The Wayward One

by Danelle Harmon

  The duke stood there staring at him, his nostrils quivering with a rage so tightly controlled that Hadley felt a cold trickle of sweat beginning to slide down the groove of his spine.

  “Your Grace, if I had stayed there, keeping this rebel’s ship in sight, I dare not think of how much more he might have hurt the lady just to taunt me or punish me for staying vigilant. I—”

  “Cease your damned prattle! I don’t want to hear excuses! You went in there without a plan, with nothing to offer O’ Devir in trade except your own foolish arrogance in thinking he’d be cowed because you had a bigger ship than he did. Is that not so, Hadley?”

  Hadley flushed darkly.

  Swearing under his breath the duke stalked to the window, where he stood looking out at the surrounding buildings, his fists clenched at his side as he tried to get his temper under control. Hadley let out a pent-up breath. The duke was angry, yes, but beneath that anger was a debilitating worry, a visceral panic over the fate and future of the little sister he loved.

  “So you saw him strike her,” he said softly, his voice trembling like a volcano about to explode. “And you left her there alone with this…this rebel, this pirate, this murderer.”

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

  “I saw no recourse, Your Grace. I can assure you that I am as worried as you are—”

  “You cannot be one iota as worried as I am,” snarled the duke, turning and impaling Hadley with a glare so black and deadly that the naval captain took a step back. “She is not your sister!”

  “Lucien, easy,” said Lord Andrew, laying a restraining hand on his brother’s arm as Blackheath returned his anguished gaze to the street. “We will sort this out.”

  “I actually have an idea,” Hadley said, drawing himself up. “It is not without risk, but I think it will work.”

  Blackheath looked at him with disdain.

  “We bring Lord Andrew to Saint-Malo and let him trade himself for his sister. And then rescue him once the exchange is made.”

  “We cannot give O’ Devir the explosive,” the elder Hadley said, vehemently shaking his head. “That is quite out of the question.”

  “You cannot give him the explosive, Admiral, because I haven’t yet sold it to you,” Lord Andrew countered, warming to Hadley’s suggestion. “It is still mine to do with as I wish, and if I want to trade it for my sister, that is my prerogative.

  The admiral’s mouth fell open in horror that this aristocrat, whose blood was as ancient and blue as the ocean itself, would betray his country so, even if it was to rescue his sister.

  “However,” continued Lord Andrew, “that is not my intent.”

  All three men stared at the young inventor.

  “It is unthinkable, of course, that I hand over the explosive,” Lord Andrew continued. “However, your son’s plan has merit.” At the thunderous fury rising in his brother’s face, he merely shrugged. “Why settle for the explosive when you can have the man who actually knows how to make it?”

  “You’re not going to share that information with him, are you?”

  “Of course not, Admiral Hadley,” Andrew said in disgust. “I’ll stall him. Put him off. Once Nerissa is safe and I’m on his ship instead, I’ll go below. Plead seasickness or something, anything to get me off the deck so you, Hadley, will have no reason not to fire on that brig and bring these pirates to heel. It could work, you know.”

  “Aye, it could.”

  “Your Grace?”

  The duke’s eyes, black, bottomless pits of pain, met his brother’s. “I’d rather we just send over a false explosive. I don’t want either of you in such danger.”

  The younger Hadley shook his head. “I doubt O’ Devir is such a fool that he wouldn’t test it first, and if he finds it to be inferior to his expectations and we’ve not held up our end of the bargain, there’s no telling what he’ll do to Lady Nerissa. No, Your Grace, I think this is the best way of handling this situation…and I can assure you that I will not fire on that brig until your sister is safely upon my ship and Lord Andrew is well off the enemy’s deck.”

  Lucien’s mouth tightened. “Very well, then, Hadley.” He let his black stare pierce the other man. “But the moment you’ve captured that vermin, you will bring him to me. I will be the one to decide his fate, not your guns. Do you understand?”

  “Sir, I cannot—”

  The duke’s fist came down hard on the senior Hadley’s desk. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. You make yourself very clear, indeed.”

  Chapter 17

  Morning.

  An evening spent by herself, an unpalatable meal brought by Joey who’d sat and demonstrated some of “Ol’ Scup’s” vocabulary until Nerissa couldn’t help but laugh at the parrot’s raunchy command of the English language, the captain coming in briefly to retrieve a chart, and another long night in darkness lit only by a swinging lantern while she lay awake and pondered Captain Ruadri O’ Devir and the way he made her feel.

  Intrigued. Outraged. Fascinated. Incensed.

  Open to possibilities that were too scandalous to even consider.

  Stay here with me.

  Early sunlight sought out the gloom of the cabin. Tomorrow was the scheduled rendezvous. Today would be her last full one aboard the brig. What would this day bring?

  Tigershark’s motion beneath her was oddly comforting, and soothed her restlessness in ways that she hadn’t expected. Up and down, up and down, while the heavy wooden planking beneath her feet seemed permanently set at a forty-five degree angle.

  If my brothers could see me now.

  She was rather glad they could not. She already feared for her captor’s safety once Lucien caught up with them. And while Captain O’ Devir might have confused and even angered her with the abrupt and unexpected way in which he’d pulled back in answer to her innocent question, the idea of harm coming to him filled her with a sharply unbearable ache. A worry that she hadn’t expected.

  The sun rose higher. She got up and made her toilet as best she could at the crude little washstand, ran her fingers through her hair and tried to restore her appearance with the help of the bit of mirror above it. She ached for a real bath. A comb. Lavender water and silk against her skin, edible food, a decent bed and Ruaidri O’ Devir.

  Ruaidri O’ Devir.

  She pressed her fingertips into her eyes and took a deep breath. Oh, what is the matter with me? She walked over to the little ship model wedged into the bulkhead and picked it up, fingering the smooth, lovingly-crafted hull, the carefully-strung rigging. It was a work of art, something exquisitely beautiful made from materials that were quite primitive, and she wondered, now, if that rough, common man out there, he who wore the uniform of an organized navy but was as wild and untamed as the windy, rain-soaked moors of his native land, had made it.

  Behind her the door opened. Her instinct was to hurriedly put down the little model, but she had nothing to hide. Boldly, she met the eyes of the man standing in the doorway, his face in shadow beneath the brim of his tricorne hat, his tall, powerful body silhouetted by the light from behind him.

  He didn’t seem to know what to say.

  Neither did she.

  He walked into the cabin and wordlessly removed the hat. “Mornin’, Sunshine.”

  “Good morning, Captain.”

  “Got some business to attend to,” he said brusquely. “I’ll try not to disturb ye.”

  She shrugged. It was, after all, his cabin. Wordlessly, she watched as he went to the desk, pulled out the chair and sat down. Flipped open the log book and sharpened a quill, dipped it in ink, and set it to paper. Her eyes drank in the sight of him. She had missed him. Hadn’t been able to stop thinking of him. Now, she itched to move closer, just to see if he truly was able to read and write as he claimed or if he was just going through the motions to fool her. But his hand was quick and sure, his intent conveyed to the page in decisive flourishes and quick, repeated dips of the quill
into the little bottle of ink, over and over again in almost an agitated motion. No man who was illiterate would write like that. She stepped closer. Came up behind him and looked down. He wrote with his left hand. His words were clean and sure, his spelling sound. No illiteracy here. She smiled.

  “You’re an enigma, Captain O’ Devir.”

  “And why is that, Sunshine?”

  She looked down at his entry, preceded by the date and followed by the weather and sea conditions. Spoke the British frigate Happenstance, Captain Hadley. No shots exchanged. McGuire still in sick bay. Succinct and to-the-point.

  She took a deep breath and let her hand drop, lightly to his shoulder. To the gold epaulet that capped that bulging expanse of muscle, the silken thread soft beneath her fingers. He raised his head. Put the pen down.

  What am I doing?

  “No longer angry with me?” he asked softly, tilting his head to look up at her.

  “I was wrong to pry. Besides—” she shrugged. “You’re a male.”

  “Aye, last time I checked.”

  “And males sometimes prefer to keep things inside. I should know… I’ve spent my life living with four of them.”

  He corked the bottle of ink, wiped the pen and pushed the log book aside so that his entry could dry. “We all have things we don’t like to talk about. Things that cause pain simply by givin’ them voice. Things we’re ashamed of, even.”

  Her hand was still resting on his gold-threaded epaulet. Propriety demanded that she remove it. Her own will told her to let it stay and besides, the captain was making no move to dislodge her touch.

  “So where do we go from here?” she asked, her fingers beginning a slow kneading of his shoulder beneath the dark blue cloth until she felt the great muscles relax.

  “Is there a ‘we?’”

  “There is as long as I’m still aboard this ship.” Mustering her courage, satisfying her curiosity, she let her hand wander closer to his neck, gently rubbing the stiffness out of his muscles as she gazed down at his wildly-curling black hair. He had tried to tame it into a queue, but the thick, spiraling tendrils had a mind of their own, springing out of the queue, curling around his ears, his forehead, his face in wild abandon.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday and it’ll be here before a body knows it,” he said softly, and leaned his cheek, rough with the day’s bristle, against the back of her hand. It was a gesture of acquiescence. Trust. Encouragement.

  “Yes.”

  “I had a thought last night,” he said quietly. “Thought I’d bolloxed this up good by abducting the wrong de Montforte, that I was wrong to take you and not yer brother. And maybe I was. I regret the scandal this will cause ye back home, regret that it might well indeed ruin ye, but there’s one thing I don’t regret, Lady Nerissa, and that’s having had the chance to know ye.”

  She looked down at his epaulet. “It has been…an adventure,” she allowed. “I’ll not soon forget it.”

  He turned his head slightly, just enough that he could look up into her eyes. “Ah, but will ye forget me?”

  She was silent for a long moment. Her hand still rested against the base of his neck, a curling black tendril of his hair brushing her knuckles. She was just about to remove it when he quietly reached up and laid his own hand over her own, keeping it there.

  “Will ye, lass?”

  She met his gaze with resolution, and felt something huge and painful grip her heart. “I will never forget you, Captain O’ Devir.”

  For another long moment he remained quiet. He reached out and shut the log book and just sat there staring at it. His mouth was tight. She could almost hear him thinking. At last he turned in his chair so that he could look up at her, and she saw then that his eyes reflected the sudden, unreasonable sadness she felt in her own heart.

  “Can’t say as if I’ll ever forget you either, Lady Nerissa.”

  “This—this friendship, or whatever it is we share…it is an unexpected complication, is it not?”

  He smiled. “A complication, but given the circumstances, not unexpected.”

  “Tomorrow, I will be reunited with my family and you will sail back to America. Should you make it back across the Atlantic with the explosive, or even without it, your life, Captain O’ Devir, only stands to get better. Mine on the other hand…” she made a helpless, defeated little sound that wasn’t quite laughter, but a reflection of the hopelessness her future held. “Mine will be one of uncertainty, memories and longing.” At his look of deepening regret, she hastily added, “And don’t think for one instant it’s all your doing. It was destined to be that way the moment you brought me aboard and showed me there’s more to life than genteel boredom. That my heart still knows how to beat, that I am capable of responding to a man, perhaps even…even to have feelings for him.” She looked unflinchingly into his eyes. “Soon, Captain, we will have parted, never to meet again.” She looked down. “Of course I will miss you.”

  He let another long moment go by before he finally spoke.

  “I could give ye somethin’ to remember me by,” he said softly.

  He turned fully around in the chair, taking her hand and bringing it down to his lips until they feathered against her knuckles. His gaze met hers, his intent clear.

  “…. Something more than…just a kiss?” she whispered.

  “Aye, lass. Something more.”

  She did not move away. Did not show outrage or insult, but simply closed her eyes as his tongue came out to touch her knuckles, first one, then the next, moving down her hand all the way to her little finger. He turned her hand over and kissed the underside of her wrist.

  Nerissa’s eyes opened wide.

  Captain O’ Devir merely smiled and looked up at her through his long, long lashes. And then his lips moved down the heel of her hand, past her palm and out to the tip of her little finger and once there, pulled it deeply into his mouth and sucked it, hard.

  Nerissa flushed, the breath catching in her throat. Sensation gathered in her nipples, between her legs. And now Captain O’ Devir was getting to his feet. Unbuttoning his long blue and white uniform coat, taking it off and putting it over the back of the chair he’d just vacated. He turned and reached for her.

  She all but plunged into his embrace.

  Desire flared like fuel on a bonfire…her female body responding to his tough, hardened male one which made her feel deliciously small and protected, which smelled good, which felt good, which was good as she allowed herself to be pulled close to it and his arms, thick, brawny, hopelessly powerful arms—a man’s arms—went around her.

  A man’s arms.

  She felt herself growing warm and wet between her legs as she pressed herself against him. The bar of his forearm was an iron vise around her back, his hand against her shoulder blades and now following the curve of her spine, cupping her buttocks, and pressing the length of her up against his own. Oh, damn him, damn herself, how she wanted him. Craved him. Ached for the touch of his skin against hers, the feel of him against her, inside her, all around her. He was giving her that but it did nothing to soothe that craving and only made it worse, pushing her toward something she sensed but did not understand. She caught her lip and pressed her forehead against his chest, flushing hot with longing as his finger traced the seam of her bottom through the breeches and moved purposely down to that insatiable place between her legs, wiping it, pressing it, through the breeches. Nerissa sank down against his fingers, the craving becoming unbearable. His hands drifted to her hips, pulling her back onto unsteady feet. She did not protest. Her eyes drifted shut, and a soft moan came from deep within her throat as she wound her arms around his neck and raising herself on tiptoe, met his lips with her own.

  This was not a tame, chaste kiss like the ones she’d known from Perry. Oh, no…this was a harsh, demanding, take-no-prisoners onslaught of his mouth against her own, his body against hers, fierce and unrelenting and driving her head back even as his hand, again rubbing her bottom through the breeches
and causing her to go dizzy with sensation, forced her closer and closer until she was pinned against the hard swelling in his breeches. The feel of that thick, rigid flesh against her own femininity, his mouth forcing her lips apart until his tongue drove between her teeth and sought her own, the brutal strength of his arm behind her back, all hazed together in a whirling blur of sensation and she pressed her breasts hard against him, pushing her fingers up into the wild, unruly locks of his hair.

  She pulled away, her body throbbing in places she hadn’t known existed, her breath coming in hard pants through her mouth and the ache between her legs crying for his touch.

  Was it possible to get any closer to another human being?

  Of course it was.

  And she knew it as well as he did, and wanted it with a desperate certainty that didn’t bear questioning.

  “Captain O’ Devir—”

  “Ruaidri,” he said hoarsely, nuzzling the hair at her temple, the top of her cheekbone.

  “Rory?”

  “Ru-ah-ree,” he repeated impatiently, his tongue coming out to touch, to taste, the delicate skin of her ear and trace its shell-like perfection.

  She was back in his arms again, his jaw rough with stubble beneath her fingertips, his hair coarse and wiry as she plunged her hand up through his wildly curling mane and freed it from its queue to spill around his broad, powerful shoulders. Her fingers explored the feel of his cheeks and jaw. His hands roved down her back, framed her hips, and she suddenly grabbed for his shoulders as he lifted her as easily as if she were an empty jar. She pulled her legs up, wrapped them around his hips as he walked and locked her arms around his neck, watching the deck now moving beneath her from over his shoulder.

  “Y’ ought to hate me, lass.”

  “I ought to, but I don’t.”

  “I’m not in the business of ravishin’ beautiful young women, even if they are English.”

  “Sometimes a woman wants to be ravished, Ruaidri. Just once.”