“Diego more than me.”
The MacDonald frowned. “I do not trust him.”
“Because he is Spanish?”
“Nay. There is too much he doesn’t say.”
“We need him,” Patrick said. He changed the subject because he had the same reservations. “Have you checked the cargo?”
“Aye. Silks from the orient. Lace. The wine, of course. Small quantities of opium. And you know about that chest in Mendoza’s cabin.”
Patrick nodded. The blacksmith had broken the lock and opened it to find a small fortune of gold and jewels—obviously the dowry for Juliana. “The Mendozas clearly wanted this alliance badly.” He paused, then asked, “Where are the gold and jewels now?”
“Locked securely in the hold,” the Scot said. “No one knows of them other than the blacksmith, you and me.”
“Except Juliana Mendoza.”
The Scot nodded. “She may not know how much there is, though it was listed in the marriage contract.”
“Destroy the contract,” he said.
“Aye.” The MacDonald left him alone again with thoughts that plagued him.
He didn’t know who he could trust other than the MacDonald, who wanted to reach Scotland as badly as Patrick. MacDonald had been taken as a hostage after the Battle of Flodden and held for ransom. It was paid, but he was sent to the galley anyway.
The MacDonald had taken charge of the stores and weapons as well as teaching some of the hands how to fire the two small cannons on ship. Though they lost some cannonballs during the storm, there were about twenty shots still available. Not much, but something.
He did not have the same feeling of trust about Diego. The MacDonald wanted to go home. Patrick wasn’t sure what Diego wanted.
And Felix. He seemed to have given Patrick loyalty, but Patrick had seen him whispering to the Moors as well.
The few times Patrick slept, the door to his cabin was locked and his dagger and a cutlass he’d appropriated were by his side.
As if the captain’s very thoughts had summoned him, Diego slipped beside Patrick.
“My turn at the wheel,” he said.
“Not yet.”
“You need sleep. You will have to stay at the wheel when we reach the coastline. You know it. I do not.”
Patrick hesitated, then asked, “You know there’s talk about taking the ship.”
“Si.”
“And you?”
“I have no desire to be a pirate,” Diego said, obviously reading Patrick’s mind. “Too dangerous.”
Patrick gave him a thin smile. “And this voyage is not?”
“This is self-preservation.”
Patrick wondered how far self-preservation would go. He’d worried from the first day of the revolt that Diego might side with those who wanted to take the ship to Morocco, that he might be biding his time.
“What do you plan to do when we reach Scotland?”
“Accept my share of the cargo and go somewhere far away from Spain. Mayhap to the New World.”
Patrick was startled. “Spain is that dangerous for you?”
“There are those who wish my death. They thought to bury me on that ship.” For the first time, Patrick heard rage in the Spaniard’s voice.
Patrick was suddenly tired. Diego was right. He needed to be fully awake tomorrow as they ran along the Scottish coast.
“Are you sure you will be welcome at your Inverleith?” Diego said.
Patrick didn’t answer. He bloody well wished he knew. Or even whether there was an Inverleith now.
“I am the heir,” he said.
Diego’s eyes met his. “We would not be free without you. I will stand at your side.”
Patrick nodded and gave the wheel to him.
He walked to the hatch and went down the steps. He had approached his cabin when he heard a scream.
A woman’s scream.
He ran toward their cabin. Manuel lay in front of the door, blood coming from a wound on his head.
Patrick swore under his breath. God help any man who had injured the boy.
The door was locked from the inside. He used all his strength to ram his body against wood, and the door splintered open.
One man held the young lass down while a second was mounting her. Another man was holding Juliana Mendoza, who was struggling to get away. The smell of ale and sweat was thick in the air.
All of them turned toward him as he stood in the doorway.
“Get the bloody hell out of here.”
“You ain’t our better,” slurred one of the men.
“Leave now or I will kill you,” Patrick said.
It was three to one, and none of them were in the best of condition. But men who forced women were cowards, and he was angry enough to kill.
His hand slipped to the dagger tucked in a sash around his trousers.
“We got as much right to her as you do,” added the man holding Juliana.
“I will not repeat myself,” Patrick said in Spanish. These three were not Moors, from which he expected opposition, but obviously true criminals from Spain.
The man holding the young lass let her go and took a knife from his trousers. “We want the women,” he said as he lunged at Patrick.
But Patrick had not been drinking and the assailants obviously had.
He stepped aside and the attacker went straight out the broken door, curses rolling down the corridor.
Patrick heard other voices coming from outside the cabin. But his eyes were on the man holding Juliana. The other was trying to pull up his trousers.
He instinctively knew the first was the most dangerous. The assailant released Juliana, tossing her on the bed, and approached Patrick with a cutlass.
He swung it, and Patrick barely evaded the blade. Through the corner of his right eye he saw the second man maneuver around him.
To his shock, he saw the Mendoza lass pick up a metal pitcher and swing it at the attacker with the cutlass. Hard. He didn’t have time to think about it, but instead thrust his dagger at the other man. The oarsman went down, the dagger embedded in his chest.
Patrick turned. The leader, the man who’d held Juliana, was trying to stand. Patrick grabbed the cutlass and pressed it against the man’s throat. He badly wanted to end the man’s life with a twist of his weapon. He needed no more malcontents.
He hesitated just long enough for the man to kick up and try to knock the weapon from his hand. Patrick plunged the weapon down in his chest and instantly it was over.
The MacDonald burst into the cabin, cutlass in hand.
“A wee bit late,” Patrick said, breathing hard.
Two men held the man who had plunged through the door. He was babbling. Asking for mercy as his gaze darted between his two dead companions.
“We had . . . the right,” he insisted again in a shaking voice.
Patrick turned away from him to the two women. The young lass was frantically trying to cover herself with a torn chemise. Tears poured from her eyes. Juliana Mendoza’s face was pale. But there were no tears. Instead, she seemed frozen.
“Take him to the cage,” he said, referring to a small enclosed area beneath the rowing deck that was capped with an iron grate. Prisoners were placed there when they were too sick to work.
“No,” the survivor yelled. “I fought, too. He has no right,” he said, turning to the newcomers for help.
The MacDonald grabbed the squirming prisoner. “I dinna do my job, Maclean.”
“Just get him out of my sight,” Patrick said. “As well as the bodies.”
“Aye, I will do that. The lasses . . .”
“They will be all right,” he said roughly, “but I think we need more than a lad to guard them.”
The MacDonald directed one of the curious onlookers to take the drunken sailor below, and two others to drag the dead men away.
Manuel!
Patrick went out into the hall. The lad was holding his head in his hands.
“Senor, I . . . tried . . .”
Patrick put his hand on his shoulder. “I know. You will have help from now . . .”
“They
were
help.”
Anger drew into rage. A blinding rage. He turned around and looked through the smashed door to inside the cabin. Senorita Mendoza had moved over to her maid and wrapped a shawl around her.
The small lass, Carmita, trembled. He walked over to her, saw the vivid bruises. He uttered an oath. “It will not happen again,” he said.
He started to reach to her, and she shrank against the bulkhead as she desperately clasped the shawl. He dropped his hand. “Are you . . . did he . . . violate you?”
She shook her head, her gaze moving frantically between him, the men crowding in, and her mistress.
Juliana Mendoza placed herself between Carmita and him. “You said we would be safe,” she accused him.
“Lo lamento.”
“Your sorry is not enough. She is a child.”
“Aye. You both will move into the captain’s cabin. You can lock that from the inside. It has a strong door. Do not open it for anyone but me, the MacDonald or Manuel.”
“And you? I should trust you?”
“As much as anyone on this ship.”
“That is not much assurance. Murderers. Thieves. Despoilers.” She stopped. “You have not told me where we are going.”
She would know soon enough. “My home in Scotland. The Hebrides.”
“But the others . . .”
“Will have enough gold to go where they wish.”
Her back stiffened. “What do you plan for me? And Carmita?”
He was silent.
“I will not speak against you,” she offered.
“And why would that be?” he said dryly. “I killed your uncle, stole your ship and all its goods, even kidnapped you. Do you think your intended husband will not believe the worst? And that once free you would not speak against me? And the others?”
“I swear,” she said desperately.
“How would you explain your sudden appearance without a ship?”
Her face clouded.
“You are so eager then to go to your intended husband?” he persisted, trying to find something, anything, he could trust.
“Si,”
she said. But her eyes belied her words. She was stiff with tension, her face full of righteous wrath. There was a touch of fear there, too. More than a touch. It was like a knife slashing through her.
A confusing rush of emotions assaulted him. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to touch her. Devil take it, but he wanted more than that. He felt no better than the three who had intended to rape her.
He took a deep breath. At least he wore the loose seaman trousers that concealed his arousal. He was only too aware his body was reacting just as his mind was. “Take what you need when you move to your uncle’s cabin,” he said harshly.
He went out the door. The hall had cleared with the exception of Manuel. “Go to Kilil,” he said, “and have him look at your head.”
“The senorita can do it,” the boy said. “Kilil says she is better than him.”
There was almost worship in his voice. Patrick raised an eyebrow.
“She is kind,” Manuel said, ducking his head.
Patrick didn’t want to think in those terms. He turned to the MacDonald. “Tell Denny to join Manuel on watch. Pick one other man.”
MacDonald shook his head. “Denny?”
“He killed a man who was threatening me. If he decides someone needs his protection, he will protect them.”
“Aye.”
“And ask the woman to look after Manuel.”
MacDonald nodded. “I will ensure their safety.” He hesitated, then said, “And after we arrive?”
Patrick wished to hell he knew.
He simply shrugged.
Problems were multiplying as they sailed closer to Scotland. Part of him thought they would never make it with the oarsmen as a crew. Too many languages. Too many age-old disputes between religions. Too little knowledge about ships. Too little armament if they met hostile ships.
But now that they were within range of Scotland, he had to consider what he was going to do with thirty or so Moors at Inverleith, not to mention the rest of the motley collection of prisoners of war, thieves and probably a few murderers mixed in.
What was he going to do with a Spanish galleon on the Sound of Mull? How was he going to keep a hundred people silent?
And what would his father think about kidnapping two Spanish women, one the intended bride of one of the most powerful families in England?
Simple battle had been far easier.
His stomach in knots, he left the corridor to clear out what few items he’d appropriated in the captain’s cabin and move them in with those of Diego.
Then he would return to the helm. He doubted he would sleep today.
Or tomorrow.
BECAUSE of the broken door, Juliana heard part of the conversation. Her stomach had clenched when there was a silence after the other Scot had asked, “And after we arrive?”
She knew the subject was their future—hers and Carmita’s.
She had considered taking Carmita and hiding somewhere in the hold. But then she’d heard something about scuttling the ship. She had no wish to go down with it.
Thank Sweet Mary that the Scot came before the oarsman raped Carmita. She was not quite sure why he was protecting them when he’d made it clear they were a danger to him. She still feared his protection was a temporary thing, a whim. That he was pondering some dreadful fate for them.
His eyes were usually so hard. She could read nothing in them.
Yet his anger had been very real when he had attacked the villains who had forced themselves in.
God help her, but he had been magnificent. Something had shifted inside her as he had started so gently to touch Carmita, only to draw back when he saw her fear. For the first time, she’d seen something in those eyes. Regret? No, something deeper.
Then the chill settled inside again.
He was her enemy and she his. Her testimony could condemn him.
And young Manuel as well.