Chapter 14

T hrough the small window in her cabin Fia saw a light at the top of the headland pierce the fog. A short while later one of the sailors came to her cabin and made impatient gestures for her to follow him.

She wasn't sure why she should consider refusing but when Thomas had told her that the little slab on the horizon was Scotland, unnamed emotions had coursed through her like a riptide. Wherever she'd expected Thomas to take her, it hadn't been Scotland.

She watched as the sailor unceremoniously tumbled her belongings into the open mouth of her portmanteau. With a grunt he lifted the trunk, grabbed the portmanteau, and jerked his head in the direction of the door.

Forcing down her rising unease, she swept out of the room and up to the open deck. Thomas was nowhere in sight. Reluctantly her eyes moved toward the shore. They were close now. Through the dense fog, she could just make out the land's sheer walls and at its base a jumble of rocks that rose like jagged teeth from an animal's foaming maw.

It could only be McClairen's Isle. She waited for the expected anguish so that she could deal with it. None came. Instead she found herself studying the great island fortess with undeniable anticipation.

Home , Thomas had said. She'd not forgotten that Thomas owned a house fifteen miles inland from McClairen's Isle, and assumed when he'd said "home" that is what he'd meant. But he'd brought her to her home as well, and she recognized that with a warm sense of familiarity.

She knew each copse of trees on that island, each patch of bracken, where the harebells hid in the rocks come spring, and where on the side of the island it would turn crimson come fall. She knew the castle, too: where the priest's hole had been carved in the garden wall, which rooms' ceilings sparkled with light reflected from the ocean below, and how hard the wind needed to blow before the battlements sang as though manned by a hundred fife players.

Her eager gaze clouded. There were no battlements now, nor rooms with sparkling ceilings. Wanton's Blush had burned down six years ago. She'd left just before the blaze had started.

Carr had been there, though. He'd struggled from the inferno with his precious papers intact; the price paid in broken bones and lacerations small compared to what the loss of his blackmail material would have meant.

"Go. Faster." The sailor snapped at her. Fia moved in the direction he indicated. At the side of the ship the sailor hoisted the trunk from his shoulder, called out loudly, and heaved it over the side. Fia rushed forward, certain he'd flung her belongings into the ocean. Angry cries erupted from below. The sailor laughed uproariously and slapped his thigh.

Fia looked over the gunnel. A small wooden boat bobbed a dozen feet below, its four crewman shaking their fists upward. One man, sitting beside her upturned trunk, rubbed his leg, grimacing in pain. Beside her, the Portuguese sailor hooted with malicious delight.

"What goes on here?" The laughter abruptly died, as did the shouts and curses from below. Thomas strode along the deck, a satchel tossed over one broad shoulder, his hair rippling in the breeze.

The Portuguese deckhand answered in rapid-fire fashion. The injured sailor below bellowed up what could only be a refutation. Without warning, Thomas dropped the satchel and snatched a handful of the Portuguese's grimy shirt.

Instinctively, Fia retreated. The sailor clawed uselessly at Thomas's wrist. Thomas shook him like a mastiff with a hare, speaking in a low, lethal voice. Whatever he said had a profound effect on the Portuguese. The man blanched and gulped, nodding frantically.

With a curse Thomas dropped him. The sailor fell on his bum and scuttled backward until he came up hard against the mast. He clambered upright, ducked under the boom, and hurried away.

Thomas bent over to retrieve his satchel, and in doing so spied her. He straightened slowly, his jaw taut, his eyes still dark and angry. She took another step back.

He frightened her.

In all the years of their association, in all the strained and unfortunate circumstances in which they'd met, not once had he ever truly frightened her. Not even when he'd stormed into her boudoir with Lord Tunbridge's bloodied épée, cursing her. But now he did.

With stunning force she realized how absolutely she was under his control, followed hard by another realization: She knew next to nothing about Thomas Donne.

He was some sort of Scots-French hybrid with a minor French title who'd come to Wanton's Blush as a gambler who didn't game much. His sister, Favor, had arrived at Wanton's Blush and captured the fancy of not only Fia's father, but Fia's younger brother, Raine, who'd escaped from a French prison and returned to the island unbeknownst to anybody but Gunna and Fia herself.

Raine and Favor had disappeared from Wanton's Blush the night it had burned down. They had married soon after. Favor had never mentioned Thomas in her letters, and neither had Raine or Ashton.

For the first time, she wondered at the wisdom of her game. She'd allowed herself to be kidnapped because she had assumed she knew what Thomas was capable of and had taken for granted that she would be capable of more. Judging from her lineage and her history, Fia had always supposed herself to be the most ruthless person in any given situation. Certainly the most dangerous.

It had been a source of, if not exactly comfort for her, at least liberation. If she was indeed the most ruthless type society had to offer, at least she knew the limits of what she was likely to encounter. But looking at Thomas's dark, hard face she found she could not gauge the depth of his anger, or say with any certainty what he would do. He'd looked near enough to killing that sailor—all because the poor sot had dropped her trunk overboard.

As if against his will, Thomas spoke. "I am the master of this ship. I am the absolute law here. And there." He jerked his chin in the direction of the land. "I make the rules and I enforce them. However I see fit."

Her mouth was dry.

"Goddamn it! Don't look at me like that. Just do as I say and you'll …"

"Not end up with my neck broken?" she suggested, the bravado she'd hoped for not quite reaching her voice.

His eyes went from burning hot to glacial cold in the space of a second. "Aye. I just might spare you. Might . Now, come here. I'll lower you into the boat."

She forced herself to move to his side. He dipped, snaring her behind the knees and shoulder, and lifted her easily into his arms.

Holding her high against his chest, he strode with her to the side of the ship and barked an order for a sailor to make a harness from a thick rope secured to one of the riggings.

She could not pull her gaze away from his profile while they waited. His eyes were not gray as she'd thought, but palest blue, flecked with green-gray shards as dark as the island's shale.

His arms tightened around her. "Hurry!" he shouted.

One of his men held out the rope sling he'd completed and Thomas set her in it. "Hold on to the rope," he told her. "I'll be below."

He released her and she swung out over the side of the ship. She gasped. The water looked far more than a dozen feet below, its dark, unreflective surface grim and expectant. Ever since she was a little girl and her mother had plummeted to her death, she had been unable to stand on a ledge and look down. Especially on water.

She clutched the rope in a white-knuckled grip. Her pulse raced, her head buzzed. "I cannot swim," she heard herself say.

"You will not have to," Thomas promised. He climbed over the gunnel, and hand over hand lowered himself by a rope into the boat below, barking out an order in Portuguese.

A second later the rope holding her jerked. She plummeted a few feet and snapped to a halt, bouncing. She slammed shut her eyes, spinning wildly in the harness. At once her seasickness returned, this time coupled with fear. She would have sobbed but her throat was too dry to make any sound.

She heard Thomas bark another order. She pressed her forehead against the rope, trying desperately to concentrate on breathing, on not letting go. She had an impression of more movement and then, suddenly, miraculously, she was in his arms again, her cheek pressed to his chest, his heartbeat as steady as her perch had been unstable.

He sat down, keeping his arms around her and settling her in his lap. She still could not open her eyes. Fear gibbered within, taunting her with her inability to control her unreasonable dread of heights.

She felt his hand move tentatively, brushing the hair back from her face. He spoke and the boat jumped forward as the men heaved at the oars while Thomas's fingers combed through her hair.

Long moments passed and he did not say a word and neither did she, the silence broken only by the slap of the oars against flat water. "You're afraid of the sea."

She considered allowing him to be mistaken, but what good would that do? Perhaps if she told him the source of her fear he might … What was she thinking? Fear had addled her brain. She told him anyway.

"Not the water. Being above the water," she said faintly, reluctant to pull herself from his embrace. Why, she asked herself gruffly, should she not take comfort where she could? It was scarce enough she found it at all. So she stayed, feeling like a thief, waiting for him to eject her.

He did not. " 'Tis heights that frighten you?"

She nodded. He did not mock her. Or laugh. He said nothing. His arms continued sheltering her without any perceptible change. His heart continued beating in its steady, unbroken rhythm. His warmth seeped through the thin batiste of her gown and slowly, like a wax taper held close to a brazier, her muscles relaxed, her limbs loosened, and she felt her body grow soft and pliant against his.

So lost was she in the inexplicable pleasure of her rare quiescence that it took her long minutes to realize that the tempo of his heartbeat had quickened and that the broad planes of his chest rose and fell deeply in counterpoint. She knew the reason. If only unconsciously, his hard male body reacted to the softening of her own.

She should take advantage of it. But the anger that had made her vow to bring him to his knees was nowhere in evidence and the seagulls were calling a homecoming greeting and the silky whisper of the water across on the prow charmed the energy from her. And she felt safe. Truly safe.

For the first time in her adult life, Fia fell asleep in a man's arms.

* * *

He ached with wanting her.

She curled in his lap like an exhausted kitten. Her hair streamed over her shoulders and across her face. Her lips had parted and her breath stirred a few witchy tendrils with each exhalation. The long black lashes that made wicked her blue eyes now lay harmlessly on the upper curve of her pale cheek, a few tiny diadems of mist caught at their very tips.

One of her hands curled slightly beneath her chin, the other she'd tucked around his torso when a deep swell had wobbled the boat. Even through the linen fabric, he could feel each finger's imprint like a brand on his ribs, just as he could feel the svelte length of her thighs draped across his lap and the soft swell of her buttocks.

He lifted his gaze away from her, peering desperately through the thick blanket of fog for their mooring place. It had to be close. Pray God, it was close. He did not think he could take much more of Fia, so seemingly lost and exhausted and in need of protection, molded to him like this.

"Land ahead, Captain," Javiero called out.

Fia stirred and he silently cursed his crewman for waking her, fully cognizant that seconds before he'd been praying for deliverance from the sweet torment of holding her. But he did not want to relinquish her, either to wakefulness or to the land.

Her eyes opened, glittering with awareness. Of course, Fia Merrick would never wake slowly, yielding to conscious thought by degrees. She would come instantly alert from sleep's deepest abyss. Because—his brow furrowed with inspiration as he studied the brilliant blue eyes gazing with such penetrating solemnity into his own—to do less could be dangerous.