The Wayward One (The De Montforte Brothers Book 5) (21 page)

He should be feeling a sense of triumph, of accomplishment, at the thought.

Instead, it brought him only a desperate ache.

I don’t want her to go.

He wished he could marry her. It was impossible, of course—too much separated them when it came to culture and class. The very idea was ludicrous, though not so much that his mind didn’t keep flitting back to the idea despite his best efforts to direct it elsewhere. She was a gently-bred noblewoman who should never have been put into a position of being alone with a man. When he’d scooped her up off that London floor, he hadn’t thought that far ahead—an opportunity had presented itself and he had grabbed it. Now, he realized just how much he had taken from her and her family with that one impulsive action. The scandal would be tremendous, outrageous, forever damning. The world, the society papers, the people amongst whom she lived and breathed…all would think she’d been compromised. She could never be expected to make a decent match after this. She would be forced to live out her life as either a spinster or wife to a man who would not love her any more than that wanker Perry had, who would forever view her as damaged goods.

He could offer for her, but she would surely refuse him and he wouldn’t blame her one bit. And yet…he could love her. He was already half in love with her, and to fall the rest of the way wouldn’t take much. He sensed a free and wayward spirit beneath the trappings of breeding and convention that complemented his own, and he had seen her kindness in her concern over McGuire when he’d gone overboard, the careful way she treated the blushing Cranton, the gentleness in her manner, her thoughts, her very soul. He had ruined her—and he owed her, no doubt about it.

I should have waited, and taken the brother. The inventor. I did it all arseways, didn’t I?

He sighed and cast a last glance at the horizon. Hadley’s frigate was gone. The evening was settling in, the moon coming up in the east. Things were in motion, wheels would be turning, and Saturday’s exchange was well on its way.

The thought brought him no joy.

Another night spent sleeping outside his cabin, restlessly craving the woman who slept so innocently beyond the door.

That thought brought him no joy, either.

* * *

Captain Lawrence Hadley had beaten it back to London.

“You know damned well, Larry, that I don’t have the explosive and I certainly wouldn’t offer it to the enemy even if I did have it,” Lawrence Hadley the Third said to his son as they sat in the elder’s office early the next morning. “But the Duke of Blackheath and Lord Andrew are due to arrive within an hour. I’ve got a meeting with the First Lord of the Admiralty about this in less than fifteen minutes, Admiral Elliott Lord and his brother at noon. We’ve got to think of something to stall that Irish vermin.”

“Father, we don’t have time to waste. He struck her with his pistol. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“He
struck
her?”

Startled, both Hadleys turned toward the door, which had been left ajar to catch the breeze coming in down the hall…and through which the mighty Duke of Blackheath and his brother had just come, some forty minutes early for their appointment.

Admiral Hadley got to his feet. “Your Grace, Lord Andrew, I thought our meeting was for ten o’ clock—”

“
He struck her?
” the duke roared, and the walls themselves seemed to shrink from his fury.

“Your Grace, you have my full assurance that the Navy is putting every resource at its disposal toward bringing Lady Nerissa home safe and sound, with no expense or vessel spared—”

“No expense spared? What is this—this
buffoon
doing here in your office when he could be out rescuing my little sister? Is this the best the Royal Navy can bloody do?” The duke stalked towards the suddenly hapless younger Hadley, who knew that Blackheath was so well-connected that the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty himself was probably in his debt. “If you were in a position to see her, you were damn well in a position to save her!
Why did you leave her?
”

“With all due respect, Your Grace, I had O’ Devir in range of my guns,” Hadley said defensively. “I expected him to surrender to me; I had a king’s frigate under my command, I could have blasted him out of the water three times over. I would have, too, but he brought Lady Nerissa topside and made sure I could see her, knowing full well that if I fired on him the risk of her being injured was substantial.”

“
Why did you leave her?
”

“O’ Devir was adamant that he would not talk business unless we did so under the terms of his demand, which is to meet at the French port of Saint-Malo tomorrow afternoon to make the exchange.”

The duke stood there staring at him, his nostrils quivering with a rage so tightly controlled that Hadley felt a cold trickle of sweat beginning to slide down the groove of his spine.

“Your Grace, if I had stayed there, keeping this rebel’s ship in sight, I dare not think of how much more he might have hurt the lady just to taunt me or punish me for staying vigilant. I—”

“Cease your damned prattle! I don’t want to hear excuses! You went in there without a plan, with nothing to offer O’ Devir in trade except your own foolish arrogance in thinking he’d be cowed because you had a bigger ship than he did. Is that not so, Hadley?”

Hadley flushed darkly.

Swearing under his breath the duke stalked to the window, where he stood looking out at the surrounding buildings, his fists clenched at his side as he tried to get his temper under control. Hadley let out a pent-up breath. The duke was angry, yes, but beneath that anger was a debilitating worry, a visceral panic over the fate and future of the little sister he loved.

“So you saw him strike her,” he said softly, his voice trembling like a volcano about to explode. “And you left her there alone with this…this rebel, this pirate,
this murderer
.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“I saw no recourse, Your Grace. I can assure you that I am as worried as you are—”

“
You cannot be one iota as worried as I am,
” snarled the duke, turning and impaling Hadley with a glare so black and deadly that the naval captain took a step back. “She is not
your
sister!”

“Lucien, easy,” said Lord Andrew, laying a restraining hand on his brother’s arm as Blackheath returned his anguished gaze to the street. “We will sort this out.”

“I actually have an idea,” Hadley said, drawing himself up. “It is not without risk, but I think it will work.”

Blackheath looked at him with disdain.

“We bring Lord Andrew to Saint-Malo and let him trade himself for his sister. And then rescue
him
once the exchange is made.”

“We cannot give O’ Devir the explosive,” the elder Hadley said, vehemently shaking his head. “That is quite out of the question.”

“
You
cannot give him the explosive, Admiral, because I haven’t yet sold it to you,” Lord Andrew countered, warming to Hadley’s suggestion. “It is still mine to do with as I wish, and if I want to trade it for my sister, that is my prerogative.

The admiral’s mouth fell open in horror that this aristocrat, whose blood was as ancient and blue as the ocean itself, would betray his country so, even if it was to rescue his sister.

“However,” continued Lord Andrew, “that is not my intent.”

All three men stared at the young inventor.

“It is unthinkable, of course, that I hand over the explosive,” Lord Andrew continued. “However, your son’s plan has merit.” At the thunderous fury rising in his brother’s face, he merely shrugged. “Why settle for the explosive when you can have the man who actually knows how to make it?”

“You’re not going to share that information with him, are you?”

“Of course not, Admiral Hadley,” Andrew said in disgust. “I’ll stall him. Put him off. Once Nerissa is safe and I’m on his ship instead, I’ll go below. Plead seasickness or something, anything to get me off the deck so you, Hadley, will have no reason not to fire on that brig and bring these pirates to heel. It could work, you know.”

“Aye, it could.”

“Your Grace?”

The duke’s eyes, black, bottomless pits of pain, met his brother’s. “I’d rather we just send over a false explosive. I don’t want either of you in such danger.”

The younger Hadley shook his head. “I doubt O’ Devir is such a fool that he wouldn’t test it first, and if he finds it to be inferior to his expectations and we’ve not held up our end of the bargain, there’s no telling what he’ll do to Lady Nerissa. No, Your Grace, I think this is the best way of handling this situation…and I can assure you that I will not fire on that brig until your sister is safely upon my ship and Lord Andrew is well off the enemy’s deck.”

Lucien’s mouth tightened. “Very well, then, Hadley.” He let his black stare pierce the other man. “But the moment you’ve captured that vermin, you will bring him to me.
I
will be the one to decide his fate, not your guns. Do you understand?”

“Sir, I cannot—”

The duke’s fist came down hard on the senior Hadley’s desk. “
Do you understand?
”

“Yes, Your Grace. You make yourself very clear, indeed.”

Chapter 17

Morning.

An evening spent by herself, an unpalatable meal brought by Joey who’d sat and demonstrated some of “Ol’ Scup’s” vocabulary until Nerissa couldn’t help but laugh at the parrot’s raunchy command of the English language, the captain coming in briefly to retrieve a chart, and another long night in darkness lit only by a swinging lantern while she lay awake and pondered Captain Ruadri O’ Devir and the way he made her feel.

Intrigued. Outraged. Fascinated. Incensed.

Open to possibilities that were too scandalous to even consider.

Stay here with me.

Early sunlight sought out the gloom of the cabin. Tomorrow was the scheduled rendezvous. Today would be her last full one aboard the brig. What would this day bring?

Tigershark
’s motion beneath her was oddly comforting, and soothed her restlessness in ways that she hadn’t expected. Up and down, up and down, while the heavy wooden planking beneath her feet seemed permanently set at a forty-five degree angle.

If my brothers could see me now.

She was rather glad they could not. She already feared for her captor’s safety once Lucien caught up with them. And while Captain O’ Devir might have confused and even angered her with the abrupt and unexpected way in which he’d pulled back in answer to her innocent question, the idea of harm coming to him filled her with a sharply unbearable ache. A worry that she hadn’t expected.

The sun rose higher. She got up and made her toilet as best she could at the crude little washstand, ran her fingers through her hair and tried to restore her appearance with the help of the bit of mirror above it. She ached for a real bath. A comb. Lavender water and silk against her skin, edible food, a decent bed and Ruaidri O’ Devir.

Ruaidri O’ Devir.

She pressed her fingertips into her eyes and took a deep breath.
Oh, what is the matter with me?
She walked over to the little ship model wedged into the bulkhead and picked it up, fingering the smooth, lovingly-crafted hull, the carefully-strung rigging. It was a work of art, something exquisitely beautiful made from materials that were quite primitive, and she wondered, now, if that rough, common man out there, he who wore the uniform of an organized navy but was as wild and untamed as the windy, rain-soaked moors of his native land, had made it.

Behind her the door opened. Her instinct was to hurriedly put down the little model, but she had nothing to hide. Boldly, she met the eyes of the man standing in the doorway, his face in shadow beneath the brim of his tricorne hat, his tall, powerful body silhouetted by the light from behind him.

He didn’t seem to know what to say.

Neither did she.

He walked into the cabin and wordlessly removed the hat. “Mornin’, Sunshine.”

“Good morning, Captain.”

“Got some business to attend to,” he said brusquely. “I’ll try not to disturb ye.”

She shrugged. It was, after all, his cabin. Wordlessly, she watched as he went to the desk, pulled out the chair and sat down. Flipped open the log book and sharpened a quill, dipped it in ink, and set it to paper. Her eyes drank in the sight of him. She had missed him. Hadn’t been able to stop thinking of him. Now, she itched to move closer, just to see if he truly was able to read and write as he claimed or if he was just going through the motions to fool her. But his hand was quick and sure, his intent conveyed to the page in decisive flourishes and quick, repeated dips of the quill into the little bottle of ink, over and over again in almost an agitated motion. No man who was illiterate would write like that. She stepped closer. Came up behind him and looked down. He wrote with his left hand. His words were clean and sure, his spelling sound. No illiteracy here. She smiled.

“You’re an enigma, Captain O’ Devir.”

“And why is that, Sunshine?”

She looked down at his entry, preceded by the date and followed by the weather and sea conditions.
Spoke the British frigate
Happenstance
, Captain Hadley. No shots exchanged. McGuire still in sick bay.
Succinct and to-the-point.