DARE THE WILD WIND (40 page)

"You can't set sail.  Not while I'm still aboard."

He wheeled at the sound of her voice, his expression startled and impatient.  "Good God, Brenna.  I told you stay below."

"You have to put me ashore." 

He laughed and threw a strong arm around her.  "You don't have to anything to fear.  Seton will never lay hands on you again.  Stay by me, now that you're here.  Take a last look at
England."   

Satisfaction and triumph vibrated in his voice, and Brenna pulled away from him.  "I'm Drake's wife.  I can't go with you."

Cam
glanced down at her, one hand still on the wheel.  "By the laws of England?" he mocked.  "By your own free will?  He has no claim on you now."

"He does have a claim," Brenna said in a rush.  "Listen to me."

His eyes suddenly bored into hers, a muscle in his jaw tightened.  "Are you saying he has some kind of hold on you?"

Swallowing, she forced herself to speak.  "
Cam, I can't go with you.  I'm carrying Drake's child."

For a shocked eternity, he said nothing.  Then his face hardened into harsh, unforgiving lines.         

"Then all the more reason to make certain he never sees you again," he said in a cutting voice.  "The tide is going out, and the ship is under sail.  It's too late to put you ashore."

Abruptly, he ordered the helmsman back to the wheel.  Grasping her firmly by the arm, he began to propel her toward the ladder leading to the main deck.

"You can't kidnap me like this," Brenna sputtered. "I only came aboard to see you again, to talk to you."

"This isn't the time or the place for argument." Tossing her bodily over his shoulder, he started down the steps from the quarterdeck.  For a second, Brenna was too
surprised to struggle.        

“Put me down," she demanded.

"You came aboard without a word of protest," he said flatly.  "You were promised to me before you said your vows with
Stratford."

Brenna squirmed to be free when they reached the main deck.

"Will you behave with a measure of dignity?" he asked as he set her back on her feet.  Brenna refrained from pointing out he was the one acting like a barbarian Turk.

"The vows are said.  I can't
take them back.  No matter how much either of us might wish for it, we've lost our chance to be together."  She spoke more quietly, trying to make him understand. 

"I can't take Drake's child a
way from him.  You must know I always loved you, but everything has changed.  I'm another man's wife."

He stared at her for a heartbeat, the expression in his eyes murderous and flat.   "Did you think I'd let you go again, Brenna?" he asked in a low icy voice.  "Do you really think I'd send you back to that lying English dog?"

He hoisted her over his shoulder again, and strode with her toward the hatch.  Without ceremony, he deposited her inside his cabin, and turned the key in the lock behind him.

Beside herself,  Brenna pounded on the door and called after him.  But his booted footsteps stalked back up the passageway.  And when she whirled to lean against the unyielding door, she saw the last jagged rocks of the headland gliding by the porthole. 
The
Red Witch
had cleared the harbor, and the ship slid into open sea.

Before her eyes, the land receded away from her.  Brenna shook inside.  She would never see Drake again.  What would he say, what would he think when he found her gone?  Unreasoning panic raced through her.  She felt cut loose from a safe mooring, cast terrifyingly into the unknown. 

A vise squeezed at Brenna's chest when she pictured Drake's return to Penherion.  He would think she had willfully deserted him
, that she had somehow connived to tryst with Cam in the village.  He would believe she had forgotten every moment of abandon in his bed, that her every cry of pleasure had been a lie.  And it hadn't been a lie.  Something in her kindled at Drake's touch.  She had never meant to betray Drake or the bargain they had made. 

Was
Cam mad?  How could he treat her like this, after she had trusted him so completely?  Did he think that her marriage vows meant nothing at all?

Brenna paced the cabin, waiting for
Cam's return.  An hour and more passed, and at last she sank down onto the wide berth, mindful of her child and her need for rest.  But sleep didn't come.  And a small treacherous voice whispered inside her.  Only a few months ago finding Cam again, finding him alive, would have been all that mattered.  Didn't she have the chance to be with him now, just as they always planned?  They could leave England behind and follow the four winds wherever the
Red Witch
took them.  How easy it would be.  And how impossible.  The babe inside her needed its father.
 
She
needed Drake.

The admission shocked her.  She had come to care for Drake, despite their beginnings.  She belonged to Drake as much as their child, and they both needed his protection now.

Worse,
Cam's reaction to the news of her baby filled her with dread.  Could she ever expect him to warm to another man's child?

She had to persuade
Cam this was a dreadful mistake.  But when he reappeared in the door of the cabin at dawn, she was furious to discover he would hear nothing she had to say.  Quickly, he gathered his charts and sextant and a few items of clothing. 

"You don't need to worry that I'll disturb you," he told her in a cold, matter
of fact voice.  "I'm joining the first mate in his quarters, and I've posted a guard at your door."

The motion of the ship had redoubled her morning nausea, but Brenna fought to hide the weakness that washed over her.       

"To keep your crew out, or to keep me in your cabin?" she asked with acid resentment.

"To make certain you come to no harm in your delicate condition," he said shortly. 

"If you
are
concerned for my health," she told him with cutting emphasis, "you'll put me ashore at your next port of call."

"Our first port is
Nantes.  I doubt you'd fare too well on your own in France." 

"
France?" Brenna echoed.  He had said the
Red Witch
sailed for Scotland.

He saw her shock.  "I have a cargo to sell, and I don't intend to sail back to the
Caribbean with an empty hold."  He halted at the door to hold out a key.  "For the rest of the voyage, you'll be safer with this in your keeping.  Tad will bring your meals, but don't unlock the door for anyone else."

"Not even you?" she asked with a skeptical lift of one brow.

"Not unless it suits you," he said brusquely.  And then he was gone.    

When he shut the door, Brenna fought the urge to kick it.  Why wouldn't he listen to reason?  She wasn't so much baggage, to be tossed below deck to sail wherever he was bound. 
Cam had a right to be angry, a right to feel cheated.  Both of them had been cheated of the life they had planned.  But he had no right to punish her for everything that had happened, for the capricious game fate had played with them.       

With an angry twist, she turned the key in the heavy iron lock.  Apart from a gallant gesture, it was clear
Cam trusted his men only so far.  He had left it to her to admit Tad, rather than place the key in the keeping of one of her guards.  And in the next two days, she saw more of the cabin boy than she did of Cam.

Shy, Tad was eager to please, and he made an effort to tempt her queasy palate with the best the ship offered.  Cautiously, she tried to draw him out about the course of the
Red Witch
.

"What cargo does the ship carry?" she asked, hoping it might provide a clue about their final destination.  Since their first day under way, thick gray clouds had flanneled the sky, obscuring sun and stars.  From the porthole, Brenna couldn't guess the direction they sailed now, let alone where they might eventually be bound.

"Rum and sugar from Saint Domingue," Tad told her as he laid out her supper.  He set a porringer of steaming stew before her.

"Saint Domingue?"  Brenna wished the geography she had studied with Fenella had included charts of the
New World.  "In the West Indies?"

"On the
island of Hispaniola."  He broke off a hearty chunk from a crusty loaf of bread.  "A man can get as rich as a Creole in a few voyages to Liverpool or Nantes." 

He spoke in a sober tone of wisdom that told her he was parroting what
Cam or one of his officers had said.  The remark puzzled her.  If honest trade was so rewarding, why did Cam prefer piracy?  Even if Cam and his crew had a price on their heads in England, he could sell his cargoes in France.  And before they left Penherion, Cam had told her he was bound for the Firth of Lorne.

"Then
Cam changed course when we left Cornwall," she thought aloud.  "When he set sail from the Caribbean, he must have meant to make port in Liverpool and then put to sea for Scotland."

With a clatter, Tad dropped a spoon.

"The captain never confides the course he plots to the likes of me, m'lady."  Blushing to be so clumsy, he lined the cutlery carefully on the fine linen napkin folded alongside her platter of cheese and bread.  "But he's talked of
Scotland, many a time."

Had
Cam meant to fly the Union Jack into Liverpool, running it up as easily as the French colors they sailed under now?  Why not, she realized.  Unless he hunted the sea as a privateer under a royal letter of marque, a pirate had no allegiance and no country, no flag he wouldn't strike. 

After he had brought her aboard in
Cornwall, Cam no longer had any need to risk sailing into an English port.  It made sense to change direction around Land's End for France.

"Will there be anything else you'll be wanting?" Tad asked. 

Brenna couldn't keep Tad from his other duties, no matter how much she might want to go on questioning him, or how starved she might be for company.  She sighed and sat down.

"Nothing but my freedom." 

"You mustn't be downhearted, m'lady.  You'll come to no harm at the captain's hands.  I'd gamble my life on that."

"I kno
w the captain would never harm me," she told him with quiet truth.  "I've known Cam since I was a girl.  I only want him to let me go."

There was no safe reply Tad could make to that.  Mumbling he would return later for her empty dishes, he ducked quickly out.

The next morning, the ship heaved into the mouth of the
Loire. 

Brenna found a guard still barred her door. 
Cam paid her a brief visit as the ship plied its way upriver on the tide.  His manner still stiff and distant, he told her she wouldn't be allowed on deck until they were once more at sea. 

"Till now, the only view I've had of the voyage has been through the porthole," she reminded him tartly.

"Now that my men are accustomed to the idea of a woman on board," he said, "I'll see that you take a daily turn on deck."

"Will you at least let me take a few steps on dry land while we're in port?  I'm not a poor sailor, but in my present state of health, it would greatly ease my discomfort."

He let out an amused sound at her ploy.  "Brenna, you never looked less like an invalid.
  Tad tells me you devour every meal but breakfast.  Playing on your condition won't serve your ends with me."  The ghost of his old smile faded.

"Your present state is all the more reason not to let you disembark.  The docks of
Nantes are the last place for any gently bred woman.  The waterfront is a filthy pesthole, and you'd risk all kinds of contagion if you so much as strolled on the quay."

"I'm  more likely to catch a fever closeted in this cabin than breathing fresh air ashore," Brenna shot back in frustration.

He smiled tightly at her.  "For once, Brenna, I can't indulge you.  Ask me anything a sane man can grant, and I'll oblige.  But don't imagine you can dupe me."

There was a clear warning in the last.  When he stalked from the
cabin, Brenna berated herself for being so transparent.  Once ashore, she had hoped to break for freedom, if necessary plead for help from anyone who would listen. 

And
Cam didn't grow lax.  In Nantes, merchants waited eagerly on the docks to buy sugar from the Indies.  Within an hour of their landing, longshoremen began to empty the ship's hold.  But Cam posted Tad with her in the cabin to forestall so much as a cry for help from the porthole.        

"You'll forgive me, I hope,"
Cam remarked, "if I fear your overworked conscience isn't entirely to be trusted."

"Wouldn't it be simpler just to let me go?" she asked, a bitter edge to her words.

Cam
took her by the arms, looking hard put not to shake her.  "Don't ask me for that.  Trust me to do what's best for both of us."

Brenna glared back at him.  "You've taken leave of your senses.  I can't do this,
Cam.  You can't do this."