Chapter 5
Sloan slowed his footsteps as he neared his cabin.
He hesitated, then quietly twisted his key in the lock and silently slid the well-oiled door inward.
His tread was silent as he moved toward the bunk, and he stood still again, gazing upon her by the muted light of the moon.
She was curled upon the lower section of the bunk with no pillow beneath her head.
Watching her, he thought of how he had first seen her lying upon the bed at the tavern.
Then, he had been fascinated by her. And he still was.
He bent to see her closer, and noticed the tears which had dried upon her cheeks. A strange feeling of tenderness assailed him as he watched her; how horrible it must have been for her to see one she loved murdered so cruelly, and to know that the same fate awaited her.
Sloan straightened. It was over. She was in his care now and there she would have to stay. She was so desperately fighting him that she could not see her own danger. She didn’t realize that she was condemned without a trial. He could not bring her to her family because Matthews would find her.
He sighed and strode the few steps to his desk, where he pulled out the captain’s chair, sat, and stretched his booted legs comfortably over the teakwood corner.
From the bottom left drawer he drew out a pint of Caribbean dark rum and drank a long draft from it, wincing slightly as the potent brew burned down his throat.
Rubbing his temple, he began to think of his own future, and of the business that had brought him to Glasgow. Ostensibly, he had been selling tobacco. In truth, he had been sent by a London delegation to ferret out the political climate in the city.
The same English lords who had sent him to Scotland had recently sent ambassadors to Holland, inviting William of Orange to invade England—and force James to abdicate his throne.
On June twentieth, James II’s wife had given birth to a son.
While the English people had tolerated their Catholic monarch as long as they assumed his heir apparent to be his oldest daughter, Mary, a staunch Protestant and the wife of William of Orange, they were not likely to tolerate the possibility of their King’s leaving the throne to a Catholic son.
There was trouble ahead; of that Sloan was keenly aware.
He knew the king. He knew that James would so implement his power that he would enrage his barons, as well as the English people.
Sloan also knew William of Orange and understood that he was very ambitious and determined.
Sloan winced slightly. There had been a time when he had liked James. A time when James had been a bold and brave man, a careful thinker, and a fine admiral. But that time was past. James had grown older, and fanatical—unbending, and sometimes cruel. He had executed his own nephew. Over the crown.
James, the Duke of Monmouth—“Jemmy” to his friends—had been the illegitimate son of Charles II. He’d possessed a full quota of Stuart charm; he’d been reckless, daring, and adventurous.
To Sloan he had been much more. When he was ten years old, his father had died—and he’d been sent to live in Jemmy’s household.
When Sloan was young, Jemmy had been his hero.
As he grew older and wiser, Sloan recognized his good points as well as his lack of prudence over the matter of the crown.
But knowing his recklessness had done nothing to change the emotions that had grown over the years, and when Sloan heard that Jemmy had lost his head after his fruitless rebellion to gain the throne, he felt the deepest loss and fury.
Jemmy had pleaded for his life but James had refused him—and executed him.
Sloan cast his head back and drank another long, long draft of the rum.
The things he’d learned in the tavern that day had been interesting.
William of Orange had assumed the Scots would be solidly against him.
Some of them would be, but not all, Sloan knew now.
If William and Mary secured their position in England, it was quite likely that the northern country would accept them too.
He laid his head back, brooding about politics, and then about the ties that bound him to Wales with webs spun of pity and honor.
Then he started suddenly, hearing a rustle from the bed. He had forgotten the Scottish lass in the gloom of his thoughts.
He smiled and pulled his boots from his feet, setting them beneath his desk before stripping methodically and casting his clothing over the chair. Then he stood over the girl again, debating whether to move her to a more comfortable position or let her be.
It was not surprising that she had been labeled “witch”—she was incredibly beautiful.
The loveliest ladies were usually marred in some way; minus several teeth, perhaps, or scarred in face or form by pockmarks or the like.
This girl was nothing less than perfect.
It was easy to believe that a less fortunate person might enviously decide that only a pact with the devil could create such flawless beauty.
But that didn’t matter now. He would keep her safe.
He found himself shuddering slightly, warmed by the thought of her.
He wanted to sleep with her again—and again.
He wanted her to touch him and practice her brand of witchcraft upon him.
He could lose himself so easily within the midnight web of her hair, the soft mystique of her cream-and-rose flesh.
His thinking should have surprised him—perhaps even worried him.
He had never before been so enamored of a woman as to worry about their future together.
But he thought of permanency when he looked at this girl.
And as he was of high-ranking nobility, Sloan possessed the inevitable ego of his rank.
He was the Fourteenth Duke of Loghaire and a Scottish country lass should be quite content as his coveted mistress.
Would this fascination last forever? Or would he find, even now, his passions rising for another voluptuous woman?
Men were not sworn to be loyal to their mistresses.
She is a witch, he thought again with a smile as he looked upon her. So exquisite.…
She inhaled and exhaled with a slight shuddering sob.
Sloan bent nearer, but saw that she still slept.
He knelt beside her and unlaced her shoes, then carefully slid her stockings from her shapely legs, feeling the heat rise in him as he performed the simple service.
Still she did not awaken, and he realized how sorely exhausted she must be.
The compassion she brought forth from him worked well to dampen the fires the touch of her created, but he was determined still to undress her for her comfort.
Therefore he worked carefully upon her gown hooks without moving her, then lifted her into his arms to attempt to lift the fabric over her head.
The muddied gown he cast haphazardly to the floor, making a mental note to purchase her some clothing.
They would have to dock somewhere along the English coast—probably at Liverpool—before sailing to Holland. He could shop for her then.
She was slumped against him still, and he tenderly adjusted her weight to wrest her shift from her. It was then that she awoke, her huge blue eyes reflections of dazed alarm in the dimness, her fists instantly flailing against him.
“I am not a witch! Leave me! Leave me! Before God most holy, I am not a witch!”
She pounded against Sloan’s bare chest, causing little harm, but one of her blows caught him well in the chin, causing his mouth to bleed where his tooth caught against his inner lip.
Grimacing with a bit of surprise at the extent of her power, he secured her wrists and held them tight over her head, breaking, still gently, into her wild speech.
“Shhh! You are not a witch, and no man will harm you! Shhh … It is all right, everything is all right.”
The wide, terrified alarm slowly faded from her eyes, but still she surveyed him. “You …” she whispered, and it was not with pleasure that she did so.
“Aye, me,” he agreed, with a wry bite to his words.
“Treveryan, let me be!” she ordered with quiet fury.
Sloan became keenly aware that she was naked now, as was he.
Each of her tense gasps for breath pressed the hard peaks of her breasts more temptingly to his chest; her slightest movement was a brand of her body against his own.
To his vast annoyance he found his own resolve faltering; against his will intense desire took hold of his body.
“I’ve every intention of letting you be,” he informed her irritably, further annoyed by the flickering of her lustrous lashes, which signified all too clearly her knowledge of his arousal, her fear that he could not wield control over his own body as he lay with his weight sprawled over hers.
“I am but trying to allow you to sleep in comfort,” he informed her, scowling darkly.
“If you wish to grant me comfort,” she snapped, “leave.”
Sloan took a perverse pleasure in the slight tremor that touched her voice. Damn her! They might have been strangers.
“Sorry—this is my cabin.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, then, I shall be glad to leave.”
To Brianna’s vast surprise she was instantly lifted from beneath him and set indecorously upon her feet beside the bunk.
Sloan Treveryan surveyed her with idle interest as he stretched his length over his bed, lacing his fingers behind his head comfortably.
“My crew will love you,” he told her dryly.
Brianna stared at him with uncertainty for a moment, but then her anger exploded like cannon shot within her head.
She was instinctively tempted to cover what part of her nakedness she could with floundering hands as he watched her so casually, but she resisted the foolish temptation to reach furiously for her discarded shift, crumpled at the foot of the bed.