It was a creditable impersonation of a leering pirate, but Lucy was not quite convinced. Gerard was glaring at a spot just over her right shoulder. His powerful hands were fisted. In threat or to hide their own unsteadiness? she wondered with dizzying insight.
His unexpected vulnerability emboldened her. Gave her the first clue that she might hold her own weapons in this duel of wits he’d forced upon her. Perhaps she could win back her clothes by less than conventional means.
Shaking back her hair, she forced herself to stroll over to the bed as if she were accustomed to parading about in her drawers before fully dressed men. “That wasn’t very sporting of you, Captain. As I’m sure you know, the nights are quite chilly at sea.”
For a stunned moment, Gerard couldn’t have said whether Lucy Snow was trying to shame or seduce him. Her glance was reproving, but her faint pout hinted at sultry promise. He struggled to cling to his anger. Rational anger at her foolish escape attempt. Irrational anger that she believed him capable of committing the most heinous of crimes against her, even though he’d given her no reason to believe otherwise. The lantern light worked its revealing magic through her sheer undergarments, distracting him.
It would have been wiser to have Apollo remove her clothes, but there were some things a captain could not ask his quartermaster to do, not even when he trusted him implicitly.
“So you think me a poor host, do you?” he asked.
Her lashes, so dark and striking in one so fair, swept down to veil her eyes. “Would you blame me? You’ve kept me locked away for days.”
“For your own protection.”
“So you say. But I won’t be of much use to you in your dealings with my father if I take an ague and die of exposure.”
She sank down on the edge of the bed, the subtle arch of her back accentuating the provocative thrust of her small breasts against the flimsy silk. Gerard’s palms tingled at the memory of their flawless weight in his hands, their incredible responsiveness to his touch. His gaze followed the curve of her lazily swinging calf. Had her legs always been so long? So delectable?
He tried to swallow again, but his throat had gone dry. What had prompted this unnerving display of audacity? he wondered. He would have been lying if he said he was entirely displeased with it. Perhaps it was time to call her bluff.
As Gerard approached the bed, his fleet steps unaffected by the rhythmic cant of the planking floor, Lucy fought to hide the unsettling effect of his nearness.
It became impossible when he reached down and slid his hand beneath her hair. His broad palm cupped her throat. His fingertips pressed against her nape with beguiling tenderness. It was the first time she’d allowed him to touch her since coming aboard, but she could hardly scorn his touch when she’d as much as invited it with her reckless posturing. Too late, she realized she’d challenged a master at his own game.
“Why, you’re shivering, Miss Snow!” he exclaimed, his brow knit with profound concern. “Might you already be taking a chill?”
As Lucy gazed into the hypnotic hazel of his eyes, she didn’t feel chilled. She felt hot, palsied, possessed by a primitive fever spreading outward from his touch to warm every inch of her sun-deprived body. It melted through her veins like hot butter, drenching her in want.
Her intended whisper came out as a croak. “I think not, sir. My health has always been robust.”
Sliding to his knees on the bed beside her, he shook his head sadly. “You mustn’t delude yourself, dear. Just look at you.” He brushed her hair back from her brow. “You’re flushed. Hoarse.” His mouth descended on hers; his voice lowered to a husky whisper. “Short of breath.”
What meager breath she did have was stolen by the alluring pressure of his lips against hers. As he shaped her mouth to fit the heated contours of his own, he gathered her into his arms, sliding one hand beneath her chemise to claim the bare skin of her back. Lucy had braced herself for his brutality, but this gentle assault on her senses undid her completely. His kiss was tender and rife with promises of pleasure only he could fulfill.
Her lips flowered beneath his, coaxing his tongue to flick the sensitive interior of her mouth to melting acquiescence. He delved deeper, testing the honeyed waters with maddening restraint. Lucy clung to him, enchanted by the tickle of the unfamiliar mustache, the prickle of his beard, the taste of salt and sea and male, the provocative rub of his narrow hips against her own.
His hands slid downward, slipping into the waist of her drawers to knead the softness of her bare buttocks. He deftly tilted her until the rigid length straining against the front seam of his breeches was positioned perfectly at the vulnerable cleft between her thighs. Lucy gasped, believing for a breathless moment that he might actually breach the fragile skein of fabric to possess her.
Instead, he kissed her to the brink of surrender, then drew back, leaving her tingling, limp, and panting for fulfillment.
His eyes sparkled with dark mischief, but his unsteady breathing proved he wasn’t as unaffected as he pretended to be. “ ’Tis worse than I feared. Your eyes are glazed, your muscles have lost all their vigor.” He cast a naughty glance over her shoulder. “Why, even your toes are curled! I don’t believe you’re suffering from an ague at all, but from a classic case of malaise.”
Lucy stiffened and withdrew from his arms. She met his eyes with bitter candor and said softly, “A pity there’s no cure for it. I fear it will be the death of me.”
For the briefest of instants, she thought she saw remorse flicker through his eyes, but then it was gone, banished by the predatory scrutiny she’d come to expect from Captain Doom.
He caught her chin between two fingers, his grip more possessive than even his kiss had been. “You needn’t fret about catching a chill, dear. Where we’re going, the nights are much hotter.”
As he rose to go, Lucy was besieged by images of swaying palms, shell-strewn beaches, naked bodies glistening with sweat. Her heart thundered to the rhythm of native drums.
Humbled by her own wretched weakness, she called after him, “If I give you my word I won’t try to escape, may I have my gown back?”
He paused at the door. “I fear, Miss Snow, that your word means no more to me than your father’s.”
He closed the door behind him, twisted the key in the lock, and slid the bolt home with a care bordering on tenderness.
Choking out an impotent cry of frustration, Lucy hurled a pillow at the door, then collapsed on the bed in near despair. One more encounter such as that one and there would be no need to sell her to white slavers. Gerard could just keep her locked in his cabin, half clothed and half out of her wits, until she was begging to do his sensual bidding.
Groaning, she curled up on her side on the bare tick, possessed by a raging fever that had nothing to do with ague.
Lucy awakened as she had awakened each morning aboard the Retribution—to the sound of Apollo’s singing. If his majestic bass held a note of false cheer as he approached the cabin, he disguised it beneath the soaring melody of an island hymn.
Unable to bear his undaunted spirits, Lucy wished for a blanket to pull over her head. It felt muzzy and full, as if she’d once again spent her tears in the privacy of sleep.
She heard the key turn, the bolt slide back, the door swing open. The song swelled. She decided to simply lie with her eyes squinched shut until Apollo and his damnable optimism went away.
She was jarred from her self-pity by a crash that seemed to shake the entire ship. An ominous silence followed.
“Apollo?” she whispered.
When her timid query received no answer, she sat bolt upright in the bed. Apollo was stretched facedown on the floor, a giant felled by nothing more than the delicate brocade pillow she had hurled at the door the night before.
The Admiral’s voice boomed through her conscience for the first time since she’d learned of his betrayal. How many times have I told that stupid girl not to scatter things about on the floor? Won’t be satisfied till I
break my bloody neck.
“Good God, I’ve killed him!” she cried, tumbling from the bed. “Gerard will never forgive me for this.”
Too distraught to examine why Gerard’s forgiveness should matter to her, she rushed toward Apollo’s prostrate form, already dreading what she would find.
Her trembling hand sought his throat. His skin was warm, the pulse beneath pounding with the reassuring cadence of a kettledrum.
A sigh of relief gusted from Lucy’s lungs. From where she crouched, she could see the faint smile curving Apollo’s lips, almost as if he were dreaming of something agreeable.
“Thank you, Lord,” she murmured, rolling her eyes heavenward.
The Lord rewarded her prayer with a startling view of the cabin door, which stood gaping open in invitation.
Lucy looked at Apollo. Lucy looked at the door. After all of her botched escape attempts, surely it couldn’t be that easy, could it? she thought. Her heart skittered in her breast. She glanced down at her sleep-rumpled chemise and drawers, dismayed by the overwhelming expanse of pink skin they revealed. Gerard’s warnings about his crew echoed in her ears. Did she dare?
She scrambled to her feet, knowing she had to take the chance. Last night had proved one thing to her—there wasn’t a man aboard this vessel more dangerous to her than its captain, for despite his treachery, she was powerless to resist him.
“Pleasant dreams, Apollo,” she whispered, relishing her turn to close the door, twist the key, and drive the heavy bolt home.
Determined not to repeat the mistakes of her earlier debacle, Lucy charged in the opposite direction. She had little chance of escaping undetected in a launch. Her only hope lay in assuming the Royal Navy was in pursuit. If she could somehow disable the ship or reach the lower gundeck and send up a signal to alert them to the Retribution’s whereabouts, rescue might be imminent.
If Gerard didn’t shoot her first.
She brushed aside that glum thought to continue her maddening trek. Lucy had learned her way around a massive seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line almost before she’d learned to walk, but the design of this modest schooner confounded her almost as badly as its captain did.
She tripped twice, stumbling over steps painted in contrasting colors, the exact opposite of how steps ought to be painted. An upward-slanting ramp led to nowhere while a promising quirk in the passageway brought her in a complete circle. Her heart nearly burst from her chest when she came face-to-face with her own reflection in a perversely placed mirror.
The precious moments ticked away, each sounding a knell of doom to her freedom. Her resolve weakened, but it was too late to return to the great cabin and nurse the lump on Apollo’s brow. She couldn’t find her way back if she tried.
She collapsed against the bulkhead, tempted to plop down in the middle of the passageway and wait for Gerard to find her. He’d already betrayed her trust, broken her heart, and stripped her to near nakedness. What more could he do to her?
Plenty.
That unvarnished truth spurred her feet forward. Ghostly shades of the Retribution’s crew leered at her out of the shadows, their imagined visages growing more dastardly with each frantic footfall. Her flawless recall provided her with a tidy catalogue of the tortures Mr. Defoe claimed pirates delighted in inflicting on their more rebellious captives: tying them to the windlass and pelting them with glass bottles; forcing rum down their throats until they stumbled overboard and drowned; filling their mouths with flammable oakum and setting it afire.
And those were only the atrocities they committed against their own sex.
A hoarse sob of frustration was wrenched from her as she once again came face-to-face with her fear-bleached countenance in the mirror. She slammed a fist into its mocking surface.
Lucy jumped back in shock as the mirror dropped to reveal a ladder recessed into the bulkhead behind it.
Hardly daring to believe her good fortune, she squinted upward into the forbidding shadows. Surely no one would have gone to such lengths to disguise a ladder that led to nowhere.
With fortified resolve, Lucy scaled the ladder and pressed her hands against the planking above. Her nimble fingers quickly located a narrow seam invisible to the naked eye. She bit back a triumphant crow, finally feeling as if she deserved to wear, if not the mantle, at least the gloves of some bold Gothic heroine.
The moment of truth was at hand. She coiled herself as high as the ladder would allow and braced her sweaty palms against the trapdoor, hoping to maintain an element of surprise should her exit be witnessed by one of Gerard’s crew.
With one fluid lunge, she gave the trapdoor a tremendous heave and sprang out of the gloom of the hold like a jack-in-the-box.
Sunlight seared her pupils, blinding her. Even more astounding than the light was the warmth. Moist and cloying, it enveloped her in a smothering blanket, forcing her to gasp for her next breath and wonder where the frigid English winter had gone.
She had reason to be thankful for that hard-won breath, for when her vision finally adjusted to the wealth of light, she found herself standing nose to nose with the leering gargoyle of her darkest fears.
Lucy screamed.
The gargoyle screamed louder. The horror staining his freckled features mirrored her own.
Lucy clapped her hands over her ears, fearful his shrill keening would pierce them. Too late, she realized she’d burst not onto the lower gundeck as she’d hoped, but onto the quarterdeck, the most visible of the upper decks. Through a haze of terror, she was vaguely aware of a pale blur behind the gargoyle and other figures perched on the fo’c’sle and in the rigging, frozen to a state of shock by the unfolding drama. The startling ebony of the sails flapped like a mourning canopy over their heads.
Instead of leaping at her, brandishing a cutlass as she expected him to do, the squealing brigand stumbled backward, landing hard on his rump. The impact mercifully cut off his scream, but restored his voice, an all but unintelligible Irish brogue.
“Saints preserve us, Pudge. ’Tis a banshee for sure.” His grimy finger signed a clumsy cross on his breast.
The bespectacled man behind him edged toward the rail, his pasty rolls of flesh quivering like an undercooked crossbun. He gazed at her in awestruck wonder. “Not a banshee, Tarn, but a Valkyrie come to escort us to the halls of Valhalla. By George, we’re doomed!”
Their nonsensical gibbering preyed on Lucy’s nerves, melting her fright to confusion. Noticing the familiar butt of a pistol protruding from the Irishman’s breeches, she advanced on him.
He scuttled backward like a threatened crab. “Don’t desert me now, Pudge! We’ve been through too much together.”
His snuffling companion inched nearer to the rail.
Heartened by their blatant cowardice, Lucy snatched the pistol from the lad’s breeches. His eyes rolled back in a blend of terror and near religious ecstasy. “Sweet heaven, deliver me, she intends to have her way with me!”
Pudge hooked one plump leg over the rail. “A succubus! I knew it!”
“Aye,” the Irishman wailed. “Beautiful and terrible she is!”
A cool voice, shaded with amusement, sliced through the escalating hysteria. “An apt description, Tarn. A pity I didn’t think of it myself.”
Startled, Lucy swung the weapon around, pointing it straight at their captain’s treacherous heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GERARD LEANED LAZILY AGAINST THE mainmast, an infuriating study in nautical elegance. His black breeches clung to his lean legs, tapering down into a pair of dashing jackboots. His white shirt gaped open at the throat and was covered by a dark blue jacket, probably confiscated at gunpoint from some hapless Royal Navy officer. Its shiny brass buttons reflected the sunlight, dazzling Lucy almost as much as his mocking grin.
“Good morning, Miss Snow,” he said, as if she weren’t brandishing a weapon that could permanently wipe the smirk off his face. “The air below getting a little stale for your refined tastes?”
&
nbsp; Tarn’s shout nearly startled her into dropping the pistol. “Save yerself, Cap’n! She ain’t human. She’s a succubus with a taste for male flesh. Don’t stray too close! She might try to have her way with you.”
Gerard’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “I should be so fortunate.”
Lucy had almost forgotten the man straddling the rail. “Perhaps not a s-succubus after all, sir,” he offered timidly. “A s-s-siren. If she opens her mouth you’d best cover your ears, for her voice is so beautiful, it will drive you mad with longing.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!” Her dubious patience at an end, Lucy gave them all cause to wish they’d covered their ears. “Stop it, I say! I won’t tolerate another minute of this rubbish! Do you hear me? Just stop it!”
Her tone of command froze them all. If Lucien Snow had taught her one thing, it was how to bellow an order. For a moment there was no sound at all but the eerie whisper of those bizarre black sails.
Lucy Snow had had enough. Enough of shifting loyalties. Enough of being the butt of jokes she didn’t even understand. Enough of being bullied by men. Her gaze darted wildly between the three men nearest to her.
She turned the pistol on the Irishman. “Get up! Get up this instant and stop groveling. What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you any pride?”
As he climbed sheepishly to his feet, a buried memory threatened to surface. A nervous snuffle drew her attention away from it.
She waved the pistol at the man clinging to the starboard rail. “And you! Climb down from there right now. And stop sniveling,” she barked, “or I’ll give you something to snivel about.”
He obeyed, still looking as if he’d like to burst into tears.
She swung the gun back around on Gerard. While she’d been distracted, he’d glided a foot nearer to her without appearing to have moved at all. Just like the phantom he was purported to be.
Thief of Hearts Page 24
