Authors: Pamela Montgomerie

Sapphire Dream (3 page)

BOOK: Sapphire Dream

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Brenna stared at him. “
What?
”

But the guide had his orders, and within minutes she found herself standing in the rain, on the wrong side of the castle’s thick doors.
Dammit.

Brenna was still debating her next move as she prepared for bed that evening, pulling on her Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and flannel sleep pants with the curly-tailed monkeys. With a yawn, she climbed under the soft down comforter and lay in the semidarkness, tracing the cool silver that encircled the sapphire at her throat until she slowly drifted to sleep.

In her dream she was little again, held tight in her father’s arms.

Brenna
.

She heard his voice as if from afar. Suddenly he was gone. She was alone.
No.
Terror welled up, threatening to choke her.

Papa
.

Then she glimpsed him, far off, enveloped in mist. She ran toward him. The pounding of her bare feet on the uneven ground echoed the thudding of her heart. He waited for her, tall and strong, smiling at her with boundless love. But as she reached for him, the mists swirled around him, stealing him away.

No!

“Brenna!” The voice echoed as if in her room.

Brenna opened her heavy lids and blinked sleepily. The light from a streetlamp cast shadows in the room, but there was no one there. She’d been dreaming. She closed her eyes, snuggled under the covers, and drifted back to sleep as the silver grew warm against her throat.

As the sapphire began to glow.

TWO

“The captain’ll kill us if’n he catches us with whiskey in the hold.”

“I’ve only taken a nip, mate. He’ll never miss it. Come on.”

Brenna stirred from a deep sleep at the sound of the rough male voices. Men.
In my room.

She bolted upright, heart pounding, then stared around her in a wash of disbelief. Gone was the quaint and quiet inn. Sounds bombarded her ears—hammering, the cry of gulls, the rhythmic splash of water. As her gaze took in the unlikely sight of a storeroom piled high with wooden barrels, crates, and sacks, the floor rolled gently beneath her as if she were on a boat of some kind.

A
boat
? She blinked at the suffocating confusion. This had to be a dream. But a host of disgusting odors assailed her nostrils—old meat, fish, outhouses—and she knew with a chilling certainty she wasn’t dreaming.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

A single shaft of sunlight poured down from the stairwell into the middle of the shadowed room—or ship’s hold. Against the light, two dark forms descended, then stopped suddenly. With a feeling of dread, she felt their gazes upon her.

“What ’ave we ’ere, Gordy?”

Brenna scrambled to her feet, her hand brushing the flannel of her monkey pants. With a jerk of disbelief, she fisted her hand in the soft fabric and looked down.
I’m still in my pajamas. On a boat. And not dreaming.

What in the
hell
was going on?

Gordy released a low cackle. “Looks like we got us a stowaway.”

Her mouth went dry as she stared around her. Was this the earl’s doing? Had he somehow drugged and kidnapped her? Sold her to slavers or something?

Right.
The real explanation was probably much more boring. Like she’d started walking in her sleep again.

Oh, crap.
Her hotel was only a block from the docks. The last time she sleepwalked, she’d been thirteen and woken on the slide at a nearby playground—in the middle of the night. No one had seen her that time. This time, she hadn’t been as lucky.

She pressed her palm to her forehead in rank embarrassment. How was she ever going to explain this to whoever was in charge? The captain? Especially if they’d already set sail.

What a nightmare.

But as she started toward the men to try to explain her wayward wanderings, they reached the bottom of the stairs and turned where she could see them clearly. Her steps faltered.

They were dressed in rags. There was no other word for it. Torn and stained shirts and vests. Loose-fitting pants that were filthy and threadbare. The bald man wore a patch over one eye, while his companion sported stringy hair to his shoulders, a dirty handkerchief covering the crown of his head, and a gap where one of his front teeth should have been. Knives and wicked-looking swords hung from each man’s waist.

They looked like pirates. Old-fashioned pirates too perfectly horrible to be real.

Her brain scrambled for an explanation.
Actors
. Somehow she’d wandered onto a movie set in her sleep. That would certainly explain the pirates. But if the matching pair of lecherous grins blooming on the two thugs’ faces were fake, these two deserved Oscars.

A burst of fear sent adrenaline surging into her bloodstream, clearing her mind and making her heart pound. If these two were actors, they had a lot more than memorizing dialogue on their minds.

The bald one, the one called Gordy, stepped toward her, his one-eyed gaze glued to her chest. “Looks like we got us a wench. Better ’n a nip any day.” He reached for the ties holding up his pants, proving her instincts were dead on.

Oh God.
An icy memory washed over her, turning her to stone. Another time. Another male fumbling with his pants as she lay pinned and helpless.

Her stomach clenched with raw terror. Her mind jerked into overdrive. There was a way out of this. There had to be a way.

If she could just think of it. And find the courage.

Brenna took a deep breath. Okay, she knew what she had to do. She pasted what she hoped would pass for a sultry look on her face, praying her fear wouldn’t leak between the cracks of her smile, and turned her back to glance at the approaching man coyly.

“Well, well,” she cooed, her voice shaking only a little. “I was hoping for a strong, handsome man.” No lie there. Preferably one in a police uniform with his gun drawn on these lowlifes.

She forced herself to sidle closer just as Gordy’s pants dropped around his ankles. Her stomach clenched at the sight of his aroused flesh, and she struggled to hide her revulsion.

If she failed . . .

She wouldn’t fail. She
couldn’t
.

Brenna edged closer and turned her shoulder. Batting her eyes at him, mentally counting one, two . . .

As he grabbed for her waist, she slammed her elbow into his nose. Gordy reared back and howled. His feet tangled in the pants around his ankles and his arms shot out and began spinning like windmills as he tried to keep his balance.

Brenna didn’t wait for him to regain his equilibrium. She shot toward the stairs, praying she could dash past Stringy Hair, but he caught her from behind. As he pulled her back against him, she kicked him hard in the knee with her bare heel.

“Blimey!” He half yelled the word in her ear, his large hands squeezing her waist painfully. Throwing her head back, she slammed into his nose and he released her with a howl.

Brenna leaped onto the wooden stairs, taking them two at a time, sprinting for the ship’s deck and safety. But as she raced onto the deck and into the sunlight, her steps slowed at the incredible sight before her. Shielding her eyes against the brightness, she stared at the masts criss crossed with rigging like giant spiderwebs against the blue sky.

Somehow she’d sleepwalked onto an old-fashioned sailing ship. A
tall ship
they called them at home.

A pirate ship.

Then again, guys dressed in pirate costumes probably wouldn’t be filming aboard a World War II destroyer. Her gaze slid from the masts to the men staring at her. An entire crew as realistic-looking as the two in the hold.

The hammering abruptly ceased. The dull thump of boots on the stairs behind her echoed into the unnatural silence that blanketed the deck. She tensed for the director’s angry shouts, scolding her for ruining the take.

Her gaze scanned the cast, looking for the film crew. The cameramen. The makeup artist? Producer? Her gaze jerked from one side of the ship to the other. Water boy?

The warm breeze lifted her hair as a chill slid down her spine. Everywhere she looked she saw pirates. And every one was staring at her with lust in his eyes. As if in slow motion, they started toward her, climbing down from the rigging, crossing the decks. Moving deliberately, menacingly, like a pack of wolves.

Her pulse thudded in her ears. What was the matter with these guys? Her gaze skirted over the leering faces even as her heart tripped and raced. They looked for all the world like real, live, cutlass swinging . . .

Oh God.
This couldn’t be happening. She was
not
in the clutches of pirates.

Reenactors.

The word landed in the middle of her fears like a big, fat life ring and she grabbed hold of it with both hands.
Of course.

They were simply a bunch of grown men playing dress up. Men did it all the time. In her part of the States, they usually reenacted the Civil War, but over here, why not pirates? They probably had boring day jobs like meter reading and auditing.

“Who’s in charge? I need to speak with your . . . captain.” The boat rocked, forcing her to scramble to keep her balance. A rough deck board scraped against her bare toe as gulls soared overhead, casting shadows on the deck.

“Aye now, I be thinking you’ll be speaking to me first, missy.”

Brenna whirled toward the voice to find a man striding toward her, his long face badly pockmarked, his eyes cruel.

“Who are you people?” she demanded. “You need to let me go.”

His grin sent fear sliding through her like cold mercury. “And why would I be doing that?”

Her gaze darted toward the others as she desperately searched for an ally. Surely
someone
would help her. But to a man they watched her without humor, without sympathy. Leering eyes, every one. Stalking the prey.

Her.

She had to get off this hell ship.

Her monkey pants flapped against her legs in the warm breeze. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the coast not too far away. She could swim it. She’d swum in college, though only in pools. The ocean water would be rough and freezing, but it wasn’t like she had many options. A brisk swim or gang rape. Gee, let’s think about that.

As the pockmarked pirate closed the distance between them, she put up her hands, palms out. “Look, I don’t know how I got here—I don’t even know where here is—but I don’t want any trouble.” That line might actually work if she were six foot four and aiming a pair of semi-automatics.

“This’ll be no trouble at all, missy.” The pirate grinned and started unbuttoning his pants, filling her with pure terror.

Jesus.
She wished they’d quit doing that.

Lunging sideways, she dodged his quick grasp and ran for a break in the thick wall of men. But the men saw her intent and closed in. As she tried to dash between them, one foul-smelling pirate caught her wrist and hauled her against him.

The first pirate followed, pulling a long, nasty-looking knife. The blade flashed in the sun, momentarily blinding her.

“I claim her. She’s mine until I tire of her.”

The one holding her whipped out a knife of his own. “You’ll not be getting ’er first, Cutter. She’s mine now.”

Brenna struggled against the punishing hold, taking quick breaths through her mouth against the man’s stench. But as the two men circled one another, she found herself dragged along like a toddler’s favorite stuffed rabbit.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught the quick flash of a blade. Her captor screamed and released her, his knife clattering to the wooden decking along with two of his fingers and a thick splash of blood.

Brenna stumbled back, fighting down the bile rising in her throat.

Reenactors gone mad.

BOOK: Sapphire Dream

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