Swept Away By a Kiss (11 page)

Steven remained motionless. Minutes passed, hours. He didn’t know, did not care. He watched her, hunger in his hands and mouth as he drank in her beauty, her sable hair, her lusciously curved lips he could practically taste upon his, imagining them upon his body. Need streaming through his veins, he traced the graceful line of her neck, the delicate angle of her jaw, the creamy satin of her skin.

He was a damned fool.

She’d only been awake for a minute, perhaps not even that long, but he was trembling. Steven could not remember the last time he trembled from something other than cold, and even then he had been very cold indeed. He could so easily go to the bed, take her into his arms, and give her pleasure for every pleasure he took in return. He could succumb to temptation.

He would not. She was beautiful. But he was not a man to be swayed from his course by beauty alone.

He fought to ignore the voice in his head insisting that more than her beauty beguiled him. He had known many lovely women in his life. None was as quick of mind and resilient of spirit as this willful yet wary woman. In a few short days she had revealed to him more of her nature than perhaps she intended, and Steven was troubled he had so easily been drawn in, as easily as a moth to a bright flame. Many men before him must have yielded to temptation with this woman, to touch her and to give their hearts over to her.

It would be so easy. Like the man she had spoken of, perhaps, and others. The wiles she had practiced upon Steven earlier were not new to her.

He did not fault her for it. A young woman of her status lived a stultified existence, a life that would drive Steven as insane as Gaston Bebain if he were forced to live it. That life must cinch at Valerie’s lively spirit as effectively as the ropes upon her body had the night before. She had learned to use that body to wrest some adventure from life.

He, however, could and would resist her enticements. Within hours he would fulfill his plans, and she would again be upon a ship bound for England. His work would continue and she would become nothing but a memory.

As he buttoned his shirt with unsteady fingers, the thought brought with it no comfort.

She must have dreamed it. The vision she had seen in the midnight dark could not be real.

Shivers glistened up Valerie’s back as her eyes opened to the gray light peeking through the cabin window. She did not move, the ship swaying her body as she stared at the empty chair.

He had the shape of a god.

Some tiny sound had awakened her. She had watched the water glint off his skin as he bathed, golden in the glow of the lamp, and she hadn’t even considered looking away.

Then his slow lion eyes discovered her seeking regard. Heat spiraled in her as her gaze traveled across his lean, muscular body, the long, angry slash of the scar stabbing her with alarm. She traced the dark line of hair descending beneath the waistline of his breeches to the thick bulge below, and her insides turned to molten honey.

When he drew the shirt around his body, her gaze had caught a glimpse of a black stain upon his forearm. But the sleeve covered it quickly. He’d paused, and in a half-dreaming sleep as she met his gaze, the indescribable longing returned, skimming beneath her skin and twining into her most intimate places.

She fell asleep with the longing unanswered and the image of Etienne’s warm, lucent eyes imprinted upon her dreams.

Now, with daylight filtering through the window, Valerie clung to the bed, willing sleep to return, her breaths short and body throbbing. But the ship moved roughly, and footsteps clustered upon the deck above. The night, and the vision it had brought, dissipated.

She was straightening the bed linens—in which, it seemed, her cabin mate had not slept—when the door opened and Zeus gestured her forward, the familiar length of rope in hand. Fashioning the binding into a loose knot around her wrists, he looked unusually grim.

“What is happening, Zeus?”

His massive hand rested gently upon hers, his brown eyes weighted with sorrow. “You will see, miss, and for that I am sorry.”

Valerie followed him silently. Above, the sailors, perhaps sixty in all, gathered in small groups, eerily silent beneath the morning’s heavy sky. At the edge of the quarterdeck, Bebain stood with his back to her. The first mate, Mr. Fevre, leaned uncomfortably into the railing, arms crossed, fingertips between his teeth.

Valerie’s gaze sought her fellow prisoner. He stood alone, staring across the deck at Maximin. The sailor looked back at the priest, his eyes hard.

“Ah, my little beauty!” Bebain cooed, skittering across deck like a crab and lifting her bound hands to his mouth. The lowering sky set his long face in a halo of pale light, and his tanned skin shone dull in contrast to the dark men all around. “Now we can commence. We are gathered here today to celebrate a funeral.” His voice lowered to a stage whisper. “Our diversions on board are few, and so we take advantage of every unusual occasion for a little entertainment. However, since a funeral is such a tiresome occasion, as occasions go, I have decided to enliven it by adding to it—ha!—the thrill of death.”

A grotesque smile spread across his wide mouth, and his nostrils flared in tandem with the spark of madness in his pale eyes. He dropped her hands and gestured across deck.

A trio of sailors stood near a plank jutting from the railing above the moving waters. The men on either side supported the one in the middle. An iron slave collar hung around his neck like a fighting dog’s tether, but there was nothing combative in the wretched figure. He was skeletally thin with skin the color of ash, nearly translucent as it stretched across the protruding bones of his face and body. His eyes were closed, his face devastated by long suffering.

Tears welled in Valerie’s eyes. Her throat constricted, and she jerked instinctively toward the shackled sailor. An iron grip pulled her back. The giant’s words came so quietly she barely heard them.

“He will kill you if you speak now.”

Valerie tried to pull away, but Zeus lifted a broad hand and covered her mouth.

“God has provided for Ezekiel,
mademoiselle
. You must have faith.”

She ceased struggling, her heart tearing at her own weakness. Zeus’s hand fell away from her mouth.

Bebain warmed to his role as carnival master, prancing about deck from man to man, brandishing a long-handled knife. Finally he approached Ezekiel, and his right hand rose to the sailor’s emaciated shoulders.

A voice rang out across the deck. Face filled with anger, Maximin shouted at Bebain in a language Valerie did not understand. Bebain only laughed.

“You mistake matters, Bebain.” Etienne’s assured voice cut through the madman’s laughter. “Maximin is right. You put yourself at risk. Ezekiel is a sailor, not market goods. These men will not stand for such treatment of their own.”

Lowering the knife, Bebain rounded upon the priest, astonishment creasing his features. He crossed the deck, his teeth baring, tiny and yellowed.

“Their own, you say, Father? Their own?” he shrieked and swept his hands around as he pirouetted in a swift circle. “These men have nothing of their own, as you so sentimentally put it. What they have is money, which I provide them with in sufficiency. They serve me, and if it is my desire that one of them die, then they serve me to see my desire met.” He cast an eye upon the sailors supporting Ezekiel at the ship rail. Their expressions shuttered.

“You see, dear Father, they are obedient to me. I do not fear them because I am master over them, in complete control of their destinies.” He began to turn away, then stopped and spoke again in clipped tones. “You, on the other hand, are an inconvenience.”

“As you are to me,” replied the priest.

Valerie’s breath caught. She had seen the reaction on some of the sailors’ faces when Bebain claimed them as property. They hadn’t liked it. Anger boiled palpably across the deck. Etienne’s taunting could only fuel Bebain’s insanity.

Bebain’s tapping boot paused and he brought his hands together behind him. Then, with one swift movement, he drew his knife in a quick arc and slashed at the priest. Valerie gasped. Etienne’s bonds fell in tatters onto the deck.

“This is well,” said the captain, moving to the gangplank. “I give you leave to do what you can to save this miserable fellow, I will do what I can to stop you, then we will see whether you are truly necessary to me, no?”

He laughed, raised the knife again, and sliced a long, dark line across his prisoner’s shoulders, and another from the nape of his neck to the base of Ezekiel’s spine. Crimson blood flickered onto the dying man’s captors, but the sick man barely flinched. Bebain moved aside and displayed his work proudly. He had fashioned a perfect cross in the gray skin, surmounted by the black iron crown of the dying man’s collar.

“Come, Father, aren’t you even more enamored of this creature now?” he shrilled.

Enveloped in shock, Valerie slued her gaze to Etienne. He cast his eyes down, folding his hands.

Valerie’s palms pressed to her face. She didn’t know whether anyone spoke or moved. Her heart felt dead, the world she had once known a dream, the nightmare she now lived an endless misery.

She had thought she could escape it, imagined she possessed some power to save herself. But she was wrong. She never had power, for years. Nothing she had ever done mattered. This was only the end of it, the horrible, cruel finale she had been too naïve to even imagine.

With a cry, she yanked the rope from Zeus’s hand and fled across deck, down to the shadowed haven of her prison cell.

Valerie moved around the cabin swiftly, her body shaking, hands cold. She didn’t know how many minutes passed before the door swung open and the Jesuit crossed the threshold. His black robe was unfastened, revealing his shirt and breeches beneath.

Valerie’s eyes narrowed, the angry look Maximin cast the priest upon deck coming back to her. The same emotion washed over her, despair and disillusionment sweeping in its wake.

“Ezekiel is alive,” he said into the brittle silence. “Bebain spared him. He is resting now, but his time is not long. The disease will take him by tomorrow.”

At the sound of the priest’s voice, strong and soothing, Valerie’s rage slipped from her tight grasp.

“If tomorrow ever comes,” she uttered.

He closed the door, the latch’s click soft.

“You should not have had to see that.”

Valerie’s eyes flashed wide.

“I should not have? None of us should. It should not have happened. But we stood there and let it happen. We let that madman tor—” She stumbled upon the words.

Etienne took a step toward her. She thrust out a palm and turned her face away.

“No. Don’t come near me. I cannot look at you. I don’t think I will even be able to look at myself again.”

“Valerie—”

“Do not say my name.” She could not bear the rich cadence of his voice, his bewildering nearness. She wanted to hate him for letting Bebain torture that sick man, as she hated everything else she had known over the past three days, an eternity of confusion. “Please,” she begged. “Do not speak to me.”

“Of course I will speak. Bebain is mad and he will pay for it, but you cannot hold yourself responsible for what happened. Your intervention would not have mattered. It would have only fixed his attention upon you as well.”

“You spoke to him. You angered him. He tortured that man because of your taunts.”

The priest remained silent.

“Well?” she persisted.

“I would bear Ezekiel’s cross if I could, Valerie. I assure you.”

Valerie’s heart constricted.

She shook her head, resisting the allure of his soothing words. It did not matter what he said. No comfort he offered now could undo what had happened, what would happen to her in the coming days, the nightmare that cast everything she had ever experienced into pitiful shade. She once thought her father’s coldness was the greatest cruelty possible. But she had been an ignorant fool.

“He did not feel pain.” Etienne leaned back against the door, closing his arms across his chest. “Ezekiel took laudanum this morning. A great deal of it. He was barely awake, and did not know it, or I suspect he would have refused.” He paused, then added, “He will die with dignity.”

“What do you know of dignity?” The words shot from her lips. Fury boiled inside her again. His words, meant to ease her distress, intensified it. She felt impotent and exhausted. She had suffered like this for far more than three days, though—for two long years—and she needed relief.