Sea Fire (28 page)

“You bastard!” Cathy screamed at him inwardly, knowing that he didn’t mean to lift a hand to rescue her until she was reduced to begging for his help. At the realization that he was actually prepared to just stand there while another man mauled her about right under his nose, Cathy’s temperature soared. She could feel bright scarlet heat flood her body. He thought to teach her a lesson, did he, to demonstrate that without his strength to guard her she was as helpless as a newborn babe? Hah! She would show him!

Grogan was greedily devouring her mouth, pulling her as close to him as he could with the slight protuberance of her stomach between them. Cathy’s hands rose to grasp his shoulders for balance, and then, with a quick, vicious movement, she jerked her knee up so that it came into thudding contact with his soft groin.

“Yeow!”
Grogan screamed, releasing her as if she had suddenly turned red-hot. Thus unexpectedly freed, Cathy stumbled backward while Grogan bent double, both meaty red hands clutching the injured spot. She caught herself, standing proudly upright as the assembled spectators roared with laughter at Grogan’s expense.

“By God, Grogan, ain’t you man enough to handle a chit of a girl?” one fellow called between chortles.

“Girl, hell! She’s a she-devil!” Grogan moaned in his
own defense, still stooped like an arthritic old man as he tried to rub the agony away.

Cathy tossed her head proudly so that her thick golden braid swung like a horse’s tail behind her. With her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes a bright cobalt blue from temper, she stared them all down. The loose white peasant blouse and full black skirt she wore concealed her pregnancy, and she looked very beautiful—and also somewhat dangerous—as she glared impartially at every man-jack of them.

“And let that be a lesson to you all,” she said clearly, meeting Jon’s bemused gray eyes with triumph. “The same will happen to any man who dares to lay a finger on me, I promise you!”

With one final defiant tilt of her chin, she turned on her heel and marched away, leaving the gathered men gaping after her, humor and respect mingled in their faces. Not the least surprised of them was Jon; he had thought to humble her by making her call out for his assistance, but, by God, she had very neatly extricated herself from a situation that would have had most females, let alone ladies of her background, swooning dead away. Admiration rose unbidden in him. Damn, she was a woman in a million! At least, in some respects.

He shouldered his way to the front of the crowd, his jaw tightening as he met Grogan’s wounded gaze. His instinct urged him to knock the man flying, but he had left it too late. He should have done it when the man had first laid hands on Cathy; to do so now would be redundant, and, what was worse, would make him look like a jealous fool. Which he probably was, he acknowledged angrily to himself, but he’d be damned if anyone else, most especially Cathy herself, was going to find it out!

“Any man who bothers Lady Stanhope answers to me,” he told the still-chuckling men. “And you can pass it on. Now, get back to work, the lot of you.”

Jon swung around and
stomped back to the quarterdeck. The men exchanged speculative looks, then did as they were told and got back to work.

Over the next few days, Cathy was surprised at the renewed deference with which the crew treated her. They went out of their way to see to her comfort without annoying her at all. Puzzled, she pondered the volte-face: surely her besting of Grogan hadn’t had such a wide-reaching effect? Grogan himself eyed her with smoldering resentment, but he made no move to approach her again and Cathy was careful to stay well out of his way. Jon, too, she avoided; she was at pains to show him that she didn’t need him one little bit!

Angie found out about her pregnancy not long after this incident, and Cathy was resigned to the fact that the girl, who seemed to be congenitally incapable of keeping a secret, would soon spread the news throughout the ship. The most embarrassing part of this was that Angie automatically assumed that the child was Jon’s. Since the girl did not know of their long and convoluted relationship, instead believing, like almost everyone else aboard, that she and Jon had somehow met in La Coruña, she spent most of her time commiserating with what she was sure must be Cathy’s sense of shame. Cathy was not in the least ashamed of being pregnant by Jon, despite the fact that she had come to thoroughly despise him, but she did not feel up to explaining this, with its ensuing ramifications, to Angie. Thus she braced herself for knowing looks and snickers from the crew, and she was right: within twenty-four hours of Angie’s discovery, every soul on board followed her movements like a cat watching a rat.

It took a little longer for Jon to become aware that the whole ship was privy to Cathy’s condition, for the simple reason that no one dared to say anything to him about it. They assumed, correctly if for the wrong reasons, that Cathy’s pregnancy was the cause of the ongoing state of armed warfare between her and Jon. To their thinking, of course, the captain was mad because his
mistress had gotten “caught,” and was thus no longer available for fun and games. Even O’Reilly, who knew much of Jon’s history, thought that this must be the case. He even ventured to congratulate Jon on his coming foray into fatherhood. Jon did not disabuse him, but he accepted the other man’s jovial comments and back-slapping with a clenched jaw. It would serve no purpose to air what he was convinced was the truth: that Cathy’s child had been fathered by Harold, Lord Stanhope, her legal husband.

Since the incident with Grogan, he had hardly seen Cathy. She was clearly deliberately avoiding him, and when they did happen to pass each other on the deck her glance seemed to look right through him. The sight of her, blooming with impending motherhood despite the deprivations of the voyage, stabbed at him like a razor-sharp knife whenever he set eyes on her, so he, too, took care to stay out of her way. The knowledge that she was to bear another man’s child tortured him continually, making him more and more morose as the
Cristobel
drew ever closer to land. Try as he would, he could not banish a picture of the child’s conception from his mind.

The
Cristobel
was down to a half barrel of water and her last, stale rations of food when the crew finally sighted land. The joyous cry of “Land, ho!” brought everyone on board running to the rail. At first it was no more than a darker shape against the clear blue of the horizon, but as hours passed it gradually resolved itself into a dazzling white beach reaching out into the sparkling bay with the outline of a town the only thing marring a seemingly endless vista of sand.

“Where are we?” Cathy questioned eagerly, turning to find O’Reilly standing beside her at the rail. It was so wonderful to see land again, to know that soon she could have fresh food and water and, miracle of miracles, a bath, that she could have embraced the world.

“Cap’n says it’s most likely Rabat, in Morocco,” O’Reilly answered, looking down at the small, golden-haired girl beside him and feeling
himself almost bowled over by the brilliance of her smile. Despite his friendship with Jon, he could not help but admire her. She was a beauty, and no mistake!

“Rabat,” Cathy repeated wonderingly, never having heard of the place before. Then she turned her eyes back to the scene before her. The closer they came to it, the more truly unbelievable it appeared.

The harbor was filled with boats, just as it would have been in Charleston or London. But what boats! They were like nothing she had ever seen before: brilliantly painted, almost flat vessels with intricately carved prows and sterns rising proudly to face the brilliant sun. The masts were short and stubby, the sails themselves almost square. Perhaps half-a-dozen long oars extended from either side of the hulls. Dark-skinned men in baggy white trousers and tall white turbans swarmed over the decks to the rails to gape at them as the
Cristobel
glided past. Clearly the English ship was an oddity. Suddenly it occurred to Cathy to wonder if, perhaps, the natives might be somewhat less than friendly.

“They don’t look very pleased to see us,” she remarked doubtfully to O’Reilly.

“They’re not. Sheikh Ali Ben-Kazar, who rules here, is not over-fond of visitors. Luckily, he and I have met,” Jon’s voice remarked from just behind Cathy’s shoulder.

She turned to look up at him. It was the first time she had looked at him, really looked at him, for weeks. His skin had darkened until he was almost the color of the natives watching them. His black hair, gleaming with blue lights under the relentless sun and blowing gently on the breeze, added to his likeness to an Arab. Only the gray eyes, cold and clear, and his towering size told the truth of his ancestry.

“You’ve been here before?” His revelation that he had met the ruler of this exotic locale intrigued her sufficiently so that she was prepared to declare a temporary cease-fire in their private war.

“Yes.” His
answer was short, but it was an answer. Apparently he, too, was willing to call a halt to hostilities for a little while.

“When?” Cathy asked.

“Long before I met you,” was all he said, but from that Cathy gathered that his previous call in this port had been under a pirate flag. She swallowed a trifle nervously. She didn’t know if that was a good thing, or not. Perhaps this Sheikh Ali whoever was not partial to pirates.

“Ali is a friend of mine,” Jon told her, correctly interpreting her doubtful expression. “At least, to a point. So long as we don’t cause any trouble, he’ll be glad enough to welcome us. Which is what I wanted to see you about: as long as we’re here in Rabat you’re to stay out of sight. All the other women will be confined to the ship as well, but you in particular, with your blonde hair, will attract attention of the sort we don’t need. Do you understand me?”

“I can’t go ashore?” Cathy cried, more aghast than angry. She had so looked forward to standing once again on dry, firm land.

“No.” Jon must have read her disappointment in her eyes, because he softened the harsh monosyllable slightly. “At least not at first. Later, when I’m sure of the lay of the land, I might take you. But under no circumstances are you to go without me!”

He punctuated this last with a fearsome glare. Cathy returned his look sulkily.

“You enjoy cracking the whip, don’t you?” she asked bitterly. His mouth tightened.

“You enjoy baiting me,” he retorted grimly. “And one of these days you’ll do it once too often. Now, get back to the cabin. As of this minute, you’re confined to quarters.”

Cathy glared at him mutinously. He was just doing this to punish her!

“Don’t make me lock you in,” Jon warned softly, for her ears alone. Cathy cast
a quick glance at O’Reilly, who had tactfully turned aside during this exchange. For her own pride’s sake, she knew that now was not the time to challenge Jon’s order. But later. . . .

With her little nose lifted high in the air, Cathy favored Jon with one long, contemptuous look. Then, her body held proudly erect, she swept away.

It was hot in the cabin. Cathy alternately raged and pouted, and finally smashed a dish as a means of venting her temper. After that, she felt slightly better—until she had to start picking up the shattered pieces. A long shard stabbed her finger; as she sat, sucking resentfully at the drop of bright red blood that oozed from the puncture, she got mad all over again.

It was late afternoon by the time the
Cristobel
finally dropped anchor. Cathy, watching the activity on the dock from a porthole, thought that one certainly couldn’t tell it: the sun still beat down as hotly as ever, and shimmering waves of heat rose visibly from the gleaming white sand. The town itself, seemingly composed entirely of long, low, white buildings, appeared as insubstantial as a mirage through the haze of heat. Along the shore, people—she couldn’t tell if they were male or female—idled, clad in long, loose white robes like shrouds. Even their heads were covered! From time to time a camel would amble past, its rider seated upon the odd-looking beast as securely as if he were riding the finest of saddle-bred mares in Rotten Row. Then, from her vantage point, Cathy saw one of the
Cristobel
’s gigs head for shore with Jon in its prow and perhaps six men manning the oars. As she watched the little boat disappear from sight, she felt aggrieved. Jon certainly wasn’t planning to deny himself the pleasures to be found on dry land!

“When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Cathy had heard Martha say that time out of mind. Now, for the first time, she truly considered what it meant: she certainly felt very much like a plump gray mouse as she crept out of the cabin. And she didn’t
feel guilty in the least, she told herself with a toss of her head. After all, why should she? Jon was merely being despotic as usual when he had ordered her to stay in the cabin. Certainly she need not regard his words.

The men were clearly excited at being in such close proximity to the first land they had seen in weeks, and they paid no attention to Cathy as she strolled along the rail. From their conversation she gathered that they were to be permitted to go ashore in small groups, with the understanding that they were to keep to themselves and not cause trouble. According to the captain, as Cathy overheard one grizzled old man say, the Berbers, as these folks were, and not to be confused with Arabs, which were something entirely different, had very strict laws on drinking and women and such: the consumption of even one drop of alcohol was punishable by a public flogging, while if a man dared to touch a woman not his own he could expect to be summarily put to death. Cathy, listening to this, wondered that the men wanted to go ashore at all under such conditions. Usually, in her experience anyway, women and liquor were, in that order, the two things disembarking sailors craved. For herself, she would love to go ashore just to put a foot once again on something that didn’t rock up and down, but
men—
here her lip curled—men were like animals: their wants overrode all else, including caution. She wagered that the
Cristobel
’s crew wouldn’t be able to resist temptation, and then there would be the devil (in the person of Jon, if nothing else) to pay.