Captain's Surrender Page 8

  He laughed again, making her realize that his good humor was an act of bravery, more admirable to her than any physical heroism. “But what appeared a miraculous rescue last night, this morning has become somewhat more complicated. And I have… And there is that bonus I swore, in my enthusiasm, to pay to the men of the Nimrod—all eight hundred of them. No. Forgive me, Miss Jones. You are speaking to a ruined man. I do not know where I will find the funds to make good my promise.”

  “They won’t expect it, surely? Once you explain?”

  Quite unconscious of the impropriety, Adam took her hand again and pressed it as though they were old friends. “I gave my word,” he said gently. “But bless you for caring. May I… I know this is forward of me, but may I be permitted to call on you again, once we arrive? You have cheered a morning I thought altogether bleak, and your smile alone would be motive enough for me to move the moon. If you will say yes, then I will count even this disaster fortunate, for your kindness is worth ruin a thousand times over to me.”

  Emily laughed, a wave of happiness and embarrassment flowing over her at the words. “That is a trifle too warm, sir,” she said, conscious of the blush that heated her cheeks and hoping that it looked becoming. “But do come and visit me. We have taken a little house on Duke of York Street, near St. Peter’s, and I have no acquaintances there. I’m sure I shall be very glad to see you indeed.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “She’s everything I dreamed, Andrews! She’s beautiful, valiant, high spirited…” Kenyon broke off to lay a hand tenderly on the sweating wooden wall and to smile again, aglow with love.

  “Her knees are crank, and her bottom is filthy,” Josh pointed out, knowing that although this had to be said it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. He drew slightly closer because Kenyon in love was a gorgeous thing to behold, and this was a love he could share, a happiness he could return and augment. “But I admit that when they’re replaced, and her copper’s scraped, she’ll be the sweetest sloop-of-war in the fleet. I give you joy of her.”

  “Give us joy rather. I’m not the only one with a new coat.”

  When they were turned out together into a foreign land, they had decided to take a small set of shared rooms above the King George coffee house. There—comfortable together after the month lodged in a tiny cabin on board the Nimrod—they had waited for the ship Kenyon had been promised when he left England.

  It had been a thin time, waiting for the Seahorse to complete her refit, Kenyon on a lieutenant’s half-pay, and Josh on nothing at all. A time when a cup of coffee was a luxury to be shared and a mutton pie cause for great celebration. But for Mr. Summersgill, who invited Peter to dinner weekly, pressing the leftovers on him “to give to the deserving poor”, they might have been hungrier still.

  Josh’s new coat—a lieutenant’s coat—sat in its magnificent box in the middle of that threadbare existence like a portent. The first outward sign of something Josh had felt inwardly the moment Peter stepped from his carriage—a change in his universe, the rising of a new star.

  He had put the uniform on, of course, as soon after his promotion as he might, and walked down the street to admire himself in the reflections of house windows. A real officer, at last. His father might have been proud, had they still been speaking.

  “These waters are lousy with French privateers.” Kenyon interrupted Josh’s reflections, lifting the lantern he carried to examine the hanging knee which supported the deck above his head. This one showed no sign of rot—the oak was silver gray with age and hard as iron. For a moment he was framed against the ribs of the hull, light in his hand, the solid, golden center of an arched, retreating hollowness. Like an angel in the cathedral, thought Josh, and then corrected himself, for no angel ever had so thin and cutting a smile or eyes so determined on death. “And now I have the means to deal with them. She’s swift enough to equal any cutter. We can chase them down. Where they flee we can hunt them and take them. If we make our fortune from prize money in the process, so much the better.”

  Kenyon lowered the lantern, picked his way out between the barrels and piles of stored cable. The wide sleeve of his shirt just touched Josh as he brushed past, and at the ghostlike caress Josh smiled. “Indeed. I should like to be able to wear my new coat, instead of these secondhand slops. Where I’d find the funds to replace it if disaster befell, I have not the slightest idea.”

  Kenyon paused, taken aback. By slight subtleties his expression changed from bloodthirsty ardor to regret and then to a hesitance Josh couldn’t quite interpret. He put the lantern down on a nearby crate with the air of a man buying time to find the right words. “I…” he said. “I am…sensible of the risk you’ve taken, choosing to throw in your lot with me. I’m aware that all I’ve succeeded in doing so far is to reduce you to penury, but…”

  “Sir, that’s not what I was implying at all.”

  “I know.” Peter bowed his head as if he was ashamed of his own smile. “It should still be said. I’m conscious you’ve trusted me with your career and received only privation in return. But soon I’ll have the chance to show that your confidence was not ill placed, and I mean to make the most of that. You shall not regret your belief in me. I swear it.”

  Instinctively, Josh looked over his shoulder, to where the hatch grating lay in a pillar of faint striped light abaft the mizzenmast. There were no sounds of movement from the deck above, and no feet disturbed the grayish, filtered radiance. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn towards privacy, and he did not wish to be walked in on while he was struggling with the inappropriate joy of these words, or the much more inappropriate things he wanted to say in answer.

  “You’ve already proved that, sir. The absence of a noose around my neck is cause enough for some loyalty, surely?”

  “No!” One got used to Peter being still, measured, perhaps stiff, and forgot that he could also swoop into movement like a hawk. Josh found himself seized by both elbows before he’d registered the beginning of the lunge. “Is that why you follow me? Out of a kind of self-blackmail? Out of fear? I thought…” He swallowed, looking almost sick with nerves. “I thought there was something more.”

  Josh breathed in—a breath that seemed to take forever, while his heart paused, frightened, above the great abyss of the future. How easily he could ruin the modest happiness he had attained as Peter’s friend by misinterpreting, by leaping out unsupported into the pit.

  “I thought you wanted to gloss over the incident,” Josh said, wiping his hands nervously against the skirts of his coat. Had he missed something? When they came to shore and took lodgings together, they had had a gentle, fearsomely embarrassed conversation about the unfortunate fate of Peter’s rather too well beloved tutor, Mr. Allenby, and then nothing. A few days’ awkwardness and then friendship returning like a balm. But had he read it wrong?

  Had the awkwardness been in fact an inept, unspoken invitation? He fought off hope and guilt together. “Frankly, sir, when you kiss a superior officer without invitation, you feel unreasonably fortunate merely to be allowed to let the matter drop.”

  Unexpectedly, Kenyon smirked. “I’ll remember that, next time I accost the admiral.” And Josh laughed, sure that he could now turn away, hide his flushed face in the shadows and let the moment pass, leaving him on an even keel again.

  But Peter had not let go. It would have taken a saint to struggle against the grip of those long-fingered, elegant hands—and Josh was no saint. Though elbows did not normally feature prominently in his erotic daydreams, when they were separated from Peter’s skin only by a layer of cotton so thin that he could feel the roughness of rope burns, the callus left by a smallsword, he found himself obsessed by them, unable to concentrate on anything else.

  “I admit I was a little…taken aback, at the time.”

  They moved; Peter’s hands moved, sliding from elbows to biceps, and Josh had to bite his lip against the rush of illicit pleasure, the maddening desire to take the one step f
orward that would enable him to press himself against Peter, hot and tight together. God, he shouldn’t have thought of that.

  “But the more I reflected on the matter, the more I confess I found myself…” Peter’s eyes had a trick of holding the light, as the sea will when the sun is bright, and Josh—oh how he wanted to swim, “…curious.”

  No protestations of undying love. It was unsettling—it was almost real. “Curious?” Josh managed in a constricted, breathless voice that was as good as an admission of guilt. If Peter had any sensitivity at all, he must know how far he was pushing; he must have the sense to back off now, before it was too late.

  “As to what you are willing to die for. I should like to know.”

  There were a number of objections Josh could have made, and he did try. He honestly did. With his blood singing and his mouth gone dry he did say, “I…don’t wish to…mistake your meaning.”

  Kenyon’s right hand stroked over Josh’s shoulder, came to rest on the back of his neck, the thumb moving slightly, raising the hairs on his nape in a shiver of delight. By themselves, his eyes had half closed, his face tilted up in mute offering, primed and waiting. He made a last-ditch defense. “I don’t want you to do…anything you’d…regret.”

  And Peter closed the distance between them. They were touching, Josh could feel the planes of that hard chest, was surrounded, invaded by Peter’s heat, his scent. Peter was looking down with wide eyes, his own breath coming ragged now, as Josh’s fever infected him. “I should like to kiss you,” he said, decidedly. “Unless you object?”

  The man’s voice was like being coated in molasses and licked clean. How was anyone supposed to object to that? “Christ no!” Josh leaned in, surrendering. “I mean yes, sir, kiss me. Oh, yes. Yes, please!”

  I shouldn’t be doing this. Peter snaked an arm around Josh’s waist, pleased and intrigued by the way just this small touch made his friend’s pulse quicken. He could feel the gasped breath fill the chest pressed against his, and it was uncharted waters from now on, with the forbidden lying like a reef beneath the surface—dangerous, exciting.

  How different. He had been lucky enough to know two young ladies in his life, and it seemed natural now to gather his partner gently into his arms, to hold back, careful of her frailty, filled with reverence for a lover so small, so easily hurt. But Andrews was over six feet tall and broader across the shoulders than Peter was himself. Nothing soft about him, and delicate only in spirit. I really should not be doing this.

  But he wanted to. The kiss they’d shared onboard the Nimrod had proved another difference. Drunk, faint, and taken by surprise though he had been, he would have needed complete insensibility to miss the fact that Andrews wanted him with a fury.

  Both of the ladies Peter had courted had been respectable, and as such they were untainted by lust, accepting his advances out of generosity—pity even. He had always felt vile for imposing on them—a seducer and debaucher of innocent young women whom he had no real intention of marrying. A libertine, a ruiner of lives. With Andrews there would be none of that. No selfishness, no guilt.

  He leaned in, barely having to tilt his head, and tentatively touched his lips to Josh’s. That…wasn’t so bad. Really, it wasn’t. The mouth was warm and firm, the lower lip full, yielding, tempting him to bite. Shifting slightly to press closer, he licked it, tasting, and was rewarded with a little whimper that made him feel warm from head to feet. Mmm…yes, nice.

  Josh’s arms went around him, pulling him close. A strong hand was behind his head, a second splayed against his spine, stroking down. Easily as that, the balance shifted, and it was no longer him kissing Andrews, but Andrews kissing him—with an ardor that quite undid him. No one had ever, ever wanted him this much.

  It dawned on Peter that he was not the one in control of this—the responsibility had been taken out of his hands. Unless he wished to struggle like a reluctant maiden, it wasn’t his fault that the hand had twisted into his hair, the kiss deepened and heated, or that the pressure of a hard thigh between his legs had grown into something rather more than merely nice. It was bizarre to be on the receiving end of a tide of desire he couldn’t equal, unnatural to be the one who had to be coaxed, pleased, seduced, but—God—the relief! The uncomplicated joy of it.

  He heard himself make a low rumble of encouragement, almost a moan, and then Andrews was frantically shoving him away, the caressing hands holding him at a distance. Considerably more aroused than he had expected to be, Peter was ready to be angry at being toyed with, but the expression in Andrews’ dark eyes was of fear, surfacing out of a deep, stunned bliss.

  “Why…?”

  “I heard something.”

  Peter had forgotten he could hang for this. Even now it didn’t seem real—what the hell was so wrong about kissing? But Andrews had instincts honed by a life of threat, and he’d neatened his clothes, taken the lantern and walked away before Peter could stop panting.

  Now he, too, heard footsteps, pausing above the hatch. He heard the grating being flung back and a pleasant voice humming “Hearts of Oak” in an offhand baritone mumble. Hastily retying his disheveled hair, Peter pulled the ribbon taut just as the owner of the pleasant voice leaped the final few rungs of the ladder and splashed into the dirty water of the hold. The lantern light showed a rawboned face, sallow from too much sun, a finely powdered wig, and a lieutenant’s coat nearly as new as Josh’s, but with the creases shaken out. “Captain Kenyon?”

  Settled in himself once more, Peter stood and moved into the light. The tanned young man looked him over with light, humorous eyes. “Archibald Howe, sir, reporting for duty. The carpenter’s crew told me you were down here.”

  Peter remembered now that Lieutenant Howe was the officer promised him by Commodore Dalby, laid off the Asp with yellow fever and, as the commodore said “a troublesome young person, but the only one we have available”. He managed not to smile at the thought that the commodore was right about the troublesomeness, though it would be a long time before “disturbing a superior officer’s experiment with buggery” would be a reportable offense.

  “You are most welcome aboard, Mr. Howe,” he said instead, resigning himself with reasonable grace to the interruption. “Help Andrews with restowing the hold, will you—I want her a little more brought by the bow—and when that’s done go down to the dockyard and see if you can charm me any more cable. Hawser weight for preference, but I’ll take whatever they’ve got.”

  When Peter came out onto the quarterdeck, just after noon, having spent the rest of the morning checking the salt beef, salt pork, salt horse, dried peas and other nonperishables, he found Andrews and Howe leaning over the railing together, laughing as if they were old friends. The sun seemed to hang in topaz fury all about them, and the rigging made a beautiful black symmetry against the burning sky.

  Inland, parrots flew gaudily over the violent green slopes, but Peter found his eye drawn back to Andrews, whose uncovered hair was tawny-copper in the golden light and whose face was lit up with humorous scorn as he related one of the Nimrod’s minor scandals to an appreciative audience. A strange complex of emotions filled Peter at the sight—proprietorial pride, aesthetic appreciation, but mostly a satisfaction such as he felt looking at his very own first command. Joy and a determination to prove himself.

  Realizing that he was standing in a public place, woolgathering, with a small—probably intimate—smile on his face, he cleared his throat and schooled himself to sternness. “The dockyard, Mr. Howe?”

  “At once, sir.”

  When Howe had gone down the side, they were alone but for the ply to and fro of small boats from the other men-of-war and the distant hammering and curses of the carpenters, echoing up from the hold. He let the smile return, and received, in exchange, a look of more sweetness than he’d imagined Josh capable of—the man was normally sharp as a barrel of bayonets.

  “Eight bells and a little over, Mr. Andrews. Would you join me for dinner?”

  �
��I’d be honored, sir.”

  Dinner was two cold pork chops, saved from yesterday, and the heel of a loaf which had served for breakfast. A less glowing heart than Josh’s might have called it poor fare. At this moment he could not be so ungrateful, for he was in that rare mood when all things were beautiful, and all people agreeable.

  Ducking through the doorway of the small “great cabin” of the Seahorse, he wondered that he had never seen before how the curve of windows and the white-painted wood made it seem almost insubstantial, floating in a great light above the sea. What would it be at twelve knots with the deck heeled over and the rigging singing like a wind harp—the wake falling away like white wings, and Kenyon, with that predatory look of his, urging her forward, white knuckled?

  Or—please, God—at twelve knots, with the timbers resonating to the triumphant note of power, the swell of the sea; Kenyon pinning him down over that table, and making him fly like the ship—intense and fast and alive. Walking out afterwards—bruised and trembling—carrying such a secret. A secret he could smile over and hoard possessively away to share with only one man in the whole world. A pearl of great price he could protect against the hypocritical, murderous mob, which was so tender and forgiving of their own fornication but would happily destroy him for his.

  “I have avoided going into debt so far,” said Kenyon, leaving his contemplation of the windows to slide one of the chops across the table, the handkerchief it had been wrapped in now serving as a plate, “but this is becoming ridiculous. I must buy plate for the cabin, a certain amount of good food if I’m to invite my officers to dine, and the dockyard is expecting a sweetener for the spare main topmast, if it’s not to go to the Dart…”