She continued punishing him. By pulling the neckline of her pink dress down until it was disconcertingly low. By adopting a slight sidle in her walk as she breezed past him in search of her shoes, which had somehow got kicked across the room. By combing her long fair hair out in a cloud and letting it carelessly brush against his face as he walked by.
He seemed undecided about how to treat her. By the time they had finished breakfast, he waxed expansive.
“You will not find me ungenerous,” he suggested tentatively.
Lorraine brushed that remark aside. “I would not sell myself for gold,” she told him coldly.
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Her head lifted and defiant pride looked out of her blue-gray eyes. “As long as I find your company pleasurable, I will stay with you, Raile. And no longer.”
A slight frown creased his brow. “I see. You are giving me notice that you will then seek other arms?”
“I did not say that,” she said impatiently. “And anyway, why should we think about it now?”
“Why indeed?” A mask seemed to slip over his face. But she could see that she had upset him.
The wench had spirit, he told himself uneasily. Perhaps more spirit than he was prepared to handle. He had expected—indeed been steeled for—an emotional scene when he informed her that he was not a marrying man: tears, accusations, sulks. But to be blandly regarded as a light love, to be worn or tossed away like a favorite ball gown, was unsettling.
It was bravado on her part, of course, he told himself, but—perhaps not!
He wondered suddenly if she was considering L’Estraille as a replacement for him, and his strong hands clenched. By God, if that Frenchman . . . !
“What is the matter?” Lorraine interrupted his turbulent thoughts. “You look as if you are about to murder someone!”
“I must see to ship matters,” he said abruptly, and left.
Later they strolled companionably about the deck. André L’Estraille, seeing Lorraine leaning slightly against her captain and smiling up into his dark face, turned a haggard countenance to Heist.
“It has happened, Heist,” he said hoarsely. “They are sleeping together at last.”
“It was to be expected,” growled Heist. “The wonder is that it has not happened before this! Look at her, L’Estraille!”
“I am looking,” groaned L’Estraille.
Heist’s gaze was rapt. “Indeed how could any man share a room with that”—he nodded across the deck toward Lorraine’s glowing countenance and lissome figure in her shimmering pink gown—“and not sleep with her? You should put her out of your mind, L’Estraille, and wish them both long life and happiness!”
“Put her out of my mind?” growled L’Estraille. “Ah, that I can’t do, Heist. She was made for me, and by all the gods, I’ll have her yet!”
Heist sighed and watched his friend hurry away. André went down to visit the four men who were in sick bay, suffering either from food poisoning got in the lowest of Bermuda’s waterfront dives or from cuts and gashes received in fights that broke out over St. George’s waterfront whores.
But before he went, the Frenchman had given Lorraine such a look of anguished yearning that she was touched by it. André had guessed the way things now were between herself and Raile—he had not had to be told. And André was so plainly in love with her—he deserved some word from her own lips.
So when Raile left her side to confer with MacTavish, Lorraine seized her chance and hurried after the ship’s doctor.
It was dark down below, the only light a swinging lantern that did not light up the mysterious dark corners of what seemed a gaping hole. Lorraine had not been in this part of the ship before. At some distance she could see the two men who had been made ill from bad food, and a little nearer, one of the two who had been injured in a fight, lying despondent, swathed in bandages. After the brilliance of the sunlit deck, it took Lorraine a moment to accustom her eyes to the dimness and find the doctor.
He was bent over, attending his fourth patient, Gautier, the big hairy mute. Lorraine had noticed Gautier before up on deck. His huge hands, always clenching and unclenching, his unchanging expression and hulking walk—indeed the impression he gave of sheer brute force surging mindlessly forward—had always frightened her. Now at close quarters she took an involuntary step back away from him, and as she did so, the ship’s doctor looked up, astonished to see her there.
“André,” she said impulsively. “I had to speak to you. To tell you how it is with Raile and me.”
L’Estraille put down the bandages he was holding and seized her by the arm, moving her away to one of the darker corners, where they could have more privacy. The big mute’s hungry eyes followed her.
“There is no need to tell me how things are between you,” André said bitterly. “ ’Tis plain you have accepted his offer—and not mine.” He was still holding on to her arm.
“André, you have been kindness itself.” There was grief in Lorraine’s voice that she should have hurt him so. “It is just that . . . that . .
“That you have chosen him,” he finished for her. She was so close, so maddeningly close. The touch of her seared him and his bitterness spilled over. “Ah, Lorraine, Lorraine, did you not know how that would turn the knife in my heart? Is there no chance for me?” His grip tightened and impetuously he caught her to him. “Let me prove to you that I am the better lover—let me spend my life making love to you!” His lips burned down upon her own.
Lorraine was unprepared for the suddenness of his onslaught. She had thought only to let him hear from her own lips in private that she loved the captain. As she felt herself tipping backward and caught at his coat to keep from falling, she heard a stern voice ring out.
“L’Estraille!” Raile’s voice pierced the dimness, and Raile’s strong hand snatched her suddenly from the Frenchman’s arms and spun her about to face him. “What is the meaning of this, Lorraine? Did you think I would not notice that you had followed L’Estraille belowdeck?”
Her face was flushed. “I only wished to speak to André alone, to tell him—”
“Yes, and she has every right to speak to me!” interrupted L’Estraille hotly. “You have snatched an innocent girl from her native shores. Captain Cameron, a jeune fille! You have kept her closed up and not allowed her to see the world!”
“Your world, I suppose, L’Estraille?” drawled Raile.
“A world she might well prefer to yours!”
“Apparently she prefers it already.” Raile gave Lorraine a bleak look. “She followed you here.”
“No!” choked Lorraine. “Raile, you don’t understand!”
“I understand well enough. Mistress London, will you be good enough to accompany me topside?”
“So that you can fill her head with lies?” That heady contact with Lorraine’s fresh young female body had made the ship’s doctor ignore all caution. Now he thrust Lorraine aside and stepped between them.
“Stand aside, L’Estraille,” his captain warned. “I’ll overlook that last remark because this voyage needs a doctor.”
The Frenchman was breathing hard. “By God, you shall not have her!” he cried, almost on a sob.
Raile reached out a strong hand and gave the Frenchman’s chest a solid shove that sent him staggering back against the wooden wall. He rose with a snarl—and with a naked blade in his hand.
Catlike, Raile responded. His own blade was out, and he had pushed Lorraine behind him. “If it’s a fight you want, L’Estraille, you shall have it,” he told the Frenchman evenly. “But it will be on deck in the light of day and Mistress Lorraine shall be a spectator along with the crew.”
“No, that it will not,” panted L’Estraille, his brassy gold eyes gone bloodshot with fury.“It will be here and now where your officers cannot interfere.”
“As you like.” Raile parried the Frenchman’s sudden thrust, on legs that seemed to be steel springs in themselves. He was
out of range of that flashing blade even as Lorraine shrank back into the shadows.
The Frenchman laughed. “You cannot escape me by these tactics,” he mocked, crouching and swaying from side to side, his long blade snaking out and catching the light.
“I do not seek to escape you,” was the level response. “I only ask that you allow Mistress Lorraine to leave us so that she may not be hurt.”
“She will receive no hurt from me,” mocked the Frenchman. “Is it yourself you doubt?”
“André,” cried Lorraine. “Do not mock him! It is your life you chance! Lay down your sword!”
“Yes, listen to her, L’Estraille.” Raile’s voice was heavy with irony. “She gives you sound advice.”
“Ha!” Maddened that he should be thought the lesser man by Lorraine, L’Estraille lunged forward recklessly—but he had miscalculated the motion of the ship. It sent him ever so slightly to the right of his target and with that opening Raile stepped in and sent his own blade neatly through the doctor’s sword arm.
Swearing, the ship’s doctor dropped his sword and clutched his arm. Raile picked up L’Estraille’s sword and sheathed his own. With his other hand he grabbed Lorraine’s wrist and dragged her protesting to the deck.
There he encountered Heist and tossed the Frenchman’s sword to him. “Take charge of L’Estraille’s sword, Heist—he’ll not be needing it for the rest of the voyage. And go below and see what you can do for him. He was ministering to the sick and wounded and now has joined them.”
Heist caught the sword and stared openmouthed at the sight of the captain dragging his flushed-faced lady along the deck. L’Estraille’s mad passion for Lorraine had caught up with him, Heist realized. He hurried below to find the Frenchman cursing and binding up his own wound—somewhat awkwardly, since he had to use his left hand.
“You have brought this on yourself, L’Estraille,” Heist told his friend severely. “You are lucky the captain did not clap you in irons.”
“Oh, go to the devil,” L’Estraille groaned. His throbbing arm did not hurt him nearly so much as the memory of those warm—even though protesting—lips that had been so briefly his, or the thought that he had not cut such a fine figure in the lady’s eyes. “You do not know what it is to be in love, Heist—unswervingly in love, past all repenting!”
“I know what it is to be a fool,” sighed Heist. “You have just shown me!”
“Topside, Raile had dragged Lorraine to his cabin, closed the door with his foot, and spun her about.
“Is this the way you keep your bargain?” he demanded harshly. “I understood you to say you would not seek other arms until we reached land.”
“Raile,” Lorraine protested, “you do not understand. André is in love with me.”
“Oh, that’s plain enough!”
“I have hurt him by”—she swallowed—“by preferring you, can’t you see that?”
“And so you followed him belowdecks and took him in your arms to soothe the pain?”
“I did nothing of the sort!” Her impatience flared. “He misunderstood me is all.”
“Well at least I do not misunderstand you.” Raile’s voice struck her like a slap. “You are a light wench. Did you think I would not see you slipping away to follow L’Estraille below? I do not invite such easy women to my bed.”
Lorraine drew herself up. “And you need not join me in this bunk!” she cried in a voice that shook.
“I do not intend to,” was the savage response. “You can sleep on the floor or on the deck for all I care, but from this night on I will occupy my own bunk!”
In silent rage she watched him go.
Dinner that night was not well-attended. The ship’s doctor was “indisposed” and rumors of the cause of his indisposition flew about. The captain’s lady sent word via Johnny Sears that she was not hungry and would not be joining them. And the captain himself spent the time stalking the deck and studying the sky.
Inside the cabin Lorraine was pacing about, hot with indignation. How dare Raile think those things of her? Could he not see that she had only been . . . What had she only been? Certainly André L’Estraille’s admiration was ardent and intense, certainly she found him attractive, but she would never have betrayed Raile—how could he think it?
First, she latched the cabin door—let him kick it in!—then she unlatched it, all too eager to give him a piece of her mind. Why did he not come back? It was growing late and the long swells the ship rode were dulling her senses, making her sleepy.
Raile did not return to the cabin. She did not know where he slept—or if he slept.
By morning the strong wind that had sprung up in the night was bearing them rapidly south. Lorraine skulked in the cabin, not caring to have her confrontation with Raile on deck where others could observe them. He was wrong, wrong! But . . . how could she make him see it?
Plainly the evidence was against her. She ate her breakfast and then her lunch alone in the cabin.
By late afternoon, she could stand it no longer and went out at last upon the deck. Raile stood some distance away conversing with MacTavish. As Lorraine approached them, MacTavish bowed and gave her a civil greeting. Raile appeared not to see her and continued talking earnestly, managing adroitly to turn his back to her. MacTavish looked distressed but Lorraine was furious at being ignored.
“I wonder if you could tell me of André’s condition, Mr. MacTavish?” she interrupted them sweetly. “He is suffering from a wound given him by our captain in a fit of jealousy.”
A sudden quiver went through the broad back that had been presented to her. Raile wheeled around, and although his dark face was impassive, there were little sparks flashing in his cold gray eyes.
“Our ship’s doctor is resting nicely. Heist attends him.”
“Perhaps I should see him myself,” she caroled.
For a moment she thought he would spring at her—and indeed in that reckless moment she would have welcomed it to break his insulting indifference. Then his iron control returned. “You will return to your cabin, mistress,” he instructed her. “And make no more trouble aboard this ship.”
Several sailors had stopped to stare.
“You have no authority over me, Raile Cameron,” she heard herself say perversely. “I am not one of your crew that you may order me about!”
Raile took a threatening step toward her. “If you defy me, you will find that I have nothing against putting a woman in irons.”
MacTavish rolled his eyes toward heaven, but Lorraine, well aware that she had gone too far, could not resist a parting shot as she turned to return to her cabin. “To think,” she said icily, “that I had believed you to be a gentleman!”
“Well, now you know that I am not!” Raile’s hard voice followed her. “But I am captain here and you will damn well obey me!” He turned to MacTavish as her skirts swished away from him. “What am I to do with the lass, Tav?” He was shaking his head.
“Take her to Barbados,” growled MacTavish. “And set her ashore.”
“Aye,” said Raile morosely. “To Barbados.”
Feeling mutinous, Lorraine went down to dinner unescorted. Conversation among the ship’s officers stopped abruptly at sight of her. André was absent, but Raile arrived shortly and made her a brief but civil bow. All eyes were on them. Lorraine felt embarrassed.
Conversation at dinner centered mainly upon their last port of call, Bermuda, and Lorraine was treated to all the grisly details of the two women who had been found murdered there. “With their own hair,” Derry Cork declared, shaking his big head. “Same as in Bordeaux. Can’t understand it.”
Suddenly Lorraine was reminded of all those times she had felt eyes watching her on deck and she jumped when one of the English officers at her elbow asked her if she would like more wine.
“No, thank you,” she said weakly and, as soon as she could, excused herself.
As she made her way back across the deck to her cabin, she looked about her fearfully,
but the watched feeling she had known before did not return. There was no watcher in the shadows now.
She wondered if Raile would join her tonight. He had not spoken two words to her at dinner. Rebelliously she climbed into the bunk. If he did not want her there, he would just have to put her out by force! He would not find her submissively stretched out upon the floor just because he had ordered her to sleep there!
But Raile did not join her. She guessed he was drinking with his ship’s officers, exchanging stories, talking of . . . What did men talk of? Women, more than likely. And money. Perhaps they were gambling. She wished she could join them but guessed she would not be welcome. On the way to Bermuda Heist had taught her to play cards and she had enjoyed it—she was even learning to wager, vast mythical sums which no one ever expected to be called upon to pay.
It was after midnight when the squall struck.
Lorraine was pitched from her bed by the sudden violent blow of the wind which shook the Lass through all her timbers. Then, as Lorraine struggled to her feet, the lean ship seemed to charge before the wind. Lorraine, gasping, held on to anything she could find and watched the chairs slide across the floor to collide with the table.
Outside it was worse. Spray from the tall waves burst over the deck and the heavy canvas was being hauled down with difficulty. Some of it never made it. With a wrench that could be heard throughout the ship, the sailcloth ripped, tore free, and collapsed upon the deck amid a tangle of cordage. Men swarmed over it, half-drowned by the wind-driven spray.
They had been driving steadily south with favorable winds, skirting the Bahamas to their right, intending to slip through the Mona Passage into the Caribbean Sea and thence to Barbados. But now the wind had tricked them and was driving them steadily westward. Though they struggled to hold a southerly course they were being swept irresistibly along the northern coast of Hispaniola—west toward Cuba.
To Love a Rogue Page 21