While he undid his robe she scrambled up, only to be shoved back onto the bed. “Oh, no, my dear! What you give tohim, you’ll give to me too!”
“Whoreson!” she snarled at him as his body crushed her flat, but he only laughed. Infuriated, she struggled against him like a madwoman.
His mouth came down hurtfully on hers, and she clenched her teeth tightly together. His hands tangled in her dark hair, holding her head still. She closed her eyes to blot him out, but she couldn’t close out his voice, which crooned in her ear. “Are you going to be my wife willingly, Skye, or is it going to be rape? Maybe that sort of thing excites you, eh, my darling? I’d rather you’d let me love you and that you would try to love me back.”
“Love you?”Her scorn was thick. “You sicken me! And to think that I once preferred you to Dom O’Flaherty!”
He wanted to hit her. What had happened to them? All desire left him. Rape was not his style. To her surprise, he rolled off her. But when she tried to rise he held her back. “No, madam! From now on you’ll sleep with me. But I’ll not give you further excuse to hate me by taking my rights by force. You’ll have to ask me for loving, my darling. And you will, Skye. You will.”
Relief made her brave. “Never!” she spat.
He laughed, and pulled her into his arms so he might caress her breasts. “Those two pretty apples of yours have grown plumper,” he observed.
“I thought you just said you wouldn’t make love to me unless I asked,” she said, trying to squirm away from him.
“I said I wouldn’t take my ‘rights,’ Skye. I never said I didn’t intend to enjoy your delicious little person.”
“Oh!” she gasped, outraged. “That’s not fair!”
“You’d rather I’d rape you?” he asked in mock surprise.
“I didn’t say that!”
“Then just what is it you want of me, my darling?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it. Let him tease and play his stupid games. She would never yield, nor would she give him the satisfaction of protest. Niall, allowing his hands the freedom of her body, roaming the marvelous skin, noted the grim line of her mouth. He smiled to himself. She would never know how close to rape she had come.
His hands and his mouth wreaked a wonderful torture upon her, and Skye bit her lips and pressed her nails into her balled palms until the pain eased some of the unholy pleasure he forced on her. When he believed he had driven her far enough, he stopped abruptly and, rolling over, went to sleep. She lay next to him, her whole body trembling, and silently hated him as much as she had ever loved him.
Skye quickly discovered that Niall intended being master in everything, not simply in their bedchamber. As soon as she was able to escape him, later that same day, she fled down the winding interior staircase of the castle to the boat cave. She stood horrified at the place where her vessel should be moored. The boat was gone! “Wat!” she shouted. “Where are you, boy?”
“Don’t bother calling for Wat, my darling.” Niall had followed her. “He’s been given a place on a fishing boat, and will no longer be serving here.”
She whirled and her voice shook with anger. “Wat wasmyservant! How dared you reassign him? And I suspect you know where my boat is.”
“I do.”
“Where?” she shouted at him.
“Precisely where you left it, Skye.”
Puzzled, she turned to look again at the empty mooring.
“Look closer,” he instructed.
She moved down the steps further, and as the sun played on the calm sea, her eyes caught a glimpse of something in the water and comprehension dawned. Slowly she backed up the stairs to the ledge, rage permeating every fiber of her being. She turned to face him, and Niall Burke saw anger as he’d never seen it before.
“Whoreson!” she hissed. “Bastard! You sank my boat! How dare you! How dare you!” And her fist lashed out to hit him a blow that caught him off guard and actually staggered him.
He grabbed at her, successfully holding her arms, and lookeddown into her face. The hatred he saw there was as fierce as her blow had been. Silently he cursed his father and Seamus O’Malley for ever believing that he and Skye could be reunited. “Aye!” he said through clenched teeth. “I sank your damned boat! I’ll not have you running off to your lover again and possibly passing off his bastards as my sons.”
Outraged, she let out a piercing shriek. “Do you consider me so without honor then, Niall Burke? And I repeat,I have no lover!” Then she wrenched out of his grasp and ran back up the stairs.
Skye was very worried. It was time for the spring parade of ships to be arriving from the Indies. Word had come from Bideford that very morning that half a dozen ships, the largest grouping ever, would be here within the next few days. She had to get word to de Marisco and her fleet, which was waiting now on Lundy for her instructions. If she could not go to them, then they must come to her.
When evening fell Skye climbed up the west tower of the castle. In the tiny topmost room that faced Lundy, she lit two small signal lights in stone dishes and placed them in the window. One was set up high, the other low. Across the clear calm of the sea a boy at the top of de Marisco’s keep looked hard, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Then he hurried to find his master. Adam de Marisco looked across the eleven miles of water with his spyglass. One high, one low. The meaning was “Come at once. I need you.” They had set up that signal after last winter’s unfortunate episode with Lord Dudley. But why would she need him now? What of her husband? Still, Skye wasn’t a woman to take things overhard. If the signal was there, then she must need him.
Several hours later, for the winds had been light and he had been forced to tack back and forth in order to reach Lynmouth Castle, he sailed into the cave and up to the mooring. Skye’s boat was gone, but she stood awaiting him.
