Miranda Jarrett - Regency High Society Vol 2 - Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

“But a fair night for one.” Jeremiah didn’t welcome the other man’s company, but how could he decently object to Bertle walking his own quarterdeck?

“True enough, true enough.” Bertle sucked on his pipe, studying the sky intently. “You’re a seafaring man, ain’t you, Mr. Sparhawk?”

“I was once, aye,” said Jeremiah cautiously. “Not now.”

“Not now, maybe, but it never leaves your blood, or your legs. You can put on those fancy shore-going clothes and pretend you’re the same as any other lubber, but you won’t fool another sailor, no, you won’t.”

Jeremiah didn’t answer, offering no encouragement.

“You’re a Yankee, ain’t you, Mr. Sparhawk?”

“And you ask a lot of questions, Captain Bertle.”

Bertle shrugged. “Nothing uncivil about questions, Mr. Sparhawk. How can you learn about a man if you don’t ask him what he don’t give up himself?”

“You can ask away, Captain Bertle, but you might not hear what you want.”

Bertle peered at him shrewdly above his pipe. “So you’re still touchy after your skirmish with the missus, eh? I guessed things was still not what they ought if you was still here.”

Jeremiah’s brows dropped lower over his eyes, warning enough. “My wife’s no concern of yours, or any other man on board this sloop.”

“You keep it that way, Mr. Sparhawk. When she put aside that veil, why, she had half my men crazy in love with her right then and there.” Bertle sniffed and spat over the side. “She’s a handsome woman, your wife. Got breeding, don’t she? More’n you’d expect in some godforsaken Yankee jack’s wife.”

“You know, Bertle,” said Jeremiah so calmly that only a fool would mistake the current of violence that ran beneath it. “I could pitch you over the side and no one would ever be the wiser. A man gets to feeling sleepy during the dogwatch, the ship heels a bit, and he tumbles overboard in the dark. Happens all the time at sea. But you being a sailor and all, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?”

“Are you making threats against me?”

“Are you still asking questions?”

“The devil take you!” Angrily Bertle jerked the pipe from his mouth, using its stem to punctuate his words. “You can’t threaten an English captain, sir, and brag about it. One more time, sir, and I’ll have you put in irons below! Is that what you want?”

“Don’t try it,” said Jeremiah, “unless you mean to swim to Gibraltar. Good night, Captain Bertle.”

Caro had left the cabin door unlatched, and Jeremiah frowned and shook his head as he bolted it from the inside. He must warn her against that, especially if Bertle and the others were eyeing her like the white-belly sharks they were. He felt sure that the only reason one of them hadn’t tried her door already was that none had guessed she’d be so careless.

She had left the lantern lit as she’d promised, a single stubby candle swaying gently in its gimbal with the sloop’s motion. To his surprise she’d taken the top bunk, and at once he imagined what he’d see, lying below, whenever she climbed up or down, her skirts hiked far up her long legs. He almost groaned aloud. He’d just have to make sure he faced the bulkhead when he heard her stir. God help him, he was going to need the patience—and the purity—of a saint to survive this voyage.

Asleep, she lay curled on her side beneath a coverlet, one hand lying with the palm open beside her face. Her hair was loose and tangled about her shoulders and her lips were parted, and relaxed like this she looked both young and vulnerable.

How, he marveled, had she held onto that appealing innocence after living the life she did? He knew from how long she’d been married to Frederick that she must be close to thirty, but by the shifting candlelight she could have been ten years younger. With him it was the opposite. Experience and hard living had weathered him beyond his years, and some mornings he feared that the face he saw in the shaving mirror belonged to some old man he didn’t know.

She sighed and shifted in her sleep, and he caught a tantalizing hint of her scent, jasmine and musk. At Desire’s suggestion they traveled with their own linen, and Caro’s pillow slip was trimmed with elaborate cutwork lace that matched her pale, gossamer-fine hair. As incongruous as that pillow slip was against the rough pine bulkheads of the tiny cabin, Jeremiah was glad she’d brought it. Frederick was right: she didn’t belong in black.

Still watching her sleep, he shrugged his coat from his shoulders and unwrapped his neckcloth. Regardless of how she looked now, she really wasn’t as helpless as he’d first thought, and she probably didn’t need half the protection he was determined to give her. To confront him the way she had today took more courage than most men had. Certainly more than Bertle. Likely more than he himself. And that time when she’d spoken up before the lieutenant with the press-gang: he’d been too caught up in his own misery then to thank her the way he should have, but she’d fought like a terrier on his behalf. So much, he thought wryly, for the dainty, delicate Lady Byfield.

Shaking his head at how besotted he’d become, he climbed into the lower bunk, lying on top of the coverlet in his shirt and trousers. He didn’t know what she was wearing to bed, but he wasn’t going to tempt fate or himself by shedding any more clothes than he had to, at least not this first night.

Would Caro be tempted, too? The longing in her eyes had been unmistakable, and the way her lips had parted had begged for his kiss. Innocent though her face might be, she was a worldly, experienced woman. She’d know both how to please a man and how to be pleased in return, and he almost groaned aloud with frustration.

With his head pillowed in his hands, he closed his eyes and tried to forget the woman lying so close above him. Instead of the soft, measured rhythm of her breathing, he forced himself to listen to the sounds of a well-ordered ship: the thrumming of the wind through the standing rigging, the rush of the waves against the hull, the creaks and groans of the timbers and the calls of the men on the watch overhead.

The sounds were so familiar that he almost didn’t hear them, and gradually he let his body relax with the rocking of the ship’s motion. It had been so long since he’d been at sea, endless months landlocked in his sister’s house, and yet now he felt as if he’d never left.

He lay on his back, still comfortably full from dinner. Instead of the salt pork that had seen them clear across the Atlantic, there had been fresh meat, for this morning the cook had slaughtered the hog Jeremiah had bought for the crew when they’d touched briefly at Gibraltar. Because the meat wouldn’t keep in the hot Mediterranean sun, they had all eaten their fill, relishing the plenty after weeks of dwindling rations. Along with the pork had been bread, real bread, and not the dry, flat crackers that passed for it at sea, fresh green peas, sweet oranges, and a custard pudding made from cream and eggs.

Davy had joined him in his cabin, and together they’d drunk to the fastest passage they’d ever had between Providence and Marseilles. If this wind held steady, thought Jeremiah as he drifted off to sleep, they’d reach the French port by tomorrow evening, in time for him to call on that saucy little innkeeper’s daughter he’d met last year. Bernadette, or was the name Antoinette?

With a jolt he woke to the crack of splintering wood, then the crash of his cabin door as it gave way and slammed open against the bulkhead.

“What the hell —”

But the man was already on him, hurtling across the dark cabin like a huge cat to land on Jeremiah’s chest. He was nearly as large as Jeremiah himself, and he fought with the strength of one who relished killing. In the inky blackness of the moonless night, Jeremiah struggled for his life against an attacker he couldn’t see, only feel, pressing down on his heart and lungs like the darkness itself: muscles that were lean and hard, a stiff, curling beard, folds of rough linen that tangled around them like a woman’s gown.