Alison DeLaine – A Gentleman 'Til Midnight (страница 3)
The tension in her gut coiled so tightly she wanted to vomit. The uproar from the main deck buzzed in her ears as precious, lifesaving moments ticked away. Some mistakes should be easy to avoid. If she acquiesced, and he turned out to be the danger she feared...
Yet if she left him to die...
“Very well.” The words tumbled out, ejected by the sick pit in her stomach. “Haul him up. If there is any sign of disease, any sign at all—” But Millicent had already spun away, practically flying down the steps to relay the order.
Katherine Kidd, indeed. She inhaled deeply and tried to still her trembling hands. Already her stomach eased, but it shouldn’t have. Even if the man was healthy, he could bring trouble.
If he did, he would spend the voyage in chains.
Alone on the upper deck, she held the spyglass to her eye and carefully focused it downward. A striking face came into view, close as breath in the lens. Her belly quickened in a sudden, visceral reaction. The man’s complexion must have been swarthy before, but now a pallor made him seem ghostly. A strong, perfectly sculpted nose extended from an angular face with sharp cheekbones. Wet, black lashes lay against the hollows beneath his eyes. His jaw hung slack, dusted by a thick stubble of whiskers that nearly hid a dark slant of mustache above firm, lifeless lips. Water plastered his hair to his head in careless black waves streaked with silver.
For a long, hypnotic moment the world contained only him.
And then the ship rolled with a wave, tearing him from her view. She inhaled sharply and lowered the glass. Surely it was too late. His large hands lay motionless against the boards that supported him. She hadn’t seen any movement through the glass.
Rafik’s staccato shouts barked up from below while the crew threw the nets over the side and clambered down. She held her breath as several crew members tried to lift the man off his raft but only succeeded in nearly capsizing it. They shouted for a boom, and soon the crew on deck fashioned a sling and lowered it down. Within minutes they hauled the man’s listless, sodden form into the air.
Quickly she made her way to the quarterdeck and then to the main, just as they brought him aboard. Crew members crowded in around the rescuers. “Give them room!” she ordered, and they backed off instantly. “Is he alive?”
“He was half an hour ago,” India said insolently, brushing past her to help remove the sling. Her blond braid hung like a rope over one shoulder as she deftly undid the hooks. Rafik hacked away the man’s white shirt and tan breeches, while two deckhands doused him with fresh water from the mop buckets. Now the orders came from Millicent, who forced everyone away except those who helped wash him.
“Phil went to find some toweling,” William said, moving in beside Katherine.
After a moment Millicent called over her shoulder. “He lives!”
Katherine exhaled.
The man lay naked and facedown on the deck as they continued to douse him until Millicent was satisfied that no salt remained. Phil returned with two lengths of linen and crouched by his side. His legs were long. Muscular. Katherine slid her gaze past solid buttocks to the broad expanse of his back and shoulders.
“A fine form of a man,” Phil purred, drying him carefully.
India snorted and snatched one of the towels from her hand. “Auntie Phil, he’s in his dotage!”
Phil laughed at her niece. “In your eyes, any man over twenty-five is in his dotage.”
“Exactly so.” Eighteen-year-old India smiled wickedly from beneath her tricorne hat.
Millicent rolled the man over, revealing a sprinkle of dark hair on his chest, a rippled stomach and—
Katherine looked away, straight into William’s laughing eyes. “I’ll wager you side with Phil this time,” he said.
“He will need clothes,” she snapped. “Something of yours will do.”
William leaned in, lowering his voice to a mock-whisper. “Are you sure? Because I rather had the impression you might prefer him without.”
“Devil take you. You’re as bad as Phil.”
“I heard that,” Phil called. “And I resent it deeply.”
But Phil had been right about one thing. The man was definitely not in his dotage. The ordeal may have nearly killed him, but he looked strong, and he was large. Commanding. “I don’t want him in the infirmary,” she told William under her breath. “Too close to the crew. We can clear out André’s cabin and put him there, but in the meantime—” she hesitated “—put him in mine.”
As expected, William’s brow ticked upward.
“One word, and you’ll meet the end of my cutlass,” she bit out, but the threat had no effect on William’s amusement. “As soon as he’s been seen to, everyone will resume their duties or punishment will be meted out.”
“Captain Cat-o’-nine-tails.”
“If behavior warrants.” But they both knew she owned no instruments of torture. It was far more effective to offer good food, high pay and commendations for good behavior. “Fortune has smiled on him today,” she said, a bit too sharply. “We shall see if that changes once he is awake.” She looked once more at the newest person for whom she was responsible. The man was handsome—too handsome, with features that bordered on aristocratic and a stubborn, angular jaw.
“We could use another man on the crew,” Phil pointed out.
“True enough,” William agreed. “But then, we’ve no idea whether he knows his cock from a bowsprit.”
In that same moment, the man’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up, straight at Katherine, piercing her with depths as green as a backlit Mediterranean wave. Something hot and liquid and unexpected shot through her, and a shiver feathered her spine.
He knew the difference. She’d wager the entire year’s take on it.
JAMES WRITHED RESTLESSLY beneath cool linens.
He was drowning—dragged beneath black water, sucked into frigid numbness. Wood splintered. Cracked. A timber shot from the water, and he made a desperate lunge. Grabbed hold.
Wood turned to flesh beneath his hands. Cold became hot. Water became woman. The curling waves unraveled, tumbling, becoming hair like black walnut silk in his hands. Her body wrapped around him. Engulfed him. He gasped, tasting the wild sea on her skin.
From somewhere far away, sultry voices pierced his dream. “...and have you try to bed him while he’s yet unconscious? Absolutely not.”
“You offend me grievously, Katherine. I’m quite through with affairs. Tedious things. Besides, he could be anyone.”
The voices threatened to tear him away. He strained to keep the woman alive, wanting. Needing. But she began to fade, slipping away.
The voices broke through, stronger now. “For the moment, Philomena, he is our captive.”
“Honestly, he hardly warrants such status.” A door closed. Footsteps tapped against wood. He awoke as if fighting the churning sea.
“Nor does he warrant any other. Help me put this shirt on him before he awakes.”
He opened his eyes to a sky-blue ceiling edged with gold scrollwork. His gaze swept over an ornate dressing table with an oblong looking glass, two armchairs upholstered in sapphire velvet, a chest of drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He turned his head.
A woman stood by the bed with a maroon tunic in her hands. Silken walnut waves fell to her hips from beneath a length of ochre cloth tied around her head in a makeshift turban shot through with shimmering threads. High cheekbones. Straight, finely sculpted nose. Statuesque profile, silhouetted perfectly by the light from a small bank of windows he recognized as belonging to a ship.
He was on board a vessel. In the captain’s cabin.
“Katherine. Look.”
Her face snapped toward him. His gaze locked with glittering topaz eyes, and his pulse leaped. He struggled to think. To remember. He tried to lick his lips, but his mouth was powder dry.
Someone else pushed in next to him—another beauty, this one with sable curls and wide, blue eyes. He felt a hand beneath his head, lifting, and a glass against his lips. Cool water slid over his tongue and he tried to gulp, but the blasted woman pulled the glass away.
“Not so quickly,” she purred, and the glass returned. “Careful, now. Just a bit.”
He sipped, then sipped again before she pulled the glass away.
“More.” His voice croaked. The vessel rolled and creaked, lolling with the waves. And suddenly, he remembered. A storm. A wreck. Days upon days adrift at sea.
A red flag with a yellow arm.
“You speak English,” the bewitching one said. He watched her mouth move, could taste those sumptuous lips as if she’d been the woman in his dream.
“Aye.” He tore his gaze away, only to have it veer to her breasts, covered only in the richly colored hues of Ottoman textiles draping her body. A blue jacket threaded with silver hung past her hips over a knee-length chemise, covering lighter blue, flowing trousers. A red sash tied around her waist held a gleaming cutlass.
The image of her flesh burned in his mind as sure as if she’d laid herself bare.
“You are a subject of the Crown?” she demanded.
“Aye.” Beneath the covers, the idiot between his legs pulsed against soft linen, stubbornly holding on to the dream. He was naked. And chained, he realized when he tried to reach for the glass. Heavy links clanked against the bed, and iron cuffs banded his wrists. “Is this necessary?” he rasped.