His Wicked Kiss (52 page)

Hurt and furious and feeling entirely rejected, Jack dove headlong into work, just as he always did. He went straight to the office at his company warehouse beside the river, where he found Trahern in charge and the job running smoothly. He walked in, greeted his dog, glad that at least somebody appreciated him, then asked Trahern for a report on the latest progress.

“Excellent news, Captain.” The higher level of responsibility seemed to sit well with the young lieutenant. He held himself straighter and possessed a new air of self-assurance. “You know those fellows your kinsman, Lord Rackford, sent me to see? Well, my visit with them produced another seventy recruits. That now makes a full three hundred from London. Provided everyone who signed on actually shows up, we’ll reach Bolivar with a full brigade, exactly as we promised.”

“Fine work, Trahern.”

“T
hank
you, sir. We also received word today from Ireland and Cornwall. They’re just about ready there.”

“Good. How much time do we need before we can go?”

“Well, the supplies are being loaded onboard as we speak.” Trahern nodded past the wide, barn-style doors toward the river, where
The Winds of Fortune
rode proudly at anchor.

Jack gazed wistfully at her, eager to be underway again and free of all this maddening Society and the exasperation of trying to get through to Eden. At least at sea he knew where he stood.

“It should take another eight to ten hours to complete the loading,” Trahern continued. “Meanwhile, we shall have to send the word out to the men. They’ll need a little notice to say their good-byes, but on the whole, these lads have nothing to keep them here. I’d say we could probably lift anchor in forty-eight hours. The only thing still missing is Lord Arthur to load up the
Valiant
with the rest of the supplies, but he could always catch up later.”

Jack agreed, nodding. “He needn’t delay us. I can have Lucien tie up loose ends with him when he gets here.”

“Why the sudden rush to shove off?” Trahern asked, turning to him. “Trouble with Ruiz?”

“No.” He paused, lowering his gaze. “Everything’s fine.”

Trahern studied him. “Jack, you look like hell. What’s wrong?”

He snorted and shook his head, and paced away from him, fed up. “I should’ve tupped the maid when I had the chance,” he said under his breath.

“Fight with the wife?”

“My boy, I believe I shall spend the rest of the night in a brothel,” he announced. “Pity you can’t join me, but you’ve got work to do.”

Trahern stared at him. “Do you really mean that?”

Jack looked at him for a moment then let out a weary sigh. “Let’s just finish this and get out of here. Perhaps absence will make her heart grow fonder.”

“Aye-aye,” Trahern said warily.

As he turned away to resume his work, Jack noticed that his dog had come to attention. Rudy was staring outside at the dark in the direction of a tower of crates waiting to be loaded onto the jolly boats.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Jack murmured with a faint smile. “Is it a chicken?”

Normal dogs chased cats, but his quirky bull-terrier usually went for the poultry.

All of a sudden, Rudy went tearing out of the warehouse barking viciously.

That was not the bark of a dog at play.

Rudy was on the attack, and Jack was right behind him.

Ruiz.

Leave it to Rudy to go after a trained assassin, fearless mutt.
If he shoots my dog, I’ll cut his heart out
.

Too quick for a mere human to catch, Rudy had disappeared into the night, but Jack could still hear him barking. Pistol in one hand, knife in the other, Jack pounded down the long wooden quay, then turned into one of the treacherous docklands alleys between warehouses, following the sound of his dog’s continued ruckus.

Down the alley, Jack spotted Rudy trying to jump over a very tall gate, bouncing as though on springs, his front paws hitting against the wooden door. Whoever it was must have slipped away behind there, he thought as he ran toward his dog to investigate.

“Down, boy. Easy, Rudy. Where’d he go, boy?”

Jack jumped up, grabbing the wooden top of the tall gate, and pulled himself up, peering over the other side. He scanned the bare, cobbled yard beyond, but there was no sign of motion and little to hide behind, other than an old wagon.

He released his hold, jumping back down again. He glanced around with his gun at the ready, but seeing no one, he bent down to make sure his brave little dog was unharmed.

“Hey, Rudy. There’s a good boy. You all right?” Since the bull-terrier was white with only the one black ring around his eye, Jack noticed at once that Rudy had something dark around his mouth. When he checked the dog’s muzzle, he realized it was blood—and it did not appear to belong to Rudy.

“By George, you got him,” he murmured. “You bit the bastard, didn’t you?”

Pleased with himself but still agitated, Rudy shifted his weight from side to side, then sat down wagging his tail; he looked up at Jack with a wide, canine grin.

“You little bruiser,” Jack whispered, shaking his head, but he was mystified by the obvious question. Manuel de Ruiz probably knew six ways to kill with his bare hands, and there was no way a trained assassin could have forgotten his weapons. So, why hadn’t he shot the dog?

Simple answer. It couldn’t have been Ruiz.

Then who
… ?

Jack spotted a small shred of cloth on the ground. He picked it up. There was blood on it, too. He’d have bet a quid that somebody was walking around with a hole in his trousers—aye, and teethmarks in his leg.

He stood up again and glanced around uneasily. The riverside regions were famous as the haunt of cutthroats and thieves.

Perhaps Rudy had simply chased off one of the local ne’er-do-wells who had come too close casing the warehouse. He was just damned glad that whoever it was hadn’t killed his dog in self-defense. “Come on, boy. Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

Rudy trotted proudly beside him back to the warehouse until Trahern appeared, then the dog went loping ahead.

The lieutenant gasped at the sight of Rudy’s bloodied muzzle. “What happened?”

“Seems we had a bit o’ company.”

“And Rudy’s quite the host.”

“Clean him up for me, would you? But give him some time. He’s a little riled up.”

“Was it Ruiz?”

“I really don’t know. It seems unlikely. He’d have shot the dog.”

“It could have been one of his underlings.”

“Hmm.” Jack considered for a moment then shook his head. “We spoke about limits, but I don’t trust that blackguard.” He nodded to himself. “I’d better get home and check on my wife.”

“What about the brothel?” Trahern quirked a smile.

Jack narrowed his eyes at him in warning.

“Captain, perhaps you should stay here in London and fix things with your lady,” the lieutenant ventured, arresting his attention as Jack turned to go. “I can run this mission on my own from this point on.”

“The hell you can,” he said idly.

“You think I can’t succeed? What, that I can’t get the ship past the Spanish? Then you’re forgetting how many times I got our silver shipments safely through those damned hordes of pirates in the Orient.”

“This is different.”

“No, it’s not. I know those waters like the back of my hand. The Spanish navy may have bigger guns—” Trahern paused as some passing workers nodded respectfully at them, then he continued in a lower tone. “But even they aren’t as ruthless as the brigands I’ve faced in the Indian Ocean, the ones that prey on merchant ships. I’ve captained those runs, Jack. I’ve outrun and outmaneuvered those heathens on many occasions—quite as well as you could at my age, if I may be permitted to say so.”

“Well, you’re not,” he muttered.

“You should stay here,” his friend said emphatically. “You’ve got too much to lose now, and I can do this. You’ve got a woman who loves you. You’re finally back in your family’s good graces—”

“Yes, but I gave the rebels my word.”

“Not to fix on details, sir, but you pledged to
recruit
and
outfit
a battalion. That means making the contacts and bankrolling the effort, which you’ve done. There really is no need for a man in your position to have to oversee every last little detail.” He grinned. “Especially when you’ve got
me
.”

Jack raised a brow.

“Let me take the men back to South America for you,” Trahern said firmly. “I’ll round the troops up and get them back to Bolivar.”

“No.”

“Jack, I know those waters like the back of my hand.”

“It isn’t that.”

“What then? Oh, but I already know,” the younger man said impatiently. “You can’t stand to give up one iota of control!”

“It’s not a matter of control,” he defended, though perhaps unconvincingly.

“What, then?”

Torn, Jack stared at his ship anchored out there on the water. His freedom. His safety. His means of escape.

“Never mind,” he grumbled. “I’ve got to go check on my wife.”

“Jack!”

“Let’s get the hell out of here and get the whole mess over with. You said you want forty-eight hours to finish? I’m giving you thirty-six.”

“You’re a proper bastard, you know.”

“Aye, and damned proud of it.”

Eden did not know where her husband had gone. She only knew he was angry at her. It was so frustrating, this tendency of his to go storming out whenever they were in conflict. It only made everything harder to solve.

She lay awake, alone, restless, in her bed. Her desire had been awakened by his earlier caresses, but her mood remained troubled. She thought about what he had said, that she was changing, losing herself. Perhaps there was
some
truth to it. Although she had become one with her girlhood fantasies, she was feeling a bit lost. She seemed to recall Jack warning her about this back on
The Winds of Fortune
.

Very well
, she admitted,
maybe I have changed a little, but I’ve never played games with his affection
. She turned over, worried. Did he really think that?

Oh, where had he gone? She missed him, her lover, her friend, and yearned for his loving to make her whole again. He was right. This had gone on long enough. She remembered the betrayed, angry look in his eyes and winced with pain.
I
never meant to hurt him
.

In any case, he had made his point. It was plain to see he was
never
going to tell her his reasons for wanting to leave her in Ireland, so she had now officially let it go. What else could she do? It wasn’t worth hurting him.

As the moments stretched out, she shifted, running her hand down her body in restless need. She was alone in her bed but it seemed she had better get used to it. Before long, Jack would be in South America, and a part of her nursed the hurt of an almost childlike sense of abandonment, an inability to understand how he could claim that he loved her so much it was killing him, and then leave her for a full half a year.

Out of sight, out of mind.

At least now she had her new family and her friends. But without Jack near to ground her in his solid strength, how much more would this life continue to change her? Would there be anything left of her by the time he returned?

Just then, she heard faintly the muffled rhythm of that swift, sure, familiar stride. Her heart skipped a beat.

Jack was back.

The faint jangle of keys and turning locks as he let himself into their suite stirred the memory of that first night she had spent in his cabin aboard
The Winds of Fortune
, after the rogue had made her strip and bathe before him.

She hadn’t known that night what her fate would be. She remembered her terror, even pretending to be asleep, as if that could stop a man of Black-Jack Knight’s reputation.

Instead, he had treated her with astonishing mercy. Gentleness. Consideration. Just as he always did. Thus he had won her trust. And, yes, she realized, she trusted him still.

And she wanted him more than ever.

Through the sitting room beyond her chamber, she heard his hard footsteps approaching, crossing toward her door.

“Eden?” The tone of his voice was taut, warning of danger. “Are you all right in there?”

She lifted her head from her pillow. “Fine, of course. What’s wrong?”

He prowled through her room, making a sweep of the dark corners and shadowed places. His big body was tensed and bristling.

She sat up in bed. “What is it?”

“Just a minute.” He stepped out onto the balcony, checked it and then glanced up at the roof. Warily satisfied, he came back inside, pulling the French doors shut and locking them.

“Has anyone been here? Any strange noises?”

“No, it’s been perfectly quiet.”

“Anyone come to the door?”

She shook her head. “No.”