Page 5 of Thief of Hearts

C HAPTER F OUR

London

“T HE ABOMINABLE WRETCH!”

Lucy flinched as the Admiral’s fist crashed down on the newspaper spread open on his writing desk.

“Captain Doom again, Father?” she murmured, resting her paintbrush on the rim of the water jar to hide the sudden trembling of her hands.

“Who else? Just listen to what the scoundrel’s done now.” Ignoring his brass-handled cane as he often did when incensed, the Admiral rose to pace the drawing room, crumpling the hapless Gazette between his fists. “‘After bringing the HMS Lothario sharply to heel,’” he read, “‘the cunning captain not only stripped the ship of her booty, but her crew of their uniforms as well.’ Cunning captain indeed! The man may be cunning, but he’s no captain. He’s a pirate! A pox on decent seafaring men! How dare the press try to paint him as some sort of colorful scoundrel!”

Lucy smiled behind her easel to envision those bastions of nautical dignity reduced to shivering in their flannel drawers. “That is what the newspapers pay them for.”

He tossed down the paper in disgust. “I can assure you it costs far more to keep them quiet. If I hadn’t lined their pockets with gold, they would have turned your own encounter with the brigand into some sort of romantic escapade. You would have been ruined.”

Lucy’s smile faded. Her father of all people should know she hadn’t been “ruined.” As if believing her too harebrained to understand his tactless questions after her fortuitous rescue by the Channel patrol, he had insisted on having her examined by his personal physician. Over a month had passed since then, but the memory of those cool, impersonal hands on her still made Lucy shudder.

Her father mistook her shiver for one of fear. “No need for hysterics, girl,” he barked, startling her into dropping her paintbrush. “That rapscallion will never lay his hands on you again.”

Lucy rescued the brush and swirled misty fingers of blue through the crystalline water, remembering that dark interval when her fate had rested entirely in Doom’s implacable hands. They were all she had really known of him. Ruthless. Tender. Mocking. Stroking her nape. Cupping her cheek. Threading through her hair to hold her captive to his will.

Jerking herself out of her reverie, she tapped the paintbrush on the side of the jar, making the glass ring. “I have nothing to fear from Captain Doom, Father. He swore he was coming to collect his debts from you, not me.”

He grunted skeptically. “So you say.”

Avoiding his eyes, Lucy dabbed fluffy whitecaps on another of the seascapes her father adored, hoping he’d be pleased with the results. She’d never been able to hide anything from him. Even as a little girl, she’d often confessed her rare moments of mischief before they’d been discovered rather than risk even a hint of his reproach.

Yet she’d hoarded stolen moments of her encounter with Doom, fearing her father’s scrutiny would twist them into something monstrous and shameful.

Even now, his sharp eyes were assessing her as if it were she, and not Doom, who was the criminal. “You’re absolutely certain the wretch gave you no reason for his personal grudge against me? Spewed forth no accusations? Cast no slur upon my good name?”

Sighing, Lucy packed up her easel, resigning herself to yet another grueling interrogation where she would be forced to repeat every word and nuance culled from her encounter with the pirate. Almost.

She was saved by the appearance of Smythe in the vaulted archway. Her father disdained the gentry’s habit of adorning their servants in livery, preferring the military simplicity of cropped blue naval jacket and starched white knee breeches. Since Smythe had spent his youth as the Admiral’s chief petty officer before retiring to household service, the ensemble suited him. It was impossible to determine the butler’s age from his appearance. His dark hair was thickly salted with silver, yet his form was as trim and dapper as a much younger man’s.

He clicked his booted heels and gave her father a smart salute. “A Mr. Benson to see you, sir.”

The Admiral drew a compass and an astrolabe from his waistcoat pocket before finally locating his trusty chronometer, missing the amused wink Smythe shot Lucy before he exited.

“Twelve hundred hours on the dot,” the Admiral proclaimed. “Excellent! If there’s anything I can’t abide in a solicitor, it’s tardiness. The applicants should be fast on his heels.”

“Applicants?” Lucy echoed.

This time her father swept up the Gazette with triumph instead of disgust. He tossed it into her lap, stabbing his ruddy finger at the open page.

“‘Wanted,’” she read. “‘Reputable male skilled in art of protection. Military experience preferred. All inquiries to be directed to Heronius Benson, Esquire.’”

Before she could absorb the words, Mr. Heronius Benson himself strode into the drawing room and pumped her father’s extended hand. “Such a pleasure, Admiral. It’s not every day a man has the privilege of meeting a living legend.”

“I should say not,” the Admiral agreed jovially.

Lucy frowned at the newspaper as the men exchanged jocular small talk. Doom’s threat must have spooked her father more than she realized. She’d never known Lucien Snow to hide behind any man.

Declining the glass of sherry the Admiral offered, Mr. Benson settled into a wing chair of burgundy leather. He nervously smoothed his few remaining tufts of hair over his shiny pate. “My associate has spent the past week interviewing prospects. He’s promised to send over only the best of the lot.”

Rapid footsteps thudded toward the archway. Smythe’s clipped voice rang out. “I say, young man, get back here this instant!”

Astonished, Lucy dropped the paper. She’d never heard Smythe’s voice raised above its beautifully modulated baritone. Even more shocking was the sight of the staid butler sliding around the corner, his boots vainly seeking purchase on the polished parquet. His knuckles were curled in the collar of a young man straining against his grip.

The Admiral rose, his rigid posture making him tower over the low-slung writing desk. He despised a hubbub of any sort unless he was the direct cause of it.

Smythe avoided his icy glare. “Sorry, sir. He got past me.”

The Admiral’s contemptuous gaze raked the flailing pup. “If you’ve come to make a delivery, lad, I suggest you use the servant’s entrance.”

Smythe’s captive renewed his struggles, wiggling so fiercely that the butler was forced to free him or risk unraveling the remaining shreds of his dignity.

Shooting Smythe a triumphant look, the lad snatched off his battered cap. His freckled face had been scrubbed clean, but Lucy wagered she could have guessed his age by counting the layers of dirt around his neck.

“I ain’t no servant, sir. At least not yet. I come about the position.”

Lucy cringed with empathy at the boy’s crude brogue. The only thing her father hated worse than a Frenchman was an Irishman. The overgrown urchin favored her with such a beguiling grin that she could not help smiling shyly back.

“Lucinda!” her father snapped. “Don’t encourage the whelp!”

“I’m sorry, Father.” Cheeks flaming, she gazed at the half-finished seascape, wishing she could dive into the cool blues and grays and disappear.

The Admiral sank into his chair, cracking his bulbous knuckles. “Very well. You’re dismissed.”

Grateful for the reprieve, Lucy rose to go.

“Not you,” he snapped. She hastily sat as he jerked his head toward the young Irishman. “Him.”

The boy lunged forward, but Smythe already had him collared. “Don’t be so hasty, sir,” the boy pleaded. “I can scrap with the best of ’em. I’m small, but wiry.”

“As am I, lad,” Smythe said, plainly savoring the taste of victory as he dragged the interloper from the room.

The creak of the main door opening was followed by the muffled thumps of a body rolling down the front stairs. Lucy could almost see Smythe dusting off his immaculate hands.

Benson squirmed in his chair, but the Admiral pinned him into stillness with nothing more than an arch of one snowy eyebrow. Lucy busied herself with capping her paints, thankful that for once she wasn’t the recipient of that withering glare.

Even the sparse tufts of the solicitor’s hair seemed to wilt beneath its chill as the Admiral echoed ominously, “The best of the lot, eh?”

The Admiral’s words were to prove prophetic as the long afternoon wore on. The brash Irish youth, if not the most qualified, was without a doubt the cleanest of the lot. Lucy had never seen such a motley collection of men. None of them could have borne more than a passing acquaintance with soap or water.

An Oriental gentleman, who insisted on favoring them with a demonstration of his fighting skills, earned her father’s blistering dismissal by accidentally shattering the Admiral’s favorite bust of Captain Cook. A towering fellow, who shyly confessed his only experience with the criminal element lay in his many years as a pickpocket, was forcibly ejected by two footmen after Smythe caught him pilfering silver spoons from the tea tray.

After the footpad’s abrupt departure, Mr. Benson sank lower and lower into his chair until it seemed he might vanish altogether. His damp hair clung to his pate in defeated strands. The chronometer ticked away the minutes with ruthless efficiency as the Admiral lit a pipe and hunched behind the writing desk, puffing out billows of smoke like an angry dragon.

Lulled into near stupor by the potent combination of the fragrant smoke and the warmth of the autumn sun beating through the bay windows, Lucy was nodding over her cold tea when Smythe once again appeared in the doorway. His voice seemed to come from a great distance.

“A Mr. Claremont to see you, sir.”

Lucy frowned without opening her eyes. Was it her imagination or had Smythe lingered over the name as if it left a taste of foreboding in his mouth?

The Admiral’s voice dripped resigned contempt. “Send him in. He’s probably an escaped murderer or Captain Doom himself come to kill us all and put an end to this ridiculous farce.”

She heard Mr. Benson shift as if preparing to bolt. Spurred more by boredom than genuine curiosity, Lucy opened her eyes to lazy slits and peered through the haze of smoke to find a man standing beneath the archway.

A rather ordinary man, she thought sleepily. Her leisurely gaze drifted downward from his brown cloth cutaway tailcoat to the clinging doeskin pantaloons tucked into short leather boots. His garments were simple, but clean and neatly pressed. Even Smythe, who hovered in the doorway, eavesdropping shamelessly, would be loath to find fault with the crease in his trousers. His boots, though unfashionably scuffed, showed evidence of a recent buffing.

At the appearance of this model of presentability, Mr. Benson perked up, sniffing at the air like a hound on the scent of a fox.

The man was lean of hip and long of leg, but the breadth of his shoulders lent him an imposing air. He moved past Lucy’s corner with casual grace to approach the writing desk. A whiff of bayberry shaving soap made her nose tingle.

Oddly relieved that she’d escaped his notice, Lucy continued to study him. A pair of steel-framed temple spectacles perched on his nose. He drew off his hat. His neatly clipped hair just brushed his nape. Ordinary hair, she echoed. The shadows had painted it an innocuous shade of brown, but a persistent ray of sunlight sought and found in its depths a ripe hint of ginger.

He offered the Admiral a tentative hand. “Gerard Claremont, sir, at your service. Or at least I hope to be.”

There was nothing ordinary about that voice. Its drawled cadences poured over Lucy, stirring her dormant senses like a forbidden swallow of Jamaican rum—rich, dark, and sparkling.

“So you’ve come about the position, have you?” The Admiral ignored the man’s outstretched hand.

Mr. Claremont tactfully withdrew it, using it instead to shape the wide brim of his tan-crowned hat. Lucy’s gaze was drawn to his hands. Their backs, too, were sprinkled with crisp ginger. “I have.”

“Speak up, lad. I’ve no tolerance for mumblers.”

Claremont met his gaze squarely. “I have,” he repeated, his voice ringing with clarity. “And I’ve brought references.”

The Admiral grunted skeptically and held out his hand. Ignoring it, Claremont drew a brown envelope from his coat and tossed it on the desk. Lucy held her breath, waiting for her father to dress the man down for his deliberate insolence.

The Admiral studied Claremont from crown to boots, lips pursed, before shaking his head. Lucy was surprised to see an admiring gleam burnish his eyes.

Claremont waited patiently as the Admiral pawed through his desk drawers, muttering loudly beneath his breath. “Damned careless girl. Lost my favorite letter opener. Ivory-handled. Shot the elephant myself during my last African jaunt.”

Lucy sank deeper into the corner. She’d neglected to tell her father that she’d used his precious letter opener to stab Captain Doom. Not even his forgiveness would have been worth reliving that grim moment.

She gasped as an object appeared in Claremont’s hand. Not a letter opener, but a knife, its lethal blade glinting in the sunlight only inches from her father’s face. Mr. Benson beamed openly at the man’s bold display of dexterity.

Claremont wryly lifted an eyebrow, toeing the line between respect and mockery with a dancer’s uncanny grace. “May I, sir?”

The Admiral raised both hands in surrender. “Be my guest.”

Claremont slit open the envelope. The knife disappeared back where it had come from while Lucy’s father perused his references.

He shot Claremont an approving look. “Former Bow Street Runner, eh? Admirable calling. Done a lot to make the streets of London safer. Don’t suppose you’ve had any military experience? Army perhaps?” Then more hopefully. “Merchant marines? Royal Navy?”

Claremont threw back his head and laughed. Dazzled by the warm, rich sound, Lucy tried to remember if she’d ever heard anyone laugh in that room before. If she’d ever heard anyone laugh at all before.

“I’m afraid not, sir,” he confessed, the very picture of sheepish charm. “I fear I’m prone to seasickness.” He flattened his palms on the desk and favored her father with a conspiratorial whisper audible throughout the drawing room. “Why, just walking into this house almost made me ill.”

Lucy could see why. Her father had christened the house Ionia after the infamous sea where Rome’s naval supremacy over the world had first been established. He’d proceeded to decorate nearly every inch of it in the nautical style. Even after living here for most of her nineteen years, Lucy still expected the polished wood flooring to list beneath her feet.

The steering wheel from the Admiral’s first command, the HMS Evangeline , hung proudly over the mantel. Every piece of furniture was dark and heavy, polished oak or mahogany chosen for its utilitarian nature rather than for its beauty. There were no Oriental rugs, no vases of fresh cut flowers, no frivolous knick-knacks to mar the overwhelmingly masculine effect. Instead there were globes, compasses, maps, sextants, Lucy’s own watercolor seascapes, and glowering busts of her father’s seafaring heroes.

The gloom of the furnishings was offset by the airiness of the spacious rooms and the sunlight that poured through the generous bay windows. Their lead-glazed panes overlooked a sea of clipped lawn that had begun to trade its billows of summer green for the golds and russets of autumn.

At Claremont’s confession, Benson’s smile deflated. Fighting her own inbred flare of disdain, Lucy braced herself for her father’s scathing denouncement. She did not relish the idea of this bold soul being reduced to scampering away with his coattails between his legs.

The Admiral sighed. “Just as well, I suppose. I’ve no plans of taking to the sea until that rogue Doom is caught and hanged. You’re hired.”

This time the Admiral took the hand Claremont offered him. “You shan’t regret it, sir. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe. Even if it costs me my own life.”

“Such sacrifices won’t be required, Mr. Claremont. It won’t be my life you’re responsible for, only my daughter’s.”

Lucy was still reeling from her father’s matter-of-fact announcement when Claremont pivoted on his heel, his gaze finding her with such unerring accuracy that she realized he’d been conscious of her presence from the moment he entered the room.

She stiffened to find his hazel eyes narrowed in flagrant dislike.