by Ruth Owen
“He ain’t there.”
Juliana and Meg whirled as one and stared at the large wine cask that had apparently developed speech. Juliana stepped closer. “Who said that?”
There was a scuffling noise and a child stepped out from behind the cask, a boy of eight or nine with curly black hair that needed combing. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his oversized pea coat and glared up at Juliana with curious, wary eyes.
A strange feeling of recognition washed over Juliana, though she was quite sure she had never seen the boy before. She glanced at Meg, but the look of surprise on her friend’s face showed that she was as astonished by the child’s appearance as Juliana was. She took a step toward him. The boy darted out of her reach like a wild animal.
“Captain’s over to the Bell,” he said grudgingly, as if regretting his decision to reveal himself.
The Bell was a tavern on the docks that had been serving strong ale and few questions to seafaring men since the reign of Elizabeth. It took its name from the brass bell hung over the entrance, which was rung every time a ship went down. Juliana had visited it once, smuggled in under Tommy Blue’s coat like a piece of contraband cargo. She remembered it as a raucous place, full of strong drink, laughter, fistfights, and pretty ladies with painted faces and old eyes. She’d had the time of her life until Connor had found them. Honestly, she’d thought he was going to skin poor Tommy alive.
Meg laid a hand on her shoulder. “Julie, the boy.”
Juliana looked around and saw that the child was backing away into the shadows, poised to run. “Wait!”
Her cry tethered the boy. He looked up at her, his dark, hunted eyes showing that he was as puzzled as she was that her words had stopped him. “Crikey, what is it, lady?”
“I—” Juliana paused, inexplicably tongue-tied. After spending years in the rarified society of the ton, where rhetoric was an art that strove for complexity and cleverness rather than truth, she was at a loss for honest words. There was so much she wanted to know about the boy—where he came from, how he knew Connor, why he had helped them. Most of all, she wanted to know why she felt a strange ache in her heart when she looked into his suspicious eyes. “I … I am Lady Juliana Dare, and I want to thank you for your kindness. You are a true gentleman.”
She wasn’t sure where the words had come from, or why she’d said them, but the results were astonishing. For an instant, the boy’s wariness vanished, and his face blossomed into the delighted pleasure of an innocent child. He faded into the murky fog, still smiling.
“What an unusual child,” Meg commented. “Do you think he was telling us the truth?”
“I would bet my life on it,” Juliana stated, staring at the empty place where the boy had been. She knew now why he’d seemed so familiar, why he’d brought an ache to her heart. His eyes were dark, not pale, and he was a child, not an adult, but such discrepancies hardly mattered. The wary, haunted look of a hunted animal was exactly the same.
The boy had Connor’s eyes.
Juliana tapped her gloved fingers impatiently on the stained wooden counter. “Well, of course you must have heard of him. Captain Gabriel’s name has been all over the papers. He’s the Archangel.”
“Never ’eard of him,” the barkeep repeated as he continued to dry a mug with a less than pristine rag. “I got customers, lady—paying customers. Either order up or be on your way.”
Juliana glanced around the noisy, crowded taproom that stank of smoke and sour beer. Leaving seemed like a grand idea—except for the fact that she had not yet found Connor. And she had far too much of her adventurer father in her to be turned aside by an unexpected squall. “Oh, very well.” She glanced at Meg. “We will have two lemonades.”
The barkeep looked at her as if she’d just sprouted wings. “And I suppose you’ll be wantin’ some tea and biscuits, too,” he snarled as he turned his back on her. “Shove off.”
It was the second time that evening that someone had rudely ordered Juliana off and she was getting heartily sick of it. She opened her mouth to tell the barkeep exactly what she thought of him and his wretched establishment, but Meg stepped between them.
“We h’ain’t no cunning shavers, guv’nor,” she said in perfect cockney. “And we won’t pass you no swimmers, neither. Give us a cup of the creature and a dram of diddle and we’ll call you a Jemmy Fellow, aye?”
“Well, why didn’t ya say so right off?” the barkeep said as he turned and lumbered toward the bottles at the far end of the bar.
Juliana bent to Meg’s ear. “What exactly did you say?”
“I am not entirely sure,” her friend whispered back. “They were lines in one of my father’s plays—Murder at Midnight, I think. Worked like a charm, though, did it not?”
“Indeed,” Juliana agreed with no little admiration when the barkeep returned with their drinks. Juliana glanced over her shoulder and squinted her eyes, attempting to pick out Connor in the closely packed alehouse. It was a daunting task. There were over two hundred people in the room, and at least half of them looked as if they’d sell their mothers for a shilling. She and Meg could spend an hour looking for Connor and still not find him—if indeed he was here at all. The boy could have sent them on a wild goose chase. Or Connor might have already left to go somewhere else. Or with someone else, her mind whispered as her gaze fixed on the fancy women at the end of the bar. She shoved aside the uncomfortable thought. “He must be here somewhere, he simply must be.”
“Well, if he ain’t, maybe I’ll do.”
Juliana spun around. At the bar beside her stood a stranger who was thin almost to the point of gauntness, wearing a fancy linen shirt and an expensive coat that had obviously been tailored for a wider man. The fine clothes hung on his frame like rags on a scarecrow.
“Name’s Mortimer Sikes, and I’d be pleased to offer my services to you ladies.”
He was harmless, of course. A man his size could not have beat up a butterfly. Nevertheless, something about the gleam in his too-small eyes made her feel … well, it made her feel a little like a fat chicken being eyed for the dinner table. Instinctively she drew away, anxious to put distance between them. “Erh, many thanks for your offer, sir, but we are … waiting for someone. No need to trouble yourself.”
“Oh, no trouble,” the man oozed, returning to her side. “Got what you want, I do. Make your dreams come true.” He moved closer, whispering into her ear. “You got needs, don’t ya, dearie? Needs that come to ya late at night, in the dark, in bed …”
Sikes’s words were unbelievably forward. A proper lady would have pulled away immediately. But Juliana had had dreams such as Sikes described, dreams so intimate that she’d never shared them with anyone, even Meg. Dreams that woke her in the middle of the night, dreams of a man who wore Connor’s face.
“Tell me you don’t think about ’em. Men. Not the pouf nobs you run with. I’m talking about a real man—a strong young buck who could take you to heaven. I can get it for ya, dearie. Pleasure beyond imagination—”
Sikes’s words ended in a yelp. He was jerked back, and held in midair like a flailing marionette.
“Leave her alone,” Connor growled.
Startled, Juliana saw him holding Sikes by his collar. With effortless strength, he shook the man until his teeth rattled, then dropped him on the floor like a sack of old clothes.
“Now get out,” he said, his words fierce with anger.
Sikes scuttled backward like a crab. Once out of Connor’s reach, he stood up, his eyes narrowing to threatening slits. “This hain’t the end of it,” he promised. “No one meddles with Mortimer Sikes. And them that does is sorry they was ever born.”
Good riddance, Juliana thought as she watched the unsavory fellow disappear into the crowd. “La, what a dreadful man,” she commented as she waved her handkerchief under her nose as if to be rid of an unpleasant odor. “I suppose I should have expected such ill-mannered individuals in a place like this, but—”
H
er sentence ended as Connor grabbed both her and Meg by the arms and dragged them to an empty table in the corner. He deposited them in the chairs like a pair of unruly children. Then he put his leg on a third chair and leaned forward, glaring down at them.
“What the hell are you two doing here?”
Juliana’s recently regained composure dissolved like sand. Facing Connor’s anger was bad enough, but as she dropped her gaze, unable to endure his condemnation, she unwittingly focused on the boot he’d propped on the chair in front of her. The polished black Hessian hugged his muscular calf like a second skin. Her gaze slid over the gleaming surface up to where his dark breeches hugged the rest of his leg. The fabric stretched taut over the coiled strength of his thigh, putting her in mind of a finely carved Greek statue. But Connor was no statue. And after the interlude with Sikes and the disturbing dreams he’d made her recall, she had admit to the fact that she wasn’t one either.
“Well?”
Juliana’s head snapped up. Unfortunately, meeting his fierce gaze only added to her distraction. “We were … um, that is to say we were …”
“We were looking for you,” Meg finished, perplexed by her friend’s apparent lapse of memory. “Juliana has something she wants to say to you.”
Meg nudged Juliana in the ribs. She might as well have been nudging stone. For the second time that night Juliana was caught in a spell. She stared into Connor’s eyes, wondering why she’d never noticed how the flickering torchlight filled them with glorious light, like sunshine breaking on new snow. She drank in the harsh, lines of his face, the ragged crown of his hair, and the energy that seethed just beneath his ice-hard countenance. He was all angles and edges and ruthless power, yet there was a part of her that yearned to seek out the gentleness that had once existed inside him, that might still exist under the anger, and the muscled body that made her feel like … like …
She ripped her gaze from his and pulled her hood down to hide her embarrassed blush. “I came here to apologize,” she said stiffly, afraid her breathlessness might betray her unseemly thoughts. “I behaved rudely when you came to our home this evening. It was no way to treat one’s … guest. Please accept my regrets.”
There, she’d done it. Swallowed her pride. Admitted her error. Feeling quite noble, she lifted her hood, expecting to see a thaw in his winter countenance.
If anything, the ice grew thicker.
“So, you come in here like Lady Bountiful, dispensing empty apologies like Christmas coins and expecting me to be grateful for it.”
Juliana’s jaw dropped. “It wasn’t empty! It took a great deal for me to come here.”
Connor gave a skeptical snort. “Spare me the disruptions this visit caused to your busy social schedule.”
“That’s not fair,” she cried as she bolted to her feet. “I came here to prove how genuinely sorry I am for what I said this evening. I know how much it hurt you.”
Connor leaned closer. “I’ve faced pirates, shipwrecks, French fortresses, and Spanish cannons. I’ve stared down death’s gullet and barely escaped with my life. I’ve done more, seen more, and loved more in the last few years than you could in a lifetime. Do you really think I give a damn about the opinions of one useless, spoiled society chit?”
His words cut her pride to ribbons. She’d come here to offer him a heartfelt apology—but it was nothing to him. She was nothing. She sat back in her chair, feeling gauche, awkward and horribly embarrassed.
“Coach is here, Captain.”
She looked up into the well-scrubbed face of a hansom cab driver. She saw Connor place enough coins in his hand to take Meg and her to China. “Get these children out of here,” he growled as he turned his back on them. “Now.”
She didn’t argue—there was no reason to stay. She allowed herself to be hustled out of the Bell by the coachman, who immediately launched into a long-winded story about his adventures as a cab driver. Juliana barely heard him. Instead she glanced back, watching Connor until the smoke and noise of the crowded room swallowed him. He never bothered to turn around to see that she’d left safely. It was as if he’d already forgotten that she existed.
Useless, he’d called her. Useless as a person, as a friend … and as a woman.
It was last call at the Bell. Most of the crowd had thinned out, leaving only the most raucous or the most quiet behind. Outwardly, Connor Reed was the latter. Inwardly, his emotions raged like a hurricane. He raised his arm for the barkeep. “Another.”
“That makes four, my friend,” Raoul commented from across the table.
It made five, Connor thought, but who was counting? It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough until he could no longer remember how she’d looked at him, how her confidence had crumbled to dust when he’d told her he thought she was a spoiled socialite. He’d been angry—angry at her for risking her safety to come to a place like this and angry at himself for caring. Most of all he was angry for giving a damn what she thought of him. He wanted to hurt her as deeply as she’d hurt him. And he’d succeeded, just as he won all his battles, with ruthless disregard for his opponent.
And he’d give ten years of his life to take the cruel words back.
“You are sure she made it home safely?”
“Zut alors, have I not told you three times already? Yes, I followed the coach as you asked. Yes, I kept out of sight—though the brown-eyed fille looked my way more than once. I almost believe she knew I was there.…”
“But is Juliana safe?”
Raoul sighed. “I watched the commodore collect them in his arms and take them into the house. Perhaps you would have wished me to go inside and tuck the lady into her bed.”
Connor’s mouth twitched. “Not bloody likely.”
“Ah, I am glad to see that you have some wits left. Hold on to them, English. You will have need them tomorrow, when you tell the Admiral how you managed to ruin a chance at scaling Whitehall. The girl is sure to turn her guardian against us—”
“She’ll say nothing.”
Raoul shook his head. “It is a woman we are speaking of, my friend. What any of them do is a mystery, even to the far more intelligent men of my country.”
Connor stared into his mug, but it wasn’t the murky ale he saw, but a long-ago moonlit night. His grim mouth gentled with a smile. “Have you ever been in love?”
The Frenchman stroked his mustache. “But of course. Only last month there was that très magnifique tavern wench in Gibraltar who—”
“Not that kind of love. I mean the kind the poets write about—when your life is consumed by wanting one woman. When you live for her smile. When you die when she cries. You would do anything, be anyone, risk everything to keep her safe. And you would give up your soul just to hear her say, one more time, drat she loves you.”
Raoul stopped stroking his mustache. He stared at his friend for a long while, then shook his head. “No, I have never been in love like that. I do not think I should want to be.”
“You won’t. But when it happens, you won’t have a choice. Hell, you won’t even know what hit you. The first time I saw Juliana …”. Connor gripped his mug and downed the rest of the sour-tasting liquor in a single gulp. “I was an idiot, a boy in love with a dream. Now she has only contempt for me. But she won’t talk—pride alone will keep her from admitting that she was bested by an inferior. She’ll go back to her balls and parties, and forget she ever met me again.”
Raoul raised an eyebrow. “And you, mon ami? Can you forget her so easily?”
“Think I can’t? Ha!” Connor pushed his chair back, feeling a pleasant, fuzzy confidence begin to glow inside him. “I’ll forget her before first light—see if I don’t. There’s plenty of women in the sea. Blondes. Brunettes. No redheads. All willing and winsome. Not spoiled. Not stuck-up. Can have my pick. Can have—”
He stood up and the world began to wobble. “Maybe I shouldn’t have had that last drink.”
“I warned you,” Raoul said as he placed a steadying
hand on his arm. “Mon Dieu, your head will ache like the devil tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? What about now? His temples pounded like the stone under a mason’s hammer. But better his heart than his head. Not that his heart ached. Not over her. Plenty of other women in the world—including the well-endowed barmaid who gave him a wink as Raoul helped him to the door. Cheered, he grinned at his friend. “She fancies me. And she’s blond. Told ya—can have my pick. Already forgot the other one. Already forgot Juliana’s name. Let her have her parties. Let her marry one of those pompous asses. Don’t care. Wasted half my life protecting her. Not anymore. She’s on her own from now on. She’s—”
The bell sounded. Everyone in the room went still as the tavern keeper cleared his throat and called out the name of the wrecked ship. “The Lady Anne, out of Kingstown bound for Southampton. All hands lost.”
“Poor devils,” Raoul muttered, crossing himself. He looked at Connor’s face and saw that it was alabaster white. “My friend, a shipwreck is a terrible thing, but the crew is past our help. Indeed, we have problems of our own. The Admiral—”
“To hell with the Admiral,” Connor growled, suddenly sober. “That ship was Albany’s. God in heaven, it belonged to Juliana’s father!”
It was a bonny winter day, with the sun glancing off the new blanket of snow like a thousand diamonds. Chickadees lighted on the sill outside the windows where Juliana sat, chirping merrily, leaving tiny, bold footprints in the untouched snow. On another day, Juliana would have been delighted by their antics, but on this afternoon she barely saw them. She leaned her forehead against the cold pane and stared out the window, the bright world blotted out by the terrible sorrow weighing down her heart.
Father would hate me to feel this way. The marquis of Albany had loved life, and had bit it off in huge, risky, joyous hunks. During their last voyage together he’d stood at the wheel with his daughter beside him, with the wind at their backs and the cold, crisp spray in their faces. “If I ever don’t make it back to safe harbor, I want you to remember me this way,” he’d said as he cheerfully steered the ship into the fighting waves. “Remember that I lived my life doing what I loved, and no man can ask for more than that. I expect you to keep people from saying too many silly things about me, and to see that my bonny ships stay clear of reefs and shoals. Most of all, I want you to marry up with a good man and have a bunch of fat, happy children. Never waste a minute of your life on regrets, Julie. Not a minute. And I expect you to shed not one tear for me.”
