Authors: Susanna Craig
To Kiss a Thief (29 page)
“Murray called here this morning and pronounced Regis's wound almost healed,” Cary told her. “No sign of infection. And I intend to follow up with Whelan tomorrow. You know I have no wish for anyone to come to harm.”
“Of course not, Edward,” she said, softening. “But you've been so dreadfully busy since Mr. Fairfax left us. Why, sometimes I think I ought to have forbidden him to leave.”
“We are not all so susceptible to the stamp of your foot, my dear.” Cary's lips were stretched in a forced smile. “Besides, although his head seemed sound enough, I always suspected Fairfax's heartâor a piece of it, anywayâlay in England.”
Miss Holderin made no comment on Cary's sentimental twaddle, but her expression said all that was needed. “Why won't you let me help? I might speak to Mr. Whelan,” she suggested, shifting the subject.
“You will do no such thing.”
Andrew expected her to pout in response to Cary's flat refusal, but he was quickly disabused. Tempest Holderin looked quite accustomed to hearing such commands, if not accustomed to obeying them. A frown creased her brow, but Cary did not relent. Although far from immune to those eyes, it seemed he had at least learned to judge the difference between squall and hurricane. “It is not safe for a young woman to go about English Harbour unattended.”
“You cannot expect me to sit idly by andâ”
“Idly?” Cary looked her up and down. “Somehow, I doubt you have been idle. Is that chalk dust I see on your skirt?” At her somewhat abashed nod, he shook his head. “How many times have I told youâ?”
“Not to teach them? It's only letters and numbers, Edward. What harm can it do?” she argued as she attempted to brush the evidence from her dress.
“In these days, with rumors of an uprising on everyone's lips? It would do a great deal of harm if you are caughtâboth to them and to you.”
“Then I won't get caught.” Failing in the attempt to improve the dress's appearance, she straightened and clicked her tongue to the little monkey. “Come, Jasper. It seems we're interrupting.” Cautiously, the monkey made its way down the drapery and onto her shoulder. Cal strained against Andrew's hold and snapped at the air in one desperate, final attempt to catch his tiny tormentor.
“A pleasure to meet you, Caliban,” she said with a smile for the dog. “And you, too, Captain.”
“Wait.”
With his free hand Andrew swept up the book she had dropped, a thin leather-bound volume that looked not old, but well-read. Nodding her thanks, she stretched out her hand so he could lay it on her palm.
“What are you reading?” he asked instead, lifting the cover with his thumb.
“Something really very horrid, you may be sure,” she answered as she tried to snatch the book from his grasp before he saw.
“A gothic tale?” He tightened his fingertips around the book's spine, refusing to relinquish it. “Are you a devotee of Mrs. Radcliffe's, then?”
“Not particularly.” She wrenched the book from his hand and tucked it against her bosom. “If you must know, this is Miss Wollstonecraft.”
“Ah.” Even a man who had spent years roaming the Atlantic could not remain ignorant of the controversy surrounding Miss Wollstonecraft and her books, with their support of the revolution in France and outspoken demands for women's rights. So Miss Holderin was a radical? It was of a piece with the rest of what he had heard.
And none of it inclined him toward Edward Cary's mad scheme. Six weeks at sea with a bluestocking who spouted Wollstonecraft? Not if he could help it. “ âReally very horrid,' indeed,” he murmured.
Evidently suspecting she was being mocked, she parted her lips to reply. Before words could slip past them, Cary interjected. “Go home, Tempest,” he urged, walking with her toward the doorway, his hand resting at the small of her back. The gesture might have been permitted under the guise of brotherly affection, but to Andrew it looked more like staking a claim. “I'll join you for supper, if I may.”
The offer of his company seemed to mollify her somewhat. “Like old times. I'll have Mari make one of your favorites. But you won't forget about the mill?”
“I won't forget.”
The monkey shot one leering grin behind him as they left, sending Caliban into another flurry of barks and forcing Andrew to squat beside him to contain him.
“Hush, Cal,” he murmured, his heart not in the command.
“I haven't much patience for Jasper, either, old boy,” Cary acknowledged when he reentered the room, casting the dog a sympathetic look. “But that little monkey is a long way from home. A sailor on a slave ship captured him in Africa, intending him for a pet,” he explained to Andrew, who was rising to his feet. “When Tempest saw how cruelly the animal was being treated, she rescued him. It's what the Holderins do,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
With such a fortune at her disposal, Andrew had imagined the sugar princess would prove pampered and elegant and probably cruel. He had not anticipated a chalk-streaked dress, radical sympathies, and a monkey. Tempest Holderin was not the sort of woman who ran away from troubleâshe ran toward it with open arms. He had been wrong. And Cary was wrong. She didn't need to be rescued from this Lord Nathaniel character.
She needed to be rescued from herself.
Cary returned to the desk and riffled through the stack of papers he had set to rights mere moments ago. Selecting one sheet, he dipped a pen and said, “Name your price.”
Andrew shook his head. He had not been to Englandâ
home
, some would say, although it would never be so to himâin more than ten years. A man in Cary's position could never offer enough to send him back now. “I draw the line at kidnapping.”
home
, some would say, although it would never be so to himâin more than ten years. A man in Cary's position could never offer enough to send him back now. “I draw the line at kidnapping.”
Undeterred, Cary scratched something on the paper. “Then think of it as a rescue.”
But if abduction was not Andrew's game, neither was salvation. For much of his life, in fact, he had been bent on destruction instead.
And whatever amount Cary offered, the encounter with Miss Holderin left him even more determined to refuse it. Oh, she was tempting in her way, it was true, with that riot of red curls and those stormy eyes.
That, he feared, was the problem.
“Half now,” Cary said, thrusting the note toward him. “The rest upon her safe delivery to her grandfather.”
Reluctantly, Andrew took it, at the same time raising his free hand to his eyes, some part of him hoping he could rub them hard enough to erase the afternoon entirelyâhard enough, at least, to render the figures on the paper an illegible blur.
He must have been staring at the number longer than he realized, for Caliban gave a troubled sort of whimper and nudged his wet nose against his hand, confused by his master's unusual stillness. The paper trembled.
He could not begin to imagine where Cary could have acquired such a sum. Was he somehow stealing from Miss Holderin's personal fortune to subsidize her abduction? For his own part, it still would not have been enough. But harder, much harder, to refuse it on behalf of his crew. Certainly Bewick and some of the others would be glad enough to glimpse old London town once more.
“Well?” Cary prompted.
The man had persuaded himself that he needed someone who was willing to break the rules, to save a woman who seemed quite indifferent to them herself.
Had he fully considered what might happen between his Tempest and such a man?
“Six weeks at sea. She will be ruined, you know.”
A muscle ticked along Cary's jaw. “Only her reputation, I trust. And far more than that could be lost if she stays,” he added, sounding resigned.
Andrew's fingers curled around the paper, crumpling it into a tight ball. Against his better judgment, he jerked his chin in a single nod. “I'll do it.”
A love affair with historical romances led
Susanna Craig
to a degree (okay, three degrees) in literature and a career as an English professor. When she's not teaching or writing academic essays about Jane Austen and her contemporaries, she enjoys putting her fascination with words and knowledge of the period to better use: writing Regency-era romances she hopes readers will find both smart and sexy. She makes her home among the rolling hills of Kentucky horse country, along with her historian husband, their unstoppable little girl, and a genuinely grumpy cat. Find her online at
www.susannacraig.com
.
Click here to get all the latest news from AUTHOR Susanna Craig!Susanna Craig
to a degree (okay, three degrees) in literature and a career as an English professor. When she's not teaching or writing academic essays about Jane Austen and her contemporaries, she enjoys putting her fascination with words and knowledge of the period to better use: writing Regency-era romances she hopes readers will find both smart and sexy. She makes her home among the rolling hills of Kentucky horse country, along with her historian husband, their unstoppable little girl, and a genuinely grumpy cat. Find her online at
www.susannacraig.com
.
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