Teresa Medeiros (31 page)

At six feet, Gerard was nearly a foot shorter than his quartermaster, but that didn’t stop Apollo from taking
a hasty step backward. “I like being second in command, sir. It spares me the difficult decisions.”

Gerard wedged a hand through his hair, his own doubts tempering his frustration. “Such as what I’m going to do with
her?”

One of the qualities that made Apollo such an invaluable sailor was his instinctive knowledge of when to retreat. “Tell me, Captain,” he asked, revealing the blinding white of his teeth, “was your junket worth the trouble?”

“You’re the second person to ask me that today.” A bitter smile slanted Gerard’s lips as he bent to retrieve the Admiral’s splintered strongbox from where he had tossed it. “No letter of marque. No mention of the officer who might have acted as Lucien Snow’s agent.” He held up yellowed sheafs of paper, letting the gusty wind ruffle them. “Just old newspaper articles immortalizing the Admiral’s venerable career.” He freed the clippings to scatter across the water, then turned up a velvet-bound ledger, mildewed with age. “And a dead woman’s diary.”

At first Gerard had thought to read Annemarie Snow’s diary, but something in her lilting, girlish handwriting, the very antithesis of her daughter’s precise script, had stopped him. He had no right to Lucy’s past. He’d invaded enough of her life with his presence—her home, her privacy … her body. He closed his eyes briefly, battered by the memory of her melting surrender to his questing fingers.

When he opened them, Apollo was regarding him with the same curious mixture of amusement and empathy he’d shown on the night he’d discovered his captain nursing a stab wound only inches from his heart.

Gerard tossed the diary and the box back to the deck, dismissing sentimentality with deliberate callousness.
“You needn’t gloat. I might not have accomplished what I set out to do, but I can promise you that my next confrontation with Lucien Snow will occur on my terms.”

“You’re certain of that?”

Gerard narrowed his eyes as he scanned the far horizon. “Dead certain. Because we’re playing my game now and I’m the one holding the high trump.”

He only prayed he could summon the ruthlessness to use that precious, but fragile, card to his full advantage.

Lucy found little solace in solitude. Captivity maddened her. She paced the great cabin like a bird beating helplessly against the bars of its cage, shying away from the towering specter of the bed and all of its dark implications.

She struggled to keep her mind a careful blank, but as the hours wore on, the effort made her head ache with unshed tears. The vengeful demons of her doubts snapped at her heels. She hastened her steps, knowing she should be thankful she wasn’t chained to the wall.

Or the bed.

Lucy swung around to glare at the teak and mahogany monstrosity that dominated the cabin. What sort of libertine would flaunt such an excess of luxury in the impractical confines of a ship? Its very presence offended her innate practicality and sense of decency. They’d probably had to knock out the walls to get the bed in, she thought unkindly, or perhaps they’d simply built the ship around it.

Its carved and fluted splendor was as far removed from the humble bedstead in Ionia’s gatehouse as the complex masculine creature who had abducted her was from the simple, common man she had believed her bodyguard to be.

A pang of grief seized her heart as she realized that man was lost to her forever. Worse yet, he had never existed at all except in her gullible imagination.

Yet his voice continued to haunt her.
If I had a woman such as you at my mercy, I’d never let her go
.

Lucy hugged back a shiver, forced to acknowledge the more sinister implications of Gerard’s vow by the inescapable decadence of that bed.

She turned to the window, preferring to think of anything else, even Gerard’s accusations against her father.

She’d been twelve years old when her father had suffered the wound that ended his career. He had allowed only Smythe to attend him, yet she remembered those dark days well—the Admiral’s bitter roars for attention; the frightened whispers of the servants; strangers coming to the house at all hours, banging on the front door and demanding entrance. Might some of them have been creditors, preying on her father’s weakness to try and collect their debts?

The unbroken vista of sea and sky blurred before her weary eyes as other childhood memories intruded—her father bidding her a stilted farewell on his way to another of his interminable meetings at the Admiralty Court; the long, lonely evenings with nothing but her sketchpad and her gloxinia for company; footsteps shambling past her room in the wee hours of morning.

For the first time, Lucy thought to wonder if her mother’s life with the Admiral had been as desolate as her own.

A tightness swelled in her chest, squeezing the breath out of her. She pressed a hand to her throat, fearing she might smother before she could identify the unfamiliar emotion scorching the tears from her eyes.

Don’t gobble your food, Lucinda
.

Knees together, Lucinda
.

Stop slumping, Lucinda
.

The barked rebukes taunted her. What if Gerard was right? What if her father’s pious reputation was a carefully crafted ruse? What if he had spent a lifetime indulging his various vices, all the while taking poorly concealed delight in chiding her for the moral failings of a dead woman?

Her hand dropped to her heart as if to shield it from an unbearable truth. She realized with no little alarm that her fear and grief were rapidly being displaced by rage. A rage she’d been meekly swallowing for nineteen years. It seemed that every man in her life had betrayed her. Gerard. The Admiral. All but Smythe. And even his innate reserve had stayed his hand from reaching out to her as he might have done.

A shriek of pure fury erupted from between her clenched teeth. Lucy clapped a hand over her mouth, shocked at the primitive sound.

Even more shocking was the slightly hysterical giggle that followed, a giggle elicited by the gleeful surge of independence coursing through her veins.

There was no one left whose approval she cared for. She could slump and gobble her food and sit with her knees apart if she wanted to. She no longer had to live up to anyone’s impossible standards. She no longer had to be the Admiral’s good little girl.

Stymied by the irony of it all, she sank to her knees on the cabin floor and buried her face in her hands. It seemed she had lost everything she held dear only to gain herself.

G
ERARD’S FIRST THOUGHT UPON ENTERING his cabin late that afternoon was that he had blundered into a colossal spiderweb. He batted it away only to have a damp stocking swing back to smack him in the mouth. He gave the familiar pink toe of the disembodied garment a curious tug, recognizing it as Lucy’s. Lantern light filtered through the gauzy silk, displaying its sheerness to its most shocking advantage.

He cocked a speculative eyebrow, overcome briefly by his more lascivious instincts. If Lucy’s undergarments were draped over the ceiling beams to dry, he wondered, then what was Lucy wearing? If anything. Gesturing for Apollo to hang behind, he proceeded in stealth, sweeping the sodden lace of a petticoat out of his path to reveal the wreckage of his cabin.

His jaw dropped in mute shock. In a matter of hours, Lucy had reduced his masculine sanctuary to utter chaos. Every drawer and door of his wardrobe sagged open with its contents spilling out. Unfurled maps and nautical charts were scattered across his
desk. An empty cracker tin was overturned on the table, surrounded by crumbs as if besieged by some overgrown rat. Not a rat, Gerard wryly corrected himself. A pink-eared, gray-eyed mouse.

He bit back a growl of dismay as he saw his beloved first edition of Defoe’s
Captain Singleton
sprawled on the cabin floor, spine up. Only the bed remained free of Lucy’s ravages, its burgundy counterpane a sea of undisturbed tranquility amid a storm of disarray.

He’d found her untidiness charming at Ionia, but having it stamped so possessively over his own well-ordered domain was as disturbing as the tart hint of lemon verbena wending its way to his nostrils through the aged musk of leather and tobacco.

A peevish mutter reached his ears. He discovered Lucy on her knees in the far corner, scavenging through an ancient sea chest. His heart doubled its pace when he saw she had commandeered a pair of his own discarded pantaloons. The faded doeskin cupped her gently rounded backside and clung to the provocative hollow between her thighs. All it took was a brief mental inventory of the garments strung above the iron coal stove for Gerard to realize there was nothing separating the worn fabric from her bare skin. The image both warmed and provoked him.

He beckoned Apollo forward, thankful for the man’s stalwart presence.

“Looking for this?” he asked loudly, drawing the Admiral’s ivory-handled letter opener from his pocket.

Lucy started, bumping her head on the chest’s lid. She swung around to glare at him, rubbing her brow, then offered him an acidly sweet smile. “I shouldn’t be needing it. I didn’t have time to leave a forwarding address.”

As Lucy climbed warily to her feet, Gerard’s image wavered like a chimera before her eyes. She wished she
could reconcile her conflicting perceptions of him. When she had seen that familiar sparkle of mischief in his eyes, her first instinct had been to hurl herself into his arms and burst into tears. She squared her shoulders, bracing herself to resist all such futile urges.

Her newfound poise deserted her as Gerard’s towering companion emerged from behind the curtain of her petticoat. Lucy had seen only two dark-skinned men in her lifetime, one a small boy the Duchess of Emmons boasted slept curled like a lapdog on a cushion at the foot of her bed, the other an elderly footman, his dignity oddly unspoiled by the powdered periwig and satin livery his master insisted he wear.

She knew she was being hopelessly rude, but she couldn’t stop gaping. The man’s skin absorbed the light like the richest of coffees unmarred by even a swirl of cream. His bald scalp glistened with oil. A colorful patchwork vest hung open over his chest to reveal massive slabs of muscle. Scarlet leggings clung to the imposing length of his legs, tapering down to bare ankles banded with thick rings of scar tissue. Those scars, raw and ugly, held Lucy transfixed.

“Put Miss Snow’s tray on the table, Apollo,” Gerard commanded smoothly.

Lucy’s heart plummeted to her stomach. Why should she have expected any more of him? Wasn’t he a pirate? A brigand? A notorious scoundrel who would give no more thought to trading in human lives than he would to robbing a Royal Treasury ship? Or abducting the woman he’d been hired to protect? She could hardly expect him to suffer from pangs of conscience when he had none.

All of those rational reminders didn’t stop her from wondering miserably if anyone had ever died of disillusionment.

She flung Gerard a look of pure contempt and fixed
her nose at its most sanctimonious angle. “You’d best obey your master, Mr. Apollo. I’d hate for him to stripe your back for some imagined hesitation. After all, we’re both little more than his chattel, aren’t we?”

Gerard sighed and rolled his eyes.

Apollo set the tray on the table and drew out a chair with a graceful flourish. “No man has been my master for nigh on eleven years, missie. I am a freeman.”

“Miss Snow, I’d like you to meet my second-in-command—my quartermaster.”

Lucy didn’t know which was more mortifying—Apollo’s gentle rebuke or Gerard’s superior smirk. She rather wished she could crawl
under
the chair.

“I believe we’ve met,” she said softly. “I never forget a voice.

If Apollo felt any chagrin at being recognized as her original abductor, he hid it behind an angelic smile.

Which only made Gerard’s lazily folded arms and arched eyebrow appear more devilish. “We
have
made the acquaintance of several white slavers during our voyages, haven’t we, Apollo? Do you think the Pasha is still seeking haughty young English misses for his harem?”