Mariah's Prize (31 page)

Without looking at him she rolled swiftly off the bed and dressed as quickly as she could, her fingers shaking. He could make every promise he wanted to about their future together. She refused to be widowed before she was married, left behind with a child who’d never know its father.

“Mariah, listen to me,” he began, taking her arm. She jerked free and he swore.

“Damnation, Mariah, will you listen” -She whirled around to face him.

“No, Gabriel, you listen to me! Can’t you understand that I love you too much to see you do this to yourself? This has nothing to do with kings or wars between France and England and Spain. This is a war between you and Christian Deveaux. I know now those men you killed in Newport were Deveaux’s men, just like the men in the Lady Anne, and the man who kidnapped me, and every other wretched man I’ve seemed to meet since I met you! When will it end, Gabriel? When you’re both dead?”

His expression was severe, unreadable.

“Aye,” he said slowly, “if that’s what comes of it.”

She couldn’t bear to stand there and let him watch her heart break.

She seized the empty water bucket from the floor and ran from the house. She ran until her lungs hurt, up the hill to the place where Figaroa had watched for the Revenge. Each morning while Gabriel had been ill she had come here herself, taking comfort in the sight of the sloop tacking back and forth off the coast, waiting for them to appear on the beach. But today there was no Revenge, no cloud of white canvas on the turquoise sea. After a week Jonathan must have finally abandoned hope and them with it, and returned to Bridgetown. God in heaven, why today of all days? Again she searched the whole sweep of the horizon, praying she was wrong, but there was nothing. Nothing.

With a tattered sob of frustration and pain she slammed the wooden bucket as hard as she could against the trunk of a gommier tree, the staves of the bucket shattering free of their hoops into the bushes.

She threw the worthless handle after them, and sank to her knees on the ground, letting her head drop forward and her hair fall free to cover her grief.

“Mariah, love, look at me,” Gabriel said softly beside her.

She had no strength left to face him, no will left to rise.

“Come along, poppet.” As he lifted her to her feet she twisted away from him, facing out to the open sea but accepting the support of his arm around her waist. He held her lightly, not restraining her, and she closed her eyes and let her head slip back against the curling hair of his bare chest. Still soft and open from his lovemaking, her body melted treacherously into his as if nothing had changed between them.

“I—I was looking for the Revenge,” she explained clumsily, her voice catching and breaking. “We could have sailed with your f-father today, but he didn’t w-wait for us. Every other day I’ve seen him here, but today he’s g-gone.”

“The old man couldn’t have stayed today even if he wanted to,” said Gabriel.

“Look at that sky. Wind’s changed and we’re in for foul weather, no mistake. Listen to me, Mariah, let me” — “Gabriel, I don’t want you to die,” she whispered. She clutched his arm, wishing she shared his strength.

“What else can I say to you?

Please, love, please, for my sake, can’t you end this with Deveaux now, with no more death? “

“Don’t ask me that, sweetheart, because I can’t.” He sighed deeply and turned her in his arms. Gently he tipped her face up toward his, and Mariah saw the sadness that burdened his eyes.

“God knows I’ve tried.

When I came back to Newport and built Crescent Hill, I thought I could leave him behind. But he won’t let me. As long as he lives, you and everyone else I care for will always be in danger. After what he tried to do to you and your sister, you must know that. And now with the child—Jesus, when he learns of that! “

She rested her chek against his chest, his arm protectively tightening around her waist.

“But why, Gabriel?” she asked sorrowfully.

“Why does he hate you that much?”

“A long story, poppet.” With another sigh he sat on the grass, pulling her into his lap. He’d come after her knowing it was time to tell her, but that knowledge wasn’t going to make it any easier. “Long ago, when I was not much older than you are now, I was betrothed to a girl from Barbados.”

She twined her fingers into his. “Catherine Langley. The one I resemble. ” “So my mother’s spoken to you, has she?” He smiled bleakly.

“But she couldn’t have told you everything because she doesn’t know it. No one does, not the truth.”

So why should he tell Mariah? Why tell her how careless he had been with his first love, why give her the reason he’d been afraid to love again? Until her, until Mariah. Oh, sweet Jesus, let her understand!

“I was master of one of my father’s ships,” he began slowly, “a sugar sloop, and I was taking Catherine to visit her sister in St. John’s.

Deveaux was sailing for the Spanish then, a guar dacosta and he followed us. I’d warning enough, but because I was so hell-bent on impressing Catherine I let Deveaux come far too close, meaning to show her how fast I could make the sloop run. But the wind turned, and they captured us. They slaughtered nearly all of my crew, my friends, just like on the Felicity, for even then he didn’t wish to be bothered with prisoners. “

His fingers tightened around Mariah’s, his voice strangely distant.

“But Deveaux didn’t let me die with them. By then he’d found the women, Catherine and her maid. He forced me to watch what he and his men did to them, there on the deck in the hot sun.”

With the wind nearly gone, the heat of the noontime sun was blistering, the planking of the deck hot underfoot and the tar melted and dripping black from the rigging overhead. The air was rank with the smell of the blood of the dead men, the deck and the scuppers and the rail all stained red. Drawn by the smell, gray-bellied sharks followed the ship, turning and twisting sleekly through the clear water. Bound tight to the mainmast, he felt his own life’s blood slipping away through the deep gash in his shoulder from Deveaux’s sword and another in his thigh. Without the ropes around his arms and the strength of his own fury, he would have collapsed long ago.

Catherine’s eyes were round with terror as they hauled her to the deck. Seeing Deveaux, his clothing and manner a gentleman’s, she had begged him to save her, to show her mercy. He had smiled, and paid her pretty compliments until she, too, had smiled with relief. Then, still smiling, still teasing, he had slowly used his sword to cut the clothing from her body while his men held her, the blade slicing into her white skin until it ran with her blood. All the time he ignored her sobs of pain and terror, and when he was done, he had given her to his men to use as they pleased.

And all Gabriel could do was watch in agony, watch the woman he loved being torn apart by men who were worse than animals. He was shaking beneath the weight of the memory, hugging Mariah tightly to his chest.

“When they were dead, he had their bodies thrown overboard. I loved Catherine, mind? I loved her, and she deserved so much more from me than a death like that.”

He closed his eyes, afraid to see the revulsion that he knew would be in her eyes. Now she’ll leave me. How could it be otherwise ?

Damnation, now that she knows the worst, I’ll lose Mariah, too.

“Oh, Gabriel, love, look atjne.” Mariah cradled his face with her hands, stroking, soothing, seeking to comfort him any way she could.

How much this must have cost him to share with her! Her cheeks were wet with tears for his pain, for his lost love. She understood so much now.

“It’s done now, Gabriel. It’s done.”

But he shook his head, not really hearing her, and with a deep breath, he continued, unable to stop until she’d heard it all. “I was still bound to the mast when a British frigate recaptured the sloop that night. The captain said I was a lucky man to survive the attack. He was wrong. I knew that attack was my own fault, and the only way I could make it right for Catherine and the rest of them was to kill Deveaux. I left my father’s service and turned to privateering, learning all I could so I’d be ready when I met Deveaux the next time. And I’m good, Mariah. The best.”

“I wouldn’t have asked for you to captain the Revenge if you weren’t,” she said gently.

“But you did find Deveaux again. You must have to have given him that scar.”

“Oh, aye, the famous devil’s mark.” He took her hand from his face and turned it briefly against his lips, marveling that she hadn’t shrunk from the truth or blamed him as he’d blamed himself all these years, and he found he loved her even more because of it.

And despite everything, she still loved him.

“We were both on ” Statia at the same time. ” His voice was stronger now, reassured by her love. ” Not even at sea. Swords, in the courtyard before the customs house, with half a town’s worth of Dutchmen there to watch. It was”-he smiled grimly ” —quite a spectacle. When his men carried him away, I was certain he was dead.

Doubtless he thought the same of me. But for what I’d done to his face, I became as much his enemy as he was mine, for as long as he lives. And I won’t throw away your life the way I did poor Catherine’s. “

“But Deveaux is a madman!” cried Mariah.

“There must be some other way to stop him besides fighting him all by yourself!”

“Oh, Mariah.” He pulled her close, stroking the silk of her hair.

Other women he’d known had always loved the dashing figure he’d made with a sword in his hand or the gold and gems he’d bring back from his prizes. But Mariah loved him as he was, not as some broadside hero.

“Tell me, poppet, why did you come back to this island to rescue me?”

“Because I feared for you,” she answered promptly.

“Because I love you.”

“And those, sweetheart, are my reasons, as well.” He kissed her again before she could argue any more, wishing there was some way to take the worry from her heart.

“I know I can’t ask you to accept what I must do,” he said quietly.

“All I hope is that you don’t stop loving me, whatever happens.”

“I’ll never do that. I can’t,” she admitted, her voice husky with emotion.

“And damn you, Gabriel, you know it.”

“Ah, my brave Mariah, we do deserve each other, don’t we?” He chuckled, lifting her to her feet as he stood. He pointed out to the sea beyond her shoulder, out to the white tips of sails just beginning to clear the horizon.

“And it’s just as well, for there lies the Revenge.”

Q^nps^Q

(jTabriel’s uneasiness grew as the Revenge loomed before them. The welcome from the men who’d rowed to shore to collect Mariah and him had been warm enough, with Ethan splashing through the surf with a coverlet flapping in his hands to wrap around Mariah, as if on so hot a day she needed it. But the subdued silence of the men as they pushed the boat back into the water wasn’t natural, and as their captain, Gabriel didn’t like it. He knew them too well to feel otherwise. Some sort of ill news awaited him on board the sloop, news they were reluctant to tell him, or else they’d be chattering like magpies among themselves.

Deveaux. It had to be Deveaux. Though every man who’d gone with Gabriel on the raid had returned—he’d asked that first off—and they’d burned the place to the ground as he’d ordered, it still had to be Deveaux that had them all on edge like this.

“So why the hell weren’t they talking?

At the side of the Revenge he could see his father, hatless, his white hair unmistakable as it tossed in the breeze. At least he could count on his father to tell him the truth. That is, after the old man railed at him long and hard about how the woman he’d gone to rescue had

rescued him in e stead. Gabriel’s shoulders tightened just imagining it. Lord, he was tired, and a sight weaker than he wanted to be, not knowing what lay ahead.

Mariah rested her hand on the thigh of his torn, stained breeches, the same ones he’d worn when he’d been captured.

“We’re almost there, love,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Almost home.”

“Our home, poppet, leastways while we’re in these waters. How many other ladies can boast of a dozen long guns in their parlor?” He tried to tease, but in return she only smiled wearily, and that worried him, too. Protectively he slipped his arm around her. Once aboard, he’d see her put to bed straightaway and not disturbed until the shadows beneath her eyes were gone.

He looked past the ship, to the horizon beyond. He hadn’t been jesting with Mariah about the weather. To a landsman, the day would seem fine enough, the sky clear except for a few high, wispy clouds torn across the brilliant blue. But to Gabriel the air was too still, the shorebirds they’d left on the island as quiet as his men, the surface of the water glassy smooth. What little wind there was came from the south, hot and dry, a Spanish wind if ever he felt one, the kind of wind that this late in the summer never brought any English sailor any good. He sighed restlessly, his arm tightening around Mariah’s shoulders. Maybe it was that wind alone, and not Deveaux, that made his men so uneasy.

The boat bumped. Against the side of the sloop, and Gabriel saw Mariah helped up the steep slanting side before he began up the rope ladder himself. He was painfully aware of how the men in the boat hovered around him, furtively eyeing the welts and bruises on his body and waiting to see if he, too, needed their assistance. With a growled oath he forced himself to make the climb alone. To lift his hands and arms upward to each rung was agony, and at the top, pale and sweating, he nearly fell over the side onto the deck. Like a great, clumsy flounder, he thought contemptuously, wishing he could square his shoulders before he must meet his father’s scorn.

But it was his father’s hand that steadied him and kept him from toppling over.

“Good day to you, Gabriel, and welcome,” said Jonathan evenly, his grip firm on his son’s arm.

“Mind you wear a shirt to cover those stripes when you greet your mother next, else she’ll faint dead away.”

“Father.” Stupidly Gabriel could think of little else to say. He remembered how Mariah had insisted his father loved him, would do anything to have him back.