Lady Vixen (8 page)

Nicole
giggled then, a giggle verging on the hysterical, and a moment later they were
both laughing on the sand, glad just to be alive. But Nicole was first to
recover and soberly she said, "I owe you my life, Allen. How can I ever
repay you?"

For
a second the blue eyes roved over her face and the slender body, the alluring
curves obvious in the wet clothes, but he merely smiled and said,
"Nonsense, young Nick! But I don't think we'll go swimming in this place
anymore, I wouldn't want to go through that again!"

With
a shudder Nicole glanced out at the still waters of the lagoon. "No!
Certainly not!"

Not
wishing her to dwell on how close to death they had come, he affectionately
ruffled the sea-wet head. "Come now! Forget it and just remember next time
don't swim out so far."

Giving
a subdued smile, she nodded in quick agreement. "The shallows it is for
me, for a long time."

They
dressed quickly without further conversation, but Nicole knew that she was
forever in Allen's debt and that she owed him her very life. It had been an
inordinately brave thing that he had done and she would never forget it.
Never!

La
Belle Garce
was
almost deserted when they boarded her some time later. Now Nicole's hair was
combed back tightly in a queue that stretched her features, hardening them and
hiding the feminine softness. She wore the cheap cotton loose-fitting pants and
shirt, and did indeed look to be a tall, slender youth of fifteen.

There
were a few men dicing near the foredeck, and with ease she recognized Jake's
sandy head amongst them. She glanced at him, wondering anew at all the
questions he asked. And as if feeling her gaze, he looked up, his ever-present
plug of tobacco bulging in one cheek. He was not a prepossessing person and
Nicole decided that he deliberately cultivated that unremarkable appearance. No
one would remember him five minutes after meeting him. But Jake asked a lot of
questions, Nicole thought, as she nodded at him and quickly walked to the
Captain's quarters. Jake was new this trip, and she couldn't quite shake the
conviction that Jake, like Allen, had something to hide. But then she shrugged
her uncertain thoughts away and entered Captain Saber's quarters.

"Oh,
hello, Mr. Higgins," she said cheerfully, seeing the first mate bent over
a map on one of the room's long tables.

"Morning,
Nick. Looking for the Captain?"

Nicole
liked Mr. Higgins. His brown button eyes were always merry and he appeared to
have a soft spot for her, because more than one time he had covered up some minor
transgression of hers from the captain's gimlet eyes.

"No.
Not really. But I thought I should report back to the ship. I've been gone all
morning," she admitted with a guilty smile.

"Well,
the Captain's gone visiting." A sly grin wrinkling his already creased
face, Higgins murmured, "And we know who he's visiting, don't we?"

"Louise
Huntleigh," Nicole said flatly, wondering why the news depressed her.

Higgins
nodded, his brown eyes twinkling. "Ah, yes. If the Captain isn't careful,
his sea-roving days will be over."

"I
hardly
think so," drawled a deep lazy voice unexpectedly from the doorway.

And
turning around, Nicole felt her heart lurch in her breast as she met the
amber-gold gaze of the Captain. Lately it seemed the sudden sight of him always
did that to her, and she resented it—resented, too, his unashamed masculinity
as he stood in the door of the cabin, a brief towel tied around his lean hips.
His skin was burned a deep dark bronze, his chest wide and well-muscled with a
mat of fine black hair, his legs long and lean like the rest of him, and he
reminded Nicole vividly of a sleek, untamed tawny-pelted panther, his gold eyes
gleaming mockingly between thick black lashes. He had obviously just returned
from a swim in the sea, for drops of salt water were staining the wood floor of
the deck. Disregarding the two occupants, he casually undid the towel, and
Nicole swiftly averted her eyes from the sight of that tall, broad-shouldered,
naked figure as he walked with a lithe nonchalance to his private quarters.

Higgins
saw her instinctive movement and there was a question in his eyes. Nicole sent
him a feeble smile, and after a minute, still wondering at her shyness, Higgins
shrugged and went back to studying his map. But before she could escape from
the Captain's disturbing presence, his voice halted her. "Nick, where the
hell did you put those black breeches I bought in Boston last trip?"

With
a resigned sigh, knowing the hours of freedom were over, Nicole reluctantly
walked into Saber's private quarters.

Saber,
still naked, was standing with his back to her, before an oak chest with one
drawer open, as he rummaged through the clothes that filled it. And for a
moment Nick was caught by the sheer beauty of that sun-coppered, undoubtedly
hard, masculine body. He was tall, an inch or two over six feet, a perfectly
proportioned Apollo from the crown of his well-shaped black head to the soles
of his aristocratically narrow feet, and she wished desperately that she could
view his nakedness, his almost pagan beauty, with the same indifference that
she gave any other member of the crew. But she couldn't. Saber unsettled her,
making her un- consciously aware of her hidden femininity, and lately those
unwelcome feelings had increased to a point that rendered her normally
confident movements clumsy.

This
time was no different, and as Saber turned and glanced impatiently over his
shoulder at her, she crossed the room and stumbled over a small wooden stool.
Saber's quick action, as he leaped and caught her by both shoulders, saved her
from falling flat on the floor in front of him.

"Hold
it, youngster. Just because I'm in a hurry doesn't mean I expect you to fall at
my feet," he grinned at her, his teeth very even and white in the
blackness of his neat beard.

Again
that unwanted breathlessness assailed Nicole and she was so very conscious of
his naked body, of the warm, sea-scented nearness of him, that for one
horrifying moment she thought she would melt into his arms and turn her mouth
up to the hard experienced fierceness of his recklessly curved lips. But with a
suppressed gasp she quickly recovered herself, as her brain clamored—remember
he thinks you're a boy!

Jerkily
she moved away from his arms and muttered, "Those breeches are here in the
sea chest, right where you told me to pack them."

"Oh,
so I did," he returned carelessly enough, but there was a puzzled frown
between the sardonically carved black eyebrows as he accepted the garment in
question from her. "Something wrong, Nick?" he asked unexpectedly.

Finding
her tongue swiftly, she mumbled, "No. I'm just having trouble finding my
sea legs this trip." She breathed a sigh of relief when he dismissed her
after a hard look from narrowed eyes.

She
would not have been so relieved if she had known his gaze followed her, the
puzzled frown deepening as she slipped from the cabin. What the devil was the
matter with the boy, Saber thought. Nick had been as jumpy as a gigged fish
lately, and he damn sure wanted to know why. Thinking of it, he finally decided
that he had better ask Higgins—Higgins seemed to know everything that went on
with the crew. And recalling all the years he and Higgins had spent together,
he smiled.

They
had been companions from the moment the older man had shielded a bewildered and
confused young man, thrown suddenly into the less-than-tender embrace of the
British Royal Navy. Those first months had been hell, even with Higgins running
interference for him. His back bore the results of those times when Higgins,
himself a felon convicted of forgery, had not been able to prevent his
hot-headed young friend from coming to grief. Looking back, Saber often thought
he would have gone mad if it hadn't been for Higgins's quiet and cool counsel.
But even Higgins had run afoul of the brutal system, and when Saber had vowed
to jump ship, Higgins had come with him—their roles suddenly reversing, for it
was now Saber who led and Higgins who followed. There were few men and, at the
moment, no women whom Saber would ever trust, but Higgins was one—the other,
people would have been surprised to know, was a black ex-slave named Sanderson.

Sanderson,
too, had known adversity, when Saber and Higgins had come across him shortly
after their own desertion. He had been on the slave block in New Orleans, and
was being sold, it was said, for insolence to his master. It was by accident
that the two were there in the square that hot, sunny morning, but the sight of
that powerful body, wearing his chains with pride, affected Saber deeply, as he
remembered his own recent chains. Pooling their resources, they had bid on the
man and shortly found themselves close to being penniless, their only asset a
slave noted for his undesirable traits.

It
had been a strange trio that had walked away from the slave sale—a little gnome
of a man, a tall, broad-shouldered youth, and a sullen, slender negro. Their
steps took them to the Lafitte Brothers' smithy, and there, his mouth twisting
in a grimace of distaste at the sight of the heavy iron shackles around the
man's ankles, Saber had demanded that they be struck off— all of them. The task
done, he had roughly pressed the purchase papers along with his last gold coin
into the startled man's hand and told him that he was free. In that instant he
gained a slave for life.

His
lips curved in a relaxed smile, Saber shrugged off thoughts of the past and
sauntered into the office of the ship. Higgins was still there, and the recent
scene with Nick on his mind, Saber asked, "Higgins, have you noticed
anything odd about Nick lately? The boy regards me as a monster and I can't
figure out why."

For
a moment Higgins hesitated answering him, instantly recalling the peculiar
shyness that seemed to overtake the boy whenever the Captain, clothed or not,
was around. Finally he said, "Can't say that I have, I
think the boy
is just growing up and maybe feeling a bit resentful of being no more than your
skivvy. Mayhap Nick has ambitions."

Saber
snorted. "I doubt it. He's either being downright cheeky to me or trying
to blend in with the bulkhead. But you may be right. I'll have to give some
thought to his future."

Nicole
would have been horrified at the thought of the Captain planning her future,
but fortunately she didn't know of this conversation or the expressed opinions
of the two men. Consequently she went about her daily tasks as if nothing had
altered, although she was conscious that Saber seemed to watch her more
closely, and once again she worried that he had discovered her deception. At
night while lying in her hammock, thoughts of the Captain invaded her mind and
angrily she cursed him. Damn Saber! Even when he wasn't around he possessed the
power to distress her.

Some
days later the thought occurred to her again, as once more she lay on the warm
sands of yet another private little cove. She was alone this time, and she had
partially recovered from the fear that struck her heart the first time she had
entered the sea after the shark attack. The abject terror was gone, for she
believed that it had been a fluke and was not likely to happen again. But she
avoided the lagoon where it had happened and she never swam too far from the
shore—something she felt certain that the Captain would mock as lily-livered,
if he knew. Sighing, she shifted her naked body on the warm sand, wishing that
her thoughts didn't always drift to the exasperating and commanding Captain
Saber.

Until
recently she had not given her relationship with Saber much thought. He was
just there, in the background. Reflectively she admitted silently that she had
admired him intensely during her first few years on board
La Belle Garce
—he
had been that godlike creature who had made her wildest dreams come true, who
had lifted her from the Markhams, and who had rilled her life with excitement.
It hadn't been until the war with England that she bad begun to question her emotions.

It
was odd, she thought suddenly, that in the five years they had been together,
he had never shown any curiosity about his young secretary-cabin boy. He had
never evinced any interest in why she had wanted so badly to go to sea or even
if she had any family to worry over her.

She
supposed it was partially due to the fact that one didn't question the motives
or backgrounds of the hard-eyed, grim-faced individuals who sailed on the
privateers and pirate ships, and he had merely extended that same lack of
interest to her. It was an unspoken rule that no one, not even the Captain,
pried into a man's reasons for wishing the anonymity of life at sea. Saber had
never paid any attention to her beyond seeing that she did as he wanted. He had
never been unnecessarily cruel, although he had been a demanding taskmaster.
She never questioned their relationship on the ship, nor the way he ran
La
Belle Garce,
and somewhat to her confusion she discovered that there was a
great deal to admire in him. But that was before, she thought grimly, before he
had displayed his complete coldbloodedness.

It
had happened just three months ago—one of the crew, a youth not above eighteen,
had smuggled a woman aboard as they left port from France for New Orleans. The
woman was a whore, one of the many who walked the waterfront areas, and Nicole
had often wondered how Tom, the youth, could have been so enamored by the
hard-faced, sly-eyed creature. But he was and, worse, had allowed himself to be
convinced by the woman that without him her life was nothing. He was so blind
with love and cleverly manipulated by the older woman that he broke one of the
cardinal rules of the ship—no women on board when on the high seas. They were
two days from France before the whore was discovered, and Nicole shivered
remembering the cold rage that had emanated from Saber when Tom and the woman
had been brought before him. Tom, he dealt with swiftly—thirty lashes before
the crew and the remainder of this trip in the brig.