Virgin Star (43 page)

"Can you believe that sorry end, Shalyn? Of course the family was overjoyed to find her alive and well, after those many months of thinking her dead. And when the day of her wedding feast to a neighboring noble arrived, our cowardly shepherd flung himself to his death ...

"I told you it was not a very good story," he continued distractedly as he sat there watching her sleep. "Surely if I were to create an ending to a story I could do better. The shepherd could just shoot the baron, the lady's father, before she even sees him. I mean who really cares about the father anyway? He no doubt deserved such an untimely death. Did I mention the baron was known to steal his neighbor's cows and cheat the King's tax collector?" he mused. "So she never does remember. Then the happy shepherd and his lady get married and go on to purchase a little white cottage with a little garden surrounded by a white picket fence at the seashore. Dover or perhaps Bath, where, of course, they live happily ever after."

Instead of feeling comforted by his new tale, Seanessy felt a constriction in his chest. He saw with sudden clarity that this little white cottage was another kind of death. At least for him. Aye, he was mad in love with Shalyn. He supposed he would have to commission someone to build that cottage. For her. He might even be happy there for a while, but not in the long run. It had to do with being a man, with needing to stretch the reach of his arms; it had to do with his love for adventure.

Yet he would do anything to keep her happy. Anything. If this cottage of domestic bliss was her ticket, he would purchase it for her.

Shalyn stirred in her sleep and he saw she was dreaming. He sat on the edge of the bed, wondering at how beautiful she was, and how little that mattered now. For his desire might be directed to the package, but his heart lifted with nothing more than the sound of her name. Shalyn.

Shalyn. Look what you've done to me ...

In her dreams, Seanessy shouted for help. Someone was tying her hands. She struggled fiercely with all her strength, desperate to save him, but she couldn't get free. "Seanessy! Seanessy!" She couldn't help him. Dark shadows lifted the shovels, lifted and returned, lifted and returned, digging the hole that would be Seanessy's living grave, and he knew it. He was afraid--.

"Seanessy!"

Her eyes moved frantically beneath the closed lids as she tossed and turned. The thin sheet, gathered at her waist, revealed her nudity. His arousal was quick and while his desire rose brighter and higher each time he had her, he began to sense the magnitude of it. The magnitude of this disaster.

The sound of his name, the anxiety marring her lovely face, told him it was a nightmare. His hands came to her, and he lifted her into his arms.

"Shalyn, Shalyn, I have you. I have you. It was just a nightmare."

"Seanessy!" Her arms reached around his neck, clinging tightly.

He closed his eyes and savored the feel of her slender form against him.

"Seanessy. It was about you. I dreamed you were going to be buried alive and it was just shadows, and you couldn't fight them. Someone had tied my hands to make me watch and—"

"Shhh. It's over. Ifs over ..."

The soft words eased her from the darkness. She closed her eyes tight. "Don't let me go."

"Never, Shalyn. Never."

The nightmare disappeared as if it never was, replaced by a rush of heady memories of their night of passion, one after another washing over her in heated waves. Oh, mercy. Oh, Seanessy. She felt suddenly dizzy as she thought of what he had done, what he had said, what he made her say in the heat of it, and he wouldn't stop, and she ...

The blush went from the balls of her feet to the top of her head. The force, intimacy, splendor of his passion was a thing of wonder and marvel and—

She squirmed upon feeling a soreness there, the squirm bringing a sticky moisture between her legs. She gasped in a whisper, "I am all sticky and sore! I can still feel you inside me!"

She felt the soft bounce of his chest against her. She tried to pull back to look into his face. "No, Shalyn," he said softly, with feeling, keeping her close. “Just let me hold you a moment."

She gave herself over to the comfort and feel of his arms. She felt so... so satiated and warm. So deliciously intoxicated. Warmed from the inside out.

And also: "I am starved! Does making love make everyone so famished? I feel as if I haven't eaten in a week of Sundays, and, oh, Seanessy, the thought of one more bowl of Slops's poison—oh! How I long for a piece of fresh fruit and warm soft bread straight from the oven, smothered in strawberry jam or marmalade. Why," she said, noticing for the first time. "You're all wet."

"Aye. The mutinous bastards that make up my crew tossed me seaside three times."

She pulled back her own laughter, but sobered quickly. She stiffened, looking around the room with alarm as the stilled motion of the ship penetrated her sleep-drugged and happy senses. "Why, we have stopped!"

"Aye. We are at the Duke de la Armanac's Isle of Blue Caverns." A hand reached her face, his touch infinitely gentle as he waited for a reaction to this. She had none. She understood simply that they would be docked at this way-station for as much as a month before they sailed on to Malacca where she could begin her search for what had happened to her.

"Shalyn, I have to tell you something."

The alarmed expression on his face instantly subdued her. If she didn't know better she'd swear he was afraid. "Seanessy, you look frightened by something?"

"Aye," he said, his hand brushing her hot cheek. "I am afraid."

She searched the handsome face. His alarm told her it would be painful. Her mind produced the terrifying idea somehow that he would be saying it was a mistake, that he hadn't meant to, but the pain and the opium was ... "No, Seanessy. You would not hurt me now."

"Nay, Shalyn. Nay. Something has happened." "What? Tis bad news—"

"Aye. You see, Kyler was waiting for the ship—"

"Kyler? But—"

"Aye, they left London a full three days after us but beat us by four days. They have been waiting. You see, Shalyn . . ." His hand left her cheek to smooth back the tousled mass of hair, then lingered on the side of her head where once there had been a bump, as he searched for the right words. "Shalyn, Kyler has found your past, and, dear God, girl, it’s, ah,"—a telling brow rose—"difficult to believe."

The words repeated in her mind three times before she understood what he had just said. Her hands went numb, her heart skipped a beat. She swallowed. "Seanessy!" His name sounded in a frightened plea.

"You are a married lady, Shalyn."

He waited for the statement to sink in. She searched his eyes frantically. "Married -.. .me?"

"Shalyn, you know him. Your name, Shalyn, is Isabel Marie de la Armanac."

It took a full minute for her dazed mind to grasp what was happening to her and then only to realize it couldn't be happening. It just couldn't! It made no sense. "The Duke de la Armanac? Married ... to me? No!" She came off his lap, one hand holding the sheet to her nakedness, the other hand rubbing her forehead hard. "No! Tis not true! How can that be true? The Duke de la Armanac!"

"The man is waiting to speak to you."

"I don't believe you!" She realized it as she said it. The Duke de la Armanac! 'Twas preposterous! "How can it be? How could I be married to him? To him! Don't you think I would have remembered when I saw him? Don't you think I would have felt something... something? I ... I ..."

He stepped to her, one hand holding her up as his other hand forced the palm away from her forehead. "I don't know, Shalyn." Then: "What did you feel when you saw him?"

"Nothing! Nothing! I felt nothing! I had never seen him before; he was a perfect stranger."

"Could he be the source of your fear?"

She searched his handsome face. Her fear. Where did it come from? It came from something she had suffered here in the China Seas...

"I don't remember! I don't know him! He is a stranger to me. He is lying, or mistaken, somehow. I know if it’s not true—"

"He told Kyler that you and he had traveled together from the Isle of Blue Caverns to London. He walked into your suite and you were gone. No clothes were taken. No jewels. Nothing. He says you suffer from terrible night terrors that often take you out of your room into the dark dead of night."

He himself had witnessed them. He had seen her curled up in a ball in a closet, and more frightened than a man could know. She had not been asleep but neither had she been awake. Night terrors. Madness.

"He said he was frantic, crazed with worry. An army of men were out looking for you, and only later did he discover that two of his men had found you in the street. He says you fought them, and as they tried to subdue you, one of them hit you on the head.

They thought they had killed you. They were terrified of the consequence and disappeared, leaving you lying on the street naked like that. Well, in a chemise. His men finally found one of the two culprits, who told this tale. I asked why these men didn't snatch the ruby star, He seemed surprised to hear of it. He could only suppose they never saw it."

Her thoughts raced over this story. "If this is true then why was your name on the paper in my hand?"

"A good question. I don't know. Neither apparently does he. He was surprised to hear of it. Anyway, he says he has been searching for you all this time. He did not discover your whereabouts until after we had left. He says he has no idea what happened to you after that, or how you came to have my name and address in your hand."

Kyler had also said he had never seen a man act out more self-reproach upon learning that she had been beaten and dropped on a stranger's doorstep, but he would not tell her that. Besides, this wasn't even the best part of the story, but he'd let her assimilate this information before going into the murky cesspool of the rest. He'd let the duke explain the balance! He could hardly wait to hear it himself.

He closed his eyes, not understanding what was happening to him, all the violence he felt. He released her arm all at once and turned his back to her, fighting for and finally winning some measure of control.

"He is, Kyler says, quite desperate to see you. He sent a note requesting your compassion and mercy, which he knows is great. He wants to see you, talk with you. He is quite certain your memory will return once you are reunited, which; I too hope for."

Shalyn closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, desperate to remember something, anything, one thing that might let her believe she had been married to the Duke de la Armanac. The Duke de la Armanac! How strange. She did not know the man's Christian name, and yet a picture-perfect image of the duke rose in her mind. As clear as if he stood before her right now. Yet 'twas a stranger's face she saw.

"I do not know him, Seanessy, I do not know how he could have been my... husband and I could not know him." She felt dizzy. Her vision blurred, and from somewhere far away she heard herself say, "Seanessy Oh, Seanessy. Help me now..."

He was at her side in the instant. She felt his arms sweep her off her feet and carry her back to the bed. He sat down, holding gently as she suddenly was crying. "Seanessy, what am I to do? I don't want to be married! What am I to do?"

In the end there was only one thing to do.

They had to listen to his story.

The sun sat just above the horizon over the violet waters of the calm bay. The men gathered on deck, waiting on Seanessy, talking among themselves, mostly about the battle ahead. There was no doubt there would be a battle. Sean had been forthright and blunt in the message he sent to the duke: if the duke wanted to see Shalyn, he was to come aboard the Wind Muse at sunset.

Seanessy would take no chances.

Seanessy called his men to gather on deck and as he waited, he looked across the waters to the last sunlight upon the jutting towers of the duke's castle. He scoffed meanly, "Don't you wish.:."

"So," he began when all his men had gathered around him. "We will not debark until the matter is settled."

Butcher wondered out loud, "And how does a man settle the fact that he's mad in love with another man's wife?"

Seanessy cocked and readied his pistole, returning it to his shoulder harness. "Why, with murder, no less."

The men roared approval, and Oly howled at the roar, for no one had any doubt of who the villain was in this story. Seanessy's grin looked every bit as menacing as his words. His long hair fell over his shoulders and he wore the pistoles over a white washed vest, a black belt, white pants, and tall black boots.