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Was. A cold hand clutched Maisie’s heart.
“She knew we’d grown close,” he murmured, meandering along, pacified as he was. “She knew my deep affection for you.”
“Beth has passed on?”
He gave her a brief nod. Maisie’s mind whirred furiously, her grief over Beth and the fact she was still shaking from the action she’d been forced to take moments earlier made it hard for her to concentrate on her magic long enough to quell him.
“Nothing will keep us from being together now. We will be married as soon as we return to London. Together we will be powerful. But I must know why you ran from me.”
“I did not run from you.” Forcing herself to meet his gaze, she knew she had to reassure him. He would have Roderick and all his men killed if she did not dissuade him. The fact she had shot Roderick herself was not enough. “I will explain.”
With one hand clasped around her jaw, Cyrus defied her to look away. His eyes narrowed, his lips curling. “You will never run again, that is certain. I will make sure of it.” His tone was sinister and possessive, and his gaze dropped to her bosom. “Once we are wed you will be mine completely.”
It was obvious to Maisie how deep his feelings ran. Much deeper than she had even suspected. His desire—both for her power and for her as a woman—had grown more obvious these past months, but never had she felt the depth of his lust for her. The look in his eyes was clear. He wanted her as a lover, as a wife.
It terrified her to even contemplate. She didn’t want him. Never had and never would. It pained her, too, because it felt so wrong of him, so misguided. She felt cheated by his trickery. Just as she had been when she’d begun to realize he wanted her power to serve his own ends. It had disturbed her greatly, but the latest revelation in his plans was even more shocking to her, and there was no denying it now. Beth had been right. He feared losing her and he planned to own her in every way. It felt like betrayal. Well, they had betrayed each other, in that case, but she must keep his attention on her until Roderick was safely gone.
She forced the words out. “I had to return to my beginnings to see the place I was born, in order for my magic to blossom fully. It came upon me as a yearning so strong and so sudden, it had to be. On a whim I went down to the dockyard and asked about passage to Scotland. I was dizzy with the desire to see the place again when I was offered the chance.”
His eyes narrowed. “You took your most precious things.”
“I had taken to carrying them with me.”
Cyrus frowned. Pulling on her deepest resources, she wove more magic in his soul. The look in his eyes became vague. Hopeful that he would not realize, she set about influencing him. Once she’d whispered the enchantment beneath her breath, bending his will to hers, she willed him blind to her influence on his thoughts.
After several long moments he nodded. “If it’s that important to you, I will request that the captain land us in a Scottish port, instead of taking us back to London.”
Relief flooded her. “Oh, Cyrus. Thank you.”
He cocked his head, looking at her as if he wasn’t quite sure about it, then departed from her side in order to instigate her request.
Desperate to make some kind of amends with Roderick’s men before Cyrus took her below deck, she struggled to know what to do for the best. It stunned her to think they had lost the Libertas because of her. And now Roderick would hate her for shooting at him. She could only hope that one day she would be able to explain, and that he would be able to forgive her for all that she’d put him through.
What would he do now? Roderick had been bound for Dundee, to meet with the partner with whom he owned the ship Libertas, this Gregor Ramsay. Presumably they would still have to go to meet him, ship or no ship. In which case they would be following the navy, which was now turning north on Cyrus’s request. She couldn’t be sure Roderick would follow, but she could try to assist.
Heart beating wildly, she looked to the skies. Murmuring fast and low, she beckoned the power of the wind and the warmth of the sun to aid Roderick’s onward journey, wherever he might be bound. “I’m sorry, my good-hearted lover,” she whispered as the wind lifted, “for all the misfortune I brought your way.”
Then she put a protection spell on him just for good measure.
* * *
“That bloody Jezebel shot you!” Brady gesticulated wildly, standing upright in the boat next to Roderick, who was slumped in the bottom. “That bitch.”
Despite the pain and disbelief he felt, Roderick was unaccountably angered by the man’s insult.
“We should have strung her up ourselves,” Brady added.
Clyde laughed loudly, which made every man jack of them turn to query his strange reaction. “She saved your life is what she did.” He gave a shrug and another laugh. “If she hadn’t taken the gun from that man’s hand, you’d be dead already.”
That silenced them all.
“What the...” Roderick tried to rise up on his elbow, but pain shot through his shoulder. “Sit down, Brady,” he shouted, “or you’ll capsize the lot of us. We are heavy with men.”
“Aye,” Clyde commented, “sit down, for that would not look good on our headstones. ‘The seamen who lie here all drowned because they couldn’t handle a rowboat.’”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brady snapped, clearly losing his composure after the turn of events. “If we drown we wouldn’t have headstones.”
Roderick cursed, loudly. He went to speak, but gave up the will when he found he was being undressed. His coat was pulled off by one man and his shirt torn open by another. Pressure was applied to his wound with the bunched cotton of his shirt. For a moment the pain threatened to wipe him out, then it eased. He laid his head back and tried to make sense of what Clyde had said. One of the men was attempting to examine his shoulder, but Roderick felt stubbornly fixed on ignoring the gunshot wound—and whence it had come. That wasn’t going to be possible. Puzzled by Clyde’s comments, he had to quiz him on it. “What do you mean, she saved my life?”
