God, he was scared. He shouldn’t have come here. He should have stayed away from her like he’d intended.
But something drew him to her, something strong, powerful. He sensed a light within Madeline, a brightness that called to the darkness of his soul. “Talk to me, Maddie. Please. Share it with me.”
“You’re frightening me. What is it Brazos? What’s wrong? Why are you doing this?”
It would get worse, he knew it. Like a woman giving birth, only these were emotional contractions. Now that they’d started, he couldn’t stop them. At least, he never had before. Maybe this time though. Maddie was with him. Maddie with that warm, soothing inner light. “Talk, just talk. I need your voice.”
“I need some answers. What is the knife for; Brazos? Did something happen on deck? Has there been a mutiny? Are you here to protect me?”
Brazos groaned, “Maddie, just shut up and talk, would you?”
“Shut up and talk. Well, that makes as much sense as everything else. Fine, you want me to talk? Well, I’m cold. I’m very, very cold. I don’t understand how you can lie there like…uh, well, you know, like you are. I guess you have a reason for opening the porthole in the middle of a sleet storm, and for choosing this particular way to slither into my bed. I imagine you even have a reason for handing me a weapon, although I can’t say I say I find it reassuring. Is it some sort of Texan custom?”
When he didn’t answer she said in a sugary tone, “But since I’m only an inferior woman, I’ll not question your intelligence or any lack thereof. Besides, it appears as if I could question you till dawn and not receive a single answer.”
Lost within the hell of his mind, Brazos held on to her voice like a lifeline. He even smiled faintly at her wit. He wrapped his arm around her, and when he spoke, his voice came from far away. “Here, sweet, somebody ought to get some use from all this heat.”
“Ow! What’s that metal thing around your arm? It’s poking me, Brazos, move it.” Her hand splayed across his bare chest. “Why, you’re burning up! But you’re sweating. What is this…oh, Brazos, is it…is it…consumption?”
“I’m not that lucky—or contagious,” he forced the words past the lump in his throat. “Keep talking, Maddie.”
She looked at him, gazed deeply into his eyes. In his overwhelming need, Brazos buried his pride and allowed her a glimpse of his torment.
“Oh, my,” she said softly.
He saw the sheen of tears she did not try to hide as she lay down beside him. And Madeline began to speak.
Curled against him, she recounted happenings during her childhood. She told tales of Mistress Poggi’s boarding school, of growing up an orphan among girls who returned to their homes for holidays. Her stories were silly ones, nothing that betrayed her secrets, except, perhaps, the loneliness he sensed was so much a part of her.
Brazos gripped her hand, concentrating on her voice, and on the fresh air streaming through the porthole. It’s open, he told himself. The window, the door, He could get out. He wasn’t alone. He could get out.
But deep inside him, the beast stirred.
Madeline continued to talk, and Brazos battled to hear her words. Her voice was a rope of life, a rhythm of light. He grasped it, basked in it. And with Madeline’s help, he held the terror at bay.
Eventually, amazingly, he slept.
For a time, Madeline lay awake, thinking about the man now sleeping peacefully at her side. The poor man. Tonight’s events had proven that Brazos Sinclair was more than the handsome, arrogant fool she’d considered him to be. She wasn’t the only person aboard this boat hiding things. And whatever his secrets were, she wondered if they might not be as horrible as her own.
With such ideas floating through her mind, Madeline drifted toward sleep. But before she slumbered, she opened her heart just a bit, and the injured boy living within the man beside her slipped inside.
BRAZOS DREAMED he was a child again, wrapped in the blessed comfort of his mother’s arms. Her gentle fingers stroked his hair, and her perfume took him back to the gardens at Magnolia Bend. Mama always favored the scent of roses.
She cushioned him with her breasts. Brazos burrowed into the softness. Something was different, the pillow was fluffier than he remembered. A rush of heat stirred him, inspiring horror that he’d react this way to his own mother. His eyes flew open wide, and all dreams of childhood disappeared as he encountered the luscious sight of a bountiful bosom within tongue’s reach. This was
not
his mother.
He must’ve died last night, after all.
Slowly, Brazos lifted his head. His stare crawled up the length of patterned blue flannel, pausing at the sight of creamy bare skin left visible by a loosened ribbon, then climbing higher to an elegant stretch of neck and to lips, full and red and slightly parted. Almost against his will, he lifted his gaze to her eyes. Deep and as dark as the velvet sea, they silently offered both plea and promise, and Brazos responded to their siren call.
He lowered his head, and his mouth touched hers.
He drowned in the pleasure of her kiss. Sensations swirled around him, creating an aching need that craved satisfaction. He groaned a low, masculine declaration of desire, and her answering whimper destroyed the few lingering remnants of resistance he’d possessed.
He rolled to his back, pulling her with him so that she lay pressed against his chest. His hands raced down the warm, soft texture of the flannel nightgown, then delved beneath to wander over skin even softer, silky and hot.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue stroking, seeking, and he felt the shudder of desire sweep through the body pressed so close to his. “Oh, Brazos,” she whispered when he tore his mouth from hers, his lips trailing downward to taste the bounty that had pillowed his head such a short time ago. Her breathy tone sent frissons of heat along his nerves. He tugged at her gown with his teeth, baring a rosy, pebbled peak to his gaze. “Yeah, Beauty,” he answered reverently.
It was as he bent and took her breast into his mouth that he remembered.
Beauty. Maddie. Madeline Christophe. Madeline Sinclair. His wife! He couldn’t make love to his wife. Not this wife, not Madeline Sinclair. Not ever
.
He pulled away just as Madeline sighed a throaty moan. He felt like groaning right along with her. Brazos was used to wanting things he couldn’t have, but this was the first time he remembered having something he couldn’t—or shouldn’t, anyway—want.
Then she opened her eyes, and what he saw there had him scrambling off the bed and diving for his pants. Those big, brown, beautiful eyes had gone all misty with desire. “Brazos?” she asked, her voice husky and soft.
He had a helluva time fitting himself inside his denims. Keeping his back to her until he’d managed to get buttoned, he took a deep breath, then turned. She was sitting up in the bunk, and she had that wounded-doe look about her again. The sight of it was like a punch to the gut. “Don’t do that,” he demanded roughly.
“Do what?”
“Look at me like that.”
The sheen of tears sparkled in her eyes. “Like what?”
Brazos raked his fingers through his hair. “Never mind.” She’d retied the ribbon at the neck of her nightgown, and above the lace collar her skin shone a light pink. Brazos shook his head, chasing away the mental image of other rose-color body parts. “Look, Maddie, we can’t…I don’t…aw, hell.” Leaning against the cabin wall opposite the bed, Brazos slowly slid down to sit on the floor. Propping an elbow on a knee, he held his palm to his forehead and repeated, “Aw, hell.”
For a long moment, Madeline stared at him. Then she plopped down onto the mattress and said vehemently, “Bloody hell.”
Brazos looked up, shocked.
She darted him a sheepish glance. “Oops.”
He felt a grin tug at the corners of his mouth. He saw amusement kindle in her eyes. Their gazes locked, and suddenly, they both began to laugh.
“My word, Maddie, you certainly know how to surprise a fella.”
She rolled over to her side and propped her head on her elbow. “You’ve a few surprises of your own. I’d never have guessed—” She stopped abruptly, and he saw her gaze focus upon the scar on his chest. “What happened to you, Brazos?”
Automatically, his hand lifted to touch the band around his arm. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re doing it again,” she said. “You kept touching that armband last night.” Madeline paused before hesitantly asking, “What was it all about? What happened last night?”
He barely heard her question because the look in her eyes filled him with such…shame. He pushed roughly to his feet.
Damn the woman. I won’t be pitied
.
“Brazos?”
“What?” he snapped, glaring at her.
She frowned with annoyance and said, “Well, you needn’t use that tone. All I did was ask you a question, which, under the circumstances, I believe I have every right to ask.”
He ground his teeth together. “Don’t fool yourself. If you’re thinking that what happened in that bunk a few minutes ago gives you any rights at all, you prove the point I was arguing yesterday.”
“What point?”
“That women don’t have any more sense than an armadillo.”
She sat up. “And what, dare I ask, is an armadillo?”
“An armadillo is one of the dumbest critters the good Lord put on this earth.”
Madeline’s mouth fell open. “I don’t believe you’re saying something like that to me.” She straightened her spine and lifted her chin, and her fiery beauty rekindled the desire that had continued to smolder inside him.
Shame and desire create a volatile mixture. With the two emotions whipping around inside him, Brazos resorted to a defense he seldom used. He lied. “Honey, you’re a perfect example. You fell for my story last night like deadwood in a gale.” Shoulders squared, a cocky expression in place, Brazos said, “I thought to get in out of the cold for a bit last night, that’s all,” he said with a shrug. “I figured I’d best do something peculiar so that you’d leave me the hell alone. That’s why I put on that little act of being crazy.”
He swept her with a contemptuous gaze. “And I was right, wasn’t I? Soon as my eyes are shut, you up and bare your breasts, hoping to catch me unaware.”
Her mouth rounded in a silent “Oh.” Then she crossed her arms and glared at him. “I did not. When I went to sleep, my gown was securely fastened. You’re the one with wandering fingers.”
“Yeah, sure.” He scooped his shirt from the floor. “You almost pulled off your scheme, didn’t you?” Shoving his arms through the shirtsleeves, he added, “Thank God I didn’t let my pecker do my thinking for me, or you’d have well me and truly leg-shackled this minute. For the last time, Maddie, my dear, I’m
not
gonna be your stud.”
She waited a moment, then said softly, “You’ve a nasty mouth on you, Brazos Sinclair.”
Lord, he knew it was true. Never in his life had he talked to a woman the way he’d spoken to Madeline. He lifted his gaze toward heaven and asked,
Dear God, what am I becoming
?
That’s when he noticed the ceiling—the very low ceiling. Against his will, his stare slowly traveled the wooden planks to the wall and then to the floorboards. The room shrank. Anxiety replaced all emotion, and he muttered hoarsely, “I’ve gotta get out of here.”
“Don’t you dare leave now, you contemptible cur. I’m not through…”
But Brazos fled the cabin, barefoot and embarrassed. He was halfway up the companionway stairs when the door to Madeline’s room flew open and his boots came sailing out to thump against the opposite wall.
Inside the cabin, Madeline started to slam the door shut, but then remembered the babies asleep in the next room. So with deliberate movements, she grasped the handle and quietly closed the door. Emotion threatened to choke her, and she blinked her eyes rapidly as her gaze wandered aimlessly around the room. Then she noticed his hat hanging on a hook on the wall.
Madeline’s imagination ran wild as she used bare feet to stomp the hat into an unrecognizable form, heedless of the tears that coursed down her cheeks. Then she crawled back into her bunk and curled into a ball beneath the sheets.
Brazos was right, she
was
a fool. How else could she explain allowing him the liberties he’d taken this morning? “Hah,” she scoffed. “At least be honest with yourself, Madeline. Liberties you offered.”
Madeline was baffled by her own behavior. Never had she acted so free with a man before. It wasn’t like her at all! She replayed the morning’s events in her mind. Still, answers eluded her. She was thinking of men in general, Brazos specifically, when she murmured, “Why do I allow them to hurt me?”
It wasn’t as if Brazos was the man of her dreams. Far from it. The man Madeline fantasized sharing her life with would recognize and respect her intelligence and abilities. He’d understand the reasons behind her more unsavory actions, and if not approve of them, he’d at least forgive her for having committed the deeds.
Most of all, he’d love her.
Never in her life had Madeline known a man’s love—not a true, abiding love, anyway. She’d never known her father, and Gentleman Jack, the man who’d taught her how to steal, had rejected her once her developing body proved her a girl, not the boy he’d believed.
Madeline threw back the covers, leaned over the bunk, and yanked open a drawer of the chest built beneath the bed. She fumbled through her clothes for a handkerchief. “I’ll find my man,” she said, tugging a cloth from the drawer and sitting up. “I will.” She blew her nose. “He’s out there somewhere, and I simply have to look around a bit to meet him.”
Then she’d show Brazos Sinclair. She’d prove to him just how wrong he was. The man of her dreams would propose to her. He’d be drowning in desire to have her in his bed. He wouldn’t flee it as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. He’d…
She stopped. Lowering the handkerchief to her lap, Madeline stared through the porthole at the white-capped sea. Faced with the sting of Brazos’s rejection, she had forgotten his conduct during the previous night. “The hounds of hell were after him,” Madeline murmured.
Slowly, she climbed from her bed, thinking past this morning’s incident to the events of the previous evening. As she dressed, she made a decision. She’d be magnanimous. She would remember that he, too, had a cross of some sort to bear, and she’d forget the hurtful words he’d spoken to her this morning.