by Holland Rae
“Big enough for a new house.” Catalina’s smile widened. “We can do it, Toni,” she said, using the nickname she had long ago forged for her friend. “We can take on more people. We can build.”
Antonia’s eyes widened. “Are you quite sure?” she asked, hesitation mingling with excitement. “There’s so much to be done here.” But her voice was tinkling with joy. “And who would watch this new house to make sure it all runs smoothly?”
Catalina shrugged. “You and I will find someone. And this job will bring more than enough funds to fix the roof and set up the gardens and fill our orchards.” A few acres of fruit orchards stretched behind Dwyer House, but Catalina knew that another dozen or so trees would ease some of the pressure upon her friend’s back. “I’ve brought you a new girl, Rose McEwan. She’s nearly bursting with her babe, and she doesn’t seem to hold her stomach all that well on the ship.”
Antonia nodded, following her thought.
“We’ll need a place to put the next Rose McEwan, Toni, and the next, and the next.”
Antonia took her hand and squeezed tightly, her smile infectious. “You are a wonder. Truly, London’s loss is the world’s gain.” She had a smile that could melt the frown off the face of Lucifer himself.
“I couldn’t do it without you,” Catalina whispered, grasping her hands in excitement. And it was the truth.
Chapter Eight
29 April 1803
200 leagues off the coast of the Americas
“Under no circumstances.” She folded her arms across her chest and leveled a stare at Armand that could have halted the British Navy in its tracks. “You’re not coming within twenty steps of my ship.” Said ship was now lolling in the light afternoon breeze and listing slightly to the left. Catalina turned her stare toward two crewmen, who stood just at the end of the dock mooning at a buxom barmaid, and they scurried up the plank to adjust the sails.
“I’m not asking permission,” Armand replied. He looked as though he was a fair bit more rested than when she had seen him last, but still the enduring expression of fear lingered behind his deep brown eyes. She didn’t remember his gaze being quite so powerful or steady.
“It is my ship,” Catalina nearly growled. “You would do well to ask some permission.”
“You understand my meaning full and clear, Charlotte.”
Her stare could have felled Medusa, and she was pleased to see him fumble.
“Catalina.” He cocked his head to one side. “Lady Catalina?”
She ground her teeth together so tightly she was certain her jaw would snap. Here was a man who was far too accustomed to getting his own way, but she could simply not allow the commission to slip away.
“Captain Sol, if you please,” she ground out. “And you’re not coming with me. I told you—no questions.” Armand’s own expression was growing as frustrated as hers, and Catalina was beginning to feel exasperated.
“I’m not asking,” he said, as if each of the words cost him. “I’m telling you. I’m coming upon this mission whether you accept me aboard your ship or not.” She arched her eyebrow. If he were this unmanageable before they even embarked, how would he be upon the open seas?
“Are you planning to swim?” she asked, her voice humorless.
Armand shrugged, and she was, much to her dismay, struck by the sheer size of his shoulders as they filled out a sensible, perfectly tailored waistcoat. The man was one of propriety and standards, to be sure. Not another man half the world around would be caught with so many layers of clothing stretched across his body—not in heat such as this.
“If that’s what it takes,” he said, and she saw the note of honesty in his eyes so clearly it could have been written in ink. That, and an overwhelming frustration with their delay, snapped her resolve.
“Fine.” Her voice was curt and every bit that of a captain preparing to set sail. “But everyone aboard my ship does their fair share. That will include you, my lord.” Catalina said the words to goad him, and goad him they did. The vein at the edge of his temple pulsed with frustration, but she had the upper hand.
“Very well,” he ground out, clearly a man unaccustomed to taking orders.
Catalina took a deep breath. This would be tricky territory to traverse. She had a ship full of stowaways, runaway brides, and orphans, and she was about to invite the island magistrate to join the fray. If they all made it out of this particular adventure unscathed, it would be nothing short of a miracle.
“Armand.”
He turned, his face expressing the surprise he obviously felt at hearing his given name. “Yes, Captain?”
Oh, but that voice. When he wasn’t being an irritating sod with his sense of his own importance clouding his vision, he truly had a lovely voice, all tinged with accents of the world, thick as honey and whispering of humor.
“Promise me you won’t ask any questions.” She must have appeared desperate, must have shown something in her expression, because he took one glance at her face, one quick look as she spoke, and nodded.
“I promise,” he said.
****
Later that night
Armand had spent much of his life on ships. He had traversed the globe to visit the title he would inherit in India, if three cousins, one uncle, and a great grandfather passed away. He had traveled back and forth between England and France before troubles upon the continent—worsening from what he heard—began to make the trip a challenge. He had been living on an island for several years, a judge and a tradesman, and oh, what would his father say about that? But Armand, for all his sea legs and all his stomach of steel, had never been able to sleep on a ship.
Oh, to be sure, he caught snatches of sleep, dozed in the afternoon or closed his eyes for an hour or so as the ship rocked through the night. But while the motion seemed to lull everyone else to the sweetness of rest, not unlike a baby in a cradle, it simply brought to Armand’s mind the vastness of the sea, the swirling great ocean, that could ruin them all with the twist of a wave, with the turn of a storm. To sleep in a ship had come to feel like climbing into one’s own coffin. With that had come envy for those who could rest, and so, instead of lying in a hammock and cursing the snoring men around him, he decided to make for the deck.
The air was warm, brushing his face the moment he cleared the top of the steps. It wasn’t yet May, and an enormous moon hung low in the sky, but the Caribbean had never been a cool place to live. Even though the sun was nowhere to be found, Armand felt a drop of sweat slowly slip down the nape of his neck.
The truth was, he wanted to like ships. To him, they had once symbolized adventure and the great world outside of London ballrooms and French aristocracy. Even now, even as he had two titles in his name, and one title in waiting, all of which were being run by proxy, Armand hated the thought of returning to London or Paris or India. He liked upholding the law, enjoyed the challenges of trade, and felt free, away from the pomp and circumstance of the ton. It didn’t much matter which country he was in—they were all the same in the end.
For a moment, Armand allowed his mind to wander, thinking back to the days of his youth, when they had traversed the seas to return to his mother’s lands. For a child, it had been a long journey, and though Henri had been confined to the lower decks with seasickness, Armand could recall spending his days on deck, watching the sailors and the horizon and the water, like a young man starved for adventure. His thoughts turned then, to the last time he had set sail from England, waving goodbye to the young girl, undeniably a woman now, who currently resided in her captain’s chambers just below, doing goodness knew what. Once upon a time, Armand had known Charlotte Talbot. He had known her as the woman he was one day to wed, known her as his childhood friend and companion. She had laughed more, when they were young, but then again, didn’t they all?
Still, he couldn’t help but imagine what their lives might have been like, had they married. She was beautiful, no doubt. Striking and powerful and commanding. But would she hav
e been those things, if she hadn’t taken for the docks and the faraway line of the horizon? If they had both remained in London and done as their fathers had bid them, would either of them be the people they were now? Armand knew the answer before he had finished the question.
It was pleasant to fantasize about a normal life, if for a moment. Armand’s life had never been normal, not since his mother had died and he had grown old enough to turn his back on the duties that lay for him upon her home shores. Everything was managed and taken care of, just not by him. Going home to India had never felt like home. The only place that ever had was the countryside estate and the London townhouse where he and Charlotte had played as children, chasing each other and their two, tag-along younger siblings. Charlotte had grown older, of course. She at fifteen and he at seventeen were no longer the children they had once been. Things would have changed, regardless of him leaving.
And yet, it burned in a way that Armand didn’t quite understand, to find that their reunion was so fraught with hostility. He had been expecting a pirate, and he’d found himself one. It shouldn’t matter that she was an old friend from a former life. She was a pirate, and that was the one thing Armand loathed more than any other in the world.
And yet.
And yet, she was such a beacon of hope for him. Henri had been gone near a week now, and to know that he was no longer solely responsible for bringing his brother home was comfort, indeed. As long as he had been a judge and successful tradesman, Armand had known he would never be truly safe. But they had taken his brother, and little else mattered until Henri was home and by his side.
A small sound jolted Armand from his jumbled thoughts of childhood and siblings. He had thought himself alone on the deck and tried to focus his eyes to see where the sound was coming from. Charlotte—Catalina, now that was a difficult thing to remember—had told him no questions. That had only made him more curious, not less.
The sound came again, followed by another, a different one. He hadn’t much experience in the field of babies and comforting women, but he’d be damned if he didn’t recognize the little squeal of infant lungs, as they protested something or other, likely the sway of the ship upon the tide. But surely, surely he was going mad, if he believed that he heard a baby onboard a ship headed out on a rescue effort. Short of Calypso herself rising up to join their madcap adventures, Armand could think of nothing more absurd than bringing an infant child on a ship headed for danger, if not complete disaster.
But this time, when the sound came, louder than before, Armand located a dark figure, standing in the shadows near the hull of the ship. She, for it was most definitely a she, moved slowly, bouncing the dark bundle in her arms and murmuring words that Armand couldn’t hear from where he stood.
What the devil? Did this Catalina Sol have a single idea what was happening aboard her ship? She clearly had a stowaway from the port, someone who had no inkling of understanding just which ship they had boarded. Well, whoever stood in that dark corner, keeping themselves hidden from anyone who might be aboard the deck after dark, had picked a very poor choice for an escape ship, indeed.
He should approach her, Armand thought, but the idea was less than appealing. What in damnation did a man say to a stowaway woman with a baby, aboard a ship destined for a pirate stronghold on an ill-conceived rescue effort? For once, Armand found himself quite glad that he was not the man, or woman, responsible. The best course of action here was to find Catalina and have her make whatever decisions needed to be made to ensure this woman’s safety, as they continued upon their mission.
So, with that thought in mind, Armand headed back toward the stairs and set off for her chambers. He had never known a ship to be quiet, and in his life he’d spent a great deal of time between the snoring of sailors and the crashing of a wooden bow against the waves. But this ship, the Liberté, felt louder than most. It felt fuller than most too, though Armand thought that might be attributed to the extra hands needed for the rescue. As he walked the short hall to the captain’s chamber, Armand got the distinct impression he was missing a fundamental element of the puzzle.
He knocked, and after a moment’s pause, she called for him to enter. When he walked through the door into her chambers, Armand was struck dumb by the image that met him. Her unruly hair tumbled over her shoulders, clad only in a linen shirt, which seemed to caress her curves, the way no man’s apparel ever should. The glow of several candles, tightly secured in their holders, lit her form. One hand gripped a quill, and the other had obviously stopped short in the act of tallying columns in a ledger book.
“Armand,” she said far too sweetly, as if she had never been anything other than the debutante set for England’s ballrooms.
“Captain,” he replied, giving her a nod. “There’s something going on aboard your ship that I believe you should know about.”
She arched an eyebrow, as if more intrigued than surprised, and motioned for him to continue.
“I was above deck just a moment ago, and I saw a woman.” He paused, expecting the words to hit the room with the ferocity of cannon fire. “She was holding a babe, no more than six months from the sound of it. I’m sorry to tell you, but I believe you’ve got a stowaway aboard your ship.” Armand expected her blanch, to stand, to shout, to do any matter of things that an ordinary ship captain might do in similar circumstances. Ah, but Charlotte Talbot, turned Catalina Sol, was in no way an ordinary ship captain.
“Ah, yes,” she said, a knowing smile playing upon her lips, far too knowing in Armand’s opinion. The sensation of missing something important surged in his chest, not for the first time that evening. “That’s just Mary. Poor wee Jon has difficulty sleeping aboard the ship some nights. She rocks him on the deck, seems to help.”
Armand stared at her for a full moment without blinking. Was she mad? Was she as cracked as an egg to be tossed from the basket? There was no other explanation for what she had just said.
“Mary?” he asked slowly, his mind processing about as quickly as molasses in the cold. “You mean to say you know her?”
Catalina looked up from the ledgers she had returned to, and Armand couldn’t help but notice the small smudge of ink that just brushed her cheek. It was such an insignificant detail, and yet, it so painfully reminded him of the girl he used to know. Who was this woman, and what the hell had she done with Charlotte Talbot?
“I thought I said no questions.” When he didn’t reply, she let out an exasperated sigh and nodded. “Yes, Armand, I know her. And I know William, the cabin boy—orphaned at the age of two. I know Rose McEwan, the woman we only just dropped on the island, eight months with child, father far off in the Americas. I know every one of the mothers, orphans, and runaways that I keep in my employ.”
He felt like a fish out of water, gulping air. Surely, surely this was not a common practice.
She looked as though she’d much rather return to her ledger, but instead she took a deep breath and said, “I take in those whom no one else will care for, Armand. I have a house upon the island, and a woman who oversees our charges. Some take up skills there; others I train to be fighters, if they’d like.” She paused and looked at him, the challenge in her eyes unmistakable, as if to say, go on, I dare you. “The woman you saw above deck is named Mary Smyth. She’s the second-best swordsman upon this ship, and she’s been in my employ a year and three months. The babe turns one the end of the week.”
His chest began to fill with a powerful rage, a mixture of confusion and anger, and Armand finally seemed able to locate his voice. “Are you telling me we’re taking orphans and pregnant mothers to retrieve my brother?” he asked, trying to school his tone so as not to wake the rest of the ship. He had little doubt he could take on several of her best swordsmen, but there was no question of an undying loyalty to the captain, and Armand didn’t feel up to facing a mob while on a ship and without an escape strategy.
“No.” She said it with a force that took him aback. Surely, this young woman of the
ton had learned a trick or two about dealing with powerful men through her years at sea. “I am telling you we are taking skilled warriors to battle, to retrieve your brother.”
She paused for a moment, and Armand swore, for a flash of an eye, she looked tired, worn, a little weathered. He didn’t like that he noticed that, not one bit.
“Armand, because I fled, avoiding a marriage to a man who likely would have beat me senseless each night of my life, my sister suffered on the marriage mart. Because you never returned, never even wrote, my fate was sealed by the first man who offered for my hand—for my dowry, to be exact. I refuse, upon my life and all that I own, to ever force another man, woman, or child to have to no choice. Do you understand?”
He didn’t understand; Catalina could tell that from the moment she told him. He had no thought, no comprehension at all, as to why she might take in the needy and lost souls of a world with no use for them. After all, why should he have any sympathy? Here was a man with, if she recalled correctly, two or three titles to his name, upon the shores of as many individual countries, and he didn’t attend to a single one of them. Here was a man who had never once suffered for his role in the world, had never once been forced to make a choice of two evils for his future. Flee or suffer? Run or die? She knew the story of each orphan, thief, and mother aboard her ship, and every single one pulled at the deep down heartstrings that reverberated with ever-increasing love for her new family.
“Is there anything more, my lord?” The title was intentional, and she saw the flicker of irritation as it spanned his golden-brown eyes. Damn the man, for all his finery and beauty. Underneath, he was just another lord—yet another gentleman with a title and lands and funds, who couldn’t ever understand the troubles of Rose or Will or Mary. As she said it, however, Catalina knew their tentative hold on friendship, whatever might have come from once having anticipated a future together, was gone—snapped in two by the paths they had taken well before reconvening. Well, so be it. She had no mind to change her path. Things were working here—she had Dwyer House, potentially another on the way, and the friends and family she had taken in to care for. She didn’t need him for anything more than the funds he provided. She wasn’t on this mission for Armand anyway, but for his cheerful, lovable brother, Henri, who had a heart of gold and would likely not fare well in the hands of a pirate crew.