“Be certain the bloody bastard is dead.”
“My pleasure.”
He hesitated a moment, glancing at the handkerchief stuffed in Rashall’s mouth.
“Never again shall we know such a moment’s peace.”
Rashall’s eyes went dark with threat.
Bronson hastily pulled out the handkerchief and tossed it aside, then withdrew a knife and swiftly sliced the ropes binding him.
“Can’t feel anything at all below my waist, and do not say it.” Rashall struggled with numb limbs, moving awkwardly, and Bronson jerked him to his feet.
The three hurried up the hatch and Bronson gave a three-note whistle as they raced back to the quarterdeck. The men assembled there just as the sailor on night watch began to come around. Deming slugged him squarely, catching his rising form and gently lowering it to the deck.
“Master?”
Disoriented at the word, Bronson found his attention drawn by the whisper from a young boy—hard to tell his age, Bronson thought, but perhaps as young as nine or ten, or as old as twelve or thirteen. Not much more than skin and bones, with utter terror in his eyes as he looked toward the captain’s cabin. Of whom was he so fearful?
“Can I come with you?”
Rashall and Bronson assented in unison. “Can you go down the rope?”
The boy nodded. “I think so. I came up it.”
They allowed him over before them, with the other men hurrying down beside him, watching their step so as not to upset his progress. Rashall went over after them, lowering himself alongside the boy, allowing him to make his own progress.
Bronson went last, keeping watch over the ship for any threat.
Mr. Adams leaned up to hug his son around the shoulders, and Rashall patted his father’s forearm. “Father, I’m fine.”
With a strong hand, Bronson gave Mr. Adams a bracing slap on the shoulder blade. “All’s well, sir,” he said.
The man nodded silently, coughed, and stared out toward the Immortal.
Bronson and Ray took a place on either side of the boy, who shivered without complaining in only a thin linen shirt and breeches—no shoes or socks at all.
Bronson removed his coat and wrapped it around the boy, and Rashall patted him on the back. “Better now?”
He nodded.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Master, I be George.”
“Well, George. My name is Rashall Adams. You can call me Raven. Call no man Master, son. Show respect to your elders and to ladies with sir or madam, and to the man who employs you, but from this day forward, you are a free man.”
The boy’s nervous features relaxed into a smile. “I like that, sir. I be a free man.”
“How did you end up on that ship?”
“I hear tell they was offering freedom to slaves, for joining. I’m only—well, I’m young, but I’m strong. The man that took me on told me he had a job for me, but…” He went silent abruptly for several seconds. “Sir, I did not like the work. I was hoping I could maybe clean or carry things. Maybe even learn a trade like the men I see in town.”
“How old are you, George?”
The boy hesitated.
“It’s all right. You’re safe with us.”
“Nine years old, sir. Least that’s what I think. My mama and daddy both gone. Daddy got sold, Mama died of the smallpox.”
“When was that?”
“Last year. I been getting by all right, I suppose. I wished I’d never left Yorktown, sir. I just thought it might be right nice, to go to sea. I hear tell, ships is one place you can be the same as a white man.”
Rashall met Bronson’s gaze with a raised eyebrow. “Well, son, that depends on the white man. Sometimes, if he works real hard you can.”
Bronson shook his head with a smile.
“I can work hard, sir. I’ll be happy to show you.” He turned his face up toward Bronson.
“I’ll wager you can, George. You think you’d do well as a cabin boy?” Bronson asked the child.
“I reckon I can. I’ll try my hardest.”
Rashall spoke. “George, meet your new employer: Mr. Bronson Trelawney. You can call him Cap’n Hawk.”
The boy held up his tiny hand toward Bronson, and the big man caught it in a light, firm grip, giving him a respectable shake. “And my co-captain, you’ll call Cap’n Raven.”
At the Immortal, he again let the boy go first along the ladder, and he hurried up more confidently now, with Bronson and Rashall on either side of him.
As they crossed the gunwale, Bronson gestured around the deck. “Welcome home, son. Tonight, you can bunk with Raven.”
His dark eyes flickered uncertainly toward Raven as he took an instinctive step away from him—even though he’d just been relaxed and easy with both men.
Bile rose within Bronson, filling his throat until he could not speak.
Raven exchanged a grim look with Bronson, thanking God that Percy Snaveling no longer walked this earth.
Bronson dropped to one knee, now level with the boy. “Tell you what. Would you feel better bunking with Jem, the other cabin boy? He’s a truepenny, as fine as you.”
The boy laughed, relieved, and the sound stung Bronson, somehow. “That be just fine, mast—sir.”
“Rosalie, sir?” Deming asked.
“And quick, while the wind is with us.”
Deming gestured to the waiting seamen, who quickly surrounded the capstan and began to push, raising the anchor.
Bronson sent one of the men to escort George along to Jem’s small room off the captain’s quarters, and he and Rashall watched the boy hurry after the sailor, the tails of Bronson’s coat flapping after him against the deck.
Rashall shook his head. “Poor lad’s probably never been off the plantation until this. Pity the first creature he mistakes for a human being is in fact a snake.”
Bronson looked at him, and after a moment Rashall met his gaze with an awkward smile. “Thanks. For coming after me.”
“Only for the countless times you’ve done the same. My worry is the man who remains out there—who your father knew. Manning, was it?”
Ashanti Adams leaned against the gunwale nearby, but at this he joined them. “Yes. James Manning. He and I went several rounds, the first time I ever visited Rosalie. Also, the first—and only—time I was ever beaten.”
Rashall gaped at him. “Why didn’t I know this?”
“Why would I tell you such a thing?”
No response.
“And what about the smallpox? Did you see it aboard?”
“I heard it was below deck, but fortunately I had yet to reach that destination. When I was brought on board, the captain was absent and Falligan gave the quartermaster a story about my having escaped from their Regiment.”
“How many men did he have with him? Falligan, I mean.”
“Just Snaveling. They were the only two I saw from the time I was taken.”
“No, you were taken by Manning,” Ashanti said. “That, we saw.”
“Well, I was knocked out, so I saw nothing until I awakened on the Navy ship.” He rubbed his neck, yawning.
“Let’s just try to get some sleep.”
Since none of the three had slept since before Great Bridge, they said their goodnights. Bronson opened the hatch and slipped down into the corridor to the captain’s quarters.
A candelabra burned near the bed, and he found Marley sleeping there, turned toward the windows. A pang came as he considered their marriage bed, gone forever, destroyed, lying at the bottom of the Elizabeth River.
And he thought of his beloved library, grateful the books had found a better home, in the Trelawney schoolhouse. It seemed a peculiar distraction, but how odd it was, that Marley had made the request—just before the ship was destroyed.
In that moment, with a fortune in Bermuda and a fortune here in this land he loved, his true home, he gazed on all he stood to lose in the world, lying trusting in his bed. Tenderness for
her overwhelmed him; and for her otherworldly wisdom, the simple suggestion he loan his books to Ruth.
And her startling—and prescient—statement about Peyton Randolph’s death, when she had no means of knowing that.
And then: her demand that he stay out of his cabin.
The deadly temptation to ask her his own fate plagued him now; had she known of the ship’s destruction? Was he to have been on the ship, but for some minor change she might have made in the past two months?
And again, he dismissed the temptation as he would the temptation of a pox-plagued whore, with this woman waiting in his bed.
He leaned down to brush the hair from her temple, to kiss the tiny, moon-shaped scar there. He whispered, “Today, I learned I can never thank God enough for you.”
He stoked the stove quietly, washed and brushed his teeth, undressed, and slipped in behind her. Unconsciously, she wriggled into the cradle of his thighs. The invitation was tempting—yet at the same time, there was something wholesome and solemn about the moment, and he a man who hadn’t slept for three days. After a night spent fearing for Rashall’s fate, staring down the muzzle of a pistol, then stumbling across the young runaway, holding his wife was a pleasure simple and sublime.
He smoothed her hair back, kissing her throat lightly, then her shoulder. She stirred.
“Shh. Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to awaken you. I only missed you. We have Ray, and all is well.”
“How long have you been gone?”
“Time matters naught.”
She turned her face toward him, finding his mouth with hers. Her body followed, and he surrendered to her soft demand on his weary but willing body. Her hands slid through his hair, and with a graceful, deft motion, she drew him underneath her, straddling his lap.
She rose over him, meeting his eyes as she lifted her breasts to his mouth. He accepted them in turn, calming her urgent passion, her awkward movements, with his hands at her waist.
But her hunger would not be calmed. The sensation of his mouth, his tongue, on her breasts, her nipples, enflamed her, and anxiously she drew away to kiss his ear, his throat, his collarbone, his chest and nipples, her mouth swiftly lowering to him as she knelt beside him.
He watched her in fascination as she opened her mouth, tasting his ready length, her tongue flickering out over him. His hands slid into her hair, lightly encouraging her as lightning shot through him, and her innocent explorations soon left him near the edge.
He shifted in the bed, slipping his head beneath, then between, her parted thighs, sighing at what he found there. She truly enjoyed tasting his body as much as he did hers. She cried out, her cry captured on his willing flesh as he opened his mouth and suckled and tasted between her thighs, his hands gripping her buttocks and drawing her closer into his kiss.
He lost himself in sensation—the taste of her, the feel of her—even as her tongue played over him, then she let him slip deeply into her mouth while her hand cupped him with instinctive, exquisite lightness—he was taut, ready.
Then the need to be deep within her outstripped even this pleasure, and even as he would’ve done so himself, she shifted again, slipping away from tasting him only long enough to straddle him. He gasped at this; she was a continual surprise and joy to him, ever unfolding.
His gaze devoured the sight of that womanly body, glistening golden alabaster with a faint sheen of sweat, in the candlelight. Her intimate kiss had left him on the precipice of climax, and in another moment she captured him within, and he clutched her against him even as she moved in rhythm, as she learned the motions that pleased them both. With utter restraint, he resisted—as long as he could—the urge to take over, to thrust within her, to claim her as his.
For this moment, he was hers to take.
Her eyes rose to meet his, and his gaze was intent on her body, her face, watching her make love to him. His gaze was transfixed by her hips, undulating with sensuous, rhythmic grace, with building pleasure as she rocked against him.
His hands cupped her breasts, his palms, then his fingers, teasing her nipples. Then one hand slipped between their bodies, finding the center of her pleasure swollen and aching for him. She cried out softly at his touch, her motions more forceful but less certain, and the sound was his undoing.
He pulled her down to him tenderly, burying his face in her hair and whispering dark endearments, and he held her to him even as he rolled her onto her back, then resuming his leisurely fondling as he drove roughly within her. His need for her was maddening, and even as he felt her convulsing around him, he sank his face against her neck, his mouth and teeth closing hard over her throat. He gave a deep growl of pleasure as he continued thrusting, at last reaching his own climax.
Minutes later, as he collapsed beside her, as he pulled her again within the cradle of his body, he kissed her throat, her ear, her temple—as they had begun. The world’s weight had been lifted from him, and he was floating toward sleep.
“You are my life,” he whispered. “My love. My own.”
She brought his hand, resting between her breasts, to her lips.
“Bronson?”
“Aye.”
“Do you know where Stonefield is?”
“Yes. Hastings’ old home.”
“It’s where I grew up.” The cooling sweat on their bodies was evaporating, and she drew the quilt over them.
“Do you know who lives there now?”
He held tight to the place of sleep beckoning even as he considered the question, surprised at the answer. “You know, I don’t. I’m not sure anyone does, anymore.”
“They do. Aside from Norfolk, it’s the only place Immortal has visited in years. Hastings goes each time.”
“Then we’ll go tomorrow. Perhaps take the old boy along with us?”
She hugged his arm, and he drew her hard against him, inhaling the aroma of her. “I think we have to take Nan with us as well.”
“Aye, my Marley.”
He moved again toward sleep, gratefully.
“Bronson?”
“Aye.”
“What would you do if my other grandmother were black?”
He rubbed his face against her hair. “I believe the proper etiquette would be never to remind you that I first suggested it.”
A minute passed after his easygoing jibe. “Good night, my love,” she whispered.
But this time, Bronson heard her voice only in his dreams.
Chapter Forty-One
The Immortal sailed upriver, her passage watched by the trees of the James—the dogwood, the elm, the mulberry, ash, maple, and countless varieties of oaks and live oaks, only the last still bearing their greenery as Christmas neared.
The ship’s captain eyed the sky with skeptic ill humor as they departed Rosalie. Within his ship were his father; that man’s new lady love; his own best friend, and that man’s parents; a gentleman who had managed Rosalie since it had come to be; and that man’s great granddaughter.
And it was that young lady who watched her husband look for any storm that might threaten his passengers.
“I tell you, it’s a superstition.”
“And I tell you, ’tis simple weather. The sky was as red this morning as a lobsterback’s finery.”
Marley knew he spoke the truth, but she couldn’t bear his worry. She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Yes. I saw it as you were tending to my morning hunger for you, with that lovely mouth of yours.”
At this, his gaze shifted to her even as he stood stock still. An echo of a smile curved his lips, and that old habit of biting his lower lip returned.
Dear God! She thought, marveling how a woman learned her husband. How had she not noticed before? His nervous tic was a sign of sexual desire. Oh, it was too tempting, to tell him. But with God’s own grace, they would have many years together, and many times that she could read this and know how to calm him. That was worth far more than any laughter they might share at this moment. Besides, laughter was a bot
tomless fount.
“You are insatiable and shameless.”
She tilted her head, her mouth breaking into a wide grin as she joined him at the rail, her hand lightly brushing the back of his. “For you, yes.”
“Do not talk this way. I cannot retire with you to my cabin in the midst of a sunny day.” Even as he scolded her, he reached out and drew her against his hard body, casually scanning the deck. But for Deming behind the wheel, facing forward, the deck was empty.
“Especially with such a dark storm on the horizon, somewhere out there in that blue sky.”
“I like this gown,” he said, for all the world hugging her with a husband’s lighthearted affection.
“You can’t even see it, you profligate.”
“But I can feel it.”
Before she was aware his intention, he slipped his hand inside her cloak and cupped her breast, his thumb brushing aside the fabric to tease her hard nipple. He flicked the wool aside, baring her breast to the morning sun and lowering his head to suckle until her knees went weak.
In afterthought, she hastily focused on Deming, who still gazed off into the river ahead of them.
Then he drew himself upright with a satyr’s smile, straightened her clothing with prim precision, and returned his attention to the sky—leaving her to grab the rail to steady herself.
“That was cruel.” Her voice was low, husky, revealing her arousal.
“Remember that, my beloved, should you think to tempt my patience again. For when you do it, I shall make you hungry for my plowing.”
The teasing crudeness in his words only worsened her arousal. “Perhaps I shall go below and take care of this myself.”
His eyes flashed at her threat. “I tell you, do not test me. Next will come a spanking, my love, and I won’t care if Deming does watch. And since I know how you enjoy it, I’ll make it a joy to dread.” Then, more loudly, he said, “Good morning, Mrs. Adams.”
Marley turned to find Camisha poking her head through the hatch.
“Would you care for coffee? I’m making a pot.”
“Indeed I would. We were just discussing going below,” he said, his eyes meeting Marley’s with lighthearted amusement.
Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2) Page 35
