The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (16 page)

Sweet heaven, she wanted him. She wanted him atop her. She wanted him to push his trousers down off of his hips, and press that extraordinary hardness against her,
into
her. How little it would take for them to come together, how easy it would be.

With her free hand, she gripped his waist, urging him against her. “Sebastian, please.”

He let out a groan. He removed his hand from her and braced himself on both his elbows so he could pull back and look at her face. “We shouldn’t,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t we? If this is to be my last night on earth, this is what I want. To be with you.”

“Damn it, Rachel.” His voice was rough with frustration.

Why was he hesitating? “Don’t you want it, too?”

“Christ, of course I want it.” His features twisted as if he were in pain. “But, no.
No
. I won’t do this to you. It’s not . . . I’m not . . . ” He rolled back away from her, breathing hard. “Listen to me, Rachel. This is not going to be the last night of your life. I brought you here, and I am responsible for you. And I am not going to let you die.”

“Oh, Lord, I’m not a child. You don’t have to weave fairy stories for me.”

But he silenced her with a thumb across her lips. “Do you hear me?” he said. “Do you understand me? I
will
find a way to protect you.” His voice was in utter earnest, as though he were swearing a sacred vow. “I will find a way to get you to Spain. And I will keep you alive, so help me God, until you are safely home in England again.”

She pushed his hand away from her mouth. “I told you, Sebastian, you’re not responsible for—”

“Damn it,
listen
.” His eyes squeezed shut for a moment, as though he were trying to compose himself. He swallowed hard. “I’ll get you home. And then—and then you will have a
life
. Not the halfway sort of life you had before. A
real
one, a full one. With love, and—and family if you want it.
Happiness
. And that means it’s not going to be with someone like me. ”

“
Sebastian
.”

“I’m not taking that chance from you, Rachel. I’m just not. Sorry, sweetheart. I have enough regrets. And you don’t need to start acquiring them. So I’m going to stop touching you, and we’re going to go to sleep now, and I’m going to get the rest I need to fight like hell tomorrow, and make damned sure that French ship is the first to sink. Do you understand me?”

She didn’t understand him, not really. But his tone of decision was implacable. She knew how stubborn he was, and nothing she could do was going to make him change his mind.

Her body ached with unmet need, and somehow, her heart ached more fiercely than any of the rest. Tears stung at her eyes, and she had to bite her lip to fight them off.

“Turn over,” he told her now, in a tone of gentle command.

There seemed to be no point in arguing. So she rolled and faced the wall again. He drew the blankets up over both of them, and then wrapped his arm protectively over her as well. Neither of them spoke, and he made no move to touch her in any other way.

She sighed. Had anyone told her this morning that she’d end the day like this, with his body curled behind hers, the two of them sharing one pillow, she’d never have believed it. She certainly wouldn’t have believed she’d be lying here desperately wishing he’d make love to her.

Well, he wasn’t going to do that. And so his presence, his warmth and weight and strength at her back, would have to be enough.

She laid a hand over the one of his that held her, and interlaced their fingers.

And despite the danger looming out there in the darkness, and the turmoil still roiling inside her, she relaxed into his embrace, and before she was aware it was happening, she was sleeping deeply as a child.

Chapter Eight

Rachel woke to find the cabin light was the pearl gray of the half-hour before dawn, and Sebastian had already left. In the eerie calm, she pulled on her simplest dress and hurried up on deck.

A freshening breeze was rising from the east. Unfortunately, it proved a spur to their pursuer, which bore down upon them ever more quickly, so that soon the voices of her commanders, French voices, carried in snatches over on the wind.

By the time the sky was light, both ships were alive with movement—men running, stringing up the final nets and barricades along the decks, rolling cannons into position, piling up more of the heavy metal balls they’d no doubt be hurling at one another momentarily. The air filled with the sharp, sulfurous smell of the fireboxes that, she realized, would soon set the cannons blazing.

And abruptly, Sebastian was beside her, a grim look on his face. “Go below, now,” he commanded. “And stay below. You can’t be up here any longer.”

She drew herself up sharply. “The fighting doesn’t seem to have commenced.”

“It will soon. You don’t want to be up here when it starts.”

“I don’t want to be down there, either—it’s dark and awful. I’ll hear everyone pounding about on deck, and have no idea what’s going on.”

“So much the better.”

“No! I want to know what’s happening. I want to help, if I can.”

“Help? Did you not hear me last night? I will be fighting for your life up here, and I can’t do that if I have to worry about you
trying
to get yourself killed!” He seized her wrist and virtually dragged her across the deck and down a narrow set of stairs, into the cramped space below, and pushed her into a dark little closet of a room. A little prison cell.

Icy panic flooded her; the tang of copper spiked through her mouth, and she couldn’t catch her breath.

“You’ll stay
here
!” Sebastian barked. “Stay low!
Do not move from this spot
!”

“I’m not staying here!”

“Then I’ll lock you in!”

Blind terror seized her. She clawed at his coat, writhing in his grip like a maddened animal. “Don’t! Don’t dare lock me in! I can’t! My aunts . . . ” Even the effort to say the words had her shaking. “They used to . . .
lock
me . . . in our cellar. When I didn’t behave.”

“Oh, holy hell.”

“Please! I can’t be locked down in the dark! I swear I’ll go mad if I can’t get free!”

“Holy
bloody
hell! Then . . . swear you’ll stay put without a lock!” He’d grabbed her arms and shook her. His ferocity was terrifying. “You cannot get yourself killed, do you hear me? You cannot get yourself killed!”

The muscles of her throat clamped as if someone were choking her.

“Listen to me, Rachel,” he gritted out. His face was mere inches away, his eyes boring into hers. “I will keep you safe, I swear it. I’ll leave the door unlocked, and come for you as soon as I can. But you’re not to move without me.” He did release her arms then, but his hands went to her face, gripping her cheeks. “You have to stay alive! Do you understand that? You have to stay alive!”

Before she could answer, a deafening roar burst overhead—the first cannon had been fired. “
Stay here
!” he demanded again, his whole will thrown into the words, and he sprang for the stairs, and battle.

She lowered herself to the floor of the little cell, hugging her knees to her chest, wishing she had at least a lantern to keep her company. The room was pitch-dark, and she felt painfully alone.

She reminded herself she wasn’t a child anymore, that this wasn’t her aunts’ cellar, but still she found herself imagining Sarah’s hands clutched tight in hers, the two of them whispering the opening lines of Caesar’s
De Bello Gallico
—the bits about the courage of barbarians, whom Caesar honored because they hadn’t been softened by the luxuries of Rome.

It had always reminded them they would not break.

The outburst of noise from above seemed to pound directly on her nerves, explosions and concussions and the cries of wounded men. The timbers of the ship shook with every blast. Choking wreaths of smoke blew in between the cracks in the wood, and beneath the door. With one particular explosion, a great shudder shook the side of the ship, with a terrible shrieking sound of rending wood.

Another huge blast, then a vast, hollow thud, and the shudder came from below. What if the hull were struck below the water line? The ship seemed frail enough already, a few wet boards between her and all that implacable ocean.
If those boards should split
. . .

Running feet pounded along the gangway outside her little chamber, and a cry of “Man the pumps!” She strained her ears, listening for the sound of water rushing in, but the general noise made it impossible to tell. Soon, a strange grinding rumbled up from somewhere below-decks—vast gears and chains moving.

The darkness seemed to press in around her. The air seemed scarcely breathable.

Where was Sebastian? Up on deck in all that thundering chaos?

She locked her arms around her knees, willing herself to stay put. Had Sarah ever done this, hunched herself over and merely waited while men fought battles around her?

The smell of sulfur burnt at her nostrils—surely Hell itself smelt exactly like this. And sounded like this.

Another horrible series of booms shook the air, enemy guns firing in quick sequence, and a fierce shock hit the boards just above her head, sending splinters and sawdust raining down on her hair and shoulders, stinging her eyes. She wiped frantically at her face. A faint trace of light filtered in now, but in the deep, smoky gloom, she couldn’t make out the extent of the damage to the walls around her. But, good Lord, no
safety
was to be found down here.

Sebastian couldn’t ask her to stay if it meant being drowned or suffocated or entombed by falling timber.

She’d rather die in the open air.

She scrambled to her feet, fighting the lurch of the ship and the shudder of yet another impact. Lord, she hoped the crew of the
Calliope
were at least giving as good as they got.

She held out her arms, reaching blindly ahead of her for the doorframe. She found the latch, lifted it, and yanked the door wide, stumbling through into darkness only slightly less dense than where she’d been—the smoke was thick in the stairway, with a reddish haze to it. Where had happened to the sunlight?

She made her way up the stairs, nearly getting knocked aside by a burly sailor racing down with a heavy length of chain wound over his shoulder. Emerging onto the deck, she found herself in a world of hazy gray, thick as London fog, but strangely warm, with foul-smelling streaks of black staining the air everywhere.

She could make out the shapes of men, vague as shadows. Their hoarse shouts as they called orders and curses and occasional cheers across the deck seemed more substantial than their bodies. Here and there, the air burst with bright sparks and smears of intense color, yellow and orange and even blue—the blasting cannons, no doubt. The noise of the explosions seemed all out of time with the light.

No one seemed to notice her. She made her way towards the nearest cannon crew, trying to stay low behind the confusing maze of masts and ropes and barricades.

And then Sebastian’s voice rang out, shouting directions to men loading one of the great guns.

She moved towards the sound, straining her eyes to locate him precisely, but she saw only a mass of men in filthy shirtsleeves, all of them smeared black as chimney sweeps.

One of them turned suddenly, as if alerted by some instinct to her presence, and she was shocked to see Sebastian’s blue eyes shining out from a mask of soot. They widened in fury when they caught sight of her.

“Go
below
!” he bellowed. But he was still busy maneuvering the cannon, gripping the side of it with his hands as a crewman laid the burning tip of a coil of rope to the back, and so he didn’t come charging at her as he clearly wished to. She was relieved for a moment—until she saw the blood spattered over the front of his shirt.

Raw horror spiraled through her. “Sebastian!” she yelled, pointing at the crimson stain.

“Not mine!” he shouted back. “Get down! And
stay back
—these guns could crush you!”

Even as he spoke the warning, the cannon gave a great leap backward, and the crew leaped with it as a blast of orange light erupted from the mouth of the gun.

Looking out along the trajectory of the flying ball, she became aware for the first time of the looming shadow of the enemy ship, not twenty yards away, sliding slowly through the water, its huge white sails filling the sky above them like a host of avenging angels.

An earsplitting, splintering crack sounded from the other ship, and all at once, the very highest set of avenging angels seemed to falter and begin to collapse upon the lower ones.

“Her main-mast is hit!” cried a crewman, in rejoicing tones. He turned and fixed Rachel with a beaming grin. “You brought us luck with that shot, milady!”

The enemy’s guns still pounded, but the great ship swung wide of the
Calliope
. With a slow, heavy groaning, the main mast lurched ever farther to the side, crushing other sails beneath it. Within moments, men swarmed into the French ship’s rigging like monkeys, hacking at ropes to free the tangled shrouds.