Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0]

by The Companion

  She took tea alone in the great stern cabin volunteered by the Captain for her comfort. The view out the great sloping windows slowly shaded as she stared at two barques from the convoy riding lightly ahead. The sea turned almost amethyst. The sun must have set.

  She still had choices. She vowed to engage with the world at every turn, though she was sure she would not fit that world. Better an antidote despised for her boring talk of archaeology and geology than a madwoman locked in some asylum. Rising purposefully, she strode onto the deck, determined to sit with Mrs. Pargutter, whether that lady would or no.

  But there, just coming up into the short Mediterranean twilight, was the most intriguing of her fellow passengers. The breadth of him filled the doorway. He seemed to exude power, energy . . . what should she call it? He was very, very male. Even the busy sailors felt his presence, though he was behind them, and gave way.

  He looked about himself. She saw him place the position of the other vessels in the fading light and the sloop that guarded them. Then he cast his eyes about the deck. After they moved over her, they came back and rested on her in speculation. Beth was used to the eyes of personable men moving over her. She was not used to them returning. She felt her color rise. Would that her brown complexion did not show her confusion.

  He moved purposefully in her direction and bowed, most correctly. He wore a black coat and buff breeches. His boots shone, though he must have tended them himself, since he had come on board without even a servant. He was clean shaven, his hair tied back neatly, no fobs or seals or rings. “Miss . . . Rochewell.” He had to search for her name. Not surprising.

  “Mr. . . . Mr. Rufford.” Her own hesitancy was not because she did not recall his name.

  He glanced to the sea again. “All is well, I hope? The convoy skims along prosperously?”

  “Why, yes. How not?”

  “Oh, I expect we shall hit calm seas sooner or later and wallow in our own filth for a week. Or . . .” here his deep voice grew harder, “we might even see an enemy sail.”

  “What enemy? Napoléon is vanquished these three years, the American war long ended.”

  His smile was not humorous. “We might always catch sight of a local corsair.”

  Beth chuckled, dismissing his fears. “We have a sloop of the Royal Navy for protection. No pirate would dare to come within a league of us.”

  “True, if the sloop’s Captain fights true. I have known them to run shy when there were only merchantmen involved.” The bitterness in his voice was back.

  “Who is more competent than the King’s Navy? They rule the water.”

  He did not contradict her. He simply looked at the merchantmen shushing through the sea around them, silent with their distance, the placement of HMS the sloop, then cast his eyes to the rigging and swept the deck and its occupants. Sailors were putting out lanterns in the rigging. Lamps flickered on the boats around them as well, a small, warm constellation.

  He seemed disinclined to continue conversation. Beth racked her brain for a way to engage him. “You have been in your cabin all the day, sir. Does the voyage not agree with you?”

  He fixed her with his steady gaze. “Night is more congenial to one of my temperament.”

  “Ahh.” The silence stretched. The crew moved about on tasks unknowable, oblivious. “Do you dine with the Captain? I am afraid you must be famished, having missed your dinner.”

  He nodded and picked out his watch. It was two hours to supper. “We have some time before we eat,” he remarked, looking conscious, as if he considered making a proposal.

  Beth mustered her courage. “I saw a chessboard in the stern cabin.”

  “Do you play?” he asked, curious.

  “A little.”

  “Why do I think you are a Trojan horse, Miss Rochewell?”

  “Because no one who really plays chess only ‘a little’ would admit it?”

  A tiny smile played about his lips. “Just so. Let us repair to the stern cabin. I wonder if you can give me a brisk game.”

  She could, for she had played with her father for all those long equatorial evenings. But she began with a conservative opening. Boldness was for later. She could not help but notice that he wore some spicy scent, cinnamon and something more elusive. It did not fit with his austerity.

  They played in silence. Beth wondered how she would broach any subject at all with her mysterious partner. Her eyes were drawn to the way his coat bulged over his biceps as he put his elbows on the table. He laid his cleft chin on his clasped hands, eyes on the board. Finally he glanced to her face. “You know the classic game. Are you capable of more?”

  He moved his knight in a rogue attack, too early by far, on her queen, three—no, four moves out. She stared, sorting through the sequences engendered by each possible counterattack. Conservative play said she should block with her knight. But if she attacked with her rook she not only blocked but also set up a sequence that, if he complied, might weigh the balance in her favor. The flurry of taken pieces might distract him. She reached for the crenellated ivory.

  Play accelerated. Both collected their downed opponents. The rush of play unfolded as each pursued a strategy that must collide, Beth knew.

  There! He had allowed her queen the avenue required.

  She moved.

  He sucked in a breath, stopped. Seconds stretched. The climax loomed. One possibility . . .

  He moved his king.

  “Stalemate,” she said, letting go her pent-up breath. “You have robbed me.”

  “But I could not win.”

  “No,” she agreed, letting it be known she had expected that.

  “So . . .” He pushed back from the table, glancing one final time at the board as if to retrieve some other outcome. “This voyage will allow scope for a rematch?”

  “If you like.” She let her tone say, “If you dare.”

  Behind him, Redding, the loblolly boy who had served her tea, looked in on them. “Miss Rochewell, Mr. Rufford, may I get you some lemon scrub, perhaps, before dinner?”

  “Wine for me, I think, and Madeira for the lady,” Mr. Rufford responded.

  Redding ducked his head and disappeared.

  “I am surprised you did not order ratafia for me,” Beth observed, too sweetly.

  He looked surprised. “You wanted wine? Madeira survives shipping in far better countenance than any claret.”

  “Perhaps I wanted to choose for myself.” She scooped the pieces into their box.

  He lounged back in his chair. “You are a strange creature, Miss Rochewell.”

  “I have no doubt of that.” She was very well aware that she was not attractive. Was that what he meant by strange? She felt herself flushing as she put the box away. Behind her there was silence. But she could feel the physical presence of him. She glanced behind her and saw him flushing in return.

  “My apologies,” he said in that sensuous baritone of his as he looked away. “I, of all people, have no right to call another strange.”

  What could he mean? “Well,” she managed. “Perhaps we have our strangeness in common as well as our humanity.”

  He looked up at her with a longing she found painful. “Perhaps not,” he whispered. He rose, as though he might flee.

  Luckily or unluckily, Redding returned with the wine. “Sorry, miss, Mr. Rufford, these particul’r bottles wa’n’t easy to come by, if you get my meaning.”

  Rufford’s scruples apparently would not allow him to abandon her publicly. He sat on the edge of his chair while Redding poured. By the time Redding bowed out, Rufford had recovered his composure and Beth had decided that the mystery of Mr. Rufford was deeper than she had supposed.

  He raised his glass. “To England, Miss Rochewell, and a quick voyage.”

  “To England,” she returned, with rather less enthusiasm. She sat opposite him.

  “Where do you call home in England?”

  Beth watched his valiant effort at nonchalance, fascinated. Light from the
swinging lamp moved across his form. What was it about him that was so . . . attractive? It was the way his body moved inside his clothes, perhaps. Or the thick column of his throat. The cleft chin? Maybe. The eyes, of course, the curling hair. She felt his presence almost viscerally, somewhere deep inside her. He seemed more physical than anyone she had ever known and . . . male, as Monsieur L’Bareaux or the camel drivers never had.

  He raised his brows and she realized that he was waiting for some answer. What had he asked? Oh yes. “I . . . I don’t call anywhere in England home. I am bound for my aunt’s house in London. And that will surprise her immensely, so I can only hope my letter arrives before I do, so she may pretend a welcome.”

  He did not press her but looked out on the dark sea through the great stern windows to where the lanterns of other ships bobbed on the swell.

  “And you, sir? Where do you go?” Suddenly she wanted to keep him talking.

  “Perhaps to Suffolk. My brother will be surprised as well. Henry inherited a couple of years ago. He will no doubt have set things to rights. He was always very practical.”

  His tone said he denigrated practicality. She decided being practical had its deficits. “Then you also must have lost your father,” she said, hesitating. “My condolences.”

  “Unnecessary, believe me.” He tossed off a glug of wine. “The old autocrat terrorized his family and brought the estate to wrack with his gambling and his . . . other habits.” He shook his head to shake off any effect his father had on him. Ludicrous, of course, but natural.

  “Fathers can be complicated. My own father loved me but was so distracted he sometimes quite forgot to provide for me. His payments to my school were irregular to say the least. The silver lining was that I was forced to insist he take me with him at fifteen. The independence I learned arranging his expeditions would be useful anywhere but England.”

  “How do you mean?” He put his hand out to toy with his wineglass. It was inches from her clasped hands. She felt it like a magnet. If she was not careful, she would take it in her own.

  “Only . . . only that in England no one seems to allow females to provide for themselves.”

  “Females provide for themselves in quite a determined manner on the Marriage Mart.” His expression darkened.

  “By getting a man to do so by proxy,” she protested. “A husband controls his wife’s fortune, her property. A woman is lucky if her father can negotiate settlements to provide for her widowhood. No, I was thinking of something more direct.”

  His smile was very small. It changed his face. “You mean setting up as a governess?”

  She sighed. “I hope I do not have to resort to employment. Almost no one wants their children to learn archaeology and geology and Arabic.”

  His brows drew together. “Perhaps your aunt will help you to a suitable match.”

  “Unlikely. I will never marry a man I cannot respect, or even . . .” Should she say it? What was this man to her that she should refrain? “Love.”

  “I hope you have choices which suit you, then.” He dismissed her as naïve.

  “I have a fair portion which should let me live independently.” She did not relish being thought naïve, whether that was true or not. She rushed on. “Father put money in the Consuls in my name. I was considering whether to offer up my portion to support his next expedition when he was struck on the head by that perfectly arbitrary bit of masonry.” She sighed. “I can’t help feeling his death was a judgment on my selfishness.”

  “Selfishness?” Rufford snorted. “Because you considered keeping the provision he had made for your future in just such a case? And don’t tell me you believe in divine retribution for your thoughts, because anyone who plays chess as you do would be lying.”

  All the tears she had not yet shed tangled in her chest and made breath difficult. “You don’t understand how important his dream was to him. A significant discovery would mean he had mattered. He wanted to find that lost city more than he wanted anything.” She smiled wistfully. “Including me.” She came to herself. “My portion would have been a small sacrifice.”

  She sipped her Madeira, conscious of his gaze.

  He said in a tight voice, “You would not want to find that city. It is evil.”

  “So the folklore says,” she agreed eagerly. “I collected maps, testimonials, even all those tales of bloodsucking and ancient evil. I found one Imam, very old, in Tunis, who I think has actually been to Kivala. I know we could have found it. We were on our way to consult him when my father . . .” Her companion’s face contorted in horror. “Whatever is the matter?”

  Mr. Rufford was saved by the pipe to dinner from answering. He sprang up as though released and knocked his head upon a beam, swearing under his breath. When he raised it, he was master once again. “Shall we?” he asked, only a slight hoarseness conveying the distress she had witnessed.

  She nodded, her brow knotted. Why that severe reaction? What had she said?

  She preceded Mr. Rufford across the deck to the Captain’s cabin, his bulk and his emotion a dark force almost palpable behind her, his cinnamon scent dissipated by the ocean air. The mystery of the man was not lessened by her conversation. She doubted that a dinner in the very public company of the ship’s officers was likely to shed any light on that mystery. But the voyage was long and suddenly very much more interesting than she had thought it would be.

  Four

  Damn her eyes! Why did he have to be confined on a ship with one of the few English people who knew anything at all about the legends of an evil in the desert?

  Ian stood at the rail again watching the lights on the merchantmen, now drifting farther away, now nearing in the wee hours as the convoy cruised slowly on at the speed of the most sluggish of her members. The boys heaving the log sang out four knots at most.

  Supper with the officers stopped any prying questions. And it had allowed him to take his gauge of her more fully. She spoke fluent Turkish. He had not let on that he understood her as she complimented the Turkish sailing master on the science of navigation his ancestors had defined. Only the Captain or the passengers could initiate conversation, and Tindly was a blockish man who indulged in avaricious anecdotes. So she made it her job to knit conversation together across the table of officers with practical questions. She dealt with the crew’s attention good-naturedly, not mistaking it for real regard. She did have social graces. They were simply different from those practiced in London drawing rooms.

  She was not conventionally pretty and she definitely thought she had no beauty. She might be wrong. Her tawny green eyes were certainly a shock in the light. They made her look exotic. And there was something about her . . . Just what it was eluded him. Was it that she was an original? What woman did he know who could give him a game of chess and spoke Turkish? Or was it the way she moved, with unconscious . . . freedom? Whatever it was, her particular charms would not be valued in parochial England. He gazed out over the waters. The fact that she was intelligent and even knew Kivala by name meant his secrets were not safe. She was a woman, too, and therefore untrustworthy. An image darted into his brain of lithe white limbs, billowing silk curtains, compulsion overwhelming even pain with lust. . . .

  “Jib and topsails!” Bare feet hurried unseen and a triangular sheet flapped into place.

  He jerked himself from the rail and lurched across the waist to climb the forward stairs to the bow. Let the wind wash his thoughts clean. White water coursed out from the ship’s side.

  He would never allow a woman to overcome him again.

  He thought of his brother Henry and his Mary. If only you could keep that first tenuous promise of happiness and interlocking sympathies throughout the years. How many marriages had he seen where the woman strove in subtle ways to make her husband feel smaller, more mean-spirited, than he was and in consequence behave that way? Would his father have been the absent wastrel if his mother had not been the oppressive saint? They lived only to torment each other and gain
the upper hand. No, women were not for him.

  He steeled his emotions. When he got to Stanbridge Court he would find Mary grown into a fat shrew and Henry looking for more temporary and convenient comforts elsewhere while taking solace in the fact that he was immortal through his children.

  Immortality . . .

  The caravan gathered at the edge of the desert. Braying camels settled in the sand, their packs piled beside them, their brightly colored rope halters fitted with dangling tassels to keep the flies from their eyes. Still their ears twitched almost constantly. Flies were everywhere. Men in striped burnooses and plain walked among the beasts. Others bargained with merchant victualers in loud voices. Boys hopped among the camel drivers, hawking figs and dates.

  Ian stumbled into camp, urged on by shouting in a language he did not understand and by the crack of the whip across his bare back. He was linked by rough hemp rope at the neck to five others, all half-naked as he was. They had fitted him with rough sandals to protect his feet. His breeches had been replaced by a scrap of cloth tied around his loins. How he had survived the march from the slave market in Algiers to this remote stretch of godforsaken desert he could hardly tell. His back was raw with lashes. The rope at his neck, rubbing the sweaty skin, had worn a necklace of blood. He was burnt by the sun. For days he had stumbled on, delirious with sun and the infection in his shoulder. But slowly he had regained his senses. The slaves were given water at intervals and allowed to sleep, a rough canvas slung over them when their small party stopped in the worst heat of the day. The six slaves were all fine male specimens, big, with powerful muscles and comely features. Only one other European, a Frenchman, was tied in their train. The rest were Arabs and a huge black man. Ian spoke excellent French, enough to communicate with the Black and the Frenchman, but the slaves were beaten for speaking to one another, so it came to nothing.

  Tents dotted the perimeter of the caravan, the inner ones fine, the outer ones shabby and ragged. And one tent, much richer than the others, stood at a distance from the bustle under some waving palms. The awning had worked borders in blue and gold. Nearby, a litter sat in the sand, colorful silk pillows just visible inside the thick draperies.