DARE THE WILD WIND (41 page)

He drew back from her.  "I can, and will.  And I won't tolerate any foolery from you while we're in port.  I'd prefer to see you more comfortable, but you will be once we're at sea again."

By the next day, men shouldered crates and sacks of grain up the gangplank
, the cargo the ship would carry on their return voyage, along with cheap trade goods, bars of iron and firearms, parasols and sabres, and casks of brandy for thirsts more educated than the dry throats rum slaked in the Indies.

Forty
eight hours after they dropped anchor, they put to sea again.  In the night, Brenna woke to feel the ship once more under way, and discover Tad gone.  When the gray light of morning broke through the porthole, a steady rain beat against the glass.  Brenna started to rise, but her uneasy stomach quickly forced her back onto her pillow.  She would wait until Tad brought her breakfast. 

Till now she had been quick to dress, but her much
worn gown had wilted considerably in the days they had been at sea.  In truth, she was far more comfortable in the flapping, oversized shirts Cam had left her to wear at night. 

But the storm gained steadily in strength, and for the first time on their voyage, Tad failed to appear.  Driven by a quartering wind, the brigantine plunged over towering swells and wallowed in the shallows, and now Brenna could only catch a glimpse of occasional patches of sky outside the porthole. 

Finally a fist pounded on the door to the cabin.  Jumping with difficulty from the bed, Brenna slid and struggled across the tilting deck to turn the key in the lock.  When the door burst open, her guard was nowhere in evidence. 
Cam swung inside, hair and face soaked and dripping beneath the oilskins he wore.   He shouted to make himself heard above the storm.

"The cook can't build a fire in the galley.  Tad won't bring you anything till the weather clears."  He propelled her hastily back across the cabin.  "I've got to secure you in your berth."

"No."  She shrieked her protest over the wind.  "I won't let you tie me in."

With a swift shake of his head, he jerked open a cupboard overhead.  He pulled out a tightly
  rolled bundle. 

"Mosquito netting."  He unfurled it with a snap and lashed it doubled to the beam atop the bunk.  "I don't want you thrown."

His eyes sought hers for a second, as if he regretted how he had treated her on the voyage.  Then, to her surprise, he bent to kiss her quickly on the mouth, his lips war
ming hers for a second.     

“I'd stay with you if I could.  But I'm needed on deck."

Before she could speak, he stretched the netting over the open side of the berth and tied it down. 

He struggled back into the companionway, and Brenna stared after him.  No key turned in the door.  He had left it unlocked.  But she had no fear of an intruder.  While the storm raged, the crew would too busy to think of her. 

Despite her first misgiving at being confined to the berth, with the cocoon of netting around her she felt more secure, and she tried to quell the rebellious roil of her stomach at the violent pitching of the ship.

But the weather only grew heavier, as if the gale blew them into the dark and deadly center of the storm.  High, sawtoothed waves crashed over the ship, and the
Red Witch
shot up sheer mountainous swells to hang with a terrifying lurch on the precipice.  Then, with a sickening slide, the ship dropped as if it plunged through empty air, catapulting down and down into troughs so deep Brenna was sure the ocean would close over them. 

Were they going under?  Was that why
Cam parted from her with a kiss that forgave all their harsh words?

Suddenly the ceiling of the berth pressed suffocatingly down on her.  If the
Red Witch
went down, she would be trapped.  The cabin would be her coffin.  Brenna fought for breath at the thought.  If the ship sank, she would be below deck.  She couldn't, wouldn't die here.  She would die above deck, in the wind and rain.  And she wouldn't drown in her nightclothes. 

She tore with clumsy fingers at the knots that held the netting.  One corner gave, and then the other. 

Brenna pulled herself upright and threw the mosquito netting aside.  Despite the yaw of the deck beneath her bare feet, she started across the cabin for her gown, hung on a peg by the door. 

Nearly to
Cam's desk, she threw out her hands as a new wave struck the ship, barely catching hold before the
Red Witch
shuddered and shot with twisting, unbalanced speed into the next steep canyon of water.  Then, just as she straightened to take her last two steps across the sloping deck, a thundering wall of water crashed athwart the keel.      

The ship rolled suddenly and wildly on its beam, and Brenna fell, her grip torn from the desk.  Hurling headlong toward a bulkhead that had become the deck, she flailed for a handhold to break her fall.  But her fingers
clawed at empty air. 

Curling, she drew up her knees, trying to shield her stomach.  Separate shocks jarred through her as her hands and knees struck the bulkhead, and then her head slammed against the wall. 

Brenna's sight dimmed.  Half stunned, she lay immobile, a thin warm trickle of blood seeping down her face.  Then, miraculously, her vision began to clear.  Elation washed through her.  She hadn't been badly hurt. 

The bulkhead skidded and dropped beneath her.  Somehow she had to crawl to a handhold or be thrown again.  She tried to roll to all fours, just as the hull of the ship hit the bottommost depth of the shallows with a brutal jolt.  There was a sharp crack above Brenna's head. 

An avalanche hailed down.  Fiery agony exploded in Brenna's side, and she went spinning into a deep and jagged pit of pain. 

Chapter  22

"You mustn't hate her," Eleanore insisted.  "You can't know what really happened."

With an effort of will, Drake curbed his anger.  Scornful of vanity or malice, Eleanore was a rarity at court, an exceptional woman by any measure.  He had no quarrel with her or with Geoffrey Wittworth.  But he refused to delude himself about Brenna. 

"You're friend enough to defend her," he said shortly, "but your generosity is misplaced.  She went willingly.  The entire village saw her go."

The words still cut through him.  And the silence he had faced when he returned to Penherion from
Truro.  The sudden empty quiet of Brenna's sitting room when he strode in calling her name.  The fearful glances of the servants.  Martine's stark answer that Brenna had gone.  Pity was the last thing Drake wanted. 

"If you've come to console me, spare yourself the effort."  He indicated the charts spread on the broad mahogany desk of his study.  "I h
ave more than enough to occupy me at the moment."

Three weeks had passed since the
Red Witch
sailed from Penherion.  Blind with fury, Drake had thought of nothing but giving chase, overtaking the brigantine and running MacCavan through.  But he had no ship, only the tiny fishing vessels in the harbor.  The
Red Witch
had two days' start, and no one in the village could tell him what course the brigantine took.  The villagers only knew the
Red Witch
sailed from the West Indies.  Drake was forced to ride for London to commission a ship and scour the docks for information that would lead him to MacCavan.

Eleanore refused to be daunted by his brusque dismissal.  "Forgive me for presuming," she said quietly, "but Geoffrey and I have come to regard you as warmly as we do Brenna.  I urge you as a friend not to embark in anger, simply to take your revenge."

Drake's head jerked up again, and he glared at her, doubly incensed by the worry he saw in her earnest elegant face. 

"What would you suggest I do?" he shot back.  "Give them my blessing?  Turn away?"

Drake knew his plan would only feed the scandal going the rounds from
Pall Mall to Covent Garden.  The whispers and stifled laughter followed him everywhere in London.  But no one in the peerage dared to taunt him to his face.  The blaze of his eyes checked ill advised gibes by would be wits or any expressions of sympathy from his oldest friends. 

"I haven't come to dissuade you from pursuing her," Eleanore said.  She sat straight
  backed and resolute in the cabriole legged chair where Drake had waved her when she arrived.

"I only want to urge you to withhold judgment until you hear her out."  She leaned forward with pleading eyes.  "I'm utterly certain no woman alive is more honorable or loyal than Brenna.
"

"Unfortunately," Drake said in a dry and bitter voice, "her loyalty has never been to me."

"You can't be positive of that.  She must have been taken by surprise that night.  You can hardly fault her for reacting impulsively when she saw Lord MacCavan alive.  But beyond that, what can anyone know?  If she planned to go away with him, wouldn't she have packed even a few of her belongings?"

Drake couldn't dispute the fact that Brenna had taken nothing with her.  Nothing was missing from Brenna's wardrobe but a cloak and the clothes on her back.  The Seton emeralds still lay in their velvet
lined case, and she had left even her mother's small collection of jewels behind.  But there might not have been time to retrieve her most valued possessions.  Her lover might have been too eager to sail on the tide.

"Why split hairs?" Drake snapped.  "When she sailed with MacCavan, she made her choice.  But neither of them will find the
Indies a refuge while I live."

Eleanore stared at him, appalled.  "I took you for a civilized  man.  Is it Brenna you want to recover, or only your pride?"

"My pride is reason enough," Drake said flatly. 

Eleanore sat utterly still, regarding him with an expression very like distaste.  Then, stiffly, she gathered her gloves.

"I can see I was sadly mistaken to come here."  She rose, her voice scathing.  "What a pity it is that men set such store by what the world thinks of them.  And what a pity that the good opinion of society is such cold comfort in the night."

Drake dropped back into the chair behind his desk, relieved to see Eleanore go.  Who could fathom the logic of women?  How could an otherwise sensible woman lecture him on his behavior in the face of how completely Brenna had betrayed him?

No man would question his right to call Brenna to account for the wrong she had done him.  Or deny him the pleasure of finishing the hangman's work.  Regardless of the name the captain of the
Red Witch
used, Drake had known at once the flamboyant figure the villagers described could only be Cameron MacCavan.  Brenna would go with no one else.  By some trickery, the Scot had escaped the gallows and returned to retrieve Drake's wayward and treacherous wife. 

Drake would never forgive Brenna for the homecoming that met him at Penherion.  He had listened in tightly
  controlled silence to Jared Roslyn's stumbling account of how Brenna had left the house at the sight of the ship that sailed into the harbor.  How she raced down the cliff path, ran to the arms of its captain. 

He had wanted to rage at Roslyn, to smash every stick of furniture in the room.  But he wouldn't concede such naked pain.  Terrified, his steward had begged his leave to go, and beat a quick retreat from Penherion's library.  It wasn't until Roslyn backed through the door that Drake saw the glass he held had shattered in his hand.  Jagged splinters of the squat crystal goblet drew welling beads of blood that mingled with the spilled cognac stain
ing his sleeve.  But he felt nothing.  The hand might have been detached from his arm, and he tilted the bottle of brandy, dispensing with a glass.     

Much later that night, not even brandy could offer refuge.  He had questioned a tearful Martine again, at length.  At the words she blurted out, an animal howl had threatened to rise inside him.  Bitter enough that Brenna had abandoned him for another man.  How in the name of God could she go while she carried his child?

All the anger that had erupted in Drake that night engulfed him again.  At the casual mention of Brenna's name, the wound opened, fresh and raw.  But Drake refused to let Brenna and her lover best him.  He had no time to wallow in regrets.  No time for anything but the charts in front of him, for fitting out a ship to sail after the
Red Witch
.

A discreet knock sounded at the door.  "A Captain Sebastian has called to see you, m'lord."

"Sebastian?"  Drake's interview with Eleanore and the long and sleepless hours he kept had left him more weary than he cared to admit.  "I'm  not acquainted with anyone by that name."

"He said to tell you he's lately navigated the
Caribbean.  And that he's had the pleasure of meeting the Countess, your wife."

Drake's
London majordomo showed the captain into the study.

"Trevor Sebastian, at your service, Lord Stratford."  Drake's caller bowed in a fashion that in no way diminished the dignity of his bearing.  Tall and sparely built, he had the indefinable mark of a man who had spent a lifetime at sea.  There was an unmistakable air of command in his erect carriage, and the eyes that met Drake's were a clear silver blue more accustomed to surveying an unbroken horizon.  Set in an angular face weathered by wind and sun, they were younger than the lines that fanned around them, and Drake judged him to be somewhere in his thirties.