The priest looked uncertain, but fumbled to pick up where he’d left off.
“Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others—”
Cries of alarm rippled through the congregants as another gunshot disrupted the priest once more. A few men leaped to their feet, including her father, who brought one hand to the ceremonial saber hanging at his hip.
This shot sounded far too close, almost as if it had occurred on the front steps. A few gentlemen seemed ready to take it upon themselves to investigate, but were brought up short by Will’s booming voice.
“Stop!”
Arabella looked to him with a furrowed brow, fear stroking down her spine with frigid fingers. Whatever was happening, he seemed more annoyed that it was interrupting their wedding than afraid.
“Whatever is happening out there is none of our concern. I am sure the fine men of our militia have things well in hand. Please, proceed Father.”
Arabella shook her head in disbelief. Surely, they ought to take this more seriously. They might be in grave danger.
“But, Will, shouldn’t we—”
“I have waited too long for this,” he declared, his voice low yet still sharp with command. A fierce light crept into his eyes, reminding her so much of Drew it was uncanny. “We are getting married this minute, and I will not allow anything or anyone to put a stop to it. Father, if you please.”
The old priest had gone as white as a sheet and seemed torn between following Will’s directive and fleeing for his life. He chose the former, stuttering out the rest of his address to Arabella.
“And f-forsaking all others, keep th-thee only unto him as l-long as you both shall live?”
“I …”
Arabella muffled a cry of fear as a bloodcurdling scream rang out, penetrating the walls from outside. Her legs nearly gave out, sweat speckling her brow and between her shoulder blades.
“I … I …”
Will gave her a little shake, becoming more unsettled by the second. He seemed desperate, his eyes going wide and wild and he watched her lips for the words that would commit her to him for life. Next would be the vows, and then the sealing of a kiss. She was nearly his.
“Say it, Bella,” he urged. “Hurry.”
She opened her mouth to try again, but no sound came out and her tongue rebelled, paralyzed by fear. Whether fear of what was happening outside, or terror over making their union solid and real, Arabella could not say.
Before she could force the words through her lips, the doors flew opened with a loud thud and crash as they slammed against the walls. Female screams tore through the church, as the outraged bellows of men preceded the slide of swords from scabbards.
Arabella’s legs gave out, and she sank to the ground, her skirts billowing around her as she took in the group of men storming the church. Sunlight framed them through the open doors, casting their intimidating shadows across the floor. They wore rough clothing, and some were quite indecently dressed in billowing white shirts hanging open to reveal wide swaths of chest, the absence of waistcoats or coats marking them as rough and common. Weapons gleamed in clenched fists, the menacing cutlasses, daggers, and blunderbusses sending an icy stone of dread sinking into Arabella’s gut. On first glance these men might seem like regular cutthroats, but the longer she stared at them, Arabella began to realize this was not the case.
Salt-stained boots and sun-weathered skin were her first clues, then she studied each of them and discovered more evidence of her premonition—brightly-colored scarves tied about their heads and waists, gleaming earrings puncturing ears and some noses, the dark ink of tattoos showing on hands, necks, chests, and even one man’s face.
Pirates.
Bile surged in her throat as she swiveled her gaze to the one standing at the forefront—he seemed to be their leader. Swathed in a black frock coat adorned with gold trim and buttons, he wore a tricorne hat with a blood-red plume over his lowered head, the brim shadowing his face. She was struck by the great stature of him, the menacing silhouette brimming with brutality and violence.
What were these pirates doing so far inland—and more importantly, why had they interrupted her wedding?
Will moved to stand in front of her, blocking her view of the leader, though Arabella did see the threat of raised weapons as the pirates started down the center aisle. A few well-meaning gentlemen attempted to engage them, their sabers raised, but one was swiftly clubbed on the head with the butt of a blunderbuss, while another was cut down, his cry of rage dying off on a gurgle when a dagger swiped across his throat to silence him. Sobs and screams swiftly died away as blunderbusses were aimed at the crowd, urging them back to their seats in the pews.
“What the devil are you doing here?” her father blustered. “You dare to enter this holy place and interrupt the wedding of my daughter? You brigands! You blackguards! You—”
Arabella clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a scream at the dull sound of a fist hitting flesh. She peered around Will’s leg just in time to watch her father crumple, sword falling from his hand. One of the pirates took him by his lapels and dragged him to his feet.
“Quiet, you bilge rat!” rasped one of the pirates, shaking her father by the collar.
“Easy with him, Mr. Cutting. That one comes with us.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
“No!” Arabella called out, scrambling to her feet as another pirate helped the one named Cutting subdue her father. Will kept her behind him, shielding her from the invading pirates. Whatever could they want with her father?
“Please, no!”
“The bride and groom, too,” said the voice of the captain. “Take them both.”
Arabella nearly doubled over with the force of recognition as the captain spoke the second time. She knew that voice with its deep and low rasp, the accent less cultured and refined than Will’s.
“You,” Will whispered, and it seemed to Arabella he trembled at bit. “But how … you … you’re dead!”
“Am I?” purred the voice, booted footsteps bringing the captain nearer. “I hate to disappoint you, brother, but I feel very much alive.”
Arabella could see the top of his head now, the hat sporting that jaunty plume appearing first, then his shadowed face. Skin toasted to a bronze finish by the sun showed, along with several days’ worth of beard that gleamed dark brown with a few golden strands here and there. Long ropes of hair that had curiously begun to clump and lock together draped his shoulders.
Grasping Will’s shoulder, she angled closer, her heart leaping into her throat as she realized she stared upon a visage as familiar as the voice emitting from that wide, sumptuous mouth.
It couldn’t be! But as he removed his tricorne with a mocking bow to them both, Arabella looked past the things marking him as a stranger—the clothing, the shadow of a tattoo on his chest, the overgrown hair, the rough beard—and saw the familiar. His eyes, golden and fiery like those of a jungle cat, the planes of his face hardened by whatever had happened to him over the past five years. She knew him as well as she knew herself, in a way she’d never known anyone else. He was here, before her, alive!
“Bella, don’t!” Will urged as she tried to come out from behind him.
But she simply twisted her arm out of his grasp and approached the man the other pirates had referred to as ‘captain.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, certain she couldn’t be seeing him clearly. On this poignant day, her mind had conjured a specter, her heart yearning for a dead man even as she stood ready to bind herself to another. But no, when she opened her eyes he remained before her, hardened and changed, but still the same boy she had loved all her life.
Tears stung her eyes and her entire body went rigid, her insides erupting into turmoil as she wrestled with what it all meant. She began to see black spots on the edges of her vision, her hands growing cold and clammy. Mother of God, she was going to faint.
“Drew?” she whisper
ed, just before her legs gave out and she fell back into Will’s arms.
The dark spots converged, becoming one thick mass blotting out the world, and all went silent.
That she had fainted turned out to be fortuitous, for it made things far easier for Drew and his men. He knew Arabella as surely as he knew himself, and had she been awake she would have fought tooth and claw to keep from being taken. Fortunately, the shock of seeing him again had worked in his favor.
Will had thrashed and flailed like a madman when Drew plucked Arabella from his arms and thrown her over his shoulder. Two of Drew’s men had converged on him, subduing Will with very little effort and capturing his wrists in irons. While Will was tall and broad-shouldered like Drew, he had not the strength to match men who put their bodies to work each day laboring aboard a ship. As he turned to face the wedding guests with Arabella’s light weight balanced on his shoulder, he had bowed his head in a move of mock gallantry.
“I regret to inform you that the nuptials of Mr. Throckmorton and Miss Baines will not be taking place—not today, not ever. Good day.”
It brought him satisfaction to watch them shrink away as he thundered down the aisle, his crew and his prisoners trailing in his wake. The people who looked upon him with fear did not seem to recognize him as the boy who had apprenticed under Falmouth’s best carpenter—not that it mattered to him. Now that he’d claimed his prize, he would leave Jamaica and never set foot on these shores again. The island’s colonial militia had put up a pitiful effort at stopping them, but Drew had been prepared for such a reception, and they had put the redcoats down.
“You dare to storm this sacred place and sully it with violence and blood?” called out the priest as he trailed them, gesturing toward the dead man who had raised a sword to one of his men. “Your soul shall surely suffer torment in the afterlife, you cretin.”
One of his men drew a cutlass, pointing it at the priest with a sneer. “Let me put this son of a whore down for ye, Cap’n. Let me take his tongue.”
Drew smirked, but shook his head to deny the request. “It wouldn’t be sporting to cut down an unarmed man. Leave him be. Oh, and Father?”
The priest trembled as he met Drew’s eyes, as if he stared into the maw of the devil himself.
“I’ve already been to Hell,” he declared before turning to continue on his way out the church. “It spat me back out.”
A cacophony of voices rang out through the church as they made their exit, but Drew paid them no heed. The horses his men had stolen from the public stables had just arrived, along with a wagon for transporting their prisoners.
“What is the meaning of this?” roared Archibald Abbot as he was lifted bodily into the wagon, hands shackled behind his back. “Andrew Reeves, I know that’s you! Your father would be appalled at what you’ve become! A bloody pirate … I never thought I’d see the day!”
“Shut him up,” Drew snapped, an order that was promptly followed by a crewman shoving a bundle of rags into the man’s mouth.
Lingering near the wagon as Will was shoved up into it next to Arabella’s father, Drew glowered at the man who had refused to allow him to wed her time and time again. He had also taken part in the treachery that had seem him ripped away from Arabella and thrown into the cruel pecking order of the British Royal Navy, which had led him right back to them as the man they looked upon now.
“My father would have you and Will to blame for my becoming a pirate,” he snapped, adjusting Arabella’s weight on his shoulder as she had yet to stir. “As such, I invite you aboard my ship so that I may thank you properly.”
“God damn you, Drew, you should have never come back here!” Will called out just as Drew had turned away to make for his waiting mount. “You’ve ruined everything!”
He swiveled to face his brother, the one man in the world he’d once thought he could depend on no matter what. The pain of betrayal had long since died, and he felt only cold revulsion and hatred when he stared into eyes identical to his.
“You should have made sure I was actually dead,” he retorted. “Or at least had the balls to kill me yourself. Leaving my death up to the whims of fate was a fatal mistake, brother.”
Will paled, his eyes as wide as saucers as several of the crewmen leaped into the wagon along with him and Archibald—whose protestations were muffled by his gag. Drew strode to his horse, lowering Arabella into the arms of his bosun while he climbed astride. Then, she was hoisted into his arms, and he laid her across his lap, cradling her back with one arm and letting her head loll against his shoulder as he took hold of the reins.
The moment her body made contact with his, he went hard, his tense muscles thrumming with years’ worth of need. She smelled just like he remembered, and he found it oddly reassuring to realize she still bathed in lilac-scented water and dabbed her neck and wrists with rose oil. He scowled at the elaborate wig she wore and the cosmetics staining a complexion that needed no enhancement. The plump globes of her breasts taunted him at her low, square neckline, pushed upward by the tight cinch of her stays. Through the layers separating them, he could feel none of her natural curves, but Drew remembered them well, had run his hands along those supple slopes and planes more times than he could count.
That he should lust after her so strongly after she had betrayed him annoyed Drew, and he dug his heels into his mount with far more ferocity than he intended. As the horse took off with the rest of his procession following on horseback or in the wagon, he turned his mind to what would happen next.
While they had temporarily managed to subdue Falmouth’s militia, he had no doubt they would mount reinforcements and begin the search for them. Once word spread that the brigands attacking the colony had actually been pirates—and that those pirates had come from on board The Sea Lion—he had no doubt the Royal Navy would become involved, if they weren’t already. He’d counted several ships of the line in Falmouth’s port, and expected them to give chase expeditiously. With Rory rendezvousing with him in Ocho Rios, Drew wanted to be off this island in less than two days. If the weather held up and rain did not slow their progress through the thick jungle, they could manage it in a day and a half.
Despite needing to keep his eyes sharp for redcoats, Drew found himself drawn time and again to the woman in his arms. As a boy, he’d never wanted or loved anything more than he had Arabella Baines. While he and Will had been close, Arabella had been the only person who seemed to understand what it was like to stand with each foot planted in two very different worlds and feel torn apart by them—to be baseborn and scorned, but elevated to a status above others like them and still not have a place to belong.
When he had been set upon by a press gang five years ago and whisked aboard the Hannibal, his every waking thought had been about getting back to her. Even when he was working his fingers to the bone, his palms raw from the drag of rough ropes and his belly quivering with hunger, Drew had thought only of her, of how worried and grieved she must have been to discover him missing.
He clenched his jaw tight as he remembered receiving word of her courtship with Will, of the intimacy that had grown between them in his absence and then of their upcoming nuptials. His jaw ached and it was a wonder he did not grind his teeth into dust as he remembered just how naive he had been. It had taken him months to realize that his impressment hadn’t been some whim of fate, but it had never occurred to him that Arabella had been complicit in it. But her marrying Will was proof enough, wasn’t it? With Drew gone, the two of them had been free to take up with one another in the same way Arabella once had with him.
A cloak of black rage fell over him as he imagined her sneaking away with Will to the private expanse of beach bordering Greenhill, Arabella undressing to her shift and letting that son of a bitch lay his eyes on the parts of her only Drew had ever seen.
His hold on her tightened as he imagined them lying in the sand together, kissing and pawing at one another, Arabella panting and moaning her pleasure. Perhaps she’d even le
t Will fuck her.
The slight form in his arms began to squirm, and Arabella came awake. Drew slackened his grip, but kept her firmly in his lap, the sway of the horse moving beneath them a torment. With each loping step, their bodies moved together, the curve of her hip pressing and rubbing against his aching cock.
“Drew?” she whispered.
Their closeness brought them nearly nose to nose, and Drew could see the dilation of her dark pupils eating up the deep brown of her irises. He could count the light freckles across her nose that couldn’t be seen unless you stood close up, the little spots only slightly darker than her tawny skin. He felt her breath on his cheek, swift and warm, her breath smelling of cinnamon tooth powder and tea.
“I don’t go by that name anymore,” he said in gruff tones, turning away and looking out over the horizon. He couldn’t let himself be drawn in by the false innocence in those wide eyes, or allow the love of a young boy to derail the vendetta of a man. “You may call me Captain, as everyone does.”
He felt her looking at him, her eyes caressing his face and taking stock of the differences five years had made him in. That she had hardly changed at all while he was so different was a testament to all he had endured while away from her. She had remained on this island, pampered and catered to, while he had endured a number of horrors she couldn’t even fathom.
Drew flinched when her soft fingers caressed his face, raking through the coarse stubble growing along his jaw. He caught hold of her wrist and twisted it behind her back, thrusting her breasts up at the most enticing angle. She gasped, peering up at him with fear in her eyes—fear that, surprisingly, only made him want her more. It made him want to yank up her skirts and pull her down onto his waiting cock right here on the back of this horse.
“Don’t touch me,” he growled, his lips brushing along her cheek and back toward her ear. “Unless you want me to bend you over and fuck you within an inch of your life, you’ll keep those pretty hands to yourself.”
That slight touch had already made a mess of his senses along with her scent and her nearness. He needed to keep his head on straight until the time was right. He had every intention of using the body hidden beneath the layers of pink silk and muslin, a body that now belonged to him. But first, he would get the answers he was due and the vengeance he’d thirsted for. Then, he would take her and take her until she begged him to stop … then, he would take her some more.
Pirates, Passion and Plunder Page 4