Authors: Lightning
They had to wait to see whether Adrian would wake, the doctor said while setting Rhys’s arm. Send for him, he said, if there was any change. So Rhys had watched. Nearly two bloody days now. Two days of tending a man he didn’t like and being subjected to the nastiest, most ungrateful, spiteful animal he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. He looked down at the bites on his good arm.
“Lauren,” Adrian whispered, and Rhys was surprised at the satisfaction the sound caused in him.
He poured a glass of water with his good hand and pulled a chair close to the large comfortable bed. “Ridgely,” he said loudly, and Adrian’s eyes fluttered open and tried to focus.
When they finally did, the blank gaze turned into a glower. “Where in bloody hell am I?”
“My lodgings and my bed. My only bed,” Rhys replied pointedly.
Adrian tried to move, his glower growing darker. “Why?”
Rhys shrugged. “I didn’t know where else to take you, except one of those charnel houses they call a hospital. I didn’t think it wise to send you to Sir Giles—neither you nor I are in great favor there. And I didn’t know whether you would live or not.”
“You don’t have to sound so bloody cheerful about the prospect of my death.”
Rhys chuckled. “So you do have a sense of humor? I never would have suspected it.”
“Not much of one right now. Socrates?”
“Is that the name of that incorrigible? He’s a devil of a sight better than either of us.”
Adrian’s tightly drawn lips cracked as his gaze raked over Rhys’s battered face, falling to the arm in a sling.
“Now
you
don’t have to look so bloody cheerful,” Rhys said.
Adrian had to summon enormous willpower to sit. “I was to sail tonight,” he mused.
“You’ve been unconscious for two days,” Rhys said.
“I’ve been here two days?” There was horror in Adrian’s voice.
“I share your distress,” Rhys observed dryly. “I not only had to sleep in a chair, but also tolerate your ill-tempered friend.”
“Why?”
“At the risk of repeating myself, I felt a trifle responsible.”
Adrian groaned as he remembered the events leading up to this deplorable situation. “Lauren?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrian groaned again as he tried to rise.
“I don’t think you’re going far,” Rhys noted with a slight grin.
“Did you mean everything you said?”
“Ah, you remember.”
“Redding …” It was a threat despite Adrian’s obvious weakness.
“If you mean the part about your being an ass, yes.”
Adrian’s glower turned ever darker. But as he recalled that conversation, he had to admit there was truth in Redding’s words. He shouldn’t have needed to be told there was nothing between Redding and Lauren, despite appearances. He
knew
Lauren. He loved Lauren. He should have trusted Lauren. But when he’d seen her with Redding, he’d remembered Sylvia. Lauren was nothing like Sylvia, however; Lauren was like no other woman. Bloody hell, what had he done?
“Will you send a message to her?”
Redding smiled sardonically. “With delight, if it means your imminent departure. And his!” He scowled toward the corner where Socrates sat glaring at Adrian as if everything was his fault.
And it was, Adrian acknowledged to himself. “I seem to remember,” he said, “that you said you would sell Ridgely. Is the offer still open?”
“Yes.” Redding stood.
“Did I tell you I bought a ship?”
“You did, and I said I would take it as part of the bargain.”
“It’s built for blockade running.”
“Remember, I’m a gambler.”
“You know nothing about the sea.”
“I know a little, and I can learn the rest if you help me find the right people.”
“You’re a lunatic.”
Rhys glanced over at Socrates.
“You
have that animal, and you call
me
a lunatic?”
There was some wisdom in that observation, but whatever liking Adrian was developing for Rhys Redding, it was quickly dispelled by the man’s next words.
“And I’ve discovered I
do
like American women.”
Lauren looked out the window from Jeremy’s house in Nassau, just as she had months ago. The harbor was nearly empty, at least in comparison to several days earlier. The new moon had arrived three days ago, one day before the ship carrying her had docked. It, too, was a steamer, but not one meant for the blockade.
The blockade, the captain had told her, was growing much too dangerous now. More and more companies were withdrawing from the trade.
She had hoped Adrian would arrive before her, and now she worried that he had been captured on the way from England.
Lauren could not stay away from the window. She haunted it when she wasn’t down on the docks, staring into the water, willing a new ship to appear, waiting to see Adrian standing on the deck of his ship once again.
Jeremy and Corinne had been wonderful. She had thought he might not want her to stay after hearing what she had to say, and she’d been prepared to find cheap lodgings in a boardinghouse and find some way to make her own livelihood. But he would have none of it. One can’t choose whom one loves, he’d said, and she had more than fulfilled her bargain. Yes, he had heard she would be arrested if she returned to the United States, but he thought he could convince Phillips otherwise. After all, Phillips did get the
Specter.
Jeremy’s optimism did nothing to soothe her spirits; but she stayed, hoping that Adrian would come.
Lauren watched as a new ship entered the harbor, a steamer. A lean silhouette, just like the
Specter.
She didn’t remember seeing it before, and her heart fluctuated madly until she told herself to cease being such a fool. She saw figures on the deck, but she couldn’t identify them. For a moment one looked vaguely familiar. Then she told herself it was only wishful thinking. Do something useful, she said. Help Jeremy in the store. Don’t tantalize yourself like this.
Jeremy, apparently sensing her restlessness, asked her to check the stock, especially the tobacco items. When the blockade runners came in, they would be clamoring for such.
She stooped down. While checking the humidors in the cases, she heard a running noise, and felt a breeze from fast movement. Suddenly a furry thing hurled itself at her, and she found herself being smacked in the face by two enthusiastic lips.
Lauren fell back against the wall as Socrates chattered excitedly, and in his excitement bit her. His greeting completed, he leaped for the counter and grabbed a stick of licorice.
A tanned hand reached down for her, grasping hers with the lazy strength that was endearingly familiar. She looked up into wonderful deep blue eyes as Adrian pulled her up so easily. For the first time in nearly three miserable weeks, she faced him.
His eyes devoured her, though his face remained rigidly set as if he didn’t know what to expect. The heat that always circulated between them, the magnetism that had bound them together almost from the very first minute, cloaked them with its own mysterious power as he searched her face. There was suddenly no one else in the world but the two of them, and it was as though there had been no treachery, no distrust. There was only now, only this minute … and the other priceless moments when they had loved so intensely.
“I’ve missed you,” Adrian whispered fiercely as his arms went around her, pulling her close against him, seeking to hear the beat of her heart.
Unbelieving, Lauren lifted her head so her eyes could meet his, and she lost herself in their smoldering depths. He seized her lips with his, and the world caught fire, filling her with a miraculous glory.
When his lips finally released her, Lauren looked up, her wide eyes welling with brilliantly shining tears. “I love you,” she said aloud for the first time, though she’d said it so many times in the silence of her thoughts.
His hand went to her cheek, quivering slightly in suppressed emotion before moving lovingly along its contours, as if reassuring himself that she was there.
“Would you like to go for a sail, Miss Bradley?” he said.
He was asking much more than that, and Lauren knew it. “Yes,” she said simply.
The small skiff skimmed through the water.
Lauren knew now that Adrian had just come in on the ship she had seen from the window, and she wondered at how swiftly he had come to her, and how he had obtained this skiff so quickly.
She knew without asking that they were returning to that wondrous island where they had started falling in love with each other, where there would be privacy, complete and absolute … except for Socrates, who refused to leave either of them.
Lauren couldn’t take her eyes from the striking man who so confidently handled the sail and tiller. She remembered thinking months ago how appealing he was as he moved with such agility, how at ease he was with the sea and the sun and the wind. She supposed she had loved him even then, though not like she did now. Not with her whole soul and heart and mind. Then, her heart was divided.
Now it belonged wholly to him, if he would take it. But there was still so much she had to confess to him.
For the moment, however, she rejoiced in watching him. As before, he had pulled off his polished black boots with a boyish smile, yet there was nothing boyish about the snug trousers and open shirt that revealed his powerful chest. The wind ruffled his chestnut hair, and she ached to run her fingers through it. He smiled at her, slowly and sensuously. That smile was as intimate as a kiss, as full of tenderness. As full of promise.
The small craft turned, spraying cool water on her, and she felt the contrast of Bahamian sun and water. Every sense was heightened now, and her body was stretched as tightly as a bowstring as she watched Adrian’s body move gracefully, his hands competently.
And then he was picking her up, carrying her to the unblemished smoothness of white sand washed by sea. She was barely aware of Socrates, who had swung up on Adrian’s shoulder for the brief ride to shore but climbed quickly down as soon as they reached the beach and ran off to find a tree.
There was only Adrian now. The closeness of him. The thunder of being in his arms, the lightning of lips touching. The storm when he laid her on the sand and knelt beside her, his hands moving along her body, caressing it, loving it.
The storm whipped into a hurricane as their bodies came together, neither of them able to touch enough, to convey enough, to express enough. Frantic because of need. Not mere lust, but so much more, the need to envelop each other, to become one again, in spirit as well as body. They had been so very far apart …
“I love you,” Lauren whispered as he entered her, their bodies joining in mutual longing and need and love. Gently at first, and then with all the wild, desperate fierceness born of loss and fear and emptiness. The fierceness turned to exquisite sweetness, then to driving need, and finally to exploding splendor.
They lay together, their clothes scattered around them, discarded in ways neither knew how, nor cared to know. They felt the sun bless them, the cool wind dry the wetness of their skin and the tears on Lauren’s face, and both felt an overwhelming sense of peace. Lauren’s hand ran down the length of Adrian’s chest, lingering only slightly at the wound inflicted in Virginia. She leaned over and kissed it. She felt the beat of his heart, which was also the beat of hers.
And then she met his eyes, knowing it was time now to open every part of herself to him: the secrets, the lies, the terrible truths.
“There is so much I must tell you,” she said.
Adrian’s lips touched hers, hushing them. “I think I know it all, love. Lisa told me some—Redding the rest.”
“And you still … ?”
“Love you?” He had a funny smile on his face, sad and regretful and even guilty. “Dear God, I love you. I have from the beginning, ever since, I think, you curtsied to Socrates.” His lips nuzzled her neck. “I knew it without doubt when you came to the jail, holding Socrates and telling that ridiculous story about a deformed baby.” He chuckled, his teeth nibbling along the side of her cheek so she could barely comprehend his words.
“Life,” he added, “would be incredibly dull without you.”
“But—”
“I know about your brother.” The nibbling stopped, and his eyes met hers steadily. “I’m sorry, Lauren. I’m so damned sorry. I didn’t know at the time, and if there was any way I could bring him back, I would. But I can’t.”
Lauren saw the deep pain in his eyes, the regret, and she knew he meant it. She felt the last residue of guilt and anger leave her. She would always remember Larry, but now she could let him go.
“The
Specter
…” she started.
“I know about that too,” he said. “Somehow I knew you were responsible from the beginning. But I thought you had to have a good reason, and I wanted you to tell me, to trust me … it was so bloody important to me.”
“I wanted to,” Lauren whispered, “but …”
“But what?”
“Jeremy told me about a bet you had with Clay.”
Adrian groaned. He was beginning to understand so many things now. Her sudden reticence on the
Specter,
the times she had drawn away from him. She had reason to mistrust him. That damnable stupid bet.