Eloise woke gradually from a deep sleep to a sense of being reborn, of emerging anew, which had everything to do with Zach.
He’d made love to her.
He’d made her a woman, leaving her sated, in awe of her own body and its reaction to his touch. He’d unlocked for her the secret of pleasure and physical union between a man and a woman.
One hand slid across the sheet in search of his solid strength. ‘Zach?’ Disappointment stung her; the bed was empty and the sheet cold where he’d lain.
‘Zach? Are you here?’ The silence suggested duty had called. It wasn’t fair to begrudge his responsibility to ship and crew. She gathered the blanket around her, breathing in the hints of a wondrous night. She touched a hand between her legs where liquid heat pooled. Her body thrummed with the knowledge of having had him inside her.
Zach. He’d looked so –
She froze. In shock, her eyes snapped open.
There! For a fraction of a second, in less than a blink of her lashes she detected light, like peeking through a key-hole to glimpse a summer’s day. Last night she’d seen his face. So his image hadn’t been a desperate act of her imagination? She threw back the blanket and sat up.
Heart pounding, she took a deep breath, held it, puffed it out, and breathed in again. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat unmoving, staring at the widening scope of light. Dry eyes forced her to blink. Irregular lines and indiscriminate shapes came into view in faded shades of colour.
She waved trembling hands back and forth in front of her eyes. Slender fingers came into focus. She looked down and slid her hands over her thighs and knees, proof she hadn’t imagined the accuracy of sight, movement, and sensation.
She experienced a sudden bout of giddiness. Either returning vision played havoc with her sense of balance or …
Her astonished joy abated, overshadowed by another stark realisation; a thought so disconcerting Eloise could scarce believe it true.
The Justice was on the move.
Water whooshed and slapped along the ship’s hull. A lively wind rattled ropes against the masts, and the creak of timbers had never sounded so loud.
Heavy footfalls echoed beyond the cabin, as did the sound of shouts and exuberant laughter. Objects inside the cabin rattled and vibrated, and the air felt damp on her skin.
She stood, eyes closed, arms outstretched, attuned to the vessel’s unmistakeable roll. Did nausea strike because of the ship’s motion, or because with every passing second it could possibly be spiriting her away from England? She dismissed the latter and sat back on the bed. Zach wouldn’t take her abduction to such extremes. He simply tested a new sail or some such thing, having let the ship sit for too long.
She snatched up the blanket, wrapped it around her nakedness and choked on an excited sob when the cabin presented itself in clear, defined contours. Images became sharper. Objects tangible. Her heart thundered in her chest. She took a moment to process the revelation of being whole again, to comprehend it all.
She had her life back. Independence. No more relying on others to do for her the simplest of tasks. The gift of moving freely and at will had blessedly returned. She would see and hold Julian’s yet-to-be born child, ride her mare, farewell spring and welcome summer.
Explore the Justice.
Her gaze roamed, eager to absorb everything about her. While neither large nor opulent, the captain’s quarters housed adequate comfort with a desk and chair, a modest-sized chest of drawers and a cabinet. Behind its glass and grid doors stood bottles, tankards and plates.
A smaller table with two plush red velvet chairs served as a place to sit and eat. They, like other furniture, had been bolted down to prevent movement during a voyage.
Her gaze fell to the floor where, in a crumpled heap, her torn nightdress lay. A reminder of Zach having rescued her from a terror any woman would fear.
His discarded shirt hung over the back of a chair close to a row of windows. She shrugged off the blanket and stood to test her sea legs. Mobility in a world of darkness had required her hands to be her eyes. Now, sudden sight forced her to reassess distance and dimension. The furniture suddenly wavered in her line of vision. This, and the ship’s movement, made retrieving and dressing in Zach’s shirt a challenge. His masculine scent empowered and invigorated her when she hugged the linen close to her skin.
Outside the windows, water rushed away in the ship’s wake. Beyond that, the vast expanse of a dark sapphire ocean met pale blue sky. No land in sight, not even a distant shoreline. How long had they been at sea? Panic-stricken, her chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe. Her fragile emotions seesawed between elation at the miracle of her sight returning, and despair over where the Justice journeyed.
She turned and cut an unsteady path towards the desk. Sea charts and maps lay strewn across it with a compass, dividers and a backstaff. An open wooden case drew her interest. In it was a pair of handsome matching flintlock pistols. Each had a brass-covered butt doubling as a club. She picked one up, surprised how light and portable it weighed in her hand, not like the heavier duelling pistols her father had owned.
She acknowledged her renewed appreciation of Julian’s tutelage in the handling of firearms. Both pistols were freshly loaded with powder and ball. If only one had been within reach at the time of last night’s assault on her. She couldn’t bear to think what punishment Zach had dealt his crewman.
It came as no surprise to Eloise that a ship’s captain would keep pistols loaded and at the ready in the event of a mutiny or an enemy attack. Staying one step ahead of, and eluding, one’s foe at sea would require skill, forethought and strategy. A timely reminder of her own self-preservation.
Escape.
How soon before they returned to shore? On the one hand, she would remain Zach’s captive if only to share with him again what they had last night. And yet she could not suppress the need to find her way back to her family and Blakely House.
Her trepidation intensified with the realisation she would soon see Zach unmasked. Jealousy cut a thin line across her heart with the memory of his parting words to Lily. He’d mentioned a proposal. Surely he didn’t intend to marry the maid?
It shouldn’t matter. And yet it did. Vying for a man’s attention had never been an issue. No man had ever turned her head, or her heart.
Except Zach.
‘Eloise?’
She gasped at the sound of his voice at her back.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
Why the discord in his tone? Her throat tightened, suddenly dry. This long-awaited moment had finally arrived and now she felt ill-equipped to deal with it.
‘I see you found my shirt.’
She ached to whip around and share with him the wonder of her sight having returned. At the same time she wanted to castigate him for pulling anchor and for the fear and uncertainty it caused her.
‘Eloise?’
Resigned to the inevitable, she kept her gaze fixed on the floorboards and slowly turned. Beneath lowered lashes, she glimpsed familiar black knee-high boots.
Her gaze jumped higher and came to rest on that part of his anatomy so distinctly male. His breeches clearly moulded lean hips and every inch in between. Her body shivered with the memory of how he’d pleasured her.
Above his buckled waist, her gaze lingered on a shirtless chest. Bronzed. Toned. The glistening combination of sweat and sea spray defined contoured muscles in his shoulders and arms. She remembered the way his body hair had tickled her breasts.
Her gaze swept up and over his face: masculine, regal. Unruly ebony hair fell shoulder-length. There was something fierce and primal about his appearance. Butterflies did battle inside her stomach.
Zach took her breath away. He looked every inch the man she’d cradled between her legs last night.
Eloise dared to look him in the eye, into the intensity of his appraising dark stare. Sudden heat stole over her. She swayed. When he stepped forth, at the ready to catch her, she warned him off with raised, open-palmed hands.
She saw confusion in his narrowed eyes. She knew his mind was ticking over, piecing together the miracle of what had occurred in his absence. Suddenly, his brows drew apart and lifted to show wide-eyed surprise.
‘You can see!’
She would have laughed with joy if not for her mistrust of him. All she could muster was a flat, ‘Yes.’
His wide smile showed relief. He moved forwards. Eloise took a step back. ‘Where is this ship bound?’
Zach’s arms dropped by his side. His smile dissolved into a look of grim resignation. ‘The Caribbean.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. She hadn’t heard right.
‘Yes, Eloise. We sail for the Caribbean.’
He may as well have ripped her lungs from her chest. She fought for breath. ‘Turn the ship around.’
‘No.’
‘You must!’
His implacable glare defied her. Eloise lunged forwards and threw the force of her fists against his chest. ‘After last night. After we … I thought –’
‘You thought wrong,’ he said flatly.
She pushed away from him, stung by his cold indifference towards her. Where was the man who’d made love to her with a gentle, caring and considerate heart?
He spun around and walked to the bed.
Eloise gasped in horror. Hideous puckered scars crisscrossed the breadth of his back and down to his waist. She couldn’t begin to imagine how or why he’d deserved them. How did she miss the disfigured skin beneath her touch last night? Immediately she recalled how he’d pinned her hands to the bed.
He turned to face her, looking every bit the enigmatic pirate. He stripped the blanket off the bed and gestured to the stain of her virginal blood. ‘You gave yourself to the wrong man, Eloise. A man you know nothing about.’
‘I knew enough to trust him with my life and body.’
‘And little else.’
His remark astounded her. ‘What could possibly be more vital than that?’
He laughed, cynical and loud. ‘You trusted a man responsible for your loss of sight.’
‘The accident was my fault, not yours.’
His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. ‘A man who seized you from your sheltered, privileged life and offered no explanation for his actions.’
‘Whatever your reasons, I sense you have my best interests at heart.’
‘If I did, I wouldn’t have stolen your innocence –’
‘It was offered. Not stolen.’
‘– or be carting you off to my island.’
‘With good reason, I’m sure. Has our intimacy suddenly compelled you to confess the truth?’
Zach’s lips pressed together. A nerve twitched along his jaw and he stood braced like a man challenged. He stepped slowly towards her and stopped a heartbeat away. Tall, imposing, suddenly intimidating. ‘Yes. It’s time you learned the truth. You trust a man who …’
His shoulders lifted and fell on a sigh. ‘You trusted a man who is wanted for the murder of your parents.’
She choked, recoiled against the desk, clinging to its edge for support.
The confession cleaved her heart in two. She felt her world collapse. Her stomach convulsed. She tamped down the urge to retch. Her nemesis, the dark, swirled in her vision. For a moment she couldn’t think clearly. The rapid turn of events since last night’s attack compounded her confusion.
And now this?
‘No,’ she whispered, summoning what little strength she had. ‘I don’t believe you.’ He couldn’t possibly be the man he claimed to be. That man died in the fire. Deservedly so. Had Zach played the role of accomplice?
He swung away from her.
Through her shock, she watched him stride back to the bed and rip the soiled sheet clean off its base. He scrunched it into a ball and tossed it like waste into a corner of the cabin.
Zach’s piratical image mocked her. His alarming revelation had obliterated last night’s ecstasy and this morning’s miracle. How could her estimation of him have been so wrong? On what, indeed, had she founded her trust in him?
She’d drawn pleasure from his every kiss and caress, from the euphoria of joining her body with his. It sickened her to think she’d coupled with a man who was connected to her parents’ deaths. Her hands shook, hiding her face while she shed tears of shame.
She turned from him and slumped over the desk.
The pistols! They lay in the open box beneath her body.
Her eyes snapped open. She picked herself up off the desk and glimpsed Zach over her shoulder. His expression masked all emotion in the same way he’d used the leather mask to conceal his identity the first night they’d met. Odd she should think that significant. A fleeting thought nonetheless.
Resolute, Eloise stood tall, gripped the weapons in each hand and spun around to face him. Through tear-blurred vision, by no means a handicap for her skilled marksmanship, she aimed one pistol at Zach.
And fired.