Chance the Winds of Fortune

by Laurie McBain

  “Indeed?” Dante remarked with a fine show of interest. “I was certain this conversation would become promising sooner or later, and I am a very patient man. Now, just what kind of proposition are you about to offer me? You are hardly in a bargaining position, and I doubt you are about to offer me your loving embrace during the long nights, are you?” Dante asked, his breath coming warm against her cheek as he wrapped the rope of living gold around his hand more tightly, until his knuckles were resting lightly against her jaw.

  “My freedom for your life, Captain. I think that a fair trade,” Rhea said softly, biting down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling. She was so frightened she could feel her limbs quivering, for never had she come up against a man quite like the captain of the Sea Dragon. He seemed at times to be a law unto himself, and almost beyond reasoning with. But as long as there was a chance, she would take it.

  “A fair trade?” Dante repeated, a doubtful note in his voice. “I fear we perceive our present situations rather differently, for I had no idea that my life was in danger. Thank you for warning me. Should I be expecting a knife between my shoulder blades, or a blow to my head some evening when I’ve turned my back rather than that loving embrace?”

  “You need fear nothing but my words, Captain,” Rhea told him quietly. “I can be friend or foe, ’twill be up to you to decide. I am no fool, and were you a wealthy man you would hardly be resorting to smuggling. And this title of yours, which I shall presume is legitimate, apparently brings with it little more than a coat of arms. You, Captain, are in need of a fortune, and I, Captain, can provide it.”

  “Can you indeed?” Dante replied. “If you will forgive me, my dear, one would hardly think so to look at you.”

  Lady Rhea Claire Dominick, dressed in little better than rags, raised her chin proudly. “You are most perceptive, my lord, but hardly politic in reminding me of my straitened circumstances. You would do well, Captain Leighton, to take heed of something my mother is fond of saying, which is never to judge a person by his or her appearance,” Rhea warned him. And thinking of her mother and the possibility of seeing her again gave her the courage to continue.

  “My apologies, m’lady,” Dante murmured, but his eyes were alight with mockery. “I should like to meet this wise mother of yours.”

  “My father, the Duke of Camareigh, should he be hearing exemplary things about you from me, would be more than generous in his gratitude. His generosity, in addition to the reward I am certain has been offered for my safe return, could add up to quite a fortune for the right man. You can be that man, Captain, and collect that fortune if you give me my freedom. All I wish is to return home. Is that too much to ask of you?” Rhea asked him, her eyes meeting his steadily, almost pleadingly. But her pride was still riding high, and she would not grovel at his feet.

  Her face was so close that Dante could see the silken sheen in the fine curve of her eyebrows. He had not been this close to her since they had lain together that first night, and now he noticed for the first time how the sun had planted its pale golden seeds across the bridge of her nose and the smooth expanse of cheek. Since she had been coming up on deck during the day, her skin had acquired a warm glow and her golden hair seemed burnished by sunlight. She was so breathtakingly lovely, so unlike anyone he had ever held in his arms. She was like a dream remembered, and one that was beginning to feel just as maddeningly elusive, for it was humiliatingly obvious that she found him loathsome and would resort to almost anything to escape him. And yet here she was just within his grasp, so why should he deny himself the satisfaction of possessing her?

  “Maybe I shall not demand a fortune of your father, Lady Rhea Claire.” Dante spoke so low that his words were hardly more than a whisper on the wind. “Perhaps only you, Rhea, can provide the means to your freedom. What is it worth to you personally, my lady, to gain that freedom? Is there a price that would be too high?” he asked, his unrelenting grip on her hair holding her lips just inches from his and making it difficult for her to escape his penetrating gaze.

  Rhea Claire thought of the honey-hued walls of Camareigh, and of the bluebells scattered across the rolling meadowlands in springtime. She could see Robin on Shoopiltee as they galloped along the edge of the serene lake upon which white and black swans drifted. Her mother and Aunt Mary were sitting beneath the spreading arms of the old chestnut, the twins tottering about on their short legs as they explored their newfound world. Francis and her cousins were playing croquet on the lawns, while in the distance she could see her father’s familiar figure as he strode across his land.

  “There is no price too high, if it means I shall see my family and Camareigh again,” Rhea said finally.

  Dante continued to stare into her proud face. Her violet eyes were dark with suffering, but he knew she would shed no tear while he stood before her. Only in the privacy of her small cabin would she give in to the struggling emotions which must be tearing her apart. For one so young she had a strength of will which was amazing. She begged not for pity or mercy, but stood seemingly inviolable before him, asking nothing. It damned him in his own eyes, and as the ship pitched into the trough of a wave, throwing her against his chest, he could feel her aversion to him in the rigid stiffness of her unyielding body. This revulsion, which she refused to hide, angered him, and he wanted to strike back and hurt her.

  “I shall remember your bravely spoken words, my lady,” Dante said against her ear, “when I ask for payment very soon. I look forward to the transaction, for you are a woman of your word, are you not, my dear? You have proudly proclaimed that a Dominick’s word is never broken, so I foresee no difficulties involved,” Dante said softly, his warm lips touching her cheek just briefly, as in promise.

  “Hrrrmph!”

  Dante glanced away from Rhea’s flushed face and encountered Kirby’s woeful countenance. The little steward was standing at the head of the ladder, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.

  “Reckon I should’ve brought some more of that lemonade, Captain Leighton,” Kirby said with a disapproving sniff, his formal address of his captain leaving Dante in little doubt he’d been given a rap on the knuckles. “Figure ye could be usin’ a bit o’ coolin’ off, Captain, sir,” he continued, stepping onto the poop deck and marching over to where Dante and Rhea were standing in an awkward silence.

  He held out the cup, slopping some of the dark liquid onto the deck and just missing the captain’s thigh. “Your coffee, m’lord,” the little steward said, with heavy emphasis on his title, as if to remind the captain of his past heritage and his gentlemen ancestors, who had, in Kirby’s mind, never sullied the good name of Leighton.

  Dante rather reluctantly allowed his hand to slip free of the golden braid of hair and graciously accepted the proffered coffee, or at least it would have seemed so from the view aloft. The little steward knew better, however, as he met his captain’s eye.

  “I’ll escort ye below, if ye be ready, m’lady,” Kirby offered with a beaming smile as he held out his bended arm. “I was kinda hopin’ ye might like to sample some of me special gingerbread. Put some in your cabin, m’lady.” It was a bribe, proudly offered, and with her small hand tucked inside his elbow, he led her to the ladder, watching carefully as she descended, although with all of the interested eyes watching her from below, there would have been little chance of her falling. With a last reproachful glance over his shoulder at his captain, Kirby’s grizzled head disappeared below.

  “We goin’ to be gettin’ any of that special gingerbread, Mr. Kirby?” Cobbs asked with a hungry glint in his eye as they passed the still gossiping sailors. “Reckon we oughta have a lady on board more often. Makes fer much finer fare from the galley, that’s fer sure. Gettin’ pritty tired of pease puddin’ all the time,” he said with a wide grin at the look of outrage on the little steward’s face.

  “Reckon ye’ll be gettin’ something different all right, Mr. Cobbs,” Fitzsimmo
ns called to him. “Like maybe some saltpeter in your lobscouse tonight. Pity that, what with us bein’ in port soon.”

  The raucous laughter of the crew followed the grinning steward as he led Rhea toward the entrance to the companionway, hurrying her past a vigilant Barnaby Clarke, who would have liked to detain her for a moment of polite conversation. To his disappointment, though, he received only a slight nod of recognition before she had disappeared below.

  “Lobscouse!” Kirby snorted in derision. “As if I’d be servin’ lobscouse in a fine sea like this. D’ye know what lobscouse is, m’lady?”

  “No,” Rhea replied with little interest. Her thoughts were elsewhere as she paused at the entrance to the small cubicle vacated by Alastair Marlowe for her use while she was on board. After she had recovered from her fever, he had been most insistent about it and was backed up by the little steward, who said she ought to make use of the cabin, since it would allow her at least a modicum of privacy, something in short supply on board a ship. Her move from the captain’s cabin into one of her own was something expected by the crew, who would have been surprised had she not, for they did believe her to be a lady of quality. If the captain had had objections he had kept them to himself. Alastair was bunking with Fitzsimmons in a cabin across the companionway that was hardly bigger than a cabinet. And at the end of the short companionway was the door to the captain’s cabin, a room she entered only to lunch and dine in.

  “Well, m’lady, lobscouse can be fixed in different ways. Reckon with whatever ye got on hand, but ’tis mostly made with salt beef, onions, and potatoes mixed with ship’s biscuit. Ain’t much to speak about compared to one of me own concoctions, but ’tis good and fillin’ when ye’ve a squall brewin’,” Kirby explained. “Now, ye just rest up here a bit. Dinner’ll be ready in an hour or so, and I’ve roasted a nice breast of chicken fer ye. ’Tis one of me specialties, what with me own special sauce on it. And me Creole mutton’s not to be bested anywhere in the Indies, if I do say so meself. Oh, but once we get to Antigua, m’lady, I can get me hands on some fresh pineapple. Select me own right off the bush, I do. Know just the kind that’s the sweetest, and once ye’ve tasted me pineapple cake, well, ’tis nothin’ quite like it. Would love to have that young brother of yours taste it. And ’tis the cap’n’s favorite, ’tis, and—”Kirby stopped when he saw her expression, which seemed to say he’d said more than enough, unless…

  “M’lady, the cap’n can be a difficult man at times, I’m not denyin’ it. I’ve served his family fer nigh on half a century, and I wouldn’t be with the cap’n now if I didn’t believe he was a good man, but ’tis just that he has the devil’s own temper, and when he’s been riled there’s just no reachin’ him. He don’t mean half of what he says, m’lady, so ye shouldn’t be worryin’ about it. Ye’ve got friends on board the Sea Dragon, and we’ll let no harm befall ye, m’lady,” Kirby told her earnestly, hoping to set her mind at ease.

  “Then please help me to escape him when we reach Antigua, Mr. Kirby,” Rhea whispered in desperation, her nervous glance in the direction of the quarterdeck telling Kirby only too clearly of her fear of the captain of the Sea Dragon.

  “Ah, m’lady, it grieves me it does, to see ye so upset, but there’s naught I can be doin’ about it. I’m loyal to the cap’n, and although I’m not always agreein’ with his ways, I’d die first before I’d betray him,” the little steward told her simply, and Rhea knew he meant it.

  “I am not asking you to betray your captain, Mr. Kirby.” Rhea spoke softly, but there was an underlying intensity to her voice that worried Kirby, for when a person was thinking desperate, they often acted rashly.

  “All I wish for is my freedom. I’ll not say anything about how I arrived in Antigua. I will not implicate anyone on board the Sea Dragon,” Rhea promised. “You have my word, Mr. Kirby. You, as well as many others on board have been kind to me, and I would do nothing to cause any of you harm.”

  “Ah, m’lady, it saddens me, it does, to have this happenin’ t’ye. Ye be such a fine young thing, but…” Kirby’s words trailed off into the tense silence.

  “…but there is nothing you can do for me.” As Rhea completed his unfinished sentence for him, her lips trembled with frustration, and with a muffled cry, she turned her back on the unhappy little steward, never seeing the gingerbread placed carefully on the small table.

  Kirby stared at her shaking shoulders and her small back, which she held so rigid and straight as she tried to bear up under the ever-growing weight of her circumstances. She looked so defenseless, so alone, standing there in that green velvet that had seen better days. Kirby felt his tender heart swell with pity for this brave young woman and he stretched out his hand to pat her shoulder comfortingly. But halfway there he hesitated, and with a sigh he turned and left her, for he knew there was really nothing he could say that would make her feel any less like crying.

  Rhea heard the door closing softly after the little steward and allowed her tears to fall freely. As the gingerbread grew cold on the table, she sank down onto the bunk and buried her face in her shaking hands.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked the silent cabin, her voice husky with a tear-fed hopelessness.

  She had to break free. She had to escape the captain of the Sea Dragon, before all was lost.

  “They cannot understand,” she said softly as she thought of the good intentions of the crew. “How can they possibly understand when they are blind to what is happening beneath their very noses?” Rhea sighed in exasperation, and could the Duke and Duchess of Camareigh have seen and heard their daughter now, they would have been dismayed to see the cynicism in the once-gentle violet eyes and to hear the tinge of bitterness in the once-soft voice.

  “How can any of them possibly protect me from myself?” Rhea whispered, daring to voice for the first time the self-doubts she had been experiencing since that first, fateful meeting with Dante Leighton. Only she seemed to realize fully the true danger which existed in her continuing to stay on board the Sea Dragon.

  Rhea pounded her fists against her lap in impotent rage as she tried to banish the vision of Dante Leighton from her mind, but those enigmatic eyes continued to stare into hers; they mocked her, tantalized her, and seduced her, until she felt as if a stranger were inhabiting her body.

  She could not fully comprehend what had happened to her while on board the Sea Dragon. She felt at times as if Dante Leighton had cast some kind of cruel spell over her, and although she walked and talked, she was no longer the Rhea Claire Dominick she once had been. She no longer knew herself—or trusted herself.

  How far she had fallen from the Lady Rhea Claire Dominick who had been so proud, so naively confident of what she had wanted out of life. Never had she thought that her life might not turn out as she had always imagined it would. Never had she foreseen such a tempestuous awakening of her womanly desires, which now had left her shaken and frightened. She hadn’t wanted it to happen this way, and certainly not with a man such as Dante Leighton.

  If only he had been an insufferable braggadocio or a corrupt bully who brutalized his crew, this captain of the Sea Dragon. How easy it would have been to despise him then. And if he had violated her, she would have sought her salvation in the sea, and that would have been the end of it. But Dante Leighton was not that manner of man.

  And yet he was far more dangerous with his handsome bronzed face and laughing eyes; his gentlemanly manner deceived a person into believing he was not the cunning opportunist he would have to have been in order to have survived this long in the perilous profession he had chosen.

  Rhea rolled flat on her bunk, her folded arms cushioning her head as she stared up at the low beamed ceiling and pondered the ill-fated fascination she felt for Dante Leighton. She had met many handsome men last year during her season in London, and yet there’d been no chance meeting of eyes with any of those gentlemen that had caused the quickening i
n her blood she felt when her eyes were captured by the gray-eyed, insolent stare of the captain of the Sea Dragon.

  There must be something else, something indefinable about him that had the power to hold her so entranced, despite her own instincts warning her against him. It had to be something other than the classical perfection of his features, for Wesley Lawton, Earl of Rendale, had been an extraordinarily handsome man too. Yet, she had never felt that fire spreading through her when his hand accidentally touched hers, and perhaps that was part of the reason. The Earl of Rendale, ever conscious of his reputation and high standing in society, would never have dared to act improperly with a lady, especially a duke’s daughter, and so any touching between them would certainly have been accidental. Genteel almost to a fault, Wesley Lawton had been court-bred and had allowed his life to be ruled by convention. Always above reproach, that had been the late Earl of Rendale, Rhea thought sadly, remembering how he had looked the last time she had seen him, just before he had been felled by that assassin’s bullet.

  The captain of the Sea Dragon, on the other hand, apparently delighted in flouting convention. There was a damn-your-eyes attitude about him that mocked the very proprieties that Wesley Lawton had held so dear. If the Earl of Rendale could have seen Dante, a supposed gentleman, who claimed a title superior even to his own, climbing the rigging of the Sea Dragon in the company of common sailors—individuals whose existence Wesley would never have permitted himself to admit—he might have been shocked into uttering an indiscreet remark. Rhea remembered standing on the quarterdeck, the winds buffeting her as she looked up the seemingly endless, swaying length of mast to where the captain was clinging precariously to the main topgallant shrouds, his bare feet balanced on the ratlines as he fitted a strap around the masthead. He had been clad only in a pair of leather breeches; his broad back had gleamed like copper and his muscles had been rippling and shiny with sweat as he worked.

  She had thought him a madman to go aloft when there were others who could just as easily have done the job, but as she continued to watch him, she had come to the startling realization that Dante was thoroughly enjoying himself as he fought to keep his footing in the unsteady shrouds while he climbed down toward the crosstrees. As he descended into the tangle of rope of the lower shrouds, Rhea could see the simmering excitement still lighting his eyes. He had met the challenge and beaten it, but still he seemed to be restless, searching for a further, more dangerous test of his courage and skills.