Mariah's Prize (4 page)

“In return you give me half the shares. Now that’s what I’d deem fair.”

“Thirty percent.” His offer was beyond fair, but her I pride wouldn’t let her give away half.

“I didn’t ask you to assume the debts.”

“I’ll pay them outright, not assume a blessed cent. Forty-five.”

Mariah took a deep breath.

“Forty. And I mean to pay you back every blessed cent.”

“Forty it is.” Gabriel slapped his palm on the desk. He would have settled for thirty, but he’d been curious to see how far she’d bargain. She was clever, and he liked that in a woman. “Send your agent here tomorrow with the papers, and then we’ll begin outfitting proper.”

Mariah told herself she should be grateful. Once it became known that Gabriel Sparhawk was the Revenge’s new captain, there’d be no more angry creditors knocking at her front door. With his kind of luck, she and her mother and sister would be free from debt after one, maybe two voyages. She had accomplished what she’d intended to do, even if it had taken one shameless, wanton kiss from a man who’d thought it only a game.

“Thank you. Captain Sparhawk,” she said softly, looking at the polished toes of his boots. Better to think of Daniel, his shy smile and the sandy hair that always slipped into his eyes. She remembered her joy when he’d asked her to wed, and felt the too-familiar sting of tears behind her eyes.

Her open face reflected every emotion, and the sadness that Gabriel now saw there baffled him until he remembered her father’s death. With her head bent and her hands clasped loosely at her waist, she seemed too fragile for the responsibilities that had been thrust upon her, and he longed to take her into his arms again to comfort her.

“And thank you for leaving me my waistcoat,” he said gently.

“You’re a sharp trader. Miss West.”

“You shouldn’t be so surprised.” Her smile was bittersweet.

“In eighteen years I’ve had to be sharper than most ladies.”

Eighteen. Only eighteen. The same age that Catherine had been when he ‘d lost her.

In the dappled light reflecting off the water, he suddenly saw again her resemblance to Catherine—the shadowy sweep of her lashes across her full cheek, the way her lips were parted, the graceful, curving line of her throat and shoulders. Shaken, he remembered what Ethan had said about second chances and salvation. Without thinking, he swore harshly. Mariah’s startled gaze met his, and the resemblance vanished.

To hell with salvation. Mariah West wasn’t Catherine Langley, and she never would be. Second chances didn’t come to anyone in this life. He hadn’t become the man he was now through ovemice scruples and preachers’ morality. If he wanted something, one way or another he made it his own.

The girl before him’ lifted her hands to settle her bonnet, unwittingly drawing his attention to the swell of her breasts above her tightly laced waist. Her skin was creamy pale, and he knew it would be soft beneath his touch.

The way Catherine’s had been.

Eighteen was young, but old enough. He had the sloop. Why couldn’t he have the girl, as well?

“There’s one more term to be settled between us.” His mouth was too dry for the bantering to come easily, and to his own ear his words sounded forced.

“One we won’) bother putting to the clerk’s paper.” j She waited, her brows raised in silent question.

“Before I sail, return to Crescent Hill and dine witt me.” He smiled, and watched her expression change froa surprise to flushed pleasure and then to wariness. Before hi was done, he’d make sure she’d feel nothing but pleasure from him. He’d prove to himself that she was no differed from all the others.

“Supper, that is all.” ;

Mariah hesitated. In the last minutes his face had changed in ways she couldn’t fathom. Though his smile’ remained, the laughter had gone from his eyes, and the lines etched into his cheeks by the sun and wind had deepened. He was right. She should be afraid of him.

“I wasn’t much of a host last night,” he said, sensing her reluctance.

Much as he longed to, he wouldn’t try to kiss her again. Better to leave her wanting and off-balance. He plucked his that from the peg and twice tapped the curved brim lightly with his thumbs. “Grant me the chance to make amends. Besides, there’s nothing untoward in a shipowner dining with a captain.”

“It’s vastly untoward when the shipowner’s a lady,” she said quickly.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot accept your invitation.”

“Some other place, then? One more agreeable to your… sensibilities?”

She didn’t like being teased about her sensibilities. She wasn’t even sure what or where they were, and she didn’t like granting him even that small advantage. But she could be just as determined. She would dine with him, and prove to him and to herself that that single kiss had meant as little to her as it clearly did to him.

“Very well, then. But not your house.”

“Not my house. Agreed.” Somehow he managed to keep the triumph from his voice. “I mean to clear Newport within a fortnight. We’ll name the night soon.” With the back of his hand he gently brushed the curve of her cheek, and she prayed he didn’t feel how she shivered at his touch. Not until he’d turned to leave did she realize her hands were clasped so tightly that her fingers were shaking.

“Captain Sparhawk!” she called, her voice a little too loud. He stopped and expectantly looked over his shoulder.

“I didn’t kiss any of the others. Truly. You were the only one.”

This time his smile was genuine.

“I know, poppet. And I intend to keep it that way.”

Q^rys^Q

“T

1 wish you to know, Mariah,” began Mrs. Thomas a she dabbled genteelly at her leek soup with the bowl of the spoon, ” that Nan Rhawn came to me this day with th strangest tale. Fancy, she claimed she saw you out walking on Thames Street with Captain Gabriel Sparhawk! “

Mariah forced herself to continue raising her spoon to her lips, to sip and swallow the soup as if what the minister wife had said meant nothing at all to her. If walking with Captain Sparhawk was so wicked, what would the;

say about her visit to Crescent Hill? She’d known from thi moment the man had accepted her offer that she’d have to explain why she’d asked him. She just hadn’t realized th explanations would have to start so soon.

Reverend Thomas clucked his tongue, his jowls quivering against his stiff, starched neck cloth

“Of course Nai was mistaken, my dearest.

Mariah would never be ‘ou walking,” as you say, with a man like Gabriel Sparhawk.”

“Pray, who is he?” asked Mrs. West with bewilderment She turned toward Mariah, not noticing how her lace cuf trailed into her soup.

“I don’t know this gentleman, do I Mariah? A captain, you say? Pray, is he a friend of you father’s?”

“No, Mama, but he could have been.” Mariah reached out and carefully blotted her napkin to her mother’s sleeve.

“He’s another privateer, same as Father was.”

“Don’t be cajoled by your daughter’s innocence, Mrs. West,” thundered Reverend Thomas in the same full voice he used for sinners from his pulpit.

“The man’s the worst kind of rogue. Because the riches of this life have come easily to him, he gives no thought to his soul in the next. Yet because he has prospered, he is held to be a great fellow, with no regard to the men he has murdered or the women he has debauched!”

“He is a murderer?” Mrs. West’s hand fluttered until it found the reassurance of Mariah’s firm grasp.

“In Newport?”

“Oh, aye, ma’am, though he’d say ‘twas for the king’s glory.”

Mrs. Thomas nodded sagely in agreement with her husband. She leaned forward, her face between the candles lit bright with her righteousness. “You know he comes by his wickedness from the very cradle. Though you yourself are too young to recall the scandal, ma’am, his mother was a Quakeress barred from her congregation for her unlawful, carnal congress with a castaway sailor that she’d found-found, mind you!—washed up on her beach!”

“The sect calls them meetings, my dearest, not congregations.” Too late Reverend Thomas had noted Jenny’s eager interest, and with self-conscious heartiness he returned to his soup.

“And you will recall she did wed the man.” “Oh, aye, and produced a lusty six-month child to prove her guilt!”

Mrs. Thomas sighed dramatically and rolled her gaze to the ceiling.

“A

girl named Sarah, I recall, now grown and wed and as heathen as her mother out there at Nantasket”

“The young ladies, my dearest, the young ladies!” Reverend Thomas’s pewter spoon clattered against his empty soup plate as he nodded toward Mariah and Jenny.

“Scandals never improve with age. Suffice it to say that Gabriel Sparhawk is a wicked man, a rakish man, and one quite unfit for ladies’ conversation.” “Wicked or not. Captain Sparhawk is the most successful privateer to sail from Newport.” Mariah laid her spoon beside her plate, her soup untouched since that single taste. Clumps of carrot floated on the now-cool surface, and she knew she’d never be able to make this soup again, let alone eat it.

“I have asked him to serve as the captain of the Revenge, and he has agreed.”

There, she thought, she’d done it. Telling Mrs. Thomas spread news faster than nailing broadsides to a tree. The whole town would know by noon tomorrow—or at least the few who didn’t know already that she’d been walking down Thames Street with Gabriel Sparhawk. Levelly she met the stunned expressions around the table.

“Lud, ” Riah,” breathed Jenny.

“I’d never countenance you knowing Gabriel Sparhawk! Abbie Parker’s mother swears he’s the most handsomest gentleman on the entire island, and here he is with you” —’ Mariah silenced her sister with one swift look. But her mother’s wistful reproach was much harder to bear.

“Oh, Mariah,” Mrs. West murmured, her mouth twisting and her eyes too bright with tears.

“Has it come to this, that you must rely on a murderer in your father’s stead?”

“The man’s no more a murderer than any soldier or sailor in the king’s service. Mama. And you know no one can ever take Father’s place.”

Mariah’s smile was forced as she watched the tears spill from her mother’s eyes and slide crookedly across her cheeks. She told herself it was grief and the Geneva, not disappointment in her older daughter, but her mother’s painful, silent tears were worse than any shouted reprimand could ever be.

“Captain Sparhawk will do well with the Revenge, I promise.” “With all the decent shipmasters in this town for you to choose from” — “None of whom would even hear me out.” Mariah had twisted the napkin in her lap into a tight linen knot. “Captain Sparhawk listened.”

“He’ll make his fortune and rob your virtue is what he’ll do, miss!”

declared Mrs. Thomas.

“A woman’s reputation should be beyond gold.”

Furiously Mariah bit back her retort, knowing she’d gain nothing by making an enemy of the minister’s wife. It was easy enough for the woman to preach virtuous poverty when there weren’t shopkeepers drumming on her front door. Though Reverend Thomas’s living was small, his father-in-law owned a distillery, a business that never faltered in hard times. “Captain Sparhawk has agreed to sail the Revenge, nothing more.” In spite of her intentions, Mariah’s chin lifted defiantly.

“And even a rake as accomplished as you paint him would be hard-pressed to harm me when he is in the Caribbean, and I am here in Newport.”

“You would defend him, then?” asked Mrs. Thomas incredulously.

“Nay, ma’am,” said Mariah slowly as she rose to her feet.

“I only defend myself. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must see to the pudding in the kitchen.”

Later, as the night stretched into morning, Mariah sat cross-legged on her bed, her father’s papers strewn across the coverlet and a saucer on her pillow to catch the drip from the candlestick. Her only experience with figures and ciphering came from managing the household accounts, but she didn’t need to be a clerk to see that her father had left his affairs in shambles. She wouldn’t blame Captain Sparhawk at all if he took one look at this mess in the morning and left in disgust.

Why hadn’t her father kept ledgers like other captains? She peeled apart two water-stained bills of lading, and between them found another scrap of paper. The ink was faded with water spots, and she had to hold the paper close to the candle to see that it was a voucher from gaming. She whistled low under her breath when she realized her father had risked five thousand dollars on dice in a Barbados rum shop. Five thousand dollars! He must have wagered the Revenge herself to meet those stakes. But at least for once he’d won. The voucher was signed with a flourish, a name she couldn’t quite make out. Not that it mattered now, thought Mariah. With her father dead and this new war with France, there’d never be a chance of collecting such a debt.

With a long, heartfelt sigh, Mariah lifted the heavy weight of her braid off the back of her neck, sticky from the heat, and stretched her arms over her head. Even with the windows open and the shutters latched back, the air in the room was hot and still. The streets outside were quiet, the town having exhausted itself in celebration the night before. Somewhere to the west a single dog barked forlornly at the quarter moon.

Through the window, over the roofs of the warehouses, Mariah could just make out the topmasts of the ships in the harbor, their furled sails silvery pale in the moonlight. She thought of the Revenge and the new master she’d picked for the sloop, how green his eyes had been in the bright sun, how he’d smiled when he called her poppet, and how her heart had thumped against her ribs when he’d stood too close to her in the sloop’s cabin.

“Mariah?” The hinges on her door squeaked as Mrs. West slipped into the room, her bare feet making no noise. By the light of the candle in her mother’s hand Mariah could see that her hair was neatly plaited beneath her nightcap and that her night rail was clean. Though grief still marked her face, her eyes were clear, and with wonder Mariah realized that for the first time since her father’s return her mother was sober, or at least close enough. “Forgive me, child, but I could not sleep, and when I saw the light beneath your door” — “Nay, Mama, I was done anyway.” Hastily Mariah scooped up the piles of papers and smoothed the coverlet for her mother to join her on the bed.