“Any or all.”
Smiling, he pulled his bed over and stretched out beside her. “For sailing the seas—stupidly, as you pointed out…No, oddly enough, I’m not. For diving after you? I could never be sorry, never, not even if I had all the time in the universe. And this afternoon…my dear Red…might have been the highlight of my life.”
She gazed at him in the shadows, and her lips curved into a smile that seemed to send rays of liquid fire through his limbs and straight to his soul.
“So nobly spoken,” she said.
“I spoke nothing but truth,” he said. Mere inches lay between them, and in an instant, those inches evaporated, like dew touched by the sun. She was in his arms, sweet and vibrant, a creature of extraordinary life and sensuality. Supple and vulnerable, soft and giving. And he discovered that touching her lips was both new and yet intoxicating in its familiarity. She was as addictive as fine wine, he thought, for he ached to know her again, to be within her, part of her, and yet he was equally hungry merely to touch her, taste her satin flesh, close his eyes and explore the shape of her body, then open his eyes and enjoy the sculpted beauty of her face and form. The night was theirs. The world was theirs. And if they stayed thus, abandoned and together, for an eternity, he didn’t think he could tire of being with her. Each stroke of her fingers was like a new awakening, her whisper stirred his body and mind, and when he thrust into her, it was as if he had discovered all the riches of the seven seas.
Was he sorry?
A groan escaped him.
Never.
In his life, he had never spoken a more truer word.
RED WOKE TO FIND Logan propped upon an elbow, watching her. He smiled.
She smiled back.
And the next thing she knew, she was in his arms again.
The sun had risen, and the day was gently coming into being. It wasn’t yet hot, nor was it too cool. A golden glow seemed to waft lightly on the breeze that moved around them.
They were naked to the elements and to the light, and it didn’t matter in the least. They were alone, and they were with each other, and only the sun and sea gave witness. Their lovemaking was somehow pure, and yet deliciously sinful, as well. It was discovery and exploration. Eyes wide open, she learned his every muscle, the tiny freckle near his ear, the laughter in his eyes, the smoky color that touched them when his hunger grew and soared….
They made love, and then she rose, laughing, and raced ahead of him to the pool.
He followed.
And there, with the fronds so gently waving above them, the water alive with sound and movement, it was as if they found a piece of paradise. They played, carefree, running, teasing, swimming to one another and then away, before collapsing exhausted on the shore. Finally they rose, starving for breakfast now that a more crucial hunger had been satisfied.
She boiled the water and brewed the tea, while he dished out the biscuit and beef.
As she was chewing very hard on a piece of salted beef, Red found herself smiling.
“What? Is the meal displeasing?” he asked, affronted after his effort.
She laughed. “No, far better than what I’ve had aboard ship many a time. Pirating is hardly a profession in which one gets to satisfy the temptations of the palate.”
His smile faded at the reminder of her profession, but he said nothing, only looked away.
She knew she had been a fool, reminding him of the gulf between their worlds.
He was still Laird Haggerty, a nobleman. His lands had been brutally seized from his father, and his mother had been murdered. She did not believe he had ever forgotten, and he had certainly spent long hours of his life dreaming of and planning vengeance.
A man such as Logan might spend an idyll on an island with such a woman as herself, but not a lifetime. He would never offer marriage.
And she would never be any man’s mistress.
She could never be what he wanted, a governess, a maid, even a kept woman, set up with all the comforts of life around her. She had set out upon a road, and she would have to go on until she reached the end of it.
Was she so wrong, or simply being stubborn? No. Blair Colm was still out there. And while he was, others might have their lives destroyed, just as she had.
She was about to say something light when she saw that he was no longer looking at her but staring down the beach.
She frowned and turned.
A large piece of a ship’s hull had washed ashore.
And two bodies lay in view atop it.
He was already standing. She leapt to her feet, her heart thundering.
She started to run toward it, afraid it was a piece of her own ship and that one of the bodies was Brendan’s.
He caught her arm and stopped her.
“For the love of God,” he said intensely, “let me go.”
She turned to him, torn.
“Stay here,” he said.
He started striding down the beach, but when she moved to follow, he swung on her.
“Stay here,” he commanded again.
She couldn’t just stay; her heart was aching, and she had to know.
But he had massive strides, and he had reached the site before she had made up her mind what to do.
“Logan!” she cried.
He turned quickly to face her. “It’s not Brendan or any of your crewmen. I fear these are more people from the ship that provided us with our supplies.”
She stayed where she was. She’d seen enough death, and he clearly didn’t want her to witness more.
But he looked so terribly sad, there by the bodies.
“Logan?” she called softly.
He rose, shaking his head.
“It’s just…I think they survived a long time at sea. They…tried so hard to survive and almost made it.”
She felt ridiculous then, just standing there, so she went to him.
“You spare yourself nothing, do you?” he asked in awe, turning her to face him, rather than the bodies.
“Life spares us nothing,” she informed him.
Then she looked down at the bodies, and a soft “Oh” of pain escaped her.
They hadn’t been young. That was the only saving grace. They were in their sixties, perhaps older. They were lashed together and to the boards that had carried them so far, and from the way they were wrapped in each other’s arms, they had clearly enjoyed many years together.
They had lived longer than most, she told herself.
Tears, so unlikely for her, sprang to her eyes. There was so much tenderness in this pair, even in death. She had been wrinkling and graying, and he had been losing his hair. Time had stolen youth and beauty, but love had remained.
She felt an ache that was almost unbearable. She didn’t want Logan to see her pain, so she turned toward the water.
“Why do I imagine they were kind?” she asked, staring into the distance.
“It is in their faces, even now,” he said.
He began striding toward their shelter, and she knew he was going to get the shovel.
When he was gone, she fell to her knees beside the pair. She touched the woman’s cold face lightly. “I am so sorry. God grant you both a speedy trip into his arms.” Was there a God? There had to be. If she didn’t believe that there was, that justice wasn’t meted out in the end, at least, she would have gone completely mad.
“At least you had one another, and you…you don’t have to mourn each other now, because you’re together.”
She could see Logan digging and closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them and looked again at the couple. They might have been asleep, he with his wig gone, his vest askew, she with her hair a tangle around her face, the salt and sand-crusted folds of her skirt crisp in the sunlight. Except they were not asleep, and that was evident, too.
“Thank you, and forgive us for using your belongings,” she said.
It was then that she saw the locket around the woman’s neck. She leaned over and op
ened it. There they were, smiling in a miniature that had been faded by contact with the sea. There were three handsome boys arrayed by them, tall, young adults. There was a little child, as well, seated on the woman’s lap. A grandchild, certainly. A friendly-looking younger woman just peeked out from behind one of the young men. The wife. She held her husband’s arm, as if for reassurance and security.
Theirs had been a good life….
She looked up and wondered how long she had been staring at the locket. Logan was there, sweating, his shirt sleeves rolled up, the buttons open, his chest damp and glittering in the sunlight. He was breathing heavily, and she was certain he had dug hard and deeply.
He began working at the knots, drawing a knife from his pocket and cutting the heavy rope that had bound the couple together and to their raft. The bodies were stiffening.
“Wait,” Red told him as he reached for the woman.
He looked at her, surprised, when she gently removed the locket.
“At some time we may be able to find the family. At least…at least we can tell them that they were together. That…they died in one another’s arms.”
He nodded.
She took the locket and slipped it into the pocket of her trousers, then stood and accompanied Logan to the hole he had dug. He had worked hard. He might have dumped the corpses one atop the other, but he had made the grave wide enough that they could lie side by side.
In time, the man rested beside his wife.
They covered the grave with sand and palm fronds.
Red fashioned a cross.
Logan, glancing at her, managed a solemn prayer.
When they were done, she rose, went to their shelter and lay down. He followed and held her.
Simply held her.
They lay awake for a long time.
And when night came, they were still lying there together.
Even in the darkness, she knew he still lay awake when at last she closed her eyes and slept.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DAY HAD TURNED to night, and the battle had finally ended.
But the darkness hid nothing.
In the light of the moon, there was blood everywhere.
Cassandra stood on deck, shaking, wide-eyed.
She was unhurt.
Her father was unhurt.
But the others…
Oh, God. There was so much blood everywhere. As she stood there, guarded at sword’s point by a seaman who reeked to high heaven—even in her state of shock, she couldn’t miss the smell of him—she watched as the pirate crew pawed through the massacred and wounded seamen of her father’s ship, tossing each one overboard after removing whatever he had of value.
There were no survivors, except for the two of them.
It was horrible, too horrible. She had seen broken men, screaming, as they were thrown overboard. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be; even the wretched fellows she’d seen dangle at the end of the hangman’s noose hadn’t been accused of this kind of depravity. They had killed, yes, but they had set the living adrift in longboats. They had not killed for the sheer pleasure of it.
“For the love of God,” her father was pleading. “I’ll give you anything, just don’t hurt my daughter.”
“Shut up, old man,” someone said.
“Pirate scum,” her father returned.
No, Father, no, she thought. Please don’t antagonize them or they’ll hurt you, they’ll…kill you.
“Pirates?”
The question was spoken in a deep voice. One Cassandra was certain she had heard before.
He had spoken calmly, as if he were offering afternoon tea….
She spun around to face the man walking the few steps down from the deck. He was tall, and his height gave the impression that he was lean, but his shoulders were broad, and on closer examination, he was bulky with muscle.
His name was Sir Blair Colm, and she had met him at a summer night’s barbecue in Charleston. He had just come ashore, with letters for the governor from King George. Some of the girls had giggled, then whispered of his dark and dangerous past.
But he had made her skin crawl even then.
There had been something about him. A coldness in his eyes. A viciousness beneath the veneer of civility.
“Sir Colm!” her father cried, shocked. “You…you are with these pirates?”
To her astonishment, the man shook his head, laughing. “Good God, man, do you think that I am deceived? It is you who would run with pirates. You and that wretched captain of yours—attempting to rendezvous with the likes of Red Robert.”
The man strode forward, his eyes filled with ice and his lips turned upward in a smile of grim amusement.
Death entertained him, Cassandra thought.
Her father was shaking, but not with fear. He was a brave man, and had fought with the crew until she had been threatened. He was shaking with anger and indignation. He had seen what this man had done.
The killing.
The blood…
Oh, God, the screams of the men as their broken bodies were tossed like refuse into the water.
Blair Colm pointed a finger at him. “You, Lord Bethany, were planning an assignation with one of the most foul and ruthless men sailing the sea, until the storm disrupted your plan. Do you think the governor does not know that you are a sly and cunning man, and that you planned all manner of havoc against the kingdom, the colonies and the king and all his faithful servants?”
Her father gaped with absolute amazement. Then his jaw snapped shut and he stopped shaking. He drew himself to his full height and stood with complete dignity. “I have never, in thought, word or deed, in any way or at any time betrayed my king, country or governor. You, sir, are making a complete mockery of law and justice.”
“So sayeth the man as the noose tightens,” Blair said, shaking his head, apparently undisturbed by her father’s accusations.
“You are mistaken. ’Tis you who will meet the hangman’s noose,” her father responded.
“I don’t believe so. I have subdued our country’s enemies, in the name of both God and the king. I am a hero of many a battle, as surely you know,” Blair said.
Her father’s rage struck with such swiftness that even Cassandra was stunned.
“Hero? You are a murderer before God.”
He did not shout, yet his scorn was as apparent in his tone as in the pulsing of the vein at his throat. “By the very God of whom you speak, you are bound for hell. I have heard the rumors of your deeds. You make the mistake of selling your prisoners in the colonies, and word of their fate travels. To my great shame, I refused to believe the words I heard about you. I believed they grew from the bitterness of a people who lost their loved ones and homes in battle. The broken and the subdued. May God forgive me and every man of stature in the colonies that we did not see you brought to justice and the scaffold.”
Blair Colm smiled coolly as he stared at her father, but Cassandra knew her father’s eloquence and justified fury had affected him.
That smile still upon his face, he bowed.
Then he struck with the speed and savagery of a viper, striking her father across the face and sending him to his knees. Cassandra screamed and burst free from those surrounding her, rushing to kneel at his side. “Father!”
“Take care, precious child,” he said through bloodied lips, before she was wrenched from his side.
Then he glared up at Colm. “If you harm her, I swear, by God and all that is holy, her mother will rise from the grave to see that justice is done to you.”
Cassandra prayed that his heart would not give out as she fought to return to his side. She was held by two of the crewmen, and her struggling did nothing to ease the hold of either man.
“Harm the girl? For fraternizing with a pirate?” Blair asked.
“Laird Haggerty is no pirate,” Cassandra informed him.
“He joined with Red Robert. And for that he will dance the hempen jig,” Blair informed her solemn
ly. “And as for you, girl, watch your tongue and I will consider mercy. Behave and I shall leave it to the courts to decide your fates.” He turned to his men. “Take them below!”
Her father tried to stand, but he was dizzy from the blow, so the crewmen simply dragged him to his feet.
Their hands were bound, and then they were thrust forward to the steps that led below and dragged down into the bowels of the ship.
And bowels was clearly the appropriate word.
She had thought that Blair Colm’s crewmen had stunk, but the smell in the decks below was even more rancid.
As they went down, and then farther down still, she prayed she would not be sick….
“Breathe through your mouth, daughter,” her father said weakly.
She couldn’t see. It was pitch-black and stifling so far down, and no sea breeze alleviated the pent-up heat and stale air in the small hold where they were shoved at last.
“Breathe, Cassie, and try to save your strength,” her father said. He was trying to sound brave and assured for her benefit, she knew.
Breathe…?
Or jump overboard at the first opportunity?
Was there any help for them?
Oh, God…
She touched his shoulder in the darkness. At least she and her father were alive.
And life was always worth fighting for.
“I am fine, Father. And you are innocent, and the finest man alive. You will never be convicted. He is a madman,” she said, and she, too, tried to keep her voice strong and brave and filled with conviction.
“Dear child,” he said.
And that time she heard his fear.
RED AWOKE and realized she felt at peace for the first time she could remember. She felt Logan’s arm around her and knew that he was watching her.
He smoothed back her hair. “Good morning.”
“Is it?”
“There was a time when I knew that any morning when I awoke to live, breathe and fight, was a good day,” he told her, and smiled ruefully.
She found herself smiling gravely in return.
“Indeed.”
He disentangled himself then. And she was suddenly afraid of the solemnity between them.
The Pirate Bride Page 17