“You arrogant—”
Lacy drew back her hand as though to slap him, and he caught her wrist. “None of that!” he said sharply. She struggled to break free, but he held her immobile. “Did no one teach you how to behave like a lady?”
Her face contorted with ire. “I never claimed to be a lady”
“It’s a good thing. For you’d not pass as one.”
She struck him a solid blow on the breastbone with her left fist. “Rakehell!”
He gasped. With effort, he captured that wrist too. “Lacy. Stop it!” Her bare foot struck his chin. “I’m fast losing patience with you,” he said, holding her at arm’s length.
“You slept with another woman!” she spat.
“She sat on my knee,” he admitted. “I kissed her. Nothing more.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“She offered. I declined. That’s all there is to tell.” He let go of her wrists. “Now, open your Christmas gift and tell me you’re sorry for acting the fool.”
She opened her mouth in astonishment, then tightened her lips without replying. Head high and back as straight as that of a ship’s first officer, she retrieved the silk bag. She untied the ribbon and poured out a string of pearls. Still silent, she dropped the pearls on the floor and stepped on them.
“Ungrateful jade,” he exclaimed.
“You can’t treat me like this,” she said. “I’ll not be betrayed, then cosseted with baubles.” She sank onto the bed, and her voice took on a husky edge. “I love ye, but I’ll nay be lied to. I know what you are and what I am. If we’re to finish what we started, we must have honesty between us.”
“You still don’t believe me?”
“You’re drunk, James. Go sober up, and then we’ll talk.”
“So it’s you giving orders now, is it?” Damn her for an unreasonable bitch! He shook his head. “I’ll leave you, since that’s what you wish. And I’ll be back in my own good time.”
“If you’re not back by noon, I won’t be here,” she threatened.
“Whatever pleases you, m’lady.” Feeling slightly nauseated, he spun on his heel and strode from the room.
“Go on,” Lacy taunted. “Go, and don’t come back. See if I care.” She followed him to the door and closed it behind him, slipping home the iron bolt.
How dare he think he could do such a thing and expect her to believe his excuses? she thought angrily. Three days? She’d gone half out of her mind with worry, certain that some pirate had cut James’s throat and dumped his body in the harbor. She’d even suspected that he’d found someone else to do his diving for him and had abandoned her there.
She drew off the beautiful wrapper James had bought her and threw it onto the floor. She was no more than a kept woman to him, she mused. Pretty clothes and serving maids to wait on her didn’t make up for the fact that James had no real respect for her. What was it he’d called her? Ungrateful jade? Lacy made a sound of derision and kicked the garment with her bare foot.
A thickness rose in her throat, and she suddenly felt the need for a breath of fresh air. Naked as the day she was born, she went to the window and threw open the louvered shutters.
The window looked out on an overgrown garden. There were palm trees and all sorts of exotic plants and flowers she couldn’t put names to. The sweet smell of orchids was almost overpowering, and the air was filled with the chatter and call of brightly colored birds.
She put a hand on her lower belly. “You’re there, aren’t you?” she murmured, then smiled at the picture she must make. Slattern at the window. At least her belly wasn’t the size of a fish basket—not yet. She was carrying James’s child. She was sure of it, even though her monthly bleeding wasn’t due for another week.
Her breasts felt tender to the touch, and last night, she’d been unable to eat the pork pie the tavern girl had carried to the room. The pastry was hot and looked delicious, but when she’d cut into it, she’d taken one whiff of the gravy and felt sick to her stomach.
Pregnant and abandoned in a strange port?
Hell and damnation! She was feeling sorry for herself—a sure sign that her body was behaving differently. She’d never been one to weep and wail, and pregnant or not, she wasn’t about to start.
She glanced down at her hand. The place where she’d been cut by the barnacles had healed completely. It had healed overnight. The healing, while certainly welcome, had been as odd as the improving weather. When she and James had left the island for Jamaica, she’d been feverish and the skies had been threatening. By dawn the following day, she was completely recovered and the winds had turned fair.
“Almost as though we were meant to leave Arawak when we did,” she murmured aloud. The hair prickled on the back of her neck and she shivered. Suddenly, the room seemed dark, despite the morning sunshine streaming in through the open window. I need to get out of here, she thought. I’m not used to being cooped up like a bird in a cage.
She’d felt uneasy since they had first arrived in Port Royal. Although she’d looked forward to getting back on solid land for a few days, Jamaica had been a disaster from the start.
They’d not been in Port Royal for an hour when she’d been accosted on the street by two rough-looking seamen. First, they offered to buy her from James, and when he took the proposal as an insult, they drew sabers and he had to run his sword through one of them. Then, before they reached the tavern, a wealthy gentleman in a carriage sent his blackamoor servant to bring James across the street to speak to him. James hadn’t told her what the man wanted, but James had been obviously disturbed by the incident. Since then, he’d not let her out of the inn’s best bedchamber.
Lacy had decided that she and James had produced such a reaction because they didn’t look as though they belonged together. He dressed like quality, in expensive boots and fancy coat and breeches. She looked like his maid or his doxy in her plain, serviceable garments and sturdy shoes.
“Either ye shall have to dress as a sailor, or me as a lady,” she’d said to him when they were safely in the tavern quarters. “And since a gentlewoman’s clothing would be as useless to me as a third tit, it’s ye who should trim your sails, Jamie.”
But he’d been stubborn.
“If I’d brought a load of turnips to Port Royal to sell, I could dress like a yeoman farmer,” he’d replied, “but since we’re selling priceless treasure, I’ll be who I am.”
So he’d kept her hidden while he enjoyed the pleasures of Port Royal. Nearly a week she’d spent in this single room, and she was sick of it.
And if the obvious differences in their stations in life made it impossible for her to go out with James, then by all that was holy, she’d see something of Jamaica without him.
Determined, she turned away and dressed as quickly as she could. Next, she brushed some order into her hair and tied it at the back of her neck with one of James’s black silk queue ribbons.
What to do about James was a problem. She didn’t want him to think she’d run away, when all she wanted was some air and scenery. And she didn’t want to call a maid and leave a message, in case James had instructed the innkeeper to be certain she remained in her room. Writing a letter would be nearly impossible. Red Tom had seen no need for any offspring of his to have book learning. She’d taught herself to write her own name and read a few words, but spelling out letters and actually penning a note ...
In the end, she simply took James’s precious backstaff and compass, and climbed out the window with them. She didn’t think he’d attempt to sail off without the navigation instruments, and she didn’t want to carry them with her, so she hid them under a shrub in the garden. She walked along the back of the tavern until she came to a path and followed it behind a row of smaller houses.
Twenty minutes later, she was beyond the fringes of the town, striding along a dirt track that was almost completely roofed over by jungle foliage. The air was pleasantly warm, and Lacy found the exercise invigorating after so many
weeks confined to the Silkie’s small space.
She walked for almost an hour without seeing any farms. The first sign of life was an elderly Negro man who rode toward her on a bay mare. On a lead line behind him was a mule bearing a load of live chickens.
“Good day to ye,” Lacy called. When the old gentleman replied with courtesy, she inquired about the nearest plantations.
“Dem be yonder back, missy,” he answered in a soft, sing-song voice. “Longah walk, you bet.” His clouded eyes regarded her with open curiosity.
“Can I just keep following this road?”
He shrugged. “Can do, follow deese road, missy. Me t’ink you feets hurt much. Better ride. Deese good mare, her. You want her feets do da work?”
“You’d let me hire your horse?” Lacy asked. Something didn’t fit. The blackamoor’s clothes were poor, more patches than cloth, and his splayed feet were bare. But the horse was one a squire wouldn’t hesitate to ride back home in England. “It is your horse?” she added. “If I did take her, I’d not want to be arrested for a horse thief.”
He laughed. “Banana Jeem no thief, him. Horse belong Masta John.”
“And this master of yours doesn’t care if you lend his mare to strangers?
“Masta John, him no care. Him food for crab. Masta John, him go feesh in boat, him no come back, two maybe three year now.” He laughed again. “Masta John, him no care. Horse no care. You got dem hard money for Banana Jeem, you got dem horse for day.” He pointed up at the sun. “Night come, you get off dem horse, let her go home. No do, Banana Jeem, he send dem bad ghosty t’ings after you.”
“Just let the mare go at nightfall?”
The old man flashed a toothless grin. “One road, where else you go? Where dem horse go? You pay, you ride. Just let go come dem nighttime, be certain you.”
Not one to let opportunity pass her by, Lacy produced two copper pennies she’d taken from James’s money pouch and took possession of the horse and saddle. When she last saw Banana Jeem, he was walking slowly down the track toward Port Royal, leading the mule.
The forest track on either side of the road was as foreign as China to Lacy. Massive trees and ferns and flowering vines closed around her, affording only glimpses of the blue mountains rising into the rainclouds. She recognized cedar and bamboo, but most of the rampant foliage was new and fascinating. The air was heavy with the scents of orchids and lilies, and citrus hung in gleaming orange globes beside the path.
Birds were everywhere; strutting down the road, flitting overhead, and pecking at insects and fruit. From the jungle, she could hear buzzing and whirring, and an occasional snapping of underbrush, but Lacy wasn’t afraid. With a good horse under her, she knew she could outrun any animal that threatened her. As for the animal that walked on two feet, she had yet to see the man born of woman that she was scared of.
To her surprise, thoughts of James didn’t trouble her. With each mile she put between herself and Port Royal, her spirits lifted. Vague questions about the plantation crops here on Jamaica rose in her mind, but they were only idle musings. Truth to tell, she didn’t know where she was going or why. But following this road felt right. And, when she reached her destination, she’d know it.
Her inner excitement grew as the day passed. Bananas and tangerines grew thickly on either side of the path, but she wasn’t hungry. She paused only once to dismount and drink at a stream, then got back on the mare and hurried on, still uncertain about her goal.
She nearly missed the turnoff. She had urged the horse into a trot, and it wasn’t until they’d passed the break in the trees that she grew uneasy and reined in. For a moment, Lacy sat there, eyes closed, listening. Then an unspoken inner voice urged her to turn back the way she had come. And when she saw the rutted lane twisting away uphill, she knew she was back on the right path.
Arndt Dieterich stood up, dusted the dirt off his stockings, and adjusted his breeches. The wench lay facedown on the heap of cut cane and sobbed. Her single cotton garment was wadded about her waist and blood stained her coffee-colored inner thighs. “Hush your caterwauling,” he snapped. “It was either me or one of these cane rats. Your tits are swellin’ and you been shakin’ your tight little arse at everything in pants. You oughta be grateful you was broke in by a white man.”
The black girl, hardly more than a child, continued to weep softly. She curled up into a ball and covered her ears with her hands.
“Stupid bitch,” Dieterich muttered. He scratched at a louse under his armpit and turned back toward the sugar house to see if the crew had continued working on the harvest. Christmas Day was usually a holiday on the plantation, but this year he’d ordered the hands to work through regular sixteen-hour shifts. “Damn, but it’s hot,” he complained to himself in his native tongue. “Too hot for December. A bad year.”
Smoke was still billowing up from the fires beneath the boiling kettles. Dieterich hurried around the shed to the courtyard where the juice from the crushed cane was being cooked down. The juice required close attention or it would burn and spoil an entire lot.
“You there!” he shouted, catching sight of Big Martha standing idle by the well. “Stir that kettle. If you ruin a batch, I’ll have you skinned like a tangerine.”
Sweating profusely, the woman moved to obey the overseer’s order. Two men, stripped to the waist and barefoot, crossed the yard with armfuls of fresh cut cane for the mill. An old blackamoor knelt by the mouth of the mill, patiently feeding cane between the stones. Dieterich nodded with satisfaction, then frowned as the mill action faltered and then stopped.
“Vat in hell do you—” The German broke into a trot, reaching automatically for the whip he usually carried on his belt and coming up with an empty hand. “Vat you do?” he demanded of the Indian.
Kutii stood stock-still, as though he was waiting for something. He tilted his head to one side, listening.
“Schweinhund!” Dieterich bellowed. Balling up a fist, he drove it into the Indian’s kidneys. The blindfolded Incan staggered but didn’t utter a sound. “Vat is this?” the German continued. “Who tells you to stop?”
“Boss! Boss!” a slave woman called from the courtyard.
Dieterich heard a horse whinny. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said to Kutii. Quickly, he hurried out of the mill house to see what was happening.
Lacy reined in the mare at the edge of the open courtyard. All around the enclosure, dark eyes were staring at her. She ignored them completely, sliding down off the mare and letting the reins fall to the ground.
This was the place she’d seen in her vision. She was certain of it. Her chest felt tight, and her breath was coming in short gasps. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would break through her cotton bodice.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
Lacy let her gaze linger on the stocky yellow-haired man for only a few seconds. He was not the one she sought. He meant nothing to her.
“I am Herr Dieterich, overseer here. What business do you have here, woman?”
Lacy’s glance moved past him to rest on the frightened child to his left. The black girl’s face was swollen from crying and she was clinging to an older woman fearfully. Bits of leaves were tangled in her close-cropped ebony hair. For a moment, Lacy’s eyes made contact with the slave girl’s before the child covered her anguished face with her hands.
Something bad has happened to that girl, Lacy thought. A tingling sensation started at the back of her hairline and ran down her spine. She felt slightly dizzy, as though she was about to slide into a trance, but she knew that wasn’t what was happening.
She had felt this way when the child had drowned in her village in Cornwall—when a seeing actually happened.
“Where do you think you are going?” the German demanded.
Lacy paid him no heed. She walked around him, straight into the shed. And there, standing not ten feet away, was the tattooed man of her dreams. His midnight hair was streaked with gray, a tangled curtai
n of black silk hanging to the jut of his bony hip. Flies fed at the fresh welts cut into his chest, and his scarred back was thick with sweat and dust.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” the red man said in his oddly accented voice. Pride held him erect, despite the bonds at his wrists, and pride kept his raw shoulders from slumping.
Without hesitation, Lacy went to him and began to untie the blindfold over his eyes.
“What do you do?” Dieterich roared. “Get away from that slave!”
Lacy gave a sharp tug, and the filthy cloth came loose. It dropped to the floor, and she stared into the black almond-shaped eyes of the man she had come halfway around the world to find.
Chapter 15
Kutii blinked against the brilliant sunlight. The intensity of the glare was an agony after so many months in darkness. The German had always had him bound and blindfolded before the slaves led him to the mill. For nearly a year, Dieterich had ordered Kutii’s eyes covered in daylight because the overseer couldn’t stand the arrogant way Kutii stared at him.
Now, the light was overwhelming. Kutii closed his eyes to stop the pain, and a shock went through him as he felt the healing touch of the star woman’s hand on his face. It was the first feminine caress he’d known since the Spaniards had murdered his wife and daughter. He opened his eyes again and gazed at the one for whom he had waited and of whom he had dreamed.
The hot Caribbean sun was a glowing ball directly behind her; it seared a fiery crown for her glorious mass of red-gold hair. The rays of dazzling light bathed her fair skin and illuminated her body until it glowed. Her features were a blur of shadow and smile, but her warm, compassionate eyes met his, and his heart leaped in his breast at the love shining there. Tears welled up in his burning eyes, soothing the ache and setting free the emotion that had remained trapped within him for so long.
“Nein!” the German roared. “Do not—”
But the star woman paid him no heed. She bent and pulled a knife from a sheath strapped to her ankle. The blade flashed in the sunlight. Dieterich stopped in his tracks, and she brought the steel down to slice through Kutii’s leather bonds.
Fortune Trilogy 1 - Fortune's Mistress Page 18