A Gentleman 'Til Midnight

CHAPTER SIX

“IT’S THE MOST reckless thing you’ve ever done,” Phil declared the next evening as they lounged in the great cabin. “He left his door propped open all morning, and the sight of him lying abed was a terrible torment.” The gleam in her eyes made it clear she hoped to bait Katherine into acknowledging Lieutenant Barclay’s appeal. It wouldn’t work.

“It’s astonishing that your duties took you past his cabin so frequently,” Katherine said, swirling the wine in her glass. She, of course, had only walked by in order to reassure herself that she had not made a mistake allowing Anne to finally go in and play nursemaid.

“Indeed,” William laughed. “Astonishing.” He leaned across the table toward Phil. “My door is always open, too, you know.”

“Perhaps Lieutenant Barclay needs a lock on the inside,” Katherine suggested.

“Auntie Phil, you’re not listening,” India complained, propping her feet on the table as she popped a date in her mouth.

“I am listening, dearest. To you, anyhow.” Phil poured herself more wine and shot a look at William. “But what you’re saying is so far-fetched that my mind naturally drifted to more realistic possibilities.”

India made a noise. “I have no intention of sitting idly by doing needlework and learning sonatas on the pianoforte after our return.”

“I daresay you’ll have little choice in the matter,” Philomena scoffed. “Your father will lock you away the moment you arrive.”

“If he tries,” India said, pointing at Phil with a date, “I shall simply move in with you.”

“Ha! I’ve quite had my fill of looking after you.”

“Then I shall live with Katherine.”

“Living with a pariah would do little for your marriage prospects,” Katherine said, reaching for the basket of kesra and tearing off a piece of the bread even though she was already full.

Phil rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand why you persist in this notion that we shall be outcasts. Mysterious, certainly. Even scandalous, but that rarely does any real damage. I have yet to discover what a widowed countess cannot do and still receive more invitations than she can reasonably consider, and as for you—well, I daresay the same will hold true for a countess in her own right. Even a Scottish one. They will expect you to eat dainties and applaud their daughters’ mediocre musical accomplishments at more gatherings than you will be able to count.”

William shuddered. “Hate those gatherings. Nothing to do a fellow in like a marriage-minded girl in command of a pianoforte.”

“I don’t need marriage prospects,” India said, “because I have no intention of marrying.”

Phil laughed. “You’ll be fortunate if your father hasn’t already paid some poor young man an offensively large amount to secure an arrangement.”

Katherine rose to get another bottle of wine and raised a brow at India, who sprawled in her chair like a man. “Would have to, given the prize.”

“You’re both insufferable!” India huffed, and bit into another date.

William reached for a piece of fruit. “I resent being left out of that. Katherine, I fancy an apple. Slice it for me?” The apple sailed in her direction and she whipped out her cutlass, slicing it in midair. The halves fell to the table with a satisfying thud.

“You’re insufferable, too, William,” India said. “You all are.” She shook her head defiantly. “If Father has arranged something, I shall run away,” she warned. She thought for a moment. “Or perhaps I could be a kept woman.”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” came Lieutenant Barclay’s voice from the doorway. Katherine’s attention snapped toward him as if he’d fired a pistol. “All the drawbacks of marriage with none of its benefits.” A smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Well, very few.”

India turned bright red, and Phil laughed. “Well put! Just look at you, Lieutenant, up and about. You appear quite recovered. Do you not agree, Captain?”

Katherine watched his gaze sweep across the giant Italian table she’d fallen in love with in Venice, the Spanish walnut cabinet that kept her wine and glasses safe from the waves, the intricately inlaid Turkish chest where she kept her logbooks. It came to rest on the painting of three veiled women tending children in a Moroccan courtyard. Discomfort edged through her, as though he could see her own memories in that painting.

“Improved, if not recovered,” she said. “The power of broth should never be underestimated.”

“I confess to having a thirst for something of a slightly different nature.” He glanced around the table. “Perhaps, since your surgeon isn’t here...”

“Lucky thing!” William said cheerfully, sliding a chair out with his boot. “Wine? Rum? Cognac?”

Lieutenant Barclay eased into a chair next to Philomena. “Undoubtedly the cognac.”

Katherine gave the apple halves to William and met Lieutenant Barclay’s eyes across the table. The wine that already warmed her blood rose a degree. Indeed, Millicent would have objected strongly if she hadn’t been holed away in her cabin, studying her anatomy text.

“An impressive display, Captain,” Lieutenant Barclay said with a nod toward the fruit.

“Katherine’s a virtuoso with the cutlass,” India informed him. “She’s done oranges, pears, figs, plums—”

“Enough, India,” Katherine said.

“—and even grapes.”

Humor flickered in Lieutenant Barclay’s green eyes. “Point taken.”

India frowned. “Point?”

“The ladies were just discussing their futures,” William cut in, lips twitching. “Young India plans to become a courtesan, as you just heard—”

“I said no such thing!”

“—while Phil expects to embrace the freedom of an eccentric widow, and our good captain anticipates complete social ostracism.”

“Does she.” Lieutenant Barclay sipped his cognac and gave her a look that was ten times as intoxicating as any liquor. “I have a suspicion you’ll be more sought after than you expect, Captain.”

“Oh, I expect to be highly sought after—by lechers with insulting propositions.” Or alluring lieutenants with dangerous eyes. “But as for the rest of society, your esteemed captain must not have told you of the bill his brother Nicholas, Lord Taggart, has introduced in the Lords.”

“Pillock!” India spat. “What business has he, trying to strip you of your title? He just can’t stand that you should accede to an earldom when he has merely been granted a barony.”

“Except that he, too, is an earl,” Phil pointed out, “if James Warre perished on the Henry’s Cross.” Her eyes shifted with delight between Katherine and Lieutenant Barclay. Katherine wanted to reach across the table and yank her hair.

The lieutenant frowned. “A bill of pains and penalties?”

“Precisely,” Katherine said, and curved her lips to hide her fear. “I stand to lose both my title and my estate.”

“But not your liberty?”

“A telling sign that they lack evidence of any ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ would you not agree?”

He considered that with a thoughtful lift of his brows.

Katherine swirled the dark red liquid in her glass. “Captain Warre never spoke of his brother, Lieutenant?”

He reached for the plate of dates India had been slowly diminishing. “He was never one to share personal information with subordinates.”

“Naturally.” She watched him sink his teeth into the date. They were white teeth, perfectly straight. “That would risk the kind of friendly bonds that a sodding bastard such as Captain Warre would never tolerate.”

“Such language, Captain,” William said, crunching into his second apple half.

She smiled. “The lieutenant’s words, not mine.”

“I propose a toast,” India declared, raising her glass. “To Nicholas Warre’s eternal ruin!”

“Hear, hear,” Katherine agreed. But Lieutenant Barclay, whether out of fear for his soul or respect for his dead captain’s family, polished off the rest of his date without joining the toast.

* * *

JAMES WAS STILL pondering that toast to his brother’s eternal ruin three days later when he finally felt well enough to venture on deck. God only knew what Nick was up to with this bill Captain Kinloch spoke of. She’d told him the Lords had put off the second reading, which meant the bill was as good as dead. James rubbed his hand over his unshaven jaw and tried to ignore the voice telling him that if it wasn’t, he would need to do something about it once they arrived. After all, he owed the woman his life. But when his little brother got his teeth into something, he did not let go easily.

The weather had turned balmy as they sailed north along the coast of Spain. The Possession was an average brig—two-masted, square-rigged. But making do with a crew of ten, counting Lady India, Lady Pennington and the captain herself, when she would have done better with at least eighteen. The ship had sixteen guns that could prove deadly to a larger, less agile foe. Not that he was aware of the Possession taking deadly action against any kind of foe except in circumstances where James himself would have done the same.

If the Admirals wanted Captain Kinloch’s shipping activity stopped merely because she was an able female captain, without proof of more, they could bloody well come to the Mediterranean and stop her themselves.

He rested his arms on the railing of the upper deck, instinctively studying the horizon for ships, trying to adjust to being a passenger without a single responsibility. It should have been more difficult than it was. But the emptiness inside him that had begun long before he’d nearly drowned with the Henry’s Cross dragged him like a fierce undertow. All that was left was to resign his commission upon their arrival in London and set out immediately for Croston. Once there, he would face nothing but endless days of...nothing.

Perhaps he would become a pigeon fancier.

The one thing he would bloody well not need to do was assert himself on behalf of Katherine Kinloch. It would be enough to report to his superiors that he’d personally observed the protocols aboard the Possession, as well as the goods in her hold, and that—as he’d suspected—there’d never been any reason to question her legitimacy in the first place. His celebrity ought to be good for that much, at least, and a positive report ought to discharge his debt to her in spades.

The devil it will.

A wave crashed against the hull and a fine, salty mist caught him in the face. The feel and the taste of it stirred his old exhilaration for the sea, but the feeling was snuffed out almost immediately. An image of the Merry Sea rose in his mind as if the entire scene had happened yesterday and not ten years previous on a day much like this one.

They’re coming about! Fire!

His own order shot through his memory. They’d been so close he hadn’t needed his glass to watch the grisly fighting between the Merry Sea’s crew and the Barbary corsairs intent on capturing her. He’d unleashed everything he could, knowing full well what awaited the seamen once hauled away as slaves to Barbary. There hadn’t been so much as a glimpse of petticoat to indicate the presence of a woman—not that it would have made a difference, except that he might have unleashed less, not more. And then there’d been the currents, the wind... Hell. In the end, there’d been nothing he could do, and his inability had cost Katherine her freedom.

He didn’t want to think of it, nor any of the other mistakes he’d made during twenty years of a supposedly glorious naval career. Every misstep, every miscalculation, every failure—they dogged him like a pack of wolves closing in on midnight prey. There would be no peace until he reached Croston.

But you’ll still owe her for that day. And now for your life, as well.

The Possession’s heavy canvas sails thwacked in the wind, and the calls of her small crew carried above the gentle crash of waves against the hull. Sunshine glittered off the water like diamonds scattered on the sea. Every inch of burnished wood gleamed softly. Clearly the Possession’s toilette rivaled that of any great beauty who spent hours in pursuit of perfection. She was a brig, but detailed carving on the rails and stern gave the ship a Moorish exoticism to match that of her captain. Across the deck, that captain stood tête-à-tête with Jaxbury, conferring about some detail of the voyage.

“Spot any threats, Barclay?” Jaxbury called over to James.

Just one. James let his gaze linger on her. The breeze played with Captain Kinloch’s loose trousers and tunic, fluttering and molding the cloth to her body in brief glimpses that presented a very credible threat to his sanity.

“I’m merely a passenger,” he called back. “Got an eye out for porpoises—nothing more.”

The two of them conferred a moment longer, and Jaxbury descended to the quarterdeck while Captain Kinloch— Damnation. From the corner of his eye James watched her come closer and join him at the railing. By the time she took the spot next to him, his breathing had gone shallow.

“Do sound the alarm if you spot anything, Lieutenant Barclay,” she said. “I’d like to think I may benefit from your vast naval experience.”

Her smile alone had alarm bells clanging painfully, but only he could hear them. “It’s gratifying to know you consider me of potential value, Captain. Shall I notify you of possible targets as well as threats? Perhaps you could engage in a bit of last-minute marauding before we approach England.”

She laughed, and the wind whipped a strand of her hair into his face. He brushed it away and felt his control slip a notch. “Clearly the depth of my ruthlessness has been overstated. I’ve never been one to maraud entirely unprovoked.”

“What a pity I won’t get to see that famed cutlass arm in action.” He hadn’t failed to notice that the British flag had replaced her colors flying at the stern.

“You have only to displease me, Lieutenant Barclay, and you shall see it firsthand.” She closed her eyes to the wind and tipped her face back. He let himself notice the way her hair shone in the sunlight, the fine sculpture of her cheekbones, the sensuous curve of her lips. She was, without a doubt, the most alluring woman he’d ever seen.

“I shudder to think of the terrifying woman Anne will become with you as a model.” Except that sweet, vulnerable Anne would never be able to defend herself with a cutlass. It crushed him to watch her navigate the cabins by memory, patting her way from one chair or table or wall to the next with those tiny hands. He’d noticed that under no circumstances was any piece of furniture to be moved. Every critical door remained open, held in place by heavy anvils that would not budge. Textured tiles marked each room, mounted outside each door at just the right height. “She is a remarkable child,” he said.

“Yes, she is. She’s had to be.” Worry shadowed Captain Kinloch’s eyes, and it annoyed him a little that he wanted to ease it.

“Already she shows signs of your deviousness. I suppose you are aware that your keys are not the only objects whose hiding place she has discovered.”

A smile touched Captain Kinloch’s lips, and he watched the way it softened the lines around her mouth. Under other circumstances, would she smile like that more often?

“She’s found the doll,” she said. “Yes, I could tell. Do you suppose my lower drawers are not the most effective hiding place for a birthday gift?”

He could tell by the laughter in her eyes that she’d meant for Anne to find that doll. “I think she enjoys the search more than anything,” he said. Against his better judgment he’d thought of an idea for a gift for her, but he would need access to the ship’s carpenter in order to find the necessary materials.

“The doll I let her find, but I’ve a small mandolin hiding elsewhere that she won’t receive until her birthday arrives.”

“A mandolin is an excellent idea.”

“You may not say so after listening to her endless practicing.” She laughed.

“Oh, I imagine I can tolerate it.” It was hard to imagine what he wouldn’t tolerate for Anne’s sake.

Captain Kinloch looked at him. “The attention you’ve shown her has been much appreciated.”

“She’s an endearing girl.” And that was the problem. All the plea rolls in England did not contain enough parchment to list the reasons why it would be a mistake to form any kind of attachment with Katherine Kinloch’s daughter.

“I’m told you are an accomplished storyteller,” she said.

“Hardly.” He had to laugh at that. “I never told a story before in all my life—except to the governess.”

“Never?”

“Not many children aboard a frigate.” The hypnotic lure of Captain Kinloch’s eyes snared him. Mysteries lurked there—dark ones likely rooted in her years as a captive, and softer, spicier ones that suggested she was aware of him as a man. The possibility had an unwelcome effect on his baser instincts.

The remainder of the voyage taunted him with the prospect of interminable weeks of temptation. It was a prospect that would change very quickly if she somehow discovered his identity.

“Captain.” Her Moorish boatswain called from the top of the stairs, and James caught himself a heartbeat before he responded to the title. The boatswain waited with his arms crossed and his gold earrings and shaved head gleaming in the sunshine. A string of beads like the one William wore was tied around his neck. All the crew had them. It was their mark, he’d learned, fashioned by Anne.

Captain Kinloch stepped away from the railing. “Excuse me a moment, Lieutenant.”

“Of course.” It took all his willpower not to watch her hips sway in those damned trousers as she walked away.

* * *

KATHERINE FORCED HERSELF not to look back as she left Lieutenant Barclay standing at the railing. But she hardly needed to look when her body still hummed with his presence. “What is it, Rafik?”

“Young rigger Danby wants to see you.”

“Send him up.”

“He will not come. He is afraid.”

Katherine frowned. “That’s ridiculous.”

Rafik only regarded her with that expressionless stare that silently let her know he thought he would make a better captain than she.

Katherine brushed by him and descended the stairs, finally allowing herself a glance over her shoulder. Lieutenant Barclay stood with his eyes on the horizon and the wind toying with the hair at his temples. She forced her attention away. “Did he give you no hint of his concerns?”

“It is best for you to hear it from him, Captain.”

Fears of returning to England had plagued the crew since the moment they’d set their sails north. No doubt he feared the impressment gangs, but there was little she could do to protect him from that. Perhaps he wanted permission to go ashore before they reached England. That was out of the question.

They made their way toward the stern, where Danby was partway up in the rigging. The moment he saw her he climbed down and whipped his hat off his head.

“What is it you have to say, Danby?”

His hat crumpled in his hands. “I—I should have told you before. I know that. But I was afraid...well, I was afraid you wouldn’t hire me.”

“Told me what?”

“That I was aboard Captain Warre’s ship. When we put in at Gibraltar, I snuck away. I know it was wrong, Captain, and I’d never do such a thing to you. I swear. I’d die first.”

“I believe you. But why tell me now?”

“I’m afraid, with him here—him what we pulled aboard.”

“Lieutenant Barclay?” Her thoughts filled with his smile—the creases at his eyes, the lines around his mouth, the subtly wicked angle of mustache above his lips. White teeth against sun-browned skin. If she were a different kind of woman—

Danby frowned and looked past her toward the upper deck. “Aye, but...that ain’t Lieutenant Barclay, mum.” He gripped his hat in his hands. “That’s Captain Warre.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

CAPTAIN WARRE.

Katherine stared toward the upper deck where he stood laughing with William. William, who surely knew the truth about their visitor. Captain Warre looked her way, caught her watching him.

An accomplished storyteller, indeed. Her blood began to pound. “Danby, are you certain?”

“No doubt on it, Captain.” Danby still worried his hat in his hands. “No mistaking the likes of him.”

She turned her back on the upper deck. “You’ve no cause for concern. He cannot punish you here, and with the number of sailors on a man-of-war, it’s doubtful he’ll remember you. You may rest easy.”

Danby exhaled and replaced his hat. “Yes, Captain. Thank you, Captain.”

“Have you told anyone that you recognize him?”

“Not a soul, Captain.”

“Good. See that you tell no one else.” Danby bobbed his head and hoisted himself back up the rigging, while Katherine exchanged looks with Rafik.

“I shall take him now and lock him in the brig,” Rafik said.

“No.”

“Then what do you wish me to do?”

Her stomach clenched fiercely. In her mind, Captain Warre’s cannons exploded. She could almost smell the acrid gunsmoke drifting across the water. The girl inside her tried to propel her forward to confront him, but the woman she’d become kept that urge in check. She may have been helpless then, but she bloody well wasn’t helpless anymore.

She glanced at the upper deck, and the past sucked at her with its violent whirlpool of fear and helplessness. For a moment she thought she would be sick. “For now,” she said slowly, “nothing. He can do little, being only one man.” Except that Captain Warre had the presence of ten men.

“That is dangerous thinking,” Rafik said too sharply.

“It is not for you to question,” Katherine shot back. “For the time being, we shall let him continue to believe we have not discovered his identity.” The significance of that identity could not be ignored. “And I shall place him under your supervision.”

Only a slight narrowing of his dark eyes told her he might find that acceptable.

“You shall assign him every menial task,” she told Rafik. Oh, yes, the great Captain Warre would swab decks and polish cannons and slop buckets of filth. “He will be one of the crew—just another sailor. And I expect you to treat him as such.”

“Aye, Captain.” A slight curving of his lips betrayed his opinion this time.

“Not more harshly, Rafik.” She would need Captain Warre alive and well when they arrived in London.

“I will treat him as the rest of the crew.”

“Excellent.” She shifted so she could see the upper deck once more. Soddingest bastard he’d ever set eyes on, was he? As she watched, he put his hands behind his head and stretched his shoulders. Her body went soft and liquid deep inside, and she clenched her teeth. Ten years she’d nursed her hatred for this man, and now it took an effort to tear her gaze away from him.

This was unacceptable.

“Tomorrow,” she decided. “You will move him into the berth with the crew. He is still weak, so give him only small tasks at first and keep an eye on him for signs that he is not as recovered as he seems.”

Rafik nodded.

“And report to me regularly about his activities. I want to know at the first hint of insubordination.” It would likely come moments after he received his first assignment.

Rafik returned to his duties, and Katherine turned toward the upper deck. Her hands shook with the desire to whip her cutlass from its sheath and confront the bastard.

Captain James Warre. Here, on her ship, eating her meat pies and drinking her wine and sleeping on her linens. She watched him shift his weight from one foot to both and brace his hands on the railing. Her eyes followed the angle of his legs past his buttocks and across the broad expanse of his back, over his shoulder and down the line of his arm to the fingers that curled around smooth wood. She didn’t need to be any closer to know exactly what those fingers looked like. Strong, solid, lightly callused. Gripping the Possession as though he owned it.