Seduced by the Scoundrel (Danger and Desire 2)

‘Tired, then? You can go below and lie down and rest for half an hour. I won’t disturb you.’

‘I want to watch. I want to see this brought to an end now I have come so far with it.’

‘Yes, for you this will be the end of the matter,’ he agreed, not looking at her.

‘I am sorry I was such a nuisance. It must have been a distraction you could have ill afforded,’ she said. It was like speaking to a stranger. She kept her voice polite and formal.

‘A distraction, yes, indeed. A nuisance? Never. This will soon become part of a bad dream, part of the nightmare of the shipwreck, and then you will gradually forget.’

‘I don’t think I could forget Ferret,’ she said with an attempt at a joke.

‘No, probably not,’ Luc agreed with a chuckle. He put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick, uncharacteristic, hug. ‘Almost there now, Miss Heydon.’

Averil let herself go with the tug of his arm, let her head rest on his chest for an instant and breathed in salt and black powder smoke and damp wool and, under it, the essence of Luc. Her fingers lay on his sleeve and ached with the effort not to close and hold on. Don’t leave me.

He moved away after a moment, the urgency of her feelings obviously invisible to him, and she clutched the mast for support. What was she thinking of to be clinging to this man, lusting after him? He had no interest in her beyond physical desire—and he would probably have felt that for any reasonably young and attractive female under these circumstances.

I am betrothed. If she repeated that over and over she might, somehow, convince herself it was real, that the shadowy, faceless man she was going to in London was the one she would spend the rest of her life tied to, not this brave, angry, half-Frenchman.

Chapter Eleven

The men swore under their breath as they took the pilot gig into the long sweep of Porthcressa beach. Averil held on to the sides of the pilot gig and stored the colourful language away. It was the early hours of the morning now, no one was about, so there were virtually no lights to guide them in.

Hugh Town was built straggling along a narrow strip of land between two great bites that the sea had taken out of the island, Luc had explained to her. The Garrison, the high mass of land to the east with the Elizabethan Star Fort planted on top and the encircling walls bristling with cannon, grew from one end of the town and the body of the island from the other.

The far side of the strip of town was where the harbour was, but he would not risk going in there and attracting the attention of the traitor. Who knew what watchers he had who would recognise Trethowan being brought back, a prisoner? Or someone might even know the French captain by sight.

But the shallow water and the lack of lights made the men twitchy and their mood infected Averil. She was almost jumping out of her skin by the time the keel ground on sand.

‘In you go.’ Luc dumped her unceremoniously over the side into water that came halfway up her thighs. A wave sloshed with a cold slap at the base of her belly and she bit back the yelp of discomfort. Luc followed her over, then Ferret, his long knife in one hand. The remaining crew pushed the prisoners out, jeering quietly as they floundered in the surf with their hands tied behind them.

‘Go back to the brigs,’ she heard Luc tell the crew as Ferret prodded the two men up the beach to join her on the dry sand. ‘I’ll send Yestin out with orders. And, Potts, they are both very nice little brigs and if they are not where I expect them to be I will hunt them, and you, down and there will be no prize money, no pardons and either you will hang or I will disembowel you. Or possibly both. Clear?’

‘Aye, aye, Cap’n.’ Potts sounded as though he was grinning. The pilot gig vanished into the pre-dawn gloom with a faint splash of oars and Luc urged the two captives towards the dark huddle of the town. ‘Up there, to the left. The sally port—Trethowan, you’ll know it, I have no doubt.’

The man grunted. Beside him the French captain muttered something, low and fast.

‘Capitaine, je parle français,’ Luc remarked. ‘I speak also the dialect of Languedoc,’ he added, still in French. ‘And any further insult to the lady will result in the removal of your ears. You understand me?’

‘Parfaitement. En effet, you are a traitor to France.’ The man reverted to standard French.

‘Mais non, your France betrayed my family, murdered my father. I will be a loyal Frenchman still when she returns to sanity.’ Luc prodded the captain round a corner beside a looming chapel and the road steepened.

‘Ah! Un aristo.’ The Frenchman spat.

‘Absolutement.’ Luc sounded amiable in the face of the insults. Averil trudged up the hill behind him, her wet trousers glued to her legs. They chafed the soft skin of her inner thighs, she was sweating in the heavy Guernsey, the cobbles hurt her bare feet and Luc had forgotten about her with the stimulus of trading insults. She cleared her throat.

‘Keep up,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It gets darker and steeper here.’

‘Good,’ she muttered mutinously. ‘I needed some exercise.’ Just in front of her Ferret gave a snort of laughter, then all four men seemed to vanish into darkness. She baulked at the entrance to the cave, then saw it was simply a narrow way through rocks that lead to the base of a high defensive bank. When she tipped her head back she could see ramparts above her.

‘How do we get in?’ she asked.

‘Quietly.’ Luc placed one hand over her mouth. ‘There are sentries patrolling the top.’

‘How do we get in then?’ she repeated, resisting the temptation to either bite or kiss his palm.

‘I have a key. Here, Ferret, take it and go first.’ The little man vanished into the darkness at the foot of the wall. Luc followed, pushing the prisoners in front of him and Averil, reluctant, brought up the rear.