Heart's Ransom

CHAPTER TWO

  They do not know who I am, Kitty thought once she had been delivered aboard a ship. It must have been set at anchor off the coast of the island in the English Channel while the crewmen who had taken her had gone ashore on a landing skiff. They were underway now; she could feel the sensation of the ship in motion all around her, and through the stern windows, she could hear churning water as the ship plowed a broad wake.

  They have kidnapped me, she thought. The bloody idiots.

  The men did not know who she was: Catherine Ransom―“Kitty” among those known well and fondly―daughter of Captain John Ransom, the reputed “Hawk of the High Seas.”

  They could not know, she thought. If they did, they would be fools to take me.

  She had been brought below the main deck into what she assumed was the captain’s quarters, giving its location on the stern end of the ship. The tall man from the beach had carried her there, and Kitty had moved carefully about the quarters, her hands outstretched, her footsteps hesitant lest she flounder into the hard corner of a wayward piece of furniture.

  She had explored the room cautiously, discovering well-laden bookshelves; a writing desk covered in mountains of papers, parchments, opened tomes; a broad bed with heavily quilted coverlets and tall, carved frame posts; a large wardrobe with a cool, glossy surface that was locked for some reason. She ran her hands across it all in turn, formulating a floor plan in her mind, imagining the chamber around her.

  This was a habit she had developed early in her childhood, because otherwise her father would have been content to see her spend the rest of her life in the sanctuary of her bedroom, or with handmaids and valets to guide her about. She had not been born blind, but a fever had stripped her sight from her when she had been very young. She did not remember much of being able to see, but she remembered the litany of abuses that had been passed off as medicinal measures as a parade of so-called “physicians” had tried to cure her of the handicap. Her hair had been cut, her body bled regularly. Her diet had been altered, her liquid intake curtailed, enemas administered and vomitting induced, until finally, she had been more miserable from these “treatments” than any ailment. Her father had relented, accepting at last and years later, that to which Kitty had long-since grown accustomed.

  She had learned to visualize things inside of her mind based on touch, to memorize the layout of rooms, even the entire breadth of Rosneath and most of its surrounding terrain. Sometimes she would use one of her father’s walking canes to guide her, tapping it back and forth in a sweeping path before her. Other times, she relied on her outstretched hands and the careful measuring of footfalls. Ten paces from the bed’s footboard to the wardrobe, she thought. Turn about three paces and then it is twenty-seven more to the desk. The bookshelves are to the portside, five paces from the desk, and then around about and back again, fifteen steps to the bed.

  That was how she had learned the path from Rosneath down to the beach, along the rocky, treacherous trail. At first, she had gone in the company of servants, her young handmaids whom she had begged and pleaded into compliance. Then, as her confidence had grown, as had the staff’s faith in her inherent sense of direction, she had made the trek alone more times than she could recount. Of course, if John Ransom had ever learned of these sojourns, he would have promptly keeled over, likely dead on the spot. She was a grown woman now, yet he continued to dote upon her as if she were a child, or some fragile porcelain doll best left kept high on a shelf. Now matter her insistence or how often she had tried, he could not―or would not―admit that Kitty was not nearly as helpless as he believed.

  Her father would come for her; of this, she had no doubt. But in the meantime, she thought, it would not hurt to find something to use for a weapon. Thus far, her curious endeavors had yielded nothing more promising than a quill, but she kept exploring still the same, patting against a wash basin in futile hope.

  An officer in the English Royal Navy, John Ransom had earned his reputation first during the War of Jenkin’s Ear in the Caribbean almost ten years earlier. He had assumed the helm of his man-of-war following the death of his commander in an off-shore skirmish against Spanish privateers. From this vantage of command, Ransom had not only captured the Spanish ship, but shackled and delivered her crew to the nearest British outpost. By doing so, he had also rescued a veritable fortune in gold and silver bouillon bound in her cargo hull for Spain from West Indies mines.

  In the years following the war, as captain of his own frigate, Ransom had hunted down and captured at least twenty-two vessels suspected of piracy or privateering in both the Caribbean and in European waters. His nickname, the Hawk of the High Seas, had come from his reputation for swooping upon his unsuspecting adversaries and catching them off-guard, much as a hawk seizes hapless prey. Ransom’s exploits and adventures had swelled to nearly legendary proportions both in England and abroad, and he was considered a hero in his homeland―perhaps England’s most famous citizen beside the king.

  No man escaped John Ransom on the high seas once he had set his mind and frigate against them. He would come for Kitty; the hand of God Himself could not have prevented him.

  A soft clack from across the room startled her, and she turned as she heard the chamber door, unlocked from beyond the threshold, swing open. Reflexively, she shied back against the nearest wall. She heard footsteps, a strange, shuffling sound as if someone approached with a maimed leg or injured foot.

  “Who is there?” she asked, her hands outstretched. The man who had seized her at Rosneath had walked with just such a limp―and he had also proven violent toward her. The taller man might have delivered her to the ship, this chamber, but he had done so in a nearly gentle fashion, and of the two, she would have rather been facing him at the moment.

  “Who is there?” she said again, when no one answered her. Her voice warbled slightly with fear, quivering shrilly. She heard a quiet snicker, a mean little snort of laughter from directly in front of her, and she shied again, pushing her hands in that direction. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “You really are blind,” said the man from the manor house, his voice as unmistakable to her as the unfamiliar, heavy accent punctuating it. Kitty cried out as his hands clamped heavily about her wrists. The man jerked her toward him, spinning her around, making her stagger clumsily in his tow.

  “Let go of me!” she said, and then she yelped as he shoved her mightily, sending her stumbling. The backs of her knees met the side of the bed and she fell against the covers. Before she could even scramble to her feet again, much less try to fight him, he was upon her, grasping her wrists again and shoving her forcibly down against the mattress.

  “No!” Kitty cried, struggling as he fell against her, his weight pinning her down. He forced her arms above her head and closed one of his hands about both of her wrists. His free hand moved, reaching between them, and she heard the sound of him wrestling with the ties on his breeches, unfettering them.

  “No!” she cried again, shaking her head, shrugging her shoulders, bucking her hips, trying anything in her desperation to get him off of her. “Get off of me! Leave me alone!”

  “Be quiet,” the man said, releasing her wrists and clapping his hand over her mouth to muffle her. Kitty screamed around his hand, beating at him with her fists, because now that his pants were opened, he was tearing at her nightgown, satisfied with ripping it off of her when he proved unable to hike the hem above her hips quickly enough.

  Her fighting only made him all the more determined―and all the more enraged. His hand left her mouth and she heard a sharp hiss of wind as he swung at her. The blow as he struck her snapped her head toward her shoulder and left her ears ringing with the force; she felt a tickling in her nose as blood slid in a thin stream toward her cheek. When she opened her mouth to cry out, he slapped her again, and her hands fell away from him, her protests subsiding as she reeled.

  She felt his hand hook against her gown again, ripping at the fabric, and then, all
at once he was gone. She heard him utter a breathless squawk of surprise, followed by a loud crash as he fell away from her. Someone else had come into the room: the tall man from the beach―she recognized his voice. He shouted at the other man, speaking in what sounded like Spanish or Italian, his tone sharp and angry.

  The two argued, a furious exchange Kitty did not understand at all. She shied back on the bed, gasping for breath, trying to drag her poor, tattered gown back into place about her legs. She touched her nose with tentative fingertips, and winced at the soreness even this gentle touch brought. When the shouting abruptly ended, and the chamber door slammed shut with a startling report, she fell still and silent, her breath hiccupping beneath her bosom, her eyes wide.

  “Who…who is there?” she said, because one of the men remained. She had heard only one set of footsteps just before the door had slammed. She thought it had been the slight, scuffling sound of the limping man’s gait, but she couldn’t be certain.

  “It is alright,” the tall man said. “He is gone now. He will not hurt you anymore.”

  She felt him touch her, his hand falling lightly against her calf, and she recoiled in bright, new terror. He might have just prevented his fellow from raping her, but that did not mean he had not done only so because he wanted first turn.

  “Do not touch me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and damnably tremulous with fear.

  “I will not hurt you, either,” the tall man said, his voice gentle. She heard a splattering of water from the basin and jerked her face toward the sound. When he leaned over the bed, pressing the corner of a cool, wet rag against her bloodied nose, she jerked away, slapping at him.

  “I said do not touch me,” she said, forcing resolve into her words, ferocity into her tone.

  The man was quiet for a long moment, and then let the rag fall against her lap. “Alright,” he said.

  Kitty lifted the rag and drew it toward her face, sniffling against the rivulet of blood from her nose. She blotted gingerly at her nostril.

  “Pinch the bridge and lean your head forward,” the man said.

  She ignored him, keeping the rag where she had placed it. She heard a quiet jangling sound, like keys on a keyring, followed by a low creaking. The wardrobe, she realized. He is opening the wardrobe.

  “My name is Catherine Ransom,” she said. “Please, I am blind.”

  “Yes, I realize that,” the man replied, adding swiftly, quietly and with inexplicable rue: “Now.”

  “I have not seen your faces, any of you,” Kitty said. “You can let me go. No one will ever know differently. You can just let me go.”

  “No,” the man said, his voice approaching her again. “I cannot.”

  She heard something drop against the bed, lightweight and slight, and flinched at the sound. “It is a clean shirt, some dry breeches,” he said. “I have you in the length, but they should still fit. You can change when I am gone.”

  He touched her again, his hands against her ankles, and frightened, she jumped, kicking at him. He caught her ankles firmly, but stilled her voice before she could cry out. “I give you my word that no man aboard this ship will show you another discourtesy as long as you are among us―myself included. I only want to examine your feet. You cut them open on the rocks.”

  She did not fight him, but nor did she relax as he touched her feet. She held her legs as stiffly as cross beams as she felt his fingertips prod lightly against her sore and swollen soles. To her surprise, he bathed her feet, drawing a cool, damp rag against them each in turn, carefully washing away sand and mud. There was something gentle and experienced in his touch, and she had the distinct impression that this gesture was not some sort of courtesy he extended, or an effort to endear himself to her. He worked clinically, as if he simply knew to do so, and approached the task out of habit.

  She heard soft, unusual sounds, tinkling and clunking, and the only explanation she could conjure in her mind was that he sifted through a wooden box filled with glass or ceramic vessels lined closely together, so that they would clink against one another if jarred even slightly. She caught a whiff of something distinct and pungent, and jumped when he touched her feet, applying something cold and slimy against her skin.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, repulsed, trying to draw away from him. “What is that?”

  “Basil and garlic paste,” he replied, holding her ankle firmly when she tried to kick him away. “Stop that.”

  “You stop,” she said. “It is cold and it smells terrible.”

  “It will keep fever from settling in your wounds,” he said and his grasp on her leg tightened. “Pare, pasado!” he snapped at her in his foreign tongue, and she did not need to understand him to glean his meaning: Hold still!

  She stopped squirming and felt him begin to wrap strips of linen about her feet, swaddling them. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name is Rafe Serrano Beltran.” He finished binding her feet and released her, drawing his hands away. He shifted his weight, leaning against the mattress. When he touched her face, his hand drawing the damp rag she held somewhat loosely against her nose more securely in place, she jerked away.

  “Pinch the bridge of your nose and tilt your head forward,” he said. “It will stop the bleeding faster that way.”

  “How would you know?” she demanded, directing a glower toward the sound of his voice.

  “I am a physician,” he replied, and his tone lent itself to a wry smile. “I studied medicine and surgery in Madrid.”

  She was surprised into momentary silence. Why would a physician be a part of a kidnapping? she thought. “Is that where you are from, Spain?” she asked, and then, in sudden, breathless dismay: “Is that where you are taking me?”

  “No,” Rafe said. She heard the soft clinking again as he gathered together his supplies and carried them back to the wardrobe. “I am bringing you to Lisbon, in Portugal.”

  Portugal? Kitty thought. Her fear had diminished with her would-be rapist gone, and up until that moment, she had summoned enough inner pluck to bait Rafe, challenge him. The realization that this was real; it was not just a game undertaken by mischievous boys, and that she might be in genuine danger returned now and in full, shuddering through her. “Please,” she said quietly, turning her face toward the sound of him, his footsteps as he moved to leave the room. “Whatever you want, my father will give it to you. Whatever your price, whatever you ask of him that is within his power, he will do it. He will do whatever you say for my safe return.”

  Again, the sound of Rafe’s voice seemed to hint at a crooked smile. “I am counting on that, Catherine,” he said, and she heard the chamber door close behind him.