The Wayward One

by Danelle Harmon

  Blackheath pinned him with a glare that could have melted the ice off a winter lake. “And how long will it take for this frigate to reach Saint-Malo?”

  “Barring any interference from the French and a favorable wind, I should hope some time tomorrow.”

  “And yet the rendezvous is not until Saturday.”

  “Indeed, Your Grace. But the Royal Navy does not, of course, deal with traitors, especially on their terms. It is our belief that the superior size and firepower of the frigate Happenstance will cow this rogue into relinquishing her ladyship and that all will end peacefully and with the least damage to both her reputation and person—”

  “Your belief had better be correct, Hadley, or I’ll see to it that your naval career sinks faster than one of your ships, do you understand me?”

  Hadley spread his hands in a gesture meant to placate. “Your Grace, the Navy is well used to dealing with threats and I am certain we have the situation well under control. In fact, my son himself is commanding the frigate Happenstance and will sail to France, under a flag of truce if need be, in advance of the exchange to try and resolve this with force and cunning. I can assure you, he’s a talented officer and, having been raised in America—I was posted there for a time, you know—he knows how these scoundrels think. I have complete faith that he will secure the release of Lady Nerissa and blow this rogue right out of the water. Now please, let the Navy do its job, and—”

  “The damned Navy had better do its job or you’ll rue the day you ever met me, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. I can assure you—”

  “Get to work,” snarled the duke and without another word, shoved the chair back and slammed out of the room.

  Chapter 10

  Ruaidri had brought her the eggs. Left her alone in his cabin. Thought about spending the night in the remaining boat, slung out on its davits over the stern, and instead decided to try and snatch what little rest would be afforded him in the same place he’d snatched it the previous night.

  Outside the cabin door on the open deck, his head pillowed on his uniform coat, a sea cloak serving as a blanket.

  He slept fitfully and woke up stiff and sore while the deck was still dark, but let no man say that Captain Ruadiri O’ Devir of the American Continental Navy was anything but an officer and a gentleman. He would not give his men anything to talk about by sharing a cabin with his captive.

  Instead, his presence outside the door behind which she slept, ensured that both her safety and her honor were guarded by someone who held both in the highest of esteem:

  Himself.

  He was up and on his feet before dawn, walking the stiffness out of his legs, paying a visit to the recovering McGuire, and finding a drop-line so he could catch her the promised fish. As the sun’s golden glow began to peep above the eastern horizon, he ordered the ship hove to. He had spent his earliest years as a fisherman. It didn’t take him long to catch her a fish and true to his word, he quietly carried it down to the galley, filleted it, and throwing some butter into a cast iron frying pan, cooked it for her himself.

  He didn’t know why he was going to such effort. He told himself that no gently bred woman would go hungry on an American ship, but he wondered if it was more than that. More than feeling a bit sorry for her. More than feeling guilty that his own actions had indeed ruined her life. Maybe it had nothing to do with any of that, and everything to do with his own damned pride.

  He was still thinking about that kiss he’d claimed.

  He’d been unable to stop thinking about it.

  Truth be told, his reaction to it had rattled him a bit…and not much rattled Ruaidri O’ Devir.

  She was English, Anglican, aristocracy, part of a hated race, and the fact that his body had responded to her with lust and longing confused the living hell out of him. No good could come of even allowing himself to think past that kiss. She was his hostage. His bargaining tool for the explosive he’d crossed the Atlantic to get, and he could not let himself be sidetracked by any thoughts of a romantic entanglement.

  And he needed sleep. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he needed sleep.

  Carrying a plate with the still-steaming fish, he opened the door to his cabin, giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. Faint light came in through the stern windows, made shadows play on the decking, and he heard the timeless creaking and settling of the ship’s timbers all around him.

  There. The girl was sitting at his table, her head pillowed on folded arms, her gown shimmering in the faint light and spilling down over her feet to the deck planking. She was fast asleep.

  He moved as silently as a cat toward her and stood there for a moment in the early morning light, his eyes drinking in her beauty. When he had first met her, her pale ivory hair had been carefully pinned up and piled high, her face fashionably pale, her hands in gloves that probably cost more than his entire wardrobe. Now, slumped over his desk with her hair spilling over her arms in wanton defeat, she looked like the innocent young woman she was. Vulnerable. Beautiful. Freed, somewhat, from her constraints.

  Lust stirred in his loins.

  She was someone’s little sister.

  The thought clubbed him just beneath his breastbone. He had a sister, and if some rogue had dared to capture her, he would move hell and earth to find and kill the wretch. This woman’s brothers must be frantic with worry. Sick with fear for her. He tried to ignore the pang of guilt; they were English and this was, after all, war. There was much about war that was unpleasant, and even more that was necessary.

  She is someone’s little sister.

  “God almighty,” he swore, and was standing there wondering whether to wake her with breakfast or leave her there sleeping peacefully, when she made a little sigh in her sleep and stirred.

  She raised her head, and her eyes, clear and beautiful in the early morning light, found his.

  “Captain O’ Devir… I did not hear you come in.”

  He put the plate down on the table in front of her and moved away, not wanting her to know he’d been gazing wistfully down at her, admiring her beauty, softening—a dangerous thing, that—as he thought of her family.

  Instantly, he made his tone gruff. Irritable. “Aye, ye’d not have heard me, because I’d a mind to keep quiet. Here. I brought ye breakfast. Caught and cooked it meself, just as I promised.”

  She looked up at him, blinking.

  And then she smiled, a true and radiant thing that lit him up from the inside out, and Ruaidri felt everything inside of him melt.

  He turned away, quickly, before she could see that that smile had completely undone him. He took off his hat, hung it on a peg, and rubbing at his eyes, blinked the fatigue from them and looked at her. Her face was open and earnest, and he saw that she had caught a bit of sun the previous day.

  You are ruining her.

  “You need sleep, Captain.”

  “I’ll be the judge of what I need.” Good lord above, he couldn’t stay here. He plucked his hat back off the peg. “Get into bed, Lady Nerissa. Ye’ll end up with the divil of a stiff neck and a backache as well if ye insist on sleepin’ in a chair. I’ll leave ye be. Enjoy yer breakfast.”

  She yawned and straightened up, pushing a hand through her hair. It rippled like silk down her back, and he felt himself beginning to harden beneath his breeches. “I can’t sleep, Captain. Once I’m awake, I’m awake.” She attempted a conciliatory smile. “You look exhausted. Where have you been sleeping? This is your cabin, is it not?”

  “Outside yer door.”

  “What?”

  “Well, someone needs to keep that motley pack of blackguards out there away from ye. Might as well be me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Sit down and have some breakfast with me.”

  “No, Sunshine, I caught and cooked that for you, not myself.”

  “There’s far more here than I could eat in a week. Please, have some. And thank you. It was very kind of you to go to such an effort on my behalf.
”

  “No effort a’tall,” he said, unable to conceal the growling of his own stomach as she cut the piece of fish in half and pushed the plate toward him. He pushed it back.

  “Ladies first.”

  She ate. No complaining about dirty flatware, weevils, gooey gruel. She was happy and he had made her so and that made him, for some strange reason, happy as well. When she was finished, she pushed the plate and the fork across the table to him and he took it, standing up to eat so that she would not have to relinquish the chair.

  He finished the meal and decided it was past time to leave.

  “You should get some rest, Captain.”

  “I’m fine. Just need some coffee.”

  Her pale blue eyes darkened with what looked like concern. “You went and caught me a fish, cooked it yourself, brought it to me and you won’t even sleep in your own bed. That isn’t right.” She watched him head to the door. “Why don’t you just sleep here? It’s not like my reputation isn’t already in tatters. Grab an hour or two. I can go out on deck and keep company with Midshipman Cranton if it would make you feel better.”

  He grinned. “Plan on murderin’ me in me sleep, lass?”

  “If I planned on murdering you, I’d make sure you were awake so that you’d feel every horrible bit of it.” Was that actually a hint of a grin on her sweet, haughty face, or was his own exhaustion playing tricks on his mind? “Besides, that honor will be my brothers’. No need for me to kill you when the four of them will be drawing straws over it.”

  He laughed, shrugged out of his uniform and put both his hat and the coat on the peg. He sat down on his bunk. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her turn her face away, probably expecting him to show himself to be the barbarian she surely thought him to be by undressing in front of her. He leaned over to remove his shoes. Through a wildly curling tendril of black hair that fell down over his forehead, he could see her face still in profile, but her blue eyes cut over to look at him, just briefly, and he smiled privately to himself. He wished he could give her more to look at. If she were a lass like Dolores Ann, he most certainly would….

  Sudden fatigue came crashing over him. Still clad in his waistcoat, shirt, breeches and stockings, he lay back against the sheet. Even in here the bedding felt damp, perpetually imbibed with salt air. He didn’t care. He turned his head on the pillow, looked sleepily at his beautiful captive, and gave her his most blinding smile.

  “’Tis dreamin’ of that kiss, I’ll be,” he said, with a pointed sigh.

  Her smile vanished and in the gathering light, he saw the quick stains of color on her cheeks.

  “Go to sleep, Captain O’ Devir,” she said tightly and rising, went to sit at the windows at the stern, putting distance between them.

  The rising sun painted the curve of her forehead, her pert nose and her lovely chin, and the strikingly beautiful image of her cast-in-light profile was the last Ruaidri knew before sleep claimed him.

  * * *

  Nerissa drew her legs up tightly beneath her skirts and leaned her side against the stern windows.

  She tried to concentrate on the sea below, the way the early morning sun caught the tossing waves and made them sparkle, the way the salty foam glittered like diamonds on a canopy of blue. Through the open windows she caught the odors of saltwater, hemp, varnish and now, something frying as forward, breakfast was prepared. Sounds above as the deck was holystoned; the endless, timeless, creak and groan of timbers, of masts, of the hull itself. The song of the wind and sigh of the tumbling waves, Lieutenant Morgan’s voice somewhere outside, sunlight, now, high enough above the horizon that its pale light was starting to fill the cabin, movement out of the corner of her eye as the captain’s blue uniform coat swung back and forth with the roll of the ship.

  And Ruaidri O’ Devir.

  He lay several feet away and fast asleep. She had purposely avoided looking at him. Instead, she had tried to concentrate on the shipboard sounds around her, the smells, the morning light, but her brain only noted these things in passing; it only noted them, because the primary and most pressing object of its attention was the lowly Irish scoundrel lying motionless, virile, vulnerable, just a few feet away.

  She would not look at him.

  She could not help but look at him.

  She turned her head, resting the opposite cheek against her knee and telling herself it was only so that she wouldn’t get a stiff neck by gazing so long out the windows. It just happened that Captain O’ Devir was in her line of sight, now. She didn’t intend to look at him.

  But she did.

  She didn’t intend to quietly get to her feet, either, and move soundlessly across the cabin, but she did.

  And she didn’t intend to stop near his cot and stand there looking down at him in a curious mixture of fascination, resentment and wonder, because this same man who should be her greatest enemy at the moment, this man whose background and class were so far removed from her own as to make him beneath her notice, this man who made the blood warm her veins and something to sing like a bird inside her when she thought of his kiss, was someone who should be reviled.

  But she did stop near his bed.

  And she did not revile him.

  Instead, she stood there quietly looking down at him as the deck on which she stood rolled gently beneath her feet. He lay on his back, one arm resting on his chest, his head rolling slightly back and forth with the motion of the brig. Up close, it felt deliciously wicked to study him. To note the way his long black lashes swept his high cheekbones, the boldness of his nose and brows, the Celtic look about his mouth and chin and the dark bristles that shadowed his jaw. His hair curled in wild abandon around his face and then fell away, framing shoulders that were wide and imposing even at rest, and she watched his arm, the hand lax, the fingers well-formed and strong, rising up and down atop his chest in time with his breathing.

  Something softened in her heart.

  You are beautiful, Ruaidri O’ Devir.

  And I hate you for it.

  She ached to reach out and touch his jaw, just to see what it felt like. Was it harsh and wiry? Stubbly and hard? What did his skin feel like? Would his lips be firm beneath her fingers, even slightly parted as they were in sleep?

  She did not touch him, of course.

  She was a lady. Ladies did not go around touching men in their sleep; they did not go around touching men, full stop.

  What do you have to lose, Nerissa?

  The thought hit her with sobering, and suddenly wicked, freedom.

  What do you have to lose? Your reputation just by being here is in tatters. This will be the biggest scandal to hit London in decades. You are already ruined. People will assume you’ve been violated by this entire ship and its wild, wicked captain, so really, what do you have to lose?

  Nerissa gazed down at her captor and began chewing on her lower lip.

  You have nothing to lose. You can’t lose something you’ve already lost. Lucien, in trying to quash rumors and scandal, will marry you off so fast that your head will spin when you get back to England. These are your last days of freedom…of making decisions as Lady Nerissa de Montforte, even if you are this man’s prisoner.

  She began to reach out, her fingers stretching toward that shadowed cheek…that dangerously beautiful mouth….

  And paused.

  What on earth are you DOING?

  She drew back, resolute, and retreated back across the cabin to the stern windows, leaving Captain O’ Devir to his dreams.

  * * *

  Captain O’ Devir’s dreams, however were far from pleasant.

  He was not a sound or heavy sleeper and Dolores Ann was close. She was there, her bright, bawdy smile beckoning him, her hand reaching out to slip beneath the bottom edges of his coat and find him in a quick, hard caress that left him groaning before she teasingly flitted away.

  Delight, she’d called herself. It was what everyone called her save for her family, who didn’t know her for what s
he really was.

  A strumpet.

  A teasing, careless flirt who hitched her wagon to the hero of the moment, a bawdy opportunist who lusted after the star that shone brightest without thought or care for whom she hurt.

  He knew that, and yet he’d loved her anyhow.

  Knew it and had asked her to be his wife.

  In his sleep, Ruaidri flipped over onto his side and tried to make Delight go away but she did not, of course.

  She was there and now, so was Josiah, and the two were meeting for the first time at a patriot gathering as Ruaidri introduced his bride-to-be to his friend and fellow captain.

  Josiah, smiling his slow, easy smile with the extra space between his front teeth giving him an innocent little-boy deviltry that made him all but irresistible to the fairer sex. Josiah who had just won the accolades of the people of Boston and the gratitude of its leaders for capturing a British sloop full of munitions and powder that the patriots desperately needed. Josiah helplessly gaping at Delight’s ample charms, while she herself lit up like a firefly in a hot June night. The two had had eyes only for each other.

  Ruaidri had been drawn away in conversation with John Adams and when he returned a few moments later, already knew it was too late.

  “Dolores, come away,” he murmured, forgotten. “I should get ye home to yer mother.”

  “But Roddy, your friend Josiah here was just telling me about the way he ran straight through the British blockade and once on the other side of it, captured that sloop! He’s a hero, Roddy! He’s your friend. Aren’t you happy for him?”

  “I told yer father I’d have ye home before dark. Let’s go.”

  A bright burst of her laughter and no, he didn’t want to see it but he did—the light, evocative touch of her fingers against Josiah’s wrist, the playful toss of her head, the flirtatious giggle.