A Wedding by Dawn

by Alison Delaine

  Her hands tightened in her lap. A glance out the window earlier had revealed a drainpipe not two feet from their room. It hadn’t seemed possible that the opportunity would present itself.

  Until now.

  She opened her eyes just a little and found his still closed. Dark lashes lay against sun-kissed skin, and his lips had relaxed into a less grim shape. A moment passed, then another, but those eyes did not reopen. Small creases at their corners testified that he was no mere youth, but with a face like that... No, ancient was hardly accurate.

  Fascinating.

  He was incredibly handsome. There was no denying it.

  But she’d spent too much time locked away in rooms, too many years at the mercy of a man who showed no mercy. She would not exchange Father’s unyielding lack of compassion for a husband’s—not now, not when she was finally mistress of her own life.

  Her toes curled restlessly inside her shoes while his chest rose and fell, rose and fell, a little more deeply with each breath. Wait. Just wait.

  Minutes passed.

  More minutes

  Slowly, carefully, India sat forward. A fresh puff of night air was just cool enough to make her shiver.

  Silently she rose to her feet, tensing, fighting off a sudden nervous tremor as she fixed her eyes on Nicholas Warre.

  His hands lay slack on his lap. No movement. Nothing.

  She crept toward the window. It was torture knowing her pistol was tucked into his breeches, but there was no help for it. She paused at the window and stared at the back of his head, willing him to stay asleep. Between them, the bed sat untouched. Whatever might have happened on that shoddy bed behind him wasn’t going to happen tonight. Or ever.

  Slowly, quietly, she stuck one leg outside.

  Listened.

  Swung the other leg around.

  Listened.

  The only thing she heard was her own heart thundering in her ears. Hurry!

  She sprang into action, reaching for the drainpipe, gripping it with both hands as she swung out of the window and landed with both feet against the building. Through the window she could see his arm and the top of his head.

  She willed him to stay asleep and began her descent. The distance to the ground was nothing compared to a ship’s crow’s nest. Every scrape of her feet against the building sounded like the drag of twenty saws, but already she was near the next floor. The guests in the room directly below theirs had left the window open. She prayed the sound of her feet would not wake them.

  One more floor and she would be on the ground.

  And then, from above, a shout.

  “India!”

  Nicholas Warre’s angry bark shot into the night from inside the room.

  No!

  She glanced up but he hadn’t come to the window—not yet. There were only seconds to spare.

  “Lady India!”

  There was only one escape. She dived toward the open window to her left and clambered through it just as Nicholas Warre’s voice came more clearly from above.

  “Lady India!”

  She tumbled through the window and onto the floor, bruising her elbow. A woman screamed. A man shouted. A large form leaped from the bed just as India scrambled to her feet and darted half-blindly toward the door.

  “Arretez!” the man shouted.

  “Excuse me!” No—French! “Pardonnez!” India stumbled over an open trunk. The woman in the bed screamed loud enough to wake the entire city.

  A pistol shot exploded in the darkness. India screamed and dropped to the floor just as the ball whizzed past her head and slammed into the door. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  “Henri!” the woman shrieked. “Tirez! Tirez!”

  “No! Don’t shoot!” Thank heaven she could speak French—thank heaven she hadn’t needed to read to learn it. There were shouts from other parts of the hotel. Doors slamming.

  A match flared. “Ne bougez pas!” the man ordered.

  “I won’t—I won’t move!” She kept her head buried and her faced pressed to the floorboards. Footsteps pounded upstairs, outside the room, and she needed to leave now or the chance would be lost. “It’s a mistake,” she told him in French. “You must let me go. Please—quickly! I must go!”

  Candlelight sputtered to life. “Un voleur, eh?” He snorted. “Vous allez le regretter.”

  “I’m not a thief. And I am sorry—very sorry. But I must go!” She started to sit up.

  “Henri, idiot! Tirez!”

  “Tais-toi!” There was a mad rustling as though he were struggling into his clothes. Footsteps thundered outside the room. A crescendo of voices poured through the paper-thin walls. Someone pounded on the door.

  “What is going on in there?” came an angry voice in Italian.

  “Please—you must let me leave by the window. There is a man trying to abduct me, and I was only trying to escape—”

  “Silence! The authorities will make quick work of you.”

  The authorities! “No, you must listen. I am not a thief—ouch!” He yanked her to her feet, not listening at all. “I am staying upstairs with a man who is trying to abduct me!”

  He dragged her to the door.

  “I am not a thief!” If he summoned the authorities, she could end up in gaol.

  He wrenched the door open. Nicholas Warre burst into the room followed closely by a man who could only be the innkeeper. There was a commotion of angry voices—the innkeeper furious over the damaged door, the Frenchman outraged by India’s invasion, the woman screaming and huddling beneath the covers, the onlookers exclaiming from the hallway.

  “I must ask you to release my wife,” Nicholas Warre told the man in French.

  “Your wife!” the man exclaimed.

  Faced with a choice between being mistaken for a thief or being mistaken for Nicholas Warre’s wife, she broke away from the Frenchman and launched herself at Mr. Warre.

  “Oh, Nicholas!” India cried, clinging to him. “Tell this man I’m not a thief.”

  He offered the Frenchman a grim smile. “You have my deepest apologies. I am discovering that my bride has unconventional ways of showing her displeasure with me. The lady was not nearly so eager for our nuptials as her father, I’m afraid.”

  “Nicholas, how can you say such a thing? I was perfectly eager until you brought that...that awful woman into our room and tried to make me— Oh!” His grip tightened painfully. “Would not any bride climb out the window under such circumstances?”

  “You can imagine that whatever justice you might hope to exact, she exacts from me tenfold daily,” he told the Frenchman grimly, and gestured toward the pistol. “In fact, perhaps I ought to beg a favor and ask you to put me out of my misery.”

  The Frenchman made a noise.

  “Shame on you, Nicholas. Sir, perhaps you would be so good as to explain to my husband that a wedding night is meant to be a private evening involving only two people.”

  Laughter erupted in the crowd, and India silently thanked Auntie Phil for being a bit too free in describing her friends’ amorous liaisons.

  Nicholas Warre reached into his pocket and held out a sovereign. “For your trouble—again, with my deepest apologies and my sincerest request that you not summon the authorities.”

  India held her breath.

  The Frenchman narrowed his eyes at the coin, and finally lowered his pistol, stalked forward and snatched it. “Bien. Take her away.” He gestured as if India was a pile of refuse in Nicholas Warre’s arms and turned his anger on the crowd. “All of you, allez! Allez!”

  Nicholas Warre dragged her mercilessly into the crowded hallway.

  “If you would rather be shot than marry me,” she told him under her breath, “I would be happy to arrange it.”

  “If you can find a way to escape your cell aboard the ship,” he growled into her ear, “I invite you to try.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  INDIA LAY ON a hammock watching candlelight dance on the wooden walls and letting her
mind go numb, while Millie stood with her forehead and hands pressed against the door. Their prison was a cabin on the same deck as William’s, bolted across the outside with a heavy wooden slider India had barely glimpsed as William shoved her into the cabin with Millie.

  “I can’t let them put me on trial for piracy,” Millie said against the wood. And then, “William!” Millie’s voice cracked as she cried out and pounded on the door. “William!”

  India had learned years ago that pounding, clawing and shouting would not make a locked door open.

  “Millie, please.” A cold wisp of panic snaked through her, and India snuffed it out quickly.

  Millie stopped shouting. “Are you all right?” she asked quietly.

  “My stomach hurts.” It always hurt when she was locked away, probably because being locked away usually meant going without a meal.

  “I’m sure William will send us dinner,” Millie reassured her. She knew what India had endured as a child—she just didn’t know the full truth of why India had been punished so severely.

  And India wasn’t going to tell her. She wasn’t going to tell anyone, ever, if she could help it.

  At least William would not be entering the cabin every few hours to make irate demands that India do the impossible.

  “I knew Father would send someone after me,” India said now, “but I never thought...” About what that would mean for Millie. Truthfully, she’d never really considered that whomever Father sent might actually succeed in capturing her. “Please forgive me.”

  “It isn’t your fault,” Millie said, turning to lean her back against the door.

  The old Millie, the pre-London Millie, would have snipped that it was India’s fault. The two of them always bickered aboard the Possession. And they still bickered plenty. But ever since London...

  It was as if Millie had built a great stone wall around herself that even India could not break through.

  Perhaps that’s what people did after they’d been beaten nearly to death.

  “The money,” Millie said now. “It was everything I had.” Her tone said she already believed their stash of money hidden aboard the Possession was lost forever.

  “We haven’t left Malta yet,” India said, pressing fingers carefully into her belly, trying to relieve the cramping. “We’re still a stone’s throw from the Possession.”

  Their entire plan rested on Millie’s money: it would let them make a start in shipping, which would enable them to make enough profits for Millie to attend the surgical school at Malta while India carried on their trade routes. Eventually, India would buy her own ship and return the Possession to Katherine.

  “She may as well be anchored in Bristol for all the good that does us now.”

  “She’s not in Bristol,” India said irritably. “She’s a hundred yards away. We can swim a hundred yards. We could not swim to Bristol.”

  “We won’t have the opportunity for swimming.”

  “Not unless we look for one.”

  “William’s crew will be crawling the ship like ants.”

  “There won’t be that many of them. If we can escape while it’s dark—”

  “That will only make it more dangerous.”

  “Fine,” India snapped. “We won’t escape. We’ll be locked away in this cabin forever, and William will likely not bring us any dinner—” her stomach spasmed a little “—and we shall waste away until we starve to death and he throws our bones to the fish.”

  India reminded herself that Millie was afraid, had always been afraid even though she would rarely admit it, and that it was only natural for the fear to grow worse after what she’d suffered at her brother’s hands. But still...

  She imagined having Gavin Germain at the business end of her pistol. It would be less than he deserved.

  “Or until Lord Taggart marries you,” Millie said, “and I am hanged or thrown in prison.”

  She hadn’t come all this way only to be captured and dragged back to England, where she would exchange one gaoler for another: her father for a husband who would have complete control over her, would do with her as he pleased, would own her. Who would discover how useless she was and be ashamed of her, but by then it would be too late.

  No. She could not let that happen. At sea, she felt useful. Knowledge came easily. The ropes, the pistol... Father would never, ever have allowed her to touch a pistol.

  “You know what happens to women in prison,” Millie said now.

  “Stop it, Millie.”

  “The same thing that will happen if we manage to escape but can’t retrieve the money.”

  India knew Millie well enough to know exactly what she was thinking. “We’re not going to end up as prostitutes.”

  “You won’t—you’ll be married to Lord Taggart.”

  “The devil I will,” India said sharply, reaching for anger as a lifeline, and finally she sat up, steadying herself in the hammock with toes that barely touched the floor. “We haven’t failed yet. We’re on a ship, aren’t we?” It wasn’t logical, but being on a ship seemed better than not being on a ship.

  Millie let out a strangled laugh. “As if we could take a ship from William.”

  Under no circumstances could they possibly take the ship from William. But, “We could take a longboat. We could float in a barrel if we must. Or perhaps we’ll be attacked and captured.”

  “Being taken captive by Barbary pirates is your solution?”

  “We only have to escape. We’ll find our way back to the Possession before William has a chance to reprovision it for sailing. We’ll sneak aboard—at night if necessary—and we will get the money.” Already half a dozen new thoughts tumbled through India’s mind. “Someone will bring us a meal, and that someone will have to open the door. And that someone—” hopefully not William “—will likely be male.”

  “How is that supposed to be comforting?”

  How much would Nicholas Warre want her if she bedded one of William’s crew? “If our chance for freedom equals my opportunity to ruin myself—”

  “What fascinating mathematics!”

  “—then the odds that we can—”

  “It’s your father’s money Lord Taggart wants, not you. You’d wait until some poor sod delivers our gruel, bed him in the hammock and discover that Lord Taggart still plans to wed you and we are as far from that money as ever.” Millie exhaled. “You’ll likely not have the chance to ruin yourself anyhow. Lord Taggart will do the deed himself at the first opportunity—only wait.”

  India grew warm, remembering how he’d touched her in the alleyway. She rubbed her arms, pacing a little. “What else can I do to deter him?”

  “Likely nothing. God, I hate men,” Millie said bitterly. “I hate them, India.” Those normally soft brown eyes grew hard and cold. “Arrogant sods, expecting everyone to submit to their whims.”

  “Indeed.”

  “A pox on them all.”

  “I shall show him, Millie. I shall show Lord Taggart exactly what kind of wife he would have if he goes through with this, and believe me, he will quickly find some other way to pay off his debt.”

  * * *

  NICK PACED THE quarterdeck, already feeling a little queasy from the roll and sway of the ship, and stared at the near-dark city where that blessedly motionless bed would never see use now—at least, not by him. The injustice of it made him want to cry. Or kill someone.

  If that someone weren’t the key to his financial solvency, he might have done just that.

  Climbing out the window—God’s blood, he’d been careless, letting himself fall asleep with her there. He was lucky she hadn’t slit his throat.

  There were footsteps behind him, and Jaxbury’s voice cut through the night. “India said you threatened to shoot her. Threaten her with your pistol again, and you’ll find your own way back to England.”

  Nick didn’t bother to turn. “Now that we’re aboard, there won’t be a need to threaten her.”

  “Believe that, and you a
re a damned fool.” Jaxbury laughed and crossed his arms, joining Nick at the railing.

  “We’ll be underway in the morning, soon as I find the rest of my crew.”

  “Can’t make England come quickly enough to suit me,” Nick muttered, and contemplated taking a longboat to shore for half a night’s rest.

  “Then you’d better hope the roads through France are passable.”

  Nick’s gaze shot to Jaxbury. “What are you talking about?”

  “Change of plans,” Jaxbury said.

  Now Nick straightened. “Devil there are. You’ll return us to England as you promised.”

  “Happy to, if you’d like to wait a few years.”

  “Now listen here, Jaxbury.” Nick advanced on him. “The agreement was you would help me find her and return us to England along with that ship you were hunting. Immediately.”

  Now Jaxbury’s expression hardened. “Helped you find her, and I don’t care to do anything more. Damned unpleasant business, Warre. Ought to leave you here to find your own way, but I’ve got to get those two away from the Possession. After that—” He shrugged. “Got a mind to stay here awhile and do a bit of trading.”

  “That was not the agreement!”

  “Ought to be plenty of priests in Marseille to do your job for you.”

  France was absolutely, positively out of the question. “You know bloody well a trip through France will present a thousand opportunities for her to run off and get into God knows what kind of trouble.” And would require passage through Paris.

  “Not my problem, Warre.”

  He’d spent fourteen years avoiding Paris and the man who lived there—a man he never cared to meet. Whose existence he tried to forget, but couldn’t.

  “What about Miss Germain?”

  “Miss Germain is my problem. Not yours. We require passage directly to England,” he bit out, knowing there wasn’t a damned thing he could do if Jaxbury refused. “As agreed.”

  “Then I suggest you return to shore and find another ship.”

  Jaxbury knew bloody well that wasn’t an option. On Jaxbury’s ship Lady India was safely locked away; if he arranged for passage aboard a different ship, he would have to try to control her without being noticed. He couldn’t hold a pistol on her from the folds of his greatcoat for an entire voyage—especially not when he would likely be bedridden the entire time.