The Lost Gentleman. Margaret McPhee

face was so close to North’s that she could feel his breath warm and moist against her skin, their bodies so close as to be lovers. Breast to breast. Heart to heart. Thigh to thigh. In a way no other man had ever been save Wendell. She stared up into his eyes, frozen, unable to move, unable to think.

       Wendell.

      She tried to right herself, but North maintained his grip around her and she was glad because her legs when they touched the solidity of the English oak deck had nothing of strength in them and her head felt dizzy and distant. Somehow the rope was gone and North was sweeping his dry coat around her and lifting her up into his arms, as if she were as light as a child.

      ‘Let me take her from you, Captain. I will carry her.’ Reverend Dr Gunner’s voice sounded from close by, but North did not release her.

      ‘I will manage,’ he said in his usual cool way. ‘It is your other skills that are required.’

      She did not understand what North meant, but the faces of the men were crowded all around, staring at her, and exhaustion was pulling at her, and it felt such an uphill struggle to think. Every time her eyes closed she forced them open. She knew she was over North’s shoulder as he descended the deck ladder. When she opened her eyes again she was lying on the cot in the cabin they had given her. North was standing over her and Reverend Dr Gunner was there, too, in the background.

      North’s hair was slicked back, dark as ebony and sodden. Seawater had moulded the cotton of his shirt to the muscular contours of his arms and his broad shoulders, to the hard chest that she had been pressed so snug against. Only then did she see the scarlet stain on his shirt.

      ‘You are bleeding.’ Her eyes moved to meet his.

      ‘No,’ he said quietly, and gently smoothed the wet strands of hair from her face. ‘Rest and let Gunner treat you.’

      Before she could say a word he was gone, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.

      Gunner opened up a black-leather physician’s bag and stood there patiently. Only then did she understand that the blood was her own.

      ‘You are a physician as well as a priest?’

      ‘Priest, physician, pirate...’ He gave an apologetic smile and a little shrug of his shoulders. ‘I never could quite decide.’ He fell silent, waiting.

      Kate gave a nod of permission and laid her head back against the pillow.

      * * *

      Up on the quarterdeck, having changed into dry clothes, Kit stood watching the distant ship creep closer. It was discernible as Coyote now without the need for the spyglass.

      He thought of Kate Medhurst lying bleeding and half-naked upon the cot. And he thought of her in the water, her body so slender and pale against the large dark silhouette of the shark. And the way that, even as he dived from Raven’s stern, the scarlet plume had already clouded the clear turquoise water. And more than any of that he thought of that look in her eyes of raw, brutal honesty, exposing the woman beneath with all her strengths and vulnerabilities, and the sensations that had vibrated between them. Desire. Attraction. Connection. Sensations with a force he had not felt before. Sensations that he could not yield to even if what had just happened had not.

      As he watched Coyote, his eyes narrowed in speculation. He was still thinking about it when he heard Gunner’s approach and glanced round.

      ‘It is an abrasion only.’ His heavy leather coat hung over his friend’s arm. Gunner chucked it on to the floor and spread it out to dry in the sun. ‘The shark’s skin has grazed one side of her waist—from beneath her breast to the top of her hip. And the palms of her hands, too, where she must have pushed against it.’

      ‘How deep?’

      ‘Mercifully superficial,’ Gunner replied. ‘She will be sore for a few days, but she will heal.’

      Kit gave a nod.

      ‘What I do not understand is what on earth she was doing in the water.’ Gunner shook his head as if he could not understand it.

      ‘Swimming,’ answered Kit.

      ‘Surely not?’

      ‘You saw her.’

      ‘Maybe she fell.’

      ‘She did not fall. Her dress was removed and neatly folded.’

      ‘Not necessarily,’ countered Gunner.

      ‘She might have removed it for other purposes.’

      ‘Such as?’

      ‘Bathing.’

      ‘With no means to reboard the ship?’

      ‘A woman might not think.’

      ‘Kate Medhurst certainly doesn’t strike me as woman who might not think—quite the reverse. I would say, rather, that she has a shrewd intelligence lacking in many a man.’

      ‘I concede you may have point there. She was not bathing,’ said Kit. ‘She was swimming. With purpose. Away from Raven.’

      Gunner nodded. ‘But there is nothing out there save those rocks. Even if she reached them, what would have been the point?’

      ‘The rocks are not quite the only thing out there.’ Kit’s gaze shifted pointedly to the horizon and the small dark shape of the pirate ship that followed.

      ‘You cannot seriously be suggesting that she was trying to escape us to wait for them.’

      ‘I am not suggesting anything.’

      ‘But you are thinking.’

      ‘I am always thinking, Gunner.’

      ‘And what are you thinking?’

      ‘I am thinking we need to discover a little more about Mrs Medhurst and her presence upon Coyote.’

      * * *

      When Kate woke the next morning she thought for a minute that she was aboard Coyote heading back to Tallaholm and Ben and Bea, and her heart lifted with the prospect of seeing those two little faces again and hugging her children to her. But before her eyes even opened to see the truth, the sound of English voices faint and up on deck brought her crashing back down to the reality of where she was and what had happened. She remembered it all with a sudden blinding panic: Coyote and Tobias and North; and the shark; and that North had saved her life by risking his own.

      Yesterday seemed like a dream. She might not have believed it had truly happened at all were it not for the ache in her body and the prickle of pain in her side every time she breathed; a dream in which she could not get the image of him appearing in the ocean between her and the shark out of her mind. What kind of man jumped into the water beside a ten-foot shark to rescue a woman he did not know? Not any kind of man that Kate had ever met.

      She thought of the way he had pulled her to safety with no concern for himself. She thought of how she had clung to him, in a way she had never been with any other man save Wendell during their lovemaking. But most of all she thought of the gentleness of his fingers stroking the sodden strand of hair away from her cheek. Such a small but significant gesture that made her squeeze her eyes closed in embarrassment and guilt. She thought of Wendell and the memory reminded her that she hated the English and she hated North. She had to remember. Always. She could not afford to let herself soften to him. Because of Wendell and because of who she was.

      Yesterday had been an aberration caused by the shock of the shark...and the rescue. This morning she was back to her usual strong self. She was Le Voile. With images of Wendell, little Ben and baby Bea in her mind, she hardened her resolve.

      On the hook of the cabin door hung her black dress, her newly dried shift with its faint bloodstain and her pocket. The sight suddenly reminded her of the rest of what she normally wore. Her heart missed a beat. Throwing back the bedcover, and unmindful of her nakedness