Midnight Mistress (21 page)

Juliana felt as if she’d been punched by a prizefighter. “N-nothing?”

“Not a brass farthing. And if it weren’t for profit he left for, it had to be another reason. And what reason could there be excepting that he thinks you ain’t got the ball—well, um, that you ain’t got the ballast to run this company?”

Juliana gripped the edge of her desk, momentarily too stunned for words. She had thought Connor had meant it when he praised her work, and said that she would have made her father proud. Now she saw that he had never thought she had a chance of managing the line. Just like everyone else.

“… can see why I have no choice but to weigh anchor and ship my cargo with another company. I ain’t saying you’re not a good lass, or that your heart’s not in the right place. But I can’t afford to risk my cargo to a girl who don’t know the difference between a shroud and a ratline.”

“The shrouds run vertical, the ratlines horizontal,” she muttered automatically.

Lovejoy rubbed his chin, clearly impressed. “Well, you know your rigging. And you’ve a bold spirit. You’d have made a fine ship’s captain if you’d been born a man. My course is still set on takin’ my cargo elsewhere, but there’s still a
chance we could strike a deal—specially if you were to see your way clear to reducing my costs by half.…”

“We sail within the hour. You can’t come aboard.”

Juliana paused on the swaying gangway of Connor’s ship. Glancing up at the top of the plank, she recognized the same tobacco-chawing brute who’d turned her away the night she’d come to the docks to apologize to Connor. In the evening twilight, the hulking tar looked even larger than she remembered. Nevertheless, she took another step up the gangway.

“Are ya deaf? Didn’t ya hear me—”

“I heard,” Juliana said. “And if you try to stop me I shall scream so shrilly that every constable in the city will come running. They’ll swarm this ship like wasps, and keep it in dock for hours while they sort it out. You’ll miss the tide. You’ll fall behind in your schedule. There will be dock fees, tardiness taxes, extra wages for the sailors, and overdue payments to the merchants. Is that
really
what you want?”

The tar looked as if he’d swallowed his tobacco. “Blimey, the captain don’t want … now see here, you can’t do all that.”

“Try me,” she promised. “Where is the captain?”

“He’s in the wardroom with the mates. And he don’t want to be disturbed. I gots my orders. I gots my—”

“Oh, to hell with this,” Juliana said, elbowing the man aside. She stormed down the deck, ignoring the stunned looks of the hard-bitten sailors as she made her way to the lower deck. Pausing for just a moment, she caught the sounds of voices coming from the wardroom. Connor. And the bastard was laughing! Her anger renewed, she thrust open the door and barreled in. “How dare you? How dare—”

Her words died as she caught sight of him. Since he’d come to London he’d dressed like proper gentlemen, but on his ship Connor clearly tossed those conventions aside. Bent intently over his charts, his ragged hair untamed by a queue
and falling loose across his forehead, he wore a pair of worn leather breeches, plain high boots that had not seen polish in a year—and nothing else.

He straightened slowly, his intense gaze pinning her like a butterfly on a child’s display board. “Gentlemen … it appears we must continue this discussion later.”

Juliana was only vaguely aware of the men who slipped out the door behind her. She drank in the sight of Connor’s chiseled face, his bright hair, the poorly healed scar that had wounded so much more than his cheek. She swallowed, realizing too late just how desperately she’d missed seeing him this past week. Of course, she hadn’t counted on seeing quite this much of him.…

With an almost deliberate slowness, he turned his back to her and pulled down a linen shirt hung on a nearby peg. “What are you doing here?”

For a several seconds she couldn’t remember. The sight of his muscles rippling across his broad, tanned back drove the thoughts from her head and the air from her lungs.
He’s beautiful
, she thought with an astonished wonder. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him without a shirt. But the powerful, hard-muscled man who casually tucked his shirt into his belt was very different from the boy she remembered … just as the innocent adoration she’d felt for him as a child was far different from the not-so-innocent heat that thrummed in her center.

With his back still to her he demanded, “Well, have you lost your tongue along with all regard for your reputation?”

“Reputation?” Juliana’s temper flared. “You are a
fine
one to talk about my reputation. I just spent the better part of an hour talking that miser Lovejoy into leaving his cargo on the
Pelican
—for three-quarters the normal rate. And I was lucky to get that. He said that you left my employ because you had lost faith in me—that you were so desperate to leave that you took this job of convoy guard duty for nothing. Is it true?”

Connor’s hand stilled. “I never lost faith in you. That’s not … why I was desperate to leave.”

“Then why?” she cried. “For once in your life deal honestly with me. I believed in you. I thought you believed in me. You made me see that there might be a future for me beyond the social whirl and a carefully arranged mar—” She bit her lip, and tried valiantly to retain her composure. “But it was all a lie, wasn’t it? Your praises, your encouragement—all cruel, heartless lies.”

“That’s not true!” He strode across the room and took her shoulders in an almost punishing grip. “No owner could have done better for the line—not even your father. I never lied to you about that.”

“Then why did you leave me?”

His eyes pierced her with hypnotic intensity, like a hawk searching for prey. His gaze absorbed her, driving the thoughts from her mind and the air from her lungs. His hastily tucked-in shirt gaped open, revealing far more of his powerful chest and its dusting of tight blond curls than decency prescribed. The narrow room made her overwhelmingly aware of his size, of his strength, of the way his sun-colored hair fell rakishly across his brow. But most of all she felt his power—the raw, barely restrained energy that seethed beneath his stone-hard expression.

Childhood memories and his gentleman’s veneer had given her a false sense of security and made her forget his notorious reputation as a privateer. But she remembered the time in the hallway in the Morrow house when she’d realized that his big hands could have easily broken her ankle in two. She recalled the time in Jolly’s office when his ruthlessly carnal caress had threatened to break much more than her ankle. Connor Reed was a dangerous man. And yet she still saw the shadow of the boy she’d loved … would always love—

He released her with a suddenness that made her stagger.
’Tis the tide
, she thought as she steadied herself against the captain’s table.
It
must
be the tide
.

“Do not trouble yourself about Lovejoy,” Connor said as he moved to the cabinet and poured himself a glass of whiskey. “I will write him from Lisbon, and assure him that I have the utmost faith in you and the Marquis Line.”

“A … letter?” Juliana breathed, still feeling unaccountably weak. “Why a letter? Why not see him when you return?”

Connor rolled the glass in his hand, then he threw back his head and downed it in a single swallow. “I am not coming back. After Lisbon I make for Gibraltar. By this time next month I shall be with the fleet in the Mediterranean.”

The Mediterranean! “You cannot. This snow is no match for a well-armed frigate.”

“Perhaps. But England needs all the ships she can get at the moment. Besides,” he added as he raked his hand through his hair, “it is not as if anyone here will miss me.”

“I … will,” she confessed softly. The thought of Connor facing Napoleon’s deadly cannons left no room for lies. “Please, do not go.”

He hung his head. “Juliana, you don’t understand. I must leave—”

“No!” The cry came from her soul, deeper than convention, deeper than honor. The thought of not seeing him for weeks devastated her. But the thought of not seeing him for months, maybe never again—she could not bear it. “You must not go. Lovejoy told me papers were stolen from the War Office last night, detailing the Spanish campaign. If they reach Napoleon, our ships will be sitting ducks for the French fleet. I could not bear for you to be in such danger. Stay, Connor. Please.”

He lifted his hand to her cheek. “Juliana … Princess … I cannot.”

The ache in his voice echoed the ache in her heart. Her pride weighed little compared to the emptiness her life would be without him. They were bound together in a way
that made no sense. And yet nothing in her life made sense without him.

She wound her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. “Stay,” she whispered.

His whole body went rigid. “For God’s sake, I’m not made of stone!”

“You don’t have to be my manager. You can be anything you want.
I’ll
be anything you want. Just don’t leave me. I cannot bear losing you aga—”

A roll of the tide slapped against the ship, momentarily unbalancing the pair. To keep them both from toppling Connor twisted and fell heavily against a cabinet, sending a small chest crashing to the floor. The chest flew open, spewing its contents of letters haphazardly across the room.

It took Juliana a moment to realize that all the correspondence bore the seal of the War Office.

“Steady as she goes, pilot,” Connor commanded as he stood on the quarterdeck of his ship with his hands clasped behind his back and surveyed the vast blue kingdom that stretched around him as far as the eye could see. Fair weather had borne them beyond the chops of the channel in record time, and the remains of a long easy southern swell had urged them westward with steady determination. The morning sun rose behind him, scattering diamonds across the gently rippling surface. Ahead, the low-riding merchant ships dipped and swayed like fat, contented ducks, while overhead the sails billowed and fluttered like angels’ wings.

Connor breathed deeply, relishing the clean, lonely peace of the ocean dawn. On mornings like these he could almost believe that he was still a boy on the Marquis’s schooner, with the wide world before him.

The sound of breaking china from the deck below shattered the illusion.

“I imagine that would be breakfast,” Raoul commented as
he climbed to the quarterdeck. “If the mademoiselle keeps this up, we will have no dishes left.”

During the two days they’d been at sea, Juliana had decimated a startling amount of pottery. Not to mention what she had done to Connor’s cabin. “She’s got to eat sometime,” he growled.

“I am not so sure. This one has a will of iron, and we will not reach Portugal for ten days.” He gazed out to sea. “
Mon ami
, you must talk with her. She will listen to you.”

“Trust me, she’d rather walk the plank,” Connor scoffed, ignoring the stab of pain through his heart. God’s teeth, why did that chest have to break open? In another minute he’d have had her off the ship. She would have been safe. She’d have remembered him with honor—perhaps even with love. But instead, that bloody box had spilled its treasonous contents all over the floor of the wardroom. He’d had no choice but to lock Juliana in his quarters and sail with the tide. Delay would have cost him his mission. Kidnapping cost him only his heart.

At the time it had seemed a wise bargain.

Another crash brought his thoughts back to the present. Raoul was right. He had to do something. Before he lost every dish on the ship. Before her hunger strike truly endangered her life.

Sighing, he leaned on the rail and stared into the open water. A school of dolphins surfaced nearby, including several cows and their spirited calves. Despite his glum mood, he could not help smiling as he watched the playful animals. “I envy you, friends. No wars. No heartache. Just endless freedom, and no responsibilities save the love of your mothers for their young …”

A thought stirred in his mind. “Raoul, how many men have we assigned to stand watch on Lady Juliana?”

“Three. But she drove them all away with bruised shins and blistered ears. The rest of the crew refuses to go near her door—save to deliver the dishes she breaks and the food she
will not eat. Besides, ’tis hardly necessary. Unless she has a taste for cold salt water, the
demoiselle
cannot escape this ship.”

“Nevertheless, I believe there is one crew member who can guard her in complete safety,” Connor mused as he rubbed his chin. “And if my plan plays out as I think it will, she will also be dining with the manners of the queen.”

“Do that, and I shall truly call you the Archangel,” Raoul replied. “We cannot afford any more distractions from our mission to deliver the letters to the Spanish courier. I hope you know what you are doing.”

So did Connor. Delivering the War Office letters was their most dangerous mission to date, and failure would mean not only his life but the lives of many others as well. Their safety was in his hands—and now, so was Juliana’s. The treason that damned his name was perilously close to damning hers. He was once again her protector, just as he had been when they were children.