“So there you have it. And if she does write and Alan reads the letter, what then of your stories that you are off to Barbadoes at your sister’s behest?”
“Alan would believe me against all the world,” Marie said simply, and Charity felt the blood rise to her head and beat in her temple.
“He cannot be a complete fool,” insisted Court. “Perhaps we should have done with these visits once and for all. It ill becomes you to go running off to seek a lover in some pirate’s hole like Tortuga.”
“Ah, Jeremy, how could you say that!” Charity grimaced, knowing Marie’s large violet eyes with their dark-fringed lashes would be turned on him imploringly. “How could you hurt me so!”
“I did not mean to hurt you,” was the grim rejoinder, “but perhaps to save you the pain of being found out. It’s for your sake, not mine.”
“Then say no more of parting!” cried Marie tremulously. “I cannot—I cannot stand it, Jeremy!”
Charity could not stand it either. She turned and fled on silent feet, in her heart a tumult greater than she had ever known.
Marie, Marie Bellingham, was here! Sleeping tonight in the notorious English buccaneer’s bed, sharing his embraces, just as she shared Alan’s husbandly embraces in Charles Towne. A pulse throbbed in Charity’s forehead. She yearned to go down and confront Marie, to shout, “Why aren’t you in Charles Towne with René?”
White-faced, Charity stared out at the uncaring moon as it drifted over the pirate’s stronghold, at the white stars blazing down upon Cayona Bay. Even the trade winds could not cool her hot face. And once she brought her fist down so hard she almost broke her wrist. She would confront Marie, she decided. Tomorrow morning!
But her anger wore her out and she fell asleep in her clothes. Limp as a rag doll she sprawled in a chair and when she woke the tropical sun was blazing. Quickly she dressed in fresh clothes, not caring what she wore, and ran downstairs.
At the foot of the steps Court met her.
“I was on my way to fetch you,” he said. “My guest has departed and I would have your company at breakfast.” Lean and dark, he towered above her. He looked tired, and his voice was conciliatory. He might have been speaking to a rebellious child who had been forgiven.
Charity was surprised. “She is gone?”
He nodded. “With the tide, early this morning. I thought it best.”
So, she had lost her chance to confront Marie. Charity rose to her full height and her voice was wild. She seemed to see Marie on all sides of her, wherever she went—beautiful, mocking, glamorous Marie, beloved by all men.
“That woman is Alan Bellingham’s wife!” she cried.
“I am well aware of that,” he said.
“But—but if you know that, then—”
“She is the woman who was lost to me in England,” he said quietly. “On a hill in Devon we plighted our troth long ago. I have not forgot. Nor has she.”
“But she married Alan.”
“Against her will, and under pressure from her father. A tyrannical old man who was against me from the first; I knew him well.” His voice was bitter. “Do not condemn Marie too much. She was young and beautiful and she believed me dead.” He stared into the courtyard, seeing not the palm fronds or the hibiscus swaying in the scented tropical breeze, but another lovely land—fair Devon far away. “And dead I was while I pulled an oar for Spain. But—” he turned and gave her a twisted smile—“I came back to life, as you can see. Shipwrecked on the Irish coast, my chains were snapped by a mocking God who thought to amuse himself by my writhings.”
“You blaspheme,” she said softly.
“I do indeed,” he sighed. “Gods and devils, they are all one to me. What are gods to galley slaves, toiling ceaselessly at the oars, naked under sun and rain, fainting beneath the lash, until at last death plucks them from their misery and their bodies are hurled to the sharks and barracuda for one last plundering?”
His bitterness struck her like a blow. As did the realization that the fabled “lady in the black mantilla” of whom all Tortuga whispered was his lost lady of Devon. Never, in her wildest flights of imagination had she dreamed that woman would turn out to be Alan Bellingham’s wife.
“And you are faithful to this woman?” she murmured.
“I have been. In my own fashion.”
His bitterness had washed over her like a flood, but now a bitterness of her own rose up to match it.
“Then you are a fool,” she cried, “for she has had many lovers!”
He gave her a stern look. “That was before she knew I was alive,” he said. “We all seek surcease where we can, Marie as well as I.”
Charity’s lip clenched in her soft lower lip. She would bring down this goddess! She would topple this statue of purity he had created and reveal her feet of clay!
“She has a lover now!” she snapped. “Did you not know it?” Her voice mocked him. “Your Marie loves a Frenchman named René du Bois. I have seen them together—I have seen her lie moaning in his arms amid the trees at Magnolia Barony!”
Court towered above her. Both his height and breadth seemed to grow so that she quailed in fear at this storm cloud that advanced upon her. His eyes, gray and deadly, stabbed at her like the rapier in his belt.
“We will have no more of this,” he said slowly. “Do not speak her name again, or—” he raised his arm and she shrank back—“I will cleanse her name from your lips!”
For a moment Charity stared up at him. So tall and haughty and fearsome, standing there in his calm terrible defense of the unworthy Marie! Then, with a sob, she turned and ran back up the stairs.
She sent word she would not be down to breakfast. But, from the courtyard below, through her open door, she heard Court’s voice rumble upward. “Tell Misstress Charity that if she does not appear at once, she will feel the flat of my cutlass on her winsome bottom the whole of the distance to the table!”
Charity rose with alacrity. There was no mistaking the deadliness of his tone. Sullenly, she approached the stairs and dawdled down them, moving more slowly with each lingering step, turning an insolent face toward him.
He watched her descent grimly, standing with his long legs spread well apart, his trousers drawn tight over his lean thighs, his hard gray eyes considering her. As she reached the bottom step he gave her a mocking bow and offered her his arm. Ignoring the arm, she marched toward the dining room and flounced down on the chair he held for her.
As they were served, he considered her across the table.
“I had thought to send you back to England,” he said musingly.
“Good!” she cried. “I cannot leave here too soon! The place is hateful, you are hateful! When do I sail?”
“You do not,” he said. “I have reconsidered.”
Charity put down the piece of bread she had just broken. “You have what?”
“I realize now that I cannot let you return. You are a danger to Marie. You know that she comes here to visit me and—you have shown a vengeful spirit toward her. You might seek to harm her.”
Rage warmed Charity’s blood. She sat trembling, her eyes sparkling savagely. At the moment she wanted nothing so much as to be revenged on them both.
“So, I have brought you downstairs to tell you that you may consider this house your prison.”
“Am I not to be allowed out?” Her voice shook.
“Only in my company, or in the company of Ravenal, whom I trust.”
“And all this because I was employed at Magnolia Barony?” she challenged.
“No, although that was the reason I kept you here at first. I wanted news of her.”
She had not thought of that. She had thought the reason was a more personal one ... a liking for her company, perhaps. Now the words went through her like an arrow shaft. He had kept her with him only because he wanted news of Marie. So overcome was she that she felt herself sway in her chair.
Then common sense reasserted itself. She must trick this buccaneer
somehow, she must get away from him and regain her freedom.
“You would not have to send me back to Charles Towne,” she said when she could speak again. “I could give you my word that I would stay in England if you sent me there.”
His eyes roved over her face thoughtfully. “You would not keep it,” he said at last. “You would return to him.”
“To whom?” Her voice shook.
“To Alan Bellingham,” he answered angrily. “It is plain you love him. Else why so bitterly attack his wife?”
“Would my word mean nothing?” she asked.
He gave a short laugh. “The word of a woman in love means little.”
“And of a man in love even less!” she cried, rising so abruptly she knocked over her chair. “You promised to return me to England!”
His eyebrows raised as he considered her lovely outraged face. “And when did I promise you this, pray?”
“Why—why—you always send the women you buy back to England!”
“Not always. Did they tell you there was a Spanish lady?”
“You sent her back! Leeds Kirby said so!”
“Ah, but not to England—to Havana. And in my own good time. Kirby talks too much,” he added humorlessly.
She stood, her hands clenched. A whole torrent of wails would not deter him in his firm purpose, she realized. No ... it would take something else. She must find where the tender spots were. She would learn this man—study him, discover his weaknesses, she told herself grimly.
And thereby find a way to free herself from him forever.
She reached down and with some difficulty righted the heavy chair she had knocked over and sat back down upon it, trying to compose herself.
“There are ugly stories in Tortuga about you and this Spanish lady you kept here and then returned to Havana.”
“Faith,” he returned equably, “there are ugly stories in Tortuga about you and me. That does not make them true.”
She tried again. “It is said she too was another man’s wife.”
“A widow, soon to be rewed. It is my misfortune to seek solace with other men’s wives, as you have discovered.”
“Do you not feel . . . jealousy, to know the women you hold dear lie in other men’s arms when you are not with them?”
An imperceptible shiver went through his large frame although his face remained expressionless. Ah, she had thrust home, she thought in triumph.
When he spoke his voice was calm. “I have held only one woman dear. And she—through honor—could throw me only the crumbs from her table. With that I have had to content myself.”
Charity glared at him. And transferred her anger to her trencher. “I am not hungry,” she declared, pushing it away.
“You will eat,” he commanded. “It is no part of my intent that you should starve yourself and so become ill.”
“Why?” she challenged. “Why should you care if I died even?”
He studied her. “That is difficult to answer,” he said. “I suppose I feel a certain guilt that I hold an Englishwoman against her will. But—I have done worse.” He shrugged.
“Your guilt! Your feelings!” she raged at him. “What about mine? Am I to be kept here eternally away from decent people, always in the company of sea robbers and buccaneers?”
She thought he winced at that. “You are right in what you call me,” he said. “Although it was none of my making in the beginning, it has become God’s truth. I am indeed a sea-robber and I am a buccaneer. But—” his voice hardened—“I am also your host, and as such you will pay me the respect that is due me. Or I will rip that handsome damask dress from your white skin and set you naked at the kitchen table eating scraps!”
A sob caught in her throat. She knew he would not do it, of course. But oh, how she yearned to hurl her goblet of wine at him and see its heavy silver lip strike his forehead making a dark bruise while its red port stained his face like blood!
“Am I excused?” she demanded fiercely, rising. “I would go to my room.”
His cold eyes flicked over her. “No, you are not excused. Since we are to be penned up here together, we will eat our meals together and sit together in civilized fashion drinking our wine after dinner. We will speak of other and better times and we will make the best of what we have.”
“By what right do you command me, Captain Court?”
A wry smile played over his dark face. “By right of purchase. I bought you in the marketplace.”
She brought her fist down hard upon the table. “God’s death, you’re a villain!”
“Perhaps, but I ask you to consider your position. We are trapped here by circumstance, you and I. Life was none so good to you outside this island, was it? Nay, I have it from your own lips that it was not. Would you rather be in Massachusetts then, waiting for the fire? Or in New York trudging through the forests with four lusty trappers? Or perhaps in the patroon’s blockhouse awaiting his pleasure?” His words lashed her, and she looked away for she could not meet his eyes. “So I think that you and I must come to an understanding. We live in hell. Charity—an earthly hell that was not of our own making, but we must dwell in it nonetheless. But in that hell we might reach out a hand to each other and make the days more bearable.”
“You should have been a preacher,” she mocked. “Next you will chide me with my sins!”
“No,” he said soberly. “I will not do that. My own are too black to contemplate, and I find yours pale and restful by comparison.”
She studied him, calmly now.
“Try to understand me,” he said suddenly. “I am pledged to protect one woman, her to whom I plighted my troth—”
“On a hill in Devon,” Charity finished woodenly.
“And so I must protect her honor too,” he finished silkily. “She takes a long chance by coming to me under cover of her visits to Barbadoes.”
Charity recalled Marie’s other ruses to gain better access to her various lovers and yearned to tell him of them, but she thought better of it. He was a man of towering rages. To drive him too far would be dangerous.
“If she loves you so much, why does she not leave Alan and come here and live with you openly?”
“In honor she cannot,” he sighed. “And she is a woman of honor, even though in your anger you would cast shame upon her. She gave her hand to Alan when she thought me dead, and now she cannot lightly cast him aside.”
Charity digested that. Marie had done her work very well, she realized. It would take a deal of undoing. Best to play along with him now, so she could strike later.
“I see that she cannot in honor leave Alan,” she said, and sat back down.
He brightened. “You can see that? Ah, then you understand why I cannot let you go? Because even though you promised—and truthfully meant to keep your word—that you would not reveal what you have learned here, there might come a time when in anger or in confusion you might speak her name—and cost her all that she holds dear. Her husband’s love, her peace of mind—”
“Her honor,” added Charity, trying to keep the irony out of her tone and almost succeeding.
He gave her an uncertain look. “I think you mock me,” he said slowly. “But no matter. It is not a thing to concern us much. Twas only that I wished you to understand why I have this great need to keep you here. It is not that I have anything against you, but—”
“I am a danger.”
“To her,” he finished.
They sat a while in silence.
“You could fare worse,” he pointed out. “Here you will be well housed, well served.”
“Like any captured bird,” she said bitterly and rose. “Have I your permission to leave the table now? I would retire and leave you to your thoughts.”
“They are dark ones today,” he said and nodded. She crossed the courtyard, white-faced, her teeth clenched. She had not known it was possible to hate a man so much.
The next day, when Kirby came by looking for Court, who was out, Charity turned
on him accusingly. “You knew Marie Bellingham was Court’s mistress and that I’d been employed at their plantation!”
“I knew.” He paused. “You’d best not tamper with Court, Charity. You’ll find his relationship with the lady from Charles Towne has all the force of a marriage for him.”
“But—Marie’s already married,” gasped Charity. “To Alan Bellingham.”
“Jeremy doesn’t really see it that way,” said Kirby, frowning. “Marie was his first, you see. And they were torn apart. A few words spoken over her head by a minister didn’t change things in his view. I think he stays out of Charles Towne to avoid killing Alan Bellingham.”
Charity ignored that. “Why didn’t Marie wait for him?”
“She thought he was dead. A reasonable assumption, when you come to think about it. He was gone a couple of years. When he finally returned, he found himself in the middle of Monmouth’s Rebellion. But he went looking for her right through the thick of it. They caught him, of course, but they couldn’t hold him. And he has never stopped thinking of her as his only love.” Kirby’s mood changed and he grinned. “So you’d better stop mooning over Jeremy and turn your face toward me. He’s taken.”
Charity tossed her head and bade him goodbye. She heard him laughing as he went out through the courtyard.
CHAPTER 39
At dinner that night Charity tried another tack with Court. “I will buy my way out of here,” she told him. “I will earn money and pay you back for the money I have cost you. Surely you would not hold me then!”
“Earn money? In Tortuga?” Court’s eyebrows shot up quizzically.
“Certainly,” she said. “I will teach. I am proficient in French and Spanish. Surely there are many here who—”
His laugh interrupted her. “Teach? D’you not know these sea dogs come from France and Holland as often as England? And Spanish most of them know, either from service in the galleys or from Spaniards they’ve taken prisoner. Teach?” He laughed again.
She tapped her fingers, rebellious.
“Come,” he said humorously. “We’ve finished our meal. Let us play whist and forget your desire to leave me.” He rose.
This Loving Torment Page 40
