Paradise Island (3 page)

“Your mission was successful,” Jade said. There was triumph in her voice.

Estelle nodded, seeing clearly in the sublime light of the moon. Jade's face was in shadow, but Estelle still saw the flat dent in the bridge of her nose where it had been broken by a man's fist.

“We have him, but we are not out of danger's path just yet. He will be missed soon, if not already and we had best make sail immediately. The Royal Navy can move fast when it wants to,” Estelle said. She knew without a doubt in her mind the Navy would miss its best and brightest Captain and would do anything it could to get him back.

“What do you want us to do with him?” Jade asked.

Estelle knelt next to the still, prone form of Gregory. His face was pale beneath his tan and his breathing was alarmingly shallow. He was younger than she originally thought. When she'd seen him on the pier, his face had been arranged into taut lines, creating a derisive tension that aged him a decade more than his years. Then his brows had flicked upwards in surprise. She'd been captured in an onyx-black, sharp gaze. It was as if he could see into her heart and read her innermost thoughts.

Her hand moved on its own and tucked a wayward curl of raven hair back into the thick waves. Her fingertips grazed his forehead. A zing of energy zapped through her fingers and jolted up her arm. She withdrew her hand, frowning, still feeling her fingertips prickle like she'd got too close to a flame.

His hand was out flung, palm side up. It was large and powerful looking, but his fingers were tapered, long and thin. She touched the skin and found it to be soft. Maybe captaincy had made him soft as well. She unconsciously rubbed the calluses on her own hands, roughened with months of hauling water soaked rope. When Dalia was recovered from hiding the
Wanderlust
, Estelle would ask her to read his palm and see what information it would reveal.

“Get the doctor to look at him, check to see he's not damaged. Then lock him in the brig. Oh, and make sure he's chained. He's going to be angry when he wakes up,” Estelle said. She turned into the door beneath the poop deck that would take her to her cabin and her bed, and let her crew look after the unconscious, darkly handsome Gregory Marshall.

• • •

His head ached with a dry throb that had him wincing. He could see flashes of burning light behind his closed eyelids with every beat of his heart. He kept his eyes closed, letting the nausea wash through him.

Gregory remained motionless, fighting the urge to release the contents of his stomach. He calmed as he heard the distant hollow slap of waves breaking against the hull. His cabin was warm, lulling him to the verge of sleep. He relaxed back into his bed, probing through his body with his mind. His muscles ached, his joints felt stiff and his skin burned on various parts of his body where it had been grazed. A hangover laced his mind, but he'd no recollection of rum having touched his lips, or why his body should feel so abused.

He recalled his last memory before everything blacked out. There was an apparition with translucent skin and flaming red hair. She had taken him by surprise and it was all he could do to stare, immersing himself in her ethereal beauty. His body had reacted instantly, his heart pushing heated blood into extremities of his body that made him want to scoop her into his arms and feel her lush curves flowing over his own body. Then she had parted rose petal lips and begun singing in a voice that was straight from heaven. The song had misted his mind, snapping his thoughts from his body, beating him down beneath waves of unconsciousness. But she must have been a dream, a vision, an aching wish brought on by months of overwork.

He raised a hand to massage his eyelids with his fingertips and heard the loud clank of a chain. A heavy manacle wrapped around his wrist, his arm weighted by the length of iron attached to it. He cracked open his eyes and reeled when the sharp sting of sunlight seared them. He moved his other arm a fraction and found that it, too, was bound.

Gregory tried to sit up, but the world tipped vertically and he crashed down with a brain-rolling thump. He waited until his head stopped spinning before he slowly cracked open one eye and focused on a plank of wood that was somewhere above his head.

His vision became less watery. The wood was well cut, smooth, and covered with a layer of shining wax. He let his gaze slowly slide around the room. Wooden planking boxed him in on three walls and on the roof. The wall to his left held an O ring to which the ends of his chains were attached. He was on a bench which served as his bed, attached to the walls. There was a chair at his feet and a small cabinet topped sparsely with some amenities. A small round portal set high into the wall on his right had been opened to let the fragrance of a warm fresh ocean breeze filter into the tiny space.

His arm swung down and his knuckles grazed the floor. He turned his head to his left and was met with a line of heavy bars from floor to ceiling. It took him only a moment to realize he was in a brig.

A brig he didn't recognize.

A female voice, soft and inaudible floated through the window and acted like a tonic. There were no females in the Royal Navy, no females on
his
ship. His crew was a superstitious bunch and they would never let a woman set a single pretty foot up the gang plank.

He was not aboard his ship. Where in hell was he?

Gregory swung his feet off the bench bed and onto the floor, sitting and waiting for his head to stop its wild spin. He couldn't help the groan that tumbled from his parched lips. There were light footsteps hurrying towards him, the tinkering of keys in a lock and the squeak of the door opening.

“You poor man! You look like you're suffering,” a soft female voice filled with deep sympathy floated around him. Something so gentle had no place in a prison. Confusion rattled his brain.

“Here, drink this.” A glass cup was held under his nose. He squinted into in and saw that it was filled with crystal clear water.

A wave of anger surged through him. He had woken to a world where nothing made sense. Why was he chained to a wall in the cleanest prison he had clapped eyes on, and being waited on by a concerned female?

He swiped the glass cup with the back of his hand and was momentarily satisfied to hear it break when it hit the floor. He quickly grabbed the female's slender wrist and held it in his larger fist. There was a soft gasp and she started to tremble.

“Where am I?” he ground out. His voice was ragged and rough and didn't sound like his own. Gregory cracked his eyes open and looked into a pair of doe brown eyes that were clouded with fear. “Tell me.”

Her lips trembled, face tight with fear. She tried to pull back but he held onto her. He knew he was hurting her, something that didn't sit well with him, but desperation simmered and made him keep a hold of her wrist. He gave a small tug. Her eyes filled with bleak distress.

His desperate anger wavered into confusion. There was an element of fragility about this woman, so concerned about his comfort a moment before, now trembling like a leaf and all he had done was take hold of her wrist.

Her tongue darted from her mouth and licked her lower lip. “Please, let me go,” her voice was a brittle whisper.

“Not before you tell me where I am and why I am here,” he said.

She whimpered and a frisson of self-disgust made him let go of her wrist. She held her wrist to her chest. Her terror was, although incomprehensible, now palpable and he didn't have it in him to torture powerless women.

“I'm sorry if I frightened you … ” he said. How he could ever hurt a woman? He sunk his aching head into the open palms of his hands.

“So you should be.” A clipped female voice, far different from those of the timid doe-eyed woman, made him lift his head. This voice used well rounded syllables, was lower in tone, sultry, held authority and was plainly used to orders it gave being observed.

An auburn haired beauty, whose eyes spat heat to match the color of the locks cascading down her back, stood before him. Her hair was clasped behind her neck. Lose tendrils escaped, framing her face in swirls of autumn flame. He blinked, shock muting him.

Her opalescent skin was perfumed by the faintest of scents, something between rose and lavender. Slim brows arched delicately over chestnut eyes that could stare a man down and make him forget who he was. Her nose was straight, slightly pointed, set resolutely over firm pouty lips that currently were thinned into a straight line.

She was breathtakingly exquisite.

Her narrow hips moved in a delicate swing as she stood in the open doorway and placed her hands on the doe eyed woman's shoulders. She was a full head taller than the woman, with a frame that was totally, wholly feminine with lean, long legs that went from the floor all the way to heaven.

To his delighted surprise she wore tight men's breeches that fit every snug curve of her legs like a second skin. Her breeches were tucked into fitted black boots, laced from toe to knee. Above the breeches, a white cotton shirt billowed above her slender waist. It was open at the cuffs as well as her neck, showcasing the gentle swell of her décolletage, although she seemed unaware of, or didn't care about, the scandalous amount of skin she showed.

“Did he hurt you, Sara?” she asked. Her tone was low, hushed and soothing.

Sara shook her head. Her eyes glimmered and she looked at the red head with a mixture of comfort and awe. “No. I was tending to him and he grabbed my wrist. He just asked where he was.” Her gaze turned introspective and she shook her head again, as if making sure in her own mind of what had happened. “He didn't hurt me.”

“Thank you for your time, Sara. I'll let you know when you're needed again.”

Sara nodded her head fractionally and slipped through the doorway without looking at him. She stepped lightly across the hallway and scampered up the steep wooden steps that led into bright sunshine. The red head turned a frosty glare at him and slowly reclined against the door frame. Her eyes roamed casually over him.

“You shouldn't have spoken to her that way. I asked her to help you,” she said, eventually.

Gregory narrowed his eyes and assessed her. “You're the woman from the pier!”

His head ached and he was in no mood for games. “Maybe you can answer my questions. Why are you here? And what am
I
doing here?” His voice was rough.

Her gaze flicked back to his eyes. The frost was now ice. Although she slouched indolently against the frame, the line of her shoulders was squared and her jaw tensed. “I'll answer what I want to answer. Sara is a healer, a doctor. She only has your best interests at heart.”

His face must have registered his shock as she continued. “Are you surprised that a woman has that kind of knowledge? Her husband was a so-called doctor, but she knew more than him even if he'd studied until the end of his life. People went to see her, not him, for treatment. He was jealous and used to beat her. One day he beat her so badly she couldn't get out of bed. A pregnant woman she was treating had her baby and Sara was too unwell to tend to her. The woman and the baby died in childbirth. That's something she has never forgotten. Her husband was a drunk and a coward and was never subtle in his loathing for her talent. He died one day in a horse and carriage accident. Because she didn't have a husband, she also didn't have a livelihood. I found her, alone and discarded. Now she uses her talents and gets paid well for it. If you're very nice, maybe she will come back and see you again.”

She hooked her gaze back to his. Her eyes were the color of burnt chestnuts. It reminded him of oak trees in autumn when they turned such a flaming red he wondered if the earth was charred underneath. There was a subtle shifting, the click of two pieces of a puzzle locking together. “I've seen you before last night,” he murmured, “You're Major Elias Stonebridge's daughter.”

She pushed away from the doorframe and stood with her feet a hip width apart. Her fresh scent followed her and filled his nostrils. Tension rode in waves from her body, quickly filling the tiny brig.

She'd changed. His faded memory was that of a plain, quiet girl who sat on the fringe of the various meetings and dinners Major Elias Stonebridge had often had at his house. Her mother had passed when she was a toddler and her father had never remarried, as the demands of his job gave him neither time nor the desire to do so. She often stayed home alone when her father traveled the world, gained an education with the grace of a good and gentle governess, and as far as he recalled had lived an often lonely and unadventurous life. It was difficult to reconcile the bland girl of his memories with the spitting fiery beauty before him. It was no wonder it had taken him a while to remember who she was. Standing before him was a woman, no longer the little girl he had once associated with timidity and the quiet life.

“Estelle Stonebridge,” he murmured, not keeping the note of astonishment from his voice.

What he couldn't work out was why she wasn't surprised he was chained in a brig working off the results of some malicious drug and was looking at him like she'd like to slice him open and feed the contents to the fish. “Why?” he asked.

“You of all people should know the answer to that question,” she spat. Her eyes shone with a palpable rage.

His head throbbed with an otherworldly vengeance. “As I've been trying to tell you, I have no idea.”

“Maybe the memory of my father will help you put two and two together,” Estelle said.

“What has your father got to do with this?”

“He has everything to do with this,” Estelle hissed. “The navy might not know what you did and the government might not know what you did but
I
do, and now you're going to pay for the life you took.”

The pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. “You think I killed him,” he said.

“I don't think. I
know
.”