“Where’s Falligan?”
“In the mess. Sir, you’ll have no fight from any of us. We’ll help as we can.”
Raven looked down at the thin, frightened man and released him. “As you were.”
With his men close behind, knives drawn, Raven raced toward the captain’s cabin. He dropped into the hatch, then turned into the passage.
And there he stopped. For between him and the captain’s cabin stood Falligan, holding Marley by the hair, his other hand pressing the tip of a dagger against her chest. Her face was pale, her eyes huge, but she refused him the sadistic pleasure of tears. Her jaw was tight with anger.
Raven took a step backward, raising his hands.
“Careful, gentlemen. I’d hate to slip and cut myself.”
He waited, buying time while his mind spun.
“Drop your weapons. There.”
He could kill the man in a moment with one throw—but if he missed by a hair, he could also kill Marley.
“All right—of course.” Raven raised his hands in submission.
The other men stood behind him, awaiting his direction. He saw Marley swallow—hard.
Raven exhaled, dropping his knife. The others, too, clattered to the deck.
“And in your boot and waist.”
The rest of their weaponry fell to the deck.
“Back up above,” Falligan shouted.
Raven watched him closely, waiting for the right time. He didn’t have much more, he knew. But all the way up the ladder to the quarterdeck, Falligan shoved his knife against Marley’s vest.
“Tie each of them to the rigging. Begin with him.”
The seaman was one of his own, but he still obeyed reluctantly.
“Get the cat,” he directed an Adventurer seaman.
“We don’t use one.”
“Then you’ll find one in my confiscated belongings.”
Each man tied in turn to the shrouds was occupied in his own thoughts. Raven’s thoughts were of his mother, and his sisters, and his father, and his nieces and nephews. And Hawk, whom he’d failed. Could it be that Hawk was already dead?
When the men were either tied or compliant, Falligan released Marley, shoving her to her knees. “Go get my accursed tea, boy.”
Then he grew quite casual, as he contemplated Raven and the others with a haughty, aristocratic gaze. He braced one foot on the slide of the carronade running parallel with the gunwale and leaned against the gunwale easily, awaiting the delivery of the whip. Clearly he intended to relish their torture.
And Raven knew in a moment, as he stood there observing the sneering Falligan, that he would not leave this ship alive. He would never again see his father, or his brother, or his sisters—or the woman who had taught him by daily example what this moment called for.
And for her, he would not cry out against a lash he had never felt in his pampered twenty-eight years. He would not beg for mercy, as Falligan wished. He would be strong.
For his mother, he would have courage.
Chapter Eighteen
The top of Marley’s head buzzed with rage she didn’t know herself capable of as she descended to the kitchen. How could so many good people have tried so hard and failed so badly, only to be conquered by one so evil? Her mind spun desperately for any idea. It had killed her to see the kindhearted, laughing Raven treated like a common criminal—when all he had done was act nobly and without regard for himself.
In the kitchen, she found the tea pot where she’d left it when Falligan had spotted the men boarding and pulled her away. The water boiled crazily, and although the handle was wooden, it, too, was hot. She found a pot holder and grasped the handle, setting it aside. At least half of the water had boiled away, but there was still plenty for tea.
At that moment, Hayworth—returned once more to his quest to enter the forbidden room—strode down the corridor toward the women’s room.
She poured the water over the antique pewter tea ball, a disturbing little image: a laughing gargoyle. Or perhaps a demon. Either way, it reminded her of Falligan.
As she splashed the hot water over its face, it gave her a small bit of satisfaction.
And her eyes lit up.
Trying to calm herself, she hurried up the ladder. She had forgone the tray, choosing instead to carry the heavy Trelawney tankard in one hand and the teapot in the other. As she stepped out onto the quarterdeck, her legs trembling, she forced herself to slow down. The last thing she needed was to be so wild with rage that she lost control. She was the last hope of every good man on both ships, and her pulse was hammering.
When you encounter that power, take a deep breath to harness it. And find a battle cry.
She took a deep breath.
Then another.
Then she headed straight for Falligan, leaving him no time to move away from the gunwale. Jem had arrived, miserably, with the whip, but Marley charged ahead of him.
“Something to warm you up, sir.”
He glanced at her, surprised at the miracle of the mute boy’s speech. A moment later, as he let down his guard to accept the tea, she slung it in his face. She slammed the tankard across his forehead, filled with a power she’d never known.
He erupted in a howl of pain. She swung her other arm hard, following through with full force, colliding directly with his head against the cast iron teapot containing another quart or so of hot water.
The boiling water splashed over him from head to chest, and he flailed in the air, losing his balance, stumbling away in reaction, screams of pain starting deep in his gut. A moment later he tumbled backward over the gunwale from the quarterdeck to the ocean below. The teapot followed him down, but she held tight to the Trelawney tankard, her arm quivering.
“Die, Jimmy—you bastard bully!” she screamed after him, an incoherent explosion of twenty years of frustration. A moment later, she wished she’d thought up a better battle cry.
I seem to be getting quite good at this, she thought as she watched him disappear into the icy waves.
Her body kept dumping adrenaline into her bloodstream, and she spun toward Raven, unable to see him. She could only see Jem, directly in front of her, agog with admiration. For a moment she couldn’t even hear the cheers of the men surrounding her, Falligan’s men as well as Hawk’s, and she screamed wildly with them.
Then her tunnel-vision cleared and she saw Raven and sprang toward him, her shaking fingers working futilely at the knots. The frozen coldness of his skin frightened her. If they didn’t get into dry, warm clothes, they’d all die of exposure.
“Knife!” Raven said plainly, laughing. “Can someone help this poor wom—er, poor one?”
But she was already running away to the corner where they’d abandoned their knives and raced back.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Raven said. “Give that thing to someone with a little steadier hand, if you don’t mind.”
She passed the knife to Jem.
“Hurry—we have to get Hawk! And—oh, that Hayworth is trying to get into the room where the gu—where the girls are.”
“Conrad, take Jenkins and go get Hawk first. Take pistols as well. You can bet Snaveling has one.”
The blast of a muzzleloader came from the women’s room.
She raced down the ladder and the walkway toward the room. At the open doorway, she stopped, stunned.
Hayworth lay just inside the room, and she looked away. He was dead, and blood stained the deck beneath him. Beyond him, she stared, uncomprehending, at what she saw.
“Mother Barbary?”
The gruff old den mother stood on the other side of Hayworth’s body, between him and the women.
“Aye,” Barbary said—but no longer a mother. Their protector had been a man in a woman’s disguise, and he calmly pulled the dress away, revealing the simple clothing of a seaman. “Just Barbary.”
Hawk had placed the gargantuan seaman there in disguise for just such a moment as this. He’d killed Hayworth without hesitating. She
felt a little stupid for not figuring it out before.
Hawk! She fled, leaping along the walkway toward the captain’s cabin until she caught up with Conrad. He forced her back behind them in the passageway. “If that ass has a pistol, the first to go in will be the first to die.”
The door was locked and barred, and Conrad wasted no time. He blew it open with the muzzleloader. The door swung open.
They needn’t have feared. Snaveling must have heard the cheering on the quarterdeck, or the muzzle firing in the storage room, and surmised the truth. He cowered before them with his hands raised, dropping his pathetic cudgel.
Beyond Conrad, she caught a glimpse of Hawk, and she shoved the men aside to get to him, dropping to her knees before him, her eyes flashing fire as she smiled up at him.
He had been beaten, his eye blackened—and still was beautiful beyond her memories, his eyes lighting as she entered.
Jenkins jerked Snaveling to his feet, shoving him to walk ahead of him out of the cabin, training his pistol on his back.
Conrad sliced through the ropes and thick knots fastening the captain to the chair from his neck down to his back, and Hawk grabbed Marley close.
Conrad was not confused by his captain hugging his cabin boy. He inched out of their way then sliced through the ropes binding his hips and legs in place.
Then he beat a hasty retreat, closing the door behind him. The blast of the powder had done some damage, but no one would dare bother the captain in this moment.
Marley lay her hand alongside his cheek, lightly touching his jawline. “Did he hurt you much?”
He shook his head. His gaze bore the faintest hint of a smile with delight at seeing her, holding her close, and he relished the vibrant excitement on her face. He sobered as he lightly brushed a fingernail against her bruised cheekbone. “What of you, my dearest love?”
She laughed, throwing her arms in the air. “I’m overjoyed! I’m ecstatic! You’re alive and I’m alive and I whacked Falligan over the head with a teakettle! He’s gone, scalded, fallen overboard and lost!”
“Ah, I wished I could’ve watched that.” The smile hooked the corner of his lips, but he only watched her tenderly.
“Oh, you would’ve been so proud! I—what did you call me?” She sat back slightly, scrutinizing his face.
He laughed. “Something akin to ‘my dearest love.’” He turned her face this way and that. “Who did this?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re all safe.”
“Tell me.” An edge entered his voice.
“It was Snaveling, but can we think about that tomorrow?”
The anger slowly left him, and he drew her onto his lap, cradling her in his arms, examining her slowly—as if for the first time. His gaze roved her, head to toe.
He tossed away the cap, and he loosened her hair from the braid, enjoying the riotous cascade of her hair over her shoulders. He studied her face, touched her chin, his thumb brushing her lower lip.
She lifted her chin in unconscious invitation.
With a teasing glimmer in his eyes, he lightly pulled away from her touch, savoring what would be their first kiss. He set her hand at her side, his own moving to the vest she’d primly closed to her collar.
His gaze never leaving her face, he opened the vest and removed it from her. And then he did look, his glance traveling downward, savoring the full, lovely breasts revealed faintly in his own soft shirt. His hand rested between them, and he made a sound of pleasure deep in his throat.
“Marley, my love.” He drew her close. “My own love.”
Then, he set her once more in his loose embrace, his hand resting over her waist. His hand flipped aside the tail of his shirt, moving lightly against the naked flatness of her abdomen. He toyed with the button at the top of the loose breeches, then simply slipped his hand inside, over her belly, his long fingers trailing down toward a place he ached to fill.
A moment later he withdrew his hand, letting it rest along the soft curve of her hips, insane with the thought of the moment he would remove these clothes and love this woman for the first time—his woman, his heart, his love.
And, at last, he lifted her in his other arm, drawing her close to him, breathing deeply the sweetness of her.
“Ah, my darling, how I’ve longed to kiss you for all these weeks—since that night I first breathed breath into you, as if you were my own, having no life before God had mercy on me and brought you to me.”
Her eyes grew darker, the pupils huge with pleasure, and her hand roved from his stubbled cheek to his throat to the place where his shirt opened, revealing his chest. She yanked impatiently at the shirt, and a button came loose.
He was delighted at her hunger as her hand roved over his bared chest.
“Why didn’t you?”
He struggled to explain. “In my life, a kiss has come to have great meaning. It wasn’t always this way. I kissed many women when I was younger. It grew too confusing, to share something so intimate—so loving. And yet, for it to mean so little. And so I stopped. Until now.
“The only thought that calmed me these past days was the memory of that mouth of yours—smiling at me, laughing at me, jabbering at me. Marley, don’t you know what you mean to me?”
As his lips parted, as he cherished the touch of her soft, creamy face under his own clumsy fingers, he lowered his lips until he could taste her breath. So sweet—
And he heard a voice in the passageway a moment before the door opened. “Are you deaf, man? We’re in Beverly! I’ve sent a boat ashore to let Mama know, and she’ll have the fatted calf roasting, and you’d best hurry—Oh. Ermph. Well. My fault. So sorry. And all that. We’re not at the dock, proper, still have ten minutes or so.” He laughed deeply as he turned away back into the passage. “From the state of your brain, though, that may be plenty of time!”
Raven disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived, but Marley’s smile held new confidence now, her cheeks pinkened in fetching embarrassment.
Where, before, with other women, Hawk would’ve been frustrated by the interruption, he found himself instead charmed by the seduction itself. By the teasing lift of her breasts toward him in invitation even as she sighed in disappointment. By the deep rose coloring her cheeks.
Then he noticed, again, her bruise from the abuse she’d endured at his confinement, and a deep shame filled him. He felt the sharp scruffiness of his own beard, the shabby cheapness of the scene before him, with him ready to take her as if she were a common whore, with his broken door gaping.
“No,” he said, touching her hand, bringing it to his mouth, lightly brushing her knuckles with his lips as a gentleman kisses his lady. “Not nearly enough time for us.”
Chapter Nineteen
The hiss of sleet fell silent early in the second afternoon, replaced by the silent fall of heavy snow blanketing Boston. The woman who stood at the window in the gathering gloom looking down over the harbor in the distance was no longer the young newlywed who’d arrived in Boston nearly three decades before. Her joy now lay not in learning her new husband’s likes and dislikes, in finding a deeper purpose than her peers in this city on a hill, achievements that would live on after her, but in all her children and her grandchildren. For they, she had come to understand, were indeed her greatest achievements. And for them, today, she gave thanks.
This day, her baby boy was on his way home. She prayed he would arrive safely. And that, she knew, was the limitation of her influence over him and the inevitable circumstances surrounding him. No matter how much knowledge she might have about the world she now inhabited, she was powerless to protect him. For in the end, she was only a mother.
The first twenty eight years of her life had prepared her for all she had encountered in the last twenty-nine, although she had not known it at the time. Her grandmother had taught her to love history, to reject victimhood and blame, to have unlimited pride in the accomplishments of her people, and humility at her own. And she had been blessed with perfect
recall. Even now, coming up on sixty, she remembered dates with dreadful accuracy. It had enabled her to keep her family safer than some—but it had given her many sleepless nights.
And so Camisha Carlyle Adams had lived her life with the curse of prescience, without the power to lift a finger to change a thing. She knew the rules. For more than twenty-nine years she’d observed them, content to participate, rather than attempt to change, this—her flawed history.
“I do not care if your eldest grows up to be Thomas Jefferson’s most trusted manservant. You will not influence him in the slightest to change history. For you see, you will fail. And in a moment you will lose all you have come to love. You’ll wake up back in the luxurious modern life you once knew, without all the deprivations that in time, you will come to love for their very reminder of your many blessings.”
Malcolm Henderson, the man she’d met nearly thirty years before, whom she had come to know as a kindly spirit who manipulated time, had made it clear that were she to lift a finger to influence the major events of history, she would lose all she loved: Ashanti, her children, their children, all her many friends—and, of course, all her other babies. Those infants she’d stolen in the night from the greedy reach of bondage. That much, Malcolm had allowed her: the rescuing of newborns from lives of slavery to the lives God had meant them to lead.
Camisha felt her husband’s presence without ever having heard him descend the stairs, sniffing at the appetite-arousing aroma of onions, celery and garlic on the stove. And even though Thanksgiving was still a week or more away, her husband was mad with desire for her cornbread dressing, so she’d relented. Today was a day of giving thanks, too.
The summer and fall had not been the time of bounty her hard-working, hard-loving family was accustomed to. This year, for the first time, they had known hunger. All except the children had sacrificed a meal every day that they would earmark to anonymously share with others in the city. It wasn’t much, but it left them with enough extra food to feed two families for two days a week.
Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2) Page 16
