Taming Charlotte (3 page)

Lydia, their stepmother, had taught them to be strong women, unafraid to take risks and let their intelligence show, and for the most part, these traits had stood Charlotte in good stead. Until that morning—if indeed it had been that morning—when she’d awakened with the brilliant idea of putting on robes and veils and exploring the forbidden
souk.

Charlotte pictured Millie, her beautiful, spirited sister, all dressed up in her lacy white wedding dress, eyes sparkling with love and excitement. She imagined each of her five younger brothers in turn, and grieved for them, one by one. Their names swelled in her heart; Devon, Seth, Gideon, Jacob, Matthew.

There was a very good chance she would never see any member of her family again. Even worse, her loved ones would surely suffer over her disappearance and obvious fate, and Bettina’s parents would be devastated. Their daughter was all they had, and because of Charlotte’s impulsive actions, they had lost their child.

Despair would almost certainly have overtaken Charlotte in that moment if she hadn’t been given something more immediate to think about.

Door hinges creaked, and a slash of light appeared in the darkness. Then a small man entered the chamber. He wore Arab garb, but that was all Charlotte could make out in the gloom.

Her heart pounded with fear and helpless rage as he approached her, wrenching her roughly up off the floor and then pulling off her gag. He produced a cup of tepid water and pressed it impatiently to her mouth.

Charlotte bit back all the inflammatory things she wanted to say, all the frantic questions she yearned to ask, and drank greedily. The heat was intense, and she realized she was wet with perspiration.

“Who are you?” she asked hoarsely, when she’d satisfied her thirst.

The man mumbled something in Arabic, and while Charlotte missed the meaning of the words, she caught the attitude. Her captor was not contemptuous, or even hostile; he was indifferent.

“What is this place?” she burst out, more in an effort to discourage the Arab from gagging her again than from any hope of getting a reply she could understand. “Why are you keeping me here?”

Charlotte’s visitor shouted something at her; like his earlier conversation, the remark needed no translation. He wanted her to keep quiet.

To demonstrate this, he put the gag back in place and tied it a little tighter than before, so that the filthy cloth chafed at the corners of her mouth. Then he shoved Charlotte, hard, sending her toppling to the floor.

For the first time, a slow, almost imperceptible sensation of rocking penetrated the fog of fear and anger surrounding her, and she realized she was in the hold of a ship. It gave her comfort that she’d identified her prison, but she also had to face the forlorn reality that escape would be even more difficult.

As Charlotte watched the guard leave her makeshift cell, she was actually glad to be wearing the gag. The scrap kept in the flow of scathing and very colorful invective she’d learned in her father’s logging camps. Even though he didn’t speak English, the Arab would have known he was being
roundly insulted, and his already thin patience would probably have snapped.

Charlotte forced herself to draw in deep breaths through her nose and let them out slowly through the cloth. Whatever happened, she must stay calm, taking every care not to lose her temper or show fear.

The heat in the dark hold was dense, and now that Charlotte knew the place
was
a hold, she picked out the sound of rats scampering overhead in the beams and foraging in the supplies stored around her. She shuddered and offered up a silent prayer for a miracle to happen.

Soon.

Patrick sighed and turned away from the rail of the
Enchantress.
Usually he enjoyed watching the last fierce light of day shatter into glimmering liquid on the water, but that evening he was troubled.

His friend and first mate, Tom Cochran, was standing behind him. “Do we set sail with the evening tide, then, Captain?” he asked. He was a solidly built man, of medium height, and a gray-white stubble of beard covered the lower half of his face. “I imagine that Khalif fellow will be looking for us to put in sometime tonight.”

Patrick gave a distracted nod. He had gone to school with the sultan in England, and Khalif was a good friend, but that night the prospect of visiting his luxurious palace lacked its usual appeal. “Yes,” he said, somewhat hoarsely. “Give the order to set sail.”

With that, Patrick descended to the lower deck and entered his private quarters, a relatively small chamber holding a bed, a wardrobe, a desk and chair, and several bookshelves. He made no move to light a lamp but instead collapsed into a chair with another long sigh.

He heard the shouts of the crew members above, on the deck and in the rigging, but his mind was stuck on the girl kidnapped in the
souk
that day. What was it about her that troubled him so? Unfortunate though it was, unwary young women were often snatched from marketplaces, ships, and street corners in this part of the world, and most were never seen again.

The nape of Patrick’s neck clenched tightly, then began to throb. He cursed and sent a small book clattering against the wall.

A knock sounded at his door.

“Come in,” Patrick called grudgingly, knowing that if he didn’t speak, the cook’s boy would just keep knocking.

That night, however, it was Cochran who brought the captain’s dinner tray.

“For mercy’s sake, man,” the old sailor said, “light a lamp. It’s as dark as the devil’s root cellar in here.”

Patrick reached up for the lamp suspended over his desk, removed the chimney, and struck a match to the wick. He knew his expression made it obvious he wasn’t pleased at the interruption.

“What’s chewing on you?” Cochran demanded, setting the tray down on the desk with a thump. “Didn’t you find that little dancer in the
souk,
the one you’ve had your eye on ever since we dropped anchor?”

A surge of unexpected shame swept through Patrick, though he couldn’t imagine why. He was an unmarried man, after all, and he’d betrayed no one by following the girl into her tent and enjoying her feminine attributes.

“I found her,” he admitted, dropping his eyes to the tray. Lamb stew, brown bread, and weak tea—again.

Cochran chuckled and made himself at home by folding his arms and leaning back against the closed door, though he hadn’t been invited to stay. “Don’t tell me she wouldn’t have you.”

Patrick refused to dignify that idea with an answer. He just glared at Cochran for a long moment and then tore a piece of brown bread between his teeth and began to eat.

“I guess I lost my head.” Cochran grinned. “Forgot for a moment that no lady has ever refused Patrick Trevarren. If it isn’t the dancing girl, what is it that’s troubling you so much?”

Patrick shoved away the tray, tossed the bread down beside his bowl. “This is a merciless world,” he said gravely.

The first mate pretended profound shock. “Now, there’s an insight for you,” he replied mockingly. “And here I thought it was all rose petals and angels’ wings.” Cochran,
unlike most of the
Enchantress’s
crew, was an educated man. In fact, Patrick knew he’d once been a tutor in a boys’ school in New York, though his friend didn’t talk much about the days before he’d gone to sea.

Massaging the knotted muscles at his nape with one hand, Patrick told Cochran about the kidnapping. He didn’t mention how the maple-colored eyes haunted him, though.

“You can’t save them all, Patrick,” Cochran said, when the woeful tale was through. “Besides, some of those girls end up living like queens, you know that. The pretty ones get servants of their own, and fine clothes, and all the fancy food they can tuck away.”

Patrick bit the inside of his lip to keep the floodtide of furious despair coursing through him from coming out as a bellow.

Cochran laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Was she pretty?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.” Patrick’s admission was gruff.

“Then she’ll be all right,” the seaman told him. With that, Cochran opened the door and went out.

Patrick propped his feet on the desk, just to one side of the tray, and tilted his head back with a groan. His headache was getting steadily worse, and even with his own lids stubbornly closed, he could still see those golden eyes looking up at him in the marketplace.

In the next instant, Patrick remembered. He and his uncle had docked the
Enchantress
in faraway Seattle, back in ‘66 or ‘67, and stayed a few days to enjoy the local hospitality and unload some of the goods they’d brought from both California and the Orient.

He’d returned to the ship one afternoon, after spending the morning with a local merchant, and looked up to find a scrap of a girl swinging in the rigging.

He’d yelled to her to come down, and she’d called back, in a reasonable enough tone, that she couldn’t move. He’d climbed up to retrieve her, of course, and they’d exchanged words.

Patrick didn’t remember her name, but those amber eyes were engraved in his consciousness. Impossible as it seemed, that adventurous young woman and the one he’d encountered
in the marketplace, just prior to her abduction, were one and the same.

He knotted one fist and slammed it down on the desktop with such force that the silverware rattled on his tray.

Charlotte lost track of time after three days. She was given very little to eat or drink and allowed to relieve herself only once every twenty-four hours or so. Her veil had long since disappeared, and her borrowed gown was twisted around her, torn and dirty. Her skin burned with fever, and the bruises and cuts hurt more with the passing of time, instead of less.

No one had come to ravish her, that was some consolation. She could endure hunger, thirst, general discomfort, and a bladder that was about to explode, but the prospect of rape terrified her.

When her irascible guard came to collect her one night, jerking her to her feet with his usual lack of ceremony, she thought her luck had finally dried up and blown away like so much fine sawdust. She fought desperately, though she knew all the while there was no chance of winning, and the Arab finally backhanded her across the face. The blow was so hard that she fainted.

She awakened—whether it was minutes or hours later, she had no way of guessing—to find herself squashed inside what felt like a burlap bag. She could see light through its loose weave, then make out the shadowy forms of several men.

They were laughing as they engaged in some game of cards, and Charlotte was practically convulsed with fury. She started to scream that they were all beasts and found that she was still gagged. A second later, her eyes widened as the realization came to her that she was naked inside that scratchy burlap sack.

The gambling went on, and Charlotte dozed, opened her eyes, dozed again. Finally she felt the bag that enclosed her being slung over some man’s shoulder like a bag of chicken feed. She struggled, but that only made whoever was carrying her laugh out loud.

“She’s a spirited one, all right,” a voice said, in unadorned
American English. “Raheem won’t be happy when he finds out you lost her at poker, but she might improve the captain’s mood some. He’s been growling for the better part of four days.”

An American,
Charlotte thought, nearly faint with relief. Now she could explain what had happened, book passage home to the United States, live a blessedly ordinary life…

After a lot of jostling, Charlotte heard a loud knock. Again she felt the rhythm of a ship beneath her.

“Yes?” someone called, in none too friendly a tone.

“I brung you somethin’, Captain,” answered the man who carried her. “Me and the rest of the crew, well, we’ve been lookin’ for a way to cheer you up a mite.”

Door hinges creaked, and Charlotte felt a peculiar combination of excitement and fear. After all, she’d been stripped of every stitch, and she was in desperate need of a bath and shampoo. When the bag was opened, she was going to make for a very unnerving sight.

The sack landed on the floor with a thump; she felt pulling as the rope or twine at the top was untied. The burlap fell around her in a rough pool, and she snatched it back up far enough to cover herself.

When she finally found the courage to look up, she found herself staring into the astonished ink blue eyes of Patrick Trevarren.

N
AKED THOUGH CHARLOTTE WAS, HER SKIN SCRATCHED AND
itchy from the burlap bag, her muscles cramped, she felt real hope as she looked up into Mr. Trevarren’s handsome face. A lamp swung from a low beam in the small quarters, and there was a comfortable clutter of books and charts on the sturdy-looking desk. She smiled, even though her ordeal had robbed her of all but the dregs of her courage.

“I can explain everything,” she said.

Mr. Trevarren nodded brusquely to the sailor, dismissing him, and after the door closed, her host went to his bed and wrenched off a woolly white blanket. “I sincerely hope so,” he replied at length, offering her the covering.

Charlotte accepted gratefully, but she was too weak and achy to rise from her humble position on the floor. “I was taken captive while my friend Bettina and I were trying to find our way home from the
souk…”