hair. He hoped she was alive.

Jasper appeared rather horrified at the prospect of carrying her, but with a gulp that rolled his prominent Adam’s apple, he nodded. Widening his stance for balance in the bouncing jolly boat, he leaned over and gingerly tucked his arms under the figure of the unmoving woman and hoisted her up.

Will sensed movement from the corner of his eye, and he glanced over at the lump he’d thought was a dog.

Two brown eyes stared at him from under a mass of shaggy brown hair. It was looking up from its position curled into a ball on the floor of the jolly boat, but it was no dog. It was a child, and he was creeping backward, as if he were considering escape.

Seeing that his first mate had looked up from his task
and had noticed the child as well, Will nodded at Briggs. “Go down and grab him,” he told him. “Best hurry, too—looks like he’s about to jump overboard.”

Briggs vaulted over the side of the
Freedom
, his movements graceful. The man had a way about him on a ship—no matter where he was from the bilge to the top of the mast, he was inherently graceful and self-composed, even in twenty-foot seas.

Briggs’s fast motion evidently frightened the boy, because he scrambled backward, and when Briggs stepped over the bench toward him, the child scurried up the side of the hull and leaped overboard. Briggs was lightning quick, though. He whipped out his hand, grabbed the urchin by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him back into the boat.

Without making any noise, the boy kicked and flailed, his hands gripping the strong arms around him and trying to yank them away.

“Feisty one, aren’t you?” Will heard Briggs say above the slap of the waves against the jolly boat’s hull. “But don’t worry, lad. We’re here to help you, not hurt you.”

That seemed to calm the boy enough for Briggs to get a firmer grip on him, and Will turned back to Jasper, who was struggling with hoisting the lady up the ladder. The second mate, MacInerny, had climbed halfway down to help, and they’d managed to heft her most of the way up.

Will bent over and reached down for her, managing to grasp her beneath the armpits, and with the two men’s help, he was able to maneuver her onto the deck. It wasn’t that she was heavy—she was actually a slip of a thing. But the movement of the ocean combined with her dead
weight and the frothy torn clothing combined to make it a cumbersome process.

Cradling her head, Will gently lay her on the deck.

“She’s breathing,” Jasper gasped as he scrambled up the ladder. “She lives!”

Will heaved out a sigh of relief.

Holding the little boy—who looked to be about five or six years old, though Will was certainly no authority on children—Briggs stepped onto the deck. The four men hovered over the woman. Crouched near her feet, Jasper cleared his throat and tugged the filthy hem of her dress down over the torn and dirty stockings covering her legs.

Something about those legs was… familiar.

With his heart suddenly pounding hard, Will raised his hand to push away the blond mass of hair obscuring her features. Her hair was dense with wetness and salt, but he cleared it from her face, his callused fingertips scraping over the soft curve of her cheek.

“Oh, God,” Will choked, his hand frozen over her hair. “Oh, my God.”

“What is it, Captain?” The question came from somewhere above him.

Will blinked away the water threatening to stream from his eyes. Was he overtired? Was he having visions? Had the intensity of the storm and lack of proper sleep caused him to have strange, perverse dreams?

No. God no, he was awake. There was too much color—the dewy flesh of her skin, the light brown spatter of freckles on her nose, the pink and white of her dress. Beyond the rancid smell of bilge water—originating mostly from the boy, he thought—he could smell her, too.
She’d always smelled sweet and pure, like the sugarcane from the plantation in Antigua where she’d been raised.

Was she a ghost?

Half fearing she’d evaporate like fog beneath his fingers, he clasped both sides of her face and turned it upward so she would have been staring at him if her eyes were open.

“You’re real,” he whispered. He crouched over her mouth and nose and closed his eyes as the soft puff of her breath washed over his cheek.

Jasper was right—she
was
alive.

This was impossible. She’d been lost at sea eight years ago—on the other side of the Atlantic. Had she been adrift all this time, like some sleeping beauty, waiting for him—her prince—to find her and kiss her awake?

Did he dare hope that this was a true miracle and not some cruel joke of fate?

“Meg,” he breathed. The dewy feel of her skin beneath his fingertips swept through him like the stroke of a rose petal. “Meg? Wake up,” he murmured. “Wake up, love.”

The urge overcame him, and forgetting the men staring at him—at them—he bent forward and pressed his lips to hers.

Her mouth was soft and cool, with a hint of salt. God help him, but memories slammed into him. He remembered the feel of her lips against his, the feel of her body against his. And his body could do nothing but respond to the images rolling through his mind. The sweetness of her body tucked against him. Her trusting gray eyes… the way she’d looked at him. No one had ever looked at him like Meg had.

He drew back, his movement slow. She hadn’t moved.

Keeping himself just over her, he held her precious face cupped in his hands. He couldn’t bear to let her go. He couldn’t bear to pull farther away from her. Instead, he touched her nose with his and reveled in the soft feel of her breath as it whispered over his forehead.

She was alive. Meg was alive.

“Captain?”

It was Briggs’s voice. Will closed his eyes and waited until she exhaled once more, and then he dragged his face up to look at his first mate. Briggs still held on to the shoulders of the dark-haired little boy, though he’d stopped struggling and was staring at Will with wide blue eyes.

Was the child hers?

The thought nearly toppled him. He lowered a hand onto the deck to steady himself and said through his teeth, “Yes, Mr. Briggs?”

“Perhaps we should take the lady below?”

Will hesitated. Of course they should take her below, but where to put her? This wasn’t a large ship—there was no sick bay or surgery, and none of the men possessed much in the way of medical expertise. There was only one reasonable place.

Rising to his feet, he let out a sigh that misted into the cold morning air. “Yes. Take her to my quarters.”

Before anyone else could move, Jasper had gathered her in his arms and risen to his feet. MacInerny led the way to the stern, where he held open the door to Will’s quarters.

Jasper hesitated, glancing back over his shoulder with his heavy brows raised in question.

“Lay her on the bed, if you will, Mr. Jasper.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” With infinite gentleness, he settled her on the bed. Jasper was a rough mountain of a man, born in the slums of London and raised by the Navy. Will wouldn’t have expected tenderness from him in any circumstance. But here he was, behaving like the gentle giant with this lady.

With
Meg
.

Jasper stepped back and gazed at her as Will stepped to his side, and the rest of the men formed a semicircle around Will’s bunk, all looking at Meg, all awaiting his next command.

Will glanced over at Briggs, who now held the boy’s hand in a firm grasp. “All of you, back to your duties.” As the men turned to go with muttered
aye, sir
s, Will added, “Briggs, you and the boy stay.”

When the room was cleared, Will knelt in front of the boy. “What happened, lad?”

The boy didn’t say a word, but his wide eyes fixed on Will as if he were entranced.

“Was your ship lost in the storm?”

No response.

Will gestured to Meg. His next words were taut. “Is that lady your mama?”

Again, there was no response, but the boy’s gaze flickered over to Meg.

With a sigh, Will rose. “What do you think, Briggs?”

“No idea, sir.” Briggs hesitated, his gaze sharpening. “Are you somehow acquainted with this lady, Captain?”

After a long, uncomfortable hesitation, Will nodded slowly. “I knew her. Long ago. You’re probably going to think me mad, but…”

Briggs raised an expectant eyebrow, and Will found
himself unable to voice the truth. It would make him sound crazy if he said the lady had been lost at sea eight years ago. He glanced significantly down at the boy. “Later.”

Briggs nodded, but his speculative blue gaze didn’t falter.

Meg let out a soft puff of breath, jerking Will’s attention to her. He hurried over to her. “Meg?”

She’d grown still again.

Briggs came to stand beside him, the boy at her side. “What’s her name?”

“Margaret Donovan,” Will responded instantly. Was it still her name? Had she married? He glanced downward, but the child stared at the unconscious woman without a change of expression, giving him no clues.

Suddenly, the lad tugged out of Briggs’s grip and scrambled up the side of the bed, smearing his dirt and grime over the silk counterpane. Briggs reached out, intending to stop him, but Will held up his hand. “Let him go.”

The boy tucked himself against Meg’s body, slung his arm around her, and closed his eyes. Without waking, Meg wrapped her arm around the boy’s thin shoulders and drew him close.

Will watched them for a moment longer. “Perhaps it’s simply that both of them are exhausted from their ordeal.”

“It seems that way,” Briggs agreed.

Will’s curiosity gnawed at him like a hundred mosquito bites begging to be scratched, but for now, Meg and the child needed to rest.

He could wait a few hours. Hell, he’d waited for Meg for six years before he’d learned that she’d been lost at sea. A few hours longer couldn’t hurt.

He released a shaky breath. “I want them watched at all times. I don’t want to see any more escape attempts from the little one. Or from the lady,” he added as an afterthought. It seemed a reasonable assumption that she might try to escape. If she’d kept herself hidden from him for eight years, why on earth would she want to be found now?

Chapter Two

M
eg hurt all over, but it felt like she was drifting on a cloud.

Where was she?

Her body didn’t want to respond to her commands for it to open her eyes, but she managed to peel them open a crack.

Nausea overcame her so fast and so hard, her eyelids slammed shut again.

Slower. More slowly this time.

She was wide awake now. Jake’s slumbering body was heavy and warm beside her—a familiar, comfortable presence. The ship rocked beneath them—and the everyday creaks and groans of the rigging sounded overhead.

She drifted off again but then came wide awake with a painful jolt.

No!

This wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to be on the
Defiant
. She and Jake had escaped. They’d been sailing for Ireland… and then it had begun to storm…

She couldn’t remember what had happened during the storm. Obviously, something had gone terribly wrong. Caversham had found them.

Oh, God.

She kept her body very still, combating the choking sobs that welled in her throat. After all this time… she’d planned it so perfectly. She’d spent years planning it, for heaven’s sake. It had been her and Jake’s only hope of escape.

And now Caversham would punish them both. He’d make sure it never happened again.

She gathered Jake closer against her body, bending her head to bury her lips in the little boy’s hair. The strands weren’t as baby soft as they usually were—they were stiff with salt and reeked of the sea.

“Meg?”

She froze, not breathing. She didn’t recognize that voice… and yet she
did
.

Her heartbeat pounding in her chest, she tried cracking her eyes open again. The cabin was bright and blurry, and she couldn’t make out any shapes. Pain sliced through her skull, and she choked back nausea. She squinted, trying to discern the shadows and figures in front of her.

“Are you in pain?” The voice was soft, full of compassion. She wasn’t used to male voices sounding like that. She was only used to the harsh, guttural noises of the men from Caversham’s ships. And Caversham himself, coldly aristocratic. A shudder prickled her skin at the thought of his voice.