When the longboat was ready to be lowered along the Ticaraguan coastline, still obscured by fog, Andre stopped his father and first mates from clambering into the boat with him.
“I prefer to do this alone, mes amis," he explained. Louis, hand on the side of longboat swinging at chest level, frowned in puzzlement.
“You do not know the area or people, mon fils it would be foolhardy to arrive without reinforcements. the others nodded. andre remained adamant, however.
“I must do this by myself, Papa.” He paused, swallowed. “Whether I find her or discover without a doubt she is gone, I fear I may become...émotionnels. That is not good for a pirate captain.”
Louis smiled. Dropping his hand to his side, he shot a look at the first mates, then back to Andre. “Feelings are not something to be embarrassed about, Andy. They mean you are human, pirate or not. But—” and he held up a hand to stave off Andre’s rebuttal.
“I understand your hesitancy. I do not think fishermen are inclined to be bloodthirsty and murderous, so we will wait at the ready upon the Princess. Just promise me, mon fils précieux, that you will signal us before dark that you are safe. If we do not see a sign, we will come ashore with swords drawn and blood in your eye, oui?"
The old pirate grinned. After several beats, Andre gave a short nod and a brief, one-armed hug to his father, another nod at Limey and de Gallo. He climbed into the waiting longboat, rode it down the side of the Princess, and splashed into the shallows. He then grasped the oars and rowed to his fate.
~*~
“Josefina, Josefina, come look at all the fish. Our nets overflow once more.”
Josephina, scaling fish along the shore, looked up with a wide smile at the gaily-dressed little girl. The child flounced her way across the sand, with long brown hair bouncing down her back and a gapped-toothed grin.
Dropping her latest skinned bonefish, Josefina wiped her hands on a smelly rag and arched her back. She wrinkled her nose as she spied a weakly flapping aquatic creature in the little girl’s cupped hands. Unable to stomach the fish when they were dead, Josefina stepped back a pace from the little girl and her near-death sample.
“Caramba, Leti, get it away from me, Josefina grumbled. She glanced about at all the baskets of dead, scaled bonefish, tarpon, and snook Abuela had already cleaned. Abuela was now in process gutting many them farther down beach, but Josefina refused to do that chore. The rest of the family laughed her, allowing her a choice duty within their fishing trade.
Leti dropped the fish in a basket with its dead comrades. “Abuela says you need to get over your disgust, Josefina. She says this is our livelihood, and if you plan on becoming part of the family you need to be not be such a...a princesa.”
As Leti giggled, Josefina managed a smile, wishing she could smack the older woman across her censure-dripping lips. Ever since she’d been rescued from the Caribbean Sea by Abuela’s grandson Renato, Josefina had been picked at and criticized for her lack of enthusiasm for fishing, as well being a stranger in their midst.
Josefina couldn’t help it. Lacking any memory except the tantalizing tidbits that arose from time to time but flitted away before she could grasp them, she knew instinctively that she hated fish and fishing of any kind. Just as she knew she wanted to be out on the water in a boat or ship.
Leti began dragging the next basket of scaled fish across the sand toward her grandmother sitting beneath the mango trees along the edge of the beach. Josefina stared out at the ocean. Once more, she felt a familiar tug, as she had felt every day since her rescue, and wished with all her heart she could be out on the sea. Even if it was on the nasty, stinking fishing boat Renato piloted every morning.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, Josefina spied Renato sloshing through the waves in his high, black boots and rust-colored pantaloons. His boat lay moored nearby, obscured by the uncharacteristic mist gathering right along the breakers.
Once he reached the sand, he headed straight for her, a wide smile on his face. His warm, brown eyes twinkled across the distance, sparking a flash of memory of other, similar eyes. The wispy vision faded before it could fully materialize.
She looked down as Renato stopped before her. “Are you tired, mi amor?" He leaned forward, nosing her hand away and kissing forehead.
“A little. Being out on the open water would probably help, Renato.”
“You never give up, do you, Josefina? Well, neither do I. Become my wife, and I will let you sail my boat every morning, no matter how much Abuela gasps and complains.
Leaning his forehead against hers, he gazed into her eyes.
She pulled back and whispered, “You know why I resist, Renny. I have no memory. For all we know I could be married. Maybe even have children.”
Renato paced away, kicking sand with his damp boot. “El doctor said you’d had no children when he examined you.”
Josefina blushed at the thought of a strange man, even if he was a doctor, examining her most private region. “But he also said I wasn’t chaste, remember, Renato?”
He rounded on her. “I don’t care, Josefina. I love you, and you...you seem to care for me a little, don’t you?”
She stepped close to cup his cheek, watched his fringed eyes flutter closed. “I do, Renny. I do. However, I’m not free, yet. Not until I remember my past, and why I was out in the ocean in the first place.”
“What if your memory never returns, eh? Will you always keep me at arm’s length, hmm, Josefina?”
“No, Renny. I promise I’ll give you an answer. Just...not yet.”
She saw his inner capitulation seconds before he brushed a frustrated kiss atop her head. Running a hand through his thick head of hair, he wrinkled his nose. Pivoting, he headed for the mango grove and the baskets of gutted fish he would then task his brothers with removing to the donkey-pulled wagon the family used to peddle their fish from home to home.
Turning back to face the ocean, Josefina prayed once more for a memory beyond the last seven months. An opening in the murkiness surrounding her aching brain so that she could move on with her life, be it here with the handsome, caring Renato and his perpetually pessimistic Abuela, or back in a past she strained for but could not remember.
As she stared at the ocean, she noticed the uncommon fog had thickened until she could no longer see the waves as they glided onto the beach. Sounds seemed muted from the humid mist, and she shivered, though the sultry vapor bore no chill. Was that a jingle, out in the hovering cloud? Perhaps a careful footstep upon the sand?
Uneasy, she stepped backward, squinted into the miasma swirling before her, and made out a shadow, a figure looming in the fog. She sucked in a shaky breath. The mists began to part before the person, for that was now what it appeared to be.
Holding her hand to her throat, she stood, mesmerized, as the form took shape, blending into a man’s silhouette striding forward out of the fog. Blue coattails swirled about his knees, brown boots skimmed the frothy tidal residue. The muted clink of sword or cutlass drifted to her ears through the humidity.
The mist shifted aside, and more details became visible to her. The intruder wore a sword at his hip, a pistol tucked into his sash, and a buckled baldric across his chest. A battered tricorn sat upon his black, kerchief-covered dark head, and a silver earring glinted through his hair. Their gazes met, sending her staggering backward.
She knew him.
Her heart started thumping deep in her chest as she searched his face. Her gaze kept returning to his dark, penetrating eyes, which appeared both hungry and wounded.
She knew him, even as he stumbled when their eyes met, as he recovered his momentum. He strode up to her, stopped bare inches away. His burning gaze roamed her face as if committing it to memory, as if devouring her very countenance.
She knew him.
She noticed how his chest under his open shirt rose and fell at an alarming pace, how the pulse at the base of his tanned throat fluttered like hummingbird wings. His thick-lashed, brown
eyes roved over her, feverishly bright, boring straight into her very soul.
Of its own volition her mouth opened, and she heard herself ask in a hoarse whisper, “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one I’ve been waiting for, aren’t you?”
At the sound of her voice, the man closed his eyes on an expelled sigh. He dropped to his knees in sudden weakness, leaned his forehead against her stomach as though his head was suddenly too heavy to hold upright. His hat toppled unnoticed to the sand beside him.
His whole body shuddered. At the feel of his loss of self-control, she began to tremble in response, and sank to her knees as well. She gathered his cold hands in hers as he lifted glistening eyes to her face. He appeared ready to snap in two, so she spoke gently, as if to a wild animal. She clasped his hands against her chest.
“I know you. I don’t know your name, but I know you in my heart. Your face, your eyes, your touch...you are as familiar to me as my body. I’ve been waiting for you to come for me.”
Their gazes held, beat after beat, until, on a choked sound, he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her tight against his chest. So tight she could feel the buckle of his baldric through her clothes, could feel the buttons of his coat, even his heart thundering against hers. Their bodies fused together as they knelt in the damp sand.
With his face buried in her hair, his mouth against her neck, he said simply, “I’m Andre.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Andre.
The name ripped through the shroud of her memory in a brilliant flash, revealing her past in astonishing clarity. It was as if it had been just yesterday, instead of seven long, agonizing months since she’d last been with her husband, last sailed the seas with a buccaneer crew.
Sophie scrunched her eyes shut against the collage of memories, tightened her arms around the man who clung to her. In her mind, she saw herself dancing at one of her coming out balls. Over there was Gilbert. She flinched away from that image, latched onto the following sequences involving Andre. Their introduction at the ball. Their wedding.
There he was, body rising above hers, his face a mask of disbelief and hurt as he looked down at her in their marriage bed. She shied away from that as well. Next, she saw herself on board the Phoenix, and later, upon the Princess.
There was her husband, sailing the pirate ship against the wind, grinning like a lunatic in her face. Then it was her turn to guide a dangerously leaning Princess through the waves while all hands on deck scrambled for safety. She saw herself holding a pistol on Andre, and he drawing one on her. She envisioned a waterfall and herself wrapped in his arms while water cascaded over their naked bodies. And she remembered toppling into the ocean, a staggering pain overpowering her body.
Her eyes snapped open. That last image receded. She drew back within Andre’s embrace, bit her lip at the sight of his damp eyes. With trembling fingertips, she reached out to trace his features. His eyelids closed at her feather-like touch, lashes dropping over kohl-lined eyes.
She moved her fingers across his forehead and down his temples, and felt the tremors wracking his body as she explored. Her caress skimmed those damp, silky lashes, down that straight nose, over impossibly high cheekbones to hesitate upon those full, velvety lips. She remembered.
She gasped when his mouth moved, brushed her fingertips. “Mon dieu, Sophie. How I have longed for your touch, your kiss, your embrace. I never knew what loss was until you were gone. Gone, I thought, forever. Having been in love before, I had no comparison. Until I lost you, and then I knew."
Her fingers hovered over that thick, plush mustache, still tingling from the birdlike brush of his lips. She searched his expression, took in his yearning gaze, and opened her mouth to tell him she remembered. But he continued, a confession he needed to get off his chest, as if it had lain heavy upon him during all their months apart.
“I never got the chance to tell you I love you before you were torn from my life. Now, the words don’t seem adequate. They don’t show you the depth of my feelings. You are not just my wife. Not simply the love of my life. You are more than that. You are...the air to my body. The light to my darkness. The wind to my sails. The rudder to my ship. You are the North Star to my constellation. You are my reason for living. I know this because I have been dead until today.”
By the time he’d exposed his very soul to her she was crying, big, fat tears that dribbled from the corners of her eyes. His quaking hands slipped up to cup her face. His thumbs smoothed over her cheekbones and captured those tears.
He leaned forward to follow his fingers with his lips, licking the salty tears with a tentative tip of his tongue. “Chut, ma femme précieux. I didn’t mean to make you cry. After going mad these last seven months, you have made me whole again. What I say is true. I am nothing without you. Chut, Chut."
He pulled her into his arms, rocked her while remaining on his knees, and held her tight while she sobbed into his shoulder, all the while whispering French endearments against her ear.
“Josefina?”
They both turned their heads. It was Renato, and he looked confused, and suspicious. Sophie stumbled to her feet, swiping at the tears coursing down her cheeks. “Renato, I have a husband. He came for me. My name is Sophie, and I remember everything.” She faced her husband, who stared at her with wide eyes. She smiled into them before returning her attention to the Venezuelan. “I remember it all.”
She knew she was making a garbled mess of it, but she was so excited. Excited, relieved, and in love. Most of all, in love. She could admit that now, now that she’d cheated death. Too much time had been wasted since the island, since the moment she realized she loved her husband. Time that could never be made up. She swung back to Andre like a pendulum.
“Renato rescued me, you see.” She frowned at that nebulous memory, but Andre’s sudden bow before the other man stopped the painful thought from forming.
“Captain Andre Dubois, Monsieur, at your service."
Showing no recognition for Andre’s title, Renato squared his shoulders as he spat out with pride, “My name is Renato Jesus Manuelo Bautiste Guerrero. When I found your wife, she was near death, floating in amongst my fishing nets. It was— ¿cómo se dice?—touch-and-go, until she recovered her strength, Señor."
Without warning, Andre reached out with one arm and hugged Renato to him. “I am indebted to you for life for bringing back my wife. Name anything and it’ll be yours. If it is jewels, I’ll give them to you. If it’s money, I have that. If it’s power, my father and I are the most powerful men in the Caribbean.
“Name your reward, sir, for the return of my wife alive is reason enough to shower you with jewels, money, and power. She is my everything. My life’s blood. Name your price.”
Sophie blinked away more tears at his words, and bit her lip, for if she’d learned nothing else in these past seven months with the Guerreros, it was that they were very proud. Renato was the proudest of them all.
His voice dripped disdain. “I need no riches, no gain. If she’d been a penniless person, it would have made no difference to me. All life is sacred in the eyes of the Lord.
“But it would indeed please my family and me if you would dine with us this evening. I assume you are not leaving on the next tide?”
By the crestfallen look on Andre’s face, Sophie could tell that was exactly what he had planned, to whisk her away. Part of her was excited to resume her previous life at the side of her husband, but good manners and bone-deep thankfulness required that they allow the Guerreros to host them one more time.
Therefore, she forestalled her husband’s response by giving Renato a bright smile. “Of course, Renny. We would never leave without celebrating the return of my memory and my husband with all of you.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Andre sketch a reluctant bow. Silently she promised him, Soon, my beloved. Soon.
~*~
At last, they were leaving. Much later in the day than he’d planned, but at least they were departing. Andre had h
is hands on the stern of the dinghy, ready to push it into the salty foam swirling around his boots, wetting the edges of his coat. All he needed was his lovely wife to stop saying good-bye a hundred times. Hadn’t he already thanked the Guerreros? Hadn’t he hidden in Renato’s discarded jacket a purse filled with enough coins for the family to buy a new fishing boat?
That man had fancied himself in love with Sophie. Andre had seen it as soon as he’d met him. He had also saved Sophie. Therefore, if Andre gave the Guerreros a hundred boats it still wouldn’t measure up to what they’d given him—his wife. His life. His very reason to live. No, a purse full of coins was not even close to payment for Sophie’s return. Another would-be suitor to fend off was a small price to pay. After all, she was leaving with him.
Turning his head to make another plea for her urgency, he was startled to see Sophie, clad in one of those beautiful, colorful Venezuelan dresses, splashing out to help him with the little boat. The waves plastered the skirt against her body, causing an instant tightening in his groin. Of course, everyone on the beach could see her as well, so he begged, “Get in, Sophie, please.” Before everyone witnesses my reaction to you.
She acquiesced without an argument, climbed into the dinghy, and seated herself at the prow. He gave the boat a mighty shove before clambering over its side to settle opposite her. After pulling out the oars, he began rowing over the white-capped crests.
He tried not to notice how the wet material of her dress clung to those curves he thought he would never hold against him again. He’d found her, she remembered him, and they’d broken bread with her rescuers. Soon he could get them off by themselves. Soon.
As they approached the Jade Princess, a dull roar crescendoed over the crashing waves. All the pirates were leaning over the rails with fists raised, yelling and shouting while stamping their feet. Sophie turned to Andre with a grin, and he shrugged.
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