Page 29 of Thief of Hearts
C HAPTER T WENTY-EIGHT
L UCY HAD IMAGINED A MYRIAD OF REACTIONS to her revelation, but the stark horror reflected in Gerard’s eyes was not among them. He sank back on his heels, gazing at her in mute shock.
She supposed it was a bit late for modesty, but she drew the counterpane over her shoulders just the same and swiped a bothersome tear from her cheek. The attack had come too soon after their loving, leaving her with no defenses.
She forced a watery smile through her chattering teeth. “It seems Kevin and I have more in common than you thought. We’re both bastards.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s all in my mother’s diary.” Lucy sniffed, dabbing at her nose with the back of her hand. “The really tragic part is that she loved the Admiral just as much as I once did. But she finally had to accept that he would never return to her bed, that his interest in her had been nothing more than a brief infatuation, another conquest of the French. That’s when she turned to other men. We should be celebrating, you know. I’m not the daughter of your enemy after all.” She disguised the pain of the words with a flippant shrug. “I’m not anyone’s daughter.”
Lucy had thought herself privy to the most potent tenderness Gerard could offer, but his hands cupped her face with such reverence it was as if he could absorb her pain through his fingertips. A rumbling salvo of cannonfire rocked them.
His eyes darkened with dawning agony. “Dear God, what have I done?”
Then he was gone, snatching his shirt and leaving her shivering in the heap of blankets that still smelled of the spice of his skin and the musk of their coupling.
Wracked by chills, Lucy hugged the counterpane around her and stumbled to the porthole. The Argonaut , nearly obscured by smoke, belched another round of fire. Was the Admiral pacing the freshly swabbed deck, she wondered, bellowing orders in his stentorian voice? Orders that would reduce the Retribution and the woman he had given his name and raised as his daughter to splinters of wood and bone.
Anger surged through her veins, warming her. She had always believed that if she could only be good enough, her father would love her. But now that Gerard had given her an intoxicating taste of true love, she realized the Admiral was nothing but a petty tyrant, incapable of loving anyone but himself.
Lucy narrowed her eyes as the smoke cleared, its ugly columns dispersed by the rising wind. A full moon bathed the Argonaut in unholy light. The seventy-four-gunner sat motionless, poised to pounce on its helpless prey, the abrupt silence of its guns more ominous than a fresh barrage of cannonfire.
A terrible suspicion flickered to life in Lucy’s mind.
“No,” she whispered. Then more loudly, “No!”
She dropped the blanket and snatched up Tarn’s shirt. The hem fell to her knees so she wasted no time wriggling into the breeches. She raced for the door, praying she wasn’t already too late.
This time the twists and turns of the Retribution ’s hold failed to confound Lucy. Most of the lanterns had been extinguished by the ship’s uneven pitching, but she plunged through the darkness with blind confidence, her love for the vessel’s captain the only light she needed.
Within seconds she’d reached the mirror hiding the secret companionway. She pounded on it, but it refused to budge. Its hidden latch had been wedged shut by one of the Argonaut ’s blows. Lucy collapsed against the cool glass, fighting her first impulse to weep with frustration. Instead, she shoved back the hair straggling over her eyes and glanced frantically around, finally locating a fallen timber small enough for her to lift. Without an ounce of remorse, she drew it back and smashed her reflection into a thousand fragments.
Heedless of its sharp edges, she swept the glass aside and scrambled up the ladder. She heaved open the trapdoor only to be engulfed in roiling smoke. She batted at it, coughing to clear her lungs. A pile of crippled sail dangled to her left, extinguished, but still smoldering.
She fanned the smoke from her stinging eyes only to have them fill with tears.
She was too late.
The flag of surrender rippled against the pallid circle of the moon, its grace a stark contrast to the charred destruction surrounding it. It was a measure of his men’s faith in him that even as Gerard prepared to surrender their beloved vessel, not one of them protested. They stood silently on the battered deck, their heads bowed, but their shoulders unbent.
Lucy passed among them like a pale wraith. She knew she should be embarrassed by her flimsy attire, her tangled hair, the scandalous signs of Gerard’s possession, but she had found among their ranks all the things the Admiral had taken such perverse pleasure in withholding—acceptance without judgment, affection without reproach, a nobility born not of birth or military stature, but of behavior.
She stopped in front of Gerard. Her low voice trembled with emotion. “You can’t do this. Do you hear me? I won’t allow it.”
He stared right through her, as if he’d been struck both blind and deaf by the enormity of his actions. Seeing no help there, Lucy turned to Tarn. His freckled face was stark white.
“You mustn’t let him do this, Tarn. I forbid it!”
The young Irishman gazed at the distant horizon, his hands fumbling with a battered string of rosary beads.
Lucy ran to Pudge. Her heart lurched to discover a fat crack running through the right lens of his spectacles. Somehow that was the worst affront of all. “Please, Pudge. Try to talk to him. Tell him he’s making a terrible mistake.” Pudge only shook his head sadly. “Is this what you ran away for? So that wretched wife of yours could watch you hang at Newgate?”
Dashing her tears away before they could blind her, she turned to Apollo. An ugly gash marred his temple. She clutched at his arm. “Oh, Apollo, dear Apollo, if anyone can stop him, you can! My father won’t bring him to trial. He’ll kill him. Now. Tonight. And he’ll see the rest of you hanged or jailed. Is that what you want? To spend the remainder of your life in chains?” The former slave stood unmoved by her pleas, his features carved in stark ebony.
A lone man slouched against the quarterdeck rail. Lucy seized upon him with desperate hope, fighting hysteria. “Kevin! He’s your brother! Surely you can make him see reason. Even if we surrender, the Admiral will find a way to silence me. He’s realized that I know about his privateering scheme. I can discredit him. Destroy his precious reputation!” A thread of blood trickled from Kevin’s fair hair. She brushed it from his brow with trembling fingers.
Kevin gently pushed her hand away, his wry, pitying gaze so like his brother’s that it chilled her to the bone.
She pivoted on the deck, turning her beseeching gaze on each man in turn. Once she had stood in that very spot and demanded they betray their captain; now she would entreat them to spare his life. The wind whipped at her hair, tore the tears from her cheeks.
“Don’t you see? He’ll find a way to silence all of you. Why do you think he only brought one ship? Because he didn’t want any bloody witnesses!”
She nearly collapsed with relief when a warm pair of hands closed over her upper arms from behind. At last, someone to help her make their captain see reason! But the voice in her ear was Gerard’s, its rich cadences deepened by regret.
“I can’t risk battle with you aboard. At least this way you’ll have a chance. If the Admiral blows us out of the water, you’ll have no chance at all. These men chose this life and, by consequence, this death. Even Digby had a hand in his own fate.” He steered her to port, showing her not out of cruelty, but out of love, the grim, canvas-wrapped bundle lying limp on the fo’c’sle.
Lucy’s knees faltered, but Gerard was there to support her as he had always been.
Grief roughened his grip as he drew her against him, shielding her from the wind. “You’re not like them, Lucy. I dragged you away from your safe, orderly life and carried you aboard this vessel by force. You had no choice.”
Lucy pulled away from the refuge of his grasp to face him. Determination banished her hysteria; her voice was as crisp as a bell ringing across the waves. “I’m choosing now. Don’t do this. I’m not worth it.”
Gerard threw back his head with a despairing laugh. His eyes shone with admiration and another, far more fragile, emotion, that robbed Lucy of her breath. “Oh, God, but you are, angel. You’re positively priceless.”
Hope flared in her heart. She fisted her hands in his shirt and shook him, her voice rising to a shout to combat the wind, the flapping of that terrible flag, and loudest of all, the smug silence from the Argonaut . “Then don’t let him win, by God! Fight! Fight for me! ”