“What are you talking about?” The doctor thought he was surrounded by lunatics.
“Nothing that need concern you.” Smith was coolly efficient once more. “All you have to do is see that the captain gets well.”
“He’s so weak now I can hardly find his pulse.”
“You’ve got to bring him through,” Smith ordered fiercely. “I’ll see that you have anything you need, but you aren’t to leave his side until he’s out of danger.”
“You must face the fact that it’s highly unlikely he will survive,” the doctor reiterated.
“You don’t know the captain,” said Smith. “He’ll survive. He has to. The earl is not the countess’s husband. The captain is, and neither of them knows it.”
“I think this shock has unsettled your reason,” the doctor stated. “Why don’t you have a brandy?”
“My reason is quite sound,” Smith declared vehemently. “Apply yourself to seeing that the captain doesn’t slip his anchor; or you’ll have cause to regret it. Now give me a list of everything you need. I can’t be tending to things twice over, so make sure you don’t leave anything out.”
“You’re wasting your time,” the doctor repeated when he’d finished listing all he would need for the next few days. “You’d be better advised to have the carpenters start making a pine box.”
“If I order any pine boxes, I’ll order two of them.”
Chapter 34
The cabin lay in near total darkness, only a thin stream of moonlight entering through the small porthole. Summer’s restless movement could be heard above the sound of the waves slapping against the side of the ship, and as the minutes passed and her movements became more frantic, the enveloping gloom was punctured by mournful cries.
Suddenly, a piercing scream shattered the night and Summer sat up with a convulsive start. “Oh, my God, he’s dead!” she cried, her hands pulling at her hair, her face twisted in terrible anguish.
Bridgit, dragged from a deep sleep, drew on her heavy robe and fumbled with the oil lamp. “It’s all right, milady,” she said as she set the flickering light beside the bed. “It’s only a nightmare.”
“But it was so real.” Summer clutched the older woman. “There was blood everywhere.”
“There isn’t any blood. It was just a bad dream,” Bridgit repeated. “It’s all over now. You can go back to sleep.”
“It will come again,” Summer whimpered. “It comes every time I sleep, only it keeps getting worse. He looked so pale. I tried to touch him, but every time I reached out he moved farther away.”
“It’s all over now,” Bridgit crooned. “Try to put it out of your mind. You’ve got to get some sleep or you’ll never get well.”
Hurried steps in the passageway diverted Summer’s attention. She put her fingertips to Bridgit’s lips and listened. Before either of them realized that the steps were heading in their direction, the door burst open and the earl rushed into the cabin.
Gowan had taken the time to put on his dressing gown, but his stocking cap had fallen from his head and his thick gray hair stood out like the spikes of a helmet. He was a forbidding man, and Bridgit couldn’t blame Summer for becoming rigid with fear when he appeared without warning, tousled and intense, but that couldn’t account for the hysterical screams she uttered one after the other.
“She sounds like she’s being torn apart,” complained Gowan, slamming the door behind him. “Make her stop before she wakes the whole damned ship.”
“That’s enough of this foolish noise, milady,” Bridgit decreed sternly, putting her hand over Summer’s mouth to muffle the screams. “It’s only your husband.”
But Summer’s wails became more piercing, and without hesitation, Gowan crossed the room and slapped her hard across the face, stopping her in the middle of a scream. Her eyes fixed on him and she shook convulsively.
“Your lordship!” exclaimed a horrified Bridgit.
“Does she do this all the time?” Gowan demanded, cutting off Bridgit’s protest.
“It’s nightmares,” explained Bridgit as she continued to coddle and pet Summer. “She can’t seem to stop having them.”
“Can’t you do something?”
“It’s been so bad lately not even the laudanum can stop them. I’m worried, your lordship. I fear her mind may be starting to weaken.” Summer tapped nervously on Bridgit’s shoulder and whispered in her ear, but her wide staring eyes never left Gowan.
“What is it, milady?” Bridgit asked, half-distracted.
“It’s him.”
“Now what could you be meaning by that?”
“It’s him,” Summer repeated, her eyes staring before her in wild-eyed fright. “The man in my dreams.”
“Nonsense. You’re just imagining things. That’s the earl, though he doesn’t look much like himself at the moment.”
Gowan’s eyes flashed angrily. “What’s the foolish female talking about now?”
“Nothing, your lordship. She’s just confusing you with one of her nightmares.”
“It seems to me it’s about time she was taken in hand,” Gowan threatened menacingly. “Your molly-coddling hasn’t done any good.”
“If you want a wife who’s stone dead, or mad as bedlam, you go right ahead,” Bridgit declared wrathfully, “but you’ll get no help from me. I’ll have no hand in driving this poor creature to her grave.”
“I wonder if she’s the poor creature you think.” Gowan peered intently at his cowering wife. “Maybe she’s fooling you.”
“Not with me sitting by her side every blessed minute for the last month,” Bridgit stated indignantly.
“We shall see.” Gowan was unconvinced. “But I won’t put up with this once we reach Glenstal. I didn’t travel six thousand miles to bring home a deranged female who will spend her life tied to the bed.”
“The countess will get well real quick when she’s kept warm and when her food will stay down.” Bridgit looked fondly at Summer. “I remember how the roses bloomed in her cheeks when I first saw her. My, but she was a lovely thing then, all peaches and cream, and she had a proud straight bearing.”
“If I hadn’t seen her on that island I wouldn’t believe you,” said Gowan acidly. “All I’ve been privileged to regard since is a sickly, whining female with hair in her face and not an ounce of flesh on her bones.”
“She’ll do you proud once she’s well again,” Bridgit predicted. “You’ll be the envy of every man in Scotland.”
“Promises are easy to make,” the earl said, his expression lightening somewhat, “but sometimes unaccountably hard to deliver.”
“This is one your lordship won’t have to worry about. Now you’d better get dressed before you catch a cold and I have the both of you on my hands.”
“I’ve never been sick in my life,” Gowan said regally.
“I’m sure your lordship’s an example to us all.” Bridgit hoped he would go before Summer said something else to set him off.
“I’ll be back,” Gowan said. He scowled at the shivering Summer before turning to go. “See if you can get some rest. You look terrible,” he added as he departed.
Bridgit took a bottle from one of the dresser drawers. “I’m going to give you some more of your medicine, milady,” she said, pouring the dark liquid into a glass. “It’ll make you sleep better.”
“I don’t want it,” Summer protested fretfully. “It tastes bad.”
“I mixed it with some wine this time,” Bridgit said, coaxing her to take the glass.
“I wouldn’t mind the taste so much if it didn’t make me feel sick.”
“I’m sorry, milady, but if you don’t get some rest you’ll die before you reach the end of this blessed journey. And you know you can’t sleep a wink without your laudanum.”
“Most of me is dead already,” Summer moaned. “My husband saw to that.”
“Hush now. You know it’s not Christian to talk about the earl like that.”
“If you tell me one more time that I have
to honor this infamous union because it’s blessed by God and his priests, I’ll throw this glass at you,” Summer said, her ferocity belying her weakened condition. “I was forced to marry that murderer. Why can’t one of these endless storms wash him overboard?”
Bridgit reproved her sternly. “You ought to get down on your knees and give thanks that you have a husband ready to risk his life just to rescue you from those nasty pirates. And him rich and powerful into the bargain. Mind you, he’s a mite old for a young thing such as you, but he’s still a handsome man, or would be if it weren’t for that terrible scar. Turns my stomach at times, it does.”
“He’s horrible,” Summer argued. She took a swallow of medicine and shuddered convulsively. “Why must it taste so bitter?”
“All medicine tastes nasty. It wouldn’t work if it didn’t. Now stop complaining about what can’t be helped.”
“You’re heartless,” Summer said, gulping down the last mouthful, “but I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“To be sure things have been mortal bad,” Bridgit said gruffly, “but you would have pulled through without me. You’re a very strong young woman for all you’ve been feeling right poor lately. And though I know you don’t want me to speak of him, the earl would have seen to you himself if I hadn’t been here.”
“That would have been worse than being alone.”
“For the life of me, I can’t understand why you have taken such a dislike to the man.”
“Don’t you know what he did?” Summer nearly shouted. She fell back on the pillows, trying to fight back the tears that began to fall. “Don’t you know what he did?” she asked in an agonized whisper.
“I’m sure it gave you a nasty turn to see that handsome captain shot,” Bridgit commiserated, “but the earl only meant to stop him from making off with you.”
“He meant to kill him!”
“You don’t know that, and you don’t know that he’s dead,” Bridgit insisted stubbornly. “Though from what you’ve told me, I can’t see how he wouldn’t be. You may not have married the earl of your own free will, but married to him you are, and that young man had no business trying to run off with you. It was his own fault if he got shot. He wouldn’t have if he’d acted like a Christian.”
“And you think the earl acted like a Christian when he shot him in the back?” exclaimed Summer, shaken by spasms as she remembered those last horrible minutes on Biscay Island.
Bridgit side stepped the question. “I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t there, so I can’t set myself up as a judge of other people’s actions. But I stick to it that the earl had a right to protect you. A man can’t just up and make off with another man’s wife, and a good thing it is too. You’ve got to obey the laws, I always say, even when you don’t like them.”
“You’ll never understand,” Summer moaned. “You’ll never understand at all.”
“Many’s the girl that has married a man she didn’t know and lived to bless the day,” persevered Bridgit. “We can’t all go about taking husbands of our own choosing. Lordy, what a mess that would be. Leave it to the parents, I say. They know something of the world and its ways.”
“All they understand is money and power,” Summer protested, but the laudanum was beginning to take hold and her words were slightly slurred. “No one cares about me.”
“You have a nice sleep, milady.” Bridgit covered her with the blankets. “You’ll feel much better when you’ve had your rest.”
“You don’t understand,” Summer mumbled. “Nobody understands.”
“You close your eyes. Things will look better in the morning.” Bridgit repeated the words like a litany, and Summer’s eyelids gradually drooped until at last she was asleep. Bridgit adjusted the pillows under her head and tried to make her more comfortable.
“Poor thing, you’ve had a right cruel time of it, and you so pretty I sometimes can’t believe you’re real.” She stroked Summer’s brow, drawing the matted chestnut hair back from her face. “You might have been happier if you’d been plain. At least these wicked men wouldn’t be acting like heathens, killing and stealing like they never heard of the Ten Commandments. You mark my words, old man Satan is going to have new souls for his fiery brimstone before long.”
Summer, ostensibly the one for whom these stern words were intended, had fallen into the uneasy sleep that had sustained her throughout the voyage. She had never been fat, but she was mere skin and bones now. It won’t do any good to force her to eat, Bridgit thought to herself, it would just come back within the hour. Even the sailors had been looking a little green during this latest spell of heavy weather. It was Bridgit’s opinion that if God had meant for men to be going about on water all the time, He would have given them fins. Surely this foul weather was a judgment.
Bridgit settled back into her chair, draped herself with several shawls, and covered her legs with a thick blanket. Barely ten minutes passed before a sharp knock sounded at the door. “Drat the man,” she grumbled. “Why can’t he learn to leave well enough alone?” The knock came again, more impatiently this time.
“I’m coming,” she hissed. “Leave off that knocking.” She unbolted the door and stepped out into the passageway.
“I’m coming in,” said the earl. “I have no intention of conversing with you in the passageway like a servant.”
“This is the first good sleep she’s had in days,” Bridgit objected.
“That may well be, but the only time I’m allowed to enjoy my wife’s company is when I come unbidden to her cabin.” He peered at the sleeping girl. “I begin to wonder if she will ever rise from that bed.”
“The countess is a lot stronger than you think, but it’s a miracle she hasn’t died, what with being locked up in this cold, damp cabin and her used to nothing but hot breezes.”
“She’ll have to get used to the cold when she gets to Scotland.”
“But she ought to do it gradually, and not while she’s so sick. Please, sir, let me have a heater. It’s getting colder every day and we still have some weeks to go yet.” When Gowan looked mulishly at his sleeping wife, Bridgit added, “It may be the only way to get her to Scotland alive.”
“She doesn’t look very good,” he agreed. “Are you sure she’s all right?”
“The laudanum makes her breath heavy, but she can’t sleep without it.”
“Is she still carrying on about that outlaw?” he asked bitterly.
“Mostly she talks about you.”
“You don’t have to tell me what she says,” Gowan growled. “I heard quite enough that first night. She has some hard lessons ahead.”
“I hope your lordship means to take pity on her.”
“I’m not going to beat her, if that’s what you mean. But she will have to learn that I’m her husband and that I insist upon being treated with respect.”
“I’ve been trying to bring her around to that, sir. Over and over I’ve told her the young captain had no right to steal her away from her rightful husband. You have to respect God’s laws, I tell her, and abide by your father’s decision.”
“And what does she say?”
“It’s not so much what she says as what she does. She begins to cry and talk about your murdering that poor boy.”
“Have the kindness to refrain from calling me a murderer,” Gowan ordered with cold fury. “That poor boy was a condemned killer and an international outlaw. Had he been taken alive, his death would certainly have been prolonged and considerably more painful. You might even say that I did him a service, though an unintentional one, in giving him a quick end.”
“I’m sure he would agree with you,” said Bridgit persevering in spite of the hopelessness of her task. “But the countess doesn’t see it that way, and while she so sick it’s hard to make her see reason.”
“She must be made to understand.”
“She has to get well first, and she can’t when she’s wrapped up in a dozen quilts, her wits chattering in
her head, and her body shaken by the sickness.”
“You can have your infernal heater, but see that you don’t set the ship on fire.”
“I know how to use a heater,” Bridgit replied stiffly. “Probably better than those wicked devils you have running this ship.”
“If you did your work as well as those wicked devils, the countess would be sitting up in her bed and inviting me to spend the evening at her side instead of looking like she’s ready for a winding sheet.”
“You can thank me that she hasn’t been laid out already,” said Bridgit, firing up. “And we’re not home yet, not by a long shot.”
Chapter 35
After long hours of silence, faint sounds of movement within the house brought Smith awake; he yawned silently, and with stiff, noiseless movements walked over to the window. Already the first orange and pink rays of sunlight were lightening the surface of the sea. Another day was beginning; another night-long vigil had come to an end.
Smith’s gaze went to the huge bed on which Brent lay motionless, his life hanging by the fragile thread that had kept him alive these past weeks. They kept a constant watch over him, the doctor and Pedro by day and Smith by night. Every sound, every shuddering breath, brought one of them to his side.
“I don’t know how he holds on,” the doctor remarked in amazement several times a day.
“I told you the captain wouldn’t die,” Smith always replied.
“But he’s just as near dead as he was when that bullet tore into his back,” the doctor would argue.
“He’ll live.”
“Maybe.”
Chapter 36
Unable to sit still for more than a minute, Summer wandered aimlessly about the cabin, fidgeting with anything within her reach and biting her lips until they were ready to bleed. She pulled at the tie of her best robe, a loose-fitting, frilly lace wrapper of bright yellow.
“If you don’t calm yourself, milady, you’ll be worn out before the earl gets here,” warned Bridgit.
“I’m too nervous,” Summer insisted, her drawn face and sunken eyes giving her the look of a tormented spirit.
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