The sea had addled his brain—he’d seen it happen to better men. God, what had he done?
He licked his lip and tasted drying blood, just as a splash of salt spray hit him in the face. Damnation—he swiped his eye with the back of his wrist and heard William calling him.
“James.”
“Go away.” Instead, William came over and stood next to the cannon. James stood, too, and the motion made his face throb. “Don’t take directions well, do you?”
“Not from you.” William stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and folded his arms. “I came to apologize.”
“Sod off.” James turned away to oil the next hinge. There wasn’t a trace of apology in William’s voice, not that James wanted an apology. Or deserved one. She’d pushed the limits of his patience until he’d boiled over. Christ, he was a disgusting wretch, on fire for the very qualities her ruination had produced—a ruination that was his own damned fault.
The sooner this bloody ship docked, the better.
“What are your intentions toward Katherine?” William demanded.
“My intentions?” James tossed the rag aside and turned back, disbelieving. “You catch us in a compromising position and now what? You think to force my hand? I can’t imagine your captain approves this approach.”
“She may be the captain, but she’s still a woman. A very vulnerable one with little experience fending off men who try to seduce her.”
When an Englishman wearing a Barbary costume and gold in his ears demanded that one do the right thing, it was a sure sign the world had turned on its head. James felt his lip crack and pressed his fingers to it—too hard, though, and he flinched. “I begin to wonder how well you actually know Captain Kinloch, for all your professed friendship. Perhaps you’ve failed to notice the cutlass at her side, and her willingness—nay, her eagerness—to use it?”
“And the fact that she didn’t.” William’s eyes hardened. “If you lure her into an affair, I promise I won’t be so gentle in my next dealing with you.”
“I have no intention of luring Captain Kinloch anywhere—least of all into an affair. Captain Kinloch is the last woman I would ever contemplate having a liason with.” That was a bloody lie.
“Your actions half an hour ago prove otherwise.”
“The only thing my actions prove is that I’m a man who’s been too long at sea, and Captain Kinloch is a very beautiful woman who, apparently, has been too long at sea, as well.”
William got right up in James’s face, but this time James was ready. William would not strike him again. “If you make her fall in love with you,” William said, “if you break her heart, I swear on all that’s holy you’ll regret it.”
Fall in love with him? Good God. “Such pretty romantic notions, Jaxbury. For God’s sake, all I want in the whole world, all that’s driven me for months, is the prospect of consuming large volumes of cognac in front of the fire. I assure you, breaking Captain Kinloch’s heart has no place in that plan. She has no place in that plan.” Never mind that at this particular moment he would give up all the cognac in France for a single rut with her. God.
“That’s just fine,” William said. “But if it’s true, then I would suggest you stay the hell away from her.”
As soon as he repaid his debt, it was a suggestion James had every intention of following.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OF COURSE, IF the debt depended on his own sense of obligation, he could simply forgive himself and be done with it.
The idea had no small amount of appeal several short days later, standing with Captain Kinloch and Miss Germain in front of the late Lord Dunscore’s towering house in St. James’s cloaked by the rank London evening, with an impatient hired hack in the street and no answer at the door. He held Anne against his chest to shield her from the damp and contemplated whether it would be possible to break down the door.
“Perhaps they assumed you were never returning and closed the place up for good,” Millicent hissed into the drizzly night.
“And left the lights burning?” Captain Kinloch shot back in a tight whisper. “There must be servants here.”
“Deaf ones.”
Meow! came Mr. Bogles’s outraged protest from inside a lidded basket.
“If we can’t get in,” Captain Kinloch snapped, “we’ll go to Philomena’s.”
James was just about to risk an almost certain nighttime spectacle by rapping the knocker a third time when the door finally cracked open on silent hinges. A skew-wigged servant scowled out at them.
“Dodd—” Captain Kinloch started, but James had no patience for that.
“Do excuse us.” He pushed past the old servant into a grand marble foyer that left no doubt as to the extent of the wealth Captain Kinloch had inherited.
“Now just wait,” the man sputtered. “You can’t—”
“Please tell your footmen to bring her ladyship’s trunks from the carriage.”
“I beg your pardon!” came Mr. Dodd’s indignant protest. “I—” Then suddenly he sputtered, “Lady Katherine?” Comprehension dawned. “I—I mean, your ladyship! I had no idea. That is to say, we had no word— We weren’t informed of your arrival.” He swept into a deep bow.
“The trunks,” James ordered, and was instantly sorry when Anne roused in his arms. “Go back to sleep,” he tried to murmur, but it came out more like a muttered command.
“The trunks. Of course. Of course!” The man finally spurred into action.
Millicent carried Mr. Bogles’s basket inside, while his repeated meows echoed through the foyer as footmen finally began carrying trunks up the great, curved staircase. Captain Kinloch stood frozen beneath a blazing silver chandelier, looking as vulnerable as Anne felt in his arms.
“Your ladyship is aware,” Mr. Dodd started, but paused. “That is to say, does your ladyship intend...”
For God’s sake, this was more than James could tolerate on a few moments’ sleep snatched during a pothole-ridden coach ride that had lasted an eternity. He glanced around for somewhere to put Anne and spotted an upholstered bench against one wall.
“Intend what?” Captain Kinloch came to life suddenly. Sharply.
“Does your ladyship intend to—” Dodd swallowed visibly “—evict Mr. Holliswell and Miss Holliswell, then?”
Her ladyship’s head whipped around. “Holliswell.” Her tone sliced through the air like her beloved cutlass.
Bloody hell. James went to the bench, fighting an urge to hold Anne closer rather than put her down, but Millicent gathered Anne away from him before he could decide otherwise.
Mr. Dodd wrung his hands. “He and Miss Holliswell have...set up residence, you see, and—”
“In my father’s house?”
“We did protest, your ladyship. Let me assure you!” Dodd’s eyes traveled from Captain Kinloch’s turban, down the length of her loose hair and over her woolen wrap, to the billow of Barbary trousers peeking out below and the boots that had served well on a ship’s deck but were unspeakably outlandish here. “But it’s well-known that Mr. Holliswell is to acquire... That is to say, he expects to receive...”
“He is to acquire nothing.” Those glittering topaz eyes flicked toward James just long enough for him to see fear developing behind her outrage. His gut tightened, and he was relieved when with angry strides she went to peer into a sitting room. He could see from here that it was strewn with gilded sofas and chairs that looked as though they belonged at the French court.
“What furniture is this?” she demanded.
“Miss Holliswell has been...redecorating, your ladyship,” Mr. Dodd said faintly.
Her hands fisted at her sides. “I want the Holliswells’ things thrown into the street.”
And wouldn’t the gossips have a frenzy with that. “Where are the Hol
liswells now?” James asked irritably. He would explain the folly of her plan later.
“They are out for the evening, sir.” Dodd eyed him with mistrust. “I believe they went to dine with Lord Croston.”
Devil take it. “I am Lord Croston,” he said sharply. By God, he would find Nick tonight and put an end to this.
“But...” Dodd’s eyes grew wide, and he paled.
There was nothing pleasant about the tight smile curving Captain Kinloch’s mouth as she turned her back on Holliswell’s painfully distasteful furnishings. “I daresay this would be an excellent time for you to effect your miraculous return,” she said, stopping in front of him. “And when you see Mr. Holliswell, you may tell him not to step foot in my house again unless he wishes to be gelded.”
“I fully agree with the first.” The fact that hearing her speak of gelding aroused him even the tiniest bit made it even clearer this business could not end quickly enough. “As to the second, I may not phrase it in exactly those terms.”
“I will find it very hard to stand paralyzed by the strictures of politeness while Holliswell steals my estate,” she warned.
Meow! Mr. Bogles agreed.
This, from the woman who thought he was ruthless. An accusing voice reminded him this was all his fault, but the fact that he owed her did not make her any less impossible. “If you don’t grasp some concept of the strictures of politeness, Parliament will hand your estate to him on a silver platter before you can toss a single gilded footstool into the street.”
* * *
COME MORNING, KATHERINE fully intended to throw an entire sitting room suite into the street. She tried relaxing her fists, but curled them tightly again to keep Captain Warre from seeing how badly she was shaking. “It would seem he’s already been handed my estate on a platter. But if he does return tonight, he’ll not step through the door.”
The door. It rose high, topped by a sweep of carved marble and flanked by great stained-glass panels whose lead canes she used to trace with small fingers. The last time she’d been here, servants had streamed out that door with her trunks as she bid a numb farewell to Papa and his new wife.
The adventure will do you good, Katie. And when you return, I’ve no doubt you’ll trounce us all at hombre.
The cold chill of powerlessness iced through her and settled in her stomach.
“As long as there’s no bloodshed,” Captain Warre said with irritation, “I don’t care what kind of reception you give him. But I’ll thank you not to make my task more difficult by losing control of your temper when I’m not present to tame you.”
Her attention shot to him. Tame her. She forced a smile. “Find your brother tonight and solve the problem, Captain, and you need never concern yourself with my temper again.”
“Nothing would please me more, I assure you.”
She glared at him, tempted to continue goading him simply as a distraction. But behind him a wispy memory lighted on the staircase—Mama with her hand on the banister, glittering and laughing before an evening on the town. One more hug, Katie, but then I must go or your father will throw me over his knee.
The great entrance made her feel small. She could not do this. She was not like Mama, sparkling and polished to London perfection. She was more like the wood the Possession was made from—burnished and solid, but showing the effects of many storms.
London would tolerate nothing less than sparkle and polish.
“Then by all means, Captain,” she said, “be on your way. We have no further use for you here.” One word and their trunks could be loaded back onto the hack and returned to the Possession. Everything inside her screamed to give the order.
He stood watching her, tight-lipped, studying her too closely. “I shall go speak with Nick and Holliswell. I’ll send word of the result.”
“Excellent.”
“Do try to refrain from anything rash in the meantime.”
“I have no idea what you could mean, Captain.”
“It’s too soon to go careening back to the ship and sailing away in the night.”
“What an imagination you have. I—”
“Mama?” came Anne’s small voice through the hall.
Katherine’s attention snapped to the bench, where Anne clung to Millicent with her feet dangling to the floor, trying to stand. “What is it?”
“I don’t feel well.”
Just that quickly, Katherine abandoned any fantasy of returning to the ship. She rushed to Anne’s side with Captain Warre a step behind her, a heartbeat away from ordering Dodd to send for a doctor.
“What hurts?” she demanded, finding Anne’s forehead and cheeks cool to the touch.
“She has no fever,” Millicent said.
“The ground feels strange, Mama.” Fatigue and distress mingled in Anne’s plaintive voice. “There’s no up and down, but I still feel the waves.”
Katherine had barely breathed a sigh of relief when Captain Warre reached past her and lifted Anne into his arms. “That’s only natural,” he told her. “Just as a sailor must find his sea legs when he first boards a ship, you must find your land legs.”
Anne made a small, whining sound and looped her arms around his neck, letting her head fall into the curve of his shoulder.
It was on the tip of Katherine’s tongue to order him to put Anne down, but Anne looked so content she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she brushed delicate wisps of dark hair from Anne’s cheek. There was no sense reminding Anne that they went through this every time they went ashore. Already her eyes were closing as Captain Warre rubbed slow circles over the back of her shoulder. She was too tired for reason.
The intimacy of Captain Warre’s touch stirred a dangerous feeling inside her. “I’ll take her up to bed,” Katherine said, reaching for Anne, but Captain Warre started toward the stairs.
“I’ve got her.”
That temper he was so anxious to escape sent up a lick of flame, but she tamped it down and beckoned Millicent to follow them up the staircase. Soon enough he would be gone.
Halfway up the stairs, her feet slowed. That old, giant portrait still hung where the staircase turned—a windswept moor cradling a massive graystone fortress at the edge of a roiling sea. It was a fortress as familiar to her as her own flesh, and the longing to go there—to walk its ramparts once more—poured up from the deepest parts of her soul.
When you are countess of Dunscore, Katie, every stone in these walls will cry out your name.
She tore her gaze away from the painting. She may have been foolish enough to believe Papa then, but she had no illusions now. The Lords could snatch Dunscore from her just as quickly as Papa had married Lady White. Just as suddenly as Mejdan had died in the night.
But Dunscore could secure Anne’s future. As soon as Anne was settled and comfortable upstairs, Katherine would begin a list of everything that would need to be done tomorrow.
Deep inside, her spirit shrank from the task.
“Miss Holliswell has taken the north rooms,” Dodd told her as they reached the top of the stairs.
“And Mr. Holliswell has taken my father’s rooms, of course.”
“He has, your ladyship.”
Holliswell thought to get himself a title and fortress at her expense, did he? They would see about that. She caught a flash of skirt disappearing through a doorway just as she topped the stairs. “Who is that?”
“Miss Bunsby, your ladyship. Miss Holliswell’s companion.”
“I want her out. I want all of the Holliswells’ servants out.”
“There will be time enough for that tomorrow,” Captain Warre said shortly. “Where can we put Anne?”
“The blue rooms are vacant, your ladyship.”
The blue rooms. She didn’t want to see them again, but Anne gave a whimpering
sigh against Captain Warre’s shoulder. Katherine turned woodenly toward her girlhood apartment. They were only rooms, after all.
She stopped abruptly outside the threshold and let Captain Warre carry Anne inside. Through the door, the shades of misty blue Mama had chosen threatened her with the same melancholia that had consumed her in those last London days after Papa’s wedding, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, and only days before she had been sent to the Continent. The eleven years that had passed suddenly seemed like eleven days.
Now Papa was gone. Lady White, she’d received word years ago, had died in childbirth. And Katherine had finally returned to claim her birthright.
She reached for her anger like a lifeline. “We’ll need someone to move that small trunk into the adjoining room.”
“Certainly, your ladyship.”
“I’ll move it myself,” Millicent said tensely.
“You won’t,” Katherine barked back, more harshly than she’d meant to. A gulp of air didn’t quite ease the tightness in her throat. “Put her in the room adjacent.”
“Of course.”
Captain Warre was settling Anne onto the blue-draped bed where, in the years before Lady White entered Papa’s life, Katherine had spent so many nights dreaming of the adventures she and Papa would have traveling the world together. Anne’s eyes were closed, as though there were no safer place in the world than Captain Warre’s arms, and she protested when he set her against the pile of blue satin pillows. He murmured something in her ear and she sighed.
The bed was too high to be safe for Anne. There was only a small screen in front of the fireplace, and there was a great expanse of empty space in the middle of the room. Later, after Captain Warre was gone, she would move Anne. They would share a room, and tomorrow she would set about having the house changed for Anne’s safety.
The thought prompted Katherine to finally find her feet. Long-dead emotions clawed inside her chest, trying to resurrect themselves as she entered the room. She went to the bed and smoothed Anne’s forehead, leaning down to give her a kiss.
A Gentleman ’Til Midnight Page 11
