The next morning the Bettina sailed into Bridgetown. Joss knew only that the ship had dropped anchor in a calm harbor. Their exact location was not revealed to him until two days later, when three sailors came to release him from the brig where he had spent nearly six days in isolation. To his silent fury, they clapped irons on his wrists before leading him topside. He was clearheaded now, able to walk without aid, but was a trifle weak from being confined without fresh air or exercise.
As he emerged into the sunlight for the first time in almost a week, Joss stopped in the hatchway, blinking furiously against the blinding glare. His escort nudged him in the back with a musket, urging him impatiently on.
As his eyesight gradually adjusted to the brilliance of the tropical afternoon, he became aware of four figures standing near the gangplank, watching his approach. Three were men, one of whom was, he thought, the Bettina's captain.
The fourth, he realized as his escort brought him to a halt a few feet from the little group, was Lilah. She was fashionably dressed in a low-cut gown of palest pink muslin that bared her white shoulders and slender arms beneath tiny sleeves. A wide sash of deeper pink was tied beneath her breasts. A ribbon of the same shade was threaded through the tousled cap of palest gold curls that framed her small face. To his annoyance, the boyish style became her, emphasizing the fragile perfection of her features, the creaminess of her skin, the soft blue- gray of her huge eyes. The very loveliness of her infuriated him so much that it was all he could do to look at her without gnashing his teeth.
He restricted himself to a single icy glare.
She met this without so much as a flicker of her thick- fringed eyes. The soft half-smile that curved her lips never faltered as she said something to the short, stocky man on her right. Joss didn't know him, but it didn't require genius to deduce that he must be Lilah's father. He was perhaps sixty, burned a permanent lobster red from the sun, his hair a gingery version of Lilah's fairness, his figure portly but not yet totally run to fat.
The man on Lilah's other side he did know. Joss cursed God, the devil or whoever was responsible because Lilah's erstwhile fiance hadn't drowned after all.