raised her rich eyes framed by dark lashes to meet his. ‘You dislike the Virginia Trading Company?’
He opened and closed his hand beneath the table, thinking he should have stayed behind her and not faced her. The white mounds of her breasts were supple and smooth against the dark fabric of her gown, tempting him to break from her gaze and admire them. ‘I do. Their ships are the only ones I attack. The others I let go.’
‘Why?’ She tilted her head to view him, making the teardrops of her earrings brush the line of her delicate jaw. ‘Were you an officer on one of their ships and the Captain disciplined you too harshly?’
He tapped the chair’s arm, wishing he could taste a little of her discipline again. ‘No.’
‘Then a rival perhaps, a gentleman of some means who had his own company but couldn’t keep it in the face of competition?’ She speared a piece of pineapple off her plate with the fork and set it between her lips, using her teeth to draw it off the tines.
Richard, his pulse racing in his ears as well as places lower down, took hold of the thin neck of the wine decanter and reached over to fill the crystal goblet in front of her. Its red depths danced with the candlelight from the chandelier above the table, the heady vintage as tempting as her. ‘No.’
She set down the fork, rested her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers beneath her chin. The delicate lengths of them almost begged Richard to take them in his calloused hands and kiss the tips of each one the way he used to do during their afternoons in the Belle View barn. How beautiful she’d been beneath him then, her languid body curled around his, eager and ready for him. ‘Then tell me why?’
The amethyst jewels around her neck winked with the candlelight and the largest of the descending teardrops rested between the swells of her full breasts. One close to her throat had turned over, hiding the gem. He reached across the table and righted it, his fingers lightly brushing her neck and bringing a chill to her skin and his. ‘Because not all scoundrels sail under a black flag.’
She didn’t lean away despite the nervousness flickering through her eyes, but met his steady gaze. ‘How unfortunate I chose one of their ships for my passage.’
‘If you hadn’t, we may not have met.’ He raised his wineglass to her. She held up her goblet before taking a sip, watching him over the rim of the crystal, except it wasn’t her sparkling eyes that held his attention, but the gold wedding band sitting like an ugly scar on her finger. It killed the desire for her coursing through his body. ‘What does your husband think of you sailing by yourself?’
He nearly choked on the word husband and everything it meant. She was not his to enjoy and tease, she hadn’t been for a long time and all because of the choices he’d made. It didn’t matter—nothing did except securing her help. She’d be no use to him if her lord and master put a stop to things.
She set down the wine and glanced at the ring as if she wanted to snatch the cursed thing from her finger and hurl it into the sea. ‘He thinks nothing of it. He’s dead.’
Richard sat back in shock, her reason for being at sea and on her way home suddenly clear. He’d despised the man who’d taken his place, but he didn’t want Cas to suffer in mourning. She didn’t deserve it—however, the man’s being gone would make many things so much easier. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
‘I’m not. He did nothing but make my life miserable.’ She stared at the reflection of the candles in the surface of the wine, the shape of them widening and narrowing with each tilt of the ship making the liquid sway. The teasing, alluring woman from a moment ago was gone, revealing the wounded one she’d hidden so well with her bravery and her charming words, the one he’d failed to recognise because he’d been too intent on getting what he wanted.
Just like when he’d left her at Yorktown five years ago.
Richard picked at the nail head on his chair, a guilt washing over him such as he hadn’t experienced since the first time he’d taken a ship what seemed like a lifetime ago. He was quickly proving to be as big a bastard as his enemy. ‘I’m sorry things did not turn out as you would have liked.’
‘It’s been a long time since anything has.’ Defeat draped her like a sail cut loose from a mast. It was the same futility he’d experienced when word had reached him of her marriage and then of his father’s death. Regret crept along the back of his mind, resisting all his efforts to kill it. He’d worked hard for so long to dampen those emotions because there was nothing he could do to change what had happened. He could change things today. He’d done nothing to earn the right to ask her for any favour, especially one that might cause her more grief than Richard’s selfishness had already visited upon her. Let Walter tell her the truth in his own time, if at all. It would keep her untarnished by the hate enveloping Richard and grant her some peace of mind.
He rose, ready to escort her back to the Winter Gale, to bid her goodbye as he had five years ago, except this time she was ignorant of who he was and he was all too aware that they would not meet again. ‘I hope you find solace with your family in Virginia.’
She slowly spun the amethyst bracelet she wore around her delicate wrist, then spoke in so low a voice he almost didn’t hear her. ‘I have no family in Virginia.’
Every sense that told him when an enemy ship was approaching on the horizon raised the hairs along the back of his neck, and he pressed his fingertips into the top of the table. ‘What?’
‘My uncle, my only family, was sick with a fever,’ she choked through heavy words. ‘He died three months ago.’
Richard worked to steady himself as everything around him came apart like a ship in a hurricane. Walter Lewis, his only ally in the colonies, was gone and with him went Richard’s greatest chance of seeing himself and his men exonerated, and Vincent ruined. Panic filled him, and he struggled to keep it under control.
Before Richard could speak, Cassandra jumped to her feet, making the plates on the table rattle. ‘I’ve entertained you at supper as you asked. Will you let us go now?’
Her plea didn’t move him this time and neither did the anguish in her eyes. Everything Richard had spent the last five years working to accomplish teetered on the edge of ruin and he would not see it go over the side. He balled his hands into fists. Vincent had defeated him once before. He wouldn’t allow Walter’s death to let him do it again. ‘No, Cas, I’m afraid I can’t, not yet.’
* * *
Cassandra gripped the side of the table as the ship tilted. ‘What did you call me?’
He reached up and untied the strings of his mask, allowing the silk to slide down his face and drop to the floor.
‘Richard!’ It couldn’t be, but it was. ‘You’re alive!’
Hard work at sea had broadened his chest and arms and everything else about him. The sun had lightened his hair, making some strands near red, and turned his skin tawny. His eyes were almost the same except for the small lines about the corners and the steel of experience hardening them. She wouldn’t believe it was him if it weren’t for the small scar beneath his left eye formerly hidden by the mask. It was a reminder of a wherry accident from when he was a boy, a tale his father had laughingly recounted to her once when she and Uncle Walter had dined at Sutherland Place in the early days of their engagement. Tears blurred her vision. During too many lonely nights Richard’s memory had haunted her and made her wail over their lost future. She’d cursed the sea
