“He’s right, Justin,” Michael said. “It would be next to impossible to remove Merriana and Charles without endangering their lives.”
Justin stared intently at each of the men opposing him, and although his expression was so calm as to verge on remoteness, his mind was racing. They were right. He realized that. He also realized that he was too deeply involved emotionally to make the type of rational decision that was required in such a situation. Had he kept Merriana safe, she would not now be on a ship which was, he had no doubt, intended to carry her to her death. With such a burden of guilt, he wasn’t the person to decide on the best plan to rescue her.
Justin looked straight into the eyes of the young sea captain. “You have a plan,” he said. It was a statement rather than a question, but the captain nodded his head.
“It will require somebody getting onto that ship and getting locked in with the young woman and her brother,” the captain told Justin. “Can you do that?”
“I can,” Justin said. “You also mentioned a price.”
The captain’s brows shot up. “You may not want to agree to what I’ll be asking.”
“Whatever it takes, I’ll agree.”
“I want the man who took them on board.”
Justin heard Tom’s swift intake of air and Michael’s cough. He ignored both of them, choosing instead to stare at this stranger who was their best chance to save Merriana. What he saw in the man’s eyes convinced him that he’d better accept the terms. He nodded once. “You help us save Merriana and Charles and you can have the whole damned crew as far as I’m concerned.”
“Very well,” the captain said calmly. “I’ll leave the details of your imminent capture up to you, but you’ll need to know the rest of the plan. Here’s what I have in mind.”
Chapter 30
Merriana was no fool, but she was finding that counting one’s life as over was not something that the mind accepted readily. She knew, logically, that both she and Charles were in grave danger, but on a deeper level, she had never really believed, not even as she was being forced to board a strange ship, that they would both die in the near future.
Not until she saw Charles.
The man she thought of as Lucifer had led her, not especially gently, onto the ship named the Charlestown Belle where he said Charles was being held. His hand had gripped the soft tissue of her upper arm so tightly while he guided her up the gangplank that Merriana had felt tears spring to her eyes, but she fought them back, not willing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her pain.
He had nodded a dour greeting to several of the sailors who stood in strategic positions around the ship, their firearms and knives in ready view, and they had nodded back. Some glanced at Merriana as though she were of no more importance to them than a bag of flour being loaded for their journey, while others appeared to be stripping her with their leering and lusty eyes. But not one looked as though he would lift a finger for anything but his own personal gain. She would receive no help from that quarter.
Her captor guided her with hurried steps down a stairway and into a narrow hall where he soon stopped beside a closed door. He released her arm long enough to pull a key from his pocket and unlock the door. With his hand on the latch, he turned to her with an ominous smile. “Prepare yourself, my dear. Your beloved brother is anxiously awaiting your presence.” He then opened the door and pushed her ahead of him into the small room.
It took a few seconds for Merriana’s eyes to adjust to the dimness of the cabin, for although there was a porthole, it was covered with a piece of tightly woven cloth that blocked most of the sun’s rays. Then she saw Charles.
She should, Merriana was to think later, have screamed or fainted or run to her brother’s side, as a properly raised young woman of her station would have done. Instead, without even realizing what her intentions were, she spun and slapped the face of their captor with all the strength she possessed.
Merriana was as surprised as he at her actions, and it was obvious that he was very surprised. She looked into his eyes and saw there his momentary bewilderment, followed by a glimmer of respect. Anger quickly supplanted both. He grabbed her wrist in a punishing grip. “I understand your sentiments, little cousin,” he said. Although soft, his voice contained an underlying note of danger that might well have terrified Merriana under other circumstances. His voice hardened as he continued. “I would strongly recommend that you not try anything of that nature again.”
“Or you’ll what? Kill me?”
He laughed softly then, genuine amusement clear in his voice. “It’s too bad I have to do that anyway. I could almost like you, I believe, and there are few people in this world I can say that about.”
“I’m deeply honored,” Merriana said, sneering. “Let go of me. I want to go to Charles.”
He laughed again. “Your wish is my command,” he taunted her, but he released her wrist anyway, and Merriana slowly walked the few steps to the bunk where Charles lay. She feared she would find him already dead. But he was not. His breath was shallow and slow, but he breathed. Both eyes were black in a face that was almost solidly bruised. Dried blood coated his lips where his teeth had broken the skin, and his mouth was so swollen that had she not known this man was her brother, she might not have recognized him.
“I want a basin of water,” Merriana informed their captor without turning to look at him, “and some clean rags and some ointment if you have it.”
“Very well,” the man behind her replied. “But you’ll only hurt him more if you try to do too much for him.”
Merriana turned to glare at him. “Why?” she asked, her eyes sparking with anger. “Why did you do this to him?”
But it was Charles who answered. Merriana’s voice had apparently reached through the layers of his pain and he managed to croak through swollen lips: “I didn’t tell him Merriana. I never told him where you were.”
Merriana quickly knelt beside her brother, softly brushing his hair back from his bruised forehead. “Hush Charles,” she crooned to him softly. “Don’t try to talk, my dear. I know you didn’t tell him. I know you never would. Go back to sleep dearest. Rest a while longer.”
Charles either obeyed her command or lost his fragile grip on consciousness, for she saw that he was no longer trying to communicate with her.
“I’ll need some brandy or wine and some sort of broth to feed him when he wakes again,” she informed the man who still stood by the door, watching her closely.
“I’ll see that you get what you need,” he told her calmly.
“How did you find me?” she asked him.
The man she thought of as Lucifer flashed one of his more unpleasant smiles. “In the underbelly of this city,” he said softly, “as in all others, there are rats watching the rats who are watching other rats. It’s all a matter of knowing which rat to offer the cheese to.”
“I don’t understand,” Merriana told him.
“Nor did I expect that you would, little cousin,” he replied. “Suffice it to say that I hired a man to watch other men who had been hired to find you. Your whereabouts, it seems, was of interest to others besides me.”
Merriana shook her head, deciding not to waste time trying to make sense of his silly riddles, and the man smiled again. “I’ll send someone with the items you asked for,” he said as he stepped through the door and locked it behind him.
Alone, Merriana felt her courage flagging. To put on a brave front when confronted with an enemy was one thing, but to feel courageous when left alone and responsible for the well-being of her badly beaten brother was quite beyond her capabilities. She allowed a couple of tears born of terror and a bit of self-pity to roll unheeded down her cheeks before attempting to pull herself together. She began looking around the cabin in hopes of finding some way to make both Charles and herself more comfortable in the hours that lay ahead.
Their quarters had been stripped of anything that might conceivably have been used as a weapon. Charles’s bunk, a table and chair bol
ted to the floor, and a sea chest at the end of the bunk were the sole furnishings of the cabin. She quickly opened the chest and found only two relatively clean blankets, one of which she folded to form a pillow for Charles. His eyes fluttered as she tenderly lifted his head to scoot the blanket under it, but he didn’t stir beyond that, leaving Merriana to fear that his injuries were more serious than those she could see.
With trembling fingers, she unfastened his shirt and pulled it back so that she could examine him more closely, and the bruises she saw convinced her that he had been kicked in the ribs several times. She feared that he’d sustained serious internal injuries, but those would be beyond her capabilities to detect.
Only a few minutes passed before Merriana heard a key turning in the lock, and two sailors entered, one carrying a bucket of water and some clean rags, while the second carried a tray covered with a dingy cloth. One of the men did no more than glance at Merriana, but the other flashed her a leering, near toothless grin while his narrowed eyes eagerly skimmed her body, appearing to look right through her rumpled muslin gown.
Merriana had seen looks like that before, but not often, and never when she was alone and unprotected. She felt her own eyes widen with fear and her breath catch low in her chest as she backed slowly toward the bunk where Charles lay unconscious.
“None of that now, Arny,” the first sailor snarled at his companion. “We’re here to deliver food and water and nothin’ else, and ye best not be gittin’ any other ideas.”
The sailor who’d been addressed as Arny shrugged. “Now, there ain’t no laws agin lookin’, is there, Mick? And the gal there is sure worth lookin’ at. I don’t think I’ve ever seen hair that color before. It’s yeller as butter.”
“And yer brain is as soft as butter, Arny. I know that look on yer face, but this gal don’t belong to us. She belongs to that pretty blond bastard, and he don’t look like the sharin’ kind to me. Now, let’s get out of here before ye lose yer head, cause I got a feelin’ if ye do that and the cap’n ever finds out, ye’ll be losin’ something that means a lot more to ye.”
“And who’s going to tell ’im?”
The first sailor sighed. “The gal, for one. Look at her, man. She may be cringing now, but if you believe she wouldn’t fight ye, then ye’re dumber than I think ye are. I’ve seen her kind before, and they don’t take kindly to men like you, or anything men like you has got to offer ’em. Now come on!”
“Oh, all right,” Arny agreed ungraciously as he licked his thin lips. “But I don’t see what we’re saving her fer. Every man on this ship knows her and her brother are going overboard as soon as we get out to sea.”
“Maybe,” his companion agreed. “But that don’t mean she belongs to you. Are ye coming? Because if ye’re not, I’m leavin’ without ye. The cap’n knows where we are, and if we don’t show our ugly mugs on deck pretty soon, I’ve got an idea he’ll be lookin’ fer us.”
Such logic seemed at last to reach beyond Arny’s lust, and he finally turned toward the door with a grumbled “All right, all right.” But he made sure he was the last to exit, and just before he closed the door behind him, he flashed Merriana a final leering smile and a broad wink.
Before that moment, Merriana would not have believed she could feel such relief upon hearing a key turn in the lock of her own prison, and she quickly dropped onto the end of Charles’s bunk, too weak from fright to stand any longer.
Long moments passed before her pounding heart began to slow and she was able to stand and walk to the table where the sailors had left her supplies. On the food tray she found a loaf of bread, some cheese, a wooden bowl filled with hot broth, a bottle of wine, and a container of relatively fresh water. The eating utensils consisted of a spoon and two tin cups, one of which Merriana quickly filled with water and carried to Charles. Bathing his wounds, she decided, was less important than getting some sustenance into his body as quickly as possible.
She had feared that she would not be able to get Charles to drink, but when she lifted his head and placed the cup to his lips, he began to drink in great gulps, as though his thirst was overwhelming. When he had finished the entire cup, he opened his eyes and tried to smile, but his swollen lips made the gesture appear more in the nature of a grimace.
“Don’t try to talk, Charles,” Merriana told him. “You’re very weak and should save your strength for eating. I have some broth that I’m going to feed you, and you must try to eat it, even if you don’t feel hungry. You need food to help you rebuild your strength.”
Even as she formed the words, Merriana was wondering if it would not be more merciful to allow Charles to remain unconscious. She realized there was no chance he could regain enough strength to prevent their deaths. At the same time, from all she’d ever heard of the exploits of De la Nuit, she was convinced he wouldn’t wish to give up as long as a thread of hope remained.
Charles blinked his eyes once to indicate he understood Merriana’s words, and he took the broth slowly as she lifted the spoon to his mouth, but he had eaten scarcely half of the bowl before his head collapsed back onto the pillow and he appeared to fall into a deep and exhausted sleep.
Outside of sponging Charles’s face gently with the tepid water to remove the dried blood, there was little Merriana could do for him and so she finally sat down at the table, broke off portions of the bread and cheese, and poured herself some wine. Her head was beginning to ache, and she put her hand back to gingerly touch the knot that still protruded through her hair. It felt almost as large as it had when she had regained consciousness in her cousin’s carriage that morning, and she flinched as her fingers gently traced its contours.
But gentle or no, her touch had set the lump to aching, and Merriana took a long drink of wine in the hopes that it would ease her discomfort. It did, in addition to relaxing her, and Merriana was surprised to feel the sudden ease of muscles that had been tensed for hours. She decided to rest her head on the table for a few seconds and then perhaps to rest her eyes for a moment. She would never have believed that she could drift off to sleep at such a time, but then she had never had occasion to experience the extreme potency of wine when mixed with exhaustion, fear, and dread.
Merriana had no way of knowing how long she’d been sleeping when she was aroused by the sounds of a key turning in the door again, but the brightness of the sun seemed to have dimmed beyond the cloth-covered porthole. Dread returned in a flash, and she jumped to her feet and moved to stand beside her still-sleeping brother as the door latch was lifted.
The door swung open slowly, and Merriana’s heart plummeted as she saw that the sailor named Arny had returned, this time alone. Her gaze flew to Charles, but she had known without looking that he couldn’t help her. His breathing was deeper than ever, and Merriana’s concern for her own safety was momentarily supplanted by her fear that Charles was slipping away from her. But she immediately realized that worries about her own well-being were going to have to take precedence. Arny had stepped inside the cabin and was once again turning the key in the lock, this time locking them in together.
Merriana licked her dry lips and tried to force her thoughts into some semblance of order. It was up to her to save herself, and she wasn’t sure she could do it. If only she had a weapon.
“Surprise will be your strongest weapon,” Vidal had told her near the beginning of their sessions on self-defense. “Run if you can. If you can’t, then never let your attacker know that you plan to defend yourself until he is close enough for you to strike out at him. That way he won’t be on his guard, and you’ll have a precious second or two to inflict damage before he realizes what you’re doing.”
Well, Merriana decided, if she was going to have the advantage of surprise when she attacked Arny, she would first have to convince him of his welcome. She tried to force her taut lips to curve up at the corners, but only a fool, she thought despairingly, would suppose for a moment that she was actually smiling.
“Now, that purty little sm
ile is just what I’d expected to see,” the sailor exclaimed with a self-satisfied smirk. “Old Mick thought ye’d be unfriendly, but I knowed better. I was always one to be able to tell when a gal favored me. Of course, it would have been just as much fun if ye hadn’t, because I always did enjoy a little fight, but this way will be quieter.”
He still stood by the door, staring and smirking and giving Merriana ample time to wonder if she should scream for help.
“Scream,” Henri had told her, “only if you’re positive that someone is both close enough to hear you and then capable of helping you. Otherwise, save your wind for protecting yourself.”
Merriana glanced at the locked door. Assuming that a scream would carry beyond the walls of this cabin, how long, she wondered, would it take someone to break down that door—and would anyone even care enough to bother? She decided to save her energies for fighting.
“Ye’re a quiet one, ain’t ye?” Arny asked as his eyes roamed from Merriana’s tersely smiling lips down to her bosom. She breathed a silent prayer of thanks that she had decided to wear a long-sleeved, high-necked gown for her apple-gathering that morning. If Arny got close enough to attempt to rip her clothes off, his job would be rendered a bit more difficult by those features.
But Arny’s first interest in clothing seemed to be with his own. Merriana noted with horror that the man was already unbuttoning his breeches, and all of Vidal’s and Henri’s pointers on protecting herself were instantly supplanted by panic. She began glancing frantically around the room for a weapon she could use to supplement her own insubstantial skills, but nothing appeared large or heavy enough to be effective against a man of such obvious strength. The only thing that might be of any use whatsoever, she decided, was the wooden bucket, and it was still half-filled with water.
“What about washing?” Merriana croaked, grasping for some reason, however feeble it might be, to delay the man’s planned activities.
“Washing?” Arny repeated in an amazed tone. He had just dropped his pants around his ankles but now stood gaping at Merriana as though she had turned into a toad.
The Mysterious Merriana Page 25
