Wherever You Are (13 page)

“They’re beautiful,” she murmured. “Thank you for showing me.”

The silence that followed was comforting. What she loved most about Morgan was he knew when she preferred quiet—which she preferred more than usual lately.

She was very aware that her ordeal with Barun scarred her. There were times when she wanted to tell Morgan everything, but she was embarrassed she allowed Barun that much power over her so she kept quiet.

Morgan rolled to his side and braced his head on his hand. “I brought you out here because I owe you an explanation. You deserve to know why Barun is after me and now you.”

Juliana held her breath. The knowing couldn’t change the past, but it would give her another glimpse of Morgan. It would allow her to understand, at least a little, what made him tick and what formed him into the man he’d become.

He studied a wrinkle in the blanket, plucked at it with his fingers. “I left my family when I was young. Seventeen.” He rolled onto his back, folded his hands over his chest and crossed his ankles. “At the time, I thought of myself as worldly. And stupid, but that’s an observation from hindsight.”

Juliana sympathized. After all, at seventeen she’d known it all too. Had believed everything in her life would turn out fine as long as she had Zach. In a way she’d been right. As soon as Zach left, everything had gone to hell.

“I met Isabelle in Boston. She was sailing to her aunt in London and I was working on the ship for food in my belly and a pillow under my head. Our ship was attacked by pirates a few weeks into the voyage. It was over faster than it started and the pirate captain left enough provisions for us to return to Boston. He took everything else though.”

Morgan’s first glimpse of pirating hadn’t been so much frightening as intoxicating. He’d heard stories, of course, and knew there was money to be made in pirating. More money than he would ever make as a sailor on a passenger vessel. But it wasn’t the money that intrigued him. It was the adventure, the freedom, the places he could go. The power.

What many in the twenty-first century didn’t realize was that a pirate’s life was much better than a sailor working on a passenger vessel. The food was better. The money was certainly better. And unlike private ships, pirate ships held to a democracy. The majority ruled.

It hadn’t taken much convincing for Morgan to decide which side he wanted to fight on.

“Pirating seemed the thing to do.” She repeated his words from a few days ago.

He turned his head to look at Juliana. He brought her out here to bare his soul. To show her what type of man he really was. His feelings for her, feelings he’d buried, were emerging and as he was once again nursing her back to health he knew this couldn’t go on.

“It wasn’t just the thing to do, Juliana. I wanted to do it. I liked the power. I liked that people feared me. I liked the money. No, I loved the money and I loved the power.”

Her gaze met his, steady, unwavering. “You loved the adventure.”

She knew him too well.

“Yes, I loved the adventure.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting adventure.”

He sat up and leaned against the side of the tender. “You have this romanticized view of pirating. It’s not pretty, it’s not romantic. It’s ugly. It’s deadly. It’s dirty and it’s illegal. For years I couldn’t step on English soil for fear of being tarred and feathered. Tarred and feathered, Juliana. They really do that.”

“I know what tarring and feathering is, Morgan.”

He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. She wasn’t getting it. Where was the horror he expected?

“I’ve killed people. Innocent people.” Faces that haunted him in the dead of night. There were too many to remember but he felt each of their souls heavy on his own.

“You did what you had to.”

“I did what I wanted to.”

She sat up as well and leaned against the other side. The tender was small and their toes touched. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need to know what type of man I am.”

“I already know what type of man you are. You’re the type who rights a wrong, who has empathy for his men. Who takes a wayward stowaway and saves her life twice.”

“That’s not me.” Yet he looked away, unable to meet her gaze. Everything he planned was falling apart. She wasn’t listening to him. She didn’t believe him when he said he was no good.

“How long were you a pirate?” she asked.

“A long time. Isabelle came with me. She had an agenda and I hooked on to her coattails so to speak. Eventually, Isabelle and I procured our own vessels by attacking some ships we had our eye on. We killed that captain.”

He paused, waiting for her reaction and was surprised to feel her fingers curl around his, squeezing.

“After Isabelle married Reed, she wanted to settle down and become respectable. They offered me a position with their company but I wasn’t interested. I took a crew and set off for the South China Sea.”

He brought Juliana’s hand to his mouth to kiss her knuckles. The South China Sea. He never made it.

“Barun rules the Indian Ocean and to get to the South China Sea you have to sail through the Indian Ocean. I was cocky enough to think I could do it, but Barun captured my ship, looted and burned it. My crew was sold as slaves and I was thrown in Barun’s dungeon.”

And the nightmares started. He would never tell Juliana about the weeks he’d been chained to the wall of his dungeon while the rodents and insects crawled on him. He would never admit the heart-stopping fear he lived with day by day, hour by hour. Nor would he tell her of the broken bones, the oozing wounds, the fevers or the hunger. His food had been withheld. He’d been isolated, denied sunlight until he didn’t know whether it was day or night, if hours had passed or days, if days had passed or weeks.

Insanity had been close and he welcomed it. Anything to escape the cruelty. Then, miraculously, it stopped. He’d been dragged, bloody, smelly, unshaven and weak from the only home he’d known for months and put onto a ship. His job, along with many others, was to row one of Sanjit Barun’s war ships.

That was the worst kind of hell—being on the water, inside a ship, the place he loved most in the world, and not able to walk around, to enjoy the spray of the ocean on his face. All he felt was the roll of the waves but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly.

There had been times when he would have preferred the beatings, the isolation, the rodents and bugs, especially when one of the rowers died. They were often forced to row with the dead man until someone retrieved the corpse. Sometimes that would be hours, more often than not, days. The smell was nauseating. The flies were so thick you could barely see the body.

He thought only of escape and revenge. He would escape. He would heal. And he would hunt Barun and kill him.

His soul had been taken from him while he rowed for his life and he was fairly certain nothing, not even Juliana, could bring it back.

“Is that where you got the scar?”

For a moment he had no idea what she was talking about until he remembered the brand on the inside of his arm. It was hideous, reaching from the bend of his elbow to his wrist. He resisted the urge to rub it. Sometimes he still felt the poker scorch his skin and still smelled the acrid stench of his own flesh burning. “It means slave in Sanskrit. Barun wanted everyone to know that the pirate Morgan was his.”

He jerked when her tentative fingers outlined the series of straight lines and half circles connected by another line.

“I thought it was a burn,” she whispered.

He remained silent, not wanting to take her to the dark places in his mind where even he didn’t want to go. As much as he knew he should push her away, he would never do that to her.

“One day Barun summoned me to his cabin,” he said. Juliana kept her fingers on his scar and even though he knew it wasn’t true, he could have sworn her touch was like a cool salve healing him.

“The guards left us alone. Apparently, Barun thought I was too weak to harm him. Or maybe he thought I would never attack him on his own ship. What he didn’t know was that I refused to die in the hell he created for me.”

“That’s how I felt,” she said softly. “On his ship. I didn’t want to die a coward.”

Morgan flinched, hating that Juliana had suffered at Barun’s hands. Just another reason to kill Barun. Maybe the best reason of all.

“There was an old sword,” he managed to say. “On Barun’s desk. Encased in glass. I broke the glass with my fist and grabbed the sword.” He had only moments to act. The sword was ancient, the blade dull. Morgan stabbed him but Barun twisted at the last moment and Morgan only sliced his shoulder. Barun yelled for his men. Morgan slipped through the door and disappeared. “It was easy after that. If there was one thing I knew, it was ships. I avoided the manhunt by changing hiding places. We were still anchored offshore. After dark, I swam to land. Within two months I was back in Boston, knocking on Isabelle’s front door.”

Juliana was both awed and amazed at what Morgan had survived and what it took to survive in this time. Her feelings for Morgan…changed. Yet she couldn’t figure out how.

The weight of true love is measured not in distance nor in time, but in deed. Look ye into this mirror and find what ye seek. Step through and discover yer heart’s desire.

A flash of memory made her go still. Steep steps. Furniture covered in sheets. Boxes. Old chests. A tall mirror.

An attic? Was that what she was seeing? Somehow the verse seemed to be tied to the mirror. How? Why? It had been taller than her. Wider than her arm span. Bigger than any mirror she had seen before. There had been a carving of a woman. She’d been sad and Juliana remembered wondering what made her sad. Then… Nothing. Her memories stopped there.

A mirror. How could a mirror help her get home? And what good was that memory in the middle of an ocean where she highly doubted she’d find a mirror?

Morgan shifted and Juliana tucked the image and her questions away.

“Tell me about the lance,” she said. “The one Barun wants back.”

He explained the supposed significance of the Holy Lance. Could something that dated back to Christ’s time still exist? If she believed she traveled through time, which she emphatically did, then it was not such a stretch to believe in the Holy Lance.

“Maybe it is holy,” she said. “It saved you.”

“I don’t want the damn lance, Juliana. I just want to be free of Barun.”

She touched Morgan’s cheek. Her heart ached for this man who suffered so much and who for once deserved peace in his life. “I know,” she whispered.

There was a wildness inside him, a desperation that seemed to confuse him. He wanted to push her away, had tried with his stories of killing and plundering but she saw through the act. Inside this dangerous man was a human being who cried out for love and understanding and somehow she knew she was the one to give him that love. Maybe that’s why she was here. To help Morgan. To teach him that even though he’d done some horrible things, he was still good at heart.

Morgan moved to her side of the tender and pulled her to him, rolling until they lay chest to chest, thigh to thigh, nose to nose. She felt every contour, every dip and valley of his body.

It felt good. Way good. Too good.

He pinned her in place with his strong arms as if he were afraid she was going somewhere when moments ago he’d tried his best to push her away.

She buried her hands in his silky, soft hair spread out beneath him like a veil. How many times had she wondered what it would feel like to bury her hands like this? She’d never been a woman who liked a guy with long hair but that was slowly changing. How was she to go back to her time, to the soft men who ruled corporate America?

“I want you to know something,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I don’t regret kissing you yesterday.”

Her hands stilled. “I meant to thank you.” It truly had started out as a kiss of appreciation. A slight buss on the cheek was all she’d meant to do. But it all too quickly turned into more, startling her in its intensity. She saw the shock in Morgan’s eyes as well. Something passed between them during that quick kiss. Something others would probably refer to as chemistry. “We’re from different worlds, Juliana.”

“I know.” Oh, how she knew. More than he could possibly understand.

“I’m not the man you think I am.” He ran his hands through her hair, tucking it behind her ear. “I’m not the man for you.”

She pressed her lips together, sealing in her protest. He was wrong. He was the man for her. And he was right. They were from different worlds.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “More than you’ll ever know.”

“We have now and sometimes now is all that matters. Sometimes the present is all we get in life. I learned that from Zach. I also learned not to waste what I’ve been given.”

Her hips moved, not at all listening to the rational part of her telling her this was a bad idea. But damn it, she wanted this because tomorrow may never come and if it did, she may not be here, in this place and time and if there was one thing she knew, it was that she didn’t want any regrets when it came to Morgan.

His eyes darkened and his breathing paused. The rigid outline of his erection pushed into her heated her skin and fired her nerve endings. Yes, this was right.

His hands slid down her body and settled on her hips. Above her the rigging softly clanked, below her the animals moved about in the hold. The stiff, brine-scented breeze brushed through her hair. But none of that mattered. What mattered was the man beneath her, the need clearly evident in the dark pupils of his eyes and the stiff erection pressing into her pelvis.

Morgan lifted his head and brushed his lips against hers, a feather-soft touch that wasn’t really a touch at all but a sensation that made her shiver in awareness. With his lips he touched her cheek, her jaw, the shell of her ear. She’d never been more aware of her body with such little contact.

“Ah, Juliana.” His voice was more a release of breath with little sound to it. He blew lightly on her neck and she shivered, falling more and more under his spell.