Love and Fury: The Coltrane Saga, Book 4 (43 page)

His eyes darkened to a deep blue. “She was jealous because of Delia. She thought if Coltrane got his money back, and we were left poor again, Delia would leave me. Then
she
could have me back. She’d never have hurt me otherwise,” he said, more to reassure himself than to convince Briana. “When that didn’t work, and she found out Coltrane was dead,” he went on, “well, I guess that’s why she tried to kill Delia.”

Briana stiffened. Alaina had tried to kill Delia? She started to ask him what had happened, but he kept talking.

“Served her right. She was a black widow spider…wanted to love me, then devour me. She stopped at nothing to get her way. She was always greedy, always conniving and selfish.” He shook his head. “My life is so much easier with her dead.”

Briana was astonished. He explained hastily, telling her without remorse what had happened to Alaina Barbeau deBonnett. But he left out the fact that she’d been alive on the rocks when he left her. Briana didn’t need to know that.

Suddenly Gavin stopped talking. He reached out and took hold of Briana’s hands.

“Dirk Hollister will not have you,” he said, his teeth clenched, his eyes burning into hers. “I am sick and tired of people interfering in my plans. When we reach Santorini, I am going to turn Delia over to Hollister to pacify him, and then you are going to marry me. He wouldn’t dare touch you if you were my wife.”

He tried to kiss her, but Briana twisted her head away. He grabbed her arms and jerked them behind her, holding her wrists with one hand. With his free hand, he grabbed her hair, holding her still as his mouth began to assault hers. When he forced his tongue between her lips, she bit down as hard as she could. Yelping with pain, he slapped her so hard that a shower of stars fell before her eyes.

“Do something like that again, and I will make you very sorry!”

He jerked a handkerchief from his coat pocket and dabbed at his tongue. When he saw the crimson stain, he swore furiously and slapped her again.

Briana tasted blood in her own mouth, but refused to give him the pleasure of hearing her cry out. Venomously she asked, “Are you through?”

“No,” he whispered ominously. “I have not even begun, my dear. You will know what real pain is when I have you tied, naked, spread-eagled, and—”

A sound in the hallway outside the door caused him to fall silent. He turned quickly, jerking the door open to peer outside.

No one was there.

Turning back to Briana, he warned, “You will be mine. I wish I did not have to wait until we reach our destination, but I don’t want a scene with Delia. Enjoy your solitude.” He gave her a look that made her feel as though her flesh were crawling with a thousand maggots. “Soon we will be together…me inside you.”

He left, locking the door.

Briana’s face and mouth felt as though she’d been burned. She lay down on her bunk and waited for sleep to take her away from her nightmare.

Briana awoke to find Raoul bending over her, looking very frightened. “Are you all right,
mademoiselle
? Who hurt you?”

She struggled to sit up, and some impulse prompted her to tell Raoul the entire story.

He listened, horrified but apparently believing her. “I do not know exactly what they have told you about me,” she finished, “but I am telling you the truth.”

He nodded very slowly, eyes on her face. “I believe you. You see, I came back here before it was time, to tell you that I know something is very wrong. They lied about you.”

He rushed to tell her that he had found it increasingly difficult to believe what he had been told about her.

That day, he’d overheard Gavin having a violent quarrel with his lady friend in their cabin. He’d known then that Gavin’s story about Briana was a lie.

“And what were you told?” she prodded.

He took a deep breath. “
Monsieur
Mason said you killed his aunt, and he was getting you out of France to avoid a scandal and prosecution. He told my cousin, the captain, that he has political aspirations that would be hurt by something so terrible as a murder…by his
mistress…
” His voice trailed away. “First he says you’re his niece, and then he says you’re…”

“Oh, Raoul, I am not his mistress,” Briana cried, “or his niece. I’m no relative of his. You must believe me. He and one of his hired killers are the murderers, not me. Hollister murdered the man I loved. They forced me to go to Greece with them, and I was forced into getting involved with Gavin in the first place, and—”

She burst into tears of exhaustion and fury. “Why, I only found out a little while ago that Alaina deBonnett was dead,” she added, wiping her eyes.

“Please don’t cry,
Mademoiselle
…?”

Briana smiled. “Briana de Paul. Call me Briana.”

He hurriedly assured her, “I know you weren’t a murderer. You couldn’t hurt anybody.”

Briana shook her head. “All I want is to escape, Raoul.” She looked at him with pleading eyes. “Will you help me?”

He stared at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “If I can,” he whispered.

She hugged him happily, feeling a glimmer of hope for the first time in a long, long time. “I realize we have to protect you, so that you won’t get into any trouble, Raoul. We must be very careful. I need time to think.”

“I will help you,” he reaffirmed, his tone firm and sure now.

Their eyes locked, held.

Briana told him to go about his regular duties, lest he be discovered talking to her too much. “I know I can count on you to help me, and I will find a way to get myself out of this.”

As it turned out, Briana did not need to find a plan of escape, for one came to her late that night. Delia paid her a secret visit.

Briana had been dozing, but was instantly awake at the sound of a key in the lock. The door opened, then closed quickly, and she could hear someone breathing rapidly, nervously.

“Briana? It’s me…Delia.”

Tense, Briana kept silent, waiting.

“Don’t make me raise my voice, Briana. I don’t want anyone to know I’m in here. Gavin is playing poker with the captain and some of his crew on the deck above us. He thinks I’m asleep. He doesn’t know I slipped the key to your cabin out of his coat pocket.”

Briana remained silent. Delia’s tone was conciliatory, but Briana had no reason to let her guard down. Why trust Delia?

“Please.” Delia sounded close to tears. “I know you don’t like me. I don’t guess I can blame you, but won’t you hear me out? I came to help you.”

Hearing that, Briana sat bolt upright. “If I believed that…”

“You have to believe me!” Delia’s voice was a mixture of desperation and indignation. “You are my only hope, and I’m yours. We’re going to help each other.”

“What do you want?” Briana snapped.

Delia gave a sigh of relief, then rushed on. “I was outside your cabin today when Gavin was here. I heard him hitting you.”

“Thank you for intervening on my behalf,” Briana quipped.

“I couldn’t do anything!” Delia cried, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I could hardly let him know I was out there. But when he came back to our cabin, I just lost my temper and told him I’d heard. To say he was going to get rid of me and marry you was just…” Her voice broke.

Delia cried for a few moments. Briana said nothing.

Delia began again. “I know you don’t want to marry him. You want to be free of this whole mess and go find your brother. I am going to give you that chance, because if I don’t, then Gavin will dump me, and I’ll have nothing, after all the chances I’ve taken. He owes me,” she said bitterly.

“Don’t worry,” she continued in a frenzy to be understood. “You can trust me. I won’t hurt you. If I did, Gavin would hate me, and I would never stand a chance of becoming his wife.”

Briana supposed that made sense. “What do you have in mind?”

“Hold out your hand.”

“Why?”

“Come on,” Delia urged. “I have something to give you. Hold out your hand.”

Briana did, and was disbelieving as she felt a knife being placed in her palm.

“You must promise not to harm Gavin,” Delia said. “I know you hate him, but you must promise you won’t hurt him. You will only threaten him with the knife, not actually harm him. Do I have your promise?”

“You have given me this knife,” Briana said evenly, “and I assure you that if Gavin tries to harm me again, I will slit his throat…just,” she added truthfully, “as I will slit yours if you try to take it away from me now.”

Delia went on in a rush as though Briana had not even spoken, delighted with herself for having all of this so well thought out. “The first night on Santorini, I will keep Gavin occupied, no matter what I have to do. Meanwhile, you will have the knife. Use it on whoever is guarding you. The ship does not sail until dawn, I found out. They have to take on goods, and then the crew has free time on the island. That’s the way it’s always been, I’m told. All you have to do is sneak back on board. By the time Gavin finds out, you’ll be safely on your way.”

Briana was not impressed. “And if Gavin finds out I’m gone before the ship sails, and comes after me?”

“I will keep him busy until midday. Believe me, I know how,” she added. “I will also see that he drinks enough to make him sleep heavily. By the time he wakes up, the ship will be gone, and so will you.”

There was a tense moment of silence as the two women thought it over.

Then Delia spoke, warily. “Do you…do you think you will be able to kill Dirk, or whoever is guarding you, Briana?”

“I will welcome the opportunity,” Briana stated.

Delia moved toward the door then, anxious to get back before Gavin returned. “He’s on his good behavior after the fight we had earlier, but still…”

Briana was left alone then with her thoughts. And when she felt the cold, sharp blade of the knife pressed against her fingertips, she was able to believe that she really had a chance to fight.

Chapter Thirty-One

Gavin Mason and his party arrived on the island of Santorini and found that so many years had passed since Levon St. Clair’s coming that no one thought much about him anymore. They were used to seeing his palatial mansion on top of a high peak, used to his being a recluse. Everyone stayed out of his way.

Gavin and the others rode up the mountain on donkeys. Briana, guarded by Buff, her hands bound before her, but not visibly so, marveled at the awesome spectacle. There were precipitous cliffs, over six hundred feet high, made of strata of black rock, russet soil, vestiges of gray lava, and veins of white pumice. Beyond those awesome cliffs stretched an endless blue sea flung all the way to the horizon.

More than once, Briana asked herself why she didn’t simply scream for help, tell passersby that she was being kidnapped. But she had spent so much time under Gavin’s thumb that she had no faith in a stranger’s ability to help her, no expectation of being rescued.

Why take a chance on being killed? If she exposed Gavin as a kidnapper, he or Hollister or one of the other American guards might kill her. No, it would be better to wait until she found a chance to escape. These people had killed her dearest love, Colt, and killed Branch. They might very well kill her if she tried to expose them.

They climbed higher and higher. Finally, reaching the top, not one of them failed to be stunned by the great white-walled villa that stood in regal splendor on its own mountain top. Delia clapped her hands in childish delight. Gavin, beneath the attempt to look as if he’d always lived in such places, was clearly thrilled.

A gray-haired old man with an ancient rifle slung over his shoulder did no more than wave them through the gates and into the courtyard when Gavin informed him that he was a relative of Levon St. Clair.

Instead of herding them all in, however, Gavin said he would go alone to meet the master of the house.

He was gone for only twenty minutes before he returned to jovially announce that there was no problem. They were welcome.

By then, Briana’s clothes were soaked with perspiration, and her hair hung limp and damp. It had been a long climb, and the weather there was almost tropical. She wanted to go inside the cool white mansion and have a bath, then sleep for a few hours on a real bed, with real sheets, on ground that didn’t rock and pitch. She knew she would need all the rest she could get, for she had looked carefully around on the journey upward, and seen how dangerous the journey down would be—precarious, with steep drop-offs. At night, in the dark, she would have to feel her way along very carefully. It would be slow going, and Raoul had warned her to be there on time for their scheduled sailing, at first light.

She watched out of the corner of her eye as Gavin talked with Al, both of them glancing in her direction. She hadn’t seen as much of Al’s dark side as she had of Dirk’s, but she knew he couldn’t be anything but bad.

In a moment, Al came over and lifted her off the donkey, then threw her over his shoulder. They moved away from the mansion, toward a rocky bluff nearby, and Briana cried, “Put me down!”

“Oh, shut up!” Al snarled. “The boss wants you locked up so’s you won’t be no trouble while he gets things organized.”