Master of Paradise (30 page)

They battled fiercely, each bent on the
destruction of the other. Hastings had backed Rodrigo against the
rail, but he leapt up on the banister and kicked Hastings in the
face so he went crashing back into the wall. Rodrigo followed with
a brutal assault. Gabrielle knew the measure of Rodrigo’s
swordplay, for she’d been bested by it herself. But from all that
she could see, as ferociously as he fought, as honed was his skill,
Hastings was matching him stride for stride.

They fought wordlessly for a time, each
concentrating on the battle before him as the cannons continued to
explode and men fought below along the shore. Then, as abruptly as
it had begun, the cannon fire ceased. A deathly stillness settled
over the dawn. For an instant, Rodrigo and Hastings paused, each
sparing a glance out to sea. Rodrigo appeared startled, but a look
of satisfaction settled on Hastings’s features.

“Ah, reinforcements arrive,” Hastings
gloated.

Gabrielle glanced toward the harbor and saw
an alarming sight. A small fleet of Royal Navy ships loomed on the
horizon, headed toward the bay. She estimated seven ships before
her startled gaze sought Rodrigo’s face. It was Admiral Fulton’s
patrol. Sheer chance that he happened to pull into Zanzibar on this
day.

Rodrigo instantly vaulted down from the
balcony. “We have to get to the ships before they box us in,” he
said to her. Then, looking back up at Cullen, he commanded,
“Jump.”

Cullen froze.

Gabrielle called up to him, “Cullen,
jump.”

“That’s a long jump, Gabby,” Hastings
laughed. “I’d say there’s a guaranteed broken leg in that
jump.”

“Don’t listen to him, Cullen.
Jump.
”

“Jump like I did, boy,” Rodrigo ordered.
“Now, or we leave without you.”

Still, Cullen seemed frozen in place.

Gabrielle glanced back at the harbor. The
ships were coming closer. In a matter of minutes it would be too
late to get into the longboats and row to their own vessels.
“What’s the matter with you?” she screamed at her brother. “Just
jump!”

“Gabby, I can’t,” Cullen wailed.

“You can. We’ll catch you. We’ll break your
fall.”

When Cullen merely put his hands over his
eyes, Hastings gave an evil cackle, glorying in his power to
inflict pain. “He never was what the bard called ‘made of sterner
stuff,’ was he?” Cullen turned his back on her.

“You bastard!” she cried.

“No, Gabby, you have that wrong. You and
Cullen are the bastards, remember?”

Rodrigo gazed sternly at the looming ships.
“It’s now or never, boy.”

“Cullen, please. Rodrigo will help you. Just
close your eyes and let yourself fall.”

His face was awash with tears. “I can’t,
Gabby. I want to, but I can’t move!”

She couldn’t believe what was happening. She
stood, stunned, staring up at him. Rodrigo grabbed her arm as
Hastings threw back his head and laughed. In the distance, she
could hear the sound of cannons again as the navy ships fired on
their paltry fleet.

“We have to go,” Rodrigo told her finally as
she dug in her heels.

“I can’t leave him.”

Hastings crowed, “You heard the boy. That
Ashton blood is not to be denied.”

“He’s not going to do it,” Rodrigo said in a
severe growl. “And there’s no time for me to crawl back up and
carry him down.”

“No.” She looked back at Cullen as Rodrigo
dragged her away. She could see the utter helplessness in her
brother’s eyes. He wasn’t coming. “Cullen, please...please...”

She lost track of what happened after that.
Rodrigo towed her away, but she fought him every step, looking
pleadingly into Cullen’s eyes and screaming his name.

Somehow, they made it to the longboat.
Somehow, the men rowed them to the ships. Somehow the sails were
unfurled and they sailed away in time to escape the Royal Navy’s
retribution. In time to see Cullen turn his back and reenter the
sultan’s chamber because he was too afraid to take the step to
freedom.

When they were safely away, Rodrigo came to
her and took her in his arms. But she broke from him, from the
contact that might have soothed. Grabbing the nearest object at
hand, she hurled it across the deck. The unlighted lantern crashed
against the deck, scattering glass in all directions. “How could he
do it!” she screamed. “How could he stand there and refuse our
help? He’s a coward. He’s always been a coward. He
deserves
to stay!”

In the aftermath of her eruption, she
realized they were all looking at her. Every man on deck had
stopped what he was doing and was staring at her as if she’d gone
mad. Her anger and frustration were so intense she didn’t care. If
a hundred lanterns were lined up side by side, she’d have hurled
them all, one by one.

It was a while before Rodrigo tried again. He
gave her time to gather her wits. Then he tentatively joined her
side. She didn’t look at him. Her burning eyes were staring through
the dawn, back toward Zanzibar, where this day both brothers had
betrayed her in their own way.

Gabrielle fell into a dark depression. It
lasted all through the voyage back across the Indian Ocean. All the
time Rodrigo was setting up a new stronghold, fearful that his
escape route to the Amirantes was cut off by the vigilante fleet.
It all passed in a daze. She was numb, incapable of reacting to
anything around her. The carpet of her life had been pulled out
from beneath her, and she had lost the will to pick herself up from
the shambles.

They were on Alphonse, an island just below
the Amirantes, a virtual graveyard of shipwrecks that had met their
fate on its jagged coral reefs. Hulks of brigantines still lay
abandoned on the sandy beach, looming like ghosts from another era.
The island had been nicknamed Dead Man’s Reef by wary sailors. As
such, it made a perfect hideout. It had been years since anyone had
been foolish enough to try to navigate its shoals. Anyone but
Rodrigo, who knew the island well.

The first order of business had been the
building of thatched huts to house everyone. Long barracklike
structures, open on the sides, were erected for the men, who slept
in rows in the sand. A more private hut with walls was constructed
for Gabrielle to share with Rodrigo. But sensing she needed to be
alone, he kept his distance and often worked through the night.

During these weeks, Rodrigo had been
vigorously training men for a new goal: an all-out attack on Mahé.
He was determined that the only way to end this struggle, to wipe
slavery out of his Seychelles once and for all, was a thrust to its
depraved heart. To that end, he was building an armada. More ships
and more men poured into his personal navy every day. Most of them
were either freed slaves or idealists, but a fair number were
experienced seamen who had heard of his audacity and just wanted to
be part of a good fight. As these men filtered in, they were
dispatched to recruit more men and commandeer more ships. Already,
there was an imposing fleet of vessels in the natural harbor of
Alphonse. It was menacing for Gabrielle to see the long row of
masts and rigging bobbing in the tide. It looked like the
preparations for the Battle of Trafalgar.

But one day Rodrigo walked away from this
enormous undertaking and sought Gabrielle out on the beach. She had
taken to spending long hours by herself on the south end of the
island, away from all the hectic activity. It gave her some peace
of mind just to sit in the sand and watch the giant land tortoises
lay their eggs. The gentle leviathans were almost extinct on Mahé
but were everywhere on this island, some of them measuring four
feet in width. They seemed to have no fear of her. Once in a while,
one would turn and spit at her, but it seemed to be more for show
than anything else. She kept her gaze fixed on one as Rodrigo
advanced.

Without speaking, he sat down beside her,
using his finger to draw a little frigate bird in the sand.

“I think it’s time we had a talk about
Cullen.”

“Rodrigo, please—”

“It was a big jump. He didn’t have it in
him.”

“You told me once that by overprotecting
someone, you cut him off at the roots. Is that what I did with
Cullen?”

“Perhaps.”

“But he so obviously
needed
protecting. The Ashton men—”

“A pox on the Ashton men. You had
expectations and Cullen met them.”

“What do you mean?”

“He grew up knowing the Ashton men were weak.
No one has to be a slave to his heritage.”

She raised a brow. “Really? Look at you.”

“That’s different. I embrace my role in life
willingly.”

She thought a moment then said, “So what do I
do now? Give up on him?”

“The best thing you can do for him—the only
thing—is to let him go. And see what happens.”

She saw the inevitability of it all and made
her decision. “Then I let him go.”

“I’m proud of you.”

She didn’t respond. He, too, was quiet for
some time. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, heavily inflected
by his Portuguese accent, the way it was when he cared deeply about
what he was saying. “I think you’re ready to tell me your
secret.”

Her throat closed in on her. “My secret?” she
croaked.

“The one you spoke of before. The one
Hastings promised not to tell.”

She flinched as if he’d hit her.

“He did promise, didn’t he?”

She dropped her head to her knees. Rodrigo
was trying so hard to be understanding, but there was no way any
man would understand.

He tried again. “Didn’t you point out to me
how damaging it was of me not to trust you? That night before I
sailed from England...if I’d trusted you, things would be
different. I could have spared us both a great deal of pain.”

A single tear trickled down her cheek.
Mechanically, she brushed it aside. “I can’t tell you.”

“Please, Gabé. Don’t make the same mistake I
made. Trust me enough to know that nothing you tell me will affect
my love for you. Nothing can make me leave you again.”

“You don’t know that. You imagine what you
will, but whatever you imagine it’s not as bad as what happened. It
can’t be. No one could imagine—”

When she broke off in a choke, he gave her a
moment before asking softly, “Did he rape you?”

She jerked away from him, unable to bear his
patient sympathy a moment more. “No,” she sobbed. “How much better
if he had. At least then...”

“At least then...?”

She whirled on him, angry now at being forced
into this, the one thing she’d hoped never to tell a soul. This
secret, this wretched secret that Hastings—damn him to hell!—had
sworn never to reveal.

“All right, you want to hear it? Then hear it
in all its ugliness. At least if he’d raped me I might be able to
live with it. I could have hated him for his brutality. But as it
was...”

“How was it?”

She cast her mind back to that fateful night
when, devastated by Rodrigo’s cold rejection, a younger Gabrielle
had run from the boat up through the sloping fields of apple trees
to hide herself in the barn of Westbury Grange. There, throwing
herself into a pile of hay, she’d cried her heart out as the horses
had whinnied softly in sympathy. She could still smell the tart
odor of manure, the sweetness of the hay beneath her wet cheek. She
was seventeen and she’d just lost, not for the first time, all
she’d loved in life.

“I must have fallen asleep,” she told
Rodrigo, seeing it all in her mind’s eye. “Something woke me. I
remember feeling as if I’d been drugged. The pain, after my short
sleep, was heavy and oppressive as I recalled our parting. I
thought I couldn’t bear it. Then I heard a soft movement. Someone
was there, with me in the dark. I realized what must have woken me.
It must have been the opening and closing of the barn door. It was
pitch-black. I couldn’t see who it was. But he came to me as if he
had cat’s eyes, with no hesitation, and took me in his arms as if
he had the right. And I remember thinking he smelled of the sea.
And—”

She was choking on her tears.

“I thought it was you. I thought you couldn’t
bear the pain of how we’d parted any more than I. That you’d turned
about on the road to London and had returned to confide your plans
in me after all. To have one last night of love before you sailed
away. One beautiful memory to sustain us both.”

For a time, she couldn’t talk. The tears
scalded her throat so that she was sure she couldn’t go on. But he
said nothing. She heard nothing but the sea rolling in to shore and
an unearthly silence coming from the man she loved.

“I loved him that night with all the passion
and anguish and love I wanted to give to you. And, feeling renewed,
feeling strengthened, feeling that I could, after all, face your
departure, I fell asleep in his arms.
In what I thought were
your arms!
”

Needing a focus, she turned to watch the
giant tortoise that was creeping across the sand with infinitesimal
strides. Still, Rodrigo said nothing. She almost wished he would.
She wished he’d bellow his outrage. Anything to halt this awful
story before it was too late.

But of course it was
already
too
late.

Gasping for courage, she went on. What did it
matter now? “The next thing I knew, a small shaft of sunlight was
awakening me. I remember opening my eyes and looking at it and
thinking how beautiful it was. How lovely to wake up in your arms.
I’d never done that, and who knew when I would again? I turned
toward you with a feeling of bittersweet contentment to kiss you
awake. And realized with a—” Her voice cracked. The carefully honed
voice of the actress, which was trained as an instrument never to
fail her. “It was so horrible. How can I tell you? How can you ever
conceive the horror of it? Of thinking I’d spent the night making
love with you, and finding...”