Thief of Hearts Page 7

  Sylvie was shaking her head sadly. “No one’s heard Gilligan speak a word, but we think he’ll be like Christopher. Christopher was almost four before he started talking.”

  Probably because he couldn’t get a word in edgewise, Lucy thought unkindly. It never mattered if she didn’t have anything clever to say around Sylvie because Sylvie did all the talking. All that was required of her was an occasional nod or sympathetic murmur.

  Her friend’s fashionably cropped curls bobbed as she described her brother Philip’s bloodcurdling tumble down the garret stairs. Lucy had never told anyone, but she fancied her mother had been much like Sylvie Howell. Possessed of irrepressible good humor. Somewhat flighty. And pretty. Dazzlingly pretty.

  She stole a glance at her bodyguard, expecting to find him already besotted. But he was occupied with feeding ham to the spaniels and bits of bread to the baby, his concentration focused on not getting his hands mixed up.

  She studied him with a newly critical eye—Sylvie’s eye. Unlike most men, the uncompromising sunlight showed him off to his best advantage. It accentuated the tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes and warmed his unfashionable tan to honeyed bronze. His age was difficult to gauge; he’d obviously spent a great deal of time outdoors.

  His was a compelling face, wide of cheekbone, strong of brow, a face that might have remained too boyish had it not been honed by time and experience. She was loath to admit that it was the very traits she found so annoying that made her reluctant to look away. The irresistible glint of humor in his hazel eyes. The amused slant of his lips. He always seemed to be on the verge of smiling, as if he were privy to some wonderful joke that had escaped the rest of the world.

  As he tilted a goblet of water to those expressive lips, she generously decided that there were some who might even call him handsome.

  “Avast, ye lowly scoundrel. I’ll hang yer severed head from the yardarm or me name ain’t Cap’n Doom!”

  Claremont choked and sloshed water over the rim of his goblet, drenching both baby and spaniels, as two small boys exploded through a nearby fortress of fallen leaves, tree branches clacking in a mock cutlass fight.

  “Sorry,” he murmured, dabbing at the baby’s bald head with his handkerchief. “They startled me.”

  Sylvie waved away his apology. “They’re only playing Cap’n Doom. It’s been one of their favorite games ever since Lucy’s thrilling adventure.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, dear, I forgot it was a secret. You see, the Admiral confided in Papa who confided in Mama who confided in me—oh, what a galloping ninny I am!”

  Lucy was tempted to agree. “Mr. Claremont is not a spy from the Times, Sylvie. He is well aware of the incident. It’s the reason my father hired him.”

  Sylvie’s eyes shone with admiration. “Who would have ever thought Lucy could be so brave? Why, she was far more intrepid than those spineless ninnies in Mrs. Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent!” She plucked a cricket from the baby’s fingers before he could eat it and shot Lucy a sly look. “I suspect our Lucy was rather taken with the villain. She colors quite prettily every time his name is mentioned.”

  “I do not!” Lucy felt a rush of heat in her cheeks even as she protested. Keenly aware of Claremont’s eyes on her, she inclined her head, hoping the fall of her hair would hide the betrayal of her fair complexion.

  A merrily unrepentant Sylvie trotted off to put the baby down for a nap and fetch a new copy of her papa’s memoirs, abandoning Lucy to her bodyguard’s company.

  The jibes she dreaded did not materialize. Instead, Claremont drew a cheroot from his pocket and clamped it between lips that bore no trace of a smile. His eyes narrowed to brilliant slits behind his spectacles as he watched Sylvie’s brothers play at pirates. The sun had lost its warmth and the temperature around the blanket seemed to have dropped by several degrees.

  Lucy sensed that once again she’d done something inexplicable to annoy him. Let him fume, she thought, retreating into her own stony silence. He’d get no satisfaction from her. She’d lived with the Admiral for nineteen years. There was no one better versed in tolerating the punishment of aloof indifference.

  Without asking her permission as was the custom, he lit the slender cigar and inhaled deeply before pursing his lips and blowing a flawless smoke ring.

  Lucy found something profane about a man taking blatant delight in such a carnal and wicked pleasure. Perhaps that was what she found so unsettling about him. He did everything as if it were both his first and last time. She smothered a delicate cough into her hand.

  A handkerchief appeared, dangling like a Jolly Roger before her eyes.

  Lucy stared at the challenging scrap of linen, offended by its unsullied purity. A new emotion stirred in her breast, dangerous and exotic. Anger, sweet and hot, washing away her passive melancholy with its unfamiliar fire.

  For years she had allowed her father to dismiss her, to treat her with the same casual disregard as he did his subordinates. Dreading his bullying almost as much as she craved his affection, she had learned to render herself so invisible that sometimes she feared she might disappear altogether.

  Mr. Claremont’s mocking indifference had the opposite effect. She could feel her spirit sputter to life in her breast, winking, flickering, then igniting in a furious blaze.

  She ignored the handkerchief. If the rascal thought he could goad her into a response, he’d be a long time waiting.

  The handkerchief disappeared. The next smoke ring floated straight at her, neatly hooping her nose.

  “Mr. Claremont!” His name shot from her lips in an explosion of pure wrath. She scrambled to her feet, slapping her gloves against her thigh. “It has been obvious from the first that our association is a fool’s endeavor. We are utterly incompatible in both temperament and moral character.”

  He lounged back on one elbow, the very image of a rumpled reprobate. That infuriating quirk had reappeared at the corner of his mouth. “Then it’s fortunate the Admiral hired me to guard you, not marry you.”

  Lucy sucked in a furious breath. It seemed the wretch was stealing all the air from outdoors as well. A very unladylike trickle of sweat eased between her breasts. “It is the Admiral who made an enemy of Captain Doom, sir, not I, and there is no reason I should continue to be punished for his folly.” She snapped on her gloves. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself and I shall endeavor to convince my father of that at the nearest opportunity.”

  She marched up the slope toward the carriage, spoiling her dignified exit by stumbling over the hem of her gown.

  Gerard rose to his feet, flicking the cheroot into the grass. So little Miss Mouse thought she would have him dismissed, did she? Thought she could look after herself without the bumbling assistance of an ill-mannered commoner?

  His eyes narrowed as he ground out the cheroot’s flame with his boot heel. He wasn’t about to let the Admiral’s brat spoil all of his carefully laid plans by having him dismissed. She’d left him no choice. To keep his position, he would have to show the haughty miss just how badly she needed a man like him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SMYTHE’S ATTACK ON THE GATEHOUSE door the following morning at 0600 was executed with far less discretion and far more volume. The pounding continued until Gerard was forced to stumble blindly out of bed. Tripping over the quilt he’d anchored around his naked form, he threw open the door and glared at the butler through tufts of disheveled hair.

  Smythe blinked at him with such maddening serenity that Gerard would have sworn the man knew about the trip he’d made into London the previous night after Lucy’s lamp had been extinguished, the four ales he’d consumed at a Whitechapel tavern, and the fact that he’d stumbled into bed shortly before dawn with the grim satisfaction of knowing Miss Snow would soon be begging him to stay on in his position to protect her.

  “Admiral Snow extends his invitation to breakfast with him and Miss Lucy this morning.”

  Invitation, hell! Gerard thought. He knew
a royal summons when he heard one. He suspected it was simply the Admiral’s sly way of nudging him out of bed before ten o’clock.

  “It will be my bloody pleasure,” he growled before slamming the door in the butler’s unruffled face.

  Lucy and her father sat at opposite ends of the dining room table, separated by a lustrous sea of oak. The Admiral was surrounded by scattered newspapers, his only concession to untidiness in the immaculate room. The only thing visible of him over the Times was his lush pompadour of white hair. His hair was the Admiral’s keenest vanity. Even when wigs had been fashionable, he’d refused to wear one.

  Lucy cleared her throat and added a dollop of fresh cream to her tea. Her father looked positively regal in his dark blue broadcloth coat with its gleaming brass buttons and gold-braided hem. In nineteen years, she’d never once seen him out of uniform. She always felt somewhat smaller in his presence, dwarfed by the grandeur of his rank and authority. She tapped her foot nervously, halfway surprised it would still reach the floor.

  She’d been searching for just this opportunity since returning from the Howells’ yesterday, but as she stole another glance at her father, her tongue was seized by that same painful mingling of adoration and guilt that had plagued her since childhood. Guilt for so frequently failing to live up to his expectations. Guilt for constantly having to battle her inherited moral flaws. Guilt for being born to a woman who had been fool enough to scorn such an exceptional man.

  He made her feel five years old again, as if she were standing on the dock, gripping Smythe’s hand and watching him disembark from some heroic voyage to the approving roar of the crowd. She had always wanted to yell “That’s my papa!” but never dared.

  She drew in a steadying breath. “Father, there’s something I really must—”

  The newspaper crackled disapprovingly. “Speak up, girl. You know I can’t tolerate mumbling.”

  She took a sip of the tea, silently damning Claremont for goading her into making the foolish boast that she would be rid of him. “Father, it’s imperative that I—”

  The words lodged in her throat as the cause of her discomfiture strolled into the room, inclining his head graciously in her direction. “Miss Snow.”

  She coolly returned his nod. “Mr. Claremont.”

  Ignoring the expressionless footman standing at attention at the Admiral’s elbow, Claremont captured a plate for himself and stood frowning down at the marble-topped sideboard. Lucy could almost see him mentally comparing the spartan fare to the sumptuous spread at the Howells’. Her father forgotten, she nibbled her dry toast, riveted by details she’d never noticed before—the worn seams on Claremont’s tailcoat, the scars on his boots that no amount of buffing would smooth. Just how badly did he need this position?

  He sank into a chair and began to slather a miniature mountain of butter on his toast beneath the reproving eyes of the footman.

  Lucy frowned, beset by a reluctant pang of conscience. Mr. Claremont certainly liked to eat. Would he go hungry if she forced her father to send him packing?

  “Well, what is it, girl?” The Admiral slammed his fist on the table, rattling the silver. Lucy jumped, sloshing her tea over the cup’s gilt-edged rim. “If it’s so damned imperative that you have to interrupt my, breakfast, spit it out, won’t you?”

  Why did her father have to choose that moment to emerge from his cocoon of newsprint? she wondered despairingly. “I thought … well, it’s just that I …”

  Claremont fixed his gaze on her face, his expression so pleasantly mild that only Lucy suspected he would have liked to gag her with her napkin.

  “I need some money for paints,” she blurted out. “I’ve used the last of the cerulean and I can’t finish my Cornwall seascape without it.”

  The Admiral’s smile was rife with such patronizing affection that Lucy wanted to duck beneath the tablecloth to avoid the coming salvo. “Ah, my darling Lucinda. I can always count on you to dramatize the trivial.” He disappeared behind a sheaf of the Times with a hunk of dry toast. “It was a special talent of your mother’s.”

  Lucy pushed her plate away. She dared a sullen glance at her bodyguard, expecting to find his eyes twinkling with amusement at her expense.

  Claremont had vanished. In his place sat a dangerous stranger, watching her father with pure murder in his eyes. A frisson of fear shot down Lucy’s spine, a premonition of disaster not for the Admiral, but for herself. Before she could convince herself she wasn’t simply giving in to fancy as her mother would have done, her father choked and Claremont’s affable expression slipped into place like a mask.

  Lucy stared in horror as her father dropped the newspaper, his florid complexion deepening to scarlet, then bruised purple. For one irrational moment, she believed Claremont had done something terrible to him with nothing more than the power of that murderous stare.

  Her bodyguard leaped to his feet and hastened around the table, shoving the panicked footman out of the way. Locking his hands together, he gave the Admiral one sharp blow between the shoulder blades. The Admiral sucked in a tortured gasp of air, his eyes watering with relief. Lucy snapped out of her daze and rushed to her father’s side, pressing a water goblet into his hand.

  Claremont pounded the Admiral’s back with more relish than Lucy deemed necessary. “You might try some butter next time, sir. It makes the toast go down more smoothly.”

  Lucy scowled at him, but her father was in no condition to chide Claremont for his insolence. “Not the bread,” he wheezed, stabbing his forefinger at the fallen newspaper. “Him! The bastard’s going to be the death of me yet!”

  Claremont reached for the paper, but Lucy swept it out from under his hand, immediately finding the words scripted in bold letters beneath the paper’s banner.

  “ ‘Captain Doom’,” she read softly, the name an unwitting entreaty on her lips.

  Gerard was thankful her father was still occupied with fighting to breathe. One glimpse of his daughter’s unguarded face in that moment and Gerard had little doubt that the Admiral would lock her away and toss out the key. Her color had heightened to creamy peach and her taut lips had softened to a tantalizing pout. With a distinctly unpleasant shock, Gerard realized that he would have liked to touch them, nibble them, plunge his tongue between their delectable curves.

  The unbidden notion opened up a realm of disturbing possibilities. Dangerous regrets.

  “ ‘After forcing the frigate into surrender off the coast of Dover,’ ” Lucy read, “ ‘the masked pirate invited (at pistol point) the blindfolded captain and his officers to join him and his crew for a gentlemanly game of faro aboard their ship. Although it is rumored Captain MacGower of the HMS Guenevere won back over one thousand pounds of the Royal Treasury gold confiscated by the brigands, he was not amused by the pirate’s antics.’ ”

  Neither was Gerard.

  Lucy lifted her gaze from the paper to stare right through him, her eyes softened to the misty gray of the sea at dawn. The tender yearning in their depths struck him high in the gut, dangerously near to his heart.

  He was beginning to hate Captain Doom almost as much as the Admiral did.

  “How dare he? Have you ever heard of such boldness? Such unmitigated gall?” The Admiral slammed the goblet down.

  Unsure of whether he was saving Lucy from her father or himself, Gerard snatched the paper out of her hands, jarring her face back to its haughty cast.

  He scanned the rest of the article, his temper growing grimmer with each word he read. “Rascal’s getting damned reckless, if you ask me. He’s liable to get his fool neck stretched if he pulls any more stunts like this one.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” The Admiral hefted the goblet.

  Lucy shot Gerard a triumphant glance. “But don’t you see, Father? If Doom is on the high seas, then there’s really no reason to—”

  “—relax our guard,” Gerard finished neatly, ignoring Lucy’s murderous glare. “A rogue like Doom probably has minions scattered al
l over England. What better time to execute an abduction than when blessed with an alibi provided by the entire crew of a Royal Navy frigate?”

  “Quite right, sir,” the Admiral concurred. “We must be more vigilant than ever.”

  Lucy snatched up a napkin, wringing it between her hands as if she wished it were his neck. But as her father polished off his water, his hands trembling visibly, her sullen expression melted to one of tender concern. Gerard knew he wouldn’t be finishing his own breakfast. Lucy’s groveling for her father’s favor had robbed him of his appetite.

  She dabbed at the Admiral’s damp brow with the napkin. “There now, Father. Shall I fetch you some more water?”

  He shoved her hand away. “You know I can’t abide being fussed over. Why don’t you take yourself off somewhere? Go buy those paints you need. That scoundrel has upset me far too much to work on my memoirs this morning.”

  Gerard bit back an oath. Another opportunity lost.

  “As you wish, Father,” Lucy replied dutifully.

  As she crept from the dining room, her posture was submissive, but the glance she shot him was anything but. Gerard’s eyes narrowed in speculation. It would only be a matter of time before she screwed up the courage to approach her father about his dismissal. Perhaps his day wasn’t to be wasted after all. A shopping expedition might provide the perfect opportunity to spring the trap he’d set for his tart-tongued mouse.

  As Gerard started after her, the Admiral cleared his throat as if he were choking on more than just dry toast. As soon as he spoke, Gerard knew it was his pride. “Thank you, lad. You saved my life.”

  Gerard gave him a crisp bow and an enigmatic smile. “Just doing my job, sir. Just doing my job.”

  As their carriage clattered toward Oxford Street later that morning, Gerard wondered if Miss Snow owned any gowns that weren’t white. The chaste hue was beginning to tell on his patience as well as his eyes.

  Against his will, his gaze lingered on the creamy shoulders and fluted collarbone bared by the severe lines of her Grecian-styled gown. He hated to admit it, but the absence of color suited her almost as well as her name. Her skin was like fresh snow—soft, virgin, alluring. Too bad she’d been cursed with an icy temperament to match.