Stormy Persuasion (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

N
athan was taken aback by the girl’s angry question. He almost laughed at how close
to the mark it was, yet it didn’t make sense. Nonetheless, the instinct for self-preservation
kicked in, and quickly.

“You’ve mistaken me for someone else. But I’m not surprised. First you thought I was
a ghost, then you took me for a landowner. Isn’t it more obvious that I’m just a hardworking
seaman trying to earn a living?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d never forget a face that’s haunted me for five years, and now I recognize
your voice, too.”

“From five years ago? I doubt that’s possible.”

“From two weeks ago when you accosted me in that ruined house,” she said hotly. “You’re
a criminal and I won’t have you on board endangering my family.”

So it was her, he thought, and not one of the duke’s servants as he’d assumed that
night. And maybe she was not quite a lady either, except in title. That was an intriguing
thought and even likely, considering how he’d met her, both times, out and about alone
at night. And now tonight.

“It seems to me you’re the one guilty of criminal behavior, breaking into houses that
don’t belong to you. And more’n once? Tell me, darlin’, does your family know about
your late-night rendezvousing?”

She sucked in her breath. “Don’t
even
go there. You know I spoke the truth about why I was there that night.”

“If I wasn’t there, how would I know? Or wait, were you there to see me again?” He
grinned, suddenly beginning to enjoy himself. “Well, me in ghost form, but me nonetheless.
And you already admitted you did that at least once.”

She scoffed, “You’re not turning the tables on me here, but nice try. There’s simply
no comparison to a smuggler, or is it a thief? Which one are you?”

“And why would I be either of those?”

“Because the facts add up precisely, and there’s a long list of them. You even proved
yourself to be a liar that night. You weren’t just passing by, not with your own cot
set up in that room.”

“A criminal who carries a cot around with him? Do you realize how unlikely that is?”

“You put a lock on the door.”

“If whoever you are talking about did that, I’d think he did it to keep pesky ghost
hunters from waking him in the middle of the night. Didn’t work, did it?”

“You think this is amusing?”

He smiled. “Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to when it’s written all over your face,” she snapped.

“Well, you have me there, darlin’. But it’s not every day I get accused of criminal
activities. I have to admit, I do find a certain humor in that.”

“You were hiding illegal goods there and that put
my
family at risk! My cousins could have been implicated. No one would believe they
couldn’t have known what was going on in their own backyard. The scandal would have
touched my entire family!”

Enraged in defense of her family? Well, that at least he could understand. It just
didn’t alter that he needed to convince her she’d made a mistake.

So he chuckled. “Will you listen to yourself now? No one in their right mind would
blame a duke for anything, much less something illegal.”

“So you admit it? You came out of the hidden room, and I tasted brandy when you kissed
me. You were
not
just a vagrant passing by as you claimed! I don’t doubt you’ve even been using that
ruined house to hide smuggled goods for five years, haven’t you?

He was hard-pressed not to laugh. She’d figured everything out and with amazing accuracy.
Smart girl. Beauty
and
intelligence. When was the last time he had come across that combination? But she
was merely making charges she hoped to hear him confirm. That wasn’t going to happen.
He did need to get her off the scent though. . . .

His voice dropped to a husky timbre, his smile broadened. “You know, darlin’, if you
and I had actually shared a kiss, that would be a pleasant memory I’d not soon forget.
And now you make me wish it had happened. . . .”

She was staring at his mouth. As he’d hoped, he was distracting her. He just hadn’t
counted on his getting distracted, too. The pull was incredibly strong to kiss her
again, right there on the deck in the moonlight. Utter madness.

But he was saved from finding out what might have happened next when he heard two
of the crew talking, their voices getting louder as they approached. She heard them,
too, glancing nervously beyond him.

“Good night, darlin’. I better fade away like a ghost. I’d hate for your family to
learn of your predilection for late-night trysts.”

Nathan walked away. The subtle threat plus the doubts he’d tried to put in her mind
would hopefully be enough to keep her mouth shut for the time being. He was going
to climb the mainmast again, but unable to resist the urge to look back, he merely
moved into the mainmast’s shadow. She was halfway to the quarterdeck before she turned
to look back as well. Had she thought of more aspersions to cast on him? But he relaxed
when he saw she wasn’t looking for him, but for the book she’d dropped. She came back
to retrieve it.

A few moments later he lost sight of her when she entered the captain’s cabin, but
her image was still in his mind. The woman was too beautiful—but she was trouble.
He was going to have to come up with a better way to keep her from voicing her suspicions
to other people. But that could wait for tomorrow.

Chapter Fourteen

I
n the morning, Nathan found corky to discuss his newest problem—Judith Malory. But
his friend had been tasked with swabbing the main deck, a chore so menial Corky couldn’t
stop grumbling about it long enough to offer any suggestions. Nathan still kept him
company while he checked the railings for loose nails. It wasn’t something he would
have thought to do so early on the voyage if he hadn’t seen Judith leaning against
a rail last night.

“Watch out, Cap’n,” Corky suddenly said behind him. “I think that trouble you were
telling me about is coming your way.”

Nathan turned to see Judith marching toward him and Corky quickly getting out of the
way. She looked even more beautiful in daylight with the sun on her glorious red-gold
hair, wearing a long velvet coat left open over an ice-blue dress trimmed with yellow-dyed
lace—and the light of battle in her cobalt-blue eyes.

She’d lost a few hairpins last night, which he’d found on the deck after she’d gone,
so he wasn’t surprised to see she’d braided her hair today. Diamond-tipped pins. He’d
thought about keeping them as a memento, but dug them out of his pocket now and handed
them to her, hoping it would forestall another tirade. It didn’t.

“I do
not
care for the way you threatened me last night!” she began.

He shrugged. “If you’re going to make outlandish accusations about me, I can make
a more realistic one about you—that you seem to have a habit of conducting nighttime
trysts with strange men.”

“When you put my family at risk, there is no comparison!” she said furiously. “I demand
an explanation.”

Nathan gnashed his teeth in frustration. He wasn’t about to spill his guts to her
and tell her about his unusual situation when he didn’t know her and had no reason
to trust her with the truth. Beautiful in the extreme, she was still a nabob. And
he wasn’t so sure she was going to spread her suspicions around either. If she was,
why would she have come looking for him this morning to discuss them again? He just
had to come up with a way to ensure her silence, or at least some explanation that
she would believe so she could laugh off her damned conclusions. Or maybe another
bit of truth would suffice. . . .

“Tremayne!” was suddenly bellowed from the quarterdeck.

Nathan hissed under his breath, “Bleedin’ hell. I knew better than to talk to you
when you’ve got relatives crawling all over this ship—including my captain.”

“Why are you even aboard? Escaping a hangman’s noose in England?”

In exasperation he said, “No, chasing down my ship, which was stolen.”

“Yet another lie? Good God, do you ever say anything that’s true?” Then she smirked,
“But that was just my uncle’s ‘come here’ voice, not his ‘come here and die’ voice.
You’ll hear the latter after I tell him who you really are, Nathan Tremayne.”

He was out of time to talk her around, so he said, “Give me a chance to explain before
you do anything we’ll both regret. It’s not what you think.”

He left her with that, and hopefully enough doubt to keep her pretty mouth shut for
the time being.

Nathan approached Captain Malory with a good deal of annoyance. The man’s summons
couldn’t have come at a worse time, when he still had an ax hanging over his head
from the man’s niece. But he didn’t think a few more minutes with Judith would remove
that ax. She’d had two weeks to convince herself that her suspicions about him were
accurate. He might need just as long to change her mind—if he could. And if he couldn’t?
If she spread her tale anyway?

He supposed he could jump the gun on her and make a full confession right now to her
uncle—captain to captain. Like hell he would. That would only be a logical path if
the man weren’t a lord, too. Damned nabobs were too unpredictable. And he knew nothing
about Judith Malory’s uncle other than he was a rich lord with sledgehammers for fists—and
he liked to fight. Nathan had definitely gotten that impression the other night.

At least he didn’t think this Malory was the one he needed to avoid. He doubted the
captain was going to want retribution for what had happened on the docks, not when
he’d let him go after Hammett’s sailor. However, as captain he was king of this ship
for the duration, his word law, his dictates followed whether they were fair or not,
and if Nathan had just gotten on his bad side because of a woman, Nathan was going
to be furious—with himself.

He’d been so stupid last night, letting that pretty face dazzle him. Talking to her
as if there could be no consequences for it, and then to forget that entirely after
she made her accusations, which could bring even worse consequences. He should have
walked away when he had the chance to, before she realized who he was.

It was laughable. This was supposed to be the easy part of this trip. The hard part
wasn’t supposed to start until they arrived in Connecticut and he had to convince
the law-enforcing Yanks over there to help him, an Englishman, take down their own
criminals. At the most he’d be giving them a good laugh over that. At the worst, they
could toss him in jail instead for his audacity or run him out of town. But he still
had a few weeks before he found out how strongly animosity still ran between the two
countries that had gone to war with each other more’n once.

He didn’t look behind him to see if the reason for his latest predicament had scurried
off. He could still see her in his mind’s eye, though, softly rounded, exquisite in
every detail, lush, sensual lips, far too beautiful for any one woman to be. If he
couldn’t talk her around, maybe he could seduce her into keeping silent instead.

The moment the thought occurred to him, he made his decision. That’s how he would
handle Judith Malory. He hadn’t felt so good about a decision in ages. So what if
she was surrounded by family on this ship and the lot of them were aristocrats. He
was used to living dangerously.

When Nathan approached James Malory, he saw him conversing with his first mate. Artie
looked contrite, as if he’d just received a tongue-lashing.

“I didn’t know you wanted it set up before we sailed . . . ,” Artie was saying.

The captain’s back was turned toward Nathan, so he didn’t intrude. Malory in a billowing
white shirt open at the neck, tight, buff breeches, black, knee-high boots, and hair
to his shoulders didn’t look any more like a nabob now than he had the other night.
Glancing around, Nathan realized he was the only member of the crew who was properly
dressed. Like the captain, the other sailors had all stowed their jackets and were working
more comfortably in their shirtsleeves. After all, it wasn’t a military ship where
the crew had to button up in uniforms.

Nathan was about to shrug out of his own coat when Malory turned and noticed him.
“My brother has a bone to pick with you,” he stated baldly.

Nathan winced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember me from the other night.”

“Forget hair like yours? Not bloody likely.”

But the captain was grinning as if from a fond memory, prompting Nathan to ask cautiously,
“You aren’t angry that I punched your brother?”

“Not a’tall. Found it highly amusing, actually. Ain’t often Tony gets taken by surprise
like that. But he’ll want a rematch, so you might want to avoid him for a few days.
As it happens, the project I have for you will see to that nicely. I’m told you’re
my carpenter, but how experienced are you?”

Relieved he wasn’t going to be questioned about the fight on the dock or be reprimanded
for talking to the captain’s niece, Nathan answered honestly, “Three years, sir. Two
to master building and repairing, and then I spent a year branching out to furnishings.
Before that I built chimneys. Before that, I tried my hand at painting and roofing.”

“A jack-of-all-trades—for landlubbers? Then what are you doing on
The Maiden George
?”

“I inherited my father’s ship a few years ago, but she was stolen last week. This
group of thieves has been plaguing En­gland for a good decade, but not so often that
the authorities could piece together who they were or what they were doing with the
ships.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, dear boy, but it does pose another. A captain reduced
to ship’s carpenter? Do you like the sea so much that you’ll sail in any capacity?”

“Your destination is exactly where I need to go to get my ship back.”

James chuckled. “Ah, there we have it, an ulterior motive. So your thieves are Yanks,
are they? I find that particularly priceless, ’deed I do. Can’t wait to mention it
to my brother-in-law. But fess up, how did you figure that out?”

“I didn’t. A Commander Burdis captured one of the thieves and he has an ax to grind
with them because they killed one of his men. He agreed to tell me where to find the
thieves and my ship if I agreed to put them out of business for him.”

“So you’re actually working for the government?”

“Unofficially.”

“Of course, can’t step on Yank toes without stirring up another war, can we,” James
said drily.

“Something like that was mentioned.”

“Well, a captain you may be, but not on this voyage.”

“I’ll earn my way.”

“You will indeed, and that begins now. My first mate remembered to load the materials
for it, but now he tells me he forgot to inform
you
that I want an exercise ring built in my ship’s hold. Fetch your tools and meet him
below. He’ll show you where to build it.”

“An exercise ring?”

James had started to turn away but stopped and a frown formed. “Do
not
tell me you don’t know what an exercise ring is.”

Nathan stiffened, ready for battle. The man looked downright menacing when he frowned.
But Nathan had to know what he was building in order to build it. The only rings he
knew about were for pugilists. Surely that’s not what the captain was talking about.
Or was he?

“For fisticuffs?”

The frown vanished. “Splendid, so you do know.”

“How large do you want it?”

“The size of the tarpaulin will determine the dimensions for the platform. A foot
off the floor will suffice. I’ve been assured everything you will need for it is down
there. And, Tremayne, don’t take too long building it. I’m already feeling a need
to make use of it.”

“It shouldn’t take more’n a day, Captain Malory.”

“Excellent. Do a good job and you can test it out with me—yes, yes, I know I already
offered you that job and you turned it down, but it sounds now like you might have
some frustration to work off, lost ship and all, so you might want to reconsider.
By the by, did you get your answers from that sailor the other night?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I should apologize for interfering in that little contretemps you were
in. You didn’t really look like you needed help. I just deplore passing up a spot
of exercise when it pre­sents itself so handily. But run along now. You’ve my ring
to build.”

Malory didn’t seem to be a bad sort—for a captain. Nathan had told him nothing he
didn’t mind sharing. And the man was right, he could use an outlet for his frustration,
just not for the reason he’d stated. But to spar with his captain, at sea, probably
wouldn’t be in his best interests. The man obviously didn’t expect to lose, but what
if he did? And ended up angry because of it?

No, the better course would be to avoid any further discourse with the captain altogether,
which shouldn’t be too hard. The first mate and the boatswain would be getting their
orders from him. Those two had to deal with James Malory on this trip, Nathan didn’t.
Thank God.