Over the next fortnight, as the air grew sultry and the waters warmer, Madeline spent each night in the captain’s bed. It was an unspoken arrangement between them, where neither asked, nor invited, nor teased the other in a flirtatious dance.
At ten o’clock every evening, she would enter his room—and his arms.
He waited for her. Always. At times, the cabin was dark, the man in wretched pain. And she held him through the night in silence. Other times, under resplendent lamplight, he took her in his embrace, captured her lips, and made love to her with the voracity of a starving castaway. However the night passed, it was always perfect, their time together a secret paradise.
Madeline worried about his chronic headaches, the cause still a mystery, and whenever she broached the subject of his health, he’d silence her with a hardy kiss. She had learned to let the matter rest—for now. As they approached Caribbean waters, danger lurked behind uncharted islands, through un-navigated currents, and from secluded pirate bays. Soon she would learn the truth about her grandfather.
She held tight the thought of a miracle. She held tight the image of a blessed reunion, of bringing her grandfather home . . . and then a troubling vision always spoiled her joy: a vision of the captain’s lone silhouette, standing on the shore of an island as they sailed for England.
Her heart cramped at the unnatural thought of abandoning him in the Bahamas. She’d made several attempts to persuade him to return with them, but he’d doggedly refused, insisting “it was his private affair.” For what unfathomable reason? she’d cried more than once. But he’d rebuffed her at every turn. He was just determined she keep her part of their bargain and deliver the letter to his sister.
Her soul in turmoil, Madeline rolled across the bed and observed the stubborn, frustrating . . . beautiful man as he studied the sea charts, brow furrowed in complete concentration.
She wasn’t his fiancée, much less his wife. He had made no offer of courtship. But the sore matter remained: what would become of them?
Would he ever return to England? Would she ever see him again? And when?
“Am I your mistress?” she queried, voice tart.
He glanced at her from above the slanted desk. “No.”
She huffed at the straightforward, passionless answer. “Whore?”
“No!”
His second, more emotional response pleased her better. “Who am I, then?”
“A damn siren I can’t get out of my head, my blood, my . . .”
He stopped there. But her heart still surged with delight—and longing. After muttering a few unintelligible words, he returned to the sea charts.
Madeline wasn’t finished with him yet, though. “William?”
“Shit.” He fisted his palms. “What?”
“I don’t want to say goodbye.”
He remained fixated on the sea charts, his breathing shallow, loud. When he finally voiced a remark, it was a tattered whisper, “You have to.”
In startlingly swift strides, he then left the room, slamming the door behind him.
I’m not angry with you, Maddie.
She had learned long ago his foul moods weren’t aimed at her, but something—something potentially devastating—was torturing him.
~ * ~
Madeline fingered the letter in her hand. William had given her the paper earlier in the day, sealed with red wax. She had tucked it inside her carpet bag with every intention of delivering the message to his sister, but she now held the parchment with curiosity and agitation.
The captain’s neat penmanship addressed the document to “Belle,” such an informal greeting, but the letter contained weighty revelations, the same revelations she’d been searching for fruitlessly aboard the Nemesis.
Madeline wandered toward the porthole and lifted the paper into the light, but its thickness was too great and she couldn’t read the note.
Her fingers trembled with mish-mashed emotions, and at last, she reasoned, she had promised to convey the letter to the duchess, however, she had not promised never to read it. She was treading on moral thin ice, she knew, but she was determined to uncover the truth, and since William refused to offer her answers . . .
Before she regained her wits, Madeline pinched the edges of the letter, about to break the wax seal, when William entered her cabin.
He stilled in the doorway, silent, staring at the letter in her hands, then lifted his gaze to her eyes. She waited for him to bellow in outrage, but he remained quiet, unnervingly quiet, and her heart thundered as he stood there, his expression inscrutable.
Madeline clutched the paper, her fingers trembling, her voice trapped in her throat as the moment seemed to stretch endlessly. At last, he moved out of the door frame, walked across the room—and took hold of the letter.
He tugged at it, but she refused to release the paper. Tears filled her eyes. Tears of shame. But he would not look at her again. He finally gripped her hand and forcibly separated her fingers from the letter before he walked out of the room without a single word. Not one rebuke. Not one reprimand. But his silence was louder than any blasted reproof.
She had lost his trust.
Madeline slumped on the bed, her tears falling too fast to soak up with her sleeve . . . so she just let them fall.
That night, she found William on deck. The crew moved quietly, performing their evening chores. A lookout sat in the nest, spyglass in hand. With the ship secure, the captain had stepped aside and leaned against the rail, stargazing.
She watched him from a distance, almost loathed to break his solitude. She found pleasure in just observing his silhouette. If she shut her eyes, she could trace every contour of his muscular physique, his handsome face with her fingertip.
Quickly she opened her eyes with a heart-squeezing gasp. In truth, she loathed to approach him because she knew their intimacy had been broken—and she might not be welcomed in his arms anymore. Their fellowship might be . . .
She swallowed her misgiving. In slow strides, she approached William as if he were a skittish deer, but she should have remembered he never let anyone get too close, much less sneak up behind him.
“Good evening, Maddie,” he said without glancing in her direction.
She settled beside him, unsure of her words. She’d rehearsed an explanation all day, but now, feeling the tension between them, her excuse seemed trite. Aye, her concern for his chronic headaches, his nose bleeds remained, but she had gone about searching for answers in the wrong way.
In the end, she said, “I’m sorry.”
The simple truth.
“I believe you,” he returned in a calm voice.
A surprise, that. But he’d always had a reasonable temperament—well, most of the time—and she sighed with unbound relief.
“I apologize, too,” he said next, his voice tightening.
She shivered, chilled. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve made a terrible mistake.” He finally looked at her, his soul in obvious turmoil. “And I accept full responsibility for it.”
Her heart dropped. “What are you saying, William?”
“We had a business arrangement: a straightforward exchange of services. I would rescue your grandfather, while you would deliver a letter to my sister.” He looked off, then. “I broke that bargain when I bedded you, offered you the impression you had a right to interfere in my private affairs. I regret that decision. I am fully to blame for it. I am always in control of my impulses, and I failed to control them these many nights.”
“I see.”
She didn’t see, of course, as her world turned on its ear and muddled her entire soul. She remembered every tender touch and whispered word. She remembered every intimate conversation, every moment of laughter. And it was all a mistake? A failure on his part to maintain control?
She seethed, gripping the rail. “And your demand that I take anything from you, everything from you, if it pleases me?”
“Another mistake.”
Her voice turned acrid at his cruel and cutting words. “You make a lot of mistakes, Captain, for a man who proclaims to be in constant control.”
His shoulders stiffened at the jibe, but his tone remained unflinching. “It would be wise if we returned to our previous arrangement.”
“And what arrangement would that be?”
“The one where I govern this ship . . . and you stay away from me.”
As a welter of feeling stormed her breast, she gathered her strength and walked away from him. “Aye, Captain.”