CHAPTER THREE
My God, if I was less of a gentleman and more of a pirate, Rafe Serrano Beltran thought as he stood in the corridor just outside the captain’s quarters aboard his ship, El Verdad. He closed his eyes and rapped the back of his head soundly against the wall, hoping to knock the wits back into his skull. He succeeded in little more than drawing the curious attention of the two crewmen he had assigned to guard the companionway ladder.
He had not prepared himself for the notion that Catherine Ransom might be beautiful. Or tall. Or blind. The blindness he could find a way to deal with; after all, he was not taking the young woman on a sight-seeing voyage. But as for the others, he was left at a speechless, witless loss.
It had been too dark on the beach for him to notice anything at all about Catherine’s face or form when she had tried to bolt past him. He had not even really noticed how tall she was; he had been too concerned with preventing the obviously frightened and determined girl from getting away. It had not been until the skiff had returned to El Verdad and he had brought her aboard, bearing her below deck and to his quarters, that he had truly and for the first time taken her fully into account.
It had not occurred to him that she would be beautiful―much less that the sight of her would cause such a powerful reaction within him. She was lovely, her face in perfect, rounded proportion to her large eyes, petite nose and upturned, shapely mouth. Her eyes were an unusual shade that reminded him poignantly of the Mediterranean as it encroached upon the shores of the island of Mallorca, his home; a vivid blue-green blanched and softened by the cream-colored sand of upward-sloping shallows.
Her hair was absolutely magnificent, even unfettered and unruly from her struggling; a wondrous tumble of loose curls, tangled tendrils of honey and amber nearly to her waist. And her body…all long, lean legs and a strong, tall frame―too tantalizingly revealed by Cristobal’s clumsy efforts to rip her nightclothes from her, to force himself on her.
Stop it, Rafe thought as again, he rapped the back of his head against the wall. Stop thinking about her like that. Never mind that as one who was tall himself, Rafe had long-since grown weary of diminutive women who stood against him or lay beneath him in childlike proportions. Never mind that he had often imagined what it would be like to make love to a woman of complementing form; a woman he would not have to show mindful restraint with when delving between her thighs for fear of crushing her, damaging her, punching clean through her miniscule and dainty form if observing a too-vigorous rhythm inside of her.
He sighed heavily and forked his fingers through his hair. He had posted the guards below too late. He had not realized Catherine’s handicap until he had delivered her to the captain’s quarters, and when he had recognized her blindness, it had been like a blow delivered swiftly, soundly to his gut. My God, what kind of sorry bastard abducts a helpless blind girl?
He had watched her stumble about the room, her footsteps tentative, her hands warily outstretched, her striking green eyes wide but fixed on nothing in particular.
She cannot be blind. He’d waved his hand in front of her face, trying vainly to catch her in some ruse or act. Oh, Madre de Dios…Sweet Mother of God…she cannot be blind!
He had immediately retreated, locking her in the room and returning to the main deck. The men would have to be told. There would be no avoiding it. The crew was not particularly enthused by the prospect of sailing with a woman aboard to begin with, as it was said to be bad luck. When they learned that Catherine Ransom was blind, as well, they would like mutiny if only to turn the prow for England again and return her home unless he calmed their anxieties.
“It is a trick,” Cristobal had said, and why had Rafe not noticed straight away afterwards that his brother had disappeared from the gathering of crewmen, that he’d ducked below deck, heading for the captain’s quarters? Rafe had locked the door, but Cristobal had a key. Rafe shared everything with Cristobal, even his own quarters aboard the ship. Why had he not realized Cristobal’s outrage enough to think to post guards sooner?
Rafe sighed again, turned and left the corridor, climbing up the companionway and back topside.
“We lost the bowsprit,” his boatswain called as he crossed the main deck.
Rafe blinked, startled from his thoughts. “What?”
Claudio Figueroa Escoto turned to him, his little silver whistle poised before his mouth as he called orders up to the highest riggings. “I said we lost the bowsprit.”
Claudio had been a member of El Verdad’s crew since Rafe’s father had first bought the frigate nearly ten years earlier. Before that, Claudio had worked the sea for Rafe’s father, crewing aboard several smaller fishing skiffs since before Rafe had been born. He was a widower with eight sons of his own; the eldest, Eduardo, served on the crew of El Verdad, while the youngest, Felipe, was only ten, and remained at home on Mallorca with his grandmother. Claudio knew the open seas as well and intimately as a lover and Rafe was under no false impressions on their voyage―Claudio was the one in command of El Verdad.
“When did we lose it?” Rafe cried, looking out toward the stem of the ship. After a momentary panic in which his heart had nearly collapsed inward upon itself, he turned to the boatswain, bewildered. “What are you talking about? It is right there, where it is supposed to be, off the prow.”
At least, I am fairly certain it is, he thought, running momentarily and swiftly through the list of sails, yards, masts and lines in his head, tacking off each mentally. He had not been aboard a ship for any measure of time in more than a decade, and then, only to bridge the short distance between Mallorca and mainland Spain. This was the furthest he had ever sailed from his home, and his inaugural voyage as a captain.
Claudio nodded once. “Of course it is now. I had it fished back into place straight away. Looks like the gammon iron came loose and the tip cracked. When we tacked into the wind, she broke clean away.”
The bowsprit was the mast that jutted forth from the bow of the ship. It anchored rigging lines and staysails that in turn secured the foremast. As for the rest―gammon irons, fishing and what-not―Rafe had no idea, but he understood enough. If the bowsprit broke and the lines tethering it to the foremast slackened or snapped, there would be nothing to hold the mast in place at the foredeck, and it could topple, crippling the ship.
“It will hold us until we are home again,” Claudio said. “But it will slow us down, Rafe. We will have to keep the wind abaft her beam as much as we can, or we risk breaking it loose once more―or worse. We will lose time for it.”
Time was the last thing they could afford to lose with John Ransom, the Hawk of the High Seas fast on their heels. Rafe’s brows furrowed and he shook his head. “Damn it,” he said. “How the hell did it happen?”
“I do not know to say,” Claudio said. “It could have happened overnight. It could have worked itself loose before we even passed Gibraltar. Perhaps our Lord meant it as a message.”
He crossed himself with the practiced ease of a lifelong and devout Catholic. Claudio had made no secret of his disapproval of their plan. He kept saying it was wrong, and had tried his best to dissuade Rafe from sailing for England. However, there had been no countering Cristobal’s desperate insistence, or Rafe’s own guilt-ridden concession.
“You did the right thing by Cristobal,” Claudio said, returning his attention aloft, watching crewmen scuttle along ratlines to make minute adjustments in the sails at his whistled commands.
Rafe blinked. “I…I did not do anything by Cristobal.”
Claudio glanced at him, lowering the whistle from his pursed lips. “What he had in mind for the girl was disrespectful and a sin.” He crossed himself again, an unspoken admonishment: Just like everything else about this voyage thus far. “You did the right thing.”
Rafe had tried to be discreet as he had followed Cristobal below. He wondered if anyone else besides Claudio suspected what had happened.
“The men know,” Claudio said, as if reading Rafe’s mind. ??
?The girl is blind, Rafe. They are not.”
Rafe saw Cristobal standing abaft the binnacle on the quarterdeck, his hands tucked into the deep pockets of his greatcoat, his tricorne drawn low upon his brow, hiding in shadows what was surely a scowl in Rafe’s direction.
“I should apologize to him,” Rafe said.
“For what?” Claudio said.
“I called him out in front of the girl, embarrassed him in the eyes of the crew.”
Claudio snorted, shaking his head. “You reminded him of his manners, Rafe,” he said. “And his place in things aboard your ship. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Why are you always so hard on him?” Rafe asked.
Claudio raised one bushy brow. “Why are you always so easy on him?”
“Because he is my brother.”
Claudio said nothing more, apparently willing to let the matter lie, even if he disagreed. Rafe walked toward Cristobal, not missing the way the younger man deliberately positioned his body, turning away from his approach.
“There is no sign of him yet,” Cristobal said, his eyes trained out upon the gun-metal grey sea. Rafe followed his gaze and could not prevent the corner of his mouth from hooking slightly.
“He has not left London yet,” he said. “It is only daybreak. By now, he is just getting the news.”
“Oh, he has left London,” Cristobal said, nodding once, as if to himself. “And he is on his way.” He fell momentarily silent, his brows pinched in a troubled furrow. “They say he rides the wind currents like a hawk in flight,” he murmured.
Sometimes, Rafe felt hard-pressed to decide whether or not Cristobal more admired or hated John Ransom. “You heard about what happened with the bowsprit…?”
“I had the deck when it happened,” Cristobal replied. He met Rafe’s gaze solemnly. “We will have to keep her downwind or it will break again.”
Rafe hated it when Cristobal spoke to him as though he was completely ignorant of the sea. True, Cristobal had always been the sailor between them, and Rafe, the scholar, but Rafe did not need constant reminding of it. “I know,” he said, frowning. “Claudio says it will hold.”
Cristobal offered a slight shrug. “If it was my ship, I would put her into port at La Coruna, on the Spanish peninsula. Have her re-rigged, the whole thing replaced.”
Rafe’s frown deepened. “We do not have that kind of time. Ransom could easily catch us then.”
Sometimes he worried that this was exactly what Cristobal wanted, and the notion troubled Rafe deeply. It was the primary reason he had agreed to Cristobal’s plan only if they sailed aboard El Verdad. Had they traveled by Cristobal’s command, La Venganza, Rafe would have feared all the while that Cristobal would find some way to confront Ransom directly and on the open water.
Cristobal shrugged again. “I am just saying, if it was my ship…”
“But it is not, Cristobal. It is mine. My ship, my helm, my rules.”
Cristobal smiled wryly. “Yes,” he said. “It is.” He held his brother’s gaze evenly for a long moment and then his smile widened. “Isabel is in La Coruna.”
Rafe frowned. “Then there is as good a reason as any to stay away.”
Cristobal laughed. “I’m sure she would delight to see you again. It has been how long since you saw her last?”
“One year,” Rafe said. It had been almost exactly one year since he had last seen Isabel Aniceto Zuniga; one year since she had broken Rafe’s heart and married Guillermo Narcisco Coronel, el Conde de la Torre―the Count of the Tower; one year nearly to the day since he had disgraced himself on Isabel’s wedding day and had sworn that he would never see her again.
Eager to drop the subject, he clapped his hand against Cristobal’s shoulder. “I am sorry for what happened below,” he said. “I should have drawn you aside, outside of the room and settled the matter between us.”
“You did me a favor,” Cristobal said. “Kept me from smutting myself with that sightless whore. I should rightly thank you.”
She is his daughter! Cristobal had shouted at Rafe once he had recovered from his initial shock at being forcibly hauled off the girl. She is his daughter, and you gave your word to this, Rafe!
Only to take her―never to harm her! Never like this! Rafe had shouted back, squaring off against his brother and matching Cristobal’s bared fists. You will not lay your hands on her again, Cristobal, or by God and all that’s holy, you will answer to me for it!
“The crew thinks you turned me out so that you could pluck her English rose,” Cristobal remarked, glancing at his brother and smiling wryly. “They say you may have the makings of a fine pirate captain yet.”
Rafe frowned, but pressed his lips together against a sharp reply. To answer Cristobal would have likely started a quarrel, and he had only just settled the last one. He clapped his hand against Cristobal’s shoulder and walked away while there was still a scrap of goodwill preserved between them.