His Pirate (Second Chance Book 2)

by Stephanie Lake

  “I don’t know, but I’m not leaving those two young lambs in this wolf’s den until I know they have a safe place to retreat if needed.”

  “Good idea, sir.” Dunn squeezed his shoulder in a rare show of support.

  Chapter Twelve

  They never drove out of the pall of smoke. The miasma from the cane rendering plant sank into the rutted path.

  No one with a sane mind could call what they traveled on a road. It looked more like a wet, sloppy clearing between the ever-present tall, mud-coated grasses that obscured any view.

  The place stank like London and looked like a madman’s crazed idea of a maze.

  Every few miles they passed a slapdash hut made of cane stalks lashed together with fronds or thin rope. Always the hut sat in a small muddy clearing.

  There were many swollen rivers and streams with wildly wobbly bridges to traverse. One so unstable, Lydia cried out in fear.

  “Not to worry, miss,” the driver said. “A crew worked all yesterday shorin’ everthin’ up. Won’t be no bridge that can’t take our little load.”

  The words were hardly believable, but they did make it over unscathed.

  Nothing taller than about ten feet was left standing; everything else had succumbed to the hurricane winds.

  Large areas were covered with mudslide debris, making the landscape appear similar to what he imagined the bottom of a lake would look like.

  Occasionally heaps of a mud flow had been dug out to allow carts to pass on the trail.

  “Why was so much labor taken to clear this path just after the storm? I would think all efforts would be on helping the injured and shoring up homes.”

  “Aye, people are doin’ that as well. But landowners want to send their downed cane to the plant while it still holds sap. Otherwise they won’t have a crop this season. I’ll pick up a load to take down with me on the return trip. This isn’t cane-cutting season, so it won’t have much sap in it this time o’year. They will receive little for their efforts, but some is better than nothin’, I suppose.”

  “Did our crop sustain damage, do you know?”

  The driver hacked and then spat a large wad over the side of the wagon. “Don’t believe you oughter worry about that, Mr. Morgan.”

  No? Well then, that was good news. Their little slice of land must be in a prime location to have survived the mudslides and wind damage. He smiled to himself and looked forward to getting out of the jarring wagon and off the boulder-hard seat.

  The longer they traveled, hitting potholes every few yards, the smaller Lydia appeared. She’d started coughing before they left the ship, and the cough grew louder with each passing mile.

  Goddamn. He hoped they would rise out of this miasma before she became feverish.

  He wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders. “Just around the corner, I’m certain there will be a nice hill that takes us to our plantation. It will be green and lush and will capture the ocean breeze. You’ll see. It will be a paradise, just like we talked about.”

  They passed no other wagons, no other horses with riders, and the only sound other than their ragged crew, were insects chirping and whirring, the sound unlike anything he’d ever heard before.

  Lydia snuggled against his chest and shuddered with a sob.

  Some twenty minutes later, they were not in paradise; in fact, he suspected they couldn’t be much closer to hell.

  Alastair and Dunn were in their third cobbled-together punch house in as many hours. In each, they gleaned information to piece together the current affairs. In each, a handful of men asked, some begged, to be taken on as hands in exchange for transporting their wives and children.

  He would never hire any of the rum sots, but he did feel sorry for their families.

  The increasingly angry comments to their questions stirred up vitriol against the governor. In essence, the people were close to riot, if not outright war.

  Alastair’s worries were nothing compared to the reality of this poor island.

  The government was corrupt and did not even hide its attempts at stealing everyone’s money. Landowners were pulling out and slaves fleeing. The island was enveloped in turmoil. The locals feared a revolt, but the government, all fat and bloated, acted invincible. They probably thought they were, with their rifles and colorful uniforms.

  “What should we do? Go and retrieve the Morgans?”

  “No,” Alastair told Dunn. “We can’t force them to leave this hellhole. And I suspect they don’t have the money with which to settle someplace else.” He drummed his finger on a tankard of ale he had not the stomach for.

  Dunn rocked his head back and forth in his hands. “There will be a civil war here before the month is up,” he whispered.

  “The Morgans are not safe here, I agree.” He tapped a finger on the sticky table. What could they do to convince Rhain to extract his sister and his handsome arse off this island with their skin still attached? “If you asked Miss Lydia to leave with us without Rhain’s permission, would she?”

  Dunn shook his head again. “I don’t think so. She adores her brother. Thinks he hangs the stars every night. Damn the luck I’d fall in love with a girl who won’t leave her brother’s side for anything. Guess he earned her devotion by taking care of her through that damn illness.”

  Alastair nodded even though Dunn couldn’t see. “You love her, then? I thought as much.”

  “Who in their bleedin’ right mind wouldn’t love her? Well, anyone who sought women that is. Beg pardon.”

  “No offense taken.”

  Dunn slugged back the rest of his dark and tart rum punch. “She is so accepting. Never passes judgment. She even kissed Tim without thinking anything could be considered wrong with it.” He laughed. “She is simply wonderful. Would have preferred she’d not kissed Tim, though. Should have come straight to me.”

  “I think more than half the ship would protect her with their last breath, Dunn.” He smiled, realizing he was in the majority. He also realized she accepted the unusual because of her brother’s gentle and loving care. A brother who on the surface displayed spines and thorns, but Alastair knew those prickles stemmed from protecting Miss Lydia. On his own, he would be a much sweeter, more accepting man.

  He missed the boy already, and it had barely been half a day since he watched that damn wagon wobble off with its one warped wheel.

  “So how are we going to entice them both back on ship before this bloody island explodes into civil war?”

  “Kidnap them both tonight,” Dunn said.

  “Too late and too dark to find them.”

  “Then we kidnap them in the morning.”

  “Kidnapping is against the law, you know, my dear cutthroat. And even more importantly, they would both hate us after that. Not the outcome I would like.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Any other helpful ideas?” Alastair was fresh out of them at the moment, so he really hoped Dunn could come up with something.

  “Here we go! How ’bout we stage a revolt and show up at their plantation just at the right time to save them. Then they both love us forever after we whisk them back to the ship. We leave after our fake revolutionaries wash up, change clothes, and return to ship.”

  Suppressing a smile, Alastair stoically said, “Very good idea. But I do imagine the Morgans would at some point hear of our duplicity. Maybe we can think of something more direct and honest. For I fear anything else would not be acceptable to those two.”

  “Yep. Too many scruples between them.”

  Alastair agreed.

  “Well, then, we could simply proclaim our love and whisk them away to a life at sea.”

  A grand idea. All of a sudden Alastair lost his desire to move. He could wallow here on the damn filthy table and drink his life away, because he had declared his love. And he’d been rejected.

  Dunn proved to be more imaginative than he himself. The best he could come up with was to let Rhain see for himself how bad things were and
then come begging for a place on ship.

  What a fool he was to think that proud boy would ever do such a thing.

  Pulling himself together, he said, “Let’s go back to the ship. I don’t think that is a workable plan, either. Tomorrow we will figure something out.” Because something must work, he thought.

  He clapped his hand on Dunn’s shoulder, and they left for the ship.

  The plantation was a disaster.

  A disaster.

  All his hopes, his dreams. To make a good life for Lydia. To be a respected landowner.

  Rhain stared at the small clearing, swallowing hard. He was afraid he’d disgrace himself in front of everyone and lose his meager supper of hard cheese and even harder bread. But who would really care if he cast up his accounts? Lydia had seen him vomit before, the seamen would be gone tomorrow, and the retainers…the retainers. They were another matter entirely.

  The two small, wiry men sat in the shade, sharing a pipe. Their ancestral origins were hard to identify with the layer of dirt on their sun-darkened skin. A shack was the only building in sight, with no door aside from a tattered blanket tacked up over the opening, and no windows.

  One of the drug-addled men claimed to be the foreman, but Rhain couldn’t imagine this man corresponding with him.

  He’d asked why there were no crops planted and where they could find the main house.

  The foreman informed him there was no money left. No help. So they didn’t plant crops. He pointed to the shack. “This is the main house.”

  “What happened to the previous two or three year’s revenue?” Rhain struggled to keep his voice just below a bellow.

  The foreman shrugged. “Most of it were took by the new gov’ners taxes. We got enough left to eat on for the next few months; then it all be gone.” The man’s singsong speech could be due to the drug, or to English not being his native tongue.

  “Why is this the first I’ve heard of the situation?”

  “I don’t read and write, so I answered your letters through the gov’ner’s office. Perhaps they are not very good at writing neither.”

  “Your letter said there was a large, sturdy house.”

  “Yes.” The man gave a long sigh. “This were a grand improvement. After it were built, the workers and I had a place out of the rain and away from the biters.” At that, the foreman slapped a blood-juicy mosquito on his forearm. “Keep us dry through this last storm, it did.”

  “Your letters said we would have good crops this year and you would implement more improvements.”

  “Yes, things would have been good this year, and we planned to fix the well.”

  “Except?”

  “Except the taxes.”

  Rhain was five very short seconds from strangling the man who stood in front of him, his dark face content and relaxed, likely from whatever it was they smoked. And how the bloody hell had he been able to afford or to cultivate a drug and not sugarcane?

  The worthless foreman said, “Would you like me to show you the improvements?”

  He gritted his teeth. “Yes.”

  The man did show him, with what seemed to be great pride. He showed that the house had four walls, a cloth door to keep the insects out, and the most amazing part—a wooden roof. He smiled when he said it could house sixteen workers and keep them out of the rain while they slept.

  Rhain wondered what those sixteen workers ever accomplished.

  Lydia still sat in the wagon, looking like a drowned kitten, her yellow muslin dress and pale curls plastered to her skin from the heat and humidity.

  The place lacked the beauty they’d seen on other islands. Their small plot of land was a flat spot between large hills. The sun baked the area, making the clearing feel like a soup bowl over flame. It was hot and muggy.

  It was miserable.

  There was no cooling breeze tickling his ear, and there were tall, ugly grasses that blocked any view. No trees or inviting green meadows, only a few slimy ponds, and insects. God, he had never seen so many insects. They swarmed him every time he stopped moving. And the least charming of it all—the pall of nasty, putrid smoke from the refinery hovered just over their heads.

  He walked, stiff-legged, to the wagon.

  One seaman asked, “Where should we put the crates and luggage?” The other leathery man curled his upper lip and looked around at their little slice of hell.

  The driver just seemed bored.

  “Are you certain this is our plantation?” Lydia said, her words squeaked out of constricted lungs.

  The foreman said, “Aye, miss, this is owned by a Mr. Morgan.”

  At the confirmation, Lydia sank further into herself and coughed into a soiled handkerchief.

  “It will be dark soon. Will there be a moon tonight?”

  The driver shook his head. “Afraid not, sir. Too dark. Can’t go back to port until morning. Otherwise I might drive off into a flooded riverbank.”

  He sighed. His shoulders felt like they weighed two hundred pounds each. “Well, let’s make the most of it and make this shack presentable for Miss Lydia. Take these crates into the…house.”

  He watched as the men carried all their worldly possessions into the shack. Ten crates, their clothing, and this worthless bit of land. That was all they had left.

  “Well, on the bright side, our new home isn’t covered by a mudslide.”

  Lydia did not laugh.

  “Don’t worry, dear, we will go back to Roseau first thing in the morning and talk to the officials. We will figure out what is going on here.” Fortunately, he was able to sound much more convinced than he felt.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rhain pried his eyes open and blinked away sleep. The dark outline of a windowless room slowly took form. The shack. Damn.

  He’d slept quite soundly, which was a surprise since he spent the night with only a few blankets on a hard-packed earthen floor. Of course, it was the first time he’d slept on land in more than two months. Perhaps the stillness rocked him to sleep, so to speak. That, or not being tempted to wake and make love to Alastair several times throughout the night.

  Standing, he stretched and yawned; his jaw popped. He adjusted his clothing and glanced over to check on Lydia.

  She was wrapped in a tumble of blankets on the pathetic pallet they’d made yesterday evening. The only thing visible on the girl was her nose, closed eyes, and a tuft of mussed hair. She snored softly, the sound holding an alarming amount of congestion.

  Leaving her to sleep, he went to the bucket of almost clean water, drank, and then washed himself as best he could. He needed to be presentable when he talked with the government officials today to straighten out the problem with their estate and the damn taxes.

  Stepping around one of their crates, he went outside to the already oppressively hot day. He organized the men and made notes on what they needed to purchase while in town.

  Half an hour later, Lydia stepped into the sun-scalded day, wrapped in a blanket, her hair still sleep-rumpled. Shivering and coughing, she climbed into the wagon.

  He climbed in after her and squeezed her hand. “We’ll find a nice place for you to stay until this damn smoke clears.” He waved his hand, indicating the air around them that was thick with soot. “I’m certain this is a seasonal occurrence and we will breathe good, clean air once the wind changes and blows the smoke out to sea. Or even better, when they are done rendering the cane.” He ignored the driver’s snort.

  Yesterday the foreman confirmed his worst fear that when the crops were good, the cane plant ran nine months out of the year. Perhaps this hadn’t been a good year for cane crops. The other bad news had been finding out the prevailing wind direction was the one they were currently experiencing. There was no use telling this to Lydia at the moment, when she felt so terrible and grieved the loss of Dunn.

  “Until the air clears, you will be staying on the outskirts of town, in a nice, clean boarding house for women, with fresh air and nice young ladies to talk wit
h. Would you like that?”

  Lydia only nodded and rested her head on his shoulder.

  An establishment nice enough for Lydia to stay in would be dreadfully expensive. He must find the funds to keep her safe and make the plantation productive as well. He would ask about a loan, and he would ask the governor himself, if needed, to recheck their tax burden and offer a reimbursement for what he was convinced must be a mistake. If all else failed, he could sell his pianoforte. But not Lydia’s harp. He could never do that to her.

  He brushed a lock of sweaty hair off her heated forehead. “It will all be fine, dear. Have faith.”

  This time she didn’t even nod.

  Rhain waited for a quarter hour in a windowless, dark-paneled room which reminded him of a tomb, before being ushered in to see Lieutenant Governor Wilkins. He suspected the short wait had more to do with how many taxes he had paid the past two years than it did with his social standing as landowner.

  Wilkins was a short, round man with jowls like a mastiff, which jiggled as he hurried around a large mahogany desk. “Mr. Morgan, what a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I must say it was a surprise to learn you would move to your plantation. A pleasant surprise for certain.” He grabbed Rhain’s outstretched hand and gave him a firm but damp handshake.

  “A pleasure to meet you as well, Lieutenant Governor.”

  “I hope the storm did no damage to your property,” the man said in practiced sincerity.

  “Very little it seems. We are in a protected spot between two large hills, but I must say I was distressed that only grasses and scrub grow on my land.”

  “Oh. Terrible, terrible.”

  “Indeed. Seems I have a small problem about my tax rate that I’m certain was a mistake, and I’d like to see this matter resolved as quickly as possible, as I need the funds for improvements and men to work my fields. I’m sure you understand that without a crop, I will not be able to pay further taxes.”

  “Quite right, quite right. Must harvest the crop before having taxable revenue; we in the government understand that with certainty.”