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 ELEVEN

THE MISTY BLUE of midnight surrounded Katherine with an eerie breeze. Beneath her feet, Dunscore rose monolithic above the sea. A man stood on the ramparts with the wind in his hair, looking out as if commanding the mist. She moved toward him. He held out his arm, and she took his hand. Kissed it, as though paying homage.

And she was his. Only his.

His arms came around her, capturing her body, drawing her in. Possessing her. Her head fell back and his mouth came down, down, hard on her lips, branding her. She sank her fingers into dark waves of silver-streaked hair, drank in the smell of the sea on sun-browned skin.

He touched her body and her clothes melted away. Strong hands slid over her skin, closed around her breasts, touched her most secret places. She cried out and pushed herself against him, rocking.

Rocking.

Creak...splash.

Creak...splash.

Katherine’s eyes flew open in the dark. She awoke on her stomach with her chest heaving into the bed, gripping her pillow with both hands, being tossed by the pitch and roll of the ship. Heat throbbed between her legs, slick and pulsing.

Captain Warre.

She closed her eyes and breathed into the pillow. The dream fogged her mind, and the blend of damp moor and salty sea air lingered in her nostrils. Misty tendrils of longing curled through her: Dunscore. Home.

Captain Warre.

On a ragged breath she pushed herself up, pushed her hair from her face and felt a damp sheen along her hairline. Her breasts hung heavy and yearning beneath her nightdress. Her lips tingled with the knowledge that his knuckles were warm, his fingers strong and callused. Her skin burned as though his hands had really touched her.

Her heart ached as though she’d really stood on Dunscore’s ramparts once again with the wind in her hair and the ancient stones of her ancestors beneath her feet.

Home.

Her cabin was dark. Shadowy. The palest moonlight filtered through the windows, just enough light to see, and she reached for the familiar surroundings as though grabbing a lifeline. She forced herself from the bed, felt the cool wood floor beneath her bare feet.

This was reality. This was home. Here. The Possession. With Captain Warre merely being ferried to Britain, and she carrying out a plan to secure Anne’s future. That was all.

She got a drink of water and stood listening to the ship’s soft creak, but still the dream’s temptation thrummed in her blood, blurring the line where Captain Warre ended and Dunscore began.

This was unacceptable. As if Dunscore were his. As if she were his. Agitated, she paced to the window. His eyes betrayed his desire each time she caught him watching her. He wanted to touch her. To do in the flesh all the things he’d just done in her dream.

Oh, God. If the dream hadn’t ended, within moments he would have been inside her.

Her body pulsed hotly, and she fisted her hand against the pane.

It was time—past time—to confront him. That he believed she thought he was Lieutenant Barclay, who would have no reason to hide his thoughts, only made everything worse. Even his berthing with the crew was not enough—not when her eyes still sought him out and her ears still listened for the sound of his voice. If he knew she’d learned the truth, he would be more guarded.

She needed more of a barrier between them than this game of mistaken identity afforded.

You realize this changes everything. Phil’s words lilted through her mind. Katherine shivered in the darkness as the night air began to cool her skin. She didn’t want to capitalize on their acquaintance. She wanted to exterminate him from her thoughts. And judging from the slice of moonlight on her floor, he was on deck this very moment for the midnight watch.

She turned from the window to her chest and yanked open one drawer, then another, quickly pulling loose trousers over her hips, pushing her arms through silk shirtsleeves, aware of every brush of fabric against her skin as she stepped into a pair of sandals. With gritted teeth she let herself silently into the passageway and climbed the stairs into the cold night air.

The sails billowed in the moonlight, making the Possession glow like a ghost ship on a midnight-blue sea. Voices drifted from the bow, but she spotted him on the upper deck. She moved quietly across the quarterdeck, nodding to another sailor on midnight watch, and climbed the stairs. He had his back to her while he put his full weight on a line and made an efficient knot. He worked this ship as though it belonged to him. As though he knew it as well as she did.

As though he were the captain here.

Captain.

That one word would put an end to this folly and erect a barrier between them too thick for illicit yearnings to penetrate.

Yes, she would do it. Now.

“Captain,” she said sharply, while she still had the element of surprise on her side. She was not disappointed.

He stopped. Turned. “I fear you must be sleepwalking, Captain,” he said. The moonlight let her see his face but not his eyes—not enough to judge his thoughts. “You should return to your cabin.”

“I am not sleepwalking, Captain.” She took a step closer, letting her tone bite him. “Did you really believe you could fool me on my own ship?”

“You must have been having wild dreams indeed.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She mentally reached behind her ribs and squeezed it into submission. “No doubt you’ll say you’d planned to tell me eventually,” she said.

“I confess, you have me at a loss. Tell you what?” He walked past her, leaving her to follow him to the other side of the deck while he repeated the procedure he’d just done and tied another knot.

“The celebration of your homecoming would have exposed you.”

He turned to face her, and she thought he smiled a little. The sea was an eerie midnight surge behind him, crisscrossed by scores of shadowy lines that shot up to the masts. The dream washed through her like a wave spreading across the beach.

“You do realize the insane are poorly treated in England,” he said. “You ought to have a care.”

She laughed away both his suggestion and the dream’s temptation.

“Tell me, Captain...do you deny it out of self-preservation or shame?”

He stepped so close that his warm breath, tinged with a hint of the rum her crew favored, wafted over her face. “You can hardly blame me for concealing my identity when you’ve made little secret that I would not be as welcome a guest as my lieutenant.”

A shiver coursed over her skin.

“Although I’ll admit you’ve surprised me,” he went on. A hint of amusement played at the corner of his mouth, drawing her attention to firm lips accustomed to issuing commands. “I would have expected you to mete out something rather more unpleasant than a cabin boy’s duties. That is what you’ve been doing, is it not? Punishing me, and not my lieutenant. I suspect you’ve known the truth for some time—William’s loyalty is steadfast indeed. Bravo, Captain. You have proven yourself an accomplished actress these past weeks.”

“As you have proven yourself an actor.” Let him assume what he would about how she had discovered his identity. “Perhaps we should both join a theatrical troupe on our return.”

“I fear the ton will be shocked enough as it is.”

Oh, yes. The ton would be shocked. It was difficult to think standing this close to him, so Katherine moved to the railing and breathed a little easier. “Perhaps you hoped to keep the element of surprise on your side so you could have my ship arrested and forfeited the moment we reach England.” She raised a brow at him over her shoulder.

He gave a bark of laughter and came up behind her, close enough that his words feathered the back of her neck. “If your ship is arrested and forfeited, it will be none of my doing. Not only do I lack the power, I also lack the desire. I assure you, once we reach England your life will proceed without interference from me.”

She forced her attention on the sea, breathing only through conscious effort, inhaling his scent with every breath. Apparently he had not considered that he was her leverage against his brother’s bill. “Is it true that you plan to resign your commission?” she asked.

He moved in next to her, and she watched his strong hands wrap around the railing much too close to hers. The breeze fluttered his sleeve against hers, and she felt it like skin against skin.

“Everything I told you about myself was true.”

She made a noise. “You told me you have an elder brother named Theodore.”

“I was describing Lieutenant Barclay.”

“You also said you had never told a fiction except to your governess—”

“That was a lie.”

“—and that you sometimes dislike yourself.”

“Given your lack of regard for me, you of all people should have little difficulty understanding the truth of that.”

His voice carried a dark undertone that spoke of regret. She chose to ignore it. “I find it difficult to believe you plan to abandon the glory of the sea when you have yet to reach the pinnacle of your career.”

“The glory of the sea,” he repeated thoughtfully. In profile he looked like chiseled stone except for the breeze ruffling his hair. Her fingers warmed with the knowledge of what that hair felt like, as though the dream had not been a dream at all. “And what, exactly, would that glory be?” he inquired, staring out at the sea. “The French prize I took in ’59, and then recaptured twice after she was taken back, only to have her sunk by the Spanish? Or perhaps the cholera outbreak in ’61 that killed nigh on half my crew. Or certainly you don’t mean the wreck of the Henry’s Cross—glorious indeed.”

If his bitterness had been a whip, she would have bled.

“Glory,” he said again, turning to look at her. “Perhaps you refer to the merchant ship I stumbled across ten years ago. I found her in the hooks of two xebecs, like a fly already half-wrapped in a spider’s silk.”

Katherine tensed. The Merry Sea. “And so you sank her.”

“I attempted a rescue,” he shot back.

Her mind filled with the smell of blood, the terrifying clash of swords, the screams of the Merry Sea’s crew, the bite of rope around her wrists. The explosive roar of Captain Warre’s cannons. “Was I supposed to catch a cannonball and float to safety?”

“I didn’t realize there were women aboard,” he bit out.

“Would it have made a difference?”

“The fate of European men taken to Barbary is well known.” The relatively few women, however, were usually ransomed quickly and returned home.

It took her a moment to realize the implication. “So you assumed they would have preferred to die?” she asked in disbelief.

“A quick death in the sea versus a slow, tortured one being sodomized and performing heavy labor under the whip? Yes, I think they would have. The fighting I witnessed aboard the Merry Sea attests to that.”

“Self-preservation is a different thing from being murdered,” she said coldly.

“Murdered?”

“Would you prefer to call it mercy killing? I can assure you, from where I sat there was no mercy in it at all.” But honestly she didn’t know which had been worse—the destruction wreaked by his cannons, or the calm that had settled over that xebec after it made its escape and the cannon fire died. Her own screams dying in her throat after she’d given up tugging uselessly on the ropes. The terror of being brought ashore, captive, in Salé—a foreign city that was the furthest thing imaginable from either London or the Continent—and having no idea what to expect.

He was quiet for a long moment—affronted, no doubt, by her lack of gratitude. “You have a flair for the melodramatic,” he finally said. “And a righteous view of naval warfare for one who has plundered so many ships.”

“I only plunder those that have already plundered.”

“That’s putting a rather fine point on it, don’t you think?”

“If you’re implying there is no difference between making a prize of a pirate’s take and plundering a trading vessel sailing under legitimate colors, then no, I don’t think so. Besides, my marauding is greatly exaggerated. I’ve made most of my fortune running perfectly legal trade goods.” She kept her eyes on the sea but felt him watching her. Assessing. Judging. Wondering. Pearls of moonlight danced on the waves.

From the corner of her eye she saw him reach out and capture a strand of her hair. Her breath caught. The fire that had torn her from sleep ignited instantly. Her gaze flew to his hand, and she watched him smooth the inky curl between his fingers. Then she met his eyes.

He dropped the strand as though it had burned him. Common sense screamed at her to step back, but this was her deck, not his. Her ship. Her command.

“Thanks to my failures,” he said roughly, “you were fed to the Barbary dogs.”

Annoyance raced through her veins. “To call them dogs would be to say that Anne is half-dog,” she managed calmly, “and that I will not do.”

“No.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Of course not.”

“Have you spent any time in the Barbary states, Captain?”

“A little.”

“And how did you find the hospitality?”

“The hospitality?” Something in him seemed to snap. “You’ve run mad. After everything that happened to you—not days, or weeks, or months, but years. Years, of living with al-Zayar, of being his—” He broke off and shoved his hands through his hair, then gripped the railing again. “I understand escape is a dangerous risk,” he said tightly. “Undertaken only by the most desperate.”

He looked at her then, and she saw the questions in his eyes. The wild imaginings. But more than that, she saw in his eyes the reason why she had not returned home after her escape.

In his eyes, her life was a tragedy. And he blamed himself.

“People become desperate for many reasons,” she said sharply. “Do not presume to know something you cannot possibly understand.”

“Explain it to me.”

His thoughts were as easy to read as the stars on a clear night, and her heart swelled with bittersweet memories no Englishman could possibly understand.

Explain it to him? As if he could possibly comprehend the terrible emptiness of knowing without a doubt that one will never go home again, that one’s life had been changed forever. The dreadful anticipation in that moment when the caravan had finally arrived at the gates of her new home—where the air had been thick with the delicious scent of orange blossoms and rang with the shrieks of delighted children somewhere inside the walls, along with deep male laughter she would soon learn belonged to Mejdan al-Zayar.

The crushing relief of finding kindness where one had expected cruelty. And then, a few short years later, the terror of having it all torn away.

Captain Warre thought she should hate Mejdan. But it would have been impossible for anyone to hate him. He was too full of smiles, of love for those around him. Yes, Anne was Mejdan’s daughter, along with all that implied. But Captain Warre would not appreciate how long Mejdan had waited when he hadn’t needed to. How much she had grown to adore Mejdan during that time, how much he was admired and respected by those both in and outside of the household.

That going to Mejdan’s bed had been tolerable.

Captain Warre would never believe any of that. All he would see—all any Englishman would see—was the fact of her captivity.

“You need not grieve over my virtue, Captain.” She would explain nothing, to him or anyone else. “I need no one’s pity. As you pointed out yourself, I’ve built a successful enterprise.” The memories of Algiers were her memories—hers alone—and she would guard them the way a shipwreck guarded its treasure. Already she could feel her homeland trampling on them.

“And yet now you are going home.”

“This ship is my home,” she snapped.

“To Dunscore, then.”

“Which, were it not for your ineptitude, I would have done years ago.”

But the fatigue and weariness he’d once spoken of colored his voice, and doubts about him began a subtle attempt to lure her away from her outrage. The breeze blew a strand of hair in his face, and she clenched her fist against the urge to reach for it. “I shall leave you to your watch, Captain,” she said tightly. “Good night.”

* * *

SOMETHING RAW AND alive and terrifying surged through James’s veins as he listened to her walk away. It burned through him, a hot and painful imposter of the life that had once animated him, reminding him that he’d once had a fire. A passion. That he’d once felt that glory of the sea she spoke of.

He gripped the railing and inhaled the cold sea air, gaining a little relief when the sound of her footsteps finally disappeared.

Where had that passion gone?

Perhaps she was right, and all he’d ever had was the brutality that characterized life at sea. Ruthlessness masquerading as honor.

The guilt of not having been able to save her gnawed at him like a lion tearing into fresh prey. Countless times he’d gone over it in his mind. If he’d only moved in a hundred yards closer, turned more sharply to starboard. Come around their bow a bit farther to cut them off and avoid the line of fire from their cannon. If he’d held off his own orders to fire by another minute or two. Judged the current differently.

Something. There should have been something he could have done.

He couldn’t even chalk it up to youth and inexperience. He’d already been on the sea ten years before it happened. He simply hadn’t known until weeks later that the Merry Sea had been anything but an ordinary merchant ship. Bloody hell, it was an ordinary merchant ship—one that just happened to be carrying Lady Katherine of Dunscore on a passage from Italy, where she’d been stranded after her chaperoning aunt had died, to Gibraltar, where family friends awaited.

If she’d made it to Gibraltar, she would have returned to Britain, married and borne children like any other woman. She would have attended soirees and discussed the merits of French lace over Spanish or whatever it was ladies discussed. If he’d been successful in his attempt to save the Merry Sea, her life would have been normal.

Instead, she had become one of the most adept sea captains on the Mediterranean. She would never have an ordinary life now. She would likely never marry—who would have her? She would never plan garden parties or fret with other ladies over the introduction of a daughter into society, because Anne would never be introduced into society.

Anne. His chest tightened, and he fingered the beads around his neck. They were not mismatched, after all, but rather, symmetrically placed according to size and shape. She could not match them with her eyes, but she matched them with her fingers.

A part of him wanted to yank the necklace away and toss it into the sea in defiance of the sweetness that was beginning to collar him as surely as the twine on which the beads were strung. Her trust in him made him feel when he didn’t want to feel. Care when he’d given up caring.

And Captain Kinloch—

God. He’d come so bloody close to pushing her against that railing and doing everything he’d been imagining, never mind who else was on deck. But his guilt for failing her stopped him.

Even now his chest felt tight. Raw. Damn it to hell—he didn’t want to care what she’d endured. Didn’t want to care what happened to her once they reached London, or whether she would manage to secure her title.

The only thing he wanted to care about now was the wine reserve at Croston.

CHAPTER TWELVE

AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT STREAMED into Katherine’s cabin. She stood at her chest, waiting for Captain Warre to respond to a summons, remembering their conversation from the night before.

Dunscore was hers by right. Did he imagine she would allow it to be stolen, when it could be used to Anne’s advantage?

The top drawer of her chest held little that was fragile save a few pieces of glass and a porcelain dog with a pale coat, friendly face and inquisitive ears. She took him out, cradling him in her palm. He looked just like the harem dog, Zaki, and a pang touched her heart.

This was not the kind of Barbary dog Captain Warre had meant.

After everything that happened to you...

He imagined she had lived as though in a bordello. Fool. Mejdan’s mother would never have allowed anything so wanton.

She closed her hand around the figurine and squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the harem with a joy so fierce it hurt. The serenity of it on a warm morning with the desert breeze making silk curtains undulate and book pages flutter. Peals of laughter as Mejdan’s daughters speculated about potential husbands. The comforting taste of mint tea in the afternoon, the excitement of comparing new cloth and trinkets and bangles after a day at the market.

They’d given her a home—Mejdan’s mother, Riuza, his wives, daughters, children—when they hadn’t needed to. If Mejdan hadn’t died, she might have stayed forever.

All the reasons she had taken to the sea instead of returning to Britain after escaping Algiers coiled in a painful urge to order the ship back to the Mediterranean. All those reasons still existed. Nothing had changed. Captain Warre’s words proved that much.

Nothing, except one very crucial truth: Dunscore was hers.

She replaced the figurine, shut the drawer and listened. No footsteps yet.

Her accession to Dunscore changed everything because of what it meant for Anne. Unlike the Possession, Dunscore could never succumb to pirate attack or wreck on a dangerous shoal. Unlike a house Katherine might purchase in France or Italy or the West Indies, Anne had roots at Dunscore that would lend legitimacy—however small—to her illegitimacy. Anne would be safe there, even after Katherine was gone.

But only if Baron Taggart’s bill of attainder did not succeed. Which was why Phil was right—Captain Warre could be very, very useful.

The glory of the sea. His bitterness whispered a quiet testimony she did not want to acknowledge. The great Captain Warre was not the man she’d expected.