“Aye, well, I’m not surprised. I hit the beldame bloody hard.”
James, who seemed to suffer none of his own qualms about the gender of their prisoner, was twisted around, looking over his shoulder at the Nadine, which was so close now that when they reached the crest of the wave her starboard side loomed above them like a giant black wall. Faces illuminated by the flickering glow of lanterns could be seen on her deck as half a dozen or so men massed at the rail, making ready to bring them up. The schooner’s sails were down, leaving her bare masts to thrust through the darkness like skeletal fingers reaching toward the storm-heavy sky.
“Pull hard to port!” someone yelled. The men complied, and the longboat’s stern swung around.
Braced against the pitching waves, one hand now pressed flat against the woman’s back to keep her secure, Hugh watched as a rope ladder unfurled down the Nadine’s side. The first part of his task was complete: He had the traitor in his possession. In a few minutes they would be safe—from the sea at least—on deck. Then the second part of his task would begin.
Thinking about what that might entail, he set his jaw in a grim expression.
“Come about!” a sailor cried.
The sailors pulled hard at the oars once again, bringing the longboat alongside and parallel to the Nadine. And just in time, too. The storm was coming on fast. The waves were taller now, closer together, frothing white at the tops with mounting anger. Even as Hugh registered that, another powerful swell caught the longboat up, carrying them high and away from their goal as it sprayed its freezing spittle over them.
He grasped a handful of frock—it was fine cloth, expensive—between the woman’s shoulder blades to keep her safe as the longboat slid down from the peak and inconveniently away from the Nadine. She stirred a little, moaning. Again he felt rather than heard the small sound she made. There was a helpless quality to it, and to her as she lay curled now against his bent legs, that made him want to ram his fist through something—preferably Hildebrand’s face.
He was many things, most of them thoroughly dissolute, as he would be the first to admit, but he had never in his life physically harmed a woman.
Now, for his country, he would have to possibly torture and certainly kill this one.
Christ.
Her back arched up against the flat of his hand as she inhaled. That he was touching a feminine form was unmistakable. Flexing his fingers in silent protest, Hugh thought again, grimly, that Hildebrand had made a bad choice: He was not the man for this job.
Although in the end he would do what he had to do, as he always did.
Hildebrand would have known that, too, Hugh reflected bitterly. Damn him.
3
Floating around just on the edges of consciousness, Claire felt the shock of an icy shower pelting her and opened her eyes. They immediately stung. Blinking rapidly, she realized that the reason they stung was because they were awash with salt water, and the salt water came from the sea. The sea was, of course, the bucking, heaving beast upon whose back she now seemed to be riding. Instinct warned her not to reveal that she was once again aware; she curled her fingers into fists to resist the impulse to rub her burning eyes, and continued, discreetly, to blink until the worst of the pain went away. Wet to the skin and so cold that she felt rather like a fish laid out for sale on a slab of ice, she was, she realized, huddled in the bottom of a heaving small boat that was being rowed, in the teeth of foaming black waves and a blowing wind, on a steady course that doggedly kept putting more distance between them and shore.
Soon, when they were far enough out, she would be tossed overboard.
They had caught her.
The thought made her forget all about her physical misery: her stinging eyes, her aching head, her frozen fingers and toes. Her heart raced. Her stomach churned. Her throat went dry. Fear instantly tightened her muscles, sharpened her senses, brought her to hair-trigger alertness where only seconds before she had been struggling with the last remnants of grogginess.
Drown her like a mewling kitten—she could almost hear the cruel nonchalance in the leader’s voice. It was her kidnappers’ plan—the plan they were at that very moment in the process of carrying out. Quickly, convulsively, she moved her hands, her feet. They were not bound. After knocking her out, had they decided not to bother tying her up? Or had they merely forgotten—and if so, would they remember before they threw her overboard? Of course they would. She dared not gamble that they would not. Her life was the stakes in this desperate game, after all.
A hurried, slightly blurry glance around told her that there were six men: four at the oars, two seated in the bottom of the boat trapping her between them, guarding her. Six men whose goal was her murder.
How could she get away?
A hard knot formed in the pit of her stomach as she faced the truth: This time, escape looked all but impossible. Rather than face one oaf, as she had in the farmhouse, she now had to outwit six, with no hefty chamber pot at hand. And instead of a window opening onto the firmness of earth, the only place she had to go if she should manage to break free of her captors was the sea.
On the other hand, however bleak the prospect for success, she had to do something. If she did not, and pretty quickly too, she was going to die.
A whimper crept into her throat. She swallowed it with difficulty before it could make itself heard. Every instinct she possessed urged her to jump to her feet, to fight, to flee. But her instincts were worse than useless under the circumstances, she realized. She resisted them, forcing herself to lie perfectly still while she took stock of the situation.
She could swim, after a fashion. Her monster of a father and his equally debauched friends had, one summer, passed several afternoons of sport in which they had tossed her and her younger sister, Beth, from a sailboat into a lake near their Yorkshire home, betting on which girl would make it to shore first and never mind the fact that both children were terrified and screaming as they were thrown from the deck. She and Beth had survived then against the odds and their own expectations, and now, amazingly, Claire thought that those hellish swimming lessons might stand her in good stead.
Another surreptitious glance around dashed even that faint hope. She could not swim in this—this seething caldron of wind-whipped waves. Her skills were no match for the sea’s savagery.
But she feared that it was swim—or die.
Fighting against the rising terror that threatened to render her immobile, Claire carefully took stock one more time. The boat was long, narrow, and open to the elements, rolling and sliding as it attacked the waves. Crowded closely in that confined space, the men were little more than shadowy shapes against the shiny blackness of the water and the more amorphous darkness of the foggy night. The rumbling sky was nearly as black as the sea; the moon was now completely obscured by clouds. The hiss of the sea was punctuated by the rhythmic sound of dipping oars.
A man’s knuckles pressed uncomfortably between her shoulder blades. Claire frowned over that, considering. Her back was curled against his hard shins; he was, she realized, holding on to a handful of her frock as insurance against losing her prematurely to the heaving sea. She could feel the shape of his fist like a large rock digging into her flesh, its only positive attribute being that it faintly warmed the point of contact. Not that his grip on her was reassuring; not when she thought about it. With terrible clarity, she foresaw that as soon as they reached whatever spot they were making for—presumably somewhere well beyond the breaking waves, so her body would not immediately be carried back to shore—he would use that grip against her. It would serve to prevent her escape while they bound her hand and foot and threw her over the side.
Better to go overboard by herself, unbound, under her own power than to wait for them to bind her and toss her out.
The dreadful realization made her eyes squeeze shut and her heart lurch. Better to drown herself than let them drown her? How so? Dead, she thought with an inward shudder, was dead.
/> She so did not want to die. Not tonight. Not until she was an old, old lady, and then, pray God, peacefully in her bed.
In the interests of survival, she forced herself to open her eyes again, this time just slits. There, directly in her line of vision, were several items tucked beneath one of the seats: a coil of rope, an unlit, battered lantern, and a jug. A large jug with a handle and a cork, made of some sort of light-colored crockery. She could just discern its squat shape through the darkness. Even as her desperate gaze assessed it, the surging puddle of water in the bottom of the boat caught it up, turned it on its side, and swept it toward her. Whatever it had once held—spirits maybe, or water—it was obviously empty now. It floated.
It floated.
In a flash Claire knew what she had to do. She was afraid to move—the men were paying her no attention, and she didn’t want that to change—but the jug bumped against her knee as the boat heeled, and she knew that it would be swept out of reach again as soon as the boat dipped the other way. She knew, too, that the jug represented her best chance—maybe her only chance—for survival.
Sending another quick, fervent prayer skyward, she made a stealthy grab and succeeded in closing her hand around the slippery handle.
“Awake, are you?”
The man with his fist in her back must have either seen or felt her movement, because he bent nearer, leaning over to speak almost in her ear. The warmth of his breath feathered across her cheek. His accent was that of the British upper classes, and it surprised her, given the speech patterns of his cohorts. Involuntarily, before she could debate the wisdom of doing so, she glanced up, registering the glint of his eyes, the darkness of his hair and skin, the intimidating breadth of his shoulders against the backdrop of the peaking waves. Then all coherent thought left her as she realized that she might very well be looking into the face of her murderer.
Stark terror froze her in place. Her breathing stopped. Even sitting cross-legged in the bottom of the boat as he was, he was a large man, she could tell. A large, strong man, muscular and fit. He could kill her himself, with his bare hands, with ease, if he chose to do so—and there were five more like him.
The knot in her stomach twisted tighter. Fighting panic, she willed herself to breathe again and drew in a shaky, quavery draft of salt-and-fish-tainted air.
It was now or never.
Grasping the jug as if it were her only hope of salvation—which, indeed, it was—Claire drew on every ounce of strength and determination she still possessed and surged to her knees. Her gown jerked free of his hold. He looked at her in surprise as his hand fell away. On her knees as she was, with him sitting cross-legged before her, they were practically nose to nose. Their gazes met, locked, for the briefest of moments. He was opening his mouth as if to say something as she swung her improvised weapon at him in a desperate arc. The heavy jug crashed into the side of his face with a sound that was clearly audible over the rushing sea.
“Dammit to bloody hell!”
Clapping a hand to his face, he fell back even as shock waves from the impact shuddered up her arm, nearly making her drop the jug. Hanging on to it for dear life, her pulse racing, she scrambled clumsily for the side.
“Master Hugh!”
The other previously cross-legged man, on his knees now too, snatched a handful of her skirt, pulling her back when she would have dived into the sea. Yanking free, she was undone by the rocking of the boat and toppled against the man she had hit. For a stunned instant Claire felt the hard strength of his body against her back. Then he grabbed her arm, hurting her, and with a strength born of utter desperation she turned on him, beating at him with the jug and screeching like a bedlamite.
“Christ Almighty! Grab her, James!”
“Aye, I’ve got her!”
She was still swinging as the second man snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her off. He felt softer than the first; the spongy resilience of his stomach cushioned her back. In the background the oarsmen shouted, moving so unwarily as they hastened to come to their companions’ aid that they nearly overturned the already wildly pitching boat.
Frantic, Claire jammed her elbow into that spongy stomach. He groaned, his grip loosening. She managed to wrest herself free only to have her wrist grabbed by the first man. Heart thumping, throat so dry that her screams now emerged more as harsh croaks, she slewed around.
“Enough, vixen!”
The words were a snarl. He was breathing heavily, but his hold on her wrist was as unbreakable as a vise. For an instant, as she drew in much-needed air, she stared into eyes that were, in that gray light, as black and pitiless as twin voids. She could see the gleam of his teeth as his lips drew back from them. Her left hand, with his right one wrapped around her wrist, was upraised between them. Her right hand still kept its death-defying grip on the jug. Behind her, the second man was already reaching for her again.
The battle was done.
But no. This battle was for her life, and she would not, could not, be bested while she yet breathed. Terror stoked by the cold breath of looming oblivion gave her a last burst of strength. Quick as a cat she lunged forward, sinking her teeth into that imprisoning hand.
“Eeow!”
He howled, snatching his hand away, and suddenly she was free. Still hanging on to the jug for dear life, she leaped for the side. The boat pitched, fortuitously this time, and through no further effort of her own she was suddenly overboard, tumbling headfirst into the icy depths of the frothing sea.
4
The water was so cold that for an instant after the sea swallowed her it seemed that every system of Claire’s body was suspended. Then her heart gave a great reviving leap. Warm blood began to race through her veins. Her eyes popped open and she could move again. A surge of exhilaration gave her renewed energy. She had done it! She had escaped.
Her joy was, unfortunately, of extremely brief duration. Struggling against a sucking current that seemed determined to drag her down, hampered by the weight of her soaked skirts as they wrapped about her legs, she found herself at the mercy of the sea. Air became an increasingly urgent necessity; she clawed and kicked for the surface. Though her eyes were open, she could see nothing; in the impenetrable darkness, up and down were, horribly, one and the same to her.
But the jug, filled with air, was bent on rising. It was, as she had known it would be, her salvation. Clinging to it with desperate strength, she rose with it. Her head broke the surface, and she was weak with relief. She gulped air like a starving man might food—and then a wave rolled over her and sent her choking and tumbling to the depths again.
Once again the jug sought the surface, taking her along. Then, without warning, her frozen fingers betrayed her: They could not maintain their grip on the slippery surface. One minute her fingers were curled around the handle. The next, the jug shot from her grasp like a greased pig.
Terrified, Claire snatched after it, but it was gone as quick as a blink, disappearing into the swirling darkness above her head. Panic-stricken, floundering, she tried desperately to swim, and her limbs valiantly reconstructed the motions from memory. But she was fighting without substance, and to her despair she realized that her struggles were puny useless things against the might of the sea.
I’m going to die, she thought, still not really grasping the truth of it although now, as if to prepare her, the words formed crystal clear in her mind. Without the buoyancy of the jug to counteract it, the current, like some giant sucking mouth, pulled her down. Her heart pounded. Her lungs began to ache and burn. She needed to breathe, but there was no air. Water was all there was. Water everywhere, surrounding her, in her eyes, her ears, trying to push into her mouth and nose, freezing her, suffocating her . . .
She had to have air. Where was the surface? In that chaotic liquid darkness she became totally disoriented, unable to tell up from down. Not that it mattered. Try though she might, she could not swim in such a sea. Her efforts to defy its force were pitiable. It would do with h
er as it would, chewing her up and spitting her out at its whim. She was as helpless against it as a babe.
The funny thing was that she was not even really afraid any longer, she mused as her frozen limbs grew heavy and clumsy and her struggles grew weak. She was light-headed, woozy. Her still desperately beating heart felt heavy and swollen, as though it might burst at any second. Her lungs throbbed. It was all she could do not to respond to their urgent need by inhaling and having done with it. Inhaling water . . . that was to drown. Vaguely she wondered, Does drowning hurt?
With a fresh burst of terror, Claire realized that she was close to losing consciousness, to succumbing to the cold, the lack of oxygen, the darkness, the despair.
Images of her sisters appeared in her mind’s eye: Gabby and Beth—the one slender, chestnut-haired, pregnant with her first child; the other a plumply pretty redhead, eagerly looking forward to her first Season. They would be grief-stricken if she died. Beth’s debut would have to be postponed; with Gabby indisposed, Claire had undertaken to bring her younger sister out this very spring. Plans to have Beth join her in London in March were already well under way. Now Beth would have to wait another year. And Twindle would grieve. So would Aunt Augusta, in her own gruff fashion. Nick, Gabby’s husband, would grieve too, although the bulk of his concern would rightly focus on Gabby, already in such distress from her pregnancy. David, her own husband, would not grieve. Oh, he would put on a great show of sadness, he and his mother, but in their secret heart of hearts they would not mourn.
The bitter truth of that startled Claire into awareness once more. Rebelling against it, she gave a mighty kick for the surface; her numbed arms flailed. . . .
Irresistible Page 3