Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  “Many a man must have studied you hard enough to guess those,” he told her whimsically, draining the contents of his glass.

  “Yes, but this man has power over me, Rye!”

  “I haven’t a doubt,” he said dryly, “that you could bend this ‘powerful’ buccaneer captain to your will if you set your mind to it.”

  “How can I?” she asked helplessly. “He doesn’t even dine with us!”

  He laughed. “So much for his being hot for your body! It is said he is taking the Sea Wolf out soon. Then you will lose your apprehensions, no doubt.”

  “I will breathe the freer,” she affirmed. “But then, who will be left in his place? The situation could be even worse!”

  “Oh, he’ll leave Lars in charge probably,” he told her in a careless voice. “Lars seems to be his second in command.”

  She stole a speculative look at him. “Perhaps I should ask Lars to help me,” she ventured.

  He frowned. “Perhaps,” he said shortly and was silent for a long time, twirling his empty glass in his fingers. When finally he spoke, it was to reassure her. “I would not worry too much about Kells. If he has not troubled you thus far, you are probably safe from him.” And when she gave him the scathing look she felt that airy assumption demanded, he added thoughtfully, “Kells will be allowing Doña Hernanda to visit her son, I don’t doubt, and you can ask to go along. It will give you a chance to see the town.”

  “But surely Captain Santos will be allowed to come here and visit his mother? It would be very fatiguing for Doña Hernanda to walk abroad in this heat!”

  The tall man lounging across from her poured himself another glass of wine before he spoke. “No,” he said with decision. “Captain Santos will not be allowed to come here. This is Kells’s home and since he took over the premises I’m told no Spaniard, whatever his rank, has ever crossed this threshold—save as a workman.”

  “But Doña Hernanda is Spanish and she is being treated as an honored guest!” protested Carolina.

  Rye shrugged. “Kells has no quarrel with Spanish women. He treats them as he treats other women— with courtesy. But you must understand that Kells is at war with Spain. It is a personal war with him and he does not care to entertain his bitterest enemies under his own roof.”

  “Then Captain Santos is in some danger here?”

  He quaffed the wine. “I did not say that. Kells observes all the conventions of civilized warfare. He has demanded ransom for Captain Santos, which will in time be paid, and Captain Santos will walk away unharmed. Meanwhile he is in protective custody.”

  “But suppose he has not the money to pay the ransom?” she cried.

  Rye’s broad shoulders moved in an indifferent shrug. “Then Captain Santos—like any captured Spanish seaman—will be required to work out some three or four years of endeavor in lieu of ransom. He might have to load and unload goods at the quay or, if he has skill as an artisan, he might be set to build a building.” He nodded about him at the massive house walls that surrounded them. “I am told that captured Spanish labor built all of this.” He leaned forward. “I see you are frowning at me. Let me tell you that if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be very different. If Captain Santos were an Englishman captured by Spaniards, he would—had he not been summarily hanged from the yardarm as often happens—have been cast into a dungeon, chained and left for the rats to gnaw on. There is a slight possibility that he could be ransomed out, but if he were unable to pay, then he would most likely be tried for heresy by the Inquisition and burned at the stake at the first auto-da-fé. Like thousands before him.”

  “But surely not to have money is not heresy?”

  His short harsh laugh seemed to crackle in the evening air. “In Spain it may be! In Spain I will have you know that for a child to defy its parents or a wife to defy her husband can be called heresy and subject one to the Inquisition! We are all heretics in the eyes of Spain.”

  Carolina suddenly remembered Doña Hernanda’s muttered words, I had forgot you were a heretic. She shivered. The warm night air had suddenly gone cold.

  Rye was quick to note that. “But you have led a sheltered life—you cannot be expected to know these things. I only explain them to you so that you may understand the passions here and why these men feel as they do. Most of them have suffered at Spanish hands— or have relatives who have been ground beneath the Spanish heel. Nevertheless you will find that Doña Hernanda will be treated with all respect. Even as you are yourself.”

  They talked a bit more. He drank moodily. Carolina, disturbed by his presence, rose after a while and declared she was for bed.

  “I will walk you to your door,” he volunteered, rising, and the sound of their light footsteps blended as they moved over the smooth stones of the gallery.

  She had turned to say good night when Rye suddenly swept out a long arm and pulled her around to face him.

  “It is good to see you again,” he muttered thickly, and his lips came down on hers even as she was gasping “No!”

  The pressure of those urgent lips was long and sweet and wonderful. All the music that had sung through her veins all evening at finding him a guest here soared about her, dimming her senses. Dizzily she let herself melt into those arms so that she seemed fluid, malleable, a molten ingot to be cast this way or that to suit his pleasure. His lips traced fire along her uplifted chin, along her pulsing throat. His strong arm cradled her back as he bent her backward. All that he had meant to her in Essex was coming back to her in force. The world was slipping away. . . .

  Abruptly that world came back to her. This was the man who had tricked her into a freezing maze and left her to die in Essex! Regardless of what he said now! He was not worthy of her love and never would be! It was Thomas she must hew to, Thomas to whom she had given her heart and her body in keeping before she even met Rye! It was treachery to Thomas to melt against this hard chest and listen to the uneven beating of her own heart! Poor Thomas, who might even now be languishing in a Spanish prison!

  She broke free from Rye’s arms so violently that her back collided with the whitewashed wall.

  “You will not make free with me!” she panted. “For you well know that I belong to someone else!”

  “Do you?” He had moved forward and now he placed both hands against the wall she leaned upon, making an effective cage with his arms. His lean face was dangerously close. And as he leant forward the skirt of his coat, hanging free, brushed against her quivering thighs and the buttons lightly abraded the nipples of her firm young breasts, tingling through the thin voile of her bodice. She gave a quick involuntary shudder of desire, and heard his voice soften. “Has no one ever told you that beauty belongs to the man who can take it?”

  “No, and I do not believe it!”

  He laughed then—and there was self-mockery in his laugh.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Perhaps beauty is a free spirit and slips through our hands like moonbeams.”

  He stepped aside to let her pass.

  She went by him with a toss of her head and opened the door of her bedchamber. “In Essex,” she said severely, “you promised not to pounce.”

  “Oh, but that was in Essex,” he told her in a leisurely voice, hinting of things to come. “And this is Tortuga where anything may happen.”

  “Not to me!” She slammed the door in his face and stood with her back against it, trembling. She closed her eyes to shut out the vision of him laughing down at her, holding her, kissing her.

  This was a purely physical attraction, she told herself, this tendre she had for Rye. She belonged with Thomas—and she would find him. Despite Rye, despite Kells, despite dons or buccaneers!

  She almost tore out the hooks of her bodice so violently did her shaking fingers endeavor to unhook them. And when she was free of the tight-bodiced, yellow gown at last, when she stood there in her thin chemise with the light ocean breeze reaching in through the shutters to caress her hot body, she tried to push away fr
om her the thought that perhaps Rye was right.

  This was a tropical world, a buccaneers’ world; here there were different standards.

  Perhaps things were different on Tortuga—even for her.

  Chapter 26

  At least some of Rye’s words of last night had rung true. The next day a remarkably uncommunicative but courteous English buccaneer named Hawks showed up and said simply that he had come to take Doña Hernanda to see her son. Doña Hernanda was overjoyed—especially when Carolina was given permission to accompany her.

  “I am afraid of this wild place,” she whispered to Carolina just before they left. “Indeed I feel that on this cursed island we are safe only behind the walls of this house. Don’t you sense that, niña?”

  In truth Carolina did not. Despite Rye’s reassurances, she was uneasy about Kells for she was in his power. And after last night she did not trust herself with Rye. On the whole she thought she might feel safer on the quay overlooking blue Cayona Bay, where merchant ships from friendly nations dropped in to buy captured Spanish goods at bargain prices, and merchant captains and their crews strolled companionably about.

  She was glad when Rye did not put in an appearance at breakfast. At the moment she felt she could not face him.

  After breakfast they started out, walking over the white coral rock, escorted by the big buccaneer Hawks, down toward the town. Doña Hernanda was puffing before they had gone halfway.

  They found Captain Santos decently quartered in a low rambling white building surrounded by palms, some distance from the quay. He was wearing clean clothes and his beard was trimmed but he was very low in spirit. His cubbyhole room overlooked a small courtyard, but he showed no wish to leave it.

  “God has forsaken me,” he told his mother gloomily when she tried to comfort him.

  “Could we not leave them alone?” Carolina asked the heavyset buccaneer who watched mother and son impassively. “I think it would cheer them up if we were not here to listen to what they have to say.”

  Hawks nodded and they left the dimness of the room for the sunlight of the small courtyard. It was full of strolling men, taking the air.

  “Are these all Spanish prisoners?” she asked.

  “Yes, and there are more of them over there.” He jerked his graying head toward a long low building she took to be a barracks. “And there are others quartered about the town.”

  “What of their sick? Their wounded?”

  He shrugged. “They are here too.”

  “Without a doctor? But this is barbaric!”

  Hawks looked at her for a long time. Then he spat. “They have Spanish doctors, mistress,” he said. “Captured along with them.”

  She felt that she had spoken in haste and tried to make up for it by giving Hawks one of her dazzling smiles. The effect was immediate. Hawks squared his heavy-muscled shoulders and when she asked sweetly, “Could I visit the sick and the wounded?” he led her with his long rolling stride into the barracks.

  She spoke with some of the prisoners, assuring them that she had learnt much about their captors and that they would not be hurt. And then, quickly, she asked about Lord Thomas and what had happened to him. (But she learned nothing. None of them knew the fate of the Coraje, but presumed she had reached Havana.

  And if she had, then Lord Thomas should still be alive and in a Spanish prison!

  She left the prisoners, promising that she would come again soon and bring them fresh fruit. Hawks watched her speculatively.

  “Why does an English wench take such interest in the Spaniards?” he asked in wonder as they went back through the sunny courtyard.

  “Why, because they are human beings,” she replied, astonished. “Men like yourself. I presume that if you were captured, some Spanish lady would show you kindness!” And as he thought about that, she said, “I have not really seen the town. Would it be possible for Doña Hernanda and me to walk back by way of the quay?”

  Her pleading smile melted the big buccaneer. He cleared his throat. “I reckon so, mistress.”

  Doña Hernanda protested that they were going the wrong way, but Carolina overrode her protests. She wanted to get to know her surroundings, to get her bearings in case the strange buccaneer captain who had captured her suddenly changed his tactics. She wanted to know the direction in which to flee in case flight became necessary.

  Hawks walked them down to the quay, where they moved about between piles of bananas and mangoes and lemons and limes alternating with stacks of captured Spanish, goods—Spanish muskets and Toledo blades, tall candlesticks and powder and shot, fine wines and Moroccan leather, frothy mantillas and pearls and spices—all the things the towering golden galleons transported back and forth between Spain and the New World.

  “Piratas,” muttered Doña Hernanda, glowering at a stack of high-backed Spanish combs just being unloaded from a buccaneer vessel. “Robbers!” She was about to shake her pudgy fist when Carolina grabbed her arm. She had just seen, past a mountain of coconuts, the golden hull and tall gilded towers of the Santiago anchored in the blue waters of Cayona Bay and it brought back to her stabbingly the sight of Thomas bound and whipped, and the memory of Thomas calling to her.

  “Remember,” she told the older woman severely, that vision of Lord Thomas sharpening her voice, “that you are a guest of one of these 'piratas and so far he has offered you only courtesy!”

  Doña Hernanda subsided, muttering, and if Hawks heard he took no notice, but Carolina, looking around her at the men who swarmed about, dickering over the goods, decided that she would do better without Doña Hernanda’s smoldering company.

  She turned with a rueful smile to Hawks. “I am used to taking long walks every day but it seems that Doña Hernanda finds it too fatiguing. Do you think,” she added wistfully, “that you might sometime walk with me down to the quay—just for exercise?”

  Walk—with him? Hawks’s lounging shoulders swung the straighter. “I’ll ask the captain,” he told her in that laconic voice that was a feature of the man.

  “Oh, yes, please do.”

  Carolina had been conscious of admiring glances turned her way, but as they were leaving the quay she heard for the first time the name that was to ring throughout the Caribbean. Quite near her a young buccaneer nudged his companion with his elbow. “See, Jack?” he said. “There goes the Silver Wench the crew of the Sea Wolf were all talking about last night.”

  And his companion gave a long low whistle and watched Carolina until she was out of sight.

  That night, as they waited on the gallery for Doña Hernanda to appear for dinner, Rye asked Carolina if she had enjoyed her outing.

  “Very much,” she told him, steeling herself against the attraction she felt for him. “I am used to exercise, and being cooped up behind a garden wall is too confining for me.”

  An outdoorsman himself, Rye gave her a sympathetic look. “Perhaps Kells will allow you to walk about more,” he said.

  “Hawks is going to ask him for me. And next time Doña Hernanda visits her son, I want to take some fruit to the Spanish prisoners. Would you ask Katje about that?”

  The slight smile that had been playing about his mouth deepened. “Of course. Is there any special place you have chosen for your walks? I will endeavor to join you if these fellows ever leave off haranguing me and dragging me off to where they are careening their ships.”

  “Yes, the quay.”

  “I suppose that would be interesting to you,” he said. “Shipments of laces and fabrics and fans piled up among the coconuts and mangoes!”

  “Oh, it is not the goods,” she said instantly. “But I must study the island if I am to make plans for my escape.”

  For a moment his smile wavered. “Escape?” he echoed in surprise. “Faith, a man might attempt it, but a woman?”

  “Nevertheless,” she said firmly.

  “Have you a plan?” he asked with interest.

  “Yes—and so should you have. Suppose you do not agree to go alon
g with these buccaneers? Suppose you anger them? What do you think your life will be worth? I am going to—somehow—meet English captains and officers of English ships who put in here. They will be more sympathetic to my plight.”

  “For the life of me, I cannot understand your haste,” he murmured. “Captain Kells has offered you no incivility, has he?”

  “No, I have not even seen him since arriving here but it is not my intention to stay here as his ‘guest’ eternally!” She smiled at his inscrutable expression. “Oh, Rye, I treated you badly—I admit it. But I promise that if I am able to arrange for my escape, I will find a way to include you.”

  His fingers drummed restlessly on the table and what he might have said then she was never to know, for Doña Hernanda came out dressed for dinner and there were introductions. Rye spoke excellent Spanish. She commented on it.

  “I have spent some time in Spain,” he admitted. This brought a happy exclamation from the Spanish lady who must needs know where. Carolina listened to his easy answers, but her expression was skeptical. She did not believe a word of it. Some Spanish girl had taught him the language, she guessed—perhaps the wife of some Spanish don who had chosen not to be shipped to Havana immediately, but to linger on Tortuga for a while—and had found a planter who came here occasionally from Barbados.

  “Do you have a wife at home?” she interrupted to ask, in English.

  He turned to her with a startled look. “But you know already that I am not married. I told you so in Essex.”

  She shrugged, thinking of Reba back in Essex and her married marquess. “Perhaps a wife in Barbados does not count when one is in England?”

  He followed then the drift of her thoughts. “Or perhaps I might have a Spanish mistress tucked away on my plantation? No such luck, I am afraid.” He laughed. “You are a suspicious woman, Mistress”—he cast a thoughtful look at Doña Hernanda, not following this sudden exchange in English, but certainly able to hear and perhaps remember proper names—“Christabel.”