IVORY DAWN (The Razor's Adventures) (3 page)

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Authors: P.S. Bartlett

BOOK: IVORY DAWN (The Razor's Adventures)

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Ivory leapt to her feet, panting hard, but still breathing. Her heart thumped in her chest as if she’d just run a mile. She leaned forward, catching herself by the knees for a moment. Then, she stood straight and raised her arm slowly with her hand faced down, clutching the knife. Ivory pointed it directly at him. “I certainly hope…you are your best man, because if so…you’re taking us with you.”

“I should kill you for this,” he whispered, pulling the cravat from his neck and blotting the blood that still seeped from the puncture in his gullet.

“So typical. You attempt to rape me, and when I fight back and best you, you want to kill me. In case you missed the past few minutes, Captain, I could have killed you twice, but I let you live because I need you alive. You will take us with you, and you will instruct your crew they are not to lay a hand on any of us, or I can promise you that the first man who tries to do so will feel my razor slice through his throat. The last thing he’ll see is my eyes before the Devil welcomes him home.”

“And what’s in all of this for me? Kill me if you wish, but there is no way you can expect me to walk out there and tell those men what happened here. They’ll never respect me again, and they certainly won’t abide by any rule I give not to have a turn with each of you by sundown tonight.”

Ivory walked to the dresser, never lowering the cutlass or taking her eyes off of Barclay, and pulled open the top drawer. She reached in and recovered a white neck scarf, shook it out, and tossed it to him. “Put that on over the other one. Yours can stop the bleeding. Mine will conceal the bruise around your neck. I’ll not divulge to your crew what transpired here, and you can have everything on this farm except for the personal items that belong to my cousins and me. You get what you need to cover your honor, and we get what we want. I don’t care what you have to tell them, but we’re getting on that ship, and you will protect us. Give us thirty minutes to pack our things but…we’ll also need sailing clothes—same as the men wear.”

“This is insane,” he croaked, tying the scarf around his neck and rubbing his throat gently.

“I let you live. Life is not insane. Expecting it to always go the way you think it should however, is lunacy. Now get up and let’s move. I suspect what you’ve taken so far from the people on this riverbank, as well as what I’m giving you, is more than enough to set sail immediately.”

“You have no idea what you’re getting these women into, Ivory,” Barclay spoke as he stood.

“You have no idea what I’m getting them away from either. If we stay here, eventually we rot for the rest of our lives under some fat, filthy farmer who hasn’t an inkling of what we’ve been through, or what we’re worth. Worse than that, we might not be as lucky the next time your sort comes along in the night, and we end up drawing our last breath with some smelly, dirty pirate beast on top of us, stealing what’s left of our dignity before he slits our throats. I’m giving us our freedom. I’m saving us no matter what it takes! I’ll never die at the hands of some pirate bastard, and I’ll kill any man who ever tries to hurt one of those girls, too.”

“My sort…I find it remarkable that a woman as smart as you cannot see the irony in all of this.”

“What irony? That you walked into my house believing you were just going to take what you wanted, go back to your ship, and move on to the next? Obviously there’s irony in the fact that I now hold you hostage.”

“The irony, my dear, is you calling me a pirate when you’re the one holding the knife and forcing me to give you passage on my ship. Just between you and me, Madame, it appears there is more than one pirate in the room.”

About the Author

P.S. (Peggy) has always had a love of books and writing. She also paints and draws and although writing takes up the majority of her free time by choice, she loves spending time with her friends and family.

Her first novel “Fireflies” was published in March of 2013 with GMTA Publishing and her second, “Hope From the Ocean” was published in March of 2014, also with GMTA.

Peggy now independently publishes her own novels.

Peggy’s goal is to become a full time writer and spend the remainder of her days creating worlds, characters and stories that will carry on long after she’s written her last word.

More of The Razor’s Adventures

DEMONS & PEARLS

Book 1

JADED TIDES

Book 2

(Coming Soon!)

AMBER WAKE

Gabriel Falling

With Ronovan Hester

(Coming Soon!)

THE BLUE DIAMOND

THE RAZOR’S EDGE