by Vanda Vadas
She waved trembling hands back and forth in front of her eyes. Slender fingers came into focus. She looked down and slid her hands over her thighs and knees, proof she hadn’t imagined the accuracy of sight, movement, and sensation.
She experienced a sudden bout of giddiness. Either returning vision played havoc with her sense of balance or …
Her astonished joy abated, overshadowed by another stark realisation; a thought so disconcerting Eloise could scarce believe it true.
The Justice was on the move.
Water whooshed and slapped along the ship’s hull. A lively wind rattled ropes against the masts, and the creak of timbers had never sounded so loud.
Heavy footfalls echoed beyond the cabin, as did the sound of shouts and exuberant laughter. Objects inside the cabin rattled and vibrated, and the air felt damp on her skin.
She stood, eyes closed, arms outstretched, attuned to the vessel’s unmistakeable roll. Did nausea strike because of the ship’s motion, or because with every passing second it could possibly be spiriting her away from England? She dismissed the latter and sat back on the bed. Zach wouldn’t take her abduction to such extremes. He simply tested a new sail or some such thing, having let the ship sit for too long.
She snatched up the blanket, wrapped it around her nakedness and choked on an excited sob when the cabin presented itself in clear, defined contours. Images became sharper. Objects tangible. Her heart thundered in her chest. She took a moment to process the revelation of being whole again, to comprehend it all.
She had her life back. Independence. No more relying on others to do for her the simplest of tasks. The gift of moving freely and at will had blessedly returned. She would see and hold Julian’s yet-to-be born child, ride her mare, farewell spring and welcome summer.
Explore the Justice.
Her gaze roamed, eager to absorb everything about her. While neither large nor opulent, the captain’s quarters housed adequate comfort with a desk and chair, a modest-sized chest of drawers and a cabinet. Behind its glass and grid doors stood bottles, tankards and plates.
A smaller table with two plush red velvet chairs served as a place to sit and eat. They, like other furniture, had been bolted down to prevent movement during a voyage.
Her gaze fell to the floor where, in a crumpled heap, her torn nightdress lay. A reminder of Zach having rescued her from a terror any woman would fear.
His discarded shirt hung over the back of a chair close to a row of windows. She shrugged off the blanket and stood to test her sea legs. Mobility in a world of darkness had required her hands to be her eyes. Now, sudden sight forced her to reassess distance and dimension. The furniture suddenly wavered in her line of vision. This, and the ship’s movement, made retrieving and dressing in Zach’s shirt a challenge. His masculine scent empowered and invigorated her when she hugged the linen close to her skin.
Outside the windows, water rushed away in the ship’s wake. Beyond that, the vast expanse of a dark sapphire ocean met pale blue sky. No land in sight, not even a distant shoreline. How long had they been at sea? Panic-stricken, her chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe. Her fragile emotions seesawed between elation at the miracle of her sight returning, and despair over where the Justice journeyed.
She turned and cut an unsteady path towards the desk. Sea charts and maps lay strewn across it with a compass, dividers and a backstaff. An open wooden case drew her interest. In it was a pair of handsome matching flintlock pistols. Each had a brass-covered butt doubling as a club. She picked one up, surprised how light and portable it weighed in her hand, not like the heavier duelling pistols her father had owned.
She acknowledged her renewed appreciation of Julian’s tutelage in the handling of firearms. Both pistols were freshly loaded with powder and ball. If only one had been within reach at the time of last night’s assault on her. She couldn’t bear to think what punishment Zach had dealt his crewman.
It came as no surprise to Eloise that a ship’s captain would keep pistols loaded and at the ready in the event of a mutiny or an enemy attack. Staying one step ahead of, and eluding, one’s foe at sea would require skill, forethought and strategy. A timely reminder of her own self-preservation.
Escape.
How soon before they returned to shore? On the one hand, she would remain Zach’s captive if only to share with him again what they had last night. And yet she could not suppress the need to find her way back to her family and Blakely House.
Her trepidation intensified with the realisation she would soon see Zach unmasked. Jealousy cut a thin line across her heart with the memory of his parting words to Lily. He’d mentioned a proposal. Surely he didn’t intend to marry the maid?
It shouldn’t matter. And yet it did. Vying for a man’s attention had never been an issue. No man had ever turned her head, or her heart.
Except Zach.
‘Eloise?’
She gasped at the sound of his voice at her back.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
Why the discord in his tone? Her throat tightened, suddenly dry. This long-awaited moment had finally arrived and now she felt ill-equipped to deal with it.
‘I see you found my shirt.’
She ached to whip around and share with him the wonder of her sight having returned. At the same time she wanted to castigate him for pulling anchor and for the fear and uncertainty it caused her.
‘Eloise?’
Resigned to the inevitable, she kept her gaze fixed on the floorboards and slowly turned. Beneath lowered lashes, she glimpsed familiar black knee-high boots.
Her gaze jumped higher and came to rest on that part of his anatomy so distinctly male. His breeches clearly moulded lean hips and every inch in between. Her body shivered with the memory of how he’d pleasured her.
Above his buckled waist, her gaze lingered on a shirtless chest. Bronzed. Toned. The glistening combination of sweat and sea spray defined contoured muscles in his shoulders and arms. She remembered the way his body hair had tickled her breasts.
Her gaze swept up and over his face: masculine, regal. Unruly ebony hair fell shoulder-length. There was something fierce and primal about his appearance. Butterflies did battle inside her stomach.
Zach took her breath away. He looked every inch the man she’d cradled between her legs last night.
Eloise dared to look him in the eye, into the intensity of his appraising dark stare. Sudden heat stole over her. She swayed. When he stepped forth, at the ready to catch her, she warned him off with raised, open-palmed hands.
She saw confusion in his narrowed eyes. She knew his mind was ticking over, piecing together the miracle of what had occurred in his absence. Suddenly, his brows drew apart and lifted to show wide-eyed surprise.
‘You can see!’
She would have laughed with joy if not for her mistrust of him. All she could muster was a flat, ‘Yes.’
His wide smile showed relief. He moved forwards. Eloise took a step back. ‘Where is this ship bound?’
Zach’s arms dropped by his side. His smile dissolved into a look of grim resignation. ‘The Caribbean.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. She hadn’t heard right.
‘Yes, Eloise. We sail for the Caribbean.’
He may as well have ripped her lungs from her chest. She fought for breath. ‘Turn the ship around.’
‘No.’
‘You must!’
His implacable glare defied her. Eloise lunged forwards and threw the force of her fists against his chest. ‘After last night. After we … I thought –’
‘You thought wrong,’ he said flatly.
She pushed away from him, stung by his cold indifference towards her. Where was the man who’d made love to her with a gentle, caring and considerate heart?
He spun around and walked to the bed.
Eloise gasped in horror. Hideous puckered scars crisscrossed the breadth of his back and down to his waist. She couldn’t begin to imagine how
or why he’d deserved them. How did she miss the disfigured skin beneath her touch last night? Immediately she recalled how he’d pinned her hands to the bed.
He turned to face her, looking every bit the enigmatic pirate. He stripped the blanket off the bed and gestured to the stain of her virginal blood. ‘You gave yourself to the wrong man, Eloise. A man you know nothing about.’
‘I knew enough to trust him with my life and body.’
‘And little else.’
His remark astounded her. ‘What could possibly be more vital than that?’
He laughed, cynical and loud. ‘You trusted a man responsible for your loss of sight.’
‘The accident was my fault, not yours.’
His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. ‘A man who seized you from your sheltered, privileged life and offered no explanation for his actions.’
‘Whatever your reasons, I sense you have my best interests at heart.’
‘If I did, I wouldn’t have stolen your innocence –’
‘It was offered. Not stolen.’
‘– or be carting you off to my island.’
‘With good reason, I’m sure. Has our intimacy suddenly compelled you to confess the truth?’
Zach’s lips pressed together. A nerve twitched along his jaw and he stood braced like a man challenged. He stepped slowly towards her and stopped a heartbeat away. Tall, imposing, suddenly intimidating. ‘Yes. It’s time you learned the truth. You trust a man who …’
His shoulders lifted and fell on a sigh. ‘You trusted a man who is wanted for the murder of your parents.’
She choked, recoiled against the desk, clinging to its edge for support.
The confession cleaved her heart in two. She felt her world collapse. Her stomach convulsed. She tamped down the urge to retch. Her nemesis, the dark, swirled in her vision. For a moment she couldn’t think clearly. The rapid turn of events since last night’s attack compounded her confusion.
And now this?
‘No,’ she whispered, summoning what little strength she had. ‘I don’t believe you.’ He couldn’t possibly be the man he claimed to be. That man died in the fire. Deservedly so. Had Zach played the role of accomplice?
He swung away from her.
Through her shock, she watched him stride back to the bed and rip the soiled sheet clean off its base. He scrunched it into a ball and tossed it like waste into a corner of the cabin.
Zach’s piratical image mocked her. His alarming revelation had obliterated last night’s ecstasy and this morning’s miracle. How could her estimation of him have been so wrong? On what, indeed, had she founded her trust in him?
She’d drawn pleasure from his every kiss and caress, from the euphoria of joining her body with his. It sickened her to think she’d coupled with a man who was connected to her parents’ deaths. Her hands shook, hiding her face while she shed tears of shame.
She turned from him and slumped over the desk.
The pistols! They lay in the open box beneath her body.
Her eyes snapped open. She picked herself up off the desk and glimpsed Zach over her shoulder. His expression masked all emotion in the same way he’d used the leather mask to conceal his identity the first night they’d met. Odd she should think that significant. A fleeting thought nonetheless.
Resolute, Eloise stood tall, gripped the weapons in each hand and spun around to face him. Through tear-blurred vision, by no means a handicap for her skilled marksmanship, she aimed one pistol at Zach.
And fired.
Chapter Fifteen
The lead ball grazed his left shoulder and smashed into the timber wall with a thunderous clap. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the cabin air. Zach’s face remained emotionless. He’d barely flinched when the shot drew blood. He stood as if deserving of the fire that must now be burning him.
Eloise ignored the churning in her stomach. She had just deliberately shot a man. There was more to his revelation than his words implied. She could not accept that he was so much less than she believed him to be. His actions had proved otherwise too many times for her to be wrong.
He’d said he was wanted for murder. He hadn’t confessed to committing the crime.
She let go of the spent pistol. It fell to the floorboards with a thud. In a quick exchange from left hand to right, she held the second loaded pistol at the ready.
‘You either lie, or you’ve yet to expand on such a weighty admission. I want the truth, or this time, the shot will find its fatal mark.’ Eloise hardly recognised her own voice. ‘If I have, as you imply, fallen slave to my feelings and bedded the murderer of my parents, then I’ll honour their deaths by killing you. Let your loyal crew dispose of me as they see fit.’
He looked horrified at her exacting words. Was he in fear now because he believed she was prepared to kill him, or because he feared that his men, before killing her, would treat her with the same intent as her attacker?
Seth burst through the cabin door with others at his back. ‘We heard –’
‘Get out!’ Zach bellowed.
Confused, their gazes darted between the pistol-wielding captive and their wounded captain.
Zach glared. ‘All of you! Out!’
The cabin door slammed shut.
‘Eloise, I –’
‘The truth, Captain!’
His gaze flicked to the loaded pistol.
‘Where you stand. Speak to me.’
He levelled his gaze with hers. ‘My name is Miles Zachary Fenton. First born son of the late Duke of Arlington.’
Her jaw slackened. The violent tremble of her hand almost caused her to let go of the pistol. ‘Impossible! Miles died in the fire with my parents. Three charred bodies were pulled from the wreckage.’
Zach shook his head and said, ‘Somebody else. A servant or stableman.’
‘No. Everyone was accounted for that day. If you are Miles Fenton then you’re a coward who fled England to escape your fate.’
He raised a brow. ‘Is that what you believe me to be? A coward?’
Eloise steadied her aim at his heart.
‘I see.’ He sounded indignant, as if it were she who’d betrayed him. ‘For what it’s worth, I stand before you a man innocent of the charges laid against me.’
‘You’ll need to do better than that.’ Eloise continued to play the part of disbeliever. ‘If not you, then …’ Her mind rallied to make sense of the situation. ‘I’m part of the puzzle, aren’t I? That’s why you’ve abducted me.’
His expression was unreadable.
‘That night on the balcony …’ She frowned, piecing the events together. ‘You said you were looking for someone.’
His silence drew out her anger. ‘Who was it? You said you came looking for a thief, and that looks can be deceiving. What did that person take that belonged to you?’
‘The same that he stole from you, and more.’
‘Enough with the riddles. Who is he? Who are you protecting?’
‘Protecting?’ Zach threw his head back and laughed.
‘Stop!’ Fresh tears stung her eyes. She took a step closer, the pistol steady in her hands. ‘Spare me the humiliation. If I’ve been a gullible fool for the past ten years then now is the time to set me straight. If not you, then who should hang for the murder of my mother and father, and for the near death of my brother?’
The long pause stretched her nerves tight.
‘My half-brother. Gareth.’
Shocked, Eloise dropped the pistol. ‘Gareth?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘Not Gareth. You lie!’
‘Most definitely not.’ His mouth tightened.
‘He’s not a coward. He risked his life to save Julian’s!’
‘A genuine and heroic feat, I admit. Nonetheless, it was he who started the fire.’
Eloise stumbled and clawed her way around the desk, collapsing into the chair. Her shoulders slumped. Her hands, now idle, found a place in
her lap. She would not yet renounce all she’d been led to believe. ‘Why?’
Zach snatched up the bed sheet from the floor and pressed it to his bloodied shoulder. ‘My mother died soon after giving birth to me. Before my second birthday, my father remarried and sired Gareth. But then, you already know this.’
She nodded.
‘What others didn’t know is that behind closed doors my stepmother reviled and ignored me.’
Eloise cringed at the contempt in his tone.
‘Spare me your pity, Eloise. I had the love of my father. I never understood my stepmother’s dislike of me, yet I learned to live with it. Her reasons soon became apparent.’
Eloise vacated the chair in favour of standing by the window. ‘Continue.’
‘She and Gareth had it fixed in their heads that Father’s love was not equally shared, that I was the favoured child. Their jealousy festered. In front of others, Gareth behaved like the perfect son and brother. When he and I were alone he demonstrated the mind and character of a twisted soul. No matter the cost, he was determined to be the heir apparent. To my face, he made no secret of wanting to rob me of the title.’ Zach’s lips twisted into a sour smile. ‘How foolish I was not to credit him with the courage to see it through.’
He tore a strip of cloth from the sheet, wrapped it several times around his upper arm and shoulder and tied it off with his teeth and hands. He opened the liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. ‘What do you remember about the evening before the fire?’
The memories remained as clear as day. ‘I sat in the shadows at the top of the staircase. I heard raised voices, though I couldn’t determine what was being said between my father, Julian and you.’
‘I’ll tell you.’ He downed the amber liquid in one gulp. ‘Gareth despised the camaraderie between your brother and me. Worse still, he resented your father treating me like a son. Gareth conspired against me.’
‘How?’
Zach set the glass down. He retrieved the pistols, carefully replaced them in the box and secured the lid. ‘Gareth tricked your father and brother into believing I lusted after your mother, and that there was immoral motive in my frequent visits to Blakely House. Gareth said he believed it his duty to inform your father of my secret and unnatural obsession. That I craved your mother’s company, not theirs.’