Luc stalked back to the fire. He wouldn’t be on this damn island with this crew of criminal rabble in the first place if it was not for the attempted rape of a woman. Averil Heydon was frightened and that showed sense: she’d had every reason to be terrified until he took her away from the men. He could admire the fierce way she had stood up to him, but it only made her more of a damn nuisance and a dangerous liability. Thank God he no longer had to nurse her; intimacy with her body was disturbing and he had felt himself becoming interested in her more than was safe or comfortable. Now she was no longer sick and needing him, that weakness would vanish. He did not want to care for anyone ever again.
The crew looked up with wary interest from their food as he approached. Luc dropped down on to the flat rock they had accepted as the captain’s chair and took a platter from the cook’s hand. ‘Good stew, Potts. You all bored?’ They looked it: bored and dangerous. On a ship he would exercise them too hard for them to even think about getting into trouble: gun drill, small arms drill, repairs, sail drill—anything to tire them out. Here they could do nothing that would make a noise and nothing that could be seen from the south or east.
Luc lifted his face to the breeze. ‘Still blowing from the nor’west. That was a rich East Indiaman by all accounts—it’ll be worth beachcombing.’ They watched him sideways, shifting uneasily at the amiable tone of voice, like dogs who expect a kick and get their ears scratched instead. ‘And you get to keep anything you find, so long as you don’t fight over it and you bring me any mermaids.’
Greed and a joke—simple tools, but they worked. The mood lifted and the men began to brag of past finds and speculate on what could be washed up.
‘Ferret, have you got any spare trousers?’
Ferris—known to all as Ferret from his remarkable resemblance to the animal—hoisted his skinny frame up from the horizontal. ‘I ‘ave, Cap’n. Me Sunday best, they are. Brought ‘em along in case we went to church.’
‘Where you would steal the communion plate, no doubt. Are they clean?’
‘They are,’ he said, affronted, his nose twitching. And it might be the truth—there was a rumour that Ferret had been known to take a bath on occasion.
‘Then you’ll lend them to Miss Heydon.’
That provoked a chorus of whistles and guffaws. ‘Miss Heydon, eh! Cor, a mermaid with a name!’
‘Wot she want trousers for, Cap’n?’ Ferret demanded. ‘Don’t need trousers in bed.’
‘When I don’t want her in bed she can get up and make herself useful. She’s had enough time lying about getting over her ducking,’ Luc said. He had not given the men any reason to suppose Averil was unconscious and vulnerable. They had believed he was spending time in her bed, not that he was nursing her. His frequent absences seemed to have increased their admiration for him—or for his stamina. ‘I’ll have that leather waistcoat of yours while you’re at it.’
Ferret got to his feet and scurried off to the motley collection of canvas shelters under the lea of the hill that filled the centre of the island. St Helen’s was less than three-quarters of a mile across at its widest and rough stone structures littered the north-western slopes. Luc supposed they must have been the habitations of some ancient peoples, but he was no antiquarian. Now he was just glad of the shelter they gave to the men on the only flank of St Helen’s that could not be overlooked from Tresco or St Martin’s.
Stew finished, Luc got to his feet, took a small telescope from the pocket of his coat and turned to climb the hill. It took little effort, and he reckoned it was only about a hundred and thirty feet above the sea, but from here he commanded a wide panorama of the waters around the Scillies as well as being able to watch the men without them being aware of it. Beachcombing would keep them busy, but he did not want a knifing over some disputed treasure.
He put his notebook on a flat rock and set himself to log the patterns of movement between the islands, particularly the location of the brigs and the pilot gigs, the thirty-two-foot rowing boats that cut through the water at a speed that left the navy jolly-boat crews gasping. The calculations kept his mind off the woman in the hut below.
With six men on the oars the pilot gigs were said to venture as far afield as Roscoff smuggling, although the Revenue cutters did their best to stop them. They got their name from their legitimate purpose, to row out to incoming ships and drop off the pilots who were essential in this nightmare of rocks and reefs.
The gig he’d been given for this mission lay on the beach below, waiting for the word to launch with six men on the oars and the other seven of them crammed into the remaining space as best they could. Beside it was his own small skiff that he used to give verisimilitude to the story of his lone existence here.
For the men hunting amongst the rocks below him what happened next would bring either death or a pardon for their crimes. For him, if he survived and succeeded in carrying out his orders, it might restore the honour he had lost in following his conscience. Luc shied a pebble down the slope, sending a stonechat fluttering away with a furious alarm call.
Scolding loudly, the little bird resumed its perch on top of a gorse bush. ‘Easy for you to say, mon cher,’ Luc told it, as he narrowed his eyes against the sunlight on the waves. ‘All you have to worry about is the kestrel and his claws.’ Life and death—that was easy. Right and wrong, honour and expediency—now those were harder choices.
Chapter Three
Averil sat by the window with the old sack hooked back and studied what she could see through the thick, salt-stained glass. Sloping grass, a band of large pebbles that would be impossible to run on—or even cross quietly—then a fringe of sand that was disappearing under the rising tide.
Beyond, out in the sheltered sound, ships bobbed at anchor. Navy ships. Rescue, if only they were not too far away to hail. She could light a fire—but they knew Luke was here, so they would see nothing out of the ordinary in that. Set fire to the hut? But it was a sturdy stone building, so that wouldn’t work. Signal from the window with a sheet? But first she would have to break the thick glass, then think of something that would attract their attention without alerting her captors.
With a sigh she went back to searching the room. Luke had left his razor on a high shelf, but after the episode with the knife she did not think he would give her a chance to use it and she was beginning
to doubt whether she had it in her to kill a man. That was her conscience, she told herself, distracted for a moment by wondering why. It was nothing to do with the fact that she kept wondering if he could really be as bad as he appeared.
Intense grey eyes mean nothing, you fool, she chided herself. When darkness came he would come back here and then he would ravish her. His protestations about not taking an unconscious woman surely meant nothing, not now she was awake.
Averil thought about the ‘little talk’ her aunt had had with her just before she sailed for England and an arranged marriage. There would be no female relative there to explain things to her before her marriage to the man she had never met, so the process had been outlined in all its embarrassing improbability, leaving her far too much time, in her opinion, to think about it on the three-month voyage.
Her friend Lady Perdita Brooke, who had been sent to India in disgrace after an unwise elopement, had intimated that it was rather a pleasurable experience with the right man. Dita had not considered what it would be like being forced by some ruffian in a stone hut on an island, surrounded by a pack of even worse villains. But then, Dita would have had no qualms about using that knife.
The light began to fail. Soon he would be here and she had no plan. To fight, or not to fight? He could overpower her easily, she realised that. She knew a few simple tricks to repel importunate males, thanks to her brothers, but none of them would be much use in a situation like this where there was no one to hear her screams and nowhere to run to.
If she fought him, he would probably hurt her even more badly than she feared. Best to simply lie there like a corpse, to treat him with disdain and show no fear, only that she despised him.
That was more easily resolved than done she found when the door opened again and Luke came in followed by two of the men. One carried what looked like a bundle of clothes, the other balanced platters and had a bottle stuck under his arm.