Drum looked at Stuart and examined him more attentively. ‘This ship your brother was on, what was it called?’
‘The Evening Star—although you will have plundered and sunk so many ships since then you maybe don’t recall the name.’
Drum’s doubtful glance went from Stuart to Cassandra and back to Stuart. He sensed an injustice here somewhere—one that had blackened Nat’s name more than it was already. ‘Do you take me for a simpleton, or do you think I’ve lost my memory?’ he growled, moving closer to Stuart and fixing him with a hard stare. ‘I remember the vessel—became detached from a convoy. I was with Nat that day on the Dolphin. We were operating with another ship captained by a man named Jacob Yeats—an altogether different character from Nat, who cut such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a more frightful fury from Hell. It is clear your accusations are not borne out by the facts, Marston.’
A look of indescribable disgust twisted Stuart’s face. ‘If you are about to tell me that Wylde played no part in the attack, then save your breath. There were witnesses. Some of those on board managed to survive in the water until they were picked up by the convoy, which arrived too late to help the stricken ship.’
‘Having stripped the Evening Star of some its cargo, Nat abandoned the vessel and left the scene—thinking Yeats would do the same. The mist was heavy, as I recall—the two ships became separated. As far as I can remember, the Evening Star was still seaworthy when we left her, and no harm was done to those on board—that was not Nat’s way of doing things. He attacked, looted and then he vanished, only punishing those who resisted. He was not notoriously cruel. It was not until later that we learned Yeats had stayed and blown a hole in the ship’s hull.’
‘And I am supposed to believe this?’
Drum shrugged. ‘Believe what you like. It is the truth.’
‘And Yeats?’
‘Dead—killed when he launched an attack on a Spanish merchant vessel a year back.’
Stuart remained unmoved by Drum’s revelation. ‘Try to absolve Wylde all you like, O’Leary, but it changes nothing. Nathaniel Wylde was a villain, callous to the feelings of humanity, who got what he deserved.’
‘It changes nothing where you are concerned either, Marston.’ Drum’s eyes shifted to his crew. They were watching him with fearsome expectancy, brandishing their knives. ‘Look at them. If they are to be denied your blood, there is no telling what they will do.’
Having listened to Drum, what he had told them about Nat had reinstated him just a little in Cassandra’s estimation. However, it did not take away the bitterness from her heart, nor it didn’t lessen the danger facing Stuart, and that was what was important at that moment. Her laugh was one of mockery edged with scorn as she swept her gaze nonchalantly over the villainous rabble. She was alarmed to see the crew of the Sea Hawk closing in around her, their faces dark and contorted with malevolence, but she did not flinch. She stood straight and erect, as if carved from stone, her gaze settling coldly on Drum once more.
‘Why, what is this? Are you not master of your own ship?’ she taunted, challenging boldly, her small fists plunked into the small of her waist. ‘If you are to be dictated to by your crew, then you are not the Drum O’Leary I remember.’
Some members of the Dolphin’s crew edged closer, their nearness threatening. The hostility on board seemed to escalate to frighteningly tangible proportions, but in frozen, mute rebellion Cassandra ignored them and continued to fix her gaze on their captain, flinging back her head, her eyes gleaming defiance, until Drum capitulated. She looked so like Nat. He might be dead, but he lived on in his daughter. She had the same indomitable fighting spirit that had possessed him.
Triumph thwarted, Drum sighed deeply. ‘What has happened, Cassandra? We confront each other like enemies.’
‘It is of your making. If you kill my husband, I will never forgive you. Never. You have only to say the word. The decision is yours entirely.’
Her look remained challenging and hard and she had the satisfaction of seeing a softening enter Drum’s eyes and his shoulders droop a little in subjugation. A feeling of relief and something like triumph stirred deep inside her. Perhaps when he realised what her intention was if he agreed to do as she asked—that she was condemning herself irrevocably and for all eternity to a life without the man she loved—he would be swayed completely.
‘I have something to ask of you.’
Wary, Drum’s eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
‘I want you to take me with you when you sail from here. But you must understand that I cannot do so with my husband’s blood on your hands.’ From the corner of her eye she saw Stuart start forward and heard him shout with rage, ‘Cassandra, for the love of God, think what you’re doing,’ but the sound of her thundering heart drowned out anything else he said. Brutal hands forcibly restrained him. She felt his helplessness, his fury. It draped over her like a death shroud, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
Looking at her in astonishment, Drum could not begin to imagine the self-sacrifice that had gone into her request. His eyes shone and his hideous smile widened. ‘As my enemy or my friend? I’d rather it be the latter, but—whatever.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll be glad to have Nat’s daughter on board again. ’Twill be a little like the old days, eh?’
‘Never that,’ Cassandra replied coldly. ‘If I go with you, it will be because I am left with no alternative. Will you grant my request? Stuart will not be harmed?’
Trying not to look at the ugly faces of his crew, for he knew the situation was extremely sensitive and explosive, Drum nodded.
‘And the crew? Does your leniency extend to them also?’
‘They will be kept under guard until we have left the ship.’
Aware that they were about to be cheated of their cruel entertainment, the pirates surged forward like a storm-tossed sea, the sun flashing on the steel blades of their raised weapons. The moment was ugly and one of extreme tension, but with a swift gesture of his hand and in sole command once more, Drum ordered them to stop.
‘I have made my decision. We will take as much cargo as can be stashed on to our ships—along with her guns and anything else that takes your eye. Because of my past association with this woman and her father, Marston and his crew shall not be harmed. Is that understood?’
Reluctantly the men drew back, taking consolation in the spoils to be had in the holds of this heavily laden merchantman. Immediately they began swarming all over the ship like ants on an ant heap.
Having struggled free of his captor, Stuart moved closer to Drum, only to find his arms seized once more, and though he struggled violently, his face contorted with rage and sheer physical determination, he was locked in an embrace of hell. ‘I’ll kill you if you lay a hand on my wife, O’Leary. By God I swear it.’
Drum motioned Cassandra forward, smiling smugly into the rage-filled eyes of the man he had been cheated of killing. ‘You have what you want—your ship and your crew. Now I will take what I want. Your wife.’
‘You can go to hell,’ Stuart retorted. ‘She’s going nowhere with you. You’ll have to kill me first.’
Drum shrugged. ‘Don’t tempt me.’ Pulling Cassandra away, out of earshot of her seething husband, he looked at her quizzically. ‘Do you not submit to your husband with wifely obedience and consider your place to be by his side?’
Cassandra looked back at Stuart through a blur of tears. She could almost feel the anger seeping out of every pore of his body. ‘I can think of nowhere I would rather be, but little did I know when I left London that I would turn my life into an irretrievable disaster. Unfortunately I was seen on the deck of the Dolphin when she sailed down the Thames, and as a consequence I have a price on my head to equal yours. I have no illusions,’ she said, a trace of sadness touching her lovely eyes. ‘If I return with Stuart to London, like my father before me, there is every possibility that I will hang. So you see, I am left with little choice.’
‘And
what about the bond that attaches you to this man? If he is alive you will never be free of him. To finish him now would—’
‘No,’ she cut in fiercely, already feeling the wrench of her separation from Stuart like a knife piercing her heart. ‘Apart or together, I remain his wife. Nothing will ever change that.’
Stuart was suffering all the torments of hell for, like the surviving members of his crew, he was helpless as he watched the vicious rabble from the Dolphin and her cohorts tearing his ship apart, penetrating every deck and cavity of the massive vessel, carrying off anything they could lay their thieving hands on.
Weariness lay upon him like a weight, pressing intolerably upon his heart and soul. As he watched O’Leary, he considered rushing at him and keeling him overboard, but the brute with his cutlass levelled at his chest, and the sheer number of the pirates, told him the dice were heavily weighted against him succeeding. But he was not so mindless that he did not realise that the sole hope of preservation of every life on board the Sea Hawk depended on his wife. No one could accuse her of lacking courage.
But she could not mean it when she said she would go with O’Leary. The mere thought of being without her, of not being able to look upon her lovely face, was like a physical, unendurable pain. Followed by O’Leary, she came back to him.
‘What you intend is madness, Cassandra. You will not set one foot on that ship,’ Stuart said, his voice low and trembling with fury. He stood towering over her, his whole body taut. ‘You cannot go with this man. I absolutely forbid it.’
Cassandra raised her face imploringly to her husband’s, and then she looked at Drum. ‘Leave us together for a few moments.’
Reluctantly Drum moved away, and with a movement of his head indicated that the pirate holding the cutlass to Stuart’s chest was to do the same.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Stuart,’ Cassandra said when they were alone. ‘I’ve made my decision. Please don’t make it any harder for me. At least you will be safe now—you will live, you and your crew, which matters more to me that anything else.’
Blind with rage, Stuart reached out and seized her arms, gripping them hard and shaking her to try to instil some sense into her stubborn, foolish head. ‘You little fool. I would rather have my life disposed of than for you to go with O’Leary and his murdering band. Death would be preferable to being connected with such a bunch of vile miscreants. For God’s sake, Cassandra, think about what you’re doing. If you leave now, you’re condemning yourself to a life of hell.’
A spasm of pain contorted Cassandra’s lovely face, but her voice was soft and steady and inflexible. ‘I’m condemned already, Stuart. Every man on board this ship knows who I am. If I were to return to England with you, it is inevitable that one of them will inform the authorities to claim the reward.’
‘Aye,’ he growled, ‘and I swear they shall not live to boast of it.’
‘Nevertheless I could not bear it. I really have no alternative. I have wrestled hard with my decision, Stuart—it is a decision I have not made lightly, and I believe I have chosen wisely. My love for you I do not doubt—but because of who I am, and the shame your association with me will bring to you and your entire family, I must go for both our sakes.’
Her face was filled with such utter conviction that Stuart became afraid that he was about to lose her forever. His grip on her arms tightened. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this. By running away you will be making matters worse. If you return to London with me, you can be sure that I shall do everything possible to make the Admiralty see that the only crime you are guilty of—if it is a crime—is one of association. I am a man of position, and my good relations with some of those at the Admiralty will count. An opportunity may occur, and if it should you will be there to take advantage of it.’
‘I’m not altogether sure of that,’ Cassandra said with a sad little flicker of a smile. There came the temptation so powerful as to be almost irresistible to give in, to cast herself into Stuart’s arms and stay there, without further thought. She needed him so much, his warmth, his strength, but she must not yield.
‘My life is at stake—the things I am accused of too serious to be set aside. Moreover, I am wholly convinced that the Admiralty has acknowledged my involvement with the stealing of the Dolphin and the disappearance of Nat’s body, and wants to teach me a lesson. The worst I have ever done in my life was to sail on a pirate ship. Apart from that, I know I have done nothing wrong but regardless of those who speak in my defence, in the eyes of the Admiralty I am guilty.’
Stuart realised with a terrible, sick despair that she could not be persuaded. The realisation of failure invaded his brain and body, almost robbing him of strength, so that his hands relaxed their grip and fell to his sides. She stood before him, slender and lovely, looking at him with sympathy and understanding, and a great sadness in her tear-washed eyes.
‘I love you, Stuart, and I shall die loving you. I could not change that even if I wanted to. It has become an integral part of me and I cannot begin to explain or analyse it.’ She searched his eyes with eager tenderness for some sign that would tell her he felt the same. Her throat swelled with pain. ‘I would accept anything life had to throw at me, misery, suffering and even death, if just once you would tell me you felt something—that you do care for me just a little.’
Unable to resist the appeal in her voice, in her eyes, which were brimming with tears, Stuart seized her roughly by the shoulders and pulled her towards him, his face, only a few inches from her own, contorted with a mixture of rage and desire.
‘I do care for you—more than I have ever cared for any other woman in my life. Night after night on board this ship I thought I would go crazy with wanting you, knowing you were close. If I didn’t feel anything for you, I would not have these feelings. But I fought the urge to go to you, hoping that with time my desire would lessen—that I would become stronger—but it was just the opposite. Each day I would look upon your face. You were there. You never left me, not for a moment, your presence and your beauty tormenting me—haunting me.’
Confounded by his revelation, Cassandra felt a warmth begin to spread throughout her body and she shook her head in incredulity, her eyes wide open and soft. ‘Why—Stuart! I—I never dreamt—’
‘How could you?’ he said fiercely. ‘I cannot explain what it is that binds me to you. It goes deeper than our marriage vows. It is more than a combination of your smiles and glances and feminine gestures that fires my blood and torments me so I believe I shall go mad with wanting you.’
Her eyes bright with wonder, Cassandra stared up at him, hardly daring to believe his words. Surely if he could speak like this, with so much feeling and passion, then he must love her a little.
‘But when I remember my brother,’ Stuart went on, ‘all the fiends from hell rise up to torment me, to mock me, for making the daughter of one of the perpetrators of his death and countless others my wife—for, whatever the truth of what happened that day, Wylde played a major part in bringing it about and cannot be exonerated.’
‘I know, and for what it’s worth I cannot blame you.’
‘Don’t you see that I haven’t the right to love you?’ Stuart said, his dark eyes blazing with anger and frustration at not being able to alter the hopeless state of affairs that existed between them. ‘But nor do I want to be without you. The thought is intolerable to me—and yet I cannot bear to look upon your face without remembering who you are. The scars are still too raw. I do care about you, Cassandra, deeply, and if I were in a position to do so I would do everything within my power to stop you going with that villain.’
Cassandra was deeply moved by his confession, which made their parting harder for her to bear. ‘You are right. The barriers that separate us are formidable and I cannot see how they can ever be overcome.’ Lifting her hand, she looked at her wedding ring and removed it slowly, holding it between her finger and thumb. Raising it to her lips, she gently kissed the bright jewel and handed it to him.
‘Keep this for me, will you? It’s bound to catch the eye of one the pirates if I keep it with me.’ She smiled sadly, bravely. ‘They would steal the teeth out of your head if they could.’
‘And these are the people you are to live with.’ Reluctantly Stuart took the ring.
‘For a time.’
‘And then where will you go? Where will you live?’
‘I have a mind to live on the Cape Verde Islands. There are people there that I got to know when Drum went to see his family. That was where I first met Rosa.’
‘Please don’t do this,’ Stuart said in one last desperate attempt to make her change her mind. ‘Whatever happens when you return to England cannot be worse than living among this bunch of murdering savages. Come back with me and we will face it together.’
Cassandra smiled her gratitude, for he would never know how much his offer meant to her. ‘Bless you, Stuart, but no. My mind is made up. But—there is one thing you can do before we part,’ she said, looking at him in a passion of love and pain.
One of Stuart’s dark brows rose in question. ‘And what is that?’
‘Will—will you kiss me goodbye?’
Stuart did not need to be asked twice. Immediately he gathered her into his arms. ‘I will kiss you gladly—but not goodbye. Never that—and if you should need me I will come to you. Only death will prevent me from doing so.’
And then his lips found hers, soft and yielding beneath his own as she returned his kiss. He crushed her to him in the wild hope that physical contact might accomplish what words had failed to do and break her resistance. When her arms came up to encircle his neck, for a time he thought he had won. She clung to him in desperation as time and the world around them ceased to exist. They became one entity, encapsulated in a timeless circle of enchantment that swayed in the light breeze blowing off the sea.
It was Cassandra who broke the spell. Placing her hands between them, she gently pushed him away, looking into his face with deep concentration, as if for the last time, trying to imprint its image on her memory forever. Stuart did not try to draw her back. He realised he had no choice but to accept the inevitable, and he steeled himself to let her go.
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