Sapphire Dream Read Online Free PDF

grip on her mind, if not her body, and she felt once more tethered to the living world, though she still couldn’t move. She could feel herself lying on her back, a rough blanket drawn over her legs.
    The bed rocked. Colors swirled. A hand brushed her throat and a thin line of pressure cut into the back of her neck. The wild-haired dwarf had hold of her necklace. The necklace had no clasp. She’d worn it since she was a little girl and the chain wasn’t long enough to fit over her head. There was no taking it off without breaking it, which seemed to be what the dwarf had in mind. The song ended abruptly with a yank brutal enough to cause the metal to tear into her tender flesh. She gasped mentally, but no sound formed in her throat.
    No. You can’t have it. It’s all I have.
    But her body would not respond to her mind’s demand to fight.
    A string of unknown words, ripe with anger, filled her ears. The thief had not succeeded. The angry mutterings moved away, then subsided with the closing of a door, leaving her swaying in a colorful sea.
    Sleep tugged at her, pulling her down into a pit of dark nightmares—dreams of pale-eyed demons, fire-breathing steel. And pirates.
     
     
    “An English frigate, Captain. Heading straight toward us.”
    Rourke strode across his storm-damaged deck, his strides long and agitated as he reached his bosun. Joshua Cutter looked at him with an I-told-you-so expression on his pitted face. With annoyance, Rourke grabbed the spyglass out of the bosun’s hand and pressed the sun-warmed metal to his eye.
    Damnation. An English patrol indeed. If the winds continued, that ship would pass them in little more than an hour. He couldn’t outrun them. The Lady Marie had been badly damaged in the night’s storm and even now barely held her own against the tides coaxing her toward the rocky shore of the Scottish coast. But neither could he allow them to board. In his hold he carried illegal arms. And in his cabin . . . a dying woman.
    A dull pain throbbed behind his left temple as he lowered the spyglass and tossed it back to his crewman. Hegarty had found her. The bloody little troll had found Brenna Cameron.
    The pounding of the carpenters’ hammers echoed across the deck, doing little to ease the ache in his head. He moved to the port rail and scanned the cliffs in the too near distance. If the wind turned against the ship, it’d be dashed on the rocks for certain. They were too close.
    And anywhere within a three days’ sail of his native land was too close. At the first port he would put Hegarty and the woman ashore. Then he’d sail directly for the Isle of St. Christopher and buy the Goodhope Plantation. He needed it, he realized. He needed solid ground under his feet. Some place to call his own. Some place far, far from Scotland.
    ‘Twas a good plan, if fate would but smile upon him for once.
    As if in answer, a scuffle broke out amongst the miscreants he called a crew, his bosun in the thick of it.
    “She bested ye, mate!” Gordy cackled as he and Cutter circled, hands at their sides. “No sense pretendin’ it didn’t ’appen. We all saw the way she near ripped off yer ballocks.”
    Cutter’s face grew more contorted by the second. The words might be true—the lass was no lady and had fought like a guttersnipe—but Cutter was not one to lose . . . at anything. He’d expected to be made first mate upon the death of the former mate three months ago, but Rourke had never fully trusted the man. In truth, he’d never sought the loyalty of any of his crew. Their respect, yes. And most especially their trepidation, for his was a crew that knew no master but greed, lust, and that most powerful of emotions—fear.
    But his former mate had given him loyalty nonetheless, as had Mr. Baker. Rourke had assigned Baker the job, though he was ill-prepared to be first mate. The man was as afraid of the crew as the crew was of their captain. Still, it was better to have a loyal hand at his