by Connie Mason
“Nicholas.” She ran down the hall to him.
When she would have hugged him close, he held her away.
“Keep clear of me, Eve. I just wanted to let you know I’ve returned.” His voice had a ragged edge. “I’m covered with powder.” His words sank to a whisper. “You’ll only dirty yourself with me.”
“Then let’s get you clean,” she whispered back. She caught up his hand. It was grimy, but she refused to release it. He let her lead him down the corridor to his chamber, where the hip bath waited.
He stood still while she peeled off his garments one by one, but his dark eyes followed her every move.
“These will be the very devil to get clean,” she murmured, glancing at his clothes.
“Burn them.”
She nodded. That made sense. She thought she could salvage his breeches and shirt, but once the theft came to light, this much powder on a man’s jacket would be incriminating. She’d see to burning it first thing in the morning.
“All went well?” she asked as she ran her gaze over him, checking for wounds. He seemed unscathed.
“A man was killed.”
Eve gasped. “Who?”
“No one you know.”
He sank into the waiting bathwater even though it was cold. Eve wrapped a hot pad around the kettle handle and grasped it with both hands.
“Spread your knees,” she said.
When he obeyed her, she poured in the steaming water, taking care not to hit him with it. The thought that Nick might have killed someone that night flitted through her mind. She didn’t see any blood on him or his clothes.
“Was it one of the colonials?” she asked softly.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Perhaps it was best if she didn’t know. She pressed her lips tight and knelt beside the bath. It was enough that he was safe. He’d tell her more when he needed to.
She picked up the jar of soap and a cloth and began sudsing one hand, taking care to scrub away every trace of blackness. Once his skin glowed with cleanliness, she turned to his other hand.
He watched her in wonderment. She had every reason to be upset with him. It was a minor miracle that she was even still in his house, much less in his chamber.
Why could he not give her what she wanted?
He felt the love he knew she craved, but he couldn’t speak the words. It should be a simple matter.
I love you, Eve Upshall.
They’d danced on the end of his tongue any number of times. Never more tantalizingly than right now. But he knew why he wouldn’t say them.
He didn’t deserve to speak those words.
“Lean forward and I’ll wash your back,” she said matter-of-factly, as if this were a service she performed for him with regularity. A wifely duty.
As her hands ran over his skin, the tension drained from his muscles. She scooped up a dipper of water and poured it over his head, careful to shield his eyes with her hand. Then she washed his hair, kneading his scalp.
Her love washed over him with every touch. Forgiveness. Peace.
The temptation to accept it was too great for him to bear. When she knelt down beside the tub to scrub his chest, he noticed her gown was wet. Her breasts showed through the thin material as clearly as if she was naked. Her nipples were clearly visible beneath the muslin. He reached over and circled one with the pad of his thumb.
Her lips parted and her breath caught. She met his gaze and he saw his own face reflected back in her pale eyes. He squeezed her nipple and her eyelids drooped languidly.
“Eve—”
“The water’s getting cold.” She rose quickly and walked to the fire. The shadows of her long legs beneath her gown made his groin twitch.
He soaped himself quickly and stood. Water sluiced down his body in soapy runnels. “I don’t need more hot water.”
She turned and stood there with the kettle in both hands. Her gaze swept over him, lingering on his cock.
Just when he thought he couldn’t get any harder.
He climbed out of the bath and walked toward her. “Put the kettle down, lass, before you burn someone.”
“Of course.” She gave herself a slight shake and obeyed him. Her eyebrows drew together and her chin quivered.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just…I was so afraid for you.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He was still wet from the bath, but he felt her hot tears against his skin.
“I’m a traitor to the Crown, Eve.” He palmed both her cheeks. “I don’t deserve a woman’s tears.”
“Maybe not.” She forced her lips into a tremulous smile. “But you have mine.”
He kissed her cheek, tasting the salty drops, then her lips. “I won’t make you cry again, Eve. I promise.”
He dropped to his knees before her and pressed his mouth against her belly through the muslin gown.
“If womankind had tuppence for every time a man promised that, we’d own the Bank of England.” A little ginger returned to her tone and she ruffled his wet hair with her fingertips.
He laughed and ran his hands up her legs, lifting the hem of her gown. She went still when he stopped at the triangle of auburn hair between her legs. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss there. Her breath hissed over her teeth.
She’d performed a wifely service for him. He’d perform a lover’s service for her.
He cupped her bottom and drew her close. “Spread your legs.”
He buried his face in the crisp, curly hairs, inhaling her woman’s scent. When he kissed her this time, he slipped his tongue between her soft folds, tasting her musky sweetness. The fragrance and taste of her went straight to his balls and they tensed into a tight bunch.
He willed his body to relax. This was for Eve.
He tongued her slowly, finding between those soft pink lips the little pearl that would pleasure her most. He sucked. He circled with the tip of his tongue.
She gasped. She trembled.
He spread her with both hands and laved her roughly. His cock ached with need.
She was saying something incoherent. Amid her whispered curses, he heard his name over and over.
Her knees threatened to buckle, but he steadied her and held her upright. He wouldn’t let her go. Not until he’d broken her with pleasure.
He slipped two fingers inside her as he continued to torment her with his mouth.
“Oh, Nick.”
He felt her tense. She was close. He gave her a light nip, just to push her over the edge.
Her whole body shook as her inner walls squeezed his fingers. Her release pounded around him. When the last contraction ended, she collapsed bonelessly into his waiting arms. He cradled her against his chest and cupped her quivering sex with his hand.
He rocked her as she settled, crooning little endearments in her ear. He kneaded her sex softly.
“No, no more,” she pleaded when the tip of one of his fingers grazed her sensitive spot. “I can’t bear it.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, love,” he whispered, and carried her off to his bed.
Chapter Thirty-two
POWDER STEAL
Save your country from ruin and the righteous wrath of our Gracious Sovereign. The Powder stolen from the magazine late last night cannot have ventured far as the wind is light.
A GREAT REWARD
will be afforded any person who makes a proper discovery before the magistrate.
—Archibald Snickering, Esq., Assistant to The Honorable George James Bruere, Governor
Digory Bock couldn’t read, but he knew exactly what the official proclamation said. The contents of the governmental placard were cussed and discussed all over the island, but no one stepped forward to claim the “great reward.” The islanders had their suspicions about who might have been bold enough to relieve His Majesty’s troops of the powder. Suspicions that were confirmed when the Susan Bell wallowed up to the wharf late in the afternoon, riding low in the water. She
was heavy with goods from the Americas.
Fear over the embargo with the Colonies had already led some to start hoarding, but a deal had evidently been struck. Trust Lord Nick to act on their behalf. There were rumors of a missing Frenchman on folk’s lips, but no one cared much about what might have befallen him. Every larder in Bermuda would be full come the winter storms. The island was grateful.
No one in his right mind would go to the magistrate.
“Not even me,” Digory mumbled into his tankard. “Me what has no reason to love Cap’n Scott.”
“Pardon me, sir, but did I hear you mention Nicholas Scott?” The dandy at Digory’s elbow leaned toward him.
“Who’s asking?”
“Lieutenant Fortescue Rathbun, retired.” The man swept a sissy bow and straightened his powdered wig.
Digory spat a gob of phlegm on the tavern floor.
“More important,” Rathbun said, slapping a coin on the bar. “I’m the man who’ll buy your next drink.”
Digory nodded for the man to sit. For the price of a drink, he could stand anyone’s company, even a perfumed popinjay like this one. The man signaled for another tankard to be brought.
“Now tell me,” he said. “What have you against Captain Scott?”
Digory slurped the foam off the dark ale. Didn’t the man know it would go bad if a body let it sit too long?
“Well?”
“He cuts me off’n his crew, that’s what. And why, I asks ye? Just because I likes me ale.” Digory took another pull at the tankard. “Me, what never did him harm. Even now, wouldn’t do him no harm.”
The stranger chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. It seemed to Digory that the man was laughing at him. “And how could the likes of you harm ‘Lord Nick’?”
“I could harm him plenty. We all could.”
“You have piqued my curiosity, indeed,” Rathbun said, leaning confidentially on the bar. “As much power as Captain Scott wields around here, I find your assertion highly doubtful.”
“Don’t you be troubling yourself ’bout my ‘ ’sertions,’” Digory said. He suspected a “’sertion” was something a molly might take an interest in and he wanted no part of that sort of unnatural doings. “But I could bring the cap’n low if I was of a mind to and I’d line me pockets in the doing of it, too.”
Digory glanced meaningfully at the placard he couldn’t read and cocked a hairy brow. The man followed his gaze to the official proclamation.
“Hmm.”
The man sounded impressed. Perhaps he’d spring for another pint.
The man lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re certain Scott was behind this Powder Steal?”
“Sure as shite stinks.”
“Then if you have evidence that Nicholas Scott perpetrated this crime, what’s keeping you from reporting him and claiming the reward?”
“Ah, there’s the rub.” He had no actual evidence against the cap’n, only the pinch in his gut to go on. And besides, Digory was not high in the court’s favor. The judge was still smarting over an altercation involving Digory and the magistrate’s pig.
“And mighty good eating it were, too, though nothing could be proved, all the evidence being missing, ye see,” he’d told his mates later.
If it came down to Lord Nick’s word against his, Digory knew full well whose ear would be pinned to the stocks.
The man was getting restless. He might not buy any more drink unless Digory kept him talking. Digory swilled the last of his pint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I could go to the magistrate, but the folk on the island, they love the cap’n. Lord knows why! Now if I was to go to the ’ficials…” Digory held out his tankard hopefully and the man nodded to the alekeep. Digory waited till the fresh pint was in his hands before he continued. “Well, I wouldn’t likely live long enough to spend my ‘great reward,’ would I? Folk won’t stand for anyone speaking against the man who brings them beef for the winter.”
“Ah, yes. Your Captain Scott’s a veritable Robin Hood,” the man said dryly.
“Weren’t no hoods robbed,” Digory said. Blast, if the man wasn’t a bit simple. “It were only the powder what was taken.”
The man rolled his eyes and slid off the bar stool. Then he stomped out of the tavern.
Digory lifted his tankard toward the placard. “Here’s to ye, Cap’n. Ye may have cut me from the crew, but this day ye saw me safe to two pints what didn’t cost me a penny.” Digory took a big gulp of the bitter dark liquid and then belched loudly. “God keep ye, Nicholas Scott!”
Rathbun strode across the cobbles. His shoes no longer sported silver buckles. He’d sold them a week ago. Every day spent on this cursed island was costing him money he didn’t have to spare.
The fact that Nicholas Scott had stolen the King’s powder was an open secret, but he could find no one who would testify against him. He’d tried to approach the magistrate with the information as soon as the rumor reached his ears, but without concrete proof, no one would give Rathbun even a small portion of the promised “great reward.”
Somehow, he needed to return to his original plan.
It was elegant in its simplicity. Rathbun only needed to deliver three bona fide English ladies to a certain madam in Charleston and his financial worries were over. Miss Marabelle had agreed to make him a half partner in her brothel as payment upon delivery of said Englishwomen.
According to the proprietress of The Red Lady, she had a wealthy, reclusive client with particular tastes. He was a devotee of the teachings of the Marquis de Sade and planned to re-enact all that Frenchman’s cruelest fantasies on the flesh of three Englishwomen whom no one would miss.
His requirements were simple.
They must be wellborn virgins. They must be English. They must be expendable.
And the mysterious gentleman was willing to pay most handsomely to indulge his passions.
Sally Munroe was already beyond Rathbun’s reach, married to that simpering bureaucrat Archibald Snickering, but if he could see Nicholas Scott incarcerated, Eve Upshall and Penelope Smythe would be without protection. Two English ladies were better than none. They’d be forced to continue on to the Carolinas with him.
Of course, women who are forced to do something become difficult to handle. When he’d dangled the prospect of marriage to wealthy planters, they’d been amenable enough, but now that they enjoyed the protection of Nicholas Scott, that carrot held no allure. He waffled back to considering the use of force, but Captain Bostock had promised not to support him if the women were unwilling travelers.
Somehow, he had to convince Eve Upshall and Penelope Smythe that they wanted to go with him. He sat down on a bench in the shade of a mimosa tree in a little park on busy Water Street to give the matter a think.
Across the street, a carriage rumbled to a stop and the two women in question climbed out just as a brilliantly workable idea formed in his mind.
“Here, Reggie,” he overheard Miss Upshall say to their young driver as she dug in her reticule for a coin. “Get yourself some penny candy and pick us up at teatime, if you please.”
Not till teatime, eh?
No one would miss them for hours.
When Lieutenant Rathbun first stopped them on the street, Eve was only annoyed. Now her heart hammered in her chest. Rathbun knew Nick was behind the raid on the magazine and he claimed to be able to prove it.
“So you see, as a loyal subject of the Crown, it is my duty to turn over the evidence I’ve collected to the magistrate,” he said.
“What sort of evidence?”
Rathbun put a finger to his mouth. “That’s a matter for the court, not you. Suffice it to say that not everyone on this island is in Lord Nick’s pocket. I have three credible witnesses who saw him steal the powder and will swear to it.”
Three! Only two was enough for her to be sentenced to flogging. She lifted her chin.
“No one would testify against Captain Scott,” Eve said, w
illing it to be so.
“I admit they were afraid to come forward without my protection.” He paused to smooth his wig. “But upon my word, they will testify.”
“Everyone respects Captain Scott,” Penny said. “No one will believe your witnesses.”
Hope flared in Eve’s heart.
“A man like Scott has as many enemies as friends. This audacious crime has blacked the governor’s eye,” he said. “They’ll believe my witnesses because it’s in their interest to settle the matter. Governor Bruere needs to be seen punishing someone swiftly for this act of treason.”
The English court had been quick to believe witnesses against her, and Eve was innocent. Nick was guilty. Hope guttered in her heart and fizzled entirely.
“You do remember the penalty for treason, don’t you, ladies? Much as I hate to bring up such a ghastly business, I don’t doubt St. Georges will be full to bursting on the day when they hang, draw and quarter Nicholas Scott and his whole nefarious crew.”
“His crew?” Penelope went white as parchment.
Eve’s vision tunneled, but she forced herself to drag in a deep breath.
Rathbun nodded. “You don’t think Scott did this evil thing alone, do you? No, his whole scurvy crew will watch their own entrails burn.”
Penny sagged but Eve grasped her arm and steadied her. “That will not happen. The islanders won’t allow it,” Eve said stonily.
“Hmph! So trusting, my dear. The Bermudians may love Nicholas Scott now, but when they realize the wrath of our king will rain down on this island, they’ll clamor for his blood,” Rathbun said. “Did anyone speak up to stop your flogging?”
She shook her head, unable to trust her voice.
“And they won’t stop justice from being done here. And do you know why?”
“I know one thing that will stop you from telling me.” She tried to push past him, but he grasped her forearm. “Let me pass.”
