Paid to the Pirate by Una Rohr

Chapter 31

Charlotte

“How do you do?” I greeted the man accompanying Colt as pleasantly as possible, offering a welcoming smile. “Pleased to meet you…”

“Charlotte,” Colt said, voice as hard as his stare. “Are you really going to play the lady when you haven’t seen your brother in years? He’s just sailed in from Boston. Won’t you give George a true greeting?”

I folded my lips between my teeth to avoid gasping and tried to calm my racing heart.

Brother? What should I do?

“Charlotte?” George asked tentatively. “Is something wrong? Stop this, please.” He held out his arms and crooked the fingers of one hand with a come motion. His eyes were round and pleading, brow furrowed with confusion.

“I - ”

What to do?

“Please, sister.” He looked so pitifully sad as he spoke. “Tell me what’s wrong and I can help. I’ve missed you.”

The pang in my heart made me gush, “Yes, of course. It’s just been so long. My dear, dear, George.” I threw myself forward, preparing to embrace the stranger as my own relative, when Colt withdrew his sabre and extended the blade perilously close to my throat, forcing me to halt.

I couldn’t help my gasp, but quickly recovered and flashed a fake smile. “What – what are you doing?”

“Who are you?” Colt demanded, face wild with hostility. “What devilry is this?” He advanced, forcing me to back up to avoid the sharp blade.

“What in the hell is going on? A twin? Some kind of witchcraft?” he cried. His rage-filled eyes searched my body. “Have you possessed her? Is this even Charlotte’s body? Speak! Now, witch, or I’ll cut you in two.”

Pressed against the wall, I panted, “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“Charlotte has no brother,” Colt growled.

I could actually feel the color drain from my face. Oh God. I’d been fooled.

“Who are you really, what trick is this?” Colt demanded.

I licked my quivering lips as tears formed. My mind, always an asset I could count upon, utterly failed me. Painfully long seconds passed.

Gazing into Colt’s impossibly black eyes, I whispered, “I’m not a witch. At least, not that I remember.” I swiped the back of my hand across my cheeks to remove the tears.

“I’m Charlotte.” I touched my locket. “I think. The truth is… I don’t remember.”

Colt stared, hard, accusing. He did not lower his sword from beneath my chin.

Shaking my head, I wiped more tears. “I was found on a beach one day. I – I possessed no memory of what came before. The Penninghams gave me shelter and work at the inn. I’ve never known who I was or what happened before that day. I possessed nothing of my life here, save this locket. Until you stormed our tavern two months ago, I didn’t know of-” I gestured broadly “-any of this.”

Colt blinked, mouth parted in surprise. “Amnesia?” he whispered, body slumping. He lowered his sword, staring with more wide-eyed horror than if I’d declared myself a witch.

I nodded. “I was afraid. Afraid of what you’d tell me, what you might make me believe if you knew the truth. I feared you’d take advantage of me. So I pretended that I hadn’t forgotten. Only, I needed something to cover up my lack of knowledge and familiarity with,” I shrugged again, “all this. So I played the lady. The lady I hoped I had been before I lost my memory. The lady I always wanted to be.”

Colt’s sword clattered to the floor. He was only half-listening. His eyes glazed over, dazed. Conks appeared in the doorway, perhaps lured by Colt’s shouting, and pulled the man pretending to be my brother out of the room. Colt and I couldn’t be bothered to care.

“You don’t remember…” Colt whispered, as if lost in his own memory.

“I don’t remember who I was before the day I was found on the beach,” I confessed.

I watched Colt’s face crumple in pain. Two agonized hands tore through his hair. His eyes rose back to mine, wild, wounded.

“You don’t remember,” he repeated, wincing.

I stepped forward and hestumbled back, as if I were a threat. I reached out my arms, “Colt, I-”

He stepped back again, hands raised, refusing me. One hand smacked his forehead, half covering his closed eyes. His fingers tensed and his brow was creased with pain, as if he tried to subdue an unbearable headache.

I froze. It seemed like an eternity passed in those seconds. Beneath his large hands I could see Colt’s face crinkled in distress. Despair.

Finally, Colt’s hand moved, swiping down his face and neck. His eyes snapped open. New eyes. Eyes that saw something else as they focused on me. They were no longer the blackness of pitch, ready to suck me in and trap me forever, but the blackness of an abyss providing nothing to stop my fall, offering nothing for me cling to. No warmth or light, just endless nothing.

“Since your jig is up, I suppose mine can end as well.”

What? I drew in a shaky breath and swallowed. I didn’t know what those words meant, and I didn’t like his ominous tone.

“I thank you for confessing, Miss Charlotte, and I thank you for the jolly time you gave me while forcing you to do so.” Colt winked. “I won’t soon forget it. At least, not until I’ve had my next turn to crack jenny’s cup.”

“Stop it,” I said, fear rising in me with as overpowering as the tide. “What do you mean?”

“I mean as you’re through pretending, so am I.”

I wanted to slap my hands over my ears and stop hearing his words. I wanted to close my eyes and stop seeing the truth, plain upon his cruel face. So cold; his face was so cold it could scarcely be called human.

“Pretending? Stop it,” I ordered. “We haven’t been. You haven’t been…”

“Treating you with affection to wrest the truth from you?” he said. “There’s no further need.”

The room spun. What was he saying?

Colt sneered. My heart screamed.

“You haven’t been doing that,” I repeated.

“Oh, but I have. Did you think I couldn’t best you? Are you forlorn to have been beaten at your own game? Did you think it was real?” he mocked. “Aw, you did? I’m sorry about that. We’ll return you to your port and keep it quiet, you have my word as a pirate,” he winked again.

What in the world was happening?

“Stop it!” I sobbed so hard, so childishly hard. “Don’t treat me like this. Like I’m some whore you’ve used and discarded. That’s not what we had. It was real, I felt it. You felt it.” Blubbering, I continued, “I know it’s true. It is real! It hasn’t changed.”

Shrugging, Colt said, “You might not have been a whore when you stepped onto this ship but you sure as hell are one now. Do you honestly think I’d marry you? A girl who’d sully herself as you have? Even a pirate has better standards than that.”

Oh God, it hurt so badly I couldn’t stand the pain. I threw myself at Colt, beating him and wailing, “That’s a lie! It was real.”

What we shared was unlike anything I’d ever felt.

Colt clasped my wrists in one of his hands, restraining me.

What was he doing? Why?

“Real? How would you know? Have you been whoring so much with the scoundrels passing through your inn these past two years, that a few tumbles in a captain’s bed made you believe it was love?”

I wailed, throwing my head back. Colt seized the top of my shirt and ripped it in two, right down the middle. My hands flew to hold the shirt back together. Colt fisted my hair instead, yanking it and causing the pins to fall.

“I could take you now and you’d love it, wouldn’t you, you filthy whore? After I’m done I could invite my men in here to take their turns.”

I barely heard his horrible words above my sobbing. “Please…”

“Say the word and I’ll drop you off at the nearest brothel. You haven’t been used too much; you can still fetch a good price. Even better if you let ’em treat you as rough as I have. Let ’em know you like it. Many men will want to rough up a pretty little thing like you.”

Impossibly, I wept harder.

“Let me know if you’d rather I deposit you at the nearest brothel, instead of back with your Daniel.” With obvious disgust, Colt shoved me off his body and I crumpled onto the hard floor, weeping pathetically.

“Makes no difference to me,” he declared, as calmly as if he discussed selecting one pair of breeches over another. I’d broken to pieces, never to be reassembled, and the entire matter hadn’t even made a dent in his day. “I have the truth from you now, Charlotte. You’re only weeping because you’ve lost. And if there’s more to it than that… well then. You have my pity at least. Pity for what an easy mark you’ve become.”

“It was real,” I babbled, over and over. “It was real to me.”

Colt shrugged, turned, and opened the door.

I didn’t think I could fall any lower, but I was wrong.

Lunging for Colt a second time, I screamed while attacking him, “I’m not a whore! Liar! It was real!”

The more my fists flew in pathetic attempts to injure him, the harder he smacked them away and eventually, he clamped my wrists. Using my own flailing against me, Colt spun me around, locked my arm behind my back, and gave me a shove so fierce I was sent sprawling. Pain erupted on my palms and knees, but I didn’t care. I lost the will to battle Colt and crumpled into a pitiful ball.

“Put her in the brig,” I heard Colt tell someone. I hadn’t even realized we had company. “If she wakes in the morning ready to behave like a lady, she can leave. If she attacks me again, she’ll stay there until we reach land.”

Crying into my hands, I felt Conks touch my elbow and help me rise on wobbly legs. I barely had the strength to stand or walk, but I didn’t have the strength to refuse the guidance either. I certainly had no power to fight Colt again. I did not struggle as I was led to the brig. In that moment, I could have been led off the plank and I wouldn’t have protested. My heart may have already taken such a plunge, right to the bottom of the ocean. That was what it felt like -- as if my heart was drowning, screaming in pain, but the rest of my body was above the surface and wouldn’t let me die, forcing me to live in continual, unbearable agony.

It was real, it was real.

It was real… to me.

I didn’t even make it to the brig’s hammock. When the metal door closed behind me with a clank, I crumbled to the floor, covering my face and wailing.

I did not move all night.