The Captain's Lady Read online

  “I see you remembered,” he said, referring to her use of his name. “He’s below. He’s trying to figure out a way to add support to those crossbeams. He’s been working with the men for a couple of hours now.”

  Alexis took a sip of her soup. It was as delicious as it smelled. Obviously Forrest did not need her around. “You mean he’s supervising the work,” she corrected Landis.

  “Meant what I said. It’s one of the reasons the men like him so much. He’s not above helping them out when there’s a problem. He knows a lot about ships—but I suppose he has already told you about that.”

  “Actually he has told me very little,” she replied, setting her spoon on the table. She leaned back in her chair and looked at Landis with interest. “He did say he met you on the Grenada. Did you escape together?”

  Landis took a seat on her right and folded his hands in his lap. “We did. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

  “I find that hard to believe. You would have found a way.”

  “I’m not so sure. I had already been with the Grenada for more than a year when they brought Tanner aboard. I had exhausted every alternative for escape I knew.”

  “And what did Captain Cloud do?” Her head tilted to one side to punctuate her sentence.

  “He thought of three more alternatives.” He laughed, his chuckle thick with admiration. “He would have thought of more but by the third time we did okay.”

  “And what did you do? I mean why did the captain put an extra burden on himself by helping you escape?”

  “Have you seen the scars on his back, Alex?” he asked softly.

  “I have.” Her voice was bland but she had to force the unemotional response.

  “I made sure he lived to think of the third way out.”

  She was silent, thinking what it must have been like for the two men, and she understood why they were such good friends now. They had earned one another’s respect and that, she decided, had to be the soundest basis for a friendship. She also began to understand why Landis had taken such an interest in her problem aboard the ship. He knew what she was going through.

  “You were saying the captain knew a lot about ships,” she said, making her voice airy in this attempt to change subjects easily. “Don’t all officers learn about the ships they command?”

  “Of course. But not like Tanner. He got his command as a result of his escape from the Grenada but he’s been around ships most of his life. That’s what I thought he had told you. His family owns Garnet Shipping of Boston.”

  Alexis’s lips parted in surprise. “I didn’t know,” she said when she found her voice. “They are one of the very best. George told me often about them.”

  “So you’re familiar with their business.”

  “Very.” She lifted her spoon and took a few more mouthfuls of soup. “Why is the captain in the navy when he could be working for his family?”

  “There was a problem about what his family wanted him to do and what he wanted for himself. He won’t talk about it much but from the little he told me it seems his parents wanted him behind a desk in the office and he wanted to be at the helm. They put up with it for a while, humored him by letting him sail on some of their ships. Tanner is not the kind of man you can humor like that. He never wanted to go back to the office again. They would not hear of it, so he joined the navy. They disowned him for a time after that but when the Chesapeake incident happened they fought hard to get him back. His sister, Emma, never did give up. Things are still not too good between him and his parents but they are beginning to accept his decision.”

  “It would appear the captain had previous experience making escapes before the English took him.”

  “As I recall from what you said the other day in the galley, you have also had an escape.”

  “I guess that’s what it was,” she replied. “I never really thought about it like that before. I just thought I was running away but I always knew what I was running to.”

  “You haven’t told Tanner about it?”

  “No. There hasn’t been any reason to. I don’t like talking about the past any more than he does.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “It is not because I can’t, if that’s what you’re thinking, John.”

  “I wasn’t. I was just curious as to what you thought.”

  “Most people dwell on the past and say ‘if only.’ But when a similar situation arises in the future they never remember their ‘if only.’ They never try to recall the past in a way that can help them. They feel trapped by it. That’s why their faces are full of pity when they hear someone else talk about what’s already taken place. They think nothing will ever change. I hate it when people look at me that way. I can see ‘poor Alexis’ in their eyes before they say the words aloud. I don’t regret my past because I learned something from it. I understand it. It’s that understanding that guides me, not painful memories. I would be lying if I told you I am never bitter about what’s happened to me. I am bitter sometimes. But I know why and because I do I can do something about it. I don’t have to let things just happen.” She paused and pushed away her bowl of soup. “And that’s why I don’t like talking about my past. I never want to hear ‘poor Alexis’ again.”

  Landis rubbed at his beard with the back of his fingers. “And you know Tanner feels the same way?”

  “I do.”

  “Then why don’t you tell him about London? He won’t pity you.”

  “I know. I’d never tell him if I thought that,” she said. “There has been no reason to. There is no reason he should know.”

  “He’ll understand, you know. Just the way you understood about him and his family and his need to get away.” Landis stood and crossed the room to the door. Before he left he turned to her. “It’s strange, isn’t it, Alex? How understanding can be infinitely more binding than pity. Not many people realize that, but you do, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, staring at her plate. How well the old man knew, she thought when she was alone. She was reluctant to talk about her past to Cloud, not because he would pity her, but because he would understand. And that would be another link in the chain that kept her close.

  She picked at her dinner while she planned out her evening. When she remembered the charts and maps in Cloud’s quarters she dismissed everything but her purpose from her mind. After she was finished eating she went to his cabin. Finding him absent she laid out his charts on the floor and began studying them, her head propped on her elbows, legs bent at the knees and raised off the floor. She was so intent on the lines and markings she did not notice Cloud’s presence in the cabin until he sat on the deck beside her.

  “Have you been here long?” she asked without looking up.

  “Long enough to know you are much more interested in what’s in front of you than what’s beside you.”

  She laughed and rolled onto her back so she could look up at him. Her head rested on the charts she had been studying. “You’re right. I want to learn more about these waters. Will you teach me?”

  “The first thing I’ll teach you is not to put your hair all over North America. The continent has never looked so inviting.”

  “I’m serious, Cloud.”

  “And I have never been more serious about anything,” he replied, his eyes caressing her slender form in one continuous motion. It was always like that, he thought. There was no place for his eyes to stop. His glance was forced to take in all of her. Her oval face, the tangent line that formed her neck and branched out at her shoulder, curving over her breast, curving in at her waist, down her thigh, her calf, and extending past her feet into infinity. “There are a few things you have to learn about me, Alex.” He stopped. Her eyes had narrowed and she held his glance in the only way it was possible, shooting amber flecks of fire into his face. He sighed. “I suppose that lesson will have to wait. What do you want to know?”

  Alexis smiled. “Everything,” she said, sitting up. “Currents, places w
here storms are especially fierce, how to maneuver a ship in tight places. I already know trade routes. George taught me that. And I know where Lafitte and his men are likely to strike. We had to know because we sometimes carried cargo from Spain and that made us his target. I am familiar with the Caribbean. I know the dangerous reefs, like Horse Shoe, but I’m ignorant of the Atlantic. I want to know about conditions around France and England, and islands that are available for fresh water and supplies. And fighting. Don’t forget to tell me about strategy.”

  “In short, everything.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Cloud persuaded her to move the maps from the deck back to the table. She sat in the chair and he sat on the arm, one foot propped on the part of the seat she would allow him while the other stretched out beside him. She grilled him with questions. He answered them concisely and clearly, aware of her reason for asking, her resolve not far from either of their minds. When she had no more questions, he asked some of her. Alexis answered instantly, and when she did not know something she would struggle with the problem at length until she could find a solution by studying the charts. He was pleased that more often than not she arrived at the correct answers. When she did not, he explained her errors in detail so she might learn from them.

  Finally, Alexis held up her hands in surrender. They had been working for almost three hours before she had heard all she thought she could assimilate.

  “No more, Cloud. Not tonight,” she said, leaning against her chair and rubbing her back on the hard wood.

  He watched her curiously. She had made the same movement earlier while he was explaining the currents off the coast of France and later when she was stuck on a particularly hard problem. It was distracting and he told her so.

  Alexis leaned forward, resting her head in her arms on the table. “I’m sorry if it bothers you but my back is itchy. Those cuts are beginning to heal and I want to scratch them.”

  He rubbed her back lightly with his palm. “Is that better?”

  “Infinitely,” she sighed, closing her eyes.

  “Where is the lotion John left with you? Have you been using it?”

  “How could—right there…up a little higher…How could I apply it to myself? I haven’t used it since he last put it on me.”

  “Then I’ll get it. Where is it?”

  Alexis told him and when he returned she was already lying face down on his bunk, her shirt and shoes on the deck beside it. She moved toward the middle to give him room to sit at her side. She felt his weight on the bunk and when he did not do anything for a long time she said, misunderstanding his hesitation, “If the sight of my back is repulsive to you I can have John do it.”

  Repulsive? he thought. Hardly. He did not know if he had ever seen anything as beautiful as the harsh, thin lines across her otherwise flawless skin. It was a symbol of her strength and a reminder to him of how much she had loved one man. He gripped her braid tightly and twisted her head so she could see his face and know the truth. He placed his mouth over hers and kissed her hungrily, almost brutally. He whispered the words she hated against her breasts as he turned her over and her arms folded around him.

  Alexis knew the truth and thought that truth had never been at once so painful and so liberating. Their bodies clashed, sweat-slick, hunger demanding to be fed. Alexis pushed against him, wanting to feel all of him pressing close to her flesh. His strong hands that could easily strangle the life from her body she wanted to feel tight against her skin, squeezing breath into her lungs that she could emit in short gasps and brief moans. His powerful legs that walked the deck so surely she wanted to feel, hard on her own, strength against strength. His mouth that said cruel things to her ears she wanted to have on her mouth, at her breasts, on her stomach, and finally at the place between her legs where nothing he said mattered any longer, where only the pressure of his tongue against her inflamed flesh was of any importance.

  When it was over Alexis lay beside him and listened to their ragged breathing grow calm in unison. Cloud took her braid and undid the golden strands, amusing himself by running his fingers through the wavy mass. He picked it up and arranged it over her glistening shoulders and breasts; then he brushed it away to reveal what he had hidden. He kissed her on the neck then, more an expulsion of air than actual pressure of soft skin on equally tender flesh.

  “You have lovely hair,” he said, brushing a wisp of it from the corner of her eye.

  “Thank you. I grew—” She stopped, realizing she was about to tell him she had grown it for Pauley, a promise in a previous existence it seemed now. She looked up into his emerald eyes. They were the exact color of the leaves on the trees around her home on the first day she saw them. Your eyes should not be that color, she thought. You should not remind me there was a time when I was free to make the promises of a little girl in love with someone who loved me back. I will hurt you for that, Cloud. “I grew it as a promise to Pauley. When I met him I had cropped hair and he told me if I ever cut it again he would take a switch to me. The threat was idle. He knew I grew it because I wanted to please him.”

  Cloud’s features tightened. He kept his fingers wrapped around the curling strands for a moment. Abruptly he released her hair and fell back against the bunk, staring at the ceiling. “I’m glad he told you to do it,” he said after a long silence. “I thought there was something special about the way he looked at you that morning on the beach.”

  “You saw Pauley and me?” she asked. “You were there then?”

  Cloud nodded. “We were waiting for your father to come to the house so we could warn him about the British. It was too dangerous for us to wait there so we stationed ourselves at points around your home.”

  “There were others, besides you and John?”

  “Two. They were killed in the firing.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said softly.

  “No reason you should,” he said, unknowingly echoing her earlier sentiment to Landis.

  “How long were you there, Cloud? Were you there before Pauley came?”

  “You were swimming when I first saw you,” he replied, a slight catch in his breath as he remembered the girl battling the waves. “I thought you were a mermaid at the time. I expected you to have fins when you got to the beach.”

  Alexis laughed. “That’s exactly how I feel when I’m swimming. As if I am part of the water, as if I belong to it while I’m in it. I sometimes think that I do have fins. But, Cloud, the best part is—”

  He turned to face her. Her amber eyes were glowing, her mouth was turned up in a smile, remembering. He returned her smile but there was sadness in the sensuous curve of his lips. “The best part,” he said, “is when you decide to get out and find that you can. The best part is heading for shore and making it. The best part is finding your fins have disappeared and your legs will carry you on land.”

  “How did you know?” she asked breathlessly.

  “I saw it,” he said. “I saw all of it that day.”

  “What did you think then?”

  “That I wanted you.”

  “Oh.” She moved closer to him then, nestling her head on his shoulder. In a short time they were both asleep.

  Alexis woke Cloud with the constant movement she made by rubbing her back against the sheets. Her hand went to her back as she tried to scratch it and he slapped it away, waking her.

  “Stop it, Alex,” he said roughly. “You’re going to make it worse. I’ll have to wrap your hands if you can’t keep them away.”

  Alexis was still half asleep and did not have the vaguest idea what he was muttering about. She smiled through her haze and wrapped a leg around his. She closed her eyes, almost asleep again.

  Cloud pushed her leg away, mumbling about a lesson she still needed, and got out of the bunk. He lit the lamp that had gone out hours ago and searched for the lotion he had forgotten in the wake of more important matters. He found it under the table where it had rolled in compliance with the motion of the s
hip.

  “Cloud?” Alexis demanded wearily as she began to wake more fully from all his noise. “What are you doing?”

  “Got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “This.” He held out the bottle.

  Alexis groaned. “The last time you tried to put that on me we did something else entirely. I’m too tired, Cloud. Let me sleep.” She buried her face into her pillow in an attempt to block out the light from the lamp.

  “Little tart. Sleep is exactly what I had in mind, mainly mine, I’ll admit. Only I can’t get any with you constantly moving around trying to scratch your back.” He heard Alexis’s muffled laugh through the pillow and he nipped her lightly on her arm with his teeth. She squealed and he kissed her shoulder, brushing the hair away from her back at the same time. She relaxed under his tender caress and it was with great difficulty that he kept to his commitment to open the bottle.

  “You’re not making this very easy,” he cautioned her as he began to apply the lotion and she squirmed invitingly beneath his warm hand.

  “I am not trying to do anything,” she retorted. “It just feels so damn good.”

  He slapped her bottom through the sheets. “Lie still while I see what kind of damage you have inflicted with all your scratching.” He put the bottle back on the floor and rubbed the remainder of the lotion into her cuts. She did not move an inch. “Alex,” he said when he was finished. “You have some other marks on your back that weren’t made with any whip.” He touched her in one of the places. She moved slightly, her wince inherent in her movement. He took his hand away. “I didn’t notice them before. They’re very faint. Were you a terribly clumsy child?” He knew it was not the answer.

  “Please, Cloud. May I have my shirt now? I would like to put it on.” Her arm went over the side of the bunk and she groped to find it, her face still resting in the pillow.

  Cloud snatched it away from her the instant her fingers curled around the material. Alexis sat up and reached for it but he held it out of her grasp. “Why?” he asked, his voice strangely hard. “Why do you want it, Alex?”