Authors: The Challenge
Lucy heard the water slapping the sides of the ship, the sails creaked and snapped as the
Sarabeth
cleaved the waves. The air was fresh and mild, scented of spring and salt; each breath she took
seemed to heal Lucy’s weariness, infusing her with energy and gladness. So this was what it was like to love the sea.
Suddenly she remembered Francis vividly, as he’d been all those years ago. It was as if the sea breeze had stripped away the clouds of memory and regret. She could see him exactly as he’d been then: young, eager, looking out over the waters to the new land he was taking her to. She wished he’d had the words to tell her then what she was feeling now. She closed her eyes to see him better. She could almost feel his presence, watching her.
“A glorious morning. Can you enjoy it?” Wycoff asked.
Her eyes flew wide. He was standing nearby, watching her. Had he been waiting for her to appear?
“I can enjoy it,” she said. She swallowed hard. “I thank you for last night, and apologize for any difficulty it caused you. I didn’t know what I’d taken. But I don’t know if I should thank you for what you said to Mrs. Oliver because of it. Jamie told me. Was she very angry with me?”
“Very. She may never speak to you again, she said. You are indeed lucky.”
“Well, I think she’ll speak with me,” Lucy said indignantly. “I paid her passage, after all.”
“Of course, she’ll have to talk to you. But you won’t enjoy it much,” Wycoff said gently.
“I didn’t before,” Lucy shrugged, gazing at him.
He was clad all in shades of gold today. He gleamed like a seventeenth century courtier when he wore gold, in spite of the fact that he wore the latest fashion of tightly fitted, soberly tailored jacket and breeches. But there was something so imperial about him, from the top of that shining clean, light brown hair to the tips of his highly polished knee boots. Gold just emphasized it. She sighed.
“Don’t feel remorseful,” he said, catching her mood, if not the cause. “You probably don’t remember much. Laudanum makes fine fantasies, but they seldom go further than your mind. You didn’t say or do a thing to make anyone think you had more than one too many glasses of wine.”
“Then how did you know?” she asked.
He gave her one of his bitter, poignant smiles. “Experience. As I said last night, experience will tell.”
“As to that,” she said excitedly, “you know? That was brilliant of you—I mean, to guess the reason for my illness last time I sailed. For so it was, I’m sure of it now because I feel so well, even though we’re asail. Last time, I didn’t know Jamie was coming—I wasn’t sure until a month after we landed. I’m an only child. It wasn’t the sort of thing Mama discussed, so I had no way to know. I thought I was just dull because I didn’t want to leave my friends and family, and queasy because of the sea. But the sickness persisted when we landed. When I went to a physician I found out why.”
He quirked one thin eyebrow. “Your husband didn’t consider the possibility either?”
She looked down. She was glad the sun shining through her parasol made an aura of pink light around her, so he couldn’t see the blush she felt flying to her cheeks. “My husband didn’t see me very much aboard ship, even less when we arrived in New York.” She realized how that sounded by how Wycoff grew suddenly still.
“He was that anxious to begin our new life,” she said quickly, raising sober eyes to his. “We left England because he was determined to make something of himself, something his father and brother would admire, even envy. His brother was scarcely two years older than he was. They always competed for everything—fishing, gaming, hunting—they were forever tallying their wins against the other’s losses. Only his brother had won the biggest prize automatically, because he was born to the title. Francis was born to a career in the Army or Navy, as with all second sons. It wasn’t fair, and it rankled him. He gave up the sea and swore to make his fortune in America. A shipmate of his had just done it. A fortune bigger and better than his brother had inherited.”
She looked down, fidgeting with the staff of her parasol. “He might have done it, too, only he caught a fever traveling north when he went looking for contact with fur trappers. He never found them. He came home to me in New York, to die, instead. He’d told me about the Ameses so I wrote to tell them, and they insisted I come to them.”
“So you went to America under protest, and you
were left alone the whole while, until you went to Virginia with your infant son?”
She gave an unconvincing laugh. “It’s not so dire as that. I—Yes,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “Yes, but the good thing that came out of it was Jamie, and that I can’t regret. Anyway, it’s done, and I’m going home now.”
“Over a decade of loneliness, neglect, and unhappiness,” he mused, “and you can say it’s done so easily, and forgive all?”
She held her head high. Only she had the right to criticize Francis. “You should certainly understand, my lord,” she said. “You asked me to forgive and forget a pattern of behavior you practiced over two decades, did you not?”
“Touché,” he said, and bowed. “Are you going in to have luncheon?” he asked, his voice composed, all humor vanished from his eyes. “I’ve just finished. Perhaps we’ll meet at dinner? I give you good afternoon, then.”
“Luncheon!” she gasped.
Now he gave her a real smile. “Yes, the other effect of Mrs. Oliver’s elixir is the way time folds in on itself.”
“Good day,” she said hastily, and took a step—and stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder. “Forgive my hasty tongue,” she said. “Please. I defend Francis because he can’t defend himself. You meant no harm, I know.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. Thank you,” he said, and bowed again.
He straightened and cursed under his breath as she walked away under her glowing circle of rosy light. If she’d only give him a reason to give up on her, and not keep proving herself as noble as she was adorable—and lonely, and needful of him. Because who else could take care of her as well as he could? Who else would take her in his heart, and home, and bed, as lovingly as he would?
He passed the next week seeing how many other men wanted to. And begrudging them their every moment with her.
The weather remained clear; the voyage went as smoothly as Mrs. Oliver felt it in her drugged haze. The passengers and crew had time to get to know each other. But so far as Wycoff could see, the males, at least, mostly wanted to get to know Lucy.
Most of the crew managed to be on deck every time Lucy was. Jamie was getting such a firm education in sea-faring from them it would be a wonder if he didn’t run off to sea, Wycoff thought sardonically. The boy was shown every unusual fish in the sea, every knot a seaman could tie, and altogether regaled with more tales than in all the Arabian nights. The sailors who staffed the ship were too young, too old, too humble, or too married to aspire to Lucy’s hand. But they seemed to forget that whenever she appeared, and they knew that she would be wherever Jamie was.
But she was a lady bred, if not one born, and so anyone not watching as intently as Wycoff wouldn’t
have known. Few would have watched that closely. Eagles couldn’t.
Wycoff also saw that Mrs. Oliver had little conversation for the woman she was supposed to be companioning. Partly because Mrs. Oliver seemed more stuporous every day, a natural effect of her wondrous “medication.” And partly because the nearer they drew to England, the less Mrs. Oliver worried about appearances with the woman who had paid her way.
But there was someone who did occupy Lucy’s time, and Wycoff began to wonder if he took up as much of her thoughts. “If Captain Kelly passed as much time with his navigation as he did with Lucy, we’d be in England by now,” Wycoff remarked to Perkins as they leaned against the ship’s rail one late afternoon, watching the captain entertain his favorite passenger.
“We have been becalmed. When the wind rises we will make sail again,” Perkins said. “However you feel about Captain Kelly, it is not his fault. He is perhaps simply being polite. As is she.”
“She’s being ‘simply polite’ to our handsome, sun-bronzed captain?” Wycoff mused. “I wonder. He is, after all, a great catch.”
“A catch?” Perkins sniffed. “With no title, or standing?”
“To an American, yes. And many an Englishwoman. He’s charming, young, his own master, and comes from a long line of prosperous ship owners. Formidable competition. And her husband was a seaman, after all….”
“
Competition
, my lord?” Perkins said innocently. But they both knew what the slight inflection in his voice meant. Wycoff flinched. “But I had no idea you were still pursuing the young woman,” Perkins went on blandly, “since you haven’t exchanged more than two words to her since that unfortunate incident the first night.”
Not words. No. But enough glances, sighs, and meaningful looks to fill volumes, if they had them for such inchoate exchanges
, Wycoff thought,
and well Perkins knew it
. He shrugged as answer. It wasn’t a thing he cared to put into words, or had to with Perkins. They’d known each other too long.
He wondered at his own thoughtless words.
Competition?
But he’d taken himself out of the running for the lady’s hand, arm, and every other delightful part he so desired. Because she’d told him she didn’t want him. But she did. He knew it from the look he surprised in her eyes when he came into her vicinity, before she could conceal it. From the way she ignored him with such utter concentration—and then glanced back at him to see if he realized it. There was something tangible between them. They both knew it. He knew all the faces of desire. She showed him most of them. But in the way of such things, he also knew she had to make the next move.
So he passed the time waiting and watching. And amusing Jamie, who had long since ceased being a ploy in the game. Wycoff never realized how much he’d missed of his own son’s childhood. He did now, and regretted it. He was enjoying the role of mentor,
teacher, and friend. Men of his station weren’t expected to spend time with their offspring, especially when their marriages were a mockery and their children painful reminders of it. Nursery, nanny, governess, and then off to school—there wasn’t much time for a father’s companionship. He was grateful he and his son Crispin genuinely liked each other now. But he liked Jamie, too. Wycoff’s eyes narrowed against the setting sun as he saw the captain entertaining Jamie again. And Lucy, of course.
She was laughing at something the captain said. Her cheeks were pink with pleasure—and the sun. The flimsy parasols she carried were little protection from the glaring sun. She’d have weeks of applications of lemon and cucumber poultices to suffer through ahead, Wycoff thought with amused regret. Every evening at dinner he delighted in seeing how many new freckles she’d hatched to ornament her cheeks and little nose.
At a word from the captain a sprightly sailor went clambering up the netting of ropes on the mast. Another followed, laughing, and the pair did acrobatics on the ropes, swinging and turning and hanging by their grimy toes, pretending to fall every other minute, while Lucy and Jamie were falling about with laughter.
“Americans are less formal aboard ship,” Perkins commented.
“Not on warships. They were formal enough in the past conflict,” Wycoff said. “Formidable, in fact. Nor on most other ships, I’d think. But cer
tainly on a craft where the captain was using his own craft to impress a young woman.”
“I thought this tomfoolery was for the boy.”
“The woman’s heart is in that boy, and any wise man would know it,” Wycoff said, watching as another sailor began to climb the mast.
But this young sailor, trying to win another smile from the lovely passenger, reached out a hand to the boy. Jamie leapt at it. A moment later, he’d shucked off his shoes and was climbing up the ropes along with his helper, grinning like the monkey he resembled from afar. He didn’t go very high, just far enough to make Lucy’s hand fly to her heart. The young sailor helped him hook his toes in the ropes, and Jamie sat beaming down at Lucy while all the sailors laughed.
The figures on the mast were outlined by a glorious sunset. The sea was blazing red because the sun was beginning to dip its round belly into it. That was why the young sailor might not have seen Jamie unhook his carefully placed feet, then swing out by one arm in imitation of the other lads, to win their applause and a smile from his mama. He was already in the air when they all saw his move. He was falling like a stone before any of them could draw another breath.
He was just far out enough to miss crashing down on to the deck. Instead, he vanished.
B
efore Lucy could take in air to scream it out, sailors began falling from their perches, and several on deck leapt out into the sea. Lucy flew to the ship’s rail, her eyes frantically searching the water. Only the knowledge that she couldn’t swim kept her rooted where she was.
One by one, men went flying into the sunset-orange ocean, hitting the surface, disappearing into the water like raindrops in a storm. They came up for air and swept down again as the captain shouted orders for longboats to be lowered. One was already being dropped. Lucy spun around and turned an ashen face to where she knew Wycoff had been standing. But he wasn’t there.
She looked back into the sea and sent up a quick, fervent prayer. She locked her hands together
because she didn’t know what else to do. It was an ocean, filled with creatures that dined on bigger dinners than Jamie every day. And so deep and cold—and he so small, so dear. She was numb with terror, unaware of the tears streaming down her cheeks until they made it hard for her to see.
So she didn’t see Jamie raised from the waters until she heard the cheer go up. She brushed the tears from her eyes and stared to see if he was moving, and heard him coughing and rejoiced, and vowed to kill him for his trick. And sent up silent thanks as the men handed him one to another, until one could carry him up and aboard.
The captain himself received him; a sailor came running with a bag of medicines. A moment later they stood back. They’d thrown a blanket around Jamie’s thin shoulders. He looked very small and bedraggled, fright turning his eyes dark and pinching his face as he gazed up at his mother.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Jamie said miserably. “I thought I could do it. It looked so easy before I slipped.”
“I
will
not lecture, I cannot—I—Oh, Jamie!” Lucy cried, dropped to her knees, embraced him, and wept.
The sailors shuffled their feet and looked touched and pleased, and guilty, by turns.
“Don’t cry, Mama, I’m sorry,” Jamie said, patting her shoulder, the way he thought a man might do. “I was frightened, too. My friend Horace taught me how to keep afloat in the pond at home, but this was nothing like! I was getting so cold. And some
times I looked up and found I was looking up through water! That was frightening because I didn’t know which way to go, or what was down or up. But when I saw Lord Wycoff and the others, I knew I’d be all right. If I could just keep my mouth closed—and that wasn’t easy, you know.”
Lucy swung her head around. Lord Wycoff stood watching them, alongside a sodden Perkins and some waterlogged sailors. He was drenched. His light hair was dark as the sea and clung to his head, dripping down his face. His fine clothing was soggy, his good linen shirt turned transparent, revealing shoulders as broad and a chest as strong as any of the agile men around him. He wore a rough blanket around his shoulders as they did, too. But that wasn’t why she had trouble recognizing him. He was grinning like a boy.
“No, no,” he was saying to a soaked sailor, “you saw him first. I only lent a hand.”
“I seen him a’right, sir. But I couldn’t get a proper hold of him. You brung him up along with me,” the sailor said generously.
“And then I handed him right down the line. The rascal had more deliverers than His Majesty’s post. You all should take a bow. Speaking of which,” he said as a long shiver crossed his shoulders, “when you’re done soaking up your deserved applause, Perkins—after you’ve wrung yourself out, do you think you could find me something dry to wear?”
Wycoff looked at Lucy. He nodded, very smug, very pleased, very much unlike the lofty Lord
Wycoff. Much more like Jamie when he’d gotten a difficult sum right, Lucy thought, her eyes filling up with tears again.
“I couldn’t leap overboard,” the captain said in chagrin. “A captain never leaves his ship. But I had every faith in my men. We’ve never lost a passenger yet.”
Wycoff kept smiling into Lucy’s eyes. She blinked, remembering where she was. “Well,” she said, turning to the captain, “You almost lost
me
, sir!”
“There should be crickets, the trill of a nightingale, something apart from the slap of the waves on such a soft night,” the voice said from out the darkness. “That’s why I could never learn to love the sea so well as the land.”
Lucy didn’t turn around. It had looked like she was alone on deck when she walked out after dinner, but she wasn’t startled. She knew where he was. She always knew where he was. She kept looking out into the endless night, and refused to join him in his whimsy. “Why have you been avoiding me?” she asked.
“Right to the chase, eh?” Wycoff chuckled. “I’ll be as frank then. I’ve been avoiding you, Lucy, my dear, because I care too much for you.”
Her silence urged him on. When he spoke again, his voice was close. She felt him at her back, his warmth, his solidity, his attraction. She forced herself to look straight ahead but felt herself relax and yet grow tense because he was so near again at last.
“Mrs. Oliver may be drugged to her gills right now, but she gossips,” he said. “Others do too. Best I stay away and keep the gossip speculative rather than see you and turn it to reportage.”
“But you didn’t even answer my note of thanks,” Lucy said, hurt clear in her voice. “You stayed far from me at dinner when we all celebrated Jamie’s rescue. Even the sailors came up to be toasted and shake hands with me. Not you. You went nowhere near me.”
“For good reason,” he said softly. “You’re going to meet your brother-in-law again after all these years. It would do you no good to have your name linked with mine in a shipboard romance, my dear. Trust me, no one would believe I had any other reason to befriend you.”
“Don’t you?” she asked, swinging round to face him. “I thought at least, you liked me.”
“Oh, at the very least,” he said, looking down at her. Her face was a small white oval in the darkness, but it blinded him to everything else as surely as the brightness of the moon blotted out the sparkle of the stars tonight. But he knew where her lips were, and found them easily enough.
He took her in his arms. One of them sighed, or both, as their mouths met. He splayed a hand on her back, another caressed her cheek as they drank each other in. They stepped closer until they couldn’t be parted by moonlight. She pressed close and let thought be consumed by sensation, felt herself awakening, and wanted more.
He tasted of wine, of liquors she’d never sampled, he reminded her of all she missed and all she’d never known. She stood on a pile of wood floating in the middle of an ocean under a limitless sky, and he was the one secure thing in the universe. The one thing she wanted and dreaded most. So she answered his tongue with her own and said yes without saying a word.
He sipped at her lips, he devoured her mouth and brought his hand to cover her breast. She was silken, soft, fragrant, responsive to his every touch—he couldn’t stop touching her. Gently, then firmly, then retreating until her soft groans urged him on again. He was a man who knew how to hold and kiss a woman to bring her to a fine madness of desire. But he didn’t think of any arts he knew now. Only what he so desperately wanted for himself and her. And that was to complete this in ecstasy now, even if it had to be right here, against the side of the ship in the open night.
But he had just enough wit left to know that couldn’t be. When he looked up to see how far they were from the steps leading to their quarters, he saw just how far they had gone. He dragged his mouth to her hair and dropped his hand from her breast. He drew in a shaken breath and locked both hands behind her back, anchoring them, resting his lips at her ear, trying to still his eager body, making it steelier than it already was. “No,” he said, as he rocked her against himself. “No. We can’t go on with this, not here, not now.”
He felt her jolt of surprise, felt her try to pull away, and held her still. “I know,” he murmured. “You didn’t expect this, of course you didn’t. But there’s no shame in wanting to, Lucy, my dear. Do you see now? If we meet like this, it will be inevitable, against all our common sense. Your name will be ruined. A ship has eyes and ears. That’s the only reason I didn’t try to take you in a huddle of ropes right there. God knows I wanted to. But apart from dignity, I need time, and you need graciousness. And what would some innocent sailor who stumbled over us think?”
She didn’t laugh.
“Lucy,” he said in despair, “don’t you see? Even tonight, here in the dark, we court risk even if we’re celibate as a pair of monks at matins. If we meet here and then only meet now and again in England, you’ll be considered my conquest. As such, you’d be open to all sorts of insult. But—if you were promised to marry me—for example…” He waited a beat to hear her protest. When she didn’t, he went on more confidently, “We could face it out together. I know your brother-in-law, at least I know him in passing. He’s not my sort, nor I his. But marriage is different from trifling and even if my name is notorious—or was—my
name
is not. It would be difficult at first, but in time my title would protect you from slander and gossip as much as I would.”
He loosed his grip. She stepped back. Only a step. She reached up a hand and touched his cheek. He caught her hand in his. “No,” she said, infinitely
sad. “It can’t be. I didn’t know how much I wanted it to be, though. You say you do, but I don’t think you can. I shock myself. I’ve never known such urgency, such abandonment. You made me forget time and my place and all my best resolves. You—and myself, I mean to say. But no.”
“Because of my reputation? I told you, it’s in the past. I’d never betray you, I’m done with that. Lucy,” he said urgently, “my wife didn’t want me. I had to prove I was a man.”
She shook her head. “I think I understand that. But try to understand me. Your morality bothers me. I can believe
you
feel you’ve changed. But how can I know? I can’t.” Her voice broke.
“My age?” he asked, tilting his head to the side, watching her. “There is that. I’m over a decade your senior, and there are so many younger men.”
“Not that. Listen. I think you’re wonderful, I’ve never met your like. You frighten and challenge me all at once. I’m happy in your company. I don’t care about your age. That’s not it. It’s that I can’t trust you. No more than I can trust myself with you, I see. But I cannot—
will not
—ever gamble again with my life. And certainly not Jamie’s. It would be more than foolish this time, it would be unfair.”
“It would be a gamble for me, too.”
“I know, I know,” she groaned. “But you know I’d never deceive you. There you are.
You
know. How can I? There is your past. It can’t be denied. And so the future can’t be predicted. What if I disappoint you?” she asked urgently, trying to read his
expression in the night. “What if you come to be bored with me? I know you’ll say you never will, but you’re human. And you
have
betrayed a wife in the past; for whatever reason, you did. The fact is I can’t be sure. And I’ve vowed to be sure in future.”
“That you can never be,” he said. “Life doesn’t work that way.” He let out a deep breath. “If you can’t love enough to test love, there’s nothing more I can say, is there?”
She lay a hand on his shoulder. “Can we still be friends?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, Lucy, my dear, I expected more from you. But yes. Of course, yes. And no, certainly not. It can’t work that way. Don’t delude yourself. If you need me, I’ll be there for you. If you want me, I’ll come to you. But never as a friend. A friend wants only friendship. I want much more than that. Being my friend would be just as much of a gamble as being my lover.” She was silent. “So, I suppose you want to retract the question?” he asked sadly.
“No,” she said. “Wycoff, I
need
a friend.”
His breath caught, his chest ached. He chuckled, with no humor. “My reputation is vile because I lived outside of society’s rules. But you females—you have no rules! Which is why you always win. You ask me to put my care for you above my love for myself?” He sighed. “Fair enough, I suppose. That
is
what true friendship is. Ah, well, I’ve been a wise counselor before. I think I remember the way of it. I make no promises, mind. But I’ll try.”
“Good,” she said gladly, as though the thing were settled. Although she couldn’t remember feeling so bad in a long time.
Lucy lay wide-eyed, staring into the night. She couldn’t sleep. She kept thinking of the reasons why. Because they’d arrive in England the next day. Because she was so full of plans and fears about what she had to do when they got there. And because she knew he lay just down a narrow corridor from her, and that she’d never lie so close to him again.
She shifted in her narrow berth. Her right side had grown numb, her left was cold, her pillow was hard, the muscles in her calves were cramping, there was an aching in her abdomen…lower. Not an aching, she admitted. A tingling, a swelling, a sensation she hadn’t felt in so very long, a discomfort because she required a comfort she hadn’t known for an equally long time. The ship rocked like a great cradle, but instead of making her eyelids droop as it usually did, the steady tempo was echoing in her own throbbing body. She felt it more when she thought of him. She’d thought of him all day long, and well into this last night aboard ship.
She was burning for Wycoff. She faced it, and sat up. She brought her knees to her chin, turned her head and rested a flushed cheek on them. She was thinking about the glimpse of his body she’d got that day when he’d plunged into the sea. She was thinking about his kisses and caresses, the feel of his lips, the touch of his hands, the sound of his voice low in
his throat she’d felt vibrate in his chest and throb in her own. The man was so very good at kisses she couldn’t help but think about how he’d be at all the rest. She’d been imagining it. And knew the imagining was not enough, not half enough anymore.
Her memories of Francis were tainted by the bitter disappointment of the life he’d left her to. But she’d loved him and loved the physical expression of it. She was no girl. The act itself she knew was nothing. She’d always thought it sad that something people built up to for so long, prepared for with words and poetry, kisses and caresses, should be in the end such a hurried, frantic flurry, over in less time than it took to cook an egg. She liked the prelude, though. The incredible intimacy of it. And then the deep, abiding satisfaction knowing she’d been so close to the one she loved.