Across Captive Seas
Page 1
Also by Michele Du Barry
Volumes I and III of The Loves of Angela Carlyle
INTO PASSION’S DAWN
TOWARDS LOVE’S HORIZON
MICHELE DU BARRY
The Loves of
Angela Carlyle (Vol II)
Across Captive Seas
Futura
To my husband
A Futura Book
Copyright © 1981 by Michele Du Barry
First published in Great Britain in 1986 by Futura Publications, a Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd London & Sydney
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 0 7088 3022 6
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading
Futura Publications
A Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd
Greater London House
Hampstead Road London NW1 7QX
A BPCC pic Company
Table of Contents
Across Captive Seas
PART ONE Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
PART TWO Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
PART THREE Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
PART ONE
* * *
Spellbound
The Scottish Highlands
1806-1807
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
—Emily Brontë
Chapter One
They were enemies of old, Scott and Angela Harrington. That they were married, and to each other, in no way atoned for the past. For four long years their hate and desire had been played out against an opulent backdrop of intrigue, deceit, and passion. Now it was too late.
The brief illusion of tranquility was shattered. Dark forces were at work in the Highlands, forces that would not leave them in peace. The Bratach Sith, the salvation and the curse of Clan Campbell, had been summoned into their eternal battle. And the wild Campbell blood ran hot in both their veins.
“I want to be alone!”
Dark fire rippled beneath Molly’s fingers as she stroked the silver-backed brush soothingly through her mistress’s hair. Humor her, the duke had told her; but Angela, it seemed, did not want to be humored. The incorrigible temper of the duchess was notorious and she didn’t disappoint her maid.
The tiny missile smashed against the wall instantly scenting the overheated air with carnation and spice. With a calm born of long acquaintance, Molly, without comment placed the brush on the dressing table, turned and silently left the bedroom.
The effort of getting to her feet left Angela breathless. Fragile, overburdened and enormous with child, she leaned with both hands on the edge of the dressing table. The baby had dropped days ago and now was almost never still. Consequently she was overtired, irritable, and totally uncomfortable. Nothing pleased her, or would again, until the baby was born.
She stood up abruptly and suffered for it; then flung her hair impatiently over her shoulders and strode heavily to the window. The diamond panes were delicately etched with a translucence of frost and Angela put the palm of her hand against the glass melting away the obstruction to her vision.
A bitter wind had blown in from the Hebrides turning the mountains to ice. Crystalline, they glittered in the early morning sunlight, silent sentinels to all that had happened at Seafield; prophets of all that would come. Impatiently Angela rubbed at another pane, expanding the picture: the herb garden below, hibernating and heaped with snow; the loch, a pure blue, making the village of Dornie look miserable as it huddled at the mountains’ base; the sky, beautiful but with a strange cloudbank looming on the horizon; and Scott, curse him, vital, unconfined, athletic and thoroughly enjoying himself as he trotted along the loch road on a roan stallion determined to have his head.
With an angry expletive Angela flung the windows wide and they caught in the wind slamming against the gray granite. The blast of cold air set the fire roaring, dispelled the fragrance of the broken perfume bottle and sent Angela’s hair streaming like gonfalons at a tournament. It was wonderfully revitalizing and refreshing. The only problem was that Scott caught sight of her leaning out the window and finally gave the horse its head—straight back to the castle.
There would be hell to pay—there always was with him—so Angela stayed defiantly in the frigid blast, fingers clamped on the window sill, savoring her small rebellion. How could he dare scold her when he was so unrestrainedly free and she was a prisoner confined to a stuffy room and had been for months? Scott Campbell Harrington would dare anything.
He had won her hand in marriage with trickery and force. Once her stepson, now her husband, no deed was too devious to accomplish his purpose. Scott had raped her on her wedding night beside her drugged husband; had forced an unwanted child upon her to destroy his father’s disinheritance plot; had ruined the reputation of her best friend to escape arrest for smuggling; had dueled with her lover; had proposed marriage, upon his father’s death, to gain her half of the estate; had abducted her at gunpoint during her wedding to Keith Montgomery. And that was just the beginning of his repertoire.
But now she was spellbound. Caught once again in that dark magic only one man could bind her in. Hate had migrated south in the autumn leaving her oddly vulnerable. Without her usual armor Angela had difficulty dealing with the arrogant, magnetic scoundrel that had seduced her into marriage. Surely there was something diabolical about the way Scott had won her.
He claimed he loved her and wanted her for his wife, yet had used their three-year-old daughter Lorna as a pawn to blackmail her into staying. How could she ever trust a man like that again? How could she ever know what he was actually thinking and what he really felt? How could he bedevil her so; this enigma with a black past that faded into dirty gray when her heart took control? If only the hate would return in the spring after the child had been born. Without it he would be able to trample her emotions into the dust.
She could tell when he came, even though she didn’t turn. It had always been like that between them—a flow of power—and neither was indifferent. He was laughing, when Angela had thought he would be furious, and how he managed to reach around her and get the windows closed against the wind she had no idea.
Turning, she was brought up short, for her flying hair had twined around the buttons of his greatcoat, all twelve of them.
“We seem to be entangled,” he noticed.
“It’s the fact that we are permanently entangled that disturbs me!” Angela commented tartly, not at all amused with the situation, or softened by his charming smile.
“Well, we can do nothing about that. But be patient, sweetheart, and at least this connection will be undone.” Deftly his fingers worked among the silken strands binding them like a botched tangle of crochet. “Ah, one link has been severed. I really think this might take hours.”
“You’re enjoying it!” Angela accused him, cross, tired, and cold.
That really made her angry and she jerked away but Scott caught hold of her shoulders before she tore her hair out by the roots. “Bastard!”
“That is an unfortunate choice of words, Angel,” Scott murmured unperturbed as he made her sit on a chair by the fireplace and knelt beside her concentrating on the unraveling. “More aptly applied to your offspring than to me.”
“You are thoroughly enjoying it,” she said, refusing to be baited further. “You always were partial to dueling.”
“With you, my love, always.”
A smile trembled at the corners of her mouth trying to break through. “You accomplished your purpose, Scott. You did distract me for a while. Oh lord. I’m too tired to even get properly angry anymore.”
“Ten more to go. Be glad you have very long hair.” Angela leaned forward as far as she could and began helping him. “Maybe we should ring for Molly to bring the scissors.”
“Cut your hair?” he said horrified. “Don’t you dare!”
“I meant to cut off your buttons.”
Brown eyes narrowed, Scott contemplated that for a moment and then concurred. “Good idea. But you’ll have to get up.” They both gazed at the bell pull across the length of the room.
“It must be three miles away,” Angela observed, leaning back but with her aquamarine eyes sparkling. “You will have to carry me. But be warned—the boulder weighs at least a ton.”
Scott’s attention and attempts at amusing her had begun to work, even his caustic teasing had enlivened her day and she was loath for him to leave. And he would as soon as they were free and her moroseness asserted itself again. For ever since the nightmare she’d had several months ago Angela Carlyle Harrington, Duchess of Brightling, Countess of Seafield, and only nineteen years old, had been terrified of dying in childbirth.
Scott saw her eyes wander to the cradle and was only too well aware of what she was thinking. It haunted him too but he mustn’t let her dwell on it.
“Ow!”
“Sorry, love.” He did look apologetic, but then nonchalantly threw the strand on the carpet. “You have plenty left. Don’t worry. I’ll be more careful in the future.”
“What about the bell?”
A devilish gleam set the golden-flecked eyes dancing and he smiled wryly. “Hercules, I’m not. I rather fancied being Penelope today.”
Laughing at his wit, and intention of staying, Angela relaxed, again distracted from her dark thoughts. Pausing for a moment Scott pushed the footstool beneath her feet and then quite slowly continued his work with strong, capable sailor’s fingers. After a moment of thought he began quoting bawdy limericks to entertain Angela and soon had her helpless with laughter.
“Scott, stop!” she gasped, with both hands on her stomach and tears streaming down her flushed beautiful face. “The baby is behaving like an acrobat.”
“Something more calming then, although the verse didn’t end at all the way you thought. I can think of at least six words that rhyme with luck.” But the look on his face belied his words and she reached out and brushed the bronze hair out of his eyes.
Catching her hand he brought it to his lips and kissed the soft palm just once. She liked it and that’s why she snatched it back from his dangerous caress. Ever since her abduction he had been drawing her inevitably closer with unexplainable results.
Now it was Scott that had withdrawn imperceptibly from her. “I’m almost done. Then I’ll leave if you wish.”
Regret at her action was instant. “No, don’t leave me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Her sole companion, barring servants and a child, Scott was her only equal in a lonely, foreign land.
“You’re pregnant,” said Scott, “that is what’s the matter with you. But don’t worry, it can’t last forever.”
Freeing the last tress he drew it through his fingers feeling the silky texture, unable to be parted from her. With sensual slowness he passed it over his chiseled lips and held it against his cheek. As Angela stared mesmerized at his hard, handsome face Scott voiced his true feelings for her.
“Oh, many and many a young girl for me is pining.
Letting her locks of gold to the cold wind free,
For me, the foremost of our gay young fellows;
But I’d leave a hundred, pure love, for thee!
Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
Oh mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?”
The charmed circle his poetry had woven about her had to be broken before she actually believed him. Abruptly Angela said, “I liked the limericks better.”
He understood. She had to fight for her freedom or be lost to him. And Angela never conceded a battle till the bitter end. And the end was not yet.
“There was a tinker from Tipperary—” he began.
“Please, no,” she interrupted. “More hilarity is apt to bring on the baby immediately.”
“Surely the date is not far off, a slight miscalculation on your part maybe?”
“The child might not be yours!”
“Several months ago,” Scott said with a grin, “you told me positively that it wasn’t mine. Now you are in doubt? Perhaps you needed a weapon to use on me then, perhaps you even wounded me, but I’m still alive and you have been disarmed.
“In any case we will soon know. If the child has blue eyes and blond hair—”
“And if it has blue eyes and black hair?” she said, furiously subdued.
“Ah, Angel, what a dilemma!” His voice was blithely unconcerned. “Then we shall know for a certainty that the baby is yours.”
The first pain struck on a freezing December night. A blizzard raged outside the castle and the snow already covered the ground floor windows. Angela lay very still, suddenly terrified at the imminent event.
“Angel?” Scott’s voice was rough with sleep. The room was too quiet and the very stillness of his wife had awakened him. “Are you all right?”
When she didn’t answer he lit a candle just as another rain rippled through her abdomen. She panted through clenched teeth, pain-clouded eyes staring at the ceiling, and he leaned over her with lines of anxiety creasing his forehead.
“I’m afraid,” she gasped, “the dream—”
“Hush!” Scott smoothed her hair away from her face, trying to hide the worry he felt. “Don’t think about that, beloved. Just concentrate on having our son and how happy we will be when he is born.”
His gaze drifted to the fireplace before which stood the cradle he had discovered in a storeroom. It was very old, made of dark wood with a carved hood and it was empty, waiting for the child that Angela must now labor to bring forth.
“I’ll go for the doctor.” Scott sprang from the bed and began pulling on his clothes.
“No! Don’t leave me!” Distress filled Angela and she struggled to sit up but Scott came to her easing her back down onto the bed.
“Don’t get upset, sweetheart. You must be calm and strong, my brave little wife.”
“I know. But promise you won’t leave me, promise!” Her hands clutched his as another spasm hit her.
“All right, I promise. But let me get Molly and Eilean.”
A quiet bustle of activity filled the room as the two women prepared for the birth of the baby. Scott left Angela’s side only once to find a frozen Angus outside the door.
“I canna see me hand in front of me face outside!” Agitation and cold shook the faithful servant. “I could na even find the stable! Never, lad, in all me born days ha’ I seen a storm the likes of this one. Even if I did reach the doctor, he wouldna’ come. It’s sure death to go oot on a night like this.”
“No doctor,” murmured Scott. “Maybe I could get through.”
“Di
nna ye try it, lad! The lassie needs ye alive, wi’ her not oot in a blizzard frozed to yer horse. I’ll try again later if the weather lifts.”
There was nothing to do but return to the brightness of the bedroom where Angela writhed on the bed reaching for him as he came into view.
“You said you wouldn’t leave me.”
“I didn’t, love—I only went to the door.” She clung to him and he was glad if his presence helped her bear the agony.
Scott knew nothing about the birthing of a baby. To be sure he had seen dogs and horses born but they were only animals. The delicate flower swollen with his child was different; she was his wife and the woman he loved. Somehow between himself and the two women hovering comfortingly near they had to bring her through the experience alone.
Morning came and went and Angela squirmed on the bed holding tightly to Scott’s hands. Her lips were bitten through with her efforts to suppress the suffering, and Scott had Molly braid a clean thick piece of linen that he placed between her teeth to keep her from hurting herself more.
The storm continued, even stronger than before and the only indication that it was daytime was a slight lessening of the darkness. Scott felt helpless before the enormity of the task ahead. All he could do was bathe her face, rub her back and abdomen, and hold her hands and whisper encouraging words when the pains came. The rest Angela had to do herself and he cursed silently, angry that she had to endure such torture. How much more could her slim, fragile body take? He was beginning to hate the baby that was causing them both such agony.
“If I could do it for you, love, I would,” Scott told her between the contractions. “I would gladly die to spare you one minute of suffering.”
“I know, darling,” she said trying to smile. “Don’t worry—it will be over soon.”
But it wasn’t. It was well past midnight when she finally started screaming and the reverberations tore through Scott like a barrage of balls shot from pistols at close range. The contractions were only a few minutes apart and as soon as one ended another began tearing her apart. Angela was exhausted, helpless to hold back the shrieks that sounded through the castle.