“Don’t you have some loot to divide, ships to blast from the sea, people to rob...”
He finished tying her feet, one to each bedpost. His eyes bored into hers. Her hair had come unbound in their struggle and it lay upon the pillow in wild disarray. He brushed back her hair from the side of her face, so he could see her. His touch was gentle and nonthreatening. She had not expected that of him.
He smiled, his rapier glance passed over her. “You’re obviously stuck with me. You’ll have to accept defeat graciously.”
Hadn’t he said those very words to her in the gaol?How she wished she could go back and change that day.
“It’s unfortunate that I’m busy with running this ship,” he offered, his warm breath tickling her ear. “Otherwise, I’d be honoring our marital vows.”
Claire’s cheeks burned. “You will not compromise me.”
“I won’t?” He laughed at her. “Are you absolutely certain about that?”
Doubt shadowed her confidence. “It is no less obvious to me that you would dare to do so, and no less obvious for any woman you come in contact and rut with.”
“No wonder I risked life and limb to seize the ship that held you captive. My prize, a thankless witch.”
Claire’s eyes slid to the curve of his lips. A memory sprang forward with the tantalizing kiss they shared in the cottage, and too, he guessed the tenor of her thoughts. An emotion even more disquieting than the stillness of the cabin glimmered in his eyes.
“The year we’ve been apart has apparently not been forgotten.”
“Twelve months,” she corrected him. “Enough to forget a thousand lifetimes.”
“Yet you counted the months.” He laughed. Claire looked away, her transparency evident.
She missed the spasm of tenderness that crossed his face. She missed the devastating hope that kernel of truth held before his expression grew serious.
“Why Claire? Why that fop?”
Claire recoiled from the insinuation that she wanted Sir Teakle, and she hated Devon for that insinuation. Tears formed. She willed them away. Did she dare tell him of her father’s deed? Would he take the document and throw it into the ocean? “I have to go to England.” She could not fail. She had to do it because her father would have wanted her to fight for what should be hers. If only Devon would understand that need.
Why marry that disgusting lump of suet? Is it because he offers title, prestige and luxuries that you seek to be a bigamist? At the first sign of battle, that quivering mound of human flesh turned tail and demonstrated his cowardice. What do you see in him? Did you spread your legs and let his pudgy fingers and slack mouth crawl over your delectable body? Did that lace-ridden dandy make you pant, writhe, beg and cry for pleasure?”
Claire pulled at the ropes that sawed her wrists and snarled. “What about your vows?”
“My vows, Madame? I would honor them and cherish you as my young, lovely, sweet, tender bride.”
Claire grew unsteady, furiously torn between accepting some demented truth in his words, and embitterment to the mockery that shaded them. She refused to ignore the facts. “The mighty Black Devil, the self-appointed, high pontiff of morality, preaching bigamy to me. You are to be married to a girl from Tortuga while keeping mistresses and cavorting with prostitutes.”
“So you have heard the rumors. What interest is it to you? You care for your husband?”
“Be assured, you are of no consequence to me.” Knowing another woman entered his arms and received all the sweet pleasures he could give, jealousy scalded through her veins like hot mercury. How pathetically foolish to think she could keep someone like Devon at her side.
I am free to pick as I wish,” he shrugged nonchalantly. “After all, is it not you who gathers husbands like the gulls gather fish?” he said, his face a mix of emotions, discerning and gauging her reaction. “I will doubtless set up a mistress, one woman for duty, one for pleasure.”
Contempt reeled in her mind, a beneficiary of his high-handedness, and womanizing.
His eyes sizzled with green fire. “Imagine, Claire, there are times when I do grow impatient for our wedding night. To have you as my wife, beneath my ever magnanimous thumb, but you will come to me, I vow, and willingly.”
He ran a finger over her breasts, pulling down on her torn bodice. Her breath caught.
Claire shivered as familiar stirrings rose within her from his touch, stirring a need long dormant. Somewhere, though, she found the will to resist. He straddled her again.
He laughed. In a cruel vise-like grip, he pulled her face back to him, stemming any insubordination from her. The annoying smile, which had come and gone ever since he had seized her, reappeared. If only she could get free. She struggled against her bonds, but the ties only served to align their bodies.
“If I were a stellar merchant, I would admire your business acumen.” He leaned over and snapped open a drawer. He dropped a handful of priceless pearls in the valley of her breasts. She shivered, the pearls cold upon her skin. “Consider it payment for services to be rendered.”
Claire gasped.
