“I do not play whist,” she snapped, but rose and followed him.
“Then I will teach you. We can play two-handed.” He drew a pack of cards from a drawer and pulled up a chair at the table in the center of the comfortable room she called the English room.
Sulkily she joined him, her eyes striking lights as brilliant as her topaz and diamond necklace in the candlelight as she watched him deal the cards.
She won the first game. And the second. He was watching her kindly and his very forbearance irritated her—this man so lately from Marie Bellingham’s languorous arms! In the back of her mind she could hear Marie’s tantalizing laugh and it galled her.
“I will wager you for my deliverance,” she said recklessly.
He studied her thoughtfully. “And what do you wager?”
She straightened and touched the jewels around her throat. “This necklace, ray silver comb—all that you have given me, against passage to Charles Towne.”
“Passage to Charles Towne?” he growled.
She leaned forward, anger making her eyes even brighter. “Surely you must pass near it as you sweep the seas for prey. All I ask is that you take me near to shore and set me in a small boat—I will row to shore.”
A cold expression passed over his lean dark face and something she could not fathom, that might have been anger, burned for a moment in his light eyes before wintry shutters closed down over them leaving them murky.
“I was ever a gambling man,” he said. “All that I have given you, you say, against passage to Charles Towne? Faith, should I lose I’ll sail you into Charles Towne harbor!”
She was taken aback at the controlled fury of his tone. Somehow, she had expected his usual mockery.
“Then deal the cards,” she said stiffly.
He did, with consummate skill. As the game went swiftly against her, it came to her with sudden force that she was a novice up against a master. Before, he had merely allowed her to win. Now he was her adversary—crafty, skillful. She was overmatched and with a sinking feeling she realized it. She bit her lips, played recklessly, and lost.
Court swept the cards up in one hand and leaned back in his chair, a hard little smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “It seems you have lost your wager, Charity.”
With all the dignity she could muster, Charity rose. In her mind she was recounting all the things he had given her—the scent from France, the small ornate mirror, the delicate ivory fan.
“I will pay my wager,” she declared ringingly.
“Here.” She undid the necklace and tossed it in a glittering heap onto the table. “I will go up and get the silver comb and other things.”
He ignored the jewels that skittered toward him. “Silver combs do not interest me,” he said, and she did not like his expression. “But it has occurred to me that you did not come to me in a dress of yellow silk or in a chemise with silver lace spilling from the sleeves.”
She caught her breath. “I will go upstairs and remove these clothes,” she said, “and henceforth wear my old ones.”
“That will not be necessary.” Even as he spoke, he rose and in two long strides had reached the door and locked it. “All that I have given you—the words were yours. Yours will surrender to me, and at once!” Too late Charity realized the trap into which she had fallen.
“No,” she said, backing up a step. “No, I—”
His expression was bleak indeed. “Would you go back on your bet?” He took a threatening step toward her.
In panic she moved around the table, but he reached across suddenly and seized her wrist. In an instant he stood before her, holding her wrist tightly.
“So you see, you will not be required to row to Charles Towne—nor I to take you there,” he said softly. “But I will have these clothes which are mine again!” With his other hand he thrust down into the soft cleft between her breasts, his big knuckles forcing her breasts apart, and firmly grasped the material of both her dress and her chemise. Giving a sudden wrench, he ripped the material straight down the front and sent the hooks flying.
Charity felt the material fall away from her breasts and torso. “Damn you!” She struck at him, but he seemed not to notice. His strong bronzed hand ripped the sleeve from her right arm and then from her left. As the material fell to the floor, she kicked at his shins and he suddenly scooped her up and wrested her skirt and petticoats from her. As she writhed in his arms, her chemise went. She fought him and her shoes fell off. She felt her stockings ruthlessly torn from her legs. Panting, gasping, clawing at him, she heard him say coldly, “I will view what I have bought!” And felt herself dropped to her bare feet on the carpet, her naked figure spun around as if she were dancing, held by one arm high above her head.
She saw his hard eyes heat up as he looked at her and a smile spread over his dark face at the sight of her flushed angry countenance. The rosy flush spread down to her gleaming white shoulders and trembling breasts, to the silky skin of her stomach and rounded hips as she stood, naked and lovely before him.
When he swung her toward him, Charity screamed and pummeled him.
Outside the locked door she heard Ravenal’s heavy footsteps and deep rumbling voice.
“Tis all right, Ravenal,” called Court, his eyes never leaving the sweet lines of Charity’s figure. “Mistress Charity is demonstrating to me how she would fight off the dons should she be so unfortunate as to fall into their hands.”
With a cry of rage, Charity struck with her free hand at his mocking face and he moved forward and closed with her. From outside the locked door she heard Ravenal’s grunt, heard his footsteps depart. She was being held so tightly in Court’s sinewy arm that she could not move. The buttons of his coat pressed bruisingly into the soft flesh of her breasts and stomach. She could feel the sharpness of his belt buckle as her trembling legs were pulled against his hard thighs. His hands explored her naked back, sending shivers down her spine. Smiling now, his head bent, he sought her lips, luxuriously.
Enraged, she bit him.
His head drew back sharply and his eyes were colder than she had yet seen them. With what seemed only a reflex gesture, he picked her up and, flinging her on the velvet couch, stripped off his coat and tossed it to a chair.
He was in the act of unbuckling his belt when Charity leaped up and seized the poker from the hearth.
In two long steps, he reached her side and, with a lightning gesture, he snatched the poker from her and threw it across the room. Unsmiling, he seized her and pushed her back upon the couch. Staying her flight with a large firm hand, he lowered himself upon her while with the other hand he ripped off his belt, tore open his trousers. As Charity stared up into his dark face, she made one last wild endeavor to strike at him, but was thwarted by a sudden movement of his hand which captured both of hers.
Beneath his weight her legs were leaden, almost numbed. With ease he found purchase between them, the heavy rough silk of his knee breeches over his hard muscles lightly abrading the silky skin of her inner thighs. She writhed, trying to wriggle free from beneath him, and gasped as she felt his manhood suddenly thrust forward and enter her.
But if she had expected savagery from his earlier anger it was not forthcoming. Although he held her in an unyielding grasp, so that she remained firmly fixed beneath him, her back and buttocks pressed down uncompromisingly into the thick red velvet of the couch, his hands on her body were surprisingly gentle and his entry was that of a lover, silken and caressing.
As he drove home, straight and true, she felt a wild tremor go through her slight frame, and her face flamed as she heard a soft low triumphant laugh well up in his throat. She burned with shame that he had recognized her vivid response to him and reveled in it. Her treacherous body yielded recklessly to his embrace, against her will, and she found her back arching toward him in tune to his rhythmic pressure. The force of his will seemed too great to bear, her very being seemed bent by his powerful hold upon her body, her mind, her senses.
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br /> With a sob, she surrendered herself to him and her arms entwined themselves around his neck. Her breasts pressed upward toward him and her parted lips murmured soft broken sounds as her breathing quickened. Her whole being raced thrillingly up steep inclines of desire to revel shamelessly in a world of glowing delights. She felt transported, and divined that he too shared this feeling as wordlessly they climbed the heights of passion together until, spent, they drifted back to reality.
She kept her face averted, aware that he was studying her with a long searching look, but sighed as his hands for a moment fondled her breasts and wandered over the smooth silky skin of her stomach.
She could not look at him, shamed as she was by her own wild response to his ardor—a response so desperate, so turbulent that she could not imagine what he must think of her now.
“Have you done with me?” she asked in a hoarse shaking voice, as he rose from the couch. “I will go to my room!” and she, too, stood up.
He began fastening his breeches, but paused to survey the beauty of the pale tense girl before him, her gleaming hair disheveled, her soft breasts rising and falling.
“I will take you there,” he said softly, and unlocked the door. “But not naked through the courtyard in case Ravenal is still about. Here—” With a caressing gesture he put his coat over her shoulders, pulled it around her still throbbing body and picked her up lightly. He carried her, her bright hair streaming, her long lovely bare legs dangling, up the stairs from the courtyard and into her bedroom. There, he set her down upon the bed and gently removed his coat from around her shoulders. In the white moonlight from the window, her breasts were silvered, pink-tipped, her eyes dark and luminous. Shrinking back from his touch, she stared up at him.
“I will bid you goodnight,” he said shortly and left the room, shutting the door softly behind him.
Charity stared at that closed door, turbulent feelings warring within her. What of tomorrow? she asked herself. How could she face him at breakfast and see in his eyes the full knowledge of how complete had been her surrender, how passionate her response to his lovemaking.
At breakfast she dressed herself in her old clothes. As if to warn him off.
She had no need to fear his presence. She ate alone.
He was gone all day. By dinner, worn out from raging inner fires, she was no longer in a mood for old clothes. Rebelliously she put on a pale blue silk dress trimmed in silver lace and went down to dinner with her head held high.
Although she waited dinner for him an unconscionable time, and sat there long after, sipping her wine, he still did not appear.
She began to wonder if something had happened to him, some altercation on the quays. Perhaps he lay even now in Kirby’s infirmary—bleeding from a cutlass wound. No. . . . Kirby would have come to tell her.
She sat in the courtyard a while and then went upstairs to her room. By now the swift-falling tropical night had descended to blanket Tortuga in velvet.
Below, Charity heard the front door open and, soon, footsteps ascending the stairs. She stiffened, and turned as the door opened. Court stood there, smiling. He was dressed rakishly in a white shirt with ruffled cuffs and black silk knee breeches. He must have discarded his rapier downstairs, she observed.
His light eyes flickered. “I see you have decided to be sensible.”
“No, I have not decided to be sensible,” she flashed.
“In the matter of dress,” he amended.
She sniffed, turning her head away from him—then swung it back as below in the courtyard there was the sound of strings. Someone down there was playing a viola da gamba.
“I have brought home a musician for your entertainment,” he said. “We can hear him well enough through the door.”
He closed it behind him.
A sensation she thought to be anger passed through her body. “It matters not,” she said. “I have no mind to go to bed yet.”
“Oh, have you not?” He tossed his sash and pistols onto a chair. “And what is so entrancing at this hour that you prefer it to bed?”
“I prefer to view the ships at anchor in the harbor from the window of my prison,” she answered. “And imagine them taking sail and flying out on the tide with me aboard them.”
“Ah, is that what you dream of?” he murmured.
She did not answer, but turned back to the harbor, her brooding gaze seeking the moon-kissed tall-masted ships that rode at anchor beneath the forbidding shadow of the mountain fortress.
She heard him cross the room and knew that he was standing just behind her. She tensed but she did not look round. The scent of the pimento trees drifted in through the windows and a lingering aroma of roses wafted up from the courtyard. Softly the trade winds blew across her face, ruffled her silken hair. Tortuga spread like a magic carpet below her while behind her the proudest and most dangerous of Tortuga’s buccaneers was but a breath away.
The music in the courtyard continued, lulling the senses. A mellow voice was singing now, rich and low, a haunting Spanish love song.
As the song began, Court’s arm went around Charity, holding her possessively so that she leaned against his hard chest. She could feel the powerful beat of his heart. Under the magic of the song she relaxed against him, for the moment not thinking of the lean body her back pressed against or the arms that held her, but of the words of the song, a lament for a lover lost and gone. Court held her lightly, without passion, and the thought pierced her consciousness, We could be friends, and was as swiftly gone. She could never be friends with this embittered buccaneer who kept her here against her will.
The song ended and, with a sigh, Court buried his face in her hair. She suffered him to do it, stiffening as his hands roved down along her breasts, sliding down around her waist, gently turning her around and lifting her to her tiptoes.
Below them in the courtyard another song had begun. The singer’s voice drifted up again, but Charity did not respond to the music.
“Why do you fight me?” Court asked dreamily. Instead of letting her answer, he pressed his lips down upon hers, and his right arm tightened about her, while the other eased her dress down so that it fell around her hips.
As her naked torso was pressed against him, she fought a rippling surge of desire. She would not allow this, she told herself hysterically. She would resist him. She would be cold, unresponsive, a stone to his touch. But even as the thought surfaced in her consciousness, she felt the blood course through her veins and every sense came vividly alive.
With an indrawn breath, she felt her breasts flatten against his chest, the soft nipples rubbing against the material of his shirt, as even that fine linen sent soft little stabs of electricity to jar and tingle against her rib cage. A terrible sweet languor stole over her as he deftly slid her dress and petticoats down her hips. The world seemed far away and fighting him seemed difficult and unrewarding. She felt a shivering thrill as the silky lawn of her petticoat glided around her knees to fall softly around her ankles. With a swift gesture, he lifted her up and out of her clothes entirely. Cupping his hands beneath her softly rounded buttocks Court carried her to the bed and laid her gently down upon it. Sweeping her legs apart with a probing knee, he lowered his body, then closed with her and thrust in straight and sure, so that she gasped and her eyelids fluttered closed, her lips parted, her breath grew shallow. He turned lightly from side to side, moving inside her with the smoothness of silk, thrusting forward with a stubborn obstinacy against her yielding softness.
She did not resist him. She closed her eyes and was transported to a place beyond reality. She rose eagerly to heights and plunged recklessly down into valleys, she soared with the eagles and when she fell to earth, she fell softly, her fall broken ever by his warm strong arms. Rhythmically, passionately, he moved within her. His touch had a terrible fierce tenderness that would not be gainsaid.
On that wave of bright passion, she was his—utterly, completely. Again he had taken her as no other man had ever take
n her, and made her his own. Gasps of breath came from her parted lips. Her eyes were closed, her expression blissful. For a moment, he looked down on her and smiled. It was almost a loving smile.
In a tumult of emotions, she kept her eyes closed and finally, hearing his rhythmic breathing beside her, drifted off to sleep herself.
Even the troubled sleep.
In the days that followed, Charity came to terms with life in Tortuga in the arms of her buccaneer lover. She no longer fought him. A wild sweet recklessness had come over her, a new feeling that she had never before known; a willingness to take each day and live it, forgetful of yesterday, heedless of tomorrow. She did not ask herself why this should be, but though she was still a captive and as closely guarded as ever, somehow she had forgotten to hate her captor. Instead she enjoyed a summertime of passion, with lazy days spent supervising cook or strolling in the market behind the quay with Ravenal, and long lovely nights of wild embraces and broken murmured endearments as her heart beat together with Court’s and their burning flesh was caressed by the soft scented trade winds that blew through the shutters. A moon that was old and wise in the ways of lovers looked down on them, but it shone no brighter than Charity’s eyes smiling up into Court’s dark countenance. His hard face seemed to soften when he looked at her.
Other men were forgotten. Marie seemed far away. Here beneath the shadow of the grim mountain fort, Charity felt the law could never touch them. It was as if all other lives before them had never been.
She told herself she did not love Court but . . . even when opportunity presented itself, as it often did when she visited Dona Isabel in the afternoons, Charity made no attempt to escape. She was happy here. She had found a new life in Tortuga.
CHAPTER 40
Charity found there was much to occupy her days. She and Ella busied themselves sorting linens, mending torn sleeves, sewing on buttons. Charity found more attractive clothes for Ella, although the girl steadfastly refused to wear shoes. Court gave Charity the keys and she sorted things in his “treasure room,” marveling at the variety of goods. It was a disappointment when Kirby would not allow her to visit the sick at his infirmary, refusing to expose her to fevers and other maladies by insisting that his own assistant was more than adequate. But she did call there regularly with baskets of fruit. On her way home, she usually dropped in to see Isabel, who had settled into domesticity with a vengeance and was redecorating her pleasant house in the severe Spanish style.
This Loving Torment Page 41