‘This cavern is somewhere along the coast not far from the city,’ Kells told her. ‘Juarez told me I could not miss it if I look for a great landmark rock that looks like a castle.’
They were riding atop seaside cliffs as he spoke and he was peering down at the white beach below where waves were foaming in. ‘I think I see it - over there.’
Carolina pushed back her hair, which was blowing in the sea wind, and peered in the direction in which he waved his arm. There before her, surrounded by a white collar of roiling surf, rose a great dark rock, glistening with sea spray. In the moonlight it really did look very like a castle, she decided - a crusaders’ castle with a curtain wall.
‘The cavern should be just past the castle rock on a little promontory. Juarez said to watch for some natural steps leading down that have been worn into the rock at the top. I think we will walk from here on.’ He dismounted and lifted Carolina down. She could very well have jumped down, but it was more delightful this way, being held - even though briefly - in his arms.
They strolled along the cliff top, leading the horse, enjoying the beauty of the wild scene below them with the sea breaking around a pattern of spray-laced rocks.
‘Juarez tells me there is a tiny fishing village nearby where vegetables and fruit and fish can be bought. And that the cavern is spacious with a view of the sea.’ He grinned. ‘I think he was hopeful that I would take a lady love there so that he could have a freer field with Marina.’
Walking along with her arm about his middle, while his was draped lazily over her shoulder, Carolina gave him a swift expressive little hug. She was so relieved to be out of the tense atmosphere of Havana and alone with him in the open countryside at last! Indeed she fervently wished Captain Juarez a free field with Marina!
Soon enough, they found the natural steps carved by nature into the rocks. From them it was an easy climb down the cliff face to the entrance of the big limestone cavern. And Juarez was right - it was a romantic spot The cavern’s central chamber, which lay open to the sea. was high-vaulted and smooth-floored and airy although farther back she could see forked and curving passages where tall stalactites and stalagmites almost met - and beyond that, mysterious darkness.
They left the horse atop the cliff contentedly grazing near a little spring that sparkled like a many-pointed star in the grass. Nearby they gathered armloads of the sweetsmelling grasses to make a bed near the cavern entrance carrying great piles of them down the worn limestone steps to heap up in their seaside lair.
‘Is this romantic enough for you?’ laughed Kells.
‘It is,’ said Carolina. She dropped her grassy burden and stretched, standing in the cave entrance with the sea wind blowing and tangling her long hair, looking out over a wide expanse of ocean that would by morning be blue: than the bluest blue, and at a white beach where surf frothed lacily upon the moonlit sands. ‘I wish we could stay here forever,’ she murmured and turned to face her tall buccaneer - her buccaneer who sturdily refused to believe himself ever to have been a buccaneer.
Against the moon a broad-winged bird swooped and dipped, and somewhere across the smooth phosphorescent face of the sea there was a silvery flash as a fish leapt out of the water. Aside from that they might have been alone in the world.
‘We have bided the night in many wild places,’ she told Kells softly. ‘But none more lovely than this.’
‘Then come to bed,’ he suggested, divesting himself of his clothes in the warm night but leaving his sword near to his hand in case of need.
Carolina, who had worn her dark formal riding habit, quickly slipped out of it, kicked off her slippers with their high red heels, removed her garters and silk stockings, and pulled the drawstring of her chemise. She did not pause to let it fall in folds about her feet, but caught it as it slid down her bare hips and stepped out of it, folding it neatly and placing it atop her black riding clothes.
She rose from her bent position and stood smiling down at him. He thought she had never looked more beautiful than she did at that moment, naked against the moon, her delicate female body ethereal in silhouette in moonlight that gilded her shoulders and kissed the sweet rounded lines of her hips. He caught his breath at the sight of her, standing there as if to entice him, her long flowing blonde hair cascading over her shoulders to her waist in a bright enchanted halo that dazzled the senses.
‘Come to bed,’ he repeated softly and reached out his arms to her.
In the moonlight she could see a certain well-remembered glimmer in his eyes.
‘Oh, Kells,’ she sighed, falling to her knees upon the soft piled-up grasses and looking down at him tenderly. ‘I thought you would never understand.’
And maybe he did not understand - maybe he never would. Maybe he would go on stubbornly believing forever that he was Don Diego and she a buccaneer’s woman who had bewitched him with outrageous lies. At the moment it did not matter. She felt he understood, felt that he knew - as did her own yearning heart - that their love had always endured, that it was older than they were, older than time, that it would outlast them, outlast the stars themselves.
‘Kells,’ she whispered again, vibrantly, and melted downward into his outstretched welcoming arms.
Naked in the warm night, their limbs entwined, they strained together in perfect harmony. They were perfectly matched, these two, and theirs was a silken joining, perfect in every respect. Their bodies moved against each other with the ease of long association and deep understanding. Kells pulled her to him with a masterful gentleness and warmth that told her all unspoken that to him she was a miracle come to share his bed. His hands roved lazily over her smooth body, inciting her to laughing moans and muffled protests as she settled in against him the closer, murmuring incoherent endearments, her warm femininity quivering against his male hardness.
They kissed and caressed, passions steadily mounting, hearts beating as one. Then sanity left them. Bodies locked, every sense alive and surging, they were tumbling fiercely together through a world lit only by desire - and fulfilment.
And spun down slowly, only to catch fire again with sparks lit from the afterglow until again their breath was hot on each other’s cheeks, their eyes were closed as they drifted once more into passion’s sphere where the blood raced and there were no tomorrows. Tonight, wordlessly, with every tender caress, every responsive ripple of pleasure, they were singing again their lovesong, begun so long ago.
But tonight beneath a white moon it all seemed fresh and exhilarating. This wild setting of sea and surf and stars had brought something new and enchanting to the pulsating rhapsody of their love, making it seem predestined. Meant to be. It was something both elemental and sublime that had been added, and it gave to their love-making this night a wonderful richness and depth that surpassed anything they had found in Havana and left them starry-eyed and exhausted and aglow. And filled with wonder that life, which had so long been harsh, should suddenly be so good to them.
Happier than she had been for a long time, Carolina went to sleep lulled by the soft booming of the sea against the rocks below their romantic cavern lair.
They lingered in this idyllic setting for almost a week. Kells fished, wading out into the surf, and Carolina roasted his catch over a small open fire he built on the sandy beach. Afterward they would lean back in the shadow of the rocks and Carolina would tell him of her life in the old days in Virginia, before she had met him. And sometimes - though not very often - of things they had done together. In Tortuga. In Port Royal.
She knew he did not believe her stories of their wild adventures but at least he was willing to listen to them now without protest - before he took her in his arms and kissed the words from her lips.
They did other things as well:
Together they rode to the tiny fishing hamlet nearby and brought back baskets of fresh fruit, including some ripe coconuts which Kells opened expertly with a rock so that they could drink the sweet milky liquid within.
They swam in the
warm blue coastal waters, sometimes diving down through coral castles of pink and white and rose, where colourful blue and green and silver reef fish darted away from them to be lost in the blue depths.
Once Kells brought up a great conch and Carolina roasted it in hot embers on the beach and they ate it with their fingers, washing it down with a bottle of the dark local wine which they had brought back from their expedition to the village.
They lazed in their cavern lair on the cliffside, looking out at the glittering expanse of ocean, watching the silver ripple of shoal fish and the occasional white sail that drifted by in the distance. The trade winds caressed them, cooling them on the hottest days. They cavorted like friendly dolphin, looking down through the unbelievably clear crystal waters at beautiful unreal vistas in an enchanted reef world far below. They ran barefoot and laughing down the white beach, they played like children in the shallows, and made love with the white surf sometimes breaking over their heads and making them laugh as they gasped for breath. They even built, one day, a castle on the sand and from the heights at twilight watched the tide inexorably wash it away. They spent their hours idly, as lovers will, and for a brief space forgot the world that waited for them back in Havana.
Carolina would always remember it as a time of bliss.
THE GOVERNOR’S PALACE
HAVANA,CUBA
28
But while Kells and Carolina were rediscovering each other, a great deal had been happening to Penny.
She had made it to the governor’s bed, but now he had unobligingly come down with the gout and Penny found herself once again sleeping alone - a situation she liked not at all. Moreover he was not available at meals in the large gloomy dining room with its stiff high-backed chairs. He lay with his painful leg propped up on cushions in the big bed of his second-floor bedchamber and groaned so loudly he kept the household awake.
Marina was as intractable as ever; she looked affronted whenever Penny came near. Everybody else spoke only Spanish, so Penny couldn’t even enjoy a conversation with the cook, who looked to be a jovial soul. And Carolina was cloistered next door taking care of Kells, who had reportedly come down with a fever. Every time Penny knocked on their door, old Juana refused to open calling out in strangely accented English the words Carolina had taught her:
‘No admit. Contagion.’
Thus frustrated on every side. Penny had been walking about the upstairs restlessly, wondering if the governor might be up to a game of cards, for Marina had been abominable at breakfast, turning away insultingly whenever Penny spoke to her - indeed there were times when Penny yearned for nothing so much as to box the girl’s ears.
The arrival of the white and gold galleon had caused a welcome diversion. Penny had even hoped for some distraction from the boring routine of the house, for the governor had promptly given permission for Marina to go down to the wharf and view it - in Penny’s company. This had caused an uproar and Marina’s spoiled wail of ‘If she goes, I won’t!’ had echoed through the house. Whereupon the governor had risen up from his bed and roared that no one would go - then fallen back in pain, muttering something to the effect that he knew not what he had done to deserve such a petulant child.
Marina, standing by, had promptly burst into tears sobbing noisily up and down the halls. And when the Hernandez carriage had arrived outside with an invitation for Marina to go driving with Carlotta Hernandez, the governor had hastily said she might go and returned to his groaning, glad to have rid himself temporarily of his daughter.
Penny was glad, too. It was always more pleasant to have Marina out of the house. She had chatted with the governor until he had fallen asleep and was just hesitating on the top step, wondering if she might not stroll down and view the white and gold galleon for herself, when the knocker sounded, the front door was opened and booted feet were to be heard upon the tiles. Amid a flurry of Spanish an attractive masculine voice said in perfectly good English, ‘I do hope you’ll tell the governor I’ve come a long way on important business and I’d be most disappointed if he refused to see me.’
An English voice! Someone to talk to! Penny sped down the tiled stairway and was arrested midway by the sight of a tall dark Englishman of commanding stance clad in dove-grey satin. He had looked up alertly at the tap of her high heels on the stair tiles and now he swept her a most elegant bow.
‘Gracious lady.’ He spoke before anyone else could.
‘Could one hope that you are the governor’s daughter?’
‘One could hope,’ said Penny humorously. ‘But one would be doomed to disappointment.’
The stranger, whose linens were of the whitest and whose laces were of the most elegant took a deep breath and his chest expanded. ‘You speak English, dear lady!’ There was delight - and relief - in his richly modulated voice.
‘Indeed,’ agreed Penny, standing at her most regal and staring down upon the newcomer. ‘And who might you be, sir?’
Her question was as much addressed to the dark Spaniard who stepped out from behind the Englishman as the man in grey himself.
It was the Spaniard who answered.
‘I am Don Ramon del Mundo, señorita.’ He had no doubt he was addressing the famous Rouge and he looked her over coolly, appraising her as he might appraise good horseflesh or anything else that could be bought. Penny gave him back a look of calm disdain.
‘And who is this gentleman with you?’ she asked.
Don Ramon favoured her with a mocking bow. ‘This gentleman,’ he said suavely, ‘asserts himself to be an emissary of the English King, come to treat with the governor on matters military. Allow me to present the Marquess of Saltenham, señorita.’
The Marquess of Saltenham!
Penny froze in her tracks, staring at the tall Englishman with the graceful mien and the empty grey eyes, who smiled back at her. But this was Robin Tyrell, the man who had impersonated Kells, then betrayed him! She felt excitement surge through her and studied Robin Tyrell critically. A fine figure of a man, much like Don Diego in appearance. A masterful manner, pleasing to women. A hard face, a dissolute face, but an attractive face with a very winning smile.
‘The governor is down with the gout,’ she told them with a shrug. ‘He had a bad night and he has just fallen asleep. He isn’t seeing anyone.’
‘Then I had best take this Englishman back to El Morro,’ said Don Ramon with decision. ‘I can quarter him there until the governor is better.’
‘Is El Morro that cliffside fort we passed on the way into the harbour?’ asked the marquess plaintively. It was clear he did not relish being locked up there.
‘It is,’ said Don Ramon firmly. ‘Now if you will just follow me?’
He gestured towards the door, about to escort the newcomer through it, but Penny intervened.
‘I am sure the governor would want the King’s emissary to stay here, Don Ramon,’ she said with just the right amount of frost in her voice. ‘And will take it amiss if the marquess is dragged back to some gloomy fortress to pass the time.’
Don Ramon looked up quickly. It was all over Havana that Rouge was the governor’s mistress, and if the governor’s mistress wanted something, she would probably get it. One way or another. For his part, if he were an older, rather portly gentleman like the governor, he would not care to see a too handsome countryman of his new mistress take up residence in his house - but who was he to judge?
‘You are certain of this?’ he asked sternly. ‘You speak for the governor in this matter?’
‘I do, indeed,’ confirmed Penny with a lofty gesture. ‘Set your mind entirely at rest, Don Ramon. The governor will be in complete accord with me.’
At that point the door suddenly opened and Marina, accompanied by her elderly duena and looking very bright-eyed in her white lace mantilla and ruffled skirts, hurried in out of the sunlight into the cool interior.
‘Don Ramon!’ she said on a note of pleased surprise, and her whole face lit up.
‘Doña Marina.’ Do
n Ramon bowed gravely. ‘I bring with me a gentleman who says he is an emissary to your father from the English King. We are currently trying to decide what to do with him. Does he return to El Morro with me or - ’
‘Oh, no, he must stay here!’ Marina cried impulsively, for she was instantly dazzled by the Englishman’s good looks and the appreciative smile he had flashed her.
Penny gave Don Ramon a smile of triumph, secretly amused that she had found an unexpected ally in Marina. Don Ramon returned her a cynical look, bowed deeply to Marina and left them. Leaving Marina - with her few words of English - downstairs to entertain their guest, Penny flew upstairs to have a suitable room prepared for him.
At first she thought she would run next door and have old Juana tell Carolina the name of the new arrival. Then she changed her mind. It would be much more fun to surprise Carolina with the marquess - but later, when she herself had the situation better in hand.
Dinner that night was something less than a success. The governor did not come down but the four of them - Penny, Robin, Marina, and Marina’s elderly duena - sat in formal splendour in the austere dining room, amid an atmosphere that was redolent of New Spain. Marina had made a half-hearted attempt to block Penny’s entrance to the dining room but had stepped aside when Penny, with a black look, had apparently been prepared to run over her. They had brushed by each other and had kept their distance ever since.
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