A Wedding By Dawn

“I rather think it’s most people’s idea.”

It wasn’t hers. Not that she had any idea of marriage—quite the opposite. Dread coursed in, lapping icily at the desire burning across her skin. “I need protection from you,” she managed. “And as for my bringing you shame...perhaps you should have considered that before you agreed to marry a young lady as well acquainted with the ways of the world as I am. I’ll not return easily to a life of drawing rooms and embroidering cushions.”

She’d told Father as much in London, but he hadn’t cared. A daughter married was a daughter tamed...or so he thought. And so Nicholas Warre thought, as well.

“It’s all too clear you need protection from yourself,” Mr. Warre said calmly. “Little wonder your father was reduced to such desperate measures. But know this...” His voice turned flinty. “You will not shame Taggart, Lady India. I’ll not allow it.”

You’ll not bring shame on this family, India.... The echo of her childhood pooled coldly in her belly. She would not endure that again—she couldn’t. “From the sound of things, it’s too late for that,” she scoffed. Anger flashed dangerously in his eyes. “If you insist on forcing our marriage, I daresay I shall only be adding to Taggart’s shame. What will happen if you cannot pay your debt to Mr. Holliswell?” she taunted.

“Oh, it will be paid,” he said flatly. “It’s merely a question of whether he’ll be paid with the dowry I receive from our marriage or with Taggart itself—and Holliswell will never seat his greasy, self-satisfied arse at the head of Taggart’s table.” He pointed at her. “No matter if I’ve got to drag your pretty behind in front of a priest and have an altar boy move your jaw up and down while reciting the vows in falsetto. This wedding will take place.”

“And you accuse me of shameful behavior.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “For God’s sake—you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

“Gain?”

“For the price of a few meaningless vows, you’ll have Taggart’s name and you’ll live as any other young woman would be content to live, and in ten years at least some of Society will have forgotten your transgressions. It’s more of a chance at redemption than most ever receive.”

“I don’t need redemption.” She made herself laugh. “But you will, sir, if you do not quickly repent the grave mistake you’re making.”

“Oh, I don’t know that I would call it a mistake,” he said. His shadowed eyes dropped to her breasts, lingering. Her breath hitched, and her sensitive peaks came alive with fresh, unwanted desire. “Especially if I am to find such pleasure at my fingertips,” he added huskily.

A heady yearning curled inside her. She never should have allowed him to touch her. But it was too late to take it back now, and it was too clear that he may not have wished to marry her—but he did want something else.

She forced her feet to move and went to the door. “Good night, Mr. Warre.” The ship banked with a large wave, and she turned, smiling back at him. “Do sleep well.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

INDIA LET HERSELF into the passageway and crept back to her cabin, trying to ignore that her body hummed with the lingering effects of Nicholas Warre’s touch.

Gain. He thought she would gain from marrying him, when he’d made his expectations perfectly clear.

Oh, God. She stopped, suddenly, in the middle of the passageway. Leaned against the wall outside her cabin, taking a moment to compose herself, aware of her breasts in a way she had never been before—but even more aware of the things he’d said, and the fact that she could never, ever allow this marriage to take place.

She knew all about the things a man would do to avoid being shamed.

Your hoydenish tricks...that was how he saw her. He did not see her accomplishments, her skills. He was already ashamed to take her to wife—just as Father had been ashamed when she’d returned to London and locked her up in her apartments.

Only imagine how Nicholas Warre would treat her if he discovered her biggest failing. Except she didn’t need to imagine, because she had an entire childhood of memories to draw on.

You may redeem yourself, India—and have your dinner, as well—the moment you decide to apply your efforts and read me these stanzas from Pope. It hadn’t mattered to Father that applying her efforts had never done any good.

It wouldn’t matter to Nicholas Warre, either. When he learned she couldn’t read, he would try to force her just as Father had, and withhold every pleasure from her, and it wouldn’t work because no matter how hard she tried it never worked. And he would prevent her shaming Taggart by keeping her hidden away, and Taggart would become her prison, just as surely as her childhood rooms had been.

Her stomach twisted. She needed to do something now—tonight. But the only person who could possibly save her now was William.

Yes. Yes—she could talk to William. Tell him everything—make him see how imperative it was that she be in charge of her own destiny. She would promise anything in exchange for his forgiveness. Then perhaps he would let her and Millie join his crew, and then they would have protection instead of needing to make their way alone. And it would be just like before when they’d sailed with Katherine—

“India!” Millie’s voice hissed through the darkened passageway.

India turned. “Millie?”

Millie hurried from the darkness and grabbed India’s arm. “Come—come quickly!”

“What’s happened?”

Millie didn’t answer. India practically ran after her down the corridor to William’s cabin, through the door, and—

Oh, God. “What have you done?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know!”

India fell to William’s side, where he lay motionless on the floor.

“It isn’t as bad as it looks—”

“How can it not be as bad as it looks?” Oh, God. Oh, God. India shook him.

“No! Don’t try to rouse him!”

“We have to!” She listened for breath—yes! He was breathing.

“No, we don’t.” Millie grabbed her arm and tried to pull India to her feet. “India, this could be our opportunity. I didn’t mean to do it—I didn’t—but we won’t escape any other way...you know we won’t. And even if we do, what then? But if we take this ship back to Malta now, we can retake the Possession—”

“We can’t return to Malta. When William’s crew finds him like this, we’ll be killed.” She felt behind William’s head, encountered a bump wet with warm blood. Pain fisted in her stomach. “Mutiny? How could you? He’ll kill us himself when he awakes!”

“Not if we lock him in here.”

“We can’t do that! Not to William!”

“Have you forgotten he came here on Katherine’s orders?”

“You know bloody well the crew will never accept our leadership.”

“Did you not hear their complaints as we boarded? These men are not loyal to William. They were hired two months ago. They thought they would be a week at Malta, but instead they’re back at sea after only a day. Believe me, the promise of returning to Malta will have them in the palm of our hands. But in case it doesn’t...”

She held out a pistol, shot and powder.

The metal glinted in the moonlight through the windows of William’s cabin. India looked at the pistol. At Millie.

“I can’t do this. Millie, you should have told me first.”

“It wasn’t something I planned!”

“We’ll be pirates. Real pirates.”

Millie’s hands were trembling. She quickly set the pistol and shot on a chair. “He’s come to no real harm.”

“Aye,” India said sarcastically, “That is precisely the definition of piracy. As long as nobody comes to harm—”

“We shan’t be stealing William’s ship.” Millie sounded terrifyingly determined. “We shall merely divert it back to Malta and then return it.”

“If we return to Malta with William and Nicholas Warre aboard, there will be no way to keep them secured until we make our escape. We’ll be apprehended before we can weigh anchor out of Valletta.”

“Then we shall leave them off somewhere before Malta.”

India’s breathing turned shallow. Leaving them off was different from keeping them safely aboard.

“What are we going to do when William awakes?” India asked.

“There are things I can give him to keep him calm—”

“Millie, we can’t do that.”

“Do you have a better solution?”

Yes. They could wake William and beg for his mercy. But even William had limits, and they had already exceeded those limits by taking the Possession from Katherine.

Now there was no turning back.

Millie hurried to dress William’s wound while India held his head with shaky hands. “Is there any chance he would wake up and think he fell and hit his head?” India asked.

Millie answered with a look.

“You confronted him?”

“I went to ask him a question.”

“And knocked him unconscious?”

“I didn’t care for his answer! Hold his head higher.”

William’s slackened features were terrifying. “What if he dies? How can you be certain he won’t die?”

“Stop asking questions and help me put a pillow beneath his head!”

“What good will a pillow do us now?” None. A pillow would do them no good. But India stuffed one beneath him anyhow and grabbed up the pistol and shot.

* * *

NICK AWOKE TO the sharp pounding of a hammer.

What the devil—

He pushed himself upright in the darkness, realizing at the same time that the hammer was pounding against his door. He bolted out of bed and tried to wrest the door open, but something on the other side held it fast.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“What the devil is this about?” No answer. “Jaxbury! Jaxbury, you sodding bastard, open the bloody door!”

The hammering stopped, and it wasn’t Jaxbury that answered.

“How does it feel to be locked away, Mr. Warre?” Lady India’s voice singsonged through the door.

The implications raced through his mind. “Where is Jaxbury?”

“William is none of your concern. From now on you shall answer to me as your captain.”

“Tell me what’s happened to Jaxbury.” Lady India, and presumably Miss Germain, could not have taken over the ship unless—

“You need not fear for your safety, Mr. Warre, as long as you cause us no trouble. You shall be let off at Sicily—it should be easy enough for you to find passage back to England from there.”

Nick’s blood ran cold. “Is Jaxbury dead?”

“I do not care to answer any questions. You will remain in your cabin. Of course, that shouldn’t present any additional hardship for you with your ill health. But I intend to keep the door locked just in case.”

“So you will put me off at Sicily, and then what? You and Miss Germain will sail the Mediterranean in a stolen ship? Once the line of piracy is crossed, it can’t be undone.”

“If I tell you I fully intend to cross that line, will it make you less inclined to marry me? Only imagine what shame it will bring upon Taggart to have a pirate as its mistress.” Nick did not bother to answer. “Ah, well,” she said after a moment. “I thought not. But only consider, Mr. Warre, how much you could profit by piracy. More than fifty thousand, I daresay.”

“You and Miss Germain are as good as dead, Lady India. And anyone else out there—” he thought of the crew and called louder, in case any might be listening “—do you imagine you’ll not be counted as pirates, too?”

“Enjoy your voyage, Mr. Warre,” she called, and he heard her footsteps fading down the passageway.

He stared at the door.

A wave of nausea rolled through his stomach, and he breathed deeply through his mouth until it passed. When it did, he lurched to the dresser for another piece of candied ginger and stumbled toward the pot in the corner of the cabin.

God, he hated ships. Despised them and everything they stood for.

With just enough moonlight to see, he slid the pot aside with his foot, gripped the wall for balance, and retrieved the pistol he’d hidden there. Loaded a ball, and replaced the pistol behind the pot with his reserve of shot and powder. Under these circumstances, having an extra pistol hidden away could become very useful.

He returned to the bed, sinking into the mattress and staring at the ceiling while his stomach threatened another rebellion.

In the space of—what, half an hour? Longer?—he’d gone from stroking her breasts, God damn it, to being imprisoned in his cabin with Jaxbury possibly dead. They couldn’t actually have killed him. Could they?

Whatever they’d done, Lady India would have had the opportunity for none of it if he had alerted Jaxbury and returned her to her cabin like he should have instead of standing there captivated by the womanly swells beneath her shirt. Putting his hands on her was a misjudgment of incalculable proportions. Yet he’d scarcely touched her at all—so much less than he’d wanted to do, and so much more than he should have.

And she’d reacted. Bloody devil, he’d seen exactly the moment it had happened, had seen the way her lips had parted a little, had noticed how she stumbled over her words as he’d caressed her full, heavy curves.

A strangled laugh pushed into his throat. Perhaps that was the way to tame her. Good God.

The ship pitched now with a large wave, and he braced himself to keep from rolling.

He’d thought her foolish and stupid. Had wanted—needed—to believe it was true. But that was just as much of a mistake as touching her. There’d been something else in those eyes tonight—something he’d been in too much of a hurry to notice in Malta, or perhaps just unwilling to acknowledge: a dark shadow.

Evil?

No. It was the dark shadow of desperation one saw in the eyes of street urchins. Except that Lady India was no urchin. She was the spoiled daughter of an earl.

And she was a pirate. And according to his agreement with her father, his fiancée.

If he were smart, he would let her put him off at Sicily and be grateful to see the last of her.

But he wasn’t smart. He was nearly fifty thousand pounds in debt. And she may have been desperate, but she was forgetting one thing.

So was he.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THEY MANAGED FOR a day, and then another, and another, until India began to wonder if they might succeed at this after all. They’d known William was all right when he’d begun pounding on the door and shouting before the first night was through.

The carpenter had filed enough of a space beneath each door to slide plates of food and low-lipped trays filled with water, like one might give a cat.

“I’m worried that there’s been no sound from William’s cabin since this morning,” India said to Millie, as the setting sun spilled into the captain’s great cabin at the end of the third day.

“Did you expect him to pound at the door without ever giving up?”

“I don’t know what to expect.” India rubbed her arms and paced by the windows.

“We’ll make Sicily by tomorrow midday,” Millie said testily. Already the wind had softened, and they both knew they would be lucky to reach Sicily by nightfall tomorrow. “We’ll put them out, and they’ll be ashore in an hour or two. Nothing will happen to them.”

“I only wish I could say the same of us,” India snapped.

But by noon the next day, the wind had died completely overnight, and it showed no sign of returning.

India licked her finger and anxiously held it up, but the only sensation was the warm Mediterranean sunshine. “Nothing.”

“It will pick up,” Mille said, working her fingers absently around her wrist.

“Is that optimism I hear?”

“Pragmatism,” Millie snipped. “The wind has to blow sometime.”

But above them the sails hung limp while the ship floated calmly on a sea disturbed by the barest ripples. Below, the crew lolled about on deck with nothing to do but watch her and Millie stand helplessly on the upper deck and wait for a breeze to catch the sails.

India held William’s spyglass to her eye and studied the distant green ribbon that was Sicily.

“The crew is getting restless,” Millie said under her breath.

“I know that.” India cast a wary glance toward the bow, where fifty men controlled only by their desire to return to the Valletta taverns had stopped lolling and now milled about impatiently. She caught the boatswain’s eye and lifted her chin the way Katherine had always done, and was satisfied when the boatswain turned away.

India studied Sicily once more. “How far do you suppose it is really?”

“Too far. Putting them in the longboat here would be murder.”

“You’re right—the wind will pick up. It’s got to.” India said it mostly to reassure herself. “Perhaps I should order another keg opened.”

“A third keg? They’ll all be drunk.”

“But occupied.”

“Oh, yes. That’s the perfect—dear God.” Millie’s hand flew to her chest, and she gripped her wrist tightly. “India, look there.”

At the bow, the twenty-seven crew members had all gathered together in a huddle. Without the crash of waves and the snap of canvas, the voices carried easily to the upper deck in an increasing crescendo of discontent.

India touched her pistol. “If they mutiny...” There would be little she and Millie could do to stop them.

Millie watched the group through eyes that had grown fearful. “They could do no more in charge of this ship than we can—nobody can control the wind.”

India thought of the brawl in the tavern at Valletta and felt a chill despite the warm sunshine. It would take mere seconds for hell to break loose aboard this ship, and the crew could throw them overboard or simply kill them and be done with it. Or worse.

From somewhere below deck came the sound of a small explosion. India snapped her attention to Millie. “A pistol shot.”

“Who could be shooting?” Millie asked frantically.

And another.

Moments later—too soon to reload—another.

India counted heads rapidly. “All the men are on deck.” Which meant it had to be William...and Nicholas Warre. “Bloody hell—it’s them.”

Bang!

Fear surged through Millie’s voice. “We can’t let them escape. We can’t!” Her frantic eyes fixed on the deck below. “What’s happening now?”

The group broke up, and the entire horde of men was heading toward the upper deck.

Bang!

India judged the distance, but she would never get past them to the stairs to see who was shooting. And at what. But it was a good guess the target was the door. A loud pounding—louder than any fist could make—confirmed it.

India’s heart raced. Millie was absolutely right: they could not allow William to escape. India drew her pistol at the same time Millie drew the one she’d taken from William, and together they rushed to the stairs and aimed down at the men gathered on the quarterdeck below.

“What is the meaning of this?” India called down.

“Just want to talk about this wind,” the boatswain called, taking the first step with a dozen men behind him.

“Do not come any closer!” Millie aimed her pistol at the boatswain’s chest.

There was another pistol shot from below. More violent pounding. If they did not go below quickly, William and Nicholas Warre would soon come above.

“There’s nothing to discuss, as you well know,” India told the men. “We shall be underway as soon as we have a breeze.” Angry faces outnumbered them six to one. “Return to your posts at once, and as soon as we are underway there will be more rum for everyone!”

Bang! Another shot from below.

“Clear off,” India commanded. “Can’t you hear those shots? If I don’t go below immediately, you’ll all be strung from the yards for piracy when Captain Jaxbury escapes.” Oh, God. Oh, God. And she and Millie would be strung with them.

“T’aint us that locked up the captain,” someone called out.

They didn’t clear off. Instead they crowded up the stairs. Too late she realized she should have resorted to her pistol while they were still gathered below. “Do not cross me,” she shouted. “One of you will die—who will it be?” She only hoped it wouldn’t be her—her and Millie both, moments after she fired a shot. But if she waited...

Below, more pounding. And hacking.

The sound of ripping, splintering wood.

A burly sailor stepped forward, and she shifted her pistol toward him. “Are you volunteering to die for the others?”

The sailor stopped.

A warm bead of perspiration trickled from her temple to her jaw. Stalemate. The glassy sea shone behind the men as far as the eye could see. The ship made no sound.

Except for voices from below. Male voices.

And hard, solid footsteps.

“India...” Terror edged Millie’s voice.

“I know.”

“We’ve got to go over the side.”

“And then what?”

Suddenly the sailors’ attention shifted behind them, to the stairs—the quarterdeck. A shot fired, and all hell broke loose. Millie fired back. A man screamed, and the crew rushed them. For two heartbeats India had a dead bead on a man’s chest—Lorenzo’s chest. A voice in her head screamed, Murderer! In her hesitation, the moment was lost. Angry hands grabbed her, tore her pistol away, shoved her roughly toward the stairs. Above the voices she heard Millie scream.

And then— “Enough!” William’s deafening command rose above everything.

At first they ignored him in their frenzy. But he pushed onto the upper deck, bellowing at them to cease. Right behind him was Nicholas Warre—with a pistol.

Men were explaining, pushing her and Millie toward the front of the crowd, calling out “We got ’em, captain” and “Kill the pirates!”

A moment later they faced Nicholas Warre and a William she scarcely recognized as the lighthearted sailor she’d known for years. Fury had turned his eyes cold, his face expressionless. He barely spared them a glance before descending to the quarterdeck. He stalked to a massive coil of rope, took up the end and began winding.

Nicholas Warre stalked after him. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

Now the crew shoved and crowded down the stairs, dragging India and Millie with them. India lost sight of William, but not before she’d seen the noose taking shape in his hand.

An uproar went up among the crew—shouts of “Hang ’em!” and “Let ’er swing!”

The world constricted to a small red spot in her vision. Perspiration ran down her face. Hands—men’s hands—she barely noticed them.

Millie’s screams came to her through a muted fog.

“Have you gone mad?” Nicholas Warre demanded. “You can’t kill them.”

William ignored him and kept winding. His usually laughing mouth was grim, and she knew him well enough to recognize that he did not want to kill them.

Breathe. Breathe! She fought for control, to stand tall instead of dissolving into hysteria. But William could rightfully kill them, and he would, because it was the only way to prove his authority in front of the crew.

Nicholas Warre yanked India from the sailor’s grasp. “You will not murder my wife, Jaxbury.”

“I’m not—” The protest leaped to her tongue despite her fear.

He silenced her with a violent yank. “Quiet!” he hissed in her ear. “For once in your blasted life.” And then, “My wife is my responsibility,” he said fiercely. “I shall mete out the consequences for what she’s done.” He looked down at her with the most awful expression and added loudly, “And I assure you they will be severe.”

The fog of terror cleared just enough to realize what he was doing: he was trying to give William a way to change his mind.

He dragged her toward William amid cries of “Hang ’em!”

He jerked her even closer. “When I threaten him, beg him for your life,” he ground out under his breath. “And prepare yourself.”

For what?

Nicholas Warre raised his pistol and leveled it at William. “You will not touch my wife. I shall take her below and punish her as she deserves.”

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