The Captain of All Pleasures

Chapter 10

Out of necessity, Nicole and Chancey made it through the day without arguing.

But that night

“Damn it, what were ye thinkin’?” he bellowed over dinner. His voice boomed so loud, Nicole thought it rattled their tin plates.

She blew out a breath. “You know, I was thinking we’d make it through the whole day.”

He had his thick hand stuffed into the handle of a mug that he whacked against the table for emphasis. “This is no school outin’. We’re sailin’ into the Forties—ye know the kind o’ storms we’ll see.”

“I know, and I can’t wait.” She slathered butter on a biscuit and took a big bite.

“We’ll have to adjust our course because o’ ye. Hell, we shouldn’t even sail this bloody race.” Another bang of his mug. “We don’t have a chance with ye on board.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she declared, tempted to bang her mug back at him. “I plan on navigating for us, winning this race, and saving the line. Unless you want to risk my father’s future and ours as well, we’ll stay steady and weather whatever comes, as it comes.”

“What about Sutherland? We all saw him yellin’ at his crew and them all scamperin’ all over the deck—ye know he’s comin’. What do ye think he’ll do now?”

“I think he’ll eat our wake for the next thirteen thousand miles,” she said with a lazy grin, ignoring Chancey’s vexed expression. She picked up an apple and knife and leisurely began cutting. “Really, what can he do now that we’re under way? Catch us?” she scoffed.

“No, he can’t catch the Bella Nicola . But say what if?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t understand a man like that. Chancey, why wasn’t he planning on sailing today? Doesn’t he care that this is probably the most important race of his life?”

“Sometimes a man like that is beyond carin’ about anythin’,” he answered as he wrenched his mug off his hand and pushed his plate aside.

“Why?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out tobacco for his clay pipe. “’Cause he’s lost the hope in him.”

“So, what happens with someone like him? Do they just stay that way forever?” she asked, then added, “Oh, don’t look at me all suspicious like that. I’m not making plans—I’m just curious. I might not ever see him again.”

He eyed her skeptically, but at her feigned studious look he relaxed, lit his pipe, and began explaining. “A man can change, but only when he can start lookin’ forward to the days ahead. If ye dread every mornin’ cause it’s a new day, then ye stop carin’.”

“Is that what happened with you when your wife died?”

Chancey inhaled deeply on his pipe, the air forcing his barrel chest to grow even larger, and exhaled slowly. “Aye. It were bloody hard—so hard I’d given up on livin’. But then yer father hired me aboard. Blasted Yank wouldn’t take no for an answer—said he understood what I was goin’ through. And I knew quick-like that I needed to help him care for ye. Ye were so wild, doin’ only as ye pleased. And he couldn’t naysay ye. Still can’t, if ye ask me,” he grumbled.

She ignored the last comment and asked, “So, we helped you get your hope back?”

“Aye. It takes somethin’ to change yer life so much ye can finally see that yer days could turn out good-like in the future.”

Was that why Sutherland wasted all that he’d been given in his life? He threw away so much, and it angered her. She needed to feed that anger, because she’d unforgivably developed soft feelings toward him that made her weak—soft feelings that clung even after she understood how truly despicable he was. She couldn’t seem to think of him without her heart squeezing in her chest, yet for him she’d been merely a…diversion. The heated names she’d called him that strange night while trying to get Chancey to forget the idea of marriage had seemed harsh and overdone then. Really, they were exactly fitting.

What was so bad was that, deep down, she’d known. She’d felt the danger rolling off him. She’d seen him in that vile tap house and had learned about his exploits even before she met him.

The only thing that kept her from truly hating Sutherland was remembering that she had been using him as well. She’d needed to appease her desires and curiosity because, until that night, she’d tossed in her bed wondering about passion until she thought it would drive her mad.

Sadly, she still tossed in her bed, but now it was because she understood what passion was.

Why couldn’t he be the type of man who would be as affected as she was and feel this longing, too?

“Nic, ye look like ye’re gonna cry,” Chancey said hesitantly as he relit his pipe.

“Huh?” She shook her head. “I was just thinking…and I am not going to cry.” She was appalled at the idea. “When was the last time you saw me cry?”

Chancey thought before answering. “When ye were eight and ye fell outta the riggin’ and broke yer arm. Such a wee monkey ye were.” He chuckled. “I thought yer father was gonna have a fit.”

The mention of her father brought Nicole’s attention back to where it should have been in the first place. Since she was fairly certain Sutherland had had nothing to do with her father’s continued imprisonment or the ship sabotage, she would just tuck that memory of him way back in her heart and think of him no more. The next few months would be grueling enough as it was.

“We’ll just have to brazen it out,” Nicole said decisively. “That’s what we’ll do. Father is counting on both of us, even if he doesn’t know it yet. I won’t let a sod like Sutherland put me off course.”

Lassiter’s imprisonment lasted not one week more, but two. He’d been like a madman when he’d received Nicole’s letter because he couldn’t do a thing to stop her. Within minutes of his release he was in Mayfair, drumming on the doors at Atworth House.

Jason pushed past the aging butler and marched down to the salon. It was a place he’d always remember. In that room, Evelyn Banning had blamed him for her daughter’s death. She’d called Nicole a savage. And she’d extracted a promise to return Nicole to this mausoleum when she was only twelve. It was the only promise he’d ever broken.

He froze in midstride as he was confronted with the huge portrait of Laurel above the fireplace. No, he’d broken one other promise. In that steamy night off the coast of Brazil, he’d told Laurel that she would live.

He couldn’t save his wife, but he could damn well go after his daughter.

“Nicole has sailed on my ship in the Great Circle Race,” Jason announced without preamble when he stood in front of her.

Evelyn didn’t raise her coiffed head from her cross-stitching. “She told me she was returning to Paris or elsewhere on the Continent. Not sailing to Australia again.”

“I need to go after her, and I don’t have a ship within two weeks’ sailing time of here.” His throat tightened. “I…I need passage,” he ground out.

At this, she lowered her work. “Honestly, Jason! Don’t be so melodramatic. I’m angry, too, but there’s nothing to be done for it now. She’ll be back soon enough. Chit will miss much of the season, though.” Then, in a dismissing tone, she added, “Keep me updated on her whereabouts.”

“I don’t think you understand me. She is in danger, and I need to go after her.”

The dowager stood in a huff. “Ridiculous. After all the times you’ve written, assuring me how safe she was, how beneficial sailing was for the girl—don’t go changing your tale on me.” She turned to leave the room.

“I could make sure she was safe because I was with her,” Jason said as he grasped her arm. She gave him a withering look, but he couldn’t be deterred. “Damn it, I wanted to spare you the realities of this trip, but you leave me no choice. I’ve been investigating a series of strange accidents that have been afflicting several lines. I know that my ship was targeted because Nicole stumbled across a couple of cutthroats sabotaging it. She barely escaped with her life.”

He continued over the woman’s horrified gasp, “She’ll travel through the fortieth parallel, known as the Roaring Forties, where some of the worst weather on earth manifests itself. Thirty- to sixty-foot rogue waves, large enough to swallow a ship of much more tonnage than mine, are not unheard of. The path where they are charted to sail has literally thousands of shipwrecks on the sea floor. And if I know Nicole, she’ll probably even maneuver them into the Screaming Fifties, which are much, much—”

“I don’t want to know!” The cross-stitching she’d been clutching dropped to the floor. “For God’s sake, why have you taken her there in the past?” she cried in outrage.

“We never sailed the more extreme course. But Nicole came across her competition’s planned route. It was next to suicidal. Now that she knows how far into the Forties he’ll go, she’ll sail even farther south.”

“I do not believe this.” She grasped the high collar at her throat with shaking fingers. “This is your fault. Again!”

Lassiter drew his eyebrows together in an agonized expression. “It’s usually not so dangerous. And even now, I wouldn’t overly worry about her because she’s in capable hands. Hell, she is a capable hand. But before there was no doubt about our ship’s integrity—now I don’t know if those thugs could have been successful. It would be a deadly combination if they timed an accident to occur in the strongest tossing of the ship.”

His look was beseeching. “I’ve got to get to my daughter, because if she hasn’t already, she could soon know a living hell.”