The Pirate and the Puritan (28 page)

“My name is Felicity Kendall, Mr.
McCulla. After my father’s reputation has been cleared, I can assure you that
you will no longer bear the title of captain. I’ll see to other accommodations
for your son.” She got to her feet, dismissing McCulla and his vulgarity.

She turned to leave, but
McCulla’s burst of laughter stopped her. “I should have recognized that snippy
tone. Looks like you sold your pa out for a roll with the devil himself. I
heard the ladies lift their skirts at a wink from
El Diablo
, but
Kendall’s pinch-faced daughter—why bother?”

She stomped back to the grate. “
El
Diablo’s
not on this ship, so stop frightening your child and your crew.”

“Well, the captain sure ain’t
‘Lord Christian.’ You’re not stupid enough to think you’re humping some fancy
lord, are you? Nope, you’re nothing but
El Diablo’s
whore, and a traitor
to your own father,” goaded McCulla.

“You’re a drunkard. That’s why
they took command of your ship away from you in the first place. You’re
probably drunk now.”

“This is the first time I’ve been
sober in ten years, and I can’t say I like it much. I can tell you the honest
truth, though, and I’ll enjoy that. Your father’s going to hang while you’re
slutting around with the one who caused it. Maybe you’re the one who’s drunk to
think
El Diablo’s
not going to kill you when he’s through with you. Just
like he killed Marley and his missus.”

Felicity swallowed hard.
McCulla’s horrible accusations made her heart race. “You don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

McCulla’s slow smile did nothing
to remove her unease. “He likes to cozy up to his victims first. Uses ’em for
all they’re worth before he does them in. That’s what happened to Marley once
El
Diablo
figured out he was on to him.”

Felicity stiffened, refusing to
let this fool see her tremble. He unnerved her with his obscenities, nothing
more. “You’re a liar. You’re just trying to cover up for your own traitorous
behavior. You deserted the only man in Barbados who didn’t openly scorn you.”

McCulla’s blessed silence assured
her she’d finally gained the upper hand. But before she reached the light that
marked the companionway, the captured man’s words reached out and stopped her
as effectively as a tug on her skirt.

“The real Duke of Foxmoor is on
Barbados right now. Said Marley wrote him about a pirate passing himself off as
one of his kin. I might not be as smart as you or your back-stabbing lover, but
I don’t have to be to know who killed him.”

She straightened and backed away.
The sensation that had begun as a nagging dread in her belly spread up her
spine. Doubt turned to cold fear, making her slightly dizzy. There was an
explanation. McCulla’s bitterness at being captured prompted him to goad her.
To lie.

“And it wouldn’t be much of a
feat to guess who’s gonna be next,” yelled McCulla at her back.

She forced herself not to run. To
calmly shake off the sensation of betrayal. This time it would be different.
Erik and Drew were nothing alike. They were not both good-for-nothing liars. If
McCulla was to be believed, Drew was infinitely worse. Diabolical, in fact.
Even as she tried to remember the reasons she should trust Drew, memories of
another deception chilled her to the bone.

***

Solomon slipped into the dim
cabin and shut the door. “Felicity, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice sounded
strange and distant to her own ears. She sat quietly on a crate in a shadowed
corner. The fingers of her right hand dug into the back of her palm as they lay
clasped in her lap.

Solomon’s eyebrows knitted and he
frowned. He glanced at Avery Sneed, who still lay unconscious. “Has Avery
gotten worse?”

She concentrated on speaking
calmly and evenly. “I checked the bandage only a moment ago. The bleeding seems
to have stopped.”

“Let’s go, then.” Solomon
appeared to be scrutinizing her stiff movements, yet thankfully he withheld any
comment. “To distract Drew, I had to convince him he’d made a mistake in his
navigation. I wondered if your patience would hold out that long. I must say
I’m surprised.”

She had no idea if it had been
mere minutes or an eternity since Solomon had first left. A thick fog had descended
around her. No matter how many times her heart assured her that her sense of
disorientation would soon dissipate, her head argued that what the lifting mist
would reveal would be worse. Had she been speeding blindly toward a precipice
from the moment Drew entered her life?

She had gone over every one of
McCulla’s words. Everything coming from his filthy mouth could be dismissed if
not for the reason Drew’s father unexpectedly arrived on Barbados. Drew had
mentioned he’d found out about his charade but failed to say how.

Solomon turned. “Are you sure
you’re all right? You’re pale.”

“I’m fine,” she said too quickly.
“Maybe just a little queasy. There was a lot of blood.”

“Can you make it to the cabin? We
have to hurry.”

Calling up a weak smile, she nodded.
He started back down the corridor. She followed swiftly to keep him from
questioning her further. Her composure hung by a gossamer thread.

She tried to remember every last
detail of the handbill she’d seen concerning
El Diablo
at the Linleys’
party. That particular part of McCulla’s tale didn’t make sense. How could Drew
be
El Diablo
? Drew had not been the man in the drawing, or surely she
would have noticed a resemblance. At the time, she would have been more than
eager to point out any similarities. She had detested Drew’s fictitious Lord
Christian from the moment he opened his arrogant mouth. The silly powder on his
face and hair had rendered the Drew she had come to know unrecognizable. With
that thought, her buoying hope sank.

A vague image of the crude sketch
resurrected itself. The eyes were different. Wild dark hair and a crooked Roman
nose might be similar, but the rough look men attain while at sea might account
for the similarities. Struggling to remember
El Diablo’s
face as it was
portrayed in the drawing faded the image rather than clarifying it. She just
wasn’t sure.

The door closed behind her, and
she couldn’t recall the words she’d just spoken to Solomon. Grateful to finally
be alone, she paced the room, giving her anxiety free rein.

She wanted to believe Drew
incapable of the duplicity McCulla insinuated, but years of cynicism had grown
too powerful to be ignored. If only she had one thing to hold on to, one small
clue to sway her in Drew’s favor, she would stamp out her doubts and trust him
unconditionally. He had brought light to her forgotten heart. She could not
stand to be thrust back into darkness.

Looking for anything to ease her
mind, she opened the cabinet where Drew kept his navigational instruments. She
unrolled a few maps and peeked through cases holding the devices Hugh had shown
her, but found nothing to reassure her. Pulling open several drawers garnered
the same results.

Something she’d heard about
El
Diablo
back on Barbados congealed in her mind. A flag.
El Diablo
had
a distinctive flag. Of its own accord, her gaze drifted to the trunk where Drew
held his bounty of colors. Without bothering to put away the maps and
instruments she’d disturbed, she drifted to the trunk and knelt in front of it.
A lock she hadn’t remembered there before dangled from the lid’s latch,
taunting her gullibility. For the first time since her mistake with Erik, she
planned to prove that disjointed voice wrong.

The key would be too hard to
find. Instead, she hunted for an object small enough to fit into the lock.
Hairpins would have done the trick if she had any. She’d perfected her talent
as a lock pick early in her childhood. The idea of a locked door or chest had
always tormented her curiosity.

The long pick she used to hold
her hair might be slender enough to squeeze past the lock. She retrieved the
wooden fid from her belongings. The tool narrowly fit. In a matter of minutes,
she sprang the lock.

She flung open the lid and
unfurled three flags in a frenzy. Her gaze barely passed over the Union Jack’s
red cross. She registered the standard of Portugal with merely a glance. The
third flag’s country she couldn’t recall, but the blue background and yellow
cross posed no apparent threat to Drew’s character—unless she considered how
easily Drew changed allegiances—but she could ignore that. She had thus far.

When she brought the fourth flag
out of the trunk, she paused before revealing what lay inside its folds. Even
in its tight triangle shape, she could see this flag was different from the
others. The background was solid black. A portion of what looked to be a heart
dripped red. She tried to convince herself that the shape only looked like a
heart and the drops blood because of her state of mind. That she would find
evidence against Drew in this form was too ironic to be believed.

If she put the flag away and
confronted Drew with McCulla’s lies, the next time she picked up this
particular flag, she’d find nothing but a red sun spitting sparks or some other
strange design she hadn’t expected. Would a person in love, if she were capable
of such an emotion, insist on evidence that her lover was not a cold-blooded
murderer?

As much as Felicity wanted to be
that trusting, confident woman, she wasn’t. Not yet. Doubt still had a foothold
and picked that moment to sprout dark tendrils to wrap around her heart.

Felicity closed her eyes and
unfurled the flag with a hard flick of her wrists. Never in her life had she
longed to be more wrong. When she opened her eyes, the image on the flag danced
in triumph. The white skeleton with pointed tail and ears skewered a bleeding
heart with the longest, sharpest sword Felicity had ever seen.

She clutched the flag to her
chest and closed her eyes. The devil had hit his mark again.

The rattle of a key in the door
jerked Felicity out of her waking nightmare. A quick glance around the room
revealed open drawers and scattered instruments. Unfurled flags lay stretched
out around her like fallen soldiers in crisp uniforms. Whoever opened the door
would instantly recognize something was amiss. For her own protection, she
should hide what she’d discovered. Her soul might be ravaged as thoroughly as
the room, but that would be her secret alone. She forced herself to stand, and
realized she still clutched the damning flag.

Drew entered with a dinner tray
balanced on his arm, and any sort of halfway intelligent plan evaporated with
her breath. He looked like the man she had fallen in love with, and only her
fiercest inner voice could stop her from going to him. She needed him more than
ever, but the man she thought she could depend on above all others had turned
out to be her worst enemy.

His bewildered assessment of the
damage to his cabin provided the chance for her to swipe her tear-stained face
with the flag she held. She stopped, forgetting that what she held was more
than mere cloth and thread. It was her worst fears materialized, about herself
and Drew. She glanced up at him hoping to see the devil-like skeleton beneath
the handsome rouge’s facade, but all looking at him did was make her heart beat
faster than its already frenzied staccato. How dare his presence make her feel
anything at all. Blessed anger began to pump through her veins.

He set down the tray on the
pedestal table. “Lose something?”

His cool sarcasm hardened her. He
wore simple black breeches and a white linen shirt opened loosely at the neck.
A black ribbon that tied back his hair gave him a deceptively civilized look.
His every movement radiated arrogant confidence. She’d been blinded by her own
wretched loneliness, or she might have seen how truly he resembled Lord
Christian in manner if not in appearance.

The fear and revulsion she should
feel would not come. With her illusions shattered, she should see what the
artist in Barbados had captured in his sketch—dark, soulless eyes with no
remorse. If she looked into Drew’s eyes, she might see the monster lurking
inside the man. She knew better than to commit that mistake. Passion-filled
eyes, the color of tropical seas, would haunt her dreams forever.

Drew strolled around the room,
shutting drawers. “I’ve been through hurricanes that have caused less damage.
Since the seas have been remarkably calm, I can only surmise you’re displeased
with me.”

For the first time in her life,
Felicity was afraid to speak. It didn’t worry her what Drew might do once she
exposed him. Her anxiety arose from the poison that would spill out once she
opened her mouth. Hurt and betrayal and rage consumed her. She didn’t know if
she could ever stop the tirade once it started.

He must have read the rush of
turbulent emotions on her face because his puzzled gaze softened and he
abruptly strode toward her. She put out her hand to stop him.

“Don’t come near me!”

Her own voice, strained and
raspy, grated on her frazzled nerves. It must have had the same effect on Drew,
because all pretense of calm dropped. He held out his palms to her and shrugged
his shoulders. His brows rose slightly in confusion.

She found the edge of the flag
and let it unfurl. Words were too painful to speak. Thoughts of her own safety
escaped her. If he cut her down at that very moment, it would come as a relief.

Before she could stop herself,
she met Drew’s gaze. His eyes mirrored the agony ripping her apart. She let the
flag drop to the carpet, unable to hold it a moment longer.

“You lying bastard!” She whirled
away from him, wrapping her arms around herself for comfort. Her closed eyes
could not block out the image of his wounded gaze. The look was deception
wielded by an artist. His show of pain represented a ruse to persuade her to
forget what she knew to be true. Heaven help her but it was working.