Authors: Donna Thorland
On the
Sally
he had been the picture of military splendor, his hair neatly clubbed, his collar starched, his cravat exactingly tied. Now his sun-shot hair hung loose about his shoulders, and he wore a soft linen shirt she had found in her brother’s dresser, open at the neck, beneath her father’s second-best coat. Even his once-polished shoes were now water stained from the squall aboard the
Sally
.
He was, if anything, even more appealing in dishabille.
She did her best to ignore his beauty. “And you,” she said to her father, “are supposed to be in bed.”
“As it happens,” her father said, unfolding himself with obvious effort, “I am waiting for Mr. Cheap to return. I need a look at the
Sally
.”
“You’re not fit for it,” she said. “The damp will play merry hell with your joints.”
“The damp finds me wherever I am. And the sooner I’ve seen her, the sooner we can fix her.”
He should not go, but there would be no way to stop him. He bade them good night and ambled out, leaning heavily on his stick.
“Will he be all right?” Sparhawk asked, watching him from the window. Her father teetered over the lawn, his cane sinking deep in the earth, until Cheap met him at the dock.
“Mr. Cheap will see that he is as comfortable as he can be, but when he comes back, he will be crippled for days. He had the freedom of the sea his whole life, and now he is a prisoner in his own body.”
“I am sorry,” Sparhawk said. “He is a charming old rogue. Why didn’t you tell me that your father was Abednego Ward?”
“Because having a pirate for a father casts doubt upon my character.”
“It shouldn’t. Red Abed was no ordinary pirate,” said Sparhawk.
“We have our fair share of retired sea dogs in Salem. Is my father’s name really so distinguished?” she asked.
“Among men who have served in the West Indies, certainly. We abhor pirates, of course, except when they are British and colorful and know how to frustrate the French. Then we heap honors upon them.”
“My father was no Morgan.”
“Only for want of opportunity,” said Sparhawk. “He was born fifty years too late.”
“Would you have let Ned go if I had told you?”
“No. I could not make such an exception. It would set a terrible precedent. But we did, I recall, speak on
several
occasions after that.”
“Would it have convinced you then that I had nothing to do with the gold and that my father was a loyal Englishman?”
“Your father, I daresay, has no love for the Rebels because he cannot abide being told what to do.”
“That is a common malady amongst sea captains,” she said.
He laughed. “So it is.”
“My father will always put kin and crew before king and country, but that does not mean that he has no love for the king.”
“I do not doubt his love for the king,” said Sparhawk. “On the contrary. Your father still has his royal pardon, rolled in a leather cylinder. I myself am the king’s trusty friend, but he has never seen fit to sign a document with my name on it. Some Jack-in-office signed my commission on His Majesty’s behalf.”
He was being charming again. “Perhaps you don’t cut a flamboyant-enough figure.” And she was flirting with him.
He warmed to it, flicking the skirts of her father’s old velvet coat. “No? Maybe it’s that I haven’t taken enough prizes. If I recall, Red Abed preyed mostly on the Spanish and French, but suffered occasional confusion when he saw British colors.”
“And that is a common malady amongst pirates,” she said.
“Your father made much the same argument.” Sparhawk turned suddenly serious. “I wish I had not placed you in such a difficult position, but I am not sorry that I captured the
Sally
, however briefly. Micah Wild’s French gold would have been used to buy powder and shot to kill sailors on British ships, many of whom are your countrymen, and one of whom, of course, is me.” There was that charm again, damn him.
“Micah sees the pressed men as traitors,” she said. “True Patriots would have chosen jail.” She could quote much of his rhetoric. She had believed in it, once.
“You didn’t tell me you were engaged to Wild, either.”
She flushed with embarrassment. “No, I didn’t. Ned shouldn’t have either.”
“You were jilted, Sarah. For mercenary reasons, it seems. There is no shame in that. It is Wild who was in the wrong.”
“I have found you a rig and a driver,” she said, changing the subject. “We must meet him at the home of our neighbor, Judge Rideout, at midnight.”
“Sarah.” He stepped closer. She could smell the soap on his skin, pine needles and juniper. She had fetched it from her father’s washstand, but it was different on Sparhawk, deeper, earthier, like the forest floor in springtime. “I want to help you, if I can,” he said.
He was so close to her now that the tips of their shoes met. She could feel the heat of his body. He was the kind of man she and Elizabeth Pierce had daydreamed about, the kind of man Sarah had thought Micah Wild to be: bold and brave and
honorable.
She wanted him, even if only for one night, to feel desired by a man with integrity, whose code was something more than personal convenience. To replace the shame and humiliation of her night with Micah Wild with something born of mutual respect and shared passion. But the danger to herself and her family was too great.
“That kind of help,” she said, not troubling to disguise her longing, “sounds very appealing right now, but it would only leave me worse off in the morning when you are gone.”
• • •
He could not recall a time since he had been ripped from his home and his mother’s arms that he had wanted anything so much. Not food or drink or a woman, though he had been starving, parched, and deprived in his time.
He tried to muster all the reasons why he did not bed women like Sarah Ward.
He could not call them to mind. The room was pleasantly warm. There was a convenient trundle near the fire. He could see the red highlights in her hair and imagine the sweet taste of her mouth, the soft sound of her sighing. She wanted him as much as he wanted her, and he knew he could make it good for her, but that still did not make it right.
“Sarah, I realize that I have a certain reputation when it comes to the fair sex, but I do have some principles. I don’t bed girls like you.”
Her nose wrinkled. She had a wonderfully expressive face, at odds with her fine features and porcelain complexion. Right now it was displaying indignation. He found the contrast enchanting.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because of our difference in status,” he said.
“You mean because you are my captive?”
She meant it as banter, but there was truth in it. Tonight, in this house, their positions were reversed. She held all the power and all the choices. If she did not want him, she had only to scream and her neighbors—Rebels all, it seemed—would come running to tar and feather him—or more likely worse. But tomorrow, things would be different. “I mean because you are, by your actions on the
Sally
, a criminal. And I represent the authority of the Crown.”
“You don’t look much like the Crown at the moment.” She touched the bald velvet cuff of his coat. “And fool that I am, I’m not running away.”
She wasn’t. For Sarah Ward, desire had already overcome reason. And the invitation in her bright, dilated eyes and her moist open lips was enough to convince him to follow. One night, he reasoned, if they were careful not to make a child—and he had been careful all his life—would not harm her, so long as no one learned of it. There had been no seduction, no false promises on either side, only this powerful tide of desire, that would drag them both to the trundle, then wash them up on shore, panting and spent.
He leaned toward her. She was so close that her breasts touched his coat. Her breathing quickened. Rational thought fled and animal nature sprang to the fore. He reached for her—
Three brisk raps upon the front door, echoing through the empty house, shattered their intimacy.
“Don’t answer it,” Sparhawk said. If she did, the moment would slip from them.
“I have to,” she replied, stepping away.
“Surely not. It’s night, and you are alone with no servants. It could be anyone.”
“But it
isn’t
anyone. It is Micah Wild.”
The knock came again, fast, sharp, demanding to be answered. Sparhawk did not like its tone. “How do you know it is him?”
“I went to his house today,” she said. “To see his wife and beg the use of her carriage. Micah’s servants will have told him I was there. He will know the
Sally
is back.”
Sparhawk did not miss the tremor in her voice. “Cargoes are seized every day,” he said. “Wild cannot blame you for his loss. Surely, despite the circumstances of our meeting, I have earned some little of your trust. What else is it you fear?”
“Without the flint you threw over the side, we cannot raise enough to pay Wild back.”
Sparhawk should have figured it out sooner. But his attention had been fixed first on the gold, and making certain it did not fall into Rebel hands, and then upon Sarah Ward, in all her intriguing complexity. “The
Sally
,” he said. “She was your collateral for the loan from Wild.”
The knock came again.
“Yes,” Sarah said. “That is why my father has gone with Mr. Cheap. Not just to hide the
Sally
from your friends in the navy. My father must hide her from Micah as well, or he and his Sons of Liberty will seize her and fit her out for their purposes.”
The fastest ship in New England, probably. Abednego had shown him how easy it would be to make her faster and more maneuverable still, with a little money and a little time: new rigging, a copper bottom, and in the event that another ship sought to hinder her, reinforced decking for cannon. A swift vessel, low in the water, able to outrun most of the navy’s blockade ships. Ideal for powder runs to Lisbon or Saint Stash.
“I cannot allow that to happen,” he said.
“
You
have a broken arm and are not supposed to be here.”
“And you are asking me to behave like a coward,” he said. It rankled—not just to shrink from his duty, but to do so in front of a woman he strongly desired.
“I am asking you to put the safety of my family ahead of your amour propre. Wild will break the door down if I do not answer it,” she said, “to search the house for his gold. And the last thing he must find here is you.”
Micah Wild alone she could handle, but he had brought one of his longshoremen, a bandy-legged ruffian in rolled sleeves and nankeen trousers. She recognized the man from the docks, Dan Ludd. When the Salem customs agent had been tarred and feathered last October, Ludd had poured the tar. Sarah could still remember the stench of burning flesh.
Fortunately, she had convinced Sparhawk to hide. She had shown him the slender panel in the dining room, the one between the hearth and the china cabinet that disguised the hidden staircase. The join was invisible when closed, but behind the panel, a narrow flight, brick on one side, wood on the other, wound up the side of the chimney to the second floor.
“Why do you have a priest hole?” he had asked.
“We do
not
have a priest hole. This is New England. You would be hard-pressed to find a papist to put in it. What a terribly gothic imagination you have.”
“Your fair city inspires it. First you anchor us off Misery Island, and now you show me a secret passage.”
“It isn’t secret, or at least, it wasn’t supposed to be. The oldest part of the house had a very large, very drafty fireplace. Father had it rebuilt, and the architect was at a loss as to what to do with the extra space, so he made this. It goes up to my room.”
Sparhawk had eyed the cramped space dubiously. “Do you ever use it?”
“Not since I was a child. It’s barely big enough for Ned. Now get in.”
With some awkwardness and bent nearly double, he had angled his tall frame inside. “It would serve you right if I were to faint,” he warned.
“Please don’t.” She gave him a gentle shove and closed the panel on his protests.
Then, her skin still flushed and her body aching with frustrated desire, she had gone to face Micah Wild.
Now he stood on her doorstep smiling, as though visiting his former fiancée in the middle of the night with a longshoreman in tow was a regular event.
“Sarah,” he said, relief suffusing his handsome face, “you’re home.”
She had forgotten how musical his voice could be. And she had forgotten the power of his physical presence. Wild could afford to dress in embroidered silk waistcoats and diamond-buckled pumps, but he had adopted the
rage militaire
and wore buckskin breeches topped with a coat sewn from homespun linen. It had been cut to flatter his compact, muscular frame, and the muted color and slubbed texture set off his dark liquid eyes and curling brown hair.
She could not blame Elizabeth for accepting him. Even now, after all that had passed between them, when Sarah looked at him, she felt a pang of longing.
He crossed the threshold and caught her up in his arms. His touch was achingly familiar, but she had, only a few moments earlier, been anticipating that of another man, and taking refuge in Micah’s embrace felt like a betrayal. She stiffened.
He noticed at once and released her.
“Sarah,” he said, stepping back to examine her in the dim light of the hall, his honey voice ringing off the walls of the small chamber. “How are you come here by yourself? Where are the
Sally
and Captain Molineaux?”
“Molineaux is dead,” she said. “Killed by a British cannonball.”
His dark eyes betrayed his shock and surprise. He drew her into the parlor. His man lingered within sight in the hall.
In a hushed voice that still managed to resonate through the empty room, Wild said, “Molineaux was carrying something for me. A chest.”
“Of French gold. The British took it. It has gone to Boston aboard a brig called the
Wasp
.”
“Where did this happen and when?”
“Outside Boston Harbor. Yesterday just past noon.” She knew he was making calculations of wind and weather and speed. They would bring him no comfort. The
Wasp
was in Boston by now. “The
Sally
barely got away. The navy will be looking for her. And she was cruelly mauled.”
“Below the waterline?” asked Wild, sharply.
“No. But she was dismasted, and then we struck a storm. Two spars gone, topsails in shreds, and the standing rigging fouled.”
Wild sighed. “That is . . . inconvenient.” He shook off his disappointment and took her hands. “But the
Sally
can be renamed and repaired. And the gold was always a risky venture. The important thing is that
you
are home and safe. Your father should never have let you go on the voyage.”
“If I hadn’t gone, Ned would have been pressed aboard that British ship. And my father didn’t know about the gold—and how much danger we were in—because
you
didn’t tell us.”
“I didn’t tell you because you would have talked your father out of the venture—and your family needed the money. Where is the
Sally
now?”
“My father and Mr. Cheap are surveying her damage.” Misery Island was one of the first places Micah would look, but her father and Mr. Cheap would be gone by then.
Wild pushed a straying hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. The first time he had done it, a casual gesture of affection, in public, on his bustling wharf, had thrilled her. But he was married to Elizabeth now and would never touch her in public again. The thought still choked her with grief and anger.
“I don’t want you worrying about the
Sally
or the debt,” he was saying. “I’ll see that the schooner is hidden safe and refitted good as new. The house I found for you is furnished. You will like it. The parlors have fine, large windows, and it is very near my wharf. I will be able to visit most days. You can bring Ned and your father with you. And everything will be just like we always talked about.”
They had talked about making their home a center for thought and discussion, a birthplace of new ideas for the Salem mariners who ventured across the sea and the navigators who plotted their courses. They had dreamed of supper parties and salons where great voyages were planned and new discoveries revealed.
He had built her a home fit for it, and then, when her fortune had been lost, he’d bestowed it on her best friend instead. Now he was offering her a love nest, tucked out of the way, where no one with any character would visit her. She had been advised in the past to accept his protection, warned more than once that it was the best she could expect in the circumstances, that to ask for anything more from life would only ensure that she received less. But she burned with resentment at the idea that one youthful folly meant she was not entitled to a man who would love her alone.
“It can never be like we talked about, Micah. You married someone else.”
“That is nothing to do with us.”
“It is everything to do with us. You have a wife.”
“I don’t love Elizabeth,” Wild said.
But Elizabeth, Sarah had realized on that terrible day when the two women quarreled, did love Wild. And that mattered to Sarah. “Then you shouldn’t have married her.”
“It is the way of the world. Marriages are made for property and money. Love rarely plays a part in such transactions.”
“Then you threw away something rare, because I did love you.”
“My feelings for you were and
are
the same, Sarah. That is why I want to take care of you and your family.” He surveyed the scabby parlor. “You should have come to me long ago. I can’t stand to see you live like this.”
“You must. I will not live as your kept woman.”
“Sarah,” he said, in the ringing voice he used when he talked about tyranny and tax collectors. “The voyage was a failure. Your father is bankrupt. The
Sally
is mine legally, and without it, Abednego has no hope of rebuilding his fortune. This house has already been stripped bare. You are running out of options.”
“If I accepted your protection, my father would feel compelled to violate his principles and hand over the
Sally
.”
“They aren’t
his
principles, Sarah. They’re the ones you adopted when I didn’t marry you. Your father would have sided with the Patriots long ago if it hadn’t been for your pride. Your brother is already one of us. Your father will relent when things are settled between you and me.”
He meant once she became his mistress. “Even if my father took the Rebel side,” she said, “he would not give the
Sally
to you.”
“He’s out in her now, isn’t he? And tomorrow he’ll be in agony. Do you want Abednego to come home to this bleak house in that condition? What will you do when the weather turns? You can’t afford the firewood to warm his room. At the cottage you will have a servant. Ned will have a tutor. The doctor will visit regularly. Your father can live out his days in comfort. And we will be together, as we always hoped. We have waited long enough. I want you to move tonight.”
Perhaps if she had not met Sparhawk, she might have been able to swallow her pride and accept Micah’s offer, but now she wanted something better for herself and her family.
“No,” she said.
He cast a glance at Dan Ludd, hovering in the doorway, and the longshoreman padded into the hall.
When she heard Ludd’s feet upon the stair, panic seized her. He must not find Sparhawk. “Where is he going?”
“To fetch your things. You cannot stay here by yourself. It isn’t safe. They say shots have been fired in Boston, and that Graves plots to shell the ports. It is no time to be on your own. You’re leaving this house tonight, even if I have to carry you out the door.”
And he would do it too. There was no one to stop him, except Sparhawk, who would forfeit his freedom—and perhaps his life—if he revealed himself. She did not think for a moment that Wild would settle her chastely in her new home and leave her be, but she could cross that bridge when she came to it. The important thing was to get Wild and Ludd out of her house.
“I can pack my own things,” she said. It would give her time to think of something. And then, “I do not want your man in my room.”
Micah nodded and recalled Ludd, then followed her up the stairs to the bare little chamber.
She had hoped for a moment alone, an opportunity at least to open the hidden staircase door and whisper a warning to Sparhawk—and the direction of the judge’s house—but Micah was not going to let her out of his sight.
There was hardly anything to pack—a spare chemise and petticoat, a bed jacket, one gown. She laid them on the counterpane and dragged her sea bag from under the bed, trying to think of a way out. Micah came up behind her, trapping her between his body and the bed. He placed his hands on her shoulders and spoke in her ear. “At the cottage you will have better things, I promise.”
She had never wanted the things, the house or its elegant contents, only what they represented: his esteem, his approval, his affection.
He kissed her neck, brushed his lips over the shell of her ear, and she felt the briefest flicker of desire, a shadow of what she had known when they were courting. And then the memory of that night swamped her.
She’d gone to the half-finished house with its wet plaster walls and sanded pine floors to tell him that the Wards were bankrupt; to release him from their engagement. Because she was not so unworldly that she thought things could be the same between them. And he had placed his coat on the floor and held her and kissed her and told her that he didn’t care about the money, that she was his whole happiness, that they would be together.
And then he’d made love to her.
She’d exulted in the tangible proof of his affection, the intimacy. Afterward he had promised her that he would always take care of her and her family, and that was when she understood the place he intended for her in his life.
She had wanted to die.
Wild’s hands plucked the first pin from the front of her stomacher.
“No, Micah.”
“I have missed you so much.”
“I don’t want to do this here.” She didn’t want to do it at all.
“It’s all right,” Wild soothed, untying the laces of her jacket. “Dan will keep watch downstairs.”
She fought an impulse to raise her voice, lest Sparhawk hear her and do something stupid and heroic. “No.” She tried to arrest his hands, but he was determined.
“I’ll make it good for you,” he promised.
“That would be impossible.”
He ignored her and plucked another pin.
She jabbed him with her elbow.
He cursed, the oath ringing off the bare walls; he ripped the lacing of her jacket, scattering pins across the floor.
The echo died, a door creaked, and the distinctive sound of a pistol being cocked filled the silence.
“Let the girl go,” said James Sparhawk.
Wild spun round and Sarah turned more slowly, holding her jacket closed.
Sparhawk was leaning negligently in the secret doorway, his broken wrist tucked into his pocket. It was a convincing pose, his bandages hidden by the wide velvet cuffs, a second pistol peeking as if by an afterthought from his embroidered pocket. Her father’s tasseled cutlass hung at his waist.
He ought to have stayed hidden and safe, but he had exposed himself.
For her.
“Who the devil are you, sir?” asked Wild. Then, looking past Sparhawk’s shoulder at the open panel, he added, “And what the hell were you doing in there?”
“My name is Sparhawk. Most recently, I commanded His Majesty’s brig, the
Wasp
. Just now I am staying with friends. Perhaps you should let my friend go,” he suggested.
Sarah didn’t wait for Micah to comply. She moved out of his reach, then took a deliberate step toward Sparhawk.
She had never seen Micah Wild at a loss for words. He looked from Sparhawk to Sarah, and back again.
Finally, he said, “I see no uniform upon you, sir.”
“I am, as you find me, at my ease,” drawled Sparhawk. “But the king’s colors, I assure you, are downstairs.”
“And whence come you, that you arrive without a king’s ship?”
“I kidnapped him off the
Wasp
,” Sarah explained, “to save Ned from the press.”
“He does not appear to be a prisoner,” replied her former fiancé coldly. “And he wears no uniform. I take him for a spy.”
“These are the king’s colonies, sir. I cannot be a spy, unless we are at war.”