Muscular, burning, an arm lashed out to curl about her waist. She was snatched off balance against a hard body and lifted, kicking viciously, into the air. Fury was trapped like her breath in her lungs. She twisted, clawing at the steely forearm that held her.
The sharp edge of the berth caught her hip and she gasped in pain, flinging herself away from the weight that sought to pin her to the mattress. Caught between unyielding wood and resistless force, she had no hope of escaping. The bulkhead confined movement. Her flailing arms were captured in a steel manacle grip and wrenched above her head. The man’s body bore relentlessly down, crushing movement.
Catherine clenched her teeth in grim resistance, setting subterfuge against strength, feigning surrender. He was still, his mouth hovering, mistrustful, above her. Their breathing was harsh in the close cabin. Catherine was aware, with a sharp amaze, of the clean male and fresh air smell of the body grinding into her and the lack of bristling beard.
What difference — a part of her mind screamed. In frustrated virulence she heaved upward and sank her teeth into his lip.
She expected recoil, a fraction of release she might use to advantage. Instead his mouth came down on hers, wet and acid with blood, savagely bruising. He shifted his weight across her thighs, forcing her knees to lock straight. The edge of his forearm pressed hurtfully into her breast, the weight behind it denying her air.
Bitter tears rose scalding to her eyes. For a woman, submission, whether to fate, to nature, or to a man, seemed constant. What did it matter that some men refrained from imposing their will with brutal blows? The results were the same.
Parting her lips in the desperate effort to breathe set her captor free. Minutely, he eased his constricting embrace.
Grief, shattering, final, welled blackly in her mind. The wet tracks of tears coursed into her loosened hair. The despair in her mind clung to the memory of the one man who had ever saved her from anything. “Rafe,” she cried out softly, shaking her head in hopeless negation. “Oh, Rafe—”
A soft curse rustled in the darkness. Abruptly, she was free.
Catherine made a small, convulsive movement. She wanted to run, to surge up and out through the half-open door, yet some quality in the strained silence held her rigid.
The moment for going, if it ever existed, was lost. Looming large in the small cabin, the man pushed the panel shut and shot the bolt, locking them in together in the dark.
The rasp of flint informed her of his actions. Blue-white sparks arched onto the tinder, flared, caught. His hands enameled by the small blue and yellow flame, the man dipped a candle into the box to catch the wick, then held it straight, a steady burning star of light. The tinderbox was closed with care, the candle, in its holder, placed upon the table. He turned.
Catherine, despairing, stared into the black and joyless eyes of her husband.
Rafael Sebastian Navarro, the Black Panther, the pirate sailing as El Capitan — The Captain. A plantation owner who had his own keelboat with a stepped-in mast. The cabin was undoubtedly the same. There could not be two with a mast thrusting upward at one end and cupboards athwart. Could there?
“So you knew,” he said, his voice like hammered silver.
“No.” Let him make of that what he would; accept it or not, as he pleased.
“Then why?”
“Why — speak your name?” Catherine lowered her eyes, letting her lashes filter her distress.
His nod was stiff.
“Why did you go to the trouble of bringing me here?” she asked, perversely.
A grim smile lit his face. “I doubt our reasons were the same.”
“Do you? I expect you are right,” she agreed with a fine show of carelessness. “But then do reasons matter?”
“They matter.” He moved nearer, a curious opaqueness rising in his eyes.
Leaner than she remembered, his features were also harder, more refined, as though they had been sheeted with bronze.
“They matter,” he repeated, dropping to one knee beside her, “but not so much as this.”
His fingers slipped beneath her neck, forcing their way through her hair, scattering the pins, lifting the soft curling strands to let them fall shining over the edge of the berth to the floor. Once more beneath her head, his fingers gripped, drawing her upward to meet the sudden, searing demand of his lips.
Deep inside her was an empty stillness. She tensed for a fresh assault, her flesh prickling with nerves and the apprehension of pain. And then his kiss changed, deepening to a searching wonder of remembered delight. Her lips parted, accepting the sweetness, curving with a gentle passion of giving to meet his need.
His hand, questing, burned upon her swelling breast. She lifted her arm to his muscled shoulder, granting him the freedom of her body. Before the gesture was complete, he took it. Thrusting his fingers through a rent in the much-washed softness of her chemise, he ripped it open from neckline to hem. His touch grew rougher, feeling the curves and hollows that shaped her femininity with the sureness of a blind man in the dark. His lips pressed liquid fire along the curve of her jaw and into the tenderness of her neck, moving in agonizing progression toward the deep rose nipples of her breasts.
Her need grew, a demanding thing, so that she moved under his hands, a near inaudible sound catching in her throat. A moment of chill desertion, and Rafe was with her, drawing her under him, fitting himself to her in perfect and urgent unity. A bursting flood of savage joy caught them, rushing them together toward a cataract of pleasure holding within it the keen edge of pain. Catherine wanted to take him completely within herself, to dissolve her being with his and be lost, safe, in him. But she could not and the realization brought silent, quicksilver tears to her eyes.
~ ~ ~
Catherine woke to daylight slanting through the hairline cracks in the shutter at the small window. She felt confined, with muscles aching from cramp, but there was a wonderful warmth at her back. With a tremor of shock she remembered, acknowledging also the faint soreness between her thighs. She might well be tender. She and the man whose arm fell so heavily across her waist had awakened in the night with a sudden and ravenous hunger for each other. Coming from the depth of sleep, their consciousness had remained at some primordial level so they grappled, straining together as shamelessly, endlessly, as any creature of the swamp with his mate. Underneath the sheet and rough blanket that covered them, she grew hot with embarrassment thinking of it.
She would have liked to move, but Rafe was a light sleeper. The last thing she wished was to wake him. Her humiliation was complete enough without having to face him as yet.
After her passionate response to him the night before, how was she to comport herself? She had no wish to be one of those pitiful objects, a woman in love with a husband who cares nothing for her. Or, she amended, nothing beyond her function in his bed. He had shown plainly what was most important. That he had missed her, missed having the use of her body, she could not doubt, but he had spoken no word of love.
Was that so important compared to his obvious need? It was. Without love his use of her was degrading. She had no more value than a chance met whore or a vase du nécessité.
I am a curious phenomenon, she thought, a puritanical idealist emerging from a whorehouse.
And then she realized he had awakened. His hand began a stealthy climb to the flat surface of her abdomen, brushing higher with persistent sensitivity.
Catherine wrenched over with a suddenness that caught him unprepared. He rallied, blinking sleep from his eyes, raising to his elbow. Quirking an eyebrow, he leaned to kiss her, his hand seeking once more the full warmth it had lost.
Catherine laid the palm of her hand against the flat planes of his chest. The grim turn of her mind led her to a grimmer subject with which to protect herself from his ardor. “Solange?” she said, her amber eyes wide. “Tell me what passed with her.”
Color receding, he released her. “Madness,” he answered bitingly.
“Sh
e did not die?”
“If you mean did life escape her body, then no, but her mind and soul have flown. She sits doddering, prinking, and primping, forever planning to elope with her lover. The nuns are very patient with her.”
“She — has entered a convent?”
“She was pushed in, and the door slammed shut behind her.”
“I — I’m sorry,” Catherine said, staring at the ceiling.
“That helps, of course.”
She ignored the sardonic inflection. “Pauline, I suppose.”
“Pauline.” He paused. “She saved her. And you need not worry. She told us of your heroic behavior in trying to come to Solange’s aid, and of the dastardly way your gentleman friend turned on you. I absolve you of guilt — except that, but for you, Marcus Fitzgerald would never have been near Alhambra.”
“And but for you neither would I,” Catherine reminded him.
“There is that. I do not absolve myself.”
She looked at him sharply but could find no hint of his feelings in his cold and withdrawn expression. “You came after me,” she said, almost a question.
“Oh yes. I might have been with Solange sooner, but for that abortive chase.”
“I am right, aren’t I? This is the boat I was brought to then?”
“It is. I had in mind to teach you a sharp lesson and return you to my bosom. Instead, I came near to killing you. I thought I had. Do you know,” he asked, his voice soft, “that at Alhambra I caused to be raised a tomb in memory of my beloved wife?”
A cold band closed around Catherine’s heart. She levered herself up, and dragging the blanket around her, got to her feet, putting distance between her and the expressionless man in the berth. At the small, bolted down table she swung around, her face set.
“How? It doesn’t seem possible that you could have arrived so close behind us.”
“You have Fanny to thank for that mercy. As soon as she left you that day, she came to find me. You were gone by the time I returned to Alhambra, but the boat with my men onboard was enroute there from Cypress Bend above. I rode along the river, joined it and began the trip downriver. Fanny believed you were running away with Marcus. My mood was not benevolent The slowest boat makes better time along that stretch than a carriage. Mine was not slow.”
“And was it luck that led you to our stopping place?”
“Hardly. My men knew about how far the river road was passable. From that point you would have to change to a boat. A sharp watch was kept. No one could have missed the Trepagnier landau.”
“No,” she agreed.
“I could have stopped it there, at once. But you had struck at my pride and Marcus at my honor. I was of a mind to slash someone to ribbons. I took the room next door to the one you were in and began to lay my trap. What I overheard through the thin walls convinced me that you, at least, had no idea other than escaping from me. By the time I assimilated this fact, you were in dire trouble. I was alarmed — but, I regret to say, unforgiving. I did not go to you, I sent a messenger to decoy Marcus into my vengeful presence, a measure that should have served the same purpose. I then dispatched Dan to see you safe to the boat while my quarry and I repaired to the innyard to try our steel once again.”
“I wish you had horsewhipped him.”
“Odd, but I had the idea you did not approve of that. In any case, my method was more deadly.”
Drawing out a chair with much show of attention, Catherine sat down. “You did not kill him. They told me he was seen in New Orleans, harmed but healthy.”
“He owes his life to the fact that you chose the moment of the coup de grâce to heave yourself into the river.”
There was a moment of silence.
“If you are wondering why, I objected to becoming the berthmate of a man who was referred to in my hearing only as “The Captain.’“
“If you had heard my name would you have gone to my boat?”
Catherine hesitated, then said honestly, “At that point, yes, if you had asked it.”
“You regretted leaving then?”
Despite the softness of his voice, that question came too close. She smiled in bitter ridicule. “I won’t deny it. I have discovered a woman without a husband is in no enviable position.”
A silence followed. The voices of the men keeping the boat on its course penetrated faintly. There was the smell of a hot coal brazier and brewing coffee.
“Is that all you learned from your experiences?”
“I have also been taught something of the tenaciousness of husbands,” she admitted, lifting her eyes to his. “How did you find me?”
“Your mother, of course.”
“My mother?” Not until this moment had she realized how deeply her mother’s rejection of her plea had gone. Her relief was a gauge.
“She sent your letter to me immediately, urging me to go after you. By return messenger she told you I was coming. Tell me, if what you say is true, and you have been reconciled to being my wife, what happened between your river bath and your arrival in Natchez to make you decide you could not bear with me after all?”
It was a moment before she understood. “Do you think I left the Martin house to avoid you?”
“You were not there.”
“No, but I never received an answer to my letter. I was led to believe there would be none.”
“And so you left. Aren’t you going to tell me why, my innocent seductress?”
Catherine stared at his mocking smile with mistrust. “No,” she said baldly.
“Let me tell you then.”
Tight-lipped, she threw her hair back behind her shoulders. “Do,” she invited.
“Wesley Martin, your host, demanded your favors and you pruned him with a sharp knife,” he said. His eyes glittering, a smile hovering about his mouth, he watched as shock rippled over her features.
“How did you know?”
“I persuaded him to tell me — no, do not interrupt. At first I accepted Helene Martin’s word that you had left, suddenly, after hearing from your mother. Then you did not, after a sufficient length of time, appear in New Orleans — wasted time, but I did think you had a dislike for my company. In my talk with Helene she had mentioned the old woman and her grandson who had pulled you from the river. It seemed possible that you had returned to them. River boatmen, by and large, are cooperative with their own kind. Inquiries at the dock in New Orleans produced the name and location of the pair. Unfortunately, they had not seen you. The young man, however, reinforced a general feeling of mine that Wesley Martin was not a particularly trustworthy individual. I returned to Natchez two nights ago and secured an interview with him without the presence of his charming wife.” Staring at his fingers, flexing them contemplatively, Rafe went on. “At first he was reluctant to discuss you, but I was able to help him remember the circumstances surrounding your departure from his house, and also your current address. He even grew loquacious enough to confide to me his arrangement with Mistress Betsy Harrelson to deliver you, drugged, into his hands. I decided to — redirect — the program.”
Catherine gave him a tremulous smile. “I am grateful,” she told him. “I will even admit, if you like, that I prefer your arrangement. But — why?”
Swinging out of the berth, he was beside her in a stride, drawing her to her feet, pushing the blanket to the floor without nonsense.
“Have you forgotten what I told you?” he asked, his voice rough at her ear. “I will never let you go — never.”
22
The wind blew fair, the river ran strong, and their passage began to take the aspect of a race. What they were racing toward, Catherine did not know, but, watching her husband scan the great triangular sail above them while he took his turn at the rudder, she could sense the tension that drove him. With his hair whipping in the chill wind and his eyes narrowed in concentration, he seemed remote, self-sufficient. Attuned to his craft, the water and sky, buttressed by the camaraderie of his men, what need had he of her?
The comradeship was not imagined. Early that first morning, while she was still below donning a gown and shawl which, from the smell, must have hung in the cupboard many a damp and mildewed month, she had heard a boatman call: “Easier to steer this morning, ain’t it, Cap’n?”
“You had trouble last night?” came the query.
“Oh, aye, turrible trouble, sirrah.”
Something must have warned Rafe, for he said only, “All right, out with it, you old sea dog.”
“Seems there was a bit of a list to port, and a mighty rocking up and down and up and down. Could hardly keep a true course. I had a mind to go have a look-see in the cargo box, but long about daybreak it finally quit!”
There were shouts of laughter, followed by a splash. Emerging on deck, Catherine found the boatmen lining the gunwale, jeering at their bearded fellow trailing behind the boat on the end of a knotted rope. Choking with swallowed water and glee, it was all he could do to hold on. Rafe steered on, unperturbed.
In Catherine’s presence, however, the men showed her an almost comical deference. Their voices disappeared to no more than a mutter behind their ferocious beards. The majority never addressed her directly, and, when speaking to Rafe while she was at his side, looked at the deck, the sky, the sail, but never at her. Of them all she found she liked best the young man with the limp whom Rafe had called Dan. He was cook for the crew, though he held the offices also of purchasing agent and records keeper. On this trip it was he who served Rafe and Catherine their meals. If Rafe had let him, he would have acted as valet in Ali’s absence. His loyalty to her husband was fanatic. Rafe had saved him from the pirate crew, of which he was a member, when they had wanted to throw him overboard as useless baggage after he caught part of a load of grapeshot in his leg. According to Dan, the correct name for their activities at that time was not piracy but smuggling, an old and honorable calling along the waterways of the gulf coast.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 79