Chapter Eleven

“Close the door,” Roarke barked.

He seized his discarded shirt and tossed it over a naked Adriana, although, if he read Sayer’s expression correctly, it was too late.

“Put the tray down, Sayer.”

The sailor, stunned, clattered the food tray on the nearby table. He fumbled behind to find the door to shut it. He never once tore his gaze from the sight of Adriana’s sweet breasts, the wet, little nipples straining upward as she struggled to pull the shirt over her head.

Damn it.

He should have paid attention. Since the poisoning, he’d insisted that each day a different sailor deliver his meal. Not every sailor had the wits to knock first.

“You,” Roarke accused, buttoning his breeches, “didn’t knock.”

Sayer stuttered, “You’ve got a woman.”

“Lower your voice.”

“You’ve been hiding her.”

“A wise man,” Roarke said, rising to his feet, “would shut his mouth fast.”

“It’s been a long time,” the Welshman said, reaching down to rub his breeches, “since any of us have had a woman—”

“Hire one in Jamaica and get your eyes off mine.”

The shock ebbed from the sailor’s eyes as he shifted his gaze from her to him. The Welshman’s expression of befuddled lust was replaced with something else, something wary and far more dangerous. A prickling alertness made Roarke keenly aware of the situation. Adrianna’s safety depended on him handling this sailor very carefully. He prided himself on being a good swordsman, better with a pistol, but he’d rather not have to kill the man.

“Gwynn, you stupid fool,” Adriana blurted into the silence. “Are you so blinded by a pair of tits?”

Roarke’s shirt covered Adriana from neck to knees, but without the bindings, those gloriously responsive nipples poked against the weave.

“It’s me,”she insisted, patting her chest.“It has always been me.”

Confusion crossed Sayer’s face. “What’s this foolery?”

Adriana sighed, “Look at me.”

His face fell. He shook his head. “You—you—you’re not—”

“I am a girl, and I was, even on The King’s Arse when I dragged your dirty self out of more than one alehouse fight.”

Behind the thick black beard, Sayer’s mouth sagged. “You sneaking whelp.”

“Don’t blame me. You couldn’t see what was right before your eyes.”

“All these years.” Sayer’s mouth opened and closed like a gasping fish. “You hid this from me all these years.”

“From you and every ship’s crew I knew.”

Roarke watched Sayer struggling to absorb the shock, waiting to see how the Welshman would take the news while he edged his way toward where his sword was sheathed.

“If the pirates of The King’s Arse,” Sayer stuttered, his face contorting, “had ever found out that you were a woman—”

“But they never did.”

“They would have sliced my throat!” He threw up his arms at her. “Those pirates would have killed me thinking I’d kept you to myself!”

“Mind you remember that,” Roarke interjected, curling his hand around his sword belt, “before speaking a word about her to this ship’s crew.”

Sayer blustered, “But I didn’t know until now!”

“Who’s going to believe that?” Roarke looped the sword belt around him as if he were just calmly getting dressed. “If you say a word about her masquerade, she’ll swear that you knew from the start.”

Sayer’s face tightened.

“They’ll believe me,” Adriana added quickly. “I’ve seen you more than once without your breeches.”

Sayer snapped, “You won’t dare.”

“I dare every day.”

She glowered at the Welshman while sitting on the bed wearing nothing but a shirt. Roarke had that strange sense of double vision again, the kind he had all too often whenever he was around this woman. She had the undeniable shape of a woman, the passion of a woman, but in times like this she spoke, acted, dared, and even sat with her legs splayed carelessly just like a man.

Then Sayer turned his attention back to him. Roarke saw the dislike slither behind the Welshman’s eyes.

“I might just keep my mouth shut,” Sayer said, as he ran his fingers through his thick beard, “in exchange for a piece of her.”

Roarke’s ears filled with a buzzing. He heard his sword belt clank to the floor as he rushed the man. Suddenly the Welshman wasn’t standing. A red haze came over his eyes as Roarke dropped to his knees and felt the jolt of the impact of his fist on Sayer’s face again and again.

“Stop.”

There was a weight on his arm, light but insistent.

“Stop.”

He stared down at the sailor trying to shield his face with his hands. Blood ran between his fingers. Roarke looked at his own clenched fist, the knuckles bloody. He glanced over his shoulder and met Adriana’s dark gaze and saw in it the warning that rang in what reason still existed under his fury.

One dead sailor, and there would be a mutiny for sure.

Roarke yanked a dagger from his boot. He set the tip against the sailor’s groin. “Welshman,” he spat, “there are many ways to stop a man from talking.”

Behind the screen of Sayer’s broken fingers, one eye widened. “There’ll be no need of that, Captain.”

“Joubert,” he said, never taking his eyes off the man, “you told me once that this sailor was trustworthy.”

“He turned on me quick enough.”

“‘Twas the shock,” Sayer sputtered, “I wouldn’t have—”

“Aye, you would have,” she said and Roarke heard the anger in her voice. “How many years have we known each other? Yet you would have treated me like a common whore and then thrown me to the crew.”

Roarke shifted the knife from Sayer’s groin to his chin. He pressed deep enough so that a bead of blood grew on its tip.

“A man without a tongue,” Roarke warned, “can’t tell tales.”

“For the love of God, Captain.”

Sayer’s chest rose and fell. The man was terrified, but Roarke knew that terror would pass as soon as he lifted the knife.

He would have to kill this Welshman.

He changed the angle of the knife.

“Mercy, captain!”

Roarke thought of Captain Samuel Leighton laughing on his ship as he sailed it away from the strand where he’d marooned his brother and himself, Adam already half-dead from a whipping. Someday he would plunge a knife into the neck of his brother’s murderer, just like this.

“Mercy,” Sayer cried softly, his face crumpling. “Please—”

“Captain.”

Her voice was calm and low but it filled his head. Her voice was the singing of reason and he heard the echo of it despite himself. He couldn’t let passions overcome him. The death of a sailor by his bloody hand would be like a spark over a powder keg. Mutiny would mean a tortured death for him, for Drake—and for Adriana.

He glared at the sailor. “Do you want to live, Sayer?”

“Aye!”

“Then swear.” Roarke pressed the dagger’s edge flat against the sailor’s throat. “Swear you’ll stay silent…or you’ll die.”