Fortune's Bride

by French, Judith E.

  Garrett gritted his teeth against the waves of pain, leaned forward, and kissed Caroline’s neck. “Meanwhile, you’re embarrassing Mistress Steele.” He made a lofty gesture of dismissal with his chin. “You might, at least, dismiss your troops. I hardly think you’re in any danger from either of us.”

  “Very well. We will wait and see what Lord Cornwallis has to say.” Talbot motioned to the dragoons. “You are dismissed. Pass the word that Mr. Faulkner is not to leave this house until I say otherwise.” He scowled at Garrett. “If you aren’t telling the truth, it will go very hard on you.”

  “Not as hard as it will go on you if you embarrass Lord Cornwallis by making outrageous accusations against your commander’s relatives,” Caroline observed.

  Talbot growled an order, and the soldiers hurried out of the room. When they were gone, Talbot moved closer to the bed. “Caroline is my cousin,” he said brusquely. “I am also the legal guardian of her affairs. As her closest male relative—”

  “I have a brother,” Caroline interrupted. “And I am quite capable of managing my own affairs.”

  Garrett sniffed. “Let the captain finish, darling.”

  “You have shamed this house,” Talbot said, glaring at Caroline. “You sicken me—pretending respectability while all the while you’re wallowing with this—this—”

  “Careful,” Garrett said. “Insulting your own cousin is a family matter, but if you sully my name, I’ll call you out on the field of honor.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Faulkner, it is only this uniform and my duty to my king that keep me from challenging you to answer for this disgusting behavior.”

  Garrett reached for his wine goblet and took a long, deliberate sip. “Really? You believe this to be disgusting behavior?” He smiled thinly. “Does your taste lie elsewhere, sir?”

  Veins stood out on Talbot’s forehead. “Don’t try and leave this house,” he warned. “And you—” He looked back at Caroline. “I will deal with you later. For now, cover your nakedness and take yourself to another bedchamber as long as this . . . this gentleman is a guest at Fortune’s Gift.” He spun on his heel and stalked from the room.

  “I don’t believe your cousin likes me,” Garrett said as Talbot’s footsteps reached down the hallway. Caroline drew back her hand and slapped him full in the face.

  “Bastard!” she said as she struggled out of bed on the far side and tried to hold her shift together with one hand while donning her dressing gown with the other.

  By sheer will Garrett forced down his own temper and tried not to let her know how much her blow had stung his face and his pride. “I suppose I had that coming,” he said slightly. “But it was your idea.”

  “My idea to save your neck,” she retorted hotly. “Not to bare myself for the entire British army.” Red spots of fury tinted her cheekbones as she circled the bed. “How dare you?” She seized a blue glass perfume vial from a table and threw it against the nearest wall. The glass shattered, filling the room with the scent of roses. “You bastard,” she repeated. “How dare you put me in that position? I’m ruined. I’ll never be able to show my face in Oxford again. By tomorrow, this gossip will be all over Annapolis.”

  “It was your choice.” He winked at her. “We were convincing, weren’t we? Much more so than with you sitting primly on your side of the bed.”

  “Damn you to hell.” She drew back her hand again.

  “No more of that,” he said. This time he couldn’t prevent his underlying anger from surfacing. “Break all the china you wish, little heiress, but never hit me again.” His scorching gaze met her fiery one, and the air sizzled between them. “I have never struck a woman, but I won’t be abused by one either.”

  “I should tell my cousin the truth and let him hang you,” she threatened.

  “He won’t, not if he actually contacts dear Cousin Cornwallis. I was telling the truth, you know. I’m not a rebel,” he lied smoothly. Damn, but she was a beauty with those huge russet eyes and that glorious hair. Too bad she didn’t have a gentle disposition to go with her looks, he mused. He’d never favored women with uncontrollable tempers . . . perhaps because his own was so bad. “Besides,” he added, “if you tell him now, you’ll look as guilty as I do.”

  “Are you a rebel?”

  “Good God, woman, of course not. I am as loyal to the king and country as you are.”

  She moistened her lips. “Then why did you pick tonight to come into my house and destroy my life?”

  “It was not by choice. I told you, this was all a misunderstanding.”

  “Of course.” She drew the dressing gown tightly around her. “There is no one here I can trust,” she said. “I will return in the morning to tend your wound again.” She started toward the door.

  “And the bites on my chest?”

  She glanced back and smiled sweetly at him. “I hope they poison you.”

  Minutes later, in Amanda’s bedchamber, Caroline slid a chest of drawers in front of the bolted door. How had she come to this—a prisoner in her own house? Only two years before, she and Wesley had made such plans for the future. They’d even talked about having a child . . .

  She brought her knotted fists up to her closed eyes in despair. They had been so happy until the dispute with English rule flared into open rebellion. Wesley had known immediately where his loyalties lay. He had been born here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; his parents and grandparents had been born here, as had her own family. This was home, and if their neighbors raised weapons against British taxation without representation, against the seizing of American sailors at sea, and against harsh laws, the two of them must join the dissenters. For Wesley, that meant sailing with one of the daring privateers the new Continental Congress had authorized to harry the English warships and run the blockade that kept much-needed military and civilian supplies out of the thirteen Colonies. And two months after Wesley joined the crew of the captain known only as Osprey, her only brother, Reed, had signed on. She was left at home to run Fortune’s Gift and to provide as much food and clothing as she could for the Maryland militia.

  Despite the many Tories who lived on the Eastern Shore, she had organized women to make stockings, to weave cloth for uniforms, and to tan hides to sew moccasins. She had instructed the workers of Fortune’s Gift to raise flocks of geese, pigs, and cattle to be slaughtered, salted, and sent north for the soldiers. And she had accomplished it all while pretending to be a loyal servant of King George. She had entertained Tory leaders and welcomed English soldiers into her home, a ploy that had backfired when Major Whitehead decided to make Fortune’s Gift his headquarters. That move had put an end to her provisioning of the Continentals.

  For months, Osprey had cut a swath through British sea defenses, robbing English merchant vessels, and once sinking an enemy warship off the Delaware coast. Then the unthinkable had happened. Osprey had betrayed his crew and his country. He had surrendered his ship in the face of British cannon fire and condemned his men to death or imprisonment for piracy.

  It had been an act of infamy for which Caroline had sworn to make Osprey pay dearly. “No, you’ll not escape my justice,” she murmured softly. “If it costs me my immortal soul, I’ll see you dead—as cold and lifeless as Wesley.”

  She had been hosting a birthday party for Major Whitehead the night friends had carried her husband’s body home. No one could tell her what had happened to her brother Reed. It was late summer before one of Haslett’s Delaware scouts, a Continental, had come to tell her that her brother was reportedly alive and a prisoner of the English in New York.

  By that time Bruce had come to Fortune’s Gift and his threats had begun. It was no secret that Reed was an American sympathizer, but Wesley had been more cautious. Knowing full well that his actions jeopardized her position as heiress to Fortune’s Gift, Wesley had never openly declared that he was a rebel. Caroline had been able to pass his death off to Major Whitehead as an accidental drowning.

  Her cousin Bruce believ
ed otherwise and had taken immediate steps to gain control of her finances. Since most of her gold was invested in London, where as an unknown woman she could not hope to prevail against her male cousin, she had been helpless to stop him. And now he was trying to force her to marry him. The thought was revolting. “I’d sooner be dead,” she murmured into the empty room.

  “Dead is a long time.”

  She turned toward the soft, lisping voice and saw the familiar ghostly figure standing by the window, outlined by moonlight. “Kutii,” she said.

  The Incan folded his arms over his bare chest. “And who else would it be, daughter of my house?”

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. “You pick the worst times to vanish. Amanda is—”

  “Your sister is in great danger.”

  “Yes, I know. Bruce raped—”

  “This one has seen the evil that passed in this room. But the danger is greater than that. I have come to warn you, my heart. You must leave this place. Swiftly.”

  “What more can Bruce do to her?” Caroline asked, moving toward Kutii. She held out her hands to him, wishing he could take her in his arms and make her safe. Since she was a child, the old ghost had listened to her sorrows and given her wise advice. “He wants to marry me,” she said in a strained whisper.

  “He wants this land. Like others before him, he will kill to take it.” Kutii turned his hawk face toward her. His eyes were pools of obsidian blackness. “If you become his wife, you will die by his hand, and your sister will be sold into slavery.”

  “No,” she protested. “He can’t do that. Amanda is a free woman. Amanda and Jeremy are both free.”

  “While demons walk this place, there can be no freedom. I, who was once guardian to the royal house of my people, know these things. I have been a slave. I have known the feel of the whip and the taste of dust in my mouth. Flee from this land, child. Take your sister and her little one and flee.”

  “Leave Fortune’s Gift? How could I? Where would I go?”

  The purring of a cat sounded loud in the room. Kutii bent and picked up the bedraggled creature, scratching behind the nub of his left ear. “There is a time to stand and fight, daughter of my daughter, and there is a time to run.”

  Moonlight gleamed off the silver armband encircling his left bicep. She could barely make out the pagan tattoos that covered his face and chest. His hair hung loose to his waist, a curtain of black silk that rippled when he moved. Despite the cold, he wore only a breechcloth around his loins and sandals of twisted rope on his feet. Round disks of gold hung from his ears. The only weapon he carried was a curious stone knife in a feathered sheath at his waist. He smelled of the sea.

  “Have you been with her?” she asked him. Kutii laughed, a comforting sound like wind through the marsh reeds. “The Star Woman,” he said. “Her blood runs strong in your veins. Do not forget that it was she who first claimed this land. You must hold it for those who will come after you, no matter what the price.”

  “How can you tell me to hold Fortune’s Gift and run away at the same time? You’re not making any sense, Kutii.”

  “Use your own power. Do what you must do.”

  His image flickered.

  “No,” she protested. “Don’t go. I need you, Kutii. You’re all I have.”

  “Her blood,” he repeated, but the words were already faint. “Her blood runs in you.”

  There was a swirling shimmer of color, and then his image faded. Cat and man were gone. Caroline was alone in the room again.

  “Don’t do this to me,” she cried. “Kutii. You stupid ghost. Come back. I . . . I need you.”

  “Caroline? Is someone in there with you?” Her cousin’s voice came from outside the door. “Open up. We need to talk.”

  “Go away,” she said. “There’s no one here, and no reason for you to be in my room.”

  “After what you’ve done, you can talk to me like that?” He rapped soundly on the door. “Open up, I say.”

  Caroline closed her eyes. For an instant, the room receded and she saw the dock at Annapolis. It was still winter; there was a crusting of dirty snow on the boards. She sucked in her breath, hard. She could see her sister Amanda clearly. Amanda’s wrists were bound, and she was weeping and stretching out her arms. “Jeremy,” Amanda cried. “Please! Don’t take my baby.” Then a strange man slapped her and began to drag her toward a farm wagon. “Jeremy!” Amanda screamed again.

  “Caroline! I warn you.”

  She opened her eyes, shaken by the power of the vision. Usually, such visions came to her when she tried to think of what was going to happen. The clarity of this scene shocked her. She shook her. head, trying to dispel her confusion. Was her seeing a warning of a possible threat, or was it a certainty?

  “Caroline.”

  She ignored Bruce and considered what had just happened to her. Caroline had been born with the gift of clairvoyance. It was as much her legacy as Fortune’s Gift. Her mother had possessed a sixth sense, not as strong as that of Caroline’s Grandmother Bess but real nonetheless. And when she was small, Grandmother Bess had told Caroline that the power came from her Grandmother Lacy, whom Kutii called Star Woman, and before that from a wild gypsy woman in old England.

  “It’s a God-given blessing,” Grandmother Bess had explained. “But only those who carry the gift can hope to understand it. Others will fear you and call you a witch. Learn to use your power. Cultivate it, harness it. Never be afraid of it, and never think it to be the devil’s work.” Her grandmother had warned her against letting outsiders know of her sight.

  Seeing Kutii’s ghost was part of her gift. Most people couldn’t see him, and only her Grandmother Bess had ever admitted to hearing him speak. Her mother had insisted that Kutii was just a story, a tale made up to frighten servants. Mother never denied that Kutii had once lived on Fortune’s Gift. A moss-covered stone with his name on it stood in the oldest part of the family cemetery.

  “An Incan Indian, to be sure,” Mother had said, “but flesh and blood. An old servant, dead and buried and forgotten, at least by everyone except fanciful little girls.”

  But Caroline knew that Kutii’s spirit walked the paths and halls of Fortune’s Gift, as surely as she knew she possessed the sight of that far-off gypsy ancestor. Never had a vision come as strong and clear as this one had. And following hard on the heels of Kutii’s appearance, it frightened her.

  Amanda and Jeremy were in terrible danger. And so was she . . .

  “You have one minute to unlock this door, or I’ll have my soldiers break it in,” Bruce threatened.

  “For what purpose?” she asked, moving close to the wooden panel. “Your suspect lies asleep in my bedchamber. You have no business here, and unless you intend to assault me, you’ll go away and leave me alone.”

  “Do you honestly believe your whoring with that popinjay will alter my plans for our marriage? I mean to have you and Fortune’s Gift, Caroline. And I mean to have them soon. Now open this door. What you give so easily to another should be offered to your betrothed.”

  “Go to hell, Bruce!” she flung back. “Try and break this door down and I’ll scream my head off. Then you can explain your behavior to both Major Whitehead and Lord Cornwallis.”

  “How long do you expect to hide in this room?”

  “Until tomorrow.”

  “Until tomorrow then, sweet cousin. Just keep in mind that I have a long memory. And you and your precious Amanda will pay dearly for this rudeness.”

  She waited, heart pounding, breathless, until she heard him walk away, then turned back toward the window. What do I do now? she wondered. Where do I run, Kutii?

  And then her gaze fell on an object lit by a single shaft of moonlight. On Amanda’s bedside table next to the candlestand lay a simple conch shell. She picked up the shell and cradled it in her hands. Amanda had always loved the ivory and blue conch. When they were children, they would put the shell to their ears and listen to the echoes of a faraway ocean.r />
  “Arawak Island,” she whispered. A shiver passed through her. Was it possible? Could she and Amanda and Jeremy reach Arawak far south in the Caribbean? “There has to be a way. There has to be.”

  Chapter 3

  A faint purple haze glowed in the eastern sky and the moon was still a pale ghost of its midnight glory when Caroline changed into a fresh kersey gown and tied an apron around her waist. She had slept in fitful interludes, and what rest she did find was troubled by dreams of red-coated dragoons and terrible images of Wesley’s drowned face. Normally, her maid would help her to dress and arrange her hair, but there was no time for that this morning. She washed her face and hands in icy water and dragged an ivory comb through her unruly curls. After securing the heavy mass with a black velvet ribbon, she pinned a lady’s cap of Irish linen over her hair.

  Her face took even less time. She had been blessed with her Grandmother Bess’s flawless complexion, so she used only a dusting of powder, a bit of rouge for her lips, and the slightest hint of kohl on her thick lashes. Her eyes were her greatest asset, wide-spaced, large, and cinnamon-brown. A shy smile and a sideways glance through those long lashes had caused more than one Tidewater gallant to come to blows with rival gentlemen.

  Caroline knew she was no great beauty by fashionable standards that demanded gentlewomen to be delicate and blond. Not only was her hair an impossible riot of rude auburn, but her body was too lush, her mouth too full, and her chin too firm. Vibrant, she had been called by suitors. Caroline chuckled. Vanity was not her chief sin. She could have been squint-eyed and bald, and still the road to Fortune’s Gift would have been well traveled by those hoping to raise their station in life by marriage to a land-rich heiress.

  No, she did not primp and fuss for the sake of vanity. She used her charms as she did her silks and satins. Her name, her family’s wealth, and the honor of Fortune’s Gift were all that kept her from being abused by the occupying British army. Amanda had not been the only woman raped.