Swept Away By a Kiss (6 page)

“Are you unharmed?” His lion eyes watched her, their expression unreadable.

“I have been left to myself all day,” she managed.

“I didn’t know where they took you last night. I am relieved you are well.” He fastened the lamp into a clasp upon the table. He looked around the cabin, his regard coming to rest on the armchair. “May I?”

He made the request prosaically enough, but Valerie suddenly saw his weariness, and something else, a slight darkening along his jaw and another over his eye. Bruises. They must have beaten him when they took the ship, yet now he seemed more concerned over her safety than his discomfort.

She gestured with a jerky motion toward the chair. He lowered his lean body, the grace of a great cat in his motions, a lion’s regal elegance.

Valerie swallowed. “I napped most of the day. Did they let you sleep?”

“They did not.” His gaze swung up. “Until now.”

Chapter 6

S
he followed his gaze to the bed, the bed he probably considered merely a piece of furniture upon which a man slept. She took a steadying breath, shoved back her shoulders, and crossed her arms.

“Then you should sleep. Have you eaten?”

“Yes. I have been fed. Like an animal. I hope you fared better.”

Valerie nodded and turned again to the window. The light had faded entirely from the sky. She drew the shutters to and clasped them. Warmth gathered between her shoulders and upon the backs of her hands, strange and stirring, dipping into her middle. She pivoted and met Etienne’s gaze. The amber depths of his exotic eyes shimmered with heat. Untamed and hungry.
Like an animal
.

Valerie foundered, desire tangling through her limbs and belly. He swallowed visibly, with a slight movement of his head, as though he wished to turn away. But their gazes held.

Finally his voice came deep and quiet into the stillness.

“You understand what Bebain intends for you and me.”

“Yes.” To her shame, the word came out like a whisper.

Silence stretched between them.

“If I am to be of any use to us in the days ahead in escaping this prison,” he said, “I must be rested. You too. But neither of us will sleep well if forced to sit in this chair all night.”

She nodded.

“We are agreed, then.” He stood, and his powerful presence in the confined space flooded Valerie’s senses. She held her breath as he reached through a slit beneath the sash of his dark robe and drew out a small, worn book. He placed it and the string of wooden beads upon the table. In mute anticipation Valerie watched him remove his cloak and lie down on the mattress. His eyes closed, and within moments he seemed to sleep.

She stood motionless. She had been in tight quarters with handsome men, mostly of her own making, but she’d never before felt so dizzyingly overset. Perhaps because this time she played someone else’s game, a game much more serious than any she had ever devised.

She glanced at the table. The battered gold lettering upon the book’s cover read
Écriture Sainte
,
Holy Bible
. She ran her fingers over the softened leather binding, tracing the letters and teasing the frayed, colored ribbons tucked within the pages. She considered the beads but did not touch them. Settling back in the chair, she let her gaze slip to the priest’s supine figure.

In repose, his face was as perfect as in animation. Her pulse quickened and her gaze slid down the length of his body, leisurely inspecting the breadth of his shoulders, his narrow hips and muscular legs stretched straight atop the counterpane. Upon the ocean, it seemed, beauty was not reserved to spectacular sunsets.

Trying to ignore her heartbeat’s unevenness, she opened the Bible.

Steven awoke before dawn, as was his habit at sea. Of course, he usually met the sunrise in his own cabin. He’d never spent a night in this one, the cabin Maximin used when both of them were aboard. But that had not been the case during many months of hard work on land and other men’s ships to get them to exactly this place.

Not exactly this place, in truth. The woman should not have been taken prisoner. Steven had hoped to avert that, but he hadn’t been quick enough to warn Maximin. He also expected her to hide, a patently foolish assumption, he realized too late.

Still, he and Maximin were close to their goal. If they played this final charade right and succeeded in gaining the confidence of the sailors Bebain had brought on board, the madman’s mania could work in their favor.

They had not planned their first mate’s betrayal. But Fevre’s duplicity brought them a wonderful treasure. When he falsely sold the
Blackhawk
to Bebain, he hadn’t counted on Maximin returning from his journey to the coast so quickly. As Steven’s partner insinuated himself into the crew, pretending to be one of Fevre’s men instead of the opposite, the mate had not said a word about it to Bebain. He was terrified for his life from both Maximin and Bebain.

That was all Maximin had been able to whisper to Steven in the few minutes they had to speak since coming aboard his ship. But it was enough. Fevre’s treachery was an unexpected boon. He did not know the identity of Bebain’s aristocratic employer, the man Steven and Maximin truly sought to ruin. With the appropriate encouragement, the pirate would surely give up information about the Marquess of Hannsley’s other ships, perhaps even names of contacts at trading ports.

Yes, all was going well.

Except for the one inconvenient detail.

Steven knew without looking that Valerie had not lain down upon the bed. His gaze sought her across the tiny chamber.

She was curled into the chair, her legs tucked up beneath her and head bent awkwardly against the chair back. Her half boots were arranged neatly upon the pine planking, but the tangle of skirts about her ankles betrayed her failed attempt at orderliness. Her eyes moved swiftly beneath closed eyelids, her brow taut with anxiety. A few locks of dark, glossy hair strayed across her forehead and exposed cheek, and she breathed heavily, the bodice of her sheer gown straining against the fretful inhales. She trembled.

Reaching for the blanket, Steven eased off the bed and bent over her.

His knee exploded in pain.

He staggered back, knocking his elbow hard against the bedpost and landing on the edge of the iron frame. Damping his instant flash of anger, he looked to his attacker.

Ready to spring from the chair, Valerie stared back at him from across the few feet separating them, her foot that had kicked him poised above the floor. A tiny, razor-sharp knife sparkled in her clenched hand. Her eyes, the centers wide and black, showed frightened wariness.

Her gaze shifted and fixed upon the blanket, and awareness dawned upon her lovely face. She lowered the knife, but only slightly.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was rough with sleep.

Steven pulled himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He laid the coverlet beside him and rubbed at his knee.

“Covering you up,” he replied in French, the language he had made his own from the time he was a child, long before his grandfather warned him to mend the ragged edges of his life. “You were trembling.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. She frowned, and her free hand ran up her other arm as she shivered, but she did not speak or lower the knife further.

“You have a powerful kick, my lady,” Steven commented, keeping his voice dry. From the depths of sleep she had awoken to defend herself as though trained to do so. Her spirit of defiance went deep. She’d had to fight for herself at an early age, it seemed. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Learn? Nowhere.” She blinked and straightened her graceful shoulders, shaking off the remnants of slumber. “But my brother gave me this. At the time I thought it was a rather dramatic gesture.” She studied the knife and slowly turned it around in her hand, then returned her gaze to Steven. Her grave, sea-blue eyes challenged. “He had been at war by then, you see.”

In the guise of Etienne La Marque, Steven had taken insults from Englishmen so often he barely noticed now. He gestured to the knife.

“You may feel free to put that away.”

“Oh, may I?” She was fully awake now. “So silly of me. I suppose now that I am safe with you I can relax my guard, is that correct?” She slid her other stockinged foot onto the floor, exposing a slender calf and neat ankle. The knife remained high. “I am so relieved to know that, Father.”

Chapter 7

S
teven stilled. “I believe you know you can trust me not to harm you,” he said quietly.

Her long-lashed eyes lit. “I don’t know anything of the kind, Monsieur le Prêtre. Your words last night did not particularly comfort me, although they certainly assured that madman. I have no idea what you may or may not consider advantageous to your situation. For all I know, this entire thing could have been planned from the start. Certainly your lack of action in trying to save us when there was opportunity makes me think you never intended to.”

“Opportunity?” Steven asked, the incredulity in his tone perfectly sincere. Regrettably. “Three men ambushed me in my cot, beat me, and tied me up before I had awakened fully. How might that constitute opportunity, I wonder?”

“You might have fought then. You should have tried to rescue Raymer, and me.” Desperation laced her words. “You should have at least made an effort. You might have done something.”

Steven regarded her calmly. “I am a priest, my lady, not a pirate. What would you have had me do to our captors, exorcise them?” He cocked a brow. “I hardly think that would have sufficed.”

A reluctant smile pulled across her lips. The transparent play of emotions across her beautiful, sleep-chased face delighted Steven. And aroused him. She was remarkably lovely, sitting all rumpled and slightly confused. Lovely enough to forget his purpose.

Standing, he moved to the window and unlatched the shutter. Damp morning air slid across his skin, scented with salt. The faintest touch of gray stained the eastern horizon. It would be morning soon, time to get to work. There were at least a dozen men aboard whose loyalties he was not certain of yet. Mutiny at high sea was a perilous thing when a man did not know his enemies from his allies.

“I am sorry,” she said into the silence of creaking boards and lapping water. “You must have been as helpless as I was once we were surrounded.”

Steven glanced at the blade still clasped in her palm, and his mouth crooked to one side. “More helpless, make no doubt of it.”

Sliding the knife back into its slender sheath, Valerie grimaced and lifted a hand to her neck. In the dim light, her throat shone smooth along the graceful curve of her chin and cheek. Steven dragged his gaze away.

“You must sleep in comfort now,” he said.

Awareness flickered in her eyes, along with renewed wariness. She did not trust him. And well she should not.

“Please, let us be allies, Valerie,” he said, using her name for the first time since entering the cabin the evening before. He hadn’t wanted to utter the word, as though in doing so he would bring his grandfather’s prophecy into the confines of their tiny cell. “Please, you must trust me.” The irony of his words cut at Steven worse than any knife blade could.

Her lashes flickered. Not accord, but acknowledgment.

“It is almost daylight,” he said. “I will take the chair while you sleep.”

“You think he will call for us?”

“I have been ordered to serve an ill sailor. But for now, sleep heals all wounds.” He glanced at his abused knee. A tiny crease appeared in Valerie’s cheek.

She let him usher her to the bed. For some time she lay stiff and silent, her gaze restless. But eventually she slept. Steven settled into the chair to await the dawn.

She ran. Despite the water collecting around her ankles, she made headway. But the birds followed, pursuing her with dark wings and red faces. Vultures, the American kind, hunting her. But vultures only hunted the very young and weak, and anger filled her because she was neither.

Another bird hovered in the sky, black and full-winged. A hawk, drifting languidly upon the currents of wind at a distance, waiting to see if she would escape the others. Waiting and watching her from afar
.