Heart's Ransom

  * * *

  Rafe could not find Claudio. Distraught, he had left Kitty and immediately headed downstairs for the servants’ quarters, where Claudio was staying. He found the boatswain’s chamber door ajar, the small room empty. Strangely, the bed clothes were in disarray, pulled loose from the mattress and left in a tangled pile on the floor. The empty chamber pot had been overturned, and Claudio’s shirt lay in a heap in the middle of the room. Rafe frowned, kneeling to retrieve it, and his frown deepened as he saw what looked like spatters of drying blood staining the bone-colored linen.

  When he lifted the shirt from the floor, Rafe’s puzzlement turned to concern. Claudio’s medal of Saint Telmo, a small pendant featuring the embossed image of the patron saint of mariners, lay beneath. Claudio always wore the medal affixed to a slender chain; in all of his life, Rafe doubted he had ever seen the older man without it. Rafe glanced about until he saw a wink of sunlight creeping in through the narrow slit of the room’s window against metal, and found the necklace’s chain just beneath the bed. It had been broken, the links yanked violently enough to shear them, sending the chain tumbling in one direction apparently, and the medallion in the other.

  Rafe rose to his feet, frowning again. He tucked the St. Telmo’s medal into his pocket and left the room.

  “Good morrow, Rafe,” Isabel called to him as he walked across the foyer, and passed the threshold to her parlor. Her voice was remarkably pleasant and bright for a woman who had been scorned only the night before, and Rafe paused, feeling decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Good…good morrow, Isabel.” He did not want to see her that morning. He had wanted simply to rouse Claudio and see him off with Kitty for the wharfs. He had wanted to collect his things and be gone from the hacienda before Isabel had even risen.

  She was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair before a small table that had been set with a tea service. She cradled a delicately wrought cup in her hand and blew over the rim before taking a tentative sip. “Would you care for some tea?”

  She was being far too nice. Rafe’s brows narrowed slightly, warily. “No,” he said. “Thank you. I…I was looking for Claudio.”

  “Your boatswain? I believe Maria told me he left sometime very early, before dawn. He said something about going to the docks.”

  An awkward moment of silence fell, and Rafe struggled to find an escape. This was the last circumstance in the world he wanted to be in; he wanted to turn, rush back up the stairs, and return to Kitty. He wanted to hold her, plead with her, make her understand. He had not wanted to hurt her―he would as soon run himself through as see harm come to her, much less by his own hand. I love you, he wanted to cry to her. Madre de Dios, woman, can you not see that? Do you not understand that is why I have to send you away?

  “Rafe, please,” Isabel said, setting her tea cup aside and rising to her feet. “Will you join me? I would like to speak with you. I…I would like to apologize.”

  He blinked at her in surprise. She looked down at the hem of her black dress, her brows lifted, her eyes downcast and pained. “It is not an easy thing for me,” she said quietly. “And I…I would as soon do it in closer quarters than to shout it across the room to you.”

  “Of course,” Rafe said, shocked momentarily witless. Here was a side to Isabel he had never seen in all of the time he had known her. The humble, nearly sheepish woman before him was an absolute stranger.

  “Would you like some brandy?” she asked as he approached. “It is early, yet, but…”

  “Yes, thank you,” he said with a nod. He was heartbroken, bewildered and still somewhat wary of this seemingly new, penitent Isabel. All at once, a deep snifter of brandy was just what he needed.

  He watched her cross the room to a small brandy service. She stood with her back to him, and he listened to the soft clink of the decanter as it tapped a cup while she poured. It was funny how he had come to pay attention to the sounds of things now; the way he would unconsciously try to appreciate the world the way Kitty did. Everything has a sound, she had told him aboard the ship, while they had been chained together. Even when most people think it is absolutely silent, I can hear things―so many wonderful things. Just the rustle of fabric, or the whisper your hand makes when you run your fingers through your hair…the soft sounds most people never pay any mind to at all, they all paint the world for me.

  He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. I do not want to think about Kitty.

  The chain around his wrist jangled as he moved his hand, and he felt the slight weight of the empty manacle that dangled and swung beneath his arm. “When will the man from Barrañan arrive?” he asked. He was ready to be rid of that damnable thing―the sooner it, and Kitty Ransom were behind him, the better.

  Isabel walked toward him, holding a tumbler of brandy between her hands. She looked puzzled. “Who?”

  “The man from Barrañan,” Rafe said again, accepting the glass. He pressed the rim to his lips and tilted his head back. She had filled it generously, but he still drained it in a single swallow. “You said you would send for him today, to get this cuff off of me.”

  “Oh,” Isabel said, smiling. “Yes. I have already sent word. It should not be long. Would you like another? I know you have always fancied your drink.”

  Suddenly, the idea of drowning his sorrows in liquor―as was his customary habit―appealed greatly to Rafe. “Yes, please, Isabel,” he said, letting her draw the cup from his hand. “I would fancy that indeed.”

  “I am sorry for last evening,” she said as she returned to the decanter. “It was wrong of me to think you might still have feelings for me. It has been so long, and you have been gone all of this while, and I…”

  “Isabel,” he said, pained. Already, he could feel the warmth of the brandy, which had pooled comfortably in his stomach, spreading throughout his body, loosening his tongue, relaxing his mind. “I do still have feelings for you. I care for you very much.”

  “But you do not love me,” she said quietly, unhappily. She brought the snifter to him, filled anew and watched as again, he downed it.

  “You broke my heart.” He set aside the cup and reached for her, cradling her face between his hands. “Isabel, there was a time when I would have died for you. I loved you so much, I felt as though I could not breathe to be apart from you. I would have given everything I had―anything I would ever have―to be with you, but you married Guillermo. Maybe I do not blame you for that…maybe, in your position, I would have done no differently. I do not know.”

  He walked away from her, bringing his glass to the brandy and refilling it again. He canted his head back and swallowed the liquor. The heat had filled him now, and he could feel it dulling his senses, bringing the soothing, expected relief and release for which he had been longing.

  “But it is different now,” he said quietly, standing with his back to her. I am different now. And I am in love with someone else.

  He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his gut and he winced. Puzzled, he pressed his hand against his stomach and felt the pang subside. He should have known better than to fill his stomach with brandy without eating first; he’d foregone lunch the day before, and supper after that, so it had been a good twenty-four hours, if not more, since he had last eaten.

  He turned toward Isabel, wanting to ask if he could beg some breakfast from her, but then another stabbing pain wrenched through him, and he buckled, doubling over at the waist and crying out hoarsely. The brandy snifter fell from his hand and shattered against the floor. Rafe collapsed to his knees, catching himself with one hand lest he pitch face-first against the tiles. He shoved his other hand against his midriff, his face twisted with pain as he gasped for breath. All at once, his lungs felt thick and heavy, as if some enormous weight had been pressed against his chest, and when a third spasm seared through him, he could not even summon the wind to cry out. He crumpled to the floor, wracked with agony, drawing his knees to his chest in a vain effort to stave the
crippling, paralyzing pain.

  “Rafe?” Isabel walked toward him. He could hear the soft, swift rustle of her skirt, sounds he might never have paid attention to before had he not met Kitty. “Rafe, what is the matter?”

  He struggled to get his hands beneath him, to push himself up. He gasped for labored breath, managing to lift his head, but then another shudder of pain seized him and he collapsed once more, his voice escaping him in an agonized, strangled cry.

  “Rafe, are you alright?” Isabel asked, and the rustling of fabric fell immediately beside him as she knelt, touching his shoulder. “Are you in pain, lover?”

  At her words, as her voice shifted from sweet concern to something colder and more calculating, Rafe understood. He remembered what her housekeeper, Maria, had told him.

  Others still say she poisoned him to be rid of him, to clear her bed for an absent lover.

  He had thought the woman was only joking, making a pointed barb meant to chastise him for his past dalliances with Isabel. He lifted his head. His vision was swimming, his mind reeling, but he saw Isabel beside him, watching him with an impassive expression, the sort of cool detachment she might have reserved for watching an insect impaled on a sewing needle as it struggled in its feeble death throes.

  “You…” he gasped, struggling to reach for her, to clap his hand against her throat. “You…bitch…”

  Another spear of pain lanced through him, the strongest yet, and he jerked, his arms wrapping about his midriff, his body folded over as he writhed in agony. “G-God…!” he screamed, his voice choked and strained. “What have you done to me, you bitch?”

  “Now, now, Rafe, there is no way to speak to la Condesa,” he heard a familiar voice say―just as he heard a familiar, shuffling set of footsteps.

  “No,” he whimpered, shaking his head in stunned disbelief as Cristobal walked into the room. “No…oh…oh, God, no…!” Cristobal was smiling; the veritable cat that has just swallowed the hapless songbird. “Cristobal…wh-why…?”

  “Why?” Cristobal asked, and he drew his foot back, kicking Rafe mightily in the gut. Rafe twisted, crying out hoarsely at the brutal, painful impact.

  “Because I hate you, Rafe,” Cristobal said, kicking Rafe again. “You ruined my leg.” Again, he punted Rafe’s stomach. “You ruined my life.”

  Rafe lay in a heap against the floor, shuddering, gagging. When another spasm of pain wrenched through his middle, he was helpless against it; he cried out softly, breathlessly, feeling his mind fading, abandoning him.

  “It was not supposed to be like this,” Cristobal told him, his voice nearly gentle. “You were not supposed to die, Rafe. You were just supposed to stay here―chained, if need be―in Isabel’s company.” He laughed, kicking Rafe one last time. “But I think I like this way much better.”

  “You turned me away and then slept with that espantapájaros―that English whore―in my house, you misbegotten bastard,” Isabel seethed, closing her fist in Rafe’s hair and forcing him to look up at her. She spat in his face, her brows furrowed, her eyes alight with murderous ferocity. “Did you think I would not find out? Did you think I would not realize?”

  She shoved his head away and then slapped him again and again, driving the heel of her hand against his cheek.

  “I saw you with my own eyes, sullying yourself with that blind, horse-faced bitch,” Cristobal said, and when Isabel finished striking him, he resumed his furious kicking again in earnest, driving his boot repeatedly into Rafe’s gut. “Did you enjoy yourself, Rafe? Was she a suitable lover?”

  He leaned over, grabbing Rafe’s hair and wrenching his head back. “I will find out for myself very shortly, brother,” he hissed against Rafe’s ear. “I will take my own turn and see how she fares. She will not be able to walk when I am through with her.”

  “No!” Rafe gasped, struggling not to faint, to succumb to the shadows that threatened to swallow him whole. “No, you…bastard…leave her alone…!”

  Cristobal laughed, turning loose of his hair, letting him crumple to the ground again. “Why, here is your little English rose now. Maybe I will start right in front of you, let you watch us for a bit.”

  Rafe heard Kitty’s voice, muffled, crying out his name, and his heart seized in despair. No, please! Mother of God, do not let them hurt her. Please…!

  Kitty fell beside him, either pushed there or stumbling of her own accord. Her hands were bound behind her back, but she folded herself atop him, shuddering against him, weeping. She had been gagged, but she mewled at him in frightened, inarticulate panic around the wad of cloth lashed between her lips.

  Cristobal grabbed her hair, jerking her backwards, and she screamed as he forced her to her feet. “No…!” Rafe gasped, forcing himself to raise his head, to fight the swelling crescendo of pain that tore through his midriff. He could hardly see; the room was spinning, his fragile consciousness waning.

  “Do…do not hurt her,” he seethed at Cristobal, even as his eyes rolled back in his skull and his eyelids fluttered closed. “Do not…touch her…”

  He did not remember collapsing to the floor. The world had gone dark, and even the silence had been unbroken.