This Perfect Kiss Page 5

  Christel had had enough of this angel business. “My name is Christel, Anna. I am not the least bit celestial, I assure you. My Grams is your great-grandmother. I am returning to Scotland after being away a very long time. Your papa has agreed to take me. But if there is an angel watching over you and your papa, then ’tis your mam.”

  The little girl buried herself deeper into the blanket and looked away. Christel credited the response to the reality that a mother’s death would be devastating to any child. “Cousin Tia said Mam is in hell.”

  Christel gasped, stifling her breath. She had not thought about her half sister in years. Tia had made her life a living hell even before their father had died.

  “ ’Tis a cruel thing to say,” Christel replied. “Why would Tia tell you such a thing?”

  “Cousin Tia did not tell me. She told Grandmamma because Papa had to force a priest to say words over Mam after she died. Papa said if he did not bury Mama in the cemetery at St. Abigal’s, he would see the kirk taken apart stone by stone and tossed into the sea. They think I am too young to know the hateful things people say about Mama and Papa. Some people blame Papa for her death.”

  “I am truly sorry, Anna.”

  “But I am glad to be going home. I dislike London so terribly much. If a lady is nice to me ’tis only because she wants to marry Papa. Not because she likes me. I miss my uncle Leighton the most. He always gives me the best presents,” she said sleepily, burying herself in the pillows. “Even better than Papa’s. Last year he gave me a pony. A real pony, but Papa says I am too young to learn to ride.”

  “Or perhaps your papa is protective of you.”

  “Grandmamma says ’tis because Papa and Uncle Leighton both loved Mamma and that they miss her, too. I think ’tis because Papa and Uncle Leighton do not like each other, though Papa would never tell me such a thing.”

  “Of course, he would not.” Christel smoothed a hand over the comforter.

  She had always cared for Leighton, even as he had changed from a friend on whom she could depend into a vice-seeking young aristocrat hellbent on defying his father at every opportunity. The elder Lord Carrick had expected him to join the service to the crown, as all St. Giles’s men had dutifully done for centuries, but Leighton considered one brother serving enough for one family to sacrifice to England’s colors. So he had gone to Oxford to learn law and had got himself involved in the war. They had always remained in touch through her uncle. During that time, he had never so much as written a word about Saundra.

  “Have you eaten supper?” Christel quietly asked.

  Anna wrinkled her nose. Christel smiled in sympathy. “You do not like cold herring and biscuits?”

  “Nurse Gabby does not let me eat the biscuits because once a biscuit nearly cracked her tooth. She says they should be used only as weapons of war and shot out of a cannon.”

  “Poor Nurse Gabby.”

  The ship plunged feverishly. Soon it would be dark. Christel’s gaze went to the door. “I need to check on her, Anna. I want you to remain here until I return.”

  The girl closed her eyes, seemingly quite content to remain beneath the warm feather tick, where Christel suddenly wished she’d been. She found the tinderbox and lit one of the lamps attached to the wall near the door, then tightened the belt around the robe she wore as she left Lord Carrick’s quarters, feeling almost as if she’d been an escaped convict.

  There were two other cabins off the companionway. One she knew belonged to Red Harry, as she had seen him retrieve a blanket for her from his room. She knocked on the adjacent door. When she received no answer, she opened it and immediately discovered that she was not immune to the effects of a rough sea when the smell of its effects flooded her senses.

  After bracing something in front of the door to keep it open, she found Nurse Gabby tucked in her bunk, oblivious to the raging chaos around her. The elder woman did not even stir when Christel set the back of her hand to her cheek. She had no fever.

  Nurse Gabby was a stout woman with round cheeks and steel gray curls sticking out of a woolen nightcap. A snore suddenly erupted, telling Christel that at least the woman still lived.

  As was the norm in such cases, there was nothing to be done for the ailment but to ride out the weather. Christel made sure the slop bucket remained secured and that the woman was as warm as she could be. Christel would continue to check on her throughout the night. By the time she had finished, it was already dark. Looking around, she found Anna’s blankets in her berth and decided to gather them up. A curly-haired doll tumbled to the floor.

  Christel touched the faded velvet dress. She lifted it into the light spilling in from the companionway and stopped short with a gasp.

  Lord Carrick stood on the threshold. From broad shoulders to booted feet, he filled the doorway with his tall form. He wore a black oilskin that went to his knees and dripped water on the floor. His hand scraped back his hood. The wind had torn most of his hair from its queue, and strands hung wet to his shoulders. The beginnings of a beard shadowed his jaw.

  “My lord . . .”

  He looked past her into the darkened room. “Where is my daughter?”

  “In my quarters. Your quarters . . .”

  But he had already turned on his heel. Leaving Nurse Gabby to sleep the rest of the evening away in unconsciousness, Christel rushed to follow him into his cabin, still carrying the doll and blankets.

  Anna lay on her side already asleep in the bed, a barely visible lump beneath a rumpled feather tick. Christel could almost feel the tension leave the child’s father. “ ’Tis dark. I came down to make sure—”

  “A lamp has been lit?”

  “She is afraid of the dark.”

  Christel set the blankets and doll on a chair. “Aren’t we all to some extent? Her mother is dead. To be in the darkness is to feel completely alone. No one wishes to feel alone.”

  He turned, his legs braced apart. His eyes went over her, wearing only his robe. With its cinnamon brocade under weaving, the fabric seemed to flow over her like watered silk. She’d rolled up the sleeves to accommodate their length on her arms, and the effect only seemed to make her feel younger.

  “I thought I told you to stay put in my quarters.”

  “Nurse Gabby is incapacitated with seasickness. Your daughter came to the door looking for you. I hope you do not think I would have harmed Anna. ”

  He took a step nearer and didn’t seem to care that he dripped salt water all over the fine plush weave of a very costly Persian carpet.

  “Nurse Gabby?” he asked with amusement.

  “The woman in the other cabin. Your daughter called her Gabby.”

  “I see. Might I suggest you not call her Gabby to her face? Mrs. Gables is somewhat sensitive when it comes to etiquette and would be greatly offended by your lack of decorum. I would not want you to embarrass yourself.”

  “Ever the knight gallant. I will attempt to restrain my colonial impertinence in front of your staff.” She followed the statement with a serene smile. “As much as possible. Seeing as how we are family and all. My embarrassment would be yours twofold.”

  His eyes narrowed. Another wave hit the ship.

  Lord Carrick rode the movement, and she did not miss the brief flinch in his expression as he put weight on his lame leg to catch his balance. Nothing else showed in his expression, and only his hand moved as he caught himself on the rafter above his head.

  Christel never understood that kind of ruthless control. She was more like a cloud in the sky shaped by the wind and surrounding forces than like a rock, incapable of molding itself to its environment.

  Still, as she fell against the back of the chair, there was something to be said for rocks and other immovable objects, and an ex-naval captain with the confidence not to think his ship was in imminent peril of sinking.

  Closing the distance between them, England’s former naval hero stopped in front of her. “Take heart,” he said. “I have only lost one ship.”
>
  “Truly!” She glared. “I can think of at least two more pleasant ways to perish than having one’s mortal remains consumed by starfish, crabs, and sharks at the bottom of the sea.”

  His blue-gray eyes were no longer disconcertingly direct. “Indeed.”

  “Aye. Being flattened on the cobbles by a beer wagon for one.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched, dispelling some of his sternness. “And the second?”

  “Tucked in bed . . . alone, surrounded by a warm feather tick and a roaring fire sharing my last moments with a good book.”

  He laughed. A small sound, certainly nothing to celebrate, but for one moment, she imagined him as he had been all those years ago when he had kissed her at the masquerade.

  Not the man beneath the aristocratic façade that shaped him now and who was about as approachable as a growling dog. She had a feeling he hadn’t laughed in a long time.

  She found him watching her. “Which book?” he asked.

  The question, like his nearness, startled her because she had not expected to feel anything and he had not allowed her to prepare a response. Then it occurred to her that he was a master tactician adept at war games that crushed enemies even if done delicately and without bloodshed. She might not have been an enemy, but he could crush her all the same.

  “I would want to be reading Madam d’Aulony’s folktales,” she said. “Far more appealing than . . .” She scoured her memory for books she disliked and remembered shelves and shelves of such guilty tomes in his own library at Blackthorn Castle. “ . . . the Histoire et mémoires, a collection of French language commentary and criticism on Greek and Latin classics. Give me the classics without the critique.”

  “And here I thought my grandfather had the only book in existence. You speak French, do you?”

  “Oui, monsieur le comte. I noticed you have many books locked behind glass and filigree. Do you perhaps have a key . . . that is, unless they are not meant to be read?”

  “The key is in the desk next to the gunpowder for the pistol. I believe you know where the drawer is.”

  He eased past her, hesitated, then stopped. His shoulder brushed hers as he turned and looked down at her, his expression bathed in amber from the light beside the door. Raising her chin, she felt her heart slip into a thunderous rhythm she did not recognize.

  “Red Harry said you asked to see me?”

  Yesterday, but she did not point that out to him.

  “I merely wanted to thank you for the clothes.”

  Lord Carrick slipped the hood of the slicker back over his head. “The garments belonged to Bentwell’s daughter. You may thank him.”

  “Will the weather remain this wretched all the way to Scotland?”

  “I am hoping it will not.”

  “Perhaps you should take hot tea. The cold cannot be good for you.”

  “Nor my crew. I am fine, Christel.”

  “My lord . . .” She squeezed past him, out of the room and into the companionway, then waited for him to shut the door, noting he was suddenly wary. “Perhaps when the weather is less demanding we could talk more. I would like to ask you about Saundra if it is not too painful.”

  She had a hundred questions, all of which began with who he believed had sent her that letter, culminating with Anna’s statements about her mother. “I know very little of how she died.”

  The temperature in the companionway seemed to drop colder than the air outside. His pale eyes reflected the change. She was now aware that something terrible must have happened to Saundra.

  Something that would make Lord Carrick want to leave Blackthorn Castle forever.

  He moved to step around her, but she planted her feet against more than the turbulent toss of the ship. “You have to talk to me. You owe me at least that much.”

  She knew at once that she had said the wrong words. But she was Saundra’s cousin. She had saved his life. Surely, that counted for something in his eyes. “Unless you truly do feel responsible for her death.”

  “Responsible—?”

  The word stopped as if severed from his tongue by the drop of an ax. With an uttered oath, he looked away but made no attempt to defend himself. Of course, he wouldn’t. He would not even defend himself against the charges leveled against him by the British admiralty for incompetence in command for losing his ship at Yorktown.

  Yet uncertainty blossomed in her belly—and fear, because she had not expected to feel doubt. She had not thought that he was responsible. “She died from a miscarriage. You did not cause Saundra’s miscarriage.”

  Her eyes raked his profile, searching for clues, dreading what she might find if she searched too long. “I . . .” She strove to keep her voice level. “There is a difference between guilt and responsibility, my lord. Whatever the course of events, you were not at fault.”

  “You have no bloody idea, Christel. You do not know anything.”

  “I understand more than you think—”

  He braced a palm against the wall, trapping her, his jaw tense. They matched stares for several long seconds before his eyes narrowed slightly. He was behaving poorly and he knew it: she read it in the heavy weight of his gaze, felt it in the shift of his stance and the hard muscles of his chest as he moved his lips to her ear. Only his oilskin touched her, barely a brush against her arm, but it might as well have been his hand for the whisper of heat that warned her.

  “Why have you really come back?” he demanded. “You have left your entire life in Virginia to travel across the world, and I doubt it was to be governess to my child.”

  “What do you mean?” She whispered the words.

  “No one does anything unless something is in it for him or for her. Or she is running away.”

  “And you are not?” she accused him, feeling cornered by her emotions, daring him to defy the accusation, angry that he could turn this conversation back on her. He pushed himself away from the wall. Before he walked two steps toward the door, she said, “Do you have so little faith in humankind then that you could judge us all so harshly? What did Saundra do that no priest would say words over her, that you would threaten to tear down the village kirk stone by stone if she was not buried in the cemetery beside her mother?”

  He wheeled around, but it was not anger she glimpsed on his face as he scraped back the hood of his oilskin with the sweep of his hand. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Your daughter.”

  His eyes closed and he shook his head as he mouthed something that sounded like an oath. Suddenly beset by a terrible urge to touch him, she forced her hands into a fist. His defensive posture told her he would never have allowed it. “Please tell me what happened. I need to know. You were there.”

  He looked up at the rafter, his jaw tight. “Saundra climbed the stairs to the light tower overlooking the cliffs,” he said in a colorless voice. “And then she jumped into the sea. We found her body the next morning washed onto the rocks.”

  Christel searched his face in utter shock. “I . . . I do not believe it. How can you be so sure she did not fall? How?”

  “You have not been in the old light tower or you would not ask me that question. No one falls from up there unless they first climb out on the ledge.”

  Christel’s eyes burned. “I . . . I am so sorry.”

  “Why?” she heard him rasp.

  For assuming the worst of him. For not returning sooner. For staying gone too long.

  “She has been dead almost two years, Christel,” he said without inflection.

  His hand suddenly came up, warm beneath her chin, turning her face into the light and returning her gaze to his. She had not expected his touch, much less to feel the gentleness behind it.

  Another wave burst over the ship. Seawater dripped beneath the door seals into the corridor. He pulled away, then withdrew his gloves from beneath his slicker. He was not looking at her, and his unexpected vulnerability struck her.

  “If you need anything, ask Harry. He will be down perio
dically to check on you throughout the night.”

  He shoved a shoulder against the door. It slammed shut behind him against an icy wind and a storm still lingering inside her that should have died long ago.

  Chapter 3

  Drawing in a deep breath, Christel set aside the remains of the blue-and-white striped feather ticking from Lord Carrick’s bed and finished gathering up the last of the blankets in the master cabin. She had aired them and only needed to fold them. This she would do in the smaller cabin away from Mrs. Gables’s stern eye.

  Since Christel was the only other woman on board, she was duty bound out of common charity to assist Mrs. Gables, who continued to suffer bouts of seasickness. Christel hoped that by exchanging cabins, the light would help Anna’s nurse recover. When Christel had returned to make up the bed earlier, Mrs. Gables had been sitting in a plush chair in Lord Carrick’s cabin, her strength improved, if her curiosity about Christel and want of conversation had been any proof.

  Christel welcomed the conversation if only because it gave her a chance to be with Anna. Mrs. Gables was not a completely unpleasant woman, and not without an interesting story. She had traveled extensively in her youth, and she’d borne and lost several children while serving with her husband in India. But, like most British, she had an acute dislike for the Irish, which meant she did not get along with Lord Carrick’s steward, for no apparent reason other than the fact that his cooking was wretched. Typically English to her core, much like one of those vexing types for whom Christel used to sew.

  She was a woman who belonged to a circle of close-minded individuals set in their ways, perfectly oblivious to new situations or experiences, not because they did not know how to adapt but because they chose not to. Such persons could travel the world and be tolerant of nothing else outside their perfectly formed sphere.

  Christel’s dog fell outside that sphere. It was hairy and shed, lacked pedigree, tore up expensive feather ticks and enjoyed licking Anna’s face. The dog had to be banished to the hold.

  Even as Christel had listened to a steady barrage of gentle commands directed at Lord Carrick’s daughter. Don’t gobble your food, Lady Anna. Hands in your lap when you sit at the table. Back straight. Sit pretty, dear.