by Angel Payne
“Wager you’re wondering what the curses I said that for.”
Mast glowered. Wayland slid out a victory smirk and poured more rum. His grin was gone after he drained half his glass in one gulp. Mast didn’t follow. He watched his friend’s features color with intoxication for the first time in the eighteen years he’d known the man.
Aye. Something was wrong.
Gaverly proved that all too correct as he looked up at Mast again. As he backhanded the alcohol from his lips, the confident smile came off with it. The man’s face grew years older in the dim candle light. “I told you that, Captain Stafford, because I can trust to no other what I’m about to commit to you.”
Mast’s confusion shot its way to his eyebrows. “Captain Stafford?”
“I know what I said.” Gaverly’s voice grated worse than his chair legs as he pushed up from the table. “I used the rank because I want the rank, Mast. I want—I need—the best bloody seaman in the Indies today. I just thank God it’s you.”
Mast couldn’t take it any longer. He pushed back his own chair and stood. “Wayland, this obscure nonsense is wearing thin. Get on with it before I throw your pickled hide to bed and hoist full sail tonight.”
To his further irritation, Wayland broke into a soft chuckle. “Isn’t this an occasion? The famed Stafford composure, at an ebb?”
“At an end. What the hell is going on?”
Gaverly sighed again, before a deep furrow ran over his brow. “You’re right. You’ve honored me with the patience of Odysseus. I owe you the truth.”
“That would be a fitting start.”
Wayland moved again to the window. “The situation on Saint Kitts is nay good, Mast. Nay good at all. You know as well as I that the island’s fortress, Brimstone Hill, is the finest stronghold in the islands. The French want it, and they’re coming in force to get it. My right eye says De Grasse and De Bouille are pulling their fleets together as we speak.”
“Aye.” Mast nodded. “We spied plenty of the French fleet on our way here.”
“Damn. The noxious worms are moving quickly.”
Wayland pivoted back. His gaze pinned Mast, his eyes glossy and intense. Beneath his tawny beard, his lips were a dry line. “I must ask something of you, Mast. A deed of magnitude you could never fathom. And I am imploring you on our friendship, please say yes.”
Mast finally took a swig of his drink. “Are you suggesting I chart my next course for Saint Kitts, Wayland?”
He didn’t know why, but the answering smile of gratitude put Mast’s senses on full alert. As he accepted his friend’s outstretched hand to seal the bargain, the alarms rang louder.
It was stupid, he tried to tell himself. Silly as the flappings of a fretting hen. The assignment was simple enough. Wayland wanted his treasures and gold off his home island before the French could “put their slithering gizzard hands on any of it,” in the man’s own words. But King George would have Wayland’s head on a platter if he so much as stuck his toe into Abaco Bay. Mast would see to the deed in his friend’s stead—at the astounding rate, Wayland insisted, of fifty percent of the booty.
Once over that shock, Mast even agreed to Gaverly’s command for absolute secrecy regarding the commission, though perplexity gnawed at why the confidence stretched to exclude even the Athena’s loyal crew. But any other way, Wayland replied with theatrical urgency, would be seducing trouble. The Earl of Pemshire’s proximity to the crown at a time like this was something the French would slaver all over each other to get at, even if it was only Mast and his crew as the man’s envoy.
Mast had no trouble with that reasoning. The trouble with the French? Well, that made the most sense so far. His disquiet was due to something beyond that. Something about this agreement drove nails of uneasiness through his conscience, and something besides demon rum set that weird glow to his friend’s eyes. Something that had Wayland giving away half his treasures without flinching an inch.
“Christ.”
Mast bounded across the room, making the floorboards shudder. Wayland interpreted his intent before he got three steps across. His friend stretched out both arms, hands stretched in entreaty. “Now, lad—”
“That’s not all you want me to get, is it, Wayland?” He formed the question slowly, hoping to God and all the angels he was wrong.
Wayland dropped his arms. “Nay,” he replied quietly. “That’s not all.”
“A woman.”
“God’s balls. I’m not sending you to the Sahara desert—”
“A woman!”
“A girl. For the love of God, Mast, just a girl.”
“What’s the bloody difference?” he exploded. “A better-filled corset? A softer pair of lips? A more willing spread of thighs?”
“Damn you.”
The man’s vicious roar caught him up short. His mentor’s violent glower was in equal parts shocking. “Damn you, Mast! It’s not like that!”
Shock or not, he stood his ground. “Oh no?”
“You had better say oh no!”
“Then illuminate me.” This was turning into an entertaining evening, after all.
Gaverly halted a few feet away. He spewed a heavy huff before locking his jaw on his next words.
“It’s not the same, you bampot, because she’s my daughter.”
For several moments, all that marked time was a window shutter banging in the night. And Mast’s heartbeat hammering in his ears.
“Daughter?”
He thought he must have heard Wayland wrong. But his friend confirmed the query with a slow nod.
Mast emitted a laugh as dry as the surrounding wind. He couldn’t control the similar tone of his voice. “But you have the life I want, you bastard. No complications. Nothing to stand in the way of your honor, your respect, your dreams. At least nothing like a woman. At least none you gave a damn to apprise me of. Especially not some hidden chit of a daughter.”
“Watch your tongue, boy.” Wayland was the only sod on the face of the earth who could get away with the words, especially in such a vehement tone. “She’s not a chit of any sort.” The older man’s gaze again filled with that faraway light as he looked toward the window. “She’s…well, she’s a very special person, Mast. Damn, on more than a few occasions, I’ve been inclined to think those barmy island spirits gave her to me as a unique form of treasure.”
“Then that must have been some tryst on the shore,” Mast quipped. He inclined against the wall again, crossing one ankle over the other.
“There was no tryst,” came the quiet answer.
“Excuse me?”
“No tryst.” Wayland shrugged and barely held back a grin. “Golden and I…well, we just happened upon each other deep in the forest one day.” The man smiled. “I was out on an exploration jaunt shortly after arriving at Saint Kitts. And there, next to this waterfall, she simply…appeared.”
Mast chuffed. “Appeared?”
Wayland shrugged. “Barmy, eh? I promise you, not a drop of rum or a lick of a toad was involved. I’d never seen such hair on any native before, but a native was what she was. Bloody unbelievable. Her whole family was wiped out in a ship fire when she was eight, so the Indians took her and raised her themselves. Some even considered her a goddess. I think some still do.” He raised his head heavenward. “I only knew God had somehow given me a second chance on life. Four months later, George granted me the special license to adopt her.”
When Gaverly lowered his face, harsh lines again vanquished his features. He returned to the window. “Gor and hell, Mast. You don’t know what it’s been like these last weeks, not knowing whether she’s alive or—” He interrupted himself with a sharp cough. “I didn’t know she wasn’t aboard until we were well out to sea. Everything was so confused that day. We had to leave so fast. When I found out she’d been left behind, it was as if a piece of me was torn away.”
His voice faded into a tight, thick silence. Mast welcomed that. He’d never heard or seen Wayland so off-keel befo
re. It made for chaos in his mind and mayhem in his instincts. Most of all, it made it all the more gut-wrenching to voice his next statement.
“Wayland, I give my credence and my respect to your feelings. But you know as well as I the highest law of my ship, voted on and adhered to by every member of my crew. No females on board. Ever.” He paused, letting the ultimatum sink into the air. “How do you expect me to not only break that code, but keep my word to you for secrecy at the same time? I’m sorry, Wayland. It would be impossible. Impossible.”
He should have known better.
He should have known Wayland would bide until the most crucial moment to deliver his biggest shock of the evening.
“I suppose adding five thousand pounds to that commission wouldn’t inspire you to attempt the impossible?”
Bastard.
Wayland said it so calmly, as if not knowing what that kind of money would mean to Mast. As if not aware that it was precisely what he needed, even after fairly dividing the sum with his men, to put himself over the top. To complete his plans. To finally realize his vision of the sign, reading in elegant letters, “Stafford Shipping,” in the clear Caribbean sun. A man of honor and integrity. Respected. Accepted. At last.
As if he didn’t know it was the dream come true.
“You’re a goddamn grotty cock, Wayland.”
He glared at his friend, who might as well have held him over a barrel of piranhas with that gold at the bottom. Wayland didn’t make things easier with his returning stare of admiration, affection, and respect. The look waned with his next words.
“You’re the only one I can trust, lad. She’s the most precious thing in the world to me. Please…bring her back.”
Mast yearned to look away. His gut wouldn’t let him. An inner voice cursed Wayland with every expletive he could remember, while another couldn’t stop thanking him for the opportunity of a lifetime.
“All right,” he finally growled. “All right, Wayland. I’ll bring your treasures and your daughter back to you.”
“And keep my secret, as well.”
“Yes. Yes, damn it. The men won’t know a thing. I have no bloody idea how yet, but—”
“No.” Wayland charged at him again. He tore a hand through his tawny hair. “No lad, from Golden as well. Dear God, especially from Golden.”
“What?” Mast bunched his hands into tense fists. “You’re insane. I can’t swoop in, stow her away on the Athena then transport her hundreds of miles without telling her something!”
“Then tell her something. Tell her anything except who you really are and who sent you for her. Mast”—his friend dug his fingers into his shoulder—“you don’t know Golden. She’s—”
“A bloody gift from the gods,” he grumbled. “I know.”
“No. It’s not just that. The girl’s got a will of iron, yet a heart of pure snow. She doesn’t have a stick of sense for how to place her trust. The combination could be dangerous, very dangerous, if she were to give one wrong person all the right information.” The grip on his shoulder intensified. “I’m certain you can envision the atrocities.”
“Aye.” Experience underlined his tone. Too damn much experience. He drew in a deep yet ragged breath. “Very well,” he conceded. “You have my oath of secrecy and my promise of honor, even for your island goddess of a daughter.”
The older man’s eyes closed for a long moment. “Thank you,” Wayland said on a relieved sigh. “Dear God, thank you, Mast.”
“Hell, Wayland,” he muttered awkwardly. “Maybe you should have told me that was one incredible tryst on the beach.”
Six weeks later, Mast reflected on those words, that scene and that whole strange Bahamas night, and wondered if those island gusts hadn’t taken off somewhere with his good sense. He was sweaty, aching, and exhausted. His head pounded as incessantly as the cannon booms that shook through the dense Saint Kitts foliage. But the French and British forces didn’t care, continuing to blast away at each other into an amber island twilight that begged for rest.
He jerked up in his chair as a particularly loud boom shook the whitewashed veranda. He’d been leaning in it with the front legs up against an archway in the Gaverly plantation, and landed with a thunk that did nothing for his jangled nerves.
He couldn’t wait to get away from this stifling island. And this ridiculous war. And most especially, out of these fetid clothes. He’d stolen the uniform off the sot who must have been the most slovenly captain in the French force. The gold-braided blue jacket smelled like liquor, women, and something he couldn’t place. Probably pig offal.
“Fuck.”
Though he muttered it beneath his breath, the screaming ire was the same. Getting himself into this had been a huge cock-up. He should have turned Wayland down, fortune or no. He knew better than to stake his future on a woman, of all things. A creature no better than the trade winds that teased at him even now, first blowing in from the east then the west, enough to throw a ship off course for days—or a man off course from things that truly mattered.
He should know. He’d experienced both catastrophes first hand. Aye, the trade wind had learned her craft well from the female. Fragrant as island wildflowers. Sweet as ripe sugar cane. Enticing as spiced sea salt. Yet as fickle as a willow wisp when a shinier trinket called, a more handsome profile, a court rumor of greater sexual prowess. Even death.
“Mum? Come along, stop your teasin’. Open your eyes now. It’s me…Masterson. Mum? Can’t you hear me, Mum?”
Another cannon boom sounded as he surged to his feet and kicked the chair across the patio. The explosion crackled through the surrounding tangle of gommier and wild plum trees before dying away across the sugar cane fields on the opposite side of the mansion. In the resulting lull, a green vervet monkey swung down to the veranda rail, cackling as if he were the prosecuting bailiff for the whole forest.
“Guilty, your honor,” he snapped at the animal. “Now go away.”
“I just got here, ya ape.”
The rugged, brightly-accented voice came from behind, though it didn’t startle Mast as it sometimes did. He knew Dinky had come inland a good two days ago; he’d gotten ample notice from the smiles plastered on the village wenches.
“About time you showed up.”
Dinky Peabrooke paused as he sidled around his captain. “Temper, perty boy. Wasn’t my decision to come here in the middle of a war, or whatever they’re callin’ it nowadays, much less tryin’ to pass my captain off as a Frenchie fop-doodle, to boot. I was perfectly happy on Martinique, swimmin’ a la naturale with the natives, drinkin’ rum from their…coconuts.”
“Dinky.” He didn’t hide his growing frustration.
“And the stars on Martinique! Crimey, in all my days I never saw such a night sky—”
“Dinky.”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
The older man scraped a match along the rail then touched it to a precariously-hanging hookah in his mouth. “Damme, Stafford. Yer wound up tighter’n a hippo on a yardarm. Wanna tell yer first mate what the hell’s goin’ on?”
Aye. I want to tell you everything, you loony old sea dog.
“No.” He mentally shoved a boot in his ass for including Dinky in Wayland’s damn secrecy clause.
“God blarst it.”
Though the man only came to the middle of Mast’s chest, Dinky squared off and jabbed him there. “Ow!” Mast snarled. The blighter might only come to the middle of his chest and have a small fortune of gold rings braided in his tawny beard, but every inch of him was muscle. “Bloody hell, Dink.”
“Stop whinin’. You tell me what this is all about, kid, and you tell me now. Something’s goin’ on, and I’m not the maggot-pate who’s gonna believe otherwise. The cargo’s been aboard and secured for two days now. The men’ve gorged themselves on so much fruit, they can barely stand watch. The ship’s right as rain, ready to fly to the moon if need be.” Dinky moved closer, purposely staring with his more penetr
ating azure eye over his duller green one. “What the hell are we still doin’ here, M?”
Mast clamped his jaw. Damn it, he’d promised Wayland. Men of honor only gave their promise if they were willing to back it with their life, so Dink would remain in the dark about everything, no matter how many times he tried jabbing Mast’s gizzards into his spine.
Despite his deliberation, the decision was whipped from his hands the next moment.
A piercing screech ripped the air. Savage. Enraged. Human.
Human and female.
Mast traded a glance with Dink. He was certain his face mirrored his first mate’s shock. The thing sounded like a cross between a tigress and a harpy.
“Hell.”
Straining the dread from it was a losing battle. It can’t be. It’s not possible. Only an animal is capable of such a scream. Though necessity dictated that he knew every predatory creature on these islands…and none of them sounded like that.
The thing shrilled again, sending a drove of frigatebirds into the sky on their seven-foot wings. Mast looked down in amazement. The sound sent vibrations through the veranda floorboards, too.
As if it were coming from inside the mansion.
“Damn!”
“Damn what?” Dink retorted. “M, don’t you dare tell me that thing is—”
“Hide.”
“What?”
“Curse it, I said hide, Dink. Here they come.”
Dinky managed to duck behind a clump of Spanish oak as a thin French lieutenant paraded down the opposite side of the veranda.
“Mon capitan.” The man snapped a grimy hand to attention. When Mast nodded, he flung it down.
“La wenche?” His imperious tone was still working to frighten his “subordinates” so much, they didn’t question his God-awful accent. He reinforced the effect with an iron stare.
“Oui! Nous avons la fille…dans le chateau.”
