Scorn deepened in the dark eyes that continued so disconcertingly to regard him. 'Honest? You say that! Honest to sell the man who save' your life? For fifty thousand pieces of eight, was it not? That is honest? Honest as Judas, who sell the Saviour for thirty pieces.'
He glowered at her in resentment. Then found, as rogues will, an argument to justify himself. 'If you don't like it, you may blame yourself. If in your stupidity you hadn't lost the jewels I shouldn't need to do this. As it is, it's just a providence. For how else am I to find money for Tim and the hands, buy stores at Jamaica, and pay for the graving of the Heron against the ocean voyage? How else?'
'How else!' There was a bitter edge to her voice now 'How else since I lost my jewels, eh? It is so. It was for that? My jewels were for that? Que verguenza?' A sob shook her. 'Dios mio, que viltad! Ay de mi! Ay de mi!'
Then, hoping against hope in her despair, she caught his arm in her two hands and changed her tone to one of pleading.
'Jorgito…'
But Mr Fairfax, you'll have gathered, was not a patient man. He would be plagued no further. He flung her off with a violence that sent her hurtling against the bulkhead at her back. His evil temper was now thoroughly aroused, and it may have been rendered the more savage because his impetuous movement brought a twinge of pain to his wounded shoulder.
'Enough of that whining, my girl. Devil take you if you haven't set me bleeding again. Ye'll meddle in things you understand and not in my affairs. D'ye think a man's to be pestered so? Ye'll have to learn different afore we're acquainted much longer. Ye will so, by God?' Peremptorily he ended: 'Get you to bed.'
As she still lingered, winded where he had flung her, white–faced, aghast, incredulous, annoying him by the reproach of her stare, he raised his voice in fury. 'D'ye hear me? Get you to bed, rot you! Go!'
She went without another word, so swiftly and quietly that she left him with a sense of something ominous. Uneasy, a sudden suspicion of treachery crossing his mind, he got gingerly down from his bed, despite his condition, and staggered to the door, to spy upon her thence. He was just in time to see her vanish through the doorway of the stateroom opposite, and a moment later, from beyond her closed door, a sound of desolate sobbing reached him across the cabin.
His upper lip curled as he listened. At least, it had not occurred to her to betray his intentions to Captain Blood. Not that it would matter much if she did. Tim and the six hands aboard would easily account for the buccaneer if he should make trouble. Still, the notion might come to her, and it would be safer to provide.