Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight

Katherine brushed by him and descended the stairs, finally allowing herself a glance over her shoulder. Lieutenant Barclay stood with his eyes on the horizon and the wind toying with the hair at his temples. She forced her attention away. “Did he give you no hint of his concerns?”

“It is best for you to hear it from him, Captain.”

Fears of returning to England had plagued the crew since the moment they’d set their sails north. No doubt he feared the impressment gangs, but there was little she could do to protect him from that. Perhaps he wanted permission to go ashore before they reached England. That was out of the question.

They made their way toward the stern, where Danby was partway up in the rigging. The moment he saw her he climbed down and whipped his hat off his head.

“What is it you have to say, Danby?”

His hat crumpled in his hands. “I—I should have told you before. I know that. But I was afraid...well, I was afraid you wouldn’t hire me.”

“Told me what?”

“That I was aboard Captain Warre’s ship. When we put in at Gibraltar, I snuck away. I know it was wrong, Captain, and I’d never do such a thing to you. I swear. I’d die first.”

“I believe you. But why tell me now?”

“I’m afraid, with him here—him what we pulled aboard.”

“Lieutenant Barclay?” Her thoughts filled with his smile—the creases at his eyes, the lines around his mouth, the subtly wicked angle of mustache above his lips. White teeth against sun-browned skin. If she were a different kind of woman—

Danby frowned and looked past her toward the upper deck. “Aye, but...that ain’t Lieutenant Barclay, mum.” He gripped his hat in his hands. “That’s Captain Warre.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

CAPTAIN WARRE.

Katherine stared toward the upper deck where he stood laughing with William. William, who surely knew the truth about their visitor. Captain Warre looked her way, caught her watching him.

An accomplished storyteller, indeed. Her blood began to pound. “Danby, are you certain?”

“No doubt on it, Captain.” Danby still worried his hat in his hands. “No mistaking the likes of him.”

She turned her back on the upper deck. “You’ve no cause for concern. He cannot punish you here, and with the number of sailors on a man-of-war, it’s doubtful he’ll remember you. You may rest easy.”

Danby exhaled and replaced his hat. “Yes, Captain. Thank you, Captain.”

“Have you told anyone that you recognize him?”

“Not a soul, Captain.”

“Good. See that you tell no one else.” Danby bobbed his head and hoisted himself back up the rigging, while Katherine exchanged looks with Rafik.

“I shall take him now and lock him in the brig,” Rafik said.

“No.”

“Then what do you wish me to do?”

Her stomach clenched fiercely. In her mind, Captain Warre’s cannons exploded. She could almost smell the acrid gunsmoke drifting across the water. The girl inside her tried to propel her forward to confront him, but the woman she’d become kept that urge in check. She may have been helpless then, but she bloody well wasn’t helpless anymore.

She glanced at the upper deck, and the past sucked at her with its violent whirlpool of fear and helplessness. For a moment she thought she would be sick. “For now,” she said slowly, “nothing. He can do little, being only one man.” Except that Captain Warre had the presence of ten men.

“That is dangerous thinking,” Rafik said too sharply.

“It is not for you to question,” Katherine shot back. “For the time being, we shall let him continue to believe we have not discovered his identity.” The significance of that identity could not be ignored. “And I shall place him under your supervision.”

Only a slight narrowing of his dark eyes told her he might find that acceptable.

“You shall assign him every menial task,” she told Rafik. Oh, yes, the great Captain Warre would swab decks and polish cannons and slop buckets of filth. “He will be one of the crew—just another sailor. And I expect you to treat him as such.”

“Aye, Captain.” A slight curving of his lips betrayed his opinion this time.

“Not more harshly, Rafik.” She would need Captain Warre alive and well when they arrived in London.

“I will treat him as the rest of the crew.”

“Excellent.” She shifted so she could see the upper deck once more. Soddingest bastard he’d ever set eyes on, was he? As she watched, he put his hands behind his head and stretched his shoulders. Her body went soft and liquid deep inside, and she clenched her teeth. Ten years she’d nursed her hatred for this man, and now it took an effort to tear her gaze away from him.

This was unacceptable.

“Tomorrow,” she decided. “You will move him into the berth with the crew. He is still weak, so give him only small tasks at first and keep an eye on him for signs that he is not as recovered as he seems.”

Rafik nodded.

“And report to me regularly about his activities. I want to know at the first hint of insubordination.” It would likely come moments after he received his first assignment.

Rafik returned to his duties, and Katherine turned toward the upper deck. Her hands shook with the desire to whip her cutlass from its sheath and confront the bastard.

Captain James Warre. Here, on her ship, eating her meat pies and drinking her wine and sleeping on her linens. She watched him shift his weight from one foot to both and brace his hands on the railing. Her eyes followed the angle of his legs past his buttocks and across the broad expanse of his back, over his shoulder and down the line of his arm to the fingers that curled around smooth wood. She didn’t need to be any closer to know exactly what those fingers looked like. Strong, solid, lightly callused. Gripping the Possession as though he owned it.

A hot lick of sensation shot through her belly as though he touched her.

Captain Warre. He was Captain Warre. Perhaps if she thought the name enough times, her body would stop reacting to him. To think that if Danby hadn’t recognized him, before the voyage ended she might have been foolish enough to—

Good God.

Petrels soared above the sails as Katherine returned to the upper deck. The sound of the waves and the familiar shouts and laughter of her crew were a comfort, but everything had changed. William still chatted with India, but she would deal with him later. Oh, yes. She would deal with William. But for now, she rejoined Captain Warre at the railing.

“Everything all right?” he asked. His scent—Turkish soap borrowed from William, plus some musky undertone that was uniquely him—wafted over her on the breeze.

“A misunderstanding among the riggers.” She put her own hands on the railing and tried to cleanse her lungs with sea air, but his subtle spice lingered.

“That required your intervention? I would have guessed your boatswain capable of handling such problems.”

“Rafik is capable of handling any number of problems—” as Captain Warre would soon discover “—but my crew is free to speak with me whenever they wish. No doubt that seems strange to you. I’m sure your Captain Warre would have abhorred such a policy.”

He made a noise. “To the extent it would have meant five hundred men queued up outside his cabin, I’m sure you’re correct.”

No doubt he planned to play the role of Lieutenant Barclay for the entire voyage. He probably reasoned that once they reached London and he rejoined the upper echelons of society, it wouldn’t matter if she finally discovered his true identity. Hot anger simmered beneath her skin, so much easier to tolerate than the attraction. And infinitely more acceptable than that old vulnerability.

Her life held no room for weakness, not when so many depended on her strength.

Captain Warre, hiding like a coward behind the persona of a dead inferior officer. How many lies would he tell to protect his identity?

“You were about to tell me a little more about yourself, Lieutenant,” she said, deciding to find out. “Are you the eldest son?”

“Hardly.” One lie. “My eldest brother, Theodore, will inherit the baronetcy.” Two. Three. According to Philomena, Captain Warre was an earl by virtue of his older brother’s death five years earlier.

“I merely wish to leave the sea and all its tedium behind and live a quiet life,” he continued.

Without a doubt, four. “Leave the navy? But surely you would become a captain soon.”

He nodded. “In a few years, I likely would have had my own command.” Five. The real Lieutenant Barclay may have had a few years to wait, but the renowned Captain Warre had risen quickly through the ranks and attained his first commission twelve years ago.

“That seems an excruciatingly slow wait,” she said. “Surely you’ve been at sea twenty years now.”

The corners of his eyes creased when he glanced at her. “You pull no punches about a man’s age, Captain. Just shy of half that, I’m afraid.” Which, for the real Lieutenant Barclay, may have been true. Six lies. The only thing she didn’t know was whether Captain Warre was hiding his identity for fear of her reputation or because he knew she’d been aboard the Merry Sea. More likely the former. He would hardly remember one violent encounter among the hundreds that spanned his career.

“I can’t imagine Captain Warre approved your plan to leave the navy, battle-hardened as he must be,” she said. “With his record and reputation, I’ve no doubt he’ll order ‘Fire the cannons!’ with his dying breath.”

He laughed, full and real with a smile that gleamed white as the sails and creased his cheeks with wicked merriment. “First, there would have to be a war on.”

“Which there undoubtedly will be again.”

“Bite your tongue. And second, he would have to remain in the navy. The reason the captain approved my plan most heartily was because he planned to resign his own commission as soon as our voyage was over.”

He did? “For what reason?”

His smile dimmed. She refused to be disappointed. “Fatigue,” he said. “Jadedness, perhaps. Battle-weary, rather than battle-hardened. I fear you would have been sorely disappointed had you met him—he was hardly the bloodthirsty predator you imagine.”

Seven. If the calculating bastard standing next to her was fatigued and weary, it was only the lingering effects of his ordeal at sea. “He could hardly have attained such notoriety otherwise,” she said. His actions against the Merry Sea supported that opinion.

He turned his head and looked straight into her eyes, piercing her with a memory. As she stared back, suddenly she knew. He had not forgotten the Merry Sea or his own hand in her fate.

“Even the most driven of men make miscalculations, Captain Kinloch.”

“Do they.” She was speaking to Captain Warre now, not Lieutenant Barclay. Desperately she fought back an onslaught of emotions and memories. “I rather wonder if they don’t simply become complacent with regard to any unfortunate consequences of their actions.”

“I can assure you, they do not.” For a heartbeat those green eyes looked as weary as he claimed. “If he were here, I have no doubt he would tell you he has many regrets.”

And she would tell him to go to hell. “If Captain Warre were here,” she said, “I have no doubt that he would have many regrets—and none would have to do with his naval career.”

* * *

KATHERINE WAITED UNTIL William had retired to his cabin that evening and knocked once on his door. Captain Warre was not the only one who would have regrets.

“A word, please,” she said tightly when William opened. He’d removed his turban, and his golden hair glinted in the lamplight. She stepped into his cabin and waited until he shut the door. An atlas lay open on the desk against the wall.

“Thought I’d see where I might go after you’ve claimed your title,” he said. “What do you think of Madagascar?”

“You betrayed me,” she said. William was her best friend in the entire world, and he’d lied to her. Was still lying to her. Her chest felt tight and hot as though she’d been speared.

William studied her for a long, quiet moment. Everything in his cabin glittered—the gold in his ears, the gilded scrollwork on the bedstead and dressing table he’d purchased in the Levant, the bejeweled waterpipe he’d taken from a ship bound from Tangier. “I would fall on my sword before I would betray you, Katherine.” There was no trace of his usual humor. His blue eyes glittered, too—hard, like sapphires. “Protect you, yes. Betray? Never.”

“Explain how lying to me is protecting me.”

“I suspect the punishment for mistreating the captain of a first-rate ship of the line would be most unpleasant.”

“You think me so stupid?”

“I think anger could blind you to the consequences of revenge, and I think you’ve spent your entire adult life in a world where the rules are nothing like those where we’re headed. It would be easy for you to underestimate the value of our latest cargo.”

“I assure you, I fully appreciate Captain Warre’s value.”

“That is precisely what I’m afraid of.”

“He’s got two hands like everyone else on board,” she said harshly, “and a strong back.” An image of that strong back leaped unhelpfully to mind, rippling with muscles beneath white linen.

“Katherine, you cannot—”

“Cannot what?” She rounded on him. “Cannot put him to work? Demand that he earn his passage?”

“You cannot mistreat him.”

“Beginning tomorrow, he will be under Rafik’s supervision. He will receive the same mistreatment as any other member of the crew. If the good captain perceives honest work as mistreatment, then I will gladly stand accused.”

William exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Did he disclose himself to you?”

“Hardly. A loyal crew member recognized him and saw fit to inform me. But you—” She swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “You would have let me play the fool the entire voyage.”

“I have far too much respect for you to play you for a fool,” William said, his voice low and harsh in a tone he rarely used. He stepped close, framing her face in his hands. “You know that.”

“It was your duty to tell me his identity.” Because his identity changed everything.

Not everything.

Yes. Everything. Whatever misguided attraction she’d felt for Lieutenant Barclay—good God, for Captain Warre—was at this moment shriveling in her bosom.

William brushed her cheek and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s my duty to protect you, pet, and everyone aboard this ship. Can’t think of a worse time for you to finally come face-to-face with him. Too many uncertainties.”

When you are countess of Dunscore, Katie, men will bow at your feet like pagans before Isis.

Papa’s declaration reached out from a past she’d long since abandoned. If the Lords had their way, she would never be countess of Dunscore at all—never mind see anyone bow at her feet. Not that it mattered, except for Anne. She was doing this for Anne’s future, not her own.

“I never thought I would count you as one of those uncertainties,” she said.

“Couldn’t risk you dealing with him irrationally. Regardless of what you think, he knew from the first where my loyalties lie.”

Bah. “And now I know, as well,” she said, even though it wasn’t true.

“You don’t believe that.”

The touch of her dear friend made her want to lean into him as she’d done during those early days after their escape, when she’d been pregnant with Anne and terrified by an unknown future. Returning to Britain with a half-Moor child in her belly had been out of the question. So had been staying in Algiers. But William had found their solution. He had been her rock—at least, until she had learned to be her own rock, thanks to him. It was William who’d suggested she act as captain. William who’d stood to the side, teaching her everything he knew, knowing the independence it would give her. She owed him her life for that.

She stepped away from him. “If you ever lie to me again, I’ll run you through and toss your carcass to the gulls.”

“Agreed.” He watched her through eyes that knew her too well. “We were both captives, Katherine. I know only too well how badly the finger itches to point at someone other than the true culprits.” He paused. “I also know how easily old resentments can be intensified by more recent aggravations.”

The slightest tick of one dark gold brow told her exactly what he was thinking. “I assure you, my resentment toward Captain Warre needs no intensification,” she said. It was her own fault that William suspected she’d found Captain Warre attractive. She’d been too unguarded, too seduced by broad shoulders and sea-colored eyes.

She would have no trouble resisting them now.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HENRY’S CROSS WRECKED.

Nicholas Warre, Lord Taggart, stared numbly at the printed words. A fire crackled in the fireplace, but a chill shivered across his skin.

All hands lost...

The news screamed at him from the paper. He’d stared at it all afternoon. He’d stared until a cavern of emptiness hollowed out his body and sucked his mind dry.

First Robert, now James. His only brothers, dead.

Nick felt dead, too.

He leaned over James’s desk—his desk, now, though he didn’t deserve it—and cradled his head in his hands, fighting to breathe through a throat that felt swollen shut. Images darted through his mind—dark imaginings too easy to conjure of gigantic waves, splintering wood and the screams of drowning men. He squeezed his eyes shut, then pushed back suddenly from the desk, springing to his feet, turning toward the fire.

Bates’s knock sounded at the door.

Nick stared into the flames. “Come in,” he said woodenly.

“Lady Ramsey has arrived, your lordship.”

“Send her in.”

The rustle of yards of fabric and lace preceded Honoria into the study. “Snuffboxes, Nicholas!” his sister declared as she entered the room. “They’re hawking snuffboxes with his likeness on the lid!”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He gripped the mantel and dropped his head to his forearm. There would be no such thing as a private mourning.

“Is there nothing we can do to preserve the family’s dignity?”

“I’m little match for the adoration of the masses,” Nick said.

“A pox on the masses! James hates snuff.” Her skirts swooshed as she walked up behind him. He felt his sister’s hand on his back, smelled her familiar perfume. “La, Nicholas,” she whispered. “I don’t know how I can survive it.”

He wanted to turn into her arms, but if he did, despair would open a chasm inside him and he would be lost. He returned to the desk instead. “Been all day with Fortescue,” he said. “Nothing’s changed. Not one damned thing.”

She followed him to the desk, all powder and jewels and black lace. Modest, by Honoria’s standards. Grief had dampened her usual high spirits and killed her quick laugh. “I keep having to remind myself it’s really true,” she said quietly. “With him at sea nearly all of the time, everything seems so...usual.”

It did. But it shouldn’t. They’d all been so close, once— God, it had been ages ago. He, James, Robert, riding hell-bent through the countryside, staging mock battles on the lawn, enraging Honoria with their merciless teasing.

Two brothers dead, and they’d all grown so far apart it was as if nothing had changed. “It’s very hard terms for a title,” he spat.

Honoria reached across the desk and took his hand. “Tell me Fortescue had a solution for your problem, at least.”

“Oh, certainly. It’s not as though there isn’t a solution. But I can’t burden the Croston estate with my debts.”

“It’s your estate now. You can do with it as you wish.”

“Indeed. Just as I’ve done with Taggart.” His own barony sat mortgaged to the tune of over forty thousand pounds—an act of desperation as one after another of his shipping investments met with disaster, and that would have been worse were it not for insurance, but that hardly made a difference now. He’d become Bertrand Holliswell’s puppet, and the fact of it made him sick.

“Tempests are not your fault,” Honoria said sternly. “Nor pirates, nor any of the other disasters that befell your ships. La, Nicholas, will you blame yourself next for—” She broke off abruptly.

James’s death. That’s what she’d been about to say. No, at least he was not to blame for that.

He exhaled and looked at the papers on the desk as though they held some kind of answer. “I’ve got to get that bill through, but it looks like the bloody thing has been put off indefinitely.”

“For heaven’s sake, I cannot abide the idea that you’re willing to throw that poor girl to the dogs to satisfy a debt that could be paid with the stroke of a pen.”

“Poor girl?” He stared at her in disbelief. “The woman is practically a pirate.”

“Don’t you remember her at that garden party at Lolly’s, pining after McCutcheon like a lost puppy? No, of course you wouldn’t. Such a spectacle, but then, we were young. We all gave our hearts recklessly at that age.” Honoria sighed. “Poor thing.”

“Poor thing?” Incredulous, Nick put his hands on the desk. “She took a corsair prize!”

“Defending the Barbary reign of terror, brother dear?” She arched a brow at him. “She freed twenty English captives, which is a good deal more exciting than anything I’ve done this season.”

“Will you join your dear friend Lady Pennington aboard that pirate ship? Oh, yes, I can just imagine you with a mop in those dainty hands, swabbing decks.”

“I highly doubt Philomena is swabbing decks. And it is not a pirate ship. The last letter I had from her told of glorious adventure—which, though I’m not well-versed in the law, I know to be perfectly legal.” Her green eyes turned worried. “I only hope the tempest that caught our James did not find them, as well.” She pried one of Nick’s hands off the desk and held it in her own, and he felt like a cad for picking a fight with her—the only sibling he had left. “When the only person standing with you is Yost,” she said, “it’s a good sign you’re going the wrong direction.”

“They’ll come around.”

“Lord Dunscore was well loved.”

He didn’t need her to tell him that. He pulled his hand free and paced back to the fire. “I think he even befriended the parliamentary rats with stray crumbs,” he said in disgust. The terrible thing was Nick had liked him, too. Always ready with a laugh, always up for a night of drink and debauchery, always offering use of his horses, carriage, houses—the man would have done anything for anybody. Poor fellow had tried like hell to ransom his daughter out of Morocco after her capture, but the dey had given her as a gift to a cousin in Algiers who had not been interested in ransom money. It was only when a handful of captives she’d rescued had come home with their tale of a Scottish virago sea captain that anyone knew she had escaped captivity. Lord Dunscore had disappeared up north for months drowning his sorrows. “She broke his heart not coming home,” Nick added.

“But he didn’t disinherit her.”

“In England she never would have inherited in the first place.”

“Be that as it may, the estate is in Scotland, and harridan though she may be, she has inherited. As a matter of principle, it’s not the House of Lords’ place to interfere.”

The irony of Honoria calling someone else a harridan was almost too much. “This has nothing to do with principle. Only with satisfying Holliswell.”

“And marrying his daughter, although you already know my opinion on that.”

“Yes. And I’ll thank you not to repeat it.” It wasn’t enough that Holliswell held Nick’s debt. Holliswell’s daughter held his heart. The moment Nick had set eyes on her, it was clear that the lovely, gentle Clarissa Holliswell was a helpless pawn in Holliswell’s lustful quest for connections. Holliswell wanted the Dunscore title for himself, yes—but failing that, he’d made it clear he would marry Clarissa to even the oldest, most licentious beard splitter in England if the man had the right title.