Teresa Medeiros (48 page)

Pleased beyond rational speech at her unspoken acceptance of his imperfections, her beguiling boldness, Gerard seized her by the hair, tilting her head back. Her eyes were luminous; that naughty, elusive dimple had reappeared in her right cheek.

“Miss Snow,” he choked out, “if you don’t learn to curb that inquisitive tongue of yours, this may be over for you before it’s begun.”

Laying her back on the altar of sand, Gerard worshipped her body in kind with exquisite patience, its creamy folds and vulnerable hollows his own private temple of delights. His deft hands nuzzled and stroked
her, drizzling her melting core with its own succulent honey until she was ripe and quivering for his possession.

Lucy moaned in anticipation as Gerard’s shadow blocked the sun. Not even his painstaking anointing could prepare her for the delectable shock of his rigid length sliding into her, filling her to the brim with each hard thrust. As if that wasn’t sensual torment enough, he reached between them and rubbed his thumb against her damp curls until thick, pulsing throbs of ecstasy enveloped her, not once, not twice, but three breathless, magical times.

As Lucy cried out his name in a bewitching incantation, Gerard’s own release came with a bittersweet force that shuddered him to the soul.

They drowsed in the sun for an eternity, their bodies entwined, their hearts slowing to some semblance of normal rhythm.

“I loved you from the first moment I met you,” she whispered.

“What romantic balderdash!” he mumbled into her shoulder. “You detested me. I was an insufferable boor. On both occasions, I might add.”

She combed her fingers through his tousled hair. “You still are. But I don’t love you any less.”

His arms tightened around her. The urgency in his embrace chilled her despite the heat. She shook off her foreboding. Perhaps at last her patience was to be rewarded by a tender declaration of love, a promise of undying devotion.

“God, I’m ravenous. I can’t remember the last time I ate.” Gerard sat up, briskly brushing away the sand that clung to his sweat-dampened skin like flecks of gold sugar.

Lucy frowned, feeling rather bereft as he tossed her his own shirt and tugged on his breeches, refusing to
meet her eyes. As she fastened the shirt over her nakedness, Gerard moved to stand at the edge of the foaming surf, staring out to sea with his hands on his hips. Lucy wondered if he was thinking of his ship, scorched and lamed just beyond those palms.

The balmy wind toyed with her hair. She hugged her knees, besieged by wistfulness. “I wish we could stay here forever.”

“Romping naked in the waves like Adam and Eve?” At first, Lucy thought he was making sport of her, but when he turned, his eyes were dark, devoid of amusement. “Even in Paradise, there was a serpent.”

“The Admiral.” It was a statement, not a question.

He nodded. “Tenerife isn’t quite the haven for pirates that it was a hundred years ago. It’s only a matter of time before he returns with more ships, more men, more guns. Before, I was only guilty of thievery and a bit of mischief, but by forcing me to fire on a British naval flagship, he’s ensured I’ll be branded a traitor and hunted down as a dangerous fugitive. They won’t stop this time until I’m dead.”

His grim resignation brought her to her feet. “Then we’ll go somewhere else. Somewhere safe. To the ends of the earth if we have to.”

He shook his head sadly. “Columbus proved the earth is round, dear. No matter how far you sail, you always end up right back where you started from.”

“Óh, God,” she whispered. “You’re taking me back, aren’t you?”

His silence was answer enough.

Blinking back a treacherous rush of tears, she threw her hands up in the air. “That’s bloody rich, isn’t it? What a capital idea! You can deliver me right to my father’s doorstep. I just can’t help but wonder how long it’ll be before I succumb to a nasty tumble down the stairs or a bad bit of kipper.”

“I’m not taking you to your father. I’m taking you to Smythe. He’ll know what needs to be done to protect you. He’s a man who can be trusted.”

Lucy averted her face, afraid he was astute enough to read her bleak suspicions. She was rapidly losing her battle with the tears. They trickled, hot and bittersweet, down her cheeks, prompting her to dash them away before she faced him again.

“That’s just fine, Gerard Claremont, you take me back. Not every man in the Royal Navy is as corrupt as my fa—”—she faltered, closing her eyes briefly to compose herself—“as corrupt as Lucien Snow. There must be good men among their ranks. Men who will listen to reason. I’ll find them and I’ll clear your name, by God, if I have to go to the bloody Lord High Admiral himself!”

Gerard crossed the sand, catching her roughly by the shoulders. His face was taut with helpless pain. “You’ll do nothing of the sort! Unless you want to get your pretty little ass tossed in Newgate for aiding and abetting a wanted criminal and for suspicion of treason against the British government. Do you know what they do to women of your ilk in a place like that? Of course, if the Admiral gets wind of your inquiries before the authorities do, you won’t have to worry about it. He’s already proved to what lengths he’ll go to silence you.”

“What the bloody hell am I supposed to do then?” she yelled, belatedly thankful to the dearly departed Mr. Digby for providing her the vocabulary to have this absurd conversation. “Sit around on my pretty little ass knitting stockings until you come back for me?”

All traces of anger fled his face, banished by poignant regret, imbuing Lucy with a knowledge more painful than anything she might have imagined. His face blurred before her eyes. Her knees crumpled. In
stead of catching her, he gently lowered her to a kneeling position in the sand, brushing his hand lightly over her hair, his touch rife with pity for both of them.

Had Lucy been able to make herself believe, even for the space of a heartbeat, that he didn’t love her, that he had only used her, then cast her aside after his sensual curiosity was satisfied, she might have begged right there on her knees, might have fought for a future with him.

But she knew better. Gerard Claremont was one of those rare men capable of doing the job that had to be done, regardless of the cost. So all she could do was watch him turn his back on her and walk away down the deserted beach, his gaze riveted on the sea he loved as if seeking solace in her azure arms.

A
N ICY BLAST OF WIND SKATED ACROSS the frothy whitecaps, stirring the cauldron of the North Atlantic into a forbidding witch’s brew. It sliced through the coarse wool of Lucy’s peacoat, but she didn’t even shiver. She’d grown accustomed to its bitter caress, preferring its bleak honesty to the warm, cozy deceit of a cabin that promised shelter, but left her heart exposed until it was raw and bleeding.

A thin layer of ice coated the forward rail where her bloodless fingers rested. She wished for nothing more than a commensurate numbness, but perversely enough, she seemed to have lost her ability to blunt her emotions. She hurt all the time now, a dull, hollow ache in the pit of her stomach. Yet since that day on the beach at Tenerife, she had failed to shed a single tear except for those whipped from her eyes by the relentless wind.

After the sunny skies and azure seas of the Canary Isles, she found the gray skies and leaden billows of the North Atlantic soothing to her raw senses. She
stood stiffly at the rail as daylight faded into twilight, measuring the seamless passage of another day.

Gerard was determined to return her to London before the Admiral had time to sic his sea dogs on them. Laboring beneath his curt instructions, it had taken the crew of the
Retribution
less than three days to make their mistress seaworthy for the voyage. To chop and fit a new foremast, to swab her decks of the charred consequences of battle, to repair the shredded black gown of her sails. To bury her salty-tongued master gunner in the sandy soil that had welcomed so many of his kindred seafarers.

In those three days and in the two and a half weeks that had followed, Gerard had kept himself aloof from her. If they happened to meet on some narrow stretch of deck or brush past each other in the shadowy belly of the hold, he would inquire gently as to her well-being, then excuse himself, averting his eyes as if fearing they might confess what his lips could not.

The crew had taken their cue from him, growing even more subdued as they neared the mouth of the Channel. Tarn’s youthful exuberance and Kevin’s rakish charm were muted by a pall of dejection. Apollo’s lilting island melodies were supplanted by wistful spirituals that sang of a home never to be reached in this pilgrim lifetime. Lucy supposed they would miss their funny little “pet” when she was gone, but after a while they would forget her. Perhaps their captain would get them a pig.

She was still standing at the rail, bathed by the pale globe of the moon, when the
Retribution’
s sleek bow ploughed into the choppy waters of the Channel, her lanterns extinguished at her captain’s command for silent running.

The miasma of gloom hanging over the ship was disturbed by a commotion at port. Lucy tried not to
care, but the ship had truly seemed a ghost ship in the past few days and any sign of life was a diversion.

She ducked beneath the foreboom to discover Apollo and Gerard standing at the port rail and Kevin lounging against the foremast shrouds as if they were a hammock. Her heart quickened at the sight of Gerard’s broad shoulders silhouetted against the night.

“Thought you might want a look at this, Captain,” Apollo said, handing him a spyglass.

Lucy had no need of a spyglass to see a flash of orange fire in the distance, vivid and shocking against the murky canvas of the night.

“As far as I can tell,” Apollo offered as Gerard surveyed the scene, “it appears to be a Royal Navy frigate, under fire from two French privateers.”

“Pirates, you mean,” Lucy said grimly, joining them at the rail. “We haven’t been at war with France since the Peace of Amiens was negotiated. They’re probably Napoleon’s minions, masquerading as common thieves.”

Gerard maintained his enigmatic silence.

“I vote we throw in with the French,” Kevin suggested brightly. “When has His Majesty’s navy ever done us any favors?”

Without a word, Gerard handed the spyglass to Lucy. Their eyes met briefly as their fingers brushed, the most intimate contact they had enjoyed since that day on the beach in Tenerife. Lucy brought the tiny telescope to her eye, granting him his wordless request.

The hapless frigate was taking a brutal pounding beneath the guns of the twin square-riggers. As Lucy watched, a spectacular broadside tore a jagged rip in the fabric of her stern. The roiling smoke cleared; another blaze of cannonfire illuminated the modest man-of-war’s familiar figurehead. Lucy gasped in dismay.

“What is it?” Gerard murmured.

She lowered the spyglass, turning her frightened gaze on him. “The
Courageous
. Lord Howell’s ship. He requested command of her after his victories at Copenhagen. He wanted to patrol the Channel so he could spend time writing his memoirs and getting to know his children again.”

Apollo bowed his head.

Dread seized her, its icy grip tightened by images of Sylvie throwing her slender arms around her papa’s neck; little Gilligan riding him like a pony, his plump, jam-smeared hands curled in the Earl’s graying hair; Lord Howell lining up his boisterous sons to teach them to knot their cravats. Now that Lucy had no father of her own, the prospect of losing such a splendid one was too tragic to contemplate.

“His children,” she echoed, oblivious to the effect of her imploring words on Gerard.

He pried the spyglass from her tense fingers. “Cannons?” he snapped.

She shrugged helplessly, not seeing how the armament of the doomed ship could possibly matter. “Twenty? Twenty-five?”

“Crew?”

“Over a hundred.”

Kevin sprang out of his comfortable seat as if someone had touched a lit fuse to the impeccably polished toes of his boots. “Not another word, sweeting. Don’t encourage his lunacy. Can’t you see what he intends to do?”

As Lucy met Gerard’s wry gaze, she knew exactly what he intended to do. And what it might cost him.

She clenched the rail as her desperate gaze shot to the distant battle. Even from this distance, she could see the
Courageous
was faltering. It would be only a matter of minutes before the French boarded her,
stripping her of booty before she sank without a trace into the icy arms of the sea.

Every man is master of his own fate
.

Her own words haunted her. This might be Gerard’s last chance to fulfill his dream of serving country and king. A dream he had cynically forsaken after it had been tarnished by the corruption of men who served only their own greed.

She knew deep in her heart that she would never be able to divert him from his course and she wasn’t about to lower herself in his eyes by trying. If he was the sort of man who could sail blithely past the
Courageous
, ignoring her distress, he wouldn’t be the man she loved.