Only You: Duke of Rutland Series III Read online

  Vengeance had emerged as his new master.

  Alexandra Sutherland shivered in the darkness. Hours passed since they had spoken. “Lord Rutland, have you wondered about the name of this ship and its crewmate? Santanas means Satan. Damiano means to kill.”

  “You know Portuguese?”

  The mockery in his voice set her teeth on edge. Thief had branded his thoughts. Let him think what he wanted. “I learned a little Portuguese at my employer’s.”

  “And he is a thief, too?”

  Stubborn, spoiled man. Certainly, not a Sir Galahad. Vicar Thompson was the gentle soul who had educated her and far from a thief. “He was very giving toward me.”

  “So, you stole for him and he offered you a warm bed.”

  Heat rose to her face. “You insufferable clod. How dare you insinuate—” She bit back the rest of the scathing words on her tongue. She needed an ally, not an enemy. Taking a deep breath, she shoved more food through the hole again. If only she could thrust it down his throat. “Be forewarned, you should not bite the hand that feeds you, and—I refuse to answer any more of your provocations.”

  “Provocation? A sophisticated word. Well-learned—”

  “For a thief? I read.”

  He grunted his disbelief. “What did you read last?”

  Despite his antagonism, the deep timbre of his voice was like an eternal god, commanding denizens of the earth. As if she needed the sound of his voice to feel his very presence taking up the space all around her.

  No doubt he was intelligent and had been educated in the best of England’s schools. She gritted her teeth. With certainty, he considered her illiterate. “Something you should read. Common Sense.”

  “You approve of the American, Thomas Paine’s clear and persuasive prose, inciting the common people of the Colonies to revolt against the King?”

  Clever to test her. Well, if he wanted a challenge… “I believe the author marshals moral and political arguments for an egalitarian government.”

  He scoffed. “You agree with Paine’s claim that a mind is a vessel not to be filled, but a fire to be kindled?”

  She smiled for the first time in a long while. “Not Paine, but Plutarch. Anymore questions, Lord Rutland?”

  “Proves you are a weed among stones. So, I’m in the company of an educated thief. Your name?”

  His voice boomed like a thunderclap, a demand not a request. She stiffened, her emotions too raw for his scorn. No reason to go into her real history, unable to prove her true ancestry in any event. She chose to give her adopted name. “Alexandra Elwins.”

  “Miss Elwins,” he repeated.

  She looked heavenward. His reckless defiance of Damiano and Captain Diogo, left no doubt of his authoritative nature. With all the ferocity of a winter tempest, he dared to quarrel with his captors. She reversed her earlier opinion of his intelligence. He was insane or feeble-minded. “Why did you champion me?”

  He sighed. “You needed my protection.”

  “I am grateful.” Regardless of his belligerence, she needed someone to communicate with as much as the air she breathed. “What do you think motivated the man who abducted you and your sister, and lured your father and brother to the laboratory?”

  “If I knew—”

  His voice deepened, too complicated to point to one single emotion.

  “I am unable to explain anything,” he said, the sharpness in his voice betraying his unwillingness to do so. If he wanted to keep his own counsel, then fine.

  Alexandra closed her eyes, fighting an onslaught of images that flashed through her head. The leering Damiano dropping into her cell, his rough hands and drooling mouth moving over her body. So far, he’d been put off by the captain’s watchful eye.

  The smirking Damiano indulged in countless taunts of the new hell awaiting her. The terrors she would face in Brazil. Stripped naked, men groping her breasts, to be prodded and probed in the most intimate places, and then sold to the highest bidder. To be used by men to satisfy their lusts. Her mind spun with the odious insults Damiano had described over the past weeks, in lurid detail, what ghastly fate was in store for her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Think of other things. Positive things. How to escape…or the low, deep and commanding voice of her fellow prisoner.

  Was the man on the other side of the wall the heir to the Duke of Rutland? She had seen him once, two years before, while visiting London. He was talking to friends in front of the Palace of Westminster. Molly’s friend had affirmed the Rutland ducal coach and Alexandra had glimpsed him from behind. Dark-haired. Broad-shouldered. Would a handsome face match that rich masculine voice of his? Perhaps not. More a haughty, pinched-faced aristocrat, pale, and possessing a penchant to wipe his beak-nose.

  She recalled a scandal following Lord Rutland, a noted pugilist after someone had died at his hands. No wonder Captain Damiano kept him drugged. The newspapers had trumpeted that Lord Rutland had committed murder with one fatal punch to another Lord. Competing testimony by witnesses, fanned by sensational articles in the London Chronicle had moved public opinion against Lord Rutland. She shrugged, unable to determine his guilt or not.

  In her cell for days, Alexandra had counted each grain and knot in the planks. She peered through the hatch, every inch of canvas fully drawn, the bellies so rounded and hard they looked ready to burst, and speeding her away from her beloved England. She sat in the gloom, her companion choosing to sink into his sullen reflections. His silence taunted her, reminding her how she had arrived at this wretched point in her life.

  Isolated in Deconshire, Alexandra had felt different from the people who resided there, different in her way of growing up. Old memories taunted her of a far easier life, and goaded misplaced childhood years to the surface. Driven by curiosity and frustrated by her adoptive parents’ lack of information, Alexandra had resorted to snooping. She tore the cottage apart and found a gold covered Bible, far more elegant than anything Molly and Samuel could afford.

  Written in the family Bible were her real parent’s names. She had confronted Molly and Samuel Elwins who had posed as her parents. To have been lied to all those years.

  Molly and Samuel sat her down and talked. Her real mother, Lady Lucy Sutherland had died during childbirth. Molly Elwins had been hired as Alexandra’s wet nurse and nanny, nurturing Alexandra. Two years later, her real father, Baron Stephen Sutherland had remarried and soon afterward, died.

  Molly had doubts about the new baroness. When Baron Sutherland had died suddenly while in good health, Molly became even more suspicious and started eavesdropping. From an overheard conversation Molly had learned Alexandra’s stepmother, Lady Ursula Sutherland, had poisoned the baron, thus enabling her own son, Willean, to become the heir of the barony.

  What terrified Molly was an unfortunate accident planned for the three-year old Alexandra to ensure Willean’s inheritance. Powerless to prove the foul deed, and to protect the little girl, Molly and Samuel had swept the child, Alexandra away in the middle of the night, leaving no trace of their footsteps. For seventeen years, they hid in the small fishing village of Deconshire in southern England where they provided a simple and good life.

  Despite Molly and Samuel’s good intentions, Alexandra, at twenty years, simmered with a fury for being deceived for so long and had refused to speak to them. She had waited for Molly to leave for London to visit a friend. Part in rebellion of their deception and mainly because she needed answers, Alexandra put on Samuel’s sturdy woolen coat and had set out on foot, leaving Deconshire behind her. Catching a ride on a miller’s wagon to the next town, she bought passage by coach and traveled to her ancestral home.

  Despite the danger, and under cover of darkness, she broke into the library.

  The key to her heritage was there. All her life, visions of her real father had haunted her. The wainscoting, his desk, the smell of leather volumes filling the shelves triggered a flood of memories—riding her Shetland pony, parties with cakes, her first pupp
y, sliding down a bannister, her father’s laughter. She had wiped away a sudden rush of tears and rifled through the desk. A lamp fell. Footsteps beat a staccato rhythm in the hall. Willean appeared and overpowered her, and then Ursula, summoned from her chambers, materialized. Willean refused his mother’s demands to kill Alexandra, and then solved their problem by shipping her off with Captain Diogo, a smuggler and business associate.

  The Santanas careened to the right. Alexandra flailed her arms, slapping her hands against the greasy planks to catch her balance. Rats scratched against the wall. She had no one to blame but herself for her miserable destiny.

  Beyond the wall, Lord Rutland remained cast in stygian darkness. He did not offer his thoughts. Had the residual laudanum made him fall to sleep? Tucking her tattered woolen skirts about her drawn-up knees, she adjusted her filthy linen blouse, and then snuggled beneath Samuel’s woolen coat, grateful she had taken it for the warmth it provided. She leaned back, tilted her head up. Through the shrouds, the heavens chased the day into night, the glimmering of stars her only companions. A shadow passed over the grate. The figure of a man. A key rasped in a lock. The hatch scraped open. Damiano.

  He swung his feet over the edge.

  “No,” she cried and scrambled to her feet, arms waving and pummeling his legs.

  He dropped onto her. “Senhorita, you will experience a man.” He covered her mouth, the rancid odor of rum and fish penetrated her cell.

  “Leave her alone! Fight me, Portuguese scum,” bellowed Lord Rutland. He kicked the walls, making a racket to alert the captain. “Captain Diogo! Captain Diogo!

  “Shut-up, Rutland, before I run you through,” Damiano warned, his voice harsh and gravely.

  “And I’ll kill you if you touch her.”

  Damiano laughed. “Brave words from the other side of the wall. You are useless.”

  Alexandra clamped her teeth on Damiano’s hand. The ugly man cursed and swung out with a powerful blow across her face. Her head snapped back, stars exploded in front of her eyes. Damiano reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her to the floor. He thrust his hand down her bodice. Pinched her nipples, sucked her lips, bit her neck. She raised clenched fists, swinging wildly, pummeling at the side of his head.

  He grabbed both of her hands and held them together over her head. “I like a woman with fight in her.” As he yanked up her skirts, her screams were drowned by Lord Rutland’s shouts. Damiano punched her on the side of the head. She stared out the opened hatch, helpless to fight anymore.

  Through a haze, a figure in the darkness appeared at the aperture above, then in one swift move, he dropped onto her assailant. Damiano’s weight abruptly lifted off her. She rolled away, cringing and pulling into herself.

  “You swine,” snarled Lord Rutland.

  How had Lord Rutland come to be in her cell?

  In the darkness, the thud of a fist buried into flesh. Air wheezed from someone’s lungs. The outline of broad shoulders charged against another dark outline. She scrambled into the corner, the tiny confines of her cell, making it impossible to avoid the two men. Fists flew as hard and fast as the curses between blows. Knuckles crunched against jawbone again and again. Her food bucket rattled against the wall.

  “I promise you, Damiano,” Lord Rutland growled as they banged around in the small space. “You will be weeping with the devil when I’m done with you.” Fists pounded into flesh.

  Boots hammered above her across the deck. She glanced to the hatch. Damiano had left the hatch open and unlocked. That’s how Lord Rutland had gotten in. Their jailer had inadvertently freed him.

  “Damiano,” Captain Diogo roared and pointed his pistols. “Stop or I’ll shoot you both.” Within minutes, two deckhands lowered a ladder and hauled both men from her cell. A lantern held by one of the sailors blinded her view.

  “Damiano tried to attack her,” Nicholas said on the way out. “Your profit will diminish if she is defiled, Captain Diogo.”

  Alexandra’s heart sank with the truth of his words. A virgin was a highly-prized commodity on the slave market. Lord Rutland was protecting her by striking the captain with his greed.

  “You would lose a substantial amount.” Nicholas pressed when Captain Diogo hesitated. “Damiano should be punished to set an example.”

  “There is truth in what you say, Lord Rutland. But this is my ship and under my command. Get back into your cell.” And at the captain’s nod, a deckhand shoved Nicholas and sent him tumbling into his cell. Diogo turned to Damiano. “I have warned you to stay away from the woman. I will not have you lashed because I need every available seaman. But I’m taking away your profit share from this voyage. Consider my orders a mercy for disobeying me.”

  Damiano leaned away from his guards and spat into the grate. “Lord Rutland, you will pay. And to you, my lady. Think how it will be if there is a storm and you are locked below to suffer the fates of the sea as the ship sinks and the water rises over your head.”

  “I will have you tied to the mast if you disobey my orders,” Captain Diogo warned. “I lose my patience when my sleep is disturbed.”

  The hatch dropped with a thud, a lock clicked, sealing them in their separate cells once again. Alexandra sank to the floor, covered her face with her hands and wept.

  Nicholas thrust his hand through the hole. “Hold my hand,” he commanded.

  Fingers shaking, she lifted her hand and clasped his. Like the force of a thousand burning suns, the heat of his strength and energy surged through her.

  “Are you hurt?” She hated the idea of Lord Rutland being injured on her behalf.

  “Half of the blows he initiated never landed.”

  With her other hand, she ran her fingers over his knuckles, and like a blind child would, caressed their breadth and width and power. So much could be told about a person’s hands, and his were calloused like a blacksmith’s. She frowned with the incongruity. Aristocrats never labored. “Damiano will remember his humiliation.”

  “Oh, he will get even, if given the opportunity. I await the occasion with pleasure.”

  Her hand felt at home in his, like it should be meant for all time. “I hope Captain Diogo will keep a stern eye on him.”

  “I wish I could lash him until he could not breathe,” said Nicholas.

  A smile touched her lips. She sensed he bore his imprisonment with solid indifference, his fearlessness allowing him to escape any tragedy. He was heroic for sure, for he had come to her rescue.

  What if they were free from these wretched conditions, and had met under normal circumstances? Where the element of her birthright was proven and her rank in society solidified. Would they be friends? Would he court her?

  No. Too many impossibilities and too much dreaming. They weren’t free. They may never be free. Their fate lay in the hands of their captors.

  “Thank you…again,” she whispered. How she wanted to tear down the wall, to be comforted in his strong arms. But for now, she received some solace that his shoulder was leaned against hers with the wall between them.

  “I did nothing. You were very brave.”

  His voice came swift and sharp and sure like the thundering of the surf against the hull, making her feel safe. As safe as one could feel in such a situation. “You did,” she said. She held his hand and a warm feeling gushed through her. Never had she been so forward in her life to allow the intimacy of holding a man’s hand.

  In the darkness, the light of consolation had come from a stranger who wouldn’t desert her. She turned his hand over, drawing a trail from his wrist, across the palm to the tip of the longest finger. His hand flexed and straightened, then she folded his hand into hers and kissed his raw knuckles.

  “Tell me about your family,” he asked softly through the darkness.

  Where should she begin? Her heart caught in her chest. “My mother stayed at home, tending a garden. My father was a sea captain, traveling the oceans for many years until he retired. He shared his love of the sea. I
helped him untangle his nets. He taught me how to whittle and use a machete.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “I…uh—” she coughed, stalling. If she gave out too much, Ursula might… “—lived in a quiet little fishing village in the south of England. Nothing remarkable. People eke out a living however they can. Very modest.” She knew what he was thinking about her. How had a nice family yielded a thief? She did not want to travel that path. Not now. “We must think of the possibility of escape.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You fought with Damiano like a demon,” she whispered. “Your skill could come in handy when we arrive in Brazil. For now, we should pretend we are sick, malnourished and getting weaker. They will think we have no strength. Once we make port, we could fight them off and run. With my limited Portuguese, we could get help from someone, don’t you think?”

  From up above, Damiano leaned against the grate, looking furtively about. “There will be no help when you reach Brasilia, Senorita.”

  Alexandra touched her throat. Had Damiano heard what she’d said? No, the wind was too high.

  Damiano drooled, his saliva dropped next to her foot. “Have I told you of the Senor in Brasilia you are promised to? He’s gonna take you home once we get there. He wanted a light-haired woman and a virgin and was willing to pay a pretty price. His practices are extreme. Your arms and legs will be tied to the four corners of a bed. He loves a woman’s screams. Takes pleasure in it. No one will come to your aid for he is enormously rich. You will feel a hot surge in your loins repeatedly. And did I mention the toys he uses on his women? When he tires of you, he lets his friends have a turn.”

  “Go to hell, Damiano.” Nicholas leaped, grabbed the grate and pushed his fist through.

  Damiano reared back, missing the blow and clucked. “All his women have a bad end…they are torn apart from stem to stern.”

  Damiano continued his rant. “Lord Rutland, there will be no escape for you in the heart of the jungle, surrounded by venomous snakes…and insects as long as your hand that suck your blood. And in the jungle, there are very large cats that will sneak up on you, not to mention the piranha in the river, their sharp teeth can devour a man in seconds. You will die, too.”