Dreaming (14 page)

Letty
stepped onto the deck and into a cold slap of welcome wind. She could taste the brisk flavor of briny sea instead of the musky ancient taste of damp wood and burned timbers. Gulls cried overhead and the sails flapped and shimmied and swelled a hello.

Hugging her slippers and stockings, she just stood there for a moment and reveled in the freedom—the wind whipping back her heavy tangle of hair and plastering her damp skirts against her bare legs, the frosty spray of salted sea that pricked her cheeks and made her feel more alive than she had since Richard had kissed her.

Even the sun peeked out from a billowy white cloud and winked down at her. There was silver green sea everywhere, and the sky, blue and clear with only a cloud or two drifting overhead, and no land on the horizon, just the brilliant shine of the bright sun bouncing off the sea water.

She smiled and strolled over to a covered hatch, where she sat on the smooth wood and began to roll her stockings. Gus thudded up the stairs and then skidded to a stop once he was on the deck. He sat near the hatch waiting, a canine grin on his homely face.

Not more than a minute later Richard’s wet head cleared the hatch beam. Gus shot up and shook every drop of water from his lanky body, shimmying and shuddering as if he were ridding himself of fleas instead of water.

Letty
watched as Gus ignored Richard’s muttered curses and trotted over to plop down next to her. Richard seemed to bring out the worst in Gus. Or was it the other way around?

She shrugged and rolled one white stocking up her leg, pausing to slowly tie the blue
ribboned
garter with a perfect bow. When it was just so, she gave it a quiet pat and turned.

Humming the romantic notes of a sonata, she grabbed the other stocking and bent down to slide it onto her bare foot, wiggling her toes in one last gesture of freedom before she confined them again. She pulled up the stocking and casually glanced at Richard.

She stilled.

He no longer glared at Gus. She followed his intense look right to her legs. Chewing her lip, she slowly, and with sure dread, scanned the deck. The crew was frozen in place, every man wearing an expression exactly like Richard’s.

Unfortunately, the ship was not frozen in place.

She jerked down her skirt, but it was too late. The sails billowed, and billowed . . . and billowed . . . until the batten ropes slid from a mate’s hand. They whipped wildly through the mast rings and curled out into the full wind like tendrils of a siren’s hair.

The sails slapped together, loud and whipping, then blew loose and outward to hover over the deck. There was a shout. The mast creaked. Someone swore.

Letty
turned toward a man who was calling out for his mother. She listened more closely: Yes, that was it. Harry, the sailor with no eyebrows, dangled by a foot from one of the mast lines, bellowing over and over.

The poor soul must have been frightened terribly, a grown man, a smuggler yet, calling as he did for his mother’s comfort. Before she could find help for him the frozen crew came alive, shouting, running, leaping at the flying ropes.

A second later the ship slowly leaned toward the west. Just as slowly, just as certain,
Letty
began to slide. She gripped the edge of the hatch cover.

The ship listed more. The crew’s shouts were loud as cannon. Barrels rolled by to crash into the sea. A mop tumbled after them while swab buckets teetered and skidded and slid past her. One banged against the hatch and tilted, spilling soapy water over her arms and hands.

She looked up, clinging to the hatch rim, and saw a mast bend under the pull of its wild sail. Her fingers began to slip.

There was a loud crack.

“Richard!” she screamed, barely hanging on.

A canine howl rent the air.

“Gus!” she cried and struggled desperately, trying to look over her shoulder.

She lost her grip and slid. She clawed helplessly at the slick wood, grabbing for anything.

There was nothing but wet, flat wood.

The ship tilted again. It almost touched the sea.

“Oh, please!” she called out and slithered across the slick deck on a last prayer.

Chapter 8

Richard’s words were nothing even close to prayer. He took one look at the hellion sliding across the tilting deck and swore viciously.

He moved to grab her. Gus slid into him first, howling and whining, his paws frantically scrambling on the wet deck.

Richard wobbled slightly. “Hell’s teeth!”

Gus bit on to Richard’s ankle, hanging on for all he was worth—which was, in Richard’s mind, about two
ha’pennies
.

Four gangly paws slapped the deck like clabber boards. Both dog and man began to slide, Gus sprawling on all fours and his weight dragging them both backward.

Richard reached for the ship’s rail. And missed.

They slid again. He gripped the closest thing—the rim of a dinghy.

The ship lurched again and
Letty
slid past him, mumbling the Lord’s Prayer.

He grabbed for her leg. He got a wad of her skirt.

The sound of tearing fabric ripped through the air, along with her divine plea that God forgive all of Richard’s trespasses.

He wound her skirt fabric round and round his hand, pulling her close enough for her to grab hold of him.

“And lead him not into temptation . . . ”

“Quit praying for me, dammit! And hold still!” He felt Gus growling around his ankle and snarled back, “You too! Bloody damn dog!”

The dinghy creaked, but he knew it was secured to the rail. Only moments before that same dinghy had been part of his escape plan, until he’d seen that there was no land in sight.

Now that same boat and a few yards of silk were the only things keeping all three of them from falling into the sea.

The ship shuddered. He felt it through his aching arm, which was damn well killing him. He gritted his teeth together, tapping strength from an innate wealth of English stubbornness.

He pulled her toward him in spite of the throbbing of his wound, the rocking and listing ship, or the chaos on deck; in spite of the damned dog that had managed to wedge himself between his splayed legs, of the animal’s sharp teeth digging into his booted ankle, and, most of all, in spite of the fact that if he just let go, all his troubles would end.

He tightened his grip on the dinghy.
Coward
.

He glanced down at the hellion whose hands were folded in prayer, whose eyes were tightly squeezed shut and who still muttered something about delivering him from evil. “
Letty
!”

She opened her frightened eyes and looked up at him.

“Unfold your blasted hands and try to hang on to me!”

She reached out for him and slipped, jerking his arm. Pain like stabbing knives shot from his wound to his fingertips.

Her face was stark white with panic and he could feel her literally begin to shake with fear. Jaw tight, he pulled, ignoring the sweat that dripped into his vision. “Hellion!”

Her gaze locked with his.

“Try again.”

She stretched toward him, reaching, never taking her eyes off his. Her fingers closed over his forearm. Sighing with relief, she said his name. He could feel Gus growling around his ankle. Ungrateful wretch.

Just then she reached up with her other hand.

“Not my arm!” he warned. “My—”

She gripped his wound.

He spat the most foul word in his vocabulary. His vision flared with stars, hundreds of stars, thousands of stars. Everything was white. Then black. For long seconds nothing existed except the burning agony in his arm.

To his credit, he didn’t let go.

But neither did she.

It would have been less painful if she’d shot him again. In the same spot. At point-blank range. A hundred times or so.

“Waist!” he finally said through clenched teeth. “Grab my waist!” He sucked in a deep breath and shouted, “My
bloody
waist!”

His vision cleared and focused on her stunned face. Her eyes widened with realization. She slid her free arm around his waist and let go of his wound, clinging to him and mumbling something into his belly that sounded like “love” and “sorry.”

The ship shifted again, and he steeled himself for another tug of war, but to his surprise it surged upward instead of slowly turning into the sea as he had expected.

Stunned, he looked around. The crew had somehow managed to secure the mainsail, and the wind was cupping the sail once again. However, the mast was no longer straight. In fact, it was bent at a strange angle. Arched.

His gaze followed it upward, where the sun, bright as hellfire, blinded him for an instant. A large shadow flew by once, then again. His eyes adjusted. A moment later he realized why the mast was bent.

Some poor sailor, snared by one foot, swung like a human pendulum from the mast lines, bellowing curses on womankind that were so vitriolic, so original in their venom, that even Richard flinched.

The hellion huddled closer. “He was desperately calling for his mother a few minutes ago.”

“His mother?”

“His mother’s kiss, actually.”

He frowned.

She looked up at him and said seriously, “He kept screaming ‘mother pucker.’”

“I see,” Richard said with a ghost of a smile. He felt an odd sense of kinship with poor Harry, who still swung high above them, screaming dire threats.

“Did you hear what he just shouted?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t suppose he was referring to me, was he?”

“You’re the only female aboard.”

“Could he actually do . . . ” she paused, frowning in horror. “That?”

Richard shook his head. “It’s not physically impossible. Inventive.” He rubbed a finger over his chin thoughtfully. “Interesting. But not possible. Of course, if I were in his . . . position, I might relish the thought of tying your legs in a cinch knot around your throat.”

She shivered suddenly, looking very vulnerable. Without thought, he did something completely idiotic. No doubt due to starvation, pain, and loss of blood.

He slid his arm around her.

Fool.

“You wouldn’t let him harm me.”

He gave a droll laugh. “I wouldn’t?”

“No.” There was certainty in her voice. “You wouldn’t.” Her hand drifted down his good arm and she seemed to try to get even closer to him, as if by doing so she’d be sheltered from danger.

He felt that chill of unexplained emotion, the strength of it, and he glanced down, seeing nothing but a familiar and tangled mane of curly brown hair. He frowned momentarily because he didn’t recognize the emotion until suddenly it had a name, a long and forgotten name: something called
tenderness
.

She raised her head. There was utter worship in her blue eyes. She looked at him as if he had just cleansed the world of sin. He fought to ignore his reaction—the
fistlike
tightening inside his chest, the incomprehensible urge to keep her close to him.

She blinked back some emotion that scared the hell out of him, then tore her soft gaze away and slid her hand into his, touching it gently and turning it over to just stare at his palm for the longest time.

He watched her over her bent head, then asked, “Looking for nail holes?”

She sighed then, one of those dreadful and dreamy exhalations that meant she was in her own little world. One he couldn’t fathom. One he didn’t want to.

He knew too that she probably hadn’t heard him, and that even if she had, she wouldn’t have understood. His cutting remarks and his bitter cynicism were lost on her, for to be bitter, one had to have hatred in their heart; to understand cynicism one had to see the world through a jaundiced eye.

In her heart, she knew no hatred, no bitterness or self-mockery. These things were as foreign to her as was the sordid and unproductive life he’d led. Surely she’d been the recipient of those cruel things. Her
London
season had subjected her to people who knew little else but to mock those they didn’t understand, those who didn’t think or do as they did. Yet she had acquired none of those cruel traits
London
worshiped as town polish.