Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (29 page)

"My lord Giles, all women need be that right in
all
matters!" She tried not to smile when she said it, but her mouth seemed to want its own way, so she changed the subject as a woman must when she is utterly correct. "What can I do of real help to you? No nimblety-pimblety duty, but such a task as you would give Tom Barnes!"

He looked at her, a beautiful defiance radiating, his face very close to hers, and he tapped his hands on both her shoulders as if knighting her. "I will not say anything of how we two came to this, although we must speak of it in time. But I find you as you are, mistress, good to look at and be with and"—he paused and she held her breath—"er, well suited to help me in this adventure."

Praise? Awkward, yes, yet true praise. Her heart did not know whether or not to allow too much happiness at his words. Though he had spoken of love to her in the heat of lovemaking, flesh on flesh could make the words obey the body. Yet now they were two together in this fight against the Hollanders, but when it was over, she would go to whatever fate God or Chiffinch planned. Whate'er her future, Giles would not be in it. Of that she was almost sure.

Was it really true that you never missed what you had never known? If it were, and she feared its underlying truth, Meriel knew that she might someday soon wish she had never known Giles's love, for she would always know what she missed ... know its touch and taste on her lips and... and elsewhere. Especially elsewhere.

Taking a deep breath, Meriel looked from Giles's face to the empty spars aloft. "Then, my lord, if we are together in this thing we should make all sail—" And since she did not mean to remind a ship's captain of his duty, especially one who was also an earl and could wear the blue sash of a Garter knight, she touched her forehead and added as humbly as she could, "As you command it, sir."

The command came immediately and the crew leapt to the halyards. A strong easterly wind caught the
No Name
and they sailed swiftly up the Thames.

Meriel looked back to see a small Dutch ship give chase, firing its bow gun as it came. She watched as Giles steered to take full advantage of every puff of wind, knowing his little ship and using the wheel as he'd used his hands on her body in de Witt's cabin: to the fullest advantage.

Several Hollander cannonballs plopped near their stern, spraying both Giles and Meriel with Thames water until, laughing and triumphant, they were thoroughly soaked but out of range.

They had not sailed far when the cannon fire from the Dutch fleet behind them ceased.

"The fort has fallen," Giles said, adjusting his heading to refill a sail as the wind shifted. "Mistress," he said, looking at Meriel in all pretend seriousness, thinking she would probably refuse, "you want a seaman's job and are not afraid of a little spray. Go below and outfit yourself as a sailor, then get ye to the bowsprit and lay out along it. Watch for any shoaling. Light a lantern in case some fool fisherman is on the river. Tom, men... and lady"—he made her a short bow, which showed some respect—"we go to save London from the Hollanders."

The men took time to yell, "Huzzah! Huzzah for our lord!"

Meriel joined the cheer, and Giles saw it with a swelling heart, though he quickly raised his gaze to his sails.

"And our brave lady," Tom shouted, and another "huzzah" rang out.

Within minutes, Meriel, changed into comfortable sailor's breeches, stretched herself along the bowsprit, balancing her lantern, aware that all could rightly see her form, but caring nothing for it. She had serious work and would not be distracted, though she wondered if Giles looked on her and was thinking:
What adorable curving hips!
Or with an excellent memory of his hands on her arse.
Hey, well, any woman would think thus! Wouldn't she?

Villagers were crowding down to the shore, shouting to them, some putting out in small boats with their families and goods piled high, their gunnels low in the water.

"Get your muskets, good men," Meriel shouted. "Call out your militia trainbands. The Hollanders are in Sheerness Fort and will soon be at the chain. Arm yourselves for England and our king!"

She shouted until hoarse and heard Giles's voice behind her, his hands lifting her from the bowsprit as the river widened to a deeper channel. "Guard your throat. They think only of saving what they have."

"Aye. They have so little I do not censure them for it, my lord."

He hung the warning lantern, then held her against him, rather too tightly to be accidental, and the surprise of knowing his body again along all its length took away her speech, though saucy words kept bubbling near the surface.

But Giles had speech. "They fear the Dutch will kill and loot as we English did when we attacked the Hollander coastal towns."

"To our shame," Meriel said, her mouth close to his.

His voice was low and gruff. "In war there can be no shame."

"My lord, there, most of all, should men seek their conscience."

"You have philosophy on your side, mistress, but men know that in war there is only victory or defeat. I doubt we will ever see beyond that."

"What makes you think women are any less warriors? Don't I thirst to win?"

"If all women were your match, perhaps," he said, and she saw a grin escape his mouth. "But I fear you are singular amongst your sisters."

"Don't wager on it, Giles."

And there in the fading light of dusk on the deck of the ketch tossed by tidal surges, he kissed her because he could not help himself, or perhaps had stopped trying.

Meriel opened her mouth to the heat of his lips and held tight to him. Her legs seemed too heavy to move her away.

"This is most unwifely behavior," he said, a smile curling his lips.

"How should I behave, then?"

He laughed. "Dam'me, I can think of no better." And he kissed her again, spray soaking them.

In the next hour, shouts from boats poorly navigated and several near collisions forced Giles to reluctantly haul sail, put in close to the shore and drop anchor for the night.

"But, Giles," Meriel questioned, eager to put more distance between the little ketch and the Dutch cannon behind them, "how can we stop for the night with the Hollanders so close by?"

"The Dutch will not risk bringing their many sail upriver at night. If they ran aground, our militia could pick off their men from shore, and they would need wait for another high tide."

He called to Tom Barnes. "Take two men and forage inland for some food and drink. Pay good coin for what you get. We will not pillage from our own."

"Aye, m'lord," Tom said, acting instantly on his orders.

With Tom gone, Meriel yawned, the tension of the last hours finally seeping through flesh to bone, forcing her eyes to close until she was almost asleep upon her feet.

"Get you below to my cabin, mistress," Giles whispered, taking a silent oath not to follow her. "When we have food, I will see you fed." He stared at her, his mouth slightly ironic to show a double meaning. "You have given of yourself most generously these last days." He handed her a lantern, lit from the candle of another.

She smiled more fully than he, licking her lips until they glistened. "I try always to be of a generous, giving nature, my lord." And then she stumbled away down the hatch to a hammock slung near the stern windows, trying to keep happiness at bay and failing, for what she saw in his face could only bring her joy. He wanted her despite all that was between them, or because of it. Didn't he?

Meriel settled into her swinging bed .. . after a third try.

Shouts and tramping feet on the deck above woke her. The lantern candle had burned down to half its length and the sharp scent of tallow was everywhere. She had slept for several hours and felt refreshed. Still, she had trouble climbing from the plaguey hammock.

The door to the deck opened, and Giles's feet, then legs, then torso appeared as he ducked his head into the cabin. "I've brought you a late supper, not exactly Longs or Lockets or even the Banqueting House, but enough to give you the strength you'll need," he said.

Meriel struggled to sit, but fell back. "Then I must eat it on my back, or I need your help, sir."

He grinned and looked nothing like the sober Earl of Warborough. "An interesting dilemma, mistress."

"For you?"

"Aye, and well you know it," he answered, gathering her in his arms and setting her on her feet, holding her a moment longer while she found her legs again in the gentle rolling shallows.

"I know nothing, Giles, but I hope for much."

He turned away at that and sat cross-legged on the bench under the stern windows, opening a hamper without issuing an invitation for her to sit.

She sat, anyway.

"A tavern keeper had not fled, hoping for business." He handed her a green glass bottle of ale, and broke off bread.

"No cheese, please you, m'lord," she said, with a little laugh.

He smiled and agreed. "A good English venison pasty will do you better." He held it out for her to bite, so that she had to bend double and open her mouth wide. Her breasts were loose and her sailor's shirt most revealing. She knew it and didn't adjust the ties for modesty. Modesty had long since fled her from lack of use.

"Mistress, will you have another bite?" Giles said, his gaze hot on her.

"My lord Giles of Warborough, I much prefer to be sweet dessert than a meat pie for a hungry seaman."

He took a deep breath and waited as it shivered out of his depths, but he could not resist so tempting a dish as Meriel St. Thomas.

"You torment me," he said, still refusing to use the name they had shared at Harringdon Hall in the big goose-feather bed and in the arms of the ancient oak. "I swear each time I lie with you that I will resist the next."

"Then sir," she answered, sliding her lips across his unshaven cheek, "if I were the Earl of Warborough, I would leave off swearing."

His hands were hot as he slid them into her sailor's shirt. "You make excellent sense for a ..."

"Say it. A maid, a servant girl. Giles, I have no shame of where I come from. It was honorable, hard work. If you think on it, you have lived the same." She barely suppressed a giggle. "Only in somewhat better clothes." She said this while shrugging out of her own breeches, wondering only a moment at the wantonness that had been in her all the time.

He burrowed his mouth into the cleft of her shirt and kissed her soft, yielding breasts, licking their nipples hungrily into erectness, supping on them as if he had not just had his fill, pulling her closer until she was on his lap, her legs wrapped about his back and braced against the stern bulkhead. He felt the heat of her open womanhood radiating against his cock as he slipped inside her. The pasty was forgotten, as was the ale. He had a taste for sweets now and he saw nothing sweeter in the world than this woman before him.

The candle had burned down to a pool of tallow and a floating wick when they finally lay close together on the wooden deck where they had tumbled, laughing. They quieted their breathing as the little ship gently rolled from side to side in the shallows.

Giles turned his head on his crooked arm to look at her in profile. A dimple showed in her cheek, and he knew that she was amused.

"What?"

"I was thinking how much I prefer your leafy perch in the woods of Harringdon Hall to this bed of oak boards."

He couldn't answer that. He wasn't ready to make that decision. But he could not take his eyes from Meriel. Her nose was most aristocratic, but shorter than Felice's by just enough to make a difference. Each time he looked at his dead wife's counterfeit, he saw the slight alteration in every feature that improved upon the original.

Until this moment, he had not had time to think of Felice or of her fitting end. He could not mourn her. She had died for him years ago, with the throwing away of his son and heir as if the half-formed babe were naught. That young and loving Felice that he had thought returned to him for so short a time at Harringdon was ... what? Could be ... what? He was a peer of the realm. She was a commoner. The divide was too deep. Wasn't it?

Meriel's lips were parted as if to speak, but he put a warning finger on them and she settled back into herself. He could not think what to do. His wife was dead, yet the best of what they might have had together lived on beside him. Better, oh, far better than what he'd ever hoped. He groaned under the weight of his tormenting thoughts, pressing his temples to get them out of his mind before they became speech.

"Sshhh, my lord," Meriel said. "Quiet yourself." She had some idea what it was like to regret behavior that seemed beyond human control. "There is a greater matter to settle. We will know what is our future when England and our king are safe."

He stood and pulled her to her feet. "You remind me of my duty, mistress."

"Our duty," she whispered.

He nodded, and they climbed to the deck above, her hand in his. She did not need his help on the ladder, but she accepted it. She would take all Giles would give.

The first brightening of a new day lit the sky to the east of the ketch bobbing in the Thames, the morning breezes sweeping in from the Channel to tug at the furled mainsail.

"Hail, the deck!"

Meriel and Giles looked up to where Tom Barnes perched on the topmost spar of the mainmast. "A squadron of Hollanders, still out of cannon range, my lord!" he shouted.

"Cock's life! They lost no time. But we have twice their speed and half their draft. To the chain, men!"

The crew leapt to the halyards and they were moving at once. Meriel jumped to lend a hand as Giles ran to the wheel. Then she doused the lanterns, as the little ketch caught the current and swept upriver toward Gillingham, the wind singing in the shrouds.

"Will we be in time?" she asked, rushing back to him.

"We'll need all the luck that seems to follow you, mistress."

Giles and Meriel, their hands sharing the wheel, steered the ketch toward the chain. High spring tides and an easterly gale combined to speed them there by the forenoon. Dropping anchor near the guard ship
Matthius,
Giles hailed the captain: "Sheerness is lost, and the Dutch are determined to come against you."