Bonds, Parris Afton

by The Flash of the Firefly

  Anne lay there, tasting the salty tang of blood on her lips. Her head rang, and it was some moments before she grew vaguely aware that the motion of the ship had changed, that the dying sun's rays no longer slanted through the bay window from the same direction.

  Sweet Jesus, he meant what he had said! Brant was taking her with him into the Gulf of Mexico! She had to get away!

  Anne stumbled to her feet, clutching at the desk until she had steadied herself against the pitch of the ship. When she regained her sea legs, she crossed to the door and cautiously opened it. Tucker switched his musket to the other arm and ogled her openly. "I―I left my baggage on deck," Anne said.

  "Cap'n said no one was to go in or out of his cabin." A slow smile was beginning to stretch below the large nose, revealing scum encrusted on teeth that were but stubs.

  Anne took a deep breath, regretting it immediately, as the man's stench washed over her. But she returned his smile and laid a hand on his sleeve. "I know that, but I was hoping to change into something―" she looked down at the ugly brown homespun and looked backup at Tucker invitingly―"something prettier."

  Momentarily confused, Tucker picked his nose as he weighed temptation against fear of the captain. "Perhaps I shall need help in changing," Anne added.

  "You got five minutes," Tucker growled, but desire flamed in the insect eyes. "Then I call the Cap'n."

  Anne hurried down the companionway, descending the shallow stairs of the quarter deck two at a time. Hugging the side of the wall, she slowed her pace, though her heart beat like a drum. What if Brant came back for her now?

  Just beyond, she could see a score or more of men engaged in the task of getting the brig under way. From the deck above her Anne heard Brant shout, "Hard helm to starboard, Mr. Garret," and the order was passed on down from the mates to the common seamen, who called and crawled across the yards. Above Anne the foresails still shivered in the crosswind as the main and mizzen topsails were pulled forward on the starboard.

  Just beyond, she could see the darkened shore line receding with each wave. It had to be now. Quickly she unbuttoned the high-top boots, dropped her skirt, and shrugged out of her jacket so that she stood only in her camisole. Then, as the brig bore away to the leeward, Anne raced across the short span of deck to the railing, throwing one leg over, then the other. She plunged into the wintry water. For interminable seconds, she hung suspended beneath its icy surface, numbed.

  At last she floated upward, breaking free to the mountainous waves. Her feet kicked out swiftly. Her arms propelled her through the water with strokes long remembered from childhood years. Behind her she thought she heard a shout, and looked back to see Brant posed on the bulwarks before his body arched forward into the air.

  For the first time Anne smiled. For once she had the advantage. As a young girl there had not been a boy who had been able to out-swim her. Brant had wasted his energy and given himself a good ducking for nothing. The shoreline was only three hundred or so yards ahead, and Anne's strokes became surer. She laughed aloud with exultation, turning her head back to gloat.

  And her mouth dropped open in dismay. Brant had gained on her. She glanced in panic toward the shoreline. She still might make it. But Brant, at that point, had gained the advantage. For he had been rested while she had been weakened by exhaustion. Anne's sure, graceful strokes changed to wild thrashing as she panicked. She coughed, strangling on the salt water. But her determination to escape goaded her, and for some seconds she was able to maintain the distance between herself and her pursuer.

  Now she could hear the splash of Brant's more powerful strokes. And when she turned back to look this time, he was only a few yards' distance behind her. Unreasonable fear, such as she experienced the day he ran her to ground among the adobe ruins, seized her again. Her breathing grew ragged, her limbs paralyzed. She felt her hair seized―heard Brant's triumphant chuckle. She struck out then at Brant in frenzied thrashings, only to feel the solid impact of his fist against her jaw.

  Together they grappled, sinking below the aquamarine surface of the Gulf into a darker void. Brant's greater strength at last subdued her as he pinioned her within the embrace of his arms. It seemed to Anne that she died, giving herself up to the blackness that swallowed her, drawing from her the last vestiges of breath and rebellion.

  With the first sharp intake of air searing into her lungs like boiling oil came the return of consciousness. Splintered wood scraped into her flesh as she felt herself being hauled upward. Something warm and scratchy was draped over her nearly nude body.

  And as the four seamen rolled the longboat back toward the Seawasp, back to Anne's captivity, averting their eyes from the captured mermaid, Anne felt Brant's lips at her ear, heard his rasping whisper, "Did you think I'd let you go?" before blessed unconsciousness once more claimed her.

  When at last her eyes fluttered open, she found herself warmly ensconced in Brant's feathered bed. She could feel the turbulent pitching and rolling of the ship and knew one of the unpredictable Texas northers must have swept down into the Gulf waters. Yet within the cabin there was a protective coziness, and she snuggled deeper beneath the goosedown coverlet. Lazily, her gaze traveled over the cabin, coming to a halt with something akin to alarm at the figure that stood looking out the cabin's bay window, his hands clasped behind his back.

  In the dim light of the slowly swinging lantern Brant appeared almost handsome in a rakish sort of way, dressed as he was in the tight-fitting doeskin britches and white shirt with full sleeves. The shirt was open at the front, and the dark brown mat of hair seemed to emphasize the shirt's whiteness.

  What chance had she? A small sigh escaped Anne's unwilling lips, and Brant turned. His brows drew down in a scowl, and the full lower lip stretched thin. He crossed to the bed and stood looking down at her.

  "Why won't you let me go?" Anne asked. Her voice, ravaged by the seawater, sounded harsh in her ears, and she lay there trembling, in spite of her defiance.

  His gaze traveled slowly over her face, coming to rest on the deceiving gray eyes that hid her thoughts from him so well. He could read animal tracks like English but couldn't read her eyes. Would he ever understand this woman?

  When at last he spoke, it was not in answer to her question. "I've orders from the Secretary of the Navy which first must be carried out."

  Anne rolled to one elbow. Her hair draped over one nude shoulder. "When Colin finds out you've taken me, he'll have you swinging from your own yardarms!"

  Brant's smile was frightening. "On the contrary, he may thank me for sparing him the shrew he thought a lady." He bowed low and was gone, leaving her to stare in stormy dismay at the closing cabin door.

  Anne sat at the cushioned window seat. The book, Pope's translation of The Iliad, lay open in her lap. But her eyes were not on the words. Instead, her gaze swept over the panorama that presented itself from the cabin's bay window. The bright blue cloudless sky, the azure waves that rolled toward the distant Mexican shore, etched by tall green palms. Even within the cabin there wafted the balmy scent from the tropical coast line.

  The urge to leave the cabin, to be on deck and feel the bite of the salt air on her skin and the wind in her hair, was overpowering, and Anne sprang from the window seat, dropping .the book on the floor. She began to walk about the cabin, fingering the exotic wood of Brant's desk, the pewter bowl set into the commode, and his razor and hairbrush.

  The brig was thirteen days out of Galveston, and Anne was bored. Bored of eating by herself. Bored of her own company. Bored enough that she welcomed even Brant's presence―which was rare. During the day he busied himself on deck, and at night he returned late to the cabin, falling into exhausted sleep in the hammock he had had Ezra rig up. And for that, at least, she was grateful. For Brant made no move to take her, though often she felt his half-closed eyes surveying her from where he lay in the hammock, watching her as she brushed out her hair.

  Several times she had been tempted to leave the cabin for
even just a few minutes of fresh air. But she would recall the lazy way Brant's gaze had raked over her and his warning. "It was your idea to come aboard, sweet. I won't be responsible for my men's actions. You are the only woman among thirty-seven seamen, mostly riffraff, who've gone too long without a woman. It'd take only one sight of your display of charms―charms that I and God knows how many other men have sampled―and they'd rape you."

  "You ought to know about rape," she had snapped back, but Brant's warning was sufficient to cause her to keep to the cabin. That, and the ugly leer Tucker had cast at her the one time she had seen him since sailing. The seaman would not likely forget the trick she had played upon him nor the three days he had been confined to the brig below without food for his part in her escape attempt.

  There was a knock at the cabin door, and Anne turned, putting down Brant's hairbrush. "Yes?"

  "It's me―Ezra."

  She opened the door, and Ezra passed through, carrying a bucket of water in each hand. "You'd best enjoy your bath, miss. Our water is about exhausted. We'll be on rations until we can go ashore for fresh water."

  "And when's that to be?"

  A closed look covered Ezra's face. "That depends, miss."

  "On what?" Anne persisted. "The devil's horns, Ezra, whom would I shout your secret to here in the middle of the Gulf―the wind?"

  Ezra ignored her, setting the pails down, and Anne began pacing the room again. "I'm sorry," she said with her back to him. "I just wanted to talk. I'm―it gets lonely here sometimes."

  "All I can tell you, miss, is that we've orders to keep the enemy―Mexico―from Texas's south coast―and cause all the worry possible to Mexican shipping in the Gulf."

  "Then the Seawasp is a brig of war?"

  "No, the Seawasp was built in Boston for African slave trade by Brant's father. The first time Brant sailed under the Letters of Marque for General Sam he added the eight guns, two of 'em are eight pounders."

  "A slave ship!" That explained the ungodly stench that had reached her nostrils from below deck the few times she had ventured outside the cabin. It was a reek one never forgets―of sweat, human excrement, blood―and intangible elements such as fear and apathy and hate that leave their own peculiar odors as strongly as urine. There had been times when slave ships had put into Barbados―she had been at the dock―and the odor was just one of the things she thought she would never forget. The other was the haunted look in the eyes of the black men and women manacled like beasts.

  The gray eyes were hard as gunmetal. "Then the gallant Captain Powers is among other things a slave trader. I should have let Iron Eyes kill him there at the San Gabriel River!"

  "And what of your family's slaves?" Ezra asked.

  "That was diff―"

  "When are you going to stop looking at things through the eyes of a little girl?" he demanded. It was the first time Anne had seen the man angry. "And while we're at it," he continued, ''have you ever thought about why Sir―"

  "Ezra!"

  Both turned to see Brant in the doorway .Anne met his stony gaze unflinchingly, yet it was Ezra he addressed. "Look out's reported a strange sail beating in from seaward. Have Midshipman Elwood run up the Mexican flag. Man the guns―and clear the decks for action."

  After Ezra left, Brant went to the window and for some seconds peered through the brassbound telescope. Anne did not know whether to be relieved or angry at being ignored so. Only when he capped the telescope and laid it aside did she find the courage to speak. "Brant, let me go. Put me aboard the vessel you've sighted. Whatever its nationality, they'll honor my neutrality as a British subject."

  "No." He crossed to the door.

  "Brant―wait!" Anne ran the distance that separated them and clutched at his sleeve. "Can't you understand I don't love you? Let me go!" Tears filled her eyes. "Please―" and she broke off as a thought surfaced from the deepest recesses of her mind.

  "It was you," she suddenly accused. "You were the one who had the Tonkawa guards scatter Colin's belongings―so he couldn't take me with him. It was you, wasn't it? Why? Why?"

  Brant's face was white, and the muscles in the jaw were rigid. He shook her hand off his arm. "What do you do, Anne, when you want something bad enough?"

  Anne gasped, "And Pa-ha-yu-quosh― you had him abduct me?"

  Brant grabbed her by the shoulders and jerked her against him. "Do you think I'd trust any other man with something I wanted for myself?"

  He shoved her from him then, slamming the door behind him. Anne stared after him in amazement. She should have been furious that he had prevented her from running off with Colin. Yet Brant had wanted her badly enough to do something. And she had wanted Colin badly enough to forsake her husband. She had wanted him badly enough that just the memory of him had kept her alive those horrendous months with the Comanches. Could she in all honesty blame Brant when she was doing the same?

  She hurried to the window and picked up the telescope, uncapping it and holding it to her right eye. Tensely she watched as the Mexican schooner of war sailed closer, lured by the flag of her country. Then, at a distance of less than half a mile, it appeared the schooner suspected treachery and heeled over until her lee guns were almost under water.

  Thunder echoed throughout the Seawasp as her men let go a broadside from the Seawasp's starboard batteries. From somewhere above came Brant's muffled shout. "Hold your fire for closer quarters! Keep the fuses ready. Strike our colors!"

  The Mexican schooner, the Guerra, retorted with a volley of grape that took down some of the Seawasp's rigging. The brig shuddered from the shot. Now fear swept through Anne―fear that they all would be killed―or that she would find herself in a slavery much more degrading than that with which Brant had threatened her. And she was forced to acknowledge that at least Brant had never degraded her sexually―not even in his fiercest lovemaking.

  The Seawasp kept within the wake of the Mexican schooner, firing a volley of round that blasted away the Guerra's main top-gallant mast. A second and third volley unshipped one of the gun carriages, taking with it a chip off the after-part of the foremast.

  Anne watched in horror as the schooner's foremast fell and killed two men, the sails and rigging crumpling to the deck like a burial shroud. A final shot plowed through the schooner's hull, and the Seawasp gained on her weather quarter to within easy pistol shot to put a broadside over the exposed decks.

  Putting away the telescope, Anne watched with naked eye as the flag with the cactus and the eagle emblazoned on it slowly lowered in surrender.

  That she would never do. Never would she surrender to Brant.

  XXVII

  The parrot squawked raucously from its stand, interrupting the melodious strains of a guitar that floated from the palm-lined shore that stretched beyond the walls of the hacienda.

  The hacienda, just outside the perimeter of the Mexican town of Sisal, was deserted by its original occupants―Yucatan insurrectionists favorable to the Texas Republic, who had fled at the approach of Santa Anna's Centralist troops. And then, with the sighting of the Republic of Texas brig of war, those Centralist troops had prudently vacated Sisal rather than be shelled by the Seawasp.

  In some of the hacienda's rooms the seamen of the Seawasp slept off their weariness in beds, for the first time in weeks, while the venturesome had gone into Sisal to take advantage of the flashing, dark-eyed señoritas available there. The seamen still on duty carried supplies of fresh water, fruits, and smoked meats to the waiting longboats.

  Anne held out the last nut in her hand, and the macaw thrust its hooked beak at the proffered food. "Gracias, mujer linda, " it replied.

  With a wan smile Anne brushed her hands off on the red flowered skirt she had found in one of the upstairs bedrooms and moved off restlessly, wandering about the large sala. Her senses were strained and finely attuned to everything about her...to the coolness of the adobe-tiled floor beneath her bare feet, and the fragrant, heavy scents of the frangipani and hibiscus that wafted f
rom the open doors of the terrace. Just beyond the wrought iron gates a tropical moon rose over the blackness of the ocean, its beams silvering a pathway to the shore. Somewhere outside, a man's baritone voice joined the guitar.

  It should have been a place for a honeymoon, she thought. But here she was, a captive of a man who was as contemptuous of her as she was of him. And yet, he admitted wanting her, though he had not yet once touched her since she boarded the Seawasp.

  Perhaps it was the romantic atmosphere of the tropical hideaway, but her own mind strayed to the more intimate moments she had shared with Brant, conjuring up the vision of his splendidly formed body, feeling once again the ripple of his muscles beneath her palms and his husky voice whispering love words in her ear. And she knew that, though she did not love him, she wanted him also.

  Anne wandered to the open doors. She longed to go outside, if only for just a few minutes, to walk along the sand-pebbled beach, to be anywhere but in the same house with Brant. But he had refused her even this pleasure, had confined her to the hacienda with the excuse that it was too dangerous to be walking alone. She had almost been tempted to demand he Escort her, but she had been half afraid that he would. Even now, she could hear his voice from the open door of the study as he conversed with the various members of the crew who had come and gone in succession during the past hour.

  How long could she hold out against Brant―against her own physical desire for him? Surely up the coast toward Veracruz there must be English or American steamers putting into the port of San Juan de Ulla―some steamer that would be willing to take her aboard. Out of Mexico, out of Brant's hands, she could at least find some way of getting to England and Colin.

  With purposeful steps Anne made her way toward the study. Brant sat behind an enormous desk, his dark head bent over a sheaf of papers. The quill pen in his hand moved furiously, only to halt as he sensed her presence in the doorway. He looked up. The narrowed eyes regarded her steadily. "Yes?"