Bonds, Parris Afton (21 page)

However, it was the man sitting behind the desk who dominated
the room. The sun was at his back, so Anne did not see the momentary look of
surprise followed by a joy that lightened the rough-east face. Joy that was
just as swiftly replaced by the guarded mask of dispassion.

There was only the groaning of the ship's timbers to
break the silence. Unnerved by the desert brown eyes that seemed to penetrate
to the very core of her innermost thoughts, Anne said, "Once again, I am
forced to ask for your help."

Brant rose and came around from behind the desk. He
moved easily with the rolling of the ship. Close now, separated from her by only
the antique Brussels carpet, he leaned back against the desk's edge and folded
his arms across his chest. For a moment he considered her. "You seem to
easily forget that when we last parted, you found me disgusting. Why should I
help you? What can you offer me?"

Anne held her tongue. She was in no position to
anger him. "I must get away, Brant."

"So, you couldn't take the hardships of frontier
life after all," he mocked. "And just where did you want me to take
you―to Sir Donovan?"

Anne was surprised herself that not even in the back
of her mind had she given thought to running to Colin. In truth, she did not
know exactly what she had wanted. At the time of her miscarriage it had seemed
important only to escape Otto. Where made little difference.

But now that she was here, facing Brant's
contemptuous sneer, she wondered why she should not go to Colin. It would save
a month or more of waiting.  Why should she stay in Texas―a land she
hated―with a husband she hated and who hated her?

She felt Brant's close scrutiny and said haughtily,
"Why shouldn't I go to Colin? At least he never barters for a woman's
body."

"He doesn't?"

Would he deny her her chance to escape Otto? Anne planted
her fists on her hips. "Will you help me or won't you?"

"And I ask you again―why should I?"

Exhaustion, combined with the horrors of the past
days, snapped the tight hold Anne had kept on herself. "Why should
you?" she hissed. "Because you owe me that much! Because you raped me―like
a beast of the field! It was because I carried your child that I was spit upon in
Adelsolms like a whore. And it was because of you, because I carried your child,
that Otto tried to kill me!"

At last, Anne saw the dispassion on Brant's face
drop away as the narrowed eyes widened in incredulity. "Aye!" she
cried, throwing herself against him. "Otto is alive. And your bastard's
dead!" Her fists struck out blindly at Brant's chest and face. "And I'm
glad! Do you hear me! I'm glad your bastard's dead!"

"You little bitch!" The back of Brant's
hand came swinging down across Anne's face, hurling her backward to the floor.

Dazed, bleeding at the corner of her mouth, she
looked up at the man who towered over her. "I'll take you somewhere,"
he said. "I'll take you to hell with me.  And when I finish with you, when
I've used you like the selfish, self-centered little bitch you are, then I'll
see that you get to your beloved Colin. If he'll have you, then."

Looking like some fiendish pirate, Brant laughed
lowly. "But that's still a long time away."

Brant swung from Anne and stalked to the door.
"Tucker, no one's to enter or leave my cabin," he snapped to the
burly seaman on guard before disappearing down the companionway.

Anne lay there, tasting the salty tang of blood on
her lips. Her head rang, and it was some moments before she grew vaguely aware
that the motion of the ship had changed, that the dying sun's rays no longer
slanted through the bay window from the same direction.

Sweet Jesus, he meant what he had said! Brant was
taking her with him into the Gulf of Mexico! She had to get away!

Anne stumbled to her feet, clutching at the desk
until she had steadied herself against the pitch of the ship. When she regained
her sea legs, she crossed to the door and cautiously opened it. Tucker switched
his musket to the other arm and ogled her openly. "I―I left my
baggage on deck," Anne said.

"Cap'n said no one was to go in or out of his
cabin." A slow smile was beginning to stretch below the large nose,
revealing scum encrusted on teeth that were but stubs.

Anne took a deep breath, regretting it immediately,
as the man's stench washed over her. But she returned his smile and laid a hand
on his sleeve. "I know that, but I was hoping to change into something―"
she looked down at the ugly brown homespun and looked backup at Tucker invitingly―"something
prettier."

Momentarily confused, Tucker picked his nose as he
weighed temptation against fear of the captain. "Perhaps I shall need help
in changing," Anne added.

"You got five minutes," Tucker growled,
but desire flamed in the insect eyes. "Then I call the Cap'n."

Anne hurried down the companionway, descending the
shallow stairs of the quarter deck two at a time. Hugging the side of the wall,
she slowed her pace, though her heart beat like a drum. What if Brant came back
for her now?

Just beyond, she could see a score or more of men
engaged in the task of getting the brig under way. From the deck above her Anne
heard Brant shout, "Hard helm to starboard, Mr. Garret," and the
order was passed on down from the mates to the common seamen, who called and
crawled across the yards. Above Anne the foresails still shivered in the
crosswind as the main and mizzen topsails were pulled forward on the starboard.

Just beyond, she could see the darkened shore line
receding with each wave. It had to be now. Quickly she unbuttoned the high-top
boots, dropped her skirt, and shrugged out of her jacket so that she stood only
in her camisole. Then, as the brig bore away to the leeward, Anne raced across
the short span of deck to the railing, throwing one leg over, then the other.
She plunged into the wintry water. For interminable seconds, she hung suspended
beneath its icy surface, numbed.

At last she floated upward, breaking free to the mountainous
waves. Her feet kicked out swiftly. Her arms propelled her through the water
with strokes long remembered from childhood years. Behind her she thought she
heard a shout, and looked back to see Brant posed on the bulwarks before his
body arched forward into the air.

For the first time Anne smiled. For once she had the
advantage. As a young girl there had not been a boy who had been able to
out-swim her. Brant had wasted his energy and given himself a good ducking for
nothing. The shoreline was only three hundred or so yards ahead, and Anne's
strokes became surer. She laughed aloud with exultation, turning her head back
to gloat.

And her mouth dropped open in dismay. Brant had
gained on her. She glanced in panic toward the shoreline. She still might make
it. But Brant, at that point, had gained the advantage. For he had been rested
while she had been weakened by exhaustion. Anne's sure, graceful strokes
changed to wild thrashing as she panicked. She coughed, strangling on the salt
water. But her determination to escape goaded her, and for some seconds she was
able to maintain the distance between herself and her pursuer.

Now she could hear the splash of Brant's more
powerful strokes. And when she turned back to look this time, he was only a few
yards' distance behind her.  Unreasonable fear, such as she experienced the day
he ran her to ground among the adobe ruins, seized her again. Her breathing
grew ragged, her limbs paralyzed. She felt her hair seized―heard Brant's
triumphant chuckle. She struck out then at Brant in frenzied thrashings, only
to feel the solid impact of his fist against her jaw.

Together they grappled, sinking below the
aquamarine surface of the Gulf into a darker void. Brant's greater strength at
last subdued her as he pinioned her within the embrace of his arms. It seemed
to Anne that she died, giving herself up to the blackness that swallowed her,
drawing from her the last vestiges of breath and rebellion.

With the first sharp intake of air searing into her
lungs like boiling oil came the return of consciousness. Splintered wood
scraped into her flesh as she felt herself being hauled upward. Something warm
and scratchy was draped over her nearly nude body.

And as the four seamen rolled the longboat back
toward the
Seawasp
, back to Anne's captivity, averting their eyes from
the captured mermaid, Anne felt Brant's lips at her ear, heard his rasping whisper,
"Did you think I'd let you go?" before blessed unconsciousness once
more claimed her.

When at last her eyes fluttered open, she found
herself warmly ensconced in Brant's feathered bed. She could feel the turbulent
pitching and rolling of the ship and knew one of the unpredictable Texas
northers must have swept down into the Gulf waters. Yet within the cabin there
was a protective coziness, and she snuggled deeper beneath the goosedown
coverlet. Lazily, her gaze traveled over the cabin, coming to a halt with
something akin to alarm at the figure that stood looking out the cabin's bay window,
his hands clasped behind his back.

In the dim light of the slowly swinging lantern
Brant appeared almost handsome in a rakish sort of way, dressed as he was in
the tight-fitting doeskin britches and white shirt with full sleeves. The shirt
was open at the front, and the dark brown mat of hair seemed to emphasize the
shirt's whiteness.

What chance had she? A small sigh escaped Anne's
unwilling lips, and Brant turned. His brows drew down in a scowl, and the full
lower lip stretched thin.  He crossed to the bed and stood looking down at her.

"Why won't you let me go?" Anne asked. Her
voice, ravaged by the seawater, sounded harsh in her ears, and she lay there
trembling, in spite of her defiance.

His gaze traveled slowly over her face, coming to
rest on the deceiving gray eyes that hid her thoughts from him so well. He
could read animal tracks like English but couldn't read her eyes. Would he ever
understand this woman?

When at last he spoke, it was not in answer to her
question. "I've orders from the Secretary of the Navy which first must be
carried out."

Anne rolled to one elbow. Her hair draped over one
nude shoulder. "When Colin finds out you've taken me, he'll have you
swinging from your own yardarms!"

Brant's smile was frightening. "On the
contrary, he may thank me for sparing him the shrew he thought a lady." He
bowed low and was gone, leaving her to stare in stormy dismay at the closing
cabin door.

Anne sat at the cushioned window seat. The book,
Pope's translation of The
Iliad
, lay open in her lap. But her eyes were
not on the words. Instead, her gaze swept over the panorama that presented
itself from the cabin's bay window. The bright blue cloudless sky, the azure
waves that rolled toward the distant Mexican shore, etched by tall green palms.
Even within the cabin there wafted the balmy scent from the tropical coast
line.

The urge to leave the cabin, to be on deck and feel the
bite of the salt air on her skin and the wind in her hair, was overpowering,
and Anne sprang from the window seat, dropping .the book on the floor. She
began to walk about the cabin, fingering the exotic wood of Brant's desk, the
pewter bowl set into the commode, and his razor and hairbrush.

The brig was thirteen days out of Galveston, and
Anne was bored. Bored of eating by herself. Bored of her own company. Bored
enough that she welcomed even Brant's presence―which was rare. During the
day he busied himself on deck, and at night he returned late to the cabin,
falling into exhausted sleep in the hammock he had had Ezra rig up. And for
that, at least, she was grateful. For Brant made no move to take her, though
often she felt his half-closed eyes surveying her from where he lay in the
hammock, watching her as she brushed out her hair.

Several times she had been tempted to leave the
cabin for even just a few minutes of fresh air. But she would recall the lazy
way Brant's gaze had raked over her and his warning. "It was your idea to
come aboard, sweet. I won't be responsible for my men's actions. You are the
only woman among thirty-seven seamen, mostly riffraff, who've gone too long
without a woman. It'd take only one sight of your display of charms―charms
that I and God knows how many other men have sampled―and they'd rape
you."

"You ought to know about rape," she had
snapped back, but Brant's warning was sufficient to cause her to keep to the
cabin. That, and the ugly leer Tucker had cast at her the one time she had seen
him since sailing. The seaman would not likely forget the trick she had played
upon him nor the three days he had been confined to the brig below without food
for his part in her escape attempt.

There was a knock at the cabin door, and Anne
turned, putting down Brant's hairbrush. "Yes?"

"It's me―Ezra."

She opened the door, and Ezra passed through,
carrying a bucket of water in each hand. "You'd best enjoy your bath,
miss. Our water is about exhausted. We'll be on rations until we can go ashore
for fresh water."

"And when's that to be?"

A closed look covered Ezra's face. "That
depends, miss."

"On what?" Anne persisted. "The
devil's horns, Ezra, whom would I shout your secret to here in the middle of
the Gulf―the wind?"

Ezra ignored her, setting the pails down, and Anne
began pacing the room again. "I'm sorry," she said with her back to
him. "I just wanted to talk. I'm―it gets lonely here
sometimes."

"All I can tell you, miss, is that we've orders
to keep the enemy―Mexico―from Texas's south coast―and cause
all the worry possible to Mexican shipping in the Gulf."

"Then the
Seawasp
is a brig of
war?"

"No, the
Seawasp
was built in Boston for
African slave trade by Brant's father. The first time Brant sailed under the
Letters of Marque for General Sam he added the eight guns, two of 'em are eight
pounders."

"A slave ship!" That explained the ungodly
stench that had reached her nostrils from below deck the few times she had
ventured outside the cabin. It was a reek one never forgets―of sweat,
human excrement, blood―and intangible elements such as fear and apathy
and hate that leave their own peculiar odors as strongly as urine. There had
been times when slave ships had put into Barbados―she had been at the
dock―and the odor was just one of the things she thought she would never
forget. The other was the haunted look in the eyes of the black men and women
manacled like beasts.

The gray eyes were hard as gunmetal. "Then the
gallant Captain Powers is among other things a slave trader. I should have let Iron
Eyes kill him there at the San Gabriel River!"

"And what of your family's slaves?" Ezra
asked.

"That was diff―"

"When are you going to stop looking at things through
the eyes of a little girl?" he demanded. It was the first time Anne had
seen the man angry. "And while we're at it," he continued, ''have you
ever thought about why Sir―"

"Ezra!"

Both turned to see Brant in the doorway .Anne met
his stony gaze unflinchingly, yet it was Ezra he addressed. "Look out's reported
a strange sail beating in from seaward. Have Midshipman Elwood run up the
Mexican flag. Man the guns―and clear the decks for action."

After Ezra left, Brant went to the window and for
some seconds peered through the brassbound telescope. Anne did not know whether
to be relieved or angry at being ignored so. Only when he capped the telescope
and laid it aside did she find the courage to speak. "Brant, let me go.
Put me aboard the vessel you've sighted. Whatever its nationality, they'll
honor my neutrality as a British subject."

"No." He crossed to the door.

"Brant―wait!" Anne ran the distance that
separated them and clutched at his sleeve. "Can't you understand I don't
love you? Let me go!" Tears filled her eyes. "Please―" and
she broke off as a thought surfaced from the deepest recesses of her mind.

"It was you," she suddenly accused.
"You were the one who had the Tonkawa guards scatter Colin's belongings―so
he couldn't take me with him. It was you, wasn't it? Why? Why?"

Brant's face was white, and the muscles in the jaw
were rigid. He shook her hand off his arm. "What do you do, Anne, when you
want something bad enough?"

Anne gasped, "And Pa-ha-yu-quosh― you had
him abduct me?"