Page 49 of Echo in the Wind

“Ah, you are awake. I am greatly relieved. Were you to die on my ship, Torrington would be most displeased.”

Joanna detected amusement in his words. It would be like him to try and humor her even in this. But his dark eyes revealed only concern.

“We cannot have that,” she croaked. Her gaze reached behind him seeing moving reflections filtering through the stern windows. The rocking motion suggested she might be on a ship. “Where am I?”

“In my cabin, Mademoiselle, aboard my ship and sailing to Lorient.”

With his free hand, he again wiped her forehead with a cool cloth. “My surgeon, Pierre Bouchet, is in Lorient and I want him to see your wound. The musket ball grazed you. ’Twas clean, but you lost a great deal of blood. I have done all I can, but I do not possess Bouchet’s skill.”

She struggled to rise. The pain in her abdomen pierced like a knife. She subsided onto the pillow with a heavy sigh. Donet placed his hands gently on her shoulders, holding her down.

“You must not move overmuch, Mademoiselle. I believe you are out of danger, but your body needs time to mend and that will take weeks.”

She could not go to France. She must go home! Freddie would be worried. Freddie! What had become of him and Zack? In her mind, she heard echoes of muskets firing, felt the searing pain in her belly and the hard deck rising up to meet her as she fell. “Freddie and Zack… Were they hurt?”

“Your brother is safe and he knows you are with me. The large man with the scarred face—the one you call Zack—rowed them both to shore. The cutter can’t pursue them on land, of course, but your Commander Ellis will be plying the waters off Bognor more frequently now.”

Joanna let out a breath, relieved to hear they had gotten away. “Did they know I was injured?” She settled into the soft bed, trying to ignore the throbbing in her belly.

“I do not think so.”

“Oh.” In a way, that was worse, for Freddie and Zack would wonder, if she were well, why she remained with the comte. “I must return to England, Monsieur. My family will worry.”

“I do not believe your younger brother will expect you anytime soon. And, after the encounter with your Commander Ellis, I cannot sail la Reine Noire back to England, at least not for some time. They might seize my ship. The English authorities cannot summon me to England for trial, but I must consider what they would do to you. I’d not see you face the hangman’s noose.”

He watched her closely. Did he expect her to panic? She would not. She met his steady gaze with her own. “You have other ships, I trust?”

He smiled. “I do.”

“Perhaps you would be so good as to return me to England in one of those?”

“Eventually, oui. But not until you are well and I am free to do so.”

His voice was that of a captain in command of his ship. It would do little good to confront him in her weakened condition. She took in a breath and slowly let it out, trying to ignore the pain. “I shall try to recover quickly. You have my thanks for seeing to Freddie and Zack.”

“You are welcome, my lady.”

She looked toward the stern windows. “What time is it?”

“’Tis afternoon but the sky is clouded over, hence the dim light in my cabin. We may soon be into rough seas. I should be on deck.”

Another thought occurred to Joanna causing her to shut her eyes tight. If word got out she had remained on a ship full of men with no chaperone, her family would face scorn. But there was no help for it. She could not very well swim back to England. She had always believed she would live an unusual life, but she had not imagined all of London would gossip about her as a fallen woman.

Once she recovered, she would somehow find her way back to The Harrows. Richard was rigid in many ways, but he would never turn her out. Perhaps the comte might take her to England in another of his ships. If she were lucky, she would return before Richard, Tillie and Aunt Hetty left London. Parliament had been called into session in the middle of May, so the Lords would not be released until sometime in August. She had time.

She opened her eyes as Donet laid his hand on her forehead. His calloused palm was warm on her skin. His touch was gentle but too intimate to be proper. Of course, she felt certain he had touched her in more intimate ways than that in tending her wound.

“You have been fevered, my lady, but Dieu merci the fever has finally broken.”

“How long was I… unconscious?”

“Two days or more, though you were not so much unconscious as delirious. Last night, I gave you laudanum to help you sleep. It seems to have worked.”

She slipped one hand beneath the cover and realized only a thin cloth covered her naked body. “Who?”

“It was I who removed your clothes. It was necessary. Of course, my attention was directed at your wound. You wear one of my shirts, which is long enough to serve as a lady’s shift.”

Hardly decent. But she could not complain under the circumstances. Still, imagining the comte seeing her naked caused a deep blush to creep up her face and heat to spread across her breasts, the same breasts he must have seen no matter how focused he was on her wound. What about her personal needs? She could not bear to think of the comte tending to those. Moreover, she had no intention of raining the subject. Instead, she took a deep breath and asked, “You are a smuggler then?”