Page 31 of Thief of Hearts

C HAPTER T HIRTY

A N ICY BLAST OF WIND SKATED ACROSS the frothy whitecaps, stirring the cauldron of the North Atlantic into a forbidding witch’s brew. It sliced through the coarse wool of Lucy’s peacoat, but she didn’t even shiver. She’d grown accustomed to its bitter caress, preferring its bleak honesty to the warm, cozy deceit of a cabin that promised shelter, but left her heart exposed until it was raw and bleeding.

A thin layer of ice coated the forward rail where her bloodless fingers rested. She wished for nothing more than a commensurate numbness, but perversely enough, she seemed to have lost her ability to blunt her emotions. She hurt all the time now, a dull, hollow ache in the pit of her stomach. Yet since that day on the beach at Tenerife, she had failed to shed a single tear except for those whipped from her eyes by the relentless wind.

After the sunny skies and azure seas of the Canary Isles, she found the gray skies and leaden billows of the North Atlantic soothing to her raw senses. She stood stiffly at the rail as daylight faded into twilight, measuring the seamless passage of another day.

Gerard was determined to return her to London before the Admiral had time to sic his sea dogs on them. Laboring beneath his curt instructions, it had taken the crew of the Retribution less than three days to make their mistress seaworthy for the voyage. To chop and fit a new foremast, to swab her decks of the charred consequences of battle, to repair the shredded black gown of her sails. To bury her salty-tongued master gunner in the sandy soil that had welcomed so many of his kindred seafarers.

In those three days and in the two and a half weeks that had followed, Gerard had kept himself aloof from her. If they happened to meet on some narrow stretch of deck or brush past each other in the shadowy belly of the hold, he would inquire gently as to her well-being, then excuse himself, averting his eyes as if fearing they might confess what his lips could not.

The crew had taken their cue from him, growing even more subdued as they neared the mouth of the Channel. Tarn’s youthful exuberance and Kevin’s rakish charm were muted by a pall of dejection. Apollo’s lilting island melodies were supplanted by wistful spirituals that sang of a home never to be reached in this pilgrim lifetime. Lucy supposed they would miss their funny little “pet” when she was gone, but after a while they would forget her. Perhaps their captain would get them a pig.

She was still standing at the rail, bathed by the pale globe of the moon, when the Retribution’ s sleek bow ploughed into the choppy waters of the Channel, her lanterns extinguished at her captain’s command for silent running.

The miasma of gloom hanging over the ship was disturbed by a commotion at port. Lucy tried not to care, but the ship had truly seemed a ghost ship in the past few days and any sign of life was a diversion.

She ducked beneath the foreboom to discover Apollo and Gerard standing at the port rail and Kevin lounging against the foremast shrouds as if they were a hammock. Her heart quickened at the sight of Gerard’s broad shoulders silhouetted against the night.

“Thought you might want a look at this, Captain,” Apollo said, handing him a spyglass.

Lucy had no need of a spyglass to see a flash of orange fire in the distance, vivid and shocking against the murky canvas of the night.

“As far as I can tell,” Apollo offered as Gerard surveyed the scene, “it appears to be a Royal Navy frigate, under fire from two French privateers.”

“Pirates, you mean,” Lucy said grimly, joining them at the rail. “We haven’t been at war with France since the Peace of Amiens was negotiated. They’re probably Napoleon’s minions, masquerading as common thieves.”

Gerard maintained his enigmatic silence.

“I vote we throw in with the French,” Kevin suggested brightly. “When has His Majesty’s navy ever done us any favors?”

Without a word, Gerard handed the spyglass to Lucy. Their eyes met briefly as their fingers brushed, the most intimate contact they had enjoyed since that day on the beach in Tenerife. Lucy brought the tiny telescope to her eye, granting him his wordless request.

The hapless frigate was taking a brutal pounding beneath the guns of the twin square-riggers. As Lucy watched, a spectacular broadside tore a jagged rip in the fabric of her stern. The roiling smoke cleared; another blaze of cannonfire illuminated the modest man-of-war’s familiar figurehead. Lucy gasped in dismay.

“What is it?” Gerard murmured.

She lowered the spyglass, turning her frightened gaze on him. “The Courageous . Lord Howell’s ship. He requested command of her after his victories at Copenhagen. He wanted to patrol the Channel so he could spend time writing his memoirs and getting to know his children again.”

Apollo bowed his head.

Dread seized her, its icy grip tightened by images of Sylvie throwing her slender arms around her papa’s neck; little Gilligan riding him like a pony, his plump, jam-smeared hands curled in the Earl’s graying hair; Lord Howell lining up his boisterous sons to teach them to knot their cravats. Now that Lucy had no father of her own, the prospect of losing such a splendid one was too tragic to contemplate.

“His children,” she echoed, oblivious to the effect of her imploring words on Gerard.

He pried the spyglass from her tense fingers. “Cannons?” he snapped.

She shrugged helplessly, not seeing how the armament of the doomed ship could possibly matter. “Twenty? Twenty-five?”

“Crew?”

“Over a hundred.”

Kevin sprang out of his comfortable seat as if someone had touched a lit fuse to the impeccably polished toes of his boots. “Not another word, sweeting. Don’t encourage his lunacy. Can’t you see what he intends to do?”

As Lucy met Gerard’s wry gaze, she knew exactly what he intended to do. And what it might cost him.

She clenched the rail as her desperate gaze shot to the distant battle. Even from this distance, she could see the Courageous was faltering. It would be only a matter of minutes before the French boarded her, stripping her of booty before she sank without a trace into the icy arms of the sea.

Every man is master of his own fate .

Her own words haunted her. This might be Gerard’s last chance to fulfill his dream of serving country and king. A dream he had cynically forsaken after it had been tarnished by the corruption of men who served only their own greed.

She knew deep in her heart that she would never be able to divert him from his course and she wasn’t about to lower herself in his eyes by trying. If he was the sort of man who could sail blithely past the Courageous , ignoring her distress, he wouldn’t be the man she loved.

Warned by the fierce glint of pride in Lucy’s eyes, Kevin staggered back against the rigging, swearing in defeat.

Lucy clicked her heels together and lifted a hand to her brow in a formal salute. “Powder Mouse Snow, sir, reporting for duty.”

The phantom ship melted out of the night in eerie silence, her silk sails billowing like the raven wings of an avenging angel. Tendrils of mist enveloped her deserted decks on a night when there was no mist. Her graceful rigging glistened silver in the moonlight, a deadly web of destruction.

At her inevitable approach, a handful of French unfortunates threw themselves overboard, preferring certain death to the specter of the unknown.

Later, many of the more superstitious French sailors would swear to their skeptical, but intrigued, First Consul that it was not a single ship, but an entire fleet of demon ships, spawned from the docks of hell by a Satan jealous of Napoleon’s ambitions to conquer what had been promised to him—the world. Their suspicions were reinforced by the terrible swiftness with which the sleek raptor swept down upon them and the chaos that ensued.

Their British prey forgotten, the square-riggers reeled in a desperate attempt to escape the inescapable. They careened through the waves, trapped in a vortex of their own terror. The relentless ghost ship sliced between them with only inches to spare, gliding so swiftly and so soundlessly that by the time a panicked gunner could get off a shot, it had vanished from sight.

The errant cannonball smashed into the rigging of its sister ship, shredding her topsail. The ships collided, shattering the abrupt silence with the protesting wail of splintering oak.

Before the phantom ship could rematerialize, and heedless of the further damage they did to their vessels in their haste, they disentangled themselves and made for the far horizon and France without so much as a backward glance.

To the Englishmen aboard the rapidly sinking Courageous , who had already been making peace with whatever God they served, the reappearance of the phantom schooner was received with mixed emotions of delight and dread. The shadow of her bow fell over them, followed by a grim creaking, as if the rusty gates of heaven were being thrown open to receive repentant sinners.

They stood knee-deep and shivering in the frigid water, wondering if they would live to tell their grandchildren of the Retribution ’s miraculous intervention. Did she represent salvation or damnation for their battle-weary souls?

As if in answer, a rope ladder unfurled from the heavens, smacking into their upturned faces. They snatched at it with grateful hands, not caring for the moment whether they were climbing to meet a loving or a vengeful God.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this. Have you lost your bloody mind?” Kevin muttered out of the corner of his mouth, his jaw rigid with disapproval.

“I haven’t much choice,” Gerard hissed in reply, watching from the fo’c’sle as the pale, sodden sailors filed aboard a deck already crowded with the somber members of his own crew. “After taking such pains to rescue them from the French, it would have been a bit ill-mannered to let them drown, don’t you think?”

Kevin returned a sulky shrug, but Gerard knew his brother wasn’t as bloodthirsty as he appeared to be. He was just half out of his mind with worry. For him.

Gerard was seized by a similar insanity as Lucy emerged from the hold. He had expressly forbidden her the lower gundeck, fearing it might come into use, but from the smudge of grime on her nose and her guilty expression, it appeared she had managed to wiggle her way into some sort of mischief after all.

He started toward her, desperate to shield her from the wildly curious stares of their new passengers, but a jubilant cry stopped him in his tracks.

“Lucy! Lucy, my girl, is that you?”

Like the exceptional commander he was, Lord Howell had chosen to be the last man to abandon his foundering vessel. As a consequence, he was soaked all the way to the trailing ends of his gray hair. As his men half assisted, half dragged him over the starboard rail by the braid of his uniform, he sneezed heartily, then shoved their clinging hands away to stagger across the deck to Lucy.

Lucy quaked at the blunt shock of emerging from the hold only to be enveloped in Lord Howell’s soggy, familiar embrace. He couldn’t have greeted his own daughter with any more heartfelt enthusiasm. His generosity tore open her fresh wounds, letting in the air they needed to heal. She crumpled into his arms, allowing herself the long-denied luxury of crying on a shoulder broad enough to absorb her tears.

“There, there, girl,” he murmured when the tumultuous shaking of her shoulders had eased. “Stand back, why don’t you? Let me have a look at you.”

She obeyed unthinkingly, dabbing at her nose with the back of her hand. Lord Howell surveyed her masculine garments with a curious eye, then beamed at her with genuine affection. “None the worse for your adventures, I see. Your poor father has been going out of his mind with worry. Almost got his silly self court-martialed by absconding with one of the King’s warships without waiting for His Majesty’s approval. Of course, His Majesty, being a father himself, took pity on him when he returned, half mad with grief at failing to retrieve you.”

Mad indeed, Lucy thought bitterly. Probably foaming at the mouth with rage.

She was spared fabricating a suitable reply by the abrupt shift of Lord Howell’s attention to the fo’c’sle behind her.

The Earl’s mouth fell open in disbelief. “Claremont? Is that you, fellow? I thought you’d skulked off in shame after the abduction. Good God, I hadn’t realized Lucien had hired you to rescue his little girl. What a splendid job you’ve done! You’re quite the hero, aren’t you?”

Lucy held her breath, afraid to even blink for fear her expression would betray her. A wild hope thundered in her breast as she realized the Admiral, in his desperation to conceal his own misdeeds, still hadn’t made Gerard’s identity public. Please, God, she silently prayed, turning to watch him descend from the fo’c’sle with her heart in her throat, please let him brazen it out.

Brazen it out he did, swaggering across the quarterdeck with a dazzling bravado that made her mouth go dry with yearning. “Spare me your accolades, sir,” he drawled. “They might impress Gerard Claremont, but I can assure you Captain Doom hasn’t the vaguest interest in them.”