"Very kind of you, I'm sure," snapped the vicomte. "I don't know who put that idea into your head. That you should picture me working a treadmill for some fat slave owner, that I could understand—but from there to burying me! It if interests you, I am in excellent health."
A faint smile touched Beaufort's lips. "I'm sorry. I ought not to have said that. But all this is so incredible. Try and see it from my point of view. I arrive here, recognize my ship and make a bid to win back my own with the help of a handful of men picked up on the waterfront, whereupon I am fallen on by a gang of screaming ruffians and hauled off to the so-called owner, only to find myself face to face with the two of you—"
His eyes, as though drawn by a magnet, had returned to Marianne, a white figure curled up amid a pile of silken cushions in every shade of green. He stepped around the stove and came to the divan, while she watched him in an agony of apprehension. What was he going to do? He was smiling with what looked like real joy, but his reactions were so unpredictable. Had he forgotten all that had passed aboard his ship, or was the memory of that last, terrible scene between them still with him, ready to stand between them once again?
That had been on board the Sea Witch. Jason had been standing on the quarter deck, watching while Caleb suffered punishment for having tried to kill Dr. Leighton, and Marianne had turned on him, wild with rage, and had snatched the bloody whip from the bosun's hands. She saw again the figure of the pretended Ethiopian hanging by the wrists from the mainmast, limp and unconscious. She heard Jason's voice saying coldly: "What is that woman doing? Take her back to her cabin!"
They had faced one another before the whole ship's company. She had hurled defiance at the man who stood there with a face of stone and madness in his eyes, a man, she knew now, who was even then in the power of a deadly drug. But what memories had the drug left in his mind?
None, perhaps. For in the look that Jason bent on her face she saw all the old fire which she had thought never to see again. A wave of happiness swept over her. Was it possible that the memory of the horrible events off the island of Cythera could have faded like a dream? If no trace of them remained in Jason's mind, how gladly would Marianne erase them from her own.
Jason approached until he could rest one knee on the next divan and, bending, offered her his hand as though in earnest of peace.
"Marianne," he said softly. "They told me you were here and that I should find you but I never thought that it would be so soon. I think I must be dreaming. How is it possible?"
She raised herself from her cushions, her hands, her arms, her whole being reaching out to him with unthinking gladness.
"I'll tell you everything! But you are here! At last! That is what is so wonderful! Come and sit by me. Here, at my side."
With an eagerness that she had not shown for many weeks, she tossed aside the cloth that covered the stove and made room for him among the cushions, her condition quite forgotten. She remembered it too late as she saw Jason draw away from her quickly, white-faced, when the gesture revealed her shape all too clearly.
"So that at least was no dream?" he said bitterly. "That was no nightmare brought about by Leighton's infernal drugs. You are with child—"
The light died out of Marianne's eyes, and Jolival saw that once again all was about to be lost and that she was to be made to suffer yet again. He lost his temper.
"Oh, no!" he said fiercely. "Not again! Beaufort, I've had more than enough of your tantrums, your tragedy airs and your insufferable pride! You no sooner arrive than you begin to set yourself up as judge and jury! You come here out of the blue, in the unedifying character of one who has been caught trying to take what no longer belongs to him—"
"What gives you the idea that my ship no longer belongs to me?" Jason demanded haughtily.
"The law of the sea. Your ship, my good sir, was captured by the Turks and brought here as a prize by one Achmet Reis, the man who had taken her. She was bought from him by the Valideh Sultan, given a complete refit, which she badly needed after a spell in your friend Leighton's hands, and presented by Her Highness to her kinswoman, Marianne. In other words, having permitted that damned doctor of yours to rob Marianne and do his best to murder her in the most hideous manner, you now come here to deprive her of everything she has and dare to get up on your high horse into the bargain when you find her in a condition that does not meet with your approval! Oh, no, my friend, it won't do! It won't do at all!"
Jason shrugged. "I don't understand a word you're saying. Leighton acted like a brigand to me but I had not thought that you had cause for complaint—"
"Oh, hadn't you? You did not know that on the night after Caleb's flogging, while you were snoring in your bed sodden with rum and drugs, he stripped this poor child of all she possessed and set her adrift in an open boat with nothing more than a nightshift and a pair of oars, leaving her wretched maid, Agathe, to be raped by half the crew? If the boat had not been found by a man fishing out of Santorini, Marianne would be dead long ago of thirst, exposure and sunstroke. She was saved in the nick of time. And no thanks to you, as far as I am aware. So kindly moderate your transports and spare us your niceties of conscience. Yes, she is with child. In fact she will be brought to bed at any moment. But although you refused to listen to the facts on board your confounded ship, I swear to God that you shall hear them now, in full, if I have to ask Turhan Bey to have you put in chains!"
"Arcadius," Marianne implored him, alarmed by her friend's fury, "please! Calm yourself!"
"Calm myself! Not until I've forced this blockhead here to see the truth. Just you listen to me, Jason Beaufort. You'll not leave here until you have heard the truth, the whole truth about the nightmare Marianne has lived through this past year, and which you in your stupidity have only made worse. You had better sit down because it will take some time."
Scarlet to the roots of his receding hair, Jolival faced up to Jason like a small fighting cock, his clenched fists itching to punch the stern face before him. He could not remember ever having been so angry, except perhaps once, when he was ten years old and a young cousin of his, out of pure spite, had killed his favorite dog before his eyes. The crucified look on Marianne's face as Jason uttered the words "You are with child!" in a voice thick with contempt, had taken him back to that other horrible moment and had unleashed forces that had slumbered in him for years, and Jolival found that, beneath the cynical, cultivated man of the world, there was still the same small Arcadius who could be roused to a primitive and savage rage by an act of wanton cruelty and injustice. Then he had hurled himself on his big cousin and bitten him to the bone like a small wild animal, clinging so fiercely to the murderer's hand that they had had to haul him off bodily. Now Jolival was once more in the mood to bite.
Instinct told Jason he had gone too far and was near to making a deadly enemy of a man who, until now, had been a loyal friend. He gave in and sat down obediently, crossing one long booted leg over the other.
"I'm listening," he said with a sigh. "Indeed, I am beginning to think there must be a great deal I don't know."
He had deliberately refrained from looking at Marianne again, restrained by a kind of embarrassment, and she seized the opportunity to extricate herself from her nest of cushions.
"Jolival, will you call Donna Lavinia, please? I should like to go to bed, now."
Jason protested instantly. "Why must you go? If I have wronged you, I ask only to acknowledge it freely for—for I too have suffered. Please. I'm asking you to stay."
She shook her head, although she saw what this admission of his own unhappiness had cost his pride.