Once Upon a Midnight Sea (26 page)

He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the pounding in his head. "Perhaps we could fight later. I am not quite up to a sparring match as of yet."

She sniffed indignantly. "Finish your tea. I'll send Mrs. Ling down to check on you."

"Are those voices I hear?" Henri's grizzled face peered through the door and brightened at the sight of him. "
Bein joué
! We feared you were done for."

"Mr. Dupree," Adriana said stiffly. "I shall take my turn at the helm." She didn't glance back at him as she stalked past Henri. What could he have possibly done, while unconscious, to upset her this time? He didn't have the energy to fret over it, and Henri's genuine smile made his mood soar.

"Ye of little faith." Christian grinned back. "Truth be known, I was a little worried myself."

"Ah, I knew you'd pull through. You're as strong as your father."

"She doesn't seem happy about it," Christian said when Adriana was out of earshot. "I suppose I made her angry by falling ill."

Henri made a face, but beneath it his happiness was still evident. "Don't you believe it. Why, she never left your side until we set sail from Barbados, and then only to take her turn at the helm."

"
Bon Dieu
. How long has it been?"

"Seven days. We were anchored at Barbados for three days, then Adriana decided to continue."

Continue? Adriana decided that? "Where are we?"

"We reach St. Laurent day after tomorrow."

Two days! He could hardly believe they were only two days away from the island prison where his father had spent the last twenty years of his life.

"Adriana sat beside me?" His mouth suddenly went dry. He remembered the night he'd awakened to find her sleeping beside him. A hot wave of dizziness swept over him.

"How you feel this morning?" Mrs. Ling's bright face appeared beside Henri's. "My tea work very good. You much better today."

"I am told I have you to thank for my very life," he said. Her smile grew impossibly wide.

He could not get over the strange euphoria gripping him. Adriana had sat by his bedside. She did care whether he lived or died.

"Drink more tea. Malaria gone, but you still weak."

"Yes, I am still weak," he agreed as another spell of dizziness gripped him. "But before I drink any more tea, I absolutely must use the privy."

They both laughed and Christian joined in, elated by the simple fact that he had cheated death yet again.

* * *

Adriana sat on the stern bench behind the wheel and placed her shaking hands in her lap. Relief swelled inside her until she had to cover her mouth to hold back the overwhelming joy bursting out of her. Christian was alive, and he was going to be fine. He was going to finish this quest and reunite with his father.

For a few terrifying days, she'd worried that wasn't going to happen.

"Christian is awake?" Ollie asked. "You look happy."

She stood and took the wheel. "Go. He wants to see you."

His face brightened and Ollie darted off, leaving her alone on deck. She stared across the glimmering azure sea that looked a thousand times more beautiful today. Chauncy trotted up, tongue lolling with happy doggy glee, as if he, too, understood Christian was out of danger.

She scooped up her little dog and hugged him to her chest. "He's going to be just fine," she whispered, and this time she allowed the tears welling in her eyes to grow and fall. A quick cry was good for the soul.

Only after she'd wiped them away did she realize that those tears were selfish. She was happy he was here, hers alone while they were on this ship. She could still fantasize about a different life, one in which she wasn't destined to marry Preston Weiss, but where her future was spent with Christian, instead.

* * *

Henri let the anchor fall and checked it was secure. They moored off a shoal near the coast, but far enough from the township that their lamps below decks would be undetectable by its people.

"You going to be all right, boy?"

Good grief, they were all treating him as if he were made of glass. Since awakening, he'd grown stronger by the minute.

"Fine," he called. "Enjoy your supper."

Henri headed below for his meal, leaving Christian alone on deck. The sun had already set, now all that remained was a murky crimson band on the horizon.

He stared off at it, trying to remember what sailors said about a red sky at night.

Beware
.

The first lights of St. Laurent's evening glittered under that ominous sky. To the south-east, somewhere in the already blackness of night, three tiny islands sat only ten miles off the coast.
Île St. Joseph
,
Île Royale
, and
Île du Diable
.

Devil's Island.

On the journey down he'd wondered if his father stared up at the same stars in the sky that he did from Lady Luck's deck. His brush with Malaria had reminded him how fragile life was here. Now, he wondered if his father was even still alive. The letter in his pocket was almost two years old.

He sensed more than heard Adriana move up beside him. He'd become so used to her presence, no, so
comfortable
in it, she felt like a source of energy when she was near. Already he felt stronger with her merely standing next to him.

She leaned against the rail, silent in the gentle breeze. He didn't speak, content just to be near her.

He looked down at the water. A strange, teeming cloud of brilliant green light swirled around the anchor's chain, just at the surface.

"What is it?"

Adriana sighed deeply. "It has many different names. Some say it is the souls of those lost at sea, looking for a ship to take them home."

Christian turned sideways her at the rail to look at her. "What do you believe?"

"It is such a sad legend, I do not want to believe it. No one deserves to be lost forever."

He sensed a deeper meaning in her explanation. "Soon my father will be rescued, back where he belongs."

"And what then?" Her eyes glistened in the wane light. "What will you do with your life?"

"I will survive, as I always have." He stepped closer, softening the hard tone he'd not intended. "I cannot think of what happens next week, next month, or next year. No man knows what his future will hold, he can only go on as he knows."

"Is that what you will do? Go on as you know?"

She wanted to know if he would still be a jewel thief. He glanced down at the magical swirling light in the water, unable to answer. "What about you? You shall go on and marry that chubby little man, Preston Weiss? Back to your safe, diffident life of parties and fine dresses and expensive baubles?"

"I'm afraid there is no escaping my fate. But it is not my future that is in question." Adriana took a step back and turned back to the sea. "Nor do I wish to speak of it."

"Is it really so bleak that you cannot bear to imagine it? You have everything a person could want, and more."

"No." She shook her head, but didn't lift her eyes to meet his. "You do not know about my life."

"Then tell me."

She clenched her jaw, hesitating a moment. Several leaping fish splashed at the surface, their luminescent scales glinting in the pale light of a quarter moon. Her eyes rose to follow, then just as quickly were hidden under the sweep of her long lashes.

"I am an heiress, yes, but truly nothing is mine, not even the privilege of choice. A woman's future is chosen for her. Our entire lives, for that matter. Perhaps you spend your life running from the law, but until you are caught, at least you are free. I have never been free, except when I am aboard this ship, sailing the wide open seas with no one to restrain me."

He reached out to brush away a strand of hair floating against her cheek. Adriana closed her eyes, but otherwise remained as still as a statue. She reminded him of a marble Aphrodite he'd seen in Paris.

"What good is money, or gaining more money, when the thing you want most cannot be bought? I want to be free. I want the chance to choose my own destiny. When I marry Mr. Weiss, my father's empire will grow, but I will have to give up what little freedom I have known."

She glanced up at him. Her eyes were shiny, but she didn't allow any tears to fall. "You were right, before. My father spoiled me."

The familiar stab of resentment poked him in the gut, but Christian forced it away.

Adriana turned her attention back to the water and a dreamy quality filled her eyes. "But not in the way you think. Not with trinkets and gifts and leisure. Those things are not truly wealth. He allowed me freedoms considered inappropriate of young ladies in polite society, and he never condemned me for my passions. When I marry Mr. Weiss, all that will change. I will have to become docile and obedient as I have been taught, and I will be taken away from the sea to live in the Adirondacks with his family."

It was a crime. Christian couldn't bear the thought of anyone killing the vivacious spirit inside Adriana.

He took her arm and turned her to face him. "You do not have to. You could stay aboard, and continue with me and my father."

Her eyes grew wide and Christian's pulse quickened. He didn't know exactly what he was saying, only that it was so daring it made his head spin. "I've already stolen the ship, what is stopping me from sailing it all the way around the cape and to the west? I hear it is a bold new land where my father and I will be able to disappear. A man can start a new life there. A woman, too."

She gasped. "Are you asking me to run away with you?" Adriana's cheeks flooded crimson. Christian collected himself and swallowed down the exhilaration welling in his throat.

"No, of course not. I am simply offering you your chance to seize the freedom that means so much to you. No one can force you to return to a life you don't want."

Her eyes drifted closed. "You are wrong. It isn't so easy as that. Perhaps for you it is, but not for me. We are too very different people. We come from different worlds, live different lives."

She'd said so their first day on the ship, but to hear it again was like a punch to the gut. What was he thinking, she with the likes of him? No, Adriana Montague was too good to ever consider taking up with a lowly thief.

"You chose the wrong path in life, Christian." Her whispered voice carried across the warm sea breeze. "It is a path I cannot take for myself."

He turned toward her and took her hand. This time Adriana didn't pull away. Instead she turned her body toward his and took his other hand in hers. Her eyes were soft and draped with mystery.

"There is no future for us, when there could have been a great one. Things could have been different, you know."

He kissed her then, before she could utter a protest or lift her arms to push him back. But she didn't. As he drew her against him Adriana moved into his embrace willingly, as though she had expected this all along. Her lips met his with a surprising fervor, and in her kiss he could feel the regret for their impossible future.

But at the forefront of this wonderful kiss was desire, longing, and the intense passion that made Adriana so wildly alluring. She was unlike any other woman he'd ever known, and Christian knew, would never meet again. He didn't want to. Adriana was all he wanted.

It was thanks to her that he had come this far. Thanks to her he would rescue his father. Thanks to her he was a different man than he'd been the day he first stepped aboard Lady Luck's deck.

Henri's voice carried through the bow hatch only a few feet away. Adriana pulled away and turned around at the rail.

"We'll have enough if you water it down some," he said to Mr. Ling as they emerged. He hesitated when he saw them. "What are you up to?"

"Nothing," Christian growled. His pent up desire had nowhere to go.

"Adriana?"

She turned around. "It is all right, Mr. Dupree." She pursed her swollen lips together as she glanced up at Christian. "We are just watching the fish."

She licked her lips, as if trying to determine if they'd somehow been changed. They had been, with that kiss. Neither would he ever be the same. He felt like a starving dog who'd been tossed a tiny morsel from a grand meal. He would never know the full power of a lifetime in her arms.

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Adriana! Mrs. Ling is serving breakfast." Mrs. Bailey gave a quick knock and twisted the knob. "You are not keeping this door locked as you promised."

She stopped in the doorway, aghast as she took in Adriana's choice of attire. "Why in heaven's name are you dressed like that?"

In black breeches and leather boots, her navy blue shirtwaist and a black waistcoat, Adriana was prepared to blend into the darkness. She'd collected her long hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.

She stood from the vanity and faced Mrs. Bailey. Her heart sped as she sensed the coming onslaught of disapproval. "We rescue Christian's father tonight."