She backed away.
Another flash of light. Her face wavered, blurred, then righted. He had less than half an hour.
Another round of flickering stabs. This time behind his forehead. Any moment now he’d be a useless shipwreck cast up on the beach of his aching head.
Too much wine. Why the hell had he drunk so much?
The pain spiked. He rubbed his temples, seeking relief. A grinding throb set up home at the base of his skull.
No holding this one off. He grabbed for her again. ‘You’re leaving.’
Her eyes widened, filling with fear. He didn’t care. He had to get her out of here. He would not let her see him brought to his knees.
‘It’s your head,’ she said. ‘Let me—’
‘No,’ he said, tugging cruelly hard on her wrist.
Anger. A hot raging beast he couldn’t control crawled up his throat. ‘Move.’ Dragging her along, he strode for the door. He flung it open.
‘Simpson,’ he roared. ‘Take her to the hold.’ Peering through the blinding haze, he thrust her outside. Simpson would see to her. He wouldn’t let him down.
God damn it all.
Thoughts whipped around in his head like storm-damaged rigging in a gale. Faces skittered across his memory. Meg falling. His beloved mother and father surrounded by flames. And Jaimie.
The light from the candles burned through his closed eyelids. Barbed arrows tore into his brain. The urge to hit something bunched his muscles. He stormed around his cabin, flinging things aside, looking for the source of his pain. The light.
The punishing light.
‘Simpson,’ he bellowed. ‘Where the hell are you?’
A flicker of sanity gave him the answer. Gone with the girl. The daughter of his enemy.
He found the bed and ripped off the covers. Found the hooks. Nausea rose in his throat. He gripped the blanket in both fists.
‘The light,’ he whispered. ‘For God’s sake, someone douse the bloody light.’
Chapter Five
‘Cap’n’ll be in a foul mood today.’
He struggled to make sense of the words penetrating the thick, swirling, grey fog.
‘Always is,’ replied the piping tones of a boy. ‘After one of they headaches.’
Who? The question bounced sluggishly in the miasma of his brain. Panic closed his throat as he stared into the surrounding heavy blackness. Who was he?
He jerked to a sitting position at the sound of a crash followed by the tinkle of shattering glass.
‘Careful, lad. The Cap’n’ll have your hide.’
Memories flooded in. His name was Michael. The all-too-familiar yawning pit of despair receded. He was Lionhawk. He owned this ship and he knew his name, his parents’ names, his grim reality.
Michael sank back on to the mattress, safe in the dark tent of blankets put up by Simpson before he collapsed. Relief washed through him. A headache had laid him low. The momentary blank when he first awoke scared him worse than any nightmare. The rush of blessed memory, every last hellish one of them, dawned like manna from heaven.
The first episode for months. It had struck him hard. And he’d thought he was free of them. He hauled air into his lungs, gathering momentum for the task of getting up. No mean feat after a night of agony.
‘Did you see the look on his face when he ordered her back to the hold?’ Simpson’s voice.
‘Naw.’ Jacko, his cabin boy. ‘I only heard him roar at her.’
Her? Michael frowned and winced at the sensation of tight skin stretching over his scalp.
‘I’m surprised he wanted that ’un,’ Jacko said. ‘T’other ’un’s much purtier. Like a china doll I saw once at the market in Freeport, black curly hair and pretty pink cheeks.
Simpson grunted. ‘You’re too young to know, me lad. That ’un’s done naught but complain. She can’t hold a candle to the Fulton wench.’
Bloody hell. Alice Fulton and her brother. The pieces of the puzzle fell together in splashes of colour and light. He’d captured Fulton’s ship and all who sailed in her and celebrated with too much red wine.
It put paid to his planned seduction, but he had learned a great deal more about his enemy.
In the cold light of day another truth lay before him as obvious as a steaming dollop of horse dung in the middle of a fancy soirée. Fulton Shipping had hit rough water.
Laughter balled in his chest. Served the bastard right. But just how badly off was he? Some men complained if they lost so much as a farthing.
The sounds of a scuffle broke out as Jacko and Simpson fought for the privilege of serving him. The wily boy won and pushed his ugly wharf-rat face between the edges of Michael’s makeshift cavern, grinning from one misshapen ear to the other.
‘Here ye are, Cap’n. Coffee. Will ye be wanting your breakfast?’
‘On my desk. And be quick about it.’ The cheeky grin didn’t falter, but the boy dashed off, leaving Simpson to pull down the blankets.
Michael covered his eyes with one hand and suppressed a groan.
‘Might do that lad some good to feel the flat of your hand on his backside once in a while,’ Simpson grumbled.
‘Not on my ship. I’ll turn off anyone who does.’ He pressed his fingers to his temples.
‘Ain’t seen you this poorly since we got into the fight with the press gang from the Dreadnought,’ Simpson commented. ‘The water for your bath is on the way. Shall I call the sawbones or do you want a hair of the dog?’
The doctor could do nothing and the thought of alcohol made Michael’s stomach roll. ‘Coffee is all I need.’
‘Cap’n?’
‘Yes.’
‘Er…’
‘What, man? Spit it out.’
‘That there Fulton lass. She told Wishart you gave orders for her and the rest of them to promenade on the deck today. Health reasons.’
Michael’s mouth fell open. ‘Promenade?’
Simpson rummaged through a chest for Michael’s clothes. ‘Sort of take a walk, like.’
‘I know what the hell promenade means.’
‘They’re to come up at six bells. Bones agreed it would do the sick lad some good.’
So, the lad was up and about. ‘I’ll see Wishart in here after coffee and a bath.’
‘Aye, aye, Cap’n.’ Simpson held out a towel.
Absently, Michael took it. Promenade on his deck without authority from him, would she? The wench had some nerve.
But then he’d known that already. Apparently, Miss Fulton now had so little respect for him, she thought to take charge of his ship.
For some unfathomable reason, he looked forward to correcting her mistake in person. The sensation took him all abeam.
Alice stepped over the coaming at the top of the companionway and squeezed her eyelids tight against the mid-morning dazzle.
‘Alice, where’s my parasol?’ Selina asked from the top step. In a pink muslin matched by the