Читать книгу Seduced by the Scoundrel - Louise Allen - Страница 9

March 16th, 1809—Isles of Scilly

It was a dream, the kind you have when you are almost awake. She was cold, wet … The cabin window must have opened in the night … she was so uncomfortable …

‘Look ‘ere, Jack, it’s a mermaid.’

‘Nah. Got legs, ain’t she? No tail. Never got that. How do you swive a mermaid if she ain’t got legs?’

Not a dream … nightmare. Wake up. Eyes won’t open. So cold. Hurt. Afraid, so afraid.

‘Is she dead, do yer reckon?’

Uncomprehending terror ran through her veins in the dream. Am I dead? Is this hell? They sound like demons. Lie still.

‘Looks fresh enough. She’ll do, even if she ain’t too lively. I ‘aven’t had a woman in five weeks.’

‘None of us ‘ave, stupid.’ The coarse voice came closer.

No! Had she screamed it aloud? Averil became fully conscious and with consciousness came memory and realisation and true terror: shipwreck and a great wave and then cold and churning water and the knowledge that she was going to die.

But she wasn’t dead. Under her was sand, cold, wet sand, and the wind blew across her skin and wavelets lapped at her ankles and her eyes were mercifully gummed shut with salt against this nightmare and everything hurt as though she’d been rolled in a barrel. Wind … skin … She was naked and those voices belonged to real men and they were coming closer and they wanted to … Lie still.

Something nudged her hard in the ribs and she flinched away, convulsed with fear, her body reacting while her mind screamed at it to be still.

‘She’s alive! Well, there’s a bit of luck.’ It was the first speaker, his voice gloating. She curled into a shivering ball, like a hedgehog stripped of its prickles. ‘You reckon we can get ‘er up behind those rocks before the others see ‘er? Don’t want to share, not ‘til we’ve had our fill.’

‘No!’ She jerked herself upright so she was sitting on the sand, her arms wrapped around her nakedness. It was worse now, not to be able to see. She dragged her eyes open against the sticky sting of the salt.

Her tormentors stood about two yards away, regarding her with identical expressions of lustful greed. Averil’s stomach churned as her instincts recognised the look. One man was big, with a gut that spoke of too much beer and muscles that bulged on his bare arms and calves like tree trunks. The one who had kicked her must be the skinny runt closer to her.

‘You come along with us, darlin’,’ the smaller one said and the wheedling tone had the sodden hairs on her neck rising. ‘We’ll get you nice and warm, won’t we, ‘Arry?’

‘I’d rather die,’ she managed to say. She dug her fingers into the wet sand and raked up two handfuls, but it flowed out of her grasp. There was nothing to use as a weapon, not even a pebble, and her hands were numb with cold.

‘Yer, well, what you want don’t come into it, darlin’.’ That must be Jack. Would it help if she used their names, tried to get them to see her as a human being and not just a thing for their use? She struggled to get her terrified brain to work. Could she run? No, her legs were numb, too, she would never be able to stand up.

‘Listen—my name is Averil. Jack, Harry—don’t you have sisters—?’

The big one swore foully and she heard the voices at the same time. ‘The others. Damn it, now we’ll ‘ave to share the bloss.’

Averil focused her stinging eyes along the beach. She sat on the rim of sand that fringed the sea. Above her a pebble beach merged into low rock outcrops and beyond that short turf sloped up to a hill. The voices belonged to a group of half-a-dozen men, sailors by the look of them, all in similar dark working clothes to the two who had found her.

At the sight of her they broke into a run and she found herself facing a semicircle of grinning, leering figures. Their laughter, their voices as they called coarse comments she could barely understand, their questions to Jack and Harry, beat on her ears and the scene began to blur as she closed her eyes. She was going to faint and when she fainted they would—

‘What the hell have you got there?’ The voice was educated, authoritative and rock hard. Averil sensed the men’s attention turn from her like iron filings attracted to a magnet and hope made her gasp with relief.

‘Mermaid, Cap’n.’ Harry sniggered. ‘Lost ‘er tail.’

‘Very nice, too,’ the voice said, very close now. ‘And you were about to bring her to me, I suppose?’

‘Why’d we do that, Cap’n?’

‘Captain’s prize.’ There was no pity in the dispassionate tone, only the clinical assessment of a piece of flotsam. The warm flood of hope receded like a retreating wave.

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Tough. This is not a democracy, Tubbs. She’s mine and that’s an order.’ Boots crunched over pebbles as the sound of furious muttering rose.

None of this was going to go away. Averil opened her eyes again and looked up. And up. He was big: rangy, with dark hair, a dominant nose. The uncompromising grey eyes, like the sea in winter, looked at her as a man studies a woman, not as a rescuer looks at a victim. There was straightforward masculine desire there, and, strangely, anger. ‘No,’ she whispered.

‘No, leave you to freeze to death, or, no, don’t take you away from your new friends?’ he asked. He was like a dark reflection of the men she had come to know over the past three months on the ship. Tough, intelligent men who had no need to swagger because they radiated confidence and authority. Alistair Lyndon, the twins Callum and Daniel Chatterton. Were they all dead now?

His voice was hard, his face showed no sympathy, but for all that he was better than the rabble on the beach. The big man had his hand on the hilt of a knife and her rescuer had his back to him. ‘Behind you,’ she said, ignoring the mockery.

‘Dawkins, leave that alone unless you want to end up like Nye.’ The dark man spoke without turning and she saw his hand rested on the butt of a pistol thrust in his belt. ‘There’s no money if you’re dead of a bullet in your fat gut. More for the others, though.’ He raised an eyebrow at Averil and she nodded, lured into complicity. No one else was touching a weapon. He shrugged out of his coat and dropped it over her shoulders. ‘Can you stand?’

‘No. T-t-t-too cold.’ Her teeth chattered and she tightened her jaw against the weakness.

He leaned down, caught her wrists and hauled her to her feet as she groped with clumsy fingers for the edges of the coat. It reached the curve of her buttocks, she could feel it chafing the skin there. ‘I’ll carry you,’ he said as he turned from raking a stare over the watching men.

‘No!’ She stumbled, grabbed at his arm. If he lifted her the coat would ride up, she’d be exposed.

‘They’ve seen everything there is to see already,’ he said. ‘Tubbs, give me your coat.’

‘It’ll get all wet,’ the man grumbled as he pulled it off and shambled down the beach to hand it over. His eyes were avid on her bare legs.

‘And you’ll get it back smelling of wet woman. Won’t that be nice?’ Her rescuer took it, wrapped it round her waist and then slung her over his shoulder. Averil gave a gasp of outrage, then realised: like this he had one hand free for his pistol.

Head down, she stared at the shifting ground. The coats did nothing against the cold, only emphasised her essential nakedness and shame. Averil fought against the faintness that threatened to sweep over her: she had to stay conscious. The man she had hoped would be her rescuer was nothing of the sort. At best he was going to rape her, at worst that gang of ruffians would attack him and they would all have her.

Last night—it must have been last night, or she’d be dead of the cold by now—she had known she was about to die. Now she wished she had.

The sound of crunching stones stopped, the angle at which she was hanging levelled off and she saw grass below. Then her captor stopped, ducked, and they were inside some kind of building. ‘Here.’ He dropped her like a sack of potatoes on to a lumpy surface. ‘Don’t go to sleep yet, you’re too cold.’

The door banged closed behind him and Averil hauled herself up. She was on a bed in a large stone-built hut with five other empty bed frames ranged along the walls. The rough straw in the mattress-bag crackled under her as she shifted to look round. There was a hearth with the ashes of a dead fire at one end, a wooden chair, a table with some crockery on it, a trunk. The hut had a window with threadbare sacking hanging over it, a few shelves, the plank door and a rough stone slab floor without so much as a rag rug.

Rather be dead … The self-pity brought tears to her eyes. The room steadied and her head stopped swimming. No, I wouldn’t. Averil knuckled the moisture out of her eyes and winced at the sting of the salt. The pain steadied her. She was not a coward and life—until a few hours ago—had been sweet and worth fighting for.

An upbringing as the pampered daughter of a wealthy family was no preparation for this, but she had fought off all the illnesses life in India could throw at her for twenty of her twenty-two years, she had coped with three months at sea in an East Indiaman and she’d survived a shipwreck. I am not going to die now, not like this, not without a struggle.

She must get up, now, and find a way out, a weapon before he came back. Averil dragged herself off the bed. There was a strange roaring in her ears and the room seemed to be moving. The floor was shifting, surely? Or was it her? Everything was growing very dark.

‘Hell and damnation.’ Luc slammed the door closed behind him. The sprawled naked figure on the floor did not so much as twitch. He picked up the pitcher from the table, knelt beside her and splashed water on her face. That did produce some reaction: she licked her lips.

‘Back to bed.’ He scooped her on to the lumpy mattress and pulled the blanket over her. The feel of her in his arms had been good. Too good to dwell on. As it was, the memory of her sitting like a mermaid on the beach with the surf creaming around her long, pale legs was enough to keep a man restless at night with the ache of desire.

He poured water into a beaker and went back to the bed. ‘Come on, wake up. You need water—drink.’ He knelt and put an arm behind her shoulders to lift her so he could put the beaker to her lips. To his relief she drank thirstily, blindly. Tangled dark blond hair stuck to his coat, bruises blossomed on lightly tanned skin. Long lashes flickered open to reveal dazed hazel-green eyes and then closed as though weighted with lead.

Then her head lolled to one side against his shoulder, she sighed and went limp.

‘Nom d’un nom d’un nom …’ This was the last thing he had planned for, an unconscious woman who needed to be cared for. If he put her into the skiff and sailed her across to St Mary’s and said he had found her on the beach, just one more survivor of the shipwreck last night, then she would be safe. But what if she remembered? Her seeing him did not matter: he had a cover story accepted by the Governor. But he had been with the men and was obviously their leader.

Luc looked down at the wet, matted tangle of hair that was all he could see of her now. She sighed and snuggled closer and he adjusted her so she fitted more comfortably against him while he thought. She was young, but not a girl. In her early twenties, perhaps. She had not been addled by her experience; her reaction when she warned him about Dawkins told him that she had her wits about her. In fact, she seemed both courageous and intelligent. What were the chances that she would forget all about this or would dismiss it as a nightmare?

Not good, he decided after a few more moments holding her. She might blurt out what she had seen to anyone when she regained consciousness and he had no idea who he had to be on his guard against, even in the Governor’s own household. Even the Governor himself.

His prudent choices were to leave her here with some food and water, lock the door and walk away—which would probably be as close to murder as rowing her out to sea and dropping her overboard would be—or to nurse her until she was strong enough to look after herself.

What did he know about nursing women? Nothing—but how different could it be from looking after a man? Luc looked at the slender figure huddled in the coarse blankets and admitted to himself that he was daunted. And when she woke, if she did, then she was not going to be best pleased to discover who had been looking after her. He could always point out the alternatives.

She had drunk something, at least. He would tell Potts to cook broth at dinner time and see if he could get that down her. And he supposed he had better wash the worst of the salt off her and check her for any injuries. Broken bones were more than likely.

Then he could get her into one of his shirts, make the bed more comfortable and leave her for a while. That would be good. He found he was sweating at the thought of touching her. Damn. He had to get out of here.

Luc stood on the threshold for a moment to get his breathing steady. He was in a bad way if a half-drowned woman aroused such desire in him. Her defiance and the intelligence in those bruised hazel eyes kept coming back to him and made him feel even worse for lusting after her in this state. Better he thought about the problem she would pose alive, conscious and aware of their presence here.

To distract himself he eyed the ships in St Helen’s Pool, the sheltered stretch of water bounded by St Helen’s where he stood, uninhabited Teän and St Martin’s to the east, and Tresco to the south.

That damned shipwreck on the reefs to the west had stirred up the navy like a stick thrust into an anthill. Even the smoke from the endless chain of kelp-burning pits around the shores of all the inhabited islands seemed less dense today. They must have searchers out everywhere looking for bodies and survivors. In fact, there was a jolly boat rowing towards him now. If she had been dead, or unconscious from the start, he could have off-loaded her on them. But then, if his luck was good, he would never have been here in the first place.

He glanced round, made certain the men were out of sight and strolled down to the beach to meet the boat, moving the pistol to the small of his back. Eccentric poets seeking solitude to write epic works did not, he guessed, walk around armed.

A midshipman stood up in the bows, his freckled face serious. How old was this brat? Seventeen? ‘Mr Dornay, sir?’ he hailed from the boat.

‘Yes. You’re enquiring about survivors from the wreck, I imagine? I heard the shouting and saw the lights last night, guessed what had happened. I walked right round the island at first light and I didn’t find anyone, dead or alive.’ No lie—he had not found her.

‘Thank you, sir. It was an East Indiaman that went down—big ship and a lot of souls on board. It will save us time not to have to search this island.’ The midshipman hesitated, frowning as he kept his balance in the swaying boat. ‘They said on St Martin that they saw a group of men out here yesterday and the Governor had only told us about you, sir, so we wondered. Writing poetry, he said.’ The young man obviously thought this was strange behaviour.

‘Yes,’ Luc agreed, cursing inwardly. The damn fools were supposed to stay out of sight of the inhabited islands. ‘A boat did land. A rough crew who said they were looking for locations for new kelp pits. I thought they were probably smugglers so I didn’t challenge them. They’ve gone now.’

‘Very wise, and you’re more than likely right, sir. Thank you. We’ll call again tomorrow.’

‘Don’t trouble, you’ve got enough on your plate. I’ve got a skiff, I’ll sail over if I find anything.’

The midshipman saluted as the sailors lifted their oars and propelled the jolly boat towards the southern edge of Teän to find a landing place. Luc wandered back up the beach until they were out of sight, then strode over the low shoulder to the left, behind the old isolation hospital he was using as his shelter and where the woman now lay.

He did a rapid headcount. They were all there, all twelve of the evil little crew he’d been saddled with. There had been thirteen of them at the start, but he’d had to shoot Nye when the man decided that sticking a knife in the captain’s ribs was easier than the mission they had been sent on. Luc’s unhesitating reaction had sharpened up the rest of them.

‘That was the navy,’ he said as they shifted from their comfortable circle around a small, almost smokeless, fire to look at him. ‘Someone on St Martin saw you yesterday. Stay round this side, don’t go farther east along the north shore than Didley’s Point.’

‘Or the nasty navy’ll get us?’ Tubbs sneered. ‘Then who’ll be in trouble, Cap’n?’

‘I’ll be deep in the dunghill,’ Luc agreed. ‘From where I can watch you all be hanged. Think on it.’

‘Yer. We’ll think on it while you’re prigging that mermaid we found you. Or ‘ave you come round for a bit of advice on technique, like? Sir,’ a lanky redhead asked, as he shifted a wad of chewing tobacco from one cheek to the other.

‘Generous of you to offer, Harris, but I’m letting her sleep. I prefer my women conscious.’ He leaned one hip against a boulder. Instinct told him not to reveal how ill she seemed to be. ‘It could be four or five more days before we get word. I don’t want you lot getting rusty. Check the pilot gig over this afternoon and we’ll exercise with it some more tomorrow.’

‘It’s fine,’ the redhead grumbled and spat a stream of brown liquid into the fire. ‘Looked at it yesterday. Just a skinny jolly boat, that’s all.’

‘Your expert opinion will be a consolation as we sink in the middle of the bloody ocean,’ Luc drawled. ‘Dinner going to cook itself is it, Potts? My guest fancies broth. Can you manage that? And, Patch, bring me a bucket of cold water and a bucket of warm, as soon as you can get some heated. I don’t want her to taste of salt.’

He did not bother to wait for a response, nor did he look back as he walked down to the little hospital building, although his spine crawled. At the moment they thought their best interests were served by obeying him and they were frightened enough of him not to push it, not after what had happened to Nye. That could change if the arrival of the woman proved to be the catalyst that tipped the fragile balance.

He needed them to believe her conscious and his property, not vulnerable and meaning nothing to him. He didn’t want to have to kill any more of them, gallows’-bait though they were: he needed twelve to carry out this mission and they were good seamen, even if they were scum.