Midnight Mistress Page 20

  She didn’t even know Connor was behind her until he took her in his arms. “Take the helm, Mr. St. Juste. I’ll be there shortly.”

  “They killed her, Connor. With her colors down.”

  “There’s no honor in war, whatever the poets say.” Connor cradled her against him. “I know what it is to face treachery in battle.”

  “Raoul told me,” she said, lifting her gaze to his. “He told me about his uncle’s ship, and how it was attacked by the French. He told me how you saved them.”

  “Not all of them. Daniel died, and so did many others—brave men who deserved death no more than young Jamison on the Pelican. But I’ll make those corvettes pay for what they’ve done. I swear it.”

  “No,” she cried softly. “I want you to run. I don’t care about duty, or honor, or anything else. I want you safe.”

  He smoothed back a strand of her damp hair and tucked it behind her ear. “The course is set, and there is nothing either of us can do to change it. I’ve got a battle to fight, and you—ah, here’s the fellow now.”

  Barnacle walked up, carrying the struggling Jamie under his arm. “Found him on orlop deck, hiding beneath the water casks. Harder to catch than a rat, he is.”

  “Put me down,” the boy cried. “I’m not going.”

  “Neither am I,” Juliana declared, with less struggle but no less certainty. “Not unless you truss me up like a Christmas goose and send me over the side.”

  “An interesting image.” Connor grinned. “But not necessary.”

  He signaled Barnacle to release the boy, then knelt down and took his shoulders. “Sir, you shall accompany Lady Juliana because she is still in grave danger, and you are still assigned to protect her. ’Tis your duty, sir, and you shall continue to perform it until”—he glanced up at Juliana—“until I release you from that charge.”

  Jamie worried his lip, struggling between doing his duty and sticking with his mates. In the end he nodded. “Aye, captain,” he said as he saluted and headed for the longboat.

  Juliana watched him go, crossing her hands resolutely in front of her. “I am not yours to order, sir. Jamie can go, but I am staying.”

  Connor’s mouth ticked up. “I thought you might say something like that. So I brought this.” He took an oilskin-wrapped packet out of his coat and stuffed it securely into her belt. “See that they get to the proper authorities.”

  Juliana’s eyes filled with tears as the last piece of Connor’s supposed treachery fell out of place. “The dispatches. Oh, Connor, I knew in my heart that you were an honorable man. If only I had listened to my heart all those years ago …”

  “No time for regrets, lady. No time for anything, except—”

  He swept off her hat and pulled her into his arms, capturing her mouth in one last caress. He tasted of smoke and battle and courage, and she returned his kiss with all the fury of the corvette’s cannons. For a moment there was no war, no danger, just two people who’d found their hearts in each other’s arms. Then he groaned and swept her up, lifting her into the longboat.

  “I love you,” she cried as the cables creaked and the boat lowered to the waves.

  “Then trust me,” he bellowed back. “I love you, no matter what happens—God’s teeth, Mr. Markham, will you shore up that mizzenline? The prince regent could tie a better rigging knot—”

  The oarsmen pulled away, rowing the longboat toward the merchant ship St. Juste had signaled when the Pelican went down. Juliana sat huddled in the center, hardly aware of Jamie’s arms around her as she watched the corvettes open fire on Connor’s ship. The shots streamed like red fireballs over the bow and stern, striking no wood but tearing through the main canvas. Juliana saw Connor standing on the forecastle, silhouetted against the smoke and flames like the devil himself. He lifted his sword, and brought it down in a sharp command.

  Then the snow’s cannons thundered in one voice and turned the top deck of the nearest corvette to kindling.

  “She’s scored a hit,” Jamie cried. “I knew the captain would beat them. I knew—”

  His triumph died as another corvette took aim and splintered the snow’s topgallant, raining shards of fire on the deck below.

  “Connor!” Juliana jumped to her feet. Dispatches or no dispatches, she couldn’t leave him. Her duty to her country was nothing compared to her duty to him. Her place was at his side, even if it meant her death. Turning, she cried to the oarsmen. “We must go back! I can’t leave—”

  The longboat bobbed on a high wave and she lost her balance. Her last sight of the snow was of Connor lifting his sword for another volley. Then her head hit the edge of the hull and she knew no more.

  Pine and foxglove. Juliana twitched her nose, wondering how the ocean could suddenly smell like a mountain forest. She slit her eyes open, blinking against the light. She was lying on her side on homespun sheets that smelled of soap, dressed in a nightrail made of much the same material. Beside her, a clapboard window was open to the afternoon sun, which poured in like thick, bright butterscotch. Most definitely not the ocean. She started to rub the sleep from her eyes, but paused as her fingers met a bandage that appeared to be wrapped around her forehead. Fragments of memory began to fit together in her mind. The longboat. The smoke and flames. The thundering cannons firing on Connor’s ship.

  She’d lost consciousness in the thick of a lopsided battle. Her last vision of Connor had been of him standing on the deck with his sword raised, in the direct fine of fire of the enemy cannons. He could be wounded. He could be—

  An unfamiliar sawing sound behind her caught her attention. She looked behind her to the other side of the bed and saw a man slumped in a corner chair. His white shirt was soiled with the soot and smoke of the battle, he badly needed a shave, and his blond hair fell across his forehead in a most unseemly tangle. And he was snoring.

  He looked almost as ill-kempt as he had on the day when she had first met him. And to Juliana’s eyes, that made him the most handsome, most magnificent, most wonderful sight in the world.

  She shook his knee. “Connor. Darling, wake up.”

  He jerked awake, almost falling out of the chair. For a moment he glanced around in confusion, as if he too expected to still be on the open sea. Then his gaze fell on her and his face burst into a grin of relief and joy. “God, Princess, I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Fa, from a little knock on the head?” she said nonchalantly, glowing at his confession. But her thoughts quickly turned to those who might have worse injuries. “Connor, all your men—?”

  “The men are fine and so is the snow,” he assured her as he took her hand. “When we shattered the deck of the first corvette the others lost their nerve. One ran like a yellow dog. The other stayed for one last volley before turning tail. My ship lost her topgallant and a few sails need mending, but otherwise she’s as yar as ever. Raoul has taken her on to Lisbon with the rest of the convoy.”

  Juliana glanced around the room. “This … is not Lisbon?”

  Connor laughed, a lusty sound that did more to repair her wounded head than an ocean of salve. “Nay. We’re in a fishing village just north of the Douro River. ’Twas the closest port I could make after the battle, and with the way your head was bleeding I couldn’t chance the extra days it would take to reach Lisbon. Jamie and I stayed behind to see you safe.”

  “Jamie! He is not hurt?”

  “Not unless you count his pride. He felt I should have trusted him to look after you alone, since that is his charge. But he was as much in need of rest as you were. And besides, I was not certain he was up to defending you against the formidable Senhora Esmerelda Maria de Varzim.”

  “Who?”

  Before Connor could answer, the door burst open and an elderly matron bustled in, her dark eyes blazing with all the fire of the French cannons. She lodged herself between the two and began to efficiently tuck the covers around Juliana, all the while prattling on in breakneck Portuguese.

  “Senhora, please, I do not
understand you.”

  “ ’Tis me she is talking to,” Connor supplied. “She thinks I am an insensitive lout for disturbing your sleep. She is the most accomplished healer I know, far superior to those powdered quacks in the Lisbon court. But she has the passion of a tigress when it comes to her patient’s welfare. I have been ordered out.”

  “Don’t go!” Juliana bit her lip, mortified that she sounded like all the desperate females she so despised. But she could not help it. She was horribly afraid that Connor would disappear from her life as suddenly as he’d appeared. “Please, I want you to stay with me.”

  “That … would not be a good idea.” Connor’s gaze skimmed to the bedclothes and to her nightrail. In the depths of his eyes something elemental changed. For a moment their gazes met, and Juliana felt the burning that he’d fired in her last night return with a vengeance. Then the senhora gave Connor a determined shove and again began to berate him in her native tongue.

  Sighing, he gave Juliana a resigned shrug. “As you see, French warships are nothing compared to this termagant. But she is right. You do need rest.”

  “I need—” She stopped the words, shocked at the unmaidenly turn of her thoughts. Swallowing, she chose a safer course. “I need to know that you will get some rest also.”

  He smiled, the same boyish grin that had completely conquered her young heart. “As you wish, my lady.”

  He left the room, closely followed by the chastising Senhora de Varzim. Even after the door had closed, she could hear the woman’s voice carrying down the hall. As she drifted back to sleep she heard the senhora’s voice in her head, repeating a phrase she’d used over and over again during her berating. Esposa.

  Wife.

  “And what are those boats called?” Jamie asked. He and Connor stood on the hills overlooking the small harbor of the village.

  “Bean-cods,” Connor supplied, grimacing at the ridiculous name for a remarkable ship. “The fishermen of Portugal have used them for centuries. The slanted front sail gives them speed and maneuverability, while the broad hull gives them plenty of room to store their catch. They can outrun a ship as fast as our snow.”

  Jamie’s eyes widened. “Could we try it? Have a race, I mean, when our ship comes back for us. We could win a king’s ransom.”

  Connor fought down a grin. Even in the midst of a war, the boy was up for a wager. There must be some nobleman’s blood in him somewhere. “I do not think so,” he admitted. Then, at the boy’s crestfallen appearance, he added, “But we will see. Perhaps when Raoul returns with the snow we can see if—”

  He stopped as he heard the crunch of loose gravel behind him. He spun around with his hand already on his dagger hilt in a fighting stance. But the intruder was unarmed—or armed to the teeth, depending on how one looked at it.

  Juliana was on the path behind them, carefully making her way toward them with that coltish grace that never failed to fascinate him. Her bandage was gone, revealing an unbound fall of hair. Instead of the homespun nightrail, she was now wearing what could only be one of Senhora de Varzim’s dresses, for it was far too large for her. But even in the atrocious outfit, she looked as poised as a queen.

  Jamie propelled himself into her arms and started a tirade.

  “Glad you’re fine and told captain you would be, even though you bled like a—did you know the corvettes ran away when we fired on—cowards and wished we’d gone after ’em but captain said—that’s an ugly dress—”

  “Jamie, I think the lady would appreciate it if you finished at least one sentence.”

  Juliana laughed and gave the boy a hug. “The lady is pleased to hear whatever you have to say. But I think, perhaps, you might want to see the special treat the senhora is cooking up for your dinner. It is called paseis de nata.”

  Jamie was obviously torn between the wish to stay with his charge and his curiosity about the food. In the end, curiosity won. “All right, but promise to come back before it gets dark. It’s dangerous up here at night.”

  Connor’s gaze strayed to Juliana, whose hair shone with the light of the first evening stars. Dangerous didn’t even begin to describe it.

  He clamped his hands resolutely behind him. “Jamie is right, my lady. It is not safe to be up here at night, especially when you are still recovering from your head wound.”

  “I am recovered enough to want some answers.” She reached into the voluminous skirt and pulled out an oilskin-wrapped packet. “I found these dispatches with my shoes and hose and the remains of my soot-covered dress. If you truly had any intention of handing them over to the enemy, you would have done so by now. So I ask you again—what is really going on here?”

  He’d known from the first she would want to know the truth—just as he knew he could not tell her without further endangering her life. He rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling tired beyond all measure. “Believe me, it is better that you do not know—”

  “The devil it isn’t! Connor, in the last few days I have been kidnapped, held prisoner, almost drowned, and survived a sea battle. I think the least you could do is give me the courtesy of telling me what I have stepped into the middle of.”

  “Courtesy?” He threw up his arms. “My lady, this is not an afternoon tea party. I am trying to keep you safe by shielding you from things you are not part of.”

  “I am part of this because I love you. And unless everything you told me last night about your sister was a lie, then I believe you love me, too.”

  He stared out at the sea and formed words that tasted like sand in his mouth. “Everything I told you was a lie. I do not love you.”

  Her laughter put paid to any faith he had in his acting ability. “You are such a cake, Connor. ’Tis like it was when we were young, and you claimed that you didn’t give a fig for me and wouldn’t care if I walked the ship’s railing. Before I took barely three steps you pulled me down to safety.”

  “And spanked you soundly,” he recalled darkly, remembering the day the twelve-year-old Juliana had dared him to prove his love. When Connor, an earnest seventeen-year-old far more aware of his feelings for her than she was, had told her to suck an egg, she’d hopped up on the midship railing and almost tumbled overboard before he yanked her back. “ ’Twas a damned fool thing to do. You could have been killed.”

  “Perhaps. But it was worth it to me to prove that you cared.” She looked over the edge of the cliff at the rocky beach below. “I would say this cliff is quite as treacherous as that railing. If I were to walk along the edge … like this … I wonder if you would—”

  Her sentence was cut short as the loose rocks slid away beneath her, and she started to pitch toward the edge. But before she was in any true danger, Connor grabbed her dress and yanked her back, pulling her so forcefully that they tumbled to the ground. They fell into a stand of heather that skirted the path, with Connor twisting beneath her so that he broke her fall. He fell with an awkward “umph,” which he repeated when she landed on top of him.

  “Idiot woman!” he growled. “I could have cracked my skull.”

  “Well, perhaps that might have knocked some sense into it.” She pulled herself up his chest so that she was nose-to-nose with him.

  “You are still a spoiled brat.”

  “And you are still an overbearing bully.”

  “Selfish chit.”

  “Pompous know-it-all.”

  “Minx!”

  “Scoundrel!”

  They stared at each other, four years of fury and frustration boiling within them. Then they poured that frustration into a burning caress, sating a need that could only be filled in each other’s arms. They tangled and rolled in the sweet heather, feasting on the carnal joys of taste and touch. For endless minutes they gave in to the love that had bound them as one beyond time, distance, and even truth. Then, groaning as if with the sound of one soul being ripped in half, Connor forced himself out of her arms and sat up, gazing out at the darkening sea. “This … cannot happen.”

  “It
already has,” she said softly. “It happened years ago. And you told the senhora that I was your esposa.”

  “I did that—” Connor glanced back, then sharply turned his eyes again to the sea. The vision of Juliana lying in the twilit heather with a sprig of it in her hair was not a sight to cool a man’s blood. He thought resolutely of icy winds and arctic waters. “I did that to protect your reputation. The senora would have known you were more to me than a passenger when I insisted on staying in the room while you were recovering. I did not want her to think that you were …”

  “Your lover?”

  “My doxie. This is no romantic midnight tryst in your father’s conservatory, and I am no honorable suitor. We’re in the middle of a war, Juliana. Any hope we might have had of a future died years ago.

  “In a week’s time Raoul will return with my ship. A day or two afterward, officials will be arriving from Lisbon to take you home. You will go back to your life of wealth and privilege. I will go back to a life of—well, something less. We shall likely never see each other again.”

  Juliana sat up and curled against his back, resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Then ’tis sensible that we spend what little time we have left together.”

  Sensible? A sensible move like that would get her ruined and put him in torment. He was already going to have to spend the rest of his arguably short life doing his best to forget her sweet kisses. Anything more would drive him mad.

  Stiffly he rose to his feet and pulled her up after him. “From this moment on I am going to do my best to avoid you. I suggest you do the same. Now, head back down the path, Juliana. I’ll follow a few paces behind. And God’s teeth, if you so much as try to look back at me I’ll see that the senhora locks you in your room until I’m gone.”

  Juliana did as he asked. She walked down the path with her gaze dutifully ahead, never looking back. But though she appeared to follow his orders, her mind was whirling. She loved Connor, and he loved her, and unless something drastic happened, he would be gone forever in a week.