To Tempt an Heiress

by Susanna Craig

  Her eyes searched the horizon, a last line of light against a blackening sky, but it remained as inscrutable as it always had. Somewhere out there, a ship called Swift Justice was still sinking into the depths, taking its crew—and Lord Nathaniel Delamere—to a watery grave. A finger of night air caressed her neck and traveled down her spine. She shivered. It would be a terrible way to die.

  A terrible death for a terrible man.

  But knowing that other men, and at least one innocent boy, had died that same terrible death made it impossible for her to celebrate her unexpected release from Lord Nathaniel’s clutches. What other losses might have been sustained during the storm?

  “Caliban, where is everyone?”

  For answer, the dog put his nose down and scented his way to the fore, stopping at the steep stairs that descended into the ship’s depths. A good portion of the crew could be found in much the same state as their captain, collapsed in unruly heaps, the lucky ones in hammocks strung along the passageway, many others on the floor. In the galley, she found the handful of souls who weren’t dead to the world: the cook, Greaves, putting the tools of his trade to rights; Ford, nursing a deep cut in his hand; and Caesar, who sat at the near end of a long table, one elbow resting on its surface, his chin propped up by his hand, apparently sound asleep although his eyes were open.

  At the far end Mr. Bewick and Mr. Beals were hidden in half darkness, their heads tipped together, almost, but not quite, touching. Mr. Bewick’s body turned toward the surgeon, one arm across the back of the chair in which he sat, looking almost as if he had been about to whisper something in the other man’s ear, although neither spoke. Despite the fact that they were not alone, their posture was so private, so intimate, Tempest dropped her gaze.

  All of a sudden, an overheard, offhand remark about the captain bunking in the empty surgeon’s quarters made perfect sense. The surgeon slept . . . well . . . elsewhere. And the captain knew and accepted the fact, as did, she suspected, the rest of the crew. Certainly the two men were currently making no effort to hide, their raw honesty born of deep fatigue and the sense of euphoria that comes with survival.

  An ache stirred at the back of her throat. Perhaps it ought to have been caused by disgust. She knew such a relationship was considered a sin, of course. Even young ladies sometimes heard words like abomination and unnatural tossed about in scandalized whispers.

  At the moment, however, she was keenly aware of her own isolation, just as if she were still standing on the empty deck. When she looked at the two men, she felt only envy, a potent emotion made more so by her never having felt it before. Was that what love looked like? The sight of a quiet moment of affection between two people pushed her to acknowledge what she had tried for so long to deny: It would be nice to have someone for whom she could care in that way, someone on whom she could lean, occasionally, for support.

  But could she ever lean against a man without wondering every moment if she were about to be smothered—whether through good intentions or ill?

  “Summat t’ eat, miss?” The cook’s offer roused the attention of the others around the table—all but Caesar, whose eyes had at last drooped closed and whose head was beginning to slide from its perch on his fist. Tempest’s eyes rebelled at the basket of hard biscuits and a platter piled with some sort of unidentifiable dried meat, but her stomach growled out its own answer.

  “Yes, thank you.” She took up one of the biscuits and cautiously nibbled an edge, keeping a lookout for weevils. “And would it be entirely frivolous to ask for some hot water? To freshen up?”

  Beals laughed and reached for a piece of leathery jerky. “You’re asking the wrong man, Miss Holderin. Sailors are a crusty sort—and I mean that quite literally,” he said as he chewed. “But no one can expect a lady to adopt all our salty ways.” He gave her a wink and nodded toward her clothes. Timmy’s clothes, she remembered with a fresh stab of grief.

  With an uncertain smile, she accepted the bucket of water Greaves ladled up. “T’aint hot, though,” he said. “No fire ’til we makes sail.”

  “Oh. Of course.” A little water sloshed over the side as she rested the bucket on the table to finish her biscuit.

  “Give t’ lad a nudge,” Mr. Bewick urged. “You can’t carry that.”

  Tempest shook her head sharply. “I assure you I am perfectly capable of doing things for myself.” For however long the storm had raged, she had felt helpless, and helplessness was not a feeling she relished. “Besides, Caesar needs his rest. You all do,” she added, looking around the table at the faces lined with fatigue. “I’ll come back shortly and fetch a tray for Captain Corrvan, if that’s all right. He’s still asleep.”

  Greaves grunted his assent and returned to the task of hanging pots and stacking trenchers. Mr. Beals said only, “He’s earned it.” Bewick nodded in agreement, his faraway look tinged with something like pride. She felt a twinge of regret for ever having called Andrew irresponsible.

  “How the captain kept the Colleen from going under, I’ll never know,” Ford confessed with a wave of his injured hand. “When the Justice began to take water, I thought that was the end for us, too. She’d been pushed right into our path. But neat as you please, Cap’n slipped us right past the wreckage, without so much as a coat of paint to spare . . .” His words trailed off with a low whistle and a shake of his head. The awe in his voice was reflected in the other men’s faces. The undercurrent of doubt in the crew’s behavior toward their captain had been invisible to her until it had been erased.

  Survival tended to alter one’s perspective like that. It was almost enough to tempt her to trust him herself.

  Ah, who was she kidding? She was tempted to do far more than trust.

  Dusting the crumbs of the biscuit from her fingers, she lifted the bucket with both hands, determined not to spill another drop. “I’ll be back shortly.” Caliban, who had curled up near the empty kitchen hearth in anticipation, lifted his head to look at her but made no move to follow. It was just as well. She didn’t need a witness, not even a canine one, to her awkward ascent of the stairs or her lopsided shuffle across the deck.

  Once inside the cabin’s great room, she set the bucket on the floor and made a few tentative circles with her aching shoulder. But after so many days of sitting and waiting, it was a good ache. A quick peek into the bedchamber showed that while Captain Corrvan had at last stirred himself into a slightly different position, he looked no closer to waking than he had when she’d left.

  As she rummaged in the near-darkness for a towel, her fingers tangled with an unexpected fabric. Muslin. Fashioned into a dress. Her dress, she confirmed when she pulled it into the light. Not cut into rags, but washed and pressed and carefully mended—by whose hands, she did not dare to guess.

  After bathing and dressing and running damp fingers through her short curls, she walked back to the galley, welcoming the breeze as it tangled her skirts. The other clothes had been infinitely more practical. Another day, she might return to them. But right now, it felt too much like disrespect for Timmy.

  The ship was returning to life. Mr. Bewick was at the helm, and Mr. Fleming was directing the repair of rigging and tattered sails. They were moving again, carefully, easing into the wind like the belle of the ball with a twisted ankle.

  During her absence, Greaves had lit a fire and managed to put together something slightly better than biscuits and jerky for the captain. The smell of hot coffee and fried salt pork nearly had Tempest salivating over the tray. But she hoisted it with a smile and carried it back with her, swallowing against her still-unappeased hunger. Maybe Andrew wouldn’t miss a bite or two?

  Pushing her hip against the door, she wedged her way into the cabin with the laden tray and froze on the threshold when she heard that familiar off-key whistle—although this evening it was more dirge than jig.

  It seemed the captain had awakened at last.

  She stepped to the door between the rooms. Because his back was to her, she cou
ld watch unobserved as he grasped his shirttails and stripped off the stained and wrinkled garment in one smooth motion. Then, without hesitation, he slipped free the buttons of his breeches and dropped them to the floor. Every inch of skin she could see was bronzed, and the fine linen of his drawers left little to the imagination.

  The child of a hot climate where hard physical labor was done, she had often seen men in various stages of undress—bare arms, backs, chests, even legs were nothing new to her. But she could not remember ever wanting to stand and stare before. If his daring exploits during the storm had not been proof enough of his strength, she could hardly argue with the evidence on display before her now: muscles that rippled and bunched as he sponged himself clean with what water she had left in the bucket. Even in the dim lamplight, she caught glimpses of a few old scars and at least one fresh bruise where something had struck him across the shoulders. Somehow, those imperfections only increased his appeal. They were signs of a flesh-and-blood man, not some picture-perfect gentleman.

  Contemplatively, he scrubbed his hand over his beard, then paused. “Was there something in particular you were hoping to see, Miss Holderin?”

  Uncertain what had betrayed her—the clumsy rattle of crockery, or a sharply drawn breath—she made no answer, just retreated back into the great room to deposit the tray on the table. And waited. For what, exactly, she could not say.

  When he joined her a few minutes later, he was dressed again—after a fashion. His lean calves were bare beneath his breeches and his shirt hung open at the neck, revealing the muscled curve of his chest. Those snatches of tanned skin and the sprinkling of dark, crisp hair that covered them were somehow even more distracting than all that had been revealed by his earlier state of undress. When combined with his shadowed jaw, the effect was somehow unsettling. There was a wildness about him that would only ever be half-tamed, despite his fine English education. Her gaze darted away, uncertain.

  She waited for him to speak, to tease her, to scold her. But when he said nothing, she at last worked up the courage to raise her eyes and her heated cheeks to his face. Despite hours of uninterrupted sleep, shadows still lurked beneath his normally sharp eyes. A sign of exhaustion, yes, but also something else. She had expected to see triumph written on his face. After all, he had saved his ship and vanquished his enemy.

  But she saw only his terrible sense of guilt.

  He brushed past her on his way to the cupboard at the far side of the room, the one Mr. Beals had opened on the night of her arrival. Withdrawing the decanter and a single glass, he carried them both to the table, then pulled up a chair, pushed the untouched tray of food aside, and poured himself a drink.

  “You cannot blame yourself for what happened to Timmy.” She spoke firmly as she came to stand before him.

  He took a single swallow of whiskey before meeting her gaze. “Who is to blame, if not I?”

  “Perhaps no one should be blamed,” she ventured. “No one could have anticipated a storm of that strength, so late in the year . . .”

  “This No One sounds like a capital fellow. Careless. Good-for-nothing. I rather think we’d get on.” The familiar cynicism had crept into his expression and his voice. “Why was the boy even on my ship?” With the toss of his hand, he finished off the contents of the tumbler before answering his own question. “Because I found him on the street, and I arrogantly assumed he would be better off somewhere else. I stuffed his head with rousing stories of sea life no lad could resist.” He paused to refill the glass, but when the neck of the decanter rattled against its rim, as if his hands were unsteady, he returned it to the table instead, leaving the glass empty. “I caused that child’s death as surely as if—as if I had—”

  “As if you’d abandoned him on the streets of Kingston?” She had never seen the place, but she could imagine what a grim future Timmy would have had if he’d stayed. Few orphans enjoyed Edward’s good fortune.

  Andrew’s head jerked up, and he settled his gaze on her, as if surprised to find her so close. “And why are you on my ship?” he whispered as his hand leapt out and snagged her wrist.

  The strength of his grip did not surprise her. What she did not expect was his gentleness. Or the tingle of longing she would feel when his calloused fingers slid along the delicate skin of her inner wrist.

  “Because you wanted me here,” she reminded him.

  “So I did,” he agreed, drawing her closer, pulling her downward, until there was nowhere to go but into his arms.

  * * *

  Andrew brought his free hand to the back of her head, capturing her mouth with his, holding nothing back. Lips, teeth, tongue—he was not gentle. Unwise, she had called their first kiss. Let her see that a second was pure folly.

  He felt the heat of her palm against the clenched muscles of his abdomen. That hand should have meant she had come to her senses and was pushing him away.

  Instead, it felt like a claiming.

  Falling forward, she tumbled into his lap, her skirts billowing around them. The fingers of her other hand came up to curl and twist in his hair. With open mouth, she met his kiss, snagging a tooth against his lip in her eagerness, then sliding her tongue anxiously over the nick.

  Did women feel it, too, then, that deep hunger for life in the face of death? The urge to couple, to ensure that the struggle to survive had not been for naught? Nature was a bit mad, he had often thought, the way it made a man who had just come through some mortal peril want to bury himself inside a woman. Tempest hitched herself against him as if she could read his thoughts, as if she feared she might be denied.

  But he was in no mood to deny her anything.

  Releasing her wrist, he let his hand roam. From her knee, he traveled over her hip to settle for a moment at the indentation of her waist before rising still higher to cup her breast. Beneath the thin fabric of her dress, he felt her nipple peak, and when he plucked it with his fingertips, she groaned into his mouth. For answer, he did it again.

  Neither of them spoke, for really, what was there to say?

  That he wanted her?

  Given how the curve of her backside fitted against his groin, she must already know it.

  That he needed her?

  True though it might be, he was hardly prepared to admit that—even to himself.

  After a time, he managed, somehow, to rein himself in enough to remember where they were. If they were going to tup—and what, short of another hurricane, would stop them?—it would not be in a chair. Not even on the table, although the vision of her spread there before him, beneath the swaying, speckled lamplight, almost undid him.

  Shifting her weight, he rose with her in his arms, carried her easily into the other room, and laid her on his bed. In some dark recess of his brain, a part of him urged caution. If she had still been wearing breeches, perhaps those extra layers, that heavier fabric, would have given him pause, would have brought him to his senses.

  But the voice of reason was drowned out by the pounding of blood in his ears, as he plucked at the tie to her dress, exposing her, inch by inch, to his eyes. By the flickering light of a single candle, he gazed upon her naked flesh—dotted here and there with freckles, but soft and white as buttermilk and almost certainly as sweet.

  She blushed beneath his regard but did not hide, and her own eyes were wide and dark with desire as she reached up to help him shed his own clothes. When her hands moved to the tie of his drawers, he stayed her fingertips with kisses and joined her on the bed instead, unwilling to allow her too-eager touch to deprive him of greater pleasures yet to come.

  Slight of stature as she was, he had not expected to find her so voluptuous, and his hands swept greedily along the same path they had taken earlier—over the flare of her hips, up the soft slope of her belly, to weigh the fullness of her breast. God, how he wanted to nip and kiss and lick his way from her toes to her earlobes, with a lengthy detour at the midpoint, to taste the sweetness hidden by a thatch of coppery-brown hair. But this was not
the moment for languorous lovemaking, so he contented himself with swirling his tongue around her navel before lifting his head to draw a nipple into his mouth.

  He feasted on that pert, ripe berry until she began to arch against him, and a whimper of need bubbled from her throat. As he shifted his lips to the other breast, he slid his hand between them and cupped her mound, easing his fingers into her curls, teasing her, stroking her, until they were both coated with her wetness.

  “Tempest,” he breathed as he rose higher against her, nestling his lips in her hair. Part question, part plea, his whisper was answered when she opened beneath him and canted her hips, inviting him to enter her.

  In another moment, he had stripped off his drawers and then knelt on the bed between her spread thighs. When he hesitated, she reached for him, sliding her hand up the arm that supported his weight, pulling him closer, until he could feel the press of her nipples against his chest and she whispered against his ear. “Please.”

  That single word was his undoing. With his other hand, he set the head of his cock against the slick opening of her body and pressed slowly into her. Too slowly for her liking, it seemed, but oh, she was tight, as tight as a—

  His body knew the truth before his mind would admit it. Because it had aligned with his own base needs, he had allowed himself to imagine that her disdain for convention, her admiration for Wollstonecraft—hell, even her surfeit of eager suitors—meant that this boundary must long ago have been crossed. She had been all eagerness, meeting him kiss for kiss, touch for touch. For all her boldness, though, Tempest Holderin was still an innocent.