“A story? I don’t know any stories.”
“Everybody knows stories.”
Eliza sighed. “Oh, all right. Let’s see … once upon a time there was a little boy who refused to grow up.”
It was her own disjointed retelling of an old story one of her nurses used to tell her. An island where boys never had to grow up, where magic was not unheard of, but where boys still must eventually face the consequences of their actions. She told the story slowly, whispering
and pausing to remember or to make up some new twist to her nurse’s tale.
It wasn’t long, however, before she realized that Aubrey was asleep. His breath came faint and even against her neck. His tousled head rested heavily on her shoulder. And as she let her story trail away, she couldn’t help smiling. He really was a sweet child. Before his accident she’d not known him very well, for he’d always escaped outdoors whenever his family came to visit, to the stables or the fields. But he’d seemed a nice enough boy. It was only his unhappiness with his recent injury that brought on his bouts of ill temper.
She pressed a kiss to his warm brow and said a prayer on his behalf. Let the warmth of Madeira mend his foot. Let the winter sunshine heal him, both inside and out.
And let her someday have sweet children of her own.
She yawned and smiled to herself. Just look at her. Three days gone, fleeing her bridegroom, and now dreaming of the children they might have together.
She shifted, sliding Aubrey off her shoulder. He murmured something unintelligible and rolled over onto his side, but still she didn’t leave his bed. Outside, the rain beat fitfully at the window. She should return to her own cabin, she knew. But she was warm and comfortable, and oh, so sleepy … .
Eliza dreamt of children running across a flower-strewn meadow as she laughed and chased them. But the dream shattered when the covers were ripped back and a pair of powerful hands tore her from the bed.
She screamed. But nothing came out. One hand clamped around her mouth. Another clutched her waist, holding her off the floor as easily as if she were a slight child.
She screamed again, choking on the terrified effort, then bared her teeth and bit down. She tasted blood. The one rational remnant of her mind recognized the strange taste of salt water mingled with blood. But if she
hurt the unholy wretch, he ignored the pain. He only yanked her more cruelly to his hard, unyielding chest.
Then something cold and round was pressed to her mouth. “Hold still,” he muttered in her ear. “Just drink this.”
She fought with all her might, kicking, flailing about within his murderous embrace. He meant to drug her! To kill her! But why?
“Hold still, boy,” he hissed near her ear. Then he abruptly let out the vilest string of oaths she’d ever heard. Still, the shock of hearing that was nothing compared to the appalling feeling of his hand sliding up to her breast and then sliding over to the other. As if to make sure she had the two of them!
“May I be Jonas-fucked!” Cyprian spat as he recognized just what lay beneath his right hand. One soft and decidedly feminine breast. And a matching one beside it. They’d been told the wrong cabin! “Son-of-a-fucking-bitch!”
The woman in his arms bit down again and with another curse he yanked his hand away from her lethal mouth. Disaster. Yet in a flash of insight he realized that if no one guessed his true motive for being here, perhaps all would not be lost.
Without further pause he jerked her around, and catching her long solitary plait in one hand to tilt her head back, he kissed her.
She’d foiled his plans. No, he’d done that himself. Nevertheless, she received the brunt of his frustration. He wanted her to believe him to be just some drunken sailor bent on ravishing her, and so he played the role to the hilt. He captured her mouth with his, parting her lips and thrusting his tongue deep. He roamed her body with his free hand, cupping an unexpectedly well-shaped bottom.
Only when his own body reacted physically to hers and he thrust instinctively against the softness of her
belly did he snap out of it. Christ, was he out of his mind?
He shoved her rudely away, willing his body to concentrate on what was important: escape, not how good she felt in his arms. Then he spun around, and no longer caring about silence, tore from the darkened cabin.
Oliver had his dagger drawn and nearly struck at Cyprian when he burst from the cabin. But the young sailor had no need of words to know the plot was foiled. As one the two flew up the short steps to the deck, then launched themselves into the stormy waters of St. Peter Port Bay.
The last thing Cyprian heard before his tense body cut into the surging waves was a woman’s scream: high-pitched, terrified, and outraged.
T
he island of Madeira rose like a jagged jewel breaking the vast reaches of the endless sea. Green and misty, with clouds shrouding its soaring peaks, it commanded the attention of every eye on the
Lady Haberton.
Eliza had stood upon the forward deck ever since the first cry, “Land ho.” Ten days they’d been without any sight of land; ten days that she’d spent reliving that terrifying night in excruciating detail.
Clothilde had fussed at her to put it out of her mind and to eat better. Cousin Agnes had decried the state of the world and admonished Eliza to find comfort in prayer. The captain, of course, had ordered a thorough investigation. But the results had been inconclusive. The watch had seen no one. And yet none of the
Lady Haberton’s
crew had been wet, as she’d recalled the man being. Salty, she’d remembered, though she’d not confessed that to anyone. Bad enough for the entire world to know she’d come that close to being forever ruined. Heaven forbid that they know he’d gone so far as to kiss and fondle her. And that she remembered how he’d tasted.
And that a tiny, wicked part of her had been tantalized by the entire experience.
Eliza let out a groan of denial. She hadn’t been tantalized. No, not at all. She’d been paralyzed with fear at the time. But later … later in the privacy of her thoughts and even her dreams, she’d recalled the most disturbing details of those few moments. Details she’d kept strictly to herself.
He’d touched both her breasts, first one and then the other. Almost as if they’d come as a surprise to him. No one had ever touched her there before and it had been altogether shocking to her. But that had not begun to compare with the feel of his tongue invading her mouth. She hadn’t liked it at all. How could she? Yet ever since then she’d done nothing but think of … of sex. Of what went on between men and women in the privacy of their marriage bed. Of what she and Michael would eventually do together.
When she thought of the very proper Michael Johnstone pushing his tongue inside her mouth, it didn’t seem quite so frightening. In the past few days, in fact, she’d spent more and more time thinking about him doing that very thing. Kissing her with an almost violent fervor. Pressing up against her belly until she could feel the bulge of his … his thing.
She shook her head, wanting to deny such perverse thoughts. But she couldn’t. She kept imagining Michael kissing and touching her with that explosive passion. Except that he invariably tasted of salt, and that always destroyed her fantasy. He always turned into her midnight attacker. Wet and salty. Powerful and unrelenting.
But he
had
relented, and every time she tried to figure out why she ended up going in the same circles. He’d spoken of a drug. He’d begun to ravish her. Then he’d fled. Had he said anything that might reveal who he was, or why he’d done it? Anything at all?
“Put me beside Eliza.”
She turned at the sound of Aubrey’s voice to see Robert carrying him toward her. The little boy had probably
been of more comfort to her than anyone else during these past days. He’d awakened to her screams that night, and despite his own fear, he’d comforted her in those first few moments until help came. Since then he’d been most solicitous of her. But unlike the others, he’d encouraged her to get up and walk about and participate in what limited activities there were on board. When Agnes would bid her rest and Clothilde would offer the calming influence of her medicine, Aubrey insisted that she hold fast to their agreement. An hour a day each.
She smiled fondly at him. He’d latched on to her offhand idea with a doggedness that mirrored his father’s bullheadedness. Despite her initial reluctance, she went along with his demands and now she actually thought it might be working. Even considering her dull spirits of late, she felt physically stronger than she had in years.
Robert lowered Aubrey to a chair beside her, then fussed when the boy nearly tumbled over. “Be still, boy. Let me get you situated.”
Be still
,
boy.
Eliza tensed. Someone else had said that, but in a harsher, rumbling tone. The night of the attack! That man had ordered her to be still. Be still,
boy
.
Had he expected her to be a boy? Was that why he’d seemed surprised to discover she had breasts?
She bit her lip in concentration. None of this made any sense. Why would he break into the cabin of a boy? She stared at Aubrey, her brow creased in thought. Could he have been searching for Aubrey? Perhaps to steal him away? But where was the logic in that?
“You can just stop frowning at me, Eliza, for you shan’t frighten me away. You still owe me an hour. So why don’t we start with a song? As loud as you can manage.”
He led her in a French children’s song about a little frog who lost his tail, and after the first verse she was
able to suppress the disturbing thoughts that had been troubling her. But she didn’t forget them. And as they drew nearer and nearer to their winter quarters, she resolved to speak to Robert and perhaps hire another man to ensure their security during their extended stay in Madeira.
“Shall I lift a few things, then? A coin here or there. A pretty bauble. They’re not likely to miss them,” Oliver finished, a hopeful look on his boyish face.
“And give them reason to suspect you?” Cyprian fixed Oliver with a warning stare. “Just ingratiate yourself with them, Ollie. Once I have the boy, you can fleece them of their every earthly possession. But until then, keep your light fingers to yourself.”
“Ingratiate myself, eh?” Oliver’s eyebrows waggled suggestively, eliciting a groan of dismay from Xavier, who sprawled in a wide sturdy chair in the corner of Cyprian’s spacious cabin. Oliver’s grin only widened at the older man’s expression of disapproval. “It shall be my pleasure to ingratiate myself, especially with the lad’s rather comely cousin.”
“Comely cousin?” Once more Xavier groaned. He knew just as well as Cyprian what that meant. But instead of thinking Oliver’s lusty intentions humorous, as he usually did, Cyprian found them irritating.
“Stay out from under her skirts,” he snapped, more anger in his tone than he’d intended. Then before either of his surprised crewmen could question him, he pushed out of his chair and escaped to the deck.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Ten days they’d been dawdling behind the slower
Lady Haberton
. Oliver had pushed him to simply overtake the vessel and seize the boy in a show of force. He, like the rest of the crew, was eager to add a little open sea piracy to their more sedate role of smuggling. They’d spent the past eighteen months shuttling black
market goods into both England and France, and in all that time they’d not had even one close call. The entire crew was spoiling for a fight, and in his own way, so was Cyprian. Such an open act of hostility would be the ultimate slap in the face to Haberton.
Yet something in him balked, and Oliver’s vulgar comment made it clear what. That comely cousin of the boy’s—the one whose face he’d yet to see, but who possessed a petite and slender body, firm young breasts, and the most exquisitely shaped bottom—had roused an unexpected fire in his gut. And it had yet to burn out.
It was all due to the circumstances, he told himself. The pent up energy, the repressed emotion he’d focused on capturing Haberton’s son that night, had been diverted in that one moment when he’d realized he had the wrong person in his grasp. The charade he’d played in kissing her to mislead her about his motives had been conceived in a split second, and even now he considered it rather inspired thinking. Only it had come with unexpected repercussions.
He’d been aroused by the woman in his arms. Painfully so. She’d been small and sweet, and had smelled of lemons. Lemons.
He stalked the length of the quarterdeck, his hands knotted together behind his back, his face darkened in a scowl. He should have stayed in St. Peter Port long enough to relieve the frustration he’d felt ever since the wench had foiled his plans. He should have ignored his scruples and simply hired the finest whore the island had to offer. Or the raunchiest. Raw, unbridled sex with a woman who knew every dirty secret there was. That’s what he needed to make him forget the faceless woman he’d kissed so hungrily in that dark cabin. Tonight, once he knew Oliver had gotten the job as bodyguard to the boy and his cousin, maybe he would ignore his usual compunctions and find out if Funchal’s Portugese whores were as good as rumored.
“I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt him,” Eliza said to Aubrey’s new bodyguard. New servant, she amended. There was no need to frighten the boy by terming this Oliver Spencer anything other than another manservant hired for the duration of their stay. But she wanted to be sure the new man knew precisely what his duties were.
“Aubrey has come here to heal, we hope. We shall keep to ourselves in the villa most of the time.” She indicated the rambling hillside house they’d taken above Madeira’s capital city of Funchal. “Only occasionally will we venture into town. For church, of course, and perhaps to shop now and again. Mostly, however, we will stay on our own grounds.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the polite young man answered. He was tall and lean, with a build that reminded her of Michael. He was almost as handsome as Michael too, she noticed, though she knew she should not. They were different in coloring, however, and Oliver Spencer appeared somehow more dangerous. She didn’t know quite why she felt that way, for he was neatly dressed and groomed, and hardly appeared the ruffian. Yet there was something in his eyes, something a little wild and reckless. Still, it was those qualities which would probably make him a very good bodyguard.
“Where am I to sleep?” he asked.
Was it only her imagination, or did the faintest smirk curl his lips? Eliza blinked and stared, but saw nothing but a serious look in his eyes. Lately it seemed she read something lurid into every look and comment.
She cleared her throat. “Aubrey’s suite includes an antechamber for you and Robert.” His gaze flickered momentarily over her and she had to fight down a sudden blush as she imagined him staring quite past all her clothing right down to her skin. What on earth was the matter with her these days? But ever since that man had
kissed her so forcefully—no, ever since
Michael
had kissed her so sweetly, she amended—her thoughts were always turning toward the most improper subjects. Once more she cleared her throat. “Can you start right away?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right away.”
Had there been another choice, Eliza would have reconsidered her decision to hire this particular young man. Somehow she suspected that Oliver would prove a handful. But Robert had approved him as a bodyguard, while Cousin Agnes had approved him as the servant they’d told her he was. Eliza shook off her doubts as she led him to meet Aubrey. He was strong, he was presentable, and he was available. Those were all the qualifications he really needed.
By the next evening Eliza’s nagging doubts about the new man seemed so much foolishness. Oliver had proven already to be just the breath of fresh air that Aubrey needed. After watching her work with Aubrey just once, the man had quickly taken up her approach, making the boy use his weak foot in all sorts of creative ways. Unlike her, however, he did not respond to Aubrey’s complaints that it hurt. Perhaps it was that he was little more than an overgrown boy himself. But for whatever reason, Aubrey responded to Oliver’s demands as if they were each a personal challenge he must meet and exceed.
“Kick it, laddie. C’mon, mate.” Oliver positioned a rounded stone near Aubrey’s leg. “Pull your foot back and shove the thing right off. Make it walk the plank. Pretend it’s your old biddy cousin,” he added in a stage whisper.
Eliza looked up from her sketch, grinning at Oliver’s cheeky comment about Agnes. It also worked with Aubrey, for he laughed and tried even harder. A warm gust of air lifted a strand of her hair from its loosened bindings and she absentmindedly thrust it behind her ear.
She focused back on her drawing. She was trying to capture the spectacular spatial disparities of their surroundings. The stone terrace of their villa jutted right out to the edge of a steep rocky hill. Below them the land spilled down, a blend of rock outcroppings and luxuriant tropical growth, to a ribbon of beach and then the brilliant surging sea. A person could see forever from this spot. Just stare off to the southwest, past the edges of the island and all the way to the ends of the earth, she fancied. But her drawing didn’t quite capture it.
Perhaps the line quality in the foreground of her sketch needed to be bolder. And sharper, she decided. Then the distant scenery could fade a bit. Perhaps a ship on the horizon would help convey the sense of space which somehow seemed lacking in her sketch.
“Avast, me hearties,” Aubrey cried. Eliza looked up just as the stone tumbled from the end of his chaise lounge.
“I’ll make a first class sailor of you yet,” Oliver bragged. Then, as if aware of Eliza’s attention, he turned and sent her a lopsided grin. “Beg pardon, miss.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” she replied. But she felt a sudden unease. He stared at her so oddly sometimes. Did he look at every woman that way? But it wasn’t just that, she realized. “Have you spent much time at sea? You use quite a lot of nautical terms.”