Velvet Lightning

by Kay Hooper

  There was a moment’s silence while Jesse stared at him. And then the younger man said slowly, “I’m going with you.”

  “Jesse—”

  “Look,” Jesse said flatly, “nothing out there in the harbor is heading south until tomorrow afternoon, and there’s no way you could catch Sheridan if you waited that long. But there is a ship out there with a chance of catching him—the second fastest ship in Tyrone’s fleet. My ship. The Robyn. We can leave today, on the afternoon tide. And even if we can’t catch Sheridan, we’ll damned well be running up his stern by the time he gets to Port Elizabeth.”

  The Robyn, like her sister ship The Raven, was a clipper built for speed. She was two hundred feet long, and her three tall masts held numerous sails. She could, Jesse told them proudly, do twenty knots when she was pushed; he intended to push her.

  Falcon and Victoria stayed out of his way. Within the few hours before they could sail it became obvious that however distressed or uncertain he was on land, Jesse was utterly and completely comfortable with a deck beneath his feet. And he handled the many details of an unexpected departure briskly and without hesitation, recalling a crew on liberty, stocking the ship for a journey, and coolly summoning one of Tyrone's attorneys to handle the necessary business matters until either Jesse or Tyrone returned to New York.

  “Will he like that?” Falcon asked curiously when the lawyer had received his orders and gone.

  “Marc?” Jesse grinned. “No. He doesn’t trust lawyers. Even his own. Especially his own.”

  “Then aren’t you taking a bit of a risk by, ah, dumping his business matters into the lawyer’s lap?” Jesse’s grin turned savage. “Serves him right, dammit. Next time, maybe he won’t be so quick to saddle me with a mess.”

  Falcon watched the younger man step aside to deal with a minor crisis among the crew, reflecting that Jesse was badly worried. But then, so was he. In his life at various times, Falcon had been both hunter and hunted; he knew what it was like to have ene-mies stalking him the way Tyrone’s were stalking. . . . He wondered suddenly if Tyrone thought of him like that, as an enemy, and found the thought disturbing.

  Victoria came to his side then, slipping a hand into his and looking at him gravely. “What will you do if Captain Tyrone has the gold?” she asked him.

  Falcon wasn’t surprised by the question. The longer he and Victoria were together, the closer they seemed to grow; she had read his face if not his thoughts themselves. "I don’t know, sweet,” he said finally, troubled by his own uncertainty. "I really don’t know.”

  "Is this Camelot more important?”

  "It may be. It may well be. Somehow, they’re connected, I know that. I feel it. And I think . . .”

  "What?”

  Slowly he said, "I think the gold may turn out to be the least important part of the story, because I believe there was, originally, no connection. I think Tyrone himself became the connection.”

  "Deliberately?” she asked.

  He frowned. "I—there’s a sense of irony.” He looked at Victoria almost blindly, as if his gaze were turned inward, searching feelings, instincts.

  She tried to help him focus. "In what way?”

  “Illusion,” he said, and his eyes narrowed. "Yes, that’s it. Illusion. What you think you see is wrong; it’s what you're led to see.”

  "What we see? You mean someone has led us to look at the entire thing wrongly?”

  "Yes, I think so. Parts of it anyway. But which parts? There are two separate threads, the gold and this Camelot. Tyrone, somehow, for some reason, is holding them both.”

  Victoria waited, watching him intently. After a moment his eyes cleared and he looked at her wryly. ‘‘Damn. It's gone. I thought I had something, but it's gone.”

  "You don't have all the pieces yet,” she reminded him. "There are some only Captain Tyrone can provide.”

  "Yes. But will he?”

  The Robyn sailed out of New York Harbor in midafternoon, heading south. She was slightly more than two days behind a slower packet on the same course. There wasn’t a great deal of wind, but The Robyn’s many sails unfurled and snatched all she could get. Her heading was directly east for a time, then southeast, and finally due south. Her narrow, streamlined keel cut through the water neatly, her crew was experienced, and her captain canny. She began to make up lost ground, as though someone had whispered to her of the importance of this race.

  Or perhaps she heard whispers of another kind; perhaps she heard the call of her sister ship.

  If so, she responded. Against all reason, The Robyn was breaking her own speed records.

  5

  Port Elizabeth

  The scream woke him from a deep sleep. It was a shriek of terror, of agony, and even as Tyrone sat up and threw back the covers, he realized that it wasn’t a human cry. He dressed quickly in trousers and a shirt left unbuttoned, thrusting his feet into boots, then headed downstairs. The house was silent, unaware, and he knew that only he had been awakened.

  He paused in his study long enough to get his pistol out of the desk drawer where he kept it, then slipped out of the house. The night was queerly silent. He stood for a moment listening, then went around to the stables in back of the house. His stables were completely enclosed, rather like an old- fashioned barn, and were built sturdily of stone to withstand the often violent storms off the Atlantic.

  The main door to the stables was flung open.

  Tyrone cocked the pistol and held it ready as he moved silently closer. He kept half a dozen horses here, and he could hear the soft stamping and blowing of nervous animals. But nothing else. Carefully, he edged through the doorway, flattening himself against an inner wall. And he listened.

  His eyes quickly grew accustomed to the darkness, and he found he could see quite well. Ten stalls, the last four at the other end empty, their doors latched open. He moved slowly down the wide hallway, stopping finally before the only other opened stall. The chestnut gelding, his favorite carriage horse, was gone.

  Tyrone stood frowning. Not the most valuable of his horses, and not the most beautiful. Hardly a target for theft, he would have thought. And it had to be that, because the stable doors held bolts made of iron, sturdy things the horses couldn’t even reach, let alone unfasten. But it didn’t make sense. The scream he had heard, shrill with terror, wasn’t a sound that a horse would make while being led quietly from a barn.

  He suddenly felt cold. He turned and left the stables, securely fastening the big door. Then, without pausing, his pistol still held ready, he walked southwest, away from the house. This was the end of the island that was built up from the sea, a jagged forty- foot cliff rising from a narrow ribbon of sand. Tyrone had built his house here partly for that reason, because his land was inaccessible from the sea.

  About thirty feet from the cliff's edge he had put up a barbed wire fence to safeguard his stock; all the horses had been loose in this small pasture from time to time, and none had ever even ventured close to the fence, perhaps sensing the sheer drop. Tyrone stood at the fence and studied it for a moment, seeing even in the faint light that the three strands of wicked wire had been neatly cut.

  He walked on to the cliff’s edge. The sandy ground here had been churned violently. He bent to pick up a heavy stick and felt sick when he realized that one end of it was wet with blood. He no longer had to look, but did anyway. He stepped closer to the edge and gazed down. The big, dark hump was clearly visible against the pale sand, and very still.

  The chestnut hadn’t had a chance.

  It wasn’t Tyrone’s way to turn to others with his problems, and he didn’t now. In the morning he told Reuben about the horse, making it sound like an accident. He himself had smoothed the telltale evidence of an animal beaten into leaping to its death, had taken away the bloodstained stick. If Reuben thought it unlikely that a horse raised on the island would have been so incautious, he didn’t comment, but merely obeyed Tyrone’s orders and repaired the fence.

  The
tide had come in by morning, and the chestnut’s carcass was carried out to sea.

  Tyrone brooded over the matter all morning. It wasn’t only losing a favorite horse that disturbed him, but how that horse had been taken from him. The violence of the act, the sheer cruelty of beating an animal bloody, of killing it in that manner, sickened him.

  Reluctantly he had asked Tully about her patient, but she had been certain. The man slept deeply now, and she would have heard if he’d gotten up during the night. And the violent stage was past, she reminded him; they hadn’t had trouble like that for more than two years.

  Relieved, Tyrone accepted the assurances. But relief was short-lived. If not the sick man in his own house, then who? Who on the island could commit such an act? Aside from everything else, his property was isolated, miles from anyone else. Who had come there in the night, by stealth, intending to kill a poor beast after putting it through agony?

  He remembered, suddenly, Lettia Symington’s little dog. Drowned? It seemed odd now that he thought about it for a dog to have accidentally drowned in the narrow, shallow stream that ran a couple of miles through the center of the island. Killed deliberately like his horse?

  After lunch he hitched a muscled bay mare to the buggy and drove her into town. He stopped first at the harbor and went out to The Raven, questioning the mate, Lyle, about the other men. All had been on board during the night, Lyle reported, mystified.

  Deep in thought, Tyrone drove on into town. He stopped at the mercantile and went in.

  “Good afternoon, Captain,” Mr. Abernathy said cheerfully. Except for Tyrone, the store was empty of customers.

  “Abernathy.”

  “How can I help you?”

  Tyrone leaned against the counter and drew out a long, thin cigar, lighting it slowly. After a moment he said, “You mentioned the other day about Mrs. Symington’s dog being killed. Have there been any other animals killed recently?”

  Abernathy looked puzzled but frowned in thought. “How recent might you mean, Captain?”

  “In the last few months, say.”

  “Well, aside from the little dog, I can’t think—No, wait. About six months ago Dr. Scott lost that old hack of his. The animal must have stepped in a hole in its pasture; broke a leg and had to be put down. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes,” Tyrone said slowly. “That's what I mean. Do you recall anything else?”

  The storekeeper leaned on the counter, his eyes distant and thoughtful. “Last summer,” he said, “Mrs. Jessop’s hound turned up missing. Everybody figured it went off and died; it was old. And just before that Miss Lander’s yellow tomcat was found dead.”

  Tyrone hesitated, then asked, “Did any of those people, aside from Mrs. Symington, claim their animals had been killed deliberately?”

  Abernathy’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “No. No, I can’t remember that they did.”

  Two dogs, a cat, and now two horses killed within the past six or eight months. Tyrone wondered if it meant anything at all. “All right. Thanks, Abernathy.” He was halfway to the door when the storekeeper’s quiet voice stopped him.

  “Captain?”

  “Yes?”

  “Captain, your questions are a bit . . . suggestive. Would I be wrong in thinking you’d rather I kept them under my hat?”

  Tyrone smiled a little, knowing that Mr. Abernathy could be trusted to keep secrets, as long as he knew they were secrets. “I would appreciate that,” he said.

  Abernathy nodded. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.”

  “Thanks.” Tyrone left the store. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, thinking, then tossed his cigar into the street and drew out his watch. Almost two o’clock. Catherine might be waiting for him . . . or she might not. He was beginning to feel frustrated by the uncertainty of their meetings, by her inaccessibility.

  He climbed into his buggy and slapped the reins against the mare’s rump, guiding her down the main street. Bothered by what he increasingly felt to be the presence of an elusive enemy—and a coldly ruthless one—he badly needed Catherine. It surprised him, this need for her that was more than sexual, and he pondered it as he drove from town.

  Desire for her was something he had felt from the first; that hadn’t changed. Or had it? Slowly he realized that he wanted her more often now, that he thought of her more often. When he was with her, he felt . . . greedy, as if he couldn’t get enough of her. Her public coldness was beginning to anger him just as her private elusiveness angered him.

  Tyrone took the usual precautions before turning off the main road and onto the track into the woods, but he was frowning as he stopped the buggy before the cottage. He pulled a tether block from the back of the buggy and tied the mare, who hadn’t been there before and couldn’t be counted on to stand and wait patiently for hours as the chestnut had learned to do.

  He patted the mare’s glossy neck, reminding himself to double-check the stables each night before he turned in. But, somehow, he didn't think one of his horses would be targeted again. It was a feeling, an instinct. He hoped he was right.

  Tyrone went into the cottage. It was empty. He paced slowly around the main room, looking without really seeing at the bare, almost rotting wood floor, at walls damp with mildew. He walked to the door of the tiny bedroom and gazed at the brass bed that had, now, only a colorful quilt to hide the mattress. He had brought that bed himself.

  Catherine had suggested the cottage as a meeting place. It wasn’t much, she had said dryly, but there was a roof and walls. And, of course, privacy. The first few times, they had made love on a thick pallet of blankets on the floor. On his next visit to the island, Tyrone had brought the bed and set it up before she saw it. She had, typically, said nothing about it, but at their next meeting had provided linens.

  The cottage had been built, Tyrone knew, when the land had first been settled, around twenty years before. It had been abandoned and vitually forgotten when larger and more permanent homes had been built closer to the coast. For Catherine and him it had been a haven for almost two years. A place of quiet and passion, a place free of strain.

  The door opened suddenly. “You’re driving the little mare,” Catherine said, clearly surprised. “I thought she was in foal.”

  “She is,” he said, turning to face her. ‘‘But she won’t foal until spring. The work will do her good.” He realized only then that he wasn’t going to tell her about the chestnut. He didn’t know why.

  Catherine started toward him and the bedroom, her arms full of folded linen. Briskly she said, “Let me put these on the bed. You’re early.”

  “Last time I was late.” He watched her as she moved past him toward the bed, catching a fleeting scent of cinnamon. Desire washed over him so abruptly and strongly that he caught his breath, feeling his belly knot hard, his loins swell achingly. “Never mind the sheets,” he said thickly.

  She turned to face him, surprised. But her eyes darkened almost instantly, her lips parting. “For heaven’s sake, Tyrone—” It was a breathless protest without strength.

  He stepped to her, taking the sheets from her and dropping them onto the floor. His hands went to her hair, and he pulled the pins away and cast them aside until her hair fell about her shoulders in a shining dark brown mass. She stood without moving, staring up at him with veiled eyes. The calico material over her breasts, demurely buttoned to her throat, rose and fell quickly, and the heat of an inner fire was rising in her creamy cheeks.

  Tyrone thought she was beautiful. He always had, even before he had seen this hidden part of her.

  He reached for buttons and began unfastening them slowly, one by one, from her throat down. It took a tremendous effort to keep from crushing her in his arms, but he held on to control with all his will. Their time together was so brief, and he was conscious of the desire to make it last.

  When the dress was unbuttoned to below her waist, he lifted his hands and very slowly pulled the edges apart. The thin linen of her shift was st
raining over her full breasts, and as he lingeringly pushed the dress off her shoulders, the hardened tips of her nipples thrust against the cloth.

  Catherine caught her breath but didn’t move.

  Tyrone guided the dress down her arms, pushed it over her hips, until she stood before him wearing only the shift, her stockings, and shoes. She made a slight movement toward him, as if she would have begun undressing him, but he caught her wrists firmly. He guided her a step backward, then gently pushed her down until she was sitting on the bed.

  He knelt before her, lifted one foot, and removed the shoe. His hands slid caressingly up her leg until he found the top of her stocking just above the knee. Taking his time, he rolled the stocking down her leg, then pulled it off and set it aside. The other shoe followed, the other stocking. Catherine was gazing down at him with eyes that were wide and dark, veiled now only with desire. Her body was trembling, her breath quick and shallow. Her hands were small fists clutching the quilt.

  Tyrone rose to his feet and slowly pulled her up. For a moment he just stood looking at her. She was primitive like this. Her glorious dark hair spilled around her shoulders, gleaming softly in the dim light. Through the almost transparent linen of her shift he could see the dark smudges of her areolas and, at the base of her belly, a shadow so enticing that his loins throbbed with a sudden, almost unbearable ache.

  “Oh, Christ,” he muttered in a hoarse, guttural voice. He reached quickly for the hem of her shift and, with one smooth motion, skinned it up over her head.

  Catherine had lifted her arms automatically, lowering them slowly as the shift was tossed aside. His eyes moved over her with exquisite slowness, lingering on her breasts, on the soft nest of dark curls at the base of her belly. He reached one hand out and touched her breast with just the tips of this fingers, circling the tight, hard center very lightly.

  Her eyes closed and she swayed toward him, a moan breaking from her lips. His hand closed around her breast, squeezing.