Devil's Embrace (17 page)

“Cassandra!”

She turned her head and saw the earl at the railing. The next instant, he stiffened and dove into the water. His head cleared the surface much too close to her.

“Fiends seize you!” she yelled at him, and inadvertently gulped in a mouthful of water. She sputtered and coughed, aware that she was wasting valuable time. She ignored the burning in her constricted throat and stroked with all her strength away from him, toward shore.

A powerful arm closed about her hips, pulling her inexorably back and downward. Water closed over her head, and
for an endless moment, she was locked against him in silent combat. She tried to kick free of his hold, but he drew her against his chest and bore her to the surface.

“You are insane, my lord. Let me go.” She struggled wildly against him, striking his chest, kicking her booted feet against his thighs. Suddenly his arms loosened and she wriggled free.

“Cassandra.”

Her name sounded barely above a low whisper and she flipped about to face him. To her horror, she saw that the water between them was red with blood. She gasped aloud. His head disappeared beneath the surface of the calm water. She saw him struggling, his arms thrashing weakly. He did not have the strength to bring his face above water.

She turned frantic eyes to the yacht. She saw Scargill, Mr. Donnetti, and half a dozen other sailors lowering a longboat. They would never reach him in time. He would drown.

“You fool,” she yelled at him. He floated near the surface, face down, in a widening pool of his own blood.

She swam back to him and clutched him under his arms, but she did not have the strength to raise his face above the water. She locked her arm beneath his chin and pulled him back against her chest, forcing his head back and up.

She looked frantically toward the approaching longboat. Her legs felt leaden, but she forced them to keep pumping. She feared she would drown with him if they did not hurry.

“Row harder,” Mr. Donnetti shouted as he flung off his cloak and boots. He was on the point of diving overboard when Scargill stopped him.

“Nay, Francesco, she may lose her hold.” A slight smile broke his grim expression. He could hear Cassie cursing the earl as they approached, berating him in broken sobs for his stupidity, his ridiculous stubbornness.

Mr. Donnetti muttered under his breath, “It makes no sense. She shoots him, then saves his life.”

“It would not be in her character to do otherwise,” Scargill said, but Mr. Donnetti paid him no attention.

The earl stirred.

“Hold still, damn you, else we’ll both drown.”

Mr. Donnetti and several other men slipped over the side of the longboat and freed Cassie of her burden. It took them some moments to pull him into the boat. She heard the earl’s voice, weak, but fiercely commanding. “Save her, Francesco, quickly, before she loses her strength.”

Mr. Donnetti grunted and grabbed Cassie none too gently around her waist. He lifted her toward the boat and several hands closed about her arms, hauling her upward.

Cassie crouched down at the stern of the boat and wrapped her shivering arms about her knees. A sailor threw a cloak over her shoulders, but it did not warm her.

The men huddled around the earl, and no one seemed to pay her the slightest attention. If she had had the strength, she might have slipped over the side of the boat before any of them noticed. She tried to see the earl, but Scargill and Mr. Donnetti were crouched in front of him, blocking her view. She heard Scargill tell him not to move.

Four sailors, two on each side of the narrow longboat, rowed furiously back toward the yacht. Cassie gazed toward
The Cassandra
and marveled at how quickly the sails had been lowered. As they drew nearer she could hear the grating sound of the iron-linked anchor line being dropped. She strained forward at the sound of the earl’s voice.

“Dammit, Scargill, none of you is strong enough to carry me up the ladder. I’ll climb it myself. Francesco, stay close to me.”

She could not believe that he would try to climb the ladder himself. She wanted to yell at him not to be such a fool, but his foot was already on the bottom rung, his face forbidding in his determination. She watched with held breath as the earl slowly and painfully pulled himself upward. A cry tore from her throat when he nearly lost his grip halfway up the ladder.

Joseph drew a relieved breath once the earl was finally hauled over the railing onto the deck. He turned to her and said crisply, “Now it is your turn, madonna.”

She shook her head mutely, for her arms felt like useless sticks of wood hanging at her sides. He misunderstood her. “I’ll not let you escape, madonna, and you haven’t now a pistol to shoot me.”

She licked her lips. “I cannot, Joseph.”

He studied her exhausted face and, without another word, hauled her over his shoulder and climbed the rope ladder. He set her down upon the deck. When she did not move, he said sharply, “Go to the captain, madonna. He’ll not be easy until he knows you are safe.”

Cassie entered the cabin quietly. The earl was stretched his full length on the bed, gritting his teeth against the pain as Scargill and Mr. Donnetti stripped off his wet clothing.

“Where is she, Scargill?”

There was an undercurrent of panic in his voice. She walked quickly forward into his line of vision. “I am here, my lord.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and closed his eyes.

Scargill straightened over the earl, his face grim. “Ye’ve lost a lot of blood, my lord, and the bullet must be drawn out.”

“Very well,” the earl said, without opening his eyes. “Get it over with.” Blood trickled through the black mat of hair on his chest. She felt an unwonted surge of guilt.

Dilson suddenly burst through the door.

“Captain, it’s the pirate, Khar El-Din. We spotted him before we brought you on board. Now he’s demanding to come aboard!”

“That bloody bastard,” Mr. Donnetti exclaimed, turning sharply.

The earl turned his head on the pillow and said calmly to Dilson, “If our friend wishes to pay us a visit, we’ll not say nay. Francesco, go welcome him and bring him here. He’ll not accept less, you know.”

“But, my lord—” Scargill began.

“Enough, Scargill. Cover me, I cannot greet my friend naked. And bind my wound. Let him smell blood, but not see it.”

Cassie took a shaking step back, her eyes flying to the earl’s face. A pirate. The earl had told her that such men still existed, but she had not believed him.

“Cassandra.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

His eyes swept over her wet clothes, the breeches that
clung tightly to her thighs and hips. He could make out her nipples pressing against the thin white shirt. Although her hair hung in tangled wet masses about her pale face, it seemed to make her all the more alluring. He felt a shaft of fear.

“Listen to me,
cara,
we haven’t much time. Wrap yourself from throat to toe in a cloak. You will sit very quietly, your eyes down. You will keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me?”

She nodded mutely, though she did not understand.

“Quickly, Scargill, cover her. Cassandra, we are not in England. Trust me in this.” He felt the pain drawing at his senses, and drew a deep, steadying breath.

“Do as his lordship has told you, madonna.”

Cassie pulled the satin cloak he offered her about her and sat down.

Her eyes flew from Scargill’s set face at the sound of heavy boots overhead. They drew nearer, sounding in her ears like the staccato beat of marching men.

A deep booming voice came through the open doorway, and a man entered whom Cassie would never forget. For an instant, her eyes locked to his, eyes so dazzling blue and piercing that they seemed hardly human. He was like a bull, she thought, short, but mammoth in girth. His blond hair was thick and long, bleached with streaks of white. His bare arms were thick with bulging muscle. He wore a loose red leather vest and baggy breeches that were held at his waist by a wide scarlet sash.

She dropped her eyes quickly to the floor.

“
Buon Giorno, Antonio! Godo di verderla!
” His voice held the swaggering tone of a man who knew himself to be in command.

The earl answered easily, in Italian. “And I am glad to see you, my friend. To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”

Khar El-Din waved a negligent hand, pulled up a chair and straddled it. His fierce eyes slewed in Cassie’s direction and she felt as though he could see through her cloak, even through her wet clothing.

“Surely there need be no special reason, among friends,
Antonio. I see that you are not well. You have suffered an accident?”

“I still live, as you see. Scargill, fetch our guest a glass of wine.”

“Ever gracious, Antonio, ever gracious. I see that you have another guest.”

Cassie forced herself to keep her head down, to pretend that she did not understand.

“Not a guest, but my wife. She is English and of course does not comprehend our language.”

Khar El-Din took the proffered glass from Scargill, tipped back his lion’s head, and downed the entire contents. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and grinned hugely. “So my lord earl finally ties himself to one woman. She is lovely, my friend, though she looks quite wet and uncomfortable. My girls will be bereft at their loss. Zabetta, in particular, will miss her English stallion.”

“I trust you will convey my regrets.”

“Trust me to console them, Antonio, though it will take me many nights. But my friend, you really do not look at all well. My men told me the strangest story, so bizarre that I must needs see for myself. A young girl diving most proficiently from your yacht to be followed by you, Antonio, your chest stained bright with your own blood. How, my friend, can I avoid drawing the most distasteful of conclusions? The mighty earl felled by a mere girl. Assist me to understand, my friend, why a wife would shoot her husband and dive into the sea to escape him.” He paused a moment, his eyes again upon Cassie. “If you had but left her in the sea, I would have been most delighted to save her and teach her the error of her ways.”

Cassie thought that the pirate must hear the furious pounding of her heart. What a fool she had been. There would have been no escape for her. The earl had saved her, not she the earl.

“Your generosity, as always, my friend, moves me greatly. But a wife must always be her husband’s responsibility. Surely you have enough wives to occupy your attention without concerning yourself with my stupid affairs.”

“Ah, Antonio, you have the smooth tongue of the
diplomat. You say everything so fluently, yet there is no meaning to be drawn. Could it be that you do not please your English wife in the marriage bed? I have heard it said that your English ladies are as cold as the northern winters. You carry the blood of your Ligurian ancestors, passionate blood, demanding blood. Can it be that you have terrified your lady wife with that huge shaft of yours?”

“I cannot believe that my prowess in the marriage bed can be of such interest to you, my friend, you who nightly may choose from so many beautiful women.”

Khar El-Din threw back his head, his mane of thick hair swirling down his back, and laughed deeply. He pointed a gnarled finger at the earl and wagged it. “I grow old and exhausted in their service. Yet, Antonio, I have not in my fifty years been shot by one of them. Let me inquire of your lady wife why she holds you in such dislike.”

Cassie felt his pale blue eyes resting intently upon her, and kept her head down. She was startled into looking up into his leathered face when he said in slow, precise English, “Give me your attention, girl. Your husband is a gentleman and thus skirts my every question. You had the courage to shoot him, and I must ask myself why. If it is your wish to leave him, my pretty one, you have but to tell me. I will willingly help you. You really do not have to render your lord husband dead, you know.”

Cassie licked her dry lips. She did not look at the earl, for she knew that he could not help her. She was aware that in her fear she was rocking slightly back and forth in her chair. An idea came to her. She said in a vague, soft voice, “My husband but tries to protect me, sir.”

Khar El-Din leaned toward her, his eyes glittering. “ Protect you, my beautiful child?”

“Not from you, sir, but from myself.”

Her voice held a peculiar singsong quality that made the pirate start.

Cassie felt a wet strand of hair fall over her cheek. In a slow, deliberate motion, she licked at the strand until it fell into her mouth.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes going wide and vacant. “He does not wish others to know of my madness. He promised
many years ago that he would wed me. He saved me from Bedlam, sir, by taking me from England.”

Khar El-Din shifted angrily in his chair and spat at the earl, “What inane jest is this? Do you take me for a fool?”

The earl only nodded, wearily.

Cassie wrapped her arms about her waist and began to rock in huge dips in her chair. She mumbled an old nursery rhyme from her childhood.

Khar El-Din swiveled back in his chair toward her and she saw doubt narrow his eyes.

“I am not always so, sir,” she said in a high child’s voice. “They called me a witch, a witch with evil powers, for I made a man die because he dared to touch me. I cannot be certain that it was I who was responsible, but he died so quickly afterward, choking to death over his wine.”

Khar El-Din thrust his empty wine glass into Scargill’s hand. He drew back from her, and Cassie saw in his eyes that he believed her to be evil, mad. He rose quickly and stared down at the earl’s drawn face. “You are a fool, Antonio, with your English honor. Let me drown her for you, ’twill most likely save your life. I knew a woman like her once, afflicted with the same madness. I had her stoned before she could devour men’s souls.”

The earl’s growing pain kept the tempted smile from his face. “Nay, my friend, as I told you, she is my responsibility. I will take her to Genoa and hide her away. No one need ever know.”

The pirate looked at her once more, and she forced a wide smile to her lips. How could such a beautiful, innocent face cloak madness? He shook his head and strode to the door.