Something Wonderful
Page 37

The captain of the Fair Winds greeted them personally as they came on board and invited them to join him for "a simple supper" in his cabin. The "simple" meal consisted of fourteen courses, each served with a different wine, and a great deal of animated conversation about the wars Britain was fighting with the French and Americans. In Morsham, when Alexandra had read about bloody land battles with Napoleon's forces and the clashes taking place on the sea, it had all seemed so far away and unreal. Now, with warships lying at anchor all around her, war was a tangible, frightening thing.
By the time Jordan escorted her down to their cabin, however, she had drunk so much wine at the captain's urging that she was feeling a little giddy and extremely sleepy. Jordan's trunks had been put in their cabin, and Alexandra smiled with rosy contentment, wondering if he intended to make love to her tonight. He'd seemed a little distant after he finally returned from his meeting in London last night, and he hadn't made love to her when they finally stopped in an inn south of the city. He had kissed her goodnight, though, and held her in his arms until she slept.
"Shall I play lady's maid?" Jordan asked. Without waiting for her to answer, he turned her around and began unfastening the long row of rose-silk-covered buttons down her back.
"Is this boat swaying?" Alexandra asked, grabbing for the small oaken table beside her.
Jordan's chuckle was rich and deep. "This is a ship, not a 'boat' and you are doing the swaying, my sweet—the result, I fear, of a shocking overindulgence in wine at supper."
"The captain was so determined I try each one," she protested. "He's very nice," she added, rather pleased with the world in general.
"You won't think so when you wake up in the morning," Jordan teased.
He obligingly turned his back while she changed, then he tucked her into their bed, drawing up the sheets to her chin.
"My lord," she asked, "aren't you coming to bed?" Alexandra wished devoutly that she wasn't required to address him always as "your grace" or "my lord," but the dowager duchess had lectured her very sternly that she must address him thus, unless and until her husband gave her permission to do otherwise. Which he hadn't.
"I'm going up on deck for a little while to get some air," he said, stopping to take his pistol out of his other jacket and tuck it in the waistband of his dark-blue trousers.
Alexandra was fast asleep before Jordan had finished walking down the narrow passageway toward the steps that led to the upper deck.
At the railing, Jordan reached into his pocket and took out one of the slender cheroots he usually enjoyed after supper. Cupping his hands around the tip, he lit it, then he stood looking out across the Channel, contemplating the highly complex problem of Alexandra. After years of associating with sophisticated, mercenary, shallow women—and of condemning the entire sex on the basis of those women—he had married a girl who was artless, candid, intelligent, and generous.
And he didn't know what to do with her.
Alexandra had some foolish, quixotic notion that he was noble and gentle and "beautiful." When, as he well knew, he was jaded, disillusioned, and morally corrupt. In his brief life, he'd already killed too many men to count and bedded more women than he could possibly recall.
Alexandra believed in openness, trust, and love—and she fully intended to try to make him participate in her beliefs. He wanted nothing to do with openness, trust, or love.
She was a gentle dreamer, he was a hard realist.
She was, in fact, such a dreamer that she actually believed "something wonderful" was going to happen—which wasn't that surprising, since she also believed wet dirt in the springtime smelled like perfume…
Alexandra wanted to make him see the world as she saw it—fresh and alive and unspoiled, but it was too late for that. All he could do was to try to keep the world that way for her for as long as possible. But he would not share her imaginary world with her. He didn't want to. He didn't belong there. At Devon she would be safe from the corrosive effects of Society, safe from the dissipations and brittle sophistication of his world—the world where he was comfortable—where he was not expected to feel things like love; where he wasn't expected to trust, or to reveal his inner thoughts and feelings…
He dreaded the hurt he knew he'd see on her face when she realized he did not intend to stay in Devon with her, but that he would not do. Could not do.
In front of him, the Channel stretched for as far as he could see, its inky surface swept by a giant yellow moonbeam. Irritably, Jordan flicked his cheroot over the side, then he remembered it was his only one. He'd left the flat gold case with the others in it at Elise's house in London the night before last.
Restless from days of enforced confinement in the coach and from trying unsuccessfully to find a better solution to the problem of Alexandra, he turned from the rail and glanced along the wharf, where light spilled out from taverns and inebriated sailors staggered along, their arms flung over the shoulders of the whores who walked at their sides.
Less than four yards away, two men darted swiftly into the shadows of the ship and crouched down among the coiled ropes out of his sight.
Hoping to buy a few cigars in the tavern across the wharf, Jordan strolled across the deck and headed for the gangplank. Two shadows emerged from the ropes and followed him, hanging back, watching.
Jordan was aware that the wharf was a dangerous place to be at night, particularly with impressment gangs ranging about, pouncing upon the unwary and loading their unconscious victims onto His Majesty's warships, where they woke up to discover they had the "honor" of becoming seamen for months or years—until such time as the ship returned to port. On the other hand, Jordan was armed, all he saw on the wharf were drunken seamen, and, after surviving years of bloody battles all over Spain, he saw little to fear from the few yards of wharf that separated him from the tavern.
"Stay back, yer fool—let 'im get to th' wharf," one of the shadows whispered to the other as they moved silently down the gangplank in Jordan's wake.
"What the bloody hell are we waitin' for," the second shadow demanded of his cohort as they waited in the darkness under the eaves of the tavern, where their prey had disappeared. "We was supposed ter hit him over the head and dump him into the water, which we coulda done better while he was on the ship."
The first man smiled sardonically. "I got a better idea—it ain't more work, and it'll get us more blunt."