The Buccaneer(13)

“Why? Because she is a woman of pure virtue and noble breeding? Her delicate senses would not take kindly to such treatment?”

“She will hurt—”

“I hurt, Santos. Every time I felt the sting of the lash tear my flesh. Every time I ate the food laced with weevils. Every time I smelled my own stink. Every time I remember it was the Marquis of Devonshire’s signature that had condemned me to rot in hell.”

Santos made no move to interrupt his tirade of pain. His friend’s suffering had been too great. Revenge was the catalyst that would heal his wounds, or so Lucian thought.

“Taking Catherine Abelard’s innocence will not cease your nightmare.”

“No, it won’t, but it will be the start of nightmares for the marquis.”

“If he is the monster you think he is, why would he care what you do to his stepdaughter? Why not just let the damaging evidence you planted against him send him to rot away in the Tower, or better yet meet his fate at Charing Crossing?”

Lucian leaned against the mast, folding his arms across his bare chest. “That would be too easy, my friend. I want him to taste humiliation as I did.”

“But he has,” Santos insisted. “These past months he has lost many friends and colleagues. He has been tried and convicted by his own peers. Isn’t that enough?”

The defined features of Lucian’s face hardened. “No. Now his suffering will begin. It is well known he holds a special spot in his heart for his stepdaughter. He cares deeply for her and would never see any harm come to her. How do you think he will feel when she returns to him in disgrace? How do you think he will feel when he learns that she was the infamous pirate Lucifer’s whore? Do you think he will hurt? Do you think his heart will break?” As mine once did.

Santos’s displeasure was apparent on his grim face.

Lucian moved away from the mast and placed his hand on Santos’s shoulder. He towered over his friend. But there was no fear in the short man’s eyes, only concern.

“I know you do not approve of this, but I must repay him for the torment he had made me suffer. I cannot let go of the anger and hate. It feeds within me and grows. Perhaps this will be its final meal and I shall then, finally be free.”

“I hope so, Lucian. I hope so,” Santos said, and turned to command the crew. “Mind those ropes, you bloody idiots. We’re underway!”

Lucian’s feet held firm to the deck as the ship pitched away from the merchant ship lying still in the water. He turned away from it and looked on the opposite side out over the clear horizon.

Lucian Darcmoor existed no more. He had been an arrogant young, fool; the son of an earl, pampered by wealth and social status until…

His eyes squeezed shit against the hurtful memories as he recalled the feel of the lash upon his back the first time. The thin leather lashes had struck him again and again and again, until he had lost count.

After being tied to the mast for several hours, an example to others who disobeyed, he was cut down and cold seawater thrown on his raw open wounds. His screams were loud—the first time – but after repeated abuses he learned to hold back the cries and disengage himself from the ordeal.

Inner strength and mastery over his emotions were the two major lessons he had learned from the beatings.

Finally, the lashes ceased to threaten, but the captain, whose thirst for another man’s blood and pain was unquenchable, devised other ways of torture. Lucian had learned by then to hold his tongue, especially when one sailor lost his over a minor infraction.

He walked to the balustrade, gripping the wood. His eyes watched the sea but instead saw his first battle with pirates. He was actually relieved to see the bloodthirsty crew attack the merchant ship he was on. Desperately wanting freedom, he had fought with the pirates. Before the captain took his last breath Lucian demanded a name, the name of the man responsible for his being sold into the captain’s servitude for so-called debts.

The captain, his life slipping away, breathed the name Abelard.

Lucian burned the name into his memory and a day didn’t go by that he didn’t think of the marquis. He was given the choice of joining the pirates, or death. Death wasn’t an alternative to him, although some chose it, having lost the will to survive.

Five long years of filth and more suffering followed until he was skilled enough to seize his own ship, and begin the destruction of the Marques of Devonshire.

“Excuse me, Captain,” Bones said hesitantly.

Lucian turned his head slowly to the side to look at Bones.

The skinny man’s knees began to quake. “Where would you be wanting the lady’s trunks?”