The Black Rose

by Christina Skye

  "Padrig!" the captain thundered, his hands clamped like a vice about her waist. "Get — her — below!"

  But Tess found she didn't wish to return to the darkness, not when she was enjoying the fine fury of the wind, the salt tang in the air. And yes, she was even enjoying this skirmish with the Liberte's high-handed captain. Why should she go back to the stagnant silence below deck?

  Her hands on her hips, her shoulders set stubbornly, she faced the Frenchman, all fire and defiance. "I won't go!"

  "Oh, you will, my little spitfire, or you'll feel the wrath of my hand upon your tender derriere!"

  Tess's mouth tightened. Some mad demon made her press closer to him, rather than pull away.

  The captain's smothered gasp was all the encouragement she needed to continue.

  Her breasts brushed his chest; the soft curve of her belly teased his granite thighs. A dark jolt of pleasure shot through her when she felt him harden and swell at this intimate contact.

  "What trick is this?" Andre demanded harshly, his fingers splaying apart and biting into her waist.

  Tess did not answer, too awash in the storm that surged through her blood, in the lightning of his touch. Her head fell back, and her long hair blew wildly about his back and shoulders, lashed by the wind until it wrapped the two of them in its dark, living flames.

  Somehow, of their own volition, Tess's moist lips parted. It was madness, of course, but suddenly she didn't care.

  She smiled.

  Andre groaned.

  Then without warning she was jerked from the deck and crushed against the length of his unyielding frame, her thighs locked to his while he set the brand of his manhood upon her.

  She should have been afraid, but somehow she wasn't. Instead she felt only a strange, urgent hunger. Wanting — she knew not what.

  "You play a dangerous game, sea gull," Andre said hoarsely. "In this world of wind and sea, I am master. Whatever I want I take. Do I have to prove this to you? Do you wish me to take you here and now?"

  Stop, fool, her last vestige of reason cautioned. But Tess did not listen, for some dark, primal instinct made her yearn to coax another raw groan from his lips. Once more she moved, sliding against that part of him which jutted and swelled in evidence of his desire.

  This time his oath was long and very fluent.

  Her breath fled as she was swept up into his arms. The schooner pitched sharply, tossed by a mountainous wave. Or did she only imagine it, buffeted as she was by wild, restless currents of longing?

  She never knew the answer, for in the next instant there came a shrill shout from the rigging. Around her the night exploded into sound and movement.

  "Hard about!" Andre roared in French, lapsing into rapid-fire Breton with his next breath.

  From the aft deck came the roar of a cannonball and the splintering of wood. Beneath their feet, Tess felt the deck shudder.

  The Liberte was being fired upon!

  " 'Tis the cursed English Revenue vessel returned!" Padrig called, somewhere to her right.

  "Damn it, Padrig, get her below!"

  But before the first mate had time to react, another volley whined through the air. Suddenly Tess felt her captor's arms go rigid.

  "An-Andre?" she gasped. "What has happened? Are you hurt?"

  The Frenchman muttered darkly beneath his breath. "No, par Dieu, but this vessel of mine is sore wounded. We'll be lucky to make the Morbihan alive."

  Dimly Tess felt giant hands lift her from him. Andre's voice seemed to retreat.

  "Come, bihan," the first mate said brusquely at her shoulder. "When lead is being traded, the deck is no place for a lady. Not even such a wild lady as yourself."

  * * * * *

  The jug was rattling on the table as Padrig opened the door to the captain's cabin. Tess felt the hull creak protestingly beneath her feet. The Liberte began to shift direction.

  A moment later another shell exploded, and the sleek schooner bucked wildly, rocked by aftershocks.

  "I must go!" Already Padrig was running back to the companionway.

  Tess's fingers gripped the cold bed linens. Dear God, were they now to die at sea?

  Suddenly her fingers froze. An English Revenue cutter, had Padrig said? Why had she not thought of it sooner? Yes, she must try to get up on deck before —

  But her wild hope died stillborn. Even if she somehow managed to signal the English vessel, what could they do for her? Lower a boat — in these stormy seas?

  Her shoulders slumped. Impossible.

  For who would care? She was a passenger aboard a French smuggling vessel, and that made her equally a criminal. "But I just happened to be floating in the Channel when the Liberte's notorious captain found me and forced me aboard."

  Tess frowned, well able to imagine their disbelief at such a tale. No, they would never believe her. And rightly so, she thought grimly, all too aware of the secret of her own identity.

  A single tear slipped to her cheek, and she swept it away angrily. Dark and clouded, her eyes probed the darkness, seeing nothing. Another shell exploded high overhead, and Tess flinched as the vessel pitched and shuddered.

  No, she had no choice but to stay here and wait.

  Hoping she did not die in the next few minutes, alone and forgotten in the darkness.

  * * * * *

  It seemed hours before the shouting stopped.

  At last the scurrying steps slowed on the deck. For the first time Tess realized her hands ached where they lay clenched in the tangled folds of the quilt.

  From somewhere aft she heard Andre shout a guttural order.

  Was it her imagination or did the wind seem to drop, the seas to pitch less wildly?

  Her slim shoulders quivered, throbbing with the strain of holding them rigid for so long.

  Suddenly heavy footsteps hammered down the stairs; the door burst open. Tess heard the sound of struggling bodies.

  "Let me go, damn you!" Andre's savage shout rent the air, more furious than any howling winds.

  Tess frowned, unable to understand the guttural Breton words he spoke next. But his meaning was clear enough, and she was glad she was not the recipient of such wrath.

  There was a dull thump, followed by Padrig's muffled grunt of pain.

  "Can you truly" — more scuffling — "be so afraid" — one of them cursed harshly — "of one little circle of lead?" Padrig rasped in French.

  "I'm afraid of nothing, Le Braz," Andre roared, "and well you know it! Now, let me get back to the deck, where I'm needed. We are not yet so far past the reefs, and that dungheap of an English Revenue vessel might still choose to come back for a second look."

  "Not after the way you gave them the slip, my captain." Padrig's voice warmed, laced with humor. "Dieu, but it was a fine thing to see. Me, I will tell my grandchildren about it some day."

  "You won't live to have any grandchildren if you don't let me go!"

  "Nor will you live if I do!"

  Tess stumbled to her feet. "Stop it!" she cried, frightened to hear more straining, punctuated by harsh gasps and the furious rustle of clothing. Then muscle struck skin and bone. Andre growled a sharp oath.

  "A thousand pardons, mon ami, but you are not long for this world unless Le Fur can dig that inch of lead from your leg. Already you are thick with blood!"

  "You call this a wound, Padrig? Bah! It is no more than the prick of an old woman's needle!"

  "For such a small thing, there is a very great deal of blood," the first mate said dryly. "Now go and lie down like a brave fellow. Your woman has graciously left the bed to your use. You wouldn't want to hurt her feelings, would you?"

  Your woman.

  Tess shivered. The words sounded so natural, so right somehow.

  The sharp silence that followed Padrig's deceptively innocent statement was broken by Andre's taut indrawing of breath. "Bah, get your wretched carcass back up on deck, Padrig. And mind you keep those sails close-hauled! There'll be more rain before morning, unless I mi
ss my guess."

  "Oh, of a certainty, I shall be most considerate of your ship," the first mate murmured.

  "One last thing, Padrig," the captain said brusquely. The next words were only for his mate, delivered in rapid-fire Breton.

  When he finished, Tess heard Padrig cross the floor. The door opened and then the first mate strode off, shouting for Le Fur.

  Tess did not move, feeling the captain's powerful presence with every nerve of her body. He was close, she knew; she could hear his harsh, unsteady breathing.

  "Bihan."

  One word. And yet in that brief utterance was packed a wealth of feeling: tenderness, triumph, uncertainty, and fierce male possessiveness.

  Was there a trace of regret too? Tess wondered. She cocked her head, frowning at the darkness.

  "Come and help me to our bed, sea gull," Andre ordered.

  "I — cannot help you," she snapped, ashamed that she could not. Furious, suddenly, that he should ask the one thing she could not do. "In case you have forgotten, I cannot see," she added icily.

  "Ah, but you can hear me, sea gull. Most important of all, you can feel me. Let that sense guide you to me now."

  Her anger flared. Madness! she thought. And yet ...

  Slowly she began to inch forward toward the place where she imagined he stood, his harsh breathing a beacon. She could almost see his tall, muscled frame braced in the doorway, his arrogant countenance shuttered as he studied her.

  The Frenchman made no sound to help her, Tess noticed, which only strengthened her angry resolve to succeed. Her senses reached out, probing the darkness, her nerves drawn taut as a marksman's bow.

  Then she felt it — a strange, wild resonance that hummed in her blood, vibrating through bone and muscle.

  That was the second lesson he taught her.

  She stiffened, all her senses reaching out for him.

  He was very close, she knew it now. When his ragged breathing stilled, it only confirmed her guess.

  She edged slightly to the right. A warm current of air drifted across her flushed cheeks, stirring an errant curl at her neck.

  A moment later her fingers grazed the curve of his muscled forearm, rigid beneath the wet wool of his sweater.

  "Do you believe me now?" the Liberte's captain muttered roughly. "You see — and you feel — far more than you know, bihan." He swayed slightly and muttered a rough curse. "And it is for me, sea gull. Remember that. Not for him."

  Without warning the Frenchman's arm slipped from beneath her fingers and he collapsed with a ragged groan upon the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  "Padrig!" Tess cried wildly, her trembling fingers searching for Andre's head. Kneeling, she crouched down and struggled to pull him onto her lap. "Anyone!"

  It seemed an eternity before she heard an answering shout, and the drum of feet down the companionway.

  "The man has no more wit than the backside of a sow!" an unfamiliar voice barked. "Help me get the fool into bed, Padrig!"

  The captain's inert body was lifted away from her the next moment. She heard the two men grunt as they lowered him to the bed.

  Tess's fingers clenched and unclenched at her sides where she knelt, rigid with shock, in the middle of the room. "What — what has happened to him?"

  "An English musket ball lodged in his thigh, that's what," Padrig answered grimly. "Hit while he was trying to carry you below. Then the fool refused to leave the deck. Now he's lost a great deal too much blood for my liking. Le Fur?"

  "Aye, Padrig. I'm ready."

  "What do you mean to do?" Tess asked faintly.

  "Le Fur will dig it out, while we pray that his hands are steady. Best that it be done now, while the captain's still unconscious."

  Tess's hand flew to her mouth. A wave of guilt swept over her. When it had happened, he had been trying to carry her below, to safety. Had she not been on deck, he might never have been hit. He might be safe and well right now, standing before her, baiting her with the fire and challenge of his rough voice.

  Across the room came the clatter of metal. Tess heard a faint sucking noise, and then the awful rasp of a metal blade carving human flesh.

  Andre groaned, then muttered something raggedly in an incomprehensible jumble of French and Breton laced with an occasional English curse.

  The sweet-sharp smell of blood filled the room, along with the acrid tang of sweat — the smells of sickness and fear.

  Death, hovering close.

  Tess's breath caught as she envisioned the nightmare scene — the big man struggling, the bed drenched with his blood as Le Fur probed for the hidden ball. Tess swayed, certain she would faint.

  "Merde! He's waking, curse it! Hold him down, Padrig!"

  "I can't, not with this candle in my hand. Bihan!"

  White-faced, Tess slipped to the bed.

  "Can you hold this? And keep it steady?" Padrig guided her fingers around the cold metal base of a candlestick. She heard him curse. "You're not going to let me down, are you?"

  "I-I'm all right," she managed to answer. "Go on — quickly! The longer he bleeds ..." She did not need to finish.

  The dull scraping resumed. Andre muttered hoarsely from dry lips. Ashen-faced, Tess listened to the sounds of his struggling. Sweat trickled down her forehead as her face was bathed in heat and smoke from the candle.

  Please God, she prayed. Save him. She must not lose this man whom she had only just found.

  Suddenly Le Fur grunted in triumph. "Ici, le diable!" More scraping — then the sharp clang of metal falling against metal. "A real beauty, by all the saints! Lodged but an inch from his bone. And the devil's own luck that it went no farther."

  "Well done, Le Fur. You've still the steadiest hands I ever saw." Padrig's voice warmed slightly. "But you'd best save that ball, for if I know our captain he'll want to inspect it for himself to be sure you didn't miss any pieces." There was a rich undercurrent of amusement in the big man's voice now.

  Tess bit back an exclamation of horror. How could they laugh while their captain lay wounded, near to death?

  Her heart pounding, she stared wildly in the direction of those light-hearted voices. "How — how can you speak so, laughing and teasing? Any minute he might — he might —" Suddenly her voice seemed to give way. Her knees threatened to follow.

  "I'll take that now, bihan," Padrig said quietly, removing the candlestick from her rigid fingers. "The captain will be fine, never fear. The man has the constitution of an ox. It will take far more than an inch of English lead to put him in his grave. And as for the humor, well, that is our way. It's Andre's way also. Now he must rest, but since every man will be needed on deck till we're out of these waters —"

  Without warning the ship bucked sharply, and Tess was thrown back against the wall. She heard Padrig stumble, his foot striking the wooden bed frame with a dull thump.

  "Which leaves no one but me," she finished. "Well, I can do this much for him, at least." Her voice was steadier now.

  "Are you sure you are well enough to tend him, Anglaise?" Anxiety tightened Padrig's voice. "He may grow feverish. He is a big man — in such a state he will be hard to control."

  "I am strong enough to manage one wounded and delirious man, I assure you," Tess snapped, with more confidence than she felt. "I may be blind, but I haven't lost the use of arm and limb. Though I might soon lose them," she added grimly, "if I continue to be tossed about in this fashion."

  "I will leave you then. I am needed at the helm."

  Tess felt a chair drawn up to her leg, and then Padrig pushed her to sit.

  "Le Fur has cleaned him up and set on new sheets. You will find water and fresh linens there, by your right hand." As he spoke, Padrig guided her fingers to a stoneware basin on the table beside the bed. "I'll send someone down to help you as soon as we're farther south and into calmer seas."

  A tense silence fell. She heard Padrig clear his throat sharply. His giant hand caught her slim fingers for a moment. "Watch him we
ll, bihan," he whispered roughly. "For me. For all of us. He is a man headstrong and harsh, unyielding as the sea itself, but he is the finest captain the Liberte has ever known."

  Tess felt a sudden ache in her throat. "I — I will, Padrig," she whispered.

  "God be with you, my captain and friend," the giant Breton said softly, and then he was gone.

  * * * * *

  The hours passed more slowly than Tess could have thought possible. For a long time the Frenchman slept, although his rest was never still. He shifted constantly, muttering, driven by some nameless urgency.

  Tess bathed his sweat-beaded face, speaking quietly. Her words and her touch seemed to soothe him. For herself, she found a certain solace just being with him, wrapped in darkness, rocked wildly in the blackness of night and storm, the wind howling outside the porthole.

  And always she pondered the things that Padrig had said.

  The Liberte's captain, it seemed, commanded the respect, the love even, of his crew. Could such a man be a scoundrel?

  She sighed, her thoughts awhirl. The last twenty-four hours had brought too many surprises. Her world had turned on its end, and now she must struggle to change with it.

  The long hours passed, night shifting into day and then into night again, all unbeknownst to Tess, wrapped in the unyielding shadows of her blindness.

  But she would find the fire again, she told herself. With him.

  Her eyes flickered and then closed. Her head dropped.

  She slept.

  * * * * *

  "Gwellan-karet."

  Tess awoke with a start to discover she was still sitting in the armchair. She frowned, furious at herself for drifting off when she should have been watching over the captain.

  From the bed at her side came a muffled groan. She reached out awkwardly, trying to find him.

  "Gwellan-karet?" It was louder this time, more urgent, a long, ragged cry torn from his dry throat.

  "I'm here, Andre." Tess's fingers curved over his forehead, sweeping back a long comma of thick hair. His beard scraped her fingers, dense and springy, and Tess found herself smiling, thinking what a sight he must look now. Was his hair black or brown? she wondered. And what color were his eyes?