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about the room. “I can’t say I’m happy about sleeping in your bed.”
“I can say that I’m not happy with you sleeping in my bed,” Andre muttered. He too
was perspiring and blew his breath over his face.
Alsandair sat down on the side of the bed and tugged off his boots and stockings.
“You want me to take off your boots?”
“Eager to strip me, are you?” Andre groused.
“Suit yourself, horse fucker,” Alsandair snapped. He started to lie back down.
“Aye,” Andre said. “I’d just as soon not have my boots on.”
Sighing as though he were being put through a tremendous ordeal, Alsandair got
back up and came around to pull off his rival’s boots, grumbling the entire time with a
disgusted look pinching his face. When he peeled off Andre’s stockings, he dropped
them on the floor then rubbed his fingers up and down his pants. Once more he went to
the other side of the bed and lay down on his back to glare up at the ceiling.
As the storm raged beyond the windows, the two men lay beside Rylee, their
thoughts as dark and swirling as the storm clouds.
“So what do we do, Farrell?” Andre asked, also staring up at the ceiling.
“I wish to the gods I knew,” Alsandair said.
“She wants us both.”
A muscle flexed in Alsandair’s jaw. “Then I guess we’ll have to give her what she
wants.”
“Can you live with that?”
“Can you?” Alsandair countered.
Andre was quiet for a moment then heaved a long, harsh sigh. “Aye, I guess I’ll
have to.”
“I guess I will too.”
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Chapter Nineteen
It wasn’t the continuation of the storm that woke Rylee as dawn spread its rosy
fingers through the window but the obnoxious, raucous snoring that filled the room.
She was lying on her left side facing Alsandair, who was flat on his back and making
the most disagreeable sound she’d ever heard coming from his lips. She reached out to
shake him when she heard his snore echoed behind her. Memory washed over her and
she slowly closed her eyes, feeling shameful lying in the bed with both men, but the
snores were so awful the sound dragged her mind from sinfulness to humor. She’d
never known either man to snore like that before.
Alsandair drew in a loud, warbling vibration of air just as Andre expelled his. Now
and again each of them would twitch and their breaths would hold then they’d start the
intolerable snoring once more.
Carefully easing to her back, she turned her head to look at Andre and saw that he
too was lying on his back, his mouth open. Both men generally slept on their sides. She
nudged him with her arm and he stopped snoring, sputtered—his lips closing and
smacking like a child’s—then he rolled over toward her. His forehead came to rest
against her shoulder.
It was then she noticed his splinted arm crooked across his chest. Very gently, she
pushed him, easing him over until he lay flat again.
She lay there trying not to laugh at the ungodly noise coming from her two
husbands—for she thought of them both in that way. Each in his own way was as dear
to her as her own life and the love she knew she had for them had only gotten stronger
with the knowledge they would put aside their dislike for one another to lie beside her
in the same bed to ease her mind. She knew that had to have been the hardest thing for
the two of them to do. They were both very strong men, powerful men, and men who
did not like sharing—especially her.
Briefly her thoughts went to the men who had attacked her but she pushed that
hideous interlude away, concentrating instead on the men at her side and how much
they had both been willing to do to keep her at his side.
“That bastard snores like a bull,” Alsandair complained.
Rylee turned her head to look into his sleepy eyes. “And you don’t?” she asked.
“I’ve never heard me sleeping,” he answered then yawned. “Do I?”
“Worse than him,” she informed him.
Alsandair winced. “I’m sorry.” He realized she was smiling at him. “Are you all
right, milady?” he asked, searching her face.
“I will be,” she answered.
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“Are you sure?” The question came from Andre.
Rylee turned her head to him. “Aye, têtu,” she said.
“I am so sorry we did not protect you, precious,” he said, and his face crinkled with
emotion.
“We’ll not speak of it again,” she said firmly.
“Rylee, you should speak of it,” Alsandair said. “It is not good to keep it bottled
inside you.”
“He’s right,” Andre agreed. “The men who hurt you are dead but—”
She reached out to put the fingers of her left hand over Andre’s lips. “There are
many things I will have to deal with, Andi. Reliving yesterday’s horror is not something
I want to do.” She met his troubled gaze. “Now or ever. Respect that.”
Andre kissed her fingers before she took them from his lips. “Whatever you want,”
he said, and looked past her to Alsandair.
“I am an evil woman,” she said.
“No!” the men protested in unison, and almost as though they were parts of the
same whole sat up and twisted around in the bed to look down at her.
“There is nothing evil about you,” Alsandair stated.
“Perhaps sinful is a better word,” she said, looking from one to the other.
“Sinful in what way?” Andre challenged. “Because you love the both of us?”
Alsandair flinched at his rival’s words but he reached down to take her hand in his.
“Rylee, I don’t know how we will resolve this but you are not to blame for any of this.”
“I am wicked in that I want the both of you,” she said, and when they would have
protested, she shook her head. “I know what I want and I want you both. That makes
me an immoral woman and you know it.”
The two men looked at one another and once more something passed between
them.
“Sandair?” Andre questioned. “Perhaps you should tell her what you intend to do.”
Alsandair’s brows drew together. “I don’t…”
Carefully, Rylee scooted up in the bed, leaning her back against the headboard. Her
body ached and she felt the wetness of blood between her legs, grateful her monthly
had come so there would be no chance of conceiving from her ordeal.
“Andi told me about the Se Tenir Conjointement,” she said. “ I could live with that.”
“Six months with him and six with me?” Alsandair asked. “Rylee, I—”
“Two months with you,” she interrupted him, “and then two months with Andi.
Would that be so bad?”
Andre arched a brow. “She’s been thinking about this, Farrell,” he observed.
“So it seems,” Alsandair mumbled.
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“Is two months not short enough, Andi?” she asked. “Would one month with you,
one with Sandair, the next with you then—”
“Aye,” Alsandair said. “I like that schedule better.”
Andre sighed. “As do I but there is another problem that needs discussing here.
Where would you stay with
him, Rylee?”
“Renaud says he has a house inland up the river that he will let me purchase from
him with my earnings from pirating,” Alsandair said.
“The old Maxim place,” Andre said. “It’s nice enough for her, I suppose.” He
glanced at Alsandair. “You’ll be low man on the totem pole, Farrell, so your earnings
won’t be that much to start. It will take you a while to pay.”
Alsandair shrugged. “I’ll take care of my woman,” he said. “You take care of
yours.”
Rylee drew in a quiet breath, waiting to see how Andre would handle that
challenge.
“Does her child stay with her as she moves from this palatial abode to that little one
up river or does he stay with you?” Andre countered, ignoring the jibe.
“Ataa,” Rylee breathed. “I’ve missed him so much! How is he, Sandy?”
“He’s doing well and learning to converse with us. He’ll go wherever he desires,
Corsair,” Alsandair said, “but I imagine he’ll stay with me.”
“Andi,” Rylee corrected him. “He is Andi and you are—it just dawned on me!” She
giggled. “Sandy!”
The two men groaned almost in unison.
“Isn’t that funny?” she asked.
“I’ve got to pee,” Andre grumbled, and got up, wincing as he padded into the
bathing chamber.
Alsandair sighed. “I’d best help him. I doubt he can—”
“I can do it myself!” Andre yelled out to him.
Alsandair snorted.
“He’s a good man, Sandair,” she said.
“For a pirate.”
“Ah, Farrell?” came a choked request. “Would you come here a minute?”
Alsandair nodded and got up, a smirk on his handsome face. “I won’t hold it for
you,” he said as he went into the bathing chamber.
“Touch it and I’ll kill you,” Andre snapped.
Rylee sat there listening to them insulting one another but it wasn’t a mean-spirited
exchange. Rather it was comical and when Alsandair came back out, he was chuckling.
“Can you live with this, Sandair?” she asked as he got back on the bed and moved
so he too was leaning against the headboard.
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“He asked me the same thing.”
“What did you tell him?”
“All I can do is try, sweeting,” he answered. “I am not happy with the situation and
I am your legal husband.”
“And you always will be but—the gods help me—I love you both,” she said,
threading her fingers through his.
“I know,” he said.
“Am I a bad woman?” she asked, tucking her bottom lip between her teeth as she
rested her head on his shoulder.
“No, sweeting. You are an honest woman,” he replied. “I may not be enthused
about this arrangement but I’d rather share you with him than not have you at all.” He
lifted her hand to his lips. “And I know he’d fight me tooth and nail if it came down to
that.”
Andre came back. “I would, and rather than run the risk of one or both of us getting
killed or maimed and leaving her at the mercy of Louis or Renaud, I too would prefer to
share her though it galls me down to the very depths of my being. Damn it, but my arm
hurts like hell,” he announced as he climbed onto the bed and joined his wife and rival
against the headboard. He slipped the fingers of his left hand through Rylee’s.
“The healer should put it in a cast and you’re going to hate that,” Alsandair told
him.
“I figured as much,” Andre grumbled.
“Of course, we could always draw cards for her,” Alsandair suggested.
“Oh no you won’t!” Rylee disagreed. “Never again, Farrell.”
Andre leaned forward and gave Alsandair an arch look. “You drew cards for her?”
“I won too,” Alsandair quipped.
“Huh,” Andre grunted, and leaned back. “Another rival put down, I guess.”
“He wasn’t a rival,” Alsandair said. “He was a bump in the road.”
“And now they are friends,” Rylee said. “Just as the two of you will be friends,” she
said.
“Nope,” Alsandair said.
“Don’t think so,” Andre agreed.
“We’ll see,” she said, bringing their hands into her lap to press their knuckles to one
another. “We’ll just see.”
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Epilogue
Two Months Later
The pirogue skimmed along the choppy water as Alsandair dug the pole into the
river bottom to guide the flat-bottomed vessel toward the landing where the house
Renaud had sold him was located. Rain had started almost as soon as the boat reached
the halfway point on the Fleuve des Épées and Rylee and Ataa sat hunched forward in
their oilskins to keep from getting wet, Ataa’s little yellow hat pulled low over his head,
Widget protected beneath the oilskin.
Ahead it was smoother sailing—the water calmer—and it was toward that wide
expanse that Alsandair poled the boat, his eyes on the shoreline to his left.
Alsandair’s mind was torn between the excitement of seeing the house in which he
would be living with his lady and their child, and the past that was riding him with
cruel spurs. He thought of Rylee leaving him in Dellymal and of his encounter with the
gypsy woman.
“Ye must distance yerself from that which is not good for you,” the old woman had said.
It was obvious to him now that that which was not good for him had been the
military. Though he was now a deserter, a wanted man with a growing price on his
head, he had never felt freer.
“The waters here be choppy but the waters ahead of the boat be smooth. Ye need to leave
behind the past and journey on to better times.”
He thought of having run away on the Mary Constance to escape his broken heart
only to find the woman he loved on the boat with him. He thought of Kyle and the
friendly rivalry that had indeed turned into a great friendship. He thought of Kyle
being there to help him rescue Rylee from the Midworld slavers then of Kyle following
behind him, watching his back at the cave.
He thought of his dream and the significance of it that made his insides quiver.
“Would you kill for me?” she had asked.
“Aye, six times over,” he had told her.
And there had been six—the two men in Midworld and the four there on Wicklaw
Cay.
He shuddered, but it had nothing to do with the rain falling gently upon him.
“Where there is balance between the head and the heart, it is there when true happiness will
settle upon ye. Look not at the past and the storms it has brought ye but on the future and the
smooth sailing it will bring.”
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The old woman had predicted the six deaths and they had come at his hands. A
violent storm had passed and the future looked promising though he doubted it would
be without its choppy waters.
“Is that it, Papa?” Ataa asked, pointing to a break in the line of trees.
“Aye, I think so,” Alsandair replied, and aimed the pirogue toward the landing.
Angling the boat toward the shore, Alsandair was very pleased with the house
toward which they were moving. Sitting on tall pylons to p
revent the house from being
flooded when the river rose, the white one-story building sat amidst vibrant green
foliage and like Renaud’s Vue de Mer and Andre’s L’endroit Sûr, it had a deep
wraparound veranda and floor-to-ceiling windows to let in light and a cooling breeze.
Its roof was made of tin and shined brightly in the light that was beginning to peek out
of the sodden sky. A short pier jutted out from the shoreline and tied up on one side
was a pirogue similar to the one they were on.
“I like it, Sandy,” he heard Rylee say. “I really like it.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. It would be here that he and his lady and their child
would spend their time together. He had taken his Oath to the Brotherhood, had gone
out on his first jaunt with Renaud and had returned to ask the Council for Se Tenir
Conjointement. Andre had been there and he had seconded the request, making it a done
deal where the Brotherhood was concerned. Not even Louis had objected.
“I don’t like it none, but if Andi can live with it, I’ll abide by his decision, foolish
though it might be,” Louis had snarled before stalking off.
“I’ve a request though,” Renaud had spoken up. “As have other men who have
joined in the Se Tenir Conjointement, Corsair and Farrell should become blood brothers.
They should be one in purpose not only to their lady but to one another, guarding one
another as brothers will.”
“Aye!” the members of the Brotherhood shouted.
And so Andre and Alsandair had taken their daggers, each placing a shallow cut on
his palm, and had then grasped hands, mingling their blood and forever becoming
bonded.
“What will we name it?” Ataa asked, drawing Alsandair’s thoughts back to the
present. “It has to have a name.”
“Les Eaux Lisses,” Rylee said, turning to look around at Alsandair as though she’d
been reading his troubled thoughts. “It’s Françasian for smooth waters.”
“This won’t be a Françasian home, sweeting,” Alsandair denied. “This will be an
Anlusian home. Right, Ataa?”
“Right, Papa! We are Anlusian!” the little boy said. He pulled his feline friend out
from beneath the oilskin. “Look, Widget! This is our new home!”
Renaud had sent along a brace of serving women to help Rylee take care of the