This Loving Torment

by Valerie Sherwood

  “I had not thought of that,” said Charity, and took herself off to McNabb’s office. As she entered, the gray-haired Scot smiled at her. Although he had greeted her gruffly on her return, she knew he was glad to have her back.

  She was sitting on the stool struggling with the accounts when Alan came in to speak to McNabb. He looked strikingly handsome in his lavender satin coat and as he turned to leave, be said something to McNabb about conditions at Cavendish Landing. Cavendish Landing, Charity knew, was the name old Dr. Cavendish had given to his upriver plantation. Her words arrested Alan.

  “Dr. Cavendish was kind to me on board the Gull,” she said. “I should like to see him and thank him. Do you think he will be coming downriver soon?”

  “He rarely goes out since his return from Tortuga,” said Alan thoughtfully. “Still ... I have a pirogue going upriver tomorrow morning. You could ride along and return in the afternoon. I think Dr. Cavendish would like to see you; he asked several times if we had heard from you.”

  So the old doctor in the huge ridiculous pantaloons had thought enough of her to inquire as to her safe return. She was touched.

  The next morning Charity waited at the landing and soon found herself gliding up the lazy river via pirogue toward Cavendish Landing. The dark mirror-like water was almost black and along the banks, amid clumps of palmettos and olive and evergreen laurel, great cypresses rose, festooned by the gray funereal Spanish moss. The silence was broken only by the call of birds, the chatter of gray squirrels, and by the occasional burst of deep-throated melodious song from the slaves manning the pirogue. Charity fanned herself with a palm-leaf and watched as a white-tailed deer darted away, startled at their approach. She waved to another pirogue as it went by carrying an upriver planter. She remembered the man from the ball at which she had discovered Marie’s affair with René. It seemed so long ago. . . .

  She was surprised to find that Dr. Cavendish’s house—although everybody referred to him respectfully as “quite rich”—was not nearly so impressive as Magnolia Barony. Built of black cypress on a brick foundation, it was squarish and rather awkward, but its owner came forward with great cordiality and welcomed her.

  In a big cane chair on the verandah, Charity sat and sipped a glass of wine. The old doctor was much thinner, more fragile. His Tortuga experience had aged him, she decided.

  He brightened when she told him that Polly, too, had managed to leave Tortuga bound for England. She did not say how, but he seemed satisfied.

  “I did so worry about you,” he told her earnestly. “You were placed in my safekeeping by Alan Bellingham, and I felt I had not taken proper care of you.”

  She smiled into his eyes and thought how nice if this kindly old man could have been her father.

  “And once I thought you had sent me a message,” he said, “when I overheard St. Clair’s pirates talking about a woman sending a message.”

  She was not listening very intently, allowing herself to relax after her journey upriver, feeling drowsy in the afternoon heat.

  “But twas not you,” he added regretfully. “Twas some Spanish lady.”

  “Spanish lady?” murmured Charity from her luxurious languor. She was thinking of Dona Isabel.

  “Well, I would presume she was Spanish. Twas someone called ‘the lady of the black mantilla’ that they spoke of.”

  Slowly that sank in. Charity’s fingers tightened on her glass and she sat up. “What . . . what did you say, Dr. Cavendish?”

  “What? Oh, I was just speaking of some message that devil St. Clair was expecting, that did not come. His quarters were close to mine, you see. I could hear him cursing—though rather weakly, since he’d had a fight with another buccaneer and near lost his life.”

  “A lady ... in a black mantilla? You are sure they said that?”

  “Aye, tis what they said. They were most fussed over it. Some more wine, mistress? You’ve had a fatiguing journey upriver.”

  “Yes, please,” murmured Charity, sinking back in her chair. “Most fatiguing.” She held up her glass, but absently, for her heart pounded and her mind was flooding with thoughts. Like the jagged pieces of a broken mirror, they fit together one by one and on that shattered reconstructed surface one face was reflected . . . Marie.

  Why had she not seen it? Marie—Marie Bellingham was behind these attacks on the shipping. Marie was using Court. Under cover of her visits to her lover in Tortuga, Marie managed—probably at quayside—to slip information on sailing dates and ships’ manifests to Captain St. Clair.

  Charity was sure that she had stumbled on the truth. It explained everything: Marie’s insistence that Charity sail on the Gull—she had wanted Charity to be captured so she could not tell Alan about René. Marie had known the Gull would be captured, that Captain St. Clair would be out there waiting for them. And old Dr. Cavendish with his false-bottomed chest—St. Clair had expected the doctor to have more than five thousand pounds; had Dr. Cavendish not told Marie last April he would be carrying ten? Marie’s coffer of jewels so hastily and angrily put away when Charity had come in without knocking—perhaps Court had not given them to her. Were they Marie’s commission, her share of the loot for furnishing information to Captain St. Clair?

  The revelation almost overcame Charity.

  But why? she asked herself. Why would Marie do it?

  René! The answer stabbed at her. Neither Marie nor René had any money of their own. But inventive Marie had found a way to get some, by visiting Tortuga and selling information to the French pirate.

  Money Marie needed in order to run away with her lover René. . . .

  That was why Marie had been so willing to villify Court, why she had been so eager to make Charity think he was behind the attacks on Charles Towne shipping; she wanted to protect her source of illicit income—the French pirate St. Clair!

  Charity’s teeth clenched through her soft lower lip and her face grew so pale and set that Dr. Cavendish regarded her anxiously. No, no, she insisted, she was quite all right; it must be the heat. But her head was reeling from her discovery, and she found that she could not concentrate on the kindly old doctor’s conversation.

  It seemed an eternity before the pirogue came to take her back to Magnolia Barony.

  CHAPTER 45

  As soon as the pirogue reached the landing at Magnolia Barony, Charity hurried ashore and went looking for Megan. She found her in a guest bedroom, tidying up.

  “How were things between the landgrave and his wife while I was in Tortuga?” she asked Megan.

  Megan turned from plumping a pillow and rolled her eyes. “Terrible,” she said. “Just terrible. M’lady came back from her last trip to Barbadoes in a furious temper and stormed about. Then she became very reckless and rode about so fast she was thrown and sprained her ankle. As soon as she could walk again she gave a ball. Something must have happened there because she locked herself in her room afterward and cried and cried. And drink! Bottles, that woman consumed! That’s been-some weeks ago, and she’s still not recovered. Don’t you think she looks bad?”

  “Not so bad as Alan—as Mr. Bellingham.”

  “True, the landgrave looks worse than she does but it’s business worrying him, I think. Tis something else upset her. She’s not been slipping out o’nights lately. Something must have gone wrong twixt her and whoever she was meeting.”

  Trouble with René . . . René, the foppish Frenchman Marie loved so much. French . . . and St. Clair was French. Could there be a connection? Could René be a—a sort of agent of Captain St. Clair’s, here to spy out Charles Towne? Could he have cultivated the landgrave’s amorous wife to gain information about her wealthy friends, to learn in advance who could be held for ransom? Could Marie have been conveying shipping information that René gathered? And had she—now that St. Clair was laid up and no longer aprowl—lost her value to René?

  If Marie’s cheeks were pale over that, then René must have thrust Marie aside rather than the other way around.... That ball
, after which she’d cried so miserably, might have been her attempt to see him again without making herself conspicuous, her attempt to win him back.

  It was pleasant to think that Marie might have been used by René, even as she herself had been used by Court. For reasons other than love.

  Suddenly Charity’s eyes narrowed and she smiled a wicked smile. She would go to Tortuga and confront Court with this evidence of Marie’s perfidy. This time she would have facts—he would have to believe her. Ah, to see his face when she told him! She might have been bought and sold but so, just as surely, had he been sold—his trust in Marie had allowed it.

  The great Captain Court had a price on his head because a woman willed it!

  “Ye look like a cat eating cream,” said Megan dryly.

  “Perhaps I am,” laughed Charity, and she strolled away humming.

  She would go to Tortuga . . . but who would pay her passage? Her wicked smile deepened. Of course! Court’s enemies would pay it! With sparkling eyes she went up to her room and, leaning on her elbows in the window, stared out at the beauty of the countryside as she conceived her dangerous plan.

  First she must find René. . . .

  Fortune was good to her. She did not have to look for René—he came to her. The next afternoon as she was walking across the lawn from McNabb’s office, she saw a pirogue glide up to the landing and a colorful party disembark. Across the lawn they strolled, the big-skirted laughing women in bright silks, the gallant gentlemen in knee breeches and wide-cuffed coats aglitter with silver and gold.

  Charity paused to watch them and her heart gave a leap—René was with them! Thin and smiling and clad in peach satin, he walked alongside an upriver planter’s wife, his plumed hat under his arm, his plum-colored velvet cuffs rolled wide.

  From the front door Marie, dressed for riding and carrying her own plumed hat, came out in a rush, her face alight, and hurried forward to greet her guests. Charity thought, had René not been with them, she’d wager Marie would have let them come to her!

  As they strolled past her, Charity heard René blandly explaining that he had not been well—a distemper of the climate, no doubt; indeed it had kept him much in bed of late. Charity caught Marie’s face as he said that, saw hope spring up in her violet eyes. Marie wanted to believe him, Charity was sure, and indeed René did not look too well, nor was his step as spry as usual.

  They could not stay long, one of the women said. They were on their way to Dr. Cavendish's plantation. Poor thing, he had not ventured out since his devastating experience of being captured and held for ransom in Tortuga. Her gaze flicked over Charity with sudden interest. Was not this the woman servant who was captured with Dr. Cavendish? she asked Marie. Marie frowned and shrugged an assent, and René looked at Charity with interest shining in his dark eyes.

  He is wondering what I know, divined Charity, and was reinforced in her belief that René was an agent of St. Clair’s.

  Well, well, said the woman. Imagine being captured and taken to Tortuga . . . Her bright gaze and the sudden titter of the other women told Charity they were imagining black-bearded pirates pouncing on her, tearing off her clothes, ravishing her. She gave them back a defiant look.

  “What think you of Tortuga, having been there?” prodded René.

  Charity’s chin lifted. “It is much like Charles Towne,” she said bitterly. “Full of low gossip and well-dressed women of easy morals.”

  The tittering ceased.

  “It is warm,” Marie’s cold voice cut in. “I need my fan. Charity, you will find it on my dressing table—the ivory one. Bring it to me.”

  At Marie’s command, Charity flushed and hurried away. When she returned, Marie snatched the fan, gave her a black look and turned her back on her. With deliberate casualness Charity wandered through the guests and paused by René.

  “I would speak with you,” she whispered.

  He looked up alertly.

  “Alone,” she said.

  “In the trees beyond the garden,” he muttered.

  Charity thought, as she turned, that Marie might have noticed them speaking together, but she kept her expression as bland as René’s and headed toward the garden.

  It was not long before he joined her, moving swiftly, casting his eyes about to find her.

  “Here,” whispered Charity. “I am here.” And came out from the shadow of a big magnolia.

  He smiled, his dark eyes kindling at her beauty as she moved toward him. He swaggered a bit and postured as if confident his irresistible charm was responsible for this meeting. Charity regarded him scathingly.

  “Shall we sit?” he asked.

  “I have not the time,” said Charity. “It’s long enough you took getting out here,” she snapped. “Until I saw you in the pirogue, I was about to look for you in Charles Towne where I’m told you have rooms!”

  René blinked. “I do. But what concern is it of yours, that I do not favor Magnolia Barony with my presence?”

  “Not my concern,” said Charity in a voice pregnant with meaning. “Captain St. Clair’s concern.”

  Shutters seemed to come down over his liquid dark eyes, making them murky. “St. Clair?” he mused. “Now where have I heard that name?”

  “In Tortuga you have heard it,” said Charity boldly. “And elsewhere.”

  “Ah, yes, and you have been recently in Tortuga. You must tell me about this St. Clair.”

  “Do not fence with me, Monsieur du Bois,” said Charity impatiently. “Captain St. Clair sent me here with a message for you. He’s well recovered now from his fight with Captain Court and eager to be aprowl again.”

  René’s eyes narrowed. “And what has St. Clair to say to me?”

  “He doesn’t trust Marie any longer. He thinks she’s conniving with Captain Court to get him hanged.”

  René laughed contemptuously. “Madness! She is in the palm of my hand.”

  “Is she? It is well known in Tortuga that on her last visit to Barbadoes she slept at Captain Court’s house and did not go near Captain St. Clair. She is playing you for a fool, Monsieur du Bois, and Captain St. Clair sends you word to beware of her or you’ll end up dangling on hemp.”

  René’s face suffused slowly with dark color. “The lying baggage,” he muttered. He turned to Charity sharply. “But that cannot be the only reason you were sent?”

  “No, I’m to take the information to him. He’s ready to set sail again and would appreciate some information from you.”

  “I’ll have it. By what ship do you leave?”

  Now came the delicate part of her negotiations.

  “I’m in some difficulties,” she frowned. “I had money when I left Tortuga but I—I diced it away.”

  He gave a sudden laugh. “That’s easy mended. Bring me a handful of Marie’s jewels, and you’ll have passage money and plenty to spare—that last lot St. Clair gave her is enough for a dozen passages.”

  “But . . . suppose I’m discovered?”

  “It’s a chance we all must take,” he shrugged. “Did you think I could help you? Merde, I’m always in debt to my ears. This coat I’m wearing—haven’t yet paid the tailor.”

  Charity bit her lip. She had expected he would rise to the bait and finance her. “She . . . she watches me,” she said defensively. “She is suspicious of me since I’ve returned from Tortuga.”

  He shrugged again. “The Flying Fin leaves five days hence for Barbadoes. It’s carrying nothing of value, but from Barbadoes you can reach Tortuga by the same route Marie did.”

  Charity nodded, pretending to knowledge she did not have.

  “Bring me the jewels and I’ll turn them into ready cash. I’ll arrange for your passage and you can be on your way before Marie realizes her loss.”

  Near them a twig snapped, and René’s head went up alertly.

  “Were you followed?” whispered Charity.

  “I don’t think so,” he muttered.

  Laughter from the garden reached them, voices coming
their way.

  “We’d best part,” he said. “Bad to be seen together, although . . .” he reached out and touched her bosom familiarly, “I’d prefer to linger.”

  Charity stiffened. “Take your hands from Captain St. Clair’s property,” she said coldly, and he gave a low laugh.

  “I can wait,” he said. “St. Clair’s not a man of hot blood—you’ll soon tire of him.”

  With a very realistic sniff, Charity made her way back through the trees to McNabb’s office. As she reached it she looked back and saw that René was just coming out of the trees to join the laughing group in the garden. She spent the afternoon working on the books and when she left the office the guests had already departed, their pirogue was gone.

  As she passed the dining room on her way to eat supper in the kitchen, Charity saw that Marie’s face was very white and set. She guessed that René had been cool to her advances. Charity smiled with satisfaction. It was time that Marie suffered a little!

  The next afternoon Charity looked out the window of the dining room, where she was counting spoons with Megan, and saw Marie, dressed in a handsome green riding dress, mounting her horse. Alan, already astride his horse, waited.

  “Where are they going?” Charity asked Megan.

  Megan replied that there was a nightdress in Marie’s saddlebag. A woman in the group who came by pirogue yesterday had told Marie that one of the Chanceneaux sisters was ill, and Marie was on her way to Charles Towne to see her. She planned to spend the night at the Chanceneaux home while Alan returned to the plantation.

  She’s going to slip out and see René, thought Charity, studying Marie’s straight back and fine horsemanship as the woman headed down the cart track beside her handsome husband. Charity wondered if René would see Marie.

  At dinner Alan was jumpy. He did not invite Charity to dine with him, but once when the door to the kitchen swung open she saw him drop his knife with unaccustomed awkwardness. She wondered if Alan had some inkling of Marie’s affairs. Perhaps he knew about them and loved her anyway. Somehow that thought had never occurred to her and a little shiver went through her.