The Pirate's Duty (Regent's Revenge #3)(72)
By the saints, she couldn’t allow it. If she lost this man, the only man who’d considered her needs and her safety, her heart would turn to a weeping stone like Old Bailey’s Tamara.
John had drawn her out of darkness. He was a man with secrets, yes, but a man willing to sacrifice his life for her. That was love, wasn’t it? Not the desolate existence she’d known all her life or the strange addiction that led her mother through years of long-suffering violence. Love was light, a desire for happiness and togetherness, and a thirst for never being parted. These were the things she’d longed for. She could not lose them now, not when they were within reach.
But loving also meant sacrifice. Is that why John fought for her? Or was he slow as a coach? She wasn’t worth his life—she was a Thorpe!
“Stop,” she cried out. “I’ll go! I’ll go with ye!”
John flinched. His attackers lowered their weapons but stood at the ready, affirming they didn’t want her dead. At least not yet. But nothing could stop them from killing John.
Except Oriana.
And if it was the last thing she ever did, she would save John.
Twenty
The BOARD OF EXCISE and the ADMIRALTY have united to exert INDEFATIGABLE pains in CAPTURING the mysterious BLACK SHIP and its BLOODTHIRSTY crew. If England cannot PROTECT its shores from PIRATES, how can it WIN a WAR against FRANCE? To quote our MAGNIFICENT hero, VICE ADMIRAL LORD HORATIO NELSON, “England expects EVERY man to do his DUTY.”
~ Sherborne Mercury, 27 October 1809
Waves splashed over the bow in a hiss of invisible spray, falling back on the cutter and drenching its occupants. The boat lurched and dipped over swells and troughs, cutting through the frothy breakers to open water, making Oriana wonder if the vessel would flip and they would drown without Charles’s assistance, without anyone even being made aware.
“Heave! Heave!”
The crew rhythmically answered the boatswain’s commands, working the oars forward and aft, straining with each corresponding pitch and sway beneath them.
No other sounds were made in the heart-wrenching darkness, except for the boatswain’s orders and the oars plunking through the sea, splashing in the water and creaking through their oarlocks, as they combated the raging surf. The sound of the thunderous volleys of powerful waves was more frightening than Oriana had ever imagined. She turned back to look upon John’s unconscious form lying among the lobbing, swaying men.
He was alive for now, praise the saints, but for how long? Her heart squeezed with unrelenting pressure and anxiety. It was one thing to listen to the sea from atop a cliff or walking along the shore, but to be out upon it in the dead of night, sailing to meet her brother with the man who’d fought like a demon to save her life, well . . . it was the stuff of nightmares and more.
Trembling, Oriana rallied her courage, clasping her hands about her torso at the bow, a good distance from John, though he was never far from her thoughts. Cold, wet, and unable to escape the boat even if she wanted to, she watched the man she loved in the darkness.
He’d been decidedly perceptive in giving her his weapon. He’d been resistant to the Regent’s offer of protection from the start, and with just cause. But how had he known this impostor had been playing them false? And with all that had happened in the last few hours with Girard and Nicholas—who would care for the poor boy’s wounds now?—the realization that she must love John defied logic, bolstered her courage, and heightened her despair.
She carefully removed the dagger from her sleeve in the darkness and placed it in her kid leather boot, wondering who John really was. He’d admitted to her he’d once been a revenue man. Is that how he’d known the Regent was a fraud instead of their ally? He certainly knew how to fight as well as the Regent. She stared openly then, blinking back drops of brine and feeling suddenly light-headed and unable to breathe.
No . . . It was impossible. John couldn’t be the real Black Regent.
Oriana swallowed, watching the moonlight radiating across John’s face. Blood caked his lower lip where he’d been beaten after refusing to allow the Regent’s men to take her out of the Roost. His hands were tied in front of him as he slumped against the gunwale several rows away.
She ached to be nearer to him, to comfort him and check his wounds. But the men separating them were not easygoing fellows like Girard and O’Malley.
Girard!
An unbidden sob nearly stole her breath. She still hadn’t come to grips with the fact that her friend was dead. There’d been no time to process what she’d seen, to bury his broken body, to gain finality. And she didn’t even know what had become of O’Malley. She gripped her waist and doubled over, silencing the wail that threatened to escape her lungs.
Oriana lifted her hands and stared at them, inspecting them in the moonlight. They appeared dirty, smeared with a darkened substance. But it wasn’t dirt. It was blood. Girard’s blood.
Why did the Marauder’s Roost solicit such violence?
“Heva! Heva!” a voice proclaimed suddenly, as if from the heavens.
She glanced up, trying to find who had hailed them. High overhead, she caught sight of a glimmering light moving closer, closer, and closer still. Soon, the cutter plunked against the side of something large and hollow. Several lanterns swayed out on rivets, illuminating the side of a blackened hull.