Thief of Hearts

by Teresa Medeiros

  She tipped her head back, boldly exposing the delicate appendages in question. “Don’t cheat your reputation, Captain. You’ve left off turning your victims to stone with a glance and ravishing ten virgins in a single night.”

  “Before midnight,” he shot back. “Although I suppose ravishing one virgin ten times would suffice. What time is it, Apollo?”

  Lucy shrank back in her chair, conceding the effectiveness of his parry. She had foolishly forgotten the risk in baiting him.

  “Time for me to see to the watch, sir,” Apollo replied smoothly.

  “Very well, then. Go,” Gerard snapped.

  As Apollo took his leave, casting his captain an unreadable look, Lucy shifted her weight, trying not to squirm. She might not have been so hasty to taunt Gerard had she realized she was to be abandoned so soon to the whims of his temper.

  She was not comforted when he pocketed the letter opener. She knew better than anyone that he had other, more subtle, weapons at his disposal. The silent specter of the untouched bed loomed behind him.

  He eyed her, massaging the hint of golden stubble along his jaw. Lucy wished he was still wearing the spectacles, if only to protect her from his inscrutable eyes. Not even her father’s bullying had so tempted her to blather all of her secrets. Secrets that could only disgrace and humiliate her further.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was as brisk and formal as the Admiral’s. “I didn’t come here to spar with you. I came to lay down the law. I thought a civilized discussion would be simpler and far less time-consuming than carving the pirate articles on your”—he fought a brief battle with himself and lost; his gaze flicked down to the faded linen cupping her breasts—“chest.”

  “Whose law are you laying down? Not the Crown’s certainly.”

  He rose to circle the table and Lucy was reminded of their first meeting. Not being blindfolded gave her no advantage. Now she knew how dangerous he was. She wondered how he had managed to suppress his natural arrogance for all those weeks. The air of command was stamped on him as bluntly as his features.

  He clasped his hands at the small of his back. “The only law that matters as long as you’re aboard this vessel. Mine.” She started as he leaned over her shoulder in that disconcerting manner of his. The smoky cadence of his voice caressed her ear. “I strongly suggest obedience. As captain of this ship, I’m afraid the task of”—he savored the word with alarming relish—“discipline naturally falls to me.”

  “Naturally.” She swallowed audibly.

  He straightened. “Laws are made to protect those who obey them. I ask only one thing of you. You’re not to leave this cabin for any reason. Due to its very nature, the Retribution is crewed by some of the most vicious cutthroats in all of England. I’ve managed to keep your presence on board a secret thus far from all but Apollo, but should you escape this cabin and fall into the hands of my crew …” His pause was fraught with both warning and regret. “I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

  “Of course not,” Lucy whispered, fighting back a shiver of pure misery.

  He’d abdicated all responsibility for her the moment he’d nabbed her in the library. She could only guess what was coming next—a generous offer of his protection coupled with a thinly veiled threat of tossing her to his crew if she refused.

  The last tiny ray of faith in her heart flickered in anticipation of dying. Her brief surge of bravado melted away, leaving her defenseless and dangerously near to tears.

  She would not beg him, she vowed. No matter what he did to her. No matter what he forced her to do. He was nothing more than a ruthless stranger who had masqueraded as a man she could love.

  “Lucy?”

  The gentle query startled her. It was like hearing the ghost of a dead loved one speak. It was even more startling to have the fog clear from her eyes to discover Gerard kneeling in front of her, his expression softened with concern.

  “Are you feeling ill again? You may still be suffering from the effects of the somnorifera.”

  He reached to touch her brow, but she shied away. “I’m fine, thank you. Unlike you, I suffer from neither perplexing bouts of blindness nor seasickness.”

  He straightened, accepting her rebuff with an ounce less grace than before. How could she tell him she was suffering from an affliction far more devastating—a broken heart?

  “What do you intend to do with me, Captain? Sell me to white slavers or hold me for ransom? Are you prepared to barter me to the highest bidder?”

  “The Admiral can choke on his ill-gotten wealth for all I care. All I want is that letter of marque and a full confession of his complicity in the scheme to defraud me.”

  The cynicism in Lucy’s laugh failed to smooth its edge of despair. “You’ll get neither. His reputation would be destroyed. He’d be utterly ruined.”

  “Then he has a choice to make, doesn’t he?” His unspoken threat chilled her. “Get some rest,” he commanded gruffly. “There’ll be no need for you to rise at daybreak. You’ll find my demands on your time far less stringent than your father’s.”

  Lucy watched, stunned, as he turned to go, shoving her petticoat out of his path. She opened her mouth to blurt out his name, then snapped it shut. What was she going to do? Call him back to impugn her honor?

  The door slammed.

  The key turned.

  The bolt slammed into place.

  “Why, that miserable wretch!” She sprang out of the chair, giving the leather-bound book sprawled on the cabin floor a malicious kick.

  Lucy knew she was being absurd. She’d been terrified he would ravish her, yet now her pride was wounded because he hadn’t even tried.

  She paced to the window to watch the shadows of dusk creep across the sky. Was Gerard just biding his time as he’d proven so skilled at doing or was he playing the gentleman with her once again? She had literally thrown herself into his lap at Ionia and he had resisted her.

  She closed her eyes, bombarded with unwanted memories: Gerard’s fingers gently cupping her breasts, stroking the moist, throbbing heart of her womanhood, capturing her helpless cry of ecstasy. The forbidden visions evoked a poignant mixture of longing and shame.

  Did he find her repugnant because she was the daughter of a man he despised, or did he find her personally distasteful? As loath as she was to admit it, she found the latter prospect by far the more dismal one.

  Her father had been right about one thing. Emotions played havoc with logic. Weary of battling her conflicting feelings, Lucy slumped against the bulkhead and gazed at the enormous bed. It didn’t seem as threatening now as it did desolate. Sighing, she extinguished the lantern. Taking great care not to muss the elegant counterpane, she crawled into the captain’s bed and surrendered to exhaustion.

  A slender spar of moonlight fell across Lucy’s face. Gerard stood over her, watching her sleep. It had been enough of a challenge keeping his distance at Ionia, but having her aboard the Retribution—beneath his command, in his bed—was more temptation than any man could be expected to resist.

  She’d curled herself into a wary ball in the precise center of the bed, somehow managing to leave the satin counterpane unruffled. The cabin was cool, the coal embers in the stove waning, yet she’d spurned both blankets and pillows as if to accept their comfort would expose her to the enemy. To him.

  Her defensive posture in slumber and the thin veneer of bravado the masculine garments lent her only made her seem more vulnerable. More defenseless and in need of protection. Gerard reached for a strand of the ashen hair fanned across the counterpane, then drew his hand back, reminding himself harshly that it was no longer his job to protect her.

  The moonlight illuminated her pallor and the smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes. He’d had no choice but to confine her to quarters. His first responsibility was to his crew. And to his family. But he dreaded the thought of her languishing belowdeck, fading like one of her fragile gloxinia blooms deprived of sunlight and fresh air. He knew better tha
n anyone how damning to the soul it was to be robbed of freedom. It made him pause to count the steep cost of his vendetta.

  With a will of its own, his hand once again sought her hair. He sifted the moon-gilded silk through his fingers, luxuriating in its texture. She had recoiled from his every attempt to touch her, loathing plain in her eyes. What had he expected? That upon learning the truth, she would denounce her father and throw herself into his arms, vowing her undying loyalty? He certainly hadn’t earned it. He had betrayed her no less than the Admiral had.

  His hand fisted in her hair. She already believed the worst of him. What was to stop him from proving her right? From leaning forward to nibble her slightly parted lips into unwitting surrender. From capturing her wrists and imprisoning her slight body beneath the weight of his own. But he doubted even his powers of seduction, once honed to perfection on some of the most beautiful women in London, were enough to overwhelm her fierce sense of betrayal. As soon as she shook off the fog of sleep and realized what was happening to her, she would fight him.

  Then they would both learn just how much of the dark still lingered in his soul.

  He let her hair slip through his fingers, some savage, selfish part of him despising his own damnable reluctance to hurt her any more than he already had. What was it about this slight girl that never failed to stir his dormant conscience?

  “You’re a bloody disgrace to the pirate profession, Doom,” he muttered, drawing a corner of the counterpane over her.

  She snuggled into it, burrowing deep. As he leaned over her, Gerard ruefully reminded himself to give the cabin’s key to Apollo with strict instructions not to give it back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  LUCY AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE unlikely sound of singing—a charming French chanson set to a sprightly island tempo.

  She opened her eyes to discover the Retribution’s behemoth of a quartermaster depositing a steaming tray on the table. “Breakfast?” she muttered, knuckling her eyes.

  “Lunch, missie,” he gently corrected. “The bells rang noon over an hour ago.”

  Noon! Scandalized by her sloth, Lucy sprang out of the bed before remembering she had no schedule to adhere to, no one to displease with her laziness. She fell back on the feather mattress, indulging herself with a languorous stretch and a feline yawn. Apollo disappeared out the door, whistling now instead of singing.

  Lucy paused, mid-yawn, shaken by a half-remembered dream. A dream where Gerard, her Gerard, had tenderly tucked a blanket around her and brushed her lips with the beguiling warmth of his own. She glanced down, realizing she had been wrapped in the counterpane when she awoke.

  Derided by her logical mind, she shook off the fanciful notion. She had simply drawn the counterpane over her when she became chilled and concocted the dream from hopeless wishes. But all the logic in the world couldn’t banish the wistful ache in her heart.

  Apollo reappeared, lugging a brass-banded trunk with negligible effort. “The Captain sent these for you.”

  Lucy sat up, her heart beating faster. Not Gerard, but “the Captain.” The omnipotent creature of command who wielded ultimate power over her future and her fate.

  She crept out of the bed and sidled toward the trunk, trying to feign indifference, but failing miserably. “What is it? The severed heads of his former captives?”

  She’d already determined that Apollo was a man of few words, but he shot her a chiding look before reaching into the trunk for a bundle of cloth. He unfurled it over his chest, shaking out the most stunning gown Lucy had ever seen.

  She gasped with pleasure. She would have sworn herself devoid of feminine vanity, but in that instant she was beset by a primitive covetousness, a yearning to feel that exquisite mesh of turquoise satin and cream lace against her skin. Its richly jeweled hues spoke of another, more passionate era, and bleached the chaste white of all her Grecian-styled gowns to insignificance.

  “Oh, my,” she breathed in awe. “It’s certainly fine, isn’t it?”

  Apollo smiled, encouraging her to run a reverent hand over the miniature pearl buttons studding the puffed sleeves.

  “May I?” she shyly asked.

  He relinquished the gown to her loving hands. Giving in to her instinctive urge, she held it up to see how it would fit.

  Her delight faded as rapidly as it had come. Her feet and another six inches of cabin floor were swallowed by the voluminous hem. The gown had obviously been tailored for a woman much taller than she. And given the yawning cavity of the bodice, much more shapely.

  I’ve heard Doom’s tastes run to women with a little more meat on their hones.

  Gerard’s own scathing denouncement mocked her. What had she been thinking? That prior to her abduction, he had gone to the effort and expense of having a wardrobe tailored for her? She cast the overflowing trunk a disparaging glance. These were obviously the castoffs of other women he’d entertained aboard ship. If they were any indication of the voluptuous creatures ordinarily at his beck and call, he must find her unappealing indeed.

  She gazed down at herself, feeling particularly gawkish and angular in the masculine attire.

  Lifting her chin, she let the glorious gown fall into a heap at her feet. “You may tell your captain that my own gown will suffice. I’ve no interest in the attire of his former whores.”

  Apollo looked so crestfallen that Lucy felt a twinge of guilt. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut as if dire consequences might result if he spoke.

  Injured pride fueled her disdain. “You may also tell him that if he thinks to buy my cooperation with a trunkful of pretty baubles, he’d best think again. Contrary to what he may believe, I’m not some timid mouse to be bribed with a hunk of cheese.”

  As if suddenly remembering he’d forgotten to set the sails or some other such essential task, Apollo wadded up the gown he’d previously handled with such care and tossed it in the trunk.

  He slammed the lid and hefted it to his shoulder. “Very well, missie. I shall deliver your message to the Captain.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lucy replied. She felt a little ridiculous curtsying in a pair of breeches, but believed she’d retained enough of her dignity to afford to be gracious.

  Apollo fled the cabin at a dead lope. Lucy knew a brief moment of hope that he might forget to secure the door, but the twist of the key and the thud of the bolt sliding into place was unmistakable.

  Abandoning one’s self to one’s emotions certainly made one hungry, she thought, going to the table. Besides, she was going to need all of her strength and cunning to cross wits with Captain Claremont.

  She drew the napkin from the tray. A squeak of impotent rage escaped her, for sitting on the earthenware tray was a tall, foamy mug of milk and a beautifully sliced chunk of cheese.

  Gerard’s demands on her time did indeed prove to be less stringent than the Admiral’s. If not for the terse inquiries into her well-being delivered by Apollo each morning, she might have suspected he’d forgotten her existence altogether.

  She found herself wildly bored with her own company, forced to endure the monotony of days at sea trapped in a cabin that seemed to shrink with each passing hour. She continued to sleep curled all alone in the middle of the immense bed.

  Her restless study of the horizon revealed no landmarks and no hint of pursuit. Or rescue. No opportunities for escape presented themselves, each of Apollo’s departures underscored by that same damning slam, click, and thud. Her temper grew shorter, but she quickly found that being rude to Apollo had no effect. Her cross words simply rolled off his well-oiled hide like water. She thought in a fit of pique that he and Smythe ought to have been brothers.

  On the third day, she was reduced by tedium to correcting the havoc she’d made of the cabin. She scooped a book off the floor only to hesitate, beset by curiosity as to what sort of book might hold the interest of a man like Gerard Claremont.

  She ran her fingertips over the title tooled in the morocco-bound cover, beguiled by it
s rich texture—Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe. It took only the briefest perusal to determine the book was a novel thinly disguised as the autobiography of an infamous pirate.

  Her lip curled in a delicate sneer. The Admiral had taken singular delight in deriding novels, insisting that something that had never really happened couldn’t possibly be of any import. Her scorn faded at the memory. The Admiral had taken delight in deriding a great many things—including his daughter. Pricked by a spirit of defiance, she plopped down cross-legged on the floor and began to read.

  She was still in the same position four hours later when Apollo brought her lunch. She ate absently, nibbling on dry biscuits and salted beef while turning pages with her other hand. She had unwittingly found what she’d been seeking between the unlikely pages of a book—escape. The hours melted away as she was transported to exotic climes by the thrilling adventures of the rogue captain.

  She finished the novel the following morning, turning the last page with a wistful, but satisfied, sigh. She gently returned it to its rightful place on the bookshelf, then pawed through Gerard’s bound atlases and charts until she discovered two more Defoe novels.

  She devoured the first and was lying on her stomach on the bed halfway through the second when Apollo entered with supper. She laid the book aside, careful not to ruffle its fragile pages. She’d already noticed the disturbing tendency of Defoe’s tarnished heroes to take on Gerard’s likeness in her imagination, but the most recent incarnation of Gerard as the noble castaway Robinson Crusoe and Apollo as his loyal Friday was too much for her to digest on an empty stomach.

  She watched Apollo arrange her supper tray with sharpened curiosity. The rich histories of Defoe’s characters had given her pause, made her wonder what drove men to the paths they took. As always, Apollo’s big-boned feet were bare and her gaze was drawn to the ugly scars ringing his ankles.