* * *
“Did you touch her?” John asked. He had ordered Rafe delivered to his quarters aboard the Precipice. Here, he had stood alone with the younger man, his expression twisted with murderous outrage. He had not yet allowed Rafe as much as a breath or word in edgewise and Rafe knew that, at least in Ransom’s eyes, he had already been tried and found guilty of any countless number of grievous charges.
“Did you touch my daughter?” John seethed again. “Because I promise if you did, if your hands have been upon her―or any other part of you―then I shall draw my blade against those most offending parts and rend them henceforth from your form. Do you understand me, boy?”
“I did not touch her, sir,” Rafe said. He did not lie to spare himself; he lied to protect Kitty, to grant her those virtues once more, at least in the telling, that he had taken from her in form.
John stood next to him, so close that Rafe could feel his breath against his cheek. His face was still flushed, his jaw tightened and tense with fury, his hands balled tightly into fists. Rafe kept his shoulders hunched, his eyes on the narrow margin of rug visible between his feet. His throat had constricted and his heart hammered in an anxious cadence beneath his shirt breast.
“I am ordering your ship secured,” John told him. “And once that is done, we are following your fellows. If your father thinks that I will be impressed by his sacrifice―leaving his son in his stead―he is sorely mistaken. I am going to follow him. I am going to capture him. And when I am finished, the two of you will throttle together from the gallows, side by side. You can mark me at―”
“My father is not aboard that ship, sir,” Rafe said, drawing John’s voice to a surprised halt. Rafe looked up from his shoes, meeting the older man’s gaze for the first time. Kitty had her father’s eyes, the same striking hue of sea-foam green. Ransom’s eyes were as cool as marble in Rafe’s regard, as flat and emotionless as if he no more than watched a beetle caught against his clothing.
“Please, sir,” Rafe said. “My father is not aboard that ship. He is dead, sir.”
At this, a hint of emotion passed across Ransom’s stoic gaze, a fleeting softening.
“This was not his campaign, sir,” Rafe said. “It was mine, undertaken with my brother, sir, in vengeance for that loss.” He looked down at the ground again. “And it is over now, sir. I give you my word that it is.”
John’s hand closed firmly against his chin, wrenching his gaze from the floor and forcing him to look up. “And what makes you think I lend one measure of merit to your word, boy?”
“You have no reason to, sir,” Rafe said, sucking in a hurting, hissing breath as John’s grasp tightened against his jaw. “But, please, I offer it to you just the same. My father was many things, sir, but a liar was not among them. He never demanded anything otherwise from me.”
John shoved Rafe away from him, sending him stumbling back a step. “I shot your father in self-defense,” he said.
Rafe nodded. “Yes, sir. I know.”
“He drew upon me,” John said. “I nearly died myself―and have a scar on my breast that pains me yet, thanks to your father’s aim.”
Rafe nodded again. “I know, sir.”
“There was no malice in it, boy. It is the way of things. Your father knew the risks he took in his pursuits.”
“Yes, sir.”
John had obviously expected an argument from Rafe, some manner of protest―anything but this quiet, humble resignation. He stood there for a moment, nearly sputtering in frustrated bewilderment and then he reached forward, catching hold of the loose manacle dangling from Rafe’s arm and giving it a demonstrative shake. “Why is this chain around your wrist?”
Rafe looked down at the offending cuff. John Ransom had not killed him yet, but here was the portion of the story in which the man would most likely shoot him where he planted his feet unless he treaded very carefully and selected his words even more so. “Your daughter put it there, sir.”
John blinked in surprise. “My daughter?”
Rafe nodded. “Yes, sir, during an attempt to escape. She found these among my things and tried to clap them on me, to hold me hostage and see my ship turned for England again.”
John’s brows raised. “My daughter?”
“She drove her knee into my groin, too, sir. Took the wind right out of me.”
“My daughter?” John asked again, and Rafe could not decide if he looked more startled or pleased. “She told me outside that you saved her―you kept her safe all of this while.”
“If I may say, sir, she proved quite capable of that herself,” Rafe said.
John’s expression shifted again, hardening once more, as if Rafe had offered some untoward comment, instead of a compliment. “What happened to your hand?”
“My brother shot me,” Rafe replied, lowering his gaze unhappily to the floor.
He felt John’s fingertips hook beneath the shelf of his chin, turning his face to him again. “Why would he do that?”
“Because I wanted to let Kitty go, sir,” Rafe said. “I wanted to let all of this go. My heart was not in it any longer. It…it has never been in it from the first.” My heart was with your daughter, he wanted to say, but choked back the words. And there it remains, sir, helplessly bound.
“My brother is dead, sir,” Rafe told John. “He shot me and fell overboard, lost at sea. You have no need to worry or fear any longer. I do not want revenge, and there is no one left to seek it in my stead.”
Ransom caught his right wrist, drawing Rafe’s bandaged hand up. “Take off the bandages,” he said.
He did not believe Rafe, not in full, not yet. Rafe did not blame him; he had offered the man a story that surely sounded ridiculous to his consideration. For all Ransom knew, Kitty could have bitten him to fend off a rape attempt, or worse, he might have feigned injury altogether to play upon John’s sympathies. He began to unfetter the swaddling wrapped around his wounds. When at last, the thin fabric drew away from the tender, newly stitched injuries, he gasped softly at the startling pain, and stumbled slightly.
“Mother of God,” John murmured in aghast, catching Rafe by the wrist, his grasp less rough this time. Even though sutured, the wounds had lost none of their gruesome impact. Blood still seeped from between the carefully fashioned stitches, and there was no mistaking or denying the inevitable, crippling potential the injuries would surely bear. “Sit against the bed, boy. What have you done to yourself? I will summon my shipboard physician. He―”
“I am a physician, sir,” Rafe said, startling John anew. “I have overseen my own treatment, and I…I would as soon trust no other.”
He folded his legs beneath him, dropping to his knees. He hung his head, the crown of his hair brushing against Ransom’s legs. “Please let the other ship go, sir. It is filled with good men, none of whom committed any crime more grievous than to follow the orders of their captain. They will cause no more trouble to you, sir. I have left them in the charge of a good man, sir―a good Christian, sir, and an even better captain―and he will see to that. I give you my word that he will.”
Jerking and tugging against the bandages, no matter how gingerly, had stoked pain anew in his hand, sending it in throbbing, wretched waves up his arm and through his entire form. His head swam and he groaned softly.
“I beg you,” he whispered. “Have mercy on my crew. Let them go. Whatever you want, whatever punishment England deems just for my offenses, I will take without complaint. Please, sir. I beg you.”