“Then I say we try.”
He brought his gaze back to hers. Her eyes were deep and still in a pale, beautiful face, her dark, chestnut-shot hair blowing wild and free about her. Reaching out, he cupped the back of her head with his palm and drew her to him, his mouth taking hers in a hard, crushing kiss that was savage and life-affirming and over all too quickly.
“Hold on,” he said as he let her go, and sent the outrigger racing toward the dark, torturous waters of the channel.
Lashed along by a strong beam wind, they flew across the water, Jack crouching forward so that he could use the paddle like a pry to throw the bow to one side or the other as dark, menacing heads of coral rushed at them.
It was a race against time—against the Barracuda, crowding all sail as she swung around the headland, against the growing strength of the tide, and against the sickening spiral of dizziness and pain that threatened to pull him down into unconsciousness. The sea was a thunderous roar, the high, wind-driven rollers breaking against the surrounding reefs in an endless cannonade that filled the air with spray and the pungent scent of brine. It seemed to Jack that the world had narrowed down until it consisted of nothing but a vivid, crazily tilting blue sky, and water: wind-flung spray, and boiling white foam, and swelling waves that set the canoe to pitching so heavily, the outrigger flew dripping through the air. Water washed over the hand-hewn gunwales, sloshed about their feet. India found a coconut shell in the bottom of the canoe and used it to bail frantically while Jack struggled to keep the wind and the treacherous waves from flinging them against the jagged coral rocks rising beside them.
“Where’s the Barracuda?” he shouted, not daring to look up.
India’s voice reached him over the roar of the waves and the flapping of the sail. “Coming fast.”
The canoe crested a wave, then dipped down again with a jarring crash that stole Jack’s breath in a flaming agony. Clenching his teeth against the pain, he shot a quick glance toward the open sea, and saw the corvette bearing down on them, her prow lifting high and proud as she cut through the rolling swells. “Shit,” he whispered.
Patu had already raised anchor and was setting sail. As Jack watched, the neat little yacht’s main sail billowed out white and full as the trades hit it, and the Sea Hawk swung away.
“He’s leaving,” India said in an anguished whisper. “Patu is leaving.”
“No.” Gasping for breath that seemed to keep eluding him, Jack leaned into the paddle and threw the canoe to starboard, then back to port as the channel snaked dangerously first one direction, then the other. “He’ll veer around in an arc and come back to pick us up with his sails already set. It’s the only chance we have of outrunning the Barracuda.”
“And how much chance is that?”
Jack started to laugh, then swore instead. “Bloody hell.” White and sun-bleached, a clump of coral reared up from the boiling water, straight ahead. He threw all his weight into the paddle, but the churning tides seemed to hold the canoe fast in their grip, spinning it relentlessly toward the jagged, looming mass. Pain stole what was left of his breath, and his sight dimmed.
For one, frozen moment, the canoe surged ahead, caught fast by the current, out of control. Jack leaned into the paddle with what was left of his strength, and it still wasn’t enough. He heard the roaring crash of the waves, felt the wild spray wet on his face. Every muscle in his body strained, screaming, desperate. Then, with an odd popping sound, the carved prow swung away. The trades eddied, gusted up again, catching the small sprit main and sending the canoe skimming out across the swelling, suddenly open water.
Jack looked back, saw the breaker-shattering reef behind them, saw the fringed palms of the distant beach rising up feathery and green against a tropical blue sky.
Then the island and the sky and the surf disappeared, and he sank into unconsciousness.
“Jack, please. Please wake up.”
Jack heard India’s tight, desperate voice, felt her fingers dig into his shoulder as she shook him, hard. He groaned, and tried to turn away.
“Jack.” The hand left his shoulder, and he sighed. “Wake up.”
Wet and cold, water splashed into his face, dripped down onto the bare flesh of his chest. “Bloody hell,” he roared, and sat up, shaking his head, droplets spraying everywhere. The blue horizon tilted crazily, then righted itself as his bleary gaze focused first on an unfamiliar Melanesian who crouched, silent and watchful, on the outrigger, then shifted to where India knelt at Jack’s feet, a wet coconut shell clenched in her hands.
“Thank God,” she said in a harsh whisper. Tossing the shell aside, she gripped his shoulders with urgent fingers. “The ladder. Hurry.”
Jack glanced beyond her, to where the Barracuda bore down upon them, the wind catching the spray from the water curling away from her bow as she crested the waves. “Bloody hell,” he said again, and scrambled for the rope ladder dangling from the Sea Hawk’s rail.
He’d made it about three-quarters of the way up the ladder when the world went into a spin and his stomach heaved. He stopped, the rope fibers digging into his clutching hands, his sweat-bathed body swaying in the wind as he hung, suspended, over the surging waves.
“It’s about time.” Patu’s hand closed around Jack’s upper arm and hauled him over the rail. “I was startin’ to think Her Britannic Majesty’s representatives were going to get here before you did.”
Jack leaned back against the gunwale, his breath coming hard and fast as he fought down another wave of nausea.
India came up the ladder in a rush. “I thought you said Granger would head straight for Rakaia?”
“I was wrong.” Swallowing hard, Jack pushed away from the rail and moved quickly to release the helm from Patu’s lashing.
Patu worked at hauling in the ladder, his frowning gaze fixed on the crowding sails of the approaching ship. “The Sea Hawk might be a fast little lady, but she’s not going to outrun a royal corvette.”
“No. But we can go places they can’t.”
India knew a niggling tremor of disquiet. “What places?”
“Run up the fisherman staysail,” Jack told Patu as the Sea Hawk, answering to the helm, swung sharply to port. “It might boost our speed by a knot or so.”
“What places?” India repeated.
Jack threw a quick glance back at the Barracuda. “The Gods’ Pathway.”
In the act of running up the staysail, Patu froze. “I think that flowerpot musta hit you harder than we figured.”
India glanced at the boy, then brought her gaze back to Jack’s face. “What is the Gods’ Pathway?”
“That,” said Patu, the canvas unfurling as he swiveled to point at the wave-lashed line of green and gold rushing toward them.
Stumbling with the pitch and fall of the deck, India went to wrap her hands around the rail and squint into the distance. “It’s a reef. You’re sailing right into a reef.”
Jack kept a steadying hand on the helm. “It’s a belt of reefs. Some with atolls, some just shelves of coral lying below the surface. It stretches for a good twenty-five miles or more. We lose ourselves in that, and the Barracuda will never be able to follow us.”
“Huh,” said Patu. “We slice our hull open on one of those submerged reefs, and the Barracuda won’t need to catch us. We’ll be shark food.”
Jack realized India was no longer looking at the ominous outline of the Gods’ Pathway. She was staring at a trio of sleek, triangular-shaped fins slicing with menacing silence through the waves off the starboard bow. “Those are porpoises, aren’t they?” she said in a tight, controlled voice. “Please tell me those are porpoises.”
Jack flashed her a wide smile, and swung the wheel sharply to port in a deft maneuver that sent the Sea Hawk slicing through a narrow passage and into the channel of turquoise water running between the line of reefs. “Those are sharks.”
Chapter Twenty-six
FROM HIS POSITION at the prow of the HMS Barracuda, Alex
Preston watched the trades catch the Sea Hawk’s sails and send the schooner-rigged yacht skimming across the waves. He had seen, through his glass, Ryder’s skill as he maneuvered the native outrigger canoe through the treacherous southeast passage. Seen, too, the way Miss India McKnight had taken control of the primitive vessel after Ryder’s collapse and brought them safely to rendezvous with that treacherous, lying little Polynesian, Patu.
“Why?” Alex asked, when Simon Granger came to stand at his side, the captain’s attention, like Alex’s, lifting to the string of palm- and shrub-covered atolls spreading out in a line, directly in their path. “Why would a gentlewoman such as India McKnight help a scoundrel like Ryder?”
The captain swung his head, his eyes crinkling with quiet amusement as he threw Alex a quick, enigmatic glance. “One presumes she believes in his innocence.”
“But how can she?”
Simon Granger raised the spyglass to his eye. “Did you see her? On the beach at La Rochelle?”
“Yes,” said Alex slowly, not understanding where the captain was going.
“She didn’t strike you as looking . . . different from the woman we first met at Rabaul?”
Alex let out a sharp laugh. “She’d just spent the better part of three days being dragged through the jungles of Takaku as a hostage. Of course she looked different.”
“That’s not what I—” Granger broke off, then swore long and crudely under his breath. “The sonofabitch. He’s not bluffing. He’s going to try to lose us in the Gods’ Pathway.”
Alex lurched forward to grab the rail. “But . . . he can’t mean to sail into that! It’s a ships’ graveyard.”
A peculiar smile tightened the ends of the captain’s mouth. “No? Just watch him.”
Side by side, the Barracuda’s first lieutenant and his captain stood at the prow and watched as the little yacht swung sharply between a palm-studded, sandy atoll and a long, surf-frothed reef. Alex kept waiting for Granger to give the order to break off the chase. Frigate birds wheeled overhead, calling, their great wings outstretched against the vivid blue of the sky; the trades blew warm and strong, kicking up little whitecaps on the swells and flapping the sails overhead. The atoll-studded reefs loomed before them, mysterious and beautiful and deadly.
The order to veer never came.
Finally, when he could control himself no longer, Alex said, “You can’t mean to follow him in there, sir.”
Granger kept the spyglass to his eye, his attention all for the Sea Hawk. “Why can’t I?”
“Because this . . . this is a corvette!”
“I know that, Mr. Preston.”
“But . . .” Alex’s hands tightened around the rail before them until his knuckles turned white. “We could sail directly to Rakaia and await him there. We have no need to follow him through those reefs.”
Simon Granger lowered the glass slowly, although he kept his gaze on the yacht ahead. “And if Ryder doesn’t go to Rakaia?”
Alex felt a sick clenching, deep in his gut, because he knew what the Admiralty—and his own family—would say if the Barracuda broke off pursuit now, only to wait, futilely, ridiculously, off the sandy shores of Rakaia for a fugitive who never appeared. They would say that Granger had deliberately let his quarry get away. That the captain of the Barracuda had allowed his past friendship with Jack Ryder to interfere with the performance of his duty. And that Alex Preston had done nothing to stop him.
Swallowing heavily, Alex watched the surf curl and break over mile after mile of hidden reef. “And if we tear the bottom out of the ship? What will the Admiralty say then, sir?”
To Alex’s shock, the captain laughed. “If we drown, we won’t need to worry about the Admiralty, now will we? And if we’re only damaged . . . Well, then we’ll patch her up well enough to limp back to La Rochelle for repairs. And then we’ll go to Rakaia.”
The Sea Hawk sailed up the narrows on a close haul. To windward lay a chain of sandy islets strewn across the turquoise sea like a line of giant rosary beads, while the submerged, milky-jade shadow of a reef lurked quiet and deadly off their starboard side.
“Holy moly,” shouted Patu, his eyes widening as he turned from trimming the main. “They’re coming in here after us.”
“What the hell—” One hand tight on the wheel, Jack slewed around to see the Barracuda doubling one of the chain’s small islands, her prow sending out a broad, foam-flecked wake as she cut through the waves. Her sails were reduced, but she was still flying more canvas than was prudent with so little sea room. “Sonofabitch.”
She was a square-rigged, three-masted warship, the Barracuda . With her flush deck and single tier of guns, she was smaller than a frigate, but larger than a brig. She’d been outfitted with engines, but she didn’t look to have any steam up. Coal was expensive and hard to get in the South Pacific; a captain could go months at a time without it—even a captain ordered by the Admiralty to apprehend a man held responsible for the death of the Prime Minister’s cousin.
India came to stand at Jack’s side, her dark hair flying about her head, her cheeks touched with a rosy glow by the salty morning breeze. He watched her eyes narrow in thought, her lips parting as she sucked in a quick, deep breath. “Simon Granger must want you very badly.”
“His career depends on it.”
She brought her gaze to his face, her features pinching with sudden concern. “You look terrible.”
Jack huffed a low laugh, then regretted it when a fiery hot coil of pain whipped around his chest. At least his head was clear. For the moment.
“How long will it take them to come up with us?” she asked.
“If Simon has the balls to keep flying that kind of sail, not long.” Jack glanced up at the telltales fluttering from the shrouds. “Ever done much sailing?”
“Some. Why?”
“Because the only way we’re going to lose that corvette is by dodging in between these islands and reefs. And that’s going to take more than just Patu handling the sheets.”
Her gaze traveled over the rigging. “I believe I can do it,” she said in that calm, no-nonsense way she had, and Jack felt a wry smile twist his lips.
The wind had blown a heavy lock of hair across her eyes, and he watched her bring up one hand to catch it. She tried to rake her hair back from her face, but it was in a hopeless tangle. Her finely tucked man’s shirt was smudged with dirt and seawater, her split tartan skirt ripped, and stained with his own blood. She looked bedraggled and hard-used and, in that moment, utterly sexless. And yet he felt a swelling of emotion that left him feeling winded and awed.
He’d been aware, for some time, of the disconcerting drift in the nature of his feelings for this woman, as admiration and raw desire had begun to mingle, unexpectedly, disastrously, with his earlier exasperation and vexation. He’d known it, and yet he hadn’t been prepared for this, this sudden, gut-clenching, heart-stopping realization that what had happened to him went beyond lust, beyond desire, beyond even liking, far beyond, into that mysterious, unfathomable realm of the eternal and the sublime.
He couldn’t have said why this revelation had come upon him at this moment. He only knew that it filled him with a fierce determination to be done with this endless round of running and hiding, and a profound regret that he hadn’t faced up to the charges against him long, long ago.
“They’re gaining on us,” said Patu, chewing the inside of his cheek.
“Ready to fall off ?” Jack said, his gaze narrowing as he caught sight of a break in the long, foam-flecked reef.
India nodded.
He spun the wheel, and the Sea Hawk fell off hard to starboard, Patu and India scrambling to trim the sails to a close reach as the hull heeled to leeward. The little yacht leapt forward, her sails spilling the breeze astern.
They cut through a passage in the reef with such clear, crystal blue water that Jack could see his boat’s shadow pass over the sand some five fathoms or more below. The air filled with the sounds of the o
cean, the gurgling swoosh of the bow slicing through the waves, the tapping of the halyards against the masts. Then they were clear of the coral, an atoll rearing up ahead of them, its sun-soaked, sandy shores licked by a lazy surf, a scattering of coco palms waving in the freshening breeze. Jack swung the Sea Hawk back to port until they were on a close haul again, running up the lee side of the reef.
Only, by now the wind had shifted, swinging around so that it was coming almost straight out of the east and putting them closer to windward than he would have liked.
“If you’re not careful,” shouted Patu, “we’re gonna be pinching.”
Jack’s head fell back, his eyes squinting against the sun as he watched the jib for the first signs of a luff. It wasn’t going to be easy, short tacking in this narrow stretch of water to windward against a foul tide. And he was starting to get dizzy again, his hair damp with a strange cold sweat. If he weren’t gripping the wheel so tightly, he thought he’d probably fall over.
“How well do you know this section of islands and reefs?” India asked, her breath coming hard and fast.
Jack flashed her a quick grin. “What makes you think I know it?” He threw a glance over his shoulder and saw the Barracuda, her crew still scrambling to trim her sails as she swung around into the smooth, bubbled water of the Sea Hawk’s wake. “Aw, hell.”
The corvette was close enough now that he could see the man who stood at the prow, a speaking trumpet in hand, his voice drifting across the wind-ruffled, vivid blue water. “Ahoy, Sea Hawk. Lower your sails and bring to instantly, or by God, I’ll sink you.”
Jack glanced at India, and it was as if the wind had died, and the earth stilled. “It’s your call.”
She brought her solemn gaze to his face. “Why mine?”
“Because you have no reason to risk dying.”
Her eyes were wide. She was still breathing hard, but a quiet came over her, and she smiled. “Yes I do.”
Beyond Sunrise Page 21
