The Rambunctious Lady Royston (6 page)

Samantha impatiently raked her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her face with a total lack of concern for her feminine appearance, and directed a now rather awed gaze upon her newly-acquired husband. While she had been spending her time since descending to her cabin in pointless procrastination, the Earl had obviously used the interim to wash away the stains of travel. His long, lean frame was now clad in moroccan slippers, slim black pantaloons, an impressive frogged and quilted midnight-blue dressing gown and—to add just a touch of dash—a snowy white silk cravat was draped negligently about his tanned neck.

Samantha pulled herself hastily together. "My, my," she smiled wickedly, then shrilled in her best imitation of the type of females she had observed in one of the seedier streets of London: "Ain't ye jist the eel's eyebrows, guv'nor? Coo-ee, but them be fine duds, real prime goods, I wager. Musta laid down 'alf a crown easy to the rag and bone man in Piccadilly for hoity-toity gear the likes of that."

St. John merely chuckled and advanced further into the cabin, his hooded eyes assessing his bride—who was still clad in her traveling cloak. "I hesitate to point out the obvious, but you have not yet changed, Sam. Have you a chill, or perhaps even a trifling attack of cold feet, my dear?"

Now Samantha may have possessed a fine spirit, but she was still little more than a child, and her rapidly slipping facade of bravado—if the evidence presented by her over-bright eyes and quivering chin were reliable clues—was visible to her husband. He began to have second thoughts about his decision to travel without his valet or an abigail for his wife. At the time it had seemed that the fewer people wandering about on board, the more comfortable it would be for Samantha, but perhaps a female in the form of some adored and ancient family retainer would not have come amiss.

His lordship's eyes shifted to the mound of baggage still sitting untouched on the cabin floor, and he asked if Samantha would not object to some assistance—an offer that was hastily turned aside by a vigorous shake of one flame-topped head. Considering himself dismissed, St. John excused himself with some farradiddle about speaking to the captain and quit the room, an amused smile hovering about his lips.

Samantha waited just until the door was closed before diving toward the nearest case and drawing out her Aunt Loretta's conception of all that a wedding night toilette should be: yards and yards of shimmering white silk that, once donned, had the curious effect of making Samantha look totally naked. Within minutes she was burrowed deep in the cavernous bed and tucked up to her chin in striped satin bedspread. That the burgundy clashed badly with her hair bothered her not a whit.

After cooling his heels on deck for nearly an hour, watching the yacht's progress over the water, the Earl descended once more to the main cabin, opened the door, and began jauntily: "I am returned, my bride. Are you ready to—"

Whatever he was about to say the world is destined never to know, for at that moment a loud gong somewhere above his head set up an imperious clanging and his sentence was left forever dangling.

"What in the name of all that's holy is that?" Samantha shrieked from her cocoon.

Her only answer was Zachary's sharply bitten out "Damn my eyes!"—and she was once again alone. She remained immobile for a few short moments, long enough to hear the sound of many running feet on the deck and the thunder of male voices—St. John's among them—as orders were barked and "aye-aye's" shouted back. Samantha threw back the bedspread and was perched on top of the blankets, her nightgown covered by a dark green velvet dressing gown, by the time the Earl reappeared.

His face was a study in controlled nonchalance as he told her with a sigh: "Well, pet, it seems we have a spot of trouble in the galley. The late supper I had planned for us is ruined quite beyond reclamation."

Samantha wrinkled her brow in consternation. "All this tow-row for a ruined supper? What happened to it?"

St. John shrugged his shoulders regretfully. "It burned."

"The entire supper?" Samantha asked, testing the air with her nose and catching a whiff of odd-smelling smoke. "How?"

The Earl allowed himself a rueful smile. "Sparks from the passageway, I imagine. One of the men tripped and dropped a lantern. It seems we—or at least you, my dear—must abandon ship." He held out one steady hand. "My lady?"

So matter-of-factly did the Earl inform her of the fire that Samantha herself almost accepted the threatened catastrophe as a trifling event. So blandly toned, masterfully polite, and calmly convincing was the Earl's directive that she abandon ship that Samantha held out her hand almost as if St. John were about to lead her into a country dance. Almost.

But not quite. Oh, no. Before her automatically bestowed hand could be taken into his possession, Samantha jerked it back as if she had just encountered a white-hot poker. Wrapping both arms tightly around a velvet pillow she privately thought to be the pick of the litter, she exclaimed gleefully, her words tumbling over themselves in her excitement, "A fire, Zachary? A real, honest to goodness, smoking, crackling fire? Oh, how splendid. I always did so want to fight a real fire. Not just a puny blaze, like when a spark from our parlor fireplace started the hearth rug on fire and I dumped the vase of Michaelmas daisies—there was water in the vase of course, but I guess you know that—anyway, I dumped it all over where the rug was smoldering, and pffft! the thing was done. The smoke afterwards was quite horrible, but Aunt Loretta—who was dozing not three feet from the fire—never so much as twitched an eyebrow." Samantha's face looked thoughtful for a moment. "I never could understand quite how Aunt Loretta came to be such a sound, and one could almost say, quite dedicated sleeper. Papa says Aunt Loretta's body functions on only two levels: slow and stop."

As Royston began to mumble to himself through clenched teeth and shift his body as if he were about to lunge onto the bed to drag his wife up onto deck by brute force, Samantha abruptly dismissed any thoughts of her aunt and turned on the offensive. "Zachary, I refuse to abandon ship like some cowardly rat scurrying down the anchor chain." Fears of the sea were lost in her thirst for adventure and she tilted her chin defiantly. "We will fight this fire together."

"In a pig's eye we will, missy," St. John growled, as he dove for one of his wife's dramatically outflung arms. Samantha had already anticipated his move, and was yards from the bed and halfway to the already open cabin door before the Earl recovered sufficiently to intercept her.

"You are going to go up on deck with me and allow me to assist you into the boat I have waiting. You are not—I repeat, not—so much as even to be allowed a glimpse of the fire," he bit out succinctly, as his coal dark eyes tried to bore a hole in her defiance. "Not only is your presence not wanted, it is not needed, for the last thing the crew should have to concern themselves with right now are the hoydenish proclivities of an immature, sensation-seeking, irresponsible brat who would probably only succeed in hampering their efforts and losing me my yacht. Is that clear?" he ended, punctuating each word with firm shakes of the strong tanned hand that held Samantha's upper arm.

She directed a long, cool stare down at the offending hand, then raised her head to impale Zachary with a full dose of her potent emerald-green eyes—showing him, he thought randomly, just how truly fitted she was to be his Countess. Her face, indeed her entire tall, slim form, was etched in lines of outraged dignity, her expression a virtual potpourrie of angelic innocence, injured sensibilities, shocked disbelief, and a well-defined, all-over glazing of superior disdain or even contempt.

But it was within those emerald eyes that the Earl found the true center of the storm that he could almost feel building up rapidly inside Samantha, for her eyes showed one emotion he could readily understand—that overpowering desire for adventure, the chance to dare the fates and even risk life and limb, just to see if it were possible. He had felt the same when he jumped his first six-bar fence, milled down his first man, broken the Faro bank at Lady Devonshire's and—yes, even then—when he pinked his man in his first duel. Samantha's expression brought it all back to him: those mad, frantic days of his grasstime, when any excuse was good enough to send him racing neck-or-nothing into adventure.

Slowly, St. John relaxed his grip on his wife's arm, saying almost kindly, "Poor infant, you really do so want to go play with the fire, don't you? Ah, but I must tell you, sweetings, much as I feel for your frustration, it's beyond the question. Perhaps some other time, preferably on dry land and with a convenient escape route nearby, I will set you a fire and allow you to exercise your whim to the limit. But for now," and all traces of humor left his countenance, "you will do as I say."

"But—"

"No more, Samantha," the Earl commanded in a voice that would brook no denial.

"But my clothes, all my beautiful new clothes! What if they were to burn? I must take them with me. Please," she pleaded with uncustomary humbleness. Samantha may have been guilty of an unladylike interest in subjects and activities more common to the masculine gender, but deep down she was still—after all was said and done—very much a female.

St. John had sprung for a monstrously expensive and plentiful trousseau for his bride, and Samantha—loving every stitch of it—had brought the entirety of her new wardrobe along on her honeymoon. She was proud of her finery; it was as outrageous as its owner, who happily was also probably the only female in the entirety of the British Isles with the face, figure, style, and downright devil-take-the-hindmost attitude able to carry off such unusual styles and colors as she had chosen. There was no way she would sit idly by in a leaky old scow while her major (and, to date, only) benefit of marriage went up in smoke!

By now the sounds reaching them from the passageway far at the stern end of the ship—as well as the few ominous looking, thin trails of smoke that snaked past them into the cabin—had effectively banished any of the Earl's fond reminiscences of his exploits in his salad days, and Samantha's latest, purely feminine argument did not cause his conscience one single qualm. Clothing could be replaced. This red-haired termagant could not be, and he had a most particular reason for making sure not one hair of her head—or one pillow of that inviting bed behind her—was so much as slightly singed.

Grabbing the soft flesh of Samantha's upper arm in a viselike grip, St. John leaned over and snatched up a huge-brimmed poke bonnet, profusely trimmed in blue grosgrain ribbon and several long, curling feathers, and jammed it down tightly on her untidy head.

"There," he proclaimed wickedly. "Unless I'm in error, a possibility so remote it fairly boggles the mind as I am considered to be well versed in such things as feminine fripperies—having over the years found myself paying down the blunt for so many of the overpriced things—this particular creation is a
cap ala
Charlotte Corday. She, poor unfortunate thing, so favored this particular style that she chose to wear it in the tumbril on her way through the streets of Paris to her fatal rendezvous with Madame Guillotine. Just the right touch, my dear, for your sojourn in the boat that awaits you now."

As he was finishing his sentence he bent over, grabbed Samantha around the back of her knees, and hauled her up and over his shoulder, from where she rained down ineffectual punches onto his broad back and mouthed blistering—if somewhat muddled—curses that only made her husband laugh out loud.

Samantha was unceremoniously dumped into the small jolly boat, and the crewman saddled with the task of keeping milady out of the fracas immediately rowed off until a good thirty feet of water separated the two crafts. Once Samantha regained her breath she sat ramrod stiff on the plank seat, her breast rising and falling mightily in righteous indignation, her hands knitted together tightly in her lap, and her eyes engaged in trying to pierce the moonless dark night for some sign of how things now stood on the Sea Devil.

For a moment she felt a pang of guilt over her headstrong behavior, for it had kept Zachary away from the scene of the fire for precious minutes when his leadership abilities could have been well employed. But, she soothed herself, shrugging, it had been after all just for a small moment. Mostly she was making rapid mental plans as to how she could threaten, cajole, bribe or even flirtatiously maneuver the loyal crewman into returning to the yacht. Finally— although it was really only a matter of some five or ten minutes later—Samantha got what she believed to be a near divine inspiration.

First she pried the misshapen Corday off her head and tossed that particular piece of ill judgment as far out into the sea as she could. She would never have bought the dratted thing if she had known the ridiculous woman it was named for had actually had the poor taste to wear a straw hat on a head destined, in the very near future, to be plunked entirely into yet another straw container. Yet, she thought upon reflection, it would have been a rare sight to see a disembodied head all rigged out in ribbons and feathers and fancy tuck bows.

Samantha giggled, but quickly sobered and began sliding open the dozen or so buttons of her dressing gown. With the absence of the moon, all the bemused crewman actually saw was a hint of white silk and the glimpse of one well-turned slim bare ankle as Samantha abruptly shed the dressing gown, stood, and dived neatly over the side.

Her tomboy ways had come to her aid, for Samantha swam like the proverbial fish—even with the folds of her nightgown tangling slightly about her legs. She was quickly situated alongside the yacht and, locating the rope ladder she had seen earlier when she first came aboard, she made short work of her climb to the deck.

Once aboard it was a simple matter to dash to the cabin and throw her travelling cape over her wet clinging nightgown and, disregarding both her bare feet and her dripping hair, she raced off in the general direction of the fire.

It was a scene that would send most young ladies into gracefully executed swoons, but to Samantha it was a sight to inspire poetry. Orange-tongued flames licked hungrily at the walls and ceiling of the galley but although the passageway—the initial site of the blaze—was obviously soot-darkened and even charred in places, there was no sign of fire there anymore.