Nicola Cornick, Margaret McPhee, et al (10 page)

The controlled, smooth friction was driving her to near madness,
and suddenly she wanted to know her own power, to show him he could not always
dictate to her. She dug her fingers into his back and bit his shoulder, and she
felt his body jolt as his restraint broke at last and he plunged into her, hard
and fast, all gentleness fled, and in its place a driving masculine possession
that almost consumed her.

His kiss had a savage urgency; she heard him cry out her name and
then the exquisite shudders racked her body again, primitive and intense. She
felt the force of his climax sweep them both away and held on to him
desperately as the only sure thing in a tumultuous world. Gradually her senses
started to settle, and she shifted into the circle of his arms. They held one
another close as the bitterness of lost love was finally wiped out by all the
bright promise of the future.

Later on Lucinda lost the petticoats, and with them the very last
shreds of her modesty and inhibitions. The snow had stopped falling and they
had run out into it, naked in the moonlight, Lucinda squealing as Daniel
tumbled her into a snowdrift and kissed her until she forgot the cold and clung
to him with the blood racing hot again through her veins.

‘Make love to me here,’ she whispered to him, as the snow melted
against her flushed body, stinging her skin with its exquisite, shocking cold.

This time his possession was slow and erotic, and she writhed
beneath his deliberate caresses.

Tell me what you want…

Oh, she wanted this pleasure. With his hands and his mouth he
drove her to heights she had not even guessed existed, and he made love to her
with a passion that made her feel she might die from the sheer bliss of it.

At last, when the coldness finally drove them back to the shelter
of the sleigh, Daniel took her in his arms and wrapped her tightly in the
fur-lined rugs. Lucinda rested her head against his chest and listened to the
steady beat of his heart, and she thought perhaps that she had been a little hasty
in rejecting the idea of marriage out of hand if it had such benefits as these.

‘I do believe that I would give up everything else in my life
just to have you,’ she whispered, wondering if he could hear her or if he was
asleep.

He made a soft sound of contentment and his arms tightened about
her. ‘And I would gladly take you barefoot and journey with you to the world’s
end,’ he murmured against her hair. And she fell asleep, dreaming of tall ships
and distant horizons.

D
ANIEL
found that he was whistling as he
went to forage for fresh hay for the horse and to pick up the provisions that
Holroyd had so thoughtfully left with them the previous night. The sky was a
bright, cold, piercing blue, the sun was shining and the snow was fresh and
crisp, blindingly white. It felt to Daniel as though the whole world was newly
made, and all because he had woken with Lucinda curled up in his arms.

Lucinda, the only woman he wanted. The only woman he had ever
loved.

He found that he was smiling. She had refused his proposal of
marriage last night, but he was sure that this morning he could persuade her.
He was sure that she loved him. He knew that he had hurt her badly before, and
that now he had to earn her trust, but suddenly that felt like the most exciting
challenge in the world. He felt his heart swell with a mixture of pride and
hope and sheer happiness.

He found a bale of old hay in a corner of the outhouse where he
had stabled the horse. The grey mare seemed less than impressed with the
offering, but snorted her disdainful way through a few mouthfuls. Daniel broke
the ice on the water trough, patted her on the nose, and scooped up the bag
with bread, slightly stale now, and ham and a bottle of cider, and made his way
back to the sleigh.

All was quiet. Lucinda must still be asleep. Humming softly under
his breath, Daniel lifted the hood. The bright morning light flooded inside.

The sleigh was empty. Lucinda’s clothes—what was left of them
after the ravages of the previous night—had disappeared, along with her ruined
dancing slippers.

Daniel’s first thought was sheer incredulity that she would have
run from him after all they had shared the previous night. She would not. She
could not.

Then he remembered her saying that he should leave her
behind—that she would be able to persuade people that she was innocent and he
had coerced her into helping him. He felt a sickening lurch of disillusion to
think that she had acted upon her word. But then, hot on the heels of that
thought, he saw the knife-cut through the material of the hood.

He leaped out of the sleigh. The snow was scuffed up, showing
confused signs of footprints and perhaps a struggle. He spun around. There was
no one in sight and no sound at all. The empty, bright morning mocked him. Fear
clutched at his heart now, driving out the disillusion. What a fool he had been
to doubt her. And a greater fool to have left her unprotected. He had allowed
himself to become distracted again. He had not been paying attention because he
was happy and in love, and blind, deaf, thoughtless to all else. And John
Norton—for it must be he—had been watching him and waiting, and had taken the
one thing that mattered more to Daniel than life itself. He had taken Lucinda
for revenge.

A moment later Daniel realised that that had not been the full
extent of Norton’s treachery. He spun around as he heard the thunder of
hoofbeats on the snow. A posse of soldiers, with Owen Chance at their head, was
spilling into the clearing and surrounding the sleigh. Chance had a pistol in
his hand. The soldiers had rifles and they were all pointing at him. There was
nowhere to run—no way in which he could help Lucinda now. This time it really
was all over.

‘Daniel de Lancey, I arrest you in the name of the King!’ Chance
jumped down. He looked about him. ‘Where is Mrs Melville? What have you done
with her, you traitorous bastard?’

‘Norton has taken her,’ Daniel said.

Two of the soldiers grabbed him roughly by the arms, forcing him
to his knees. He felt the manacles snap about his wrist, but he ignored them,
concentrating desperately on Owen Chance.

‘For God’s sake, man, we have to find her!’ He said. ‘Norton has
carried her off. You must let me go after him!’

Chance’s handsome face looked as though it was carved from stone.
He did not even look at him. ‘If what you say is true,’ he said, ‘then we will
find her.’

Fear, fury and frustration swept through Daniel in equal measure.
‘No! You don’t understand!’

Chance was walking away. The soldiers were already dragging
Daniel towards the nearest horse, in preparation for chaining him to the saddle
and hauling him back to Woodbridge Gaol—the wanted criminal, the pirate,
captured at last.

‘Norton will get clean away!’ he shouted. ‘Even now he is
probably halfway back to his ship. I have to stop him!’

A sharp tug on the chains sent him sprawling in the snow, in
danger of being trampled by the horses, but he did not care about the indignity
of it. Fear for Lucinda roared through him. ‘Don’t you understand, man?’ he
yelled, towards Owen Chance’s unresponsive back. ‘She will be raped and
murdered before you even have the first idea where to look for her! It is
Norton’s crew that has been ravaging the coast these six months past! For
pity’s sake—’

For the first time Owen Chance turned and met his gaze, and
Daniel could see that he was thinking about what he had said. For a moment his
hopes hung in the balance. But then Chance’s jaw set and he shook his head. ‘We
will find her,’ he said again.

Daniel would have put his head in his hands if he had been able.
He knew it was hopeless. Perhaps it was already too late. He could beg and
plead, but Chance would never let him go to rescue Lucinda. Probably he did not
believe his story anyway, seeing it as just another ruse in order to try and
escape. Chance had his prize now: the pirate he had been hunting through years
of failure and frustration and humiliation. He would never risk losing him
again.

The chains tightened again, jerking Daniel to his feet. He spread
his manacled hands wide in a last gesture of appeal.

‘Please…I swear on my life that if you let me find her I will
turn myself in and surrender to you as soon as she is safe.’

Chance looked at him. And laughed. ‘Do you think I would take the
word of a pirate and a traitor, de Lancey? Take him away!’

The soldiers remounted and the little procession formed up. But
they had gone less than a hundred yards towards the Woodbridge road when a lone
horseman came galloping towards them and reined in sharply, in a showy but
beautifully controlled circle. The rider—and it was a slender young woman, with
long dark hair—tumbled from the saddle and ran across the snow towards Owen
Chance, who jumped down from his own horse and caught her in his arms.

‘Miss Saltire! Eustacia! What on earth are you doing here?’

‘They’ve taken Lucinda!’ the girl cried, grabbing his arm. ‘Owen,
you must do something to stop them. Sir John Norton holds her to ransom!’

Daniel’s heart lurched with a mixture of hope and despair. If
Norton was planning on ransoming Lucinda there was the smallest chance that he
might not hurt her. But it seemed unlikely. He knew Norton’s tricks of old. He
would take the woman, rape her, abuse her, and then throw her back to her
relatives and friends once they had paid up, as though she mattered less than a
side of meat. He faced the thought of that happening to Lucinda and felt a mad,
murderous rage mixed with his fear, and a furious frustration at his own
inability to do anything to help her.

‘For God’s sake, Chance!’ he shouted, his voice breaking with the
emotion that was inside him. ‘Will you stop wasting time here and just go and
get her?’

Chance shot him a look. The girl—Eustacia—grabbed Chance’s arm
again. ‘Owen, please! Lucinda has been the truest friend to me that I could
ever have asked for. You must help her!’

‘I’ll call the Navy out—’ Chance began.

‘There’s no time,’ Daniel said.

Chance looked down at Eustacia’s white, pleading face, and back
at Daniel. ‘How do I know you are not in league with Norton and this isn’t all
a trick, de Lancey?’

‘You don’t,’ Daniel said. Despite the cold, sweat was trickling
down between his shoulderblades now. ‘I love her, Chance,’ he said. He looked
at Eustacia. ‘If you have any understanding or sympathy for that, then I beg
you to help.’

There was a long silence.

‘We’ll take the
Defiance
then,’ Owen Chance said. He came
across to Daniel. ‘Do we still have a bargain, de Lancey? We free Mrs Melville
and then you surrender to us?’

‘I swear on my life,’ Daniel said.

They looked at one another for a long moment, and then Chance
nodded slowly. ‘Take his manacles off,’ he said. There was a flicker of
amusement in his dark eyes. ‘I never thought to be doing this, de Lancey…’

‘Oh, thank you!’ Eustacia Saltire looked radiant. She stood on
tiptoe to kiss Owen Chance’s cheek—a kiss that turned into something rather
more passionate as Chance caught her in his arms and returned the kiss in full
measure.

The soldiers shifted, trying not to grin, and Daniel tried not to
feel too impatient.

‘Time for that later,’ he said, and Stacey turned within the
circle of Owen Chance’s arms and gave him a dazzling smile.

‘Good luck!’ she said.

Chance, still looking vaguely stunned by the kiss, let her go at
last.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what are we waiting for?’

Lucinda had never felt so ill in all her life—nor been so
abjectly grateful for feeling so. As soon as she had set foot on John Norton’s
ship she had started to be sick, and she had barely stopped since. It was the
only thing that had saved her. Norton, at first so delighted to have the woman
he had termed ‘de Lancey’s doxy’ in his power, had been utterly disgusted to
discover that she was so poor a sailor, and had had her thrown into a festering
little cabin in the bowels of the ship and had left her alone.

‘Don’t think de Lancey will be coming for you,’ he had sneered.
‘I tipped off those useless redcoats—again—and this time the Riding Officer
will have him in chains.’ He’d leaned against the cabin doorway and his
insolent bloodshot gaze had appraised her from head to foot. ‘Perhaps you’ll be
more use to me financially than you are for anything else,’ he’d said. ‘The
crew can have their pleasure with you once you’ve stopped throwing up, and then
I’ll sell you back to your friends.’

After that Lucinda was happy to be as sick as she possibly could.

She had no idea of how much time had passed, but eventually the
seasickness abated and she started to feel a little less faint. In her head,
round and around, drummed the thought that Daniel must have been captured this
time, taken by Owen Chance’s men, and she did not know what made her feel more
despairing, the thought of what might happen to him or the certainty of what
was going to happen to her. She lay down on the bare wooden floor and curled up
tightly, trying desperately to think of a way out of her hideous situation.
Norton had said that she might be more use to him financially than any other
way, and that could only mean that he intended to ransom her—but who would pay?
Who would pay for the return of a penniless governess who was already ruined by
running off with a notorious privateer?

It was a little while before her misery receded sufficiently for
her to realise that the ship was not merely at anchor but actually underway.
Although there were no portholes in her little prison, she could tell that the
movement of the ship was different, and some kind of urgency seemed to have
come over the crew, different from the drunken lassitude she had glimpsed when
Norton had first dragged her on board. The
Saucy Helen
was no
well-drilled ship like the
Defiance
, and Lucinda could hear the sound of
running steps overhead, and shouting that became ever more agitated. And then
the door of her noisome cabin was flung open and Norton burst in, cursing and
swearing.