Читать книгу Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch - Louise Allen, Miranda Jarrett - Страница 20

Caro had expected Jeremiah to be surprised, even a bit irritated, to find her on board the felucca with him. She had, after all, disobeyed his orders, and by now she knew him well enough to understand that orders weren’t something he gave lightly. But she hadn’t expected him to be as angry as he was now, staring as coldly at her as if she’d dropped from the sky.

“You might say you’re glad to see me, Jeremiah,” she said, her smile fading. She had so anticipated this moment, and now that it was here, it wasn’t at all what she’d counted on. “I’m vastly glad to see you again, you know.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Tomaso, shaking Caro by the arm. “You would dare to pretend you know this gentleman?”

“She does,” said Jeremiah grimly, “just as I know her. This, Captain Tomaso, is Caroline Moncrief, Countess of Byfield, though she doesn’t look like much of anything right now.”

“I do not believe it, Capitano,” said Tomaso flatly. “This creature a contessa?’

Delighted that her disguise was such a success, Caro’s smile returned. She had done what the dowager countess had advised and taken responsibility for herself, and she was proud of how well she’d done. Remembering how in Portsmouth the secondhand gown and bonnet had hidden her in plain sight, she had literally bought the clothes from the back of a maidservant at the inn.

Not that anyone should guess she was an English countess, not dressed in a rough full-sleeved shift beneath a laced black bodice, two coarse petticoats, thread stockings and worn shoes that tied with dirty pink ribbons. She had tried to pin her hair severely back the way the maidservant had worn hers, but since Caro’s fashionably cropped tendrils had refused to sleek back, she had been careful to cover her hair and shadow her face with the oversize black shawl that, too, had come from the maidservant.

“Captain Sparhawk’s right,” she said to Tomaso. “I am Lady Byfield. Didn’t you receive word that I would be a passenger?”

Hearing the unmistakable upper-class accent in her speech, Tomaso hastily released her arm. “Forgive me, ma donna, I did not know! But how would I, eh? You dress yourself like una domestica, you pay for yourself on the wharf like all the others, you sleep on the deck with them. How would I know otherwise when this ribaldo accuses you of cutting his purse, eh?”

“You wouldn’t, and that was the point.” Free of the heavy shawl, she tossed her hair back in the cool night breeze, unaware of the interest that her pale, loose hair caused among the sailors and other male passengers. “It was a disguise.”

Unsatisfied, Tomaso shook his head and raised his shoulders. “But I do not understand. Why such a disguise, eh? You are a great English lady. Is it some jest, una facezia, that I cannot see?”

“That’s two of us, Tomaso.” Jeremiah took her arm, his grip every bit as rough as the Italian’s had been. “Come along, love. I’m eager for answers.”

She went meekly as he led her down the short companionway to the tiny cabin, and when he released her to bolt the door and light the little lamp hooked to the bulkhead, she stood with her hands folded, waiting patiently. She had nothing to fear, nothing to hide. Her reasons for joining him were the best.

Yet from the look in Jeremiah’s eyes when he turned around to face her, she knew at once he wasn’t going to agree.

“Don’t start, Jeremiah, not until you’ve heard—”

“I’ll start whenever I damned well please, Caro, and nothing you say will change that.” Pointedly he lowered his eyes to her clothing. The tightly laced bodice accentuated the curve of her waist and hips in a way that her more fashionable French chemises never could. “What the hell are you doing here, rigged out like that?”

“Like this?” She lifted the side of her skirt and glanced down at it almost as if she’d forgotten herself what she wore. “That’s quite simple. I wanted to come on board without any extra fuss, so I dressed myself like this to look like the others. I remembered what you said that night in Portsmouth.”

“For God’s sake, Caro, can’t you see the difference?”

“The difference?” she repeated uncertainly, and looked again at her petticoats. “I suppose these are worse than what you bought me that night, smelling as they do of the kitchen. Frederick would be absolutely appalled to see me like this. That’s why I brought a gown of my own to wear when we free him, white mull—oh, Jeremiah, I left my bundle on the deck!”

“Whatever was in it is gone now,” he said. “You might be too fine a lady to steal from your fellows, but believe me, they won’t feel such scruples about you.”

Hoping to retrieve her belongings, she tried to squeeze past him. “But if I went and asked—”

“You really don’t understand, do you, Caro?” He blocked her path, his body filling half the cabin and his fury the rest. “What’s different isn’t the rags on your back. It’s that you were alone, among strangers who’d sooner do you harm than blink. Can you guess what kind of mercy you’d have found from that crew on deck if I hadn’t come to vouch for you?”

Jeremiah could, all too vividly, and the horror of what might have happened to her, either on board the Colomba or wandering about the Neapolitan waterfront, fueled his anger at how much she’d foolishly risked.

“Damnation, Caro, this isn’t some little masquerade for your amusement! Why the hell didn’t you stay in Naples where I’d know you’d be safe?”

“Oh, yes, and Naples is such a fine, safe place!” Her own temper flaring, Caro shoved at the hard wall of his chest. “Have you ever considered what would happen to an English lady if Bonaparte’s army returned? Why do you think Frederick’s mother is so eager to make peace with me so she can go home to England? She told me that I—”

“Why are you suddenly so thick with a woman who despises you? How can you trust a blessed word she says?”

“At least she believes that I can do things for myself!”

“Don’t argue with me, Caro,” ordered Jeremiah, his voice as stern as if he stood on his own quarterdeck.

“And don’t give orders to me!” Furiously Caro lashed out at him, her hand nearly reaching his cheek before he grabbed her wrist.

“Stop it, Caro,” he said, more softly this time, but with the same commanding tone. “Do you want that whole pack of jackals topside to believe you’ve lost your wits?”

“I don’t care a fig what they believe!” With a cry of wounded frustration, she struggled to pull free and try to strike him again, but he held her as tightly as if they’d been bound together. He was so much larger, so much stronger, and in that moment she hated him for it. “And you don’t care, either, not about what they think or whether I’m safely left behind in Naples! All that matters to you is that I obey, like some well-trained little dog, so that you can feel free to go off alone and get yourself killed with a clear conscience. That’s it, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“How can you say that after all we’ve done together?” he demanded, his eyes glittering like green fire. She’d never guess how deeply her words cut into him, as surely as any knife. Didn’t she realize how much he’d changed for her? The man he had been a year ago would not be here now, risking his life to save an English lord because his wife had asked him. For Davy, yes. He’d do anything for a friend like him.

But not for a woman. And never for love.

“I can say it because it’s true!” she cried, her words shaking with emotion. “Whatever you do, you do for yourself, because you’re the blessed American Captain Jeremiah Sparhawk!”

“Damnation, Caro, I’m doing this now because I love you!” His mouth crushed down on hers, stopping her words as he kissed her long and hard and deep. He felt the instant when her struggles subtly changed, when she stopped struggling to free herself and instead clung to him, when her anger, too, was channeled into the same desire he felt racing through his body. He let her hand go and she curled it around the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair as she drew him closer.

He pushed her back the last few inches against the bulkhead, lifting her higher until her hips were level with his. He held her there with the pressure of his body, suspended, her toes grazing the floor as she steadied herself with her hands on his shoulders. The lacing of her bodice snapped through the eyelets as he hooked his fingers in the bow, tugging the neckline lower over her breasts.

She gasped as his open lips found her nipple, drawing it deeply into his mouth and suckling hard. Even through her petticoats she could feel the heat of his arousal, and instinctively she rocked her hips against his, her back arching against the rough timber of the bulkhead and thrusting her breast more deeply into his mouth. As much as he gave her, she desperately craved more, more that only he could offer.

His hand plunged beneath her petticoats, following the sleek length of her thigh above her garters to her bare hip, and she whimpered as she moved against him. Rapidly he unfastened the fall on his trousers, freeing himself as he swept away the last barrier of her skirts and shifted her long legs around his waist.

She was open and ready for him, her need shameless, and when he guided himself into her aching flesh, she raggedly cried out his name. With her legs crossed over his back she drew him in deeper, intoxicated with the way he filled her as he drove into her so powerfully that he lifted her against the wall.

She didn’t care; she didn’t care about anything except the feverish, spiraling ecstasy that was coiling in her body, making her limbs shake and her heart pound, her breath hot in his ear. Passion swept them both beyond sense, beyond reason, until at last their self-made world of pleasure exploded, and with a final sob of release she melted in his arms.

They stayed there joined together as their heartbeats slowed and their breathing grew more regular, her eyes closed and her cheek resting against his shoulder, his face buried in the damp silk of her hair, relishing the languid, animal fragrance of her satisfaction.

Finally, slowly, he lowered her to the deck, but even as her skirts dropped between them he still could not bring himself to let her go, touching her gently, caressing her, kissing her eyelids and the little dimples that framed her smile.

“You are so precious to me, love,” he murmured. “Can you wonder that I’d want to keep you safe?”

She smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead. “But not if it means being apart from you. As soon as you’d said goodbye, Jeremiah, I thought I’d go mad from missing you.”

“Ah, sweetheart,” he said sorrowfully. “Did you think it was any easier for me?”

“Then you will understand.” She reached up to brush her lips across his. “I followed you because, inside, I had no choice. I loved you too much for that goodbye.”

He sighed wearily. “I’d still send you back if I could.”

“But you can’t.”

“No.” With one finger he traced the bow of her lips, thinking how she was at once both impossibly fragile and strong as steel. “You must promise me that you will do what I tell you.”

She opened her mouth to protest, and he laid his finger across it. “Hush, and hear me out. You must do as I say because to stop and argue with me may cost both of us our lives. This isn’t England, or even Naples.”

“I could help you,” she offered eagerly. “The way we fooled the captain of the French frigate.”

“Don’t even consider it, sweetheart,” he said firmly, though touched by both her offer and the innocence behind it. “I admit that I’ll be inventing this as I go along, but I won’t expect you to exercise your charms on my behalf. In Tripoli, it plain won’t work. You’ll be a heathen, an infidel. Nor will anyone give a damn about you being a countess, except, perhaps, if they stop and consider how much of a ransom they could ask for you.”

“I’m not sure there’s enough money in Frederick’s coffers to redeem us both,” she said, striving to be playful and failing. With a troubled sigh, she searched Jeremiah’s face as her own expression became uncharacteristically serious. “Tell me truthfully,” she asked. “Do you still mean to find Hamil?”

“I must, love,” he said softly, cradling her face in his hands. That much of the truth he could tell her. The rest, that which frightened him most, wasn’t death itself at Hamil’s hands, but that he would meet Hamil and be too much the coward to do what he must. “If I don’t, I’ll never be the man you deserve.”

She nodded, knowing how futile arguing would be, and told herself that it was the smoke from the little lantern that was making her eyes sting.

“And what will you do when we find Frederick?”

Silently she thanked him for that when, not if. Already she did not deserve a man this fine, this noble. “I don’t know,” she said, her words barely audible. “I must see him first, and decide then.”

“I will not let you go, Caro,” he said with quiet determination. “No matter what, I will not give you up.”

But before she could answer, he suddenly pulled away, every muscle tensed. “Something’s wrong.”

She shook her head, bewildered. “Wrong?”

“We’ve hauled aback. Stopped. Can’t you feel the difference?” He was shoving his shirt into his trousers, his head cocked toward the louvered cabin door as he strained to listen. “I can’t think of a single good reason for Tomaso to order it, but there must be a dozen bad ones.”

Matching his haste, Caro laced her bodice and tugged her shift back into place. “Whyever would he stop now? We must be in the middle of the Mediterranean, quite in the middle of nowhere!”

“Doesn’t sound good, does it?” He checked the powder in the pistols, hesitated a moment, thinking, then held one out to Caro. “Do you know how to use this?”

She stared dubiously at the offered gun and shook her head. “Frederick wouldn’t countenance firearms at Blackstone. He wouldn’t even allow hunting the deer from the park when they came and ate my roses.”

“We’re not talking about deer, love.” He put the butt of the pistol in her hand and arranged her fingers over the catch and hammer. “First pull back this, then this, and don’t be flustered by the smoke. Aim along the barrel as best you can, and don’t be fancy. Just aim for the broadest part of a man—usually his belly—and you’ll bring him down.”

She nodded, determined to prove that she wouldn’t be a liability, and concentrated hard on what he said.

But he sighed, watching how the gun wobbled in her grasp. “Tomorrow when we’ve more time, I’ll show you properly. Mind, if you don’t have time or the willingness to fire, just grab the barrel and use the brass part of the butt to rap your man on the head. Does well enough.”

Her smile was lopsided with uncertainty, and his heart lurched at what she might have to face. “I’ll do my best, Jeremiah.”

“I know you will, love, though I pray you won’t have to. Now hide that away in your pocket, beneath your skirts. Most likely this will all come to nothing.” Overhead he heard shouts and calls, though no alarms. He probably was overreacting, yet better that than the same complacency that had cost him the Chanticleer.

Caro smoothed her petticoats over the pistol, and her grin widened. “I’m glad I’m not in Naples,” she said, and he realized she was breathless with excitement, not fear. “And I love you, Jeremiah, oh, so much!”

Quickly he swept her into his arms to kiss her one more time. No, not the last time. He wouldn’t even consider that. Yet as they embraced, the pistol’s weight beneath her petticoats thumped against his thigh and his conscience, too.

“I love you, too, Caro,” he said gently. “Whatever else you think of me, remember that. Now we’d best go.”

The horizon was red with the coming dawn, and the passengers who had slept on deck had already awakened and gathered in little groups for makeshift breakfasts. But every eye now was to the east, to the black silhouette of a large, sharp-nosed xebec riding easy on the waves not one hundred feet away. Staring into the rising sun, it was impossible for Jeremiah to make out much about the xebec, but he saw enough to fuel his uneasiness. Xebecs were the choice of pirates and corsairs, and he’d never known one used for honest trading.

There was no flag flying to announce the xebec’s nationality, and none of the usual good-natured calling back and forth when two vessels fell in together at sea, despite the boat that was being rowed toward the Colomba. He strained his eyes for the black squares of gun ports in her side, or a glimpse of a gun on her deck. He’d bet a hundred pounds they were there, and another hundred that the xebec’s captain had purposefully set her into the sun to hide her.

With Caro’s hand tight in his, he made his way across the deck to where Tomaso stood talking with his mate. Despite the early hour, the Colomba’s captain was newly shaven, the ribbon in his queue freshly tied, ready for the company he obviously expected.

“What the devil’s going on, Tomaso?” demanded Jeremiah. “What’s that ship?”

“Buon giorno, Capitano, Contessa,” said Tomaso, his smile more of a smirk. “I am surprised to see you from your sleep so soon. Most especially you, ma donna. Did you not rest well?”

There was no mistaking what he meant, and Jeremiah’s first impulse was to knock Tomaso down where he stood. But Caro’s hand was on his arm, and it was she who spoke first.

“Why, thank you, yes, Capitano Tomaso,” she said graciously, a countess even in rough homespun. “How kind of you to ask.”

Unsettled by her demeanor, Tomaso belatedly lifted his hat to her, and another time Jeremiah would have laughed out loud. Caro as Lady Byfield could be a formidable creature indeed.

Languidly she waved her hand toward the xebec. “Why have we stopped for this other ship?”

Tomaso’s face reddened beneath his tan, and he glanced uneasily at Jeremiah. “A bit of business between two merchants, Contessa. Nothing out of the ordinary, eh?”

“You tell me, Tomaso,” said Jeremiah curtly. He wished the man still smirked; this guilt and lying were sure signs of worse things to come. “Is it ordinary for you to trade at sea with a ship that doesn’t dare show its flag?”

Tomaso shrugged elaborately. “I am not a wealthy man, Capitano. This war between you English and France, eh, it has ruined Napoli. I must trade wherever I can.”

Sheer will alone kept Caro from ducking behind Jeremiah’s back. Jeremiah had been right: there was something very wrong here, more than just Tomaso’s insolence. Did Jeremiah too see how only the captain stood near them, how everyone else, passengers and seamen alike, had inched away and left them to stand alone on that crowded deck? The pistol weighed heavily in her pocket, and she wondered if she’d have to use it after all.

The xebec’s boat bumped alongside the felucca, and with obvious relief Tomaso hurried to larboard to meet it.

Jeremiah squeezed Caro’s hand for reassurance. “Stand firm, love,” he murmured beneath his breath for her ears alone. “You couldn’t be doing better.”

She turned to smile her thanks to him, and froze. The six men from the xebec’s boat were climbing on board the felucca, and even in her inexperience she knew these were no ordinary merchant sailors.

All six were tall and broad shouldered, fierce, dark-skinned men with white turbans on their shaved heads and black beards that curled to their bare chests. Instead of shirts they wore short, brightly colored vests over their bronzed arms and chests, and tucked into their sashes and belts were pistols and curving sabers. As each one slung his leg over the felucca’s side, his gaze swept the deck with the practiced air of a warrior, and though none of them drew the weapons at his waist, those looks alone were enough to silence every idler and sailor on board the Colomba. In spite of her resolution to be brave, Caro shrank closer to Jeremiah’s side.

“God in heaven,” she prayed, her voice barely audible. “Whatever can they want?”

Protectively Jeremiah pulled her close to him, his arm circling her shoulders. “Steady now, love. We’ll find out soon enough.”

But he already knew. From the instant he’d seen the first man, he’d known. How could he not? He’d played his nightmare over so many times in his mind that every sound, every smell, every last detail was engraved forever in his memory. But dear Lord, what had he done in his life until now to have fate deliver such a dreadful coincidence to him?

The last man over the side was the leader; from his almost princely bearing alone he could be nothing else. To Caro’s surprise he was European, perhaps even English, his long beard reddish gold and his eyes bright blue, and he surveyed the deck before him with a haughty stare down his long, arched nose.

His vest was richly embroidered with gold and silver thread that glittered in the dawn’s light, and beneath it he wore a white silk shirt, also heavily embroidered. Tucked into his scarlet sash was a pair of beautiful silver-mounted pistols. A saber in an enameled hilt hung at his waist, and in the center of his turban was pinned a large cut amethyst. Unlike his barefoot men, he wore soft boots of red leather, and he stood with his arms folded and his legs widespread, well aware of the impression he was making.

As he glanced their way, one of the passengers let out a wail of uncontrolled terror and folded to the deck, shaking and sobbing, his outcry the only sound on the silent felucca. Around him, the others shuffled away, afraid to share in whatever horror the man felt, but the red-bearded man didn’t deign to notice. Yet Caro felt Jeremiah’s fingers tighten into her shoulder, and she heard him swear softly beneath his breath.

Tomaso rushed forward, bowing so low over his outstretched leg that his forehead touched his knee and his black bow flopped forward from his neck. “I am honored, vostra magnificenza, vostra superiorita, vostra—”

“None o’ your ass’s prattle, Tomaso,” interrupted the red-bearded man irritably. “I haven’t time t’waste. The message said ye had a gift for me to ensure the safety o’ your miserable felucca.”

Impatiently his gaze again swept across the deck, but this time it stopped at Caro, lingering over her with an interest that made her blood turn to ice.

“Jeremiah,” she whispered, too terrified to look away. “Who is he?”

“Hamil Al-Ameer,” he said hoarsely. “And God help us, we’re the gift.”