For Her Love (38 page)

She spun toward Diego with a wide smile. “You’ve done it! They’ve given up!”

“
¡Maldito sea! ¡Hijo de puta! ¡Cabrón!
” Diego spat.

More than a month surrounded by Spanish sailors had left Grace with an interesting vocabulary. Not that she specifically knew what any of those words meant. She only knew that whenever one of the sailors accidentally used any of them in her presence, he would duck his head and mutter, “
Lo siento
,” in apology.

“Is that not good news?” she asked timidly. “We didn’t want them to catch us, did we?”

“
Destiny
!” he snapped at her.

“Destiny?”

“I gave my word of honor that he would repent! It is not just his honor. He has none! But
my
honor is another matter! I gave him the woman I loved, and what has he done? Does he not understand that when a man marries, his life is no longer his alone? He has obligations! Obligations to me,
obligations
to her!” His tirade dissolved into Spanish again, but by now, Grace was no longer paying attention.

She snatched the spyglass from him and focused it on the ship now sailing away from them. “Merciful heavens, give chase!” she cried. “Why are they running?”

“Because he knows who it is he faces. We are even, the two of us; each has defeated the other, but now I have Magdalena on my side! I put my honor on the line to save his stinking life, and he has spit upon it. I will not make the same mistake again. You are right,
Señora
Courtney, we must give chase!” His hands spun the wheel as he shouted to his men.

“Nay, Captain, you do not understand! Aye, give chase, but you mustn’t hurt Geoff. Do you not see? He is looking for me! He must be! He loves Faith and Jonathan with all his heart. He would never risk his life with them unless Giles needed him, and Giles has no desire for Spanish wealth! If Geoff is pursuing Spanish ships, he does so in search of me!”

“
Señora
Courtney…” he began, shaking his head.

She looked at him with pleading eyes. “Please, Captain. Even if I am wrong, and Geoff has, for some reason, gone back to plundering Spain, he has it in his power to reunite me with my husband.”

Diego narrowed his dark eyes in a calculating scowl. “Do you think that friendship means anything to a man without honor?”

She shook her head in incomprehension.

“Will he exchange himself for his best friend’s wife?”

Grace gasped. “I cannot ask that!”

Diego’s face was set like steel. “I can.”

*

The two ships were sailing windward now. Under the circumstances, the competition had less to do with the ships themselves than the skill of the men who sailed them. In that, it soon became clear that
Magdalena
, her captain working with men who knew him well, had the advantage.
Destiny’s
crew felt their loyalty divided evenly between two commanders, both of whom were shouting orders, and they were unsure to whom they should respond.

“‘Tis
my
ship, Giles!
My
life!” Geoff shouted when Giles contradicted yet another of his commands.

He was right, of course, but somewhere along the way, Giles had lost his taste for taking orders, even from his friend. And in truth, he knew himself to be as capable of evading the Spanish vessel as Geoff. Still, one of them had to give; the price of pride was too high. “You want the bloody helm? Take it!”

He stalked away, grinding his teeth. There was a glimmer of contrition in Geoff’s eyes, but he took the wheel anyway. Giles ripped the spyglass from Geoff’s hand and looked through it. Sure enough, Diego Montoya stood at the helm of his ship, his face a mask of fury. But it was the woman standing behind him and to one side that made his heart jump into his throat.

“Heave to!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Heave to!”

Geoff looked over his shoulder at Giles and the Spanish merchantman. “Are you mad?” he called out. Then he took one look at his friend’s face, and all discord, all rivalry vanished. “Heave to!” he confirmed. “Heave to!”

Confused and apprehensive, the men obeyed, and
Destiny
gradually slowed until she appeared nearly motionless in the shining surface of the sea.
Magdalena
pulled up beside her, and the two crews eyed one another tensely across the water.

“Captain Hampton!” Diego challenged.

“Diego! Cousin!” Geoff shouted with an arrogant grin. “Seems you’ve a bit of cargo we might relieve you of!”

“You son of a bitch!” Diego shouted back. “If you try to steal one thing off my ship…”

“There now!” Geoff cried in mock indignation. “We were only trying to retrieve a little something that belongs to us. Well, to my friend, actually…”

Giles ignored their posturing and banter. He set the men to work, carefully closing the distance between the two ships. There at the rail opposite him, wearing a prim, Spanish-style gown of dove gray, her wild curls flying in the wind, was the most beautiful site e’re to meet his eyes.

I want this man
, Grace thought to herself. She watched him direct the crew with his trusty confidence and easy manner, and she wanted him as she’d never wanted anything before. She had only to look at him and she could smell the scents of sandalwood and musk, feel his warmth radiating through the cotton shirt that rippled in the wind and molded itself to his solid chest. She wanted to touch him, breathe him, assure herself that he was not an illusion only.

She heard Diego chuckle behind her. “If you keep looking at him like that, he is going to go up in flames,” the Spaniard warned her.

She turned to him and smiled, not even blushing at having worn her heart so plainly on her sleeve. “I can never thank you enough.”

“
No importa
,” he replied. “He is coming. Go to him,
Señora
.”

Giles swung gracefully across the gap between the ships and landed lightly on
Magdalena’s
deck, but he came no farther, and Grace was afraid to move. What if he knew? What if things had changed between them? Changed for him, anyway.

Finally, he closed his eyes, and she could see his throat contract when he swallowed hard. “God help me, Grace, I thought I had lost you.”

“Nay, Giles, I am not lost.”

All at once she was in his embrace, and she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shirt. She breathed in the smell of sweat and sandalwood while he sank his face into her hair and drew in the scent of jasmine, clean and sweet.

Giles pulled back and took her face between his hands. “When I found out about your uncle, and then learned where he had taken you… And then, in Havana, I thought I’d found you, but you were gone.” His voice cracked as he forced words through his tightly constricted throat. “And we didn’t know who had taken you or where.”

“‘Twas Faith’s cousin,” she answered. “He heard me speak of Geoff, and he helped me.”

Suddenly remembering they had an audience, the two of them looked around. The sailors on board both ships had been watching the exchange with avid interest and more than a few sentimental smiles, but Diego and Geoff still glared at one another.

“You dare to fly that flag when you have given your word?” Diego demanded. “I should blow a hole through your hull here and now. We will see how many ships you plunder with your own at the bottom of the sea!”

“You’ll not find one Spaniard on this sea who can claim ill treatment or robbery at my hands,” Geoff retorted. “I’ve done naught but pluck a few feathers from various Spanish peacock’s tails! We are not out for gold, Montoya, but something even you would agree far more precious and worth any risk!” He pointed to Giles and Grace.

Giles buried his hands in Grace’s hair and rubbed its texture between his fingers. “I think that we should take this somewhere more private.”

Grace nodded, feeling a curious mix of dread and relief. One way or another, they would be done with the secrets and lies between them, and then they would begin or end their marriage, but the question would be decided.

It was instantly apparent that Giles had been inhabiting the captain’s cabin on board
Destiny
—apparent because there was not one personal item belonging to him anywhere in evidence. Grace smiled softly and ran her hand over the scarred but empty surface of the big desk. And yet, ‘twas also clear that the cabin was not his. In the light that poured in through a large window, she saw that the oaken desktop was marred, perhaps by boot heels, and bore rings from the bottoms of a few wet tankards.

“‘Tis a mess,” Giles commented apologetically.

Grace laughed. “I have missed you so, Giles.”

The sound of her laughter was sweet, but the look of uncertainty in her eyes tore at him. He wanted so to ease her fear. “I have to tell you something. This whole time that I have thought you were gone forever, been tortured by thoughts of what might have become of you, I realized something. Something I am so grateful to have a chance to tell you.” He reached for her, pulled her close. “Grace, I…”

She put her hand to his mouth. “Stop!” Her eyes burned and her chest ached, but if she let him say what she knew was coming, she would never be able to tell him what she had to tell him. “Don’t say it. Not yet. Not when you may only have to take the words back.”

“I love you, Grace.”

“Nay!” she cried. “You do not know me, Giles!” She tried to pull out of his arms, but he held her tight.

“Nay, we are beyond that old argument, you and I,” he said. “Do you know what I love about you? I love that you are strong. You are a survivor. You have been to hell and back again, and yet here you stand, looking just as fit and fine as ever. I love that you know your own worth, for even a purely evil bitch like Iolanthe Welbourne could not touch your spirit. I love that you are smart and shrewd and care not who knows it.” He laughed out loud. “Nay, woe betide the man who thinks that he can master you. And you are beautiful.”

“Stop, Giles.”

He ran his hands through her hair. “I love your hair, and your beautiful nose, and your lush lips.” He kissed her upon them, not hard, but not without passion. Then he pulled away and looked deeply into her eyes. “As far as I can tell, all that is best in you came from your mother, for it is not Edmund I see in you.”

“I have to tell you about my mother…”

“What is there to say but that she must have been no slave? No woman who could give life to someone as brave and passionate as you could ever have truly thought herself anyone’s slave.”

Grace stared at him, unable to so much as breathe. He knew. He knew, and he loved her. He loved her, not in spite of who her mother had been, but in part, because of it. She didn’t think about it, didn’t plan it, had hardly even admitted it to herself. Nonetheless, she opened her mouth and the words fell out. “I love you, too, Giles. You are kind and gentle and giving…”

He laughed again. “Then I’ve the makings of a terrible pirate. ‘Tis fortunate that farming appears my fate.”

The comment made no sense to her, but she didn’t care. She pulled him to her and their reunion became a heated melding of lips and matching of breath. The dread that had become a familiar presence to Grace was absent. Between Faith and Encantadora, she knew she had nothing to fear. It seemed that couplings between strangers were endurable, and couplings between real lovers were truly wonderous. On this glorious afternoon she was but relieved to have been spared the former, and rather eager to experience the latter.

“I’ll not hurt you any more than I must, I swear,” Giles said to her, his voice low and smooth.

“I know,” she answered. Then she smiled. “It only hurt a little dis time an’ den it ova,” she snapped her fingers, “jus’ like dat.”

Giles shook his head dubiously. “What?”

“Kiss me.”

She didn’t have to ask him twice. He wrapped her in his arms and felt a surge of joy when she did the same, pulling him close to her. Her lips were soft, yielding, opening eagerly under his and welcoming his tongue into her mouth. He couldn’t explain this change in her, but neither did he care much at the moment. All that mattered was the heat and moisture of her tongue against his, her hands threading through his hair, and the quickening of her breath.

Grace felt something deep inside her core become molten. Heat radiated from where their mouths met, coursing through her and inflaming her. Her breasts felt tight, and they tingled in anticipation of his touch. As though he had read her mind, one hand stayed flat against the small of her back while the other caressed her through the stiff bodice of her gown. Grace pressed herself impatiently into his palm.

Giles pulled away. “‘Tis a dreadful color on you,” he said, and Grace gave him a quizzical look. “Gray. It doesn’t suit you.”

She blushed self-consciously. Diego had obtained a few things for her, and she had been in no position to dictate color or style. As soon as she could, she would find something more pleasing to Giles. “What color do you prefer?”

“Gold.”

She thought for a moment. She didn’t have much in that shade.

Giles watched her fret a moment. He loved watching her thoughts play across her face, as legible as any book. “The color God made you to wear, and naught else,” he prompted.

“Actually, I think it rather washes me out. With my skin and my hair—oh!” She blushed even more deeply.

“If you’d rather not—”

“Would it please you?”

The mere thought made him ache. “Aye, very much.”

“I am to be yours today,” she said.

“And I yours.”

“Then I think it only fair that, well, all things being equal—” She plucked at the sleeve of his shirt.

Giles grinned. “Mayhap I should wash first. I worked up a sweat between alternately chasing and running from you.”

“Nay,” she replied. The smell of his sweat was not offensive. Quite the opposite, it stirred something in her.

The bodice of her gown laced up the front, and Giles’s deft fingers nearly flew as he unfastened it. His hands brushed softly against her, and she felt her nipples tighten in response. This time she felt no concern over the fact that he was so skilled at this. She was only glad that one of them knew what he was doing. Once the gown was on the floor and she was stepping out of it, Giles reached to pull his shirt over his head.