She shrugged, consulted a ragged scrap of parchment on the desk, and opened the door to the common room. “No matter. Works as well with one as another. Number twenty-three!”
A man sitting in the corner reading a book jumped up and hurried toward Mags, a strip of cloth in his hands. “I’m twenty-three!”
“First room on the left,” Mags said, pointing to her bedroom, taking the numbered bit of cloth. She gave me a questioning look. “Ye look all stove in. What happened to ye?”
“Kidnapping, near drowning, almost having a heart attack when Bas appeared out of nowhere,” I answered tiredly, limping my way down the hall toward my room. I wanted nothing more than to fall down onto the bed and lie there an eternity or two until Corbin came to carry me home.
“Ah. Ye’re bleedin’. Ye want Jez?”
“Yes, please. When she’s not busy.”
Mags nodded. “I’ll tell her.”
“Thanks. Is my room still—oh, hoy, Renata.” The old woman, coming in the back way, stopped in midstep and stared at me with eyes wide with surprise. She blinked twice. “Renata? Is something wrong?”
“Nay, dearie.” She shook her head, her eyes avoiding me. “I wondered when we’d be seein’ ye again. Ye’re injured?”
“Not too badly, but enough I want to see if Jez has something to keep the cuts from becoming infected.” I hesitated, bothered by something in Renata’s manner. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just rest in my old room until Jez has time to look at me.”
“Aye, ’tis a good idea, that. Where be yer man this evenin’?”
Red Beth and one of her customers (clad this time) emerged from her room. The man, whom I recognized from Corbin’s flagship, kissed her noisily, made a little forelock-tugging gesture at me, and went off with a song on his lips. Red Beth smiled smugly and went to fetch her next customer.
I gave Renata a long look. She wasn’t on my list any longer now that Bart had been uncovered, but she was certainly acting in a manner that had my radar pinging. “Corbin is out seeing to the last couple of blockade ships. Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “I just thought that now that ye’ve settled the blockade, ye’d have Black Corbin glued to yer side.”
“Ah. I thought maybe you had something against him because of his history.”
“He be a man. All men are devils at heart,” she said placidly. “And I’m right in thinkin’ this one has captured yers, aye?”
“My heart? Yes, he has. You were right when you told me I shouldn’t let pride stand between Corbin and me.” I frowned, remembering something unpleasant. “That was the night you told me to get Corbin on my ship for the blockade . . . the same ship that later got shot to pieces.”
“Aye, unfortunate, that.”
The hairs on my arms stood on end as I looked at the old lady in front of me, but I told myself I was mad. Paul was Bart—he’d admitted as much. Still, if I’d done as she had suggested . . . “Actually, I think the way things turned out was quite fortunate. If Corbin had been on my ship rather than on his own, he’d never have been able to block the worst of the shots. We were so damaged, we wouldn’t have stood another round of fire.”
She nodded. “So ye wouldn’t. ’Twas lucky he was there to save ye. If ye’ll be excusin’ me, dearie, I’ve to run some wine to the mayor’s wife. She be sufferin’ from the toothache, and me elderberry wine is just the thing to relieve her pain.”
I stepped aside so she could pass me, a thousand confusing questions spinning around my mind. I was just about to ask one when a thunderous shout from the next room wiped out all thoughts but one.
“Amy!”
It was Corbin, at last. At
long
last. I didn’t wait to caution Bas against following me; I just ran straight for the door that would lead me to the man whom I so desperately wanted.
“Amy, what the devil is going on here? Good God, man, put some clothes on! You could poke someone’s eye out with—
oomph
!”
I hurtled through the door into the living room, flinging myself on Corbin where he stood in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the naked men around him. We went down in a tangle of legs and arms and his wonderful, adorable face, a face I took every opportunity to kiss.
He stopped trying to speak and kissed me back, which I approved of until I realized two things—we had an audience who were good-naturedly calling their approval, and my collision with the man who had so quickly made himself a part of my life didn’t do my injuries any good.
“I think I’m going to faint,” I told Corbin as a wave of pain accompanied by inky darkness seemed to suck me in, not wanting to let me go.
“You’re what?” he asked, but his voice came from a long way away.
I gave in to the blackness, sure that Corbin would take care of me. Now that we were together, everything was going to be all right.
I really hate it when I’m wrong about things. . . .
Chapter 24
Away, away, away! . . .
To-night the traitor dies!
—Ibid, Act II
“Amy, I forbid you to do that again!”
“Ow! That stings! You’re an evil nurse. I was much nicer to you. What’s that? And forbid me to do what—be kidnapped, or faint?”
“Both.” Corbin held up one of the bottles that Jez had provided him with to take care of my injuries. “It says water hazing.”
“Witch hazel,” I said, squinting at the tag tied to the neck of the bottle. “That’s okay. It shouldn’t sting. You may proceed.”
He glared at me as he poured a little witch hazel on a clean cloth before dabbing it on the long scratches on my lower calf. I lay on the bed in one of the guest rooms at the governor’s house (I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the same bed where Bart had slept), warm and relaxed and as comfortable as one could be when one was stark naked having a miscellaneous collection of cuts, scrapes, scratches, and bruises treated by a man who looked furious enough to bring down the entire house.
“You, woman, are infuriating. What the hell do you think you were doing letting Paul kidnap you?”
“It’s not like I had a whole lot of choice in the matter,” I answered, feeling the back of my head and wincing when my fingers found a small, painful lump. It didn’t hurt unless I pressed on it. “Well, there’s one small blessing—at least with being torn up on the rocks the pain from being whacked on the head has faded.”
He hitched his glare up a couple of notches and indicated he wanted me to roll over. I turned over to my stomach, sighing with relief as he dabbed the soothing liquid on the burning scratches on the backs of my legs. “You could have yelled for help, or used self-defense moves to disable Paul, or done something to save yourself.”
“Save myself?” I asked the pillow, the tight muscles in my back starting to relax now that I was safe. “Where were you, I’d like to know? Why weren’t you saving me? Haven’t you read pirate books? The pirate always saves his lady love.”
“What happened to women not needing a man to save them?” Corbin asked.
“I didn’t need you to save me,” I said, groaning as his hand brushed my thigh. “If you’ll notice, I saved myself just fine. The point is, it would have been nicer if you had rode up on your white horse and saved me so I didn’t have to get bashed to a bloody pulp on those rocks.”
He dug through the basket of salves and ointments and pulled out a pot of something with a cork lid. He sniffed at it, then dipped his finger into it.
“What’s that?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him.
“Says it’s a burn salve. Can’t hurt. And I don’t have a white horse.”
“Nitpicker,” I told the pillow, my eyes closing at the pleasure the gentle brush of his fingers on my abused flesh was giving me.
He stopped for a second before getting a roll of gauzy material. Carefully he wrapped it around the worst wounds on my legs, using his knife to cut the ends and tie them in neat knots. “I’m sorry about that, Amy.”
“Hmm? Sorry about what?”
“That I wasn’t there when you needed me. I should have been guarding you. I should have known that Paul would grab you in an attempt to hurt me.”
I rolled over onto my side, tugging him down so he rested on the bed next to me. “Silly man. I don’t expect you to be psychic, Corbin. And I was teasing you for the most part—you’re absolutely right in that I don’t need a man to save me.”
“But it would have been nice if I had?” he asked, his eyes dark with emotion.
“Well . . . maybe just a little saving.”
His eyes went even darker. “You saved me. You saved my life. I didn’t even know you’d been kidnapped.”
“And that’s why I’m not, at this moment, reading you the riot act,” I said, kissing the tip of his nose. “I couldn’t have saved you if I hadn’t been right there with you, could I? So there’s no reason to beat yourself up for not being somewhere when you had no idea I was in danger. Besides, I like you in my debt this way. It means you have to do anything I want you to do.”
“It does, does it?” he asked, his hand running up the curve of my hip. “And what is it you want me to do?”
“Make mad, passionate, all-night-long love to me,” I answered, sucking his lower lip into my mouth.
“You’re hurt,” he said before his tongue came visiting mine. I squirmed against him, my skin suddenly highly sensitized against the rough texture of his clothing.
“Not that hurt,” I answered, gasping in air as his mouth moved down my neck, leaving behind a trail of sizzling kisses.
“Mind over matter,” he murmured into my breastbone.
“Absolutely,” I answered, a thousand and one nerve endings coming to sudden tingling life.
He made slow, sweet love to me, just as I’d asked, his kisses gentle, his touches giving rather than demanding, building the need in me until I was almost frantic. But when he pulled my knee over his hip and slid into me, I sighed with the pleasure of it all, and bit his lip. “I love you, Corbin. More than any other man. I love you so much my heart may just burst.”
“I know CPR, too,” he said into my mouth, his hips flexing.
“What a romantic answer.” I laughed and gave myself up to the moment, pushing aside all the worries and problems that besieged us, and focused on showing the man I loved just how much he meant to me.
I lay awake late into the night, snuggled up to Corbin’s side, my hand possessively lying on his chest, right over his heart. His chest rose and fell with slow regularity, his heartbeat a gentle thud beneath my fingertips. Corbin had fallen asleep before I had a chance to discuss the latest developments with him, leaving me with an exhausted body and a brain that wouldn’t stop puzzling over things long enough to let me sleep.
What role did Renata have to play in things? It was becoming clearer to me that she wasn’t exactly what she seemed. What did Bart have planned for us? How were we going to catch him, and once we did, was Corbin serious about killing him in order to get us out of the game? What was going to happen to the people of Turtle’s Back if things went wrong? Who would watch out for Bas?
I finally fell asleep with those thoughts swirling around until they merged into one bright, shining problem that seemed to glow with a blinding intensity that consumed everything in and around me.
Corbin woke me up a short while later with one word that struck fear deep and hard within me.
“The island is on fire,” he said, strapping his sword belt to his hips and grabbing his pistols. He’d already pulled his pants and boots on, but before I could pull my thoughts together in my sleep-muddled brain, he was running out of the room, yelling for the few servants who slept in to wake up and help.
“Fire?” I asked, sitting up in bed, sniffing the air. “Are you sure? I don’t smell smoke. How do you know there’s a—” As I swung my legs over the bed, the window came into my view. Beyond the scraggy line of trees that marked the boundary between the settled part of Turtle’s Back and the rest of the island, the sky glowed orangey red.
“Oh, hell,” I swore, jumping from bed and grabbing the nearest clothes—my knickers and Corbin’s shirt. My arms and legs protested the quick movement, but I ignored the stiffness and hurried into my boots, grabbing my foil out of instinct before I ran from the room. Downstairs, the cook and scullery maid were lighting candles. Bas emerged from a room two doors from mine, rubbing his eyes.
“Bas, I want you to get dressed and go down to Renata’s house,” I told him. Holder bolted past me from the room he’d confiscated as his own, leaping down the stairs to the main hall.
“What’s happenin’?” Bas asked, standing at the top of the stairs.
Corbin was standing just outside the opened double doors, shouting orders to the remaining servants. Holder joined him for a moment, then took off toward the town, presumably to raise the alarm there.
“Fire,” I said succinctly, not waiting to explain further. “Just go to Renata’s house and tell the ladies there to get on a ship if the fire reaches the town.”
I raced out of the house, following Corbin, intent on helping him fight the fire. Outside, the smoke was thick and heavy as I reached the point where the lawn ended and the scrubby, sparse forest that covered much of Turtle’s Back began. The palm trees and surrounding tall grass were fully ablaze, casting grotesque shadows as Corbin and the men danced around it, trying to beat out the burning grass. Billows of black smoke shot up into the night sky, mushrooming as they hit cold air in the upper levels. The heat from the fire at ground level was breathtaking—literally—absorbing the oxygen and leaving everyone breathless and gasping.
“Get in the bucket line,” Corbin yelled when he saw me standing, staring helplessly at the burning trees.
I gave the fire a wide swath as I ran painfully around to the back of the house, where I knew the well was located. Bas’s black silhouette darted past me as he grabbed a bucket in his good hand.
“Dammit, Bas, I told you to go to Renata’s house,” I gasped, clutching my ribs where they’d been bruised in my clash with the rocks.