Wicked at Heart (7 page)

"Appealing?"

Gwyneth stared
hopelessly, unseeingly, into the fireplace.  "He is magnificent,
Rhiannon."

Rhiannon sat up
with sudden interest.  "Go on!"

"His
shoulders are broad and proud, his physique, a Greek statue with life breathed
into it.  But no warmth.  He is like animated stone."

Rhiannon raised
an eyebrow.

"His hands
are elegant, his nails clean, his fingers —"
masterful
  — "his
fingers, long and sensitive.  Rather like a musician's, or an artist's.  I did
not expect that . . . not in such a brute."

"Oh, do go
on, Gwyn!"

"He is
tall.  At least six feet.  I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes."

"And his
mouth?"

"Sensual."

"His
nose?"

"Every inch
an aristocrat's."

"His
temper?"

"Horrible." 
Gwyneth leaned her brow into her hand.  "But his eyes . . . they are
without contest his most arresting feature.  When he looked at me, I sensed
that he could read every one of my thoughts, could even see inside my head and
know just what kind of effect he was having on me.  I felt like he was the
charmer, and I was the snake.  It was altogether chilling.  Fascinating.  Maybe
even a little frightening."  She shuddered and looked straight at her
sister.  "They are devil's eyes, Rhia."

Silence, with
only the ticking of the clock, went on for a long moment.

"He scares
me, Rhia.  I am not used to feeling scared.  I — I am not quite sure how to
deal with this emotion, or with Morninghall himself."

"Well, think
of it this way, Gwyn.  You
have
been moaning that you haven't had a
challenge since William died."

Gwyneth sipped
the whiskey, and stared hopelessly into the fireplace.

"He kissed
me, Rhiannon."

Rhiannon sat
straight up in her chair.  "
Oh
?"

"He
employed all of the predictable male methods of getting rid of a woman:  first
rudeness, then intimidation, and failing their success, unwelcome
advances."

"Surely,
you didn't let him get away with it!"

"Of course
not!"

Rhiannon leaned
forward, elbows on her knees, her young face bright with excitement.  It was
all too obvious she hoped Gwyneth
had
let him get away with it.  Even
Mattie raised his noble head, his brown eyes inquisitive.  "So, what did
you do?"

"I kneed
him in the groin," Gwyneth replied, airily.  Then she looked at her sister
and both burst into laughter.

"You
didn't!"

"I most
certainly did!"  Gwyneth put down her glass before she could spill its
contents.  "Oh, Rhiannon . . . perhaps you are right.  I mean, my life
has
become so very pointless and dull since William died, and maybe this is just
what I need to give me an interest in things once again.  I can't think of a
better cause than reforming the conditions on those horrid hulks and driving
Lord Morninghall mad in the bargain."

"If anyone
can drive a man mad, Gwyneth,
you
can." 

"You don't
do so badly yourself, sis."

The two giggled
once more. 

"So what
are you planning to do to His Lordship?" Rhiannon ventured, watching her
sister over the top of her glass.

"I plan on
making his life hell.  And this, dear Rhiannon, is how I am going to do it. . .
."

Chapter
4

The following
morning found the Marquess of Morninghall standing before a mirror, just
finishing shaving, when his new cabin boy, Billy, walked in carrying a tray. 
On it were Damon's breakfast and a vase containing three daffodils over which
the boy's too-eager-to-please eyes were peering.  He stopped at sight of Damon,
smiling hopefully.

"Your
breakfast, my lord."

Damon angled his
neck and, keeping his gaze intent on his reflection, pulled the razor over the
side of his Adam's apple.  "I know, you damned fool.  You don't have to
announce it as though you're a butler in the finest house in all of England.  Just
set the bloody tray on the table and take your grand aspirations
elsewhere."

Tilting his head
to reach a hollow better, he made three more quick, precise flicks with the
razor, trying not to look at the brat in the mirror.  But the boy didn't move. 
Damon's cold gaze slid sideways in the mirror to fasten on the small figure's
reflected eyes.  Billy's smile had crashed, his throat was working, and his
eyes, so wide that they seemed to dominate his narrow, freckled little face,
were filling with tears.

A quick stab of
guilt, then anger, roared though Damon, and he whirled, gesturing with the
razor.

"Damn you,
get out of here!"

The tray crashed
to the table and Billy fled, the daffodils quivering in their vase, their heads
bobbing madly with the jolt of impact.  Damon stared at them, the razor
clenched in his fist.  Damned brat!  Snivelling, pitiful little wretch!  Always
trying to do something nice, always trying to bring something beautiful into
his world when there could be nothing beautiful about it, nothing at all, and
it was no use trying —

Still fuming,
Damon swung his attention back to his reflection and finished shaving.  Then he
yanked the thick towel off from around his neck, wiped his face and throat, and
flung the thing into a basin while he carefully fingered the several small,
inevitable nicks.  Lack of sleep was no excuse for his bad temper — he spent
every morning in a bad temper because the days that followed them were never
anything to look forward to — but it was a better excuse than none at all, and
he needed an excuse, any excuse, so the brat's wounded eyes wouldn't haunt what
was left of his conscience for the rest of the whole bloody day.

Yet even as he
tried to drive that hurt little face from his mind, he knew that it wasn't
Billy who deserved his bad temper.

It was that
contemptible bitch, Lady Gwyneth Evans Simms.

Already, she was
trying to make his life hell.

His finger
paused on a tiny gouge just above his Adams' apple, and in the mirror he saw
ice chips beginning to glitter in the flat glaciers of his eyes.  The hellcat
had not been content to torment him with her very unwelcome visit yesterday. 
She had not been content to anger him with a promise to make his life
difficult.  She had not been content to insult and enrage him with her
reminders of his failings, nor was she content to be the catalyst behind one of
his attacks.  Oh, no, she had to rub salt in the wounds, coming to him in the
most erotic dreams he had ever experienced, tempting and taunting him with that
rosy mouth, those flashing eyes, that body he wanted to possess with every
raging demon that ruled his black and tortured soul, until he had thrown her
down on the deck, right there in the dream, right there on the rug behind where
he stood, driving himself into her until she was broken and begging, subdued,
mastered, repressed.  His blood began to pound at even the thought of it — the
prim and elegant Lady Simms laid out on his rug like some common tart,
screaming her defiance even while she begged him to take her . . .

And she would,
too.

Beg.

He slowly let
his fingers fall away from his throat.  In the mirror his eyes remained
unfeeling and soulless, only a slight heightening of their natural iridescence
betraying the rising fury of his emotions.  His dark brows remained unmoving. 
His forehead showed not the slightest trace of a crease; his mouth was carved
from ice.  The man who looked back at him was impenetrable, polished, cold. 
Emotionless and lacking both soul and conscience.  He raised his chin and
fingered a small shaving nick, still holding his own gaze.  Ah, what the mind
harbored, what the face could conceal. 
And what he wouldn't give for a
chance to put that virago in her place.

His eyes glowed
with unholy light.

Right here,
right now.

He felt the rage
starting, red-hot and hungry, devouring everything in its path and making him
burn as if with fever.  His hands curled into fists and he caught a glimpse of
his eyes, fanatical, fiery, and now blazing with the devil's own fury.  Unable
to gaze upon that malevolent face in the mirror any longer, he spun on his heel
and yanked out a chair, trembling.  The red haze followed him, burning in his
chest, his throat, his head, inescapable and growing hotter by the second. 
Scenes flashed before his eyes:  Commodore Julian Lord engulfed in the glory
and admiration that he, Damon, had found briefly but lost; his tyrannical first
captain, whipping him over the breech of a gun until he overcame his fear of
heights and climbed the mainmast; and there, puncturing these memories like
bolts of lightning, his rival, Adam Bolton, getting promoted over him because
he was the son of an admiral, the bastard rubbing his nose in it until he'd
incited the fight with Damon that had been building for as long as the two had
known each other; the court-martial, the public insults, the duel, and Bolton's
father, avenging his son's death by putting Damon in charge of this reeking
sewer, pulling the rug out from under him and destroying his naval career.  His
mother hurling a wine bottle at him, Oxford and humiliation, Morninghall and
terror, and over it all the mocking taunts of Lady Gwyneth Evans Simms —

Damon pressed
the heels of his hands into his temples and stared down at his breakfast —
be
calm, be calm
— seeing the toast stacked with military precision in a
little metal rack, the pats of butter on a tiny plate, the knife, fork, and
spoon rolled up in a crisp square of white linen, the strong black coffee in
its porcelain cup, the delicately enameled pots of marmalade and jam, dainty,
exquisite,
God help me, I want to smash them
, like the frail shell of a
songbird's egg,
God help me, God help me
, and over everything the
nauseating stench snaking its way in from the rest of the ship —

Something inside
him exploded.  With an inhuman howl of rage, he crashed his fist down on the
table, sweeping everything off the tray with one violent slash of his arm.  The
stupidly pretty little jam pot, the coffee cup, the little rack of toast, and
yes, even the daffodils, sweet, mocking, sunny when all the world was black —
all went flying.  China crashed to the deck, shattering in a thousand pieces. 
Coffee ran everywhere, toast went skidding, and the daffodils lay quivering on
the rug, broken, tragic, accusing, before giving a final tremor and falling
still.

Damon put his
elbows on the table and drove his knuckles into his forehead, into the bone,
willing the rage to subside.

Then, as Billy
rushed in and stared in dismay at the carnage, he leaped to his feet, crushed
the flowers beneath his heel, and strode out of the cabin.

~~~~

At the very
moment Lord Morninghall's fist was falling upon his table with the force of a
dropped mortar, the man widely believed to be the Black Wolf was taking his
schooner out of a hidden cove and slipping out to sea.

If ever there
was a fellow who needed a war to keep him out of trouble, Connor Merrick was
that man.

He had come from
a family that thrived in unrest.  His father, Captain Brendan Jay Merrick, had
been a legendary privateer during the American War of Independence and now
owned a successful Newburyport shipyard in partnership with Connor's uncle
Matthew Ashton, a hothead if ever there was one.  Connor's mother, who now ran
Mira Merrick's School of Fine Seamanship, had been an uncontrollable hoyden
during that same war, garbing herself as a boy and becoming the finest gunner
on the schooner
Kestrel
.  Connor's grandfather Ephraim had been a crusty
shipbuilder of unpredictable temper, and Connor's sister, Maeve, had run away
from home when she was sixteen, spending seven years terrorizing the West
Indies as the Pirate Queen of the Caribbean until a wily British admiral by the
name of Falconer had fallen in love with her and put paid to her nefarious
activities by means of a wedding ring.

What goes around,
comes around.  Nearly fifteen years ago, Maeve had stolen
Kestrel
from
their father, and now Connor, recently escaped from the prison hulk
Surrey
,
had stolen
Kestrel
from Maeve.

On this fine
spring morning he stood at the tiller, watching the southern coast of England
moving away off the larboard beam.  He waited until the schooner's sails were
drawing and she was well underway; then, giving the helm to one of his crew, he
leaned against a gun carriage, raised a cup of cold coffee to his lips, and
reread the note from the Reverend Peter Milford, his contact aboard the prison
hulk
Surrey
.  His green eyes scanned the paper; finally he crumpled the
note, tossed it carelessly over his shoulder into the sea, and whistling,
watched his crew as they busily set the topgallants.

His lieutenant,
pretending to be engrossed in coiling a line, observed him from several feet
away.  Orla O'Shaughnessy was a petite Irishwoman with dark, windblown hair and
soulful blue eyes, and she had served the Merrick family well.  In her youth
she had been Maeve's maid; later, when Maeve ran away and became the pirate queen,
Orla had been the most trusted member of her crew of lady pirates.  And now
here she was, swept up into another adventure by yet another Merrick.  She knew
both Connor and Maeve well.  She also knew that Connor thought of her as
nothing more than a friend, but that did nothing to calm her heart whenever he
was near.

Tall and lanky
like his handsome father, with the same easy smile and natural charm, Connor
was enough to melt any woman's heart.  Several months of hell aboard the prison
hulk
Surrey
had not claimed his winsome grin, and dressed in a billowy,
white shirt open at the throat, his long legs painted with a bit of black
fabric that passed for trousers, it was easy to believe that his bones held
more flesh than starvation and abuse had afforded them.