His Wicked Kiss (31 page)

More days passed.

If there was any way to make the ship go faster, Jack would have left
Eden
at his Irish estate and simply let her drop out of his life, sailing away on his mission.

But there was not.

He was stuck with her in a cramped cell in the middle of an endless ocean. There was nowhere to escape from her, and nowhere to escape from his bleak certainty that no one was ever going to love him, no matter how rich he got or how many companies he owned; and no matter how many times he told himself that he didn’t give a damn, it was always going to hurt.

As
The Winds of Fortune
crept higher into the north latitudes, autumnal temperatures above the equator gave way to winter, cold and gray.

They’d be there soon.

Eden
was having a terrible time with her sewing. As night descended, the winter’s early twilight encroaching, she worked by candlelight in the stateroom, seated on the red leather window bench. Her hands were wobbly with the needle until she even pricked her finger.

“Ow!” She threw her work down, popped her finger in her mouth, and noticed herself feeling seasick.

She assumed at first that the ill, shaky feeling in her stomach was due entirely to being upset over her fight with Jack, who had barely spoken to her since his explosion. Without his friendship, the sea had become a very desolate place. He had taken to sleeping in a hammock in the stateroom, leaving
Eden
to lie awake alone in his berth, fearing to contemplate what could happen to her in this elemental shipboard world with her protector angry at her. But when she heard the low whistling of a draft blowing in through the cracks around the closed jib door, and noticed the fine brandy sloshing about in its crystal decanter atop the mahogany cabinet, she realized there might be another explanation for her touch of mal de mer.

Turning to gaze out the bank of stern windows, her breath formed steam on the glass; she saw that the wind had picked up and the sea had turned choppy. Whitecaps showed here and there atop the dark waves. Farther out, the indigo line of the horizon seesawed a bit more distinctly. The ship was so big that its rocking most of the time was nominal, but now she could feel its motion. Perhaps they were in for a gale.

Wonderful
. A storm brewing outside, and a human hurricane at the helm, cold and dark and unpredictable…

That man.

She considered going topside to ask the captain what was happening, but on second thought, that sounded like a recipe for more hurt, since he clearly wasn’t speaking to her anymore—even though she had said she was sorry. Even though she had only been trying to help.

With a sigh,
Eden
leaned against the wooden bulkhead and drew her slippered feet up onto the leather bench, wrapping her arms around her bent knees.

She was a little angry at him for being angry at her. Perhaps it was time to revisit her visions of dashing Town dandies in coats from Savile Row. Elegant men. Cultured men.

Pirate-barbarian-beasts who yelled in her face had never been part of the plan.

Still, it was strange to think that under that façade of rock-hard invulnerability, Black-Jack Knight was exactly what she had said he was from the start: a big, howling lion beset by a nasty thorn in his sensitive paw pad.

Why, he’s just a big baby, she thought in simmering mutiny, especially when she recalled the day he had first found her aboard his vessel and had forced her to strip. Oh, not for lascivious reasons, she understood now.

The man was, sadly, expert at controlling his lust. He had given the order because he had known it would symbolically reduce her to complete vulnerability—and why should he want that? she thought. Because he trusted no one. Not even a harmless stowaway.

He had wanted her naked before him in every sense of the word, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, as well. He had wanted to stare into the deepest regions of her soul, and she had let him—
Why
? she thought again.
Because I have nothing to hide
.

Ah, but let her get a peek at
him
without his steely armor on, that tough, bad, need-nobody aura of his, and
this
was how he behaved. Thundering at her and slamming about like a huge, terrifying barbarian.

Just then, a pattering of footfalls reached her from beyond the stateroom’s door. The Nipper burst in. “Miss Edie! Miss Edie! Up on deck! Quick, hurry!”

“Phineas, what is the matter?”

Barreling over to her, the boy grabbed her hand. “Come on, hurry, I’ll show you!”

“Let me get my pelisse—”

“No, you’ll miss it!” He was already pulling her out of her seat. “Come on!”

Befuddled by the child’s clamor, she let the Nipper tug her outside, but the moment she stepped onto the quarterdeck, she stopped in her tracks.

“Look!” The boy pointed, but
Eden
was already staring up at the sails in amazement.

Against a black and moonless sky with a wisp of fog, an eerie blue light danced along the spars and coated all the ship’s sails.

She stared at it, frightened yet mesmerized.

The ghostly illumination was as bright as lightning, but clung to the canvas, hanging stationary, only wafting on the night’s haze.

With a glow like blue flame, its brilliance illumined the humble faces of the crewmen on deck who were virtually silent with awe, marveling at the phenomenon.

Some blessed themselves with the sign of the Cross while others took off their caps and clutched them to their chests in superstitious reverence.

Then she noticed something else. The strong wind of a mere quarter hour ago had stopped.

They were becalmed.

Looking around, she spotted Jack standing near the mizzen mast, his head tilted back as he, too, gazed at the unearthly lights. He was very still, his angular features bathed in the strange blue glow.

For a moment,
Eden
stared at the rugged captain of
The Winds of Fortune
, looming a head taller than all of his devoted crew. Drawn to him, she climbed the ladder to the poop deck and walked toward him, ignoring the fact that he was angry at her. She had to be near him in this moment, she knew not why. Perhaps to share in the miracle with him. Perhaps fear of the unknown phenomenon drove her to his side, seeking him out for the instinctual sense of protection that she always felt when he was near.

As she strode toward him, she detected a strange charge of electricity fairly crackling in the air, like the change in atmosphere that came before a tempest. It made the hairs on her arms and nape rise, but the pounding of her heart was entirely due to Jack’s presence.

He seemed unaware of her study. Warmly dressed to ward off the elements, he wore a thick brown corduroy coat with a woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, his hands encased in a pair of heavy work gloves. The dark scruff on his jaw was growing back in, giving him once again that rough edge that she secretly found irresistible.

Indeed, she hesitated, for at the moment he looked as large, remote, and forbidding as a rocky island in the middle of a cold, cold sea. He looked so hard, so tough, and so alone, she thought, though he stood in the middle of his crew. His expression was closed and guarded, his mouth a firm, unsmiling line. Then he looked over and noticed her there.

He stared at her as she approached with cautious steps; seeing the stony look in his eyes, a small corner of her heart despaired. Even if she gave him everything she had, she would probably never really reach this man, never make him stay.

In his own way, he had isolated himself from the world as thoroughly as Papa had. Papa had the jungle; Jack had the sea. Papa had science; Jack had work. Her father had turned his back on civilization because it had destroyed the woman he loved; Jack kept humanity at arm’s length, coolly rejecting the world before it rejected him.

That had to be why he had gotten so angry, she concluded as she held his stare. He must have thought that she, too, would reject him on account of his bastardy. Those scars clearly ran deep. Rejecting Jack, however, was the farthest thing from her mind.

Closing the distance between them with slow, measured paces,
Eden
faced facts: She wanted to be with this man. So badly that it shook her. But even if he would have her, after coming all this way in her journey, how could she even contemplate linking herself to a husband who would only drag her along into his lonely exile, just like Papa?

She could imagine it now—life as Lady Jack Knight. Sailing across the globe from port to port. Never settling down. No solid home. No normal life. They would be nomads.

Rootless.

But at least I would be with him
, she thought bravely.

Jack Knight, in all his dark, flawed glory.

He said nothing as she joined him. He merely reached into his coat and took out a cheroot. Though he put it in his mouth, as usual, he didn’t light it. Cap’n Jack loved his cigars, but he allowed no smoking on the ship—after all, her hull was made of wood.

She looked up once more at the strange floating illumination. “What is it?” she whispered.

“Saint Elmo’s Fire.”

“But what is it, where does it come from?”

“Nobody knows.” Jack looked at her warily in the darkness.

“It’s wondrous,” she breathed. As she tilted her head back to study the weird blue light, she could feel him staring at her.

Then his voice reached her, low and deep. “They say the chance to experience it only comes along once in a lifetime.”

She was afraid to look at him. “R-Really?”

“Aye.” He, too, stared up at the sails in guarded nonchalance. “Conditions have to be just right. Even then, it never lasts.”

“Oh.” Her heart was pounding, but his final words had left her slightly crushed. “I-It doesn’t last?”

“Not for me.”

A slight shift of the rocking deck set her slightly off balance; Jack steadied her, and the strange lightning seemed to leap between them.

She glanced up at him, mumbling her t
hank
s as the spectral glow enshrouded them; she found him staring at her like a man who was stuck inside himself and didn’t know how to get out.

She held his gaze with a lump in her throat, but she knew it was now or never. She had to let him know how much she cared.

“Jack,” she whispered. “I realize you’re embarrassed I found out about your father—”

“Embarrassed?” he echoed with a low, bitter laugh.

It stung her. “I thought it might help if I told you something embarrassing about me.”

A skeptical pause. “Like what?”

“That night we tended Peter Stockwell together, and I told you about how I yearned for so long to go to
London
. Remember, I said I wanted to take part in all the pleasures of the Season?”

He nodded.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with you about why.”

He slanted her a piercing look of question. The sharp, cool suspicion on his face left no doubt that his immediate assumption was some unworthy ulterior motive on her part.

“I couldn’t come out and say it that night when we were talking because I didn’t want you to think me a fool. But, Jack, the real reason I was so desperate to take part in the Season is simply because I-I wanted to find a husband. But not just any husband. Oh—blazes, this isn’t coming out right.” Her cheeks flamed.

Jack watched her with a look of fascinated distrust.

“The true reason I wanted to go back to civilization was to find—someone to love,” she forced out before she lost her nerve. “Only, I-I think I may have already found him.”

He stared fiercely at her.

Eden
held his gaze, her heart pounding. She shivered in the cold, more naked now in her walking dress than she had been when he had ordered her to strip.

He looked away almost angrily.

Why doesn’t he say something? I practically told him I loved him. Oh, God, why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut?

Unable to bear his damning silence, she scanned the sails, wishing any passing whale might leap up and swallow her. “So, er, why is it called Saint Elmo’s Fire?”

“Patron saint of sailors,” he mumbled, avoiding her gaze just as studiously as she avoided his.

She suddenly frowned. “Is it dangerous? Could it not set the sails on fire?”

“No. Nothing like that. It is an omen,” he added in a low tone.

“Of what?” At last, she forced herself to turn to him.

His shrewd gaze scanned the dark skies. “Storm.” Even as he uttered the ominous word, the blue glow began to fade, gone in another heartbeat.

The night sky turned to black.

“Barometer’s been dropping all day,” he added.

The reverent hush lingered all around the decks; the men watched the sky in silence, waiting to see if it might come back.

Instead, the wind returned, rising with eerie speed. With a burst of frigid air, it warned them all of its malicious intent, aggressively flapping the sails.