Teresa Medeiros (37 page)

“Dressed?” Lucy provided.

His freckles melted into a flush. “Aye, that too. Of course, I was a bit flustered, what with you beatin’ me brains out with that wee umbreller of yers.”

“Tarn!” Gerard barked an instant too late.

Lucy took a long, hard look at the lad, realizing that he was indeed the masked assailant who had tried to nab her reticule outside the mercer’s shop. Her discovery led her to another, far more chilling, conclusion.

Time tumbled backward to the fireless room of an inn, the tapping of frozen rain on the windows, the beguiling warmth of Gerard’s arms around her as he pressed his lips to her bruised throat in a kiss that might very well have been his most bitter betrayal of all.

Blinking through a scalding veil of tears, she lifted her gaze to Gerard’s face, utterly helpless to disguise the pain flaying her heart. He took a reckless step toward her, already shaking his head in denial.

She dragged back the hammer of the pistol.

“Captain …?” Apollo whispered on a bass note of warning.

Tears spilled from Lucy’s eyes, and streamed down her cheeks. These men weren’t going to do her bidding. They were nothing but a heartless bunch of bullies. Just like her father. Just like the three men who had thought to rob and rape her in that dank, cold London alleyway. Just like the man who had hired them.

All the pain Gerard had caused her welled up from her aching heart in the nearest thing to hatred she’d ever felt toward him.

He took another careless step. “I know what you’re thinking, Lucy, but those men weren’t mine. I swear it.”

“Why should I believe you? You’d already proved you’d do anything to protect your position.”
Even feign an affection he did not feel
.

He spread his upturned palms in a gesture of appeal, offering her an unguarded target. “I’ve no proof to offer you beyond my word. You’ll just have to trust me.”

His request was so ludicrous that Lucy started to laugh, the gulping exhalations tearing at her like sobs. She brought the muzzle of the pistol to bear on his heart only to discover that she was even less capable of doing him harm than when she’d stood on this very deck one windy, moonlit night that had changed her life forever.

She swung the pistol straight up and fired into the air. Gerard didn’t even flinch.

Her arm fell limp at her side. The pistol clunked to the deck, leaving as the only mementos of her pathetic rebellion the echo of the report, the stench of gunpowder, and a slice of azure sky visible through the grim elegance of the fore topsail.

Lucy sank to a sitting position on a coil of rope, her tear-streaked face a study in defeat. Gerard found he could take little pleasure in his victory. He dropped his jacket over her shoulders, shielding her from his crew’s curious stares and glances of grudging respect. A mutiny such as the one she had dared to stage would have earned them a flogging or an even more dreaded abandonment on the nearest deserted island with nothing but a pistol to shoot themselves with before they perished of thirst.

He snapped off a volley of orders that had them wisely scurrying in all directions. Not all of his men were as superstitious about women aboard ship as Tarn and Pudge. Tarn slunk away with the rest, sheepishly retrieving his fallen pistol, but with uncharacteristic boldness, Pudge hesitated.

He sponged the sweat from his palm with a scarlet kerchief before shyly offering his hand to Lucy. “I—I—I’m sorry, miss. I shouldn’t have c-c-called you those names. ’Tweren’t very gentlemanly of me.”

Shaking off her daze, Lucy found herself looking up into a familiar pair of temple spectacles. A fresh pain lanced her heart, but the brown eyes behind the lenses blinked with such sincerity that she couldn’t help giving his hand a comforting squeeze. “All is forgiven, sir. I shouldn’t have startled you.”

“See to the sail, Pudge.” Gerard gave him a gentle nudge toward the block and tackle.

“Aye, sir.” He gave his captain a doting salute and limped off to do his bidding.

“Pudge is more skittish than most when it comes to
women,” Gerard said quietly. “His wife used to beat him. After she smashed his knee with a poker while he slept, he ran away to sea.”

Not wanting to hear these things, not wanting to care, Lucy escaped to the rail, hugging Gerard’s jacket tight around her. Sunlight rippled across the scattered whitecaps. A balmy breeze stirred her hair, disconcerting when she’d expected nothing but bitter winter winds. It was her first taste of freedom in days, yet her heart felt as if it were bound in iron chains.

Gerard moved to stand beside her. She childishly edged her elbow away to keep it from touching his. “They were his spectacles, weren’t they?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

He nodded. “Damn things gave me the very devil of a headache.”

“And Tarn?”

“When the
Retribution
sailed, he stayed behind in London, knowing I might have need of him. When you threatened to have me dismissed …” Gerard trailed off, before offering matter-of-factly, “Tarn’s lifelong ambition was to be a priest. Only he could never quite master his vow of celibacy. When they caught him in bed with two of the blushing young novices—”

“ ‘Some of the most vicious cutthroats in all of England.’ ” Lucy tossed his own words back at him with dull accuracy. “ ‘A dangerous lot … utterly ruthless.’ An excommunicated priest? An amateur philosopher who doesn’t believe in violence? A sailmaster terrified of his own shadow? These are your devil’s minions?”

His unrepentant shrug brought their forearms back into contact. “You haven’t met Fidget yet. He murdered his mother-in-law. Of course, they say there never was born a witch more deserving of it.”

“You should have introduced him to Pudge’s wife,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry if their lack of villainy disappoints you. Despite what you may have read, most pirates are and always have been ordinary seaman. Men who prefer freedom to the taste of the lash. Men who prefer a command system based on merit, rather than on the fickle fortunes of birth. We’ve our share of deserters from your father’s precious navy.”

She cut him a mocking glance. “Does that make you the only practicing villain aboard?”

His hazel eyes captured hers, their wary heat belying the cold set of his jaw. “Hardly. After all, any man is capable of villainy when confronted with a temptation he can’t resist.”

Spotting Apollo by the main mast, Lucy tore her gaze away. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I shall see if your quartermaster would be kind enough to escort me back to my … cell.”

“Lucy?” The husky query stopped her. Not
Miss Snow
with its sharp, mocking edge, but
Lucy
—tender, bewitching, and fraught with memories. “Now that you’re not pointing a gun at my heart, you can believe what you like. But I didn’t hire those men. And I’ll regret to my dying day leaving you alone in that alley.”

She inclined her head, aching to believe him, but fearing he’d once again think her a deluded fool if she did.

Gerard watched her silent battle, wishing its outcome weren’t so vital to him.

When Lucy finally tilted her grimy face to him, her eyes were sparkling with a haughty impertinence he had feared was lost forever. “I can’t say that I believe you, sir, but I have no proof to the contrary. If I did, Pudge would be sewing up you instead of your topsail.”

With that dubious absolution, she marched across the deck and captured his quartermaster. Gerard met Apollo’s gaze over her head, offering him a gesture and a faint nod. His mate’s stoic face briefly registered surprise, but he saluted his captain to signal his unquestioning obedience.

Lucy had been generous enough to gift him with a fragment of her trust. Even if it cost him his tenuous peace of mind, Gerard could afford to do no less.

The hold didn’t seem nearly as confusing when navigated by Apollo’s confident strides. Lucy was forced to trot to keep up.

“Does your head ache frightfully, Apollo? I’m very sorry about your accident. I shan’t throw a pillow at the door again.”

He rubbed the lump ruining the symmetry of his sleek pate. “I didn’t mind the pillow, missie, but I do wish you’d stop threatening to shoot the Captain.”

“I’ll consider it,” she muttered, refusing to make any promises.

He escorted her inside the great cabin, then turned to go. She poked her head out the open door. “Apollo?”

“Aye, missie?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He frowned as if deeply puzzled, then broke into a broad grin. “Your lunch! I’ll fetch it right away.”

Lucy was surprised to realize she was ravenous. She would never have suspected that attempted mutiny was such a stimulant to the appetite. “Not lunch. The door. You forgot to lock the door.”

He continued on his way, calling back over his shoulder. “No need. The Captain has given you the run of the ship.”

Lucy sank against the doorframe, her knees weakened
by a long denied hunger sharper than that for food. Apollo might not realize it, but the Captain had given her something infinitely more precious than just the run of his ship.

Gerard’s breeches and shirt had been a poor fit, but with a few artful nips and tucks by Pudge, Tarn’s cast-offs fit Lucy as if they’d been tailored for her. Her slender, boyishly clad figure became a familiar sight on the
Retribution
’s decks in the days to come.

Once Tarn lost his fear that she was going to whip out a parasol and whack him across his freckled nose, he became a most amiable companion, escorting her about the ship with the vastly superior tolerance of an elder cousin. Lucy suspected he didn’t often get the opportunity to lord his knowledge over someone less informed than he.

The ship itself seemed to have been designed by a maniacal genius with a perverse sense of humor. Its decks and hold were riddled with secret companionways. Lucy lived in fear of dropping through a hidden trapdoor, triggered by nothing more than the innocent action of brushing against the mizzenmast or peeping through a gunport.

Although its taciturn captain remained an enigma to her, the ship was not so reluctant to surrender its secrets.

A pirate vessel’s only salvation lay in being faster, sneakier, and meaner than her opponents. The
Retribution
excelled in all three. Every bit of visible wood on the boat had been stained dark. Gerard had replaced the traditional canvas sails with black double silk, an extravagant but effective method of masking the ship’s path through the indigo waters of night. An oversized replica of a galley stove squatted in the stern,
equipped to belch out clouds of steam to confuse pursuers.

A false deck had been built into the bulwark, thus explaining the ship’s deserted appearance on the night Lucy had first sighted her. The shell could be rolled over the fo’c’sle, quarterdeck, and aftercastle in the event of attack, leaving the crew free to manipulate the ship from below, using an elaborate combination of pulleys, mirrors, and curved spying glasses. The flush false deck also gave them the advantages of speed and agility under sail.

All of those clever modifications allowed Gerard to run the ship with a crew of ninety men, only half of what he should have required. Pudge doubled as both sailmaker and sailmaster. Apollo labored as quartermaster and kept Gerard’s logs in his flawless, elegant hand. Only the navigator had one job, his sole task keeping them on whatever mysterious course Gerard had charted.

As Tarn hastened to explain, the schooner had been designed for rapid attack and quick retreat, but her most formidable weapon lay in the reputation of her captain. The whispered name of Captain Doom alone could coax most merchant ships, awkward, under-gunned, and pregnant with heavy cargo, to surrender without a fight.

A lingering twinge of navy pride forced Lucy to stiffly retaliate with, “That doesn’t make him any match for one of His Majesty’s warships. A well-placed broadside could reduce this floating circus to so much flotsam.”

Tarn’s green eyes shone with admiration. “That’s where ye’re wrong, Miss Lucy. Cap’n’s the very best. He studied navy strategy in his younger days. It’s almost as if he knows what they’re thinkin’ afore they do.”