Bob Gallen, first mate aboard the Sea Shroud, knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, calling to his captain.
Frowning, he opened the cabin door and stood stock-still for a moment, staring first at his unconscious captain and then at the motionless white-faced girl who was wearing his captain’s shirt.
“Oh no,” he said. He bent down to examine Jameson Wilkes. “He’ll be all right, I think,” he said, raising his eyes to Juliana. “Look, miss, I’m sorry about all this, but what you’ve done was utterly stupid. Jesus.” Bob plowed his hand through his thick brown hair.
“Please,” Juliana whispered, “please help me.”
“I can’t,” Bob said. “Both of us would wish ourselves dead if I did.” He quickly untied the captain’s wrists and lifted him in his arms. He laid him on the bed.
“Get me into one of the boats, that’s all I ask! Please!”
He shook his head. From the corner of his eye he saw the girl race toward the door. He caught her easily and pulled her back. He shook her.
“Don’t, for God’s sake! You’re not stupid! You know what the men did to your friend, don’t you, before she jumped?”
“I don’t care,” Juliana spat at him, struggling with all her might. “I hope he dies!”
“Look, Miss DuPres, I don’t approve his taking a missionary’s daughter, but I have no say in the matter. For god’s sake, even if I managed to get you in a boat and away from the ship, you’d die soon enough.”
“All of you are evil! God, I hope you die too!”
Both of them froze at the groan from the bed. As if mesmerized, Jules watched Jameson Wilkes slowly sit up and gingerly rub his head.
4
“Well, Bob, may I inquire as to the reason for your presence?” Before Bob Gallen could reply—a difficult matter in any case, since he felt strangled with fear—Jameson Wilkes continued, “Ah, I see the problem. You look charming in my shirt, Juliana. Did you strike me?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice shrill with fear. “I only wish I’d killed you.”
Jameson Wilkes said nothing until the dizziness passed. “I underestimated you,” he said more to himself than to her. “A mistake I shan’t make again. Bob, you may leave now. I believe my faculties are sufficiently intact once more.”
“Sir, really,” Bob Gallen said, but stopped abruptly at the deadly calm threat in his captain’s gray eyes.
He turned on his heel, not looking at Juliana again, and left the cabin, closing the door softly behind him.
Jameson Wilkes rose slowly from the bed. “Your modesty prohibited you from removing my trousers, my dear?”
Fear curdled in her stomach, but she knew she had nothing to lose. She would not cower before this evil man. She said with the best sneer she could manage, “After I got your shirt off, I saw how old and ugly you were. Do you think I would want to see more? You are repellent.”
Jameson Wilkes was forty-one years old. He didn’t consider himself either old or ill-formed. In fact, he prided himself on his body. He was lean, with none of the paunch at his middle that most men his age sported. At her words, he wanted to thrash her, but he controlled his impulse. He saw the fear in her expressive eyes, realized that her speech was all bravado, and reluctantly admired her for it. It had been years, he thought, since he’d thought of a woman as an individual, a being who was separate and distinct unto herself.
It was quite likely that the man who purchased her would be repellent. Probably fat, with sagging jowls. He allowed himself a few moments to feel regret, then quashed it.
He said in his usually calm voice, “Please remove my shirt, my dear.”
Jules clutched the fine lawn material to her chest. “No.”
He sighed. “If you do not remove the shirt this instant, I will call back my gallant first mate. He, I am certain, no matter what his chivalrous feelings toward you, will be pleased to see all your charms.”
Jules felt the pounding in her temples—fear, outrage, determination. “I won’t,” she said. Quickly she leaned down and picked up the ivory bookend. “You come near me and I will kill you.”
She didn’t stand a chance, of course. He was on her in an instant, bending her arm in an iron grasp until she dropped the bookend. He practically tore the shirt from her and threw her none too gently onto the floor.
“You deserve to be beaten,” he said as he pulled on his ripped shirt. “But I can’t mark you. There isn’t the time for you to heal. And no man would want to buy damaged goods.”
All bravado was gone, stripped away as surely as he had stripped away her only clothing. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed softly.
Jameson Wilkes frowned down at her. Her glorious hair was in wild curls about her face and shoulders. Her white back quivered as she cried. Never before had he dealt with a female like her. For a moment he stood quietly, indecision written clearly on his face. He didn’t want to break her, not completely, but he couldn’t allow her to be a wild thing, either. He didn’t doubt for a minute that she would never willingly allow herself to be raped by the man who would buy her. It would hurt his reputation badly were she to kill the as-yet-unknown man.
Then he smiled, his decision made. Without another word he lifted her from the floor and set her on the bed. He tied her wrists above her head and left her.
That evening when he brought her dinner tray, he said nothing to her of the afternoon’s incident. He even allowed her to cover herself with the sheet while she ate.
“Do drink your wine, Juliana,” he said. “It is from my own private stock, and quite tasty.”
She shook her head.
“You’ve never tasted wine before?” he asked with mild interest. He rose and poured himself a glass. “Come, now, just a bit to see if you like it.”
Jules, her mind numb and empty, raised the glass to her lips and drank. The deep red wine was rich and sweet. It sent welcome warmth all the way to her stomach.
Jameson Wilkes watched closely as she downed the entire contents of the glass. He smiled. “Excellent,” he said.
It would take a while, he knew. He had no idea whether the amount of the drug he’d poured into the glass was correct. The old Chinese gnome who’d sold it to him had merely said that the dose “depended.” On what? Jameson had wondered. Well, he thought, leaning back in his chair, he would soon see. The drug was a mixture of opium and other things, the old man had said, things that would make women utterly wild. Jameson wasn’t certain that such things as aphrodisiacs existed. Certainly the myth about oysters was just that, a myth.
“We will be in San Francisco within a week,” he said, cutting through the thick silence. “We’re making excellent time, better than I’d expected. Did I tell you, my dear, that this was my last voyage to the islands?”
Jules was beginning to feel odd, somehow detached from herself. She heard his soothing voice, understood his words. She said slowly, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth, “I want to go home. I do not particularly like my father or my sister, but Lahaina is my home.” She looked a bit startled at what she’d said, but continued in a soft singsong voice, “I collected flowers, and cataloged fish. I don’t want to be a man’s whore. I don’t want to be like some of the women on Maui.”
“You are a smart girl, Juliana. Perhaps the man who buys you will indulge you in your interests. Perhaps you should consider how best to . . . endear yourself to your future protector.”
“No,” she said quite clearly. But Jameson Wilkes wasn’t very clear anymore, and she blinked to keep him in focus. “My family would know.” She realized vaguely that what she’d said didn’t make any sense.
She saw he was smiling at her, and wondered at it. She also realized at that moment that she had to relieve herself. Always before, she’d been alone. “I must use the chamber pot,” she said.
“Go right ahead, my dear.”
Jules shook her head in confusion. “No,” she said. “I can’t, not while you’re in here. Please l
eave.”
This was interesting, Jameson Wilkes thought, studying her face closely. A loss of inhibition, an excellent start. “Of course you can,” he said, his voice as soothing as smooth honey.
But still she sat there looking confused, bewildered. He said very gently, “I won’t pay you any heed. Go ahead.”
Jules eased off the bed and walked to the chamber pot, which was stored beneath a small cabinet. She didn’t realize that she was quite naked. Nor did she pay any more attention to Jameson Wilkes. When she was finished, she turned, straightened, and stared at him.
To his complete and utter surprise, Jameson Wilkes felt a powerful surge of lust. He’d believed himself immune to her body—to any woman’s body, for that matter. It was a heady combination, her standing so confidently before him, but her eyes dazed and confused.
“What do you feel, Juliana?” he asked, forcing himself not to move.
She shook her head, not understanding what was happening to her. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you lie down? Surely what you’re feeling will pass quickly enough.”
She did, stretching languidly, her eyes closing. Her body felt tingly, strangely alive in places she’d never paid much attention to. But she wasn’t frightened of the feelings.
Jameson Wilkes sat down beside her and carefully laid his hand on her breast. He felt her quiver.
He leaned down and caressed her nipple with his lips.
Suddenly she lurched up, crying out in horror. She began striking him with her fists.
I didn’t give her enough, he thought as he subdued her. But now I know. Probably, his thinking continued, it was only the opium that had relaxed her so much, sent her into that otherworldly, detached kind of dream state. He’d seen it before.
“What did you do to me?” she yelled, struggling with all her might, even after he’d again bound her wrists.
“Why, nothing, my dear,” he said easily. “Perhaps you’re really a little whore at heart. Didn’t you enjoy my touching you?”
She recoiled from him, from herself. She closed her eyes, not moving even when tears streamed down her cheeks.
Jameson Wilkes walked slowly to the cabin door. He’d won. He ignored the stabbing pain in his belly.
San Francisco
It was near to midnight. There was a quarter-moon, but the fog was so thick that the night looked an eerie gray. Saint had returned to his house thirty minutes before. He had an appointment with Hoot Moon, an unlikely criminal with a personality as unlikely as his name. As he settled down in his favorite armchair to wait for his visitor, he wondered what the man had to tell him. Hoot Moon owed him, as did many other of his friends, for Saint had, through sheer luck, saved the man’s life when he’d been shot in the head. He heard a furtive knock on the front door and rose to answer it.
Hoot Moon quickly slipped into the small entrance hall. He was a small man, vicious to his victims but possessed of a strange sort of honor that made him as loyal as a tick to his friends. He counted Saint among his friends.
Saint watched him slip off his thick cloak. “Why all the secrecy, Hoot?” he asked.
“You told me to let you know if any slavers came in,” Hoot said in his low, hoarse voice, the result of a knife wound in his throat many years before.
Saint felt himself stiffen. “Who and when?”
“Jameson Wilkes, the old scoundrel, he just got in yesterday. Word’s out that he’s got something besides just the usual count of little Chink girls for that Chinese madame, Ah Choy. He’s got him a missionary girl, Doc, stole her in Maui. I can’t say I rightly can hold with that, no siree.”
Maui!
“I know you spent a couple years there, Doc, in Lahaina. I wanted you to know right away.”
Saint felt such a surge of rage, mingled with fear, that he couldn’t speak for a moment. He got hold of himself and said crisply, “Come on into the living room, Hoot, and let’s have ourselves a drink. Whiskey.”
Hoot scratched his ear and followed Saint. He downed the shot of whiskey in one quick gulp, then moved to stand by the fireplace to watch Saint expectantly.
“Now,” Saint said, “tell me everything you know.”
“He’s having an auction tomorrow night, at the Crooked House on Sutter Street. He’s really toutin’ the missionary gal. He wants plenty of money for her, of course, her bein’ a virgin and all.”
“Is there a description of the girl?”
“Yep. Flame-colored hair and green eyes. About eighteen, I think, maybe nineteen. Beautiful, according to what I heard, and real white skin.”
Saint went utterly still. Oh yes, he knew who the missionary girl was, all right. Juliana DuPres. Jules. Lord, she’d been only fourteen or fifteen when he’d left Maui. His little ruby jewel, he’d called her, ruffling her thick red curls, always out swimming and searching out new species of fish, or hiking to find new plants. She’d quickly become “Jules” after that. And she’d tagged after him like a puppy, that pert little face of hers filled with worshipful infatuation. He could have told her to go to the moon and she’d probably have done her damnedest to do as he wished.
Rage filled him and he felt his stomach heave. He rarely felt the urge toward violence, but he did now. He wanted to kill Jameson Wilkes with his bare hands.
But that wouldn’t help Jules.
“Whatcha say, Doc?” Hoot asked after many minutes had passed.
“We’ve got to save the girl, of course.”
“Old Wilkes is gonna ask a fortune for her, I’ll bet.”
“He’d be a fool not to,” Saint said. He suddenly remembered the day he’d left Lahaina. Jules had stood on the dock waving frantically to him. He’d seen tears in her eyes even from that distance. Then he’d seen her father, the damned prig, pull her away roughly.
During the past two years, Saint had managed to buy four young Chinese girls from Ah Choy before they’d been debauched. But of course he didn’t have enough money to buy Jules. God, what was he to do?
He said finally, “Hoot, find out exactly what hour the auction starts.” He added quietly, “I think it’s about time I called in some favors.”
After Hoot Moon left as furtively as he’d come, Saint poured himself another whiskey and sat down again in his chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his fingers steepled. Until now he’d never involved his friends. There was always the chance of reprisals. Once before, two years ago, a friend had helped him, and had been recognized. He’d been found two days later with a bullet through his brain. But this time was different. He knew he could trust Delaney Saxton. After all, Del had saved his cook and housekeeper, Lin Chou, from one of those filthy cribs. Del, at least, cared. But Del was a new father. If he were recognized, there could be real trouble for him and Chauncey.
The criminal element in San Francisco knew no social boundaries. Some of the wealthiest men were utterly rotten, and it was impossible to tell who was involved in what. As for Hoot Moon and his sort, they were petty criminals in comparison. And, oddly enough, Saint trusted them.
He could borrow money from Del Saxton and buy Juliana DuPres outright. But the thought of paying, at the very least, a good five thousand dollars to that scum Wilkes made him want to howl. No, he didn’t want Wilkes to get a cent. He wanted to smash the man’s face into pulp.
Somewhere near three o’clock in the morning, Saint decided he wouldn’t involve any of his respectable friends. He’d call in the favors from the Sydney Ducks.
Jules felt calm. When Jameson Wilkes tried to auction her off, she’d scream, fight, tear the place down. Somebody would help her. Not all men were like him.
She was still a prisoner in Wilkes’s cabin. After she’d decided what she would do, she spent a good deal of time staring out the porthole at San Francisco. They were docked at the Clay Street wharf, Jameson Wilkes had told her.
He’d put a lock on the cabin door. “Just in case you get any outlandish ideas, my dear,” he’d said in that calm voice
of his.
She’d asked him two days before, “Isn’t there anyone you care about?”
Oddly enough, he’d stiffened alarmingly. But he’d said nothing, merely looked away from her as if seeing someone in the distant past.
It was dark now, and her nose was pressed against the porthole. There were so many lights, and she could even hear the shouts of men in the distance. She didn’t look around when she heard the cabin door open.
“Juliana, it is time.”
Jameson Wilkes drew back a moment at the hatred he saw in her eyes. But it was more than that, he realized. There was determination as well. It didn’t require a powerful intellect to realize what she planned to do. He shook his head, and there was a flicker of regret in his eyes. He felt a sudden burning pain in his belly and automatically began to rub his stomach.
He handed her a gown, no underthings or petticoats, just a gown that was of a filmy material and a garish crimson color.
Jules only stared at the gown. He’d forced her to bathe that afternoon and wash her hair. She was now standing before him, a sheet wrapped around her. She drew herself up and sneered. “Surely, sir, that gown is in dreadful taste. Won’t your gentlemen friends want to purchase a female who looks more a lady than a whore?”
He laughed. “Take the gown, my dear.”
“No, I won’t!”
“If you refuse,” he said, his voice as unruffled as always, “you will go before a roomful of men quite naked. It is your decision.”
He calmly laid the gown on the bed, turned on his heel, and strode to the cabin door. “You have fifteen minutes, Juliana, no more.”
She had no choice, none at all. She didn’t disbelieve his threat. As she struggled to cover herself as best she could with the bright red dress, the memories of that night some five days before again filtered through her mind. Vague images, but they bothered her. She saw herself, as if through a haze, lying on her back, feeling strange sensations, feeling as though she were floating above her body, a body quite separate from her. Until he’d touched her breast—then she’d become herself again. She shook her head. It had made no sense. None at all. She raised her chin and waited for Jameson Wilkes to return for her.