The black-haired, tattooed pirate with the letters carved into his chest moved into the room. “Drop him.”
Never taking his eyes off his captor, Liam slowly began to bend.
“I said drop him, not lay him to bed like a baby in a cradle.”
Rosalie’s eyes went wider and she pressed close to the big Irishman. Liam didn’t move, and the pirate drew a pistol. He advanced on Liam, who took a step backward. Another, the pool at his back.
And then the pirate aimed the pistol at Liam’s feet and fired.
The Irishman jumped back as sand spouted an inch from his toe, losing his balance to the slope behind him. He fell backward, twisting and trying to cushion his captain’s body with his own, and both of them tumbled heavily into the water with a sheeting splash that raised the bats in a cloud of whirring wings. Liam lost his grip on his captain. The pirate gang’s guffaws echoed off the dank chamber as he splashed hurriedly to the younger man’s body, now floating slowly off toward the center of the pool.
“You bastard!” Liam cried, trying to reach his captain as the pirates roared with laughter. “Ye wretched, stinking devil!”
But Rosalie had already charged into the pool. Captain Merrick was floating face down, the heels of his shoes making twin bumps in the water like a pair of sunning turtles, his arms outflung. She seized the shoulder of his waistcoat and with all her strength, flipped him over onto his back just as Liam and Joel, bent nearly double with pain, got there to help her. The laughter of their tormenters filled the air, disturbing more bats, all of which wheeled in circles around them. Tight-lipped, Liam lifted Captain Merrick out of the water and staggering beneath his weight, trudged to the strip of sand. He put him down and looked up, his blue eyes angry and hard.
“Why don’t ye just kill us all now and be done with it? Why must ye torment us so?”
The black-haired leader let his vicious gaze rake over them all. For Liam and Joel, amusement. For the man lying unconscious on the sand, contempt.
And for Rosalie, a carnal leer that promised fulfillment.
“Because I find you all quite entertaining. Because I’m not done with you. Because when that man you’re protecting wakes up, he’s got something to tell me.”
Again the dark eyes settled on Rosalie.
“And because you, little señorita, are going to provide this weekend’s entertainment.” She went white and her heart stopped beating in her chest. “For both me and my men.”
* * *
The pirates, still laughing, tossed a capped jug, an old mug and a loaf of bread to the sand. Then the heavy iron gate clanged shut behind them, the voices and guffaws faded, and they were alone.
Liam waited until their voices were distant and the bats, wheeling and frenzied, finally settled and reclaimed their footholds on the walls of the cave. He knelt down and checked that his captain was still breathing and frowning, looked directly up into Rosalie’s eyes.
“We need to get out of here. Immediately. Do ye understand, lass?”
She nodded tightly, aware that the odds were stacked heavily against them. Joel with his injured shoulder. Old Liam bruised, battered and humiliated. She, a female.
And Captain Merrick, quite dead by the look of him.
She stared bleakly down at him lying motionless at her feet. The skin around his eyes had sunken down in a way that lacked tone. Blood oozed from his cheek, diluted by water running from his hair and into the sand beneath his head. She looked at his hand, the fingers half-open and still, and something lurched painfully in her heart.
“What did they do to him?” she asked quietly.
“Slammed him up against the mast when he wouldn’t talk. Knocked him out.”
“Bastards,” she murmured. “Bastards.”
She knelt down and touched his jaw, filled with sudden anger at their brutality—and compassion for this man she’d taken such delight in irritating. She regretted that now. Wished she could take it back. His image blurred behind a sudden sheen of tears.
“What did they want to know?”
“Where he sent the other pirates they put aboard yer merchantman. One of them is his little brother Pedro. And by now, he’ll know that his other brother, Diego, is dead.”
“The one Captain Merrick shot….”
“Aye.”
“Dear God…we’re doomed.”
“All the more reason we’ve got to find a way out of here.”
She had not taken her gaze from Captain Merrick. Gently, she thumbed away the trickle of blood beneath the point of his cheekbone. Several hours’ worth of bristle were already rough beneath her fingers. She felt terrible that she’d made his last few days so wretched. Terrible that her demands that he rescue her brother would likely cost him his life. Blinking back the tears, she reached out and took his lifeless, heavy hand in her own.
If Liam noted it, he didn’t say a word. “He’s tough, our Kieran. He’ll be all right, lass.”
“He didn’t deserve this.”
“They left him alive. We’ve got that going for us.”
“Did they truly believe such brutality would make him talk?”
“Not too bright, that lot. But cunning and ruthless.”
“Not as cunning as we’ll need to be,” she said, and pulling up the hem of her skirts, revealed the leather garter that held her pistol, and the knife whose hilt poked above her half-boot.
Liam Doherty’s eyes went wide, and for the first time since they’d been taken prisoner, he began to smile. “Clever lass you are,” he said softly, his eyes full of admiration. “You hold onto those. We might be needing them.”
She nodded, gently laid Captain Merrick’s hand down on the sand, and stood up. Joel sat a few feet away, staring dejectedly down into the pool. He appeared to be dazed, unable to accept what had happened. Rosalie approached and knelt before him.
“Joel?”
His dark gaze swung to hers. He looked through her for a long moment, then shook his head, his eyes coming into focus. “I let you all down,” he said. “My friends. My brothers. My crewmates.” He glanced at the man lying so very still on the sand nearby. “Captain Merrick.”
“Captain Merrick is not dead, and you’re not either. For that matter, neither is Liam Doherty and neither am I. That makes four of us who are bound and determined to find a way out of this predicament but unless you pull yourself together, Joel, we don’t have a chance. We need you. Do you understand?”
His gaze flickered to his captain then back to her, but he said nothing.
“We are going to get out of here, and we’re all going to survive. We’re going to escape these rogues and make it back to our families. But you have to believe it for us to make it work. Do you?”
He said nothing.
“Do you, Joel?”
“Yes, Miss Rosalie.”
“Good.” Everything in his demeanor argued against his words. Rosalie leaned forward and touched his shoulder in encouragement but he winced, his mouth tightening with pain. She frowned. “Is it broken?”
“The whole thing’s knocked awry,” he said. “I can’t move it.”
“Dislocated?”
“I believe so, Miss Rosalie.”
“And you’re bleeding, too. I can see it seeping through your shirt.”
“Aye, caught a blade across the chest. It’s nothing, though, compared to the shoulder.”
There was much that Rosalie knew how to do, and while setting a shoulder wasn’t one of them, she did know how to bind a wound to stop the bleeding. Pulling her knife, she slashed a strip from the hem of her gown and quietly bound the big man’s chest with the fabric. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.
Liam exchanged glances with Rosalie.
But Joel didn’t notice. He was too busy staring at Rosalie, his eyes mirroring the same respect and admiration that Liam Doherty had shown. The two of them were realizing she was no mere, helpless girl.
Good.
“We’ll get out of here,” sh
e said again, her voice firm.
Joel nodded and for the first time, Rosalie began to have hope.
Chapter 11
The rum was a small mercy from their captors.
Liam pulled the cork from the jug and the three of them took turns drinking from it. Water dripped all around them. The temperature began to drop.
And Captain Merrick lay where Liam had put him, as still and quiet as death.
The light began to go. In the ceiling-hole above, the sky went grey as a shower moved in and though rain fell hard for a few moments, not enough found its way through the opening and into any kind of receptacle to collect it. The shower cleared out, the sky went blue again, and eventually its color softened as night approached.
Night. What would it bring? Rosalie shuddered, her spine going cold. The return of their captors? The brutal torture and murder of her three companions? Her own rape and probable killing?
And where, oh dear God, where were Stephen and Penelope’s crew? Had Escobar brought them here to this island as Diego had claimed, or had he simply dispatched them to a cold and watery grave without patience or mercy?
Stephen’s unknown fate was the only thing that kept her distracted from thoughts of what the coming night held. Or, the following day. Escobar seemed to take a cruel satisfaction in letting events build until those who inhabited them were frantic with terror or pain or both. She wouldn’t be surprised if he and his evil band let them all rot here tonight just to enhance their dread of what would happen when they did return. But it was best not to think about Escobar or his plans for them.
The sun sank lower.
And now Liam Doherty, sitting next to his captain, leaned over and once again shook his shoulder. It was the fifth time he’d done so in what Rosalie guessed was the last hour. Wordlessly, she and Joel watched him.
“Kieran, lad. Can ye hear me?”
Nothing.
Liam got up, moved a short distance away and stared bleakly into the water. Rosalie chewed her lip in growing concern. If Captain Merrick didn’t wake, if he wasn’t able to move on his own accord, it was going to complicate their hopes of escape. Joel was injured. Rosalie didn’t have the strength to lift and carry a man whose height and weight far exceeded her own. Only Liam Doherty had that strength, and Rosalie didn’t know how much longer it would last, especially given the fact that the old man had already carried his captain all the way here from the beach. And the alternative? To leave him behind while they saved themselves?
Unthinkable.
The cave grew gloomy as the light faded. Soon it would be pitch black in here and the bats, already swelling and moving on their damp wall, would be taking flight. Every noise from outside caused the captives to tense. Every degree of descending darkness brought rising dread. And all three of them knew it was only a matter of time before the pirates returned.
Liam walked back toward his captain.
“Let me try,” Rosalie said, staying him. “He’s obviously not hearing you.” She got up, brushed at the folds of her skirts, and went to the man lying so still on the sand. She knelt by his elbow and saying a silent prayer, took his hand. It lay lifeless and heavy in her own. By the last of the light, she looked down at it, tracing the creases in its palm with her thumb. She had not noticed his hands before, nor how unusual they were for a man of his trade. For a mariner, he had beautiful hands, masculine and strong, with long, sensitive fingers. She suspected he was a kind soul when he wasn’t irritated. Probably a deep thinker. Artistic. Creative, if the way God had designed his hands and drawn his face were anything to go by. But there’d be time to think about such things later. Quietly, she unbuttoned his cuff, pressed her thumb into the underside of his wrist, and rubbing hard at the bones and tendons beneath his skin, tried to rouse him.
Nothing.
She dug her nail into the heel of his hand.
“Wake up, Kieran.” She pressed harder with her nail, dragging it up and down the groove between the tendons, hard enough to leave angry white lines in the tanned skin. “Wake up, or we’re going to die and it’ll be all your fault. You brought us here. You’re going to get us out of here, do you hear me?”
She felt a presence behind her. Liam, standing above her and anxiously looking down, with Joel beside him.
Rosalie shook the wrist. Slapped it, hard.
There was no response.
“Christ,” Liam muttered, his eyes tragic. Desperate.
Afraid.
“Don’t you go taking the Lord’s name in vain, Liam Doherty! Have faith in me, would you?”
“He’s dead to the world, lassie. Maybe dead, anyhow.” He wiped a huge hand down his face, his eyes filling with emotion and his lips taut with the effort to maintain his composure. “Oh, Brendan, I’ve let ye down, broken my promise… Fine job I’ve done protecting him, I’ve failed ye, I’ve failed his mother, I knew we should never have—”
“Stop it!” Rosalie snapped, glaring up at him. “You are not helping matters, Mr. Doherty, by feeling sorry for yourself!” She took up Captain Merrick’s hand once more, applying more pressure, trying to reach him. “And who is this Brendan?”
“He was his da, my best friend, the finest man that God ever made.”
“And you think this man, this Brendan, would want you to abandon hope, Liam Doherty? Or would he be telling you to brace up and do what you could to get us out of this situation?”
Liam made a V of his thumb and forefinger, dug them into his eyes and walked a little distance away, and it was then that Rosalie felt a tremor go through the fingers she was chafing. Another.
She bent over her patient. “Come on, Kieran, that’s it,” she urged. “Wake up, because I’m going to make it more unpleasant for you to stay asleep than to join us in the land of the living, do you hear me?”
Liam hustled back to her side. “Is he coming to?”
“He’s trying.”
Joel’s labored breathing filled the air above and behind her. A tension sizzled between them, a sense of desperate urgency. Again, a tremor went through the hand she held and from his pale and parted lips, oh, praise God, a barely audible groan. His lashes fluttered and he tried, weakly, to raise his head before letting it drop to the sand and falling still once more.
“That’s it, Captain,” Rosalie said, stroking his cheek, thumbing the damp hair off his brow, tapping her fingertips at the side of his mouth. Keep touching him, keep irritating him, make it impossible for him to drift back under. “Come on, wake up. Wake up.”
But no, he was still again.
“Captain Merrick!”
Behind her, she heard Liam curse softly and turn away.
And Rosalie, desperate, did the last and only thing she could think of. She placed his hand down on the sand, moved up and over his prone body, leaned down and planted her lips squarely against Captain Merrick’s warm, handsome mouth—and kissed him for all she was worth.
Lips, pliant and unresponsive beneath hers. The jaw lax. The skin smelling like blood and salt, already rough with bristle. Come on, wake up. She drove her fingers through his damp curling hair and held his head steady, her tongue tracing his lips, once, twice, before plunging into his slack mouth.
Beneath her he jerked, groaned, and fought for consciousness. Rosalie pulled back, desperately staring down at him, her fingers rubbing the corner of his mouth as she tried to ignore the sudden swell of heat that pushed through her blood. Settled between her legs. Made her far too aware of him as a man and herself as a woman at a time that demanded haste and results. She leaned down and had just touched her lips to his once more when suddenly the black lashes parted and opened, and she found herself looking down into the solemn, amber depths of his eyes.
He stared blankly up at her.
She pulled back, blushing and passing her tongue over her lips while triumph made her heart pound with fierce and joyous abandon.
And then he began to frown.
“What the…devil…are you doing, Miss McCormack?”
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Liam was behind her again, pounding a fist into his palm with a sudden shout of relief.
“She’s kissing ye, what do ye think she’s doing?” he crowed. “It worked, Miss McCormack. Ye’re an angel, lass! A beautiful, clever, right-thinkin’ angel!”
Captain Merrick’s frown was spreading. He levered an elbow beneath himself and with an effort, raised himself a few inches off the sand, twisting and turning to his side. “Damned she-devil, if you ask me,” he muttered, bending his forehead into his palm, his thick mop of hair spilling in poet’s curls around and through his fingers. He could not know of course, of the thrill that had electrified Rosalie’s very being, that had vibrated through every cell in her body as her lips had touched his, tasted his, and he had come alive beneath her, a Sleeping Beau to her Princess Charming. He could not know that her entire body was humming from the contact even as her heart was stung by his obvious indignation that she had kissed him. Now, his frown deepened as he stared up at her in irritated confusion. “Why were you kissing me, Miss McCormack?”
She was grateful for the gloom. “You needed waking.”
“And there weren’t other ways to accomplish that?”
“If there were, none of us found them, and don’t think we didn’t try.”
He made a noise of disgust, and the triumph that Rosalie had felt as she’d brought him back to life, of the heady feel of his mouth coming awake and alive against her own, dissipated. Of course he was disgusted. She was no Princess Charming after all. Just a short, overly plump, overly round, and overly freckled young woman with shocking orange hair and a runaway mouth and an ability to continuously irritate him, even when she wasn’t trying.
He was repulsed. And why shouldn’t he be?
Her throat closed up. To hell with him. At least she’d gotten him awake. Done what needed to be done even if he didn’t appreciate it, nor the fact she’d probably just saved his ungrateful life. She stood up and moved away, trying to preserve her own dignity in the face of such blatant rejection.
Heir To The Sea Page 9
