She turned about, and a gasp formed and froze upon her lips.
Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood was sitting forward in a longboat, reaching out a hand to her.
“I—I can’t—” she began.
“Child, look who I have with me!” Spotswood demanded.
She looked past him. Lord Theodore Kinsdale peeked around the lieutenant governor’s shoulder, his eyes rheumy with tears, his mouth breaking into a hearty smile.
“Father!” she cried.
“Help the lass, help her!” Spotswood demanded.
Spotswood’s sailors reached into the sea for her. Skye flushed, and the men politely turned aside as she tried to adjust the sodden cloak and find a seat within the longboat. Theo’s ferocious hug nearly upset all of the boat, and she found herself held warmly in her father’s arms. She shivered and chattered insanely. Someone pressed a bottle to her lips. The brew threatened to burn her mouth.
“Drink it!” she was ordered.
She swallowed. Then she swallowed more deeply. The shivering at long last seemed to subside. “More!”
She swallowed more. The world was hazy around her. Maybe some of the rough edges of pain were eased.
“Bless God and the saints above us!” Theo muttered.
Skye pulled back. Her father—her dear, fastidious father—was torn and disheveled, from his unpowdered hair to his filthy mustard breeches and snagged stockings. He smelled like an animal hold and he was every bit as sodden as she, but she cried out and hugged him again, because he was alive and well. “Father! Oh, Father! Why did you come for me! I was safe; you could have been safe! And now…” Her voice trailed away. In her relief to see her father, she had momentarily forgotten the Hawk.
“I had to come, you’re my life, my only child. You are everything to me!” Theo reminded her.
“Oh, Father! I do love you. But now—”
“The Hawk!” Theo said.
“My God!” she breathed.
“My God, indeed!” Spotswood murmured, and he turned to her. “There, milady. I see him there, still aboard the ship!”
She strained to see past the fire and the smoke and she saw that the lieutenant governor spoke the truth. The figures of two dueling men could be seen, outlined clearly like black silhouettes against the fiery furnace of the blaze. They feinted forward, and they feinted back.
Theo placed his hand upon her shoulder. “’Tis the Hawk,” he murmured. “He tossed me overboard to the boats below with that vile Logan a-breathing right down his shoulder.”
“He’ll best Logan. He has to win, Skye. You understand that?”
She didn’t understand anything. She screamed suddenly, leaping up, for the pirate ship exploded, bursting in the night. But just as it happened, the silhouettes were still stark and visible. And one of them drew back his sword with a fierce and mighty swing, and sent it flying like a headsman across the other’s throat. And even as the explosion rent the air, sending both silhouettes flying into the dark and waiting water of the night, she could see a severed head go flying from a torso.
She screamed and screamed, clutching her throat. The explosion had killed the other man, surely! It was an inferno, and they were scarcely far enough away themselves not to feel the horrid heat of the blaze.
“Skye!” Spotswood called to her. “Dammit, child, sit, will you? Skye!”
Their boat tipped, and capsized.
And for the life of her, she could not care. She wanted to sink at that moment into the darkness. Life, she thought, had been darkness until he had lifted her from it. She wanted no part of the light, if she could not share it with him.
“Daughter!”
“Skye Cameron, come over here!”
Whether she wanted life or no, she was going to be forced to live. The sailors righted the boat; her father grabbed her. When the boat was righted, they dragged her up. They all sat shivering.
Another explosion rent the pirate ship. The fire crackled high in the night, and then it began to fade. It would burn for hours, Skye thought, but never so brightly as now. By morning, the fire would be gone.
