Sold Into Marriage (8 page)

The sky grew darker. Varron jumped to his feet and fought his way across the deck, his only thoughts on getting below to the cabin where Meadow slept. Christ, he hoped she was still sleeping. If she’d awoken to the noise and tossing of the ship, she might have ventured on deck.

His heart pounded in his ears and rage pumped through his veins. Having fought in many a battle, he was a skilled swordsman and had no difficulty killing every pirate that crossed his path. The knives they carried were no match for his sword. The ship kept rocking, and Varron was stunned as he looked around and realized both ships were in danger of sinking. After the ships crashed together in the waves several more times, both started taking on water and sank lower into the ocean.

He cut down another pirate, slicing him from neck to stomach. The pirate’s intestines spilled onto the slippery deck and he gurgled blood as he collapsed to his death. Varron rushed by him and down the steps. He ran at full speed once he reached the narrow corridors below.

But he found the door to his quarters ajar.

“Meadow! Meadow!”

The room was empty.

He spun around and took in the state of the bed. The covers were torn off and lay partially on the floor. The entire space was a mess, but whether it was due to a struggle or due to the incessant rocking of the ship, Varron knew not.

“Meadow!” As the ship continued to take on water, he fought his way back up to the deck. More pirates had boarded. Bodies littered the deck, and many of the slain had fallen in the water and were sloshing about in the waves below.

He searched for a flash of blue, his heart in his throat. Meadow had been wearing one of the new gowns he’d bought her, a blue one.
God, please let her be all right. Please let me find her.

He’d never prayed so hard in his life. He continued his search, until he spotted a smaller ship in the distance, and a longboat rowing toward it. How had they missed the second ship? He squinted to get a better look at the occupants of the longboat through the darkness and the punishing rain. Was Meadow on the boat? Had someone taken her?

Coldness gripped him. If she was still on the
Georgiana
, he would have found her by now.

He removed his boots and his sword belt, then without a second thought ran as fast as he could and jumped over the railing. Seconds later, he splashed into the raging waters. The frigid cold shocked him, making him go still in the waves for a moment. He grabbed onto a board that was floating in the water and managed to start kicking and swimming using it as a floatation device.

He aimed for the boat, navigating through the increasingly violent waves and the dead bodies. When he made it farther away from the
Georgiana
, he peered over his shoulder to see her sinking deeper into the ocean. The pirate ship that had attacked them was sinking as well, but more longboats were carrying the surviving pirates toward the smaller ship that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

A wave overtook him and he hugged the board to his chest as he tried to kick his way to the surface. His lungs burned from holding his breath, and his limbs felt like they were being stabbed with thousands of tiny needles.

When he finally surfaced, he was closer to the surprise pirate ship. This one had black sails as well. The thunder rumbled farther and farther away, the storm apparently only passing by quickly. Varron swam with all his strength, only pausing when he noticed the form of a woman being passed from one of the longboats to a man dangling from a rope ladder hanging on the side of the ship.

A woman wearing a blue gown. A woman who was thrashing around and trying to fight off her captors.

Though he was already nearly frozen in the ocean, Varron’s blood managed to run even colder at the sight of his beloved wife struggling in the hands of the pirates. Then another wave crashed over him and knocked the board from his arms.

A lass with long, wavy dark hair moved through the crowd in the market. Varron quickened his pace, his heart thumping in his chest. Was it
her
? Was it his sweet Meadow? His throat constricted so tight he couldn’t manage to call out her name. He broke into a run.
Please, let it be her.

Once he reached the lass, he grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. She gasped and peered up at him with large, fearful dark eyes. His hand dropped from her shoulder. A look of confusion crossed her face, and she took two large steps back from Varron.

His heart sank.

It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Meadow.

“Apologies, lass. I thought you were someone I knew.”

The girl smiled nervously and adjusted the basket she held higher in her arms. “I do not believe we have ever met, sir.” She turned and disappeared in the crowd.

Varron had lost count of the number of dark-haired young women he’d mistaken for Meadow. He saw her everywhere he went, yet it never turned out to be her.

His heart ached. He took a deep breath and scanned the crowd again. Searching. Always searching.

He would not stop until he found her.

*****

Meadow stared out the window of her chamber. The day was bright, the scenery green and tropical, but the pretty view did nothing to lift the persistent cloud that hovered over her. Sadness clung to her, and the feeling became so heavy at times that she often found it difficult to breath.

A month had passed since the pirates’ attack on the
Georgiana
. She shuddered as she recalled that fateful day. And tears prickled in her eyes when she remembered the last time she’d glanced toward the
Georgiana
. It had been sinking. With Varron on it. Or maybe he’d been one of the bodies floating in the waves. She didn’t know, and she really didn’t want to think about the fact that he was gone forever, but she couldn’t seem to force herself to think of anything but her late husband.

They had only been married for a short time before he’d been ripped from her life. It was a cruel twist of fate—that she’d finally found happiness only for it to be stolen away.

The sun rose higher and she turned to get dressed for the day. Voices and the clattering of dishes floated up from the tavern below. She supposed she was lucky to have found work on this small island, especially being a stranger to this place. After all the years spent worrying over whether or not her stepfather would throw her out on the streets, it was nice to discover she would’ve been able to survive just fine if he’d actually followed through with those threats.

She also supposed she was lucky to have been rescued from the pirates by a warship from Himma, but it was difficult to feel anything but absolute desolation. She often wanted to lay down in her bed and never rise up again. But the will to survive somehow persisted within her. Maybe because she thought Varron would want her to be happy and move on. If she had died during the pirates’ attack and he had been the one to live, she would have wished the same for him. Sometimes she was so miserable that she wished it had happened that way, but it was too late to change the past.

She finished dressing and wandered downstairs to the tavern. As customers trickled in, she waited on them, bringing them the shepherd’s pie the cook had prepared for today’s meal, and making sure their cups remained filled with mead. The people of this island, known as Manacover, were more welcoming to strangers than on the mainland, at least. When the warship that had rescued her docked to take on supplies here, she’d slipped off and disappeared into the streets, not wishing to return to Himma.

There was nothing for her there. She had no wish to live in Varron’s house in the capital city, where she would be reminded of his absence even more so on a daily basis. She also had no wish to return to Monnak
a.
She had no family left and no friends either. It was a lonely existence.

Sometimes she pretended Varron wasn’t really dead. Sometimes she daydreamed that he was only away, leading his troops to war, and that he would return to her in a few years.

She considered saving up her meager wages from working at the tavern to book passage to Geshema Providence, and perhaps she would one day just so she could glimpse the land Varron had called home as a child, but for now she was content enough to remain on Manacover. No one knew her name or her story here, and she liked that she could tell everyone she’d traveled from the mainland to Manacover just because she’d heard stories about the island’s beauty and wanted to live here for a few years before her travels took her elsewhere.

Being a young woman, she got strange looks whenever she told this tale, and many a person asked why her father and brothers hadn’t stopped her from setting out on her own, but she always smiled and said her family supported her adventures. No one needed to know her real father was dead, and her mother too, or that she was an only child, or that her stepfather had treated her cruelly and met his death at the end of a rope.

No, it was much better to invent stories and pretend all was well, and much easier to cry alone in her chamber above the tavern after the last customer left for the night.

Though only a month had passed since she became a widow and the loss of Varron still cut deep, she couldn’t imagine ever moving on and finding love again. Yes, she knew now that she had indeed grown to love him in the short time they’d had together. He’d saved her from a lifetime of slavery, and he’d gone on to treat her with kindness though she’d been but a stranger to him. He could have viewed her as a nuisance, or he could’ve stood by and allowed her stepfather to sell her to the crown. No other man could compare to Varron. He’d been a good man; the kind of man she’d been lucky to find herself married to.

If only they’d had more time together. If only they’d waited another week to sail to Geshema Providence and hadn’t met with the pirates.

She shivered at the memory of her time in their captivity. The captain had taken a liking to her and forced her to sleep in his quarters. But by the grace of God, when he’d come at her in the night, groping at her and trying to kiss her, he hadn’t been able to remain hard. He hadn’t been able to enter her, especially with her fighting him.

After three nights of keeping her locked in his quarters, he’d given up his attempts to have sex with her, but he never passed her off to any of his men either. A week after that, the warship from Himma attacked, and she found herself rescued in the middle of an otherwise calm night at sea, so much unlike the pirates’ attack on the
Georgiana
during a frightening storm.

The pirate captain had boasted that the first ship, the one they’d crashed into the
Georgiana
, had been a stolen merchant vessel they’d taken several weeks prior. No wonder they’d thought nothing of sailing straight up to the
Georgiana
during a storm and crashing into her. She’d glimpsed their longboats filled with food, spirits, and other goods meant for Geshema Providence.

All the muscles in Meadow’s body were aching by the time the tavern closed for the night. She grabbed a quick meal in the kitchen, helping herself to a shepherd’s pie the cook had saved for her, before she ventured back upstairs to her lonely chamber.

She went through her bedtime routine, donning the new nightdress she’d sewn and brushing out her long dark locks. She washed her face, cleaned her teeth, and settled into her bed, grateful that the tavern owner had been generous enough to provide her with this small chamber. Amidst her grief and all the memories that wouldn’t seem to fade, she valued her solitude and was glad she didn’t have to bunk with another employee.

She opened the window, allowing the warm night air into her chamber. Inhaling the scent of the ocean, she said a prayer for Varron’s soul.
Please God, watch over him
. Then she spoke aloud to her beloved husband, even though she doubted he could hear her.

“I miss you, Varron, and I’ll never forget you.” She stared at the stars sparkling in the vast black sky above, and at the slightly waning moon, bright and brilliant as it kept watch over the earth.

The sound of waves crashing against the rocky shore below lulled her into a trance, and she soon moved to her bed and crawled under the covers. She closed her eyes and envisioned Varron riding toward her on his horse, the hilt of his sword gleaming in the sun. Oftentimes, if she pictured him in her mind as she fell asleep, she would dream he was still alive.

Exhausted from working sunrise to sunset in the tavern, she drifted into unconsciousness as the warm breeze drifted through her window.

Rather than a pleasant dream about her beloved Varron, she dreamed she was falling into a deep black pit. She held her breath as she kept falling and falling, but the pit seemed bottomless, for she never hit the ground.

Suddenly, a light appeared above her and she stopped falling. She gasped and bolted upright in her bed, fully awake. Breathless from the nightmare, she blinked as her vision adjusted to the darkness.

Her heart caught in her throat when the outline of a huge man emerged, directly in front of her window, blocking out the white rays of the moon that normally spilled across the floorboards.

She clutched her covers up to her neck with one hand, but with her other hand she carefully reached beneath her pillow until her fingers brushed the cool surface of the knife she never slept without. She’d never been happier to have stolen the knife from one of the soldiers aboard the warship than she was now. Perhaps this intruder was one of the customers who’d visited the tavern earlier, drunk and hoping for a quick, easy fuck. Well, he was in for a big surprise.

Clutching the handle of the knife, she held it pointed outward, but underneath the covers so as not to alert the trespasser that she possessed a weapon.

The moment he came at her, she would stab him in the heart.

*****

Varron stared at Meadow as she slept peacefully, wondering what she was dreaming about. She whimpered something he couldn’t quite hear, and he took a step closer. Her arms thrashed around for a moment and then she shot up in bed. Apparently she hadn’t been slumbering as peacefully as he’d thought.

Emotion burned in his throat at the sight of her, even in the darkness when he couldn’t make out all her features. Guilt riddled him to have taken so long in finding her. He’d almost drowned the night of the pirates’ attack, and he’d awoken from a delirious fever state a week later in the care of a native tribe on an island known as Bunca. Apparently, he’d washed up on the shore.

Would Meadow forgive him for taking so long? He worried the pirates had brutalized her, mayhap scared her so badly she wouldn’t be able to stand a man’s touch, even his. He tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth the words became stuck in his throat. He longed to rush to her and take her in his arms, to hold her and never let go.

But what if his touch frightened her? Images of the horrors she might have endured while in captivity flashed through his mind, and he closed his eyes and gave his head a harsh shake, hoping by some miracle she hadn’t been treated as harshly as he suspected.

When he’d discovered she’d been rescued by a warship from Himma, his worry had increased after he learned she’d vanished from the ship while it took on supplies in Manacover. Perhaps the ship filled with men had been too much for her. Perhaps that was why she’d left to never return, even though the warship had remained in port for an extra two days as they sent soldiers to search the streets looking for her, no doubt bound by honor and duty to assist a lady in distress.

“Meadow.” When he finally spoke, her name came out as a whisper. “My sweet lass.”

Something clanged to the floor, and he caught the glint of metal in the moonlight as he took another step forward. She must have thought him an intruder and been prepared to defend herself, and the fact that she still had a fight left in her made hope flicker inside his chest. If she’d been broken, she wouldn’t have taken care to arm herself.

“Varron. Oh my God. Is…is it really you?” She covered her mouth to stifle a sob.

He moved to her, cautiously, mindful of all she had probably been through since the attack on the
Georgiana
and not wishing to frighten her.

She peered up at him, her long hair arranged around her shoulders, her white nightdress clinging to her—she must have broken into a sweat during her nightmare—and gleaming in the moonlight.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked, a small smile curving her lips up. She released a shuddering breath and reached for him.

It was all the encouragement he needed. He swept her up in his arms and held her to his body, nearly crushing her in his fierce embrace. He knew he should be gentler, but after missing her for a month and even fearing she’d been killed, he could no longer help himself. Fortunately, she wasn’t struggling or shuddering at his touch.

“Meadow.” He stroked her hair and breathed in her scent. Still, after all this time, her hair smelled of roses. He pulled back and kissed her forehead, then her cheeks, and finally—oh yes, her sweet and welcoming lips.