Once Upon a Midnight Sea (9 page)

"Perhaps Henri was right," he started. The words lodged in his throat, thick and bitter. "I have placed you in a difficult situation. I do not mean to make you uncomfortable. It is your father with whom I am at odds."

She lifted her chin. "I embody everything he stands for. You said so yourself."

Christian ground his teeth. "I was hasty." He grumbled a sigh. "I'll not deny that I despise your lifestyle. That you flourish while most around you suffer. You truly have no idea how hard life is for those who do not exist in your silver and fine china world, do you?"

He didn't give her a chance to argue. "But my dispute is not with you. I would like to arrange a truce."

"I shall enter no truce with the likes of you."

"I guarantee, heiress, it shall be a miserable journey if we do not."

She pursed her lips again, staring daggers at him. Her hands clenched the spoke handles until her knuckles turned white.

"For the benefit of the others around us, if nothing else." He forced a charming smile, which went ignored. Seducing her would be harder than he'd anticipated, but the challenge only electrified him.

Adriana turned her gaze out to sea and sighed. "Very well. I do not wish to upset the others any more than they have been already."

He offered his hand. Adriana's eyes grew wide. She stared at him as if he possessed the devil's clawed paw. Resignedly she accepted. Her hand was soft and small in his grip, warm and gentle, yet capable of commanding this immense ship. As if she were a bolt of lightning, her touch made his entire body jolt.

She jerked her hand away. "You must answer me one question. Why we make this journey? What awaits you in South America?"

Christian crossed his arms over his chest. "Why, my father, of course."

"I do not understand." Her brow furrowed. "Do you expect the French government will simply release him to you because you ask it?"

"Of course not." The heiress was truly naive. "I intend to take him by force."

She gasped and took a step back. "You are mad! No one has ever escaped from Devil's Island."

"That is what the French authorities want you to believe," he growled. "Even if it were true, should I let that stop me from attempting to rescue my father? Tell me this–what would you do, heiress, if it were your father unjustly imprisoned?"

Her mouth snapped shut and the cold anger returned to her expression. "First of all, my father would truly have to be the jewel thief you claim him to be, which he is not. That is why it is not he that is behind bars. Secondly, you have as much as admitted your father is the thief who stole India's Midnight. It sounds to me as though he deserves to be where he is."

She stared at him as though he were a cockroach scurrying across her polished deck. He fought the urge to slap that haughty look right off her face. She kept her back straight and her chin high. Those ice-blue eyes held fierce purpose.

His patience had reached its end. "You look so foolish grasping at whatever excuses you can find. Your father isn't the saint he's convinced you he is."

"If you truly wanted justice, you would have revealed him to the authorities, instead of robbing him."

"Justice?" He took a step nearer, making her shrink away. The wheel spun as the waves took the ship. "My father was denied justice when he refused to name his accomplice. What should have been a ten-year punishment for robbery turned into a life sentence. The French government made an example of my father, because he refused to name yours!"

Adriana sucked in her breath. That condemning expression changed to one of panic. Christian turned away and drove his fingers through his hair. This was futile. He would do best to stay as far away from her as the confines of the ship would allow.

"How do you know this?" she asked in a soft voice. "If your father has been in jail all this time, how could you know any of this?"

Her question should have angered him, but in her voice he now heard what might be pity. Maybe even compassion. He knew she didn't believe him and he wanted to hate her for it, but some deep-buried part of him was diffused by the tenderness in her voice.

He strode to the railing and spoke with his back to her. "All these years I believed my father dead. Then a letter arrived, and I learned the truth." He turned back to face her. "The truth that you will soon believe, as well."

* * *

John Locke glanced at his new gold pocket watch for the third time as he saw his contact saunter through the pub's swinging doors. He was always late for their meetings. John knew the man didn't believe social consideration was required when dealing with someone of the lowest part of society, like him. Keeping him waiting was just another way to remind John who was in charge.

The man glanced around as though offended by the establishment.

John motioned to the bartender for another pint of ale as he mentally raised his price for this inconvenience. Soon, he wouldn't be so much lower at all.

"I thought I told you to be discreet." In his voice was that snobbish lilt that set John's teeth on edge. The man stared down at the stool with distaste before finally deciding it was clean enough for his velvet clad derriere.

"I'm just having a pint. Nothing unusual about that."

"What was that shiny bauble you tucked back into your pocket when I walked in?"

"Nothing that calls nearly as much attention as a bloke like you walking in to a pit like this."

The man scowled. "Let us conduct our business and be done."

John had intentionally seated himself at the end of the bar, as far from the door as possible. A few other patrons sat here and there in the pub, but no one would hear their conversation.

"You've made a fine muck of things again."

John tightened his grip on the glass. "'ere now, why say a thing like that?"

"Because it is true," the man spat. He glanced around and lowered his voice. "First you shoot the old man before Adriana had married Preston–"

"We been through all that," John growled. He was nearly at his wit's end. "What's done is done."

"It isn't! If Edmund Montague dies, there is no one to ensure this marriage takes place."

"He ain't going to die."

He rudely flipped up a hand, continuing as if John hadn't even spoken. "She'll inherit everything and Preston will be left out in the cold."

And you dandies wouldn't be so full of yourselves anymore, would you now
? John thought. More than once he'd considered offering what he knew to Edmund Montague for a price, but the righteous old man would never pay, and John had already received a right plum amount from this donkey's arse. Edmund didn't invest himself in criminal dealings. No, he knew he'd find himself with accommodations in the state penitentiary if he ever went to Edmund. And with the sum he'd been promised to finish the job, he'd be comfortably set for as long as he lived. John wisely held his tongue. Soon he wouldn't have to put up with this blather anymore.

"If this marriage fails, R.L.W. Steel is finished. I didn't take care of Roland and Lennox just to watch some spoiled debutante foil my plans because she's too prissy to marry Preston."

"Right, well, just remember it was
you
who took care of Roland and Lennox. And let's not forget R.L.W. was just fine until your debts chiseled away at it."

"And neither will we forget who shot Edmund."

The man never left without a threat. Their impact had begun to wane, and John merely took it to mean their meeting was nearly at an end.

"He's still alive." John shrugged to show he didn't care either way. "And still set on marrying his daughter to the young prince," he finished with rancid sarcasm.

"Is that so? And where is the lovely lady?" He delivered his well-practiced expression of condescension. "I told you not to let her out of your sight. Rumor has it she has run away."

"She's always running off somewheres. She's a regular little pirate with that ship of hers." John wanted to slug that arrogant face into next week.

"I have made certain inquiries. The ship has disappeared. No one from Maryland to Georgia has spotted her. Nor has she been sighted headed for Europe."

"Maybe she sank," John said with forced disinterest. Deep in his gut, the first quake of fear started. If Adriana died fleeing, they'd surely find a way to pin it on him.

He didn't want anyone to die. He'd been drunk the night he shot Edmund, and considered it a heaven-sent miracle the man had survived. A second chance gifted from God himself. Since then, he'd stayed up many long nights searching for a plan to make it only look as if he killed Edmund when the time came to finish the job, and escape with his payment before anyone realized he didn't.

"Edmund will know where she has gone."

John shook his head and swallowed a mouthful of cooling ale. "He don't."

"We shall see about that. Go collect him, and bring him to the dock," the man ordered. "Tell him Vincent Weiss wishes a word with him."

"I can't get him out of the sanitarium," John protested. He wanted nothing more than a hearty beef dinner across the street at O'Shaughnessy's and a good night's sleep.

"You can, and you will," Vincent sneered. He slid off the seat and straightened his fine woolen coat. "He will take us to Adriana if he knows what is good for him."

* * *

Even though she convinced Mrs. Bailey to return to her own cabin, having demonstrated the solidness of the locks at her door, Adriana tossed and turned through another sleepless night. When she wasn't pondering the many strange revelations that seemed to be materializing about her father, she was thinking about the irate young man sleeping on the other side of her cabin wall.

Though his unruly hair was in need of a trim, he'd been transformed into the most handsome vision she'd ever laid eyes on merely by putting on her father's fine clothing.

No, Adriana realized, it wasn't the clothes, but the man she saw in a clearer light. Unlike the refined young men who pranced around like peacocks in their up-to-the minute fashions, Christian stood with a distinctive degree of integrity in those squared shoulders and proudly held chin. He was a man who knew what he wanted, and took it the best way he knew how. Strangely, Adriana admired him for the passion with which he pursued his quest. In the wrong or not, his determination was admirable.

What if he were to pursue her with the same tenacity? Strange flutters rolled through her stomach at the thought. She closed her eyes and imagined handsome Christian seeking her with the same passionate energy, and her body grew heated. These thoughts were sinful. She was to be married in less than two months.

But these thoughts are my own, and no one will ever know about them. I have a right to them
.

She recalled the feel of his large hands on her forearms when he'd trapped her in the hall; strong like granite yet gentle, almost a caress. The way his eyes had drifted over her, his lashes sweeping up and down as he shamelessly drank in every inch of her. Preston Weiss had never looked at her like that.

The heat raging through her turned to sour regret. She would never know such ardent passion. Her future was laid out for her in a neat little package, but Christian would go on to adventure after adventure, wild and free and following nobody's rules but his own. How she envied him for that. How she wished she could be part of it.

She put her fingers to her lips to suppress a giggle. Imagine, the two of them together, sailing the high seas like pirates.

The feeling turned cold in an instant. Christian despised her. If she weren't so necessary to him, he probably would have already tossed her overboard.

Adriana rolled over again, bringing a whine from Chauncy as she disturbed him with her foot. "Come here boy. What do you think, my little darling? Should I be kinder to him?"

The dog's ears perked and his tail thumped up and down.

Christian wanted to hurt her father. For that, she couldn't forgive him. But Adriana couldn't help thinking back to her time in London when her best friend had become so cruel. She wished Cecelia could have put herself in Adriana's shoes and imagined how she felt.

She bit her lower lip. "What does he feel?" she asked Chauncy. Christian was dangerous, that much was as obvious as his eyes were mystical sea foam green. He was a criminal who continued to break laws with no regard. It was hard to imagine what possessed a person to act in such a manner.

He longed to save his father. Adriana sighed. She'd been told as much, but she wasn't anticipating his emotions.

"I cannot," she whispered to Chauncy. The dog rose and padded up to her head. "Try as I might, I cannot understand his feelings."

Chauncy curled up beside her head in a tiny ball. He licked her cheek, his tail gently wagging.

"I will try," she said. "Tomorrow, I will try to imagine what he is feeling. Perhaps if I understand him better, I might find a way to convince him to abandon this ludicrous plan and take us home."

Chapter Seven