Micah Wild alone she could handle, but he had brought one of his longshoremen, a bandy-legged ruffian in rolled sleeves and nankeen trousers. She recognized the man from the docks, Dan Ludd. When the Salem customs agent had been tarred and feathered last October, Ludd had poured the tar. Sarah could still remember the stench of burning flesh.
Fortunately, she had convinced Sparhawk to hide. She had shown him the slender panel in the dining room, the one between the hearth and the china cabinet that disguised the hidden staircase. The join was invisible when closed, but behind the panel, a narrow flight, brick on one side, wood on the other, wound up the side of the chimney to the second floor.
“Why do you have a priest hole?” he had asked.
“We do not have a priest hole. This is New England. You would be hard-pressed to find a papist to put in it. What a terribly gothic imagination you have.”
“Your fair city inspires it. First you anchor us off Misery Island, and now you show me a secret passage.”
“It isn’t secret, or at least, it wasn’t supposed to be. The oldest part of the house had a very large, very drafty fireplace. Father had it rebuilt, and the architect was at a loss as to what to do with the extra space, so he made this. It goes up to my room.”
Sparhawk had eyed the cramped space dubiously. “Do you ever use it?”
“Not since I was a child. It’s barely big enough for Ned. Now get in.”
With some awkwardness and bent nearly double, he had angled his tall frame inside. “It would serve you right if I were to faint,” he warned.
“Please don’t.” She gave him a gentle shove and closed the panel on his protests.
Then, her skin still flushed and her body aching with frustrated desire, she had gone to face Micah Wild.
Now he stood on her doorstep smiling, as though visiting his former fiancée in the middle of the night with a longshoreman in tow was a regular event.
“Sarah,” he said, relief suffusing his handsome face, “you’re home.”
She had forgotten how musical his voice could be. And she had forgotten the power of his physical presence. Wild could afford to dress in embroidered silk waistcoats and diamond-buckled pumps, but he had adopted the rage militaire and wore buckskin breeches topped with a coat sewn from homespun linen. It had been cut to flatter his compact, muscular frame, and the muted color and slubbed texture set off his dark liquid eyes and curling brown hair.
She could not blame Elizabeth for accepting him. Even now, after all that had passed between them, when Sarah looked at him, she felt a pang of longing.
He crossed the threshold and caught her up in his arms. His touch was achingly familiar, but she had, only a few moments earlier, been anticipating that of another man, and taking refuge in Micah’s embrace felt like a betrayal. She stiffened.
He noticed at once and released her.
“Sarah,” he said, stepping back to examine her in the dim light of the hall, his honey voice ringing off the walls of the small chamber. “How are you come here by yourself? Where are the Sally and Captain Molineaux?”
“Molineaux is dead,” she said. “Killed by a British cannonball.”
His dark eyes betrayed his shock and surprise. He drew her into the parlor. His man lingered within sight in the hall.
In a hushed voice that still managed to resonate through the empty room, Wild said, “Molineaux was carrying something for me. A chest.”
“Of French gold. The British took it. It has gone to Boston aboard a brig called the Wasp.”
“Where did this happen and when?”
“Outside Boston Harbor. Yesterday just past noon.” She knew he was making calculations of wind and weather and speed. They would bring him no comfort. The Wasp was in Boston by now. “The Sally barely got away. The navy will be looking for her. And she was cruelly mauled.”
“Below the waterline?” asked Wild, sharply.
“No. But she was dismasted, and then we struck a storm. Two spars gone, topsails in shreds, and the standing rigging fouled.”
Wild sighed. “That is . . . inconvenient.” He shook off his disappointment and took her hands. “But the Sally can be renamed and repaired. And the gold was always a risky venture. The important thing is that you are home and safe. Your father should never have let you go on the voyage.”
“If I hadn’t gone, Ned would have been pressed aboard that British ship. And my father didn’t know about the gold—and how much danger we were in—because you didn’t tell us.”
“I didn’t tell you because you would have talked your father out of the venture—and your family needed the money. Where is the Sally now?”
“My father and Mr. Cheap are surveying her damage.” Misery Island was one of the first places Micah would look, but her father and Mr. Cheap would be gone by then.
Wild pushed a straying hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. The first time he had done it, a casual gesture of affection, in public, on his bustling wharf, had thrilled her. But he was married to Elizabeth now and would never touch her in public again. The thought still choked her with grief and anger.
“I don’t want you worrying about the Sally or the debt,” he was saying. “I’ll see that the schooner is hidden safe and refitted good as new. The house I found for you is furnished. You will like it. The parlors have fine, large windows, and it is very near my wharf. I will be able to visit most days. You can bring Ned and your father with you. And everything will be just like we always talked about.”
They had talked about making their home a center for thought and discussion, a birthplace of new ideas for the Salem mariners who ventured across the sea and the navigators who plotted their courses. They had dreamed of supper parties and salons where great voyages were planned and new discoveries revealed.
He had built her a home fit for it, and then, when her fortune had been lost, he’d bestowed it on her best friend instead. Now he was offering her a love nest, tucked out of the way, where no one with any character would visit her. She had been advised in the past to accept his protection, warned more than once that it was the best she could expect in the circumstances, that to ask for anything more from life would only ensure that she received less. But she burned with resentment at the idea that one youthful folly meant she was not entitled to a man who would love her alone.
“It can never be like we talked about, Micah. You married someone else.”
“That is nothing to do with us.”
“It is everything to do with us. You have a wife.”
“I don’t love Elizabeth,” Wild said.
But Elizabeth, Sarah had realized on that terrible day when the two women quarreled, did love Wild. And that mattered to Sarah. “Then you shouldn’t have married her.”
“It is the way of the world. Marriages are made for property and money. Love rarely plays a part in such transactions.”
“Then you threw away something rare, because I did love you.”
“My feelings for you were and are the same, Sarah. That is why I want to take care of you and your family.” He surveyed the scabby parlor. “You should have come to me long ago. I can’t stand to see you live like this.”
“You must. I will not live as your kept woman.”
“Sarah,” he said, in the ringing voice he used when he talked about tyranny and tax collectors. “The voyage was a failure. Your father is bankrupt. The Sally is mine legally, and without it, Abednego has no hope of rebuilding his fortune. This house has already been stripped bare. You are running out of options.”
“If I accepted your protection, my father would feel compelled to violate his principles and hand over the Sally.”
“They aren’t his principles, Sarah. They’re the ones you adopted when I didn’t marry you. Your father would have sided with the Patriots long ago if it hadn’t been for your pride. Your brother is already one of us. Your father will relent when things are settled between you and me.”
He meant once she became his mistress. “Even if my father took the Rebel side,” she said, “he would not give the Sally to you.”
“He’s out in her now, isn’t he? And tomorrow he’ll be in agony. Do you want Abednego to come home to this bleak house in that condition? What will you do when the weather turns? You can’t afford the firewood to warm his room. At the cottage you will have a servant. Ned will have a tutor. The doctor will visit regularly. Your father can live out his days in comfort. And we will be together, as we always hoped. We have waited long enough. I want you to move tonight.”
Perhaps if she had not met Sparhawk, she might have been able to swallow her pride and accept Micah’s offer, but now she wanted something better for herself and her family.
“No,” she said.
He cast a glance at Dan Ludd, hovering in the doorway, and the longshoreman padded into the hall.
When she heard Ludd’s feet upon the stair, panic seized her. He must not find Sparhawk. “Where is he going?”
“To fetch your things. You cannot stay here by yourself. It isn’t safe. They say shots have been fired in Boston, and that Graves plots to shell the ports. It is no time to be on your own. You’re leaving this house tonight, even if I have to carry you out the door.”
And he would do it too. There was no one to stop him, except Sparhawk, who would forfeit his freedom—and perhaps his life—if he revealed himself. She did not think for a moment that Wild would settle her chastely in her new home and leave her be, but she could cross that bridge when she came to it. The important thing was to get Wild and Ludd out of her house.
“I can pack my own things,” she said. It would give her time to think of something. And then, “I do not want your man in my room.”
Micah nodded and recalled Ludd, then followed her up the stairs to the bare little chamber.
She had hoped for a moment alone, an opportunity at least to open the hidden staircase door and whisper a warning to Sparhawk—and the direction of the judge’s house—but Micah was not going to let her out of his sight.
There was hardly anything to pack—a spare chemise and petticoat, a bed jacket, one gown. She laid them on the counterpane and dragged her sea bag from under the bed, trying to think of a way out. Micah came up behind her, trapping her between his body and the bed. He placed his hands on her shoulders and spoke in her ear. “At the cottage you will have better things, I promise.”
She had never wanted the things, the house or its elegant contents, only what they represented: his esteem, his approval, his affection.
He kissed her neck, brushed his lips over the shell of her ear, and she felt the briefest flicker of desire, a shadow of what she had known when they were courting. And then the memory of that night swamped her.
She’d gone to the half-finished house with its wet plaster walls and sanded pine floors to tell him that the Wards were bankrupt; to release him from their engagement. Because she was not so unworldly that she thought things could be the same between them. And he had placed his coat on the floor and held her and kissed her and told her that he didn’t care about the money, that she was his whole happiness, that they would be together.
And then he’d made love to her.
She’d exulted in the tangible proof of his affection, the intimacy. Afterward he had promised her that he would always take care of her and her family, and that was when she understood the place he intended for her in his life.
She had wanted to die.
Wild’s hands plucked the first pin from the front of her stomacher.
“No, Micah.”
“I have missed you so much.”
“I don’t want to do this here.” She didn’t want to do it at all.
“It’s all right,” Wild soothed, untying the laces of her jacket. “Dan will keep watch downstairs.”
She fought an impulse to raise her voice, lest Sparhawk hear her and do something stupid and heroic. “No.” She tried to arrest his hands, but he was determined.
“I’ll make it good for you,” he promised.
“That would be impossible.”
He ignored her and plucked another pin.
She jabbed him with her elbow.
He cursed, the oath ringing off the bare walls; he ripped the lacing of her jacket, scattering pins across the floor.
The echo died, a door creaked, and the distinctive sound of a pistol being cocked filled the silence.
“Let the girl go,” said James Sparhawk.
Wild spun round and Sarah turned more slowly, holding her jacket closed.
Sparhawk was leaning negligently in the secret doorway, his broken wrist tucked into his pocket. It was a convincing pose, his bandages hidden by the wide velvet cuffs, a second pistol peeking as if by an afterthought from his embroidered pocket. Her father’s tasseled cutlass hung at his waist.
He ought to have stayed hidden and safe, but he had exposed himself.
For her.
“Who the devil are you, sir?” asked Wild. Then, looking past Sparhawk’s shoulder at the open panel, he added, “And what the hell were you doing in there?”
“My name is Sparhawk. Most recently, I commanded His Majesty’s brig, the Wasp. Just now I am staying with friends. Perhaps you should let my friend go,” he suggested.
Sarah didn’t wait for Micah to comply. She moved out of his reach, then took a deliberate step toward Sparhawk.
She had never seen Micah Wild at a loss for words. He looked from Sparhawk to Sarah, and back again.
Finally, he said, “I see no uniform upon you, sir.”
“I am, as you find me, at my ease,” drawled Sparhawk. “But the king’s colors, I assure you, are downstairs.”
“And whence come you, that you arrive without a king’s ship?”
“I kidnapped him off the Wasp,” Sarah explained, “to save Ned from the press.”
“He does not appear to be a prisoner,” replied her former fiancé coldly. “And he wears no uniform. I take him for a spy.”
“These are the king’s colonies, sir. I cannot be a spy, unless we are at war.”
Micah smiled. “Then allow me to be the first to inform you, sir. Shots were fired at Concord two days ago.” He drew a folded broadside from his pocket and tossed it on the bed. It was from the Salem Gazette, Mr. Russell’s Whig paper, and the headline read “BLOODY BUTCHERY BY THE BRITISH TROOPS.” Two rows of black coffins decorated the top.
Sparhawk didn’t take his eyes off Wild. “That is as may be, but even so the fact remains that I am in a private home, and I have not appeared in public without my uniform.”
“Only because you are here in secret,” replied Wild. “Your presence must be reported to the Committee of Safety.”
Sparhawk cocked his head. “Is that the body that authorizes you to assault young women, or do you undertake that on your own authority?”
“The lady and I have an understanding.”
“I fail to comprehend it,” said Sparhawk.
A floorboard creaked. Wild’s man, Dan Ludd, appeared in the door, hand on his truncheon. He looked darkly at Sparhawk and sent a questioning glance at Wild, who shook his head.
“You have me at a disadvantage, sir,” said Micah Wild. “It will not happen again.”
Sparhawk gestured toward the door with his pistol. Sarah watched him follow Wild and Ludd down the stairs, her heart seeming to beat in time to his feet upon the risers. She gathered her pins from the floor; listened to the door open and close, the latch click, the bolt slide home, feet upon the stairs again. By that time she had managed, hands trembling, to pin her jacket to her stays. The ribbon she would have to mend later. Then Sparhawk was back, one of her father’s pistols still in his good hand.
“You heard everything, I suppose,” she said.
“I heard enough.”
“I am not crying,” she said.
“Of course not.” He laid the first pistol atop the chest, but left it loaded. He drew the second out of his pocket and placed it there as well. Then he came to stand in front of her. Close enough that she could rest her head against his chest.
The velvet of his coat felt cool upon her cheek and when, after a moment of hesitation, he closed his arms around her, she began to cry in great racking sobs. She had not felt so safe, so understood, so cared for, in two long years.
He stroked her hair, rubbed small circles across her back, and whispered soothing nonsense into her ear. The words were not so different from the things her father had said to her: that Wild was a selfish bastard, that she deserved better, that none of it was her fault. Not true exactly, but reassuring to hear all the same, and somehow more satisfying coming from this man she had known barely more than a day than from her own father.
When she had no more tears left, she looked up at Sparhawk and said, “You have been very kind, but you must go. Micah will be back with his friends.”
“I’m not leaving you alone. I will wait until your father and Mr. Cheap return.”
“You cannot wait for them,” she said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “Now that I know what Micah intends, I can protect myself. The carriage will be at the judge’s house at midnight. It may be your only chance to escape. You cowed Micah and Ludd with your ruse, but if they had known you had only one good hand, they might have taken you. If they do catch you, they will drag you to the common and try you. It is the kind of street theater Micah excels at. As a king’s officer, your chances of survival would have been slim at best, but now that you have wounded Micah’s pride, I would put them at null.”
He considered a moment. “Then come with me,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Come with me to Boston. Your father and Mr. Cheap cannot guard you day and night. If you remain here, you will end in Wild’s keeping. I want to help you. I am offering you, in every sense of the word, my protection.”
“Oh.”
“My terms will sound altogether too like Wild’s, but there are, I flatter myself, important differences. I have money to keep you. I could get Ned a place on a good ship, your father perhaps a pension. Lord knows he deserves one. He captured more pirates than the navy did in those days.”
“You forget,” she said. “I took you captive. I will be wanted in Boston for piracy.”
“An American boy will be wanted for piracy. No one on the Wasp saw your face.”
“Your lieutenant may have,” she said.
“But he is a lieutenant, and I am a captain, and I will swear it was not you.”
“And how,” she said carefully, “would this differ from Micah’s offer?”
“Well, for one thing, I am not married. For another, I think you actually like me.” There was his damned charm again. “I would offer you more, if I could, but I cannot.”
“That is what Micah said, the night he told me he was going to marry Elizabeth.”
“Granted, the effect upon you is similar,” he admitted, “but I swear to you that I have better reason in this than Wild. I cannot offer you my name because I was not born ‘Sparhawk’ and I was not christened ‘James.’ I’m an imposter.”