The Blue Diamond (The Razor's Edge Book 1) (17 page)

Chapter
Eighteen

Just before sunrise, Maddox
blinked his blurry eyes and focused them on the warm, naked body pressed
closely against him. He believed he had awakened naturally by some stroke of
luck, until he heard the light tapping at Ivory’s door. He jerked to move from
the bed, which caused her to stir slightly.
 
He slowed his movements and slid quietly away from her to answer the
door in the last few moments of candlelight.

He remembered what he’d told
Richard and tapped lightly three times, and the door unlocked and creaked open.
“Sir, it’s nearly sun up,” Richard whispered through the six inch gap the naked
Maddox had allowed. He only nodded in reply and pressed the door closed. He
turned and pulled on his pants.
 
He took
one last look at Ivory’s smooth shoulders and her long, pale hair tossed and
tangled against the pillow, before following Richard’s lead back to his cabin
in the dark.

Ivory’s eyes were wide open
in the darkness, and she clutched the sheet to her body tightly as she, too,
stood from the cot. Her steps were soft and light as she crossed to the tea
table.
 
She blew out the stub of burning
wax and crawled back into her cot, falling fast asleep. A short time later, she
awoke to the usual rustling noises of the ship, and a short time thereafter,
the eerie silence of still water.

She sprang up and stared out
the small window, even though she didn’t have to do so in order to know the
ship was not moving. The storm, now hours behind them, had left nothing in its
wake but a stifling heat and not a breath of wind. Richard’s familiar knock
came with the promise of fresh water and food, and she snatched her robe from
the floor, tying it tightly around her.

“Yes, Richard; I’m awake.”

He turned the key in the lock,
but when the door opened, Master Green stood before her. He wasn’t carrying
anything but the expression of a frustrated and bewildered man. “Richard is
sleeping. It appears he was awake most of the night, and the Captain has
allowed him a few hours respite…but you already knew that, did you not?”

Ivory turned her back to
him, realizing that, in her robe, she might as well be naked. She sat down on
the cot and covered herself with the sheet.

“Are you going to answer me,
Madame?”

“You know more than I do,
sir. I was only hoping for fresh water and something to eat.”

“Of course…what more could
you possibly need, correct?”

“Why are you here? Did you
come down here just to berate me?” Ivory asked, pulling the sheet tightly
around her and looking away.

“I gain no pleasure in such
things.”

“Then, why? I’m sure you
have more important things to do, so why don’t you…”

“I want to help you!” he
shouted at her in a whisper, picking the chair up and sitting down to face her.
“I told you, Maddox is my friend as well as my captain. I respect the man. I do
not always agree with his choices—this barter, for one —but I cannot and will
not defy him. However, if you want your freedom, sooner or later you are going
to have to tell the truth about what was on that ship when you took it.”

“I told you, there was
nothing on that ship other than what was in the log.”

“I offer you my help, and
still you lie. What sense does it make to die when you know you can save
yourself? This is insanity, Ivory. No, it is suicide and…”

“Maddox loves me. I know he
does. Yes, maybe I’m insane to believe that in only these few days he’s fallen
in love with me, but God help me, I know I love him. He believes I’m his
prisoner only because he’s viewing this through a spyglass. I’m seeing it as
far and wide as the horizon.”

“You make no sense.”

“Master Green, you know me.
You know what I can do, as well as what I’ve done. Of course stories out here
are stretched and turned to lore, but you and I both know that I absolutely did
capture and take the
Demon Sea
from
Barclay that early spring morning back in Charles Towne.
 
You also know that my ladies and I took out
several of his best men. Everything that came after was much the same, but as
we also both know, it’s impossible to forget that fork in the road which twists
your fate. We donned our slops and took to the sea, and this life, as if we
were born into it. After seeing it all through your own eyes, ask yourself if
you believe I am, or have ever been, anyone’s prisoner.”

“Then why do you stay? If
you could have taken your freedom back at any moment, what keeps you here?”

“I…I don’t know. To tell the
truth, at first I was in no condition to save myself, but I was strong enough
by the second day. I could have saved myself the night Maddox and I…well, of
course, waking up bound to a bed certainly wasn’t my finest hour.”

“Ugh! You are worse than
him. Why do I stick out my neck?”

“I’ve never before allowed
any man inside my head, or my heart.”

“I can assure you, Madame,”
Green said, looking about the dank and dingy room, “this is not love.”

“And how would I know? You
say these things as if I would know love when I saw it. I may not know what
love is supposed to look like, but I know something turned in me, as I believe
it did in Maddox.
  
I want to, at the
very least, give him the chance to save me himself. I believe that, even if it
comes to the last minute, he will do the right thing.”

Green pushed the chair back
away from Ivory in frustration and leaned forward, staring deeply into her
eyes. “You, my dear, are even crazier than I feared. However, strangely enough,
the storm has left us adrift with no wind. It would seem God has bought you a
few more hours.”

“How can you be so sure that
I’ve only hours?
 
We could sit here for
days.”

“I know these waters well. I
am certain that by this afternoon we will once again be on our way. I will pray
for your crazy plan, but for your sake, I hope you have another—although
knowing you as I have, I am sure you do.”

Green stood and left,
finding Richard outside the door with Ivory’s breakfast. Green took the tray
from Richard and sat it on the tea table. “You have perhaps thirty six hours
left. If I were you, I would reconsider your current plan and go directly to
whatever the other may be. Your head is like a lump of coal, but Maddox—his is
as hard as a diamond.”

Ivory swallowed hard and sat
silently until the door was locked, then cleaned her plate and washed from head
to toe. She opened the trunk Zara had packed, pulling from it one of the
dresses she was to wear to her hanging, and laid it out on the cot. Doubts
began to fill her mind, and she questioned her belief that she did, in fact,
love Maddox. She asked herself what it was that so set him apart from any other
man who’d made advances toward her, but no matter how she pressed herself for
some logical reason, there was none to be found. The only real evidence that
she loved him was how she felt when he took her in his arms, and the irony of
how safe and secure she felt there. Those were two emotional places she’d never
been with another human since the day of the Spanish raid—the day she grew up.

  
Suddenly, something remarkable happened.
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks.
 
Within a few moments, she was curled in a
ball on the cot, sobbing. The sadness that washed over her seemed to come from
a solitary thought that, for the past several days, she had refused to allow
into her mind—
what if he doesn’t save me
?

That one question of
complete doubt put her out on the edge of her life, and through her tears, she
finally asked herself if this uncertainty truly was worth risking her life.
Regardless of their passion and the depth of those foreign pleasures that
extended far beyond the bounds of her flesh, she was asking herself if this
man, or any man for that matter, was worth dying for.

With a deep breath, she sat
up, pressed her face through the open window, and took an even deeper and more
satisfying breath.
 
The sea had not
failed her. As long as she gave it her respect, trusted its currents, and did
not try to beat back against it, from the crystal blue of its shallows to the
deep cobalt of its fathoms, they had an understanding which these nearly ten
years was never broken. Even given the opportunity to swallow her up, it
carried her on—something no man had ever done without wanting something in
return.

Once she’d filled her lungs
sufficiently, the tears stopped. She sprang from the cot and reached into the
trunk again, tossing gown after gown into the air.
 
Suddenly, she stopped. Beneath the layers of pastel
taffeta and lace she discovered the old, ragged slops in which she had been
found. Now washed and neatly folded in the bottom, they were hidden beneath
clean stockings and a shawl. Zara had thought of everything. Little did Ivory
know the extent of what Zara had planned, until she pulled the linen shirt,
cotton breeches, and even her belt, boots, and vest from the trunk, and caught
her reflection in the gleam of a dagger lying nestled in a red silk sash at the
bottom of the trunk.

She paused as the emotional
reminiscence of a similar dagger, clasped in Maddox’s right hand as it sliced
through her gown to take her for the first time, swept through her mind. The
memory of his wanton lust spun through her like a tempest, and then swiftly
blew itself out, leaving her body with a heavy sigh. Regardless of what Maddox
believed, nothing had ever happened to Ivory that she did not invite or permit.
She was tempted to reduce him to the level of a poor choice of adventure, but
decided that, on the remote chance he’d actually felt what he claimed, she’d
allow him one final chance to have her—before striking him from her life
forever. This twisted misadventure wasn’t her first, but she consciously
decided she was through with any man who had to struggle to love her, and even
worse, was too encumbered by his own demons to prove it.

She quickly packed
everything back in its place, neatly arranging the final bead-encrusted gown on
top and closing the trunk, but she clutched the dagger tightly in her right
hand and pointed it toward the open window.

 
“Thirty six hours of which I’ll allow him
twenty. Upon that hour, has he not proven himself worthy, I’ll take my leave
out of you, window.
 
Upon Saturday
morning, when he rises, he’ll be the one to face the noose, empty-handed. Until
then, I’ll withhold my heart, and should he be that man worthy of having it,
I’ll happily surrender.
 
But should he
not, I’ll happily watch him hang in my place.”

The key turned in the lock,
and she heard Richard’s unchanged boyish voice as he exchanged words with
another man. Quickly, she hid the dagger behind the cot and, again, wrapped
herself up in the sheet to await his entrance. “Madame, I’m here for the tray.”

“Yes…I’m through.”

“Will there be anythin’
else?”

“Will you ask the Captain, since
this will be my last night alive, if perhaps I could have just a bit of rum, or
beer? If not, then just some fresh water would be fine.”

“Aye, Madame.”
 
Richard shook his head and quietly turned
back and spoke again, “Do ye want ta’ die, Madame?”

“Well, of course I
don’t.
 
But, I have no choice.”

Richard sat down the tray
and turned and looked at her sadly. “But what of last night?” he whispered.

“Young man, were you
spying?”

“No, Madame!
 
But, I’m twelve years old, ye know? I’m not a
child. I know what goes on with men and women behind closed doors.”

“And?” Ivory asked, holding
back a laugh.

“Between us—ye and me that
is, somethin’ just smells foul about that. I mean, ta’ share a lady’s bed,
‘specially a lady like yerself, and then just let her hang, well…that’s all I
got ta’ say about it.” Richard pursed his lips hard and sighed, then scrunched
them to one side of his face.

“Come here, Richard,” Ivory
said, waving him towards her, and then taking his dirty hands into hers. “Don’t
ever lose this part of yourself that knows wrong from right. The world will try
to steal it from you, a bit at a time, but stand up to it and listen to that
voice that steers you straight. Promise?” Ivory asked, lifting his face by the
chin.