Almost a Lady (22 page)

Meg looked at him in puzzlement. He hadn’t answered her question and he was clearly thinking deeply about something. Something unpleasant, judging by the hardness of his mouth and the coldness of his eyes. “So now your mind’s at rest,” she pressed.

“Yes,” he said shortly. But his face said the opposite.

She could see that he considered the subject closed, but she couldn’t help herself. “So what did happen to her? What delayed her?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he said in the same curt tone. “Messages by courier pigeon tend not to be detailed, as you can imagine. I only know she’s safe.”

“Well, that’s good,” Meg said. He wasn’t telling her everything, she could feel the deception in the air. He was a smooth liar, but there was something that didn’t sit quite right about this short, glib explanation that was no explanation at all. And she most definitely didn’t like the look in his eye, the shadow that mingled with an anger that she had never seen before. She had encountered his frigid look, but that was not an angry look. In fact, Meg thought, she had believed the privateer when he’d said he didn’t believe in anger, considered it a wasteful emotion. He’d never appeared more than determined and sometimes annoyed. He was coldly ruthless on occasion, but he never raised his voice, was never discourteous even when giving orders.

She felt a small frisson of fear. Ridiculous because that suppressed rage was not directed at her. But there was a power to it that made her fervently pray that she would never be the cause of it.

And then abruptly he smiled, a slow, lascivious smile that lit his eyes from behind and banished all shadows, any vestige of anger, as if they had never existed. “So, my love, it seems that danger excites you,” he murmured, reaching for her, drawing her between his knees as he sat on the window seat. He held her hips lightly, pressing his thumbs into her hip bones. “Cold, wet, filthy, covered in weeds . . . you’d have made love in that ditch regardless of a rampaging army of enemy soldiers just waiting for something to move that they could plunge their bayonets into.”

“You started it,” she answered, running her hands over his head, twisting an auburn lock around her finger and tugging gently. “You were as hard as a rock.”

“Well, I’ve never denied that for me danger and arousal are closely connected. I just hadn’t guessed it would be the same for you.” He bunched up the hem of her nightgown and began to ease it upwards inch by sensual inch.

If this was his way of closing a conversation, Meg reflected distractedly, it was certainly effective.

There came a sharp rap at the door and Cosimo swore under his breath. He let the nightgown drop again and called, “Who is it?”

“David.”

He got up and went to open the door. Gus flew off David’s shoulder and onto his perch with a cheerful “G’day.”

“Bad moment?” David inquired, reading Cosimo’s impatient expression. “Forgive the intrusion but Gus was clamoring, and I brought this for Meg. Echinacea.” He handed a small vial to Cosimo. “It’s proven quite efficacious against chills.”

“Thank you, David.” Cosimo took the vial. “Good night, now.”

“Good night . . . good night, Meg,” David called over Cosimo’s shoulder. “Take the echinacea before you go to sleep. Six drops in water.”

Cosimo closed the door rather firmly on his departure and with the same firmness put Gus into his cage and dropped the cloth over it. A mournful “G’night” came from beneath the crimson covering and then there was silence.

“Now,” Cosimo said, “where were we?”

“In a ditch, I believe,” Meg responded, her eyes shining. “With a troop of soldiers with bayonets searching for us.”

“Ah, yes.” He reached for her hands and pulled her against him, pushing his hands up under her hair. “God, I want you.” He kissed her mouth, his teeth nibbling her lip, and the surge of arousal flooded her loins, tightened her thighs.

There was no time now for the niceties. When he spun her to face the bed, she knew what he wanted and toppled forward, bracing herself on her hands. He threw her nightgown up over her head, then held her hips as he drove into her. She pushed back against his belly, reveling in each thrust that seemed to reach further to her core, to fill her with sensation. His nails scribbled down her spine, his fingers kneaded her backside, as she drew closer and closer to the edge, and when her knees finally buckled and she collapsed onto the cot as the joy became almost unbearable, he flipped her over and entered her again, his gaze, dark with passion, fixed upon her as if he would read her very soul.

And when finally he allowed his own climax to engulf him, Meg lay sweat-soaked and exhausted, unable to believe that such heights of passion could be scaled by one mortal woman.

Chapter   16

W
hat happens when we get to Bordeaux?” Meg asked sleepily, sensing Cosimo’s approach across the sun-dappled deck.

“Ah, you’re awake at last. I thought you were going to sleep the day away.” He stood over her, his shadow blotting out the sunlight.

“The way
you
choose to spend the nights, the days are the only time I have to catch up on sleep,” she retorted, squinting up at him. “Could you step out of my sun?”

He moved aside. “I wasn’t aware the choice was only mine.”

“Well, now, perhaps it isn’t,” she agreed with an indolent stretch as she lay full length on the deck.

She reminded Cosimo of a thoroughly self-satisfied, contented cat at that moment. He dropped down to the deck beside her, leaning his back against the rail. “So what was your question?”

“What happens when we get to Bordeaux?” she repeated, pillowing her head on his thighs. “I assume there’ll be some rendezvous for handing over the dispatches. Is it to another ship, or somewhere on land? Is it in the town itself? Or somewhere outside?”

“Such a lot of questions,” he said, his fingers trawling through the sun-fragrant red curls.

“Well, I’m curious. We’re half a day’s sail from Bordeaux, or so you said this morning. That’s the end of your mission, then we go home. I’d like to know how it’s going to work.”

Cosimo still hadn’t decided on the opportune moment to tell her they were not going back to England. “I can’t risk the
Mary Rose
by sailing up the estuary to the harbor,” he said. “Even if we disguise ourselves as a merchantman, the danger’s still too great. So, I’ll make a night landfall by dinghy as usual in a little fishing village just this side of the city. That’s where I’ll deliver the dispatches.”

Dispatches that Meg still hadn’t seen hide nor hair of, despite her clandestine but nonetheless thorough searches of the cabin. It had become something of an obsession with her. She’d already deduced that the various dictionaries were used for writing and breaking codes. The knives she preferred not to think about. But where were the dispatches? They weren’t in the locked drawer and she could find no other safe. They could be somewhere else on the ship, of course. Maybe in David’s cabin. She wasn’t sufficiently obsessed to poke around there.

“Silas was saying something about supplies,” she said. “Where will they get those?”

“Another village,” he said casually. “There are those outside the towns who don’t mind whom they sell to as long as the price is right.”

“And how long do you think it will take us to sail back to Folkestone?”

“Maybe we won’t go back to Folkestone,” he said.

“Oh? Well, I suppose it doesn’t much matter where we land. I can always take a post chaise home. Only, I’m afraid you’ll have to lend me the money.” She sat up, and swiveled to face him, brushing the hair away from her eyes. “I didn’t have much with me when I fell.”

If he’d hoped to lead into a gentle discussion of the possibilities of continuing their journey awhile longer, it was a fond hope, Cosimo reflected. Meg was in no way obtuse, but she was so straightforward herself she didn’t suspect a roundabout approach to any subject. He would have to wait for the right moment to spring his surprise without artifice.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, leaning forward to rub the little line between his brows with a fingertip.

For answer he took her hand and sucked her finger into his mouth, and felt the quiver run through her, the way her body quickened with lust. Passion
was
an addiction, he thought as he had done once before. They were both enthralled by desire, by the slightest brush of a finger, the merest touch of skin. He could bring her to the brink of arousal by a raised eyebrow, and all Meg had to do was give him her narrow-eyed look, touch her tongue to her lips, and he was lost.

It would serve him well in this greater purpose, but for some reason the knowledge didn’t please him as much as it should. He found it faintly distasteful to be considering the openness of Meg’s sexual passions as a means to an end. Which was a novel feeling. In his past relations, such a benefit outweighed everything. His own lust was easily subsumed into the greater purpose. His world was dangerous and unstable and there was no room in it for emotion or dependency, mutual or otherwise. And yet he knew he could not bear to hurt this woman who gave herself with such uninhibited delight, and whose passion fired his own beyond anything he had previously experienced. But he was deceiving her, and he intended to go on doing so for as long as necessary. So where did that leave him and his scruples?

“You’re thinking too much,” Meg said with a soft laugh. “I don’t find it flattering to play second fiddle to thoughts that aren’t of the pleasantest, judging by your expression.”

“Daytime intrusions,” he said, turning her palm up and planting a kiss in the middle. “Forgotten now.”

“Shall we go below?” Her sandy brows lifted in mischievous invitation. “We could be very quick.”

He glanced around. The
Mary Rose
was sailing serenely on quiet waters. There was no sign of other shipping, hostile or otherwise. And Bordeaux and all the disruptive decisions that would have to made there were only a half day’s sail. A wise man took the opportunities offered to him.

“Why not?” He stood up, reaching a hand down to pull her to her feet.

“Why won’t you let me come with you this time?” Meg demanded, watching as Cosimo pulled his black cloak tightly around him. “It’s a perfect night for a row . . . unlike the last time.”

“The person I’m meeting is expecting me to come alone.” He bent to kiss her. “Wait up for me. I’ll be back before midnight.”

She followed him up onto the deck and stood at the rail in the moonlight as he climbed down into the dinghy, took up the oars, and began to pull towards the sandy cove about half a mile away. She’d been following him around like a dog all day and she still hadn’t seen him take the dispatches from wherever they’d been hidden. She couldn’t even see where he’d put them for the journey to shore. Dispatches had to be bulky, surely. But there were no bulging pockets in his britches, no lumps beneath his shirt. Nothing she could feel when she kissed him goodbye.

It was yet another puzzle. But when he came back to the ship his work here would be done. They would sail back to England with no more hazardous journeys ashore. There’d be all the perils of French shipping to navigate, but Meg had no fears on that score. She firmly believed the privateer could outsail any admiral of the French fleet. Probably of the Royal Navy, not excluding Admiral Nelson. But that article of faith she kept close to her chest.

She leaned her crossed forearms on the rail and gazed out towards the beach and the small shape of the dinghy. The adventure was all but over. It had to be. She had a world to go back to, not to mention consequences to face. She couldn’t begin to imagine how to explain what she’d been doing to her mother, let alone her father. Arabella would help fabricate something, but it was still a daunting prospect. And that would be the end of adventuring. She would be an old maid of thirty, with limited financial prospects, no longer remotely interesting to the social world, even with the patronage of the duchess of St. Jules. If she were a widow, the situation would be brighter. A widow with a decent annuity, even brighter still. But she was just plain Miss Barratt with a sufficient competency to maintain a dignified single life in the country.

Except that she was
not
that person. How could she possibly settle for such a half-existence? She was a privateer’s mistress. She knew depths of passion unthinkable to most of the women of her world. Arabella being the exception. She felt truly alive as never before. And all that lay ahead was being buried alive in Kent.

She turned away from the rail and went below, suddenly too depressed to enjoy the soft night air.

Cosimo took a path from the beach into the tiny village of St. Aubin. He knew it of old. Before the war he had run a healthy smuggling trade in fine wine from the vineyards of Bordeaux to the beaches of Cornwall, and despite changed circumstances he was still welcomed by the occupants of the Lion d’Or as an old friend.

“Eh, bonsoir, mon capitaine,”
the bartender called, opening the tap on a casket of wine and filling a glass. He set it on the counter.
“Comment ça va?”

“Bien, merci, Henri, et vous?”
Cosimo raised the glass in an appreciative toast.

The old man shrugged an affirmative that was not quite convincing. Then spat into the sawdust at his feet. Cosimo nodded his comprehension, and when the door banged open a few minutes later to admit two members of the gendarmerie, he understood even more as he watched his old friend supply them with the best of his cellar with no hope of payment.

He stayed, however, offering monosyllabic responses to the policemen’s questions, before offering to buy them cognac, signaling to Henri for the best he had. It worked magic as it always did as they began to talk under the influence of the fine spirit. He learned that patrols had been stepped up in the hills, that Napoleon was going to conquer the world . . . something he fervently hoped would prove incorrect . . . and that the port of Bordeaux was now closed to all foreign shipping.

After an hour he threw money on the counter, offered a wave of farewell, and left the tavern, his step just a trifle unsteady. He heard derisive laughter behind him and a contemptuous smile flickered across his mouth.

He reached the
Mary Rose
without incident a little before midnight. Climbed onto the deck, gave orders that they should take the ship out of sight of land, and went below.

Meg was curled up on the window seat, still reading Mrs. Radcliff’s
The Italian
. She didn’t think she’d ever taken so long to get through a book, and had a moment of regret for the long line of eager ladies waiting for its return to Mrs. Carson’s lending library. She jumped up as Cosimo came in and Gus announced, “G’day,” swooping from the window seat onto Cosimo’s shoulder.

Meg looked him over carefully. He seemed the same as always. “You’re back,” she said, stating the obvious. “Did everything go well?”

He shook his head as he discarded his cloak. “No,” he said.

“Why? What happened?” Concerned, she came over to him. “Are you hurt, Cosimo?” Alarm edged the question.

He shook his head again. “No . . . no . . . not a scratch.
I’m
fine.”

Meg stepped back a pace. “So who isn’t?” She watched his expression.

“The courier didn’t appear,” he said flatly. “I can only assume something happened to prevent him.”

Meg frowned. “Will you try again tomorrow?”

“No, I can’t risk it. It’s an absolute rule. If a meeting fails, we don’t try it again.”

“Oh.” That made sense in the strange world that Cosimo inhabited. “What will you do?”

“They’re vital dispatches,” he said.

“Where are they?” Meg asked. “May I see them?”

For answer he unbuttoned his shirt. Tucked snugly beneath his armpit was a tightly folded packet of paper. “Why would you wish to see them?”

And now she felt stupid for her doubts. “No real reason, of course. But what are you going to do with them? Is there someone else who can take them?”

“No.” He unfastened the thin leather strap that held the papers in place and took them out, setting them on the chart table. “We work in exclusive circles. It’s the only way to keep information safe. This circle is now closed.”

“But if they’re vital?” Meg wondered why she was pursuing this when she knew perfectly well that he was going to take the dispatches himself. Wherever their final destination was.

He pursed his lips. “You know what I’m going to say.”

“Yes. Where do they have to go?”

“Toulon.”

Meg’s eyes widened. “But that’s on the Mediterranean. It’s the other side of France. You’ll have to sail around Spain, through the Strait of Gibraltar.”

“Your geography is impeccable, my dear,” he said, regarding her with a smile that was both questioning and rueful. “As it happens, I don’t intend to sail.”

“Go overland?” She tried to envisage the map in her mind. Such a trek across the center of France in the middle of a war, with sensitive dispatches . . . “Sweet heaven,” she murmured.

“Come with me.”

For a moment she was breathless. She looked at him dumbstruck as the prospect of such a journey, such an adventure at the side of the privateer, took shape, the map of France opening up in her mind’s eye. She took a deep, slow breath and asked simply, “How will I get back?”

“The
Mary Rose
will sail into the Mediterranean to meet us. It will take her perhaps two weeks longer than it will take us.” He kept his voice calmly matter-of-fact, as if what he was suggesting was a simple and perfectly reasonable, logical adaptation to changed circumstances.

“Will I ever get home?” Meg murmured more to herself than to Cosimo. She wasn’t so far lost in the joys of passionate adventuring as to be completely unaware of the very real possibility that such a journey could end in disaster. What would happen if the
Mary Rose
was lost at sea, sunk by a French vessel, leaving them stranded in the center of a French port on the Mediterranean? What would she do if something happened to Cosimo on the overland journey? There were no guarantees, despite the privateer’s cool confidence.