Patricia Potter (8 page)

She’d closed her eyes, but then she felt the dirty fist over her face again. Even worse, she kept seeing concerned blue eyes in a battered face. Battered because of her foolishness.

She thought about Jeremy’s words when she first met Captain Cabot: “Stroke of luck,” he’d said.

It wasn’t a stroke of luck at all; it was more a curse.

Captain Cabot was nothing like what she expected.

She had to make herself think of Larry … of the last time she had seen him.

His eyes were green, much more vivid than her hazel ones, but then everything about Larry had been vivid and glowing. She had adored him, followed him, imitated him. Lauren had always been Button Nose to him, and since so many followed his lead, she’d become Button to everyone in their acquaintance. Laurence and Lauren were all too alike in sound, and she’d been the only one to call him Larry.

The years he was away at school had been misery, but she had worked with her father, helping with dressings and splints and assisting with operations. She took great satisfaction in knowing that soon all three of them would work together.

When he had finished his medical studies, the war was in its second year, and Larry felt bound to offer his services. He had always loved the sea, and had often said that if medicine weren’t in his blood, he would have plied the China trade. So it wasn’t surprising that he chose the Navy. Lauren had been pleased, believing the sea far safer than the bloody battlefields down South.

He had looked so grand that last day, tall and strong and excited about his new adventure. Everything was an adventure to him, and this was to be the greatest one of all …

Lauren turned over in the bed. Button. How she wished she could hear him say it again. Once more. A dozen times more. A hundred times more, as long as she was wishing.

But he never would, because of Adrian Cabot. Blue eyes and a handsome face couldn’t compensate for that loss. Neither could a rescue.

She closed her eyes tightly against Captain Cabot’s invasive interruption of her rest. Part of her wished for sleep, but another part feared it, feared the nightmare that had recurred since the night Larry died. Feared the pain that struck her as it must have struck Larry.

And she knew she would do anything she had to do … to see justice done.

Adrian gingerly washed the cut on his lip and placed some very expensive ice on the discolored skin around his eye. He looked like bloody hell.

Socrates had jumped up on the bureau and was likewise peering in the mirror, first at himself with a deplorable lack of modesty, then up at Adrian, chattering fiercely.

God, but he was exhausted, as well as hurting. He had left the dinner to check on the continuing unloading of the ship when he had, heard Lauren Bradley’s cry and ran to the rescue.

He winced as his hand touched another sore spot. He must be getting old, or else he’d forgotten how damned painful a fight could be.

But it had been worth it, he’d decided, for the moment of seeing Lauren Bradley without all the defenses he’d noticed in her. He had been strangely attracted to her earlier in the day, though he hadn’t known exactly why. Perhaps it had been the fire in those lovely eyes, or perhaps the almost hostile attitude that piqued his interest. But even then, except for the eyes, she had appeared quite unremarkable in the modest gray dress with the high neck and severe hairstyle.

But that evening, she had been extremely fascinating, especially when she’d so ably tripped one of those louts instead of fainting as so many of the women he knew would. And she was very appealing with her hair flowing in wild curls halfway down her back, and her dress ripped to show at firsthand her deliciously feminine curves. Even in the dark, he had seen the blush creep up her face as she had said her last words, and he had been amazed at the surge of warmth he felt when she had so grudgingly thanked him.

Lauren Bradley was very different from any other woman he’d ever met, and he wondered if perhaps that was why he was so interested. She mystified him with her hostility, attracted him with the secret fire in those amber-green eyes, and challenged him in a way he hadn’t been challenged in years.

It could also be, he thought a bit wryly, that she did not behave in the ways other women of his acquaintance usually did. She was so different from Sylvia, the first love in his life and, he had vowed, the last …

Sylvia had been what his peers called a diamond of the first water—or at least her beauty was. Adrian had been in London with his brother John during her season, and they both attended the first great ball.

Sylvia Clairmont was the daughter of a minor baron, and Adrian had been warned that her family was looking for a major alliance for her, in both title arid wealth. But that fact had little meaning for him as they danced, and she looked up with teasing blue eyes and an invitation on her lips.

Adrian had always been successful with women, with almost everyone, in fact, except his father. Even as a boy, he’d charmed the cook and maids into extra favors with a smile that one neighboring girl told him put the sun to shame.

It was a smile that he had retained, despite some very bitter years. He used it to cover disappointments and losses, and even bewilderment. It had, in fact, become almost automatic, a tool, and seldom did the smile stretch to his eyes, and never now to the heart.

But then, at nineteen, when he had seen Sylvia, his heart had responded, and he’d wanted her as he had wanted few other things in his life. His only other obsession was Ridgely, and he knew, by then, he would never have it, as he had never had his father’s love. That had all been reserved for John, and even with his brother it had been sparingly given.

Adrian had fallen in love, totally, blindly in love with Sylvia. He was attending Cambridge, but made it back to London at every opportunity. He knew he was only one of many admirers, but she allowed him to believe he was the one she wanted. They would disappear into the gardens, behind some sheltering tree, and she allowed him liberties that led him more and more to believe that he was the chosen one, fortune or not.

And it was not as if he didn’t have prospects. He had an inheritance from his grandfather, and if he wasn’t completely sure as to what he would do after Cambridge, he had friends aplenty and many opportunities to make his fortune.

It came, then, as an abrupt shock when Sylvia announced her engagement to a marquess nearly three times her age. She quickly assured Adrian, however, that she would continue to be available to him.

For Adrian, who had suffered through a marriage of convenience between his mother and father, the disillusionment was immense. He remembered the terrible arguments between his parents, and the violence directed toward his brother and himself. When there wasn’t anger, there was coldness, a chill that froze everyone around the Cabot family. He used to escape to the glades of Ridgely, to the bank of the river that wandered merrily through the property, to the small houses of the tenants who, though poor, had more love in their dwellings than he had in his. And they had cared more for the boy, and the man he was, than his family had.

Despite the discord in his family, however, Adrian had always loved the heartbeat of Ridgely. He felt its life when he looked at the grand portraits of his ancestors, as he traveled halls that had been trod hundreds of years earlier. He explored the underground dungeons and wondered how it must have felt to be confined in their inky blackness, as his family’s enemies had been, even one of their own blood during the Wars of the Roses. He had studied the history and read the personal journals, and knew more about its people than his father or brother. Yet he had no claim to it, and he could only watch his father’s mismanagement and realize his brother’s disinterest, even hatred of the place.

And Sylvia had wanted him to do the same with her … to lose the whole and accept leftover crumbs.

Bitterness, and a sense of hopelessness, had gnawed at him. He’d left Cambridge and started drinking and inhabiting gambling clubs, where he recklessly lost his inheritance from his grandfather, and more. Annoyed by his son’s insistent creditors, Adrian’s father offered to buy him a naval commission, and announced he would then be through with him. Adrian, with few options other than debtor’s prison, accepted. A year later his father was dead, and John owned Ridgely …

Much to his surprise, Adrian had liked the sea, although he didn’t like naval discipline. Not even his smile helped there. But gradually he’d adjusted and learned everything he could. He had been happy enough until his last tour of duty. The captain was both a martinet and a fool, and Adrian’s hot temper destroyed his career. And then John had lost Ridgely after a long series of losses at the gambling tables.

Adrian had felt hollow at hearing the news, as if a vital part of him had been torn away, and he realized then that he had always expected to return. And now a man named Rhys Redding, whose sole talent was gambling, owned Ridgely, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it—until the American Civil War erupted and created opportunities for quick wealth.

But in those years during his childhood, his courtship of Sylvia, and the final betrayal by his brother, he had lost any trust he’d ever had in others. And since Sylvia, he’d had no serious thoughts for women.

So why did Lauren Bradley haunt him so?

Socrates sat in front of him, his head positioned on his hands like a little wise man, as if surveying a mystery.

Or a fool.

Lauren dressed carefully the next evening. She felt the strangest combination of dread and excitement, and she didn’t understand the tingling inside her body. She should feel nothing but loathing for the Englishman.

Yet there had been something about him the previous night—the wry, crestfallen charm when she had called Socrates a hero, then the bright, shining smile when she had amended the compliment to include him. She had not been able to dismiss either expression from her thoughts.

She had spent much of the day with Jeremy in his shop. It had not taken long to learn there were few secrets in Nassau. The first customer, a gentleman involved in the shipping business, remarked on her “unfortunate incident,” and later Lauren felt her cheeks glow brightly as she explained to Jeremy what had happened.

“It was really nothing,” Lauren tried to assure him. “I didn’t want to bother or worry you.”

His forehead furrowed with concern. “Tell me everything that happened.”

“The night was so pretty. I was feeling restless, so I took a short walk. I often walked in the evening in Dover,” she explained.

He raised a thick gray eyebrow. “I’m afraid Nassau isn’t Dover,” he said quietly. “It’s safe enough on some streets in the daytime, but you shouldn’t go anywhere alone at night. I should have warned you.”

Lauren knew he thought he shouldn’t have to warn her. It had been a careless thing to do, and she realized he probably now had doubts about her competence. But she had needed that time to think.

“Continue,” he prodded gently.

“Four sailors,” she told him. “They were drunk and thought …”

“I can imagine what they thought,” he interrupted curtly.

“I would have been in a great deal of trouble if Captain Cabot and his monkey hadn’t happened along.”

Jeremy’s eyebrow rose higher. “Cabot?”

She nodded. “And Socrates. He bit one of them.”

Jeremy smiled as he shook his head. “Someone seems to be on our side.”

Lauren frowned slightly in question.

“There’s no quicker way to a man’s heart than to bring out the protective side of him.”

Lauren’s hand went to the side of her skirt, and her fingers clutched the material. “It’s going to be more difficult …”

His voice gentled. “Phillips thought you could handle it, and you can. You must think of the good you’re doing for your country, the lives you can save.”

They spoke no more about the incident, and at Lauren’s insistence, Jeremy had spent much of the rest of the day showing her the stock. She needed to be busy, to be helpful.

All the while he talked about the island of New Providence, and Lauren realized he was trying to divert her attention from her obviously growing doubts about her mission. He told her how pirates once roamed the seas, how English seamen used Nassau as a base to raid Spanish ships, and the Spanish, in turn, sacked and burned the city.

The Bahamas had a bold and adventurous history, he’d said, but had settled down to a peaceful and quiet existence until the Civil War. Sunday, he said, he would take her to see the governor’s mansion and some old houses, as well as the Royal Victoria Hotel where Captain Cabot and the other blockade runners stayed. The mention of the captain cast a shadow over the afternoon as Lauren thought again of the lies she would tell that night, the false pretenses, the deceit.

And yet she still felt so expectant …

She looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing a dark green silk dress with puffed sleeves and a high neckline decorated with lace. It was a modest dress, but flattering, and the color made her face appear more vibrant, her eyes deeper, more mysterious.

Even from her upstairs room, Lauren heard an authoritative knock at the front door, and the rich sound of Captain Cabot’s English-accented greeting as the door was opened. She bit her lips to make them red, and pinched her cheeks for color, but then they flushed naturally as she realized how much she cared what he thought of her appearance.