by kps
"Mistress Lightfoot." He rose. "Will you stroll with me about the courtyard?"
And that was like Kells, too. She could almost hear him saying it. She rose as if she were in a trance and paced beside him about the stone-floored courtyard.
Suddenly in the shadow of a rustling palm he came to a halt. He was in shadow, but Carolina stood bathed in brilliant moonlight that made mysterious lights glow like witches' lanterns in her silver eyes. The scent of bougainvillaea and roses and other flowers, pouring riotously over the railing and up the round stone pillars, was almost overpoweringly sweet. A night bird called sleepily.
Carolina waited, breathless.
And then it came-his lips on hers. Lightly brushing. And then more urgent, demanding. His arms went around her. She seemed to flutter in them, and then like the night bird, settled down into those arms as into a nest.
The kiss she gave him was a kiss of yearning.
I will pretend he is Kells, she told herself. I will pretend. ...
His moving lips had pressed her own slightly parted lips wider apart now. His tongue was probing impudently, excitingly, leaving a trail of sweet fire where it touched. He brought her body toward him urgently until she was pressed so tightly to the black and silver of his coat-that coat he had worn, she suspected, to show respect for her, rather than choosing the comfort of just his white cambric shirt-that coat was pressed so tightly against her that its silver buttons bit into her soft flesh.
One of his hands moved downward along her back, tracing delicately her spinal column, and she moved softly against him, surrender and desire in every slightest movement of her lithe young body.
His lips left hers and began a fiery tracery down the white column of her neck, over the pushed-up tops of her breasts, rounded so invitingly by the tight neckline of her voile gown. His tongue had found the cleavage between her breasts and she quivered as its warm wet tip touched her.
A soft desperate moan escaped her.
"Oh, Kells," she whispered. "Kells ..."
That hard body that held her captive stiffened. Abruptly he drew away from her-and when she would have surged forward, half-fainting with desire, he took her shoulders in his warm hands and held her away from him.
He looked down deep into her eyes but there was a hard note in his voice.
"Mistress Lightfoot," he said. "I want no warmed over passion. I will not make love to you while you close your eyes and imagine that I am some other man!"
She Bung away from him with a sob. "Is it my fault you look so like him?"
"No, nor is it mine," he said grimly. "Well, we may yet know one another better. But in the meantime, Mistress Lightfoot, let us go to bed-you to your bed, I to mine."
He bowed most courteously and led her up the stairs.
Sleep, for the passionate Virginia lass who could almost believe the counterfeit was real, was something she searched for desperately that night-and did not find.
PART TWO
The Dangerous Rival
The songs that they sing about us
May ever be less than true,
But however legend may flout us
My heart belongs to you!
THE HOUSE ON THE PLAZA
DE ARMAS HAVANA, CUBA
Summer 1692
Chapter 21
Don Diego was gone when Carolina arose-she was almost glad because her feelings toward him were so mixed. She dressed and wandered downstairs where old Juana-all too aware that Carolina had dined with the master last night-gave her a subservient look.
"Why didn't you call me for breakfast?" asked Carolina. "I would have," Juana responded honestly. "But Don Diego said you were not to be disturbed." She hesitated. "He also said that I was to accept your commands as his commands," she added reluctantly. So she was to be mistress of the household! Carolina's spirits rose abruptly. She had been, it seemed, slave only for a day! She could only hope that Penny, next door at the governor's house, was faring as well.
"I see you have been furnished with a helper," she told Juana, noting the wide skirts and turban of a young island girl outside, bent over a washtub.
"With two helpers!" Juana declared proudly. Her broad face broke into a smile. "That one's Nita and the other one's Luz. I just sent Luz on an errand," she added.
Carolina would have preferred not to have Luz, for whom she had formed a slight dislike yesterday, as a servant in her household, but then, she reminded herself, she must count her blessings-yesterday she had been alone and friendless in an enemy city, today she had a house and three servants!
"I think I will stroll about the town after breakfast, Juana," she told the old servant.
"And you can be my duena and accompany me," she added gaily. "Unless you'd prefer to send Nita?"
"Oh, no, I'll go," Juana said hastily. Not for the world would she have missed this gorgeous wench's first stroll through Havana!
"Wear your Sunday best, Juana," Carolina told the smiling old woman when breakfast was over and the dishes were being carried out by soft-footed Nita, who gave her resplendent new mistress a shy look and bent her head above the crockery plates.
Accordingly, Juana appeared in somber black with her hair pulled back severely. She gasped at sight of Carolina.
Carolina, that day, was not on her best behavior. Her world had been overturned yesterday-more than once. She was in a wicked mood.
"Are you going out-like that?" Juana asked weakly.
Carolina whirled about in her red voile over yellow linen. Those brilliant colors alone, she knew, would mark her as something less than a lady in Havana, where patrician wives and daughters wore black-or white. It was a town of elegant mantillas and rustling dark silks and flashing fans and dark eyes and blue-black hair. Very well, lady she would not be! Instead of piling her hair up-as she would have done in Port Royal-she had decided to comb it out and wear it down in a glistening white-gold shower over her shoulders and back. It was a spectacular effect she had created with her delicate pink and white skin, her enormous mass of blonde hair floating in the breeze, and the tight red voile bodice and rippling flame like effect of her red and yellow skirts.
"There is just one thing," she murmured, looking down with a frown at her bare white bosom in her low-cut bodice. "I am sure to be sunburned if I wander about like this.
Do you think you could send Nita next door to find me a parasol?"
Juana looked a little dazed, but she promptly called to Nita, who responded with alacrity.
And so it was that a startling sight swept out of the small house on the Plaza de Armas a few minutes later: Carolina like a vision of white and gold and red flame-above her head a black ruffled silk parasol that had once belonged to the governor's wife-and carrying that umbrella, somberly gowned with her eyes bright but her face impassive-old Juana, moving stolidly half a step behind her young mistress.
"Where will we go?" asked Juana, who would have been glad to parade through the whole town and observe the shocked expression in people's eyes as they passed.
Carolina looked ruefully down at her shoes. They had endured an earthquake, a flood, the salt air of the Ordeafs deck, and being marched through Havana's dusty streets-the combination had nearly disintegrated them. "I think we will visit the market, Juana. Perhaps I can find a pair of sandals there."
"What will you use for money?" wondered Juana, doubting this lustrous wench had any. "I will simply tell them Don Diego will pay," said Carolina with a careless toss of her head. Juana nodded thoughtfully to herself. Doubtless that would serve!'
Their progress down the handsome expanse of the Plaza de Armas was-to Juana, who hoped for drama -somewhat disappointing. One or two gentlemen in wide-
brimmed hats, clattering by on horseback, spurs a jingle, turned to stare. A barefoot Franciscan friar in his simple habit of coarse gray sackcloth, with a white cord knotted around the waist, hurried by-averting his eyes, Juana noticed with glee. But as they approached the market the streets grew more crowded. A handsome
carriage approached and Juana shook the black parasol slightly over Carolina's head, letting the black silk rufftes shimmer in the sun. She was rewarded by the sight of two elegant ladies, severely gowned in black, who registered shock at the sight of Carolina. Old Juana hid a grin-e-she had not been so entertained since the governor's cook had pursued Miguel down the street with a knife, screaming that he had taken a mistress!
A group of soldiers from the fort, seeing them, stopped to stare-and were frowned at by a Dominican friar in black mantle, white tunic and white apronlike scapulary, whose way they had blocked.
Carolina swept through them, head high. "Move along here, you're blocking the path," said a familiar voice in Spanish.
The soldiers moved on with alacrity and Carolina came to an abrupt halt, for in this strange city she had at last stumbled upon someone she knew:
That erstwhile Frenchman she had invited to sup in Port Royal stood before her-indeed it was his commanding voice that had scattered the knot of staring soldiers.
But what a difference in his appearance!
Gone was the foppish look that had made him at first sight seem French. Here was a Spaniard born and bred. He was dressed in somber black and he seemed arrow thin.
His tawny eyes had a dangerous look, and the wintry gaze he had turned on the soldiery held no slightest vestige of the ready smile she remembered.
This was Don Ramon del Mundo-s-and he lost a step at sight of her. But he recovered promptly and swaggered forward with a jaunty grin to sweep Carolina the lowest of bows.
"Good morning, beautiful lady," he said in English. "Have you come to take the city?"
"Only the market," laughed Carolina. "So you are Spanish! I was sure of it back in Port Royal."
"Your discernment matches your charm," he said easily. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Don Ramon del Mundo."
"Not Monsieur Raymond du Monde-whose name means, I believe, man of the world?" she teased, reminding him of the last time they met.
"Not French and not du Monde-although the name means much the same thing in Spanish." He fell into step beside her. "Let me escort you to our market, which is most unusual."
"I know," she said dryly. "I narrowly escaped being sold there myself just yesterday!"
He gave her a puzzled look. "Perhaps my English is not so good after all. I do not understand you."
"I was on my way to England when our vessel was waylaid by a Spanish warship.
We were escorted willy-nilly to New Providence where a French-Spanish attack swept the beaches clean of pirates. With the men all dead, the 'ladies' of the place were bundled aboard our ship and we were all brought here to Havana to be sold as slaves. And it was done-in the marketplace. Yesterday."
"What?" he cried, aghast.
"You don't keep up with what's happening in Havana?" she asked, slanting a narrow look up at him. "Surely no one could miss yesterday's fiesta?"
"I was up in the hills," he said moodily. "Hunting. All I caught was a touch of fever. It dogs me in this climate." He frowned at her. "You say you narrowly escaped being sold?"
"My sister and I were withdrawn from the sale. She now resides at the governor's palace. I was sent next door to be-housekeeper"-she stumbled over the word-"to Don Diego Vivar."
"Vivar!" Anger flitted briefly over Don Ramon del Mundo's dark countenance and was gone. "I might have known! First he is put in command of my plan to take Jamaica-now he is given my woman!"
Carolina stood straighter. Her silver eyes blazed at him in the tropical heat. "I am not your woman!" she cried indignantly.
His somber gaze passed over her. "You would have been," he muttered, "had I been permitted to carry out my plan."
"So you were my guest under false pretenses?" she said resentfully."You were actually there to spy out the island for an invasion!"
"I offered my sword to a lady in distress," he said imperturbably. "And was invited to sup-nothing more. Surely you could not fault me for that!"
"You would be wasting your time to invade Port Royal now," she told him bitterly.
"There is nothing left! The earthquake, the wave swept all before it. The entire town has sunk into the sea."
He shook his head, marveling. Then he looked down with compassion upon her fair head. "That will mean you have lost your house," he murmured. "I am very sorry to hear it."
Her house at that moment seemed the least that she had lost, but Carolina chose not to enlighten him. "What is your quarrel with Don Diego?" she asked, seeking to change the subject. "Don Diego seems singularly favored by God," he muttered.
"First, as a king's favorite, he is sent out from Spain to command my venture, then the governor takes him up-and now the governor has given him you. By the saints, next he will replace me as commander of El Morro!"
She stopped in astonishment on the dusty street and her head swung upward to look at him. "You are in command of El Morro?"
"Yes. Is it so difficult to imagine?" He gave a short laugh.
"No, not at all," she said hastily. "It was just that when we sailed in under the guns of El Morro, it seemed such a forbidding place. . . ."
"And you would imagine me in some more lightsome role? Perhaps a dancing master?"
The sarcasm in his tone made her flush. "I did not mean that," she hurried to say. "It is just that to command that fortress on the rock must be very grim."
He shrugged. She tried a different tack. "What of the men on the Ordeal? What has happened to them?" "They are, all of them, deep in El Morro," he told her moodily.
"Where you command. . . ." she murmured.
"Where I command," he echoed with a touch of hauteur. He peered down at her suddenly, and his dark brows met in a frown. "Why? Did any of them hurt you? If so, I will punish the culprit!"
Carolina shivered-surely, to be lost in the depths of EI Morro was punishment enough even for Captain Simmons, who would have sold her to gain his freedom! "No, no,"
she said. "Of course not. I just wondered what will happen to them."
The man who strode beside her shrugged again. "The governor will send word to Spain that they have been taken and he will ask what should be done with them. I am afraid it will take some time."
They had reached the market now. It was piled with produce. Indian women from palm-thatched bohios sat with expressionless faces behind mountainous stalks of yellow bananas. Blacks and mestizos hawked their wares. They strolled between great piles of oranges and limes and coconuts, stacks of woven baskets, rows of pottery. Bargaining was going on all around them. Old Juana regretted bitterly that Don Ramon and her mistress spoke only English.
"Is there anything you desire to buy?" he asked her courteously.
"I had thought to buy a pair of sandals," admitted Carolina. "My shoes are not much longer for this world!"
Don Ramon cast an appreciative glance down at her dainty feet.
"I will take you to a bootmaker," he decided.
"Oh, but I couldn't let you," protested Carolina. "You see," she confided, a trifle embarrassed, "I left the house without money but I had thought it would be easy enough to explain to a sandal-maker at the market that Don Diego Vivar would come by to pay for an inexpensive pair."
But protests were in vain. Old Juana's eyes were bright as Don Ramon masterfully led his protesting lady to a bootmaker's shop where he personally selected for Carolina a pair of very soft black kidskin shoes with high red heels.
When Carolina suggested that Don Diego would pay for the shoes, Don Ramon waved his hand airily and insisted that he would pay for them. He would be back, he told the bootmaker, to do so presently. Meantime he must escort this lady home in her new shoes. The bootmaker, intimidated by Don Ramon's reputation, gave them both a worried look and hastily agreed.
Carolina wondered if Don Ramon really had arty money. She thought with compassion that she must get her shoes paid for elsewhere-she would ask Don Diego the next time she saw him.
That was to be sooner than she had imagine
d for as they were coming out of the bootmaker's shop the governor's carriage clip-clopped by. And sitting in that carriage, being driven about the town, was Don Diego himself-and beside him the governor's daughter, clad all in white with a white mantilla of heavy lace shading her excited face.
If Don Diego felt startled at sight of Carolina, he kept that emotion to himself. His narrowed gaze roved over them both and settled expressionlessly on Carolina as he acknowledged their existence with the slightest of bows.
Beside him the governor's plump daughter leaned out to stare hotly at Carolina-and then tum her accusing gaze on Don Ramon del Mundo, who made her a deep bow.
She lifted her chin and turned her head, refusing to acknowledge his greeting.
Irrepressible, Carolina waved gaily at Don Diego and turned about, fair hair flying, to take Don Ramon's gracefully proffered arm. She hoped Don Diego had noticed her high red heels that he would soon be paying for!
"Would you care to see EI Morro?" Don Ramon was asking by her side. "Not today."
She flashed him a smile. "But perhaps one day soon? I wonder, could I see the prisoners?"
"It is most irregular," he murmured, smiling down upon her fair hair. "However in your case"-the smile on his dark face deepened-"I think it might be arranged."
"By order of the commandant?" she suggested saucily.
"Something like that. . . ." The crowd swirled round them-two broad-hatted Jesuits in sackcloth, a cimaroon drunk on the local black wine, some leather-clad hunters-but Don Ramon remained immobile, staring down at her. "Would you care to see our waterfront, senorita? Or perhaps I could call you by your first name."
"Yes, do," Carolina said contentedly. "It is Carolina."
"Dona Carolina? A lovely name."
"And I have seen your waterfront."
"But you have not viewed our customs house or La Fuerza, down by the sea wall, from close up." She shook her head. "Another day perhaps." "Then perhaps you will share with me a glass of