Thief of Hearts

by Teresa Medeiros

  Tarn ticked off the ingredients on his fingers. “Gin. Sherry. Rum. Spices …”

  “D-d-don’t forget the raw eggs,” Pudge shyly offered.

  Lucy coughed and sputtered. “Not much chance of that.”

  When the laughter had subsided, Kevin leaned over and folded the dice into her palm. “Sixes are the main. A kiss for luck, darling.”

  Gerard’s hands clenched into fists. He held his breath, fearing what he would do should Lucy tilt her lips to Kevin’s handsome face for a kiss. In twenty-two years, he’d never lifted a hand to his brother in anger; now he wanted to fasten them both around the tanned column of Kevin’s throat and strangle him.

  His captive breath escaped as Lucy brought her cupped hand to her lips and gently bestowed a kiss upon its contents. Even that innocent gesture made the blood pool, hot and heavy, in Gerard’s loins.

  He stepped forward, no longer content to hover in the shadows. “What a charming pet you’ve made of our little hostage. I’ve heard of vessels keeping a trained dog to amuse them. Or even a pig. But never an admiral’s daughter.”

  Gerard’s unexpected broadside jolted Lucy to the core. Her fingers went icy, then numb. The dice tumbled from her hand, rewarding her clumsiness with two sixes. After an instant of stunned silence, the men sent up a halfhearted cheer.

  Their captain’s slow, sarcastic applause silenced them. His mood had been less than predictable lately. “Cursed with the devil’s own luck, isn’t she? Or perhaps just her father’s.”

  Lucy’s nerves had been stretched taut by the effort of forcing a gaiety she did not feel. At the unprovoked attack, she sprang to her feet to face him.

  Tarn’s hand snaked to his breeches to check the security of his pistol. Pudge inched backward. Fidget’s cheek twitched and Digby began to swear softly, but fluently, beneath his breath. Kevin gazed at the fallen dice as if able to divine the future in their inscrutable dots.

  “You’ve a lot of nerve condemning my father for gambling, Captain,” Lucy said, stabbing a finger at Gerard’s chest. “What do you think you’re doing? Isn’t there any risk in sailing in circles just waiting for the Royal Navy to find you? Isn’t there any hazard in trying to outwit ships with bigger guns, bigger crews, and more brilliant strategists than you could ever hope to be? Why, you’re more of a gambler than my father ever was! Only you gamble for keeps. You gamble with these men as your dice. Their lives and their futures are all your stakes and you don’t give a damn about any of them as long as you win in the end.”

  He gazed down at her for a long moment, his unassailable dignity more infuriating than any outburst. “Perhaps we should reconsider getting that pig,” he said quietly before turning on his heel and leaving her to mop up her own mess.

  The men crept off, one by one, refusing to look at her. She turned her burning eyes on Kevin, expecting him to cheer her show of spirit. His expression was oddly reproving. She sank down and rested her cheek on her folded knees. She’d be damned if she was going to cry again, she thought sullenly. She’d shed enough tears for Gerard Claremont to replenish the sea.

  When it finally came, Kevin’s rebuke was all the more potent for its gentleness. “Curse him for his stubbornness, Lucy. Damn him for his ambition to succeed, no matter what the cost. But don’t undermine his competence in front of his men.”

  Lucy sniffed, despising the telltale thickness of her voice. “I should have known you’d defend him. The wretch is your brother.”

  “And the only father I’m ever likely to know. He brought me into this world and buried our ma when the job was done. Instead of abandoning me when he went to sea, he found a captain with a wife who would raise me as her own. They hadn’t much money, but they had a comfortable cottage in the country—much more than he’d ever had. He might have left me then and not looked back, but he didn’t. He was gone for months at a time, but he never returned without some exotic present for his baby brother. Until the day came when he didn’t return at all.”

  Lucy turned her face away, but Kevin squatted in front of her, ruthless in his quest to make her understand. “Gerard’s father had the grace to marry our mother before he was lost at sea. She took to the streets after that. My own father could have been any one of a dozen men. I’m a bastard, Lucy, but whatever Gerard’s name might be at any given moment, he always shares it with me.”

  Lucy lifted her head. The breeze snatched at the bitter tears she had vowed not to cry. “Then you should consider yourself fortunate, for that’s more than he’ll ever share with me.”

  It took Lucy until noon the next day to screw up the humility to apologize. Gerard was standing at the bow, a grim figurehead glaring at the horizon as if he could conjure up a navy warship with the sheer force of his will.

  Lucy joined him in his vigil. “Perhaps he’s not coming,” she said softly. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that he might be glad to be rid of me?”

  He shot her a crooked glance. “Hourly.”

  Before she could so much as sputter a retort, he was gone, dropping down into the main companionway without a sound.

  Lucy was not the only one to feel the lash of the captain’s tongue that day. His brooding mood darkened by the hour, enveloping the Retribution in a cloud more inescapable than the billowing sails blocking out the sunlight. He was a man known for his cool head and even temper, yet he barked orders with the poorly restrained ferocity of an Irish wolfhound. His crew scurried to do his bidding, afraid any delay might result in yet another stripe inflicted by his merciless tongue.

  When a relieved Apollo reported that the Captain had retired to his dayroom to review the week’s logs, Lucy came up with the idea of drawing caricatures of the men to diffuse the tension. She was using Kevin’s back as a desk and putting the finishing touches on an enormous pair of spectacles for a delighted Pudge when the drawing was snatched from her hand.

  Lucy stared dumbly at the muscled smoothness of Kevin’s back. Her heart thudded a belated warning. A lethal quiet descended around them like the tense peace of the sea before an explosion of cannons. She straightened to find Gerard holding the coarse paper to the light. His knuckles were stark white, yet he took care not to smudge so much as a line of the drawing.

  “A brilliant likeness, don’t you think, Pudge?” he inquired gently.

  Pudge shuffled his feet. “Y-y-yes, sir.”

  “It’ll look simply smashing posted on the wall at Newgate.”

  He handed Pudge his prize and focused his lethal attention on Tarn. Tarn tried to shove his own sketch down the front of his breeches, but Gerard held out his hand before he could succeed. He sheepishly surrendered the likeness. Gerard frowned. All of them, including Lucy, held their breath. Only Kevin seemed unconcerned. He was watching his brother with an odd mixture of wariness and amusement.

  “Far too many freckles, I fear,” Gerard finally pronounced. “I’d hate for the magistrates to have trouble recognizing you.”

  The Captain lifted his tawny head, studying each of his men’s faces in turn. Only Lucy was spared his scrutiny, but somehow the omission did not hearten her.

  “Fidget,” he said, choosing his next victim with deliberate care. “Didn’t I see you showing Miss Snow how the steam furnace works earlier in the week?”

  Fidget’s cheek twitched in staccato rhythm. “Aye, sir, she was … curious.”

  “And you, Digby. Was it my imagination or were you demonstrating how the powder monkey handed you shot during an attack?”

  The elderly gunner scratched his balding head. “Twas the damnedest thing, Cap’n. She just happened by and … aw, shit, I can’t deny it.”

  Gerard shook his head, his voice so fraught with patience that it sent a shiver down Lucy’s spine. “Even you, Apollo. You were the one considerate enough to teach Miss Snow the workings of the false deck.”

  His quartermaster stood at stiff attention. “Aye, sir. That would have been me.”

  Trerard paced between their ranks, his hands locked at the sm
all of his back. When the storm finally broke, it did so with a mighty roar. “Why didn’t the bloody lot of you just get together and provide her with a diagram of the ship? My ship! She could have wrapped it in ribbon and presented it to the Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy with her own dainty little hand!”

  The men gaped at him. They’d never seen their levelheaded captain in such a state.

  His eyes blazed with fury. “Have you all lost your minds? You’re wanted criminals, for God’s sake. Fugitives! Has she got you so besotted that it never occurred to you that it might be dangerous to let her reproduce your likenesses? You won’t be quite so charmed by her talents when these sketches pop up in the pages of the Times right alongside a healthy reward for your thick skulls!”

  Lucy could not allow them to endure a punishment that was rightfully hers. “Captain?” she said, hating the timid sound of her plea. “It really wasn’t their fault. They were just trying to amuse—”

  “You!” Gerard wheeled on his heel and stabbed a finger in her direction. “You meddlesome little …”

  Lucy backed away, his inevitable approach effectively separating her from the others. He backed her toward the starboard rail with ruthless efficiency, his powerful body coiled to pounce. Not since the night she’d stabbed him with the letter opener had Lucy seen him in such a murderous rage. But he hadn’t killed her then, she reminded herself breathlessly. He had kissed her. Twice.

  Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. For some reason, she didn’t feel afraid, but exhilarated. Her back came up against the rail. There was nowhere left to flee.

  She met his gaze boldly. “Why don’t you go ahead and throw me overboard? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Captain Doom?”

  He snatched her up by the shoulders. “I ought to. You’re quite an effective little spy, aren’t you?” His gaze searched her face, darting wildly from her eyes to her lips, which had parted in unconscious invitation. “All you have to do is bat those silky eyelashes over those big, innocent eyes of yours and twitch that pretty rump and my men spill all their secrets.”

  “I know too much,” Lucy agreed, blinking solemnly. “You can hardly afford to let me live.”

  He jerked her against him, more of desperation than violence in his grip. Her back was arched against the rail, the softness of her breasts pressed to the tense wall of his chest. The butt of his pistol dug into her belly.

  His lips were a scant inch from hers when he gave her a shake harsh enough to dislodge strands of hair from her braids. “Damn you! If you think I’m going to let myself fall under the spell of some prim, underfed brat of a virgin, you’ve overestimated your charms. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even want you so badly if I hadn’t been without a woman for six bloody years!”

  His words echoed without mercy in the stunned silence. Swearing with Digby’s curt fluency, he released her and marched away, stabbing a furious hand through his hair. Lucy collapsed against the rail, the loosened strands of her hair tumbling forward to veil her face.

  The men crept around her. Pudge’s plump fingers stroked her arm. “Don’t cry, Miss Lucy. Oh, p-please, don’t cry. I’m sure he didn’t mean to be so unkind.”

  They had to strain to hear Lucy’s voice. “Apollo, whose clothes were in that trunk the Captain sent me?”

  It was Kevin who answered, his tone matter-of-fact. “They belonged to the prosti—”—he paused to clear his throat of a damning obstruction—“um—my actress friend.” His roguish shrug conveyed volumes. “She barely had time to dress before Gerard put her ashore.”

  When Lucy lifted her head, her eyes weren’t shining with tears as they’d feared, but with hope. Her joyous laughter rippled through their jaded hearts like song.

  She folded the sailmaster’s hand in her own. “Have you ever worked as a dressmaker, Pudge?”

  Gerard stared sightlessly at the leather-bound logs spread open on the table before him. Something thumped on the ceiling of the dayroom; his eyes shifted upward. Given his erratic behavior since bringing Lucy aboard, his crew was probably abovedeck plotting mutiny. Captain Lucy, he thought wryly. He had to admit it had an intriguing ring to it. Pudge could use his talents to fashion a new flag—a pastel pink one, perhaps, with a likeness of a woman’s delicate hand squeezing a heart. A fool’s heart.

  He tossed back a swallow of brandy, wishing his own ban on open flame aboard ship didn’t preclude indulging in a cheroot. The liquor’s smoky tang only intensified the hollow ache spreading through his body. Lucy had coaxed him into making a royal ass of himself in front of his men and all he could think of was how good it had felt to have her back in his arms.

  As he reached for the brandy bottle, a mildewed ledger caught his eye. He drew it toward him. He had picked up Annemarie Snow’s diary a dozen times in the past week, thinking to read it, but each time something had stopped him. Some reluctance to disturb the shades of the past. He had enough ghosts in his life clamoring for justice without adding one more.

  His weary fingers caressed the moth-eaten velvet. Perhaps he should give it to Lucy. It might keep her out of his hair … for at least ten minutes.

  Apollo appeared in the doorway, contorting his towering frame into a formal bow.

  Gerard regarded him quizzically. “I’ve never seen you wear a shirt when it wasn’t snowing. What’s the occasion? Are we being boarded by His Majesty?”

  Maintaining his aloof silence, Apollo handed him a scrap of paper etched in the quartermaster’s own unmistakable calligraphy.

  Miss Snow requests the honor of your presence for supper.

  Gerard disguised a flare of raw emotion behind the flippant cynicism he’d had five long years to perfect. “Has she found a more efficient way to finish me off? Poison, perhaps?”

  “I don’t believe hemlock was on the menu, sir.”

  Gerard hesitated, poised to decline, then slammed the nearest log shut. “What the hell. I haven’t any more promising invitations tonight. My men all think I’m a lunatic.”

  As he made his way down the passageway, his strides much longer than his present temper, Apollo discreetly vanished.

  Gerard paused before the door of his cabin, resisting the urge to straighten his shirt and smooth his hair. He gave the door a curt knock, then entered without bothering to wait for an answer. After all, a captain should hardly have to beg for an invitation into his own quarters.

  He’d expected to find the cabin an unholy mess and Lucy waiting to pounce on him in her sleek masculine garments. What he did not expect was to find the cabin in perfect order, even the morocco spines of his cherished Defoe novels aligned with loving precision on the shelves. Before he could absorb the shock of that, a girl glided out of the shadows.

  Not a girl, but a woman, he realized. A woman he hardly recognized. Lucy had abandoned both Tarn’s breeches and the chaste white of her Grecian gown for a glorious concoction of ribbons and lace. The glimmering turquoise satin was overlaid with a gossamer web of cream lace. The gently belled skirt fell to a scalloped hem that just covered her toes.

  The antiquated gown might have been scoffed at in current circles, but its rich hues perfectly complemented Lucy’s porcelain complexion and the silvery tint in her upswept hair. Gerard felt as if he’d stepped back in time. As if he were twenty-four years old again, facing one of those exquisite London belles who had given of themselves so generously to make him a man.

  The lacy décolletage of the gown was both less revealing and more enticing than the present fashion, allowing Gerard to use his vivid imagination to envision the pale, flawless breasts that lay beneath.

  A harsh edge of longing closed his throat. Apparently, Lucy didn’t plan to kill him off quickly, but to make him suffer a slow, lingering death for want of her.

  “Thank you for accepting my supper invitation,” she said in her clear, cool voice.

  Gerard wanted to hear it roughened with passion, hoarse with need, begging him to finish her as he’d done that night in the gate
house. “I’m not hungry,” he said, beyond caring if he was rude. “I don’t care for the odds in dice and I’m not interested in having my portrait done.”

  Her gaze was faintly challenging. “Then why did you come?”

  “For this,” he said, striding past her prettily laid supper table to take her into his arms.

  Lucy had expected Gerard’s lust to be inflamed by the elegant gown. She had not expected it to rage out of control, threatening to engulf everything in its path, including her will to resist him. For a trembling moment, he held her wrapped as tightly against him as his arms would allow, his restraint more provocative than any attempt at seduction. Lucy clung to his shirtfront, torn between surrender and shoving him away before he could hurt her again.

  “Isn’t this why you invited me here?” he murmured into her hair.

  The spicy, familiar scent of him flooded her nostrils, making her breath come in shaky gasps. “I don’t know. I thought if we could just talk without shouting …?”

  He blazed an openmouthed trail of fire down the naked column of her throat. “I’m not shouting now, am I?”

  If he had been, Lucy couldn’t have heard him over the thundering of her pulse beneath his artful lips. With a will of their own, her fingers delved into the open collar of his shirt, seeking from memory the warmth of his smooth muscles beneath their crisp whorls of hair.

  Gerard groaned at her shy touch. He raked his fingers through her hair, freeing it from its loose chignon to tumble around her shoulders. He cupped her face in his hands as if it were infinitely precious to him and lowered his mouth to meld it with hers. He nibbled her lips, laving their supple curves with painstaking care. His kiss held no mockery, no teasing this time, only the hungry reverence of a man who had been born adoring women.

  If only he adored her, Lucy thought bleakly. He had as much as admitted that after six years of enforced celibacy, any woman would do to slake his thwarted passions. Even his enemy’s daughter.