Ride the Wind: Touch the Wind Book Two

by Erinn Ellender Quinn

  She smiled, remembering. “My brother Collum. He brought home some books tae translate. I liked the pictures, even if I didnae understand the words.”

  She ran a finger along a shelf of more general histories and sighed, regretting her deficiencies. “I dinnae see anything on Italy that’s translated, and my Latin is poor at best. If ye hae some books on myth and legend, I would look at those.”

  “Look away,” he said. “If you find something, you’re welcome to have at it.”

  Accepting his invitation, she browsed his collection, stopping when she came across a set of eleven Dutch atlases, printed in Latin. Inspired, she pulled the volumes she wanted and carried them to the small table she’d placed by the daybed for the Captain’s use.

  She pulled a chair up to it. “Why don’t ye show me where ye’ve been? Tell me aboot it, seeing as I’m nae likely tae ever get there.”

  The Captain chuckled. “You never know. Fate is a fickle bitch. When you want to stay, you’re pulled away. When you want to explore, you’re left on shore.”

  It was Beth’s turn to laugh. “A poet now, are ye?”

  “Sorry, I can’t lay claim to it, but it’s true nonetheless. Fate has a way of changing courses midstream. Make all the plans you want, but you must ever watch to see if she says otherwise.”

  He appreciated that she was one for details, but in this first foray, he made it easy on himself and found a world map. “I supposed it’s best to start at the beginning. Ireland. Dublin born and bred,” he said, pointing to it.

  It was what he didn’t say that she was most interested in. His mind was not as opened as it once was, but he was still on the laudanum, and the barest touch he’d had for a second dessert, after the electrick strawberries, was making him feel mellower by the minute.

  She saw glimpses of horses and hooves, his childhood pet, an Irish wolfhound whose loss he still mourned.

  He left home, abruptly, then and now. “I went…here, to France. Brittany, to be precise. I’d heard they had fine folk music and went to see for myself. Wouldn’t you know, they were right.”

  An image of auburn hair and pretty teeth flashed in his mind’s eye.

  “I met a girl, Marie Delacorte, and took her back with me to Ireland. Limerick was next, and might have been last, except for the press gang that was takin’ boyos left and right. Ended up on a British man-o’-war, got shoved off on the merchant marine, and here we went.”

  Crossing the Atlantic, back and forth, up and down the American coast, south to the Caribbean.

  The Captain moved so quickly, she had to wonder why. If it was because he was refusing to dwell in the past, that was a good thing. If he were in denial, though, that was another story.

  “Eventually we make port in Ireland.”

  But Marie was gone. Gone….

  He shook off the sadness and returned to the map. “Then one day we’re about…here, and Stede Bonnet boards the ship. He offers those impressed a way to depart our service and we take it, my friend Justin and me. The procurement part wasn’t so bad, almost like taking spoils o’ war, but we never held with the killing. Then one day…here,” he said, “we came across the Bess, with a belly full of indentures bound for America. The men were pissed. They wanted booty. They started in, left and right. I managed to save a child.”

  He was able to stay a little longer this time, when his focus shifted from the woman he’d forever lost that day to the child she’d left, the one he still pretended was his niece. Beth remembered Christiana those months that she’d been here. She’d never touched her, somehow knowing she shouldn’t. It had been hard enough reliving that part of their lives through the Captain. Who knew what had gone before?

  “There came a point, we jumped ship, the three of us, Justin and Christiana and me. Our next berth was with a Welsh smuggler who plied his trade…here…and there. Then came the king’s pardon, that I couldn’t take under my own name, there likely being a desertion charged against it, so I took the name of Jean Delacorte, got pardoned, and found us—Christiana and me—a berth on a Dutch square rigger that plied the Atlantic trade. Back and forth we go. When I got to be captain, I did take us to Italy once. I’d promised meself to see Michelangelo’s chapel before I died, and I’m happy to say, I took it off the list.”

  He paused, remembering the soaring ceilings, God’s outstretched finger imparting life to Adam. Adam, in his full glory, with the tiniest penis imaginable. If there’d been any competition, Eve wouldn’t have given him a second look.

  “We saw the Sistine Chapel, and the Pope, and the Coliseum and other antiquities, but the city was pure filth, so we saw what we came to see and hied ourselves back to the Caribbean. There we sailed, all about the West India Isles, until Christiana was old enough, she needed to be in school, needed to learn to be a lady, which was nothing to be done aboard ship, so I took her to Havre.”

  The Captain’s finger made a sad, slow line to France. “I left her with the Ursulines. She did fine,” he told himself. “She’s bright, and bold, and now she lives here.”

  He pointed to the south side of Saint-Domingue. “Justin’s own island. Calls it Valhalla, a nod to him being part Viking and all. You’ll know it, soon as you see that white-blond hair. It’ll be worth laying odds to see what comes out on top, with the mix between the two of them. Christiana’s hair is dark, but her mother was a red head, and Christiana’s got the highlights.”

  He angled a glance at her and pretended he was changing the subject. “You didn’t happen to see any red-headed grandbabies?”

  “Aye,” she admitted, though they didn’t come from Christiana. It was too soon, and the future was not set. He still had healing to do.

  Patience.

  She spoke to herself, but the laudanum seemed to let him hear it. Maybe it was just as well he thought it was about his other grandbabies rather than about her. About them.

  He angled his head. When she ignored the question in his eyes, he shrugged a shoulder and turned his attention back to the map.

  “All right, then. While Christiana’s in Havre, I’m…here, when I win The Oaks in a card game that lasted three days and nearly put me under the table, but I came out on top with the biggest purse I’d yet taken and still have yet to match. I’m…here,” he said, “when I win the Deirdre and get a second ship. I’m…here, at Mrs. Smith’s House of Entertainment in Road House, on Tortola, when I win the purse that lands me in prison…here.”

  Jamaica.

  And there he was, back in the space of a heartbeat. Port Royal prison. A mute roommate who painted with piss. One guard who enjoyed torture, and another who liked making men cry.

  Beth’s heart hurt for him, for what he’d had to live through. Picking up a piece knocked loose, she tucked it away and anchored it with light and love and a wishful bit of pixie dust.

  “Ye’re here, now,” she said softly, taking his hand and bringing him back to her. Ye’re here. Ye’re safe. I willnae judge you. I promise.

  Suddenly, he stopped breathing. For a moment suspended in time, she did not move. Then, she rubbed slow circles on the back of his large hand, over the dark hair that dusted his knuckles and the scar where he’d startled his dog and it bit him. Her bottom hand was eclipsed by the width of his calloused palm, a captain come from the sea, bearing such terrible wounds.

  “Aye, here,” he said, pulling free, breaking apart.

  Feeling less than a man.

  How could she tell him how special he was? He’d rescued his Marie from the uncle who’d have raped her. He’d saved his “niece” any number of times. Didn’t he know he was a man worth the wait?

  She willed him to listen to her; the laudanum should let him. But she wasn’t certain he’d heard until he raised his head, and she looked in his beautiful green glass eyes and saw it for herself.

  Ian blew out softly, frustrated beyond bearing. Recognizing that lambent look in her eyes, he knew that her interest in him had gone beyond tending his wounds. He might be better
than he was, but he was still a broken man. He wanted her too, but wishes alone wouldn’t make that happen.

  He wanted to feel her lying naked against him, with her wild red curls and eyes the color of Aruba and her pomegranate breasts and those pretty feet of hers. But she’d tended him enough, she’d seen his lifeless member when he should have been standing at attention and giving her a salute.

  Michelangelo’s Adam might have a tiny penis, but at least it worked. His hadn’t since Jamaica.

  “Give it time,” she said.

  As if she thought that’s all it took. But how could she know?

  Eavesdropper. She gave him a smile, soft and sweet and full of hope. “Can ye nae feel the truth of it?”

  “Aye,” he said, surprised. The first time she’d asked him that, he hadn’t been able to fathom it. But now….

  Now he’d eaten a man’s breakfast. He’d eaten electrick strawberries. He’d put Jamaica behind him again, and told himself that would get easier with time. Time, the healer of most wounds, even if the scars remained.

  For now, she was willing to wait, willing to give him however long he needed to be able to come to her and take what she would share. Their time had not yet arrived, but when it did, he was sure it would feel like heaven, and he would not be remiss if electrick strawberries were involved.

  Chapter Five

  That night, she let Theo help the Captain upstairs to bed. She did not go up. She did not check on him. She’d given him most of her day already. Now it was time to tend herself.

  Beth let Sophie in the back door, and the two of them curled up on the daybed in the library, where the Captain passed each day. At night, she would imagine the entire thing set inside a diamond of white light. She imagined the diamond clearing out any unpleasantness, any imbalances, any problem energies, and drawing in whatever was needed to clear the space and replenish the well of her soul.

  Her teacher had recognized her empathic nature, and had warned what would happen if she didn’t take care of herself. Those who gave so much to heal others would shorten their own lives, if they did not.

  The diamond served also to filter dreams, allowing only the most important to slip through. Beth seldom remembered her dreams, but she noted them when she did. She had learned how to go back into a disturbing or unpleasant one and change it, until the outcome was acceptable. If the dream was in the wee hours of the morning, she knew to pay particular attention.

  Normally, she would build her diamond of light and drift into a deep, peaceful sleep. Usually she slept until dawn. Tonight, after spending the day with the Captain, after sensing his hunger beyond hunger, she lay on the bed she shared separately with him, and she dreamed of times long gone.

  She dreamed of a Viking invader who’d come with Hrolf the Granger to France. She dreamed that she was a healer, pagan and clean because of it, her cleanliness and her long brown hair and her skill with a knife making her stand apart from the others they had conquered in Normandy. Wanting to meet her, not knowing how, the Viking warrior let a wound on his upper thigh fester, just to give him an excuse to approach her.

  She’d known a man; though he seemed to have abandoned her, he had left her with a bouncing baby boy that she doted on. She gave her infant son a toy and turned her attention to the Northman, chastising him for not coming sooner. He was neither aged nor young, certainly old enough to know better. She set about cleaning and treating his wound, and as she worked, his body responded and reached for her. She watched him grow hard, she listened to his breath; she felt his hand touch her hair. He was the conqueror. He could have forced her. When he did not, she put her hands upon his thighs and used her mouth to give him the relief his body needed to leave her house and walk out amongst his men.

  Her son’s father returned, and felt it was his right to take her, though they were not married and she fought him. The next day, when the Viking saw the bruises and understood what had happened, his justice was swift and severe.

  He made certain her son’s father would bother no woman again.

  The Viking, being older, was patient, and bided his time, waiting for her to heal. But one day he fought for her, and from the look on his face, this time, there would be no denying him. He came into her cottage and he backed her across the room until she could go no further. He pulled up her skirt, and freed himself and took her against the wall, lifting her legs to wrap around his hips, drinking from her milky breasts and driving into her until he’d spilled himself inside her.

  Then the scene changed, and she was somewhere in Russia, and the Vikings were raiding again. She was a woman of power, and her teacher—a sorceress—created in a wall a doorway to a plane beyond this that people could pass through and be saved. More afraid of the Vikings than magick, they entered, one by one, until it was her turn, but a mage stopped her, telling her no, that her way lay with the Northmen.

  And so she was taken, and found herself aboard ship with a large number of others captured and destined for the slave markets of Byzantium. She knew that the women would be raped and ill used and determined to do what she could to help. She demanded to speak to the captain, and told him to listen well. She called up a storm. He saw her power and heard her threat, swearing if he did not listen, she would sink the ship. When she promised him that she would be the only survivor, he believed her and did what she said. The virgins that remained stayed thus, though they learned how to pleasure a man, and when the rest were sold, she alone returned with them to Norway and met the man who was her destiny.

  Back she went, to an even earlier life in Norway, when the warrior whom she loved had died, and she asked to be the sacrifice, to go with him to Valhalla. She was high born, akin to a princess. Her sister, who was jealous, hated her and was glad to see her go. As was the custom, his friends came, one at a time, and took her, and shared their strength with her to give to their friend, and the priest led her onto the funeral ship and set her soul free so that she did not feel the flames.

  Back she went, to the lifetime when she learned to talk to trees. She saw herself walking among them with a fist full of ribbons, seeking the ones were willing to become magical staffs and tools, marking for harvest those that answered.

  Back she went, to another realm, of wizards and dragons and sacred quests. She was the Grail Maiden, the secret daughter of Merlin, created for the sole purpose of serving humanity, conceived in France and taken to Avalon, raised as an orphan, never knowing Merlin as more than a teacher. She saw herself with Arthur, and Lancelot, and the child who could have belonged to either of them. She saw the child who came after, but with Galahad, there was no question that Lancelot was the father.

  Back she went, when she was keeper of the griffins, and she’d been taken by a ruthless dark mage who was determined that they serve his will. Refusing to bend to it had put her life in peril, but she managed to escape the tower where she’d been held captive and sent out a silent call. When she reached the open courtyard, she stretched out her arms, and two griffins flew down and took them in their grasp and bore her safely away.

  Further back she went, to an island continent whose culture was corrupt, whose scientists played god and she was left to deal with what they’d done, using crystal tools to make the victims of the experiments seem more human, removing wings, relieving the pain from the surgeries that created the manbeasts. She saw a temple of white marble, with scrying stones rising from the altar, and a multitude of healing rooms lined with different colored stones. It was there that she’d learned the deepest levels of healing, going beyond the mere physical, into the mind and the spirit. Her mate was a centaur. Forewarned, they boarded a ship to escape the coming devastation. She had reconciled herself to the loss of human life but when she realized the danger posed to the whales and dolphins she worked with, she called out to them. The ones who came were saved, but the grief she felt for those who were lost settled like a millstone on her heart and would eventually kill her.

  Away she went, to an alien landscape wi
th a beautiful purple sky. She stood on the edge of a vast field and raised her staff and struck the ground, and crystals erupted as far as the eye could see, letting her access their healing energy, then sinking beneath the surface when the work was done.

  Then back further yet, to ancient hills trod by ancient gods. She was a wood nymph, and a bacchanal was underway, male and female, nature spirits and demigods, two or three or more at once, sharing the joys of the flesh. Pan was there, uncaring of gender, seeking only pleasure when his eye fell on her. He approached her stroking his goat member, hard and slick and eager. He took her as a woman, then in another way, seating himself to his root and pulling her back with him to lie on a forest bed. Others came, male and female, in a constant orgy of pleasure, until the one came Pan had been waiting for, the one he’d chosen her to share: a silenus, half man and half horse, with two legs, not a centaur’s four, but hung like one nonetheless. Pan knew, when the silenus entered her, that he would feel it too, being inside her like he was, that it would be like the silenus was having them both.

  Beth jerked awake, breathing hard, her body aching with desire, as if remembering the feel of Pan beneath her and the silenus inside her. She thought of Herne in the woods and the Captain upstairs, and she knew they’d never share.

  It was but a dream, she told herself. This—this—was her life, and she deserved more than seasons of love and loss. If any of those lifetimes she’d dreamed about, that seemed so real, were hers, then she had earned a happily ever after. This time, she swore that she would have it.

  And it would not be with Herne.

  Chapter Six

  The first time Ian heard the fiddle, he thought Philip’s ghost had moved to the main house with him. Or that Beth, whom he’d taken to calling “Red Riding Hood” because of the basket of goodies she carried in daily, or “Red Beth” just because, had added fiddle playing to her list of known accomplishments.