Teresa Medeiros (38 page)

Lucy was discomfited by the reminder of what Gerard might have accomplished had her father not robbed him of his career. And his freedom.

It was impossible for Lucy not to think of freedom beneath the banner of azure blue that unfurled from horizon to horizon each dawn. Impossible not to think of it while leaning over the forward rail with the wind tossing her hair, the sun warming her back, the cool salt spray peppering her cheeks. How was it possible that as Gerard’s defenseless captive, she had never felt so free?

Free to read the morning away on deck or simply drowse in the sun. Free to watch the men at their tasks or badger Apollo for tales of his native Africa.

The spontaneity of life aboard the
Retribution
was irresistible. Except for the bells tolling the changing of the watch, time might have ceased to exist. Unlike the worker ants toiling beneath her father’s command, there was nothing regimented about Gerard’s crew except for their common and unspoken desire to run the sleek schooner to the best of their abilities.

These men laughed whenever they wanted, frequently burst into song, and paused in trimming the sails to swig rum from a jug or dance a merry jig. They censored neither their jokes or opinions, engaging in good-natured fisticuffs if the occasion warranted, but never forgetting that if any one of them dared to draw steel, he would suffer the traditional penalty of forty stripes.

Lucy’s chief amazement stemmed from their treatment of her. A drawing room full of the most impeccably mannered gentlemen in London couldn’t have treated her with any more deference. Some, like Pudge, were shy. Others, like Tarn, bold enough to court her favor. Even the murderous Fidget, with his pronounced facial tic, inclined his bushy head to kiss
her hand upon being introduced to her one sunny afternoon.

“My, my,” she whispered to Tarn as the friendly little killer went back to waxing a bolt of sail thread. “They must have heard of my father’s reputation. If any harm comes to me, the consequences will be quite grave.”

Tarn snorted. “Not any graver than gettin’ their nostrils sliced. That’s what the Cap’n’s promised to any one of ’em fool eno’ to so much as wink at his woman.”

The Captain’s woman
. A treacherous tingle passed through Lucy. “But I’m not …” She hesitated. Perhaps it wouldn’t be wise to refute such a fable. What if Gerard had only concocted it to keep his men at bay?

She couldn’t imagine why the crew would believe such an outrageous claim. Their captain had managed to avoid her presence at every turn, no easy task aboard a three-masted schooner.

The glint of sunlight on brass drew her gaze to the lookout nest at foretop. A man stood within its confines, the breadth of his shoulders and the arrogant grace of his bearing unmistakable. Instead of searching the horizon for enemy ships, he had shamelessly trained his spyglass on her.

Lucy’s breath caught in an odd mingling of outrage and gratification. “The nerve of that man,” she muttered, but Tarn was already out of earshot, scaling the rigging with the lithe skill of a monkey.

Regardless of what they’d been told, Gerard’s crew seemed to sense that their truce was an armed one. They had a tendency to vanish when he appeared, as if fearing to stray once again into their line of fire.

At Ionia Lucy had jerked her draperies shut against Gerard’s prying eyes. Here she was free to indulge the childish, but far more satisfying, urge to poke her
tongue out at him and practice an insolent hand gesture taught to her by Digby, one of his own grizzled gunners. She wasn’t quite clear on its meaning but she suspected Gerard would be.

She was correct.

“Wouldn’t I love to?” Gerard murmured, lowering the spyglass with a rueful chuckle. He could also think of several more compelling uses for that saucy little tongue of hers.

He watched her scamper after Tarn, holding his breath until she reached a safe perch. He didn’t really need the spyglass. Every detail of Lucy’s appearance was etched in his memory with merciless clarity.

He would have thought it impossible, but the sun had bleached her hair an ethereal shade paler. Her fair skin was kissed by an apricot glow and her features had lost the pinched look that had plagued them at Ionia. He didn’t know what had done the most for her—the fresh, salty air or escaping the smothering weight of the Admiral’s thumb.

He wondered again at the wisdom of granting her so much independence. He’d locked her in the cabin originally to keep her out of his reach. Now he had to severely restrict his own movements just to keep from tripping over her.

She was everywhere he turned: the two braids she’d taken to wearing inclined over a sail as Pudge taught her a difficult stitch; reading aloud from one of Defoe’s novels, his men gathered around her like children around their mother’s skirts; leaning against the forward rail at twilight, gazing pensively across the billows as the damson-tinted sea doused the flaming ball of the sun.

He was disturbed by the ease with which the dour Miss Snow had enchanted his crew. He knew they were hungry for feminine company in all of its guises,
but he was the one starving for lack of it. Her unadorned beauty swept through him like a bracing blast of salt spray. Her chiming laugh tormented him until he began to regret his own charity with a violence that alarmed him.

He snapped the spyglass shut, knowing there was only one place to take a temper this grim. As he swung down from the foretop, he didn’t see the gamin face that peeked out from behind the capstan to follow his progress.

Lucy tiptoed through the shadowy hold toward the iron-banded door, recalling her last inauspicious attempt to breach the mysterious chamber. Gerard had disappeared into it less than five minutes before and it had taken her that long to muster her courage to follow.

Why should she be afraid? she asked herself. After all, he’d expressly forbidden her no area of the schooner, so he could hardly berate her for snooping. She swallowed a squeak of doubt. Could he?

She pressed her ear to the door. Much to her relief, she didn’t hear any screams of agony or desperate voices pleading for mercy. She
did
hear the cadences of male voices, raised slightly as if in anger.

Gerard’s clipped words were muffled by the thick oak, the answering drawl even more pronounced than his own. Lucy frowned. She didn’t recognize Apollo’s bass rumble, Tarn’s brogue, or Pudge’s timid murmur. She concentrated harder, deciphering snatches of conversation between each pause in the heated dialogue.

Gerard was saying, “… no one to blame but yourself … still be safely tucked in her own bed if it weren’t for your little indiscretion.”

Lucy’s mouth fell open. As far as she knew, she was the only
her
within a thousand knots.

Her fascination with herself as a topic of Gerard’s conversation enabled her to translate an entire retort from his companion. “Ah, yes, but would she be alone? And as I recall, you seduced more than a few bored noblemens’ wives in your heyday.”

Gerard’s reply was succinct to the point of obscenity. Lucy recoiled. His master gunner, Digby, spoke profanity as if it were a second language, but even he hadn’t taught her that particular phrase.

Gerard’s companion seemed to be more amused than alarmed by the anatomically impossible suggestion. His reply floated toward the door on wings of sarcasm. “…  locked me up for my protection or hers?”

Rapid footsteps approached the door. Lucy barely had time to dart around the corner before it flew open. She crouched in the shadows as Gerard emerged. He didn’t look nearly as angry as she’d feared, but perhaps, she thought grimly, she was the only one capable of inciting him to a truly murderous rage.

Her heart sank as he locked the door behind him and pocketed a brass key. She huddled in the dark long after he’d passed, shaken by the realization that she wasn’t the only prisoner aboard the
Retribution
.

Late that night, Lucy lay alone on the aftercastle, a discarded pile of sail her pillow and a vast sprinkling of stars her only blanket. The Admiral had taught her to think in rigid shades of black and white, but now she found herself wandering in a gray netherworld, unable to separate shadow from substance and no closer to solving the mystery of Captain Doom than when she’d begun.

Was he the man who had vowed to guard her life as his own—tender, patient, fiercely protective? Or was he a man hell-bent on vengeance—embittered, ruthless,
cynical, and quick-tempered? For the first time, her bewildered heart was forced to entertain the notion that those two diverse men might be one and the same.

His men seemed to both revere and genuinely like him. He maintained discipline with an iron fist and ready wit, yet rarely impinged upon the freedoms they held so dear. While the Admiral’s fierce reputation had been measured by the number of stripes he’d inflicted on his crew’s backs, Gerard’s threats of reprisal for infractions of the
Retribution
’s code of law were just that—threats. His men respected him too much to test the limits of his patience. They seemed, to value his praise more than they feared his punishment.

They were men who did not give their loyalty lightly, yet Lucy had discovered in the past few days that there wasn’t a man aboard who wouldn’t consider it an honor to lay down his life if their captain required it.

Do you know what it is for a captain to outlive his crew, Lucy?

She was the only one who knew it was the one sacrifice he would never ask of them.

Exhausted from battling the present, Lucy closed her eyes to float in a haze of memory. Gerard puffed a smoke ring at her nose, his eyes sparkling with mischief behind Pudge’s homely spectacles. He dusted a sprinkling of cinnamon from her lower lip with his little finger. He twirled her in the dizzying arms of a waltz, his powerful hand encompassing the small of her back.

She was so beguiled by her visions that she didn’t even start in surprise when her eyes drifted open to find Gerard leaning over her. Her dreaming hunger for him was such that she couldn’t stop herself from
reaching up to trace his beardless jaw with her fingertips.

She blinked, lost in a mist of confusion. A dream indeed, for this was a different Gerard. A Gerard unscarred by time and disillusionment. A Gerard whose bright eyes were unshadowed by cynicism. Her own guilt must have led her to conjure up this creature. This was the Gerard who might have been had it not been for her father’s treachery.

She had neither the strength nor the will to resist as his beautifully carved mouth descended on hers. Her lips parted without coaxing for a kiss that was dazzling, deft, and provocative.

And totally wrong.

It was bestowed with the skill of an artist who’d spent countless hours of practice perfecting his technique, but it lacked the elusive spice of maturity. It was a mild spring shower over the English countryside instead of a wild and perilous storm at sea, and it left her curiously, but completely, unmoved.

Lucy’s eyes popped open in shock as an acerbic, and all too familiar, voice rang out.

“I had thought to introduce you to my brother someday, Lucy, but I can see the two of you have already met.”