Swept Away By a Kiss (2 page)

Valerie narrowed her eyes against the gathering dusk. Her girlish imagination had once conjured up a mysterious figure just like this, a man of privilege and power who nevertheless bore a heathen’s heart past redemption.

But Valerie was no longer a girl, and the sight of this very real Jesuit’s broad shoulders stretching his mantle taut stirred in her an entirely womanly appreciation. Captivated, she continued staring as an urchin scurried toward the priest and grasped him around the knee.

The child’s dusky face looked as grubby as the rags draped over his bone-thin frame. But without hesitation the priest swept back his elegant cloak and bent. An object passed from the boy’s fist into the man’s palm—a slip of paper, perhaps? The priest’s hand enclosed the tiny one, and his other stole across the matted twists of the boy’s hair in a captivating gesture of approval, or possibly affection. He stood to his full height again, and the urchin ran off.

“Lady Valerie!” The anxious call of Valerie’s maid sliced into her reverie.

The priest turned and looked directly at her. His eyes flashed gold in the failing light. A frisson of recognition skittered through Valerie’s belly. Her breath caught.

She did not know him. She would certainly remember if she’d met him before. At a distance he appeared handsome, all teak skin and ebony-clad masculinity cast in the slanting rays of sun. But the sense of familiarity clung, spreading to her throat and chest.

Disturbed by the absurd impression, she tried to look away. But his gaze held hers like a silken grip. For an instant, as though in a dream, she seemed to look out of someone else’s eyes at the solitary figure at the water’s edge.

Her maid’s footsteps sounded upon the planking. Peculiar panic darted through Valerie. She wrenched her gaze from the priest.

“Yes, Harriet?”

The maid bobbed a curtsy. “Mr. Raymer says the ship is ready to get under way. He wants your company.”

“I will be there shortly.” Smudges of purple stained Harriet’s gray cheeks. Valerie frowned. “Harriet, you look unwell.”

“A touch of the megrim is all, miss.” The maid wrung her hands.

“You better go and have a rest. I don’t want you laid up below deck all month for taking the first day too quickly.”

Wanting to turn again toward the quay—and the priest—Valerie dampened the urge. He was exactly the sort of inappropriate man she once eagerly sought out. But she had changed. Two years of grief had seen to that. Not even a handsome, mysterious stranger could inspire her to recklessness.

Besides, she didn’t have anyone to shock with that sort of behavior any longer.

She ushered her maid back to the hatchway. Harriet descended to the cabin, and Valerie started aft toward the captain’s observation deck. But an odd warmth gathered between her shoulders, tugging her back. Taking a quick breath, she turned.

Not far along the quay, a cluster of sailors rested from the press of last-minute work before the sun’s disappearance. A scraggly dog picked around their feet for bits of discarded tobacco. But where the Jesuit had stood was nothing but the worn wood of the dock and, beyond, the darkening lap of water in the bay.

He had vanished, just as Valerie’s unease at making this journey to England had disappeared. Instead, a spark of excitement sizzled through her, and her blood, so cold for twenty-four months, hummed with warm anticipation.

* * *

Valerie
.

The name rustled through Steven’s consciousness. A memory followed, words sung into the fire smoke in his grandfather’s gravelly voice.

Strong. Her heart is strong. Your path will cross hers and you must choose which road to tread. But only one will lead you home
.

Valerie.

Valor. Strength.

His grandfather had said much more. Steven tried to recall it as he strode down the quay in the hush of early evening. But his thoughts were already full of the project at hand. He hadn’t the leisure to muse on futile prophecies. His destiny did not matter. Steven respected his grandfather, but he never much cared for the notion that a man couldn’t create his life for himself.

Steven’s future had not been predestined, after all. The Natchez blood running in his veins alongside the blue of the English aristocracy saw to that. He could have easily spent his lifetime as a pell for men of pure lineage, scorned and beaten for being born a lesser mortal. But he hadn’t. Only ten years old, he’d fled England and forged another future for himself.

No, Steven did not believe in prophecy, even when it involved a beautiful woman. He didn’t believe in fate either. A man’s future should not be determined by his parents’ blood, or by the color of his skin as so many believed.

Including the villain Steven now hunted.

On silent feet he slipped into the warehouse. The note the boy had passed him indicated this as the meeting place his contact preferred. The building echoed dank and cool after the long winter and smelled of brine. Scanning the high-ceilinged chamber stacked with barrels and crates, Steven’s gaze went to the shadows, to tiny windows, other possible escape routes—the usual perusal for such a meeting. He wished he had a sword at his side, regretting the disguise he had donned so long ago it seemed like a second skin and made bearing a sword impossible.

His strength and agility would have to do. At least today he would not be required to brandish a weapon. A man never knew, though. Not when lives and gold and power were at stake, as always in the world of the slave trade.

Steven drew a slow breath, trying to quell the peculiar expectation stirring his senses. Anticipation over the imminent meeting didn’t cause it. He knew what was to come. For two years he and Maximin had planned everything carefully. This meeting would merely confirm a final detail. Nothing about it worried Steven now.

But . . .
Valerie
.

A coincidence. Women all over the world bore that name. He’d even shared a bed with one years back if he remembered correctly, and hadn’t given it a second thought.

But this English noblewoman, she stared at him so fixedly, as though she knew.

Steven shook himself. She knew nothing. She was a complete stranger, and she would remain one despite the journey they were about to share, a journey that would not proceed as the beautiful Englishwoman imagined. Not if everything Steven arranged came to pass.

Footsteps scuffled upon the sandy floor. A man appeared in the dim light of a lantern.

“Angel?” he whispered. His gaze skittered around the building, searching for Steven in the shadows.

“I am here,” Steven said, managing not to cringe at the alias given him years earlier. He still thought it was ridiculous. If the men and women working for him truly knew him, they would have named him much differently, no doubt more like the name his mother’s people had offered him.

“Expect them in four days, Father,” the man said.

Four days, long enough to sail past the American naval barricade and still remain within the pirate Bebain’s territory. Perfect.

“Thank you, my son.” The priestly words slipped easily off Steven’s tongue. He had played the part for so long, it barely took effort.

Recalling the English beauty’s wide, direct stare, Steven wondered briefly if pretending to be a priest would be quite so easy for the next four days.

Chapter 3

G
ood heavens, not again,” Valerie muttered, setting a basin beneath her maid’s chin. How a person could be so ill, so many times, while the ship moved in such calm waters, Valerie could not fathom.

“I’ll be better in a trice, my lady,” Harriet moaned, falling back onto her cot.

Valerie rinsed a cloth in water laced with her own lavender oil and placed it upon her maid’s forehead. Back in Boston, Cousin Abigail insisted Harriet would make a fine companion for the crossing. Valerie should have known better. The girl’s dull temper did not suit her, but Abigail thought of Harriet as a steadying influence on her wild English mistress.

Valerie snorted inelegantly, patted her maid’s hand, and rose.

“Rest now, Harriet. I am going above deck for a bit, but I will be back soon.”

“But, milady, you can’t. Your cousin—”

“My cousin does not have any say over my comings and goings any longer. No one else does either.” The words slipped over Valerie’s tongue like sweet wine. “We have been aboard nearly three days already and I simply must be free of this cabin. No one will notice if I poke my head above without you.”

Harriet groaned again. Valerie tucked the ends of her shawl under her elbows and ducked from the chamber. A few steps along the gun deck took her to the hatchway and up into the bright morning.

The Dutch barque was broad and solid, its square sails filled with wind driving it eastward. Scattered sailors worked unhurriedly beneath the early summer sun. A trio of boys at the deckhouse door chased a tune from a pair of mouth organs and a pillbox accordion. The music danced across the decks, mingling with the roll of water carved by the ship’s stern and the white-tipped ocean swells.

She did not see the captain at his usual post on the upper deck and looked toward the prow. Her lashes fanned open. Another passenger stood at the forecastle rail, his black-clad shoulders and back to her. But his virile, robed figure and proud stance were unmistakable. The Jesuit.

Beside him, the navigator, a hoary old seaman, fiddled with some sort of tool. His hands seemed anxious on the instrument. The priest spoke, and snatches of phrases skittered to her on the afternoon breeze.

French?

She shouldn’t be surprised. A Dutch ship was bound to carry other foreigners, even passengers whose nations were at war, like England and France. Boston had its fair share of monarchist émigrés from France’s war-torn colonies. Perhaps this priest with the broad shoulders was an aristocrat driven abroad by the Revolution. Or maybe he simply sought the adventure that came with a missionary’s vows in America.

A crease formed in Valerie’s brow. Flight from the dangers of revolution she could appreciate, but not that other sort of sacrifice. She would never understand how a man could deny himself intimacy in hopes of securing divine love. In Valerie’s experience, human love was hard enough to win.

The navigator reached beneath his coat and pulled out an envelope. As though he expected it—just as with the boy on the dock—the priest drew it from the older man’s fingers and slipped it into his sleeve. The sailor’s face filled with relief.

Valerie’s eyes narrowed, her pulse quickening. The envelope must contain something of great value to cause the navigator to react like that.

“Welcome atop, Lady Valerie,” a voice boomed across deck. “It is a glorious day.”

Valerie pivoted to greet the shipmaster. “So glorious, Mr. Raymer, that I have come up without my maid. Unfortunately she is ill. May I impose upon you for company?”

“Certainly. In such fine weather, no one should cower below. Please join me for some refreshment.”

Valerie accepted the master’s outstretched arm and he led her aft. Beneath a sturdy awning, a table was already set with tea and biscuits. Shaking her head at the proffered chair, she leaned against the rail and looked below at the waves splashing against the ship’s broad sides. The salt air sank deep into her lungs.

Untying her bonnet ribbons, she removed the hat. Her hair worked free in the breeze and she sighed at the glorious sensation. She had been so proper and well behaved living with her cousins. But she was not in England yet, and she didn’t have anything to hide aboard this ship. None of the sailors would notice if she acquired a freckle or two as penalty for her minor transgression. And aside from Harriet, no one else aboard would care a fig if she went without her bonnet. Certainly not a French priest.

The captain regarded her with bashful appreciation as he filled a teacup for her. Valerie smiled over the rim at the Dutch sailor. She liked his affable, fatherly air, a quality the earl had entirely lacked.

“It’s a shame your servant has taken ill in such a fine wind,” he said. “Fortunately, we are not likely to see truly inclement skies. You chose a good season to sail.”

“Don’t you think there is any chance of a storm, Mr. Raymer?”

“When Beauty ventures into the open, not even Neptune dares produce an errant wave to drive her below deck.” The fluid French words caressed Valerie’s senses. She swung around to face the priest.