She still couldn’t stop herself from drinking of his bittersweet draught. From welcoming the intoxicating thrust of his tongue against hers. He tasted of stolen brandy and forbidden temptation just as he had that autumn night so long ago. The night when she’d been in danger of surrendering not only her body, but her soul, to Captain Doom.
As if the mere thought of the name had summoned the past to haunt them, a fist pounded on the door.
They both froze as Apollo’s disembodied voice floated to their ears. “Seventy-four-gunner approaching, Captain. Flagship Argonaut.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LUCY HAD NEVER BEEN A GIRL GIVEN TO tantrums, but she wanted to stamp her feet and wail at her father’s perverse timing. Her eyes met Gerard’s, reading in them a flicker of regret, too quickly engulfed by a blaze of raw excitement.
She reached for him, but he was already striding toward the door, anticipation coiled in every step. “Don’t leave this cabin unless I summon you. It might not be safe.”
“Gerard?”
It took him a minute to turn, almost as if he dreaded looking her in the eye. He ducked his head like a small boy caught playing Navy in the bath, making her chest tighten with love. “Yes?”
She rubbed her arms, chilled by his abrupt defection. “Take care. He’s a dangerous adversary.”
A ruthless smile touched his handsome lips. “So am I.”
“Don’t I know?” Lucy whispered after he’d gone, gazing blindly at the ruined supper Tarn had so painstakingly prepared. It seemed the game was on again and she’d lost before it had even begun.
The Argonaut was silhouetted against the night sky like the bloated carcass of a mighty dragon. Skeletal fingers of mist caressed her bow, as if the cloying fog of the North Sea had stalked her even to this unlikely place.
Gerard gripped the rail in primitive excitement, his nostrils flaring at the unmistakable scent of his enemy. Lucien Snow was out there somewhere and this time Gerard had no intention of letting him slip through his fingers. He’d bided his time long enough. The moment had come for all the Admiral’s debts to be paid, including the ones he’d incurred against his daughter’s resilient spirit.
A disturbing pall of silence hung over his crew. They were only too aware that at close range, the imposing pride of His Majesty’s fleet would dwarf their lithe schooner, that the man-of-war’s seventy-four cannons were backed by a crew of six hundred and protected by an unsinkable fortress of oak.
Yet his crew’s confidence in him was a palpable thing. Even Pudge’s doughy features were resolute with determination. The timid sailmaster might cringe in terror from the sensual threat of a lovely girl garbed only in her chemise, but Gerard had never known him to flinch in the face of impending battle.
A chill finger of doubt caressed his spine. Hadn’t the crew of the Annemarie believed in him as well? Gerard scowled. There was something sinister about the lone ship crouched motionless against the horizon. In some perverse way, he would have almost preferred to face an entire fleet of warships backed by the supreme moral authority of His Majesty himself.
“Dawn,” he said decisively. “I’ll take a launch over at dawn and deliver our demands.”
Kevin and Apollo protested in unison, but Digby drowned out both of them. The gunner had a tendency to bellow, a habit developed from decades of shouting orders over the thunder of cannons.
“Hell, Cap’n, not meanin’ to offend you, but that’s the damnedest bit o’ nonsense I ever heard.” Digby scratched his balding head with fingers permanently blackened with gunpowder. “I ain’t no genius, sir, but from what I can figger, ye’re ever bit as important to that Snow bastard as the young miss. If he takes ye hostage, what are we to do? Sit here and scratch our arses?”
“He’s right,” Kevin said. “You shouldn’t be the one to go.”
Gerard looked around at their expectant faces, recognizing that Kevin wasn’t the only brother he had aboard the Retribution. “This is my fight. I won’t drag any of you into it any more than I have to.”
“Let me go, sir,” Apollo said. “As your second-in-command.”
Digby bit off an expressive oath. Rudely elbowing the African giant aside, he came to stand before Gerard, drawing his withered frame to its full height. “I’m sixty-five years old, Cap’n. I’ve been a gunner since I was twelve, trapped belowdeck with nothin’ but powder and shot for company. How many chances for glory do ye think I’ll have?”
Gerard gazed down into the old man’s rheumy eyes, brightened now with youthful ambition. He locked his hands at the small of his back. “Are you volunteering yourself, Mr. Digby?”
“I am.”
“Very well. I’ll expect you on deck at dawn.”
Digby beamed, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth. As Fidget and Tarn slapped him on the back with subdued congratulations, Gerard returned to the rail, wishing he could shake off his chill of foreboding and salvage his waning lust for battle. One by one, his men joined him in his silent vigil, their hollow eyes reflecting the grimmest of his own doubts as they pondered the unspoken question foremost in all their minds.
Was there any ransom, on heaven or earth, of more value than their captain’s precious prize?
Lucy paced the great cabin in an agony of suspense, the rustle of her elegant satin skirts mocking her every step. The anchored ship hung in listless stillness, barely rocked by the tide, but its malaise only drove her to pace faster. She pressed her hands to her ears, but could not seem to stop the relentless ticking of the chronometer in her brain. The hourglass was tilting again and she was standing dwarfed beneath it, helpless to shield herself from the smothering rain of glass and sand.
She paused in her flight to nowhere to grip the back of a chair, the wild tumble of her hair mirroring the tumult of her thoughts. Was this how the Admiral had made her mother feel? Battered by a bewildering jumble of facts and emotions? Was Annemarie Snow’s alleged hysteria rooted in her inability to reconcile what she knew to be true and what she felt in her heart?
Lucy blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes, struggling to review the facts with a trace of her old logic. The Admiral had lied to her. Gerard had lied to her. Truth be told, she shouldn’t give one whit if they blew each other out of the water.
So why couldn’t she seem to stop loving either of them? Her fingers bit into the chair back. Despite his perfidy, the Admiral was still her father. Not even the weight of his betrayal could completely squelch a lifetime of blind adoration.
And Gerard? Oh, Gerard, her heart echoed. The image of any physical harm coming to him made her racing heart feel as if it were being ripped whole from her chest.
Braced by determination, she straightened, freeing the chair. Despite what the Admiral had raised her to believe, she was not powerless against the machinations of men. If Gerard had taught her one thing, it was that women possessed their own weapons, aside from pistols and cannon shot. Weapons of tenderness. Weapons of grace. Weapons of forgiveness.
She would stop this disaster before it occurred. Before one of the men she loved was maimed, or even killed, she would lay herself down as a sacrifice between them. Surely her love was strong enough to conquer Gerard’s hatred. She would soothe his temper with her tenderness and allow him to slake his desire for vengeance on her willing body.
With trembling hands, she reknotted her chignon and smoothed her skirts, preparing to go to the Captain of the Retribution and offer him both her innocence and her love.
Lucy approached the Captain’s dayroom, the nervous thud of her heart drowning out the murmur of her stocking feet against the planking. Despite her trepidation, she did not regret her impetuous decision. She knew somehow that Gerard would appreciate and honor the inestimable worth of the gift she would offer him. A gift she had once thought to bestow only upon her husband.
A yearning regret touched her, not for that faceless man, but because Gerard was not that man. He would never slip a ring on her waiting finger. Would never give her ginge
r-haired, hazel-eyed babies with her high-handed temper and his penchant for mischief. Smiling, she brushed an unexpected tear from her cheek. Perhaps it was just as well. Not even the indefatigable Smythe could handle such a saucy brood.
Lantern light spilled into the passageway from the half-open door of the dayroom. Lucy hesitated at the fringes of its revealing arc, the rich cadences of Gerard’s voice as mesmerizing as they’d been the first time she had heard them. She could not see Gerard from her vantage point, but Apollo hunched over the cabin’s sole table, the graceful scratch of his quill across a sheet of vellum punctuating Gerard’s frequent pauses.
He was dictating, Lucy realized. And pacing. Just as she had been doing earlier. His shadow crossed a hammock strung in the corner and she knew where he’d been sleeping since giving her his spacious quarters. The tiny room was more a cell than a cabin and she shuddered, wondering how he had endured it. He must have kept the lantern burning around the clock.
Her empathy faltered as his crisp voice assailed her ears. “… have learned only too well how to play your diabolical games, Admiral Snow. Thus far, your precious daughter has remained untouched, but if my demands are not met by sunset tomorrow, I will ruin her.”
At the terrible finality of his words, Lucy’s hand flew to her throat. Had her innocence been nothing more to him all along than a bargaining tool—the highest trump in a high-stakes game?
He stepped into view, rubbing a hand over the determined set of his jaw. Lucy could only stare at him, at the predator’s grace of his lean body, the sensual threat of his sculpted lips, willing herself to believe he wasn’t the man she feared him to be.
“What will your beloved London society think of you then, sir,” he continued, each sardonic word lacerating Lucy’s sore heart, “upon discovering you’ve allowed your only daughter to become the whore of the notorious Captain Doom?”
Lucy’s worst fears were confirmed. Gerard was only too willing to take by force what she would have given him freely in love. She clamped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late to muffle her small cry of anguish.
Gerard jerked his head up. Their gazes locked, his eyes reflecting surprise, regret, then a naked pain that mirrored her own. But he did not try to defend himself. The shards of her broken trust littered the cabin floor between them, making trespass impossible.
With a strangled sob, Lucy gathered her skirts and fled, knowing instinctively that he would not follow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
T HE SUN HAD YET TO TINGE THE HORIZON with pink the next morning when Gerard found himself standing outside the door of Lucy’s cabin. Odd how he’d come to think of the cabin as hers, he thought. How would he bear reclaiming it when she had returned to her safe, tidy life in London? Would a hint of lemon verbena still cling to his counterpane and haunt his barren dreams?
He rubbed his beard with a weary hand, contemplating the door. He’d spent a sleepless night on deck, gazing at the winking lanterns of the Argonaut, but seeing only the wounded betrayal in Lucy’s eyes, hearing only her muffled sob of anguish in the moment she had turned away from him.
Gerard had known when he had dictated those terrible threats that he’d never be forced to carry them out. The Admiral might care less for Lucy’s well-being than she was willing to admit, but the man’s sterling reputation was of paramount importance to him. He would not allow it to be tarnished by the scandalous downfall of his daughter.
Gerard knew only too well that society, in all of its perverse hypocrisy, would condemn Lucy, citing some inherent sensual weakness in her character that might provoke a pirate to ravish her. After all, they’d been blaming Eve ever since the spineless Adam had partaken of the apple she offered him.
By nightfall Lucy would be safely aboard the Argonaut, cradled once again in the blustering bosom of her father. A pain seized his heart, fierce and unexpected, but he willed it away with the same resolve that had enabled him to spend five years in darkness without going mad.
It wasn’t as if he had any choice in the matter. Regardless of how hardily she’d adapted since her kidnapping, a girl of Lucy’s delicate sensibilities could never be suited to life aboard a pirate ship. Snow’s confession and letter of marque might acquit him of past crimes, but they lacked the power to absolve him of present sins. He had nothing to offer Lucy beyond the vagabond life of an outlaw, always one fleet-footed step ahead of the hangman.
He gave the door a gentle rap, then waited, glancing ruefully at the ledger in his hand. He doubted that he’d fare any better with a bouquet of roses or a foil-wrapped box of chocolates. Lucy was not a woman to be charmed by vain and sentimental gestures.
When there was no response to his knock, he opened the door and eased his way into the unwelcoming silence. As he’d expected, the bed was empty, the blankets undisturbed as if its occupant had risen early or never retired at all.
Lucy stood at the porthole, her lithe figure once again garbed in Tarn’s castoffs, her silky hair caught in two precise braids. Her gaze was riveted on the stark specter of the motionless Argonaut. There was no sign of the beautiful gown, no hint of the enchanting woman who had welcomed him with such warmth only last night. Gerard’s breath caught with an aching sense of loss.
He cleared his throat with more difficulty than he would have admitted. “I’ll have to confine you to quarters today. For your own well-being, of course.”
He might have been addressing a statue. Or an ice sculpture, he amended, fighting an unreasonable flare of irritation.
He tossed her mother’s diary on the table with less care than he’d shown since finding it. “I thought this might help you pass the hours. I found it in your father’s strongbox. I haven’t read it,” he added, knowing she probably wouldn’t believe him.
Her glacial contempt showed no sign of thawing. Gerard could almost feel his toes beginning to tingle with frostbite. He could not resist snapping off a mock salute at her unyielding back. “Good day, Miss Snow.”
He was almost to the door when her soft reply came. “And a good day to you … Captain.”
As he secured the bolt that would once again make Lucy his unwilling captive, Gerard only hoped he could bluff the Admiral half as well as he had bluffed the man’s daughter.
Lucy kept her weary body propped at the porthole long after Gerard had gone. She watched in numb misery as dawn unfurled its glimmering thread on the horizon, despising its seductive beauty.
The sea at dawn is a cathedral, Lucy.
The smoky warmth of Gerard’s words stirred memories best left buried.
“Hypocrite,” she muttered.
If the sea were a cathedral, Gerard was only too eager to sacrifice her on its altar. Her traitorous heart lurched as a launch drifted into sight at the corner of her vision. Surely Gerard wouldn’t be fool enough to deliver that damning missive himself.
Her heart steadied. With each rhythmic stroke of the oars, the newborn rays of the sun glinted off Digby’s balding pate. He swiveled to give the Retribution a jaunty wave and a gap-toothed grin. Lucy found herself half wishing she was abovedeck to cheer him on. The elderly gunner’s wiry arms propelled the sturdy craft with surprising strength, sending it cutting through the deepening blue of the water in a direct path to the Argonaut. A gull danced and dipped above his head, startling Lucy with the realization of just how near they must be to land.
When the tiny craft drew alongside the massive man-of-war to be engulfed by its shadow, Lucy turned away from the window, hugging back a frisson of dread.
The velvet-bound ledger on the table caught her restless eye. She hesitated, reluctant to approach Gerard’s offering with anything resembling enthusiasm. The book had landed where he’d tossed it with a resounding thump, dislodging several of its yellowed pages. If he’d found it in her father’s strongbox, it was probably nothing more than detailed notes on the Admiral’s career or perhaps an impromptu collection of newspaper clippings immortalizing his military victories. A rush of contempt for her fat
her’s unrelenting vanity surprised her.
Her innate curiosity got the best of her. She brushed her fingers across the ledger’s mildewed cover. A faint tingle passed from her fingertips to lift the tiny hairs at her rape. She drew the nearest scattered page toward her. The date inscribed at the top of the page read 26 May 1780. Lucy frowned, intrigued by the unabashed femininity of the flowing script, so unlike her own.
“ ‘I write this in English,’ ” she read aloud, “ ‘for it pleases him and pleasing him has become my one desire, my only yearning, the sole obsession of my poor, besotted heart.’ ”
The quaint words echoed in the deserted cabin. Once Lucy might have dismissed them as the trivial ramblings of a sentimental fool. But with her own heart so tender from its recent bruising, they resonated with the timelessness of truth, made all the more genuine by their girlish ardor.
She read on. “ ‘He is a hero, they tell me, a valiant warrior in his country’s navy. I care nothing for that, but only for those grave, gentle smiles he bestows on me with such rarity.’ ”
Lucy’s stomach twisted into a dull knot. She sank into a chair, thinking how ironic it was that she might have once written those very words herself. Her hands trembled with suppressed emotion as she gathered the delicate pages into a semblance of order, finally understanding that they were her last fragile link to the woman who had given her life, then left her to face it all alone.
The noon sun boiled down on the Retribution’s deck, its relentless heat undiluted by even the whisper of a breeze. The glassy surface of the sea hung in eerie calm, just one more irritant to Gerard’s frazzled temper. He paced the length of the quarterdeck for what seemed like the hundredth time, swiping away the sweat tickling his nape. His crew wisely stayed out of his path, knowing it wasn’t anger provoking his savage mood, but apprehension.
His explosion of wrath came as predictably as the toll of the bell ringing the next watch. “I should have never let him go. I should have gone myself.”