“It’s not going to make any difference whether I’m here or not,” he said, tightening the ropes again.
“You could die!”
He leaned over and kissed her hard on the mouth, marking her with his blood. “You could only be so lucky. I’ve decided not to give you up, Maddy Rose. So unless I go overboard you’re stuck.”
He was at the door before the words sank home. She tried to sit up but the ropes held her in place. “What did you say?”
“I’ll repeat it once we get through the storm. Stay put or I’ll have to tie your wrists again and I don’t want to do that. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” she said dazedly.
A moment later he was gone.
Rufus couldn’t stay belowdecks any longer. He couldn’t stand the smell of his own sickness, the way his body was being smashed against the crates and the hull of the boat, the scream of the wind, the roar of the rain as it tried to pound the ship into a thousand splinters. The massive cracking sound finished him.
The ship was splitting in half, and he was damned if he was going to be drowned like the rats that were trapped down here, eyeing him out of glowing red eyes. They’d probably feast on his carcass if the ship survived and he didn’t. Could someone die of seasickness?
He heard the pounding of footsteps overhead, up on the deck, and guessed that one of the main masts must have broken, leaving them adrift in the midst of a storm that seemed to have reached biblical proportions. How had he gotten it so wrong? He had finally listened to what his instincts had told him, he’d followed the bitch onto the namesake ship her wretched father had had built, and now he was facing death? It wasn’t possible!
He straightened, brushing at the stinking, stolen clothes as if they were the finest wool. Of course it wasn’t possible. How could he lose faith so easily? He’d been led to the ship—it would have been so easy to have missed it, missed his chance. Nothing worth doing was ever easy, and once he finished with the middle sister he could concentrate on the spoiled baby, back home safe on the grounds of Somerset, their stolen country home. It had been returned to its rightful owners, but that didn’t mean the debt was wiped out.
The passageways were deserted as he made his way up from the bowels of the ship, clinging desperately to the ropes strung along the sides. He was almost at the top, ready to head out into the storm itself, when he realized that Madeleine would be alone. And this time they may have forgotten to take the key.
He fell twice making his way to the captain’s quarters in the bow of the ship. Seawater had poured in through the hatch, and it was sloshing around his ankles, making things even more treacherous. It was dark down there, very little light coming from the portholes, and it wasn’t until he was almost outside the door that he saw the key was gone. His fury was so powerful it temporarily washed away his nausea. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to die by his hand, maybe she was simply going to go down with the ship, and it was up to him to survive. He had to make certain she was still trapped in there before he made his way topside.
He reached out and rattled the doorknob. To his momentary astonishment the door swung open, then slammed shut again as the ship lurched. “Who’
s there?” he heard her voice call out. “Luca? Is that you? Are you all right?”
Rufus chuckled to himself. This was the way it was supposed to be. He pushed the door open again, and waded into the cabin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HELL WAS SUPPOSED TO be flames and heat, but Luca knew better. Hell was howling winds and waves taller than a church spire and rain that lashed as hard as a whip. Hell was noise and pain, blindness, water everywhere, and no knowledge of where the next blow was coming from—the sea or the ship itself.
The mizzenmast was cracked, the crossways spar listing directly over the deck. Sailors were working, lashed safely, and Billy was wrestling with the wheel, a savage grin on his face. Billy had always laughed in the face of death.
So had he. But not today. Today Luca wanted to live with a fierceness he’d never known before. He wanted to make it through this bloody storm and come out the other side, limp his wounded ship to shore for repairs, and go downstairs and bring Maddy up into the sunshine. He’d take her off this blasted ship, to the first hotel or inn he could find, depending on where they washed up, and they wouldn’t emerge for days, damn it.
If they made it through this he was going to marry her. He recognized that fact with a grim certainty. There was nothing like looking into the face of death to realize what mattered. Whether it was bad for her or not, he could no longer worry about that. He needed her. He needed her in his bed, he needed her to fight with, he needed to be around her and know she was safe. If no one had come to hurt her, if she were still pretending to be a maid in his household, he’d have gone in at night and stolen her away like his ancestors had done. She was his, and nobody else’s, and he finally understood that fact with the certainty that impending doom made impossible to deny.
If they lived long enough he was going to have to convince her of that fact. She could do so much better than a half-breed sailor. But he no longer cared. She was his, and he’d kill before he let her go.
“How’s it looking?” he shouted to Billy, making his voice heard over the devil’s own wind. “Think the mizzen will go?”
“Aye,” Billy shouted back. His face was covered with sheets of water, his grizzled gray hair plastered to his scalp. “The question is, where will she land? If she lands just right and the spar crashes through the sides then we’re going down.”
“No, we’re not,” Luca said. “When she starts to go you’ll jerk the wheel in the right direction and it’ll fall into the ocean. I’ve seen you do it half a dozen times. I have faith in you.”
Billy snorted, then coughed as seawater went up his nose. “Sooner or later our luck is going to run out.”
“Sooner or later,” Luca agreed. “But not today. We’ll…” His voice stopped, as he saw something emerge from the hatch he’d closed so carefully to keep more water from filling the lower decks. He blinked against the blinding rain, for a moment terrified that Maddy had ignored his orders and followed him up on deck. One good wave and she’d be overboard, and there’d be no way to save her.
But the figure was too bulky, though he couldn’t make it out. And then a gust of wind blew the rain in another direction, and for a moment he was able to focus. It was a sailor, one he didn’t recognize, and he had a struggling Maddy over his shoulder, and for the first time in his life Luca felt pure terror.
“Shite!” Billy cursed beside him. “Who the bloody hell is that?”
Everything inside him had coalesced into an icy, murderous rage. “Someone’s got Maddy.”