Windswept (22 page)

It had seemed like a good plan when he voiced it. The problem was that the next morning no one on the island of Key West knew where Jacob Proctor had gone. Most people were only certain of the places he hadn’t gone, like Nassau or the other Caribbean islands with which he generally traded. In addition, Thurston learned one other very distressing fact. Every few months, Jacob Proctor left the island and sailed to an undisclosed destination that kept him away for three or more weeks at a time. He always took the same abbreviated crew of six men with him. Men who had never told another living soul where they sailed with their captain.

“I’ve no idea, Your Honor,” an ancient, gimpy-legged sailor left in charge of Proctor’s Warehouse told Thurston. “No one knows but them few that sails with him. The captain always says he’s goin’ on personal business, and he leaves it at that.” The old sailor then dismissed a Federal judge with a wave of his arthritic fingers. “You’d best forget askin’ around town, Judge. Ain’t no one on this island gonna tell you what they don’t know.”

It was hopeless. The
Dover Cloud
had a full twenty-four hour start on any vessel Thurston might consider hiring to chase her. And no ship currently in Key West could even hope to keep up with Proctor’s sleek schooner, much less overtake it. And the old-timers who watched the sky swore a storm was brewing in the southeast, and only a fool would venture into the Atlantic when a blow was coming. Thurston was not a sailor, and he was not a fool. He was a practical man who suddenly found himself having to trust in luck.

With a heavy heart, he trudged toward his home knowing he would have to tell his wife discouraging news. He thought of his precious daughter, somewhere on the seas with a man she barely knew and he didn’t trust. He hoped Proctor had the good sense to return his daughter to Key West. If he didn’t, Thurston vowed the captain would pay dearly for this error in judgment.

“My dear Nora,” he muttered. “If all this is a result of some romantic notion you somehow got in your little head, I pray to God you don’t find your illusions dashed on a dark reef or crushed in the cruel hands of a tyrant.”

Sunlight as fuzzy and soft as the down on a duck sat on Nora’s eyelids. It was just enough to convince her it was daylight and dim enough to prompt her to open her eyes without threat of her headache returning. Oh, dear…that star-spangled, skull-pounding headache came back to her with startling clarity. Something hard had hit the back of her head just before something heavy covered her, and did still. She was nearly buried in blunt thickness. She remembered thinking it was nighttime. Now she was glad it was not. She had to put the pieces together, to make sense of what happened. If only she could concentrate.

Strange noises interrupted her attempt to remember. They were creaks and groans, and Nora thought at first they were coming from her. She wouldn’t have been surprised. Her body ached as if it could groan its protest.

She managed to work her arm from under the weight pressing down on her and felt behind her head. Her palm met timber, thick and wide, and slightly rough. The odd noises seemed to originate from a sort of wooden fortress surrounding her. And from footsteps sounding on a wood floor.

Oh, God, she remembered! She was in the hold of Jacob Proctor’s ship. She had fallen while trying to escape. A coil of rope. A sack of flour…it was all too ridiculous. How long had she been unconscious? Not long she decided, determining from shadows that the sun was near its apex. Hopefully she had time to get off the ship without being seen. If she could just remove the stupid sack. And if whoever was in the hold with her would go back on deck again. With a little luck, she could slip up the ladder and cross quickly and quietly to the harbor.

She remained perfectly still while an inner voice urged her to stay calm and wait for her opportunity. Confidence in her plan faltered, however, when she sensed motion all around her. Her body, though rigid in its burlap prison, rocked in a gentle sway. Her head hummed with an effort to maintain a steady equilibrium. With a quick, hot burst of panic she understood. Her fortress was moving! The
Dover Cloud
had sailed.

“Bloody ‘ell! What the devil’s goin’ on ‘ere?” A voice squawked in a strong Cockney accent, and Nora’s stomach clenched in fear.

Heavy soled shoes clomped briskly across the floor away from her, and the same voice hollered up to the deck. “Captain Proctor, come quick. There’s a body in the ‘old. We got us a corpse on board!”

So much for escaping. Nora pondered her immediate future and realized the next few minutes could be the most embarrassing and unpleasant of her life. There was nothing to be done but await her fate. Pinned against the walls of the
Dover Cloud’s
hull, and trapped under twenty pounds of flour, all she could do was agonize over the prospect of facing the man she’d least choose to be her accuser. She half hoped he’d actually mistake her for dead and throw her overboard in a canvas sack. But the sad fact remained that if she escaped the sack, she still couldn’t swim.

In seconds Jacob’s footsteps sounded on the ladder and his voice filled the small room. “What is it, Skeet? Where’s the body?”

The sailor’s answer reflected the quivering in his body. “It’s th..there, s..sir. Just the sh..shoes are stickin’ out.”

Nora wiggled her feet and shoved at the flour sack. It moved an inch or so, and the sailor named Skeet shrieked. For one crazy moment Nora wished she were Jonah and a giant whale would surface from the bottom of the sea and swallow her whole. She’d rather face the gullet of a monster than the wrath of the captain of the
Dover Cloud
.

Long fingers wrapped around the limp corner of the sack that now tickled the skin between Nora’s nose and mouth. She recognized the light matting of hair on the knuckles just as surely as she recognized the deep voice that hovered above her head. “One thing’s for certain, Skeet,” the voice said as the sack was lifted. “The stowaway’s not dead.”

Like a crushed sunflower, Nora Seabrook lay crumpled on the floor of the
Dover Cloud
. Her yellow dress, dusted with flour, spread around her face and body, encircling a mass of raven hair in its center. Her legs, bare from the knees down, stuck out like two delicate stems. And Jacob couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d uncovered a field of brilliant sunflowers growing in the dimly lit hold of his ship.

He flung the sack away and stared at her, trying to gather wits that refused to do anything but scatter to the four corners of the hold. He closed his eyes and pressed his finger and thumb against the lids. When he opened them, she was still there. “You!” The word came out almost as a curse and was followed by an actual one. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She struggled up on her elbows and leveled an icy glare at him that for just an instant made him feel as if he were the intruder, she were Cleopatra, and the
Dover Cloud
had suddenly become a Nile River barge. But only for an instant. “I asked you a question, Nora!” he shouted, for lack of any intelligent thought coming to his head.

“It’s not as if I chose to be here,” she snapped back. “I would hardly choose these accommodations for a Caribbean voyage, Captain.”

“Do you want me to believe you were carted on board against your will with the supplies?”

Some of the blue ice melted in her eyes. “I want you to believe it, yes, but I doubt that you will.”

“Nora, how did you get on this ship, and what earthly reason did you have for doing so?”

Her gaze darted around the confined space as if she expected to find answers to his questions carved in the black oak walls. When she glanced down her body and noticed for the first time her disheveled and immodest appearance, she let out a gasp. With quick, nervous hands she attempted to cover her legs, and Jacob felt an unwanted stab of pity. Her rumpled, flour-covered skirt wouldn’t cooperate, and she only managed to reveal layers of ruffled undergarments.

He cleared his throat. “Are you hurt?”

“Not that you care, but yes, I was. I’ve been lying down here with a mountain of flour on me for heaven knows how long.”

“For over twenty-four hours apparently.”

Her fingers stilled over the pale bare skin of her calves, and her gaze shot to meet his. “Twenty-four hours? We’ve been sailing for over a day?”

“Nora, we’re approaching the eastern tip of Cuba.”

The pageant of emotions on her face matched the ones spinning turbulently in his own head. He’d only begun to grasp the consequences of having her on board, and all of them spelled trouble. He couldn’t take her to Belle Isle. He was as certain of that as he was of the wrath that must be building inside Key West’s Federal judge at this moment…if he suspected where his daughter was.

And worse, Jacob had just left Key West the day before, determined to put distance between himself and the innocently, yet dangerously seductive Nora Seabrook. He had done the noble thing, damn it, for once in his life. And yet here they were, two of eight people occupying one hundred and seventy scant feet in the middle of a vast ocean. If ever there was a time Jacob needed to think, it was now. “Can you walk?” he asked her.

“Of course I can walk…back to Key West if I have to!”

He extended his hand to her, she took it and struggled to her feet. “At this point I’ll just ask you to come to my quarters. I’m going to get some answers, Nora. Skeet, escort Miss Seabrook to my cabin.”

He turned away from her but a sudden pressure on his hand brought him back. He stared into a face that had gone milky white and eyes that were suddenly veiled with a soft aquamarine haze. She swayed against his chest, and he caught her under her arms. “I thought you said you could walk,” he said.

“I can,” she insisted. “I just need a minute.”

It was then he saw the discoloration on the crown of her head. Her hair was matted with blood. Picking her up, he cradled her against his chest and muttered under his breath, “I’m starting to believe that I’m not going to get an honest statement out of you at all, Nora.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Will you hold still? I can’t do this if you’re squirming.” Jacob’s voice displayed a mounting impatience, but Nora knew he couldn’t possibly be as impatient as she was. For ten minutes he’d been swabbing her head with a strange concoction, not letting her move from the bed where he’d placed her when they first came into this cabin.

He had set her down first and then lowered himself beside her and turned her around so he could examine her wound. His left leg was on the floor while the other was bent at the knee and drawn up on the bed coverlet. Nora’s backside was pressed against his calf. His arm was around her and his hand was holding her brow immobile. She’d endured his none too gentle ministrations for about as long as she intended to.

“Ouch!” she cried when his warlock brew seeped into the cut again. “What you’re doing hurts worse than my injury.”

“Well, it wouldn’t if you knew how to be a good patient.”

“I’d be a good patient if you had any bedside manner as a doctor!”

“I’m not a doctor, in case I need to remind you of that fact. I’m a ship captain, one who has the unpleasant task of dealing with a stowaway…a stowaway who just happens to be you!”

She ducked her head and spun around to glare at him. “Why is it that every time I’m around you, you make it seem as if my presence is the worse thing that could have happened to you?”

He choked out a sarcastic snort. “In this case, it may truly be the worst thing that’s happened to me. What does a man have to do to distance himself from you, Nora?”

She stood up and placed her hands on her hips. Her temper had boiled up through her bloodstream until she wouldn’t have been surprised if her hair caught on fire. “Here’s a suggestion…walk the plank!”

His face contorted with the effort to keep from grinning, infuriating her even more. He leaned back on the bed. “I’ll consider it. Now, sit back down and let me look at your head one last time.”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t need more looking at. If you had any compassion at all, you’d know there are other areas of my body that are causing me much more discomfort than that little scratch.”

If he possessed the slightest common sense he would understand what she was so delicately trying to express, but apparently, he didn’t. So he simply sat forward and stared at her with a wary expression that bordered on sympathetic. “Where does it hurt? I can call for Trevor. He’s the closest thing we have to a real doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor, Jacob. I need privacy. I’ve been in that hold for over twenty four hours. There are certain matters that need to be taken care of.”

His eyes widened with understanding. “Oh! Of course.” He pointed to a set of short stairs that led to a dark paneled door. “It’s over there.” He backed away until he reached the exit. “I…I’ll just leave you to do whatever you need to do. Take as long as you like. We’ll talk later.”

At least he wasn’t totally insensitive, and she had to admit he was even somewhat endearing in his thick-headed manly embarrassment. “Thank you,” she said, “and as long as you’ve displayed this much concern for my well being, may I also beg a little nourishment? It’s been just as long…”

He raised his hands in a sign of capitulation. “I know. Twenty-four hours. I’ll have something sent up.”