The next few hours flew as she held the hand of a mutineer as Kilil tied a piece of wood to the man’s arm to hold it steady. She stitched cuts and tied bandages around limbs. She held the head of one man as he died and sang a short Spanish lullaby to him. Then she looked up and saw the Scot in the doorway. He was watching her intently.
The loose shirt he wore was pink with rain and blood. He entered the surgery, and Kilil approached him. He took off the shirt, and the bandage around the dagger wound looked scarlet with fresh blood. Kilil cut it off.
“It must be burned,” the Moor said, surveying the wound, which had been ripped open sometime during the storm.
The Scot didn’t blink. Only nodded his assent. The man who’d lost a leg had been moved to the floor. The Moor pointed to the bloodstained table and the Scot sat.
She watched as the Moor heated a knife.
She put some opium in a cup and added water, then offered it to him.
“What is it?”
“Opium,” she said. “It will help the pain.”
“Nay. I want nothing that will dull my brain.”
“That is foolish.”
“Mayhap it is.”
She looked for a piece of wood and found one. She offered it to him, and he took it. He didn’t flinch as the Moor took the knife from the fire and approached him.
To her surprise, she thrust her hand into his and held it tight as the knife hit skin, sizzled. The Scot bit down hard on the wood and his hand tightened around hers so forcefully she feared he would break it.
The smell of burning flesh mixed with that of blood as the Moor drew the knife away.
The Scot’s body shuddered, then stilled. The grip on her hand gave way and she lowered her arm to her side.
He started to move, then stopped, but she didn’t hear a sound from him. The self-control amazed her.
One of the men helping the Moor stepped up and offered him a cup of what looked like wine. The Scot did take that and drained it.
His gaze caught hers again. His eyes were lined with exhaustion and pain, and for the first time he appeared vulnerable. But that impression was fleeting. He stood, nodded to the Moor. He took a step, leaned against the wall for a second, then continued through the door.
Though he had uttered few words, the intensity of what had just happened still crackled in the air. She realized she’d barely breathed during those moments. Her heart pounded again.
Bringing breath back into her lungs.
Not because of any other reason.
She turned to the next patient.
HER touch had electrified him. He hadn’t expected her to offer her hand. More than her hand. She had offered something else that had affected him as nothing had before.
She had offered part of herself to relieve his pain.
God, but she had looked appealing as she sang to a dying man. Patrick leaned against the door and was mesmerized with the softness, the sweetness, of her voice.
Her gown had been bloodstained and damp. Clumps of hair had escaped her long braid and hung limply alongside her face. Yet she’d appealed to him more than at any other time. When she turned toward him, there was a look of caring on her face. She wasn’t there just because he’d ordered it.
That startled him. Astonished him, in truth. The last thing he wanted now was to admire her. He had enough complications. Holding the crew together long enough to reach Scotland, then to do what had to be done. He tried to remind himself she was the blood kin of a family who made their fortune from the blood of others. But her face in the flickering light had been anything but venal. There had been true compassion.
When their gazes met, he’d felt an entirely different heat than that which touched his body. A more dangerous heat, he knew. He had grown used to pain. He knew how much he could take. He also knew that he had neared the limit.
Which is why he had accepted her hand. And probably almost broke it.
He returned to the captain’s cabin and lay down on the bed. He’d told Diego that he would take a few hours to rest. God knew he would not have to try hard.
THE wind blew hard and the ship fairly flew across the water, toward Scotland. Two days had passed without sight of another ship.
Patrick stood at the wheel. Diego was finally getting much-needed sleep. One Moor, a man named Gadi, stood by him. He had asked to learn. Patrick suspected he wanted to learn navigation for his own reasons, but Patrick needed all the help he could get, and refusing the request could further raise the suspicions of the Moors.
He knew they were angry. They, quite naturally, wanted to head to their own countries. He suspected that only the fact that there were more Spanish, Scottish and French prisoners on board than Moors prevented them from trying to take the ship themselves.
He understood why. Patrick was taking them to a Christian country, and why should they believe they would be treated any better there than in Spain? They had been fighting Christians most of their lives.
Only the fact that few of them had any sailing ability had stayed their hands. But for how long?
He gave the wheel to the Moor, watched his concentration as he held the
Sofia
steady. The wind blew clean and strong, filling all the sails. They would make the Hebrides in five or six days if the wind stayed true.
He looked at the sun. It was his guide at the moment, until the stars appeared and he could better judge their position.
But what if he was wrong? If he made a mistake? They could wander the seas until they ran out of food and water.
He glanced around the deck. The crew, this ragtag group of nationalities, were teaching each other what skills they knew, sometimes by sign rather than speech. Then his gaze caught a flutter of skirts.
His thin shoulders straight, Manuel stood at the railing with the Mendoza lass and her maid. They were his charge and he was doing his duty.
Patrick left the helm and walked over to them. The eyes of both women were wary.
“We came up for air,” Juliana Mendoza said defensively. “Kilil said I might.”
“He says you have been useful in the surgery.”
“Little more than comfort, and I am not sure anyone wants comfort from me.”
“They will take help from any who offers it. They are not so used to it.”
“They needed a real surgeon,” she said with a spark of anger in her eyes. “Perhaps you should not have been so quick in killing him.”
“He never helped the likes of us,” Manuel interjected bitterly, then stalked away to another part of the ship.
Her gaze followed the boy, then returned to Patrick. Her eyes were wide, surprised.
“The surgeon used him in ways you might disapprove,” he said.
“No!” He had said it before but she hadn’t believed him. “My uncle would not permit . . .”
Patrick shrugged. “Believe what you will. But the surgeon was not the only one.” He paused, then said in a tightly controlled voice, “You should not be out here. There is still much anger.”
“I needed some fresh air. Kilil . . .”
“Kilil is not the captain.”
“And you are?” she challenged him.
“It appears so. At the moment.”
“At the moment,” she repeated softly.
He stiffened. “What have you heard?”
“Mumbling.”
“You had better pray that it was no more,” he said.
“Why? You are no better than the rest,” she countered.
“Aye, I agree,” he said. “But far better than the likes of your uncle.”
She turned away from him, and to his surprise he saw her shoulders shaking. To his greater surprise he found himself reaching out to her. He put a hand on her shoulder.
A jolt of heat ran through him. She jerked and turned around, her eyes widening. They were glistering with un-shed tears. Devil take it, but he wasn’t prepared for the sudden hesitation of his heart. It just . . . paused for a few seconds, then started beating all too rapidly.
God help him, that had never happened before. For a moment he stopped thinking at all. His hand did not move from her shoulder. Instead, he wanted to take her into his arms and wipe the fear and uncertainty from her eyes.
He took a deep breath. He had been celibate far too long.
He took his hand away. “If you are not in the surgery,” he said roughly, “you and your lass should stay in the cabin. ’Tis dangerous here.”
But her gaze held his for another minute or so, and, mesmerized by the violet that ringed the silvery blue-gray of her eyes, he almost lost his ability to reason. What in the bloody hell was he doing?
Her back stiffened, and he saw from the flash in her eyes that she felt the bright flash of attraction—nay, more than that—that so violently assaulted him. She took a step back and her hand went up as to ward against a physical blow.
A princess. A Spanish princess. And he was so recently a slave and now a mutineer.
He muttered an oath and stepped away.
“Stay in your cabin,” he ordered again as he tried desperately to feint the arching need in him.
This time he did not wait to see if she obeyed. He turned around and returned to the helm. He felt as if a hundred eyes were watching him.
And her.
God help him but it was going to be a far longer journey than he’d imagined.
J
ULIANA’S legs barely carried her to the hatchway and down the steps. She had to steady herself with a hand against the wall.
Carmita was behind her. Silent as usual. Manuel had taken up his post as their guard.
She was stunned by the magnetism of the Scot, by the pure need that had skittered along her nerve edges and settled in her stomach. An undefinable but powerful craving seemed to take control of her body. Her mother had told her about the ugliness and pain of coupling, but she had said nothing about these strange, turbulent feelings that ran amok inside.
Nor the way she’d longed, for a moment, to run her hand along his heavily muscled arm and settle it in the large, callused hand.
She reached the cabin and went inside, waited for Carmita to join her, then stood at the door and regarded her young guard. “I am tired,” she said. “If I am needed, I will come, but . . .”
He nodded. “I will bring you something to eat.” He turned to go.
“Manuel?” she stopped him.
“Si?”
He turned to face her.
She looked at the slender lad. His dark eyes belonged to someone much older. There was altogether too much knowledge there. “Do you not get any rest?”
“I am free, senorita, and no one will touch me again. That is all the rest I need.”
So the Scot had not lied.
She closed the door softly and leaned against it.
She could not undo what her uncle and father had done, but now she understood some of the hatred she saw in the eyes of the oarsmen.
She was not going to ask any more questions about what brought any man to this ship. She was already becoming leaden with guilt for her father’s and uncle’s sins.
Her father!
What would he do when he learned the ship—and his daughter—were missing? It might be months before he realized she had disappeared. Probably not until he and her mother arrived in London for the wedding.
Would he grieve? Try to find her? Would he take out his disappointment on her mother? That was her greatest fear.
The ocean was a vast place. The ship could have gone down anywhere. No one would know except for those now on the
Sofia.
That reminded her more than ever of the jeopardy she was in. Ironically her fate seemed to be mostly in the hands of a man who hated her family, who had killed her uncle and probably many more.
A man who also stirred new and heated feelings inside her, feelings she’d never known existed.
Feelings that she suspected could lead her to far more dangerous places than she’d ever anticipated.
Chapter 12
PATRICK stood at the helm, gazing up at the moon and the thousands of stars that sprinkled the sky. It was after midnight on the sixth day since taking the ship.
It was easy now to chart a course by the stars. Home was a few days’ sail. Reaching Inverleith had gone from impossible to possible to likely. It had been in doubt so many times, including during the last few days as the ship passed through the English Channel. Fog had been both a blessing and a hazard. The
Sofia
was invisible to hostile eyes, but the persistent fog had presented its own dangers. He couldn’t see the stars, nor the shore, and they ran the risk of going on the rocks. He’d taken the ship farther out in the Atlantic until the fog dissipated, then he’d had to turn back against the wind. The crew was still clumsy with the sails and he almost lost the wind.
But earlier that day, at sunset, he had a glimpse of land.
He had not seen Juliana Mendoza in the past day. He had made sure of that. She aroused feelings that were disastrous. If the crew thought he was taking something denied to them, he might not be able to control them. He still wasn’t even sure what should be done with her when they reached land.
He did know he was having feelings he’d denied for years, even before his imprisonment. He’d known from boyhood he could not marry. Unlike Rory, he believed fully in the Maclean curse. There was no other explanation for the string of tragedies that plagued the Macleans.
Now, though, he concentrated on keeping the crew together. He was very aware of the tensions on the ship as the
Sofia
continued north. The Moors gathered in small groups and he heard them mumbling. He knew that they expected to take the ship once they arrived in Scotland.
No matter his promises, they made it clear they wanted no part of another Christian country. Nor did they believe an infidel. Not completely.
“Ye are a natural sailor.” The MacDonald’s voice interrupted his thoughts.