Judith E French (13 page)

Murrane gave a strangled cry and hurled the tin cup against the hearth as the lady’s unsuppressed laughter burned his ears and contorted his features with rage.

 

Four days later in a tiny village along the rocky Scottish coast, Ross held tightly to Anne’s wrist as the final barrels of water and provisions were loaded aboard the brigantine
Laird’s Bounty
. His stallion, Tusca, was already below, nervously pawing the deck in his close, dark quarters. Ross could hear the animal’s frantic whinnies across the water.

Anne planted both feet stubbornly on the dock. “I won’t go with you. How many times do I have to tell you? You can’t take me to America against my will.”

“Aye, hinney, so you’ve told me.” Ross pulled her out of the way as two pigtailed tars staggered by with a heavy, coffin-shaped wooden box. As they lowered the crate into the longboat to be rowed out to the ship, one corner of the box struck the edge of the dock. Wood splintered, and Ross caught sight of musket barrels in the crate.

The bosun cursed and boxed the nearest sailor alongside his ear. “Gently, ye maggot-brained swabs!”

Two other sailors came down the dock with a similar box. With the aid of the first two men, the second crate went into the longboat without mishap. The small boat was nearly loaded; when the sailors delivered the cargo to the ship and rowed back to the dock again, it would be time for the passengers to board.

Ross’s gaze scanned the
Laird’s Bounty
from bow to stern, taking in her scarred masts and gunwales, the three light cannon visible on the aft side of the brigantine, and the weathered figurehead of a unicorn that had long since lost its gilding. The ship was well-seasoned; the crew and captain as lean and battle-hardened as the worn deck. Bound from Glasgow to Jamaica and Philadelphia, the
Laird’s Bounty
had no honest reason to be docked in Saile. Ross smiled. It was obvious to him that the brigantine was a smuggler’s vessel, carrying untaxed goods to the Colonies.

Luck was with them. If he could have picked a ship weeks ago, he couldn’t have chosen better than this fast, well-armed brigantine. He and Anne were the only passengers, and the ship rode high in the water. Whatever contraband she carried, the
Laird’s Bounty
wasn’t weighed down with heavy cargo—she would lift her skirts and fly across the ocean to the American Colonies.

He glanced down at Anne. She was still furious with him for taking her from Strathmar. What would she say when she learned he’d promised her pearl earrings to the captain for passage to America?

The lie he’d told her grated on his nerves as a poor-fitting saddle rubbed a horse. Lying wasn’t in his nature—it came hard to him, but harder still to tell Anne that he’d carried her off because the thought of living without her was too bleak to contemplate.

Anne and he were wrong together.

He shut his eyes against the glare of the bright sunlight reflecting off the waves, and for an instant, another woman’s face filled his mind, and a rush of emotion flooded over him. Nibeeshu Meekwon—Moonfeather of the Shawnee . . . He’d been in love with her for years. At least he’d believed he loved her . . .

Moonfeather. Fiercely independent, so beautiful she took his breath away whenever he saw her. The daughter of a Shawnee peace woman, Moonfeather shared with him the legacy of a Scottish father. Unlike him, she had rejected her white blood, and she had refused his offer of marriage because he was not Indian enough—choosing instead a Shawnee warrior not worthy of her.

Nibeeshu Meekwon was the image of the woman he’d always thought would stand beside him in times of trouble and of joy. She was what he pictured as the mother of his children. She could shoot an arrow as straight and sure as he could; she could run a canoe through rapids and track game over the stoniest ground.

Nibeeshu Meekwon had grown up in a Shawnee Indian village, but the Shawnee way of life was much like the one his own Delaware mother had given him. The Shawnee and the Delaware were cousins; they shared a similar language, songs, dances, and religious beliefs. He and Moonfeather had played the same games as children, and had both been rocked to sleep in
ambi’sons
, cradleboards, hung from tree branches when they were babies. Their mothers had baked the same good corncakes, and in early spring, when the sap ran in the sugar maples, they had made maple candy by pouring boiled sap onto the snow.

His mother and Moonfeather’s mother had belonged to different clans, but they had been linked by kinship ties too complicated for him to unravel. His mother had taken him to visit in the Shawnee village when he was a boy, and Moonfeather and her mother had come to his father’s trading post every spring.

He and Moonfeather had swum, and fished, and explored underground caverns together. Once, they had been hunting a deer when they were surprised by two enemy Seneca warriors. Together, they had killed one brave and wounded the other, escaping to relate a tale of adventure that no one else would believe.

Nibeeshu Meekwon . . . He’d not given up hope of having her, even after she’d wed. Sometimes he thought that she was the reason he’d never married himself. As long as he was free, there was a chance that they could someday . . .

Ross chuckled to himself and opened his eyes to look at Anne again. She was about as far from a Shawnee squaw as a man could get. Oh, she was as small and neat as Moonfeather, and she was beautiful in an English way. She had the same heart-shaped face and expressive hands that moved when she talked. Her complexion was much fairer than Moonfeather’s, but he had always favored copper-skinned lasses. Anne’s eyes were gray and ever-changing. Sometimes they picked up the blue of the sky. When they’d made love in the castle tower, he could have sworn they’d been sea-green. Moonfeather’s eyes were as black as obsidian.

Two beautiful women, lovely in face and form, but as different as earth and sky . . .

Anne would be lost a hundred paces from the back door of his trading post. She would be fearful of every snap of a branch and the moan of the winter wind through the endless forest.

Far from being able to hunt down an animal, skin it and cook it for dinner, Anne would be horrified by his normal diet of wild game and Indian maize. She would be helpless around a campfire, and unable to preserve meat for the winter or do any of a woman’s tasks necessary for survival in the wilderness.

Without servants, Anne would have to learn how to dress and bathe herself, how to do her own hair, and how to sew her own clothes.

It was impossible to conceive.

She would hate his way of life. She would come to hate him if she didn’t hate him already.

He had lied to Anne when he told her he took her for the money. He had wronged her when he carried her off against her will from Castle Strathmar. He could still undo those wrongs.

He could leave her here in Saile. She was a gentlewoman. Someone would care for her until her family came for her.

Ross’s jaw tightened as he remembered the shameful way Anne’s mother spoke to her, the way she ridiculed everything Anne did. The Lady Langstone would come for her daughter gladly, and she would hand Anne over to that pig of an English baron, Murrane.

Anne would have the life she was born for: servants, precious jewels, silk gowns, palaces. But the price would be dear. All Anne’s wealth could not buy her dignity or a man who would love and cherish her for her own sake.

Would she be happier in his unspoiled wilderness? Would she believe him if he told her he’d taken her because he loved her?

“Damn you to everlasting hell, Ross Campbell!” Anne cried. “Don’t you hear a word I’m saying to you?”

Startled from his thoughts, he focused on her and the fact that she was kicking him in the shins and pounding his good arm with her free fist.

“I won’t get on that boat, I tell you!” she insisted. “This is a smuggler. The captain and crew are no better than pirates. Don’t you see what they’re doing? There’s no dock master here. They’re carrying muskets on board. There are no stamps on the boxes. It’s all illegal.”

Ross forced himself to keep his features immobile. “Do ye think so, hinney?”

“Think so? I know so! I won’t go to America with you, and I certainly won’t go on a pirate ship. If we get on that boat, we’re as guilty as they are. We’ll all be arrested and hanged.”

“Pirates, ye say?”

“As good as.”

He released her wrist and she stepped back out of his arm’s reach. “Ye wish to stay here and marry Murrane?”

“Yes . . . I mean no,” she stammered.

He moved toward her, and she backed away down the dock. “Yes, ye want Murrane in your bed, or nay, ye do not. Which is it, hinney?”

“No. I don’t want Murrane.” She took another step backward.

“Then ye’ve made what I’m about to do all the easier,” he declared with a grin.

Anne stopped short, suddenly realizing that she’d reached the end of the dock and there was nowhere to run. She let out a startled squeal and tried to duck past him.

He caught her, lifted her up, and tossed her in the arms of a bare-chested sailor in the longboat below. “Catch her,” Ross warned. “If you let her jump overboard, you’ll have to swim after her.” Ross leaped into the stern of the boat, picked up a set of oars, and began to row.

Anne screamed and began pounding the hapless seaman with both fists. The bosun laughed and bent his back to another pair of oars, joining in heartily when Ross began to sing in a deep, rich voice:

 

A
nne pushed open the hatchway, and a gust of wind and rain struck her so hard that it knocked her halfway down the steps. Blinded by the onrush of water, she clung to the ladder and tried to get her footing on the slippery surface as the hatch banged back and forth above her.

Ross’s angry voice rang out over the howl of the hurricane winds. “Get ye below, Anne! Are ye mad?”

“I’m not going to die down there like a rat in a hole,” she shouted back. “I want to be on deck!”

“You’d be washed overboard in minutes. Get back to the cabin.” He yanked the hatch shut behind him, descended the ladder, and lifted her in his strong arms. “Are ye hurt, Anne?”

“No. I’m . . . I’m all right.” Her teeth were chattering from the icy water, and her left knee felt numb where she’d struck it on the step. She was scared half out of her wits, but she’d not admit it to him. She wanted to be out of this dark hole, up where she could breathe.

He cupped her chin gently in his hand and lifted it to stare into her face. It was too dark for her to see more than the outline of his head. Anne’s heart was pounding. “Please . . .” she began.

“Ye’ll nay die, lass,” he rumbled. “I swear to ye. It’s a bad storm, but the ship is sound. The captain knows his business. Now, go back to the cabin. Ye’ll be safe there. They need me on deck. In weather like this, it takes three men to hold the ship’s wheel, and each man’s strength will only allow him an hour or two at the post. I maun take my turn like the rest, Anne.”

“You’re lying to me,” she cried. The deck quivered under her feet, and they swayed to and fro with the pounding of the waves. Again and again, the ship rose on a swell and then dove to dash against the black, rolling water. With each buffet, Anne felt the
Laird’s Bounty
creak and groan as ribs and planks strained beneath the weight of the angry sea.

He leaned close to her ear. “If the ship begins to break up, I’ll come for ye, hinney. I swear it—on my immortal soul.”

She shrank away from him. “When a godless man speaks of his soul, I know we’re in trouble.”

Ross shook his head. “Nay, never godless. I may not see him as ye do, but I have my own faith.” He pushed her back along the narrow passageway to the captain’s cabin. “Stay here, Anne,” he ordered. “Tie yourself to the bunk if ye have to—but think no more of dying. ’Tis bad luck.”

Ross pulled the low wooden door closed behind him, and Anne was left alone in the dimly lit interior of the cabin. The deck tilted under her feet, and she slammed against the wall hard enough to bruise her arm. Shakily, she made her way back to the bunk and sat down.

She supposed that it was night—the hurricane had lashed them for more than twelve hours. At noon, the skies had darkened as though it were twilight, and the gray swirling clouds had sunk lower and lower until they enveloped the top of the foremast. The wind had changed direction. In minutes, the temperature had dropped, and the gusts had ceased to snap the sails; instead, the force of the wind billowed them to taut walls of canvas.

Ross had ordered her below deck, but not before she’d seen the strain on Captain Gordon’s face or the naked fear in the sailors’ eyes. She’d known then that this was more than a storm at sea. Now, the harsh whisper of the wizened ship’s cook came back to haunt her.

“Hurricane.”

Hurricane. Even behind the sheltered walls of her London existence, she’d heard of the fury of these terrifying New World winds that flattened houses and forests and swept ships from the surface of the ocean like pieces from a chessboard.

Anne shivered. She curled into a ball and drew a blanket up over her, trying to still her chattering teeth. Overwhelming fear rose in her mind as she imagined the
Laird’s Bounty
breaking apart, or diving deep into the black sea, never to rise again. She covered her ears with her hands and shut her eyes, trying to blot out the sounds of the ship’s agony.

She wouldn’t think about the storm.

Ross’s image flickered behind her closed eyelids, and her breathing slowed to near normal.

Ross had promised her she wouldn’t die.

Her mouth tightened. Nonsense. He couldn’t stop the wind or keep the ship from sinking. He was telling her what she wanted to hear, soothing her as if she were a frightened child with nightmares.

Anne rubbed the smooth surface of her golden amulet between her fingers. It was silly, but Ross’s promise comforted her—like this charm her father had given her. Ross had said he’d come for her if the ship were in real danger.

She believed him.

Of all the men she knew in the world, Ross Campbell was the last she should have chosen. He was uncivilized, a barbarian. He’d kidnapped her, not once but twice. He’d forced her into a marriage against her will. And he’d done it all for her money.

How could she possibly trust him?

She counted off in her mind the people she’d known and trusted, the ones who had never betrayed her. Her childhood nurse; Scarbrough, her dead husband; Robert Wescott, Viscount Brandon, whom she called Brandon; Cameron Stewart, her real father. So few? Anne’s eyes snapped open. And Leah. A rush of warm emotion brought moisture to Anne’s clenched eyes. Yes, definitely Leah, Brandon’s exotic wife . . .

Anne’s lips curled in a faint smile as she remembered the beautiful Shawnee Indian girl Brandon had brought back with him from America. Anne had believed herself desperately in love with Brandon, and she’d expected to despise his new wife. Instead, she’d found a friend.

Anne chuckled as she thought of Leah. It was as outrageous an idea that she and Leah might have become friends as it was that she trusted Ross Campbell.

Leah was everything that she herself was not. The Indian girl was tough and hot-tempered; she considered herself the equal of any man, no matter his rank or title. She could ride, and shoot a bow and arrow, and defend herself with a knife as well as any London cutpurse. She had the courage of a lion—Brandon had said that Leah had defied an enraged war party and her entire tribe to save him from burning at the stake in an Indian village.

Leah, with her strange Scottish accent, her lilting Indian tongue. She walked with the grace of a leopard, and her slanted, obsidian eyes drew men like bees to honey.

“Words like winter snowflakes . . .” Leah had quoted that from Homer’s
Iliad
one day when Anne had taken her out to view the sights of London. The words had come back again and again to echo in Anne’s mind. Leah’s tongue was as sharp as her wit. They had shared a love of books and learning, as well as the love of the same man.

Leah was an enigma to Anne. She was a savage, as wild in her way as Ross Campbell, yet a savage who could quote Homer and Milton as easily as an Oxford scholar. The abandoned lovechild of a Scottish nobleman, Leah was like no other woman Anne had ever met.

Anne took a deep breath as she realized that Leah’s irregular birth was yet another link binding them.

“We are both half Scottish, and both born out of wedlock,” she whispered into the empty cabin. “Both bastards.”

Anne clutched her amulet tightly. The knowledge of her shameful parentage played heavily on her own mind, but it had never bothered Leah. What was it the Indian girl had said about bastards?

“Among our people, there is no word for bastard. A child takes the clan of the mother, and since every babe knows his own mother, no child can be illegitimate. A child is a gift of God. How can His gifts be shameful?”

A simple belief, Anne thought, held by a childlike race of people. The tightness in her bosom eased. “Would that it were true,” she murmured.

Part of her inner self had cried for joy when Cameron told her that he was her true father, but another part had withered in shame. As Cameron’s daughter she was not entitled to the rank she held in society. Her mother had made a match for her with the Marquis of Scarbrough; if her husband had known she was born on the wrong side of the blanket, he might have taken her for a mistress but never as his wife.

“All my life has been a lie,” Anne whispered. She should have hated Cameron, but it was impossible. The loving friend of her childhood would not become a villain in her heart. She could readily blame her mother, but not Cameron. For if the charming Scottish lord was not her father, Langstone must be, and she could find no affection in her memory for her mother’s husband.

“I did not invent the lie, but I must continue it.” She sighed. Her shameful birth was a secret, and a secret it must remain. So long as the world believed her to be the lawful heir of the Earl of Langstone and the rightful widow of Lord Scarbrough, she would be received in the best homes. She would remain a member of the nobility. She could dine or dance with the Crown Prince of England did it please her—and she had.

A drop of water splashed on her forehead, and she looked up to see a dark line of seepage running across the deck above her. Her gaze followed the leak to its source—a minute crack in the planks above one of the cabin portholes. She swallowed the lump in her throat and shivered. For a short time she had forgotten the hurricane, but now . . .

Anne rubbed her arms and tried to think. If the ship did go down she would swim. Brandon had taught her to swim in a castle moat when she was a child.
Fool,
a voice sounded in her mind,
your petticoats will drag you down.

“Then they must go!” Resolutely, Anne began to divest herself of her layers of clothing, first the gown, then the underskirt, not stopping until she wore only her stockings, a corset, and a simple linen shift. Undressing without a maid was difficult but not impossible—she’d done it since they’d begun this accursed voyage.

Damn Ross Campbell for bringing her here to die. Anne kicked at her pile of discarded clothing. She’d not drown! She’d survive to spite him!

He’d used her priceless pearl earrings to procure passage to America for the two of them and his horse. Captain Gordon had even given up his cabin so that she might make the voyage in comfort. Where the captain slept and where Ross slept she didn’t know or care. She and Ross had not lived as man and wife since they’d left Castle Strathmar.

A pity. She was angry—nay, she was furious with him. She hated him. But yet . . . Anne nibbled on her lower lip and sighed. He did trouble her dreams with his great brawny shoulders and his lean, hard thighs.

I am like my mother, she thought—a shameless hussy. If I could make him return me to England, I’d still have him as a husband. The memory of their lovemaking in the tower at Strathmar was bittersweet, but it was an opium that cried out to her for more.

If he had shared this cabin, I would have given him my body in a week’s time, she admitted. Even now, her mouth grew dry as she remembered the feel of his strong hands on her hips, the taste of his mouth.

A curious sensation warmed her loins, and she blushed as she realized that the forbidden thoughts of their shared lust had caused a moistness between her thighs. “I am wanton,” she murmured, then laughed aloud as she realized what she had said. “I desire my own lawful husband—surely that cannot be a great sin.”

Still, desires of the flesh could not make right what was wrong between them. Even Scarbrough had asked her permission before transporting her to London or to the country. He’d never hauled her off like a sack of stolen flour to a New World inhabited by wild animals and wilder natives.

Ross cared only for her money, not for her. She must remember that. And if he would not take her home to England voluntarily, then she must find her own way. As wife to the Master of Strathmar—tumbled-down ruin that it was—she could not be forced to wed another. She would be free to live out her days in comfort, going where and when she pleased, taking orders from no man.

If she did not drown within the hour . . .

Anne’s reverie was shattered by the sound of the cabin door slamming open. She whirled to see Ross filling the doorway with his massive frame. His clothes were soaked to the skin, and his midnight hair had come loose to hang around his shoulders in a wet, tangled mane. A single drop of water glistened on his lower lip.

Anne’s first instinct was to throw herself into his arms and lick that drop away with the tip of her tongue. She tensed to spring into action, then froze as the reason for his appearance formed in her mind. “We’re sinking,” she gasped. Anxiously, her gray eyes scanned his face for the awful truth. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

“Nay, hinney.” Ross’s copper-bronzed skin was stretched taut over his chiseled features, and his black eyes were unreadable. He held out his hand to her. “We be halfway through the storm. The eye of the hurricane will be passing over us in minutes.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but her tongue seemed too thick to utter the words. Sliding off the bunk, she swallowed and took a hesitant step in his direction. “The eye?” she managed huskily. “What does that mean?” Fear distorted her voice until it sounded like the rasp of an old woman to her ears.

Ross took two strides and enfolded her in his arms, crushing her against him until she could feel the pounding of his heart. “’Tis like a wheel,” he grated. “The storm be shaped like a wheel with a hub. When that hub passes over us, like as not the sun will shine and the sea will calm.” He tilted up her chin to cover her mouth with his own.

His kiss was hot and demanding, and his hard fingers dug into her arms as they slid to their knees on the rolling deck. Anne shut her eyes and savored the tremors of pleasure that made her limbs weak and her head spin. She was kissing him back, welcoming the thrust of his tongue and the heady scent of salt and wind and water that radiated from Ross’s wet skin and clothing enveloping them both.

The crash of the waves against the ship faded before the throb of her own blood, and her fear drained away. She threaded her fingers through his thick hair and pulled his head down to nuzzle against her breast.