But when she had whispered his alias and slumped in his arms, her soft, boneless weight becoming his own, he’d been seized by a fierce surge of possessiveness, a primitive masculine response more suited to a cave dweller than a ship’s captain. He simply could not bear to relinquish her to his enemy.
So he had carried her off to his waiting ship, adding kidnapping to his growing list of transgressions. He knew the Admiral couldn’t afford to keep silent this time. Soon the London press and the Royal Navy would know the name he’d been born with, his description, and possibly some distorted version of his history. A version in which Lucien Snow would doubtless emerge as the most valiant of heroes.
His smoldering eyes searched the mist-shrouded horizon, but not even the tempestuous charms of the distant billows could soothe his raw temper. Too soon, that horizon would be studded with a fleet of Royal Navy ships, their rows of cannons trained on the Retribution.
He’d risked his ship, his crew, and his life, all for nothing more than the opportunity to make Lucinda Snow despise him.
He didn’t turn around when Apollo padded out of the shadows beneath the fo’c’sle like the ghost of his conscience. “The first time I brought her aboard, I did not know she was a woman. Can you say the same, my friend?”
His quartermaster’s melodious voice was underscored by the rhythm of the islands and lightly accented with the French of his former masters. Gerard knew he was worried. You didn’t spend five years chained next to a man without learning his moods, even a man as private as Apollo.
Gerard shot him a dark look. “I might have had more time to consider the consequences of my actions had my crew not threatened to sail without me.”
The natural serenity of Apollo’s features was disturbed by a faint wince. “Not by choice, Captain. We’d thought to lie low in the shallows for another week, but after that unfortunate incident with the earl’s wife, we thought it best to sail before the duel. That’s why I sent Kevin to the fancy house to inform you of our need for haste.”
“Damn his lascivious hide! I ought to call him out myself.” Gerard gave his cheek an irate rub, abrading his palm on the fresh stubble of what he hoped would soon be a thriving beard. One of the things he had detested most about Ionia was having to shave twice a day. “He hasn’t a repentant bone in his body. I should never have left him in command.” He stabbed a menacing finger at Apollo’s freshly oiled chest. “If you’d have only agreed to do it …”
At six feet, Gerard was nearly a foot shorter than his quartermaster, but that didn’t stop Apollo from taking a hasty step backward. “I like being second in command, sir. It spares me the difficult decisions.”
Gerard wedged a hand through his hair, his own doubts tempering his frustration. “Such as what I’m going to do with her?”
One of the qualities that made Apollo such an invaluable sailor was his instinctive knowledge of when to retreat. “Tell me, Captain,” he asked, revealing the blinding white of his teeth, “was your junket worth the trouble?”
“You’re the second person to ask me that today.” A bitter smile slanted Gerard’s lips as he bent to retrieve the Admiral’s splintered strongbox from where he had tossed it. “No letter of marque. No mention of the officer who might have acted as Lucien Snow’s agent.” He held up yellowed sheafs of paper, letting the gusty wind ruffle them. “Just old newspaper articles immortalizing the Admiral’s venerable career.” He freed the clippings to scatter across the water, then turned up a velvet-bound ledger, mildewed with age. “And a dead woman’s diary.”
At first Gerard had thought to read Annemarie Snow’s diary, but something in her lilting, girlish handwriting, the very antithesis of her daughter’s precise script, had stopped him. He had no right to Lucy’s past. He’d invaded enough of her life with his presence—her home, her privacy … her body. He closed his eyes briefly, battered by the memory of her melting surrender to his questing fingers.
When he opened them, Apollo was regarding him with the same curious mixture of amusement and empathy he’d shown on the night he’d discovered his captain nursing a stab wound only inches from his heart.
Gerard tossed the diary and the box back to the deck, dismissing sentimentality with deliberate callousness. “You needn’t gloat. I might not have accomplished what I set out to do, but I can promise you that my next confrontation with Lucien Snow will occur on my terms.”
“You’re certain of that?”
Gerard narrowed his eyes as he scanned the far horizon. “Dead certain. Because we’re playing my game now and I’m the one holding the high trump.”
He only prayed he could summon the ruthlessness to use that precious, but fragile, card to his full advantage.
Lucy found little solace in solitude. Captivity maddened her. She paced the great cabin like a bird beating helplessly against the bars of its cage, shying away from the towering specter of the bed and all of its dark implications.
She struggled to keep her mind a careful blank, but as the hours wore on, the effort made her head ache with unshed tears. The vengeful demons of her doubts snapped at her heels. She hastened her steps, knowing she should be thankful she wasn’t chained to the wall.
Or the bed.
Lucy swung around to glare at the teak and mahogany monstrosity that dominated the cabin. What sort of libertine would flaunt such an excess of luxury in the impractical confines of a ship? Its very presence offended her innate practicality and sense of decency. They’d probably had to knock out the walls to get the bed in, she thought unkindly, or perhaps they’d simply built the ship around it.
Its carved and fluted splendor was as far removed from the humble bedstead in Ionia’s gatehouse as the complex masculine creature who had abducted her was from the simple, common man she had believed her bodyguard to be.
A pang of grief seized her heart as she realized that man was lost to her forever. Worse yet, he had never existed at all except in her gullible imagination.
Yet his voice continued to haunt her. If I had a woman such as you at my mercy, I’d never let her go.
Lucy hugged back a shiver, forced to acknowledge the more sinister implications of Gerard’s vow by the inescapable decadence of that bed.
She turned to the window, preferring to think of anything else, even Gerard’s accusations against her father.
She’d been twelve years old when her father had suffered the wound that ended his career. He had allowed only Smythe to attend him, yet she remembered those dark days well—the Admiral’s bitter roars for attention; the frightened whispers of the servants; strangers coming to the house at all hours, banging on the front door and demanding entrance. Might some of them have been creditors, preying on her father’s weakness to try and collect their debts?
The unbroken vista of sea and sky blurred before her weary eyes as other childhood memories intruded—her father bidding her a stilted farewell on his way to another of his interminable meetings at the Admiralty Court; the long, lonely evenings with nothing but her sketchpad and her gloxinia for company; footsteps shambling past her room in the wee hours of morning.
For the first time, Lucy thought to wonder if her mother’s life with the Admiral had been as desolate as her own.
A tightness swelled in her chest, squeezing the breath out of her. She pressed a hand to her throat, fearing she might smother before she could identify the unfamiliar emotion scorching the tears from her eyes.
Don’t gobble your food, Lucinda.
Knees together, Lucinda.
Stop slumping, Lucinda.
The barked rebukes taunted her. What if Gerard was right? What if her father’s pious reputation was a carefully crafted ruse? What if he had spent a lifetime indulging his various vices, all the while taking poorly concealed delight in chiding her for the moral failings of a dead woman?
Her hand dropped to her heart as if to shield it from an unbearable truth. She realized with no little alarm that her fear and grief were rapidly being displaced by rage.
A rage she’d been meekly swallowing for nineteen years. It seemed that every man in her life had betrayed her. Gerard. The Admiral. All but Smythe. And even his innate reserve had stayed his hand from reaching out to her as he might have done.
A shriek of pure fury erupted from between her clenched teeth. Lucy clapped a hand over her mouth, shocked at the primitive sound.
Even more shocking was the slightly hysterical giggle that followed, a giggle elicited by the gleeful surge of independence coursing through her veins.
There was no one left whose approval she cared for. She could slump and gobble her food and sit with her knees apart if she wanted to. She no longer had to live up to anyone’s impossible standards. She no longer had to be the Admiral’s good little girl.
Stymied by the irony of it all, she sank to her knees on the cabin floor and buried her face in her hands. It seemed she had lost everything she held dear only to gain herself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
GERARD’S FIRST THOUGHT UPON ENTERING his cabin late that afternoon was that he had blundered into a colossal spiderweb. He batted it away only to have a damp stocking swing back to smack him in the mouth. He gave the familiar pink toe of the disembodied garment a curious tug, recognizing it as Lucy’s. Lantern light filtered through the gauzy silk, displaying its sheerness to its most shocking advantage.
He cocked a speculative eyebrow, overcome briefly by his more lascivious instincts. If Lucy’s undergarments were draped over the ceiling beams to dry, he wondered, then what was Lucy wearing? If anything. Gesturing for Apollo to hang behind, he proceeded in stealth, sweeping the sodden lace of a petticoat out of his path to reveal the wreckage of his cabin.
His jaw dropped in mute shock. In a matter of hours, Lucy had reduced his masculine sanctuary to utter chaos. Every drawer and door of his wardrobe sagged open with its contents spilling out. Unfurled maps and nautical charts were scattered across his desk. An empty cracker tin was overturned on the table, surrounded by crumbs as if besieged by some overgrown rat. Not a rat, Gerard wryly corrected himself. A pink-eared, gray-eyed mouse.
He bit back a growl of dismay as he saw his beloved first edition of Defoe’s Captain Singleton sprawled on the cabin floor, spine up. Only the bed remained free of Lucy’s ravages, its burgundy counterpane a sea of undisturbed tranquility amid a storm of disarray.
He’d found her untidiness charming at Ionia, but having it stamped so possessively over his own well-ordered domain was as disturbing as the tart hint of lemon verbena wending its way to his nostrils through the aged musk of leather and tobacco.
A peevish mutter reached his ears. He discovered Lucy on her knees in the far corner, scavenging through an ancient sea chest. His heart doubled its pace when he saw she had commandeered a pair of his own discarded pantaloons. The faded doeskin cupped her gently rounded backside and clung to the provocative hollow between her thighs. All it took was a brief mental inventory of the garments strung above the iron coal stove for Gerard to realize there was nothing separating the worn fabric from her bare skin. The image both warmed and provoked him.
He beckoned Apollo forward, thankful for the man’s stalwart presence.
“Looking for this?” he asked loudly, drawing the Admiral’s ivory-handled letter opener from his pocket.
Lucy started, bumping her head on the chest’s lid. She swung around to glare at him, rubbing her brow, then offered him an acidly sweet smile. “I shouldn’t be needing it. I didn’t have time to leave a forwarding address.”
As Lucy climbed warily to her feet, Gerard’s image wavered like a chimera before her eyes. She wished she could reconcile her conflicting perceptions of him. When she had seen that familiar sparkle of mischief in his eyes, her first instinct had been to hurl herself into his arms and burst into tears. She squared her shoulders, bracing herself to resist all such futile urges.
Her newfound poise deserted her as Gerard’s towering companion emerged from behind the curtain of her petticoat. Lucy had seen only two dark-skinned men in her lifetime, one a small boy the Duchess of Emmons boasted slept curled like a lapdog on a cushion at the foot of her bed, the other an elderly footman, his dignity oddly unspoiled by the powdered periwig and satin livery his master insisted he wear.
She knew she was being hopelessly rude, but she couldn’t stop gaping. The man’s skin absorbed the light like the richest of coffees unmarred by even a swirl of cream. His bald scalp glistened with oil. A colorful patchwork vest hung open over his chest to reveal massive slabs of muscle. Scarlet leggings clung to the imposing length of his legs, tapering down to bare ankles banded with thick rings of scar tissue. Those scars, raw and ugly, held Lucy transfixed.
“Put Miss Snow’s tray on the table, Apollo,” Gerard commanded smoothly.
Lucy’s heart plummeted to her stomach. Why should she have expected any more of him? Wasn’t he a pirate? A brigand? A notorious scoundrel who would give no more thought to trading in human lives than he would to robbing a Royal Treasury ship? Or abducting the woman he’d been hired to protect? She could hardly expect him to suffer from pangs of conscience when he had none.
All of those rational reminders didn’t stop her from wondering miserably if anyone had ever died of disillusionment.
She flung Gerard a look of pure contempt and fixed her nose at its most sanctimonious angle. “You’d best obey your master, Mr. Apollo. I’d hate for him to stripe your back for some imagined hesitation. After all, we’re both little more than his chattel, aren’t we?”
Gerard sighed and rolled his eyes.
Apollo set the tray on the table and drew out a chair with a graceful flourish. “No man has been my master for nigh on eleven years, missie. I am a freeman.”
“Miss Snow, I’d like you to meet my second-in-command—my quartermaster.”
Lucy didn’t know which was more mortifying—Apollo’s gentle rebuke or Gerard’s superior smirk. She rather wished she could crawl under the chair.
“I believe we’ve met,” she said softly. “I never forget a voice.
If Apollo felt any chagrin at being recognized as her original abductor, he hid it behind an angelic smile.
Which only made Gerard’s lazily folded arms and arched eyebrow appear more devilish. “We have made the acquaintance of several white slavers during our voyages, haven’t we, Apollo? Do you think the Pasha is still seeking haughty young English misses for his harem?”
Lucy’s cheeks ignited as Gerard’s gaze roamed her masculine attire with insulting thoroughness, but she refused to drop her defiant glare. “Tell me, Captain, while you were at Ionia, was he the one cavorting about the Channel, stripping naval officers down to their drawers and playing faro with Royal Treasury gold?”
Gerard exchanged a cryptic glance with his quartermaster, but declined to answer.
Apollo cleared his throat with a bass rumble. “I’d best see to the watch, sir.”
Sir, Lucy thought. A term of respect, deference even, but not of subservience. Had she not been foolishly blinded by the hue of Apollo’s skin, she would have realized immediately that these men shared equal footing.
“Stay.” Gerard’s barked command surprised her. If it surprised Apollo, he didn’t show it, but simply stepped back to linger on the fringes of the lantern light.
Lucy blinked innocently and spread her arms as if inviting Gerard to search her. “I’m unarmed, Captain. You’ve no need of a bodyguard.”
But you might, Gerard thought, surveying Lucy through narrowed eyes. There was something different about her. Something that ran deeper than the linen shirt knotted carelessly at her waist or the insolent fall of her hair, unfettered by ribbons or combs. Something indefinable, yet undeniably appealing. He made a mental note to obtain some proper clothes for her. She was too damned alluring in his.
He gestured tersely to the table. “Eat. And if you’ve any childish ideas of starving yourself to gain my sympathy …”
He was forced to swallow the rest of his threat as Lucy straddled th
e chair and began shoveling food into her mouth. Her unabashed enjoyment of the simple fare was jarring. Gerard was thankful Tarn had purchased fresh stores in London. He doubted she would have shown such enthusiasm over the wormy oatmeal and weevil-infested biscuits they were frequently reduced to eating after long weeks at sea.
She polished off a plateful of beans and half a loaf of brown bread, then washed it all down with a healthy swallow of milk. Gerard was gratified. He had confiscated the precious beverage from Pudge’s private stores. It was almost worth enduring Pudge’s whining to see Lucy’s aristocratic upper lip painted with a milk mustache. He had the absurd desire to bend down and lap it away.
She rescued him from that temptation only to present an even more beguiling one as her pink tongue swept away the creamy froth with the sensual languor of a cat preening its whiskers.
Biting back a groan, he sank heavily into the chair opposite her and indicated the chaos surrounding them. “I’m glad to see you kept yourself amused while I was away.”
Lucy shrugged, unwilling to admit she’d been searching for some clue to his capricious character. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was still that intrigued by him. And not even under threat of torture would she reveal that she was coming to believe his accusations against her father.
“I’m easily bored,” she said airily.
“Ah, yes, and a productive life is a happy life, isn’t it, Miss Snow?”
His mockery goaded her. “Pirates must have their own schedule of wicked deeds to complete in the course of an average day. Plundering ships. Terrorizing innocent people.”
Gerard’s capable hands toyed with the Admiral’s letter opener, almost as if he’d forgotten he still held it. “Don’t forget drinking the blood of newborns and weaving necklaces of human ears.” He shot her a look from beneath his luxuriant lashes, testing the blade against the pad of his thumb. “Have I ever told you what pretty little ears you have?”
Fresh humiliation stung her as she recalled reciting those ludicrous Captain Doom myths. How he must have laughed at her! Her embarrassment coalesced into surging anger.