Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  A breakfast table had been laid for one, and at that table Kells was just finishing his breakfast. Gone was the somber Spanish finery of last night. Today he was a typical buccaneer in loose white shirt and breeches with a cutlass swinging at his thigh.

  “I was afraid that last crash would wake you,” he sighed. “One of the beams must have fallen at the far end of the house.” He nodded in the direction of his officers’ quarters, which last night had served as a hospital. Now his appreciative eyes roved over the thin silk robe that outlined her figure in an inviting way. “Faith, you look very fetching this morning.”

  Fetching or not, she stood there staring at him in an agony of doubt, hoping it did not show on her face. Had she or hadn’t she? She would have given years of her life to know.

  He rose and pulled back a chair for her. “I had thought to let you sleep late after last night,” he said. But since you are up, you can share breakfast with me.”

  After last night. ... Oh, God, what did he mean? She sat down rather abruptly in the chair he proffered.

  “Do you like the fit of that robe?” he asked, and when she nodded: “The first dress I sent you was a guess, but Katje took the measurements of the gray linen dress you arrived in, and the rest were made or altered to those measurements. I trust she took them well?”

  “I have not yet tried any of them on,” said Carolina nervously. “But they do look as if they will fit me.” She jumped as the little island girl came softly up behind her, bringing another trencher.

  He gave her a sympathetic look. “You are entitled to be edgy this morning,” he said. “After all it was your first.”

  “My—first?” she faltered.

  “Battle,” he said absently.

  “Kells,” she burst out. “I must know. Where did you sleep last night?”

  “Sleep? Ah—I see.” His eyes grew shuttered but beneath his lids the gray irises glittered; he looked angry. “What would you like to hear me say?”

  “The truth, of course!”

  “The truth?” He gave her a mocking look and rose lithely. He cut a dangerous figure with his cutlass swinging against a narrow dark-trousered hip. “I can see that you will not be good company today, but if all El Sangre’s men have left—as I expect they have— Hawks will take you walking down to the quay and that should restore your good humor.”

  “Kells!”

  He had begun to walk away but now he turned, his expression inscrutable. “Can you really not remember last night, Christabel?”

  “No. Would I ask you if I did?”

  “I am not sure. You might.”

  “Kells, answer me!”

  “I will leave you to think upon it,” he said wistfully. And then his wicked smile flashed. “But I will say this: that last night I found you irresistibly charming.”

  She sat back, dazed. She had—oh, God, she had! Worse, she now began to remember vaguely a dream she had had last night, a dream that she had pushed away from her as she woke. A dream of a lover who had carried her in his arms to the big bed and there had laid her down and joined her. Her cheeks burned as she remembered the hot caresses of her dream, how her very flesh had burned as his questing hands wandered beneath her flimsy chemise . . . and she had waked in that chemise with the dream still fresh in her mind.

  And now she knew it had not been a dream! It had been reality.

  Unable to eat, she shoved her trencher away and walked restlessly back to her room. Her mind was aswarm with thoughts, but paramount among them was the thought that she had betrayed Thomas. Inadvertently, of course—she must hold onto that belief. To believe anything else would be to admit she was a light woman, unworthy of such a man as Thomas.

  Did sinners absolve themselves if they fled from their sin? she asked herself in panic. If they changed? Would she cleanse away the stain of her faithlessness if she fled this place, found Thomas and was true? Her mind whirled with such thoughts.

  It was with relief that she heard a knock on the door, heard Hawks’s laconic voice say that he had come to take her for a stroll if she cared to go.

  “Yes—just give me a minute to dress, Hawks,” she cried, and reached for her usual yellow gown which lay across a chair. And then her hand stilled. This was not the day for modesty, for simple unassuming clothes. This was a day for dramatic elegance and startling effects. For this was the day she was going to make her escape from Tortuga! Before last night’s slip could become a habit. Before the overwhelming physical attraction the lean buccaneer had for her became an obsession that would sweep all before it. Before she could be found out and ruin Lord Thomas’s life!

  And there was no other answer but to run. For to stay was surely to court disaster. Last night Kells had taken her without her permission. But next time—ah, the next time she might melt in his arms and never count the cost.

  A hot sense of guilt almost overcame her.

  She could not do that to Thomas.

  So today she would somehow—somehow make her arrangements to escape this island and the too attractive man who ruled it. A man who, if she stayed, would lure her down paths she had no wish to follow.

  And with that decision to leave, a kind of peace descended upon her, a cold inner calm, and her nervous fingers lost their tremble. With cool decision she chose the gown she would wear along the quay, and with considerable cunning made her plans.

  The dress she chose was a dress to be reckoned with. It was the flashiest of the lot: of brilliant scarlet silk, low cut and with its neckline and its elbow-length puffed sleeves edged in glittering silver threads. Beneath it she wore an almost transparent black silk chemise whose lace spilled as delicately as spider webs from her elbows across her slender forearms. She found a pair of black satin slippers with high red heels and a pair of black silk hose. She put both on, fastening them artfully with the rosetted black garters set with brilliants that she had found amidst a pile of garters of all colors in one of the chests. She rummaged through the available petticoats until she found one dramatic enough to wear this day: a sensuously rustling sheer black taffeta garnished with silver threads and sprinkled with occasional brilliants. She tucked up her scarlet skirts into wide panniers, piled up her hair fashionably high and then let several fat gleaming curls cascade down to rest seductively upon her white shoulders—they would bounce and attract the eye every time she took a step. A ruffled parasol of scarlet silk completed her costume and she twirled in satisfaction before the mirror.

  She needed no rouge—her cheeks were already flushed with excitement, indeed with desperation, for she felt that she must make her escape now or she never would—and she would bite her lips to make them redder. Yes, and she would carry her skirts daintily high with one hand—not just the better to clear the dusty coral streets but the better to display her trim black silk ankles and smart red heels!

  She recalled that Hawks had told Kells she usually attracted too much attention when she strolled along the quay—well, she would garner twice the attention this day!

  Hawks looked taken aback at sight of her. He chewed on his lip with worry, but she walked proudly on, chatting with him as airily as if she were not a red and black and silver vision to startle the eye.

  Down into the town they went and Carolina’s advent upon the quay was all that she could have wished. Not a masculine head but turned as she passed. She twirled her parasol so that the scarlet ruffles danced in the sunlight. Buccaneers jostled by, stumbling into each other as they craned their necks to see her. Harlots from the town gave the lady in scarlet resentful glances. Hawks viewed his charge with great disapproval as she picked her dainty way among the piles of merchandise, stacked up against a backdrop of the blue-green waters of the bay.

  As she walked, Carolina considered narrowly the field presented: The quay contained a great variety of men—on whom should she take a chance? Sea birds wheeled above her: a ragged line of pelicans, and a cloud of gulls that swooped and squalled and occasionally darted down to secure a piece of food dis
carded by some buccaneer who munched as he sat upon a pile of plunder. An admiring crowd gathered behind the dazzling beauty, but fell back every time Hawks turned a menacing look upon them and fingered his cutlass. She was straining his good humor to the breaking point, she knew, but—her cause was desperate.

  And then her questing silver gaze found the target she sought: the pair of captains she had met once before on the quay—Shawn O’Rourke, the Irish buccaneer, and his friend, the black-bearded Bourne Skull. They stood together, talking earnestly in the brilliant sunlight. O’Rourke’s hair flamed copper in the golden rays. Carolina eyed him speculatively.

  A moment later she indicated a pile of silken scarves. “I would like this one,” she told Hawks, picking up a yellow one so sheer it was almost gossamer. While Hawks haggled over the price with the grinning one-eyed buccaneer who was selling the scarves, Carolina twirled her parasol and O’Rourke, looking up, came to attention. Skull, turning to see where O’Rourke was looking, straightened up too.

  Hawks was concentrating on the purchase. Carolina gave O’Rourke a winsome smile. Across a pile of barrels she saw his chest expand. A moment later both he and Skull were heading in her direction.

  Promptly Carolina attracted Hawks’s attention by asking him about one of the ships in the bay—was it a French ship or was it English? Hawks, asked such a reasonable question, squinted into the sun—and while he was thus occupied, Carolina watched the two buccaneer captains approach.

  When they had almost reached her she lifted the light scarf in the breeze and let it float away from her. The wind caught it just as Hawks pronounced the ship a “Frenchie.” Carolina gave a little cry of dismay. “My scarf!” she cried on an anguished note. “Hawks, it’s blowing away!”

  Hawks made a snatch for it, but the wind was capricious. He took off after it, floundering into a pile of kegs. The scarf had come to rest atop a pile of mangoes but as Hawks reached for it, the breeze snatched it away again.

  O’Rourke had reached her now.

  “Captain O’Rourke,” she said rapidly, “I would speak with you. Can you keep Hawks occupied for a few moments?”

  Shawn O’Rourke had not reached his present eminence as a buccaneer captain by being dim—he was nothing if not resourceful. He cast about him and saw a small boy playing nearby with a hoop. “You, lad!” He flipped the boy a coin. “Keep yon big fellow who’s chasing that scarf occupied for a while. Trip him up if ye have to!”

  The boy, who had grown to his present size knowing nothing but the life on this island, grinned and ran toward Hawks, rolling his hoop.

  “What is it ye want of me, mistress?” asked O’Rourke curiously.

  “I want to leave this island and Kells won’t take me!” she pouted.

  His reddish brows raised. “Faith,” he murmured. “Where is it ye wish to go? London?”

  A week ago Carolina would have answered feverishly, “Yes!” But now she had another plan, a desperate one.

  “I wish to go to Cuba,” she said.

  “Did you hear that, Bourne?” O’Rourke murmured to the hulking black-bearded buccaneer who had come up and was almost jostling his shoulder. “The lady wants to go to Cuba!”

  “Why?” rumbled Skull.

  “I have business in Havana,” said Carolina airily.

  This time two pairs of brows shot up.

  “Business in Havana?” repeated O’Rourke incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a small buccaneer settlement on Hispaniola,” rumbled Skull. “’Tis near enough to reach Havana easily.”

  “But it’s—” began O’Rourke, and Skull raised his big hand to quiet him.

  “Mistress Christabel wants to go to Cuba, Shawn,” he rumbled. “Are ye saying we won’t take her within striking distance?”

  “No, I'm not saying that.” O’Rourke, who had been about to protest that the little group of lean-to shacks built along a secluded cove by the buccaneers and occupied on occasion could not really be called a settlement, subsided. He warmed to the idea. “And a lady dressed in black with a black mantilla to hide her hair and her face would not be much noticed in Havana, if she wished to visit there.”

  “I do wish to!” said Carolina fervently. “You’ll be well paid for taking me there,” she added on an anxious note.

  The two buccaneers exchanged glances.

  “Well paid, the lady says, Bourne,” murmured O’Rourke.

  “In gold,” interposed Carolina. For was not her old friend Ramona Valdez wife to the governor of Cuba? And even if she could not reach such an exalted personage, she could hang about and waylay Doña Hernanda on her way to church for that pious lady would never miss mass, and surely Doña Hernanda would help her! She was sure—well, almost sure—that she could get the gold.

  “Silver will do,” murmured O’Rourke. He was studying the gleaming spun metal of her hair. His bold eyes raked her speculatively. “I'd sail ye anywhere, Mistress Christabel, and welcome. Whether it be Philadelphia or Port Royal—or Cuba, if you please—the Talon would take you there. But Bourne here, he wouldn’t like to be left out. Indeed, I think he’d fight me for the privilege.” He gave her an impudent grin. “Would you accept a matelot?”

  Out of the corner of her eye Carolina was aware that the boy with the hoop had managed to collide with Hawks just as he had grasped the flying scarf. Hawks had gone over in a heap against a large pile of oranges, which had collapsed from the sudden assault, raining oranges impartially down upon them both.

  “Matelot?” she murmured, casting about for what the word meant.

  “Aye, matelot,” rumbled Skull. “I’d settle for that!”

  Matelot, thought Carolina, keeping an eye on Hawks, just now extricating himself from the oranges. That must be Spanish for—let’s see, “lote” meant “share,” and “matel,” that must mean “metal” . . . their pronunciation might be vile but obviously Captain Skull wanted a share in the venture, a share in the gold and silver coins. And Havana was dangerous territory; it was reasonable that O’Rourke would want a sister ship with him. Obviously that sister ship was to be Captain Skull’s.

  Hawks had by now dusted himself off and was striding back toward her.

  Carolina did not pause to make sure what matelot meant.

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “I would indeed.”

  O’Rourke pulled a large silver daalder from his pocket. “Call it, Bourne!” He flipped the coin in the air.

  “Tails,” cried Skull.

  O’Rourke slapped his palm down on the coin he had just caught on the back of his hand. For a moment he stared down as if afraid to lift his palm. Impatiently Skull seized him by the wrist. “Well, let’s see it, Shawn!”

  O’Rourke’s palm came away and a lion rampant gleamed up at them from the coin.

  “Ye’ve lost,” laughed Skull.

  “No, I’ve won,” murmured O’Rourke, and triumph lit his green eyes, making them shine like green glass when the light is behind it. Swiftly he pocketed the coin.

  Carolina had been taken aback by the exchange and by the flipping of coins—obviously they were deciding who should transport her to the vicinity of Havana in his ship. For although O’Rourke seemed clean-cut, she had not envisioned voyaging anywhere with Skull—and she was relieved that O’Rourke and the Talon had won the toss.

  Perhaps O’Rourke sensed her relief for he was suddenly very attentive. “Perhaps ye’d rather wait until the Sea Wolf sails?” he asked politely and Skull snorted.

  “No,” said Carolina nervously, for Hawks had almost reached them, winding through piles of bananas and coconuts and those who haggled for them. “I will have to send you word when I can get away.”

  She turned abruptly to accept the scarf from Hawks. His face was very grim at his finding her deep in conversation with two buccaneer captains.

  “Good day to you, Captain O’Rourke and Captain Skull,” she said, dismissing them both with a twitch of her shoulder. “I will remember our conversation.”
She turned quickly away, fingering the scarf. “I am sorry I have caused you so much trouble,” she told Hawks.

  “What was that about, mistress, those two tossing a coin?” Hawks asked, frowning after the departing pair.

  Carolina shrugged. “Oh, were they tossing a coin?” A touch of insolence had crept into her voice and Hawks’s frown deepened.

  “I think we’d best go home,” he told her. His uneasy gaze took in not only the swaggering backs of the two buccaneer captains, but several of the prostitutes who frequented the quay and who were standing nearby. Indeed they had listened avidly to the conversation between O’Rourke and Skull, and now one of them was saying rather loudly to the others, “I wonder if blonde hair pulls out as easy as dark hair? What d’you think, Nan?” And Nan shrugged and said, “Why don’t we find out?” Hawks had no desire to separate fighting wenches here on the quay—he’d seen too many of them. A man could not but come off second best, with a scratched face and torn clothes. He might even get knifed in the bargain.

  “Yes, I would like to go home now,” Carolina surprised him by saying.

  She had done what she came to do. For her the die was cast. She accompanied Hawks home through the afternoon heat with the sun glaring down upon the white coral stone of the path. It was a relief to reach the shade afforded by the dark waxy green leaves of the lemon and avocado trees.

  She usually kept up a bright conversation with Hawks as she walked, but today she was silent, full of plans for reaching Lord Thomas, for using influence in lieu of ransom—even if they were holding him in the deepest hole of Morro Castle! And she was still puzzling over ways and means as they reached the sprawling green-shuttered whitewashed house that was just now being swarmed over by Spanish workmen repairing the scars caused by El Sangre’s assault.

  Hawks escorted her not through the green garden door which had been shattered, but through the front entrance, a more imposing portal. The heavy iron grillwork had been carted away for repair but the massive inner door of heavy wood was only scarred. Its locks had burst open beneath the assault of the battering ram but they had been given temporary repairs and now the door swung open on well-oiled hinges.