Sparhawk's Angel (10 page)
Authors: Miranda Jarrett
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
Finally, when the bells marked the end of one watch and the beginning of another, he knew it was time he, too, returned to the
Angel Lily
's deck. There'd been more than a little truth to Gideon's accusation that lately he'd been too busy chasing ghosts and petticoats, and if he ever wanted to capture another ship, he'd do well to be back at the helm where he belonged.
Carefully he carried Rose to his own bunk. She stretched against the pillows, mumbled something he didn't understand and once again sank deeply asleep. Before Nick drew the coverlet over her, he unbuckled her shoes and set them neatly side by side on the deck. Next he unhooked the front of her bodice far enough to loosen her stays to make her more comfortable; every woman he knew complained of how stiff and unyielding fashionable clothing could be, and the hooks, tapes and laces that held a lady's gown together offered no challenge to him.
Yet as unmoved as he tried to be, he still swore softly to himself in frustrated admiration at how her small, high breasts swelled above her stays, the darker nipples clear through the sheer linen of her shift.
"So this is how you treat my poor sister, is it?" demanded Lily imperiously. "Make her insensible with strong drink, then tumble her onto her back while she's incapable of protesting? Or is this what passes for lovemaking among the wenches in the lower sort of dockside taverns and brothels you frequent?"
"I was waiting for you to appear." Nick wheeled around to find her sitting on the back of his chair, her fluttering wings providing the necessary balance. Her arms were folded and her blue eyes were narrowed, and he knew he was in for a fight. "I've been expecting you all afternoon."
"Not enough, apparently, to restrain you from this sorry performance!" Sweeping her arm toward her sleeping sister, Lily dramatically brought her angled wrist to rest on her forehead. "To think that I am the cause of dear little Rose being used so!"
"Oh, stow it, sweetheart," said Nick, disgusted by her histrionics. "You're not exactly blameless yourself. Why the hell didn't you tell me the whole story? Why did you leave it to 'dear little Rose' to air your family's shabby linen?"
Her painted brows arched higher. "What, about Papa? How I was to be his powdered and perfumed calling card to genteel society? The dutiful daughter who'd bring him a titled son-in-law?"
Nick was surprised by her cynicism. It wasn't exactly something he'd expect from an angel, but then Lily herself in her white-and-gold gown with the cherry-colored stockings wasn't too ordinary, either. "Why should your father care about titles? He already has one himself, doesn't he?"
"Not a real one." She sighed and flicked open her fan. "I suppose you wouldn't know, being an American given to vile democratic tendencies, but a knighthood's only granted for services rendered. It expires with him. Papa's made vast piles of money, you see
—
he's a merchant and a shipbuilder and goodness knows what else, which is how he earned the knighthood, fitting out navy ships in record time during the last war. But in the eyes of the real lords and ladies, Sir Edmund Everard's only a jumped-up tradesman, and he hates that with a vengeance. That's what he planned, too, I suppose—vengeance, with me to do the
veng
ing
."
Nick sighed and dropped into the chair where Rose had sat. As annoyed as he was with Lily, he could understand all too well the power that strong-willed patriarchs wielded. "And that's when you fell in love with Captain Lord High-and-Mighty Eliot."
"Love Lord Eliot?" Her blue eyes flashed. "Oh, pish, I never could abide the man, let alone
love
him! He's vile and mean-spirited and puffed up with his own imagined self-worth, but he has the bluest blood that Papa could lure into our house, and he was the one with the deepest debts. When Papa promised to clear those plus stuff his pockets deep with more gold, of course Lord Eliot offered for me."
Her bitterness was unmistakable, and there were lines furrowed in the powder around her mouth that Nick didn't remember seeing before. "Rose and I both had our proper roles, you see. I was to be the great belle launched among the aristocrats with Papa's money, while poor Rose was to stay home and be his nursemaid in old age. We never had the chance to be anything else. Papa saw to that."
She looked down, away from Nick, and concentrated instead on straightening the blades of her fan. "Wonderfully sordid, isn't it? Too bad for Papa I'd have none of it."
"But Rose said—"
"Rose didn't know." She sighed, and looked fondly toward her sleeping sister. "She's always been much more dutiful, while I wasn't nearly as amenable as Papa wished. Oh, I agreed to wed Lord Eliot to stop his nagging, but I'd no intention of actually marrying him. I'd set my cap for Thomas Carville, really, and he'd nearly come round to proposing an elopement when I died."
She smiled wickedly at Nick, tapping her closed fan to the dimple on her cheek. "Tom's father owns some sort of mills to the north, which makes him even more tawdry and common than Papa, though Tom himself is quite wonderful, tall and comely with a laugh, la, that fair made me swoon. He's rather like you, actually."
"Pity you didn't come back to meddle in his life instead of mine," grumbled Nick, propping his long legs on the edge of the table. "So now on account of all your flirtations, your poor sister's going to have to marry this bastard of a lord?"
For a moment Nick thought he saw something like remorse, even guilt, flicker across her lovely face. But before he could be certain, her expression swiftly regained its usual assurance, her chin imperiously high.
"I can assure you, my dear captain," she said indignantly, "that I'd no intention of dying when I did. I know it seems as if I were being abominably selfish, but it wasn't like that. Well, not really. If I'd lived and run off with Tom, then I would have made sure,
quite
sure, to rescue Rose from Papa. But I've told you before that I can do nothing to help her now."
Nick's sympathy promptly evaporated. "Except to toss me into her path."
"
That
was before I knew you meant to treat her so dreadfully!" she exclaimed huffily. "A right model Yankee Don Juan, you are!"
"Don Juan, ha!" Nick's feet dropped down from the table to the deck with a thump. "If you'd been here earlier, you'd have seen how your sweet little sister practically ravished
me
!"
"Oh, hush." Lily sniffed above her fan. "I won't hear you say ill of Rose, especially when the proof's here asleep in your own bed. In matters such as this it's always the man who's at fault. Once in Portsmouth I saw a play by Mr. Rowe called
The Fair Penitent
, and in it was a low character who much resembles you at present. Perhaps, my dear captain, I shall take to calling you after him—Lothario Sparhawk."
Nick had heard of neither Mr. Rowe nor this low character Lothario, but from Lily's tone he was certain it was no compliment.
"Hold there now!" he said warmly. "Your sister was the one who proposed that infernal game in the first place, setting kisses for wagers!"
Lily frowned and shook her head as she clucked her tongue. "Oh, dear, Nick, now that was a mistake. You must never, ever play draughts with Rose."
"Well, I did," declared Nick, "and I'm damned lucky she left me my breeches. But I swear I didn't touch her, not beyond that one kiss."
"You didn't?"
"I did not," he said flatly. "And don't go looking at me like I don't know the difference. All this is your fault, anyway. If you'd disappeared like you were supposed to, I would have left Rose alone. Instead I coaxed her down here with every wicked intention in the world, and kept her glass filled to addle her wits just like you said. But then she started winking those big silver eyes of hers and telling me how sorrowful her life has been, and I couldn't do it. Hell, I was the one who put an end to that single blessed marvelous kiss!"
"Oh, my, my," said Lily archly. "Next all cats will walk on water and dogs will fly."
"Why the devil not?" he asked glumly. "They gave
you
a pair of wings. But the worst of it's what's happened to me."
Nick bowed his head with disgust as he ran his fingers through his hair. "Look at me. You save my miserable life, and now I've turned too bloody noble to toss a pretty girl's petticoats. What's gone wrong with me, eh?"
"Not a single thing, my darling captain," said Lily softly, her smile for once genuine, even sweet. "For this time you've listened to your conscience, and though a weak, feeble little conscience it is for someone of your size and years, 'tis better than having none at all. For a bit there, you know, I'd rather feared you didn't."
He lifted his head sharply to stare suspiciously at her. "You knew it all along, didn't you? The draughts game and Rose's silver eyes and why I didn't—damnation, why I
couldn't—
tumble her here tonight?"
"Of course I did," she said gently, her pale form already fading away. "But I wanted to hear you say it yourself. Sweet dreams, my dear, darling captain!"
Rose was sure, quite sure, that she was going to die.
Or at least, right now, that was what she prayed would happen. Her head ached and throbbed, and her empty stomach roiled with such an ominous uncertainty that all she wanted to do was lie as still as she possibly could until this slow, certain death ended her suffering.
But even that seemed impossible, for the ship and the bunk in which she lay were surely in the middle of the worst storm they'd seen since they'd cleared the Channel. Yes, that would explain it all, the aching head and the wobbly stomach and the cabin that refused to stay level. With a groan she didn't bother to stifle, she pressed her face to the pillow slip and wished again for the end to come.
But something wasn't right. Sick as she felt, her senses were still working, and the linen beneath her cheek smelled not of her own perfume but of some deep, masculine scent that was disturbingly familiar. With great care and growing dread she forced herself to open her eyes. The cabin was filled with morning sunlight, the polished brass lanterns swaying gently with the most moderate of seas instead of the storm she'd imagined, and Captain Sparhawk's blue coat draped carelessly across the back of his chair where he'd left it last night.
Last night
. Oh, dear heaven deliver her, she was in Captain Sparhawk's cabin, worse yet in his bunk, and with dreadful, humiliating clarity the night before came rushing back. Or most of it did: she remembered her nervousness and drinking far too much wine because of it; she remembered the game of draughts and kissing him and sitting on his lap like the most wanton hussy; she remembered his hands stroking her back and curling familiarly around her waist, and then—then nothing more.
Nothing.
Her dread growing by the minute, she threw back the coverlet, running her fingers through the tangles of her hair. Her shoes were on the deck and her garters half-untied, her skirts rucked up around her waist and her bodice shamelessly unfastened, even the laces on her stays loosened. With shaking hands she shoved her skirts down over her bare legs and pulled the front of her bodice together.
She had been lonely, and he had understood. She had felt lost, and he had been kind and generous. She had smiled with giddy pleasure and dressed in coral silk, and he had smiled, too, and worn a waistcoat embroidered with forget-me-nots. And with a magic that she couldn't explain, he had made her feel beautiful and cherished and safe. She bowed her head, and saw how the bright sunlight glanced off the betrothal ring on her finger.
Swiftly she closed her eyes, fighting the sick feeling in both her stomach
and her soul. If she had let herself be so easily
…
dishonored
, then she had shamed not only herself but her father and her sister's memory as well. Papa had made it clear enough that her duty as his daughter was to marry Lord Eliot, and that she would not be welcomed home again except as Lady Eliot.
But now she'd given Lord Eliot ample reason to refuse to marry her, and to her sorrow she would not be able to fault him. Not even Lily herself would have dared to do what she had done. What gentleman wanted a wife who had first become one more conquest of a notorious rebel privateer? Nick Sparhawk was exactly the kind of rogue her future husband had been sent to the Caribbean to hunt down and hang.
Nick Sparhawk
. Dear Lord, when had she started to think of him by his given name? When had her very thoughts begun to betray her with the same eagerness as her willing body? Two short days ago, she had not even known he existed. Better she had never known; better she had never learned how firm yet gentle his mouth could be upon hers, or how something as seemingly simple as a single kiss could flare and scorch her to the quick. And, oh, merciful heaven, how much else she might have done that now, in the clear, harsh light of morning, she hadn't even the decency to remember!
Her fingers still clumsy, she rushed to finish dressing. She could not undo the past, but she could try to reclaim her tattered future. She was the American's prisoner, not his guest, and she must be nothing else. She would keep to her cabin, avoid his company on the deck, refuse his invitations and ignore his smiles. She must always remember that she was the daughter of Sir Edmund Everard and the betrothed of Captain Lord Eliot Graham, and she must forget every single, sinful thing she'd learned from Nickerson Sparhawk.
And if her heart broke, too, it would be no more than she deserved.
N
ick stared down at the folded letter in the boy's hand, and saw that the seal—his seal—remained unbroken.
"Th' lady said I'd best bring it back t' you, Cap'n," said the boy, Johnny, with more sympathy than judgment. "Miss Everard, she said your compliments was all well an' good, but she was of no more mind
t' read this letter than any o' the others."
Without a word, Nick took the letter from the boy, who did know well enough to duck his head and scurry away from the quarterdeck when the captain's face had that particular ominous look to it.
Nick didn't notice. Lightly he ran his finger across Rose's name, written in his best penmanship across the front of the folded sheet, and then with a muttered oath he stalked to the stern and tossed the unopened letter over the taffrail and into the
Angel Lily
's white-churned wake.
Every morning for the past nine days he had written to her, and every morning she had returned his letters unread. She wouldn't even deign to take them from the boy's hand.
He gripped the rail, oblivious of how the wind whipped at his hair. She had kept to her own cabin since that single night she'd spent in his. She'd insisted on taking her meals alone, and turned down all invitations to come topside at all, let alone with him. She hadn't been rude about it; she'd been quite polite, really, refusing everything with the most genteel and ladylike regrets. But still she had refused his offers, and so in her genteel way had refused him.
He couldn't begin to make sense of it. The first time in his memory that he'd behaved honorably with a woman, and she did this. How could she blame him when for once he'd done nothing? It hurt his pride, but worse than that, it simply hurt because he missed her.
He tried to tell himself it was because he hadn't bedded her, that it was the incompleteness of the thing that made him feel so foolishly on edge, endlessly replaying in his mind every word she'd spoken to him, and writing those damned notes over breakfast. Deep, deep down he knew it was more than that; but exactly what he couldn't say, because he didn't know the words for the desperate need he felt for Rose Everard.
It was Lily's fault, he was certain of that. But each time he'd tried to tell her, she'd only laughed and disappeared in her usual, maddening way that always let her have the last word. But in this he was determined to win. The next time he was alone with Rose, he wouldn't turn sentimental and respectful. Instead he'd shower her with the full force of his considerable charm, and he wouldn't stop with one kiss. Next time when she woke in his bunk, she'd be wearing a contented smile and nothing else, and she wouldn't be so damned eager to run away. And then he'd see if Lily laughed!
If, that is, there ever was a next time.
Nine blasted
days
.
And as if Rose's closed, latched cabin door and the rejection it represented weren't enough to infuriate him, his famous luck as a privateer seemed to have turned tail and vanished, too. No matter that he'd set a course to cruise through the busiest merchant lanes in the Atlantic, or that the weather had been flawless, with the favorable winds and cloudless skies of early summer. Not once since the
Angel Lily
had captured the
Commerce
nearly two weeks earlier had the cry come down from the lookout in the foretop. It wasn't just that they hadn't made chase or taken a prize; they hadn't even seen another sail on the horizon. Nick couldn't remember a spell this dry since the war began, and uneasily he wondered if this, too, could be laid at Lily's doorstep.
"You want to blame everything on me, don't you?" she asked, her voice raised to be heard over the wind. She was standing against the rail beside him, leaning back on her elbows. The ribbons in her hair streamed back from her face in the wind, and random feathers in her wings bent backward, like those of a gull trying to fly in a gale. "Everything that goes wrong is my fault."
"Well, hell, it is, isn't it?" He scowled, then self-consciously looked away from her, out over the water, so the man at the helm wouldn't see or hear him talking to the air. "Look at everything that's gone wrong since you decided to bless me with your care."
"Oh, my, yes, it's quite a list." She tipped her chin as she ticked off her fingers. "First of all, I kept you from dying. Then I saved your ship when by every right it should have sunk, and gave you a newer, better one in the bargain. I also arranged for you to regain your crew's confidence by capturing the
Commerce
. Though really you were the one who was doubting, not them. They still seem determined cheerfully to follow you to Hades and back, the greater fools they."
"Aye, as if they—"
"Hush, now, dear captain," she said evenly, her fingers still spread for counting. "I'm not finished."
"Oh, yes, you are," ordered Nick. "You're becoming a damned bore."
"Boring?" She stiffened. "No one has ever dared to call me boring!"
"You're a bore because you're so bloody predictable," repeated Nick wearily. "I know I could sail straight into Carenage Bay on St. Lucia, haul alongside the admiral's flagship and order every man to drop his breeches and salute the English flag, and you'd still find a way to get me clear. Almost makes me want to try it. Things are getting blessed boring for me, too."
She cleared her throat with a harrumph of disgust. "What has become of your great plot upon my sister? Or is that too boring to contemplate as well?"
"Absolutely nothing is happening between your sister and myself," he said, bristling at what she implied. "As you know damned well."
"Not surprising when the best you can do is send a scrap of paper every morning. Highly resistible, that, even by a girl as inexperienced as Rose."
"Lily, I have had other more pressing demands upon my time. You might recall that I am captain of this ship
—
"
"Oh, pish, that's not it at all." She glanced at him sidelong, her eyes gleeful. "You're afraid she'll say no to your face."
Nick took a deep breath, struggling to control his temper. "I am the captain, Lily. The captain, mind? I have nearly two hundred men under me. I cannot and will not go below to beg outside your sister's door like some tomcat."
"That's because you're not nearly the hardened rakehell you fancy you are, my dear Nick," she said shrewdly. "If you were, you wouldn't give a fig about being a captain. You'd go down there directly, break down her door and toss her on her own bunk, never mind how much she screamed or fought. If you truly wished to upset me, that is. But I don't believe such barbarous behavior's in your blood, thank the heavens."
It took every last shred of Nick's self-control not to roar his outrage. Where Rose was concerned, Lily was right, blast her, but she'd never get him to admit it.
"Damnation, woman," he said, his usual roar half-strangled, "did I ask for your advice?"
"Not yet, no," said Lily mildly." But if you do, I can tell you that Rose—"
"Rose will do whatever she pleases." Nick's eyes gleamed with triumph. A new idea had come to him while they'd spoken, one that was guaranteed to end boredom for all parties. "You can't control her or what she does. That's up to her, not you. Or have you forgotten?"
"I'd rather thought you had, Captain Sparhawk." She smiled, and with a graceful sweep of her arm rose in the air to hover before him, the same wind that filled the ship's sails holding her wings steady. "But don't underestimate my little sister, Nick. She doesn't need my help to deal with you."
Nick shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked up at her. "Don't cash your bets yet, Lily. I told you before I play to win."
"Doubtless the same way you played draughts." Her smile remained bright even as her outline faded into the sunshine. "Next time I hope she
will
take your breeches."
"There you be, Miss Everard." Carefully Johnny set the tray with the battered teapot, cup and now-cold toast on top of the trunk that Rose used as a table in her tiny cabin. "I'll be back in a bit to collect th' tray when you're done."
Standing by the door with her hand stiff on the latch, Rose nodded, exactly the same way she'd done on the seventeen other mornings. She'd learned early in her self-imposed isolation that Johnny would never say more than he needed to, whether from orders or inclination, and now she didn't even try to begin conversations with him. But this morning, she couldn't keep still.
"There's no letter?" she asked, curiously disappointed. "Captain Sparhawk didn't give you one today?"
"Nay, Miss Everard, th' cap'n didn't," said the boy, his jaw jutting forward with undisguised disapproval. "Not that I'd expect you
t' care, seeing as you couldn't never be bothered to read th' others. Too fine a lady
you
is, I 'spect, for th' likes o' good free men like us an' th' cap'n."
"It's not like that at all," said Rose swiftly. "It's not Captain Sparhawk who is to blame, but myself. I'm the one who acted wrongly, not he, and that is why I couldn't accept his letters."
Lord, how could she explain what she'd done to the boy when she could scarcely understand it herself? She had only meant to be loyal to her father's wishes and her own country, as well as respect the promise she'd made to marry Lord Eliot for Lily. She knew she'd been right to refuse Nick's—no, Captain Sparhawk's—letters, to salvage what remained of her honor and to punish herself for her weakness by keeping here alone in her cabin.
But even that punishment had turned into a bittersweet agony, for not a
minute passed that she didn't recall the way his green eyes watched her, the
warmth that had streaked through her blood at the touch of his lips on hers, the
unsettling possibility that somehow fate had brought her here to him before she
wed another and it was too late, too late for everything.
…
She gave a small, shuddering sigh as she jerked her thoughts back to the boy before her. "It must seem capricious of me, I know," she said sadly, "but it's how things must be between Captain Sparhawk and myself."
"Just blessed peculiar to me." The boy sniffed and wiped his nose on the cuff of his gingham shirtsleeve. "But I 'spect th' cap'n's got himself other plans for merriment now than botherin' with fine lady prisoners like you. We'll be back in Charles Town by nightfall, to refit an' take on our mates from
the
Liberty
's prize crew."
"Charles Town?" asked Rose. Her eyes widened with surprise. Charles Town, any town, meant land instead of the endless ocean, and the chance to free herself that she hadn't dared hope for. She'd had hours alone these past weeks to plan an escape in case she found the opportunity, and now that, miraculously, she did, she remembered every carefully worked-out detail. "That's in one of the American colonies, isn't it?"
"One of th' free American states, miss. South Carolina, t' put the nail on it." He squeezed past her to reach the door. "Like I said, miss, I'll come round in a bit for th' tray."
"Wait!" Rose scrambled to her bunk and thrust her hand beneath the pillow, pulling out a little needle-worked pocketbook that clinked dully with coins inside. "I would ask a favor of you, Johnny. Two favors, really. And of course I'm quite willing to compensate you for obliging me."
He paused at the doorway, drawn back by the sound of the coins. "What kind o' favor?" he asked suspiciously. "I won't do nothing that's traitorous nor cowardly against Cap'n Sparhawk, not for all th' gold in London."
"I swear to you what I ask is neither." She clutched the pocketbook in both hands, praying for the right words to convince the boy. "I should like to buy a suit of your clothes—breeches, shirt, coat and a hat."
The boy sniffed scornfully. "I only have but th' two Mam saw me off with."
"I'll pay you enough so you can buy yourself five new shirts in Charles Town, plus a new bonnet for your mother, too, if you please!"
She knew from the expression on his freckled face, trying so hard to be as distant and aloof as a grown man, that he was tempted.
"What be th' second favor, then?"
Rose licked her lips nervously, knowing better than to smile. "Simply that you ask Mr. Hobb to come speak to me. He's new to your crew, so if—"
"Th' Englishman that fair talks your ear from your head. O' course I knows him." He rubbed at his nose again. "Do you be plotting some mischief with him? 'Cause if you is, then I want no part o' it."
"I swear I'll never mention your name to a soul," she promised, shifting the little pocketbook in her fingers so the coins jingled again. "And if anyone finds your clothes in my keeping, then you can say I stole them."
"They'll believe it o' you, no mistake." But he thrust out his open palm for the money, and at last Rose dared to smile.
It was after supper and almost dusk when Hobb scratched at the door, and in an instant Rose opened it to let him slip inside.
"You're sure of this now, lass?" he asked, his long, earnest face lined with concern. "Cap'n Sparhawk, he does mean to give you back, just as quick as your pa's people pay down your ransom. But if the cap'n catches you trying to escape, well, who knows what a man with a wicked temper like his will do?"
"I don't intend to find out." Restlessly Rose tugged Johnny's worn knit hat lower across her forehead, hoping the rolled rib brim would shade her face from the other crewmen in the dark. "And you're not to protect me, either. If anyone suspects that you've helped me, you're to deny every word. I don't want Captain Sparhawk taking out that 'wicked temper' on you for my sins."
"Ah, miss, 'tis no great sin," said Hobb gruffly, wiping his palms nervously on the thighs of his loose-fitting trousers. "How can I fault a bride what wants
t' join her bridegroom?"
Rose blushed, not from modesty but from shame for the lie she'd told. "This is only the first step, you know. I still must find passage from Charles Town to St. Lucia."
"And so you shall, Miss Everard, on account o' wanting it so bad." He beamed at her. "Myself, I'm promised to wed a sweet, dear lass at home, an' I'd expect my Annie
t'do same for me. Leastways I hope she would."