My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (12 page)

"Aye, sir!" floated back the reply.

"Belay that noise!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

Argyle bashed Ian smartly over the head and hauled him away. Cecilia screamed, not so much in fright as in surprise at the efficient way it was done.

"Best thing for it, really," Lockhart said, and bared his teeth in a broad white grin. "No refunds. Now climb, lass. It's too dark for me to look up your skirts."

Screaming wasn't doing her any good.

Cecilia shouted and battered at the bolted door, to absolutely no avail. If she'd thought being rescued meant that she had some kind of status, she'd been dead wrong. As soon as Lockhart had set foot on deck, he'd had her tossed into a lightless black hold. It smelled of rotten fish and moldy bread, and didn't even have the meager creature comfort of a hammock like her guest quarters. And to add insult to injury, a few minutes later another limp body was tossed inside, groaning.

Ian. Oh, joy. They might not let her drown, but they probably wouldn't care if Ian finished the job for them.

The ocean's bounce seemed to be getting worse. She clutched her head as the ship leaped weightless, then crashed down into a trough . . . then rose . . . and fell. .

. .

Ian groaned feebly, and she heard him scrabbling around as the door was bolted shut again behind him. No light, so she couldn't see him, but she could imagine how miserable he looked. "Oh God," he moaned. "I think I have a skull fracture."

"Then die already," she said. "I wish they'd shot you. With . . . with great big musket balls."

"Cess"

"Don't call me Cess!"
she yelled furiously. It was easier when she couldn't see him. "This is all your fault! I can't believe you tried to kill me!"

"Now, um, Cecilia" More fumbling noises. Oh God, he was coming her way. "It was a mistake, that's all. You're just. . . confused, and"

"I'm not the one with a skull fracture, Fabio. Now, let me see if I got this straight: You found the letter while you were working at the post office, and you intercepted it and decided to what? Seduce me? Marry me and then do away with me?"

"Um"

"On a
pirate ship?
What are you, crazy? What kind of plan is that?"

"It's not a real pirate ship! It's . . . just an act."

"Who told you that?" she demanded furiously.

"Well... a guy at the docks"

"Let me guess: some shiftylooking guy at the docks? Were you looking for a honeymoon cruise or body disposal?" She was screaming at him now, and she didn't care. She felt around and found something rolling on the floor. A filthy, ancient potato, it felt like. She hefted it in her right hand.

"It's not like that; it's just um...look, I can explain."

She pelted the potato at the sound of his voice and sidestepped his lunge. She tripped over a box, went sprawling in a tangle of wet skirts, and his weight landed awkwardly on top of her.

Oh, damn.

"Oh, Cess . . . ilia, I just don't know what Iit was just temporary insanity, I swear; I don't know what happened. ... I lost my grip on you. ... It was an accident!"

She slapped him. He pinned her hands to the deck. "I want a divorce!" she shouted.

"Fine! We split the money fiftyfifty!"

"I don't have any money, you idiot!"
she shouted, right in his face.
"And I don't
have an aunt Nancy!"

There was a long, ringing silence.

"You don't have an Aunt Nancy?"

"No."

"Then you didn't inherit two million dollars?"

"Not a chance."

"But it was addressed to"

"The wrong Cecilia."

A long pause. "Oh."

"I can't believe I ever thought that somebody like you would could did you ever like me at all?"

"Well," he said judiciously, "I'd have probably taken you to bed at least once, you know. Things just got. . . out of hand."

She was hunting around for something hard enough to give him a
real
skull fracture but froze at the metallic clatter of latches. The doorhatch?swung open and she was blinded with a lantern's glare.

"You," said a male voice. "Lass. Out with you."

She swallowed hard and started to get up, but suddenly Ian was there between her and the light. "Wait! You can't leave me here!"

Her eyes were adjusting to the dazzle, and she picked out the gleam of fussy spectacles perched on a narrow nose, short graying hair, and a deadlylooking pistol being pressed to Ian's temple. Mr. Argyle, her hero.

"Can and will. Come on, me laddie, you're too pretty to die. Fetch a good price at some of our less savory ports of call, I expect." He nodded toward Cecilia. "Let's go, then."

Cecilia edged around Ian to step out into the larger darkened cabin. Even short as she was, she had to duck to pass under the low beams. The main crew quarters were partly filled with men sitting at trestle tables, knotting ropes, mending shirts, drinking. They eyed her as she passed, with varying degrees of sinister leering.

"Up," Argyle said, and prodded her with his pistol. She climbed.

Outside, it was dark and breathtakingly clear. Argyle hustled her through the nowfamiliar black door and down the corridor. Instead of taking the lefthand door, he opened the right, and ushered her through.

She blinked and paused a couple of steps in, because it looked as if she'd stepped off of the ship and into an elaborate manor house. Fine tables, linens, candles, hung from clever brackets that tilted with the motion of the ship. Thick carpet underfoot.

There were seven men seated at the table. Dinner, it seemed, had just ended.

Plates were empty, serving dishes ravaged, and the only things filled were crystal glasses. Filled, emptied, and filled again before she'd managed to cross the long room with Mr. Argyle at her side.

"The wee lass," Argyle said, unnecessarily. They'd already looked up, and she was the focus of seven sets of assessing male eyes. The most disconcerting were Captain Lockhart's, because he seemed to see nothing in particular that appealed.

"Or shall we say, the soontobe widow?"

"Sit," the captain said, and kicked out a chair. Or tried. His boot missed it by an inch. He aimed with great concentration and succeeded in thumping it assovercushion to the carpet. "Damn."

"I've seen this movie," Cecilia blurted. "This is where you leer at me and tell me that food doesn't satisfy you, and you turn into zombies in the moonlight. Right?"

There was a long, surprised silence, and then they roared drunkenly with laughter. Argylesober, monkish Mr. Argylelaughed so hard he reeled into the paneled wall. "Now, lassie," Argyle gasped, "does it
look
to you as if food doesn't satisfy this lot? They've done their level best to lick the shine from the plates! The best part of our cargo's food and drink!"

"Zombies in the moonlight!" roared a lopeared fellow near Lockhart's left elbow. "Zounds, that's rich. . . . What the devil is a zombie?"

"From the Caribbean," Lockhart said contemplatively. He was decidedly not laughing. "Means the walking dead."

The laughter cut off abruptly. In the odd silence, Cecilia clumsily bent down and set the chair upright again and let herself sink into it, because she wasn't sure her trembling knees would hold her. It had been a long, long day.

"Zombies," Argyle repeated blankly. "Well. I do stand corrected."

After a cutting glance around the table, Lockhart reached for the bottle and poured the crystal glass in front of Cecilia's empty plate to the brim.

"Drink up," he said.

"No, thank you."

"You need it. Not every day you get married and murdered," he said, and leaned his chair back precariously on two legs. She waited for him to tip straight over backward. It wasn't possible to keep a chair balanced with the constant gyrations of the damn ship, especially as drunk as he was. "Excuse me. Nearly murdered."

She waited, breathless. He stared back, the chair gently moving back and forth, never quite off center, never quite still.

She slowly reached for the glass and sipped, then coughed. Good British rum, burning a wide path down her throat. Argyle rapped the table and nodded his appreciation. "Braw lass," he said. "Fill her glass, Jacks."

Lockhart's neighbor cheerfully obliged, his face mottled red as he chuckled.

Someone started up a drinking song, and Argyle took it up with a startlingly clear tenor voice; at the chorus, everyone lifted a glass, even Lockhart. She hastily followed suit.

There were several refrains and quite a lot of choruses. Lockhart, she noticed, only raised his glass and touched it to his lips. She tried, but the ship kept deceiving her with its dips and swirls, and the liquor spilled either over her or into her mouth, and one way or another, she was getting mightily drunk. Not to mention sticky.

"A bit of business," Argyle said once the song was over and glasses were being refilled. "What about the lad, Cap'n?"

Lockhart shrugged. "Over the side, I suppose. No great loss to anyone."

Argyle looked sad. "Could've fetched a pretty penny for him, back in the good times. Sold him in Tortuga"

"Tortuga's gone soft," Lockhart said. "So's every damn port in the world, even Singapore. We'll never get a profit out of his pretty hide. Might as well save ourselves the bread and aggravation."

"Wait!" Cecilia blurted, alarmed. "You're . . . you're talking about"

"Pitching your wouldbe killer over the side," Argyle said. "You don't have to thank us."

"No!"

"No?" He looked momentarily nonplussed, and then downed his rum and slapped the table in comprehension. "Ah! You want to put a musket ball through his black heart first! Done, lassie! A fine piece of vengeance!"

"No! No, of course I don't! I want"

Lockhart raised one ironic eyebrow. "Drink first," he said. "I never negotiate with a dry throat."

She got most of it down in long gulps, choked, and swayed. She was getting used to the upanddown lurch of the ship, she decided. Like riding a horse. Or a cowboy. Oh, dear. The pirates howled their approval and downed their own rum.

"Another round!" Argyle shouted.

Lockhart, who hadn't taken a single drink, suddenly crashed all four legs of his chair to the deck, causing an instant and precariously sober silence. "Everybody out," he said. He didn't raise his voice, but all of the other men shoved their chairs back and took their leave. Cecilia tried, but Lockhart reached out to place two long fingers on her wrist to press it to the table. She froze. "Not you." He exerted no pressure, but she couldn't find the strength to get up.

In seconds, the cabin was empty except for the two of them. Lockhart let go of her wrist and rested his elbow on the table.

"Well," he said. "You're set on mercy for your would be killer?"

"Yes," she said. The room lurched, and she swayed with it. Well, this wasn't so difficult after all, now, was it? She was on a pirate ship, aye, avast, and all that crap.

"Yes, I'd like you to ... to ... let him go."

"That's what we're going to do, Mistress Taylor. Let him go. If he sinks, well, that's purely a flaw of character."

"Hey!
I'm not married!"
She got her thoughts back on track with an effort. "And no fair dumping him in the middle of the osh . . . osh"

"Ocean."

" 'Zackly."

"An island, perhaps? Something . . . harsh. With hostile natives. Possibly cannibals."

She considered it. It did have an appeal. "No cannibals. But everything else is okay."

He cocked his head slowly to one side. "Then my felicitations, Miss Welles.

Consider yourself divorced. Of course, you'd be far more unattached if you'd let us put a musket ball in his back."

The room spun. Were they caught in a whirlpool? She pressed her hands flat against the table and tried to hold steady, but the damned boat turned over and her legs went to warm jelly and all of a sudden she toppled.

And when she caught her breath, she was sitting in Captain Lockhart's lap.

Apart from a very slight widening of his eyes, he didn't move. She sucked in a deep breath, and the smell of him washed through her sharp male sweat, old rum, clothes worn too long without more than an opportune rainstorm. The coat puffed out an aroma of patchouli. Her left hand was braced on Lockhart's chest, and she felt his muscles tensing pleasantly under the thin cloth of his shirt.

He slowly tilted his head, keeping his gaze steady and level on hers. "Yon Ian's a pretty, emptyheaded fool, and no match for a woman of your . . . potential. You should have known that."

She let loose of the table to make a grand sweeping gesture with her right hand, which made her sway alarmingly on the captain's lap. "Potential," she said. "Right.

I have loads of that. A deadend job, no money, no friends . . . and Ian, he was just so"

"Pretty?" Lockhart supplied dryly.

"Considerate!"

Lockhart smiled slowly. "Oh, aye," he said. "We offered to make sure you were dead before he tossed you overboard, for a bit extra, but he'd have none of that.

Very considerate of his pocketbook, your husbandtobe. It was a considerable savings to let you drown."

Heat rushed over herphysical, sticky, painfuland she thought for a miserable second that she would simply pass out. 
Oh, Ian . . .

"Cecilia," Lockhart said quietly. It was the first time he'd called her by her name,

"He meant to have you dead, one way or another. Be sure of that."

She pulled her hand back from his chest, and sure enough, the ship's next lurch sent her head and balance spinning. The world spiraled away in a hiss of gray sparkles, and she slid sideways toward the lurching deck.

He caught her, both arms around her, and she was in a very indecent position for a woman who just, well, 
tonight
 had been saying yes to a different man altogether, but in the candle's glow his eyes were unguarded and dark and lovely, and she buried her fingers in the stilldamp curl of his hair and kissed him.

After a second of surprise, his lips moved, molding into hers, still cool from the water, and she put her arms around his neck and moaned into his mouth and, 
My
 
God, you're drunk,
 she told herself, but it wasn't really the rum; the rum just let her forget about all the reasons why this was a very, very bad idea.