“Nothing but!” Shanna threw him a glance of some surprise then smiled softly at her treasures. “You simple oaf, you would do far better in your fickle meanderings with half that man’s understanding.”
Happily Shanna scrambled to the middle of the bed. Gathering her legs beneath her and sitting back upon her heels, she laid the articles before her gently as if they might shatter at the slightest abuse. Lifting the comb and ignoring Ruark’s scowl, she began to work the tangles from her wildly cascading tresses, framed in reflections from her audience of mirrors.
Day ended, bringing Carmelita and Dora with oil lamps to hang above the long table in the common room as darkness invaded the inn. Boisterous joviality grew louder with each cup that was passed among Harripen and the other captains. Ruark sat in the shadows away from the mainstream of coarse banter and watched as these outcasts bolstered their spirits on the plentiful rum and ale. He sampled the brew in his own mug more than a small bit and cast many a glance toward the shadows at the head of the stairs, waiting for Shanna to make an appearance. Her toilette had proved too much for him, and he had retreated here to the safety of numbers, before lust overcame him and he attacked her.
Harripen drew away from the loud group which had gathered near his seat and approached Ruark. “Ah, man, ye’re just the one I would see,” he ventured in a slurred voice. “Ye see, I’ve been wondering now as to the wench.”
Ruark raised a brow questioningly. In the meager light his eyes were like stone, staring into the man without a trace of warmth.
“Be it true, lad? One of Trahern’s bondsmen said the liedy were no virgin at all, but a widow.”
Ruark shrugged. “She was made a widow some months past. Some fellow by the name of Beauchamp.”
“Oooü,” Harripen breathed, lust showing in his eyes. “And a new widow’d be most grateful for a good man on her belly.”
He lay back on the table and bellowed his mirth at the timbers on the ceiling. His companions clustered around, and Ruark could feel the muscles in his own gut tighten. Shanna, as the topic of their conversation, would only brew trouble.
Hawks sat on the table and leaned over his captain, gathering the others to him as if to share a secret with them, but his voice rang loud enough for Ruark to hear the words clearly.
“If one man should please the liedy,” he leered, “is it not sure that a dozen would please her more? I say we should each take turns, being fair-minded like we are, that no man”—he hooked a thumb toward Ruark—“should have a giant’s portion of the loot. Share and share alike, I sez. And he already has had his own and poor ol‘ Robby’s.”
A general nodding of agreement followed, and lecherous grins gaped about the table, showing the readiness of the rogues to enter into a common arrangement. Harripen pushed himself up through them and slid back into his chair. Still chuckling, he peered at Ruark, but his eyes glinted as he connived to be first in any such arrangement.
Ruark leaned back, his tension becoming a relaxed readiness to do instant battle. He returned Harripen’s stare over his mug as he sipped calmly at his ale.
“Where is the wench?” Harripen asked. “She’s usually hanging onto yer coattails.”
Ruark waved his mug toward the stairs. “In the room, but I would warn you—”
“Ah, warn us not, ya Yankee swaggy,” the mulatto captain made bold to speak. The black rum had given him an unusual measure of courage. Swinging a meaty fist, he stood away from the table. “I’ll bring the Madam Beauchamp down to greet her peers.”
Guffawing loudly, he plowed an uneven path to the stairway. “Don’t call if it takes me a while,” he roared over his shoulder and set his foot on the first step.
The explosion in the confines of the room numbed the ears of all, and the mulatto froze as plaster flew where the huge ball struck the wall a bare hand’s breadth in front of his nose. In anger, he whirled and saw Ruark lowering the still smoking pistol. Snarling a curse, the man matched the cutlass from his side and leapt down to seek vengeance upon his assailant. His feet barely hit the floor before he stopped abruptly. The bore of the second pistol seemed twice as large as the other, and it gaped hungrily at his chest. He did not miss that the hammer was at full cock, and his rage vanished as rapidly as he sobered. He stared into the golden eyes of death, which gleamed behind the flintlock like twin orbs of hardened amber, and his swarthy face paled. Slowly, carefully, he replaced the cutlass in his sash and straightened, while he tried to twist suddenly thick lips into a smile.
“I—,” he stammered, “I meant no harm, cap’n. I was only funning, you see?”