Sparhawk's Angel (8 page)

"I shall play you if you don't believe me." Suddenly she smiled with surpassing sweetness. "If, that is, you will agree to play for stakes. Papa and I generally played for a penny a game."

"Done."

It took only a minute for Nick to send the word throughout the ship for a draughts board and pieces, and less than five for a game set to appear at his cabin door, courtesy of the gunner's mate, who'd made it himself.

Nick set the board in the center of his dining table along with the wine and glasses, while Rose untied her hat and put it aside, and shoved back her deep lace cuffs with all the assurance of a practiced gamester. To Nick's amusement, she didn't even blink at the sailor's board, the checkered squares framed by lovingly inked, bare-breasted mermaids frolicking with Neptune. And this from a lass who'd nearly wept from modesty when he'd seen the torn hem of her shift!

"I assume you'll wish to be black, on account of being Black Nick," she said briskly as she shoved the round black pieces across the table to his side. "Which leaves me the white."

"For White Rose?"

She grinned, oddly pleased that he'd thought of it too. "It doesn't have the same fearsome ring as Black Nick."

"A good thing, too, for a lady," he said. "Though I've never quite determined whether the black referred to my hair, my temper or my soul, or if some wag attached it to my name simply because it sounded well."

She deepened her voice to the register of a bullfrog. "Black
Nick
," she intoned dramatically. "
Black
Nick!"

"Don't try me too far, White Rose," he warned as she tried not to laugh. "I have hung men for less."

"But not a lady."

"Only because I haven't had the opportunity." He dropped a small leather bag onto the table with a thump. "I've a mind to make this more interesting than playing for pennies. That should be two score of gold pistoles. My stake, Miss White Rose."

His smile was charming as he considered the possibilities. He'd accept a small forfeit to begin, a garter perhaps, and proceed from there. To find her willing to gamble like this made his goal almost pathetically easy, and when she laughed like this, her face as rosy as her name, he learned how very much he wanted to win. "And what, my dear, shall you wager?"

"Oh, I won't need a stake," she said blithely. "I'm sure to win from you."

"So certain?" he teased. "Luck's a part of any gaming."

"Not for me." She stacked her pieces on the first two rows of the board, then looked up expectantly. "Where is your watch? We'll need it for keeping time."

He drew his heavy old captain's watch from his pocket and set in on the table. "I'll admit I haven't played draughts for years," he said, though in truth he'd never played the game at all, "but I don't recall there being time kept."

"Oh, the way Papa and I played there is," she said easily, turning the watch
so she could see the face as well as he. "Ten seconds per play, else you must
forfeit your turn. It keeps the game moving most wondrously fast."

And fast it was. In eight lightning moves, Rose managed to capture all of Nick's pieces but one boxed hopelessly in a corner, and to make kings of half of hers. Eight moves, and, he reckoned by his own traitorous watch, less than three minutes.

"I warned you," she said with a note of pity as she tapped the first of his lost pistoles on the edge of the table before her.

"Opening luck," he said, still smiling though he'd determined not to let it happen again as he refilled her wineglass. "But at least you've earned your stake, just as you promised."

Two games later, and she'd tripled it.

Certain by then that he'd learned the rhythm of her leapfrogging moves, Nick raised the stakes for the next game, and she beat him in two minutes flat. She smiled sympathetically and offered to go back to a single coin, and he irritably insisted on raising again. Another two games, and Nick was certain she'd been weaned in White's; three games after that, and he swore it must have been Newgate, for her to learn to take a man's purse with such ease.

"I'm very sorry," she said as she added the last pistole to the neat pyramid of gold coins before her. "But I did warn you."

Before Nick was forced to admit defeat, the steward and two boys appeared at the cabin door with the trays bearing dinner. Thoroughly pleased with herself, Rose scooped her winnings into the bag, leaned back in her chair and drank her wine while the cloth was laid and the dishes set out. Braised onions, sauced potatoes, a pair of roast chickens, and some sort of savory stew besides—Rose hadn't seen, or smelled, such a deliriously bounteous meal since clearing Portsmouth, and her mouth watered with anticipation.

"I hope you pay your cook well," she said as she began to help herself to the vegetables. "From this he looks to be worth every last ha'penny."

Nick only shrugged with a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, still too furious with himself for losing to venture much more.

But Rose's heart sank. She'd been wrong to win every game, selfishly and foolishly wrong. One or two would have let him save his pride, but she'd been too caught up in the play to consider the consequences.

Another small way, then, that Lily would have succeeded where she'd failed. Lily might not have won as many games, but she would have known when and how to lose to soothe her male opponent's dignity. Rose had only to look at the rigid set of Captain Sparhawk's mouth and the way he was savaging the roast chicken instead of carving it to see the damage she'd done. Her gaze dropped to the plate before her, her pleasure in winning shrinking and fading with every second.

"You're thinking of Lily again, aren't you?" he demanded fiercely. "It wasn't enough that you've proved you're the sharpest gamester I've ever sat down with. Somehow, someway, that blasted sister of yours always seems better."

"But I should have let you win," she said in a tiny voice. "Lily would have."

"And why in blazes should you have done that?" He set down his knife and fork with an emphatic clatter. "I love to win and I hate to lose, and it doesn't matter whether I'm fighting for my life against another ship or fumbling my way through a wretched game of draughts. Why should it be any different for you?"

"Because I
—
"

"Nay, Rose, you'll hear me out this time," he said firmly, resting his arms on the table to lean across it toward her. "You made a good start there at being your own person and leaving Lily's shadow behind. Now you've got to keep on. I know how hard it is. I've done it. I was cursed and blessed with a father who was pretty near next to God in Newport, and my older brother Jon's a close second. Sparhawks are like that. I heard about 'em from the cradle onward. Nothing I did would ever be as good, let alone better."

With painful clarity he remembered the first time he'd realized his place in his family. He couldn't have been more than four, which would have made Jon six. As a special treat Father had taken them to the dockyard to see a new ship of his still on the ways.

He and Jon had spent the morning climbing in and around the unfinished ship, balancing on timbers, poking sticks into half-set tar and bellowing commands back and forth to hear their voices echo in the great empty hull. He could still recall the fresh, sharp scent of the newly planed pine and oak and how the clanking sound of the mallets against the hawsing irons rang out across the waterfront in the chilly March air, even the new pair of red mittens that he'd stained with tar.

"Jon?" roared Father. " Where are you, lad?"

In a flash Jon had raced to the quarterdeck to their father, and unsure of what else to do, Nick had followed breathlessly. Father stood near the wheel, his height and commanding presence making him tower over the circle of men around him, and with a smile he'd bent and welcomed Jon into the group.

"Here's the next Sparhawk captain," he said as he'd lifted Jon up to try the carved spokes of the ship's wheel. "Mark my words now, Jon here will be master of his own vessel before his seventeenth birthday!"

The men had all laughed and cheered and clapped Jon on the shoulders while Nick had hung back, lost in the forest of knee breeches and mud-covered boots. At
last the men had moved away, returning to their tasks and Nick was able to push his way forward. Jon was wearing Father's black beaver cocked hat with the gold braid, grinning proudly as he held it back from his eyes. Father was laughing, his green eyes as full of pride as Jon's, his black hair tossing in the wind as he rested his hand across his eldest son's shoulders.

"Look at me, Nick," said Jon importantly, one hand still clasped on the wheel. "Father says that when I'm a captain, I'll have a ship that's twice as fine as this one!"

"True enough, lad, true enough!" Father had laughed again, his eyes still warm as his gaze lingered on Jon. Then he'd sighed, and turned at last to Nick.

"Well now, there you are, "Father had said. He was smiling still, his handsome face pleasant enough, but the special warmth he'd showered on Jon was gone from his eyes, and Nick had felt the difference like a knife in his stomach. "I suppose you'll want to try, too?"

But Nick had only shaken his head, and told himself he was too old to cry. Then, at least, he was; but later that night, alone in his bed in the dark, he had wept with all the grief in his four-year-old soul.

"I cannot believe that you were ever second to anyone," said Rose, frowning.

"Ah, trust me, I was. Most likely still am, in Father's eyes." He refilled their glasses, wondering why the devil he was sharing this with her now. He couldn't remember telling anyone else, not even Gideon.
It must be Lily that was making him urge Rose to rise up and rebel like this. It couldn't possibly be that the misery and dejection he'd seen in those silver eyes across the table had so closely echoed the way he himself had felt times beyond counting.

She cradled the wineglass in both her hands. "So what did you do?" she asked in an excited conspirator's whisper.

"The only thing I could. I ran away." He smiled at her open amazement. He'd tell the short version, the tidy, romantic one that played so well in taverns, and spare her the bitter details of his homecoming. "Not directly, mind. I suffered along for a good long spell, trying to be what Father wanted, but when I was fifteen, I jumped ship—one of
his
ships—in London, and signed on with an Indiaman outward bound for Bombay the same night. I didn't go back to Newport until I could go on my own terms, master of my own ship without a lick of help from the old man."

"Bombay," she marveled softly. "Lord, but it's different for men."

"Not so different," he said with a shrug. "Look at you, bound clear across the ocean to marry this navy captain. I can't imagine a better way to turn your back on Lily and your old way of life."

She made an odd little sound in the back of her throat that could have broken into a sob if she'd let it. "It's far more complicated than that," she said, and gulped the rest of her wine. "Far more."

"Then tell me, Rosie," he said gently. He refilled her glass, trying to remember what Lily had told him about Rose's betrothal and wondering how much of that to believe. The truth—or at least the complete truth— didn't seem to be Lily's strongest point. "It can't be as complicated as all that."

Troubled, she hesitated, not sure if it was even her story to tell. She didn't wish to be disloyal to Papa or to Lord Eliot, either, and she certainly didn't wish to shame Lily's memory by complaining. And as Aunt Lucretia had said, Lord Eliot's offer was likely to be the best she'd ever entertain on her own merits.

Yet when she looked across her plate at Captain Sparhawk, her same Black Nick of the draughts game with his mouth curved in a half smile as he waited for her to begin, the temptation to confess her fears to his handsome, sympathetic ear was more than she could resist.

She sighed and looked down, tracing her finger along the rim of the glass.

"Lord Eliot Graham had come to Portsmouth to join his new ship," she began. "Though he was there but a fortnight, he met and fell in love with Lily, like so many other gentlemen. But unlike the rest, when he asked Papa for her hand, Papa agreed, and what was more, so did Lily. Their betrothal was announced the night before he sailed again."

Nick listened, his irritation with Lily growing. No wonder she'd been so convinced that Rose was to be unhappily wed; Rose had claimed Lily's sweetheart for herself.

"Then Lily went frolicking in the snowflakes, took ill and died," he said. "So Eliot took to wooing you instead?"

Startled, Rose wondered how he could have known the details of Lily's final illness. "Not exactly, no." Fearfully she glanced around the cabin. "Lily's not here now, is she? I don't have the same feeling I did last night, but you did say you can see her and I can't."

Nick sat back in his chair, his palms flat on the tablecloth as he looked to all of Lily's favorite perches to be sure. "She's not here. She wouldn't be able to keep her mouth shut if she were."

Rose smiled weakly. "That would be Lily, yes." She took another breath, tracing her finger more and more slowly around the heavy glass. "When Lord Eliot learned she'd died, he wrote to Papa that grieved though he was to learn of Lily's death, he still wished to wed, and that he'd accept me in her place."

"He'd
accept
you?" demanded Nick, appalled. Blast Lily for only telling him half the truth! "As coldhearted as that? He'd trade one bride for another, like a new coat or hat? Didn't he give a damn whether
you
accepted
him
?"

"To marry Lord Eliot is a very great honor," said Rose mechanically, her aunt's repetitious arguments now echoing from her own lips. "He is second in line to be marquis of Danbury, and they say his brother's not even wed, let alone sired any heirs. He has excellent connections in the Admiralty to ensure that his career prospers. He has a small estate of his own in Hampshire. He is by all reports a most comely and agreeable gentleman and officer."