Page 21 of A Pirate’s Pleasure (Cameron Family #2)
XVIII
I n the whole of her life, Skye had never been so frightened. No darkness surrounded her now, but rather Logan’s ship was ablaze with lanterns against the darkness of the night, and of the sea. Perhaps it seemed that the very creature of her nightmares had stepped forth from the darkness to meet her in the light, and the face of fear was far uglier in light than it could ever be in shadow. Logan threatened all that mattered in life. He threatened her father, he threatened Roc, and he very definitely threatened her person, and did so at that very moment.
She stared at his hand. She knew that she would never take it.
“Get up!” he bellowed. “Come—to me!”
She hesitated. Then she leaped to her feet with speed and agility, racing past Logan across the deck.
“Stop her!” Logan ordered. “She’ll jump!”
She would have jumped; it was her whole intent. She would rather face a shark or any monster of the blue depths than face Logan.
But his men were quick and agile, too. She had just reached the railing when her cloak was seized from behind, and she was dragged back, spinning into the arms of a black-toothed hearty. He laughed, enjoying her discomfort. Skye faced him, and carefully smiled in return. She was thrust against him. She inhaled the filth of his body and the reek of rum upon his breath, but she endured the horror for the sake of freedom. He did not know just how far she was willing to go to achieve her freedom, and so he was totally unprepared when she drew his sword from the scabbard at his side.
“Damme!” the man swore.
“Fool!” Logan raged. “Seize her, take her! She cannot best you all! By God, I thought I had men on this ship!”
She could not best them all, Skye knew that. But she spun away from the pirate who had stopped her plunge into the sea and backed herself to the railing again. The pirates surged toward her, but they were forced to take care. She parried their steel swiftly and desperately, aided by Logan’s next bellowed order.
“I need her alive! Idiots! What good will she be against the Hawk if she lies dead!”
Two of her attackers backed away. Skye eyed them warily, and they watched her like sharks, waiting for her to blink, to drop her guard for a single second.
“Ahoy, Captain Logan!” someone cried. “A ship approaches!”
Logan’s attention was temporarily distracted. “The Hawk!” he called, savoring the words.
“Nay, sir, I think not. Or perhaps it is! ’Tis Blackbeard, sir, I can see him standing toward the bow!”
“Then the Hawk is with him!” Logan said. “I need the girl! Now!”
Skye was already crawling up atop the railing. She screamed when she was caught by the hair and thrown down hard to the deck. She looked up, gasping for breath. It was Logan himself. She still held her sword. She lifted it in a definite threat.
“You want to fight, little girl?” he demanded. “All right, then, we will fight! Toss me my sword, gents! Someone toss me my sword.”
A blade swirled through the air and landed at his feet. Skye feinted toward him as he reached for the weapon, but he was quick, and he was good. He lunged toward her, and it was all that she could do to evade the heavy thrust.
“Milady, have to!” Logan cried. He attacked and she parried, and he attacked again, and she parried once again. His men backed away now as they fought, and she thought that she knew why. Logan didn’t believe that she could really kill him. She was good, very good. But she didn’t have his strength or stamina, and if he kept a fair distance, he would eventually wear her down.
She could not let him do so.
He smiled at her as they fought. “Milady! Your cleavage is showing!”
She smiled in turn, aware that the cloak gaped open, then it spun and flew as she fought. She could not seek modesty now. Logan hoped to unnerve her with that ruse.
“Does it, sir?” she inquired, undaunted. Their swords clashed hard and the momentum brought them together, face-to-face. He reached out as if to touch her with his hook and she cried out, flinging herself away. She leaped toward the mainmast, and kept it to her back. When Logan charged, she quickly sliced the air.
She caught him in the cheek. A thin stream of blood appeared against his flesh. He paused, wiping it away with the back of his sleeve, then staring at the blood that stained his sleeve. His eyes shot back to Skye’s with undimmed hatred.
“Little girl, you play rough. But I will play however you want, and lady, you will wish that you were dead!” He thrust toward her hard and she screamed, ducking. His sword sliced into the masthead, dropping rigging, and Skye screamed again, rushing over to the side of the boat. Blackbeard was coming. He would be there any second.
She could not believe that she was waiting for the infamous Blackbeard to save her, but she was. If he would just arrive while she still held her own, the pirates could all engage in battle, and she would be free.
But her father would not. Where was he? Somewhere aboard the ship? She prayed that she could help him, but she could hardly help herself.
“Hold her, seize her, take her!” Logan ordered, and suddenly they were all coming after her again.
She held her own. She fought valiantly, and she fought well, and she was certain that no lad could have lasted longer. But the sailors were already upon her. While she parried the one, the next was striking. She was forced further and further along the deck to the stern, and then she parried and turned to leap but found that her way was blocked. Logan was there, and his sword was ready this time. He cast the point hard against her throat.
“Drop the sword,” he ordered her.
“I’d—I’d rather die!” she managed to cry, even though she shivered and quaked with the fear of it. She wanted so desperately to live!
“Fine. Drop the sword, or I will slice you from head to toe. And when I am done, I will drag the old man up here on deck, and while you bleed slowly to death, I will hack him into little pieces before you.”
“And you will never have the Hawk.”
“One day I will have him. It is inevitable.”
“You will never have the treasure.”
“Is there a treasure, my dear?”
“Of course!”
“I think not.”
“There is—”
“Drop the sword.”
“Logan! Captain Logan!”
The call came from the longboats, far below the railing. It was Blackbeard’s voice. The pirate had arrived at last. Too late.
“Drop it!”
Skye did not respond, and Logan surged forward with a fury. He caught her blade with his, and it fell flat to the deck. He wrenched her to him by her hands, hurrying over the fallen rigging to reach the portside of his ship and the new arrivals. “Blackbeard, you common traitor! Get away!” Logan roared.
“Now, Captain Logan, that’s not atall nice, sir, not atall nice! Now I’ve come in good faith—”
“You’ve come for more treasure, you greedy viper, and that’s that. You’d kill me, you’d kill the Hawk, you’d kill your own mother’s every living son or daughter for more treasure!”
“Yer hurtin’ me, Logan, yer hurtin’ me deep!” Blackbeard called out sarcastically.
Slammed against the railing with Logan behind her, Skye could see that longboats were arriving with men by the dozen. Her heart caught in her throat, then suddenly soared. Against the lantern glare and the darkness, she could see Robert Arrowsmith. The Hawk’s own men had arrived. There would be a mighty battle here, indeed.
“Where’s the Hawk?” Logan raged.
“Not with me!” Blackbeard called.
“He’d best be. It’s the Hawk I want. If I don’t get him, I kill the girl, and that’s that. Stay out of it, Blackbeard. This is no business of yours.”
“Now Logan—”
“Shut up!”
In a fury, Logan turned around, thrusting Skye toward one of his burliest men. The man caught her hard, sweeping his arm around her and dragging her across the deck again. He held her against the railing while Logan looked down to Blackbeard. “I want the Hawk. I don’t know what he’s playing but I want him now. Don’t think to storm the ship. Hans has Lady Cameron, and he has a blade at her heart now, and he’ll kill her quicker than you can blink. Get the Hawk before me, and get him now.”
“Now, Logan!”
“I’m done!” Logan thundered. “Man, I am done, and she is nearly dead!”
Nearly dead…
And that she was, Skye thought, for the man with his arms about her was huge, well over six feet, and each of his arms was greater in circumference than her own waist. His arm was clamped around her, holding her tight against him. And as Logan spoke, he drew out his dagger and smiled as he moved the cold steel between the valley of her breasts. His hold was so tight she could scarcely breathe. He would smother her before he could stab her, she thought. And yet she was afraid. Deathly afraid.
“He’ll come!” someone called out. “Don’t fear, lady, the Hawk will come!”
And then silence reigned. There was nothing, nothing but the night, nothing but the darkness and the eerie glow of the lanterns, and the sound of the water lapping against the ship at night.
“He’ll come!” Logan laughed, casting back his head. “She’ll die!”
His laughter faded, and the silence continued. Logan strode over to her furiously. He plucked up a piece of her golden-russet hair and fingered it slowly. “Pray, lady! Pray now, pray deep, for if I do not soon see his face before me, you will swiftly die!”
He dropped the lock of her hair. He stroked the length of her cheek and he jerked open her cloak, drawing the palm of his hand slowly down to cup her breast. Skye moved to fight him but Hans jerked her back, his hold as secure as rock.
“Blackbeard!” Logan called. “Can you hear me?”
“Aye, Logan!”
“Tell him—tell the Hawk that her hair is satin and her flesh is velvet. Tell him that her breasts are lush and firm and ripe. Tell him that I’m touching her.”
Skye spat at him. He started, and wiped his cheek. He stared at her and smiled and she cried out, for he viciously caught and twisted her breast. “Next time, milady, it will be the hook!” he warned her.
He smiled, and his touch lingered, and she barely dared breathe, nor could she move. Logan tired of staring at her. He strode back across the deck. Silence held the night once more. Silence…
She heard something. It was nothing, she told herself. It was just water lapping against the hull of Logan’s ship. It was nothing, nothing at all.
But then she managed to cast her gaze behind Hans, and she was glad then that she was so nearly smothered, for she could not gasp out in startled surprise.
He was coming…he had come. To save her. The Hawk.
He had crawled up along the hull of the ship, barefoot and bare-chested, his knife between his teeth. He silently leaped over the edge of the starboard hull, landing with the softest thud upon the wooden deck. Hans started to turn, his knife still taut against her breast.
But Hans turned too late. He dropped his hold on Skye to defend himself against the Hawk. Roc attacked quickly, catching the bulky Hans right in the rib cage. Hans didn’t get to say a word. The breath left him with a soft whooshing sound, and he crumpled to the deck.
That was when Logan turned.
“Hawk!”
“Aye, ’tis me, Logan! Here, where you have her!” Roc cried. He grabbed Skye, throwing her behind him to the rigging. “Climb!” he ordered her. “Climb high!”
She obeyed him, clinging to the rigging for dear life. She paused, and looked back.
Roc had found the sword Logan had forced her to discard. He held to the rigging, balancing as he fought with speed and fury, knees bent, the whole of him as agile as a dancer. “Come, fellows! You’d fight a mere girl and threaten her life as one, come, take me on, too.”
Steel clashed. He parried forward, he allowed himself to be thrust back, only to surge forward with a whole new force again. Men fell before him. One sailor leaped over the side; Roc caught his midriff with the sword and the fellow screamed as he crashed into the water.
“Come, Logan!” Roc cried out. “It’s you and me, isn’t it? Isn’t that what this melee is about? Come, sir, let us have at it again.”
“Sir!” Logan stormed. “As you wish it! And understand that there will be no mercy for you!”
The sounds of a score of cries, battle cries, suddenly burst through the night as Blackbeard and his men and the Hawk’s crew climbed aboard Logan’s ship, all of them entering into the fray. Skye, climbing high atop the rigging, looked down and saw the fight. She saw Robert Arrowsmith and Fulton, fighting finely, their swords flashing, bringing about victory. Then she gasped softly, for she saw young Davie, too, and she was stunned.
Roc had taken the innocent lad aboard a pirate ship! she thought, but then her thoughts gave way, and her attention was riveted back to the pirates fighting below her.
Logan and the Hawk.
This was, she knew, a duel, and a duel to the death. Neither man would leave this fray until one of them lay bleeding life away upon the decks.
Pray God that it would be Logan dead, Skye thought!
“You bastard, hold still!” Logan shouted. “Then I may skewer you through!”
“Skewer me? Why, sir, it seems that you cannot touch me!”
Logan bellowed at Roc’s words, leaping forward. Roc caught hold of the rigging and swung clear of the man’s lunge, turning swiftly to renew his own attack.
“She was sweet and wonderful!” Logan taunted, backing away.
“What?” Roc demanded quickly.
“I touched her, I had her, all of her. I held her taut and I let her scream, but I had her, deep and sweet and sure—”
“Lying bastard!” Roc roared, surging forward. It was the advantage Logan wanted. He lifted his sword to crack it down upon Roc’s shoulder with all of his might. Just at the last second, Roc dropped down and back, spinning about, reappearing on the other side of the mainmast.
“I’ll have your ears!” Logan called. “I’ll slice your ears and your toes and your privates, and I’ll stuff them down your own throat, and you’ll choke to death on your own flesh, knave!”
“You’ll have to best me to do it, rogue!” Roc retorted.
Logan looked up suddenly. He smiled, seeing Skye perched high upon the rigging. He suddenly lifted his sword and brought it hacking down hard upon the ropes.
“No!” Roc bellowed.
Skye screamed as the rope sagged and the wood beams could be heard to crack and shiver. She held tight, afraid to climb upward, afraid to climb down.
Someone knocked over a lamp. A fire caught in the forward section.
“So help me, by God, by the very devil! This night will be the end of you, Hawk!” Logan screamed.
“Abandon the bloody ship!” a voice raged out.
Skye’s heart sank. Her father!
“Roc!” she screamed. He paused, his gaze still warily upon Logan as he listened to her. “My father, Roc! He’s aboard! He’ll burn to death aboard this bloody death trap.”
He looked up at her, and smiled slowly. He looked out to the sea, then over to Logan. Logan started to laugh. “Ah, the Hawk is in trouble at last, is he? Save the girl, save the man—or slay me, and save his own hide!”
“Do you mind a bit of a swim, love?” Roc murmured.
She shook her head, frowning, having no idea of what he meant to do. Suddenly he lifted his own sword and hacked with a swift clean blow against the rigging. She couldn’t help but scream and hold tight as the mast seemed to sway and tottered with her and the rigging, then started plunging toward the sea.
She fell…fell and fell and fell, and felt the cold embrace of the water. She plunged downward, downward into darkness at first. There was nothing, nothing but the cold, nothing but the darkness. Her lungs were near bursting. She closed her eyes against the darkness, kicked with all her strength, and went shooting back up to the surface of the water again.
It seemed that all of the ship was ablaze. Men were screaming; men were leaping into the water. The night was alive with light, with activity, with shouts, and still, with the clang of steel.
Skye grabbed on to a floating log. The cloak had been dragging her down but she clung to it once she had the log; it seemed to offer her a certain warmth, sodden as it was. Or maybe the fire was warming up the water, she didn’t know.
Perhaps her heart and soul had gone so cold that she could not feel any ice external to herself. Her father and her husband remained aboard the ship, and it burned with an ever-wilder frenzy.
“Scurry, men! If you would. By God, see! There’s enemy sails afloat!” someone called out.
More cries broke out in the night. Longboats broke away in the night, but Skye didn’t try to reach any of the pirates. She would wait. She would hold tight to her log and…pray.
“Lady Cameron! Lady Cameron!” someone shouted to her.
She turned about, and a gasp formed and froze upon her lips.
Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood was sitting forward in a longboat, reaching out a hand to her.
“I—I can’t—” she began.
“Child, look who I have with me!” Spotswood demanded.
She looked past him. Lord Theodore Kinsdale peeked around the lieutenant governor’s shoulder, his eyes rheumy with tears, his mouth breaking into a hearty smile.
“Father!” she cried.
“Help the lass, help her!” Spotswood demanded.
Spotswood’s sailors reached into the sea for her. Skye flushed, and the men politely turned aside as she tried to adjust the sodden cloak and find a seat within the longboat. Theo’s ferocious hug nearly upset all of the boat, and she found herself held warmly in her father’s arms. She shivered and chattered insanely. Someone pressed a bottle to her lips. The brew threatened to burn her mouth.
“Drink it!” she was ordered.
She swallowed. Then she swallowed more deeply. The shivering at long last seemed to subside. “More!”
She swallowed more. The world was hazy around her. Maybe some of the rough edges of pain were eased.
“Bless God and the saints above us!” Theo muttered.
Skye pulled back. Her father—her dear, fastidious father—was torn and disheveled, from his unpowdered hair to his filthy mustard breeches and snagged stockings. He smelled like an animal hold and he was every bit as sodden as she, but she cried out and hugged him again, because he was alive and well. “Father! Oh, Father! Why did you come for me! I was safe; you could have been safe! And now…” Her voice trailed away. In her relief to see her father, she had momentarily forgotten the Hawk.
“I had to come, you’re my life, my only child. You are everything to me!” Theo reminded her.
“Oh, Father! I do love you. But now—”
“The Hawk!” Theo said.
“My God!” she breathed.
“My God, indeed!” Spotswood murmured, and he turned to her. “There, milady. I see him there, still aboard the ship!”
She strained to see past the fire and the smoke and she saw that the lieutenant governor spoke the truth. The figures of two dueling men could be seen, outlined clearly like black silhouettes against the fiery furnace of the blaze. They feinted forward, and they feinted back.
Theo placed his hand upon her shoulder. “’Tis the Hawk,” he murmured. “He tossed me overboard to the boats below with that vile Logan a-breathing right down his shoulder.”
“He’ll best Logan. He has to win, Skye. You understand that?”
She didn’t understand anything. She screamed suddenly, leaping up, for the pirate ship exploded, bursting in the night. But just as it happened, the silhouettes were still stark and visible. And one of them drew back his sword with a fierce and mighty swing, and sent it flying like a headsman across the other’s throat. And even as the explosion rent the air, sending both silhouettes flying into the dark and waiting water of the night, she could see a severed head go flying from a torso.
She screamed and screamed, clutching her throat. The explosion had killed the other man, surely! It was an inferno, and they were scarcely far enough away themselves not to feel the horrid heat of the blaze.
“Skye!” Spotswood called to her. “Dammit, child, sit, will you? Skye!”
Their boat tipped, and capsized.
And for the life of her, she could not care. She wanted to sink at that moment into the darkness. Life, she thought, had been darkness until he had lifted her from it. She wanted no part of the light, if she could not share it with him.
“Daughter!”
“Skye Cameron, come over here!”
Whether she wanted life or no, she was going to be forced to live. The sailors righted the boat; her father grabbed her. When the boat was righted, they dragged her up. They all sat shivering.
Another explosion rent the pirate ship. The fire crackled high in the night, and then it began to fade. It would burn for hours, Skye thought, but never so brightly as now. By morning, the fire would be gone.
Spotswood inhaled and exhaled. “All right, men. I see no other of ours in the waves. Head toward the Bonne Belle. ”
“No! We can’t leave!” Skye protested.
“My dear, there are other boats about.”
“No man could have survived that explosion!” one of the sailors said. He whispered, but Skye heard him.
“Now, now. The Hawk is known to be a survivor. Perhaps he has gone on with his pirate friends, and maybe that is best,” Spotswood said.
No, Skye thought. The sailor had been right. No man could have survived the explosion. Not unless he had leaped clear when the ship went to splinters.
Oars lapped the water. Theo pulled her close to him again and Skye rested her head on her father’s shoulders.
“Damn child, if I’m not quite a mess!” Spotswood murmured, very unhappily wringing out his wig. “I’m not even supposed to be here—this is North Carolina territory, you know. Not supposed to be here—I’m not here! If any man ever says it, I will deny it! Blimey, but you have given us a good soaking girl.”
She couldn’t respond. Theo took her face tenderly between his hands. “Did he hurt you, Skye? Are you well, are you fine? I was so terrified for you; all I could think of all the time was how very afraid you must be of the darkness.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark, Father,” she whispered, and she squeezed his hand. He loved her, and that was why he had come for her. She had to understand that. She had been willing to sell her own soul for Theo’s sake, and she was grateful beyond measure that he was alive. “I’m not afraid of the dark, not anymore.”
“There she is, right ahead, the Bonne Belle . And not too far from our own waters at that!”
The longboat came alongside the ship the Bonne Belle . “Captain, lower the ladder if you will!” Spotswood called out. “I’ve Lady Cameron and Lord Kinsdale safe and sound and with me!”
A cheer went up. Skye was helped up the ladder and over the edge, and she tried to smile to the young man who helped her so intently. She fell against the railing, though, and as her father and Spotswood crawled up behind her, she turned about to stare out to the sea, out to the night.
“Peter! Bring your mistress a dry blanket, and quickly!” Spotswood called out.
Peter! Skye whirled around and, indeed, Peter was there, rushing to her with a dry, warm blanket. He set it about her shoulders. “My lady, are we grateful to see you!”
“Peter!” She forgot protocol and hugged him fiercely, then looked to Spotswood. Spotswood shrugged.
“I already told you, dear—I am not here this evening. The Bonne Belle is another of your husband’s ships.”
“Oh!” she cried, then she turned back to the water again, and she started to shake and cry in earnest, tears cascading down her cheeks. She couldn’t bear it. She just couldn’t. She loved him too deeply, for all his sins, because of all his sins. He had always been there for her. He had risked his life time and again to save hers. He had come to her in darkness, and in light, and all that mattered now was that he was gone, and that life held no meaning.
“Skye!”
She heard her name as a rasping whisper, calling out to her from the fog of anguish that covered her heart. It was not real, she thought, but she turned slowly, and then her heart started to leap. He was there . Standing before her, drenched and dripping over the deck, barefoot and bare-chested still. He held no weapons, but faced her with his palms out, his heart within his silver eyes. He was alive.
“Roc!” she screamed his name in gladness, hurtling toward him, throwing herself against him. She cried his name again and again, holding close to him. She clutched his face between her hands and she showered him with kisses, his forehead, his lips, his cheeks, his sea-wet bare chest and shoulders. His arms folded around her. He pulled her close, holding her wet and sleek to his heart. His fingers combed through her sodden hair.
“Skye…beloved…”
His mouth covered hers, and the warmth of a summer day exploded within her. He was alive! He was warm, he was real, he was with her, beside her upon the deck of the Bonne Belle .
“Really!” Theo Kinsdale groaned. “They’re barely clad, between the two of them.”
“Theo!” Spotswood reprimanded him. “Have a heart, sir! They are duly wed, and I might remind you, it was all your doing. Give them a moment’s peace, then I shall part them myself.”
A moment’s peace…
Skye didn’t hear the words. She was in her own world.
In paradise…
Touching him, feeling him, convincing herself with all of her senses that he was truly alive. Then he broke away from her, and she saw his face, stripped of his beard. His hair unpowdered, wet and trailing down his back. His shoulders sleek and bronze and rippling with muscle.
And Spotswood was here. The lieutenant governor! He would know—just as she knew!—that the Hawk and Lord Cameron were one and the same. And there would be no escape now. No escape at all. Roc had survived Logan and the fire just to hang!
“No!” she gasped in horror, staring at him.
“Skye—” he murmured.
“Ail right, my dear young friends,” Spotswood said, coming toward them. “I’m afraid I must interrupt you now—”
“No! No!” Skye cried. She held her husband tightly. “You don’t understand! You mustn’t take him—”
“But, my dear, I must—”
“No!” she cried.
“Skye…” Roc murmured.
But it was suddenly too much for her. She fought for reason; she fought for light. Darkness was overwhelming her. She clung to her husband, and his arms came around her. But it was not enough. She fell into his arms, and the world closed in darkness around her.
“My God, what’s happened to her!” Theo demanded, pushing forward.
“Nothing, Theo, nothing. And it seems that the lad has her well in hand. She’s fainted, Theo, and that’s all. And for the night that the poor thing has endured, it seems little enough!”
“I will take her to bed,” Roc said softly.
“But—” Theo sputtered.
“They’re married, Theo!”
Theo tried with dignity to adjust his ragged clothing. “Quite right, Alexander, quite right. It’s just that…”
“Quite right, and that’s that!” Alexander said. “Lord Cameron! I need a word with you as soon as she’s settled.”
When she woke up, it was light. The sun streamed in upon her and she rose up, amazed to discover that she was home.
Home. Cameron Hall.
She was dressed in a soft blue nightgown with lace at the collar and the cuffs and hem. Her hair was dried and soft and she was comfortable. She had been out a very long time.
She lay upon her husband’s bed, and the very sight of it brought her up, amazed. “Roc!” she cried out his name, but he was not with her, and she had known that he would not be. Spotswood would have arrested him for piracy by now. They would take him to the jail in Williamsburg, and as soon as the court met, they would try him.
And hang him.
“Oh, no!” She leaped out of the bed, and she was amazed that she could have been out so long, and so completely. It was the liquor they had made her drink, she thought. Her head was still pounding. She pushed up from the bed, and she stared about the room. How ironic! Now, at long last, she slept in her husband’s handsome bed. But he was not with her. The sun streamed into this place that he loved so much, and she was alone with it. She let her hand fall to her abdomen, and she thought of all the time that had passed since she had first encountered the Hawk, and she trembled. He had wanted an heir. Perhaps that was what she had left. Perhaps she could live to give him that which he had so desired, the son to carry on his name in this all-important land. “Please God, let it be that it is so!” she whispered.
Then she spun around, determined. She would not let the father hang so quickly, she could not! Her father would help her. Theo would testify that the Hawk had saved his life during the fire. There would be enough men to stand for the Hawk, oh surely.
She had to find her father, or the governor, or Peter, or someone. Ignoring her state of undress, she tore out of the bedroom and along the hallway with the portraits of the Cameron lords and ladies. She paused, and her heart beat fiercely. “I shall not let you down, I swear it! I will save him, I promise. I did not want to come here, that is true, but it’s my blood, too, now, you see. I think I’m to have his child, and besides, you see…I love him. With all my heart. He is my life, and this land is his passion, and therefore, it is mine.”
She was talking to portraits, she realized. But the Camerons looked down upon her, and she thought that they smiled their encouragement. The men with their silver eyes, the women with their knowing warmth and soft beauty.
She turned away from the portraits and ran down the elegant stairway. From the grand hallway she burst into the office.
Spotswood and her father were there. They were seated quite comfortably, lighting pipes, sipping coffee—out of fine Cameron cups.
Skye strode to the desk, facing Spotswood. “Where is he? I demand to know.” She spun around. “Father, you make him tell me where my husband is! I want to see him now. You may arrest him, but you’ll not hang him. I’ll fight you. I’ll fight you both tooth and nail until we are all nothing but blood. Father! He saved your life!”
“I know that, daughter—”
“And Alexander! You were all willing and eager for the Hawk to do your dirty work. The government of Virginia cannot interfere with the government of North Carolina, and so you didn’t mind seeing him attack other pirates in Carolina waters. Now I’m telling you, I demand to know where he is.”
Theo looked at Alexander, and Alexander looked at Theo. The lieutenant governor shrugged. “By the river, I believe. He mentioned a certain spot. It’s quite lovely and private. Down past the docks, beyond the graveyard. You’ll not see him if you don’t run down the slope by the old oaks.”
“What?” Skye murmured. “But—”
“Find him. Speak with him.”
Skye backed away from the desk. They had both gone mad, but Roc was out there somewhere. She could see him and touch him. She could cling tightly to him and tell him that there would be an heir to Cameron Hall. She could love him, before they could take him.
She stared at her father and the lieutenant governor, then she whirled around and raced out of the house.
“Milady!” Peter called to her, startled that she should be running out in her night attire. She ignored him. She burst from the house and into the day and down the slope. She saw the docks before her, and the family graveyard to the right, and she kept running upon the soft green grass. Her feet were bare, and she stumbled, but she didn’t care. She had to reach him.
“Roc!” she screamed. She raced far past the graveyard, and by the mound of oaks.
She saw him then. He was clean and bathed and handsomely dressed in fawn breeches and buckled shoes and a deep red frockcoat. His dark hair was unpowdered, but neatly queued. He rested a hand against a pine tree, and he looked out to sea.
Until he heard her call. He turned about, and his eyes came alight with a silver blaze, and his lazy, slow, sensual smile curved his lips. Perhaps he would have reached out to her. She didn’t know. She tripped and went stumbling down the slope of grass there, and fell at last into his arms.
“Skye!”
Her force nearly knocked them both over. He swept her into his arms, and down then upon the ground, in a bed of pine needles. He cradled her gently and searched her eyes while her fingers fell tenderly upon his clean-shaven cheeks. She gasped for breath, then kissed him. He arched his brow and brought his palm against her thundering heart. “My love—” he murmured.
“Aye, Roc, and I do love you!” she gasped. “I’ll not let them have you!”
“Them?” he inquired.
She could smell the sweet pine needles beneath her and the cleanliness of the river air. She felt both the sun and the shade of the trees, the birch and the oaks and the pines. She felt the searing warmth and sweet fire of the man, the silver blaze within his eyes. She held tightly to him. This was indeed his Eden. It was where his parents had come. It was a garden where a man could love a woman, and a woman love a man, far from the cares of the world.
“Oh, Roc!” she whispered. “We are, I think, I’m almost sure—”
“What?” he demanded, his arms tightening around her.
“We’re—we’re going to have a child.” His arms came like steel, warm and loving, and she spoke on quickly. “I don’t know whether Lord Cameron or the Hawk has fathered the babe, but Roc, I will raise him, I swear it, come what may! Yet I swear, my love, too, that I haven’t given up on his sire as yet—”
“I should hope not!” Roc said indignantly. “Oh, my love, a babe, really?” The tenderness in his voice tore into her heart. It brought tears to her eyes.
“Really, I believe. Now, Roc—”
His kiss cut off her words. It was deep and sweeping and sensual, and it enveloped and enwrapped her in splendor and warmth. It filled her with sweet longing and desire, and left her trembling in his arms. When he rose above her, the tenderness was still with him. “My dear lady, bless you. With all of my heart, madame, I do love you. You believe that now, don’t you?”
“Yes, I believe you!” she whispered. He smiled, and reached to her gown, tugging upon the laces at the bodice. The material fell away and he lowered his head against her, taking her nipple deeply into his mouth and laving it with his teeth and tongue.
“Roc!” she cried out, tugging upon his hair. “Stop, please, we must talk.…”
He spoke huskily against her flesh. “We’ve a lifetime to talk!”
“ No! ” She tugged fiercely upon him, drawing him back up to face her. He was a handsome devil, she thought. Handsome, strong, seductive. She could not bear life without him now! “No, Roc, now listen to me. We must think. We must find you legal representation, the very best. And witnesses, the proper witnesses.”
He was nuzzling her breast once again. Sensations blazed into her, but she fought them all fiercely. “Roc, this is serious!”
He groaned.
“Roc, they’ll hang you!”
His eyes fell upon her, wicked and silver, and hungry like a gray wolf’s.
“If I am a condemned man, then love me, wife!”
“Roc! You mustn’t—you must listen to me. Roc—”
“Have you ever seen such a glorious place?” he murmured, and again he spoke against her flesh. He edged her gown from her shoulders, and his words and kisses fell against them, then he moved lower as he stripped her completely in the bower of pines. “It is Eden. Feel the breeze, love, upon your flesh. Like my touch, I swear it. Gentle always, soft sometimes, with heady passion at others. Feel where the air touches you where my lips have just lingered, the coolness against the heat. Hear the birds, my love? Sweet and never strident. Smell the earth, the verdancy, the flowers. Never so good as the sweet scent of you, never so provocative, yet always enticing.…”
“Stop!” she pleaded, catching his dark hair as he teased her belly with the hot tip of his tongue. Swallowing, seeking breath, she dragged him to her. She pressed her lips passionately to his, then drew away. Tears glazed her eyes. “I cannot! I will not let them hang you!”
His lashes fell, dark over his eyes. “They are not going to hang me, love.”
“What?” she cried. “Oh, Roc! You must not be overconfident because you are Lord Cameron!”
He paused then, and cradled her in his arms. He ran his palms over her naked breasts tenderly, and he thought that he had never seen her more beautiful, more gentle, than at this moment. The trees rocked their branches above. Her nightgown hovered in a soft blue swirl about her hips while the beauty of her throat and breasts and torso were bared to his eyes. Her hair cascaded all about her, sunlight, sunset. Her eyes were all teal, liquid with her love for him.
He had never felt more humble, and he trembled. He had never known what love could be. Now, it was his. It was more precious that life, limb, earth, or country. She was life. His life. Their child grew within her. Their future stretched before them. He had loved the land before; now it was everything. Now it would be shared.
“My God!” he whispered, and his fingers shook as he smoothed away her hair. “Skye, I love you. I cannot say it deeply enough. I love you.”
“I love you!” she whispered, and the tears still stung her eyes.
He smiled, holding her tight, cherishing and savoring the soft feel of her naked chest as he held her against his body. “I’m not going to hang, my love, because the lieutenant governor has been in on it all the time.”
“What!” Stunned, she broke away from him. He was reminded of the daring temptress who had fought him so fiercely on the deck of the Silver Messenger , the very first day he had seen her.
He nodded slowly, watching her flashing eyes. “I was asked to be a pirate, milady. I stole nothing. I tried to learn the plans of the real rogues at their hideaways, and I captured ships, but only my own ships, or imaginary ships, or ships that I captured from other pirates to send on home.”
“But—but—”
He lifted his hands. “Spotswood would deny it, of course. He is a servant of the Crown. But several years ago I had a ship taken and my crew was butchered, and I could not help but want to seek revenge. Alexander and I spent a night drinking and…the Silver Hawk was born.”
“But the place on Bone Cay—”
“I own it. The Camerons have owned it for at least fifty years.”
“Oh!”
“Love, I’m sorry! I could not tell you. You already despised the man you were to marry, and I had sworn to Alexander that I would never divulge the truth to anyone.”
“But Robert—”
“Robert Arrowsmith has always been one of my best friends. I have given him a plot of land connecting ours. He is going to become a gentleman planter now.”
“What of Mr. Soames and Senor Rivas and—”
He shrugged. “They like the Caribbean. And I have no intention of giving up my island. It holds wonderful memories for me, and can be fine to visit in the winter. The pardon you spoke of before has come through. Men in authority have gone to take control of New Providence. The Silver Hawk will seek a pardon, turn his property over to his deserving cousin—Lord Cameron—and then disappear into the pages of history.”
“Then you won’t—you won’t set sail again?” she whispered.
“Alas, no, my love. My pirating days are over. Jack is gone, and Logan is gone. One day Spotswood will have Blackbeard, but I haven’t the heart for that fight, and the lieutenant governor has decided that my usefulness to the Crown is over. I am a changed man, love! I swear it!”
“Oh!” she gasped.
He stroked her cheek, and laid her down upon the pines. “I love this place,” he whispered. “I want our son to grow here. I want it to be the finest estate in all Tidewater Virginia.”
“Ummm,” she murmured.
“Say something!” he implored her. “Will you mind so very much that the Hawk is not to hang?”
She shook her head. She stretched her arms around him and drew him close, loving the masculine hardness of his body as it pressed against hers on their bed of pines. “I’m glad he’s not to hang,” she whispered. “And since he is not…”
“Since he is not?”
“Then I demand that he love me here, in this Eden. Perhaps he is of no more use to the Crown, but his lady shall always demand his time, and his energy.”
“Ah, but the Hawk will be gone! ’Tis Lord Cameron who will give you his life and his love and his passion.”
She laughed with sweet delight and raked her fingers through his dark hair, drawing him close. “Perhaps. But perhaps my legal lord will always be the valiant pirate Hawk in my heart. And perhaps I will always lie with him now, forever, in this Eden.”
“Perhaps…”
“And then, perhaps, it matters not at all, for I love the man, you see. Whether he is the Hawk or the lord, the rogue or the noble gentleman, I love him. And would have him love me now.”
He smiled to her, and caught her lips, and rose above her, his eyes—silver eyes, dancing eyes, rogue’s eyes—alight with his passion.
“Gladly, milady, gladly,” he assured, and set forth with fire and passion and tenderness to prove to her the bold beguiling truth of his ardent assurance.