Taming Charlotte (15 page)

She trembled, awed by the power this man held over her, outraged by it, as helpless against it as she would have been against an earthquake or a hurricane. “Patrick—” she gasped, loving him and hating him, both at once.

Gently he peeled away Charlotte’s wet robes and tossed them aside. Her slippers had come off during the battle, and while one was submerged, the other floated. These, too, were retrieved and discarded.

Patrick positioned Charlotte astraddle of his hips, and
soon water splashed rhythmically over the sides of the tub as she rode him.

Charlotte was sleeping like a rock beside Patrick, and he willed her not to awaken when the alarm bell up on the main deck began to clang steadily. He reached for his clothes, found that they were soaked with the overflow from the bathtub, and cursed as he splashed to the chest for fresh breeches and a clean shirt.

“Patrick?” Charlotte muttered as he dressed. “Are we sinking?”

“No, goddess,” he answered. “Go back to sleep.”

She sighed. “All right,” she replied, with unusual compliance, and Patrick felt a strange twisting sensation somewhere deep in his chest. It was purely remarkable, he thought, as he took his pistol from a desk drawer, how a little amber-eyed minx like Charlotte could complicate an otherwise orderly life.

Quickly, more by instinct than by sight, Patrick loaded the gun’s chamber and then strode across the dark cabin and out. No more than a few minutes had passed when he reached the wheelhouse.

“What is it?” he demanded of Cochran, who was on night watch.

“There’s a ship approaching, sir—off the starboard side. She’s moving fast, and I don’t think she’s just passing close by for a friendly hello.”

The night was silvered with the light of the stars and moon, and Patrick snatched the spyglass from Cochran’s hand and raised it to one eye.

Sure enough, another vessel was coursing toward them. Patrick couldn’t make out her colors or emblem. “Tell that idiot to stop ringing that bell before I stuff his head into it and strike every note in the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’“ he muttered, still studying the intruder.

“Yes, sir,” Cochran responded, and immediately carried out the order.

Patrick’s well-developed instincts told him the visitors weren’t friendly. Under different circumstances, he would have relished the challenge of a good fight, but Charlotte was
belowdecks, warm and well loved in his bed, and that put a very different light on the situation. He had taken on a weakness as well as a wife, he reflected, and he’d never felt more vulnerable.

He saw the flash of cannon fire, and his experienced crew rushed to their battle stations. The
Enchantress
fired on her attacker, and the salty air was suddenly pungent with the smells of gunpowder and smoke.

A ball struck the ship’s hull and she quivered under the impact, but her timbers, heavy oak from the oldest forests in New England, held firm. Patrick felt her strength through the soles of his feet, for the clipper was as much a part of him as his stomach or his soul. She had breath and a heartbeat of her own.

The cannon on both vessels fell silent, but only because the intruder had drawn up alongside. As pirates poured over the rails from the other craft, Patrick concentrated on defending his ladies—Charlotte, the wife he had not intended to wed, and his beloved and faithful mistress, the
Enchantress
herself.

T
HE SOUNDS OF A RAGING BATTLE WERE UNMISTAKABLE, EVEN
to Charlotte’s relatively naive sensibilities. She bolted out of bed, trembling, and scanned the small chamber for something to wear. Her robe, the only garment she possessed, was sodden, and there was nothing to do but commandeer some of Patrick’s clothes.

She found gray kidskin breeches in the trunk at the foot of his bed, along with a very dashing linen shirt. The breeches were too loose in the waist and too snug through the hips, but Charlotte wasted no time worrying about the way they fit. She might be called upon to defend herself at any moment.

After more searching, she finally found a mean-looking dagger among Patrick’s belongings. Uncertain that she would be able to wield the blade against another human being, Charlotte nonetheless carried it with her when she left the cabin.

The din of warfare was deafening by the time she sneaked cautiously onto the main deck, and smoke curled everywhere, like a blue-gray fog, making it difficult to breathe. All around her, male bodies clashed in hand-to-hand combat.

Charlotte gripped the handle of the dagger in slippery palms and crouched behind a large crate to assess the situation. There was another ship bobbing alongside the
Enchantress,
and it required no particular genius to work out that the attackers were pirates.

Closing her eyes briefly, Charlotte swallowed and, once again, silently cursed herself for ever wishing to find adventure.

A hard, familiar body tumbled backwards against the crate. Patrick bent his knees and kicked the pirate hard in the chest, sending the other man sprawling.

“What the hell are you doing up here?” Patrick yelled, without even looking at Charlotte. “Find a place to hide and stay there until I tell you otherwise!”

With that, he sprang back into the fierce battle, and Charlotte did not pause to wonder how he’d known she was crouched behind that crate. She looked around carefully, then made a dash for the doorway leading to the lower deck.

She had barely gained the top step when she felt ironlike arms clamp around her from behind. A jolt of pure terror shot through her system, petrifying her for a moment, but then some deeper, more primitive part of her mind took over. She fought like a tigress, wildly thrusting the dagger behind her, against her assailant’s torso.

A bellow of furious pain presaged her release; Charlotte did not pause to look back, but scrambled down the short flight of stairs and hurtled along the companionway. She was pulling open the door to the storeroom, where she intended to hide until she was either rescued or murdered, when a hairy hand reached past her head to slam it shut again.

She whirled, her back to the hard oak panel, and found herself face-to-face with a leering pirate. The smell of him, coupled with the terrible fear she felt, made bile surge into the back of her throat. He clutched one bloody thigh, his fingers stained crimson, and glared at her.

“Cut into my hide like a joint of venison, will you?” he rasped, revealing himself to be an Englishman of very low social standing. He knotted his other fist in her hair, slammed the back of her head hard against the doorjamb.
“You’ll have to pay for that, little lady, and the price will be a dear one!”

Charlotte moved to knee him, but he saw the attack coming and shifted sideways to avoid it. She was left with no choice but to use the knife again, and she did, pretending the pirate was a roast chicken and aiming for the breastbone.

The blade bounced off, but not before it sliced the man’s filthy shirt and the flesh beneath. He gave another shout of animal fury and sprang at her again, but at that instant, God be thanked, he was wrenched away.

Patrick sent him headlong into the wall, and the misguided wretch folded to the floor, unconscious.

“Damn it all to hell, Charlotte,” Patrick blazed, bending to get the pirate by the back of the collar and drag him toward the steps, “I don’t have time to play nursemaid to a puddingheaded woman! Do as I told you!”

“I was trying!” Charlotte couldn’t help pointing out, before she ducked into the storeroom and bolted the door behind her.

The place was dark and the air was hot and close. She stood still for a long while, struggling to calm her nerves, and when her eyes had adjusted to the near-total absence of light, she crawled behind a tall crate.

Muffled shouts and gunshots seeped through the deck over her head, and Charlotte started to tremble, now that she had time to review her situation. When she heard a body thud hard against the storeroom door, her heart leaped into a beat so fast that it left her with no strength to breathe. She lifted the lid on one of the barrels and climbed inside, sneezing as a cloud of flour rose around her.

Squatting down, she tried to be grateful that the cask was only partially full and at the same time prayed her hiding place wasn’t marked by a circle of white.

The interval to come was like something out of Dante’s
Inferno
—more than once, the storeroom door literally rattled on its hinges as it was struck from outside. The battle, confined to the upper deck before, was now being waged in the lower confines of the ship as well.

Charlotte’s bravado was all gone. The dagger’s handle was literally glued to her hand, since she was perspiring, and
clumps of paste formed on her cheeks when she finally gave way to tears. If the pirate siege was successful, the results would be too horrible to contemplate.

She waited, too frightened even to pray.

At least an hour had passed, by her fevered reckoning, when she heard a thunderous knock.

“Charlotte!” The voice was Patrick’s. “Open the door!”

Relief swept through Charlotte—he was still alive!—followed by the purest rage. He had sounded impatient, as though he would rather be doing almost anything besides looking for his wife.

“How do I know you’re not being coerced? This might be a trick—a pirate could be holding a knife to your throat!”

“You’ve been reading too many silly books,” the captain responded irritably.

She climbed out of the flour barrel, went to the door. She stood with her ear pressed to the panel, listening. Then, driven by her longing for light and safety, Charlotte took a chance and lifted the latch.

Patrick stood alone in the companionway, glaring at her. His dark hair was rumpled, his face was bruised, and his shirt was torn, but there was no visible blood anywhere on his person.

“Thank God,” Charlotte rasped.

Patrick leaned against the doorjamb and let his indigo gaze move over Charlotte’s figure. She must have looked like a ghost, she thought, her hair wild, her countenance covered in flour from head to toe.

It didn’t help when Patrick chuckled.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” she warned, trying to push by him.

He barred the way, as impassable as the stone wall that enclosed her stepmother’s rose garden back home in Quade’s Harbor. “Everything is all right, Charlotte,” he said, with gruff gentleness. “There’s no need to be afraid.”

With a little cry, Charlotte flung her arms around Patrick’s neck and clung to him, shaking with residual fear. “I thought you were surely dead—I was certain the pirates would make me walk the plank…”

She felt his smile as his lips moved against her hair.

“The
Enchantress
doesn’t have a plank,” he said reasonably. “And, as you can see, I’m very much alive.”

Charlotte slid slowly down Patrick’s chest, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to step away. “Are they gone?” she whispered. “The pirates, I mean.”

He smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. A cloud of flour rose and dissipated between them. “Yes, goddess,” he said. “Come along and we’ll see about getting you cleaned up.”

The cabin was still awash in spilled bathwater, and all hands were needed above decks since the ship had sustained damage during the attack, so Charlotte was given a mop and told to swab the floor. By the time she was finished, and the cook’s helper could be spared to bring fresh water so she could wash, her skin, eyebrows, and hair were crusted with dried flour. She felt like a plaster statue.

“Will there be anything else, Mrs. Trevarren?” the lad from the galley asked, once he’d poured the last bucket of hot water into the tub. He was no older than fourteen, by Charlotte’s accounting, and doing a poor job hiding a grin.

“Yes,” she answered, pretending to great dignity. “You may stand guard outside the door. I don’t want anyone to come in while I’m having my bath.”

The boy went out, and Charlotte stuffed the end of a pen wiper into the keyhole just in case he turned out to be of less than sterling character. Then she removed the clothes she’d purloined from Patrick’s trunk, peeling the cloth carefully away from her flesh like bandages from a wound.

For the second time that day, she scrubbed her skin and hair, and she was just rising out of the water, a towel bunched against her bosom, when Patrick suddenly strode in.

He eyed her naked form brazenly as he closed the door, and Charlotte flushed with annoyance and the damnable attraction she could not deny.

“I specifically instructed that young man to guard the door,” she said, arranging the towel around her like a toga.

“I am the captain of this ship,” Patrick said offhandedly. “I will not be barred from any part of it—particularly my own cabin.”

Charlotte swallowed. The events of the day had been harrowing, to say the least, and she had just about exhausted her personal resources. She hoped Patrick could not see that she was shaking as she stepped over the side of the tub.

“What am I supposed to wear now?” she asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed with an angry little bounce. “Or must I go naked from now on?”

Patrick grinned. “As appealing as I find that prospect,” he replied, “I’m a jealous man. I’d have to confine you to the cabin until we reached Spain, and you probably wouldn’t like that.” He went to the armoire, opened one of the glistening walnut doors, and plundered through various well-tailored garments until he found what he sought—a dreadful dress covered in purple lace ruffles. “I’d forgotten about this,” he said. “Who’d have thought it would ever come in handy?”