by Susan Ward
Trying to steady herself inside, she had the horrifying impression of how a fly must feel trapped on a pinwheel in a windstorm. Round and round, until the senses in her body blurred, until all thoughts, all reactions, became lost in the constant whirling.
Thump.
The crate hit hard a rock, bounced, and landed with a heavy drop into the sand.
Stillness.
Merry waited dumbly for the motion to start up again, her vision still spinning relentlessly. The hard drop had knocked the wind from her, but her arms and legs were moving.
She scrambled out. Springing to her feet, she began to run across the beach.
The path was less than ten yards away, and as each step brought her closer, she began to believe more and more in the possibility of escape.
That was easy. Really easy. Then, somewhere in the middle of her self-congratulations, she felt something grab hold of her legs. She was thrown forward into the earth.
As she tried to rise, a booted foot landed painfully atop her buttocks, forcing her back downward into the sand.
“Let me go,” Merry screamed, trying to wiggle free beneath the pirate’s leg.
“Hold still, you miserable wretch. I ought to feed you to the sharks. You don’t want to learn how little patience I have for the likes of you,” the boy-pirate warned calmly, moving his boot.
Furious, she scrambled on her belly until she did the only thing that came to her mind. She bit him. Desperately, she clamped her jaws shut around his calf.
The leg moved an angry jerk, dragging her across the sand like a rag doll.
“What the hell do you think that’ll accomplish?” he growled. She was unprepared for the painful grasp of his dark fingers that jerked her carelessly to her feet. “We can do this two ways, you little fool,” the boy pirate hissed, “quick and with a minimum of pain or...”
“Go to the devil,” Merry screamed, kicking him in the shin with all her might. “If you don’t let me go this instant I will see you hanging from the gallows by morning.”
The pirate ruthlessly clasped both her fists in one hand, jerking her several inches from the earth, and gave her a snapping shake to silence her.
“If you don’t stop that racket now, I will break both your arms with a single snap.”
To emphasize his words, his fingers tightened like iron bands around her wrists. Merry went limp from the pain.
“You’re hurting me,” Merry accused heatedly.
“What did you expect? You’ve been a damned nuisance so far."
How dare he blame her for his brutality?
“I suppose you wouldn’t mind being rough handled. Unhand me now, or be prepared to suffer the consequences.”
The boy’s smirk let her know just how greatly she’d failed in intimidating him, and how foolish she had sounded.
“Let me go,” she demanded again, replacing the dramatic, with cold menace. “Or you’ll be dead by morning.”
The other pirate reached them, huffing and puffing as he leaned forward, hands braced on his knees. His blond head tilted upward, and his large green eyes sparked with mirth. Smile lines fanned his youthful features as a lopsided grin held his lips.
“Quick as a salmon, ain’t he?” he laughed, tossing his long gold hair back over his shoulder. “Thought he’d be off to the sea before ye could get to him.”
“Do you think I’d let him scamper off to raise the militia?”
Frantic, Merry struggled violently against the iron hold of the pirate, trying to strike his companion with the wild motion of her legs. “I wasn’t going after the militia.”
“Weren’t ye now? Of course ye were, you little maggot. Would have tried it meself if I were in yer shoes. The militia is camped on the other side of Falmouth, in case ye weren’t knowing that.” The jovial pirate laughed good-naturedly. “So ye see, it’s just ye, us and the owls. We just want to be having a talk with ye.”
A talk. Did they think her a fool? “This is all a mistake. A terrible mistake.”
“Ye shouldn’t have spied fer Shelby, unless ye were willing to dance the piper. A man has got to pay fer his friends. He ain’t one ye should have bothered with.”
“I didn’t bother with him. I don’t even know the man.”
“Ye were willing to spy on Morgan fer a man ye don’t know? There’s no point in denying it now. Ye were caught red-handed, lad. If ye stop acting like a bloody fool, I promise that Indy will leave nary a scratch on ye. But if ye keep up this madness...”
He let the threat hang in the air. Merry gathered every scrap of the coldness that was flooding the linings of her digestive tract, weaving it into a chilling voice, as she said, “I don’t know anything. If you touch one hair on my head my father will kill you.”
Indy took a handful of her shirt, shaking her back and forth before his sneering face. “Will he? Is he tucked away in the crate, as well?”
How rude of him to make jest of her. “You’re as good as dead if you don’t let me go immediately,” she snapped.
“Give it up, young’n. Tell Indy what he wants to know. He can be bloody ruthless with that knife, when he’s got a mind to be. He’ll not be leave’n without answers.”
In spite of herself, Merry trembled, allowing images of how Indy had dealt with Blackburn to slip into her mind.
She turned her anxious gaze on the sinister long-haired pirate. He was calmly polishing the ugly blade against his pants.
Frantically, she turned back to his less terrifying companion. “Let me go this instant. This is a mistake. I don’t know Jack Shelby. I don’t know anything.”
“The hell ye don’t. I saw it with me eyes, ye working fer Shelby. Could hardly miss it. Damn worse drink pouring I ever saw. Where the hell ye learn to poor drinks, lad? If ye don’t know Jack Shelby, what the blazes were ye doing in his tavern and why did he send ye into the storeroom to spy on Morgan?” came the boy’s rambling inquiry.
“He didn’t send me to spy. He thought I could escape through the storeroom window, only it wouldn’t open.”
The boy’s eyes were cold and disbelieving.
“It’s the truth,” she insisted fiercely. “I just wanted to get out, but the windowpane was jammed. Then Morgan came in and I hid in the crate. Truly, that’s what happened.”
One jet brow eased upward on Indy’s sinister face. “Off to raise the militia, were you?”
Merry’s cheeks flushed with fury. “No. I only wanted to leave. It’s the truth.”
The pleasant pirate’s hands took hold of her arms, jerking her with painful force. “We haven’t got time to waste here listening to fairy stories. Ye best start talking, lad, or Indy will see that ye do.”
“But, I have already told you everything. Why won’t you believe me?” Merry demanded frantically.
Indy’s sneering face came within inches of her own. “Because Shelby knows no one is to leave while Morgan is at the tavern. Why would he risk his life to help you?”
“I don’t know. He helped me because...” her voice broke off. She’d been about to say because he knew that she was a woman. The boys hadn’t figured out she was a girl, yet. What a blunder that would have been. “I don’t know.”
“You had better start to know and quickly,” the boy-pirate advised, pulling his knife from his belt. “Hold him steady, Shay.”
Merry’s eyes locked on the knife as she began to struggle furiously within the pirates grasp. “No. Please. I have told you the truth.”
She didn’t see Indy’s other hand moving toward her, until it was too late. She was too busy trying to ease back from the knife pressed against her neck. She was unprepared for the blast of chilled night air hitting her warm trembling flesh as the front of her shirt was rented down the middle. Moonlight spilled across her lace bound breasts. She cried out in horror, wanting desperately to cover herself, but Shay would not relax his grip.
“Bloody Hell. This ain’t no lad. It’s a woman.”
Trembling with embarrassment and r
age, the last scattered drops of good reason gone, she began to thrash wildly in Shay’s hold. Humiliation tore through her middle as she struggled to cover herself with the battered remains of shirt. Both the choking sobs and useless flailing motions of her limbs, strangers to Merry, seemed beyond her control. Head spinning, it felt as if the explosion of fluid would drain every cell in her body.
“Christ,” Indy growled. “Cease that racket you fool or I will silence you myself.”
“Go ahead,” she screamed, making frantic, useless efforts with her hands to pull her tattered shirt in place across her quivering flesh. “I told you I wasn’t one of Jack Shelby’s accomplices. I have told you the truth. You refused to believe me.”
“Well, how were we to know you had tits beneath your shirt instead of...”
Seeing the effect of his words and Shay’s pointed stare at the girls well-endowed front, he cut his sentence abruptly off. Cursing under his breath, he tore off his vest and pulled it in place quickly over her quivering flesh. The last thing he needed this night was a fight with Shay over this miserable girl.
“If you’d stop crying for a minute,” Indy hissed, irritated, “perhaps we could figure out what to make of this tangle.”
Merry brushed the uncontainable tears of her humiliation from her cheeks, and lifted her chin to stare daggers at Indy. “No tangle. A mistake. Your mistake.”
“Bloody hell,” Shay exclaimed, noting her face for the first time. “She’s little more than a child, a damn pretty little piece at that. Ain’t seen nothing this juicy at Grave’s End before. Is Morgan off his tub? Why would he want us to harm this girl?”
“She unwisely decided to listen in on Morgan’s meeting. Remember?”
“Christ, girl, what possessed ye to make an enemy of Morgan?”
Indignant at being continually misjudged, Merry exclaimed fiercely, “I wasn’t out to make enemies of Morgan. I was just hiding, that’s all. A perfectly logical thing, since you were out committing murder and mayhem.”
“Who the hell are you?” Indy asked, staring hard at the delicate face.
Before she could stop herself, Merry bit out, “Who are you? What were you doing with Shelby? Why did you murder Blackburn? How do you like to be questioned? The devil take you, and your questions. I wasn’t spying and that is the last time I will tell you that. If you don’t release me this instant I will ...”
Over her simmering tirade, Indy barked, “If you don’t stop that screeching, I will stop it for you. Keep a lid on it or someone is apt to hear you and come to investigate. Morgan has men all over the coast. So, unless you want to be the sacrificial lamb at a pirate debauchery, shut up. If the crew comes there’ll be no question you’ll be harmed.”
Somehow she managed to recognize the faintest traces of worry on the boy’s scarred face, though it was hard because his expression never changed. She sank her teeth into her lower lips, fighting her panic. Whatever else happened, she didn’t need more pirates to contend with. The two boys were trouble enough.
“You, of course, would be desolate if that were to happen,” she sneered, not able to stop herself.
“You’re yipping up the wrong tree, if you have the idea that I care what happens to you,” said the boy, smoothly emphatic. “I just don’t want to have to kill one of my own to protect your hide until I make reason of this mess, and decide what to do with you.”
Behind him she heard the blond pirate say woefully, “Damn Morgan fer dumping this bit of work on me. I don’t go fer harming women, Indy and she a bonnie one at that. We should let the lass go before the others see her, lad. She’s just a poor scared little thing. Morgan would be the first to have other thoughts than harming her on his mind, if he could see what a fion bit of fluff she is, if ye ask me.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you, you damn stupid Irishman,” the boy said irritably.
“Damn ye fer the cold-blooded maggot ye are. Even ye should be able to recognize a harmless, frightened girl when ye see it.”
Shay clamped his beefy hands on Merry’s cheeks and spun her around to face the boy with such swiftness that her cap flew off, fully revealing her face for the first time.
“Plague rot it, look at her. Do ye mean to tell me that ye could take your knife to this? What’s become of ye, lad? There was a time I thought ye had some human heart in ye.”
A minute passed before Indy reluctantly looked at the girl. He made a short inspection of her face and if this little exercise was supposed to have some effect on her fate, clearly it did not. His eyes, narrowed and hard, were quite simply soulless.
The boy’s voice was chilling. “What I see is trouble,” was all he said, knife in hand. “If you have no stomach for this, I suggest you go to the skiff and wait for me.”
“Damn it, lad, let her go.” His voice had taken on a wheedling edge, but he surrendered the girl to Indy’s hands. It was clear that in a battle between the two boys, the sinister pirate would win without a struggle.
Then, when she was beginning to feel as though all hope was lost, fighting helplessly in the boy’s arms, something flickered on his face, quickly, then gone. The knife retreated from her as swiftly as it had closed in. He ruthlessly seized her face in the cup of his hand and pulled her more closely beneath him, his eyes taking on a sudden sharpness.
“Bloody Christ,” he cursed. With an irritation and a quickness that caught Merry off guard, his scarf was in her mouth. She was gagged before she could muster a resistance. He was only an inch or so taller than her, his lithe body a collection of gracefully knit muscles, but he was much stronger than Merry had anticipated.
“Hell’s teeth, Indy. Do ye mean to torture the lass before ye butcher her?”
“Take a look at her, damn it,” Indy barked.
“I told ye she was just a poor, scared girl.”
Indy’s hard impassive mask flickered briefly with intense annoyance. It defied logic that Shay didn’t recognize this pale, aristocratic face, but then Shay was annoyingly idiotic at times. They’d seen the girl, only a bare handful of times, during that long spring month when Morgan had sent them to London, in worthless surveillance of his lordship’s activities. Inquiries had provided her name, which had been as much of a shock as was her connection to him, and the villain it had become his mission to destroy.
Staring at the girl, he suffered a brief regret for having been so rough with her. He couldn’t begin to reason why she had been at Grave’s End, dressed like a boy and cavorting with Shelby and pirates. He was sure the answer would be a stupid one. Indy knew this girl, too well.
He had indulged an unfathomable curiosity last spring, by spending as much of his time watching her as he did his target. He had observed her often enough never to expect her to conduct herself in a manner that was anything but idiotic. He knew, whatever the truth, it would be nothing evil and merely absurd.
He was certain of only two things. This girl had nothing to do with Shelby, and no power on earth could force him to harm her.
The strongest impulse inside of him, surprisingly, was to release her now, to lie to Morgan, and let his discovery remain his own. But, the girl had been witness to that farce at Grave’s End and had seen too much. He knew with her exposure to the upper ranks of British aristocracy, she had certainly recognized the man poorly disguised, as a fisherman, had been the Earl of Camden. There was no telling what dangers could come of that. If he let her go, he would be doing so at the risk of Morgan and the ship. However, killing her was just not an option.
He could give her to Morgan’s care, but that meant only one thing: in the least captivity on a pirate ship, most probably Morgan’s bed. That option was equally disturbing.
He knew if he dumped the girl and the truth at the captain’s feet, he could save her from all of these unpleasant fates. He knew Morgan would neither keep, nor harm her. She’d be safely home before morning.
But what would save them from the girl?
She’d heard too much. Now in her hands were eno
ugh pieces that the truth about the pirate captain could come together. What could save them from her? Only her death, Indy conceded grimly, unless...
He looked at her face with its delicate aristocratic lines, cursed himself a fool, and fought the rapid clicking reasons why he would never have a chance at success in all this. He could never play a game with Morgan that Morgan didn’t win. As strange as it all seemed, the more he gave it all thought, the more he wondered if perhaps the gods were smiling on him in this.
What it would require was simple sleight of hand manipulation. Iron determination. Fearless, emotionless battle. One wrong move would sink them all...
“Get the skiff,” Indy announced unexpectedly.
“Ye ain’t thinking what I think yer thinking. Are ye crazy, lad?”
“Unless you mean for me to kill this girl I suggest you start moving quickly.”
“Bloody hell. Morgan will have both our hides’ fer this. I wanted ye to let the lass go, not to see us dead. Ye know very well, we can’t take her aboard the Corinthian. Why there isn’t a pirate crew on the seas that’ll take a woman on board. It’s bad luck, boy."
“Superstitious nonsense. Morgan takes on women all the time.”
“Morgan is bloody charmed. He can tempt a little bad luck.”
“Get the ropes. If she jumps from the skiff, we’ll never find her in this darkness. If she kicks up a scuffle, the crew will be on her before we can get her to Morgan’s cabin.”
Merry’s eyes rounded in horror. Did they mean to take her aboard the Corinthian? Frantic, she began to struggle, her arms and legs flailing wildly about, as she tried to kick at her captors and wiggle away from the ropes they held in their hands.
“Feisty bit of fluff, ain’t she?” Ian Shay laughed, holding her legs for Indy to bind. “Look at her try to claw ye. Morgan will have his work cut out mounting this one.”
She pulled free a leg and kicked the Irishman soundly in the gut. To Merry’s dismay, he only laughed.
