for just the right moment, to make her move at the only possible moment when it would succeed. When the dinghy was free and under sail, but before she was out of reach.
Anthony stood holding the tiller, then he swung it and the sail caught the wind. He was still standing, looking back at the mass of men on the beach. Their muskets were aimed but Olivia was in the way.
The marquis of Granville stood a few feet in front of his men.
“Olivia?” he said quietly, questioningly.
She looked at him, feeling where she couldn’t see the dinghy moving away from the beach. She felt it as if her skin was being flayed inch by inch.
And she knew that she had no more time.
She held out her hands, palm up in a gesture of helplessness. “Forgive me,” she said simply. “I have no time to explain, but it must be this way.”
Then she turned and plunged into the lapping waves. The dinghy was reaching deeper water. “Anthony!” she yelled as the water reached her waist. “Anthony, damn you! Wait for me. You know I can’t swim!”
Behind her now came Cato’s men, surging through the surf. She was just ahead of them, floundering as the waves swelled against her body and her skirt caught in her legs, hampering her movements.
Anthony brought the boat head to wind. He reached over the stern and lifted her bodily out of the water. Olivia tumbled into the dinghy onto her knees. Anthony moved the tiller and the sail caught the wind again.
“Hold your fire!” Cato bellowed again as his men still plunged through the water in a last-ditch attempt to seize the dinghy.
Olivia had her hand at her throat. “Will they catch us?”
“No, we’re over the shelf now. They’ll have to swim, and we can sail faster than they can swim.”
As if in confirmation the pursuit suddenly stopped. Men stood in the water at the point where the sandy bottom shelved steeply, and watched as their quarry sped from them.
Olivia stared at the scene on the beach. She could see her father standing where she had left him. What she had done was irrevocable. Phoebe and Portia would explain, but would he ever forgive her? Would she ever see him again?
Another boom from the cannon banished all but the present from her mind. “They’re going to blow
“They seem to be firing across her stern for the present,” Anthony said calmly. “Once I get on board there’ll be nothing to worry about.”
Olivia looked and saw that the frigate now had her mainsail raised. She saw too that they’d dropped the rope ladder over the side, ready for their approach. She could hear on the still night air the strong rhythmic singing as the men turned the winch to haul up the anchor. There was a sense of purpose, but not of alarm. Both here in the dinghy and on
The wind was much brisker as they approached the mouth of the cove. She shivered. “Why is it that I always get soaked when I’m with you?”
“For some reason I find you exceptionally appealing when you’re wet,” Anthony said solemnly. “It must play to my mermaid fantasies.”
“Mermaid fantasies!” Olivia exclaimed. “You never said anything about them before.”
“Perhaps because I’ve only just realized I have them,” he responded with a grin. “That dress is clinging to you in the most seductive fashion.”
Olivia glanced down at herself. The pale muslin seemed to have become transparent. “How can I go on board looking like this? It’s as if I’m wearing nothing at all.” She became abruptly conscious of Mike’s presence. His ears were rather red and he looked as if he wished he were anywhere but within earshot of this conversation.
Anthony merely laughed and unbuttoned his shirt with one hand, shrugging out of it, exchanging hands on the tiller as he did so. “Here, this’ll make you decent until you can change into one of my nightshirts. You know where I keep them.”
Olivia slipped on the shirt. It was warmed from his skin and carried his own special fragrance of salt and sea. She sat in the bow as they came alongside
She scrambled up and willing hands helped her over the side. No one seemed surprised to see her, and she assumed that they had been watching events on the beach through the spyglass.
“We gettin‘ out of ’ere, master?” Jethro stood at the wheel.
“Yes, it’s getting a little too hot for comfort.” Anthony jumped the steps to the quarterdeck. Jethro stepped aside and Anthony took the wheel. “Go below, Olivia, and change out of those wet clothes,” he called.
“I can do that later.” She came up beside him. “What are you going to do? If they dismast you…”
“They won’t. Fortunately cannon have a poor aim if they’re not right up against you.” He looked down at her and his eyes were sparkling with exhilaration. This was an adventure worthy of a pirate.
There was a loud report, a whine as a cannonball crossed the ship, missing the rigging by a hair. It splashed into the sea just beyond the bow. Anthony laughed and turned the wheel. “A little too close, that one. They seem to be getting serious. Hoist the topsail.”
Men swarmed up the rigging just as another ball crashed into the sea from the other headland. If Anthony hadn’t adjusted the wheel when he did, it would have smashed into the ship’s side.
“That would have been on target,” Olivia observed, astonished at her own objectivity.
“True… Wear ship,” Anthony called without any indication of haste or dismay. The frigate turned onto the starboard tack and seemed to Olivia’s astounded eyes to be on a direct path to the right-hand cliff. It took them well clear of the range of the cannon on the left headland, but it seemed to be taking them directly into the line of fire of the other one.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming in under the gun,” he told her, his voice exultant, his deep-set eyes afire. “You see, they can’t hit us if we’re beneath them any more than they can if we’re out of range. We’ll sail against the cliff, under the headland, below the one and out of range of the other.”
“But the rocks! Won’t you run aground?” Even as she asked the question, she knew it was absurd. Anthony wouldn’t run aground in these waters with his eyes shut.
“Not if I pick my way,” he responded.
Olivia fell silent. Anthony was whistling softly between his teeth as he sailed his ship almost into the cliff and brought her about the instant Olivia was certain they would drive into the cliff face. Above them, the cannon boomed, balls falling harmlessly across their bows, sending up fountains of spume.
Hugging the cliff,
Olivia looked back at the island as the ship picked up speed in the freshening wind.
She glanced up at her pirate, who was still whistling to himself, his eyes on the big sail. Sensing her glance, he looked down at her. “No regrets?”
“No,” she said definitely. “Have you?”
He shook his head and smiled his wonderful smile, and Olivia knew that she had seized her only chance of happiness. She would never love like this again. Only one man could bring her such deep, deep joy. To throw away the promise of such happiness would be to spit in the face of the gods.
“Go below,” he said softly. “Get dry. I will come to you when we’re clear of the island.”
Olivia looked again across the water to the receding hump of the Isle of Wight. “Will we come back?”
“You will need to make peace with your father.”
“Yes,” she said, and went below.
“So, you decided to run away to sea?” He gazed down into her face, holding himself above her as dawn fingered the sky and a soft ray of pink light fell through the open window across the bed.
“So it would seem,” she agreed, caressing the hard, taut cheeks of his buttocks. “We shall go adventuring and never be ordinary.”
“Of course not,” he agreed gravely. He withdrew to the very edge of her body, and her dark eyes took on a luminous glow.
“Not at all ordinary,” she repeated.
“Not in the slightest degree.” He eased himself into her again, delicately, fraction by fraction.
She bit her lower lip on a little exhalation of delight. Her finger probed wickedly and he threw his head back with a moan. “How did you learn to do that?”
“Instinct,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m a pirate’s doxy now. I know such tricks.” She was fighting to hold herself back from a climax that would bring to an end this wonderful loving.
Anthony watched her face, searching her eyes. When he saw she was about to give up the fight, he withdrew again, waiting for her urgency to subside a little before sinking himself within her again.
“I don’t want this ever to stop,” she said, stroking his inner thighs, loving the stretched power of his muscles against her hand.
“This is but the beginning, my love,” he whispered, bending to take her mouth with his own. She tasted his sweetness as his tongue moved within her mouth and he moved within her body, hard and fast now until she thought she would explode. And yet still she hung on the edge in ever astounding bliss, meeting and matching his thrusts with her own, her tongue engaged with his in a savage dance of delight.
Her fingers raked his back, bit deep into his buttocks, pulling him against her as if she could make them one. And then the world flew apart and she clung to him like a drowning woman to a spar as the torrent took her, tossed her and tumbled her, and she cried out his name with wild abandon.
The sun rose out of the sea, flooding the sky with orange. He gathered her to him as he fell to the bed, smoothing her damp hair from her cheek. “How is it possible to love so much?” he whispered. “It terrifies me. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
“You won’t,” she returned, turning her lips into the hollow of his throat where the pulse beat fast against his sweat-slick skin. “We are meant for each other. We will live and die together, my love.”
He took her head in both hands and kissed the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the tip of her chin.
“But we won’t marry,” Olivia declared, her tongue darting to lick the tip of his nose in turn. “Wives don’t make good pirates.”
“I’m not the marrying kind myself,” Anthony said lazily. “I’d rather have a doxy any day.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The early September air was soft as
