Heather Graham’s Christmas Treasures
Heather Graham
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities between real life events and people, and the events within this product are purely coincidental.
13Thirty Books
Print and Digital Editions
Copyright 2014
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Copyright © 2014 Heather Graham
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0692320229
ISBN-13: 978-0692320228
DEDICATION
To all who believe in the spirit of the season . . .
No matter what their faith may be!
Not the tinsel and gifts, but the caring and the brotherhood!
Peace to all – and a happy and healthy New Year.
And, of course, thank you for reading!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My family, my friends, both near and far, often seen and dearly missed,
Merry Christmas.
one little mirAcle
Chapter 1
"Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Anna Maria cried, terror deep within her gray eyes as she stared out over the white-capped waves before them. "'Tis a pirate ship; see how brazen her skull flies from the mast!" She crossed herself once, then again, and still one more time. "Dear Lord, save us!"
Tessa Dousseau, standing with Anna Maria at the bow of their armed French sloop, Mademoiselle, narrowed her eyes and stared across the waves, feeling hot tremors of fear and excitement and dread come sweeping in a fever down her spine. Indeed, the ship appeared to be a pirate ship, bearing down on them swift and hard, regardless of the gray-clouded, ominous skies, regardless of the wild, reckless waves that crashed and rose, white-tipped as if touched with snow.
The Mademoiselle was a fine sloop, and when she had been built, it had been intended that she carry thirty guns and a crew of more than a hundred hale and hearty men to operate those guns. But somehow, she had left port minus fifteen of her guns and dozens of men. There hadn't been time to outfit her properly, not with winter so swiftly on its way. And Tessa's father, the Comte de la Verre, had been very determined that he would have Tessa set upon the French isle of Dejere well ahead of Christmastide—for she was his idea of a gift for a friend.
It was nearly the first of November now, and they were within twenty-four hours of their port.
Facing a pirate ship...
"Oh, dear God, please—" Anna Maria began again, and Tessa started as she saw her lady's maid sink to her knees at the bow of the ship. Then Tessa's fingers curled more tightly around the wooden rim of the bow as she remembered how she had prayed those very same words, again and again, all the long way out here at sea.
Dear Lord, please. Dear Lord, please...
She had begged and prayed for a miracle to release her from her father's bargain. Day after day, hour after hour.
She had considered jumping into the sea—not to take her own life, but to swim to some distant shore.
But now it seemed that her prayer was about to be answered, and in the most dreadful, horrifying way. There was a pirate ship upon the sea. She was outfitted with the English flag—and a skull-and-crossbones—both whipping hard against the wind from the ship's flag mast.
"Ladies!" Tessa could hear Don Juan Diego, the Mademoiselle's Spanish captain, bellowing out to them. She swung around, seeing him in his elegant coat and white-lace cravat and perfectly powdered wig, and wondered how her father had ever imagined that such a dandy was fit for this commission at sea. Don Diego's face seemed nearly as white as his powdered wig. "You must hasten below, my lady!" he charged Tessa. "We've a murderous English scoundrel ahead of our bow! This is that wretched creature, the dreaded Red Fox, the only fool English captain to warn his enemies with his colors bright and bold. You must go and hide from the fighting!"
"You will best him, Don Diego!" Anna Maria cried, leaping to her feet.
"We've a battle ahead, a fierce one!" Don Diego promised. Then he shrugged. "A battle, or perhaps surrender. This pirate does not butcher men as so many others do. He seeks the gold of ransoms. Perhaps—"
"You cannot let him take us, Don Diego!" Anna Maria cried in horror.
"A battle would be fiercely bloody."
"But the Lady Tessa is to wed Raoul Flambert, Comte de Sierre, and the Royal Governor of Dejere! You cannot trust her to the likes of an Englishman!"
Tessa decided not to remind Anna Maria that Tessa's mother had been English, that Tessa had spent most of her life in England, until very recently. Besides which, it didn't matter to her. Pirating was a wretched profession, and no man had a right simply to pluck the treasures from another man's ship—no matter what his nationality. And pirates were horrid, hairy men with rotten teeth, bowed legs, and rancid, insect-infested beards. She would rather die than surrender to such malignant men.
"My father would be heartily disappointed in your cowardice, Don Diego!" Tessa said firmly, her eyes, deep blue like the sea, flashing an earnest warning. It didn't help, of course, that she had warned her father of the privateering activities going on when he had determined this course of action. But her father had received a fantastic sum—in gold—for her marriage portion, and he had waved a hand at the idea of pirates. "They go after the treasure ships, my dear. The Mademoiselle will carry no cargo more precious than you, Tessa, and so the pirates will all stay at bay."
Not this pirate. Perhaps he didn't know that the only precious cargo aboard the ship was a bride bought and paid for in gold. There was French furniture aboard, linens, silks, all the things that went with a woman who would soon be wed. There was the little jewelry she possessed. Perhaps even these meager pickings would do for this wretched English pirate Red Fox.
A cannon suddenly boomed, and just off the bow of the ship, a tremendous spray of water erupted from the sea. Tessa was startled by the little tremor of terror that suddenly tore at her heart. She didn't want to die. She hadn't wanted to ever reach Dejere, and her fate there, but neither did she want to die. She gritted her teeth very hard together, grasping the rail at the bow to maintain her balance as the ship rocked upon the sea, as the mates and seamen screamed and cried out and went running in confusion.
"Hold her steady, hold her steady!" Don Diego called to his first mate at the raised helm above them.
"It was a warning shot!" Tessa heard herself cry. "Don't run from him so swiftly! Fire back!"
"Get below!" Don Diego, very red-faced now, commanded her. "You must go below—"
"But I am not frightened, Don Diego," she lied to him, eyes narrowed. "I will not so swiftly submit to the barbaric tactics of a pirate!"
"Mademoiselle! We are not properly armed!" Don Diego cried to her.
There was another burst of fire from the not-too-distant cannon. The shot just missed the ship. Water spewed up again, falling back upon them like rain droplets.
"Send up the white flag!" Don Diego shouted.
"You whiny coward!" Tessa cried, alarmed. "Don't you see? He is not so eager to hit you! He wants to seize your ship. You can fight him, or you can outrun him!"
"Mademoiselle, you will go below!" he roared again, shaking his head. "Mon Dieu and Dios mio!" he muttered, combining his Spanish and his French. "I warned your papa that you had been in English schools too long!"
"Outrun h
im!" Tessa demanded. "Else, dear Captain, you will be saying much more to my father!"
For a moment it seemed that Don Diego could not decide if he was more afraid of the pirate or of Tessa's father, not merely the Comte de la Verre, but a man among the Sun King's favorites.
"Go below, I beg of you," he pleaded, "and I will do my best to outrun this English menace!"
"Come, my lady, please!" Anna Maria begged, tugging now on her arm.
Tessa remained on deck for a moment, feeling the touch of the breeze, the sea spray upon her cheeks. She didn't want to go below. But Anna Maria was pulling at her arm and Don Diego was still staring at her, a mute and desperate plea now in his eyes.
She allowed Anna Maria to hurry her along. They ran quickly down the narrow stairway to the quarters below the topside deck, and then down the hall to the captain's cabin, given over to Tessa for this long voyage from the Old World to the New. Small paned windows looked out from the bow of the cabin, and as Anna Maria closed the door after they entered, Tessa hurried to the broad bunk that sat at the right side of the cabin and stared out the glass at the sea beyond it.
Her heart shuddered hard again. Perhaps she was a fool. She didn't mean to cast a death sentence upon all the men who sailed the Mademoiselle. The pirate ship had come closer upon them, so very close, and with such tremendous speed that Tessa was frightened to death. She was a bigger sloop than the Mademoiselle, and Tessa could count thirty guns just on her starboard side.
Now she could hear the shouts from above decks, Don Diego, calling out in his mixture of Spanish and French for his mixture of a crew. He had said that he would try to outrun the pirate ship, and he would.
He had very little chance, and Tessa knew it.
"He must surrender!" she said suddenly, with a sinking heart. She pushed away from the bunk, swinging around on Anna Maria. Anna Maria was tall and slim and just beginning to gray. Her face was very lean, her eyes very big and brown. She was dressed in a gray gown, her only thought to fashion at all the hoop beneath her skirt—the revival of the farthingale. Poor woman! She had led her life caring for Tessa's little half-brothers, and she had never experienced a moment's violence in her life. She was in definite dismay now, and though she had irritated Tessa since they had met, Tessa now felt sorry for her.
"I have to get by, Anna Maria."
But Anna Maria was backed against the door, ashen, frozen. She finally managed to shake her head. "You mustn't go out there. Pirates are coming! And what a pirate might do with such a young beauty as yourself—"
"Not so young," Tessa corrected her quickly, and with bitterness in her heart. Her father had been exceptionally anxious for this marriage because she was over twenty now, very old to him, since he had wed her mother when he had been but sixteen and his bride a full year younger. "Practically decaying, as my father would tell you," Tessa said, trying to smile. "Anna Maria, you must let me out now. I have all but damned these poor men, and I must change things."
Anna Maria stood her ground, too frozen to move, but Tessa was determined. She strode to the door and gently but firmly removed the slim woman from the doorway, all but lifting her aside.
"You are in my care, I am to watch over you!" Anna Maria called in dismay, but Tessa had no time to answer her, for she was already hurrying back down the hallway to the narrow stairs. She had nearly reached them when the ship shuddered violently. She staggered against the paneled wall, fighting to regain her balance while panic filled her. They had been broadsided. The pirate ship had reached the Mademoiselle and rammed her hard.
She pressed her hands over her ears, crouching to her knees, hearing the screams and the shouts and the wild cries of panic. Then she leaped up, determined to right what she felt she had put wrong with her reckless demands.
She raced up the steps, and coming onto the deck, nearly smacked headlong into a slim, dark-haired pirate with a knife between his teeth and an unsheathed cutlass in his hands. He froze when he realized he faced an unarmed woman.
Terrified, Tessa took a wild swing at the man. She caught him in the jaw and winced, clutching her hand as he fell. Her knuckles seemed to explode in pain. She shook her hand, staring in disbelief at the man she had felled.
She crouched down beside him, looking up, and saw that more men were hurrying toward her. "Take care! The woman is dangerous. Look what she did to Wily Fred!"
Once again, it was not courage but rather simple panic that brought about her actions. The men were rushing at her. She had to have some defense, and so she grabbed up the fallen pirate's sword and waved it menacingly at the half-dozen English privateers who suddenly rushed toward her. They all stopped out of range of her wild swipes and looked at her warily. She looked from one man to the next; they weren't quite what she had expected. They were certainly well-dressed for pirates, all wearing hugging breeches that came just below the knee, silk stockings or none at all, and bare feet. Their shirts were white linen, oddly clean. One pirate was very tall, gray-haired, gray-eyed, and lean; three were younger, one a redhead, two blond; and two were middle-aged fellows, white-wigged despite the battle they had enjoined.
She wanted to shout out in English, to tell them that the ship would surrender, to demand mercy for all the men, but she wasn't given a chance. A deep, rich voice suddenly boomed out, and before she could speak, the men parted ways before her, and she was silenced by her first glimpse of him.
He was tall, shirtless beneath the sun, with broad shoulders that glistened a deep bronze color. He was in high boots and crimson breeches that seemed to cling to his hips and the hard columns of his thighs. He moved like a great cat, smooth, sleek, silent. When he stood before her, he seemed almost like some pagan god. He was heedless of his half-nakedness, steady upon his booted feet, his pirate's cutlass hanging idly for the moment from his right hand. He seemed intrigued only by her, and stared openly with yellow-green eyes, like a cat's, set deep in a bronzed face—a face of startling appeal with high cheeks, clean-arched brows, long straight nose, and full, curling, very sensual lips. His hair was a very deep, rich auburn, a full head of it, cropped just below his neck, as if such a style might keep it from being bothersome. There was something about him, perhaps merely the power with which he seemed to move, which instantly alerted her that he was the captain, the wretched pirate Red Fox.
"What have we here?" he murmured, and she was startled by the richness and refinement of his voice. It had a deep and masculine tone, one that seemed to touch her inside and out, in a way she had never felt before.
She realized that she was still standing with her stolen sword raised, meeting his cat's gaze. He didn't seem at all afraid. He seemed, in fact, so self-confident that she almost longed to run him through just to take the self-assured look from his cocky eyes.
Yet he seemed to realize everything that went on in her mind, and he bowed deeply. "Mademoiselle, I will take the sword."
She shook her head. He had spoken to her in French, and she gave him a simple answer in the same language.
"Non!"
Muscled shoulders rippled. Hands on hips, he seemed to straighten to an even greater height. Again, he spoke to her in French. "Mademoiselle, you are the Lady Tessa Dousseau, daughter of the infamous Comte de la Verre, and soon to be bride of the despicable Comte Raoul Flambert, heinous governor of the French colony Dejere."
She remained very straight, saying nothing, staring into his green-gold eyes with her stolen sword aimed at his throat. She inhaled and managed to speak her demand in swift, angry French. "You, sir, are the very wretched pirate Red Fox. And you must swear now that these men, who have done you no harm, will receive none in return!"
A smile curled ever deeper into his mouth. Then suddenly she gasped, for he lifted his idle sword, struck hers from her grasp, and brought the point of his own to circle lightly just inches away from her throat.
"The business of death does not pleasure me, my lady, while that of besting Spaniards and Frenchmen—and acquiring great treasure alon
g the way—does." His voice, low and soft, suddenly rose to a thunderous level once again and he called out, still in French, "Drop your weapons now! You will not be put to death, or tortured or abused, if you surrender your weapons now!"
There was an instant clatter of swords upon the deck.
Tessa had wanted the crew to surrender. They simply had not needed to do so with such humiliating speed.
"And now you, ma cherie," he said pleasantly, "will accompany me aboard the Golden Wind, serene in the knowledge that no man will die on your behalf!"
He was laughing at her, she thought, and she longed to reach out and slap his handsome face, but his sword remained too close to her throat for comfort, and she managed to remain still.
"I don't care to change ships," she told him loftily.
"You what?" he inquired, arching a brow.
"I do not care to accompany you to your ship, or anywhere, you filthy pirate!" she said, still replying mechanically in French, for it was the language he spoke.
"Filthy?" He turned to the tall, gray-haired pirate, now near his back. "Don't I bathe more commonly than most men, Thibault?" he asked.
"Most commonly!" Thibault assured him eagerly in English.
"Nod!" the Red Fox told him. "Our mademoiselle is Français, and probably understands little English, and I would surely have her understand you now!"
The Englishman smiled and nodded strenuously. The Red Fox turned back to Tessa, arching a brow.
"Monsieur," Tessa said, "the body is but the shell of our existence, and the dirt with which you live rests most heavily upon your soul!"
"Indeed?" he inquired. He had kept smiling, but now those cool gold-green eyes were narrowed, and she thought that she had angered him as well. Alas, she thought angrily, such a small price for his piracy!
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