Page 139 of The Devil of Clan Sinclair
“I do apologize for her,” he said, glancing around him. “She has fits on occasion and I think the excitement of going on her first voyage is telling on her.”
He kept advancing, the crowd parting to allow him to approach her. She took a few steps away, only to feel the railing at her back.
The ship was nearly at the mouth of the harbor. Once they were out to sea, she wouldn’t be able to escape him.
The breeze skittered across her skin; she wanted to clap her hands over her ears to silence the clamor of conversation and speculation. Her heart beat too quickly. Her skin was tightening with each shallow breath.
A man dressed in a dark blue coat with a slouch hat over his gray hair pushed his way through the crowd and strode toward her. Beside him were two burly men. The man spoke to Paul, who nodded and remained where he was.
The captain was going to subdue her. That wasn’t difficult to figure out. They were going to place her in Paul’s cabin, where he could rape her whenever he wanted. No one was going to hear her or understand what he’d done. As far as they were all concerned, he was her husband and had full rights over her. He could say anything and they would believe him, but they wouldn’t believe her.
They would think she was crazy, and laud him for his care of her.
She hated him more than she’d hated any man in her life. More than her father, who’d considered her a commodity. More than Lawrence, who only saw her as an instrument of revenge. The only man who’d ever treated her with decency, kindness, and love was Macrath, and she’d repaid him by being deceitful.
The captain was only a few feet away. Before he could reach her, before anyone could grab or stop her, she threw her legs over the railing and plunged into the sea.
At the harbor’s mouth a ship was heading for open water. Macrath was on the pier when he realized it was theOregon.
A woman stood at the railing, and although it was too far to see her clearly, something told him it was Virginia.
His heartbeat thudded in his ears.
As he watched, she turned and, in a slow and terrifying act, jumped off the ship, disappearing into the water.
“Stay there,” he said, turning to the young man who’d told him about Henderson.
He stripped off his boots and dove into the water.
He was damned if he was going to let the woman he loved drown.
Virginia sputtered to the surface, the desperate need to get away from the ship blotting everything else from her mind. All she had to do was swim, that’s all.
She pushed a bobbing crate out of her way, treaded water for a few moments to get a second breath. The chloroform was making her light-headed, or maybe it was the sudden, exhilarating freedom she felt.
Still, she had to pace herself. She was out in the middle of the harbor and had to swim to the pier. Pausing a moment, she thought she heard her name being called and started swimming again. She wasn’t out of reach of the ship. Someone could lower a boat and Paul could come after her.
Debris floated in the harbor: oranges and pieces of something green, shards of wood not yet waterlogged. A tankard floated by, as if a sailor had simply finished his measure of grog and pitched it into the sea. She didn’t like seeing the hulls of the ships coated with barnacles and green slime disappearing into the murky water. Nor could she abide the smell of fish.
Her legs cramping, she rested again, floating on her back. The distance hadn’t seemed so far before. Now it looked almost unattainable. She told herself she could reach the dock. All she had to do was concentrate on swimming, then resting, then swimming again.
At the closest pier, fishing boats clustered like nursing puppies suckling at their mother. All except one ship, larger than most, nearly the size of the one she’d escaped.
The teak figurehead caught her attention. A woman emerged triumphant from the waves, arms thrust behind her, her smile joyous and free, the face a duplicate of her own.
She started to cry.
He’d said the figurehead resembled her. He hadn’t said how magnificent it was.
Something was coming in her direction, splashing furiously. Not a something after all, she then realized, but a person, someone who knew her name. Was the chloroform giving her hallucinations? Suddenly, she saw it was Macrath, fully clothed and swimming toward her.
When he reached her, she stretched out her hand to cup his jaw, then pressed her fingers against the frown on his forehead.
“Are you really here?” she asked.
“I’m really here, but I might ask the same of you.”
Macrath turned, shouted something at the ship looming nearby, and a rope slapped into the water. Pressing her hands around it, he moved behind her, guiding her toward the hull. She didn’t like ships. She didn’t like the ocean, either. Did he know that?
