Buccaneers Series

by Linda Lee Chaikin

  She came alert. “Oh? From a map and journal? But why would he come to you?”

  He hesitated, as if wondering how much he should explain. “Baret has inherited more from his father’s death than a title. He has his father’s enemies. He has a notion that Royce was betrayed into the hand of the Spanish admiral. Say nothing to anyone in the family—not even to little Jette—but Baret has reason to believe their father may yet live.”

  “Viscount Royce Buckington?” she whispered. “But how? I thought—”

  He interrupted, his expression troubled. “Baret believes that Royce was sold as a convict slave. By now there’s no telling how he fares. He doesn’t wish Jette to know yet. And least of all Lord Felix.”

  She could understand not wishing to disappoint Jette if the idea proved false, but why did he not wish Lord Felix to know? Surely the half brother to Royce would be pleased …

  Her mind faltered.

  No. Of course the man would not. The conversation she had overheard between Great-aunt Sophie and Geneva took on new significance.

  Her father’s eyes, never known to be dispassionate, turned fierce. “Baret vows to find his father. It is the reason that brings him to Port Royal, though the family believes ’tis the wedding. They suspect nothing. And they must not find out.”

  “I’ll say nothing, of course.” So Baret believed his father had been betrayed. “Betrayed by whom?” she whispered. “Someone in Port Royal, or in London?”

  “Maybe both. The journal may offer some interesting facts, as well as prove the innocence of Royce when it comes to piracy.”

  She wondered. Or, she thought dubiously, perhaps prove his guilt? Maybe the deceased Royce Buckington and his son were both pirates, hiding behind titles, and the journal was an excuse for learning of prized Spanish targets. Baret would surely come to the same violent end as his father.

  As she contemplated, Karlton warned again, “See you say nothing of this to anyone.”

  “What was the document you gave him?” she pressed. “I saw him place something in his tunic.”

  He hesitated. “A map from Jonah. Baret intends to journey inland to the Blue Mountains. A bit of prowling about among the Cameroons may uncover some information.”

  The Cameroons had been slaves who served Spain on Jamaica until Cromwell sent Commander Venerable and Sir William Penn to the West Indies. Although the British failed a larger conquest, they had driven out the small Spanish garrison on Jamaica and laid claim to that island in 1655. Her father said that Henry Morgan had fought with the indentured servants from Barbados to take the island.

  The Spanish slaves there fought against the British, and when the island was colonized, many of them—the “Cameroons”—escaped into the Blue Mountains to an area called the “Cockpit” because of its caves and rugged terrain. Through the years, other runaway slaves joined them and intermarried with the Arawak Indians. Together they had continued to fight against the English planters until a peace treaty was drawn up with the governor-general, which gave the Cameroons the Cockpit for a sovereign territory of their own.

  Ty had wanted to escape to the Cockpit and take Jamie there until they could acquire a ship. Had Jamie risked going alone? Though unfriendly to the planters, the Cameroons were known for taking in runaways.

  Then there was still the possibility that he might gain passage on a ship and send for her!

  “A fiercer lot cannot be found, but they know things others do not, and it’s what the viscount is depending on. They may have some bit of information that could help him.”

  “But Lord Felix said his brother’s ship went down in a hurricane.”

  His eyes hardened. “Baret’s convinced Felix lied to him four years ago. ’Tis the reason he’s been searching for information.”

  Emerald shuddered. And Lord Felix was about to marry Cousin Geneva!

  “We must speak to Geneva.”

  “I have. And Baret too will speak to her tonight.”

  Emerald had no doubt about the harm that an insatiable appetite for power could do to a man’s conscience if he lusted for it to the extent that Lord Felix appeared to.

  “Felix is not a man to be thwarted easily,” she said. “He’ll surely not allow anything to come between him and this marriage.”

  “Aye, but when a man has a just cause, there is no turning aside from what must be done. If his father was betrayed, what choice is left to him?”

  She recalled how Baret had stood looking at the sea tapestries. Now she understood the thoughts that must have raced through his mind as he studied the ships in peril and thought of his father and the death of so many. She could not blame him for wanting to know about how his father died, but it seemed to her a hopeless task, one fraught with danger.

  “Knowing his father may yet live as a slave, shall he pursue a goodly life in London and pretend it is not so?”

  It was not only his father who had suffered from this despicable deed, but Baret himself and Jette, she thought. Still, she couldn’t blame Baret for confronting dangerous and impossible odds in the hope of finding his father.

  Anxiety suddenly gripped her. What of her own father? He too would go to sea.

  “It is not the viscount I worry about, Papa, but you. Oh, I wish you wouldn’t take to sea with Captain Morgan,” she pleaded. “You know what Uncle Mathias says. He insists it’s little different than becoming a pirate.”

  He scowled, but she noted that his silver-gray eyes were not unpleasant as he thought of Mathias.

  “Every ship sailing with Morgan flies the colors of His Majesty. I shall return a happier man for sailing, and so will you be happier.”

  She wished she might tell him she wanted nothing more than Jamie’s freedom and a voyage to the New England colony, but his mind was set, and so was his determination to join Morgan’s buccaneers.

  Emerald went back up to her chamber. She had not been there long when she heard the door quietly open behind her. She turned quickly.

  Eight-year-old Jette Buckington peeked in through the crack. “Emerald,” he whispered.

  “Jette!” She threw open the door, and the boy stepped inside, pulling the mulatto twins Timothy and Titus in behind him.

  Two pairs of dark eyes and a pair of gray-green eyes stared up at her.

  Jette whispered excitedly. “I overheard! My father’s alive! And I’m going with my brother Baret to find him!”

  Emerald felt her heart sink.

  13

  A CHILD-KEPT SECRET

  “And I’m taking Timothy and Titus with me,” whispered Jette. “You can come too, Emerald. My brother is the viscount. His ship is big enough for all of us.”

  She must move cautiously to discover his plans in order to alert her father. She could not bring herself to believe that Baret would allow Jette aboard his vessel in such a dangerous search. That being the case, what did Jette have in mind? To convince his brother to take him? But what gave him such confidence that Baret would do so?

  Stooping to his eye level, she took hold of his small shoulders and drew him near, careful to appear calm and worthy of his secrets.

  Now that she had met Baret, she was able to recognize in Jette the physical similarities—the dark hair, the handsome features. But the illness that had confined the boy to his nursery chamber for a year after his arrival on Foxemoore showed in a body that was small for his years.

  “Did the viscount come to see you at the Great House and take you on his ship?” she asked warmly.

  “No, it was old Peter in the kitchen who told us about the Regale. His son works at the harbor unloading ships from all over, and he saw Baret.”

  “And of course you want to go away with the viscount when he leaves again. But won’t that make Geneva unhappy? She loves you very much. Remember how sick you were, and she looked after you day and night?”

  His dark brows tucked together, and he nodded.

  “After Cousin Geneva marries Felix, she’ll want you to voyage with them and Lavend
er to London to Buckington House. Your brother will want you to stay there and attend school.”

  He gave her a swift look, and there was a glimmer in his eyes as if he understood the motive behind her words.

  “How do you know? Did he tell you?”

  “No, but if he’s any kind of a brother, he’ll insist on your education.”

  He squirmed. “He wouldn’t do that, because he didn’t like Cambridge. And I’m going to be just like him, so I’m not going to like it either.”

  So he had attended Cambridge. “How long did he attend?”

  His eyes solemnly gazed at her, and, as though troubled, he whispered, “So long he was old when it was over. And then they made him go somewhere else and learn the king’s laws too. But Baret was smart—this time he didn’t stay a long time. He just left.”

  Her mouth turned. “He sounds hard to please.”

  “Oh, he is, Emerald. Very hard to please. So then he went to the best place of all.”

  Her brow lifted. “And where was that?”

  His eyes glistened. “The Royal Naval Academy.”

  She covered her surprise. The Baret Buckington that Jette was describing was far from the “rogue” she had met on the Regale.

  “He likes having his own ship and doing what he wants.”

  “Indeed. Well, we can’t always do as we please. We must also think of others and what our Lord wills for our lives.”

  “Does that mean you too?”

  “Of course—” She stopped, uncomfortable. In running away to marry Jamie, could she be following her own will?

  “He’s easy to get along with when he has his way,” explained Jette proudly. “And he doesn’t like to wear velvet and satin, he said. He likes boots and leather and swords. He has lots of ’em.”

  “He looks as if he might. I suppose he likes his rum too.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. He never talks about that, but he talks a lot about all the land he saw in the American colonies. He said it was very green and handsome, with lots of lakes and trees and bears too. Have you ever seen a bear?”

  “No. Did the viscount promise to show you the American colonies?”

  “No, but I will see them, because I’m going with him,” he said again. “You can come too. I don’t think he’ll care much. I love Cousin Geneva, and Great-aunt too, but I don’t like Felix. I want my real father.”

  “But you haven’t met Lord Felix yet,” she said easily. “You may like him very much.”

  “But Baret has his own ship. He’ll teach me to read maps. You too, maybe.”

  “Did he tell you he would teach you the ways of a ship?” she asked casually, still wondering if somehow he had already seen his brother.

  “No, I haven’t seen him yet. But he will. He’s my brother,” he said as though that in itself was all the answer either of them needed.

  So he had not seen Baret yet, and his big dreams were all of his own making. She could not imagine Baret’s taking the boy with him on a dangerous voyage, yet she must know how much he had overheard of her conversation with her father in the office.

  She shuddered to think that he may have understood the meaning behind her father’s words when he had cast doubt upon Lord Felix. Such knowledge could be risky for both Jette and the twins.

  “I know you’re very excited about what you heard my father and I discussing in the office. Suppose you tell me again what it was?”

  His eyes narrowed into the guarded expression that she knew only too well. He nodded solemnly. “Baret’s come to search for our father, because he thinks he’s alive,” he stated.

  Then he smiled so happily that her heart twisted.

  “But Jette, it’s only a hope. He doesn’t know for certain. Hopes do not always come true. Anything else?” she pressed gently. “My father and I talked for a long time.”

  He looked at her from beneath long silky lashes, then shrugged his tiny shoulders. “I didn’t hear everything ’cause old Drummond caught us and sent us back up here to my room. Just that my father is not dead after all. Oh, Emerald! I was so happy I cried and cried, and old Drummond thought it was over him catching us downstairs.”

  She reached out a hand and cupped his chin. “Dear Jette, I wish you hadn’t heard.”

  “Oh, no, Emerald! This is the best news I’ve had in my whole life! That, and that Baret’s come back.”

  “Jette—I know you want with all your heart to believe it, but I want you to pay close attention to what I say. Will you do that?”

  He tilted his head with a cautious expression. “Yes, but—”

  “Good, because I don’t want you to be disappointed,” she whispered. “Things don’t always work out the way we expect or want them too. Yet if we love Jesus, whatever happens to our hopes, we need not be disappointed.”

  He moved uneasily beneath her hands. “You’re going to tell me what I heard isn’t so.”

  “I can’t say that, because I don’t truly know. And that’s just it—neither does anyone else, including the viscount. He is hoping his secret information is true, but he isn’t certain.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It would hurt very much to hope for something that proves not to be true after all, wouldn’t it?”

  The desire in his eyes seemed to burn like small coals, and he stiffened a little. “Yes, but it’s got to be true, Emerald. My brother wouldn’t come if it wasn’t so.”

  “But remember, he could be mistaken about the information. Or the man who gave him the information may have been mistaken. That is possible, isn’t it?”

  He frowned.

  “And if you hope too hard—if you believe with all your heart something that isn’t true—that won’t make it happen, Jette. It isn’t how much we believe something that makes it true. We can believe things that are wrong.”

  “But if I pray!”

  Her heart ached as tears welled in his eyes and spilled over his cheeks.

  “Oh, Jette …”

  His mouth quivered. “You said Jesus answers my prayers!”

  “Always. But not always in the way we ask them. Because He never makes a mistake, He will do only what is the very best for all of us who trust Him. As our Great Shepherd, He will lead us in the right path for our feet. Perhaps He has your father with him and—”

  “But Baret said our father is alive. And I’ve prayed. So he is.”

  “Yes, someday all those who die believing in God’s Son will live again in new bodies, but you will need to wait until that day comes.”

  “But my father didn’t truly die—I heard what Karlton said.”

  “Maybe. But if your brother’s hopes prove false, your prayers will still be answered, though in another way. You will need to wait.”

  “But my brother wouldn’t look for Father if he wasn’t alive. Baret’s too smart.”

  “Yes, I think you are right. He is quite smart. But he too can make mistakes. Only God’s Son Jesus never makes a mistake. When Jesus tells us something, we can believe it with all our heart.”

  He stared at her and said nothing for a moment, then nodded yes.

  “So you will be careful to understand that searching for your father is only a hope.”

  He nodded.

  “And if Baret wishes the information to be kept a secret—you must tell no one. Understand?”

  Again he nodded. “I’d never betray my brother.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t.” She smiled and brushed a dark strand of hair from his damp forehead. “You’re sweating. Here, let’s wipe your face with a cool wet cloth. Come, sit on the settee.”

  He did so, while the twins sprawled on the floor and watched her with round eyes, their spotted hound between them.

  As Emerald wrung water from a clean cloth and wiped the boy’s face and hands, Jette too watched her.

  “Just think, Emerald, my brother captains his own ship—just like our father did.” His eyes shone. “He’s even fought pirates. And he knows how to use a sword. W
herever our father is—” he stopped and cast her a glance “—I mean if he’s alive, Baret will find him. And I’m going to help.”

  He turned to the twins. “And so is Timothy and Titus.”

  “Not me, I ain’t be liking the sea,” said Timothy, his large dark eyes troubled. “Heard Minette say, when them waves climbs high over the sides of the ship, why, they’s like fingers ready to drag sailors down, down to the sea monster.”

  “Only if there’s a storm,” said Jette gravely. “But the fingers won’t snatch us away, because we’ll hide in the hold. I know the perfect place to hide on a ship—on Baret’s ship.”

  Emerald glanced at him, but Jette was smiling at the twins. “Know where?” he asked them excitedly.

  Emerald pretended to be busy.

  “Sure I do,” said Timothy. “Ain’t me no fool, not me. Just like you said—down in the hold. Right where the master keeps the ammunition locked.”

  “You only know ’cause old Peter told you, but I knew ’cause I know about ships from Baret.”

  Titus gave a firm shake of his head. “Uh-uh, no sir, not me. I’m not going neither. Like Timothy says, Minette says them waves roll too high.’”

  Jette’s eyes clouded. “You have to come with me, ’cause I don’t want to go alone.” He added more firmly, “And I own you both.”

  They jutted out their chins and stared at him in brooding silence.

  Jette stared back and folded his arms.

  “Then we’ll go with Father and Baret to America. I’m going to preach to the Mohawks.”

  “Mohawk be worse than Arawaks,” said Timothy.

  “When I preach to them, both of you will guard me with your swords.”

  “We ain’t got no swords,” stated Timothy. “And it’s the angels’ job to keep you from bein’ scalped, not me and Titus.”

  “Then you can sing while I teach the Mohawks,” Jette argued gravely.

  They shook their dark heads. “We don’t like to sing—” They stopped abruptly and looked up at Emerald with guilty expressions. “We like to sing with Miss Emerald, though, don’t we, Titus?” asked Timothy, elbowing his brother.

  He nodded firmly. “And Mr. Mathias too.”