Wind and the Sea

by Marsha Canham

  “But it was my choice too. We had a chance to hurt them the way they hurt us.”

  “Aye, and if I know ye, girl, ye’ll find another way. “Ye’ll make another chance happen. And for that, I bought ye time.”

  “What makes you think the Yankee will honor the bond he made?”

  “He will honor it, lass. Ye come to know a man fast and well when ye stare at him across pistol barrels. He'll honor it.”

  Courtney heard the wall of guards shifting suspiciously behind her and she reached quickly for several rolls of bandages. There were tears stinging the rims of her eyes and a tremor grew in her chin. A man who had always seemed to Courtney to be indestructible would be flogged to death in the morning and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “We haven’t much time, Court,” he murmured, seeing the emotion riding high in her cheeks. “There are things ye have to know. Things ye must warn the O’Farrow about.”

  “Warn...?” Courtney met the pain-filled black eyes. “Then you do not believe it either...what the Yankees said about his being hanged.”

  “There is no man been born who could place a noose around Duncan Farrow’s neck,” he said, his whisper reinforcing her own doubts.

  “If he was dead, I would have felt it,” she breathed. “I know I would have.”

  “Aye, and that is why ye’ve got to live, Court. Ye’ve got to find him. Warn him.”

  “Find him? But...how?”

  “Verart told ye,” Seagram hissed. “I heard him tell ye on the beach. D' ye remember it all?”

  “I...think so.”

  “Yer life depends on remembering, because that is where Duncan will go. That is where he will be waiting on ye. Tell no one else. Not a friend or lover, not a man or woman, not a crack in the wall. We have been betrayed. D’ye understand me? Verart knew. He was near to sniffin' out the son of a whore, and it was only a matter of time before he would have found out who was hiding behind the name."

  “The name?”

  “Aye. The filthy sneaking swine calls himself—" Seagram’s eyes flicked suddenly past Courtney’s shoulder and the bearded jaw clamped firmly shut. Courtney continued to stare at him. She was aware of Matthew Rutger’s presence by her side, but she longed to scream the burning questions: What name? Who betrayed us? Why? How?

  Matthew glanced from the corsair to Courtney, uneasy with the tension he could feel between them.

  “I have done all I can for the other man,” he murmured. “It was not very much, I am afraid, but at least he is a little more comfortable. Now let me have a look at this arm.”

  Neither Courtney nor Seagram moved.

  “I told ye once to bugger off,” Seagram snarled, breaking the visual contact with Courtney. “I'm telling ye again. I'm not wanting yer fancy medicines, and there is no point takin' a saw to it when I will not be alive to see another sundown.”

  “No,” Matt agreed quietly. “No point, I guess. But I can bind it for you. I can stop the bleeding and maybe give it some measure of support.”

  The black beard parted to a slash of broken and neglected teeth, but before the rebuke could be put into words, Seagram felt the cool pressure of Courtney’s hand on his.

  “Let him help you,” she said softly.

  The curse was growled into silence, and the shaggy head leaned back against the bulkhead. His gaze remained locked to Courtney’s while Rutger cut away the useless sleeve and wrapped several thicknesses of cotton tightly around the gaping wound.

  “That is it, then,” Matt said when he was finished. “That is all we can do here.”

  “Please—" Courtney turned wide, imploring eyes up to his. “Another minute...please.”

  “I am sorry. We have already overstayed our visit. The guards—" he glanced over his shoulder— "have their orders from the captain. It was only because of Adrian’s intervention we were allowed to come at all.”

  “But—”

  Matt took her arm and firmly pulled her to her feet.

  “Seawolf!” Seagram hissed, his hand grasping at the cloth of Courtney’s trousers. “Find Seawolf!”

  Courtney whirled to look back at Seagram, but Matt had already pulled her insistently to the door. The black eyes seared into hers and the name, mouthed silently on Seagram's lips, was the last thing she saw before the door was slammed and bolted behind them.

  ~~

  When Courtney was taken back to Ballantine’s cabin at midnight, she was too exhausted, mentally and physically, to do more than sit numbly on the edge of the bed while Matthew lit the lantern and slung the hammock. She could not get the sight of Seagram’s eyes out of her mind—the command in them, the warning in them, the fear in them. His order to “find Seawolf” echoed and reverberated within her brain, mingled with unshed tears, recoiling with the memories of cannon-fire and crushed bodies. She stared at the thin pillow beside her, dreading sleep and the nightmares she was certain would crowd in upon her. Yet, she was so tired...

  “There we go, that should be comfortable enough,” Matt announced, straightening. The expression on his face softened when he saw that Courtney had lain down diagonally across the berth, her feet still dangling over the side, and was fast asleep. He looked at the hammock and sighed, then with a rueful smile that gentled some of his own weariness, he lifted Courtney’s feet onto the berth and tucked the blanket around her shoulders. His hand lingered a moment at the nape of her neck, his fingers teased by the soft auburn curls. In sleep she looked so innocent. So damned innocent. What hellish circumstances had led her to this end?

  Matt’s hand dropped away and he took one last look around the cabin before dimming the lantern and departing quietly for his own quarters.

  ~~

  It was well past three o’clock in the morning before Ballantine had satisfied himself that the bulkheads in the brig were sufficiently reinforced to stand off an assault from a battering ram. He was filthy with sweat and grime. His shirt, once white, was blackened and torn open over the breadth of his chest. He felt completely drained, but the hard work had helped to expend some of the rage and frustration the day’s events had brought. Falworth’s revelations had come as a shock, no question about it. What was it about the best-laid plans...? So much for Commodore Preble’s assurances of secrecy. So much for the whole damned operation, for that matter. If one man could fit the pieces of the puzzle together, a dozen could, and since it was not yet proved certain that Jennings was the man selling information to the Arabs, it could mean a knife in the back in a shadowy companionway from any one of a dozen sources.

  Compounding his troubles, there was the girl, and the prisoners’ revolt. MacDonald’s disclosure that someone had smuggled guns into the brig worried him more than he cared to think about. It could have been the same man he was after who was responsible, or it could be a totally unrelated incident. Some of the ordinary seamen—those who had found themselves on the receiving end of Jennings’ sense of justice and godliness—might have succumbed to the lure of pirate’s gold in exchange for a few guns. Discounting the wounded and those whose presence on the lower deck would have instantly roused comment, there were at least two hundred possibilities. Two hundred suspects. Two hundred more knives in shadowy corners whose owners were frightened of being discovered.

  Ballantine wiped the back of his hand across his brow, angered by the film of sweat gleaming from the fine hairs on his wrist. As much as he had needed hard physical labour earlier, he needed sleep now. Sleep and a chance to sort out the tangle of thoughts spinning round and round in his mind. Sleep might help brace him for a worse morning ahead, for the floggings were scheduled for eight bells, a mere five hours away.

  Ballantine stood on the threshold of his cabin and stared at the curled form sleeping blissfully unaware on his berth. Anger surged back into his cheeks and his first thought was to rip the blanket from the slim body and toss her into a broken heap in the corner. He had a hand outstretched for Courtney’s shoulder and the taste of a harsh curse on his tongue whe
n a single flicker of lamplight stopped him cold.

  The sudden bath of light revealed a face twisted in the throes of torment. Her cheeks were awash with tears; the dark crescents of her lashes were squeezed tight against some dreamed horror. Her arms were clasped around a crushed pillow and her fingers dug into the thin ticking. Her whole body was rigid, wracked by convulsive shudders that accompanied the disjointed gasps and whispers.

  Adrian’s hand, still outstretched, inched toward the slender shoulder. The effect of the gentle contact was immediate, and Courtney’s distress was shocked into silence. Like a blind man groping for security, she flayed her arms at the empty air and until she touched the solid wall of his chest. A sobbed word: "Father!" sent her upward into his embrace—an embrace that was stiff and unrelenting at first, slow to accept, reluctant to open wide so that the frantic, groping hands would have something real to grasp onto. He winced as her nails dug into his back and shoulders. He sat on the edge of the bed and felt her tears run hotly down his flesh to form a tiny puddle in the crease of his belly.

  Haltingly, he smoothed his hands along the arch of her shoulder and cradled the taut muscles of her neck. The breath left his lungs on a soft curse, and he stroked the silky auburn curls. He held her close and rocked her gently until the terrible tension left her body and the last of the dark night horrors were sobbed free.

  He tilted her chin and studied the pale features in the lantern glow. She was still asleep.

  His fingers lightly brushed her cheek, and he stared at the tears that clung, like diamonds, to the fingertips. Without thinking, he bent his lips to hers, covering the trembling mouth, kissing it with more tenderness than he had felt a need to express in a very long time.

  The softness, the helplessness he discovered startled him. Earlier he had kissed a wilful, defiant creature who had thought to best him in a lesson on gamesmanship. Now he found himself kissing a warm, vulnerable woman who was tempting his body with exactly the kind of release it craved—a blinding, mindless release that would give him the escape he longed for. He wanted to forget and to be forgotten for as long as the darkness and the softness would allow.

  He felt her lips quiver and begin to move beneath his. Hands that had grasped him for comfort moments before now clung to him with a new urgency and sent a chill rippling through his body.

  What was he doing? What insanity had gripped him?

  Adrian started to pull away but the softness followed him and this time his flesh met a greater temptation: the bold firmness of a breast found its way into his hand, the crown thrusting eagerly to fill his palm. He lifted his mouth from hers, his lips bathed by the salty-sweet tang of her tears. His hand cupped her flesh and even though there was a layer of cotton obstructing his way, the velvet suppleness branded its imprint onto his skin. The ache grew, robbing him of the ability to think clearly or to move. Blood pounded through his temples, drowning his common good sense, drenching it with need. He knew he had to fight the weakness in his arms and the hunger flowing into his loins. God, the hunger...!

  “No,” he muttered hoarsely. “No, dammit...”

  He eased Courtney quickly back onto the berth and drew the blanket high under her chin. He backed slowly away from the bed, but his eyes continued to devour her, to want her against all reason. His hands burned; his mouth tasted salty from her tears. He edged even farther away, until he felt the hard planks of the door at his back, and then he turned and hurried out into the darkened companionway.

  ~~

  Courtney’s eyes were startled open. She remained perfectly still, not knowing what had wakened her. Her body was tingling, her heart was beating against her ribs, her mouth tingled with a curious sense of abandonment. Propping herself upright, she took a cautious look around the cabin; nothing seemed amiss. She was alone with the shadows and the solitary flicker of the spirit lamp. Her fingertips came away from her temples damp, and she surmised it must have been the nightmare that had frightened her awake. It had been so real. So ugly. So terrifying...until the end. And then a shadow had blocked out the horror. A cool, soothing shadow that had no name, no shape, no substance.

  Her body continued to throb and for some time after she had nestled back beneath her covers, she could not dispel the ghostly image of warm hands, searching lips, and eager, straining bodies.

  Chapter Seven

  Dawn was announced by the clanging of the ship’s bell. Sailors thudded across the decks, waking their mates, hastily folding, tying and stowing their sleeping hammocks. On most days, there were duties that had to be completed before the breakfast bell tolled. Decks had to be scraped free of splinters; rigging had to be inspected for damage; rails had to be varnished and cracks puttied.

  On this day, there were going to be floggings and all hands were required to be on deck at eight bells to witness them.

  Courtney's muscles had stiffened overnight; the sores on her wrists stung; her throat was raw and tasted bitterly of her fear for Seagram. He was strong but no one could survive three hundred strokes. And it would be an ignoble death for a man who had breathed life and fire at every turn.

  Something cool and hard intruded on Courtney’s senses, and she looked down to see that she was clutching the small gold locket she wore as if it was a talisman, an icon to give her the strength she needed to carry on through the day. With trembling fingers she snapped the tiny clasp open and fanned the two halves apart. In one oval was a miniature of her mother, Marguerite de Villiers. Pale blue eyes were set in a delicately regal, flawlessly beautiful face that had won the heart and devotion of a wild Irish adventurer. Duncan Farrow’s boldly sculpted features were crowded into the second oval. The portrait did not do him justice aside from the mane of thick auburn hair and the square, stocky jaw, but she could picture the rakish smile and the ever-present gleam in the dark, brooding eyes.

  Marguerite de Villiers had been the daughter of Valery Gaston de Villiers, financier and confidant of Louis XVI. She had eloped with Duncan Farrow against the express wishes of family and friends. Her father, in retaliation, had sent a score of hunters to track the lovers down. He had found them within the week, only hours before they would have reached the coast and freedom. Duncan had been attacked and left for dead; Marguerite had been carried back to her father’s chateau, where her child had been born eight months later.

  Within a few short years, the Revolution came into full bloody form. The king was imprisoned; the great estates of the aristocrats were confiscated, their owners herded into small, cramped prisons to await the impersonal judgment of the guillotine. By some miracle, Marguerite de Villiers and her young daughter were smuggled to the city of Toulon, an important port that had been seized by anti-revolutionary forces and turned over to the British to defend. For the next few years Marguerite aided countless fleeing aristocrats, but refused to leave herself, especially after hearing rumors of a bold Irish mercenary who was fighting on the side of the British. It took further months of delay to confirm his identity as Duncan Farrow, and yet more wasted time to send word to him that she had not been executed with the rest of the de Villiers.

  By then it was too late.

  A brilliant young artillery captain named Napoleon Bonaparte had been placed in command of the bombardment of Toulon. Marguerite was once again forced to flee for her life, this time to the countryside where she and her child were kept safely hidden by loyal ex-servants. Attempts to re-establish communications with Duncan took another full year, but by then the strain of running and hiding had taken its toll on her health. Betrayed by greedy peasants and too weakened by fever to fight the overwhelming odds, in a last gesture of defiance Marguerite arranged Courtney’s safe delivery to the rendezvous with Farrow’s ship while she lured the military troops to a village many miles away. For her bravery, Marguerite had been presented to the guillotine by a cheering crowd.

  Courtney snapped the locket shut and held it tightly in her clenched fist. The courage of a selfless mother flowed in her veins, as did the cunnin
g and resourcefulness of the man who had vowed he would not rest until the sea had turned red with French blood. Duncan Farrow’s war had not been against the Americans until they had chosen to interfere. He had hunted, chased, and sunk more French ships than any other corsair in the region, and if his efforts had seemed to support Yusef Karamanli's own reign of piracy, it was merely a byblow.

  If Duncan was still alive—and Courtney believed it to be so with all her heart—she had to find a way to reach him. She had to be strong and determined enough to do whatever was necessary to survive so that she and her father, together, could bring vengeance down on those who had sought to destroy them.

  “They have not beaten us yet,” she whispered fiercely. “They have not beaten me, by God. I will let them think they have broken me. I will be meek and dutiful and—" She stopped, her gaze caught by the shimmering reflection of light dancing across the ceiling beams indicating the sun had risen and the rays were bouncing off the water.

  And what? She asked herself.

  “If I have to let the Yankee believe he has broken me, I will,” she murmured. “If I can find some way to make him believe it. Just long enough for him to lower his guard.”

  With the strength of new resolves, Courtney forced aside her aches and pains and quickly vacated Ballantine’s berth. She retrieved the linen neckcloth from the floor and carefully wound it around her breasts to flatten them, then splashed her face with the ice-cold water from the pitcher. As an afterthought, she carried the jug out into the companionway and refilled it from the huge barrel of rain water, taking the opportunity to mark the location of stairwells, storerooms, and hatchways. She had been too angry, too confused, too hurt to note much of anything the previous day.

  Ballantine was descending the steps as she hurried back from taking a quick peek forward to the gun deck.

  He said nothing to her, did not acknowledge her presence except to cast a brief glance at her clothing and toss her a narrow-brimmed woolen cap. He was unshaven, and his hair was loose and windblown about his face. His clothes were grimy and rumpled and smelled strongly of the canvas sails he had made do with for a bed.