Chapter Forty-Four
Four days out and they still hadn’t sighted the ship they were trying to catch. James had said it could take upward of a week to reach St. Kitts, less only if they were lucky with the currents and the wind. They’d been sure that overtaking Catherine’s ship en route would be the only way to rescue Jack without a loss of life—on their side. But obviously the other ship’s head start was an advantage they couldn’t overcome, so an alternative plan had to be considered.
To that end Judith had a purpose other than delivering Nathan’s breakfast when she arrived at his cabin this morning. He was standing at his desk, but he immediately glanced at her, his eyes lingering for a long moment, before he looked down again at the charts that were spread out on his desk. James’s charts of the Caribbean. They had been soaking wet when Artie had fetched them from The Maiden George before they had sailed. But now that they had dried out, they were still readable.
“Only one plate again?” Nathan said before she could broach her subject. “You don’t follow orders very well, do you?”
She smiled. “Eating with you isn’t appropriate—while I’m acting as your servant.”
“I’m not releasing you from your job as my cabin boy.”
“Did I ask you to?”
“No, you didn’t—and why haven’t you?”
She was surprised. This was the first time he’d revealed that her complete compliance with his demand might have baffled him. But she would never admit how thrilled she’d been to be included in his terms. She’d been a little nervous at first, but that hadn’t lasted long when it became clear that he only wanted her to perform the customary chores of a cabin boy. He had no way of knowing that the work she was doing actually made her feel as if she was helping in a small way to get Jack back.
In answer, she said, “So you could tell me no? That’s quite all right, thank you.” Then she quickly mentioned, “We’re getting close to St. Kitts. Strategy needs to be discussed with my family. I suggested we have dinner tonight here in your cabin so you could be included.”
He raised a brow. “A little presumptuous of you, wasn’t it?”
She gave him an innocent look. “You don’t want to be included?”
“With you serving dinner? I can imagine how well that will go over with your family. How many of them will I have to fight off before they get around to discussing anything?”
“I won’t rub their faces in your orneriness. Tonight I’ll eat with you.”
He laughed. “Is that what I am? Ornery?”
“Better than acknowledging that you’re getting revenge against me.”
“Never that, darlin’.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“A simple need for a cabin boy.”
She twisted her lips in annoyance that he wasn’t any more willing to tell her his real reason for making her his servant than she was willing to say why she didn’t mind. She went over to make his bed. She could feel his eyes still on her. It was almost as if he were actually touching her. And why didn’t he?! Yes, he’d promised her uncle he wouldn’t, and James had assured her that he and his brothers-in-law would mutiny if Nathan did, but she’d never expected Nathan to adhere to his word so literally.
Then he suddenly said, “I woke up this morning with a crick in my neck that isn’t going away. Come over here and see if you can work it out.”
Her eyes flared wide. She straightened and turned slowly to find him sitting at his desk now. She asked carefully, “What about your promise to my uncle?”
“I’m not breaking it. Your uncle said I can’t touch you, but he didn’t prohibit you from touching me.”
Her stomach fluttered at the thought, but she was worried about getting that close to him, worried that she couldn’t do what he’d asked without touching him the way she wanted to touch him. Her breathing quickened before she even reached him. When she stood behind him, staring down at his wide shoulders, she felt a rush a warmth and desire for him. She had to pretend it wasn’t him she was touching. She closed her eyes and tried that, taking care to keep her fingers on his shirt.
“I can barely feel you.” He rose from the chair, turned toward her, and starting unbuttoning his shirt.
Judith groaned to herself yet couldn’t take her eyes off him, and when he removed his shirt and hung it over the back of the chair, her gaze roamed from his muscular chest down to his belt buckle.
“Now, try it again.” When she looked up, she saw a half grin on his face. He was enjoying this!
Judith took a deep breath, deciding to make him as uncomfortable as she was in this intimate situation he’d concocted. She put her fingers on the soft skin of his neck and rhythmically moved them up and down, and then lower to the tops of his shoulders. His hair brushing against the backs of her hands was so sensual she almost gasped at the sensation! While she might have started out stroking him, soon she was kneading his shoulders, deeply massaging them, then lightening her touch to a caress. She heard him groan and then sigh. Soon she was lost in her ministrations, which were clearly giving him pleasure, lost in thoughts of what could happen next. . . . She leaned forward and asked, “Can you feel me now?”
“This wasn’t—” Nathan shot out of the chair. “Leave. Now!”
Judith ran out of there, straight to her own cabin, and stayed there until the flush left her cheeks and her hands stopped trembling. Contradictory man! She hoped his sore neck got worse—no, she didn’t. Or did he even have a sore neck? He’d sounded a little smug when he’d told her she could touch him. Had it just been a ploy that had backfired on him? That thought had her feeling a little smug now. But she didn’t return to his cabin before dinner—with her family.
That could have turned out much worse than it did, but the Andersons were actually neutral where Nathan was concerned, even though Judith was their brother Boyd’s sister-in-law and Georgina’s niece. Judith had seen to that by assuring them she didn’t mind helping with the “cause.”
But Nathan’s cabin wasn’t exactly designed for guests. His table only sat four and was so filled with the food that arrived that no one tried to eat at the table. And the discussion had already begun.
Thomas and his brother Drew were leaning against one wall as they ate. Warren, James, and Judith used three of the chairs, while Nathan remained behind his desk.
“You can’t just turn yourself over to them,” Thomas was saying to James. “When we get there, we must find out where they’re holding Jacqueline before they know we’re there.”
“Dock elsewhere?” Drew suggested.
“That won’t be necessary,” Warren put in. “Catherine is the only one who will recognize any of us, but she won’t know this ship.”
“Enter the town disguised then?” Thomas said.
Warren nodded. “Long enough to find one of them that we can question.”
“When Jack might not even be there?” James said.
“What are you thinking?” Warren asked.
“They are directing me there just for further instructions. That doesn’t mean that’s where they are going.”
“And what’s the point of that?” Thomas asked.
“To get me on a different ship—alone.”
“Don’t do it, James,” Thomas warned. “You can’t just give them the only leverage we have. You.”
“I still think if you can figure out who Catherine’s father is, then we can ascertain how to foil him,” Drew insisted. “Think, man. Who wants revenge against you so badly they’d go to this much trouble to get it?”
“We already ruled him out, and it’s pointless speculating. I stepped on too many toes in my day, yours included. I can’t honestly count the number of enemies I have on this side of the world.”
“Yet most of them think Hawke is dead,” Warren reminded James. “That alone narrows it down.”
“Who’s Hawke?” Nathan asked.
Silence greeted that question, but a few Andersons glanced at James to see if he would answer—or lay into Warren for mentioning that name. But James stared at Nathan for a long moment before he said, “It was a name I used to go by when I sailed these waters years ago.”
“When you were a pirate?” Nathan persisted.
Worse silence. Tense silence. Judith groaned to herself, almost blurting out that she didn’t tell Nathan that. But James actually laughed. “Like you were a smuggler?”
Nathan snorted. “Touché.”
“But I am the black sheep of my family,” James continued. “And for a time I felt compelled to protect them from my antics by using a false name. Couldn’t give them more reasons to disown me, you understand, when they already had so many.”
Nathan tipped his head to that vague reply. “Then might I point out that you’re overlooking the obvious? If you’re going to sneak around St. Kitts, grab Catherine while you’re at it. Then you have a more palatable exchange.”
There was full agreement with that idea. But James also pointed out, “That’s if her ship is even there. They might merely have someone planted there to direct me elsewhere. But we have contingencies now, so we are at least prepared for numerous outcomes.”