Page 12 of The Black Lion
However, the way he looked at her could not be compared to the murderous intent written all over his face when he set eyes on Will and her father. He trembled with uncontained rage, his jaw tight and a cheek muscle ticking spasmodically, hands curling into fists. Arabella shivered at the sight of those hands, the knuckles notched with pale scars, the back of the left one tattooed with a nautical star between the thumb and forefinger. It had taken her a few peeks at those hands to make out the letters etched onto his knuckles, four on one hand and four on the other.
HOLD FAST.
The opening of his shirt showed her that he had also marked his chest, though she could not make out whether the skin would show more words or an image of some kind. She couldn’t fathom the pain he must have gone through in order to brand himself this way. Falmouth being full of sailors coming and going from port, Arabella was familiar with the practice of piercing the skin with a needle and black ink made of gunpowder. But she’d never seen a sailor with as many of them as Drew and his men had.
The gleaming ruby puncturing his left ear drew her eye each time he turned his head, as did a collection of unfamiliar scars. One marred the bow of his upper lip, while another slashed his neck as if someone had been midway through slitting his throat before stopping. There was another on the back of his right hand that looked like a burn. How many more did he hide under his clothes? How badly had the world wounded him in the years they had been apart?
Arabella found herself torn between the desire to press her lips to the scars and being terrified to touch him. She hadneverbeen afraid of Drew. But now … one look in her direction, and Arabella was quivering from head to toe, uncertain whether she would survive whatever he had in store for her. This man was not her Drew; the longer she was in his company, the better she understood that. Whatever had happened to the man she loved, it had transformed him in the most fundamental of ways.
Arabella was kept separate from her fiancé and her father during the journey, even when they made brief stops to water and feed the horses. Will and Archibald were only let out of the wagon once and led into the jungle to relieve themselves, before they were unceremoniously shoved back into the vehicle. They halted for an evening meal of dried biscuits the pirates referred to as hardtack, salted and dried beef, and oranges plucked from the surrounding trees. Arabella noticed one of the men hoarding great quantities of the fruits, along with handfuls of limes he discovered—likely to ward off scurvy once they had boarded the ship. Fresh drinking water had been drawn from a nearby river.
She was unbearably hot, the humidity wilting her skirts and making her undergarments stick to her skin. Her scalp began to itch, the pins holding her wig in place chafing, but she refused to suffer the indignity of removing it in front of these men, so she suffered in silence.
They continued at a grueling pace, until reaching one of the rivers winding throughOcho Riostoward the ocean. Abandoning the stolen horses, the pirates uncovered three canoes hidden within the foliage and pushed them into the river before taking up several oars.
Arabella’s head spun as she stared at Drew’s broad back undulating beneath his coat while he rowed, as the realization that he had planned this entire thing astounded her. This wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment kidnapping. It had been orchestrated down to the very last detail, including a well-thought-out escape plan. She kept expecting the auxiliary militia to appear through the underbrush, sabers raised and rifles cracking, but the jungle remained as still and quiet as ever—save for the chirp of bugs and gurgling of the rivers.
As the boats glided down the wide river abreast of one another, Arabella stole a glance at Will, who looked as if he would be violently ill at any moment. His wig sat crooked on his head, wisps of his brown hair hanging in his face. Sweat stained his silk suit in places, and there was a tear in one shoulder seam from the rough manhandling of the pirates. As he turned to look at her with mournful eyes, his teeth clenched around a gag that had been forced on him when he spoke out of turn, Arabella felt conflicted. While she pitied him, she also wondered at what had passed between him and Drew at the church. Her gaze grew accusing the longer she looked at him, filled with one thought:You told me he was dead.
Will furrowed his brow and gave his head a little shake, as if to tell her:I thought he was.
Her father was no better off. His white periwig had been lost and his balding pate was on undignified display, reddened from the harshness of the afternoon sun. Archibald’s face was mottled and red as well, eyes downcast as he stared at the shackled hands folded in his lap. Like Will, he seemed to be a target of Drew’s anger—but why? Arabella’s head began to ache as she tried to puzzle it all out only to come up short.
By God, she would have answers. Drew had promised to reveal where he’d been all this time, but that wouldn’t be enough. He avoided speaking to her aside from ordering her on and off his horse and offering her food and water. But once they boarded his ship, she would not be denied. Arabella didn’t care how angry it made him, she would press for the information she needed to untangle the threads and make sense of this.
With the moon peeking out from behind thick clouds, they left their canoes and traversed the rest of the way to the beach on foot. As the trees grew sparser, white sand and the dark blue sheet of the ocean appeared. On the gently rolling waves sat a ship she assumed must belong to Drew. Its hull had been painted black, the golden figurehead of a snarling lion thrusting from its prow.
Under the cover of night, dozens of men came and went, loading unmarked crates. The ocean crashed and rolled in waves of frothy white, a match for the canvas sails undulating in the soft push of the wind.
Holding tight to her arm, Drew steered her toward a gangplank lowered into the stand, at the bottom of which stood two men who greeted him with easy smiles.
The first was a towering African who stood higher than even Drew’s impressive height, his shaved head gleaming in the moonlight and his white teeth flashing in the dark.
“Ahoy there, Captain,” the man said in the thick accent of his homeland, though his English was near as perfect as her own. “It has been some time since The Black Lion has been spotted on land.”
“You won’t be seeing me on this godforsaken lump of dirt again, Malike, you can be sure.”
Malike threw his head back and laughed, seeming not to care that the boisterous sound carried through the night. In fact, none of these pirates appeared concerned with speed or stealth, and the need for haste had dissipated once they were free of the boundaries of Falmouth.
“We’ve almost finished loadin’ the supplies, Cap’n,” chimed in a red-haired Irishman with a lyrical accent and a smirking mouth. “The Sea Lion’sshipshape and ready to raise anchor.”
“Very good, Mr. Walsh,” Drew replied, inclining his head toward Will and her father, who remained in irons. “See these two to the bilge. I’ll deal with them in the morning.”
Arabella watched as Will and Archibald were prodded up the gangplank, her fiancé’s protestations muffled by the gag. She didn’t know what a bilge was, but Will didn’t seem keen to go there, so it must be a less desirable space on a ship to occupy.
Turning to Drew with no mind for his companions, she cleared her throat. “And just where do you plan to stow me?”
Drew’s fingers flexed around her arm, his gaze dropping to her mouth and holding for a moment before traveling lower and locking onto her breasts. Her belly roiled, and a slow pulsation began between her legs. Drew’s gaze promised both pleasure and retribution—but for what, she couldn’t be certain. The longing to feel his lips and hands on her again was as strong as the urge to demand he set her free and tell her what was going on. At the moment, her desires were winning out, five long years of starvation overtaking all else.
“You’ll remain with me, of course. Mr. Walsh, I trust you to tie things up here. I expect us to raise anchor in one hour.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” the Irishman replied with a grin and wink.
When he caught Arabella’s eye, however, his expression darkened, his smile fading. If it weren’t her imagination, he almost looked as if he pitied her. That only made dread swell within her as Drew directed her up the gangplank, his long, swift strides forcing her to trot to keep up. Why did she have the feeling that Drew did not mean for them to have a proper, romantic reunion behind the closed doors of his cabin? The surety in his stride and the unbreakable clench of his grip had the heat of her earlier lust freezing over into an icy block of terror.
“Drew, would you please tell me what’s going on?”
He paused, swinging her around to face him so fast she nearly lost her footing. Then, he gripped her other wrist and hauled her against him. He didn’t let her go, the heat of his body seeping through the layers of their clothes and making Arabella aware of every hard inch of him. Even Drew’s work as a carpenter had not made him this solid in his youth. From what she could feel, there wasn’t a bit of softness left to his torso and thighs, his arms bulging against the seams of his coat. Hard labor aboard ships had chiseled him, lending greater strength to the hands holding her.
