Paradise Island

by Charmaine Ross

  “Thank you for your time, Sara. I’ll let you know when you’re needed again.”

  Sara nodded her head fractionally and slipped through the doorway without looking at him. She stepped lightly across the hallway and scampered up the steep wooden steps that led into bright sunshine. The red head turned a frosty glare at him and slowly reclined against the door frame. Her eyes roamed casually over him.

  “You shouldn’t have spoken to her that way. I asked her to help you,” she said, eventually.

  Gregory narrowed his eyes and assessed her. “You’re the woman from the pier!”

  His head ached and he was in no mood for games. “Maybe you can answer my questions. Why are you here? And what am I doing here?” His voice was rough.

  Her gaze flicked back to his eyes. The frost was now ice. Although she slouched indolently against the frame, the line of her shoulders was squared and her jaw tensed. “I’ll answer what I want to answer. Sara is a healer, a doctor. She only has your best interests at heart.”

  His face must have registered his shock as she continued. “Are you surprised that a woman has that kind of knowledge? Her husband was a so-called doctor, but she knew more than him even if he’d studied until the end of his life. People went to see her, not him, for treatment. He was jealous and used to beat her. One day he beat her so badly she couldn’t get out of bed. A pregnant woman she was treating had her baby and Sara was too unwell to tend to her. The woman and the baby died in childbirth. That’s something she has never forgotten. Her husband was a drunk and a coward and was never subtle in his loathing for her talent. He died one day in a horse and carriage accident. Because she didn’t have a husband, she also didn’t have a livelihood. I found her, alone and discarded. Now she uses her talents and gets paid well for it. If you’re very nice, maybe she will come back and see you again.”

  She hooked her gaze back to his. Her eyes were the color of burnt chestnuts. It reminded him of oak trees in autumn when they turned such a flaming red he wondered if the earth was charred underneath. There was a subtle shifting, the click of two pieces of a puzzle locking together. “I’ve seen you before last night,” he murmured, “You’re Major Elias Stonebridge’s daughter.”

  She pushed away from the doorframe and stood with her feet a hip width apart. Her fresh scent followed her and filled his nostrils. Tension rode in waves from her body, quickly filling the tiny brig.

  She’d changed. His faded memory was that of a plain, quiet girl who sat on the fringe of the various meetings and dinners Major Elias Stonebridge had often had at his house. Her mother had passed when she was a toddler and her father had never remarried, as the demands of his job gave him neither time nor the desire to do so. She often stayed home alone when her father traveled the world, gained an education with the grace of a good and gentle governess, and as far as he recalled had lived an often lonely and unadventurous life. It was difficult to reconcile the bland girl of his memories with the spitting fiery beauty before him. It was no wonder it had taken him a while to remember who she was. Standing before him was a woman, no longer the little girl he had once associated with timidity and the quiet life.

  “Estelle Stonebridge,” he murmured, not keeping the note of astonishment from his voice.

  What he couldn’t work out was why she wasn’t surprised he was chained in a brig working off the results of some malicious drug and was looking at him like she’d like to slice him open and feed the contents to the fish. “Why?” he asked.

  “You of all people should know the answer to that question,” she spat. Her eyes shone with a palpable rage.

  His head throbbed with an otherworldly vengeance. “As I’ve been trying to tell you, I have no idea.”

  “Maybe the memory of my father will help you put two and two together,” Estelle said.

  “What has your father got to do with this?”

  “He has everything to do with this,” Estelle hissed. “The navy might not know what you did and the government might not know what you did but I do, and now you’re going to pay for the life you took.”

  The pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. “You think I killed him,” he said.

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  “You’re wrong!”

  Estelle took a small step towards him and the fragrance of musky roses embraced him. Her arms were straight poles at her sides. Her breasts pushed heavily against the billowing white shirt as she spoke, accentuating her shapely form. He watched her as carefully as he would a tiger stalking prey.

  “You might be able to fool the entire Royal Navy, but I knew my father. He wouldn’t have put himself that the position everyone said he did. He said that he had made arrangements for his last special assignment. An assignment I knew he took you on. Everyone else had a perfect alibi, except you. I don’t know what you did to keep yourself out of jail, but it won’t work with me. He trusted you and he never came back from that mission.”

  “I was coming back to find you!” Gregory cried, “At your father’s request! But you were gone before I could get to you.”

  “My father was not only murdered, he was defamed. He was a man who gave his life for the good of the people, the good of the government! Not just accused, but somehow proven guilty of treason. He was innocent of all charges! Being a single, penniless Major’s daughter does not pay the rent, and when my father died and his list of so-called crimes was made public, my security died also. I could not own property as I am a female. The house went to the state. I was left without money, a home, or any prospects. I had no friends. I was not there when you came because the buzzards had already come for me and picked me apart.”

  “There must have been someone ready to help you. You were no more than a child.”

  “The only person that treated me with any kindness was the General,” Estelle said.

  “General Marcus Worthington?”

  “Even he could not stop the claws of society. Men didn’t want to know me and women clung to their sides, fearful of being tarred with the same brush. To know me was to be like me. And one simply could not be like me or my father.”

  Gregory held up his manacled wrists. “So this is how you treat men now?”

  “This is how I treat murderers and liars.” Her eyes were filled with sparks of molten rage.

  He let his hands drop back into his lap, recalling those days so long ago. The girl Estelle had disappeared before he had had a chance to find her and help her to safety. She couldn’t know what had really happened on that bleak night and it was too dangerous to tell her the truth, even now.

  The Navy would be on her heels and would surely catch up soon. She would be caught, found guilty of kidnapping him, and ‘questioned.’ The information he had gathered over the years was too dangerous for her or anyone else to know. He had to keep it to himself. He wasn’t going to waste years of building the evidence he had for it all to be wasted on her misguided idea of vengeance.

  He would offer her part of the truth, and he hoped it was enough for her to let him go free. For her own sake, and ultimately her fathers. He licked cracked lips. She needed to trust him; she needed to believe his next words. He locked gazes with hers and stared into the contemptuous depths.

  “Estelle, I didn’t kill your father.”

  “I cannot trust a word you say.” Her eyes flared with indignation and heated abhorrence. She was poised, ready to strike him, her hands bunching into tight fists, her body wired. He withstood the onslaught, keeping his eyes locked with hers was the only way he could show her he told the truth. He hoped she would at least try and trust his words, knowing that they sounded a desperate excuse to be unchained and set free, but also knowing they were true.

  “Estelle. He … is not dead.”

  Chapter Three

  “You lie!” A thick lump clogged her throat. There was no way her fa
ther could be alive. For years she’d tried to find him, circled the world, using every possible source, but to no avail.

  She eventually came to the heart wrenching conclusion that if he had not perished on that fateful mission then he had since. Then she had set her course on revenge on the one man who knew what had happened, but never had the stomach to own up to his own failures.

  “It’s the truth. Think about it. A body was never found,” Gregory said.

  “That is not unusual in the Navy and attacks at sea.”

  “We were not at sea,” Gregory said.

  She grasped onto the cool steel bars, steadying herself. She’d thought her father was at sea on that mission. Gregory watched her with an alert wariness. The sheer bulk of his body filled the little brig. His dark eyes were calculating, shining with an intense intelligence that was worthy of a captain of the Royal Navy.

  Estelle shook her head, regaining some of her lost equilibrium. He was playing mind tricks in order to gain his freedom. She needed to keep a cool head and not get caught up in the lies she should knew he would tell.

  “Prisoners don’t get the luxury of pleading their case until a just trial,” Estelle said.

  His dark eyes glittered. “Then what do you intend to do with me?”

  “I’m taking you to a safe haven where you will face the trial you never received on English soil. There will be a judge and jurors and you can plead your case for innocence.”

  “What if I’m found guilty?”

  “That is for the judge to decide,” Estelle said.

  “And who will be my judge?”

  “One has been appointed.”

  Fury etched harsh lines around his eyes. The vein at the base of his neck pulsed with every driving heartbeat. “How can I trust that this will be a fair trial? I don’t know the judge, I don’t know you. You have me trussed up like a Christmas Turkey and I have no idea where you are taking me.”

  A corner of her mouth flicked up and she looked directly into his eyes. “I’m taking you to Paradise.”

  He reeled from the bed so suddenly she wondered at how fast he moved. One moment he sat on the plain little bench and the next he was staring down at her through gleaming black eyes, the breath rushing in and out of his nostrils. He was only slightly taller than she, her eyes came level with the top of his nose, but he had the physical power of a lean, hard male body. He was close enough to strike her, touch her, but he held his hands in tight fists at his sides. She saw the muscle working at his temple as his jaws clenched tight. He was a black panther, set to strike, held in tight control.

  She was speechless, awed. Her immediate reaction was to step back, but she would not back down in the face of her father’s murderer. She straightened herself to her full height, pulling her head and shoulders back in the same physical tactic he tried on her. She let her gaze travel with languid slowness up along the rugged inner line of his neck then along his straight, stubble-roughened jaw, over his mouth and into the brilliant, black, bottomless pools of his eyes. She wanted to provoke him, to see how much he could withstand before he snapped and unleashed the beast within.

  His gaze flickered to her mouth. He seemed to guess her game and with a final long breath, he steadied himself, hooked his gaze back to hers and spoke in a calm voice. “Give this up now and you may see old age in a crowded jail cell instead of the wrong end of a rope in your youth. The Navy will catch you and send you to trial for what you’ve done. I give you one chance to redeem yourself before this happens.”

  “You want me to show you mercy when my father saw none.”

  “You will be caught.”

  “You will be treated as the murderer you are.”

  His gaze solidified and his outward display of raw energy receded. The crackling tension in the tiny brig mellowed. He tilted his chin back so that he looked at her with a downward slant from the bottom of his eye. The corner of his mouth lifted as he regarded her. The panther had become a fox.

  He raised his hands. The heavy chains clinked. He flicked the edges of his shirt. “Do you keep all your prisoners in rags?” His voice was deep and soft and rumbled gently in waves around her.

  Estelle’s gaze swept to his bare chest. She had forgotten about ruining his shirt when she had taken him from his ship. It was torn open from the neck to the tails. His chest was an expanse of deeply tanned skin, bronzed to a healthy sheen with the golden rays of the sun. A sleek line was formed between the hard planes of toned muscle down the center of his chest. His torso was rippled with defined facets that made his skin a smooth layer over the hard, leanness beneath. His stomach was tight and flat and tapered into the line of his breeches. A swirling sensation rolled in her abdomen and fluttered upwards, constricting her chest as her gaze dropped lower.

  Grazes laced his skin from where he had been caught on the edge of the pier. They looked red and sore, and her heart tripped in a flurry of rapid beats. “I will have some fresh clothes sent to you if I have your word you will not assault any more of my crew.”

  A sleek raven brow lifted and he treated her to an ironic stare. “Your crew?”

  There were clambering footsteps coming down the wooden stairs. Claire set foot on the last rung, and instead of joining them on the floor, bent down sideways with a look of terrified horror on her face.

  Her fine silver hair flew in silky wisps around her face and her delicate eyes were wide with fear. Estelle knew at once she felt The Terror, saw it written in the shining depth of her eyes and the tense line of she shoulders. She was pale and her face shone with a thin layer of perspiration. This was as bad as Estelle had ever seen her. Claire held a tight fist to her stomach, winced, and bent double in pain.

  “Claire!” Estelle cried, and in two steps had covered the distance from the brig to the stairs. She held onto Claire’s thin shoulders with both hands and helped her to sit on one of the steps. “What is it?”

  Claire’s face was awash with despair. She shook her head and her watery blue gaze faltered to Gregory before slipping back to Estelle. “I … don’t know. It’s terrible. I can feel many people displaced, screaming, disoriented.” Her face screwed into a tight ball and she let out a forlorn sob.

  “What is wrong with her?” Gregory asked. Estelle ignored him.

  “There’s no time, Estelle. It’s coming fast and it’s nearly here. It’s bad,” Claire whispered. “Estelle. I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.”

  “We will be prepared,” Estelle said. “Get topside. Wait for me there.”

  Claire nodded and went back out through the door.

  “Estelle!” Gregory called.

  She spun about. “Don’t call me that.” She climbed the steps after Claire.

  “What do I call you?”

  Estelle ducked her head down below the line of the roof so that she could see Gregory. “You can call me Captain,” she said and stepped onto the deck.

  She quickly went to Claire, who sat on the steps leading to the poop deck. Dalia was at her side, an olive-skinned hand resting on her shoulders. She glanced at the crew. They were quietly going about their business, throwing nervous glances at Claire. They knew of her talent, and knew to respect it. Estelle sat on a step so that she could speak quietly with Claire. “What exactly do you feel, Claire?”

  Claire looked as though she was lost in a nightmare. Her brow was deeply furrowed. Her sleek, faintly silver eyebrows were shucked upwards over eyes filled with plain despair. Estelle took one of her hands.

  “It’s like what I’ve felt before, only a hundred times worse. It began an hour ago. Just a slight little prickle. I tried to ignore it, but it kept getting bigger and fiercer. I can’t think of anything else, feel anything else. Estelle, it hurts.”

  “Dalia, are you still tired from hiding the Wanderlust?” Estelle asked.

  Dalia turne
d worry-filled, gentle brown eyes on Estelle. “I am a little tired, but I am nearly recovered,” she said.

  Estelle looked into her friend’s face. She wore her long, coffee-colored hair beneath a bright headscarf. Around the edges, flattened little golden discs had been stitched into the edging common to her Arabian heritage. Her face was long and oval and timelessly beautiful. She was also tall, although not quite as tall as Estelle, but her long limbs were more toned with sinewy muscle telling of the hours of harsh physical labor demanded of her. It was not a surprise that she had been the favorite of the ship’s slave owner when she had been kidnapped. If not for her talent, Estelle knew she would not be alive today.

  “Have you rested well enough?”

  When Dalia used her talent, especially for as long as Estelle had asked of her last night, it normally took days for her to recover. The power of her mind, combined with her physical energy was draining. Dalia nodded. “If it is going to be as bad as Claire feels then I am ready.”

  Estelle took Dalia’s hand with her free hand so that she held onto both of her dear friends. “We have been through bad times. We are together now and together we will get past whatever it is coming upon us. It is just another challenge for us to endure. We will take it all in our stride. Just like we always do.”

  Dalia inclined her head and Claire watched her with wide, trusting eyes. Estelle turned from one to the other. Dalia, so composed she could be royalty; and young, innocent, gently bred Claire. Estelle let a small smile touch her lips and hoped that she was able to believe her own words as much as her friends did.

  Estelle stepped past Claire and Dalia, and took her position on the poop deck. A deep feeling of dread crawled up her spine from the center of her stomach, threatening to claim her head and rid it of logical thought. Claire was never wrong, her talent finely tuned from years of protection from her father. Estelle knew never to ignore it. Her best defense was preparation.

  Estelle took in a deep, steadying breath and called attention to her crew. She threw orders at them like the scatter-spray of a musket gun and soon had her ship ready for battle. Her crew moved wordlessly, every female member of it doing her job and ready to protect the ship and themselves. The sun beat onto her shoulders, caressing her with a warm embrace, but it didn’t melt the chill that had settled into her bones. She pulled her telescope from the belt at her hip and scanned the hazy horizon with a seasoned eye.