“An impressive display, Captain,” Lieutenant Barclay said with a nod toward the fruit.
“Katherine’s a virtuoso with the cutlass,” India informed him. “She’s done oranges, pears, figs, plums—”
“Enough, India,” Katherine said.
“—and even grapes.”
Humor flickered in Lieutenant Barclay’s green eyes. “Point taken.”
India frowned. “Point?”
“The ladies were just discussing their futures,” William cut in, lips twitching. “Young India plans to become a courtesan, as you just heard—”
“I said no such thing!”
“—while Phil expects to embrace the freedom of an eccentric widow, and our good captain anticipates complete social ostracism.”
“Does she.” Lieutenant Barclay sipped his cognac and gave her a look that was ten times as intoxicating as any liquor. “I have a suspicion you’ll be more sought after than you expect, Captain.”
“Oh, I expect to be highly sought after—by lechers with insulting propositions.” Or alluring lieutenants with dangerous eyes. “But as for the rest of society, your esteemed captain must not have told you of the bill his brother Nicholas, Lord Taggart, has introduced in the Lords.”
“Pillock!” India spat. “What business has he, trying to strip you of your title? He just can’t stand that you should accede to an earldom when he has merely been granted a barony.”
“Except that he, too, is an earl,” Phil pointed out, “if James Warre perished on the Henry’s Cross.” Her eyes shifted with delight between Katherine and Lieutenant Barclay. Katherine wanted to reach across the table and yank her hair.
The lieutenant frowned. “A bill of pains and penalties?”
“Precisely,” Katherine said, and curved her lips to hide her fear. “I stand to lose both my title and my estate.”
“But not your liberty?”
“A telling sign that they lack evidence of any ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ would you not agree?”
He considered that with a thoughtful lift of his brows.
Katherine swirled the dark red liquid in her glass. “Captain Warre never spoke of his brother, Lieutenant?”
He reached for the plate of dates India had been slowly diminishing. “He was never one to share personal information with subordinates.”
“Naturally.” She watched him sink his teeth into the date. They were white teeth, perfectly straight. “That would risk the kind of friendly bonds that a sodding bastard such as Captain Warre would never tolerate.”
“Such language, Captain,” William said, crunching into his second apple half.
She smiled. “The lieutenant’s words, not mine.”
“I propose a toast,” India declared, raising her glass. “To Nicholas Warre’s eternal ruin!”
“Hear, hear,” Katherine agreed. But Lieutenant Barclay, whether out of fear for his soul or respect for his dead captain’s family, polished off the rest of his date without joining the toast.
* * *
JAMES WAS STILL pondering that toast to his brother’s eternal ruin three days later when he finally felt well enough to venture on deck. God only knew what Nick was up to with this bill Captain Kinloch spoke of. She’d told him the Lords had put off the second reading, which meant the bill was as good as dead. James rubbed his hand over his unshaven jaw and tried to ignore the voice telling him that if it wasn’t, he would need to do something about it once they arrived. After all, he owed the woman his life. But when his little brother got his teeth into something, he did not let go easily.
The weather had turned balmy as they sailed north along the coast of Spain. The Possession was an average brig—two-masted, square-rigged. But making do with a crew of ten, counting Lady India, Lady Pennington and the captain herself, when she would have done better with at least eighteen. The ship had sixteen guns that could prove deadly to a larger, less agile foe. Not that he was aware of the Possession taking deadly action against any kind of foe except in circumstances where James himself would have done the same.
If the Admirals wanted Captain Kinloch’s shipping activity stopped merely because she was an able female captain, without proof of more, they could bloody well come to the Mediterranean and stop her themselves.
He rested his arms on the railing of the upper deck, instinctively studying the horizon for ships, trying to adjust to being a passenger without a single responsibility. It should have been more difficult than it was. But the emptiness inside him that had begun long before he’d nearly drowned with the Henry’s Cross dragged him like a fierce undertow. All that was left was to resign his commission upon their arrival in London and set out immediately for Croston. Once there, he would face nothing but endless days of...nothing.
Perhaps he would become a pigeon fancier.
The one thing he would bloody well not need to do was assert himself on behalf of Katherine Kinloch. It would be enough to report to his superiors that he’d personally observed the protocols aboard the Possession, as well as the goods in her hold, and that—as he’d suspected—there’d never been any reason to question her legitimacy in the first place. His celebrity ought to be good for that much, at least, and a positive report ought to discharge his debt to her in spades.
The devil it will.
A wave crashed against the hull and a fine, salty mist caught him in the face. The feel and the taste of it stirred his old exhilaration for the sea, but the feeling was snuffed out almost immediately. An image of the Merry Sea rose in his mind as if the entire scene had happened yesterday and not ten years previous on a day much like this one.
They’re coming about! Fire!
His own order shot through his memory. They’d been so close he hadn’t needed his glass to watch the grisly fighting between the Merry Sea’s crew and the Barbary corsairs intent on capturing her. He’d unleashed everything he could, knowing full well what awaited the seamen once hauled away as slaves to Barbary. There hadn’t been so much as a glimpse of petticoat to indicate the presence of a woman—not that it would have made a difference, except that he might have unleashed less, not more. And then there’d been the currents, the wind... Hell. In the end, there’d been nothing he could do, and his inability had cost Katherine her freedom.
He didn’t want to think of it, nor any of the other mistakes he’d made during twenty years of a supposedly glorious naval career. Every misstep, every miscalculation, every failure—they dogged him like a pack of wolves closing in on midnight prey. There would be no peace until he reached Croston.
But you’ll still owe her for that day. And now for your life, as well.
The Possession’s heavy canvas sails thwacked in the wind, and the calls of her small crew carried above the gentle crash of waves against the hull. Sunshine glittered off the water like diamonds scattered on the sea. Every inch of burnished wood gleamed softly. Clearly the Possession’s toilette rivaled that of any great beauty who spent hours in pursuit of perfection. She was a brig, but detailed carving on the rails and stern gave the ship a Moorish exoticism to match that of her captain. Across the deck, that captain stood tête-à-tête with Jaxbury, conferring about some detail of the voyage.
“Spot any threats, Barclay?” Jaxbury called over to James.
Just one. James let his gaze linger on her. The breeze played with Captain Kinloch’s loose trousers and tunic, fluttering