Page 13 of Thief of Hearts

C HAPTER T WELVE

L UCY FROZE IN CLAREMONT’S ARMS AS they both stared down at the fallen sketch. His embrace underwent a subtle shift, the arm beneath her breasts tightening to imprison her without mercy against the muscled wall of his chest. His breathing resounded in her ear like the threat of distant thunder.

Lucy shivered, overwhelmed by his intensity, his palpable strength, the potent masculinity of his stance. She was shamed by her own yearning to turn in his arms, mold her body to his, and offer her parted lips up like a sacrifice to a pagan god. Not even a lifetime spent in the Admiral’s shadow had prepared her to feel so vulnerable, so fearful of being consumed by another’s will. She pressed her eyes shut, dizzied by the nagging sensation that she’d danced this dangerous dance before, in another time, another place.

“Stop it! You’re hurting me!” she lied, desperate to escape his assault on her bewildered senses.

His arms fell away so abruptly that Lucy felt a pang of guilt, as if it were she who had hurt him. Still unsteady on her feet, she reached for the scattered drawings. Gerard snatched them from beneath her hand with a ruthlessness that warned her they were no longer playing some harmless game of cat and mouse.

“What the bloody hell is this?” His eyes narrowed behind his spectacles as he thumbed through the sketches, taking care even in his haste not to crumple or smear them.

Lucy held her silence, already knowing what he would find. Sketch after sketch of the phantom ship that had haunted her since it had first come drifting out of the mists of her imagination. The Retribution sailing across a bloated pumpkin of an autumn moon, cresting a mountain range of stormy billows, teetering on the edge of a churning whirlpool. The Retribution , her delicately etched rigging frosted silver by an unearthly web of lightning.

Claremont’s taut voice radiated anger. “Quite a departure from your milksop seascapes, aren’t they? Positively brimming with passion and majesty.”

He went abruptly silent, his stillness more frightening than his frenzied search had been. An alarmed squeak escaped Lucy as he pivoted on his heel to face her. He was beyond furious. The grim sparkle in his eyes made her father’s frequent rages appear nothing more than infantile tantrums. He took a step toward her; Lucy took a step away from him.

The wall blocked further flight. Lucy shrank against it and was just contemplating screaming for Smythe when Claremont gently drawled, “Tell me, Miss Snow, does lunacy run in your family?”

She clutched her negligee shut at the throat. “I can’t pretend to know what you mean. They’re just drawings. They’re of no import whatsoever.”

He thrust a sketch in her face—a man, more phantom than reality, shrouded in mist, ghostly shadows of rigging crisscrossing his bearded face. “This is him, isn’t it? Your precious Captain Doom.”

She tilted her head, examining the sketch from all angles as if she’d never seen it before. “I don’t remember. It could be anyone.”

His skeptical gaze was sharp enough to flay the thin silk of the negligee from her skin. “Have you any idea what you’ve done?” he asked softly. “How you’ve endangered yourself? If Doom knew these existed, do you really think he could afford to let you live?” His voice rose to a shout. “Do you?”

Lucy flinched. Claremont swore and whirled to pace the cluttered room, running a hand through his hair. “You seem determined to make the job of protecting you a challenge, Miss Snow. I can only surmise how grateful the Royal Navy was to receive sketches this detailed. Once they start circulating, your pathetic little life won’t be worth a trice to Doom.” He swung back around to confront her. “I’m sure the Admiral was delighted for you to turn your talents to such a noble cause.”

Lucy slumped against the wall, shooting him a sheepish glance before quietly confessing, “My father’s never seen the sketches. No one has. Except for you.”

Claremont sank down on the edge of the bed and gaped at her as if she’d suddenly begun to gibber in a foreign tongue. Lucy thought it might be ill-timed and rather belated to chide him for his impropriety.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me why?”

Reassured by his rational tone, she glided to the bed and rescued her sketches from his limp fingers. She held the drawing of Doom to the light, gently passing her fingertips over his charcoal-shaded beard. She was too engrossed in her memories to see the strange shudder that passed through Claremont.

She said softly, “It might shock you to know that I’ve searched this portrait for hours only to discover a thread of honor in this man’s countenance, a strain of nobility, if you will.”

“Excuse me, but are we referring to the same fellow who adorns his neck with human ears and cheerfully rips the hearts from his victims while they’re still thumping?”

Lucy winced. “A blatant exaggeration, I fear. Just one of the many grave injustices I’ve done the man.”

Claremont’s eyes hardened to shards of jade. “What of the injustices he did you? Abducting you? Throwing you overboard like so much shark bait?”

Lucy’s cheeks heated with the painful fire that had plagued them since her encounter with the pirate. “It’s not what he did to me, Mr. Claremont. It’s what he didn’t do.”

Her impassioned words hung in the perfumed air between them. A gentleman would have pretended to understand. Claremont was no gentleman.

He lounged back on his elbows, looking shockingly at home in the rumpled folds of her counterpane. “Do go on.”

Her hands twisted together, unwittingly crumpling the edges of the sketch. “You know as well as I that given the circumstances, he might easily have…could have…” She searched for a delicate phrase.

“Raped you?” Claremont offered coolly. “Stolen your virtue and left you for dead?” Lucy should have been mortified by his blunt candor. Instead she was mesmerized by the unholy mischief in his eyes, the black humor that twisted his mouth into a travesty of a smile. He indicated the sketches. “So all this time, because of his dubious restraint, you’ve fancied yourself protecting the man.”

She nodded. “It was the least I could do after misjudging him so harshly.”

Claremont rose from the bed, taller than she remembered, all traces of both mockery and amusement erased from his face. “You don’t need to read fiction, Miss Snow. You’re living it. Despite your tender and hopelessly romantic fantasies, this fellow Doom is not some misunderstood hero. He’s a desperate, ruthless bastard who has nothing left to lose and everything to gain.”

“You speak as if you know him.”

“I know many like him. It’s unavoidable in my profession.” He advanced on her, but this time Lucy stood her ground. For the first time, her bodyguard’s speech was underscored by the harsh cadences of the London streets. “And not one out of the bloody lot of them would let some spoiled, lonely brat—”

Stung by his unfairness, Lucy cried, “But I’m not—”

His next words robbed her of her defense. “—no matter how breathtakingly beautiful, stand in the way of what they wanted.” Claremont caught her chin in an implacable grip. “If your path ever crosses Doom’s again, God forbid, don’t make the mistake of underestimating him. He might not be such a gentleman.”

Lucy blinked back tears as he tumbled her idol, trying desperately to hide how deeply his words wounded her. “So you think me a sentimental fool?” she whispered.

His grip softened. His palm wandered up to smooth a wing of damp hair from her cheek. Her breath caught at his scorching tenderness. “On the contrary, my dear Lucy. I think your noble Captain Doom a fool. If I had a woman such as you at my mercy, I’d never let her go.”

But Claremont did just that, striding from the room without so much as a backward glance.

When Lucy slipped into the library the next morning at exactly 0900, she found her father pacing in front of his desk, Smythe polishing a brass sextant as if his very existence depended upon it, and her bodyguard nowhere in sight.

She had waged a restless battle with her bedclothes most of the night, trying to determine whether she’d been complimented or insulted, cautioned or threatened, protected or compromised. She only knew that every time she closed her eyes, she saw not the charcoal rendering of Captain Doom, but hazel eyes sparkling with raw emotion.

She slid into her chair, hoping to find some peace by throwing herself back into the soothing rhythm of her daily routine, where thought was neither necessary nor desirable.

Her father’s cane thumped a staccato warning as he limped around to glower at her. His eyebrows gathered over his aquiline nose like snow-laden clouds. It was the same look he’d leveled at her after her rescue from the Retribution . The same look he’d given her as a child when she’d thought to please him by blacking his uniform boots with India ink.

She devoted her attention to organizing her pens and paper, resisting the overpowering urge to start blathering, confessing her guilt for lurid sins and passionate crimes she’d contemplated only in her most feverish imaginings.

Instead, she forced herself to say “Good morning, Father. I trust you slept well,” as if she hadn’t deliberately avoided his presence for the past five days.

He snorted in disgust. “Not as well as your Mr. Claremont, it appears.” He drew out his chronometer and glared at it. His ruddy color heightened. “I’d like to know what in thunder is going on around here. Has the entire discipline of this household gone to rot? What’s next, Smythe? Will you start languishing in your bed until noon?”

“I should say not, sir.” The butler appeared dutifully horrified at the suggestion. The Admiral considered sloth as number two on his own personal list of the seven deadly sins. Right after adultery and before patricide.

Mr. Claremont appeared in the doorway, his head inclined toward the book in his hands. The sight of his unyielding shoulders tied all of Lucy’s sensible intentions into a hopeless tangle. The Admiral stared pointedly at the mantel clock and cleared his throat with the force of a cannon shot.

Claremont looked up then, riveting Lucy with the guileless blink of his cinnamon lashes behind the polished lenses of his spectacles. “My apologies, sir. I became so engrossed in Lord Howell’s account of your triumph at Sadras that I lost all sense of the time.”

Her bodyguard’s bland innocence was so convincing that even Lucy was tempted to believe him. The man was a consummate liar. A trait her treacherous heart would do well to remember.

Claremont slouched in his chair and began to thumb through a sheaf of yellowed letters, missing the piercing gaze the Admiral leveled at him. Lucy could almost see the cogs of suspicion jerking to life in her father’s head.

A splinter of foreboding twisted in her stomach. She knew better than anyone that the Admiral’s trust, once lost, could never be regained.

Lucy huddled alone in a corner of the carriage, thinking how immense its interior seemed to have grown with Mr. Claremont riding atop with Fenster. Not even the threat of freezing rain from the bruised charcoal of the sky could drive him to seek her company.

They were off to the Theater Royal in Drury Lane to watch the great Sarah Siddons portray Lady MacBeth. Lucy thought direly that the tragedy was an appropriate counterpart to her mood. She tried to hum the melody of “That Banbury Strumpet, As Sweet As A Crumpet,” but found the hollow sound an unbearable reminder of how empty her life had been before Mr. Claremont had elbowed his way into it.

Since discovering her sketches of Captain Doom, her bodyguard had retreated behind a demeanor of cool professionalism. The man who had taken such wicked delight in teasing and cajoling her the night of their impromptu picnic had vanished, replaced by a punctual, neatly garbed stranger who treated her with the respectful deference of a servant.

There was nothing in Claremont’s performance to complain of to her father. He tipped his hat and bowed graciously to her every wish. At social functions, he remained with the carriage or stood at rigid attention in the corner, his aloof glower making the guests fidget. Even Sylvie remarked upon his uncommon devotion to duty.

But when Lucy stumbled out of bed each morning at dawn, the gnarled oak tree beneath her window stood sentinel alone, its naked branches shivering against the bleak sky.

His deliberate distance punished her in ways she hadn’t anticipated. She realized for the first time how much she had secretly enjoyed his impertinent scowls, his mocking smiles, his exaggerated yawns at her father’s ramblings. His expressive face was now closed and unreadable.

She toyed fitfully with her gloves. Claremont’s defection had left her no choice but to resume her lady of-the-manor posturing, but her spirit was no longer in the game.

The carriage drew to a halt. Catherine Street teemed with the bustle of Saturday night—the chatter of the crowds, the cries and curses of the drivers, the stamping and whinnying of the restless horses.

When the door to the carriage failed to open, Lucy tapped on the front window with the ivory handle of her fan.

Fenster’s homely face appeared, screwed into a jack-o’-lantern’s grimace. “Sorry, miss. The traffic’s in a devil of a snarl. We’ll have to wait it out.”

Lucy gathered her gloves and reticule. “Sylvie will never forgive me if we miss the opening curtain. It’s only a few blocks. We shall walk.”

Claremont spoke without turning around. “That would hardly be advisable, Miss Snow.”

All the more reason to attempt it, she thought wickedly. “John,” she called out. “Please help me down.”

Instead of the freckled footman, it was Claremont who opened the carriage door, wrenching it with such force that Lucy was surprised it didn’t topple off its hinges. She was unprepared for the quizzical warmth melting inside of her. The hint of a sulk around her bodyguard’s mouth only made his face more compelling. She was beset by a terrible urge to touch him, to trace his expressive lips with her fingertips until the lines of tension around them thawed.

“I cannot recommend this,” he said. “It will be very difficult to protect you in this crowd.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Claremont. I have the greatest confidence in your abilities.”

He didn’t budge or offer her a hand so she was forced to brush past him to climb out of the carriage. The brief contact dizzied her. Ignoring the brisk wind biting through her thin cape, she swept ahead of him, giving him no choice but to follow. The glow of the scattered street lamps barely pierced the evening gloom.

After they’d traveled a block, she dropped her fan, then hesitated. “Would you be so kind as to retrieve my fan?”

He did, slapping it into her palm.

A few more feet and her satin reticule slid off her arm. “How clumsy of me.” She cast him an entreating look. “Could you …?”

His breath escaped in rhythmic puffs of steam. Scenting victory, she marched ahead as he bent to retrieve the reticule, ducking into the darkened doorway of a bookseller’s shop. She was too engrossed in her game to notice the three dark shapes who darted into an adjacent doorway.

She peeped around the corner just as Claremont straightened. His eyes scanned the crowd, searching for her. The raw concern on his face shamed her until she reminded herself that he was probably more worried about his monthly wages than her well-being. She was gathering her cape to flee to another hiding place when a hand clamped down on her arm, a hand lightly sprinkled with ginger and smelling of spice.

Claremont’s face was as resolute as she had ever seen it as he marched her back toward the carriage.

She stumbled along in front of him, painfully aware of the curious stares of the crowd. “Where are we going? The theater is that way.”

“I’m not taking you to the theater. I’m taking you home. I’ve a job to do and if you persist in behaving like a wayward child, you give me no choice but to treat you like one.”

“You’re my bodyguard, not my nursemaid.” Lucy tried to plant her feet on the pavement to no avail. “Stop it this instant! You’re making a public spectacle of us. Do you want to cause a scandal?”

With no warning, he shoved her into a deserted alleyway, carrying their spectacle into the realm of the private. The comforting chatter of the crowd suddenly seemed very far away.

As he drew her around to face him, his hand still clamped like a vise on her arm, she realized she’d finally succeeded in what she had set out to do. All traces of indifference had been wiped from his eyes, vanquished by glittering fury. He loomed over her, his familiar features obscured by shadow, his big, warm body no longer a refuge, but a threat.

This was no phantom to fuel her midnight fantasies who could be safely banished by the morning light. This was a man—six feet of pure masculine animal tempered by years of experience.

The taste of Lucy’s triumph was bittersweet. She could only gaze up at him and try not to tremble.

“We wouldn’t wish to damage your father’s precious reputation, now would we, Miss Snow?” he bit off between clenched teeth. “So walk with me or, as God is my witness, I shall carry you.”

Lucy stuck out her lip a mutinous inch, but the Admiral had taught her since birth that there was no shame in surrendering if you were outgunned and out-manned. Mr. Claremont accomplished both with negligent effort.

“Very well,” she said.

He wheeled around and took a few steps toward the mouth of the alley, obviously expecting her to follow.

Defeat made Lucy reckless. Her glove fluttered to the cobblestones. “But not until you retrieve my glove.”

He pivoted slowly, staring at the dainty scrap of silk she’d tossed down like a gauntlet between them. A disbelieving smile slanted across his face. More alarmed by his ferocious good humor than she’d been by his anger, Lucy took a step backward. Her shoulder blades came up against a sooty brick wall.

He pointed a finger at her. “You, my dear, can retrieve your own bloody glove. You can also balance your own embroidery frame and sharpen your own damn pencils. I’m tired of being led on a merry chase by the likes of you. I’m not your nursemaid or your lady’s maid. For all I care, you can run sniveling back to your father because the two of you deserve each other.” He tossed her reticule at her. She reacted just quickly enough to keep it from falling. “I quit!”

Panic seized Lucy as he turned to go, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the feeble lamplight. What if this were to be her last glimpse of him? What if he melted into the teeming crowd, disappearing from her life as abruptly as he’d come into it? A blade of pain knifed her heart.

Her gaze darted around the deserted alley, searching wildly for any excuse to make him stay. “You can’t just abandon me,” she wailed. “What if Captain Doom should abduct me?”

He waved a derisive arm in her direction. “He’s welcome to you as far as I’m concerned. And God pity the man!”

At that fresh insult, Lucy drew herself up, swallowed her panic, and gathered her pride. “Your resignation is not accepted, Mr. Claremont. You’re dismissed!”

He disappeared around the corner.

Lucy’s triumph at winning the last word faded as quickly as her show of spirit. She slumped at the back of the alley, utterly alone. She hadn’t felt so miserable since she’d embedded her father’s favorite letter opener in Captain Doom’s unsuspecting shoulder. It was as if she’d not only done another person injury, but mortally wounded herself.

She ought to be celebrating, she told herself fiercely, blinking back tears. Wasn’t this what she had wanted all along? To be rid of Claremont. To drive him into resigning from his position so she could regain her precious independence. Her privacy. Her solitude.

She turned her face to the wall, discovering too late that Mr. Claremont’s apathy was far more tolerable than his absence.

The brooding sky chose that inopportune moment to dump a bucket of frozen rain on her head. Its icy teeth chewed through her thin cape, soaking her finery without mercy. She was so enveloped in her haze of misery that she never saw the menacing shapes come creeping out of the shadows.

“Lost yer fine gent, did ye, lass?”

Lucy jerked her head up to find a mouthful of blackened and broken teeth only inches from hers. She recoiled from the stench of the speaker’s breath and blinked the rain from her eyes to discover two grimy, rag-swathed men.

The second of them, whose long, lank hair looked no worse for the wetting, clucked at her in sympathy. “Come now, girl, don’t be sad. We may not ’ave as much coin as that fine fellow, but we knows ’ow to show a lady a good time.”

Only seconds before, Lucy had been certain she had reached the very nadir of her existence. Now she discovered that she had dedicated her entire life to maintaining the appearance of propriety only to end up being mistaken for a prostitute in some dreary London back alley. Mr. Claremont’s perverse sense of humor must have corrupted her, for she found herself choked with helpless laughter instead of tears.

She swiped rain from her eyes, confounded by the odd mixture of despair and hilarity. “I’m afraid there’s been a dreadful misunderstanding, gentlemen.”

“We ain’t no gents,” came another voice, low and threatening. “And you ain’t no lady.”

Lucy’s amused chagrin faded as a third figure emerged from the shadows. His narrow face had the sharpness and cunning of a fox’s.

His rabid gaze snaked to her reticule. Its satin skin was swollen with her handkerchief and everpresent watch. “Seein’ as we ain’t got no coin and you do, mayhap you could pay us for our services. We’re worth it, ain’t we, mates? All the wenches says so.”

Their harsh laughter grated across Lucy’s nerves. Her heart began to thud dully in her ears. She inched toward the mouth of the alley only to discover her path blocked by the men. She had no parasol with which to defend herself, no tender, teasing bodyguard to protect her.

Fighting the paralysis of terror, she forced a coy smile and dangled the reticule in front of Mr. Fox-Face’s greedy eyes. His ragged whiskers twitched in anticipation.

“I doubt even the three of you together are worth this much gold,” she said.

He snatched at the bait. Thankful for the solid weight of her watch, she swung the tiny purse in a wide arc, smashing him in the ear. Before she could flee, the other two were on her, dragging her to the cobblestones in a flurry of straining limbs and rending silk.

Gerard lounged against the wall next to the alley and waited for Lucy to emerge. He supposed she was sulking, expecting him to soften and return to retrieve both her and her precious glove. His self-contempt mounted as he realized he was doing it again—playing his role as bodyguard with such flair and conviction that even he was coming to believe it. How could he hope to protect Lucy when the most dangerous threat to her was him?

He tilted his head back, letting the icy darts of rain stab his face. They did nothing to cool his rage. The time had come to bring this ridiculous charade to an end. He’d known it the instant he’d seen Lucy’s damning sketches and listened to her tender defense of Captain Doom. It was a pity, he thought, that the jaded pirate would never fully appreciate the loyalty, however misguided, of his enemy’s daughter.

He shoved himself away from the wall. He had thought to see his young mistress home for the last time, but surely even the disaster-prone Miss Snow could make it one block to the security of the carriage without his protection.

He ought to be thankful to be free of this farce, he told himself as he slipped the spectacles into his coat and started down the pavement. But unbidden memories pelted him with every step: wrapping Lucy in his coat to shield her from the rain, feeding her sugary comfits from his fingertips, drawing her so tightly against his body that she’d felt like a part of him that had been missing since birth. A phantom limb that now ached all the more because of its fleeting restoration.

With no effort at all, Gerard could feel her melting against him through her thin negligee as she’d done in that moment when he had enfolded her in his arms. Could feel the tickle of her damp hair against his cheek. Smell the lingering scent of soap warmed by the secret hollows of her flesh until it incited his body like an aphrodisiac. His loins pounded an exquisite protest, torturing him as he deserved.

He hastened his steps. He might have removed himself from Miss Snow’s service, but he still had unfinished business with her father. The rigid contours of his pistol prodded his ribs.

A muffled yelp sounded behind him. He stopped. The crowds streamed around him, recoiling from his fierce expression.

“Her bloody Highness probably wants me to step on a cockroach for her so she doesn’t soil her dainty little slipper,” he muttered. “Sorry, Princess, not this time.”

Ignoring the hollow clench of his gut, he resumed walking, his long strides surer than before. He was done playing knight in tarnished armor to Lucy Snow’s lady bountiful.

He froze in his tracks. For over the raucous clamor of the crowd had flown a sound he’d never thought to hear. A single name couched in a terrified scream that chilled his blood to ice.

Gerard .