Brazen Temptress (24 page)

For her hair, a gold coronet shaped like an asp had been fashioned from silk. The fabric shimmered as if it were truly a precious metal. An elaborate mask with paste jewels and peacock feathers completed the ensemble.

"How did you do this?" Maureen asked, since her own sewing skills were limited to repairing sails and an occasional ill-fitting patch for her trousers.

Lady Mary smiled. "I suppose the 'economies' of having William on half pay for so long have finally paid off. I've been redoing my gowns and William's uniforms for nearly thirty years. I suppose you could say I've picked up a thing or two."

A thing or two? The lady was being entirely too modest.

"I shouldn't wear this," Maureen said. "Even you've told me that a young lady's dress should never be daring. And this ..." Maureen looked down at the costume again. "Why, I'll draw too much attention."

"This is exactly why you will wear it," Lady Mary snapped. "Maureen, this dress may well save your life. If you create a huge sensation tonight, the Lord Admiral wouldn't dare hang you. How will he explain your disappearance?" The lady looked back down at her creation. "He won't be able to. So he will have to leave you alone, especially if you gain the protection of someone. A man with the power to shelter you." The lady held up the dress before Maureen. "What you need to do tonight is find someone to propose marriage."

Maureen stared at her "godmother" as if the woman had finally fallen completely prey to her own fantasies.

"You want me to find a husband? In one night?" She hoped she didn't have to tell the lady that she already had one, and look at all the trouble he'd caused her! But another one? Hardly.

"It's been done before," Lady Mary said with the assurance of one who thought it quite likely. "Very successfully, mind you. And by young ladies with half your beauty."

"But it won't be —" Maureen started to say, but she stopped herself as she saw the disappointment hiring the lady's mouth. She'd gone to so much work to help Maureen in the only way she knew how; how could Maureen dash her dreams? Instead, she picked up the mask and looked at the delicate stitchwork around the edges.

It won't be necessary, she wanted to tell her. I'll be gone at midnight, and you won't have to worry about the Lord Admiral ever harming me again. But that would only distress her guardian even further, so the less said, Maureen reasoned, the better.

"Oh, you don't think it will be possible wearing the mask," Lady Mary finished. "That is why you will wear your hair unbound. No one will mistake you for anyone else." She smiled and shooed Lucy into action.

In no time Maureen found herself staring into the hallway mirror, unsure of who the mysterious lady in the reflection could be.

Surely, not her!

Lady Mary's promise of a transformation meant to captivate hadn't been a boast — Maureen barely recognized herself. If the Trahern masquerade was meant to be a night of illusion, then Lady Mary had completed the task admirably.

Maureen wondered what Julien would think of her disguise. This costume hardly fit his recommendation to wear something that she could slip away in unnoticed. The gold thread caught the light and one's eye with its flickering cast. The paste gems in the mask sparkled as if they had been dug from the ancient queen's tomb.

Even dressed as she had been of late in the current English fashions, she hadn't felt so ... naked. She'd never seen herself as a woman before, not in the way she looked now. She wondered if the fabled temptress of the Nile had ever felt so wicked.

Oh, Julien would have a fit for her to be out in public dressed so. And that, she knew, would have its own rewards later.

She grinned to herself, thinking of their night together, of the vows they'd renewed, of their future.

The bell over the door jangled loudly, startling her out of her daydreams. She could hear Lady Mary and Lucy holding a loud discussion in the kitchen over the ironing, while the Captain seemed to have disappeared into his study. None of them seemed to notice the bell as it jangled a second time, so Maureen opened the door.

To her complete shock, there stood a disheveled and grief-stricken Mrs. Landon.

"Oh, Miss Maureen," the lady cried, "I found you." She rushed forward and crushed Maureen in her ample embrace. "I was so frightened, and I didn't know where else to go."

"Come inside, Mrs. Landon," Maureen told her, drawing the woman in from the front steps. The last thing she wanted was the Lord Admiral's guards to overhear anything the distressed lady might blurt out. She closed the door and led her to the small office Lady Mary kept off the front hallway.

"What has happened?" Maureen asked. "Is it my aunt? Ethan? Are they hurt? Sick?"

"Oh, if only it were so!" Mrs. Landon wailed as she collapsed into a chair. The lady dissolved into a deluge of tears, pulling her ever-present apron up to her face to cover her anguish.

"Mrs. Landon, what is it?" Maureen asked, kneeling before the woman and pulling away her apron. She looked directly into the housekeeper's watery eyes. "You must tell me, so I can help."

"Oh, there's no help to be had!" the lady cried.

"How is that?"

"They've taken away our dear boy."

Maureen's breath froze. "Ethan?"

The lady nodded.

"Was it a press gang?"

"No," Mrs. Landon said. "It couldn't be. They came to the house with a carriage, and before I knew what was happening they took ..."

"They took Ethan," Maureen finished for her when it seemed the lady could not utter another word of it.

Mrs. Landon nodded, new tears welling up in her eyes.

"Did they harm Aunt Pettigrew?" Maureen couldn't imagine her aunt allowing anyone to take Ethan without putting up a fight. The lady might be in her eighties and like to play the infirm, but Maureen knew well enough that Aunt Pettigrew was still cast of iron.

"That's the puzzle, miss, and why I came to you," Mrs. Landon said. "They took your aunt as well."

With Lady Mary and Lucy still engaged in the kitchen, Maureen was able to sneak Mrs. Landon upstairs to her attic room. For the better part of the next half hour, Maureen carefully extracted the complete story from the distraught woman.

The housekeeper had been out doing some shopping in town. When she returned she noticed a black carriage parked in the lane. As she drew closer she saw three men coming out of the house. Two were dragging Aunt Pettigrew, while the third had a trussed-up Ethan slung over his shoulder like a bale of cotton.

Mrs. Landon had shrunk back into the alley and watched in horror as her employer and young charge were tossed into the carriage and driven away posthaste.

Maureen knew she had little time before Lady Mary would be calling her downstairs to depart for the Trahern masquerade. Instead of alerting anyone to the lady's untimely arrival, Maureen instructed Mrs. Landon to wait for her in the attic room.

Stalking down the stairs, Maureen knew she'd been deceived.

Dammit, how could I have been so blind?
she cursed.

There was only one man who knew of Ethan's existence. Only one man who would have wanted her son.

Julien.

They'd agreed to leave Ethan at Aunt Pettigrew's for the time being. It would be safer for their son to be in England rather than sailing the seas with them. Julien had said he would set up an account for Aunt Pettigrew and send his solicitor instructions to see to the lad's future in case their plans went awry.

Lies, all of it lies, she realized. He'd never intended to see any of it through.

Instead, he'd betrayed her again with the same ease and charm as he had all those years ago. Before she reached the bottom of the steps, that fateful day, eight years past, replayed in her mind.

A painful reminder of lessons learned and lessons so easily forgotten.

West Indies
1805

Maureen awoke from her wedding night to the sound of thunder. She bolted upright in the strange bed, disoriented by her unfamiliar surroundings and the echoing retort of the brewing storm.

She turned over and found the space beside her empty. Her hand went to where Julien had been, but the sheets were cold, as if her languid memories of the night before were just a dream.

Again, a mighty thunderous clap boomed from the heavens, rocketing through the cabin, shaking the ship from stem to stern. But this time Maureen realized it wasn't thunder.

It was cannon.

They were under attack.

She leapt out of bed and to the door, ready to take her place beside her husband, but she realized she was still naked. She ripped through the cabin, opening chests and drawers until she found a shirt and breeches, all the while listening to the growing battle outside.

As she looked for a weapon, her gaze glanced past the window. She stopped her frantic search and stood as if frozen in the middle of the mayhem of Julien's now thoroughly ransacked cabin.

Beneath her feet, the slope of the deck and the pitch of the floor told her that the
Destiny
was maneuvering to join the battle. But what stopped Maureen was the direction the ship was taking.

Out the great windows of the cabin, she saw her father's ship and his fellow Alliance members trapped in the cay's inlet. Yet the
Destiny
wasn't turning to aid them; it was turning to join the line of ships bottling up the mouth to the bay, blocking any escape for the Alliance ships.

Including the
Forgotten Lady.

She pressed her nose to the glass and caught sight of several ships firing at the trapped pirates. Over each of these fluttered the Union Jack.

The British! There had been rumors of late of an organized hunt to stop the Alliance, but there had been such rumors for as long as she could remember.

Now it seemed the rumors were true, and they'd been betrayed.

Betrayed by her husband.

She looked at the offensive being mounted and spied three frigates and a ship of the line, at least a three-rater, she judged. While the Alliance had them outnumbered, their positions in the shallow water left them prey to the British, who could maneuver easily in the deeper waters of the channel.

And now the British could add the fleet
Destiny
to their number.

Then she remembered what she'd seen the night before — a lone sailor rowing out of the bay. Julien had joked that the man had been going to find his own true love, but she suspected now that the sailor had been sent to tell the British where to find the Alliance.

And later, when she'd thought the ship had come adrift, he'd distracted her, kept her from discovering the truth.

She flew to the door and tried to open it, only to find it locked. Infuriated, she searched the room again — this time for a weapon. There wasn't a pistol, dirk, or sword anywhere in the room that could be used to open the door.

It was almost as if Julien had planned everything, right down to the last detail.

Yanking open the last chest, she overturned it, spilling the contents of shirts and linens. Falling to the floor, she tossed the contents this way and that, hoping to find something he had missed. Then, when she was about to give up, she spied her salvation.

The dagger from Julien's pirate costume. He'd tossed it aside last night and hadn't noticed it this morning, hidden as it was under the table.

Her hand wrapped around the horn hilt, and for a moment she contemplated what to do.

There would be no opening the sturdy oak door with the wicked blade, of that she was sure, but there remained one avenue of escape.

The window.

The window her husband had climbed through to join her in their wedding bed.

If she had any sentiments about that evening before, they quickly evaporated. The room that had seemed her own piece of tempting heaven last night was now nothing more than a prison cell from which she could watch Julien's version of hell.

She went to the casement but found it, too, was locked, probably latched somehow from the outside. Frustrated but unwilling to admit defeat, Maureen picked up the empty chest and hurled it through the ornate glass.

It shattered the panes, opening the cabin to the acrid stench of gunpowder and flames. She slipped through the jagged opening and caught a rope hanging from the stern. With the dagger tucked in her belt, she climbed hand over hand up the rope through the smoke.

Once she made it over the railing, it took her a moment to get her bearings in the apparent chaos of the battle. But Maureen had been in battles before and immediately discerned the tight organization with which Julien's men worked.

Now to find my traitorous husband,
she thought, the dagger clenched in her hand.

The cannon from the closest English ship exploded with a hail of fire, the shot flying through the air in precise order. She watched the deadly spray of iron balls broadside the
Forgotten Lady,
opening her to the sea and soon, destruction. The once proud and beautiful ship listed precariously to one side, while flames licked and grew near the waterline.

Near where they'd stowed the Portuguese munitions they'd taken.

"No," she muttered. If she didn't warn her father soon, their ship would explode.

Revenge could come later.

As she climbed up on the railing to dive into the waters below, a pair of hands caught her around the waist and snatched her back from the rail.

"Reenie," Julien shouted at her over the raging din around them. Just then a round of answering shot whistled toward them. He threw her to the deck, knocking the wind from her and sending her dagger clattering across the debris-strewn planks. He lay over her protectively, as a second round swept over them. "Watch yourself. We are about to come about."

"You bastard," she spat. "You murdering, lying bastard." She struggled against his grip, but he held her down, sheltering her from the falling debris showering down around them. "You told them. You told them where we were. The only reason you came to us was to find us. To betray us."