Susan Wiggs - The Hostage

“See here now,” he said in a thick Irish brogue. “The poor lass is out of her head with fright.”

“That’s a fact, mon frerè,” said the big man. “My poor wife lost everything tonight, and she’s not herself.”

“Wi…wi—” Deborah was too shocked to get the words out.

“I reckon she’ll be all right by and by,” her abductor said, grasping her insolently around the waist. He held her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. “We could use your prayers, mon frère. We surely could.” He pulled her quickly away, heading down toward a wide wooden pier that jutted out onto the lake.

“But he’s not…I’m not his wife—” she called, but she was dragged relentlessly along, and the Irish priest had already vanished into the throng on the beach. Deborah opened her mouth to call out again, but before she could speak, her captor pressed her roughly against one of the wet timber piers upholding the dock. He put his angry, frightening face very close to hers. She could smell the leather and smoke scent of him—the essence of danger and strangeness.

“Quit your caterwauling,” he ordered. “I’m out of patience.”

She forced herself to glare up at him. He was a giant of a man. She had never seen a man so tall. She was terrified, but she had nothing to lose. “And patience is such a gift of yours, I’m sure,” she spat with far more bravado than she felt. “What will you do? Sock me in the face? Shoot me?”

“Tempting offers, both of them.” He took her upper arms in a bruising grip and lifted her bodily off the ground. The sensation of being entrapped between his strong hands raised a havoc of panic in her. The blood drained from her face and dry screams came from her throat, but he didn’t seem to be bothered by her protests. Handling her like a longshoreman with a timber bale, he bundled her into a small wooden dinghy tied up at the pier and cast off the ropes.

“What are you doing?” Deborah shrieked. “You can’t—”

He shoved off with such force that she fell backwards, hitting her shoulder painfully on something hard and sharp. The impact drove the breath from her lungs. By the time she righted herself, he was pulling strongly out into the lake. The hot glow from the burning city made him appear more fierce and frightening than a dark angel.

He glared at a spot over her shoulder. “What the hell is that?” he muttered, laying aside his oars.

“What is what?” she asked.

“Something in the water.”

She grabbed the side of the boat and twisted around. “Philip?”

“Close. I think it’s a rat.” He reached down, the fringe on his sleeve brushing the surface of the water, and scooped up the animal, holding the dripping, shivering creature aloft. “Yours?”

She grabbed the dog and gently cradled it to her breast. The smell of smoke and wet fur nearly made her gag, but just for a moment, she felt a flood of hope and relief. Then she looked at her captor, his huge form lit by the glare of the burning city, and the terror and confusion returned. Without taking her eyes off him, she set the dog in the bottom of the boat. The mongrel shook itself violently, spraying water. Deborah knew she had to act. Her hesitation on the shore had cost her dearly and she must not make the same mistake again.

No longer worried about the indignity of making a scene, she seized one of the oars. Drawing back, she swung it at the big man. Being violent was harder than it looked, she realized as he ducked. Frustrated, she swung it back the other way. He put up a hand and caught the oar, wrenching it from her grasp. He never said a word, just took up rowing again.

Deborah slumped down on the hard, narrow seat. She had gained nothing by trying to fight back, yet the very idea that she had dared made her feel slightly better. Very slightly. Within moments, fright and uncertainty returned with a vengeance.

The stranger’s simmering silence alarmed her far more than any tirade of threats. He had a hard look about him that frightened her, yet she found herself studying his shadowed face with something more than fright. There was a large swelling on his head where her father had struck him with the marble statue. The blow probably would have cracked the skull of any other man. His bear-paw hands gripped the oars with easy certainty, and his smooth, rhythmical strokes told her he was an experienced waterman.

She had no idea why she was speculating about this stranger, so she forced herself to stop. She held fast to the wet, smelly little dog as each powerful stroke of the oars bore her farther from shore.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What do you want with me?” she demanded.

He gave no answer, and the look he shot her made her doubt whether or not she truly wanted to know.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked. She definitely wanted to know the answer to that.

He simply kept rowing. The small boat pounded through the choppy water, riding up the crest of each wave, then slapping down in its trench, one after the other. The dog trembled in her lap.

She bit her lip, trying to hold in a rising panic. Even after all she had seen this night, she still felt no easing of her terror. With each passing second, she slipped farther and farther away from all that was familiar. She felt numb, yet beneath the numbness lay a banked hysteria beckoning her to madness. If she gave vent to it, she might never stop screaming.

Drawing in a deep breath, she asked, “Are you a white slaver?”

“What?”

“A white slaver,” she repeated. “Is that what you are?”

“Yeah,” he said, flashing her a predatory grin that was even more intimidating than his thunderous scowl. “Yeah, that’s me. A white slaver.”

She shuddered, resentful of his sarcasm. The idea of white slavers had been planted by the forbidden novels the young ladies of Miss Boylan’s giggled over late at night. In the books, the adventure seemed to befall innocent, usually fair-haired girls, though what became of them after being taken by their brutal captors was always left to the imagination. Deborah had always envisioned a shadowy place, the air spiced with incense, exotic music emanating from the unseen corners.

The stranger brought the dinghy alongside a larger boat. The firelight picked out the low-browed profile of a small steam freighter. In the pilot house a single lamp burned, swinging with the motion of the waves.

He tied the dinghy to the stern. Without bothering to ask permission, he bent and scooped up the dog, which immediately bit him.

“Ouch! Damn it!” He brought the dog over the side, practically flinging it into the trawler. He swung around to glare at Deborah. “Climb aboard,” he ordered.

She clutched the sides of the rowboat. “No.”

He let out a long breath that sounded of repressed fury. “Do you really want to fight me on this?”

“I refuse to go.”

“Climb aboard or I’ll heave you over, too,” he said.

She stared at him, all six and a half feet of him. The fringed buckskins of a savage. The dark, lank, sawed-off hair of a backwoodsman. The bear-paw hands that could snap a person in two. The reflected glints of fire and rage in his eyes. No. She did not want to fight him.

For the first time in her life, she was going to have to think ahead, to plan. She would wait for the right opportunity, and then she would act.

Bracing her hands on the hull of the trawler, she pulled herself up. The churning water made her lose her footing, but she clung tenaciously to the ladder. Her foot snagged in the hem of her skirt, and she heard a ripping sound. It crossed her mind that climbing a ladder in front of a gentleman was a risky and unladylike thing to do. Another swift glance at Paul Bunyan reminded her that he was no gentleman, and that ladylike qualms would not be tolerated.