His shoulder was almost touching hers.
“A mystery, that, why they’re wet, isn’t it? Perhaps you’ll tell me sometime.”
“You ended up in the pool over there. The rest of us fished you out before you could drown.”
“Ah.” She sensed him smiling in the darkness. “Well now, I needed a bath, so no harm done, eh?”
She could feel his warmth tantalizing her with its nearness, and everything in her ached to push herself closer to it even as the idea rather mortified her. He was so much bigger and stronger than she, and the idea of being completely wrapped in that protective warmth, to be blanketed in it and his firm assurances that they were all going to emerge from this nightmare alive, brought such a yearning to her that she shivered all the more.
He shifted his weight beside her—and then she stiffened as his arm went around her shoulders.
“May I?” he asked.
“I would’ve thought you couldn’t bear to touch me.”
“What?”
“Well, the fact that I repulse you is obvious.”
“Why would you say something so absurd?”
“You were angry that I kissed you awake.”
“I wasn’t…angry.”
“What were you, then?”
“Many things, but not angry. Confused, more than anything else. Embarrassed. Surprised. You caught me off guard.”
“Yes, well, that was the point. You were a little too comfortable in slumber, and we needed you.”
He was silent for a moment. “Well, you have me now,” he murmured, his voice deep and reassuring, and let the weight of his arm rest across her shoulders.
It was all she could do not to burrow closer to him, to allow herself to relax into his warmth and protection. She was ever so cold. But his earlier actions had hurt, and they still hurt—no matter what excuses he offered.
He, obviously, had forgotten the kiss. Or maybe it didn’t matter enough to him to hold onto the memory. His arm, so reassuringly heavy and strong, tightened around her and drew her as close as she ached to be, right up into the deliciously warm, sheltering underside of his shoulder and against his ribs. Right up against the hard muscles beneath his waistcoat, smelling like damp cotton and the sand on which he’d lain unconscious. Right up against him.
She kept herself stiff, hoping he couldn’t read her thoughts.
“Relax,” he said quietly. “I don’t bite. I’m just trying to keep you warm.”
The shivering came in involuntary spasms now, and something about his reassuring presence, his strong, comforting manner, unleashed all the fear of the past two days, the uncertainty of their fate, the worry about her brother and crew and the emotions—and yes, she had them, and she could not make sense of them—that had swept through her at the feel of his mouth beneath hers, the touch of his hand in the darkness, and now…this. And he was confused? Tears threatened, and she blinked them back. What was wrong with her? How and why was he affecting her so? He was just one man, but she knew in her heart that he would keep her safe, that he would keep them all safe—or die trying.
And it was in that moment that Rosalie fell just a little bit in love with him.
Or maybe more than just a little bit.
She burrowed closer to him and felt the tears flooding her eyes. Tears of relief. Of hysteria that she hadn’t allowed to surface over these horrible events of the last twenty-four hours. Of allowing herself to lean on someone else for just a few moments, someone stronger than she, someone who wasn’t succumbing to emotion. Her sinuses burned and she sniffled, hating herself for the weakness and taking deep, steadying breaths in the hopes that he would not notice.
But of course he noticed.
He seemed to notice everything—as the quiet types often did.
“Think of your family, Miss McCormack,” he said softly. “Of how happy they’ll be to see you again.”
“I might never see them again. Nor even another sunrise.”
He drew her closer. “Now you sound like Joel. Stop it.”
Her head nodded a jerky assent in the darkness and she took another deep, steadying breath. “I will try.”
“Try harder.”
She got herself under control. There was something about him that was so quietly reassuring that she felt drawn to him like a ship to harbor. He felt safe in the storm of life, in the uncertainty of tomorrow, let alone tonight. Trust in him flooded her.
“I have a knife in my boot,” she said. “And a pistol hidden under my skirts. When those pirates come back, I’m not going down without a fight.”
“Do you, now?”
“And you dismissed me as a useless female.”
“A mistake I won’t make again.”
She sensed him smiling in the darkness. They sat there together, neither saying a word, each thinking their own thoughts. She could not know how very aware he was of her softness, her scent, the feel of her body tucked protectively within the shelter of his, the way her own take-charge strength had dug its way into his awareness and forced him to admire it. She could not know that he couldn’t stop reliving what it had felt like to be pulled back to his senses by a kiss, and what her sweet, soft lips had felt like against his own. Of how they had penetrated the nothingness, become the center of his existence until full consciousness had overwhelmed him.
There were worse things to wake up to—even though the reality of the situation had left him confused and just a little bit shocked. And just as she could not know his thoughts, he could not know that she, too, was reliving the kiss, wishing, perhaps, that it had been a bit slower to be effective, wishing that he had responded to it with anything but indignation. He could not know that she was firmly engraving it into her memory and into her heart, to be taken out and relived over and over again when she was an old maid.
The kiss.
It lay unspoken between them—both of them painfully aware of it, both desperate to examine the feelings it had evoked, neither quite ready to explore it further for fear of rejection by the other.
The darkness lay heavily around them.
“So,” she said, at length. “How’s your head, Captain Merrick?”
“Throbbing with every beat of my heart.”
“I thought you were dead when Liam carried you in.”
“Liam carried me?”
“Yes.”
“All the way from the ship?”
“I don’t know, but I’m assuming so….”
Over in the corner, they could both hear the big Irishman’s snores.
“Dear God, that could not have been easy for him,” Captain Merrick said ruefully. “He’s got a lot of aches and pains.”
“I have the feeling, Captain, that if he left you there to die, the anguish of your death would have completely overshadowed those aches and pains. It’s obvious he’s quite devoted to you, and steadfastly loyal.”
“That feeling is mutual.” He resettled his arm across her shoulders. “He’s like family to me.” And then, quietly, “Aside from Connor and Maeve and her children, pretty much all I have left.”
The silence stretched on and his pain was a tangible thing, filling the darkness, the space around him, and she thought of the anguished exchange of words between him and Liam Doherty.
“I’m sorry, Captain Merrick.”
“Thank you, Miss McCormack. I’m sorry, too.”
Again, the silence. Liam’s steady snores. Water dripping, somewhere. Outside in the forest, the scream of an unknown animal.
“And what of your family?” he asked, at length. “Tell me about this brother of yours we came here to find.”
“Stephen.” She dug her heels into the sand. “He’s significantly younger than me. Red-haired and freckled, also like me. Burns easily in the sun.” She made a little noise of grudging acceptance. “Also, like me.”
“Got some Irish behind you?” There was a fondness in his voice.
“Scottish.” She shifted position, allowing herself to relax and e
njoy his protective warmth. She could hear his heart beating beneath her ear, and thought of how he’d just told her that each thump pounded in his head. He was obviously not the complaining sort, as he’d made no further mention of it. “And what about you? Kieran is not a common name.”
“My father was from Connemara. Half-Irish. My siblings and I were all given Irish names.”
“Are you the oldest?”
“The youngest of three. My sister Maeve is the oldest and my brother Connor is the middle child. He’s a privateer too, recently wed. Maeve’s married to Sir Graham Falconer, the British Admiral on Barbados.” He was silent for a long moment. “I was on my way back home from visiting them, dreading going home, really, when I ran into your Penelope.”
“I bet you wish now that you hadn’t.”
“On the contrary, Miss McCormack.”
He said nothing more, letting her draw what she might from his words, and she suddenly felt awkward and shy. Best to steer the conversation back to safe ground.
“So your family are all mariners?” she asked.
“Every one of them. And yours?”
“My father is a businessman. He owns ships, shops, does a lot of trade—or did, before the blockade—dabbles in politics.” Father. His seamed face with its long side-whiskers rose up in her mind and with it, the threat of sudden tears. She would likely never see him again, let alone her mother or her little sister, Penelope. Hope, dependent upon the injured man against whom she rested, was fading with every moment that time marched toward its inevitable outcome. She bit her lip, trying to quell the places her imagination insisted on taking her, to control her sudden trembling.
“I’ll get you back home safe and sound, Miss McCormack,” he said quietly. His arm tightened around her body, squeezing her reassuringly close. “I promise.”
She nodded jerkily, afraid to speak for fear he’d hear the weakness in her voice, afraid to ask the next question and angry with herself that she was placing such childish trust in his answers. He was not, after all, a god—though at the moment he almost felt like one.
“And Stephen…. Do you think he’s still alive, Captain Merrick?” When he didn’t immediately answer, she rushed to fill the silence with a barrage of words. “I mean, if they’d killed him I’d know, wouldn’t I? I’d feel it in my heart, in my soul, in my very bones, wouldn’t I? That horrible loss of his existence, an emptiness?”
He took a long moment to respond, so long that she wasn’t even sure that he was going to. “I can’t answer that objectively, Miss McCormack. It can be difficult to separate hope from what we know in our hearts to be true.”
The tone of his voice, the carefully delivered words and underlying it all, the resignation, told her that he was referring to his lost parents.
She reached out in the darkness and tentatively found his hand. He did not pull away. They sat there together, comforted by each other’s warmth, each other’s hopes, finding strength and solace in each other’s pain.
“What happened to them?” she asked gently.
It was several moments before he spoke.
“We’d all gone down to Barbados to spend the winter with Maeve and Sir Graham for the birth of their fourth child. It was the first real sea trial for Sandpiper, and Da was delighted with her. He designed her…he and my uncle Matt, they built her.” He took a deep breath. “We had a lovely visit with my sister and her family, and Connor and his new wife, until my mother took sick with a fever. She wanted to go home to Newburyport.” He paused for a long moment. “They should never have left, but my da, he couldn’t deny her and wanted her only to be happy.”
Rosalie squeezed his hand, accompanying him in his pain.
“Da asked Connor to take them home in our schooner, Kestrel. She was a gallant old girl. My father, you see, was a privateer during the last war and a gifted naval architect. He could draw and design a ship from pencil shavings. He designed Kestrel. He designed Sandpiper….” He paused. “For me.”
“We’ll get her back, Captain Merrick.”
“Yes, we will.” His voice hardened. “If it’s the last thing I do I’ll get her back, because that ship is mine, my father’s last gift to me, and I’ll be roasted in boiling oil if I let those vicious killers out there have her.” He took a deep and steadying breath. “Especially those vicious killers.”
She said nothing, waiting.
“You see, Miss McCormack, the pirates that are holding us are the same bunch that Kestrel encountered on her way home to Newburyport. I wasn’t there; I was still back on Barbados with my sister and her family, but I heard what happened from Liam, from my brother, from my cousins who were aboard. Against my father’s advice, against his warnings, Connor mistook that brigantine for an innocent merchantman and went to investigate it. There was a battle. Kestrel was only one hundred and twenty nine long tons, half the size of the pirate ship and probably three times as old. She took a hit below the waterline and foundered.” His voice dropped. “Took my mother and father down with her.”
Her heart ached for him and she yearned to reach out, to take him into her arms and hold him. Her own eyes filled with tears.
“I am so, so, sorry.”
“It’s bad enough to lose one’s parents,” he said quietly. “But when their deaths are caused by the actions of one’s brother—” He let out his breath and shifted his weight on the sand. “I was too numb at first to blame him, though everyone else did and rightfully so. But as time goes on my resentment toward him is only building and I dream at night, dream of wanting to hurt him as he has hurt me, to hammer him with my fists until we’re both torn and bleeding and my mother miraculously appears and tells us to stop it. He was reckless and cocky, impulsive and rash and that’s the way he’s always been but this time, it led to tragedy.” He leaned his head back against the stone wall, took in a deep breath, let it out. “Thing is, Miss McCormack… I don’t even recognize this part of myself. It’s not like me to feel such things, especially toward Connor, and I don’t like feeling them. He cannot help the man he is. But this resentment, along with the grief…it eats at me.”
“Of course you feel resentment—you lost your parents.” She didn’t know what else to say, and she vowed then that if they survived this, she would try and be kinder to him. To be more understanding, especially as he had so intimately shared the source of his pain, the reason why his warm russet eyes held such sorrow. And suddenly she remembered how she’d taunted him about his sloop, and how angry he’d been when she’d said that its design had been copied from what was coming out of Fell’s Point in Baltimore.
Remorse tightened the back of her throat, and she suddenly felt terrible.
“What was Kestrel like?”
“She was a topsail schooner. Plenty of steeve at bow and stern, sharply raked masts, not much freeboard. She looked a lot like Sandpiper really, only schooner-rigged. When she was built back in ’78, there was nothing on the sea that looked like her. Nothing. It wasn’t until years later that ships started appearing that resembled her.”
Confirmation, then. Shame filled her.
“And here I insulted you by saying your Sandpiper looked like what we’re doing in Baltimore. I’m sorry, Captain Merrick. Maybe our builders were the ones who did the copying, who took inspiration from your father’s design.”
“It is forgiven, Miss McCormack.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Well, we didn’t exactly get off on the right foot, did we?”
“No,” she said ruefully. “I shot at you.”
“And missed.”
“I promise that if I have to shoot at anyone between now and when we get back to that ship of yours, I won’t miss.”
“You had better not miss, Miss McCormack. I’m counting on you.”
She sat there, content within the warm shelter of his arm and torso. It was a good place to be. A place she didn’t want to leave. Again, she remembered him lying senseless on the sand. Her efforts to rouse him. And
then him stirring beneath her kiss, coming alive, coming awake as her lips had moved against his, her tongue had slipped into his mouth, and a guilty heat surged through her.
“I’m not sorry, you know,” she said with quiet defiance.
“Not sorry for what?”
“Kissing you awake.”
It was a long moment before he spoke. “Know something, Miss McCormack?”
“What?”
“I’m not sorry, either.”
“So what do we do with that?”
“Accept it,” he said, pulling her close, and Rosalie decided that maybe it was best to just say nothing more at all. Words sometimes had a tendency to ruin the moment.
And truth be told, none of them knew just how many moments any of them had left.
Chapter 13
The pirates returned a short time later.
It was pitch black in the cave. Not even the faint starlight shining through the hole in the limestone ceiling was able to penetrate the gloom. In the close darkness, sounds were amplified: the whir of a bat passing close by as it circled the cavern and then flew through that same hole to freedom. The steady drip of water echoing off the damp walls as it fell from stalactites into the pool. The trickle of the distant spring that fed this place. And Captain Merrick beside her, suddenly tensing, his arm slipping from her shoulders as he became fully alert to the coming danger.
Voices in the distance. Instantly the others were awake.
“Bloody hell,” Liam muttered.
A breath of light outside the gate of their prison. A torch, flickering orange in the night, getting brighter by the moment and now casting the long shadows of the iron bars across the sandy floor. Drunken laughter. Curses.
“Here we go,” Captain Merrick murmured almost cheerfully. “Give me your knife, Miss McCormack.”
She pulled up her damp, now-ragged hem, found the weapon and handed it to him in the darkness. He got up and moved a little distance away. Instantly she felt cold, lonely and unprotected.
The voices grew louder.
“Got a plan, Kieran?” Liam’s voice, little more than a whisper in the darkness.
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