Heart's Ransom

by Sara Reinke

CHAPTER FOUR

  “Why will you not let me go to London with you, Daddy?”

  On the day before she had been abducted, Kitty had sat on the edge of her father’s bed at Rosneath Manor and listened as he packed a traveling trunk.

  “Because London is no place for you, Kitten,” John Ransom had replied with an emphatic snap of linen as he folded a shirt over his arm. “It is no place for anyone with a mind to keep their constitution healthy. The air is dirty there, choked with soot and smoke and not fit to breathe. And that is not to mention the stench of the Thames…”

  He had gone on, but Kitty had not needed to hear more. Because you are blind, Kitty, is what he meant.

  “…prostitutes and pickpockets in the streets,” John said. “Poor scoundrels so drunk on gin, you trip over them sleeping shoulder to shoulder along thoroughfares―”

  “For heaven’s sake, Daddy, I am talking about staying with Melanie’s aunt, a dowager viscountess in the Mayfair district, not White Chapel,” Kitty said, exasperated. “I have told you. Melanie has already written to her at length, and she said it would be lovely, that I would be more than welcome and she could serve as my proper chaperone to parties and socials. She could introduce me to London bachelors. It would all be perfectly proprietary.”

  “What is wrong with the bachelors here on the Wight?” John asked. “That nice Michael Urry, for example. He would court you properly enough and ask for your hand, if only you would let him.”

  Kitty sighed. She did not want to marry a man from the Wight, to spend the breadth of her days on the island, never knowing more than its cragged, cliff-lined boundaries. Why her father―who had spent most of his life sailing to all corners of the known world―could not appreciate or understand this, she did not know.

  “I have known Michael Urry since I was hock-high to a pony, Daddy,” she told John. “Marrying him would be like marrying a brother.”

  “Well, you are not going to London,” John Ransom said, and another smart snap of linen as he had folded another shirt clearly imparted: And there will be no further discussion of the matter.

  “You should not be going, either,” Kitty replied, switching tactics and crossing her arms over her bosom. “I should write to Dr. Huddlestone straight away, as I am sure he would agree with me.”

  “It has been three months,” John said, sounding dismissive. “And I am fine.”

  For a man who fretted almost constantly about his daughter’s well-being, it was Kitty’s observation that John Ransom paid remarkably poor attention to his own. “Daddy, you were shot,” she said. “You nearly died from blood loss. You are lucky the pellet missed your lung, or anything else vital, Dr. Huddlestone said. That Spanish pirate, what-is-his-name…”

  “Evarado Serrano Pelayo.”

  “Yes, well, he could still be out there on the seas, and what if you come upon him again?”

  John had chuckled at this, a doting and gently patronizing sound. He had at last come to understand the torment to which he had subjected his daughter in her youth, at the hands of some of London’s supposedly finest physicians. He himself had fallen victim to their wretched methods in the aftermath of his injury, until finally, having endured one colonic too many, he had sent them all packing for the mainland once more.

  “I shot him back, Kitten,” he told her. “Pelayo is at least as worse for the wear as I am, if not more. If I come upon him again, I think I will simply throw up my hands and call us fair for it.”

  Pelayo was the only man to ever have escaped John Ransom. The Spanish privateer’s ship had opened fire on Ransom’s frigate; boarding parties had skirmished all around, and in the end, the two captains had drawn their pistols on one another. Both had taken hits; both had fallen, and somehow, in the ensuing confusion, Pelayo and his crew had avoided capture and escaped.

  “Still,” Kitty had said. “You should not be going anywhere yet, much less out to sea.”

  She heard him approach, the rustle of his clothes as he had leaned toward her, and she had smelled the soft, familiar fragrance of him. She felt the whisper of his beard stubble tickle against her and he kissed her cheek. “I will be fine, Kitten.”

  He will come for me, Kitty thought aboard El Verdad, listening as Rafe again unlocked his wardrobe and removed his crate of medicinal supplies. Daddy will come for me, and then you will be sorry.

  Rafe unwound her bandages. “You get around remarkably well in spite of your…condition,” he said, his tone of voice nearly idle.

  “My condition?” she repeated, deliberately and sarcastically lending the word the same awkward note he had used.

  “I did not realize you were blind when we were on the beach,” he said.

  She thought about remarking that he had obviously been too busy swinging his quarterstaff about, blocking her path, but instead pressed her lips together in a thin line.

  “You ran so quickly,” he said. “As if you knew your way. Have you always been blind?”

  “Have you always been a pirate?” she replied hotly, trying to jerk her foot away from his grasp. She was tired of his attempts at polite conversation, and abandoned any pretense of courtesy.

  He held her ankles gently but firmly. “I am not a pirate. I am a physician.”

  She wrenched her leg loose and he yelped as she drove her heel at him, striking his forehead, the bridge of his nose from the feel of things. “You are not!”

  “Stop that,” he said, and when he caught her again, his fingers closed firmly, sharply. “If you kick me again, woman, I will turn you over my knee and take my belt to your backside.”

  She froze, her mouth dropping. “You would not dare…!” she gasped.

  “I most certainly would,” he replied. “If you insist on behaving like a malcontent child, I will treat you like one.”

  She scowled, but offered no further resistance as he tended to her. “How do you expect me to behave, given the circumstances?” she demanded.

  “Despite the circumstances,” he said pointedly, “I would expect you to behave like a lady of some civility and reason. There is no point in fighting me. There is nowhere to go if you try to run, except the sea. And I highly doubt you would be able to swim back to England.”

  He began to apply ointment to her heels. The cream was as cold and malodorous as ever.

  “Why must you keep putting that on my feet?” Kitty complained.

  “I told you,” he said. “It will keep the wounds from festering.”

  “Should you not bleed me or something instead?” Kitty asked. “Lop my hair off to my shoulders, or give me something to make me retch anything foul from my form? I have had my fair share of encounters with physicians before. I should know what to expect.” She winced as he touched a place of particular tenderness and jerked her foot away. “That is how I know you are not really a one, as you claim.”

  He caught her leg. “I do not doubt that such barbarous methods pass for medicine in England,” he said. “But I assure you that in Spain, I learned differently.”

  “Oh, yes,” Kitty said. “You learned how to jerk blind girls from their beds and take them shipbound to Portugal for ransom. There is bloody damn civility and reason for certain.”

  Despite her mockery, she was nearly inclined to believe him. He was unlike any pirate captain of whom she had ever heard. He told her he had studied medicine in Madrid, and she wondered if he had received formal tutelage there as well, the sort that noble sons in England received.

  A noble son-turned-pirate wasn’t nearly as peculiar as the notion of a physician-turned-pirate. Kitty knew plenty of young noblemen in England suffered the scourge of debt, family fortunes squandered and lost on card tables. Maybe Rafe Beltran was in much the same predicament, and hoped that ransoming off a wealthy English daughter would give him enough gold and silver to remit on his losses.

  Some time earlier, he had come to the room with another man in tow. They had set up a table with silverware and plates for her, and Rafe had told her to eat. Sh
e had been able to smell the food, but though the aromas were wondrous and tempting, she had not touched much at all. She would be damned if she would be cooperative with this man who had forcibly abducted her from her bed. As he rewrapped her feet, she heard him sigh heavily to realize the relatively untasted food nearby. “You need to eat,” he said.

  “I did,” she replied. When he snorted slightly, not believing her, she frowned. “I ate the oranges.”

  She had smelled the sweet fragrance and been unable to resist. Oranges were a seasonal luxury in England, and she had gobbled the sweet, succulent slices, rinds and all, licking the sticky juice from her fingers when she had finished.

  His hands fell still. “I have seen you brought better a meal than most men aboard this ship will see for months,” he said, and now there was tempered irritation edged in his voice.

  “That is your failing, not mine,” she replied, her brows pinching. “You are the captain of this ship, no matter what you say to the contrary. You should provide better for your crew.”

  He rose to his feet, his breath escaping him in a sharp huff. “I never said I was not the captain,” he said. “I said I was not a pirate.”

  She had needled the right point sore, and struggled to prevent the corner of her mouth from hooking triumphantly upward as she listened to the sounds of his heavy footsteps stomping toward the door. He muttered under his breath in fervent, furious Spanish. When the door slammed loudly behind him as he left, the sharp report startled her.

  Kitty sat perfectly still and silent for a moment, straining her ears. She could hear him tromping down the corridor toward the companionway ladder. She held her breath and continued to listen until she felt sure he was not just going to turn around on his boot heel and come storming back to the room.

  He had left her alone with his medicines still out, his wardrobe unlocked. She did not know what might be inside the wardrobe so worth keeping under lock and key, but until that moment, he had paid very careful heed to keep it so, and she meant to find out why.

  She reached down, finding the opened box of medicinal supplies. She could feel cork-stopped glass bottles and vials all neatly arranged in small compartments. In a deeper section toward the front, she felt a leather-wrapped bundle, and, curious, she pulled it out. She unfurled the hide and patted her hands against the contents tucked and secured within; it was a set of surgical tools, the shapes and designs unfamiliar to her touch. She found a scalpel among the tools, the blade keen enough to draw blood when she pressed the tip of her thumb tentatively against it. She winced, sucking against the shallow wound, and then slipped the scalpel from the kit. She would have rather found a dagger or pistol, but if there were none to be had in the wardrobe, the scalpel would prove better weapon than none.

  She rolled the remaining surgical tools back in the hide panel and returned it. She abandoned the medicine box for the wardrobe, hoping Rafe kept a gun locked inside. She knelt, running her hands past clothing. She found boots on the floor, two pairs arranged neatly and still smelling faintly of polish. There was a large, empty space where Rafe stowed his medicinal case, and beyond that, as Kitty reached, she frowned to feel a folded heap of heavy wool.

  She ran her hands against the fabric and her frown deepened. She did not need sight to realize what it was; she felt the details in the brass buttons. She had touched her father’s greatcoat enough to know the uniform of an officer in the English Royal Navy by touch.

  Not a pirate, my ass, she thought, wondering which poor lieutenant or captain had lost his life to part so with his coat. There is no other way Rafe Beltran could have this—that bloody bastard murdered an Englishman to claim it!

  She moved the folded coat, drawing it along the wardrobe floor toward her and heard a peculiar scraping sound, like a heavy piece of metal against the wood. Puzzled, she reached beneath the coat and blinked in surprise to curl her fingers against a short chain. She ran her hands against it curiously, realizing it was a set of manacles, a pair of opened, iron cuffs joined together by eight chain links.

  That bastard, she thought, because it did not take much to realize the manacles were meant for her. If I had put up more of a fight, that is. He must have used them to chain up his captured English officer before murdering him, and next, he thought to put them on me. He anticipated kidnapping a girl who would fight back, who needed to be cuffed into submission, but he never anticipated me—a poor, helpless blind girl. That is why these are in his wardrobe and not around my wrists.

  Her brows furrowed. “I will show him a bloody helpless blind girl,” she whispered.

  She heard footsteps from beyond the chamber door, undoubtedly Rafe returning. She rose hurriedly, taking the manacles with her. She turned, one hand outstretched as she scurried back to the bed. The covers were still turned back and tangled together from where she had struggled with her would-be rapist; now, Kitty tucked both the cuffs and scalpel beneath and among them.

  I can clap a cuff on him, and one on the bedpost, she thought, sitting once more at the edge of the bed, within reach of both the manacles and the footboard posts. Hold the scalpel against his neck and demand he turn the ship around for England. I will hear if any of the men try to sneak in here and stop me. I will hold his bloody ass for ransom—for my return home.

  She heard the sound of the key turning in the chamber door lock, the hinges squeaking slightly as the door opened.

  “I want you to eat, Catherine,” Rafe said, his voice and heavy footsteps coming toward her.

  “I do not care what you want,” Kitty replied, slipping her hand beneath the blankets. She felt his hand close against the crook of his elbow; he meant to pull her upright. She sprang into motion, snatching the manacles out from beneath the coverlets. She slapped the cuff against his wrist, snapping it closed. She heard the startled intake of his breath and lunged for the foot of the bed, one hand outstretched and groping, the other holding the remaining cuff out to secure around the bedpost.

  “You—!” Rafe exclaimed, the tone of his voice caught somewhere between surprise and outrage. He drew his arm back, jerking against the chain, and Kitty yelped, trying to grab better hold of the free cuff lest he snatch it from her grasp. He caught her by the arm and she yelped again, frightened, as he hauled her roughly to her feet. She danced on her tiptoes, smacking squarely against him and rammed her knee into his crotch.

  His breath drew sharply, startled and pained, and he crumpled against her, sending them both tumbling to the floor. She landed beneath him, pinned by his weight, and struggled, balling her hands into fists and striking wildly. He was still breathless, choked from her blow to his groin, and when she scrambled to her feet, he could only paw feebly, clumsily for her ankle, his fingers slapping harmlessly and without finding purchase as she darted for the door.

  She did not know what she meant to do or where she thought to go, but she knew he would be angry with her now—really angry—and his pretense of courtesy on account of her blindness would be gone. She had hurt him. Now he would hurt her, and she was frightened.

  She did not make it two full strides from the bed before something jerked mightily against her wrist, snapping her arm behind her and making her slip backward, her feet from beneath her. She fell, her rump smacking loudly, painfully against the floor. She thought he had grabbed her; he had managed to clamber to his feet somehow and seize hold of her wrist, and flapped her arm frantically, trying to shake him loose. She heard a jangling sound, felt the edge of something metal cut into her skin and drew abruptly still.

  Oh, no! she thought. She shook her arm again. This time, she felt her arm jerk as Rafe tugged back. Oh, no, please no!

  “What…what have you done?” Rafe groaned hoarsely from behind her as again, he pulled futilely against the short tether of chains binding them cuff to cuff, wrist to wrist. “Madre de Dios, woman, what have you done?”