Chapter Six
“My secret?” Herding asked, her eyes turning hostile.
“Yes.” Sometimes attacking a problem head-on was the only way to get what you wanted. And Wolf needed to learn as much as he could about this young woman if he was going to be able to help her. “Your charade is over,” he said. “I know who and what you are.” He raised his hands as a sign that he didn’t mean to harm her. “Don’t be alarmed. You are safe now. You can let your guard down.”
“Safe?” Herding blinked rapidly. She wiped her mouth with trembling fingers and grimaced at the contact with her cut, swollen lip. She glared back at him, her gaze filled with contempt. “You can’t possibly grasp what I’ve done to stay alive . . . to get this far, Captain.”
“I can, and my name is Wolf.”
Beneath the muck, the blood drained from her face, her gray eyes a stark contrast to the filth. “Wolf? Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“Aye.” He suppressed a chuckle at her disbelief.
“Now who’s keeping secrets?” She cocked her eyebrow at a ridiculous angle. “Tell me something I do not know. Are you from England?”
“Careful, Miss Herding,” he warned.
“Miss?” She blanched at his proper address. “I’ve concealed my features, altered my voice, and speak French fluently. No one else has suspected my ruse. Tell me—what makes you so different?”
“I also speak French fluently.” He was a man of many talents, with a long list of skills she would never discover. “You are wise not to trust me because you have no idea what I’m capable of, but let me enlighten you. I am not like those men in the Wasp.”
“Are you saying you are not a killer?” Her mouth thinned with displeasure. “I saw proof of it with my own eyes.”
“Aye,” he growled. For some inexplicable reason, it irritated him that she’d seen him at his worst. “I kill by necessity, not for pleasure,” he explained. “Commit no harm unless it be needed is our code.”
“Whose code?” She observed him cautiously as he moved around the desk.
“What do you mean?” he asked, trying to harness the bark in his tone.
“You said ‘our code.’”
Bollocks. He nodded, realizing he’d talked himself into a corner. “The people I work for are not murderers bent on harming women or children.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and gave a dismissive snort. “I am not a child.”
“No.” But she’d done an excellent job pretending to be one.
After losing the first eight years of his life, he understood a great deal more about the extremes she’d experienced in captivity than she could possibly imagine. He’d hidden in the shadows, trying to evade capture. He’d witnessed evil and debauchery through a child’s eyes. He’d endured the rod, felt the sting of the cat, and looked up at Captain Charve’s hallowed head with a mixture of fear and relief. If it hadn’t been for Charve’s compassion, he’d have fared no better than the boys at the mercy of Cuvier and Robillard in the tavern.
Wolf ground his teeth and rubbed his brow to calm his thoughts. “So stop acting like one.”
She gasped. “Is that a threat?”
“Not unless it needs to be.” He inched closer, studying her as if she were a species he’d never encountered before. “I understand your distrust. It cannot be easily won after what you’ve been through, but try to understand that I have your best interests at heart.”
She shrugged, but her fixed gaze never wavered. “You have no idea what I’ve been through, Captain.”
“Wolf,” he reminded her, hoping to put her at ease. “And no. I do not.” He lifted his hand and then lowered it. “I do know, however, that you have nothing to fear from me. I will not hurt you.” Few knew about his past and the things he’d been forced to endure. And that was information he didn’t intend to share with Miss Herding. “Whatever you’ve done to get where you are standing now, I want you to know your suffering is at an end.”
“At an end?” She shook her head, her tremulous voice filled with anxiety. “It will never be over.”
Sage words, a truth even Wolf couldn’t debate. He wrestled with what to say to allay her worries. But what could a man say when he hadn’t come to terms with his own weaknesses?
“You’re young,” he assured her. “Your whole life is ahead of you. This will get easier.” Why the hell was he lying to her again? Because for some strange reason, he cared, damn it. He couldn’t explain his feelings. He only knew that he wanted her to be all right somehow.
“There are . . .” She paused to stare at him. “I am . . .”
“A clever, courageous young woman,” he said, emphasizing her sex. He only knew of one woman who excelled higher—Joanna. And he didn’t know the whole of her story, either.
Miss Herding’s gray eyes turned stormy again as shock quickly turned to fury. “When did you figure out what I was?” she asked. “Before you exchanged your cigars for me or afterward?”
“I knew it from the moment I walked up to the bar.” Else he might not have risked his life to broker her release.
“Do you mean to tell me—” she raised her chin “—that you only intervened on my behalf because you thought I was a woman?” Her eyes glinted like fire and ice. “You are a coldhearted batârd! I was forced to watch a harmless boy named Jimmy succumb to Cuvier’s cruelty. If I had been Jimmy, would you have left me there to be tortured by those—” she looked around, he assumed in search of something to clobber him with “—animals?”
Wolf frowned. Would he have left Jimmy in Cuvier’s hands? Absolutely not. But he’d made a habit of not assuming how he would react until he was in a particular situation. He’d learned to be brutally honest with himself. He had no idea what he would do until he did it. But he’d endured cruelty at the hands of corsairs. He’d sworn an oath never to allow anyone to experience the same.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” he said.
“No, I don’t. And that is the problem.” All the hurt and rage trapped inside her seemed to burst forth. She rushed at him, fists clenched, her face a mask of intensifying rage as she pummeled his chest.
He allowed her to vent her anger, to use him as an object on which to take out her pain. As her tears flowed, she poured out her despair in the privacy of his cabin. Her emotional outburst and her strong, lean body stirred up his need to protect her. Fear and desperation swirled about her in waves. Wolf knew he should say something—anything—to counter her reaction, to convince her he was a good man. But he wasn’t. He’d be damned if he’d lie to her about it.
“You asked me a question, and I gave you an honest answer,” he said. The things he’d done would turn her stomach. “Don’t ever compare me to those butchers.”
“Then let me go,” she said, panting. Her voice held a faint tremor that dug into his belly like a gutting blade.
Feeling helpless, knowing he was incapable of easing her heartache, was the worst type of pain Wolf had ever experienced. “I’ll let you go when you tell me who you are and why are you here. And don’t say your name is ‘Boy’ again. We both know you aren’t who you claim to be.” His voice held no visage of sympathy now because he needed the courageous boy he’d discovered in the Wasp to reappear. Until then, controlling the beat of his heart was going to be an arduous challenge.
She stilled, leaned back, and stared up at him, cold fury simmering in her eyes. Her breaths were shallow, a testament to the energy she’d just expended. “Very well.”
“Cuvier deserved a more painful death for what he did to you and your friend.” He searched her face. Her expression fell. “I cannot help you until you disengage your claws.”
“Selina.” Her voice ended on a broken whisper that he barely heard. “My name is Selina.”
He swiped a loose strand of hair away from her eye. “Is Herding your alias, then?” In his line of work, he’d met plenty of people pretending to be someone else.
“Alias? No.” She shook her head from side to side. “I spoke the truth before. My name is Selina Herding.”
He glanced at her lips, drawn in by their dewy softness and sensuality of movement as she spoke. Warmth from her body penetrated his greatcoat. Her body was lean and pliant, making his respond in ways that filled him with unease.
Bugger. He didn’t even know what she looked like underneath all that filth, and yet, somehow, he was drawn to her rather than repelled.
The lines on her face slowly faded as she continued to fight the silent hell that men like Cuvier and Robillard had dragged her into. The journey back to normalcy would be hard. It would take months, if not years, to put her experience behind her. But he knew she would rise above this moment. Determination, a stony will, reflected in her wide-eyed stare.
“How does a British woman end up in Saint-Malo at a time like this?” he asked. She’d mentioned being kidnapped. But was that what had really happened to her? Regardless, whatever had occurred had been traumatic and been done without her approval.
“I was kidnapped,” she said matter-of-factly.
Bollocks. “So you were being truthful when you spoke to Cyrus.”
She nodded.
“How long ago?” He searched her face. “Where was this done?”
“A fortnight ago on the way to my—” She shivered, unable to finish.
“Look at me,” he said, tilting her chin so he could look into her eyes. “I promised to take you home, wherever that is, and I will.”
She blinked. “I don’t know what to say. You are the first person to offer me any kindness since—” She broke off again.
He pressed for more information, simple questions that she could answer that would quiet her fears. “Are you really from Portreath?”
“Yes. Well . . . not exactly.” She sighed. “My home is in Redruth. Portreath is the nearest port.”
“And how did a woman from a wealthy mining district fall into the hands of corsairs?”
She cleared her throat as a disturbing flush crept onto her face. Her eyes misted. “My brother and I were in a carriage headed to the wedding chapel. Our driver was attacked and killed. My brother, he . . . We tried to fight when the carriage door opened, and several men dragged us out . . . We couldn’t escape. There were too many of them. Somehow, they knew we could—”
“Defend yourselves?” he finished for her. He brushed another curly hair out of her face as she spoke. “And they were prepared.”
She nodded. “The man who kidnapped us told us we were being held for ransom and that if our father did not pay, we would be killed.” She paused, inhaling deeply. “A letter was dispatched to Papa. I did not fear for myself at the time, but for Owen, who kept trying to free us.”
“Owen?” he asked.
“My brother,” she quickly told him. “He’s impulsive. I fear what he will do . . . or has already done. He and I, we . . . He was given every instruction a son of a peer should receive—fencing, boxing, and equestrian training. But he needed a partner, so Owen chose me.”
She almost seemed to question why Owen would do so. “Is that how you learned to fight?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her voice was husky, filled with a depth of emotion begotten only by tragedy.
“Interesting. And did your father pay your ransom?”
She nodded, then closed her eyes. “We were told he did.” A single tear slipped down her face. “And they . . . they . . . the pirates took it, and—” her voice broke off “—kept us.”
So Selina and her brother had been kidnapped and ransomed because of Herding’s affluence. That sounded like the work of corsairs or mercenaries, not necessarily Cornish pirates. A gamut of emotions swarmed over him.
“Why would they do that?” Her eyes narrowed. He blinked, loathing his lack of candor and his choice of words. “Why didn’t they release you?”
“You don’t understand.” She frowned. “I believe someone doesn’t want us to return home. Owen is not expendable; he stands to inherit Papa’s mining corporation.”
“Did they return your brother but keep you?” he asked, a foul taste filling his mouth.
“No.” She shook her head as another tear found its way down her cheek.
“Did they kill him?” Fury vibrated through his body. Bollocks. How much had this young woman suffered? “Tell me, Selina.”
A sob tore from her throat.
“Tell me,” he urged gently.
“They sold him . . . on the auction block in Cadiz.”
Wolf swallowed hard. That wasn’t the answer he’d expected.
Tears spilled from her eyes as sobs burst to the surface once more. How long had Selina carried the burden of not knowing if her brother was alive or dead?
He pulled away to give her more space to breathe. She sank to the deck floor and curled into a fetal position at his feet. Her body was racked with spasms as she grieved for the brother she’d likely never see again.
Feeling powerless, Wolf glanced around the cabin. He understood this kind of pain all too well. He was searching for a brother he didn’t know, a boy he’d abandoned on the docks in Bristol, one who appeared in flashbacks he couldn’t make any sense of. But to have grown up with a brother and then lose him to a fiendish plot? He couldn’t think of a more brutish hell.
He knelt down and wrapped his arms about her, scooping her up to carry her to his bed. There, he sat on the edge of the mattress with Selina, cradling her in his arms, stroking her hair, holding her firmly against his chest until her tears were spent.
“I need to tend to your wounds,” he said when she finally quieted.
She sucked in a breath. “I can manage.”
He raised his fingers to wipe the tears from her cheeks, and she flinched.
“Easy now,” he said, gently testing her bloody lip with the tip of his finger. “Did Cuvier do this to you?”
“Yes.” She shivered in the silence.
“Did he hurt you anywhere else?” There, he’d asked it. The question that plagued him, filling him with a rage he fought hard to suppress. If anyone had—
“Cuvier did many things.” She lowered her gaze to his chest where her hand lay against him, as if too ashamed to admit what else had befallen her. “The least of which,” she said, “was to make me chase after swine and eat Cuvier’s scraps.” She raised her gaze, locking it with his, her bloodshot eyes glistening before she closed them, now stubbornly trying to hide her humiliation and anguish.
“You’re alive.” He tilted her chin until her eyes met his. “You survived.” He cleared his throat, shocked by how deeply he felt this woman’s pain, her nearness, a kinship that neither of them sought or desired. He knew the aftermath of her experiences would be the hardest to endure. “Survival is all that matters. You must focus your energy on that now.”
She offered no resistance as he raised her hands and inspected the raw, bloody evidence left behind by the iron chains. “Morning Star gave me a container of medicinal ointment in Salamanca.”
“Morning Star?” Her brows rose in amazement as her eyes met his.
“Aye,” he said. “He’s my quartermaster, a Cheyenne Dog Soldier who followed me from the Colonies.”
Her mouth dropped open. “A Cheyenne warrior!”
He nodded. “And a loyal friend who learned about medicine from a shaman. The liniment has been instrumental in quickly healing my wounds. I will find it for you. It will help take away the sting.”
She nodded, becoming strangely quiet. Had shock settled in?
He lifted her off his lap and settled her on the bed, covering her with the counterpane to warm her. He quietly walked to his desk and continued the search through its drawers.
“I remember putting . . . Aha!” He raised the container of salve for her to see. “The balm of the gods.”
He crossed the room, retracing his steps to the bunk. She flinched again, retreating to the bulwark and raising her hands to stop him from approaching.
“Selina.” He took a knee on the bed, lifting the liniment again for her to see. “It will do you no good to sail with us if your hands become infected.”
“I . . . I’m . . .” Her face turned ashen, and she stared at him, her eyes widening with surprise. “You would allow me to continue my pretense?”
“Aye. No one other than me need know who you really are.” He reached for her hand and turned it over, frowning at the irritated skin. He placed the container of ointment in her palm and closed her fingers around it. “Keep it. You need it more than I do.”
“I don’t know what to say.” The smoky irises of her eyes snapped to life as color seeped back into her skin. “I thought—”
He gave a tight smile. “‘Thank you’ will suffice for now.”
She nodded vigorously. “Thank you.”
He rose from his knee and backed away. She needed rest, food, a bath, and the privacy to do all three.
Drawn to the stern windows, Wolf put his hands behind his back. “No one will bother you here. You have my word.”
“Your w-word?” she stuttered.
No matter what could be said of him, he was a man of integrity. “Haven’t my actions thus far proven I can be trusted? You are safe here in my cabin.”
“Safe? I thought . . . No one is ever safe,” she finished.
The agony in her voice gave Wolf pause. He grimaced as the lantern creaked and he was once more a frightened child cowering inside a cage. “You’re with me now.”
“But your men—”
“Might be scallywags, but they’ve been sworn to uphold justice. A code, I might add, I strenuously enforce.” He turned to look at her over his shoulder. “We come from different nations and backgrounds, but we are joined together for one cause. I promise you that does not include abusing women. Far from it.”
Her stare unnerved him. “If what you say is true, you are not like the men who kidnapped me on my wedding day.”
“Your wedding day?” Every nerve in his body snapped. He’d assumed she’d been attending her brother’s wedding.
“Yes,” she said. Selina opened the container and began to apply the balm to her wounds. She made no sound at the contact, but her grimace revealed all. She had a high pain tolerance, which was a convenient talent but also meant she might have endured more horrors than he’d ever discover.
“Isn’t it customary for the bride’s father to accompany his daughter?” He tried to figure out why Selina’s story annoyed him so. Who would steal a woman before she was about to marry? And why wasn’t her father there to protect her?
“I do not know. It didn’t seem strange at the time because my betrothed requested Papa’s presence at the chapel.” She concentrated on a particularly raw area on her hand. “Papa never had time for me before because I . . .” She glanced up. “Oh, it makes no difference now. What I’ve seen and experienced at the hands of pirates can scarcely compare,” she said. “Senseless slaughter . . . women, men, and children sold on auction blocks, families torn asunder. Dignity and honor stolen. Hearts forever broken.”
Bollocks. Wolf clenched his fingers around the windowpane and growled low in his throat. What was she holding back? “You can trust me.”
“Can I, Captain?”
“Wolf,” he reminded her, desiring to hear his name on her lips as he stepped away from the windows.
“Promises have been made to me before, Captain, and they were overturned.”
Her refusal to say his name gutted him afresh. “And?” Corsairs had one objective—selfish gain. “What happened?”
“I escaped.” She put the lid on the container and fisted it in her hand. “And I have every intention of never letting anyone forget it.”
A chill seeped into his bones. “You cannot mean you intend to hunt down your abductors.”
“No, I plan to get my brother back.” She glared at him in open defiance.
“And how do you propose to do that?” he asked.
“My father has worked hard to give my brother a place in society. He will pay anyone handsomely to find Owen, and I intend to be among the crew the day that ship sails.”
Her thinking was twisted. “Won’t your father object to you hunting for your brother?”
“I am only a pawn to him.” She looked away but not before Wolf noticed a slight quiver in her jaw. “And the game my father played is at an end. I am ruined. I am certain the man Papa is forcing me to marry will cry off when I return.”
Was the world still living in the dark ages? “Cry off?” He’d never been able to understand why the ton behaved as it did. Hartland, Thorston, St. Peter, and Bateman had explained the customs to him fully. According to them, a man didn’t cry off without creating a scandal that would follow him for all his remaining days.
“And it is just as well,” she added. “Without ties to bind me to Redruth, it will be easier to leave.”
“But you have a home.” For some reason, Wolf couldn’t remember his childhood, his father, or even the mother who’d given birth to him. Thoughts of her filled him with equal parts warmth and shame, but the mere thought of his father caused him distress. What he wouldn’t give to reclaim his past, to have a home to return to . . . “Why would you want to leave your home after being stolen away from it?”
Selina drew her knees up to her chest as fresh tears flowed down her cheeks. Heartrending sobs began to shake her shoulders.
What had he said?
Wolf rubbed his neck. He’d ridden miles over enemy territory to deliver messages to Wellington’s staff. He’d been surrounded by danger without food, water, and ammunition. He’d fought in hand-to-hand combat when the odds were against him. He’d been wounded, had healed, and been wounded again while docked in foreign ports, spying on the French. But nothing he’d ever gone through had taught him how to deal with a crying female.
Ill-equipped and feeling grossly out of place, he crawled onto the bed, but he did so slowly so he didn’t scare Selina half to death. He reached out. “Take my hand.”
Selina glanced up, her face full of raw emotion, her stare boring into the depths of his soul. “I have to go back,” she said. “It is the only way to find my brother.”
Wolf’s heart clenched, making it hard to breathe. So this was the connection between them. They both wanted—needed—to find their brothers, though their reasons were different.
“Do you think Owen can be found?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said without hesitation.” He pulled her toward him. Selina eased into his arms, folding into him and laying her head against his chest. His fingers curled about her short hair, holding her to him as he massaged her scalp. “You have my word that I won’t rest until I’ve returned you safely to your father.”
What then? Could he just leave knowing Selina would quickly sail off into danger without someone by her side to protect her from evil men like him? Wellington and Hartland had recalled him to London, after all.
Wolf held Selina until he felt the slow and steady rise and fall of her chest and knew she’d drifted off to sleep. She was desperately in need of a bath, and if his growling stomach was any indication, she was hungry, too.
Selina Herding certainly was a mystery. Even after their conversation, he didn’t know much about her. For instance, why hadn’t the pirates released her when they’d received their ransom? That wasn’t typical behavior unless someone with an agenda had paid to have the captives disappear. Her brother, Owen, would be a rich man when their father died, which made his kidnapping suspect, and Selina had been on the way to marry a gentleman who intended to get her out from under her father’s roof, presumably a man related to the ton. Was there a connection?
He glanced down at the woman in his arms, pitying the man who pined for his bride-to-be. Something didn’t smell right to Wolf. And when his senses came alive that way, his instincts were usually accurate.
His brow furrowed in thought. Few corsairs ventured to Cornwall because the Royal Navy and the preventative guard charted those waters. That meant her kidnappers had been paid handsomely to do so at risk to life and limb. But who wielded that kind of power?
Wolf intended to find out.