This Perfect Kiss Read online

  Anna seemed to take the instruction in stride. When not listening to her nurse, she kept herself occupied, diligently learning from Christel how to make a bonnet for her doll. She seemed like a practical girl, interested in the world about her, but content to remain on its fringes. In many ways, she reminded Christel of herself at that age. Perhaps that was why she felt drawn to the child.

  Upon entering Mrs. Gables’s former cabin, Christel did not at first note that she was not alone until she heard the creak of leather and looked over the tops of the blankets bunched in her arms.

  Lord Carrick sat at the small table, his legs outstretched in front of him, a study of casual nautical sophistication. He wore a heavy dark blue seaman’s sweater and woolen breeches tucked into jackboots that hugged his calves. Though he’d clubbed back his dark hair, strands had pulled loose in the wind.

  She had not seen him below, and for some reason she almost tripped. “What are you doing here?” she asked, feeling ridiculous the instant the words spilled out.

  He cocked his brow as if his thoughts mirrored hers. This was his ship; he could go where he chose. “Red Harry told me you had changed cabins.”

  She dropped the blankets on the berth and proceeded to fold them, not believing for one moment he’d come to see to her welfare. “There is no reason I should have remained in the master’s chambers alone.”

  “You have an aversion to sleeping alone?”

  She whirled to face him. But he was not even looking at her. He was looking at the comforter on the top berth.

  “Tell me you are not planning to re-stuff that thing,” he asked.

  Her startled gaze swung to the berth where she had laid the tick, suddenly worried he might order it tossed overboard simply because it lacked perfection. She had salvaged the tick and most of the feathers. “And if I do?”

  Smoothing her fingers over the fabric one last time, she carefully folded and placed it at the foot of the berth. Indeed, she had created a wedding gown less costly than this bed covering. But that wasn’t why she wanted to save it.

  “I would tell you ’tis not necessary, Christel.”

  Sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, he made no other comment, as if unwilling to argue the point, because either it was unimportant to him, or he sensed its importance to her. She was responsible for its destruction. She would see it repaired. She paid her debts. She would keep it that way.

  “Do you have a place to stay once we are in Ayr?” he asked after a moment. “Have you been in contact with your grandmother?”

  “You need not worry about my accommodations,” she said. “I am returning to Seastone Cottage.” The place where she had been born. Where she had lived for twelve years before her mother had died and Papa had sent her to stay with Grams at Rosecliffe. “I know the family my uncle hired to care for the place.” Without looking at Lord Carrick, she said, “I am not returning to Virginia. My decision was made before I left Boston.”

  “Your uncle has been dead a year. Have you considered that you will owe taxes?”

  She did not argue his point. His conclusion was true. Accepting employment with Lord Carrick had been as much a matter of economics as any other reason she had for returning to Scotland, but this too remained unsaid. Lord Carrick had wanted answers as to why she would accept a position as a governess for his daughter. He was intelligent enough to discern that her motivations were monetary without making her demean herself by spelling it out. Except now that she had met the child, even that point was no longer accurate. Anna was Saundra’s daughter. Christel wanted to know her.

  “I have no intention of remaining at Blackthorn Castle,” he said. “Any governess I hire will have to accompany me back to London.”

  “I am sure you will find one in London to suit your needs, my lord. My home is Seastone Cottage.”

  He unfurled from the chair, his size shrinking the room by half in her mind. A wayward perception that she immediately decided was incongruous, for he was no taller or broader of shoulder than other men in her life had been.

  She returned to folding blankets, listening as he walked past her to the port window, touching a hand to the washbasin as he bent at the waist and peered outside at the pewter sky. A quick glance and he continued his examination of the room, his restless pacing beginning to wear as her senses followed his movement to the cupboard. She could hear a limp in his step and caught the faint scent of liniment.

  “Your hair is short,” he said from behind her, giving her a start.

  She shrugged a shoulder, indifferent as to whether her hair was short or long, and set the last blanket on the bed. “I sold the length to a wigmaker before leaving Boston. Better to salvage the coin than waste it on louse. Hair grows back . . .” Unlike limbs, she had started to say and had stopped herself, realizing at once that the thought had also been his. Just as quickly, she regretted the implication that her silence implied pity for him.

  “You needn’t fear speaking the truth around me, Miss Douglas. I am not made of eggshells.”

  “But neither are you forged from iron.”

  “Nor are you, Christel.”

  Dropping the blanket in her hands, she turned and placed her hands on her hips. “Is it to be Christel or Miss Douglas?” she queried. “Clearly, you cannot seem to decide.”

  “Which would you prefer?”

  “That depends. Perhaps we should clarify our relationship to each of our satisfactions so that we can stop skipping about the other as if we are total strangers. For Anna’s sake, we can certainly find a way to be friends. Can we not?” She smiled, aware that she was nervous, even more aware that he could sense it.

  After everything that he had told her, she remained unsure of her place and of how much leeway he would give her. “Which means that I give you leave to call me Christel,” she said decidedly. “I am family, after all. Indirectly, of course.”

  Folding his arms, he leaned a shoulder against the berth. She waited for him to invite her to call him by his Christian name. He didn’t. He was still studying her, clearly unsure what to make of her.

  “Though even if you gave me leave to call you Camden or St. Giles, I would not feel comfortable reciprocating,” she prattled on. “To that point, I should speak my mind on another matter.”

  “By all means. Do. To remain silent or docile in the face of adversity only leaves the problem to confront another day.”

  “Well spoken,” she agreed, even though she sensed amusement in his tone. “You shared a lot with me last night. Words are not adequate to state—”

  “Then do not try. Some things are best left unsaid.”

  She nodded.

  He remained silent. She drew in breath. “I also know that you have a certain noblesse oblige ingrained in you. You were born with it in your blood and you will feel obligated to protect me once we are in Ayr no matter what has happened in the past that might color your—”

  “Are you trying to irritate me, Christel?”

  “Who would dare, my lord?”

  “Certainly not you.”

  Despite herself, she felt the corners of her mouth lift. “I only wanted to stress that I am quite capable of taking care of myself. I do not want you to think that you have to worry about me or think that you need to take care of me. When we get to Scotland, I do not expect charity from you. I do not expect, nor do I want, anything.”

  He returned to the porthole and stared outside, his seeming lack of attention to her allowing her to observe him unhindered.

  The shadow of a beard marked the angular plains of his handsome face. He’d stepped from the persona once owned by the blue and white uniform of his naval rank into something inherently more predatory, always on guard, like a hawk that had suffered a broken wing, never to recover well enough to soar again. He wore his past like an unyielding mantle of iron. It weighed against him, and written deep into his posture was an inherent distrust of the world. Such men were dangerous and unpredictable, if only because they lived on th
e fringes of life and would defend their territory to the death. She thought of his daughter and wondered what it would be like to own that kind of love.

  She had wanted it once. Not anymore.

  Lifting her gaze, she realized too late that while she’d been assessing him, he’d also been assessing her, but far less subtly.

  She looked into eyes the shade of the pewter sky churning behind him. Yet there was something else in his gaze.

  Something that was not cold at all. She had thought the attraction between them gone.

  She turned away from those penetrating eyes, aware of the burn in her cheeks as she resumed folding in an effort to pretend composure. She wished he would go now. She didn’t understand his presence, especially after their conversation last night. He’d done his duty by her, had reassured himself that she had a place to go once in Scotland. There was nothing else to say. She had meant it when she’d said she wanted nothing from him.

  “Why are you not married?” he asked.

  It was an impertinent question and he clearly knew it. She presented him an offhand reply. “No man will have me, my lord. I have been quite happily on the shelf for years and intend to remain that way.”

  His mouth crooked slightly and his teeth shone white against the dark bristle on his face. “And what exactly is the age one is considered on the shelf these days?”

  “When a woman learns how to use a saber as well as a man.”

  He looked mildly amused. “I should have guessed no mere colonial would have the bollocks to properly manage you.”

  “Pah! No mere Englishman had the bollocks to try, my lord. In fact, was I to pit the two factions ’twould probably end much like the war.”

  He surprised her by laughing. “A colonial to the core.”

  “I am half Scots.” Her mouth curved up in a smug smile. “So are you, my lord.”

  Taking a step toward her, he stopped so near that she could feel his breath stir her hair. He smelled of wind and salt and an icy sea.

  “Now that we have finally found common ground between us to both our satisfactions”—plucking something from her hair, he presented her with a feather—“I should return to my duties.”

  She took a casual step backward. “I could not agree more, my lord.”

  After he left, she shut the door behind him and leaned against it for solid support. She could credit that while she disliked her reaction to him, she could not deny the stir of long-suppressed awareness coming to life any more than she could deny his beauty, his height and heat that seemed to emanate from him.

  She reminded herself to be more cautious. He had been Saundra’s husband. Not hers. She thought she knew him. She did not.

  But for now, they seemed to have struck a fragile truce.

  “There she is again, my lord,” Bentwell said over the lashing wind. “She’s flying the revenue ensign and commission pennant.”

  Camden raised the brass telescope to his eye to see for himself. She was canted over steeply to starboard, every inch of canvas spread, giving him a full view of her profile against the churning sky. “The same ship just outside Dover?”

  “Aye, my lord. She’s been weatherin’ on us. Dangerous at best in these winds. The captain is a fool to risk his ship in such a manner. But at that pace he will cross our path in the next hour.”

  There was only one reason a ship would weather on another, to maneuver into a superior position just before one initiated an engagement.

  “Flying the signal flags of a revenue cruiser could be a ruse,” Bentwell said.

  “She’s clench built. Typical British lines for a revenue cruiser. Probably constructed in Liverpool.” Camden snapped the spyglass shut. “I would prefer she be French.”

  The crew of a naval revenue cruiser hunted and hanged smugglers pursuant to enforcing the navigational acts originally designed to keep the newly independent Americans out of the West Indies. Now the policy was enforced anywhere Britain considered her sacred waters. Camden was familiar with the fact that the captains of such vessels rarely asked questions before seizing a ship and pressing its crew into service. Pirates, privateers, and other ne’er-do-wells he could outrun and maneuver around to escape. The Royal Navy was another matter entirely.

  His gaze swung upward. Visible just below England’s bold red-and-blue standard, his own black-and-gold banner whipped above ice-encrusted rigging. The earl of Carrick was not an anonymous British entity. There wasn’t a ship’s captain in England who didn’t know who he was. If that revenue ship had been shadowing the Anna since Dover, then the captain of that cruiser knew without a doubt this ship belonged to him.

  “Do you think she was lying in wait for us?” Bentwell asked, clearly recognizing what Camden had already concluded.

  “Only if someone knew the Anna was leaving London and tipped them off far enough in advance. Who delivered the message from the dowager countess Carrick three days ago?”

  “The Pelican. The captain gave it to me himself. Said it came from your grandmother. The request seemed as dire as it did genuine.”

  The Pelican was a seal hunting vessel making its last run to market before winter. The captain had brought mail in from Blackthorn Castle while Camden had lived in London. But if for some nefarious reason that revenue cruiser had indeed been lying in wait, then someone had told them the Anna was carrying illegal cargo. That someone was playing dangerous games. The Anna was no smuggling vessel.

  “Inspect the supercargo, then do a search of the hold,” he told Bentwell. “If something is on board that should not be here, find it.”

  After Bentwell left the deck, Camden stood for some time with his wrists crossed behind him. He had already run out the weather guns to keep the ship on a more even keel, giving her a better grip on the water. Yet even he had his limits. He might know these waters, but in this weather, only a fool would test the limits of a ship when the wind could snap a mast and leave a ship floundering in dangerous seas.

  “Helmsman, edge down to starboard. Keep her as near to the wind as she’ll lie,” he shouted, keeping his eyes on the distant ship.

  It could be nothing, he thought, taking the most charitable view of a potentially unpleasant situation.

  A view that was premature as he heard the lookout call, “She be signaling us to come about, my lord.”

  Chapter 4

  The schooner flew the white ensign of the Royal Navy. It was all business as Camden waited on deck, watching the approaching jolly boat battle the swells. He raised his perspective glass to his eye.

  A single officer stood at the bow of the small boat. A heavy military frock coat warded off the chill and whipped in the wind, revealing the crisp navy blue and gold braided jacket beneath. Two lobster-backs sat behind him. “Not exactly an armed boarding party,” Bentwell murmured. “Are you going to let them board?”

  “What do you think would happen if I did not?” Camden turned his attention to his crew. “Look lively there!” he shouted, sending them into action, up and down the deck and masts.

  A lad lowered the rope ladder to prepare for boarding as the boat closed in against the hull of the ship. The officer swung himself up the ladder and clamored briskly aboard.

  He was a tall man, in his thirties, square jawed and clean shaven in the way of a lieutenant who ran a strict ship. His cheeks were ruddy pink from the cold. Seeing Camden, he removed his bicorn and tucked it beneath his arm, revealing a helmet of burnished gold hair. It was unusual that a British naval officer would show that manner of respect to one suspected of smuggling, even more unusual that he would come aboard without escort.

  Camden let his gaze slide over the blond lieutenant. “To what do I owe this signal honor, Lieutenant?” he asked, unimpressed and investing an annoyed air in his tone. All the while, his attention remained focused on the cannonades aimed at his ship.

  “I am Lieutenant Ross of HMS Glory Rose, my lord. I was once the custom’s agent assigned to the Tidewater region of Virginia. We have not had the
pleasure of meeting personally. But I know who you are.”

  Camden heard a hint of admiration. “You were an excise officer in the colonies, and now a sailor?”

  “I am from a family of seafarers,” the lieutenant answered. “After Virginia, I returned to take a position away from the war and still serve England. You see . . . I married a colonial.”

  “I am sure you did not come aboard to share your personal history with me, Lieutenant.” Camden tightened his mouth, though amusement laced his words. “You will not find me inviting you to tea. The seas are rough and I would like to be about my business.”

  Lieutenant Ross straightened his shoulders as if reprimanded. “The British navy has reason to suspect this ship of smuggling, my lord, a hanging offense—”

  “So is stealing food in most parts of the world.”

  “Would you object if my men searched your cargo hold?”

  “Would it make a difference if I did? Though if you believed I was smuggling, you would not be asking to view the cargo. My ship would be swarming with your men. As you can tell, this ship is riding high in the water. With the exception of a mangy dog and some livestock, the cargo bay is empty.”

  Lieutenant Ross withdrew a missive from inside his coat. “I was already on my way to London to find you when I received orders to intercept your ship. Someone informed upon you, my lord, and gave us information where you would be.”

  Aye, he had suspected as much.

  Camden read the missive, signed by a former commanding officer in Bournemouth. “This communiqué gives you leeway to make your own decision about a search.”

  Lieutenant Ross took a step toward the railing, pulling Camden from earshot of his crew. “Aye, my lord. I wanted to discern for myself whether you would consent to be boarded. We did not see you flagrantly tossing your cargo overboard, so that either means you are not guilty of possessing contraband or you are too arrogant to think I would not find anything hidden on this ship. I do not see that you are arrogant, my lord.”