“Stop it!” she hissed desperately. “Nothing makes it all right!”
“No, it doesn’t, does it?” he murmured. He turned her around by the shoulders. She tried to jerk free from his touch, but he would not allow her to go. She stared up at him, her eyes glazing with tears.
“I need your help!” she insisted bitterly. “I had no choice. My father—”
“Aye, your father,” he muttered darkly. “And still I tell you, milady, that your husband would have gladly fought and died rather than let you pay this price.”
“His blood cannot be payment for my request.”
“Aye, milady, for his blood has become your blood, as surely as yours is his. God alone knows how he will feel this time!”
“What do you mean?” she cried, wrenching away from him at last.
“Well, milady, I assume you must have admitted something.” The sweep of his eyes told her clearly and boldly that he spoke of her lack of innocence when she entered into her marital bed. “What did you say? That it was fear? Loneliness? Desperation, a bid to save your very life! This time…perhaps you need not tell him that you bartered with what was his, that you offered yourself in payment. You can tell him that I am a pirate, a cutthroat, a ravaging rapist, and that I dragged you down before you had a chance to think.” He reached out for her again so suddenly that she nearly screamed. His fingers threaded cruelly into the hair at her nape, and he dragged her close. “Maybe he’ll be so enraged he’ll beat you to within an inch of your life. I wonder what I would do, milady, if you were my wife, under such circumstances. I’d kill the man, that is for certain.”
She kicked him savagely, taking him by surprise. He howled with outrage as her foot came in wild contact with his shin, then he jerked harder upon her hair, pulling her flush against him. He gritted his teeth. “Pirates, milady. We are allowed to be savages, remember? But I do wonder just how savage your fine aristocrat of a husband might turn out to be when he hears of this latest maneuver on your part! But then, you told me that you loved him, didn’t you?”
“Let me go!” she cried frantically. “He is my concern.” Aye, Roc was her concern, just as the Hawk was her concern. And at the moment, he was the man to fill her heart and her thoughts, for she was so completely his prisoner. From head to toe she was flush with the man, achingly aware of the heat of his muscles, the strength of his hands and arms, the fire in his groin. It occurred to her fleetingly then that she knew him more thoroughly still than she did Petroc Cameron, for this one she had seen boldly in the nude, while her husband had seduced her and been seduced in return while never quite shedding his clothing.
Warmth blazed through her as she struggled to be free.
“Captain!”
“Aye!” He released her instantly, striding the deck to come back upon the platform by the helm. It was Jacko calling to him from atop the crow’s nest.
“I see ships ahead, far right into the inlet.”
“Pirates?”
“Aye, sir! I see Teach’s flag atop the one. They’re drawing it in, I believe.”
“Safe harbor on the islands!” Robert Arrowsmith seemed to growl.
Skye hurried after the Hawk to the platform. “Where are we?” she demanded.
“My glass!” the Hawk demanded. He leaped for the mast and began to shimmy up the length of it. Skye watched his dexterity with perplexity and annoyance, then turned to Robert. “Robert! Where are we? What is going on, here?”
“A party, milady.”
“A party!”
“A pirate fete upon a North Carolina island. A number of men have gathered here. Teach just took some incredible prize and enhanced his reputation a thousand times over. We believe he has a certain immunity here, in this area of North Carolina. So do some of the others.”
Skye gasped. “So Eden of Carolina has been bribed by the pirates!”
“So goes the rumor.”
“But why have we come…?” she began, but even at the last, her voice trailed away. “Logan! The Hawk thinks that Logan has come here with my father!”
“Precisely, Lady Cameron.”
Skye fell silent and hurried back to the railing, looking starboard side. She realized that the Hawk was calling down orders to Robert Arrowsmith, and that Robert was then calling out commands to the crew. The sails were drawn in tighter and the ship began to shift. Skye thought that the Hawk meant to sail straight into the land, and she nearly turned to scream that they were insane. But just when she would have done so, she saw the narrow channel leading inland. It was a fair space ahead of the other pirate ships.
They were going to hide, she thought. Hide, until the Hawk could get a fair layout on the land—and its inhabitants.
She was right in her assumptions.
Turning about again, she saw that the order had been given to bring down the longboats.
