Scandalous

by Minerva Spencer

  Beauville could not count the number of times women had come seeking Bouchard, crying, begging and—on one memorable occasion—brandishing a gun.

  The striking ex-slave was more skilled at attracting the opposite sex than any man Beauville had ever known. He was also colder and more ruthless than any when it came to discarding them. The first mate believed he knew his captain as well as anyone could know such a proud, arrogant man and doubted Bouchard ever completely opened his budget with anyone. Well, perhaps he was honest with his mentor, One-Eyed Standish, a man as inscrutable as himself.

  The captain was as scarred by life as any man could be, and for good reason. Beauville himself had been a slave on a corsair galley for a little over a year before his ship was captured and he was freed by One-Eyed Standish.

  Bouchard had been born a slave, chattel since the day he came into the world. Beauville shuddered at the thought of his captain’s brutal past. The man could hardly have ended up any differently than he had.

  But lately the captain had been stranger than usual. His behavior around the plain missionary woman was different from anything Beauville had seen before. If he had been forced to guess, he would have said Bouchard was acting like a jealous lover. Beauville had found him more than once lurking outside the Dutchman’s cabin, always when Miss Fisher was inside.

  Beauville chuckled to think of the hardened captain finally losing his heart to a woman or even discovering that he had a heart. And to such a woman as the missionary. Not that Sarah Fisher was ugly, far from it. But she was nothing compared to the women Bouchard had always attracted in droves—not just whores, but beautiful women, rich women. Women who would do anything for him.

  As far as Beauville could tell, Sarah Fisher treated Bouchard the same way she did Daniels or Graaf, both of whom also seemed besotted by the kind, rather plain woman.

  He shrugged. It was one of life’s mysteries. Who knew why a person’s heart made the choices it did? Certainly not he. After all, Beauville was besotted with a mere slip of a girl he had seen only twice in the town of Eastbourne. He’d never even spoken to her, and he was as lovelorn as his captain. He could not stop thinking of her and would have to make her an honest offer when he returned to England. She was not the type of woman who would accept anything less.

  Beauville sighed with contentment; the idea of taking a wife and settling down held more than a little appeal. For most of his life he’d lived on a ship and rubbed shoulders with both the best and the worst of men. Like most sailors he knew few females other than whores or the promiscuous wives of men who did not take care of their women. When it came to women of virtue, he was without a clue. Maybe the dark-haired little serving wench would not want an older, battered French husband. All he could do was ask.

  He did not think his arrogant captain would allow the capture of his heart with such a sanguine attitude. Bouchard had the look of a man who would go down fighting, all the way to the bitter end.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A sharp rapping sound shook Martín from his restless slumber. Before he could find his voice to tell whomever it was to go away, Sarah Fisher entered his cabin, slamming the door with unnecessary force. He winced, closed his eyes, and pushed his head under a large, soft pillow.

  “Why are you still abed, Captain Bouchard? I believe we have three lessons this morning since you missed the last two.”

  The pillow did nothing to muffle her piercing voice.

  “Captain?”

  She would not go away. That much was plain. Martín inhaled deeply and squinted through eyes that were swollen and watery with drink.

  And pain.

  He carefully cleared his throat, but even that hurt his head. “Ah—”

  “You may view my teaching as a frivolous waste of time, but I see it as the only way to pay my debts. I see you are incapacitated. The result of alcohol and prostitutes, no doubt. Be that as it may”—her voice went up an octave—“I can only answer for my own behavior. I will complete our arrangement as agreed. I can work around your indisposition. I will return in an hour.” She stomped to the door and then stopped, swinging around. “Oh, I purchased this in town, mistakenly believing you would enjoy it.”

  Martín barely dodged the missile she hurled at his head.

  She did not wait for a response before slamming the door behind her. He could feel the thud of her feet as she stomped down the corridor.

  Martín picked up the brown paper-wrapped package, curiosity overwhelming the pain in his head. A gift? He had received very few gifts in his life. His hands shook as he unwrapped the package; it was a book. His hand scrabbled blindly on the nightstand for Graaf’s spectacles, which he had not yet returned. He put them on and looked at the book. It was a dictionary. Inside, on the flyleaf, was her neat, careful writing: For my friend Captain Bouchard, may you never be at a loss for words, Sarah Fisher.

  He dropped his head back on the pillow, moaning in pain at the sudden movement.

  Martín was a jackass, but it hurt too much to think about it right now. He’d barely closed his eyes when he realized somebody was at his door again. This time it was a soft scratching sound, rather than pounding.

  “Yes,” he called weakly, not bothering to sit up for fear he would vomit. He cracked an eyelid and watched through a watery, red haze as Jenkins entered the room, not making a sound.

  The little man held a tray, his shifty eyes darting from Martín to the table and back to the bed. “I’ve brought you some hot coffee. I’ll go and fetch your hot water while you drink it. Miss Fisher sent me, Captain,” he added, when Martín failed to move or respond.

  “Miss Fisher?”

  Martín could hear his wiry servant swallow from across the room. The soft clink of a spoon on china filled the long pause. “I’ll just put your coffee here, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Miss Fisher says you’re to be ready for a meeting in an hour, sir.”

  The door latch clicked shut, telling him Jenkins had departed without waiting for an answer.

  That was just as well, as Martín seemed incapable of giving one. A rich, dark aroma teased his nostrils, and he propped himself up and took the steaming cup in his shaking hands, clutching it tightly before putting it to his lips.

  “Ahhhh.” He clenched his jaws as hot liquid scorched his throat. Any pain was better than that in his head.

  Martín drained his cup before he knew it and reached for the pot.

  The second cup jarred loose the memories of the last few days. Well, some of them.

  As was his practice in a brothel, he’d engaged for a meal, drink, and the best-looking woman in the house. The food had been excellent, as had the wine. The woman, also, was much finer than those in most port towns. She’d also been eager and skilled.

  Not, apparently, skilled enough.

  Martín groaned and immediately regretted it. His last memory had been of paying the madam three times the amount she usually charged in exchange for her promise to keep the lack of activities to herself. At the rate he was going, there wouldn’t be a whore in existence who wasn’t privy to his embarrassing secret.

  Martín had sent the woman from his room and proceeded to get drunk, as if that would help him forget that his cock had refused to function for an unprecedented second time in a row—at least it wouldn’t in the presence of a whore.

  Once he was alone, his treacherous brain had replayed the episode with Sarah over and over again. Just recalling her powerful orgasm had given him an erection of raging proportions. Instead of feeling relief that his breeding organ still functioned—after all, his cock had been the center of his existence his entire life—he’d felt only anger. What good was it that it did so in response to only one woman? A woman who was not available, and never would be after the way he’d treated her.

  It had been a good thing he was alone and nobody else had witnessed the ensuing orgy of self-pity. Not to mention that the only way he’d been able to vanquish his insistent arousal had been to satisfy his own urges
, something he’d not been forced to do since he was a boy. And certainly never while in a building filled with dozens of perfectly good whores. Martín’s face heated with shame at the memory.

  After two pots of coffee, a hot bath, and a larger breakfast than he had believed he could eat, he was ready for Sarah when she showed up precisely one hour later.

  He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the two hours that followed were even more humiliating than the previous two nights. She treated him like a stranger she’d been engaged to teach. She was polite yet distant, gentle, yet firm. The lesson was nothing more than a business transaction. Gone were the small personal asides she’d previously included while teaching him. Gone were the warm smiles and uninhibited praise.

  It was misery. And it was all he could do not to push her from the room and go back to bed.

  But Martín survived the lesson, his body becoming almost weak with relief when she stacked up her books and papers and left. He’d survived today, but he did not know how he could tolerate such treatment for the remainder of the journey.

  Apologize.

  The errant thought hit him like a stray piece of shot.

  Apologize? Where had that come from? It was not a thought of his making; perhaps he was still drunk?

  Martín looked down at the desk to the page he’d been working on, a sheet of practice words and sentences. His large loopy handwriting looked nothing like Sarah’s, which was consistent and uniform. Just like she was. She’d been consistently open and caring from the beginning, even while holding him at gunpoint.

  She had behaved the same way with him while he had been . . . Martín stopped. Why go in that well-trammeled direction? He’d done what he’d done, and nothing could undo it. Apologize? He snorted and crossed his arms. He would not apologize, and nobody could make him.

  Nobody.

  He grasped the quill and signed his name with a flourish on the blank paper in front of him, as if he had just struck a deal and made his mark to seal it.

  Nobody.

  * * *

  When Martín later reflected on the weeks that followed Tenerife, he could say, in all honesty, they were some of the worst of his life. True, they were nothing compared to being a slave, so they were not the most terrible days of his life.

  Sarah treated him with a politeness that made him recall his boorish behavior every second they were together. Not a single personal comment or discussion occurred during the weeks of tutoring that followed. If he made a joke, she ignored it. If he smiled at her, she ignored it. When he thanked her for the dictionary, she ignored him.

  All she allowed were the same businesslike transactions Martín had with any other member of his crew.

  Her cool behavior was even more jarring when he walked past Graaf’s cabin—which he admittedly did more often than was necessary—and heard laughter coming from behind the closed door. It was all Martín could do not to smash through that door and pull the Dutchman’s head from his shoulders.

  Every time he saw her strolling the deck with Daniels, it was like a boot to his groin.

  Each afternoon she spent reading to the men who gathered before her on deck was like having a treat dangled before him that was just out of reach.

  Her reading was miraculous, her voice changing with each and every character. Martín lingered on deck just like all the others while she spun a web of magic over his men. Over him. He hated that he held his breath in suspense as he braved the world’s perils with Gulliver. Really, it was agonizing, and he’d brought it all on himself.

  Martín stared at her face while she read, his rage enough to choke him. He wrenched his eyes away from her profile and looked up. Beauville was watching him. His first mate’s face was impassive, but Martín swore he saw a flicker of amusement in the other man’s eyes.

  “Have you nothing better to do?” Martín snapped, ignoring the fact that he, too, was lounging and listening instead of working.

  Beauville moved along, his lack of argument making Martín even more irascible. He repressed the urge to yell at the other lounging men and instead stalked below deck. He was about to enter his cabin when he noticed the Dutchman’s door was open. Why wasn’t the fool up on deck with the rest of the fools? Martín strode to the open door and looked inside.

  Graaf was hunched over his miniscule desk, concentrating so hard he didn’t hear Martín’s approach.

  “What are you working on? A letter to your cousin the king?”

  The other man jumped and gave a startled yelp. “No,” Graaf said once he’d collected himself. “I am working on a letter to a missionary society in Amsterdam.”

  “Oh?” Martín was disgusted by the curiosity he heard in the single syllable.

  “Yes, I told Sarah I would write to them. When my mother was alive she had connections with the brother and sister who operated the mission.”

  Martín glared, frustrated by his inability to find anything to scorn in the man’s words. The Dutchman continued to regard him with his wide blue eyes, the hint of superiority in his smile raising Martín’s hackles. He snorted and left the room. The temptation to choke the life out of Graaf seemed to get stronger the closer they got to England.

  Martín slammed the door to his cabin and flung himself into his chair, staring blankly at the books and papers left on his desk from the morning’s lesson. There would not be too many more lessons, he realized, taking up the quill he had split yet again with his heavy-handed use.

  Heavy-handed. Martín laughed. That was a perfect description of him, especially when it came to Sarah Fisher. His feelings toward her were so frustrating, they made him wish he could tear off his own head and throw it overboard.

  Right after Graaf’s, of course.

  Writing to missionaries? The man was obviously engaged in ingratiating himself with Sarah, dangling promises of aid for her ridiculous scheme of returning to the burnt-out village and rebuilding it.

  Still, he couldn’t honestly blame Graaf for trying. At least the man knew how to gain a woman’s attention with something other than his cock. That was pretty much the limit of Martín’s abilities in that regard. And even that had been less than impressive lately.

  But how could Sarah be taken in by the Dutchman’s efforts? How could she care for a man who’d bought her people and stowed them in the hold of his ship like so many head of beef or crates of fruit? Graaf’s claim that he’d been unaware of the people his first mate had purchased—even if it were true—did not excuse the man. Nothing could.

  Oh, Martín knew what Sarah said. She was a Christian. Christians practiced forgiveness.

  He could not begin to countenance forgiveness of such a matter. Slavery and the willingness to engage in it merited only one response: vengeance. Well, and perhaps death.

  Martín chewed at his cheek and twirled the splintered quill between his fingers. He’d repeatedly tried to use Sarah’s forgiveness of Graaf to work up a dislike for her, but never succeeded. Her propensity to forgive anyone for anything—except him, of course—aggravated, annoyed, and angered him, but it didn’t make him dislike her.

  But he disliked intensely her effect on him. He hated how she dominated his mind and ruined all other women for him. And it drove him mad to see her laughing and talking with his crew. It drove him even crazier when he realized he was displaying his craziness to either her or his men.

  Her attitude toward Graaf was infuriating, but at least she showed him no preference. Daniels, on the other hand . . . The younger man seemed determined to assume the role of Sarah’s protector. He’d even had the effrontery to linger around her when she was near Martín, as if Martín were some vile, corrupting influence that should be kept at bay. What made it worse was Martín agreed with Daniels. He was a corrupting influence. All Martín could think about was getting her into his bed and corrupting her. Again and again.

  He dropped his head into his hands. “Merde.” Why couldn’t he ignore the traitorous thoughts his mind seemed increasingly bent on gener
ating? He yearned for the time before Sarah Fisher dominated his every waking—and sleeping—hour, when he’d been happy, or at least ignorant of anything other than fulfilling his appetites for pleasure and vengeance in equal measures.

  What had happened to him? Perhaps it was some fever of the brain? He would speak to Ramsay when he reached Eastbourne. The man had a far greater knowledge of mental and emotional workings, subjects Martín had always considered irrelevant in the past.

  In any case, it was Martín’s plan to bring his two “guests” to the baron’s hall near Eastbourne. It was rude to make such plans without asking Ramsay, but where else could Martín keep the king of the Netherlands’ bloody cousin while making arrangements to haul him to London?

  Martín could put Sarah at Ramsay’s, along with the Dutchman. Ramsay’s wife would know what to do with Sarah. While Martín didn’t entirely trust the baron’s reserved, clever wife, he did think she was unusually practical for a woman. He respected her, which was something he didn’t feel for many females. She handled her husband—a man whose name still struck terror in savage killers all over the globe—with impressive ease. Martín had initially made the mistake of underestimating Lady Ramsay and would never do so again. She was the perfect person to assist Sarah with her foray into British society.

  He could leave Sarah in the baroness’s capable hands, take Graaf to London, and deposit him with British officials. There would be no point in lingering and waiting for resolution of the Dutchman’s case, which he doubted would ever come to anything. Martín would be lucky if he even received reimbursement for transporting and feeding the man.

  After he’d disposed of Graaf? Well, Martín could do whatever he wanted. He could go to Paris, something he’d never been able to do because of the damned war.

  He looked down at the desk, at the sheet of paper Sarah had left for him. The page was filled with her neat writing, sentences, word problems, and other exercises. Suddenly, it struck him like an axe between the eyes: he could read. Not quickly or easily, of course, but he got better every day. Now, with his dictionary—yet another thing she’d given him—he could read anything he wanted.