she could not escape the unpleasant thought that she was at the mercy of a man who had thought it a joke to carry off a gypsy wench for his use for the night and had taken her without a thought for her feelings or for anything but the sating of his own lust. He had wanted to be rid of her soon after—what would his reactions be now?
At that moment there was a crashing noise overhead, and the ship tossed more violently than before, pitching Marisa against a bed that was anchored to the floor.
It was just as well she had not become a nun, for she had no moral fiber at all. She had been raped and had not had the courage to kill herself afterwards. Instead, she had taken a bath! And now, almost petrified by fear, she found herself thinking that perhaps rape was preferable to death by drowning after all.
Clutching a trailing blanket around her shivering, icy body, Marisa stayed crouched where she was, one arm wrapped around a bedpost. She tried to pray, but the humble, gentle prayers of praise and invocation she had recited so glibly in the convent chapel became all garbled in her mind. She had sinned deliberately, she had no right to ask for mercy. Instead of the vision of the Virgin’s gentle face bringing her comfort, she saw another face bending over her, dark and angry looking, with a white scar and eyes like daggers, cutting her to pieces, impaling her body and battering it helplessly while she lacked even the strength to cry out.
6
Strangely enough, it was the sudden cessation of noise that woke her. That, and the pleasant feeling of warmth penetrating her chilled flesh. She must have lost consciousness during the worst of the storm, Marisa thought dazedly. At least she was still alive.
As circulation crept back into her cramped and aching limbs, the pain was almost unbearable, making her afraid to move.
Her eyes opened a fraction, and she realized that she was lying in bed, the covers drawn over her. In front of a glowing brazier which had been set in the center of the floor, a man stood stripping off his sopping wet clothing, flinging everything aside in an untidy, dripping heap. The ruddy light played over his tall, lean body and the movement of muscles beneath the skin of his shoulders and narrow flanks. His back was to her, its symmetry broken by a crisscrossed pattern of scars. Only a criminal would carry the marks of the lash. Marisa’s golden eyes widened and then squeezed shut quickly as he reached for a bottle that stood on the desk and raised it to his lips.
A few moments later she could not help cringing as the covers were rudely snatched off her cowering form.
“Whose wench are you? Donald’s? Isaac Benson’s? I can hardly believe it of the old hypocrite!” She felt his body drop over hers, taking her breath away, and then he had rolled to the other side of the bed.
“Don’t get your hopes up, scrawny one. I’m too damned tired to find out tonight. And if you want to stay in this bed you had better shed those wet clothes; you’re as clammy as a corpse!”
Numb with fear, she had obeyed him, reacting like a puppet. She fell asleep and when she next awoke, the events of the previous night seemed all jumbled up. She had half-expected to wake up in the same narrow bunk she had occupied for the last week or so, and when her senses swam back to dull awareness of the present, she felt a heavy weight over the lower half of her body and found her face pressed against a masculine shoulder smelling faintly of sweat and tasting like salt. She tried to move away but an arm scooped her closer.
“No, you don’t! You were content enough to keep me warm all night—what’s your hurry now?”
Her golden eyes stared mesmerized into his sleepy grey ones with dark pupils that seemed to contract as recognition flared into them.
“You!” Suddenly he held her pinned down by the shoulders, his face staring down into her. “How did you contrive it? Did you put one of your gypsy spells on poor Donald and on my ship as well? No wonder we’ve had such a bad voyage—a woman aboard ship always brings bad luck! What are you doing here?”
There was a cruel, dangerous look on his face, and sheer desperation made Marisa shout back at him.
“You—you threw me in here last night! And if I’m such bad luck, why don’t you just throw me overboard and have done with it? You’re such a rotten bully, no wonder all your men are so afraid of you! Well, I’m not. You can’t do anything worse to me than you have already—”
She was appalled at her own boldness.
He shook her, his fingers digging into her bare shoulders.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he muttered threateningly between clenched teeth. “This is my ship. What are you doing aboard her? Did you offer yourself to Donald in order to persuade him to bring you here? Cabin boy—hah! I suppose you’ve been spreading yourself thin—distributing your doubtful favors to every man on board this ship. No wonder you were supposedly too sick to show your face on deck! What’s your game?”
Too overwrought by now to care about the pain he was inflicting on her, Marisa screamed, “Nothing, nothing! I have not done anything, and I’m not what you accuse me of being—you ought to know that! I only wanted to get to France, and if I hadn’t been so—so sick I would have worked my passage there! I’m not a gypsy, and I’m not a whore, although you tried to make me one! And I wish you’d have let me be swept overboard last night. That would have been best, I’m sure for all concerned!”
“What a virago! I can feel you shaking like a trapped rabbit under my hands, and yet you dare shout back at me. I’ll say this much for you—whatever you are, you’ve got courage.”
“Courage is something one finds easily enough when there’s nothing left to fear,” Marisa shot back wearily.
It came to her with a sudden shock, when she saw his eyes harden, that he had made his last statement in English, and she had answered in the same language.
“How did you discover such a cynical truth so young in life? Well, well. Maybe there’s more to you than I imagined at first. You’re beginning to intrigue me all over again, little one.”
She had no idea what he might have done next for a rapping at the cabin door made him stiffen and swear under his breath.
Suddenly embarrassed, Marisa dived under the covers like a guilty child. A wooden-faced Donald entered, bearing dry clothes over his arm.
“Beg pardon, captain. I thought you’d be needing these. And Mr. Benson has a jury mast up, all right and tight. If the wind and weather hold, we ought to fetch port with no more trouble.” In the face of an ominous silence he cleared his throat and went on awkwardly, “Thought—you dinna’ gave me a chance to explain matters last night, and—”
“If we hadn’t been shorthanded you’d be clapped in irons and making your explanations to the rats in the hold. No, I’ll have my explanations from the right party, and hear your side later, if my temper holds out! Here. You can take our erstwhile cabin boy’s clothes and have them dried. And fetch me some breakfast, while I decide what to do with her.”
“Captain, you don’t understand. The puir lassie has no friends or family to protect her in Spain, and those gypsies had vanished like the wind—”
“You’d be wise to vanish yourself, you sneaking old reprobate, before I change my mind and have you flogged for insubordination!”
With a last worried glance at the mound of covers on the bed, Donald decided on discretion instead of valor and fled, hearing the door kicked shut behind him.
Marisa could hear her own heart thudding, and the next moment the covers were yanked off her curled-up body, and, crying in pain, she found herself dragged upright by her hair.
“What the hell do you think you’re hiding from? And just a moment ago, you were so brave!”
In spite of the tears that sprang to her eyes she noticed with relief that he had pulled on a pair of closely fitting breeches, with a wide belt that snugged his flat stomach.
“Here.