by Paula Quinn
Alex smiled and nodded his head. “I like tarts and pies. Of course, I’ll join yar brother. He’s an excellent swordsman.”
“He says the same about ya,” Sam said over his shoulder as Alex headed for the galley.
Alex would like to remember that in the morning. He made it belowdecks without incident. When he reached the galley, he looked around for David Pierce.
The Expedition traveled with them, keeping just ahead on the starboard side. He wasn’t surprised to see Pierce on board. Captains often boarded ships while they sailed. Alex would try to remember to be impressed that Pierce could do it after only six months at sea. It made up for his sensitive stomach.
“Ya know, Pierce,” he said, slipping into a seat near Sam’s older brother, “yar dog truly is the ugliest mongrel I’ve ever seen. What breed is it?”
“Hell if I know. But she isn’t ugly. She’s unique.”
“All right,” Alex said, reaching for a cup and a tart. “If that’s what ya wish to call it.”
“Risa’s mother once saved Edmund MacGregor from death at the hands of Walter Hamilton, Lord Chancellor of Scotland.”
Alex gave him half his attention. The other half he gave to his banana almond tart. He bit into it and closed his eyes. Now this, this could make him forget. “Put some pineapple in yar rum,” he advised Pierce, “and ya will never go back to bitter wine.”
The English captain looked around the table and shook his head at the oblong, prickly fruit. “I’ve seen pineapples before but have never tasted one. Is it like the mango?”
Alex took the fruit in his hand, drew his dagger, and skinned and sliced it. He handed a piece to his guest.
“Tell me why the Lord Chancellor sought to kill MacGregor.”
“Edmund kidnapped the chancellor’s betrothed and stole her heart. Damnation! This is good!”
Alex grinned. He didn’t know anyone who thought differently. “Edmund is Kyle’s brother, aye.” When Pierce nodded, Alex thought about it all for a moment and forgot everything… save one thing.
“Did ya meet Caitrina… er Miss Grant when ya visited Camlochlin?”
“I did.”
Alex eyed him from above his cup. “What did ya think of her?”
Pierce squeezed more pineapple juice into his rum and then ate the flesh and licked his fingers. “I thought she is the daughter of Captain Connor Grant, the niece and granddaughter of some of the most notoriously dangerous men on earth. And then I thought of her no more.”
Alex laughed. “Ya were afraid of them then.”
Pierce nodded and downed more rum—not the gunpowder kind. “As you should be, Kidd. You would do well to forget her and move onward.”
“I know I would,” Alex admitted. “She’s made her choice and I must leave her to it.”
“She chose for you to live.”
He smiled but he felt like smashing something. Many somethings. He slammed his cup on the table. “What a great service she’s done me.” He rose to his feet and turned to leave the galley. “Remember to thank her fer me if ya ever see her again.”
He left and climbed out onto the deck and into the cool night air. He’d already forgotten his order to Sam to sail back to get her so he didn’t notice that they hadn’t turned around. They could reach their destination in a day if the winds held up. He prayed they would. He wanted off the ship, away from the tedium, away from the memories of her in his bed every time he tried to lay in it.
Tonight, he avoided it and slept on deck, rocked to sleep by the Atlantic and plagued with thoughts of a stubborn Highland lass who’d come to steal his heart.
As he expected, he awoke the next morning with a thunderous headache and no memory of the night before. At some point in the night he must have eaten a tart because half of it was stuck in his sash. But gunpowder rum didn’t erase memories further back than that. Alex wished it did. His mood remained foul during the day, even after two rum concoctions to ease his throbbing head. He ordered the men about and threatened Cooper twice to make this pile of rat-eaten wood go faster.
He didn’t dine with his crew but found a quiet place at the bow where he sat with Pierce’s dog, Risa, and a jug of rum. He spent many hours telling the dog about Caitrina, unable to keep her from his thoughts or his lips. He spoke freely, confessing to Risa’s pointed ears his deepest heart, hoping this might be a way to exorcize her.
The next day, when they docked in Costa da Pimenta, Alex felt hopeful when he greeted some of the female natives.
This was what he needed to forget her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
This wasn’t the first time Trina rallied men to move. She’d succeeded in getting Mr. Bonnet and the crew to go after Alex, hadn’t she?
Unfortunately, the men in her family were a bit more stubborn. Still, she didn’t give up. She could feel the walls cracking. They would give in with more time. But she didn’t have time. If the navy arrived, her kin couldn’t sail anywhere without them watching. They had to go now.
She had hoped to keep her heart out of it, but that hope was quickly fading. She had tried to convince them that Alex needed their help. But they argued that since the navy didn’t know his whereabouts, he was relatively safe. She wanted to see him again. She had to see him again, and she had to make her father understand her heart.
“I tried not to feel this way, Papa,” she told him, then looked at the others sitting around the table in the meeting hall. Her brother’s wink when she met his gaze strengthened her, as did Kyle’s smile. “I canna’ stop my heart from feeling the way it does. I have tried and I have failed.”
“He’s an outlaw, Caitrina,” her father argued, still looking a bit sick and miserable from the last four hours of talking. “What kind of life d’ye expect with him?”
“One of adventure. Even if we settled down on two islands, he would fill my days with spark and challenge. A life filled with love. You have it.” She spread her eyes over each face and, no longer needing support, forged on ahead. “Ye married women ye wanted, with or withoot anyone’s permission and ye are all happy. Why d’ye deny me the same?”
“We dinna’ bring our wives with us to rob and pilfer—” her uncle Rob said.
“While barely escapin’ the navy,” Colin agreed.
“There have been at least two battles in Camlochlin,” Malcolm pointed out in her defense. “Were not yer wives in jeopardy then?”
“Hell,” Colin muttered. “Connor, ye should bring yer son outside and show him why our wives were never in any danger.”
“I’m simply sayin’,” Malcolm repented with a flash of his dimples, “that love is sometimes worth the risk.”
Every eye at the table turned and looked at Malcolm like he’d just sprouted another head. Malcolm loved his women and to hear him utter such a thing was shocking indeed. Trina knew that he did it for her.
“Aye, I want to take that risk,” she told them all. “I have fallen in love with Captain Alex Kidd and I want to sail to Costa da Pimenta to find him.”
“The Pepper Coast,” Kyle corrected, then smiled nervously when all eyes turned to him. “’Tis in Africa. West Africa.”
Her father laughed, but the sound chilled Trina to her bones. She knew his reaction would not be favorable but actually seeing disbelief and frustration, not to mention deep concern, marring his handsome features broke her heart.
“Ye’re so much like yer mother.”
She smiled. He didn’t.
“Papa, he is a good man.”
“He’s a pirate, Caitie. How can he be a good man?” He held up his palm to silence her when she would have said more. “I’ll hear no more talk of him.” He stood up, angry and taller than everyone, save the chief. “I’ve given in to yer whims fer too long. Ye should be married with a bairn or two by now, not stowin’ away on a bloody pirate ship! I’ve indulged ye so much that ye honestly think I would entertain yer suggestion of bringin’ ye to him and then biddin’ ye farewell and sailin’ back to Scotland without ye!”
She’d done the right thing. Knowing it didn’t make it any easier. She’d saved her captain’s life. She should be thankful. But she wasn’t. Thankful that her father would never let her go? Thankful that her life was not her own? She looked toward Malcolm. Her brother offered her a comforting smile but nothing else. Kyle, too, remained quiet out of respect for his uncle’s reprimand.
She loved them. She loved her father. But she felt her anger rise up inside like lava beneath a mountain. “If ye will excuse me.” She moved to pass the men and her father. What more was there to say?
“Caitrina,” her father spoke softly now and reached for her arm.
She pulled it away. “I will be waiting on the ship. But when we return home, I will not wed, nor will I have any bairns. That is my condition.”
“Condition?” her father asked, looking sincerely stunned. The others all looked equally astounded at her declaration.
She nodded, quite boldly. “If I canna’ go to him, then I will go to no man. I will live oot my matronly days under yer watchful eye and nae harm will ever come to me and I will make yer life a happy one.”
She stormed away from him and everyone else. She meant what she said. She would never marry. How could she settle for a life without Alex? When she stepped out of the hut her tears came harder. She ran the rest of the way toward the beach, her soft cries flowing out behind her.
Kyle watched her until she disappeared in the darkness and then he looked inside the hall, spotted her father looking miserable, and went back inside to have words with him.
Alex liked the Pepper Coast. Over the years, Portuguese, Dutch, and British traders formed posts here and it became a region rich in trade imports. Its most important commodity was the malagueta pepper, or, as the Dutch and British called it, Grains of Paradise. Spices, gold, and ivory were exchanged for textiles, alcoholic beverages, general merchandise, and slaves.
The best thing about Costa da Pimenta, though, was that Caitrina Grant wasn’t there. She still plagued his every damn thought, but the rum was beginning to help. Thieving helped, too, of course. He and his mates had already procured enough coin and trinkets to buy all they needed to make it to Madagascar in one haul.
They needed grain, lots of it. So Alex enlisted David Pierce and six others, including Gustaaf and Cooper, to help him fetch some, while Sam and the others traded for poultry and spices. It was always wise to invest in live chickens and some geese. The fowl provided eggs and fresh meat after weeks at sea.
And anything, no matter how rotten it became, tasted better with the right spices.
Alex didn’t mind the idea of more weeks aboard ship. The need he’d felt during the last couple of days to escape the boat and his memories of her was gone. He’d felt trapped with nowhere to run. But he was a pirate, seawater flowed through his veins, and now, on his second day ashore, all he wanted to do was run to his ship and find comfort in her rocking embrace.
He would have preferred a woman’s embrace… Ah, but there was nothing better than forgetting the world and all its vast emptiness in the embrace of a warm, willing woman. But he had no desire for any woman.
Only for her.
It scared the hell right out of him. It was worse than he feared. He was lost to a Highland lass who he would likely never see again. And why? Because she feared for his life and for her kin’s lives, instead of trusting him.
He should have tossed her over his shoulder and apologized on their way toward Africa. He would have convinced her that after they got wealthy from the Quedagh Merchant they would sail back to Scotland and speak with her kin.
“We’re goin’ back to get her.”
Pierce stopped walking and looked at him. “We can’t do that.”
“I wasn’t askin’ fer yar permission,” Alex said, and kept walking. “Nor did I ask ya to come. Poseidon’s Adventure will return here in a week. We will meet up and continue on toward the treasure. A minor delay.”
Pierce picked up his pace to reach him. “Use your wits, Captain. Her family might have arrived by now. Between her and Kyle, they might convince her father that you had no part in taking her, but if you show up to take her from them, they will kill you without question.”
Alex didn’t reply, but smiled as he walked.
“I mean no insult to you,” Pierce offered. “When I arrived in Camlochlin to get my dog, I stayed for a month and came to know them more. No one takes from them and lives. The vow began with their land and continued to their name. They are everything terrifying you’ve heard spoken of around fires, and more. They took me in as friend, then ushered me out like a friend who’d overstayed his welcome. They don’t care much for strangers. Did I tell you that already?”
“What’s yar point, Pierce?” Alex glanced at him.
“My point is that if you try to take her, there will be fighting. Why would you put her through such things? Even if you emerge victorious, do you think she will feel the same way about you after you kill one of her uncles, or cousins… or her father?”
Alex slowed and turned to him. “You were a good friend to me father. I’m thankful fer it. But I hold ya to no bonds, Pierce. Yar loyalty to me father brings gratitude, but ya owe me no such allegiance.”
“I know,” Pierce assured him with an irresolute smile, “but I do owe it to my brother. He’s fond of ya.”
Alex almost laughed for the first time in days. “So’s yar dog.”
They reached the others and paid for a dozen sacks of grain. The men hefted two sacks on each shoulder and headed back to the ship.
“I’ll pay ya whatever ya want fer her.”
Pierce laughed. “How is it possible that such an ugly dog has become so prized?”
“She’s a good listener.”
“I won’t argue that,” said Pierce, shifting beneath the weight of the sacks on his shoulders, “but she stays with me. I risked much going to Skye for her. I’ll not part with her.”
“Ya make the men of Camlochlin sound like blood-lustin’ hounds with horns and forked tails. I met them. They didn’t seem so terrible. I wouldn’t lift me sword to them. I promised her that.”
“Then it will be you who she watches die. Sword or not, you’re trying to take her from them and give her an outlaw’s life. Her father will never allow it. Think, I beg you.”
He didn’t want to think. He wanted to hold her and look at her and bite her mouth. But Pierce was right. He couldn’t go back for her now. Her kin might have arrived. He would travel to Madagascar, get his treasure, sell it, and sail back to Camlochlin to make her his wife.
He could wait.
When two native lasses, wearing nothing but skirts, crossed their path, he looked, the same way every other man in attendance looked. But he continued on toward the docks. For not throwing down his sacks and chasing after them, he received a smile from Gustaaf. Alex wondered how the giant was taking Caitrina’s absence.
He slept fitfully that night and woke up four times to finish off his rum.
The next morning, Sam found him asleep in the dirt outside the small inn where they were staying. Risa was asleep beside him. Sam almost walked away, letting them sleep, when he heard a loud shout in the distance.
The MacGregors had landed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Stirling’s Pride dropped anchor off the western shore of the Pepper Coast three days after Alex arrived. The landscape was arid and the absence of lush vegetation and tall, shady trees made Trina’s eyes burn. There may have been trees here once, but endless rows of stalls had replaced them. Traders lined the roads as far as the eye could see. As men passed her, Trina picked up dialects of Dutch, French, and Portuguese she r
ecognized from Lisbon. She squinted against the glare and almost tripped over a scrawny chicken. She didn’t like it here. Not the way she liked Parrot Cay and even Lisbon. There was no music to fill this parched air, only the suffocating hum of hundreds of voices and crying in the distance.
She blushed four shades of scarlet when a native woman, absent of any covering on her breasts, passed her and the men of her clan. She didn’t dare look at her uncles and she didn’t need to look at her brother or the others to know what they were doing.
She didn’t like that Alex was here, somewhere within the thriving, pulsating hustle and bustle. When another dark beauty appeared at her father’s side and offered him pleasure, Trina wondered with a sinking heart if Alex was lying in a bed somewhere with a naked native.
“He shouldna’ be too difficult to find.” Kyle tore his smile away from a pretty lass with skin like smooth onyx and humble breasts that pointed toward the heavens. “’Tis a busy city but our crew will stand oot.”
She smiled, grateful that he still considered the crew their crew. She prayed they weren’t too late. Convincing her kin to sail her to West Africa had been nearly impossible. Getting them to take her to Madagascar would be too much. And too much to ask them to stay away from their lives at home for so long.
“If they are still here. We didna’ see Poseidon’s Adventure docked anywhere.”
“The coast is long, Trina. There were many ships. We could have quite easily missed it.”
She walked with him along one of the roads leading to the village. Keeping her eyes on the warriors who escorted her while they broke up into groups of three to cover more ground, faster. She assumed Alex would be staying in the village, perhaps in a hut, as he had on their previous stop.
“How did ye do it, Kyle?”
“Do what, love?”
She turned up her face and smiled at him. She owed him so much. Malcolm, too. They’d fought for her, as did Cailean and Edmund.
“How did ye make them listen?”
“Yer father was already willing when ye left the hut. It didna’ take too much to get him to realize that yer unhappiness would soon break yer spirit. ’Twas ye who changed his mind, not any of us.”