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Chapter Six

Within an hour Caro was dressed decently, if not fashionably, in a linsey-woolsey gown with a checkered scarf tied around her throat and over her breasts and a chip bonnet with a limp pink rose on her head, and perched on a bench across a table from Jeremiah in a bustling tavern near the water. Before her sat a slice of onion pie topped with yellow cheese and a tankard of cider, and nothing in her life had ever tasted so good. Although she guessed the hour must be closer to dawn than midnight, the tavern was full of sailors, shipwrights, carters, colliers and their women, and Caro leaned closer to Jeremiah to hear him over the din of their laughter and shouted conversations and the fiddle player near the hearth.

“I said, Caro, that Stanhope will think you’ve vanished from the face of the earth.” He thumped his own tankard of ale down on the oak table for emphasis. “As far as he’s concerned, you have. Look at you! No one would ever believe you’re a countess now!”

She grinned, and took another bite of the pie. To see Jeremiah Sparhawk across from her now, his face relaxed and his green eyes warm as he teased her, made it easy for her to forget the pistols and the long, bloodied knife at his waist. He really wasn’t much better than the highwayman they’d pretended he was. Maybe no Americans were. His gift for self-preservation would make him perfect for the task she meant to set before him, and with his chivalrous inclinations on her behalf he’d be bound to agree. Now if only she could convince herself that her own feelings toward him were equally mercenary!

For the first time, she wished she knew more of men and the world. Before she’d met Captain Sparhawk, she’d been able to divide them neatly in two: there were the precious few like Frederick and Jack Herendon, who treated her with kindness and respect, and then there were all the others, who looked at her with a blatant mixture of contempt and lust. But no man she’d ever met treated her like this oversize American, teasing and bantering with her one moment and then willing to fight to the death for her honor the next, and to her confusion, she liked it. She liked him, more than she should, certainly more than was proper for her as Frederick’s wife.

Jeremiah covered her hand with his and the warmth of his touch raced through her. “You’re quiet, lass,” he asked with real concern. “Weariness, or is there something else that ails you?”

“Weariness.” How could she ever admit that he was what ailed her? “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Self-consciously she withdrew her hand, but as she sipped her cider, her eyes met his over the tankard’s battered rim. There was gray streaked through his black hair at the temples, and from the deep lines that fanned from his eyes when he smiled, she knew he’d seen much of life, not all of it good. But she also knew better than to ask. She had more than her own share of secrets to keep hidden.

“Then I’d best find us lodgings for what’s left of the night.” He kept his hand on the table after she’d pulled hers back, unspoken admission of her rebuke, and he studied it now as if surprised to find it there. “Though truth to tell, I like where I am just fine.”

In the crowded, noisy, smoky room his smile was for her alone, an invitation she had no right to accept. She must end this now, while she still could.

“I told you I would pay you back your kindness with the information you wished about your friend, and I will. But first I must tell you of Frederick.”

“You don’t have to,” said Jeremiah quickly, perhaps too quickly. But he didn’t want to hear again of the paragon that was Caro’s husband, or how much she loved him. No, he didn’t want to hear that again at all. “You’ve told me more than enough already, and I wouldn’t want you to speak of anything that might cause you pain.”

Selfish, conniving bastard! He couldn’t believe he’d actually said that, especially after the lovely, grateful smile she gave him that he didn’t deserve.

“No, Captain, I’ve scarcely told you anything.” With a sigh she pushed the pewter plate to one side and clasped her hands on the table before her. She looked very young in the old-fashioned bonnet, her face framed by the curving brim, and he’d meant it when he’d said no one would believe her a countess now. “Frederick’s mother, the dowager countess, still lives, though she is very old and not well. I’ve never been presented to her. Before I was Frederick’s wife there wasn’t any question of it, but when she learned we planned to wed, she left England for Naples so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge me. It was—is—very painful for Frederick, though of course I understand entirely.”

Yet the way Caro looked down at her hands, rubbing one thumb against the other, told Jeremiah that she didn’t understand at all, and that the elder Lady Byfield’s scorn wounded her every bit as much as it did Frederick. Pompous old bitch, thought Jeremiah angrily. His sister had told him how she herself had been snubbed in certain aristocratic circles simply for being an untitled American who’d had the audacity to marry the younger son of an English lord, and he imagined what those same overbred vultures would make of poor Caro.

“Two years ago this summer Frederick’s mother finally agreed to see him again,” she continued sadly, “and with great joy and eagerness he booked his passage to Naples. She specifically excluded me from her invitation, but Frederick held great hopes for their reconciliation. I wept for days and days after he sailed. We had never been apart, you know, not since my fourteenth birthday.”

Jeremiah nearly choked on his ale. He’d known she’d been young, but fourteen, for all love!

“I had one letter from him,” she said, unaware of his reaction, “brought by another ship that had met his, and then nothing more because—why is everyone running away?”

All around them men were shouting and abandoning their drink and their women to crowd out the back door, some not waiting their turn and climbing through the windows instead.

A laconic barmaid reached over to take Caro’s empty plate and swipe a rag across the tabletop. “It’s the pressgangs again, lamb,” she explained. “They’ve been at it so hot all this week that the few men left run like frightened coneys at the very hint o’ a lieutenant an’ his bullyboys.”

Slowly the woman straightened, hands on her hips and her full breasts jutting out above her bodice as she languidly surveyed Jeremiah. “Best tell your pretty sailor man here to turn tail with the others ‘less he wants to spend the next seven years servin’ against the French.”

Caro gasped and shoved her bench back from the table. “Oh, Captain, she’s right! There must be three score navy vessels in the harbor now—I saw them from the window at George’s house—and they’ll all be looking for men! Come, hurry, you don’t want them to take you!”

“Hush now, lass, they’ll not take me.” He caught her wrist and gently forced her back down to her seat. “I’m an American, mind?”

The barmaid sniffed. “Don’t be so sure, Yankee. There was two New Yorkers here the other night had their protections torn up right afore their eyes. The lieutenant called them bloody liars an’ read them into the king’s service anyways.”

Alarmed all over again, Caro tugged at Jeremiah’s hand. “Hurry, then, there’s little to be gained taking chances like this!”

“There’s no chance to it, Caro,” scoffed Jeremiah, touched and pleased by her concern. “I’m an American, and I’m a captain and owner of my own vessels. Six of ‘em, last I counted. They can’t touch me.”

Pointedly the barmaid studied how he was dressed and sniffed again, not believing his claim for a moment. “Please yerself, Cap’n,” she said with a dismissive shrug, “for here they be now.”

Abruptly the fiddler stopped playing in the middle of his tune, and every one of the people who remained—women, toothless old men and those missing limbs, sailors already serving with a ship and watermen protected by the crown—turned to stare in hostile silence at the six men standing in the doorway. At their head was a young navy lieutenant in a blue coat and two marines in red, and behind them stood three more seamen, clearly chosen for their size and fearsomeness.

The lieutenant scowled as he scanned the room. Empty seats with half-full tankards and tumblers before them were testimony enough that they’d arrived too late to find any useful men.

“An empty net tonight, eh, Lieutenant?” taunted one old man, his cackle echoed by the others. “The fish all slipped through yer net again?”

Angrily the officer searched the room for the man who’d mocked him. His gaze stopped when he spotted Caro and Jeremiah at their table near the far wall, and with a tight-lipped, predatory smile on his face he headed toward their table. One of the bad men, decided Caro uneasily, one of the ones who only wanted to hurt.

“You there, skulking behind the petticoats!” he said sharply. “What ship, eh?”

Her anxiety mounting, Caro watched as Jeremiah slowly rose to his feet, using his height to his advantage as he towered over the others. It seemed to her he was twice the size of the little lieutenant, and despite his rough, common clothing, there was more authority in him alone than in all three of the uniformed Englishmen combined.

The lieutenant knew it, too, and didn’t like it. “I asked you your ship, you insolent dog.”

“I’m not a dog, but a captain,” answered Jeremiah with a mildness that didn’t fool Caro. She thought of the pistols in his belt beneath his coat and the knife at his waist and who only knew what else, and prayed he wouldn’t be halfwitted enough to use any of them now.

“An American captain,” continued Jeremiah, “a shipmaster and an owner of nearly twenty years’ standing. I stood my own quarterdeck before you were breeched, you English puppy, and I’ll thank you to remember it before I report you to your betters for ill breeding.”

The others in the room hooted and laughed derisively. “Silence, all of you,” bellowed the lieutenant as his men raised their cudgels around him, “or I’ll have you all taken in for disrespect to an officer of the crown!”

The cudgels, not his threats, brought an uneasy silence, and the officer turned back to Jeremiah. “You claim to be an American captain. What ship? What port? Where, sir, are your papers?”

“I am Captain Jeremiah Sparhawk of Providence, in the State of Rhode Island in New England.” There was no mistaking the pride in his voice as he handed the lieutenant a document with a heavy red seal stamped into one corner. “Most recently of my own brig the Chanticleer.”

“The Chanticleer? I know of no ship by that name in port.”

“She was lost,” said Jeremiah softly, “last November.”

The lieutenant grunted as he took the document. “That’s convenient, isn’t it?”

Caro held her breath as the officer scanned the paper, his lips moving slightly as he read to himself. If what Jeremiah said was true, then the man must be satisfied and leave them alone.

But instead he tossed the paper scornfully onto the floor at his feet. “A Yankee forgery, and an amateurish one at that. Were I in Boston, I’ll wager I could buy another like it for half a crown. But I don’t even believe you are American. Sparhawk, that would be a Scottish name, wouldn’t it?”

Caro could see Jeremiah tense, how he consciously flexed his hands at his sides to keep them from making fists.

“In Cromwell’s time, it was English,” he said, his voice unnaturally calm, “but it’s American now, and has been since we tossed your kind off our shores twenty years ago.”

“He lies, sir,” spoke up one of the marines, his role obviously rehearsed. “The rascal’s from Greenock, sir. I knew his people there.”

The lieutenant smiled with triumph. “Then he shall do his duty in the maintop of the Narcissus, or be flogged for the lying, sneaking Scotsman he is. Seize him, before he makes off!”

But outnumbered though he was, the fury in Jeremiah’s green eyes kept the Englishmen at bay. “If you do not choose to believe me, then perhaps you’ll believe the word of Vice Admiral Lord John Herendon—your captain’s superior, aye? Herendon will vouch for me, for he is married to my sister.”

“A rogue like you married into Lord Jack’s family?” The lieutenant sneered, and now it was his men’s turn to laugh. “Next you’ll be telling me that this little strumpet is lady-in-waiting to the queen!”

The tension that had been building in Jeremiah suddenly exploded. He pulled Caro to his side and tipped the heavy oak table over with a clatter of pewter and breaking crockery, scattering the Englishmen on the far side of the makeshift barricade. With a grunt he lifted the bench and swung it like a club, knocking the first marine senseless to the floor. The second one had his rifle lifted clear from his hands, and while he stared openmouthed after it, Jeremiah struck his chest so hard that the man folded in two and fell gasping for breath on top of the other marine.

But then came the unmistakable snap of flintlocks being cocked. Jeremiah froze, staring at the lieutenant’s pistol aimed at his heart and two seamen’s rifles pointed at him, as well. Behind Jeremiah, Caro stared at the guns with her knuckles pressed to her mouth, sick with dread over what would, inevitably, come next. The hatred between the American and the Englishmen was palpable, and the only sound in the room came from the groaning marines on the floor.

“That will earn you an extra twenty lashes, you filthy liar,” said the lieutenant. “Now drop it.”

With an oath Jeremiah tossed the bench over the table and at once the English sailors were on him, shoving Caro aside as they roughly jerked Jeremiah’s arms behind his back to tie his wrists with tarred cords. They found and claimed his pistols and long knife, and a second blade hidden in the sleeve of his coat, and struck him with a cudgel when he tried again to protest. Blood trickled from his mouth and stained his shirtfront, and when they prodded him toward the door he stumbled, and they laughed again with a cruelty that tore at Caro’s heart.

She couldn’t let them do this to him. He deserved better from them, but even more from her. Three times this night alone Jeremiah Sparhawk had come unbidden to her defense, and though she didn’t have his experience or his strength, there had to be a way to save him now.

For Frederick’s sake, she told herself as she rushed after them. She was doing all of this for Frederick, not for Captain Sparhawk, and never for a moment for herself.

“Jeremiah, love!” she cried as she flung her arms around his neck. “They cannot take you like this, my darling husband!”

Confusion, then irritation, showed in Jeremiah’s eyes. “Hush, Caro, this is none of your affair. They won’t make any of this stick. I’ll be out and free tomorrow, and I don’t want you in the middle of it.”

“No, love, no!” she wailed, fervently kissing his cheek before she turned to the lieutenant, wringing her hands with despair that was only partially feigned. “Please, oh, please, kind, dear, just sir! We are newly wed, only this very night! Could you be so cruel as to rob a bride of her heart’s one true love on this day of all others?”

Behind her Jeremiah groaned. “For God’s sake, Caro—”

“No!” She clutched at the lieutenant’s sleeve, pleased that her histrionics had made him look so uncomfortable. The other men in the gang were hesitating, too, looking to him for reassurance, and around them the tavern’s patrons were muttering and grumbling among themselves. She had him, she thought triumphantly; he’d have to let Jeremiah go now.

But instead of agreeing, the officer shoved her away. “Where would his majesty look for his navy if every wife wished to bind her husband with her apron strings?” he said curtly as he motioned for the others to continue. “It’s your misfortune, not mine. My duty is to fill the company of the Narcissus, and I mean to do it no matter how many dubious brides weep at my feet.”

“No, wait!” She rushed back to Jeremiah, her arms flung across his chest to protect him. She wasn’t as certain as he that they’d set him free tomorrow. She’d heard too many stories from Frederick about the abuses of the navy’s pressgangs in Portsmouth, and it was all too easy for her to imagine Jeremiah shipped out on a British frigate, beyond her reach for years and years. They’d already mocked his nationality, his rank and his protection papers, and laughed at her new bride’s ploy, but there was one last, desperate gamble she still could try.

“You speak of your duty, and what his majesty expects,” she said breathlessly, “but not even the king himself would expect my husband to serve as a mariner after what he has suffered at the hands of the Turks!”

With Jeremiah’s hands pinioned behind his back, his coat was open over his shirtfront. Her hands trembling from her own audacity, Caro yanked his shirt clear of the waistband of his breeches and lifted the linen high over his bare chest. Gasps of horror filled the room as the light from the fire danced over the long, livid scar that sliced across Jeremiah’s body. It was worse than Caro remembered, far worse, but it was also testimony that no one would ever question.

“God’s shame on you if you take that poor lad!” called a woman near the back, and her cry was echoed over and over by the others. Caro let the shirt slip from her fingers, but left her hand resting lightly on Jeremiah’s chest. She could only guess what her dramatic gesture had cost him, and she prayed he’d understand.

The lieutenant stiffened with displeasure and defeat. He waved curtly to the others, who jerked the ties from Jeremiah’s wrists and tossed his guns and knives onto the table beside him. They pulled the two marines to their unsteady feet and, without another word among them, retreated out the door and into the street, followed by jeers and catcalls and a thrown heel of bread.

The tavern owner rushed over to Jeremiah. “God keep you, Cap’n, and whatever you wish tonight is my gift to you.” He winked broadly and cocked his thumb toward Caro. “‘Tis not every night a man outwits the press and gains a clever bride like this one, eh? Whatever you wish, Cap’n, but name your fancy and it’s yours.”

“Thank you, no.” His expression grim, Jeremiah stepped clear of Caro, leaving her to stand with her hand awkwardly in midair. She swallowed hard and tucked her hand beneath her other arm. He hadn’t understood what she’d done; he couldn’t make it any more apparent, not to her or anyone else in the room.

He shoved his shirttail back into his breeches and hooked the pistols back on his belt. “Though I appreciate your hospitality, sir, I must needs have a word with my wife in private.”

He grabbed Caro by the elbow and ushered her roughly out the door. She tried to pull free but he held her fast, half-dragging her across the courtyard and past a curious stable boy at the pump. To her surprise the sky was beginning to pale with dawn. Was it really only last evening that he’d come for her at George’s?

“You shouldn’t be angry with me,” she began, breathless at the pace he’d set. Her hat slipped from her head and though she grabbed for it he jerked her relentlessly onward, leaving the crumpled rose facedown in the dust. “If you’d only stop and consider—”

“Nay, ma’am, I shall not. Not here, not now. You’ve entertained the world enough tonight.”

He pulled her into the open door of the tavern’s small stable and back among the stalls. Beneath the single lantern the space was warm with the heat of the close-packed horses’ bodies, the air thick with their smell.

“At least these beasts won’t repeat what they hear or see, which is more than can be said of your last audience.” With a last little shake Jeremiah released Caro’s arm and she backed away, glaring at him as she rubbed her arm where he’d held it. “What the hell was all that about, anyway? Have you lost what few wits you possess?”

“I did what I judged best under the circumstances.” Around them the horses shifted and nickered uneasily, made restive by the unchecked emotions in the human voices. “And don’t you dare call me witless!”

“I’ll call you whatever I damned well please! Why did you decide I needed a wife?”

He took another step toward her, trapping her in the corner with his body. She could feel his anger like a force between them, a white-hot violence barely contained, and any other time she would have been terrified of him. But her own furious resentment blinded her, and she lifted her chin defensively.

“I thought being married would make the lieutenant pity us, and he’d let you go. I saw it once in a play, though of course the hero was a Scottish laird, and—”

“A play?” He stared at her, appalled that she would even admit such a thing. “All that ‘darling husband’ claptrap was from some damned play?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” she said stubbornly.

“Listen to me! They would have kept me at the press house for an hour or two at most, then let me go!”

“You trusted them too much! This is England, not America!”

“Oh, aye, my fine Lady Byfield, as if I’d forgotten! I don’t need you to tell me that. I don’t need you for anything!”

“Don’t you go making any of this my fault!” She felt tears smarting behind her eyes and she didn’t know why. “You’re not being fair. You were the one who forced your way into George’s house to rescue me. All I did was try to return the favor, and now you’re free.”

“I’ll never be free, you damned selfish bitch!” Tormented by a pain she couldn’t understand, he slammed his fist into the post beside her. “You claim fair play. You turned my private life into a penny curiosity. What of you, eh? What if I took you back in there before the others and told them all your shame, your sins? Would that be fair?”

“You wouldn’t dare.” She shook her head wildly. “You can’t!”

He tore the kerchief from her bodice, and with a frightened gasp she pressed her hands over her neckline, striving to cover herself with her spread fingers. Instead he caught her wrists and pinned them high over her head, mercilessly forcing her back against the rough planks of the stall. She was painfully aware of how she stood trapped between the rough stable wall and the equally unyielding barrier that was Jeremiah Sparhawk.

Yet her body sensed the difference between the two, her softness matching and melting against the lean, muscled planes of his, warm with the heat of his anger. It had been this way the one other time he’d held her in his arms, and she shivered with an anticipation she desperately wanted to suppress. Long, long ago her mother had told her of such feelings between men and women, and their inevitable result. No wonder Captain Sparhawk could taunt her about her sin and shame when her body betrayed her like this!

When he bent his head over hers, she knew he meant to kiss her, just as she knew too late how wrong she’d been to trust him. By trusting him she had made herself vulnerable. She squeezed her eyes shut, the last defense she had.

“I thought you were different,” she whispered rapidly, her voice barely containing her tears of fear and disappointment. “When I saw that scar and guessed what you had suffered, I thought you were the only man who could help me, the one who had fought Hamil Al-Almeer and survived. I believed you were strong and brave, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? I was wrong! You’re a coward, just like you fear. A coward!’

She felt him go still, his ragged breathing matching hers, the only sound between them. Though by infinitesimal degrees his grip on her wrists relaxed, she kept her eyes closed, both unsure of what he’d do next and unwilling to break the strange spell between them.

Gently his fingers caressed the narrow bones of her wrists, his thumbs sliding along the inside of her upstretched arms as he traced the pale blue veins that ran to her heart until, at last, he eased her arms down to her sides. Gently, so gently, he cradled her jaw in his hands, his breath warm on her forehead, and she felt the roughness of his beard on her skin as his lips feathered across the loose wisps of hair near her parting.

“A coward, you say,” he said so softly she nearly didn’t hear him. “Dear God, I never wanted to hurt you.”

Then his hands, his touch, were gone. Bereft, she opened her eyes and saw he’d retreated across the stable, his back against the slatted boards of a stall as he crouched down in the straw, his arms folded tightly over his bent knees and his chin resting on his arms. The light from the lantern hanging overhead was harsh, sparing him nothing. His jaw was bruised from press-gang’s beating, already swollen and mottled, and in his eyes was the same empty, haunted look Caro remembered from that first night.

The nightmare, she thought miserably. Something that she’d said or done had brought it back.

“I didn’t mean that about you being a coward,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You believed it when you spoke, and God knows it’s the truth.” He sighed and rubbed his fingers into his eyes. “So let me guess. Hamil has your precious Frederick prisoner, and you wish me to go fetch him home. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Only to Naples, to his mother,” said Caro eagerly. “She is the one who has heard through the Neapolitan court—they maintain diplomatic relations with the Pasha of Tripoli for their trade, you see—that Frederick still lives, and that Hamil would consider a ransom for him and your friend Mr. Kerr, too. I thought that because you’d fought Hamil before you’d like the chance to meet him again. Not as a friend, of course, but as men do, you know—oh, dear, that’s not coming out at all how I intended!”

“You mean would I like another crack at killing him the way he nearly did me? A bit of bloodthirsty revenge amongst the savages, with a nice little errand delivering dear Frederick’s ransom on the side? Is that what ‘men do’?”

Caro winced. “That makes it sound vastly foolish, doesn’t it?”

“Men are vastly foolish, sweetheart, though I’ve never had reason to judge women much better.” He plucked a piece of straw from the floor and twirled it absently between his fingers. “So to make all this work, you must rely on the promise of a heathen pirate, the good will of an old woman who despises you, and the vengeful wrath of a coward you scarcely know?”

“I told you I don’t truly believe you’re a coward!”

“Ah, but Caro, I do.” He tossed the straw away and slowly stood. “You’ve chosen the wrong man to be your hero.”

She looked down, unable to meet his eyes. “It wasn’t a choice. There were no others. You were all I had.”

“Damnation.” He didn’t want to do it, and he’d be ten times a fool to agree. He didn’t trust the old countess in Naples or George Stanhope here in England, the Pasha of Tripoli or Hamil Al-Ameer; any of them could play Caro false in a minute. And God in Heaven, what he himself could do to her hopes without even trying, a pitiful battered Yankee who was afraid of the dark!

Yet there was Davy, and maybe others. To turn his back on them would be to admit far worse of himself than cowardice alone.

And then there was Caro herself, waiting for his decision there by the post like some poor felon in the dock. An exhausted, bedraggled countess in secondhand clothes who’d tried to do her best to save him just as he’d saved her. A beguiling, unpredictable creature who mixed world-weary airs with unstudied innocence. A luscious, desirable woman who melted in his arms and tempted him with lips redder, plumper, sweeter than summer berries on the vine.

A woman who expected him to risk his life for the husband she loved.

Damnation, indeed.