by Laura Landon
Damien watched Captain Durham put his slicker and hat back on and leave the cabin. He took another long swallow of the brandy and kneaded the muscles in his right thigh, which always hurt worse than the other.
The lamp burned low and soft, casting flowing shadows across the room, reminding him of shaded evenings in a gentler time. He tried not to think of her. Tried to keep his mind focused on what he had to do. On the loose ends he needed to tie up.
He couldn’t rush in and claim Olivia like he’d originally intended. Revealing himself would have to wait. He needed to keep his identity a secret until he knew who was behind the accidents. Whoever it was wouldn’t be nearly so careful if they thought Olivia was a defenseless female. And they’d make a mistake.
Then, when Olivia and Pellingsworth Shipping were out of danger, he’d marry her and have the life she’d stolen from him nearly four years ago.
Damien stretched his legs out in front of him and laid his head against the back of the chair. It was Olivia’s face he saw when he closed his eyes. Olivia’s eyes looking down on him. Olivia’s lips smiling back at him. Lips he’d dreamed of kissing every night in his sleep.
Damien let his fingers trail down the left side of his face, over the wide, jagged scar that ran at an angle from his temple, across his cheek, and down his neck. The scar that pulled awkwardly at his flesh. At least she hadn’t screamed in horror when she’d seen it. In fact, she’d barely seemed to notice.
Damien threw the remaining liquor to the back of his throat and rose stiffly from his chair. With a self-deprecating oath, he shrugged into his jacket and stepped out on deck. He needed fresh air. He needed something other than being penned in by four walls and a past life of memories he couldn’t escape.
So he walked, without knowing where or why, in hopes he could escape the nightmares that haunted him.
Olivia glanced up from her paperwork and looked at the clock on the shipping office wall. She hadn’t intended to stay here this long—hadn’t even intended to come here tonight. But after her shocking afternoon, she needed to be here, in her father’s office at Pellingsworth Shipping, surrounded by memories of everything that was his.
She rubbed her hand over her eyes and faced the possibility that in less than six weeks, the shipping company might no longer be hers.
Olivia leaned back in her chair and considered her choices. She could either marry Rolland and forfeit everything to Damien, or she could marry Damien and condemn herself to a life with a man who no longer loved her.
Why had her father written such a stipulation into his will? He knew how much she loved the harbor. Knew how much she loved coming to the shipyards to oversee the comings and goings of ships and the cargoes they carried all over the world. And her father had essentially given it all to Damien, leaving her no choice but to marry him to have a connection to it.
She lunged forward in her chair and slammed her fist against the top of the desk. She would not marry Damien. She wouldn’t marry a man who didn’t love her. A man who’d let her believe he was dead. A man who only wanted her now because of the wealth that would come with her.
No. She would never marry Damien.
She would marry Rolland. He wanted to marry her, had pressed her to marry him more than once. But love would never be part of their marriage. He was still in love with his first wife. Just as she was still in love with Damien. And probably always would be.
The choice came down to the ships. To how badly she wanted to keep them. To what she was willing to do to keep them.
She laid down her pen and looked outside at the darkening sky. It was past time for her to leave. Johns, her driver, would no doubt be worried. If she didn’t get home soon, Cook would be upset with her again tonight for having to hold dinner, and Mrs. Dawes would scold her for staying down here after dark.
After her disturbing afternoon, she needed to keep her mind as busy as possible. She grabbed some paperwork to take with her and stuffed it into a leather folder. There was enough here to keep her busy half the night. It was the only way to keep Damien from infiltrating her memory. The only way to keep the pain of what he’d done from hurting worse than it already did.
She took her pelisse from the closet, then locked the door behind her and hurried toward her waiting carriage. Before she could reach it, a hand grabbed her. Strong fingers wrapped around her neck, squeezing the air from her body. Olivia tried to scream but couldn’t get any sound past her throat.
The man held her from behind so she couldn’t see him. The harder she fought, the closer he brought her up against him, the tighter he held her. She tried to kick him, but he moved far enough away to get out of her reach.
He was a big man, with arms so muscular she couldn’t span them with her fingers. And he was tall. As tall as Damien if not taller, because the top of her head barely reached his chin. He laughed. He was enjoying this. Enjoying the dominance he had over her. It was almost as if he were playing with her, tormenting her, like a cat torments a captured mouse.
She heard his laughter in her ears, felt his body vibrate against her back. She struggled again, and he laughed even harder at her feeble efforts. Olivia was terrified. For the first time ever, she was afraid for her life.
“Fighting won’t do you any good, little lady. You might as well relax and enjoy yourself. It doesn’t matter if my women are willing or not when I take ’em.”
Olivia struggled harder. She tried to scream again, but his hand clamped tighter over her mouth. His other hand moved over her body, down her throat and across her breasts, touching her as no one ever had. She reached above her and felt satisfaction when she raked her fingernails down his cheek.
The giant holding her bellowed in pain, but his grasp didn’t ease. Instead, he spun her around, and with a swift blow, brought his fist down across the side of her head.
Lights flashed behind her eyes, and she shook her head to clear the confusion that made everything go dark around her. With almost no effort, he pushed her against the side of a building and leaned into her.
Olivia knew what he intended to do, and fought him, clawing and scratching whatever exposed part of him she could reach. Her feeble efforts would have been comical if the situation weren’t so desperate. And suddenly, her attacker’s weight lifted from her.
Olivia collapsed to her knees and tried to catch her breath.
Two men were fighting. The man who’d pulled her attacker away slammed his fist into her attacker again and again. The attacker stumbled, but recovered with more speed and agility than she’d thought someone of his size could possess. He spun around, a knife in his hand gleaming in the moonlight.
Olivia hadn’t seen her rescuer reach for a weapon, but he, too, held a knife. With lightning speed, he slashed his blade through the air and grabbed the attacker’s right hand, causing his knife to fall to the wooden planks. Her champion slashed out again, and she heard a loud groan.
She knew her attacker had been wounded a second time because he staggered behind a large barrel stacked along the buildings.
Her defender picked up the second knife and lunged forward, then darted to the side when the injured man picked up the barrel and heaved it toward him. Her rescuer recovered quickly and swung out with the knife; her assailant turned and ran.
Olivia moaned a weak cry of relief.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
Strong arms held her, then lifted her off the ground. Olivia looked up and stared into Damien’s face.
The breath caught in her throat, and she pushed away from him. He let her go.
“What the hell are you doing down here alone?” he bellowed, his voice loud and angry. “Don’t you know not to come here after dark?”
“I had work to do,” Olivia answered, her legs trembling beneath her, but she refused to let him see how frightened she still was. “A shipp
ing company doesn’t run itself, you know.”
“No wonder your father set up his will like he did. The sooner you can worry about guest lists for afternoon teas instead of shipping cargoes the better.”
“How dare you!”
Damien closed the gap between them until he loomed over her. “I dare because it’s my right.”
“It will never be your right to tell me where to go and what to do.”
“Your father gave me that right four years ago.”
“No! My father gave that privilege to a man he once admired. And only because he thought to protect me. You, sir, are a usurper who is taking advantage of the good my father thought to do.”
Olivia felt him stiffen before her and thought her words had made an impact. Until he spoke.
“Be that as it may, Olivia, the facts remain. You are still my responsibility and I don’t want you to come down here again.”
Olivia clenched her hands into fists to keep from hitting him. “Where I go is no longer your concern, my lord.”
With her chin high and her back rigid, she turned and walked away from him for the second time since he’d come back.
This time it was easier.
Chapter 8
Damien crept through the shadows in an alley behind Pellingsworth Shipping and watched as two men scaled down the rope ladder on the side of the Conquest and dropped into a waiting dinghy. He hadn’t seen them climb aboard, nor did he know what they’d done while they were there, but he knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
It had been three days since Olivia had been attacked. He’d come down each night to watch, but nothing had happened since. Except that Olivia still had come to the office twice despite his order.
His temper raged when he thought of how she’d so blatantly ignored his warnings. He knew her stubbornness was what motivated her. That and her pride. He knew she had no intention of giving in to him. Of submitting to him in any way. At least she hadn’t come alone tonight, but had been smart enough to bring her man, Chivers.
Damien moved his thoughts from Olivia back to the two men tying the dinghy to the wharf and climbing onto the walkway. He wrapped his fingers around the knife in his pocket and waited for them to come closer.
One of the men was tall and bulky, his weight as much muscle as fat. He walked with a lumbering gait that made him appear clumsy. The other was short and squatty. He sported a scraggy red beard and had a black knit hat pulled low on his head.
Damien evaluated the two and thought the shorter man looked the more dangerous. He wore a patch over one eye, and the way he carried himself said he was a man used to fighting battles.
Damien rubbed away a pain in his leg and waited as they approached. When they were near enough, he stepped out from the shadows between the two buildings and stood in front of them, blocking their paths.
“Good evening, mates. I was wondering if you’d like to explain what you were doing aboard the Conquest?”
Both men pulled knives from their pockets and slashed the blades through the air. Damien had anticipated their attack. If he were to survive, one of the men would have to die. He didn’t much care which one. He needed answers and only needed one of them alive to give them to him.
The two men separated and surrounded him. Damien moved so he could see them both. He couldn’t afford to let this go on too long. He didn’t have the stamina he’d had before the fire and had to make short work of them if he wanted to live.
The shorter man lunged forward, and Damien ducked out of his way. In a quick move, Damien spun around and brought his knife upward. The blade caught the taller man on the arm and he growled a loud curse.
Damien swiped his blade through the air again, and the shorter man attacked a second time. Damien moved with the instincts he’d developed living the last years in ports much more deadly than London’s. He darted to the left and shoved his knife upward. He struck the taller of the two beneath the ribs and the man doubled over. Blood gurgled deep in his throat as he fell lifeless at Damien’s feet.
Before Damien could pull the knife from the first man’s gut, the second man arched his blade through the air. Damien felt a hot, burning pain run across his waist at his back. He sucked in a painful breath and spun around to face his attacker.
This assailant was smaller, but his tactics were more aggressive. He circled Damien as though he’d figured out Damien’s legs were weak and thrust out the knife from every direction. Damien parried the thrusts, his aim sure enough to keep most of the attacks at bay.
Damien noticed the shorter man kept his head at an angle, his sightless right eye a hindrance. Damien moved to the right and the man turned his body to keep Damien in view. Damien moved more, and the man turned faster. When Damien was out of the man’s line of sight, he charged forward. He came up behind the man and wrapped his arm around his neck.
The man struggled, thrusting his elbow back and hitting Damien on the side where he’d been injured. Damien sucked in a hard breath. His shirt clung to him, wet and warm with his blood. He tried to keep his hold but was engulfed by white-hot shards of pain. It took every ounce of his strength to keep from going down. But before he could gain control of the man, the attacker raised his foot and brought it back against Damien’s leg.
Damien doubled over as the agony of a thousand fiery saber strikes consumed him. His arm fell from around the man’s chest. Damien’s knife dropped to the boards with a dull thud, and his legs gave out from beneath him. He had nothing with which to protect himself and knew he was powerless to stop the man from killing him.
Damien rolled to the side, blindly reaching out to find anything with which to arm himself. The man sprang toward him, and Damien rolled farther, trying to ignore the throbbing that ripped through him. The man raised his knife, then stopped short when a voice bellowed from behind them.
“Hey! What’s going on there?”
Damien rolled to the edge of the walkway nearest the water, desperate to escape the man trying to kill him.
The short man with the patch pulled away. With an angry grunt, he turned and ran in the opposite direction. Damien dropped silently into the cold, murky water.
“Where’d they go?” a voice asked while Damien tried to keep his head above water without making any noise. He wanted to pass out from the wound at his side, but instead, took huge gulps of air and prayed he wouldn’t lose consciousness and sink to the bottom of the sea.
“One ran down that way,” another voice said.
“I thought there were two of them.”
“There were. Here he is. He’s dead.”
Damien stayed in the cold, frigid water until the two sailors left to get the authorities. It wasn’t that anyone cared what had happened to the man, or that they’d search for the man who’d killed him. Deaths were all too common at the docks. The men who died were not worth worrying about. But the body did have to be removed, after all.
Damien waited until all was quiet, then stretched his left arm out in front of him. He needed to put distance between himself and the man he’d murdered. His right side burned like a white-hot poker was still embedded in his flesh, and Damien felt a strange lightheadedness with which he was all too familiar. He knew he had to get somewhere for help before he was no longer able.
“My lady?”
Olivia bolted upright in bed and stared at her maid. It was the middle of the night and Tilly stood at the side of the bed, clutching the front of her robe together with one hand and holding a lamp high in the air with the other.
“What’s wrong, Tilly?”
Olivia blinked her eyes as she struggled to focus, then took a deep breath, trying to keep her heart from thundering out of her chest.
“It’s Chivers, ma’am. He sent me to fetch you.”
Olivia threw the covers back and took the wrap Tilly held out for her. “Did he say what was wrong?”
“No. He just said to have you come.”
Olivia pulled the tie around her waist and followed Tilly down the hall. “Where is he?”
“In your father’s room, ma’am. He asked for you to wait outside.”
Tilly knocked on the bedroom door, and they waited in the hall until Chivers came out. He quickly closed the door behind him, and he and Tilly shared a look before the maid scurried away.
“What’s wrong, Chivers?”
“It’s . . . Lord Iversley, ma’am. He’s come with information concerning the Conquest.”
“At this hour?”
Chivers nodded. “He says it’s imperative you send a message to the captain to tell him something’s wrong aboard ship.”
“What is it?”
“He doesn’t know. He saw two men leaving the Conquest in the night and knows they were up to no good.”
Olivia looked at the door Chivers was guarding, then stepped forward. Chivers didn’t move. “Where’s Lord Iversley?”
Chivers hesitated, then answered. “He’s inside, ma’am.”
“Let me pass.”
“I’m afraid Lord Iversley gave express orders to keep you out.”
Olivia fisted her hands at her sides, but it was fear racing through her body more than anger. “I’ll not be told which rooms I can enter in my own home. Please, stand aside.”
Chivers released a heavy sigh. “He’s been hurt, my lady.”
Every nerve in Olivia’s body went numb. “How badly?”
“Bad enough.”
“Have you sent for the doctor?”
“Lord Iversley refuses to have a doctor. I’ve sent Johns for some bandages and a needle and thread. I’ve had a little experience sewing, and Lord Iversley assures me he’ll be fine.”
“Step aside, Chivers.”
“But Lord Iversley said—”
“I don’t care what Lord Iversley said. This is still my house, and I’ll decide which rooms I can and cannot enter. Not Lord Iversley.”
