“Was it not thrust upon me by the injustices of a cruel and greedy aristocracy? Your precious King James created this.” He swept his arm wide across his ship. “This is what I am now and where revenge is, let the great ax fall.”
“An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind,” she made to slip by him, but he blocked her. She was forced to look up at him.
“Blind to what? Blind to an aristocracy that can do to common men whatever they wish? My mother was a sweet, beautiful woman. An English nobleman took a fancy to her. One day, my father and I were called to the nobleman’s home to care for his very ill wife. Once my father realized that the nobleman’s wife was not ill, he knew it to be a ruse. We rushed home and discovered my mother raped and beaten. The nobleman’s name revealed with her last breath. As you are well aware, English nobles wield tremendous power in Ireland, holding immunity from prosecution. Against everyone’s warnings, my father called him out. The nobleman−skilled with a sword. My father, no skills except that of a gentle healer. At the age of twenty-four, I watched my father toyed with, laughed at, and dispatched ruthlessly. He died in my arms. In retaliation, I burned down the nobleman’s stables and was caught attempting to set fire to his house. The sordid irony−the nobleman free from the murder of both my parents while I was to hang. I fled to Europe, picked up soldiering, a far better occupation that has prepared me for this life.”
The pain she heard in his voice was so keen it made her close her eyes, reliving the pain of that final scene. “I am so sorry. I cannot imagine−” Claire’s heart slammed into her with a sickening thud. No wonder he hated her. She symbolized the aristocracy that killed his parents. The aristocracy who made him powerless. The aristocracy that enslaved him. All the injustices, beyond what anyone could conceive had been hurled on his head.
Aching for him, a deep understanding of him rose inside of her. She could picture him as a young man helpless and unable to defend his mother and father. She understood the suppressed guilt he shouldered that exaggerated the worst of his flaws, making him more reckless, impulsive and judgmental. She prayed the old festering wound brought to light would somehow release him from the agony of his soul.
She laid her trembling fingers on his arm.
He brushed them away. “Do you think I want your pity? I don’t care what you feel. I have a need for justice burning so deep within me I’d go to hell and back for the sake of it. So resign yourself. There will be time enough to settle scores, depending when and how I choose will be up to my inclinations. And understand I don’t believe in soft solutions. Be aware, Claire Blackmon...” His Irish accent clipped the syllables of her name, infusing it with complete contempt. “The retribution I seek from you will be sweeter than flowing honey.”
They had been conversing so loudly, Claire could not help but notice their audience who pretended nothing unusual was going on between her and their Captain, casting conspiratorial winks at one another.
“Is everything all right over there, Captain?” Bloodsmythe yelled from the foredeck, shading his eyes with his hand from the bright sun.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” Devon said. A burst of male laughter followed.
Claire had no trouble interpreting their masculine amusement. She wished every male on earth to Hades at the moment. With the most blistering spot reserved for Devon. She raised her knee.
Without warning he jerked her into his arms, holding her tight against him, her hands touching his chest, his body, hot with anger. “You nearly crippled, Le Trompeur.” His eyes glinted sharper than the point of a knife. “No one insults me. Not without paying a price.”
The rough magic of his lips heated and tormented her, rousing a sudden fever that was hard and searching. His hands slid down her back, forcing her tight against him, allowing her to feel his strength and power. The kiss went on and on, shamefully she responded to the endless teasing, drawing a soft moan from deep in her throat.
Distantly, she heard laughter. From a deep dreamy haze, Claire, horrified, realized what she was doing. She pushed at Devon, pummeling him with her fists, her resistance a pitiful thing in the face of his superior strength. When Devon finally pushed her away from him, her blood pounded, her face burned with humiliation. Their audience hooted. Claire clapped her hands to her face, her body shaking. His breathing was harsh and ragged, his expression incensed. Lust all but smoked from his frame. Her mortification complete, Claire raced past him to his cabin to salvage the last remnants of her sanity.
Half seated in his bed, propped up by pillows, Claire had sifted through many books. For several hours, she held onto this mind numbing activity, too afraid to venture out, needing to forget that horrid experience on deck and feeling defeated on every front. What a fool she had been to think she could rile Devon on his own ship.
Though he kissed her on the deck as though she were the most precious find of his life, Claire willed herself to remember how the man, the pirate terrified her, fearful of his passion and his anger. Afraid of the way he touched her, afraid that she would never be able to forget.
Claire wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. For just a moment, she managed to recapture the faint, indefinable feeling from her childhood that proved to her, beyond doubt, that she’d had parents who’d loved her. The memory of that one vivid precious moment, that vision from her past, reminded her of something she had always known in the depths of her heart−if her parents had lived, it would have made all the difference in the world.
Yet the crucial loss of her parents, followed by the great miseries she endured existing on the streets of St. Giles, created a disconnected wound that never healed. Shattered by feelings of abandonment, Claire struggled with loneliness and fear, creating an emptiness that silently leeched away her confidence.
On Devon’s ship, the old ache of loss had a new sharp edge, because now she was swimming in uncharted territory. Wallowing in self-pity would not solve a thing. She had been thrown into a strange world with strange people, and rather than brood about her past, she’d somehow manage to deal with the present.
Claire thought about the children at the orphanage on Jamaica. She loved them like her own, filling a crushing unexplainable void rising inside her. She had been driven to make them feel happy and secure. Doting on them like a loving parent to the point of exhaustion. Was her drive to help them impelled by the crushing need for them not to feel abandoned?
With Devon coming back into her life, her world once more turned upside down. Was he taking her to the ends of the world? She pressed her hands to her temples, her head hurt with her impatience to know her fate. Her future didn’t concern him.
The door opened and Devon entered. Claire made it a point to pretend he wasn’t there, skeptical as she remained of his silence, she preferred not to get caught up in his whirlwind machinations. She read her book, surreptitiously watching him beneath lowered lashes. His white shirt opened carelessly half-way down his chest so that the furring of dark hair covering his body laid tantalizingly visible, the muscles in his arms and thighs, rippling as he moved. Claire suddenly wanted her cousin’s sound advice. What would she say to Lily? I can’t be alone with Devon because I’m afraid he might ravish me? I can’t be alone with him because I’m afraid I might ravish him? When he removed his shirt completely, she glanced in the opposite direction, making a study of the wall. She heard him laugh.
Claire clapped her book shut, refusing to look at him.
Devon cleared his throat. “Madame,” he began awkwardly. She turned her head, permitting herself a withering stare.
“I see you are making an effort to charm me,” he said.
“I wasn’t about to beguile,” she snapped.
Devon shot her a hard look, shrugging into a new shirt and buttoning it angrily. She could see him glowering at her, clearly disliking her answer. “How did you get loose?”
“As leader of pirates, I assumed your clever mind would have figured it out.”
He stepped towa
rd her. She hastily produced the knife from beneath her pillow and dropped it in his hand. “You should be more careful in the future.”
He pivoted and threw the knife. End over end it twirled, pinning to the center of the door. Her hand flew to her chest. He threw back his head and roared with laughter then flung himself in a chair. “You were saying?” He put his feet on the bed and crossed his legs.
Claire could not breathe then she burst out laughing. “I deserved that. Will you never cease to amaze me?” she said solemnly, warming to the old, impetuous Devon she had cherished. For just this moment, she wanted to forget he was a pirate.
He took his feet off the bed and leaned forward. “We could be together, Claire−”
If only she could accept him. “And what do I receive? A hunted felon. A pirate with no chance for a home and family. Always on the run, looking over the next horizon, never knowing if it will be your last day on earth. Do you think that is the kind of life I desire?”
“I could give you riches. All that I am, all that I have gathered is for you, Claire,” he said with heartrending tenderness.
She shook her head unable to bear an intimacy completely at odds with her moral compass. “I can take nothing from you, knowing you have stolen every bit of it. Knowing you have caused hardship for those who had the ill-fated misfortune to cross your path. Knowing that blood lies on your hands.”
It was if she struck him. Naked pain flashed across his handsome features. Her words wrought feelings usually foreign to him, and born entirely of anger and regret, emotions that would render unreasonable the most reasonable of men. Instead, he surveyed her as though she were lost to him, the remaining link to their relationship in tatters.
Her sorrow was a huge painful knot inside. Tears welled within her eyes, her misery so acute that it was a physical pain. If he were to be captured, she could not face his death. She had to harden her heart.
It is the end.
His voice filled with anguish. “Then I bid you goodbye, Madame. You will have full reign of my ship. We must careen for repairs for a short time until I can put you safely to a port where you can secure passage to England, and a far better life than I can provide.
He paused as if waiting to hear some final word of protest from her lips. In that split second, she saw the torment once more cover his countenance, bringing a deep, cutting pain to her breast. She wanted to stop him to tell him it was all a lie, to caress his handsome face with her fingers. But the reality of what could be could not be. She started to speak, but when she looked up his expression turned taut and forbidding. “Madame,” he bowed. It was as if a curtain fell. All emotion passed from his muted voice. “This will be the last we speak.”
She refused to look at him, to let him see her tears. She heard the soft click of the door close quietly behind him. She covered her face with trembling hands and gave vent to the agony of her loss.
The force of her rejection slammed into Devon. The sting of her words, and the best thing about his cursed past, and the only hope of his impossible future, to find him so lacking and contemptible. He climbed to the waist, his men chanting on deck during their night watch. They stopped and stared at him.
“Why are you lying about, you dogs? Heave too.” He vaulted up the mainmast, climbing higher and higher, sprinting up the rough ropes with a burst of speed he knew caused by his own wretched vileness with the female he left in his cabin.
How he had wanted her for so long, to be with her, waiting for some godforsaken miracle to bring them together. And when that miracle happened, it wasn’t good enough. He was damned in her eyes, a soulless wretch ready for the dung heap of humanity.
He climbed over narrow ropes, when close to the top Abu Ajir settled beside him. He brushed the bird away. The crow settled on the mizzenmast and cawed raucous rebukes. Devon looked above, the canopy of lonely stars his companions, the darkness swallowing him, and the wind beating at his face. His lips curled as his hands balled around the ropes. He hung precariously. He didn’t care, his insides scraped raw from her judgment.
He had dared to foolishly dream, one day he’d break away from it all...of finding a normal life, a life with her. Yet the vagaries of life were as wide as they were severe. He didn’t have any choices. He had traded the long soulless death of a slave for the freedom of a wanted man, a cursed man, his chosen path to navigate the open seas as a thief and pirate, carving out an existence on the underbelly side of life.
Early on he had established his own codes, honorable as they were, still a far cry from the Brotherhood. It took a tight rein and his force of character to keep them in place. There existed somewhere in his brain−or perhaps in his heart−some memory of a moral or two. All this he had done for her, but to no avail.
Devon tried to convince himself that it was a desire for revenge that had sent him sailing into Le Trompeur’s ship, carrying so much canvas that any sane man would question his recklessness. Fatigued, emotionally as well as physically, he needed sleep. It would elude him. He lowered his head against the rope, letting the roughness saw against his forehead. The abyss that separated them remained impossible to navigate.
Paradise. The crew breathed it in shouted reverence. An island of grace and beauty magically soared from the ocean. From its shore rose rugged mountains of rich forests undulating in waves of verdant green. A veritable Eden. Claire stood awestruck, taking it all in, an impulse to be free. Paradise. There truly remained no other word for this creation of heaven on earth.
Sails lowered, the crew lined the bulwarks and rigging, impatient as stabled stallions. The Sea Scorpion glided smoothly through sparkling turquoise waters of a hidden bay where rhythmic sounds of gentle surf beat upon a crescent of golden sand.
“Stand clear of the starboard chain. Let go the starboard anchor.”
Several men dove into the water. Claire envied them, their quick graceful arcs, swimming eagerly to shore. She longed to join in their excitement, but waited until rowed to a dock.
Seagulls floated and basked above an excited group of people gathered to see the Black Devil’s return. Claire looked about, waiting for someone to tell her where to go. The comings and goings of pirates pushed her off the dock, carrying her onto the shore. She floundered, standing there all alone, a miserable outcast, everyone going on about their business, paying her no mind. She tried to drum up a cheerful thought, but even that eluded her. Cut off from everyone’s general excitement and news gathering, Claire pushed the toe of her shoe through the sand, drawing little circles. Cookie and Lily were several days behind on the Golden Gull. Devon had out sailed them.
She stood on the beach for as long as she could stand the hot sun. No one had made a move to tell her what to do or where to go. Not Devon, busy with his ship, letting loose an array of commands. The strain of the continuing silence between them wore on her frayed nerves. Frustrated, she moved down the beach to a patch of shade beneath a palm tree. Abu Ajir settled on a limb and cawed a cheerful greeting. The fact that the only welcome she’d received came from a crow filled her with bleakness.
“He’s an unusual fellow,” remarked a soft feminine voice.
Claire swung around to see the author of that voice. A pretty and very pregnant young woman with blond hair and cornflower blue eyes smiled.
“That he is,” Claire said. It was the first feminine company she’d had in a week and the only greeting entering the island.
“My name’s Jenny.” She bobbed a curtsy then directed her gaze to the men busy with their work on the ship. “It looks like they’ve forgotten you for the time being. Why don’t you come and visit with me?”
She looked so young and so nice that Claire could not refuse her hospitality. Beneath spreading boughs, Claire followed the barefoot girl up a sandy path, arriving at a little white hut hidden among a copse of trees. Inside the air was cooler. Jenny motioned for her to take a chair.
Claire removed her bonnet. The interior of the cottage was swept clean and polished. Shiny cop
per kettles hung from the ceiling, a broad table graced the center of the room and the delicious scent of stew simmered from a fireplace. Claire sighed.
Safe. Sound. Secure.
“My Wolf captains a ship for Captain Blackmon,” she volunteered proudly.
“I see,” said Claire, but she really didn’t see, and the confusion on her face must have showed because Jenny laughed.
“You’re probably wondering how I got here. My ship had been captured by pirate, Captain Silvers, my mistress ransomed and me-self only a servant with no means, saved to be bartered and sold. In a tavern in Tortuga, Captain Silvers fancied himself to deflower me in front of all the pirates. I was so ashamed.” Jenny halted.
Claire put her hand on top of Jenny’s to comfort her. It could have been that way for her with Le Trompeur if Devon had not rescued her.
“Silvers ordered his men to hold me down on a table. I cried for help. My eyes fell on a huge Titan of a man. Wolf they called him, although he looked like ten wolves put together. He saw my misery, and in my mind’s eye, I saw a decent man. He offered a great sum of money for me. But Captain Silvers would have none of it. Then Wolf cleared a path to get to me, picking up men throwing them across the room like a Goliath heaving whole trees, his strength nothing I had ever seen. I was terribly frightened for him for he was outnumbered. It took fifteen men to hold him down, and still he fought. I despaired he would die.
“Captain Blackmon swaggered in as calm as you please and ordered everyone to stop. His quick wit saved many. He challenged Captain Silvers to a game of cards, betting his ship for me. Silvers had his eye on the Sea Scorpion, consumed with the superstitious notion that the ship divined power. Captain Blackmon played to his greed. I prayed like I never had in my entire life. Captain Blackmon won my freedom. Silvers resented it. Captain Blackmon obliged him with further play. Silvers put up Paradise, his island for collateral. Wolf edged closer to me. He grabbed my hand. I knew I was his the moment he made contact.”
The Winds of Fate Page 23