‘Stop struggling,’ said the deep voice. ‘You are quite safe. You were having a nightmare.’
Sarah batted at the arms that held her, made contact with a very solid, bare chest and realised by the flickering lantern-light that she was in her bunk on the Yarmouth Gannet, and that the man holding her was the Duke, clad in breeches and not much else.
She had seen a marionette once, its strings cut by a naughty small boy, and thought vaguely that this must be what she looked like as she lay against Nicholas.
‘What is it?’ he asked, his breath warm across her ear.
‘Marionette...’
‘You were having nightmares about a puppet?’
‘No... I do not know. I am confused. I’m sorry.’ She became aware that the hand that was supporting her was making small, comforting circles against her back.
I should sit up...
But it seemed that her strings truly were severed, because she simply did not have the strength.
‘You were calling for your father,’ Nicholas said. ‘“Papa, don’t trust...”’
‘Oh, yes. I remember now.’ Her strength seemed to be returning with the memory and Sarah sat up away from him. She immediately regretted it. Not only was the support and comfort of that strong arm removed but she now had an unimpeded view of considerably more of the Duke than was comfortable. Smooth skin over discernible muscles, a dusting of dark hair, nipples.
Nicholas stood up, probably, she thought with an inward cringe, blasted by the heat from her cheeks. He picked up his shirt and pulled it over his head. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ He sounded perfectly matter-of-fact, but even so, it took her a shocked second to realise he was talking about her dream, not her reaction to finding a half-naked man on her bed. ‘It might help clear it from your mind,’ he added, which Sarah had no trouble interpreting as, And you will therefore not disturb my sleep again.
‘I think I was trying to warn Papa about Josiah Wilton, his business manager. I was uneasy, although I was not certain why. Papa had been ill, you see. An inflammation of the lungs caught after he had fallen getting into a rowing boat taking him out to one of the ships. Wilton had to manage all of the business for several months. I offered to help because I understood enough to keep the books straight, but he was very evasive.
‘By the time Papa was well enough to get himself to the office he found that Wilton had gone, taking our best ship with him, that the others had vanished, somewhere abroad, and the safe had been cleared out.’
‘And shipping companies run on credit a great deal, do they not?’ Nicholas asked. ‘So when the news got around, confidence collapsed, people called in their loans and your father was bankrupted.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. Nicholas had the tact not to mention what happened next.
‘You cannot force someone to listen to what they do not want to hear,’ he said. ‘You had no evidence to show your father to explain your worries about the man and I suppose the absence of the ships was easy enough to explain.’
‘That was the trouble. All manner of things cause shipping delays and my father’s instructions to the captains was to change plans if they learned of a profitable cargo. Wilton could not have done it if Papa had not been so ill, and he could not have got away with it for many more weeks, but the damage was done.’
‘Where is Wilton now?’
She shrugged. ‘Operating out of a Continental port, I would imagine, with a new name and a small fleet of renamed vessels. I try not to think about him.’
‘Very wise,’ he said drily. ‘Imagining revenge when there is no way you can inflict it does damage, I always feel.’
‘You have been in such a situation?’ Sarah asked. She sat up against the bulkhead, hugging her knees. Nicholas sat at the other end of the bunk.
‘Fortunately not.’ His sudden smile was wolfish. ‘I have always been in a position to exact my vengeance.’
Sarah shivered.
‘And now you are cold. Try and sleep again.’ Without waiting for her reply he climbed up to the top bunk and, a moment later, there was a soft flump as his shirt landed on the stool.
Sarah snuggled down as much as she could under one sheet and a threadbare blanket and tried not to remember how he had looked in the faint light. So male, a treacherous little inner voice said. Which was ridiculous, the sensible Sarah told herself, because of course he was male. What else would he be? He was an adult man.
In his prime, whispered the inner voice.
Well, he isn’t quite thirty yet, she agreed and then pulled herself together. And he is healthy and privileged and well able to keep himself in prime condition.
Mmm, murmured the voice appreciatively.
Stop it, Sarah thought, cross with herself. He is arrogant, top-lofty, and however warm his chest might be, the rest of him is as cosy as an iceberg. I will not think about him any further.
Sarah woke the next morning wrapped around her pillow and all too aware that she had been dreaming about Nicholas. The dreams of a respectable maiden lady ought not to have been very explicit, given her ignorance of sensual matters, but Sarah, having an enquiring mind, had a reasonable idea of what went on between a man and a woman in bed and was sincerely regretting that now.
She could only hope that any self-consciousness she showed this morning would be put down to the disturbance in the night and not to the fact that thinking about the Duke was making her toes curl and creating a very uncomfortable sensation in places she did not wish to think about. Focusing on the many disagreeable attributes of Nicholas Terrell, Duke of Severton, would surely send those night-time fantasies back into the mists where they belonged.
The sound of his voice from the passageway—clear, authoritative, demanding—was a help. ‘I fail to see why the provision of hot water for washing should be such a burden. I assume that even if none of you ever wash, the galley does produce such a thing. If you wish to have the four of us in a reasonable state and recognisable to my agent it would be in your interests to maintain us in civilised conditions. And as for these buckets—’
She stuck her head under the pillow and drifted back to sleep, her mind safely diverted from thoughts of dangerously attractive dukes.
Nick informed Millie that hot water was on its way and that if she took the buckets to the end of the passageway nearest the hatch someone would toss them over the side on a rope’s end and tow them through the sea until they were clean.
‘I suggest you take hot water through to the other cabin for yourself and my wife. I will assist Pendell here.’
‘Your Grace—’ His valet struggled up against the pillow. ‘It isn’t right.’
‘It certainly is not right for this innocent young maid to wash you,’ Nicholas said, straight-faced, and got a very sideways look from Millie, on her way out. ‘And it certainly isn’t right for the pair of us to smell any more offensive than can be avoided, given the state of this ship.’
That left Pendell with very little to do other than to submit to being washed, shaved, and helped into a clean shirt and breeches. ‘Thank you, sir. There’s something quite lowering about being told what to do by a female when one is in one’s nightshirt.’
Nick was hard put to keep a straight face and it occurred to him that, despite being kidnapped and held to ransom, he had found more to entertain himself over the last two days than he normally did in a month.
Pendell turned bright red as his ears appeared to catch up with his mouth. ‘I mean... One is at such a disadvantage without one’s breeches.’
‘Quite,’ Nick agreed. It would be unkind to tease the lad, who was certainly in no position to retaliate.
He tipped the dirty water out of the porthole and poured himself some fresh, then stripped off. The luxury of a scoop of hot water and soap under these circumstances was as satisfying as the deep hot bath he had been fantasising about.
Through the wooden bulkhead he could hear Millie’s voice and, under it, the softer tones of Sarah answering. There was a ripple of laughter which meant, he supposed, that she had recovered from last night’s bad dreams. Had he done the right thing in encouraging her to talk? He couldn’t imagine ever telling anyone about the things that disturbed his own sleep, but talking had seemed to help her.
It had done little to help him sleep, he had to admit, he thought, frowning at his reflection in the small mirror propped up on the top bunk as he drew the razor across his chin. Not the tale itself—a common enough story of a crooked employee defrauding and ruining his trusting employer—but the proximity of Sarah Parrish, warm, frightened and clinging.
The clinging had not lasted long, nor had the fright. The woman had backbone and she had recovered a great deal of her poise the moment she was fully awake. But the memory of that softness pressed against him, the feathering of her breath across his naked chest, the scent of sleepy woman, had been powerfully arousing and had kept him awake for a good hour after her breathing had settled.
It was not as though she was a great beauty, he told himself now, working around the tricky area under his left ear. He was used to ladies more lovely, more sophisticated and infinitely more experienced flirting—and more—with him. It was not as though Sarah was attempting to attract him, either. Which was, he admitted ruefully, attractive in itself when one was used to being a target and knowing that was so very often because of his title and not any personal attributes he might possess.
There was a sudden knock on the door which almost had him slicing off the tip of his nose with the razor. His nerves must be more on edge than he thought.
‘Come in!’
It was Millie brandishing a dripping wet bucket. ‘There you go, sir,’ she said cheerfully, dumping it in the corner behind the curtain.
‘Your Grace,’ Pendell said. ‘I keep telling you, Millie.’
‘I think that sir will do under the circumstances,’ Nick said, wiping the last of the soap from his face. ‘But not in front of any of the crew. I want to keep reminding them that I am a duke and therefore valuable. Do you understand, girl?’
‘Yes, sir. Your Grace,’ she added with a wicked twinkle at the valet. ‘My lady says—’ She broke off at the sound of Sarah’s voice in the passageway.
Nick opened the door and stepped out, braced for trouble, to find her facing Captain Lockhart.
‘I cannot see what possible difference it can make to you if we eat in the saloon and not in our cabins,’ she was saying. ‘It is even further from the hatch and it would be easier to keep an eye on us all, would it not?’
Nick reached Sarah’s side in two strides, his hand closing around her upper arm so that he could thrust her behind him if Lockhart made the slightest move.
‘Stubble it,’ Lockhart said, narrowing his eyes at Nick. ‘I’m not going to tangle with your lady. You want to eat down there? You go ahead. You can say grace nicely before you eat and pray your man is on his way with the money. He’s got about forty hours, by my reckoning.’
‘He’ll be there,’ Nick said easily, releasing Sarah and offering her his arm instead. ‘Come, my dear. Breakfast awaits us.’ He took one step towards Lockhart and the man grinned and stepped back to allow them to make their way to the bleak saloon. Behind him he heard Pendell muttering to Millie that he could manage perfectly well and he did not need supporting.
‘It’ll be a pleasure to take your money, Your Grace,’ Lockhart said as they passed him. ‘A right pleasure.’
Pendell and Millie would have taken a separate table, but Nick waved them towards the larger one. ‘We need a conference.’ He broke off as a sullen crewman dumped food on the table, followed by the cabin boy with mugs and a jug of the dubious coffee.
‘That lad has a black eye and a cut lip,’ Sarah said, when they found themselves alone again. ‘This is no place for a child.’
‘Could be up a chimney with a fire lit below to hurry him up or learning to pick pockets,’ Millie countered. ‘Sorry, ma’am, but it’s a tough life for young ’uns.’
‘Perhaps we could—’
‘No, we couldn’t,’ Nick said firmly. ‘Pendell, how is your shoulder? The truth mind. Heroics are not of any help whatsoever.’ He kept his tone conversational and his voice low, but not suspiciously so.
‘It’s sore and I can’t move it much,’ his valet admitted. ‘But it isn’t bleeding and I can use that hand.’ He reached for a mug and picked it up. ‘I don’t think I could hit anyone with it, though, sir.’
‘I very much hope you will not be required to. Can you run, do you think?’
The freckled face scrunched up as he thought. ‘Some, sir. But I’ll be better tomorrow.’
‘Will we need to run?’ Sarah enquired. Her voice was steady, but he could read the anxiety in her eyes.
‘We may have to. I do not know this coast, but I believe Horsey is in Norfolk. Therefore the coast will be low with crumbling cliffs or marshes or sand dunes, possibly all three. I assume the gap is a way through to the beach, doubtless used by fishermen and smugglers. Underfoot it may be sand or shingle or mud—heavy going whichever it is. Wear your sturdiest shoes or boots, and if you think they may slip off, tie them in place.’
They all nodded, clearly paying close attention.
‘And may I recommend no tight lacing, no skirts that you cannot move freely in?’
To his relief Sarah nodded briskly. He had not been too certain how she would react to mention of her stays, but she clearly valued common sense above modesty.
‘And our possessions?’ she asked. ‘I imagine taking our baggage would only impede us.’
‘That is a good point. However, I believe we should take them with us from the ship: it will reinforce the impression that we are not prepared to react swiftly. But if you can conceal any valuables about your persons, then, if we have to, we can drop the bags and run.’
‘Very well. You expect trouble, I assume?’ Sarah asked as though she was soliciting his opinion on whether it would rain in the morning.
‘I think it inevitable.’ Nick had come to the conclusion that attempting to hide the seriousness of the situation was both impossible—Sarah was too intelligent—and dangerous: they all had to be alert. ‘But I have every confidence in Fawcett. I will tell you more as we eat.’
The food was no improvement on their last rations and, if anything, the bread was harder and the coffee worse. ‘I am convinced the cook boils up the leftovers from the day before and just adds more water,’ Sarah commented, grimacing over her first sip.
‘It is quite dreadful,’ Nick agreed. ‘Now: Fawcett. He was an officer in the Rifles who sold out after Waterloo. I have known him since we were boys and when he left the army he became my confidential agent.’
‘But he has so little time,’ Sarah began.
‘Fawcett is cunning and quick-thinking. It will be a dangerous mistake for anyone to make to assume he is some desk-bound clerk who spends his time studying rent books. He has a number of connections from his army days, all of them Riflemen. The first thing he would have done was to dispatch them up to Horsey Gap to scout out the land and to get into position well before Lockhart’s men arrive.’
‘There will be others besides the crew, you think?’
‘It will be an ambush, I am certain. Lockhart is going to want the money and, I have no doubt, to dispose of us once he has it. He will not want witnesses.’
Sarah shivered. ‘You do not sugar-coat the pill, do you?’
‘If I thought any of you were likely to be paralysed by fear, then yes, I would. But you have courage, all of you. It is better that we are fully prepared.’ He looked at the three faces staring back at him. The maid, Millie, was a tough little thing. She would know how to duck and run—and she’d know where to plant her knee if a sailor made a grab for her too. Pendell was young, fit, and a mixture of excitement and willpower would carry him through, even with his wound.
And Sarah Parrish? She was a gentlewoman unused to violence. She might have come down in the world, she might be from a merchant background, but the brutality and danger she was facing now would be utterly alien to her. She must be his chief concern once they were on the beach, he told himself, wondering just why he felt so apprehensive, given his trust in Fawcett and his irregular little army.
Nicholas squared his shoulders and reached for the cheese. It must simply be the enforced inactivity that was wearing on his nerves.