Horsman, Jennifer

by Crimson Rapture

  "Bring the prisoner to deck," he ordered and then to young Ensign Gibson, "Warn the passengers that we are being boarded by pirates. All cabin doors should be bolted locked.

  "Aye, aye!"

  The battle had been over before it started. The Defiant would lose to one of the ships, two merely assured the end would be quick. There was nothing to be done, save enduring the humiliation of the audacious act.

  Young Gibson raced along the dark hall, wet from the rain and nearly shaking with fear. He called into each cabin to explain pirates were boarding the Defiant, that the captain ordered all doors bolted and shut.

  Christina gasped and stood in mute panic while the other ladies jumped up at once. A heated debate ensued. Hanna and Elsie wanted to catch a glimpse of the pirates and refused to bolt the door. Scared witless, Katie and Marianna not only wanted to bolt the door but also insisted on securing their trunks against it.

  Captain Forester felt an impotent fury as he watched Justin Phillips reunited with his men on board the Defiant. Like his two ships, the young man had a startlingly bold and commanding presence and seemed unexplainably unaffected by his long days of confinement. Standing in the rain and conferring with his men, Justin Phillips ranked easily among the tallest of men and his muscled frame, clad only in white breeches, a torn canvas vest, and black boots, spoke of unleashed power. The captain watched as Justin swung into action, first leveling orders at his own men, then securing a pistol and a dagger to his belt as he turned and approached.

  Justin stopped in front of the captain and addressed him forthright: "Captain Forester, have you ever sailed into a monsoon?"

  "What's it to you?" came a cold answer.

  "To me nothing; to you, this weathered ship, your crew, and passengers, quite a bit. A monsoon is like no other storm. One must ride full sail into a monsoon, with just enough loose sail for steerage and with sails ready to go up as each rips. You lose masts rather than steerage. And the way you're rigged now," he pointed to the sails, "you won't survive."

  Captain Forester looked up to his lowered sails. "I never heard of such measures. One weathers storms with lowered sails and while you lose steerage—"

  "Not a monsoon," Jacob interrupted at Justin's side. "I got me the color of my hair from the last one Justin and I went through," he said, lifting a wet lock of silver hair. "Over two years ago; four of the most terrifying hours of my life—sixty footers, gale winds that would flatten a mountain, men drowning just from the rain. I saw men crushed from the size and force of freak waves that hit them. It's worse than sailing around the horn in the dead of winter. You've got to steer the ship almost full billow and a sail at a time, 'cause your only hope of seein' daylight is if you blow through it and quickly, and even then we all have but the slimmest of chance."

  Captain Forester looked out to the darkness, growing ever larger on the horizon. He had spent his life at sea and had never heard of such a storm, winds that would flatten a mountain or men drowning in rain. It was impossible, simply impossible.

  "There is another chance," Justin said. "Are you aware your ship has drifted at least a hundred miles north off course?" he asked, and immediately saw that the information came as a surprise to the captain. "There is a small chain of islands," he explained, "fifty miles into the monsoon's course. With any luck the Defiant can keep some semblance of bearing and reach them." He then motioned to Jacob. "Jacob?"

  From his canvas cape Jacob withdrew a folded paper wrapped protectively. "The bearings to the island," he said as he handed it to the captain.

  Captain Forester's surprise, as well as his doubt, were written plainly on his face. It was incredulous; too incredulous to be believed. Why would men known for their ruthlessness and deviousness, for spreading unmitigated terror wherever they traveled, endeavor to save his ship? Why would Justin Phillips give a damn?

  "Rumors are for idle old women." Justin read the captain's thoughts. "Do not be misled. Neither I nor any of my men negate the value of human life. Take my advice—"

  "It will be a cold day in hell before I take your advice, Mister Phillips!"

  Justin, knowing lives would be lost from the captain's inexperience, wasted several more minutes trying to convince the stubborn man. Unfortunately to no avail. Frustrated, Justin finally ordered two of his men to explain the situation to the passengers. Anyone, even the crew, who wanted to board the Athena was to be permitted. He then demanded to know where Christina's cabin was located.

  "What do you want with Miss Marks?"

  "To see her alive."

  "You lay a finger on her or any other passenger, it will be over my dead body!"

  Justin lost all patience with the man and leveled a cocked pistol at his head. "That could be easily arranged."

  Christina heard Justin's voice in the hall and, unable to bare the suspense, she quickly scurried between the bunks and wall. Her position afforded a view but kept her hidden. A man swung open the door and stepped quickly inside.

  Christina stopped breathing.

  He was the most devastating and frightening-looking man she had ever witnessed, every bit the pirate of her imagination. So tall and half naked like a savage, his masculinely lean frame radiated a shocking strength and violence, a violence pronounced by his weapons. His dark hair and beard accented sharp aristocratic features and as his fine dark blue eyes looked from one face to the next, his lips curved with an amused smile. He could not be Justin, she knew, but even the fact that he must be one of his men shocked her.

  Justin refused to believe any of these women was Christina, for there would be no mistaking that hair. "Christina?" he asked.

  Christina gasped and pressed herself against the wall, closing her eyes at once. It was his voice! No, it just couldn't be! This man unconsciously imitated Justin's voice, probably in admiration of his captain...

  Justin's gaze flew to her hiding place and he chuckled, knowing it was Christina even before his eyes fell on her. She would be hiding at such a moment.

  He stepped quickly in front of her and then for the longest moment, he just stared, every bit as surprised as Christina.

  "I had heard others say you were lovely—but this?" He ran his hand casually over her face and down the long length of that hair as his gaze fell over her slender figure in ready appreciation of the ever-so-feminine proportions. No, he hadn't expected such startlingly beauty.

  Christina shivered and could not make sense of all she felt, except that shading everything was fear. He stepped closer, and she still could not look at him, feeling his strength tower over her. His hand lifted her face to him and her fear intensified twofold.

  He just stared, stared at the delicately boned face, the high cheekbones flushed with a soft blush, and her lips! Lips pouting and sensual, the color of dark red wine and trembling slightly with uncertainty.

  "Look at me," he said, wanting to see the eyes hidden beneath the long black lashes. She glanced up quickly but retreated instantly, allowing him but a glimpse of her eyes.

  "Perhaps my fondness has clouded my judgment, though I don't think so. All I can say, Christina, is had I any idea, our ah, friendship," he smiled, "would have taken a markedly different turn from the start."

  Elsie and Hanna giggled nervously but she barely heard. She had no idea there was a name for how his gaze claimed her but she felt possessed and without will, as though he had locked invisible chains around her wrists to force her bound and helpless. She wanted to cry in protest, run from him this man, a man she could never call Justin.

  The ship took a sudden lurch on its side and she gasped as his arms came around her, pulling her against his hard frame. She froze mutely, startled, then scared by the sweeping warmth his body pressed on her. He seemed not to notice.

  "Listen carefully, ladies," he addressed the others. "We are headed into a storm; not just any storm but a monsoon. We run a slim chance of surviving. And to make matters worse, your captain seems bent on destruction. I guarantee that if you stay aboard this ship, y
ou'll be joining that great silent majority, so I am offering passage aboard my ship. While I will guarantee none of you safety from my crew," he smiled, "I can assure each of you better odds. The choice is yours."

  Elsie and Hanna exchanged frightened, excited glances. "What do we have to lose?" Elsie whispered to Hanna.

  "My lady!" Hanna replied.

  "Our ladies or our lives!" Elsie retorted.

  Christina watched in stunned disbelief as Hanna grabbed Elsie's hand and both women jumped from the bunks to join Justin. He smiled, turned to Marianna and Katie.

  Jacob stepped in the doorway. "Last call—" He stopped, took one long look at Christina held intimately in Justin's arms, and two silver brows lifted. "Is that your Christina now? My but the lass is a sight for sea-weary eyes!" He grinned in appreciation, while bowing formally in address. "Miss Marks, 'tis a true pleasure. We're all indebted to you for caring for Justin."

  Justin chuckled when Christina looked down and flushed. "She's very shy, Jacob. She hardly speaks to others," he said, brushing his hand affectionately through her hair again.

  "Shyness be fine in a woman, so long as it lifts beneath the covers." He smiled and in the same breath he turned to the others. "Which of you ladies are going to save your souls and come with us?"

  "These two." Justin pointed and then looked to Marianna and Katie. "How about it?"

  The two women had the least to lose. Katie bit her lip uncertainly and looked nervously at her friend. Marianna looked to Justin and he only nodded, convincing the women not with words but with his very manner. Marianna nodded to Katie, and suddenly all the women turned to packing.

  "Just what's necessary," Jacob warned, "and hurry it up now."

  "Where's your trunk, Christina?" Justin asked. Christina shook her head but dared not glance up. "I'm... I'm not going."

  "What?" he asked, staring down at her and suddenly aware of what was running through her head. "Jacob." He smiled slowly, amused. "I do believe my looks have frightened her. Just what were you expecting, sweetheart? A slight dandy of a gentleman in tailored clothes bearing polite social pretenses, a bouquet of flowers for his lady?"

  "Ah, Christy." Jacob too chuckled. "You're the first lady I've seen who found disfavor with Justin's looks, though personally I quite agree with your sentiments. I don't care what the ladies say, I've never seen anythin' handsome in him."

  Christina wished the sea would in fact swallow her up, so great was her embarrassment. A pained embarrassment that could not hide the real pain of a shattered illusion. All she knew was she refused to go with him, that she would rather die than to do so.

  Justin ignored her fear and ordered the ladies' possessions placed in Christina's trunk, silencing her protest by placing a hand gently over her lips.

  "I'll be damned if I'm going to let that idiot captain list you among the dead," he said, but added honestly, "though truthfully, I'd take you with me without the threat of a storm."

  She looked up in panic, unable to believe that. But Jacob led the ladies out and two men came in for the trunk. "No," she said to the two men, "that's mine! All my things—"

  Justin merely nodded to his men and the trunk was carried away.

  "I don't want to go with you!"

  "This refusal might bother me had I given you a choice." She gasped and tried to pull away but he stopped her. "No, sweetheart, you have no choice; you're coming with me." And he lifted her effortlessly into his arms and carried her through the door.

  "No... No! Please, please, Justin, put me down!"

  "Not a chance," he replied and when she cried out and struggled in earnest, he merely chuckled and tossed her over his shoulder. He brought her quickly to the deck. Rain fell in torrents from a darkening sky and within a minute they were soaked. The wind was fierce too and the sea already churned beneath huge fifteen-foot waves. Four of Justin's men held Captain Forester at gunpoint, forcing the man's officers and crew to watch passively as Justin made his retreat.

  With one hand on the ladder rope and one arm keeping Christina securely to him, Justin quickly shimmied down the side of the Defiant, and Christina screamed, clinging tightly to his neck. With inexplicable grace and ease, Justin dropped into the lifeboat. Her feet never touched the bottom, even as he set her on a seat.

  Each of Justin's four men in turn dropped into the lifeboat and then they were off. The lifeboat, as large as a fair-sized house, made slow progress between the two ships, climbing over ten-foot swells, then sliding down. Waves occasionally crested and collapsed inside the boat.

  Jacob moved quickly to secure what he called a floater over her, a stuffed jacket. He hurriedly tied it around her waist and chest and he then pointed behind her. She turned to confront what could not be imagined.

  Darkness devoured half the sky, black against gray. It looked like the opening to a dragon's mouth, sheets of lightning like a lashing tongue and thunder its fury. The monsoon.

  Ten men rowed. The women were placed protectively between them. Justin stood at the stern shouting orders to his men, his tall frame seeming to defy gravity and rules of balance, making him look once colossal and heroic.

  Captain Forester had already forgotten Justin.

  His voice was a weak cry in the angry wind as he stood on the quarterdeck immersed in readying the Defiant for the fast-approaching storm. The captain would never permit shots to be fired at the boat, considering the female hostages there, but one man no longer considered orders or obedience or chivalry.

  Carrington slid his broken leg to the side, seeking a balance nearly impossible between the motion of the ship, the gale winds, rain, and his injury. And only the sheer force of his will could find it.

  He just wanted revenge. After all the monsoon spelled death as surely as starvation and thirst. What did it matter? An expert marksman, he raised his pistol and waited.

  A shot, but a small whiz against the tremendous roar of wind and rain and sea, grazed Justin's arm. Moving with a flash of speed, he ducked down, bringing Christina beneath him while shouting the order to take cover.

  "Someone's a hell of a shot!" Jacob shouted, raising his pistol and searching the distant deck for the culprit.

  "But not quite good enough," Justin replied just as he spotted the man, leveled and aimed his pistol.

  Another shot hit one of Justin's men and Katie screamed as the man in front of her collapsed, blood washing over his face. Seeing Justin kneeling in front of her about to kill another human being and compelled by something she didn't understand, Christina cried out, "Nooo!" and jerked his arm just as his shot fired.

  Justin's shot, a shot that would have proved him every bit as good a marksman as the man firing from the Defiant, ricocheted from the side of the ship just as lightning cracked furiously and a huge wave collapsed inside the boat, nearly capsizing it. Nature warned all that the real battle was to be fought with her.

  Justin's gaze found his man, Roberts, lying dead against the side of the boat. He turned to Christina and in a single sweep of motion, he lifted her up. He held her hard against his body and forced her terrified gaze to confront the gruesome sight. "Look at him! You might have been responsible for that!"

  Shutting her eyes tight, she cried in protest, trying desperately to twist from mercilessly strong arms but Justin held her still, nodded to Jacob, and the dead man was quickly thrown over the side. Then he turned her to face him and said what she could not believe.

  "I'm willing to tolerate a lot more from you than I would from any other women, but I will never tolerate interference in my actions. I'll warn you once; the next time you elicit my anger the consequences will not be pleasant. Do you understand?"

  And her nightmare began. She managed to nod through a silent scream. Justin set her back in the seat. She started trembling with fear. A fear born not of the storm or its promise of doom but of him. The real Justin Phillips frightened her more than any storm in heaven or on earth could.

  Strong arms and thick ropes hoisted the lifeboat up th
e side of the great ship and Justin instantly became an essential actor in the bustle of activity. Everything not built into the ship had to be secured to something that was. Jacob and two other men led the women beneath deck and into a small cabin. Four bunks, a tiny closet and porthole, that was all.

  Each woman in turn submitted to being tied tightly to a bunk's pole. Christina sat on the floor with the pole to her back and her legs stretched in front of her, while Jacob tied a rope around her waist and chest, leaving her arms free. As he worked to secure each woman in turn, he explained that their small chance of surviving rested in a slim hope that the masts and sails withstood an unimaginable force of gale winds just long enough to see the ship through the center of the storm's eye. "The danger lies in the waves. You'll feel the ship rock on its side real soon now and this here room will turn upside down. Don't be afraid now, for we're only in trouble if she don't right herself, 'cause then the next wave will crush her under and, madonna," he shook his head, "if that happens just say your prayers, ladies, 'cause we all goin' ta hell for bein' such sinners—present company excluded, of course.

  "The trick is keepin' the ship on keel and knowin' when she goin' under before she does, then at least the lifeboats might be some hope, if only a slim one. I swear, though, ladies," he surprised them with a sudden grin as he stood up, "if there's any chance of seein' the next day, it's with Justin. Young as he is, he's got the damnedest intuition and the sharpest senses I've ever watched. He'll know when our time's up.

  Jacob left and for a long while no one had a word to say. They suffered silently as the monsoon's forces gathered and grew stronger by the minute. The wind howled savagely, unceasingly, and the ship rocked violently. Eyes widened and faces paled as the room slowly darkened; the black outside penetrated their small sanctuary and destroyed any feeling of safety.

  Katie seemed to be getting sicker. She shook visibly as though with chills and this despite the warm air of the storm. Her pale face was drawn, a ghastly pallor covered her skin, and Christina was becoming increasingly worried for her.