Alison DeLaine – A Wedding By Dawn (страница 13)
“What good will a pillow do us now?” None. A pillow would do them no good. But India stuffed one beneath him anyhow and grabbed up the pistol and shot.
* * *
NICK AWOKE TO the sharp pounding of a hammer.
What the devil—
He pushed himself upright in the darkness, realizing at the same time that the hammer was pounding against his door. He bolted out of bed and tried to wrest the door open, but something on the other side held it fast.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“What the devil is this about?” No answer. “Jaxbury! Jaxbury, you sodding bastard, open the bloody door!”
The hammering stopped, and it wasn’t Jaxbury that answered.
“How does it feel to be locked away, Mr. Warre?” Lady India’s voice singsonged through the door.
The implications raced through his mind. “Where is Jaxbury?”
“William is none of your concern. From now on you shall answer to me as your captain.”
“Tell me what’s happened to Jaxbury.” Lady India, and presumably Miss Germain, could not have taken over the ship unless—
“You need not fear for your safety, Mr. Warre, as long as you cause us no trouble. You shall be let off at Sicily—it should be easy enough for you to find passage back to England from there.”
Nick’s blood ran cold. “Is Jaxbury dead?”
“I do not care to answer any questions. You will remain in your cabin. Of course, that shouldn’t present any additional hardship for you with your ill health. But I intend to keep the door locked just in case.”
“So you will put me off at Sicily, and then what? You and Miss Germain will sail the Mediterranean in a stolen ship? Once the line of piracy is crossed, it can’t be undone.”
“If I tell you I fully intend to cross that line, will it make you less inclined to marry me? Only imagine what shame it will bring upon Taggart to have a pirate as its mistress.” Nick did not bother to answer. “Ah, well,” she said after a moment. “I thought not. But only consider, Mr. Warre, how much you could profit by piracy. More than fifty thousand, I daresay.”
“You and Miss Germain are as good as dead, Lady India. And anyone else out there—” he thought of the crew and called louder, in case any might be listening “—do you imagine you’ll not be counted as pirates, too?”
“Enjoy your voyage, Mr. Warre,” she called, and he heard her footsteps fading down the passageway.
He stared at the door.
A wave of nausea rolled through his stomach, and he breathed deeply through his mouth until it passed. When it did, he lurched to the dresser for another piece of candied ginger and stumbled toward the pot in the corner of the cabin.
God, he hated ships. Despised them and everything they stood for.
With just enough moonlight to see, he slid the pot aside with his foot, gripped the wall for balance, and retrieved the pistol he’d hidden there. Loaded a ball, and replaced the pistol behind the pot with his reserve of shot and powder. Under these circumstances, having an extra pistol hidden away could become very useful.
He returned to the bed, sinking into the mattress and staring at the ceiling while his stomach threatened another rebellion.
In the space of—what, half an hour? Longer?—he’d gone from stroking her breasts, God damn it, to being imprisoned in his cabin with Jaxbury possibly dead. They couldn’t actually have killed him. Could they?
Whatever they’d done, Lady India would have had the opportunity for none of it if he had alerted Jaxbury and returned her to her cabin like he should have instead of standing there captivated by the womanly swells beneath her shirt. Putting his hands on her was a misjudgment of incalculable proportions. Yet he’d scarcely touched her at all—so much less than he’d wanted to do, and so much more than he should have.
And she’d reacted. Bloody devil, he’d seen exactly the moment it had happened, had seen the way her lips had parted a little, had noticed how she stumbled over her words as he’d caressed her full, heavy curves.
A strangled laugh pushed into his throat. Perhaps that was the way to tame her. Good God.
The ship pitched now with a large wave, and he braced himself to keep from rolling.
He’d thought her foolish and stupid. Had wanted—needed—to believe it was true. But that was just as much of a mistake as touching her. There’d been something else in those eyes tonight—something he’d been in too much of a hurry to notice in Malta, or perhaps just unwilling to acknowledge: a dark shadow.
Evil?
No. It was the dark shadow of desperation one saw in the eyes of street urchins. Except that Lady India was no urchin. She was the spoiled daughter of an earl.
And she was a pirate. And according to his agreement with her father, his fiancée.
If he were smart, he would let her put him off at Sicily and be grateful to see the last of her.
But he wasn’t smart. He was nearly fifty thousand pounds in debt. And she may have been desperate, but she was forgetting one thing.
So was he.
THEY MANAGED FOR a day, and then another, and another, until India began to wonder if they might succeed at this after all. They’d known William was all right when he’d begun pounding on the door and shouting before the first night was through.
The carpenter had filed enough of a space beneath each door to slide plates of food and low-lipped trays filled with water, like one might give a cat.
“I’m worried that there’s been no sound from William’s cabin since this morning,” India said to Millie, as the setting sun spilled into the captain’s great cabin at the end of the third day.
“Did you expect him to pound at the door without ever giving up?”
“I don’t know what to expect.” India rubbed her arms and paced by the windows.
“We’ll make Sicily by tomorrow midday,” Millie said testily. Already the wind had softened, and they both knew they would be lucky to reach Sicily by nightfall tomorrow. “We’ll put them out, and they’ll be ashore in an hour or two. Nothing will happen to them.”
“I only wish I could say the same of us,” India snapped.
But by noon the next day, the wind had died completely overnight, and it showed no sign of returning.
India licked her finger and anxiously held it up, but the only sensation was the warm Mediterranean sunshine. “Nothing.”
“It will pick up,” Mille said, working her fingers absently around her wrist.
“Is that optimism I hear?”
“Pragmatism,” Millie snipped. “The wind has to blow sometime.”
But above them the sails hung limp while the ship floated calmly on a sea disturbed by the barest ripples. Below, the crew lolled about on deck with nothing to do but watch her and Millie stand helplessly on the upper deck and wait for a breeze to catch the sails.
India held William’s spyglass to her eye and studied the distant green ribbon that was Sicily.
“The crew is getting restless,” Millie said under her breath.
“I know that.” India cast a wary glance toward the bow, where fifty men controlled only by their desire to return to the Valletta taverns had stopped lolling and now milled about impatiently. She caught the boatswain’s eye and lifted her chin the way Katherine had always done, and was satisfied when the boatswain turned away.
India studied Sicily once more. “How far do you suppose it is really?”
“Too far. Putting them in the longboat here would be murder.”
“You’re right—the wind will pick up. It’s got to.” India said it mostly to reassure herself. “Perhaps I should order another keg opened.”
“A third keg? They’ll all be drunk.”
“But occupied.”
“Oh, yes. That’s the perfect—dear God.” Millie’s hand flew to her chest, and she gripped her wrist tightly. “India, look there.”
At the bow, the twenty-seven crew members had all gathered together in a huddle. Without the crash of waves and the snap of canvas, the voices carried easily to the upper deck in an increasing crescendo of discontent.
India touched her pistol. “If they mutiny...” There would be little she and Millie could do to stop them.
Millie watched the group through eyes that had grown fearful. “They could do no more in charge of this ship than we can—nobody can control the wind.”
India thought of the brawl in the tavern at Valletta and felt a chill despite the warm sunshine. It would take mere seconds for hell to break loose aboard this ship, and the crew could throw them overboard or simply kill them and be done with it. Or worse.
From somewhere below deck came the sound of a small explosion. India snapped her attention to Millie. “A pistol shot.”
“Who could be shooting?” Millie asked frantically.