Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) (12 page)

“
Senorita
,” he said, tersely. “Back to
your quarters at once.”

“I think there’s
a problem below decks,” Ella said, wringing her hands and looking at the man
with her best weak-little-woman expression. The first mate turned to look at
the bridge as if hesitating to abandon his post when a scream from behind Ella
snapped his attention back again.

“Fire! Fire!” a
man’s hoarse scream exploded from the direction of the hall in front of the
kitchen.

“It’s what I was
trying to tell you,” Ella said, worried now that she wouldn’t get credit for
raising the alarm. “There’s a fire in the kitchen.”

The Spaniard
spoke quickly in Spanish to the three men on the bridge and one of them bolted
away on the other side, presumably to alert the rest of the ship. The Spaniard
pushed past Ella and charged in the direction of the kitchen. The man below continued
to howl and now Ella could tell he was screaming in pain.

Oh, crap! How did that happen?

Deciding that
keeping out of everyone’s way was the best recourse for someone who didn’t want
to be blamed for the disaster in the first place, Ella slid into the shadows of
the top deck to wait out the pandemonium. Within moments, the ship was crawling
with sailors. Most of them, half-dressed and half-asleep, stumbled about
grabbing rope and buckets in a clear panic as if they were being boarded by
Blackbeard himself.

It occurred to
Ella as she saw the fear on all of their faces that fire onboard a wooden ship
was a very bad thing indeed. If there was even a hint of a suspicion that she’d
deliberately started it, she was going to be lashed to a mast and fed to the
sharks.

At the very
least.

Wondering how
sophisticated arson forensics could possibly be on an 1800s ship in the middle
of the ocean, Ella began to seriously second guess how great her idea was of
assuming a superstitious sailor’s hesitancy to touch a menstruating woman could
transfer to the idea that all women on board ship were bad luck.

If I followed the logic of that argument to its natural
conclusion
, she thought,
the brisk wind on deck slicing painfully through her thin blouse,
they might as well just slit my throat as
drop me off at the next port.

Be a lot more convenient, too
, she thought as she stared into the
dark, depthless deep of the black water as it lapped the side of the ship and
pushed further into the shadowy recesses of the ship topside.

 
Although it seemed to take forever, in
the end she knew it hadn’t really. After watching most of the men disappear
below deck to try to battle the blaze in the kitchen, it didn’t take long
before she saw one or two—and then more—come back to the deck and
wander about as if they were looking for something.

Looking for me.

She knew hiding
in the shadows made her look guilty, but she was reluctant to give up her small
moment of peace. She knew the accusations, the tears, the assault would begin as
soon as she showed herself. But it had to be done—and done
convincingly—if she wanted to survive this night.

She took a long
breath to steady her nerves and emerged from the shadows.

“Oy! There she
is! I found ‘er!”

Figures it would be that turd Roger
, Ella thought, trying to stay brave in
the face of three men descending upon her. They grabbed her arms and dragged
her to the center of the deck near the bridge, where she could now see the
captain was standing with Cook. Unfortunately for her, she could see that Cook
was nursing a bloody lip—clearly an admonishment from the captain.

“It was an accident!”
Ella blurted out. Up until that moment her plan had been to claim she was as
surprised as everyone else. She wasn’t sure what made her say what she did.

“An accident, my
arse!” Cook said, making a fist and shaking it at her. “Ye burned down me galley,
ye vicious harpy!”

“I didn’t mean
to! I’m so,
so
sorry.” Ella turned to
appeal to the captain, who looked, if not educated, at least a little more
civilized than his crew. “There were so many rats and I was trying to…I thought
if I used smoke I could drive them away. I thought I was helping!”

Whether the captain
or many of his men were married Ella couldn’t know, but she could see they had
little to no respect for women in general—and her, specifically. She knew
her only hope was to use that disrespect to get them to believe her.

“Stupid bitch!
Are all women so stupid?”

Step two. Tears.
Ella crumpled up her face. “I wanted to help but, especially during this time
of month, I don’t always make the best decisions…”

She watched two
men step back from her and one of the men holding her let go.

“And it’s not
only the rats but the spiders. They’re huge!” Ella said to the captain, sniffling
and dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. “I was just trying to
help.”

“Arrr, cap’n,” a
voice bellowed out. “Didn’t I say women were trouble? And Petey’s burned ‘is
beard completely off just coz he was wanting a cracker at bedtime.”

Ah, so that was who discovered the fire.
Ella sincerely hoped Petey wasn’t too
badly hurt.

“Right,” the captain
said, turning back to Ella. “Lock ‘er in the aft brig and post a guard so she
doesn’t try to ‘help us’ any more this night.” A begrudging spatter of laughter
followed. “In the morning, at first light, she’s over the side. You…” Ella saw
him look at Roger. “She causes any more damage tonight yer going over with ‘er.”

Ella watched
Roger nod solemnly, his normally tan face pale as he took her by the forearm
and, holding her at arm’s length, marched her away from the crowd.

It worked!
It was all Ella could do not to skip alongside her captor. He pushed her down
the corridor that led to her original cell and slammed the door. She heard the
wood groan as he slumped to a sitting position in front of the door. She could
lock it or not as she liked. She wasn’t going anywhere tonight.

As Ella groped in
the dark to find a spot to curl up in that wasn’t too awkward, an insidious
thought niggled its way into her brain that soon made it impossible for her to
shut her mind off in order to sleep.

What, exactly, had
the captain meant—s
he’s
over the side
?

Five hours later at
just before dawn Ella found out.

She was still
asleep when the door to her cell lurched open, and Roger and another man
grabbed her and hauled her down the corridor to the upper deck. Her terror
awakened her quickly enough. So quickly were they hustling her that her feet
weren’t touching the wooden planks of the ship flooring.

“Stop!” Ella
cried. “Let me walk! Stop this!”

 
They ignored her, marching and half
carrying her to where the weasel-faced first mate stood at the ship’s railing.
Roger and the man threw her down in front of him and Ella fell awkwardly on her
wrist. She crouched huddled at the first mate’s feet, cradling her hand tenderly
when she heard the distinct sound of a sword leaving its scabbard.

She forced
herself to look up at the Spaniard who stood over her, a wicked blade
unsheathed and in his hand.

“You must go now,
Senorita
,” he said solemnly, his head
jerking in the direction of the ship’s railing.

Dear God, they
were pitching her over the side of the ship.

She got shakily
to her feet, hugging her injured wrist to her chest and holding it with the
other. She glanced at Roger and the other sailor—clearly there to prevent
any last minute dashes back toward the rest of the ship where she’d no doubt
create more mayhem. It was still dark, but she could at least see the ocean
waves now, white caps popping into vision now and then.

The sea was rough
this morning.

Ella swallowed
and looked at the Spaniard. “This is murder,” she said. “I have people who will
be looking for me. You can’t do this and not expect to spend years rotting in
an English prison.”

“I speak English
not good,” the first mate said with a shrug. “You must go now.” He gestured
with his sword.

Ella looked over
the side of the ship where he wanted her to jump and saw, for the first time,
the rowboat that pitched and rocked by the ship.

Out of the frying pan…

“How am I to get
down there?” Bypassing the Spaniard, Ella looked at Roger, who it seemed was beginning
to show definite signs of guilt.

“There’s a rope
ladder,” he said, pointing to the rim on the underside of the railing.

Ella nodded. It
was the best she could hope for and she intended to work on finding herself
grateful for not being murdered outright. Her wrist had started to puff up.
Best to get this done before it became totally useless. She hesitated and then
turned back to Roger.

“A jacket, at
least? Or a hat?”

He hesitated and
then dashed down the hallway. Ella looked at the first mate, but now that it
was clear she would go he seemed tolerant of the delay.

Roger was back in
short order with a heavy cotton jacket and a large floppy hat. One would
protect her from the sun, the other from the night’s chill. It wasn’t an iPhone
with a GPS app, but it was better than nothing.

“God speed and
good luck to ye.”

Ella shrugged
into the jacket and positioned the hat on her head, then crawled out on the
ship’s railing until her foot met the first rung on the rope ladder.
Immediately, she felt the wind try to pluck her from the ladder and her hurt
wrist screamed as she clung to the side of the ship. A strong pair of hands
clamped down on her arms. Roger held her securely in place until the wind died down.

“Thanks,” she
said hoarsely, and slowly descended the rungs—slipping only once and then
catching herself—until she jumped the remaining distance of six feet into
the boat. She grabbed the oar and pushed away from the ship until she could
manage a steady pull on the oars.
 

The
Constantine
was tacking against the
current. To go in the opposite direction of the merchant ship she would,
thankfully, be rowing with the current instead of against it. Within thirty
minutes, she was amazed at how far away the ship was. In an hour, it was only a
speck on the horizon. Two hours later, the sun was nearly at its apex in the
sky but the temperature was falling.

And she was
totally alone.

10

The sharks stayed
close the whole morning. The biggest one—a long black monster who
surfaced long enough to cock a lidless bloodshot eye at Ella—made a point
to bump the bottom of the dinghy every third pass or so.

Every time he did
it, she screamed.

Could he smell
blood? Was her little boat just the only thing happening in a very big,
otherwise very boring ocean? Was this just the ûber bully of the sea? Ella
imagined all the other creatures of the deep relieved not to have to dodge this
asshole and his gang for a little bit while he was busy working on upending the
human tapas on a plank.

When she still
had the
Constantine
in sight she knew
which direction to row—away from it. But now that it was no longer in
view, and hadn’t been for hours, she found she’d gotten turned around. The
waves were rough and many splashed inside the little boat so that she was
drenched. The cloud cover meant she stayed that way.

Bam!
The large shark hit the bottom of the dinghy right below where she sat and she
shrieked. Looking down, she was certain she saw a crack had been created from
that last hit. The inside of the boat was already so wet it wasn’t possible to
determine whether or not it was now leaking.

“Dear God, help
me!” she screamed to the heavens. “Have I really come all this way to lose my
child, my husband and end up a shark chew toy?” Her words came back to her on
the wind, tossed in her face, which made her realize that it had picked up. Far
from needing the hat to shield herself from the sun, her arms were covered in
goose bumps underneath the jacket.

She looked up at
the clouds she had just appealed to and noticed the sky was darkening.

Oh, don’t even tell me.

Fury and panic
coursed through her. When the big shark nudged the bow of her dinghy with his
back, without thinking she brought the oar down hard on its fin. He reacted
violently, twisting away from her and thrashing in the water. He wasn’t badly
hurt that she could see. His explosion of physical frenzy looked more like a
tantrum than a death roll.

When she glanced
away from his gyrations she realized she was holding a broken oar in her hand.

Oh, my God, no.
She set the oar down gingerly on the floor of the boat. How was she supposed to
row with only one oar? She tossed the other oar down and gripped the sides of
the boat as a rolling swell rocked the boat and tipped her far to one side
before righting itself. When the wave receded in preparation for another attack
on the boat, Ella looked worriedly into the water to see where the shark had
gone.

She saw blood.

There was more
gore than she could possibly have created whacking the beast with her puny oar
and she felt her hopes rise. Had she wounded it? Were his pals now doing what
came naturally? She strained to see movement in the water but there was
nothing.
Maybe the big shark was hurt and
running away from them?

When the second
wave hit, Ella wasn’t watching and the impact jolted her over the side of the
boat. She hit the icy water with her mouth open and felt herself plunging down
as if she were wearing weights. In a panic, she kicked off her leather shoes
and began thrashing the water to return to the surface. She’d only had time to
suck in a quick breath before she hit the water.

A large shadow
swam slowly next to her.

She broke the
surface with a gasp, her chest heaving with the effort to inhale air, her lungs
burning. The dinghy was two strokes away but her arms felt like she was
swimming in quick sand. She went under once and bobbed back up, her terror
further slowing her efforts to swim even one stroke toward the boat.

Desperate and waiting
any minute for the tug on her leg that would tell her the sharks had found her,
she tried to dog paddle toward the boat and forced herself not to think of the
sharks or the pelting rain as it assaulted her in sharp needles.
Just the boat. Just get to the boat.

Her fingers
reached the side and she began to try to pull herself up but she was too
terrified, too cold and too heavy from her sodden clothes to manage it.

An image snapped
into her head of what her legs—kicking frantically—must look like
to the circling sharks below.

And she was still
on her period.

Forcing the image
out of her mind, she gave a scream of frustration and brought to mind a picture
of Tater’s face the last time she saw him. The time when she promised she would
return to him.

Just like her mother had promised her.

A burst of unholy
anger launched from her throat as she clutched the rim of the dinghy and, feeling
the splinters jam under her fingernails, she hauled herself up and over the
side and into the bottom. For a moment, she lay there in the puddle of water
that was quickly filling the boat, feeling the rain pummel her face. Her chest
heaved with her exertion, her terror, her fury.

By God this is not going to be how it ends!
She sat up and grabbed one of the oars,
her wrist still aching and tender.
If I
have to beat to death every goddamn shark and backstroke all the way to
Casablanca, I’ll bloody do it
.

As she lifted the
oar to plunge it into the water she saw the hull of a sloop appear from the
mists on the horizon. She stared at it with her mouth open. It was a shadowy
form that moved eerily forward, tacking as it progressed, its sails trimmed
against the rain and the wind.

Ella stood up in
the boat and instantly it wobbled and she lost her footing, forcing her to sit
down on the single bench with a hard thud.

Could it see her?
Was she too far away?

The water in the
bottom of the dinghy was up past her ankles now. Even if she could figure out a
way to start bailing, she’d never keep up with the onslaught of the rain as it
filled the boat.

She was probably
thirty minutes from sinking.

She watched the
ship inch closer and then, just when she was sure they might hear or see her,
it changed tack.

Away from her.

“No! I’m here!
Help! SOS! Ahoy! I’m here!” she screamed until her last words were soundless
croaks but she knew the wind was snatching them from her mouth and flinging
them further out to sea.

Where no one
would ever hear them.

Desperately, Ella
looked around the boat. After four hours, she was sure she knew every inch of
it and every bit of its contents but still she searched for
something
.

I would kill for a flare gun.

And then she saw
it. Her white cabin boy shirt, although sodden and plastered to her body, might
be visible in the gloom and the rain. She ripped it off and quickly tied it to
the end of the unbroken oar. Bracing her legs against the sides of the boat for
support, and with the rain beating into her face, she stood up and began to
wave her flag. Bare breasted and shaking with the wet and the cold, she stood
mutely, desperate prayers on her moving lips, her eyes willing the ship to see
her, and slowly waved the oar from side to side with her trembling arms.

Just when she was
sure it was about to disappear from view—as silently as it had
appeared—she saw the sloop unfurl its sails and tack right into the storm
as it turned back.

An hour later,
she didn’t care forty French sailors had seen her naked from the waist up. She
didn’t care she’d let them haul her onboard their ship, their hands grabbing
whatever part of her that might help them do that. She didn’t even care where
the ship was heading.

But it was heading
to Casablanca.

Ella sat huddled
under a blanket drinking a hot cup of coffee that was more brandy than coffee,
and as she watched the storm abate and blue cloudless stretches begin to creep
across the late afternoon sky she knew more intensely than she knew anything in
her life that nothing and nobody would stop her now.

She curled up in
the quartermaster’s hammock and slept dreamlessly, the sleep of exhaustion and
relief, all the way back to port. After thanking the French captain—who
had his own ideas of how she could repay him if she really wanted to—Ella
hailed a carriage at the docks. Although she was finally dry, she knew her
clothes would get her arrested before she could get a cab, so she borrowed dry
clothes from the boatswain on the ship. When she still received a suspicious
look from her cab driver, the ship’s quartermaster stepped in and paid the fare
to her hotel.

Ella couldn’t
help but compare these helpful men with the ones who’d kidnapped her and set
her adrift in the Atlantic Ocean. The French captain admitted it was a fairly
busy shipping lane and that the captain of the
Constantine
had every reason to believe she would be picked up.

If I wasn’t turned into shark sushi first,
Ella thought grimly.

When it pulled up
in front of the Salim Hotel, Ella bolted from the carriage and hurried inside.
The last thing she wanted to do was answer questions about her appearance from
anyone.

Fortunately, the nosy
desk clerk was busy when she entered. Although other guests gave her appalled
glances as she ran up the stairs to the hotel rooms, Ella made it into the
darkened hall without being intercepted. Her fingers quickly found the key on
the hidden ledge and she let herself into her room.

A quick
inspection showed that everything remained untouched. Ella sank onto the bed.

She’d done it.

She’d discovered
where Rowan was and she hadn’t died in the process. Now all she had to do was
go after him. Before she let the exhaustion of that thought—and the
exertion of her last two days—totally overwhelm her, she stood up and
stripped off her borrowed clothes. A hot bath, a hot dinner and a long sleep in
a soft bed with clean linens. She nearly groaned at the prospect when there was
a knock at the door.

She stiffened and
looked at her bedside table where she kept a serviceable hand knife.

“Who is it?” she
called through the door.

“It’s Lord
Bingham, Miss Pierce,” the voice came back smooth and friendly.

What the hell?

“I’m not decent,
Lord Bingham,” Ella said, not bothering to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

“I am indeed
getting that impression.”

Her temper
getting the best of her, Ella slipped on her silk robe, cinched the belt and
strode to the door, jerking it open.

“What do you
want?”

She could see
she’d shocked him. His eyes went to her body beneath the thin silk. She knew
the fabric showed the fullness of her hips and breasts and left little to his
imagination.

“I…I…” He tore
his eyes from the outline of her body to her face. “I saw you come in.”

“Congratulations,”
she said. “Although I’m not sure I owe you an explanation.”

He cleared his
throat and she found herself a little charmed by his awkwardness. He was
actually embarrassed. “Of course you don’t, but I couldn’t help but think I
might be of service to you.”

“Of service how?”

“May I…may we
discuss it over dinner tonight? In the hotel dining room?”

He was clearly
not comfortable talking with her in her robe—which suited her fine.

“No, I’m going to
have an early night tonight. But you’re welcome to come in.”

She was right.
His eyes grew wide in alarm and it was all she could do not to laugh out loud.

“I say, I’m sure
I would not be able to…I say. I really don’t…”

“Look,
Lawrence
, is it?”

He nodded,
swallowing and again clearly having trouble dragging his gaze from her body.

“Well,
Lawrence
, I’ve just had a catastrophic
last twenty-four hours and I really need a bath and a good night’s sleep. So if
you don’t mind—”

 
“I noticed you left the hotel two days
ago. In the night.”

She hesitated. “You
followed me?”

“Hardly. A proper
gentleman venturing to any of the facilities I saw you approach would be
murdered outright. I must say, I feared for your life, Miss Pierce! Especially
when you didn’t reappear at the hotel that night. Or the next.”

“I ran into a few
snags.”

“Please, Miss
Pierce, I beg you to allow me to help you in whatever way I can. I entreat you
to trust me with your mission.”

“My mission.”
Ella rubbed her eyes. She was so tired. “Why in the world would you want to
help me?”

 
“Why? That must be obvious to a blind
man. I must say, I’ve become quite captivated by you. But even if that was not
the case, helping a woman in need—especially one with no obvious family
or support—is the only gentlemanly thing to do.”