My Seductive Innocent (32 page)

The man lifted his gray head. “I’ve only had four drinks.”

Ravensdale growled under his breath. “Damn it, man. I told you I need you to sew him up”―he motioned at Nathan―“and retrieve the bullet. I need him alive.”

“I can do it,” Rowley said on a hiccup. “Bring me my thread and needle.”

Nathan’s blood turned icy and his muscles jumped. A bad physician was worse than no physician, but he wasn’t in a position to put up a fight.

Within moments, the man was sitting beside him and leaned over his leg. “Do you want him to have laudanum for the pain?” he asked Ravensdale, who stood directly behind him.

Ravensdale’s gaze locked with Nathan’s and he smirked. “I know how you love laudanum, but I find I want to see you squirm.”

Nathan was careful not to show his relief. He didn’t welcome the pain, but he didn’t want to take the drug he’d felt unable to live without before. “I won’t be very entertaining.”

“We shall see,” Ravensdale commented and motioned to the physician to begin.

Each jab of the needle made bile rise in Nathan’s throat, causing it to burn and his eyes to water. He didn’t cry out during the stitching of his gashed leg but he did shake, and he hated himself for showing weakness.

When the physician was finished, he sat up and mopped his sweating brow as Ravensdale peered over the man’s shoulder at Nathan’s throbbing leg. “You’ve made a mess of it, Rowley. You’re too foxed to retrieve the bullet today with those trembling hands. You’d kill him, and I’ve plans for him. Get yourself sober, or
I’ll
kill
you
,” Ravensdale snarled. The physician backed out of the room with mumbled apologies and Nathan was left alone with Ravensdale, who walked over to a counter and came back holding a bottle.

He shook the glass bottle at Nathan. “I’ve changed my mind about the laudanum,” Ravensdale said. He leaned over Nathan, and after much struggling, pried his jaw open and poured the contents of the bottle down Nathan’s throat. The familiar sweet liquid made Nathan want to gag. He tried to spit it back up, but Ravensdale clamped both hands over his mouth and leaned against his chest. “If you don’t swallow, you may choke, and I’m in the mind to let you do it. Then I’ll go visit your wife and comfort her.”

Black fury blanketed Nathan as he swallowed and watched helplessly as Ravensdale turned and left him alone. Images of Sophia being ravaged by Ravensdale tormented him. He turned his mind toward escape. Ravensdale’s cockiness made him careless, and Nathan was to be sold to a pirate in two days. If he had any chance of getting away he had to do it the day they were docked. He’d never make it off a ship run by pirates alive. His mind began to feel groggy, but he fought the pull of sleep and concentrated on his plan. Ambush from his cell seemed the most likely, but he would need to be unchained. How to get unchained? As he struggled to figure out the details, sleep claimed him.

T
he ground underneath Nathan swayed as he awoke. Or at least he thought it was the ground. He tried to open his eyes, but when he did, pain so great he almost cried out vibrated up his right leg. His left leg had a dull throbbing pain. Grunting, he tried again and got his lids open enough to see more blackness.

Moaning and creaking filled the heavy, damp air around him.

He was in hell.

Where you deserve to be.

He squeezed his eyes shut and struggled to sift through the thick fog blanketing his mind. At first, nothing came, and then awareness hit him in nauseating pangs. He was on Ravensdale’s ship, and Ravensdale intended to find Sophia and harm her.

Nathan’s gut clenched, and he rolled to his side, dry heaving repeatedly until he was left panting. Intense agony radiated from his right leg, onto which he’d rolled. He struggled to his back and lay there trying not to retch again. It felt as if sand filled his mouth.

Christ.

He needed... “Water.” The sound of his raw voice shocked him. How long had he been out since being sewn up?

“There’s no water to be had, Your Grace.”

Your Grace?
Whoever was in here with him knew him. Nathan tried to recall who that might be, but his memory wouldn’t cooperate. Unwilling to reveal the weakness, he kept quiet and forced his eyes open as much as possible. He held his hand in front of his face. He couldn’t see his arm, but he knew it was there because he touched his nose with his fingertips. His nose felt wrong. Crooked and caked with something crusty. He ran a finger down the bridge. The unfamiliar sharp veer of his nose to the left told him Ravensdale had broken it.

“You all right?” came the deep voice again from the dark.

Nathan ignored the voice and the other sounds, which were muffled and came from somewhere above, for the moment. Whether the man knew him or not,
he
didn’t know if a friend or enemy was near. Though he thought he heard concern in the tone, he didn’t trust himself enough in his current state to decide anything too quickly. Wincing, he reached up and fingered the bridge of his nose again. When he inhaled, the high-pitched sound of air trying to enter his nasal passages pierced his ears.

He’d once seen a boxer at Gentleman Jackson’s straighten his own broken nose. Nathan clutched his nose with one hand and the floor with the other. Wet, slick slime met his fingertips, and a shudder coursed through him. With grim determination, he inhaled a sharp breath and jerked his nose back to the right.

Nausea gripped him, but when he inhaled, air came through his nose this time. Water leaked a steady stream out of his eyes. He wiped the moisture away, the gesture reminding him of wiping Sophia’s tears from her soft cheek. His chest hurt at the memory of her, and a throbbing regret consumed him.

Regret would have to wait. The time for survival was at hand.

“Where am I?” he demanded of the unknown man.

“We’re locked in a cell in the far corner of the cargo hold. You were passed out when they dragged you in here,” he explained. “The captain delivered you personally with one of his crew.”

“Captain, is it?” Nathan sneered.

The man made a derisive noise from his throat. “He’s a renegade privateer who works with the Barbary corsairs to capture white slaves. He’s a bit of a legend on the sea.”

“You’re a seaman?”

“Your Grace, I work for
you
. It’s Stephens.”

“Stephens?” Instantly, Nathan had a mental picture of a scrawny, redheaded young man who could not be more then nineteen. Nathan felt his lower jaw part open. The simple movement caused pain to radiate once more. “How the hell did you end up in here?”

“I saw Ravensdale and his man carrying you onto their ship and I tried to rescue you.”

“Oh Christ, Stephens. I’m sorry.”

“You would have done the same for me, Your Grace. They stuck me in this cell after dragging me on board, and I’ve been here ever since.”

Nathan swatted at something crawling up his arm while he forced himself to sit up. Light danced in his vision, but it was only speckles from his efforts. He swayed where he sat until he collapsed backward once again.

With the hesitancy of one fearing to find a limb gone, he searched his throbbing leg until his fingers came to the bullet wound. Around the wound, the skin felt soft. Too soft. Like mushed porridge. When he inhaled, the foul stench of rotting flesh filled his nose. The wound was festering. He moved his leg, suddenly afraid he no longer could. And then realization struck: he was unchained.

“Have we docked in Saint-Malo yet?” he demanded, fighting the fear that he’d missed his only opportunity to escape.

“No, Your Grace. We’ll be there tomorrow, according to the conversations I’ve managed to overhear.”

Relief made Nathan fall back against the deck with a thud. He lay there and struggled to concentrate. Sweat dripped down his forehead and hot flashes consumed him. He didn’t need to be a physician to know a fever was ravaging him. Trying to sort out the details in his mind of what he needed to do was like walking through the thick mud of the riverbank near his home after a long storm. Impossibly slow-going.

He shoved himself up and turned in the darkness to Stephens. He still couldn’t see the man, but he could smell the sticky stench of unwashed skin. He owed this man a debt for trying to stop Ravensdale and his men from dragging him aboard this ship while he was unconscious. “I have to get this bullet out before tomorrow. I’ll be of no use to you if I don’t.”

“Because you’ll be too weak?”

“Because I’ll likely be dead.”

“I’ll call for the guard,” Stephens said hastily. “Ravensdale said to call for a guard if you looked like you were taking a turn for the worse.”

“Wait one moment. We need a plan. Last time Ravensdale poured laudanum down my throat. If I’m asleep when you feel the ship being docked at port, awaken me. You’ll call the guard and say I’m dead, and when he comes, we’ll overtake him.” The guard carried a cutlass and a pistol, and Nathan planned to take both. He’d find the strength. Somewhere. Somehow.

“And then we’ll fight our way out of here?”

“Hopefully, we will sneak out of here. But if we’re spotted we’ll fight until the death.”

“Hopefully not ours,” Stephens said.

“I should hope not, as well. My wife would not like that at all,” he said, trying for levity, but it felt as if a hand gripped his heart and was squeezing it like a vise. “Go ahead and call for the guard.”

The shuffling of feet sounded in the small cell, and then Stephens started yelling for the guard. Within moments, the groan of the hatch opening filled the room, and in the distance, a lantern light seemed to bob in the dark as if suspended from nothing. Footsteps clapping toward them filled the air, followed by the clank of jingling keys. Now Nathan could make out a tall man with a covered head and a beard holding the keys in one hand and a pistol in the other. The cell door creaked.

“What?” the guard snarled.

“His Grace is dying,” Stephens supplied.

“His Grace is dyin’,” the man mimicked while lowering the lantern to shine it in Nathan’s eyes.

Nathan immediately had to shield his eyes from the bright light.

The guard smirked at him. “Can His Grace get his arse up?”

“I’ll manage,” Nathan replied and slowly started the process of shoving to his feet. Once he was standing, he took a step toward the guard and Stephens, but his weakness caused him to stumble and he ended up crashing into both men.

The guard shoved him hard in the chest. “Get off me.”

Nathan eased toward Stephens, grateful for the man’s hand as it clasped his arm and held him steady.

“You,” the guard barked at Stephens, “you make sure he don’t fall on his face on the way to the captain’s cabin. If the captain wants you to live so bloody much, I don’t see why he hasn’t ordered the bullet taken out of your leg,” the guard grumbled.

“That would be because he desires me to suffer as much as possible,” Nathan replied as he leaned against Stephens. They followed the guard out the cell, across the cargo hold, and up the creaking ladder into a dim passageway. The trek from the cell to the captain’s cabin left Nathan panting, sweating, and on the verge of passing out. It also left him with a gnawing sense of how difficult escaping would be tomorrow.

“Your Grace?” Stephens nudged him in the side, and Nathan blinked, realizing he’d been caught in a haze of his own thoughts.

Ravensdale stood in a small room that Nathan thought he must use as his office. Bolted to the center of the room was a table that had maps and charts spread across it. The only other pieces of furniture in the room were a chair and a table, which were both bolted to the floor, as well. Ravensdale grinned maliciously, displaying his rotted, yellow teeth.

Much like his personality,
Nathan thought.

“I’m told you’re about to die, Scarsdale.” Ravensdale nodded to the guard and the man reached toward Nathan, but Nathan lurched back out of his grasp.

“Lucky for you, Rowley is sober now. I’d hate for you to die and ruin my special plans.” Ravensdale motioned to the guard. “Fetch Rowley and tell him I have a patient in need of his skills.”

The guard snickered but nodded.

Not ten minutes later, Nathan was tied to a table in the surgeon’s quarters. The guard, Ravensdale, and the physician all stood over him. Stephens had been taken back to the cell because Ravensdale cheerfully pointed out that he might try to interfere when his employer was thrashing in agony. Nathan vowed to himself that no matter how bad the pain, he’d not give Ravensdale the satisfaction of moving a muscle or making a sound.

The physician’s cracked, leathery face loomed over Nathan, and the smell of strong liquor washed over him from the man. The physician narrowed his eyes, causing his bushy, silver eyebrows to come together. “This is going to hurt. Would’ve hurt anyway, but especially now since the captain says you get nothing to dull the pain.”

Nathan nodded and prayed Ravensdale would hold that train of thought and not force laudanum down his throat once more.

With a rattling sigh, the physician leaned over Nathan again, but this time he held a sharp knife in his hand that he lowered to Nathan’s leg. The hard tip touched his skin, and it was as if someone had shoved a fire poker into his body. His instinct was to buck and scream. Instead, he gritted his teeth until pain hummed in his ears a steady noise that refused to relent. Dr. Rowley turned his head slightly toward Ravensdale. “You can cleanse the wound now.”