Day Dreamer

by Jill Marie Landis

  He called out and Edward rushed in. The servant stopped short in the middle of the cabin, wringing his hands. His expression bordered on sheer terror.

  “What is it now?” Cord demanded. “Don’t tell me Dundee is back?”

  “Worse. There’s a storm brewing. A big one. Cap’n Thompson sent me to tell you to keep to the cabin. Later on there’ll be a cold supper, if cook can manage it. The cap’n don’t want any fires in the galley ’cause it’s bound to get rough, ’e says.”

  Edward was practically hopping from foot to foot, fretfully glancing at the porthole over Celine’s bunk as if he expected the sea to burst through.

  Celine groaned. “It’s going to get rough?”

  “A real blow, ’e says, ma’am. Told the hands to batten down the hatches.”

  “Calm down, Edward,” Cord told him. “If you stay this worked up you’re liable to have a heart attack.”

  “Better than drownin’, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

  “I do,” Celine said.

  Last night’s bout of seasickness had been bad enough; there had even been a few hours when she was certain she was going to die. Now she would have to weather a fierce tropical storm, possibly even a hurricane.

  She glanced up and found Cord watching her closely while Edward busied himself closing her trunks, securing things around the tight quarters.

  “I’m afraid it’ll be much worse than last night,” Cord said.

  “My mother was buried at sea,” she told him, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

  Over in the corner, Edward overheard. He stiffened like a marionette, cast one desperate glance at them and raced from the room.

  Cord watched his servant flee. He looked down at Celine and sighed. “I need a drink.”

  It was one of the worst storms he had ever experienced.

  Through pelting rain and mountains of water that crashed over the side with each swell, Cord mounted the ladder that led from the ’tween deck to the main, intent upon making it back to the saloon without ending up washed over the side. He had gone below to see to Edward, who was cowering in his bunk. Foster had resorted to tying him down to keep his companion from rolling onto the floor. Both men looked the worse for wear, but Foster was doing his best to hide his fear. Edward, on the other hand, sobbed and clutched the four-inch rails on either side of his bunk.

  An accountant named Alfonse Pennyworth, two bunks over, was content with alternately spewing vomit into and around a bucket and promising the good Lord he would never transgress again. As Cord passed him on the way to the stairs, he wondered what the whey-faced young man might consider a transgression. Forgetting to use a napkin?

  Although he had much worse to be forgiven for, Cord was not ready to make God any promises or to beg for mercy. The only God he had ever learned about was of an unforgiving nature, a God who set shrubbery ablaze when He wasn’t hurling fire and brimstone. Cord decided long ago that he would prefer a trip to hell. The company would no doubt be more to his liking.

  He was exhausted, having done his fair share to help the crew batten down the hatches and stand storm watch. He didn’t know how the exhausted sailors were able to stay on their feet, but when Thompson told him to go below and see to his wife, Cord realized how thankful he was to be a passenger and to have that right.

  As his head and shoulders cleared the stairwell to the main deck, a wave washed over him. Water cascaded down the ladder. He wiped his eyes and stepped outside. There was no difference between the color of the sea and the leaden sky. The world appeared shrouded in seething gray clouds, lashing rain and undulating swells. He waited until the Adelaide was climbing up a wave before he made a dash for the saloon doors. Forced to walk on a water-slicked floor, he intended to make it to the cabin door unharmed.

  When the ship plunged through one particularly deep trough, he reeled into the dining table, unable to right himself before smacking his hip on the edge of the table hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He staggered to Celine’s cabin door. Thankfully, it was unlocked, but when he opened it, another lurch of the ship jerked the knob out of his hand and sent the door slamming back into the wall.

  He glanced first at the porthole over Celine’s bunk. It was seeping water, and he thought immediately of Edward. He looked down at her bunk and thought the weak light was playing tricks on him. She wasn’t there. Nor was she on the floor by the bunk. His throat tightened with fear. It had been hours since he had seen her last. Cord spun around and opened the connecting door to his cabin. The porthole there was not leaking, but the bunk was empty.

  “Celine!” he called over the tremendous roar of the sea and the groan of protesting timbers. There was no answer.

  The ship was tilting at a forty-five-degree angle. He grabbed hold of the doorjamb between the two rooms and hung on. As he stood there straddling the line between the rooms, he noticed Celine in her cabin, crouched behind a barricade of shifting trunks and boxes. With her face hidden in the crook of her arm, all that was visible of her was the top of her head and her very bare shoulders.

  He cursed and lunged for her, forced to grab her bunk to keep himself from sliding back into his room when they dove down a wave. He shoved the trunks aside. A small, barrel-shaped carrying case rolled past him and rumbled all the way to the far end of the other cabin, where it hit the wall and popped open. His personal possessions went flying.

  “Celine?”

  He took her by the shoulders. Her skin was cold and clammy. Cord shook her. When she looked up at him, he saw nothing to relieve his anxiety. The light in her eyes had been extinguished by fear.

  “I’m dying,” she whispered.

  He was able to read the prediction on her lips.

  “I should be so lucky,” he jested.

  She didn’t smile. He waited until the ship righted itself between onslaughts and then stood, pulling her up against him. She was trembling so hard she could not stand on her own.

  He held her alongside him as he struggled into his cabin. There, at least, the bed was dry. He whipped back the bedding and urged her down.

  “Take off your gown,” he yelled.

  She looked up at him and shook her head forlornly. “Not now, Cord. Please.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Take off your gown. You’re soaked through.”

  “Will it matter once we’ve capsized and I’m drowning?”

  “You aren’t going to drown.”

  “My mother—”

  “Your mother was buried at sea. Spare me the details.” Cord reached out and grabbed the front of her gown. It was so sodden it had nearly slipped all the way off her on its own. Rather than waste time struggling with it, he gave a quick tug and ripped it off.

  She did not protest at all.

  “You’re worse off than I thought,” he mumbled.

  She had black-and-blue marks all over her shoulders, breasts and ribs. As he whipped the wool blanket from his bunk, he shouted, “What in the hell happened?”

  “I kept falling off the bunk,” she said, taking no notice as he wrapped her in the wool cocoon. “I gave up being tossed around and barricaded myself behind the trunks. I’m so tired. Are you tired?”

  “Lie down,” he said, gently pushing her back onto the bunk and sliding her up against the wall. He was too tall to stretch out comfortably in the small space, but now his height served him well, as he braced his boots against the wall at one end of the bed and his shoulders against the other. Wrapped around her, he could hold her against the sea wall so that she would not go flying off the bunk.

  He felt her trembling against him and found it hard to believe that this was the same woman who’d been brave enough to face down a pirate crew. To calm and reassure her, Cord began to stroke her head. Within minutes he found his own anxiety beginning to seep away.

  “Tell me about St. Stephen,” she whispered against his ear. “I want to imagine what it will be like if we get there.”

  “We’ll get there,” he promised
.

  Her breath was warm. It teased his neck. Cord found himself nuzzling her cheek before he realized what he was doing, and immediately stopped. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back. All the years he was in Louisiana, he’d never spoken of his island to anyone. No one had ever cared enough to ask. Not even Alex.

  “Sunshine and rainbows,” he began. “The air is warm and balmy, perfumed with the scent of flowers.” He smiled to himself in remembrance. “I never wore a pair of shoes before I was eight.

  “We lived charmed lives, island lives. My mother was English. She had inherited the Dunstain land on St. Stephen from a childless aunt and uncle. She met my father and fell in love with him. My father ran things and kept mother happy. They lived like the other landed gentry, but he was always considered an outsider and less than they because he was only a Creole from New Orleans, while they were a titled set. It never bothered him. He didn’t really care what any of them thought, only that my mother was happy.”

  Cord braced himself when the ship shuddered after a particularly hard hit. Celine slipped her arms free of the blanket and wrapped them tight around his ribs. He glanced down. Her eyes were closed. Her cheek was pressed against his heart. It was strange, this new sensation, this need to protect and to comfort her.

  “The house,” she whispered. “Tell me about the house.”

  “It isn’t like any plantation house in Louisiana. It’s as large, but not all that grand. My mother’s gardens are filled with plants that bloom every color of the rainbow. There is fruit ripe for the picking anytime you want it. On the hillside below the main house there is a sugar mill and distillery. The slave village is nearby. The hills and valleys are covered by acres and acres of sugar cane, a waving sea of rich emerald green.”

  Celine lay with her arms wrapped tight around him, her mind capturing not only the sights and sounds he painted with words but those that swirled and eddied about him like a mist of tangled dreams. Since childhood, she had never clung to another living soul. Drifting between sleep and wakefulness, pressed full length against him, her unguarded mind feasted at a banquet stocked with a cornucopia of memories.

  No place on earth, she thought, could be as beautiful as the visions of the island locked forever in Cord’s mind. She saw the tableau as he set the stage for her, and she could see the players as well.

  Foster and Edward. Younger. Caring for the young boy and his family. Alyce Dunstain Moreau. Cord’s beautiful mother. The lady who danced by starlight.

  A sudden chill. A rush of anguish. Hurt and betrayal. Black crepe. A man who looks like Cordero. A view from the foot of the bed. Half his head swathed in bandages. Terror and loss. Cord listening, paralyzed with grief. Too numb to cry anymore.

  “Your mother died in the accident. She’s never coming back. Eight-year-olds are too old to cry. You will be leaving tomorrow—”

  The dark pain was suddenly cut off. Somehow, Cord had managed to force the feelings into some place inaccessible to both of them. Celine stirred. She realized how deeply Cord had buried his pain, how strong a will he must have created in himself to do so. He had perfected hiding the hurt, even from himself, over many, many years. She hurt for him, and closed her eyes again.

  The island was safe for him; that was why he went there so often in memory. She saw the place again the way he had seen it last. She walked with him along a shore with sparkling pink sand, dove beneath foaming sea green waves.

  She let his thoughts and the words he whispered against her hair slowly allay her fear of the roaring wind and pounding sea. She let herself take refuge in his arms and felt safe for the first time since she had run from the sight of Jean Perot’s blood pooling on the cobblestones in his courtyard.

  She let herself dare to hope that the horror of that night was truly behind her. She swore to the Infinite Power behind all life that if they should come through the storm alive, she would do everything she could to be a good wife to Cord. She would offer unconditionally the one thing he had never been able to hold on to: She would offer him love. She would give him her loyalty. She would make him believe in life again.

  She felt his arms tighten around her as he braced himself in the bunk. The warmth of his strong, hard body seeped into her. The slow, steady beat of his heart against her ear lulled her to sleep.

  Cord knew the minute Celine fell asleep. She was too exhausted to fight her fear any longer. At the same time, almost imperceptibly, the storm had started to weaken. The ship no longer shuddered down every swell, the timbers no longer screamed with every gust of wind. He let himself relax, but remained alert in case the gale picked up again.

  With one arm tight around Celine, he continued to stroke her glossy black hair. Holding her close had been an act meant to comfort her, but slowly it had become something else. A pervasive calm had settled over him from the moment he had taken her into his arms.

  When she had asked him to describe St. Stephen, he had almost denied her innocent request, fearing the pain lodged with the memories. But once he’d begun the telling, sharing it with her had seemed natural. He’d no longer been alone with his pain.

  He gently worked the tangles out of her hair until it slipped like ebony silk between his fingers. He pressed his body closer to hers. He was fully aroused, and had been for too long to deny it. It was a stolen pleasure. He smiled as he imagined what Celine would say if she knew.

  From the moment he had laid eyes on her, she had surprised him at every turn. Her outrageous confrontation with Dundee had not only scared the hell out of him, but had amazed him as well. Her quick humor amused him more than anything had in a long while. They had been bound only by an agreement made between two old men, but she had trusted him enough to fall asleep in his arms.

  He felt something inside of him tighten, a stirring he had not allowed himself in years. He warned himself not to care for her, not to become attached to this slip of a girl who kept denying her true identity, who kept claiming to be part gypsy.

  Everyone he had ever let himself love had abandoned him. Why would she prove any different? If the situation at the plantation proved impossible, and Celine was miserable, he would let her go.

  If she chose to stay, perhaps in time they could at least learn to give each other mutual satisfaction. It wasn’t an impossible idea. Most of the men he knew had wed through arranged marriages, and many had made the most of it. Chances of finding a love match like his mother and father’s were one in a million.

  There was absolutely no need to risk falling in love with Celine. He could not allow her to walk off with whatever remained of his heart.

  It was bad enough that she had already made him realize there might be a bit of it left after all.

  Nine

  Celine knelt on her bunk at the porthole watching glittering moonlight kiss West Indian waters. The moon seemed close enough to touch. She never slept well during a full moon, and tonight was no exception. The Adelaide sliced through the calm sea, her sails proudly billowed and straining, as if the ship itself, as much as her passengers and crew, anticipated reaching St. Stephen on the morrow.

  Celine slipped a mint green day dress over the shift which had doubled as a nightgown ever since Cord had destroyed the other. As she smoothed down her skirt and opened the cabin door, she was surprised not to find Cord in the saloon. After the way he had been drinking at dinner, she decided he must surely have passed out at the table.

  He had been drinking heavily since the night of the storm, and in part she blamed herself. If she had not asked him to describe St. Stephen, he would not have tapped into the past he kept locked so deep inside.

  Celine left the saloon and walked along the rail of the main deck, grateful to be up and about. Now that there were only a few hours of the voyage left, she had finally found her sea legs. She reached up to brush a stray lock of hair behind her ear and then paused to lean against the rail and stare out at the midnight blue water. Moon-glow backlit the clouds an eerie blue-white. The breeze was balmy, t
inted with a hint of fragrant blossoms. Somewhere out over the water a seagull cried. Land was near.

  A sailor carrying a heavy coil of rope passed without a glance in her direction. The crew had given her a wide berth since she had pretended to curse Captain Dundee. Foster told her that the sailors half believed she truly had put a curse on Dundee. They were a superstitious, uneducated lot, he said, and it served them right if they wanted to think that a slip of a girl like his mistress was capable of black magic.

  She had seen more of Edward and Foster since the storm than she had of Cord. His visits to her cabin had been restricted to quick, carefully polite inquiries about her health. When they reached calm waters, she had half expected him to approach her with his original request, but he never again demanded she sleep with him. Nor did he ever show the level of caring he had during the storm. He was reserved, almost cautious in her presence, watching her when he thought she was not aware.

  As she stood alone in the dark, she quickly discovered there was a magical quality about the ship at night, with its green and red lanterns mounted as running lights along the port and starboard sides. The slick teak rail felt as cool and smooth as glass beneath her palms.

  Celine raised her face to the heavy moon, shook out her long hair and let it sway against her back. She took a deep breath of the salt air. It was good to finally be free of the stifling four walls of the cabin. She would be glad to touch land.

  As she stared at the ribbon of moonlight playing on the water, she recalled the image of Cord’s mother, Alyce, as she danced beneath the night sky. His love for the beautiful woman was only one of the memories she had stolen from him during the storm. Still unsettled, Celine left the rail and strolled back to the ladder that led to the poop deck. She had expected to see a helmsman at the wheel, but it came as a surprise when she found Cord on the deck as well. He stood alone at the upper rail, an imposing figure cast in moonlight and shadow, staring down at the water. His full-sleeved shirt billowed as blue-white as the clouds. His arms were spread wide and his hands gripped the rail.