The Rebel Pirate (21 page)

His eyes widened fractionally, and he tensed with what she now recognized as desire held in check. “Need . . . ,” he said, considering her assertion, then shaking his head,
“no.”
He crossed the room, drew her to her feet. “But what is a necessity at sea may prove a pleasing variation on land. And
need
is a matter of perspective.”

•   •   •

Sparhawk lay staring up at the canopy of the great bed. Sarah Ward was curled beside him, her honey gold hair spread across the pillow. She radiated happiness and contentment. Over and over again as they had moved together, he had thought, We are made for each other.

After the first time on the stairs he had experienced a sense of discovery that recalled his very first affair, a liaison with a Venetian opera singer named Marcella. McKenzie had introduced her to him, part of the gruff old Scot’s effort to broaden a young officer’s horizons.

Marcella had been thirty, experienced, beautiful, and kind to a fumbling youth. He’d come so quickly the first time that he’d expected to be thrown out of her bed, but instead she had roused him again and shown him, patiently, how to stop and start and prolong his pleasure to ensure hers. After a mutually satisfactory second performance, and then a third that met with not only her approval but her praise, he’d lain back on her gilded bed, surrounded by grinning putti, and seen the world anew. So long as he was considerate of his lovers, and did not repeat the mistakes of his father or the brutality of Slough, he could enjoy
this
anytime he was in port.

Making love to Sarah Ward on a darkened staircase had filled him with a similar sense of revelation. They’d climbed to the second floor and laughed over the ludicrous old bed, and he had shown her how a man enjoyed a woman in the confines of a crowded ship, bent over a cannon or a narrow berth. He had described to her how much he wanted to have her that way when he had a ship again, his words, as Marcella had taught him so long ago, painting pictures to drive both their passions higher.

When they were spent, melancholy had washed over him, and self-loathing such as he had not felt since the first time he had given in to Slough. He had told Sarah Ward that he loved her, implied with his heated talk that they would share a future together.

She reached out to stroke his shoulder. He felt her fingers, feather light, tracing over the linen of his shirt, which he had kept on to hide his scars. They were not the sort of thing that refined ladies liked. Her hand traveled lower and he tensed. Then her fingers reached the hem and met the ridged flesh of his back.

She did not shrink from the contact, did not take her hand away. “If you asked me, right now,” she said, “to come with you tonight, I would.”

He was as bad as his father. She had a future within reach, safe from the horror of imprisonment and execution, and he had compromised it. Even now her brother slept downstairs with stitches in his belly—a tangible reminder of the danger in which this affair placed her.

He rolled over and pushed her questing hand away. It felt like amputating his own.

“Your brother told me that you are about to receive an offer,” he said, the words tasting like bile in his mouth. “On terms I cannot match.”

“Indiscretion,” she said, “is a Ward family failing.”

“He also pointed out to me that ours is a dangerous association, one that could get you hanged.”

“My older brother is a hypocrite.”

It had not occurred to him that she might be aware of her brother’s affairs. “You know?” he asked. “About Benjamin?”

“He told me when he was seventeen and I was fifteen,” she said. “The girls at my dame school, including my best friend, all adored him. I asked him why he didn’t take any of them into the garden during dances at the assembly hall. I thought I was so very worldly then, but he had to explain it to me, the way men loved other men. I knew I mustn’t tell anyone, although I think Father suspected early on. But I didn’t understand what it would mean, the danger it might place him in, until later. And now he has a lover who is rich and royal, and who can do as he pleases. And if they are found out, it is Benji who will suffer.”

“Ansbach held the marines back after Benji was shot,” said Sparhawk. “I will not say that your brother has chosen an easy path, but Charles Ansbach is an honorable man, and the fact that the streets were not teeming with soldiers hours ago is a testament to the affection in which he holds your brother.”

“I thought the navy took a dim view of sodomy,” she said.

“When it is discovered, yes. But between consenting adults, on most ships, it is more often ignored than prosecuted.”

“And on your ship?”

“Your brother has nothing to fear from me,” said Sparhawk. “And he is right about us, about our prospects.”

“My brother,” said Sarah Ward, “is the last man on earth who should lecture another about dangerous entanglements.”

“Nevertheless, he is right. And prosecution for sodomy is rare, whereas arrest for piracy, smuggling, and treason is epidemic at the moment.”

“I am not afraid of Admiral Graves or his odious nephew.”

“You should be. Your testimony could condemn them both. And now Benji is implicated as well. He was seen on the
Hephaestion
. Ansbach restrained the marines, but not before he called out your brother’s name. It would not take much for an alert informer—and both sides have their share—to put two and two together and realize that Ansbach and your brother were acquainted in London. That will give the admiral greater leverage over you. And as you pointed out, Ansbach is royal and inviolate. Your brother is not.”

“Do not presume to lecture me about the risks my brother takes.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “That came out ungracious and ungrateful. I am conscious of the great service you and your family have done me, and would like to repay you. I can instruct my prize agent to sell the house and forward you the money.”

She stiffened. He felt it through the feather mattress. “That is very generous of you,” she said in an icy voice, “but I don’t require payment for my services tonight—”

“That is not what I—”

“And we don’t need the money. The Rebels will pay us for the use of the
Sally
and Benji’s services as captain.”

She was brave and loyal and tenacious, and that was why, for the first time in his life, he was in love. And that was also why he must now act like the man he despised above all others—his father—and abandon her.

He got up and paced to the washstand, where he completed a quick toilette in silence. He could feel her watching him, knew he had hurt her, and was about to hurt her more. He buttoned his breeches, tied his shirt closed, reached instinctively for the blue wool coat that he was no longer entitled to wear, then left it where it lay on the chair. Finally he turned to her. She had drawn herself up on the bed, pointed chin held defiantly in the air.

“Your brother may be a hypocrite,” he said, knowing his words would lash her like a whip, “but Benjamin’s assessment of your predicament is correct. If you come with me, and we are overtaken, you will be at the admiral’s mercy. He must try
me
as an officer, but the Port Act means he can arrest
you
and hold you indefinitely, without trial. And I very much doubt, since you know the truth about the French gold, you would survive long in his custody. I cannot take you with me. I sail on the tide for England, alone, and I will not be coming back.”

•   •   •

She would never learn.

It was impossible to stay after that, in the pretty little house he had bought her with its sturdy antique furniture and sanded floors, where they had made love. Her heart broke again when he didn’t try to stop her.

A few blocks away, the cook’s son caught up to her carrying a lantern and a kitchen knife and looking solemn and scared, whether of Sparhawk, the regulars, or common criminals, she couldn’t say. He walked her the rest of the way home.

He needn’t have bothered. The streets were no longer empty. Carters and drovers were already stirring, bringing their scanty produce, their precious eggs, their dear butter, the fish that the admiral only occasionally allowed them permission to catch, to market.

But she was glad of the boy’s company, because alone she might have broken down and started crying. When Micah had jilted her, the humiliation, the public tallying of her worth, had been crushing, but in the months that followed, she had been able to tell herself that money and Wild’s mercenary nature had played a role in her rejection.

There would be no such comfort with Sparhawk.

Inside Trent’s manse it was cool and silent, the stairs dark. She longed for the enveloping cocoon of her dimity bed curtains, where she could lay her head on the feather pillow and stretch her body, sore from its exertions, over the smooth fresh sheets.

She saw the light under the door: her father would be waiting up for her, eager for news of the escape he had helped plan, of Benji and Mr. Cheap and the
Sally
; the sort of exploit that harked back to the escapades of his youth. He would be able to read her face, and offer his bottomless understanding. She only wished she didn’t need it quite so often.

She pushed open the door and hesitated on the threshold. It was not her father. Trent sat in one of the slipcovered chairs flanking the paneled fireplace.

“Come inside and close the door, please,” he said. “Your father finally has gone to bed and the servants are too well paid to gossip.”

Sarah stepped inside the room and shut the door.

“Thank you,” said Trent, with the brittle politeness she recognized from his confrontation with the fusilier at the Three Cranes, and his more recent meeting with Lieutenant Graves. She had known, of course, that he was a duelist and a dangerous man, but lulled by his kindness to her family and the gentility of his home, she had lost sight of the fact that he could be dangerous to her.

“I was called to the admiral’s house near the battery this evening,” he said. “It seems Sparhawk has escaped.”

She wished she had the poise of Angela Ferrers, the widow’s practiced ability to conceal her thoughts and feelings, but she did not.

“I know,” she said. “Benji and I helped him.”

Trent did not answer at once. He had taken his blue coat off in deference to the warmth of the night. He was dressed from head to toe in faultless cream linen and gold lace, but now, as the silence stretched, she noticed that his sword lay across the arm of his chair, and that he had placed two pistols on the table beside him.

Finally he spoke. “That is . . . unfortunate. This Sparhawk has used you badly. If he takes his case before the Admiralty, and can muster even a shred of proof, Graves will try to find another scapegoat for the theft of the gold, and he has one near to hand, in you.”

I am not afraid of Admiral Graves or his odious nephew.

You should be.

Here was the danger Sparhawk had warned her about. And abandoned her to.

“You must be sorry you took us home from the Three Cranes,” she said.

“No. I’m only sorry that you did not heed my warning and stay out of this.”

“I could not let Sparhawk die. He had saved Ned’s life, and he was innocent.”

“But you are not,” said Trent. “To prove you innocent of theft is to prove you guilty of piracy. Either will see you swing from the
Preston
’s yardarm. We have a little time, I hope, to take steps to protect you from that fate.”

She considered her options. Salem was closed to her because of Micah Wild. She might appeal to Angela Ferrers, but she had nothing to bargain with now.

Trent seemed to read her thoughts. “You cannot run. Graves has transferred Ned to the
Diana
, under one of his nephews, Thomas. It has been done in the guise of patronage, with Ned made midshipman, but he is a hostage; do not doubt it.”

“What, then?” she asked.

“Admiral Graves knows you live under my roof. No doubt he assumes that you are my mistress. He is a man of limited imagination and will not suspect that I might wish to make you more. I am a baron. It is not a great name or beautiful estate, but with it come certain privileges. Peers and peeresses can only be tried in Parliament. Such trials are very public, and the truth about the gold would be almost certain to come out. At least as damning allegations. Not what the admiral wants at all. Marry me, and Graves and the Admiralty Courts will have no authority over you.”

He was offering to save her life, by joining theirs forever. She could not play this man false. “I have had lovers.”

“So, as it happens, have I,” he said.

“That is different.”

“Only if you think of women as commodities, to be bought and sold, their value dropping with use. I have been a mariner long enough to know that maiden voyages are generally full of unhappy surprises. Better a seasoned ship that’s had a taste of the wind and settled into her frame.”

“How can you be certain that I’m not a shoddy old tub like the
Charybdis
?”

“Because I have come to know you, these past weeks, and your father shared with me the circumstances of your disappointment.”

There were other, more recent circumstances as well. But they did not matter. What mattered was that she had a family who loved her and a man who esteemed her and was prepared to shelter them from harm. She felt tears prickle her eyes. “Did he also tell you I am a bad cook?”

Trent smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact he did.”

•   •   •

Cheap returned just before dawn, pushing a briny cart. Benji was still unconscious. Sparhawk and the Wards’ sailing master made a bed for the injured man out of tarps, and concealed his presence with oyster nets and baskets. Sarah’s brother barely stirred until they reached the dock, and fortunately by that time he had recovered a little of his sangfroid, enough to remark on the persistent smell of oysters and to pluck a handful of swamp roses growing between the stones of the rough-hewn quay. He inhaled their elusive scent, then tossed the flowers into the waiting boat and climbed stiffly down after.