DARE THE WILD WIND (27 page)

In a single movement, Drake pushed away the torn shoulder of her gown to bare the firm ripe thrust of her breast.  Cupping it with his hand, he tasted and charted the virgin mound, nibbling and nuzzling with his lips and flicking in a teasing wet pattern with his tongue.  Circling the rosy areola until Brenna gasped with need, his mouth fastened at last with a searing moist heat over her erect nipple. 

Her limbs went liquid, and an aching starburst of need exploded and blossomed from the secret center of her being, pulsing with an exquisite, agonizing urgency.  She writhed against him, against the masculinity that pressed, hard and virile, against her through the barrier of her skirts.  He made a low animal sound, and his hand shot down to jerk her petticoats aside.

Icy sanity flooded back through Brenna.  Dear God, had she completely taken leave of her senses?  In another second, he would be astride her.  Was she ready to let him use her like some trollop from his English court?

Abruptly she stiffened, pushing his suckling mouth from her breast.  Thrusting both hands out against his chest, she shoved with such unexpected force he fell back from her in surprise.  Swiftly, she rolled away from him. 

"You unspeakable monster," she spat out.  "Do you force and seduce every woman you drag to this room?"

For an instant matching rage glittered in his eyes, and he looked as if he might spring on her again.  She lunged for the opposite edge of the bed, but his hand flashed out to capture her wrist in a cruel grip. 

"I've hardly forced you," he said with an angry effort at control.  "Unless, of course, that's what you prefer."

Brenna recoiled.  "I'd prefer that you never touch me again." 

"You have an uncommon way of showing it."

Guilt made Brenna redden, and she righted her skirts. 

"Would you have listened to anything I said?" she sputtered.  "It's plain you're practiced at this... this sort of thing."

He let out a harsh laugh and released her wrist with a gesture that flung her away from him. 

"And you're not?  You're far too eager a pupil for me to believe your
Highland lover didn't school you in every liberty I took."

Brenna's hand
itched to crack across his face.  But she had learned she could provoke him to her grief the day she had slapped him on the moor. 

"You're not fit to speak
Cam's name."  Her nails bit into the palms of her hands.  "Cam never treated me like a whore.  We were going to be married."

A peculiar light dawned in Drake's eyes.  When he spoke, his tone was formal and mocking.  "Can it be I've had the honor of tasting charms your betrothed hasn't sampled?"

Brenna slid from the canopied bed.  "That's none of your affair."

"An ill
  chosen remark for a woman in your state of undress," he responded, derision and an odd callous amusement in his voice.

Brenna caught the stuff of her gown up over her exposed breasts.

"I've been promised to
Cam since I was ten," she gritted out with a cold attempt at dignity.  "I'll never betray him.  And I will find him, even if I have to jump from that window to do it."

He regarded her for a moment, his look strangely probing.  Then he swung to his feet on the opposite side of the bed.  "You won't need to take desperate measures," he said in a low clipped voice.  "I've sent for Thomas Wolcott to make queries about where your Rebel is held. 

"If you're determined to see him in chains, I'll do my best to oblige.  But more than that I won't permit.  You can't follow your Scot to prison or the Colonies."  He paused and let out a short breath.    

"Once he's tried and sentenced," he said quietly, "he'll be lost to you.  He made a fool's choice, and now he has to answer for it." 

Chapter 17

Had the Earl told her the truth?  Drake Seton was arrogant and unpredictable, but Brenna had never known him to lie.  A small voice inside her taunted that she knew him hardly at all, but she was left with no choice but to rely on his promise.  If the Earl chose to wield his influence, he could discover where Cam was held far more quickly than she could on her own.  She had to pray he would stand by his word.  And that he wouldn't pay her a second visit before morning.

What had made her surrender so heedlessly to him?  It was
Cam she loved.  Cam was everything to her, all that had mattered to Brenna since she had been old enough to sit a pony and gallop after him across the moors.  But Cam had never kissed her as Drake did.  Some dark treacherous part of her had awakened under the pressure of his searing, insistent mouth, a side of her she hadn't  known existed.  How could she have yielded to his touch?  Brenna cringed inside at the humiliating recollection.    

Drake Seton was an accomplished, unprincipled rake.  He had assaulted her with the all the salacious arts he had learned at a dissolute English court.  But
Cam was a far different, far better man.  Cam's arms were a haven to her, his kiss shared sweet passion with a man who loved her, who stopped short at despoiling her before they said their wedding vows. 

It was dawn before she slept.  She woke to a rapping on the door, and sat up in the bed in relief as the serving girl entered, balancing a tray. 

"A right eerie morning,
m'lady."  Through the paned windows, the river and the budding branches of the trees had vanished in a dank shroud of fog.  "More like Lent than May.

"Your dress is mended."  She indicated Brenna's mulberry satin gown.  It lay pressed and freshened across the lounge at the foot of the bed.  "I had orders not to wake you when I brought it."

The ornate clock on the mantle told Brenna it was still early, scarcely past seven.  She forced herself to eat.  She would need all her strength and wit to thwart the Earl once he led her to
Cam.

The butler summoned Brenna after she dressed.   "His Lordship requests your presence, m'lady."  He held out a hooded velvet mantle.  "Against the wet and cold, miss."

The Earl waited for her
in the marble foyer in a caped redingote and a tricorne hat.  "I've had a message from Wolcott.  He's located Lord MacCavan in the Admiralty roll of prisoners in the ships at Tilbury wharf.  He's held aboard the
Medusa
."

He hastily handed Brenna into the coach drawn up below the steps.  The wheels jarred over the cobbles, rattling the coach and their bones as they started up the street along the
Strand.

"How is he?" Brenna asked.  "Has he recovered?"

Drake turned from the window.  "He was alive when his trans
port docked in London.  More than that, the Admiralty couldn't say."  His face was shuttered and impassive.  "Be prepared.  The neglect aboard a prison ship passes imagination.  Lord MacCavan was wounded when he embarked from Scotland.  Likely, he's very ill.  It will take a strong stomach to face the conditions aboard the
Medusa
."

Brenna answered in a quiet voice.  "Do you think I'll scream or swoon?  I saw the dead on
Culloden Moor.  Whatever Cam has suffered, whatever has happened to him, I love him."

Brenna saw fleeting, reluctant respect in the Earl's eyes.  "Then I won't trouble to shield you from whatever Wolcott may find," he said shortly, and turned to gaze out the window again.

Dense patches of mist rose like a wall before them, making the horses snort and balk in the traces.  The coach pressed on by fits and starts, jouncing ahead far too slowly.  Warehouses and wharves gradually gave way to the
Essex countryside.  Then, at last, a bare  sparred graveyard of rotting hulks rose above the river, lying apart from the ships cutting up the main channel.

"Tilbury," Drake said.  "When
London's jails are bursting, His Majesty makes use of ships decommissioned from the navy."

They alighted from the coach under a lowering leaden sky and the hideous figurehead of the
Medusa
, a Gorgon with writhing snakes wreathing her face.  Thomas Wolcott started down the gangplank, a ship's officer at his heels.  Drake addressed the uniformed man.

"Tell the captain we request permission to come aboard."

"Surely, sir, you don't mean to bring the lady aboard?"

Drake's mouth tightened in a grim line.  "I fear the lady insists."     

"Forgive me, Lady Brenna," Wolcott said uncomfortably.  "I'd like a moment to speak with the Earl."

Brenna's gaze fled from his face to Drake's, fright taking root inside her.  "Whatever you say to the Earl, you can say to me."

Drake nodded agreement, and Thomas turned back to Brenna.  "I'm afraid Lord MacCavan is no longer aboard the
Medusa
."

Brenna's heart went still.  "What are you saying?" she asked in a voice she couldn't keep from shaking.  "I was told when he left
Inverness, he was making a good recovery."

Wolcott shot a
swift look at the Earl.  "You must understand.  The conditions aboard... fever and poor rations..."

"No!" Brenna burst out.  "
Cam can't have died in a place like this!"

He shook his head.  "Lord MacCavan was carried off the
Medusa
on a stretcher, but he left the captain's charge alive."

Brenna shut her eyes for a second in relief.  But when she opened them, Wolcott's gaze held a terrifying pity.

"He was summoned from the
Medusa
to be tried."  He paused as Brenna swallowed and stared back at him.  "My lady, the charge was treason.  You must know what that means."

Brenna forced herself to speak.  "That an English jury will have no sympathy for a Scot," she said bitterly.  "Only tell me where he's being tried."

"I'm afraid the trial has already taken place." 

The first officer of the ship finished for Wolcott.   "Lord MacCavan was tried and condemned yesterday afternoon.  And transported at dawn to Kennington Common."

Brenna's pulse thundered in her ears, and she swayed for a second.  "No."  Her voice wavered.  "That can't be!"  

"My dear Baroness," he said with acid formality, "good Englishmen give short shrift to traitors.  Lord MacCavan was sentenced to hang.  He went to the gallows this morning."

The world tilted for a second.  Brenna forced back the terror she felt.  "They can't have hung
Cam.  There has to be some way to stop them."

Her voice crossed the thin edge of hysteria.  She whirled blindly away.  She had to find a horse.  Drake reached out to restrain her, and a shred of sanity returned at the sight of the waiting coach.  She wheeled back to him.

"Please.  In the name of God, take me there."

Behind her, she heard Thomas Wolcott speak.  "Kennington Common is the last place for her." 

With a strength Brenna never knew she possessed, she wrested free of Drake's grasp.

"No," she grated out.  "I won't be treated like a child."  She confronted Drake.  "You promised me.  You told me I'd see him."

He stared down at her for a taut, silent moment.  His face had set, and he
answered with a nod.  "I gave my word."

As quickly as the three of them climbed inside the coach, the driver cracked his whip above the horses' heads.  They had to retrace their journey to Tilbury.  The fog was lifting, and she prayed the coach could make faster time now.

Kennington Common lay on the other side of the
Thames.  Only one span crossed the river, and carts and vendors and jostling idlers on foot clogged the long, shop  lined street on London Bridge.  The coach slowed to a crawl, and Brenna ground her teeth to keep from screaming or weeping at the delay. 

Then, finally, they were across, in the shadow of Southwark Cathedral.  At a signal from Drake, the coachman whipped the team to a reckless gallop that scattered everyone before them. 

At last, the coach rocked to a halt.  Thrown back against the seat, Brenna righted herself and would have leapt out unassisted if Drake hadn't been quicker.  He handed her to the ground as Thomas Wolcott swung out the opposite door.

The sight before her paralyzed Brenna.  A hastily
  built gallows stood in the center of the grassy common.  Three men swung from its center beam.  Their faces blackened, and over the heads of the suddenly silent spectators, she heard the sharp crack of bone as a last neck snapped.  Brenna felt Drake's hand steady her.  But desperate hope rose inside her.  Cam wasn't one of the men on the gibbet.      

She couldn't spare a moment's weakness now.  She plunged into the watching crowd. 

"Let us through."  Half
  demented, she fought her way forward.  Swiftly, Drake shouldered ahead of her, breaking a path for her, Thomas shielding her from the angry onlookers they pushed aside.  They reached the fore of the crowd, directly below the wooden platform.  The trapdoor hung above Brenna, lolling like a hideous tongue, gaping beneath the condemned  mens'  feet. 

A small knot of prisoners waited behind the platform, at the foot of the steps that mounted  it.  More stood a little way beyond, roped off from the crowd like livestock readied for a fair.  Bound, their hands behind their backs, there were
two score or more.