Wicked (4 page)

Serena's grateful thanks were casually brushed off by the landlady. And while the splendid young noblemen were engrossed in their ladies
'
rendition of the newest ditty disparaging the Prince of Wales, Serena slipped into the secluded corner near the f
i
re.

Within short hours she'd be on board the ship that would take her to Florence, to her friends the Castellis, to an art school she'd always dreamed of attending ever since her mother had told her of all the renowned ateliers and collections in the city of her birth. Despite a ringing fatigue and hunger, she was comfortable and warm, protected from the rain that had just begun falling, ensconced in a cozy refuge
f
or the night. If she believed in luc
k
—
a
nd she did with the same gambler's spirit as her fathe
r
—
s
he'd be tempted to say her luck had finally turned.

******************

Sometime later she ate her soup and tea while the young bloods and their ladies consumed Fanny's best cut of beef and pudding and drank Champagne and laughed . . . and kissed. There was much kissing and more than that on occasion with the young ladies sitting on the gentlemen's lap from time to time. Serena tried not to loo
k
but the noisy, amorous repartee was in too close proximity to fully ignore.

The rain had been driving in sheets against the windows tor some time and between kisses and giggles and
f
lirtatious petting, the conversation had occasionally centered on whether they would all stay the night or begin the journey back to London. The dark-haired buck didn't seem to mind ;f they went or stayed. And while he kissed the lady clinging to him, he did it idly, like a man with other things on his mind.

As the heat from the f
i
re seeped through Serena's tired senses, her eyes began drifting shut and the amusements of the party from London seemed to enter her consciousness
f
ro
m
a great distance. Until a giggling shriek jerked her awake and a swift glance was enough to know she shouldn't look again no matter the instinctive impulse. The fair-haired blade, roaring drunk and laughing, was sliding the gown
f
rom his paramour's shoulders and it appeared as though he were intent on making love to her, public venue or not.

"You might want to shut the door, Charlie, unless you're in an exhibitionist mood," Beau mildly said.

"Sha'it yourself."

"Char
l
ie-e-e," Lizzie fretted, her remonstrance ending in a giggle as the Marquis of Albington licked a path downward between her breasts. Then she softly moaned, her eyes drifted shut, and her hands came up to hold his head to her breast, the compelling sensations of his mouth on her nipple apparently overcoming any reservations she might have had.

"It appears we're about to be entertained," Beau lazily drawled, clearing the filled glasses from the tabletop in his immediate vicinity.

"Wake up the judge!" The cry from the street outside was dimly heard, and a second later, the front door of the Pelican crashed open. A rain-soaked man burst through the portal, shouting, "Wake up the judge!" his voice like a crash of thunder in the candlelit room. "Fanny, where the hell are you?" he yelled before glancing quickly into the parlor in search of the landlady. Not catching sight of her, he spun away, racing toward the back of the inn, his voice raised in summons. "Fanny, Cap'n Darby's been killed!"

Within minutes, the Pelican was a scene of pandemonium, a score of men wet from the storm crowding into the parlor, the alarm having been raised from the docks to the inn's front door. While everyone waited for the judge to come down from his quarters above, the dead man was carried in and placed on a long trestle table near the door. Even in the dim light, the brutality of the attack was evident. The man's head and face were a bloody pulp, distorted out of all human semblance, crushed flesh and bone bleeding onto the floor in a widening crimson pool.

"It was his first mate Horton, for sure. He and Darby been at odds for years," one man brusquely said, staring down at the corpse.

"Horton were drinkin' all day at the Bird's Nest," another noted, his voice gruff.

"Heard tell he were swearing to make the cap'n pay for them lashings he got back last year. It must ha' been him." The man speaking nodded his head with certainty.

"Seein' how he sailed off tonight without the captain, it looks likely."

"Someone has to notify Crawford's."

"And the widow Darby."

A sudden silence filled the room.

"Fanny can tell her," someone quietly said. "They's friends."

"Can they find Horton and bring him back?"

"Not the way he knows the seas," the man with the gruff voice bluntly observed. "Been sailing since he were ten."

"He could sell the
Betty Lee
in some foreign port and live the rest of his life in style."

"He were a violent man. . . ."

The men's voices suddenly faded away in Serena's consciousness as the disastrous import of the words
Betty Lee
registered in her brain. The
Betty Lee
was
her
ship, she fearfully realized, the ship that was to take her away to Florence in the morning. It was
gone,
they said, which meant her luggage and passage money were
gone.
For a moment she couldn't breathe, so cataclysmic was the news. Everything she owned had been on that ship, including money she'd hidden in her paint box. Forcing herself to a calmness that threatened to erupt into a wail of despair, she desperately tried to deal with the devastating events.

Fighting back her tears, she reminded herself she was alive, at least, unlike Captain Darby, who was brutally murdered and still as the grave short feet away. However much ruin faced her, it was far from the stark reality of death before her eyes.

She needed options, she consciously deliberated, swallowing hard to stifle her tears. Think, she commanded her numbed mind. While she struggled to regain some modicum of reason, a cacophony of voices rose from the crowd, everyone speaking at once, when the local magistrate entered the room.

He raised his hands to quell the uproar.

As the clamor diminished, the elegant, young noble with dark hair came to his feet, his height and patrician presence immediately silencing the room. In a deep, temperate voice that gave no indication of the numerous bottles of Champagne he'd consumed, he said, "Perhaps I could be of help. Since I'm scheduled to sail soon, if you'd care to arrange an arrest warran
t
—
s
hould witnesses conclude Horton did the dee
d
—
I
could see that the appropriate authorities in various ports of call are made aware of his crime."

Everyone's eyes were trained on the tall aristocrat, splendidly dressed by London's best tailor.

He stood in placid repose as if he were familiar with legions of gazes centered on him.

"Capital, young men," the judge exclaimed into the hush. "Bound to say Crawford Shipping would be beholden to you," he went on. "When do you sail and where?"

"My yacht is at the ready. I'm bound for Naples, but I'm at your convenience, sir." Beau bowed slightly.

"Well, then, come, my boy," the judge briskly said, "and you too, Camden. We need the particulars written down and the witnesses interviewed."

His yacht at the ready, Serena silently mused, the black abyss facing her shrinking by the second. Naples wasn't Leghorn, but it was a lifetime closer than Dover, she reflected. An option of sorts if she had the nerve. Trembling at such a blind bargain, she considered what other possibilities were available to her with her passage money gone, her ship set sail, and her purse so depleted she'd be destitute in a fortnight.

She could no longer apply for a governess post in London. Mrs. Totha
m
would have put out the alarm with the greatest of pleasure too, she suspected. Possibly she could hope for employment in some outlying area of England where London gossip rarely intruded but such an undertaking required staying in rented quarters while she advertised for a position, depleting what little money she had left. What then, if no position materialized? And even should she find work, there was no guarantee her new employers would
be
an improvement over the Tothams.

Rising suddenly, she moved around the outskirts of the Assemblage filling the parlor until she came to the windows racing the dock. Pressing her face against the cool pane, she made out the dim outline of a sleek yacht tied to its moorings, its pale raking form faintly visible even in the heavy ra
i
n.

When he first heard the so
f
t footfall in the passageway outside his stateroom, he glanced at the clock mounted on the ship's overhead beam.

Two o'clock.

He came fully awake.

A woman was on board his yacht.

He immediately recognized the tiptoeing gait as that of a female but then Beau St. Jules had vast experience with tiptoeing rendezvous in the middle of the nigh
t
—
a
s he had with women of every nuance and description. His amours rivale
d
—
s
ome said surpasse
d
—
h
is father's distinguished record. The Duke of Seth's eldest son wasn't called Glory by all the seductive ladies in London for the beauty of his smile alone.

That celebrated smile suddenly appeared on his starkly handsome face as he threw his legs over the side of his bed and reached for his breeches.

A female stowaway on his yacht. How serendipitous.

Entertainment, perhaps, for his voyage to Naples.

******************

Creeping down the dimly lit passage, Serena hardly dared breathe. She'd waited until all sounds of activity had ceased on the yacht save for those of the night crew above decks. And if she hadn't been famished she wouldn't have risked leaving her hiding place in the small closet filled with female attire.

The scented
 
fabrics
 
reminded her poignantly of her
m
other's fine gowns. Long ago . . . Before her mother's death.

Before her father's spiral into drink and gambling.

Before her own servitude as governess to the despicable Tothams.

A small sigh escaped her as she moved toward the galley she'd seen when she'd stolen aboard the yacht at Dover late
la
st night. How far removed she was from that distant childhoo
d
—
w
ithout funds, in flight from England aboard a stranger's yacht, hoping to reach Florence by the grace of God and her own wits.

Her stomach growled, the delicious scent of food from the galley drifting into her nostrils as she eased open the joor and the more urgent need to eat drove away any remnants of nostalgia or self-pity.

She was adding a crusty loaf of bread to the cheese and pears she held in the scooped fold of her skirt when a voice behind her gently said, "Would you like me to wake my
c
ook and have him make you something more substantial?"

She whirled around to find the yacht's owner lounging
a
gainst the doorja
m
b. His smile, flashing white in the subdued light, mitigated the terror his voice had engendered Although his state of undress, clothed as he was in only
b
reeches, gave rise to another kind of fear. He was powerf
ull
y built, the light from a small oil lamp modeling his mus
c
ular body in shadow and plane, his virility intense at close range.

"Have we met before?" he softly asked, wondering if he should know the young lady, the blur of women in his life occasionally making it difficult to recall specific females.

"Not precisely," Serena replied, hesitant, not certain of his mood despite his soft voice. "I saw you in the parlor of the Pelican."