An upbringing as the pampered daughter of a wealthy family was no preparation for this, but she had fought off all the illnesses life in India could throw at her for twenty of her twenty-two years, she had coped with three months at sea in an East Indiaman and she’d survived a shipwreck. I am not going to die now, not like this, not without a struggle.
She must get up, now, and find a way out, a weapon before he came back. Averil dragged herself off the bed. There was a strange roaring in her ears and the room seemed to be moving. The floor was shifting, surely? Or was it her? Everything was growing very dark.
‘Hell and damnation.’ Luc slammed the door closed behind him. The sprawled naked figure on the floor did not so much as twitch. He picked up the pitcher from the table, knelt beside her and splashed water on her face. That did produce some reaction: she licked her lips.
‘Back to bed.’ He scooped her on to the lumpy mattress and pulled the blanket over her. The feel of her in his arms had been good. Too good to dwell on. As it was, the memory of her sitting like a mermaid on the beach with the surf creaming around her long, pale legs was enough to keep a man restless at night with the ache of desire.
He poured water into a beaker and went back to the bed. ‘Come on, wake up. You need water—drink.’ He knelt and put an arm behind her shoulders to lift her so he could put the beaker to her lips. To his relief she drank thirstily, blindly. Tangled dark blond hair stuck to his coat, bruises blossomed on lightly tanned skin. Long lashes flickered open to reveal dazed hazel-green eyes and then closed as though weighted with lead.
Then her head lolled to one side against his shoulder, she sighed and went limp.
‘Nom d’un nom d’un nom …’ This was the last thing he had planned for, an unconscious woman who needed to be cared for. If he put her into the skiff and sailed her across to St Mary’s and said he had found her on the beach, just one more survivor of the shipwreck last night, then she would be safe. But what if she remembered? Her seeing him did not matter: he had a cover story accepted by the Governor. But he had been with the men and was obviously their leader.
Luc looked down at the wet, matted tangle of hair that was all he could see of her now. She sighed and snuggled closer and he adjusted her so she fitted more comfortably against him while he thought. She was young, but not a girl. In her early twenties, perhaps. She had not been addled by her experience; her reaction when she warned him about Dawkins told him that she had her wits about her. In fact, she seemed both courageous and intelligent. What were the chances that she would forget all about this or would dismiss it as a nightmare?
Not good, he decided after a few more moments holding her. She might blurt out what she had seen to anyone when she regained consciousness and he had no idea who he had to be on his guard against, even in the Governor’s own household. Even the Governor himself.
His prudent choices were to leave her here with some food and water, lock the door and walk away—which would probably be as close to murder as rowing her out to sea and dropping her overboard would be—or to nurse her until she was strong enough to look after herself.
What did he know about nursing women? Nothing—but how different could it be from looking after a man? Luc looked at the slender figure huddled in the coarse blankets and admitted to himself that he was daunted. And when she woke, if she did, then she was not going to be best pleased to discover who had been looking after her. He could always point out the alternatives.
She had drunk something, at least. He would tell Potts to cook broth at dinner time and see if he could get that down her. And he supposed he had better wash the worst of the salt off her and check her for any injuries. Broken bones were more than likely.
Then he could get her into one of his shirts, make the bed more comfortable and leave her for a while. That would be good. He found he was sweating at the thought of touching her. Damn. He had to get out of here.
Luc stood on the threshold for a moment to get his breathing steady. He was in a bad way if a half-drowned woman aroused such desire in him. Her defiance and the intelligence in those bruised hazel eyes kept coming back to him and made him feel even worse for lusting after her in this state. Better he thought about the problem she would pose alive, conscious and aware of their presence here.
To distract himself he eyed the ships in St Helen’s Pool, the sheltered stretch of water bounded by St Helen’s where he stood, uninhabited Teän and St Martin’s to the east, and Tresco to the south.
That damned shipwreck on the reefs to the west had stirred up the navy like a stick thrust into an anthill. Even the smoke from the endless chain of kelp-burning pits around the shores of all the inhabited islands seemed less dense today. They must have searchers out everywhere looking for bodies and survivors. In fact, there was a jolly boat rowing towards him now. If she had been dead, or unconscious from the start, he could have off-loaded her on them. But then, if his luck was good, he would never have been here in the first place.
He glanced round, made certain the men were out of sight and strolled down to the beach to meet the boat, moving the pistol to the small of his back. Eccentric poets seeking solitude to write epic works did not, he guessed, walk around armed.
A midshipman stood up in the bows, his freckled face serious. How old was this brat? Seventeen? ‘Mr Dornay, sir?’ he hailed from the boat.
‘Yes. You’re enquiring about survivors from the wreck, I imagine? I heard the shouting and saw the lights last night, guessed what had happened. I walked right round the island at first light and I didn’t find anyone, dead or alive.’ No lie—he had not found her.
‘Thank you, sir. It was an East Indiaman that went down—big ship and a lot of souls on board. It will save us time not to have to search this island.’ The midshipman hesitated, frowning as he kept his balance in the swaying boat. ‘They said on St Martin that they saw a group of men out here yesterday and the Governor had only told us about you, sir, so we wondered. Writing poetry, he said.’ The young man obviously thought this was strange behaviour.
‘Yes,’ Luc agreed, cursing inwardly. The damn fools were supposed to stay out of sight of the inhabited islands. ‘A boat did land. A rough crew who said they were looking for locations for new kelp pits. I thought they were probably smugglers so I didn’t challenge them. They’ve gone now.’
‘Very wise, and you’re more than likely right, sir. Thank you. We’ll call again tomorrow.’
‘Don’t trouble, you’ve got enough on your plate. I’ve got a skiff, I’ll sail over if I find anything.’
The midshipman saluted as the sailors lifted their oars and propelled the jolly boat towards the southern edge of Teän to find a landing place. Luc wandered back up the beach until they were out of sight, then strode over the low shoulder to the left, behind the old isolation hospital he was using as his shelter and where the woman now lay.
He did a rapid headcount. They were all there, all twelve of the evil little crew he’d been saddled with. There had been thirteen of them at the start, but he’d had to shoot Nye when the man decided that sticking a knife in the captain’s ribs was easier than the mission they had been sent on. Luc’s unhesitating reaction had sharpened up the rest of them.
‘That was the navy,’ he said as they shifted from their comfortable circle around a small, almost smokeless, fire to look at him. ‘Someone on St Martin saw you yesterday. Stay round this side, don’t go farther east along the north shore than Didley’s Point.’
‘Or the nasty navy’ll get us?’ Tubbs sneered. ‘Then who’ll be in trouble, Cap’n?’
‘I’ll be deep in the dunghill,’ Luc agreed. ‘From where I can watch you all be hanged. Think on it.’
‘Yer. We’ll think on it while you’re prigging that mermaid we found you. Or ‘ave you come round for a bit of advice on technique,