“Finally.”
“Thanks to the Lord!” Clearwater proclaimed. “An end to dreary hours with rancid swill.” He raised his mug in toast and gagged as he swallowed the gin.
James smirked but kept his attention more on the two across the room, contemplating how to approach them.
“…that witch drove him, you know tha’,” one complained.
The other nodded. “How’re we ta know she got Spanish?”
James nearly jumped, his heart beating rapidly. Eleanor confided she had a governess who was from Spain and taught her the foreign tongue. Considering the war, and Spain under control of France, it wasn’t a fact she wanted anyone to know. French, after all, remained the diplomatic language and many ladies learned it. But Spanish? No.
“Yeah, betcha he’s got’er cunt, too, ta control her, too.” He spat on the floor.
That statement zeroed in to James. Eleanor? Not only with a pirate ship but in bed with the captain? His blood roared, the pounding in his ears deafening, Clearwater comments drowned out by it. It couldn’t be true! Not his wife, not his love! His free hand clenched, his other tightened around the pottery mug, the pain of it branching through his hand and up his wrist.
“Pretty tart.” The other sailor chuckled before his face turned hard. “But we done lost what coin we had! Now we gotta find another ship. He dumped us to where that’d not be happenin’ soon. Here ain’t no better.” He moaned.
“I says we find one that’ll let us find tha bastard and take back what’s ours!” the first pirate declared and promptly burped.
“And maybe be taken that wench, too. Thinkin’ we teach ’er true Spanish ways.” He winked at his friend and both gave a hideous, evil laugh.
It was that laugh that launched James upright.
“James!” Clearwater hissed.
James huffed but knew his friend was curtailing his desire to slug those two to the ground for their remarks. In reality, he knew Clearwater was right to stop him. It would do neither him nor Eleanor any good to pulverize these two without finding more information. He paused and redirected his thoughts. The saucy serving wench gave him a wayward smile. In return, he motioned for her to come over.
Bouncing across the dark and grimy room, she slid next to him, arriving after he settled back down to his chair. He gave her a smirking grin, trying to be nonchalant.
“What can I git you, gov’nor?” she asked, her own smile genuine.
“Petunia, do you see those two sailors across the way?”
She grunted. “Aye. Riff raffs of the Equuleus, Captain Cavendish’s ship. They were thieves aboard, so he dumped them at sea.” She shrugged. “They managed to convince a sailor to pick them up to return ’em here, so they be claimin’.”
A perfect set up for him to utilize, and James would exploit it to the hilt. He pulled Petunia closer. “Sweet Petunia, I want you to bring them a round of this place’s best drink.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide but he gave her his best smile as he slipped a coin into her hands. Her fingers grasped the piece and she bit on it to believe it was real silver, not wood and smiled as it passed the test. She tilted her pretty head and gave him a return grin. “Sure nuff, guv,” she chirped and spun to get the order.
“So, what’s your plan, ole man?” Clearwater muttered.
James watched the two out of the corner of his eye. Petunia delivered the mugs, giving a laugh to the two along with a few words. Whatever she said got them to glance over toward him. He raised his cup and gave them a nod. Their reaction, returning the gesture, was exactly what he’d hoped for but he schooled his thoughts and emotions to remain calm. He needed that so his next move would not set them off from his questions. As the bar wench wandered away, he gave Clearwater a nod and got up. His friend followed.
“Gents,” James started, fighting hard not to laugh at the word. “Did I overhear you correctly about the Equuleus?”
The taller of the two wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Aye. What’s it to ya?”
James hit pay dirt. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. It appears, it’s captain stole an,” he paused and gave Clearwater a quick glance, “item of great expense from me. A jewel.”
“What’s it worth ta ya?” the other stuttered but the interest was in his eyes.
“Its worth more than you can make in a single haul.”
They grumbled with disbelief so he ordered another round, utilizing every method to soften them up. He pulled up a rickety chair and plopped into his seat with a smile. Yes, all the days of waiting were about to be redeemed.
* * *
“Afta you, milady.” The pirate stepped back and motioned her before him.
It was an odd set of circumstances. Elle’s unlucky status miraculously turned to being treated like a queen since she exposed Juan and Roberto as the cutthroats and thieves they truly were. She wanted to laugh, since pirates were just that, but these two stealing from the crew and plotting to oust Trent placed them just a step beyond the rest. No one would ever trust them and in the world of pirates, that was a death sentence, or so Trent informed her.
But still being treated like a lady, out here in the middle of the ocean on a ship full of thieves just was unusual.
She scanned the horizon and found the outline of an island ahead. Trent informed her they would stop there and pick up supplies before crossing the sea to the Americas. The island lay off the coast of North Africa and reported to be lush and beautiful, something the crew needed before thrusting off to the West Indies. That long two month passage would prove difficult, Trent told her, if the men didn’t have a place to relax. The land may be gorgeous but what the men wanted was the access to booze and whores that serviced sailors there.
“Looks strange, does it not? To see land again,” Trent said softly, standing behind her.
“A touch,” she answered, nodding. “Almost as if it’s an illusion.” She turned to face him. “My world has been confined to this ship and the men who sail her.”
He chuckled, his glaze boring into her. “Makes one feel safe, does it not? To be able to see everything that is in your grasp, know the space, and what is and isn’t there. Land, though, means the same to a sailor—confining, almost like a prison. The open sea is freedom.” He shrugged.
She smiled, trying to understand but with the bulk of her past still locked away from her, she had nothing to base anything on. The reflection on his face showed he understood her undecidedness and she blushed at being so telling.
He leaned back against the railing next to her. “Still nothing more?”
She shook her head. She hated to admit it. Even her dreams were void of anything other than being at sea. She was sure that being on the water wasn’t normal for her but nothing else came to mind. The mere recognition of that tripped her heart into a fast pounding pace and she panted as a frantic frenzy washed through her.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “Breathe. All is well.”
His voice was low and soft. She locked gazes with him. His brown eyes sparkled in warmth, yet teasing dance. Somehow, this pirate made her feel good. Comfortable. But still, she needed more.
“Since the...” she paused. “The men appear more…polite towards me. How is it I went from a bad omen to courtesy and manners?”
He chuckled again, and reaching out with his fingers, lightly brushed the line of her cheek, down to her jawline. His eyes were dark, almost black in color.
“You exposed the men who thought they could take more than they earned, and thwart the mission this ship has launched over. While they are not completely thrilled with the idea of a woman aboard, they are also a superstitious lot, believing you are good over evil. And to get rid of you would impair them from future prizes by bad luck.” His forefinger touched her lips. It was ever so light, she almost didn’t feel it. With a puzzled look, he turned to walk away.
The loss of his touch was coldness. Somewhere deep inside her, a longing for him had settled in, b
ut to have his touch only to leave left her feeling abandoned. Instantly, she spoke, an attempt to return his attention back to her.
“And how do you feel, Captain?”
He stopped and slowly turned to face her. “I still believe you are dangerous, in more ways than you could imagine, and some of that is to yourself. Your real self could be bad or good, but we’ve no clue at this point. While returning you to England might have proved the better part of valor, I believe the men would’ve refused to sail there, outside the reason of them being hung as pirates. So I find myself in a quandary of do I find a British ship or town in the West Indies that’ll take you or keep you at my side, for more fortune.”
A chill swept through her at the mere idea of returning her to England. “But you wouldn’t return me now, would you? You dropped the Spanish at that island off the coast of France. We’ve sailed for four days so to return there would burn more fuel and deplete your supplies.”
At her rational, yet quick, argument against reversing back to England, Trent laughed loudly. “On that you are correct, my lady. Pirates can be lazy, when allowed, and to see England now, when more fortunes lay ahead, they no doubt would refuse to do.” He took her hand more fully into his and pulled her closer. “Instead, I’d like to show you how the sea can be beautiful.” He raised her hand to his mouth for a kiss.
Where his lips touched her skin, a fire burned, quickly spreading up her arm. Her body tightened and her core burned. He was so handsome, this rugged daredevil man who posed as a pirate but held the manners of a gentleman. Often, she thought to ask him where he learned such courtesies but she didn’t. She just couldn’t decide why. Something hit a cord, a feeling mixed a memory she couldn’t visualize. It scared her, but she concentrated on him and how he touched her. Whatever her past was, she had to let that frustration go and simply glow in his light. But what if it went further?
This Love Of Mine: Chapter Thirteen
The feminine laughter floated up the stairs. James forced himself to sit still in the armchair and wait. The room hadn’t changed much since the last time he saw it. Still decorated in frills and lace, Lydia’s bedchamber matched her—lovely, feminine, and excessive all at once. But his dalliance with her was years ago, brief, thankfully. A lady who wanted it all and could hide it behind a façade of innocence. It made his stomach twist.
Mounting anger drove him to her townhouse even though it was late. He shoved his way in, right past the butler who stood speechless, and right up the staircase to her room. The door swung wide open and he was greeted with—nothing. A garbled curse escaped his mouth as he kicked at the step stool before the fireplace chair. Running his hands through his hair, he concentrated on thinking. The discussion with those two vermin at the gin joint had revealed more than he hoped for…but with a price he didn’t want to accept.
How the hell would he get her back from a man who controlled a pirate ship? That was, if he could find them. And that was when Lydia came to his mind... So he found his way here, though he didn’t remember the journey, his thoughts were wrapped in red fury at the complications.
The doorway cracked with a sound of her giggle accompanying it. Inside she stepped, still dressed in her ball gown of the evening, and at her side was a tall, blond-haired lord in tow.
The two of them didn’t see him, nor did she care that her servants knew she was home alone with a man this late at night or that another sat in her bedroom alone waiting for her. Echoes of his past with her of a similar time, she lured him to her bed, played in his mind. There was an air around her that somehow, she was above the rules of society. It had attracted him at first, and now, made him want to shake his head. Even now, he saw she hadn’t changed and that was precisely why he sat here, waiting for her. At her age, she should curb her tastes, he thought. But her infectious laughter only demonstrated how that’d never work.
She spun on her heel, removing her shawl when her gaze fell upon him, bringing all her laughter to a halt.
“Lord Windhaven, what an unexpected surprise.” Her tone was a mixture of surprise, shock, weariness, and satisfaction. Satisfaction that he was here, in her bedroom. He almost rolled in the mere thought that his trip had nothing to do with her expectations.
He ignored her and glared at her companion. “Lord Hillwood, I expect you have other things to do right at this moment.”
The young man’s shoulders jerked back, his face paled a bit when he saw James.
“Lydia, I mean, my lady, I believe Lord Windhaven is right and I must bow out unexpectedly…”
She whipped her head around to see him.
“…I apologize.” He nodded toward James and backed out of the room.
When the door shut, again she spun toward him and stormed across the room. “How dare you!”
“He’s below you, my dear,” he commented drily.
“And you’ve come to your senses, seeking my attentions now?”
He was always amazed how quickly she could switch from anger to smitten as he witnessed the smile spread across her face while she sauntered over to him. Yet no matter how hard she tried, he had one thought, one motive to be in her bedchamber and it had nothing to do with seducing her. If nothing else, that fanned his initial reason.
As she bent to hug him, tilting her head, aiming to kiss him, he leaned back.
“I did not come for you.”
A flash of anger passed over her face before she re-schooled her expression to an amiable smile. “Then what do I owe this invasion? One that pushes my beau out the door.”
Her beau. That he knew was a lie. “Lydia, tell me about your father’s business.”
Her shoulders slumped as did her lower jaw. “My father’s ownings? Why?”
The look in her eye told him everything. The only way he’d get anything out of her being a gentleman would never work. Her stance, the slant in her eye laid the rules—she’d tell him anything after he seduced her. His blood boiled. Eleanor’s life depended on him to find her. As Lydia stood, her tongue licked her upper lip, trying to look alluring, the opposite happened and he exploded. He growled and rushed at her, pushing her up against the bedroom wall, his hand on her neck.
“This should be easy for you, since you’re well acquainted with how to get men.”
She gasped a strangled noise with his hand pressed against her windpipe.
“I can not fathom what you mean.” Panic spreading across her face.
“You will tell me what you know of my wife’s disappearance, Lydia.” Anger twisted his gut. Eleanor’s life hung in the balance. “Now!”
* * *
Elle stretched. There was something entirely decadent about sitting on the beach, her toes wiggling in the sand, her hair falling loosely about her shoulders and wearing no hat. The sunrays bathed her in pure light, the salt air filled her nostrils and the utter abandonment of sitting with nothing demanding her time—or her appearance—filled her with joy. This was what it was like to relax and she loved it.
“Is that a smile I see?”
Slowly she opened her eyes to Trent walking toward her from the palm trees that lined the beach.
“Perhaps,” she replied, waiting for him to reach her. He was a handsome man, though not the type she believed she was used to being around. He wasn’t pale like the veiled noblemen of London. In fact, he glowed as his face and hands were bronzed from hours in the sunlight aboard the ship. His walk was more like a saunter as he neared her, like a man looking for his next bedmate, his tight thighs visible in the leggings, his pull-over blouse loose and billowy in the sea breeze, giving her a hint of a muscular body that was hidden in clothes. She licked her lips and bit her lower one to bite back a moan. The man was trouble, sin in flesh. He was a pirate, a man driven by condemnation of whoever took his wife, so Fitzgibbons claimed, but he had the manners of a man of worth and a body of one who knew how to seduce. Elle’s toes curled in the sand as he set her body to liquid again.
It just wasn’t right, she knew that, but
the reason never cleared other than he was married. A married man whose widowhood drove him to reckless abandon. That should stop her wanting him yet she knew, deep down, there was more. A voice of her inner core struggled to be heard, making her wonder if she, too, had a husband somewhere. And if so, where was he? It was a question and silence that ate at her, enough so to keep her distance from the Cavendish.
The longer the time went, the more tired she became of fighting to find out who she was.
With all the musing in her head, she didn’t realize he had reached her until he plopped himself down on the sand next to her.
“For a lady who has been so demanding, the silence is deafening.” He gave her another infectious grin and handed her a tin cup.
She laughed. “Can one not simply enjoy the view without conversing about it?”
He raised his eyebrows as he uncorked the dark brown bottle that had been in the crux of his arm a moment before. “Certainly. But I have yet to meet a member of the fairer sex who would remain quiet on purpose of her own choosing.”
The smell of the rum as it poured into her cup tempted her to take a sip. Something told her this wasn’t a liquor she’d tasted before.
“Perhaps you should be worried, then, for my silence. Who knows what I may be plotting.”
“I would enjoy that worry, my sweet.” He filled his cup and shoved the bottle into the sand. Tipping his drink in the air, he said, “To your continued good health.”
She nodded, lifting her cup in agreement then took a sip. She rather liked his use of the endearment of “my sweet”. It unnerved her, making her stomach flutter. He hadn’t done that before. But all thoughts came to a screeching halt as the rum burned its way down her throat. She wanted to gag at the first impact.
He gave her a knowing look over the rim of his cup. “I was about to tell you to sip it slowly.”
When he reached for her cup, she snagged it back in her grasp, holding it against her chest. “No, its fine. I believe this is the first I’ve had of this liquor. It has a bite.” And a warmth in her stomach that relaxed her more.
Her Perfect Gentleman: A Regency Romance Anthology Page 11
