Beyond paradise (9 page)

Elizabeth Doyle

ward her. He possessed a strength from deep within that seemed to make him a fearsome obstacle. When he reached out and touched her, he did so with the point of his sword. Holding the golden handle, he teased her pale brown hair, sparkling like auburn in the sunset. His sword point came dangerously near her face, but she stood rigid in trust. He looked like an expert with that weapon. "Lovely," he said to Jacques, in that language Sylvie now suspected was Spanish. He had a glint in his narrow eye, as though he were trying to communicate a compliment to her. "Where did you find her?"

Jacques looked warily at the sword point in Sylvie's hair. "She helped me escape," he said. "I've told her she can go."

"Go?" asked the captain, aghast. "No, no. I think not. Come, let me have a look at you, child. Does she speak Spanish at all?"

"None, sir."

So the captain said in mediocre French, "Lift your hair for me, like this." He demonstrated with his own.

Sylvie, aware of her tenuous situation—though she didn't realize quite how tenuous it really was—lifted her hair as he instructed, only to hear him prattle on in Spanish again. "Beautiful neck," he told Jacques, "a lovely line to her jaw. Ah, I haven't seen one like this in some time. Very modestly dressed," he added, gazing at the body she hid so well behind a plain brown dress and apron, "but I like a woman with modesty. I think I shall even dance with her this evening before I bring her to my cabin. I am certain the taste of her will be even sweeter once I have roused her maidenly curiosity."

"Sir," said Jacques, respectfully but quite firmly, "she has assisted me, and I promised her she could leave." He added a nod of determination to strengthen his words. It was a nod which said, Do you understand me? without forcing him to speak so brazenly to his captain.

"Well, she has suffered a change in plans then," said

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Roberto, smiling at Sylvie, who smiled in return, for she did not understand what was being said.

"Sir. I

"Enough," said his captain scornfully. "I am claiming her. Men, help me bring her to the ship, will you?"

Jacques looked worriedly at Sylvie, and that made the crew hesitate. But only for a moment. Their friendship with Jacques ran deep, but their fear of their captain ran deeper. They began to move toward Sylvie. "Captain, you can't!" he shouted.

His captain, who had just turned his back, suddenly whipped around. "What did you say to me?"

"Captain, I... I can't let you do that because .. ." He swallowed. "Because she's mine."

"She's what?"

"She's mine, sir. I have already bedded her—I have already claimed her for my own. I... I want her, sir."

Captain Roberto gently broke from his piercing stare into a smile. He began to laugh, and with him, the other crew. "Well, why didn't you just say so?" he asked, "You've a right to it. I didn't know she was spoken for. Men! Bring her on board for Jacques."

Sylvie gasped as they grabbed her. She looked to Jacques for help. "No need," he told the men, "no need to drag her. I'll . . . I'll explain to her in French that she's got to come. It's all right." They unhanded her, much to Sylvie's relief. But her relief did not last long.

Jacques smiled weakly at her. "Sylvie, I, uh ... I'm afraid you're coming with us."

She lost all color. "What?" She smiled as though it were a joke.

"I'm sorry," he shrugged, "I tried to talk them out of it. but. . "

"No!" she cried and she began to run at Monique.

Elizabeth Doyle

Jacques sighed regretfully, watching her go for only a moment. Then he spoke in Spanish. "I'm afraid I was wrong. You'll have to bring her by force." And so they caught up with her and one threw her over his shoulder. Sylvie had never screamed before in her life, so far as she could remember. As a result, her scream was rather quiet and broken. She was self-conscious and embarrassed about it even as the sound was released. But once she was on the little lifeboat, with a man's arm clenching her like a chain, and she was too far from shore to swim, she stopped her senseless shouting and went about the more practical business of saying prayers.

The golden ship was alight—not with one ray of gold, but with a hundred glimmers of yellow springing from a hundred lanterns. It was growing larger and nearer, and so were the sounds: ominous sounds of men's voices as though in a deep hum. And then came the smell. A filthy, sour smell leaked from the ship, across the ocean, to Sylvie's nose. As the curtain-like sails drew so near that she could hear the wind slapping and filling them, and the golden light grew so bright that she could not bear to look, her heart took on a terrified, frantic rhythm. Never before had she feared for her life.

"What can you tell me about the ship we're chasing?" asked Jervais's first mate.

Jervais was poring over a map spread over his desk in the lantern light. "If it's the same ship, it will be a barque, but pirates change ships often. It will have a black flag with only a few red stars, and its captain is Roberto Dominguez. The particular pirate who stole her is named Jacques Dupree. I caught him myself when he tried to trade pirate loot on the island of Cuba. Why Blanchet wanted a pirate sailor and not

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the captain is beyond me, but he's the one I was commissioned to find. I brought him here to hang, and he was just about to do that when our lovely but not very bright Mademoiselle Davant enabled him to rejoin his ship"

"Poor thing," said Pierre. "I hate to think what's happening to her now."

Jervais was sharp with him. "Nothing!" he cried emphatically. "Nothing is happening to her now. Do you understand me? We will find her, and we will rescue her, and we will do so before she is dishonored."

"But Captain," said Pierre, shaking his head, "they will have done it in the very first moment."

"Not necessarily!" cried Jervais. He ground his teeth, then bent back over his map.

Pierre looked confused. "Is it really so important, Captain? Just so long as we find she's alive? Won't that be good enough for Monsieur Etienne Peridot?"

"Perhaps," warned Jervais, "but then again, maybe we are not doing this for him."

With a look of absolute astonishment, Pierre took his captain's meaning. "My God, you aren't thinking of. . . well, of.. . keeping her?" he asked, unable to think of a better way to phrase it.

"None of your concern," he grumbled. "Your only concern is helping me find her."

"Captain," said Pierre very bravely, "I'm not going to let you lie to yourself or to me."

Jervais looked up.

"She's not going to be a maiden when we find her, sir. Not if she's been in the clutches of pirates all this time."

Jervais lowered his eyelids.

"Sir? Are you listening?"

"Yes," he growled. He was listening, but he was really

Elizabeth Doyle

struggling. He just didn't know whether he could live with it... having Sylvie, but not being the first. He dropped his forehead, causing his first mate to frown. "Sir, I never knew you to be so fickle."

Ten

Sylvie was led below deck through what felt like a mob, leering and parting to form her path. She kept her jaw clenched and her eyes unfocused. The stairs smelled musty like wood that had been damp for much too long. She smelled putrid smoke from the kitchen and wet animals everywhere. A skinny sheep skidded past her, rubbing against her skirt, staining it with a streak of wet goo. She hoped the sheep would not be supper. She felt akin to the poor sheep, as though she, too, were a filthy lamb, surrounded by carnivores, wondering when or whether they would consume her. A door opened before her, and she beheld what must have been the crew's cabin. Rows of roped hammocks lined up like nooses stretched out before her. It was a long, clean room. Starlight flickered in from tiny portholes near the ceiling, and orderly rows of lanterns completed the task of illumination. When the door closed behind them, Sylvie looked at Jacques. They were alone.

"You told me I could go." It was all she said.

"I tried," he explained, "I tried to send you on your way, but my captain took a fancy to you. I'm sorry."

Elizabeth Doyle

"Really," she replied blankly. "Then why is it that your captain was not the one to drag me on this stinking ship? Why is it that you're the one who had me brought here, and rather cruelly, I might add." She lifted her sleeve to show him a bruise on her arm.

He was not happy at all about the bruise. He reached for her hand so he could inspect it, but she pulled it away with a snap. He met her stunning blue eyes and saw control there, but a distinct anger struggling to break through. She was glaring at him without apology. "I had to do it," he said, "I had to tell them that you're mine, or else the captain would have taken you."

"And how would I be worse off then than I am now?"

He laughed gently as he thought she ought to know the answer. But apparently, she did not. He could see that in her unwavering glare. "You obviously don't know my captain. Please believe me. It is much better for you to be here with me."

"Better for me?" she challenged him. "Or better for you? I helped you escape—unintentionally, mind you. But it is because of me that you're free. And this is how you repay me?" When he did not reply instantly, when he took a moment to indulge in surprise, she added, "If what you say is true, that your captain was going to harm me—and I'm to take your word for this, since I cannot understand Spanish, and do not yet know you to be a man of honor—then how have you saved me by bringing me on board? How am I better off in your care, tossed down here with hundreds of love-starved pirates, than in your captain's quarters?"

That made him a little angry, somehow. He wasn't sure whether it was because she'd insulted his pirate mates, brought up his modest status and living conditions on the ship, or whether it was simply the fact that she wouldn't acknowledge he'd helped her. But he was officially annoyed.

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"He'd have his hands all over you by midnight, and nobody would be able to help you, because he's captain." It had been a crude and blunt thing to say, and he knew it. But to his surprise, she did not avert her eyes or blush or tremble.

She simply returned his gall by asking, "And I'm supposed to believe that you won't do the same?"

"That's right," he growled.

Sylvie wanted to believe him. She wanted to imagine she would make it safely home someday, unharmed and unrav-ished. She wanted to believe she had an ally. But it just seemed as though he had already betrayed her trust by bringing her on board. "Won't people think that's a little odd?" she asked cautiously. "That I'm 'yours,' as you put it, and that we don't even share a bed?"

"We'll have to share a hammock," he shrugged, "if for no other reason than to keep the others off of you. But I'll keep my hands by my sides."

"I'm to trust you to do that?"

He'd been sorting through a trunk for something to wear but suddenly looked up. "What?" Sylvie repeated her reservations, this time with some indignation. "Don't be so impatient," he said, returning to his task. "I simply didn't hear you. But the answer is, we have no other choice. You're going to have to trust me if you want to make it off this ship. I don't see your alternatives."

Sylvie squinted a little in puzzlement. "Are you hard of hearing?" she asked rather gently.

He looked at her quite plainly, his brown eyes solid and frank. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he broke into a wry smile and remarked, "It took you a while to notice."

"Oh, I'm . . . I'm sorry."

"No need. You were a bit preoccupied—I understand."

"No, I mean, about the . . . about having problems with your ears."

"Oh, that." He smiled at some private joke. "Well, uh, I can't see that you had much to do with it." He returned his attention to his tasks in a sudden manner that made Sylvie wonder whether she had made him feel awkward.

At last, he found a clean ivory shirt and some fresh breeches. Tossing them over his shoulder, he announced, "I'm going to see if I can find some fresh water and wash myself. Do you mind staying in here alone for a moment? I don't think anyone will come in, but if they do, just stay close to my bunk and try to look ashamed."

"Ashamed?"

"Yes, you know. As though I've been ravishing you for the past half-hour."

"I don't think ashamed is how I would feel about that."

"Well," he shrugged, "just try to look however you would look."

"Enraged?"

"Well..." He couldn't suppress a grin. "Either that or maybe exhausted and love-struck."

"I think I'll choose enraged."

"All right." He smiled adorably, so adorably that Sylvie was reminded for the first time since her abduction of how unbearably handsome he was. "I promise to have more clothes on when I come back," he said cheerfully. "You're probably tired of looking at me in this half-naked state." Not true, she thought; a thought she could only have, she realized, because she was beginning to believe in his determination to help. If he'd intended to ravish her, they were alone, he could have done so already. Perhaps he was an ally after all... Perhaps she had no other choice but to believe that.

She merely nodded bashfully as a lady ought, and watched him depart.

Being left alone was a strange thing. There was enormous noise on deck, which she could hear quite plainly. But it was

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Qt, like music playing tar away, the music of deep voices shouting at random. The crew's quarters were so big, so long, that Sylvie was surprised the ship was as long as the room. She couldn't imagine what it would be like when the pirates all piled in. There had to have been hundreds of hammocks. It would be noisy, no doubt, and it would smell of the filth of dirty men, and the room would be transformed from this echoing sanctuary which made her feel so small. Every time she heard footsteps in the hall, she tensed, thinking someone was going to intrude. She desperately didn't want that. She desperately wanted some safe place where she could be isolated from the pirates. But she knew it was not to be. It was only a matter of time before they broke in with their shouts and their laughter and their disdain of women.