This Perfect Kiss (7 page)

The crew of a naval revenue cruiser hunted and hanged smugglers pursuant to enforcing the navigational acts originally designed to keep the newly independent Americans out of the West Indies. Now the policy was enforced anywhere Britain considered her sacred waters. Camden was familiar with the fact that the captains of such vessels rarely asked questions before seizing a ship and pressing its crew into service. Pirates, privateers, and other ne'er-do-wells he could outrun and maneuver around to escape. The Royal Navy was another matter entirely.

His gaze swung upward. Visible just below England's bold red-and-blue standard, his own black-and-gold banner whipped above ice-encrusted rigging. The earl of Carrick was not an anonymous British entity. There wasn't a ship's captain in England who didn't know who he was. If that revenue ship had been shadowing the
Anna
since Dover, then the captain of that cruiser knew without a doubt this ship belonged to him.

“Do you think she was lying in wait for us?” Bentwell asked, clearly recognizing what Camden had already concluded.

“Only if someone knew the
Anna
was leaving London and tipped them off far enough in advance. Who delivered the message from the dowager countess Carrick three days ago?”

“The
Pelican
. The captain gave it to me himself. Said it came from your grandmother. The request seemed as dire as it did genuine.”

The
Pelican
was a seal hunting vessel making its last run to market before winter. The captain had brought mail in from Blackthorn Castle while Camden had lived in London. But if for some nefarious reason that revenue cruiser had indeed been lying in wait, then someone had told them the
Anna
was carrying illegal cargo. That someone was playing dangerous games. The
Anna
was no smuggling vessel.

“Inspect the supercargo, then do a search of the hold,” he told Bentwell. “If something is on board that should not be here, find it.”

After Bentwell left the deck, Camden stood for some time with his wrists crossed behind him. He had already run out the weather guns to keep the ship on a more even keel, giving her a better grip on the water. Yet even he had his limits. He might know these waters, but in this weather, only a fool would test the limits of a ship when the wind could snap a mast and leave a ship floundering in dangerous seas.

“Helmsman, edge down to starboard. Keep her as near to the wind as she'll lie,” he shouted, keeping his eyes on the distant ship.

It could be nothing,
he thought, taking the most charitable view of a potentially unpleasant situation.

A view that was premature as he heard the lookout call, “She be signaling us to come about, my lord.”

Chapter 4

T
he schooner flew the white ensign of the Royal Navy. It was all business as Camden waited on deck
,
watching the approaching jolly boat battle the swells. He raised his perspective glass to his eye.

A single officer stood at the bow of the small boat. A heavy military frock coat warded off the chill and whipped in the wind, revealing the crisp navy blue and gold braided jacket beneath. Two lobster-backs sat behind him. “Not exactly an armed boarding party,” Bentwell murmured. “Are you going to let them board?”

“What do you think would happen if I did not?” Camden turned his attention to his crew. “Look lively there!” he shouted, sending them into action, up and down the deck and masts.

A lad lowered the rope ladder to prepare for boarding as the boat closed in against the hull of the ship. The officer swung himself up the ladder and clamored briskly aboard.

He was a tall man, in his thirties, square jawed and clean shaven in the way of a lieutenant who ran a strict ship. His cheeks were ruddy pink from the cold. Seeing Camden, he removed his bicorn and tucked it beneath his arm, revealing a helmet of burnished gold hair. It was unusual that a British naval officer would show that manner of respect to one suspected of smuggling, even more unusual that he would come aboard without escort.

Camden let his gaze slide over the blond lieutenant. “To what do I owe this signal honor, Lieutenant?” he asked, unimpressed and investing an annoyed air in his tone. All the while, his attention remained focused on the cannonades aimed at his ship.

“I am Lieutenant Ross of HMS
Glory Rose,
my lord. I was once the custom's agent assigned to the Tidewater region of Virginia. We have not had the pleasure of meeting personally. But I know who you are.”

Camden heard a hint of admiration. “You were an excise officer in the colonies, and now a sailor?”

“I am from a family of seafarers,” the lieutenant answered. “After Virginia, I returned to take a position away from the war and still serve England. You see . . . I married a colonial.”

“I am sure you did not come aboard to share your personal history with me, Lieutenant.” Camden tightened his mouth, though amusement laced his words. “You will not find me inviting you to tea. The seas are rough and I would like to be about my business.”

Lieutenant Ross straightened his shoulders as if reprimanded. “The British navy has reason to suspect this ship of smuggling, my lord, a hanging offense—”

“So is stealing food in most parts of the world.”

“Would you object if my men searched your cargo hold?”

“Would it make a difference if I did? Though if you believed I was smuggling, you would not be
asking
to view the cargo. My ship would be swarming with your men. As you can tell, this ship is riding high in the water. With the exception of a mangy dog and some livestock, the cargo bay is empty.”

Lieutenant Ross withdrew a missive from inside his coat. “I was already on my way to London to find you when I received orders to intercept your ship. Someone informed upon you, my lord, and gave us information where you would be.”

Aye, he had suspected as much.

Camden read the missive, signed by a former commanding officer in Bournemouth. “This communiqué gives you leeway to make your own decision about a search.”

Lieutenant Ross took a step toward the railing, pulling Camden from earshot of his crew. “Aye, my lord. I wanted to discern for myself whether you would consent to be boarded. We did not see you flagrantly tossing your cargo overboard, so that either means you are not guilty of possessing contraband or you are too arrogant to think I would not find anything hidden on this ship. I do not see that you are arrogant, my lord.”

Camden returned the missive to the lieutenant. “You were on your way to find me in London? Why?”

Ross straightened, his deep sense of duty evident in his posture, and Camden remembered a time when he had been such a man. But there was also something else in the man's eyes as well. “I am looking for a woman,” he said. “Are you carrying passengers?”

Camden hesitated. “Do you want to explain to me what this is about?”

“Mrs. Claremont arrived from Spain some days ago. I was hoping she would have come to you. London is not kind to a woman on the streets—”

“Mrs. Claremont?”

“Christel Douglas Claremont,” he said. “Your wife's cousin. She is my sister-in-law.” The lieutenant turned. “Finding her means a great deal to my wife and her family. Enough for me to risk a career-ending formal reprimand from my superiors should anyone ever learn I stepped out of the realm of my job for personal reasons.”

Camden faced the rail. “I was not aware that Miss Douglas was married.”

“Daniel Claremont was . . . killed two years ago during the siege in Yorktown. She returned to Williamsburg shortly after that, where she managed a small dress shop, but she always kept in touch with my wife's family. Five months ago, she sold her shop and vanished.

“My brother-in-law, a former British naval commander, is an American frigate captain. He learned that the ship on which Christel left Boston was diverted for nearly three weeks to Lisbon for repairs after a storm damaged her severely. I missed her in Spain by days and was on my way to London when I received the missive that you were there. I was hoping she had gone to you. She spoke of your wife often, my lord.”

Agitation stirred him. And something else. “If I see her, I will tell her you are looking for her, Lieutenant.”

But Lieutenant Ross did not move away. Looking off across the choppy sea, he pressed his lips in a straight line as if he debated his next words. “You do not understand, my lord. Two years ago, during the Yorktown siege, seven British soldiers ransacked my wife's family home. Daniel was infirmed with a fever. Elizabeth—who was pregnant with my son at the time—as well as her mother, younger brother and sister, and five servants, were also in residence. The soldiers were hunting spies.

“Even sick as he was, Daniel fought the men. He killed four before they hanged him from the banister in his own house. They set the house ablaze. Christel defended the family against the attackers. Then got everyone to safety, hiding them in a root cellar behind the barn and keeping them alive for a week until my brother-in-law found them.”

Camden felt his eyelids narrow. “What happened to the men?”

“Five months ago, the last man responsible for that murder was found dead outside Richmond. He had been killed in the same way as the previous two, a sword thrust through the heart. All were rumored to have been hunted down by a notorious Sons of Liberty leader called Merlin.”

“You seem to doubt Merlin was responsible.”

“Daniel Claremont
was
Merlin, my lord.”

The implication sent a chill down Camden's spine. Surely, the lieutenant couldn't mean to be telling him that Christel was in some way connected . . . and yet . . .

“Let there be no mistake, my lord. Whoever it was who went after those men did the world a service. The three barbarians who got out of the Claremont farmhouse alive were not soldiers but criminals, in my opinion, though some would see it differently.”

“If I should see Mrs. Claremont, is there a message you would have me give her, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Ross drew in his breath, and Camden knew the young officer would not search his ship, would not force him to betray Christel's presence even if he believed her to be on board. “Tell her that my wife and I now live in Bournemouth. Tell her she is not alone and we just want to know she is safe. We may not be blood kin, but she is one of our own. Family takes care of family.”

With his bicorn tucked beneath his arm, Lieutenant Ross started to leave, but he stopped and looked out across the faces of Camden's crew. He then brought his attention back to the captain of the
Anna
. “In case you have not already deduced, my lord, someone wanted this ship intercepted. Perhaps even impounded. I would be looking to someone close to you and ask yourself who wants you destroyed.”

Camden smiled mockingly. “I have considered that possibility, Lieutenant.”

“I will bid you good afternoon, then, my lord.”

Camden stood at the rail watching the lieutenant put off in the jolly boat. The sea swells were large, and returning to the cruiser would be rough going. But as Camden's attention absently wandered to the turbulent skies, he left it to the lieutenant's crew to watch out for their own men. He finally looked away, filled with a sense of foreboding.

Or perhaps what he felt was anger.
Why had Christel kept her marriage from him?
Or the tragedy that had befallen her?

Could she have committed acts of execution in the guise of a once infamous highwayman?

“And what is the age one is considered on the shelf? Exactly,”
he had asked her earlier on the topic of marriage.

“When she learns how to use a saber as well as a man.”

Slowly, becoming aware that the wind was shifting a point or two from the west to a northerly tack, he contemplated it with strong disfavor and ordered all sails trimmed, including the topmasts, which had been housed during the earlier heavier gale winds. Behind him, the ship's capstan clicked in a steady familiar rhythm as the boatswain was still shouting to raise anchor.

From his place near the rail, he caught sight of Bentwell talking to another man, who seemed to have just come from the hold and was gesturing with his arms like a broken signal line flapping in the wind. Bentwell's expression forewarned Camden that something had been found in the hold.

“Below the floor, my lord, between bulkheads,” Bentwell informed him a moment later. Pulling his woolen coat collar around his neck, he opened the door leading into the hold and crews quarters. “A chest of rifles, cartouche boxes and brandy. Bigelow also informed me that the
Anna's
supercargo is not aboard.”

A supercargo was a merchant ship officer in charge of freight and the business dealings of the ship. In the navy, a yeoman held such a position.

“We are doing a run of the crew now to see if any others are missing.” Bentwell lowered his voice. “But I will tell you, sir, nothing got on this ship while we have been in London. Whatever is here was put here before leaving Scotland.”

“You are positive.”

“I would wager my life on it, my lord.”

Forcing himself into an attitude of composure, Camden nodded, aware that the only other person who had ever sailed this ship was also the bane of his life. With his left hand, he tapped his thigh impatiently. “Thank you, that will be all. There is nothing to be done for it now.”

He would deal with his brother when he reached Scotland.

“O
ne must never forget we are a civilized people no matter our circumstances,” Mrs. Gables declared the next morning. “There is no substitute for a decent cup of hot English tea.”

The pronouncement pulled Christel from her dire thoughts as she stood in front of the stern gallery window looking at the distant slip of land on the horizon. She didn't point out that the tea was actually from China. Unfolding her arms, she turned into the cabin.

Mrs. Gables sat at the table near the stove, warming herself, her fingers curled around a hot cup of tea. Along with breakfast, Red Harry had also proudly presented to them the rosebud painted teacups and matching pot on a tray earlier, just after the
Anna
had officially sailed into the Irish Sea.

“I do not know what could have got into his lordship. 'Tis not seemly for a young lady to be exposed to questionable elements aboard this ship.”

“Perhaps he does not wish to tax you further with Lady Anna's care,” Christel said.

But Christel had not voiced her real concern, that it was she Lord Carrick did not want around his daughter.

She had not wanted to consider that possibility, but the attempt to steer her thoughts from the idea failed. Yesterday, she had been concerned, nay scared witless, when the naval cruiser had signaled the
Anna
to stop and be boarded. But the ship had gone away.

That morning Red Harry had told her the
Anna
was still on course. Then he had told her Lady Anna's father wanted the child dressed warmly and that Lord Carrick would be taking her topside today.

The only thing that wasn't in order was her perception of the truce she thought she and Lord Carrick had struck. Had she expected too much to think that he would have said a few words to her this morning at least? That he might have explained why the
Anna
had been stopped? Or was she looking for shadows where they did not exist?

She finished straightening the cabin, carefully folding the blankets. “Would you care for more tea, Mrs. Gables?”

“You are a dear, Miss Douglas.” Setting down the cup, Mrs. Gables pulled the blanket over her shoulders and watched Christel pour the tea. “Will you join me? One should never suffer cold tasteless porridge alone, if at all. I cannot stomach it myself.”

Christel adjusted a blanket over the older woman's lap and put more coal into the stove. “You really should eat. At the very least if you intend to get sick again you will find yourself better served to have something cold and tasteless to be sick with.”

Mrs. Gables reluctantly accepted the spoon Christel offered from the tray. “Pragmatic, are we?”

Christel set the orange marmalade beside the bowl, especially since she had gone to a great deal of trouble to find it. “I try to be,” she said. “I ate earlier. Even coming from a family of seafarers, I am not immune to the effects of the sea. I know what tends to work.”

“No one will ever accuse me of being a dainty eater.”

But after a bite, Mrs. Gables's attention slipped to the window. She set down the spoon. “His lordship usually does not take Lady Anna on deck,” she said. “ 'Tis not my place to question him, but her mother was such a delicate sort. What if Lady Anna should come down with a fever?”