To Love a Rogue

by Valerie Sherwood

  “There are pirates in those waters who will take your guns,” she reminded him, hoping to make him change his mind.

  “Bedevil the guns!” exploded the burly Scot. “I’ll not have my laddie butchered by any scheming French barber surgeon!”

  Tav’s affection for Raile ran deep, she knew—but his streak of stubbornness ran even deeper. Exhausted by her long hours of struggle in the cabin, Lorraine sagged against a ratline for support.

  “Tav,” she said, using Raile’s name for him, “you’ve known Raile for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Since he was a wee laddie living over a stable and his father in the great house not willing to claim him,” was the morose answer.

  Lorraine’s eyes widened. So Raile was illegitimate? “But his mother?” she protested. “Couldn’t she . . .?”

  “His mother had come to the house as a servant and she bore Raile there in the master’s bedroom. But when the master of the house married, he sent her away. Oh, the man came to visit her from time to time in the little cottage where he settled her, and she bore him a second son there. But when she died, her two little lads were left homeless and penniless. Raile was the best of the two, but too young to be apprenticed—the other one wasn’t worth powder and shot! But the grand lady in the big house wouldn’t allow either of them under her roof and she could always bend Raile’s father to her views. So they both ended up in the stables. I used to seethe with rage at the way the poor little laddie was treated. They were always flogging him for something his little brother, Rory, had done. I would have taken him away with me to serve as cabin boy but I couldna take care of them both and Raile refused to be separated from his brother—he said with no one to protect Rory, ’twould be the finish of him if he left.”

  Lorraine’s heart went out to that younger Raile, beaten, abused, yet sturdily standing up for his weaker brother. Her eyes smarted.

  “Did his father never claim him?” she asked wistfully.

  “Not ever!” MacTavish’s voice was savage. “His own sons, mind you, wearing rags and living in his own stables eating scraps—when by rights they should have been wearing velvet and lace and dining in the great hall on pheasant!”

  Lorraine had never heard such an outburst from MacTavish. His face was thunderous.

  “What happened?” she asked. “How did he get away?”

  “His father died and she turned him out.” MacTavish sat and smoldered for a while. The sky above them was a clear unaltered blue, reflecting no storms of the flesh or problems of those born on the wrong side of the blanket. “That was when I took him to sea,” he added moodily. “I was a first mate then on the Heather.”

  “And his brother?”

  “Rory? He went to work on a farm. He’d no liking for the sea.”

  “But why didn’t Raile become a first mate on a merchantman like you? How did he get into smuggling?”

  MacTavish looked surprised. “The Heather was a smuggling vessel herself, lassie. ’Twas how I first met the lad, when I was taking contraband lace into the countryside to sell to his father!”

  So Raile had become a smuggler because that was the only opportunity that had reached out to him! “So it was you who taught him his trade, Tav?”

  The big Scot looked proud. “Aye, lassie.”

  Lorraine took a deep breath and plunged. “Did you know Laurie Ann?”

  “Laurie Ann MacLaud?” He spat. “Aye, I knew her. And a bad piece of goods she was!”

  “You say she was bad? What was she like, Tav?”

  He shot her a long hard look. “Slim, red-gold hair, eyes that laughed up at you.”

  And a mouth made for kissing, no doubt! Was she always to be plagued by beautiful redheads? Lorraine wondered. First Lavinia, now Laurie Ann!

  “That’s how she looked, Tav, but what was she like?"

  “Wild and reckless—with a restless foot.” He studied Lorraine from beneath bushy brows. “Like you,” he sighed, “she was too beautiful for anyone’s good!” Coming from anyone else that would have been a compliment—coming from Tav it was not.

  “Is this ... is this Laurie Ann’s picture?” Lorraine asked hesitantly. She pulled out the gold locket from where it was tucked into her bodice and opened it.

  MacTavish did not even need to glance inside. He recognized the locket from its case. “Aye. The laddie bought that for her. ‘Twas to be a gift for her when he returned from sea—the locket to frame the picture she’d given him of herself.”

  So much for Raile’s insistence that he did not know the girl in the locket.

  Lorraine sighed and dropped the gold locket back down the neck of her bodice. She would pry that picture out when she got back inside, and dispose of it! “Raile said he asked her to marry him.”

  “Aye, and was accepted,” was his dry rejoinder.

  “Why didn’t she marry him, Tav?”

  “Because she was a faithless jade!” said MacTavish savagely. “She dinna like the sea so she sent my laddie away with the promise that it would be his last voyage—and he came back to Scotland to find she’d married while he was gone and had journeyed to America on her father’s dowry!”

  “Did Raile follow her?” Lorraine asked, almost fearfully.

  “To Virginia?” MacTavish snorted. “He did not! He had too much sense!”

  “Where is she now, Tav?”

  “Still living on the Curies of the James River, I suppose—though like as not she’s run away with someone else by now!” He gave Lorraine a fierce look. “She broke my laddie’s heart and it’s been slow a-mending. I’d not like to see it broken again!”

  “Nor would I, Tav.” Lorraine sighed—and decided on one last try. “It’s not his heart, but his body that I’m worried about now. Oh, Tav, won’t you let Dr. L’Estraille see him? Raile is like to die if you don’t!”

  The big Scotsman slid his long leg from the rail and reared up to his full height. “My laddie is not like to die!” he thundered. “He’s lived through sword thrusts and knife wounds and twice being shot! I’ll have no French barber surgeon finish him off!”

  Lorraine sighed and went back past the stolid guard to her sickroom duties. Plainly Raile was not to have medical aid. She tried to force some hot broth into him but he was shivering so violently that both spoon and bowl crashed to the floor. Lorraine sobbed as she retrieved them.

  Sometimes he shook so violently she had to fight to keep him in the bunk at all; at other times his skin seemed to scorch her palm and she poured water down his parched throat.

  He will die, she thought in terror, watching him. He will never reach Jamaica. He will die here aboard the Lass with no one to help him. And for a bleak moment she hated MacTavish, even though she knew that the stubborn Scot loved Raile like a son.

  Toward noon she went out to reason with MacTavish again—and found him occupied with other business. A fat-bellied merchant ship flying the English flag was wallowing in the blue waters nearby and an interesting conversation was going on between the first mate and the ship’s doctor.

  “I tell you they’ll not risk sending you a doctor once they know this is a fever ship,” insisted L’Estraille.

  “They’ll send us a doctor if they have him,” was the big Scot’s heavy response.

  Lorraine stayed to watch—breathlessly. If only MacTavish could pull it off! He had hailed the ship and gotten a response. Now his big voice was booming out across the water once more:

  “Have you a doctor aboard? Our captain has fallen and been injured and we’ve no doctor aboard to tend him.”

  “That’s your opinion,” muttered L’Estraille savagely.

  “Be quiet, André!” pleaded Lorraine.

  The French doctor subsided, muttering.

  But a short time later a boat was put over the side and was rowed over the quiet waters toward the Likely Lass.

  “Oh, thank God!” cried Lorraine. Her knees felt weak.

  MacTavish whirled on her. “Say naught till I get this doctor t
o the cabin,” he warned her. “Nor you Frenchman.”

  Lorraine fled back to Raile.

  “A doctor is coming,” she told him excitedly. But he did not seem to hear. He was talking again, incoherently, turning and tossing. “Vile . . . vile . . .” was all she could understand. And then, more clearly, “Sea chest . . . friar.”

  Light seemed to burst over Lorraine. Raile was not saying “vile”—he was saying “vial”! The Spanish friar must have given him a vial and it was in his sea chest! She began rummaging through both sea chests, tossing everything about. At last she found a large vial and ran to show it to him.

  “Did the Spanish friar give you this?” she demanded excitedly.

  “Yes.” He was coherent for once. He reached for the vial but fell back, shivering violently. “It is . . . extracted from . . . cinchona bark.”

  At that moment MacTavish entered with the doctor. He proved to be a spry, amiable little man with twinkling blue eyes and ginger hair, who bounded along lightly despite his ample waistline. At sight of Raile, now shivering uncontrollably in the bunk, he stopped short and his demeanor changed. “Ah.” He sucked in his breath. “So this is a fever ship?”

  “Aye,” said MacTavish grimly. “And our captain is in grave need of your services.”

  Lorraine waved the vial. “This is extract of cinchona bark,” she told the newcomer eagerly. “Given to Raile by a Spanish friar.”

  The doctor brightened. “Quinine?” he said eagerly. “You have quinine? Ah, then there is hope!” He proceeded to dose the patient and leave instructions. “Are there more such?” he inquired.

  “No more serious cases now,” said MacTavish, taking charge of the vial. Lorraine guessed he would defend it against all comers. “Will you not share a glass of wine with me?”

  “Ah, that I will,” sparkled the little doctor. “I am too old for these jaunts across the water!”

  He sat down at the table and was joined by Lorraine and MacTavish. He was a talkative man and over two glasses of wine he told them that his ship was the Heron out of Philadelphia on her way to Port Royal, Jamaica. On her way down, she had touched at Yorktown and all Virginia was in revolt. Some planter named Bacon, angered by Indian incursions on the Curies of the James River, was leading the colonists against the Indians in defiance of the governor. Everything there was in an uproar and it was said that if the rebels were not murdered by the Indians, they would surely be hanged by the governor.

  MacTavish cast an uneasy look at Raile, who was resting quietly now in his bunk. Lorraine was not sure he even heard.

  By that night the fever had broken, and Raile looked fairly normal. “Lorraine, send Tav to me,” he said in a weak voice.

  Lorraine went to get MacTavish and remained on deck, glad to breathe other air than that of the sickroom. MacTavish came out of the cabin with eyes snapping and Lorraine hurried back to see what had occasioned his wrath. She found Raile peacefully asleep and forbore to wake him.

  The next morning when she went out on deck, André L’Estraille came up to her saying, “MacTavish has gone mad. We are sailing in the wrong direction.”

  Lorraine saw that the morning sun had indeed reversed direction since yesterday. It was coming up over her right shoulder when it should have been over her left.

  “Did you ask him why we have changed course?” she demanded.

  The Frenchman shrugged. “He is in such a mood this morning that none dare approach him.”

  “I will ask Raile!” She spun on her heel and returned to the cabin, where she found Raile awake and putting on his clothes.

  “It is too soon for that,” she protested. “You are still weak.”

  “ ’Tis time I got my sea legs again.”

  “We have changed course,” she told him. “No one knows why.”

  “I know why. I ordered it.”

  “Why, where are we going?”

  “To Virginia. There’s an insurrection going on—we will sell our guns there.”

  So he had heard what the doctor from the Heron said last night!

  “I thought you were not listening,” she said in an altered voice.

  “I was thinking what to do,” he told her. “I called for Tav once I had decided.”

  Word spread quickly of their new destination. Derry Cork was enthusiastically for it; so were Heist and most of the others. The ship’s doctor, however, had other ideas.

  “Captain Cameron.” He confronted Raile formally. “We cannot sail to Virginia. You seem to have forgotten that I told Captain Bridey in Bermuda that we were bound for Virginia. Mademoiselle Lorraine may well find that she has a welcoming party to take her back to Rhode Island!”

  “That’s right,” cried Lorraine, who had forgotten the Frenchman’s lighthearted lie on her behalf.

  “Nevertheless it is our only alternative,” said Raile. “Our ship needs better than temporary repairs—and we can get those repairs in Jamestown. The Lass is in no condition to sail across the Caribbean in this season of storms.”

  “You were not of that opinion when we left Mexico!” challenged L’Estraille.

  “That was before I knew of the insurrection in Virginia. We will be able to make ready disposal of our guns up the James—the planters have money.”

  He was not to be moved.

  “I will take care of you, lass,” Raile assured Lorraine in a quiet voice.

  She gave him a bitter look. She had suddenly decided they were not going north to sell guns or because of temporary repairs that might not hold—they were going north to save a woman named Laurie Ann MacLaud, a woman who had betrayed him but a woman he still loved.

  She flung away and went to stand clutching the rail, looking out at the whitecaps frosting the blue sea.

  André joined her. “What do you think of this change of course, ma petite?" he muttered.

  “I think it is despicable!” she cried, and ran sobbing back to the cabin, leaving him to stare after her.

  That night she told Raile in a tight voice that he was “not well enough” and must sleep alone in the bunk—she would sleep on the floor.

  “Nonsense,” he said roughly. “We will sleep together. There is room for two in the bunk!” When her chin came up stubbornly, he gave her a keen look. “It is because we have changed course, is it not?”

  “Yes!” She met this gaze squarely.

  He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Lorraine, I know you feel I am putting you at risk, but I must go to Virginia. It is not something I can avoid.”

  She was trembling in fury that he would admit it. And to her! “I do not need your explanations!” she cried. “I do not care why you sail to Virginia. But from now on you will sleep alone!”

  He opened his mouth—and closed it again. “As you wish,” he muttered. “You may have the bunk. I will take the floor.”

  “It is not necessary!”

  “It is. You nursed me through my fever, you found the vial for the doctor.”

  Oh, yes, I have been very useful! she thought bitterly. And convenient. Someone to warm your bed! And now we have set sail to rescue your lost love!

  She flounced to the bed, giving him an indignant look as she passed—and decided that she would flirt with André L’Estraille the whole way!

  V:

  DARK OF THE MOON

  CHAPTER 20

  The Carolina Coast

  September 1675

  UNDER FULL SAIL, with the aid of dangerously piled on canvas, fair weather, and the warm blue current of the Gulf Stream to help them, the Lass's voyage through the Yucatan Channel, past the Dry Tortugas, and up the Straits of Florida was dazzlingly swift. But as far as Raile and Lorraine were concerned, it was a bumpy voyage.

  Once Raile had recovered from his fever, Lorraine kept her distance from him. He wondered why she was still so upset when he had promised to protect her. He never once guessed that what he had babbled in his delirium, and not the fact that sailing to Virginia would put her in some danger, was the cause of her
anger. He thought perhaps her mood was justified, but it irritated him that she spent so much time with Heist and the French doctor, who were still teaching her to gamble.

  The three card players would crouch on deck in the sunshine, gaily making tremendous wagers—all with the understanding that real money would never be used. They won and lost ten, twenty, even seventy thousand pounds on a hand of cards—although André L’Estraille sometimes slyly suggested that they play “for a garter or a stocking—and the winner must of course remove it from the loser!” It amused the doctor that he could so easily make Lorraine blush.

  Lorraine was a good pupil. She was learning fast and she had developed a taste for their lighthearted brand of gambling.

  Raile was inclined to find it objectionable.

  “What will you do with your newfound skill?” he asked her one day.

  “Why, I will make my living with it, of course—once I am on shore!” she told him airily.

  Raile looked amazed and shook his head, but he did not mention her gaming again.

  Their steady progress northward was checked off the Carolina coast by an urgent need of fresh water. They cast anchor in the landlocked harbor at Albemarle Point on the west bank of the Ashley River where the little community of Charles Towne had been founded as the first permanent English settlement in Carolina five years before. So impatient was Captain Cameron in his flight north that, to the discomfiture of his crew, he decreed that the Lass would pause only long enough to refill her water casks and would depart on the evening tide.

  Lorraine accompanied Raile ashore—a sulky Lorraine with her blue-gray eyes snapping angrily at the speed with which Raile had kept the Lass skimming the waves. She had completely convinced herself at this point that the reason for such haste was to rescue his old flame Laurie Ann.

  While the others roamed about the little settlement, Raile and Lorraine repaired to the common room of a small rough-hewn inn that overlooked the Ashley River. The innkeeper, a stout friendly fellow, joined them at their table, bringing with him a bottle of indifferent wine. And as it was being poured, Raile asked, “What news of the troubles in Virginia?”