Almost a Lady (12 page)

Lieutenant Murray appeared in the cottage doorway at the sound of his approaching visitors. “Captain,” he said with the inevitable crisp salute.

“This is Lieutenant Murray, of the Royal Navy, Meg. Murray, may I present Miss Barratt.” Cosimo gestured between them as he made the introduction. “She’s sailing with us, and needs to send an urgent message to her family in England.”

Murray couldn’t disguise his curiosity as he offered a stiff half bow to the woman accompanying the privateer. She looked disreputable, he thought disparagingly. Bold-eyed and flushed, perspiration beading her forehead. No respectable woman would show herself in public with such a wind-blown tangle of curls and disheveled appearance. But then, no respectable woman would be sailing on the
Mary Rose
, keeping company with the privateer.

“Ma’am,” he murmured faintly.

Meg had little difficulty reading his expression and her eyes flashed, her chin went up. She acknowledged him with a haughty nod. She had no interest in the hidebound opinions of a self-important young sailor preening himself in an immaculate uniform that didn’t look as if it had ever seen anything more exciting than a thundershower.

“The pigeon, Murray?” Cosimo prompted. “If you recall, we have a message to send.”

The lieutenant cleared his throat. “If you’ll come this way.” He led the way to a small building that stood just behind the cottage. A soft cooing greeted them as they entered the dim interior. There were half a dozen pigeons sitting on perches and beams that laced the ceiling.

“We have three here at the moment that do the English route,” the lieutenant said. “The others have recently flown in from France.”

Meg, despite her disdain for the popinjay lieutenant, was fascinated by the concept of a pigeon courier service. “They each know their own route?”

“That’s right,” Cosimo replied. “Some are able to go direct from France to the English coast, but others stop here. It depends on the message.” He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a handful of corn. He held his flat palm up to a bird watching them intently from its perch. The bird hopped forward and delicately pecked at the corn before flying onto Cosimo’s shoulder. There was a whirr of wings and two more alighted, one on top of Cosimo’s head, the other on his other shoulder. He dug into his pocket for more corn.

Meg remembered the bird books in the cabin. Cosimo seemed to have an affinity with the species. These pigeons were behaving with him much as Gus did. “They seem to think you’re an honorary bird,” she observed.

“There are worse things,” he responded. “Murray, which one are we using?”

“Number 3 is rested.” The lieutenant snapped his fingers at the guard who’d accompanied them. “Get her ready, Hogan.”

“Aye, sir.” The young man lifted one of the birds off the perch, holding its body securely. He held it for Cosimo, who attached the tiny cylinder to its right leg with a thin leather strap. Cosimo stroked the bird’s neck for a minute and then stepped back. The guard placed the bird in a cage and closed the door on it. “I’ll send her off now, shall I, sir?”

“Right away,” Murray said.

“I’d like to watch.” Meg followed the guard carrying the birdcage out into the sunshine. The young man gave her a rather nervous smile. Presumably he didn’t have much experience with women, Meg reflected, offering a reassuring smile of her own. “Is she just called Number 3? It seems a bit impersonal.”

“That’s her navy identification, ma’am. I call her Stella.” They had reached the brow of the hill and he set the cage on the ground.

Meg bent to reach in and stroke the bird’s shimmering throat. “Fly swift and straight, Stella.” She stood up and gazed out towards the invisible English coast. “Where will she make landfall?”

“Dover, ma’am. We’ve a station just up from the beach.”

Her heart jumped. Folkestone was but eight miles from Dover. “How long will it take her?”

“Depends on the wind, ma’am. She should make it by dawn tomorrow, or soon after, unless she gets blown off course.”

Meg thought of the storm that Cosimo said was brewing. That could add a few hours to the bird’s flight, but even so, Arabella should know all was well, or at least relatively so, by tomorrow morning.

Hogan extracted the pigeon from the cage and held her high. He checked the cylinder was firmly attached and then threw the bird into the wind. She soared high and they watched for a few minutes as she flew steadily northward.

Meg felt a wave of relief. She’d done all she could for the moment. She felt the privateer’s eyes on her and glanced over at him. His gaze held a question. She wondered if it was the same question she was asking herself, and she knew that it was. Now that reassurance was on its way to her friends and family, was there still a truly pressing need for her to arrange passage home without delay? It could wait for a couple of days if she had something better to do. Was a brief sensual interlude with the privateer something better to do?

Her body answered the last question for her. Just the thought of such an interlude made her stomach flip and sent a jolt of arousal through her loins.

Cosimo watched her expression. Meg Barratt was no expert at dissembling. He could read her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them. He was only faintly surprised at her openness about her sensuality; there were women aplenty like her, Ana among them, but he had not before met one straight from the upper echelons of London Society. Unwrapping such a package promised to be as intriguing as he sensed it would be exciting.

He turned to the lieutenant, who was shuffling his feet impatiently on the turf. “Send to me immediately if there’s a message, Murray. It’s most urgent.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Thank you.” He gestured to Meg. “Shall we go back to the ship?”

“It’s such a beautiful afternoon, it seems a shame,” she said. “Are you needed on board, or could we explore the island a little?”

He nodded. “I see no reason why not. But come and take a look over the other side of the hill.”

She followed him around the back of the cottage and looked down at the busy scene in the water below. The two English men-of-war and the French frigate, which now flew the Union Jack and was tied fast to one of the British ships. Longboats scurried around the little flotilla, ferrying men between the ships.

“Will they sail it back to England?” Meg inquired thoughtfully, wishing she didn’t feel obliged to ask the question. She knew that naval ships often carried civilian passengers when there was a good reason, and it would be a much more comfortable voyage than in a fishing boat. It would be a pity if the vessel’s departure was imminent, she reflected with rueful self-knowledge. Despite her ambivalence she would have to take advantage of it, which would mean she wouldn’t be able to explore the possibilities of an interlude with the privateer. But if that was the situation, then she had no choice but to accept it.

Cosimo pretended to give the question some thought. In fact he had nothing to think over. He was not ready for Meg to leave Sark for far more important reasons than the simple satisfaction of his own lust. He needed her here until he knew where matters stood with Ana. If he heard nothing, he’d know there would be no partnership on this mission and then Meg, albeit unwitting, was his trump card. It was highly likely that the French prize would be sent back to England with a prize crew and her own officers and crew as prisoners of war. A small white lie was in order.

“I doubt it,” he said finally. “They’ll put an English crew aboard and immediately incorporate it into the English fleet.”

“But what of the French crew?”

He shrugged. “The officers will be prizes, worth a handsome ransom. I imagine they’ll be left here in the charge of the naval outpost until they can be transferred by the next available naval ship. The men will be offered the opportunity to sign on with the British navy or to be held as prisoners of war, also awaiting transport to English shores.”

Meg said nothing, but a frown creased her forehead. It sounded perfectly reasonable but she detected something, nothing she could put her finger on, that didn’t ring true.

“So none of those ships will be sailing back to England?”

“Not immediately. They’ll be chasing Napoleon,” he said with an assumption of carelessness.

Meg regarded him with arrested interest. “Where’s Napoleon going?”

He hesitated, then decided that sharing such a piece of intelligence with her could do no harm and might help his cause. It would make her feel she was in his confidence. “Egypt, we think.”

“Think, or know?” she asked.

He smiled. “An astute question. We know. But strictly speaking, I should not have told you. It’s a piece of covert intelligence at present.”

She nodded, fitting this with everything else she’d divined about the privateer. Pigeon couriers, spy networks, missing agents, covert intelligence. “I see,” she said dryly.

He glanced at her. “Do you?” Then he laughed a little. “Yes, I believe you do. Now, shall we stroll around the island?”

“I think I’d like to ask the captain of one of those men-of-war if there’s any chance they might decide to return to Dover,” she said with a thoughtful frown, keeping pace with him as he strode off along the lip of the hill. “One never knows.”

“Indeed not. It’s easy enough to convey a message to the commander of the
Leopold.
If you wish it, you could ask him today.”

“So I could,” Meg said, casting him a quick appraising glance, but there was nothing in his expression to imply deception, so why did she have this feeling that he was being less than candid? “So I could.”

Chapter   8

T
hey strolled along the brim of the hill, Cosimo pausing frequently to look up when a particular bird on the wing caught his eye.

“Have you always been interested in ornithology?” Meg inquired.

“Since I was a small boy,” he responded. “Ah, now look at this . . . careful now.” He had stopped and was peering down into the cushiony grass.

“Plover’s nest,” he whispered when Meg stepped softly up beside him. “Can you see the eggs? They’re camouflaged.”

“Isn’t it dangerous for them to lay their eggs on the ground?”

“Very,” he said straightening. “But nature has an odd and sometimes cruel sense of humor. Somehow the species survives. Move away now, the mother’s coming back.”

Meg walked away hastily, hearing the distressed bird call behind her. “Will we have put her off?”

“No, so long as we didn’t touch anything.” He dug his hands into his pockets as he walked, lifting his face to the sun.

He seemed as at home on the land as on the decks of his ship, Meg thought. “How long will you stay here?” she asked. “On Sark.”

“We leave on the dawn tide on Wednesday morning.”

Today was Sunday; that left the rest of today and two full days. Meg frowned as she walked, still cradling her arm against her chest. It could be seen as just the perfect length of time for a passion-filled idyll with no strings. A couple of days of loving and laughter and no regrets on parting.

“Time is perhaps of the essence.” His voice startled her, the comment shocking her with its uncanny tuning into her own thought.

She looked at him sideways and saw that he was smiling, but it was not his usual pleasantly careless smile. There was purpose behind it, a deep lingering sensuality to the curve of his mouth and in the sudden darkening of his sun-bleached eyes. They were walking now in a small copse of wind-bent, gnarled pine trees, the ground beneath them crunchy and fragrant with pine needles. The sun was a mere glint through the overhanging evergreen umbrella.

He moved in front of her, laying his hands on her shoulders, easing her backwards a pace so that she felt the trunk of a tree against her back. A bird whistled somewhere above her and the silence between them was for a moment suspended, filled with a gravity of intent that could not be misunderstood.

Meg tilted her face, meeting the privateer’s steady, hungry gaze. His mouth hovered over hers and then his lips met hers. At first it was a cool, firm touch, more of a statement than a caress, she thought, wondering why she always analyzed such initial moves in the lovemaking dance. She liked his smell; it was salty, tinged with fresh air and sunshine, spiced with pine. She touched his lips with a rapid flickering of the tip of her tongue, tasting like a bee testing a flower for its nectar. Salt and sweet. She brought up her good hand and laid it against the side of his face, feeling its shape, the hollow of the cheek, the angularity of the cheekbones, the line of the jaw.

He still had his hands resting gently on her shoulders, but now he moved them to the sides of her breasts, lightly cupping the curve. Fingertips nudged the nipples and Meg felt the frisson as they rose, obedient to encouragement.

She pushed her tongue more insistently against his mouth and his lips parted, drawing in the intruder with a sudden vehemence that for a second took her by surprise. And then all interest in analysis fled as her body took over. She reached her good arm around his neck, pressing herself against him, as their tongues played. His hands moved down her body, holding her hips now, thumbs pressing into the sharp pointy hip bones that she had always wished were not so apparent. But the privateer didn’t seem to mind them. In fact, he was playing a tune now that made her catch her breath even as her tongue plunged and fenced and she tasted the salt sweetness of his mouth with a hunger that couldn’t be sated. She forgot about the wound on her arm and brought both hands to his buttocks, kneading the hard muscles beneath her fingers with an exhilarating urgency of passion.

Cosimo raised his head, breaking the kiss, looking down at her flushed face, her parted lips, her luminous eyes. “Be careful of your arm,” he murmured.

Meg shook her head. She could feel his penis hard and demanding against her loins and her arm had nothing to do with any of this. “Damn the arm.” She laughed with the exhilaration of a moment before, digging her nails into his backside.

He kissed her, tracing the shape of her face with his tongue before returning to her mouth. A swift stroking caress of her lips and then he possessed her mouth and she had no control over this. She received him, gloried in the deep, embracing power of his thrusting tongue and the knowledge of the greater possession it preceded. He lifted her skirts, sliding the material up her thighs with deft movements, his breathing as swift as her own. When his skillful fingers found her center, she braced herself against the tree, her arms once more entwined around his neck, her mouth pressing hard against his so that her soft cry was stifled against his lips as the orgasmic waves engulfed her.

Cosimo kissed her long and deep as he let her skirts fall about her. He stroked her cheek with a flat palm until she had regained her breath, then drew her against him, caressing the back of her head. A tiny smile played over his mouth. It seemed he had been right about Miss Barratt. She was going to prove an exciting and responsive playmate.

She was caressing him now, the fingers of her good hand playing over the hard shape of his penis jutting against his britches, and it was only with a supreme effort of will that he fought the surging arousal and caught her wrist, lifting her hand firmly away from its work.

“I’ve always believed in give and take,” she said, sounding a little indignant as she tried to return her hand to its original position.

“There’ll be time enough,” he said, a laugh in his voice. “I must get back to the ship.”

Meg squinted up at him against a ray of sunshine that fell across her face. “That seems a little unfair,” she observed.

He smiled. “Oh, you’ll have your turn, ma’am. I promise you.”

He had remarkable self-control, Meg reflected. She’d been all too aware of the strength of his arousal. One day, she would really put that self-control to the test. Just the thought made her stomach flip again. “I’ll hold you to that,” she said, brushing at her skirts. “Do I look dreadfully disheveled?”

“No more so than usual.”

“If I weren’t in such a state of euphoria, I might take exception to that.”

“Oh, please do,” he said, taking her good hand and leading her out of the copse. “It sounds as if it might be amusing.”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” she returned. So the die had been cast. She was going to enjoy a passionate, clearly defined interlude with the privateer. No strings, no harm. Two days, that was all. Nothing could happen in two days beyond a few lustful encounters. And she did enjoy lustful encounters.

They walked down the hill towards the little hamlet in a thoughtful but companionable silence. Meg wondered what Cosimo was thinking, and whether his thoughts ran on much the same lines as her own. She would have been more than disconcerted if she could have read his mind.

Cosimo was thinking of Ana. Involuntarily he caught himself scanning the horizon for a pigeon homing in on the gray cottage. Meg’s eager, uninhibited enjoyment of those few minutes in the copse reminded him vividly of Ana. And yet the differences were as striking as the similarities. Ana had a shell, engendered he knew by a life that didn’t allow for weakness. She’d grown in a hard school and matured in a harder. He enjoyed that in her, they met and matched each other on an equal playing field, but the Ana that existed deep within her carapace was unknown to him, and sometimes he thought to her too. He dealt always with the part of Ana she was willing or knew how to share. Meg was different. Her core was not so protected. In many ways, he thought, it indicated greater strength than Ana. She was not afraid to reveal her self.

Unconsciously he swung her hand as they stepped through sea pinks and clover on the last stretch to the hamlet. Despite his anxiety over Ana, he felt exhilaration and a purely passionate anticipation. Wherever she was, Ana would not begrudge him that. They had come together when time and events allowed it and parted in the same way. But dear God, he needed to know what had happened. The moment of exhilaration abruptly faded.

Meg felt the change in him through the hand that held her own. A sudden tension, a slight stiffness in his grasp. She glanced at him and saw that the residue of passion had left his gaze. He seemed to be looking inward at something unpleasant. “Is something the matter?” she asked hesitantly.

Instantly his expression reverted to the relaxed humor that she was accustomed to. “What could possibly be the matter?” he said lightly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It felt as if some shadow had fallen over you.”

She was acutely sensitive, Cosimo reflected. Ana would never have noticed that moment and if she had would have dismissed it as unimportant and no business of hers. Once again he wondered if Meg could be ruthless enough to partner him in his enterprise. Was she perhaps too sensitive? Her emotions running too close to the surface? She was an unusual woman, certainly, but was she unusual enough?

“Oh, just someone walking over my grave, I expect,” he said with a careless shrug.

Meg considered this and decided it was a most unsatisfactory explanation, but she was disinclined to press the matter. She didn’t know the man well enough to pry. “I’m starved,” she said instead. “Aren’t you hungry?”

Cosimo, relieved at this change of subject, responded, “I suppose so. It’s the middle of the afternoon, after all. A long time since breakfast.”

Meg looked at him with curiosity. “You don’t normally recognize when you’re hungry?”

“Not really,” he said, jumping off a low stone wall that separated the hamlet from the bottom of the hill. “Often I don’t have time to notice, so I suppose I’m accustomed to ignoring the signs.” He reached for Meg’s waist and swung her down onto the dirt-packed alleyway. “There’s a tavern on the quay. They make a pot of excellent steamed mussels with wine and garlic, accompanied by a tankard of home brew.”

“I thought you had to be back on the ship.” She caught her foot in a wheel rut and righted herself hastily, grabbing hold of his sleeve.

“Close to it,” he said. “The tavern’s within earshot of a whistle if I’m needed . . . Are you stable now?”

“As much as I can be with only one arm,” she declared. It was a little strange that they could be having this mundane conversation after what had happened in the copse, and yet, at the same time, it increased her anticipation. What had passed between them had been merely the preliminary, and pretending in some way that it hadn’t happened heightened her excitement. They would eat mussels and drink ale and return to the
Mary Rose
. . . How did one make love in a box-bed? Maybe a hammock . . . A chuckle escaped her.

“What’s funny?”

“Oh, nothing much. I was wondering how hammocks reacted to activity . . . certain kinds of activity.”

“It depends on the expertise of those engaged in the activity,” he responded solemnly.

Meg let that go and allowed her imagination full rein.

The tavern was low-ceilinged and smelled of ale-soaked sawdust and stale tobacco. A few fishermen sat on the ale bench outside, but within only a surly man in a stained waistcoat leaned against the bar counter, his nose buried in the froth of his tankard.

Cosimo gave him a nod that was barely returned and banged on the counter. A slatternly woman appeared within a few minutes, adjusting a grubby cap on dirty yellow hair. “Aye? Oh, ’tis you, Cap’n.” The greeting didn’t sound too enthusiastic to Meg’s ears. “What’ll it be?”

“Mussels, Bertha, if you please, a loaf of bread, and two tankards of your best bitter. We’ll be outside.” He gestured to the door he’d left open behind them.

The woman merely nodded and disappeared. “Shall we?” Cosimo indicated the door and Meg followed him with alacrity.

“Is it safe to eat from that kitchen?” She was reluctant to show her squeamishness but couldn’t help it.

“There’s enough garlic in the mussels to ward off a host of vampires.” He sat on the low bench and leaned back, resting his elbows against the split wood of the table.

“And if we both eat them, we won’t need to ward off each other,” Meg observed, following his lead, lifting her face to the sun.

“Precisely.” He laid a hand briefly over hers and the electric crackle was almost audible.

“Should you let your crew know where you are?” Meg asked, trying to put the conversation on an ordinary footing.

“Oh, they know,” he said lazily. “Thank you, Bertha.” He smiled at the woman who set two foaming tankards on the table.

“Mussels’ll be a few minutes,” she muttered, hurrying away.

Meg looked towards the
Mary Rose
, bobbing gently a few hundred yards from the quay. Of course at the very least Miles Graves or Frank Fisher would be watching for the captain’s appearance on the quay.

The mussels arrived in a steaming fragrant cauldron, with a long thin loaf of crusty bread. Cosimo broke into the bread, passing Meg half of the loaf, and then dipped his fingers into the bowl until he found an empty shell. He used it like a spoon, extracting golden morsels from their shells and supping the juice.