His Wicked Kiss (15 page)

Hearing voices in the other direction, she glanced over and drew in her breath. Five rough-looking sailors were trudging down the companionway, heading for the orlop deck. She pressed back deeper into the shadows and surmised that these were Mr. Brody and his mates. Blending into the perpetual twilight belowdecks, she stepped into another companionway and ascended to the middle gun-deck, creeping silently down the passage.

Steadying herself against the rocking of the ship, she could smell the galley stoves cooking and hear the men relaying orders through the hatch. On this level, the flanks of
The Winds of Fortune
were also lined with long rows of bristling cannons, but here, the wooden gun ports were open on both sides, creating a delicious cross-breeze.

Glorious golden sunshine filtered down through the grate over the hatch some yards away.
Eden
stopped to stare at it for a moment. Lured like one mesmerized, she crept toward it, blinking against the light.

For a brief moment, alone in the companionway, she allowed herself to absorb it, stepping into the stray shaft of dusty sunlight. She tilted her head back, basking in its nourishing glow. Closing her eyes only for a second, letting the beam of sunlight warm her face, she suddenly sensed someone watching her.

She had heard no one, but when she flicked her eyes open and looked down the dark passageway, she saw him—a formidable silhouette at the far end of the corridor.

He had just stepped down from the companionway and stood motionless, staring at her. The light from above fell upon his head and across his broad shoulders, haloing his tall, powerfully muscled form with its brilliance, though his face was in shadow.

Looming and darkly beautiful, he said not a word as their stares clashed from across the passageway.

Jack.

Like the prey entranced by the predator, she was momentarily transfixed by the way his aquamarine eyes glowed in the half-light; his stare stayed fixed on her, just like in her ballroom fantasy.

She remembered then that she was a trespasser on his property; this ship was his floating fortress, and he its feudal lord. He did not call out to her, but the second he moved—began striding toward her—
Eden
whirled around and fled.

She raced aft with all the jungle stealth at her command, but when the ship rocked, she nearly tumbled headlong into the officers’ wardroom, lieutenants and midshipmen preparing to dine.

Recovering her balance, she rushed on, not stopping to heed one of the officers who yelled after her, “Look lively, sailor! Man your post!”

She could sense Jack coming after her, feel him gaining on her. She flung around another dim corner of the passageway, but all that was ahead of her was the open deck.

Casting about in desperation for any place to hide, she spotted a closet marked
LIFE BUOYS
and dove into it. She wedged herself in among the piles of hard cork life rings and pulled the door shut silently. She held her breath, her heart pounding.

Listening hard over the din of her own thundering heartbeat, she heard sharp, forceful strides approaching over the wooden planks.

“Captain, is something amiss?”

“Did anyone come this way just now?” a deep, commanding baritone rumbled.

“Why, yes, sir. One of the quartermaster’s lads, I think. He ran up on deck a moment ago.”

Lord Jack growled, just outside the door of the closet.

Eden
waited with her heart in her throat.

After another nerve-racking moment, he prowled on.

Just when she started to exhale, a light, swift tapping sound scampered after the captain—was that a dog? The animal stopped suddenly. Along the crack at the bottom of the closet, an eager, rapid snuffling sound arose.
Eden
’s eyes widened in the darkness. She could just make out the tip of a black canine snout.
Oh, no
…

An explosion of wild barking erupted from the other side of the closet door. She gasped and fell backward against a pile of hard cork life buoys. Panic rose up swiftly, instinct readying her to fight or flee.

“Rudy! Here, boy! Enough o’ that!” the officer scolded. “What mischief are you into now?”

Slowly, the hard, firm footsteps returned.

“I think he’s cornered one of the ship’s cats, my lord.”

Their ominous rhythm stopped on the other side of the door. “We’ll see.”

Jack grabbed Rudy’s collar and handed the dog off to
Peabody
with a nod silently instructing him to take the animal away. He paid no mind to the other officers who had come out of the wardroom and crowded into the passageway to see what had caused the commotion.

Turning once more to the closet with narrowed eyes, Jack waved the men back and drew his cutlass in case he was wrong about their stowaway’s identity. God’s truth, he still wasn’t sure if he believed his eyes after the vision of that lithe figure he had spotted in the corridor, standing in a sunbeam.

Warily, he gripped the latch and suddenly threw the door open, thrusting his free hand blindly into the closet. As his questing hand grasped the front of the miscreant’s clothing, a small yelp rose from the darkness.

“Come out of there!” he boomed, hauling the stowaway out into the open.

Despite the fact that he’d already guessed it, seeing her again, eye to eye, shocked him to the core. It was Eden Farraday, all right—looking a mess, trapped, and terrified of his wrath.

Jack released her as though he had been burned.

His flabbergasted stare traveled over her, from the soiled bandana tied around her head to the dirty shirt, men’s waistcoat, and oversized breeches she wore held up by a length of knotted cord, all the way down to her scuffed, dusty knee boots.

He could hardly find his tongue. “You’re going to show up in
London
looking like that?” he blurted out, still dazed.

She let out a war cry at his cynical greeting, and perhaps he should have known better than to corner the little wild thing, for even as he stood there in astonishment, she attacked, flying at him. She shoved him aside with what he guessed was all her might, though he barely budged, then she launched past him.

He reached for her, but in the blink of an eye, she ducked under his arm and fled. He pivoted and grabbed her, but only got the canvas knapsack on her shoulder. The girl herself kept running.

Jack suddenly looked down and realized she had nicked his pistol right out of its holster on his hip. Now he glowered.

“After her!” he bellowed at his men.

“
Her
, Captain?” one echoed in surprise.

The young midshipman blanched at Jack’s hellish glance.

They scrambled to obey.

Damn her, the maddening minx!

He was right behind the pack of his men, stalking with heavy footfalls down the dim companionway. He’d ring her bloody neck for that stunt. How dare she take his weapon—with so many of his men there to witness it? How could he have let her?

Ah, but a beauty like Eden Farraday was made for making fools out of men.

“Where do you think you’re going to go?” he roared as she went pounding up the gangway like the fox with the hounds at her heels. “We’re in the middle of the damned ocean!”

In her panic, she dashed out onto the upper gun-deck, no doubt blinded by the blaring sunshine after so many days belowdecks.

The baying of his men had roused the crew on duty topside, and by the time Jack reached the top of the gangway, his horde of lusty tars had their stowaway surrounded.

“Easy, now, there’s a bold lad,” good old Higgins was saying, trying to contain the situation.

“Lad or lass?” another sailor yelled. “Cap said it’s a her!”

Shocked murmurs rippled through the crew as the rumor traveled across the decks.

Jack saw that although she was ringed in on all sides, the girl struggled to keep them all at bay with her jungle machete in one hand, his stolen pistol in the other.

“A her?” the men were murmuring.

“It can’t be,” others scoffed.

“He’s wearing breeches, ain’t he?”

“So? You never heard o’ them Queer Moll clubs where the gents prance around wearing ladies’ gowns? She could be the opposite of their sort.”

“Or a lady pirate, like Mary Read or Anne Bonny!” another helpful soul chimed in.

“I’m not a lady pirate, you mongrels!”
Eden
hollered at them, but this did nothing to resolve the question. “Stay back!”

Hearty laughter spread across the decks, but Jack frowned, squinting against the sun. This was hardly the sort of thing he cared for his sailors to discuss in front of a young girl, but a dose of male crudity might be exactly what she needed to illustrate the fact that the world beyond her green paradise was a dark and strange and frequently dangerous place.

Maybe then the chit would learn she could simply not carry out whatever mad adventure popped into her head. God, she was as bad as her daft father, he thought as he restrained the surge of protective instinct that coursed through him. Folding his arms across his chest, he let the lads taunt her for a moment while he remained in the shadow of the ship’s waist, close enough to intervene if need be. For now, he decided to give her a minute or two to test her mettle.
The minx got herself into this. Let’s see how well she can get herself out of it
.

With raucous humor, the crew continued debating the mystery of their stowaway’s gender. Their confusion was understandable, given her boyish clothes and the nimble way she wielded two weapons at once—a fact that infused Jack with an absurd sense of pride in the little tigress.

She had lost weight since their jungle encounter; with her hair tied back beneath the kerchief, her delicate features had been sharpened by hunger. Her athletic leanness had dwindled to a wiry, waiflike fragility, and she was looking decidedly bony, the loose, masculine clothing hanging off her thin frame. But although her smudged, pale face bespoke youthful strength, fierceness, and grim resolve that might have belonged to either sex, for all that, she was just a girl.

Nervously scanning the wall of dirty, sweaty, rough men that ringed her in, her gaze stopped on Jack, her green eyes flashing out a heart-tugging plea for help.

Finally, she seemed to have gotten a good look at his crew and had apparently realized that, aside from her knife and the two bullets in Jack’s double-barreled pistol, he was her only possible protection.

He merely lifted his eyebrows and sent her an attentive smile, waiting to see her next move.

At his show of amused indifference, her pleading gaze of a moment ago hardened to one of defiance. A stubborn gleam came into her eyes as if to say,
To hell with you, Jack Knight. I don’t need you, anyway
!

Hmm
, he thought. Having dealt with innumerable unruly and cocky youths before, indeed having been one himself ages ago, he had long since learned how to manage such creatures. They usually made fine sailors after a few months of his pounding them into submission. Eventually they realized that one of them was going to break and it wasn’t going to be Jack. Some navy-style discipline was all it took; their juvenile aversion to authority merely required a bit of taming.

But all those countless young sailors he’d subdued had been males, he realized a tad uneasily, and though his crew might still be in the dark on the matter, Jack was acutely aware that their little stowaway was very much a woman—a species, God knew, that operated under an entirely different set of nature’s laws.

Trahern, in charge of the watch, now marched onto the scene. “Leave off! Back to your posts! The captain will deal with the lad! Leave the boy alone, all of you!”

Jack arched a brow sardonically to find Trahern still innocent of their stowaway’s true identity.

One of the sailors tried to educate him on the matter. “I’m tellin’ ye, Mr. Trahern, that there ain’t no lad!”

“Aye, it is!” another argued.

“You’re blind! I’ll bet ye grog rations.”

“I’ll take that wager! Look at the eyes, aye, you can tell by the mouth of ‘er!”

The sailor rolled his eyes. “Pretty little girlies don’t use guns!”

“So, what
are
you, then?” big Ballast the gunner demanded, sauntering up to her without fear of her weapons, his gold tooth flashing, his bald head gleaming in the sun.

Jack tensed a bit, looking on. Every ship had its chief troublemaker, and on
The Winds of Fortune
, that distinction belonged to Ballast, the surly gunner who fancied himself first among the crew and obeyed only two people on the ship: Mr. Brody and Cap’n Jack.

“Lass or lad?” he taunted her. “Show us your bait-‘n’-tackle and settle the wager!”

“Stay back!” she warned as Ballast, laughing, made a swipe to grab her arm and missed.

Eden
nimbly twisted clear of him.

“Aw, don’t be like that,” he persisted, circling her, while most of the crew laughed at their sport. “We want to see what you got!”