Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (24 page)

He set his tankard down, his eyes on hers. “On the contrary, Beth, I think that I shall be of great service to you.”

Beth knew he meant it in more ways than one.

Jacob found them before they were finished, to tell them that he had found a ship leaving within the hour. There would be no others for more than two days.

Hastily wrapping what remained, as well as Jacob’s meal, they left the inn and made their way to a ship whimsically called the Bard’s Honor.

They were to sea within the hour.

The crossing, with a strong wind to assist them, took a little more than a day, and went smoothly. Jacob looked overjoyed to be back upon the water, even for such a little while. And as for Duncan, Beth could see that he clearly loved being on deck, feeling the water’s spray in his face as he leaned at the railing. He’d been standing there for hours and she couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking.

Was the sea a woman to him, with endless allure?

Beth joined Duncan and Jacob as they stood at the railing in comfortable silence. She studied Duncan for a moment. “You look as if you are reborn.”

There was something about the sea that spoke to
him. He knew he would always be half in love with it,
though she could know no master. A little, he thought, like Beth. “Do I?”

“Yes.” She leaned forward so as to get a better look at him. “Your eyes have the look about them of a man who has come home.”

With a trace of nostalgia gliding through his veins,
Duncan ran his hand along the railing. The salty air had
eaten into it, and rather than feel smooth, it was full of tiny holes. Just like his own galleon had been.

“I spent five years more upon the sea than on the land.” He shut his eyes as the wind feathered long fingers through his hair and dipped into his soul. When he opened them again, he looked down into Beth’s upturned face. “For some, that feeling of belonging to the sea never leaves.”

“For some,” she repeated. “Such as you?”

Enough of these feelings, he thought. He laughed softly.

“I can make my home anywhere I must. I am adaptable to many conditions.” His past life attested to that. “I remember someone once standing over me in prison, after they had flogged me, and saying that I was too wicked to die.”

Beth’s mouth had dropped open. “Flogged you? In prison?”

He wondered if learning that he had been in prison changed her opinion of him.

“Does that shock you, Beth?” he asked, his voice soft. “That I was in prison?”

She weighed her words carefully. They mattered dearly, she realized, looking up into his eyes. Though he scornfully laughed at danger, she had already learned that the man’s heart could be easily offended.

“It shocks me that anyone could capture you.”

It was the right answer. His mouth curved. “I am mortal, Beth.”

He took her hand into his and gently stroked it with his thumb. He could see desire flowering in her eyes. Just as it flowered in his soul.

“You have proved that, if nothing else.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it softly, his eyes holding
her prisoner, just as the Tower had once held him. Jacob
had secured one cabin for them to take their rest. It was all the captain had to spare. “Will you go below with me?”

She wanted to, but now was not the time. She turned to look toward the other man at the rail. “Jacob—“

With the crook of his finger, Duncan brought her eyes
back to his.

“—Knows only what I tell him, thinks only what I tell him to think.” He saw the look blossoming on her face. She was taking offense for Jacob’s sake. But it was
not a matter of Jacob being a lackey. There was another
reason for Duncan’s words. “Jacob is an innocent, Beth. He sees the world through eyes only children are blessed with. There is no condemnation within them, or in his simple soul.”

Perhaps not, she thought, glancing at Jacob again and receiving a wide smile in return. “But the captain will know.”

The captain was on the other side of the ship and
cared not about his passengers’ affairs if they did not af
fect him. “Only if we tell him.”

Still she resisted. Her heart was not free to join her body. Not when they were so close to her goal. “Duncan, I cannot.”

He smiled as he toyed with the outline of her ear, brushing his fingers along it. “The last time you said those words, you did.”

She sighed as she shook her head. She was weakening and had to struggle to keep her resolve. “You have a silver tongue.”

His laugh was warm and lusty. “You would be the one to best know the texture of it.”

Beth bit her lip. “Truly I am tempted, but—“

He took her hands and placed them against his chest. Against his heart.

“It is very tiring to try to resist temptation, Beth,” he told her solemnly. “Do not tire yourself out. You need your strength for the journey.”

His persistence was tinged with amusement, as if it were a game, one he knew he would not win this round. “Laying with you does not create strength, Duncan, it takes it away.”

He released her hands and pretended to sigh. “You’ve an answer for everything.”

Except for these feelings I have for you, she thought
helplessly.

“Very well, I shall let you win your argument this time.” Standing behind her, he placed his hands on her shoulders. “But ’tis a lonely thing, being a winner, Beth. Sometimes, it is best to lose.”

She closed her eyes, struggling. And losing.

“Land, Duncan,” Jacob cried excitedly.

Beth’s eyes flew open and she stood on her toes, peering over the railing. There was but mist for her to see.

“There always is, at the end of the sea,” Duncan an
swered, with a resigned tone.

And what, he wondered, was at the end of his sea? He had never wondered before, never taken more than a moment at a time. Perhaps this was what came of being landlocked for so long, he thought. Suddenly eternity shimmered before you and your thoughts turned stale.

He looked at Bern’s face and decided that perhaps his
thoughts were not quite stale after all.

Chapter Twenty-four

Duncan could feel Beth’s anxiety growing as she stood beside him on the dock. They were waiting for their horses to be brought off. The captain had at first refused to allow the horses on his ship. His mind had changed when he’d seen the color of the gold coins Duncan crossed his palm with.

The animals’ passage had cost them dearly. But Duncan did not want to trust his fate, or that of Beth’s and Jacob’s, to horses he was not familiar with. Though he might grumble about the animal, his stallion was surefooted and swift as the wind. Duncan had chosen two more horses of equal ability for Jacob and Beth.

Destiny was a difficult sea to navigate blindly, but he did what he could to prepare for this adventure that stretched before him, this adventure that involved a woman he had come quickly to regard as as necessary to him as the very air he took in.

After a young sailor coaxed the animals down the gangplank, Duncan slipped a coin into his hand. The dull eyes brightened and widened. The boy bowed. “Anything else, Your Grace?”

Duncan laughed. Clearly the boy had his titles confused. “There is nothing of grace about me, boy.” Duncan looked past the boy’s head at the vessel. “I was a captain once, on a ship three times this size.” But it was better not to speak of those days. There were enemies
still alive, enemies who harbored grudges and a need for
revenge. “No,” he said, “there is nothing else.”

Duncan turned to Beth as he handed her the bay’s reins. “Do you know the way to your father’s house?”

She nodded. “I was there once, years ago.”

His eyes narrowed. She had not mentioned that before. “How many years?”

She thought back. “Fourteen.”

He looked at her, stunned. “You were a babe in arms,” he scoffed.

She raised her chin in a gesture he now saw whenever he closed his eyes. “I was eight.”

“And you remember,” he mocked.

Her eyes did not waver from his. “I remember. Every path, every tree,” she insisted willfully. “My grandmother’s home is on the outskirts of Paris. The northern outskirts,” she added, for good measure.

His skeptical look was replaced with concern. “That is the center of the trouble, Beth.”

She nodded, their differences momentarily aside. “I know.” She looked up at him, a troubled daughter, her heart heavy. “That is why I am so worried.”

Duncan motioned Beth and Jacob away from the docks. It was not the most reputable of places and he wanted to put distance between them and the sailors who were milling about there.

“How long since you have heard from him?”

She had it down to the moment, but gave him a
rounded answer. “His letters ceased arriving two months
before I left Virginia.”

The skeptical look returned for a different reason, perhaps her alarm was baseless. “That is not that much time, Beth.” Perhaps letters had arrived after her departure.

She would have agreed with him had the times been
different. “Without a revolution around it, no. But under the circumstances, there is much cause for concern. My father was a faithful writer. A letter or more came upon every ship that arrived in port. Without fail, Duncan. Without fail.”

Duncan led the way from the harbor, his expression thoughtful as he turned toward Beth. She was in many ways an innocent still. And she did not know of the darker side of men, no matter what she professed.

He broached it as delicately as he could, knowing how well she loved the man. “Beth, perhaps he did not want to return.”

Her eyes filled with anger at the insult. Then, just as quickly, her emotions simmered down. She shook her head as they left the town behind them. “You do not know my father, or you could not say that. He loves his
wife and daughters, his home in Virginia, and the life he
has made for himself there.”

“Then why did he leave?” Duncan pressed.

“I have already told you that: to help. He is a selfless man,” she said fiercely.

She would not believe that her father chose to lose himself, to desert his wife and family. That might be the way for other men, but not Philippe Beaulieu. Tears gathered in her throat, formed by fear.

“No, something has happened to him.” She turned her eyes to Duncan. “I know it.”

He reached across the pommel to place his hand reas
suringly on hers for a moment. He believed that she believed what she said. Whether it was true was another matter, but he would act as if it was, until they discovered otherwise.

“Do not think on it until we know. Worry never helped a cause.”

Beth knew he was right, but she could not help the
thoughts that crowded in her mind, trying to win posses
sion of her.

“It’ll be all right, mistress,” Jacob chimed in, unable
to remain quiet in the face of her distress. His voice rose like that of a young skylark singing praises of the rising
sun. “If anyone can find him, Duncan can.”

Sometimes it was hard, Duncan thought, taking the lead. He smiled once more at Beth and prayed that the situation was not as black as he feared.

They journeyed more than two days to her grand
mother’s estate. Rather than look for proper shelter at an
inn, they slept upon the road. Duncan felt it was safer
that way, and Beth saw no reason to contradict him. She
blessed the God who watched over her that He had formed her so differently from her sisters. Otherwise she could have not endured the hardships she faced.

When they arrived on the grounds of the Beaulieu es
tate on the morrow of the third day, Beth was appalled by what she saw. The sight warred with the treasured memory she had retained in her mind. Frayed around the edges, touched with nostalgia, the estate, in her
memory, was a thousand times better in appearance than
what she looked upon now. The grounds were sad and sagging, like an abandoned widow left to die alone, overrun with weeds and the poison of neglect. The building was in disrepair. This was not the house of sunshine her father had told her about and that Beth remembered.

Yet she knew that there was no mistake. This was her
grandmother’s house. There was much for her to recognize and grieve over.

“Are you sure you are not mistaken, Beth?” Duncan
prodded. She had been, after all, a child the last time she had walked here.

She slowly shook her head, numbed.

“I’m sure.” The words were a whisper, not from fear of being overheard, but from disappointment. “It looks so sad, so forgotten.”

Her father could not be here, she thought. He would not have remained and let his birthplace look like this.

“Many lose the will to smile in a revolution,” Duncan told her practically. He slid from his horse and handed the reins to Jacob, who was quick to jump down from his. “Jacob, I want you to remain here with the horses until I come for you.”

His words dissolved the aura of sadness about her.
She looked at Duncan from atop her horse. “We are not
riding up to my grandmother’s door?”

“It may not be your grandmother’s any longer,” he told her matter-of-factly. “And it may not be your grandmother who waits now within.” He looked toward the house. He saw no one at the windows, no one on the grounds. But that did not mean it was empty. “I’ve
heard that many of the mansions belonging to the aris
tocracy have been seized and now each house many families rather than one. If that is the case here, I do not want to alert whoever is within that we are approaching.”

The thought of the house where her father was born, where he had spent so much of his youth, defiled in this manner appalled Beth and stirred her indignation. Quickly she dismounted and handed her reins to Jacob.

Duncan caught her arm before she could take a step forward. “I would rather that you remained here with Jacob.”

She glared at him. Did he think he was going to stop
her so close to the threshold, after she had come all this
way? “And I would rather that you remembered that you are with me, not I with you.”