A Promise by Daylight

by Alison Delaine

  I want you to be my wife. He’d uttered those words, and Millicent was right. He hadn’t meant to. But the idea had been there, planted in his thoughts, and after he’d spent himself inside her, she’d felt so damned right in his arms that the words had slipped out.

  Perhaps... Good God. Perhaps he had meant it.

  “Hard to credit she could take over a ship,” the man he was working with said, jarring Winston out of his thoughts. He realized the man had followed his line of sight and that he’d been staring at Millicent.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Her.” The man nodded his head toward Millicent. “Only a few months back. Her and another scrap of a thing—blonde girl. Locked Cap’n Jaxbury away and took over the ship. I’m the only man still aboard from that crew. Never will forget it.”

  The man had Winston’s full attention now. “Are you saying she took the ship by force?”

  “Aye, that’s what I’m saying.”

  Millicent and Lady India, mutineers. It was a capital crime.

  The man lowered his voice. “And if you ask me, I wouldn’t be turning my back on her if I was Cap’n Jaxbury.”

  And now, a puzzle was coming together in Winston’s mind. An unholy rage was building inside him. “And how did Jaxbury punish this insurrection?” he asked tightly.

  The man made a noise. “Tied her to the mainmast and gave her the lash, that’s what he did, and as long as I live, I’ll never—”

  The words weren’t finished before Winston was walking away. Striding across the lower deck, the quarterdeck, with his eyes fixed on the upper deck where Jaxbury stood with Carlyle, Millicent and a few others.

  He climbed the stairs. Walked up to Jaxbury, grabbed his shirt and laid his fist into Jaxbury’s jaw.

  Jaxbury reeled, and almost immediately someone grabbed Winston from behind, but Winston was too angry to care. “You’re the whoreson that whipped her,” he raged.

  “Winston, no!” Millicent cried. “You don’t understand— I deserved it.”

  “Devil that.” Already there was a commotion down below, and Winston realized it was Carlyle that held him, but his eyes were fixed on Jaxbury, whose lip was bleeding now.

  “I did what I had to,” Jaxbury said.

  “You marked her for life.” He imagined Millicent screaming, crying while Jaxbury brought the lash down mercilessly in front of the crew.

  “They wanted to hang me,” she told him desperately. “William saved my life.”

  “Winston,” came Carlyle’s calm voice at his ear, “this isn’t the place. Don’t make her talk about this in front of the crew.”

  And then came a shout from the crow’s nest. “Corsairs!”

  Instantly Jaxbury raised a glass to his eye. Winston’s attention snapped to the direction the man pointed. Jaxbury barked some orders, and the crew disbursed below. The boatswain shouted for Winston, and he bit his tongue not to tell the man to go to the devil.

  He returned to the lower deck, helped with the sails. Half an hour later, they hadn’t outrun the ship. A xebec, he’d been told—small and fast, built for overtaking larger, lumbering merchant ships.

  “She’s going to catch us,” one of the sailors said grimly. “We’re going to have to fight her off.”

  And now Winston no longer cared about protocol. He went to the upper deck and faced Jaxbury again. “What’s going on?”

  “Go back to your post, Winston.”

  “And you can go to the devil. What’s happening? Where is Millicent?”

  “Going to be overrun by sodding corsairs if you don’t return to your bloody post. Ready the cannons!” Jaxbury shouted, and a chill ran down Winston’s spine.

  “Where is Millicent?”

  “I need you at your post, Winston, or so help me—”

  Devil that. He’d find her himself. He went below, to the infirmary, didn’t find her there. Walked through the gun decks, where a dozen men were scrambling to pack powder and cannons.

  “Winston!” someone shouted. “Man that cannon!”

  He ignored the order and exited the far door. He found her in her cabin loading a pistol. And now he realized what she was doing: readying for battle.

  “No,” he said absolutely. “You are not going to fight. I won’t allow it.”

  She looked up at him, her face already set for what lay ahead. “This isn’t for you to allow or disallow. We need all hands—including yours.”

  “I won’t have you killed.”

  “It’s our duty to fight them. Yours and mine both.”

  “I want you to stay here. In your cabin.”

  “Absolutely not.” She was angry now. “If you weren’t prepared for what happens at sea, then what are you doing on board this ship?” she demanded.

  “You know bloody well what I’m doing here.”

  “No. I don’t. Do you have any idea what it takes to command the respect of those men up there? What they will think of me if I don’t fight with them? This is my life, Winston, and you will not take it from me.”

  He didn’t want her to need the respect of those men. He didn’t want her to need anything at all.

  But then there wasn’t any more time to argue because the sound of a cannon exploded through the air, and men’s shouting came from above.

  She ran up to the deck, and he followed her, refusing to let her out of his sight. Cannons exploded from the starboard side. Jaxbury’s orders bellowed above the shouting and chaos, and the xebec took a direct hit to the bow, but the Possession took a ball on her stern that wiped out a corner of the upper deck, and now the xebec was close enough to throw her grappling hooks.

  On deck, all was chaos.

  Already, Barbary pirates were shimmying up ropes and trying to climb aboard amid a volley of pistol fire.

  Millie had darted away, separated from him by nigh on half Jaxbury’s crew, and suddenly there was nothing to do but fight.

  Men screamed to his right, his left. He parried, jabbed, thrust, sliced. Felled one pirate, then another, while his pulse screamed in his ears with the agony of dying men.

  There was more cannon fire. Part of the xebec exploded near its stern—a direct hit to its store of gunpowder.

  Flaming bits of wood shot into the water, arced over the Possession. One of her sails caught fire, and a handful of sailors raced to cut it down and snuff it out, chased by a pair of pirates.

  Winston stabbed one in the back. Jaxbury grabbed the other and slit his throat.

  Blood ran slick on the deck planks.

  “Where is Millicent?” Winston shouted.

  But another pirate rushed them, stopped just in time by one of Jaxbury’s crew, and then Jaxbury was gone, shouting a string of orders, just as Winston spotted Millicent near the bow firing her pistol point-blank at a pirate trying to climb up the nets from below.

  His stomach turned.

  The xebec took another direct hit. And another, even though it was already engulfed in flames.

  Winston dispatched another pirate, shoved the body aside, whirled around to confront the next...

  But there wasn’t another.

  All the pirates were dead.

  Immediately he plunged through the chaos looking for Millicent. And found her on the lower deck, crouched over one of the crew, who was covered in blood.

  * * *

  AFTERWARD, AN EERIE calm settled over the ship as they watched the xebec list, flaming in the water, sending billows of smoke into the air as she inched beneath the waves. Millie’s shoulder burned, too, but there wasn’t time to think of her own wounds because she was tending to others.

  She felt the blood seeping into her shirt, felt it begin to run down her shoulder and under her armpit. Still she tied tourniquets, shouted orders for men to be carried to the infirmary, triaged the worst of the wounds.

  “Millicent!”

  She heard Winston shouting for her, but there wasn’t time to think of him. “Take this man below—immediately! I’ll tend to him first.” She headed f
or the ladder leading down, but a hand curled around her arm and stopped her.

  “Are you all right?”

  Winston was ragged, covered in blood, eyes fierce.

  “Have you been wounded?” she asked.

  “No. But you—” His eyes landed on her shoulder. “God’s blood.”

  “I need to go below. Either help me or move out of my way!”

  Somehow she managed to stay upright through twelve ball extractions and an amputation. One of the men died—there was nothing to be done about it, his innards were torn up beyond repair.

  She was vaguely aware of Winston there, handing her instruments, mopping up blood, working with William and two others to hold the men still while she worked.

  Her shoulder burned with pain so sharp it made her arm numb.

  And when at last she heard William utter the words, “That’s the last of them,” she collapsed to the floor and the world went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  IT TOOK TWO bloody days to reach Rutledge’s shipyard off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

  Winston sat by Millicent’s bed while she tossed and turned with fever. Every moment, his mind tempted him with visions of the worst. And he might have begun this voyage as part of Jaxbury’s crew, but with Millicent at death’s door, he wasn’t going to do one bloody thing except stay by her side.

  Sir Noah Rutledge and his wife, Josephine, lived in a villa overlooking the harbor.

  Getting Millicent off the ship was a devil of a thing, but they managed it, and now she lay in a room at Rutledge’s villa, where his physician was doing everything he could for her. Winston stood at the side of the room with Jaxbury, watching the physician work. When he’d finished attending to Millie and gone, Jaxbury signaled that he wanted to talk to Winston outside.

  “You’ve done enough,” Jaxbury said. “She’s with friends now.”

  “What the sodding devil is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know bloody well what it means. This isn’t an aristocrat’s adventure, puttering about the Mediterranean trying your hand at being a sailor. This is our lives. Millicent’s life.”

  It was almost exactly what she said to him aboard the ship before the fighting broke out.

  But it was his life, too. And he felt more alive now than he could ever remember feeling before. And it wasn’t because of some new and creative pleasure he’d found. He’d never been in so much pain.

  “You’re not helping her by acting as if you’re going to be there for her when you aren’t,” Jaxbury said.

  “It would seem that I already am here, would it not?” Winston asked coldly.

  “And what are you going to do when she awakes? Ask her to be your mistress again? Become a part of my crew for the rest of your life?”

  Actually, he’d been planning to ask her to marry him. But... This is my life, Winston, and you will not take it from me.

  Jaxbury shook his head. “You’ve got nothing to offer her, Winston. Don’t make her any more attached to you than she already is.”

  “Understand me well, Jaxbury...I’m staying right here until I’m satisfied she’s out of danger.” And then he would lay his whole life at her feet. And if she wanted her life at sea more than she wanted him, then—and only then—he would leave.

  * * *

  MILLIE AWOKE IN a bedroom draped in colorful, shimmering silks. Sunshine streamed through windows built high on the walls.

  “She’s awake. Aunt Josephine, she’s awake!” And then, “Miss Germain...Miss Germain, can you hear me?”

  “See if she’ll take some water, Pauline.”

  Millie turned her face and tried to lick her lips, but her mouth was cotton dry. She tried to move, but her shoulder burned like fire.

  The anxious face of a young woman in traditional Turkish dress peered at her, clutching her hand. “Here,” she said, “just a little bit.” She dribbled some water from a spoon into Millie’s mouth.

  Another woman joined her, perhaps Philomena’s age. Beautiful, with upswept auburn hair and kind, hazel eyes. “We’ve been so worried about you,” she said, taking Millie’s hand. “You needn’t be afraid—I am Josephine Rutledge, and Katherine Kinloch is a dear friend of mine from many years ago. Your captain, Sir William, is well acquainted with my husband, Sir Noah.”

  Millie moved her hand over her belly. “My baby...” she rasped.

  Was still there. She felt the gently rounding bump, and all the tension drained out of her.

  “I shall call Winston,” Josephine said. “He only just stepped out this minute.”

  Winston. “Wait.” Millie reached toward Josephine. “Tell me he doesn’t know—” she moistened her lips again to speak “—about the baby.”

  “If he does, he hasn’t spoken of it. Ah—here he is now. Winston, she’s just awakened.”

  And then he was at her side, lowering himself into a chair by the bed. “Millicent,” he said, and took her hand, brought it to his lips and dropped his forehead against it and closed his eyes as if in prayer. When he looked at her again, he was so unbelievably handsome it took her breath away. “Thank God.”

  William came into the room. “Millie,” he said, moving to the side of the bed across from Winston. He bent down and kissed her forehead. “How are you feeling?”

  “Awful,” she said, and tried to smile, but her lip cracked.

  “Noah will bring the physician,” Josephine told them. “Sir William, come and help me choose something delectable that might tempt her.”

  William hesitated, Josephine’s ploy only too obvious, but followed her out with a promise to Millie that he would be back shortly.

  And then Millie was alone with Winston.

  “William is still upset with you,” Millie said.

  “You mustn’t worry about that.” He still had her hand in his, was still looking at her as if he was afraid to look away in case she lost consciousness again.

  It all came back to her, the fighting and the terror, the carnage afterward. The fight between Winston and William just before.

  “Someone told you what happened.” Her mouth was still so dry. “That I took William’s ship.”

  “Shh...you don’t need to talk.” He spooned some water between her lips the way Pauline had done.

  “I didn’t want you to know.” She looked away from him. “I was so desperate, so angry... I didn’t know what would happen to me if I were separated from India. I was so afraid.” She paused. “I’ve done so many shameful things.”

  Winston’s lips thinned, and his fingers stroked hers. “If we compared our past shames, I guarantee I would come out the winner. In any case, your friends have all forgiven you, haven’t they?”

  She nodded against the pillow.

  He reached out with one hand and softly brushed the hair from her forehead. Even like this, his touch was pure magic, warming her on the inside. And she realized now what she hadn’t wanted to admit before: she loved him.

  The truth had been sitting inside her, waiting, but she hadn’t dared consider it—and now that she had, her eyes began to fill with tears.

  She loved him.

  Winston, the devil duke, who could not love her in return.

  “Millicent,” he said now in an alarmed tone, catching a tear that fell, “it doesn’t matter to me. You could have sailed with Blackbeard himself and I wouldn’t think less of you.”

  She tried to smile, but that wasn’t it at all, and she couldn’t tell him. And right now she loved him so much she would almost rather be his mistress than not be with him at all.

  Almost.

  * * *

  MILLIE STAYED IN bed the next day, still too tired to do more than sit up. Everyone visited with her, read to her, talked with her. Josephine’s uncle Elias even played draughts with her. She saw Winston, but he didn’t stay at her side as he’d done when she first awoke. Most of the time, now, he wasn’t there.

  By the second day, Millie was well enough to sit outside in what Josephine called
“the women’s courtyard.”

  “The Ottomans have a marvelous concept called the harem,” Josephine was saying as they sipped tea in the dappled shade beneath an arch covered with flowering vines. Millie wore one of Pauline’s colorful Turkish gowns that was easy to slip on and wrapped around her comfortably without disturbing her shoulder too terribly. “An entire wing of the house just for the women. I told Noah I absolutely wanted one.” She smiled mischievously. “He’s very suspicious of what goes on here.”

  Millie smiled, cradling a small glass in her hand. She sipped the apple tea, breathing in the scent, trying to take comfort in the breeze that smelled of earthy Mediterranean foliage and salty Mediterranean air. “Every manner of feminine plots and plans, I’m sure.”

  “Exactly.” Josephine looked at her across the table. “You are unhappy.”

  Millie’s eyes filled with tears. It had been happening too much lately, and all because of one person. “Has Winston said anything to you about leaving?” she asked.

  “Not at all. Do you expect him to?”

  “I’ve hardly seen him since I awoke,” Millie said, looking down into her glass.

  “Men do strange things sometimes—exactly the opposite of what we might expect.”

  “With Winston, I’ve always known what to expect.”

  “You know, I did spend many years in London before we came here. Lord Winston and I are old acquaintances—and by that I do not mean intimate acquaintances—but I’m all too aware of his reputation. You might say he’s always been very...predictable.”

  Millie inhaled. Sipped her tea. “You must think me such a fool.”

  “Millicent, the man who stayed here the past days was not the Winston I remember.”

  Winston had changed. It was true. Millie knew that in her heart, and hope rose up, but she didn’t dare entertain any hopes.

  “The Winston I remember would without a doubt have tested the waters to see exactly how devoted a wife I am to Noah. He would not have spent his every moment with a feverish young woman who couldn’t even talk to him, let alone... Well, let us just say the Winston I remember would have sought more lively entertainment.”