Her eyes widening with disbelief and hope, she began to drop down beside Jeremiah, but Hamil’s hand jerked her back to her feet.
“Come,” he said harshly. “I am your master now, and ye must think no more of him.”
Slowly, painfully, Jeremiah fought his way back to consciousness. He was on a ship. He knew that much from the slow rocking and the distant rushing sound of the waves, and the familiar sound was the one thing of comfort to him. His whole body ached and throbbed, but the searing, blinding pain was concentrated in his left temple, as if whatever had caused it still hammered against his head. He wanted to curl into himself against the pain and retreat again into unconsciousness, but his legs felt strangely heavy, too heavy to move.
From a distance beyond the water, he heard a woman call his name. Her voice was gentle, familiar, and instinctively he turned his head toward it for comfort, groaning at the pain the slight effort caused him.
“Jeremiah, love, you’re going to be all right,” murmured Caro as she placed another damp rag, torn from her petticoat, onto the angry, bruised lump on Jeremiah’s head. All she’d been given to tend him was a bucket of water and a tiny lamp to keep away the rats here in the hold of Hamil’s xebec, and she knew she should be grateful she’d been granted that much. The gash on Jeremiah’s head had been relatively minor, as Hamil had predicted, but the bruise worried her for the damage that might lie behind it. “You’ll be fine, I swear it, you will. Oh, love, will you ever forgive me what I’ve done to you!”
“What the devil have you done now?” croaked Jeremiah.
With a startled gasp Caro bent closer. “You are alive!”
“Barely.” He forced himself to open his eyes a fraction, her taut, worried face spinning before him in dizzy circles. “Damnation.”
“Here, drink this.” Gently she lifted his head enough for him to sip from the dipper of water. “But don’t move any more unless you wish to. There’s no reason to, anyway.”
“I can’t. What happened to my legs?”
“Nothing,” she said angrily. “Hamil’s men put you in irons, though where he thought an unconscious man would run I’ll never guess.”
Hamil. At once the whole bitter scene on deck came back to him. “I should never have given you that pistol. They could have killed you.”
“I was afraid of what you would try to do,” she confessed. “I thought I could shoot him first because no one suspected me. If you had even moved, they would have murdered you.”
“It seems they half did anyway.”
“I know.” She hung her head forlornly, the dipper clutched tightly in her hand. “There’s more that’s my fault, Jeremiah. It was Frederick’s mother who betrayed us first, selling us to Tomaso like sheep at the market. Your only misfortune was to be with me. Oh, I know I should never have trusted her, but for Frederick’s sake, I—I believed what I wanted to.”
Jeremiah reached out to take her hand, fitting his fingers into hers. He understood why she’d done it, maybe better than she did herself. With a family as strong as the Sparhawks behind him, it pained him to imagine poor Caro so starved for a parent’s affection and approval that she would turn to a mother as evil as Frederick’s.
“It’s done, and I’ll live,” he said, wondering whether it was love alone that had changed him, or if being struck on the head had had something to do with it, too. There’d been a time when he would have berated her for her misplaced trust and blamed her for how desperate their situation had become. But now all he saw was how much worse it could be; they were both alive, relatively unharmed, and they were still together. “I’ll hear no more about it being your fault.”
She would have wept if she’d had any tears left. “You’re too good for me, Jeremiah,” she whispered. “Far, far too good.”
“Good for nothing and fit for less, is closer to the mark,” he said gruffly. “But how are you, sweetheart? I knocked you harder than I intended, but I wanted you out of Hamil’s way.”
“I’m fine, now that you are, too.” She lifted his hand to her lips, her smile shaky. “Most likely I would have come closer to hitting Mount Vesuvius than Hamil.”
“True enough,” he agreed, thinking how strangely wonderful it was that, even as Hamil’s prisoners, they could still make jests. “We shall have to work on your aim.”
With a loud scrape the hatch overhead was lifted off, and a beam of bright sunlight pierced the gloom of the hold. Swearing, Jeremiah lifted his arm to shield his eyes. Three of Hamil’s crewmen dropped through the opening without bothering with the stairway, and motioned for Caro and Jeremiah to climb the steps to the deck above.
Caro scrambled to her feet, her hands squared defiantly on her hips. “Captain Sparhawk can’t be moved,” she said sternly to the tallest man. It didn’t matter that the man spoke no English; her voice and manner were expressive in any language. “He has suffered a very grievous wound to his head, and I don’t want him injured further.”
The man lifted his bearded chin higher, clearly offended to be addressed so insolently by a mere woman. His hand went to the hilt of his saber, another kind of wordless message.
But Caro held her ground, unimpressed. “I’m not going anywhere without Captain Sparhawk, and so you may tell Mr. Al-Ameer if—”
“Caro, lass, hush,” warned Jeremiah, unsteadily rising to his feet by leaning against the bulkhead. “This isn’t worth your neck. You know it could be we’ve made Tripoli and they’d like us to go ashore.”
“Oh.” Slipping her shoulder beneath his arm to help him walk, she glanced at him sideways, the proud, haughty countess suddenly gone and only a scared, vulnerable woman in her place. “Somehow everything will be all right, won’t it, Jeremiah?”
He sighed deeply, wishing he could be both truthful and encouraging. “Somehow, aye, it will, love. With you by my side, it always is.”
He knew he didn’t deserve that bright smile from her, but he claimed it anyway. God only knows when she’d have reason to smile again, and wherever he was bound, that lovely memory might be all he’d have to comfort him.
The midday sun off the water was blinding, slicing like razors into Jeremiah’s head, and he stopped at the top of the companionway, struggling to adjust to the brightness before he must face Hamil. He had a brief impression of a coastline, the curving arms of a wide bay, the white fortress city of Tripoli.
One of the seaman jabbed him in the back to hurry, and with enormous effort he raised himself from Caro’s support and forced himself to walk unassisted, the heavy iron chain dragging between his feet. Hamil stood aft near the wheel, watching them approach, and Jeremiah prayed not to falter or fall beneath his enemy’s eyes.
“Sparhawk.” Hamil looked him up and down, his lip curling at how torn and dirty Jeremiah’s clothing had become. “I didna remember the name until this morn.”
“Hamil or Gordon, I didn’t forget yours.” Jeremiah’s disdain equaled Hamil’s as he studied the Scotsman’s opulent dress, the silk sleeves billowing in the wind and the gold thread and sequins on his waistcoat twinkling like tiny reflected suns. Gotten up like some ten-guinea French whore, thought Jeremiah contemptuously, all spangles and tinsel and empty show.
“I took your Chanticleer, Sparhawk,” said Hamil slowly as he studied Jeremiah, the gentle burr of his accent softening the calculated cruelty of his words. “A bonny little brig. I sold her to the Bey of Tunis, who fancied a Yankee-built toy. Alas, the bey’s men are better suited to camels than the sea, and she broke up on the rocks off Zembra not a fortnight after I sold her off.”
Jeremiah felt as if he’d been struck