The Very Daring Duchess Part 30

Bracing his back against the mainmast, Edward stared up into a sky that was as dull and gray as old pewter, and bitterly cursed the fate that had settled such a sky over his head this morning. Oh, he'd sailed long enough to know that the only certainty at sea was uncertainty, but it still sat very hard with him that the Antelope would have come this far under the fairest of skies and with the sweetest of winds to fill her sails, only to fall into foul weather so close to England.

He couldn't recall a time he'd been more eager to reach his destination. True, in London he must face whatever waited for him at the Admiralty, with enough grim possibilities to fill any sane officer's head with foreboding and dread.

But in London he also meant to take the best suite of rooms at the one of the fashionable new hotels that were replacing taverns and inns, and disappear into those rooms with Francesca for at least a month. He'd already spent a good deal of time dreaming and planning the details, how he would offer her everything she could possibly desire to make up for the discomforts of these last weeks: the most delicious meals and wines, the softest, most luxurious featherbed with the finest linens, a bath beside the fire filled decadently with steaming water brought up from the kitchen.

And, most of all, he'd offer her himself and his love, freely and openly, a husband to his wife, without any restraints or restrictions or a single st.i.tch of clothing between them, Francesca naked in his bed, exactly like the plump, willing nymph she'd sketched for him. No wonder the paper was growing worn, he'd looked at it so many times, and no wonder, too, he'd felt like he'd been hard in his breeches since Palermo.

"Looks like we'll be in for a nasty blow, sir," said the beardless midshipman beside him with unwonted cheerfulness. "Lieutenant Pettigrew, sir, he says it's coming from the North Sea straight down the Channel for our throats. Lieutenant says, sir, that we could be bottled up here for days."

Edward regarded the boy with the icy reserve of a senior captain, barely containing the impulse to throttle him on the spot. The puppy's only excuse was his callow youth. Otherwise he'd have more sympathy for a man near cross-eyed from l.u.s.t for his wife, and more sense than to tell the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d they'd be days longer in the Channel before he could be frolicking on a featherbed.

But as unsympathetic as the midshipman had been, his prophecy was right. The first rain began to fall from that pewter sky before noon. By evening, the rain was driving down upon them in sheets, the waves whipped to a frothy chop. By what should have been dawn if the sun could have peeked through the clouds, the wind was howling and shrieking like a banshee through the rigging, flailing and shredding the few sheets of canvas Pettigrew had tried to leave in place. The waves toyed with the Antelope like a cat with a mouse, tossing the sloop up high in the air one minutes, only to slap her down with sickening force the next.

Like every other able-bodied man on board, Edward and Peart took their turns at the pumps; with so much water driving into the hold, there was no standing on ceremony, not even for senior captains or their manservants. The muscles in Edward's arms and shoulders ached from the unaccustomed labor, made worse by the chilly, sodden weight of constantly wet clothes.

"A nasty blow, that is all," he told Francesca, borrowing both the midshipman's phrase and his cheerfulness. "In January, they're all too common here south of the Channel."

"Not to me, they're not, Edward." Wide-eyed with fear, she'd braced herself against the pitching waves in the corner of their bunk, wrapped in shawls and the coverlet with her feet tucked up under her petticoats. By staying on the bunk she'd kept clear of the seawater that had flooded down past the hatches and through the companionway, and now sloshed back and forth across the deck as if in the bottom of a basin instead of their cabin. The timbers creaked and groaned with the stress of the waves, and the lantern swung back and forth wildly, casting exaggerated shadows that were even more disorienting.

"The storm when we sailed from Naples was worse," he said. "You weren't frightened then."

"I'm not frightened now," she countered crossly. "I'm terrified, and with every good reason, too."

He grinned. "If you are still feeling clever enough to make jests like that, then you are not terrified."

"And if you show so little sympathy toward me, Captain Ramsden, then you are most barbarously cruel and unfeeling." She stuck her tongue out at him, pulling the shawls higher around her shoulders. "The Antelope seems no more than a walnut sh.e.l.l, the way she's being tossed about. Santo cialo, just like that! The Centaur was so much larger and safer that I didn't feel the waves, not in the least."

"You didn't feel them because you were so busy tending to all those bedraggled Neapolitan counts and countesses," he countered. "Here you've nothing to do but listen to the timbers creak and imagine the worst."

She sighed despondently. "Mi dispiace e mi scusi, e non me ne importante."

He looked at her, questioning. She didn't use nearly as much Italian as she once had, and his had grown even more rusty as a result.

She sighed again. "I am sorry and I beg your forgiveness," she repeated in English, "and-and I don't give a d.a.m.n if you grant it to me or not."

"Oh, la.s.s." He leaned across the bunk to reach her, not caring how much he dripped on the sheets. She was very dear to him, his Francesca, even so bundled and huddled in wool that it was hard to tell her elbow from her knee. Her face was woefully forlorn, her nose red from the cold and, he suspected, more than a few lonely tears. "I'm sorry I've had to leave you here so much by yourself."

She sniffed. "You're not supposed to say you're sorry anymore, Edward. Besides, you have to help the crew. They'll need you. I'd much rather have you as captain than that wretched, ugly, old Mr. Pettigrew."

"I'll be sure to give him your fondest regards," teased Edward, but at once he turned more solemn when he saw her eyes growing red around the edges. "Don't be frightened, Francesca. I know that's easier for me to say than for you to believe, but I can guarantee that once we're in London, you'll forget every bit of this."

"You promise, do you?" Her wobbly attempt at a smile showed how unconvinced she was, and when she abruptly shoved aside her wooly coc.o.o.n and threw herself into his arms, he had all the proof he needed. "Oh, Edward, I do not want to drown!"

"No one ever does, sweetheart," he said, holding her close and stroking her hair to comfort her. "You be brave, and remember how much I care for you, and we'll weather this storm together, just like everything else."

But by the end of the day he wasn't nearly as sure. With an ominous crack that shuddered down to the bottom of the hold, the top of the mainmast broke off late in the afternoon, smashing the ship's boat and dragging the starboard rail with it in a tangle of snarled lines and splintered spars. Worse still happened that evening, when the pins holding the rudder gave way, snapped like twigs by a wave that caught them broadside.

Now they truly were at the storm's mercy, left to wallow without even a pretense of steering themselves. They were shipping more water by the hour, no matter how the exhausted men labored at the pump, and the sloop was sitting visibly lower in the waves. Their only boat had been dashed to sticks, and no one survived more than a few minutes in the icy grasp of a winter sea. Unless the waves miraculously calmed, they would be swamped by dawn, and sink. It was as brutally simple as that.

Unable to take any bearings in the storm and dark, they had no way of guessing whether they were nearer to breaking up on the rocks of the Spanish coast or running aground in English shallows, or even tumbled out into the endless, inhospitable reaches of the Atlantic.

But for Edward, the worst part was knowing he must tell Francesca.

He felt his way down the pitching companionway, the bulkheads on either side as cold and wet as if they were walls to a cave. The door to their cabin was swollen shut with the damp, the latch useless.

"Francesca?" he shouted over the roar of the wind, shoving his shoulder into the door to force it open. "Francesca, la.s.s, it's Edward."

The door gave way with a rush of seawater, abruptly enough that he staggered off-balance and pitched forward into the cabin, barely catching himself on the edge of the bunk. The gust of wind snuffed the candle as he stumbled inside, and as the ship lurched to starboard, the door behind him swung shut, and plunged him into the thickest, blackest darkness.

"Francesca?" he called frantically. "d.a.m.nation, la.s.s, where are you?"

No answer, no answer. Could she have gone searching for him in the ship? He should have come back sooner. He shouldn't have teased her about being frightened. He should never have left her alone so long. What if she'd wandered to the deck, desperate to find him? She would have been swept over the side in an instant without anyone noticing, and she would already be lost to him forever.

"Francesca!" he shouted again, his voice growing louder with panic as he groped blindly for any trace of her. "Francesca!"

"Edward," she whimpered, and then she was there, finding him in the dark, wrapping her arms tightly around him, drawing him close. "Oh, mio caro, I-I thought you were gone, I-I thought you'd forgotten me!"

"I'd never do that, la.s.s," he said fiercely. "Never, mind?"

As much to rea.s.sure himself as her, he touched her face, her cheeks wet with tears, her fragrance of orange blossoms and jasmine still magically clinging to her hair in the midst of so much destruction. Everything in the dark seemed exaggerated, as if his other senses had swelled to make up for the darkness. She was shaking against him, her breathing little more than broken sobs against his chest as the ship continued to roll and pitch with the force of the waves.

"You-you said I must be brave, Edward, and I have tried," she said in a tearful rush. "I have tried, mio caro, but I know, I know that this-this is not right, is it?"

He would have given all the riches of the world to be able to tell her anything other than the truth. From the first time he'd put to sea, he'd had to prepare himself for an end like this, and he'd always thought he'd be ready if it came. To have it happen now, when he'd been on the verge of discovering the first genuine happiness and joy in his life, seemed in itself a grotesque joke. But for Francesca to die with him-that was d.a.m.nably, cruelly unfair.

"No," he admitted bleakly. "It's not right. It's wrong as h.e.l.l. Everything that could save us has been done, but now we're in the hands of fate alone, and I can offer you nothing more."

"But we're together, Edward, aren't we?" she pleaded, her hands moving along his back, along his shoulders, sliding along the front of his coat, then tugging the b.u.t.tons free to slip inside. "No matter what else happens, we are together, Edward, together, together, and-and-oh, my darling husband, I never wanted it to end like this!"

And then, to his shock, her mouth had found his and she was kissing him, scalding him with desire and with the raw urgency of the life she didn't want to end. At once his body responded, his weariness forgotten, and he tipped her head back over his arm, hungrily deepening the kiss that she'd begun. There'd be no time to stop now, no time even to think, only respond. He knew that, and so did she, and neither wanted it otherwise. Edward had looked at death in the black water churning around them, and he'd felt it trickle down his neck with the icy rain. But Francesca was giving him a chance to cheat death one last time, to be gloriously alive as only a man and woman together could be.

He plunged deeper into her mouth, unable to hold back as he poured a lifetime of wanting her into a single kiss, crushing her lips as he ground his body against hers. She was still shaking, but now from excitement and need instead of fear. The complete darkness and rocking motion that had been so disorienting before now seemed charged with the sensual heat between them, making the tiny cabin a special place of their own making.

She shoved the heavy, wet coat back from his shoulders as he tore first one arm, then the other free from the sleeves and let the coat drop behind him. He reached for her, found the narrowness of her waist, slid his open hands lower along the voluptuous curve of her hips. She'd shed the layers of shawls, and wore only the insubstantial linen of her shift, the warmth of her skin glowing through the thin fabric. His hands slid lower, and he realized she was kneeling on the bunk, the thin shift sliding high over her thighs.

His imagination gave pictures to all he could touch but couldn't see in the darkness. No, she'd even helped his imagination, because what he envisioned was the sly little nymph she'd drawn on the centaur's back, and with a groan he had to kiss her again. She pressed herself against him, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s soft and full against his chest, or maybe it was the ship that was rocking them together. He didn't know and he didn't care, not when he reached up to caress her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, taking her intoxicating moan of pleasure into his mouth as she stretched upward to offer him more.

For a moment she lifted her arms, a quick gesture he couldn't visualize until he realized she'd unpinned her hair, her fingers swiftly combing out her braids until the silky, scented hair was fanning over her bare shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and falling around them both like a fragrant, sensuous curtain.

But though he could feel her nipples, already ripe as little berries through the thin linen, it wasn't enough, not at all, and he hooked his thumbs into the tiny sleeves of her shift and pulled them down, over her shoulders and the tops of her arms until the fabric tore. She gave a little purr of satisfaction and shrugged, and then her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were beautifully bare, filling his hands with their sweet, heavy weight.

She wasn't shy, his Francesca, no missish reluctance, and she wasn't afraid to let him know he pleased her. She wriggled closer to the side of the bunk, swinging her legs over the edge and on either side of his hips, drawing him closer. She dropped her head over his shoulder, her breathing ragged and punctuated with sharp little animal cries of longing and mindless sc.r.a.ps of Italian that seemed all the more erotic because he didn't know their meaning. Her nipples were so taut, distended, as he pulled and rubbed at them with his fingers and so aching for more that he could have spent the whole night just teasing them, just teasing her.

But there wasn't time, not for them, and like an ominous reminder came the cracking and splintering of wood as another part of the sloop-another piece of the mast, another railing?-gave way and washed over the side. There wasn't any d.a.m.ned time left at all, and already she was reaching between them, shoving aside the tails of his shirt, tugging open the b.u.t.tons on the fall of his trousers, freeing him, touching him-Jesus, yes!-as if he needed any more encouragement at all, he was so hot and hard and thick, then her whispering more Italian, praise, desire, and hurry, hurry, hurry.

Unerringly he found her entrance, even in the dark. She was as ready as he, wet and swollen and so ready that she whimpered and writhed and clung to him when all he did was touch her with his fingers.

Not even the end of the world would stop him from taking her now. He jerked her to the very edge of the bunk and eased the tip of his member inside her, parting her, groaning at this other kind of wet, hot kiss as she panted and tried to wriggle and take more of him. He looped her thighs over his arms, opening her even further, and then with a long, single stroke, buried himself in her as deeply as he could.