A Most Unconventional Courtship

The click of the door latch cut across her thoughts. Alessa froze, her eyes still shut, listening. The door opened, closed. Someone was inside the room. She braced herself to scream if it was one of the crew, and brought her head round sharply on the pillow. But the man leaning a negligent shoulder against the door jamb, his hands behind his back, was no randy sailor.

‘Chance!’He stayed so still that for a moment she thought she was imagining him. ‘Chance?’

‘Are you all right?’ He sounded concerned; there was something in the steady voice she could almost believe was anger, but he made no move towards her.

‘All right?’ Alessa wriggled until she was sitting upright. She grabbed the rails to which the silk bonds fettered her to the bed and glared at him. ‘Do I look all right? I have been betrayed by a man I thought was my friend, kidnapped by my aunt, and then again by your friend Zagrede. I have been hit on the chin, tied to this bed, entertained by a madman with a proposal of marriage—and now you stroll in to amuse yourself by mocking me. No, Lord Blakeney, or whatever your real name is, I am not all right.’

Chance shifted his stance against the door frame. ‘What do you mean, whatever my real name is?’

‘Well, as I assume the real Lord Blakeney is not cruising the Adriatic in the company of pirates, you are presumably some sharp travelling under his name. Or perhaps you are nothing but a pirate with an English education.’

Chance’s eyes were fixed on her face, his own dark with whatever emotion he was experiencing—Alessa doubted that it was remorse.

‘The Count went to Harrow,’ he remarked.

‘Did you meet there?’ She tried to match his conversational tone and merely achieved sarcasm.

‘No. I went to Eton. For heaven’s sake, Alessa, I am not a sharp, I am not a pirate, I am Blakeney and exactly who I told you I was. I came on this ship to fo

llow you, for no other purpose.’

‘Oh? And I suppose the Count gave you the run of it, did he? And you stood by while he boarded an English ship by force and took three Englishwomen hostage? I had not thought you a coward.’

That brought the colour up under the skin drawn taut over his cheekbones. Whatever he was about, Chance did not appear to be enjoying the situation, that was one comfort, and things felt so desperate, any comfort was welcome.

‘There was nothing I could do to stop them. If I had tried to, I would have been dragged below and locked up. I gave my parole until the ship was taken; I thought at least then I had some hope of stopping bloodshed, of looking after you.’

‘Indeed? And why should I believe you would care? You have already betrayed me, broken your word to me, abandoned those children—’ Her voice broke, and with it her temper. Better to shout than to weep, better to hurl all the bitter, hateful things she had been thinking about him than to let him gloat over her foolish trust for him.

‘You promised me you would make sure they sailed with me, and you have betrayed that promise. Have you any idea how they must feel? I shouldn’t imagine you have. You tricked me with that message to go to the ship, you connived with my aunt and my cousin—you are a liar and a traitor and a coward with no conscience…’

She could feel her voice beginning to shake and controlled it with an effort. ‘And now you lounge there, amusing yourself seeing me in this predicament and you do nothing, nothing to help make this better.’ The tears were welling up in her eyes now; Alessa bit down savagely on her lip to halt them. ‘I hate you, and I thought I…. I hate you.’ She yanked at the restraining ties, bruising her skin. ‘If I was free, I would like to kill you.’

There was silence in the cabin. Above their heads feet thudded on the deck, the faint sound of shouted orders reached them. The square porthole threw light across the middle of the room, touching Chance’s bare feet. He pushed away from the door frame, his hands still behind him, and stepped towards her.

‘There is nothing to be said to that, except that it is not true. None of it is true.’ Now she could see his face clearly Alessa saw he was white under the tan. ‘I was tricked too. I delivered that message in all innocence, and when I found out, I followed you, not knowing what Zagrede is. The children know what has happened, they are with Kate. I am no friend of the Count’s, and he knows it.’

‘The Count told me that you were not what you seemed. He warned me you wanted only to make me your mistress,’ she shot at him.

‘Do you believe what you are told by a man like that, or do you believe what you know in your heart and can see with your own eyes, Alessa?’

As he spoke Chance turned so she could see his hands, not clasped casually behind his back as she had imagined, but lashed together. His wrists and hands were bloody: he had struggled to free himself until he had cut the flesh raw, she realised, her stomach swooping into a sickening lurch.

‘How did you get in here?’ Alessa’s voice was hardly a whisper.

‘I picked the lock to my cabin, which was easier than I imagined it could be, with a hair pin and my hands behind me.’ Her face must have shown the question she was about to ask. Chance smiled faintly. ‘My good friend Zagrede appears to make a habit of entertaining ladies—my cabin has a dresser scattered with pins.’

‘How did you find out what happened?’ How could she have believed the Count rather than the man she loved? Had she been alone so long that she had forgotten how to trust, and expected to be betrayed? Perhaps she simply did not believe she could find, and hold, a friend like Chance.

‘Demetri told me—he stole a horse from the Residency stables to do it and rode right into the middle of the cricket match to storm at me that you had gone, with all your luggage, and I was responsible. The ship was still in harbour. I was trying to find a boat to get out to you when I saw you jump into the sea.’

‘Demetri saw?’

‘Yes. I sent him for help and tried to swim out to you, but they had you before I could get there. The Count fished me out like a drowned rat and offered to give chase. I was surprised, to put it mildly, when he slipped into a hidden harbour and transformed this ship into what you see now.’

‘And the children?’ She could not get the anxiety out of her mind.

‘With Kate and quite safe. I promised them I will get you back.’ His smile was gentle. ‘And I will.’