by Howe, Cheryl
Felicity heard a noise somewhere above deck and tiptoed back the few feet she had traveled. Safely inside Avery’s sickroom, she almost had the door completely shut, the last bit of evidence of her dull yet forbidden adventure, when she heard a disturbing noise. A child’s muffled cry echoed somewhere in the passageway.
Chapter Fourteen
Felicity followed the soft whimpers back into the triangular storage area she had just left. The child’s cries originated from inside something, but the strange echo kept her from finding the source. She rolled a heavy sack off a stack of supplies, fearing Hugh might be trapped underneath. The bag of grain landed with a loud thump, which increased the boy’s hysterics.
“It’s all right, Hugh. Where are you?”
Silence greeted her question. Something was terribly wrong. Had he lost consciousness? Removing a musket ball from a grown man was one thing—tending a frightened, hurt child was another. Frantically she scoured the dim storage area for a clue to Hugh’s location. Until she hit her toe on the heavy, metal ring protruding from a grate, the hold had gone unnoticed. With a shout of pain, she grabbed her injured foot.
“Shut up. I hear a woman,” said a man’s muffled voice. She stopped hopping. The voice had definitely come from the hold. Hugh’s cries began again, but were stopped short by the distinctive sound of a slap. The grate in the floor, secured with the heavy lock that had tripped her, separated her from the bodies that went with the voices. Solomon would be furious, and so would Drew for that matter, if she let one of the crewmen see her. Yet she couldn’t let Hugh continue to be hurt by the mysterious man. She had no choice.
She knelt to peer into the darkness beyond the grate. “Unhand that child at once or I’ll bring the captain.”
“I don’t need the bloody whore of a pirate to tell me how to take care of my son. If you brought us some rum give it over, if you ain’t, you can save that trap of yours for that murdering bastard,” said the man out of the darkness. His slur was followed by a couple of male snickers.
The outrage! No wonder Drew didn’t want her around his crew. The man was undoubtedly being imprisoned for insubordination. That would explain his obvious disdain for Drew, but it did not excuse his treatment of Hugh.
Felicity recovered from her momentary loss of words with a vengeance. “Give me that child right now or I promise you whatever fate Drew has for you will increase in severity tenfold.”
A grimy face appeared on the other side of the grate. “Sure, love. Just open her up and I’ll hand the lad to you.” He lifted a child until his red head almost hit the crossed metal holding them in. The boy blinked at her from a tear-stained, freckled face.
He wasn’t Hugh. The man had called the child his son. Regardless of their relation, she was determined to get the child away from him. But she wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t unlock the grate even if she had the key. If Solomon would not see to it, she would tell Drew. Surely he didn’t realize the crewman’s son had been locked up with him.
“I’ll have someone release your son, but if you lay another hand on him, I’ll see that your punishment is doubled.”
“I already got fifteen lashes, but I know he ain’t done with me.” The prisoner lowered the boy and grumbled. “Stupid slut, you going to have your devil lover kill me twice?”
“I don’t want to die,” whimpered the boy. His voice sounded weak. He needed immediate care.
“You won’t die, little boy. I won’t let that happen.” Felicity leaned closer to the grate. The child had disappeared into the darkness, swallowed by the shadows of at least a dozen men.
“El Diablo lets his whore run his ship? I bloody doubt it,” said the same man. A few of the men agreed in mumbled curses. The rest seemed to have succumbed to the gloom.
For some reason, she recognized his voice, though she was sure she hadn’t made the acquaintance of anyone so horrible. “Who are you?”
“Harold McCulla, former captain of the Carolina. And who might you be? Show me your tits and maybe I’ll remember you. You remind me of a wench I fondled at the Hare and the Hound back on Barbados.”
His name brought a flood of clarity. The boy must be Tanner, though his red, swollen face hardly resembled the happy ragtag boy she’d met at the docks. These were the men from the ship Drew had captured. Everything started to make more sense. She’d been so upset over the news of her father, she’d not even thought of the men onboard. This dingy hole was a proper home for McCulla, but Tanner would have to be placed elsewhere.
“My name is Felicity Kendall, Mr. McCulla. After my father’s reputation has been cleared, I can assure you that you will no longer bear the title of captain. I’ll see to other accommodations for your son.” She got to her feet, dismissing McCulla and his vulgarity.
She turned to leave, but McCulla’s burst of laughter stopped her. “I should have recognized that snippy tone. Looks like you sold your pa out for a roll with the devil himself. I heard the ladies lift their skirts at a wink from El Diablo, but Kendall’s pinch-faced daughter—why bother?”
She stomped back to the grate. “El Diablo’s not on this ship, so stop frightening your child and your crew.”
“Well, the captain sure ain’t ‘Lord Christian.’ You’re not stupid enough to think you’re humping some fancy lord, are you? Nope, you’re nothing but El Diablo’s whore, and a traitor to your own father,” goaded McCulla.
“You’re a drunkard. That’s why they took command of your ship away from you in the first place. You’re probably drunk now.”
“This is the first time I’ve been sober in ten years, and I can’t say I like it much. I can tell you the honest truth, though, and I’ll enjoy that. Your father’s going to hang while you’re slutting around with the one who caused it. Maybe you’re the one who’s drunk to think El Diablo’s not going to kill you when he’s through with you. Just like he killed Marley and his missus.”
Felicity swallowed hard. McCulla’s horrible accusations made her heart race. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
McCulla’s slow smile did nothing to remove her unease. “He likes to cozy up to his victims first. Uses ’em for all they’re worth before he does them in. That’s what happened to Marley once El Diablo figured out he was on to him.”
Felicity stiffened, refusing to let this fool see her tremble. He unnerved her with his obscenities, nothing more. “You’re a liar. You’re just trying to cover up for your own traitorous behavior. You deserted the only man in Barbados who didn’t openly scorn you.”
McCulla’s blessed silence assured her she’d finally gained the upper hand. But before she reached the light that marked the companionway, the captured man’s words reached out and stopped her as effectively as a tug on her skirt.
“The real Duke of Foxmoor is on Barbados right now. Said Marley wrote him about a pirate passing himself off as one of his kin. I might not be as smart as you or your back-stabbing lover, but I don’t have to be to know who killed him.”
She straightened and backed away. The sensation that had begun as a nagging dread in her belly spread up her spine. Doubt turned to cold fear, making her slightly dizzy. There was an explanation. McCulla’s bitterness at being captured prompted him to goad her. To lie.
“And it wouldn’t be much of a feat to guess who’s gonna be next,” yelled McCulla at her back.
She forced herself not to run. To calmly shake off the sensation of betrayal. This time it would be different. Erik and Drew were nothing alike. They were not both good-for-nothing liars. If McCulla was to be believed, Drew was infinitely worse. Diabolical, in fact. Even as she tried to remember the reasons she should trust Drew, memories of another deception chilled her to the bone.
***
Solomon slipped into the dim cabin and shut the door. “Felicity, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice sounded strange and distant to her own ears. She sat quietly on a crate in a shadowed corner. The fingers of her right hand dug into the ba
ck of her palm as they lay clasped in her lap.
Solomon’s eyebrows knitted and he frowned. He glanced at Avery Sneed, who still lay unconscious. “Has Avery gotten worse?”
She concentrated on speaking calmly and evenly. “I checked the bandage only a moment ago. The bleeding seems to have stopped.”
“Let’s go, then.” Solomon appeared to be scrutinizing her stiff movements, yet thankfully he withheld any comment. “To distract Drew, I had to convince him he’d made a mistake in his navigation. I wondered if your patience would hold out that long. I must say I’m surprised.”
She had no idea if it had been mere minutes or an eternity since Solomon had first left. A thick fog had descended around her. No matter how many times her heart assured her that her sense of disorientation would soon dissipate, her head argued that what the lifting mist would reveal would be worse. Had she been speeding blindly toward a precipice from the moment Drew entered her life?
She had gone over every one of McCulla’s words. Everything coming from his filthy mouth could be dismissed if not for the reason Drew’s father unexpectedly arrived on Barbados. Drew had mentioned he’d found out about his charade but failed to say how.
Solomon turned. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’re pale.”
“I’m fine,” she said too quickly. “Maybe just a little queasy. There was a lot of blood.”
“Can you make it to the cabin? We have to hurry.”
Calling up a weak smile, she nodded. He started back down the corridor. She followed swiftly to keep him from questioning her further. Her composure hung by a gossamer thread.
She tried to remember every last detail of the handbill she’d seen concerning El Diablo at the Linleys’ party. That particular part of McCulla’s tale didn’t make sense. How could Drew be El Diablo? Drew had not been the man in the drawing, or surely she would have noticed a resemblance. At the time, she would have been more than eager to point out any similarities. She had detested Drew’s fictitious Lord Christian from the moment he opened his arrogant mouth. The silly powder on his face and hair had rendered the Drew she had come to know unrecognizable. With that thought, her buoying hope sank.
A vague image of the crude sketch resurrected itself. The eyes were different. Wild dark hair and a crooked Roman nose might be similar, but the rough look men attain while at sea might account for the similarities. Struggling to remember El Diablo’s face as it was portrayed in the drawing faded the image rather than clarifying it. She just wasn’t sure.
The door closed behind her, and she couldn’t recall the words she’d just spoken to Solomon. Grateful to finally be alone, she paced the room, giving her anxiety free rein.
She wanted to believe Drew incapable of the duplicity McCulla insinuated, but years of cynicism had grown too powerful to be ignored. If only she had one thing to hold on to, one small clue to sway her in Drew’s favor, she would stamp out her doubts and trust him unconditionally. He had brought light to her forgotten heart. She could not stand to be thrust back into darkness.
Looking for anything to ease her mind, she opened the cabinet where Drew kept his navigational instruments. She unrolled a few maps and peeked through cases holding the devices Hugh had shown her, but found nothing to reassure her. Pulling open several drawers garnered the same results.
Something she’d heard about El Diablo back on Barbados congealed in her mind. A flag. El Diablo had a distinctive flag. Of its own accord, her gaze drifted to the trunk where Drew held his bounty of colors. Without bothering to put away the maps and instruments she’d disturbed, she drifted to the trunk and knelt in front of it. A lock she hadn’t remembered there before dangled from the lid’s latch, taunting her gullibility. For the first time since her mistake with Erik, she planned to prove that disjointed voice wrong.
The key would be too hard to find. Instead, she hunted for an object small enough to fit into the lock. Hairpins would have done the trick if she had any. She’d perfected her talent as a lock pick early in her childhood. The idea of a locked door or chest had always tormented her curiosity.
The long pick she used to hold her hair might be slender enough to squeeze past the lock. She retrieved the wooden fid from her belongings. The tool narrowly fit. In a matter of minutes, she sprang the lock.
She flung open the lid and unfurled three flags in a frenzy. Her gaze barely passed over the Union Jack’s red cross. She registered the standard of Portugal with merely a glance. The third flag’s country she couldn’t recall, but the blue background and yellow cross posed no apparent threat to Drew’s character—unless she considered how easily Drew changed allegiances—but she could ignore that. She had thus far.
When she brought the fourth flag out of the trunk, she paused before revealing what lay inside its folds. Even in its tight triangle shape, she could see this flag was different from the others. The background was solid black. A portion of what looked to be a heart dripped red. She tried to convince herself that the shape only looked like a heart and the drops blood because of her state of mind. That she would find evidence against Drew in this form was too ironic to be believed.
If she put the flag away and confronted Drew with McCulla’s lies, the next time she picked up this particular flag, she’d find nothing but a red sun spitting sparks or some other strange design she hadn’t expected. Would a person in love, if she were capable of such an emotion, insist on evidence that her lover was not a cold-blooded murderer?
As much as Felicity wanted to be that trusting, confident woman, she wasn’t. Not yet. Doubt still had a foothold and picked that moment to sprout dark tendrils to wrap around her heart.
Felicity closed her eyes and unfurled the flag with a hard flick of her wrists. Never in her life had she longed to be more wrong. When she opened her eyes, the image on the flag danced in triumph. The white skeleton with pointed tail and ears skewered a bleeding heart with the longest, sharpest sword Felicity had ever seen.
She clutched the flag to her chest and closed her eyes. The devil had hit his mark again.
Chapter Fifteen
The rattle of a key in the door jerked Felicity out of her waking nightmare. A quick glance around the room revealed open drawers and scattered instruments. Unfurled flags lay stretched out around her like fallen soldiers in crisp uniforms. Whoever opened the door would instantly recognize something was amiss. For her own protection, she should hide what she’d discovered. Her soul might be ravaged as thoroughly as the room, but that would be her secret alone. She forced herself to stand, and realized she still clutched the damning flag.
Drew entered with a dinner tray balanced on his arm, and any sort of halfway intelligent plan evaporated with her breath. He looked like the man she had fallen in love with, and only her fiercest inner voice could stop her from going to him. She needed him more than ever, but the man she thought she could depend on above all others had turned out to be her worst enemy.
His bewildered assessment of the damage to his cabin provided the chance for her to swipe her tear-stained face with the flag she held. She stopped, forgetting that what she held was more than mere cloth and thread. It was her worst fears materialized, about herself and Drew. She glanced up at him hoping to see the devil-like skeleton beneath the handsome rouge’s facade, but all looking at him did was make her heart beat faster than its already frenzied staccato. How dare his presence make her feel anything at all. Blessed anger began to pump through her veins.
He set down the tray on the pedestal table. “Lose something?”
His cool sarcasm hardened her. He wore simple black breeches and a white linen shirt opened loosely at the neck. A black ribbon that tied back his hair gave him a deceptively civilized look. His every movement radiated arrogant confidence. She’d been blinded by her own wretched loneliness, or she might have seen how truly he resembled Lord Christian in manner if not in appearance.
The fear and revulsion she should feel would not come. With her illusions shattered, she should see what the
artist in Barbados had captured in his sketch—dark, soulless eyes with no remorse. If she looked into Drew’s eyes, she might see the monster lurking inside the man. She knew better than to commit that mistake. Passion-filled eyes, the color of tropical seas, would haunt her dreams forever.
Drew strolled around the room, shutting drawers. “I’ve been through hurricanes that have caused less damage. Since the seas have been remarkably calm, I can only surmise you’re displeased with me.”
For the first time in her life, Felicity was afraid to speak. It didn’t worry her what Drew might do once she exposed him. Her anxiety arose from the poison that would spill out once she opened her mouth. Hurt and betrayal and rage consumed her. She didn’t know if she could ever stop the tirade once it started.
He must have read the rush of turbulent emotions on her face because his puzzled gaze softened and he abruptly strode toward her. She put out her hand to stop him.
“Don’t come near me!”
Her own voice, strained and raspy, grated on her frazzled nerves. It must have had the same effect on Drew, because all pretense of calm dropped. He held out his palms to her and shrugged his shoulders. His brows rose slightly in confusion.
She found the edge of the flag and let it unfurl. Words were too painful to speak. Thoughts of her own safety escaped her. If he cut her down at that very moment, it would come as a relief.
Before she could stop herself, she met Drew’s gaze. His eyes mirrored the agony ripping her apart. She let the flag drop to the carpet, unable to hold it a moment longer.
“You lying bastard!” She whirled away from him, wrapping her arms around herself for comfort. Her closed eyes could not block out the image of his wounded gaze. The look was deception wielded by an artist. His show of pain represented a ruse to persuade her to forget what she knew to be true. Heaven help her but it was working.
She waited for Drew to come to her, to touch her shoulders in an act of compassion. She would shrug off his attempt, proving to him and herself that she would no longer be his pawn. The pressure of his touch never came. She hadn’t believed she could feel any worse. She was wrong.
