Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

"Tis not legal, you know,’ he murmured against the lemon-scented cloud of her hair.

  Christabel nuzzled against him. She savoured deliciously the slight tangy scent of his fine white cambric shirt against her cheek, aromatic with the faint but identifiable scent of leather and sea spray and fine Virginia tobacco. ‘What isn’t legal?’ she murmured.

  ‘This marriage of ours. It has no force of law.’ His lips moved lightly across the moonlit shimmer of her hair, found her ear, the white column of her neck, moved downward to the pulsing hollow of her throat.

  The tingling thrill of his touch went through her, made her knees feel weak.

  ‘I care not,’ she said. ‘And anyway, we can remedy that when we reach Virginia.’

  And at that moment she did not care. At that moment neither gods nor devils could have kept them apart - nor any laws made by man. All the clouds of their stormy past were swept away, vanished. Their future seemed to them as clear and as pure as the moonlight pouring through the slanted bank of stern windows that bathed them both in pale gold.

  He chuckled. ‘I had thought you would care,’ he murmured.

  Then you were wrong, Kells. I care only for you.’ And to be the one woman, the only woman in your life. It was not spoken, but it was understood, this pact between them.

  And that you shall ever be, Christabel,’ he said in a deep-timbred voice. ‘Forever.’

  Together, ignoring the table piled with food by a buccaneer cook who had sought to keep the bridegroom’s strength up, they swayed towards the bunk.

  Christabel could feel the ripple of Kell’s muscles as his hard body responded to her womanly softness. She could feel the sudden urgency in his kisses - and felt that same urgency communicated to herself. And then - as if to some unspoken command - they were tearing off their clothes with eager fingers. Too eager - a hook gave here, a seam was rent there. No match for this impetuous assault, the elegant ice-blue satin bodice was slipping down from Christabel’s white shoulders; the wide drifting skirts, all set with sparkling brilliants that caught the moonlight cold as ice crystals, were sliding over her smooth, curving hips and down her trembling limbs. There was naught but her sheer white lacy chemise between her and the lean hard body of this man who had married her such a short time before - married her under a name not his own - there on the Sea Wolf's swaying deck.

  For the arms that held her so triumphantly were indeed the strong arms of the celebrated Captain Kells, the Irish buccaneer who, it was admiringly said, could hold all Tortuga at bay - but Kells was not his name and neither -was he Irish. He was in reality Rye Evistock, gentleman of Essex, and his daunting grey eyes were smiling down at the wench he had just married as ‘Christabel Willing.’ But that was not her real name either, this ‘Silver Wench’ the buccaneers held in such esteem. The girl, whose shining ice-blonde tresses were just now loosened by trembling fingers to spill down over her bare shoulders, whose lacy chemise slipped lower, lower, hesitating at the out-thrusting pink tips of her breasts and then falling suddenly away to cascade down her pale naked body to the floor, was in reality Carolina Lightfoot of Yorktown - and every billow of those great sails that flew above them and cast their shadows across the Sea Wolf's moon-washed deck was carrying her closer to home.

  Tomorrow she would wonder what her mother would say when she appeared at the front door of Level Green - Carolina the runaway, coming home at last with a lover. For she and Kells and Sandy had agreed among them that once they reached the Tidewater, this ‘buccaneer wedding’ performed on the Sea Wolfs deck would be their own secret, and that under their real names of Rye Evistock and Carolina Lightfoot they would be wed again - and more decorously - in the new Bruton Parish Church. Unless, of course, Letitia Lightfoot preferred to see her daughter trail down the wide stairway at Level Green, a blushing bride.

  But that was tomorrow . . .

  For tonight Carolina’s unhappy childhood in Fielding Lightfoot’s house on the Eastern Shore was all forgot; her beautiful rebellious mother, Letitia Lightfoot, was forgot; and her mother’s cousin Sandy Randolph, whom she’d learnt just before she ran away was her real father - though they both knew he could never claim her save in some godforsaken spot like Tortuga - was forgot as well.

  Tonight, in this magical unreal world, even her real identity as Carolina Lightfoot was forgot. Tonight she was Christabel Willing and he was Kells and there was no world out there waiting for them - there was only the moonlight and love’s bright passion driving them on.

  On the wings of that magic she felt herself lifted to the bunk, deposited there, feather-light, to lie with parted lips, her breasts rising and falling as her anticipation mounted. Through the dark fringe of her lashes she watched as Kells undressed with astonishing speed. She flung back an arm that somehow had become entangled in her long hair and with the gesture tossed that fair skein shawl-like across the pillow. She stretched and breathed a deep luxurious sigh.

  Kell’s clothes, she noted dreamily, seemed to be disappearing from his sinewy body almost as if a strong wind was blowing them away. She had earlier heard the clang of his basket-hilted sword as it struck the floor, and then his boots, thump, thump, flung away from him. His trousers came down with a single sweeping gesture - and his fine cambric shirt would never be the same for she heard it rip as it went. And then, aware of his tall muscular frame looking more formidable than ever in dark silhouette against the moonlight, she felt the smooth heavy satin of his throbbing flesh as he lowered his big body down upon hers, felt the light probing pressure of his knee between her willing thighs.

  She yielded meltingly, remembering when she had fought him . . .

  But that wild time when she had defied him was over.

  Forever. She would always be his woman, she knew that now. All the misunderstandings, all the torment, lay behind them. Ahead stretched the future - blindingly sweet.

  His lips were on her own, questing, moving. His body was claiming hers with that sure touch that was ever his. Every moment had a tingling urgency, every whisper, every touch a deeper meaning.

  Kells,’ she whispered vibrantly, and then on a drifting sigh as their bodies joined, ‘Kells . . .’ that name she had come to love.

  And lost in the demands of the moment, the lean buccaneer did not remind his lustrous lady that when they reached Yorktown she would have to start calling him Rye again. For he must be careful not to court arrest before he could claim the king’s pardon that was being extended to all buccaneers now that war was looming and England would soon need privateers for the king’s service. And, anyway, the name ‘Rye Evistock’ would be more palatable to the aristocratic Colonial planters he would face in Yorktown than ‘Captain Kells’ - a buccaneer name with all the glamour and menace of the Spanish Main about it. For he was all too aware that it might be hard for this plantation aristocracy to accept even a pardoned buccaneer into their charmed circle - and a pardoned buccaneer he soon would be. Her family would be taken into their confidence, of course, but to spare Carolina and her mother, to the rest of the world he would be Rye Evistock and she Carolina Lightfoot once again.

  But here on the Sea Wolf they were still Kells and Christabel - for that was the name she had used on Tortuga, where the buccaneers had christened her the ‘Silver Wench’ for her hair like spun white metal and her luminous silver eyes.

  But in these ecstatic moments of silken joining, both Tortuga and Virginia’s shores were but a distant shimmer, eons away. For now they were like other lovers, lost in a dream of love . . .

  Entranced by love are they tonight,

  The stars have never seemed so bright,

  The moon has ne’er had such a glow -

  Ah, that it could be ever so!

  2

  The Honeymoon Voyage

  “Their voyage to Virginia seemed a charmed one. No storms beset them in this blue water world of wind and wave. The weather continued fair with a stiff breeze blowing. Onward towards the mainland sped the long grey ship - sometimes with an esc
ort of playful dolphins cavorting off her bow - leaving behind her a creamy wake. Her white sails billowed full against a clear ultra-marine sky where cormorants and gulls soared and dipped against the sun. In this enchanted world, flying fish leapt from the water to bank and glide over the waves, and by night the air was cool and a silver phosphorescent sea lapped against the Sea Wolf's wooden hull.

  Carolina wished it would last forever.

  The mood on board was boisterously cheerful, for the men who had elected to come with them were still jubilant at the thought of returning to home and hearth with gold jingling in their pockets - and with full pardon for their buccaneering. The talk was of farms in Surrey and in Hampshire, of cottages in Kent and Essex, of planting, of country frolics - and of the wenches they’d left behind.

  Sandy Randolph was his customary urbane self, brooding often by the rail, drinking too much, but gallantly toasting Carolina’s eyebrows in captured Madeira or Canary. And Kells had turned away from the dark side of his life. He was boyishly happy, full of plans for their future in Essex - and he revelled in her company.

  Only once during that delightful journey did Kells’s mood of buoyancy change. That was on a day when they sighted two fat merchant ships ploughing through the water; as the ships drew near both promptly piled on more canvas than was safe and fought mightily to pull away from Kells’s ship.

  ‘That’s strange,’ Kells muttered. From the Sea Wolf's taffrail, he was regarding their antics through a glass. ‘They fly the English flag and so do I. Why this haste to be gone?’

  Carolina, wearing a gown of linen pale as sea foam, had been standing beside him watching a blue-green dolphin pace the ship. She answered him absently, ‘Perhaps they’ve heard of the Sea Wolf.'

  ‘But that’s even less reason to avoid us.’ The man beside her frowned. "Tis well known I’ve never attacked any ship that did not fly the flag of Spain.’ His lips tightened. ‘I’ve a motion to catch up with them and ask them why!’

  And that would mean having their captains on board for supper and endless talk of navigation and weather and the state of things in various ports.

  Carolina sighed. She was already weary of ship’s talk, for she got too much of it when they dined with Kells’s officers. Even Sandy seemed full of ship’s lore for all that he was by trade a planter. ‘Come away,’ she said restlessly. ‘What do you care why they ran? Perhaps they’re timid men and fear all buccaneers!’

  Kells shrugged and lowered his glass. ‘I’m marvelling that they would risk capsizing to avoid me.’

  But her warm little hand in his was pulling him away from the rail. Towards their cabin. Towards their wide bunk that promised such delights.

  The lean buccaneer caught her thought and his grey eyes kindled. He went with her very willing.

  The soft scented winds of the Caribbean were gone now and cold sharp winds with the promise of snow had taken their place, for it was winter and the rakish prow of the Sea Wolf was driving through leaden greenish seas off the Virginia coast. From the slanting deck of the lean grey ship Carolina felt a hint of snow on the sea wind - and -imagined what it would be like on shore.

  There would be snow in Williamsburg now and perhaps her family would be there, visiting at Aunt Pet’s checker-board-brick, green-shuttered house on Duke of Gloucester Street. A bright fire would be burning on the hearth and a world of glistening white would be beckoning through the frosty windowpanes. From the kitchen would come the tangy scent of frying bacon and the little hot cakes of which Aunt Pet was so fond. Aunt Pet loved to breakfast late and she would be trying to keep them all at table, but Carolina’s slim beautiful mother, Letitia Lightfoot, restless as always, would be tapping her foot, eager to be up and away. Her dark blue eyes would meet her husband’s across the table as he finished his morning coffee. Tall dark Fielding would be staring back at her vengefully perhaps, if she had danced once too often with another man at some ball or other, for Fielding had never been able to control his jealousy of his enchanting Letty.

  Indeed, they might well be quarrelling - they so often did. In which case Aunt Pet would be making helpless little fluttering gestures of alarm and inserting quick placating little remarks designed to keep the peace. If they were really quarrelling, this handsome couple, sitting there garbed in the latest fashions, then the two younger children, Della and Flo, would be summarily dismissed from the table, and Carolina’s older sister Virginia would have her head down, her attention fixed with almost painful concentration on her plate, as she tried to stay out of it - for the stylish combatants were apt to lash out at anyone nearby when they were at their worst, and if Virginia chanced to say the wrong thing she might find herself denied a seat in the family carriage to the next party!

  Carolina sighed, remembering. Life on the Eastern Shore when she had been growing up had been hectic at best, and at its worst awash with tears, but as she approached that familiar shore, she realized that, strangely enough, she had missed it. Missed the familiar brick and frame houses of Williamsburg and Yorktown with their little gardens, their fruit trees, their neatly clipped boxwood. Missed the warm hospitality of the Virginia planters. Missed all that she had ever known of home.

  Now she tried to tuck a stray lock of fair hair back beneath the hood of her scarlet velvet cloak. Grateful for the green wool that lined the cloak, she pulled the garment a little closer about her, for the wind had an icy bite to it. She had had time to think during those long days when the sparkling aquamarine waters of the islands had turned to this duller winter-green off the mainland, and although she had at first intended to take her family into her confidence, it had come to her that she could not go home quite as she had planned. She could not just stroll up to the doors of Level Green with her buccaneer beside her and announce that this was the famous Captain Kells, who planned to marry her under his real name of Rye Evistock.

  For she had abruptly remembered what in her excitement at going home again she had forgotten: Fielding hated the buccaneers. ‘Damned pirates,' he called them. Carolina had never before understood the reason for his hatred. But now, having learned from her real father, Sandy Randolph, that he had once been a buccaneer, indeed had sailed with Morgan on the sack of Panama, she felt she had discovered the reason. There had always been wild rumours about Sandy - rumours she had discounted, for her mother had sniffed disdainfully whenever they were mentioned. One of those rumours was that Sandy Randolph had been in his youth a buccaneer. Plainly Fielding believed it - thus his openly expressed hatred of all buccaneers.

  No, she could not walk blandly through the front door of Level Green and tell them she was about to marry the fabled Captain Kells, whose name echoed throughout the Caribbean. Worse, that she had already married him in a buccaneer ceremony! Fielding might deny him the house!

  And that would certainly not make her mother happy!

  She decided she must speak to Sandy about this.

  She found him standing by the taffrail. He was wearing a maroon woollen cloak against the weather, but he was not wearing his hat. The wind whipped back his hair, which seemed to glow on this grey day like white metal - so like her own. Held to his eyes was a glass, and he was studying a passing ship with such intensity that he did not at first hear her greeting.

  ‘What are you watching?’ she asked as he turned to her.

  The action of that ship,’ he said, frowning. ‘I know her. She is the Tandy Cole out of Philadelphia and she came close enough to see that we fly the English flag - I know because I could see her captain studying us with his glass from the deck. But when she came close enough to read our name she sheared off and as you can see, she has piled on near enough canvas to capsize. And it is not the first time that has happened on this voyage.’

  ‘But the Tandy Cole has no reason to fear the Sea Wolf!' Carolina exclaimed indignantly.

  ‘Aye, one would think not,’ he murmured.

  ‘Kells has never attacked an English ship!’ That was a matter of pride with her. Her buccan
eer’s personal war was with Spain and he knew his enemy.

  Sandy’s ice-grey eyes were thoughtful as he turned to her. ‘So Kell says.' It was a blunt statement, clear in its inference. And for the first time since the journey began Sandy had called his half-legal son-in-law ‘Kells’ - not ‘Rye’, as had been his wont. Instantly Carolina caught his meaning.

  ‘And I believe him!’ she cried defensively.

  Sandy shrugged. ‘There are rumours, Carolina,’ he murmured.

  ‘What rumours?’

  He shrugged again. ‘Idle talk that the Sea Wolf of late has gobbled up other shipping than that of Spain.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ she scoffed. ‘Rye hardly left harbour in Tortuga after he brought me there.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Sandy’s pale grey gaze passed appreciatively over his beautiful daughter. ‘Still . . .’

  She brushed aside his doubts. ‘I came to ask if you think it wise to keep everyone from knowing that Rye is also Kells the buccaneer? Even’ - she sounded troubled -‘even those at Level Green.’

  ‘Very wise,’ agreed Sandy in such a cynical tone that Carolina glared at him, planting both feet on the deck.

  Gossip is always rife about men such as Kells,’ she said sharply. ‘Why, in Yorktown and Williamsburg there are rumours about you!’

  He laughed. ‘And some of those rumours are undoubtedly true! But you are right, of course, there’s probably - nothing in it.’

  ‘I’ll settle it - I’ll go ask him!’ The words came out in a rush.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Sandy said thoughtfully. ‘A man prefers his bride to believe him. In all things.’

  ‘What I was hoping,’ she admitted tentatively, ‘is that the suggestion would come from you. I mean, I would not want Rye to think that I did not trust my family . . .’

  He gave her a shrewd look. Because you don’t, that look said.