by Georgie Lee
They lay together in silence, the cicadas filling the night with their endless music while he held her close, enjoying the faint sweep of her fingertips across his back, the stretching silence telling him she worried about their future the same way he did. At last, he shifted down beside her and pulled her close.
‘Where did you go today?’ she asked.
He could no longer hold back the truth or reality. ‘I went to see Lord Spotswood to ask for the King’s Grace.’
She sat up, the hope filling her wide eyes increasing his torment. ‘You received a pardon?’
He reached for his coat on the floor and slipped the useless document from the pocket and handed it to her. ‘I did. My men didn’t.’
She tilted the pardon to read it by the dim light of the candle on the bedside table, a crease of confusion marring the smooth skin of her brow. ‘Why would Lord Spotswood do such a thing?’
‘He wants me to procure solid evidence of Vincent colluding with pirates so he doesn’t have to.’ He explained the task Lord Spotswood had assigned him, conscious of the pain just behind her eyes. ‘It’s his way of punishing me even when the law says he can’t because I sought the pardon.’
‘What will you do?’
He stood up and tugged on his breeches. ‘I have to find Captain Dehesa and secure his testimony against Vincent. It’s the best evidence I can secure.’
She opened her fingers and the paper fluttered to the floor. ‘You’re going back to sea?’
‘I have no choice. Until I fulfil my end of the bargain, my men are still wanted. I can’t leave them at risk while I walk free. It would be a betrayal of the faith they’ve placed in me these last five years.’
‘And if this Captain Dehesa’s sworn testimony isn’t enough, then what will you do?’
He turned to face her where she knelt on the bed, her long hair falling in thick ringlets over her shoulder to cover breasts as tantalising as any prize ship. He didn’t want to leave her, or break her heart, but if he didn’t do it now, he never would. ‘Continue on as I have before until I gather what I need.’
‘It will mean violating the terms of the pardon and becoming a wanted man again.’
‘It’s a chance I have to take.’ He turned his back on her to gather up his frock coat and pull it on, wincing at the pain in his shoulder and his heart. All his newfound plans to be with Cas and destroy Vincent were coming apart, just like every other plan he’d ever made for his life.
‘No, you don’t. You can stay and gather evidence here. The sea can’t be the only place where Vincent has made deals or spoken to people.’
‘None of whom are likely to tell me with the threat of retribution from Vincent hanging over them.’ He pulled on his boots with angry jerks. ‘Assuming I can even find those people.’
‘I know who one of them is.’ She tugged up the sheet to cover her beautiful body. ‘A man in North Carolina named Mr Powell who Vincent has been corresponding with, and I’m sure it has to do with his illicit trades. I also discovered that Vincent is deeply in debt to the Devlins. It means your efforts to weaken his company are working and he’s close to ruin. If you stay here, you could talk to Mr Powell, and perhaps the Devlins, and drive home the final blow.’
He faced her, stunned by her news. ‘How did you find out all this?’
A red flush spread across her cheeks and she twisted the corner of the sheet around one finger. ‘I went to Butler Plantation today to see if I could find evidence to help you and I did.’
He clasped her upper arms, sickened by the chance she’d taken for him. ‘You’re not to jeopardise yourself for me, do you understand? If he’d discovered what you were doing, he could’ve killed you, or worse.’
‘I can’t sit idly by while you risk your life to obtain proof. I can’t watch you hang when you fail to find what you need.’ She reached out and took his hand, covering it with both of hers and trapping him in her sweet grip. ‘I didn’t nurse your wounds to see you die of jail fever or worse.’
‘I didn’t set you back on the Winter Gale to watch you throw your life away for me.’ He pulled his hand out from between hers.
She didn’t reach for him again or protest more about why he should stay and how she might help him. Instead, she stared up at him as everything he told her and what it meant to them and her dreams of their future descended over her. The pain making her eyes shimmer with tears made him curse fate for bringing them together, for revealing he was alive and allowing her to hope for their future before he yanked it away. He reached out and stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. She didn’t melt into his touch like she had before, but remained rigid. In her stiffness, he could sense the anger boiling inside her, the one tearing at him, too. ‘I would stay with you if I could, Cas.’
She jerked away from him. ‘I’m not sure you would, not when I see you rushing back to your ship like Giles used to rush back to his whore.’
‘I’m nothing like him.’ He rose and stuffed the blunderbuss into the inner pocket of his frock coat.
‘You’re exactly like him, except all he cared about was pleasure. All you care about is revenge.’ She snatched up her chemise and pulled it over her head, then tugged on her panniers and the dress. ‘I wonder if it was Lord Spotswood who ordered you to prove Vincent guilty or if it was your own desire to see him ruined that drove you to make this deal.’
‘I care about my men too much to save myself at their expense. I promised them freedom and I will damn well deliver it.’ He banged his fist on the table, almost making the candle topple out of its brass holder before he caught and righted it.
‘And once again, your promise to me to be my husband and stand beside me through everything means nothing.’ She did up the stomacher, her fingers trembling so hard she could barely slip the laces through the eyelets. He reached out to assist her, but she knocked his hands away, then yanked the laces so tight they scraped over the eyelets. ‘Don’t try to help me, not when you’ve never been there for me before or cared what happens to me.’
‘I do care, I always have.’
‘Talk of affection from a pirate,’ she snorted. ‘You’ll ruin your fearsome reputation with such idle chatter.’
The disgust in her eyes made him want to crush her to him and bring back the fiery passion of only a few moments before, but it was too late. He hadn’t left, but already he’d placed too much distance between them, one she increased with her insults.
‘Yes, I’m a pirate and, ever since our reunion on the Devil’s Rose, I’ve made no effort to hide what I am and who I’ve become, or to conceal how firm a grip this life has on me and how much it has changed me for the worse, but you refused to believe or accept it.’
‘I do now. I hope you find your evidence, Richard, and I hope your vengeance brings you comfort. It’s clear nothing else ever will.’ She flung open the cabin door and ran out into the darkness, not even pausing to give him one last look before she left him alone.
He stepped on to the porch, catching the faint yellow of her dress made white by the moonlight before it and she vanished into the darkness of the trees. He opened his mouth to call her back, to hang on to her once-powerful belief that he could stay with her and somehow still defeat Vincent, but he remained silent. There was nothing he could say or do to heal the damage he’d wrought.
He went inside, took the pardon and the pieces of eight off the table and stuffed them in his coat pocket before hurrying out of the cabin, across the clearing and into the forest. Tramping down to the river, he found a small path along the shore and followed it, fighting against his exhaustion to move fast, eager to be away from his enemies and the ghost of the life he might have enjoyed with Cas. He paused and leaned against a tree, dragging in a deep breath to beat back the sharp pain in his shoulder and the failure engulfing him. She’d been in his arms and willing to defy Vincent and her eagerness for his and s
ociety’s acceptance to help him. He’d won her and then he’d lost her again.
He banged one fist against the rough bark of the tree, scraping his skin. Curse it all.
He pushed off the tree and resumed his steady pace, soon coming upon a skiff tied to a slanted and rickety wharf. Up through the trees sat an equally dilapidated cabin barely visible through the dense woods. Its curtained windows were dark, but a thin wisp of grey smoke drifted out of the chimney.
Richard trod quietly across the rotting wood dock to the vessel. He kept an ear out for its owner, but nothing except the croak of frogs, the lap of water and the continuous humming of the cicadas reached him. Richard lowered himself into the bobbing vessel. Despite the poor condition of the cabin, the wood and sails of the skiff were sound. Richard fished a single piece of eight from his inner coat pocket and left it on the dock. The money was worth three times what the vessel was and he hoped the owner would put it to good use.
He cast off from the dock and caught the current. When he was far enough away from the shore, he raised the yellowed sail and it filled with the breeze. Richard gripped the tack line with his good hand and used his weak one to work the rudder. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, he guided the craft towards the Chesapeake Bay and the open sea, fleeing in the night in a stolen skiff like a criminal with Cas’s curses ringing in his ears.
He tightened his grip on the tack line when the craft sailed around an all-too-familiar bend in the river and into sight of Sutherland Place. It stood on a hill overlooking the James River, the view of the windows along the brick façade exactly as he remembered. The windows burned with the light of numerous lamps and illuminated the many people gathered inside. The breeze being hard at his back dampened the sounds of the shore and the river grew quiet around him, but it didn’t muffle the faint notes of a pianoforte being played inside, his mother’s pianoforte, entertaining another woman’s guests in another man’s house. The property had been sold lock, stock and barrel to pay his father’s debts, the ones he had acquired because of Richard.
Damn it. This is not how it will be. He was sick of loss, of not keeping his promises, sick of losing to Vincent time and time again and of being ruled by revenge and the darkness of Captain Rose. With each bob of the craft over a small swell or the slap of the water against the hull, his determination to finally end this hard and ruthless life increased. During the last two days, Cas had given him a taste of what he could have if he gave up the sea, and he wouldn’t allow it to be ripped from him the way Sutherland Place and his youth and innocence had been torn from him. I won’t fail again.
He’d follow the coast to Knott Island and rejoin the Devil’s Rose. They’d prepare for their final voyage to rendezvous with Captain Dehesa off Cape Hatteras, then sail to North Carolina and find a solicitor willing to take his affidavit for a few pieces of silver. Once there, he’d find the Mr Powell Cas had spoken of. She’d risked her safety to gain him this information and he would use it, either purchasing the man’s testimony or forcing it out of him. Resolve welled inside him to equal the one that had made him choose the alias of Captain Rose, but this time he would kill the pirate Captain for good. He was done with him and defeat. He would give Lord Spotswood what he demanded and then seize for himself the things he craved: Vincent’s end, a life on land and Cas’s heart.
* * *
Cassandra rushed down the path to Belle View, trying to outrun the pain strangling her. She paused beneath a thick tangle of trees, wanting to return to the cabin before Richard left and somehow convince him to stay, but she forced herself forward towards the house. He was leaving her again and nothing, not her kisses or her pleas, had moved him enough to make him change his mind. There was no reason to run after him and humiliate herself. For the second time, she’d seen something in a man that wasn’t there.
He didn’t love me, he never did. She should have guessed as much last night when he couldn’t even bring himself to say the words after she’d laid bare her heart to him. She tugged at the tight laces of the stomacher, trying to loosen them and take a deep breath, to not collapse beneath the weight of disappointment. Everything she’d ever believed and thought she would find with him had been a lie. He hadn’t loved her any more than Giles had, or, if he had, his affection had been little more than the whims of a young man and easily forgotten. She’d been naive to trust in his affection, duped by her desperate need for love and to recreate the family life at Belle View the fever had taken from her all those years ago. She’d swallowed Richard’s lies about returning to her at Yorktown and had almost believed them today. He was never coming back. The sea was a better lover and one she could not outdo. She couldn’t offer him the thrills and danger he must enjoy in piracy. All she could give him was the quiet and steady rhythm of a planter’s life and the peace and comfort of being a husband and a father. At one time she’d thought him eager for these simple things, but his having gone to sea the first time should have told her he’d never wanted them or her.
She resumed the march up the rise to Belle View, her feet coming down hard on old twigs and snapping them. With each step, she tried to take hold of her pain, to shove it into the small place in the back of her mind where she’d kept all of her anguish over Giles, the Chathams’ betrayal, Uncle Walter’s death and the loss of her parents. No one knew Richard had been here, forcing her to mourn the loss of him and his love alone.
Alone.
It made her heart sink further. She’d been left to struggle against troubles by herself for so long and, for a moment in Richard’s arms last night and today, she’d thought her solitude had at last come to an end. Instead, it had grown even deeper than before.
Up ahead, the trees began to thin and the red brick of Belle View came into sight. A few windows downstairs blazed with light. This late at night they should all be dark, but Dinah or Mrs Sween must be up, or perhaps they’d forgotten to douse the lamps. Cassandra sighed. If someone was up, it would mean more lies, more deceit, more hiding of her feelings, and she had no strength for it. She couldn’t face Mrs Sween or Jane and not have everything come tumbling out. Hopefully, they would understand and not chide, scorn or blame her for her present misery and her hand in it. There was no one else she could turn to for comfort.
She wandered listlessly up the back lawn, the ivy and weeds choking the brick deepening the pain of Richard’s leaving. She’d come here to rebuild her life and with it Belle View. For a short time, Richard had become a part of her plans, her future. He was once again her past, just like the prosperity of the plantation and her loving and safe childhood. Whatever happened now, she’d face it by herself, like nearly every calamity which had befallen her since Richard had first gone to sea.
When she drew near the house, the sound of a man and woman arguing inside made her stop. It sounded like Mrs Sween and a man’s voice she faintly recognised, but couldn’t place, but there was no mistaking the harsh tone of it. She quickened her pace, hoping it wasn’t the overseer returning to collect past wages. It was strange to choose this late at night to confront her, but drinking at the Raleigh Tavern often turned sane men angry, especially those who felt they’d been wronged. He could demand all he liked, she had little to give him, but she would find something to soothe him and send him on his way.
She hurried up the porch steps and quietly entered the back sitting room.
Mr Fitzwilliam’s raised voice from the entry hall made her freeze in the centre of the faded rug. ‘Tell me where she is.’
‘It’s none of your business where she is,’ Mrs Sween shot back. Cassandra crept up to the door and peered around it and into the main hallway to see the housekeeper planted in front of Mr Fitzwilliam, her thick fists on her ample hips, as determined as the burgess. ‘She doesn’t receive visitors this late at night.’
‘Don’t insult me with your flimsy regard for convention.’ He reached out, ready to shove Mrs Sween aside when Cassandra stepped into the
entry hall.
‘What is the meaning of this intrusion?’ Cassandra demanded in the same voice she’d used to halt the marauding pirates on the Winter Gale. It didn’t stop Mr Fitzwilliam.
‘I’ve been patient in my pursuit of you, but no more.’ He stepped around Mrs Sween and marched to Cassandra. She raised herself up to face him, refusing to be cowed even when he leaned in close to her, his voice like the hiss of a copperhead snake beneath a bush. ‘You’ve been hiding Richard Davenport.’
She stiffened with panic and forced herself not to move or react, afraid even the slightest twitch or flush might reveal her guilt. How did he find out? ‘That’s impossible. Richard Davenport is dead. It’s cruel of you to come here this late at night for no other reason than to make up such stories.’
Over his shoulder she caught Mrs Sween straining to hear, but Mr Fitzwilliam kept his words menacingly low. ‘Don’t play me for a fool. Richard, or should I say Captain Rose, is very much alive thanks to your tender care.’
The sound of hard footsteps on the front steps echoed through the house. Mr Adams entered, more morose than usual, with two sallow and burly men flanking him.
‘Did you find him?’ Mr Fitzwilliam demanded.
‘No, there was no one there when we reached the cabin. We searched the nearby woods, but found nothing.’
Cassandra would have sighed in relief if she dared, but she could do nothing to confirm Mr Fitzwilliam was right.
Mr Fitzwilliam whirled on her. ‘Where is he?’
‘Buried at sea as you and everyone else well know.’
‘He’s no more dead than you or I.’ He curled up his lip, revealing one crooked tooth. ‘Now tell me where he is or I’ll see to it Lord Spotswood finds out about your treachery.’
