Midnight Mistress Page 16

  The Mediterranean! “You cannot. This snow is no match for a well-armed frigate.”

  “Perhaps. But England needs all the ships she can get at the moment. Besides,” he added as he raked his hand through his hair, “it is not as if anyone here will miss me.”

  “I … will,” she confessed softly. The thought of Connor facing Napoleon’s deadly cannons left no room for lies. “Please, do not go.”

  He hung his head. “Juliana, you don’t understand. I must leave—”

  “No!” The cry came from her soul, deeper than convention, deeper than honor. The thought of not seeing him for weeks devastated her. But the thought of not seeing him for months, maybe never again—she could not bear it. “You must not go. Lovejoy told me papers were stolen from the War Office last night, detailing the Spanish campaign. If they reach Napoleon, our ships will be sitting ducks for the French fleet. I could not bear for you to be in such danger. Stay, Connor. Please.”

  He lifted his hand to her cheek. “Juliana … Princess … I cannot.”

  The ache in his voice echoed the ache in her heart. Her pride weighed little compared to the emptiness her life would be without him. They were bound together in a way that made no sense. And yet nothing in her life made sense without him.

  She wound her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. “Stay,” she whispered.

  His whole body went rigid. “For God’s sake, I’m not made of stone!”

  “You don’t have to be my manager. You can be anything you want. I’ll be anything you want. Just don’t leave me. I cannot bear losing you aga—”

  A roll of the tide slapped against the ship, momentarily unbalancing the pair. To keep them both from toppling Connor twisted and fell heavily against a cabinet, sending a small chest crashing to the floor. The chest flew open, spewing its contents of letters haphazardly across the room.

  It took Juliana a moment to realize that all the correspondence bore the seal of the War Office.

  “Steady as she goes, pilot,” Connor commanded as he stood on the quarterdeck of his ship with his hands clasped behind his back and surveyed the vast blue kingdom that stretched around him as far as the eye could see. Fair weather had borne them beyond the chops of the channel in record time, and the remains of a long easy southern swell had urged them westward with steady determination. The morning sun rose behind him, scattering diamonds across the gently rippling surface. Ahead, the low-riding merchant ships dipped and swayed like fat, contented ducks, while overhead the sails billowed and fluttered like angels’ wings.

  Connor breathed deeply, relishing the clean, lonely peace of the ocean dawn. On mornings like these he could almost believe that he was still a boy on the Marquis’s schooner, with the wide world before him.

  The sound of breaking china from the deck below shattered the illusion.

  “I imagine that would be breakfast,” Raoul commented as he climbed to the quarterdeck. “If the mademoiselle keeps this up, we will have no dishes left.”

  During the two days they’d been at sea, Juliana had decimated a startling amount of pottery. Not to mention what she had done to Connor’s cabin. “She’s got to eat sometime,” he growled.

  “I am not so sure. This one has a will of iron, and we will not reach Portugal for ten days.” He gazed out to sea. “Mon ami, you must talk with her. She will listen to you.”

  “Trust me, she’d rather walk the plank,” Connor scoffed, ignoring the stab of pain through his heart. God’s teeth, why did that chest have to break open? In another minute he’d have had her off the ship. She would have been safe. She’d have remembered him with honor—perhaps even with love. But instead, that bloody box had spilled its treasonous contents all over the floor of the wardroom. He’d had no choice but to lock Juliana in his quarters and sail with the tide. Delay would have cost him his mission. Kidnapping cost him only his heart.

  At the time it had seemed a wise bargain.

  Another crash brought his thoughts back to the present. Raoul was right. He had to do something. Before he lost every dish on the ship. Before her hunger strike truly endangered her life.

  Sighing, he leaned on the rail and stared into the open water. A school of dolphins surfaced nearby, including several cows and their spirited calves. Despite his glum mood, he could not help smiling as he watched the playful animals. “I envy you, friends. No wars. No heartache. Just endless freedom, and no responsibilities save the love of your mothers for their young …”

  A thought stirred in his mind. “Raoul, how many men have we assigned to stand watch on Lady Juliana?”

  “Three. But she drove them all away with bruised shins and blistered ears. The rest of the crew refuses to go near her door—save to deliver the dishes she breaks and the food she will not eat. Besides, ’tis hardly necessary. Unless she has a taste for cold salt water, the demoiselle cannot escape this ship.”

  “Nevertheless, I believe there is one crew member who can guard her in complete safety,” Connor mused as he rubbed his chin. “And if my plan plays out as I think it will, she will also be dining with the manners of the queen.”

  “Do that, and I shall truly call you the Archangel,” Raoul replied. “We cannot afford any more distractions from our mission to deliver the letters to the Spanish courier. I hope you know what you are doing.”

  So did Connor. Delivering the War Office letters was their most dangerous mission to date, and failure would mean not only his life but the lives of many others as well. Their safety was in his hands—and now, so was Juliana’s. The treason that damned his name was perilously close to damning hers. He was once again her protector, just as he had been when they were children.

  Only this time the danger he was protecting her from was himself.

  Juliana cast her gaze around the room, searching for something, anything, that might aid her escape. But the spacious captain’s quarters had been stripped of everything but the bedclothes before she was locked in. And while she could have wrapped her fist in the sheets and broken the glass panes of the large aft window, it was still a long, cold drop to the water below. She would certainly drown. And yet death seemed almost preferable to enduring the terrible ache in her heart. He betrayed me. He betrayed all of England. How could I have let my self fall in l—?

  She heard the metal scrape of the door’s outer bolt sliding back. She reached around and picked up one of the two remaining waterglasses from the room’s huge sea chest. Drawing back her arm, she launched it toward the door at head level, only to watch it shatter against the wall.

  “Damn. That was my best crystal.”

  Connor stepped into the room wearing much the same clothes that he’d worn the last time she’d seen him. His white shirt was still tucked haphazardly into his belt. His leather breeches still clung to his thighs like a second skin. She closed her eyes, hating the traitorous heat that burned inside her. Hating him. “Please leave.”

  “Gladly. As soon as you promise to take something to eat.”

  “Never!”

  She twisted around and reached for the last glass, but Connor grabbed her waist and dumped her into one of his massive oak and leather chairs. He gripped the arms and bent down, trapping her like a cornered fox.

  “You will eat, Princess. I do not intend to arrive in Lisbon harbor with a corpse.”

  “Sir, that is the only way you will keep me from telling of your despicable deed. I can assure you that you will not get away with your crime. By now my family has discovered that you have taken me. They will hunt you down and hang you like the dog you are.”

  His hard mouth edged up in a humorless smile. “Hate to disappoint you, but your family hasn’t the least idea of where you are. Nor are they likely to any time soon. No one saw you come aboard. My men even planted rumors that you had been seen heading in the direction of the Temple.” He bent so close that she could feel his heat. “It will be days before your family unravels the deception.”

  Days. Alone with him. She sho
uld have hated the thought. Instead, her heart began to pound like ocean waves against a cliff. “My family … will come.”

  “Face it, Princess, no one is sailing to your rescue. But if the wind holds we shall reach Lisbon in ten days and I will see that you are safely delivered to the magistrate. I give you my word that no harm will come to you—”

  She gave a harsh laugh. “Your word. And what good is that? You are without honor.”

  He arched a cynical brow. “I recall you being without it too, just before we sailed.”

  She’d revealed her most secret heart to him, the cherished, yearning passion that years of separation, pride, social convention, and even betrayal had not been able to kill. She loved him with all the worship of the child she’d been, and all the desire of the woman she’d become. The horror of losing him forever had made her confess that love. The horror of his treason made her curse it.

  She glared at him with all the pain and fury in her soul. “I despise you.”

  He winced as the barb struck home. Surprisingly, she took no pleasure in it.

  The pain in his eyes lasted barely a heartbeat. He stared down at her, his eyes glittering like ice shards, his hard, ruthless features carved in unforgiving stone. “As I said, I do not intend to deliver a corpse to the Portuguese magistrate. You must eat. So I have arranged for you to have a companion to share your meals.” Unhurriedly, he straightened and turned toward the cabin door. “Sir, you may come in now.”

  “He can share those meals with the devil,” Juliana cried as she bolted from the chair. “I have no intention of—”

  She stopped as a dark-haired child entered the room carrying a tray of food. “You—you are the boy from the docks. The one who told me to look for the captain at the Bell.” Her gaze flew to Connor’s. “Have you sunk so low that you would kidnap a child?”

  “I ain’t been kidnapped and I ain’t no child,” the boy stated huffily as he set down the tray. “Name’s Jamie and I’m the cabin boy. Least I was until the captain promoted me to be your new ‘watch.’ ”

  Juliana stared at the boy. She’d driven away the men Connor had sent to guard her who were three times his size. “Is this some sort of jest?”

  “No jest, Princess. I have promoted Jamie to ‘acting lieutenant of the watch’ for our prisoners. Since you are currently our only prisoner, you are his sole responsibility. He is charged to watch you day and night. He is also charged to take his meals with you, and to eat only when you do. If you eat, he eats. If you starve …” He shrugged.

  “But that is barbaric!”

  “Barbaric or not, Jamie has his orders. Like any member of my crew he will obey them to the death. Is that not so, sir?”

  “Aye, captain,” Jamie said, though his gaze remained fixed on the food-laden tray.

  Juliana turned to Connor and saw him watching her with calculation. Check and mate, she thought grimly. She had no doubt that the devil would let the child starve—just as she had no doubt that he would never willingly let her leave this ship alive. He had no choice but to kill her, since she’d rather die than allow him to sell out his entire country.

  But he had not killed her yet. And while she was alive, there was a chance she might find a way to steal the Admiralty letters, signal one of the other ships in the convoy, and escape. She might even be able to use her wealth to buy the allegiance of some of his men. Possibilities spun through her mind, but practicality persevered. Bribery would have to wait until after breakfast.

  She turned her back on Connor and sat down at the table, inviting the weary boy to sit beside her. “If we are to dine as one, my fine young lieutenant, I must know what you are partial to. So which would you prefer—the ham or the kippers?”

  Juliana had steeled her courage for all manner of terrors on Connor’s ship, but in truth the next few days proved to be almost pleasant. Though still confined to the aft quarters, she had access to Connor’s surprisingly extensive library to help pass the time. On the evening of the third day, she was brought a collapsible tub, and was able to take a much welcome bath. To her surprise, a clean dress was miraculously provided, a blue flowered muslin with a velvet jacket and Spanish cap sleeves that was very nearly her size. When she put it on, she twirled around in front of the floor length mirror, realizing just how much she enjoyed wearing colorful clothing after the drab mourning garb she’d been confined to for the past two and a half months.

  She saw nothing of Connor. She was relieved, of course. No man on earth was more loathsome to her. And yet every time the cabin door opened, she found her heart beating faster with anticipation, until she saw it was only Jamie or one of the other men. She told herself that she wished to see him only so that she might convince him to return the stolen Admiralty dispatches. But in the dark of the night, when she lay on the bed that had so recently been his and buried her face in the pillow that still held his scent, she could not deny her broken heart—or ignore the hot, damning dreams that left her body aching.

  But in the midst of her peril, she found a diamond. Jamie was the joy of her days. Though wary at first, the young boy gradually gave her his trust, until by the end of her fifth day on the ship he was chattering through their meals incessantly. His language was sometimes less than elegant, but Juliana preferred his lively conversation to the stilted rhetoric of her own class. He talked with surprising comprehension about everything from poetry to the points of the compass, and Juliana found herself wondering about his education. “Your parents must have taught you well, sir,” she commented one day over tea.

  Jamie grew still. “Never knew my parents. Never knew much about anything till the captain picked me up on the Moroccan wharf. No one had given spit about me afore then. Captain taught me everything I know. Saved my life, he did. Can I have more cake?”

  Juliana handed the boy another slice, but her mind was still trying to make sense of what he’d just said. Connor was a treasonous privateer. And yet as she took in the picture of the chattering, contented child and compared it to the horror of life in the stinking Middle Eastern slums, her opinion of her captor’s villainy turned to dust. Connor had acted with the same selfless charity as her father, when the marquis had taken an orphaned wharf rat and raised him as his own. It was a kindness she hadn’t expected of the ruthless man Connor had become. It was a kindness that for some supremely contrary reason, made her eyes pool with tears.

  “Are you blubbering, lady?”

  “The polite term is ‘crying,’ ” Juliana corrected gently as she dabbed away a tear. “I assure you, ’tis nothing. Just a mote in my eye.”

  The boy frowned, obviously concerned over the welfare of his charge. “I dunno. Knew a lady once who took to blub—that is, to cryin’, and she fell down dead before the week was out. ’Course, she was going on eighty, but the ’pothecary said she woulda fared better if she’d had some fresh air now ’n’ then.”

  Jamie paused for a moment and rubbed his chin, looking for a moment so much like Connor that Juliana’s heart skipped a beat. “Tell you what. If you give me your parole, I can fix it so you can take a spin topside.”

  A “spin topside” would seem Like heaven after days in the cabin. And it might afford her an opportunity to reclaim the purloined dispatches. She hated using the boy, but if she was to save her country, she could ill afford to pass up any chance at escape. She took Jamie’s offered hand, and gifted him with her sincerest smile. “I would be very grateful for a walk around the deck. And I promise that, while I am in your company, I will do nothing to dishonor your faith in me.”

  “She is up to something,” Connor growled as he stood on the forecastle and watched Juliana pause on the quarterdeck and gaze out at the sea. “I know that walk. She’s plotting.”

  “Well, she would be a fool if she wasn’t,” Raoul replied. “She is a prisoner of war who is in peril of her life. And forgive me, mon ami, but you have done nothing to dispel that belief.”

  Connor looked away and watched the light of the dying su
n unfurl its colors across the dark sea. Normally he loved this time of day, the moment of vast peace that settled over a vessel just before the evening watch. But there was no peace in his heart that night—or any night since they’d started this voyage. They were still a week out of Lisbon—a week that promised to hold more misery and torture than any man could endure. She was on his ship. Hell, she was in his bed! And if he acted on any of the sinful appetites that raged through his body, he’d ruin them both beyond redemption. “ ’Tis better that she hates me.”

  “Ah yes. I forgot about your damn English honor,” the Frenchman replied laconically. “Alors, it is astonishing that there are so many children in your country, considering the way your men keep their distance from the jeune filles.”

  “I have done enough damage to the girl’s reputation. The only thing I can do for her now is to make sure she is returned to her family untouched.”

  “And perhaps to give her a kind word or two—all right,” Raoul said, backing away from Connor’s murderous glance. “Very well, mon ami. I will seek out what the lady is up to. And you may linger here with the cold comfort of your English honor.” He turned away and headed for the ship’s stern muttering, “Mon Dieu, ’tis astonishing that there are any children at all.”

  Connor gazed past the bow at the half dozen merchant vessels of the convoy. So far the ruse had worked, and no ships had appeared on the horizon to threaten his plans. But luck was as fickle as the weather—and as unforgiving as a woman’s heart. Frowning, he lifted his face to the wind, sensing the change in the pit of his soul.

  A week to Lisbon, even if the weather held. And somewhere, out in the vast emptiness of the ocean, a storm was brewing.

  Too far, Juliana thought as she leaned out over the quarterdeck railing and mentally measured the distance to the water below. Oh, she would survive the drop, but the shock of hitting the cold water would disorient her, and she would lose several of the precious minutes she would need to make for the convoy ships. Perhaps if she waited for the warmer currents of the south, the shock would be less taxing. Or if she had a rope—