Authors: Lightning
And now it was as if she closed the door on him. And he didn’t know why.
He would have three days to find out. And he intended to do exactly that.
Adrian decided to stay on the
Specter
that night. He wanted to check the loading of cargo himself, to make sure the weight was evenly distributed. He wanted nothing to go wrong this trip.
He had told Wade that they would have a passenger who would occupy Adrian’s cabin, and that he would move in with his first mate. Wade had merely lifted his eyebrows in surprise.
“A passenger, Captain?”
“Yes,” Adrian said shortly, cutting off any other questions.
Wade tugged at his hat. “We’ve had an invitation tonight, Captain.”
“An invitation?”
“Captain Harding, sir. Something about the crew invited for dinner. A bet?”
Adrian swore to himself. He’d forgotten about the damned bet once Clay had admitted defeat. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “You go. I have work to do.”
Wade grinned. “You sure, Captain?”
“I’m sure,” Adrian growled. The last thing he wanted to be reminded of was that damnable bet. But the invitation had already been given his crew members, and he didn’t want to disappoint them. Not now. Not before a run.
After most of them had left, leaving only a skeleton crew aboard, Adrian went up on deck.
The lights in Nassau were bright, twinkling like so many stars. He found the ones belonging to the Case home and wondered which shone from Lauren’s room. He thought about her too much, he chided himself, when he should be thinking of nothing but the run ahead. The Yanks would be in full force along the southeastern coast, their patrol boats circling the harbors and their fast cruisers patrolling the sea between the Bahamas and the Carolinas.
He wished he had guns, that the ship was not so vulnerable. There was only a handgun in the cabin, and he was well aware of the price of using even that against the Yanks. Not only his ship, but his life was at stake. And right now, his life seemed very precious to him.
How many more runs before he could purchase Ridgely? Would the man who now owned the estate even sell? And how would Lauren Bradley like Ridgely, the rolling green hills, the dense private forests, and the gracious manor house? He wanted her to see it, to understand his love for it.
Exactly when had she crawled into his heart? From the moment she had curtsied to Socrates, or when she’d laughed when she removed her shoes at the beach, wriggling her toes in the sand, or when she’d danced with him at the Governor’s Ball, or when she’d held him tight against his grief yesterday? He didn’t know. He only knew she had become vitally important to him.
He was taking her to Charleston, because he realized she was going to go, one way or another. And he’d rather have her under his protection than Clay’s. He would know where she was, where she was going, would know how to reach her.
One of the lights in the Case home flickered off. Lauren’s? He pictured her lying on a bed, her honey-colored hair fanning over a pillow …
And he felt his belly tighten, his manhood swell against the tight trousers he wore, his blood race. “Lauren,” he said softly into the sea breeze.
Lauren stood on the deck of the
Specter
as it moved slowly away from the wharf. Lights still shone from its interior and from the oil lamps on deck, but she knew they would soon be quenched, and the
Specter
would become true to its name.
She felt the barely suppressed excitement of the men scurrying around her, and that feeling communicated itself to her, became part of her. Now she had some understanding of what Adrian had said. Every nerve in her body tingled with a mixture of fear and excitement, and all her senses were alive and humming and expectant.
Lauren looked upward to the dark night, where only the slightest slice of moon broke the field of stars. Wisps of clouds moved lazily against the sky, like pieces of lace.
She listened to the hum of the engines under her, the slap of waves against the bow of the ship, and she watched as other sets of lights moved out to sea with them. She counted nearly sixteen clumps of lights moving, and even more still behind in the harbor. Many of those would be gone too, by first light.
It was a sight she knew she would never forget, the silent, wraithlike silhouettes moving into harm’s way, like an army of ghosts.
Soon, she knew, the ships would move away from one another, their captains each plotting different courses so a lucky Yankee patrol boat wouldn’t find more than one at any time. In this business of hare and hounds, there was no safety in numbers.
She shivered as she thought of the dangerous game ahead, the now-familiar sickness in the pit of her stomach stronger than ever. She had met many of these captains now, met them and liked them. They were no longer the Evil Enemy, but men who laughed and teased and loved.
How could she have such a divided heart?
Lauren looked toward the front of the ship, toward the wheel where Adrian stood with the young man he’d introduced as Johnny, the pilot. The pilot was nothing more than a lad, a boy with a devil-may-care smile and tousled hair, and a wide grin. He was the only Southerner among the crew, and Lauren was only too aware that he would be subject to imprisonment, unlike the others.
But then he, too, was getting rich for the risks he took. Jeremy had said the pilots received three to five thousand dollars per run, a fortune. But still …
Lauren turned her gaze to the sea. It was gentle here, and still as clear as a piece of glass. She heard a nearby ripple and knew it must be a fish. She wished for a moment that she were that creature; free of conscience, of living with the consequences of one’s actions.
She was aware of Adrian’s presence almost immediately, although he stepped so lightly. It wasn’t sound that made her aware; rather, it was the heightened tingling of her senses, a sudden tension in the air.
“Peaceful, isn’t it?” he said.
“For how long?”
“If we’re lucky, two and a half days.”
“And then?”
“Then we wait for a fog to take us into Charleston and hope we don’t blunder into a Union ship.”
“Thank you for your cabin.”
His hand settled lightly on her shoulder, and she felt its warmth roll through her like hot syrup. Compelled by a need she tried unsuccessfully to fight, she felt her body move back, touching his hard one. But the night was magical, the sea air tangy and exhilarating, his touch irresistible. She had tried to avoid him until that moment he had fetched her from Jeremy’s and again had maintained a reserve as he had taken her aboard and showed her the small cabin …
She had immediately noted its austerity, the maps, the books. “This is yours?”
He nodded. “I’ll move in with Wade, my first officer.”
“I … can’t take your cabin.”
He gave her a devilish grin. “We … could share it,” he replied suggestively.
Lauren knew she was blushing again, especially as she felt a strange yearning in the depth of her. She turned away.
Adrian’s tone immediately changed, became apologetic. “I’m sorry, Lauren, but we don’t usually take passengers. This is all we have. I can take you back to Jeremy’s.”
Lauren bit her lips. The cabin was not nearly as grand as she’d expected he would have. There were no windows, no comforts, only a narrow bed set into the wall, a small desk anchored to the floor. A bookcase was built onto one of the walls, and it was filled. There was a small seaman’s chest and some hooks for clothes, and two more for oil lamps. That was all.
But it smelled of him, of soap and leather and musk. And even the austerity of the small, almost cell-like room was compelling because it was his.
“It’s fine,” she said in a soft voice, trying to close her mind to the need inside her. How could he still affect her this way when she knew that she meant nothing to him, nothing more than a grogshop wager?
Socrates scampered into the room to a small box with a bundle of rags in it.
“I suppose you don’t mind sharing with Socrates,” Adrian said with that slight self-mocking smile that was always like a blow to her stomach.
“It’s more respectable,” she retorted.
“There’s nothing respectable about your being here alone on a runner,” he said dryly. “I still wish you would reconsider.”
Lauren had shaken her head. She wanted to reconsider. Oh how much she wanted to reconsider! She thought of the small cloth bag of sand in her portmanteau.
“I have to go above,” Adrian said. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“When will we leave?”
“In a few hours. You might like to come up and watch. A number of ships are leaving tonight … it’s an interesting sight.”
“What about Union patrol boats?”
“They can’t do anything in the Bahamian waters, and that takes in a very large area. They can try to follow us out, but with a dark night and our lights out, the Union ships are easy to elude.”
Lauren had spent only a few minutes in the cabin before feeling unaccountably confined. She could barely stand the closeness of the walls. But she hesitated to go up on deck. Adrian would be there, and she didn’t know whether she could bear being close to him, for her body was sure to betray her the way it always did when Adrian Cabot was around.
But neither could she stand her own thoughts, nor staring at Adrian’s possessions, nor the lingering scent that remained in the room.
In three or four days, if all went well, this cabin would no longer belong to him.
If everything went well …
“Lauren.” Adrian’s voice was soft in her ear, and she returned to the moment, to the seductive night, and the danger. His danger. Her own danger when she was with him. Dear God, how could she survive this?
Hate him, she urged herself. Hate him for what he is, for what he’s doing, for what he wagered.
But that was like hating the warm, bright sun, hating the brightness while the body drank up the warmth.
“Frightened?” he said, his hand on her shoulder tightening ever so slightly.
Lauren kept her gaze away from him. She couldn’t look at him now, at the eyes so deep a blue she could never find its source, or identify the currents that ran in them. She didn’t understand him, or the many contradictions she saw in him.
“Yes,” she said. But not for the reason he believed.
“The run is really fairly safe,” he said, leaning over, his words a soft whisper in the night as his breath touched her ear, and she shivered in the warm Caribbean night. Or was it morning?
His hand dropped from her shoulder, and both of his arms went around her waist. She found herself leaning back against him. It was so natural, as if it was meant to be, this fusing of bodies.
The lamps on the ship were quenched, one by one, and she turned, looking askance at him in a night lit now only by a host of stars that were bright in the sky but flashed precious little light to the earth.
“It’s time,” he whispered, “to get lost in the night.”
Lauren watched as distant lights also disappeared, one by one, and she and Adrian seemed alone in the total blackness of night. Even the loud voices of the crew had quieted to whispers, and only the sound of water against the hull made music in the vast emptiness.
The sudden void matched the hollowness inside her. Adrian’s arms were still around her, and something deep inside her relished the comfort of his embrace. But it was all false, she reminded herself. He doesn’t mean it, any more than she did.
She forced some words out. “Isn’t it dangerous … without lights?”
“Johnny’s the best pilot in the business. He can sense—see—every reef, every jut of land in the blackest of nights. Damned if I know how. Part owl, I suppose.”
Keep talking. Keep talking so you won’t feel.
Lauren shifted slightly, and Adrian’s arms moved with her. The friction of skin against skin, body against body, sent waves of painful pleasure washing over her. She wanted his hands to move again, to reexperience those wonderful sensations that made her feel so alive.
There was a tug on her skirt, and she looked down, barely able to see Socrates in the darkness. Then she tipped her head upward. The shadow of Adrian’s head, the outline of those hard, clean features so close, came even closer as she felt his lips touch her cheek and his hands turn her ever so slightly so she was at his side rather than in front of him.
Her heart thumped so loudly she thought he must hear. Her hand trembled where it lay on the railing. His lips moved to touch her lips, softly, searchingly.
Lauren knew they were lost in the shadow, in the inky darkness, so the members of the crew could not see. It was as if they were alone in an infinite empty vault, nothing real except each other. She felt his lips press tighter against her mouth, and she realized she was responding, her mouth opening to his gentle probing.
Emotions flooded her. Wild, runaway emotions. Pleasure. Need. Anticipation. The danger, the tension, made everything so much more intense, magnified her sensations until she didn’t know how she could bear them, to hold them inside without exploding. She was learning quickly what Adrian had meant about danger.