Seduced by the Scoundrel (10 page)

Luc was scribbling on a piece of paper, his head bent over a table spread with charts. In the corner a red-headed man sat scowling in the light of the swaying lantern, his hands tied to the arms of the chair. ‘Take this up to Potts,’ Luc said, and pushed the note across the table without looking up. ‘Tell him to hold that heading until told otherwise.’

‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ Averil said as she snatched the paper, dumped the chart roll on the table and beat a hasty retreat.

‘Then get back down here!’ he roared after her.

She had to face the music sooner or later, she thought, as she climbed down the ladder again. Better down there and not on deck in full view, and hearing, of the crew.

But Luc’s attention was elsewhere when she peered round the cabin door again, so she slid in and perched in a corner.

‘We’re smuggling, that’s all,’ the red-haired man protested. It sounded like a continuing argument. ‘Picking up lace and brandy.’

‘I am sure you were.’ A cupboard door in the bulkhead swung open on its hinges to reveal an empty interior. Luc studied an oilskin package in his hand, then slit the seals. ‘Paid with by this, presumably.’

‘Don’t know anything about that,’ the man said, shifting in his bonds. ‘Private letters, those. Mr—er, the gentleman who hires us said they were letters to relatives in France. Personal stuff. I wouldn’t dream of looking,’ he added with unconvincing righteousness.

‘Indeed?’ Averil shivered at the cold disbelief in Luc’s voice as he spread the papers open on top of the charts. ‘They are certainly in French. What an interest his Continental relatives must have in naval affairs. Ship movements, provisioning, rates of sickness, armaments, prizes taken …’ He read on. ‘Rumours of plans for changes at Plymouth. Interesting—I hadn’t heard about those.’

He looked up. That wolf’s smile had the same effect on the other man as it had on Averil the first time he had used it on her. ‘Treason, Mr Trethowan, that is what this is. You’ll hang for it, along with your anonymous gentleman. Unless you cooperate, of course. I might be able to do something for you if I had names to bargain with, otherwise …’ He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness and smiled that smile again.

‘He’ll kill me. He’s got influence, a tame admiral.’

‘So have I—and the First Lord of the Admiralty trumps your man’s cousin any day. It
is
his cousin, isn’t it?’

‘If you know it all, why ask me?’ The red-haired man hunched a resentful shoulder, then winced as it made the cord dig into his wrist.

‘Who else on the islands is involved in this?’

‘No one, I swear. That interfering Governor is suspicious—had the brig searched last week, arrested my bo’sun on some trumped-up charge the day before yesterday—and his men are asking questions.’

So, the Governor is in the clear,
Averil thought. That would make things easier for Luc.

‘Any more papers on board? I’ll have the vessel stripped down in any case, but it’ll go better for you if you hand it all over now.’

‘Nothing. I’ve got stuff in my house, though.’ The man seemed eager to talk now. Averil eyed him with distaste—he had known exactly what he was carrying to pay for those French luxury goods. ‘I’ll give it all to you, if you’ll save my neck.’

‘I’m sure you will. And when we come alongside the Frenchman, you’ll act as though nothing is wrong or you’ll get a knife in the ribs and won’t have to worry about the hangman at all.’ Luc got to his feet, went out to the foot of the steps and shouted up, ‘Two men, down here, now!’

When Trethowan was bundled out Luc turned, finally, to look at Averil. His expression did not soften in the slightest from the way he had looked at the traitor. ‘And your excuse for being here is what, exactly?’

‘You were a man down.’ She wanted to wriggle back against the bulkhead and vanish, but it was solid against her shoulders. Luc neither raised his voice nor came any closer, but her mouth had gone dry and her pulse was pattering as though he had shouted threats at her. ‘If I took Ferret’s place in the gig then he could come up on deck and fight. I gave him the pistol as well, so you had one more weapon.’

‘Very noble,’ Luc said.

‘There is no need to be sarcastic,’ Averil snapped. ‘I couldn’t bear being stuck back there, not knowing what was happening. But I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t been able to do something helpful.’

‘Helpful!’ The change from cool sarcasm to a roar of fury had her jerking back so violently that her head banged on the wood behind her. ‘Do you call shredding my nerves helpful? I saw Ferret, asked him what the devil he was doing on deck and he said you were in that damned gig and I nearly throttled the little rodent. We still have a French brig to capture. You will stay down here. You will not so much as put your nose above deck until I send for you. Is that clear?’

W
hat did I expect? To be welcomed with open arms and to be told I am a heroine?
‘Yes.’ Averil nodded. ‘Yes, I promise to stay below deck. Is anyone wounded? Ferret said something about Tom Patch’s shoulder. I could dress that if there are any medical supplies.’

‘Have a look round,’ Luc said as he stuffed the papers into the breast of his coat and strode out. ‘And if you find anything incriminating, let me know.’

‘How am I supposed to do that without putting my head out?’ Averil enquired of the unresponsive door panels. Oh, well, it could have been a lot worse, she supposed. At least no one was seriously hurt and Luc could have been even more angry. It occurred to her after a moment’s thought that he was probably more furious than he appeared, but was controlling it well. She could only hope that the fight to capture the French brig would take the edge off his temper.

She began to search the cabin systematically and found several cupboards built into the woodwork. None
of them contained any sinister papers, which was a disappointment, but she did find a workmanlike medical kit rolled up in waxed cloth.

‘You all right, miss?’ Ferret poked his nose round the door, then sidled in. ‘Thought I’d keep out of sight a bit.’

‘Could you tell the captain that I have found a medical case and if someone could bring me some water and send anyone who is hurt down I will see what I can do for them?’

‘I’ll do that, if ‘e don’t throw me overboard on sight.’ He vanished and a few minutes later Tom Patch arrived with a bucket in one hand and the other thrust into his bloodstained shirt.

Averil had been brought up to deal with far nastier injuries amongst the servants or sustained by her father or brothers on hunting expeditions, although Tom was reluctant to take off his shirt and show his wound to a lady.

‘Don’t make a fuss,’ she said as she poured water into a bowl. ‘I had to dig a bullet out of my brother once when the doctor couldn’t be found.’ Actually it was buckshot in the buttocks, the result of drunken horseplay. Still, bathing and bandaging a simple bullet hole was easy enough, and it kept her mind off Luc’s scathing tongue.

‘That’s better, miss, thank you.’ Tom got to his feet. ‘Better get back up top, we’ll be up with them at any moment, I reckon.’

Averil discovered that she could obey Luc’s instructions and still catch a glimpse of what was going on by sitting on the second step down. It was frustrating, for
all she could see was legs, but she could hear orders being given and listen to Luc’s voice.

When it happened, it all happened at once. The brig slowed and came around. There was a hail, the red-headed man answered in poor French, then there was a shouted exchange and the brig lost more way. She almost tumbled down the steps with the bump as the small ships came together with a grinding of fenders and, suddenly Luc shouted, ‘Board them!’

Gunfire, the clash of steel on steel, shouts in French and English. Averil gripped the steps in an effort to stop herself bobbing up to see. But if Luc saw her he would be distracted, or think he had to protect her; it was her duty to stay here, she told herself. Once being dutiful had been second nature, now it was something she had to struggle to achieve. Averil held on and prayed.

She did not have long to wait. The gunfire ceased and the voice she could hear clearly was Luc’s, in French and then English, giving orders. Averil unclenched her reluctant fingers and went down to the cabin. She was seated at the table, rewinding bandages with mechanical precision when the door opened.

‘There you are.’ Luc came in and closed the door behind him, then leaned back against it like a man falling on to a soft feather bed, eyes closed. ‘Come here.’

So now he was going to shout at her. Averil put down the gauze and went to stand in front of him. ‘Is everything all right? Did you get what you needed?’

‘Everything.’ He kept his eyes closed. ‘We got their orders, before they had a chance to throw them overboard, we took the captain and the officers unharmed.
Je te …
I have the proofs.’ His educated English accent
had changed. He had been speaking and thinking in French, she realised.

‘Très bon,’
she ventured and his lips quirked. Her accent was probably laughable. ‘What happens now?’

‘This.’ He opened his eyes and looked at her and she saw the fire in them, the life, the fierce energy. The desire.

‘Luc?’ It came out as a quaver.

‘Are you afraid of me?’ He came upright with a speed that took her unawares, caught her in his arms, turned her and had her pressed against the door before she could say another word. Her nostrils were filled with the scent of man and fresh sweat and black powder smoke; her body quivered with an anticipation she could not control. ‘Because you should be. I want to take you here, up against this door. Tell me
no.
Tell me no,
now.
’

One hand was in her hair, the other palmed her breast with possessive urgency. His mouth on her neck was hot, fierce, and her blood responded, all the tension and fear and triumph of the night merging into a fire that consumed the last shreds of restraint.

This is what I want: this, him, now.
Nothing else was real, nothing else mattered except the moment, and the next few moments, in Luc’s arms.
My hero, my man.

Her hands were in his hair, trying to bring his mouth to hers, but he was intent on dragging her clothing off and she vanished, blinded and struggling, into the thick wool to emerge, naked from the waist up. She blinked in the lantern’s light as she pushed her hair from her face so she could see Luc, reach for him. But he dropped his hands and stepped back, pale under his tan.

‘Oh, my God.’ He stared at her as if he was seeing her naked body for the first time, then lifted both hands and cupped her breasts, moving close so he could look down at them, as though they were treasures he had found and could not quite believe. Her flesh felt heavy and swollen in his palms, but he did not move more than his thumbs, caressing slowly across the hard, aching points of her nipples.

‘Luc.’ It was a whisper, but it brought that deep grey gaze to meet her eyes. ‘What … what do I do?’ Her aunt’s lecture on Marital Duties had not included this quivering in her belly, the ache between her legs, the desire and the need. It had included nothing that did not involve lying on her back in the dark and submitting to embarrassing and probably painful intimacies.

His eyes went dark and his hands still and then he released her, turned, slowly, and dropped his hands to the chart table, bent over it like a man in pain.

‘Nothing. You do nothing,’ Luc said and heard his voice harsh with barely suppressed fury that was directed at himself, not at her. She was probably ruined. Probably. He could not take her until he had tried, and failed, to rescue her from the consequences of all this. He had made her his responsibility, fool that he was.

Behind him Averil was silent for the time it took her to draw in two, very audible, breaths. Then she said, ‘Why are you angry? You do not expect a virgin to know what to do, do you?’

She was always thinking—when he allowed her to and was not addling her senses with lovemaking—always, always, courageous. ‘I am angry at myself,’ he said, wrenching his voice back under control. ‘Get
dressed before I lose my mind again and forget that you are an innocent.’

‘My friend Dita says that men become amorous after danger or excitement. It seemed rather strange to me, when she said it.’ Averil’s voice faded, then strengthened, and he guessed she had pulled her clothes back over her head. ‘Is that what it is?’

‘My inability to control myself?’ Luc asked. The lines on the chart under his spread hands came back into focus. He was supposed to be sailing this damn brig, and getting it and the French prize and the captured papers back safely, not ravishing virgins in the cabin.

‘You seem quite capable of controlling yourself,’ Averil said as she came round on his right side and sat down on the edge of the bunk. Her voice was steady, but one look at her white face and the slashes of colour on her cheeks told him that she had sat down because her legs were about to give way. ‘Eventually,’ she added. For a hideous moment he thought she was going to cry and his stomach, already knotted with guilt and lust, gave a stab of pain.

‘You give me an opportunity to excuse myself?’ Suddenly it felt as though speaking in French would be easier, for him, but from her accent it seemed unlikely that she would be fluent enough to follow what he was struggling to understand himself. ‘I was fired up. I had been fighting and we had won. And, yes, some primitive creature inside me needed to take a woman—
my
woman—in triumph.’
My woman. She is
not
my woman. I do not have a woman. I will not think of her like that. I will not care.

She was silent and he wanted to drop his eyes from
that clear, troubled gaze, but that would be cowardice. ‘I had been frightened for you, and angry because you had put me in a position where I might not have been able to protect you. I required, I suppose, to assert mastery and that is one step from forcing you.’
Which is no doubt why I feel sick. That and aching frustration.

‘Your
woman?’ Averil said as though he had not spoken those last sentences.

He could not unsay them. Nor, he realised, did he want to. He wanted her, wanted to be the man who took her virginity. He wanted to keep her and teach her … everything. ‘You are not anyone’s,’ he said at last, making the effort to behave like an English gentleman. ‘You are your own woman.’

‘Not according to the law,’ she pointed out with painful clarity. ‘An unmarried woman belongs to her father in every practical way.’

‘You are of age.’ What was he arguing for? He wanted to make her his.

‘I have an obligation,’ Averil said. ‘A duty. And I have been forgetting that.’ And this time a tear did roll down her cheek. Appalled, unable to move, to touch her, Luc watched her dash it away with an impatient hand. No others followed it. ‘I don’t know—is this, whatever
this
is—’ she waved a hand vaguely, encompassing him, the cabin, her own disordered clothing ‘—is it usual? Is this why unmarried girls are chaperoned so fiercely?’

‘I do not know, I have never experienced this before,’ he snapped and saw her shock at his tone. ‘I have never dallied with an innocent.’

‘Oh. Dalliance.’ She gave a light laugh and turned her head. He could no longer read her face. ‘A pretty
word. If that is all it is, then there is nothing to worry about, is there? I must just learn to flirt and not take this all so seriously. Why did you come down here, just now?’

‘Why—? Don’t you want to discuss this?’

He wanted to, even if she did not. He needed to understand what she felt for him and what it meant.

Averil shrugged, an elegant turn of her shoulder reminding him that she was a lady, despite her seaman’s clothing and her tangled hair. ‘There is nothing to discuss, is there? We have controlled ourselves, you have remembered that you have a ship to navigate, I that I am betrothed. Don’t you recall why you came down?’

‘I came to look at the charts,’ he said through gritted teeth. How was this little innocent tying him in knots? It was like being outwitted by a kitten, only to discover it was a well-disguised panther.

‘Hadn’t you better do so?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to hit the rocks again.’ She said it lightly, but he saw the shadows of controlled fear behind her eyes. Despite what had happened the last time she had been on board a ship she had stowed away on the frail pilot gig and then thrown herself into a sea fight. There was nothing wrong with her courage, that was certain.

‘We’re in deep water now and well clear here of any rocks. I was expecting to sail for the mainland, but now I know I can trust the Governor I can go to him on St Mary’s—which will mean we can lay hands on our man without fear of him getting wind of this and escaping. I need to find somewhere for the brigs to hover while I’m rowed into Hugh Town in the pilot gig.’

He smoothed the rolled sheets under his hands and
tried to focus. ‘I will take you in, too, and leave you with the Governor’s wife.’ Yes, there was the best place to leave the brigs, in the channel between St Mary’s and Gugh. It was a short row into Porthcressa beach and he could send the men back to man the brigs and guard the prisoners until the Governor could get the navy out to them.

‘What will you tell her?’ Averil swung round, her expression tense.

‘That I found you on the beach and locked you in the old isolation hospital away from the men. I am sure she will want to help you. As far as the outside world is concerned there is no need to tell even that. I imagine that there has been enough confusion for us to conveniently gloss over the fact that you were not picked up the morning after the wreck.’

‘You mean I should lie?’

‘Yes, of course you should lie! At least, I suggest most strongly that you edit the truth. Do you want to be ruined?’
Say yes,
he thought.
Say the world and your virtue are well lost in my arms.

‘No,’ she said, looking at him quizzically. ‘No, of course not. May I go up on deck now?’

‘I don’t see why not. The prisoners are all down in the hold.’ He turned his back and reached for a rule, pleased to find his hand quite steady. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Averil get to her feet and go to the door. For a moment he wondered if she would speak, but it closed behind her, leaving him alone with the memory of her silence.

Averil climbed up to the deck, found herself a corner out of the way of the crew and watched the French
ship, a ghostly shadow that kept station beside them, while she waited for her body to stop trembling and the ache of desire to subside. Lord, how she wanted him—beyond all reason and certainly beyond all decency.

She made herself focus on the ships and what they were doing. The brigs did not seem to need many hands, which was fortunate, with prisoners to guard and allowance to be made for men wounded.

‘You all right, miss?’ Tom Patch appeared beside her, an unnerving sight with his bloodstained shirt.