The Prodigal Hero

by Nancy Butler

  They’d likely send MacHeath on his way and take her back to Cudbright with them, and then nothing would be sorted out. Quincy would deny anything to do with her abduction. And MacHeath would have no chance to plead his case with her father. No, going home without him was not an option.

  But thank heavens she’d convinced him not to shoot at the two men. Her father would never forgive her if—

  The wind shifted slightly, and Alexa returned her attention to the lines.

  Once they were free of the headland, the sail swelled, and the Bluebird showed her mettle, cutting cleanly through the water like a cruising shark. Though the Channel was running to a fair chop, the breeze was steady from the southeast, which meant Alexa would not have to tack unless it changed direction.

  It looked to be a straight shot across Lyme Bay to the mouth of the River Exe. Twelve hours, maybe fifteen, if the wind gave them any trouble. They’d be sailing through the night, which bothered her a little. She’d never been out at night in such a small boat. Though she imagined they would never lose sight of land, where the lights in the coastal towns would help keep them on course.

  When she and her parents had sailed to Barbados the year she was nine, the voyage had lasted over a month. The nights at sea had been her favorite part of the trip. But that had been during the warm, summer months. Now the wind cut across the Channel in icy needles, and she knew it would only get colder as it got darker.

  The ship was now heading into the first rays of the sunset; the sky at the horizon, with its jagged aurora of fiery orange spikes, looked like Rome on one of Nero’s bad days.

  MacHeath had not spoken to her since their spat in Nat’s cottage, except to issue a few curt instructions once they were on board the Bluebird. She’d heard his hurried farewell to the old smuggler, and her heart had sunk when he’d told Nat he’d be returning in a week’s time. She wanted desperately to believe that once he got to Cudbright, he would remain there with her.

  Although, if he couldn’t convince her father of his innocence, there was every possibility he would have no choice about remaining in Devon—not if he was taken off to Exeter jail in chains.

  When they’d awakened in the attic bedroom yesterday, he’d offered to tell her about what had transpired in her father’s office ten years ago. She knew that the morning after the theft, the constables had carted him off, still barely conscious, before he had had a chance to plead his case. But she’d told him she would wait. She needed him to understand that she believed in his innocence without hearing his tale.

  MacHeath adjusted the tiller with his left hand, keeping the ketch on a course parallel to the shoreline. Nat’s Bluebird was a tidy, nimble little ship, swift over the water and quick to respond. She practically sailed herself. He occupied himself by watching Alexa, who was making constant adjustments to the sail to take maximum advantage of the stiff breeze.

  But he kept forgetting to admire her seamanship, lost instead in the wild beauty of her hair, which scudded around her face in a dark tangle. The wind had brushed a rosy blush over her cheeks that was entrancing. At the moment she was backlit by a breathtaking sunset, and he had to strain his memory to recall viewing anything even half as lovely.

  She hadn’t said a word to him since they’d fled the cove, just nodded or grunted when he told her what to do. Not that he could blame her for her starchy silence—he’d acted like a nodcock back there at Nat’s, whining about his infirmity, and horrified that she might guess that he was afraid to set foot in a boat.

  There, he’d finally admitted it. He was afraid.

  It wasn’t so much the loss of his hand that had kept him from pursuing work on a ship. That had been an all-too-convenient excuse. It was true the first few captains he’d spoken to had dismissed him. But there were hundreds of captains, hundreds of ship owners, who could use a seasoned sailor, however impaired, with the ability to read the stars and plot a sure course.

  But he’d grown strangely disoriented the two times he’d gone aboard a ship for those interviews. His stomach had churned, his brow had beaded with sweat. After the second time, he had staggered onto the dock, ill and dizzy, and had sworn he would never try again, never even set foot on another ship. When he’d told Alexa that ships made him bilious, it wasn’t exactly a lie.

  It was easy enough to know where the sweaty, dizzying fear came from—the memories of that last sea battle, coupled with the trauma of losing his hand had never really left him. The screams of his drowning men as the water surged around them still haunted him. They had been followed by his own screams a scant half hour later, when the French surgeon, coolly disregarding his urgent pleas, had lopped off his hand. At least the fellow had done a neat job of stitching him up, but that didn’t occur to MacHeath until much later, once he and his surviving crewmen had been traded back to the British. By then, the neatly mended wound was of little matter. There were other, deeper scars that were still tender to the touch.

  Or so he thought

  He’d now discovered, almost immediately, that he was able to slip back into this, his true habitat, with great ease. His concern for getting Alexa safely away had completely overridden his fear. He felt no dizziness, no panic. The ketch rose and sank beneath him, the rhythmic cadence as soothing to him as a mother’s caress. The sail thudded as a gust filled it, and the lines creaked and chattered. There was no music on earth more welcome than those humble sounds.

  He owed Alexa for getting him out here. Who knew how many years he would have avoided the sea, or even if he’d have ever come back? And that would have been a sorry waste.

  His heart filled with pure, exhilarating pleasure for the first time in two years. He had all he needed—a ship and the sea and the sky. And the woman. It was the first time he’d added that particular item to his equation of perfection. For this short while, he would have a bounty of the things he valued most.

  Alexa was leaning against the mast, her arms angled behind her. The boat was making way smoothly now, and she no longer needed to tend the sails so closely. She was gazing at him from under her brows, a challenge in her blue eyes, her chin at a determined angle. Throwing her victory right in his face, no doubt.

  Something inside him started to simmer in response to that look.

  This was a woman who backed down from very little, and the thought intrigued him. She could muster up passion aplenty when it came to brangling and arguing. He wondered—and felt his belly tighten at the image—just how much passion she could muster in a more appropriate venue.

  He reached for the docking line that trailed behind him in the water, and wrapped its sodden length around the tiller to hold it in place. They had the whole width of the Channel around them if they veered off course, and he had more pressing business now than steering the boat.

  He rose from the plank seat, relieved to find his legs steady under him, as though he’d trod a deck only days before. He moved toward her swiftly, closing the space between them in three paces, and then he captured her hands behind her, holding them against the mast.

  “Will you accept the apology of a boneheaded clot?”

  She tipped her head up. “You forgot overbearing and insufferable.”

  Her eyes were still challenging him, but there was a slight smile playing over her mouth.

  When he kissed her, she was already straining up to meet him. She moaned softly as he tightened his hold, thrusting her back against the mast with his body, leaning into her with all his strength, nearly lifting her off her feet. Again and again he kissed her, taking her mouth, groaning against it, tasting her until his head swam and his knees trembled. She smelled of open air and heather, and her lips were dappled with sea spray that tasted sweeter than nectar.

  He released her hands and felt them immediately tangle in his hair, tugging at the long strands that brushed his collar. He breathed her name over and over against her cheek, while his hands moved to her hips and began an intent, sensuous slide up her body.

  His chest tighte
ned—he swore he could feel her with both hands ... the swell of her hips, the sweet indentation of her waist, the breath-stealing rise of her breasts. She’d slipped her hands beneath his coat, her curled fingers clawed their way up his back and then down again.

  He thought he might go mad.

  The wind was chill and blowing strong, but the fire in the pit of his stomach was an inferno, heating him, consuming him. Alexa had opened to him like a rose, all her beauty and all her passion displayed to him without restraint.

  “Simeon!” she cried, arching against him, hip and thigh and belly pressing into him with a canny innocence that made his blood roar through his veins. She was so delightful to touch, to caress, to kiss. Not delicate, not hesitant, but lusty and hungry and as driven by desire as he was.

  He lowered his head again, thinking that he would make a lifelong habit of kissing her, when the wind shifted abruptly and the sail started to swing around.

  “Blast it, we’re coming about!” he cried as he dragged her away from the mast. The spar came bearing down on them, and they both ducked as the canvas whooshed overhead. The boat heeled over acutely and picked up speed.

  Alexa was laughing as she scrambled to loosen the line. MacHeath came up behind her and took it from her.

  “Mind the tiller,” he said, nodding toward the stern. He put his whole body weight behind the rope before he tugged on it to secure the sail. “Wind’s shifted. It seems we’re going to have to tack now.”

  “Aye, Captain,” she drawled as she undid the rope holding the tiller. “Can you manage?”

  “I seem to be.” He had the line in his left hand, the trailing end wrapped around his right wrist. She watched as he pulled it taut, and then looped the end over a brass cleat in an inverted figure eight. Any sailor could do that knot one-handed, but he’d done it instinctively, without thinking.

  “Yes,” she said with a silent sigh of relief. “Yes, you do.”

  Chapter 10

  MacHeath was heartily glad of the small crisis that had torn him away from Alexa’s arms. Things might have gotten out of hand in a very short time if that sail hadn’t come swinging toward them—he’d been nearly mindless with desire. Thank God he’d gotten some control back now.

  That she was willing, he had no doubt. Willing to kiss him, willing to be his advocate, perhaps even willing to share her life with him. In the precipitate manner of females since the dawn of time, she was probably already planning their future together.

  All because of that foolish infatuation she felt for him. It was clear that as a child, she’d made him into a sort of demigod. It was equally clear she had carried that childlike hero worship into her adult life.

  Ah, but there had been nothing childlike in the way she’d faced him in Gable’s barn. She’d confronted him and his wretched infirmity like a woman of maturity and compassion. It had taken more than just pluck to do that, to overwhelm the enormous barrier of his shame. He now realized he had to rethink the depth of her feelings for him. The notion that she might truly be in love with him made him feel something akin to elation.

  Which he promptly squelched.

  He reminded himself that his own feelings for Alexa were strictly superficial. Which was a damned difficult thing to do, considering the way his heart had been misbehaving ever since she’d put her arms around him in the barn, with an expression of such promise in her eyes.

  He thought back to that precious interlude they’d shared in the attic bedroom. He’d never felt so contented, leaning there on her bed. He hadn’t even wanted to touch her; just watching her, seeing the emotions play over her face, had been utterly satisfying. He hadn’t ever felt like that before, not with any woman. It almost frightened him.

  Yet, the plain truth was, his feelings for her were immaterial. Even if he was able to convince her father of his innocence, even if he managed to regain his honor, he had nothing to bestow on a wife. No home, no status or rank, not even his own name. He could never go back to being Simeon Hastings—the name was sullied in his mind. He’d spent most of his adult life as MacHeath, and so he would remain, but it was not a name worthy of Alexa Prescott.

  He had never before considered taking a wife, even when he prospered in the smuggler’s trade. His life then was too full of risks, and too much of his time was spent at sea. He’d had as many women as his appetites required whenever he was in port—on either side of the Channel.

  But now he found himself wishing for more than a female to warm his bed. He wanted a companion, someone to share his days as well as his nights, who would soothe him and challenge him and make him laugh. A woman whose eyes promised to protect him from all hurt and scorn. A woman exactly like Alexa Prescott.

  The trouble was, he needed to protect her in return, keep her safe from the buffeting of life’s storms. His masculine pride made that imperative. And how the devil was he to do that? He had no wealth or possessions to bring to her, nothing but a world-weary heart and a very questionable past.

  He could hear her protests over this vast catalog of his faults. She had more money than she could ever require, she would proclaim. She wouldn’t care if he was sunk below reproach in the eyes of the world. She would insist that his feelings for her were the only offering she required.

  If life were only that uncomplicated.

  He knew he had to set her away from him. Kissing her, he realized, had been a very bad idea. The incredible connection that had leaped between them would only fuel her conviction that they were meant to be together. It was difficult enough for him to talk himself out of that same conclusion.

  Still, he had to do something, say something to make her draw away. The more she looked at him with a dazzle of stars in her eyes, the harder it was for him to think clearly. If he dared to kiss her again, his resolve might just shatter completely.

  And then he’d find himself married to an heiress and heir presumptive to a prosperous shipyard ... and called fortune hunter and parasite behind his back by everyone he met. Better to return to the East End, where at least the names they called him were tolerable. He’d revert to Mackie the Cripple before he ever became MacHeath the Kept Man.

  * * *

  Eventually the wind grew too strong for the small boat. MacHeath suggested they find somewhere to take shelter for the night, and Alexa nodded. She had a feeling that if he’d been out there alone, MacHeath would have kept on sailing, but she didn’t point that out to him when he declared they were no longer safe in open water.

  She was not unhappy to take a break from the icy wind and the constant battle to keep the ship on course. Neither of them had slept in what felt like years, and the stress of the journey was finally taking its toll. She was exhausted and suspected, from the way the skin was stretched taut over his cheekbones, that MacHeath was also near the end of his reserves.

  It also occurred to her that if they were no longer in a rocking, shifting boat, he might kiss her again. As tired as she was, she knew she’d gladly stay awake for MacHeath’s kisses. And whatever might come after them. She conjectured on this as she minded the tiller—the delicious things a man might do to a woman in the dark, with his hands and his mouth and his lean, hard body—and felt herself begin to blush.

  Nothing had ever felt as fine as being held by him. Except perhaps touching him back ... sensing the restrained strength in his arms, and knowing she had the power to undermine that restraint. Feeling his muscles shift and tighten through the fabric of his coat and shirt, wondering all the while what his bare skin would feel like under her hands.

  She’d been so close to him, wrapped in his arms, drowning in his kisses and his heated, murmuring sighs, but she knew there was another, deeper closeness a man could offer a woman, one that beckoned to her even as it made her heart thud with apprehension.

  She’d naively thought herself proof against such wanton desires—certainly no man before him had ever come close to breaching her defenses—but she’d discovered that all those carefully erected barriers had cr
umbled at MacHeath’s first onslaught. He had only to look at her, through his tangled forelock, and her pulse raced. With a swift smile and a flash of his white teeth, he made her blood surge and her head spin. And when he caressed her, every vital organ vibrated. Sweet Lord, her entire body clenched and shivered all the way down to her toes.

  And she knew he’d felt it, too, that incredible, insistent tug that made coming together seem like an inevitability. He was still her lodestone, as he’d been in her youth. But the most amazing realization was that she had now become his. Even though he hadn’t touched her since he’d kissed her up against the mast, there was no denying the expression in his eyes whenever he looked at her—ardent ... hungry ... impatient.

  It was nearing ten when they put in at a deserted, rocky cove somewhere between Weymouth and Lyme Regis. There was enough of a shingle for MacHeath to beach the ketch. He set out the anchor just to be on the safe side, and then assisted Alexa from the boat. She craned her head around, observing the high cliffs that rose on three sides.

  Following her gaze, he mused, “Do you think it’s worth finding a path inland? There might be a tavern or a hostelry near here.”

  “No, we have the food from Nat, and we can light a fire to keep warm. I think we should stay by the boat ... in case the wind dies down we can go back out.”

  “I’ll get you home for Christmas, Alexa,” he said as he began to scout along the shore for driftwood. “Even if we leave in the morning, we’ll be in Cudbright by late afternoon.”

  “I’ll make the church service in St. Peter’s, then.” She looked puzzled when he turned to gawk at her.

  “Why do I have a difficult time picturing you inside a church?”

  “What? Do you think I’m such a hell-born babe that the roof would come tumbling down on me if I ever set foot in such a sanctified place?”