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The sound of angry footsteps on the stairs warned of Millicent, who stepped onto the upper deck with her expression locked in the glower she had adopted the moment they’d sailed for Britain. With her slender body enshrouded in a shirt and breeches, her hair pulled severely beneath a misshapen hat and her conventional features, Millicent passed for a young man to those who weren’t looking closely. “Philomena is beside herself,” she announced, “and India is ready to go over the side. This isn’t sitting well with the crew.” She awaited Katherine’s reply with lips thinned.
“We’ll be underway as soon as the tide turns,” Katherine told her.
“And leave him to his fate?” Disbelief raised the pitch in Millicent’s voice.
“Katherine Kidd,” William quipped, pushing away from the railing. “I shall go see what I can do to quell the riot.”
Katherine looked over the rail, hoping for confirmation that it was too late and there was nothing they could do. As she watched, a wave rolled over the man below. One of his hands moved, reaching, then stilled. Devil take it, watching him die was intolerable.
She thrust her spyglass toward Millicent. “Come here. Look at him. Is there any sign of disease?”
Millicent, the eldest daughter of a country physician and an excellent surgeon in her own right, pointed the instrument downward. “There are no sores on his face that I can see,” she said after a moment, “but it’s difficult to tell with several days’ growth of whiskers. I don’t see any jaundice. I see nothing on his hand except raw skin.” After another moment, she returned the spyglass. “Assuming he was clean-shaven before disaster struck, he’s been adrift at least three days. It is very unlikely he would have survived this long if he also had a sickness. I can’t be sure, of course. Not without examining him. But I believe he’s as safe as any to bring aboard.”
Safe was patently the wrong word. Reason advised that one man could pose little threat, but experience warned otherwise. Katherine stared down at him. A shipwreck survivor? They’d seen no evidence, and the weather had been clear except for some high clouds. A Barbary captive attempting escape? The possibility stirred a sympathetic rage inside her.
“I don’t speak lightly, Captain,” Millicent added stiffly. “I would never endanger this crew, or Anne.”
“I haven’t the least suspicion that you would.” Another swell covered the motionless form on the raft. On the main deck, so many hands had gathered at the rail it was a wonder the ship did not list to starboard. Young, impulsive India gestured wildly to William. Philomena—never one to turn a blind eye toward any man—looked up at Katherine as though to say, “Well?”
The tension in her gut coiled so tightly she wanted to vomit. The uproar from the main deck buzzed in her ears as precious, lifesaving moments ticked away. Some mistakes should be easy to avoid. If she acquiesced, and he turned out to be the danger she feared...
Yet if she left him to die...
“Very well.” The words tumbled out, ejected by the sick pit in her stomach. “Haul him up. If there is any sign of disease, any sign at all—” But Millicent had already spun away, practically flying down the steps to relay the order.
Katherine Kidd, indeed. She inhaled deeply and tried to still her trembling hands. Already her stomach eased, but it shouldn’t have. Even if the man was healthy, he could bring trouble.
If he did, he would spend the voyage in chains.
Alone on the upper deck, she held the spyglass to her eye and carefully focused it downward. A striking face came into view, close as breath in the lens. Her belly quickened in a sudden, visceral reaction. The man’s complexion must have been swarthy before, but now a pallor made him seem ghostly. A strong, perfectly sculpted nose extended from an angular face with sharp cheekbones. Wet, black lashes lay against the hollows beneath his eyes. His jaw hung slack, dusted by a thick stubble of whiskers that nearly hid a dark slant of mustache above firm, lifeless lips. Water plastered his hair to his head in careless black waves streaked with silver.
For a long, hypnotic moment the world contained only him.
And then the ship rolled with a wave, tearing him from her view. She inhaled sharply and lowered the glass. Surely it was too late. His large hands lay motionless against the boards that supported him. She hadn’t seen any movement through the glass.
Rafik’s staccato shouts barked up from below while the crew threw the nets over the side and clambered down. She held her breath as several crew members tried to lift the man off his raft but only succeeded in nearly capsizing it. They shouted for a boom, and soon the crew on deck fashioned a sling and lowered it down. Within minutes they hauled the man’s listless, sodden form into the air.
Quickly she made her way to the quarterdeck and then to the main, just as they brought him aboard. Crew members crowded in around the rescuers. “Give them room!” she ordered, and they backed off instantly. “Is he alive?”
“He was half an hour ago,” India said insolently, brushing past her to help remove the sling. Her blond braid hung like a rope over one shoulder as she deftly undid the hooks. Rafik hacked away the man’s white shirt and tan breeches, while two deckhands doused him with fresh water from the mop buckets. Now the orders came from Millicent, who forced everyone away except those who helped wash him.
“Phil went to find some toweling,” William said, moving in beside Katherine.
After a moment Millicent called over her shoulder. “He lives!”
Katherine exhaled.
The man lay naked and facedown on the deck as they continued to douse him until Millicent was satisfied that no salt remained. Phil returned with two lengths of linen and crouched by his side. His legs were long. Muscular. Katherine slid her gaze past solid buttocks to the broad expanse of his back and shoulders.
“A fine form of a man,” Phil purred, drying him carefully.
India snorted and snatched one of the towels from her hand. “Auntie Phil, he’s in his dotage!”
Phil laughed at her niece. “In your eyes, any man over twenty-five is in his dotage.”
“Exactly so.” Eighteen-year-old India smiled wickedly from beneath her tricorne hat.
Millicent rolled the man over, revealing a sprinkle of dark hair on his chest, a rippled stomach and—
Katherine looked away, straight into William’s laughing eyes. “I’ll wager you side with Phil this time,” he said.
“He will need clothes,” she snapped. “Something of yours will do.”
William leaned in, lowering his voice to a mock-whisper. “Are you sure? Because I rather had the impression you might prefer him without.”
“Devil take you. You’re as bad as Phil.”
“I heard that,” Phil called. “And I resent it deeply.”
But Phil had been right about one thing. The man was definitely not in his dotage. The ordeal may have nearly killed him, but he looked strong, and he was large. Commanding. “I don’t want him in the infirmary,” she told William under her breath. “Too close to the crew. We can clear out André’s cabin and put him there, but in the meantime—” she hesitated “—put him in mine.”
As expected, William’s brow ticked upward.
“One word, and you’ll meet the end of my cutlass,” she bit out, but the threat had no effect on William’s amusement. “As soon as he’s been seen to, everyone will resume their duties or punishment will be meted out.”
“Captain Cat-o’-nine-tails.”
“If behavior warrants.” But they both knew she owned no instruments of torture. It was far more effective to offer good food, high pay and commendations for good behavior. “Fortune has smiled on him today,” she said, a bit too sharply. “We shall see if that changes once he is awake.” She looked once more at the newest person for whom she was responsible. The man was handsome—too handsome, with features that bordered on aristocratic and a stubborn, angular jaw.
“We could use another man on the crew,” Phil pointed out.
“True enough,” William agreed. “But then, we’ve no idea whether he knows his cock from a bowsprit.”
In that same moment, the man’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up, straight at Katherine, piercing her with depths as green as a backlit Mediterranean wave. Something hot and liquid and unexpected shot through her, and a shiver feathered her spine.
He knew the difference. She’d wager the entire year’s take on it.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b55f47b5-7023-50b6-a0d5-a3e9e4400c27)
JAMES WRITHED RESTLESSLY beneath cool linens.
He was drowning—dragged beneath black water, sucked into frigid numbness. Wood splintered. Cracked. A timber shot from the water, and he made a desperate lunge. Grabbed hold.
Wood turned to flesh beneath his hands. Cold became hot. Water became woman. The curling waves unraveled, tumbling, becoming hair like black walnut silk in his hands. Her body wrapped around him. Engulfed him. He gasped, tasting the wild sea on her skin.
From somewhere far away, sultry voices pierced his dream. “...and have you try to bed him while he’s yet unconscious? Absolutely not.”
“You offend me grievously, Katherine. I’m quite through with affairs. Tedious things. Besides, he could be anyone.”
The voices threatened to tear him away. He strained to keep the woman alive, wanting. Needing. But she began to fade, slipping away.
The voices broke through, stronger now. “For the moment, Philomena, he is our captive.”
“Honestly, he hardly warrants such status.” A door closed. Footsteps tapped against wood. He awoke as if fighting the churning sea.
“Nor does he warrant any other. Help me put this shirt on him before he awakes.”
He opened his eyes to a sky-blue ceiling edged with gold scrollwork. His gaze swept over an ornate dressing table with an oblong looking glass, two armchairs upholstered in sapphire velvet, a chest of drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He turned his head.
A woman stood by the bed with a maroon tunic in her hands. Silken walnut waves fell to her hips from beneath a length of ochre cloth tied around her head in a makeshift turban shot through with shimmering threads. High cheekbones. Straight, finely sculpted nose. Statuesque profile, silhouetted perfectly by the light from a small bank of windows he recognized as belonging to a ship.
He was on board a vessel. In the captain’s cabin.
“Katherine. Look.”
Her face snapped toward him. His gaze locked with glittering topaz eyes, and his pulse leaped. He struggled to think. To remember. He tried to lick his lips, but his mouth was powder dry.
Someone else pushed in next to him—another beauty, this one with sable curls and wide, blue eyes. He felt a hand beneath his head, lifting, and a glass against his lips. Cool water slid over his tongue and he tried to gulp, but the blasted woman pulled the glass away.
“Not so quickly,” she purred, and the glass returned. “Careful, now. Just a bit.”
He sipped, then sipped again before she pulled the glass away.
“More.” His voice croaked. The vessel rolled and creaked, lolling with the waves. And suddenly, he remembered. A storm. A wreck. Days upon days adrift at sea.
A red flag with a yellow arm.
“You speak English,” the bewitching one said. He watched her mouth move, could taste those sumptuous lips as if she’d been the woman in his dream.
“Aye.” He tore his gaze away, only to have it veer to her breasts, covered only in the richly colored hues of Ottoman textiles draping her body. A blue jacket threaded with silver hung past her hips over a knee-length chemise, covering lighter blue, flowing trousers. A red sash tied around her waist held a gleaming cutlass.
The image of her flesh burned in his mind as sure as if she’d laid herself bare.
“You are a subject of the Crown?” she demanded.
“Aye.” Beneath the covers, the idiot between his legs pulsed against soft linen, stubbornly holding on to the dream. He was naked. And chained, he realized when he tried to reach for the glass. Heavy links clanked against the bed, and iron cuffs banded his wrists. “Is this necessary?” he rasped.
“I want to know who you are,” she said. “Your name. Where you’re from. Were you aboard a ship?”
“Let him drink again,” the other one said, offering the glass once more. She eyed him curiously as he sipped. “There will be broth coming, and when you’re ready, some bread to sop it with.”
The news made his stomach rumble. If the prospect of such a meager meal piqued his hunger, no doubt he’d been adrift a very long time. Already the idea of food began to tame the desire that gripped him.
His name. His origin. Of course. His mind churned as if racing through mud, reaching for a false identity. “Thomas Barclay.” The lie fell roughly across his tongue. “I was aboard the man-o’-war Henry’s Cross. Went down—” he swallowed, his mouth already dry again “—northwest of Gibraltar. Near Cadiz.” That last, at least, was true.
“When?”
“April 10.”
“Four days ago,” she said to her companion. “The current must have pulled him through the strait.”
“Where are we?” he managed.
“Anchored east of Gibraltar, awaiting conditions for passage west through the strait. You are aboard the brig Possession, and I am—”
“Corsair Kate.” The irony of the situation snuck through the mental fog. Three years of quietly subverting orders to put an end to what the admirals considered her questionable seafaring activities, and now here he was. All that was left was to inform her that her ship was now the property of the Crown and declare victory.
Those topaz eyes narrowed, and those lips curved ever so slightly. “You may call me Captain Kinloch,” she bit out in a voice both sultry and liquid. Fresh desire surged through him.
This lust was unacceptable. He needed to regain control, but he was so weak he couldn’t lift his head—at least, not the one that knew better than to dally with the likes of Corsair Kate, who—since her father’s death six months ago—was also countess of the Scottish seat of Dunscore.
The lady beside her laughed. “It’s a grand thing to have earned a pseudonym of such notoriety, Katherine. I rather think you should sanction its use.” This beautiful companion was most certainly the scandalous young widow Philomena, the countess of Pennington. And somewhere aboard would be the countess’s young niece, Lady India, daughter of the Earl of Cantwell. The tale of their rescue had become legendary: taken captive by Barbary corsairs during an ill-fated voyage to see antiquities in Egypt, and subsequently liberated when the Possession in turn captured the marauding ship.
Captain Kinloch crossed her arms and pinned him with an assessing look. “The Henry’s Cross,” she said thoughtfully. “Captain James Warre’s command?”
His own name on her lips caught him by surprise. “Aye.”
Her lip curled. “You have indeed met with improved circumstances, then. What was your rank?”
Improved circumstances? “Midshipman.”
“Midshipman! You’re too old for that.”
Hell. The real Thomas Barclay, of course, had been just the right age. “I was...demoted. Problems with the captain.” It took all his strength to hold her gaze.
“With Captain Warre? What kind of problems?” she demanded.
“Any number of things.” Devil take it, he could barely think.
“I want details.”
Damn the woman! “It was...a misunderstanding,” he rasped.
In a heartbeat she whipped out her cutlass and laid it against his neck, leaning over him. “What kind of misunderstanding?” Those topaz eyes blazed, and the ends of her hair pooled on his chest.
His body reacted as though she’d straddled his hips.
“Katherine,” Lady Pennington warned.
“Insubordination,” James managed through gritted teeth. He knew men who paid for this kind of treatment, but damnation! He wasn’t one of them. “I’ve been known to have difficulty with authority.” Another grain of truth.
“And Captain Warre tolerated you at his side? The good captain must have favored you.” The blade’s pressure increased by a fraction. “Understand me well, Mr. Barclay. You will display no insubordination aboard this ship if you wish to see its destination.”
“You would not murder a British subject,” he breathed. God, he needed more water.
Her lips curved into a terrifying yet seductive half smile. “A British subject who by all accounts perished at sea.”
Their eyes locked in silent battle. But her blade lay cool against his neck, and her chains sat heavy on his wrists. “I assure you of my utmost respect,” he said, and forced a half smile of his own. “Captain.”
