Devi's Paradise (14 page)

He turned to lie on his back, relaxed as men are after shagging women, but on the alert, too. ‘So you want to leave me and go to your aunt in Jamaica, do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And marry Lord James and lead the insipid life of a society wife?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And I’m supposed to believe this fairytale?’ He had risen by now and was standing behind her, his fingers playing with that sensitive spot at the back of her neck. She shivered involuntarily, even though his spunk trickled down her inside thighs, cool and cloying.

‘Believe it. I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate you.’

He laughed quietly, released her and said, ‘We’ll see about that. If I was a gambling man I’d wager that you’ll soon be begging me to keep you.’

‘Never.’

He was ready to leave now, saying, ‘Tomorrow we are sailing to Tortuga and there, if I decide this is for the best, a packet-boat will carry a letter to your aunt, telling her of your plight and how much it will cost to free you. Meanwhile, Sabrina will stretch you with the butt-plug.’

I’ve never known such discomfort in all my life, Romilly complained inwardly, lying on a couch in Sabrina’s apartment with a dildo inserted in her arse. Aponi and Marcus were in attendance.

‘Such a to-do,’ the Creole had exclaimed when Romilly yelled at this intrusion. ‘This is the smallest size and they will gradually get bigger, till you’ll be able to take the master with ease. Lie there and be good. Then we’ll see what you can wear to dazzle Cayona in the morning.’

Alvina had been permitted to join her, and she was now sitting on a chair close to the couch comparing notes. ‘I like it here,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been fucked so much. No chaperones or parents or older brothers keeping an eye on one.’

‘Have you had Joshua Willard?’ Romilly was still interested in the upright and honourable seaman.

‘No,’ Alvina said, encouraging Marcus to wave the feather fan just that little bit faster. It was a very hot day. ‘Don’t be so mean. You have the highly desirable Armand.’

‘Who I don’t want. D’you see what they’re doing to me, just so he can take his perverted pleasure in my bottom? He’s hateful.’

‘Oh, dear, aren’t you protesting a little too much? You don’t sound sincere. Anyway, Joshua is mad in love with you.’

Romilly’s heart leapt, and even the pain in her rectum was slightly mollified, but, ‘Don’t be foolish,’ she chided.

‘It’s true, dearest. Both he and Jamie are most dreadfully put out because Armand took your maidenhead.’

‘Doesn’t anyone here have more to do than gossip?’ Romilly asked, exasperated.

‘Apparently not. Men are bigger scandalmongers than women, I vow, and just because this lot are pirates it doesn’t make a hap’orth of difference. They chew the fat and comment on the love affairs of others like a gaggle of old washer-women.’

She dived a hand under Marcus’s sarong and played with his genitals. His response was immediate. Sabrina, watching idly from her place near the couch, said to him, ‘Go on, do it. I want to see you at it. Then you can diddle my pussy. Hurry, slave,’ and she flicked his backside with her whip, hard enough to sting and make his cock lift.

‘Can’t you remove this tiresome thing from me?’ Romilly grumbled. ‘How much longer do I have to endure it?’

Sabrina smiled, showing a flash of perfect white teeth. ‘You’re right. It is time for something bigger. Aponi, fetch the next size. Don’t pay no mind to what I’m doing to you, Lady Romilly. Keep your eyes on your friend and Marcus.’

This was easier said than done. When Sabrina withdrew the plug Romilly felt she was being disembowelled. Her torment wasn’t over, however. Aponi carried in an even larger one and though Sabrina greased it well, Romilly insisted that she introduced it to her anal opening slowly and carefully. Eventually it slid inside her and, ‘Make believe it’s Armand’s magnificent prick,’ the Creole whispered lecherously.

Meanwhile Alvina was with Marcus, stretched out on Sabrina’s bed while he slurped at her cleft. When she mewed like a kitten, then threshed wildly in climax, he followed this up by thrusting his cock into her. Despite what Romilly had said she found such an exhibition arousing, willing to let Sabrina fondle her clit till she came, the muscles of her back passage clenching round the carved ivory lingam.

‘There, that’s not so bad, is it?’ Sabrina crooned. ‘Now I want it, too. Marcus, come over here and bring me off. Aponi, you shall attend to my breasts and later, if you please me, I may let you enjoy a good frigging.’

After a while Romilly became bored with voyeurism. She wished her ordeal was over, cursed Armand for his selfishness and inwardly bewailed her lot. But there was a gleam of light at the end of the tunnel. It seemed that Armand was prepared to negotiate and send a letter to her aunt, Lady Fenby, demanding a substantial sum of money for their safe passage to Port Royal and freedom. She knew that her aunt and uncle were exceedingly rich planters and would be happy to extend a loan to be paid back by the victims’ fathers. Soon the ordeal would be nothing but an unpleasant memory, and the fact that she wasn’t overjoyed was cause for concern. Surely she wanted to be free, didn’t she?

My life has been turned topsy-turvy, and it’s all the fault of that villain, Armand Tertius. I wish I had never, ever met him, she vowed, and wriggled uncomfortably on the object buried in her fundament, put there for the sole purpose of increasing his pleasure. Typical, she raged. God damn all men!

‘Where’s Jamie?’ she shouted suddenly, needing to vent her wrath on someone. ‘He’s not bothered to seek me out.’

‘His movements are restricted,’ Sabrina answered lazily. She had just come and was resting on the bed with Marcus on one side of her and Aponi on the other. ‘We can’t have prisoners roaming at will. They might get some silly notion of trying to escape. Impossible, I assure you.’

Later Sabrina had her slaves bring clothes from a walk-in wardrobe, and Romilly was astounded by the richness and variety of those on offer. There were gowns and cloaks, petticoats and furs, hats, gloves, shoes and every refinement of female attire, all of excellent quality.

‘Where did all this come from?’ Alvina asked, letting gold chains and pendant earrings and any amount of jewellery run through her fingers and back into their casket.

‘Loot, no doubt,’ put in Romilly acidly. Though relieved of the plugs she was sore and uncomfortable.

‘You’re right. All these treasures are spoils of war, as it were, selected by Armand for sale or to clothe any visitors he might have,’ replied Sabrina.

‘Enforced ones.’

‘Whatever.’ The Creole gave a shrug of her shapely bare shoulders.

‘I don’t want to wear anything he has stolen from some other unfortunate.’ Romilly was offended. Surely he could have provided her with something other than cast-offs, not that she wanted to be obligated to him in any way whatsoever.

Sabrina smiled, a woman of the world. ‘Everything here is of the very finest quality. Some of it will go to Cayona to be auctioned tomorrow, along with surplus slaves.’

‘That’s horrible. A traffic in human flesh!’

‘And doesn’t your aunt own plantations in Jamaica? I dare swear that the workers are slaves, transported from Africa. I come from such stock, so you have no call to be uppity, my fine lady.’

This silenced Romilly. She had never before questioned her father’s wealth and its source, assuming it was inherited. No doubt most of it was, but he traded abroad, importing tobacco and sugar and now she realised slaves produced this. It gave her food for thought, but the idea that Armand might dare put her on the block, or even her servants, was abhorrent. The man was a monster! She resolved to refuse him if he came near her again with his demands, his masterful possession of her that reduced her to a similar kind of slavery. I’ll die first, she vowed.

‘And what do you think we should do, my lord?’ Joshua glanced across to where Jamie and George were seated in the shade, playing cards. Peter Quidley had joined them; another stranded Englishman who, through force of circumstance, had ended up on Devil’s Paradise.

‘I don’t much care, just as long as we get away from this godforsaken spot.’ Jamie had been cast down ever since Armand had taken Romilly.

‘And you, Lord George?’ Joshua was disappointed in their lack of action. If any man had touched his betrothed! By God, he would have been hell-bent on revenge. Even though Romilly could never wed someone of his station, the idea of her being fucked by a pirate made him see red.

‘Me, old boy? I just want to get back to London in one piece. The life here ain’t bad, I suppose. Warm and sunny with plenty of wine and women… youths too, for that matter, but I miss the theatre and coffeehouses, the chat with witty fellows, keep up with Court gossip and some such. Yes, I want to go home. What say you, Clive?’

‘I’m in total agreement. Can’t wait to see London again.’ Clive shuffled the cards and spread them out. No one, except the doctor, had any money, so they were playing for pebbles.

Joshua was well aware that Clive could act the ‘sea-wife’. Not that he had ever taken advantage of the young man’s predilections. He was non-judgemental about such matters. Being so long at sea had taught him many lessons, not the least of which was to mind his own business. He had enough to do commanding his ship without bothering about who was sharing whose hammock.

Now he was restless, needing to launch into action. The island was idyllic, and from where he sat he could see the ocean, watch the white horses running up the golden beach, smell the fragrance of exotic trees and enjoy the juice of pineapples and other strange fruits. It could have been heaven on earth, instead of a playground for that scoundrel Armand and his gang. Joshua was a member of the merchant navy and bitterly resented his ignominious position. If he could only lay hands on a lively ship, a few gunners and stalwart lads, then he’d give these rogues a run for their money and see them hanging from the gallows at Tyburn Tree.

‘Can I get you anything, master?’ lisped a golden-brown slave girl, all big eyes and black hair, a tiny person, doll-like and enticing.

‘Go away,’ said the doctor firmly. ‘You’ll get no trade here. These gentlemen are prisoners.’

This reminder made Jamie fling himself back in his rattan chair, exclaiming, ‘Dammit, Quidley, d’you have to say that? I was doing my best to forget, and going to ask her to bring us another bottle of rum.’

‘For which I would pay? I don’t think so, my lord. My advice to you is to do as Tertius suggests. If you go along with the plan, then we shall shortly be in Cayona where he can send a messenger to Port Royal, negotiate with Lady Fenby, and arrange an exchange.’

‘Will he honour such an agreement?’

‘Of course. You don’t know him, but I can assure you that he comes from French aristocracy, an old respected family but, on the death of his father, the old Comte de Tertius, he was robbed of his inheritance on some trumped-up charge. He went to prison and was then deported to the West Indies. That is how he became what he now is, but old habits die hard and he has codes of behaviour to which he always adheres.’

‘Not with regards to my fiancée,’ Jamie reminded dourly, and his hand went to his left side where, normally, he would have worn his sword.

The doctor lifted his lean shoulders and said, ‘He is susceptible to a lovely woman, naturally. And she is exceptionally beautiful. If he found the right lady, then I think he would settle down.’

‘A vagabond like him? You jest, sir!’

Peter shook his head with its long brown locks streaked with grey at the temples. ’No sir, I don’t. We are all of us not getting any younger, and I myself would like to marry, leave this island and practice medicine and my doctoring skills among respectable folk. I have an eye on Lady Romilly’s companion, Mrs Jessica Wade. A charming woman who would suit me admirably, but alas I am committed to this way of life.’

‘Can you never leave?’

‘Not unless I obtain a pardon.’

‘How did you come to be here?’

‘I sailed from England several years ago, part of a venture organised by London merchants who financed a ship to explore the Indies, bringing home samples of flora and fauna. We were captured by Tertius and given the option of joining them or being marooned. I wanted to live and continue my work, so I consented and, strangely enough, have learned a great deal while attending the pirates’ wounds, working among the inhabitants and adding to my collection of drawings and examples of flowers, seeds and native remedies.’

The more Joshua heard the more he liked the neatly built, pleasantly looking medical man. If I get out of this alive I’ll put in a word for him with the authorities, he resolved, but meanwhile the future looked uncertain.

Just for a moment he allowed his thoughts to dwell on Romilly. What Quidley said was true: she was indeed a rare and beautiful example of womanhood. He wanted her with a desire that was like fire in his belly, and would have gladly taken her on, had he been given the opportunity, even though she had now been soiled by a pirate’s spunk. But even this notion excited him, and he could not control the thickening of his cock as he imagined her, naked and suppliant, in Armand’s experienced hands. This shocked him, for his parents had been God-fearing people, regular churchgoers who raised him and his four siblings to be pillars of society. He’d had women, of course, during the course of his career, but had always been ashamed afterwards. Now he was twenty-eight and ready to fall in love, marry and establish a family.

The presence of Sabrina and her shameless sisters had stirred emotions in him best forgotten. The pirates were licentious and bawdy. There was constant reference to sexual matters during their conversations. Joshua could see the last remnants of civilisation slipping away from him if he didn’t escape from there soon. Maybe if he travelled to Jamaica as Armand’s messenger, he could arrange matters so he could sail back to Devil’s Paradise and attack the pirate stronghold.

As if reading his thoughts the doctor glanced up from his cards and reminded, ‘Lady Romilly and her companions will be held hostage, you understand. Any rash move on your part will result in their deaths.’

At the slack of the tide the helmsman expertly steered the
Scorpion
into the crescent-shaped harbour of Cayona. Armand trusted him to pilot her through the narrow, dark-blue streak of water that marked the passage to the land-locked port of the fortified island of Tortuga. It was the refuge of privateers, pirates and buccaneers and the governor, who received generous handouts for his trouble, had granted them semi-official French protection.