“And you,” she shot back, looking at the dark, wet stains on his neckcloth and waistcoat with equal disgust, “look most presentable yourself, Captain. Why, you wear venison quite well, don’t you?”
“Cease your prattle, Maria.”
“I told you, my name is—”
“Ahem!”
The door had swung open to admit the governor’s representative, and Maria’s breath came out in a despairing whoosh. She’d expected to see an authoritative figure, someone she could prevail upon with whatever charm she could muster and pity she could elicit. But the man who entered the room was anything but impressive. His head was bare of any fine, expensive peruke, and his brown hair, threaded with gray at the temples, was closely shorn and neat. He wasn’t an old man, but he walked with a limp, and his stooped shoulders lent him another score of years he probably didn’t deserve. He clutched a walking stick and his fingers, his hand, his very arm trembled upon it as he lurched in his broken gait toward them.
Maria felt sick. There was nothing remarkable or authoritative about him at all, let alone sympathetic, and she despaired of finding any help from this quarter. She looked at his well-tailored coat of broadcloth, the fine lace at his throat and wrists, and felt her heart sink into her toes.
Leaning so hard upon his walking stick she wondered why it didn’t snap, the man managed a shaky bow. “Are you Captain Ingols?” he asked, his voice as cracked and brittle as his body.
Ingols bowed, swiping fiercely at his stained clothes, but made no attempt to keep the derision out of his eyes, nor his voice, at the sight of this unfortunate wreckage of a man. “At your service…sir.”
Wheezing, the stranger struggled to pull out a chair, then settled himself into it gratefully. “I am Captain Barrymore, on behalf of His Excellency, Governor Shute.” He reached for the half-empty bottle of Madeira that reposed on the snowy lace tablecloth. “And who, pray tell, is this…female?”
Squint-eyed and decrepit he might be but his stare was keen, and it had noted the angry red skin of her wrist where Ingols had twisted it, and now settled upon her bloodstained gown. She bristled at the expression in his eyes.
“Oh, don’t mind her,” Ingols declared with a wave of his lace-framed hand. “Maria, please leave us. Captain Barrymore and I have important business to discuss.”
The visitor held up an unsteady hand. “No, I wish her to stay.” His gaze was angry now, as though he found her disheveled appearance insulting. His next words confirmed it. “Although I do find it most distressing to be in the company of a woman whose gown appears to be stained with blood. Have you no other attire, madam?”
Maria’s temper began to boil. Just who did he think he was, anyway? She’d hoped to plead with him to give Sam a fair trial, to do whatever was in his power to save him. But there was nothing but distaste and anger in his eyes as they fixed upon her soiled clothes and tangled hair. No, he’d be of no help. None at all.
“I have no others, sir,” she said frostily. “Your Excellency’s servant sank the vessel that carried my belongings out from under my feet.”
“The pirate ship,” Ingols offered, smirking.
“Ah, yes,” rasped Captain Barrymore. “I quite understand. My apologies, madam. I realize now why you have no other clothes. But please, see to it that you make an attempt to clean the ones you have. I find them most…offensive.”
“And you’d find them even more so if you knew whose blood darkens them,” Ingols put in.
“I am fully aware of whose blood it is, thank you,” Barrymore rasped with a disdain that easily surpassed Ingols’s. “The blood of a pirate runs blacker than most, don’t you agree?” He turned to Maria, his hand now shaking so badly as he lifted his goblet that she feared, and hoped, he’d spill wine all down the front of his immaculate coat. “Now, madam, a word with you concerning the activities of this… Captain Black.”
Maria’s eyes went sullen.
“Good luck,” Ingols said acidly. “She’d trade her life for his if she could, foolish little waif. You’ll get nothing out of her.”
Barrymore fixed Ingols with a cold stare of impatience. “Perhaps if you gave us some privacy, Captain, she might speak to me. ’Tis obvious she’s not overly fond of you.”
“I can’t let her out of my sight. I’ve got the ignorant people of this town believing she’s dead. Told them she’d escaped and run off into the woods, where the Indians got her. Until the trial I’d like to keep things that way. ’Tis for her own protection, you know. These people have put up with pirates for long enough, and they’d be clamoring for her blood too, if they knew she were alive.” He sat back in his chair and twirled the stem of his wineglass in his fingers, a habit Maria already hated as much as everything else about him. “Besides, it would be a pity to see her chained up alongside that scoundrel, let alone to have her hang beside him. I concur she doesn’t look like much now, but believe me, clean her up a bit and she’s a pretty little thing. Far too pretty to waste on such vermin.”
“I’d rather die with the captain than be forced to sit here with you!” Maria cried, leaping to her feet.
“Sit down, dear,” Captain Barrymore wheezed, putting out a tremulous hand to touch her arm. “See, Captain? You’re upsetting her. Please, allow us a moment or two to speak in private. You’ve my promise she’ll be safe with me.”
Ingols hesitated, his eyes distrustful. A muscle twitched in his cheek. Finally he got up and strode reluctantly to the door. “Very well,” he said, favoring Barrymore with a falsely pleasant smile. “I’ll return in ten minutes. But I warn you not to turn your back on her. Her reputation as a witch is well founded.”
The door slammed behind him. Sullenly, Maria toyed with her napkin, mutely vowing that Barrymore could question her until he shriveled up and died of old age. He’d get nothing from her. Nothing.
A moment passed. The silence grew heavy, oppressive, uncomfortable as she sat staring down at her hands, but she refused to look up, to even speak to him.
And then she felt his hand upon her arm, and this time his fingers weren’t trembling. She heard the scrape of his chair as he rose to his feet, saw that the shadow he threw across the tablecloth was anything but crooked and bent. Her head jerked up in surprise, and she saw that he was tall and proud, strong and well-muscled. The stoop, the trembling, the age, were gone.
And when he spoke, his voice was no longer cracked and rasping; it was a vibrant voice, deep and reassuring.
It was a voice that she remembered well.
“That damned pirate of ours sure keeps us hopping, doesn’t he? Well, don’t you worry, sweetheart.” He squeezed her hand reassuringly, then reached up to brush the hot tears from her cheek. “You just leave everything to me, because I have a plan….”
It was the peruke, of course. She hadn’t recognized him without it. She burst into choking sobs and went into his arms like a terrified child.
Paul Williams.
She had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.
Chapter 28
Freedom alone is the salt and the spirit that gives
Life, and without her is nothing that verily lives.
—Swinburne
“Really, Phoebe, why do you keep trying to feed him? He’s not a dog, you know, that you can just throw a bone to. I tell you, he’s not going to eat it.”
The two women stared at the pirate captain chained in Phoebe Beckfield’s dark cellar, unable to believe he was the same one the king’s men had brought in last week. His fine lawn shirt was soiled and stained with his own blood, and if Phoebe hadn’t crept in and dressed the terrible gash on his arm he’d probably be dead by now. His skin, once so healthy and tanned, was now the color of suet, and beneath the sinewy muscles that sheathed his lean torso they had been able to count every rib. And it was no wonder. He had declined everything from the salt fish to the apple tarts that Phoebe had sneaked down to him, instead passing his time staring vacantly into space, his eyes devoid of life.
’Twas a pity. He’d been such a bold, defiant one at first, with those black eyes flashing like the devil’s own, his handsome body straight and proud, his very manner so commanding that Satan himself must’ve done his bidding. Phoebe could still remember him staggering to his feet after he’d regained consciousness, demanding to know the fate of his young lover in a voice she had no trouble imagining carrying the length of a dark and stormy quarterdeck.
She should never have told him.
Now, the spark had fizzled out of those dark eyes, the broad shoulders were slumped in defeat, and the corners of that hard, sensual mouth drooped with a sadness that went beyond grief.
It was the young woman’s death, of course. How he must have loved her to mourn her so. Hour after hour he sat upon his pitiful bed of straw on the cold dirt, his head in his hands, his dark hair falling over his knuckles as he silently grieved. He was no longer a dangerous criminal, just an anguished, broken man who welcomed his impending death with open, greedy arms. The news of his lover’s murder at the hands of the Indians had destroyed him, broken that defiant spirit, and now Phoebe wished with all her heart that she could take back her words. No matter who he was, what he’d done, it just wasn’t right that his last hours should be spent in such suffering.
But now there was nothing she could do for him except try to make him comfortable. Sighing, she approached him, a steaming bowl of baked Indian pudding in her hand.
“Phoebe, he’ll get you!” Joan shrieked in needless terror.
“Fiddlesticks,” Phoebe returned. “We’re good friends, aren’t we, Captain?”
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t even raise his head. Sitting there with his back against the mildewy wall, his knees drawn up to his chest and his chin, now covered with a rough mat of thick, black whiskers, propped lifelessly upon his wrist as he stared at the floor, he looked to be asleep. But she saw him blink his eyes, and knew that he was not.
“I brought you something to eat,” she said softly, digging her spoon into the pudding. “See? It’s still hot. I even put lots of molasses in it. You like molasses, don’t you?”
No answer.
She knelt down beside him, hoping to tempt him with the delicious smell of the food she held out before him. He remained unmoving.
“Here you go, Captain.”
The spoon pressed against his lips. He turned his face away.
“See, I told you he’s not going to eat!” Joan sang.
Sighing hopelessly, Phoebe placed the bowl at his bare feet, stood up, and left him to his private agony. She knew that when she returned the bowl would still be sitting there, the untouched pudding cold and congealed. But at the foot of the stairs she paused, wishing that a spark of interest would animate those handsome dark eyes, that he would eat what would turn out to be his last meal.
For tomorrow morning he would die.
But he didn’t move, didn’t look up, didn’t even acknowledge her presence. And if she’d been able to see him clearly through the choking gloom of the dank cellar, she would have noticed those broad shoulders quaking with silent grief.
Softly, the women trudged up the stairs, and as they shut the door behind them, the last of the feeble light was snuffed out.
Sam sat unmoving in the darkness. Outside, rain had begun to fall. He could hear it pattering softly against the house’s stout frame and seeping into the ground. He could hear water, running swiftly, trickling away into the thread of eternity—like sand in a glass—like the remaining hours of his life.
The first flicker of something; interest, maybe, or just a morbid sort of relief, stirred in his heart. Several more hours, and it would be dawn. Several more hours, and he’d be choking his life out on the end of a rope.
Several more hours—and he would be with his beloved Maria.
* * *
Dawn broke through cheerless clouds still pregnant with rain. The earth smelled freshly scrubbed, the air pungent with the scent of pine, summer grasses, and wildflowers. A gentle breeze swept in from the sea and sent the tall conifers to whispering quietly, their hushed voices mingling with the lonely, soul-stirring cries of the gulls that wheeled above them. Birds began to twitter and an eagle, floating high above the steep cliff face, cast a graceful shadow over the crude, hastily built gallows that stood atop it.
In the parlor of their host, a prosperous merchant named Penwick who, with his passel of children and shrewish wife, had departed nearly an hour ago to get a prime spot to view the hanging, Captain James Ingols of His Majesty’s Royal Navy stood in front of a looking glass. He was smiling, anticipating the event he was taking such pains to prepare his appearance for, dreaming of the rewards that the governor—if not the king—would surely bestow upon him for ridding the coast of a most dreaded enemy.
He raised his chin to better fuss over his snowy lace necktie. “Such a pity that Barrymore was called away to Boston,” he said airily. “I’m sure he would’ve enjoyed watching the execution, don’t you think?”
Maria stood looking out the window. Dawn shot pink streaks like arrows through the fluffy clouds hanging over the sea. “Go to hell,” she said flatly.
“Still angry, are you?” He laughed as her back went rigid and her small, graceful hands clenched in unladylike fists at her side. “I thought I could appease you with that new gown. Maybe you’re having difficulties buttoning it up the back? Here, let me assist you.”
Her voice was chilling, vibrant with hate. “I repeat, Captain Ingols—go to hell.”
Each word had been meticulously pronounced through clenched teeth. He laughed, admiring her in the mirror; now that she was out of that bloodstained rag and cleaned up a bit, she was truly a work of art. A vision. Plush folds of pale pink velvet, yards of lace at the sleeves, her bosom swelling above the scalloped decolletage; and that hair.
God, that hair.
Pressure tightened his loins, nudged against his breeches. Ingols didn’t take his eyes off her as she turned back to the window.
Yes, she was a sight to make the devil weep, let alone that murderous Bellamy, who’d be in for quite a surprise when he saw her. How his black heart would break at sight of his lady love standing with him, Captain James Ingols, moments before the executioner snuffed out his worthless life.
Ah, but revenge was sweet, wasn’t it?
Ingols was well aware that the pirate captain was already in his own private hell, refusing food, refusing to respond to interrogation, and refusing to say anything in his own defense. Why, if Ingols hadn’t seen him in action on the decks of his sloop, he would never have believed that the lifeless, wretched prisoner rotting in the Beckfields’ cellar was the same man.
He grinned. Certainly, the thought of his own impending death would not have brought about such despair; the pirate had made it obvious by his actions that he didn’t give a damn about his own well-being. But Maria Hallett? Ah, now she was another story; she was where the true weapons of revenge, of torture, lay. Bribing his host into silence, Ingols had hidden her here without allowing her out of the house and had personally spread the story of her “death” in the hope that the tale would get back to her lover, and to his immense satisfaction, it had. And the townsfolk? Stupid colonials. If they’d filed past Penwick’s home, it was merely to get a glimpse of himself, the heroic naval commander who’d brought down the pirate.
Of course, he’d have to explain Maria’s presence at the hanging, but it would be an easy matter to say she’d found her way, miraculously unharmed, back to town. Such an ingenious plan. He was quite brilliant, was he not? But he cared little, really, for what the townspeople thought. Breaking the pirate captain’s spirit was all that mattered, and from what he’d seen and heard, he’d succeeded in doing just that.
Yes, life was grand.
Ah, Robert. He thought of his cousin, dead these many weeks now after the wreck of the Whydah. If revenge could only bring you back….
“Do hurry, my dear. We wouldn’t want to be late.” Pushing
Robert from his mind, he made a last primp in the mirror, brushed a speck of dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and turned. For a long moment he gazed at the girl’s stiff spine and shimmering gold hair, caught up under a clean white cap, her flashing eyes and tiny, enchanting waist.
He couldn’t wait to span that waist with his hands, to take her to his bed. Lust snaked in his loins at the very thought.
Revenge. Yes, the ultimate revenge.
“Are you certain I can’t help you with those buttons?”
“I do not need—or desire—your help.”
He shrugged and poured himself a glass of port. He could not know that beneath her frigid exterior, Maria’s heart was bouncing off the walls of her chest like a butterfly trapped in an airless jar. Every nerve in her body was thrumming; she’d lost count of how many times she’d wiped her damp palms on her skirts. But she couldn’t let Ingols see her nervousness, couldn’t give him any reason to become suspicious.
For Maria had no intention of buttoning up this hated gown. She’d be out of it soon enough, anyway.
Shock them, Maria! Paul Williams had urged, and by God, she would.
“But it’s getting late, dear. We wouldn’t want you to arrive in a state of undress now, would we? What would your lover think? Don’t you wish to look nice for him? And for me? Don’t forget, you’re in my company today.”
“A fact that causes me unending embarrassment,” she said sullenly, glancing at the sand glass on the mantel.
“Yes, do look at the time, Maria. Not much left, is there? Count the precious moments that remain in Black Sam’s life!” Smirking, he turned his back and with a flourish, picked up his goblet.
Now.
Biting her lip Maria padded across the room toward him, her footfalls masked by the satin slippers he’d given her. That hated back. That hated uniform. That hated man, humming now as he set the glass back down on the table….
Once, she would not have been able to do it. Once, she would not have even considered it.
Pirate In My Arms Page 37
