Authors: Marsha Canham
Swept Away (33 page)
Annaleah whimpered softly. Seamus Turnbull looked and sounded exactly how she would have expected a bloodthirsty pirate to look and sound. Up to now, she had felt quite safe in Emory’s company, had even regarded their flight thus far as a kind of noble adventure. But now, pinned against the wall by glittering green eyes and a face so ominous it stopped her breath, she could only wish for the strength to dash back out the door and run to safety.
There was no cache of energy left to call upon, though, and just managing to hold her bladder drained the last of her reserves. Her knees wobbled and she could feel herself starting to slide down the wall, sinking into a cool, dark fog of her own. Dimly she heard a voice beside her and there was a sudden flurry of movement as a strong pair of arms caught her before she actually crashed to the floor. Her lashes stayed open long enough to see Emory’s face swim into view above her, then they fluttered closed...then there was nothing...
She awoke one sense at a time. The smells came to her first, a frowsy blend of roasted meat, soap, mustiness and lamp oil. Somewhere in the distance she could hear voices raised in song; a ribald sea ditty complete with the banging accompaniment of many tankards. These were mingled with street sounds: carriage wheels, shouting pedestrians, the clopping of horse’s hooves. There was a faintly unpleasant taste at the back of her throat, salty and harsh, like stale broth, and a swollen feeling to her tongue, as if it grown too large for her mouth.
Conversely, she felt shamefully snug and warm. A tentative wriggling of her toes suggested she was inches deep in a thick feather mattress with an equally thick covering of goosedown overtop. Other sensations gradually prickled to awareness along her body. She was no longer itchy, no longer belted and buttoned into the strangeness of men’s clothing. She was naked, in fact, and it was this last discovery combined with a memory of the Irishman’s scowling face that prompted her to push herself upright with a small surge of panic.
She did not recognize the room or the bed she was in. But the man sleeping in the chair beside her was breathtakingly familiar. His head was on a precarious tilt, his cheek mashed inward by a supporting fist, the elbow balanced on the arm of the chair. His long legs were stretched full out and crossed at the ankles, and if she filtered out the background noises, she could hear the soft rattle of a snore at the back of his throat.
It wasn’t a dream then. It wasn’t a nightmare. She had travelled across half of England on a mail coach, had been taken to some squalid tavern on the riverfront where one of Emory’s shipmates--a red haired, green eyed Irishman had frightened her into a dead faint.
Looking cautiously around the shadowy room, she identified a table, two chairs, a brick hearth with a fire smoldering in the grate. The small night table next to Emory held the two steel-barrelled flintlocks, a bottle of wine and two partly filled glasses.
There was a window in the far wall, but the shutters were closed and the curtains drawn, giving her no hint if it was even day or night.
Gingerly she reached out and took one of the glasses, sniffing the inch or so of red liquid in the bottom before taking a small sip. The wine was sweet, a little rusty in flavor, but it cleared the sourness out of her throat. The movement displaced the covers, bringing forth what she thought was a faint hint of rosewater scent. Her skin felt clean, her hair was brushed free of its rats nest of tangles.
She glanced at Emory, but he was sleeping soundly. He was freshly shaved and bathed, his hair gleamed like fine black silk in the lamplight. The shirt he wore was open at the throat, the laces hanging haphazardly over his chest.
“My brother, Arthur, used to do that.”
Startled, she saw his one eye was opened in a lazy slit.
“Used to do what?” she asked.
“He would sneak into my room at night and watch me while I was sleeping. He would perch on the footboard like an owl, and say he was guarding me. Keeping the demons away.”
“Did it work?”
He sat straighter on the chair, stretching out the kinks in his spine as he did so. “I had a lot of demons. But it helped me sleep easier, knowing he was there.”
Anna drew her knees up beneath the tent of blankets and circled them with her arms. “How long have you been watching over me?”
He turned to glance at the window, cursed at the cramp in his neck, then settled back, a hand to his nape, massaging. “You have slept through most of the day and a good part of the evening.”
“And you have been in that chair all that time?”
“Only an hour or so,” he frowned, “though it surely feels like more.”
“The bed is perfectly big enough for two,” she pointed out shyly.
“So it is, but I am not a saint, madam, and it posed enough of a challenge just to see you settled without letting my hands wander too far astray. Besides, you looked so comfortable all curled up and purring like a kitten, I did not want to disturb you. ”
“You undressed me?”
“Both Fysh and Seamus offered, like the gallant louts they are, but I pulled rank.”
“And you... bathed me?”
“It was not nearly as pleasurable an experience as the last time, I assure you. Not with you waving your hands about, demanding this, demanding that. Rose oil, you claimed I promised, and you would not give me leave to rest until I fetched the damned stuff.”
She was surprised. “I was awake?”
“You don’t remember cuffing me on the chin when I told you we were lucky just to have soap?”
She shook her head slowly. “No.”
“Or draining half a cauldron of beef broth and three unwatered glasses of wine?”
Her breath left her throat in a gust. “No, not at all.”
Something flickered in the dark eyes for a moment--the temptation to invent some dreadful sin to accuse her of committing--but in the end he only smiled. “Then you have some idea of how I felt waking up in your aunt’s house. You even threatened to call the constabulary down upon me if I dared forced you into those breeches again.”
“I do not recall saying any such thing, sir, but the sentiment is genuine. How you wear the infernal things, day in and day out is completely beyond me. They pinch and itch and are downright uncomfortable where...where the flesh is particularly sensitive.”
His eyes glinted as they roamed across the bare white slope of her shoulders. “And where might that be?”
“You know very well where.”
“In truth, I do not,” he protested innocently.
Anna stared at his mouth, his smile, and suffered an unexpected tightness in her chest. She was in a smelly tavern in the seedy end of London, hiding from God knew who with a man who, although he was being hunted by every soldier, constable, and magistrate in the country, who had charges of treason, sedition, and piracy hanging over his head, and who had barely escaped death at the hands of a skilled assassin...could sit and watch over her while she slept, could fetch a trifling thing like rosewater, and bathe her, and now tease her as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
She swallowed hard and steered the conversation to safer ground. “Your friend, Seamus, he seems a very...capable man.”
“And a hard fellow to forget, you would think, wouldn’t you? He was positively crushed to hear I had done so, however, and spent most of the day reminding me of his many heroic feats. Some I was able to remember after some prodding; some were embellished beyond recognition. But to answer your unasked question, we have been sailing together for eight years, during which time he has taught me everything I know--or so he insists.”
“Does he know what happened to you in France?”
Emory shook his head. “All he can tell me is that I was present at a midnight meeting with Bonaparte and his advisors the night before he surrendered to the British authorities. I went back on board the
Intrepid
that night, but I was followed.”
“Cipriani?”
He nodded. “When I went back on shore to speak with him, someone else knocked me on the head and tossed me into a wagon. Seamus took some men and tried to follow, but...” He shrugged and stared a moment at the empty glass before tipping more wine into it.
“Does he know about the letter?”
“He thinks I locked some papers away in the strongbox, but he did not see them.”
“He was not curious enough to look?”
Emory took a swallow of wine and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “He would not have looked unless he was certain I was dead.”
“But the papers...they might prove your innocence?”
“I won’t know that until I retrieve them. In any case, assuming I kept some insurance to prove I was working for the English government, I cannot think of a thing that would prove I was not working both sides of the fence for profit. It was my ship that carried the bastard away from Elba, after all.”
She watched him take another harsh swallow of wine then lean his head against the chair.
“There must be an explanation. Did Cipriani not say your messages were intercepted? Surely your Mr. Seamus can testify on your behalf; he must know the truth of what happened.”
Emory blew out a soft breath, for he and Seamus had had this discussion already. “No, unfortunately he cannot. He dare not step foot near an English court or he would be tried and hung for murder.”
“Murder!”
“It happened a few years ago in Portsmouth. He strangled a man. A rather important gentleman, as it turned out; the elder son of an earl.”
“He admits to strangling him?” she whispered.
“He does not have to admit it. I was there. I saw it.”
“You watched him strangle a man,” she said. “Why did you not stop him?”
“By the time I realized he was
not
going to stop, it was too late.” Emory saw the shadow that came into her eyes and guessed that she was remembering the seeming ease with which he fired the gun at Cipriani’s hand. “He had come upon the young gentleman and another fine chap while they were in the process of kicking a dog to death. It seems the mongrel had lifted his leg on the gentleman’s carriage wheel and he took offence at the gesture. While expressing his displeasure, he had such good sport kicking the beast halfway across the road, he made it into a game. When Seamus came upon them, every bone in the poor creature’s body was broken, yet the two men were still kicking it back and forth, laughing and making wagers as to how long it would keep whimpering. The second gentlemen had the rare good sense to run when he saw Turnbull’s face, but the earl’s son was arrogant enough to turn and draw his sword. Seamus took him up by the neck and...well...I have often told him he does not know his own strength, especially when he is enraged. I tried to stop him, but for my trouble earned a bullet in my, ah, nether quarters.”
“He
shot
you?”
“It was an accident; we were scuffling about in the dirt with about five other men from the
Intrepid
who were trying to help me pull him off the corpse. The gun discharged and I was in the way. He felt terrible afterwards, of course.” He paused and smiled faintly again. “For shooting me, not for throttling the young nobleman. In that he is steadfastly unrepentant. As a result, he has a charge of murder outstanding against him and a reward of several hundred pounds against his capture. Wessex thought it only added to my credibility as a rogue mercenary,” he added quietly, “to have a murderer as my first officer.”
“Where is he now?” she asked, glancing at the door.
“Seamus? I have sent him on ahead to Gravesend. I will meet up with him there at the
Bull and Horn
Friday night after the regent’s ball.”
“You intend to take back your ship?”
“If it is at all possible, yes. Before my men are transferred to a gaol somewhere out of reach.”
“But you still intend to see Wessex?”
“Cipriani was not in Torquay by accident. He was there for a reason, and if that reason is Bonaparte, then Wessex should be alerted. At the very least he should double, treble the guards around him, and move the
Bellerophon
out to sea if necessary.”
“How can you warn him of an escape plan if you do not know what it is?”
“I can be a pretty persuasive fellow if I put my mind to it,” he said, holding her gaze with his. “Ideally, of course, I can convince him to give me back my ship, or give me enough time to retrieve the letter Cipriani was so anxious to recover. With luck and a fast horse I can be in Gravesend two hours after I speak to Wessex. If he sends me with an escort, all the better. If not--” he shrugged and left the sentence unfinished.
Annaleah studied his face. “You keep saying ‘I’.”
“Do I?”
“You are not planning to take me with you, are you,” she said softly.
He stalled for as long as it took him to set his empty glass down, but she did not need to wait for his answer.
“But...why?”
“Anna, it just too damned dangerous.”
“More dangerous than being chased and shot at by soldiers? More dangerous than being hunted and very nearly killed by an assassin? Or fleeing halfway across England through the dead of night and having to hide away in some dreadful little inn that smells of slops and...and other things I choose not to think about?”
