She did this for two full circuits of the Sirius’s deck before she risked a smug peek in Ballantine's direction, only to discover he was no longer standing at the rail.
~~
Courtney elected to remain in her cabin most of the day and took her meals, with the exception of dinner, alone. She appeared in the wardroom wearing a white batiste gown patterned with tiny sprigs of mauve flowers. She had added a short cashmere shawl as protection against the dampness of the passageways; but to judge by the scandalized look on the duena's face, the amount of flesh bared across her shoulders and décolletage was shockingly inappropriate. She had relied solely on the advice of a shopkeeper in Gibraltar when she had selected the few gowns she had purchased for the journey, and was somewhat disconcerted to find the other women wrapped to the throats in protective layers of brocade and bombazine.
First Mate Lansing assumed the brazenness was for his benefit and relished it accordingly. Even the staid and moustachioed Mr. Santini relaxed from under the glare of his stout wife long enough to wink admiringly. There was, however, only amusement in Ballantine's eyes as he, in turn, complimented the senorita on the richness of the lace and brocade that molded exquisitely to her shapely young figure. It made Courtney grit her teeth and wish with all her might for a pair of leather breeches and a loose flowing shirt.
To the surprise and chagrin of First Mate Lansing, Courtney again excused herself early and retired to her cabin. She went alone this time, the senorita adamantly refusing to obey the whispered commands of her duenna. Courtney’s thoughts were in such a turmoil that she had the latch of the cabin door turned and the door half opened before she realized that someone had followed her along the corridor.
Her gasp was stifled in her throat as she recognized the short, burly outline of Davey Dunn.
“Davey! You frightened me half to death! Come inside quickly before anyone sees you.”
“I’ve nay but a minute to spare, lass,” he grunted as he ducked inside the cabin. “I only came to warn ye.”
“About the Yankee lieutenant being on board? Yes, I know. I have already had the displeasure of supping in his company twice.”
“Eh? An’ he said nothin’ to ye?”
“Nothing yet. Has he seen you?”
“Dunno. But I seen him on deck today an' near lost my water. He is a wily bastard, that’un; and I ain’t about to wager the other ballock he ain’t seen me, beard or no.”
Davey did look drastically different without the halo of red fuzz surrounding his face, but Courtney knew there was not much that escaped Ballantine’s notice.
“Like a regular masquerade ball on board this ‘ere ship,” Dunn muttered. “You an' me; the Yankee—all goin’ in circles, chasin' after our own tails. Never mind, lass, I'll think on some way to get rid o’ him what won’t cause too many questions.”
“Davey," she reached out a tentative hand to his arm, “I doubt he will cause any trouble. He would be risking his heroic welcome home as well as his career if he were to admit he harbored the daughter of the notorious Duncan Farrow. He just wants to go home and recuperate from his wounds.”
“He blew up yer ‘ome, girl.”
“I know. And we blew up his ship.”
The pale blue eyes screwed down into slits. “It were him what thumped me on the head, weren’t it? And it were him what took ye off the Falconer before hell busted loose, weren’t it?”
Courtney did not need to offer an answer to either question; he knew them already.
“Damnation” he exploded. “An' I suppose this were no accident either, you an’ him on the same ship?”
“No. No! I took the first passage that was available. He was supposed to leave Gibraltar on the Carolina. His being here was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you.”
Dunn did not look convinced. Surly disbelief was etched all over his face.
“Davey...you have to believe me. I do not like having to trust him any more than you do, but what other choice do we have? You can not just kill him, for God's sake; I doubt if anyone would believe it was accidental."
“Oh, I dunno. We are bound to hit a storm or two. I'll be watchin' him real close an' if I think he is up to nay good, he'll be in the drink before he knows his feet is wet. As fer yersel’, girl," he lifted a stubby finger and wagged it ominously, “remember, ye’re a Farrow. Think on what Duncan’d say if he know’d ye were warmin’ yer cockles with a Yankee.”
Courtney’s mouth dropped open, but he was already turning back to the door. He flung it wide, his anger slamming back at Courtney. He was gone before she could jolt herself into going after him. She went to the door but her hand fell away from the latch without opening it. She leaned her brow on the wooden panel instead, cursing everything and everyone who came to mind, with special vehemence towards the tears that seemed to spring so easily into her eyes these days.
Tears! What on earth was she crying for now? When was it going to end?
A brisk tap on the door jolted her head upright.
“Davey?” she whispered and yanked the door open...but it was not Davey Dunn and she had to adjust her glance upward.
“What are you doing here?” she asked on a gasp. “What more, in God's name, do you want from me? Why can you not just leave me alone!”
Adrian Ballantine held up the cashmere shawl she had worn earlier to the wardroom. “You forgot this. I thought you might need it for the morning.”
Courtney dashed her hands across her cheeks, wiping furiously at the two shiny streaks of tears. With damp fingers, she reached out and snatched the delicate garment out of his hand.
“Thank you. Now will you please go away and...and... just go away! Go back to your senorita. She is far better at playing the role of helpless female than I."
She turned her back on him and bunched the shawl into a tight ball. She heard the door close, and she released her breath on a sob—one that was stifled midway as she heard his quiet baritone behind her.
"Of all the words I might use to try to describe you, Irish, helpless is not one."
"Oh please, just go away," she cried softly.
“Irish? What is wrong? What has upset you?”
“Upset me?” she whirled again, her eyes shimmering. “Upset me? Since when have you begun to care if something upsets me?”
“I happen to care very much,” he said calmly, unaffected by her scorn.
“He is going to kill you! He knows about us; he knows what happened on the Falconer!”
Ballantine’s frown deepened as he watched her tears course down her cheeks. “Lansing knows who you are?”
“Lansing?” Courtney cursed under her breath and raised a trembling hand to her temple hoping to squeeze away the frustration. “Good God, no. Not Lansing...Dunn! Davey Dunn! He is on board the Sirius. He saw you on deck today, and he was just here to warn me. When I told him we had already spoken, he guessed what had happened on the Falconer...that you were the one who knocked him out...and I just know he knows the rest.”
“The rest?” Adrian inquired politely, and took a step closer.
“The rest. The rest! You know damn well what the rest is.” She dropped her hand, and her eyes met his, the tears brimming with damnable persistence. “The rest is...that I will be lucky if he does not send me over the rails with you when the first storm hits.”
Adrian pursed his lips to contain his smile. “Is that what he is planning to do—toss me over on the first wave?”
Her breath was expelled on an exasperated sob. “Davey is no joke. He can be mean and dangerous, and...and....”
“And so can I. I am listening to you, Irish. I am taking your warning to heart, believe me.” Somehow his hands found their way onto her shoulders, his long fingers resting lightly on the curve of her throat. “But the fact is, I simply have more important things on my mind at the moment, such as: Why is it you still do not think you can trust me, even after all that has happened between us?”
“Nothing has happened!”
she insisted. “As for trusting you, every time I thought it was safe to trust you, you used me. On the Eagle, on the Falconer!”
“I also recall saving your life a couple of times,” he murmured.
“I never asked you to. And how do you know what would have happened to me if I had stayed on the Falconer? Davey escaped, Garrett escaped, Miranda escaped—”
That seemed to pull Ballantine up short for a moment. “Shaw escaped? The Falconer did not burn?
“She burned, no thanks to you, but not before the crew escaped to shore.”
Adrian exhaled thoughtfully, and after a moment, his fingertips resumed their gentle, caressing strokes along her neck. “So you are telling me you wish I had left you to live happily ever after with Garrett Shaw? Should I have believed Miranda when she told me you and he had set up house together in the aftercabin?”
Courtney's looked up, shocked. “She was lying! Garrett Shaw never touched me. Oh he wanted to, all right, and he tried to but—” She stopped and caught her breath, for his hands had tightened on her shoulders and were drawing her forward. His head was lowering toward hers. His mouth was brushing her temple and trailing a tender path of kisses across her cheek.
“No!” she cried and pushed out of his arms. “No, I will not let you do this to me again!”
“Do what, Madamoiselle de Villiers? Rape you, as I did on the Eagle? Or ravish you until you cry out for more, as you did on the Falconer?”
Courtney’s cheeks flushed hot, and she stumbled back but there was nowhere to take refuge from the intensity of his eyes. She turned away to break their hold, but she could still feel their heat searing through the sheer fabric of her gown.
“Please...please just go away.”
Adrian came up behind her and placed his hands on the narrow indent of her waist. She gasped softly at the touch of his lips on her shoulder, at the back of her neck.
“Please,” she whispered.
“I asked about you everywhere,” he said, his voice muffled against her skin. “As soon as they let me out of that blasted hospital bed, I limped around to every tavern in Gibraltar, every rooming house, every hotel. I tore strips off a dozen innkeepers I suspected of lying to me.”
Courtney’s eyes widened. “Wh-why would you do that?”
He laughed quietly, and his breath tickled the fine hairs across her nape. “Well, on a purely practical level, my perceptive young beauty, I wanted to make sure you were all right, that you had somewhere to stay, that you were not dressed in rags and stealing scraps from the market to eat. If you recall, I did give my word to Seagram to see that no harm came to you. And as you have accused me so often in the past, I am an honorable bastard. Too damned honorable, I have also been told.”
“But I released you from your bond. Several times.”
“Perhaps I did not want to be released,” he said pointedly and pressed a kiss on the tip of her ear. “And perhaps there was a second reason. Maybe it occurred to me, lying there in that godforsaken hospital, that seeing you again, touching you again, holding you was all I could think about. It was all that kept me going.”
His hands slid upward until he had the thinly clad firmness of her breasts cradled in his palms. She felt her flesh tighten under the gentle insistence of his thumbs; she felt her nipples constrict and send shivers down her spine with each demonstrative stroke.
“When I saw you yesterday,” he breathed, “do you know how close you came to being picked up, carried into my cabin, and ravished then and there? I spent a long cold night walking the decks because I knew if I came below, you would not have stood a chance.”
His hand slid up to her chin and cupped it, turned it, angled it so he had access to her mouth. A flush of heated blood set the length of her body on fire.
“Please,” she tried one last time.
Lips that had only been grazing hers closed over the plea and silenced it beneath a demanding kiss. Hands that had been content to merely taunt her, descended boldly to her waist again and turned her around, forcing her fully into his embrace. Tears poured hot and fast over her lashes, and his mouth broke away from hers to try vainly to capture the shiny rivulets and dry them.
"How do you do it," he whispered against her temple. "How do you manage to completely disarm me? All of my clever witticisms, the sarcasm, the humor...all the ways I know how to render myself immune to a big pair of sea green eyes and lips that are too forthright for their own good...I cannot use them on you. They simply do not work. You make me want to throttle you and wrap myself around you at the same time. You make me feel capable of conquering the world, yet I am all muddled and confused when it comes to trying to win you." He sighed and bowed his head, touching his brow to hers. “Do you know how much I want you, Courtney de Villiers Farrow? How much I need you?”
Courtney’s heart soared at the ragged honesty in his voice. “But...surely this is wrong. It cannot happen. ”
“It is as right as we want it to be. And I am afraid, Irish—" his mouth was warm and so very convincing— “I am afraid it is happening.”
For a full minute Courtney could do little more than savor the taste and feel of his lips as they moved possessively over hers. She dared not think, she could hardly breathe through the heady rush of sensations that welcomed each slow, probing thrust of his tongue. Her body betrayed her first, pressing closer to his. Her hands crept up the broad plain of his chest and curled around his neck; a soft whimper acknowledged the tremors in his arms as they tightened around her waist. Her gasp was smothered as he crushed her to him and she knew she was lost. She knew she could no longer deny, did not want to deny the feelings and emotions she had tried so hard and with such futility, to hide.
She felt his hands moving over her body as buttons and ribbons were assaulted. She felt the material part and the warmth of his palms chase the gown off her shoulders and down to her hips. Within moments she found herself standing in a puddle of silk and batiste, stripped of everything, even her pride.
She cried out weakly as he abandoned her lips to travel to the curve of her shoulder. Her knees shivered and threatened to fold, but he moved on. He moved down. His hands molded to the roundness of her breasts, and his mouth captured the aroused and straining peaks. Over and over, his tongue flicked and circled the achingly sensitive flesh. His lips pulled and suckled and tormented her until her hands were clawed into his shoulders and her body was molten with liquid heat.
It was wrong, but she no longer cared. It seemed wicked and wanton to stand naked in his arms, with him still fully clothed, so she took the initiative, sliding her hands beneath his broadcloth coat and pushing it off his shoulders. She attacked the buttons of his waistcoat, the starched white neckcloth, the thin cloth of his shirt.
Adrian’s eyes were smoky-dark with passion. He kept his gaze locked to hers as she urged his arms up and lifted his shirt over his head. Another soft rush of breath sent her hands spreading flat over the steely hard surface of his chest. She ran her fingers through the wiry mat of hair, and she leaned forward so her brow touched the stern line of his jaw. The scent of his skin was intoxicating. The feel of his flesh sent such raw lust coursing through her body that her mouth became the aggressor—tasting, sampling, exploring the hard-surfaced contours. Her hands were greedy now to know and feel what her stubbornness had almost denied her. The strong column of his neck, the muscled rack of ribs, the tapering funnel of curling hairs that led to the waist of his breeches, she explored it all. And when she plucked at the waist of his breeches, she heard his sharp intake of air, but it was she who chose to ignore reason now, to ignore everything but the surging flesh that pushed boldly, vigorously into her hands.
His hands twined into her hair and tilted her mouth roughly up to his; his arms scooped her off her feet and carried her to the narrow berth, where she was left untended for the few brief seconds it took for him to remove what remained of his clothes and join her. Courtney’s thighs parted to welcome him, her hands reached greedily for the tautly
muscled flanks as they bore down on her. Hot and pulsing, iron hard and sleekly determined to find the most forbidden reserves of ecstasy, the solid thickness of his flesh slid deeply and possessively within her. A groan made him hold his position a moment to gain control, but then he stroked and probed and thrust to the very core of her passion.
The strength of her orgasm caught her unawares and she nearly screamed as the spasms sent her body arching up again and again, clutching around his flesh, pulling him deeper, holding him there until he shuddered and shared her release. They groaned together and rocked until every last shiver and pulse was expended and when Courtney thought she could no longer bear the pleasure, he proved her wrong. He held her and moved for her, with her. He whispered her name and whispered words she thought she would never hear, and the sheer joy of it filled her time and again, making her entire body ripple with the ecstasy and the sweet, drenching oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Courtney purred and stretched with contentment. There was not much room to manoeuvre; the berth was built to accommodate one person, and then without any degree of comfort. Two were a test of the thin wooden supports and the equally thin mattress ticking. Still, with arms and legs entwined, with her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder and her breasts pressed against his chest, the arrangement proved to be intimately cozy.
Her attempt to stretch out a cramped muscle triggered an instant response from Adrian’s sleeping form. His hand shifted to curve possessively around her buttock and a smile tugged at his lips as he felt more sensitive areas of his body stir. He turned his head slightly, and his eyes opened a slit to find Courtney's chin propped on her hand and a studious look on her face as she watched him sleep.
"Does everything meet with your approval?"
She smiled. He had lost the thong from his hair and it lay fanned out beneath his head like burnished gold. His chest, his arms, his legs...his everything was simply magnificent and she answered by licking her lips—lips that had avidly explored every inch of that magnificent flesh.
Wind and the Sea Page 43
