Sparhawk's Angel (13 page)

"Whatever you please, Nick." Cassie pursed her lips, accented by three tiny black patches at one corner. "The usual, then?"

But Rose didn't want to know what was usual for him. She'd seen more than enough already. "I'll wait in the garden, Captain," she said as she edged toward the door. "You can—"

"Nonsense, lad." Nick seized Rose by the shoulder and propelled her up the stairs before him. "I won't hear of it. Cassandra Morton's hospitality is the finest in Charles Town, and you'd be a fool to miss it."

It was on the stairs that Rose saw the wallpaper more closely, and noted exactly what the antique satyrs and nymphs were doing before their little painted temples. With a gasp of shame she jerked backward into Nick, nearly toppling them both down the stairs. "Truly, Ni—I mean Captain Sparhawk, I do not wish—"

"Don't be shy, Henry, not here." He guided Rose into the chamber he always favored, the one at the back of the house. "Cassie won't hear of it."

Leaving Cassie smiling on the landing, he closed the door gently after him, shutting himself inside alone with the girl, and wondered what the devil he was doing. He'd seen the alarm in Rose's eyes on the stairs, and the repulsion she hadn't been able to hide. In a way, this would be worse for her than the thieves in the street, a sheltered young lady who'd blushed when he'd seen the torn hem of her petticoat. If he'd any decency at all, he'd end this now and take her back to the ship.

But he wasn't decent and he wasn't a gentleman, and besides, because of Lily, it was already too late to turn back.

The candles in the room had already been lit, the tall windows to the piazza thrown open to catch whatever breeze might rise from the water. Rose stood before the window, her back to him until she heard the click of the lock. Then she spun round to face him, her eyes flashing with a fury he hadn't expected.

"You knew, didn't you?" she cried, her voice rising as she tore the cap from her head and shook her hair loose over her shoulders. "From the very beginning, in the boat, you knew who I was and yet you kept silent, determined to let me humiliate myself! You
knew!"

"Then that makes us quite the knowledgeable pair, sweetheart." Nick jerked his arms free of his coat and threw it across the back of a chair. Despite the open windows, the air in the room was still and hot, and already vibrating with the tension between them. "I knew you weren't a boy, and you knew you were going to run away. Where the devil did you think you were going to go, anyway?"

"Certainly not here!" She waved her arm, encompassing the room and all its furnishings. She might have been too innocent to understand the true nature of Cassie's house when they'd stood in the front hall, but there'd be no such mistakes here. The chamber was small, only large enough to contain two chairs, a table and washstand, and an enormous bed with hangings and pillows of a brilliant scarlet. Looking glasses were placed strategically on either side of the bed, and the single decoration hung over the mantelpiece, a colored engraving of Leda and an exceptionally amorous swan. "Here in a—a bagnio!"

Nick's expression hardened. "Don't be so certain, sweetheart. The world, and all the bagnios in it, are filled with little girls who thought the same."

There was a light scratching at the door and Cassie slipped inside, followed by a maidservant bearing a wide silver tray with food and drink to set on the table. As she did, Cassie leaned over Nick, her breasts perilously close to slipping free from her bodice.

"Another of my guests this evening has told me of a certain neighbor of his north on the San tee River," she said archly, "a certain Tory braggart who vows his ship full of indigo can outrun all piddling Yankee privateers to London. Perhaps you would like to greet him when he sails tomorrow, and convince him of his error."

"I'd like nothing better," said Nick with a chuckle. "How else will the rascal learn to respect the cause of freedom?"

"How else indeed, my pet?" Cassie smiled wickedly. "Tis all in the name of liberty, you know. Not every battle's won on the field, eh?"

Her knowing glance slid from Nick to Rose and back again, and her smile turned sly as she shooed the maid from the room.

"So much for your pretty cabin boy, Nick," she said, pausing at the door. "I didn't think your tastes had changed so vastly.
Bonsoir et bonne chance, mon cher capitaine!
"

"Forgive me for not being as beautiful as your customary guests," said Rose, her voice brittle with anger and hurt. He belonged with a woman like Cassie, a woman as tall and beautiful and wicked as he was himself, and one who didn't need foolish wagers to make a man kiss her. "I'm sorry to have lowered your estimation in Madam Morton's eyes."

Nick stared at her. In her boy's clothes with her cheeks flushed with defiance and her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, she was one of the most desirable women he'd ever seen. "What the devil are you talking about, Rose?"

"I'm no fool, Captain Sparhawk. I heard what she said." Rose tossed her hair back, hating him for making her spell it out. "She said she didn't think your tastes had changed so vastly, by which of course she meant they'd sunk to include me."

His sudden smile, rich and lazy and for her alone, made the temperature of the room rise another ten degrees for Rose.

"Cassie didn't mean you at all. There are some men who prefer the company of boys to women, and she was merely relieved for her own selfish reasons that I wasn't one of them." Carefully he filled one of the tumblers from the bottle the maid had brought, tasted it and smiled again over the glass at Rose. "Relieved, and likely a bit jealous. Cassie's too clever a businesswoman not to know competition when she sees it."

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Rose, though her cheeks flushed just the same. He was teasing her, nothing more. How could she ever compete with a woman as undeniably lovely as Cassie Morton? "And how charming that she's willing to betray her—her
guests'
confidences to assist you."

"Oh, I've never been above listening to the ladies," said Nick easily, and he thought fleetingly of Lily's assistance. At least she seemed to be blessedly absent now. "All's fair in war and love."

Unconvinced, Rose watched as he filled a second glass and held it out to her. With a contemptuous sniff she shook her head. "Thank you, no."

"Are you sure?" He cocked one brow, blatantly tempting her with more than the rum alone. "Rhode Island rum, the best there is. Cassie always sees to the niceties."

Rose ducked her chin and scowled, wishing he hadn't pointed out one more way in which the other woman was superior. "I told you no. I'm never drinking with you again."

"And I'm not playing draughts with you." He leaned against the armchair, crossing his long legs as he sipped the rum. "I've learned my lesson."

"So have I," she said tartly. "Though I very much doubt it's the same one."

"Don't be so sure," he said easily. "We're not really as different as you like to think."

"I don't 'think,' Captain Sparhawk. I know." To see him so perfectly at ease here in a hired room of a brothel with lewd pictures on the wall and his favorite rum in his hand only served to prove to her how different they were. "Night and day, oil and water, black and white, you and I. Pick whichever you choose, for it's all as one to me."

"All as one, or one from two. Your ciphering pleases me, Miss Rose." This kind of seductive bantering came as second nature to him, as much a game of give-and-take as chasing and capturing enemy ships, and he'd always been good at it. At least he was when Lily didn't interfere, and for now, thank the Lord, she was nowhere to be seen. "But then you'd warned me before that you were clever."

Rose eyed him suspiciously. He was clever, too, and she wasn't accustomed to anyone who could match her like this, especially not anyone with green eyes and black hair that fell so carelessly over his brow and a smile that was whiter than the linen of his shirt.

"One from two leaves one, Captain, by my ciphering or any other's, and so it shall be with us," she said. "Now if you're done guzzling your fine Rhode Island rum, you might as well march me back to your prison ship, for I've no wish to remain here any longer than I must."

"All in good time, lass," he said, intrigued by how deftly she tossed his words back at him. She'd done it from the first time she'd appeared on his deck, and it was one of the things he liked best about her. She was a challenge, no mistake. Even fully dressed, she'd never be boring. "All in good time."

In response she grumbled to herself and began pacing restlessly back and forth before the open window, holding the heavy weight of her hair off her neck and to the side with one hand, and as Nick watched her move, his eyes narrowed with careful, practiced appraisal. Now this, he thought, was interesting; he hadn't dreamed she'd such initiative.

"How much have you sewn into that coat of yours?" he asked gently. "Nay, don't deny it. I've done it myself on occasion in an unfriendly port, often enough to recognize how that plain Yankee homespun doesn't sit quite right. Dollares, is it, or pistoles?"

Sharply she drew in her breath and stopped her pacing, her eyes full of reproach. "It's guineas," she said. "One hundred
English
guineas, each marked with the heads of King William and Queen Mary. You might recall them as two more of your royal tyrants, but now, I suppose, you'd rather wish to add them to the rest of your plunder at my expense."

She yanked off the coat and hurled it at him, and he caught it easily in one hand. But then he would, she thought unhappily. Everything came easy to him, even her gold.

He tested the weight of the coat, shaking his head, and then tossed it onto the second chair. "I don't want it, Rose," he said softly. "Any more than I want the rest of your things. You'll find them all, even the pianoforte, safe in a warehouse here in Charles Town, and none of it, I trust, the worse for my men's removal from the
Commerce
."

Strange how even to his own ears he sounded so frighteningly earnest. He'd thought to turn that bit about her goods being safe in the warehouse to his own advantage and not just Lily's, but somehow instead it sounded as if he really had ordered Rose's belongings saved from auction.

Maybe, heaven help him, because now he wished he had.

She stared at him, not sure whether to believe him or not. "That might have worked once with the gown and the hat," she said slowly, "but not again."

He sighed, the broad expanse of his chest swelling beneath the embroidered waistcoat. "We're not discussing some broken timepiece, Rose, or why 'that' does or doesn't work. I meant only to show my good-will and respect toward you, to prove that things don't have to be so blessed disagreeable between us."

"But they do, Nick," she said in a small, weary voice. "It's better this way."

She turned a little away from him, and with her face bathed in the light of a candle he saw how her anger had faded away, her profile as impassive as a cameo against her dark hair. By the candlelight, too, he could see the outlines of her body, soft and curved with now only the worn gingham shirt over her round, high breasts. He couldn't recall having seen a woman in breeches before, and he liked how the fabric pulled taut over her thighs and hips, surprisingly full hips, considering how slight the rest of her was. He liked how she looked. He liked it a great deal, and there wasn't any way now he'd mistake her for a boy.

"Forgive me if I'm being thickheaded, sweetheart," he said, his voice low as he raised his gaze back to her face, "but I'll be damned if I can see why it's better."

"Why not?" she asked, her breath suddenly tight in her chest. By a trick of the candlelight his green eyes had turned dark to match the night, the spiky shadows of his lashes impossibly long as they crossed his cheekbones, and she shivered as she realized how intently he was watching her. No one had ever looked at her like that before, as if she were so special that he found great pleasure in the sight. It took all her strength to remember why it was wrong that he should.

"Aye," he said. "Isn't it bad enough that our countries are at war without us turning on each other, too?"

"But that's exactly the reason why!" she cried, hugging her arms to herself as if that were enough to protect her from her own weakness. "You're an American who has robbed my father in the name of this foolish war, and I am betrothed to an officer of my king, a man whose duty is to destroy Yankee privateers like you. What kind of future does that make for either of us?"

For once he had no ready answer. What, he wondered, had happened to the blithe, bantering game of cat and mouse that had begun this conversation? He couldn't even remember the reasons why he'd brought her here in the first place, they mattered so little now. Now he found himself drawn into something deeper and darker, with currents swirling between them that he didn't begin to understand. And for the first time in his life he wanted to. Lord help him, he
needed
to, almost as much as he needed her, and the realization shocked him.

She turned her face toward the open window, her hand curled beneath her chin, and the graceful line of her cheek and throat in the moonlight was something he'd never forget.

"No matter how much you might wish it otherwise, Nick," she said, so sadly, so softly, that if he weren't as keenly aware of everything to do with her, he would have missed it, "you cannot change the truth."

Rose heard him set the tumbler down on the tray, and when she turned to look she wasn't startled to find him standing behind her. Not by that, no; some part of her had almost expected him to be there, drawn to her by the same force that had made it so impossible for her to leave him. The expression in his eyes reminded her of the night they'd stood on the
Angel Lily
's deck, and she remembered how she'd felt close to him then, drawn to him in a way that was at once irrational and inevitable. Then she'd thought it was Lily's doing. What other explanation could there be?

But in this narrow room tonight there'd be no Lily to guide her. Only a bed hung in crimson, Black Nick and White Rose. Any other time and Rose would have laughed from the sheer overblown spectacle of it.