Fortune's Flame

by French, Judith E.

And she struggled with her own doubts and fears.

  What had happened between them in this room had been inevitable—she didn’t regret a moment of it. No matter what happened, she would always cherish the joy of their coming together. In one night, Kincaid had wiped away the unpleasant memories of lovemaking Richard had given her and left only good ones in their place.

  After Richard had raped her, she’d spent weeks terrified that she carried his child. This time, she found to her amazement, it didn’t matter to her. Becoming pregnant would be awkward at best with Panama looming ahead of them, but the thought of having Kincaid’s child didn’t frighten her.

  If she returned to the Tidewater in the family way, she would simply invent a husband who’d met an untimely death. Neighbors would whisper behind her back—but who could say for certain that she wasn’t an honest widow? And if she returned with her grandfather’s treasure, she would be wealthy enough to laugh at their gossip. And the child, male or female, would be the heir that Fortune’s Gift needed from her body.

  She was too wise in the way of the world to expect any more from Kincaid than a brief interlude of passion. There could be no future for them once the treasure was found and Kincaid had his freedom. He didn’t belong in her world, and she’d not descend into his. He was what he was—a brutal soldier.

  Bess smiled. No . . . not brutal. Kincaid definitely had a tender side. Still, he was hardly a man she would choose as a husband. He was too unpredictable . . . too dangerous. Such a man would never be managed by a wife. Besides, she thought, the last thing in the world she wanted was a husband. No, she’d have this time together with Kincaid and savor it. And when she returned to Fortune’s Gift, she’d take up her own life again, a life dedicated to her land and her people.

  The night passed, hour by hour. She slept off and on, and the waiting was heavy on her mind. What if Kincaid had run off and left her? What if he’d been arrested? What if he’d gotten into a fight and been killed? In the bright light of day such worries seemed foolish—but in the humid darkness of a Carolina night they plagued her like an onset of fleas.

  The second day was worse than the first. She wanted to follow Kincaid to Charles Town, but she was afraid she’d miss him on the road. The innkeeper demanded payment and stared at her with hostile eyes. The threat didn’t need to be spoken aloud. “This is a decent establishment. We’ll have no abandoned sluts here.”

  “My husband will be back for me when he finishes his business in Charles Town,” Bess said, trying to keep her gentlewoman’s speech from betraying her.

  “Husband? Hmmph!” the proprietor scowled. “I saw ye ridin’ that black horse with your skirts up and your legs bare as an egg. Don’t put on airs with me, girl.”

  Bess spent the afternoon in her room again. At dusk, she could no longer take the heat and the lazy drone of flies. She went down to the yard and walked across the road to the place where the fair had been held.

  She had been walking for the sake of stretching her legs when she saw a black man on horseback riding down the road, leading a mule behind him. She waved, and to her surprise, he reined his mount in her direction.

  “Bess?” he called. “Be that you?”

  She stared and began to run toward him. “Rudy? Rudy? Is that you?” Her heart began to hammer against her chest. “Rudy? God’s breath, man! I thought you’d drowned!” She knew that the black seaman had been on the sloop’s bow when it struck the sandbar. “You’re alive!” she said.

  “I am.” For the first time since she’d known him, he smiled. “I swum a far piece and got picked up by a snow headed for Charles Town. Got there ahead of you, I reckon.” His dark brown eyes glowed with a deep sadness. “Reckon Ants Taylor has bought it, along with the boy. Ants was a good man. I served with him nigh on to ten year. You won’t see many knows the sea like Ants, or many can treat a man like me the way he did.”

  “Ian?”

  “The Irishman?” Rudy shrugged. “Drowned, I guess. But he wasn’t much. Ain’t seen an Irishman yet could find his way in the dark.”

  “I’m glad you’re alive, Rudy.” She waited. He seemed to have exhausted his supply of talk for the day. “Where are you going?” she asked him finally.

  “Come for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Kincaid sent me.”

  “You found Kincaid?”

  “Best fetch your stuff, if you got any. We got a piece to ride afore dark.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You wouldn’t know iffen I tole you.” His wide mouth firmed. “You ’fraid to go with a blackamoor?”

  “No, Rudy. I’m not afraid of you.”

  He nodded. “Best get your stuff, then.”

  In ten minutes, Bess had retrieved her saddlebags, slipped the serving wench a silver penny in thanks for her kindness, and was riding the mule bareback down the road toward Charles Town with Rudy. They left the main track after a few miles and set off on a narrow path through the woods.

  Bess endured silence for an hour, then spoke. “When do we meet Kincaid? Has he found a boat?”

  “After dark.”

  “Did he find us a boat?”

  “Reckon so.”

  Another hour passed. Her arms ached from balancing the saddlebags over the mule’s neck, and the animal’s back was as hard and sharp as a fence rail. Mosquitoes and horseflies buzzed around their heads and bit any inch of exposed flesh. The mule plodded on, seemingly impervious to the annoying insects.

  As they neared the coast, the hardwoods gave way to scrub pines and they crossed one stream after another. They passed no farms or signs of human habitation until they came to a lonely cabin just before dark. Smoke puffed from the mud-and-stick chimney, and a few chickens scratched in the yard.

  “We leave the animals here,” Rudy said. They dismounted and he turned them into a log enclosure.

  Bess thought she heard a baby crying, but no one came out of the house. “Could we buy something to eat?” she asked Rudy. “I’m hungry.”

  He motioned for her to stay where she was and went to the door. Someone opened it and Rudy went inside. In a short time, he was back with two wooden bowls of spicy fish stew and a round of corn bread. Bess took it eagerly.

  “I can pay,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Sara don’t like no truck with white folks. I paid her for use of the horse and mule. She says eat and welcome to it. She don’t take money for feeding travelers.”

  “Please give her my thanks, and tell her that I meant no disrespect,” Bess said. “I’m grateful.”

  Rudy smiled. “I tole her what Kincaid say. You got no slaves on your plantation. You freed your slaves. Sara says that’s the only reason she willin’ to feed you. Sara don’t care for white folks. She’s a real Africa woman. She’s Mandingo.”

  Bess looked around at the poor cabin with the small, neat garden. “You tell Sara that her fish stew is the best I’ve ever eaten and I’m much obliged.”

  When they had finished, Rudy returned the bowls to the cabin, came back and slung Bess’s saddlebags over his shoulder, and headed into the woods. Bess glanced back at the house, then followed him down an overgrown path. A short distance from the dwelling, they came to a river. A log dugout canoe was pulled up on the bank. A half-grown black boy stood beside it, leaning on a long pole.

  “Get in,” Rudy said. Bess obeyed. He and the boy pushed the boat off the shore and stepped into the wide canoe. Using a pole to maneuver along the shallows, the silent boy guided the heavy craft along a narrow waterway. Trees and vines hung over the river on both sides and grew so close together overhead that it was like traveling through a dark tunnel.

  More mosquitoes circled Bess’s head as she stared into the gloom of the gathering night. They passed islands and glided from one channel into another until she had lost all sense of direction. Then the moon began to rise, and she saw that they had entered a broader stretch of water. Not long after that, Bess saw the flicker of lantern l
ight.

  Kincaid’s voice echoed over the still water. “Rudy?”

  “It’s us.”

  Bess’s sigh of relief was audible. As they grew closer, she made out the shape of a longboat with at least six men in it. “Kincaid?” she called.

  “Aye, ’tis me. And who did ye think it was? Louis of France?”

  The dugout nudged the side of the longboat and Kincaid’s strong hand reached out to clasp hers. Her pulse quickened as he assisted her into the boat and pointed out a seat. Rudy handed her saddlebags over and Bess settled them across her lap. He stepped into the longboat, and the boy pushed away with his pole and vanished into the darkness.

  “What are we—” Bess started to ask.

  Kincaid cut her off. “You’ll find out soon enough.” He looked past her to the men at the oars. “Well, what are ye waiting for? Put your backs into it!”

  The moon rose higher as the sailors rowed the longboat around a point of land. As soon as they - cleared the marshy tip, Bess saw a two-masted schooner lying at anchor only a few hundred yards away. She looked around. There were no lights on the ship or on the land. There were no sounds but the wind and the rhythmic creak of oars and the splash of water.

  Kincaid leaned close to her. “There she is, Bess. There’s the ship that will take us where we want to go and back again.”

  “How? Why?” They had money for passage certainly, but not enough to buy a boat. Who would take them to Panama and back? “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “She’s mine,” he said.

  “Yours? But you don’t own a ship.”

  One of the sailors behind her laughed.

  “Mind your own affairs,” Kincaid snapped. “And remember what I’ve told you. Lay a finger on my woman—speak to her unless you’re obeying a direct order from me—and I’ll hang ye by your balls from the yardarm, and feed what’s left of ye to the sharks.”

  “Kincaid, where did you get a ship?” she insisted. “Did you steal it?” God in heaven! What had she gotten herself into? Stealing a ship was worse than horse thieving.

  “After a fashion,” he answered. She caught a whiff of rum on his breath. He wasn’t drunk, but he had been drinking. She knew it by his cocky humor.

  “Captain Bartholomew Kennedy had the bad luck to run aground on a sandbar last week with a Royal Navy snow breathing down his neck. He and his crew—what’s left of them—have been sentenced to hang in Charles Town tomorrow morning. And since he had little use for his schooner anymore, I hired my own crew and lifted it out from under the Navy’s high noses.” His amused burr was so thick she could have cut it with a knife.

  “You stole a ship from the Royal Navy?” she cried.

  “Kennedy’s own Scarlet Tanager, complete with six cannon, four swivel guns, and a hold full of fresh water and supplies.”

  It went beyond all belief. Bess shook her head, certain this must be Kincaid’s idea of a bad joke. “A pirate ship?”

  Figures appeared at the rail of the schooner. Someone tossed a rope ladder over the side.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said to Kincaid. “You’ve actually stolen a ship?”

  “Aye, woman, if ye care to look at it that way. But as I said before, Captain Kennedy will have no use for the Tanager in Hell, and ye did hire me to take ye to Panama.”

  Chapter 16

  Jamaica

  The Scarlet Tanager glided into the Kingston harbor on an overcast afternoon in late July, and the young captain, Evan Davis, gave the orders to furl the sails and drop anchor. Bess and Kincaid stood near the rail at the stern of the ship and gazed at the bustling port town amid a brilliant sea of green foliage.

  Evan strode down the deck toward them. “It’s a tame place compared to Port Royal,” he said, pointing across the harbor to the far shore opposite Kingston. “ ‘Twas said the devil hisself thought twice before sailing into Port Royal. A bigger nest of pirates and cutthroats you never saw. A hurricane three years ago destroyed most of it. Twenty-six ships sank and over four hundred people drowned in that single storm.”

  “It’s hard to believe,” Bess replied, looking at the jewel of an island nestled in a bowl of blue water. The sweet smell of orchids, lilies, and citrus was nearly overpowering, and the air was so soft it felt like velvet against her skin.

  “Aye, miss, but true. Some think Port Royal was cursed. The town was swallowed up by an earthquake around the turn of the century.”

  “We have fierce storms on the Chesapeake,” Bess said, “but nothing like that. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have the earth open up under your feet.”

  Evan nodded and glanced at Kincaid. “We’ll have to let the men go ashore, sir. And they’ll be wanting—”

  “To be paid,” Kincaid finished. “Every man will have his fair leave and enough coin to satisfy his hungers. But I want you on this deck when I’m not aboard, and I want them ashore in parties of no more than six. I’ll not leave the Tanager undefended.”

  “As she was when we found her?” Evan grinned. “I’ll keep her safe for you, Munro, be sure of that.” His mood sobered. “The men deserve their recreation, sir. They’ve worked well together, for all that we were shorthanded.”

  “You’ve my permission to take on four more hands here, if you can find experienced men. Their share will be two-thirds of what was promised to those who left Charles Town with us.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Evan touched his forehead in respect to Bess and returned to his duties.

  “He’s a good master,” Kincaid said, “for all this is his first command. He knows these waters, and I think we can trust him.”

  Bess nodded. Of all the men Kincaid had hired, she liked Evan Davis the best. Rudy was as taciturn as always, and the rest of the crew seemed to her no better than pirates. She particularly disliked Floyd Hartly, ship’s cook, carpenter, and surgeon. He was the brother of the horse dealer they’d met in Charles Town, and also was one of the first men Kincaid had signed on. It had been Floyd who’d led Kincaid to Rudy and Evan Davis.

  “Would ye expect church deacons to help me lift a ship from the Royal Navy?” Kincaid had teased the first time she’d complained about his choice of crew. “Floyd’s rough, but he’s a good man. He never complains and he’s always ready with a joke or a story to keep the men’s spirits up. I’ll grant ye, he’s no beauty, but then ye can appreciate my fine looks all the more.”

  It was true that Floyd was an ugly man, short and squat, with an oversized nose that had been broken so many times that it had lost all shape and sat on his poxed face like a lumpy potato. His eyes were pale blue and bulging, and he wore his sparse graying hair in a tarred knot at the back of his head. But it wasn’t his looks that alarmed Bess; it was her own inner voice.

  She’d come in personal contact with Floyd only once, when his hand had accidentally brushed hers as he set a bowl of stew on the table in the captain’s cabin. Her immediate reaction had been a sickening lurch in the pit of her stomach, and she’d seen a flash of mud-brown in her mind’s eye. Since then she’d watched him, and had tried without much success to warn Kincaid against trusting him.

  The voyage south to the islands had been uneventful, and Bess had found out why her father loved the sea. She never tired of standing at the rail and watching the ocean’s changeable moods. She thrilled to the magnificent sunrises and the feel of clean salt wind blowing through her hair. The sight of dolphins swimming beside the Tanager and of great whales rising out of the depths moved her to tears. If she had been a man and not a woman, and if her heart wasn’t already pledged to Fortune’s Gift and the Tidewater, she knew she would have been content to spend her life on a spray-kissed deck with the promise of adventure waiting just over the horizon.

  She and Kincaid had spent many days and nights together, not just sharing the joys of the bedroom, but also talking and laughing. As they’d left the mainland behind them, Kincaid seemed to shed years from his shoulders and become more lighthearted. He’d shown her
great passion as well as respect and tenderness.

  And despite her disagreement with him over the Tanager, Bess found that the coals of her own desire lay waiting to burst into flame at any moment. When they were alone in the privacy of the small cabin, Kincaid couldn’t keep his hands off her, and his slightest touch sent her eagerly into his arms. She had given up thinking of the future; she took each day as it came and savored the sweet, wild rapture of his embrace.

  Bess had assumed when she came aboard that Kincaid meant to captain the Scarlet Tanager himself, but he’d said he knew his own limitations. Evan Davis had served fifteen years at sea on merchant vessels as junior officer, navigator, and finally second-in-command of a hundred-and-fifty-ton brigantine that carried goods from the Caribbean to the North American mainland and back again.

  Bess suspected that Davis had had some experience aboard the Tanager under suspicious circumstances, but she couldn’t prove it; and neither Kincaid nor Evan would give her any further dues to the Welshman’s past and why he was willing to risk his life and career on this illegal venture.

  Kincaid took her hand and led her back to the cabin. “I don’t want to go below,” she protested. “I want to see the harbor. I want to go ashore and see what’s carried in the local shops. I want to taste fresh sugarcane and have a hot bath in something besides salt water.”

  “And so ye shall, ye greedy wench,” he teased. He closed the cabin door behind them and drew her into his arms. His mouth was warm and tender against hers, and she sighed with pleasure. He made her feel loved and secure, safer than she’d felt in many years.

  “I want to eat a meal that Floyd hasn’t handled with his dirty hands,” she said.

  “His hands aren’t dirty,” Kincaid said. “At least not for a sea cook. When I sailed aboard the Revenge, the cook . . .” He trailed off and grinned. “Never mind, ye’d nay appreciate the tale.”

  “You never mentioned a ship named Revenge,” she said. “When did you—”

  “Shhh.” He put a lean finger over her lips. “ ‘Tis past, lass, past and best forgotten. I’ve done much that belongs to another time and place.” He smiled at her with a hint of mischief, a smile that made her heart lurch. “I need that bag around your neck, Bess. ’Tis time ye parted with that little gold cat and your other valuables. I ken how much they mean to ye, but the hands must be paid if we dinna wish a mutiny.”