Toward Love's Horizon
Page 1
Also by Michele DuBarry
Volumes I and II of The Loves of Angela Carlyle
INTO PASSION’S DAWN
ACROSS CAPTIVE SEAS
MICHELE DuBARRY
The Loves of
Angela Carlyle (Vol III)
Toward Love's Horizon
Futura
For B.E., cushla machree; and everyone else who believes in love at first sight.
A Futura Book
Copyright © 1981 by Michele DuBarry
First published in Great Britain in 1986 by Futura Publications, a Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd London & Sydney
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 0 7088 3068 4
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading
Futura Publications
A Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd
Greater London House
Hampstead Road London NW1 7QX
A BPCC pic Company
Table of Contents
Toward Love's Horizon
PROLOGUE
PART ONE one
two
three
PART TWO four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
PART THREE twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
* * *
Reality’s Dark Dream
The Caribbean
1810
My Grief on the sea,
How the waves of it roll!
For they heave between me
and the love of my soul!
—Anonymous
The Caribbean stretched forever beneath the hot blue vault of the sky. It was breathtakingly beautiful but merciless and deadly. And against the sheer-spun haze in the north, like an enormous black velvet curtain, hung an advancing line of thunderstorms.
A deluge of lovely turquoise water inundated the tiny raft. It receded momentarily, only to be repeated again—and again and again. Angela choked and gasped as the salt water burned into her eyes, nostrils, and throat.
It had to be a nightmare. If it was reality it could not be borne.
“Please, make it a dream,” she pleaded. “Let me wake up now!”
But it wasn’t a dream. It was all too real.
Angela raised her stinging eyes to the awful sight as it spread, stretching out on the horizon, curving round to embrace them with the kiss of death. Another huge wave washed over and she held her breath, feeling the rope that bound her to the spindly mast tauten and hold her safe.
It was her lifeline, for after four days at sea with hardly any food or water, she was as weak as a newborn kitten. Seasickness, exposure, and shock had drained her strength. Shock, at what had happened to her four nights ago in the Bahamas. Shock, at what she had been forced to do.
Gaston Laporte and his beautiful evil protégé, Jules, were dead. Angela Harrington had killed them with her own hands. But she didn’t regret it and knew she never would. It was what went before that haunted her—what she had done to protect her children.
If only she had known in the beginning why the pirate had attacked and sunk the Dark Lady. Why he had been so elated to find himself holding Scott Harrington’s wife and two children hostage. But she hadn’t known, until that last night on the island, that her husband was the man who had horribly crippled and scarred Laporte.
She had resisted long and hard the veiled threats, then the demands. But when Laporte had her maid Molly raped to death by his whole crew, right before Angela’s horrified eyes, she realized that he meant what he said.
When he told her what he proposed for her children, her blood ran cold. Robert was only three and Lorna six, but what mother, with children of any age, wouldn’t sacrifice herself instead? So Angela gave in and became Laporte’s mistress. And though he brutalized her till she thought she must surely go insane, not one complaint crossed her lips till that night—the night he shared her with Jules.
Both of them were filthy, roaring drunk when Jules made his mistake. He inadvertently let slip that Angela had not bought her children’s lives with her exquisite body—just postponed the inevitable.
It was over now—over! And she had saved not only the children but herself, with the help of a friend. For without Ezra there would be no raft and if not for Angela he would have been flogged to death in Jamaica. They had exchanged favors, she buying him and then setting him free; Ezra building the raft and saving them from Laporte’s cohorts. And now their lives were forfeit again, for they both knew they would never survive the storm.
“It’s the wrong time of year for a hurricane,” Ezra assured her, but her pale, glittering eyes held only disbelief. “It must be some squalls preceding colder weather.”
“Just remember your promise, Ezra.”
He nodded slowly, sick at the thought of saving the children at the cost of her life. But he had vowed that he would do everything within his power to see the children safely to their father in Australia.
With shaking fingers Angela withdrew from her soaking bodice papers carefully wrapped in oilskin. It was her reason for leaving the safety of England and dragging the children halfway around the world—to save the man she loved. For the Duke of Brightling had been convicted of a crime and transported to Botany Bay for fourteen years on the testimony of a bribed witness. It had taken her several agonizing years to discover the treachery but now she held the key to Scott’s freedom.
Ezra took the pardon from her reluctantly and placed it securely in his pocket. It seemed of small consequence but he knew Angela too well. She was finally giving up in the face of overwhelming adversity. A lesser woman would have given up long ago, but Angela was strong. She had weathered more in her short lifetime than a dozen men could be expected to face, and though she never emerged totally unscathed at least she was alive.
The rain was as cold as ice and it hissed as it struck the warm waters, stinging and lashing everything in its path. Lightning sizzled with blinding white light and the wind blew into a tempest. The waves were gray mountains now, capped with white.
It was then that the raft began breaking up.
The Silver Bear sailed into the wind, her captain at the helm. He was huge and unmoving, impervious to the elements buffeting his ship, and only when the call came from the crow’s nest did he look up.
It was perilous work rescuing survivors in a heavy sea but he gave it not a second thought—that was the kind of man he was. And when he saw that there were children he went for them himself.
The woman was unconscious but between the captain and the Negro they dragged her aboard too. She streamed water like a mermaid all the way to his cabin, black hair plastered over her sunburned face, twined round her neck and arms and waist like seaweed. She set his bunk awash in a high tide as the man knelt beside her pushing the hair out of her face with strangely gentle fingers.
The captain lit the oil lamps dispelling the cramped gloom and as the light fell full on her face she opened her eyes. He took a shocked step back as her sorrow-haunted, aquamarine eyes focused, then dilated as they f
astened on his face. She half rose on one elbow, her other hand, as fragile as a shell, pressed against her throbbing bosom.
He was at her side in an instant, thoughtlessly shoving her companion aside, an amazed smile dawning through his close-cropped silver beard. Her fingers trembled as they reached out and his arm slid beneath her shoulders supporting her and drawing her close. Head falling back against the crook of his arm, she stared as in a daze, her fingertips tracing the large downward curving mustache that quirked beneath his hawklike nose.
“Duchess! My sweet little girl!”
With an all too audible indrawn breath Angela looked deep into those unforgettable pewter-gray eyes. The words never reached her lips. For his mouth, firm and gentle and warm, pressed against her cold lips taking her breath away.
She was flying through insubstantial space as sheer and ethereal as a wisp of mist. He was warm. Why had she thought it must be cold? His thick hair slid between her fingers—it seemed like only yesterday.
But they had hung him in London on a winter day five long years ago.
Then Angela knew for a certainty that she was dead.
PART ONE
* * *
A Pirate's Revenge
Cayo Hueso
1810
Those fiends upon a shaking fen
Fixed me, in dark tempestuous night.
—George Crabbe
one
Angela was not dead. She lay sleeping beneath yards of mosquito netting in a small but lovely green and white room. A mocking bird chattered on the windowsill as dawn’s virgin light spilled across the sea slowly gilding the small island.
She was so tired. Her eyelids fluttered like dying butterflies as she tried to open them. The mocking bird scolded her shrilly and flew away. She had absolutely no idea where she was.
Through the window was the glint of the ocean, wavering through shadowy palm fronds, and a ship rode at anchor in the harbor. There was no storm. What had it all been—a dream within a dream?
The door opened slowly and he stood there filling the doorway with such a tender look for her. The silence spoke loudly and eloquently of feelings never to be forgotten, alive and quivering invisibly between them.
Angela was the one that shattered the silence. “Jack? My God, this can’t be real!”
He went straight to her and took her hand, bending from his great height to press a kiss on her fingers. He was a little older, his hair all silver now, but the humor and compassion were still the same. Jack Newton—the infamous highwayman, Gentleman Jack—could never change. In England he lived on in legend, and here—wherever here was—he was very, very real.
Sitting beside her on the bed Jack hugged Angela to him stroking her soft, dusky curls; the prickle of his whiskers against her cheek too familiar to resist. This was no ghost, that she knew. He was as solid as a granite boulder and as gentle as a mother with an only child. She was safe!
Jack released her with a grin, and none too soon, for a moment later a voluptuous, aristocratic looking blond woman entered the room with a tray in her hands. She smiled with genuine pleasure to see Angela awake at last with the color returning to her cheeks. She had nursed her for a week through a dreadful fever and now there was relief in her soft brown eyes.
The last time Angela had seen her was at the trial—Amy, Jack’s wife—the love of his life, he had called her.
“Welcome to Cayo Hueso, and our home,” Amy said, setting the tray down on a table beside the bed. “I hope you will be our guest for as long as you possibly can.”
Angela stared at her, bemused. Such a gracious welcome for her, Jack’s former lover, when she must be the most unwelcome of visitors. She would never have been able to accept so easily the reverse situation, welcoming one of Scott’s women, and heaven only knew there had been enough of them.
“Thank you,” Angela said guardedly. “I’m so grateful you took us in.”
But if Amy sensed the undercurrent or her unease she smoothed right over it deftly changing the subject. “Your children are most charming! You should see them. Right now they are in the kitchen pulling taffy and are sticky from head to toe.”
“I hope they haven’t been underfoot.”
“Nonsense! I love children. I wouldn’t mind a few more myself. . . .”
“Good lord, woman!” said Jack going to stand beside her and slipping his arm around her waist. “Isn’t six enough?”
Just watching them together Angela could see the great and enduring love they shared. It was as if her affair with Jack had never existed, even though it must have been excruciatingly painful when Amy had found out—even worse than discovering her husband’s true profession. For Jack had abducted Angela and held her for ransom, and then fell in love with his intended victim. Their affair had ended abruptly with his capture, but burst like fireworks over London when the scandalmongers caught the scent. Every detail had been dragged into the light of day and examined eagerly beneath the magnifying glass of rumor and innuendo, embellished beyond all recognition. The same thing had happened to her again two years ago in the same city when false gossip credited her with four simultaneous affairs, including one with the Prince of Wales!
“Drink your tea,” Amy coaxed,“and I will leave you two to get acquainted again and fill in all those missing years.” She left them then, confidently and considerately, closing the door behind her.
Jack dragged a chair close to Angela’s bed and poured her a cup of steaming tea, and all the while she was unable to keep the amazement from her face. Jack—alive! He had saved her from the sea.
“Angela, Angela, I never thought I would see you again. Do you think it’s some part of a master plan? Our lives crossed so briefly and you fought so valiantly for mine when you could have turned your back on all the unpleasantness. Now we meet again, in the middle of the ocean, half a world away from home! This time it was my turn to help you—and your children. They are wonderful! So you did marry your Scott after all.”
“Yes,” she said with a dreamy, faraway smile. “Oh, Jack, I’m so glad you are alive. It wasn’t easy after I thought you were executed. ...”
“But then Scott came back and swept you off your feet!”
“Literally!” Angela laughed, her aqua eyes sparkling as they hadn’t for over a month. “He put a pistol to my head and snatched me from right under Keith’s nose at the altar. Oh how I hated him then! I fought him all the way to Scotland. But I don’t want to talk about myself anymore. Tell me everything, Jack, simply everything!”
“Well, where shall I start?” he wondered out loud.
“Right after the trial,” Angela replied, settling back against the plump pillows and sipping her tea.
“All right. I gave the hangman the slip by getting transported instead.”
“New South Wales?”
“Yes, the same as Scott. The only difference is that I never made it there. We were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in the worst storm I have ever seen in my life. I was sure I was dead but somehow managed to make it to shore along with three other convicts.
“A damned inhospitable place! One of my companions died within the week of injuries and another just disappeared a month later. We finally found our way to a village and shipped out on a slaver bound for the West Indies. I signed on for two years but jumped ship in Kingston.
“Then I heard there was a lucrative business going on in Cayo Hueso so I saved all my money and came here. Within three years I had enough for a ship and a year later I sent for Amy. I made more money last year than I did in five as a highwayman.”
“You’re not a—a pirate!” Her stricken expression made him laugh.
“No! The snobs of my profession call themselves salvagers but what I really am is a wrecker.”
“But don’t they lure unsuspecting ships onto the rocks. . . .”
“I’m afraid many have,” Jack said with a sad shake of his leonine head, “which is why wrecking has a bad reputation. But I decided to give up my l
ife of crime. Promised Amy. Besides, the strategic location of this island makes that unnecessary.
“There are treacherous reefs everywhere and the channels are not marked, so if a captain’s charts are not accurate or there’s a storm the inevitable happens.
When the ship is aground then the race is on! The first one to reach the vessel in distress is proclaimed Wrecking Master.”
“What does that mean?” Angela inquired with a little frown between her brows.
“That he gets to salvage the cargo and gets a large percentage of the take.”
“Jack, it sounds dangerous. Have you ever been hurt?”
“No, Duchess, I’m very careful and if you know what you are doing that lessens the risk. Why ships from the four corners of the world pass offshore! They carry wine and liquor, mahogany and timber, silks and silver—then it’s auctioned off in Havana.”
“And you get rich!” Angela laughed. “Jack, you will never change. Your business is legal but rather shady, and you love the excitement!”
“I’ll have to admit to it,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “If you promise not to tell I’ll let you in on a little secret of mine. I’m addicted to excitement! I’m afraid I never did get over my days as Gentleman Jack!”
They reminisced the day away and Jack put her completely at ease making her almost believe that the past was only a bad dream. But Angela told him nothing about Laporte; she didn’t ever want to utter that fiend’s name. That shameful secret would go with her to her grave.
She was sick of being sick. Another whole week had passed and the fever was completely gone but Angela felt as sick as she had on the raft.
“You poor thing,” cooed Amy wiping Angela’s face with a damp cloth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”