Mariah's Prize (33 page)

Mariah thought back to how gleeful they’d been when the Revenge had pursued the Marie-Claire. How much better it was to be the cat rather than the mouse!

They ate their supper on the deck, biscuits and coffee and soup served cold because the galley fires were out for safety. Sometime during the second watch Mariah fell asleep on the deck, and when she awoke she found that Ethan had covered her with a quilt and placed a pillow beneath her head. It was the wind that woke her, whipping at her hair and cracking through the sails overhead, the standing rigging singing shrilly and the warm rain peppering her cheeks.

Stiff and sore, she clutched the quilt and pillow to keep them from blowing overboard. Beyond the patchy, tropical shower that soaked them she could see the Chasseur in the same place they’d left her, two points on their lee but closer now, both her topsails and mainsails clear of the horizon.

There was no teasing this morning from Gabriel, and only a brief, subdued kiss of greeting. He had braided his long hair into a tight sailors’ queue, and his face was set and haggard, his green eyes red rimmed from lack of sleep. Without asking she knew they were in trouble.

“I thought we’d lose ‘em in the dark,” he said at the rail beside her, his voice raised over the wind and rain, “and now we’ll never make Bridgetown. Look at that sky.”

Through the clouds the sun hung low on the horizon, red as fire, and around it strange clouds eddied and swirled like flames. Rain streamed down from the clouds to the ocean in diagonal sheets, and the usually translucent Caribbean was dark and restless.

“Hurricane sky if ever there was one,” he continued grimly.

“We’ll run for the cove at Bequia and pray the reefs will be shelter enough.”

Though she’d never heard of Bequia, Mariah knew all too well what destruction a hurricane could bring. Her father had told her tales of the damage he’d seen in the Caribbean, houses and churches blown to pieces, trees plucked up by their roots like weeds, ships torn apart and the shattered pieces swept miles inland. Touching her new wedding ring like a talisman, she stared at the sun, now only a glowing smudge behind the clouds, and knew with the others that nothing Deveaux might do to them could rival the danger from the storm that swathed the bloodred sun.

“Bequia will be a hell of a place for a fight,” shouted Jonathan in return.

“He’ll have us trapped tight as a fly in a Jug.”

Gabiel grimaced as he squinted into the rising wind. “If we don’t reach Bequia, there won’t be anything left of us for him to fight.”

The wind and rain lashed at Mariah like living creatures, growing stronger by the minute as they tore at her sodden clothes and hair.

She clung to the rail with both hands,

fearing she’d be swept away otherwise, until she felt the solid band of Gabriel’s arm around her waist to steady her.

They were racing as fast as they could for a low, green island before them. With the bay in sight, Gabriel had set every scrap of canvas the Revenge could muster, and two men fought to hold the wheel steady as they steered into the crests of the wind-driven waves. As they finally rounded their way into the harbor, the topsail shredded and the torn canvas whipped back like streamers, and the sloop lurched, unbalanced beneath the strain. At once Gabriel bawled out for the men to take in what remained of the sail, and as the top men struggled to furl the heavy, wet canvas, other men dropped the sloop’s anchor in the bay.

The full force of the hurricane shrieked around them, the sky black as night. There was nothing left to be done now except to pray that they could ride it out.

But Jonathan was pointing toward the mouth of the bay, his curses audible over the wind. Ignoring the weather, Deveaux had swung the Chasseur’s head around so she fell broadside against the running sea.

Every one of her gun ports swung open, the black squares barely visible through the rain.

“That’s madness even from a madman!” cried Jonathan above Mariah’s ear.

“She’ll broach to for certain. God help the poor devils aboard!”

With their blasts muffled by the wind, the guns fired raggedly, twelve bright flashes in the gloom. Mariah gasped and clung more tightly to Gabriel, but in the storm the balls fell wildly astray from the Revenge.

The Chasseur wallowed in the trough of a wave, the water rushing into the open gun ports before another wave plucked the ship up and swept her forward on her side toward the mouth of the bay and the coral reefs that guarded it. The smaller Revenge had cleared the reefs effortlessly, but the Chasseur’s hull ripped open and split on the sharp coral, her thick oak sides splintering like twigs. Men screamed and scrambled to cling to the slanting deck, but the waves relentlessly plucked them free and sucked them under. Mariah watched in horror, imagining too easily what might have become of the Revenge.

Amid the tangle of canvas and lines and splintered planking, the dark figures of the wreck’s survivors swirled through the churning water toward the Revenge. Rivalries forgotten, the only enemy that mattered now was the sea, and already the sloop’s crew was tossing lines out to them, pulling aboard the few able to catch the ropes. Too late a single boat pushed away from the wreck, so many striving frantically to cling to its sides that it nearly capsized, and Mariah looked away, unable to watch. That the Frenchmen had spent their last minutes trying to destroy the Revenge didn’t seem important now. Of the one hundred and ninety men in the Chasseur’s crew, only a handful managed to reach the sloop.

With his arm still fast around Mariah’s waist, Gabriel guided her down the companionway to the cabin. She was pale and shaking from exposure and all she’d seen, and she felt frozen to the center of the cabin’s deck as the water streamed from her skirts, unable to move after being so battered by the wind. Without a word Gabriel came and held her, his hands sliding up and down the length of her spine, comforting her with his touch.

“It’s done now, love,” he murmured, his voice cracking with disbelief. “No more Deveaux, no more war. Only you and me, poppet. Only us.

Dear God, Mariah, but I love you! “

Mariah’s smile was tight, and with her cheek pressed against his chest she was perilously close to tears. Gabriel was finally free. The years of war and revenge were done.

They could be in Newport long before their child was born. Their first child. She wanted more, just as she wanted years and years together with Gabriel. And now she’d have them.

They ignored the first knock at the cabin door, then the second.

Reluctantly. Gabriel acknowledged the third. Welsh’s broad shoulders filled the doorway, his face grim beneath his curly sheep’s-wool hair, while another man waited in the dark companionway behind him.

“I

wouldn’t’ve bothered ye, Cap’n, but the bugger insisted. “

At first Mariah didn’t recognize the bedraggled man Welsh dragged into the cabin, not with his wrists bound with tarred cords and his wig and lace ruffles and the shoes with the cut-steel buckles all washed away by the storm. But then Welsh shoved the man full into the light of the swinging lantern, where there was no way for him to hide the scars on his face, and with a little cry Mariah shrank back against Gabriel. “Bonjour, mon ancien ami,” said Deveaux, his voice reduced to a croaking rasp.

“I’ve come to grant you the field, Sparhawk. You are the victor. You have won. You’ve destroyed everything I ever held dear, anglais, and left me nothing but an empty, damned life. I congratulate you.”

He glanced over his shoulder expectantly at Welsh, who, grumbled and wedged a scabbard with Deveaux’s sword in it between his bound hands. “You surrendered your sword once to me. Allow me the folly, the indulgence of doing the same to you.”

Clumsily he held the sword out to Gabriel, “and for a long moment Gabriel only stared at it, the bright red-and-blue enamel on the hilt glittering like jewels in the lantern’s light. Gently he set Mariah aside. Then he lashed out furiously at Deveaux, knocking the sword from the Frenchman’s hands before driving his fist hard into the man’s jaw. The sword clattered across the planks as Deveaux staggered and lost his balance, collapsing on the floor close to Mariah’s feet.” You ask me to treat you honorably after everything you have done? “

demanded Gabriel, his breathing harsh.

“After all the women and men you’ve made suffer, the lives you’ve destroyed for your own amusement, you dare ask for mercy? I won’t do that for you, Deveaux. I won’t do anything except take you to Bridgetown for trial, and see you hung as you’ve deserved to be since the day you were born.”

Mariah pressed against the bulkhead, away from the man on the deck before her. With his close-cropped head bowed, he gasped for breath as he struggled clumsily to his knees and then to his feet, swaying unsteadily beneath the motion of the ship. If she didn’t know him and all the wickedness he represented, she would have pitied him.

Welsh stepped forward.

“I’ll take th’ bastard away from yer sight, Cap’n,” he said.

“There’s plenty o’ us below that want a chance t’pay our respects.”

With his back to them still, Deveaux managed to draw himself upright, his head held high with his old arrogance. Then with a swiftness none of them expected, he turned and lunged forward, trapping Mariah against the bulkhead with his body. Clasped in his hands was a small pistol, and roughly he thrust the barrel against Mariah’s cheek.

“Damn yer soul, ye lyin’ little devil, where’d ye get the gun?”

demanded Welsh.

“We-searched ye soon as ye dragged yer filthy hide over,.m’ side!”

“Ah, but you searched only until you found the sword you expected.”

Deveaux smiled triumphantly.

“Tres careless for one of your men, Sparhawk. I’d recommend twenty lashes to improve his memory.”

“Let her go, Deveaux,” said Gabriel as quietly as he could, fighting every instinct to attack Deveaux, to throttle the last worthless breath from his body with his own hands. But he couldn’t risk it with Mariah in his grasp. Fleetingly he thought of Catherine. Dear God, how had he let it happen again? His Mariah, his poppet, his wife, with her fate in Deveaux’s hands!

“You know odds are that your powder’s too wet to fire.”

“Mats oui, the odds are against the flint sparking and the powder taking,” agreed Deveaux.

“But there is still the chance, the tiny chance, that the gun might fire and your bonne femme would die. Is it a chance you wish to take, mon ami?”

With the sound of her heart pounding in her ears, Mariah didn’t dare move, not with the pistol’s muzzle cold against her skin, pushing relentlessly against her cheek and reminding her of how close to dying she was. God deliver her, she didn’t want to die, not here, not like this. All she wanted was to live with the man she loved.

“When this storm is done, Sparhawk, you will put me ashore with all of my men, and any of yours that might wish to join me. I can be generous, eh?”

“Then take me as your hostage instead, and let her go,” urged Gabriel.

“I’m the one you want anyway, don’t you?”

Mariah started, momentarily forgetting the pistol.

“You can’t go, Gabriel!” she cried.

“If you do, you know he’ll kill you.”

1”Mademoiselle is right. I doubt I could leave you alive, after you have left me nothing. Your life in exchange would be almost fair.” He smiled, savoring their turmoil.

“You leave her behind, and when you have kept clear of the harbor for three days, the girl will be waiting for you in Port Elizabeth. But if you try to be gal ant and return sooner, she will die. My terms, anglais. Or you gamble that the powder is wet. It is, you see, your choice as captain to make.”

Outside the wind and sea still buffeted the Revenge, her timbers groaning and the rigging howling, but inside the cabin it seemed there was only silence. Helplessly Gabriel looked at Marian, her blue eyes round with terror. The same way Catherine’s eyes had been when she realized he couldn’t help her.

Not again, dear God, not again! This time let him do the right thing to save the woman he loved.

“Don’t do it, Gabriel,” said Marian, her voice quavering. Frightened though she was, she understood what he, too, was suffering.

“If you let him go, you know he’ll just kill me instead, the same way he would kill you, and I couldn’t bear to live alone in a world without you!

You know the gunpowder must be wet. Don’t let him force you to do this for my sake, love. Gabriel, look at me. Look at me! I’m not Catherine. “

“Petite folle,” scoffed Deveaux.

“Certainement, when he looks at you he sees only her.”

“No,” cried Marian miserably, “that isn’t true. I love him, and he loves me!”

Deveaux shoved her against the bulkhead, nearly spitting his words out in his vehemence.

“Do not lecture me on the marvels of love, mademoiselle! For ten years Sparhawk has hounded me for the sake of his Catherine’s memory, and he has ruined me in the name of his love.

Love, fan! Will love bring me another ship and crew, or build for me another house? Can’t you see that you’re nothing to him beyond your resemblance to her? “

“Damn you, Deveaux, let her go!” thundered Gabriel, unable to contain himself any longer.

“Marian is my wife, you black hearted bastard!” | Still trapping Mariah beneath his shoulder, Deveauxj abruptly swung the pistol around to aim it at Gabriel!

“Then tell me, Sparhawk,” he asked mockingly, “do you love your little wife enough to die for her?”

Gabriel didn’t flinch.

“I love her much more than that,” he said, looking steadily at Mariah’s small, pale face. If Deveaux used the pistol’s single ball to kill him, then Welsh would attack the Frenchman instantly, and Mariah would be safe. Gabriel would die for her if he must, but he didn’t want to leave her, not now, not when their life together had only begun. “I love her more than you will ever know, Deveaux, you with your empty, loveless soul!”

But Deveaux wasn’t listening any longer. Instead he stared past Gabriel to the small oval looking glass fastened to the bulkhead, staring with horrified fascination at his own reflection.