Seduced by the Scoundrel Page 8
But all in all, Averil thought as she whipped her hair into a firm braid, she was coping. And changing. Whatever happened, the Averil Heydon who left this island was not going to be the same woman who had been washed up on its sands.
She took care to slip out of the door and round to the back of the hut when she left, but there was no sign of interest from the ships riding at anchor in the sunshine. Her frantic dash for freedom and Luc’s swift recapture of her must have gone unnoticed.
But there was a strange boat drawn up on the beach below the camp and a stranger stood by the fire, a steaming mug in his hand as he talked. The men were clustered round and they were listening intently, but they were watching their captain. For all their apparent hostility it was clear they looked to him to deal with whatever was happening now. Averil felt an unexpected warmth, almost pride, as though he really was her lover.
She gave herself a brisk mental shake as she walked towards them. Luc d’Aunay was neither her lover nor her love, he was merely doing his job and if he happened to look confident and commanding and intelligent while he was about it, so much the better for the Royal Navy. There was no excuse for her to get in a flutter.
‘Who’s this? No one said anything about women.’ The stranger spoke with an accent that she guessed must be local. He looked like a fisherman, there were nets and crab pots in the stern of his little boat, and he seemed uneasy with her presence.
‘My woman,’ Luc said, with a glance in her direction. ‘Never mind her—are you certain of the times?’
‘I am.’ The man grinned. ‘Stupid beggar didn’t check the sail loft. Still can’t work out who he is, mind you. I can’t find out where he’s coming from and he wears a cloak and his hat pulled tugged low. He keeps his voice low, too—a gentleman, I can hear that much, but if it wasn’t for Trethowan not keeping his voice down I wouldn’t have worked it out.
‘He looked to see if he was being followed all right, but it didn’t occur to him that someone knew where he was going from last time and got up there first. It’s the same brig as before—the Gannet—but they’ve changed the sails, so someone’s had some sense. The patch has gone and they’ve a new set of brown canvas.’
He took a gulp from the mug. ‘They’ll be slipping anchor at eleven tonight so you’ll need to be in position off Annet. The tide’ll be right for you to get in behind the Haycocks rocks. I’ll signal from the Garrison when I see them leave. It’ll be clear tonight.’
‘How do we know we can trust ‘im?’ Harris said and the other men shifted uneasily.
‘Because I say so,’ Luc replied. ‘I know him and he’s good reason to hate the French.’
‘Aye.’ The man scowled at Harris. ‘Killed my brother Johnnie they did. And I don’t hold with them that’ll sell out their country to foreigners.’
‘Foreigners like Frenchy here?’ a voice from the back mut tered.
‘Don’t be more of a bloody fool than you can help, Bull,’ Luc said.
‘Sorry, Cap’n, I was only—’
‘Don’t you go insulting the captain.’ The fisherman turned, furious. ‘My Johnnie was serving with him when he was killed and he wouldn’t have a word said against him. He’d come home and he’d say—’
‘Yes, well, spare my blushes, Yestin. You get out fishing now. We’ll look out for your lights, six bells on the first watch.’
The man grunted. ‘You navy men and your bells. It’ll be eleven by the clock on Garrison Gate.’ He put down his mug, gave Averil another long stare, then marched down the beach and pushed off his boat. ‘You kill the lot of them,’ he called back as the wind caught the sail. ‘And I’ll have lobsters for all of you.’
‘Good news,’ Luc remarked. ‘After dinner, Tom Patch, I want all the dirks and the cutlasses sharpened. Harris, double check the boat. Timmins, come with me and we’ll sort out the ammunition and the handguns. The rest of you can take it easy—I need everyone alert and ready to go at two bells on the first watch.’
‘Two hours to do that distance?’ one of the men queried.
‘I want you in good condition when we get there,’ Luc said with a grin. ‘You’ll have some fast rowing and then some brisk fighting—no need to be blown before you start.’
They ate, all of them more cheerful than Averil had seen before. Even Dawkins found discussing the best way to cut a French throat more interesting that ogling her. When they had finished the men with tasks to do went off, leaving nine of them fidgeting around the fire.
‘Oh, get away and look for wreckage,’ Potts said, exasperated. ‘I’m trying to clear up and cook supper and you lot are under my feet. Unless you want to help?’
That sent them off down to the shoreline. Averil watched who went where and then followed, taking the opposite end to Dawkins and Tubbs. There were splintered timbers and cask staves sticking up between ridges of rock, some torn canvas, tangled ropes. Averil picked her way along the shore, gripped by a horrid fascination, half dreading seeing something that she recognised, half as infected by the same treasure-hunting enthusiasm as the men.
Time passed; the sand was warm under her bare feet and the foam at the water’s edge tickled her toes. If the cause was not so grim, this would be a delightful way to spend a spring day.
‘You found anything?’ It was Tubbs.
She straightened up, wary. ‘Only shells and rubbish.’
‘Aye,’ he agreed, sounding almost amiable. ‘You found anything, ‘Arry?’
‘Nah.’ The big man was balanced precariously on a low ridge of rock sticking up a couple of feet from the sand. ‘I’m for a kip in the tent.’ He turned, awkward on the sharp edge. ‘Wot’s that?’
Tubbs darted forwards and picked something up. Averil saw it as it lay in his calloused palm, a dark oval, smooth and polished, a hinge on one side. ‘I know what that is. Give it to me, please—’
‘I saw it first,’ Dawkins said and made a grab at Tubbs. It all happened so fast Averil did not even have time to step back. Dawkins slipped, fell, crashed into Tubbs, the box shot up in the air, she caught it and was drenched as the two men landed in the shallows. There was a bellow of agony and she saw that Dawkins was not getting up. The water around him was red.
She stuffed the box into the waistcoat pocket and splashed to his side. He was lying awkwardly, cursing with pain; his leg, where all the blood was flowing from, was jammed into a crack in the rock.
‘Tubbs, get hold of him, try to get him straight while I hold his ankle!’
The man went to his mate’s shoulders and started to heave as Averil got her hands around the trapped foot. ‘It’ll be ‘opeless,’ Tubbs remarked gloomily as Dawkins swore, a torrent of obscenity. ‘Potts! Get a knife, we’ll ‘ave to cut it off.’
‘Nonsense,’ Averil said, hoping it was, as the cook ran down to her side. ‘Look, if enough of you can lift him and stop his weight dragging on the leg, I might be able to work it free.’
It involved considerable splashing, cursing and heaving and more blood than Averil ever wanted to see again, but minutes later Dawkins was lying on the beach like a porpoise out of water, moaning and groaning while Averil sent men running for clean water and something to tear up for a bandage.
‘I don’t think it is broken,’ she said when she had got the sand and broken shell washed out of the deep cuts and grazes. The others hauled Dawkins up and he balanced on one foot in front of her, white to the lips. He tried to put his foot down and swayed, gasping with pain. Averil grabbed hold, too, before he crashed down again. ‘But I think you’ve damaged the tendons. You won’t be able to walk for a—’
‘What the hell?’ It was Luc, at the run. ‘What have you done? Dawkins, you bastard, get your hands off her!’
Chapter Eight
Averil glanced down at herself and realised what Luc was seeing—Dawkins with his hands on her shoulders, her shirt red with blood. ‘It is all right, he has hurt his foot. It is his blood,’ she said urgently as Luc reached them, murder in his eyes.
‘I never touched ‘er!’ the sailor protested, flat on his back on the sand, one meaty hand clamped to his face.
‘Why did you hit him?’ Averil protested. ‘He’s the one who is injured. It was an accident.’
Luc pulled her towards him, none too gently, and held her by her shoulders as he scanned her face as though looking for the truth. ‘For scaring the living daylights out of me,’ he said too softly for the men to hear, then raised his voice. ‘The damn fool has probably hurt himself too badly to be any use tonight.’
‘I can row,’ Dawkins said. The others had hauled him to his feet again and he stood propped between Tubbs and Tom Patch, his slab of a face creased with anxiety. ‘I can reload and guard the boat when you’re boarding. I can shoot from the brig. Gawd, Cap’n, I’ve got to go or they’ll say I haven’t earned me pardon!’
‘You haven’t,’ Luc said. ‘You know damn well that the most dangerous part, the part I need the men for, is boarding the brigs and you go and fool around and have an accident—if it is an accident.’
‘Tell ‘im, Miss!’ Dawkins turned to Averil, all trace of the blustering bully gone. ‘Tell ‘im it was an accident. Could ‘ave ‘appened to anyone!’
‘It was an accident,’ Averil confirmed. ‘Honestly it was, Captain d’Aunay. He wasn’t doing anything that the others weren’t.’
There was a stinging silence while Luc contemplated Dawkins’s sweaty face and the men seemed to hold their breath. ‘Miss Heydon is remarkably forgiving, considering the disrespectful way you have behaved to her,’ he said at last.
‘Yes, Cap’n. She’s a real lady and I’m sorry, miss.’
Watching him, Averil thought he probably was genuinely regretful. He was a bully who was used to being kept at a distance; her unforced help seemed to have shocked him.
‘Very well. I accept that. If we are successful, then you will get your pardon like the rest. Now go and lie down and stop hopping about like a damned rabbit.’
‘Er … miss?’ Tubbs was eyeing her like a hopeful jackdaw after a scrap of meat. ‘You’ve got the thing we found, miss. Rightfully mine, that is. Finder’s keepers.’
‘Yes, it would be, Tubbs,’ Averil said. ‘But it belongs to me.’ It was a lie, but she wasn’t allowing the only thing she had left of her friends to fall into Tubb’s greasy fingers. ‘Look, I’ll prove it to you. What do you think is inside?’
‘Dunno, miss.’ He was looking more intrigued than resentful. Some of the others who were not helping Dawkins back to his shelter stopped to listen. ‘Snuff? Money?’
‘Tiny carved animals,’ Averil said, slipping the box out of her pocket. ‘A Noah’s Ark. I couldn’t have guessed that, could I? If you can find a flat rock out of the wind, I’ll show you.’
She opened the lid and there they all were, the minute ivory animals, the ark, Noah himself—the gift Lady Perdita Brooke had bought for Alistair, Viscount Lyndon, in Cape Town. Her hand shook a little as she set them out on the rock with the men crouched down beside her or hanging over her shoulder to look. Where had it been when the ship struck—in Alistair’s cabin or on his person? Was it a good omen or a sign that he and Dita were gone?
Averil took herself to task for superstition. It was chance, no more, no less, that this small object should have been washed up on this beach for her to recognise.
‘Lovely workmanship,’ Luc said behind her as he reached over her shoulder to pick up one of the camels, as small as his little fingernail. ‘But very fragile for a child’s toy.’
‘It isn’t a toy,’ she said, as she blew grains of sand out of the box before she packed the pieces in again. The men drifted away, back to the beach or the fire, leaving them alone. ‘It was a gift. A birthday gift from someone very special to me.’ Dita had been her closest female friend and she had loved her like a sister. I do love her, she corrected herself. She is alive, I know she is alive. ‘They bought it in Cape Town,’ she added, thinking to explain the craftsmanship.
‘I see,’ Luc said. ‘Lord Bradon would be interested to hear about that, I imagine.’
‘You think I had a lover on board? Someone I met on the voyage?’ she demanded, shocked and yet curiously gratified. Was he jealous? Not that she wanted him to be, of course, that would presuppose she actually had any feelings for the man, other than a grudging admiration for his leadership and sympathy for the fate that had brought him here.
‘I know you did not,’ he said. ‘At least, if you did, he hadn’t kissed you.’
Averil glared. ‘It was a gift from a woman, my best friend. Just because you appear to place little importance on fidelity there is no need to assume everyone else is the same.’
‘I am always faithful,’ Luc protested, all injured innocence, she thought resentfully as he cocked a hip on the rock and made himself comfortable to watch her fiddle the pieces back into place.
‘Serial fidelity to a succession of mistresses, I presume?’ She could imagine Luc selecting a mistress, negotiating—he would be reasonably generous, she guessed—then … Enjoying her, she supposed, was the phrase. She would not let her imagination go there.
‘Exactly.’
‘Disgraceful!’ She secured the lid of the box and stood up.
‘How so? I am generous, I provide well for the woman when the liaison is over, she appears satisfied with the arrangement.’
‘There is no need to be smug about your sins,’ Averil snapped. Even to her own ears she sounded irritable and stuffy. ‘I hope you are not going to tell me you are married and keeping a string of mistresses.’
‘A succession, not a string,’ he said. He appeared to find it mildly amusing, curse the man. ‘And, no, I am not married. If I get my head out of this noose then I shall devote myself to finding a well bred, virtuous young lady of an émigré family.’
‘Really?’ Distracted from her anxieties, Averil turned back. ‘Not an Englishwoman? You intend to go back to France one day?’
‘Of course.’ He stared at her as if she had suggested he go to New South Wales instead. ‘I have responsibilities in France—that is where my title comes from, where my lands are. Obviously I need a wife who understands that. Once the war is over there will be nothing for me here.’
‘Oh. I see. It is just that … you seem so English.’ But he did not, somehow. Despite the completely perfect pronunciation there was something under the veneer of the English gentleman and officer, something foreign and unsettling and different.
She pulled herself together. Luc’s marriage plans were no affair of hers. ‘What will happen to me tonight?’
‘You stay here, of course.’ He was frowning again. Perhaps it was tactless of her to have mentioned his marriage when he must have feared all that was lost to him. ‘There is ample food and water. I will collect you tomorrow. I don’t think you need worry about Dawkins. With that foot you can outrun him easily. And I think he knows he is in your debt, although I would lock the door at night, if I were you. Reform is likely to last only so long.’
‘And if you do not come back?’
‘I always come back.’
‘You are not immortal, even if you are arrogant,’ she retorted. ‘Don’t tempt fate by saying such things.’
‘I hadn’t realised you cared.’ Luc stood up and caught her in his arms. His eyes were dark and warm and his mouth was curving and he was just about to kiss her, she was certain.
Averil let herself sway closer, let herself absorb, just for a moment, the intensity of his gaze, the heat of his body, the tempting lines of his mouth that gave such wicked pleasure. ‘I do not. Naturally I wish the mission well and that you all return safely, but I am worried about what happens to me if you get yourself killed,’ she said, stepping back out of range.
‘You wish the mission well?’ he mocked, mimicking her starchy tone. ‘That is enough to send us all off with a patriotic glow in our breasts, I am su
re.’ The satirical light in his eyes died and he became serious. ‘If I do not come back by nightfall tomorrow, then light a fire on the beach outside the hut and discharge the pistol I will leave with you. I’ll show you how to fire and load it now. That will be enough to attract interest from the nearest frigate.’
‘A gun?’ She had never touched one before and was not at all sure she wanted to start now.
‘Here.’ Luc pulled the pistol from his belt. ‘This is loaded. Hold it.’ Reluctantly she curled her fingers round the butt. ‘You cock it—go on, it won’t bite you—that’s half cock, now fully back. Keep it pointing at the ground—no, not at your foot!—until you are ready to fire, then point it out to sea and pull the trigger.’
‘Ow!’ The bang made her jump, the recoil hurt her wrist. ‘Won’t that have been heard?’
‘The wind is to us.’ Luc produced a box from his pocket. ‘Here’s how to reload—you may need more than one shot.’
He showed her how to reload several times, more patient with her initial clumsiness than she would have expected. When he was satisfied at last he walked with her back to the hut and saw the pistol and ammunition safely stowed on the shelf.
‘But you have no handgun now,’ Averil realised. ‘You will need one.’
Luc was already removing a stone in one wall. ‘I have two.’ He stuck the spare pistol in his belt and pushed the stone back.
‘You would have taken two if it was not for me,’ she said, worry fretting at her conscience. ‘Here, take this one back, you’ll need it. I can attract attention without it, I am sure.’
‘I would feel more comfortable if you were armed.’
‘Couldn’t Dawkins sail your little skiff across to St Mary’s? Oh, no, I suppose if you do not come back then he needs to be able to disappear and never to have been here. I see.’
Luc stood frowning at her, thinking about something else and not, she thought, listening to her work it all out aloud. ‘There are papers in that cache. You just need to prise the stone out with a knife. If you have to leave without me, take them to the Admiralty when you reach London. Don’t give them to the Governor, I am not certain about his loyalties yet.’