Alison DeLaine – A Wedding By Dawn (страница 8)
“I must ask you to release my wife,” Nicholas Warre told the man in French.
“Your wife!” the man exclaimed.
Faced with a choice between being mistaken for a thief or being mistaken for Nicholas Warre’s wife, she broke away from the Frenchman and launched herself at Mr. Warre.
“Oh, Nicholas!” India cried, clinging to him. “Tell this man I’m not a thief.”
He offered the Frenchman a grim smile. “You have my deepest apologies. I am discovering that my bride has unconventional ways of showing her displeasure with me. The lady was not nearly so eager for our nuptials as her father, I’m afraid.”
“Nicholas, how can you say such a thing? I was perfectly eager until you brought that...that awful woman into our room and tried to make me— Oh!” His grip tightened painfully. “Would not any bride climb out the window under such circumstances?”
“You can imagine that whatever justice you might hope to exact, she exacts from me tenfold daily,” he told the Frenchman grimly, and gestured toward the pistol. “In fact, perhaps I ought to beg a favor and ask you to put me out of my misery.”
The Frenchman made a noise.
“Shame on you, Nicholas. Sir, perhaps you would be so good as to explain to my husband that a wedding night is meant to be a private evening involving only two people.”
Laughter erupted in the crowd, and India silently thanked Auntie Phil for being a bit too free in describing her friends’ amorous liaisons.
Nicholas Warre reached into his pocket and held out a sovereign. “For your trouble—again, with my deepest apologies and my sincerest request that you not summon the authorities.”
India held her breath.
The Frenchman narrowed his eyes at the coin, and finally lowered his pistol, stalked forward and snatched it. “Bien. Take her away.” He gestured as if India was a pile of refuse in Nicholas Warre’s arms and turned his anger on the crowd. “All of you, allez! Allez!”
Nicholas Warre dragged her mercilessly into the crowded hallway.
“If you would rather be shot than marry me,” she told him under her breath, “I would be happy to arrange it.”
“If you can find a way to escape your cell aboard the ship,” he growled into her ear, “I invite you to try.”
INDIA LAY ON a hammock watching candlelight dance on the wooden walls and letting her mind go numb, while Millie stood with her forehead and hands pressed against the door. Their prison was a cabin on the same deck as William’s, bolted across the outside with a heavy wooden slider India had barely glimpsed as William shoved her into the cabin with Millie.
“I can’t let them put me on trial for piracy,” Millie said against the wood. And then, “William!” Millie’s voice cracked as she cried out and pounded on the door. “William!”
India had learned years ago that pounding, clawing and shouting would not make a locked door open.
“Millie, please.” A cold wisp of panic snaked through her, and India snuffed it out quickly.
Millie stopped shouting. “Are you all right?” she asked quietly.
“My stomach hurts.” It always hurt when she was locked away, probably because being locked away usually meant going without a meal.
“I’m sure William will send us dinner,” Millie reassured her. She knew what India had endured as a child—she just didn’t know the full truth of why India had been punished so severely.
And India wasn’t going to tell her. She wasn’t going to tell anyone, ever, if she could help it.
At least William would not be entering the cabin every few hours to make irate demands that India do the impossible.
“I knew Father would send someone after me,” India said now, “but I never thought...” About what that would mean for Millie. Truthfully, she’d never really considered that whomever Father sent might actually succeed in capturing her. “Please forgive me.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Millie said, turning to lean her back against the door.
The old Millie, the pre-London Millie, would have snipped that it was India’s fault. The two of them always bickered aboard the Possession. And they still bickered plenty. But ever since London...
It was as if Millie had built a great stone wall around herself that even India could not break through.
Perhaps that’s what people did after they’d been beaten nearly to death.
“The money,” Millie said now. “It was everything I had.” Her tone said she already believed their stash of money hidden aboard the Possession was lost forever.
“We haven’t left Malta yet,” India said, pressing fingers carefully into her belly, trying to relieve the cramping. “We’re still a stone’s throw from the Possession.”
Their entire plan rested on Millie’s money: it would let them make a start in shipping, which would enable them to make enough profits for Millie to attend the surgical school at Malta while India carried on their trade routes. Eventually, India would buy her own ship and return the Possession to Katherine.
“She may as well be anchored in Bristol for all the good that does us now.”
“She’s not in Bristol,” India said irritably. “She’s a hundred yards away. We can swim a hundred yards. We could not swim to Bristol.”
“We won’t have the opportunity for swimming.”
“Not unless we look for one.”
“William’s crew will be crawling the ship like ants.”
“There won’t be that many of them. If we can escape while it’s dark—”
“That will only make it more dangerous.”
“Fine,” India snapped. “We won’t escape. We’ll be locked away in this cabin forever, and William will likely not bring us any dinner—” her stomach spasmed a little “—and we shall waste away until we starve to death and he throws our bones to the fish.”
India reminded herself that Millie was afraid, had always been afraid even though she would rarely admit it, and that it was only natural for the fear to grow worse after what she’d suffered at her brother’s hands. But still...
She imagined having Gavin Germain at the business end of her pistol. It would be less than he deserved.
“Or until Lord Taggart marries you,” Millie said, “and I am hanged or thrown in prison.”
She hadn’t come all this way only to be captured and dragged back to England, where she would exchange one gaoler for another: her father for a husband who would have complete control over her, would do with her as he pleased, would own her. Who would discover how useless she was and be ashamed of her, but by then it would be too late.
No. She could not let that happen. At sea, she felt useful. Knowledge came easily. The ropes, the pistol... Father would never, ever have allowed her to touch a pistol.
“You know what happens to women in prison,” Millie said now.
“Stop it, Millie.”
“The same thing that will happen if we manage to escape but can’t retrieve the money.”
India knew Millie well enough to know exactly what she was thinking. “We’re not going to end up as prostitutes.”
“You won’t—you’ll be married to Lord Taggart.”
“The devil I will,” India said sharply, reaching for anger as a lifeline, and finally she sat up, steadying herself in the hammock with toes that barely touched the floor. “We haven’t failed yet. We’re on a ship, aren’t we?” It wasn’t logical, but being on a ship seemed better than not being on a ship.
Millie let out a strangled laugh. “As if we could take a ship from William.”
Under no circumstances could they possibly take the ship from William. But, “We could take a longboat. We could float in a barrel if we must. Or perhaps we’ll be attacked and captured.”
“Being taken captive by Barbary pirates is your solution?”
“We only have to escape. We’ll find our way back to the Possession before William has a chance to reprovision it for sailing. We’ll sneak aboard—at night if necessary—and we will get the money.” Already half a dozen new thoughts tumbled through India’s mind. “Someone will bring us a meal, and that someone will have to open the door. And that someone—” hopefully not William “—will likely be male.”
“How is that supposed to be comforting?”
How much would Nicholas Warre want her if she bedded one of William’s crew? “If our chance for freedom equals my opportunity to ruin myself—”
“What fascinating mathematics!”
“—then the odds that we can—”
“It’s your father’s money Lord Taggart wants, not you. You’d wait until some poor sod delivers our gruel, bed him in the hammock and discover that Lord Taggart still plans to wed you and we are as far from that money as ever.” Millie exhaled. “You’ll likely not have the chance to ruin yourself anyhow. Lord Taggart will do the deed himself at the first opportunity—only wait.”
India grew warm, remembering how he’d touched her in the alleyway. She rubbed her arms, pacing a little. “What else can I do to deter him?”
“Likely nothing. God, I hate men,” Millie said bitterly. “I hate them, India.” Those normally soft brown eyes grew hard and cold. “Arrogant sods, expecting everyone to submit to their whims.”
“Indeed.”