This Loving Torment

by Valerie Sherwood

  It was the wrong thing to have said.

  With a roar Court was on him, driving him around the heavy table and into the courtyard. Charity screamed in terror as they lunged and parried, leaping about over the tiles. She could see that although Tom was a good swordsman, he was no match for Court. With muscles hardened to iron from his days as a galley slave, and driven by the pent-up rage that was in him, Court drove his opponent back and back. Suddenly Tom slipped on a loose tile and fell hard on his back. In an instant Court had flicked Tom’s blade from his hand and stood over him, the point of his rapier at Tom’s throat.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” he said in a low deadly tone.

  Tom stared up at him. “Ye’ll not kill me for a girl who prefers you?” he cried.

  “Prefers me?” echoed Court bitterly. He drew a deep breath, but kept his rapier tip at Tom’s throat. “Is this true?” he challenged Charity.

  White-faced she stood raging inwardly, but knew she must agree to save Tom’s life. “Yes,” she said shakily, “I do prefer you, Jeremy.”

  For a long time he stared at her, and she could not tell what was behind the gray devil’s mask he wore.

  Suddenly he sheathed his sword. “Up, Tom,” he said. “I'm behaving like a fool this morning. If you can overlook it?”

  Looking vastly relieved, Tom scrambled to his feet and brushed off his velvet coat. “I must get back to my ship. Wilt walk with me?” Court hesitated. “Ye said she was her own woman, Jeremy.”

  “That I did,” said Court in a weary voice. “Twas a lie, but I said it. She is mine.”

  His! Once again anger swelled Charity’s breast.

  “I prefer Alan Bellingham to you both!” she screamed after them. And ran up the stairs to be free of the sight of them.

  On the small table beside her bed she saw that Tom had left her a gift—a pair of heavy gold bracelets. She stared down at them.

  Oh, God, she asked herself, what have I become?

  Tormented, she flung herself down at her dressing table and gazed at her face in the mirror.

  She must get back to Alan, she told herself almost hysterically. She must not live with this devil of a buccaneer who could make her flame up at his touch, who had the power to hurt and degrade her, who would use her and cast her aside as callously as . . . as Tom had done.

  For a long time she sat with her head in her hands.

  Court did not return.

  From Ravenal she learned that the Sea Witch had sailed.

  Charity brooded on that. Another foray . . . another return to her waiting arms. Another battle. She told herself she hoped he never returned.

  Still she watched the bay.

  And into that bay sailed a ship she knew—the Marybella on which she’d come from New York to Charles Towne; its captain must have decided to trade with the buccaneers. The Marybella's captain wouldn’t have a price on his head like Court and Kirby—and she knew him. He’d take her with him!

  At the marketplace behind the quay, with Ravenal in attendance, she learned that the Marybella was indeed bound for Charles Towne—and when she would sail. Minutes before the Marybella was due to leave, Charity sat at table and called angrily for the cook, complaining of the meat. With cook tasting her product in puzzlement, Charity flounced from the room and once out, sped by Ella and out the kitchen door. At the quay she quickly contrived her passage with the captain.

  She boarded the ship in her old green dress that Alan had bought for her, carrying only Megan’s shawl as luggage.

  All that Court had given her she’d left behind. She paid for her passage with the golden bracelets Tom had left. Bitterly, Charity told herself that she had earned her passage.

  She looked back at the fast-retreating Mountain Fort that guarded the luckless and the lawless. And then up at Court’s house, growing small in the distance.

  When he returned, he would find her gone. Somehow, the satisfaction she expected to feel from that thought was missing.

  BOOK V

  Charles Towne 1688

  CHAPTER 44

  Aboard the Marybella, Charity found herself looking back and feeling sorry that she had not been able to say a proper goodbye to her friends in Tortuga. She loved Ella, the dainty little mute girl who had befriended her; it was not right that she had had to run past her in that fashion without so much as a word. And Kirby . . . cynic though he was and bargainer for her body, Charity felt that in his own way he loved her; she should have told him goodbye also. Yet in her frenzy to avoid the giant Ravenal and so escape Jeremy Court forever, she had not been able to do so.

  It was one more score she chalked up against Court. How glad she was to escape him. Charity’s hands clenched till the knuckles whitened as she remembered her treacherous body’s wild response to his lovemaking.

  Oh, damn him, damn him. . .

  When she arrived in Charles Towne at last, Charity set out immediately for Magnolia Barony. Luckily, on the crowded docks she spied Josh, one of Alan’s trusted slaves, come to town with a cart to pick up supplies. His black face lit at sight of her for she’d often been kind to him; he was the first to welcome her back. She spent the time waiting for him to load the cart walking about, breathing the free air of Charles Towne, and comparing it with Tortuga.

  Here no frowning fort loomed over the city, its fixed guns pointed out to sea. No wild crowd of swarthy cutlass-clanging buccaneers laughed and jostled and bore away with them bright-eyed women with whisky voices. No medley of foreign traders bargained for stolen Spanish goods at the quay. It was not so colorful but ... it was safer. Here people led steady, placid lives, made homes, bore children. She told herself that was what she wanted.

  Overhead pelicans and black skimmers wheeled, competing with the gulls for a chance at the fish and other seafood piled in baskets below. Ships unloaded West Indian rum and loaded indigo and rice. Tar and pitch went by in wagons and down the sluggish river in pirogues floated big cedar logs on their way to be sold. Around her were piles of beaver skins awaiting transshipment. Josh soon had his cart loaded, and as they jogged down the muddy cart-track through the green walls of lush vegetation, beneath an overarching roof of tree branches and dangling vines, Charity rehearsed her story.

  To her delight, the first person she saw at Magnolia Barony was Alan, returning home from the rice fields astride his big roan. She leaped off the cart before it stopped and ran toward him, green skirts flying. With an exclamation, he dismounted and hurried toward her.

  They met in mid-lawn and his hands clasped her shoulders. He regarded her in wonder. “But we thought you lost!” he cried. “Dr. Cavendish returned and told us that you and another young woman were captured with him but had disappeared in Tortuga.”

  “I was bought at a slave auction by a tavern owner,” she explained. “He was very fatherly, and allowed me to receive tips for my services—and when I had saved enough for passage money, he let me go.” Alan’s smile was bright and believing; it should have warmed her more than it did. But she noticed that he looked drawn and tired. And thinner.

  “You’ll need rest after your journey,” he said. “Brought your luggage?”

  “All was lost,” she said, looking down at her worn green dress and thinking of all the lovely things she had left behind in Court’s house in Tortuga.

  “Never mind,” he said gently. “We will provide.” And led her inside the house.

  As they entered, Marie was descending the stairway in a rose-pink silk dress. She paused at sight of them. It gave Charity a grim satisfaction to see the look of astonishment on her face.

  “See who has returned from the dead,” smiled Alan.

  “So I see,” murmured Marie.

  She is asking herself if I could have seen her on Tortuga, Charity thought, and wondered that Alan did not remark her pallor. He seemed abstracted, indifferent almost, to his beautiful wife standing there.

  “We heard you had been swallowed up in the sinkholes of Tortuga,” said Marie, regain
ing her composure.

  Charity yearned to say, We shared the same sinkhole! But she did not. Instead she glibly repeated the story she had told Alan. That Marie could not gainsay it, she was certain. Court, she felt, would hardly have mentioned her presence in his house, and who else would the cloistered “lady in the black mantilla” know in Tortuga?

  With her usual disdain, Marie drew her skirts aside as Charity passed her. But when Charity looked back from the stair landing, Marie was still standing there, gazing up at her with a puzzled expression. As if she had expected Charity to be scarred and contaminated from her Tortuga experience and was surprised to find her looking as fresh and lovely as ever. Resentment flamed Charity’s cheeks and she yearned to fling at Marie, I was as well treated there as you were —though not for the same reason.

  Biting her lips, Charity hurried on to the stuffy little room upstairs with its broken washbowl and hard bed. After her recent luxurious surroundings, it looked worse than ever to her.

  Of all those on the plantation, Megan was most joyful to see her. She came running up the attic stairs and, bursting into the little room, flung her arms around Charity and hugged her. “When I heard ye was taken, I cried for days,” she said. “Sure and you’re like my own daughter to me, Charity.”

  Charity’s throat closed up and she hugged Megan silently. The gray-haired Irishwoman was a true friend.

  Megan pushed Charity away and stared at her in wonder. “It’s a miracle!” she cried. “To be taken by pirates and come back looking none the worse for wear! I’d been thinkin’ you’d end up in a brothel and that would be the end of you.”

  And well I might except for Jeremy Court, thought Charity grimly. And wondered where the Sea Witch was tonight. . . .

  The account books gave a clear explanation of why Alan looked so troubled. Her second day back, Charity had no sooner settled herself on the high stool and opened a ledger, than he appeared. Although he cut a handsome figure in his cream brocade coat and silk knee breeches, his face was very sober.

  “A word with you, Mistress Charity,” he said, and Charity turned to him, glad that McNabb wasn’t present. He cleared his throat. “As you’ll see at once, from the books, Magnolia Barony is in trouble. We had a storm in Charles Towne while you were gone. Lashing seas and high winds that knocked down many trees. There was a high tide, one of the flood gates was carelessly left open—in short, the rice crop was ruined.”

  Thunderstruck, Charity stared at him. “But you were counting on that—you needed it to pay your debts!”

  “Aye,” he said grimly. “So now the money won’t be forthcoming and unless there’s new money from somewhere, my creditors will be closing in. All the planters around here were hurt by the storm; none can advance me what I need—many in fact are as lost as I am.”

  “Never say you’re lost, Alan,” she said softly, touching his arm, and in the heat of the moment forgetting that she had never before used his given name. “There must be a way.”

  He looked away as if he could not bear the sympathy in those topaz eyes. “Nay,” he muttered. “Not this time. Each year I’ve got in deeper, spending more, ever more than I have earned.”

  “Your wife’s jewels,” she cried. “What of them? Would they not hold off your creditors until you can bring in another crop?”

  He looked astonished. “She has but a set of amethysts, some coral and seed pearls—some jet she has worn for mourning for her father. All trilling, compared with my needs.”

  But what of the diamonds and emeralds and rubies Charity had seen spilling out of that coffer Marie had once so angrily shoved out of sight, Charity wondered silently. Were they all gifts from Court and therefore to be hidden from Alan?

  She kept silent, her heart aching for this troubled man, unwilling to so grievously hurt him by telling him of his wife’s unfaithfulness.

  “Then there is no way?” she asked sadly.

  “I see none.” He turned to her in misery. “They’ll be selling Magnolia Barony away from me.” He looked so hopeless that she touched his arm again. At her touch, he turned and with a sob enfolded her in his arms.

  She stroked his hair, murmured soothing words and let him hold her thus, his head resting on hers. After a time his dry sobs ceased and he stepped back from her, embarrassed. But his voice was stronger and he seemed to have gained strength from her.

  “I ask your pardon,” he said humbly. “But this land has meant so much to me. The thought of losing it wounds me deep.”

  “There is no need to ask pardon of me,” she said gently. “Had I but the power, I would give it back to you.”

  A shadow of a smile passed over her face. “I am sure you would, Mistress Charity. For the kindness of your heart, I am grateful.” He paused, embarrassed. “I came to ask you to say nothing of this state of affairs to my wife. She does not know and McNabb is sworn to silence.”

  “But will she not know when they come to sell the place?” Charity asked.

  He gave a nod. “But until then I would preserve her happiness. Bad enough that I must drag her down with me—let her be happy yet a little while.”

  Charity promised to say nothing to Marie and watched him walk back to the house, his handsome shoulders drooping in his brocade coat.

  There was a time when his last remarks about his wife would have cut her to the quick, but now they left her oddly unmoved. How often had she wished that Alan would take her in his arms and yet, when at last those arms had enfolded her, she felt only pity. In her mind Alan seemed not a desired lover but a lost unhappy child. She felt oddly dissatisfied by his behavior. Court too had suffered grievously, but he had not let life down him, he had continued to fight. Why could not Alan do the same?

  It was all very strange and it puzzled her. With a sigh she went back to trying to figure out McNabb’s scraggly writing. Before the day was done she realized the depth of Alan’s debacle; it would take a small fortune to bail him out

  Magnolia Barony would soon be breaking up, but for the time Charity was back in Alan’s household, back in her old job on the plantation—and back combing Marie’s lovely ash-blonde hair.

  “I am curious,” Marie said next day, watching Charity’s face intently in the mirror as she wielded the silver comb. “You must have seen many pirates in Tortuga.”

  “Many,” said Charity, combing impassively.

  Marie’s shoulders moved a little in her lace combing jacket. “Did you, for instance, see the notorious Captain Court about whom all Charles Towne is talking?” she asked casually.

  Charity could not resist giving a strand of Marie’s hair a sharp pull. “Oh, did I hurt you?” she cried.

  Marie winced and her lips compressed. “We were speaking of Captain Court,” she said.

  “Yes, I saw him.”

  “And did you find him well-favored?” pursued Marie.

  For a moment Charity remembered that lean strong body with its great breadth of shoulder, the way he strode and took stairs three at a time, his deep resonant voice and arresting hawklike face. In the mirror she met Marie’s violet eyes and shrugged. “I saw him but once by the light of guttering candles. He is very tall and dark. It was not I who served him rum but another girl. Many buccaneers are well-favored. Many bear deep scars from their engagements with the Spaniards.”

  Those violet eyes were watching her keenly. Apparently pleased with her answer, and relieved that she professed not to know Court, Marie asked lightly, “Was it he who took your ship?”

  Charity’s hand trembled ever so slightly. She managed to control it. “No, a French pirate named St. Clair.”

  “Under Court’s direction, no doubt,” said Marie complacently. “Tis said he is behind all these attacks on shipping from Charles Towne.”

  You know better than any other that is untrue, for you’ve had it from his own lips! thought Charity stormily. She stepped around to comb the other side of Marie’s hair and in her rage knocked some powder from Marie’s dressing table. With an angry exc
lamation, Charity bent over the spilled powder.

  It was well she did so for her expression would surely have given her away. With a madly beating heart, she bent her head and addressed herself to cleaning up the spilled powder. Was Marie so prone to treachery, she asked herself, that she must needs cuckold her husband and then blacken her lovers? Charity’s hands shook with fury. But her anger was not so much for Alan as for Court. Alan had long been played for a fool by this violet-eyed temptress. But Jeremy Court—ah, he deserved better. He had come through hell to reach this woman’s side. And when Marie had come to him in Tortuga at last, how easy for him to have kept her there, his helpless prisoner! But he had held himself in check to preserve Marie’s honor. Her honor! Charity was near bursting with rage.

  With as placid an expression as she could muster, Charity straightened up and resumed combing Marie’s hair. But having finished her combing at last, Charity could not resist saying, as she removed Marie’s lace combing jacket, “Captain Court is known to have a mistress who comes by ship to visit him. She is always veiled in a black mantilla.”

  She was touching Marie’s head as she said that and felt the woman’s body freeze for a moment before Marie regained her self-control.

  “Oh?” Marie turned her head this way and that to consider her coiffure in the mirror. Her voice sounded strained. “Do they say what she is like?”

  Charity gave a contemptuous shrug. “One who saw her face when the wind blew back her mantilla said she was not so much for looks. Light hair but a hard face, as if she were a woman used by many men. He said he’d seen better in the brothels of Tortuga.” She laid down the comb and regarded Marie with insolent eyes.

  Marie’s voice shook as she fought for control. “I would advise you to say little about your experiences in Tortuga. There are those who will wonder how it is that you, without money, managed to make your way back. They will speculate that you may well have earned your passage in those very brothels you speak of, and it will weigh against you in securing a husband.”