Mariah's Prize (24 page)

“Regardez, la femme de Sparhawk. ” The man turned eagerly, and Mariah gasped at the scar that so severely deformed his face. For an instant in his eyes she saw the pain her thoughtless reaction caused, followed swiftly by a kind of wondering recognition and then the same triumph he’d shown when he’d won.

“One look at you, mademoiselle,” he said softly, “and everything becomes clear. And this time I shall not lose.”

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After the bright sun, Mariah stumbled as Deveaux’s turnkey led her into the dark cellar hallway beneath the house. Impatiently the man swore in Spanish, dragging her roughly after him until he reached the last door. Quickly he unlocked it and with another oath shoved her inside, the door slamming behind her with grim finality.

“Mariah!” gasped Jenny as she rushed to help her sister up from where she’d sprawled across the stone floor.

“Oh, God, help us both! How could they have gotten you?”

“Jenny, for all love!” Mariah hugged her sister fiercely. They sat side by side on the bedstead with their hands clasped together, reluctant to part. “Mama meant for me to find you, and I came after you to Barbados on the Revenge. Then that awful Frenchman had me kidnapped and brought me here because of Gabriel, but you—why ever would they want you? Where’s Elisha? If that boy has deserted you now” — “They killed him, ” Riah. ” Jenny stared into her lap, knowing she wouldn’t be able to stop the tears.

“They killed Elisha and Captain Richardson and everyone else on the Felicity. I saw them do it. I’m the only one they took alive, and I still don’t know why.”

“Elisha’s dead? Oh, Jenny, love.” Mariah pulled her sister close, letting Jenny bury her sobs against her shoulder. It was so hard to imagine Elisha’s goodnatured grin gone forever, but Mariah knew Jenny had no reason to lie. In the few minutes she’d spent before this Capitaine Deveaux, she’d seen enough to believe any sort of cruelty from him. But why poor Elisha Watson? And why Jenny?

Jenny raised her head, smudging the tears with her fingers.

“Everything was going so well, ” Riah, like it all was fated to be.

Everything was going to be so right for Elisha and me! First came the gold pieces from Elisha’s aunt so we could run off together, then Captain Richardson up and offers us passage on the Felicity when he’snever taken passengers before and then finally you going off to dine with Captain Sparhawk on the very night we sailed, when you never go out at all! “

Mariah listened uneasily, resisting the conclusions her mind was forming. Her sister might believe in fate, but to Mariah, so many happy coincidences seemed more the work of man—one man in particular, who had the money and the connections to bring about any manner of coincidences.

“Gold from his aunt?” she asked.

“Jenny, you know as well as I do Elisha and his brother Timothy have no one else in the world besides themselves, certainly no one with gold to give away.

“Twas one of the things about him that rankled Mama most.” , “I saw the coins myself, ” Riah, milled Spanish gold pieces. Where else would Elisha get them if not as a gift? ” She closed her eyes and shook her head, her face twisting with renewed grief. ” But none of it matters now, now that my sweet Elisha’s dead. “

But to Mariah it did matter, and as she held her sister she cursed Gabriel Sparhawk for the sorrow his lust had brought to her family. If he had loved her, he would simply have asked her to sail with him. That would have been enough, and most likely she would have agreed. But instead he’d gone and made a game of her seduction for his own amusement, arranging all of this knowing she’d insist on following Jenny. Mariah remembered how he’d shown no surprise at all when she’d come to board the Revenge. He must have paid off both Elisha and Captain Richardson, and with Spanish gold, too, which no one else in Newport would have. How much trouble Gabriel had gone through merely to bed her, and how easily, really, she’d succumbed. Lord, how he must have laughed at her lovesick predictability!

And now the elaborate ruse was over, at least as far as Gabriel was concerned. He’d been careful never to say he loved her. Not once had he promised her any sort of future together beyond this cruise. When he looked at her, he saw some long-dead woman. His own mother had told her that. She should probably count herself fortunate that when they’d lain together, Gabriel had never called her Catherine instead of Mariah. Even when he’d sworn he wouldn’t let her go, she had felt more like a prized possession than a cherished woman, one more bit of privateering plunder.

She was quite certain now he wouldn’t have wed her, despite his parents’ insistence. If she hadn’t been kidnapped by Gigot, Gabriel would still somehow have escaped, or been called away, or produced some sort of eleventh-hour reason he couldn’t marry, and she would have been left standing before his parents and the minister and the crowd of witnesses she didn’t know. She could have walked away from their pity, just as she could have taken off the silk gown and the pearl bracelets, but the child she’d conceived, his child, she’d have as a constant reminder long after he’d forgotten her. How many other bastards had he left in his wake, how many other foolish, smitten women who’d believed in his kindness?

She was sick and exhausted and frightened, and she longed to weep like her sister and sink beneath the weight of her betrayed, broken heart.

But for Jenny’s sake, she couldn’t. Despite what Gabriel had planned, her reason for sailing south was to set her sister’s life to rights, and that she still intended to do.

“Listen to me. Jenny, please,” she said softly, turning her sister’s tear-swollen face toward hers.

“We don’t have anyone else here to trust but each other.”

“What about your Captain Sparhawk? Won’t he come try to rescue you?”

“Nay, Jen, I wouldn’t dare wager a farthing that he’d risk his handsome neck to help me.” She sighed, rubbing her temples with her fingers.

“I don’t know what this French captain wants of either one of us, but whatever it is, I don’t mean to give it to him.”

Jenny sniffed loudly.

“He said if I didn’t tell him what he wanted to know about Captain Sparhawk, he’d give me to the other pirates to—to use. Oh, ” Riah, I wouldn’t even let Elisha do that, not until we were married! “

“Hush, Jen, no more weeping. Elisha wouldn’t have wanted you crying all the time, would he?” Mariah sighed and leaned against the damp wall, trying to think.

“I’ll have to try to convince this Frenchman to let us go. I’ll tell him all he wants to know of Gabriel, if that’s what it will take to get us back to Newport.” ^ “Do you know what he said about you, ” Riah? He said you, you, were Captain Sparhawk’s whore! “

Mariah’s smile was bitter.

“Perhaps the man knows Gabriel better than I do.”

The door opened and a crippled woman crept into their cell with a

basket of fruit and bread for their dinner. What 3

ever else Deveaux meant for them, the meals he sent were generous enough. When Mariah reached out to take the basket, the woman started, shrinking from the contact.

“I don’t mean to hurt you, mistress,” said Mariah quietly.

“I only want you to tell your master that I wish to speak with him. Can you do that for me, please?”

The woman shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. She seized the empty basket from Jenny’s breakfast, and with her eyes downcast, she hurried to the door, her twisted leg dragging unevenly.

“Please, mistress, I beg you with all my heart.” Gently Mariah caught the woman’s arm, surprised by the knots of scars she felt beneath her sleeve. She thought the woman had been born crippled, but perhaps her handicap had resulted from some accident instead. When she moved into the grated square of light from the window, Mariah saw that the woman wasn’t as old as she’d first guessed, either, not so very much older than Mariah or Jenny.

“Please help us and tell the French captain!”

Again the woman shook her head, not daring to meet Mariah’s eyes as she tried to pull her arm free.

“She won’t talk, ” Riah,” said Jenny.

“I’ve tried every day and she hasn’t said a word.”

“Maybe it’s our language she doesn’t understand.” Mariah frowned, trying to remember the bits of Spanish she’d overheard on the Revenge.

With her sharp cheekbones and silky black hair, the woman could be one of the island Indians who’d mingled their “blood with the Spaniards.

“Por favor, senora, Capitaine Deveaux” -But at the mention of the Frenchman’s name, the woman jerked free from Mariah as if she’d been struck, her eyes wild with panic. Without thinking she opened her mouth to speak, but only awful, guttural sounds came out, and as soon as she realized what she’d done she clapped her hand over her mouth and fled, leaving the laughing turnkey to slam and lock the door after her.

Jenny clutched fearfully at her sister’s arm. ‘“Riah, did you see?”

^ “Yes.” The few teeth that remained in the woman’s mouth had been broken off, jagged yellow stumps, and she could not speak because her tongue had been cut from her mouth. Mariah closed her eyes, but the awful image remained, and she tightened her arm protectively around her sister’s shoulders.

“Oh, Jenny, we must leave this place. And God help us, we must leave soon.”

Early the next morning, Mariah and Jenny stood in the drawing room of the grand house above their cell, watching while Christian Deveaux finished his breakfast. Mute though the crippled woman was, Mariah’s request had somehow reached him, and to the sisters’ surprise and trepidation, he had agreed to see them.

They waited in silence, the way the guards had ordered, and near the open window, so their unwashed bodies and clothing wouldn’t offend the Frenchman as he ate. Dressed for morning like a Parisian gentleman in a bright silk ban-yon and an embroidered cap over his shaved, wig less head, Deveaux dined alone, ignoring the two Englishwomen in favor of La Fontaine’s Fables, propped up against the sugar bowl before him.

Her temper fraying, Mariah’watched as he neatly pared away the skin of a tamarind orange with a porcelain-handled knife. If she’d any sense at all, she knew she should be terrified of this man. What he’d done to Elisha and the crew of the Felicity and to the mutilated serving woman should have left her as shaken as Jenny was, who trembled beside her. But instead of intimidating her, his arrogance and plain rudeness angered Mariah as much as they did in any bully, whether a Newport dressmaker who looked down her nose at the Wests or a French pirate without the manners to match his silk dressing gown.

“Exactly how long. Captain, do you intend to keep my sister and me waiting on your pleasure?” she asked, her voice crackling with irritation. “As miserable as our quarters are, I prefer them to standing here while you paddle marmalade on your toast.”

Deveaux wiped his mouth with his napkin and slipped a silk ribbon into the book to mark his place as he closed it before, at last, he raised his eyes to Mariah. Or rather one eye. Mariah noticed again how he kept his face in profile to them, hiding the scarred side that had made her gasp before. She doubted his care was for her consideration alone. There were no looking glasses in the elegant room, none of the polished silver hollowware that would be expected on his table, not even silver teaspoons that might reflect his ravaged face. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he said pleasantly. “Might I assume then that you find my hospitality lacking?”

“Hospitality is a word most use to guests, not prisoners.” Beside her Mariah heard Jenny’s small noise of alarm, and to reassure her she slipped her hand around her sister’s fingers’. “Guests are free to come and go when they please. We, I’ll wager, cannot.”

Deveaux waved his hand wearily, reaching for the porcelain coffeepot. “The hour is far too early for such brilliant repartee. Mademoiselle West, and so I shall concede. You are my prisoners, and I’ll take no more pains to pretend otherwise.”

As he poured the coffee into his cup, a small black goat trotted into the room, her little hooves clicking on the parquet floor as she came to stand tamely beside Deveaux’s chair. With a fond pat to the animal’s neck, he lowered his cup and squeezed her milk directly into his coffee.

“Pray, mademoiselle, don’t be so scornful of my little Mioumiou’s presence in my salon,” he said as the goat butted gently against his knee, begging to be scratched behind her ears.

“In these islands, no milk will keep above an hour, and ma petite answers quite nicely. If you visit more widely here, you’ll find that even your English ladies keep goats to make their wretched tea more acceptable. Though none so fine, so accommodating as my Mioumiou.”

Mariah thought bitterly of the serving woman as she watched Deveaux smile and pop a bit of sweetened biscuit into the goat’s mouth.

“You treat that animal with more kindness than you show people.”

“Indeed, and unlike people she returns that kindness.” His voice sharpened, the world-weariness gone.

“She comes to me willingly when I call. She doesn’t recoil before me as if I were the devil himself.”

“It’s your actions, not your face, that mark you as the devil’s own son!”

“If you weren’t more useful to me alive than dead, mademoiselle, that remark would have earned you your grave.” He pushed his chair back from the table, the little goat forgotten, and came to stand to one side of Mariah. He was taller than she had realized, and it took all Mariah’s will not to back away from him.

“You’ve made this all so easy for me, you know. I’didn’t even have to seek you out. Announcing yourself instead of asking for me at the Lady Anne as if I were some low, scraping gamester!”

“You?” Mariah struggled to reconcile the smeared signature on the gambling chit with the man before her. In her mind she’d always

thought of the name as Dahveeaucks, but she should have remembered that the French were notorious for their strange pronunciations.

“You lost at dice to my father?”

He shrugged elaborately. “I wanted his sloop, and at the time he was in Bridgetown I hadn’t the resources there to take it by force. It was the whim of a moment, no more. You don’t truly believe I’d pay off a mean little wretch like yoflr father?”