“Tell him, do tell him”—Araminta’s weak voice had risen wildly—“that I still love him ... as I did . . . the night of the Green Flash.”
“I’ll tell him,” Lorraine promised huskily. She was still sitting there weeping when Jonas staggered in. Lorraine told him Araminta’s dying words but they seemed not to move him. He stumbled out and she did not see him for three whole days, not even at the funeral, which was of the plainest sort, with a cheap peaked pine coffin. Lorraine was joined by a handful of neighbors, the only mourners for the brief ceremony performed in the drenching rain.
When Jonas finally came back, he was sober—and had news.
“I’m going west,” he told Lorraine. “And since there’s no one to take care of you. I’ve bound you over to the Mayfields.”
Two blows falling at once! Lorraine had felt her world cut out from under her feet. Even her freedom was gone!
And in her mind it had somehow got all mixed up with ginseng.
“Why would you do that, lass?” Raile repeated. “Why would you throw the root overboard?”
Lorraine stopped glaring down at the root and looked up.
“My father spent the last of our money buying up all he could of this root and shipping it off to China on a ‘venture’ in the care of someone named Nicholls.” Her lip curled. “We never heard from either the ‘venture’ or Nicholls again!”
“Ah, but you might have,” was his thoughtful comment. “This root is highly valued by the Chinese—they’ll pay a fortune for it. Your father might have become rich from his ‘venture.’ ”
“So he said.” Lorraine’s voice was resentful. Thinking back, it seemed to her that all the money her father had ever got his hands on he had squandered away on “ventures,” as they called these efforts to send something overseas to be traded or sold. This strange-looking root reposing in Raile’s hand was a symbol to her of all that was wrong with her life.
No doubt Raile “ventured” as well as smuggled! Somehow that made everything worse.
“My father,” she said dully, “did not fare well in life. But if he has survived—as nobody believes—he will still be ‘venturing’ somewhere.”
“Is that so terrible, lass?” he asked her softly.
“Yes! Yes, it is terrible—for it cost my mother her youth and her looks and her health.” Lorraine’s voice broke and she flung away from him. “Oh, do not talk to me about the past,” she said. “And get that root out of my sight. I am grateful to you for the locket, but it ... it must mean something to you, since you carry it about. I cannot accept it!” She began to struggle to unclasp it from around her neck.
“Wait, lass.” There was sympathy in Raile’s voice, for he was remembering his own unhappy boyhood.
His hands clasped over her own trembling ones. “Keep the locket. I assure you it means nothing to me. I won it in a game of cards in Bordeaux. The young fool who wagered it flung it down as a stake and stalked off when he lost.”
“Then this”—Lorraine had given up trying to unclasp it and now her hands slipped from his and she opened the locket, peered down at it—“this woman whose picture is in it means nothing to you?”
The young face painted into the locket seemed to stare up at her accusingly. It was a challenging face; it belonged to a girl in a yellow dress with heather in her red-gold hair.
“Nothing at all,” said Raile. His voice was wooden. She held on to the locket uncertainly, staring up at him, trying to discern if he was telling the truth, but his gray eyes revealed nothing.
“I ask you to keep it,” he said gently. “As a souvenir of this voyage. Surely even your thorny pride can have no quarrel with that, for it is a trinket only, and not very valuable.”
As a souvenir of this voyage. . . . The words bit into Lorraine. They had a good-bye sound to them.
“I will keep it,” she said tonelessly. “And wear it in the spirit in which it was given.”
A trace of bitterness appeared around his mouth then. “By all means,” he agreed. “Wear it in the spirit in which it was given.” He looked away and then asked abruptly, “How do you like our ship’s doctor?”
“André?” On that subject, at least, Lorraine could wax enthusiastic. “I think he’s charming—and such a wonderful dancer! Did you notice how cleverly he moves his feet?”
“Yes,” muttered Raile. “He is nimble as a monkey. I noted that you danced more than one dance with him.”
“Oh, yes!” Lorraine’s face had brightened, for she loved dancing. “But I fear I have not yet mastered the new steps he taught me. Do you think we can persuade MacTavish to play for us again tomorrow night?”
Raile looked away. “Yes, I think Tav might do it—if you ask him,” he said, then went to the door and paused. “I’ll away while you prepare for bed, Mistress Lorraine, and I’ll knock to warn you when I return.”
“I think you might call me Lorraine, since we’re sharing a bedchamber,” observed Lorraine, fingering her locket.
He gave her a long slow look. “Sharing it . . . Are we?”
And he left, leaving her to ponder over why he had said that.
CHAPTER 12
MORNING FOUND LORRAINE leaning against the fleet ketch’s starboard rail, basking in the sun in her beautiful new gown. She had been standing there but a short time when once again she had the prickly sensation of being watched. She swung about to see the ship’s doctor striding down the deck to join her, looking debonair as usual in the morning light.
“Ah, the beautiful demoiselle!” He greeted her with an elaborate bow, making a fine leg as he did so. “ ’Tis hard to believe that you made that dress yourself. Faith, you’ve a talent with a needle! That gown puts all the Paris fashion dolls I’ve seen to shame!” He stood back and studied her critically.
“You give me too much credit, André,” Lorraine demurred—for after last night’s dancing they were on first-name terms. “ ’Tis the fabric that makes the gown.” But she could not help dimpling at such open admiration. She herself had never even seen one of the small French fashion dolls he spoke of, but she knew that they were shipped out of Paris in their finery so that their gowns could be copied full-size for the lucky women who could afford them.
“A fine dress indeed—’tis too bad ye’ve not a new chemise to match it!” The Frenchman smiled roguishly.
Lorraine gave him a reproving look, lifted her brows, and lightly flicked the worn ruffles of her chemise sleeves that spilled out from her elbows. She had no intention of discussing her intimate apparel with him, even if he was a superb dancer!
André L’Estraille seemed not to notice.
“Ah, would that we were in Paris!” He sighed. “Where we could replace these threadbare ruffles with Alençon lace—or point de France! I’d buy you a chemise so thin you could slip it through a keyhole!” That roguish smile again lit his handsome face and he cast a meaningful glance toward her cabin door as if to say: That keyhole!
“But we are not in Paris now, L’Estraille,” came Raile’s cool voice from over their heads. He swung down a ratline, landing lightly beside them on strong bare feet. He looked very fit, clad only in his trousers, with the muscles of his deep chest and sinewy shoulders rippling and gleaming bronze in the sunshine. Lorraine wondered suddenly if it could have been Raile’s gaze she had felt upon her just now. No, it had not been the cool contemplation of those light gray eyes she had felt—it had been a more malevolent stare.
“I wish you would not drop from the skies into my conversations with Mademoiselle Lorraine,” complained the Frenchman, looking aggrieved.
Raile laughed. “I’ll thank you not to be bothering my lass with your keyhole chemises!”
André regarded his captain warily. “Ye’d cross swords over it?”
“I might.” But the smile that went with the words was good-natured. “If I thought you’d gone too far with my lass here.”
André’s shoulders shrugged in a completely Gallic gesture. “The English have no savoirfaire." He sighe
d. “No éclat."
“But they do have good eyesight and good hearing where their women are concerned,” countered Raile in a warning voice.
Lorraine felt that this exchange had gone far enough. “I would speak to you in your ... in our cabin, Raile,” she said, touching his arm lightly.
With a grin at the discomfited Frenchman, Raile strolled off after his hurrying lady to their cabin and closed the door.
“If you flirt with our ship’s doctor,” he warned, “you may come out the loser, for flirtation is his game.”
“I wasn’t flirting with him,” said Lorraine frankly. “I felt someone watching me—I’ve had that feeling several times on deck—and I turned around to see if I could catch whoever it was. And there was André, striding down the deck toward me.”
“L’Estraille watches all the pretty ladies,” murmured Raile. “He was following one jauntily down the cobbles in Bordeaux when Jocko first introduced us.”
“I ... It wasn’t like that,” Lorraine admitted a trifle sheepishly. “I felt . . . well, evil eyes upon me. A menacing stare.”
“Then it definitely wouldn’t be L’Estraille,” laughed Raile. “For he has naught in his heart but seduction!” For a moment he looked at her more keenly, this slip of a girl alone on a ship full of men. “I’ll watch over you, lass,” he murmured, and she lowered her eyes, all too aware of the sudden heat in his.
When she looked up, she found him studying the ruffles of her chemise. Although they spilled out fashionably from the elbows of her big slashed sleeves, they were so threadbare they looked about to disintegrate.
He thought a moment, then went over and opened the smaller of his two sea chests, bent over it. When he rose and turned, she saw that he had something white in his hand.
“See if you can make do with this, lass,” he suggested crisply. “The fabric may not be quite thin enough to go through a keyhole, but perchance it will serve—it was given to me by a lady.”
Make do with it! Lorraine stared down at the delicate snowflakelike white lace that was deeply set into the fine cambric handkerchief he had tossed to her. But this was Venetian rosepoint—she knew because her mother had had a scrap of it still when she was a child. She looked up at him, dazzled.
“Won’t you . . . miss it?” she asked reluctantly, for she did not wish to rob him of a treasured keepsake.
“No—nor the lady either,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “For the last time I was in her home port, I learned she’d had the bad taste to marry somebody else.”
“Oh, well,” Lorraine said hastily. “In that case!” She took the delicate swatch of cambric and lace with delight—and spent the rest of the afternoon happily sewing pieces of the kerchief to her chemise sleeves so that when she appeared that night at dinner, the lace that dripped from her elbows caused André L’Estraille’s brows to lift in amazement.
“Why, what miracle is this?” he cried, reaching out to touch the delicate lace gingerly, as if to assure himself it was indeed real.
“A miracle by a man who makes miracles happen!” laughed Lorraine, glancing merrily toward Raile.
For a moment the eyes of the two men met. Steel bit into copper.
André looked away and subsided. But during the meal he often cast a narrow look at Raile, as if measuring him.
The next morning a gusty wind was blowing as Lorraine stepped out on deck, and she had a hard time keeping her skirts down. From the stern she saw the ship’s doctor strolling toward her. Suddenly after a wild blast of wind that took her skirts riding high, he stopped abruptly and focused, fascinated, on her legs. Lorraine reddened and bent almost double, clutching her skirts. When she looked up, he had gone.
The wind had died down when he came back, beaming.
“Ah, mademoiselle!” he hailed her blithely. “I have for you the one thing your costume requires!”
“You have hairpins, André?” she cried hopefully, for it was difficult to keep her hair tied back.
“To hold back that wondrous cloud of gold? Mon Dieu, no! Let it fly about! I have—these!” He held up the sheerest stockings she had ever beheld.
Lorraine had never owned a pair of silk stockings.
In Rhode Island, silk stockings were worn by the Lavinia Todds—not the Lorraine Londons!
“Oh, André, I couldn’t accept them!” she demurred in confusion.
“Why not? You have accepted a gown and a petticoat from Jacques Le Loup!”
“Yes, but he was—”
“Dead?” he mocked. “Mais if you can accept from a dead Frenchman a petticoat to encase those swaying hips, can you not accept a pair of stockings from a live one? I’ve been waiting for a pair of legs that would do them justice!”
His manner was so rollicking, his logic so comical, that Lorraine began to laugh.
“Wait, there is more!” He produced a pair of blue satin garters trimmed with silver lace rosettes and placed them calmly in her palm.
“What else do you keep in your cabin, André?” she gasped.
“Come and see,” he suggested wickedly.
Raile, who was standing in the prow, had turned and was observing them. His hawklike face darkened and he turned abruptly away.
Lorraine saw that from the corner of her eye. So it was possible to make the inscrutable captain jealous! Her heart sang and laughter seemed to bubble up in her voice as she thanked André warmly.
“Thank me by wearing them, mademoiselle!" he countered.
Lorraine went toward the cabin with a slight swagger for the benefit of Captain Cameron. He did not turn. Perhaps, she thought, irritated, he did not care!
Lorraine had eased the sheer stockings up over her legs, marveling at their wonderful silky feel, and had pulled on one blue silk garter, when the door burst open and the captain stood there clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Come in,” she said calmly.
“Thank you, I am in.” He shut the door behind him so hard that she jumped.
“André has given me a pair of silk stockings,” she volunteered.
“And a pair of blue garters,” he added grimly.
“With silver lace rosettes,” she amplified.
“I have observed those too,” he said heavily.
She bent to fasten the other garter, then deliberately lifted her skirts and whirled around so that he might view her pretty legs.
“Don’t they look nice?” she challenged.
He made a strangled sound in his throat. “Nice?” he echoed. “Is that the word you use for it? Don’t you know that damned Frenchman believes he has bought you for the price of those stockings and garters?”
Lorraine’s skirts dropped and her color rose. “That is not true!”
Raile strode over to her and caught her by the wrist. For a moment she thought that he might toss her onto the bunk and strip the stockings and garters from her legs, but that was not what he had in mind. He dragged her over to the smaller of his sea chests, tore it open, and stuffed some coins into her hand.
“Give those to L’Estraille,” he grated. “Thank him, but pay him!”
“I will not!” gasped Lorraine, struggling to his grip. “He’d be insulted!”
“Then I will do it!” he cried. Dragging her along beside him, he burst out onto the deck, came to a halt an arm’s length from the Frenchman.
“In plain English, L’Estraille, I owe you for those stockings and garters which have taken my lass’s fancy. Here.” He thrust the coins at the other man.
“But no, mon ami!” L’Estraille took a step backward, laughing. “They are a wedding gift! Did mademoiselle not tell you?”
Raile opened his mouth and closed it again. He turned to consider Lorraine narrowly. “No, she did not.”
“You did not give me the chance!” protested Lorraine, taking her cue from André.
“I realize the gift is a little early, but why should I not give it to her now?” continued L’Estraille guilelessly.
Raile continued
to study Lorraine. She was growning restive under that penetrating gaze. “Why not indeed?” he murmured—and turned on his heel and left them.
Lorraine sighed and turned her attention to the doctor.
“Do you know what the men call you, my fair Lorraine?” André asked.
In truth Lorraine had not given much thought to the men, who were all French and spoke in a tongue strange to her—it was the ship’s English-speaking officers she had cared about. But now, at something sardonic and amused in his tone, she looked up questioningly.
“They call you the captain’s bride,” he said softly. “But I doubt me we will ever see you wed to him. . . .”
Lorraine’s chin went up.
“And why not?” she challenged.
“Because I think you well may wed another man.” He smiled. “Me, for instance.”
Lorraine sniffed and turned about, intending to leave him, but with lightning speed he was there to block her path.
“I think in the end it will be me or nothing, my lovely demoiselle,” he murmured, and there was a hint of warning in his voice.
“Thank you, I shall take my chances,” said Lorraine stiffly.
“Ah, that you are already doing,” he countered, but he moved aside to let her pass. Then he changed his mind and seized her hand.
“André!” she said warningly.
“Ah,” he said. “When you lie restless and alone in your bunk tonight, think of me! I will remind you that although yon tall fellow who is now scowling at us may lay claim to the rest of you, in those stockings”—he nodded significantly downward—“the legs”—he chuckled wickedly—“the legs are mine.”
“André, hush!” she said, breaking free and feeling mortification flood her face with color. “You will shame me before the crew!”
He shrugged. “The crew is French, mademoiselle, they will understand. It is the English who will not, and perhaps”—he turned his narrow gaze toward Raile—“perhaps a Scot here and there will not either.”
She felt very sure a certain Scot would not!
CHAPTER 13
To Love a Rogue Page 15
