***
“I tell you sirs, it was Mr. Schlange’s order to berth another passenger in one of the cabins,” Langham’s voice dipped in agitation as the Toller brothers loomed angrily in front of him. They were gathered in the captain’s own quarters.
“And I tell you Langham, he sent word for us to sail on the Eastwind, and he meant us to have the cabins.” Roman spoke with menacing intensity. His chest swelled threateningly and he pounded a fist into the palm of his other hand.
“Well Roman,” Morgan raised a sardonic brow and glanced at his brother. “We can share the other cabin. One of us can sleep while the other stands.”
Roman shot him a look of contempt. “I can scarcely bear to hear you talk, let alone snore. I’ll string a hammock on the deck before I’ll bunk with you,” he jeered.
“Mr. Toller,” Langham said in a carefully controlled voice. The last time the Toller’s sailed with him he had been certain one of them would throw the other overboard before they reached the colonies. His eyes shone with unmasked irony. “Mr. Schlange anticipated the problem. He assured me that though the additional passenger might be a surprise, the two of you would find a satisfactory solution to any problems that ensued,” Langham finished resolutely and rose to leave. “If you gentlemen require me, I’ll be on the quarter deck.” He nodded perfunctorily before departing.
When Langham had shut the door behind him, Roman exploded, his ire only fueled by Morgan’s jocular expression. “Bloody hell, Morgan! Wilhelm told us there were only bondservants on this ship.” He paced a short path across the floor. “I’ve never known him to quarter a bondservant in a cabin. These games of uncle’s are getting tiresome. He treats us as if we were...”
Roman stopped his pacing as he momentarily remembered how he had treated the wench on the docks. A spark of regret showed in his eyes. A waif, a doxy, he didn’t know which. He hadn’t been able to make out her features through all the grime but her eyes had burned brightly and looked at him with a hopeful gaze that had stirred a strange awakening within him. He had been about to take her reverently in his arms and comfort her when he had caught his wits and turned his unwarranted wrath on her instead.
“Well, I’m to the deck,” said Morgan, giving Roman a sound thump on the shoulder as he pushed past. “If I’m to spend this voyage enduring your close company, I’d best take the air when I can.”
Roman ignored the gibe but followed Morgan aloft. The air was sharp and cold. Through the growing breaks in the fog he could see that the sea was calming. Ahead the sun rose high and would soon mark an endless expanse of blue. Roman took a turn about the deck to clear his head, giving a nod here and there to the crewmen who were checking lines and securing crates and barrels.
The night at the Red Feather had not brought him a complete hour of sleep, nor for that matter had the entire week before. Since his ship had docked for repairs after months at sea, and he had met Morgan in London, theirs had been a life of constant revelry. He sighed wearily. Not in a fit of madness would he admit to Morqan that he longed for a night of rest. No matter if bone tired, if a challenge arose he must best his brother in drinking the most ale or bedding the prettiest wench.
He found Morgan leaning against a starboard rail, looking out to sea. “I have it, Morgan” Roman gave his brother’s shoulder a stronger than needed shake.
“If you mean the worst temper in this port, that I know,” Morgan retorted, turning about and scowling at Roman as he set right his tricorn which had been knocked askew by Roman’s impudence.
Roman smiled. “I mean a solution to our problem of the cabins.”
“How’s that?”
Roman pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and let them clink about in his palm before he gave his brother a more than playful shove back the way they had come a short while before. “Don’t know why I didn’t think of it from the first.”
“Thinking is never what you do first,” Morgan said more jovially.
Roman ignored the barb. “We’ll pay the bloke off,” he said. “Offer him enough coin that he will gladly string a hammock in the hold.”
Morgan smiled. “And I will be shed of you and your foul moods.” He put a sharp elbow to Roman’s ribs. “Sometimes, brother, you do have a good thought.”
***
The gentle roll of the ship counteracted the exhaustion that had gripped Silvia as she curled beneath the light blanket in the narrow bunk. Her eyelids were shut fast before she had taken more than a single breath.
Within moments she slept so heavily that she was wholly lost in the musing deepness of dreams of that took her to green lands with warm breezes and genteel people who treated one another with kindness and concern. She allowed herself to drift into the pleasantness and peace and bright hopefulness of the place until somewhere around the edges of her dream a darkness slithered inside. With it, a noise too rude for that perfect place intruded on the quiet of her mind. She pushed both disturbances away and, with a sigh, returned to her paradise. She was safe there—Was she not?
Thank you for reading Dark Prelude.
Silvia’s story continues in the novel Dark Splendor. . .
About the Author
Andrea Parnell is the award-winning author of ten novels, short fiction and articles, with more than one million copies of her books in print. Her works include Gothic, Western, and other historical and contemporary romances. Several of her books have been set in her home state of Georgia. Andrea has received both the Maggie and Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice awards for her writing, and is a member of Novelists, Inc. (NINC) and past president of the Georgia Authors Network. She is fond of cats, travel, overgrown gardens, and old houses with lots of crooks, crannies, and interesting shadows. Please visit her website at AndreaParnell.com.
Twitter: @andreahparnell
Facebook: Andrea Parnell Facebook Page
Also by Andrea Parnell
From Trove Books
Dark Splendor
Lovely young Silvia Bradstreet comes from London to an isolated estate off the coast of colonial Georgia to be an indentured servant. But a far different fate awaits her. Clothed in finery and pampered like a queen, she finds herself a pawn in the devious schemes of Wilhelm Schlange, master of Serpent Tree Hall, as he manipulates the family members who hope to inherit his vast fortune. Haunted by ghostly dreams and threatened by the island's deadly secrets, Silvia cannot trust her own senses, much less anyone around her. Most of all, she dare not trust her growing passion for Schlange's nephew, handsome sea captain Roman Toller. His lips move like a hot flame over her flesh and draw the very breath from her body. Can Roman offer Silvia an escape from her dark fate--or is he leading her closer to destruction?
Whispers at Midnight
If only his kiss had been hard, brief and demanding, but it was not. It was gentle and probing, possessing, and took her breath away . . .Amanda Fairfax met Ryne Sullivan when she came to take possession of the colonial Virginia plantation that was her legacy. She could see resentment burning in his dark blue eyes, yet once in his arms she could feel how fiercely he hungered for her, and how little she could resist his desires or her own. In a place where terror ruled the night and mystery cloaked each move, Amanda could not fully trust her lover or her love, for she sensed every moment of ecstasy might be her last...
Delilah’s Flame
Demure society beauty Lilah Damon is secretly Delilah, Flame of the West, a notorious saloon singer with fire red hair who inflames men's passions with her sultry stage show while pursing a personal mission of vengeance. When handsome cowboy Tabor Stanton, fleeing his own troubled past, threatens to expose her double life, Delilah must submit to his every desire to protect her secrets.
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