Across Captive Seas

by Michele du Barry

  So this was how he would pay her back for slapping him and refusing to eat dinner with him. The children danced excitedly around the table while Ezra quickly covered the abominations. She saw everything through a veil of red rage and before anyone could stop her was running for the door.

  “My lady,” Ezra called, “don’t do anything you will regret later!”

  “If I don’t do this then I will regret it!” Holding up her skirts she took the stairs two at a time brushing past several startled slaves. With a heaving chest and half tumbled hair she flung open the dining room doors.

  The men looked up at her sudden entrance from beneath a blaze of candles set in a crystal chandelier. Laporte stood up and made a slight mocking bow and the others rose too.

  “Thank you for joining us, chérie. I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed. I told you she would appear before the soup, gentlemen, didn’t I?”

  Struck speechless Angela picked up the heavy crystal decanter on the snowy damask-covered table and threw it at Laporte. He sidestepped the heavy object and it missed him by only a fraction of an inch and crashed into the large mirror behind him shattering it into a thousand pieces. Laughing at the spectacle the other pirates watched in amusement as Laporte rounded the table and grabbed Angela by her long dark hair twisting one arm up behind her. Pushing her into a chair he turned to his guests.

  “Didn’t I promise you an exciting and unusual evening? Angela meets all the prerequisites for a savage lady.” Sitting down and turning to her Laporte whispered, “You ought to be thankful I didn’t have you served for dinner on a silver platter à la John the Baptist!”

  “Let me go this instant! I refuse to remain in your odious company. You stink worse than that rotten fish you sent up!”

  “Careful, Duchess, you are here now and will stay—unless you would rather entertain my guests upstairs.” Angela flinched at his crude remark noting that the barbarous side of him was never far from the surface. He was used to getting his way and he had succeeded in getting her downstairs and into the dining room. If she left now she didn’t know what would occur. Could he possibly make true his threat?

  “I mean what I say!” Laporte released her but clamped a hand on her knee squeezing viciously. “I wish you to have dinner with me—nothing more, nothing less. Furthermore you will dine with me every night hereafter or you will receive the same delicacies in your room morning, noon, and night! Did your children enjoy their dinner? Well, as soon as we begin here I will have a proper meal sent to them.”

  “You are a monster!”

  “Hardly,” Laporte parried. “You will find that I am much more than that!”

  Removing his hand from Angela’s knee Laporte signaled for dinner to begin. She sat in a daze of anger and humiliation through several courses touching nothing and staring at the table. The other pirates talked, ate and drank with gusto but she didn’t notice.

  “You don’t eat,” Laporte observed.

  “How can I with your ugly face before me? You make me sick to my stomach!”

  “But you are not looking at me. For the past half hour you have been staring at your lap.”

  “Leave me alone! I am here. That’s all you requested—my presence—and you have that.”

  Slowly her hearing became attuned to the conversation and she was shocked at what they were discussing. They had an intimate knowledge of sailing routes and plans of most of the large ships plying the Caribbean waters. She heard several ships she knew mentioned and they cold-bloodedly assessed their chances for taking them. They spoke of tonnage, cannons, cargo, and the times they were expected in a particular place. Laporte must have a network of spys in his employ gathering and dispensing the vital news that kept his empire thriving.

  The men present were captains of their own ships and in return for the information they cut Laporte in on a percentage of their take. He got a nice tidy slice of the profits even though he wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Surely he was the king of the pirates using his brains and letting others use the brawn and take the risks. Why then had he himself taken the Dark Lady? While Angela pondered that point she let her secretive gaze wander over the ten men present. They were all quiet and ordinary looking at first glance except for one, a youth directly across from her who didn’t seem to be participating in the talk.

  He was beautiful. That was the only word to describe his shining angelic looks. His hair was the color of gilt, and his eyes, a startling violet, narrowed suddenly staring back at Angela. There was a petulant look to his full sensual mouth as he studied her. No man had ever looked at her like that before—as if she was an opponent. The only times she had received such poisonous glances was from other women, rivals.

  The business out of the way the talk became more general and the boy across the table engaged Laporte in conversation. Angela touched her lips to a glass of wine only wetting her mouth and watched as the pirate captains settled down to serious drinking. Never in her life had she seen such quantities of liquor consumed so fast. At the rate they were going they would all soon be reeling.

  A red-bearded man next to her smiled bleary-eyed at Angela and fumbled beneath the table finding her thigh and stroking it. Surreptitiously she pushed him away but he leaned toward her with a leer on his face determined to continue with his fumbling. No one else noticed what was happening as a tussle started under the tablecloth. Finally exasperated and with a dangerous glint in her aqua eyes Angela deliberately picked up the sharp fruit knife beside her plate and stabbed the pirate’s other hand pinning it to the table.

  With a howl of pain and outrage he sprang up knocking over his chair, diverting the attention of everyone present. Laporte took one look and burst out laughing, the harsh sound only enraging the man more. One of the other captains pulled the knife from his friend’s hand and wrapped it in a napkin.

  “Just a trifle, Smith,” he told him with an amused corner-of-the-eye look at Angela. “You’ve had worse before. That’ll teach you to fool with a lady!”

  The pirates were all entertained by the incident but regarded Angela with a new respect. She heard murmurs of shrew, bitch, and vixen, and not one of them could take their eyes from her. What a woman!

  Getting to her feet Angela said, “Dinner is over and I have been thoroughly insulted, so with your permission Monsieur Pirate,” she addressed Laporte with contempt, “I will retire for the night.”

  “Bien entendu,” he replied standing and dismissing her with his curt bow. “You have provided us with a most diverting evening!”

  So that was all he had been after, an entertaining evening! She had been summoned to perform like a circus act and had provided an adequate show. With a sneer at Laporte Angela moved regally toward the door but the red-bearded pirate grabbed her arm as she passed him and raised his uninjured hand to slap her.

  “Touch her, Smith, and you are a dead man!” Laporte’s voice was crisp in the silence of the room. But the man had not heard in his anger or was too drunk to care.

  The blow exploded against the whole side of Angela’s face, the force catapulting her out of his grasp and onto the floor. She lay stunned, unmoving, a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth. When she opened her eyes they focused on Smith’s body on the floor not far from her and across the room stood Laporte with a smoking pistol in his hand.

  “If anyone else even dares look askance at the duchess again, the same thing will happen.” Laporte put the pistol on the table and went to Angela helping her to her feet. With unexpected concern and gentleness he wiped the blood from her face. Supporting her with an arm about her waist he escorted the half-fainting woman across the room.

  At the door she looked up confused at the gilt-haired youth blocking their way. His violet eyes shot venomous hate at her and she wondered what she had done to deserve that.

  “Gaston,” he complained pettishly, “let one of the servants take her upstairs.”

  With a withering look Laporte put him in his place. “You try my patien
ce, Jules. You are not indispensable.”

  As they left the dining room Angela heard Jules calling after them, his voice several tones higher than before, “I won’t put up with it, Gaston. Get rid of her!”

  Angela joined Laporte every evening for dinner during which she ate nothing. Sometimes there were guests and sometimes just the three of them: Jules, Laporte, and Angela. She had made a concession, it was true but it went no further than an hour or two spent in the dining room beneath Jules’s malevolent looks and Laporte’s secretive gaze. After that she was free and her days were her own insofar as she could be free confined against her will on a tiny dot of sand lost in the ocean.

  Ezra had at last found out where they were by gleaning information from the pirates and the unexpected discovery of a chart that was left on Laporte’s desk in the library. It was just as he had surmised, they were on one of the thousands of cays making up the archipelago of the Bahamas. They could remain hidden away here for a hundred years and no one would ever find them. His shell collection grew to mammoth proportions as he unceasingly searched for a way of escape. If they didn’t get away soon he felt as if he would turn into the idiot he was playing. Having to act like that continually was becoming tiresome.

  Leaving the children in the garden under Molly’s loyal care Angela went into the house intent on finding a book to relieve the boredom. If only she could ride, that could occupy her for hours but the thought of asking a favor of Laporte went against the grain. He did have a stable with several fine horses. She had seen him and Jules riding out several times.

  Laporte had introduced Jules as his friend and protégé but there was something just beneath the surface of their relationship that didn’t ring true. She had thought that maybe Jules was his illegitimate son but threw that idea aside. If he was he would have acknowledged him as such; being the virtual ruler of the cay, no one would gainsay him or look down on the fact. After all most of the men who lived there were the lowest scum and of dubious backgrounds themselves. So Angela watched and listened puzzled by the eighteen-year-old’s obvious jealousy of any attention directed at her by Laporte.

  Pushing open the already slightly open library door Angela turned to stone, only her wide shocked eyes moving in her suddenly pale face. So that was their relationship! What a fool she had been not to have realized it sooner.

  They sat on the brown silk loveseat too wrapped up in each other to even notice Angela staring at the disgusting sight. Laporte’s arm was around Jules’s broad shoulders and the younger man stroked his hand over Laporte’s bared chest. He had unbuttoned his shirt to the waist and bent to caress the flat hard nipple with his flicking tongue. Laporte’s eyes closed and his hand clutched in the thick golden hair brushing his chin. When their lips met in a long demanding kiss Angela must have made a stunned sound because they both looked up straight at her as she turned and ran from the loathsome scene.

  Blindly she found her way to the veranda and was sick all over the tiled floor. Spasms still shook her as she straightened up to find they had followed her. Laporte’s bared chest heaved with malicious laughter and Jules joined in thoroughly amused by her reaction.

  “You revolting perverts!” she screamed at them beside herself with abhorrence at their unusual behavior.

  She had been plunged into a den of iniquity, a squalid indecent hellhole of sin. Never in her life had Angela been confronted with such debased people. Once she had called Scott a pervert but she hadn’t known the meaning of the word till now. Even the voodoo ceremony paled to insignificance next to this.

  “Look at her, Jules,” laughed Laporte doubling over with mirth. “She doesn’t blink an eyelash at shooting a man, stabbed Smith without a second thought, would have brained me with pleasure, and walked through bodies strewn about the deck of her ship like a queen strolling through a rose garden—yet at a little sign of affection between us she pukes up her guts!” He looked straight at her and said with a sneer, “Chacun à son gout!"

  Angela fled from them, their laughter resounding through the halls and up the stairs after her. With shaking fingers she locked the door and sank down on the bed with her hands over her ears. She still felt nauseous, still almost couldn’t believe the degenerate tableau she had witnessed.

  Everything fell into place, all the unrelated pieces joining to make up an obscene picture. So that was why Laporte had never made any advances toward her—he was a homosexual! Through her disgust at having to reside in the same house with them came a dawning realization that now she need not fear any violation by Laporte. That worry had always been in the back of her mind especially since he killed Smith for daring to lay a hand on her.

  That night she didn’t go down to dinner and wondered if Laporte would retaliate in the same way he had before. But dinner was served punctually in her room and everyone ate but her. She was still sick over this afternoon and the retelling of it to Ezra did nothing to settle her stomach. So while they ate she wandered downstairs and into the courtyard.

  Sitting on the edge of the fountain she trailed her fingers in the lukewarm water turned golden in the setting sun. The surface rippled where her hand passed and where the dolphins spouted water from their perpetually open bronze mouths. A cooling breeze stirred the skirt of her simple linen dress, the thin, almost sheer, white material decorated with cut work around the hem, neckline, and short sleeves. She looked like an innocent young girl lost in a daydream, only her sad aqua eyes evidence of the things she had been through.

  “You look like a white rose,” commented Laporte. “But so melancholy. Come, come, is it that bad?”

  “Leave me alone, Laporte,” Angela told him, her wet hand clenching into a fist beneath the water. If she had a weapon handy she would have killed him.

  “But you didn’t come to dinner. I thought you might be sick.”

  “I am sick—sick of the whole situation! You are the vilest creature on earth; yes, not even a man but a slimy creature! Do you think I could stand to be in your company? Did you ever wonder why I could not eat in your presence? Even before I found out, you revolted me but now, now, I can’t even find words to describe the monster you are!”

  The smile had faded from his face leaving it shadowed and grim. “So you hate me, loath me. Good! It will make your surrender that much more enjoyable.”

  “What are you talking about?” Angela stood up and moved warily around the fountain placing it between them. He started after her but she was quicker, easily keeping away from him.

  “So you will make me chase you? I think not. You will come to me of your own free will. I have persuasive ways to get what I want.”

  “And what do you want?” she screamed frightened by what was implied.

  “Why, you, chérie—naked in my bed—my mistress, my whore!”

  “But, but—” Surely she couldn’t be hearing him right, not after this afternoon and Jules.

  He smiled again, the familiar grimace contorting his face. “So I lulled you into a false sense of security. Did you think I only liked men? They are far less complicated than you women and better companions. But I like it both ways and am willing to make an exception in your case.”

  “You are mad!” she cried running for the door into the house. “You are a loathsome reptile and I hate you! Never, never would I let you make love to me!” Her heart failed as she tried to open the door and found he had locked it. Swiftly lifting her skirts in both hands she fled to the other door giving Laporte an enticing glimpse of her shapely legs. Tugging frantically at that door she found that it too had been locked and Laporte was bearing down on her determinedly.

  “Damn you. If you lay a finger on me I will scream the house down around your ears. . .”

  “Ma foi! That will hardly matter since no one will dare interfere. But don’t worry, I have no intention of raping you here in the courtyard. In fact I have no intention of raping you at all. You are the one that will make love to me—willingly,” he repeated watching her lips curl in disgust. “Oh
, yes, you will beg me to master you and then proclaim to the world that you are my whore!”

  It was gray dusk now but Angela could see his cold eyes as hard as diamonds glittering at her from the other side of the splashing jets of water. She was weak with fear at the unspeakable things he was saying. She would rather die than let him touch her. “Never, never, never!”

  “Yes! You will come to my room tonight at midnight and consummate our relationship. If you don’t—well—let me just say you will regret it. Remember what happened before when you refused me? This will be much worse....”

  “Stop threatening me! I won’t have it! You will never get away with whatever your scheme is. I would kill you or myself first!”

  “What, and leave your precious children alone and at the mercy of a pervert?” Laporte said pulling a large key from his pocket. “We shall see.” Unlocking the door he held it open and waited for her to pass through but she hesitated.

  “Move away from the door,” Angela told him not trusting him at all.

  “No. If you want to leave do so now. I already said I would not attack you and I keep my promises. You should know that by now.”

  Hesitantly she moved toward the beckoning doorway ready to defend herself with tooth and nail but he made no move toward her. As she passed quickly by him Laporte bowed sharply and murmured, “Midnight!” She fled up the stairs as if the furies were after her and burst into her room frightening Molly.

  “Are you all right?” questioned the maid.

  “No! Take the children. I must talk to Ezra alone.” Sitting down on a chair Angela buried her face in her trembling hands and drew in great shuddering breaths.

  “What is it? What happened?” Ezra moved to her side shaken because she was upset.

  Slowly, then building up momentum she blurted out every word that Laporte had said to her.

  “I’ll kill him,” burst out Ezra. “I will tear that disgusting little pervert limb from limb!”