She released his ear to gently nip on his neck and suck on the flesh in the most erotic kiss he could recall, though maybe that was because his brain was turning to mush as most of his blood had surged south. His breath came in shallow pants.
He slid his hands around to cup and knead her backside. “Yes, boring. We can put in at Brixham and move your mother so she can stay with you, keep you company at Langston Hall. She can live in the manor until we get the Dower House up to snuff.”
“You mean stay with us.” She lifted herself a few inches.
He wanted to pull her back down, spend more time exploring her lush mouth. “I thought you’d want her there to keep you company while I’m gone.”
She moved back a little farther. “Where are you going?” The sultry teasing tone was gone from her voice, replaced by uncertainty.
“Fetching cargo, of course. Merchantman, remember?” He curled up a little, trying to reach her mouth.
She sat up fully and let her weight rest on his midriff. “You’re going off sailing, and you expect me to stay at home?” There was an unfamiliar edge in her voice.
Nick suddenly had a vision of an antique navigation chart his grandfather had had, with areas marked Here Be Dragons. He plunged ahead anyway. “Well, yes. My mother stayed at home while Adam went to sea. Caroline stays at home while Norton goes to sea.”
“I’m not your mother or sister,” she said softly.
“Of course you’re not.” He tried to rest his palms on her thighs again, but she grabbed his wrists and held them stretched out to the side. “Caroline stays at home, overseeing the running of their estate. You already have the skills to be a brilliant household manager. And she’s there like a beacon, welcoming Norton when he comes home. So that he looks forward to going ashore. Mother did the same for Adam. As I’m guessing your mother did for your father.” He couldn’t make out her expression from this angle in the semidarkness.
She let go of his wrists to fold her arms across her chest. “While you and Norton go off adventuring at sea, you want me to stay home.”
Her words seemed like a question, but her flat tone made it a statement. He realized he was floundering but couldn’t identify the hidden hazard. How could he steer around something he couldn’t see? “Yes. Where I know you’re safe.” How could he tell her how the injury she’d suffered after the battle with Ruford, however minor it actually was, had haunted his dreams for a week? How he had to keep touching her, reassuring himself she was still with him and fine. How seeing her slip and lose her footing in the foretop during the storm had scared a decade off his life?
He’d just realized how precious she was to him. Not merely someone to lust after or laugh with, but whose company he enjoyed as no one else. No one had ever stirred these strong emotions in his breast, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her being hurt in battle, or her broken body falling to the deck or being lost overboard. He shied away from those images.
She climbed to her feet. “That day in Gunter’s, you claimed I wanted an adventure before I settled down as a respectable matron. Well, it turns out you were right. This trip has indeed been an adventure.”
Missing her closeness already, Nick jumped up and dusted himself off. He reached to do the same for Harriet, but she took a step back. Out of his reach.
“The problem for us, it seems, is that I’m still not ready to be that respectable matron you desire for a wife.” She dusted her backside and smoothed her hair, plucked bits of straw from her braid, and let them flutter to the deck. “If this trip has been a taste, it seems I’ve developed quite an appetite. I’m not done adventuring. You and your crew and this ship have opened my eyes to so many possibilities. I don’t have to go back to that tiny, quiet life in Brixham. And I won’t.” She shrugged into her coat. “And as much as I’ve come to love you, Nick, I won’t wait at home for you, wondering when or even if you’re going to come home to me from the sea. I don’t want my mother’s life.”
She walked toward the passageway. When she turned back to him, her body was outlined by the light from a lantern in the passageway, her face in shadow. “If that’s the kind of wife you need, then it seems we won’t suit, either.”
Again, she’d flummoxed him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could barely draw breath. His feet felt lashed to the deck, his breath frozen in his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to regain his equilibrium.
When he opened them again, she was gone.
Chapter 24
The next morning, Norton insisted on a wound check and escorted Nick into the surgeon’s cabin. Nick sat at the table and allowed Norton to unwind the bandage from his forehead and turn his head this way and that to examine it in the lantern light. The overcast day sent only dingy grey light through the window.
Norton leaned in for a close look, smelling faintly of pipe tobacco. “Shouldn’t leave much of a scar,” he pronounced. “I’ll clean it again and put some salve on it, and let you go without a bandage from now on.” He poured gin on a cloth. “As you’re my employer and the grandson of my previous employer, I would never question your judgment.” He dabbed a little at the edges of the healing gash. “Being your brother-in-law, however, I feel entitled to a little liberty. I was looking forward to having Harry at family dinners. What did you do to foul things up?”
Careful not to move his head, Nick glanced up. “What makes you think that I—Ow!” Norton used far more force than Nick thought necessary to clean the gash.
“I wanted to give another tin of salve to Harry and had to deliver it to her in the foc’s’le, where she was sleeping in Winston’s berth. With the larboard watch.”
Nick’s gut clenched anew, remembering the pain of seeing her things gone from his cabin when he’d come below for a nap before midnight, and the sight of her huddled in a hammock in the crew quarters, wrapped in her colorful blanket, only the top of her head visible.
“Clearly she no longer feels welcome in your bed.” Norton tossed the cloth into a basin and applied salve to the gash.
Nick felt his cheeks heat under his brother-in-law’s stare. “For the record, we never…” He cleared his throat. “I never joined her in my bed.” Well, there was that one time, but it had not led to what Norton assumed.
Norton sat down, his brows raised. “Seriously? Comely little lass like that in your cabin all these nights, and you never…”
Nick forced himself to not look away.
Norton whistled. “All right, I believe you. But clearly something changed. What did you do wrong?”
