‘I know the house,’ said Don Diego. He smiled rather fondly at them both. ‘If I may take my leave of you?’
The governor graciously waved him away. His arm had hardly come to rest before a low, furious voice beside him said, ‘Oh, Father, how could you do that? Send Don Diego away from us and give him a bawd to keep him company?’
‘I do not know that she is a bawd,’ the governor said airily. ‘I know only that she is a buccaneer’s woman. Captain Avila said that she had shown kindness to captured Spanish sailors and soldiers on Tortuga.’
‘I can guess what kind of kindness she showed them!’ snapped Marina bitterly.
‘Marina.’ The face her doting father turned to his child was suddenly stern. ‘It seems I have been remiss in your upbringing. Henceforth you will show me proper respect and you will not question my decisions.’
Doña Marina slumped down in her seat and sulked the entire way home. Her father hoped he had done the right thing. He wanted to put some distance between his daughter and Don Diego - at least until inquiries could be made about him in Spain. But he had not wished to incite rebellion.
And that was definitely rebellion he saw glowing in his spoiled fifteen-year-old daughter’s eyes.
Carolina meanwhile was having an anxious time of it.
‘Who is Don Diego?’ she asked Juana.
‘A caballero who has been living at the governor’s house.’
Carolina was bewildered. ‘Well, then why - ’
‘I do not understand it any better than you do, señorita. But like Miguel, I take orders. While the governor leased this house to the Mendozas, I cooked for them. Now perhaps I will cook for Don Diego - who knows?’ She shrugged and sat down and began to shell a large bowl of beans.
‘I think I will look about,’ Carolina said nervously.
‘Look all you like. You will find I have kept the place clean enough! And with hardly anyone to help me!’
Carolina moved into the central courtyard.. It was in her mind to escape - but escape to where? Suddenly she remembered Ramona Valdez and she retraced her steps to the kitchen where old Juana looked up.
‘Perhaps you could tell me about Doña Ramona?’ she asked diffidently. ‘Where is she?’
Old Juana looked up at her without comprehension.
‘The governor’s wife,’ prodded Carolina.
‘Ah! That Doña Ramona.’ Juana’s puzzled face cleared.
‘She is long gone. Her husband fell ill and took her back to Spain. That was two governors ago. The one we have now is Governor Corrubedo.’
It was a blow to learn that Ramona Valdez would not be here to help her, but, ‘Does the present governor have a wife?’ she asked, thinking of Penny.
Juana nodded. ‘A wife under the sod,’ she said. ‘But he does not remarry. No one understands why.’
Thank God for gossipy servants! thought Carolina. ‘Does he have children, this new governor?’
‘One daughter only. You would think the sun rose and set by her slightest word! The governor grants her every wish.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Doña Marina? Perhaps fifteen - I do not know.’
And she will give you trouble, Penny, thought Carolina. She went back to thinking about her own troubles. ‘What is Don Diego like?’
‘Handsome.’ Old Juana waved a long string bean at her. ‘A true caballero. Dashing!’
And she might just as well add virile, demanding! thought Carolina glumly. She could see she might well have some trouble with Don Diego. She bit her lip. Across the kitchen, lying on the shelf of a low cupboard, she could see a butcher knife. She eased over towards it under the pretence of scanning the cupboards.
‘You keep the kitchen well, Juana,’ she approved, and old Juana lifted her chin. The woman who was speaking might be dressed in ragged and mended clothes at the moment but she had the face of an angel and figure to match. Juana little doubted that before the week was out she would be wearing silks and Don Diego would be dancing to her tune.
‘I do my best,’ she said.
Carolina had reached the cupboard now. She turned about and faced Juana. ‘Can you describe Don Diego?’ she challenged.
‘Tall. Dark. A soldier’s bearing.’
Carolina was leaning back on her arms on the cupboard. Now she cautiously eased one of them back so that she could grasp the knife’s wooden hilt. ‘And women, Juana? Is he fond of women?’
‘As fond as most men, I suppose.’ Juana chuckled suddenly. ‘It is the governor’s daughter who is fond of him! Their servants have told me so. They say she tries never to let him out of her sight. And that she becomes very angry whenever Doña Jimena rides by.’
‘And who may Doña Jimena be?’ Carolina had the knife now.
‘Doña Jimena is the most beautiful woman in the world,’ stated Juana. ‘All Havana throws itself at her feet. I have heard the governor say that men have gone to their death happy just because Doña Jimena Menendez smiled at them!’ She gave Carolina a sly look, as if to say, You will have your work cut out for you!
‘And does Don Diego fancy this Doña Jimena?’ Carolina asked idly, moving away from the cupboard with the knife behind her.
‘Who does not fancy Doña Jimena?’ Juana said, shrugging. ‘Doña Jimena has the blackest hair, the brightest eyes, the whitest teeth in all of New Spain.’
‘Is she married?’ Carolina was moving away from the cupboard now with the knife concealed in the folds of her yellow calico skirt.
‘Oh, yes, she is married.’ Juana’s head nodded. ‘To the richest man in Havana - Don Carlos Menendez.’
'And what does Don Carlos Menendez think of all this?’ She must keep Juana’s attention so that she would not miss the knife.
‘Don Carlos thinks nothing - at least he says nothing. He is too blinded by Doña Jimena’s beauty to protest!’
‘You are saying that Doña Jimena has many lovers?’ Carolina was easing her footsteps towards the door.
‘Ah, si, si!’ Juana was emphatic about that!
‘And one of them is Don Diego?’ Carolina had almost reached the palm-shaded inner courtyard as she spoke.
‘About that I do not know,’ old Juana said firmly, and bent to the shelling of her beans. Let the blonde minx find out for herself whether they were lovers! She knew no more, after all, than what the gossipy housemaids next door told her when, shirking their duties, they skipped away from the governor’s ‘palace’, as everyone called it, and perched on the benches or wooden table of Juana’s kitchen and nibbled her tortillas and giggled over the doings in the governor’s household.
Thus edified by back-stairs gossip, Carolina passed on through the courtyard with its tinkling stone fountain and towards the front of the house.
Basically the house had on its first floor only its wide, tiled entrance hall - cool and with only very high grille-work windows to permit air in but to keep out the hot tropical sun - which could serve as a reception room; the large central court, part of which was covered by an open gallery that ran entirely around the courtyard; and the capacious kitchen. Obviously dining was meant to be accomplished in the shade of the palms of the courtyard or in the cool recesses of the gallery behind low stone pillars. The second floor was reached by means of a tiled stairway from the courtyard.
She decided she had best secrete the knife upstairs while she decided what to do - after all, if she stayed in the house tonight with the entrancing Don Diego, whom all the women were after, she well might need to use it!
With that in mind she ran lightly up the stairs and surveyed the two bedrooms - one at the back from which a narrow back stair opened down into the kitchen - and one which occupied the whole front of the house and was reached by means of the tiled unroofed corridor which encircled the inner courtyard.
The Mendozas obviously had taken most of the furnishings with them when they left for all the rooms were sparsely furnished with - in the main - only huge heavy objects difficult to move. There was
an enormous cedar wardrobe - empty, for Carolina looked - and a big dark carved square bed in each of the upstairs bedrooms. The Mendozas obviously could not have had a large family. But despite their lack of furnishings, the rooms were airy and pleasant with their white-washed walls and high ceilings. The mattresses were hard but adequate - she glanced at them nervously, remembering that this was Don Diego’s lair.
She was still looking for a good place to secrete the knife and had just decided that beneath the mattress at the head of the big bed in the front room was probably the best place when she heard the sound of a booted foot on the stair.
That would be Don Diego!
Carolina froze. He was taking the steps three at a time - there would be no time to hide the knife. She thrust it behind her to be hidden in the folds of her wide skirt. Her heart was pounding.
It seemed to her that he took a long time coming up the stairs. Her heart thudded with each footfall and she clutched the knife with a sense of doom.
She would be polite, she told herself. She would greet his strange Spaniard civilly - oh, God, if only this were not his bedroom!
She steeled herself as the footsteps paused momentarily outside her door - then came on again.
THE HOUSE ON
THE PLAZA DE ARMAS
19
Don Diego Vivar stepped briskly into the big front bedroom - and checked himself at sight of Carolina, who, in her excitement, dropped the knife.
It clattered to the floor, and a cool voice as familiar to her as her own said in astonishment, ‘You will have no need of a weapon this day. I will not besiege you!’
‘Oh, it is you!’ she cried. ‘I was so afraid it would not be!’ She threw herself into his arms, and those arms closed about her. She was sobbing against his chest now, that broad familiar chest, and hearing the strong masculine beating of his heart. Between sobs her voice was low and vibrant, choked with emotion. ‘When I saw you at the market, it was wonderful. I was sure you would buy me, I couldn’t wait - ’ She pulled his face down to hers and silenced anything he might have to say with her soft eager lips. She could feel his response to her, feel the tension in the lean hard body she clutched ecstatically to her own. She could feel his swift response to her kisses, the leisurely delightful exploration of his tongue between her parted lips, the sudden bulge of his masculinity.
His hands were roving over her back now ... his lips left hers and trailed tantalizingly down her white throat, across her smooth bosom ... he was loosening the hooks that held her bodice ... it was slipping away.
Her eyes were closed, and tears of joy sparkled on her long lashes. Her face, which had been so pale at the approach of what she thought was an unknown stranger, was flushed and hot to his touch.
‘When they took me away from the sale, I was afraid you would not be able to find me.’ Her voice was a rushing gasp as she struggled to help him remove her gown. ‘Oh, do you think we would dare to - here?’
‘Why not here?’ he said, and she opened her eyes to see that the expression in his grey eyes was as hot as her own.
‘Yes - of course.’ She tried to laugh but her laughter was tremulous, emotion-laden, as she felt her clothing fall away. ‘Oh, I have waited so long! It seems a lifetime!’
‘Then you will wait no longer!’
He swept her up in his arms, a naked writhing sprite, tearing at his shirt, covering him with kisses - and fell with her to the big square bed. There were no sheets and the fabric of the mattress was coarse against her bare skin, but Carolina hardly felt it. Had she thought the mattress hard but adequate? Indeed it was wonderful!
It was wonderful because the arms that held her were the right arms, the lips that silenced her soft broken murmurs were the right lips, the lean body that lay atop her own, giving her such joy, was the body of her buccaneer!
His trousers were open now, he had thrust within her. She thrilled to his touch and her own body, fired with the same heat, took up the rhythm and surged with his, giving him back thrust for thrust in an agony of ecstasy. Away from her sped all the terrors and heartbreak of the past, gone forever in his strong embrace.
The moments sped by - delicious golden moments snatched from time. She had lost him, but she had him back again! Her heart was singing and the joyful exuberance of her lovemaking kept pace with that silent love-song. Every breath, every rasp of his skin against her own thrilled her. And she who had thought never to love again gave of herself unstintingly and felt an open-hearted joy at her masterful lover’s deft way with a wench.
Not even the sea had been able to keep her from him, not earthquakes or tidal waves! She was back in his arms again!
But even joy must end sometime and at last, reluctantly, her elegant lover slid away from her and lay beside her, lightly caressing her quivering body, still tingling in the afterglow of passion.
Impulsively Carolina turned over and gathered herself up, resting on her hands just above him. The tips of her soft breasts brushed his lightly furred chest and her bright hair spilled down over his pillow, over his shoulders, in a silken skein as she looked down at him lovingly. For she wanted - no, she needed to fill her eyes with him, to reassure herself that this was not all only a lovely dream from which she would soon wake.
‘Oh, Kells,’ she whispered. ‘I thought - we all thought - that you were dead. Hawks thought so, I thought so! A battered ship that looked like the Sea Wolf was being rowed into the harbour just as the earthquake struck, and it was swept ashore and went down among the houses.’ Her soft hurried voice rushed on. ‘And Hawks found someone from your crew - he must have been delirious to say what he did - who told him a wild tale about the Sea Wolf fighting the Santo Domingo and another galleon - and of course we both believed it since he was dying as he told the tale. And I left Hawks in Port Royal and sailed for England, only our ship was caught up in the French and Spanish raid on New Providence and then Penny and I were brought here - and oh, I can’t believe it’s really you. I’ve been mourning you for days. I was certain I’d never see you again!’
Impetuously she hugged him. And was aware suddenly that she was not being hugged back. Indeed she was being put gently away from him as her lover now sat up. He was looking at her warily, and now he rose to his feet, towering over her as he swiftly adjusted his trousers, stuffed his shirt tail back into those trousers.
‘Señorita,’ he said regretfully, ‘I think you are under a misapprehension.’
Carolina, crouched naked upon the square mattress, her hair a tousled halo, looked up at him in bewilderment. ‘What - misapprehension?’
‘A misapprehension that you know me.’
‘But I do!’
‘When I saw you looking at me on the street a short while ago, I thought I saw a hot light in your eyes. In that’ - he shrugged, his gaze lightly raking the lovely young body that had been pressed against his own with such ardour only moments before - ‘I was not mistaken. And I thought,’ he went on ruefully, ‘that it was my masculine charm that had won you to such a gallant display as just now.’ He sighed. ‘No woman’s arms have ever lured me as yours have today, but it seems you have mistaken me for somebody else.’
Carolina stared at him, stunned. She could not be hearing this! It was all a bad dream!
The tall man before her squared his shoulders, and his voice held a regretful note of humour. ‘It is true that I was aboard the Santo Domingo, but in all else you are mistaken. I am honoured to be so warmly greeted, but I have never seen you before in my life.’
Life seemed to stop.
Outside a seabird screamed. From the courtyard below came the faint tinkle of the fountain, the sound of palm fronds rustling.
Feeling as if she had suddenly been pushed underwater, Carolina fought to absorb the blow of his words - coming so swiftly, so devastatingly after the wild passion of his lovemaking.
It had to be a joke - some terrible joke that life was playing on her.
‘Kells,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t trifle with me. I n
early went mad with grief when I thought you were dead. I - ’
There was a chill in his voice now, a cold light in those grey eyes that had so often looked upon her with such tenderness. ‘What did you call me?'
‘I called you “Kells” for that is who you are,’ faltered Carolina.
‘Kells!’ He spoke the name like an oath. ‘That is the name of the most infamous buccaneer in all the Caribbean, is it not?’
‘The most famous,' she countered stiffly. ‘As you should certainly know!’
He ran long, raking fingers through his dark hair as he frowned down at her. A variety of emotions fought for mastery on his lean countenance. Then, ‘What do they call you?’ he asked abruptly.
Carolina gave him a look of vast reproach. ‘Don’t you remember?’ she asked, wounded.
‘I do not,’ he stated flatly. ‘Indeed I have never heard your name spoken, señorita - I am sure of it!’
‘It is Carolina!’ she cried, stung. She leapt up and stood facing him.
‘And do you have a last name?’ he said inexorably.
She stiffened at that and tossed her head back. As if suddenly aware of her nakedness when he was clothed, she reached down for her chemise and struggled into it. Her dress was half over her head before she said bitterly, ‘Perhaps you also do not recall that before I married you my name was Carolina Lightfoot?’
‘Before - ?’ He was looking at her, thunderstruck.
‘Before I married you,' she repeated grimly. ‘A step that I am now beginning to regret!’ Her temper was rising and her fingers trembled as she fastened her hooks.
He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘Señorita,’ he said formally, ‘I suppose your lapse is understandable because you have been under some strain - ’
A terrible fear was beginning to settle over Carolina, chilling her veins. ‘I have not been under a strain!’ she snapped. ‘At least not enough to make me lose my mind as you seem to be suggesting! And I certainly recognize my own husband, no matter how odd the place we happen to meet!’
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