Tempted at Christmas

by Kate Pearce

  “Yes, I know it.” He had done his turn at Channel duty, studying the coast of France through a spyglass for hours on end. “And no—it’s empty dunes.”

  “The perfect place to hide a dory. Is this marsh behind?” She traced her way across the chart.

  “Aye. With scrub and longer reeds than the grass on the dunes.” He had never felt more attracted to her than at this moment when she was brilliant and beautiful all at the same time. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms—except that he also wanted her to keep saving his worthless neck.

  “I think we ought to hide at least two of the dories along the coast here, one in the dunes, and another in the marsh, so we’ll have two different avenues of escape.”

  “Excellent.” He never would have thought of having a contingency—he would have simply sailed in by dead reckoning, improvising as he went, and hoping to hell he wasn’t out of his depth. But experience had taught him to understand the distance and time involved. “Although I’m worried about how long it might take to deploy two boats—we’ll have to see if we can manage it just before twilight, because we’ll need to make the canal of the L’Aa at fall of dark but at near high tide. The moon should be three-quarters full and waxing.”

  It was good to know he could come up with a few ideas she hadn’t.

  “Oh, yes. So we’ll have some light reflecting off the sand of the dunes to mark the opening of the passage.” She sat back on her haunches and looked to him. “What do you think? Do you think it will work?”

  “I do, lass.” Matthew could feel the certainty rise within him like the flames of the well-fueled fire he meant to set. “We’ll make pyres in both the holds, well-soaked in lamp oil, but covered with tarpaulins over the combing to keep hidden until the moment. And then we’ll becket the rudder—haul the tiller up tight with a rope to steer her to starboard—so that the bow goes into the dock and the stern swings wide, blocking the passage. And every sailor in the place will leap to their own vessels to try and save them, hopefully abandoning the warehouse to its own bad luck.”

  “Aye.” Her smile was a reflection of their shared pleasure. “Indeed, that is exactly what Sally said happened in Brest—panic spread faster than the fire.”

  “And that is exactly what we want.” Matthew could begin to see it all in his mind’s eye—the hot flames, and the cold water, the chaos and confusion they would sow, the disruption to the enemy nation he had spent the whole of his life fighting.

  He leaned back against the tiller and crossed his feet in satisfaction, as comfortable and pleased with the plan as he had ever been in the whole of his career. “Damn but you’re bloody brilliant at this, Teague. Devil take me if you weren’t born to it.”

  “Am I?” Her genuine surprise was a delight.

  “You certainly do have pirate blood in you, lass, running along with generations of smugglers’ wiles. It’s a miracle that you didn’t take over the whole of the free trade while you were still in the cradle.”

  “I’ve a ways to go before I take over the whole of the trade, but I am nearly twenty. I hope there’s still some time.”

  She was attempting to be light-hearted, but she was an old nearly-twenty with those weary, seen-it-all-before, never restful eyes.

  But something else about her pink-cheeked pleasure at his praise had him asking, “Has no one never told you that? Surely they told you that in the caves? If you planned out the receipt of cargoes anything like you’re planning this out, you’re a bloody wonder.”

  “It’s just what I do.” She shrugged the compliment off. “There’s no time for compliments, only for the job at hand. When I have the very livelihood of half the village in my preview, it’s my job to get it right—no one ought to give me a compliment for that.” She shook her head as if warding off the very idea. “If I wasn’t good enough I wouldn’t get the job done.”

  The free traders of Bocka Morrow might not give her the compliments she was due, but he would. “You’d have made a hell of a sailor.”

  She gave him that sleepy, self-possessed smile that, for some reason he could not yet fathom, fired his blood. “I thought I was making a hell of a sailor.”

  “You are Tressa Teague, you are.” He very nearly let the tiller go so he could pull her flush to his chest and kiss the bright exactitude from her lips.

  But he did not. Instead, he held on to his rekindled admiration, enjoying the new sensation. He had never before felt something so…fraternal toward a woman. No, what he felt wasn’t brotherly, but something more like camaraderie. Whatever it was, it was something he had never felt for a beautiful young woman he fancied.

  It was an astonishing discovery—and he liked it. “I wonder what they’ll make of you?”

  “The French? I should hope I never find out what they would think of me. Oh, and we should put provisions—food and water at least—in the boats we hide if we mean to sail them back across the Channel.”

  “Agreed—we’ll leave nothing on the lugger that we might need.” Matthew laughed. He liked her wry sense of humor as well as the fact that she was always thinking—she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “No—I meant what my family will think of you. Though I don’t know which ones of them are at home at present, besides Grace and her children.”

  It was always something of a delight to come home to Cliff House and discover one or another of his brothers even temporarily in residence. “Grace keeps the home fires burning, as it were, while the rest of us come and go, on cruise and off.”

  “I know—or rather I know of Lady Grace from your sister’s letters. But…” The unguarded animation stilled on Tressa’s face. She turned away to look out over the bright water to the land passing under the larboard rail. “I should prefer not to meet them in Falmouth. I can’t meet them now.”

  It was a simple enough statement, said without any rancor or petulance, but it struck him then in a way it had not before—the precariousness of her position. She had left her family, and all her friends and had thrown herself in with him. And while their agreement might make all the sense in the word to the two of them, it would probably find no favor from the world at large. Perhaps not even with his unconventional family. “If you know Sally, you will know that she would be the last person to question your coming aboard with me. And after all your correspondence with her, she will be disappointed in me if I don’t bring you to see her.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, but her gaze, which had always met his head-on, turned away over the sea. “When shall we reach Falmouth?”

  “Before evening. Another six hours of easy sailing.” The wind was high, the sky was bright, and the sun shone clear in the late autumn sky. There was nothing to blight their prospects—nothing but the worried frown pleating itself between her brows.

  “You mustn’t worry about them, Tressa,” he assured her.

  It was a pleasure to say her name, to allow himself the intimacy of that privilege. And it made him want other intimacies as well.

  He reached for her hand, and brought it to his lips. “We’ll be fine, Tressa. I promise.”

  She finally laughed, but her bittersweet smile did him in. “Don’t make promises you know you might not be able to keep, Kent. We neither of us know what the morrow will bring.”

  “It will bring victory.” That was his captain voice, full of certain charm and confidence to inspire his men. But she was too smart to believe his bluster—she had already seen through his charm. “Listen to me, Tressa. I have always been happy to go to perdition quite comfortably all on my own, but I have never once led my men into a danger I didn’t think they could face. But if this is a danger you don’t think you can face, I will very gladly set you off safely in Falmouth until I can retrieve you.”

  Her answer was immediate. “Oh, no. You’ve got the danger all wrong, Kent. I don’t mind the French at all.” She pointed her face into the wind and closed her eyes. “It must be that pirate blood you accused me of having. I’ve made my choice, and I know what I
’m doing.”

  Devil take him, he was glad of it.

  Because he wasn’t sure at all of what he was actually doing.

  Chapter 12

  Matthew Kent did something he had never done before—he let his heretofore un-exercised scruples be his guide. For Tressa’s sake, he reined in his strong impulse to visit his family, and instead, once they were anchored in the quiet shallows of the River Fal, satisfied himself in only rowing to Falmouth quay, and sending word—to be taken up to the house on the Cliff Road the next morning, after they had upped anchor and made their way eastward toward Portsmouth.

  After it would be too late to stop them.

  Yet despite his uncharacteristic discretion—or perhaps because it was uncharacteristic—word reached Cliff House anyway, because no sooner had he purchased a hot pot of stew from a quayside alehouse and rowed back out to the lugger with his thoughts running more characteristically to the long, tall, brilliant, beautiful girl awaiting him below deck, than he was hailed from across the water.

  “Ahoy, Kent!” It was his friend, former shipmate and brother-in-law David Colyear rowing out mercifully alone.

  “Col.” Matthew greeted his friend, clasping his hand to bring him aboard. “Good to see you, man.”

  “The same. Although I gather from this present mischief you’re up to some ruse?”

  Col knew him too well, but there was no profit in denying it. “Indeed.”

  Col gave him a meticulously assessing look. “Do I want to know about it?”

  For a long moment, Matthew contemplated turning the whole of his plan over to Col, who was at least as meticulous a planner as Tressa Teague. And what a thing it would be to have Col by his side again—the plan would be assured of success were the man who had burned out Brest by his side. “I’m taking a page out of your book.”

  And Matthew’s niggling scruple that he ought not put Tressa any closer to harm’s way would be satisfied if he could trade her for Col. With Tressa safe with his family at Cliff House, he and Col could set the enemy aflame without a flicker of worry.

  “I hope it’s a different book—Sally is with child.”

  There was a horrible strained silence that rang in his ears—Matthew was sure he could not have heard his old friend aright. “My sister Sally?”

  Col’s stern mouth twisted up in a wry, one-sided smile. “Have you another sister I know nothing of?”

  “No.” Matthew knew he was gaping like a netted pilchard, wide-eyed and gasping for water. “But how—” He would have thought his sister Sal the last woman on Earth who would want to have a child—she would have to give up sailing with her husband and live at Cliff House with Grace from now on.

  “Well,” Col said in his clam, wry way. “If you don’t know how it’s done by now, Matts, I’m afraid there’s no hope for you.”

  But Matthew was too astonished to be embarrassed. “Col. Be serious. A baby?” Matthew’s mind boggled with the implications.

  “Yes. That’s what we old married people seem to do—fall in love and be happy and have babies. Cliff house will soon be full of them, for Dominic’s wife Georgiana is also due later this winter.”

  “Well, damn me.” Matthew felt utterly becalmed, as if all the wind had run out of his sails. To be fair, it had been nearly six years since his bother and Georgiana had been married— nearly as long as Col and Sally. “I suppose the fairer question would be, what took you so long?”

  “There are ways of planning these things, Matts,” Col went on in his easy baritone. “But if you don’t know that either, I really do fear for you out in the world.” Col shook his head in mock sadness. “Time and tide wait for no man or woman—Sally’s five and twenty now, and I am no longer by any stretch of the imagination a fresh-faced young lieutenant. But we’ve earned a fortune enough in prizes that we have the means to support a family now. So that’s what we are doing.” Col glanced back across the deck toward the small after-cabin. “As to what in hell you are doing, I reckon there are only two choices—either what you plan is illegal, unsavory, or dangerous. Or it involves a woman.”

  Matthew may have had his flaws, but generally, when he wasn’t trying to root out traitors, lying wasn’t amongst them. “All women are always dangerous.”

  Col let out a long low whistle. “God’s balls, Matts, have you lost your mind?”

  “I have not.” He said it to convince himself as well as his friend. “I have a plan.”

  “You?” Col scoffed. “You’ve never made and kept a plan a day in your life.”

  “Don’t act so shocked—I can plan things out you know.” With Col, Matthew couldn’t always tell when his friend was taking the piss out of him.

  But Col seemed serious. “Not in my experience.”

  “Come now.” Matthew’s pride objected. “I’ve been a Post captain nearly as long as you. I’ve learned from my experience.”

  “Your recent rebuke and reposting from the Admiralty said otherwise, though I hear from Grace and Owen that you are to be congratulated—that your time in the hinterlands of the west coast was well spent and ultimately successful. But why in hell you would want to jeopardize that success with a dubious scheme involving a woman?”

  Because she wasn’t just a woman.

  There was nothing Matthew wanted more in that moment than to tell Col all—to tell him about Teague, and her plan, and pull out the chart and pore over the escape she had hatched—just so he could see the look of astonishment and admiration on Col’s face.

  But for the second time that evening, Matthew Kent thought beyond the small reach of this own needs and ambitions—to Tressa Teague’s tenuous position. And to the risk that surely outweighed the reward for Col and his new family.

  As little as Matthew liked the idea of putting Tressa in harm’s way, he now liked putting Col there even less—to put Col at risk was also putting Sally and their baby in jeopardy.

  And Matthew would not do that. “Don’t worry yourself about me—it’s just a jape, a bit of fun to impress a girl—a free trader,” he added, lest his brother-in-law ask any other questions about the lass’s identity that Matthew did not want to answer.

  “A smuggler? You surprise me—I thought you were working against the free-traders and their law-breaking, revenue-dodging ways.”

  “I was working to root out a traitor, and needed the smuggling confraternity’s help. Her knowledge was invaluable, as it is for my next”—Matthew chose his word carefully—“mission.”

  “An official, Admiralty mission, or another foray against orders?”

  “You know better than most that I would never purposefully go against orders.” There was only so much abuse his pride, and his innate sense of duty, would withstand. But he didn’t want Col to worry. “I’m just having a bit of fun before I return to Portsmouth and take up my command—I’m bound for the West Indies squadron.”

  “So I hear. And I congratulate you—your father’s old command. You must be pleased.”

  “I am.” Or at least he had been. Funny how he hadn’t thought of that command in days.

  Col leaned on the rail for a long moment of silence. “I have to get back. I sneaked out, and if Sal finds I’ve gone off without her to meet you—which she will, because she’s Sally Kent who has a nose for what goes on in a ship or a house or a town—and there will be the devil for me to pay.”

  Matthew clasped Col’s hand. “A pleasure to see you, my friend.”

  “I wish it were more pleasure and less worry.” Col shook his head. “Just promise me that you’re not going to jeopardize your new command to impress a girl—a smuggler, for God’s sake, who cannot be worth your effort.”

  “It’s not like that, Col,” Matthew said. She wasn’t like that.

  And she was well worth any risk—even to his beloved career.

  Chapter 13

  Tressa stayed seated near the top of the companionway ladder until their conversation faded from earshot.

  Just a ruse. A jape to impres
s a girl—a smuggler.

  The words burned into her until she was so hot with the mortification of betrayal she couldn’t breathe. She had believed he had been treating her as an equal. She had believed he was different. She had believed there was a special art of understanding between them.

  She retreated to the small after-cabin, listening for the sound of his sea boots on the companionway ladder.

  “Teague?” He smiled when he saw her. As if nothing were wrong. “I got us some stew from the quay, but I fear I’ve let it run cold.”

  She set herself to face him. “Having too much fun?” She could hear the scalded sarcasm that heated the edge of her voice to a rolling boil. “If you were trying to impress me, Kent, you’ve failed miserably.”

  He stilled, the way a smart man might when he sensed danger. “Oh, damn. What did I say?” But he held up a hand, as if he were mentally replaying his conversation in his head. “Damn me for an ass.” He ran his hand through his hair as if that would help clear his obviously malfunctioning brain. “I didn’t mean it in the way you think—I said that because I wanted to protect you—”

  “I don’t need your protection, Kent. I need your respect.”

  He stilled again, as if she had finally managed to shock him. “You have my respect. I would not be here—on this ship by your request, not up with my family at Cliff House—nor even contemplating this frankly dangerous ruse unless I had respect for your foresight and abilities.”

  This statement—along with the apparent sincerity in his voice—took some of the heat from her hurt. But not all.

  She crossed her arms over her chest in the hopes of holding the pain of disappointment within, of reasserting her faculties of reason to answer for the problem. But the problem was that she’d got her feelings hurt, and there wasn’t much room for reason in that. “Then why did you not voice that respect to Captain Colyear. You purposefully misled him.”