Nathan set himself to ignore the exhausting pain in his back and thought about Clemence. Tomorrow, if everything went according to plan, he would take the Sea Scorpion into a trap. If he survived the resulting action and if the ship was captured and if he got Clemence off safely—He stopped, contemplating that long list of ifs. Assume all that. Then he would take her back to Jamaica and do something about her uncle and cousin. And then what?
This adventure would have ruined her, he knew that. It made not a jot of difference whether he seduced her or not, the assumption would be that she was no longer a respectable marital proposition.
He didn’t give a damn about that. All he knew was that he wanted her, physically and, increasingly, for all sorts of other reasons as well, the overriding one of which was the strong need he felt to protect her. And now marriage was the only thing that would save her from whatever fate awaited the ruined orphan daughters of small merchants within a claustrophobic island community.
Would she have him? She was as stubborn as a mule. She said that she trusted him, although he doubted that trust was wholehearted—she was too intelligent for that. How was she going to react to the extent of his deception and what he must tell her about his past life? And then, if he persuaded her to say yes, others would most certainly have som
ething to say about such a match. His mother, for one, the rumour-mongers for another. For himself, he didn’t care. He was never going to fall in love again, that was over and done with; marriage to Clemence would do very well. But could she cope with the reality of life with him?
She was very young, very inexperienced in the hard realities of life away from her comfortable middle-class existence. If she married him, her world would be turned on its head yet again. Would that be better than the alternative? It had to be. Although, looked at from the viewpoint of this cabin, at this moment, he was not much of a catch; his prospects just now appeared negligible.
Nathan shifted in his seat and swore. The pain was going to be better tomorrow, he knew. Agony though it had been, eight lashes got nowhere near the dreadful damage a prolonged flogging would inflict.
He was going to have to get up again in a minute and move around. By tomorrow, he had to be at least fit enough to keep on his feet, hold a pistol and look after Clemence or all of this agonising over her future would be pointless.
Gritting his teeth, he stood and moved to where she had folded his clothes so neatly. It made him smile, the way she attacked the hated task of keeping the cabin clean and tidy and the rueful way she acknowledged that she had been fortunate in the past to have had servants. She didn’t grumble about her changed circumstances, just coerced the dirt and disorder into submission and got on with the next thing. He wanted, Nathan realised, to pamper her and shower her with luxury and that was ridiculous. She would not be the woman he thought she was, if she would find that kind of existence acceptable, even assuming he could afford it.
No, marriage to him would be hard work and something utterly different from anything Clemence was used to. She was so very young, ten years younger than he. Was he being fair to even think of asking her? Probably not, but that was not going to stop him, if he survived. Fairness didn’t come into it; making the best of a bad situation and doing his duty to look after her was all that mattered.
He sat down to put on his shirt, relieved to find that he was not as weak as he feared. The widespread damage to his back was painful, but it did not, from that number of lashes, have the deep impact a sword or bullet wound had, shocking the entire system and costing pints of blood. Already the green salve that he had purchased from a herbalist when he had been briefly stationed on Corfu was working its magic. It was going to be a while before he slept on his back though, he thought, pushing his feet into his shoes and standing with caution to buckle his sword belt low on his hips so it did not chafe.
Clemence found him as he made it to the deck and stood catching his breath. ‘You idiot!’ she hissed, stabbing him in the chest with one very sharp finger. ‘What are you doing? You told me you were resting.’
‘You are behaving like a nagging wife,’ he murmured, observing with interest the way she coloured up. Interesting that she should react so. Was it possible that she had been thinking of herself in those terms?
She dropped her hand and glared, shrugging, a sulky boy again for the onlookers. ‘You’ll bleed on your shirt and I’ll have to wash it again,’ she said.
‘Cheeky brat,’ he said with a simulacrum of irritation. ‘Go and get me some food.’ He resisted the temptation to follow her with his eyes as she left, focusing instead on the challenge of negotiating the ladder to the poop deck, with McTiernan waiting at the top of them.
‘You’re a hard man, Stanier,’ the captain observed when he joined him at the wheel. ‘Perhaps I should have added a few more lashes.’
‘There’s just so much I can take of staring at my cabin walls.’ Nathan almost shrugged, then thought better of it. Exercise was one thing, violently agitating his back muscles, another. He hitched a hip on to the hatch cover. ‘What’s the plan for tomorrow?’
‘One of the skiffs has just come in.’ McTiernan jerked his head towards the little craft bobbing alongside. The crew were furling the lateen sail and securing the lines. ‘There’s a nice little merchantman making ready to sail with a most interesting cargo.’ Nathan raised an eyebrow. ‘Chests—and an armed escort at the dockside.’
‘Bullion?’
‘Could be. All very secretive, the idiots. If they’d taken no precautions, they wouldn’t have stood out.’ Nathan suppressed a grin. Bluff and double bluff. ‘If the winds hold as they are, it will be passing tomorrow before noon. We’ll get the skiffs out and the lugger with a couple of light guns on it to herd it back towards your sand-bar.’ He ran a cold eye down Nathan’s carefully still body. ‘You up to the chase?’
Nathan contemplated the likely results of saying no. ‘Aye, Captain.’ Down on the deck he could see Clemence balancing his meal in one hand with two tankards gripped in the other and exchanging mild insults with two of the hands. ‘I’ll get some food,’ he observed, concentrating on not wincing as he stood up. She was getting too confident, he worried, then saw her put the food down on a barrel and swing up into the rigging, climbing like a monkey to the first spar, apparently just for the hell of it. No, perhaps she was right. Who would suspect a merchant’s daughter could be capable of scrambling about twenty foot above deck?
‘Get down here, Clem!’ Clemence peered down through the lattice of rigging at Nathan’s upturned face. He wasn’t going to let her fuss over him, that was plain. She began to descend, revel in the freedom that climbing gave her. Her muscles were working again, she had an appetite, she felt fit and happy and terrified, all at once, and the source of that happiness was standing eating the cheese she’d brought him, a scowl on his face.
Nathan was only pretending to be angry, she was almost certain. Sometimes she thought that she was beginning to understand him, could read the expression in his eyes. And then he reacted in a way that surprised her, or the amusement turned to something still and secretive and she realised she didn’t know him at all. And although he knew her lethally dangerous secret, she was convinced that he was confiding in her only what was absolutely unavoidable.
She dropped to the deck and trotted over. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, you are not.’ He pushed the food towards her and shifted his position as if getting comfortable.
Instinctively Clemence followed his gaze around. Yes, there was no one within earshot. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know whether I’ll get another chance to talk to you—McTiernan is planning and we could be on deck all night. Tomorrow there will be a fight. They’ve spotted the ship they want, and very tempting it is, too. We’ll drive it on to the sand-bar and then the plan is to board it.’
‘Yes?’
‘But the crew of the merchantman will board us instead and when that happens I want you to get down to the orlop and let those men out. Tell them that the navy is up top and show them the weapon chests on the gun deck—and then get into the cabin and stay there. Do you understand?’
‘The navy? How do you know?’ Understanding and an enormous sense of relief flooded through her. ‘You’ve planned this all along, haven’t you? The crippled merchantman…that was a trap that went wrong. You aren’t just an opportunist, seeing if you can find a way to get a reward if the chance arises, are you?’