The Diamond King

by Patricia Potter

  He ordered the ship anchored, then silently cursed as Jenna and Meg appeared on deck. He nodded to her but did not approach.

  He’d been successful in avoiding her this past week. He worked eighteen to nineteen hours a day, often doing physical work with the crew, then falling into a hammock in a cabin he shared with Claude. He realized it hurt her. Bloody hell, it hurt him.

  He would destroy her if he allowed himself to get any closer to her. He could never marry her. It could well be a death sentence for her. At best, they would be fugitives all their lives.

  Rory Forbes, the former Black Knave, had married. The Black Knave had been wanted by the British. Alex’s mind turned that over, before he discarded it. Perhaps Forbes was alive. Perhaps he was not. But Rory’s wife had been a fugitive from Cumberland, a Jacobite marked for death. She’d had nothing to lose.

  Jenna had everything to lose.

  He turned his attention back to Vitória, the capital of the state of Espírito Santo. He looked for Marco, one of the crew who was Portuguese and would act as translator. Alex knew some Spanish, and the two languages—Spanish and Portuguese—had much in common.

  “You and I will go ashore alone,” he said. “Claude will stay here. I want him ready to sail immediately if he sees another ship come in.” He looked at Marco closely. “We may be left.”

  The man shrugged. “Every time I go to sea, I take risk.”

  “We will leave in thirty minutes,” he said.

  He turned back toward Jenna, who was standing with Meg. They were both looking toward the town as he approached them. Yet he knew Jenna was aware of his presence, just as he was always aware of her presence. She seemed to stiffen.

  “Meg,” he said, “I want to talk to Lady Jeanette. Will you find Robin and send him up here?”

  Meg looked at him curiously, but left without argument. For a moment, he just stood next to Jenna, enjoying the sense of lightness and belonging her presence gave him. There seemed no resentment on her part, only a guarded interest.

  “I am going ashore for a few hours,” he said. “I told Claude to set sail if he sees a British ship.”

  She nodded without comment.

  He suddenly felt as uncertain as a schoolboy. “I … thank you for taking such good care of Meg.”

  “I care about her,” she said simply.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked. “I cannot take you back to your … betrothed.” The word stuck in his throat, even knowing as he did that she had never met the man.

  She turned and looked at him then as if she had no idea how to answer. It was the first indecision he’d seen in her. There had been defiance, anger, resentment, then a passion that had stunned him.

  “If you wish to go on to Barbados, I’ll see if I can arrange it,” he said. “I will find you a ship. And I will give you funds to go anywhere you wish … if it does not … if you do not want to stay with him.”

  She lifted her chin. “I have enough money.”

  “I saw what you had,” he said.

  He saw in her eyes the realization that he had admitted searching her trunks. She hesitated, then said slowly, “I sewed some jewels and money in the hem of my dress.”

  “The necklace you wore in Martinique. I thought I had missed it.”

  “Nay.”

  He was stunned. He hadn’t thought about that, but then he hadn’t had much to do with ladies’ garments lately. “Are you sure you should tell me that?”

  “You just offered me money. I do not think you will steal what I have.”

  “True,” he said. “But this is all my doing. You should not have to pay for it.”

  “It has been an adventure,” she said. “I do not regret it.” She was silent for a moment, then added, “I have learned much.”

  “About pirates?”

  “Aye, about pirates who care about children. I remember when the captain of the Charlotte assured me there were no more cutthroats in the Caribbean, that the Royal Navy had cleared the seas of them, and I believed him. Then you appeared out of nowhere and I was so frightened.”

  “You did not look frightened. You looked angry.”

  Her eyes were wistful, and he wondered again how he ever thought she was plain. She attracted him as no other woman ever had, not even the bonny daughters of Jacobite lords, or the well-dressed women of Paris. The latter had smelled of too much perfume, and their hair was stiff. Jenna’s hair was soft with tints of gold. He remembered how it had felt in his fingers that night. It was a memory he’d tried to shed.

  And now he wanted to run his fingers through the silken strands of her hair, and take her hand, and run a finger down her cheek.

  Bloody hell, he sounded like some miserable poet.

  Still, he couldn’t resist putting his hand on her shoulder, resting it there, reveling in the easy comfort of it. She’d thought so little of herself when they first met, though he had not realized it then. He could kill those Campbells who had made her feel that way. She was worth so much more than she had ever known.

  She should have her chance.

  She still had not answered his question.

  “I want to stay here for a while,” she said.

  “Here?”

  “On the Ami. Or the Isabelle,” she quickly corrected herself.

  “It is dangerous,” he said.

  “I am very aware of that after the past several weeks,” she replied. “But Meg is here. And Robin. Perhaps I can go back to France and take care of the children.”

  “Robin no longer considers himself a child,” he said, trying to hide his astonishment. She had said something like that before, but he had not taken it seriously. He would not have allowed her to take the children to the house of an Englishman.

  Now she was offering to give up any life of her own for two orphans, both of whom had been anything but pleasant to her for the first few days. She asked nothing at all from him.

  He’d thought his heart had been hardened against almost everything. The children had made cracks in it, though he’d tried to patch them. But now he felt swells of tenderness inside.

  He told himself there could be nothing between them, no future. And she’d never mentioned the night they had spent together, nor made demands, nor said she cared about him.

  She showed you.

  And he had walked away from her, making no promises except one to himself not to further endanger her.

  “Captain?” Robin’s voice broke his thoughts.

  He turned, lowering his hand away from her shoulder, missing the feel of her.

  “I’m going ashore, lad. Just Marco and myself. I want you to look after Meg and Lady Jenna,” he said, slipping into the name she preferred. He took a key from his pocket and gave it to Robin. “This is a key to a box in my … in the lady’s cabin. It is for you and the children and Lady Jenna if I am delayed.”

  “I want to go with you,” Robin said.

  “You are grown up now,” Alex said. “You have responsibilities. I am entrusting Meg and Lady Jenna to you.”

  “What about Claude?” Robin said.

  “You are family,” Alex said. “I trust only you to do this for me.” He had already decided this was the only way Robin would stay aboard. And keep Meg with him.

  Robin drew himself up. “Aye, sir.”

  Jenna gave him a small smile as if she knew exactly what he was doing, but she did not say anything.

  A most unusual woman.

  He watched as the quarter boat was lowered. Some men manned the oars, then he and Marco climbed down the ladder and the boat started for shore.

  He kept his gaze on Jenna. Meg had joined her, and Jenna had one arm around her. Robin stood on her other side, straight and sure and proud.

  A large lump grew in his throat, and he turned away, toward the town that looked little more than a village.

  A local drinking establishment was Alex’s first stop. After, that is, a few bribes were paid to the local authorities waiting for him to land.
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br />   Bribes were beginning to deplete his prize money quickly. He had also made arrangements for supplies, the stated reason for his arrival. That, and to repair damage caused by the storm. He’d not had time to make them in Martinique.

  There was canvas to purchase and sails to be repaired. He also had some possessions taken from the prize ships that he intended to trade for coffee. Diamonds were something that he had no intention of handling through official sources.

  He and Marco found the most disreputable tavern they could, one they were told was patronized by a few bandeirantes that had been to Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state where diamonds had been found.

  One of the soldiers, to whom he’d slipped several gold pieces, told him to look for a Tomas Freres. If, he added with a leer, Alex didn’t care if his throat was slit.

  Well, Alex had done his own share of slitting throats.

  The tavern was poor indeed with dirt floors, dirty glasses, and rum that would kill most men. It was also mostly empty. The one person inside regarded them with suspicious eyes.

  Alex leaned against a rickety bar and let Marco talk for him. Marco, he knew, had never been to Brazil, but he had been born in Portugal to a whore. He’d grown up on the waterfront and was as tough as any man in his crew, and that was saying a great deal.

  Alex tried to look indifferent, as if the conversation was of no import to him, and drank the rum. He’d had bloody poor liquor before, but this was about the worst. It burned all the way down his throat and settled in his stomach like molten lava.

  He knew Spanish well enough to make out some of the conversation; it was close enough to Portuguese to understand meanings. He pretended otherwise, though. It suited him to act the swell. He wanted to be underestimated.

  Tomas was indeed in the town. He had a wife here who was pregnant and he returned often to see her between expeditions into the interior for gold, diamonds, and other precious stones. Only God himself, though, knew when he would attend the bar, and no one was willing to tell them where he lived.

  He and Marco sat at what passed as a table in chairs he feared would break under Marco’s hefty weight. One rum became two, and two became three. The sun sank into the west, a ball of fiery red.

  God, it was hot. He wished he were on the back of a fine horse on a Highland path, making his way across a glen with tumbling waterfalls. He longed for the heather and nettles and light brown cottages with their dark brown thatch roofs. There everything was muted: the mist, the hills, the skies, even the purple of the flowers.

  Here, everything was brilliant. A sun so bright and large you felt you could reach out and touch it, green so startling it was more vivid than a polished emerald, flowers like colors in a kaleidoscope.

  The heat sapped strength while the cold of Scotland invigorated him.

  By all the saints in heaven, he was homesick. He even missed the smell of peat and the taste of oatcakes.

  He knew he would never know any of them again. He could never return to Scotland.

  The thought—or maybe the rum—made him morose.

  And led to an even more dangerous image of a Scottish lass.

  She had the strength of the Highlands in her. The muted beauty. The character tempered by steel. Despite her Campbell heritage, she had the attributes he loved best about his homeland.

  Marco kicked him.

  He realized he’d been staring down at the bloody rum. Crying in his cups, someone might say.

  He looked up.

  Two men in white shirts and white trousers were entering the establishment. They paused, looking cautiously around the interior, their gazes fixing on Alex and Marco. Their faces were burned brown with the sun, their eyes predatory, their stances wary. Their features indicated Indian as well as Portuguese blood, and perhaps even some African.

  Their eyes were contemptuous as they regarded whom they obviously considered interlopers who did not belong.

  They went to the bar. A rumble of a language not quite Portuguese ensued between the bartender and the newcomers. Then one turned toward Alex and came over to him.

  “Senhor, I hear you are looking for me.”

  Alex understood, though the dialect made it difficult.

  “Si. Bon tarde,” he said in an accent he knew gave him away as something other than Portuguese. Still, one look at the man’s eyes and he decided he best not play games. He doubted pretending an ignorance of speech would do him any good.

  “Tomas Freres?” he asked.

  The man nodded warily.

  “I was told,” he said in Spanish, “that you might know of diamonds I can buy.”

  “You can buy diamonds in São Paulo,” the man said shortly, and turned back to the bar.

  “But then I would have to pay taxes and send them to Goa. There is an easier way.”

  “Only for thieves,” the man said.

  “Aye,” Alex said.

  The two men regarded each other steadily for a moment. Marco was silent, watching. So was the second man who had entered just seconds earlier.

  Slowly, the first man smiled, a wide smile with a gold tooth glinting. “I think I like you, Senhor …?”

  Alex hesitated, then said, “Malfour.” His true name of Leslie was known only to Burke. He intended to keep it that way.

  “So do you like snakes, Senhor Malfour? To reach the … stones, you will have to move among them.”

  “I’ve been around the two-legged kind.”

  Another brilliant smile. “Ah, they can be more deadly, perhaps.”

  “Their intentions are.”

  “And how much dinheiro can you offer for my trouble?”

  “You have none to offer?”

  “Senhor, no. I am but a … how do you English call it … a messenger.” His look became sly. “I can take your dinheiro and return.…”

  Alex smiled. “That is very kind, but I would not like you to encounter the snakes alone.” He paused. “And I am not British.”

  Tomas raised an eyebrow in question.

  “I once was a Scot, before they stole our homeland.”

  “Then you and I have something in common, senhor. My ancestors’ land was also stolen.”

  “Are you interested in my proposition?”

  “Sím, you interest me, senhor.”

  “You interest me, too,” Alex said, turning to Marco. “This is my friend, Marco.”

  The man merely nodded. “How much will you risk for your prize?”

  “Much.”

  “I know someone who might help you. But you will have to go inland, and it is risky for someone who does not know our country.” He grinned again. “Of course, you could change your mind and trust me.”

  “Would you?” Alex asked.

  The bandeirante grinned again. “I think I like you. We will leave this afternoon.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Alex returned to the ship. He and Marco would go with Tomas; Burke would stay in Vitória with half of the money they had. He’d been told the journey would take a minimum of twenty days. Eight days to the meeting with a band of bandeirantes on the Jequitinhonha River. Four days there to bargain, eight days back.

  The three of them met with Claude.

  Alex and Claude pored over a map. “I want you to sail the ship north, away from the shipping lanes. Return in twenty-one days,” Alex said.

  “Do you trust him?” Claude asked.

  “I trust no one,” Alex admitted wryly. “But if all goes well, we can all leave this ship rich men.”

  Claude nodded.

  “I want you to watch the children. And Lady Jeanette. No one is to follow us.”

  “Oui,” Claude said.

  “It probably will not be easy,” Alex added with an ironic twist of his lips.

  “Little is easy with you,” Claude said.

  Alex chuckled at that. “Aye, I think you are right.” He looked at the others. “We will leave a little before dawn. Tomas says it is easier traveling then.”

  “Is it safe?”r />
  Alex shrugged. “Burke will stay in Vitória with the remainder of the money to buy the diamonds. He will take proper cautions on secreting it, then leave instructions with you, though I trust his abilities to stay alive completely. No one will know he has any funds with him. I will take enough to let them know I am serious. I am not foolish enough to take it all with me. I am hoping their greed will keep me safe.”

  He left then, heading to the main deck where he knew he would find Jenna and the children. She was sitting on a stair leading up to the forecastle. Both children were sitting on a step below and she was reading to them from a book.

  It was a pretty picture.

  He had found her unusually literate and well-read, more so than most women. She would probably be called a bluestocking in England, but he enjoyed the company of a woman who knew more than how to organize a household and was not afraid to show it.

  He walked over to them, aware somehow that she was aware of him, even before he approached. He regarded the book’s title. Poetry by Thomas Gray.

  Alex knew it, despite the fact that Gray was English. In truth it was his book. He had purchased it in France.

  “You like it?” he asked.

  “Aye, it is gentle.”

  “At times,” he said.

  Her large expressive eyes were cautious. And well they might be. He’d been cruel in order to be kind. At least, that was what he had told himself. Perhaps he had been protecting himself.

  She looked down at the children. “Will you fetch me a cup of tea?”

  Robin and Meg looked from one to the other knowingly, then started for the hatchway, leaving them alone.

  “You came to tell me something,” she said.

  Her honestly never failed to startle him. He had never thought that a quality of women, but then, he chided himself, it hadn’t been of men, either. Wasn’t he a prime example of that?

  “Aye,” he said. “I will be leaving before dawn for the interior. I will be gone for three weeks or so. Claude will sail the ship north, far away from the shipping lanes, and wait.”

  “And what do you propose to do about me?”

  “Will you stay aboard, look after the children? Make sure they do not come after me?”

  “Aye.”