Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight

CHAPTER THREE

JAMES WRITHED RESTLESSLY beneath cool linens.

He was drowning—dragged beneath black water, sucked into frigid numbness. Wood splintered. Cracked. A timber shot from the water, and he made a desperate lunge. Grabbed hold.

Wood turned to flesh beneath his hands. Cold became hot. Water became woman. The curling waves unraveled, tumbling, becoming hair like black walnut silk in his hands. Her body wrapped around him. Engulfed him. He gasped, tasting the wild sea on her skin.

From somewhere far away, sultry voices pierced his dream. “...and have you try to bed him while he’s yet unconscious? Absolutely not.”

“You offend me grievously, Katherine. I’m quite through with affairs. Tedious things. Besides, he could be anyone.”

The voices threatened to tear him away. He strained to keep the woman alive, wanting. Needing. But she began to fade, slipping away.

The voices broke through, stronger now. “For the moment, Philomena, he is our captive.”

“Honestly, he hardly warrants such status.” A door closed. Footsteps tapped against wood. He awoke as if fighting the churning sea.

“Nor does he warrant any other. Help me put this shirt on him before he awakes.”

He opened his eyes to a sky-blue ceiling edged with gold scrollwork. His gaze swept over an ornate dressing table with an oblong looking glass, two armchairs upholstered in sapphire velvet, a chest of drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He turned his head.

A woman stood by the bed with a maroon tunic in her hands. Silken walnut waves fell to her hips from beneath a length of ochre cloth tied around her head in a makeshift turban shot through with shimmering threads. High cheekbones. Straight, finely sculpted nose. Statuesque profile, silhouetted perfectly by the light from a small bank of windows he recognized as belonging to a ship.

He was on board a vessel. In the captain’s cabin.

“Katherine. Look.”

Her face snapped toward him. His gaze locked with glittering topaz eyes, and his pulse leaped. He struggled to think. To remember. He tried to lick his lips, but his mouth was powder dry.

Someone else pushed in next to him—another beauty, this one with sable curls and wide, blue eyes. He felt a hand beneath his head, lifting, and a glass against his lips. Cool water slid over his tongue and he tried to gulp, but the blasted woman pulled the glass away.

“Not so quickly,” she purred, and the glass returned. “Careful, now. Just a bit.”

He sipped, then sipped again before she pulled the glass away.

“More.” His voice croaked. The vessel rolled and creaked, lolling with the waves. And suddenly, he remembered. A storm. A wreck. Days upon days adrift at sea.

A red flag with a yellow arm.

“You speak English,” the bewitching one said. He watched her mouth move, could taste those sumptuous lips as if she’d been the woman in his dream.

“Aye.” He tore his gaze away, only to have it veer to her breasts, covered only in the richly colored hues of Ottoman textiles draping her body. A blue jacket threaded with silver hung past her hips over a knee-length chemise, covering lighter blue, flowing trousers. A red sash tied around her waist held a gleaming cutlass.

The image of her flesh burned in his mind as sure as if she’d laid herself bare.

“You are a subject of the Crown?” she demanded.

“Aye.” Beneath the covers, the idiot between his legs pulsed against soft linen, stubbornly holding on to the dream. He was naked. And chained, he realized when he tried to reach for the glass. Heavy links clanked against the bed, and iron cuffs banded his wrists. “Is this necessary?” he rasped.

“I want to know who you are,” she said. “Your name. Where you’re from. Were you aboard a ship?”

“Let him drink again,” the other one said, offering the glass once more. She eyed him curiously as he sipped. “There will be broth coming, and when you’re ready, some bread to sop it with.”

The news made his stomach rumble. If the prospect of such a meager meal piqued his hunger, no doubt he’d been adrift a very long time. Already the idea of food began to tame the desire that gripped him.

His name. His origin. Of course. His mind churned as if racing through mud, reaching for a false identity. “Thomas Barclay.” The lie fell roughly across his tongue. “I was aboard the man-o’-war Henry’s Cross. Went down—” he swallowed, his mouth already dry again “—northwest of Gibraltar. Near Cadiz.” That last, at least, was true.

“When?”

“April 10.”

“Four days ago,” she said to her companion. “The current must have pulled him through the strait.”

“Where are we?” he managed.

“Anchored east of Gibraltar, awaiting conditions for passage west through the strait. You are aboard the brig Possession, and I am—”

“Corsair Kate.” The irony of the situation snuck through the mental fog. Three years of quietly subverting orders to put an end to what the admirals considered her questionable seafaring activities, and now here he was. All that was left was to inform her that her ship was now the property of the Crown and declare victory.

Those topaz eyes narrowed, and those lips curved ever so slightly. “You may call me Captain Kinloch,” she bit out in a voice both sultry and liquid. Fresh desire surged through him.

This lust was unacceptable. He needed to regain control, but he was so weak he couldn’t lift his head—at least, not the one that knew better than to dally with the likes of Corsair Kate, who—since her father’s death six months ago—was also countess of the Scottish seat of Dunscore.

The lady beside her laughed. “It’s a grand thing to have earned a pseudonym of such notoriety, Katherine. I rather think you should sanction its use.” This beautiful companion was most certainly the scandalous young widow Philomena, the countess of Pennington. And somewhere aboard would be the countess’s young niece, Lady India, daughter of the Earl of Cantwell. The tale of their rescue had become legendary: taken captive by Barbary corsairs during an ill-fated voyage to see antiquities in Egypt, and subsequently liberated when the Possession in turn captured the marauding ship.

Captain Kinloch crossed her arms and pinned him with an assessing look. “The Henry’s Cross,” she said thoughtfully. “Captain James Warre’s command?”

His own name on her lips caught him by surprise. “Aye.”

Her lip curled. “You have indeed met with improved circumstances, then. What was your rank?”

Improved circumstances? “Midshipman.”

“Midshipman! You’re too old for that.”

Hell. The real Thomas Barclay, of course, had been just the right age. “I was...demoted. Problems with the captain.” It took all his strength to hold her gaze.

“With Captain Warre? What kind of problems?” she demanded.

“Any number of things.” Devil take it, he could barely think.

“I want details.”

Damn the woman! “It was...a misunderstanding,” he rasped.

In a heartbeat she whipped out her cutlass and laid it against his neck, leaning over him. “What kind of misunderstanding?” Those topaz eyes blazed, and the ends of her hair pooled on his chest.

His body reacted as though she’d straddled his hips.

“Katherine,” Lady Pennington warned.

“Insubordination,” James managed through gritted teeth. He knew men who paid for this kind of treatment, but damnation! He wasn’t one of them. “I’ve been known to have difficulty with authority.” Another grain of truth.

“And Captain Warre tolerated you at his side? The good captain must have favored you.” The blade’s pressure increased by a fraction. “Understand me well, Mr. Barclay. You will display no insubordination aboard this ship if you wish to see its destination.”

“You would not murder a British subject,” he breathed. God, he needed more water.

Her lips curved into a terrifying yet seductive half smile. “A British subject who by all accounts perished at sea.”

Their eyes locked in silent battle. But her blade lay cool against his neck, and her chains sat heavy on his wrists. “I assure you of my utmost respect,” he said, and forced a half smile of his own. “Captain.”

* * *

IF THOMAS BARCLAY’S utmost respect included a perpetual salute from his male organ, he would find this a very long voyage indeed. “This is unacceptable,” Katherine said, storming into the great cabin, already guessing the next words that would fall from Philomena’s lips.

“I daresay the situation suits him well enough.” Amusement colored Phil’s voice. “I don’t suppose you noticed—”

“I noticed!”

“Noticed what?” William asked, looking up from the charts spread out on the table. Anne sat in a spear of sunlight on the floor, jiggling a length of twine for Mr. Bogles to attack.

“Never you mind,” Katherine said. “It was nothing.” The pressure she’d felt earlier in her gut had traveled to her head. She needed a nip of wine, morning hours be damned. She went to the cupboard and poured a tiny slosh. He hadn’t been as close to death as they’d assumed.

She raised the glass to her lips and tasted a blend of guilt and ire. She’d been wrong about his condition, but absolutely right about his temperament.

Phil settled into one of the plump chairs at the table. “Oh, I wouldn’t call it nothing. Suffice to say our guest seemed rather...pleased...to meet Katherine.”

William arched an amused brow. “Oh?”

Phil’s lips curved mischievously. “I would almost say...excited.”

The brow arched higher. “Oh.”

This was her reward for mercy. Thomas Barclay had no more been a midshipman on the Henry’s Cross than she was a cabin boy on the Possession. More likely he was an officer, and a high-ranking one at that. The lie had been there on his face, although if he’d been stronger, he would certainly have been able to hide it.

His utmost respect! Even with her blade at his neck, he’d defied her with his eyes.

“Is he quite recovered, Mama?” Anne asked.

“Not quite, dearest,” Katherine replied. “He’s still very weak from lack of food and drink.” Weak, yet everything about him screamed of power. Her blood still hummed with it. A man like that would have a difficult time with his superiors, indeed. Even a captain as ruthless as James Warre must have feared for his own authority.

This was exactly why they should have left Thomas Barclay in the water.

Worry lines furrowed Anne’s innocent brow. “May I go in and hold his hand?” The ball of twine fell out of Anne’s hands and rolled with the ship’s sway, and Katherine quickly set her glass aside to retrieve it, this time ignoring that she shouldn’t.

“My little angel of mercy,” she said, putting the twine back into small hands while Anne, blind since a fever took her sight three years ago, stared in the area of Katherine’s shoulder. “Not now. We know too little of him.” Not ever, and they knew enough. Anne would never be allowed in the same room with that beast. Pressure throbbed in Katherine’s temples as she smoothed Anne’s dark hair from her small, upturned face.

“Yet he suffers, Mama.”

Suffer was perhaps the wrong word. “He is comfortable for now. You mustn’t worry.” Anne would not pay the price for Katherine’s misjudgment—not ever again. “Be a good girl and take Mr. Bogles into William’s cabin for a while. You can play him a song on your bells. Are you hungry? I shall have cook send you some kesra.” The warm, soft flatbread was Anne’s favorite.

“Yes, please, Mama.” Anne stood up with her ball of twine and found her way out of the great cabin with practiced pats on this chair, then that one and then on the side table, then the doorjamb as Mr. Bogles darted past her into the passageway. Katherine resisted the urge to help, and the pressure intensified.

Devil take it, there was no time for a headache. She had to figure out what to do about the insubordinate in her bed.

“Do I need to run him through?” William asked the moment Anne was gone.

Phil laughed. “Katherine nearly did a good enough job of that herself. I feared she would slit the man’s throat.”

“He will learn to respect his superiors,” Katherine said, moving to inspect the charts herself, “or he will reap his reward accordingly.”

“Well, you certainly had respect from part of him.”

“Aha.” William leaned back in his chair. “A man can’t always control these things, you know. Poor fellow. Faced with the two most beautiful and powerful women on the sea, his humiliation was all but certain. Were you able to find out anything?”

Thomas Barclay would not compromise this voyage in any way. She would kill him first. “He survived a wreck of the Henry’s Cross outside Cadiz,” she said. “A midshipman, demoted by Captain Warre for insubordination—or so he says. It seems your friend dealt lightly with him.”

“Growing up on neighboring estates hardly makes James Warre a friend. The Henry’s Cross went down? God—unthinkable.”

“It would seem Captain Warre’s cannons aren’t as effective against Mother Nature as they are against wood and sails.” A memory snaked down her spine. When corsairs had captured the Merry Sea ten years ago and taken her captive, she’d thought Captain Warre would prove her savior. But Captain Warre hadn’t cared about saving anyone. His cannons had sunk the Merry Sea and one of the Corsair xebecs, while the other xebec slipped away with Katherine bound and gagged in its hold. There was no doubt he would have sunk it, too, if he’d been able. “Pity it wasn’t the good captain himself who washed up against our hull,” she added. “I would have relished the opportunity to finally meet him.”

“Ha!” Phil leaned forward. “To slit his throat, more likely, and then where would you be upon our return? Dangling from the end of a rope, that’s where.”

Upon their return, she would already be dangling—at the end of Nicholas Warre’s bill of pains and penalties. The Lords might well strip Dunscore from her before she could set foot inside those ancient walls again. Cousin Holliswell would smugly accept the title and the estate, and she would have once again failed Anne.

That would not happen. Not if Katherine had any say in the matter.

“Poor sod’s been through a hell of an ordeal,” William said, standing. “Suppose I’ll go talk with him. Probably beginning to wonder if he’s the only man on board.”

“Assure him we shall see to it that he suffers no more,” Phil said.

William laughed. “Still waiting for you to ease my suffering, Philomena.”

“The moment my desperation becomes that unbearable, I shall certainly let you know.” There was nothing between them, but William found no end of amusement at suggesting there should be.

“I won’t have you turning sympathetic with the prisoner,” Katherine called after him.

“Course not.” He grinned from the doorway. “I mean only to tighten the shackles—hold down the circulation and all that. Might solve the problem for next time.”

Next time. Good God. “My bed, a haven for deviants,” she muttered, and called after William, “See that you do!”

“Shackles aren’t all that deviant,” Phil commented after he left. “If you don’t want him chained to your bed, I’ll happily allow you to chain him to mine. Even in this sorry state, that man has more virility in his little finger than most men have in their—”

“Enough! As soon as we’re through the strait, he won’t be chained to anyone’s bed.”

Just then, India stormed into the cabin. “Millicent says she hopes we’re captured by Barbary pirates in the strait!”

“Millicent is a fool,” Phil snapped. “Does she think they would return her to Malta?”

“She’s just angry.” India plopped down at the table. The dark waistcoat she favored fell away from her hips, revealing the gleaming pistol that was her prized possession.

“She’ll thank Katherine one day,” Phil said.

Katherine doubted that—not after she’d resorted to trickery to force Millicent to return to Britain with them. Even had Millie succeeded in her plan to gain admission to Malta’s School of Anatomy and Surgery by applying as a young man, eventually the truth would have been discovered. She would have been expelled from the school and left to fend for herself on Malta, and Katherine refused to be responsible for that.

“We shall sail on tonight’s tide,” Katherine said.

A smile spread across India’s face. “Just imagine how infamous we shall be in London.”

“Just imagine how ruined you’ll be,” Katherine said. The thought of returning to Britain turned the screws on every nerve. Society would accept neither her nor Anne. All the reasons why she had shunned her homeland after escaping Algiers still existed—all but one.

When you are countess of Dunscore, Katie...

She slammed the door on Papa’s old, familiar words. Dunscore meant nothing to her now except a means to Anne’s security.

India gave a haughty shake of her head, managing to look regal even in her ridiculous tricorne. “I am the daughter of an earl, and still a virgin, and my chaperone has been ever with me,” she said. “I am not ruined—just well traveled.” Katherine looked at Phil. Life aboard the Possession would not be regarded merely as travel.

“How is the castaway?” India asked.

“Not still a virgin, I daresay,” Phil answered slyly.

“Blech!” India made a face and covered her ears. “Auntie Phil, you’re disgusting. I’ll wager he’s fifty if he’s a day!”

“Certainly not.” Phil’s blue eyes twinkled like the sea on a clear day. “Do you think so, Katherine? Fifty?”

“I shall leave such judgments to your expertise.” Thirty-five or forty, more like. And judging from the smile playing at Phil’s lips, bound to be a distraction. Of all the dangers she had considered, that one was easily addressed. As soon as Mr. Barclay recovered, she would either lock him in the brig or put him with the crew under the boatswain’s supervision.

Either way, Mr. Barclay and his virility would be out of sight and out of mind.

CHAPTER FOUR

“BOY-O, JAMES.” The sound of the door and a familiar voice jolted James out of near sleep. “Sounds like you could use another dunking—perhaps in the waters of the Arctic. Got the ladies all in a tither.”

A blond, blue-eyed corsair stood grinning at him. James took in the turban, gold earrings and billowing trousers. “Good God. Jaxbury?” A slightly apprehensive relief eased through his weak body. “Haven’t seen you since...” His mind raced to remember. “Good God. That time in Marseille.” And before that, not since their youth.

“Ah, Marseille. Fine wine, finer women.” Jaxbury dragged a small chair closer to the bed and straddled it backward. “Devilish good fun we had. Must have had—I barely remember it.”

“Had no idea you’d taken up—” James dragged in a breath “—with Corsair Kate.”

“Don’t let her hear you call her that,” Jaxbury laughed. “Things won’t go easy. Of course, you haven’t heard. Those of us of the masculine persuasion aboard the Possession aren’t the stuff of wild stories. Nothing interesting about us at all.”

James tried to raise his hand but couldn’t fight the iron. “I don’t suppose you’ve come to unlock these shackles.”

Jaxbury shook his head. “Never hear the end of that one. Especially not after the show you put on for the ladies.”

Bloody hell.

“Nothing to worry about,” Jaxbury said. “Weakened state, some things hard to control—don’t have to explain it to me, old boy. I’ll sound you a caution, though—Phil’s been two years without an affaire d’amour, and she’s getting damned restless.”

James looked at the sky-blue ceiling. “This is a bloody nightmare.”

“Is it? I can think of any number of men who’d be contemplating how to turn the situation to their advantage. Won’t work with Katherine, though, and of course, I’d have to kill you if you tried,” Jaxbury said conversationally. “But Phil—damn me if you wouldn’t be doing us all a favor.”

“Are you and Captain Kinloch—”

“Good God, no. Like a sister to me.”

A sister. Only a corpse or a blood relative could look at Captain Kinloch and feel that way. His disbelief must have been evident, because Jaxbury laughed. “You’d feel the same if you’d been the one to deliver her child.” Her child! Jaxbury made a face. “Bloody disgusting! At the same time, a damned miracle. Never look at her the same. May as well be the Virgin Mary.”

“So you haven’t told her my identity.” But Jaxbury’s other revelation still had him reeling. Captain Kinloch had a child. Whose child?

“Wouldn’t want your blood on my hands. I’ll give you fair warning, she holds no affection for you.” And James knew why. Even ten years later, the sight of those Corsair xebecs butted up against that British merchant ship was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. He’d let loose with everything in his power to save it, knowing full well what awaited those on board if they were captured. If he’d succeeded, he might have saved Katherine Kinloch, as well.

“So sorry about the Henry’s Cross,” Jaxbury said solemnly. “Tragic.”

A strangling grief ripped his chest. Memories of the recent wreck swarmed like bees, and for a moment he relived the terror—giant, nighttime waves, splintering wood, the invincible Henry’s Cross pulled under like a bit of flotsam. Had any of his men survived? “We were headed back to Britain,” he managed. And it would have been his last voyage. The moment his feet touched land, he’d planned to go directly to the Admiralty to tender his resignation.

“You’re in luck, then, on that count,” Jaxbury said. “We, too, sail for Britain.”

“Britain!” He said the word with too much force and ended up in a fit of coughing.

Jaxbury filled the mug and held it for him. A simple necklace of mismatched beads on braided twine peeked out from beneath his tunic. “Aye. The captain has business to attend to in Scotland. No doubt you’re aware of her change in status.”

James managed a drink of water and nodded once. “Nothing to drive a person home—” he coughed again and inhaled deeply “—like a title.” It hadn’t worked for him, but it should have.

Jaxbury leaned forward, his eyes glinting with a seriousness James would never have believed his carefree childhood friend capable of. “Do not presume to understand her.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” God, they could not reach Britain quickly enough. Perhaps he would not spend even a single night in London. Perhaps he would go directly to Croston Hall. The sooner he could shut himself away in the library with every bottle of cognac in Croston’s reserve, the sooner he could forget how much he’d once loved the sea, and that sometime in the past year—two years? three?—life had seemed to turn gray.

Perhaps he’d stay foxed for a month.

“Katherine is first and foremost a captain,” Jaxbury went on, “and until we reach London you’d best not forget it.”

“Not sure how I could.” He imagined a voyage spent in chains and briefly considered revealing his identity to Captain Kinloch just to exercise its leverage. But his identity was the only weapon he had, and it would be a shame to play that card too soon.