Читать книгу Seduced by the Scoundrel - Louise Allen - Страница 11

The light was coming from an odd angle. Averil blinked and rubbed her eyes and came fully awake with a jolt. She was not in her cabin on the Bengal Queen, but in some hut. She had seen it before—or had that been part of the nightmare, the one that never seemed to stop but just kept ebbing and flowing through her head? Sometimes it had become a pleasant dream of being held, of something soft and wet on her aching, stiff limbs, of strong hands holding her, of hot, savoury broth or cool water slipping between her lips.

Then the nightmare had come back again: the wave, the huge wave, that turned into a leering hulk of a man; of being stared at by a dozen pairs of hungry eyes. Sometimes it became a dream of embarrassment, of needing to relieve herself and someone helping her, of being lifted and placed on an uncomfortable bucket and wanting to cry, but not being able to wake up.

She lay quite still like a fawn in its nest of bracken, only her eyes daring to move and explore this strange place. Under the covers her hands strayed, and found coarse sheeting above and below, the prickle of a straw-filled mattress, then the finer touch of the linen garment that she was wearing.

There was no one else there. The room felt empty to her straining senses, she could hear nothing but the sea beyond the walls. Averil sat up with an involuntary whimper of pain. Everything hurt. Her muscles ached, there were sore patches on her legs, her back. When she got her arms above the covers and pushed back the flopping sleeves to look at them they were a mass of bruises and scratches and grazes.

She was wearing a man’s shirt. Memory began to come back, like pages torn at random from a picture book or sounds heard through a half-open door. A man’s voice had told her to drink, to eat. A man’s big hands had touched her body, held her, shifted her. Washed her, helped her to that bucket.

What else had he done? How long had she been unconscious and defenceless? Would she know if he had used her body as she lay there? She ached so much, would one more pain be felt?

Averil looked around and saw male clothing everywhere. A pair of boots stood by the window, a heap of creased linen spilled from a corner, a heavy coat hung from a nail. This was his space and he filled it, even in his absence. She twisted and looked at the pillow and saw a dark hair curling on it. This was his bed. She drew a deep, shuddering breath. For how long had he kept her here?

Water. A drink would make it easier to think. Then find a weapon. It was a plan of sorts, and even that made her feel a little stronger. She fumbled with fingers that were clumsy and stiff and threw back the covers. His shirt came part way down her thighs, but she was sitting on a creased sheet. Averil got to her feet, wrapped it around her waist, then staggered to the table. She made it as far as the chair before she collapsed on to it.

There was a jug beside a plate and a beaker on the table and she dragged it towards her with both hands. She spilled more than she poured, but it was clear and fresh and helped a little. Averil drank two beakers, then leaned her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands.

Think. It wasn’t only him, there were those other men. They had been reality, not a nightmare. Had he let them in here, too? Had he let them …? No, there was only the memory of the dark-haired man they had called Cap’n. Think. The rough wooden planks held no inspiration, but the knife next to the plate did. She picked it up, hefted it in her hand. He’d be coming back, and she might only have that one chance to kill him when he was off guard. When he was in bed. Kill? Could she? Yes, if it was that or … Her eyes swivelled to the bed. Under the pillow. She had to get back there. Somehow.

Her legs kept betraying her as she tottered to the bed, but she made it, just in time as the door opened.

He swept the hut with a look that seemed to take in everything. Averil clenched her hand around the knife under cover of the sheet, but it had been on the far side of the plate, out of sight from this angle. Surely he wouldn’t notice?

‘You are awake.’ He came right in, frowning, and looked at her as she sat on the edge of the bed. ‘You found the water?’

‘Yes.’ Come closer, turn those broad shoulders of yours, I’ll do it now, I only need a second. Where do you stab someone who is bigger and stronger than you? How do you stop them shouting, turning on you? High, that was it, on the left side above the heart. Strike downwards with both hands—

‘Where is the knife?’ He swivelled to look at her, a cold appraisal like a man sighting down the barrel of a weapon.

‘Knife?’

‘The one you are planning to cut my throat with. The one that was on the table.’

‘I was not planning to cut your throat.’ She threw it on the floor. Better that than have him search her for it. ‘I was going to stab you in the back.’

He picked it up and went to drop it back beside the plate. ‘It is like being threatened by a half-drowned kitten,’ he drawled. ‘I was beginning to think you would never wake up.’ Averil stared at him. Her face, she hoped, was expressionless. This was the man who had slept with her, washed her, fed her, probably ravished her. Before the wreck she would have watched him from under her lids, attracted by the strength of his face, the way he moved, the tough male elegance of him. Now that masculinity made her heart race for all the wrong reasons: fear, anxiety, confusion.

‘How long have I been here?’ she demanded. ‘A day?

A night?’

‘This is the fourth day since we found you.’

‘Four days?’ Three nights. Her guts twisted painfully. ‘Who looked after me? I remember being washed and—’ her face flamed ‘—a bucket. And soup.’

‘I did.’

‘You slept in this bed? Don’t deny it!’

‘I have no intention of denying it. That is my bed. Ah, I see. You think I would ravish an unconscious woman.’ It was not a soft face, even when he was not frowning; now he looked as hard as granite and about as abrasive.

‘What am I expected to think?’ she demanded. Did he expect her to apologise?

‘Are you a nun that you would prefer that I left you, helpless and unconscious, to live or die untouched by contaminating male hands?’

‘No.’

‘Do I look like a man who needs to use an unconscious woman?’

That had touched his pride, she realised. Most men were arrogant about their sexual prowess and she had just insulted his. She was at his mercy, it was best to be a little conciliatory.

‘No. I was alarmed. And confused. I. Thank you for looking after me.’ Embarrassed, she fiddled with her hair and her fingers snagged in tangles. ‘Ow!’

‘I washed it, after a fashion, but I couldn’t get the knots out.’ He rummaged on a shelf and tossed a comb on to the bed by her hand. ‘You can try, just don’t cry if you can’t get the tangles out.’

‘I don’t cry.’ She was on the edge of it though; the tears had almost come. But she was not in the habit of crying: what need had she had for tears before? And she was not going to weep in front of him. It was the one small humiliation she could prevent.

‘No, you don’t cry, do you?’ Was that approval? He put his hand on the latch. ‘I’ll lock this, so don’t waste your effort trying to get out.’

‘What is your name?’ His anonymity was a weapon he held against her, another brick in the wall of ignorance and powerlessness that was trapping her here, in his control.

For the first time she saw him hesitate. ‘Luke.’

‘The men called you Captain.’

‘I was.’ He smiled. It was not until she felt the stone wall press against her shoulders that Averil realised she had recoiled from the look in his eyes. Don’t ask any more, her instincts screamed at her. ‘And you?’

‘Averil Heydon.’ As soon as she said her surname she wished it back. Her father was a wealthy man, he would pay any ransom for her, and now they could find out who her family was. ‘Why are you keeping me a prisoner?’

But Luke said nothing more and the key turned in the lock the moment the door was shut.

At about two in the afternoon Luc opened the door with a degree of caution. His half-drowned mermaid had more guts than he’d expected from a woman who had been through what she had, let alone the well-bred lady she obviously was from her accent. She must be desperate now. The table knife was in his pocket, but he’d left his razor on the high shelf, which was careless.

She was embarrassed as well as frightened, but she would feel better after a proper meal. He needed her rational and she was, most certainly, sharing his bed tonight. ‘Dinner time,’ he announced and brought in the platters and the pot of stew.

Averil turned from the stool by the window where she had sat for the long hours since he had left her, thinking about this man, Luke, whose bed she had been sharing. The one who sounded like a gentleman and who was as bad as the rest of that crew on the beach. What was he? Pirate, smuggler, freebooter? The men were scum—their leader would be no better, only more powerful. She had dreamed about him, and in her dream he had held her and protected her. Fantasy was cruelly deceptive.

‘Here,’ he said as he dumped things on the table. ‘Dinner. Potts is a surprisingly good cook.’

The smell reached her then and her empty stomach knotted. It was stew of some kind and the aroma was savoury and delicious. Luke had put the platter on the table so she would have to go over there to reach it, dressed only in his shirt and the trailing sheet. He was tormenting her, or perhaps training her as one did an animal. Perhaps both.

‘I want to eat it here, not with you.’

‘And I want you to use your limbs or you’ll be as stiff as a board.’ He leaned one shoulder against the wall by the hearth. ‘Are you warm enough? I can light a fire.’

‘How considerate, but I will not put you to the trouble.’ The worn skim of sacking over the window let in enough light to see him clearly and she stared, with no attempt at concealment. If he had any conscience at all he would find her scrutiny uncomfortable, but he merely lifted one brow in acknowledgement and stared back.

He was tall, with hair so dark a brown as to seem almost black. He was tanned, and by the shade she guessed he was naturally more olive-skinned than fair. She had seen so many Europeans arrive in India and burn in the sun that she knew exactly how every shade of complexion would turn. His eyes were dark grey, and his brows were dark, too, tilted a little in a way that gave his face a sardonic look.

His nose was large, narrow-bridged and arrogant; it would have been too big if it had not been balanced by a determined jaw. No, it was too big, despite that. He was not handsome, she told herself. If she had liked him, she would have thought his face strong, even interesting perhaps. He looked intelligent. As it was, he was just a dark, brooding man she could not ignore. Her eyes slid lower. He was lean, narrow-hipped.

‘Well?’ he enquired. ‘Am I more interesting than your dinner, which is getting cold?’

‘Not at all. You are, however, in the way of me eating it.’ She was not used to snubbing people or being cold or capricious. Miss Heydon, they said, was open and warm and charming. Sweet. She no longer felt sweet—perhaps she never would again. She tipped up her chin and regarded him down her nose.

‘My dear girl, if you are shy of showing your legs, allow me to remind you that I have seen your entire delightful body.’ He sounded as though he was recalling every detail as he spoke, but was not much impressed by what he had recalled.

‘Then you do not have to view any of it again,’ Averil snapped. Where the courage to stand up to him and answer back was coming from, she had no idea. She was only too well aware that she was regarded as a biddable, modest Nice Young Lady who did not say boo to geese, let alone bandy words with some pirate or whatever Luke was. But her back was literally against the wall and there was no one to rescue her because no one knew she was alive. It was up to her and that was curiously strengthening, despite the fear.

He shrugged and pulled out the chair. ‘I want to see you eat. Get over here—or do you want me to carry you?’

She had the unpleasant suspicion that if she refused he really would simply pick her up and dump her on the seat. Averil fumbled for the sheet and stood up with it as a trailing skirt around her. She gave it an instinctive twitch and the memory that action brought back surprised a gasp of laughter out of her, despite the aches and pains that walking produced and the situation she found herself in.

‘What is amusing?’ Luke enquired as she sat down opposite him. ‘I trust you are not about to have hysterics.’

It might be worth it to see how he reacted, but he would probably simply slap her or throw cold water in her face—the man had no sensibility. ‘I have been practising managing the train on a court presentation gown,’ she explained, as she reached for the fork and imagined plunging it into his hard heart. ‘This seems an unlikely place to put that into practice.’

The stew consisted of large lumps of meat, roughly hewn vegetables and a gravy that owed a great deal to alcohol. She demolished it and mopped up the gravy with a hunk of bread, beyond good manners. Luke pushed a tumbler towards her. ‘Water. There’s a good clean well.’

‘How are you so well provisioned?’ she asked and tore another piece off the loaf. ‘There are how many of you? Ten? And you aren’t here legitimately, are you?’

‘I am,’ Luke said. He returned to his position by the hearth. ‘Mr Dornay—so far as the Governor is concerned—is a poet in search of solitude and inspiration for an epic work. I told him that I am nervous of being isolated from the inhabited islands by storms or fog, so I keep my stock of provisions high, even if that means stockpiling far more than one man could possibly need. And there are thirteen of us and we are most certainly here in secret.’

She stowed away the surname. When it came to a court of law, when she testified against the men who had imprisoned and assaulted her, she would remember every name, every face. If he left her alive. She swallowed the fear until it lay like a cold stone in her stomach. ‘A poet? You?’ He smiled, that cold, unamused smile, but did not answer. ‘When are you going to let me go?’

‘When we are done here.’ Luke pushed himself upright and went to the door. ‘I will leave you before the men eat all of my dinner. I’ll see you at supper time.’

His hand was on the latch when Averil realised she couldn’t deal with the uncertainty any longer. ‘Are you going to kill me?’

Luke turned. ‘If I wanted you dead all I had to do was throw you back or leave you here to die. I don’t kill women.’

‘You rape them, though. You are going to make me share your bed tonight, aren’t you?’ she flung back and then quailed at the anger that showed in every taut line of his face, his clenched fist as it rested on the door jamb. He is going to hit me.

‘You have shared my bed for three nights. Rest,’ he said, his even tone at variance with his expression. ‘And stop panicking.’ The door slammed behind him.

* * *

Luc stalked back to the fire. He wouldn’t be on this damn island with this crew of criminal rabble in the first place if it was not for the attempted rape of a woman. Averil Heydon was frightened and that showed sense: she’d had every reason to be terrified until he took her away from the men. He could admire the fierce way she had stood up to him, but it only made her more of a damn nuisance and a dangerous liability. Thank God he no longer had to nurse her; intimacy with her body was disturbing and he had felt himself becoming interested in her more than was safe or comfortable. Now she was no longer sick and needing him, that weakness would vanish. He did not want to care for anyone ever again.

The crew looked up with wary interest from their food as he approached. Luc dropped down on to the flat rock they had accepted as the captain’s chair and took a platter from the cook’s hand. ‘Good stew, Potts. You all bored?’ They looked it: bored and dangerous. On a ship he would exercise them too hard for them to even think about getting into trouble: gun drill, small arms drill, repairs, sail drill—anything to tire them out. Here they could do nothing that would make a noise and nothing that could be seen from the south or east.

Luc lifted his face to the breeze. ‘Still blowing from the nor’west. That was a rich East Indiaman by all accounts—it’ll be worth beachcombing.’ They watched him sideways, shifting uneasily at the amiable tone of voice, like dogs who expect a kick and get their ears scratched instead. ‘And you get to keep anything you find, so long as you don’t fight over it and you bring me any mermaids.’

Greed and a joke—simple tools, but they worked. The mood lifted and the men began to brag of past finds and speculate on what could be washed up.

‘Ferret, have you got any spare trousers?’

Ferris—known to all as Ferret from his remarkable resemblance to the animal—hoisted his skinny frame up from the horizontal. ‘I ‘ave, Cap’n. Me Sunday best, they are. Brought ‘em along in case we went to church.’

‘Where you would steal the communion plate, no doubt. Are they clean?’

‘They are,’ he said, affronted, his nose twitching. And it might be the truth—there was a rumour that Ferret had been known to take a bath on occasion.

‘Then you’ll lend them to Miss Heydon.’

That provoked a chorus of whistles and guffaws. ‘Miss Heydon, eh! Cor, a mermaid with a name!’

‘Wot she want trousers for, Cap’n?’ Ferret demanded. ‘Don’t need trousers in bed.’

‘When I don’t want her in bed she can get up and make herself useful. She’s had enough time lying about getting over her ducking,’ Luc said. He had not given the men any reason to suppose Averil was unconscious and vulnerable. They had believed he was spending time in her bed, not that he was nursing her. His frequent absences seemed to have increased their admiration for him—or for his stamina. ‘I’ll have that leather waistcoat of yours while you’re at it.’

Ferret got to his feet and scurried off to the motley collection of canvas shelters under the lea of the hill that filled the centre of the island. St Helen’s was less than three-quarters of a mile across at its widest and rough stone structures littered the north-western slopes. Luc supposed they must have been the habitations of some ancient peoples, but he was no antiquarian. Now he was just glad of the shelter they gave to the men on the only flank of St Helen’s that could not be overlooked from Tresco or St Martin’s.

Stew finished, Luc got to his feet, took a small telescope from the pocket of his coat and turned to climb the hill. It took little effort, and he reckoned it was only about a hundred and thirty feet above the sea, but from here he commanded a wide panorama of the waters around the Scillies as well as being able to watch the men without them being aware of it. Beachcombing would keep them busy, but he did not want a knifing over some disputed treasure.

He put his notebook on a flat rock and set himself to log the patterns of movement between the islands, particularly the location of the brigs and the pilot gigs, the thirty-two-foot rowing boats that cut through the water at a speed that left the navy jolly-boat crews gasping. The calculations kept his mind off the woman in the hut below.

With six men on the oars the pilot gigs were said to venture as far afield as Roscoff smuggling, although the Revenue cutters did their best to stop them. They got their name from their legitimate purpose, to row out to incoming ships and drop off the pilots who were essential in this nightmare of rocks and reefs.

The gig he’d been given for this mission lay on the beach below, waiting for the word to launch with six men on the oars and the other seven of them crammed into the remaining space as best they could. Beside it was his own small skiff that he used to give verisimilitude to the story of his lone existence here.

For the men hunting amongst the rocks below him what happened next would bring either death or a pardon for their crimes. For him, if he survived and succeeded in carrying out his orders, it might restore the honour he had lost in following his conscience. Luc shied a pebble down the slope, sending a stonechat fluttering away with a furious alarm call.

Scolding loudly, the little bird resumed its perch on top of a gorse bush. ‘Easy for you to say, mon cher,’ Luc told it, as he narrowed his eyes against the sunlight on the waves. ‘All you have to worry about is the kestrel and his claws.’ Life and death—that was easy. Right and wrong, honour and expediency—now those were harder choices.