Emerald turned quickly and rushed for the steps, not stopping until she climbed to their room. The door was open and Minette was already packing their trunk for boarding her father’s ship.
She paused, holding to the rough banister to look down at him.
Baret stood looking up at her. There was no smile on his face. He turned and walked from the buccaneers’ meeting hall and out into the sunshine where Erik Farrow waited for him.
Emerald looked after him. It seemed her world had exploded. Had he felt the same? She didn’t think so.
What would the future hold for her in London? What would it hold for Baret in the war? Would he truly come to Buckington House?
Why had he said yes? She could understand why he would have vowed in order to keep from killing her father, but he could have simply yielded to Levasseur and relinquished his commitment to her.
But he had not. Did that mean Baret Buckington actually did have feelings for her? And how deep were they?
Karlton’s ship sailed from Tortuga the next morning. Emerald stood at the rail of the Madeleine, enjoying the breeze as they made for deep water. She was watching the Regale also set sail.
Somehow she had thought he would come on deck, for he knew her father was departing as well. She watched the Regale’s white canvas billow and snap as it caught the wind.
I’ll make good my opportunity to seek education in London, she thought. Surely this much of her new life was a gift from the Lord.
She looked back across the blue-green Caribbean toward Port Royal. A tiny smile formed on her lips.
“And if he does come to England in the future, Baret will see a far different Emerald Harwick. But what of you, Baret Buckington? Will you come at peace with your Lord and your father’s past? Or as a buccaneer disguised as a viscount?”
Her smile faded. Her eyes had found him on the deck of the Regale, a handsome figure in white Holland shirt and black breeches. Her heart caught. He had come, knowing she would be at the rail.
He lifted his wide-brimmed hat and smiled, and Emerald smiled too and lifted a hand in farewell.
“Until London,” she whispered, and her eyes were moist.
Aboard the Regale, Baret watched her dark tresses blowing in the breeze, saw the hem of her skirts billow as she stood on the quarterdeck steps.
An image to remember, he thought wistfully.
But now there was the war.
And the dream remained that he would locate his father. He thought of Lucca’s Bible.
When the image of Emerald had melted into the warm Caribbean morning, he left the deck and went to the Great Cabin. He pulled open the drawer of his desk and removed the Bible. Perhaps within these holy pages he would find the answer to all his dilemmas.
As he sat looking at the leather cover, he became aware that the Bible was familiar not because it had belonged to Lucca but to his father, Royce Buckington.
He tensed, quickly opening the book and leafing through it, a sudden unexplainable expectation in his heart.
The last words of Lucca in the courtyard at Maracaibo—what had he said? “The Bible … important message …”
Baret had wondered at the time what he meant. “Thy Word … a light … for your path …”
Dare he hope? What if the stolen letter brought to Felix had not contained the true message? What if Lucca, knowing the importance that Baret placed on the Scriptures and his past training at Cambridge, had written the truth in his father’s Bible?
Baret leafed through the pages but found nothing written in Lucca’s hand. He had nearly given up when he came across a portion in the Acts of the Apostles where certain words were boldly underlined. At the bottom of the page was written “Lucca.”
His heart was pounding as he read the underlined words:
where two seas met … ran the ship aground … soldiers’ counsel was to kill the prisoners … kept from their purpose … delivered the prisoners to the captain … a soldier kept him … two years … prisoner … P … B …
Baret stared at the words, going over them again carefully. Then he set the Bible aside and took out his chart of the West Indies. He traced a line from Port Royal down to … P … B.
“Porto Bello,” he breathed.
His father was yet alive and held a prisoner at Porto Bello!
Hob came into the cabin, bringing a mug of black coffee and sporting a new parrot of blue and yellow.
“His name’s ‘King Charlie,’” he said with a gleam in his wily old eyes, as he deposited the bird on Baret’s desk. “He’s yours, says I. Meant to give it to that pert lass you upped and claimed.”
“He’s alive, Hob! My father is a prisoner at Porto Bello. And I shall find him when we attack with Henry Morgan!”
Hob looked at him cautiously. “How now be you knowin’ all that, seein’ as how poor Lucca were killed?”
Baret smiled and picked up his father’s Bible. “Where else would the truth be found? Lucca left a message for me in the one way he knew it would be safe. Neither Levasseur nor Felix Buckington would ever think to pick up a Bible and read.”
Hob’s eyes twinkled. “Heard say old Morgan has his eye on Porto Bello. Heard say more’n two hundred thousand pieces of eight just be waitin’ for the pickin’s.” He chuckled. “And Lord Felix ain’t be knowing the truth since he has that trick letter. Pert smart of old Lucca to leave a false trail, says I. And I be thinkin’ ’bout that assassin threw the dagger at you. Ten pieces of eight says it be Sir Jasper or one of his smugglin’ cronies.”
Baret remembered that day at the Bailey. He’d long suspected that his uncle had something to do with the attempt on his life, using Sir Jasper who, as Hob pointed out, had deadly contacts among the smugglers.
King Charlie squawked and stretched his bright blue wings. He cocked a black shiny eye toward Baret, who offered him a piece of plantain fruit. Just then, Baret’s eyes fell upon the portrait of Lavender sitting on the bureau.
Hob handed him the mug of coffee. “Then your mind’s made up? We’ll be sailing with Morgan?”
Baret accepted the coffee. He took the portrait down and placed it in a drawer of his desk. “The best is yet to come, Hob.”
Hob scratched his chin and cocked his head as he looked down at Baret’s half-finished sketch of a girl.
The dark windblown tresses and sweetly innocent face could not be mistaken.
Hob grinned. “Aye, Captain Foxworth, you be makin’ the right decision, says I. First, Morgan—then Sir Karlton’s pert lass be waitin’ in London.”
Baret lifted the sketch to study his work with a critical eye. He crumpled it into a wad.
When Hob looked at him, Baret said with a faint smile, “You’re looking at the wrong portrait, Hob.”
He opened his drawer and produced a second sketch. Emerald wore purest white silk, carried a lace parasol and a Bible, and several African children were gathered about her skirt as though for protection. There was a noble expression on her face, and she wore a wistful smile—one that he remembered well.
Hob sighed. “A noble woman, your lordship. Always did think so of her anyhow. Too bad you didn’t show it to her, I mean. She’d have set a big store by it, knowing how you saw her in your mind’s eye.”
Baret placed it in his drawer and shut it quietly.
“Is the pinnace ready?” he asked, finishing his coffee and trying to shut Emerald’s face from his mind.
“Aye, it is. All set to bring you to join the other captains on Morgan’s ship.”
“War does not wait,” said Baret. “Nor will Porto Bello.”
He wondered just how long it would be until he went to England to see her and, when he did, what he would find the more mature and educated Miss Emerald Harwick to be like.
Baret slipped his leather baldric of weapons over his head and put on his hat. As he walked out into the Caribbean sunshine to board the pinnace that would be rowed to Morgan’s ship, he paused. One thing he was quite certain about. He didn’t think h
e would be disappointed in what he found her to be.
He frowned a little, his dark eyes narrowing as he looked at Morgan’s vessel lying at anchor. Perhaps it would be Emerald who would eventually be disappointed.
Before his task was complete in the Caribbean, his Uncle Felix might yet arrange with King Charles to have a warrant out for his arrest for piracy. There were no living witnesses left to swear to his father’s innocence. Royce Buckington must live in order to have audience with King Charles. And a dangerous path lay between his ultimate freedom and any future in England.
Baret felt the wind tugging at his hat. He thought of Emerald.
May the Lord be the Guardian of our paths.
Moody Press, a ministry of the Moody Bible Institute,
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THE BUCCANEERS • 2
The Pirate and His Lady
LINDA CHAIKIN
MOODY PRESS
CHICAGO
©1997 by
LINDA CHAIKIN
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
All Scripture quotations, unless indicated, are taken from the King James Version.
ISBN: 0-8024-1072-3
13579108642
Printed in the United States of America
To Ella K. Lindvall,
one of the finest editors in
Christian publishing—Psalm 20:1–5
CONTENTS
Part One On the Spanish Main
1. Baret Buckington’s Dilemma
2. Destination: Pirate’s Cove
3. The Black Dragon
4. Marooned
5. Encounter on the Beach
6. The Pirate’s Savage Virtue
7. Treasure
8. The San Pedro
Part Two On Jamaica
9. In the Night His Song Shall Be with Me
10. To Trap a Pirate
11. Lady Lavender Thaxton, Adversary
12. At the Town House on Queen Street
13. The Surprising Scheme of Earl Nigel Buckington
14. A Call for the Buccaneers
15. In Darkness and the Shadow of Death
16. Bound in Affliction and Iron
17. Through Thorny Ways
18. The Dutch Ship
19. Why Are My Winters So Long?
20. Edge of Light
21. A Virtuous Woman, Who Can Find?
22. Called to King’s House
23. Pirate or King’s Agent?
24. The Man in Black
25. Promise Me Forever
Part One
ON THE SPANISH MAIN
1
BARET BUCKINGTON’S DILEMMA
Aboard the twenty-gun buccaneering vessel the Regale, its enigmatic captain, Baret Foxworth—in reality Viscount Baret Buckington, grandson of Earl Nigel Buckington II—opened his desk drawer and replaced his worn, leather-bound copy of John Calvin’s Institutes beneath a sheaf of drawings. The copy of Calvin’s theology along with a book of Puritan prayers were contradictory evidence revealing Baret’s complexity.
Included in the papers he kept at hand were several pirated maps of the West Indies, which he had gratefully confiscated from a Spanish capitán before happily sinking the galleon to the bottom of the blue Caribbean. There were also several of Baret’s better sketches that he’d done in pencil. One of them was of Emerald Harwick. The second was of the woman he had intended to marry—until she had betrayed him by marrying his cousin.
Flaxen-haired Lavender, a future duchess, was now Lady Grayford Thaxton. He knew he should get rid of the drawing, but his emotions had not yet been able to release her. He comforted his troubled conscience by telling himself that he kept the sketch only because it was well done.
The third drawing was of his staunch Puritan tutor from Cambridge, Sir Cecil Chaderton. His sharp, sanctified gaze pierced Baret’s soul with scriptural conviction of the absolute holiness of the God he read about in Calvin’s Institutes.
Gazing at Sir Cecil’s hawklike countenance brought an unlikely half smile to Baret’s face. When Cecil discovered that Uncle Felix Buckington hoped to have Baret arrested for piracy and hanged, he would be quick to remind Captain Foxworth of his past warnings against the dubious career of buccaneering. Baret’s mouth curved with bitter irony.
“Warm family affection runs as deep as the Caribbean currents,” he murmured. “An uncle, in order to inherit the earldom of my father, will justify his decision to hang a nephew who stands in his way.”
“Har, you was sayin’, your lordship—I means, Cap’n Foxworth?”
Baret glanced at his serving man, Hob, seeing a grin-creased leathery face beneath a floppy hat pulled low over shaggy white hair. His cool cotton drawers were cut off calf-length, and his sun-faded red shirt was too big on his stooped shoulders. The sleeves were rolled up haphazardly and tied into place below the elbows. He carried a gleaming coffee pot in one gnarled brown hand and a spotless captain’s mug of Peruvian silver in the other.
“More’s the pity I can’t hang Felix instead,” Baret said.
Hob scratched his chin and chuckled. “Always did think ye had a shark’s sense of good humor. Aye, ol’ Felix would make a pert sight, says I, but better think twice. Havin’ Jamie Boy danglin’ on the yardarm of the Regale be trouble enough for ye at port. If ye go to danglin’ Lord Felix too, I’ll be bringin’ your coffee to Gallows Point. Them rascally-mouthed judges in the Admiralty Court don’t have any humor.”
Hob set the coffee service on the desktop and left.
Baret snapped the heavy drawer closed and locked it, then turned to an ornate peg on the cabin wall behind the desk and removed his buccaneering regalia. He slipped the wide leather baldric, containing a pair of silver-butted French pistols, over his dark head. Unlike his Puritan beliefs and the short hairstyle generated by the Roundheads, his own hair bore quiet proof of his royal blood and was worn in the fashion of the Cavaliers of King Charles II.
Catching up his wide-brimmed black velvet hat with dashing pristine-white plume, he flecked away a speck of lint and settled it on his head with a tap. He wore a matching black velvet jacket with wide lapels and a white Holland linen buccaneer shirt with full sleeves. His appearance had earned him young feminine sighs, but the reaction to his goodly countenance brought Baret more cynical amusement than it cultivated conceit.
Sir Cecil had taken laborious pains to lecture him as a growing lad about the evils of undisciplined handsome flesh. “Good looks are the devil’s playground. So is idleness. It is now time for your lesson in Greek.”
Baret smiled at the memory of his days in France with the exiled King Charles. He took only a sip of the coffee, then turned to leave his immaculate cabin. As he did, an accidental glance at his darkly handsome reflection in the small looking glass brought a thoughtful pause, followed by a slight frown. The frown was not at the remembered words of his teacher but at what his reflection represented in the Caribbean.
His image belonged to a stranger, not the youth he remembered under the strict tutelage of Cecil. Baret hardly knew the man in the mirror. The ruthless challenge in his dark gaze might have belonged to the pirate Henry Morgan or to Pierre LaMonte. Nor did he even try to reconcile the difference between what he had been at Cambridge and what he was now.
“You make a realistic enough rogue to gather a crowd at your hanging.” A crisp voice came from the cabin door.
Baret turned toward the familiar voice. Sir Cecil stood without, wearing his wry yet affectionate expression.
Surprised and genuinely pleased to see him, Baret smiled disarmingly. “Welcome home to the Regale, my dear Cecil.
I’m soon ready to sail for an attack on Cartagena. Have a seat.” He gestured to an unlikely furnishing to be found aboard a pirate ship, a luxurious velvet chair that Cecil had claimed for his own in the past.
Baret turned his head and called, “Hob! Quick! Tea for the Cambridge scholar! We have a royal guest today, the gentleman who taught me Greek and—” he doffed his hat and bowed to Sir Cecil “—Spanish. A debt I can never repay.”
Sir Cecil’s thin mouth went down at the corner. “My one mistake.” He eased his lanky frame into the soft chair, looking about.
“Seems like old times,” said Baret. “I’ve been wondering what to do with that odious chair.”
“Old times and comfortable chairs are not as easily forgotten and packed away as books—and Bibles.” He shot Baret a meaningful glance.
Baret slipped from the uneasy moment as smoothly as a live wet fish, and smiled. “I’m glad to see you’ve returned. Your presence graces my ship with an aura of respectability. His Majesty will find the report you will write about our venture on the Venezuelan coast of serious interest—and acceptance. In light of the trouble I’m having with Governor Modyford, we’ll need your endorsement.”
“I dare say. There will be no more respectable reports to the king by this Cambridge divine until you quit the life of a buccaneer. The tropics are going to your head, and the gallows are waiting for your neck.”
Baret folded his arms. “Now you’re sounding uncomfortably much like Earl Nigel Buckington. Did you come this dangerous distance to Tortuga to have me surrender to the High Admiralty Court—or to board a merchant ship for London like a whipped puppy?”
“Discipline your tongue, you impudent rogue. Neither the Admiralty nor Nigel knows I’ve risked a trip to the odious Tortuga to find you and bring you safely back to Foxemoore.” He smoothed the starched white shirt at his throat. “I’ve come on my own—and because Jette is asking for you each night in his prayers.”
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