The Pirate Captain - By Kerry Lynne Page 0,178

dear.” Lady Bart circled the room, clapping her hands to her cheeks. “To think, you were abducted right from our very garden, taken by that insidious, vile, disgusting creature and dragged off like some kind of an…an animal. I don’t know why Diggie refuses to do something about those perfidious, barbaric creatures! We must be rid of such disreputable criminals, right here in our very midst…”

Sally appeared and Lady Bart’s voice faded from Cate’s awareness. After a flash of dismay at Cate’s ruin, the gown a ghost of its former self, she undressed Cate in her confident manner, and snugged a wrapper about her shoulders.

“Here,” Sally said, under Lady Bart’s monologue and pressed a glass into Cate’s hand. “Drink this. It will give you ease.”

It was brandy, and a very good one. Cate’s eyes watered at the first sip touching her throat, raw from screaming. The liquor set off a pleasant glow in her stomach and she began to sag. It had been a very long night. It seemed impossible it had barely been a day since Nathan had set her off for Hopetown.

“Let’s wash you up,” said Sally, in a motherly tone as she set down a basin of hot water. Exhaustion turning her limbs to sand, Cate yielded to her competent hands, while Lady Bart rammed about the room like a ranting bee in a bottle.

Under Sally’s watchful eye, Cate finished the brandy and another was poured. At the senior maid’s silent bidding, the chambermaid intercepted Lady Bart, and crooning patiently, steered her out of the room. The door was pulled shut and blessed quiet befell the chamber.

Sally surveyed Cate critically as she sponged her arms. “Will you be well?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” Cate sighed, touched by her sincerity. With some effort, she raised a hand to her head. Surprised to see her hand quivering, she let it fall back to her lap. “I didn’t realize I was so tired.”

“That would be the brandy working. Drink up, and then take your rest.”

Brandy finished, Cate allowed herself to be tucked deep into the quilts. Sally moved in virtual silence across the Turkish rugs to pull the shutters closed, and then left, the latch of the door clicking faintly behind her.

Lying on her side, Cate fingered the knotted pendant at her neck, suffused with the contentment of a goal accomplished. That shining victory was tarnished, however: her plan had only gone as far as providing a distraction for Nathan’s rescue. Escape for her wasn’t an option, not yet at any rate. To do so would be to risk leading Harte and his Marines to Nathan.

She had the sudden sense of being watched. Lifting her head, she was met with a glare of intense accusation from the nameless Dunwoody ancestor on the mantel.

“What?” she huffed at the ancient face. “I’ve done what I might. Nathan’s free. The rest will just have to bide until I can think of something…something…later.”

###

Leaving the town in their wake, Pryce was caught between the need for haste and the burden of a battered and dazed Cap’n. And so they pushed on, as hasty as could be managed.

Confident any pursuit was outdistanced, Pryce called a halt in a quiet glade. With a running stream and good defenses, he figured to bide, until the Cap’n could find his legs.

Pryce wryly smiled. ’Twas a wonder how cooperative a soul could be at gunpoint, and so soon being yanked from his warm bed. Two strokes by the town’s sleepy-eyed smith, and the Cap’n was free of the shackles. A few coins smoothed ruffled feathers and bought the smithy’s silence, but such loyalty would only endure, until the arrival of someone with a larger coin, and make no mistake.

Watches posted, Pryce hunched down next to where the Cap’n laid, head pillowed on a log, and gave him a critical eyeballing.

“How bad is it?”

The Cap’n’s voice was a start, figuring him either asleep or out cold.

“If I may make so bold, I’ve seen ye worse, but more oftener I’ve seen ye a damn sight better. ’Pears they had their way with ye,” Pryce said judiciously.

“A bit,” came with effort and a sigh.

An outright blatant exaggeration on the skipper’s part, it was. It was Pryce’s notion a fair job of beating had been done. Eye swollen shut, split lip, scraped cheek, nose bleeding—not busted, just bleeding—he promised a sight by the morrow. The raw wrists told the tale: they’d taken their time. It had been a beating, but a careful one: not to