Page 10 of The Black Lion
“No!” Arabella called out, scrambling to her feet as another pirate helped the one named Cutting subdue her father. Will kept her behind him, shielding her from the invading pirates. Whatever could they want with her father?
“Please, no!”
“The bride and groom, too,” said the voice of the captain. “Take them both.”
Arabella nearly swooned from the force of recognition when the captain spoke the second time. She knew that voice with its deep and low rasp, the accent less cultured and refined than Will’s.
“You,” Will whispered, and it seemed to Arabella he trembled at bit. “But how … you … you’re dead!”
“Am I?” purred the voice, booted footsteps bringing the captain nearer. “I hate to disappoint you,brother, but I feel very much alive.”
Arabella could see the top of his head now, the hat with its jaunty plume appearing first, then his shadowed face. Skin toasted to a bronze finish by the sun showed, along with several days’ worth of beard that gleamed dark brown with a few golden strands here and there. Long ropes of hair that had curiously begun to clump and lock together draped his shoulders.
Grasping Will’s shoulder, Arabella angled closer, her heart leaping, seizing and skipping beats as she realized she stared upon a face as familiar as the voice emitting from that plush mouth.
It couldn’t be! But as he removed his tricorne with a mocking bow to them both, Arabella looked past the things marking him as a stranger—the clothing, the shadow of a tattoo on his chest, the overgrown hair, the rough beard—and saw the familiar. His eyes, golden and fiery like those of a jungle cat, the planes of his face hardened by whatever had happened to him over the past five years. Arabella knew him as well as she knew herself, in a way she had never known anyone else. He was here, before her,alive!
“Bella, don’t!” Will urged as she tried to come out from behind him.
But she simply twisted her arm out of his grasp and approached the man the other pirates had referred to as ‘captain.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head, certain she couldn’t be seeing him clearly. On this poignant day, her mind had conjured a specter, her heart yearning for a dead man even as she stood ready to bind herself to another. But, when she opened her eyes again he remained before her, hardened and changed, but still the same boy she had loved all her life.
Tears stung her eyes and Arabella’s entire body went rigid, her insides erupting into turmoil as she wrestled with what it all meant. Black spots encroached on the edges of her vision, and her hands grew cold and clammy. Mother of God, she was going to faint.
“Drew?” she whispered, just before her legs gave out and she fell back into Will’s arms.
The dark spots converged, becoming one thick mass blotting out the world, and all went silent.
That she fainted turnedout to be fortuitous, for it made things far easier for Drew and his men. He knew Arabella as surely as he knew himself, and had she been awake she would have fought tooth and claw to keep from being taken. Fortunately, her shock had worked in his favor.
Will thrashed like a madman when Drew plucked Arabella from his arms and threw her over his shoulder. Two of Drew’s men had converged on Will, subduing him with little effort and capturing his wrists in irons. While Will was tall and broad-shouldered like Drew, he had not the strength to match men who put their bodies to work each day laboring aboard a ship.
As Drew turned to face the wedding guests with Arabella balanced on his shoulder, he bowed his head in a move of mock gallantry. “I regret to inform you that the nuptials of Mr. Throckmorton and Miss Baines will not be taking place—today, or ever. Good day.”
It brought him satisfaction to watch them shrink away as he thundered down the aisle, his crew and prisoners trailing in his wake. The people who looked upon Drew with fear did not seem to recognize him as the boy who had apprenticed under Falmouth’s best carpenter—not that it mattered to him. Now he’d claimed his prize, he would leave Jamaica and never set foot on these shores again. The colonial militia had put up a pitiful effort at stopping them, but Drew had been prepared for such a reception, and they’d put the redcoats down.
“You dare to storm this sacred place and sully it with violence and blood?” called out the priest as he trailed them, gesturing toward the dead man who had raised a sword to one of his men. “Your soul shall surely suffer torment in the afterlife, you cretin.”
One of his men drew a cutlass, pointing it at the priest with a sneer. “Let me put this son of a whore down for ye, Cap’n. Let me take his tongue.”
Drew smirked, but shook his head to deny the request. “It wouldn’t be sporting to cut down an unarmed man. Leave him be. Oh, and Father?”
The priest trembled when he met Drew’s eyes, as if he stared into the maw of the devil himself.
“I’ve already been to Hell,” he declared before turning to continue on his way. “It spat me back out.”
A cacophony of voices rang out through the church as they made their exit, but Drew paid them no heed. The horses his men stole from the public stables had just arrived, along with a wagon for transporting their prisoners.
“What is the meaning of this?” roared Archibald Abbot as he was lifted bodily into the wagon, hands shackled behind his back. “Andrew Reeves, I know that’s you! Your father would be appalled at what you have become! A bloody pirate … I never thought I’d see the day!”
“Shut him up,” Drew snapped, an order that was promptly followed by a crewman shoving a bundle of rags into the man’s mouth.
Lingering near the wagon as Will was shoved in next to Arabella’s father, Drew glowered at the man who had refused to allow him to wed her time and time again. He had also taken part in the treachery that saw him ripped away from Arabella and thrown into the cruel pecking order of the British Royal Navy, which had led him right back to them as the man they looked upon now.
“My father would have you and Will to blame for my becoming a pirate,” he snapped, adjusting Arabella’s weight on his shoulder. “As such, I invite you aboard my ship so I maythank youproperly.”
“God damn you, Drew, you should have never come back here!” Will called out just as Drew had turned away to make for his waiting mount. “You’ve ruined everything!”
Drew swiveled to face his brother, the one person he’d once thought he could depend on no matter what. The pain of betrayal had long since died, and he felt only cold revulsion and hatred when he stared into eyes identical to his.
