My mother is there, thought Carolina. He cannot have her but he cannot forget her. And perhaps it is the same way with her. She gave him a misty look.
“I thank you for coming to rescue me,” she said softly. “But as you can see, I am far from needing rescue!”
“That at least is true.” He sighed and clapped Rye on the shoulder as he left. “But if ever you have need of me on my daughter’s behalf, you have only to ask. And for both of you the doors of Tower Oaks are ever open.”
Rye nodded and wrung his hand.
“Your father is a good man,” he murmured as he watched the older man depart, his hair as frosty blond as Carolina’s in the moonlight.
My mother always thought so. . . . “Yes,” she said wistfully. “A good man. I am proud he has claimed me at last.” And prouder still to be claimed by you, her radiant look told him.
“You would like to see the Tidewater country again, would you not?” he asked her suddenly.
“Yes,” she sighed. “I suppose I would.”
“And so you shall.” He called after Sandy Randolph, who turned questioningly, with one foot over the rail. “Come back, I’ll sail you to the James!”
Quite readily, Randolph turned back. “I am glad you have made this decision,” he said. “Rye here can accept his pardon in Williamsburg as well as elsewhere —and I’ll be there to see that nothing goes amiss.”
Carolina swallowed. You are a wonderful father, her eyes told him. And I've missed you all these years!
Suddenly she thought of something that would please him and she leant forward impulsively. “My mother despairs that all her daughters are runaways,” she said. “Would it not be a kindness if we were not to tell her of this ceremony which we have just held here aboard the Sea Wolf and let her launch at last a virgin bride down the main stairway at Level Green?”
He looked startled for a moment and then he smiled. “I think it is what she most desires,” he said softly. “And kind it is of you to think of it.”
“And we can have a third wedding, if you choose, before all your friends in Essex,” Carolina told Kells.
He laughed. “I’m a marrying man, but two weddings will be quite enough!”
“Then a toast to the bride’s eyebrows!” cried Sandy Randolph. “May your lives sail as sweetly as this ship and cut the water as cleanly! May you find safe harbor!”
Kells smiled at him across his glass. “I take it you’re a sailing man?”
“In my youth,” said Sandy Randolph modestly. “I sailed a hitch with Morgan once,” he added. “Now best forgot.”
“And where was that?” wondered Kells.
The silver eyes so like those of the wench at his side glimmered for a moment with amusement. “To Panama,” he said.
Kells threw back his dark head and laughed. Then he clapped the bride’s father on the back. “A welcome to you, sir!” he cried. “For you were in the greatest venture of them all!”
“Now best forgot,” reminded Carolina with a view to her father’s safety. “Perhaps you’d best ask for the King’s amnesty too,” she told her father with a frown.
“Oh, all is forgiven where I’m concerned,” he told her with an easy smile. “And long ago forgot. No need to tell it around the Tidewater however—although Letty knows of course,”
Of course—Letty would know. Carolina wondered how many brave secrets her mother kept locked in that courageous but divided heart. Suddenly she longed to see the Eastern Shore again, to walk the streets of Yorktown, to throw her arms about Virgie and Aunt Pet, to show her lean buccaneer the beautiful Tidewater country—the great plantation of Sandy Randolph, lightsome rake and sometime buccaneer, and the elegant new seat of Fielding Lightfoot, who had, after all, put up with her all these years! She would do something at last to please her mother—she would dress herself in white and silver, or perhaps palest ice blue, and float down that wide stairway at Level Green that would take eight abreast and acknowledge the man who had let her wear his name all these years by letting him give her away as a bride to her buccaneer lover!
Her mother would have her cherished great wedding, and she herself would have one last long look at home.
And then she would begin her life’s long journey beside the man who in all the world meant most to her—Kells or Rye Evistock or whatever he chose to call himself.
And then at last they were alone. Alone in the great cabin of a buccaneer ship with the moonlight streaming down through the bank of slanted stern windows. Beside them, untouched upon the heavy carved Spanish table, the Scottish cook had set out “a meal to give the captain strength—for he’ll need it with such a lass!” as he had jovially told the sleepy cabin boy who sat nodding while it simmered.
The night was fair and the water that fled by them was silver with phosphorescence—like her eyes, Rye thought, like her hair washed in moonlight, lit by stars. Behind them lay the mountain fort with its captured Spanish guns overlooking the bay; behind them lay Tortuga and the life he once had led. And now the rakish gray Sea Wolf was cutting cleanly through the waters of the Spanish Main—for the last time, he hoped. All about them the tropical night was velvet soft and velvet black. There was not a sail on the horizon. They might have been passing alone through the perfumed night on a vast empty sea with love to fill the sails and love to steer their ship.
On some more formal tomorrow they would become their other selves—those aristocratic selves they had left behind them somewhere outside the buccaneer stronghold that so recently had been their home. And back in Essex—just as in Yorktown—they would again become Carolina Lightfoot and Rye Evistock, country gentry. They would melt into the English countryside. They would ride to hounds and give elegant balls and rear handsome children and spend glittering seasons in London.
But for tonight the past—all that they were in those former lives or had ever been—was stripped away. Tonight they were Kells and Christabel—a dangerous Irish buccaneer and his American love.
They passed the table of food as if it were not there.
As one they swayed together, as one fell upon the bunk, as one breathed and sighed and caressed and merged into a perfect joining, savoring an earthly paradise that would leave them sated and smiling and forgetful of all the world.
They were caught up by the night and the magic, by the silvery moonpath on a midnight sea, by a wide-eyed moon that looked down uncaring. Tonight the laws of God and man seemed very far away. There would be no reckoning, and death was something that would never reach them.
Tonight they were lovers—and theirs would be a never ending lovesong.
In wild Tortuga many times they'll quench
With ale their stories of the Silver Wench
Who captivated such a man as he,
Stormed his defenses, swept him from the sea!
And ponder how it was a man like Kells
Was lured so readily to wedding bells. . . .
Lovesong Page 52