To Love a Rogue

by Valerie Sherwood

  “Heist is dead,” she repeated carefully.

  She had expected Gautier to bob his head to show that he understood, but instead, his lips opened and a perfectly good, if somewhat hollow-sounding, English voice answered her.

  “I know,” said the mute. And then, still in that hollow-sounding voice, but almost dreamily, “You have beautiful hair.” He seized it even as he spoke.

  Unable to twist away, Lorraine tried to scream, but the sound was choked off by brutal hands that seemed intent on crushing her windpipe.

  They had hanged the wrong man in Bordeaux. The glittering eyes upon her were English, not French—but their owner was La Garrotte. La Garrotte, who strangled women with their own long hair.

  “Don’t try to scream and I’ll let you breathe,” her captor muttered. “Be a sensible girl and plait your hair. That’s the way I like it best—plaited.”

  Lorraine’s world stopped whirling and came to a dizzy stop.

  She was aware that she was close to the edge, aware too that perhaps in a surprise move she could hurl herself over. But the will to live was strong in Lorraine, and although being crushed against the sharp rocks below might be preferable to death by strangulation, she kept telling herself she would wait a few more heartbeats. Perhaps she could distract the madman until help arrived.

  “Who are you?” she asked from between stiff lips, even as her fingers moved mechanically to fashion her hair into two long plaits.

  “Does it matter?”

  She tried another tack. “Those women you killed, they were French. Perhaps you had something against them. But I’m not French, I’m—”

  “Before I went to Bordeaux I lived in England,” he told her almost absently. “They called me The Strangler in London town.” His avid gaze was still fixed on her long fair hair. “I’ve been watching you on the ship . . . waiting my chance.”

  And so he had. She remembered that eerie feeling of being watched on the Lass. Now she knew that he was the one who had watched her from the shrouds above, scrambling up the ratlines. She could not control a shiver.

  “But why?” she pressed, desperate to keep him talking and letting her fingers slow almost to a stop, for she sensed he would not kill her until she had finished plaiting her hair. “Why me? Why any of us?”

  “Why?” His gaze roved momentarily to her pale face, studying him so raptly. “Because I saw a woman once—tied to a cart and whipped through the countryside. A tree fell and a branch caught in her hair—the cart kept going and her hair strangled her.” His voice had a hollow rumble in it now. “I saw it—it was beautiful. So now I make it happen.”

  Mad! She had reached the end—her plaits were completed.

  At that moment over Gautier’s shoulder she saw a black-haired youth stealing up behind Gautier on sandaled feet. He was clothed in a costume as odd as the Indian girl’s and he carried a spear. His black eyes burned with a fierce light.

  If she could only distract Gautier a moment more!

  “I am the Captain’s woman!” she screamed in Gautier’s face—for even then the wiry youth was drawing back his spear arm. “He will avenge me!”

  What might have been a laugh rumbled out of Gautier’s throat, as his big hands closed on her long braids. Her world seemed to explode.

  The spear caught Gautier in the side and spun him around. His hands left Lorraine’s braids with a jerk that nearly snapped her neck—but the convulsive motion of his great body as the spear penetrated sent her spinning to the edge of the stone terrace. Below her yawned death, and she feared that her frantic clutching hands would not be enough to slow her momentum and keep her from sliding over the edge to oblivion.

  She fell forward with a choked scream and felt her legs going over the edge, hands scrabbling at the stone.

  Above her Gautier’s big body was performing an agonized dance of death as he teetered on the edge of the stone terrace clawing at the spear. Lorraine did not see him but the men in the boat below watched in awe as that powerful body writhed above them, his pain so fierce he did not realize he was but a breath away from hell. With a last convulsive gasp Gautier wrested the bloody spear from his side and toppled, headfirst, from the gray-stone fortress. His gigantic form described a long arc that brought a howl of horror from those in the boat below as they watched him plummet downward, strike the cliffs rough edge, and bounce horribly down its forty-foot rise to the rocky surf below.

  Immersed in terror, entirely occupied in trying to maintain her desperate slipping grasp on the smooth stones as she dangled helpless over the terrace edge, Lorraine saw none of this, heard none of it. She was not even aware of the clatter of booted feet. She did not see Raile come skittering across the terrace. Even his sharp cry of “Lorraine—hang on!” barely penetrated her paralyzed brain. It seemed to her a miracle when his strong hand seized her wrist and dragged her back to safety.

  “Lorraine.” His voice was choked as he embraced her.

  “Gautier was ... La Garrotte.” The words sobbed in her throat. "It was Gautier who murdered all those women!"

  “So I guessed.”

  Lorraine looked up. “How? How did you guess?”

  “We stumbled over Renaud’s body. Tav and his party joined us about then and Tav said Gautier had been retching, so he had detailed Renaud to stay with him. It all came together for me then—the stranglings in Bermuda, the same pattern as those in Bordeaux. I feared Gautier had gone for you.”

  “And you came back.” She collapsed against him.

  “Yes, I came back,” he said gently. “Did you the think I would not?”

  But Lorraine was overcome by the narrowness of her recent escape. She shuddered in his arms.

  He caressed her, murmuring soothingly. The words she had been shouting as he came up the stone steps three at a time still warmed him. “I am the Captain's woman!" Whatever happened, he would never forget that she had said that.

  The others surrounded them now. Lorraine looked up. “What happened to the Indian boy?” she asked.

  “What Indian boy?” came a chorus of voices.

  “The one who threw the spear. I think he was avenging the Indian girl Gautier killed when he killed Heist.”

  “Heist is not dead,” reported MacTavish, coming up just then. “He is badly wounded but he is still alive. He may live if we can get him back to the Lass to the doctor.”

  “See to it, Tav,” said Raile over his shoulder. At that moment he had eyes only for the beautiful girl who a moment before had been so frighteningly near death herself.

  “Aye.” MacTavish took a long hard look at the lovers and shook his head. The laddie was mad with love, but she was a spirited lassie, strong-willed, independent.

  The laddie would have his work cut out for him.

  CHAPTER 19

  THAT NIGHT BENEATH the cold white stars, the coast of Yucatan was bathed in moonlit splendor. Lying naked in the warm night on the white sands, Lorraine and Raile were wrapped in each other’s arms in wildest passion. The storms that had rent them asunder had been washed away, gone like the raging winds. The white surf that lapped gently at their toes murmured an endless love song.

  Raile embraced his woman fiercely, his heart blazing with the triumph of that wild admission on the brink of death: I am the Captain’s woman! She was his, she loved him—had she not shouted it out for all to hear?

  Lorraine had forgotten even that she had said it. She had loved Raile all along, any fool could have seen it! So she reasoned as she fitted her pliant form the more tightly to his strong body and they moved together in silent joy to a rhythm old as the sea itself.

  Side by side they lay panting in the warm light, looking up at the brilliant stars. They were safe, she knew, because they were hidden from the sentries Raile had posted by the towering cliffs. Their private world was complete and perfect.

  But not lasting. Tomorrow they must face the future.

  Beside her, Raile’s dark face turned toward her in the starlight and he reached ou
t to run a possessive hand down her bare arm. It came to rest lightly on her smooth stomach, where he tweaked the silky hairs of that gentle triangle at the base of her hips. When he spoke, his voice was resonant with love.

  “I had not been sure of you, lass—not until today.”

  Had it taken a brush with death to convince him? Lorraine laughed shakily and clasped her arms behind her head. The gesture imprisoned part of her long hair and threw into high relief her white breasts, pearly in the starlight. Still aglow with the fierce rapture of his love, she let her own hand drag lingeringly over his hard thighs, felt the muscles tighten at her touch.

  “How did you become a gunrunner, Raile?” she asked softly.

  He shrugged. “I suppose you could say I fell into it. One day I ran across some guns at a good price and remembered where they could be useful, so I bought them and sailed off to sell them for a tidy profit.”

  “Then you’ve always run guns?” she asked wistfully.

  “Why, no.” He seemed startled at the suggestion. “I run anything I can—spices, French wines, contraband lace. I’m for free trade, lass, and against the excise tax.” He rose on an elbow, the better to view her magnificent body, pale against the sand. “These guns I carry now are French flintlocks. They were outlawed in France by ordinance of Louis XIV. Yet they’re good guns. I stumbled upon a large cache held by a widow in Bordeaux who was afraid to keep them once her husband was dead, and she made me a good price. I thought of the colonies, where guns are always needed against marauding Indians, and so”—he shrugged again—“I went to Rhode Island.”

  “It was a mistake,” she told him somberly. “You met me and I’ve ruined all your plans. If you hadn’t met me, you’d have found Moffatt’s group and sold your guns and been away to England or somewhere. Instead, you’ve piled up your ship on some heathen beach and you may never reach the Indies!”

  “I’ll reach the Indies,” he said confidently, pressing a warm kiss on one tingling nipple.

  Despite the thrill that went through her at his touch Lorraine’s mood did not change. She had cost him so much!

  “Perhaps.” Her voice was somber. “But I’ve brought you so much grief—you may yet decide you’ve made a mistake.”

  He lifted his head and his gaze was steady. “It was no mistake, lass. The best day of my life was the day I found you.”

  Lorraine felt a catch in her throat. Sincerity rang in Raile’s voice when he said it.

  “I want you to stay with me, lass. Always.”

  She pulled his face down to hers, for there were tears shining in her eyes and she did not want him to see them, not now, not yet, while their love was still so new. “I will,” she choked. And in her heart she made a silent vow: I will stay with you as long as love holds true, and that will be forever.

  In silent communion, heart to heart, soul to soul, they made love again—and it was wonderful. There on that empty stretch of beach they were joined in a joy so fierce and true and cleansing that they both knew it must be everlasting.

  And after that Lorraine pulled on her chemise and slept—for the crew would be stirring at first light and the captain’s lady must not be seen rising like a sea nymph naked from the foam!

  Now that the resources of the land had been scouted out, the real work of repairing the ship went on. Pieces of wood, precut in place, were dragged to beachside. Saws and adzes and hammers pounded and shaped and fit the Lass back to seaworthiness. Lorraine helped with the mending of sail until Raile saw the blisters on her hands and decided the work was too rough for her and forbade her to touch them.

  “The mosquitoes out there in the bush are terrible,” he told her one day. “I have ordered the men to clear out well before dusk lest they be eaten alive.”

  Lorraine glanced at the dark tree line. She was glad she did not have to go in there! At least here the sea breezes blew the mosquitoes away from the shore.

  “Raile,” she asked, “has he ever come back—the Indian boy who cast the spear at Gautier?”

  “Never,” he said. “But we left food out for him just as you asked. And some trade goods that he could barter or sell to make his escape from this coast if he chose.”

  Lorraine’s face clouded. “I am sorry he did not come back, for he saved my life and I would have liked to thank him.”

  “He was probably not thinking of your life,” pointed out Raile sensibly. “He was more likely avenging the Indian girl’s death.”

  “Perhaps he has not taken the food and trade goods because we left it on the terrace of the Castillo—and to him it may be a temple and not a fortress. He may have thought it was an offering to the gods.”

  “Very well, we will leave it atop the wall at a place where it can be seen for a long way.”

  But the Indian lad did not return, and Lorraine would forever wonder what had happened to him.

  They were finally caulking the ship. The rudder had been repaired, the sails were back in place, and the damaged mast—while not replaced, for they could not find timbers long and strong enough among the scrubby trees hereabout—had been tightly lashed and would hold “if we get not too hard a blow,” according to MacTavish. They were near to casting off and Lorraine felt a wistful wrench to be leaving the place where Raile had told her I want you with me .. . always. The words sang in her heart.

  Everyone was making final preparations to cast off, when the first man came down with fever. By the time they had pulled up the anchor, five of the crew were shaking with chills or burning up with fever.

  “This voyage is cursed,” muttered Derry Cork. André L’Estraille, upon whose shoulders as ship’s doctor the burden fell, looked inclined to echo him. “The sooner we clear these shores, the better!”

  “Why?” wondered Lorraine. “What is the cause, do you think?”

  “Poisonous emanations from the soil is all we know about it,” he said, giving her the accepted medical wisdom of the day. “From such areas one must flee.”

  “Well, we are fleeing,” sighed Heist, coming up just then. “And short-handed, too, with so many ill!”

  “Can you handle this outbreak, L’Estraille?” asked Raile.

  The doctor stiffened—he was still at odds with his captain. “Certainly!” he snapped. “These are mild attacks—they occur every other day.”

  But Lorraine anxiously noticed how hot Raile’s skin was.

  On their fourth day out, Lorraine returned from a walk on the deck to find Raile lurching about the cabin with his teeth chattering. She urged his shivering form into the bunk and wrapped him in blankets. “I will call André,” she cried.

  “It is nothing,” Raile told her. “I will get over it. Do not alarm the ship.”

  In a few minutes he was burning up with fever.

  Lorraine burst out on deck and ran into MacTavish. “Where is the doctor?” she cried. “Raile has come down with chills and fever—oh, there he is. André!” She beckoned as she saw the Frenchman come up on deck.

  But when the ship’s doctor started to enter the captain’s cabin, MacTavish’s brawny body blocked his way. “Keep away from him,” he warned. “I’ll have no barber surgeon attending my captain. You tried to kill him once!”

  “Don’t be a fool, MacTavish!” L’Estraille would have shouldered past him. “I’m a doctor—let me pass!”

  The big Scot’s expression was dangerous. He drew his sword. It looked very wicked gleaming in the sun. “If you do not care to have this blade between your shoulders, laddie,” he suggested, “you will depart. Now.”

  L’Estraille threw up his hands. “I have others to care for,” he muttered, and strode away despite Lorraine’s frantic pleas.

  And so she found herself caring for Raile. It was difficult to know what to do. Sometimes he shivered so violently she was afraid he would fall out of the bunk. The blankets, the hot stones at his feet, were not enough. In desperation she stripped off all her clothes and climbed in beside him, pressing her warm flesh against his shivering body and
wrapping them both with blankets. But then, of a sudden, he would be burning with fever again, gasping, throwing off the blankets, tossing, crying out for water. Distracted, she cared for him—bathing his hot face, holding water to his lips for him to drink.

  “Vile,” he kept saying thickly. “Vile.” And then he would fall back into a stupor.

  Lorraine thought he was commenting on the water. “ ’Tis the best we’ve got,” she told him unhappily. “You must drink it, no matter how it tastes—to bring the fever down.”

  He sat up suddenly, his eyes wild. “She can’t have!” he shouted. And then, in a mumbling tone, “I’ll kill him . . . kill . . .’’He sank back, exhausted.

  She realized then that he was delirious and that his oft-moaned “vile” was only a part of that delirium. One night, as she crossed to the other side of the room to get the can of water the cabin boy had left just inside the door—for Johnny Sears was deathly afraid of any kind of illness, every member of his family having succumbed to fevers of one kind or another, and he stubbornly refused to go near any of the sufferers—her footsteps were arrested by Raile’s murmured “Lorraine, Lorraine,” uttered in a plaintive tone. She turned, smiling sadly at him, and then realized with a shock that he was not saying “Lorraine.” He was saying softly “Laurie Ann, Laurie Ann,” and then he said intensely, “Marry me—I promise I will quit the sea after this voyage!”

  Lorraine almost dropped the can of water she was pouring into a basin. She went to stand over him, looking down uncertainly. He was muttering incoherently now.

  But as time went on, his incessant half-coherent calls for “Laurie Ann” grated on her nerves. Who was this Laurie Ann anyway?

  At dawn she trudged outside to find MacTavish and beg him again to let the doctor see Raile. MacTavish remained adamant.

  “You are going to try to sail the Lass all the way to Barbados with a captain who may be dying?” she challenged. “And not help him?"

  “I will sail the Lass to Jamaica,” MacTavish told her grimly. “There are plenty of doctors in Port Royal—good ones too.”