His only interest was to find his daughter safe. Until he held her tightly in his arms once more, the good of all mankind could go hang. He asked no questions, and this pleased the captain, too.

He and Connor had been prepared to endure dreadful accommodations, musty cots, tainted water, awful food-the only ones who ate well were the ship's cats, thanks to a large supply of rats-but they had only sailed a few days out from port when it became apparent that the situation was even worse than they had feared.

The captain was every bit the crude, abusive ruffian they had suspected, but the crew eyed their master in surging hatred and Victor could already smell a mutiny brewing.

Perhaps the captain feared it, too, for he spared no man for even minuscule infractions.

One sailor had already been keel-hauled and another two flogged, but the captain, ever clunking up and down the decks on his wooden peg, spewing abuses, relied on his first mate to protect him, a man with the face of a rapist.

Even during more tranquil hours, the mood of cruelty was palpable aboard the ship-dark, untempered pa.s.sions-violence that might flare out at any time. Connor and he had been appalled to watch the men beat to death a rat that had scampered across the fo'c'sle. The crewmen's jovial laughter at the game was still ringing in Victor's ears a few days later, when the first mate climbed out onto the bowsprit and shot the pair of dolphins swimming alongside the ship for the spectacle of watching the great sharks come and feed.

More disturbing or, rather, threatening even than this, however, was the change that Victor sensed coming over Connor with each day that pa.s.sed.

He was keenly aware that the brawny Australian was all that stood between the vicious crew and himself, a small-framed, weaker man of poor vision and advanced years. Victor knew he was at risk, though had more brains than the whole of the crew put together.

Moreover, he could smell the mutiny coming and when violence broke out, he feared that his weakness would make him a natural target. He needed Connor's protection now more than ever, but these days, he thought uneasily, his fellow naturalist did not seem entirely right in the head.

Trying to get the man to speak of what ailed him was as useless as ever, especially in their current situation. Victor could do nothing but watch his young friend with a scientist's keen powers of observation in an effort to discover what was wrong, but he still could not quite put his finger on the nature of the problem. He had a terrible foreboding sense that something was... building in Connor.

Something that must eventually explode, like the crew's churning hatred.

Perhaps with her woman's intuition Eden had sensed the shadow in him, too; perhaps, Victor thought with a pang of regret, that was why she had refused the match.

In any case, he vowed to himself that from now on, he would listen to his daughter in a far more serious way than had been his habit in the past.

"Victor?"

Connor's low query stirred him from his musings.

"Yes, my boy?"

Connor was staring down at the deck before him as though the answers he sought might be written there, if he could only make them out.

Victor took off his spectacles and turned to him with a worried frown. "What is it?"

"It's... my fault she's gone," he forced out in a struggling tone.

"Now, now, my lad, we are both to blame-"

"No." Connor sent him a tortured glance and shook his head slowly. "If I were different-better-but she did not want me and that is why she left."

Victor looked at him sadly. He did not know what to say. Emotions had never been his strong suit, after all.

"You know this man, Jack Knight." Connor sent him a penetrating look. "Will he hurt her?"

Victor knew the answer at once and shook his head, easily recalling the worshipful protectiveness with which the young Lord Jack had shielded Lady Maura's every step. "No. Not if there's the merest remnant of the lad I once knew beneath that hard outer sh.e.l.l. Not a chance."

"I pray you're right," Connor said, staring forward. "Because if he harms one hair on her head, Jack Knight is a dead man."

By evening, the whole ship buzzed with the sailors' high-spirited but raunchy discussions of how Cap'n Jack would have his fun tonight with the tasty morsel locked up in his cabin. There were no wagers on if he would bed the wild redhead, only on how many times, and whether or not there'd be any girlish screaming.

Given their fair stowaway's fierce display on deck this afternoon, the men hoped he'd stay on his toes with the wench, for she'd surely try to slit his throat if he laid a hand on her. If he was wise, a few opined, he'd tie her up before he climbed aboard.

Yes, they were princes, the lot of them, Jack thought wryly, ignoring their ribaldry with an occasional scowl here and there to silence them. G.o.d knew, the l.u.s.ty images they concocted did nothing to help the underlying level of arousal that had gnawed at him all day after Miss Farraday's lovely bath.

How he was going to keep his hands off her, he did not know, but Jack clung to his earlier decision to resist temptation. She was luscious, yes, and could breed him strapping sons, but l.u.s.t aside, she was not at all what he had in mind.

When it came time for him to take a wife, he would choose someone docile. Someone tame. Someone who'd never dare question him, but would follow his orders as a.s.siduously as if she were but an extension of himself.

Eden Farraday was altogether her own person. Her own delightful, artlessly innocent, sensuous nymph...

b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.

It was most irksome, his constant awareness of her, cloistered away in his cabin. Her presence somehow permeated the ship: a change in the air. It all felt so odd.

Annoyed at himself for his failure to maintain his policy of cool indifference, he huffed and scowled and did his best to work off his preoccupation with the tantalizing female by hard physical labor on deck, and when that didn't do the trick, by exhaustive practice with his fists, pounding his thick leather punching bag into oblivion-but it was no use.

It was almost as if he could smell her, so near, her dewy-fresh, vanilla-orchid scent. It was driving him mad.

What was this ridiculous reaction? She was just a girl, like any other. Well, except for her eccentric ways, all those wonderfully odd little quirks... Oh, G.o.d. What the h.e.l.l is wrong with me? He had left a dozen more beautiful women than her without a backward glance.

But that was just the point.

Stuck out at sea and sworn to protect her-as if he didn't have enough already to worry about!-there was no escape from Eden Farraday.

They were in the middle of the b.l.o.o.d.y ocean; it was not as though he could carry out his usual tactic of moving on in his nomadic way before anybody got too close.

On the contrary, for the next few weeks, he'd be sharing very close quarters with her, forced into intimate contact.

The worst part of all was that he could not even manage to feel properly angry about the way she had invaded his s.p.a.ce and installed herself in his inner sanctum. He was baffled, but the region of his solar plexus tingled even now with eagerness to get back to her. This was insane.

He had not experienced such absurd reactions to a female since he was a witless lad of seventeen, agog over stupid Maura Prescott. No one had gotten to him since.

Thrusting the stowaway out of his mind for the umpteenth time, he went to put the fear of G.o.d in Ballast.

He found the unruly gun captain in the sickbay, where the surgeon had just finished putting ten st.i.tches in his tattooed forearm, which Eden had sliced. When he was satisfied that the gunner was cowed by his threats and promises of doom if he even looked at Eden, Jack returned to the main deck to ask around for any articles of ladies' clothing on board for her to wear.

He was hoping one of the officers might have bought a dress for a wife or sweetheart back home, but no such luck. The only gown anyone could find for her was a glittery bluish-green thing that the crew always made the newest midshipman wear as a joke during the baccha.n.a.lia of King Neptune's Court that occurred at each equator crossing.

It was more a Carnavale costume than a proper lady's gown, but it would have to do for now.

"This trip just keeps getting stranger," Trahern mumbled, shaking his head as he eyed the dress.

"I'll have Martin sew her some decent clothes in the days to come," Jack mused aloud. "We've got several bolts of fine cloth in the hold. Can't have her freeze to death. Getting colder as we move north."

Trahern nodded. "Jack?"

"Hm?" he asked, distracted from hazy images that had begun to dance inexplicably in his brain-visions of himself doing all the sorts of things with his little future sons that no one had ever bothered to do with him.

He blinked them away, irked with himself anew. "What?"

"You won't... hurt her, will you?"

He lifted his eyebrows. "Christopher."

"I know you want her. It's just that she's been so sheltered, Jack-"

"Don't worry, man! As I said, she's under my protection. The crew can think what they please, but you know me better than that."

"Just checking."

"h.e.l.l, I'm the one you should fear for," he added in sardonic reproach. "I'm putting my life in her hands."

"What do you mean?"

"I left her in there with my sidearms and my knife."

"You did?" he exclaimed. "How could you of all people forget a thing like that?"

"Who says I forgot?" He flashed a wan smile. "If she feels at all threatened, you cannot doubt she'll use them. You saw what she did to Ballast."

Trahern snorted. "He deserved it."

"Aye. Which is why I shall give the lady no cause to shoot, stab, disembowel, castrate, or otherwise maim me."

"Well, you always liked living dangerously. By the way, I noticed you didn't flog Ballast for his offenses," Trahern said after a brief pause. "I was wondering why."

Jack had a strong stomach, but any man of feeling regarded with deep distaste if not repugnance the occasional necessity of doling out harsh justice at sea. On the other hand, Trahern was right. Flogging was standard procedure. The men knew the consequences of insubordination, and so, by now, the whole crew knew that Cap'n Jack had let Ballast off light-this time.

Jack looked at him ruefully. "I didn't want the girl to hear the screams. She'd only blame herself."

"Maybe she should."

He frowned, shaking his head. "She's an innocent. She's been through a hard enough ordeal."

Trahern stared at him.

Jack shrugged, abashed after his heartfelt a.s.sertion. "Anyway, she taught Ballast a lesson, herself, I'd say. He needed ten st.i.tches, did you hear?"

"Yes, I heard." Trahern studied him with a faint smile of amus.e.m.e.nt tugging at his mouth.

"I'm going to bed," he announced.

"Good night, Captain. May G.o.d keep you safe in there."

Jack laughed idly, gave him a farewell nod in answer, and headed for the quarterdeck, tossing the glittery gown for Eden over his shoulder.

He prowled into the moonlit day cabin, savoring the light breeze coming in off the stern gallery. As he approached the locked door to his sleeping cabin, he paused, wondering if he really should sleep elsewhere.

He could, he supposed, sling a hammock here in the day cabin. He turned to peruse the st.u.r.dy hooks sunk into the beams overhead. Hm. Privacy was always in very short supply at sea. If he did not share a bed with her, word would soon get around. What would the crew have to say about that? He could practically hear them already.

If Cap'n Jack hadn't bedded his little jungle flower, then maybe he wasn't staking a serious claim on her for himself. That could lead some to believe the wench might be fair game, after all. No, the only way to stave off such dangerous murmurings was by the two of them sharing his bed.

Besides, why should he be inconvenienced and have to change his habits just because the girl had stowed away? His adventurous mode of life had taught Jack to sleep, as they said, with one eye open; the only place he felt truly comfortable enough to close his eyes in deep rest was behind that barricaded door.

Most of all, he'd already decided that nothing was going to happen between Eden and him. He was not Ballast. He could control himself. Besides, he still had many questions- Admit it. You just want to be with her, his thoughts interrupted, mocking him. You big fool. You like her company.

So what, anyway, if he felt drawn to her? he thought, bristling defensively. Anyway, it was probably due to the respect he had for her father, nothing more.

Or perhaps it was due to the fact that she was one of the few people Jack had ever seen who knew as much as he did about loneliness.

That was when he realized that he couldn't leave her in there all by herself, day and night. She'd lose her mind. She had already been starved for companionship when he had found her in the jungle. His nonexistent heart clenched, recalling how she had been too vulnerable even to hide it.

Hurt that innocent?

Why, if she thought him capable of it-if Black-Jack Knight was indeed that far gone, a d.a.m.ned soul, lost to honor-then he'd rather she shot him when he walked through that door.

His expression stoic, Jack took out his keys and began the great unlocking.

In the silence, every iron bolt with which he'd protected himself for so long seemed to slam back into its housing with an echoing, fateful boom.

As he gripped the doork.n.o.b and took a deep breath, he almost wished she'd hit him in the head with some hard object the moment that he stepped into the room.

Knock him out cold.

Unconscious, he couldn't possibly give in to the urge to ravish her.

He needed a wife, yes, but Eden Farraday was too much of a threat.

Chapter.

Eight.

Alone in Jack's berth, Eden huddled close to the wall, her eyes wide, her heart pounding with violent force as she watched the seven locks slowly turning all down the barricaded door.

A little moonlight shimmered into the dark s.p.a.ce of the sleeping cabin. It gleamed on the wicked iron cannon and danced tauntingly on each metal bolt as it came undone.

Eden clutched the covers to her chest and swallowed hard.

She did not know what was going to happen to her tonight, but wearing nothing but the captain's shirt, wrapped in the sheets that still bore his scent, her fate already seemed sealed: deflowerment at the hands of that very dangerous ex-privateer.