SPENCER SAT at the small table bolted to the deck in the captain’s quarters as the sloop cut through the choppy waters of the Channel, testing and retesting the knife Courtland had given him, smiling at the thought that his brother could be a dead bore. Dead bores don’t get ideas like this weapon in their heads. Perhaps Court’s time spent riding out as the Black Ghost hadn’t all been for the unselfish sake of the residents of Romney Marsh. Staid, proper Courtland Becket might just have enjoyed cutting a dash in that cape and mask—the devil. What was that saying about still waters?
“Spencer?”
He was on his feet and turned about in less than a second, the chair toppling backward on the wooden deck, the knife still open in his hand. “Mariah, what in bloody hell—”
She held her hands out in front of her, the door to a cabinet behind her still hanging open on its hinges. “Put that thing away, please. I’ve been punished enough, cramped up in that cabinet for the past several hours,” she said, and then waited until he’d done so. “Thank you.”
“You might not want to thank me,” he said, righting the chair and motioning for her to sit in it—which she didn’t do and he probably should never have expected her to do, damn it all to hell, anyway. Obey might be a part of the marriage vows they’d take on Saturday morning, but that’s all it ever would be to Mariah. A word. “How did you get aboard ship? Is there a body I may be tripping over soon?”
She shook her head, trying not to smile even if what she’d done wasn’t all that amusing. He was so upset. “Jacob Whiting is neatly tied up, I’ll grant you, but he’s safe enough. He’s in a cabinet in the other cabin. A smallish cabinet, so his knees are touching his ears, poor thing. Don’t be angry with him. I was holding a pistol on him from beneath my cloak as he rowed me to the ship. It was tricky as I climbed the rope ladder onto the deck, but he believed me when I told him I’d shoot his nose off for him if he betrayed me. I can see why your sister Morgan found it easy to lead him around by that nose, as Sheila does now.”
Spencer rolled his eyes heavenward. “Jesus. And this is the mother of my child?”
He wasn’t the only angry person in this cabin. Mariah was more than ready to dismiss the subject of Jacob Whiting and get down to the business at hand. “And this is the father of my child, deliberately lying again and again to the mother of his child, haring off to risk his life and that of this crew in order to clean up Ainsley Becket’s mistakes for him? He was a pirate when you lived on that island with him, Spence. He broke the King’s law.”
If she wasn’t going to sit down, he was. “Where were you?”
“In the hallway outside Ainsley’s study, until I had to hide in a corner when I heard Jack walking down the hallway. You’d left the door open behind you when you went in to see your father,” Mariah said, not bothering to dissemble. She, at least, told the truth. “Spencer—what is all this about? Is this the way you think you’ll earn your way out of the family, how you’ll earn your freedom? By putting yourself in danger, jeopardizing your own future to make up for whatever terrible past is clearly Ainsley’s responsibility? I heard him say it, he was a bad man who’d done bad things. This isn’t your fight, Spence. It’s his.”
“No, Mariah,” Spencer said, oddly calm now, his blood suddenly so cold it barely moved through his veins. “It’s our fight. All of us. You heard what you heard but you can have no conception of what happened, what so many suffered. Old men. Women, children—babies. Not a few casualties of a fight between partners who’d had a falling out. Not even a fight. A massacre, Mariah. Torture, when Beales didn’t get the answers he wanted. Venting his rage once Ainsley’s Isabella was dead and lost to him, because Beales had wanted her for his own. And the rage went on forever, while those few Odette could rescue hid deep within the trees and listened to the screams. A bloodlust that fed on itself until there was no person, no animal, nothing left alive to destroy.”
He scrubbed at his face with one hand and then pushed his fingers through his hair, trying to wipe away the mental portrait he had just painted for her. But this had to be said if she was to understand the enemy they faced, and damn his family for making him keep such a secret from her. Maybe he had to say it for himself, too, as he had forced the memory from his mind for too long, tried to deny that terrible day had ever happened at all.
It was time to bring the memories out and deal with them. Not to defend Ainsley or any of them. But to explain. Until Mariah, he hadn’t found anyone else he had wanted to tell. Had trusted enough to tell.
“There were more than forty children on the island when Ainsley’s supposedly trusted partner and his men dropped anchor in the harbor that day. Fourteen sailed with us to England. Fourteen, Mariah. I was one of them. Sometimes we would wish we’d died that day, so we wouldn’t have to remember what we saw, what we heard. I’ve spent the last sixteen years trying to forget it. All those bodies wrapped in sailcloth, silently slipping into the sea once we reached open water, one after another after another, as if we’d mark our route all the way to England with the bodies we left behind us. Sweet Jesus, there wasn’t enough sailcloth, so we had to wrap the babies with the mothers.”
“Spencer, I—”
“No, you need to hear this, if you’re going to accuse Ainsley. Let me finish. Aboard ship, night after night, I’d hear the other children crying for their mothers. Grown men sobbing, cursing God as they shouted at the stars. Hell on earth, Mariah. Two ships, manned by dead men who still breathed and only held together—eventually made whole again—by the man I most admire in this world. You can’t know what it was like and I don’t want you to know what it was like. But don’t tell me ridding the world of Edmund Beales is not my fight.”
Mariah thought of William, snug and safe in his cradle, and wrapped her arms about her waist, feeling physically ill. “How could he…how could anybody…?”
“I don’t know,” Spencer said honestly. “There’s more to it, I’m sure, and I don’t know it all. We never talk about it. Tonight was the first time I’d ever really heard Ainsley say anything to the point about what happened. I’d always thought Beales did it simply because he wanted Isabella and Ainsley was leaving, taking her to England. And when she died trying to escape him, screaming to us to run, to hide, then tumbling down the stairs, he simply went mad and killed everyone. But that’s not all of it. I hadn’t thought much about their profits or that they could have been hidden on our island. I assumed he’d been after Ainsley’s share, but that’s all.”
“But Ainsley said this Beales person didn’t find the—the booty, is it called?”
Spencer nodded, thinking back to what Ainsley had said. He’d seemed to hesitate before he’d said the words. What in bloody hell was included in that profit?
“The crew—the husbands and fathers—they wanted to stay, fight, but Ainsley knew they all just wanted to die so he wouldn’t allow it. Instead, we repaired the ships—there’d been a battle at sea, something you haven’t heard, another piece of this whole long nightmare of Beales’s making—and we left for England and the house Ainsley had ordered built years ago, safe at the back end of nowhere. Beales supposedly was dead, anyway; his own crews turned on him when he couldn’t find the fortune he’d promised them shares of as their reward for attacking the island.”
He sat back in the chair, spreading his arms wide; a weight he hadn’t known he’d been carrying seemed to have lifted off his shoulders, just by talking to Mariah, sharing his burden with her, a woman who had lost someone she loved in another senseless, stupid battle.
“The past is over, Mariah. It’s done. The why of what happened doesn’t really matter now and Ainsley has been doing his penance for too many years. What matters is that Edmund Beales is alive. We’ve known that, believed we’ve known that at any rate, for about a year, but he went to ground and we’ve been waiting for him to surface once more. If Ainsley’s right, Beales has and he’s gone far beyond attacking one small island. He’s plotting to unleash Bonaparte to make a living hell out of half of Europe. More battles, more deaths. You said you hate war, Mariah. We both do. That’s all I can think about right now. The rest, with Beales, happens when it happens. Our revenge has already waited for sixteen long years. But right now I have to think about something else, don’t I? I have to think about how I’m going to find myself another impossible, flame-haired witch after I bloody well break your neck for being here.”
Mariah went down on her knees in front of him. He had to let her help, now more than ever. “No, no, you don’t. I heard what you said to Ainsley, Spencer. You don’t speak French.”
“So?”
“So, Spencer, that’s why I’m here. Because I do. We were stationed in Montreal for three years. I can be your ears when you meet with this person. Possibly hear things they don’t want you to hear, comments they might make about you and their plans for you. And I can shoot. I wasn’t threatening anything with MacTavish that I couldn’t do. I could have your back while nobody bothers to consider me important at all. I can help you.”
Spencer looked down into her serious, intense face for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed out loud. “How? First you’ll have to find a way to get yourself untied, madam, and off this ship.”
She gripped his knees tightly. “No, Spencer, please, listen to me. I heard what Ainsley said. And, hiding at the back of the hallway, I heard what Jacko said. I haven’t been tested. I haven’t…I haven’t proven myself. If I’m to be a Becket, I don’t want to be held at arm’s length. Not by your family…not by you.”
“And hiding yourself in this cabin is proving yourself?”
“No! Going into Calais with you would be proving myself. Nobody would think twice about your having a woman with you. It might even serve to allay anyone’s fears if they thought you might be out to betray them. I mean, they may believe you’re an idiot, taking time to…to diddle a woman when you’re planning Bonaparte’s rescue from Elba, but they’d be less inclined to believe you had some other motive for seeking them out. You’ll just be the idiot Englishman who wants an adventure and not a danger to them.”
“Diddle a woman?” Spencer rubbed at his forehead, sure the world had just turned upside-down. “Where in bloody hell was your father when you were growing up in all these army postings?”
Mariah relaxed slightly. “Our quarters were often very small, with my cot tucked up in a loft open to the ground floor where Papa and his friends sat around the hearth in the evenings telling tall tales. And little pitchers have big ears. Please, Spencer, let me go ashore with you. I can be your ears. If we’re to have that future you talked about, let me help you finish this, gain your freedom. I…I want to earn my way, too.”
“Ainsley never put conditions on any of us.”
“I’m sure he didn’t. You put those conditions on yourself because that’s the sort of man you are. That’s honorable, Spence. I admire you for that, I truly do,” Mariah said quickly. “But the dream, Spence. Just tonight you finally spoke to me honestly, openly. You told me your dream and it’s a wonderful dream. You offered to make William and me a part of that dream and I thank you for that. But please, don’t ask me to know you’re in danger, that the dream is in danger, and then stand back, do nothing. You’re meeting with Frenchmen. I speak French, you don’t. It’s that simple. You need me.”
“William…”
“Will be safe with your family until we return tomorrow or the next day. Please, Spence, let me help. I don’t intend to die. And I damn well didn’t save your life so you can throw it away.”
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” he asked, pulling her to her feet as he stood. “Maybe I should find a way to save your life so that we’re even and you won’t have that to hang over my head for the next fifty years. But it damn well won’t be by dragging you into the middle of this.”
She placed her hands on his forearms, aware of how small this cabin was, how near he was, how much she couldn’t ignore the fact that his safety meant more to her than her own and probably had from that first moment she’d touched his brow and he’d looked up at her without really seeing her. “I found my way to safety after my father was killed. I found my way to Becket Hall while heavy with your child. I have found my way onto this ship, Spencer Becket, and I’ll damn well find my way to your rooms in Calais. You know I will. I don’t give up easily.”
Spencer sighed in frustration. “Julia poked her nose in all sorts of places it didn’t belong. And while anyone would expect Morgan to do the same, even Elly volunteered to—you’re right. Chance never won nor did Ethan or Jack. Why am I fighting this? All right, Mariah. You can come with me. But only if you obey me without question, without argument. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Mariah promised quickly. “As long as you give reasonable orders.”
They stood there, gazes locked, each trying to exert their will on the other, as Anguish knocked on the door. “Kinsey is saying as how we’ll be dropping anchor within the hour, sir.”
Spencer continued to look into Mariah’s eyes. “Thank you, Anguish. I have a few things to attend to here but I’ll be up on deck in good time.”
Mariah tightened her grip on his forearms. “Spencer? Please? I’m going to be a Becket in a few days. My son is a Becket. That makes this my fight, too.”
He’d burn in hell for this. “You don’t look like some low tavern wench. You look like my son’s mother.”
Made nearly giddy with relief, she quickly raised her hands to her hair, roughly pulled out pins and let them drop to the floor, then ran her fingers through the deep waves that tumbled into her face, onto her shoulders. She shook her head and one thick lock of fire-kissed sunlight hair came to rest over her left eye. “There, is that better?”
Spencer felt a tightening in his loins. “The gown…the gown isn’t right.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Spence,” Mariah said, unbuttoning the top three buttons of the old gown she’d chosen because she could then dress herself without assistance. “Now?”
He could just glimpse a hint of the enticing curves hidden by the plain gray material. “Being a fallen woman entails more than a few opened buttons, Mariah,” he said as he eased four more buttons from their moorings and then spread the material, tucking the ends under themselves, to reveal the modest, lace-topped shift she wore beneath it. “Better,” he said, “but I think we’ll have to untie this as well,” he said, reaching for the strings that held the shift closed.
Mariah shut her eyes, her skin burning as Spencer’s fingers worked at the bow, and he smiled when those eyes flew open again as he slid his hands beneath the shift, cupping her bare breasts in his hands.
“Don’t…” she breathed quietly.
He moved the pads on his thumbs across her nipples, which responded immediately to his touch. He’d been thinking about—dreaming about—touching her like this ever since the day he’d walked in on her so soon after William’s birth. The image and the longing hadn’t cooled with the passage of time but had driven deeper and deeper into his brain, making that longing even more intense.
And now he had her here, was touching her, and he wasn’t idiot enough to believe she wasn’t responding to him. He needed her now, needed a release after all he’d thought and said in the past hours. He told himself that she might feel the same.
He bent his head and captured her nipple in his mouth, the rasp of his tongue replacing the drag of his thumb…and Mariah seemed to collapse against him, allowing him this new freedom.
He moved his head, sliding his mouth into the valley between her breasts, licking at her, tasting her, his thumbs busy once more as Mariah clasped his shoulders, threw her head back, whimpered low in her throat.
The lightning bolt of passion evident to them from that day on the beach shot through them both again now in this small cabin, and Mariah didn’t protest, couldn’t even think to protest as Spencer turned her about, backed her against the wooden table in the center of the room.
So much need, all coming together in the form of a passion neither could deny….
His mouth was on hers. His hands were bunching up the material of her gown, pushing the hem up, up, out of his way. She worked frantically at the buttons of his breeches, her mind whirling, her senses swimming, her common sense departing without so much as a cautionary note of farewell.
Spencer ripped at her undergarment as he half lifted her onto the table, still ripping at the damn material, pushing himself between her legs as she freed him from his breeches. He came into her, hard and fast, pulling her against him, his teeth nipping at the side of her neck as she gripped him tightly at the shoulders.
This was no weakened Spencer Becket in need of comfort, roughly, clumsily reaching out to that comfort. This was a dark and dangerous man, a fully potent man, taking what he wanted. But it was also what Mariah wanted. She hadn’t known that when she’d stowed away in his cabin. That what she felt certain had almost begun in her bedchamber a few hours earlier and was culminating now was what she wanted more than anything on this earth, now or ever.
But it was.
The heat of it. The fierceness of it. The raw hunger of it. Building. Building. Like a spring coiling tighter and tighter deep inside her, filling her with a tension that transformed itself and her into this wildly wanton creature that wanted nothing more than to hold on to Spencer Becket and take all that he could give her.
Take all that she could take….
“Mariah,” Spencer breathed against her mouth before sealing his against her, his hands on her buttocks as he pulled her hard against him, moving deep inside her again and again as she wrapped her legs around his back, until he felt her clenching around him, heard her whimpered cry of surprise and allowed himself his own release.
Madness. Divine madness….
“Lieutenant?”
Spencer swallowed down hard, trying to bring his breathing back under control as Mariah buried her head against his shoulder. “In a minute, Clovis, in a minute.”
“You want me to help you with the knife harness, sir?” Clovis called from the other side of the door…and Mariah’s arms tightened even more around him.
“No…no thank you, I can manage. And Kinsey won’t run us aground. This isn’t our first trip to Calais. Now go—I’ll be right there.”
“Sir,” Clovis said, his tone rather injured at this dismissal.
“Is he gone?” Mariah whispered as Spencer stepped slightly away from her, held her steady as she seemed to collapse against the table edge.
“Yes, thank God,” Spencer said, grabbing a length of toweling from the bunk in the cabin, using it and then tossing it to Mariah before turning his back, giving her some sense of privacy. “Ainsley designed a fine sloop but he neglected to put a lock on that door. Jesus God, Mariah, we’re both out of our minds.”
He turned to look at her again and saw her smile as she stood there, holding up her white lawn pantaloons, now ruined beyond repair.
“I don’t have any other clothing with me, you know. You can be a generous protector and buy me more when we land, but nobody but you can be allowed in the longboat before I’ve climbed down the ladder. Now, do I still look like the mother of your child, Spencer?” she asked him, feeling delicious, even as she wrapped her arms tightly about herself because otherwise she’d be throwing those arms around him, holding on tight.
The corners of his mouth twitched as he looked at her. “Your hair is wild, your mouth is pink and swollen, your gown looks as if you dressed without a candle in the dark and we both probably smell of sex. No, Mariah, you don’t look like the mother of my child. But I’m damn glad you are.”
She wasn’t as sophisticated or as wanton as she’d like him to believe. “Is there…is there time to wash?”
Now he chuckled low in his throat. “No, there’s not. I thought you were only recently thinking about the benefits of becoming a fallen woman, as I think you called it. So—does the idea still hold as much appeal?”
“Now you’re making fun of me,” Mariah said, suddenly more than ready to get back to the business at hand and ignoring the slight soreness between her legs, the almost pleasurable heaviness low in her body. “And we’re wasting precious time. Let me see this harness Clovis mentioned. What is it—what does it do?”
“Nothing. A small toy Court thought up some long winter night.” He picked up the knife, slipped it up inside his sleeve to engage it and then held out his hand, his arm lowered. “Watch.” Pressing his arm against his side three times, the knife appeared; a push on the lever exposed the blade.
Mariah goggled at the blade. “You call that a toy? Then you are expecting trouble.”
“To not be prepared for trouble, as Ainsley says, is to invite it in and offer it a chair,” Spencer said, repositioning the blade inside his sleeve. “No, don’t smooth your hair, leave it as it is. Did you think to bring a cloak, madam, or just a pistol?”
Mariah shot him a look he felt fairly sure a wise man would do his best to avoid inciting again, and then retrieved a dark, hooded cloak from the cabinet she’d hidden herself in earlier. “What will the men…your crew say?”
“Ah, let me think. Women onboard are bad luck? Are you out of your mind, Spence? You lucky sod? Yes, looking at you, probably that last one.”
Mariah felt her cheeks going hot. She’d go up on deck and every man there would know what had happened in this cabin. Very well. All right. Staring them down would be good practice, wouldn’t it, if she was to play her part successfully when Spencer met whomever he was to meet. She would simply have to raise her chin, ignore the flutterings in her stomach and do what had to be done.
That’s what her father had taught her. A person does what has to be done. Execute the order given. No thought, no question. Fear, indecision, could prove fatal.
“If you would be so kind as to wipe that inane grin off your face, Mr. Becket, let’s be on with it. The sooner we begin, the sooner we finish.”
“And the sooner we’ll be back aboard ship. There is a bed in here, you know.”
“Not that you remembered earlier.”
Spencer nodded, acknowledging the hit. “You have no idea what it is to make love, do you, Mariah? Not really. First the fumblings of a man lost in his own fevered head and then the rutting boar of a few minutes ago. You’ve no notion of what it is to lie in a man’s arms as he leisurely kisses you, strokes your naked body, wakes you, makes you yearn for the unknown. Brings you pleasures that spin you both into another realm, where there’s nothing but your two bodies and the moment. And that’s my fault, my mistake. One I intend to correct the moment we’re back at Becket Hall.”
He took three steps in her direction—all that was needed in this small cabin to bring him close to her. He put a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to within a breath of his, devouring her with his hot gaze, wanting her again and again and again. “I promise you, I’m not always so clumsy. I’m going to make love to you one day soon, Mariah, until the world goes away. Long and slow, until we’re both mad with it, until you understand what it is to float above the earth, spin off into the stars, even as the world grows wonderfully small, centers on you…centers on me…and then explodes around us, between us…deep, deep inside us.”
Mariah closed her eyes, swayed where she stood. “Don’t…”
“Yes. Don’t. You keep saying that, Mariah. And I never listen.”
Thank God. But she didn’t say the words. It was possible she’d lost the power of speech forever. As long as she didn’t lose her eyesight or else she’d never see this glorious, intense man again. That would be heartbreak….
The sound of the anchor chain unwinding, the anchor breaking the surface of the water, shattered the moment that Mariah believed might otherwise never end, she might want to never end.
“Are you ready?” Spencer asked, tying her cloak around her shoulders before reaching for his own. “We’ll breakfast in the public room to make our presence noticed, then sleep for a few hours. Wait for our quarry to contact us. With any luck, we’ll be back on board tonight or tomorrow morning with all the answers Ainsley seems to think he needs.”
“Unless this Beales person or this Jules person recognizes you and you’re fish bait,” Mariah said, her fears returning even as she retrieved the pistol she’d borrowed and tucked it into the pocket of her cloak. “If you let that happen, Spencer, I’ll never forgive you.”
“A consequence I fear more than anything, madam,” Spencer said. Then he opened the door and moved his arm in a flourish as he bowed her out of the cabin ahead of him.
The sun had already risen and Mariah squinted, shielding her eyes with her hand as she mounted the last stair and stepped out onto the deck.
“Miss Rutledge?”
She turned to see Anguish standing nearby looking, well, anguished. The man’s name suited him. “Good morning, Anguish. Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“I…um…that it is, Miss Rutledge, it is that, indeed. Par…um…pardon me, ma’am,” he stammered, backing up all the while until he collided with Clovis.
“Here now, catch yourself up, lad. It’s an arm you lost, not a leg,” Clovis said, righting him. His grip on the man’s upper arms seemed to freeze in place for long moments as he caught sight of Mariah. “Ma’am,” he finally said, looking past her to Spencer. “Lieutenant, sir. It’s…I…that is…forgive the interruption earlier, sir. Beggin’ your pardon.”
“Don’t mention it, Clovis,” Spencer said, slipping an arm around Mariah’s waist and pulling her close against his side. “And I mean that, most sincerely. Now, the name is Mr. Abbott, remember, not lieutenant, and this is not Miss Rutledge but—”
“Lily,” Mariah said quickly, grabbing at her mother’s name and hoping lightning bolts weren’t about to come crashing out of the sky to strike her dead. “You’re to address me as Lily, Clovis. I’m…I’m his…that is, I’m—”
“Allow me, please,” Spencer cut in, returning interruption for interruption. “Lily here, Clovis, is my doxy, my light-o-love, my recreation. She will be at my side at all times, making a perfect spectacle of herself as she lends credence to the notion that I am a very foolish man with more money than sense—and one who will probably end with a whacking great dose of the clap for his indulgence before this short visit is completed. Anguish, close your mouth and check on the longboat. I want to be onshore in the next fifteen minutes or know the reason why I’m not.”
He kept a smile on his face, doing his best to ignore the fact that Mariah had been surreptitiously grinding the heel of her half boot into the top of his foot since he had begun speaking.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Abbott, sir,” Anguish said before turning about smartly and making himself scarce.
“Clovis, if you’d be so kind as to go down to the cabin next to mine and retrieve Jacob Whiting from the cabinet and untie him—and then forget you’ve done either thing?”
Clovis took in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Forgettin’ a lot, sir, it seems. Shoulda listened to my ma, sir, and stayed home in Dorset, working in the cobbler shop like my da before me, if this is what wantin’ to go out and see the world gets for a person.”
“And what would that be that you get, Clovis?” Mariah asked, unable to hold back a smile.
“Troubles, Miss—Lily. Piles and heaps of troubles.”
By this time the rest of the crew had been alerted via whispers and surreptitiously pointed fingers that Miss Rutledge was aboard and looking a bit queer and bawdylike while she was at it, too.
But these were Ainsley’s men, Becket men, and they asked no questions. They just went back to the rigging, the lowering of the longboat. After all, they’d seen stranger things and would probably see stranger things still before they were finally carried off to bed on six men’s shoulders.