Dreaming (13 page)

There had really been no chance for her mother and her to be much of anything. For the first seven years of her life, her mother was not a friend and mentor, but instead a safe warm haven for a babe, a pair of comforting arms when she had fallen and was hurt, a quiet reassuring voice when dreams turned into nightmares.

At the age when she needed a mother’s wisdom, there had been no one to teach her about men and women. The ways of romance were foreign to her.

She knew only how she felt inside her heart, tattered as it was at this moment. Richard was her hero. Her everything. Her dreams, her hopes, and every moment existed only because he did.

She took a quivering breath. “But I love you,” she whispered, hoping the truth would, perhaps, win her forgiveness for not knowing how to behave.

“You’re too young, too naive to know what love is. Bloody hell! I don’t even know what it is!” He stood barely a foot away, towering high above her like the god she thought he was.

Gus leapt to his feet and wedged his way between them. He raised his head and looked up at Richard, snarling.

“Come here, Gus.”
Letty
swallowed around the lump in her throat and patted the floor beside her.

Slowly, never taking his eyes off Richard, Gus moved to stand protectively beside her.

As she had done so often before, she put an arm around her pet and rested her head against his thick neck. There were times, not unlike now, when it felt as if the entire world was some foreign land where she didn’t speak or understand the language, where nothing was familiar, where she was so completely alone that fear was an incomplete word for what she felt. So she held onto Gus and tried to think about the one thing in her life that was constant and true.

Her love for Richard.

Her hand softly scratched Gus’s ear, and he cocked his head so she could scratch the right spot. He stopped glaring at Richard, who,
Letty
was certain, had not stopped glaring at her.

The tension he’d had so much trouble controlling was a live, animated thing that she could feel as surely as she felt his touch and as surely as his harsh words had bored painfully through her heart.

With her gaze locked on the sand and crusty dirt that marred his black boots, she quietly began, “I know what love is.”

When he said nothing she looked up. “I knew the first time I ever saw you. You can shout and you can bluster and you can try to shock me the way you try so hard to shock everyone else, but all the brandy, all the wild ways and anger in the world, won’t change what’s inside here.” She pointed to her heart. “I love you.”

The taut anger in his face slipped, and something akin to desperation flashed through his expression. Her Richard was there, somewhere, guarded, underneath everything he showed the world. He had for one instant lost that guard. But just as quickly it was back up, and once again he hid behind a mask of dark cynicism.

“You love me?” He laughed cruelly and squatted down in front of her, his look as intense as his being. With one knuckle he tilted her chin up until she could look nowhere but at him. “I’ll give you this warning, hellion.” His dark green eyes carried the cold hardness of marble, and he shook his head and said, “Don’t.”

Then he stood up swiftly and crossed the room, his shoulders straight, his long lithe strides taking him back across the hold to another barrel of destruction. He bent and refilled his cup, then stood there leaning against the crates, his gaze pensive, cold, and distant. And the minutes felt like hours, vacant, empty, because he never bothered to look at her again.

For the long hours of the blackest of nights there was no sound but the sea, nothing but the constant rocking of the
lugger
. There was also little wind, as if the gods of irony had decided to play little games with those who chanced to be aboard.

With a purple dawn came a breath of wind, enough to fill the sails, enough to send the gulls cawing and wheeling out over waters that rippled like the gods’ laughter. And later, from deep within the still dark depths of the ship, a loud and constant thudding echoed above board.

“Open this bloody door!” Richard raised a fist and pounded again.

“Do you think they’ll come soon?”

He cursed under his breath and turned toward the hellion.

“The water seems to be rising,” she informed him from her perch atop the gun crates. He watched her peer thoughtfully down at the sea water that was now a good foot deep. Her skirts were damp and her slippers and stockings were piled in her lap, while her bare feet dangled impatiently. One arm was around the hellhound’s neck.

Richard would have liked to get his arm around the beast’s neck too. The damned dog had spent the better part of the last hour shaking water on him whenever it could.

He hammered the door again. “Open. Open, I say! Do you hear me? This is the Earl of
Downe
! I order you to open this door! The Earl of
Downe
, you hear! The Earl of—” He froze, frowning. “Good God, I sound like
Belmore
.”

The lock slid with a rusty clunk and Richard stepped back. The door slowly opened. Water from the flooded hold spilled into the passageway with a loud swoosh.

There was a gruff curse, and one of the triplets stuck his head inside. A second later he slogged into the hold, followed by the sailor with the singed beard and no eyebrows. Both men held pistols.

Sluggish Gus sat up, suddenly alert, and he barked a greeting.

Richard took a step and found himself staring into a gun barrel held by
Phelim
.
Phergus
?
Phineas
?
Phelix
?
Philbert
?
Phleabrain
? Whichever.

“We are not staying down here,” Richard said, his tone unyielding, and his plan underway. He’d loosened the canvas in the small hours of the morning so the sea water leaked through in streams instead of trickles. He reasoned that this was the only way for them to have a chance of escape. They would have to get topside whichever way they could.

The smugglers stared at the water, frowning.

“It’s been filling faster for the last hour. And I’ve been pounding on the bloody door for half that time. You’d think the entire ship was deaf.”

“None of us be hearing too well after that blast,” a sailor said in the overly loud voice of an old
cannoneer
. He kept his pistol aimed at the hellion. The gun quivered slightly.

“
Ye’re
shouting again, Harry,” the other smuggler told him. “Here.” He handed him the other pistol. “Keep an eye on ’
em
since
yer
ears ain’t no good.” He crossed over to the canvas, inspecting the edges until he came to one of the five spots where Richard had removed the nails. He glanced down at the floor, bent down, and felt around the water, coming up with one of the nails. He crossed the hold and started out the door.

The damned fool was going to leave them in the flooded hold. “Where in the bloody hell are you going?”

“Topside. We need volunteers.” He gave a covert look toward
Letty
. “Men willing to come down and
renail
the canvas.”

“You cannot leave us in here.” Richard moved toward the man, but Harry the
eyebrowless
stopped him with a pistol barrel in the chest. “Now see here, Ph—” Richard frowned. “Which one are you?”

“Why do ye want to know?”

“That’s
Phineas
,” the hellion volunteered.

Richard gave her a look that was meant to quiet her.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked the man, ignoring Richard’s look like she did everything else he said, ordered, or asked, which was why she had no idea he had a plan. He’d made sure she was asleep when he’d loosened the canvas.

“Aye.”
Phineas
turned to Richard and eyed his wound. “I don’t suppose ye could cause any more problems with that arm, now can ye?”

“Oh, Richard won’t be one bit of trouble.”

“
Letty
 . . . ” he warned.

“Well, you won’t. It’s obvious we cannot stay down here. And Mr.
Phineas
isn’t a cruel man, are you? Of course not. I can tell by his kind eyes. As brown as
sorgham
molasses. No one with eyes like molasses could possibly be cruel and mean, now could they? You do have very kind eyes, you know. Just like my very own Uncle
Phineas
.” She blessed him with a smile so brilliant even Richard was caught off guard for an instant.

He recovered and glanced at
Phineas
, whose suspicious and gruff features were anything but kind. Until now. The man now looked as if he’d just been handed a fleet of duty-free goods. “I suppose there’d be no harm in ye coming topside.”

“Her?” Harry shouted in a tone that said he considered
Letty
, who weighed scarcely near seven stone, more of a threat than a hundred of Richard. “Can’t we lock her up somewhere else?”

“Give me the pistols,”
Phineas
told him, taking the guns. “Tell the crew to stow all gunpowder in the mezzanine.” He glanced at
Letty
. “
Ye’ll
keep away from the stern?”

She nodded.

Harry scurried from the room, his shouts to the crew echoing back down to the hold. Richard heard the words “female” and “topside.” There was a sudden rash of cursing and the rafters above the hold thundered as if the men on deck were running for their lives. Rumbling downward was the sound of barrels rolling over the deck toward the stern.

Richard moved toward the crates to help the hellion down. Before he could offer his hand, she hopped down with a small splash, her skirts in one hand and her slippers and stockings in the other. She sloshed past him, her face glowing with that look of half excitement and half delight.

Richard shook his head and started to follow her from the hold. A loud howl stopped him cold.

“Come along, Gus!”
Letty
called out from the passageway.

Before Richard could think, let alone move, Gus had vaulted from the crate, his legs outstretched and his ears flapping. He plunged into the water, splashing and shaking and spraying sea water with more eagerness than a mad retriever.

Richard wiped the burning salt water from his eyes and face just in time to see the beast’s wet tail disappear around the door.

Richard slowly slogged through the water toward the doorway. His plan was a success. Except that even he had trouble convincing himself he was any kind of Machiavellian strategist with a gun barrel in his damp back and water dripping from his long aristocratic nose.

Damned dog.