Heart's Ransom

  * * *

  “I am sorry,” Rafe said over his fourth cup of wine.

  Neither he nor Catherine had touched a bite of supper. They sat facing one another in the same heavy silence that had shrouded them for much of the afternoon. She did not respond to the sound of his voice, not so much as a flutter of her eyelashes. Rafe sighed unhappily, looking down at his wine glass.

  “I…I should not have spoken so harshly to you this morning. I should not have grabbed your arm, hurt you.” He sighed once more. “It will not happen again.”

  She pressed her lips together, a minute reaction to his words. Her gaze remained stoically averted.

  “I do not want this,” he said helplessly. “I did not mean for this, any of it.”

  She cut her eyes toward him. “Then why are you doing it?”

  He toyed with the basin of the wine glass. You do not understand.

  “Is it your brother?” Catherine asked. “Is he making you do this somehow?”

  Rafe lifted the glass. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, not even tasting the wine as it rolled down the back of his throat. “I am making myself do this.”

  She looked at him, those large eyes as fixed on his as if she could see. “I do not believe you.”

  He refilled his wine glass. “I do not care.” He did not need to explain himself to her. He did not need to plead for her understanding.

  How could she understand, anyway? She had no idea, no appreciation for the burdens that came with being the first-born son. He had always shouldered responsibility not only to his father, but to Cristobal, as well―more so for Cristobal, because Evarado had been away from home and out to sea so much during their youth. Rafe had been left in charge during Evarado’s lengthy absences. And when Cristobal had been injured, the responsibility for his recuperation had been left to Rafe, as well. His father had trusted him to it.

  And I failed them both, he thought, sighing heavily, his breath ragged. He drained his wine glass dry once more and reached for the decanter.

  “You drink too much.”

  He frowned at Catherine as he poured himself another cup. “That is none of your concern.”

  “It most certainly is,” she replied, and some of the haughty arrogance had returned to her voice, that annoying note of over-confidence that grated on him like fingernails against a slate. “I am chained to you, and apparently will be so for the duration of this miserable, ill-begotten voyage.”

  He had told her there was nothing aboard the ship that could cut through the chains binding them, and in her innocent naiveté, she had believed him. They would have to wait, he had told her, until they reached port, and then they would go to a blacksmith to see the cuffs removed. She had accepted this far more easily than he had anticipated. He had rather hoped that she would raise a fuss, arguing and caterwauling enough so that he could have convinced Cristobal of the plan’s lunacy. But she hadn’t; she was clearly unhappy about their circumstances, but resigned to them nonetheless, and thus, Rafe had proceeded to drink himself witless dinner.

  “Are you going to make a habit of drinking so much wine every night?” Catherine asked from across the table.

  His brows narrowed. “I might, yes.”

  She jerked against the bonds under some feigned pretense of reaching for her spoon, and his frown deepened as wine sloshed over the rim of his glass, splattering against his lap. “You are pathetic,” she muttered, making no real effort to keep him from hearing.

  Claudio had told him that rumor had spread among the crew of his predicament. Splendid, Rafe had thought, finding in this yet another reason to get mind-numbing drunk. The men were not willing to believe that the cuffs had no key to begin with, or that any son of Evarado Serrano Pelayo might have so easily fallen into so ludicrous a trap.

  “Some say she is a witch,” Claudio had told him in Spanish, cutting a wary glance at Catherine, as if he, too, lent some credence to this. “That she cursed the chains.”

  “Well, that is just rot,” Rafe had said, although he felt like he had indeed been cursed by Catherine Ransom. She was proving she could certainly be a witch when she set her mind to it. Or something that at least rhymes with ‘witch,’ he thought, scowling as he tried to wipe the spilled wine off his pants.