Page 24 of Thief of Hearts

C HAPTER T WENTY-THREE

G ERARD LEANED LAZILY AGAINST THE mainmast, an infuriating study in nautical elegance. His black breeches clung to his lean legs, tapering down into a pair of dashing jackboots. His white shirt gaped open at the throat and was covered by a dark blue jacket, probably confiscated at gunpoint from some hapless Royal Navy officer. Its shiny brass buttons reflected the sunlight, dazzling Lucy almost as much as his mocking grin.

“Good morning, Miss Snow,” he said, as if she weren’t brandishing a weapon that could permanently wipe the smirk off his face. “The air below getting a little stale for your refined tastes?”

Tarn’s shout nearly startled her into dropping the pistol. “Save yerself, Cap’n! She ain’t human. She’s a succubus with a taste for male flesh. Don’t stray too close! She might try to have her way with you.”

Gerard’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “I should be so fortunate.”

Lucy had almost forgotten the man straddling the rail. “Perhaps not a s-succubus after all, sir,” he offered timidly. “A s-s-siren. If she opens her mouth you’d best cover your ears, for her voice is so beautiful, it will drive you mad with longing.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!” Her dubious patience at an end, Lucy gave them all cause to wish they’d covered their ears. “Stop it, I say! I won’t tolerate another minute of this rubbish! Do you hear me? Just stop it!”

Her tone of command froze them all. If Lucien Snow had taught her one thing, it was how to bellow an order. For a moment there was no sound at all but the eerie whisper of those bizarre black sails.

Lucy Snow had had enough. Enough of shifting loyalties. Enough of being the butt of jokes she didn’t even understand. Enough of being bullied by men. Her gaze darted wildly between the three men nearest to her.

She turned the pistol on the Irishman. “Get up! Get up this instant and stop groveling. What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you any pride?”

As he climbed sheepishly to his feet, a buried memory threatened to surface. A nervous snuffle drew her attention away from it.

She waved the pistol at the man clinging to the starboard rail. “And you! Climb down from there right now. And stop sniveling,” she barked, “or I’ll give you something to snivel about.”

He obeyed, still looking as if he’d like to burst into tears.

She swung the gun back around on Gerard. While she’d been distracted, he’d glided a foot nearer to her without appearing to have moved at all. Just like the phantom he was purported to be.

Her voice dropped to a dead calm. “Don’t take another step, Captain, or it may very well be your last.”

Gerard nodded toward the pistol. “That thing’s a bit more lethal than a letter opener. You won’t have quite the margin for error.”

It wasn’t the gun or even the threat of death that captured Gerard’s attention. It was Lucy herself. She was too incensed to be conscious of her scant attire, but the wind was taking great delight in molding the delicate chemise and drawers to her taut curves. Pudge, with his abiding love of mythology, had been closest to the truth. With her bare, shapely legs braced against the swell of the deck and her long, blond hair whipping in the wind, she looked every inch a wronged Norse goddess gunning for vengeance.

Her gray eyes flared with murderous emotion. Her generous mouth had tightened in a sneer. Gerard thought she’d never looked more magnificent. He wished the Admiral could see all the spirit and spunk he’d fought so hard to repress come boiling to the fore. Being held hostage to her whims in front of his men should have infuriated him, but his frustration was tempered with fierce pride.

“Did it ever occur to you that the gun might not be loaded?” he ventured. “Do you really think I’d let a muzzy-headed lad like Tarn ram a loaded pistol down his breeches?”

Lucy’s confidence wavered, but she remembered only too well how convincing Gerard could be when it suited his selfish purposes. “If it’s not loaded, then you won’t mind if I pull the trigger, will you?”

Gerard’s rueful smile conceded her victory. The wary gazes of his men bored into her.

“If you value your captain’s life, gentlemen, then I suggest you shorten the sails and drop anchor. We’re going to sit right here and wait for a Royal Navy ship to happen by,” When they made no move to obey, Lucy steadied her arm against the dragging weight of the pistol “Do it or I’ll put a ball of lead right through his miserable heart! I admit it’s a poor target, but it will have to do.”

The men glanced uncertainly between her and Gerard. All it took was the faintest shake of his head. Not one of them so much as twitched another muscle.

“I’m sorry, Lucy. I’m afraid my men obey only my orders.” Gerard’s kindness was even less tolerable than his mockery.

“Then you tell them to do it.”

He folded his arms over his chest, his expression almost pitying.

Lucy’s trigger finger jerked as Apollo stumbled into sight, holding a dripping rag to his head. “You mustn’t blame the little missie, sir. It’s all due to my own clumsiness. I’d still be out cold on the cabin floor if Kev—”

Gerard’s eyes narrowed in warning, giving him time to realize it was not the little missie in jeopardy, but his captain. Apollo’s great liquid eyes darkened as if Lucy had somehow disappointed him. He moved to stand behind Gerard, a reproving sentinel.

Their united front intensified Lucy’s desperation. Perhaps if she chose one of his weaker men…

“You!” she said, cornering the man who’d tried to jump ship. “You’re the sailmaster, aren’t you?” she asked, recognizing the leather apron stretched over his distended belly. “You shorten the sails.”

He shuffled his feet and tucked his head like a shy pouter pigeon, declining to answer. There was something familiar about his quaint, steel-framed spectacles, something that made her heart contract with nostalgia.

“All right then, you!” she exclaimed, pointing toward the muzzy-headed young Irishman. “You’ll be the one to…” Her command faded as she studied the dirt rings around his freckled neck. “You,” she echoed softly. “You’re the one who applied for the position as my bodyguard. The one Smythe booted down the front stairs.” The pistol wavered as she studied the familiar faces of the men around her. She pointed an accusing finger at a lithe Oriental man. “You’re the one who broke Captain Cook! And you—you’re the fellow who pilfered the silver.” A hysterical laugh escaped her. “Where were you that day, Apollo? I’m sure I would have remembered you.”

“My penmanship is legendary,” he admitted modestly. “I forged the Captain’s references. Oh,” he added, flexing his mighty hands. “And I detained the genuine applicants until he was hired.”

The legends were true, Lucy thought. The Retribution was crewed by ghosts. Resurrected ghosts their captain had used to worm his way into her life. How could the Admiral have resisted the self-assured Mr. Claremont after being besieged by such bumbling applicants?

Tarn appeared nearly as shocked as she to recognize her. “Why, miss, I never would have known you. The last time I saw you, you was—”

“Dressed?” Lucy provided.

His freckles melted into a flush. “Aye, that too. Of course, I was a bit flustered, what with you beatin’ me brains out with that wee umbreller of yers.”

“Tarn!” Gerard barked an instant too late.

Lucy took a long, hard look at the lad, realizing that he was indeed the masked assailant who had tried to nab her reticule outside the mercer’s shop. Her discovery led her to another, far more chilling, conclusion.

Time tumbled backward to the fireless room of an inn, the tapping of frozen rain on the windows, the beguiling warmth of Gerard’s arms around her as he pressed his lips to her bruised throat in a kiss that might very well have been his most bitter betrayal of all.

Blinking through a scalding veil of tears, she lifted her gaze to Gerard’s face, utterly helpless to disguise the pain flaying her heart. He took a reckless step toward her, already shaking his head in denial.

She dragged back the hammer of the pistol.

“Captain …?” Apollo whispered on a bass note of warning.

Tears spilled from Lucy’s eyes, and streamed down her cheeks. These men weren’t going to do her bidding. They were nothing but a heartless bunch of bullies. Just like her father. Just like the three men who had thought to rob and rape her in that dank, cold London alleyway. Just like the man who had hired them.

All the pain Gerard had caused her welled up from her aching heart in the nearest thing to hatred she’d ever felt toward him.

He took another careless step. “I know what you’re thinking, Lucy, but those men weren’t mine. I swear it.”

“Why should I believe you? You’d already proved you’d do anything to protect your position.” Even feign an affection he did not feel .

He spread his upturned palms in a gesture of appeal, offering her an unguarded target. “I’ve no proof to offer you beyond my word. You’ll just have to trust me.”

His request was so ludicrous that Lucy started to laugh, the gulping exhalations tearing at her like sobs. She brought the muzzle of the pistol to bear on his heart only to discover that she was even less capable of doing him harm than when she’d stood on this very deck one windy, moonlit night that had changed her life forever.

She swung the pistol straight up and fired into the air. Gerard didn’t even flinch.

Her arm fell limp at her side. The pistol clunked to the deck, leaving as the only mementos of her pathetic rebellion the echo of the report, the stench of gunpowder, and a slice of azure sky visible through the grim elegance of the fore topsail.

Lucy sank to a sitting position on a coil of rope, her tear-streaked face a study in defeat. Gerard found he could take little pleasure in his victory. He dropped his jacket over her shoulders, shielding her from his crew’s curious stares and glances of grudging respect. A mutiny such as the one she had dared to stage would have earned them a flogging or an even more dreaded abandonment on the nearest deserted island with nothing but a pistol to shoot themselves with before they perished of thirst.

He snapped off a volley of orders that had them wisely scurrying in all directions. Not all of his men were as superstitious about women aboard ship as Tarn and Pudge. Tarn slunk away with the rest, sheepishly retrieving his fallen pistol, but with uncharacteristic boldness, Pudge hesitated.

He sponged the sweat from his palm with a scarlet kerchief before shyly offering his hand to Lucy. “I—I—I’m sorry, miss. I shouldn’t have c-c-called you those names. ’Tweren’t very gentlemanly of me.”

Shaking off her daze, Lucy found herself looking up into a familiar pair of temple spectacles. A fresh pain lanced her heart, but the brown eyes behind the lenses blinked with such sincerity that she couldn’t help giving his hand a comforting squeeze. “All is forgiven, sir. I shouldn’t have startled you.”

“See to the sail, Pudge.” Gerard gave him a gentle nudge toward the block and tackle.

“Aye, sir.” He gave his captain a doting salute and limped off to do his bidding.

“Pudge is more skittish than most when it comes to women,” Gerard said quietly. “His wife used to beat him. After she smashed his knee with a poker while he slept, he ran away to sea.”

Not wanting to hear these things, not wanting to care, Lucy escaped to the rail, hugging Gerard’s jacket tight around her. Sunlight rippled across the scattered whitecaps. A balmy breeze stirred her hair, disconcerting when she’d expected nothing but bitter winter winds. It was her first taste of freedom in days, yet her heart felt as if it were bound in iron chains.

Gerard moved to stand beside her. She childishly edged her elbow away to keep it from touching his. “They were his spectacles, weren’t they?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

He nodded. “Damn things gave me the very devil of a headache.”

“And Tarn?”

“When the Retribution sailed, he stayed behind in London, knowing I might have need of him. When you threatened to have me dismissed…” Gerard trailed off, before offering matter-of-factly, “Tarn’s lifelong ambition was to be a priest. Only he could never quite master his vow of celibacy. When they caught him in bed with two of the blushing young novices—”

“‘Some of the most vicious cutthroats in all of England.’” Lucy tossed his own words back at him with dull accuracy. “‘A dangerous lot…utterly ruthless.’ An excommunicated priest? An amateur philosopher who doesn’t believe in violence? A sailmaster terrified of his own shadow? These are your devil’s minions?”

His unrepentant shrug brought their forearms back into contact. “You haven’t met Fidget yet. He murdered his mother-in-law. Of course, they say there never was born a witch more deserving of it.”

“You should have introduced him to Pudge’s wife,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry if their lack of villainy disappoints you. Despite what you may have read, most pirates are and always have been ordinary seaman. Men who prefer freedom to the taste of the lash. Men who prefer a command system based on merit, rather than on the fickle fortunes of birth. We’ve our share of deserters from your father’s precious navy.”

She cut him a mocking glance. “Does that make you the only practicing villain aboard?”

His hazel eyes captured hers, their wary heat belying the cold set of his jaw. “Hardly. After all, any man is capable of villainy when confronted with a temptation he can’t resist.”

Spotting Apollo by the main mast, Lucy tore her gaze away. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I shall see if your quartermaster would be kind enough to escort me back to my…cell.”

“Lucy?” The husky query stopped her. Not Miss Snow with its sharp, mocking edge, but Lucy —tender, bewitching, and fraught with memories. “Now that you’re not pointing a gun at my heart, you can believe what you like. But I didn’t hire those men. And I’ll regret to my dying day leaving you alone in that alley.”

She inclined her head, aching to believe him, but fearing he’d once again think her a deluded fool if she did.

Gerard watched her silent battle, wishing its outcome weren’t so vital to him.

When Lucy finally tilted her grimy face to him, her eyes were sparkling with a haughty impertinence he had feared was lost forever. “I can’t say that I believe you, sir, but I have no proof to the contrary. If I did, Pudge would be sewing up you instead of your topsail.”

With that dubious absolution, she marched across the deck and captured his quartermaster. Gerard met Apollo’s gaze over her head, offering him a gesture and a faint nod. His mate’s stoic face briefly registered surprise, but he saluted his captain to signal his unquestioning obedience.

Lucy had been generous enough to gift him with a fragment of her trust. Even if it cost him his tenuous peace of mind, Gerard could afford to do no less.

The hold didn’t seem nearly as confusing when navigated by Apollo’s confident strides. Lucy was forced to trot to keep up.

“Does your head ache frightfully, Apollo? I’m very sorry about your accident. I shan’t throw a pillow at the door again.”

He rubbed the lump ruining the symmetry of his sleek pate. “I didn’t mind the pillow, missie, but I do wish you’d stop threatening to shoot the Captain.”

“I’ll consider it,” she muttered, refusing to make any promises.

He escorted her inside the great cabin, then turned to go. She poked her head out the open door. “Apollo?”

“Aye, missie?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He frowned as if deeply puzzled, then broke into a broad grin. “Your lunch! I’ll fetch it right away.”

Lucy was surprised to realize she was ravenous. She would never have suspected that attempted mutiny was such a stimulant to the appetite. “Not lunch. The door. You forgot to lock the door.”

He continued on his way, calling back over his shoulder. “No need. The Captain has given you the run of the ship.”

Lucy sank against the doorframe, her knees weakened by a long denied hunger sharper than that for food. Apollo might not realize it, but the Captain had given her something infinitely more precious than just the run of his ship.

Gerard’s breeches and shirt had been a poor fit, but with a few artful nips and tucks by Pudge, Tarn’s cast-offs fit Lucy as if they’d been tailored for her. Her slender, boyishly clad figure became a familiar sight on the Retribution ’s decks in the days to come.

Once Tarn lost his fear that she was going to whip out a parasol and whack him across his freckled nose, he became a most amiable companion, escorting her about the ship with the vastly superior tolerance of an elder cousin. Lucy suspected he didn’t often get the opportunity to lord his knowledge over someone less informed than he.

The ship itself seemed to have been designed by a maniacal genius with a perverse sense of humor. Its decks and hold were riddled with secret companionways. Lucy lived in fear of dropping through a hidden trapdoor, triggered by nothing more than the innocent action of brushing against the mizzenmast or peeping through a gunport.

Although its taciturn captain remained an enigma to her, the ship was not so reluctant to surrender its secrets.

A pirate vessel’s only salvation lay in being faster, sneakier, and meaner than her opponents. The Retribution excelled in all three. Every bit of visible wood on the boat had been stained dark. Gerard had replaced the traditional canvas sails with black double silk, an extravagant but effective method of masking the ship’s path through the indigo waters of night. An oversized replica of a galley stove squatted in the stern, equipped to belch out clouds of steam to confuse pursuers.

A false deck had been built into the bulwark, thus explaining the ship’s deserted appearance on the night Lucy had first sighted her. The shell could be rolled over the fo’c’sle, quarterdeck, and aftercastle in the event of attack, leaving the crew free to manipulate the ship from below, using an elaborate combination of pulleys, mirrors, and curved spying glasses. The flush false deck also gave them the advantages of speed and agility under sail.

All of those clever modifications allowed Gerard to run the ship with a crew of ninety men, only half of what he should have required. Pudge doubled as both sailmaker and sailmaster. Apollo labored as quartermaster and kept Gerard’s logs in his flawless, elegant hand. Only the navigator had one job, his sole task keeping them on whatever mysterious course Gerard had charted.

As Tarn hastened to explain, the schooner had been designed for rapid attack and quick retreat, but her most formidable weapon lay in the reputation of her captain. The whispered name of Captain Doom alone could coax most merchant ships, awkward, under-gunned, and pregnant with heavy cargo, to surrender without a fight.

A lingering twinge of navy pride forced Lucy to stiffly retaliate with, “That doesn’t make him any match for one of His Majesty’s warships. A well-placed broadside could reduce this floating circus to so much flotsam.”

Tarn’s green eyes shone with admiration. “That’s where ye’re wrong, Miss Lucy. Cap’n’s the very best. He studied navy strategy in his younger days. It’s almost as if he knows what they’re thinkin’ afore they do.”

Lucy was discomfited by the reminder of what Gerard might have accomplished had her father not robbed him of his career. And his freedom.

It was impossible for Lucy not to think of freedom beneath the banner of azure blue that unfurled from horizon to horizon each dawn. Impossible not to think of it while leaning over the forward rail with the wind tossing her hair, the sun warming her back, the cool salt spray peppering her cheeks. How was it possible that as Gerard’s defenseless captive, she had never felt so free?

Free to read the morning away on deck or simply drowse in the sun. Free to watch the men at their tasks or badger Apollo for tales of his native Africa.

The spontaneity of life aboard the Retribution was irresistible. Except for the bells tolling the changing of the watch, time might have ceased to exist. Unlike the worker ants toiling beneath her father’s command, there was nothing regimented about Gerard’s crew except for their common and unspoken desire to run the sleek schooner to the best of their abilities.

These men laughed whenever they wanted, frequently burst into song, and paused in trimming the sails to swig rum from a jug or dance a merry jig. They censored neither their jokes or opinions, engaging in good-natured fisticuffs if the occasion warranted, but never forgetting that if any one of them dared to draw steel, he would suffer the traditional penalty of forty stripes.

Lucy’s chief amazement stemmed from their treatment of her. A drawing room full of the most impeccably mannered gentlemen in London couldn’t have treated her with any more deference. Some, like Pudge, were shy. Others, like Tarn, bold enough to court her favor. Even the murderous Fidget, with his pronounced facial tic, inclined his bushy head to kiss her hand upon being introduced to her one sunny afternoon.

“My, my,” she whispered to Tarn as the friendly little killer went back to waxing a bolt of sail thread. “They must have heard of my father’s reputation. If any harm comes to me, the consequences will be quite grave.”

Tarn snorted. “Not any graver than gettin’ their nostrils sliced. That’s what the Cap’n’s promised to any one of ’em fool eno’ to so much as wink at his woman.”

The Captain’s woman . A treacherous tingle passed through Lucy. “But I’m not…” She hesitated. Perhaps it wouldn’t be wise to refute such a fable. What if Gerard had only concocted it to keep his men at bay?

She couldn’t imagine why the crew would believe such an outrageous claim. Their captain had managed to avoid her presence at every turn, no easy task aboard a three-masted schooner.

The glint of sunlight on brass drew her gaze to the lookout nest at foretop. A man stood within its confines, the breadth of his shoulders and the arrogant grace of his bearing unmistakable. Instead of searching the horizon for enemy ships, he had shamelessly trained his spyglass on her.

Lucy’s breath caught in an odd mingling of outrage and gratification. “The nerve of that man,” she muttered, but Tarn was already out of earshot, scaling the rigging with the lithe skill of a monkey.

Regardless of what they’d been told, Gerard’s crew seemed to sense that their truce was an armed one. They had a tendency to vanish when he appeared, as if fearing to stray once again into their line of fire.

At Ionia Lucy had jerked her draperies shut against Gerard’s prying eyes. Here she was free to indulge the childish, but far more satisfying, urge to poke her tongue out at him and practice an insolent hand gesture taught to her by Digby, one of his own grizzled gunners. She wasn’t quite clear on its meaning but she suspected Gerard would be.

She was correct.

“Wouldn’t I love to?” Gerard murmured, lowering the spyglass with a rueful chuckle. He could also think of several more compelling uses for that saucy little tongue of hers.

He watched her scamper after Tarn, holding his breath until she reached a safe perch. He didn’t really need the spyglass. Every detail of Lucy’s appearance was etched in his memory with merciless clarity.

He would have thought it impossible, but the sun had bleached her hair an ethereal shade paler. Her fair skin was kissed by an apricot glow and her features had lost the pinched look that had plagued them at Ionia. He didn’t know what had done the most for her—the fresh, salty air or escaping the smothering weight of the Admiral’s thumb.

He wondered again at the wisdom of granting her so much independence. He’d locked her in the cabin originally to keep her out of his reach. Now he had to severely restrict his own movements just to keep from tripping over her.

She was everywhere he turned: the two braids she’d taken to wearing inclined over a sail as Pudge taught her a difficult stitch; reading aloud from one of Defoe’s novels, his men gathered around her like children around their mother’s skirts; leaning against the forward rail at twilight, gazing pensively across the billows as the damson-tinted sea doused the flaming ball of the sun.

He was disturbed by the ease with which the dour Miss Snow had enchanted his crew. He knew they were hungry for feminine company in all of its guises, but he was the one starving for lack of it. Her unadorned beauty swept through him like a bracing blast of salt spray. Her chiming laugh tormented him until he began to regret his own charity with a violence that alarmed him.

He snapped the spyglass shut, knowing there was only one place to take a temper this grim. As he swung down from the foretop, he didn’t see the gamin face that peeked out from behind the capstan to follow his progress.

Lucy tiptoed through the shadowy hold toward the iron-banded door, recalling her last inauspicious attempt to breach the mysterious chamber. Gerard had disappeared into it less than five minutes before and it had taken her that long to muster her courage to follow.

Why should she be afraid? she asked herself. After all, he’d expressly forbidden her no area of the schooner, so he could hardly berate her for snooping. She swallowed a squeak of doubt. Could he?

She pressed her ear to the door. Much to her relief, she didn’t hear any screams of agony or desperate voices pleading for mercy. She did hear the cadences of male voices, raised slightly as if in anger.

Gerard’s clipped words were muffled by the thick oak, the answering drawl even more pronounced than his own. Lucy frowned. She didn’t recognize Apollo’s bass rumble, Tarn’s brogue, or Pudge’s timid murmur. She concentrated harder, deciphering snatches of conversation between each pause in the heated dialogue.

Gerard was saying, “…no one to blame but yourself…still be safely tucked in her own bed if it weren’t for your little indiscretion.”

Lucy’s mouth fell open. As far as she knew, she was the only her within a thousand knots.

Her fascination with herself as a topic of Gerard’s conversation enabled her to translate an entire retort from his companion. “Ah, yes, but would she be alone? And as I recall, you seduced more than a few bored noblemens’ wives in your heyday.”

Gerard’s reply was succinct to the point of obscenity. Lucy recoiled. His master gunner, Digby, spoke profanity as if it were a second language, but even he hadn’t taught her that particular phrase.

Gerard’s companion seemed to be more amused than alarmed by the anatomically impossible suggestion. His reply floated toward the door on wings of sarcasm. “… locked me up for my protection or hers?”

Rapid footsteps approached the door. Lucy barely had time to dart around the corner before it flew open. She crouched in the shadows as Gerard emerged. He didn’t look nearly as angry as she’d feared, but perhaps, she thought grimly, she was the only one capable of inciting him to a truly murderous rage.

Her heart sank as he locked the door behind him and pocketed a brass key. She huddled in the dark long after he’d passed, shaken by the realization that she wasn’t the only prisoner aboard the Retribution .

Late that night, Lucy lay alone on the aftercastle, a discarded pile of sail her pillow and a vast sprinkling of stars her only blanket. The Admiral had taught her to think in rigid shades of black and white, but now she found herself wandering in a gray netherworld, unable to separate shadow from substance and no closer to solving the mystery of Captain Doom than when she’d begun.

Was he the man who had vowed to guard her life as his own—tender, patient, fiercely protective? Or was he a man hell-bent on vengeance—embittered, ruthless, cynical, and quick-tempered? For the first time, her bewildered heart was forced to entertain the notion that those two diverse men might be one and the same.

His men seemed to both revere and genuinely like him. He maintained discipline with an iron fist and ready wit, yet rarely impinged upon the freedoms they held so dear. While the Admiral’s fierce reputation had been measured by the number of stripes he’d inflicted on his crew’s backs, Gerard’s threats of reprisal for infractions of the Retribution ’s code of law were just that—threats. His men respected him too much to test the limits of his patience. They seemed, to value his praise more than they feared his punishment.

They were men who did not give their loyalty lightly, yet Lucy had discovered in the past few days that there wasn’t a man aboard who wouldn’t consider it an honor to lay down his life if their captain required it.

Do you know what it is for a captain to outlive his crew, Lucy?

She was the only one who knew it was the one sacrifice he would never ask of them.

Exhausted from battling the present, Lucy closed her eyes to float in a haze of memory. Gerard puffed a smoke ring at her nose, his eyes sparkling with mischief behind Pudge’s homely spectacles. He dusted a sprinkling of cinnamon from her lower lip with his little finger. He twirled her in the dizzying arms of a waltz, his powerful hand encompassing the small of her back.

She was so beguiled by her visions that she didn’t even start in surprise when her eyes drifted open to find Gerard leaning over her. Her dreaming hunger for him was such that she couldn’t stop herself from reaching up to trace his beardless jaw with her fingertips.

She blinked, lost in a mist of confusion. A dream indeed, for this was a different Gerard. A Gerard unscarred by time and disillusionment. A Gerard whose bright eyes were unshadowed by cynicism. Her own guilt must have led her to conjure up this creature. This was the Gerard who might have been had it not been for her father’s treachery.

She had neither the strength nor the will to resist as his beautifully carved mouth descended on hers. Her lips parted without coaxing for a kiss that was dazzling, deft, and provocative.

And totally wrong.

It was bestowed with the skill of an artist who’d spent countless hours of practice perfecting his technique, but it lacked the elusive spice of maturity. It was a mild spring shower over the English countryside instead of a wild and perilous storm at sea, and it left her curiously, but completely, unmoved.

Lucy’s eyes popped open in shock as an acerbic, and all too familiar, voice rang out.

“I had thought to introduce you to my brother someday, Lucy, but I can see the two of you have already met.”