e your punishment,” he said, his voice as calm as could be. “I had intended to give you another day or so . . .” He broke off and shrugged. He strode toward her, and Jules, with a strangled cry, pressed her back against the headboard of the bed.
She struggled frantically, but soon she was lying on her back, her wrists bound securely above her head to the headboard. He very slowly drew off the sheet.
“There,” he said. “How lovely you are, Juliana,” he continued, studying her body. Jules closed her eyes tightly, so shamed and humiliated that she wanted to choke from it.
She felt his dry, cool fingers touch her breasts, and screamed, trying desperately to writhe away from him.
Jameson straightened, smiling. “You will remain thus, my dear, until it pleases me to release you. When you are ready to be more cooperative, I will untie your wrists. Now, I have some work to do and I shall stay here in my cabin.”
He walked to his desk, sat down, and opened a ledger. She could feel his eyes on her. She wanted to die.
The days and nights blurred in Juliana’s mind. She wasn’t certain, but she believed it had been four days now since Jameson Wilkes had kidnapped her. It was afternoon, and something within her simply snapped. She would no longer be an obedient, biddable possession. She waited, not moving, until she heard Wilkes’s footsteps coming toward the cabin. She knew his sound as well as she knew her own. When he entered, she very calmly struck him as hard as she could with an ivory bookend.
She stood a moment, staring down at his inert body. “Now, you pig!” She stripped him of all his clothes except his trousers. She couldn’t bring herself to do that, though she’d planned to. She’d wanted him to feel as she did—humiliated, exposed, helpless. She donned his shirt, hating it because it smelled like him, then tied his hands behind him. In her fury, she kicked him hard in the ribs. Then she stood back, and the realization that what she’d done was for naught struck her hard, and she burst into frustrated tears. She heard the sound of footsteps coming toward the cabin. She raced to the door, but there was no lock. Slowly she backed up and waited.
Bob Gallen, first mate aboard the Sea Shroud, knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, calling to his captain.
Frowning, he opened the cabin door and stood stock-still for a moment, staring first at his unconscious captain and then at the motionless white-faced girl who was wearing his captain’s shirt.
“Oh no,” he said. He bent down to examine Jameson Wilkes. “He’ll be all right, I think,” he said, raising his eyes to Juliana. “Look, miss, I’m sorry about all this, but what you’ve done was utterly stupid. Jesus.” Bob plowed his hand through his thick brown hair.
“Please,” Juliana whispered, “please help me.”
“I can’t,” Bob said. “Both of us would wish ourselves dead if I did.” He quickly untied the captain’s wrists and lifted him in his arms. He laid him on the bed.
“Get me into one of the boats, that’s all I ask! Please!”
He shook his head. From the corner of his eye he saw the girl race toward the door. He caught her easily and pulled her back. He shook her.
“Don’t, for God’s sake! You’re not stupid! You know what the men did to your friend, don’t you, before she jumped?”
“I don’t care,” Juliana spat at him, struggling with all her might. “I hope he dies!”
“Look, Miss DuPres, I don’t approve his taking a missionary’s daughter, but I have no say in the matter. For god’s sake, even if I managed to get you in a boat and away from the ship, you’d die soon enough.”
“All of you are evil! God, I hope you die too!”
Both of them froze at the groan from the bed. As if mesmerized, Jules watched Jameson Wilkes slowly sit up and gingerly rub his head.
4
“Well, Bob, may I inquire as to the reason for your presence?” Before Bob Gallen could reply—a difficult matter in any case, since he felt strangled with fear—Jameson Wilkes continued, “Ah, I see the problem. You look charming in my shirt, Juliana. Did you strike me?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice shrill with fear. “I only wish I’d killed you.”
Jameson Wilkes said nothing until the dizziness passed. “I underestimated you,” he said more to himself than to her. “A mistake I shan’t make again. Bob, you may leave now. I believe my faculties are sufficiently intact once more.”
“Sir, really,” Bob Gallen said, but stopped abruptly at the deadly calm threat in his captain’s gray eyes.
He turned on his heel, not looking at Juliana again, and left the cabin, closing the door softly behind him.
Jameson Wilkes rose slowly from the bed. “Your modesty prohibited you from removing my trousers, my dear?”
Fear curdled in her stomach, but she knew she had nothing to lose. She would not cower before this evil man. She said with the best sneer she could manage, “After I got your shirt off, I saw how old and ugly you were. Do you think I would want to see more? You are repellent.”
Jameson Wilkes was forty-one years old. He didn’t consider himself either old or ill-formed. In fact, he prided himself on his body. He was lean, with none of the paunch at his middle that most men his age sported. At her words, he wanted to thrash her, but he controlled his impulse. He saw the fear in her expressive eyes, realized that her speech was all bravado, and reluctantly admired her for it. It had been years, he thought, since he’d thought of a woman as an individual, a being who was separate and distinct unto herself.
It was quite likely that the man who purchased her would be repellent. Probably fat, with sagging jowls. He allowed himself a few moments to feel regret, then quashed it.