by Louise Allen
‘The house is on a cliff and my room has a balcony overhanging the sea. I wrote a despairing note to make them think I had thrown myself over and I climbed up the creepers from the balcony, along the ledge just below the roof and then slid down some other roofs. I stole a horse from one of the penns about two miles away.’ Nathan made an interrogative noise. ‘You’d say farm, I suppose. Or agricultural estate. I threw my clothes and my plait of hair away far from the house. They’ll think I’m dead, I hope.’
Clemence felt him lift his head. ‘It’s over.’
That poor man. He had probably done many awful things himself in the past, but he deserved a fair trial for his crimes, some dignity, not a brutal death for a tiny mistake.
Nathan didn’t free her and she did not try to duck out of his embrace. It was an illusion, she knew, but even the illusion of safety, of someone who cared, was enough just now. She felt her body softening, relaxing into his. ‘You’ve got guts. What did you hope to do?’ he asked.
‘Stow away, get to another island, find work.’ The lie slid easily over her tongue without her having to think. However good he was being to her now, if he knew she was a Ravenhurst, guessed at the power and the wealth of her relatives, then she became not a stray he had rescued, but thousands of pounds’ worth of hostage.
‘And what do you want to do now?’ he asked.
‘Have a bath,’ Clemence answered fervently.
Nathan chuckled, opened his arms and let her sit back upright. ‘We could both do with that,’ he agreed. Free of his embrace, she could study him. His eyes were not just blue, she realised. There was a golden ring round the iris and tiny flecks of black. As he watched her they seemed to grow darker, more intense. ‘I’ll have to see what I can organise. It’ll be cold water, though.’
She nodded, hardly hearing what he was saying, her eyes searching his face for something she could not define. It felt as though he was still holding her, as though the blow to her head had shifted her thoughts and her perceptions. He knew she was a woman now, and somehow that made her see him differently also.
‘Nathan…’ Clemence touched his arm, not certain what she was asking, and then he was pulling her into his arms and his mouth took her lips and she knew.
Chapter Five
How had he not realised immediately that Clem was a woman? Every instinct he possessed had been trying to tell him, and a life of near misses had taught him to listen to his instincts. He had been focused on getting into the crew of the Sea Scorpion and staying alive while he did so. Perhaps his brain had more sense than his instincts and put survival over sex.
Nathan held himself still, caressing her mouth with his as though she were made of eggshell porcelain. Oh, yes, not a girl but a woman. Young, yes, untouched certainly, but everything that was feminine in her had been in her eyes as she looked at him a moment ago, just as every male impulse was telling him to claim her now.
It was a long time since he had felt like this about a woman. Seven years, in fact. But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. He shook himself; now was not the time to be thinking of those dark dramas and the poetry into which he had plunged in the aftermath of the scandal on Minorca.
She was transforming under his hands, that thin body curving into him, her boyish gestures becoming languid and feminine. The strong part of him, the code of honour he had been brought up in, the naval discipline that had formed him and had all but broken him, were enough to stop the animal within from pressing her back on to the hard bunk and taking her, but they were not enough to stop him kissing, holding, inhaling the female scent of her skin. In the brutal masculine world in which he was trapped, that scent was like everything civilised and beautiful.
If he tried to take her now, he probably could. Not because she was wanton, but because she was frightened and he represented all she had of safety. He sensed that in her near collapse into tears and could only admire the way she had summoned up her courage to keep fighting. That alone was enough to restrain him, he realised, sliding his tongue between her lips, sweeping it around to taste her, tease the sensitive tissue. Clem gave a little gasp, her breath hitching, and he lifted his mouth away.
Too much, too soon. She is so fragile, Nathan thought, as he ran his thumb gently under the downswept lashes that shielded those big green eyes and feathered her undamaged cheek. Despite her height, her bones felt slender; despite her deceptively boyish appearance, the high cheekbones and pointed chin had a charm that spoke of delicacy.
He couldn’t imagine the courage it had taken for her to escape the way she had, the guts she needed to cope and adapt to finding herself here on what must seem a ship from hell.
‘I think that cold bath is probably a good thing for any number of reasons,’ he said, finding his voice oddly husky.
‘I—’ She opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘What happened?’
‘I kissed you.’
‘I know that.’ She gave him a look part-exasperation, part-amusement, wholly female. ‘Why? I mean, why did you stop?’
‘Because I shouldn’t have started and, having started, I knew damn well I shouldn’t continue. I don’t seduce virgins, Clem.’ Although one once seduced me. And now he really had opened a Pandora’s box of troubles for himself. He didn’t need his imagination any longer to guess how she would be in his arms, he knew. He needed no fantasy to conjure up the sweet softness of her mouth or the taste of her.
Nathan stood up and went to sit on the far side of the table. No reason to let her see just how aroused that insane kiss had made him.
‘Thank you,’ she said politely, making him smile despite himself. ‘But you shouldn’t take all the blame. I enjoyed it and I feel better for you holding me. I’ve missed being hugged,’ she added, rather forlornly.
Oh, God! There was nothing he would like more than to hug her. And kiss her. And take off those boy’s clothes and unwrap the binding around her small breasts and kiss the soft, compressed curves beneath. And lay her back on that hard bunk and—
‘I must go up on deck. I’ll tell them I want a tub sent down and some water and they are to be quiet about it because you are very sick from that blow to your head.’
He stood looking down at Clem, fighting the urge to grab her, bundle her into a boat and get away. Which was impossible. There were things he had to do and no one girl was going to prevent him doing them.
Clemence. He said the name in his mind, savouring the sound of it, a sort of fruity sweet tang of a name. Tart and challenging, yet mellow, too. She nodded, watching him. She was thinking hard, he could tell, but those thoughts were hidden. She had learned well in those nightmare weeks at the mercy of her relatives.
‘I’ll get into bed, pull up the blanket and pretend to be dozing. When they’ve gone I’ll wedge the latch before I take my bath.’
That did it. The image of Clem standing up, slowly pulling off that shirt, unbinding her breasts, stepping shivering into cold water, her nipples puckering, was so vivid Nathan drew in a deep, racking breath. Her eyes slid down his body, stopped, widened. ‘Good idea. I’ll knock when I come back.’
Clemence sat staring at the back of the cabin door for some minutes after it had shut abruptly behind Nathan. So, not only was she sharing a cabin with a man she desired and who had discovered she was a woman, but a man who was showing unmistakable evidence of the fact that he desired her, too.
She understood the theory of lovemaking, naturally. But she had never observed the—her mind scrabbled rather wildly for a word—the mechanism before. And she had produced that effect on him. The feeling of gratification was something to be ashamed of, she told herself severely.
What would she have done if Nathan had done more than kiss her? Protest or yield? She had a sinking feeling that she would have yielded. No, worse, she would have positively incited him. She had seen those sculpted muscles; now she wanted to caress them.
Shame, confusion, arousal were all uncomfortable internal sensations when yo
u had just had a nasty thump on the head. Clemence slid down under the blanket, pulled it high over her ears and closed her eyes, thankful to be still for a while. If she could slip into sleep, she could pretend this was the dream.
The sound of voices, the rattle of the door opening, jerked her out of her doze, rigid under the blanket. It seemed a very slight barricade. There was a thump on the floor, some more banging about, then the door closed again. Cautiously Clemence sat up. There was a small half-barrel on the floor, just big enough for a person to sit in with their knees drawn up, and two big buckets of water and a jug.
She slipped out of bed and wedged the latch on the door with her knife, then went to dip a finger in the water containers. The buckets were salt, but the jug was fresh for her face and hair. A rummage through Nathan’s kit bag produced a new block of green soap. She sniffed. Olive oil. On the side were imprinted the words Savon de Marseilles. And there was a luxuriously large sponge as well. French olive-oil soap and sponges? Had he been in the Mediterranean recently? She sensed there was a lot he had not told her.
Clemence stripped, sighing with relief as the linen strips uncoiled from around her ribs. She ran her hands over her torso, massaging the ridges where the bandages had cut into her skin. Nathan’s hands had rested there, and there—and just there.
She stepped into the tub, shivered and hunkered down, gasping as the cold water covered her belly. Her head throbbed; the strange new pulse between her thighs throbbed, too, despite the chill of the water, and she realised the fear that had been ever present in the pit of her stomach for days had gone at last.
There was no logical explanation—it was dangerous folly not to be frightened. Clemence reached for the block of soap and began to work up a lather.
Nathan tapped on the door, wondering at the apprehension that gripped him. What was he going to find inside? His imagination reacted luridly to months of enforced celibacy at sea; it suddenly seemed a long time since he had left England and paid off his mistress. The remembered sweetness of Clemence in his arms conjured up the vision of a slender, naked woman, dripping with water, a nymph uncoiling herself from her tiny pool. The reality, when the door opened, was Clem, wet hair tousled, cheeks glowing and exuding a healthy, and less than erotic, smell of olive-oil soap.
In her clean second-hand clothes she looked the perfect well-scrubbed youth until she met his eye and blushed, rosily. Heat washed through his body and he gritted his teeth. ‘Better?’
‘Yes, much, much better, thank you. I found some birch-bark powder in your medical kit and that helped my headache, and the bliss of being clean, I cannot describe.’ She gave a complicated little wriggle of sensual satisfaction, causing his loins to tighten painfully, and smiled. ‘It is horrible being dirty; I don’t know why it is so difficult to get boys to wash. Surely no one is willingly dirty?’
Nathan found he was not up to discussing any subject touching Clemence and the removal of clothes. She followed his eyes to the tub of dirty water, perhaps assuming his silence was irritation. ‘Sorry, I was just trying to work out how to empty it.’
‘I’ll use the empty bucket and bail it out through the porthole.’ He tossed his waistcoat on to the bunk and rolled up his sleeves. ‘You’ve been very thrifty with the water.’
She was looking at his bare forearms. Nathan watched his own muscles bunch as he hefted the bucket and found, to his inner amusement, that he was endeavouring to make as light work of the task as possible. Poseur, he mocked himself. Showing off like a cock with a new hen. He remembered the frisson of pleasure when he had sensed Julietta’s eyes on him in his uniform, the temptation to swagger to impress her.
‘There isn’t much space in the tub,’ Clemence pointed out, jerking him back to the present. ‘And there’ll be even less room for you.’
Nathan chucked a pail full of water out of the porthole, his mind distractingly full of the image of Clemence curled up in the tub. ‘You’ll have to scrub my back, then, if I can’t reach,’ he said, half-joking.
‘I suppose I could,’ she said doubtfully. ‘With my eyes closed, of course. Have you a back brush?’
‘No. I was teasing you.’ She smiled at him, unexpectedly, and he found himself grinning back. ‘Are you usually this calm about things, Clem? I would have thought you fully justified if you were throwing hysterics by now.’
‘It wouldn’t do any good, would it?’ she pointed out, folding discarded clothes with a housewifely air that contrasted ludicrously with her appearance.
‘I wish my father was alive and I was at home with him, or, if that cannot happen, I wish my uncle and cousin were the men Papa believed them to be. Or, worst come to worst, I wish I had stowed away on a nice merchantman and was now having tea in the captain’s wife’s cabin. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride and having hysterics would not be pleasant for you.’
‘That’s considerate of you.’ Nathan poured clean water into the tub and began to unbutton his shirt.
‘It is in my interests not to alienate you,’ Clemence pointed out, all of a sudden as cool and sharp as fresh lemonade. She sat down on her bunk, curled her legs under her and faced the wall.
‘What’s the matter?’ Nathan asked, his fingers stilling on the horn buttons.
‘I do not want to have to go into the privy cupboard while you have your bath.’
‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ He would have stripped off without a second thought, Nathan realised; he was so focused on not pulling her into his arms that he was forgetting all the other ways he could shock or alarm her.
The shock of the cold water as he crouched down was a blessed relief for a moment, then the absence of the nagging tension in his groin was replaced by the sobering reality of protecting a young woman on the Sea Scorpion. Clemence would be safer in a dockside brothel—at least she could climb out of a window.
Nathan shook his head in admiration as he scrubbed soap into his torso. Out of a window overhanging the sea, up creepers, along a roof, stealing a horse…Now that was a woman with courage and brains. He had been brought up to regard the ideal woman as frail, clinging and charmingly reliant upon a man’s every word. And he had found himself one who apparently embodied all of those attributes combined with the exotic looks of half-Greek parentage. The only fault his mother would have found with her—at first—was her lack of money.
They had all been well-dowered young ladies, the candidates for his hand that his mother had paraded before him. She always managed to completely ignore the fact that, however worthy her late husband’s breeding might be, he had gambled all the money away and that their elder son had to manage a household with the parsimony of a miser. The need for Nathan to marry money was not spelled out, but he was always aware that if he did not, then he could expect to exist upon what the navy provided.
So, the daughters of well-off squires, the granddaughters of merchants, the youngest child of younger sons of the minor aristocracy were all considered—provided they brought money with them. And, while most of them seemed pleased at the thought of a tall naval officer with a baron for a brother, Nathan had found the entire process distasteful. His mother, he was well aware, had made a suitable match to a man she despised. His brother Daniel had wed the sour-faced youngest daughter of an earl because of her breeding and her dowry—substantial, Nathan had always assumed, because of the need to get her off her family’s hands. Neither gave him any desire to marry for money.
So he had married for love. More fool he.
Now, of course, any of those well-dowered damsels would flee screaming if they found themselves alone with him. Nathan grimaced and stood up, slopping water everywhere, and began to wash his hair. Too much to hope that Clemence had left him any fresh water, he reached for the jug and found it half-full.
‘Admirable woman,’ he said, pouring it in a luxurious stream over his head. ‘All this fresh water left.’
‘I don’t need much now my hair is short,’ she said, her shoulders still firmly turned away from him.
‘Was it very long?’ Nathan stepped out, splashed through the puddles and found a linen towel.
‘To my waist,’ she said with a sigh. ‘My only beauty.’
‘Your what?’ Nathan balanced, one foot wrapped in the towel as he dried his toes, and stared at the back of her head and the damp mop of hair that, when dry, was all the colours of pulled taffy. ‘That I cannot believe.’
‘I am not fishing for compliments,’ Clemence said, apparently resigned to her looks. ‘I know I am too tall, too slim and my face has too many angles. My papa used to say that I was as flat as a kipper in front, but I’ve never seen a kipper, so I don’t know.’
Nathan swallowed. This was more information than he felt able to cope with, even after a cold bath. The memory of her body moulding into his came back. Even with her bosom bound, he knew perfectly well that kippers were not that shape.
‘You’ve lived on Jamaica all your life, then?’ he asked, pulling on his loosest trousers and snatching at an innocuous topic of conversation.
‘Yes. Papa and Mama came out here just after they were married. Papa was a younger son, like you.’ She sighed. ‘Mama died ten years ago of the yellow fever.’
‘It isn’t a very healthy climate,’ Nathan said sympathetically, finding a clean shirt.
‘I know. But I don’t seem to catch things, perhaps because I was born out here. Have you finished?’
Clemence was getting a crick in her back from sitting hunched up and her imagination was uncomfortably exercised by the knowledge of what was going on behind her, her ears following every splash, the sound of Nathan working up a lather on bare skin, his sigh of pleasure when he tipped the fresh water over his head, the flap of his shirt as he shook it out.
‘Yes, I’m finished.’
She swung her bare feet off the bunk and grimaced as they hit a puddle. The floor of the neat cabin was awash with more water than she believed had been brought in, there were wet towels on the chairs, dirty clothing discarded into the wet.
