He turned to go. She bounced to her feet. “Stay!” Realizing how peremptory the command must have sounded, she twined her hands together and offered him a tremulous smile. “Stay, please? Share supper with me. I’m … lonely.” Until she said the words aloud, Lucy didn’t realize how true they were. Gerard’s defection had left her with no one.
Apollo hesitated, then surprised her with a graceful bow. “I am honored to accept the missie’s gracious invitation.”
As he folded his large frame into a chair, she took meticulous care dividing her supper in half. She could imagine how shocked her father would be to see her breaking bread with a man he would consider little more than a savage. She smiled, inordinately pleased by the thought.
Apollo was dazzled by his hostess’s impish grin, the first he’d seen from the girl since her rejection of the captain’s trunk. He had delivered her scathing message as instructed that day. Gerard had laughed until he’d been forced to swipe tears of mirth from his eyes.
“Where are you from, Apollo?”
Lucy’s innocuous question caught him off guard. Thus far, she had shown no interest in anything but her own churlish complaints. Perhaps she only longed for the comfort of a human voice. Apollo knew how damning protracted silence could be.
“I come from the Zulu clan,” he replied, breaking off a dry chunk of biscuit and dipping it in the thin paste of water and flour that passed for gravy. “I was taken from my home in my nineteenth summer and carried to Santo Domingo where a French plantation owner purchased me.”
Apollo’s voice was melodic, eloquent, the voice of a natural-born storyteller. His precise diction proved him to be a man who loved the English language more for having come to it late. Food forgotten, Lucy propped her chin on her hands to listen.
“My master was a good man, an enlightened man. Instead of sending me to the fields, he educated me—taught me to read and write in French, Latin, and English, taught me the manners of a gentleman’s gentleman, spent hours discussing the arts and philosophy with me.” Apollo chuckled. “Rousseau and Christ were his undoing. ‘Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.’ ”
Apollo’s rendering of the noble words that had unwittingly sown the seeds of the French Revolution sent a shiver down Lucy’s spine.
“If this Christ, whom he was so eager for me to embrace, had died to set men free, then why was I not free? I finally forced him to concede my point.” Apollo’s face clouded. “His resolve came too late. Before he could petition the governor for my freedom, the slaves revolted. He was murdered by a neighbor’s field hands. He died in my arms.”
Lucy found herself perched on the edge of her chair. “What was left for you to do? Join the rebellion?”
Apollo shook his head. “If I learned only one lesson at my master’s feet, it was that violence can only beget violence.”
An odd philosophy for a pirate, Lucy thought, but chose to keep her own counsel.
“The rebellion was squelched. I was arrested and imprisoned. The authorities were afraid of me—some of my size, others of my education. The slaves revered me for the same reasons. The governor would have had me hanged along with the other captured slaves, but he feared making a martyr of me would only incite another rebellion, bloodier than the first. So they locked me away and waited for the outside world to forget about me.”
“Did it?” Lucy asked softly.
He nodded, his dark eyes devoid of self-pity. “Until he came.”
Lucy did not have to ask who he was. Her leaping heart told her. She didn’t want to hear any more. Didn’t want to risk any blows to her contempt for her captor. But it was too late.
A bittersweet smile played around Apollo’s lips. “His was the first laughter I’d heard in over five years. It was like music—a balm to the soul.”
Lucy pushed her plate away, remembering the first time she’d heard that same irresistible laughter. The echo of it still haunted her dreams. “So you liked him right off, did you?” she asked glumly.
Apollo rumbled with laughter. “I hated the son of a bitch!”
She leaned forward, shocked. “You did?”
“My bitterness had been festering for five years. He was a white man just like the men who had locked me away. Not only a white man, but a white man who chattered with every breath. I told him to shut up and leave me the hell alone or I’d strangle him with my chains while he slept.”
Lucy shook her head, recalling all the times she’d been tempted to do the same. She was in complete commiseration with Apollo’s dilemma. “It didn’t work, did it?”
“No. He just kept on, prodding and teasing and poking until I finally started talking just to drown out the sound of his infernal voice. His hunger to learn was even greater than my own. He’d had no formal education. Oh, he could read atlases and cargo lists, and could scribble well enough to keep a decent log, but beyond that, nothing. He had such a gift for languages that within months, he was prattling away both in French and in the dialect of my tribe.”
A ponderous sadness claimed Apollo’s eyes. “He tried so hard to keep talking. To keep laughing. It was a long time before they took his voice away from him.”
Lucy despised her empathy. “I suppose he planned a miraculous escape. Something daring and resourceful. An earthquake, the trumpets of angels blaring from the clouds, or some other such nonsense.”
Apollo shook his head. “Our rescue was an act of less than divine intervention.” His enigmatic smile warned her that pressing for details would be to no avail.
Lucy studied him curiously. She could understand why two men of such diverse backgrounds might have bonded when forced into captivity together, but that still didn’t explain why this imposing giant with his pacific leanings and his fondness for French philosophes was serving aboard a pirate ship.
“There must be few places in the world for a man of your”—she faltered, embarrassed by her own tactlessness—“education. I suppose you had no choice but to take up with Mr. Claremont.”
Apollo’s brow furrowed as if her statement puzzled him. “He is my captain. I would follow him anywhere.”
Lucy lowered her gaze, shamed by his eloquent simplicity and troubled by the irrefutable evidence of such loyalty. She longed to explore what had inspired it, but found to her chagrin that her throat was too tight to ask.
Lucy keenly regretted sharing Apollo’s confidences in the unbearably long hours of the days to come.
Mr. Defoe’s novels no longer engaged her. Her mind wandered, haunted by images of Gerard chained like an animal to a stone wall, his sunny smile fading to bitter resignation, his bright eyes dimmed by hopelessness and despair. His pointed physical absence from her life only intensified his constant presence. In her thoughts. In her heart. In her sleep.
He came to her one night in a dream, his face shadowed and elusive, one minute dark and scowling, the next alight with that heartbreaking grin of his. She awakened to find her cheeks damp with tears, her arms wrapped around herself in a travesty of an embrace that offered no relief from her yearning desolation.
She spent the remainder of the night tossing and turning in the tangled counterpane, her desperation growing. She had to escape before she could no longer smother her lingering feelings beneath layers of anger and wounded pride.
She awoke from fitful sleep the next morning to find milky sunlight spilling into the cabin and a narrow finger of land visible on the far horizon.
When Apollo entered with her breakfast, she was standing by the wardrobe, smiling innocently, her hands clasped demurely behind her. “Good morning, Apollo.”
“Good morning, missie.”
Turning his glistening back to her, he pushed aside a weighty atlas and arranged the tray on the table. Lucy tiptoed toward him, slowly lifting the neck of the bottle clenched in her shaking hands. Her heart thudded with nervous terror and premature remorse.
Without turning around, Apollo said gently, “I’d rather you didn’t do that, missie. It’s the captain’s favo
rite brandy.”
Lucy sheepishly lowered the makeshift weapon, oddly relieved at being spared the unpleasant task of bashing it over the quartermaster’s head.
Lucy’s second escape attempt was even more inauspicious. Devoid of inspiration, she simply waited until Apollo opened the door and made a mad dash for the hold. She made it as far as the threshold before he caught the hem of her gown and reeled her back in. She brooded the rest of the day, but he remained unaffected.
She allowed Apollo a respite the following morning, hoping he’d lower his formidable guard. Nightfall found her perched on a chair behind the door. When it swung open, she dropped her petticoat over Apollo’s unsuspecting head. As he clawed at the clinging material, she scampered between his legs and fled silently out the door.
Resigned to knowing it would only be a matter of minutes before Apollo caught up with her, Lucy darted down the nearest passageway, resisting the temptation to check over her shoulder for signs of pursuit. She hadn’t thought much past simply escaping the cabin, but she was determined to make the most of her time. Perhaps she could locate the powder magazine, an ideal location for a standoff should such an opportunity arise again.
She’d never seen a ship’s hold designed in such a haphazard fashion. It had more peculiar twists and turns than Lord Howell’s topiary maze. Too late, she realized she’d chosen a passage that led deep into the belly of the schooner. The low-burning lanterns hanging at each intersection were her only salvation. She shuddered to imagine being trapped in this splintery web of wood, smothered by encroaching darkness and the stench of bilge water.
She paused to catch her breath and press a hand over her pounding heart. There were still no sounds of chase, only the eerie creak of the ship fighting the relentless swell and pitch of the sea.
A solitary iron-banded door lured her to the opposite side of the corridor. She knew escape was unlikely, but perhaps she could barricade herself somewhere until Captain Claremont demonstrated a willingness to bargain. Her fingers tingled as they brushed the chill handle. She jerked them back, remembering against her will Gerard’s dire warnings about his crew.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she chided herself. “He was just trying to spook you.”
She almost hoped the door would be locked, but a halfhearted push eased it open. The cabin within was as dark as sealing pitch, which only made the intrusion of the lantern light from the hold more startling.
An involuntary shriek caught in Lucy’s throat. The shadowy chamber was an Inquisitor’s dream, appointed with a handsome torture rack, a barbed cat-o’-nine-tails, three pairs of rusty manacles bolted to the wall, and several other ominous meldings of metal and wood. Lucy’s imagination, freshly fertilized by Mr. Defoe, had little difficulty assigning them sinister purposes. An iron maiden reigned over the grim tableau, her features frozen in a sneer of malevolent grace.
As Lucy watched, she would have almost sworn its hinged door began to creak open, inch by inch.
“Missie!” Apollo’s voice cracked like thunder.
Lucy slammed the door shut and spun around, throwing herself across it. Apollo towered over her, looking worse than forbidding in the scant light.
She injected a note of false gaiety into her voice. “What’s wrong, Apollo? Has the Captain some skeletons in his cupboard?”
“You might say that.”
Without preamble, he heaved a weary sigh, bent at the knees, and matter-of-factly tossed her over his shoulder. Her unbound hair blinded her, but as Apollo turned to carry her back to the cabin, a bolt of tension arced through his muscles.
The greeting was deceptively gentle. “Good evening, Apollo.”
“Good evening … Captain.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LUCY SQUEEZED HER EYES SHUT IN MUTE misery. She had entertained visions of confronting Gerard with her dignity intact, not draped over Apollo’s shoulder in limp defeat.
“Going somewhere, Miss Snow?” The edge had returned to his voice.
She tried not to squirm, only too aware that he was addressing her rump. “It appears not, Captain.”
Pleasantries completed, the awkward silence stretched until Gerard’s clipped words ended it. “How many times has our guest sought to leave us?”
It was Apollo’s turn to squirm. Lucy could almost feel the chagrin seeping from his oversized pores.
“Put me down,” she demanded, refusing to let him bear the brunt of the blame. After all, what did she have to lose by brazening it out?
Apollo dutifully obeyed. Lucy swept her hair out of her eyes, then half wished she hadn’t. The unreliable lantern light cut swaths of darkness across Gerard’s face, reminding her of her disturbing dreams. For the first time, she allowed herself to wonder what manner of man would equip a chamber of horrors like the one she’d just discovered.
Her fear of him infuriated her. She tossed her head with deliberate insolence. “I believe this is my third unsuccessful bid for freedom. What do you intend to do about it?” She offered him her upturned wrists. “Clap me in irons?”
He tilted his head as if to consider the merits of the offer. “A tempting proposition.”
Lucy withdrew her hands, not sure how far she could afford to push him.
“Bring her,” he commanded Apollo, pivoting on his heel with humiliating disregard.
Lucy marched between the two men like a condemned felon sentenced to the gallows. She might go meekly to her fate, but she refused to go quietly.
“Do forgive my impudence, Captain, but I thought it best to maintain our professional relationship. You, sir, are the pirate. I am the captive. Therefore, as the captive, I feel it my sacred obligation to routinely attempt escape if only to discharge my duty as the previously aforementioned—”
Lucy flinched as a door slammed directly behind her. It seemed that Apollo had abandoned her, leaving her alone in the great cabin with a powerful man she’d just taken great pains to enrage.
Lucy braced herself as he faced her, but nothing could have prepared her for the changes a week had wrought in his appearance. His skin was darker, intensifying the brilliant hazel of his eyes. His hair was lighter and already curling in unruly tendrils at his nape. She squelched a treacherous desire to curl her fingers through them. A beard darkened his jaw, shading its boyish angles with devastating maturity.
A raw edge clung to him, as if he’d spent one too many sleepless nights. For the first time, Lucy thought to wonder where he’d been sleeping while she slept in his bed, dreaming of him. Oddly enough, the faint air of dissipation only enhanced his rugged charm.
Her bodyguard had been a handsome man. This man was irresistible.
If she’d been unprepared for his altered appearance, she was doubly unprepared for the melting sensation in her midsection, the hazardous yearning in her heart.
“Take off your gown.”
His words struck Lucy like a dash of cold salt water. Her bravado withered beneath his resolute stare. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I won’t try to escape again.”
“Damn right you won’t. Give me the gown.”
He stood before her, six feet of pure male determination. Lucy took a step backward without realizing it. Her misconceptions about her father had proved her a poor judge of character, but was it possible she had misjudged this man so badly as well?
“You can’t blame me for trying to escape. You’d do the same if you were in my position.” Lucy wished she could have bitten back the words. He’d been in a position far more intolerable than hers. For five long years. “If this is your twisted idea of discipline …”
He took a menacing step toward her. “Don’t make me strip you, Lucy. I’m well aware that’s your only gown.”
“Oh, please, I—” Remembering her earlier vow not to beg, Lucy clenched her chattering teeth over her pleas. Gerard’s image wavered through a sheen of unspilled tears as she fought to salvage her dignity. “I don’t deserve this.”
Her softly spoken rebuke had no di
scernible effect on him. She gathered her skirt, then hesitated, remembering that she wasn’t even wearing a petticoat to shield her from his probing eyes. Perhaps that was to be her punishment for dropping it on his quartermaster’s head.
She dragged the gown off and stood stiffly before him, trying not to shiver in nothing but her thin chemise, silk drawers and tattered pride. Her fingers bit into the balled-up gown, but she refused to do herself the indignity of covering herself with her hands.
His eyes raked her once, twice, before he came striding toward her. Lucy closed her eyes, dreading the moment when he would lay his hands on her. When he would rob her of her innocence with nothing more than his unrelenting grip as he steered her toward the bed.
He stopped so near to her that she could feel his breath stir the hair at her temple, feel the inescapable heat of his body scorching the vulnerable skin bared by her scant attire. She drew in a shaky breath, then wished she hadn’t. He smelled of wind and sea and salt—the aroma of freedom. After days spent locked in the stuffy cabin, the seductive fragrance intoxicated her. Currents swirled between them, more violent than anything the sea had to offer.
Sensing that she was the one in danger of being sucked into their depths, Lucy no longer dared even to breathe.
Without warning, the gown was torn from her clenched fist. Her eyes flew open. To her shock, Gerard had left her to stride to the door. He sent it crashing into the opposite wall, then hurled her gown into the passageway.
She watched, dumb with amazement, as he emptied the wardrobe and sea chest of his own clothes with similar savagery, slamming drawers and muttering beneath his breath the entire time. He ruthlessly whisked both blankets and sheets from the bed, leaving the feather tick bare of all but pillows. Within minutes, he’d fed every scrap of cloth in the cabin, except what they were both wearing, to the voracious mouth of the hold.
He slammed the lid of the empty chest with deafening force before wheeling to face her. “Maybe you’ll think twice about escaping the trap now, Miss Mouse. One look at you in that—that”—he swallowed hard—“frivolous creation and my men will tear you apart.” His voice lowered to a growl. “By the time they’re finished, there won’t be enough left of you to feed to the sharks.”
Thief of Hearts Page 23
