Virgin Star (42 page)

"Seanessy, what do you make of it?"

Hamilton and Butcher joined him at the rail. Butcher handed him the glass. "Edward, steady at the wheel," Sean called, his voice curiously subdued by the devastation before him. "Furl the mainsail! Lower the spanner," he called back. "Nice and easy around the point."

Butcher was but a moment confused by Seanessy's apparent well-being. "You look so—so hale—" He abruptly realized he had not seen Shalyn since the moonlit night. So Sean had taken the cure, a fortuitous move. Their game had begun and Seanessy, like all of them, would need his wits and strength to pull this one off, no doubt.

Seanessy's grin disappeared at he looked through the glass. "Not a natural disaster. The jungles around here are the thickest, most impenetrable I've ever seen. I remember when we burned to clear our property for our house—it was the hardest part. Remember—the fire kept sizzling out?"

"Aye, it had to be staked with dry kindling and even then —"

"You are forgetting," Ham said. "This is no doubt the man's idea of a treasure hunt."

"Aye," Seanessy said, a sly and yet somehow irritated grin lifting on the handsome face. Sly because anyone as stupid as to undertake such an endeavor for treasure would be easily thwarted, and irritated because it was so absurdly wasteful.

"As dumb as a box of rocks," Butcher repeated.

As the ship sailed slowly around the eastern tip of the island and the color of the sea returned to a sparkling blue, their game changed. Seanessy offered fifty pounds to the first man to spot the warehouse that looked like a patch of grassy green from the distance. Prescott was up the ratline with a glass to his sharp eyes, the most frequent winner of these wagers, but every man present found incentive in the reward to keep his eyes trained on the shoreline. Edward kept the ship steady at the wheel. The sails were adjusted to the light breeze blowing off starboard.

Seanessy called for the trunk of explosives to be brought up and readied. The duke was no doubt sailing the horn at the moment, perhaps not even that far. With any luck they could blow it to hell by twilight and be a thousand leagues away by the time anyone figured out what had happened!

Yet as he continued to look through the glass, he thought of Joy, and the light in her eyes. This picture was placed alongside the vision of chain gangs digging holes in sand. What would happen to the duke without the wealth represented in the opium supply? No doubt, he had sufficient moneys to continue his. absurd quest for treasure, at the expense of the back-breaking labor of so many black bodies .. .

A haunting loneliness and desolation covered the island as thick as its jungles, a sense of dark secrets and isolation indeed. The formidable air was inescapable and Seanessy, not usually given to fanciful notions, wondered if he only imagined it when Butcher whispered, "Somethin' about this place raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Like seeing a shrouded figure in a graveyard at night."

"Springs from its isolation," Hamilton suggested, sensing it too. "And the poor black sods put to digging up sand."

"Seanessy, what are you thinking?" Butcher asked, knowing Sean well enough to see his uncertainty.

"I was thinking of Joy, of reason enough to return after we save merry ole England."

"I don't know, Sean—a standing army of two thousand—"

Prescott spotted it first. "Ho, Cap'n! There she is!"

All gazes fixed on the island. Seanessy peered through the glass until he found it. A patch of green that did indeed appear to be a grassy spot in the jungle. The warehouse. Jungle encroached on it from all sides. An enormous black boulder marked the spot two hundred or so paces off shore in the water. Prescott noticed the boulder. "Why, 'tis almost a perfect heart shape." Seanessy and the others noticed the point at one end, with two rounded orbs at the other.

They were staring at this curiosity when Edward shouted, "Cap'n! Off the bow! We've been spotted!"

A small clipper sail at full speed toward them. Seanessy turned and saw it, swearing softly. "There

goes that plan. Probably the man's henchman, this

overseer I was supposed to meet who looks after the duke's business."

"Well, the man's got a lot of balls approachin' a seven-hundred tonner at that speed. For all he knows we could be the very devil come to take the place."

"Aye," Seanessy said, curiously. He ordered the explosives returned and hidden in the hold and all men to arms, just in case. The ship was naturally in a constant state of readiness for a battle: the Wind Muse was the last ship that would fall prey to pirates, but a number of the men rushed off to arm themselves. Except Seanessy. Not only was he glad Shalyn still slept and was safely out of trouble, if only for a time, but he would be loath to wake her. She was going to need her strength.

All gazes and looking glasses-riveted onto the fast-approaching yacht. The kind of ship a gentleman might use for holidays, no doubt used by the duke to travel around his little kingdom. A number of the duke's men stood at the bow. Seanessy passed the glass to Hamilton.

"Sean!" Hamilton called as the ship came closer. "Take a look at who's waving his arms like a madman!"

The glass dropped. He stared. Surprise worked in his face. "Kyler!" His brows rose. "What the devil?" He tried to reason what had made Kyler abandon his plans and instead travel to this island, but he could not fathom it.

"And look who's standing with him," Ham said.

Seanessy put the glass back and searched the space near Kyler. A half-dozen dark-skinned heathens surrounded him, men all wearing black boots and pants, the same cut of white shirt; all of it looked hot beneath the blazing and humid tropical sun. He didn't understand at first until the glass stopped on an expensive pair of black boots, up the tailored black pants, a white silk shirt and a vest, the ridiculously hot garb of a wealthy man that announced his name before Seanessy saw his face. "Well, if it isn't the master of ceremonies himself.

They must have left just after us, chasing the eastern winds while we sat in the doldrums!"

A chill raced up Butcher's back; he could not guess what Kyler was doing here. Something warned him, though. Seanessy turned to shout a series of quick orders as the smaller yacht pulled alongside the larger ship. Sails were quickly furled. Lines were secured. A rope ladder descended.

Kyler turned to the duke and shouted something, then shook his head, motioning the duke back. The duke, however, appeared adamant about proceeding first. Too late. Kyler started up the ladder. The duke and his men followed.

"Kyler!" Seanessy shouted as he leaped down to the deck. "What the blazes—"

"Sean—" Kyler stopped and cast an anxious gaze as the duke and his men came up behind him. "We beat you by four days. Is she with you? Isabel—" He shook his head. "I mean Shalyn?"

"Shalyn? Who the devil wants to know?"

The Duke de la Armanac showed no sign of the emotion washing over him in force, except for a hand that reached for and found the sturdy rung of the ladder at his side. He seized it. His knuckles whitened as the relief, so powerfully felt, threatened his last semblance of composure.

The duke straightened, and his eyes blazed with emotion as he said, "Isabel is the Duchess de la Armanac—she is my wife!"

Hands on hips, Seanessy registered his shock. You!? Her husband! Why, you bloody son of a bitch!" And he threw his fist hard into the man's jaw.

The resounding crack snapped the duke's head back and threw him hard against the wall, where he dropped like a puppet without stings. The battle had begun.

*****

Chapter 12

Seanessy did not have to think long about this bastard tying Shalyn up to make her helpless for his pathetic abuse; it took only seconds to mobilize the full force of his violence. He was going to kill him, beat the bastard to a bloody pulp and keep after the carcass like a greedy vulture long after he was dead. He viciously fought against the five men who held him back, including now Slops, Butcher, and Edward.

"I'll kill him!" He freed his elbow and shot it hard into Slops's enormous stomach. "I'm going to kill the—"

Kyler shouted to the duke's men to get the nobleman away before Seanessy managed to break free. They sprang into action. The largest among them lifted the unconscious duke over his shoulder, moving quickly to the ladder.

"Sean! Listen to me! Listen—"

Yet he wouldn't hear. Kyler swore viciously, clenched his fist, and swung hard into Seanessy's face. His blow had no effect, like the brush of a breeze.

Except it gave all his men an idea of the miracle that had passed between Sean and the girl. The idea was a kind of marvel too, for no one ever expected Seanessy to be landed by a lass. Seanessy was a wild card; the force of his colorful personality, the strength of his will, the unholy passions with which he lived his randy life did not make him a probable or even likely candidate for the devotion and love known as domestication. Women, in Sean's life, satisfied physical needs, occasionally amusing him as they did, but never any more.

Until Shalyn. The wagers had been in her favor since the day she had stood on the rail and had only gone higher as the crew became familiar with her unique blend of femininity and pluck, beguiling charm, innocence, and courage. The wagers increased even more when they watched the captain's response to the package on which Butcher commented, "Enough sparks be flyin' between the two to light up Winchester Cathedral on Christmas Eve!"

The duke's yacht sailed slowly away.

Kyler had seen these signs before they had left. He was not surprised either. Not really. It made perfect sense that Sean, when he did finally fall, would fall like a ten-ton brick from the sky.

Kyler shook his head. "Throw him over the side."

It took three more men to do it, and tense moments when one of Seanessy's arms came free and he punched Slops again, then Butcher squarely in the jaw, before they managed it. Loud curses sang until the moment he hit the water. He came up cursing still.

Butcher listened to this as he watched from the rail. "Now we've got some trouble."

Concern changed Kyler's eyes too, and he rubbed his hand over the smooth surface of his head. "And it's only the beginning."

Butcher still cursed Seanessy, up one side and down the other. The afternoon sun began its grand descent as the Wind Muse anchored in the aqua-blue waters of the bay. A white sand beach stretched along the leeward side of the island. The mountain range fell away at the north end here. A township made of stucco cottages cluttered the seashore—the housing for the duke's formidable army. A bell tower of a church rose above the Spanish tiled roofs. Yet all gazes were drawn to the preposterous jutting towers of a stone fortress and its manned battlements, all a tribute to the duke's grandiose posturing.

Seanessy half expected a crocodile-infested moat.

One long arm reached out above the frame of his door, and Seanessy braced, trying to grasp a small measure of control. Long enough to tell her.

After an hour or more of swearing, cursing, and denting two walls, Kyler's words finally began to penetrate. Kyler had heard the duke's explanation and now Seanessy had to hear it. That was all. Just hear it. Shalyn had to learn the truth also. It was after all her life; he was after all her husband.

Her bloody husband.

"Butcher ... My God, I just want..." He closed his eyes, steeling himself against the violence, the rage of the idea that she was married. Married to that man. He tried to see his way through this disaster. "I just want to shoot the bastard and be done with it."

Butcher lost wind all at once. His hand spanned his forehead as if to encompass all he felt. "I know, Sean, I know," he said in a whisper of regret. "But we've got to figure this thing out. And Shalyn has to at least hear what he has to say to her. It might be the only thing that brings back her memory. For Shalyn, Sean."

Seanessy nodded, looking away. With compassion and concern, Butcher patted his back and left him there. Sean's fear stretched like rain clouds over a horizon, spreading in so many different directions he couldn't make sense of it, and because he couldn't make sense of it, he just wanted to shoot the man.

He finally opened the door and stepped inside. Shalyn still slept. A bath waited for her. The man who said he was her husband had also, oh so obsequiously, sent her a trunk of clothes.

Shalyn ...

He came and sat on the edge of the bed. "Shalyn," he whispered to the still and quiet air of the room, wishing he was many miles from this island and its master, where the whole world had turned upside-down. "I never told you the real ending to the story of the shepherd and the lady. I wanted to keep it from you. You see, after the shepherd knew the bliss of her love, they finally encountered her father and friends at a Maying party. He tried to keep the sight from her, but she was entranced because her memory returned as she watched. Then came a moment in which the shepherd lost his soul: the moment when she turned to see him. In her eyes, the story goes, there was no love, no tender feeling, not even sorrow. She looked at him, her true love, with ... revulsion. Then she turned and ran into the clearing. She never looked back." He reached down to stroke her golden hair, spread out like a glorious sunrise on the pillows of his bed.