Jack choked on her choice of word.
She couldn’t possibly know what she was doing to him with no more than a simple conversation. His hands trembled.
Or maybe she did?
His eyes were drawn to her bodice, searching for some evidence that she shared his bawdy thoughts, but the thickness of her dress completely hid pebbled nipples.
If he reached out to touch those lovely breasts, would her nipples be hard through the layers of her gown?
Like the Princess and the Pea... a man’s fingers knew instinctively what lay beneath.
His thumb itched to brush her nipple with a lover’s touch, take the supple treat into his mouth.
He stuck the handle of his knife into his mouth while he adjusted her hand. It was a poor substitute.
He cleared his throat, and tried to change the direction of his thoughts, reminding himself what he had caught her doing … preparing to burn the proof of her espionage. The splinters served her right.
He peered up at her and found her staring at him, deep in thought.
What was she thinking? Was she wondering where the telegrams were?
She blinked down at him, her expression vulnerable. “Sophia?”
“Yes?”
He went back to working at her splinters. “What were you doing in the kitchen?” he asked outright.
He must have pricked her a bit too hard. “Ow!” she exclaimed, but didn’t jerk her hand away.
“Sorry,” he murmured, glancing up at her, and almost meant it.
“Well...” She frowned at him. “I... ummm... well, you see... I was...”
She was searching for an excuse.
He tried to sound casual, though he was anything but. “Looking for something?”
“I suppose you might say that,” she replied, sounding a bit uneasy. He glanced up to gauge her expression and found her eyes narrowed on him.
He watched her intently.
“What exactly were you looking for?”
Her cheeks turned pink again. “Actually,” she told him, averting her gaze, “I was trying to figure out how to use the oven.” She peered back at him with lifted brows as though she expected a reaction from him.
“You were trying to figure out how to use the oven?”
She nodded once. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Well... you see ... when I was on deck ... I couldn’t help but overhear what they were saying about the cook—Shorty is it?”
Jack lifted a brow. “What about him?” Clever little liar.
She smiled shyly, looking every bit the virtuous little miss, and Jack clenched his jaw. “Well, when I heard he’d been left behind ... I thought I’d surprise everyone and cook breakfast in the morning.”
He didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm from his tone. “Oh, really?”
“Yes.” Her smile brightened, and she seemed oblivious to his skepticism. “You see ... I truly meant it when I said I wanted to make myself useful.” She batted her lashes, looking quite pleased with herself.
She was waiting for him to pat her on the back, he realized, and Jack just wasn’t going to do it.
He didn’t believe her.
“How good of you,” he replied, and dropped her hand. “I think that’s all of ’em,” he said, and stared up at her in disbelief.
She was either a very good little actress, or she was telling the deuced truth.
He just couldn’t tell which.
The evidence, however, seemed undeniable.
For an instant, he considered pulling out the telegrams and confronting her with them, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up his poker hand. There was time enough to figure out how best to handle this. She wasn’t going anywhere.
In the meantime, he decided, Mizz Sophia Vanderwahl was fair game—Harlan be damned. As far as Jack was concerned, with her kiss, she had declared herself available to him. If she had misrepresented herself, well then ... he sure as hell wasn’t about to feel the least bit guilty over taking what she willingly offered.
And if she was telling the truth... he still felt not one iota of loyalty to Penn. He had no respect for the man, so why should he honor the man’s engagement?
Either way, he knew only one thing for certain... Sophia Vanderwahl had the damnable most beautiful mouth he had ever sampled.
Chapter 12
Jack awoke to the smell of bread baking. The tantalizing scent drifted into his cabin, teasing him out of bed. Like a zombie, he made his way into the mess hall, and true to her word, he found Sophie fast at work in the kitchen, and his crew salivating mindlessly at her skirts—and not entirely over the prospect of food.
He smiled at the sight she presented, adorably unkempt, skirts mussed and hair escaping pins as she labored diligently despite the distraction of thirty-five men hounding her heels. He would have stepped in, but she handled them easily enough, putting them to work—Randall gathering silverware and Kell delivering plates, Pete in charge of forming a line for those who had already received their dishes. For their efforts she gave them a smile that endeared her to one and all.
But despite Sophia Vanderwahl’s killer smile, they should have all stayed in bed.
The bread turned out as black as the oven itself and the smoked meat as ashy as carbonized paper.
Peeling away the charred layers of his breakfast, Jack took a glance around the room. It was like looking into a mirror with thirty-some faces—every expression the same. No one wanted to hurt Sophie’s feelings, but the question was the same in every gaze.
How could anyone screw up something so simple?
Sophie stood over them, looking as uncertain as a newlywed bride with honeymoon jitters. When no one spoke up, she finally took her own plate and sat in the only empty seat remaining in the mess hall... right in front of Jack, next to Kell.
“I think it is a little burnt,” she told Kell as she sat.
Kell smiled uncomfortably and nodded, pushing a rock-hard piece of loaf into his mouth. “It’s fine,” he told her, his words muffled by the ungodly crunch.
As they watched, he crunched down on his food, and Jack thought maybe it hurt him to chew, because he winced with every bite.
Sophia looked at him then, apologizing with those honey-colored eyes that left him dazed every time he stopped to look into them.
“The fire burned a little too high,” she explained, and shrugged nervously. “I didn’t realize ... until they were already quite ... done.”
Jack coughed.
Overdone, he wanted to say.
He lifted up a piece of incinerated ham and put it into his mouth. It tasted like ash, and he resisted the urge to spit it back out. She was watching him much too intently, and the look in her eyes told him that she really had tried, that it seemed to matter how he responded.
Unsure why it was important to him that her feelings weren’t hurt, he swallowed, wincing as a jagged piece of ham tried to make its way down his parched throat. He attempted a smile for her, and closed his mouth when he looked at Kell’s ash-blackened teeth.
“It’s quite ... good,” Kell offered politely, nodding just a little too enthusiastically.
Jack stifled his laughter.
Kell was a poor liar, he decided, but a better man than Jack was, because Jack couldn’t seem to muster the words to give her the assurances she seemed to need.
Sophie’s brows lifted when she saw Kell’s teeth ... and the black inside his lips... and thank God she broke the ice with a horrified little squeal.
“Oh my!” she exclaimed, dropping her own bread and slapping a hand over her mouth. “Tell me you aren’t missing teeth because of me!”
It sure as hell looked like it, and it sounded that way as well.
Kell looked panicked for an instant, his eyes going wide as he shoved a finger into his mouth to feel for missing or broken teeth. There were none, and his relief at finding them intact was evident in his gasp of relief.
“Damn!” he said, casting an uneasy
glance at Jack. “Scared me for a sec.”
Sophie turned to Jack then, pursing her lips and trying not to laugh.
Jack grinned at her, knowing his smile would be as flattering as Kell’s, and was rewarded with her sparkling laughter. The sound of it sent a shudder of desire through him.
Christ, she wasn’t merely lovely when she laughed, she was dazzling. Her laughter glistened even in her eyes. He wasn’t quite prepared for the way it affected him and he found himself completely disarmed.
Even Kell seemed to hold his breath until the spell of laughter subsided, and then he turned to meet Jack’s gaze, and Jack groaned inwardly, recognizing the instant infatuation in his friend’s eyes.
Damn, but she was going to be trouble ... in more ways than one.
And Jack was in trouble too, if she could win over his motley crew with a lousy as hell breakfast like that!
Judging by the expressions on all of their faces, she’d somehow done exactly that.
God bless the irksome wench.
* * *
Sophie didn’t try to fool herself. She knew her first attempt at cooking had been a complete disaster, but it obviously had not gone unappreciated. The crew either felt terribly sorry for her, or they had taken her gesture for what it was ... a hand in friendship.
In either case, they seemed to have adopted her as one of their own—Kell in particular.
Sophie rather liked him.
The tall, dark-haired giant was a Bohemian of sorts. His shoulder-length hair was bound at the nape like some old-time pirate’s, and his dress, as well, was reminiscent of another age. His mirth never faded from his bright blue eyes, and his patience was remarkable. For that Sophie was indebted to him.
Without having been asked, he had taken the time to show her how the stove worked so that she might do better with her next effort. And then he’d given her a tour of the ship. She had only to ask about the cannons, and he determined to show her how they worked.
“Are you certain it’s no trouble?” she asked, afraid to become an inconvenience. He had spent practically all afternoon amusing her, and she was beginning to feel guilty about monopolizing his attention. She knew he had work to attend to.
“No trouble at all,” he assured, and winked, then drew her aside to watch from a safe distance as he properly packed the cannon.
Sophie clutched her hands together as she watched him work. The prospect of actually seeing the gun go off left her with a strange sense of anticipation—like a child waiting for a display of fireworks.
“You say this was a vessel used for exploration?”
“Yep,” he told her. “Primarily by topographers.”
Sophie’s brows knit. “Why would a topographer need cannons, I wonder.”
He stopped what he was doing to answer her question. “It’s an old ship, Miss Vanderwahl. The cannons were their sole means of protection on highly ungovernable seas.”
“Please call me Sophie!”
He nodded. “All right, Sophie,” he replied warmly.
The crew on deck began to gather around them, watching as well, curiosity snatching their attention.
“They are so tiny!” she declared, speaking of the cannons. “Why so little?”
“She was never meant to be a warship,” Kell disclosed. “No reason for heavy artillery.”
Her brows knit as she watched Kell struggle with the preparations. “Quite a tedious process!”
“Sometimes it was,” he agreed. And then he finished at last and lit the fuse. “Ready?”
Sophie nodded excitedly.
He backed away from the cannon and took her by the shoulders, pulling her out of harm’s way.
The cannon went off with an explosion that nearly left her deaf.
“Oh, my!” Sophie exclaimed.
The cannonball landed in the ocean with a lame splash, not more than fifty yards from where they were.
Sophie laughed. “How pitiful!”
Kell nodded. “Yep, and at this point, the ships are crashing,” he told her, donning his storyteller’s cap. “The crew is off and running to grab their real guns…”
Sophie grinned at his boyish gestures. He brandished his finger at her as though it were a pistol.
“No swords?” she asked.
“Nope, no swords,” he said. “Guns ...” He stopped and winked at her. “Or maybe a few poison arrows... we’re going into savage country,” he reminded her. “Wanna try the cannon?” he asked abruptly.
Sophie blinked in surprise. “Me?”
“Yes, you. C’mere, I’ll teach you how.”
Sophie followed him. It was, after all, just a baby cannon, hardly much bigger than a rifle. What harm could possibly come of it?
Kell walked her through the entire process, and she felt almost like a pirate standing beside him, packing the powder to his boyish utterances. “All right, here they come!” he encouraged. And, “Hurry ... they’re almost upon us!”
Never mind that this wasn’t a pirate ship at all, it felt dangerously exciting to play along.
The crew joined Kell in his banter, and Sophie never felt so much a comrade in arms. She giggled as she rushed her preparations, trying to arm the ship before they could be overtaken by their imaginary foes.
Someone lit a match and came running to light the fuse for her, and Sophie stepped back, plugging her ears as she waited for it to go off.
“What the hell is going on here?”
His voice thundered over the decks and Sophie heard it despite her muffled ears.
She spun to face him, her heart leaping at the prospect of seeing him again. He’d been locked in his cabin working all afternoon with strict orders that he not be disturbed. As she turned, her feet tangled in a coil of rope and it sent her tumbling backward against the cannon. She merely brushed it and tumbled past it onto the deck, onto her rear, but the impact of her weight tipped the cannon upward slightly, small as it was.
Sophie only had time to realize what had happened when the cannon exploded.
“Hell’s bells!” someone exclaimed.
It might have been Kell.
Sophie lay there helplessly as the ball went flying upward. Every gaze followed it.
Complete silence fell as it rose above the sails ... and then it seemed to pause in midair for an interminable moment. Chaos broke loose as it made its descent, plunging toward the stern. It ripped through the sails, and Sophie gasped in alarm.
She met Jack MacAuley’s murderous gaze for the briefest instant before he sprinted after his crew toward the hole she had just put in his ship.
Chapter 13
Sophie was afraid to move.
She watched the crew gather around the damage she had done, and she was taken with the most overwhelming urge to jump overboard.
Had she managed to sink the boat?
Jack’s silence was terrifying.
In fact, everyone seemed suddenly mute. They all gathered like mourners about a casket, curious and grim. Jack had disappeared into the mob of his crew, and had yet to resurface, but Sophie could tell by their stoic silence that she had done something really, really terrible.
Her heart beat frantically, and though it wasn’t her way to fly from trouble, she might have done so... if she’d had somewhere to go—but there was nowhere, and nothing else to do but face Jack.
Deciding she couldn’t avoid it, she picked herself up and brushed herself off, then went to view the damage.
Instinctively she hid behind Kell, peeking between him and Randall.
“Someone get down there,” Jack barked at them. He gestured with his hand, and several men obeyed at once. He got down on hands and knees and peered into the cannonball-sized hole. It was a long, uncomfortable moment before he spoke.
“I’ll be damned,” he swore, and Sophie held her breath, waiting to hear the report.
“Do you see it?” she heard Jack ask after a moment. Apparently the men had reached the damage site.
Sophie couldn’t hear
their muffled responses, but she heard the chatter of voices below deck. Kell suddenly seemed to notice her standing beside him and put a hand on her shoulder, as though to comfort her, but he said not a word. The gravity of the situation did not escape her. If the ball had managed to go through the hold and bottom of the ship, would there be anything they could do to stop it from sinking?
Her heart raced wildly.
“Are you sure?” Jack shouted through the gaping hole.
More chatter below.
“What stopped it?” he asked.
A thousand sighs exploded around her, and Sophie thought that might be a good thing.
She nibbled her lip anxiously.
“You’ve got to see this!” she heard someone below deck shout up at them.
“I’m coming!” Jack told them, and bounded up from his knees. As though he had sensed her presence, his gaze seemed to find her at once, and the look in his eyes sent her pulse skittering.
He came toward her, pointing rudely, and Sophie froze. “You!” he said. “Come with me!” And he seized her by the arm.
“Hey, Jack, it wasn’t her fault,” Kell said in defense of her.
No one else dared to speak up.
Silence followed them.
Sophie’s heart pounded with fear as he dragged her behind him. He came to the ladder and released her, practically jumping down, not bothering with the rungs, and then he motioned for her to come down after him. Sophie didn’t dare resist.
He pulled her through the mess hall and then down another ladder, and up into the captain’s dining hall.
Sophie had yet to see any sign of the cannon damage.
And then she did.
Several crewmen were gathered around her cabin, staring inside. They parted for Jack, and he released her long enough to go inside and inspect the damage firsthand.
“Lucky thing she packs like a woman, eh?” she heard one man whisper.
“There went her summer wardrobe,” snickered another.
Sophie groaned inwardly and stepped forward to see for herself.
There, indeed, went her summer wardrobe.
The cannonball had come through the roof of her cabin and had landed, of all places, on her suitcases ... which were of course stacked upon her bed. She had dragged them out to find a suitable dress and then had stacked them on top of one another, smallest on top, because there just hadn’t been room to do anything else. She had left them there, intending to set them aside later when she went to bed.
To Love a Lord: A Victorian Romance Collection Page 38
