Lady Of Fire (22 page)

It was she whom Lucien most looked forward to seeing again. “What else?”

“That is all I know.”

Lucien nodded. “Though a year can change even that.”

“It can.” Nicholas offered his wineskin.

Lucien accepted and, shortly, passed it back.

“Change is not always bad, Lucien. After all, it has brought you back from the dead.”

What he was saying without saying it, Lucien knew, was that if things were different at Falstaff when its heir returned, he should be tolerant.

And Lucien was determined he would not disappoint. He had abided in darkness too long to sow discord among his family.

He looked out across the blue-black waters that abutted the blue-black sky. Somewhere in that unforeseeable distance lay England.

Home,
he breathed into himself.
I am going home.
Feeling a settling in his soul, he bid his cousin a good eve and headed back across the deck to Alessandra.

Nicholas considered his mistress. Like the harlot she proved to be each time he came to her, she lured him, spread her arms wide, seduced him with salty kisses, was quick to betray him. And he savored every moment. Or nearly so, for at her most treacherous, she left casualties in her wake. But that was the price paid to be borne upon her.

Lucien could have his redheaded paramour.
Jezebel’s
captain would make do with the occasional wench, always returning to the one who possessed his soul.

Settling his elbows to the railing, he peered across the water to the moon’s reflection on the sweetest of curves. And laughed at himself. He took his feelings for the ocean too far, but for all that she was not and could never be, she was safer and more constant than a flesh and blood woman, like the one he had bought at auction at his cousin’s behest.

He almost pitied Lucien—almost, for though Alessandra would surely continue to test the man who had rescued her from lifelong bondage, she was something to behold. The question was, what lay ahead for them? Of greater import, what lay ahead for Lucien?

Nicholas worked through their conversation and, coming to the end of it, grunted. There was one thing he had neglected to mention—important, though better forgotten for the time being.

Had he told Lucien of his father’s illness, it would be a much longer voyage than it needed to be, for Lucien’s guilt would be tenfold greater. Too, it was possible the old man had recovered—a good possibility considering what the De Gautiers were made of. But Nicholas feared not.

“It is an interesting game.” Alessandra wrinkled her nose as she considered the ivory cubes Lucien and she had been tossing this past half hour. “But not much fun.”

He swept the cubes into his palm. “’Tis called dice, a popular game in England. My brother, Vincent, has but to hold a pair and he loses all but the clothes on his back.”

Alessandra drew her knees up, rested her chin on them, and looked to the distant coast of Portugal. “I prefer chess.”

“And your donkey game.”

She hid her smile against her knees. “It makes me laugh. Were you not so English, you might see the fun of it.”

“And were you not so Arab, you might see how ridiculous it is.”

She returned her gaze to him. “These past days you have been merciless in reminding me I am English, instructing me in all manners of that culture, and now you call me Arab?”

“It must be your determination to cling to your pagan ways that confuses me,” he said.

She clicked her tongue. “Have I not been a willing pupil? I lift my skirts and measure my steps. I curtsy and use polite address though I have yet to encounter one seaman deserving of such. I eat that terrible fare with a smile on my face. And I have learned your dances and suffered these gowns.”

“All that, and yet you refuse to wear head cover to protect your skin.” He leaned forward and tapped freckles the sun had warmed to a darker pigment.

Alessandra lowered her lashes, not to hide embarrassment, but to mask the emotion roused by his touch. Since their departure from Tangier, he had played the gentleman well. All she had of him were kisses stolen amid laughter, frustration, and uncomfortable silence. As she had from the beginning, she longed to be nearer him, but he continued to hold himself apart.

“I like the sun,” she said, then stood, propped her arms on the railing, and cupped her chin in a palm.

Lucien also rose. “You will not see much of it once we reach England, especially with summer nearly past.

“Mother said it could be a cold place.”

“’Tis the reason so many babes are born during high summer.”

“How is that?”

Mischief brightened his eyes. “When the clouds are weeping rain and snow and the air is so chill it near bites you bloody, the best place to be at day’s end is abed. And not alone.”

Holding his teasing gaze, Alessandra said, “Is that what you do? Lie abed with a lover?”

He raised his eyebrows.

Jealousy, with the bite of the English cold of which he had warned, sinking its teeth into her, Alessandra said, “Of course you do,” and stepped around him.

Though she felt his presence at her back all the way to the cabin, she pretended ignorance and started to close the door behind her.

His foot prevented it from settling in its frame. “I should not have been so forward,” he said when she looked up. “For all that I would have you behave the lady, it seems I must learn again how to behave the gentleman. Pray, forgive me.”

She gave a curt nod, tried to close the door.

When he resisted her effort, she gave a huff and pivoted.

“Still, you are angry with me,” he said as he stepped inside.

Busying herself with straightening her few possessions, she said, “I am merely tired.”

When the silence stretched so long it became more awkward to keep her back to him than to face him, she turned.

“What do you want from me, Alessandra?” he asked where he stood before the door.

Though the girl tempted her toward a coy response, the woman urged her to speak true, even if it left her vulnerable, her pride trampled.

“I feel for you, Lucien. I believe you know this. What I would know is if you feel for me.”

His jaw shifted. “I have already said I desire you. I make no lie of it.”

“That is not what I asked. Do you feel something beyond desire?”

Once more, all went still between them, but just when she thought he would not answer, he strode forward. “I know you believe your feelings are those of the heart”—he halted before her—“and you would have my feelings be the same, but it is not so simple a thing.”

She frowned. “I do not see why it should be hard.”

“Alessandra, as I am the only remnant of your former life—albeit recently acquired—it is natural you would attach yourself to me, especially after all you have lost and endured.”

She caught her breath as memories kept carefully tucked away unfolded—her mother’s agonizing death, the terrible journey to Tangier, near ravishment in the tavern, the platform upon which she had been auctioned as if she were a breeding goat.

“In England, there will be no harem to hide you from men’s eyes,” he continued, “nor to hide them from yours. Before you will be a wondrous selection, and among them will be eager suitors—men who are not your father’s adversary.”

She stepped nearer and slid her arms around his neck. “I do not want any of them. I want—”

“Alessandra”—he closed his hands around her wrists and pulled them down between them—“do not mistake inexperience and gratitude for something it is not. For both our sakes.”

Heartbreak made her snatch hold of the one word that offered hope. “Both?”

He released her and turned away.

Frustration made her call after him, “I will not ask again what you feel for me, Lucien.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Then you are making good progress.”

Anger made her yank off a shoe and draw her arm back to hurl it.

He closed the door behind him.

The yearn to be seen as a woman made her drop the shoe to the floor and her face into her hands. But she did not cry. Would not cry.

Though tempted to forgo the nooning meal, Alessandra gathered herself together as a woman would do and left the cabin.

When she entered the galley, Lucien and Nicholas looked up from their meal of salted meat and fish.

She inclined her head and came around the table to seat herself on the long bench beside Lucien.

“Sit next to Nicholas,” he said.

She halted. Had she so angered him that he did not wish her near?

“A lesson,” he clarified, and she knew he had glimpsed her distress.

A lesson,
she mulled as she advanced on his cousin,
not as dire as him being angry, but unwelcome, nonetheless.

Aware of the strain between her and Nicholas, despite it having abated, she lowered herself several feet from him.

Without looking up from the meat from which he was pulling a strip, Lucien said, “Closer.”

“Why?”

“Closer, Alessandra.”

She edged nearer.

“More.”

She looked to Nicholas. Though his attention was on his goblet, there was a smile in the corner of his lips.

Determined to upend his private humor, even at the cost of looking childish—surely even a woman could enjoy herself from time to time—she slid so near him their thighs touched. And gained what she sought.

Mouth suddenly weighted, he snapped his gaze to her.

It was Alessandra’s turn to smile. “This close?” She looked to Lucien.

“No respectable English lady would sit so near a man in public,” he growled, “not even her own husband.”

“I must remember that,” she said, though she did not move. Thus, it was Nicholas who put space between them.

Shortly, the wiry old cook came out from behind the screen in the corner. Bearing two trenchers, he set one before Lucien, the other between Alessandra and Nicholas.
 

She peered into the stale, hollowed-out loaf of bread that held a thick concoction in which unappetizing foodstuffs floated. “I fear I am not very hungry.”

Lucien arched an eyebrow. “Still, you will eat, for there is no lesson otherwise. Now try the stew.”

She lifted the spoon and reached to pull the trencher in front of her, but Nicholas’s hand shot out and prevented her from doing so.

“Now what?” she exclaimed as she turned a frown upon him.

“It is also Nicholas’s trencher,” Lucien said. “In England, sharing food between two is common.”

It was difficult enough becoming accustomed to dining among men, but to also share food?

“Did your mother not tell you of such things?” Lucien asked.

She did recall Sabine speaking of it, but it had only been talk. How primitive the reality. “She did.”

“Then I need not explain further.”

She sighed and scooped up a spoonful of stew. The dish proved more palatable than it looked—indeed, it was tastier than anything she had thus far been served aboard ship.

She dipped again, and her spoon collided with Nicholas’s.

“You must await your turn,” Lucien said.

She withdrew and watched as Nicholas took his time fishing for a worthy morsel. Finally, his spoon curved around a large piece of meat. And abandoned it.

Alessandra looked up and found him watching her.

“Mayhap you would like to choose one for me, my lady,” he said.

She drew back. “Of course I would not.”

“This is not a lesson in the code of love, Nicholas,” Lucien said sharply.

“Most unfortunate,” his cousin said. “Though it could be. You must take care not to neglect that part of Alessandra’s education, Cousin.”

“’Tis none of your concern,
Cousin
.”

Alessandra reveled in what she read as jealousy. Was this what it would take to make Lucien reveal his feelings for her?

Deciding it was not childish to test the possibility, reasoning that even a woman must know how well she was regarded by one she well regarded, she laid a hand upon Nicholas’s arm. “Tell me of this code of love.”

His lips thinned as he considered her hand upon him. But when he gave her his gaze, there was light in his eyes, as if he understood her game.

“Let me think.” He took another bite of stew, slowly chewed and swallowed, then said, “The code is a fine thing. A lover must submit to his lady the same as a knight would his lord. He swears loyalty and enduring service.”

“And?”

“The lady offers him some favor. Of course, she must not submit too soon, for her lover must suffer, at least a little. And once she accepts him as her lover—”

“Enough!” Lucien rose so abruptly that had the bench not been secured to the floor, it would have been upended. He rounded the table, took Alessandra’s arm, and drew her toward the door. “We will speak of this later, Nicholas.”

As he pushed Alessandra ahead of him up the steps and into sunlight, from below came the sound of his cousin’s laughter.

Skirts raised, Alessandra struggled to match Lucien’s stride as he led her toward the cabin. But then he changed direction and steered her into the shadow of the mainmast.

Guessing he did not trust himself alone with her, hoping he feared he would be tempted to kiss her as she longed to be kissed, she was almost breathless when he halted.

He released her, braced his feet apart, and said in a low, strained voice, “Have you learned naught from what I have taught you?”

She also secured her footing. “I have learned plenty, and found little of it enjoyable—excepting the dances we shared and Nicholas’s talk of love.”

“Which he knows little enough of, he who loves none but the ocean.”

“And you know more?”

His eyes narrowed. “I know what a lady does and does not discuss with a man not her husband—that the only lover a true lady takes is the one to whom she is wed.”

“
We
have discussed such things,” she retorted, “and if you would have me be a true lady, why do you not wed me?” She gasped as words she had not intended to speak soared from her like birds taking to flight.

Lucien’s lids rose, jaw eased, furrowed brow smoothed. Then he stepped close and swept the hair out of her eyes. “Twice I have been betrothed, Alessandra, and twice I have broken my betrothal. Marriage does not bode well for me.”