Everything I Ever Wanted (30 page)

All of it under the covers, he realized. Or under the cover of darkness. He could do anything he wanted to her as long as he could not see. He could touch her in any manner except with his eyes.

South rose slowly from the bed. The room was warmer now, and he washed and dressed without hurrying. Long before he finished, he heard India leave her room and trip lightly down the stairs on her way to the kitchen. When he finally followed her, he once again had more questions than when she had left him.

As soon as his feet touched the bottom step, she handed him a long wooden spoon to stir the porridge. "Have a care not to let it burn, my lord. There is nothing so vile as scorched oats."

"If that is the worst you have tasted," South told her, "then you have eaten well." He accepted the spoon and bent to his task at the hearth while she used a large paddle to lift a loaf of bread from the hearth oven and check its underside. With an expert economy of motion, she tipped the paddle just enough to permit the loaf to slide neatly back into place and closed the iron door. Watching her, South realized he was shaking his head again, something he seemed to do a great deal when he was in her presence. Just when he thought he had some sense of who she was or who she had been, she showed him an unexpected facet. He could not have pictured her so comfortably contented at a cottage hearth.

"What is it?" she asked, straightening. She brushed at her cheek. "Have I a smudge on my face?"

"No."

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like I have a smudge on my face." India was a perfect mimic, and she effortlessly mirrored South's expression back to him.

For his part, South could only stare. He knew that expression and didn't wonder that she had gotten it right. He was thoroughly beguiled.

"Well?" she demanded.

South raised his hand. "Here," he said, brushing her opposite cheek with his fingertips. "You have a smudge."

Now it was India who shook her head, bemused. She ducked out from under his arm. "The porridge," she told him when she felt his eyes following her. "Mind it carefully."

It helped to focus South's attention when a thick bubble of porridge burst and splashed the back of his hand. He thought he heard India's light laughter as he nursed the burn, though when he glanced in her direction she was simply setting bowls on the table and humming tunelessly to herself. If there was a smile playing about the line of her mouth, then she only meant to tease him with the hope of glimpsing it.

South thought he had a better chance of seeing the porridge smile, and was still thinking the same when they sat down to eat a few minutes later. "Do you mean to be Miss Butter-wouldn't-melt for the rest of the day?"

"I do not want to encourage you," she said primly.

"India."

She raised her head then and gave him the fullness of her lushly curved mouth. It almost set South back in his chair. "Mayhap you are right to use it with discretion," he said after he recovered. "Otherwise, I will be moved to take you here at the table."

India's smile vanished as quickly as it appeared. "That is what I thought," India said in precise, cool accents. "It takes little enough to start you and so much effort to rein you in." She waggled her spoon at him."Eat your porridge, my lord, while your mouth is open for it."

His mouth was indeed open. He filled it with a spoonful of hot oats before she literally had him eating out of her hand.

India sliced a heel of warm bread for herself and added a spoonful of jam. She was quiet as she spread it across the heel, her thoughts moving away from this place and time.

"What is it, India?" South asked.

She was not surprised he had caught her mood. He seemed. to have little trouble doing that. She raised her face slowly to his and let him see she was now in earnest. "Will you tell me about the prison barge?"

He may have gauged her mood, but her question took him unawares. "What do you want to know?"

"You don't mind?"

"I will tell you if I do."

She nodded. "Very well. When did it happen?"

"Ten years ago. I was in the Peninsula then. Napoleon had taken Madrid after the rebellion. King Joseph had fled. There were skirmishes almost daily in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The ship I was on had the misfortune to be captured by the frogs."

"You weren't ransomed and returned?"

"No. There were too many uncertainties at that time. We were moved to a barge and kept there while diplomats haggled over our fate."

"You said it was eight months."

"Yes."

"That is a very long time."

"Yes."

His succinct answers revealed more to India than she thought he meant to. "Did you regret your decision to serve?"

"No. Only that my father and I exchanged bitter words over it. He did not want me to go. There was no reason for it, you see, except that it was what I wanted and I was determined. I think he sensed I was prepared to defy him, and that was when he gave in. He did not have to. In that way he was far wiser than I gave him credit. Had he opposed me to the end, we might have never reconciled. I came late to this understanding, but with eight months to reflect on my father's actions, I was finally able to see he was possessed of no less good judgment than Solomon."

India watched a faint smile lift the corners of his mouth. She guessed the reason for it. "You told him so, did you not?"

"As soon as I saw him."

"He agreed with you."

"Of course," South said. "Then he called in my mother so she might hear me say the same. Apparently, my imprisonment had not given her so fine an opinion of her husband. I do not think she was prepared to forgive him if there had been no release."

"You are her son," India said simply. "I think it must always be thus for a mother and her son."

South shrugged. "Perhaps. It is true that she is persuaded she is in the right of everything where I am concerned."

"You do not sound convinced of the same."

"She is my mother, India. Not my conscience. And yes, I have had occasion to tell her so, though not in quite that straightforward a manner. With Mother, one is best served by practicing a bit of roundaboutation."

"And you are very good at that, my lord."

He smiled. "Yes. I am."

She returned his smile, albeit a gentler version than the one she had given him earlier. "Tell me how you were released," she said."Was it finally the work of the diplomats that aided you?"

"No. I might be there yet, waiting for an agreement. In the end, there was only one way to guarantee my freedom and that of every other prisoner on board. I escaped."

India's eyes widened fractionally. "Escaped? How was that possible?"

"Mr. Tibbets died," South said. "He was one of the men sharing leg irons with me. The guards had to unshackle us to remove his body. When the linking chain was lifted, I was able to move for the first time without the cooperation or permission of another man. The guards were not prepared for an assault. After so long a confinement, it is understandable that they would miscalculate the strength of their prisoners."

South set aside his spoon and picked up his cup. He wrapped both hands around it, threading his fingers together, and raised it toward his mouth. "I was able to overpower one of them. Mr. Blount, the man who shared shackles with Mr. Tibbets and me, took the other. We had planned for months for just such an occasion as this. It is but one way to pass the time, you understand, and it gives a man purpose to plot his escape."

South's half-smile mocked him. He drank from his cup. "We had imagined being able to take the keys from the guard and free everyone held in the same area. We would then move to other parts of the ship until we had taken it over. It was a reasonable plan given how many of us there were and how few were assigned to guard us."

India waited for the explanation of what had gone wrong. That something had was there in the gravity of his expression and the sober gray eyes that would not quite meet hers.

"One of the guards was able to fire his pistol," South told her. "Mr. Blount went downmortally wounded, though I did not know that then. The shot alerted other guards. We could hear the shouts and their running approach toward us. There was no time to effect the escape of all, so I went alone."

"The other prisoners must have urged you do so," India said.

South nodded. "Yes, they did. In very strong terms."

India searched his face. "You have regrets that you listened to them?" she asked gently.

He glanced up from contemplating the contents of his cup. "Regrets," he repeated, his voice slightly hoarse with emotion. "Yes. Always."

"But you"

"I escaped, India," he said flatly. "Many of them did not. Seven men were hanged for having some part in my defection. A score more died from disease or despair."

"And how many were saved?" she asked. "The story does not end there, not with your escape. That is but the beginning. You went back, did you not? You returned for them, and those that survived in your absence were rescued because of it."

"You would have me be a hero, India. Is that it?"

"I would have you be what you are," she said. "Are you telling me you did not return?"

"No," he said. "I did. But you should not make too much of it. I had an obligation to those I left behind. It was my duty."

"You are a man of integrity, my lord. The obligation you had was to yourself, to act in an honorable manner. Perhaps it is as you say: you are no heroyet it is not every man who risks his life and still asks, years later, what more could I have done. I do not believe you should reproach yourself for what you could not accomplish."

South sat back in his chair and regarded her over the rim of his cup. "Have I acted honorably toward you, India?"

India's brows drew together, and a small crease appeared between them. "I do not know what you mean," she said slowly, feeling her way. "It is not the same thing at all."

South's study remained considering. "Not the same," he murmured. "I wonder if that is" His voice trailed off.

He set down his cup and returned to his rapidly cooling porridge. "You're frowning. Did I burn your porridge after all?"

Her frown actually deepened. "What?" India's glance fell to her bowl. "Oh. No. It is just that"

"Yes?"

She pressed her cup to her lips and drank. "Nothing," she said. "It is nothing." If he did not intend to pursue the question he put to her, then she would be wise not to raise it, but she wondered what had provoked it. Did he believe he had not acted with honor toward her? Was it because he had taken her from London without her permission? Or shared her bed at her own invitation? "Tell me the rest," she said after a moment. "How did you get off the barge?"

South was not surprised when India did not press him to make any other explanation. He doubted that she believed he had acted in any way dishonorably, but it revealed much more about the way she thought of herself than how she thought of him. "There was time enough for me to take a coat and hat from one of the unconscious turnkeys. I put them on and slipped out in the confusion that came with the arrival of the rest of the guards. I made my way topside and threw myself in the water before I could think better of it."

"How did you know which way to swim? Could you see land?"

"Not then. I just struck out. It was when no boats from the ship were released to pursue me that I realized just how far from shore we were. They assumed, quite correctly, that I couldn't swim such a distance."

"Then how?"

"Mere chance," he explained. "Some would say a miracle. A Portuguese fishing boat came upon me and hauled me in."

India's dark eyes narrowed. "How long were you in the water before they found you?"

"A day and anight."

She found she simply had no words to properly express herself, nor any voice with which to say them. She could only stare at him. That he should explain so plainly, without bravado or extravagance, made India's emotions that much more deeply felt.

"The Portuguese took me to shore. Fed me. Hid me. Three days passed before I was strong enough to leave. I made my way north, found a packet boat, and stowed myself on board. That boat was stopped by one of His Majesty's frigates when it tried to run a blockade."

"You escaped again."

"It was not so much an escape as merely being found."

"And then the frigate returned to rescue the men on the barge?"

He shook his head. "No, that would have meant a full engagement. I asked to be allowed to have use of the packet boat instead and fly the French tricolor. When we arrived in the waters where I had last known the prison ship to be, our presence aroused no alarm. We were taken for a supply ship and given permission to come alongside the barge. By the time our ruse was discovered, we were in position to take the ship."

India knew he would not give her the details of that fight even if she had wanted to hear them. The truth was, she did not. "Did you leave the navy afterward?"

"No. Not immediately."