This Perfect Kiss (3 page)

He also knew that she had already endured hell coming from the war-torn Tidewater region in Virginia. He was no novice when it came to understanding what war did to people.

Despite her bravado, she was very much a person now in exile.

Much as he was.

Forcing his attention back to the letter, he refolded it as his gaze fell on the dog. He had forgotten the mutt was present.

“He is mine,” she said defensively, kneeling beside the natty red and brown spotted dog as if she would protect it from being thrown into the Thames.

He had never had pets, and when he was a boy, he couldn't understand his own grandmother's doting over a hairy, yapping lap dog that had never missed an occasion to bite him.

“I am not going to toss either of you overboard, Christel.” Pocketing the letter, he looked past her out the stern gallery window into a dim, snowy morn. “When was the last time you ate something?”

“Yesterday morning.”

He turned and strode across the room to the adjoining chamber. The cold made his leg ache, and absently he rubbed his palm against his thigh as he opened the door and found his steward in the corridor, warming blankets in hand. He took one, then directed the rest to his daughter's chamber. “After you deliver those to Anna's room, bring hot water and soap to these quarters,” he said. “Then bring our guest something to eat. Coffee?” he asked her.

“And something for my dog?”

“Will a plate of kippers suffice?”

At her nod, he allayed the information to his steward. “Have we any women's clothing on board?”

“Maybe sir,” his steward said. “Captain Bentwell's wife keeps a trunk in his quarters.”

Shutting the door, Camden turned back into the room. As Miss Douglas and her mongrel stared back at him, he contemplated what he had got himself into.

“You will remove those clothes so I can have them burned.” He jutted his chin toward the trunk in the far corner. “You can find something in there to wear. My robe should provide you adequate protection until we find you something more suitable. I trust the dog will not chew up anything.”

“But these are your quarters. Where will you stay?”

He gathered up his hat and gloves to quit the room. “Accept my hospitality, Miss Douglas. I am not normally so accommodating.”

She waited until he had opened the door before saying, “Thank you, my lord. You have saved our lives this day whether you like it or nay.”

His hand froze on the latch and his gaze returned to hers. Any normal person would have been grateful for his aid. Yet with typical colonial impertinence, she seemed to reproach
him,
as if his character had been on trial in a room filled with his peers.

“I will repay you for any expenses you incur on my behalf,” she said.

Camden's scowl gave way to a momentary lapse of amused silence. She could not afford one of his shirts. But her posture told him more eloquently than words that she intended to repay him every shilling if she had to dig turnips from the ground the rest of her life to do it.

He was not a man tolerant of emotions, especially his own, yet he found himself possessed of the need to lift her face back into light and ask her what the hell she could possibly do to support herself.

“Christel . . . Miss Douglas,” he managed with patience, “if 'tis your conscience you need to appease, you may do what you think best.”

“I have never thought you less than kind, my lord.”

Her voice again arrested his hand on the door latch. Only this time it was the words spoken that made him turn. For they had not been facetious, nor had she meant to be hurtful.

He wanted to laugh. Saundra had not died thinking him kind.

But he could not force cynicism into his thoughts. There was none.

“And me with no reputation for civility. You, Miss Douglas, are still too trusting by far, or you would not be stranded and in need of my help.” He cocked a brow, surprised that of everything he had been able to say, it had been the truth that had cowed her into silence. “
Now
do I have your leave to retire?”

C
amden's steward was waiting for him in the corridor. “I put yer trunk in my cabin, my lord.” Carrying a tray, he hurried forward and swung open the door to his quarters. “I am heating water for the girl's bath. She is young. I had heard she got out of Lisbon before they closed the port for cholera. She is fortunate to have made it this far alone. Why would a woman cross the Atlantic alone?”

“I do not know, Harry.”

“Must have been desperate to come home.”

Camden limped past the little Irishman into a cabin that was smaller than his privy closet. He dumped his cloak, hat and gloves on the bottom berth. The room had a washbasin and a narrow space next to the wall barely wide enough for Harry's sea bag and Camden's leather trunk.

His leg was so stiff that he could barely bend it to sit on the berth. His knees bumped the stove, but he welcomed the heat.

“I can see from here that leg's all swelled up,” Red Harry said. “Let me take a look.”

“Have mercy on me and bring me hot coffee.”

The old steward shut the door. He had already made a pot of coffee and forced Camden to stand to accommodate his presence as he squeezed next to the washbasin, where he set the tray.

“That girl has come a long way,” Red Harry said. “You ought be more patient with her. She is no' as strong as she seems.”

“That girl survived Yorktown.”

“So did you, my lord.”

Camden yanked at his stock. “Duly chastised, Harry. As the oldest of the crew and more trustworthy than my own grandfather, you are tasked with her care. Make sure she eats a hearty meal. The galley will most probably be out of service once we enter the channel.” He removed his jacket and ducked to look out the porthole. “Someone will also need to take that hound of hers to the hold. There is straw in the livestock stalls for his needs.”

He scrubbed frost off the window. Outside, a forest of masts sporting flags from several nations bobbed above a crowded watery surface and stood against a London skyline of tall brick buildings and chimneys billowing clouds of black smoke. The scene held little interest beyond a cursory glance to reassure him that his ship was leaving the quay. The voyage around the southern tip of England past Falmouth, then north into the Firth of Clyde, would last four, maybe five, days. By land with winter encroaching, the journey to Ayrshire would have lasted six weeks.

He could survive four or five days in close quarters with Christel.

Absently rubbing his thigh, he turned away from the porthole. Harry squeezed past him to the cupboard, forcing Camden to stand. Finding himself trapped against the bunk, the top of his head touching the ceiling and his shoulders pressing against the upper berth, he eyed his steward narrowly.

“Ye can toss me overboard if ye wish later,” Red Harry said. “But right now ye will be lettin' me tend to that leg.”

Red Harry removed a tin and, slapping a towel around his neck like a drover snapping a whip, turned. “Down with yer breeches and on your side, my lord.”

“Dammit, Harry.”

But the old hunched-over wolf stared Camden down as if he'd been a contrary pup. After a moment, Camden's hands fell to his waist and the next thing he knew, he was peeling down his breeches in the most humbling, humiliating way possible. He sat on the berth, accepting a flask of whiskey from his gaoler.

“You do understand you are the only man I would ever allow to torture me in this way.”

The man's gnarled fingers kneaded foul-smelling balm into the swollen area around the ugly red scar just below Camden's hip. The scar stretched to his knee. “I have known wee babes who take better care of themselves,” Red Harry muttered unpleasantly.

“Is that a tone of hostility I am hearing?”

“When ye be old and crippled like me you'll be wishin' you'd listened to me more, my lord. Ye should have stayed at Blackthorn Castle to begin with, where ye belong, my lord.”

Tipping the flask, Camden let the warm liquid slide down his throat. “I
should
have listened when you thought moving to Naples would be a good idea.”

“I never thought 'twould be a good idea. I only said any place would be warmer than England. I do no' fancy ye goin' anywhere but back to Blackthorn Castle.” Red Harry wiped the oil from his hands on a towel and slapped it around his neck. “No one ever believed ye would walk away and leave the place to your blackguard brother.”

“I do not intend to remain longer at Blackthorn Castle than I must to discharge my duty to Grandmother.”

“You'll be returning to London to be with Miss Jordan then?”

Camden adjusted his clothes. “Are you tiring of London's gay life, or is it the company I keep?”

Red Harry knew better than to question Camden's relationship with Marie Jordan. The fact that he did surprised Camden.

Indeed, he was more than aware of the beautiful Miss Jordan's character. He just didn't care. He'd ceased finding relevance in society or its over-bloated opinion of itself long ago.

A knock sounded on the door. Camden answered it as he pulled a heavy sweater over his head. “We will reach Gravesend in an hour, my lord,” Bentwell said. “The snow has turned to ice. We may need to take the ship farther east toward Calais to escape the brunt of the storm.”

Camden had no intention of entering French waters with his daughter aboard. “Or we can skirt Dover and use the wind to our advantage in the straits.”

Bentwell nodded. “Aye, the storm is coming in from the north. That could work. Could shave off half a day of travel if we time it right. The crew will like that. 'Tis bloody damn cold up there.”

Camden shut the door and turned to Red Harry. “See that someone brings enough coal for the stoves in both Miss Douglas's room and my daughter's. I will be topside as soon as I finish down here.”

After Red Harry scurried out, Camden stepped across the companionway and entered his daughter's cabin. He found her dressed warmly and lying on her bed asleep. Smoothing her hair from her face, he kissed her brow. The girl being eight years old, her beauty still possessed the angelic innocence of childhood, untarnished by the lessons of life. Asleep, she looked as fragile as the finest porcelain. Awake, she could be a mythical woodland sprite rumored to live in the woods surrounding Blackthorn Castle.

Anna was the one thing with which God had seen fit to bless him. Camden loved her more than he had ever loved anything, even more than his own life. Despite everything that Saundra had done, she had never alienated his daughter's affections from him. Anna was the reason he'd survived these hellish last years after Yorktown. She was the reason he'd learned to walk again. The reason that he lived. They had rarely been home since Saundra had died there almost two years ago.

“She had a restless night, my lord,” the nurse said. “I think she will be glad to be returning home.”

Camden wrapped her in fur. Warming bricks heated the interior sufficiently to render the chill less biting.

His daughter stirred and turned onto her back. “Are we going home now, Papa?”

He looked into her face and smoothed the hair back from her cheek. “Aye, lass.”

“And I will be able to see Uncle Leighton and Grandmamma?”

Camden held back the frown that wanted to form just at the corners of his mouth. Somehow, his brother had managed to steal his daughter's heart, and Camden did not have it inside to hurt her more than she had already been hurt with her mother's passing. “Aye, Anna. They will be there.”

She settled comfortably in the blankets as he wrapped the fur more tightly around her. “I am glad, Papa.”

“The weather will be rough. I want you to stay in your cabin. You and I will share a cup of tea tonight.”

“My doll, too?”

He chuckled. “Aye, your doll, too.”

She smiled and turned back into her pillow. He looked over at Mrs. Gables and told her not to stand. Letting himself out of the cabin, he caught himself against the ship's sway as he shut the door. Two lanthorns on the wall knocked against the bulkhead. He looked over at his cabin, hesitated, then raised his hand and knocked.

The door swung open. Christel stood before him wearing his brown silk robe and carrying a stave bucket filled with soap and a towel. Her gaze shot up to his. “Oh.”

The disappointment in her voice was so evident that he almost laughed. “Oh?”

Her other hand clutched the edges of the robe. A whisper of gold flashed just above the mounds of her breasts. “I thought you were Mr. Harold . . . ah, Red Harry. He took my dog to the hold. It has started to sleet.” She held fast to the door. “Does the captain know what he is doing? Should we have left London in this weather?”

Camden raised a brow. “This is November,” he said. “If I waited for the perfect day to leave London, I would be waiting until June.”

“You
are this ship's captain? I thought Captain Bentwell was.”

“Mr. Bentwell runs the ship back and forth in trade between Glasgow and London and sometimes to Holland. But I am the captain of this ship.” He looked past her toward the cupboard. “And as captain, I need my oilskin and a few of my belongings.”

She stepped aside. He walked to the cupboard and withdrew a few of his items. He could feel her eyes on him. His skin felt warm and discomforting, like he was catching a fever. As he sat on his berth to put on his boots, he made an effort not to look at her even as he knew she was standing in a shaft of daylight coming through the gallery windows.

He stomped the sealskin boots onto his feet, retrieved his fur hat and slicker, and stopped. She stood in front of him holding out his heavy woolen gloves. The ship labored against a swell. She tightened her hold on the bucket. His mouth softened.