Wicked Loving Lies. Rosemary Rogers

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СКАЧАТЬ bunk in my cabin. I wouldn’t want a lad as young as he is corrupted by the dirty talk and gambling in the fo’c’s’le.”

      Hell—maybe Benson was that kind after all! But as long as he did his job and the new cabin boy knew what was expected of him, what the devil did it matter?

      There was still Donald to be coped with, and Dominic said harshly, “Since we’re short a man, and I don’t have to impress people on shore with the fact that I, too, have my own valet, you can go back to your usual duties, my old friend! I’m sure you’ll be relieved.”

      Catching the fleeting impression of thankfulness on Donald’s face as he and Benson turned to leave, he held up one hand, staying him after the door had closed behind the first mate.

      “Wait a minute. Why are you in such a deuced hurry? I haven’t heard a word out of you yet, and you must admit that’s unusual. Well? Aren’t you going to tell me I’m headed for perdition?”

      Donald sounded unusually solemn.

      “It’s not for me to say, as ye’ve reminded me often, captain. I reckon ye’ll be after finding your own kind of damnation, at that.”

      “I reckon I will!” Dominic Challenger gave a harsh laugh that seemed torn from his throat. The thin white scar that stretched from his temple and across one cheekbone like a crescent gave him a look of the devil—or so Donald always said to himself, seeing the captain in this kind of mood.

      He hoped there would be no more questions, but on the heels of that hope came the curt command to fetch a decanter of wine—since there was no cabin boy in a fit state to perform such small duties.

      “By the way—how did you manage to be rid of the gypsy wench? Were the gold coins I gave you sufficient to compensate for the loss of her virginity and provide her with a dowry?”

      Halfway out of the door already, Donald’s back stiffened, but he did not turn his head.

      “She asked only to be taken to some distant relatives, captain, and it was the least I could promise, wasn’t it, now? She returned your gold to you, too—said she didn’t want payment for what she hadn’t sold.”

      With a look of dour satisfaction on his face, Donald closed the door behind him, ignoring the angrily muttered, explosive curse that was hurled at his heels. Let Benson say what he would—he knew best how to handle the captain in one of his black moods.

      The mood lasted for the whole of the week that followed, along with a spell of bad weather that was almost as ugly.

      It appeared they were carrying secret dispatches to the newly arrived American minister in Paris, and so instead of looking for likely prizes, they were to avoid running into any other ships if they could help it—a highly unusual situation for a notorious privateer. All the same, there were the usual duties to be performed, just in case; the decks had to be kept clean and clear and the guns polished and cleaned for action. The Challenger’s slim, rakish lines were too well known to King George’s Navy to permit any relaxing of their vigilance; and it was well known that in spite of the so-called Peace of Amiens, there were British war frigates skulking off the coast of Portugal and in the Bay of Biscay itself. And so the Challenger kept to a slow zigzag course heading well out to sea before she turned back again to head for the French harbor of Nantes.

      A series of storms plagued them after they had rounded Cape Finisterre—both sea and sky as grey as the captain’s cold eyes. At first Marisa was far too sick and miserable to care if they broke into pieces and sank to the bottom of the ocean, in fact, in her lucid moments, between spasms of sickness, she almost welcomed the thought of an end—any end—to her misery.

      Except for Donald, who looked in occasionally, bringing her food she refused, and shaking his head in a helpless fashion, no one had time to wonder about her, not even Mr. Benson, whom she hardly saw.

      Marisa had lost all idea of time, and when the day came that she was actually able to sit up in her bunk, craving food in spite of the constant pitching motion of the ship, she had no notion how long she had lain there.

      “Ah, looks like you’ve found your sea legs at last, my girl!” Donald said with an attempt at cheerfulness as he brought her a watery broth which she gulped down voraciously. “I canna’ stay for long,” he added with a backward glance over his shoulder. “He’s in a worse mood than ever because of all the delays and having to run from a damned Britisher of only sixteen guns yesterday. Lost her in the fog, but it’s a shame we could not have stayed to fight her.”

      Marisa shuddered weakly, and he gave her thin shoulder a clumsy, comforting pat.

      “Ah, weel! Ye won’t be seeing any action, an’ that’s a relief. We’ll fetch into Nantes in a few days now, and I’ll get you off the ship with none being the wiser. You just stay below now and try not to worry. The captain’s an excellent good sailor, for all his hard ways—and it’s a powerful hard life he’s had, to make him that way, too. You couldna’ care for that though, could you, puir little lass? It’s like a little drowned mouse ye look now, with no one ever suspecting ye’re a lass after all. You’ll need a lot of feeding up once you’re safe with your relatives.”

      When Donald had left, Marisa managed to wriggle out of her bunk and found her knees too weak to hold her. Just then the ship dipped into a deep wave-trough and rose up again, almost on its end, and she slammed against the bulkhead with a force that almost stunned her.

      ‘I’m surely going to die,’ she thought as she crawled across the floor. And the thought alarmed her only faintly, for she felt more than half-dead already. Tears of sheer weakness and exhaustion slipped unheeded down her pale, hollowed cheeks without her being aware of them. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered too much at this point. She could not even remember what she was doing here, being tossed from side to side like a tiny cork while she waited for the wave that would surely smash in the side of the ship and sweep her with it to oblivion.

      Somehow, miraculously, it didn’t happen. Mr. Benson came back to the cabin, smothered in oilskins, and lifted her back into her bunk, ordering her gruffly to stay there, for they expected the storm to last all night. He gave her a large, worn volume of the Protestant Bible to hold on to, and told her she should pray that she’d be saved. Still, he was as kind in his own gruff way as Donald had been, and Marisa nodded solemnly before he left her again.

      Huge, foamy waves smashed against the side of the ship. The porthole had been closed with a heavy wooden shutter, and Marisa had no idea whether it was night or day. As the storm gathered in intensity the timbers began to creak alarmingly, and she had to clutch desperately to the side of the bunk to prevent herself from being thrown out.

      Suddenly she began to fancy that they were about to go down—that everyone else must surely have been swept overboard leaving her alone, trapped in this cramped space like the little mouse Donald had called her. Had she really heard a cry, “Abandon ship! Abandon ship!” above the thunderous roaring of the wind-torn waves?

      Without quite knowing how, Marisa found herself clawing desperately at the door. She wrenched it open at last and was soaking wet in a second, buffeted by the fury of the storm that was raging all around. The door slammed shut behind her, and she slid along the suddenly sloping deck. A wall of pale-green water came to meet her, pushing her backwards, drenching her eyes and hair and face; her mouth was filled with salty water when she opened it to scream. So this was what it felt like to drown…. Her mind registered the thought in a detached fashion, even while her arms flailed desperately seeking some kind of handhold. And then, just as her feet slipped from under her, she was brought up short—an arm СКАЧАТЬ