“I’ll get you a glass, love,” he murmured.
She shook her head, and her teal eyes were luminous with a glaze of tears. “It will not be necessary,” she said.
She slipped back into his arms. She drew him down to her embrace, finding his lips with parted mouth, meeting him with a wild abandon that swept away his very thoughts.…
Then a shattering pain burst upon his skull.
Darkness came in upon him, and wavered back. Liquid spilled over him as he crashed down to his knees. He managed to look up, and into her eyes. He saw the broken rum bottle in her hands, and he managed to swear at her in a single gasp.
“Bitch!”
Then he fell, heavy and flat. She cried out, but stepped aside, and his weight came down full upon the floor as the blackness of oblivion came surely to claim him.
XIV
Roc came back to consciousness very slowly.
Pale light flickered by his eyes.
He smelled like the scurviest of taverns. He moved his hand, and winced, feeling broken glass beneath.
Then he heard a soft chuckle and saw a handsomely buckled shoe with a well-turned masculine calf attached to it. He groaned aloud, allowing his eyes to fall closed once again.
“Come on, my boy, up, up!”
Wincing, he sat, and cast Spotswood an angry glare. “What are you doing in my room? And why is it—sir—that you seemed to have known that you would find me in this state.”
“Truthfully, Petroc, I did not know how I would find you at all, but it was imperative that I see you now, so I came as quickly as I saw your wife leave.”
“Leave!”
He bolted up, shaking his head, desperate to clear it. “Blast that wench! I have chased her over half the seaboard and through forest and glen, and I swear, sir, that I am about to keep the lady in chains. Dammit, where has she gone now?”
“Why, to find the Silver Hawk, of course,” Spotswood said complacently.
“What?”
“I believe that I’ve sent the young lady off to find the Silver Hawk. In fact, I know that I have.”
“Why!” Roc exploded incredulously. “Damn you, sir, but what have you done to me now?”
“Petroc, wait, listen!” Spotswood pleaded vehemently. “We’ve worked at this for years now, and you must know the rationale of what I’ve done. A tremendous favor, and that’s the God’s own truth, sir, and I swear it. Think—”
“Think!” Roc groaned and clutched his head and sank down to the bed. “Think, eh? Sir, it has been bad enough. I returned from my last adventure with the woman who is my wife, afraid to put my hands upon her, afraid to come too near her! Now you think that I must go out and change roles again! Her husband was going for her father! I was going, I would have sailed today with my legal and legitimate crew and a ship that docks safely upon the James—”
“Robert Arrowsmith has the Hawk’s sloop ready and waiting on the river. You need only don your whiskers—”
“Don them! They were real last time.” Roc rubbed his clean-shaven chin, gritting his teeth. He’d had time to grow a fine set when sailing for New Providence and the Tortugas in the hopes of claiming theSilver Messengerand his bride. This time he would have to play with theatrical hair and sticking gums. He didn’t care for the idea, but in one respect, the lieutenant governor was right—it might be far better for the Silver Hawk to set sail against Logan than for Lord Petroc Cameron to do so. No other pirate would come to his assistance if they knew him as Lord Cameron, but if a battle or skirmish came about someplace, he might find assistance as the Silver Hawk. Everyone knew about the “relationship” between the two men, and therefore it was easy enough to play the act before men and women who did not come too close—
Playing an act before one’s wife…one’s mistress, one’s lover…was nearly impossible.
He had envied the Hawk. Until this very evening, he had longed to be his alter ego once again, the man who could freely shed his clothing before Skye and not fear that she’d find some scar upon him that would tell her beyond a doubt that he was, indeed, his own “cousin”—the sea slime, the scourge of the seas, the rogue.
The man to whom she had willingly and so sweetly given her love.
He stood up suddenly, his temper soaring. The wretched little adventuress. She’d seduced him to betray him—him! her lawfully wedded husband—to go off to find a rogue. Perhaps the acting would not be so heinous after all.
“You, sir, sent her after the Hawk?” he inquired darkly of Spotswood.
