Wind and the Sea Page 4

“Go ahead,” Rutger said. “Drink it. The worst is over.”

  Courtney accepted the cup and swallowed the strong rum in two desperate gulps. It landed in her empty stomach like a fireball. While she collected her breath and her wits, the doctor finished bandaging her arm.

  “Better?” he asked, with a smile.

  She was about to answer when she sensed they were no longer alone in the room. She glanced toward the door and saw the tall blond Yankee officer leaning casually against the jamb.

  “Ah." The doctor followed her gaze. “Lieutenant Ballantine. Is this a social visit or are you in need of my services?”

  “Neither.” The lieutenant straightened from the doorway, a movement duplicated by a suddenly nervous Dickie Little, who backed away from the table as the lieutenant approached. “I was just on my way to the brig to see if our guests were secured.” He nodded at Courtney. “Is the boy ready to join them?”

  “His arm is patched, if that is what you mean. I am not so sure I am ready to condemn him to the prison hold.”

  Ballantine shrugged. “He fought as hard as any of them. Seems to me he has earned the right to share in their reward.”

  “Adrian, for God’s sake, he is only a boy.”

  “Weren’t we all at one time or another?”

  Rutger sighed. “And look at how you turned out. Perhaps given half a chance—”

  “Softening in your old age, Matthew?” Ballantine’s mouth curved down at the corner. “Or is this just a desire to adopt another stray?”

  “I hardly call it soft to try to give the boy a chance."

  “What would you have me do?” Ballantine asked, with gentle sarcasm. “Convince the captain to take him on as a boot boy?”

  The doctor shook his head and grimaced. “No, but maybe you could arrange a parole to the galley, or let the boy work with the sailmaster, or the carpenter, at least during the day. It has been done before with good results.”

  The lieutenant glanced pointedly at Dickie Little, who was trying unsuccessfully to blend into the shadows. The gray eyes narrowed and raked casually over Courtney’s tattered clothing. “Your...friend on the beach...was he your only family?”

  The emerald of her eyes flared darkly with an unspoken retort.

  “Speak up, boy. Do you have anyone else on this ship? Any other family?”

  “No,” she spat. “You bastards have done your job well.”

  His jaw squared into a ridge. “I see. Matthew seems to think you deserve an opportunity for redemption. What do you think?”

  Courtney smiled tightly. “I think you are a pair of filthy bastards and I would shoot you both dead if I had the chance.”

  Rutger sighed audibly. Ballantine simply stared.

  “Have you ever had a taste of the lash, boy?” he asked finally.

  Courtney’s response was to tilt her chin defiantly higher.

  “I warn you not to test my patience too far, or you will,” he promised. “Now thank the good doctor for his services.”

  “Go to hell.”

  The lieutenant reached forward suddenly, grasping the chain that linked her manacled wrists together. He twisted it hard to take up the slack, causing the iron bracelets to bite deeply into her flesh. She was yanked off balance at the same time and only saved herself from a bad fall by bracing her hands against his chest.

  “I said: thank the doctor,” he hissed. His eyes had become darker, angrier, hinting at a violent temper beneath the cool exterior.

  “Thank you, doctor,” she spat contemptuously.

  He shoved her toward the door and scoffed, “Any more humanitarian suggestions, Matthew?”

  The doctor avoided meeting the lieutenant’s gaze as Courtney was shoved roughly again, this time hard enough to strike her wounded shoulder against the bulkhead in the companionway. She choked back a cry of pain and stumbled ahead of the Yankee’s impatient bootsteps, half running along the dimly lit corridor. When they arrived at the farthest, murkiest point in the hold, he barked at her to halt.

  Three lounging guards, alerted to the lieutenant’s black mood, jumped to attention at once.

  “Put this boy in the cage. He wants a few days alone to learn some manners.”

  “Aye, sar.” One of the men saluted and stepped forward. “And ‘is bracelets?”

  Ballantine glanced down at the chafing manacles. “Leave them. It will give him something to sharpen his teeth on.”

  With that, the Yankee officer turned on his heel and strode back along the passageway. Courtney felt a tug on her shirt and heard the guard grunt an order to follow him. Tears, pressing and unwanted, burned behind her eyes as she inwardly voiced every curse and invocation she could remember. She passed the barred entrance to the brig and felt some relief when she recognized Seagram’s scowling face peering out from the dark interior. He roared a stream of oaths when he realized she was not to be put in the same holding pen, and his voice was joined instantly by a rousing chorus of oaths from deep in the darkness.

  The guard muttered a Scottish oath and banged on the iron bars with his truncheon. The din only increased in volume, and several arms snaked out from between the bars in an attempt to grab the wooden club.

  “Get on wi’ ye,” he snarled, pushing Courtney away from the bedlam. There was a squat iron cage at the far corner of the hold, three of its sides made of rusted bars and the fourth of moldy, slime-covered planking. Something dark and furry darted out from behind the crates stacked nearby, and she could smell and feel the vileness accumulated an inch thick beneath the soles of her feet. There was no source of light other than the yellowish glow that came from the lantern at the guard station. There were creaks and drips and constant groans from the outer hull, and for the first time since the attack on Snake Island began, Courtney experienced a shiver of fear.

  “Could I not be put in with the others?” she whispered, facing the burly guard.

  “Ye heard the lieutenant’s orthers. And I’m no' the man to go against ‘im when he's in a foul mood.” The Scot hesitated, see the involuntary tremor in the lad's chin. “Ach...I’ll fetch ye a crate to sit on. Keep yer feet up off the muck and give a rattle on the chains now an’ then to keep the rats away.”

  Courtney shuddered. She watched him slot a thick iron key into the lock, twist it, and swing the cage door wide. She looked up into his face once, steeled herself against the pity she saw there, and ducked slowly inside.

  Chapter Two

  Miranda Gold yawned and stretched, arching her golden body into the stream of sunlight that filtered through the open gallery door. From habit, she slid her hand along her thigh and inspected the single bruise she had earned during the fight for Snake Island. It was low on her hip, and she hadn’t the faintest recollection of how she had come by it—probably in the hut with Drudge. At any rate, it had faded nicely over the past six days, changing from an angry, mottled purple to a sickly yellow.

  She was alone in the captain's wide berth, cloaked behind the sheer netting that was draped from ceiling to floor in an effort to deter the intrusion of night bugs and mosquitoes. Filmy enough to let her feel the gentle morning breezes against her body, the net was thick enough to give her the impression she could see without being seen. Jennings was seated behind his desk. She could clearly make out the shiny top of his bald head, the brow pleated in concentration, the fat, spatulate fingers scratching a quill across the pages of his log book. The man was obsessed with recording the hours and minutes of his life, as if they were of importance in the grand scheme of things. As if in years to come the volumes would be exhumed from some dusty vault and held aloft for all to see and praise.

  As Miranda sighed and rolled onto her side, her gaze followed the slash of light from the gallery window. The greatcabin was not as large as that on either the Wild Goose or the Falconer, but what was lost in size was made up for in comfort. No spartan, military basics for Captain Willard Jennings. His desk was carved oak with brass inlays; his chairs were upholstered in thick rich velvet
. The carpet underfoot was Persian, the pile deep enough for one to lose sight of toes and heels. A china washbasin and pitcher sat atop a priceless gilded nightstand that housed a solid gold thunderpot in the lower cupboard. There were two enormous ebony sea chests, oriental in design, with a pair of rearing dragons inlaid in ivory on the lids. A wire-fronted cabinet was stocked with silver goblets and china dinnerware. The candles on his desk were seated in gold bases, and even the lantern that hung from the ceiling beam was brass, not pewter or tin.

  Yes indeed, she mused, Jennings was a man consumed by self-interest and creature comforts, a pompous man accustomed to wealth and power. It had taken less than two minutes for Miranda to assess his character and to determine he was the type of man who could be cruel and vicious when the mood was upon him, or as malleable as a hungry puppy when the events of the day agreed with him. A conceited fool, a blow-hard; the kind of man she normally associated with French uniforms and tastes that ran to young boys.

  Her amber eyes clouded a moment as they stared through the film of netting. She had assumed, with the entry of Duncan Farrow into her life, that the need for such games would be over. Sold to a Spanish marquis at the age of nine, traded to a Dutchman by the time she was twelve, won on a duelling field at fourteen, then kidnapped by a Frenchman and forced to work in a bordello, she had developed early-on the instincts of a survivor. A multilingual survivor, she reflected wryly. And that talent, more than anything else, had earned her the notice of Duncan Farrow.

  She had been sixteen and serving aboard a French merchantman in the capacity of captain’s plaything, when the ship, Triomphe, had been attacked and destroyed by the Wild Goose. The corsair, Duncan Farrow, had shown little interest in Miranda’s more obvious charms, and even though she had targeted him to be her protector, it was not until she had off-handedly cursed him in four languages that she had earned a second glance. His own talents, although impressive, were confined to a brilliance in naval tactics and a wild fearlessness in the face of adversity. He had sheaves of captured documents he could not translate; a treasure trove of shipping schedules and manifests he had no means of interpreting—until Miranda had come along. “Golden Miranda,” he had laughingly dubbed her, after the first documents she deciphered led to a prize cargo of ten chests of gold coin.

  She spent hours poring over ledgers and manifests, and hours studying the tall, enigmatic Irishman whose smile was a quick as his temper. He was the first man—the only man—Miranda had encountered who appeared to be completely immune to her powers of seduction. Rum did not affect him, regardless of the quantity, nor did provocative clothing—or the lack of it. Subtle invitations were refused; not so subtle attempts to arouse him won black moods and even blacker threats of violence. Yet she had heard of his prowess between the sheets from a dozen sources. There were no apparent grounds to question his manhood, yet he seemed loathe to touch her even by accident.

  After weeks of mounting frustration, the reason for his bizarre behaviour was introduced to Miranda on the shores of Snake Island: Courtney Farrow.

  Duncan’s daughter, his protégée, his conscience.

  She and Miranda had been the same age: sixteen. They had been the same height and had a similar fine-boned structure, but they shared little else beyond an ability to convey entire worlds of emotion in their sparkling eyes. At the sixteen years, Miranda possessed a face and body that turned heads in awe, whereas Courtney was all legs and eyes. The dress she consented to wear on special occasions hung from her shoulders like a sack. Her hair was a lustrous auburn when clean, but it had been cropped boyishly short by the hand of a butcher. Miranda saw nothing soft or pretty about her, nothing promising in the gawky, suspicious way she shunned everything feminine.

  Miranda had been told the blood of the French aristocracy flowed in Courtney’s veins, but it was obviously in short supply—a supply that flowed daily from cuts and scrapes, from scuffles with the young boys on the island, from rope burns and splinters when she worked on the rigging of her father’s ship. It flowed most stubbornly during the lessons she sought with sword and dirk and pistol.

  The two hated one another on sight. Where Miranda was sensual and voluptuous, with flowing black hair and proud, jutting breasts, Courtney was slim and firm with muscle. While Miranda could seduce a man with a single glance, thereby promising him pleasures beyond his wildest imaginings with a simple pout of her gloriously red mouth, Courtney could wield a sword and shoot a pistol with enough accuracy to make most men keep a wide and wise berth around her. And where Courtney was considered just another member of the crew, Miranda Gold was the seductive beauty who haunted every man's dreams.

  Every man except Duncan Farrow.

  Accepting the challenge, Miranda had become like a panther stalking its prey. She concentrated on Duncan with a single-mindedness that doomed him from the outset, despite the strength of his own resolve. She attacked him through Courtney, his weakest link, by assuming the role of motherly advisor. She suggested to Duncan that he persuade his daughter to learn at least the rudiments of femininity, and then she proceeded to show the chit how to dress, how to arrange what little hair she boasted into an attractive style, how to wear a corset, and how to pad the meagre allotment nature had provided in order to fill out the bodice of a dress.

  Courtney had rebelled, as Miranda had known she would. Humiliated, she had hurled accusations at both her father and his supposed mistress, compounding Duncan’s frustration by declaring an abhorrence for everything soft and feminine. Duncan had been startled into realizing what everyone else had seen from the outset, that Miranda and Courtney were as different as the wind and the sea. He had retreated in frustrated silence to the solitude of the Wild Goose—straight into Miranda's open arms.

  Miranda inhaled deeply and smiled at the memory of her lean Irishman standing rock-like and immobile as she slowly pulled away the layers of his clothing. And such discoveries she had made! Her reluctant lover was sculpted from mahogany, honed to athletic perfection with not an inch of excess flesh anywhere on his impressive frame. His arms were like iron and rivalled Seagram’s in strength; his legs were sinew and bulging muscles. His flesh bore a hundred scars, some from his youth in Ireland, many from his days as a mercenary in Europe, most from the years he spent plundering the shipping routes of the Mediterranean. Savage and demanding in his lovemaking, he was able to render her breathless and trembling and utterly depleted.

  Yet, while he had admitted Miranda to his bed, he was as cool and indifferent to her as if she were only a vent for his physical needs. Ten minutes prior to leading her to bed and ten minutes after leaving it, he was a stranger—a dangerous stranger with black moods and an impenetrable wall around his innermost emotions that only Courtney could access.

  It had been maddening and demeaning, and more than once Miranda had thought to punish him by going elsewhere for the attention she craved. But Duncan Farrow was not a forgiving man, nor one likely to look on cuckolding with much favor. She remained loyal to his bed while it suited her, but it gave her a small degree of satisfaction to know that she could leave him any time she chose.

  Unfortunately, there were no such alternatives now. Duncan was dead, and she, Miranda, had changed hands again. If she tried very hard she might be able to coax forth a tear or two for her lover’s fate—he had been a man who deserved better than a dog’s hanging—but tears were not a part of her character. She shed them often, certainly, and always to good effect; but she could not recall the last honest emotion that had drawn them forth. She was a survivor. Moreover, she knew how to survive with a minimum of discomfort. It was another glaring difference between the Mirandas and the Courtney Farrows of the world: some were born to languish on silks and satins, others were fated to prove their merit in a fetid prison cell.

  The image amused her and Miranda snuggled deeper into the cool, slippery sheets. A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth as she thought of Courtney Farrow battered and bleeding, dazed to insensibility and broke
n in spirit as she was dragged out of the dank hold night after night and passed around amongst the leering, lustful members of the Eagle's crew. It would be the end of her. Miranda only wished she could have been present to witness it. Surely after a week of captivity the little bitch had been raped to death.

  ~~

  Lieutenant Adrian Ballantine studied the toe of his polished leather boot and frowned over a salt stain one of the cabin boys had missed. He was freshly bathed and shaved. His damp hair trapped the soft rays from the lantern overhead and gleamed the color of burnished brass.

  He was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and breeches, having decided it was too early in the afternoon and too hot in his cabin to bother with the heavy woolen tunic and formal collar. His snowy white shirt was open at the throat and contrasted vividly with the wealth of smooth dark hair on his chest. His feet were crossed at the ankles and propped carelessly on the corner of his desk; his long tapered fingers were steepled beneath his lower lip. His brow, furrowed in concentration, creased to deeper folds as he noted a subtle change in the ship’s motion.

  A summer storm had kept them anchored in the shelter of a friendly bay for the past forty-eight hours, giving them extra time to lick their wounds and affect minor repairs to sails and rigging. They had sailed around Cap Blanc with the early-morning breezes, and if the weather held they would be anchored at Gibraltar within three days.

  Ballantine blinked and raised his head at the sound of a knock on his cabin door.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Rowntree, sir.”

  Ballantine was about to object to the interruption, then recalled that the sergeant-at-arms was present by his request. He sighed and lowered his feet from the desk.

  “Come in, Mr. Rowntree.”

  The cabin, located amidships, was windowless and ten paces square. Comfortable enough for a man of simple tastes, it contained a narrow sleeping berth, a desk and chair, a bookcase, and a single much-battered sea chest.