Pleasures of a Tempted Lady (32 page)

He leaned forward, looming over her. “The reason MacInerny needs to dine with us is because if you and I dine alone, I will cause serious damage to your virtue.”

“Yes.” She hesitated, then looked up at him, her brows drawn together. “And… you don’t want to?” Honestly, he didn’t make any sense.

“For God’s sake.” He took a predatory step toward
her. “I want you.” His gaze raked her body, and the blue heat of his eyes prickled her skin from head to toe. “I’m not known as a patient man, Jess, but this—this is far too important. So, yes, I want you… but I
won’t
destroy your virtue, your reputation, your innocence. Not until—” He cut himself off, and with a sharp intake of breath, looked away.

“Not until… what?”

He closed his eyes, then opened them, but he didn’t meet her gaze. “Until I have your family’s blessing.”

She cocked her head, trying to imagine her family giving their blessing for him to ravish her.
That
would never happen.

And yet, from the expression of hope, of desire—goodness, of
love—
on his face, she knew he meant far more than ravishing her.

Oh, God. Her heart expanded, feeling full and whole, probably for the first time in her life. She reached up to smooth his brow, her fingertips stroking over the bumpy surface of his scar. “How did you get this, David?” she whispered.

He stood still, unmoving, but his eyes sank shut again as her fingers moved over them.

“In the Navy.”

“How?” she persisted.

“A battle.”

She frowned. “Surely there haven’t been any major engagements for the British Navy in a long while.”

His lips twisted. “I’m sure no one would say it was a major engagement.”

“What happened?”

His eyes were still closed. She continued tracing his
scar, then moved on to touch the details of his face as he spoke, starting with his forehead, his hairline, his cheeks and nose, down to his jaw.

“Two years ago, the Greeks were having difficulties with pirates in the Aegean. They requested British and French help to contain an especially active pirate port at Gramvousa. We were to occupy the island and force the pirates out.”

She nodded, her fingers hesitating over his cheekbones. “Go on.”

Keeping his eyes closed, he continued. “Captain Langley’s men were to occupy the island. The French would rout the pirates from the harbor and surrounding waters.”

“A land battle,” she murmured.

“Exactly,” he said. “At first, the pirates had the advantage of us. They knew the tiny island well, and they ambushed us.” He blinked hard. “A man shot one of our lieutenants, and I was running toward him, attempting to help him… and I heard a shout from behind me. I turned, and…” He gestured toward his forehead, his eyes now open and gazing at her.

“You were stabbed in… in the skull?”

“It was a bayonet—the blade swiped across my eyebrow and halfway around my head as I spun away.”

“Oh. Lord.” Jessica held her hand over her mouth.

“There’s a scar across my scalp, but it’s difficult to see because of my hair.” He shrugged.

“What happened to the man who… attacked you?”

“I tried to fight him, but blood was running into my eyes, blinding me. Captain Langley…” David swallowed hard and gazed at a point somewhere beyond her shoulder. “Saved my life. He saved us all.”

“He killed the man?”

David released a breath that sounded like it had been pent up for hours. His gaze flicked to her. “Yes. He killed the man.”

“Well…” Jessica’s knees felt a little weak. “I suppose now I understand why you are so loyal to him. You owe your life to him.”

David’s eyes, such a dark, ocean blue, gazed at her, imperturbable, indecipherable. “I do,” he said softly.

Releasing a breath of her own, she hooked her arm around David’s. “Come. Let’s go above. The air will be fresher up there, and perhaps you will feel less seasick.”

He raised a brow at her, and the scar she now understood wrinkled. “I’m not seasick.”

“You look rather green about the gills.”

“So do you.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Well… not because I’m seasick, though.”

“Me, either.”

She looked up at him, knowing what they were both thinking about. For a long moment, they gazed at each other, fully understanding. She wanted, so badly, to kiss him again.

But not now. Not here, where she might embarrass him in front of his crew. Instead, she tugged him out of the salon and up to the deck.

Caversham hadn’t had time to bring his brig
Defiant
all the way to Liverpool. Furthermore, as far as Will knew, Caversham didn’t keep any of his vessels in Liverpool. But Meg had told him that he did own ships frequenting
the ports that began with “B.” Blackpool was one of those ports, and it was nearby.

If Caversham had a ship there, then he would be sailing on it. Will would bet his fortune on that. He had nothing firm to go on, but he’d spent enough time on the ocean that he knew the minds of sailors and their ships. What he intended to do with Meg and Jake—especially Meg—was another question. One Will didn’t want to think about.

He didn’t head north to Blackpool. Instead, he went straight to the
Endeavor
, which was now afloat in one of the Liverpool locks in preparation of being launched day after tomorrow. His hired men were already working, even this early in the morning, and they paused to hail him as he walked by.

He went to the bridge and shouted to all within hearing distance. “Change of plans, gentlemen. We sail today.”

His first mate, Halliday, rushed up to him. “Sir, we’re not ready. I haven’t even—”

Will raised his hand. “I won’t hear any excuses. Do whatever needs to be done. We sail at noon.”

Halliday’s eyes bugged at him, and his mouth gaped open, but he shut it with a snap and turned away from Will, shouting orders. “You heard the captain. Get yer lazy arses to work, lads. We’ve a steamer to launch!”

Will went into his chart room and rolled open a chart of the area. Blackpool wasn’t far from here, and if Caversham had sailed with the tide, he’d already gone out at the same time as the
William Thompson
earlier today. Will doubted he would have sailed north—the northern passage was too narrow and he’d be too easily sighted and caught. If he was traveling south—and Will would wager money on that—he’d have already passed Liverpool. That
meant Will would be in pursuit of Caversham’s ship, rather than on an intercepting course.

He had to trust the promises of his architects… they’d said the
Endeavor
would be the fastest thing on the sea—especially in calm conditions. It was calm this morning, but the wind always picked up in the afternoon…

He shook his head, flinging those thoughts from his mind. He couldn’t dwell on the “what-ifs.” He needed to follow through with his plan. If it didn’t work, there’d be another plan, and another… until he found Meg and Jake, and Caversham no longer posed a threat to either of them.

He wanted them all to be together again. As a family. Without them—without Thomas, Jake, and Meg—he was a shell. They filled him—with love, with belonging, with a sense of fullness. He needed
all
of them.

Thomas
. For now, he needed Thomas, and Thomas needed him. He couldn’t leave his son alone and afraid in Lancashire—not now. And yet this mission was a dangerous one…

Will sucked in a breath. The
Endeavor
was faster and stronger than whatever ship Caversham might’ve had in Blackpool. Will wasn’t going to let anything happen to Thomas. Or to Jake and Meg, for that matter. He was going to keep his family safe.

Turning to the closest idle-looking man, Will sent him on a mission to fetch his son and bring him back to the
Endeavor
in time for him to be aboard when it sailed.

A few hours later, the
Endeavor
left the Liverpool docks under its own steam power, black smoke puffing out of its smokestack. When the boiler first started, Thomas clung to him, and Will closed his eyes, imagining the soft whoosh of the
Freedom
as she slipped through the waves.

How different this was. Was this what the future was going to be like? Full of engines and noise? Even on land. The Manchester-Liverpool Railway would be opening at the end of summer. If they’d come to Prescot only a few months later, they could have taken a train instead of a carriage.

The future—full of foul-smelling smoke and the roar of engines. Was this the price they’d all pay for progress?

Despite his misgivings about the ugliness of steam power and progress, Will was grateful for how easy it was to get out of the harbor. They didn’t require a favorable wind or tide, or a tow. They left when they pleased, and the
Endeavor
navigated the harbor waters easily without a concern about the direction and force of the wind.

“Sure sounds sweet, don’t she?” Halliday yelled at him over the belching roar of the engine. “Smooth as silk.”

Will thought it sounded anything but smooth, but he didn’t say so as they chugged out of the harbor, deftly swerving around anchored vessels. Instead, Will ordered the course for the pilot to lay and stood at the bow with Thomas beside him. He’d explained to the boy that they were searching for a ship that had taken Jake and Meg away, and Thomas’s little chest had puffed out.

“I’ll find them, sir!”

So as the
Endeavor
emerged from Liverpool Harbour, Will and Thomas stood at the bow on the lookout for any other vessels heading south through the Irish channel.

The first thing to penetrate Meg’s consciousness was that she had a horrible, skull-splitting headache. Clutching her head, she turned over, feeling her hip bone dig into the hard surface of a wood floor.

She opened her eyes to a weak light filtering through a grime-covered porthole. She must be in the bowels of the front of the ship. It smelled of rank salt water, and cold, dirty water seeped through the layers of her clothes, chilling her to the bone.

Jake was nowhere to be seen in the tiny V-shaped room.

Closing her eyes, she remembered—vaguely—the rattle of a carriage. Being dragged onto the deck of a ship she’d never seen before. Jake sobbing and crying her name. Men taking her by the armpits and dragging her down stairs, then literally tossing her into this room and locking the door behind her. Trying to pound the door, calling for Jake, then weakly crawling into a corner before she lost consciousness again.

She rose clumsily, holding on to her aching head as if to keep it attached to her neck, and searched for the door. She saw it—a faint rectangular shape in the dimness, and lurched to it, feeling for the handle.

“Jake!” she called, her voice scratchy and weak. “Jake?”

Of course he didn’t answer. He was with Caversham, and Caversham wouldn’t be found anywhere near the bilge on any of his ships. And, of course, when she wiggled the handle, she found that the door remained securely locked.

The ship swayed under her feet. Obviously, she’d been out for a while. They were under way.

Like an old woman, she hobbled back to the porthole and scrubbed at it with her skirt, slowly wiping away the thick layer of grime until she could see the blue sky, the ocean below, and the gray spray of the waves as they crashed into the hull. There was no sign of land, but that didn’t mean anything. They could be very near to shore,
and she wouldn’t know unless she was looking from the correct angle.

She rose to explore the room more thoroughly.

It appeared to be an old surgery, the working space of a surgeon who no longer existed—or at least no longer used this space. A cot sat in the center of the room, presumably where the man had performed his medical procedures. The wall adjacent to the porthole held shelves full of half-empty and broken bottles, probably containing old medicines. Meg searched for one labeled with something akin to “cures a horrible headache,” with no luck. But as she scanned the shelf, her attention moved from the intact bottles to the broken ones, to their sharp, jagged corners and edges.

Weapons
. Or, at least, potential ones.

She found a particularly deadly looking large shard of glass—not from a bottle, but from a broken hand mirror—and carefully slipped it into a pocket sewn into the folds of her chemise. It might work—if she didn’t flay her hand open in the process of trying to fight.

Good Lord. They were out at sea. If she did resist and by some miracle was able to get away, where on earth would she and Jake go? She’d have to fight off the entire crew to be able to launch a jolly boat. She’d had years to carefully plan that escape from the
Defiant
. Even then, the plan would have certainly resulted in her and Jake’s deaths had Will’s ship not happened by to rescue them.

Even through the fog of hopelessness that shrouded her, the weight of the glass in her pocket was comforting. It made her feel a little stronger. And right now, she welcomed whatever tiny bit of strength she could get.

After she explored every crevice of the room without
finding anything else that might be of use, she huddled back into the corner she’d slept in, tucking her knees against her chest, wrapping her cloak around her, and conserving her strength for the encounter that would invariably happen.

About an hour later, she heard a key scraping in the lock. She looked up from where she’d been resting her forehead on her knees, as one of Caversham’s brutes entered.

Hesitating at the door, the man squinted, searching for her in the dimness of the room. Finally, his gaze stopped on her. “Hurry up, then. Cap’n wants you,” he mumbled.

She hesitated, but it would be no use for her to resist. If she did, the man would drag her, kicking and screaming, to Caversham. And she still needed to conserve her strength.

Painfully, she rose to her feet. Leaving her cloak behind—it was wet beyond repair—she made her way to the door. The man grabbed her already bruised arm and pulled her through, then dragged her up the two sets of short, narrow stairs that led to the deck.