Under Her Brass Corset

by Brenda Williamson

  She pulled away and flicked the buttons through the tight holes on her dress.

  “What are you doing?” Jasper’s gaze fixated on her fingers.

  “I said you could have me when I got my treasure.” She reached up and pulled her hair free of the few hairpins keeping it up.

  “We should go back to the Illusion.” He started to get up, but she grabbed his hand and put it in the opening of her unbuttoned dress.

  “We wouldn’t be alone there.” She moved his hand beneath the cloth and let go once she felt his fingers fold around her breast.

  Jasper pushed her back gently. He crawled forward over her, stretching out the length of her as she lay down. From there he needed no coaxing. His kisses showed as much greed as his hands that raked her dress from her shoulder and yanked it down her arm. Sand clung to her skin dampened by sweat and excitement. He rolled, pulling her over him. She lay on his chest, content to be in his arms.

  “I can’t remember the last time I felt so alive, Abigail. Four hundred years and I—”

  “Not again.” She groaned and pushed herself to sit up, and then she turned her head at the sound of gunfire.

  Jasper jumped to his feet and jerked her up. From the distance, she barely saw the person in the longboat coming to shore.

  “It’s Eric.” Anger was evident in the prolonged low growl.

  She took Jasper’s word that he recognized her cousin. “What do we do?”

  He scooped the bottle up from the ground and stuck it in her hand. “Stay behind that rock. I’m going to convince him to leave.”

  “He has a gun.”

  “Immortality has a shipload of benefits,” he answered as he marched away.

  She watched him strut and swagger across the sand. Arrogance surrounded him like a shield. The attractiveness in the masculine show of bravery made her hot with desire.

  She ducked behind the rock so Eric didn’t see her. On her hands and knees, she peered around the side of the boulder and watched the men.

  “Give it up, Blackthorn.” Eric took a determined stance. “You aren’t leaving this island with my treasure.”

  “You aren’t leaving here alive,” Jasper answered.

  Abigail held her breath. Eric lifted his gun and shot Jasper. He flinched, but he kept going. Another shot made him stagger back. A third caused him to drop to his knees.

  “I know I can’t kill you with a gun, but it’s a good tranquilizer, wouldn’t you say?” Eric tossed his pistol to the ground and pulled a cutlass from the sash around his waist.

  Abigail sat back and looked at the glass bottle. If she believed Jasper, then she had to trust he’d never want Eric to get hold of the water of Avalon. But she had to do something to stop Eric. Even she knew that if Jasper lost his head, he’d die.

  Jasper struggled with the riveting pain in his chest, the sharp sting in his shoulder and the excruciating hole in his abdomen. He pulled a leg up and got one foot under himself.

  “I understand you can’t grow a limb back, but you won’t die. However, I suspect, if you lose your head, you’re a goner.” Eric took a swing and Jasper dived out of the way.

  The blade caught him in the side and he grasped the open slice oozing blood. Eric came at him again.

  “No!” Abigail’s yell stopped him.

  Jasper wanted to wring her neck for exposing herself.

  She held her arms up with the bottle in one hand and the cork in the other. Her blouse, still open, exposed the creaminess of her skin between her breasts.

  “You kill him and you’ll never get this,” she claimed.

  Eric heeded her warning and lowered his sword. “Be careful with that.”

  Her brave front wavered the moment her gaze went to his blood-covered body.

  “Pour it out, Abigail,” Jasper ordered, lowering his hands and rising, hoping his show of strength would bolster her courage.

  Eric swung his cutlass back near Jasper’s neck. “You do that, dear cousin, and Blackthorn loses his head.”

  “Do you promise not to kill him if I give this to you?” Abigail asked, her brow wrinkled with a frown.

  “What are you doing?” Jasper took another step forward, gritting his teeth against the pain. Too many wounds took too long to heal, leaving him weak.

  “Of course, Abigail dear,” Eric said cheerfully. “If I get what I want, Blackthorn can keep his head.”

  “Then here, take it.” She held the vial out.

  Eric hurried forward. When he got more than halfway to her, she corked the bottle and sat it in the sand. Then she ran a wide circling path toward Jasper.

  “Ow.” He flinched from her touch.

  “What can I do?” She lifted her skirt and tore a strip of fabric free.

  “I’ll be all right.” He let her compress the cloth against his stomach. “I promise everything will heal.”

  “Not if you bleed to death.” She left him holding the cloth against his stomach while she ripped another piece from her skirt.

  Jasper watched Eric uncork the bottle and drink the contents. The puckered expression Eric made seemed odd, since the water of Avalon tasted just like ordinary water. Jasper expected Eric to question the taste, but it never happened. Instead, Eric let out an evil laugh of triumph.

  “This isn’t possible,” Abigail whispered hoarsely. “You can’t really be…”

  Jasper glanced at her hand perched by the vanishing wound in his shoulder.

  “Move behind me.” He pushed her aside.

  Eric sheathed his sword and pulled a small pistol from his waistband. “She’s coming with me.”

  “You got what you want, Eric.”

  “I need time to find out if this magic water is working.”

  Jasper tried to think of a way to protect Abigail.

  “I could stab you in the heart and show you right now,” Jasper offered.

  “Yes, you would love that, but no. Besides, Cousin Abigail and I have some catching up to do. A nice family reunion is waiting for her. Now let’s go, Abigail.”

  “She’s not going with you.” Jasper decided he’d have to charge Eric.

  Then Eric shot him in the opposite shoulder, showing him the futility in trying anything. “Damn it, Eric.” Any move he made endangered Abigail.

  “She goes with me or the next bullet just might land in her.” Eric advanced, circling, waving his gun at Abigail to go to his boat.

  Jasper let her go. Eric had given a clue to where they were headed. He took her hand and kissed her sand-covered fingers. “I’ll come for you. I promise.”

  “Let’s go!” Eric punctuated his statement with a shot in the sand at their feet.

  “You’ll be all right.” He slowly released her outstretched fingers as she walked away. “Trust me, Abby. You’ll be all right.”

  She nodded and forced a faint smile to form on her grim face.

  “I’m warning you, Eric. If you hurt her, you’ll have to spend every moment of your miserable life looking over your shoulder.”

  “I live for the day, Blackthorn.” Eric pushed Abigail into his boat.

  Jasper watched them row out to Eric’s ship. He shook off the last effects of the healing and rushed to his longboat to follow. The shots he had heard Eric fire on his arrival had been into the bottom of his longboat, now filling with water.

  “Damn.” He spun around and thrust his fingers into his hair, pulling at the strands in frustration.

  The shimmer of something on the sand near the rock Abby had crouched behind caught his gaze. He walked to see the wet spot. Beyond he saw small pockets of water from a recent rain.

  Had she dumped out the water of Avalon? He pulled the Crystal Compass from his pocket and touched it to the moist patch of sand. The glass simply glowed, proving Abigail had had the foresight to empty the vial and fill it with ordinary water. He worried what Eric would do once he learned she had deceived him.

  Jasper looked toward his ship and saw a small boat coming toward him. He ran to the surf and
waited, thankful to see Adam had found the rowboat in the hold of the Illusion.

  “Need a ride?” Adam grinned.

  Jasper didn’t wait for him to reach the beach. He waded into the surf and jumped in the boat. “Eric has taken Abigail,” he said.

  “Is she all right?” Adam’s gaze raked over him.

  “It’s my blood.” He drew his shredded and stained shirt up over his head and dipped it in the water. “Eric mentioned a family reunion. I have a feeling he’s going to take her to Blackbeard.”

  “Blackbeard won’t let anything happen to her. She is his granddaughter after all.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on. She’s going to need protecting, however, when Eric finds out the water he drank isn’t from Avalon and he’s not immortal. That boy has a mean, vengeful streak in him.”

  “What water?”

  “Blackbeard hid what he had left that I gave him. That’s why Abigail and I came here. She found a map, and this.” He pulled the Compass from his pocket. “The Crystal Compass of Avalon is a device for locating any source of water from a spring of Avalon.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “A story for another time.” He stood and tucked the Compass in his pocket, then reached up and grabbed the rope ladder dangling on the side of the Illusion.

  All his thoughts went into rescuing Abigail from Eric’s clutches, and then confessing to everything he’d kept from her, including how deeply he had fallen in love with her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Abigail stared at the man in the dark suit and short dark hair. She saw a little of her father in his face. Blackbeard the pirate—William Thatch—William Drummond—Edward Teach. So many aliases. Did she dare believe it possible he lived an immortal life? She had seen for herself the wounds on Jasper magically healing.

  “The newspaper articles describe you a bit differently,” she said.

  “That was another life, child.” He touched her face with long, thin fingers. “You are the spitting image of your dear grandmother with the same beautiful eyes that attracted me to her. I bet you have an adventurous soul like her as well. And I see you wear the mother-of-pearl shell cameo I gave her when your father was born.”

  She covered the brooch with her hand. He grandmother had said it was a gift from her grandfather. It didn’t seem real that she meant Blackbeard. Yet after all that had happened, she believed him.

  “That thieving scoundrel Jasper Blackthorn said you were alive,” she told him, hoping her emphasis on thieving would shift away their need of her.

  “He’s been many things since our pirating days. The thieving may be accurate, but a scoundrel, never. The man has a chivalrous soul. Not to mention a sensitive one. I remember a time he only wanted to sail around in that ship of his and write poetry. Then he took to tinkering with tools and making dang contraptions the likes no one had ever seen. He even made that arm for Eric.”

  “I don’t believe it. He detests him,” Abigail charged.

  “Maybe now, but there was a time he watched after the boy. Just the same way he’s watched over you. Jasper’s a loyal one, keeping an eye out for my children and grandchildren. The one thing I didn’t expect was for him to take a special liking to your father and mother. They had become the closest to friends he’s had since becoming immortal. He never learned how to handle death—goes all to pieces, blubbering like a woman. That’s why it surprised me after all these decades he had taken up with befriending your family. Now I see why.”

  “If you’re suggesting he was interested in me when I was a child—”

  “Nothing so tawdry, dear. Jasper is an honorable man. Yet I can see how tempting you became once you were all grown up.”

  “Enough of the little reunion.” Eric came forward, swinging his arm with the artificial hand, to which he’d attached a sharp blade. “I want to know where the map is that shows where you’ve hidden the real bottle of water.”

  Abigail gulped down her fear and lifted her chin to show her defiance. “I don’t have the map anymore and you already had the bottle.”

  “And it was ordinary water.” He held up his arm, brandishing the cut she accidentally gave him after she’d pushed him into a stack of crates on his ship.

  “I told you, boy. That map and bottle aren’t important. It’s the glass sphere Jasper has hidden away,” her grandfather said.

  “You know about the Compass of Avalon?” she asked, saddened that Blackbeard had lived up to some of his reputation. Jasper would have told him about the Compass out of trust, and now her grandfather was betraying him.

  “Of course. Jasper told me all about it years ago, but he wouldn’t show it to me. He said it was dangerous to let anyone have it because armies of immortals could be made on a whim. I told him that wouldn’t be so bad, having the command of thousands. The seas…No, the world would be ours to rule.”

  “You sent Eric to kill my father and ransack my home?”

  “Your father’s dead?” He turned an angry glare at Eric. “Did you kill my son?”

  “He was in the way.”

  “Boy, I told you to get the sphere.” He marched over to Eric and slapped him in the head with no more effort than if he scolded a five-year-old. “Family is important and you can’t go around killing them.”

  “That’s all you have to say to him?”

  “We can’t change things, now can we? I guess it was a bad plan on my part to send your grandmother that map. Though I have to say, I did a good job convincing Jasper he should hide the sphere there. After all, he was always visiting the place.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not more upset about him killing my father, your son.” She shook with anger.

  “When you’ve pirated for as long as I have, you get used to death. You know Jasper saved me from that fate. If not for him, that bloody Lieutenant Robert Maynard would have killed me in that brutal battle on Ocracoke Island. Him and his men managed to shoot five musket balls into me and lacerated me body over a dozen times with their swords. But that there brave Jasper, he fought the lot of them and then dragged me into safe hiding. He gave me a vial with some water in it and he told me to drink it. It saved me life. If that weren’t enough, he led Maynard away from finding me. I heard later that fool Maynard cut off the head of one of me crew and hung it from his yardarm, touting it was me own head.”

  “Let’s stop this reminiscing and discuss the magic water,” Eric said to the man claiming to be her grandfather. “She and Blackthorn found the bottle you buried and I drank it, but I don’t feel any different. The cut on my arm hasn’t healed.”

  “Maybe you cut yourself too soon, before the water had a chance to take effect. Cut yourself again, boy,” Blackbeard told him.

  Abigail watched Eric slice his arm with the knife attached to his artificial limb. Blood bubbled up through his blue sleeve.

  “Damn, that stings,” he grumbled. “How long?

  Blackbeard tugged Eric’s sleeve up. “Should have started immediately. Something that small can heal in less than a minute.” He turned to her. “What’d he drink, dear?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “That bitch gave me sea water.” Eric lunged for her.

  Blackbeard stopped him. “Easy boy, we’ll get you the real thing.”

  “How?”

  “Jasper. He’ll come here for help in finding her. Then we can negotiate the trade for that device he says locates the closest supply of water from Avalon.”

  Eric paced back and forth in the small room. Twice he tripped on the small rug by the door.

  “I’m tired of waiting.” Eric struck the vase on a table and sent it flying into a wall, and then turned to her. “Was that really the bottle Edward buried or did you set me up and pretend all along you went to that island to dig it up?”

  “Pretend? I’ve been skeptical of this immortality claim from the start. I’d never go along with any plan to pretend anything. However, I’m not stupid enough to take a chance, so when I saw a pudd
le of water behind the rock, yes, I poured out whatever was in the bottle and refilled it with that.”

  Eric swung his blade-tipped arm around as if it was a harmless stick. “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Enough!” her grandfather demanded. “Blackthorn will show up with the Compass.”

  “He’ll never give it to you.” Abigail glared at him. “I’d rather die than let you get hold of the Crystal Compass of Avalon.”

  The door on the other side of the room burst in as if a strong wind pushed with all its might. Jasper stood in the shattered framework with Adam behind him.

  “Stay right where you are.” Eric grabbed her and held her in front of him like a shield. “I want the Compass.”

  Jasper’s brow furrowed as he entered. He glared her way. Adam entered and stepped to Jasper’s side.

  “You told him about the Compass, Edward?” he asked, disappointment in his tone.

  “Sorry, Jasp, guess I wasn’t thinking,” her grandfather replied, exhibiting remorse she knew he didn’t feel.

  “He told Eric on purpose, Jasper,” she said so he would not blindly trust Blackbeard as the friend he thought he was.

  “I know,” Jasper answered.

  “How?” Blackbeard asked.

  “Eric’s comment about a family reunion. It didn’t sound right that he should mention something like that when you and he always acted as if you’d not have anything to do with one another. And yet, no matter how rotten Eric was, you kept asking me to look out for him. I didn’t want to suspect you of helping him, but then, you are a pirate.”

  “It’s nothing personal, Jasp. Think of the power we’d have. You could join us, command your own ship. That goes for you too, Sutterby.”

  “Count me out, old dog.” Adam wandered around the room, studying pictures on the wall as if he was there just to observe. “Jasp and I do just fine commanding our own ships already. We don’t need the trouble piracy will bring.”

  “Your own ship?” Jasper questioned Adam with an amused look.

  She knew Adam no longer had a ship. That was the reason for him joining them. Seeing Jasper joke with Adam made her happy. They had finally showed signs of patching up their differences.