Rudely stalking away from Minerva, Rory headed directly for
the circle of dancers containing his wife-to-be. Laughing gaily as she twirled
from one masculine arm to another, she seemed not to see him.
He vowed to put an end to that conceit soon enough. He was
the one who had wooed her and won her to his bed, and it was his arm she should
be clinging to. He’d had enough of her flighty dalliance.
The circle of dancers welcomed him as the music struck up a
lively country tune. Alyson was situated on the far side of the circle, but the
steps would lead him to her soon enough. He was eager to see her face when she
grabbed his arm in the allemande.
The dancers shifted rapidly, and Rory had difficulty keeping
his straying feet in line. He partnered some plump miss with a simpering smile,
then promenaded with a gray-haired dowager. Every time he glanced up, Alyson
was with some new young beau, and he never seemed to come closer.
The pace increased as couples skipped through the center to
the clapping of the others. Rory grabbed the plump miss’s clammy hand and
danced her to where he judged Alyson to be, only to discover her circling the
ring with some young scholar with a receding hairline. Groaning in frustration,
he followed the circle around to where he had been, only to find himself
confronting the old lady again.
His urge to throw aside all convention and make a mad dash
for the place he had last seen that cap of ebony curls was thwarted when the
fiddlers sent the dancers spinning off in another direction entirely. Every
time Rory looked up, Alyson was elsewhere, and the plump miss smiled at him as
if they were already engaged.
By the time the dance ended, Alyson had disappeared.
***
Breathlessly running down the stone steps of the terrace
to the street below, Alyson had to stop and gasp for air. The music still swirled
in her head with the vision of Rory valiantly trying to dance his way to her.
He had looked so handsome in his silk coat and ruffled shirt that she had
almost surrendered without a fight. Almost.
The other vision had saved her, the one of Rory and his blond
lover. She could not put that image from her mind—not until she had time to
learn to deal with still another betrayal. That might not be anytime soon.
The governor had been so excited to see her that she had not
even considered his giving her over to Rory. She had received the impression
that he held Rory in disfavor for some reason, but then, she had never been
very good at understanding other people’s motives. She just knew she wasn’t
safe even here, and she knew nowhere else to run.
So it was with quiet resignation that she came face-to-face
with Dougall in the carriage-lined lane.
Dougall respectfully lifted his cocked hat and folded it
under his arm as he blocked her escape. “If ye will, lass, I know of a place ye
can get a good night’s sleep in a proper bed, in a proper house. Will ye trust
me to take you there?”
She had expected to be led unceremoniously back to the ship
and locked in the captain’s quarters. This reprieve seemed miraculous. She
looked at the bushy-browed mate with suspicion. “What kind of a house? I don’t
want to be foisted off on strangers again.”
“’Tis an empty house. The owner will have no objection to
yer using it, I’m certain. It will be better than running in the streets all
night.”
Alyson tried to find the flaw in this. “Does this house have
a key? Can I lock the doors?”
Dougall shrugged with embarrassment. “It does that, lass,
but I’m not makin’ ye any promises where the captain is concerned. He’s a hard
man, sometimes. I just thought to offer ye a chance to be alone. Living close
on a ship is hard to get used to sometimes.”
He wasn’t offering a permanent haven but a temporary
respite. That was better than any other choice she had at the moment. With a
shrug to match Dougall’s, she fell into step with him.
Alyson drifted along, lost in her own thoughts, as Dougall
led her from the palatial estates of the influential to the more modest
residences of the town, their feet crunching the shell-strewn streets. In the
faint gleam of the moon she admired the pastel colored homes and lush foliage
and hoped one of these houses would be where they would stay.
They halted before a sadly neglected narrow house that still
held considerable charm even though overgrown by flowering vines and giant
hibiscus. Dougall unlatched the door and gestured for Alyson to enter.
They passed through airy dark rooms, sparsely furnished but
scrupulously tidy. Dougall found a candle and lit it to guide their way
upstairs, and Alyson had a glimpse of polished dark woods and leather, but
little of feminine touches of color and softness. She glanced uncertainly at
Dougall’s craggy face.
“Are there no servants?”
He gave another of his diffident shrugs. “A maid comes
occasionally, I believe. It is too late to fetch her tonight. I’ll send her in
the morning, if you like.”
Somehow, that reassured her. He seemed to know the house and
its routines. Perhaps it was even his own, and he was being modest about it.
She felt safe here, and a real bed would be a luxury.
As they stopped outside the bedroom door, she turned to study
Dougall’s honest face. “Are you going to send for Rory now?”
Dougall shoved his hands in his pockets and returned her
look. “He will have to figure it out for himself.”
She accepted his assurance at face value. Dougall had no
intention of returning to the governor’s house. She smiled in gratitude.
“Then I shall trouble you no more this evening, sir. Thank
you.”
***
After confronting the governor and spending an hour of
wine and argument with him, Rory had gone beyond anything so amiable as a foul
mood to the nether regions of dangerous implacability.
The damned traitorous earl of Cranville had
lied
about him. He was the one who had
reported Rory as pirate and thief and forced the governor to send troops.
Rory wanted to commit murder, but since no convenient victim
was at hand, other drastic action was required. His earlier drunken plans
solidified with the knowledge that Cranville’s lies were responsible for half
his trouble—and the cause of the other half had evidently escaped with his
first mate.
Alyson could be the only reason Dougall had deserted his
post. Rory had learned from the governor that Cranville and the
Neptune
had sailed before the
Sea Witch
arrived.
There was no danger that the damned earl was responsible for Dougall’s rank
betrayal. Only Alyson was capable of leading grown men astray so quickly.
In the early hours after midnight, Rory dumped his sleeping
men from their hammocks and sent them scurrying with furious orders. If he wasn’t
getting any sleep, neither were they. There was no time to lose, in any case.
He had to carry out his plans and make them a
fait accompli
before news
of Alyson’s arrival on Barbados spread and Cranville returned.
He aimed for the most logical hiding place first.
Dougall was sleeping with his feet propped on the rolled arm
of a leather couch. He showed no surprise when Rory roared through the door
shouting his name, but he did raise an eyebrow at the retinue of half-dressed,
hung-over seamen stumbling in his wake.
Rory scowled as the older man unfolded himself to stand. “Where
is she?”
Dougall shrugged. “Asleep.” He regarded Rory with doubt. “The
lass is weary. Ye have not given her much rest these last days. Wait until
morning before ye tear her to shreds.”
“You have some promise that she will be there come morning?”
Rory demanded. Then, striding to the window, he shoved aside a shutter and
indicated the hint of light on the horizon. “It’s near dawn. How much longer
does she need to make her escape?”
Dougall spread his hands in surrender.
***
Alyson woke from her fretful slumber with the feeling that
someone else was in the room. Wearing only a short shift and no covers in the
room’s humid heat, she reached for the protection of a sheet.
“Ye needn’t fash yerself. I’ll not be stayin’ long,” Rory’s
voice slurred from the darkness.
It took Alyson a second to focus on the pale gleam of his
ruffled shirt near the door. He was leaning against the panel as if to block
her escape, but all she could think about was the strength of those muscled
arms and how much she longed to have them around her.
“Where are you going?” she asked foggily, wondering if she
were still dreaming. Did he mean to leave her here?
“To find a clergyman. There’s bound to be one in this
forsaken place somewhere. Dougall’s gone to fetch Rosie. She’ll find something
suitable for you to wear.”
He was trying very hard to enunciate clearly. Alyson paid
more attention to his forced speech than his actual words, thus entirely
missing his meaning. “Why are you talking like that?” She sat up in the bed,
pulling the sheet around her.
How in the hell could a man vent his justifiable rage when
its object sat like a wanton mermaid in the middle of his bed asking inane
questions instead of fighting back? How could anybody argue with a misty vapor
who defied logic?
Grinding his teeth, Rory made another attempt. “I am trying
very hard to be patient, Alyson. If you wish to explain why you ran away again,
I’m prepared to listen, but nothing you can say will change my mind. It has
been made very clear to me this night that we have no other choice. As soon as
I can find a clergyman, we will be married. There will be time to shop for a
trousseau afterward, and then we will return to London.”
She continued to stare at him in perplexity. “You are very
drunk.”
“I was, but I’m cold sober now.” That came close enough to
the truth. As he saw her there in the first rays of dawn, her satin-soft hair
streaming in thick cascades over nearly bare shoulders, his mind had nearly
stopped functioning. Not even drunken thoughts could intrude through his
desire.
“Were you cold sober when you made love to that pink canary?”
Had that question made any sense at all to Rory’s befuddled
mind, he might have recognized it as the opening for the fight he sought. But
Alyson didn’t play the game fairly, and he stared at her with incomprehension.
“I don’t see pink canaries when I’m drunk, and I don’t think
I even want to know what you’re talking about. Just be ready when I return.” He
lifted his shoulders from the door and started to turn away, when Alyson’s
reply brought him to a halt.
“You can find all the clergymen you like, Rory Douglas, but
I’ll not marry you.”
For Alyson, this speech was quite firm and decisive, and
Rory turned to stare at her in disbelief. She was the one who had wanted
marriage. Now what in hell had she got in her mazed brain? “You have someone
else in mind, perhaps?”
Alyson shrugged. “Not particularly. I do wish you would
leave, Rory. You are making me quite uncomfortable.”
“I am making
you
uncomfortable?” He repeated her words with incredulity. “Uncomfortable, is it?
Someday let me tell ye how I’ve spent this night while ye played at yer fancy
ball and slept soundly in my bed! It is more than uncomfortable I will make ye,
should ye ever lead me such a merry dance again!”
His control was slipping. Alyson glanced nervously at the
door.
And then she apparently registered his words and glared at
him in incredulity. “Your bed? Dougall brought me to
your
bed? Did you make love to the pink canary here?” With visible
distaste she stood up, trailing the linen sheet like a Grecian goddess. “If we
make each other so uncomfortable, then it is obvious we should not marry. I’ll
dress and leave you to
your
bed, if
you will but give me a few minutes’ privacy.”
To touch her would be fatal to what remained of his control,
but Rory contemplated grabbing those lovely white shoulders and shaking her
until her teeth rattled. “I’ll give ye privacy enough for now, but I’ll be back
with the clergyman before noon. I expect you to be ready when we arrive.”
Alyson peered at him uneasily as she clutched her sheet and
backed toward the window. “He cannot marry us against my will. Even I know that
much.”
It had never occurred to him that she would refuse, and Rory
had no formulated plan to persuade her otherwise. He only knew that he had made
up his mind it was in her best interest, and that she had best agree to it
before anything else happened. Having little expertise in the fine art of
persuading maidens, he fell back on his practical business sense.
“Then I would suggest, lass, that you change your mind or
find yourself staring at the cold walls of Bridgetown’s charming prison.”
***
He had gone stark raving mad—that much was clear as Alyson
gazed in dismay upon Rory’s disheveled handsomeness. Dark curls fell across his
bronzed brow, and beneath them, his wickedly-lashed eyes gleamed with unholy
fires. Something or someone had driven him quite over the edge. “I have done
nothing wrong. I can’t be put in prison for refusing to marry you.”
Rory stonily disregarded her argument. “Do you remember the
voucher you left in my trunk when you ‘borrowed’ that gold from me?”
That had been so many months before that Alyson was left at
a loss. Voucher? Was that what she had written? The word had an ominous ring. She
was almost afraid to nod acknowledgment.
Rory continued coolly at her nod. “Are you prepared to repay
it?”
Bewildered, Alyson almost lost her grip on the sheet. Rory
seemed some stranger to her, not at all the considerate gentleman of yesterday.
Could a person change overnight? “Of course,” she responded faintly. “Just as
soon as we return to London.”
“That’s not what I had in mind, Lady Alyson.” Rory mocked
the title the governor had thrown in his face. “I need the money now. People
who give out vouchers are expected to repay upon demand, otherwise they go to
debtors’ prison until they raise the sum. At least, while you were in there, I
would know where you are.”