The Captain of All Pleasures (Sutherland Brothers 1)

"I take it you've seen someone you'd rather not?" he asked in an amused tone.

When she'd given them enough time to pass, she broke from him. "Those two up ahead, the wide one and the weasely one. They--they are the two men who attacked me back in London."

It was as if she could see aggression fire through his body.

"I don't know what they're doing here," she said in a shaking voice, "but maybe we should trail them and find out how they got to Syd--"

"Stay here!" he ordered, and charged toward the two men.

She hitched up her skirts to follow and got there just in time to hear Clive's nose crunch as Derek pounded him to the ground. When Pretty scurried to escape, he lunged after him, yanking the wiry man around into his other awaiting fist.

"Th-they said something about a captain," she stammered from behind him.

He looked from the barely conscious Clive slumped on the ground to the visibly quaking Pretty.

"Now, which one of you wants to tell me who your captain is?"

The search of Tallywood's ship took less than an hour. The watchman had arrived just as Derek learned the English earl was their captain. Upon hearing Nicole's story about her father suspecting Tallywood of being behind the damage to several ships, the Australian authorities called for a search of the Desirade. Word swiftly spread around the small sailing community, and crowds flanked the docks. Derek coerced his way onto the ship, and since he obviously wasn't letting Nicole out of his sight, she marched aboard as well.

"This is an injustice!" Tallywood cried, the pale, flaccid skin of his face and jowls shaking in outrage as the Australian authorities restrained him. "I'll have your positions for this, you heathens," he spat at the men who held him. "I'm a bloody earl! You're nothing but some convict's spawn."

The two officers were a brawny, rough-looking pair, and each time he whined they jostled him enthusiastically.

After picking Tallywood's safe, an officer uncovered detailed lists and intricate plans for several ships in the race.

When she spied the lists, Nicole rushed forward, dragging Derek along. "Are we in there?" she cried to the marshal. "Did he sabotage our ships?"

"The Southern Cross?"

Derek nodded.

"He had your water tainted before it was even loaded on the ship." He turned to her. "The Bella Nicola?" At her anxious nod, he said with obvious regret, "Yes, miss. They loosened your rudder and compromised a support in your hold."

She could feel her lower lip trembling. She didn't want to appear weak in front of these men, but she had to know why. Turning to Derek, she glanced at Tallywood in question, but Derek looked as though he'd stop her. Before he could say a word, she crossed the deck to where the two men held their prisoner.

"Why'd you do it?"

He ignored her, and she thought he wouldn't answer. The second she pulled her eyes from him, the coward spoke. "You all laughed at me," he began in an eerie voice so low that she had to strain to hear him.

"Common sailors and dockside whores openly mocking me. But I won," he spewed in an increasingly violent tone. "I won the greatest race of the century...." He continued ranting.

Nicole wanted to interrupt, to answer his words. But she didn't think one could argue with a man like this, a man so full of his own importance that he couldn't fathom the rest of the world wouldn't want to bring him down from his lofty position.

One of the two big officers holding Tallywood said, "You can give him something to remember you by, miss, if you like."

"Stop this, this bloody instant," Tallywood shrieked in response. He turned to Nicole. "You're nothing but a commoner. Do you know what will happen if you strike a peer?"

The other officer leaned down to her and said with a wink, "Don't hurt your hand, little bit."

It was useless to try to find some wise, reconciling words to convey that he'd won the race but lost everything else. Instead, she hiked up her skirts and planted her boot squarely between his legs.

With great ceremony, the Great Circle Race award had been bestowed on Derek by the mayor of Sydney. Afterward, he and Nicole walked to his ship as though isolated from the revelry around them. His hand reached down to clasp hers.

"You, uh, you..." he began in a gruff voice, "could have taken the race." Although he looked away when admitting that, she simply nodded.

"Your ship was unstoppable." He looked down at her now. "And you and the Irisher worked her like clay in your hands. It should have been you and your crew feted in Sydney today."

"We can never know that for sure," she assured him, but she had a good idea he was right.

"I never realized how hard this must be for you."

She wanted to deny it, but he said, "If it helps at all, I want you to know that I...care about you. So much that the win feels hollow." He opened his mouth to say more, but fell silent and walked on.

When they entered his cabin, he strode over to her and wrapped her in his arms, pressing his hand to the back of her head, keeping her next to his heart. She couldn't stop herself from clasping him back.

He whispered into her hair, "I'm sorry."

She cried against his chest, her tears wetting his shirt and her little hitching noises against his chest embarrassing her, until he made a vow to her with such intensity she believed it.

"No one will ever hurt you again."

Chapter 22

D erek concluded that they couldn't continue the indefinite nature of their relationship. He needed to cement something between them, and broached the subject one night while they lay in bed relaxed and sated together.

"I want you," he began confidently, "to be my mistress." She started to speak, but he held up his hand. "Before you answer, let me tell you how I'd plan to--"

"No." She extricated herself from his cumbersome limbs and jumped up to get dressed. Derek watched her in grim sile

nce as she pulled on her last boot and briskly brushed her hands. "I don't believe I want to be your mistress, Captain."

He didn't know if he was more infuriated at her refusal or her flippant tone. She treated it as though he'd made an immature, half-cocked suggestion, when in fact he'd thought about little else since he'd realized she had nothing to do with the poisoning.

He'd never known a woman who made him so angry he wanted to put his fist through a wall! He didn't bother to hide his annoyance. "Of course not, you would want more--a title, perhaps? I'll warn you, if you angle for a marriage proposal, you're wasting your time. I won't give you more than an offer of carte blanche."

"Whoa, my lord," she said, dripping contempt on his title. "I don't want more--I want less. I have no desire to make any commitment to you whatsoever!"

He stared at her with thinly veiled surprise--damn it, she meant that. Her heated refusal of any tie that might bind her to him rattled him to the core.

"From what I understand about upper-class men and their mistresses, in compensation for...intimacy, a man keeps his mistress in a house he provides and gives her jewels and silks." She stood looking down at him, her eyes sparking. "Well, am I close?"

He agreed, impatient to hear what she would say next. One could never be sure with Nicole.

"Why on earth would I want to be kept in a house on land, stuck in the same place day after day for your convenience, all for some jewelry and finery I'd never wear?"

He'd only offered what had always worked in the past. Women liked to have things bought for them, to be cosseted. He'd had no reason to doubt that every female wanted fine things--expensive things--not only for her enjoyment but also for security.

Did Nicole even realize how abject her life would be once they returned to England? "In light of all that's happened in the last few months, who do you think will take care of you if I don't? Even if your father's been released, you'll have to get back to England to find him. How will you manage that?" He jumped out of bed and yanked on his clothes, his own temper threatening to boil over. "Your ship is on the bottom of the South Atlantic, and I stranded your crew at the Cape. You don't have a guinea to your name."

Her face took on a scornful, even haughty look. "I have means to survive. I'm not brought so low that I have to--oh, how did you put it that night in London?--bag an earl, either by marriage or by becoming your mistress," she snapped. "When you leave me here in Sydney, I'll be just fine."