Chapter Twelve
All she could do was stare at him as light from a lantern on deck illuminated him. Hair as white as she remembered and floating about his shoulders. His eyes a deeper green than she remembered. And tall. No, taller than she remembered she realized now that she was standing next to him, six feet at least. He was too close. She realized he’d grabbed her shoulders to keep her from tumbling backward down the stairs. But he should have let go of her now that she had steadied herself. Someone might come along and see them. Someone such as her father.
With that alarming thought, she stepped to the side, away from the stairs, and he let go of her. All she could think to say was “You’re dead.”
“No, I ain’t, why would you say so?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I think I’d remember dying.”
“We met a few years ago in that old ruin in Hampshire, next to the Duke of Wrighton’s estate. I thought you were a ghost when I found you there. What are you doing here?”
It took him a moment to connect the when and the where, but when he did, he laughed. “So that’s why you seem familiar to me. The trespassing child with sunset hair.” A slow grin appeared as his emerald eyes roamed over her, up, down, and back up. “Not a child anymore, are you?”
The blush came quickly. No, she wasn’t a child anymore, but did he have to look for the obvious evidence of it? She shouldn’t have left her evening wrap in the cabin. Her ghost was a common sailor. She shouldn’t be talking to a member of the crew for so long, either. Devil that, he was fascinating! She’d wanted to know everything there was to know about him when she’d thought him a ghost. She still wanted to.
To that end, she held out her hand to him but quickly pulled it back when he merely stared at it. A bit nervous now that he didn’t know how to respond to her formal greeting, she stated, “I’m Judith Malory. My friends and family call me Judy. It would be all right if you do.”
“We aren’t friends.”
“Not yet, but we could be. You can start by telling me your name?”
“And if I don’t?”
“Surly for an ex-ghost, aren’t you? Too unfriendly to be anyone’s friend? Very well.” She nodded. “Pardon me.” She walked over to the railing. She gazed at the wavering reflection of the moon’s light on the pitch-dark ocean. It was so dramatic and beautiful, but now she couldn’t fully appreciate it because she was disappointed, much more than she should have been. She almost felt like crying, which was absurd—unless Jack had been right. Had she really fancied herself in love with a ghost? No, that was absurd, too. She’d merely been curious, amazed, and fascinated, thinking he was a ghost, that there really were such things. Even after Jack and she were older and admitted he couldn’t really be a ghost, it had still been more fun and exciting to think of him that way. Yet here was the proof that he was a real man—flesh and blood and so nicely put together. Not as pale as she remembered. No, now his skin was deeply tanned. From working on ships? Who was he? A sailor, obviously. But what had he been doing in that old ruined house in the middle of the night all those years ago? The ghost had told her the house was his. But how could a sailor afford to own a house?
She was more curious about him than ever. Unanswered questions were going to drive her batty. She shouldn’t have given up so easily on getting some answers. Jack wouldn’t have. Maybe she could ask Uncle James . . .
“Nathan Tremayne,” said a deep voice.
She grinned to herself and glanced at him for a moment. He was so tall and handsome with his long, white hair blowing in the sea breeze. He was standing several feet from her and staring at the moonlight on the ocean, too, so it didn’t actually appear that he had spoken to her. But he had. Was he as intrigued with her as she was with him?
“How do you do, Nathan. Or do you prefer Nate?”
“Doesn’t matter. D’you always talk to strange men like this?”
“You’re strange?”
“A stranger to you,” he clarified.
“Not a’tall. We are actually old acquaintances, you and I.”
He chuckled. “Telling each other to get out of a house five years ago doesn’t make us acquainted. And why were you trespassing that night?”
“My cousin Jack and I were investigating the light we saw in the house. That house has been abandoned for as long as anyone living can remember. No one should have been inside it. But we could see the light from our room in the ducal mansion.”
“And so you thought you’d found a ghost?”
She blushed again, but they weren’t looking at each other, so she doubted that he noticed. “When we saw you there, it was a reasonable assumption.”
“Not a’tall, just the opposite.” Was that amusement she heard in his tone? She took a quick peek. It was hard not to. And, yes, he was grinning as he added, “You drew a conclusion that no adult would have come to.”
“Well, I wasn’t grown yet. That was quite a few years ago. And you were holding your lantern so that its light only reached your upper body. It looked as if you were floating in the air.”
He laughed again, such a pleasant sound, like a bass rumble. It shook a lock of hair loose over his wide brow. His hair wasn’t pure white as she’d thought. She could see blond streaks in it.
“Very well. I can see how your imagination could’ve played tricks on you.”
“So why were you there that night and looking so sad?”
“Sad?”
“Weren’t you?”
“No, not sad, darlin’.” But instead of explaining, he said, “Do you really believe in ghosts?”
She looked up and saw his mouth set in a half grin and the arched eyebrow. Was he teasing her? He was! She also noticed his green eyes were gazing at her intently. Quite bold for a common seaman if that’s what he was. Quite bold for any man, actually, when they’d only just met—that first time didn’t count.
In response to his teasing she said, “Jack and I admitted to ourselves a few years ago that we’d been mistaken that night. But we continued to refer to you as the Ghost because it amuses us. It was our special secret that we only shared with our younger cousins. It was much more fun to say we’d found a ghost than the new owner of the house. But you can’t be the owner of the house. What were you doing there?”
“Maybe I like secrets as much as you do.”
On the brink of discovery and of clearing up a mystery that had intrigued her for years, she was more than a little annoyed by his reply. “You really won’t say?”
“You haven’t tried convincing me yet, darlin’. A pretty smile might work. . . .”
Judith went very still. So still she thought she could hear her heart pounding. She couldn’t believe what had just become crystal clear to her. She knew who he was. It was that second instance of his calling her darlin’. She’d been too flustered to pay much attention to it the first time he’d said it, but this time she remembered where she’d heard it before. A mere two weeks ago from a man who she suspected was far more dangerous than a vagrant.
The moment it had struck her that night of how odd it was for a vagrant to be drinking French brandy, she had known he wasn’t what he’d first seemed to be. But that wasn’t all. He claimed to know the abandoned house better than she did, so he’d either been staying there a long time or had visited it more than once. His putting a lock on a door that didn’t belong to him. His coming out of a hidden room where he could have been storing smuggled or stolen goods. And his warning her to tell no one that she’d seen him there. All of it pointed to his being a criminal of one sort or another.
Of course she’d told Jacqueline about him in the morning, and of course Jack had agreed with her conclusion and suggested she tell Brandon, who could prevaricate a bit and warn his father without revealing that Judith had had a run-in with a criminal in the old ruin. Before they’d left for London, Brandon had told her he’d spoken to his father and assured her they’d catch the smuggler red-handed that very day. So what was he doing here, on The Maiden George?
He appeared to be waiting for her to answer him. She did that now, hissing, “You deserve to be in jail! Why aren’t you?”