Seductive Wager (36 page)

“Fools!” he screamed. “If I do not stop him, he will defeat all of you one by one.” Uttering a string of blasphemous curses, he climbed onto the roof of the cabins and moved with catlike tread until he was directly behind Brett. Waiting only until Brett moved forward to press the attack against a much-scarred foe, he jumped noiselessly down to the deck; a sixth sense warned Brett of danger, but he was too late to dodge the blow from the hilt of Raisuli’s sword that sent him crumpling to the deck.

“This man is worth a dozen of you,” Raisuli said, waving his sword at his pirates. “With him at my side, I could rule the whole Mediterranean. It is too bad he is a Christian dog.”

Raisuli strode the deck of the captured ship like a king. He was a mean and petty man of small stature and only moderate physical strength, but he had a cruel and cunning mind that had earned him unquestioned command over his ignorant and ragged forces. He got a feeling of cruel satisfaction from humiliating his captives when they were defenseless and likely to beg for mercy, and he inspected the men with slow and deliberate malice. Grinning expectantly at one hugely muscled sailor, he said, “Hmm, if I have you castrated, you’ll make a perfect eunuch.” The man nearly fainted as the pirate crew jeered its ribald enjoyment.

Next he approached a handsome young man with a smooth chin and a clear skin. He had him roughly stripped and as the poor unfortunate flushed crimson, Raisuli leaned forward and whispered loudly in his ear, “I know a grand Turk who would pay a king’s ransom to have you in his bed.” He screeched with laughter when the man blanched and struggled vainly to free himself.

He nudged Brett’s inert form with his booted foot. “This is the prize of the lot.” He pulled Brett’s head up by the hair and then let it drop back to the deck with a thump. “With a physique like that, he won’t die of the heat or overwork. Hell be worth his weight in gold to some planter, or the planter’s wife.” He howled with laughter once more.

Abruptly his humor changed and he became anxious to finish his work. “Search every corner of this ship,” he shouted to his men. “I want the girl found at once.” He paced the deck impatiently while his men fanned out to ransack the ship from one end to the other.

As his impatient strides brought him near where the captain still lay, the man opened his eyes and spoke softly in Arabic. “Did the dey send you? Did he give you my money?”

Raisuli froze, his attention riveted but his gaze still straight ahead. “I do not work for anyone,” he hissed.

“I sent a message from Gibraltar to warn the dey about the man.”

“I do not come for a man. It is the woman I seek.”

“Forget her. The man is the one who will ruin the dey’s plans.”

“So you are playing at the traitor,” Raisuli sneered, his cold, hard gaze suddenly turned squarely on the captain. “I do not talk to a dog like you.” A vicious kick to the unfortunate man’s head broke his neck. “Now you have no need of your money.”

Raisuli turned back to his men, his temper worse and his mood blacker because they had failed to turn up any sign of the girl.

“There’s no trace of a woman,” one man reported. “Not even a dress or a comb.”

Raisuli boiled with impotent fury. “Damn Yukor’s eyes. If that fat pig has sent me on a fool’s errand, I’ll spill his guts and leave them for the buzzards.” He turned to Brett, but neither he nor the first mate showed any signs of life. “Search again. I want every inch of this ship turned inside out, including these cabins.”

“One of them is locked, but the others contain nothing but trunks and crates being shipped to the British consul in Algiers.”

“Break everything open. The girl could be hiding anywhere, even in a trunk.”

Brett regained consciousness in time to see one of Raisuli’s men throw his considerable bulk against the door to Kate’s cabin, and fear for Kate drove him to superhuman effort. Throwing off the two men that held him, Brett struggled to his feet and plowed his way through half of Raisuli’s force before anyone could stop him. Of the two men who first attempted to seize him, one fell back with a broken collarbone and the other a smashed nose. Brett was almost buried by the bodies of his attackers before he could be brought down.

“What’s wrong with you?” Raisuli screamed at his struggling men. “Are you weak virgins that it takes six of you to hold one man?” Under the scorn of their leader, the pirates finally managed to pin Brett to the deck. “Knock him out before he overpowers you again. He’s better than I thought,” Raisuli mused as Brett slumped to the deck again. “Someone will pay dearly for him.”

He looked at the locked door then back at Brett’s inert form. “So the little bird thinks to escape from me by locking a flimsy door,” he said, amused. “Break it down. She must be in there.”

A sail boom was found and they fragmented the door on the first try. “Bring her out,” Raisuli shouted. One of the men put his hand through the splintered hole in the door and fumbled with the knob before he was able to unlock the door. It swung inward on its own, and he stepped forward. The moment his foot lifted from the floor, the onlookers were dumbfounded to hear the loud report of a pistol and see the man drop. There was a bullet hole neatly centered in his chest.

The stunned silence was broken by Raisuli’s loud voice shouting more Arabic curses. “Drag the Christian whore out by the hair. If she is not as beautiful as Yukor says, I’ll blind the lying beggar.”

Suddenly the fear-crazed Mark launched himself from the dark shadows of the cabin and threw himself at Raisuli. Thinking it was Mark who had fired the shot, Raisuli drew his sword and severed the unfortunate boy’s head from his body with one powerful swipe. The air was rent by a scream. A pirate stepped across the bodies to reach the girl he assumed was now alone and defenseless; again the sound of a pistol exploded from inside the room and a man fell dead.

Raisuli lost all control of himself. Screaming filthy abuse, he unexpectedly grabbed Brett by the hair and pulled him to where Kate could see him through the open door. She stood by the bed, two pistols in her hands. For a second, Raisuli paused in stunned surprise as he realized that it was this young girl who was responsible for shooting two men as neatly as any he’d ever seen in his life; but in spite of his stunned surprise, he was murderously angry at the loss of his men.

“Come out of there,” he ordered. When Kate remained motionless, he called out again. “Didn’t you hear me, you infidel she-wolf? I’ll have this man cut into little pieces before your eyes.” As an afterthought, he added, “You can leave your pistols behind.”

Kate dropped the useless pistols to the floor, and as though propelled by an unseen force, she began to move toward the door. But she stopped at the doorway, unable to force herself to walk over the jumble of bodies lying in her path. Raisuli motioned to some of his men, and the bodies were pulled from the doorway and callously shoved overboard.

“Now let’s have a look at you.” Raisuli could see no more than Kate’s outline in the dark cabin until she stepped into the early-morning sunlight; then a single glance at the unbelievable beauty of this girl sent a shock of pure surprise racing through his body and flamed his animal passions to such a consuming heat he forgot his surroundings, the crew, the ships, even that he intended to sell her for a fortune. Blood thundered in his veins, and lust blocked out everything except his desire to take his pleasure of this gift from Allah. He didn’t care if she lost half her value; he might even keep her for himself. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. With something like this waiting at home, he wouldn’t mind longer stays on land. He was getting too old to be roaming the sea all the time anyway. A quiet little village, a cool house with this girl to warm his body and satisfy his loins, and life would be sweet indeed.

He swaggered up to Kate and took her chin roughly in his grasp. “Yukor did not lie. You are worthy of the great sultan himself.”

Kate’s frightened eyes never left Raisuli’s face, but her whole mind was on Brett. He looked so lifeless. If she could only have touched him to make sure he was still breathing.

Raisuli turned her face from one side to the other. He spun her around in front of him noticing how the high breasts thrusting out against the fabric of the dress further accentuated the slimness of the waist. He reached out to catch his fingers in the neck of her dress and rip it away so he could study her charms unhindered, but Kate drew back with a tiny gasp of fright.

Anger and lust warred in his breast; lust won, and he erupted with hoarse, heated laughter that sent terror racing through every part of Kate’s body. She prayed for strength, knowing she had to wait; she must do nothing to antagonize him while he held Brett’s life in his grasp. He grabbed her roughly and took her into his arms. The ugliness of the man and the stench of his unkempt body were too much for Kate and she fainted, slithering to the deck at his feet.

Raisuli spat out another oath. He couldn’t decide whether to take her like she was, or wait until she regained consciousness. Her face, so angelically fair, and the sensual allure of her creamy skin fanned his appetite and he couldn’t wait. He picked her up and was nearly driven crazy by the warmth of her young body in his arms, the fresh smell of her skin that filled his nostrils. Blind to all danger, he couldn’t control himself; he had to have this girl. He didn’t care if he lost a fortune on the auction block. He’d never get another chance at such a prize as this and the temptation was too much for him to withstand. He signaled two men to guard the door as he started to drag her toward the cabin she had just left.

Kate had only pretended to faint, but when she found herself pressed to Raisuli’s odorous body with his foul breath in her face, she nearly fainted in truth. Keeping her arms clasped close to her side, she fumbled with her right hand under the ample folds of her dress until her agitated fingers closed around the hilt of the dagger she had hidden. Her body was suddenly infused with energy, and as Raisuli started to carry her through the doorway, she struggled to regain her feet.

Electrified by her sudden awakening, Raisuli hungrily fastened his lips to hers and pressed her body against his inflamed loins. With one rough hand he fumbled with the buttons as he tried to get inside the bodice of her dress.

Fighting waves of nausea, Kate gathered all her strength and tore loose from his grasp. Raisuli’s anger flamed to a dangerous heat, but before the first word could pass his lips, Kate snatched the dagger from its hiding place. In one desperate lunge, it flashed through the air and sank deep into his throat, parting flesh from flesh and tearing through tissue and sinew. The razor-sharp blade severed Raisuli’s jugular just above the collarbone and his life’s blood spilled over Kate and the deck in huge rhythmic spurts. An expression of bemused questioning covered Raisuli’s face; he staggered back two steps and slowly sank to the deck where he lay at her feet as the last feeble tremors of life left his body.

Stunned by her own deed, Kate dropped the knife with a clatter as she stumbled back from the bleeding corpse.

For a moment everyone stared in shocked disbelief at the gruesome and unexpected death of the pirate leader at the hands of this frail girl; in the next instant, everything was pandemonium. Sailors who had minutes before given themselves up for dead grabbed any weapon they could see, even the pirate’s own weapons held momentarily in slack hands, and sprang at their enemies. The ruffians came to life, too, but without their leader they were disoriented and their efforts to recapture the ship were soon in confusion.

Then a piercing cry of warning cut through the noise of the conflict.

Chapter 21

The pirates who fell into the water had climbed aboard their own ship by the sea ladders placed there for that very purpose and were following the progress of the battle on the captured ship with real, if dampened, enthusiasm. The unexpected turn of events caused them to forget their usual caution, and unnoticed by any of them, the ships were drifting rapidly toward the coast and a French man-of-war that was racing toward them under full sail. The single pirate’s frenzied cry of alarm caught the attention of his mates, and their eyes turned in the direction of his shaking finger. It was their united cry that finally penetrated the confusion and clamor of battle and caused the combatants to pause. The approach of the French ship and the sight of their fellows preparing to leave them behind filled the pirates with panic and they scrambled to regain their own ship as quickly as possible, even abandoning their victims in the act of aiming a blow. For them, capture meant certain death.

In the wild melee, the pirate who had directed the search for Kate suddenly swept her up over his shoulder and dashed for his ship. Charles had partially regained his senses by now, and he made a valiant attempt to intercept him, but the man grabbed one of the ropes which had been used to tie the ships together and swung across the water, safely out of Charles’s grasp. Ruthlessly tossed over the man’s shoulder like a sack of corn, Kate was held virtually upside-down, and the small pistol she had hidden in her dress clattered to the deck of the pirate ship as her captor landed with a thud. Now she was defenseless against whatever awaited her.

Leaving their tardy and wounded mates to fend for themselves, the pirates cut the last of the ropes holding the two ships together and made a desperate attempt to turn their vessel around before the French warship could overhaul them. The last pirates left on board either jumped into the sea or were run through by a crew who had been revived and heartened by the sight of the fleeing pirates, as well as spurred on to one final effort by the shame of knowing they had failed to save Kate.