Teresa Medeiros (47 page)

Her foresight cheered her. Now she would have far less distance to fall when she collapsed in her death throes. For it seemed that Gerard had unfurled every remaining scrap of sail and set them on a collision course with the
Argonaut
.

“Christ, the Cap’n’s gone balmy,” a scrawny boy breathed, suddenly looking more the fifteen he was than the seventeen he’d claimed to be to gain a coveted berth aboard the
Retribution
.

Lucy threw one arm over the nearest cannon to brace herself for impact. She longed to close her eyes, but couldn’t drag them away from their imminent destruction. A curious exhilaration seized her, tempering her terror. At least Gerard would die not at the whim of others, but standing proudly at the helm of his ship, master of his own fate. Tears of pride burned her eyes, fierce and hot.

They sliced through the indigo water toward the massive warship, so close she could see the tiny figures scrambling in panic on its deck. It was too late for the
Argonaut
to negotiate a retreat or even a turn. Its sail pattern was too complex, its lumbering weight too awkward. Its very might damned it to ruin.

But not so the
Retribution
. Just prior to impact, just before that fatal instant when the scream building in
Lucy’s throat would have erupted in blind terror, the sleek, graceful schooner swung about, raking down the
Argonaut
’s hull with a hideous scrape that made Lucy want to clap her hands over her ears. The risky maneuver was not without cost. Somewhere abovedeck, a mast snapped with the macabre crack of splintering bone.

Like a bellow of pain at the needless destruction of something precious came a mighty roar.
“Fire!”

Lucy gaped at her new compatriots, wondering if her own expression was as comical as theirs. Realization dawned in a flash of gunpowder. Gerard’s brilliant, if dangerous, maneuver had enabled the smaller, lighter ship to come in
under
the warship’s guns, rendering the pride of the King’s fleet as helpless as a kitten without its claws. Gerard might be risking damage to his own vessel by firing at such chilling range, but it was a risk carefully calculated and weighed against the odds.

They might have stood frozen that way forever were it not for the booming eruption of a quarterdeck cannon and an exasperated shout Lucy recognized only too well. “Halloo! Is everybody asleep down there?”

The gunners and monkeys scrambled as one to begin the steps of the complicated minuet that would start their cannons firing in synch.

As he touched the hissing match to the first fuse, one of the gunners gave a jubilant crow. “This one’s for Digby, ye bloody bastard!”

The cannon roared in response. Lucy rather thought Mr. Digby would approve of the tribute.

Time stumbled to a halt in the narrow gallery, reduced to the stench of burning gunpowder, the deafening thunder of the cannons, and the protesting shudders of the
Retribution
at being caught too near to her prey. Lucy lost count of the number of times she
staggered back and forth across the pitching floor, her arms aching beneath the weight of an iron cannonball or a keg of gunpowder.

Smoke burned her eyes; heat scorched her fingers; powder blackened her arms and hands. Yet still she pressed on, driven by the sheer exhilaration of battle. After a life wasted on surrender, she’d finally discovered someone worth fighting for.

Like David pounding Goliath with nothing more than a slingshot and a rock, they pumped shot after shot into the
Argonaut
’s hull. Lucy was hefting another ball and stumbling blindly toward the gunports when one of the gunners caught her by the arm.

His lips moved with dizzying haste. Lucy frowned up at him, both dazed and baffled. Her ears crackled with an annoying whine, but she couldn’t decipher a single word he was saying. Realizing her dilemma, he pried the cannonball from her cramped fingers and gently led her to a gunport.

The
Argonaut
was retreating with nary a shot fired from her massive cannons.

The gunners and powder monkeys leaped around like young colts, slapping each other on the back in congratulations. Lucy would have loved to join in their celebration, but she suddenly discovered she was so exhausted she could barely remain on her feet. Smothering an enormous yawn, she crawled over to collapse against the bulkhead, using her folded hands as a pillow.

That was precisely where Gerard found her over six hours later.

It had taken him until dawn to bring his crippled ship limping into the balmy bay of an uncharted island off the coast of Tenerife. Turning command over to Apollo, he had dragged his weary body to the great cabin, his exhaustion lightening at the cozy image of
Lucy curled up in his bed, tousled by sleep and eager for his touch.

Finding the cabin abandoned and the rumpled bedclothes on the floor exactly as he’d left them, he’d combed the ship from bow to stern, growing sicker with worry each passing moment.

When he finally strode onto the lower gundeck to discover the limp bundle crumpled against the bulkhead, his heart stopped.

Alarmed by the sudden drain of color from his captain’s face, one of the powder monkeys rushed forward, still clutching the bottle of whiskey that had kept him company after his mates had passed out from a surfeit of rumfustian and excitement.

“She’s wore out, sir. And well she should be. She did a capital job last night.” The lad’s bleary eyes gleamed with admiration. “Done ye right proud, she did.”

Gerard’s heart resumed its rhythm, if at a slightly brisker pace than before from trying to absorb the shock. The man Lucy had believed to be her father for nineteen years had just tried to murder her, but instead of collapsing in hysteria, she had plunged eagerly into the fray, fighting at Gerard’s side as surely as if she’d been leaping about the quarterdeck with a cutlass between her pearly teeth.

He sank to his knees beside her, counting each precious rise and fall of her chest beneath the tattered shirt. He smoothed back her tangled hair. At the sight of her grimy little face, blissfully serene beneath its mask of gunpowder, tenderness seized him, intensified by a damning wave of guilt at the jeopardy his selfish vendetta had placed her in.

She had taught him how to smile again with that odd combination of haughty dignity and childlike innocence his jaded heart found so endearing. She had
banished his fear of the dark with her reckless courage. She had reminded him, against his stubborn will, that there was something in this corrupt world of more value than vengeance.

And how had he repaid her? By rejecting her, betraying her, purchasing a one-way passage to certain doom and dragging her along for the voyage. Going out of his way to make her feel he wanted nothing more from her than her lithe, supple body to warm his bed. He wondered bitterly which one of them he’d been trying to convince.

He touched his finger to the tip of her nose. It came back smudged with grit. She didn’t belong in the dank hold of a pirate ship, he thought despairingly. She belonged in some elegant London drawing room, serving tea to a bevy of wealthy admirers. His gaze traveled to her cracked and blackened fingernails, her scorched knuckles. Before he’d invaded her life, her delicate hands had been sheathed in immaculate gloves, her milky complexion shielded from the sun by a lacy parasol, her cheeks tinted by rice powder, not gunpowder.

What in God’s name had he done?

Her eyes fluttered open, softening to misty welcome at the sight of him.

Gerard’s relief was so acute that he wanted to choke her. He clasped her to his breast, burying his lips in her smoke-scented hair. “You bloody little fool! What possessed you to stage such a lunatic stunt?”

Still half asleep, she snuggled against his chest as if rooting for truffles. Her complacency only increased his frustration.

He held her away from him until her limp head fell back. “When I asked you to go below, I didn’t mean to the bloody lower gundeck.”

She blinked up at him. “Huh?”

“Don’t play the innocent with me. You knew exactly what I meant.”

“What?”

“And stop shouting! If you think you can distract me with your bellowing, wench, you’ve got another think coming.”

Humbled by how close he had come to losing her and saddened by the grim knowledge that he would lose her anyway, Gerard drew her to him in a fierce hug, determined to cherish her warmth, her solidity for as long as he dared. He showered kisses on her face, not caring that she tasted of gunpowder and sweat.

Since she couldn’t understand a word he said, Lucy should have been alarmed by Gerard’s bizarre behavior. She’d never seen his face quite that shade of scarlet. But as far as she was concerned, he could go on scolding her forever as long as he kept punctuating his harangue with such tender embraces and delightful kisses.

She sighed with drowsy contentment as he swept her into his arms and carried her from the hold. His exhausted, exhilarated crew wisely hid their furtive smiles and knowing winks at the spectacle they made. Gerard’s lips never stopped working, not even when he plunged into the shallow waters of the bay, still cradling her in his arms.

He marched through the water, ignoring the rosy dawn blushing the sky, until they reached a narrow inlet, sheltered from view of the ship by a throng of swaying palms. Only then did he set her on her feet.

The hem of Tarn’s shirt ballooned on the surface of the water. Lucy stood in dumb confusion as Gerard alternated between smothering her brow with kisses and shaking her by the nape as one would chastise a disobedient spaniel. She peered intently at his beautifully
chiseled lips. He seemed to be repeating the same thing over and over.

She was shaking her head to indicate she didn’t understand when her ears cleared with a resounding pop.

“—love you, dammit!”

She flinched at the volume of his desperate bellow.

Disbelieving wonder flooded her, warmer even than the gentle swells that cradled them. Her toes curled into the sandy ocean floor. “You do?”

Her tentative whisper seemed to jolt him back to sanity. His brow crumpled, his expression suddenly so vulnerable, so inexplicably miserable, that Lucy had the absurd desire to comfort him, to reassure him that it was all an unpleasant dream or a tropical fever. His love for her was nothing that couldn’t be cured by a piping hot cup of coffee and a strong dose of cinchona bark.

“For God’s sake, stop looking at me like that!” he shouted. “You’re exhausted. You need food, drink, and rest. But if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to make love to you again. Thoroughly,” he barked in afterthought.

Lucy’s hearing had been restored with such acuity that she could hear the surf whispering against the shore, the warbling cry of some exotic bird, the desperate cadences of Gerard’s breathing.

“I know what I need more than any of those things,” she said softly.

“Some common sense?” he offered.

She slipped the first button of Tarn’s shirt from its mooring. “A bath.”

Even a less rational man than Gerard could find no argument with that. He groaned as the shirt slipped from her shoulders to reveal her rose-tipped breasts, their pale perfection even more beguiling in contrast to the sooty streaks marring her arms and throat.

He staggered toward her, drunk with desire. His first urge was to seize her into his arms, but instead, he scooped water into his cupped hands and dribbled it over her gently rounded shoulders. It trickled between her breasts in lazy rivulets, beaded into molten diamonds on her nipples, tempting him to lean down and flick them away with his tongue. Her hands clutched at his hair; her head fell back, ceding her body and her heart to his tender dominion.

As the sky melted from misty pink to gold to a crisp, dazzling blue, they bathed each other’s battle-weary bodies in shimmering cascades of warm water, shivering with want when their open palms and questing fingers lingered in some sweet, forbidden place.

Gerard had told Lucy that the nights were hotter where they were going, but he’d failed to warn her about the mornings. When his fingers delved beneath the water, sliding in and out of her in a sinuous promise of delights to come, her body ignited in a fever hotter than the fiery ball of the sun ascending in the sky. Her legs drifted upward, wrapping around his lean hips in languid invitation.

This time Gerard was determined to prolong their pleasure, to woo her luscious body, still tender from his eager possession of the previous night, with every erotic skill at his jaded disposal. Water streamed from their melded bodies as he carried her ashore, laying her on a sugary bed of sand. He stood back, dragging off the clinging remainder of his clothing with impatient hands, his hungry gaze locked on Lucy’s parted lips. Her dewy skin was the same ethereal pink as the inner curves of the broken shells scattered around his feet.

Lucy’s mouth went dry at the sight of Gerard’s sun-gilded body. The first time they’d made love, he had denied her the pleasures of exploration, but the
uncompromising morning light made it possible for her to appreciate him with an artist’s eye for sheer masculine beauty. In her innocence, she had once thought that sunlight showed him to his best advantage, but she’d never dreamed just how spectacular that advantage was.

She cried out in involuntary empathy as he peeled off his stockings to reveal ankles banded by thick rings of scar tissue. Their gazes met, hers questioning, his faintly defiant, as if expecting her to recoil in distaste. She realized that while Apollo might display his scars as badges of honor, Gerard still considered them emblems of shame. His chains might be broken, but he’d yet to be freed from their shadow.

She rose to her knees, gently bathing the sand from his scars with the dripping tendrils of her hair. She continued her tender ministrations, gliding her hands up the back of his calves to muscular thighs, lightly dusted with hair. A broken sound escaped his throat, half gasp, half groan, emboldening her to pursue her rapt exploration. When both of her hands failed to encompass the steel-sheathed-in-velvet perfection that throbbed so exquisitely to her caress, she touched her tongue shyly to its tip.