She took his hand in both of her own, squeezing the long, hot fingers.

  "It's all right, Damon. I am here."

  "No . . . not here . . . Gwyneth, where are you? Gwyneth. . . . Gwyneth —"

  "Easy, Damon, we're almost home . . . to Morninghall Abbey."

  Her words only seemed to agitate him further, and he began to thrash like a child. He got one of his arms free of the strap and began tearing at his bandages.

  "Do hurry, Edwards!" Gwyneth called up to the driver.

  "Get on with ye!" the man yelled, trying to coax more speed from the flagging horses.

  Gwyneth leaned forward and put her arms around the marquess, tried to hold down his struggling body with her own. She did not know if he recognized her, did not know if the damage he'd sustained had reduced his keen intelligence to that of an infant, but her nearness seemed to calm him and he went still, moaning in pain, the sweat gleaming on his throat and his chest rising and falling with his rasping, quickening respiration.

  Outside, the clouds were definitely growing thicker, gathering like a massing army and blotting out more and more of the blue sky. As the wind gusted again, she could feel the heavy threat of rain in the air.

  "Almost there, my lady," came the footman's voice from above. "Another half a mile at most."

  Thank God.

  Damon lay back against the seat, shaking and making horrible keening noises of pain and fear.

  Her own heart pounding, Gwyneth took his hand in her own, trying frantically to calm him. Now the road was leading into a great tree-lined drive, curving gently as it followed the crown of this highest, noblest hill.

  Damon clutched her hand in a death grip, his harsh, rapid breathing filling the coach.

  Her fingers began to throb and she tried to free her hand, but his grip became desperate, savage.

  Greenish darkness and a cool, eerie silence came as they passed beneath a low, heavy canopy of oaks. Sounds were amplified. The horse's hooves crunched against the gravel; the squeak and rattle of the coach echoed against the wall of huge trees on either side. A drop of rain splashed into the coach, followed by another. And there, looming up out of the shadowy depths ahead, was a huge pair of iron gates which barred the drive from this point on. A massive, eight-foot-high wall draped with ivy ran out from either side of them, the yellow stone going dull beneath the heavy trees and the sudden retreat of the sun.

  The coach came to a lurching stop. Gwyneth looked out and saw, perched high atop pedestals on either side of the gates, two ancient sentinels of black stone — mighty, life-sized wolves, warning her away with baleful, staring eyes.

  She swallowed hard and, as Damon's grip on her fingers became crushing, looked through the gates.

  Beyond them was a long, flat drive laid out like carpet for royalty.

  And there, clouds of gray framing its majestic, forbidding splendor, stood the great house itself, Morninghall Abbey.

  "We're here, my lady!"

  The clouds moved across the sky. The last of the sunlight fell off.

  And the Marquess of Morninghall's hand slipped from hers as he fell into a dead faint.

  ~~~~

  "Hurry, we must get him inside!" Gwyneth cried, leaping down from the coach before it had even come to a stop and yanking the door wide as two bewigged and liveried footmen hurried forward.

  The steps of the great house were lined with servants, the men elegantly dressed and powdered, the women watching with anxious eyes. Gwyneth, casting a quick glance toward her sister's coach, just coming down the drive, had no time to take in the arrayed magnificence, no time to properly greet the elderly butler who introduced himself as Britwell, no time to wonder about the nervous looks passing between the twin ranks of servants.

  She impatiently waved a footman toward the open door of the coach. The servant, a huge, strapping country lad, leaned into the vehicle and brought the marquess out. Holding his master like a babe in his arms, he looked to Gwyneth for direction.

  They hurried toward the house.

  "I trust you got Admiral Sir Graham's missive?" Gwyneth asked as Britwell rushed along beside her.

  "Yes, my lady. It arrived yesterday. The doctor is waiting in His Lordship's bedroom."

  The marquess stirred, began to moan, and, as the footman carried him past the twin rows of servants and up the stairs, started fighting against the arms that held him, thrashing and crying out with pain.

  "Right this way, my lady," Britwell urged, hurrying the little party into a magnificent receiving hall, down a corridor, up a sweeping flight of stairs, and down another corridor lined with books, portraits, busts and antiquities. He was moving fast, nearly running, so Gwyneth grabbed up her skirts and began to run too, trying to keep up.

  "No . . . NO!" Damon was mumbling, as the footman rushed him down the hall. "Gwyneth, no . . . don't let them bring me in there, please —"

  At the far end of the long corridor, a man emerged from a room and hurried toward them.

  "I'm Dr. MacDowell," he puffed, staring anxiously at the man thrashing in the footman's arms. He quickly ushered them all into the bedroom, dashed to the bed, and began turning down the sheets.

  "Set him right here, man —"

  Damon's fist was flailing, swinging into empty space. "Gwyneth, no . . . Not here . . ."

  "He doesn't want to be in here!" Gwyneth cried, trying unsuccessfully to prevent the footman from putting the struggling marquess on the bed.

  "He has to be in here, it's the only room we have prepared for him," the doctor snapped. "Footman, close the door, pull those drapes —"

  "Gwyneth! . . . Help me . . . the wolf . . . going to bite me. Don't let him bite me . . . Mama's in here . . . she'll hurt me — Gwyneth!"

  "It's all right, my love," she said soothingly, leaning over the bed and taking his hand. "Nothing is going to hurt you."

  "Pay him no mind, he's delirious," the doctor said gruffly, pushing her out of the way as he took Damon's arm, shoved up the sleeve of his nightshirt, and felt around for a vein. "It's just nonsense he's spouting, nothing more."

  "Wolves, Gwyneth," the marquess whispered, his bandaged head thrashing from side to side on the pillow. "Don't let them bite me . . . don't let them bite me . . ."

  Desperate, Gwyneth spun to look around the room — and saw what he could not see but obviously remembered well.

  "Get rid of that hideous thing!" she cried, spotting the great pelt of black fur that hung above the massive stone fireplace.

  Britwell protested, "But my lady, that wolf hide has been there since the first marquess killed it with his bare hands back in —"

  "I don't care how long it's been there, get rid of it, it's frightening him!" She turned and saw a huge portrait, directly opposite the bed, of a formidable looking woman in court dress and jewels. "And who is that?"

  "It's his mother, the late marchioness —"

  She waved another footman toward the painting. "Get that witch off the wall and out of here too!"

  "But my lady, it's his mother —"

  "Get her out of here!"

  The footman ran toward the painting. Britwell, speechless, stood back with a little smile of admiration on his face. Down came the wolf pelt, and out the door. Down came the painting, and out the door. There were two pedestals on either side of the huge, carved bed, and on them sat two more wolves, these of black marble; without hesitation, Gwyneth grabbed up a spare sheet, tore it in two, and threw it over each baleful, staring head.

  On the bed the marquess had curled into a pitiful ball, his arms over his head and covering his bandaged face. He was sweating and trembling convulsively, and as the doctor tried to come near him, he struck out with a fist that, even directionless, was potentially lethal.

  Unafraid, Gwyneth went to him, sat down on the bed, and snared his white-knuckled hand. She held it to her cheek, gently stroking the fingers.

  "It's all right now, Damon. Those stupid wolves are gone. Your mother's gone. I'm here, and I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

  As he curled himself around her fist, sobbing brokenly, she looked up at the doctor. A shocked stillness hung over the room, and everyone in it was staring at her with a mixture of fear and respect, as though she were some general just in from a war.

  The doctor swallowed hard.

  "You may examine him now," she said, firmly. "He'll give you no more trouble."

  ~~~~

  Later that evening, many miles away on a windy stretch of the Channel, Connor Merrick stood at the helm of the schooner Kestrel and watched the random lights of the English coast sliding in and out of the mists just off to starboard.

  They were close-hauled on the starboard tack, the schooner sailing so close to the wind that Connor's face was damp with salt water, his hair wet with spray. Wind hummed through stays and shrouds, and the black, endless waves angled out of the night toward them, breaking against Kestrel's rapier-sharp bows and parading beneath her hull in great, sweeping swells of mighty power and hissing foam.

  "See anything yet, Orla?" he called to the woman who sat far out astride the bowsprit, watching.

  "Not yet."

  Not yet. A signal, three short, hooded blinks of a lantern, wasn't much to ask. Had Milford been detained? Where the hell was he?

  He stared grimly at Orla's slim figure, a dark smudge against the charcoal night and darkened sea. With her piratical past she was priceless, he thought, as sharp and keen as a well-honed knife. He was sure going to hate losing her, but he did not love her, not in the way she wanted to be loved. He could give her a place on Kestrel, he could give her friendship and adventure and a reason to exist — but he could not give her love.

  He thought of the one man who could — and smiled wryly. It was doubtful that the Reverend Milford, once he asked for Orla's hand, would take kindly to her roving the seas and smuggling prisoners of war off the hulks any more than his brother-in-law Sir Graham Falconer had to his sister Maeve's desire to continue terrorizing the West Indies as the formidable Pirate Queen of the Caribbean.

  Poor Maeve.

  Poor Maeve, my arse.

  His ribs were still sore.

  He wiped the spray from his face, remembering. No sooner had he left Nathan's body hidden beneath a tarp in the marshes when alarms had sounded from the prison hulk, and he'd rowed frantically back toward the stricken ship just in time to see Lady Gwyneth Evans Simms take what surely would have been a fatal tumble into the harbor had he not been there to fish her out. Her hysterically babbled news about Morninghall had been like a fist to the gut, and in that moment Connor had known it was the beginning of the end. Without the marquess aboard the prison hulk, all was lost.

  And young Toby had yet to be rescued.

  Not that he'd had time to do the deed himself. He'd barely brought Lady Simms to shore and watched her disappear into the crowds when a figure had dropped lightly down into his boat like something out of a boarding party. He'd looked up to see his sister, elegant in silk and sharks' teeth, smiling that ominous smile of hers and calmly holding the point of her dagger against his ribs. People had been rushing about like chickens with their heads cut off — rushing to shore, rushing to boats, rushing to piers, yelling, shouting, giving orders — but none of them had taken notice of the ex-pirate queen, and she had been equally oblivious to them.

  I want my ship back. Now. And, Orla.

  It had taken all of Connor's significant powers of persuasion to convince her to let him keep Kestrel. After all, Maeve might've married an Englishman, but her heart was still American, and even she could not argue that Kestrel was best kept in the service of the country that had built her. With a promise to sway her powerful husband to abandon the hunt for the missing schooner, Maeve had finally set her lips and ordered — ordered! Connor thought, with a little chuckle — him to "just return Kestrel to our home in Barbados when you're damn well finished with her, or else."

  The "or else" was not worth considering, he thought, grinning and massaging his ribs.

  Ah, well. By now she and Sir Graham and their growing brood would be preparing for their trip back to the West Indies, and trouble from that quarter was — for the moment at least — diverted. As for returning Kestrel —

  Orla's voice broke in.

  "Captain! There, just a point off to starboard, the signal! Again! Do you see it?"

  He turned his head and, yes, he did see it, the last, fuzzy blink of gold piercing the gloom like an eye out there in the darkness. He shoved the tiller hard, and the schooner turned into the wind, there to lay shuddering and rolling as the waves drove beneath her.

  The crew — some French, some American, all snatched from the prison ship Surrey by the Black Wolf himself — ran to their stations. Connor grinned to himself. That crew was about to increase by one, and tonight he was the happiest soul on earth.

  The boat came melting out of the gloom like a craft from the netherworld, the oars rising and dipping with steady purpose. Moments later Connor heard it bumping lightly against Kestrel's hull, then the voices of greeting as those gathered at the rail reached down to help the newcomers aboard.

  At last, he thought, on a wave of relief.

  Having a prisoner fake his own death had been the most clever, the most brilliant, the most daring of the Black Wolf's rescues. It was also, Connor thought grimly, the last, and there was still little Toby to get out. Toby, alone and defenseless and at the mercy of the other prisoners and those bastards Foyle and Radley. Toby, who had lost his fearless protector —

  "Welcome aboard, Reverend Milford," he heard Gerard, one of the Frenchmen, say warmly. At the same time that gentle cleric stepped onto Kestrel's shiny, wet deck, Connor saw Orla running toward him, her hair flying about her excited face. The chaplain's countenance broke into a happy grin at the sight of her.

  Connor looked on with a paternal smile as the two embraced.

  And finally came that voice he had waited so long to hear.

  Connor walked forward, smiling, and there were real tears in his handsome eyes.

  "Nathan," he said, extending his hand and heartily pulling his cousin up onto the salt-sprayed deck. The two embraced each other warmly. "It is good to have you back at last."

  Chapter 21

  Damon knew he was dreaming; he could see the Black Hole rearing out of the darkness and awash in liquid flame as he approached it. He thought of the person locked inside, a person with thoughts and fears and feelings just like himself, suffering, hungry, lonely and in pain, and he began to hurry, the oily brine bursting into flames now, licking at his calves, clawing at his legs, his stomach, his chest. Fear and desperation drove him, sweat drenched his body, and there was no turning back, no salvation for him unless he could reach that horrible box and free the man inside —

  Hurry up, damn it!

  He was running now. He had to run because that man was himself.

  The unholy roar started on the decks above. He knew instantly what it was: the prisoners, hundreds of them, streaming down through the decks, coming down the ladder for him, and there, leading them, was his mother.

  He screamed as they came at him, yelling like savages. I pray to God the flames get me before you do Mama! Burn, burn, burn —

  She reached for him, fingers cold as a tomb against his burning flesh.

  "Damon — Damon it's me, Gwyneth!"

  No no no, you're not Gwyneth, you're my mother. Hurry, flames, take me, burn me, I'm horrible, I'm not worthy, I don't deserve to live after what I know lurks down here in this floating hell, after this suffering I have seen. God forgive me, I did try to help them. Yes, Peter, I know my reasons were all wrong. It was because I hate the navy. I see now they were wrong, and if I live I'll do it for all the right reasons, I swear I will, just get her away from me —

  "Damon!"

  Her icy hand seized his wrist, and with an inhuman howl of terror he lunged away, trying to escape, clawing at the wrappings they'd put around his head and over his eyes. But it was too late. He was in his cabin now and the prisoners had him, pulling him down once more, punching him, kicking him, grabbing him by the hair and slamming his head against the deck over and over again. Run, Gwyneth, RUN! Ad now a great whooshing, violent, sucking noise, and he was, oh God, no, please God, NO-O-O-o-o-o-o-o!, hurtling through a tunnel, arms flailing, and at its end was Morninghall Abbey, and he was flung into that massive sixteenth-century bed. It was dark, the spirits were coming, Mama was coming, he could hear the door creaking open, You are a very bad boy, Damon, it was she, she, SHE!

  Everything crashed to a stop.

  Dead.

  No sound, no sight, no . . . anything. Just hot, ringing silence.

  He lay curled on his side, wrapped in sheets damp and stinking with his own sweat. He heard himself panting, the sound close and loud and stifling against the pillow. Beyond the stillness that cloaked him, beyond his own desperate breaths, he heard the patter of rain falling against glass and gutter and stone and grass. Morninghall. Shudders racked his body, and from deep in his throat came a primitive, frightened whimper.

  I am awake. This is real. And God help me — I am at Morninghall.

  He tried to open his eyes but saw only darkness.

  He curled closer into himself, blind and trembling and afraid. Damp heat enveloped his face from the nose up. Pain throbbed in his shoulder blade, clouded the side of his cheek, his skull, his jaw.

  He was in The Bedroom.

  And he was in the dark.

  Alone.

  No, not alone. Someone else was here, someone whose breathing he now could hear, someone whose hand was gently stroking his back and telling him that everything was going to be all right, that he was safe, that she would look after him. Her soft hair tickled his jaw, and he could smell her light, elusive fragrance.

  His heart began to beat in that strange, rushed way it always did before an attack, and he started to shake. He didn't know who was leaning over him, didn't trust those words, didn't know what she was going to do to him.