Authors: Miranda Jarrett
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
Sparhawk's Angel (7 page)
"Oh, thank you!" she cried as she rushed forward. "And after I was so hateful to you about my trunks being stolen!"
She tore the kerchief from her head and stuffed it in her pocket, heedless of how her hair came tumbling down with it, before she took the straw hat from him and gingerly set it on her hair. Determined not to let the wind claim this one, too, she carefully tied the long pink ribands beneath her chin before she looked up at Captain Sparhawk.
"Thank you so much," she said softly, his image blurring because of the tears in her eyes. Once again he'd surprised her with a special gesture for her alone, and she longed to be able to tell him how much it meant. "You cannot know, but—oh, thank you!"
"You're welcome," he said gruffly. He held out his arm to her. "I'll wager you'll be wanting this to go with it."
Stunned, she saw that the coral-colored gown draped over his arm was hers as well, and could only shake her head in amazement.
"Go on, lass, take the gown, too," he urged. "Go below and change if you wish. Don't wait on ceremony on my account."
She was beyond thanks, beyond words—Nick could see that from how her eyes shone too brightly as she'd taken the gown from his arm and hugged it to herself before she ran back to her cabin to change—but it wasn't greed that had made her so. He'd seen that enough in other women to recognize the difference, when he'd rewarded one or another of his mistresses with some new bauble that made them squeal with acquisitive delight. But Rose's reaction clearly came from the giving, not the gift itself, and uneasily Nick recognized that, too.
And it was fine with him that she'd been left speechless. At least no one would notice that he was in much the same state as well. He had never in his life seen either the hat or the gown, let alone expected the boy to bring them from his own cabin. But obviously they were Rose's, and he could guess how they'd come to be in his quarters.
"You've made my little sister monstrously happy, you know," said Lily from where she sat in the mainmast shrouds, the toes of her slippered feet tucked daintily through the ratlines and her wings folded snug against the wind. "And oh, my, when she finds the second trunk of hers you've managed to squeeze into that abominable little cabin!"
She laughed merrily, showing the tip of her tongue. "I vow, my dear, darling Nickerson, that you couldn't have chosen a better way to charm her. Though I shall venture that your coat today is most splendidly cut across the shoulders. Even Rose might notice. Your tailor does you proud."
Nick glared at her, his suspicions regarding the hat and gown confirmed. "Why the devil are you still here, anyway? If you don't recall the consequences of your continuing to plague me, be certain that I do, and that I damn well mean to act upon them."
"Aye, aye, Nick, I'll leave," grumbled Gideon, already moving away. "If you wish to be left alone with the little chit when she returns, then you've only to ask civilly."
But Nick grabbed his arm. "Wait, Gid, no, I didn't mean—oh, blast and hell!" In frustration he looked again to the rigging where Lily had been and now, naturally, was no longer.
"Is it the woman in the figurehead again, Nick?" asked Gideon, his voice low and serious. "Are you seeing her again? The surgeon says—"
"Rot the surgeon! There's not a blessed thing wrong with me!" Nick stared at the empty rigging, furious. The hat and the gown and now her popping up here on the deck: Lily was taunting him, daring him pure and simple. With all her dithering about him becoming a better man, she didn't believe he was capable of cold-hearted seduction. Well, he was and he knew it, and so did the long line of women in his past. She was gambling against him, and so help him, she was going to lose. The sooner she realized that, the better.
Gideon cleared his throat. "I was about to clear for gunnery practice, Nick," he said. "You said yesterday you wanted the crews faster with the firing."
"Use your wits, Gideon!" snapped Nick. "Run out the long guns this close to the Carolina coast? Why not simply write out our intentions and deliver them to every frigate captain in range?"
"Why not indeed?" answered Gideon sharply, at last forgetting rank. "Maybe then you'll remember why we're here and stop chasing ghosts and petticoats!"
Stunned, Nick stared coldly at his friend before he broke down and swore with exasperation, rubbing his fingers into the back of his neck where that lead weight had returned.
"Nay, Gideon, you are right," he said gruffly, "and it's my temper that's wrong. My apologies, if you'll have them. I wonder that you stay with me at all."
Gideon shrugged carelessly, though as the anger faded from his dark eyes the questions and the concern remained. "Who else would have either of us?"
"Who else, indeed." Nick sighed. "Still and all, we'll stay the gunnery until tomorrow. I've no taste for it today. Keep the helm to this course for now, and call me at once if there's a sail. We should be directly in the lines of the—ah, Miss Everard!"
The difference nearly took his breath away. Freed from the heavy, dowdy mourning, she seemed years younger, a bright figure in coral sarcenet that captured the eye and interest of every man on deck. She'd tied her dark hair loosely back with another ribbon, and beneath the hat her face was glowing with pleasure. The gown's close-fitting bodice emphasized the narrowness of her waist and her small, high breasts, and the sweep of her flounced skirts, the pinked silk edges rippling in the wind, made her look as if she were dancing even as she stood still.
"Captain Sparhawk." She smiled shyly, her face dappled with the sunlight that filtered through the straw brim of her hat. "I suppose I must thank you again. Though I can't conceive of how you did it, I'm most grateful for the return of that second traveling case, even though there's scarce room for me in my cabin now. You cannot know what a relief it is to wear clothing that is clean and dry, even if I feel disloyal to Lily for putting aside the mourning."
"Ah, I doubt she'd take it to heart," said Nick, his throat strangely dry. If Lily had wanted to keep his sister safe from his attentions, she should have left her in rusty black, and not tricked her out in this charming; delightful, and sorely tempting fashion. "She didn't strike me as the kind who'd fancy wearing black for long herself."
The long pheasant feather on Rose's hat bobbed as she nodded. "That's true. When our grandmama
died four years ago, Lily outright refused to wear mourning beyond a month. She said that black made her too sad for words, and turned her cheeks sallow besides. Finally Papa had to stop her bills at Madame Dusonnet's to make her comply, and even then she wore red ribands over the black."
"Your sister must have been a trial for your poor old Papa." As offhandedly as he could, Nick glanced around the deck and through the rigging to see if Lily had returned to listen. Stopping her credit at a mantua maker's certainly seemed a far easier way to bring her in line; a pity it wouldn't work now. "A regular trial."
Rose sighed wistfully. "I suppose she was. But she was also kind and generous and vastly amusing, and she always took my side against Aunt Lucretia." Her shoulders drooped as she ran her fingers across her skirt. "You can tell this gown was made for her, not me. I'd never dare to wear anything so bold, but Lily
—
why, Lily would dare anything."
"Hush now, no more of Lily," ordered Nick. "The gown is yours, and with your grace you have made it your own in a way no other woman could."
Swiftly she raised her gaze to his, startled by his tone and unsure of his meaning. He was captain, true, but what reason or right did he have for sounding so blatantly possessive?
"You speak to turn my head, Captain Sparhawk," she said, just breathless enough to prove how well he'd succeeded. "Or does wearing a bold gown draw bold words?"
"Not so bold, Miss Everard, only true. A pretty lady, prettily dressed—what greater verity can there be?" He smiled, slowly and lazily and, to Rose, very boldly indeed.
"Verity has nothing to do with it," she replied, feeling rather bold herself. "Except, perhaps, to confirm my country's opinion that Americans are not to be trusted as far as they can be tossed."
"Cruel words, Miss Everard!" He sighed dramatically even as his smile winked wickedly higher. "Last evening we parted before I could share my humble bachelor's meal with you. Will you grace me again with a second chance, and join me this hour for dinner instead so I might defend the honor of my country to you?"
Rose knew she should be blushing, blushing furiously to the tips of her toes, at such an outrageously inappropriate invitation. But she wasn't, not in the slightest. Pleasantly warm, yes, though that could be from the sun on her shoulders or from the sheer heat of Captain Sparhawk's green-eyed gaze, but that was all. Instead she was meeting his scrutiny with ease, her palms dry and her hands still as she bantered with him.
Almost, thought Rose with an inward premonition of disaster, as if she were Lily.
Uneasily she remembered how strongly she'd sensed her sister's presence while standing near the figurehead that bore Lily's face. Could putting on this gown have had the same effect?
And then, of course, Rose's cheeks turned as bright as the coral silk sarcenet. "Oh, Captain Sparhawk, I—I cannot say," she stammered. "That is, I should be honored, if I could agree, but I doubt that—"
"You'll doubt nothing," said Nick easily, "and I shall take that as acceptance."
He reached out and captured her hand before she realized what was happening, his large fingers swallowing hers in their clasp. Still smiling, he bowed over their hands, his eyes never breaking away from her own.
"I fear, Miss Everard, the ship demands my attention for a moment or two," he said, his voice low and intimate, "but if you'll wait for me below in the cabin, I promise I'll join you as soon as I can."
She nodded dumbly, drew back her hand and fled.
Gideon snorted. "The ship demands, hell," he scoffed. "We could have twelve feet of water in the hold and an admiral's flagship raking our stern and you wouldn't be giving this poor scrap of oak and pine another thought, not with that sweet little piece waiting below."
"No wonder I don't as a rule allow women on board. But this one's turned out most handsomely once she changed her rig, hasn't she?" Nick looked fondly in the direction Rose had gone. What he felt for Rose Everard was more complicated than her appearance alone, but he wasn't about to confess that to Gideon. "At least by the time her blasted intended comes chasing after us, I'll have given him more reason to be wasting his time."
Gideon winked broadly. "So you mean to give his lordship a pair of horns before he's even wed?"
"Gideon, Gideon, where is thy sense of shame?" asked Nick, clucking his tongue in mock outrage even as his eyes glittered wickedly. "The lady is our prisoner and our guest. How could I ever serve her gallant sweetheart so basely?"
"The same way you've served every other husband whose wife you've craved." Gideon chuckled. "At least I know you're on the mend, Nick. You couldn't have picked a better way to prove it."
Nick's smile widened. He hoped Lily, wherever she was, had heard—and believed—every last word.
G
ingerly Rose touched the hilt of the cutlass on the captain's desk. She had never seen a sword that wasn't attached to a gentleman's waist, making this the first she could actually study without seeming ill-mannered.
In comparison to the elegant creations of polished steel, gilt wire hilts and enameled or jeweled guards that she'd seen in Portsmouth parlors, Captain Sparhawk's cutlass was sturdy and serviceable, with a horn grip worn smooth from use and a curved guard of battered steel. Obviously left on the desk where the captain had tossed it himself, his belt was still threaded through the black scabbard, and Rose's heart beat faster as she thought of the belt and the cutlass swinging low on his narrow hips.
With her fingers still on the hilt, Rose hesitated, listening for footsteps or voices in the companionway. The captain had kept her waiting a quarter hour thus far, and she'd little reason to believe he wouldn't remain on deck another quarter hour more; he was, after all, the master, and for all he'd flirted so wickedly with her, he did have responsibilities. Besides, when would she have another chance like this to satisfy her curiosity? Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she lowered her chin with determination, tightened her fingers around the horn grip, and pulled the cutlass from its scabbard.
It swept free with an ease that caught her by surprise, the weight sending her staggering backward. Swiftly she clapped her left hand over the right to brace it, steadying her wrists to balance the unaccustomed weight. The guard might be dented and scratched, but the long, curving blade was sleek and cared for, gleaming dully in the sunlight. Remembering what she'd overheard from men bragging about swordplay, she circled the blade clumsily in the air before her.
Once long ago, before her governess had confiscated it, she had found and devoured a cheaply printed romance about pirate queens a hundred years before, women as ruthless and daring as any men. As she held the cutlass in both hands, she pictured herself as Anne Bonney, commanding her own destiny with a crew of desperate men behind her.
"Avast there, you rogues and dogs!" she muttered fiercely, narrowing her eyes at the imaginary crew crowding her quarterdeck. "Else I'll see you hung from the yardarm, see if I don't!"
"Not if I can help it, you won't," said Nick dryly from the doorway. "Or do you plan to serve your king by running me through with my own blade?"
Rose gasped and spun to face him, the cutlass still clasped in her hands. "Oh, no, please, that wasn't my intention at all!"
"I'll be grateful unto eternity." And that long, too, Nick knew he'd never forget the image of her standing there with the cutlass drooping from her little hands and the elegant new hat perched jauntily on her head, her cheeks as bright as the silk of her gown and her eyes the perfect guilty circles of a child caught with a hand in the sweets. "I knew I was late, but I would have come sooner if I'd realized the consequences."
"It wasn't that at all. It's only that I've never seen a sword this close, you understand, and though I know I shouldn't have touched it at all, I didn't believe you'd notice or see the harm and I'm truly, vastly sorry." She took a deep breath. "Truly."
"Vastly sorry?" Nick asked sternly, his black brows drawn together in a single menacing line. He was also having the very devil of a time not laughing out loud.
She nodded vigorously, the pheasant's feather bobbing in counterpoint above her face.
"Then surrender your weapon, Miss Everard, and I promise I won't hang you from the yardarm, either."
He held out his open hand to her, and she awkwardly transferred the hilt from her fingers to his before contritely scuttling back to the far side of the desk. Shamefaced though she already was, he still couldn't resist making a few showy, elegant passes with the blade through the empty air to make her gasp with admiration before he deftly slid the cutlass back into its scabbard. He told himself he should be ashamed, playing to her so openly like that.
He wasn't. "I suppose I should be doubly thankful you weren't curious about the pistols," he said as he hung the belt and the cutlass with it on the peg where it belonged and hooked his hat on top for good measure. "You could have done a great deal more damage with gunpowder."
"I should think you'd do sufficient damage with the sword." Her eyes were still round, but at least she seemed again able to speak coherently.
"Not as much as you think," he admitted, accepting the telling of this truth as his punishment. "The whole point of privateering is to take prizes with as little fuss and damage as possible to either party. Most merchant shipmasters—like the one you were sailing with—will strike after a single warning shot. We try not to close and board to fight hand to hand unless we can help it. It's too costly."
"Oh." She sighed and glanced wistfully one last time at the cutlass on the bulkhead peg. "So you have not been forced to kill anyone?"
"I didn't say that." Nor did he wish to say more, not to a face as innocent as hers.
Once he, too, had been that young, that innocent. Once he had believed the same foolishness as other young men, that killing was glorious if the cause was just, and that only the fallen enemy suffered. He was barely fifteen, serving on one of his father's ships in the last of the French wars, when he'd first killed another man. Another boy, really, also pretending to be a man, and Nick had watched both his dreams of glory and his own innocence die along with the French boy weeping for his mother.
"Forgive me," said Rose softly. "I had no right to ask such a question of you."
She was standing beside him, her hand resting lightly on his sleeve, and the depth of the sympathy and understanding that showed on her face shocked him, almost as much as the need that suddenly surged within his soul.
What comfort could she possibly offer him? For God's sake, she was but a
little girl playing at pirates, his prisoner, the sheltered daughter of an
English lord, a pretty pawn with silver-gray eyes in the middle of a wager to
test his sanity.
…
"I know I often say the wrong thing," she went on, "and I am far too inquisitive. I should have remembered you were a—a warrior."
"Warrior? How blessed Homeric." He tried to smile, and when he couldn't, he went to the cabinet that held his rum and other spirits and busied himself with the glasses and decanters. All she'd offered had been the simplest of apologies; he'd been the one who'd read so much more into it. "Because I wished to offer you something grander than toasted cheese, I'm afraid that dinner won't be here for a bit yet. But this might help to pass the time. Not quite everything I capture, you see, reaches the auction house."
He handed her a glass of sherry wine, noting how she held it with both hands the same way as she'd held the cutlass. Was she already sensing she'd need two hands to hold herself steady?
"Oh, I know, Miss Everard, I know the wine is French," he said lightly as he filled a glass for himself, "and the French are at present my allies, but before you take me to task, I swear I took it from an English ship, and everything is as it should be. Drink up now, lass. Shall we be evenhanded, and drink confusion to the enemy, whichever side it is?"
More likely confusion to herself, thought Rose unhappily as she drank to his toast. Without his hat, the small, barely healed scar above his left brow was still pink and jagged across his sun-browned skin, one more sign of how badly she'd erred. For all she knew he might have been close to death himself from that very wound. She'd seen how his face had closed against her when she'd blundered about the cutlass and the war, his green eyes as shuttered as if he'd stepped behind a wall.
And who could blame him? Toying with the man's belongings hadn't been bad enough; she'd been prying and thoughtless and outright rude, her childish apology only making it worse. He had treated her with far more kindness than any prisoner deserved—he still was—and this was how she repaid him.
She swallowed hard, the sweet wine bitter in her mouth. If somehow Lily had been guiding her earlier on the deck, then it had been Rose herself, all on her own, who had brought this current disaster down upon her shoulders. As if a new gown alone could change what had always been wrong with her!
Swirling the wine gently in her glass, she stared down into the amber-colored liquid rather than meet the captain's gaze. Through the wine she could see her fingers as they circled the glass, distorted and magnified by the curve, and there on the third finger the heavy ring with the oval aquamarine, the stone greenish through the wine. Lord help her, did she really need another reminder?
With an unintentional thump she set the glass half-filled with wine on the table. "I thank you for your courtesy, Captain, but I believe it will be better for us both if I leave now."
"Nay, Miss Everard, stay!" he said, moving swiftly between her and the door. He wasn't about to let her go yet, not with so much hanging unsettled between them. "Please, I ask you. Simply… stay."
Blocked, she looked anxiously from one side of his body to the other, vainly willing him to step aside. Level with her eyes was the wide expanse of his chest, crossed by the line of buttons on his waistcoat, each one embroidered with a tiny blue flower. Forget-me-nots, she realized foolishly, as if she'd ever forget him, and at last she raised her eyes to his face.
Simply stay, he'd asked, but already she'd learned that nothing with him would ever be simple. He was watching her closely, his half-shut eyes shadowed by his lashes, and though the smile of a genial host curved his lips, there was still an uneasy tension between them that showed how much her response would mean to him.
"Please, Miss Everard," he said again, his voice dropping low. "Rose. You will stay to dine with me, will you not?"
He had used her given name once before, when he'd held her in the moonlight, and she knew it was doubly wrong for him to do it again now. Wrong, and yet she did not stop him. In eight endless weeks, no one had called her Rose, not since her father had kissed her farewell, and that sharp-felt loneliness, soothed for a moment by the sound of her name, kept her silent.
"Dinner, and no more," he said softly. "What harm is there in that?"
She raised her chin but lowered her eyes as she nodded more from resignation than agreement, and then, before he could speak again, she retreated from the door to the stern windows. If only he had blustered and shouted at her the way he had before, or at least mocked her for being a plain, empty-headed Britisher; that she would have expected and understood. But this kindness, this gentleness, bewildered and disturbed her, and made her weak with longing for things she could never have.
Retreat
, she warned herself,
hold back and keep yourself safe. Do not commit the folly of seeing, accepting, believing more than is there simply because you wish it so
.
"It is a pity you did not bring my pianoforte from the
Commerce's
hold, Captain Sparhawk," she said, her words brittle with forced cheerfulness. Oblivious to the view before her, she pressed her palm to the cool windowpane and left the mark of her fevered skin on the glass. "I could have played for you to pass the time. I'm told I play tolerably well—the Italian masters, Mr. Handel, Scottish and other country airs arranged for keyboard. Though of course I don't play nearly as well as Lily did. She was truly gifted, while I must toil and work for proficiency. But Lily—"
"Damnation, I'll hear no more from you of Lily!"
She turned swiftly, startled by his vehemence, and found that while she'd rattled on he'd closed the gap she'd put between them. With the window behind her, she could not run again. This time, whether she wished to or not, she would have to stand her ground.
"No more of Lily, mind? Not a blessed word!" He sliced his hand through the air, so near her face that she felt the air across her cheek. "She couldn't possibly have bettered you in everything. She was your sister, not a saint!"
"But if you'd known Lily, you would understand," she protested.
"Nay, I doubt I would," he said flatly. "Instead I want you to tell me one way—only one, when there must be scores!—in which you surpass her. Come now, Rose, tell me!"
She shook her head, her thoughts turning blank before the intensity of his demanding gaze. Why should it matter so much to him, anyway? Oh yes, there were plenty of things that she did better than Lily: she could coax her roses to bloom a fortnight earlier than anyone else's in the county; she recognized by name and face every wife and child of every man who worked in her father's shipyard; she knew the secrets of hiring a first-rate cook and firing a footman given to thievery; and she was the only one who could coddle and humor her father when his gout kept him in his bed.
But none of these were valued as much as Lily's beauty and talents and indisputable charm had been, not by the world and certainly not by a man like Captain Sparhawk. Sadly Rose knew the truth. Ten minutes in Lily's company and he would have fallen under her spell as completely as had every other man alive.
"One way you're better than she was, lass," he insisted. "Tell me one, that's—"
"I'm very good at draughts," she said defensively.
"Drafts?" Nick turned his head a fraction to look at her suspiciously. She was Lily's sister; she could well be ridiculing his request. "What sort of drafts?"
"Draughts," she repeated. Without trying she'd managed to throw him off-balance, and the knowledge renewed her confidence. "You know, the game. I played Papa every evening except Sunday, and it's been, or was, years since Lily could beat me."
"Draughts." He couldn't help glancing around the cabin for Lily, convinced this must be another trick of hers. He wasn't sure how he'd expected Rose to excel—in fancywork with crewel threads, perhaps, or good deeds among the poor. A game played in taverns and much favored by apprentices and stable boys wouldn't have been his first choice, or even his hundredth. But if draughts were her special gift, then by heaven he wasn't about to scorn her for it.
