Teresa Medeiros (29 page)

She clawed at his white shirt like a desperate lover, ignoring the rending protest of its seams. How long had it been since she had sought to bare his chest for her caress? A lifetime ago? She jerked the crisp linen back and down, stripping his right shoulder.

The flawless melding of muscle and sinew was marred by a single narrow scar. She touched her fingertips to it, exploring its uneven border with dumb shock.

Gerard caught her wrist, his grip both gentle and implacable. She slowly lifted her eyes to meet his, already dreading what she would find.

“Gerard Claremont,” he said, his eyes sparkling with grim humor. “My friends call me Gerard, but my enemies call me Captain Doom.”

Lucy flinched as reality fractured around her just as her father’s hourglass had. The blood drained from her face. An icy sweat broke out on her brow. Her ears
roared as if flanked by twin conch shells. The soothing fog of unconsciousness drifted toward her, promising respite from a truth she could neither change nor endure.

Before she could succumb, bitter nausea curled through her belly. For one humiliating moment, she thought she was going to be ill all over Gerard’s striking jackboots and half wished she would.

Then he was there as he had always been, his competent hands supporting her shoulders, bathing her bloodless lips with a damp rag.

“Stop it!” she spat, batting them away. She couldn’t bear his touch. It was a mockery. An abomination.

He at least had the grace to withdraw a few feet from the bed. She threaded her fingers through her hair and pressed her palms to her temples, waiting for both her rioting emotions and stomach to subside.

“The champagne and the
somnorifera
were an unfortunate combination,” he said quietly. “When I stole it from the stables, I never intended to use it on you. I’m sorry.”

Lucy remembered the smothering softness pressed over her face. She could still taste the sickly-sweet bitterness of poppy on her tongue, scent it in her nostrils.

“Sorry?” She glared up at him through a tangled strand of hair. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe
somnorifera
is
intended
to subdue horses for gelding.”

She savored every ounce of menace in the last word. Gerard’s lips tensed as if he would have liked to smile, but didn’t dare.

He folded his arms over his chest. “Which is exactly why it would have worked to subdue Smythe had he disturbed me. He’s the only man I know who sleeps less than I do.”

“Was it your
intention
to abduct me or was that an unfortunate accident of fate as well?”

He drew a step nearer to the bed. The silkiness of his voice didn’t soften its sting. “Had it been my intention to abduct you, I would have done so long ago. God knows, you offered me ample opportunity.”

As their eyes met, Lucy recalled all the other things she’d offered him. Her trust. Her heart. Her innocence. Waves of humiliation and self-loathing washed over her as she realized she’d been nothing more to him than the means to an end. A hapless pawn in some enigmatic game.

Tears sprang to her eyes, but she furiously blinked them back, refusing to debase herself further before this man. If he had the sheer gall to offer her a handkerchief, she might very well lunge for his throat.

“What a mewling goose you must have thought me! How you must have laughed at my calf-eyed adoration, my absurd defense of Captain Doom!”

His impassive silence was as damning as a confession.

She choked a single word past the raw magnitude of his betrayal. “Why?”

He paced away from her, his deliberate distance pounding the wedge between them that much deeper. Outside of a Royal Navy flagship, Lucy had never seen a great cabin of such generous proportions. There was even a window at starboard, a large, rounded porthole that provided a glimpse of a bleak dawn unfurling over a gray sea.

Not even the spacious cabin could confine its master’s restless energy. He didn’t so much pace as prowl.

When he pivoted on his heel, the man she had known as Gerard Claremont was gone. His usurper was the predatory stranger who had stalked her in this very cabin on the most frightening, exhilarating night of her life. The essence of command was limned in every roll of his sailor’s swagger. This was a man who
did not feel it necessary to hide his pistol beneath a coat, but wore it jammed boldly into the waistband of a pair of black breeches that clung to his lean flanks like a second skin.

Lucy fought the same breathless fear she had felt when watching the
Retribution
emerge from the night. It was as if she faced some elemental creature of awesome power whose very existence threatened her own. As he approached, she hugged her knees to her chest, knowing them a precarious barrier at best. He had already breached them once.

“Contrary to what you may think,” he said, “piracy wasn’t always my chosen vocation.”

“A pity. You seem to excel at it.” Her words sounded as brittle as she felt.

He slanted her a dark look, then resumed his pacing. She supposed she was entitled to her sarcasm. God knows he’d left her little else.

“I went to sea when I was twelve. By the time I was nineteen, I was serving as master of my own merchant vessel.”

No small accomplishment, that, but Lucy would have bitten off her own tongue before praising his initiative. “If you’ve a quill and some paper, I’d be more than happy to take notes for your memoirs.”

“Or my eulogy?” he ventured. “After the Spanish switched their allegiance to France, there was a fortune to be made for any captain willing to challenge their combined Mediterranean blockades.”

“I’m well aware of Spain’s betrayal. It almost cost my father his leg. It did cost him his career.”

“I can promise you that it didn’t cost him nearly as much as it cost me.” Gerard’s silky tone flogged her raw nerves. She was thankful when he continued his clipped recitation. “I returned from a voyage to Gibraltar, after inadvertently dismasting a Spanish frigate
carrying gunpowder to the French, to find myself something of a hero.”

“A role I’m sure you relished.”

A rueful smile curved his lips. “It had its charms. I was presented at court and wooed by the Royal Navy. There were very few salons in London that weren’t open to me.”

Very few beds either, Lucy deduced. It was only too easy to imagine the handsome young captain soaking up the simpering admiration of the
ton’s
beauties. A pang of jealousy disturbed her. How plain and unsophisticated a lowly knight’s daughter must have seemed to him!

She hid her discomfiture behind a venomous smile. “So how did this idyllic interlude come to an end?”

“With the appearance of a stranger at a masked ball. A stranger claiming to represent a high-ranking naval official who could grant me the one thing fame and fortune couldn’t buy me. I’d already been offered a chance to take the lieutenancy exam, but this man promised me command of my own ship.” His voice softened with remembered longing. “A captaincy in the Royal Navy.” As if already regretting that he’d revealed too much, he paced away from her, tension coiled in every step.

“Go on,” she whispered, aching with bleak suspense.

“I’m sure you’re aware of the thin line that separates privateering and piracy during times of war. I was offered a chance to tread the lawful side of that line. To sail to the Caribbean, capture and board French and Spanish frigates, and return one-fifth of their booty to His Majesty to fund the war effort. My crew and I were to split the balance. My anonymous benefactor would commission a ship and the Lord High Admiral would issue a letter of marque to legalize my
activities and keep the French from hanging me should I be captured.”

His lips twisted, but this time his contempt was only for himself. “Such a scheme couldn’t help but strike the patriotic fancy of a brash young man who’d spent his life dreaming of serving his king. The intrigue alone was irresistible. I met my benefactor’s representative at masked routs, in shadowed alleys, priest’s confessionals. I never saw his face or knew his name. I wasn’t to understand the reason why until it was too late.”

“You were captured,” Lucy said with dread certainty.

“I was betrayed!”

She recoiled from his damning shout. She had exasperated him, infuriated him, possibly even enraged him during his weeks at Ionia, but he had never raised his voice to her with such violence. Her gaze dropped to his clenched fists. She’d seen firsthand the damage they could do when their threat was unleashed. For the first time, she entertained the painful possibility that she might have more to fear from this man than heartbreak.

Following the direction of her gaze, Gerard slowly uncurled his fingers and released a deep breath. “I was
captured
,” he conceded, “off the coast of San Juan. Two days before, a Spanish merchant vessel had surrendered without a fight. I boarded her, showed the captain my letter of marque, and proceeded to divest her of her cargo.” His eyes sharpened at the memory. “Three thousand pieces of gold, silver bars, spices, cotton, indigo, silk, cinnamon. A treasure to warm the moldering heart of Captain Kidd himself.”

“And the heart of His Majesty, I’m sure.”

“I was never to know. We were captured by a French warship and taken to a fortress in Santo Domingo. Even when the guards were clapping me in
irons, I laughed in their faces because I knew they hadn’t the evidence to convict us of piracy. I still had the Lord High Admiral’s letter of marque in my possession
and
I’d had the foresight to stash our prize in San Juan.”

“Buried treasure. How romantic.” Her droll tone implied the opposite.

“My benefactor’s henchman came calling the next day. It had been agreed upon that he would be waiting in the islands to defend me in the event of such a situation. All he required was the letter of marque and the location of our cache.”

For a stunned moment, Lucy lost the threads of her sarcasm. “And you told him?”

Wheeling on his heel, Gerard shot her a scathing look. “You’ll have to forgive me my naïveté. That was back when I still had faith in mankind.”

Lucy met his gaze and said softly, “I seem to remember suffering from just such a grave condition myself.”

He was the first to look away. “That was the last I saw of the wretch. Without the letter of marque, I had no way to prove myself a privateer and not a pirate.” His face darkened. “They hanged my crew the following day, all the way down to the sailmaster’s nine-year-old apprentice. They would have hanged me, but my earlier boasts had planted enough doubt in their minds that they feared reprisal from the British government.” He added with chilling gentleness, “Do you know what it is for a captain to outlive his crew, Lucy?”

Lucy recalled standing on the misty deck of the
Tiberius
, imagining the ghostly strains of betrayed sailors vowing vengeance. The notion didn’t seem quite so fanciful anymore.

She shivered. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity,” he snapped.

“Then what do you want?” she cried. She could no longer bear his enigmatic baiting. It was like being batted about by the elegant, but deadly, paws of a leopard.

He swaggered toward the bed. It took every fiber of her will to keep from shrinking back into the pillows. “Would you care to know the name of the ship my benefactor provided me? The recommissioned beauty the French gutted and sank off the coast of Santo Domingo?”

“Not really,” she whispered, her mouth going dry.

He ignored her. “The
Annemarie
.”

Lucy blanched. A sick feeling blossomed in her belly. “Annemarie was my mother’s name. I’ve never heard of such a ship.”

Gerard arched one eyebrow. “My benefactor always did have a droll sense of humor. It was his idea to give me the alias Captain Doom.” Her heartbeat quickened as he leaned over the bed, flexing his hands on the headboard behind her to imprison her between his muscular arms. “So you see, my dear, you can’t blame me for being a villain, because after all, I’m only what your father made me.”

“Y
OU’RE LYING!”

With that impassioned cry, Lucy ducked beneath Gerard’s arm and sprang out of the bed, desperate to escape his taunting presence. A moment earlier she might have judged herself too weak with shock to stand without foundering, but now outrage fortified her as she took her turn at pacing the immense cabin.

“You’re lying,” she repeated, turning on Gerard like a mother tigress defending her cubs. “My father is a good man. He’s dedicated his life to serving his country and king.”

“He’s dedicated his life to serving himself!” Gerard snarled.

He was looking at her as if he hated her as much as he hated her father. Refusing to be distracted by the sharp pain in the region of her heart, Lucy retreated behind the cool veil of logic.

She faced him, her hands linked before her with contemptuous calm. “Upon what evidence do you base your absurd accusation?”

Amusement at her bravado glimmered briefly in his eyes, jarring her more than his antipathy. “Your father had the perfect motives. Jealousy of a young, healthy naval hero with a bright career ahead of him. Greed. Desperation.”