The Pirate Next Door

  Alexandra gave him a reassuring pat. “It is all right. I will be well.”

  He caught her hand a moment. He gave her a long look, as if he wanted to say more. Then he bowed his head, turned away, and left the cabin.

  Ardmore followed him, with Alexandra pattering anxiously behind. Outside the door Ardmore spoke to a passing sailor. “Hoist anchor as soon as they’re gone. We’re away.”

  “Aye, sir,” the sailor answered, and jogged off, shouting to his fellows.

  Ardmore turned to Alexandra. His green eyes burned with sharp fire. “That is what you wanted, isn’t it? To force me to leave. To keep your lover, Finley, safe.”

  Alexandra clasped her hands. “I am afraid so. I have used the duke and Mr. Henderson most shabbily.”

  “Nothing more than they deserved. I would almost like to congratulate you. I was not expecting such a move.”

  “Almost?” she repeated the word in trepidation.

  His smile was cold. “Almost, Alexandra. You have not won yet. But you still might have a chance.”

  He turned his back on her and strode to the rail. When he reached the place where they’d boarded from the boat, he stopped and pointed the pistol straight down.

  Alexandra dashed to him, her tangled skirts impeding her. She reached the rail the same time he did, and looked down. A damp mist rose from the river, curling around the mast of the little boat. The duke and king looked up. Madame d’Lorenz, her hands shackled, also looked up.

  Mr. Ardmore, his face fixed, aimed and shot Madame d’Lorenz through the chest.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Alexandra screamed. The pistol shot echoed into the dawn, the acrid smoke mixing with the mist.

  “Why did you—How could you—”

  Ardmore seized her and dragged her back to the stern cabin. He did not close the door. Henderson entered behind him, looking shocked. “Sir?”

  “Are we underway?” Ardmore asked, as if he just hadn’t murdered a woman in cold blood.

  Henderson nodded. “Forsythe is taking us out. But—was that necessary?” He was white around the lips.

  Ardmore laid the spent pistol on the desk. He opened a drawer and removed a box, which, when opened, revealed a small cask of powder, white wadding, and round lead bullets, all tucked into neat compartments. He lifted a cloth fitted to a rod, then slid it into the barrel, cleaning the pistol. “What would your English Admiralty have done to her? Taken her to Newgate? Tortured her for the names of her fellow agents? They will kill her in any case. And how are traitors and spies killed in this country?”

  Alexandra’s face drained of blood. Traitors were tied and their abdomens slashed. They were kept alive to watch themselves be disemboweled. Sometimes, she had heard, they lived for a long time.

  “Even if she escaped them,” he went on, as he tapped fresh powder into the pistol, “she has tipped her hand to the French émigrés. Would they let her live?”

  Alexandra swallowed. “I suppose not.”

  “I will give the English back the French king,” he said. “But I will not hand them an easy victory. They will have to fight the war themselves, without benefit of all Madame d’Lorenz’s secrets.”

  Alexandra watched, mesmerized, as he dropped a lead ball into the barrel and followed it with a small wadding of cloth, tamped down with the rod. Then he cocked the trigger and carefully tapped more powder into the pan.

  “If Napoleon invades England—” she began.

  “He won’t. Your navy is far too strong, despite my efforts. And I truly do not care if he does invade England.” He looked up at her. “Because you will be with me.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I promised to marry you.”

  Henderson glared in fury. Ardmore closed the box and slid it back into the desk. “You did. But I no longer wish that. The game has changed.”

  She stared. “It has?”

  He lifted his eyes to her. She saw dark amusement dance in them, the amusement of a man about to play his trump card. “It has.” He lifted the pistol and pointed it at her. “Please remove your clothing, Mrs. Alastair. All of it.”

  Both she and Mr. Henderson stopped dead. “Sir, no!” Henderson choked.

  The pistol did not waver. “Please begin, Mrs. Alastair.”

  Alexandra looked into the deadly dark hole pointed straight at her. “Or—or what? You will shoot me, too? I am not afraid to die.” She lifted her chin, trying to pretend she was, indeed, not afraid.

  “No,” he said. He moved the pistol and leveled it at Henderson’s chest. “I will shoot Mr. Henderson.”

  Henderson went sheet white. “You son of a bitch.”

  Alexandra met Mr. Henderson’s eyes, wide behind his spectacles. No matter what Alexandra thought, Henderson at least believed that Ardmore would kill him.

  She bent a glare on Mr. Ardmore. “Oh, very well,” said the haughty duke’s grandaughter once more. Under his pinning green gaze, she reached for the buttons on her bodice, and began to unhook them.

  Grayson watched the Argonaut, whose sails were almost as familiar to him as those of the Majesty, making swiftly for the mouth of the Thames. He lowered the spyglass and stepped back to Ian O’Malley who held the wheel.

  “Looks like your captain sailed without you, lieutenant.”

  O’Malley looked resigned rather than alarmed. He took the glass and moved to the side of the boat.

  Grayson took his place at the wheel. The morning wind lifted his hair. He adjusted his stance automatically to the tilt of the deck, the ship pulling hard against the leaning sails. The power of the ship came to him through the tiller, the pull of the water, the rise and fall of the deck, the wind that could either aid or hinder.

  He belonged here. He knew it with his heart. Here, not in gray and brown Mayfair with unmoving cobbled streets and stifling smoke-drenched passages. He belonged here, giving orders to the sailors who scrambled to furl sails, working with precision among the myriad lines that criss-crossed the ship from the masts, tying off every few feet along the gunwale. He belonged at the tiller, steering his precious ship through dangerous waters; he belonged in his chart room bent over a table, drawing lines where lines had never been drawn before.

  He had brought Maggie to London for her own good. He should have known better. Alexandra knew. She sensed what he did, that Maggie would have an impossible time against the rigid codes of Mayfair. Maggie had adored sailing across the Atlantic. She also adored Alexandra.

  To hell with it. Grayson held the wheel against the tug of the wind, aligning the ship in a straight path with the fleeing Argonaut. He would finish with Burchard, whose ship hung just aft, finish with Ardmore, and deliver the French king to the Admiralty. Then he’d take Alexandra and Maggie away. To anywhere in the wide world. He would marry Alexandra and he would have a family. After so many, many years of solitude, he would have a family. A heady thought.

  At the rail, Ian suddenly fixed the glass on something moving astern. His jaw dropped. “Oh, me sainted mother.”

  Grayson glanced at him. “What?”

  Ian snapped his mouth closed. “Ah—nothin’ in particular.”

  Grayson shouted for Jacobs to come and take the wheel. When the young man had done so, he stepped to Ian’s side and pried the glass out of his hand. He lifted it.

  What he saw was a dinghy, slicing haphazardly about in the water. At its tiller sat a corpulent man who obviously knew damn-all about steering a boat. Wrestling with the sails was none other than the Duke of St. Clair. In the bows, blood scarlet against her dove-colored bodice, lay Madame d’Lorenz. Her eyes were fixed, staring at nothing.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t want to look,” Ian breathed.

  “Jacobs! Come about.”

  Jacobs, without questioning, obeyed. He bellowed orders to the sailors. Ponderously, the ship turned, slowing. They drew alongside the foundering dinghy. St. Clair looked up. His face was harassed and as white as the sails he struggled with.

>   “As I live and breathe,” O’Malley said. “I believe that’s Louis, king of France, a-manning that tiller.”

  Grayson stared at the large man, then at the duke. “What the hell happened?”

  “Stoke,” the duke panted. “Thank God. Mrs. Alastair led me to the king, as you asked. But I’m afraid she’s in a spot of trouble. Ardmore still has her.”

  As I asked? The words flitted through Grayson’s mind, and then dissipated before the hard anger that filled him like water pouring into a dry well. “Ardmore has her?”

  “Yes. I could do nothing to stop him.”

  Ardmore had her. The words beat through his brain. He had her. She had led the duke to him. She had gone to him.

  Sudden fear touched him. She had not gone to betray Grayson. She had gone to betray Ardmore. To save Grayson’s worthless hide. Because she loved him.

  A grim iciness settled over him.

  Ian called down to the boat. “Did you shoot the lady?”

  “I did not.” The duke’s voice was shaking. “Ardmore did it. He’s a madman.”

  “Well, you don’t need to be tellin’ me that,” Ian shouted back. He clucked his tongue. “Well, well, an English duke and a Frenchie king. In a conundrum.” He gave them a cheerful wave. “Hope you sink.”

  “Jacobs,” Grayson heard himself say. “Dispatch someone to help him sail that bloody boat to shore.”

  Ian looked mournful. “You take away an Irishman’s sweet pleasure, that you do, Finley.”

  Grayson frowned. “Full ahead, Jacobs. I want to speak to my old friend, Ardmore.”

  Ian’s eyes narrowed. “I thought the plan was to double up and take down Burchard.”

  Actually, the plan had been to distract Ardmore with Burchard and then rescue the French king, all the while giving Ardmore a good pounding. Grayson had seen no reason to share that information with Ian.

  “The plan has changed. He has Alexandra. He wants me to come after him.” He smiled a bleak smile. “So I will.”

  “I’ll be obliged to stop you, you know,” Ian said.

  Grayson’s smile stretched wider. “You can try,” he said.

  Alexandra shivered as Mr. Henderson locked the cold chains about her wrists. His mouth was hard, his face drawn. But he was not disobeying Ardmore’s orders.

  Ardmore had made her remove every stitch, even down to her silk stockings. She stood barefoot, and the boards of his cabin floor were cold under her feet. Her skin prickled with the cool breeze blowing through the skylight, but she held her head high and refused to give way to embarrassment.

  She frowned at Mr. Henderson as he clicked the manacle in place. A long chain stretched between her wrists and lay cold against her abdomen. “I am ashamed of you, Mr. Henderson.”

  His eyes were still, though she sensed slight dismay behind them. “We all make choices, Mrs. Alastair.”

  “That may be true,” she replied. “I simply disapprove of yours.”

  Captain Ardmore still held the pistol. “Have her clothes been dispatched?”

  Henderson gave him a weary glance. “Aye, sir. Robbins took them, the poor, unlucky fool.”

  “I will reward him well.” He gave Mr. Henderson a nod. “Leave us.”

  Henderson stiffened. “Sir?”

  “Leave, Henderson. I would be alone with the lady.”

  Henderson drew a breath. “You are using her to lure out Finley, sir. That is all.”

  “Thank you for the reminder, lieutenant.”

  Henderson swept a glance down Alexandra’s bare body, his spectacles glinting. He tightened his mouth, shot a hard look at Ardmore, and finally departed. The click of the door closing sounded loud in the stillness.

  Alexandra had been raised to be a genteel lady. Her well-trained governesses had reared her to rise to every occasion with aplomb. She thought it unlikely any of them, even Mrs. Fairchild, had ever dreamed Alexandra would be standing in the cabin of a pirate-hunter’s ship, unclothed, and in chains. A lesser woman would have swooned or wept or hidden herself in trembling fear. Alexandra straightened her spine and swept Captain Ardmore a glare worthy of a princess dressed in silks and a tiara, who stared down at her supplicants from a royal balcony.

  Captain Ardmore did not seem impressed. He looked her over carefully, from the tangled red curls on her head, down over her bared breasts, to her abdomen so pitifully exposed, to her thighs, calves, and stockingless feet. It was not a lustful glance, or a glance of frenzied evil, but the calm scrutiny of a man who wanted to fully examine a prize he had just won.

  What he thought of his prize, he did not say. He simply looked at her, and in his eyes she saw grim satisfaction.

  She drew a breath and broke the silence. “Your lust for vengeance has driven you a bit mad, I think, Captain Ardmore.”

  His eyes flickered. “I went mad a long time ago, Alexandra. You can’t change that. Neither can Finley.”

  She ventured. “I am certain Grayson did not mean for your brother to die. I know that.”

  He was not as unemotional as he tried to appear. His large hands curled, his knuckles whitening. He had a naked woman standing before him, and yet, his eyes held only anger and pain. “How do you know, Alexandra? How do you know what Finley meant to do? You weren’t there. I was not there. I was not there to stop it.”

  “I know,” she said. “It was beyond your power.”

  His fist struck the desk in a sudden, explosive blow, shattering his calm. “I did not want it to be beyond my power. When my brother lost his wife and child, I hurt for him. He was lost in his grief until the end of his life. All his smiles, all his happiness, gone.” He came to her. “And Finley, your precious Finley, took away my last chance to help him heal.”

  She stared at him. Tears beaded on his black lashes. Behind the tears lay the grief of a man who could not bear to feel grief.

  “I swear to you,” she whispered, “he never meant that.”

  “It does not matter what he meant. Paul died. And I could do nothing.”

  Her heart twisted. “I am sorry.”

  The pain in his eyes was raw. “He was still alive when I reached him. Do you know what it felt like to watch him die? To know I had failed him—again? I failed him, Alexandra. I have never in my life been able to make up for that.”

  “You cannot blame Grayson.” She lifted her hand, the chains clinking, and touched his shoulder. “You cannot make him pay for that. It is not his fault.”

  He stared at her a moment as if he’d forgotten her presence. Then he seized her arms, his fingers biting her flesh. “Dear God, he does not deserve you. You are completely in my power, and yet you stand here and tell me I am mistaken and misguided. A man could fall in love with you.”

  “Please do not. I have had enough declarations for one day.”

  He laughed, a harsh sound. “Well, mine is the last. I believe I will enjoy life with you, Alexandra. I will make it worth your sacrifice.” He touched her cheek. “After Finley catches up to us.”

  She flinched from his touch. “How do you know he will bother to follow? I should be more worried about the Duke of St. Clair, were I you.”

  He chuckled. “St. Clair knows where his duty lies, the poor bastard. In his world, the French king is important, the fate of a widow he admires is not. That was a hard choice he made, a choice between worlds. He will not pursue us.”

  She bit her lip. “Oh.”

  “Finley, on the other hand will come. When Robbins hands him your gown and stockings, he will roar like a bull and come charging after us.”

  Alexandra imagined the sailor called Robbins handing the pile of clothing to Grayson. Robbins would either be innocently unsuspecting or trembling with fear. Poor wretch. She wondered whether Grayson would shrug and say that he had finished with Mrs. Alastair, or whether he would slam Mr. Robbins to the ground. “The poor man,” she breathed.

  “I will make it up to him.” Ardmore traced her lower lip. “I am much looking forward to our marriage, my dear.?
??

  Alexandra swallowed. She did not tell him that she had come here only to make certain Grayson was safe, and with no other purpose. She would do anything she had to do. Her ancestors had fought for the English crown when it had been threatened a hundred and fifty years ago. They had been just as bold and ruthless as Captain Ardmore ever was. And their blood beat in her veins.

  Ardmore leaned to her and kissed her lips. She did not respond. He did not seem to care. He kissed her again and lifted his calloused palm to her breast.

  The cabin door slammed open. Alexandra jumped. Ardmore straightened up slowly, taking his time. He turned to the panting boy who stood on the threshold. “What?”

  The terrified lad’s gaze did not waver from Ardmore. Alexandra might not have existed. “He’s here, sir. Mr. Henderson sent me to tell you. Captain Finley’s behind us. And he’s brought another ship. It looks like Captain Burchard.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Ardmore did not move. The cabin boy stood, white-faced, waiting for orders. Alexandra also waited, her legs shaking, the chain between her hands clinking slightly.

  At last Ardmore spoke. “Good.” He drew the word out, his Charleston accent becoming pronounced. “Then I don’t have to wait for him.”

  “Sir?” The boy’s voice trembled.

  “Get back to your post. We’ll come about.”

  The boy scampered away. Ardmore swung on Alexandra and seized the chain. “Time to go.”

  Alexandra tried to resist, tried to fight him, but he simply dragged her along behind him out onto the deck.

  “He’s coming about!” Jacobs shouted.

  Grayson watched as the Argonaut turned. Ardmore’s ship moved swiftly, sails bent to the wind, the prow slicing water.

  “Burchard is signaling, sir,” Jacobs continued.

  Beyond the polished ship’s rail, the gray river rolled behind them, wide and misty between the flat, faraway banks. Burchard’s ship, sails wide, tread in the Majesty’s wake.