Swept Away By a Kiss (15 page)

Footfalls sounded upon the planking behind her.

“The weather is clearing. You will have smooth passage to Savannah tonight,” Etienne said, coming beside her at the rail.

“Savannah? I wondered whether you would tell me or withhold that information as well.” He did not respond. Valerie shivered and closed her eyes. “I want you to kiss me.”

She heard Etienne’s slow intake of breath.

“Valerie, I cannot—”

“No, not like before.” She turned to him. “It’s not that I want— I—I need something to erase—”

“Come.” He reached for her in the blanket of night. She went with a sob, pressing her cheek against his chest. His arms wrapped around her, his muscles contracting. Remembering his wounds, Valerie pulled back, but he drew her close again. His fingers cradled her chin, lifting her face under the glow of his tawny eyes.

The kiss was brief, a bare caress. Eyes open, Valerie released a tiny sigh.

He lowered his lips again, settling his mouth upon hers as though in kneeling prayer, humble yet certain, and fully willing. She slipped her hands along his arms, holding fast as his mouth moved across her cheek, into her hair, trailing sweet, slow fever in their wake.

As he put his mouth where the madman’s had gone before, and his hands traveled the same path Bebain’s had lurched across her flesh, she understood why he agreed to do this. In Bebain’s cabin, as the tiny knife sliced its way through twisted hemp, Etienne had watched what Bebain did to her.

Now his certain, deliberate touch upon her body where the pirate had grasped at her felt like the sun, warming, comforting, reclaiming. His familiar scent of man and sea and lime enveloped her. She gasped in breaths of freedom as his mouth returned to her lips, tasting wine and blood, and nearly laughed aloud, edging at panic. But he would not allow it. Instead he urged her lips to part and his hands moved below her waist, following the curves of her body.

Valerie shuddered, desire and fear crowding each other inside her. She clung to him, mouth open, giving where she had been forced. His hands caressed her thighs, moving upward, unhesitating along her waist.

His breaths were hard against her mouth. She could feel his desire in his rigid arms, and against her aching body. She tasted him and pressed into him, wanting to feel her need against the hard length of his arousal again, wanting the delirious pleasure he had awakened in her the day before.

He lifted his head.

“Don’t stop.” Her voice was a heated whisper in the dark.

“No,” he murmured. “No yet.” Gaze in hers, he caressed her breast gently and so seductively she leaned into him. He covered her mouth again, harder, seeking as he had in the cabin. Her knees parted, his tongue stroking across her lips, and nothing was left of the pirate’s touch in her body. She hungered for Etienne, for his hands upon her, his scent and arms and taut desire pressing into her flesh, making her ache to have all of him.

He pulled back with a deep breath. She sighed, a quavering sound, and his arms tightened about her.

“If you change your mind and choose now to thank me,” he said in a low voice, “you realize, I will have to throw myself overboard.”

A constricted laugh escaped her throat.

“Consider it a penance.” Reluctantly, she released his shoulders.

He grasped her hands.

“I came to give you this.” He pressed a book into her palms. Valerie’s fingers closed around the Bible’s worn leather cover.

“But you need this. Why are you giving it to me?”

“Please, take it.” Again his hand cupped her cheek. He tilted her face up. “Read it, sketch in it, use it as a paperweight. Do with it whatever you wish. But take it.” The corner of his mouth rose in beautiful modesty. “I have little of my own that I value, and I want you to have it.”

She ached deep, as though a fist gripped her heart.

“I cannot thank you for it, of course.” An uneven grin tugged at her lips.

Etienne returned the smile, but only for a moment. He seemed to be about to speak. Gaze tangled with his, Valerie held her breath. She had never seen him uncertain before, never hesitant.

“Valerie.” His voice was rough. “I do wish circumstances were different.”

Valerie choked, the sound emerging like a bitter laugh from her throat.

“Circumstances.” She clenched her hands around the book.

He stepped back.

“Zeus will come for you when we meet your ship.”

She nodded.

“Good night, Valerie.”

“You mean that as good-bye, I suspect.”

His beautiful lips curved up at one edge in the smile Valerie would never forget.

“Never satisfied.” He backed away. “
Bon voyage
, dear lady.”

But not good-bye.

The thrum of funeral drums pounded heavily through the deck, rocking Valerie’s cabin with eerily mournful passion, conveying Ezekiel’s lifeless body into the ocean’s depth. Heart too unsteady to trust, afraid of the quickening that every beat drove more forcefully through her veins, Valerie remained in her cell alone, listening in the darkness.

Toward the middle of the night the drums faded into stillness. Shortly after that, Zeus arrived to find her cloaked and prepared to depart. They ascended to the top and he gestured her forward to the rail. Below, a slip bobbed in the dark water. The giant took Valerie’s hands between his.

“God bless you,
mademoiselle
.”

“Stop flirting with the lady, Zeus, and move along.” Maximin grasped Valerie’s arm. “Zeus will escort you to the
Seafarer
. Follow him down the ladder, but take care. It is sometimes slippery.” He gestured to Zeus and moved aside.

The giant seized the rail and stepped onto the rope ladder extending down to the water. He disappeared over the ship’s side, and Valerie moved to the deck’s edge to follow.

Warmth gathered between her shoulders. She turned.

In the lantern light, Etienne appeared like a god of old, fashioned of bronze and amber, his gilt beauty mellowed through ancient worship. He took her hand, and Valerie’s body shivered with heat from the mortal man’s touch.

He lifted her fingers and pressed his lips to them. A smile curved the corner of his mouth. Valerie tried to breathe, but she could not quite remember how. Without a word, he released her. She turned, grasped the rail, and descended into the dark.

“All is well now,” Steven murmured into the lamplight.

“Never again for you, I suspect.” Maximin looked away from the slip moving through the black water. The schooner beyond was visible only by lanterns in the distant darkness. He placed a hand upon Steven’s shoulder. “But that, my brother, is your destiny.”

“I do not believe in destiny.”

“It sighs before you. You tease it, make love to it. Yet you deny it. You make a fine priest.”

Steven glanced at his friend, but he did not smile.

“You have succeeded, Max. I am distracted by your idiocy, if not by your dire warnings. You can be certain of it now, I will not brood.”

“More the fool you are, then,” the Haitian rejoined. “You want her.”

“I do. Like a blindness.” Steven took a deep breath. “But she will return to where she belongs, unharmed. I promised her. It is all I can do.”

“One needn’t do anything to be given a gift.”

At his friend’s words, something new in Steven, something untested, constricted.

“Tell me what gift I have, Max,” he said, ignoring the sensation, “that I have not struggled for, bled, fought, and labored after. I defy you to name one.”

“A gift for which such efforts would prove fruitless, of course.”

Steven’s jaw clenched hard against the unfamiliar ache of doubt.

“She had to go. We must stop Hannsley. Bebain was only the beginning. You know it as well as I. We don’t have time to waste entertaining a girl bred to fine aristocratic living. She’s better sent off quickly to those sorts of comforts.” His tone did not suit his words. He couldn’t care. “She longs for home, Max.”

“She is not alone in that desire, my friend.”

“You are free to go whenever you wish.”

“I was not speaking of myself. And I was not referring to a city or nation, of course. You are a well-educated fellow. You should recognize metaphor when you hear it.”

Steven could not see the little boat any longer. He turned away from the
Seafarer
’s flickering, far-off lanterns.

“You have already dealt with Fevre, I suspect?”

“Our faithless mate resides incommodiously in the bilge, no doubt full of remorse for the poor choices he has made.”

Again Steven didn’t laugh.

“Come,” he said, investing his voice with a composure he did not feel. “We will eat, and you will tell me how you managed to withstand Bebain’s madness for so long. And then you will tell me more about myself, I suspect, hm? Is there any rum aboard, or did that lunatic drink it all? I’ll need it tonight.”

Chapter 15

October 5, 1810

CAPTAIN ETIENNE LA MARQUE

BLACKHAWK

PORT-AU-PRINCE, REPUBLIQUE D’HAITI

Dearest Godson,

The Captain and I received your communication of August 8. All is in preparation, invitations pending our return to town. We will do all we can. Hurry home. It would be delightful to spend time with you alone before the festivities begin.

Affectionately,
Margaret, Countess of March
Derbyshire, G.B.

Chapter 16

Y
ou are not dressed for dinner yet, Valerie. Aren’t you joining us at Lady March’s salon?” The Countess of Alverston’s honey-gold hair, swept up into a fashionable arrangement, glowed in the candlelight as she crossed the bedchamber.

“I thought I would stay home reading, if you and Valentine don’t mind it.”

“Well, this is remarkable. Five months back and already so bored with society you prefer a book to admirers? Your time abroad truly changed you, my dear.” Anna smoothed Valerie’s hair. Valerie tilted her head into the caress. Since childhood Anna had been like a sister, and now she truly was one. While Valerie had been at sea, her brother and childhood companion had married.

But now suspicion shone in Anna’s warm brown eyes. Valerie slipped her book beneath a cushion.

“It will be a large party. No one will miss me.”

“Everyone expects you. Lady March especially told me she wished you to attend. And there are others who won’t like your absence.”

Valerie shrugged, but she already knew what Anna would say next.

“Darling, Valentine is concerned that you are not being honest with Lord Bramfield.” Anna’s voice was unaccusing and painful to hear. Valerie found censure infinitely preferable to compassionate understanding. She was far more accustomed to the former, after all.

“Yes, my brother mentioned that to me,” she muttered.

“I am concerned too, but not on Timothy’s behalf.”

“My reputation is not yet mended, do you think?” A spark lit in Valerie’s chest. “Two years of exile did not suffice to redeem me? Ah, the
ton
is horridly unforgiving.” If they only knew of her escapade aboard a pirate ship, society would thoroughly cut her. But Valentine had used his influence abroad and his wealth to ensure that Raymer and the officers of the
Seafarer
would never reveal it. As for the rest, she hadn’t told her brother anything, even the name of the
Blackhawk
.

“That is not my meaning,” Anna said. “All is forgotten upon that score. I speak, of course, of your reluctance to respond to Lord Bramfield’s suit.”