Brazen Temptress (14 page)

"If you say so, Mary," William said, glancing across the table at Maureen.

Maureen was of the same mind as the Captain. She wanted to be done with this business — most of all she didn't want the Lord Admiral questioning her commitment. "What about Miss Cottwell? Won't she take advantage of my disappearance to spread her stories of my 'unusual qualities'?"

Lady Mary sighed. "I highly doubt Miss Cottwell is going to be spreading any rumors about that discussion." She paused for a moment, her soupspoon in midair. "But how did you know about the Weltons and their ... well, how can I put it ... infirmities?"

"You mean about the madness?" Maureen stared at the lady. Oh, her comment had been better aimed than she'd originally thought. "It's true?"

Lady Mary nodded.

"I didn't know. I just said it to put that simpering puss in her place."

"Oh, Maureen! You can't say such things. Especially if they may be true, as it was in this case. It is a sorry story, but no one ever mentions it, at least not in public."

Maureen didn't miss the slight smile at the corners of Lady Mary's otherwise disapproving countenance. "If you don't mind me saying, that does explain a thing or two about Miss Cottwell."

The Captain began to laugh, the likes of which Maureen had never expected from the usually gruff man. She happily joined in, while Lady Mary looked torn between a mild giggle and the need to reprimand the unruly behavior.

"I hardly think it was a ladylike thing to do, Maureen," Lady Mary scolded, enough to settle the Captain down and to get Maureen to cover her mouth with her napkin. "Especially in front of Mr. D'Artiers. I am sure Miss Cottwell thought you did it to cut her out of his affections."

"Didn't appear to me," Maureen muttered, "that he looked all that put out to discover his dear Miss Cottwell isn't all she appears to be. I'd say they were a pair of bedlamites if ever I saw 'em. He can have her and all her ladylike ways."

She hadn't meant to sound so defensive or so riled, but she had, and now both Captain William and Lady Mary stared at her as if in wonderment at this outburst.

"It's just that ..." Maureen's protest faltered.

"Just what?" Lady Mary asked.

Maureen sighed. "Miss Cottwell obviously was right about the breeding and all. I suppose the truth of it just stuck in my craw and I let it get the better of me. I'm not a lady. I never will be. I'm just a rough sailor, and I proved that today. I'm sorry, Lady Mary. I won't do it again." She rose from the table and excused herself. "If we aren't going out tonight, I think I will go upstairs and rest. Good night."

As Lady Mary watched the downhearted young woman leave the room, tears welled up in her eyes.

At first she'd been shocked at the task the Lord Admiral had dropped into her lap, but now, a month later, she had all but forgotten Maureen's past and the reason she was in London. If she were to tell the truth, she'd grown immensely fond of having a goddaughter, even a pretend one.

The girl filled a spot in her life that had been empty for too long, and it broke her heart to think that Maureen thought herself unworthy of being called a lady.

It wasn't true, and perhaps it was time someone told her.

She got up to follow her, but William caught her by the arm, as she passed his seat at the head of the table.

"Where are you going, Mary, my girl?"

"Why, after that poor child." She looked down at her husband, lips pursed. "She needs to be told."

At this William's eyes grew wide. "Why, you've gone as balmy as one of those Weltons. Tell her what?"

"Tell her she is a lady."

William rose and steered her back to her chair. "Sit down, Mary. Think about what you are saying."

"She's Ethan Hawthorne's daughter. She's a lady in her own right; why, she's even a —" Lady Mary haltered her speech as her husband's bushy eyebrows rose in alarm.

"We vowed a long time ago we wouldn't mention that name in this house," he told her sternly. "I'll have you keep that word, Mary. We have no proof she's Ethan Hawthorne's daughter, just her word on the matter."

"William, you may be many things, but you are not blind! The girl is the image of Ethan — those eyes. Why, I would have recognized them anywhere. And that hair; her grandmother had the same coloring. You know as well as I do who she is. And she has a better bloodline than a hundred Eustacia Cottwell's and more right to the life than that —"

Again, William halted her with a stiff shake of his head. "No more, Mary. I won't hear it in this house. You may have the right of it, but we can't do anything about it. Not now, not ever." He paused and reached down to squeeze her hand. The chill in his fingers told her that she should fear the truth as much as he did.

"William," Lady Mary whispered. "Do you think when Peter is done with her that he'll do as he's promised? That he'll let her go?" She paused before she voiced the suspicions that up until now she'd been afraid to say aloud. "Will he let her live?"

"Of course, Mary. Why wouldn't he?"

He didn't sound all that convinced.

"If she knew, if she was told the truth —"

His grip on her hand tightened to where it was almost painful. Just as quickly he let it go, and in his haste to hide his alarm, he wiped his brow. "You wouldn't do that poor girl any good to tell her your fanciful tales. What could she do? Ethan couldn't stop the inevitable, and I doubt his daughter has any better chance. Allow her to do what she needs to do, and then let her sail away. 'Tis best for her and best for us."

But Lady Mary wasn't so convinced. Perhaps Maureen Hawthorne, armed with the truth, could do what Ethan Hawthorne had failed to do so many years ago.

For Maureen had one thing Ethan Hawthorne hadn't: her mother's fire. And that, Lady Mary suspected, might finally turn the tide on the Lord Admiral's unholy hold on the past.

For all of them.

Long before the first light of dawn, Maureen slipped downstairs and purloined the rest of her belongings from the Captain's sea chest. In her old clothes she felt comfortable for the first time in weeks, reveling in the freedom of her canvas breeches and loose shirt. Hiding her hair beneath a watch cap, she slipped out her attic-bedroom window, shimmied down the drainpipe, and carefully eluded the Lord Admirals guards posted around the Johnston house.

As if his drunken lot could keep me contained, she thought as she made her way through the shadowy side street. Getting out of the Johnston house, she decided, was easier than climbing down from the crow's nest on a summer's day.

Through the long hours of the night, she'd come to the conclusion that there was only one way to settle her indecision. Discover the truth herself. If the
Retribution
was indeed for sale, then someone around the London pool would surely know of it.

Now all she had to do was find her way out of the maze of Cheapside to the docks.

As luck would have it, Maureen ran into a fishwife on her way to pick up her wares at the first corner.

The toothless old woman, after listening to her young companion explain that "he" was an apprentice running away from a brutal master so he could serve his King and country at sea, had no qualms about showing the lad the way to the docks.

Especially when Maureen offered to carry the woman's basket for her.

So with the bent-backed crone leading the way, Maureen made her way to the river.

Even before they came upon the Thames, the scent of the river — thick and foul with the refuse of the city — filled her nostrils. Maureen inhaled deeply, if only to catch for a moment the sweet, rich scent of the sea, filled with salt and life and movement, trapped as it was within the stew of the river.

Gulls and seabirds, who'd followed the ships inland, added their cries to the wee hours of dawn, beckoning her closer.

"There you go, my boy," the lady cackled, clapping Maureen hard on the back, as they came to the docks. "Take care now, and bring back a huge prize for your good friend Mag, eh?" The woman reclaimed her basket, slinging it over her bent shoulder, and then hobbled down to the left toward the fishing boats.

Maureen scanned the familiar sight of ships and sails and riggings, in the complicated web of the London pool. She wandered for close to an hour before she spied her ship, the
Retribution,
moored between two frigates. At the sight of her once-proud ship, its rigging loose and limp, the poorly stowed sails flapping raggedly in the breeze, she bit back the anger rising in her chest.

The Lord Admiral had promised that her ship and crew would be well taken care of, but this! Why, the
Retribution
looked more like a fishing scow than the bonny vessel Maureen loved.

She had wandered as close to it as she could, when she was accosted by two sailors. Navy, from the looks of them, she surmised quickly, trying to sidestep their approach.

"Have a mind to go to sea, lad?" the first one asked, a black patch over one eye, a striped cap pulled down low over his greasy pigtail. "I'm Sollie, and I could help you find a might' fine berth aboard me ship here."

She shook her head.

"Tell him, Ferg," Sollie said to his equally foul companion. "Tell him how he won't do better than to sail with us as mates."

All she needed was to be tossed onto the nearest outbound ship. Not that she wouldn't be put off at the nearest port when her true sex was discovered, but it might take time to find someone she could trust to tell.

She'd heard enough tales from her men — several of whom had served with the Navy after being pressed from other ships — to know what the scurvy lot who ruled the below-deck world of a Navy ship would do with a woman.

"What say ye?" Ferg asked, spitting a long stream of spittle into the river. "You want to go to sea?"

Wiping her nose with the sleeve of her jacket, she lowered her voice and replied, "Can't say that I do. I'm here for me master. He wanted to know what is happening with that ship." She jerked her thumb out toward the
Retribution.

"Tell your master it is set to go on the block next week."

So it was true. Her ship was being sold. Why that lying, thieving bastard of a Lord Admiral, she thought.

"Why is it being auctioned?" she finally managed to ask.

"Prize money," Sollie told her, puffing out his chest as if the act of catching the ship had been entirely his doing. "Your master interested in buying her?"

She didn't trust herself to open her mouth and speak, lest the words come spitting out in anger. Instead, she nodded her head.

"Well you tell 'em we took her just off Sheerness. A smuggler's ship, right handy for all kinds of crossings. Not much to look at, but in good shape, all things considered."

She didn't like the way he said that. As if there was something wrong with the
Retribution.
Why, it was the finest ship this pig would ever have the privilege of viewing from the wharf, for he'd never be welcome to serve on her.

"What things?" she asked.

The two men exchanged glances.

"Now you've spilled it, Sollie," Ferg said, jabbing his companion in the ribs. "Might as well go ahead and tell the lad."

Sollie leaned over, pointing his dirty finger under her nose. The eye without the patch watered, as if it wasn't much better than the one hidden. "Don't be spreading this around or think of telling your master, or I'll find you and split you open like a mackerel and feed your guts to the rats."

She'd like to see the cocky bastard try. Wouldn't he be in for a surprise.

"You promise?" he repeated.

Maureen nodded.

"That ship was captained by a woman."

Maureen waved her hand at him. "Do you take me for a fool? A woman? What kind of crew would sail with a woman?"

"A crew headed for convoy duty." Sollie laughed.

"How's that?" she asked. "My master was told they were still aboard and willing to serve the next owner."

"Yer master should have looked a little closer at the auction notice. That there crew was convicted of smuggling, so they've all been sentenced to service in the Navy."

Service in the Navy? But the Lord Admiral had promised that her men would be released.

Another of Julien's assertions coming true.

Damn him, why did he have to be right?

"So there is no one aboard her?" she asked, looking out at her ship.

"Just the rats." Sollie laughed again.

"And the captain?" she asked, almost unwilling to hear her fate.

At this Ferg spoke up. "Gonna hang. Don't usually take to hanging a woman, but this one weren't natural, iffin you know what I mean. Thinking she could captain a ship and get away with smuggling right under the nose of the King's navy. Not natural, I tell you."

Maureen had stopped listening to his idiotic diatribe. But three words echoed and beat in her chest like the resounding clap of thunder on the horizon.

Hang. Gonna hang.

And who would stop it?

She didn't want to think of the one man she suspected could.

Julien.

No, it couldn't be true! She wasn't going to hang. She had a deal with the Lord Admiral. De Ryes in exchange for her life.

A deal her lofty friend obviously had no intention of keeping.

How had Julien known?

Having not paid attention to her companions, she suddenly found them on either side of her. They caught her by the elbows, their grips as sure as a reef knot.

"Unhand me," she told them, struggling to free herself.

"Now, why would we want to do that?" Sollie asked. "We're set to sail with the tide, and we are still short a few men. You look like a lively lad, well suited for a life at sea."

They began dragging her toward the gangplank.

"Let me go," she told them, twisting this way and that in a vain attempt to break their hold. "My master will be furious if I don't return."

"By the time he finds out, you'll be halfway to the Horn," Ferg told her.

The pair laughed and continued hauling her along.

"I don't think so, gentlemen," a deep male voice called out from behind them.