“Enough, Rafe,” Vallé interjected. “I need to speak with Mademoiselle Delacorte alone, s’il vois plait.”
Rafe’s gaze sliced from Vallé back to her, a silent promise in his dark eyes. No mercy. He’d be the first to volunteer again, this time to administer her punishment if and when he learned she’d tried to bring his captain harm.
Christiana set her chin and refused to look away, even though she shuddered inwardly to think of what his punishment might entail. She’d been raised around the Brotherhood, had lived by the Custom of the Coast the same as Vallé. She’d seen what cruelty men—and women—were capable of and had seen what ends they met. Blackbeard and Major Bonnet were gone; Mary Read, too, dying of fever in the same prison which Anne Bonny had somehow managed to escape, where O’Malley was now.
Christiana held the Spaniard’s withering stare for a moment longer, then released her pent-up breath when he turned abruptly, staccato boot heels clicking an angry tattoo across the floor. The door creaked open, then closed sharply behind him.
Having dismissed his lieutenant, Vallé began to roll up the chart on his desk. She watched and waited, regaining her composure by the time Vallé spoke.
“Well,” he said quietly, tucking the last of his papers into place. “I have heard Lieutenant Quintanal’s theories. I’d like to hear yours.”
“Really?” She thrust up her chin and met his gaze squarely, unwavering. “Then you should have asked while he was still here.”
“Dammit,” Vallé gritted. “I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.” Slamming a fist on his desktop, he punctuated his grudging admission. “But what the devil am I to think when you feed me bits and pieces? What the hell else have you decided ‘doesn’t matter?’”
He started towards her, then changed his mind. Biting back a curse, he raked his fingers through his hair, loosening more strands from his queue as he paced the floor like a caged tiger. Then, just as suddenly, he stopped, and with those same lethal reflexes, took her by her forearms and dragged her up against him. Their gazes locked, and beneath the turbulence in his, Christiana could see the reflection of her own eyes, filled with pain and passion and regret, but without recrimination. The doubts he had were reasonable and deserved answers.
She only hoped that she could give them.
Justin shouldn’t have touched her. He knew it, and yet, inexplicably, he knew he’d had no choice. He remembered the way she’d come alive beneath him when he’d accepted the gift of her innocence and the nights thereafter, when he’d tutored her in his bed. Every instinct told him that in his arms, she held nothing back. Nothing. She gave herself honestly, freely, unabashedly, and now he wanted her mind, her memories open to him as well.
Gentling his hold, he rubbed his callused hands over her linen-sleeved upper arms. “Tell me. I must know everything,” he said. “From the beginning. Where were you when news of O’Malley’s arrest reached you?”
“In Charles Town.” She sighed and dropped her gaze to the laces on his shirt. “I am—was—employed by Monsieur Jean Baptiste Jobert and his wife Marie, to care for their three youngest children. Their eldest, Hèléne, was a classmate of mine, and my best friend. When we completed our course of studies, we sailed together to Charles Town, her home port. I met her family. They were wonderful people. We kept in touch after I went to The Oaks, the horse farm O’Malley won, in Maryland. When I returned to Carolina for Hèléne’s wedding, I stayed on as governess for the family.”
“Tell me about this farm. The Oaks?”
“O’Malley owns a house,” she said. “With property. A small plantation, I suppose you would call it, with a stable of horses for breeding, some rolling timberland, pasture, fields. Behind the main house is an orchard, and gardens. The tilled acreage grows enough crops to feed the livestock and his people.”
Justin tilted his head, his brow creased. “Slaves?”
“No!” Her chin came up. “He’s Irish,” she told him indignantly, as if that explained everything. “He has hired help, and bondservants who are willing to work for a fair share and a small place of their own.”
“And you left there to work? Why?”
She looked suddenly uncomfortable. Blinking, she cleared her throat, then pulled out her kerchief and tended her reddened nose before answering. “I wanted to work,” she told him. “I had gone to school. I desired to put my education to use.”
Justin shook his head. “You could have done that anywhere. You didn’t have to leave Maryland. Yet you chose Carolina. Why?”
“It seemed best to leave,” she finally admitted. “O’Malley’s overseer, Philip—well, he formed an…attachment,” she said hesitantly. “I declined his offer, but it was clear that he still held hope. When I was invited to Hèléne’s wedding and learned that the Joberts needed a governess, it seemed a perfect answer. I thought, perhaps, that Philip would accept my decision more easily at a distance.”
“And did he?”
Justin nearly wished he’d never asked when he saw the haunted look that crept into her eyes.
“No.” She shook her head and blew her nose again, this time pressing a finger to the corner of each eye. “The day he received my letter with news of my employment, he jumped on a stallion they’d been breaking and raced toward the woods. It stumbled at a fence and fell with him.” She shuddered at the memory. “The accident broke his back. The horse had to be put down. Philip was left paralyzed. I returned as soon as I got word. He…he died…the next day….”
Jésu Christ.
She looked up at him, moisture glistening in her eyes, her chin trembling. “I returned to the Joberts after the funeral. It was easier than staying, don’t you see?” Her voice quavered with soul-deep desperation, as if she still hadn’t found a way to put his ghost to rest. “If I kept busy enough, I wouldn’t have time to think about what had happened. That it was partly my fault.”
“Was it?” he asked softly, brushing a finger along the soft curve of her cheek. “This Philip was responsible for his actions, not you. And no one can be blamed for such an accident. They just happen.”
“Sometimes,” she acknowledged, clearly torn. Exhaling softly, she looked at him and told him the rest of it. “But when I bade Philip goodnight, he—he asked me to leave the laudanum….”
And he’d used it. He’d have called Philip a selfish bastard for putting Christiana in that position, but he’d seen how despair drove people to madness.
“Ma belle, you did him a kindness,” he told her. “Nothing more. Something anyone else would have done. And if not that night, then another. I only regret that he asked it of you.”
“But…I knew what he would do!” she cried. “I left the bottle. And now…O’Malley….”
The torment etched upon her face was terrible to behold. “I am afraid for him. In my dreams, I see O’Malley in Philip’s bed, only he is the one who is hurting. He prays to be free of the pain.”
“Ian isn’t Philip,” he assured her. “And whatever his condition when we find him, he will heal. This Philip was a broken man. For him, all hope was lost. He chose to slip away in his sleep quickly rather than suffer for days, or weeks, while you watched him waste away. You did nothing but what he asked of you. What he wanted. Anything else is between Philip and whatever God he looked to. Ma pauvre chérie, I am no priest to offer absolution, but you’ve done penance enough, I think. It is time to let it go. Once you find peace with it, perhaps Philip will be at peace, too, hmm?”
She exhaled, a long, cleansing breath that she’d been holding since the morning she’d found Philip dead. “I would like to think that,” she murmured gratefully, dropping her gaze to the handkerchief gripped in her hands. “I’ve struggled with it, trying to make sense of it, wondering if there was anything else I could have done. If I’d accepted his offer, he might still be alive. But I couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t.”
Justin dropped his hands when she pulled away, seeking to put distance between them, as if she did
not wish him to feel her pain. And she did hurt. He could tell it in the rigid set of her shoulders, the white-knuckled grip on the cloth she clutched, the faulty breaths she inhaled.
Turning, she went to the bank of windows and focused her gaze on the foam-kissed waves. “The heart does not always choose wisely,” she said. “Philip had the sad misfortune to fall in love with someone who could not return his affections, and both of us have suffered for it.”
Justin realized that he could have told her—perhaps should have told her—about Felicia, but he was still struggling after three years. He offered platitudes instead. “Love can be patient,” he told her. “Love can be kind. But it is seldom easy.”
“Nor is it the constant thing that poets would have us believe,” she added hoarsely. “It is like a seed, carried by the wind, falling at the whim of nature with no choice where it lands. It either finds fertile soil and flourishes, or it sprouts only to die, starved of what it needs to thrive. But sometimes,” she added in a barely audible whisper, “it’s more of a miracle, surviving against all odds, against all reason, the single bloom left after the storm, rooted deep in the crack of a barren rock that by rights should grow nothing.”
Mon Dieu. When Justin realized that she spoke of herself, he felt as breathless as if she’d robbed the wind from his sails. She’d given herself to him that first night out of love, a love that she’d nurtured all these years. Remembering Philip, she’d said nothing rather than risk rejection.
Now what the devil was he to do?
Rather than rush in where angels fear to tread, he gave her room, and gave himself time to think. Crossing to his sea chest, he rummaged for a clean handkerchief to replace the increasingly damp one she pressed to her face. When he offered it to her, and she looked at him with such gratitude, with such sweet, sad longing, he knew, beyond a doubt, that he was looking at the face of a woman in love.
And a woman who cherished a love like that would not—could not—have betrayed him.
“Merci,” she whispered, taking the kerchief from his fingers.
“You are welcome.” He waited until she’d blown her nose before continuing. “You say that Druscilla’s letter reached you in Charles Town?”
Christiana nodded. “It said that O’Malley was arrested for piracy and desertion and was imprisoned in Jamaica, with no date for even a trial. All because the French and the British want to fight over him, like dogs with a bone!”
“Tell me of Ian,” he urged her. “The French think he’s a pirate, based on a ring he tried to pawn. You said he often won at cards. That he played at Mrs. Smith’s.”
She heaved a soft, tremulous sigh. “There, and other places, in different ports,” she said. “He may have called himself Jean Delacorte, but he had the luck of the Irish, or so it seemed. The Oaks, his plantation, was won on the turn of a card, and a two-masted schooner, and some pretty piles of gold and jewels. He’d played at Mrs. Smith’s the evening before he was arrested, winning big again, from what I understand, and buying Druscilla’s time for the rest of the night.”
Justin rubbed beneath his queue at the tension in his neck. “She told you that?”
“She, and others. ‘Tis common knowledge, much of what goes on in a brothel.” When Christiana paused to glance at him, he was glad to see more color in her cheeks. “O’Malley went into a local shop the next day to see what prices he could get for some of the pieces he’d won. The shopkeep recognized the crest on one of the rings. He knew its owner had been killed in a pirate raid. He pulled a pistol on O’Malley and kept him there while his son ran for the authorities. The rest, I think, you know.”
“I worry less about the British than the French,” he said. “A good lawyer and the right bribes, and the desertion charge will disappear. Surely they know it, too. So why haven’t they handed him over to the French? Why are they taking so long?” he mused aloud. “It makes no sense.”
“It does if they are bent on torture,” she said tightly, unshed tears lacing her words. “I fear that’s why they refused to let me see him, afraid I will bear witness to how they treat their prisoners. I think they wish to force him to confess where the rest of the loot is—either that, or they hope his crew will come for him. They seemed upset that they captured the captain but his ship managed to slip away.”
Justin wanted to assure her differently, but he knew what went on behind locked prison doors. The night he had helped spring Anne Bonny from her cell, he’d seen bruises not only on her but on the tiny babe she clutched to her milk-laden breasts.
“You’ll get him, won’t you?” The words were the barest whisper, but when she turned to face him, she looked at him with such trust and faith, it was as if she thought him capable of saving the world.
A strange, gut-wrenching sensation swept through him, and Justin knew he’d do anything in his power to keep that look in her eyes rather than see it replaced by bitter disappointment.
“I will try, chérie,” he murmured, touching her cheek. “I promise you, I will try.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vallé excused himself after an early dinner, leaving Christiana with shelves of books and no desire to do anything but sleep. She awoke an hour later, thoroughly miserable, aching so badly, she felt as though she’d been keelhauled.
She supposed Vallé was conferring with his officers, making plans to free O’Malley. She should make herself presentable, comb and style her hair, perhaps change into her dress—anything to lift the black mood he was in.
It had started when they’d argued at lunch. She’d asked when they would be in Jamaica. Vallé said they were headed home first, but he refused to defend his logic in going there. Indeed, he’d stiffened when she demanded to know his plans, and something in his eyes made her uneasy enough not to pursue the subject.
Sniffling, she felt for the kerchief that she kept close by, and caught the sneeze she’d felt coming. The next sneeze made her eyes tear. She might have cursed her luck, but she held her tongue, needing no more ill wind after those that had blown about the dinner table. This blasted cold hadn’t helped her Irish temper.
Christiana eyed the comb on Vallé’s dresser but could not force herself to go that far. Instead she foundered, sinking back on the pillow she’d doubled to elevate her head and drew the sheet to her chin. Coughing fitfully, she drifted into an uneasy sleep. A short time later, the door squeaked open and she jerked awake, relaxing when she recognized Vallé by the confidence of his movements, the master in his domain, his footsteps amazingly light and graceful for such a large man. He shed his clothes in the dark before slipping beneath the sheet.
Reaching for her, he found that she was still wearing his shirt. The significance was not lost on him. This was the first night she’d climbed into bed with clothing since coming aboard. She would have feigned sleep rather than explain, but the tickle in her chest forced her to push away from his embrace and sit, knees drawn up, coughing into her kerchief until the spell had passed.
Vallé propped himself on one elbow and pressed the backs of his fingers to her cheek. “You’re sick,” he accused, a faint trace of alarm in his voice.
She knew she was. His skin, still slightly cool from his time on deck, felt like ice against her fevered skin.
“You noticed,” she quipped, trying to make light of her condition. But in truth, she was frightened. Frightened by her mounting agony, by the feel of congestion moving down into her chest, by the unnatural sounds from restricted passages and labored lungs. Not being able to breathe freely brought a panic all its own. “I’m afraid I’ll not be much of a bed partner this night, captain. If you want any sleep, let me string a hammock somewhere and I shall cough at a distance.”
Justin wanted to shake her. “The hell you will. Why didn’t you say something earlier? I’d have had the surgeon come look at you.”
Christiana shuddered in revulsion. “No doctors,” she said adamantly. “No leeches. I will have Caleb bring me some willow bark tea in the morning.”
<
br /> In the patch of moonlight that filtered through the mullioned windows, he could see that her eyes were overbright; her cheeks were two spots of color against the unnatural whiteness of her face. She stared at him for a moment, then closed her eyes and collapsed back onto her pillow, her respiration shallow and far too rapid for his liking.
“No doctors,” she repeated, laying a burning hand upon his forearm. “Promise me,” she said, and then fell eerily silent.
Justin winced when he felt anew how hot she was. She had braided her hair into a single rope that fell across her chest, lifting with each shallow, rattling breath. He watched her, unable to take his eyes off the movement, fearing that if he looked away, she’d stop breathing altogether. The scene had a sense of unreality, as if he’d stepped into the worst of dreams. She had always been so strong, so healthy. Surely this was something she could defeat. A minor illness, nothing more.
But wanting it, wishing it, would not make it so. Deep in his heart, he knew that she was very sick. He watched the rise and fall of her braid, fighting the urge to wrap it around his hand and bind her to him so closely that death would not dare try to take her away. She was sick, he told himself firmly. Not dying. Not yet. He refused to allow it. Whatever it took, he would see her well again. And if she chose to hate him afterwards—
He’d had her love. He had only himself to blame if he earned her enmity. That she live to choose was all that mattered.
Justin went for the surgeon as soon as he was certain she’d fallen into Morpheus’s embrace. By the time they returned, she was frantic in her sleep, wrestling with the bedclothes and struggling for each labored breath. A tormented cry escaped her parched lips; her nails dug into his arm when he reached to wake her, intending to help Christiana escape her nightmare—not the first one she’d had but the worst, from the sounds of it.
Justin shushed her, making soothing sounds. He reached to pry off her burning hand and realized that she was locked in the throes of delirium, not dreams. Fighting a rising panic, he quickly moved aside so that the ship’s surgeon could take a look.
Touch the Wind: Touch the Wind Book 1 Page 9