He smoothed the rolled sheets under his hands and tried to focus. ‘I will take you in, too, and leave you with the Governor’s wife.’ Yes, there was the best place to leave the brigs, in the channel between St Mary’s and Gugh. It was a short row into Porthcressa beach and he could send the men back to man the brigs and guard the prisoners until the Governor could get the navy out to them.
‘What will you tell her?’ Averil swung round, her expression tense.
‘That I found you on the beach and locked you in the old isolation hospital away from the men. I am sure she will want to help you. As far as the outside world is concerned there is no need to tell even that. I imagine that there has been enough confusion for us to conveniently gloss over the fact that you were not picked up the morning after the wreck.’
‘You mean I should lie?’
‘Yes, of course you should lie! At least, I suggest most strongly that you edit the truth. Do you want to be ruined?’ Say yes, he thought. Say the world and your virtue are well lost in my arms.
‘No,’ she said, looking at him quizzically. ‘No, of course not. May I go up on deck now?’
‘I don’t see why not. The prisoners are all down in the hold.’ He turned his back and reached for a rule, pleased to find his hand quite steady. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Averil get to her feet and go to the door. For a moment he wondered if she would speak, but it closed behind her, leaving him alone with the memory of her silence.
Averil climbed up to the deck, found herself a corner out of the way of the crew and watched the French ship, a ghostly shadow that kept station beside them, while she waited for her body to stop trembling and the ache of desire to subside. Lord, how she wanted him—beyond all reason and certainly beyond all decency.
She made herself focus on the ships and what they were doing. The brigs did not seem to need many hands, which was fortunate, with prisoners to guard and allowance to be made for men wounded.
‘You all right, miss?’ Tom Patch appeared beside her, an unnerving sight with his bloodstained shirt.
‘Yes, thank you. Are you? Was anyone else hurt?’
‘I’m fine now, thanks to you, miss. And there’s nothing much wrong, just the few of ‘em with the odd scratch and bang. Cap’n knows what he’s about, I’ll say that for him, for all that he’s a hard devil.’
‘Is he? Hard, I mean? I thought all naval officers would be like that.’
‘Yeah.’ Patch leaned against the mast and sucked his teeth in thought. ‘They’re all for discipline, but he don’t rely just on that, see?’ She shook her head, not understanding. ‘He can relax, let out the rope, like, because he knows, and we knows, that if we don’t come to heel when he tugs it then there’s hell to pay. And I gets the feeling that he didn’t much care what happened to him, just so long as he could prove himself right and get the bug—um, get the traitors.’
‘It was a bit more than that, surely? They had taken his career away. His honour. They could have had him shot. He had a lot to lose and to prove.’
‘Aye,’ Patch agreed. ‘Dead men walking, the lot of us.’
‘Not any more,’ she said. ‘Thanks to the captain.’
‘You going to marry him, miss?’
‘What? No! I am betrothed to someone else.’
‘Oo-er,’ Patch said and she could hear he was grinning from his voice. ‘He’s going to be pleased about all this then, your gentleman.’
‘I was not the captain’s mistress, that was just a pretence to … to keep me safe.’
That provoked a muffled snort. ‘Pull the other one, miss, it’s got bells on. I’ve seen him kiss you. And I’ve seen him look at you.’
‘Captain d’Aunay is a very good actor,’ she said stiffly and had to listen to Patch chuckling to himself as he walked away.
At least this motley crew were not going to be acquainted with Lord Bradon! Could she get away with this editing of the truth? Would her future husband guess that she had kissed another man with passion, that he had caressed her, pushed her to the point of reckless surrender? He would know that she had been kissed; Luc had been very confident that he was the first and she supposed she had been getting better at it. That could be explained as the result of flirtations, not anything more serious, she supposed, and frowned into the darkness as the lights of Hugh Town on St Mary’s, the largest of the islands, came closer.
But it was not right to deceive the man she was contracted to, the man who would be the father of her children. The man she would spend the remainder of her life with. Should she confess to Andrew Bradon? The thought made her feel sick. She did not think she had even the words to describe what had happened, had not happened, let alone the will-power to speak of it to a complete stranger who was not going to be pleased about it, however tolerant he was.
Luc’s deep voice behind her made her start. He had come up on deck without her hearing him and was giving the orders to bring them in closer to the beach below the Garrison, high above the town, the place where Yestin the fisherman had signalled to them. That seemed like days ago, not hours.
The men were working the sails, Luc hailed the French brig and it altere
d course with them. The wind sent her hair whipping across her face.
‘There you are.’ He leaned against the mast as Tom Patch had done. ‘Are you cold?’
‘No.’ It was not the stiff breeze that made her shiver.