by Lara Temple
‘Oh, no, Mama,’ Emily protested. ‘You know we have been wanting to see Kit’s ship for ever and ever. It is not a long voyage to Portsmouth. We shall be there tomorrow.’
Mary’s smile wobbled and Genny glanced at the first mate.
‘Perhaps some fresh air would be a good idea, Mr Fábregas?’
Mary smiled with relief and Emily hurried to take her mother’s arm. Peter followed, a little unsteady himself, and Genny and the first mate brought up the rear.
‘You are feeling well, Mees Maitland?’ he asked solicitously, and she nodded.
‘I was used to sailing often with my grandfather between England and the Continent. It seems I have not quite lost my sea legs, Senyor Fábregas.’
‘You must call me Benja, please, miss. Many men on this ship have no family and no past, so it is agreed we use only our Christian names. Even the Captain.’
‘Captain Kit?’
‘Ah... When he was a boy, on his father’s ship, he was Kit. But when he bought this ship, after the wars, he did not wish to speak of old times. He is not Kit the boy, not Captain Christopher Carrington of the army. To us, he is only Captain Chris—or Capità Krees in my terrible English.’
Genny laughed at the first mate’s obvious self-deprecation, a little surprised that he was being so open with her, and wishing he would be a great deal more so. Kit had introduced him as one of the sailors who had served under his father on the original Hesperus and there was evident affection between them—the same quiet but solid respect that seemed the order of the day among the other sailors. Another sign that this ship was more than a mere trading vessel.
It was like being back in Spain—she knew these men were used to risking their lives for each other. She’d missed this. Even if she’d always been outside that inner circle of male camaraderie, she’d lived with it so long that it felt like coming home.
Once they were on deck, Kit came to guide Mary towards the bulwarks, moving between the sailors and ropes with fluid grace.
‘You’ll be better on deck,’ he said comfortingly. ‘Keep your eyes on the horizon if you can. Meanwhile, Benja will prepare his magical mint tea.’
‘But there are waves!’ Mary objected, her hands as tight on the bulwarks as they’d been on the chair.
‘But isn’t the view marvellous?’ Emily replied, though her hands also clung rather tightly to the railing. ‘We are moving so fast...’ she added wonderingly.
Genny had noticed the same; once in the Channel, the ship had seemed to jump forward, all but leaping over the choppy waves.
‘Perhaps it is merely that I have not sailed for many years, but this seems much faster than the ships I remember ferrying us between England and Spain with Grandfather.’
Kit smiled at her, his face alight with pleasure. He looked younger—another side of him still. He was in his element, and his pleasure was infectious, but Genny also felt a strange pinching in her chest...perhaps envy.
‘It is definitely faster,’ he replied. ‘The Hesperus has the same hull design as the dreaded USS Constitution—American live oak between layers of white oak. Though it is heavy, it sits very lightly on the water and is almost impenetrable to cannon fire. You will be happy to hear that, aside from being very fast, she is very hard to sink.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Emily said. ‘It is a little wet, though.’
A gust of wind confirmed this assessment by gathering an armful of spray and tossing it up at them. Mary retreated, spluttering, and Emily turned into Peter’s shoulder.
‘Perhaps we ought to go inside after all, until the storm calms?’ Peter asked, looking rather worriedly across the choppy sea.
Genny caught the rueful amusement in Kit’s eyes as he nodded and took Mary’s arm, guiding her back inside.
Genny remained, watching the waves slip by faster and faster. Another burst of spray engulfed her and she laughed in sheer pleasure. It had been years since she’d felt so...so free.
She looked around the damp deck at the sailors going about their work. For a group of men with dubious pasts they looked surprisingly civilised and amiable, and not in the least put out at having women on board.
Just then Benja appeared from the hold, carrying a tray with impressive balance. He motioned her towards a strange construct which stood in the centre of the deck. She walked around a wooden partition and stopped in delighted surprise. Three wooden walls created a protected gazebo, and inside there were two armchairs and a table nailed to the deck.
She had never seen anything like it. It reminded her of a royal barge she’d seen in an illustrated book. The thought of sitting there as the world slipped by, under the shade of the stretched sails, perhaps with a book...
‘Mint tea, Miss Maitland. It keeps your heart warm and your stomach cool. The Captain will join you soon.’
‘Thank you, Benja. You are very kind.’
‘It is a pleasure, Miss Maitland.’
Emboldened, she reached for her memory of Catalan. ‘El plaer és meu, Benja.’
His dark eyes lit with pleasure. ‘You speak Catalan!’
‘Not much, I am afraid. I have forgotten most of the little I knew.’
‘Miss Maitland was in Spain during the war,’ Kit said, appearing in the entrance to the gazebo. ‘I served under her grandfather for a year—General Maitland.’
‘Ah, yes. I remember you spoke of him, Capità. A wise man, and good to his men.’
Pain prickled at the back of her eyes and a surge of yearning for that good, wise man washed over her. She needed him now more than ever.
‘He was,’ she said, her voice hoarse.
Benja smiled and melted away, but Kit remained standing in the opening.
She felt absurdly embarrassed and rose to her feet. ‘How are they?’
‘They will be fine...just finding their sea legs.’
‘Perhaps I should sit with Mary...?’
‘No. Stay.’
She hesitated. ‘You think I shouldn’t intrude on them?’
‘I think you should do as you wish. Do you wish to go inside or stay here?’
Again there was that strange shift in energy, like a moment in a play that presaged some portentous action. She looked past him out to the choppy grey surface of the sea, stretching into a sky of scudding clouds, and then to the scrubbed wood of the deck and the whimsical little study at its heart.
‘I wish to stay.’
‘Then stay.’
The ship tipped and a cloud of spray ballooned over the side like a cool kiss, commending her for her audacity. She laughed, and he took her arm and guided her towards the armchair.
‘But this is your seat,’ she objected.
‘Not today. This seat belongs to the one who needs it most. Today that is you, Genny.’
She sat, her behind sinking into the generously upholstered cushions. It was a little stiff with dried salt water, but she could easily doze in such a chair, lulled by the waves, a book on her lap... She sighed.
‘I feel I ought to issue a command,’ she said.
‘Try me.’ He poured out a cup of tea for her and then leaned back in the other chair, stretching out his long legs.
The ship kept shifting, sometimes a little jerkily, like a rug being tugged and shifted beneath her feet, though Kit didn’t seem to notice at all. The wooden partitions protected them from the worst of the wind and spray, and gave a strange sense of the two of them sailing alone, with only the masts and a strip of the sea in sight.
‘I can’t think of anything I’d care to command at the moment. I’m too content. I shouldn’t be, I know—not when they are unwell—but...this is so much more pleasant than travelling in a carriage. I wish...’
He waited, and somehow she spoke the words.
‘I wish we could keep sailing.’
He looked away, o
ut to sea. She felt the flush of embarrassment spread over her cheeks. After their rocky beginning she’d become far too comfortable sharing her thoughts with Kit Carrington. Somehow, after every time they clashed, they seemed to reach a greater degree of understanding. She kept telling him things without thinking them through. She supposed he was becoming a...a friend. Like Julian.
No, not like Julian.
She was comfortable with Julian; what she felt when she was with Kit was not comfortable. And Julian, in his own way, would always be there for her. As soon as Kit was finished with Emily’s wedding he would be on his way again. For a brief moment he’d entered her cage, just as she now sat at the centre of his. But nothing had truly changed except inside her.
It was not his fault, but he had done her a disservice worse than any enemy—he’d made her want more from life...from herself.
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, raising her face to the sun dancing in and out of the clouds.
His touch on her cheek was so light she might almost have mistaken it for the caress of the breeze, or the sweep of her escaping hair across her cheek.
She opened her eyes, wondering if she’d imagined it. He was leaning forward now, his face intent and hard. Not with anger, but something that sent her nerves into alert far more readily.
He touched her again...just skimmed the back of his fingers down her cheek. ‘You’re crying.’
She touched her own cheek, a little shocked to discover he was right. ‘It’s the wind,’ she said, her voice hoarse.
He shook his head and shifted, raising her off the chair only to slip under her and place her on his lap. She sat there, utterly shocked at this strange manoeuvre, and even more so at the feel of his body under hers.
‘What are you doing? I cannot sit on you!’
‘I certainly can’t sit on you. I’d crush you.’
His voice was warm against her temple, and he compounded it by putting his arm around her and settling her more comfortably against his chest.
‘There. Now I can offer you a shoulder to cry on in earnest. No, don’t hold yourself stiffly like that. You’ll get a crick in your neck. Relax.’
She tried not to, still clinging to her outrage—more at herself for not getting up immediately than at him.
‘Is this common practice in your gazebo?’ she demanded.
‘This is the first time—to my knowledge, at least—that this seat has been occupied by two individuals at once. I wonder it has never occurred to me before. It is quite comfortable. Or at least it would be if you unbent.’
‘I don’t think it is wise.’
He sighed. ‘It is certainly not wise, Vivi,’ he said. ‘But we are now outside the boundaries of society and will all too soon be back inside them. If you wish me to return to the other chair I will. Your choice.’
Her choice.
Perhaps it was the way he called her Vivi. No one had ever called her that. It made her feel...daring. Vivi would undoubtedly choose to follow her heart—or at least her body.
She relaxed against him, tucking her head into the curve of his shoulder. He’d dispensed with his waistcoat and wore only a linen shirt under his jacket, and he was warm...more than warm. She could feel his chest against her arm, the hard pressure of his muscles.
She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. Beneath the wood and salt air there was an indefinable, magical spice that was beginning to haunt her. Now she could breathe deeply of it.
She canted her head so that her forehead rested against the warm skin of his throat. She could feel his pulse against her temple—swift and clear.
‘This is shockingly improper,’ she said, but in a different way from before, and he laughed.
‘Let us imagine we have for the moment sailed off the edge of the earth and into another sea entirely. Where neither the Ton nor my grandmother reign supreme.’
‘Where neither the Ton nor men reign supreme,’ Genny amended.
‘Where men and women are measured on their merit. We are becoming very revolutionary.’
‘Why is it that revolutions so often begin with such fine ideas and invariably disappoint?’
‘Because ideas are ideas and people are people.’
She sighed. ‘Nasty, brutish things, people.’
‘You aren’t,’ he replied gently, brushing aside a lock of hair from her face and gently twining it about his finger.
She smiled and let her eyes drift shut as he ran his fingers through the unravelled hair. So this was what Milly and Barka felt when she stroked them. Except that it wasn’t truly soothing. His pulse seemed to grow around her, echoing inside her, carrying through her blood as if it was bringing her to life.
‘This is comfortable,’ she murmured, settling more deeply against him, resting her hand against his chest. ‘Though you are not as soft as the chair.’
His arm tightened around her, his other hand abandoning her hair and capturing her hand, threading their fingers together in an abrupt motion.
‘No. I’m definitely not soft,’ he muttered, his voice no longer playful.
He slid her a little down his legs.
‘Am I too heavy? Should I move?’ She forgot she was Vivi and began to shift, but his arm tightened further.
‘God, definitely don’t move, Vivi. Oh, the hell with it!’
He shifted her back again, so that she was once again pressed against his chest, her behind settled against his slightly splayed thighs. Her slow mind finally registered the hardening pressure of his erection against her thigh. It would have been obvious to any woman with a smidgen of experience. Even she realised its import.
He desired her. At least right here, right now, he desired her.
Her body went up in flames.
It had been simmering for the past weeks, flaring at the worst possible moments, reaching boiling when she’d kissed him, but this conflagration went far beyond that. It ached, with a hard, burning ache right at her core, tightening her breasts, making her skin tingle from her head to her toes.
The urge to touch his skin made her hands twitch. She might not know much about sensuality, but she knew what she wanted right then as clearly as she knew anything—she wanted to raise her skirts and straddle him so that she could feel him, hot and hard against that ache. She wanted to taste his skin. She wanted him to kiss her back into oblivion.
It didn’t matter that they were on the deck of his ship, exposed to anyone who walked by. It didn’t even matter at the moment that there was no future to this.
He had said that this chair belonged to the one who needed it most.
This moment it belonged to her.
She touched her lips to the pulse at the side of his throat, brushing it in time with the shortening rhythm of his breathing. Then she drew her tongue along that beating artery, gathering his unique addictive flavour. He breathed in and out, deeply. Other than that, and a strange muted sound deep in his chest, he didn’t react. But she could feel his body straining against his control like the sails above them, taut in the wind of the elements.
She was the wind—far more powerful than a mere man-made construct. Perhaps she could even tear through his defences if she wished.
She brushed her lips against the softness of the lobe of his ear and a shudder coursed through him, ending in another of those muted groans. She rather liked that sound. It rang something deep inside her, dragging an answering echo. So she ran her tongue along that soft curve again, and then, on impulse, caught it lightly between her teeth.
She hadn’t expected the sails to tear quite that easily.
‘Genny...’
His fingers splayed over her nape into her hair, canting her back to capture her mouth with his. It wasn’t like the soft, teasing kiss in the garden. This was possession. It was begging and demanding and bringing this new Vivi to life like a wizard’
s spell. His tongue tangled with hers, caressing it as his hands moved over her body, then drew back to taste her unbearably sensitised lips.
It wasn’t only the kiss that was conjuring her into existence, releasing wave after wave of need. His hands were doing as much damage—even more so. He was still holding hers and he ran their joined hands up her waist, brushing the curve of her breast, and a harsh groan was wrung out of her, as if the ship itself was being torn open.
It felt doubly wanton to feel the heel of his palm shaping it, his thumb skimming the bared skin above her bodice and her own hand moving with his, skimming the smooth fabric and the weight of her breast beneath it. Her skin tightened, her breasts turning heavy and needy, and when he shifted their hands to brush them over the taut, tingling peak she moaned against his mouth, her teeth catching at his lip, her legs pressing tensely against him as she tried to turn into the sensation.
She should have held still, because his body bucked under hers and with a strangled groan he pulled back from the kiss. For a moment he didn’t move, breathing deeply, and she waited for him to stand up. But then he wrapped his arms around her again. He was caging her, but she didn’t feel caged. She could feel the tension of his inner sails being drawn taut again, the quivering of muscle and nerve as he pressed down on the heat that was trapped between them. It was viciously frustrating to feel it, and viciously satisfying to know he felt it too.
‘Hell, this is madness, Vivi,’ he said at last, his voice hoarse and raw. ‘If I had the power, I’d banish every last person off this ship right now.’
‘That sounds dangerous. Who would sail it?’
‘I don’t give a damn.’
He touched his lips to her hair briefly, as if by compulsion. His voice was light, but hoarse, and there was still that rigid tension singing through every inch of his body she could feel.
The temptation to test his control was so strong she was just gathering her resolve to throw caution to the winds when she found herself suddenly seated alone while he was on the other chair. She hadn’t heard a thing, but then with a clearing of his throat Benja appeared.
