by Juliana Gray
He had given up that possibility as soon as he’d gotten a better look at her, over breakfast. He knew every square inch of his onetime protégé, and there were certain personal characteristics that even the canniest student of disguise couldn’t mask. No, this woman wasn’t Miss Dingleby.
To be sure, there was something familiar about Miss Harris. The set of her shoulders, maybe, or the unwholesome, twangy timbre with which she uttered the words—
“Do we have a deal, Your Grace?”
Olympia blinked and returned his gaze to the agreeable landscape of Ruby Morrison’s face. “I beg your pardon?”
A petulant sigh. “Haven’t you been listening to me at all, sir?”
“Of course I have. Something to do with safety.”
“The safe, sir! I’ll get you those papers from the safe.”
Olympia removed his handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes, which stung from the salt wind. Also, to cover his shock. “Papers, Miss Morrison? I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
“Now, don’t tell me you don’t remember the papers my dear Mrs. Schuyler gave me to put in the ship’s safe.”
He replaced the handkerchief and snapped his fingers. “Ah, yes. There was some fear that your cabin had been burgled.”
“A little birdie told me you’d like to get your hands on those papers yourself, and—as I said—I’m perfectly willing to fetch them for you, in exchange for just the smallest wee little favor.”
“What favor is that, Miss Morrison?”
She leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “The use of your stateroom tomorrow evening.”
“Miss Morrison!” He put his hand on his heart. “I am shocked, shocked to the core.”
“No, you aren’t. We both know it’s the only way. My mother would do anything to avoid scandal, and if I were to be . . . well, if Robert were to . . . and then nature takes its course . . .” She dropped her gaze to the buttons of his overcoat. Her cheeks were already pink from the sea breeze, or she would have blushed.
“Miss Morrison. Do you mean to say that you wish Mr. Langley to . . . that is, to put you in the family way?”
“Yes! I mean, only because Mama hasn’t left me any choice.”
“Mr. Langley?”
“I’ve heard your stateroom is the most private and luxurious on the ship. I’m sure, with a little champagne, he’ll give up his silly notions about what’s proper. It will be just like a wedding night, don’t you think?” She was still staring at his buttons. As well she should. Was he really so benign and harmless that she would talk to him freely about wedding nights?
It was the American in her, he decided. No doubt these young ladies were taught all manner of indelicate subjects in the schoolroom.
He decided to return her frankness.
“But you do realize that the odds are not in your favor? A single night?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean that, nature being what it is, the miracle of conception is quite often not so easily achieved as that. In fact, in my own experience, life often requires repeated urging to bring about.”
Ruby’s beautiful brow took on a puzzled line. “But . . . well, that doesn’t make sense. In all the books—”
“Reality, I’m afraid, bears little resemblance to novels. Which is why we read them.” Olympia lifted his chin and gazed off toward the horizon. The weather had steadied over the past two days, but the ocean was still fitful, the sky still steel-gray and liable to tantrum. The scent of ozone lay heavily in the air, like a warning.
A little birdie told me. Which birdie was that? Mr. Langley, perhaps?
The frustration rose up in him again. Since the apparent burglary of the Morrison-Schuyler cabin—in which nothing had, in fact, been taken—Olympia had detected no sign whatever of any other interested party on board the Majestic. He had searched Miss Harris’s stateroom, part of a suite with Miss Crawley, and found nothing suspicious or revealing. He had contrived to inspect Mr. Langley’s small cabin in the second-class section, and seen nothing but what an ordinary love-struck chap might pack in a very great hurry: hair pomade, two suits, and a few changes of shirt and underclothes. If some other person lurked about the ship, trying to reach Mrs. Schuyler’s papers, he or she remained frustratingly out of sight.
“Let us return the subject of the papers, Miss Morrison. I confess I’m at a loss. Who is this feathered friend of yours?”
“I’m not telling.” She set her lips in a playful line and looked back up at his face.
“I could make you tell me.” Whisper-soft.
She laughed. “How funny! Say that again, in just that tone.”
God help him. And just when he’d been looking forward to reaching dry land again, where he could nick the portfolio easily from Mrs. Schuyler’s amateur grasp and set about the far more agreeable business of getting the lady to forgive him for it. Now Miss Morrison had decided to upset his neat, efficient plan with an alternative.
Well, he wouldn’t do it, by God.
He turned to her with his most grandfatherly gaze, the kind that should return any reckless young lady to a proper notion of decorum. “My dear Miss Morrison,” he said. “I’m afraid I cannot allow myself to become party to such an immoral transaction as the one you propose.”
Miss Ruby Morrison smiled and patted him fondly on the arm, as one did to the senile. “Excellent! Tomorrow evening, then. If you can manage to leave behind a bottle of iced champagne and a dish of strawberries, I’d be most obliged.”
God help him. He really was losing his touch.
***
“I am not, by nature, a teller of tales,” said the Duke of Olympia, as they walked along the promenade deck that evening, arm in arm, like an old married couple. “But I feel compelled to inform you that your charge is contemplating an act of extraordinary indiscretion.”
“I’m shocked,” Penelope replied serenely.
“You don’t wish to know the details?”
“I’m sure your sense of gentlemanly honor will forbid you to tell me. Anyway, if she’s told you about it, you have the power to stop her yourself.”
Olympia responded with a harrumph that would probably have appalled his younger self. Or so she imagined; she could picture him as a strapping young man, setting out to conquer the world, rich and handsome and brilliant and impatient. Not a single harrumph would have passed those youthful male lips. Of course, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance then. If it weren’t for the forced intimacy of shipboard life, he wouldn’t be giving it to her now.
“There’s another thing,” he said. “I am not convinced that Mr. Langley is quite what he seems.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. First you suspect poor Miss Harris of being an enemy agent, and now it’s Mr. Langley. I suppose next you’ll be accusing Mrs. Morrison.”
He paused and turned his face to the moonlight. “Now, there’s an idea. The disguise is flawless, after all.”
The clouds had begun to lift after dinner, and the sky was now partly clear, though the ocean still twitched around them. The air was cold but less damp, and for the first time they had a few other bodies for company out on the promenade deck at eleven o’clock post meridiem. Nobody seemed to pay them any attention, however. Olympia wore his brown beard and hat; Penelope was bundled from head to toe, leaving only her eyes and cheekbones to face the world. They reached the end of the deck, near the bow, and instead of turning to walk back down, Olympia led her to the rail.
“Two more days,” he said.
“One and a half.”
“And I’m gratified beyond measure, Mrs. Schuyler, that you’ve chosen to spend them amicably with me, instead of seeing me as an enemy to be avoided at all costs.”
“Oh, I see you as an enemy, all right. But there’s no reason we can’t fraternize comfortably anyway. Business is business
, after all, while . . .” She let her words drift softly on the wind and lifted her face to meet his.
“Pleasure is pleasure?”
Her heart began to smack against her ribs. His eyes were so blue, even here in the darkness, lit only by one of the nearby electric bulbs on its string. An act of unspeakable daring. Could she do it? So easy, wasn’t it, to be brave in the comfort of one’s stateroom. Here on the promenade deck, in the chill and intimate evening, faced with the physical reality of an enormous and all-powerful duke—well, could she do it?
“Yes,” she said. “As long as we understand each other.”
“I see,” he said.
Their elbows rested next to each other on the rail. Olympia’s hand hovered inches away, large and broad inside its leather glove. His fingers moved to cover hers and draw her arm toward his chest, hidden from the rest of the deck, and the firmness of his grasp stopped the breath in her lungs.
“I meant what I said the other night,” he said. “I mean you no harm. The opposite, in fact. I intend, from the moment we disembark on the Merseyside, to give you every possible comfort. The life you deserve.”
“I don’t want comfort. My life has lacked many things, but not comfort. I want something else.”
“Whatever it is, you’ll have it.”
She should have been appalled by this offer—for that was what it was, naked and brazen, an offer to keep her as his mistress—but instead her heart went on beating with that pleasurable acceleration, sending the blood to tingle in her toes and fingertips and . . . elsewhere. The endings of every nerve.
“I see. A blank check, is it?”
“You can write in it whatever you like.”
“Except the papers. There is that little exception. You want to intercept my private communication.”
He sighed. “It’s not your communication, my dear. You’re simply a courier, a mule. It was indecent of Madame de Sauveterre to use you in this way, to put you in danger. Let me take the burden from your shoulders, and leave you to the simple enjoyment of life.” He lifted her gloved hand and pressed it to his mouth.
“Just like that? Remove the burden?” she said. “Leave these complicated matters of espionage to the experts? Trust that you know best where these papers should go?”
“Exactly so.” His breath warmed her fingers.
“Simply enjoy myself? Sink myself into the luxury of your bed? The Duke of Olympia’s fortunate new mistress?”
He went still against her hand. “That isn’t the word I would have chosen.”
“Why not? I have no objection to it. Call a spade a spade, I always say.”
“I’ve offended you.”
“On the contrary. I’m going to give your offer the serious consideration it deserves, Your Grace. You see, as often happens during ocean voyages, when one has time to contemplate the course of one’s life, I’ve decided that . . . well, that you’re right. I’ve wasted myself. I’m going to leave the Morrisons’ protection when we reach England and make my own way.”
A faint pause. “I’m delighted to hear it.”
He didn’t sound delighted. He sounded . . . suspicious. Penelope smiled and pulled down the muffler that covered her mouth.
“A new life,” she said. “A new code of rules.”
“Mrs. Schuyler, I’m entirely in favor of this transformation, but before you commit any rash steps—”
She angled her body toward his, took his face in her hands, went up on her toes, and kissed him.
For an instant, he was too surprised to kiss her back. But the Duke of Olympia recovered quickly from shock, and in the next second he had turned her around against the rail, covering her with his massive body, and his hands disappeared under her hat to cup the curve of her head. His mouth opened, and then she forgot to keep track of anything, because he tasted of brandy and brandy made her dizzy, or maybe it was the movement of his lips, the gentle pressure of his fingers in her hair, the warmth of him settling down through the layers of her skin.
My God. She had missed this. How had she lived without this for so long?
Except that John Schuyler had never kissed her quite like this. She had enjoyed the physical aspects of marriage immensely, but this was something else. This was like . . . delirium. This was like the transports you read about in forbidden novels, the ones that made you huff and roll your eyes and say, Bah! Pure sentiment!
But you couldn’t put the book down, could you? You wanted to believe it was true. That someone, somewhere could give you transports of pure ecstasy. A dose of undistilled exhilaration. Just once in your life.
And then the duke lifted his mouth away, and for a moment she stared at him and he at her. His pupils were large and black in his electric-lit eyes, and the tip of his nose was pink.
“Come back to my stateroom, Penelope,” he said softly. His hands remained in her hair.
“I can’t. Ruby—”
“Damn Ruby.” He kissed her again, more fiercely. “Damn them all, damn everybody else in the world, and especially that vixen de Sauveterre.”
“But you wouldn’t have given me another glance if I hadn’t been carrying those papers.”
“Yes, I would.”
Another kiss, but she didn’t let it last. She put her hands against his chest and pushed him away. “People are watching. We’re creating a scandal.”
“I thought you didn’t care anymore.”
“Only because it will make things awkward for the rest of the voyage.”
He rose to his full ducal height. “If anyone says a word against you—”
“Oh, stop. Really, just stop. I need to think, and it’s very hard to do when you’re looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to eat me up.”
“I hope I am.”
Penelope wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but from the suggestive depth of the duke’s voice, growling from his endless chest, she imagined it was something wholly and deliciously improper. She laughed and broke away, and a passing man averted his gaze in a way that made her realize she was right: the other passengers had noticed them. Had probably watched the whole affair.
She pulled the muffler back up, until it almost covered her nose, and smiled against the wool. There, you see? That wasn’t so hard, was it? A first step in the liberation of Penelope Schuyler.
Olympia took her arm. “Let me at least escort you to your stateroom.”
“I don’t think that would be prudent.”
“I thought you had given up your prudent ways.”
“Not all of them. Not until we reach England. Besides, Ruby will be back in the cabin by now, waiting for me.”
“If you’re lucky,” he said darkly.
But once inside the deckhouse, he parted from her with only a squeeze to the elbow and a hard look, as if he were searching her for clues, as if he didn’t quite trust her change of heart.
“Your lips are quite pink,” she said, over her shoulder.
“So are yours,” he called after her, and then she rounded the corner of the main staircase and hurried down to her stateroom, where Ruby would be getting ready for bed.
Except that the light was already out, and the room quite dark.
“Ruby?” she said, and a wiry arm slipped around her neck, pressing so firmly against her windpipe that she almost didn’t notice the sharp point digging in to the general region of her intestines.
***
He didn’t know quite what made him stop, poised and watchful, outside the door to his stateroom. He never did, on such occasions. Some noise below the level of conscious recognition, he supposed; some animal perception, honed to razor-sharpness over the long course of his career.
Something was amiss.
In the next instant, he was bolting down the stairs four at a time, l
eaping over the banister like a steeplechaser to land at the head of the corridor leading to Penelope’s cabin, where he collided with an object hurtling down the opposite direction.
Oof, he said.
Ugh, the object grunted, lurching to the floor.
Off balance already, the duke staggered backward, caught himself, and reached instinctively for a flailing arm in a dark wool sleeve.
But the arm was too quick, and his strength and balance hadn’t caught up with his instinct. A twist, a slither, and the person had ducked beneath his soaring wingspan to scurry down the corridor to the staircase. Olympia turned and caught a glimpse of fabric, a dark flutter that might have been a skirt or a long duster coat, but he couldn’t stop and give chase.
He pivoted about and thundered up the corridor to where a door stood open, letting out a rhombus of light onto the carpet. Just like before, he thought, just like before, except this time—
A slender figure stood inside the door, bent at the waist.
“Penelope!”
He plunged into the cabin and reached for her shoulders.
“I’m fine!” she gasped. “Did you catch her?”
“No, she went down the staircase. Are you hurt?”
“Of course not! Why didn’t you chase her?”
“Because I was coming for you, you idiot!” He turned her to the light and searched her face, which was stunned and rosy, eyes wide and lips parted. He ran his hands along her face, along her throat and shoulders. Her neck was pink, but she was breathing well. “What happened?”
“Never mind! Go! Go after her! Don’t you care?”
“No, damn it! I don’t. I care about you. What happened?” he said again.
“She was waiting in the cabin. Grabbed me by the neck, but I flung her off,” she said, a little proud. A little incredulous.
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to throttle her. “Flung her off?” he said, checking her torso, her arms. His fingers found something wet. “You’re bleeding!”
“Oh!” She looked at her sleeve. “So I am. What a nuisance, she’s ripped right through the coat.”
Already Olympia was tearing the coat from her shoulders, sliding it down her arms, tossing it on the floor. She had been wearing an evening dress of sensible proportions, emerald green, sleeves to the elbows. There was a cut on her forearm, about an inch and a half long, trickling blood. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Thank God you were wearing your coat,” he muttered, taking out his handkerchief. “You’re sure it was a woman?”
