Defiant Captive Page 6

  It was then that he noticed the faint stirring, the merest quiver in her shoulders. With a surge of hope, he lifted his head.

  Again it came. In feverish desperation, Hawkesworth caught a handful of water and tossed it across her face. The auburn lashes fluttered, and she moaned slightly. Again he splashed her face, this time slapping her cheeks and calling her name.

  "Wake up, damn it! Fight, Isobel! Fight me!" Once more, Hawke struck her face with a stinging slap, followed by another dowsing, and finally he was rewarded when a weak fist rose to block his hand. With a gasp, Hawke caught her palm to his lips, breathing a prayer of thanks against the wet skin. His own cheeks were damp as well, and he could not have said whether the source was her wet body or his own tears.

  Heedless of the water he sloshed over himself, Hawke lifted his wife dripping from the brass tub and carried her to the armchair, where he settled her in his lap. Briskly, he drew his coat of blue superfine across her shivering skin and lifted the tankard to her lips, all the while watching for her eyes to open.

  "Open your mouth and drink this, damn it. It will warm you." He tilted a bit of the bitter drink into her lips, waiting as she was racked with coughing. "No more laudanum, I promise you," he added grimly. When her coughing subsided, he forced another drink upon her and held her face until she swallowed it.

  Slowly the color returned to her cheeks. He felt her begin to shift restlessly on his lap and smiled grimly at the bolt of desire that shot through him as her hips kneaded his thighs.

  The cease-fire was nearly over, he vowed.

  In his lap Alexandra Maitland began to make the long climb back to consciousness.

  She awakened slowly, her senses only gradually attuning to the world around her. Dimly, she registered the rocking of the sloop, the sharp tang of seawater, and the cry of hungry gulls. Too cold to be Madras, she thought hazily. The smells were all wrong as well.

  And then she noticed something else. A man's taut thighs beneath her, his solid arms anchoring her while one large hand coiled in her tangled, half-soaked hair.

  With a frown she struggled to pull free of his hold, shaking the ragged fragments of sleep from her mind.

  "Hold, Isobel. It will not do to walk just yet."

  There was something deep and compelling about the voice flowing over her with such cool authority. She remembered that voice. She remembered the chiseled face that went with those rough dark tones.

  And then Alexandra's struggling hands met naked skin. Her naked skin!

  Her eyes flashed open, and she took in the small room, the open porthole, the rumpled bedding.

  Last of all, the tanned, unsmiling face with brooding gray eyes.

  "Dear God, what have you done?" Her voice was an anguished cry.

  This time, Hawke held her for only a heartbeat longer before he allowed her to struggle out of his grasp. From the chair he watched her, silent and unmoving, as she backed unsteadily toward the wall.

  Alexandra sensed the currents running fast and deep beneath his frozen exterior. Even then, she sought out the dark pools of his eyes, silently begging him to tell her that what she feared had not taken place.

  "What have I done?" Hawke laughed grimly. "I've saved your life, it seems. And the question, my dear Isobel," he said slowly, "is more rightly what have you done."

  Alexandra clutched the meager length of wool to her shivering damp frame, vainly striving for decency, unaware that it was his coat that covered her. "I? I've done nothing but been driven and hounded by you since that ill-fated moment when our paths first crossed. And now you have—" Her voice broke, and she could not utter the words. To say them aloud would make them too real.

  "I've done nothing but prove your lie, my dear. You were very close to death, and I must confess that the temptation to let you slip on was great. But it seems, Isobel, that not even for you can I break the habits of a lifetime." The tall man lounging in the armchair ran a coldly deliberate look across her bare thighs, which were exposed beneath his coat. "Perhaps it was the thought that when I got to hell I would find you there, waiting to torture me for all eternity."

  "Then you did not —"

  The man interrupted coldly. "Did not what? Bed you? Really, my dear, such delicacy of speech is not at all your style. You are much more believable when you stay closer to reality."

  "You still insist that I am your wife? Mindless, brutish creature!"

  His face hardened at her words, and he continued as if she had not spoken. "The answer is no, I did not bed you, though I cannot imagine why one more man between your legs would make the slightest difference at this point."

  Shock and hysteria warred in Alexandra's whirling thoughts. Suddenly, she felt an overpowering urge to laugh. What would one more violation mean now, after all that had happened to her? She was as good as ruined anyway, she thought wildly.

  Seeing her relief, the arrogant man before her smiled a lazy, knowing smile. "No, my dear, today's performance was all on your part, and it was most affecting indeed. Your uninhibited display of passion surpassed my wildest expectations." He stopped, and his eyes narrowed as he watched her response.

  Alexandra's eyebrows rose, and once again she fought the urge to laugh. Really, the madman was making no sense at all! If he had not violated her, then what was he talking about?

  He smiled impersonally. "Nymph or temptress, I ask myself? Natural harlot or just a poor, tormented creature — as you have made of me? Perhaps, in the end, it does not matter." His voice dropped to a taut whisper. "For I find you still in my heart, God help me — like a parasite burrowing ever deeper." His voice grew uneven for a moment, and he did not speak. He was close enough to touch her now, but he did not; he only sat rigidly across from her, his burning gray eyes locked upon her face. "Shall I spell it out for you then? It was a little test, you see, to determine whether that habitual coldness of yours was a pretense to torment me. And your response was everything I'd hoped for. Oh yes, the cries of passion were entirely beyond faking, my dear, especially when you begged me to complete what I had so carefully begun. I believe that now we may dispense with this fiction that you find me — how did you once put it? — 'repellently clumsy, more huge brutish animal than man.' "

  Alexandra finally began to glimpse his meaning. He had touched her while she slept a drugged sleep — dear God, he had more than touched her. And she — she had ...

  The idea was unthinkable.

  She stood before him, swaying, and suddenly, from deep in her mind, came memories of the erotic sculptures that decorated the temples of India. Scenes of gods and goddesses intimately entwined flashed before Alexandra's eyes, their bodies boldly merged. Scenes that the English memsahibs had whispered about disapprovingly and had walked past with rigidly averted eyes. "Disgusting!" they had snapped in outrage. "Degraded!"

  Once Alexandra had asked her Indian ayah about the odd sculptures. The brown woman had smiled, telling her the story of how the world began, flowering from the passion of Shiva and his consort.

  But Alexandra had never quite understood. She was untutored in the ways of man and woman, her imperfect understanding gleaned only from the giggling and whispers of Indian servants overheard as a child and later from the furtively shared imaginings of the other girls at the colonial school.

  If it was true, then this implacable stranger had —

  The blood rushed to Alexandra's face in a hot tide. She felt his unrelenting gaze upon her, knowing that he triumphed in her mortification. Was this the way of man and woman? she wondered desperately. Her father had never spoken of such things, of course, and her mother had been lost to her so young.

  The tall man ran his odd silver-flecked eyes across her sensitive skin, burning her as surely as if his long fingers were grazing her.

  "What kind of monster are you?" she cried. "Will you not hear reason?"

  "I fear I am beyond reason," her captor replied dispassionately. "If so, it is you who have made me that way."

  "Please," sh
e whispered hoarsely, "release me now. You have kidnapped and degraded me — what more can you want of me?"

  "Only one thing more, Isobel," he said slowly. "Then you will be released. More important, I shall then be free of your curse."

  As he spoke, he uncoiled his muscular body from the chair and moved toward her. Too late, Alexandra saw the smoky determination in his eyes. Too late, she turned and plunged toward the door.

  Her hand met cold metal, frantically twisting the knob, but he had been careful to lock the door and pocket the key. In a frenzy, feeling him close behind her, Alexandra struggled with the knob and jerked it furiously until she lost her footing and fell to the floor.

  Hot tears burned a trail down her face as she flung her hands upon the floor in anger. He let her pour out her fury for a moment before catching her clenched fists in one hand and sweeping her effortlessly against him with his other arm.

  "You're the Devil's own son!" Alexandra spat in impotent rage, flailing against his hard grip. Her head fell back to reveal a sprinkling of tears beneath the tangle of red-gold hair.

  Her captor's eyes burned with gray flames as he carried her across the room, pulling his jacket from her trembling frame and tossing her naked upon the rumpled bed. His eyes narrowed as he studied her pale beauty.

  "And you are his daughter, my dear. Yes, you really are quite exquisite," he said coolly. "But how disobliging of me to remain clothed when you are so fetchingly bare."

  Deep in her throat Alexandra fought down a sob of rage and fear. His large hands slowly rose to work his neckcloth free of its knot. In shock but unable to look away, she watched him loosen the snowy folds and then pull the shirt from the waist of his breeches. Moments later, he flung the shirt behind him, revealing a rippling wall of muscled flesh thickly matted with dark hair. In a daze Alexandra watched fluid muscles flex across tanned skin as he bent to remove his boots and tossed them carelessly to the floor.

  Even when his fingers went to his buckskin breeches, she could not drag her eyes from the muscular breadth of his body. "You cannot mean to ..." Her voice trailed away in horror.

  "But I mean precisely that, Isobel! I mean to exercise a husband's rights and then teach you how it feels to want something you can never have. To teach you to suffer as I have suffered."

  The buttons of his breeches were freed, and in an impatient gesture he stripped them off, dispensing with the supple leather as carelessly as the rest of his clothes.

  Alexandra choked, unable to tear her eyes from his body. Bands of muscle rippled across his powerful arms, chest, and broad shoulders.

  She tried, but failed, to keep her eyes from dropping lower, and she saw with shock and fear the rampant length of muscle at the crown of his thighs. Dear God, he was huge! Two spots of color stained her white cheeks — the only color in her face except for the great aquamarine pools of her eyes.

  How remarkable, Hawkesworth thought as he walked toward the bed. Her eyes flame like seafoam in a spring storm, green and blue churning into white froth. A muscle began to flash in his jaw when he saw her curl into a tight ball, her arms clutching her knees.

  "I am not your wife, damn you, nor will I pay for her sins," Alexandra rasped unsteadily. "I will claw your eyes out before I let you so much as touch me!"

  "But you mistake the matter, Isobel. This will be no rape. You'll be begging me to take you before the night is over."

  "Never," Alexandra whispered raggedly.

  His eyes fixed her within their smoky depths, and Alexandra thought of the king cobra, which seduced its prey to immobility before the final strike. Like the cobra, this man's control was a palpable thing, his command total; already he was beginning to cast his black spell over her.

  Her back pressed against the wall, Alexandra fought the dark power of those unwavering gray eyes.

  His voice was teasing, dark with unspoken promise as he watched her. "Are you wondering how it will be between us after all these months? Quick and savage or slow sweet torture? Which way, Isobel?"

  Alexandra felt her skin burn with the memory of his hair-roughened chest and the rigid line of his thighs. Choking back a little moan, she closed her arms tighter around her nakedness.

  "Ah, how very ill suited you are for the role of innocent virgin," he added mockingly. "Not when nature gave you the body and soul of a harlot."

  "And you the morals of a foul toad! For twenty years and more I have lived in safety among people you would no doubt call heathens. Only when I came to England did I meet with true savagery!" she cried. "And you are the vilest of savages!" She flung her head back, her dark eyes flashing. "No, worse than a savage, for you come from a society that teaches you to know better."

  His shuttered expression did not change and Alexandra realized he'd heard nothing she said. Even if she could prove her identity, he would still ignore it. Panic washed over her with suffocating force as she saw there would be no reasoning with this man.

  "L-let me go!" she cried then, hating the fear that caught the words in her throat.

  "Not just yet, I think." Something checked his advance, and the quiet pad of his feet stilled. "Though for now it will suit my purpose well enough to let you suffer awhile longer. Yes, wait and suffer as I have done. It may do you good," her dark captor added with a hard, mocking laugh.

  "I am lame! A cripple, can't you see? Not the woman you married. You cannot want me!"

  "Oh, but I do," her captor said flatly. "More than I have ever wanted anything in my life." His voice dropped, its taut fury revealing the man's inner torment. "And I damn your soul for that too."

  He turned and tossed on his discarded breeches, white shirt, and boots and then he left. She saw the door close behind him; she heard the click of a key turning in the lock outside.

  "Are you so witless that you cannot see your error even now?" Alexandra screamed at the locked door. "What sort of arrogant ass are you?"

  But there was no answer, only the angry ring of boots upon the narrow stairs.

  In the empty cabin Alexandra slid slowly to the floor. Bereft, seared by the fires of fury and shame, she felt hot tears slide down her cheeks.

  Could nothing make this madman see reason? Dear God, how much more could she take?

  A rough, mocking voice whispered that the greatest humiliation was still to come.

  Chapter Eight

  Somewhere in the long hours of darkness Alexandra fell into a fitful sleep. When she awoke, it was nearly dawn, and gray light had begun to steal in through the room's open porthole. The cold clutched at her stiff muscles, and she grimaced with pain when she tried to rise from the hard floor where she lay curled.

  She did not know how long she had slept, or when her reckless captor would return, but she knew that this would be her only chance to escape. Desperately, her eyes ranged across the room, seeking a way out. Her teeth chattering, she moved to the porthole and pulled aside the fluttering curtains. Below her stretched a rippled expanse of iron-gray sea. Farther out, a line of breakers snarled in white fury. Blaze and bother!

  Turning, Alexandra saw they were moored only fifty yards from the great stark face of the chalk cliffs — fifty yards from the sandy beach.

  Her heart began to pound. She could make it, she knew she could. She was a strong swimmer, for this exercise had hardened her after the accident in India, when her ayah had insisted on a daily regimen to strengthen her wasting muscles.

  With growing hope, Alexandra turned back to the room. Thank God she was small, for the porthole would be a tight squeeze.

  Now, what to do about clothes? Her eyes flashed to the small wooden chest next to the door, and she threw open the lid, barely stifling a crow of victory when she saw neatly folded clothes inside.

  Quickly, Alexandra pulled out a simple white cambric shirt, slipped it over her head, and folded back the cuffs, which drooped almost to her knees. Next came a sturdy pair of brown homespun breeches, equally oversize. Deeper down, she found a thick piece of knotted rope — some sort o
f keepsake, she supposed. Quickly, she looped the rope around the breeches to anchor them at her narrow waist. Last came a jaunty boy's sailor cap which she jerked onto her head, stuffing her tangled curls up beneath the brim.

  She looked wistfully at the boots nestled at the bottom of the trunk but realized they would be impossibly large. She would just have to go barefoot.

  Her fingers trembled as she pushed the armchair to the porthole and climbed up. For a moment she hesitated, one leg over the chair as she studied the angry sea churning below. The leaden depths reminded her of her captor's eyes, and Alexandra knew she had no choice but to jump.

  Then she heard the slap of a bucket riding from a stout rope on the other side of the porthole. Her eyes widened, and she leaned out farther, straining for the rope, which hung just out of reach.

  The boat swayed as a wave captured it from astern, rocking the bucket close for a moment. She'd almost touched it that time! Tensely, she waited for the exact moment to stretch out, perilously poised over the water.

  This time she had it! Her fingers closed on stiff coils, and she gave thanks for the knots at even intervals, which were designed to make a full bucket easier to raise to the deck.

  She took a gulp of air and pushed through the narrow porthole, barely able to force her way outside. With one last kick she leaped free, but was left dangling for a heart-stopping instant before her legs closed around the rope. Then slowly she began the agonizing climb up the knotted strand, inching ever closer to the brass rails that bordered the deck above.

  Her energy was almost gone and she had ripped off two nails by the time her fingers met cold metal. With the last of her strength she kicked out and found the deck's narrow ledge. A moment later, her head came even with the rails.

  The sun had not yet broken above the horizon. On deck, all was silent, for which Alexandra breathed a prayer of thanks to Indian deities and English saints alike.