Wicked at Heart (4 page)

She pressed the
handkerchief against her nose once again.  The smell of the thing was
overwhelming.

Of all the causes
into which she had thrown her heart and soul — and there had been many — this
one was surely going to present the greatest challenge.  Not that she minded
challenges; in fact, she thrived on them.  But this was the first cause she was
taking on without the backing and political muscle of her deceased husband, who
had succumbed to pneumonia thirteen months before.  Dear old William.  He had
been a powerful man in the House of Lords, and a good friend too.  She still
missed his companionship, his wise counsel, dearly.  She wished he were here to
see her now, taking on this wicked blackguard who ran HMS
Surrey
, prison
hulk.

She'd done her
homework well enough.  Damon Andrew Phillip deWolfe, sixth Marquess of
Morninghall, fourth Earl of deWolfe, born 1786, sent down from Oxford in 1802,
entered the navy that same summer.  She reached into her reticule, took out a
tiny notebook, and read over her notes, though she had already memorized the
facts and such an action was merely a token one.  Commended for bravery at
Trafalgar in 1805.  Promoted to lieutenant in 1806 and captain in 1810.  Court-martialed
in 1811 for threatening bodily harm to another officer after a dispute of
unknown origin, and subsequently put at the bottom of the seniority list within
his rank.  And there, her last entry in the chronology of Lord Morninghall's
naval life;  he'd made the newspapers a month before for dueling with — and
killing — the son of Admiral Edmund Bolton, an action that she suspected was
the catalyst behind his swift and merciless transfer to the prison hulk he now
commanded.

A
prison hulk
. 
And he a marquess, besides!

She closed the
notebook and tapped her finger against its cover, gazing at the approaching
bulk of that very ship.  Surely such ugly stains upon what otherwise might have
been an glorious career would have made Morninghall bitter, a fact she would
have to keep in mind during her dealings with him.  She envisioned him as
small, cocky, and mean.  Or perhaps bloated and self-important, a swine
weighing in at twenty stone with a nose gone scarlet from drink.  Either way,
he'd be a thoroughly miserable character.  And, no doubt, the sensational news
sweeping Portsmouth — that the mysterious man calling himself the Black Wolf
had raided Morninghall's ship the night before and made off with several
American prisoners — would add no sugar to a temper that was probably already
worse than bad.

Normally,
Gwyneth's dealings with such a fellow would be conducted with patience and
pity.  But this man, with his high-handed dictate about allowing her to come
aboard when he damn well felt like it —

Well, Gwyneth
was not inclined to be patient, pitiful,
or
, understanding.

The raucous
yelling and catcalls of the men imprisoned within the hulk invaded her thoughts
at the same time she noticed that the sunlight had fallen off.  Looking up, she
saw the immense, smoky bulk of the ship looming above her like a mighty
fortress of death, and then the sailor was maneuvering the boat against the
rickety looking stairs built against its filthy, curved hull.

Not even the
gulls dared venture near this floating hell.  Indeed, even the water that
surrounded it seemed to be as still and dead as the River Styx.

"Ye sure ye
wanna be goin' aboard her, m'lady?" the tar challenged, grinning as he
fought to be heard over the prisoners' yelling.

"You sure
you don't want a refreshing swim in the harbor?" Gwyneth yelled back,
shoving her notebook back into her reticule.  "Help me up, if you
please."

Hundreds of
waving, clawing arms covered with filth thrust through the barred gunports, and
the clamor grew deafening.

Gwyneth stuck
out her hand toward the seaman, waiting.

He stared at her
for a moment, then he shrugged and took her gloved hand.  Moments later she was
standing on the little platform at the bottom of the stairs.  Alone.

Morninghall had
sent no one to meet her.

With one hand steadying
her hat, Gwyneth marched up the damp steps, and every voice on the ship went
silent.

Chapter
2

Gwyneth was met
by a young midshipman on deck.

"I am
Midshipman Foyle," he said grandly, taking her gloved hand and puffing out
his chest with self-importance.  "Welcome to HMS
Surrey
."

"Indeed."

Her sharp tone
did not faze him, nor did the offensive stench coming up from below.  Pressing
her handkerchief against her nose, Gwyneth declined his offered elbow and
instead swept up her skirts with her free hand.  As she followed him aft, she
was all too aware of the stares of the seamen, the hushed comments, the
snickers and elbow-jostling that surrounded her.  Someone let out a long, low
whistle.

Gwyneth never
paused, though her eyes narrowed and spots of angry color bloomed in her
cheeks.

"Pay no
attention to this lot," Foyle said, his voice high and whiny, not unlike a
colicky child's.  "The sea is no place to learn manners, I'm afraid."

"As your
very
gentlemanly
captain has already proven," Gwyneth remarked
acidly, still seething over the appalling conditions that surrounded her and
growing more furious by the moment.  To think that decent human beings were
forced to live in this floating hell, their only crime being that they had
fought on the enemy side!  "But no matter.  I already dislike what I see
here, and by the time I am through with him, Lord Morninghall will rue the day
he met me."

The midshipman
only raised a skeptical brow and looked away, but not before Gwyneth caught his
private smirk.  Of course it was easy for him to be so blithe,
he
was
not the one forced to live in the conditions she could only imagine below!  And
Gwyneth knew from experience that men in Foyle's position usually harbored no
pity in their hearts for others, but found self-importance and satisfaction in
the bullying of the weak, the unfortunate, the helpless.  Foyle was of that
mold; she saw it in the spoiled set of his mouth, in the swagger of his
stride.  And she could see him smiling, as though he'd found her remark amusing. 
Did he think Morninghall would send her running with her tail between her
legs?  Well, the both of them had another thing coming if they thought she was
some quaking ninny.  Gwyneth was about to open her mouth to say as much when
Foyle suddenly seized her elbow, steering her around a group of filthy,
vacant-eyed prisoners just coming up from the black mouth of a hatch.

The sight was
enough to stop Gwyneth dead in her tracks.

The prisoners,
their once-yellow clothes tattered and filthy, blinked in the sudden light,
knuckling their eyes and groaning before another midshipman angrily urged them
on.  Chains dragged from their ankles, making a horrible, rattling noise as
they scraped across the deck.  Their faces were bearded and encrusted with
grime, their backs were rounded and hunched, and some had advanced signs of
scurvy.

"Dear
God," Gwyneth breathed, paling with horror as the group approached.

"Come, m'lady,
you shouldn't have to look at these wretches."

"They're in
chains," she murmured.  "Why?"

"One of
their number escaped last night and drowned in the marshes, the stupid sod. 
They're being taken off the ship so that they might bury the wretch — hence,
the chains.  Come, let us move on."

Despite the bile
that welled up in her throat, the sudden pity that tightened her chest, Gwyneth
resisted the midshipman's efforts to draw her forward, instead forcing herself
to watch in growing horror as each prisoner was led past.  One young man
paused, stretching a pathetically skeletal hand toward her as though she were a
vision he needed to touch in order to believe, before the midshipman cursed and
swung his musket hard across the back of the man's legs.  The prisoner went
down, smashing his chin on the grimy deck.  Wordlessly, he picked himself up
with what shreds of pride he had left, the threadbare yellow shirt issued by
the Transport Office and stamped with the letters "T.O." revealing
raw, bare patches of sore-ridden skin.  Gwyneth stood frozen, her fist against
her mouth, the back of her throat aching with unshed tears.  But the man was
now too ashamed to look at her.  He hung his head and, now limping, shuffled
off with his companions.  Gwyneth swallowed hard, determined not to let Foyle
see how much the sight had affected her.  She needed her wits, and her rage, if
she was going to do any good here.

"Begging
your pardon, my lady, but as prison ships go, this is one of the
good
ones —"

"
Good
ones?" she said angrily, his sniveling voice snapping her out of her
shock.  "I see nothing at all that is
good
about this — this
atrocity
,
and I suspect that by the time I've finished touring the downstairs —"

"Belowdecks,
ma'm," he corrected, sheepishly.

"
Belowdecks
,
I'll find enough information to condemn the lot of you.  I've seen
pigs
kept in better conditions than this!"

A breeze, ripe
with the stench of the nearby mudflats, came up, whipping the laundry strung
above Gwyneth's head and tugging a long, blond curl from the severe bun into
which she had scraped her hair.  She shoved it back in beneath her hat, trying
to calm her shaken nerves.  With a sharp jerk of her head, she bade the youth
to move on.

They passed a
hatch, a gateway into the stinking bowels of the ship.  Gwyneth paused, despite
Foyle's urging, and hesitantly took the handkerchief away from her nose.  Hidden
beneath the noxious fumes, the stench of sickness, imprisonment, excretions,
and death, was the faint scent of —

"That's
vinegar you're smelling," Foyle said importantly, as she wrinkled her
nose.  "The captain orders the ship fumigated every night."

"Obsessed
with cleanliness, is he?" Gwyneth drawled, with cutting sarcasm.

"He does
his best, m'lady.  And we set the sails to direct a breeze down there, too. 
Sorry if you find the vinegar offensive.  It's not
our
fault that —"

"The scent
of vinegar is not what I'm objecting to," she said.  "Where are the
prisoners kept?"

"Belowdecks."

"Take me
there, please."

"Oh, I
can't do that, m'lady.  No one's allowed below, and besides, it's no place for
a gentlewoman, I'm afraid."  He led her beneath the poop deck and stopped
at a large door sporting a bright coat of red paint.  "Anyhow, here we
are.  I'm sure that His Lordship will be . . . delighted to meet you."

With that, Foyle
knocked once on the door and, with sudden terror animating his face, hesitantly
pushed it open.

Gwyneth,
prepared to do battle, sailed in.  And halted in her tracks.

There, before
the stern windows, stood a high-backed swivel chair upholstered in burgundy velvet. 
The back of the chair was toward her, and above it she could just see the crown
of a dark head.

Foyle found his
voice, which came out as a thready squeak.  "Your Lordship?  Lady Gwyneth
Evans Simms to see you."

A lengthy pause,
then, a deep-timbred voice.

"I
know."

A moment
passed.  The silence grew uncomfortable.  Then, slowly, the chair began to
rotate.

First an ear.  Then
a ruthless, aristocratic profile.

Then the face of
the devil himself.

Gwyneth's breath
caught in her throat, and she stepped back involuntarily.

"Do come
in, my dear," His Lordship drawled, with an imperious sweep of his hand. 
He had one long, tautly muscled leg thrown casually over the other, and his
snowy shirt was open at the throat to reveal a broad wedge of tanned skin.  He
did not bother to rise, he did not bother to take and lift her hand, he did not
bother to honor her presence at all, as any man of his breeding ought. 
Instead, he merely raised his brows and said with arrogant self-confidence,
"How stunned you look — but, ah, I seem to have a similar effect on all of
the woman I meet."

Effect
wasn't the word.

Danger
,
she thought.  It was there in his lean, powerful body; in his relaxed, watchful
pose; in the very way he looked at her — as though he were going to rise out of
that chair at any moment and ravish her, right there.  His face was strikingly
chiseled, angelic yet demonic, beautiful, wicked, arresting.  But it was his
eyes that were so unnerving.  They were cold eyes, almost iridescent, thawed by
a hot, underlying sexuality simmering just beneath the surface, glowing with
cunning intelligence yet veiled by thick lashes that lent him an expression of
boredom and challenge.  They were piercing, those eyes, expressive, pure as a
Siberian glacier and devastatingly lethal.

Devil's eyes
,
she thought, swallowing hard,
and he knows just how to use them.

"You may
leave now, Mr. Foyle," the marquess murmured, never taking that malevolent
stare off her.

Gwyneth waited
until the youth had made his swift exit.  "And what
effect
is that,
Lord Morninghall?" she challenged.

The marquess
looked at her.  Something shifted in those eyes, moving subtly across them,
humor that came and went as quickly as a wisp of cloud over a darkening sun,
before they became chillingly cold and hard once again.

"Do you
know," he murmured faintly, leaning forward to pour himself a glass of
brandy and purposely neglecting to offer her one, "my own mother thought
me the devil."  His voice was deep, elegant, and cultured, as polished as
heirloom silver, both hard and soft at the same time and oozing a dark and
unexpected sensuality.  Hard and soft.  Angelic yet demonic.  The man was a
study in paradox.  "She ended her days in a London asylum, where she took
great delight in informing her equally mad audience that she had birthed the Antichrist." 
He raked her with that frozen stare.  "You are younger than I expected, a
mere chit.  What do you want?"