Margaret McPhee - The Lost Gentleman

‘I am very well recovered, thank you, sir.’ Following yesterday’s lapse, her armour was back in place. Her head was held high with that slight underlying hostility that was always there for him. There was the same expression in her clear grey eyes, politeness flecked with strength and defiance, wariness and dislike.

Most women would have still been abed, waiting for Gunner to dress their wounds. Kate Medhurst had not waited for Gunner...or for him and his questions. The grazes on her hands were the only visible evidence of what she had endured the previous day.

‘How are your hands?’

‘Healing.’ She held out her hands before her, palms up for him to see, a gesture of revealing herself to him, a clever tactic given that he suspected that, aside from yesterday, Kate Medhurst had revealed nothing of the truth of herself.

‘And the rest?’ His eyes held hers.

‘The same.’ She did not look away.

He let the silence stretch, let that slight tension that buzzed between them build, until she glanced away with a small cynical smile.

‘I came to thank you,’ she said, taking control of the situation and looking at him once again.

‘For what?’ He leaned back in his chair, watching her.

She raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated quizzing. ‘For rescuing me.’

‘Is that what I did?’ he said softly. Rescuing her...or preventing the escape of a prisoner.

The ambiguity of the words threw her off kilter for the tiniest moment. He could see it in the frisson of doubt and fear that snaked in those cool, unruffled eyes of hers, before she masked it.

‘How else would you describe it, Captain?’ she asked.

‘A lunchtime swim,’ he said.

Despite herself she smiled at that and averted her gaze with a tiny disbelieving shake of her head.

He smiled, too. And then hit her with the question. ‘What were you doing in the water, Mrs Medhurst?’ His voice was soft, but the words were sharp.

Her eyes returned to his. The hint of a smile still played around her lips. ‘Swimming. At lunchtime.’

‘As I suspected,’ he said.

They looked at one another, the amusement masking so much more beneath.

‘Tell me about Kate Medhurst.’

‘What do you wish to know?’

‘How she came to be aboard Coyote .’

‘In what way do women normally found upon privateer or pirate vessels come to be there?’ she countered.

‘Were you abducted?’

‘Abduction is a delicate question for any woman.’

She was good. ‘As is the question of allegiance, I suppose.’

‘I do not know what you mean, sir.’

‘I am sure that you do.’

She said nothing. Just looked at him with that calm unruffled confidence that hid everything of what was true or untrue about her.

‘Where are you from, Mrs Medhurst?’

‘Louisiana, America.’ She said it with defensive pride, wielding it like a weapon. ‘And you?’

‘London, England.’

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly at his answer.

‘Why do I get the feeling that I am not your favourite person?’ he asked.

‘Delusions of persecution?’ she suggested, and arched one delicate eyebrow.

He laughed at that. And she smiled, but the tension was still there simmering beneath the surface between them.

‘I don’t expect you can take me home to Louisiana,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Too dangerous for you?’ she taunted.

‘Most definitely.’

‘So, Captain North,’ she said in a soft voice that belied the steel in her eyes, ‘what are you planning to do with me?’

‘We are for Antigua to replenish our water and stores before our journey to England. There is a British naval base there, they will arrange your transport home.’

‘Thank you.’ She gave a single nod of her head.

The conversation had been conducted on her terms. Now she terminated it at will. ‘If you will excuse me, sir...’ She rose to her feet.

And as manners dictated he did the same. He waited until she reached the door and her fingers had touched to the handle before he spoke again. ‘I had presumed you would be happy to travel with us to Antigua. Is that the case?’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Why, indeed?’ he asked.

The quiet words hung in the air between them.

Her eyes held his a moment longer and the tension seemed to intensify and rustle between them. About unanswered questions, implications and the physicality of yesterday.

‘Good day, Captain North.’

‘Good day, Mrs Medhurst.’ Her bare feet were silent upon the floor. The door closed with a click behind her.

He stood where he was, his eyes fixed on the closed door. In his mind he was seeing the one moment when Kate Medhurst had let her mask fall, in the ocean faced with death. Then there had been nothing of poise or polish or clever tricks. Only a pair of dove-grey eyes that had ignited desires he thought long suppressed. Eyes that made him remember too well the press of her half-naked body against his and the soft feel of her, and the scent of her in his nose. Eyes that were almost enough to make a man forget the vow he had sworn...as if he ever could.

He sat back down at the desk and, picking up his pen, curbed the route his thoughts were taking. He wanted her, he acknowledged. But he could not have her, not even were she not hiding something from him. Not even if she were available and she wanted him, too. He thought of that vow, forged in blood and sweat and tears.

A knock sounded at the door, pulling him from the darkness of the memory. This time it was Jones, and Kit was glad of it.

Kate Medhurst was not being entirely truthful. But whatever it was she was hiding, she and it need have no bearing on his returning La Voile to London.

* * *

The afternoon was as beautiful as the morning. Every day was beautiful around this area, except when hurricane season came. Kate did not have to feign that she appreciated the view as she stood at the stern, watching the crystal-clear green waves and the intense warm blue of the sky so expansive and huge...and the distant speck of a ship against its horizon.

North was on the quarterdeck, issuing commands to his men. Her muscles were still tense, her blood still rushing, her skinned palms still clammy from their confrontation in his cabin that morning. Part of her wanted to stay hidden below decks in her cabin, not wanting to face him, but Kate knew she could not do that. Coyote was coming. So she stood on the deck, brazening it out, watching Sunny Jim struggle to catch them, and breathed a sigh of relief that Gunner seemed to be right about Raven having the superior speed.

As she watched she thought of North’s cabin, a cabin that she would have mistaken for that of an ordinary seaman had it not been for its larger space. Everything in it was functional. There were no crystal decanters of brandy on fancy-worked dining tables, no china plates or ornamentation, no crystal-dropped chandelier as she had expected. Everything was Spartan, functional, austere as the man himself. He did not seem given to indulgences or luxuries. Maybe that was why the men liked him. Or maybe they were just afraid of him. She slid a glance at where he stood with his men, seeing the respect on their listening faces, before returning her gaze to Coyote .

There was no tread of footsteps to warn her of his approach, nothing save the shiver that rippled down the length of her spine as North came to stand by her side, his body mirroring her own stance, his gaze sweeping out over the ocean.

‘Enjoying the view, Mrs Medhurst?’ The Englishness of his accent, cool and deep and dark as chocolate, sent a tingle rippling out over her skin.

‘Indeed I am, Captain North.’ And she was, now that there seemed little danger of Coyote catching Raven .