Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

‘Well,’ sighed Carolina, ‘you know how Fielding raves against buccaneers . . .’

  Sandy Randolph turned away suddenly. His gaze was speculative, and for a moment it trailed the English ship, careening away from them in terror under a mountain of canvas. ‘I think it will be snowing along the James,’ he said abruptly, veering from the subject.

  Carolina pulled her scarlet cloak about her tighter. ‘Then you will suggest it to Rye?’ she asked in a small voice, staring in sudden confusion down at the deck.

  ‘Of course.’

  She looked up at him and smiled. Sandy was her real father - as anyone looking at them now could plainly see, for she shared not only his colouring but his aristocratic features, although hers were softened in a feminine way. ‘I shall tell Mother that you came for me,’ she said softly.

  He gave her an uneasy look, a look that spoke volumes. He loved her mother so much - but he had been married when he had fallen in love with Letitia and his wife was mad; he could never divorce her. He had let Letitia go to Fielding Lightfoot’s arms, hoping she would find happiness there. But then - all too briefly - the winds of fate had driven her back to him. And Carolina had been the result. The scandal had been hushed up, of course. As far as the world went, Carolina was Fielding Lightfoot’s third daughter by the glamorous Letitia, but at home relations between Fielding and the child who was not his own had always been strained. It had been a long time before Carolina had learned the truth, and it was a truth that even now she must cloak. For her mother’s sake. For all their sakes.

  ‘Explain to Letty when you get home that I thought it best not to accompany you to Level Green,’ he said in a sombre voice.

  Carolina nodded soberly. His futile love for her mother was a personal tragedy and she would not add to it. ‘I will tell her - in private. I expect she will be at Aunt Pet’s and not at Level Green for she hates being out in the country this time of year.’

  He laughed. ‘Perhaps the magnificence of the new house Fielding has built at Level Green has seduced her into staying home!’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Carolina regarded her real father whimsically. ‘You know how much Mother loves parties. She would rather be in town when the snow flies!’

  Father and daughter smiled at each other in perfect understanding.

  ‘We will sight the coast soon,’ he remarked restlessly.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She sensed that he was on the verge of telling her something, and her gaze on him was questioning.

  ‘Carolina, I would not have you take amiss what I am about to say,’ he began slowly, weighing his words.

  Her slender gloved hand fluttered down on his, rested there lightly. ‘I would never take amiss anything that you might say,’ she said with that impulsive warmth that had so endeared her mother to him.

  The icy-grey eyes that she looked into - so like her - own - were cynical. But his voice was gentle.

  ‘’Twas only a “buccaneer wedding” - you know that.’ She gave him a puzzled look.

  ‘I mean ’twas not legal. There was no licence, no parish register, no banns were cried, the “minister” who performed the ceremony was long ago cast out from his church - the man told me so.’

  Carolina drew a deep breath. Her gaze upon the father who could never claim her back home in Virginia was a level one. ‘It was a marriage to me,’ she said steadily, and I am wed to Rye forever!’

  His expressive shrug spoke volumes of hard living and blasted hopes. ‘I but wanted you to know the truth of the matter,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Until the knot is tied in Yorktown, you are still a free woman. Free to leave him, free to seek your fortune elsewhere.’

  ‘Why? Why do you tell me this?’ she challenged him, perversely refusing to admit that she had already known her marriage had no force of law. ‘Do you not like Rye?’

  ‘I do,’ he replied moodily. ‘But’ - a troubled frown crossed his countenance - ‘but you are my daughter and to me you must come first. I could not let you arrive in Yorktown thinking that you were well and truly wed.’

  Her expression softened. He was very winning, this newfound father of hers. ‘I thank you, sir,’ she said, dimpling. ‘But in my heart I am already well and truly wed - no matter what I must pretend in Yorktown.’

  ‘That is where I will be leaving you,’ he told her. ‘I will be going directly to Tower Oaks when we disembark.’

  ‘Of course.’ She nodded, repressing a shudder that he must return to a house devoid of children, whose mistress was a madwoman, for Sandy’s young wife, always unstable, had never recovered from a terrible childbirth that had nearly taken her life. She was seldom lucid, and when she was, she blamed him for that disaster as well She had attacked him once with a carving knife and he bore the scars of it. Wild, wicked Sandy Randolph, so in love with her mother, who must return upriver to his private hell. ‘I will understand if matters upriver prevent your attendance at my wedding,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘But’ - she flashed him a misty smile that turned her luminous grey eyes to shimmering silver - ‘I will be honoured, sir, if you do attend.’

  He gave her a hunted look. If he attended, he would see her mother again, his wild lost love of yesterday - and that was dangerous. ‘I would see you safe and settled,’ he muttered. ‘Not sailing the seas in some buccaneer vessel.'

  ‘And soon I will be,’ she told him with a confident lift to her chin. ‘Rye plans to take me back to England with him and we will settle down there - perhaps at his family seat in Essex.’

  ‘Pray God you will be happy there,’ he murmured fervently and for a moment pressed her hand. ‘And if you ever need me . . .’

  ‘I will sail up the James and seek you out at Tower Oaks!’ she laughed. ‘Oh, Sandy - dear Sandy, for I can never call you “father” - be happy for me!’

  He gazed down at her with pride. ‘We are alike,’ he muttered. ‘Both of us eager to set out on some wild venture, to best the world.’

  ‘And we will have the best of all possible worlds!’ she declared, laughing. ‘We will have it yet!’

  His own pale silver eyes kindled. ‘Perhaps,’ he sighed. ‘Well, I had best find this “husband” of yours. We have matters to discuss.’

  He left her then, strolling away down the clean-scoured deck.

  Carolina, leaning upon the taffrail, smiled after him. The brisk sea wind whipped back her scarlet velvet hood, took her hair, pale as the ocean foam, and sent it in disarray around her slender shoulders. For a moment it blew around her head in a bright tempestuous whirl and two sailors, climbing the rigging, looked down and nearly fell from their perch at the beauty of the sight.

  The Sea Wolf cut the water cleanly, flying the English flag, driving straight and true towards the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Above Carolina, standing on the deck, the canvas crackled noisily as she fought to pull her hood back over her flying hair. And the crack of the sails and the lazy creaking of the grey ship’s timbers were musical sounds to her, blithely calling out that it was all going to happen at last - that she, Carolina the runaway, was coming home in triumph, coming home with her true love beside her, to a wedding as befit a Colonial belle of Yorktown.

  She wrapped her arms around her against the cold and shivered in her cloak - but there was not a cloud on her horizon. And the song the cold wind sang aloft in the topsails was more than a windsong to her - it was a love song born of the wind and the sea.

  BOOK 1

  The Hush-Hush Bride!

  Dearest love, lie down with me beneath the summer sky,

  Whisper that you love me - even though you lie!

  Cover me with kisses, promise me a ring

  So I’ll know what bliss is - make my heart sing!

  PART ONE

  The Change in Plans

  Sing to me a lover’s song,

  Tell me where our love went wrong,

  Lie to me, beneath the moon,

  Swear you will return - and soon!

  THE YORK RIVER, VIRGINIA

  Winter
1689

  1

  A light snow was falling when they cast anchor below the familiar bluffs of Yorktown. It drifted down through the blue dusk, melting as it fell - but causing the air to be damp as any cellar. The soft flakes wafted down upon Carolina’s blonde hair as she and Rye bade Sandy Randolph goodbye and transferred themselves to a longboat for the ride upriver, for Carolina was so eager to gaze upon this Tidewater world she had thought lost to her that she forgot to put up her soft French velvet hood.

  As the town fled by to the steady sweep of the oars, it seemed to her that all their plans had changed since they had left Tortuga. The lean grey vessel which they had left anchored behind them had had her name changed during the voyage from Sea Wolf to Sea Waif, and the buccaneer crew they left behind them in Yorktown looked almost boringly respectable. The Sea Waifs new ‘captain’, chosen to hold authority while Kells was gone (and chosen partly because of his ability to hold his tongue as well) had about him no hint of the buccaneer. And in the longboat beside Carolina, Kells was once again the sober grey-clad country gentleman he had seemed when first she met him.

  Kells and Sandy Randolph had worked it all out together.

  "Twould be a mistake for you to come swinging in with a cutlass, proclaiming yourself to be the notorious Captain Kells - even to your new in-laws,’ Sandy had counselled the younger man over captured Spanish wine in the great cabin during their last dinner on board ship. Sandy was elegantly turned out in a stiff brocade coat that gave the effect of etched buff, heavily encrusted with gold braid. The froth of lace at his throat and cuffs was impeccably white, his trousers of the latest cut. Carolina thought he would have looked perfectly at home at the Court of St James and was proud of him.

  Seated across from him, toying with his glass of Madeira, Kells cut a more sinister figure. His deep-cuffed coat of claret velvet had somewhat tarnished braid, but it fitted his broad shoulders arrogantly. His thick dark hair was not meticulously tied back and caught with a black grosgrain riband as was Sandy’s; it hung carelessly to rest, gleaming, upon his shoulders. The lamp above them highlighted the strong planes of his face, the square set of his jaw. In deference to the heat of the cabin (kept warm for Carolina in her low-cut crimson velvet gown) he had tugged open his collar and presented a carelessly casual appearance somewhat at odds with that of the other two.

  He made no immediate comment on Sandy’s suggestion, and Carolina, watching the two men in silence, wondered suddenly how much of Sandy’s present argument had to do with her request of him earlier and how much had to do with her shrugging off his suggestion that she was not really married to the lean buccaneer who now regarded them both with such a steady look.

  ‘Better to appear to be a passenger on a merchant ship, arrived to pick up cargo in Yorktown,’ pursued Sandy. ‘Then if there’s any trouble with your pardon . . .’

  Then you can make your escape before the authorities learn you’re Captain Kells, Carolina thought with a pang.

  By sea ... It brought home to her how precarious was their life together, she the Tidewater aristocrat who had passed herself off in Tortuga as one Mistress Christabel Willing - and Kells, the counterfeit Irishman whose buccaneer façade hid an English country gentleman yearning to go home . . .

  ‘D’ye anticipate trouble with my pardon?’ Kells wondered abruptly, and for a moment his grey eyes were bleak as if he had seen a longed-for world snatched away from him.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Sandy Randolph’s handsomely brocaded shoulders moved in the slightest of shrugs - but the gesture was nonetheless eloquent. Gold usually changed hands to secure a king’s pardon, and who could trust this general amnesty that had been declared to include such a famous buccaneer as Captain Kells, on whose head there was a price of forty thousand pieces of eight in Spain? ‘I will promptly intercede with my friend the governor on your behalf - without telling him your real identity, of course,’ Sandy assured the younger man earnestly. ‘But since you are giving the world your real name - Rye Evistock - I think it would be best to give that name only to the Lightfoot clan as well. That way there can be no chance slips of the tongue to endanger you. And in the meantime I will check into this matter of the pardon for you.’

  Kells swung around to face Carolina. ‘Is that what you desire?’ He was regarding her keenly.

  Carolina flushed, and the colour that flooded her cheeks spread down her throat and prettily pinked her bosom and the pearly white tops of her young breasts so attractively displayed in the elegant low-cut gown.

  ‘Y-yes,’ she said, stumbling over the word. ‘I think it best too. Rye.’

  ‘So be it,’ he said, but he looked thoughtful, and Carolina for a moment felt hot shame that she really could not trust all those at Level Green not to betray him. Perhaps Fielding Lightfoot in his hatred of Sandy and his dislike of her - no, no, she would not face that possibility, and she would not have to face it if no one knew Rye was a buccaneer.

  And so the officers and crew of the newly rechristened Sea Waif had been warned to use extra caution and to pass themselves off as having signed on a merchantman out of Bristol, here in Yorktown to load on tobacco to fill the long clay pipes of England. And now the Sea Waifs longboat, with wary taciturn seamen at the oars - men who, once they received their pardons, would return as wealthy men to their native country - was making its way up the tide-swollen York.

  Carolina’s heart was racing when they reached the landing at Level Green and she saw the great red brick turreted house of Flemish bond - largest in all Virginia - rise up before her. Candles winked from the downstairs windows. Perhaps they had guests? Oh, it would be awkward if they did! For all the Tidewater knew that Carolina Lightfoot had run away from home! And now she was back, still unchaperoned, flaunting a new scarlet cloak and with a commanding gentleman in grey at her side.

  And then they were tying up at the pier and hurrying over the wide snow-covered lawns and banging the big knocker. And being let in by a startled servant and stepping over the threshold, shaking the snow from their cloaks and setting down their luggage in the majestic hall with its tall pilasters and its massive carved stairway that could comfortably accommodate eight abreast.

  Suddenly it all seemed like a dream to Carolina. She had come back to this house from England still a schoolgirl and left it a runaway to avoid being forced into some safe respectable loveless marriage. And now she had returned - she who had been for a space the daunting Silver Wench of the Caribbean! Fate worked in mysterious ways . . .

  Her reverie was interrupted by an elegant woman in violet velvet who appeared in the great hall. A woman with a great mass of fair hair whose slender figure froze to stillness at sight of them.

  Carolina tossed back her head of wet blonde hair on which snowflakes still sparkled and prepared to stand her ground.

  ‘Mother.’ She nervously addressed the small-waisted woman in the wide skirts who now swept towards them. May I present my betrothed, Rye Evistock?’

  If any words had been calculated to silence the greeting that sprang to Letitia Lightfoot’s lips, those were the ones. She came to a halt. She did not embrace Carolina. Instead her handsomely coiffed head lifted alertly as if she might be facing an adversary, and her dark blue eyes glinted as they raked the smiling countenance of the tall man before her.

  ‘Welcome to Level Green, sir,’ she said on a note of irony. The barest inclination of her aristocratic head acknowledged Rye’s sweeping bow. ‘I am grateful that you have brought Carolina home to us. And I see you have brought your luggage as well.’ She glanced down at the two bags Rye had carried over the lawn and set down upon the floor of the hall. ‘I will have it taken upstairs, and rooms prepared. And the men from your barge, what of them? They will need to be cared for in the servants’ quarters - ’

  ‘They have already departed,’ Rye told her easily.

  ‘What, at this hour?’

  ‘It was a longboat, Mother,’ Carolina put in quickly.

  ‘And the men wer
e eager to get back to Yorktown and the wenches there.’

  At this mention of wenches, her mother’s higharched brows lifted a trifle but she made no comment; she merely looked pointedly at Carolina’s scarlet velvet cloak which she had not seen before. Carolina moved uneasily under that look. Unmarried daughters of the gentry do not accept valuable gifts from men - particularly clothing, it seemed to say.

  Carolina opened her mouth to answer that unspoken criticism - and closed it again. Her mother was as usual in complete command of the situation and she felt awkward, gauche.

  ‘Delcy.’ Imperiously, Letitia signalled the servant girl who had let them in, and who had been standing there goggle-eyed, to help them off with their wraps.

  ‘I am still cold - I think I will keep my cloak on until I thaw out,’ murmured Carolina, declining Delcy’s offer of assistance.

  And indeed she felt cold. Not merely because her elegant emerald-green satin gown was too thin for a night like this - she had recklessly worn it because of its great sweeping skirt and the abundance of gold embroidery on its emerald-green velvet petticoat, now waterstained from the snowy lawn - but because she felt that perhaps they would not be staying, perhaps she would be sent away . . .

  Her mother must have caught that thought for she gave Carolina a sardonic look. ‘Have you supped?’

  ‘On board,’ said Carolina hastily for she wanted to get her mother’s questions over with - she might well choke on them at supper.

  ‘Well, perhaps you will join us then in a glass of wine?’ Letitia might have said more but from the head of the stairs Carolina’s older sister Virginia had just then glimpsed the newcomers. Now Virginia picked up her heavy black skirts and fled down those stairs with a glad cry and embraced Carolina.

  Oh, Carol, you’re back!’ she cried joyfully. ‘We were all sure you were dead!’