Karen Robards - Amanda Rose

“You don’t know much about it if you think that.” Zeke’s voice was dry. Amanda glared at him, blushed, and turned to stare back out to sea. “Well, there’s no help for it. You won’t be disembarking, my girl. You’re coming back to New Orleans with me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, yes, you are. Like it or not, you’re carrying my brother’s child. That makes you my responsibility until you are safely back with Matt.”

“I don’t want to go back to Matt.”

“But, you will. ” They glared at each other. Then Zeke’s eyes gentled. “He’ll marry you, Amanda, you’ll see. Matt wouldn’t be Matt if he didn’t do the honorable thing.”

That flicked Amanda on a raw spot. She didn’t want him to do the honorable thing. She wanted him to love her, damn it.

“I don’t want him to do the honorable thing! He’s already offered to, and I refused him.”

“He asked you to marry him?” If possible, Zeke sounded more appalled than she had when the significance of her missed courses had become clear to her. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

Zeke looked harassed. “Knowing Matt, it never occurred to me that he’d propose marriage to you-not without a compelling reason. He thinks marriage is a trap for fools-he’s told me so times out of mind.”

“Then I’m more glad than ever that I refused him,” Amanda answered harshly.

Zeke groaned, rolling his eyes upward in a silent plea for strength before looking at Amanda again.

“I knew I should have steered clear of this. Damn it, Matt will have my hide, and I won’t blame him. Why the hell didn’t you tell me he wanted to marry you? I’d never have let you come aboard if I’d known. Instead you cried to get your own way.” He sounded thoroughly disgusted.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Amanda glared at him. His attitude infuriated her. Because she was carrying Matt’s child, Zeke was ready to hand her over to Matt, lock, stock, and barrel. But she wasn’t having any of that, thank you very much. Matt might be hard to defy, but she wasn’t about to knuckle under to Zeke.

“God, I see now what my brother was up against. I’m surprised he hasn’t strangled you. I’m tempted to myself.”

“Just you try, Zeke Grayson.” Amanda tilted her chin at him belligerently.

Zeke stared down at her small, slender frame and had to laugh. “Matt told me you were a termagant, but I didn’t believe him. Seems I’ve wronged him all around.”

“I won’t go back to him, Zeke.” Amanda’s anger had faded, and she spoke with quiet determination. Zeke’s eyes turned serious, too, as they met hers.

“I thought you loved him.” He spoke so quietly that Amanda wasn’t prepared for the way the words stabbed at her heart. She turned away to look out to sea, not wanting him to see her face.

“Amanda?”

Amanda swallowed, then made an impatient gesture. “That’s the problem-I do.”

“God preserve me from women,” Zeke muttered, putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her to face him. “Now, let me understand this: you love him, he wants to marry you, and that’s the problem?”

Amanda met his steady gaze, and despite everything she could do, her lower lip quivered. “He doesn’t love me,” she explained softly.

Zeke’s hands tightened on her shoulders, comforting her without words. “Are you sure?”

Amanda nodded miserably. Zeke started to say something, only to be interrupted by a cry from overhead.

“ Sail ho. ”

Immediately Zeke looked around, his expression changing dramatically.

“Where away?” he called back to the sailor high aloft in the crow’s nest.

“Astern,” came the answer, and unaccountably Zeke began to grin.

“Come,” he said to Amanda, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her with him toward the quarterdeck. Once they were standing on the raised platform, Zeke let go of Amanda and seized a spyglass. Striding to the rail, he peered in the direction of the stern.

“Christ, it’s too far away to be sure,” he said disgustedly, lowering the glass.

“Be sure of what?” Amanda asked, mystified. Zeke waved an impatient hand at her.

“I’ll tell you when I’m sure, which won’t be for a couple of hours.”

And despite her teasing, that was all he would say. It was rather more than a couple of hours before the ship came close enough so that Amanda could get an inkling of what he was talking about. She stayed on the quarterdeck for most of that time, scowling off and on at Zeke, who seemed oddly lighthearted. The ship behind them was at first no more than a tiny dot on the horizon, but gradually it grew until Amanda could see that it was much like the Eloise and the Clorimunda, a three-masted, high-prowed ship, elegant and graceful. Zeke seemed in no hurry to pull away from it, so Amanda deduced that he must know it for a friend. But he refused to answer any of her questions; instead he grinned maddeningly.

The sun was just beginning to sink below the horizon, bathing the sky and the sea and both ships with an orange glow, when the other ship pulled alongside. Watching, Amanda saw a sailor in the other ship’s crow’s nest wave two flags at them in a complicated pattern.

“Captain, he wants to come aboard,” the sailor in the Eloise ’s crow’s nest called down to Zeke.

“He does, does he?” Zeke grinned. “Let’s make him work for it. Tell him no, Darcy.”

“Aye, sir.” But the man sounded dubious. Amanda turned to Zeke, still puzzled. Then came an earsplitting boom, and she turned back just in time to watch a round black missile arch over the Eloise ’s prow. On the deck of the other ship, smoke billowed from the mouth of a small cannon.

“Zeke, they’re shooting at us,” Amanda exclaimed in horror.

Zeke grinned. “A warning shot over the bow only,” he explained, his voice soothing. Then he grinned again. “He must be angry as hell.”

“Who?” Amanda was still mystified. Zeke, shouting an order to heave to, didn’t answer. She turned to look at the approaching ship again. Rosimond was the name on the prow. Thinking further about Zeke’s odd reaction, she began now to have the faintest niggle of an alarming suspicion…

Zeke had left her side to see to the lowering of sails and anchor. Amanda turned back to watch as a small boat was lowered from the Rosimond ’s deck. Three men climbed down a ladder from the deck to drop into the boat. Two began to row toward the Eloise while the other stood in the prow with one foot propped on the forward seat and his arms crossed over his chest. Even at that distance he looked furious-and familiar.

“Zeke, it’s Matt. ” Zeke had come to stand beside her again. He was grinning, and at the horror in her voice his grin widened.

“It is,” he said, sounding amused. “Come, let’s meet him. Amanda, stay close to me, and allow me to do the talking. Agreed?”

Amanda looked at him. In that instant all her suspicions crystallized into certainty. “You knew he was coming, didn’t you?” she said accusingly.

“Shall we say I hoped.” Zeke slid his arm around her waist and propelled her with him toward the sailors who were lowering a ladder over the side.

Matt was the first one up the ladder. As he pulled himself up and over the side, Amanda stared at his face. It was black with temper. Instinctively she shrank against Zeke, who still had his arm fixed comfortingly around her waist. Matt looked up, saw them, and strode toward them.

“You son of a bitch,” he roared at Zeke when he was still some paces away. “What the hell do you mean, sending me a message that you’ve run off with Amanda?”