A lifetime ago, but she’d never forgotten that look in a man’s eyes. Greed and lust, a predator’s cold need, marking her, using her, ruining her beyond redemption. All she had, all she was, to be sold to the man with the deepest pockets.
“Tumbled the chit right out o’ her hammock, sheets an’ all, did you, mate?” asked the first seaman, fumbling in the bag around his neck for another coin as he leered at Caro. “Saints, but she’s finer than any o’ the drabs we seen in the fancy houses on Water Street. How much’ll you take for a turn wit’ her?”
“Not a farthing,” said Jeremiah with a quiet authority that startled Caro.
“Ah, mate, we’s only askin’ to share yer good fortune!”
“The lady’s with me,” said Jeremiah, his voice rumbling deeper. “And she’s not for sale.”
The man raised his hands and backed away, intimidated by the threat in Jeremiah’s voice. “Meanin’ no offense, gov’ner. She’s yours, an’ there it ends. No offense.”
But his companion had had his courage bolstered by more rum, and he lurched toward Caro to snatch the coverlet away. “Come on, lovey, let’s have some sport.”
The knife was in Jeremiah’s hand in an instant, the long blade flashing in the moonlight. The second sailor yowled and stumbled back, clutching his arm where blood was already darkening the slashed sleeve of his jacket.
“I told you,” said Jeremiah as he guided Caro past them, “the lady’s with me.”
“You would have killed him, wouldn’t you?” whispered Caro. The ease and violence with which he’d defended her stunned her. Frederick would never have dreamed of doing such a thing, even if he’d been able. “Just like that, you would have killed him.”
Jeremiah made a disgusted sound deep in his chest as he wiped the knife’s blade clean. “If I’d had to, aye. But that bit of English foolishness wasn’t worth the killing.”
She tried to smile. “But this bit of English foolishness was worth defending that way?”
He glanced at her sharply, surprised by the quaver in her voice. She looked small and waifish, her mouth pinched and her eyes still wide from what she’d just witnessed. Belatedly he realized that while dockyard arguments and drawn knives were nothing new to him, she’d be accustomed to more tender circumstances. He longed to take her in his arms and reassure her, to hold her until the fear left her eyes, but the memory of that well-loved husband stood uneasily between them, and instead all he did was slip the knife back in the sheath at his waist and clear his throat.
“There’s nothing foolish about you, lass,” he said gruffly, “except, maybe, the way you’ve rigged yourself out. But we’ll remedy that directly.”
He pounded on the door of a shop with men and women’s second-hand clothing hanging from a rod in the window until a sleepy old woman answered the door.
“Can’t ye read the sign, ye great bluff baboon?” she said. “We’re closed.”
“Not now, are you?” Jeremiah raised a guinea in his fingers to glitter in the moonlight, and at once the woman opened the door. “The lady needs a gown, and whatever else she pleases.”
“Ain’t ye the Lord Generous,” grumbled the woman, eyeing Caro critically. “What’s become o’ yer own clothes, girl?”
“She lost ‘em throwing dice with a crimp,” answered Jeremiah dryly. “Look quick about it, ma’am, we haven’t all night.”
Chapter Six
Within an hour Caro was dressed decently, if not fashionably, in a linsey-woolsey gown with a checkered scarf tied around her throat and over her breasts and a chip bonnet with a limp pink rose on her head, and perched on a bench across a table from Jeremiah in a bustling tavern near the water. Before her sat a slice of onion pie topped with yellow cheese and a tankard of cider, and nothing in her life had ever tasted so good. Although she guessed the hour must be closer to dawn than midnight, the tavern was full of sailors, shipwrights, carters, colliers and their women, and Caro leaned closer to Jeremiah to hear him over the din of their laughter and shouted conversations and the fiddle player near the hearth.
“I said, Caro, that Stanhope will think you’ve vanished from the face of the earth.” He thumped his own tankard of ale down on the oak table for emphasis. “As far as he’s concerned, you have. Look at you! No one would ever believe you’re a countess now!”
She grinned, and took another bite of the pie. To see Jeremiah Sparhawk across from her now, his face relaxed and his green eyes warm as he teased her, made it easy for her to forget the pistols and the long, bloodied knife at his waist. He really wasn’t much better than the highwayman they’d pretended he was. Maybe no Americans were. His gift for self-preservation would make him perfect for the task she meant to set before him, and with his chivalrous inclinations on her behalf he’d be bound to agree. Now if only she could convince herself that her own feelings toward him were equally mercenary!
For the first time, she wished she knew more of men and the world. Before she’d met Captain Sparhawk, she’d been able to divide them neatly in two: there were the precious few like Frederick and Jack Herendon, who treated her with kindness and respect, and then there were all the others, who looked at her with a blatant mixture of contempt and lust. But no man she’d ever met treated her like this oversize American, teasing and bantering with her one moment and then willing to fight to the death for her honor the next, and to her confusion, she liked it. She liked him, more than she should, certainly more than was proper for her as Frederick’s wife.
Jeremiah covered her hand with his and the warmth of his touch raced through her. “You’re quiet, lass,” he asked with real concern. “Weariness, or is there something else that ails you?”
“Weariness.” How could she ever admit that he was what ailed her? “Nothing more, nothing less.”
Self-consciously she withdrew her hand, but as she sipped her cider, her eyes met his over the tankard’s battered rim. There was gray streaked through his black hair at the temples, and from the deep lines that fanned from his eyes when he smiled, she knew he’d seen much of life, not all of it good. But she also knew better than to ask. She had more than her own share of secrets to keep hidden.
“Then I’d best find us lodgings for what’s left of the night.” He kept his hand on the table after she’d pulled hers back, unspoken admission of her rebuke, and he studied it now as if surprised to find it there. “Though truth to tell, I like where I am just fine.”
In the crowded, noisy, smoky room his smile was for her alone, an invitation she had no right to accept. She must end this now, while she still could.
“I told you I would pay you back your kindness with the information you wished about your friend, and I will. But first I must tell you of Frederick.”
“You don’t have to,” said Jeremiah quickly, perhaps too quickly. But he didn’t want to hear again of the paragon that was Caro’s husband, or how much she loved him. No, he didn’t want to hear that again at all. “You’ve told me more than enough already, and I wouldn’t want you to speak of anything that might cause you pain.”
Selfish, conniving bastard! He couldn’t believe he’d actually said that, especially after the lovely, grateful smile she gave him that he didn’t deserve.
“No, Captain, I’ve scarcely told