Dreaming (20 page)

The pirate Dion moved then, two steps, before he leapt down from the upper deck with lightning-quick agility. He handed the pistol to Gabriel and walked over to stand next to the captain.

“I see you cannot control your tiresome penchant for absurd melodrama, Hamish. I suspect you are the one cursed with a tongue affliction.”

“Nary a lass has ever complained. One of my more tantalizing black arts. I’d prove it with this wide-eyed little gillyflower if I didn’t think Galahad here would do something stupid and then I’d have to kill him.”

Hamish moved his languid gaze from Richard to
Letty
, and he gave her a wicked wink.

She could feel Richard tense, and it was her turn to squeeze his hand in warning. He didn’t respond, so she glanced up at him. His jaw was fixed tightly and his eyes were narrowed in challenge, as if he wanted the pirate to try.

Hamish laughed, apparently finding Richard’s anger amusing.

“Stop taunting him,” the other man warned.

“Ah, Dion my friend, as always you leave me no toys to play with.” He leaned back against the bulwark, crossing his boots and tilting his hat back with the dagger. “What shall we do with them? Plank-walking? Keelhauling?
Hmmmm
, what are some other delicious pranks? Ah, yes, I remember now. It has been a while.
Wenching
, looting, and plundering.” Hamish gave a lazy smile. “I feel in the mood for some plundering. Who goes first? You or I?”

“You do have a cruel streak.”

“I try.”

“Too hard at times,” Dion said with subtle meaning, and he began to pace slowly in front of them.

Letty
had the distinct feeling that this man was actually the one in command. There was intelligence in his manner and a smooth confidence that gave the impression he was in complete control. He turned, and she had the first good look at his face.

His features were fine, his hair long and queued and spun as golden as
Rumpelstiltskin’s
straw. He paused and looked out at the smuggler’s ship, listing but not destroyed. “Is the cargo emptied?”

“Every last crate and barrel, silks, lace, glass, and even more interesting than barrels of brandy”— Hamish paused before he added—“were three crates of gun locks.”

Dion whipped around. “What?”

“Gun locks.” Hamish flicked another wood shaving toward
Phineas
, who had come around and was being helped up by his brothers, then he casually pointed at them with his knife. “Hard to believe of those three.”

Dion was silent for a few long seconds, then said, “Get rid of them.”

Letty
jumped forward. “No! Please. Don’t hurt them!”

“Come back here!” Richard tightened his grip on her hand and tried to pull her back.

She stubbornly jerked her hand free and faced the pirate Dion. “I’m certain they didn’t mean to do anything so terribly wrong. Did you?” She looked at the triplets just as
Phineas
hit the deck again with a loud thud. She gave
Phelim
and
Philbert
an imploring look. “Tell him you’re sorry. Anything. Please!” She turned back to the pirates. “Don’t kill them. Please.”

Dion stared at her as if taken aback. Hamish burst into deep, wicked laughter.

She turned to Richard and followed the direction of his look. He was watching the pirate Dion with intense regard. She took a deep breath so she could brave the other beast, planted her hands on her hips, and glared at Hamish. “Murdering people is not amusing.”

Hamish laughed even harder, and he turned to Dion. “And you accuse me of melodrama?” He chuckled as he sheathed his knife, then braced his hands on his hips and said, “Shall you tell her, or shall I?”

Dion looked at her through shrewd gray eyes that held a trace of a wry smile. “Foolish girl. I was talking about the gun locks.”

And so it was that an hour later the smugglers had been escorted back aboard their listing ship, less gunpowder, cannonballs, and other such weapons. With an odd feeling of kinship that had nothing to do with familial blood and everything to do with spilled blood, Richard had watched two of the men lug Harry back to his own ship. He hadn’t come around, to the hellion’s good fortune.

The gun locks had been given a quick burial at sea, and the remainder of the plunder was stowed in the hold, except the human plunder: Richard and
Letty
, and the inhuman Gus.

With the prod of a pistol muzzle in his back, something that was becoming as natural a sensation as breathing, Richard walked past the pirate Hamish and through the ship’s companionway, pulling the hellion along with him. Gus trailed behind in a floppy kind of half trot, half lumber, until the corridor ended at a large oak door and they stopped.

Hamish reached around him, pressing the pistol deeper into Richard’s back, and opened the door. Then he straightened and looked at the hellion. With swashbuckling flair he waved his free hand, gave a slight nod of his head that was anything but polite, and his mouth quirked into an irritating smile that bordered on a leer. “After you, little gillyflower.”

“She stays with me.” Richard tightened his grip on her hand.

Hamish gave a thundering laugh. “I stand corrected. After
both
of you.”

Richard pulled the hellion inside after him. She looked up at him with true fear in her eyes. The chit had finally grown some sense. He kept a tight grip on her hand and instinctively shifted closer to her.

Dion entered the cabin, and Hamish pushed the door closed behind them and leaned against it, crossing his boots. He gave them a pointed black-eyed stare, then said with casual wit, “Perhaps they’re Siamese twins, joined at the hand.”

Scowling fiercely, the hellion tried to pull her hand away, but Richard held fast—his own volley to the challenge of the man’s snide remarks.

Seeming to ignore them, Dion crossed the cabin silently. Meanwhile Hamish wore a droll smile that said he had expected Richard’s response, then he raised the pistol sight to his squinting eye and slowly shifted the barrel from Richard to the hellion.

Instinctively Richard pushed her behind him and pinned Hamish with a look that said “go ahead and shoot.”

“As I said . . . ” Hamish grinned, looking from the hellion, who was peeking around his shoulder, then to Richard. “A hero.”

Dion silently watched the exchange from behind a heavy mahogany desk, which stood in front of a bow of mullioned windows. Behind him was a vast view of the rippling gray-green sea and cloud-darkened sky where every so often a shaft of yellow sunlight would pierce through.

But he appeared unaware of the elements around, above, and before them. His intent was focused elsewhere. Exactly where was a mystery to Richard. He, who prided himself on gauging most men, couldn’t fathom what this man intended.

Dion braced his slim hands atop the desk in a gesture of command. He gave Hamish a meaningful glance. “Behave yourself.”

Hamish shrugged as if he could care less and leaned back against the door, his face filled with lazy amusement. Richard felt the strong urge to wipe that look off with a hard right cross.

“Sit.” Dion gave a curt nod toward two chairs standing opposite the desk.

Richard guided
Letty
around to sit in one of the chairs, and Gus lumbered over and flopped down at her feet, resting his head atop his mammoth front paws. It seemed to Richard that the dog was most cheerful when they were caught in a disaster. The animal was completely devoid of any danger instinct. Completely oblivious.

But Richard wasn’t. He stood behind
Letty’s
chair, his hands gripping its back. He gave the man a direct look. “I’d prefer to stand.”

“As you wish.” Dion slid into his own chair and picked up a letter opener from the desk. He studied it for a moment, then leaned back and gracefully swung his boots atop one corner of the desk. There was but one sharp, precise click of his boot heels hitting wood. Silent, he coolly twirled the opener in his hands and stared out through the wall of glass.

Time grew slow in the silence, and the hellion began to squirm. The quiet was getting to her.

Richard slid his hands from the back of her chair to her shoulders and heard her catch her breath at his touch. He gave her another squeeze of encouragement and felt it when her gaze shifted up at him.

But he didn’t meet it. Instead he kept his sharp eyes on the man seated across from them. Ever since this enigmatic man had joined the others above board, Richard had had an eerie feeling that he’d seen this Dion before. The name wasn’t familiar, nor was his face, per se, but there was something.

His instincts were unusually keen—when they weren’t dulled by drink. And though he knew he’d had nothing to drink, his senses were still muddled. It was unsettling, because for the life of him he couldn’t figure out where he’d met this man or what it was he recognized.

There was no sound in the room except the natural sound of the sea, the only movement the slight motion of the ship and the rise and fall of human breathing. But tenseness continued to hang in the room like fog, threatening, dangerous, almost palpable it was so strong.

And even the confining walls of a ship’s cabin couldn’t keep those caged within from reacting in primal challenge. Richard bristled with it, felt the strong need to hold his own against some force that was stronger than he.

“So,” Dion said smoothly, never taking his gaze away from the sea, “what do you think we should do with them?”

“I opted for plundering.”

He ignored Hamish and looked from
Letty
to Richard. “Suppose you tell me who you are and how you came to be on that
lugger
.”

Richard could play his own taunting games. He said nothing, letting the silence hang around them for a change. The pirate didn’t move, but he didn’t take his shrewd gray eyes off him either. After another tense few seconds, Richard said, “I’m—”

The cold steel of a pistol barrel pressed into Richard’s temple.

“Not you. Her.”

Richard silently swore. He tightened his hold on her shoulders and hoped to God she understood what to tell them. No . . . He had a second thought. What
not
to tell them.

He could feel her stare and looked down. Her head was tilted back, but her gaze was locked on the pistol at his head. The color slowly drained from her face.

Her shoulders shook under his palms, and he tightened his grip again and had the satisfaction of watching her worried look flash to his.

“We’re waiting.” The smooth voice was controlled, too controlled.

“I’m
Letitia
Hornsby and he’s Richard Lennox.”

Gus’s head popped up and he snarled. For once the blasted dog had served a purpose. In warning, Richard quickly pressed his fingers into her shoulder. Her eyes flinched slightly, and she looked down. “Hush, Gus.”

“’
Twas
all my fault,” she began quietly, speaking to her hands clasped in her lap. Her shoulders heaved with the force of the breath she took. She slowly raised her head and looked directly at the pirate with all the martyrdom of a burning saint. “I’m in love with Richard,” she admitted, as if that explained everything.

Richard’s first reaction was to groan, but he didn’t. The pistol left his head and some of the tension flowed out of him. Then he heard a snort of laughter from behind him and felt his jaw tense.

“I’ve loved him for half of my lifetime.” She sighed. “So I followed him to the cliffs near our homes. We’re neighbors, you see, and I had hidden in the pantry earlier, on my way to snitch some
honeybuns
—I have a horrid sweet tooth at night—and heard Cook talking to one of the servants. They said he’d come home. Finally. He hasn’t been home for over two years.” She looked up at him. “Do you have any idea how long two years is when one is waiting?” She took another breath. “It seems almost a century.