Almost a Lady (16 page)

She settled for a neutral “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

He looked at her then, a searching, questioning glance, before efficiently rebandaging the arm. “Are you writing letters?” He indicated the parchment and quill.

Meg gave up a pretence that didn’t sit well with her anyway. “A difficult letter,” she said ruefully. “To my friends in Folkestone. Cosimo said he could send it with the fishing fleet before we leave. I have to give them some explanation.” She opened her hands expressively.

“They know you’re unharmed? Cosimo sent the pigeon courier?”

“Oh, yes. But I have to concoct some explanation they can put about for why I’m taking an extended absence from the world . . . well, my world,” she amended.

David inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Tricky. I wish you luck.” He picked up his bag and went to the door. “But then, I’ve always believed one should follow one’s fancy.”

“Really?” It seemed the most extraordinary thing for the reclusive, efficient, unemotional surgeon to believe.

“I’m following Cosimo,” he reminded her with a flash of a smile. “Where he leads, there go I, when I could be peacefully and quite lucratively established catering to the whims and megrims of London’s society set.” He nodded in farewell.

Meg chuckled in amazement as she picked up her quill again. So David Porter liked a little adventure in his life too.
Needed
a little adventure for his own satisfaction, she corrected. Only a pressing personal imperative would persuade a man like David to throw in his lot with a man like Cosimo, on the surface his antithesis.

The reflection spurred her to fresh efforts on her letter. Arabella would sympathize, and Jack would too, once he’d recovered from any residual anger at her for causing his beloved Arabella a moment’s anxiety. But it had not been her doing and her conscience was clear on that. This that lay ahead, however, was entirely of her own making, so she’d better do the best she could to ease matters for those she left behind. Most particularly her parents, who would bear the brunt of the inquiries. They would forgive her in the end, at least she hoped they would, but they would do so much more readily if there was no scandal attached to her adventure.

She looked out of the window for a moment, imagining that she was sitting with her friend in Arabella’s conservatory. Bella would be feeding and pruning and spraying her beloved orchids, listening intently to every word. She heard her friend’s mischievous chuckle as she regaled her with the more intimate details of her lovemaking with the privateer. A smile touched her mouth and she dipped the quill in the ink anew and attacked the paper with renewed vigor.

When Cosimo came into the cabin fifteen minutes later, she was sanding the closely written, frequently crossed sheet. “Long letter,” he commented.

“I couldn’t think of a few short lines to describe adequately the complexity of this situation,” she retorted, shaking off the sand. “Could you?”

“Probably,” he said cheerfully. “I am a man of few words.” He was once more at his charts.

Meg folded the letter and affixed a wafer to the fold. “Do you have wax?”

He reached to the shelf above the chart table and took down a stick of red wax. “There’s flint and tinder in the drawer under the table.”

Meg heated the wax and dropped it onto the wafer. She would have liked to have stamped some identifier into the melted wax but she wore no rings and could think of nothing else, so it would have to go as it was. Then a thought struck her. She took up the quill and scratched a
G
into the wax. Arabella would make that connection as she’d made the last.

“It’s ready,” she said.

“Good. Take it to Miles. He’s waiting for it. We make sail in an hour.” He spoke without taking his attention from his charts.

Meg contemplated the curve of his long back, the tightness of his buttocks as he stood, legs braced apart, while he worked. Arousal flickered in her belly but she knew the privateer was as unaware of her gaze as he was of any desire to arouse her. The passionate lover was clearly taking a secondary role to the working captain and always would. Well, at least she had no illusions about her position in his priorities.

And when she came first, she most certainly came first. Smiling, she went up on deck to deliver her letter to Miles.

They left the harbor on the swell of the tide, the
Mary Rose
tacking across the sheltered body of water towards the open sea, where the crash of the breakers on the reef grew ever louder and more menacing. Cosimo was at the helm, Mike beside him, as the sloop, under full sail, headed for the gap in the rocks.

Meg, wrapped in a cloak against the freshening wind, looked back at the rapidly diminishing hamlet that seemed to represent the last vestige of her normal world. The sea-bound world she inhabited now had rules of its own, and dangers all its own, and she couldn’t begin to imagine what her future world would be like after this adventure. Would she be able to fit back into conventional society again?

She’d never been completely at ease in that world, even when she’d known no other. Unlike Arabella, she had not managed to make the ordinary world fit her needs. Bella had molded society to her own tastes, ably assisted, of course, by her unconventional rake of a husband. Meg, without the advantage of such a husband and the social status of a duchess, had had little success in carving her own path. What the duchess of St. Jules could do without scandal, a mere Miss Barratt could not. And she’d opted to appear at least to toe the line. She doubted that she’d be able to settle for that after this adventure with the privateer. So what would the future hold for her?

The question caused a flutter of unease and she spun away from the departing shoreline and looked ahead. Cosimo’s tall, powerful frame blocked her view to the bow and the churning waters beyond, and she was content at the moment to have it so. For now, her future lay with the privateer. She had made the decision and she would not allow herself to regret it.

She watched him steer the craft through the rocks, his eyes on the sails, his voice, barely raised as always, calling out a series of orders. Sails were adjusted minute by minute as the sloop entered the gap. Spray from the breakers blinded Meg and dampened her hair, and then the
Mary Rose
sprang free of the narrow gap and the sound of the crashing waves came from safely behind them. Ahead lay a moving sea, white-capped swells racing towards the sloop’s lifting bow. The wind was stronger, whipping her hair into a tangle as she stood holding her cloak together at her throat, feeling the deck rising and falling beneath her booted feet, and the salt spray on her cheeks.

The last lingering threads of unease vanished into the wind and Meg yielded to the exhilaration of the moment, to the excitement of knowing that the man holding this ship on course would quite soon be devoting that strength and concentration to a quite different activity. She laughed and the sound was snatched by the wind.

Chapter   11

T
he weather changed when they rounded the jutting rugged coastline of Brittany, leaving the town of Brest to port as they headed into the rough waters of the Bay of Biscay. Rain clouds scudded across a gray sky and the wind was as cold and bitter as a winter gale.

Meg stood in her usual position against the stern railing, shivering into her thick cloak, her hair frizzed by the damp air. She could just make out the faint line of the French coast and thought longingly for a moment of a warm fireside, a pot of hot soup, a glass of spiced punch. Winter comforts all of them, and things that wouldn’t have entered her head yesterday, when the sun had been hot in a brilliant blue cloudless sky and the
Mary Rose
had skipped across sparkling waves. Today she was lumbering through them, climbing up and then pitching forward under only minimal sail.

“Feeling queasy?”

She turned at Cosimo’s voice. “No, but it’s not very comfortable.”

“It isn’t,” he agreed, coming to stand beside her. “And I’m afraid it won’t be for a while. Biscay’s notorious for its heavy seas and bad weather.”

“I wish you’d warned me,” she said, only half joking.

“Would it have made a difference?” He loosened his boat cloak, then put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him, wrapping the voluminous folds around them both.

“No, of course not,” she said truthfully, inhaling the mingled scents of his body warmed by the enclosed air inside the cloak. His shirt still smelled of soap and the previous day’s sunshine that had dried it, overlaid with a faint earthy tang of sweat from his recent wrestling with a recalcitrant helm.

“We’re sailing well away from the coastline,” she observed, wondering if closer in it would be less rough.

“For the moment,” he agreed. “I don’t want to attract unnecessary attention from French patrols. But tomorrow night we’ll be going in.”

“Why won’t it be dangerous tomorrow night?”

“It will be, but I have something to do ashore.”

It had been a day and a half since they’d left Sark, and Meg had been content to take each moment as it came, putting aside the war-related purpose of this voyage. Now she experienced that flutter of unease again. “You’re actually going ashore?”

“Just for an hour or two.”

“To do what?”

He shook his head in mock reproof. “Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies, my dear.”

“But I’m not one of your crew,” she protested. “They don’t seem to mind being kept in the dark. But I do. It matters to me what you do and why.”

His expression darkened as she’d known it would, and the warm humorous light left his eyes to be replaced by that cold blue glitter that she loathed. “You’re on my ship,” he stated. “You’ll know exactly what I want you to know, nothing more, nothing less.”

She didn’t want to quarrel and yet somehow she couldn’t help herself. “That’s not good enough, Cosimo. I refuse to be subject to the same rules as your crew. I’m your lover, I’d like to think I was your friend . . . worthy of some confidence.”

“You are both those things but that has nothing to do with it. While you’re on my ship you’ll receive the same information as everyone else,” he said baldly. “Believe me, I have my reasons.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” she said acidly, moving away from the shelter of his cloak. “And tell me, pray, if it was Ana standing here beside you, would you be treating her to the same lack of confidence?”

He had no answer for that, of course. “You must excuse me,” he said, leaving her standing there, the formality of his departure conveying his displeasure more effectively than any loss of temper could have done.

If Ana was with him, he wouldn’t be making this unscheduled landing at Quiberon. There was a secret courier-pigeon outpost there, manned not by the navy but by members of his own spy network. He’d sent news of Ana’s capture from Sark. His agents would have started working on finding her immediately. If there was any progress, news would be sent to Quiberon. If there was none there, the next place would be La Rochelle, farther down the coast. Each landing on the enemy coast was fraught with danger and could only take place at night, but he wouldn’t be at peace until he had some news of her.

He wasn’t ready to take Meg into his confidence at this point. She was not committed to his mission as yet. Apart from the fact that it flew in the face of his ingrained habit of keeping his own counsel, he couldn’t risk her having information that would betray him if she was forced to give it up. She wasn’t a seasoned agent like Ana, and he hadn’t had the time or the opportunity to test her strengths and her resourcefulness. That would come later with the training he would have to give her.

And then the thought occurred that perhaps there was no time like the present to initiate such testing and training. It was certainly no time to antagonize her. Meg wasn’t Ana, but he needed her to take Ana’s place. How could he know what she was capable of if he didn’t give her the opportunity to show him?

He glanced back to the stern rail but she was no longer there and he guessed she had gone below to nurse her resentment. Except that he didn’t think she was the kind of woman who nursed resentments or held grudges. She would be annoyed, but she would let him know it.

Meg was indeed back in the cabin, and she was indeed annoyed. Gus, who was showing every expression of pleasure at having some company again, hopped onto her shoulder and pecked at her earlobe. “Oh, are you lonely, Gus?”

He muttered sweet nothings in her ear and she felt some of her indignation fade. She lifted him back onto his perch and shrugged off her damp cloak, shivering in the thin silk of the gown beneath. There had been no winter-weight materials in Ana’s cupboard, which puzzled her a little. Surely both Cosimo and Ana would have been aware of the way the weather could turn nasty at sea?

Maybe in another cupboard. She hadn’t explored the cabin with any thoroughness as yet. She knelt to open the cupboards set beneath the window seats and rifled through their contents. The privateer’s undergarments, stockings, cravats for the most part. She sat back on her heels, frowning. Where were the mysterious dispatches he’d picked up from Lieutenant Murray?

Surely they’d be in the cabin somewhere. She forgot about searching for warmer garments and went over to the chart table again and its shelf of books above. Perhaps they were tucked between the volumes. She took out each book, wondering once again why the privateer’s library consisted only of dictionaries. Why in particular did he need a Latin dictionary? And a Bible? Did he conduct a Sunday service or something? But she’d passed a Sunday on board, and in port too when the crew had nothing better to do. There’d been no sign of religious ceremony then. Perhaps he was a closet Bible reader. There was an absurdity to that image that restored her usual good humor, but she still wanted to find these dispatches that were the reason for this voyage.

She lifted the charts on the table, opened the little drawer beneath. It held a fresh supply of quills, sheets of onionskin, and a handful of the tiny canisters. She knew, because he’d made no secret of it, that he facilitated courier correspondence, and, because he’d told her, that he was a courier, a carrier of dispatches himself. Important activities, she was sure, in the world of the spy, but somehow they didn’t seem important enough for Cosimo. So what else did he do?

She bent to open the cupboard beneath the chart table but it was locked, the only place in the entire cabin that didn’t yield up its contents. What secrets did he keep in there? The elusive dispatches, perhaps? But what else?

She was gazing in thought out through the rain-smeared window at the churning gunmetal sea when the door opened. She turned swiftly, unable to help a guilty intake of breath, aware of the open drawer behind her, the volumes that she had not yet returned to their place on the shelf.

“Looking for something?” Cosimo asked, a frown flickering in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “Something warm to wear.”

“In that drawer? Behind the books?” He gave her an incredulous stare as he closed the door behind him.

“No,” she agreed, resigned to what this time would be a justifiable use of the glacial look. “I was being nosy.”

“Ah.” He nodded slowly and remained with his shoulders leaning against the door at his back. “What did you hope to find?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a helpless shrug. “A clue . . . something . . . anything, really.”

“Permit me to tell you, my dear, that you’ll never make a spy if you don’t learn to cover your tracks.” He pushed himself away from the door and crossed to the chart table.

Meg skipped slightly to one side. “I wasn’t trying to spy,” she protested.

Cosimo returned the volumes to their shelf and closed the drawer of the table. He continued as if he hadn’t heard her protest, “And you should always conduct an operation when you’re certain you won’t be disturbed.”

“Without a key to the door, that would be impossible,” she retorted, disliking this schoolmasterly tone much more than straightforward annoyance.

He merely shook his head and regarded her thoughtfully. “A clue to what?”

“To you, of course. I can’t get a straight answer out of you, so I have no choice but to poke around a little.”

“You could always just accept my wishes.”

“I could, I suppose,” she said, her head tilted slightly as she appeared to consider the appeal of this. But her green gaze held a warning as she met his eyes. “But blind, unthinking obedience to your wishes was never a condition of our agreement. Had it been, I would be back on English shores by now. I’m no puppet, Cosimo, and you, in this instance, are no puppet master. You may pull the strings of your crew, but not mine.”

Cosimo wondered with some interest if she had really considered the reality of her situation. She had neither power nor freedom on his ship while they were plowing through the high seas. If she had considered it, her refusal to acknowledge it was certainly indicative of a particularly stubborn, determined nature. Qualities that he had always found appealing in a woman, and that were certainly essential for the work that lay ahead.

“What do you wish to know?” he asked, casting aside the thick, damp folds of his boat cloak.

The question . . . the capitulation . . . so astounded Meg that for a second she was dumbstruck. “Tell me about Ana,” she said finally, even as she wondered why, of all the questions crowding her mind, that one should have popped out first.

“What exactly do you wish to know about Ana?” He sat down, clasping his hands on the tabletop in front of him.

Meg cursed herself for opening such a fruitless discussion that could so easily imply some kind of pathetic jealousy on her part. She wasn’t in the least jealous of the absent Ana. But she
was
interested in other aspects of the missing woman’s relationship with the privateer. “Does she work with you?”

“On occasion.”

“Is she English?”

“No. Austrian.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Not yet.”

“But you expect to soon?”

“I hope to.” His countenance had remained expressionless throughout the catechism, his tone neutral, but the wall he’d thrown up was unassailable nevertheless.

Meg accepted defeat at the hands of a master. “It’s none of my business,” she said. And then she frowned as his last answer sank in.

“Are you going ashore to find out?”

He smiled, the cool neutrality of his expression transformed as the familiar Cosimo returned. “It took you a while, but you got what you wanted in the end.”

“You could have simply told me.”

“So I could.” He stood up. “But that doesn’t come easily to me. Other things, however, do. Come here.” He crooked a finger. “I have it in mind to demonstrate that even you, my dear Meg, can perform for a puppet master on a certain stage.”

And how right he was, Meg thought, as she went into his arms. But she too could play puppet mistress on occasion. Sauce for the goose was most definitely sauce for the gander.

Making love on a pitching sea was a curious business, Meg reflected some considerable time later. It required all the balance of a skilled gymnast. Cosimo had no such difficulty, but then, the sea in all its moods was his natural terrain. He held her against him, cushioning her as the motion threatened to toss her against the hard sides of the box-bed, but not for an instant did he lose his rhythm as he thrust deep inside her, bringing her inexorably closer to her peak despite the distraction of the ever moving space. In the end she relaxed and let her body go wherever the sea took it.

“That was rather like making love on the back of a horse,” she observed dreamily, running her hand down his sweat-slick back as he dropped beside her on the cot.

“When have you made love on a horse?” He stroked her belly lazily.

“Well, never, actually, but it’s how I imagine it must feel.”

“We should try it one day,” he said. With a sigh he pulled himself upright and out of the bed. “I’ve left my ship unattended for too long.” He pulled on his britches again and thrust his arms into his shirt. Then he remembered something. “What were you saying about warmer clothes?”