‘Not to me,’ said North. With a single curt gesture of his head towards her, ‘To the lady.’
‘Our apologies, ma’am,’ they murmured, turning to her. Then quieter, to her, but not North, ‘God help you, Kate Medhurst.’
‘Get down before her,’ North instructed.
They glanced at one another again, but did as he said, kneeling in the sandy soil of the alleyway.
‘Lower,’ said North. ‘On your bellies.’
She saw them swallow their pride, saw the humiliation in their eyes as they obeyed, to lie face down in the dust.
‘Did they hurt you?’ he asked her.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
‘Then they get to live,’ said North. He bent over, and whispered the words quietly to the prostrate men, ‘But if there is ever a next time, gentlemen of the Gator...’ He let the words hang unfinished, but they all understood too well his promise. ‘Now, I think you should leave me and the lady together.’
The two of them got to their feet and ran out of the alleyway as if the devil himself, or North, were on their heels. The raven flew off, following them.
Leaving Kate facing North alone, knife in hand, pistol aimed directly at his heart.
Chapter Five
His gaze held hers, yet he spoke not a word.
Her heart was pounding hard and fast. Beneath the grip of both the pistol and knife her palms were clammy. Her mouth went dry.
‘I had it under control. I can defend myself, sir.’
‘So I see,’ he said in that quiet sensual voice that made the goosebumps break out across her naked skin. His gaze dropped to the weapons still clutched tight within her fingers, before coming back to her eyes. ‘Do you want to put them away now?’
She was not sure that she did. Not because she thought he would hurt her, but because of what might happen when she did. The tension seemed tight enough to break between them. They were standing alone, too close together, in a place shielded from the eyes of others. She could feel the heat of him, sense the dark passion that lurked beneath that cool calm control.
She swallowed. Took a couple of steps back to put some space between them. Turned her back to stow the weapons safely once more.
He was leaning against the wall of the alleyway, waiting, when she faced him once more.
Their gazes held, his with such dark intensity that she feared how much he might have overheard before he stepped into the alleyway.
Neither of them spoke.
Neither of them moved.
She felt like she was trembling inside, from the shock of what Linder had almost done and from the feelings that overwhelmed her when she looked in North’s eyes. Of attraction. Of desire. Of a need so raw and guttural she could no longer deny it.
He walked closer.
Kate knew she should move away, but she didn’t. She just stood there, knowing what was coming, her eyes never leaving his.
Reaching a hand out, he threaded it through the back of her hair. He hesitated only a moment longer before his mouth met hers and their bodies came together, and he kissed her just as she wanted, exactly how she needed. A kiss that was inviting and passionate and filled with all of the stormy intensity that was in her own soul.
He tasted of something divine, his tongue enticing her own. He was masterful yet not forceful, gentle yet passionate. And his kiss woke other parts of her, parts she had thought long laid to rest. Needs and desires, passions and longing. The feel of him, the touch of him, the scent of clean man and leather and sunshine and sea...and just North. And then she caught what she was doing—kissing him. Kissing the first man since Wendell...the only man other than Wendell. And not just any man—North. An Englishman. A man who made his money from killing privateers and pirates.
She broke the kiss, backed away, confused and embarrassed and ashamed, and angry, too, with herself more than him.
‘We should go,’ he said.
‘We should.’ Her voice was cool and firm to hide the quiver and flux of conflicting emotions inside.
‘But I will have your weapons first.’
‘And you think I am just going to hand them over?’ She stared at him.
‘You will if you do not want the dressmaker to see them. What would she think?’ he asked silkily. ‘A pirate ship at anchor and a woman with a pistol and a knife strapped to her thighs turning up in her shop.’
Pirate’s moll. The words whispered unspoken between them.
She gritted her teeth and, sliding her hands into the slits in the seams of her skirt, produced the weapons. She looked at him for a moment, almost tempted to use them, before reluctantly yielding them.
‘And the holsters,’ he said as she watched her weapons disappear into the pockets of his coat.
‘What?’
He looked at her.
With an exclamation of disgust, she turned her back, rustled beneath her skirts to unfasten the buckles and finally dropped the leather strapping into his waiting hand.
‘Still warm.’ He smiled.
She glared at him.
As they walked out of the alleyway together and re-entered the crowded square she felt his hand close firm, but gentle, around her wrist.
‘Just in case,’ he said softly by her ear. ‘I would not want to lose you again.’
* * *
Kit was careful not to look at Kate Medhurst again until he had cut a path through the crowd to Gunner.
‘Change of plan. You check on the procurement and the men. I will take Mrs Medhurst to the dressmaker.’
He saw the way his friend’s eyes moved to Kate Medhurst and Kit’s grip upon her, before returning to Kit, and the hint of both curiosity and speculation that was in them, but Gunner was wise enough to say nothing.
Beneath his touch he felt her stiffen and saw the rosy bloom, that had not yet faded from her cheeks since the kiss they had shared, intensify. ‘That will not be necessary, Captain North.’ Outraged antagonism flashed in her eyes.
‘It is entirely necessary.’
Gunner cleared his throat. ‘I will see you back on Raven.’ With a nod, he hurried away, his tall fair frame standing out amongst the shorter dark crowd.
‘This way.’ Kit directed Kate Medhurst onwards.
‘You’re not a priest,’ she said.
‘You noticed,’ he replied, but he did not look at her and he did not stop leading her towards the only dressmaker in town.
‘Allow me to go in there alone.’
‘No.’
He felt the slight resistance in her arm. ‘For pity’s sake, North, you must be aware of the impression it will give if we enter the shop together.’ Her eyes met his, part-appeal, part-indignant anger.
‘Fully aware.’ He looked at her then—at those beautiful soft grey eyes, and her kiss-swollen lips that tasted like the sweetest thing on earth, and the sensual disarray of her sun-kissed tawny hair from its pins—and felt the urge to take her hand in his own, lead her from this square into the quiet intimacy of an alleyway once more. He wanted to put her against a wall. He wanted to pull up her skirts and make her his own.
‘There is a wedding band upon your finger. And we are together, my hand on your arm. What impression do you think it will create?’
‘Do you honestly expect me to pretend to be your wife?’ Beneath the cover of the frumpy fichu her breasts rose and fell with increasing rapidity.
‘I do not expect anything other than you choose your clothes quickly.’
* * *
The dark woman at the other side of the counter flashed her gaze between them, taking in Kate’s hair that had escaped its pins and the way North stood too close to her, before fixing on North. Her smile was wide and very white in her pretty dusky face.
‘You
are looking for a dress for your wife, sir?’ Her English was smooth with just a trace of an accent, taking them as man and wife just as North had said. Kate could feel the heat in her cheeks, but better this than they thought her his whore, she told herself. And no amount of explaining was going to make it seem anything otherwise. She swallowed and touched at her wedding band for reassurance.
‘My lady’s wardrobe was lost. We are looking to replace it. But we are only in port for a few hours. We sail tonight.’
‘Such a little time.’
‘Not a full wardrobe, just a few items for traversing the Atlantic,’ Kate clarified. ‘Respectable...and black if possible.’ She did not look at North. She was too aware of him and the proximity of his body that proclaimed an intimacy between them beyond the fact that he was buying her a wardrobe of clothes. His kiss still burned upon her lips, her skin still tingled everywhere he had touched. She tried to smooth her hair tidy, tucking the strands behind her ears.
‘Fate smiles on you today, ma’am.’
Not with the fort or Bill Linder, she thought. But with North’s timely arrival in that alleyway, the little voice in her head whispered, and she knew it spoke the truth. Her pistol was small, its single shot at best only able to cut the attack by fifty per cent. Her knife, to fend off the other barrelled brute of a man, would have been sorely tested. Despite her protestations, and whether she wanted to admit it to herself or not, North had saved her. Again.
‘I have the very thing.’ The dressmaker smiled again. ‘A customer of mine was unable to return to collect her order, a lady of a similar size to yourself. A full wardrobe all finished and ready.’ Her gaze dropped to Kate’s bare feet. ‘Slippers, too.’ She looked at Kate with curiosity. ‘Dark in colour—a mourning wardrobe, in fact.’
Kate twisted the wedding band harder around her finger and stared down at it, thinking of the man she had lost. ‘How appropriate—it will suit my needs perfectly.’
‘As would the yellow silk,’ said the dressmaker as she saw North glance at a bright yellow dress draped upon a mannequin in the corner.
‘No,’ said Kate.
‘We’ll take both,’ said North and paid the woman for the clothes and to wrap them.
‘After you, my dear,’ he said as he tucked the parcels beneath his arms and opened the door for Kate.
‘You are too kind to me, sir,’ she replied with heavy irony.
He leaned closer as followed her through the door out into the square and said quietly. ‘You know very well, Kate Medhurst, that I am not kind at all.’
She felt the shiver ripple through her both at the coldness of the words and the heat in his eyes.
* * *
The afternoon was done and the evening begun by the time that the provisions were all aboard. A whole stockroom of sacks of flour and grains, of fruits and vegetables. Livestock, too. The cages containing the hens had yet to be taken below. Kit could hear their soft clucking from where he stood on the quarterdeck.
The cool white-blue of the daytime sky was yielding to the warm orange and glorious red of sunset. The aqua-green of the ocean was silvered in this cobwebbed light of dusk, a swirl of colour bigger and more vivid than anything that could be seen at home in England. Colours there were softer, more muted, like the land and the people. Here, as in the East, life was more immediate, more intense and bold. To be lived all the freer or snatched away in the blink of an eye.
The wind was mellow, but enough to billow in Raven’s sails and carry her away from Antigua and Gator, anchored not so very far away.
‘The men are grumbling about missing out on a night in the town’s taverns,’ said Gunner by his side.
‘Tell them they can go back in the jolly boat for their night in the taverns, but Raven shall not be here waiting for them tomorrow morning. Nor will their share of the bounty. And remind them of our trip to the East Indies.’
‘Where the local brothels were hotbeds of pestilence even if the women themselves showed nothing of the symptoms,’ said Gunner. They both remembered too well what it had done to the crew in the days before they turned hunters.
There was a silence while they both watched the silhouette of the island recede into the distance.
‘What happened with Mrs Medhurst...in the square back there?’ Gunner asked, without shifting his gaze from the view.
‘She had a run in with a couple of Gator’s boys.’
‘You got to her in time?’ Gunner’s gaze shot to his, his brow creased with concern.
‘I got to her as she was about to put a shot through one of them and take her chances against the other with a knife. She is capable, but even so the scoundrels would have had her eventually.’
‘Had you not shown up. Where did she get the weapons?’
Kit glanced round at him. ‘She was holstered beneath that skirt of hers.’ He remembered the flash of those pale legs in the dim shade of the alleyway and was very aware of the leather, within his pockets, that had been strapped so intimately to her thighs.
Gunner’s eyebrows rose. ‘She really is wife to one of Coyote’s men.’
Kit thought of the way Kate Medhurst touched so often to her wedding band. He thought, too, of the look of sadness in her eyes following the dressmaker’s reference to a mourning wardrobe and of her response— ‘How appropriate...’
‘I am not so sure of that,’ said Kit.
‘She seems too respectable for a pirate’s lightskirt.’
‘Appearances can be misleading. But I do not think she is a pirate’s lightskirt.’
‘Then what?’
‘A widow.’
There was a silence during which he could feel the weight of his friend’s gaze.
‘So the dress was mourning weeds, after all.’
‘It is now. I am not sure if it was when we first saw her in it aboard Coyote.’
‘You think she is La Voile’s widow?’ whispered Gunner.
‘That is what I need to discover. I will speak to her after dinner. Until then, I have work to do.’
‘Kit.’ Gunner’s voice stayed him. There was a ripple of embarrassment in Gunner’s eyes. ‘I think perhaps you should know—her belly bears the signs of having borne a child.’
Kit gave a nod. ‘Thank you.’
‘Will you not stay and watch the beauty of the sunset? It will be gone within the quarter of the hour.’
Kit was almost tempted. Whilst stood on the deck of a ship he had seen the sun set across the oceans and countries of the world and it truly was a wondrous sight. But to stand here and indulge himself in the pleasure...? He clapped a hand against Gunner’s upper arm in a token of their friendship. ‘You stay. Enjoy it.’ He had work to do. And the problem of what he had overheard in that alleyway to think of.
He left Gunner standing where he was and went to find his desk.
* * *
Kate sat on the cot in her cabin, haunted by thoughts of Kit North saving her from Linder, by his hard handsome face and the feel of his mouth on hers.
She touched her fingers to lips that even now still seemed to tingle and burn from his kiss. It seemed she could still smell the scent of him, still feel the strength of his arms around her. Her breasts felt heavy and sensitive, and there was an insistent ache between her legs that could not be denied.
North awoke a longing deep inside her that should not be there, a longing that made her burn with shame and anger and frustration.
She thought of the vow she had sworn. She thought of the love that was in her heart.
Beneath her fingers the gold of her wedding band felt smooth and warm. She looked at the ring on her finger and, pushing North from her mind, filled it instead with Wendell. His presence seemed to surround her, giving her strength. She thought of Ben and Bea and the weakness was gone.
Three-
and-a-half-thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean lay ahead of her with North. And given what he had seen he was going to ask questions, a lot of questions. She worried how much he might have overheard in the alleyway. Regardless, he would be more than certain by now that she had not been aboard Coyote by abduction. But he had Tobias and that would mean he would not push too hard. She knew it looked bad for her, but shrewd as those dark eyes were, she was confident that they would not guess the truth. No one had ever guessed the truth.
Kate would just have to be very careful how she answered his questions.
Someone knocked at her cabin door and she started.
North. His name whispered through her mind, making her heart race, making birds take flight in her stomach, making her afraid that it was not questions he had come to ask.
Taking a deep breath, she composed herself, reminding herself of what men like him had done to Wendell. Opening the door, she was ready to do battle.
But it was not North that stood there. The level of her gaze dropped to the young cabin boy.
‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but Captain North wishes to know if you will join him for dinner.’
Couched in terms of politeness, Kate understood the message for the command it was. It was the summons she had been expecting.
The boy’s face and frame were thin. He could barely have been older than nine or ten years of age and his mop of blond hair and freckled cheeks reminded her too much of what she had left behind in Louisiana.
She smiled him. ‘What is your name, boy?’
The boy’s eyes widened. ‘Have I done something wrong, ma’am?’ There was fear in his voice.
‘You have done nothing wrong.’ She reached a hand to his arm to reassure him, but the boy jumped beneath her touch and pulled away as if burned. ‘I only ask that I might know what to call you.’
The boy was regarding her with the suspicious wariness of a trapped animal. ‘They call me Tom,’ he said after a moment.
Heaven only knew what manner of treatment to which the child had been subjected, to warrant such a reaction.
I am not kind. North’s own admission seemed to echo in her head. All of the stories and rumours she had heard surrounding him came whispering back. Of his cruelty and his temper. Of all those things he was reputed to have done to men doing their best to reclaim the living denied them. It reminded her just who he was, and more importantly who she was. That knowledge and the sight of the child before her fuelled her determination, hardening her will, sharpening it, focusing it with precision.
[GOD08] The Lost Gentleman Page 8
