He gave her a lazy look, his eyes glittering.
“I wouldn’t have you put your hands on me.” But her voice was breathless and high-pitched.
“You’d rather all the men on the ship?”
“I’d rather not be handled at all.”
He got up out of his chair.
She set down her napkin. “What are you doing?” Her voice shook.
He regarded her, using one finger to trace his jaw. “I can’t be making idle threats, now can I, Miss Bennet? If I say I’m going to do something, I’d better follow through.”
She stood up too, and took several steps back from him, her heart starting to speed up. She was frightened of this man, and she hated him—his violence, his rudeness, his insouciance. But it wasn’t only fear that was causing her pulse to race. Some part of her was almost eager to see what it was he was talking about, to be touched by him.
He closed the distance between them.
She made a half-hearted attempt to get away, but he reached out and stopped her.
Catching her arm, he tugged her close.
“Stop it,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“That’s the thing, Miss Bennet,” he said in a gravelly voice, “they won’t stop. No matter how you plead or scream or beg, they won’t stop.”
“Fine,” she said, trying to extricate herself from his grasp. “I understand now. Please let me go.”
His hand moved from her arm to her waist, and he encircled her.
Oh, my. His arm was so… thick. And warm. And strong. She let out a little whimper.
He lowered his face, putting his lips against her ear. “That won’t work. Asking to be let go.” He tightened his grasp.
She was pressed up against his body now, and he was firm and huge and unyielding. A trembling breath escaped her lips.
“They won’t care,” he continued, his voice a dark whisper, “that you’re small and soft and helpless. That will only drive them on. That will only…” His voice cracked. “Excite them.”
She slammed her eyes shut.
Abruptly, he let her go.
She stumbled, barely retaining her balance. She hadn’t realized how much she was leaning into him.
He went back to his chair and sat down, almost angrily.
She gripped the back of the chair to steady herself.
He cleared his throat. “I apologize for that. It was indecorous. Please continue your dinner. I promise I will not…” He looked up at her and then away.
She sat down. Her hands were shaking.
* * *
After dinner, he said that he would take her up to the deck, so that she could get some fresh air. She tried not to feel pathetically grateful for this small kindness, because he didn’t deserve that from her. He was clearly a dreadful man, and he’d manhandled her during dinner, which had been absolutely awful. She didn’t want that to happen ever again. At least, so she told herself. Because to have enjoyed being touched by this villain was…
Well, she wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to enjoy the evening air and the salty breeze and the night sky. She was going to do her best to forget that he was even there.
But once on the deck of the ship, she looked off into the distance and saw another ship on the horizon. A man was tied to the mast of the other ship, and he was yelling. They were too far away to make out his words, but she could hear him. She turned to Darcy in horror. “What is that? Are you responsible for that?”
“The captain of the other ship thought he could be a hero, and he needed to be taught a lesson,” said Darcy. “This displeases you? I could have killed him.”
She shook her head. “You’re a liar on top of everything else.”
He raised both eyebrows. “What are you on about?”
She pointed to the ship. “You told me that they never resist.”
He sighed. “Well, usually they don’t.”
“Like they resisted on the ship that I was sailing on.”
“What happened on your ship was really an unfortunate accident, Miss Bennet. Truly, I don’t make it my business to go around and kill everyone on every ship I board.”
“No? That’s what pirates do, isn’t it? And that’s what you are. You’re a ruthless killer, and I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t want to be near you.”
He pressed his lips into a firm line. “Am I to take this to mean that you don’t want to continue your little walk on the deck?”
She stopped breathing. She squeezed her eyes shut. She looked out at the ship again, and she let out her breath. “No,” she muttered, defeated. “No, I should like to stay out in the fresh air for a bit if you don’t mind.” She was weak and horrid. If she had any principles, she would have stuck to them and stayed locked in her cabin, away from this terrible man. He was a monster, really, killing people left and right—
“Listen, Miss Bennet,” he said, stepping closer to her. “Everyone’s got to die sometime. And you mustn’t think that the people on your own ship were angels. Most of them were sailing men, and they had done their fair share of terrible things, let me assure you. In some ways, they deserved it.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t have to kill them. You could have simply left.”
“No, no,” he said. “I couldn’t very well do that. Because they would talk about what I’d done, and my disguise would be laid bare.”
“I thought notoriety was supposed to be good for a pirate.”
“Not for me. How am I to trick people if everyone knows about the trick?”
“Well, it seems to me that the captains of those ships could get home and start talking to the East India Company, who would tell them they don’t employ a man like you, and then your whole scheme would be ruined anyway.”
He pressed his lips together.
She gave him a triumphant look, feeling as if she’d scored a point.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “But you’d be surprised how long something like that might take to actually come about. By the time I’m discovered, I’ll have made my fortune, and I’ll be back home in England. I don’t intend to be a pirate forever.”
She shook her head at him in disgust. “You’ll use your blood money to resurrect your estate, then? You’re an evil man, and I hope that someone stops you, that someone kills you for all the people that you have killed.”
He seized her by the wrist and pulled her towards the railing. “Perhaps you should get some fresh air and enjoy the view in silence, Miss Bennet.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but he held it firmly. His grip was tight. It hurt a little. She looked out over the ocean, the choppy waves, the dark sky, and she had to admit it felt good to have a breeze on her face. Maybe it would be smarter to keep her mouth shut, after all. She took several deep breaths, filling her lungs with sea air.
She heard the rumble of a deep voice behind her, and she turned to see that Mackie had approached Darcy.
“Speak up, Mackie,” said Darcy, annoyed. “You’re mumbling.”
“I’m trying to keep the other men from hearing,” said Mackie. “And you might look to the girl as well for that, because she’s yelling at you and they can all hear her. You wouldn’t let one of the men talk to you so. Why are you letting her speak out?”
Darcy’s nostrils flared. “Listen, man, if you have nothing better—”
“I’m not asking myself, I’m not, Cap’n. I’m only saying that’s what the men’ll be saying if you aren’t careful.”
Elizabeth swallowed, looking around the deck. She didn’t see any of the men at first, but then she spotted them across the ship, on the other side of the main mast. They were staring at her, their eyes shadowed, their chins covered in beards. They looked… dirty. She felt fear flood her, and it was nothing like the feeling earlier when Darcy had talked to her about what the men might do. That had been exciting somehow. This was only terrifying, frightening in a way that she’d never even considered before. She couldn’t
even let herself fully consider it. When she started to imagine, she shied away from the thought in horror.
She stepped closer to Darcy.
He looked down at her.
“I’m-I’m sorry if I said anything… Please don’t be angry with me,” she said. “Don’t remove your protection.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been through quite a shock, Miss Bennet. I’m sure you don’t mean half the things you say.”
* * *
That night, after locking Miss Bennet away for the night, he paced the cabin for a while, unsure of why he had spent so much time defending himself to Miss Bennet’s accusations. He didn’t care what she said, not at all. He didn’t care if she thought he was a ruthless murderer. Her opinion of him mattered less than the opinion of seagulls. So, why had he spent so much time talking to her about it?
Mackie was right. It wasn’t a good precedent to set, letting her openly disagree with him on the deck of the ship. He had allowed her to make him look weak. And the funny thing about it was, it was all his own fault. After her first accusation, he shut her up rather easily, threatening to lock her back up. If he’d just kept his mouth shut, the whole exchange would have been over.
But no, he’d had to launch into that little spiel about everyone having to die someday, about the men deserving it.
He wondered why it found it necessary to say such things to her.
Maybe it wasn’t her he was trying to convince. Maybe it was himself. Maybe he wanted to clear his own conscience.
He wasn’t the only man on earth who’d had to kill for some reason or other, he knew. He’d been lucky enough to avoid the wars, but that didn’t mean that other men, even his own cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, hadn’t had to fight, cutting men down by the dozens, barely escaping with their lives themselves.
Once, he had been drinking in a pub in England, and he’d sat down to talk with another man, who was deep in his cups, talking about how he had dreams about it. About how he would wake up unable to breathe, seeing the men racing at him with their swords drawn, terrified for his life.
“But that wasn’t the worst of it,” this man had said. “The worst is remembering the ones I killed. Their eyes. I always remember the look in their eyes. How the spark was there, and then… then… gone.”
Later, the man had passed out on the table and someone had to be called to get him home. He’d been incredibly drunk.
But anyway, Darcy knew that killing was a thing that men sometimes had to do. Much was made of the idea that killing in war was noble and righteous, doing a service for one’s country and all that.
But the way Darcy saw it, it was all the same. People fought wars because they wanted more land. Well, not people, but kings and whatever Napoleon considered himself. They wanted to expand their kingdoms. So, they went out and tried to take land by killing people. And if the other kings—whose fathers had killed people for their land—didn’t like that, they started killing people to stop it, to keep the land themselves.
There wasn’t anything noble or righteous about it. It was all just the same land, passing back and forth from king to king over and over again.
Well, Darcy wanted his land back. He wanted the land that he’d gambled away, and he wanted enough money to secure Pemberley, and to possibly find himself a wife, so that he could have an heir, and he could pass the whole business down.
So, he had to kill some people to get the money to get that land.
He wasn’t a king, but it was all the same in the end, wasn’t it? Kings had more land than men like him, but it was all the same. He was a miniature version of a king. There would be less blood on his hands in the end.
And that all made sense, and made him feel a bit better about what he’d done.
But it didn’t mean that it cleared his conscience entirely, because it didn’t.
And he knew what that fellow had meant when he went on about the eyes. He’d seen the light go out behind men’s pupils, and it haunted him sometimes. A day like that one on Miss Bennet’s ship, when there had been so much bloodshed, the ship running red with blood…
He felt cold all of the sudden.
Pulling a blanket around his shoulders, he settled down on the little cushions he’d constructed for himself and began assembling the things he’d need to smoke opium.
He didn’t have anything like a proper opium den, but he did have a decent lamp, and a proper pipe. He could recline on the cushions and hold the pipe over the lamp, and let the ecstasy wash over him.
There was nothing like smoking opium, nothing at all. It was bliss, pure joy, the most wondrous thing he’d ever experienced. He didn’t do it too often, because he had heard tales of dependency, and he wanted to be careful. But there were times when he had to do it, or he thought he might lose his mind.
And there were times when he did it just because he enjoyed it.
There was something pure and perfect about being lost in the darkness and warmth, only seeing the beautiful patterns cast by the decorations on the lamp, and drifting into a state of oblivion.
Thinking of it made his mouth dry with anticipation.
Surely, opium was the cure for all ills, the most wonderful thing on God’s green earth.
* * *
Elizabeth awoke from a deep sleep to the scrape of her door opening. She sat up straight on her bed roll. “Hello?” she said into the darkness.
The door opened, and a sliver of light from outside widened, spilling into the room.
She gathered the covers tight against her chest.
Two men stepped inside the room. She didn’t know who they were. She had seen them before. She thought they were among the men who had been on the deck that night, who had watched her with shadowed eyes. But she didn’t know their names.
“What do you want?” she said, her voice shaking.
One of the men scrunched up his face. “Hush now, missy. It’ll be better for all of us if you keep your tongue in your head.”
“No,” she said. “What are you going to do? I’m under the captain’s protection, you know, and if you hurt me—”
The other man darted across the room and put his hand over her mouth. “Shh, now.” He nodded at his friend. “Rip off a bit of the bottom of her dress there. We’ll shove it in her mouth.”
The first man knelt down and grabbed at her skirt.
She kicked him.
He made a face, and seized both of her feet, holding them in place. “Now, look, missy, it’s not as if this is how we’re wanting to have a woman, mind you. It’s only that the knowledge of you being down here has been driving us both wild with wanting, and then seeing you on the deck tonight, so pretty… Well, you can hardly blame us for taking what it is we need. We’ve been cooped up on this ship for too long, and you’re too pretty. So, our apologies, but it’s the only thing that can happen.”
Her heart began to race. This was happening. All the threats from Darcy hadn’t been mere bluster, and now she was really going to be ravished right here in this cabin and—
No.
She elbowed the man who had his hand over her mouth.
He let go, yelping.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, putting everything she had into it. She screamed loud enough to wake the entire ship. Someone would come and put a stop to this.
CHAPTER FOUR
Darcy heard the scream, but he didn’t care.
He had finished smoking some time ago. He didn’t know how long. It was impossible to gauge when he was under the influence of the opium, floating here in this perfect cloud of warmth and happiness and pleasure. Time didn’t matter in a world like this. Nothing mattered. Here, he was able to contemplate the fact that everything in the universe was connected, that the ship and the water and the men were made from the same building blocks, and that they all flowed into each other. Nothing was important, because everything was one. So nothing bad could happen, not if everything just flowed from one state to another.
Hi
s room was filled with intricate shadows cast by the ornate decorations on the lamp. They looked like vines and flowers, beautiful flowers, and when he gazed up at them, he could see that they were moving in the breeze.
Or maybe that was just the rocking of the ship.
Whatever the case, it didn’t matter.
It was beautiful here.
It was wonderful here.
He was basking in the most perfect and excellent place in all of the world, and nothing could touch him.
* * *
The man behind Elizabeth let out a string of curses and then tugged her body against his again. This time he pinned her arms to her sides. “No more of that.”
The other man, the apologetic one, stuffed a wad of fabric from the skirt of her dress into her mouth. “Sorry about this, missy. Really, I am.” He was still holding her legs in place with one hand.
She struggled.
“Now, don’t do that,” said the voice behind her. “Because Finn here is going to cut open your dress, and if you’re squirming about like that, he might nick your pretty skin.”
Elizabeth was choking on panic. She could hardly breathe around the gag in her mouth, and she couldn’t move her body because the two men were holding onto it so tightly. She wanted to buck and writhe and kick until she was free.
But Finn pulled out a knife, and its blade glinted in the light from the open door.
She was still.
Finn leaned over her, grabbing the bodice of her dress and bringing the knife down to the fabric.
She screamed again. It was muffled, but it was still loud.
The knife jerked in Finn’s hand. “Don’t do that!” he said.
And then there was a noise from the door.
She looked over to see that someone had arrived, but it wasn’t Darcy, it was a throng of four or five other men from the ship. They were pushing their way inside the room.
“Now, what have we here?” said one.
“Why it’s Finn Welch and Eli Brown,” said another. “I don’t think anyone ever taught them that it’s nice to share.”
Finn turned, letting go of her feet, and pointing the knife at the newcomers. “Now, we were here first, boys, and we’ve done all the work getting her subdued.”
The Dread Mr. Darcy Page 4
