Bride of the Baja (5 page)

Thinking of her white and naked body, Malloy felt his maleness grow. He slammed his fist on the desk in front of him. It would never happen. She hated the sight of him, shunned his touch. Once he had her abed, though, that would change, he told himself. She was a virgin, he was sure, but once she had a man she'd be a hellcat—she wasn't one of these prissy once-every-two-weeks women like some of his friends had married. He could tell by the way she looked at him sometimes, as though she too had secretly imagined their bodies intertwined.

He was tired of whores. He didn't want another man's leavings, he wanted a woman who would be his and his alone. Where were the girls he'd known ashore?

Married, the lot of them, most at fifteen or sixteen and none too soon at that, their bellies already swelling beneath their wedding gowns. He didn't want that either, not a life sentence as punishment for a few minutes' roll in the hay.

Malloy sipped his drink. What a fool you are, Amos Malloy! he told himself. Calling this your ship. Dreaming of returning in triumph to Boston with Alitha at your side. He looked down at his hands. You'll be naught but a horny-handed seaman for the rest of your life, Amos Malloy. A short life at that, he feared, one fated to end in a watery grave. It wasn't right--it wasn't fair.

And then slowly, one thought laboriously added to another, as a ship's carpenter might fashion a sea chest, he began to construct a plan in his mind. He crafted it with care, and when he had finished, he inspected it from every side. He could find no flaws. Malloy smiled. Soon the
Yankee
would be his, Alitha would be his. He stood up, ready--there was no reason to delay. Picking up the bottle, he emptied the last of the whiskey and raised his glass in a toast.

"To Captain Amos Malloy!" he said aloud.

After her father's burial service Alitha returned to the forecastle, where she meted out swallows of the ship's precious water to the sick crewmen. She cleaned and bathed them, trying to soothe them in their misery. When she saw there was no more she could do, she hurried aft, warily keeping out of Malloy's sight. She went to her father's cabin and closed the door behind her. Such a small cabin, she thought, though it was the largest on board. The ship seemed so small, so cramped. After they left Boston, while they sailed south into the Southern Hemisphere's summer, the ship had seemed spacious, with each day offering her new vistas of sea and sky as the they left the bitter New England winter behind. Now, with the seas running high, and a storm bearing down on them with her father dead, she felt trapped aboard the
Yankee.
A prisoner on her own ship.

Dropping to her knees in front of her father's sea chest, she took his keys from her pocket and tried them one by one in the lock. After the lid sprang open she laid her father's folded clothing to one side until she found, at the bottom, a Bible and an intricately crafted rosewood case. She opened the Bible, a small black volume with pages edged in gold, and, as she often did when she needed guidance, read aloud the first verse she saw:

And he shewed me Joshua the high
priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

Alitha shook her head. What did the verse mean? How did Ezekiel's words apply to her? Closing the Bible and returning it to the sea chest, she removed the rosewood case.

Taking the case in both hands, she turned and placed it carefully on her father's desk. She raised the lid. Inside, lying on the purple velvet lining, was a pistol with a silver barrel and a carved wooden handle. She tested the weight of the gun in her hand, finding it heavier than she had remembered.

She frowned. Could she load the weapon? Her father had taught her how long ago, even letting her practice firing the pistol. She remembered closing her eyes when she pulled the trigger and missing the tree-stump target by several feet.

Now she removed a cartridge and ball from a packet in the rosewood case, tore off the paper end and poured a small amount of the powder into the pistol's hollow pan and the rest down the barrel. She dropped the ball and the paper wrapper into the barrel and rammed them down with a rod. After relocking the sea chest, she picked up the pistol gingerly by the handle and carried it to her cabin.

Once she had slid home the bolt on her cabin door, Alitha laid the pistol on her bunk. She removed her shoes, unbuttoned and stepped out of her dress and petticoats, then pulled her chemise over her head. She held a sheer white batiste nightgown in front of her, admiring for a moment the delicate blue of the ribbons threaded through the bodice, then put her arms in the sleeves and shrugged the gown down over her body.

The pistol. Where could she hide the pistol? She was afraid of leaving the gun on the desk or deck, fearful that a sudden lurch of the ship would send the gun slamming against a bulkhead, firing it. Finally she raised the goose-down mattress from her bunk and put the gun between the mattress and the canvas underneath.

Satisfied, she turned the spirit lamp low, lay on her bunk and pulled the blanket over herself, telling herself she would surely fall asleep at once, she was so tired, so exhausted. But she did not. Thoughts of her father, her mother, Thomas and Amos Malloy whirled through her mind, even thoughts of Jordan Quinn and the
Kerry Dancer.

She forced herself to picture the Sandwich Islands as she imagined them to be, with the Yankee sailing into a sheltered cove where palm trees arched over white sand beaches. Her imaginings mingled with reality as the ship rose and fell to the rhythm of the sea and she heard the creaking of the
Yankee's
timbers as the ship bore her on toward her destiny.

She was swimming in warm, milk-white water. Turning onto her back, she floated, feeling the sun on her face. When she looked down she drew in her breath at the sight of her uncovered breasts breaking the surface of the water. She ran her hands down along her sides. She was naked.

Rolling over in the water again, she swam toward shore, feeling freer than she had ever felt before. When her hand touched bottom she stood up, wading to the beach. She turned, standing at the waterline with her hands on her hips as she looked at the breaking surf. Her nakedness did not shame her, rather, she felt a pride in her body.

She sensed someone behind her.

"You are a thing of Satan, a creature of the devil." It was Thomas's voice. "Cover your lustful body, woman."

Her hands went to her breasts and she began to run, her hair jouncing damply on her shoulders, her toes digging into the wet sand. When she could run no more, she climbed the slope of the beach and threw herself on the sun-baked sand, feeling the granules hot against her breasts and thighs.

A man's hand closed on the nape of her neck, his fingers moving down to the small of her back. A rough hand. Alitha looked over her shoulder and . . . woke up. The cabin was totally dark--the spirit lamp was out. The ship was pitching more violently than before, rising high to meet each wave and crashing down into its trough. Had she heard a sound in the cabin? Had something or someone touched her? Wakened her? She held her breath, listening. Yes, there was someone here, close by. She hunched herself up in the bunk, holding a blanket in front of her.

A hand grasped the blanket and tore it from her. She screamed although she realized no one could hear her above the wail of the storm. She felt a hand on her shoulder. The hand felt its way to the neck of her gown and yanked downward. The ribbons pulled loose and the gown opened to the waist, exposing her breasts. She clutched at the cloth.

The gun. She had hidden the gun beneath the mattress. Shifting her body to the far side of the bunk, she whispered, "Who are you?"

"Why, 'tis Amos Malloy," a voice answered, "your husband-to-be."

"You've lost your senses." Her hand slid down between the bulkhead and the mattress, her fingers searching for the gun.

"You'll never say no to me again," Malloy told her. "Once I've had you, you'll have no choice but to marry me. You'll be begging to marry me."

Her fingers closed on the gun's barrel and she pulled the weapon from beneath the mattress. Shifting her grip to the handle, she pointed the pistol where she had last heard Malloy's voice. "I have a loaded pistol in my hand," she said. "If you touch me, I'll kill you."

He laughed in disbelief. When she felt his huge hand close on her knee, her finger tightened on the trigger and she heard a snap. The gun had misfired. She pulled the trigger again. Still the gun failed to fire. What had she done wrong when she loaded it? She took the weapon by the barrel and swung it at Malloy, the butt grazing his head. He cursed her and his hand found her wrist, twisting her arm until she cried out in pain. He seized the pistol and tossed it behind him to the deck.

"You bitch, you did have a gun," he said.

He gripped her ankle and pulled her down so she lay full-length on the bunk. His hands went up her body beneath her gown, closing on her hips and pulling her to him. When his chest brushed against her breasts, she knew he was naked. She screamed, fighting him, clawing at him. He laughed and grabbed the open front of her nightgown so that the thin cotton tore. A moment later her entire body was bared to his hands. Those terrible huge hands.

"I've waited a long time for this," he said.

CHAPTER FOUR

Alitha stopped struggling. I must think, she told herself desperately. I can't outfight Malloy--my only hope is to outwit him.

His fingers slid roughly up her leg to her inner thigh and, though she felt her flesh shiver in revulsion, she forced herself to lie still. He pushed her thighs apart with his hands and knelt on the bunk between her legs, his hands going to her breasts.

Her breath came rapidly, not with desire but with fear. Every touch of Malloy's enormous hands made her cringe. How could I have imagined wanting this man to hold me in his arms? she wondered. She wanted to hurt him. Yes, to kill him if she could. Still she made no move to defend herself. Though her tense body quivered, she lay before him as though defeated and helpless.

Malloy's hands left her breasts and she felt the mattress shift under his weight as he leaned toward her. His lips touched her breast. When his tongue circled her nipple, she gagged. Swallowing, she raised her hands and put them on his shoulders, her fingers kneading his flesh in the briefest of caresses—she couldn't force herself to do any more to make him lower his guard. She heard Malloy draw in his breath.

With all the strength she had left, she shoved against his shoulders with both of her hands, at the same time hurling herself away so she fell backward from the bunk, her shoulder slamming heavily on the deck. Malloy grunted in surprise and she heard him scrambling to his feet. She rolled sideways until her leg struck the sea chest, and then she was on her feet plunging toward the cabin door.

Malloy was there ahead of her. Catching her by the arm, he held her as she struggled, then forced her back step by step, his strength overpowering her. She felt the edge of the bunk pressing against the backs of her legs.

A pounding came from the passageway outside the cabin. Malloy hesitated and, with both of them frozen in surprise, they listened. A voice called out.

"Captain. Captain Malloy." Linton? Yes, surely it was the bosun.

Malloy's hand closed over Alitha's mouth. She heard more pounding, as though Linton had gone from Malloy's cabin to her father's.

"Captain, Captain Malloy," Linton called again. "Surf to starboard, Captain."

Malloy cursed, shoving Alitha from him so she fell back across her bunk. She lay exhausted, feeling pain stab her shoulder while she listened to Malloy searching in the dark for his clothes. Only after several minutes did she hear the cabin door bang open and then close.

"I'm coming," Malloy shouted to Linton from the passageway.

Surf! The storm was sweeping the
Yankee
toward the California coast. Alitha had been so numbed that at first the meaning of the bosun's words had almost escaped her. Above the sound of the wind and waves, she thought she heard a distant rumble like the roll of thunder in the mountains.

She pushed herself from the bunk, hurriedly slipping a chemise over her head. Taking the first dress her searching fingers found, she put it on, then slid her feet into slippers and ran from the cabin. She climbed the companionway, having to stop and cling to the railing as the
Yankee
listed precipitously to port. The ship shuddered, righted herself, and Alitha climbed the rest of the way to the deck.

The wind struck her a savage blow from behind and she went to her knees to keep from falling across the wet deck. The night was so dark she saw only the faint outline of the ship. Huge waves rose and fell blackly against the dark gray of the sky. When she stood up, a rain-soaked cloth slapped her face. Reaching over her head, she felt the cloth and recognized it as a torn section of sail. Without enough crewmen to work aloft, the
Yankee's
sails had been shredded by the wind.

A wave roared across the deck as though trying to sweep her into the sea, but she had found a rope along the starboard side and kept her feet. Though she peered to both port and starboard, she couldn't see the telltale white of the surf nor could she hear its boom above the howling of the storm and the shrieks and groans of the ship around her.