Romance Novel (Untitled)

Chapter Three

         “Now yer still, ye are…” muttered the angry man. “Say ‘no’ so haughty to me now, do ye!” And he reached toward her bodice to take what he had been after all along.

         “Here now!” cried a thin voice to landward. “Who goes there?!”

         The thug grimaced, his eyes (‘eye,’ more accurately; the blow from the skinny little wench had landed smartly enough to close the right nearly all the way) darting around the shadows seeking safety from the lantern light of the guard o’ watch.

         He moved toward the neglected end of the dock, pulling Susannah’s motionless body with him. Her shoeless feet made no sound or signal of her abduction. In the shadows of one of the ships, he waited, weighing his odds against the watchman.

         “I say, who’s there?”

         The voice was rising in pitch, fear overtaking authority. Susannah’s attacker grinned evilly in the darkness, knowing the scales were tipping in his favor.

         Just then the ship closest to the watchmen rolled in a stray eddy, bumped and groaned against the dock, complaining to her berthmates.

         The watchman jumped, uttered a thin, short shriek, and thrust his lantern at the ship as he might a musket at a brigand. Then he let out his breath, bent at the waist and put his hands on his knees. The lantern swung by his feet, and shook as if the man were laughing or crying—or both.

         He muttered ruefully, “Ye great hulk! Ye nearly made me soil myself!” He laughed shakily, blew out a breath and headed back toward the shore.

         The man with Suasannah’s limp form at his feet hissed a sickening laugh, then whispered, “Now, pretty…”

         He reached behind Susannah’s head to bring her to his mouth, intending to kiss her helpless face…and more. But he pulled away suddenly, his hand wet, and sticky.

         “Argh!” he grunted. “This pretty’s more’n sleepin’, I’d say!” he commented to no one in particular. “A bit o’ fun she mighta been, even on the nod, but the dead make lousy lovers.”

         He grunted his disgusting chuckle once again as he threw Susannah’s lifeless form over his shoulder and moved toward the edge of the dock. He made a move to unload his burden into the water, then stopped.

         “Course, they find yer pretty face watchin’ the sun come up from under this’ere dock, ‘n’ there might be questions, eh?” he asked the rag-doll Susannah had become “That piss of a guard might start thinkin’ he knowed what made them noises t’night, eh? Well, ol’ Tom knows a trick worth two o’ that!”

         Looking around, the man smiled an ugly grin in the darkness. “I know—in the bin wi’ ya, girlie! Heh!” And with that, he heaved her narrow frame into a shoulder-high crate that was stacked with several others waiting to be loaded aboard a nearby Spanish schooner within the day. He placed the lid of the crate, which was leaning to one side, over the top, thumped once on it with his fist to tighten it, offered best of luck to the corpse within, and staggered away to sleep off the late night’s entertainment.