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Authors: Jennifer Horsman

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General

Passion's Joy (7 page)

BOOK: Passion's Joy
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Cold fear battled with rage, and as her mind spun with the danger, her wits returned at once.

He didn't know yet, but when he discovered she had helped to free slaves, all was lost: the Reverend, Sammy and herself. Perhaps even Joshua would be implicated in the felony crime of the highest order. Yet she was far less afraid of the fines and jail term than the knowledge that Southern justice was not often dealt in a court of law.

Hanging might only be the merciful end!

In all her years as a conductor, never had her mind conjured the risks in such graphic detail.

Added to this was the frightening attempt to guess what he might personally do to her. This contemplation could not be borne, for whatever it was, it seemed bound to be worse than the worst.

Her whole body screamed one word—Run!—and this was tempered only by the crystal clear understanding of just how far she would get. She cast a quick glance back to where the Reverend slept at the bar, deciding that no help would be coming from that direction. She found two exits, the front and a hallway, surely leading to the back door. Nervous, still trembling with fear, she could barely contain herself as she saw she must to wait for her chance.

Ram stood near the bound man, conferring with two of his men. His attention finally turned to Sean, and for the first time, the large crowd of men joined in the deathly quiet with the rest of the room. Even the bound man, whose voice had been raised with vicious threats and curses, all at once fell silent.

"Allow me to present Captain Willis." Sean began in that dispassionate air of boredom of his, as though, like the great blond Viking God he resembled, these mere mortal surroundings thoroughly taxed him. The impression was completely situational, rising from the knowledge of the bound mail's chains. "We followed the foul stench of his ship—the Blue Crest—from the Caribbean Isles, allowing her some wind to see where she'd go. We caught her less than a hundred miles directly due east from here."

A dark brow lifted; this information interested Ram, and the prisoner received another appraisal.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Captain Willis interrupted to demand of Ram, no longer able to contain his indignation, bewilderment and rage. The bloody green gall of taking my ship—I still cannot believe it happened and in New Orleans to boot!—why, I'll be damned if I don't see every last one of you cutthroats hanged before the day is through! And if you think for a moment you bloody bastards can get away with it—"

Ram had set down his cup and motioning for silence, said simply, "You will not speak until

asked."

"The bloody hell I—"

With no warning, Ram brought the bunt end of a pistol against the man's face with an

untaxed strength that even few in this room could match. The impact threw Captain Willis hard

against the floor, and Joy screamed as her hands flew to her mouth with the shock of his demonstration showing the terrifying difference between how he treated a man as opposed to herself. The man struggled to lift himself up but collapsed with the effort. As though he had done nothing more than swat a bothersome mosquito, Ram's gaze returned to Sean.

"The cargo was what one might expect." Sean continued with matched dispassion. "Though I suppose certain details bare mentioning. The Blue Crest was rigged as a brig and small at that— less than three hundred tons—but with a burden any seaman would find too large for a thousand ton schooner."

"The exact number, Sean," Ram demanded. 'Two hundred and eleven."

The number hung in the air, seemingly more damning than God Almighty’s fingers, and Joy tried to understand what it meant.

"Needless to say"—Sean shrugged—"this forced our good captain here to position his passengers back to back lengthwise, stacked like oh so many flapjacks in a small four-foot hold. And apparently either the crew was particularly lazy or the rations particularly bad, for there was one dead man to everyone still managing to breathe in that stench."

A slaver! Joy's eyes widened enormously before dropping to the man lying on the floor. If even half of what Sean claimed was true, then it was not cruelty etched in the hard features of his face but evil. The unconscionable evil, Joshua often said, of running a slaver was the first, most awful step in the long journey to hell.

Uncertainty added to her fear as she looked at Ram anew. So many thoughts clamored for her attention, she could hardly make sense of it beyond the single pressing question. What part does he play in this evil?

"The crew?" Ram asked next.

"Ah, we dealt with them," Sean sighed, smiling. "You know how hard it is to control my men in these situations."

The men's grunts, nods and amusement lent credibility to Sean's assertion, but Ram answered with: "I only know how little you try."

Sean smiled with a shrug. "Don't worry, my lord, I did manage to save you this captain, and in the event he perishes before he breaks, I have two of his, ah, officers in wait."

hard."

"Oh, he'll break all right," Ram said, looking at the fallen man. "I wager it won't even be

"About that," Sean said with the barest hint of disgust lifting through his dispassionate

interest, "we also found two wenches tied and beaten in the captain's cabin. The man's obvious fondness for whips might enhance your much deserved reputation for dealing justice poetically."

The meaning of this was not lost on Ram, and he chuckled lightly as he motioned to two of his men waiting on the sidelines. Missing not a word or implication, Joy watched as the fallen man was lifted to his feet by two of Ram's men. One of these men drew a clean shiny saber. The sword sliced through the ropes that bound the captain's hands, but before he had even shaken blood back to his numb limbs, his arms were forced over his head and bound again.

An ugly swollen welt already marred his face, and his nose was broken. Fear finally found its way into his face as, with smooth practiced motions, Ram's man tossed the rope over an overhanging beam and then secured the tail to the table, which was held down by the elbows of over ten of the strong and able-bodied men watching.

Joy's attention riveted to the scene, and she did not see the man enter the tavern, quickly making his way to Ram's side. He was middle-aged, in his forties, with a magnificent mane of silver and white hair and bright blue eyes. The quickness with which he approached Ram seemed in defiance with his immense stocky frame, for one might think his muscles far too large and cumbersome to allow the apparent ease of his movements.

As the man spoke, Ram's attention returned to her. The dark gaze changed with surprise. "Bounty hunters?"

Bart quickly gave the details, and Joy would have felt more alarmed if she had witnessed Ram's appraisal of the men in the bar. Based on the briefest description, Ram's gaze rested on none other than the Reverend. He mentioned something inaudible to Bart, who nodded in turn, and after exchanging a few hearty greetings with Seanessy's men, Bart turned away.

Joy had determined for a fact that she could not, would not, ever, no matter what, bear witness to a hanging, and as she began to deliver a fervent prayer to her pounding heart to make her faint, she saw with ever-increasing horror that hanging was not the intent.

It was worse.

Ram's man ripped the shirt from Captain Willis's back, and his first scream sounded pure fury as the sharp blade of the saber cut a neat red cross on his back in blood like some large

illiterate signature. One of Seanessy’s men stood up, sporting a long black whip in his hands, the common tool of overseers. With easy flicks of his wrist, he sent the whip cracking over the captain's bare feet. The captain's muscles jerked and tensed, sweat laced his brow in an effort to stop the cry in his throat. Sean's man mercilessly waited for each breath to ease his pain, bringing feeling back again, before cracking the whip another time. Amidst sudden grunts and growls, many of the other men abruptly found displeasure with the quality of the tavern's rum and tossed the hot liquid over the fresh bloodied back.

Joy covered her eyes and turned away, shaking and sick, jolted visibly by each gasp of the man's pain. Ram waited impatiently for the man to gain some semblance of control, then finally explained, "Your life hangs precariously on my small mercy. Do you understand that?"

The man’s breath rose so hard and fast, it was mistaken as a nod.

"I want to know the numbers first. How many slavers are running from Orleans?''

Ugly hatred flared in Willis's eyes, and he spit, missing Ram by inches. "That's to your numbers!''

The whip cracked, a fiery snake coiling around his neck, searing it with a blazing hot pain that arched his back, and Joy's gasp drown in his scream. The whip cracked twice more in quick succession before suddenly, he cried, "Five!"

Leaning arms on his bent knee, Ram interrupted the motion of bringing his cup to his lips. Apparently, it was the wrong number, for he gave it but brief consideration. He nodded slightly to his man with the saber, and the blade had only to lightly run across the open wounds of the captain's back before he screamed, "Eight!"

"Ah, that's more like it. Now, I'll have the names of those financing these ships."

Horror lifted through the man's pain, as though he had not expected this question. "Oh, no," he shook his head, throwing large drops of perspiration to the bloodied straw at his feet. "You'll have to kill me first, 'cause I'll not—"

He never finished, for the whip cracked angrily, the sound crashing through Joy's terror despite the hands held tight over her ears. She did not know she had bolted from her seat until Ram's arms were on her, forcing her still with her backside against his long length.

"Something wrong, sweetheart?" he whispered against her ear. "I had thought you'd be good for a while longer—it has, after all, only begun."

Panic kept her mute, but her eyes, filled with fresh tears, terror and desperation, pleaded her case. When the man's next scream jolted her small frame with a physical force, Ram knew she had indeed reached her end. She was hardly conscious of those arms lifting her to the air, carrying her down the hall and through the back door, until the blessed fresh air filled her lungs, and she opened her eyes to the bright sunlight.

She trembled still, and Ram set her to her feet, cursing when her knees gave way like a paper doll's. He caught her back into his arms and brought her beneath the shade of a willow tree. He sat down against the trunk, fitting her beneath his outstretched legs, and for a long while he just stared. The dramatic evidence of just how shaken it left her only fueled his anger.

"That show obviously has upset your, ah, delicacies is it?" he asked.

Joy glanced up to meet the anger in his cold gaze. Now, all her fear rose from the single dread that he would force her to return to that nightmare. It was all she could do not to beg.

"If that scene reduced you to tears and trembling, sweetheart, imagine this," he said evenly. "Imagine a young girl on some ill-conceived mission of charity, donning boys' clothes in a ridiculous attempt to disguise her... oh so obvious sex. Imagine that girl entering an establishment like this." He motioned to the Red Barn.

"Now, sweetheart," he almost whispered, catching her thin arm in his hand, as if he needed more of her wide-eyed attention. "Imagine the patron's delight, nay excitement, upon discovering this young girl's sex. Imagine this girl being thrown backside to a foul smelling floor—"

She covered her ears, "Nooo ..."

"Yes." He caught both her arms to force her to hear the rest. "Imagine the line forming, a line that would not stop when the girl finally, mercifully passed out. A line that would only stop when there was enough blood between your thighs to convince the most dull-witted among them that you were indeed quite dead!"

She tried desperately to deny this vision, and while she shook her head almost frantically, the graphic details he drew could neither be escaped nor ignored. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, seeing not what could have happened but what probably would have happened. That nightmare was the last awful end to the worst day of her life. Emotionally and physically exhausted, she collapsed with the last tears, now drained even of the burden of caring what he would do.

Exhaustion was her only explanation for what happened next. She didn't know how it happened; perhaps she had collapsed into his arms or perhaps those arms had guided her there, but suddenly she was folded in his embrace with her face buried in his chest, crying softly.

She had never before experienced the comfort of a man's arms, save for Joshua, the Reverend and Sammy. It was even more odd that he—a man who had dealt her nothing but the most punishing blows—was the one providing her comfort. Yet, even through her dazed wits, she intuitively grasped that he was no longer going to harm her, that while she still had reason for fear and uncertainty, his anger had diminished as she had broken.

She felt her emotions quiet somewhat, and her thoughts struggled to answer the most pressing question: Who was he? He sat like a king on a totalitarian throne with a stream of men at his beck and call: huge, mean, terrifying men that included a whole band of hardened sea pirates. He even had the attentive deference of their leader. She had witnessed his great strength and aura of command when dealing cruel and harsh justice to the evil of running a slaver. This demonstrated such an unlikely and unexpected nobility of purpose, the thought sent her into a quick tumult of confusion.

To say he was not like anyone she had ever known or heard of or even read about was an understatement. He seemed a hundred times more than most men, stronger not just physically but also of will, and at least that much as sharp. She did not think he would be received in any house she knew; yet he had an aristocratic bearing that made Louisiana's grandest look as dull and impoverished as the Reverend's peddler's hat.

These thoughts registered but dimly on her mind, waiting to crystallize and grow with the mystery of Ram Barrington. What was not so vague was the gentle stroke of his hand through her hair, that inexplicable warmth of his touch and his scent: clean, fresh and masculine. The increasingly disturbing effect of these things caused her pulse to quicken, as a heat spread physically through her limp limbs.

BOOK: Passion's Joy
12.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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