Under the Lash Page 11

  Just as he had. The only difference was that he had kidnapped her and taken her out to sea, away from her mother and his uncle and any hope of rescue. No wonder she’d braved the battle to try to get the attention of anyone she could on the Insuperable.

  Although he looked longingly at her in his bed, he didn’t feel he couldn’t quite bring himself to join her in it any more. If there was any point in his life when he wanted – no, needed – to get stinking drunk, this was it, but he couldn’t allow that to happen since he was her primary caregiver, and he wasn’t at all willing to pass that duty off to anyone, even the doc.

  And so he stayed with her, as he had been, day and night, doing everything the doc suggested to help her, which was alarmingly little. He’d only ever really gone through the motions in church, but he had taken to praying fervently for her, not that he thought it was doing any good, unfortunately.

  Although he knew that the crew waited anxiously for updates, they knew better than to disturb him, but he knew they pestered Rory incessantly for any news about her condition, but that poor man was barely able to find out anything himself, considering he was both the First Mate and the acting Captain. The few times Anjel opened his cabin door to get a bit of fresh air into his quarters, he always found small gifts for her that he knew the men were leaving there.

  One of those infrequent times, he caught Wink, one of the oldest men he commanded, leaving a cross in front of his door. He nodded to the man wanly, thanking him for the gift, then Wink mentioned something almost under his breath that somehow rang true with Anjel about how his mother had often treated his fevers – and those of his thirteen brothers and sisters – by bathing them in alcohol.

  Perhaps he was simply at the end of his rope and willing to try any bit of nonsense just to see some improvement in her instead of just watching her slowly slip away from him without trying everything he could. Anjel called for a big rainwater tub to be emptied – into something else, of course – and then began to fill it will every single stock of liquor he possessed, and then sent out word to his crew that if anyone wanted to help the “brave miss” – as they had come to call her – that they could donate whatever amount they were willing to of their rations of ale or other spirits.

  The doc was very doubtful as to the success of this operation, but he couldn’t think that it would be any more detrimental to her than what they had already tried, so he gave it his blessing, and added his treasured bottle of twenty year old Scotch to the effort.

  He bathed her himself, of course, making sure that he got every part of her wet in the sticky stuff, even that glorious hair, and he was amazed to see that it worked, however slowly, in combination with the things he was already doing. By this time, he knew how the raging fever felt when he put his palm to her forehead like he knew the feel his own cock, and after only a short time in the alcohol soup, he could feel that it had abated somewhat.

  Progress, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  So he took to having two tubs of liquid in his cramped quarters, one full of the fresh rainwater he had originally had poured out of the first container, and then another of the mixture of various spirits he had been able gather from the generous donations of his shipmates.

  Anjel was careful to release a cautious update, through Rory, that their efforts were helping somewhat – not wanting them to think they would be going without in vain and also wanting to share his elation at the fact that she seemed to be doing a bit better.

  They reached San Miguel in record time, just as she seemed to be resting much more peacefully than she had since this whole ordeal had begun, and it was he who carried her himself up the back path and into the back entrance to the mansion, through the kitchens and up the back stairs, shouting orders to the servants as he walked, most particularly that they were to send for his uncle’s doctor. He put her in the first bedroom he came to, set the first maid he found to watch her, charging her with coming to find him if Cassie’s condition changed drastically in any direction, then set off to find his uncle.

  Gregorio and his wife were in the drawing room on the first floor, and he burst in at a time when the older man had been trying his best to comfort his wife about the sudden disappearance of her daughter. Both of them had been most chagrined about what she had witnessed between the two of them, and they had intended to set things right with her – or rather her mother had for propriety’s sake – as soon as they could the next morning. But she was nowhere to be found by then. They had noticed that a small valise of hers and a few items of clothing were missing from her wardrobe but other than that, it was as if she had vanished into thin air, or so it had seemed.

  “Why, Anjel, how wonderful to see you, although you’ve chosen a rather unfortunate time to visit,” his uncle greeted him. “Allow me to introduce you to my wife.”

  “The former Lady Sutton?” Anjel filled in, taking the startled woman’s hand and kissing the back as he executed a perfect bow, despite the fact that he hadn’t bothered to change his clothes for this meeting and he probably fit the bill of a pirate pretty perfectly at first glance.

  “Why, yes,” she answered. “My husband died this past winter. Do I know you, sir?”

  Anjel took a deep breath. “No, but I believe I know your daughter, Cassandra?”

  Luckily, Gregorio was at her side when she swooned, carrying her to a beautiful gold and red couch to allow her to stretch out. The Don patted her wrists and sent a servant for wine to help revive his wife, who brought herself out of her faint and fairly clutched at Anjel’s shirt. “Do you have news of my daughter? Have you seen her? Please tell me what you know about her!” she begged.

  “Is she about this high?” he asked, indicating that the top of her head would be about at his mid chest. They both nodded their heads. “With long, red gold hair?”

  The Don got up and hurried over to his wife’s desk, bringing back with him a small portrait in a gilt frame. “This is Cassie from two years ago.”

  Now it was Anjel’s turn to feel as if someone had knocked the wind out of him. “Yes, that’s Cassie.”

  “Where is she? What do you know about her? How – ”

  Anjel took his new aunt’s hand in his. “She’s in one of the guest bedrooms upstairs.”

  Lysette made as if to get up, but both men barely managed to keep her in place, Gregorio because he was worried she might faint again and Anjel because he wanted to prepare her for the fact that her daughter was still very, very sick.

  So he told her the barest bones of the story that he could, focusing on the end of it and mentioning very little about how she had gotten onto his ship in the first place, but saying that she had taken a gunshot wound to her side and that the wound had become badly infected, but that she was doing somewhat better now.

  The Don refused to allow his wife to walk to the room where her daughter was ensconced and carried her in his arms all the way there without so much as a faltered step at the added weight. He was almost as strong of an ox as his nephew was, despite his age.

  Anjel stayed with the three of them, and then with the doctor, too, giving him as much information as he could about her condition and how he had been treating it, then backed out of the room as her mother took over responsibility for her care, knowing that she couldn’t be in better hands.

  But before he could turn to go back to the ship, his uncle exited the room just after him and caught him before he was two steps down the hall, and he allowed himself to be bullied into the room that his uncle used as a study. It was lined with floor to ceiling books on every possible subject and had been one of his favorite places when he made his occasional visits. It was his uncle who had fostered his love of many things that were of particular interest to him – books and the sea, as well as beautiful women, which were only three of a long list.

  “You’re not going to get away that easily, Anjel. I know that what you told Lysette about what happened to Cassie, but I want to hear all the pertinent details that you very c
arefully left out.”

  His uncle knew him entirely too well, and Anjel knew that he wasn’t going to set foot out of this room until he’d satisfied the other man’s curiosity complete.

  So he started at the point when he had seen Cassie turn away from where he and his usual boarding party were just coming ashore, that hair flashing in and out of view in the moonlight as she scrambled up the path, then becoming more completely revealed as they lit their torches.

  But he wasn’t the only one who did the talking. Anjel was very happy to have been filled in on what was probably her motivation for trying to run away that night. He certainly could understand how upset she’d be about what she had seen.

  “You realize you’re going to have to marry her.”

  He shot his uncle a look, which the older man mistook as a reluctance to marry in general, which he certainly understood, but he was motivated by something entirely different from what his uncle knew.

  “It’s not so bad. I know you were hoping to follow in my footsteps and stay unmarried all your life, but it has its compensations, believe me. I couldn’t be happier with Lysette, and I’m sure that you and Cassie will be much the same.”

  The look he gave the other man was downright incredulous. “Did you not hear what I just told you about how I treated her? I can’t imagine how she’ll feel about having to marry me, and I surely don’t think she should be saddled with the likes of me for the rest of her life. She detests me, and I can’t find any reason why she shouldn’t.”

  Gregorio sighed. “Believe me, many marriages have had much worse beginnings than yours. We’ll fiddle with the date a bit, just in case she’s with child –”

  Stark fear crossed Anjel’s face.

  “Ah, hadn’t thought about that, now, had you?”

  “No. She’s been so ill . . .”

  “Well, you never know. And you wouldn’t want a son of yours to be born a bastard, now would you? And – for all your altruism – would you really want to leave her a fallen woman, knowing that no other man of any stature would have her now that you’ve sullied her?”

  He banged his glass of port down onto his desk and answered for his nephew. “Of course you wouldn’t. In fact, the right thing to do is to get you two married as soon as we can. I’m the governor, and I can perform the ceremony right now.” He was already halfway to the door, while Anjel stayed right where he was, taking a large swig of that fine vintage.

  “Anjel. That was not a request,” Duque Gregorio snapped. “Regardless of how you feel about how you treated her, the most honorable thing you could do for her now is to give her your name. That way, if the unthinkable happens, she dies the wife that she deserves to be. And if she lives, well, then, my friend, it’s about time your pirating days were at an end, anyway. You need to settle down and produce an heir. After all, some day – decades from now, of course – it is you who will inherit my title.”

  Anjel hadn’t been reluctant to agree to the Duque’s suggestion because he didn’t want to marry Cassie. He had been reluctant to agree because he couldn’t think that Cassie would choose to marry him. He was quite sure that, once she recovered, the only thing she would want to see would be his back – preferably with a large knife sticking out of it and him gasping his last breath. At least that would be how he would feel if the situation were reversed.

  But his uncle was right. He drained the last of the port from his glass and joined the older man at the door, saying, “You’re quite right, Uncle. I want to do whatever is best for Cassie.”

  ***

  A month later...

  “Cassie! Didn’t I tell you that you shouldn’t be riding! It’s too soon after your illness for you to be so active.”

  Blast it all! He had caught her at the stables again – her husband. It was such a strange thing to think that she was married, and even stranger still to think that it was to Anjel. She absently twirled the heavy gold ring she’d awakened to find on her forth finger. And she didn’t remember one bit of their wedding ceremony, either, since it had been conducted – without her consent – while she was still unconscious and in the throes of that horrible fever.

  When she’d awakened, nearly a week after he’d brought her back to the island, his face was the first thing she saw, and her mother’s was the second, just slightly afterwards, which was good because she flew into a near panic when she set eyes on Anjel’s face. It had taken her mother a long while to get her to settle down afterwards, which luckily she didn’t ask any questions about and just put it down to her illness.

  She hadn’t seen it, herself, but later, when she was more recovered, her mother had tried to describe to her the look that had come over her husband when she reacted to him the way she did. “He looked – devastated, I guess, is the best way to put it, Cassie. As if someone had pulled the rug out from him. The way I probably did when your father died in my arms.” She smiled and continued, “I’ve told you that he spent all of the time after he discovered you had been shot with you – he was your only nursemaid, he told me, not that he was complaining at all. What he devised to bring down your fever was a stroke of genius. And as soon as he realized who you were, he brought you right home to us.”

  Cassie merely nodded. She’d heard all of this before; her mother had started in early with a pro–Anjel campaign, probably terrified that her daughter was going to do something crazy that would drive him away before she had a grandchild. Her mother singing his praises were some of the first words she had heard once she regained consciousness, but Cassie had come to realize that her mother only really knew part of the story – whatever thoroughly sterilized version of it that the men had decided to spoon feed her, she assumed.

  Lysette cleared her throat. Her daughter was still weak, but well on the road to recovery. They were on lounge chairs that Gregorio had thoughtfully set up in the gardens, so they could enjoy the warm, fresh sea air.

  She knew that what the men had told her about what had happened between her daughter and Gregorio’s nephew was a bag of horseshit, as her late husband might have said, but it seemed to ease their minds to think that she believed every word they’d told her. But she’d known from the pure fright on her daughter’s face when she’d awakened to her husband leaning over her that much more had gone on than she even wanted to know.

  But the two of them were bound together now, and she wanted to do what she could to help her daughter come to terms with her new life and be as happy as she could with her new husband. She felt strongly that they both needed to put behind them whatever it was that had happened between them on the ship and move forward with their lives.

  “I know that what you saw between Gregorio and me sent you running away from us, and I will never forgive myself for being the catalyst that launched you on your...misadventure. But I want you to know how glad I am to have you back, and that I’ll do anything I can to help you and Anjel have as happy a life as Gregorio and I do.”

  Feeling extremely uncomfortable with the subject matter, Cassie had smiled wanly, saying, “Thank you, Mother. We appreciate that you and Gregorio have offered us rooms in the mansion. You two have been wonderful.”

  “I have wanted to talk to you since that night, Cassie, and now that you’re a married woman, well, I hope you can understand somewhat and put into perspective what it was that you saw on that awful night.”

  Blushing at least as furiously as Anjel used to delight in making her, Cassie’s answer was decidedly strangled by her embarrassment. “Yes, Mama.”

  “Because we do love each other so very deeply. I don’t want you to doubt that. Gregorio has made me nearly as happy as your father did all those years, and I am so blessed to have found him, and I don’t want you worrying that he’s abusive or that he beats me.”

  It was Cassie’s turn to clear her throat nervously. “I understand, Mama. I do. Much more so than I prefer to talk about, really.” That was about far as Cassie was willing to discuss with her mother about either matter – the fact that
Gregorio disciplined Lysette or that Anjel had done the same thing to her.

  Lysette leaned over and patted Cassie’s hand. “Thank you, dear. I appreciate your understanding.”

  And now here was her husband, standing directly in front of her, blocking out nearly the entirety of her line of sight except for him, looking for all he was worth as if he wanted to practice some of that same type of discipline around which she and her mother had skirted so delicately right this very moment, although he hadn’t so much as touched her – in any intimate way – since she’d gotten sick.

  Come to think of it, she did remember that he had said something about how he thought that riding was too strenuous for her to take back up until she was more fully recovered, but she had much preferred to consider what he’d said to be a suggestion rather than an order, and so when she awoke this morning and saw that it was yet another gorgeous day, she decided that she wanted to go for a ride.

  “Yes, I believe you did say something to me about that a few days ago,” she answered, her tone carefully bland. “But I asked the doctor at his last visit and he said that if I was feeling strong enough, and I am, that it would be fine as long as I stopped when I got tired.”

  That was apparently not the answer Anjel wanted to hear, and she could see him clench his jaws in anger. Even after all these weeks without him having laid a hand on her, the sight made her take a small step back from him, despite the fact that she was inwardly cursing her own cowardice.

  Although he didn’t like the fear he saw in her eyes, he nonetheless took a step closer to her, bringing her in full contact with his achingly ready body. There hadn’t been a minute in the past four weeks that he hadn’t wanted her with everything that was in him, but he had vowed to himself that he would stay away from her. Anjel had turned over her care to her mother and his uncle’s doctor, although he often stole into her room at night to watch over her for long moments, as if he needed to reassure himself that she was still getting better. But he was careful never to let her see him doing that.