Lord Of The Sea (10 page)

As he bowed over her hand, his green eyes met hers from over her knuckle; there was something hard and angry in them, but he quickly smiled, making little crinkles fan out from the corners of his eyes and transforming his face into one of careless good humor, and the moment was lost. Perhaps she’d only imagined his anger; he seemed too much of a free spirit to harbor such an emotion. But all too soon, he was striding toward the big glass doors, broad-backed, lean and handsome, the lantern light falling softly on his tousled chestnut curls. A moment later he was gone, taking his larger-than-life presence with him.

Small talk ensued. But Rhiannon’s gaze kept going to the empty chair where Captain Merrick had been sitting, and she was painfully aware of his absence.

And so she passed the rest of the evening feeling much lower than she let on, speaking when she was spoken to, smiling when she was supposed to smile, and being kind to the naval captain whom, she feared, was fostering an interest in her that she probably shouldn’t encourage. Captain Lord was a good man, a noble one, entirely suitable but altogether wrong for her. She would break his heart, and she knew it. Captain Merrick, on the other hand, was entirely unsuitable but altogether
right
for her. He made her heart beat a hundred times faster and her blood to race and her thoughts to turn to wicked, imagined things that couples did in the darkness.

 She went to her room as soon as it was polite to make her excuses, and from somewhere off in Bridgetown, the strains of lively music came wafting through the warm night. The breeze moved gently into the room and Rhiannon, wishing for tiredness but unable to turn off her thoughts, her mind, her memory of the brave, half-naked Captain Merrick leaping fearlessly from the rigging earlier that day, could not sleep.

She pulled the lantern close and picked up a book, but the words filed before her, empty of meaning, and she found herself going over the same paragraph over and over again without remembering what she had read.

She got up and paced, finally stopping at the open window and looking down into the harbor where the riding lights of the British fleet, merchant ships, trade vessels, and somewhere, the American privateer schooner
Kestrel
, winked in the darkness.

Connor Merrick was out there somewhere.

Connor Merrick, who leaped with fearless abandon from high in the rigging . . . who had saved her beloved sister from drowning back in Portsmouth . . . who had rescued her and Alannah from bloodthirsty pirates, brought them safely through a terrible storm at sea, and delivered them without incident to Barbados; Connor Merrick, who made her blood thrum and her knees weak and a strange, restless ache to gather between her legs.

She would not sleep this night.

Frustrated, Rhiannon turned from the window, moved across the room, and decided that a walk in the warm night air might soothe her enough to find the rest she sought.

For her, as it was for Captain Merrick, trouble was waiting.

*     *     *

Connor had not gone back to
Kestrel
.

He needed exercise, the release of moving his body, and there wasn’t room enough on the schooner’s eighty-foot deck for the hard walk that his muscles, let alone his temper, craved. Instead, he stalked angrily away from the house and down the lawn toward the water, even the balmy trades against his skin unable to soothe his anger.

Damn Sir Graham. Damn Delmore Lord. Damn everyone, damn everything, and damn himself for letting himself get hooked by Miss Rhiannon Evans when he’d known all along, when he’d told himself all along, to walk away.

If he were a smart man, he’d sail out of here tonight and leave her to Delmore. But he was a proud man, not a smart one, and there was no way on God’s green earth he was going anywhere.

Not now, when Sir Graham had all but thrown down the gauntlet.

Not now, when Delmore had set his own eye on the woman that he, Connor, had found first.

Not now, when his insides felt like someone had twisted them into a knot and set them on fire.

Oh, he had his pride all right. Rhiannon Evans was
his
.

Ahead, the moon was poised above the western horizon and lighting up the sea. He reached the water’s edge and reaching down, picked up a stone and flung it, hard, out over the water, trying to get it to skim and skip the surface as he and his siblings had so often done as children.

What are you going to do, Connor?

Yes, what was he going to do?

He picked up another rock. Sent it flying out over the surface.

She was just a young girl. Too young to appreciate him for anything more than the careless daredevil she knew him to be, too young to want him for the real man he actually was. A man who couldn’t stop striving to be all that his father had been before him. A man who wasn’t, in some respects, quite as confident as he would have others believe. A man who had a secret so shameful that she would surely pity him, maybe even laugh at him, if she were to ever find out about it.

So what are you going to do, Connor?

The hell with pride. He would be smart, just this once. He was going to go back to
Kestrel
, that’s what he was going to do. And he was going to stay there until every last man of his crew returned and then, he was getting the devil out of Barbados and going back to work.

He pitched one last stone and headed back up the beach.

*     *     *

Rhiannon had intended to just spend a few moments outside, but the night was quiet, the front gardens deserted, and a gibbous moon was just setting over the western horizon, lighting a serene path of gold out over the water and seemingly into forever.

Above her head, the trades whispered through the palms and in the near distance, Rhiannon could hear the gentle, timeless rhythm of surf against the beach.

She headed toward the sound, thinking to find a place to sit and watch the moon setting over the sea, and to think.

“Connor Merrick.”

There, she’d said it. Breathed life into the name and, in so doing, made this strange, exciting, shivery feeling of infatuation, real. But was it infatuation? Or was it something more?

Was it possible for a woman to fall in love at first sight?

Of course it is. He saved your life.

And, your sister’s.

She’d had infatuations before, of course. What young woman didn’t? But she had been younger then, and there was a big difference between the shy, pimply, insecure youths she’d known back in the little Welsh village where she’d grown up, and a confident and virile man like Connor Merrick.

What would Gwyneth—who had raised her and Morganna after their parents had died so many years before, who had taken a position in the local public house so the three of them would have enough to eat, who had married the elderly Lord Simms in order to give her little sisters a better life— have to say about her obsession with Connor Merrick?

Ahead, the beach glowed pale in the light of the moon. Sighing, Rhiannon moved closer to the waves breaking gently against this protected western shore, kicked off her shoes and, arranging her skirts around her, sat down, curling her toes in the warm sand. She folded her arms across her knees and, resting her chin on her wrists, gazed morosely out over the path of moonlight that led out over the sea and to the horizon.

Down here, the riding lights of the ships anchored in the harbor were brighter, glowing like stars from rigging and tops alike, casting their own tiny reflections over the water.

“Connor Merrick,” she said again.

And sensed movement behind her, and a presence.

She knew who it was before she even turned and saw his tall, lean form leaning against a palm tree a short distance away.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, mortified—and grateful that the night hid the sudden, hot blush that filled her cheeks.

“Long enough to hear my name uttered.” He bowed, and she could see that he was smiling. “At your service, ma’m.”

“Were you spying on me?”

“Actually, I was on my way back to my schooner when I noticed you sitting there. My curiosity was aroused. Forgive me.”

“You
were
spying on me.”

“Very well then, I was spying on you. And thinking of a million ways to send Deadly Dull-more to hell and back for the fact that he had the good fortune to be sitting next to you tonight, and I did not. Pardon my language, ma’m.”

“Why, Captain Merrick . . . if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous!”

“Hmph. Of that starched up prig? Hardly.”

He came forward, and her heart began to pound.

“I should go inside, this is not proper.”

“Proper? What, Miss Evans, about the world is?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Our president Madison declared war against your country when he should’ve declared it against the French, who were guilty of many of the same insults that offended us in the first place. I’m an American privateer supping with a British admiral who only tolerates my presence here because he’s married to my sister. My nephew and nieces speak with an English accent, my normally fierce sister is an emotional, weepy mess, and my dead-bore of a cousin claimed the seat at the dinner table tonight next to the most beautiful woman in Barbados.” He gave a little grin, acknowledging her blush. “And you speak to me about ‘proper?’ The world is a strange and confusing place, Miss Evans. I should think that two people enjoying the beauty of a tropical moonlit night might count it as one of the only things in this world that
is
proper, given the upside down state of affairs in which we find ourselves.” He smiled. “Would you care to walk?”

“I think you should take me back to the house. If anyone discovers us out here alone, it would be disastrous.”

“Who would care, here in Barbados? You’re not in a London drawing room.”

“I—”

“Do you
wish
to go for a walk, Miss Evans?” His smile turned roguish. “Or better yet, that swim?”

Her eyes widened. “You were serious, then? About teaching me?”

“Indeed I was, ma’m.”

“Well, I confess the idea makes me rather nervous . . . it’s dark out. There might be sharks. I lack the courage you display in hurling yourself out of the rigging, you know. But if you vow to keep me safe. . . .”

“Courage isn’t defined by doing things you aren’t afraid to do, no matter how terrifying anyone else finds them. Courage is about doing the things you
are
afraid to do, no matter how
un
-terrifying anyone else finds them. Even so, d’you think I wasn’t just a little bit afraid, when I jumped out of the rigging like that?”

She laughed. “No, I do not think you were afraid at all, Captain Merrick, but having the time of your life.”

“Then you sadly overestimate the few qualities of my character, Miss Evans.”

“You were only doing that to impress me, weren’t you? Because you had a female aboard?”

“Oh, no. Though I do confess that knowing you were watching did compel me to jump all the higher. Come, let us walk. I know a quiet cove just south of here. The water is shallow, gentle, and warm.”

He reached down and, having no choice, Rhiannon slid her fingers into that broad, strong hand, picked up her shoes, and allowed him to raise her to her feet.

He was a tall presence beside her, one that made her feel both safe and protected and in great danger all at the same time, and she felt all the blood in her veins beginning to turn to steam.

I should not be doing this! How do I get myself out of this situation?

And then:
Do you
want
to get yourself out of this situation?

No. Oh, absolutely, positively, not. She was having an adventure, she was with the devastatingly handsome Black Wolf, and he was jealous that another man had shown her attention.

She had nothing to lose.

And everything to gain.

He’s going to teach me how to swim!

She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, her heartbeat beginning to thunder in her ears. Oh, this was deliciously wicked to be out here alone with him. Forbidden, sinful, by every rule of society. But oh, if he could “live a little,” as he seemed to say so often, then so could she.

I wonder what it would be like if he were to kiss me . . .

The sand, still warm from the heat of the day, scrunched under her bare feet as she allowed him to lead her down to the beach, the lights of Sir Graham’s mansion receding into the trees behind them.

“So, what compelled you to become a privateer, Captain Merrick?”

“The money,” he said, with a half-apologetic smile.

“No overwhelming sense of patriotism or pride?”

“No.” He shook his head. “This war’s different from the one we fought thirty years ago. It’s not about independence this time. And to be fair, there are many of us in New England who were against it. Jefferson’s Embargo Act squeezed most of us such that the economy was in ruins. We could have done without another war, but since one was declared, might as well profit from it.”

“And so here you are.”

“Here I am. Destined, it seems, to ply the same course my
Dadaí
did back in the old war, and with the same ship, as well.”

“Your father was a privateer, too?

She leaned a little closer to him as they continued along, her hand tucked safely in the crook of his elbow, hearing his words through a strange, delighted thrumming of excitement at the fact that she was out here all alone with him in the dark.

Wicked.

Scandalous.

Forbidden.

Alone.

“Yes, and a good one. I grew up hearing the stories about him,” he continued, his voice fond with admiration, perhaps even awe. “He was a rising officer in the Royal Navy, but defected to the American side shortly after the war began and made a name for himself as one of the most legendary privateers of the Revolution. From the time I could remember, I heard the stories, told to me by my mother, by my aunt and uncle, by the townspeople of Newburyport, by everyone, really, except my father himself . . . stories of how he outsmarted the British by pretending to be in shallows when
Kestrel
was in deep ocean water . . . stories of the outrageous numbers of prizes that he and my Uncle Matthew brought back into Newburyport, making them both rich beyond imagining . . . stories of how he managed to save
Kestrel
when the British admiral blocked the American fleet in Penobscot Bay by cleverly setting a prize ship afire and using it to blast a hole through the British ships so he could escape . . . stories of Irish luck and miraculous survival, breathtaking feats of seamanship and daring. . . ” He looked up and out over the sea, his gaze far away, a little smile playing with the corner of his mouth. “I used to think that they were just stories, those tales of my father’s daring feats, but they were not.”