Secrets of an Accidental Duchess (42 page)

Briggs turned to Will and nodded, the edges of his blue eyes crinkling against the glare. “Aye, captain. But we’ve been out here a fortnight already and haven’t seen any hint of ’em.” The wind had picked up, and it ruffled through the other man’s tawny hair and sent wisps of fog swirling through the rigging behind him.

“We’ll find them.” Will squeezed Briggs’s shoulder. Neither man said any more; instead both turned back to gaze out over the ocean. The sea was slowly gathering strength after its rest from the gale, and the schooner
sliced through the small waves at a faster pace now. Will took a deep breath of the salt air. So much cleaner than the stale, rank air full of sewage and coal smoke in London.

“What’s that?” Briggs asked.

Will glanced at the man to see him squinting out over the open ocean.

“What’s what?”

Briggs pointed straight ahead. “That.”

Will scanned the sea. Could he have been wrong all this time? Could they encounter the smugglers’ ship way out here? Even as he thought it, he realized how unlikely it was. More likely they’d come across another legal English or Irish vessel.

Seeing nothing, he methodically scanned the blurred, foggy horizon once again, and then he saw it: the figure of a boat solidifying like a specter from the fog.

Will frowned. This vessel was far too small to be this far out at sea on its own.

After half a minute in which they both stared at the emerging shape, Briggs murmured, “Holy hell. Is it a jolly boat?”

“With a broken mast,” Will said, nodding. “I don’t see anyone in it. Can you?”

Briggs leaned forward, squinting hard. He shook his head, but then frowned. “Maybe. Lying on the center bench?”

The mast looked like it had snapped off to about a third of its height, and half the sail appeared to be draped off the side of the little boat, floating in the water. No one was attempting to row.

The boat was adrift. And the
Freedom
was headed straight for it.

Will could see at least one figure now—or at least a mound of pinkish fabric piled on one of the benches. Beside the bench, he saw the movement. Just the smallest shudder, like the twitch of a frightened puppy crouched beneath one of the bench seats.

He spun around and shouted out an order to Ellis, the man at the helm. They’d been sailing close-hauled, and he told Ellis to turn into the wind on his command. If they timed it properly, rather than barreling right over the little boat and tearing it to splinters, they could pass it on the port side without getting its floating sail tangled in their keel or rudder.

“Aye, captain!” Ellis answered.

Will heard a shout. He turned to take stock of the other seamen on deck. There were six additional men, four of them clustered near Ellis and pointing at the figure of the boat emerging from the fog. The other two had been at work swabbing the deck, but were now looking at the emerging vessel in fascination.

“Fetch the hook,” someone shouted, and a pair of seamen hurried down the port deck where the telescoping hook was lashed.

Everyone else was still asleep, but Will could easily make do with the nine of them. The
Freedom
was sixty feet of sleek power, and one of the most impressive of her attributes was that her sails were controlled by a series of winches, making a large crew unnecessary. In fact, Ellis and three others could easily control the ship while Briggs, Will, and the other seamen secured the little vessel.

“We’ll draw alongside it on our port side,” Will murmured to Briggs. Even after such a short time aboard the
new ship, Will had impeccable timing when it came to the
Freedom.
Briggs and the crew often laughed that the ship was such a part of him he could command it to do anything he wanted with a mere thought. The truth was, Will knew the
Freedom
intrinsically. He could predict with great accuracy how it would react to any manipulation of its sails and rudder—certainly a result of knowing everything about the ship since its earliest conceptualization.

“Aye, sir,” Briggs said. “I’ll prepare to secure it portside.”

“Very good.” Will turned back toward the jolly boat as Briggs hurried toward midship. He could see the figure on the bench more clearly now, and he swallowed hard.

It was definitely a woman. The pink was her dress, a messy, frothy, lacy concoction spattered with the muck that was part of the inner workings of any sailing vessel. She lay prone and motionless on the bench. Beside her, the brownish lump wasn’t entirely clear. A dog, Will thought, probably dead afraid, with its head tucked under its body.

He waited another two minutes. The wind had begun to gust, and Will adjusted his plan to compensate. He waited, on edge, judging the wind and the closing distance between the two vessels. Finally he shouted, “Haul up!”

Ellis responded instantly to his order, turning the wheel so the
Freedom
sailed directly into the wind. The sails began to flap wildly, but Will heard the whir of the winches, and soon the sheets were pulled taut.

The
Freedom
lost speed quickly as the jolly boat approached, and they drifted to a halt just as a seaman reached out with the grappling hook to snag the gunwale of the small vessel.

Will ran to the port side while Briggs lashed the boat to the
Freedom
’s cleats and one of the seamen secured a ladder. He had already descended the ladder when Will arrived at the scene.

“There’s a lady here, sir!” The seaman, Davis, who was really just a boy, looked up at Will wide-eyed, as if uncertain what to do.

“Can you carry her, lad?” Will called down. The poor woman hadn’t budged, and her matted hair and torn clothing covered her features. He hoped she could breathe through that thick tangle of blonde hair. He hoped she was alive.

Davis looked rather horrified at the prospect of carrying her, but with a gulp that rolled his prominent Adam’s apple, he nodded. Widening his stance for balance in the bouncing jolly boat, he leaned over and gingerly tucked his arms under the figure of the unmoving woman and hefted her up.

Will saw movement from the corner of his eyes, and he glanced over at the lump he’d thought was a dog.

Two brown eyes stared at him from under a mass of shaggy brown hair. It was looking up from its position curled into a ball on the floor of the jolly boat, but it was no dog. It was a child, and he was creeping backward, as if he were considering escape.

Seeing that his first mate had looked up from his task and had noticed the child as well, Will nodded at Briggs. “Go down and grab him,” he murmured. “Best hurry, too—the boy looks like he’s about to leap overboard.”

Briggs leapt over the side of the
Freedom,
his movements graceful. The man had a way about him on a ship—no matter where he was from the bilge to the top of
the mast, he was inherently graceful and self-composed, even in twenty-foot seas.

Briggs’s fast motion evidently frightened the boy, because he hurried backward, and when Briggs stepped over the bench toward him, he scrambled up the gunwale and leapt overboard. Briggs was lightning quick, though. He whipped out his hand, grabbed the urchin by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him back into the boat.

Without making any noise, the boy kicked and flailed, his hands gripping the strong arms around him and trying to yank them away.

“Feisty one, aren’t you?” Will heard Briggs murmur above the slap of the waves against the jolly boat’s hull. “But don’t worry, lad. We’re here to help you, not hurt you.”

That seemed to calm the boy enough for Briggs to get a firmer grip on him, and Will turned back to Davis, who was struggling with getting the lady up the ladder. Another seaman, MacInerny, had climbed halfway down to help, and they’d managed to heft her halfway up.

Will bent over and reached down for her, managing to grasp her beneath the armpits, and with the two seamen’s help, he managed to pull her the rest of the way up. It wasn’t that she was heavy—she was actually a slip of a thing. But the movement of the ocean combined with her dead weight and frothy torn clothing combined to make it a cumbersome process.

Cradling her head, Will gently laid her on the deck.

“She’s breathing,” Davis gasped as he scrambled up the ladder. “She lives!”

Will heaved out a sigh of relief.

Holding the little boy—who looked to be about five
or six years old, though Will was certainly no authority on children—Briggs stepped onto the deck. The four men hovered over the woman. Crouched near her feet, Davis cleared his throat and tugged her dress down over the torn and dirty stockings covering her legs.

With his heart suddenly pounding hard, Will raised his hand to push away the blonde mass of hair obscuring her features. Her hair was dense with wetness and salt, but he cleared it away from her face, his callused fingertips scraping over the soft curve of her cheek.

“Oh God,” Will choked, his hand frozen over her hair. “Oh my God.”

“What is it, sir?” Briggs asked.

Will blinked away the water threatening to stream from his eyes.

Was he overtired? Had the intensity of the storm and lack of proper sleep caused him to have strange, perverse dreams?

No. God no, he was awake. There was too much color—the dewy flesh of her skin, the light brown of the freckles of her nose, the pink and white of her dress. Beyond the rancid smell of bilge water—originating from the boy, he thought—he could smell her, too. She’d always smelled like fresh sugar, like the sugar cane from the plantation in Antigua where she’d been raised.

Was she a ghost?

Half fearing she’d evaporate like fog beneath his fingers, he clasped both sides of her face and turned it upward, so she would have been staring at him were her eyes open.

“You’re real,” he whispered. Leaning down, he held his cheek over her mouth and nose and felt the soft puff of her breath.

Davis was right—she
was
alive.

How could this be? She’d been lost at sea eight years ago—on the other side of the Atlantic. Had she been adrift all this time, like some sleeping beauty, waiting for him—her prince—to find her and kiss her awake?

Did he dare hope that this wasn’t some cruel joke of fate?

“Meg,” he breathed. The dewy feel of her skin beneath his fingertips swept through him like the stroke of a rose petal. “Meg? Wake up,” he murmured. “Wake up, love.”

The urge overcame him, and forgetting the men staring at him, at them, he bent forward and pressed his lips to hers.